In What Alternate Reality Does Disclosure Of CIA Bases In Ukraine Garner More Support?

CTH  |   I find it very interesting this report surfaces in the New York Times and not The Washington Post first.  This material distinction showcases the motive for the outline is heavily domestic in nature; meaning, the core of domestic USA politics (specifically the White House) needs to admit that Ukraine is a proxy province in order to retrigger support for policy.

[Inside Baseball] – Watch the responses to this report from CNN (State Dept) carefully and watch the responses from WaPo (CIA/Intel). The more subtle and/or quiet the response(s), the more certain these influence institutions were collaborating on the material report to the New York Times.

The White House is admitting the CIA and larger IC apparatus, which includes the State Dept., has been heavily controlling all activity in Ukraine for the past decade.  The only reason to admit this now very publicly is because they are losing voter support.  THIS EXPLAINS WHY BIDEN IS CALLING FOR A WHITE HOUSE MEETING!! 

The US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) maintains 12 secret bases in Ukraine along the border with Russia, and last Thursday CIA chief William Burns made his 10th secret visit to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The Times is now reporting the USA (State Dept.) was responsible for the coup in Ukraine (color revolution) and took control over political operations in 2014.   We have long suspected this; many have reported exactly this reality; however, this is the first time it has all been admitted.

(NYT) – The C.I.A.’s partnership in Ukraine can be traced back to two phone calls on the night of Feb. 24, 2014, eight years to the day before Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Millions of Ukrainians had just overrun the country’s pro-Kremlin government and the president, Viktor Yanukovych, and his spy chiefs had fled to Russia. In the tumult, a fragile pro-Western government quickly took power.

The government’s new spy chief, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, arrived at the headquarters of the domestic intelligence agency and found a pile of smoldering documents in the courtyard. Inside, many of the computers had been wiped or were infected with Russian malware.

“It was empty. No lights. No leadership. Nobody was there,” Mr. Nalyvaichenko said in an interview.

He went to an office and called the C.I.A. station chief and the local head of MI6. It was near midnight but he summoned them to the building, asked for help in rebuilding the agency from the ground up, and proposed a three-way partnership. “That’s how it all started,” Mr. Nalyvaichenko said. (read more)

Source: The New York Times, based on more than 200 interviews with current and former officials in Ukraine, the United States and Europe.

The report tries to paint various Ukraine officials as the originators of the operation to use Ukraine as the tip of the spear against the Russia construct; however, it doesn’t take a deep weeds walker to realize that part of the narrative is needed to protect the U.S. foreign influence policy from public ridicule.

The White House needs support for their Ukraine proxy.  The public opposition to that continued policy agenda is a problem.  The politicians are caving to pressure from the people.  The IC needs to change the narrative urgently; thus the admission takes place.

A Struggle Ensued...., Copaganda Is Built Into The Fabric Of Police-Media Relations

kansascitydefender  |   It is easy to see how police are the dominant authority in these murders. Another news story, released by KSHB Kansas City two days after Malcolm Johnson’s murder, works to legitimate the narrative by exclusively using police and FBI perspectives. In the story, Public Information Officer Sgt. Jacob Becchina says, “We train tirelessly from day one to give officers every tool both physically, mentally and tactically to work through those situations so that they have the best chance to make the best decisions that they can,” suggesting again that this outcome was the best possible and truly could not have gone any other way.

The article also quotes a retired FBI agent and former cop, completely uninvolved in the case, who adds legitimacy through admitted ignorance: “Unless there are circumstances that we don’t know about, I think this will be found to be a justifiable use of force.” The article follows this with information about Johnson’s backstory that does not pertain to the actual incident in the convenience store.

Becchina is one of KCPD’s three Public Information Officers, a euphemism for marketing and PR cops who push information out to journalists and are functionally in-house propaganda machines. PIOs write press releases and often, as the primary spokespeople for all incidents, prevent the media from talking to the cops involved. In a 2016 study conducted by the Society of Professional Journalists, 196 survey respondents at a variety of news outlets shared that over half of them regularly experienced PIOs blocking their interview attempts with police.

A third of these respondents said that it was the department’s policy to prohibit interviews with anyone other than the PIO, Chief, or other executive cops. Every reporter I asked about PIOs had a similar story of being blocked from access to crucial information. “The police would rarely speak to me; I had to go through the city manager and rely on insufficient press releases,” a reporter for a small city’s only newspaper told me. Others spoke of problems with purposeful misinformation or information withholding, discrimination based on news outlet, and exhausting runarounds.

As paid members of the police force who report directly to the Chief, Public Information Officers create the narratives that most breaking news stories reproduce. In a vlog called “What I’ve Learned Being a Public Information Police Officer” (posted 11/23/19), a YouTuber called officer401 talks about the process of getting information to the public:

“Something major happens…you go back to your office, you type up this long press release, and you send it out to the public and all the news agencies. Within minutes you have reporters from all over the country calling you. I’ve had people from the New York Times call me, I’ve had people from People Magazine call me. And they all want further information about your story….there’s something strangely satisfying that when you put out that press release, hours later you’re watching the news and every station that’s talking about your story is literally reading your press release word for word.”

Because reports are sealed due to “pending investigations,” crime scenes are closed, and involved cops are not available for comment or questions, the rapidfire media cycle forces reporters to rely on PIO press releases for all initial reporting. Having a dedicated PR staff means police committing these acts of violence have someone at the ready to handle any incidents with necessary time, energy, and media connections, something completely foreign to the average person, not to mention someone who has been incapacitated or killed by police.

A lack of transparency and public understanding makes it so that the average person knows nothing of the way PIOs impact news stories. Further adding to the confusion, television reporters often head to the scene of the crime to do their reporting, which–again–is frequently taken verbatim from the PIO’s press release. Visually, the presence of a reporter at the scene suggests they have a kind of eyewitness authority–that they themselves have gathered information from the crime scene, possibly talking to cops and witnesses. This seeming objectivity gives the police narrative even more power.

What You Get When You Make War Against Truth And Reality

kunstler |  In effect, the people running things went from a war against a particular person to a war against reality and its twin sister, truth. Now they are deeply invested in unreality and untruth to the point where they have forgotten how this whole fiasco started and all they can do is desperately patch the dike they had to construct against the informational deluge of truth and reality coming at them like a tsunami rolling across the sea. The harder they work at this futile task of defense, the more absurd they make themselves, leading to ridicule, humiliation, and finally condemnation in whatever remains of the legal arena, where their deeds will finally be judged.

      The first stage of that outcome for them is to pretend that none of it is happening. That’s why The New York Times and Washington Post ignore the news that the gallant knights of the FBI and several other tentacles of the Intel octopus mounted a ferocious, long-running psy-op through the new phenomenon of social media — which happened to rise in importance through this whole period of national discord. In effect, the intel agencies seized the transmitters (as Fidel Castro might put it) and used them very effectively to control their hallowed narratives.

     The second stage is deploying a ruse to distract the public’s attention: That’s why CNN allowed Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the most accomplished liar in all of American politics, to set the stage on Sunday for this week’s criminal referrals against Mr. Trump to be issued out of the House Special J-6 Committee he sits on. That will give America something else to talk about than how they’ve been gaslit and deceived for years. If The Party of Chaos can only bring The Insurrection back into the spotlight, they will feel safe for a little while during the Christmas holiday — because shortly after the new year, there will be a different crew running the J-6 committee and, for the first time in a couple of years, they will be looking into neglected and tacitly suppressed matters such as the FBI’s actual role in that event, and Nancy Pelosi’s failure to honor the then-president’s request for national guard troops to protect the Capitol building.

      Between then and now, we must expect to see the release of Elon Musk’s Twitter files regarding the interactions between federal public health officials and the social network during the years of Covid-19. You understand that these officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, CDC chief Dr. Rochelle Walensky, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and many others, lied about absolutely everything concerning the pandemic and continue lying to this moment about the putative remedy for it: mRNA vaccines, which happen to be killing a lot of people these days. These disclosures will be very serious business. Soon will come congressional inquiries, subpoenas, compelled testimony, and perhaps even criminal referrals.

     Of course, the professional and managerial class also happens to be the most stalwart group of vaccine champions in the land and thus the most psychologically invested in thinking they did the right thing taking all those shots — while forcing as many others to submit, whether they consented or not. The psychology of previous investment is a prime generator of self-delusion. It looks like that class of people will be proven incorrect the hard way. It turns out, after all, that the mRNA “vaccines” were very effective — but only at being deadly. The excess mortality has already kicked in. It’s 18 percent above normal, for instance, in Australia right now, because they’re keeping track. Our officials don’t want to keep track. They don’t want to know, and they certainly don’t want you to know. This is what you get when you make war against truth and reality.

"Don't Hate The Player, Hate The Game....,"

unz  |  Commenting on Adidas dropping Ye, a reader wrote:

As a large company, you’ve got the practical matter of the Jews being able to get your suppliers to boycott you, your bank to withdraw your credit line, your distributors to stop working with you, the shops to stop stocking your goods. Then they can sic Health and Safety on your factories, you might get a visit from the taxman, or you could find yourself with unexpected industrial action from your workers, who for some mysterious reason suddenly get riled up about pay and conditions. There are so many ways the J’s can fuck up a business it’s unreal, and all can be done under the guise of a government agency or other third party, that it would be impossible to fight and win.

Here’s the thing: the Jews themselves claim everyone hates them, and if that were true, some company, somewhere would be operating a business and be against the Jews – unless the Jews controlled everything and were able to shut any such business down. As the Jews will tell you constantly in a whiny, badgering manner, historically in America there were several companies that were openly anti-Semitic in their operations, most notably Ford Automotive under prominent anti-Semite Henry Ford. At the time the biggest auto manufacturer in the world, Ford would sell each new car with a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

But here we are in the current year with the Jews saying that anti-Semitism is more prevalent in America than at any time in history, and no single company in operation is anti-Semitic. The math here is not difficult: the only explanation for this is that the Jews have an absolute ability to shut down anyone who does not go along with their program.

Now, you don’t even need that analysis. You can just look at what happened to Ye. All the man said was his personal opinion, and gave his own account of his experience, which in a free country would be protected. He was not mean about it, he was not “hateful,” and he’s repeatedly said that he apologizes to anyone who is not guilty. The Jews, including the “bro kike” Lex Fridman, have said that he must apologize to the guilty.

At this point, even if he apologized and kissed Howard Stern’s Jew dick as they are demanding, there is zero chance they would give him back his business connections. Frankly, I doubt they would even stop at this point. It’s possible that they would stop, and at least allow him to continue making music, if he got down on his knees and begged, but there is no guarantee.

But here we are in the current year with the Jews saying that anti-Semitism is more prevalent in America than at any time in history, and no single company in operation is anti-Semitic. The math here is not difficult: the only explanation for this is that the Jews have an absolute ability to shut down anyone who does not go along with their program.

Now, you don’t even need that analysis. You can just look at what happened to Ye. All the man said was his personal opinion, and gave his own account of his experience, which in a free country would be protected. He was not mean about it, he was not “hateful,” and he’s repeatedly said that he apologizes to anyone who is not guilty. The Jews, including the “bro kike” Lex Fridman, have said that he must apologize to the guilty.

At this point, even if he apologized and kissed Howard Stern’s Jew dick as they are demanding, there is zero chance they would give him back his business connections. Frankly, I doubt they would even stop at this point. It’s possible that they would stop, and at least allow him to continue making music, if he got down on his knees and begged, but there is no guarantee.

If you offend the Jews, they make you grovel like a worm for permission to live as a worm.

This must stop. It can’t go on. If the Jews are going to dominate the government, news, entertainment, academia, and healthcare, and make all of these decisions about who is allowed to do what, make decisions about eliminating people from the business world unilaterally, then we have to be able to talk about it and we have to have some ability to petition grievances against them.

Ye has to be able to say “I don’t like Jews controlling every aspect of my life.” Christians have to be able to say “I don’t like Jews mutilating the genitals of children.”

This situation that we are in now, where the Jews have total power and yet you’re not even allowed to mention that they have power without them using that power to destroy your business and your family, is unsustainable.

There Are No Uncertainties Concerning The Outcome Of The War On The Ground

Reality is that a tiny allied force of perhaps 200,000 (personnel from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Chechnya and Russia) with only the Russians being particularly well equipped, has inflicted acknowledged losses of over 100,000 on a NATO equivalent force of between 500 and 600 thousand, wiped out the military stockpiles not only of the Ukraine, but of NATO, and has captured and is holding about a third of Ukraine.

By adding Russian troops relieved from other posts by the mobilization, along with current equipment, Russia will be better positioned to limit Ukrainian incursions into already demilitarized areas and perform their important denazification and demilitarization missions without the concern of leaving previously liberated areas undefended against reincursion.

Liman had a population of 25,000. Smaller than many villages in the USA. Thanks to flight and evacuation it now has a population of around a tenth of that, and is being defended by the Krasnolimansky garrison of a few hundred who are succeeding in causing thousands or tens of thousands of reserves and combat forces from other areas to be transferred in to the region of Liman only to die in force. Liman is important to the Ukrainians only because its small garrison suggested that it could be overrun and it's politician claimed it would be captured. 

There is no reason to imagine that it is important to the allies or serves any strategic purpose. Look at a map. This is why, while undoubtedly grateful for the garrison's efforts, and their completely disproportionate impact on Ukrainian forces, the Russians have almost certainly ordered the garrison to withdraw (and perhaps evacuate remaining civilians who want to leave) if threatened with being overrun, after which any surviving Ukrainians can occupy the ruins - and Kiev can claim an enormous victory. It certainly not the first time, and probably will not be the last..."

PS The ascension of the liberated regions of Ukraine will only occur with ratification by all the government bodies, so, while it is practically inevitable, it will only be after that, probably in two to six weeks when, if the Ukraine has not already surrendered or at least withdrawn, Russia will deploy additional resources to the Ukraine. Until then it is likely that the Allies will simply continue to assist the Ukrainians in demilitarizing themselves through attrition by artillery.

A little more reality for you to consider:

1) This is the first war in the history of mankind where both sides have access to excellent satellite recon. Forget drones. They can be jammed, bidirectionally. Piloting commands can be jammed, imagery transmitted back can be jammed. Only the autonomous one-way drone going to a specific latitude/longitude mean anything, and they are usually not recon. They are suicide type.

2) Satellites come in types. At geosynchronous altitude of 23,000 miles you don't get much imagery. Recon satellites are lower in altitude and Keplerian element sets define their orbit, typically overhead at some locale for at most 15 minutes. They traverse the sky. They don't hang overhead. That is what geosynch does and those are for communications and even sometimes radar or eavesdropping, seldom if ever imagery with decent resolutions of square meters per pixel. So, those low altitude (call it 500 miles) passes are entirely predictable. You can inform troops to hide, or be sure to move afterwards.

3) 1 and 2 above means something important. There are no surprises. You cannot mass equipment or troops without being seen. The spacecraft are typically multi-spectral but even with that, it's a cloudy planet. The great pictures you see are one of 100s taken before clear sky was present. Also, those 15 minute passes . . . usually groups of 3. The first is 8 minutes maybe, then 15, then another 8, and then 12 hours pass before the next group of three. These spacecraft are usually polar type orbits with the planet rotating under them. That it why you don't have to maneuver. The desired location for imaging will be seen each day two times per day, though one group of three is usually dark. Babbling a bit but you wackos need to know this. THERE ARE NO SURPRISES.

4) The senior officers of both sides went to the same schools, in Russia. The past 8 years since 2014 some junior officers likely have gotten US and UK training, but the generals who took 25 years to reach their rank, they went to the MTI annexes of Russian civilian universities. This is just like US ROTC, where most officers come from. Academies do supply officers, and Russia has them, too, but most officers are from ROTC or these Military Training Institutes attached to civilian universities. Thus, the Russian and Ukrainian generals were classmates. They may have even kept in touch over the decades. They all learned the same tactics from Stalingrad. They all have the same satellite imagery. They all know the eventual outcome of what is going on.

5) This will also likely be the mechanism for the eventual military coup, that to some extent is the only possible outcome. No one will trust anyone in any agreements that might be signed, so a coup is almost certainly the only way it ends. The US and UK certainly are aware of this and have taken steps to keep Ukraine military senior personnel out of the relevant Kiev buildings, but . . . it doesn't matter. It's the only conceivable eventual end.

 

Vision Neither Directly Or Accurately Reports Reality

frontiersin |  Sensory perception is often the most striking proof of something factual—when we perceive something, we interpret it and take it as “objective”, “real”. Most obviously, you can experience this with eyewitness testimonies: If an eyewitness has “seen it with the naked eye”, judges, jury members and attendees take the reports of these percepts not only as strong evidence, but usually as fact—despite the active and biasing processes on basis of perception and memory. Indeed, it seems that there is no better, no more “proof” of something being factual knowledge than having perceived it. The assumed link between perception and physical reality is particularly strong for the visual sense—in fact, we scrutinize it only when sight conditions have been unfortunate, when people have bad vision or when we know that the eyewitness was under stress or was lacking in cognitive faculties. When people need even more proof of reality than via the naked eye, they intuitively try to touch the to-be-analyzed entity (if at all possible) in order to investigate it haptically. Feeling something by touch seems to be the ultimate perceptual experience in order for humans to speak of physical proof (Carbon and Jakesch, 2013).

We can analyze the quality of our perceptual experiences by standard methodological criteria. By doing so we can regularly find out that our perception is indeed mostly very reliable and also objective (Gregory and Gombrich, 1973)—but only if we employ standard definitions of “objective” as being consensual among different beholders. Still, even by meeting these methodological criteria, we cannot give something in evidence about physical reality. It seems that knowledge about the physical properties of objects cannot be gained by perception, so perception is neither “veridical” nor “valid” in the strict sense of the words—the properties of the “thing in itself” remain indeterminate in any empirical sense (Kant, 1787/1998). We “reliably” and “objectively” might perceive the sun going up in the morning and down in the evening; the physical relations are definitely different, as we have known at least since Nicolaus Copernicus’s proposed heliocentricism—it might also be common sense that the Earth is a spheroid for most people, still the majority of people have neither perceived the Earth as spherical nor represented it like that; one reason for this is that in everyday life contexts the illusion of a plane works perfectly well to guide us in the planning and execution of our actions (Carbon, 2010b).

Limitations of the Possibility of Objective Perception

The limitations of perception are even more far reaching: our perception is not only limited when we do not have access to the thing in itself, it is very practically limited to the quality of processing and the general specifications of our perceptual system. For instance, our acoustic sense can only register and process a very narrow band of frequencies ranging from about 16 Hz–20 kHz as a young adult—this band gets narrower and narrower with increasing age. Typically, infrasonic and ultrasonic bands are just not perceivable despite being essential for other species such as elephants and bats, respectively. The perception of the environment and, consequently, the perception and representation of the world as such, is different for these species—what would be the favorite music of an elephant, which preference would a bat indicate if “honestly asked”? What does infrasonic acoustics sound and feel like? Note: infrasonic frequencies can also be perceived by humans; not acoustically in a strict sense but via vibrations—still, the resulting experiences are very different (cf. Nagel, 1974). To make such information accessible we need transformation techniques; for instance, a Geiger-Müller tube for making ionizing radiation perceivable as we have not developed any sensory system for detecting and feeling this band of extremely high frequency electromagnetic radiation.

But even if we have access to given information from the environmental world, it would be an illusion to think of “objective perception” of it—differences in perception across different individuals seem to be obvious: this is one reason for different persons having different tastes, but it is even more extreme: even within a lifetime of one person, the perceptual qualities and quantities which we can process change. Elderly people, for instance, often have yellowish corneas yielding biased color perception reducing the ability to detect and differentiate bluish color spectra. So even objectivity of perceptions in the sense of consensual experience is hardly achievable, even within one species, even within one individual—just think of fashion phenomena (Carbon, 2011a), of changes in taste (Martindale, 1990) or the so-called cycle of preferences (Carbon, 2010a)! Clearly, so-called objective perception is impossible, it is an illusion.

Illusory Construction of the World

The problem with the idea of veridical perception of the world is further intensified when taking additional perceptual phenomena, which demonstrate highly constructive qualities of our perceptual system, into account. A very prominent example of this kind is the perceptual effect which arises when any visual information which we want to process falls on the area of the retina where the so-called blind spot is located 

Interestingly, visual information that is mapped on the blind spot is not just dropped—this would be the easiest solution for the visual apparatus. It is also not rigidly interpolated, for instance, by just doubling neighbor information, but intelligently complemented by analysing the meaning and Gestalt of the context. If we, for example, are exposed to a couple of lines, the perceptual system would complement the physically non-existing information of the blind spot by a best guess heuristic how the lines are interconnected in each case, mostly yielding a very close approximation to “reality” as it uses most probable solutions. Finally, we experience clear visual information, seemingly in the same quality as the one which mirrors physical perception—in the end, the “physical perception” and the “constructed perception”, are of the same quality, also because the “physical perception” is neither a depiction of physical reality, but is also constructed by top-down processes based on best guess heuristic as a kind of hypothesis testing or problem solving (Gregory, 1970).

Binaural Beats Exist Solely As A Consequence Of The Interaction Of Perceptions Within The Brain

amadeux  |  If two tuning forks of slightly different pitch are struck simultaneously, the resulting sound waves and wanes periodically. The modulations are referred to as beats; their frequency is equal to the difference between the frequencies of the original tones. For example, a tuning fork with a characteristic pitch of 440 hertz, if struck at the same time, will produce beats with a frequency of six hertz.

In modern investigations tuning forks are replaced by electronic oscillators, which can supply tones of precisely controlled pitch, purity, and intensity. Beats are produced when the outputs of two oscillators tuned to slightly different frequencies are combined electrically and applied to a loudspeaker. Alternatively, the signals can be applied individually to separate speakers and the beats will still be heard. The result is the same whether the tones are combined electrically and then converted into sound, or converted into sound separately and then combined.

A quite different phenomenon results when stereophonic earphones are used and the signals are applied separately to each ear. Under the right circumstances beats can be perceived, but they are of an entirely different character. They are called binaural beats, and in many ways they are more interesting than ordinary beats, which in this discussion will be called monaural.

Monaural beats can be heard with both ears, but one ear is sufficient to perceive them. Binaural beats require the combined action of both ears. They exist as a consequence of the interaction of perceptions within the brain, and they can be used to investigate some of the brain’s processes.

The physical mechanism of monaural beats is a special case of wave interference. At any instant the amplitude of the resulting sound is equal to the algebraic sum of the amplitudes of the original tones. The signals are reinforced when they are in phase, that is, when the peaks and nulls of their waves coincide. Destructive interference diminishes the net amplitude when the waves are in opposition. The pure tones used in these experiments are described by sine waves’ the resulting beats are slowly varying functions similar to, but not precisely conforming to, a sine wave.

A beat frequency of about six hertz, as in the example given above, would sound something like vibrato in music (although vibrato is frequency modulation rather than amplitude modulation). If the interval between frequencies is made smaller, very slow beats can be produced, down to about on per second, to perceive. Rapid beats, up to about 30 hertz, are heard as roughness superimposed on the sound, rather like a Scotsman’s burr. With still greater intervals beats are not heard; the two tones are perceived separately.

Beats are rarely encountered in nature because in nature sustained pure tones are rare. They abound, however, in mechanical devices. In an airplane, jet engines operating at slightly different speeds may produce a very strong-beat, often recognized only as a feeling “in the pit of the stomach.” Acoustical engineers can filter out the whine of the engines, but the slow vibrations are difficult to suppress. Occupants of apartment houses may be annoyed by beats produced by machinery, such as two blowers running at different speeds, but they will have a hard time finding the source.

On the other hand, beats are used to advantage where frequencies must be determined precisely. Electrical engineers compare the output of a test oscillator with that of a standard oscillator by detecting the beats produced when their signals are combined. The tuning of pianos is another process that depends on beats. Typically the piano tuner will first listen for the beats produced by a tuning fork of 440 hertz and the A above middle C, and tighten or loosen the A wire until the beats slow to zero. He then strikes the A key and the D key below it and tunes the latter wire until 10 beats per second are heard. That frequency is produced by the interaction of the A string’s second harmonic, or second multiple (2 x 44 0 = 180), and the D string’s third harmonic (3 x 290 = 870). In this fashion, key by key, the piano is tuned; in theory it could be done even by someone who is tone-deaf.

Binaural beats were discovered in 1839 by a German experimenter named H. W. Dove, but as late as 1915 they were considered a trivial special case of monaural beats. It was argued that each ear was hearing sounds intended for the other. This extraneous result could be eliminated by placing the tuning forks in separate rooms, with the subject in a third room between them, and guiding the sounds through tubes to each ear. It was necessary to carefully seal each tube to the head, however, and another objection was raised; that sound presentation to one ear could be conducted through the skull to the other.

Bone conduction is well established, and indeed some hearing aids operate on this principle, although sound is attenuated a thousandfold from ear to ear. The possible contribution of bone conduction to the perception of binaural beats is eliminated, however, by the use of modern stereophonic earphones. Such earphones have padding, often liquid filled, to insulate the head from the sound source, and are designed explicitly to prevent conduction effects. Indeed, stereophonic recordings played through earphones can sound unnatural because the instruments seem too isolated.

The difference most immediately apparent between monaural and binaural beats is that binaural beats can be heard only when the tones used to produce them are of low pitch. Binaural beats are best perceived when the carrier frequency is about 440 hertz; above that frequency they become less distinct and above about 1,000 hertz they vanish altogether. No person I have tested reports hearing beats for frequencies above 900 hertz. Experimental conditions, particularly the intensity of the sounds and the type of earphones used can affect the results, however, and other investigators report detecting beats produced by tones up to almost 1,500 hertz. At the other end of the scale beats also become elusive. Below about 90 hertz the subject may confuse the beats with the tones used to produce them.

J. C. R. Licklider of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a technique when he was working at Harvard University to measure a spectrum of binaural beats [see upper illustration on page 102]. He adopted the frequency of one oscillator until the interval was large enough so that the beats seemed “rough”; then he noted the frequency of the unchanged reference oscillator. Next he changed the setting of the reference oscillator and repeated the procedure. In this way the range of perception of each subject was recorded.

Another distinguishing characteristic of binaural beats is their muffled sound. Monaural beats produced with sounds of equal intensity pulse from loudness to silence, as their wave form would suggest. Binaural beats, on the other hand, are only a slight modulation of a loud background. I have tried to estimate the depth of the modulation, and it seems to be about three decibels, or about a tenth of the loudness of a whisper. In order to help subjects recognize these relatively faint effects I usually present signals with monaural beats and then suddenly change to the binaural mode. With tones of about 440 hertz it usually takes two or three seconds for the subject to recognize the binaural beats.
-

Disquiet At Davos And The Fear Of Failure

strategic culture |  "Klaus Schwab, passionate for Ukraine, essentially configured the World Economic Forum (WEF) to showcase Zelensky and to leverage the argument that Russia should be kicked out of the civilised world. Schwab’s target was the assembled crème de la crème of the world’s business leaders assembled there. Zelensky pitched big: 'We want more sanctions and more weapons'; 'All trade with the aggressor should be stopped'; 'All foreign business should leave Russia so that your brands are not associated with war crimes', he said. Sanctions must be all encompassing; values must matter.

"Disquiet ran through the Davos set: The WEF is high-octane globalist, right? Yet this Schwab line suggests a de-coupling ‘on stilts’. It precisely reverses interconnectedness. Plus, the western generals in charge are saying that this conflict may last not just years, but decades. What will this signify for their markets in parts of the world that refuse action against Russia, the moneymen were wondering?"

Prior to Kissinger's words that got him sanctioned by Zelensky, both a NYT OP/ED and Congressman Eric Cantor opined in a similar vein:

The Davos ‘greater disquiet’ emerged however, from an unexpected quarter. Just before the WEF began, the NY Times had run a piece from the editorial team urging Zelensky to negotiate with Russia. It argued that such engagement implied making painful territorial sacrifices. The piece attracted indignant and angry push-back in Europe and the West, possibly because – albeit couched as advice to Kiev – its target was evidently Washington and London (the arch belligerents).

Eric Cantor, a former whip in the U.S. House of Representatives (a legislator well versed on Iran sanctions), also at Davos, questioned whether the West would be able to maintain a united front in pursuit of such maximalist aims as Zelensky and his Military Intelligence Chief have demanded. “We may not get the next vote”, Cantor opined (in wake of the $40 billion vote ostensibly earmarked for Ukraine).

Cantor said excluding Russia entirely would require secondary sanctions against other countries. This would place the West into a head on clash with China, India, and the almost 60 states which had refused to back a UN resolution denouncing Russia’s invasion. He warned that the U.S. may be in danger of overplaying its hand.

Add Kissinger's remarks, and that makes a massive FUBAR far worse than Afghanistan.

Eric Cantor, and other Americans at WEF may frame their disquiet over western objectives in ‘polite company’ as simply articulating their uncertainties over America’s grand strategy – whether the U.S. is trying to punish Russia for its aggression, or whether the goal is a subtler use of policy that gives the Kremlin a ‘route out of sanctions’, were it to change course. But behind the narrative lies a darker fear. The unsaid fear of failure.

What does this mean? It means that the West’s ultimate war aims in Ukraine have so far been able to stay opaque and undefined, the details swept aside in the mood of the moment.

Paradoxically, this opacity has been preserved despite the public failure of the West’s first statement of aims – which was that the seizure of Russia’s offshore foreign reserves; the Russian bank expulsions from SWIFT; the sanctioning of the Central Bank; and the broadside of sanctions would, in and of itself alone, turn the rouble to rubble; cause a run on the domestic banking system; collapse the Russian economy; and provoke a political crisis that Putin might not survive.

In short, ‘victory’ would be quick – if not immediate. We know this, because U.S. officials and the French Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire bragged about it publicly.

So confident in a quick financial-war success were these western officials that there seemed little need to invest deep strategic reflection on the aims or the course of the secondary Ukrainian military thrust. After all, a Russia already economically collapsed, with its currency ruined and its morale broken, would likely put up little or no fight as the Ukrainian army swept across Donbas and into Crimea.

Well, the sanctions have proved a bust and Russia’s currency and oil revenues are bountiful.

And now, western politicians are being warned in the media, and by their own military, that Russia is ‘close to a major victory’ in Donbas.

This is the unspoken fear disquieting Davos attendees – fear of another débacle, following that of Afghanistan. One made all the worse as the ‘war’ on Russia boomerangs into an economic collapse in Europe, and with NATO’s eight-year investment in building-up a successful proxy-army to NATO standards turning to dust.

This is what Kissinger’s comments – decoded – urge: ‘Don’t procrastinate’; get a quick deal (even an unfavourable one), but one that can be dressed up, and somehow spun as a ‘win’. But don’t wait, and let events lead the U.S. into yet another unmistakable, undeniable débacle.

Shrapnel In The Forest And Shells From The Sky

NYTimes |   Under the fire of Russia’s long-range arsenal and facing a desperate need for ammunition and weapons, Ukrainian forces remain outgunned on the long and pockmarked eastern front, according to military analysts, Ukrainian officials and soldiers on the ground.

Just one engagement on Thursday and Friday on a small swath of the line, in a forest north of the town of Sloviansk, sent about a dozen Ukrainian soldiers to a military hospital with harrowing shrapnel wounds.

“You ask how the fighting is going,” said Oleksandr Kolesnikov, the commander of a company of soldiers fighting in the forest, interviewed on an ambulance gurney outside a military hospital in Kramatorsk. “There was a commander of the company. He was killed. There was another commander. He was killed. A third commander was wounded. I am the fourth.”

Out on the highways in the Donbas region, trucks towing howitzers and flatbeds carrying tanks rumbled east on Saturday, suggesting the Ukrainian military was reinforcing its front lines. The army does not disclose its force numbers but has publicized the arrival of Western weaponry, including American M777 artillery guns.

“We needed to move a group to the left flank and they immediately started pounding us with mortars,” said Mr. Kolesnikov. “That is how I was wounded.”

He called for artillery fire from the Ukrainian side to hit the Russian mortar crew, but said the Ukrainian battery was only able to shoot a dozen or so shells, which did not halt the Russian mortar attack.

The deputy commander, Anatoly Ignatyenko, was wounded a day earlier in the same spot. The two soldiers, now off the front line, comforted one another in the ambulance, and Mr. Ignatyenko helped his commander drink from a bottle of water.

Both said President Biden and the leaders of other Western nations need to hasten the supply of long-range weapons, such as rocket artillery, to even the odds in the battle for the Donbas.

“Let Biden not be stingy with weapons,” said Mr. Ignatyenko. Russian artillery attacks were relentless, he said: “There is not an hour without a pause.”

Also on Friday, a Ukrainian logistics unit resupplying the soldiers in the forest suffered losses. Soldiers drove an armored personnel carrier to the position to deliver food and ammunition.

When the soldiers inside stepped out, a mortar landed nearby, killing the commander of the carrier and wounding two others.

“I’ve never seen such hell,” said Mykola Pokotila, a soldier wounded by shrapnel in the forest.

Another wounded soldier, Serhiy Osetrov, sat gingerly in the same ambulance, wincing from shrapnel still lodged in his right leg.

The Ukrainian soldiers were deployed to the forest to repel a Russian advance in the area, on the western edge of the larger battle raging in the east. “We try to push them back but it doesn’t always work,” said Mr. Kolesnikov. “We don’t have enough people, enough weapons.”

Nearby, another more heavily wounded man was wheeled out on a stretcher, his head bandaged. Bloodied field stretchers were stacked up in a line against the wall, traces of the daily cost from the front lines of the Donbas.

Mainstream Confesses Ukraine Getting Boiled In Russian Cauldrons

theguardian |  After several weeks of deadlock, Russia’s military appears to have found a way to advance in the Donbas – pounding it with such intense, unsophisticated artillery that Ukraine’s exhausted defenders are having to yield.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy rarely gives casualty figures but Ukraine’s president said last Sunday that “50 to 100 Ukrainian troops die on Donbas frontlines each day”, meaning perhaps 3,000 a month in the grisly war of attrition.

Wounded will typically be three or perhaps four times as much, a serious loss for a Donbas defence force estimated at 30,000 before the war began, although the numbers increased following Ukraine’s mass mobilisation.

“Russian forces have secured more terrain in the past week than efforts earlier in May,” reported the Institute for the Study of War on Tuesday, in particular approaching the frontline city of Sievierodonetsk and in villages nearby.

“The shelling of Sievierodonetsk is growing exponentially,” said Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Ukraine’s Luhansk region, which is now 95% controlled by the Russians. He estimated 10,000 Russian troops and an extra 2,500 pieces of equipment had been committed to the attack.

The Russian advances are not dramatic but they reflect a new strategy. Gone for now are the attempts at wider encirclements of Ukrainian forces in the Donbas, which included a failed river crossing in early May. Instead units are focused on smaller encirclements – or “cauldrons” – and a sheer concentration at Sievierodonetsk.

That was confirmed by the militia head of the self-proclaimed pro-Russian republic in Donetsk, Eduard Basurin, who said Russian forces had adopted an approach of creating smaller encirclements to deprive Ukrainian troops of logistics and reinforcements, rather than pursuing a single large one.

 

 

After Months Of Hyping Ukraine - Russian Military Supremacy Has Become Undeniable

WaPo  |  The ambulances hurtled into the parking lot one after the other, each carrying wounded troops directly from the nearby front line. One young man stared straight ahead, his face swollen, his neck and back dripping with blood. Others lay silently under foil blankets.

Some stumbled out the back doors and collapsed into wheelchairs as staff members rushed to push them inside. Nearby, bloodied cots sat propped against a tent and other wounded soldiers lingered about, their faces grim, their heads, arms or legs bandaged as the sound of outgoing artillery boomed across the sky.

About 10 wounded soldiers arrived at this hospital in eastern Ukraine in less than an hour Sunday morning — the latest military casualties as Ukrainian forces, outgunned by Russia in the country’s east, continue to lose territory at a critical moment in the war.

The Washington Post is withholding the name and precise location of the hospital out of concerns from staff members that it could be targeted by Russian forces.

“Seventy people from my battalion were injured in the last week,” said a soldier and ambulance driver just outside the hospital gates who identified himself only as Vlad, 29. “I lost too many friends; it’s hard for me. I don’t know how many. … It’s getting worse every day.”

The night before, he said, the shelling was so loud he hardly got any sleep. “It’s all artillery bombing down,” he said. “All the wounded are coming from shrapnel. Most guys in the trenches haven’t even seen the enemy face-to-face.”

Last week, one battalion of young soldiers on a road near Kramatorsk spent their days digging defensive trenches in a pocket not far from the front line.

They were gearing up to provide additional support for the soldiers battling the Russians head-on, preparing for a worst-case scenario in which Russian forces continue or accelerate their current advance. That would be a potential turning point on the battlefield.

It would come at a particularly desperate moment for the Ukrainians. Kyiv is already enraged that some Western voices are floating the idea of ceding territory to Moscow. And the Biden administration is taking weeks to decide whether to provide heavier weaponry that could aid Ukrainian troops at this critical juncture in the war.

“Everyone’s tired,” said Bohdan, a 30-year-old soldier and officer in the battalion who spoke on the condition that only his first name be used and his precise position not be given. “But we are ready to stand and protect until the last man.”

 

 

Why We Don't See Sentient Extraterrestrials

declineoftheempire |  Generally speaking, there are two answers to the question Is There Intelligent Life In The Universe?, where the term "intelligent life" means technologically advanced sentient beings broadly similar to humans. In the first essay I discussed optimistic answers to this question. Optimists imagine a Universe teeming with more advanced versions of ourselves, an answer which coincides (not coincidentally) with their vision of a bright human future.

This week we look at the views of the pessimists, who constitute a small minority of those concerned with astrobiological questions. Pessimists believe that Homo sapiens is alone and unique in the observable Universe, or believe that species broadly similar to Homo sapiens are very rare.

I am a pessimist, a position which follows from prolonged contemplation of the Fermi Paradox, which Paul Davies called "the eerie silence" (see the first essay).  Let me begin with an illuminating quote from Lee Billings, whose book Five Billion Years of Solitude was recently published by the Penguin Group (October, 2013).

The book’s title, Five Billion Years of Solitude, is actually a subtle nod to some things I’ve changed my mind about in the course of my research.

It’s a reference to the longevity of Earth’s biosphere. Earth’s life emerged shortly after the planet itself formed some 4.5 billion years ago, and current estimates suggest our world has a good half-billion years left until its vibrant biosphere of diverse, complex multicellular life begins sliding back to microbial simplicity.

When I first began planning this book, I believed that we would eventually find clear signs of life beyond our solar system, and suspected that contact with other cosmic civilizations was just a matter of time, for they were probably common throughout our galaxy. I believed that humans had a future, a destiny, beyond the Earth, and that our discoveries of other habitable or inhabited worlds would galvanize society to strive to voyage to the stars. I no longer hold these beliefs as foregone conclusions.

My optimism for humanity’s long-term prospects has dimmed.

I now believe that while life may be widespread in the universe, creatures like us are probably uncommon, and technological societies are vanishingly rare, making the likelihood of contact remote at best.

I am less confident than I once was that we will find unequivocal signs of life in other planetary systems within my lifetime. I believe that, when seen in the fullness of planetary time, our modern era will prove to have been the fulcrum about which the future of life turned for, at minimum, our entire solar system.

I believe that we humans are probably the most fortunate species to have ever arisen on Earth, and that those of us now alive are profoundly privileged to live in what can objectively be considered a very special time.

Finally, I would guess that though we possess the unique capacity to extend life and intelligence beyond Earth into unknown new horizons, there is a better-than-even chance that we will fail to do so.

The human story may end as it began — in nasty, brutish, and short isolation on a lonely, solitary planet. The book in part is my attempt to explain and come to terms with these beliefs, beliefs that I would very much like to be proved wrong.

 

 

Uselessly Eating Muggles Are Using Up All Of Our Personal Fossil Fuels...,

 surplusenergyeconomics  | TIMING THE MOMENT OF FRACTURE

When and how can we know that a change of direction is fundamental and lasting, rather than a temporary departure from established trends?

That, in essence, is the call we need to make now. Far from being “transitory”, current conditions – including rising inflation, surging energy prices and the over-stressing of supply-chains – are indicators of a structural change.

Ultimately, what we’re witnessing is a forced restoration of equilibrium between a faltering real economy of goods and services and a drastically over-extended financial economy of money and credit.

This is where confidence in continuity crumbles, where the delusions of ‘growth in perpetuity’ succumb to the hard reality of resource constraint, and where ‘shocks that are no surprises’ shake the financial system.

If you want just two indicators to watch, one of these is the volumetric (rather than the financial) direction of the economy, and the other is the behaviour of the prices of essentials within the broader inflationary situation.        

The economics of stress

In the science of materials, it’s observable that fractures happen quickly, even if the stresses that cause them have accumulated over a protracted period. We can spend hours, days, weeks or even years gradually increasing the tension applied to an iron bar, but the ensuing snap in that bar will happen almost instantaneously.

Economics isn’t a science, but there’s a direct analogy here. Anyone who understands the economy as an energy system will be well aware of a relentless, long-standing build-up of stresses.

They’ll be equally aware that this cannot continue indefinitely.

Two things matter now.

First, when will these cumulative pressures bring about the moment of fracture?

Second, what should we expect to see when this snapping-point is reached?

The answers to the second question are pretty clear.

You Peasants Are All In This Together

off-guardian |  The rush to elevate self-isolation to Olympian heights as a way to combat the spread of COVID-19 has gotten to the celebrities. Sports figures are proudly tweeting and taking pictures from hotel rooms (Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton being a case in point). Comics are doing their shows from home. Thespians are extolling the merits of such isolation and the dangers of the contagion.

All speak from the summit of comfort, the podium of pampered wealth: embrace social distancing; embrace self-isolation. Bonds of imagined solidarity are forged. If we can do it, so can you.

The message of warning varies in tones of condescension and encouragement. Taylor Swift prefers to focus on her cat. “For Meredith, self-quarantining is a way of life,” she posted on Instagram. “Be like Meredith.” Meredith, of course, had little choice in the matter.

John Legend delivered a concert on Instagram, wife Chrissy Teigen beside towelled and quaffing wine. “Social distancing is important, but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring. I did a little at-home performance to help lift your spirits.”

Then there was Arnold Schwarzenegger, who actually boasted two miniature ponies. “We will get through this together.” So good of him to let us know.

Others, like model Naomi Campbell, can barely hide their revelations, moments of acute self-awakening amidst crisis. 

A long dormant, cerebral world, awoken by a virus. 

Similarly, singer Lady Gaga has found that within that deodorised, heavily marketed form of celebrity is the heart of a human. “This is reminding me I think a lot of us,” she reflected on Instagram “what it is to both feel like and be like a human being.”

Self-isolation has seen the rich with their entourages making an escape for holiday homes and vast retreats. Then come the eccentric and the slightly ludicrous options: the well-stocked and equipped bunker; the safe room. Such an approach is far more representative of the estrangement between haves and have-nots.

See Something, Say Something Snee-yaht-chez....,

wikipedia |  The FBI Indexes are a system used to track American citizens and other people by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) before the adoption by the FBI of computerized databases. The name signifies that the lists were originally made on paper index cards, compiled by J. Edgar Hoover before he became director of the FBI.^[1] The Index List was used to track U.S. citizens and others believed by the FBI to be dangerous to national security, and was subdivided into various divisions which generally were rated based on different classes of danger the subject was thought to represent. There is no indication the FBI stopped adding names onto its Index List before September 11, 2001.^{[citation needed]}

 

After September 11, 2001, the date which the FBI folded its Index List into the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) is unknown, while the FBI consolidates the TSDB from other lists and manages its information. The TSDB is currently available to all U.S. national security agencies, while select information contained on the TSDB is forwarded to other nation states and international security agencies.

The Security Index pertained to the FBI list of dangerous individuals who might commit acts inimical to the national defense and public safety of the United States in time of emergency.^[11] The list also included those who could be arrested upon the order of a U.S. President invoking the Emergency Detention Program. The Reserve Index, on the other hand, listed all left-wingers and individuals suspected of being a Communist. By 1950s, for instance, there were 5,000 names under the Security Index while the Reserve Index had 50,000 in the Chicago field office.^[12] An individual in the Reserve Index could be transferred to the Security Index if such individual posed a threat to U.S. interests in a period of national emergency.^[13] A difference between these indices involved their color scheme. The files of those under the Security Index were all in white while the Reserve Index varied in colors depending on the occupation of the subject.^[12]

 

Prominent figures listed in the Security Index include Martin Luther King. The FBI had been monitoring his activities with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference since 1957 and by 1962, he was finally listed in the FBI index due to the involvement of two of his advisers with the U.S. Communist Party, although he failed to meet the criteria for inclusion in the Security Index.^[14]

The Security Index itself was merged with the Agitator Index and the Communist Index. Renamed to the Reserve Index in 1960, this index included a Section A for teachers, doctors, lawyers, entertainers, and other people considered influential and not politically conservative. Hoover had Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. added to the Reserve Index, Section A, in retaliation for his civil rights work and worldwide popularity.^[15]

Open Source SARS-CoV2 Responses Around the World: Top Secret Response in America

mintpressnews |  As the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis comes to dominate headlines, little media attention has been given to the federal government’s decision to classify top-level meetings on domestic coronavirus response and lean heavily “behind the scenes” on U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon in planning for an allegedly imminent explosion of cases.

The classification of coronavirus planning meetings was first covered by Reuters, which noted that the decision to classify was “an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion.” Reuters further noted that the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Alex Azar, and his chief of staff had “resisted” the classification order, which was made in mid-January by the National Security Council (NSC), led by Robert O’Brien — a longtime friend and colleague of his predecessor John Bolton.

Following this order, HHS officials with the appropriate security clearances held meetings on coronavirus response at the department’s Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF), which are facilities “usually reserved for intelligence and military operations” and — in HHS’ case — for responses to “biowarfare or chemical attacks.” Several officials who spoke to Reuters noted that the classification decision prevented key experts from participating in meetings and slowed down the ability of HHS and the agencies it oversees, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to respond to the crisis by limiting participation and information sharing.

It has since been speculated that the decision was made to prevent potential leaks of information by stifling participation and that aspects of the planned response would cause controversy if made public, especially given that the decision to classify government meetings on coronavirus response negatively impacted HHS’ ability to respond to the crisis.

After the classification decision was made public, a subsequent report in Politico revealed that not only is the National Security Council managing the federal government’s overall response but that they are doing so in close coordination with the U.S. intelligence community and the U.S. military. It states specifically that “NSC officials have been coordinating behind the scenes with the intelligence and defense communities to gauge the threat and prepare for the possibility that the U.S. government will have to respond to much bigger numbers—and soon.”

Speaking Of Boggled Minds...,

realclearpolitics |  Joe Biden’s status as the frontrunner in the Democratic presidential race highlights the party’s hypocrisy when it comes to striking down Donald Trump, SKY News Australia "Outsiders" host Rita Panahi says.

Ms Panahi said it’s surprising the candidate, who is “so confused that he has trouble remembering where he is and why he’s there,” has not been discounted.

“Biden's cognitive issues have been evident for some time but just watch the same media who for four years have been declaring Donald Trump mentally and physically unfit for office have a collective meltdown when Biden's mental faculties are questioned,” she said.

“Can you imagine that man in a presidential debate with Donald Trump? There's not enough popcorn in the world.”

Who Or What Started It: The Everlasting Gobstopper Account of SARS-CoV2 Outbreak

AHTribune |  The Novel Coronavirus, COVID-19, is cutting a broad and deep swath though epidemiological history with uncertain impact on the viability of many families, communities, institutions, economies, and even countries starting with the most heavily populated nation on earth. Many fates are hanging in the balance, not the least of which is that of the communist government that has ruled China since the Maoist Revolution brought it to power in 1949.

The new strain of Coronavirus has added novel genetic features to the same family of pathogens that brought the world the SARS crisis in 2002-3 and, a decade later, the less lethal MERS outbreak. This Novel Coronavirus strain, COVID-19, is showing itself to be much more contagious and lethal than was SARS and MERS.

Some have anticipated that, if not dramatically countered, the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic could be headed in the direction of the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918. This prediction flows from the assessment of, for instance, Prof. Gabriel Leung, Chair of Public Health Medicine at Hong King University. Looking at the very fast rate of COVID-19’s spread from human to human through the air, Dr. Leung challenged any residual sense of complacency. He anticipated a possible 60 per cent infection rate of the world’s entire population with deaths numbering in the many tens of millions.

The so-called Spanish flu has set the bar for how severe and widespread a contagious plague can become. The pandemic of 1918 took more lives in one year than all deaths due to World War II. The Spanish flu of 1918 engendered more mortality in one year than the four peak years of the notorious Black Death Bubonic Plague that decimated Europe in the middle years of the fourteenth century. The worldwide pandemic of 1918 infected over a quarter of all people on earth. About 65 million people died from the illness.

News reports from the ground zero area of the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic demonstrate that the effects of the viral infection cut far and wide. Every facet of Chinese society is being challenged to the limit by a fast-spreading plague disseminating germs of destruction disrupting many biological, political, economic, and knowledge systems simultaneously.

Questions about how to interpret the epidemic and how to explain to the public what is known or not known are quickly coming into focus. Who should be believed? Who is credible and who is not credible as the epidemic unfolds. What should be the role of social media and of whistle blowers in the process of deciding how to respond? What happens when genuine whistle blowers like Dr. Li are too quickly dismissed and reprimanded by ruling authorities as “conspiracy theorists”?

An essential task that must be faced in this initial phase of this crisis is to develop an accurate explanation of where contagion came from and how the first victims of the Novel Coronavirus came to be infected. The need for some degree of certainty about the origins of the virus and its subsequent genesis is absolutely essential to the development of sound and appropriate responses. It would be highly irresponsible to rush ahead with the development of an overall strategy for dealing with the plague without making an honest attempt to get at the truth of how the contagion first came into existence.

The importance of getting to the factual roots of what happened to put humanity on this epidemiological trajectory should be especially clear after the debacle of September 11, 2001. Without any sustained investigation of the 9/11 crimes, Americans were rushed into cycles of seemingly perpetual warfare abroad, police state and surveillance state interventions at home. This cycle of fast responses began within a month of 9/11 with a full-fledge military invasion of Afghanistan, an invasion that continues yet.

When two US Senators, Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle, sought to slow the rush of the US executive into emergency measures and war, they and the US Congress they served were hit hard by a military grade bioweapon, anthrax. The violent tactic of the saboteurs proved effective in easing aside close scrutiny that might have slowed down the fast approval by the end of October of Congress’s massive Patriot Act. 

Since then a seemingly endless cycle of military invasions has been pushed forward in the Middle East and Eurasia. The emergency measure powers claimed by the executive branch of the US government extended to widespread illegal torture, domestic spying, media censorship and a meteoric rise in extrajudicial murders especially by drones. This list is far from complete.

All of these crimes against humanity were justified on the basis of an unproven official explanation of 9/11.  Subsequent scholarly investigations have demonstrated unequivocally for the attentive that officialdom’s explanations of what transpired on the fateful day in September were wrong, severely wrong. The initial interpretations are strongly at variance with the evidentiary record available on the public record.

We must not allow ourselves to be hoodwinked in the same manner once again. The stakes are too large, maybe even larger than was the case in 2001. The misinterpreted and misrepresented events of 9/11 were exploited in conformity with the “Shock Doctrine,” a strategy for instituting litanies of invasive state actions that the public would not otherwise have accepted.

The conscientious portion of humanity, many of whose members have done independent homework of their own on the events of 9/11, will well understand the importance of identifying the actual originating source of the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic.