Category Archives: Must-Read Articles

A range of carefully-selected useful, important and insightful articles from a numerous authoritative publications are presented for those who don’t have all day to spend reading.

Must-Read Articles

More must-read articles. Currently focused on Covid-19

 

The current focus of this post relates to the Coronavirus chaos, vaccines and implications. Note: Many more articles follow the latest five.

German Minister Admits Lockdown Will Kill More Than COVID-19 Does

German Minister Admits Lockdown Will Kill More Than COVID-19 Does  By Steve Watson, via Summit News, Zerohedge, 27 September 2020

Germany’s Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, Gerd Muller, has warned that lockdown measures throughout the globe will end up killing more people than the Coronavirus itself.

In an interview with German newspaper Handelsblatt, Muller warned that the response to the global pandemic has resulted in “one of the biggest” hunger and poverty crises in history.

Muller warned that further damage will be done if draconian measures continue to be enacted by governments.

“We expect an additional 400,000 deaths from malaria and HIV this year on the African continent alone,” Muller emphasised, adding that “half a million more will die from tuberculosis.”

“The supply of food and medication is no longer guaranteed,” Muller continued, adding “Many of the West’s aid programs are not adequately funded,” also noting that while countries focus on battling the virus at home, it is having a massive toll on countries not equipped to combat it without help.

Muller further warned that “humanitarian catastrophes” are “building up right on our doorstep,” while European governments concentrate on lockdowns and restricting the movement of people.

“Europe has decided to support its own economy with programs worth around two trillion euros. No additional support is planned for Africa. That will catch up with us,” Muller urged.

The Minister admitted that a further wave of mass migration in the future could result from such action.

Muller’s comments come five months after a leaked study from inside the German Ministry of the Interior revealed that the impact of the country’s lockdown could end up killing more people than the coronavirus due to victims of other serious illnesses not receiving treatment.

The findings dovetail with other research that has concluded lockdowns will conservatively “destroy at least seven times more years of human life” than they save.

As we have previously highlighted, in the UK there have already been up to 10,000 excess deaths as a result of seriously ill people avoiding hospitals due to COVID-19 or not having their hospital treatments cancelled.

Professor Richard Sullivan also warned that there will be more excess cancer deaths in the UK than total coronavirus deaths due to people’s access to screenings and treatment being restricted as a result of the lockdown.

His comments were echoed by Peter Nilsson, a Swedish professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at Lund University, who said, “It’s so important to understand that the deaths of COVID-19 will be far less than the deaths caused by societal lockdown when the economy is ruined.”

According to Professor Karol Sikora, an NHS consultant oncologist, there could be 50,000 excess deaths from cancer as a result of routine screenings being suspended during the lockdown in the UK.

In addition, a study published in The Lancet that notes “physical distancing, school closures, trade restrictions, and country lockdowns” are worsening global child malnutrition.

Experts have also warned that there will be 1.4 million deaths globally from untreated TB infections due to the lockdown.ive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

As we further previously highlighted, a data analyst consortium in South Africa found that the economic consequences of the country’s lockdown will lead to 29 times more people dying than the coronavirus itself.

Hundreds of doctors are also on record as opposing lockdown measures, warning that they will cause more death than the coronavirus itself.

Despite citizens across the world being told to observe the lockdown to “save lives,” numerous experts who are now warning that the lockdown could end up costing more lives are being ignored or smeared by the media.

========================

Victoria Australia’s creeping totalitarianism

 

Victoria Australia’s creeping totalitarianism  By Helen Buybiski, RT news, 25 September 2020

 Victoria Australia’s creeping totalitarianism is based on wild overreaction to Covid, and the rest of the world is going down the same path

 Melbourne residents are prisoners in their city, risking indefinite detention for ‘pre-crime’ and even having their kids taken based on Covid statistics that are often inaccurate. How long before this spreads elsewhere?

Americans would be wise to pay attention to what’s going on Down Under. Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has gone on a police-state shopping spree to rival the Patriot Act, recently introducing a bill that gives the state government the power to preemptively detain “high-risk” persons, indefinitely, in quarantine facilities based on mere suspicion they might not comply with self-isolation orders.

This is being justified using Covid-19 stats that even the fear-porn-loving media establishment has acknowledged are probably very much inflated, based on a test whose creator was reportedly horrified by the thought of using it to diagnose viral infection. Yet the same media establishment has embraced Andrews’ totalitarian lockdown as a model the US should adopt.

Disaster for democracy

Sounding more like a cartoon villain than a politician, Andrews earlier this week warned Melbourne residents that the “odds are very poor” they might escape the “ring of steel” his government has constructed around the city. With the rest of the state’s lockdown loosening a bit on Thursday, Melbournians still under the stricter regulations are threatened with $5,000 fines if they try to flee to saner climes. And if the thought of being preemptively detained for months for being “conspiracy theorists” doesn’t scare residents away from thought crime, the provision in the Omnibus Bill that allows the government to remove children from their parents for up to 30 months certainly will. The bill passed Victoria’s lower house last week.

Victoria declared a state of disaster on August 2 with 123 coronavirus deaths across the state over the entire course of the pandemic, citing a sudden, inexplicable spike in case numbers in its decision to lock public housing residents in their apartments and send military service members from door to door to ensure citizens were obeying.

Video of police dragging a pregnant woman out of her home for merely promoting an anti-lockdown protest in her small town in solidarity with Melbourne residents  triggered international outrage, and the economic and psychological condition of people there has deteriorated rapidly over the past two months.

ALSO ON RT.COMAustralia should be ashamed & appalled by this video of police handcuffing a pregnant woman for posting an anti-lockdown message

Nor has it been just mental health that has suffered under ‘Dictator Dan’’s lockdown. Coronavirus deaths have actually soared, from 123 when the lockdown was imposed on August 2 to a whopping 773 as of Wednesday. Of course, ‘whopping’ is relative – given the tens of thousands of people supposedly infected, one might expect considerably more deaths, at least until one recalls that 90 percent of ‘cases’ diagnosed via PCR test likely carried too little virus in their systems to experience any symptoms or infect others. While it’s good news for all the Australians who won’t die of Covid-19, it’s bad news for those now locked in their homes because of those inaccurate numbers.  

Dictatorship means never having to admit mistakes

Europe’s LOCKDOWN will kill more people worldwide than Covid-19 virus, German minister warns

Even setting aside the false positives, the terrifying computer models that inspired so many countries and states to lock down have long since been exposed as flawed. However, the policies they inspired have not been re-examined. Given the enormous collateral damage that comes from shutting down a country’s economy – statisticians warned months ago that more Australians would die of suicide than from the virus by a factor of 10, with a significant portion of those deaths from young people, while UK and US medical experts have warned the shutdowns are killing more than the virus they’re meant to stop – there’s no excuse for locking up the young and healthy in order to protect the elderly. The fact that those same elderly are more likely to die of non-Covid-19 causes when kept in social isolation only adds insult to injury. 

No one wants to admit they’ve made a mistake. Premier Andrews is being praised by the international media for seizing even more powers, and plenty of US and UK leaders are eager to follow in his footsteps. Rarely is there an attempt to correct bogus statistics, despite widespread discoveries of fraudulent (or simply incompetent) record-keeping in the US and UK. Even the understanding that most forms of Covid-19 testing are wildly inaccurate has done nothing to slow the enthusiasm for forcing it down a population’s throat (literally).

 

And Andrews is far from the only leader inflicting what can only be termed cruel psychological experiments on his people under the guise of a virus response. Whether it’s New Zealand’s pledge to lock up everyone who tests positive and their family members in quarantine facilities, Scottish FM Nicola Sturgeon’s ban on household visits, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s threat to shut off water to homes and businesses that host parties, or the US state governors who demanded nursing homes accept Covid-19 positive patients despite the risk to their charges, it seems for all the world that every wannabe-dictator in the English-speaking ‘democracies’ is racing to see who can cross the totalitarian finish line first. 

While we look on in horror at what’s going on in Victoria, we must do what we can to halt the growth of totalitarianism in our own countries.

=========================

How we have been lied to so dramatically about masks

How we have been lied to so dramatically about masks  By Daniel Horowitz, The Blaze, 22 September 2020

If you are looking for the scientific rationale behind universal mask-wearing, you certainly won’t find it now that the issue has become as political as guns, abortion, and taxes. We are now at a point where Canada’s chief public health officer is calling on people to wear masks when engaging in sexual activities and 19-month-old babies are being forced to wear them on airplanes. There is no rational thought in a political cult. But what did the governmental and scientific literature say on the issue before it became political?

POLL: Who should Trump nominate to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court?

On April 3, already several weeks into the unprecedented lockdown over coronavirus, but before the big media push for universal masking, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued guidance for respiratory protection for workers exposed to people with the virus. It stated clearly what governments had said all along about other forms of airborne contamination, such as smoke inhalation — “Surgical masks and eye protection (e.g., face shields, goggles) were provided as an interim measure to protect against splashes and large droplets (note: surgical masks are not respirators and do not provide protection against aerosol-generating procedures).”

In other words, they knew that because the virions of coronavirus are roughly 100 nanometers, 1/100,000 the width of a hair and 1/30 the size of surgical mask filtrations (about 3.0 microns or 3,000 nanometers), surgical masks (not to mention cloth ones) do not help. This would explain why experience has shown that all of the places with universal mask orders in place for months, such as Japan, Hong Kong, Israel, France, Peru, Philippines, Hawaii, California, and Miami, failed to stave off the spread of the infection. Surgical masks could possibly stop large droplets from those coughing with very evident symptoms, but would not stop the flow of aerosolized airborne particles, certainly not from asymptomatic individuals.

This is why the CDC, as late as May, was citing the 10 randomized controlled trials that showed “no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks.” The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford also summarized six international studies which “showed that masks alone have no significant effect in interrupting the spread of ILI or influenza in the general population, nor in healthcare workers.”

When Dr. Fauci spoke so assertively against universal mask-wearing early on in the epidemic, it was clearly based on this knowledge. “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,” infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci told “60 Minutes” on March 8. He went on to explain that masks can only block large droplets, they give a false sense of security, and they cause people to get more germs on their hands by fiddling with it. Those facts don’t change with time.

Several weeks later, Surgeon General Jerome Adams punctuated this point about the counterproductivity of wearing masks in public. Appearing on “Fox & Friends” on March 31, Adams said that based on a study that shows medical students who wear masks touch their faces 23 times more often, one has to assume that “wearing a mask improperly can actually increase your risk of getting disease.”

Ever since then, we have all seen how people leave masks in their pockets or cars for days and continuously put it on and off as needed without washing their hands. It’s inconceivable that this is not serving as a bacteria trap, if not downright helping spread the virus on our hands.

A 2015 randomized clinical trial from the University of South Wales testing the effectiveness of cloth masks among health care workers in Hanoi found that the poor filtration becomes a conduit for moisture retention. Researchers found a high rate of infection among those workers presumably because “their reuse and poor filtration may explain the increased risk of infection.” Can you imagine how much worse this is in a non-health-care setting where reuse and cross-contamination are rampant?

This is why before mask-wearing became a cult in Canada, Quebec’s public health director Horacio Arruda told the Montreal Gazette that masks are counterproductive. Arruda’s guidance as given in the article states that masks “get saturated with moisture from the mouth and nose after about 20 minutes. Once they’re wet, they no longer form a barrier against viruses trying to come through or exit.” This renders the daylong mask wearing in businesses, stores, and schools, as opposed to the short onetime use in clinical settings, a complete hazard to spread of bacteria and pathogens.

Nothing about the biology of the virus or our discovery of it has changed in the past few months that would lead us to believe that masks are somehow more effective against it than they are against the spread of other respiratory viruses. What has changed is the politics. Governments could no longer control our lives through wholesale lockdowns, because it was logistically untenable, so they created the mask mandate as a way of permanently controlling our movement. They wisely did this on the heels of the full-scale lockdown when people were grateful just to be back in business under any conditions and were desperately willing to do anything to stave off a shutdown.

Dr. Jeffery Klausner, an infectious disease doctor at UCLA, described mask-wearing in early February as all psychological, not physiological. He told the Los Angeles Times that “fear spreads a lot faster than the virus” and that a mask only “makes you feel better.” What is so dangerous about this is that, as Fauci and others originally warned when they were actually speaking from a modicum of scientific grounding, is that many immunocompromised people will go to dangerous places thinking the mask protects them. I’ve seen countless friends and neighbors who are concerned about their heart conditions and diabetes blissfully walk around indoors thinking the mask is their shield.

This is why Swedish epidemiologist Anders Tegnell warned that because scientific evidence for mask-wearing to prevent COVID-19 is “astonishingly weak,” it is “very dangerous” to believe that face masks on their own could control the spread of the disease rather than hand washing or, in the case of those who are seriously ill, staying away from indoor gatherings. He would know, because his country barely has any cases left, and almost nobody in Sweden wears a mask.

The Dutch government made the prudent decision of only requiring masks on public transit when people are really close to each other for a limited period of time. With such scant evidence of the effectiveness of mask-wearing, how can we disrupt lives of children in school, businessmen in offices, and even people walking outdoors in some countries and states? “From a medical point of view, there is no evidence of a medical effect of wearing face masks, so we decided not to impose a national obligation,” said Netherlands Medical Care Minister Tamara van Ark in August.

The Danish supposedly commissioned a randomized clinical trial to study mask effectiveness specifically as it relates to protecting against SARS-CoV-2, but despite promises of imminent release weeks ago, the study has not been published. Henning Bundgaard, chief physician at Denmark’s Rigshospitale, noted, “All these countries recommending face masks haven’t made their decisions based on new studies.” It doesn’t appear that anyone else is interested in finding out the truth.

Even in England, where there is more mask-wearing than in some of the other northern European countries, Public Health England concluded, “There is weak evidence from epidemiological and modelling studies that mask wearing in the community may contribute to reducing the spread of COVID-19 and that early intervention may result in a lower peak infection rate.”

Our own U.S. government has failed to produce new evidence that counters years’ worth of evidence that masks don’t work in stopping respiratory viruses and is still producing evidence to the contrary. In June, HHS’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality funded a systemic review of all relevant randomized clinical trials (RCTs) on the effectiveness of mask-wearing in stopping respiratory infections and published the findings in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The conclusion was as clear as it is jarring to the current cult-like devotion to mask-wearing. “Review of RCTs indicates that N95 respirators and surgical masks are probably associated with similar risk for influenza-like illness and laboratory-confirmed viral infections in high- and low-risk settings.” The study noted that only one trial did show “a small decrease in risk” for infection when doctors wore N95s in high-risk settings, but even that evidence was scant.

The study looked at eight trials with 6,510 participants that “evaluated use of surgical masks within households with an influenza or influenza-like illness index case (child or adult). Compared with no masks, surgical masks were not associated with decreased risk for clinical respiratory illness, influenza-like illness, or laboratory-confirmed viral illness in household contacts when masks were worn by household contacts, index cases, or both.” Remember, Dr. Deborah Birx, the Coronavirus Task Force coordinator, is now saying people should wear masks even at home?

How have we gone from public officials universally warning about the lack of effectiveness plus the potential to spread germs from masks to mandating that young children who are germ factories wear them all day in school – without even a legislative debate or public hearings?

The answer is that we have become emasculated as a society. We have become a people who are willing to surrender every morsel of our liberty at the ever-changing and capricious whims of “public health officials,” even when they are appallingly contradictory and without any evidence justifying the 180-degree U-turn.

During times of panic, opportunistic politicians in positions of power will always latch on to desperate and regressive ideas to infringe upon liberty, while packaging them as some sort of enlightened advancement in technology or understanding. In reality, these same desperate measures were tried in 1918, and even then, it was understood that they didn’t work. A November 16, 1918, headline of the Santa Barbara Daily News read, “Average Person Doesn’t Know How to Take Care of Mask and It Becomes Veritable Bacteria Incubator.”

Many principles in life are inviolable and do not change with time. We used to understand that mask-wearing was a novelty of Halloween. Now, our passivity has allowed our entire country to become a Halloween nightmare masquerade every day, with no end in sight.

This article has been updated.

=========================

We shut up shop for a coronavirus that was unlikely to kill us

We shut up shop for a coronavirus that was unlikely to kill us  By Adam Creighton, The Australian, 22 September 2020

“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof.”

John Kenneth Galbraith’s quip couldn’t be more apt right now, where the world’s political class and their cheer squads in the media and pockets of academia are trying to justify the extraordinary attack on civil liberties and economic freedom over a disease that’s like a severe flu in its health impact. They will need more than: “China said it worked”, “it was popular”, and “it feels as if lockdowns must work”.

The aim of such blunt policies, enacted contrary to advice and without empirical support, has steadily shifted from “flattening the curve”, to suppression, and now, in Victoria, at least, “elimination”.

Regardless, we shouldn’t have copied the policies of an increasingly totalitarian state on faith; many terrible and stupid things are popular, and science doesn’t care about feelings.

In Sweden — a nation castigated mercilessly for taking sensible precautions rather than enforcing a China-style police state — total mortality has turned out to be much the same as previous years.

It’s had no “second wave”, unlike other lockdown-prone European nations, lending support to the idea Swedes have developed some herd immunity, and are getting on with their lives.

The modelling produced to justify Victoria’s stage-four lockdown that began on August 1, predicted the 14-day average of new cases would be “over 60 by mid-September” with a tough lockdown. It was 34 as of Monday, when 11 new cases were announced — the modelling was poor.

As analysts at Bell Potter showed, the virus peaked just three days after the fourth stage began, which, given the incubation period, means the additional measures had nothing to do with the decline.

Almost 1770 Belgian doctors and health professionals issued an open letter urging Belgium — in a second wave of about 1000 cases a day — against reimposing a lockdown. “If we compare the waves of infection in countries with strict lockdown policies to countries that did not impose lockdowns (Sweden, Iceland …), we see similar curves. There is no link,” they said on September 10.

Belgian doctors have spoken out against harsh emergency policies to combat the coronavirus. Picture: Screengrab / docs4opendebate.be/en/

Never mind all that. Just as our medieval ancestors thought influenza was caused by the “influence” of the stars (hence the name), the decline in cases in Victoria will be attributed to curfews, lockdowns, and Victorians’ globally unique vigilance.

There is no link between lockdowns and reduction in deaths, let alone a demonstration of causality, as multiple analyses in medical journal The Lancet and elsewhere have shown. The sun doesn’t rise in the morning because the rooster crows.

Paris-based data scientist Ivan Debono published an insightful graph last week, putting the 960,000 global deaths from or with COVID-19, in context. You almost need a microscope to see the impact, given more than 60 million people, mostly aged, die each year.

And Melbourne University’s vice-chancellor implied this week, in terms of quality-adjusted life years saved, the toll would be much less. “What is the value of a 90-year-old’s life versus the value of the continuing livelihood and happiness of a 25-year-old?’’ he bravely asked.

Police patrol Melbourne’s CBD on the weekend. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Wayne Taylor

The chart, anyway, is either a demonstration of our collective genius in snuffing out a very deadly virus — for the first time in history — or one of the coronavirus’s modest lethality. I am pretty sure for which explanation future historians will opt.

Ultimately the tide of sanctimony and hysteria will go out leaving the facts, but in the meantime the economic and social destruction continues.

The facts have changed but not the response. Why?

Economics provides two ideas that help us understand how we ended up putting millions under house arrest: path dependency and public choice theory.

If the virus had emerged in Sweden, Brazil, Japan or even Victoria, it is unlikely the world would have locked itself down in terror. History matters; China took the lead, we followed.

The path you’re on depends how you started, however stupid it was in hindsight. For reasons of saving face and sheer inertia, governments cannot and do not re-optimise like computers might with the latest information each day, which leads to the second factor. Economists once thought politicians acted wholly in the public interest, their models assumed policies were carried out as if by a “benevolent dictator”.

Nobel prize winner James Buchanan blew this naivety away in the 1970s, showing that bureaucracy and regulators often acted in their own interest or that of the industry they regulated (as the GFC well-illustrated).

“Show me the incentives, and I’ll show you the outcome” quipped legendary investor Charlie Munger.

The pandemic has given the political class an opportunity to increase its fame, power and relative income under the self-righteous banner of “saving lives”.

Politicians, who know they’ll be accountable to the media only for pandemic deaths, do whatever is popular, such as close state borders, in order to be re-elected.

All the costs have fallen on others, who had no place at the decision-making table.

Imagine one slight tweak to this incentive structure whereby every politician and chief medical officer endured a 20 per cent pay cut for every day lockdown and restrictions were maintained. How long would it have lasted?

ADAM CREIGHTON

 

ECONOMICS EDITOR

Adam Creighton is an award-winning journalist with a special interest in tax and financial policy. He was a Journalist in Residence at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business in 2019. He’s written … Read more

=======================

Australian state of Victoria is now a police state

Australian state of Victoria is now a police state  By Janet Albrechtesen, The Australian, 13 September 2020

The state of Victoria is unfathomable. The duly elected leader, a Labor Premier, has armed police with brute powers to enter and search the Ballarat home of a young pregnant woman, her partner and children, arrest and handcuff her and seize all phones and laptops, regardless of who owns them.

Why? Here’s the fascist part.

Twenty-eight-year-old Zoe Buhler posted about “Freedom Day Ballarat” on Facebook. She wrote this: “PEACEFUL PROTEST! All social distancing measures are to be followed so we don’t get arrested please. Please wear a mask unless you have a medical reason not to. As some of you have seen, the government has gone to extreme measures and are using scare tactics through the media to prevent the Melbourne protests.

“Here in Ballarat we can be a voice for those in stage 4 lockdowns. We can be seen and heard and hopefully make a difference. We live in a ‘free’ country.”

She was right to put quotation marks around the word ‘free’ because, right now, freedom is up in the air.

When police stormed Buhler’s home at suburban Miners Rest, in Ballarat, her four-year-old child ran and hid under a bed. Buhler told police she could take down the post, right there and then. The march had not taken place.

She pleaded with police to show some common sense.

“I didn’t realise I was doing anything wrong,” she said to them. “I’m happy to delete the post. This is ridiculous. My two kids are here. I have an ultrasound appointment in an hour.”

Assistant Police Commissioner Luke Cornelius reckons the officers “stuffed” the optics — but they were right to arrest and handcuff the pregnant mother. Stuff the optics, indeed.

 

THEAUSTRALIAN.COM.AU0:19

Pregnant anti-lockdown protester: ‘I was scared I was being kidnapped’ (Today)

Zoe Buhler has spoken to media about her controversial anti-lockdown protest arrest.

This is about the state of democracy in Victoria. It’s not about turning the young Ballarat woman into a martyr or a hero.

For all we know, she might have plenty of views that chafe. Maybe she’s into crystals? Maybe she’s an anti-vaxxer? But police didn’t come for Buhler because she might have views in common with rich hippies in Byron Bay.

Buhler is on bail, facing hefty fines and possible imprisonment, for posting about “Freedom Day in Ballarat” to protest against lockdown policies. Her brother set up a GoFundMe page to help his sister, only to delete it after receiving death threats.

This is Australia in 2020?

The young mum lost her job during the economic shutdown. She is worried about suicides. Many frontline medical experts are also concerned that Daniel Andrews and Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton are focused only on COVID-19, ignoring the devastation caused to lives by lockdown measures.

A group of thirteen senior medical specialists wrote to the Victorian Premier on Monday night. They want to do something, so they offered to meet with him.

“It is our professional opinion that the stage 4 lockdown policy has caused unprecedented negative economic and social outcomes in people,” wrote the doctors.

“In particular, it has caused or exacerbated depression, anxiety and other mental health issues, as well as contributed to domestic violence, through an extreme and unjustified disruption to family, social and work life.

“Job losses, home-schooling, the isolation of the elderly and single people, and the restriction on the number of people who may attend funerals are but a few examples of how the government’s current response is harming the health of the general population.”

Australians should be concerned that governments have turned health bureaucrats into health dictators. That’s what happens when governments choose a narrow bandwidth of advice.

The Victorian Premier is following the early lockdown model of the Morrison government, adding his own COVID-19 bells and whistles: a nightly curfew, one hour of exercise a day, no roaming beyond 5km of your home. None of this is based on science, only the advice of bureaucrats.

Australians should be troubled about early political calculations made by the Morrison government, copied by other state and territory leaders.

They reckoned that they would be held to account for every COVID-19 death but not for suicides or self-harm or depression or lives lost to cancer or another disease because treatment was cancelled, suspended or slowed down through fear of attending a hospital.

Why wouldn’t Australians be concerned that Andrews chose a softly, softly approach to Black Lives Matter protesters in the middle of a lockdown, but has emboldened police to cuff and arrest a young woman for wanting to exercise her right to protest, in a COVID-safe way, against lockdown laws that are not grounded in science?

We have that right in Australia, a right to political freedom under the Constitution. We might hear more about that from Buhler’s Melbourne lawyers, Stuart Wood QC and criminal lawyer Stephen Andrianakis, who stepped up to act for Buhler on Thursday. The high-profile and high-powered lawyers aren’t just defending one young woman; they are defending our freedoms.

Apart from the Constitution, Buhler’s lawyers might look at whether the whole damn scheme imposed by Andrews under the Public Health and Wellbeing Act is unlawful for empowering thousands of lowly bureaucrats and council workers with extreme and disproportionate powers.

A court might find that the Andrews government has applied the law unlawfully, or strike down the law for overreach.

If this was a migration matter, the Federal Court would look very dimly on a government using laws to impose tyranny by fiat.

And then there’s the Victorian Charter of Human Rights. The Andrews government will need to craft something better than “Seriously, one more comment about human rights …”.

That’s how the Premier, at a press conference in July, dissed our hard-fought freedoms.

Australians from all walks of life contact me daily, desperate to know what they can do to defend our way of life in the face of lockdown laws that are devastating their lives. For starters, watch the video of Buhler being handcuffed, the noise of her little children in the background, her pleading with police to see reason. It should send shivers down your spine.

What about the Prime Minister? What will he do? Will he talk about the importance of freedom now? Even if it doesn’t create a single new job?

That has been Scott Morrison’s excuse in the past when asked about incursions into our culture and our freedoms.

Millions of mainstream Australians will cheer a leader who understands that our way of life must be defended, that freedoms are fragile, that each generation must protect them, and hand a robust set of freedoms on to the next generation, explaining to them why they must do the same.

NSW Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to defending basic freedoms for Australians — more than most Liberal MPs combined in the Morrison government. He contacted the family of the Ballarat woman, offering his support.

Does the Prime Minister want to be remembered for his managerialism, or as a national leader who fought to uphold basic freedoms?

Rather than be concerned about the protest against government policies that is scheduled for today, we should be far more troubled if all Australians simply sat in silence.

The second wave of COVID-19 was unleashed by an inept Andrews government who also withheld information from the public; heavy-handed restrictions remain “on the table” even after the current state of emergency is due to end on September 13, as Sutton said on Wednesday. And worst of all, the Premier has encouraged brute police tactics to enfeeble citizens.

Andrews has done more to incite Australians to breach public health orders than a young pregnant Ballarat woman dressed in pink flannelette pyjamas who posted on Facebook about Freedom Day in Ballarat. Her arrest is nothing short of modern fascism. It will be a healthy sign if more Australians draw a line in the sand.

JANET ALBRECHTSEN

 

COLUMNIST

Janet Albrechtsen is an opinion columnist with The Australian. She has worked as a solicitor in commercial law, and attained a Doctorate of Juridical Studies from the University of Sydney. She has written for n… Read more

=====================

Flu Is Killing More People Than Covid19, And Has Been For Months

 

Flu Is Killing More People Than Covid19, And Has Been For Months  By Kit Knightly, HAF, 12 September 2020

A report from the UK’s Office of National Statistics (ONS) shows that since at least June 19th, more people in the UK have been dying of influenza than Covid19.

This, of course, is despite the fact that “Covid19 deaths” are incredibly vaguely defined.

Under UK law a person only has to test positive for the Sars-Cov-2 virus at any point in the 28 days prior to their death for “Covid19” to be on their death certificate, a policy which totally ignores the fact the majority of Sars-Cov-2 infections are completely symptomless (and has already resulted in huge over-counts).

Meanwhile boring old influenza is lumbered with having to actually contribute to the death before being added to the death certificate.

And nevertheless, for three straight months, the UK has recorded more flu deaths than Covid deaths.

See this graph: (Editor’s note: Download the article using link above to view this very telling graph.)

“Ah”, some of your may be saying, “this is just evidence that the lockdown, social distancing and masks have worked.”

But that is obviously not the case. Clearly, if these measures did anything to halt viral transmission, the flu deaths would have gone down as well. They have not. They are right in line with the five-year average.

Despite social distancing and wearing masks and hand sanitizer on every corner… the spread of the flu virus has not halted one bit in its usual annual progress through society.

Ergo – the “emergency measures” have little to no impact on viral transmission.

The “novel” coronavirus is still spreading all across the population and is now killing fewer people than normal flu viruses, even though it’s late summer and we’re well past the peak flu season.

Even following the state’s own coronavirus narrative – that every person who dies with the virus is a “covid death”, and that every positive test is actually a “case” and not a false positive – even then the Covid19 story is done.

The virus arrived, it hit those with weakened immune systems or who were already seriously ill, and is now moving harmlessly through the population – regardless of whatever draconian controls we put in place to (allegedly) stop it.

Just as many epidemiologists and virologists predicted it would.

Does this mean the lockdown is over? Does this mean we can dump “the new normal” and get back to the old normal, which – though I wasn’t enjoying it much at the time – I now look back on as golden age of calm and reason?

Does this mean the government are going to leave us alone?

In short, no.

Instead, the social controls are getting stricter. The UK has announced that, from Monday the 14th, no social gatherings of more than 6 people will be allowed. There’s talk of a curfew too.

Oh, and those “immunity passports”? You remember, the ones only paranoid conspiracy theorists were ever worried about.

Well, they might be bringing those in to. As a purely temporary measure you understand, so people can go to the movies again.

The numbers speak for themselves. The “danger” – such as it ever was – is over. The curve has been flattened, the hospitals protected, the hands well and truly sanitized.

And yet the lockdown is still here, and getting tighter all the time. Maybe, just maybe, it was never about the virus.

========================

Previous articles

August 2016

July 2016

June 2016

May 2016

April 2016

March 2016

February 2016

January 2016

December 2015

November 2015

October 2015

September 2015

August 2015

    •  A sea of frothing, sweary, often pompous, intolerance  By Tim Black, Spiked Online, 29 August 2015

July 2015

June 2015

May 2015

April 2015

March 2015

February 2015

    •  

January 2015

 

Must-Read Articles

Book reviews – ‘They’re conning you!’ first.

This post comprises reviews books that add substantially to the understanding of our world, economics, politics, history and geopolitics, and what may happen in the future.  Scroll down to read all reviews.

  • They’re Conning You! By Peter Senior. Note: the book can now be downloaded as a PDF document until the updated version is available: They’re Conning You!
  • Full review at: David Icke’s Everything You Need To Know But Have Never Been Told
  • JFK and the Unspeakable. Why He Died and Why It Matters  Book review by Edward Curtin, 31 October 2017
  • The Cosmic War, by Dr Joseph P Farrell
  • Phantom Self, by David Icke
  • 1984 – Nineteen Eighty Four. George Orwell’s 1950 classic
  • Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now, Ayaan Hirsi Ali
  • The Death of Money, James Rickards  
  • American Betrayal, Diana West
  • From Third World to First, Lee Kuan Yew
  • Lee Kuan Yew by Graham Allison

They’re Conning You! 

Who are ‘they’? And what are ‘they’ planning? This is the REAL story of our past, present and possibly future.

They’re Conning You! By Peter Senior, Senior Consulting

Note: the book can now be downloaded as a PDF document until the updated version is available: They’re Conning You!

They’re Conning You! is only available on Amazon Kindle because it includes hundreds of vital Internet links that would be far too tiresome to type in from a paper book.

They’re Conning You! presents information that is likely to cause ‘cognitive dissonance’ as it examines in depth a wide range of evidence that demonstrates much of what thought we knew is, in fact, wrong. The subjects discussed cover a wide spectrum from aliens and UFOs to asking where the technologies used to construct ancient structures come from, whether ancient civilisations waged nuclear wars against each other, to financial treason.

‘Consciousness’ is examined, as is what are we made of and how did this come about? Could it be that aliens modified our DNA, which may have come from the outer Cosmos anyway?

We are accustomed to overt and covert PC education, indoctrination and media ‘fake news,’ but do we realise how this is turning us into zombies? Servants of the State? Many scientific bodies, government departments and corporations often distort and lie about what is assumed to be ‘science.’ Even nastier things are being exposed such as paedophilia and Satanism.

Some ‘deep state’ government departments with-hold information that would enable free energy and the consequent massive improvement to most peoples’ lives and countries’ economies in order to protect their secrets as well as the massive oil and associated industries valued at $500 trillion.

There is compelling evidence that US President John F Kennedy was assassinated by covert government people because he planned to share US’ knowledge of aliens and UFOs with Russian President Khrushchev, as well as expose massive corruption.

The book presents frightening information about the two events that changed our world most in the last 55 years: JFK’s assassination and ‘911’, the demolition of the Twin Towers and Tower 7 on 11 September 2001 by covert government-controlled actions.

The subject of who ‘they’ are is discussed in depth, in particular with regard to plans for a New World Order (NWO), and who is orchestrating this.

The US is mimicking the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, whilst Europe is gradually transitioning into a bureaucratic dictatorship. The world’s financial systems are being manipulated for the benefit of their controllers, all underpinned by the ‘deep state’ which has been shown to have syphoned off at least $21 trillion through covert Pentagon misappropriations. Globalisation has expanded trade around the world, but it is now being manipulated by global corporations.

Compelling evidence demonstrates the US and other ‘deep state’ governments have secret space programs that have grown since the first UFO sightings and capture during and shortly after WWII. Imagine what 70 years of ‘reverse engineering’ from captured UFOs would yield, together with alien contact?

Several potential future scenarios are presented with assessments of each. Readers are invited to decide which seems more likely based on what they now know after reading this book and, hopefully, carrying out much more in-depth research.

A review of They’re conning you! by highly-regarded executive journalist Julian Tomlinson, based on 24 years’ experience, notes:
‘This book will appeal to the firm believers in so-called “conspiracy theories” and “conspiracy facts”, as well as those with a curiosity and even the firm non-believers. The author combines painstaking research from innumerable sources and combines bland shreds of information into a compelling narrative. Readers will feel they are sitting there actually talking to the author as he manages to convey a sense of wonder, concern and excitement in every sentence, effortlessly flicking between known pre-history, the Roman period and modern times in a manner that’s easy to follow.
If you are in the “conspiracy camp” this book expertly summarises everything you do know and want to know into one, easy-to-read volume. If you are not in the camp, you’ll at least gain an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of “conspiracies” and why they exist. You may even start to believe. Well worth a look.’

They’re conning you! is available from Amazon Kindle: www.amazon.com – search for: they’re conning you

Seven further reviews by Indie Book Reviewers are highly complimentary, and recommend the book should be read by everyone:

  1. This is a powerful, very well-written and highly informative book! I have read several books on different types of hidden ‘truths’ and conspiracy theories… what is really going on in our world and what the future might hold, and sometimes I get the sense that most are just recycling old information or things we’ve all already heard before. For this book it seems like I read a lot of new ideas presented in a way that makes a great deal of sense, even if might be perceived as somewhat “controversial”. The content was mostly new to me and laid out in a coherent way that is easy to follow, but is meticulously researched and supported with solid evidence. Peter Senior uses facts and present-day conditions as well as real-life examples to share his perspectives and ideas, Fast paced, informative, and easy to read, I recommend this book, “They’re Conning You!” to everyone who wants to know what is really going on, from aliens to secret societies, shadow governments and 9/11 and so much more.  (5 stars) John Goldman– Goodreads; Barnes & Noble; Indie Book Reviewers
  2. Peter Senior has a great ability to take complex ideas, concepts and put them in the simplest terms for all to understand easily. He covers many different points of society – past, present and future—and holds nothing back in the way of exposing information that many people might not be aware of. The media and governments do a great job of distorting reality and manipulating truths so that the average person has no idea what is really happening. Mr. Senior has compiled so much interesting research and documentation on a variety of hot-button topics and gives straightforward, convincing arguments that demand to be heard and studied further. Nicely crafted and I liked how it was formatted/broken down into individual chapters that focused on different elements. Made for easier reading and retention. Near flawless editing (formatting is a little wonky at times) and I walked away feeling like I really learned something from reading this book and am inspired to do more reading and research on my own. (4 stars) Leo Gregory– Goodreads; Barnes & Noble; Indie Book Reviewers
  3. Funny how few books there actually seem to be on so many of these topics… and this is such important information! I am still in college and it’s just not normally the type of book that I gravitate to for ‘fun’, but I thought there might be something useful I could learn anyways and I was so right! It is eye-opening and very compelling – it is clear that the author knows what he’s writing about and has done in-depth research (and has detailed and comprehensive appendices at the end to prove it). Provocative and bold, this book is not just for academics or scientists or political gurus, but for anyone who wants to know what is REALLY going on ‘behind the scenes’ and how different it is from what “they” are telling you. Everything from the JFK assassination to Twin Towers to Extra-Terrestrials, Antarctica and “Deep State” governments… Peter Senior has created an impressively comprehensive body of research and theories that can definitely get people’s attention, whether you are a ‘skeptic’ or a ‘believer’. I could definitely see the truths behind much of what he was saying. The main concern I had was that while he presented lots of great information and shocking revelations, I was left with the feeling of like “okay, now what am I supposed to do with this info?” So in that regard it is a little frustrating, but I guess it is better to know than to not know. I like that it challenged the traditional narrative and put things into new perspective. (4 stars) James Masters– Goodreads; Barnes & Noble; Indie Book Reviewers
  4. I wasn’t sure what to expect when reading “They’re Conning You” by Peter Senior, as I’m not normally one to read about things like this. But surprisingly enough I found the straight-forward and engaging narrative style to be quite fascinating and down-to-earth. I liked how Mr. Senior uses his vast and well-researched knowledge ‘story-style’ to make his points and relate his ideas in ways that we all can fully and easily grasp. Each chapter/section/topic gives valuable information, examples and supporting links or sources for further research/reading. The whole thing just flowed so well and I hope people pay attention to as it is clear that the author knows what he is talking about, and that he is an excellent writer. I have found that many times reading philosophy/political or ‘conspiracy’ theory books can either be too ‘highbrow’ and esoteric, or they just don’t present the material in a way that I feel I can relate to (or its condescending), but this definitely was not the case here at all. My only very small complaint was that I wish there were more in-text citations for sources (footnotes or direct links), because while the author does provide a very thorough appendices/references at the end, there were a few times I would’ve preferred to see the sources cited in text. A very minor thing, though. Recommended read. (4 stars) Cale Owens– Goodreads; Barnes & Noble; Indie Book Reviewers
  5. I think a lot of these types of books get a bad rap sometimes, as a lot of times they are all theory and ‘talking in circles’ but don’t really bring anything ‘new’ to the table or make the information credible and or relevant. But I have to say in this case I feel like the author did a solid job of getting his message out and doing so in a very digestible manner. I was unaware of so many things discussed in this book, and I consider myself to be fairly well educated and worldly. I’m not exactly sure who the right target audience for this would be, as it almost seems something almost anyone could (and should!) read. I admit I am not all that sure what to do with this information, but if nothing else I enjoyed learning more about certain things I was unaware of before, and I have ALWAYS had an interest in knowing more truths with aliens/ET and their contributions to our planet and advancing civilizations. The pacing is pretty even and overall it is an impressive effort by Mr. Senior and worth serious thought and discussion. (4 stars) Carla Biggins– Goodreads; Barnes & Noble; Indie Book Reviewers
  6. In “They’re Conning You…” Peter Senior lays out his ideas is a way that encourages the reader to think ‘outside the box’ and question the ‘reality’ that is often presented to the masses. Whether you believe in conspiracy theories or facts or not, there is enough detailed examination of ‘controversial’ subjects here to entice the pickiest of readers. His narrative is easy to follow, even if some of the concepts were admittedly a little ‘out there’ at times. I still feel like I gleaned some valuable information – actually a lot that I didn’t know before. While not exactly a ‘mainstream’ sort of book, in a way that is exactly what makes it so good –This book is intelligent and thought-provoking – opens your eyes and provides a necessary paradigm shift. Some parts pull the rug out from under you – others will pull the wool from your eyes and expose truths, sometimes uncomfortable, that we all need to at least hear about, even if you chose not to believe it.  At least you can decide for yourself when given the bigger picture. I liked how many outside sources he references, so many links, videos, articles and books… I will definitely be reading more! Recommend. (4 stars) Cody Brighton – Goodreads; Barnes & Noble; Indie Book Reviewers
  7. Warning – when starting “They’re Conning You…” make sure you don’t have anywhere you need to be or anything you need to do because you won’t want to stop reading until you’ve finished it all!! Trust me on this! The book starts off with an intriguing beginning pulling us into this provocative world and ideas, and just keeps going with one interesting topic after the next. I think what I liked the most about this book was just the overall feel the author Peter Senior managed to create where it felt intimate, like a friend is telling me this really cool, strange story that I didn’t want to stop listening to. Loved the energetic tone and the fact that he has his opinions, but the book doesn’t feel overly ‘biased’ or judgmental… This went much deeper than that, and I was truly impressed with the author’s literary and research skills. I actually feel like I learned a lot, all while being ‘entertained’. I’ve always had a fascination with many of these subjects (esp. aliens and secret societies), but they are usually presented in such an eye-rolling, unbelievable way It was great to read something so intelligently constructed with impressive research and complex connections that all come full circle. Suitable for mature teens on up. (5 stars) Essie Harmon—Goodreads; Barnes & Noble; Indie Book Reviewers

================

The American Deep State: Big Money, Big Oil, and the Struggle for U.S. Democracy – Updated version 

by Professor Peter Dale Scott 

Note: this review is  copied from the Amazon/Kindle website.

Now in a new edition updated through the unprecedented 2016 presidential election, this provocative book makes a compelling case for a hidden “deep state” that influences and often opposes official U.S. policies. Prominent political analyst Peter Dale Scott begins by tracing America’s increasing militarization, restrictions on constitutional rights, and income disparity since World War II. With the start of the Cold War, he argues, the U.S. government changed immensely in both function and scope, from protecting and nurturing a relatively isolated country to assuming ever-greater responsibility for controlling world politics in the name of freedom and democracy. This has resulted in both secretive new institutions and a slow but radical change in the American state itself. He argues that central to this historic reversal were seismic national events, ranging from the assassination of President Kennedy to 9/11.
Scott marshals compelling evidence that the deep state is now partly institutionalized in non-accountable intelligence agencies like the CIA and NSA, but it also extends its reach to private corporations like Booz Allen Hamilton and SAIC, to which 70 percent of intelligence budgets are outsourced. Behind these public and private institutions is the influence of Wall Street bankers and lawyers, allied with international oil companies beyond the reach of domestic law. Undoubtedly the political consensus about America’s global role has evolved, but if we want to restore the country’s traditional constitutional framework, it is important to see the role of particular cabals—such as the Project for the New American Century—and how they have repeatedly used the secret powers and network of Continuity of Government (COG) planning to implement change. Yet the author sees the deep state polarized between an establishment and a counter-establishment in a chaotic situation that may actually prove more hopeful for U.S. democracy.

================

Everything You Need to Know,  by David Icke, 14 February 2018

See full review at: David Icke’s Everything You Need To Know But Have Never Been Told

David’s latest book is reviewed in a recent post by Freedom Article, as follows: ‘This book sprinkled throughout with David’s humor, e.g. when discussing transhumanism poster boy Ray Kurzweil of Google, David remarks “I wouldn’t trust him to tell me the date in a calendar factory” or when discussing the Christian sacrament of the Eucharist (eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ), David remarks that mainstream religion is “Satanism lite.”

Here are 2 key quotes from the book:

“If you want to control the dream you must control the perceptions of the dreamer and that’s the global conspiracy to enslave humanity in a single sentence.”

David uses the same quote from Einstein twice in the book, since it’s so important:

“Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you can’t help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”

Therein lies the grand solution. The solution to all these problems, to the entire New World Order, comes down to some very simple principles. Remember who you are. Identify with the depth of your spirit, not the shallowness of your form. Life is a mirror: whatever you put out, you receive. Change your perception and your change everything. The universe matches your vibration with an experience or situation, so if you change your vibration, you change your experience, and your entire life. If enough of us do it, we change the entire world.

Everything You Need To Know But Have Never Been Told is the kind of book that can change your life. Get a copy, read it, let it inspire you with knowledge and courage, and let the astonishing amount of dot-connecting sink in and give you a perceptual reboot.’

================

JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters

 JFK and the Unspeakable. Why He Died and Why It Matters  Book review by Edward Curtin, 31 October 2017

Despite a treasure-trove of new information having emerged over the last forty-six years, there are many people who still think who killed President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and why are unanswerable questions. There are others who cling to the Lee Harvey Oswald “lone-nut” explanation proffered by the Warren Commission. Both groups agree, however, that whatever the truth, it has no contemporary relevance but is old-hat, history, stuff for conspiracy-obsessed people with nothing better to do. The general thinking is that the assassination occurred almost a half-century ago, so let’s move on.

Nothing could be further from the truth, as James Douglass shows in his extraordinary book, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters (Simon & Schuster, 2008). It is clearly one of the best books ever written on the Kennedy assassination and deserves a vast readership. It is bound to roil the waters of complacency that have submerged the truth of this key event in modern American history.

It’s not often that the intersection of history and contemporary events pose such a startling and chilling lesson as does the contemplation of the murder of JFK on November 22, 1963 juxtaposed with the situations faced by President Obama today. So far, at least, Obama’s behaviour has mirrored Johnson’s, not Kennedy’s, as he has escalated the war in Afghanistan by 34,000. One can’t but help think that the thought of JFK’s fate might not be far from his mind as he contemplates his next move in Afghanistan.

Douglass presents a very compelling argument that Kennedy was killed by “unspeakable” (the Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s term) forces within the U.S. national security state because of his conversion from a cold warrior into a man of peace. He argues, using a wealth of newly uncovered information, that JFK had become a major threat to the burgeoning military-industrial complex and had to be eliminated through a conspiracy planned by the CIA – “the CIA’s fingerprints are all over the crime and the events leading up to it” – not by a crazed individual, the Mafia, or disgruntled anti-Castro Cubans, though some of these may have been used in the execution of the plot.

Why and by whom? These are the key questions. If it can be shown that Kennedy did, in fact, turn emphatically away from war as a solution to political conflict; did, in fact, as he was being urged by his military and intelligence advisers to up the ante and use violence, rejected such advice and turned toward peaceful solutions, then, a motive for his elimination is established. If, furthermore, it can be clearly shown that Oswald was a dupe in a deadly game and that forces within the military/intelligence apparatus were involved with him from start to finish, then the crime is solved, not by fingering an individual who may have given the order for the murder or pulled the trigger, but by showing that the coordination of the assassination had to involve U.S. intelligence agencies, most notably the CIA. Douglass does both, providing highly detailed and intricately linked evidence based on his own research and a vast array of the best scholarship.

We are then faced with the contemporary relevance, and since we know that every president since JFK has refused to confront the growth of the national security state and its call for violence, one can logically assume a message was sent and heeded. In this regard, it is not incidental that former twenty-seven year CIA analyst Raymond McGovern, in a recent interview, warned of the “two CIAs,” one the analytic arm providing straight scoop to presidents, the other the covert action arm which operates according to its own rules. “Let me leave you with this thought,” he told his interviewer, “and that is that I think Panetta (current CIA Director), and to a degree Obama, are afraid – I never thought I’d hear myself saying this – I think they are afraid of the CIA.” He then recommended Douglass’ book, “It’s very well-researched and his conclusion is very alarming.” [1]

Let’s look at the history marshaled by Douglass to support his thesis.

First, Kennedy, who took office in January 1961 as somewhat of a Cold Warrior, was quickly set up by the CIA to take the blame for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961. The CIA and generals wanted to oust Castro, and in pursuit of that goal, trained a force of Cuban exiles to invade Cuba. Kennedy refused to go along and the invasion was roundly defeated. The CIA, military, and Cuban exiles bitterly blamed Kennedy. But it was all a sham.

Though Douglass doesn’t mention it, and few Americans know it, classified documents uncovered in 2000 revealed that the CIA had discovered that the Soviets had learned of the date of the invasion more than a week in advance, had informed Castro, but – and here is a startling fact that should make people’s hair stand on end – never told the President. [2] The CIA knew the invasion was doomed before the fact but went ahead with it anyway. Why? So they could and did afterwards blame JFK for the failure.

This treachery set the stage for events to come. For his part, sensing but not knowing the full extent of the set-up, Kennedy fired CIA Director Allen Dulles (as in a bad joke, later to be named to the Warren Commission) and his assistant General Charles Cabell (whose brother Earle Cabell, to make a bad joke absurd, was the mayor of Dallas on the day Kennedy was killed) and said he wanted “to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” Not the sentiments to endear him to a secretive government within a government whose power was growing exponentially.

The stage was now set for events to follow as JFK, in opposition to nearly all his advisers, consistently opposed the use of force in U.S. foreign policy.

In 1961, despite the Joint Chief’s demand to put troops into Laos, Kennedy bluntly insisted otherwise as he ordered Averell Harriman, his representative at the Geneva Conference, “Did you understand? I want a negotiated settlement in Laos. I don’t want to put troops in.”

Also in 1961, he refused to concede to the insistence of his top generals to give them permission to use nuclear weapons in Berlin and Southeast Asia. Walking out of a meeting with top military advisors, Kennedy threw his hands in the air and said, “These people are crazy.”

He refused to bomb and invade Cuba as the military wished during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Afterwards he told his friend John Kenneth Galbraith that “I never had the slightest intention of doing so.”

Then in June 1963 he gave an incredible speech at American University in which he called for the total abolishment of nuclear weapons, the end of the Cold War and the “Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war,” and movement toward “general and complete disarmament.”

A few months later he signed a Limited Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khrushchev.

In October 1963 he signed National Security Action Memorandum 263 calling for the withdrawal of 1,000 U. S. military troops from Vietnam by the end of the year and a total withdrawal by the end of 1965.[3]

All this he did while secretly engaging in negotiations with Khrushchev via the KGB , Norman Cousins, and Pope John XXIII , and with Castro through various intermediaries, one of whom was French Journalist Jean Daniel. In an interview with Daniel on October 24, 1963 Kennedy said, “I approved the proclamation Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will go even further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we will have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear.” Such sentiments were anathema, shall we say treasonous, to the CIA and top generals.

These clear refusals to go to war and his decision to engage in private, back-channel communications with Cold War enemies marked Kennedy as an enemy of the national security state. They were on a collision course. As Douglass and others have pointed out, every move Kennedy made was anti-war. This, Douglass argues, was because JFK, a war hero, had been deeply affected by the horror of war and was severely shaken by how close the world had come to destruction during the Cuban missile crisis. Throughout his life he had been touched by death and had come to appreciate the fragility of life. Once in the Presidency, Kennedy underwent a deep metanoia, a spiritual transformation, from Cold Warrior to peace maker. He came to see the generals who advised him as devoid of the tragic sense of life and as hell-bent on war. And he was well aware that his growing resistance to war had put him on a dangerous collision course with those generals and the CIA. On numerous occasions he spoke of the possibility of a military coup d’etat against him. On the night before his trip to Dallas, he told his wife, “But, Jackie, if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it.” And we know that nobody did try to stop it because they had planned it.

But who killed him?

Douglass presents a formidable amount of evidence, some old and some new, against the CIA and covert action agencies within the national security state, and does so in such a logical and persuasive way that any fair-minded reader cannot help but be taken aback; stunned, really. And he links this evidence directly to JFK’s actions on behalf of peace.

He knows, however, that to truly convince he must break a “conspiracy of silence that would envelop our government, our media, our academic institutions, and virtually our entire society from November 22, 1963, to the present.” This “unspeakable,” this hypnotic “collective denial of the obvious,” is sustained by a mass-media whose repeated message is that the truth about such significant events is beyond our grasp, that we will have to drink the waters of uncertainty forever. As for those who don’t, they are relegated to the status of conspiracy nuts.

Fear and uncertainty block a true appraisal of the assassination – that plus the thought that it no longer matters.

It matters. For we know that no president since JFK has dared to buck the military-intelligence-industrial complex. We know a Pax Americana has spread its tentacles across the globe with U.S. military in over 130 countries on 750 plus bases. We know that the amount of blood and money spent on wars and war preparations has risen astronomically.

There is a great deal we know and even more that we don’t want to know, or at the very least, investigate.

If Lee Harvey Oswald was connected to the intelligence community, the FBI and the CIA, then we can logically conclude that he was not “a lone-nut” assassin. Douglass marshals a wealth of evidence to show how from the very start Oswald was moved around the globe like a pawn in a game, and when the game was done, the pawn was eliminated in the Dallas police headquarters. As he begins to trace Oswald’s path, Douglass asks this question: “Why was Lee Harvey Oswald so tolerated and supported by the government he betrayed?” After serving as a U.S. Marine at the CIA’s U-2 spy plane operating base in Japan with a Crypto clearance (higher than top secret but a fact suppressed by the Warren Commission), Oswald left the Marines and defected to the Soviet Union. After denouncing the U.S., working at a Soviet factory in Minsk , and taking a Russian wife – during which time Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane is shot down over the Soviet Union – he returned to the U.S. with a loan from the American Embassy in Moscow, only to be met at the dock in Hoboken, New Jersey by a man, Spas T. Raikin, a prominent anti-communist with extensive intelligence connections, recommended by the State Department. He passed through immigration with no trouble, was not prosecuted, moved to Fort Worth, Texas where , at the suggestion of the Dallas CIA Domestic Contacts Service chief, he was met and befriended by George de Mohrenschildt, an anti-communist Russian, who was a CIA asset. De Mohrenschildt got him a job four days later at a graphic arts company that worked on maps for the U.S. Army Map Service related to U-2 spy missions over Cuba. Oswald was then shepherded around the Dallas area by de Mohrenschildt who, in 1977, on the day he revealed he had contacted Oswald for the CIA and was to meet with the House Select Committee on Assasinations’ Gaeton Fonzi, allegedly committed suicide. Oswald then moved to New Orleans in April 1963 where got a job at the Reilly Coffee Company owned by CIA-affiliated William Reilly. The Reilly Coffee Company was located in close vicinity to the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and Office of Naval Intelligence offices and a stone’s throw from the office of Guy Bannister, a former Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Chicago Bureau, who worked as a covert action coordinator for the intelligence services, supplying and training anti-Castro paramilitaries meant to ensnare Kennedy. Oswald then went to work with Bannister and the CIA paramilitaries.

During this time up until the assassination Oswald engaged in all sorts of contradictory activities, one day portraying himself as pro-Castro, the next day as anti-Castro, many of these theatrical performances being directed from Bannister’s office. It was as though Oswald, on the orders of his puppet masters, was enacting multiple and antithetical roles in order to confound anyone intent on deciphering the purposes behind his actions and to set him up as a future “assassin.” Douglass persuasively argues that Oswald “seems to have been working with both the CIA and FBI,” as a provocateur for the former and an informant for the latter. Jim and Elsie Wilcott, who worked at the CIA Tokyo Station from 1960-64, in a 1978 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, said, “It was common knowledge in the Tokyo CIA station that Oswald worked for the agency.”

When Oswald moved to New Orleans in April 1963, de Mohrenschildt exited the picture, having asked the CIA for and been indirectly given a $285,000 contract to do a geological survey for Haitian dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier, which he never did , but for which he was paid. Ruth and Michael Paine then entered the picture on cue. Douglass illuminatingly traces in their intelligence connections. Ruth later was the Warren Commission’s chief witness. She had been introduced to Oswald by de Mohrenschildt. In September 1963 Ruth Paine drove from her sister’s house in Virginia to New Orleans to pick up Marina Oswald and bring her to her house in Dallas to live with her. Thirty years after the assassination a document was declassified showing Paine’s sister Sylvia worked for the CIA. Her father traveled throughout Latin America on an Agency for International Development (notorious for CIA front activities) contract and filed reports that went to the CIA. Her husband Michael’s step-father, Arthur Young, was the inventor of the Bell helicopter and Michael’s job there gave him a security clearance. Her mother was related to the Forbes family of Boston and her lifelong friend, Mary Bancroft, worked as a WW II spy with Allen Dulles and was his mistress. Afterwards, Dulles questioned the Paines in front of the Warren Commission, studiously avoiding any revealing questions. Back in Dallas, Ruth Paine conveniently got Oswald a job in the Texas Book Depository where he began work on October 16, 1963.

From late September until November 22, various Oswalds are later reported to have simultaneously been seen from Dallas to Mexico City. Two Oswalds were arrested in the Texas Theatre, the real one taken out the front door and an impostor out the back. As Douglas says, “There were more Oswalds providing evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald than the Warren Report could use or even explain.” Even J. Edgar Hoover knew that Oswald impostors were used, as he told LBJ concerning Oswald’s alleged visit to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. He later called this CIA ploy, “the false story re Oswald’s trip to Mexico…their ( CIA’s) double-dealing,” something that he couldn’t forget. It was apparent that a very intricate and deadly game was being played out at high levels in the shadows.

We know Oswald was blamed for the President’s murder. But if one fairly follows the trail of the crime it becomes blatantly obvious that government forces were at work. Douglass adds layer upon layer of evidence to show how this had to be so. Oswald, the mafia, anti-Castro Cubans could not have withdrawn most of the security that day. The Sheriff Bill Decker withdrew all police protection. The Secret Service withdrew the police motorcycle escorts from beside the president’s car where they had been the day before in Houston; took agents off the back of the car where they were normally stationed to obstruct gunfire. They approved the fateful, dogleg turn (on a dry run on November 18) where the car came, almost to a halt, a clear security violation. The House Select Committee on Assasinations concluded this, not some conspiracy nut.

Who could have squelched the testimony of all the doctors and medical personnel who claimed the president had been shot from the front in his neck and head, testimony contradicting the official story? Who could have prosecuted and imprisoned Abraham Bolden, the first African-American Secret Service agent personally brought on to the White House detail by JFK, who warned that he feared the president was going to be assassinated? (Douglass interviewed Bolden seven times and his evidence on the aborted plot to kill JFK in Chicago on November 2 – a story little known but extraordinary in its implications – is riveting.) The list of all the people who turned up dead, the evidence and events manipulated, the inquiry squelched, distorted, and twisted in an ex post facto cover-up – clearly point to forces within the government, not rogue actors without institutional support.

The evidence for a conspiracy organized at the deepest levels of the intelligence apparatus is overwhelming. James Douglass presents it in such depth and so logically that only one hardened to the truth would not be deeply moved and affected by his book.

He says it best: “The extent to which our national security state was systematically marshaled for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy remains incomprehensible to us. When we live in a system, we absorb and think in a system. We lack the independence needed to judge the system around us. Yet the evidence we have seen points toward our national security state, the systemic bubble in which we all live, as the source of Kennedy’s murder and immediate cover-up.”

Speaking to his friends Dave Powers and Ken O’Donnell about those who planned the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, JFK said, “They couldn’t believe that a new president like me wouldn’t panic and try to save his own face. Well, they had me figured all wrong.”

Let’s hope for another president like that, but one that meets a different end.

[1] http://consortiumnews.com/print’2009/091309a.html [This link appears to be too old to still work. Unlike the print age, the digital age loses references, another way that memory and history are stolen.]

[2] Vernon Loeb, “Soviets Knew Date of Cuba Attack,” Washington Post, April 29, 2000

[3] See James K. Galbraith, “Exit Strategy,” Boston Review, October/November 2003

Edward Curtin teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

====================

The Cosmic War, by Dr Joseph P Farrell

A review from Amazon of this extraordinary and compelling  ‘must read’ book, The Cosmic War: Interplanetary Warfare, Modern Physics, and Ancient Texts: A Study in Non-Catastrophist Interpretations of Ancient Legends, Author Dr Joseph P Farrell.

Farrell’s foray into ancient antiquity is scholarly in it’s precision and thought-provoking in its ramifications.  Oxford educated researcher Dr. Joseph P. Farrell unleashes a reverberating hypothesis regarding ancient history whose echoes will be forever heard.

Cosmic War is an extremely intriguing incursion into the possibility of a very ancient war in high antiquity. Dr. Farrell’s hypotheses of an Ancient Interplanetary War is argued in an in-depth, precise and reasonable approach. The extensive evidence Farrell collates and synthesizes will leave the reader aghast with the possibilities.

Intriguingly, many ancient cultures stated that the ‘Wars of the Gods’ were quite real. Predictably, even though there’s extensive evidence for advanced physics, advanced weapons, ancient [millions and BILLIONS of year old artifacts found by reputable sources], the establishment has painted all over ancient history with myth.

Regarding this very issue, Jim Marrs in his book Our Occulted History, sets his cross hairs on this very issue: “The term mythology stems from the Greek word mythos, simply meaning words or stories reflecting the basic values and attitudes of people. In past ages, when the vast majority of humans were illiterate, easily understood parables were used to educate people about history, science, and technology. During the Dark Ages, when most of people were taught that the Earth was flat, the word mythology was changed by the Roman Church to mean imaginative and fanciful tales veering far from truthfulness. This small change in semantics has caused untold damage in current perceptions.”

Ironically enough, there is starting to be more and more evidence of ‘myths’ now turning out to be fact. As Chris Hardy Ph.D remarks in her poignant book DNA Of The Gods: “…let’s remember that, before the discoveries of loads of ancient tablets written in the pictographic Sumerian language (Late Uruk period, fourth millennium BCE), the kingdom of Sumer was believed to be a myth. We had already discovered Akkad and deciphered Akkadian, and still archaeologists wouldn’t give credence to the numerous carved references, within historical dated records, to a line of kings whose title was “King of Sumer and Akkad”.

Or how about the “myth” of Troy: “This myth collapsed in 1865 with archeologist Frank Calvet’s discovery of the historic ruins of not only one city of Troy but nine layers of it! The city, whose siege is recounted in Homer’s Iliad, is only Troy VII, the seventh level underground, dating to the thirteenth century BCE.”

The gatekeepers, for many reasons, want to keep established history in a nice little box. Fortunately, as anyone who has extensively research these topics know, there’s more than ample evidence that shows that at minimum history isn’t what we have been told.

In any case, Cosmic War covers wide ranging but pertinent topics such as Van Flandern’s exploded planet hypothesis, an analysis of plasma in relation to weapons that employ scalar physics, petroglyphs which show plasma instability glyphs that were recorded by ancient cultures, remnants of giants in ancient history, optical phase conjugation, the story of the ‘gods’ as related through ancient texts, pulsars, generational charts of the ‘gods’, the scarring of The Valles Mariners being possibly from a weapon, Iapetus and its hexagonal craters, and a LOT more.

The ramifications of this book abound, and filter in all aspects of our lives. Dr. Farrell gives compelling reasons [coupled with countless others in his other trenchant books] as to why we need to give history, particularly ancient history, a very long and thorough look.

In its totality, this book is a veritable fountain of information that is scholarly in precision, and thought-provoking in its ramifications. This book is a must read for anyone interested in ancient history, ancient civilizations, and any of the topics there-in. There is more than enough information to make the reader curious about our past in more ways than they can really imagine.

========================

David Icke’s “Phantom Self”: A Book Review from Freedom Articles

david-ickes-phantom-self-a-book-review-from-freedom-articles

Phantom Self, the latest book of researcher David Icke, takes conspiracy research to a new depth with the idea of a primal virus that has hacked Life itself.

(Editor’s note: this book is amongst the most fascinating, timely and thought-provoking books I’ve ever read.  I strongly recommend setting aside all prejudice and past learning – what we were taught, and so believed – then reading it with an open mind. And then thinking deeply.)

Phantom Self is the latest book of famous researcher and free-thinker David Icke. Just as in his previous book The Perception Deception, David takes his research to a new level of depth with a comprehensive display of dot-connecting that will leave many in awe of his knowledge – but more importantly awaken people to the real dire straits humanity is in. Like many of his books, it ends with a positive message and the ultimate solution to all of humanity’s problems; however, most of the book is devoted to exposing the current reality of planet Earth, often in horrifying detail. This is an essential part of David’s message, for without the true knowledge of what is really going on – and the capacity to feel the horror of it – we will not muster the courage and motivation to change it. Part of the reason humanity is so stuck deep in the conspiracy is that it is engaged in massive collective denial, which it prevents it from acting decisively to quash and transform the evil (or unconsciousness as I prefer to call it). A hallmark of Phantom Self is that it takes a step further down the rabbit hole – past the reptilians and Archons – and looks at the controlling force behind them, which David says resembles some kind of computer virus that has hacked life itself.

The full review can be seen at david-ickes-phantom-self-a-book-review-from-freedom-articles

========================

1984 – Nineteen Eighty Four

George Orwell’s classic 1950 novel is very worthwhile reading (again for most people).  It is frightening to review how much of what Orwell wrote is happening today, albeit is somewhat different guise.  Recall Orwell was a member of the Fabian Society, where he learnt of their plans before resigning.  He used novels as a practical was to publicise the plans he learn about from other Fabian members.  The Amazon website – – explains much about the book, and presents several perceptive reviews – this is one of the 4,613:

George Orwell’s classic was incredibly visionary. It is hardly fathomable that this book was written in 1948. Things that we take for granted today – cameras everywhere we go, phones being tapped, bodies being scanned for weapons remotely – all of these things were described in graphic detail in Orwell’s book.
Now that we have the Internet and people spying on other people w/ webcams and people purposely setting up their own webcams to let others “anonymously” watch them, you can see how this culture can develop into the Orwellian future described in “1984.”
If you’ve heard such phrases as “Big Brother,” “Newspeak,” and “thought crime” and wondered where these phrases came from, they came from this incredible, vivid and disturbing book.
Winston Smith, the main character of the book is a vibrant, thinking man hiding within the plain mindless behavior he has to go through each day to not be considered a thought criminal. Everything is politically correct, children defy their parents (and are encouraged by the government to do so) and everyone pays constant allegiance to “Big Brother” – the government that watches everyone and knows what everyone is doing at all times – watching you shower, watching you having sex, watching you eat, watching you go to the bathroom and ultimately watching you die.
This is a must-read for everyone.

=====================

Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now

Author: Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, was raised Muslim, and spent her childhood and young adulthood in Africa and Saudi Arabia. In 1992, Hirsi Ali came to the Netherlands as a refugee. She earned her college degree in political science and worked for the Dutch Labor party. She denounced Islam after the September 11 terrorist attacks and now serves as a Dutch parliamentarian, fighting for the rights of Muslim women in Europe, the enlightenment of Islam, and security in the West.

Editor’s note: this book should be considered essential reading by anyone who has an interest in Islam as well as everyone who is or may be effected by Muslims (that means just about everyone!).  The book is very comprehensive and, unlike most other books on the subject, provides not only a wide-ranging background and analyses based on her own experience, but some thought-provoking solutions.  After scanning numerous reviews of this excellent book, the following written by ‘Helpful Advice’ on Amazon is more or less  what I would have written.

After ‘Infidel’ and ‘Nomad’ worldwide known, equally hated and adored Ayaan Hirsi Ali is back on literary (and considering the topic inevitably political) scene with her new and probably the most controversial book so far she wrote – ‘Heretic’.

A book that will certainly be subject of numerous texts, quoted or despised, she raised the question of some key Islam teachings incompatibility with the values of modern or free society for which the majority (or at least we think so maybe) people in the world stands for.

It seemed that comparing to some other major religions, Islam somehow proved immune to changes in the new world we are living, characterized by enormous speed of information exchange and the development of human rights. There were some attempts such as Arab Spring that tried to challenge traditional thinking, ingrained prejudices or facts about the Muslim world. But with the simultaneous proliferation of Islamic fundamentalism and even its acceptance in certain circles of the population in the West, according to the author it seems that it is time for some radical actions that must be implemented by the very Muslims, not someone else from outside.

So, what Ali proposes needs to happen for Muslims to defeat the extremists for good? Economic, political, judicial and military tools have already been proposed, some of them deployed, though it seems that all these will have little effect unless Islam itself is reformed.

Therefore she calls for a Muslim Reformation—a revision of Islamic teachings, alignment of modern society with traditional religion doctrine, that seems difficult, but not unfeasible due to the rejection of extremist behavior among the majority of Muslims around the world.

She reminds that such reformation has been called for since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent abolition of the caliphate, but instead of general phrases and generalized objectives she precisely pointed out five key precepts that have made Islam resistant to historical change and adaptation. And only when the harmfulness of these ideas will be recognized and as result they will be rejected, a true Muslim Reformation would be possible.

Although to comment each of them would require writing essays, I’ll just list all five of them:
• Removing of Muhammad’s semi-divine status, putting him into the history context as important figure that united the Arabs in a pre-modern time that cannot be copied in the 21st century. And consequently also recognizing the fact that Quran is the book made by human hands.
• Emphasizing that life is more important than something that comes after it will reduce the appeal of martyrdom.
• Appreciation of modern laws that need to be put in front of Shariah legislation that is violent, intolerant or anachronistic.
• The abolition of the individual’s right and so called religious police to enforce the law, something for Muslim community is unfortunately particularly known
• And most important, Islam must become a religion of peace removing the imperative to wage holy wars against infidels

Once again this author must be admitted undeniable courage to tackle the dangerous subjects in a world where because of the drawn cartoons you can easily lose a life. Her theses are clear, her objectives are fully explained, her mission to change the Islamic world from the inside continues, causing the happiness and satisfaction of all civilized Muslims worldwide.

Therefore high recommendations for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, this brave author who after fighting for the rights of women engages into even greater battle with the hope that one day we will be able to say that books like these changed the world. For the better.

===============================

The Death of Money

The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System.  8 April 2014.  By James Rickards.

James Rickards, author of the other best seller, Currency Wars, has gone even further in The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System, in telling it like it is (and will be, so prepare yourself!). Jim’s all-facts, straightforward approach is peppered with just enough analogy and anecdotal wit to make sophisticated economic/mathematical/political concepts understandable to the (educated) layperson. His clarification techniques serve the book well by making sure the content never gets watered down or condescending. For anyone interested in knowing what is going on behind the scenes, how the dollar is being systematically devalued by The Fed (and why), what a rigged sham our banking system is, and how things are likely to play out in the very near future, read The Death of Money!

American Betrayal

The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character by Diana West (May 28, 2013).  Diana West’s newest book “American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on our Nations Character” is a highly researched, blockbuster of a story taking 356 pages to tell with 29 pages of notes.  Whilst not directly about ‘management’, this book is packed with information that any successful manager should understand, in particular regarding communications (propaganda?)  and planning.  It’s the most thought-provoking, worrying, disillusioning book I’ve ever read.  I’ve attached a couple of reviews of the book from Amazon.com. American Betrayal, Diana West, May 2013. Reviews  that give you a glimpse of what it’s about.  John, of John’s Newsletter fame, noted: ‘American Betrayal explains what many already know about the creation of the soviet monster by the FDR administration, stacked with communist spies and the author of the cold war from as early as 1942.  How FDR’s lackeys could give the USSR the atomic bomb via Lend Lease is fascinating and unfortunately true.  It is clear that powerhouse though she may be, America has been ungovernable since the outset…Just too big, too complex and too full of leaks and confused ideologies.  America is now, as a reaction, on the road to becoming a police state.  Folk who have read the book  called “The Open Society and Its Enemies” by Karl Popper will understand how the USA came to this pretty pickle and the realities behind this scandalous state of affairs.  Horrific though her anecdotes are, I have seen independent corroboration elsewhere of Diana’s central themes and accept them as factual – when asserted as such.  This book is too disturbing for general consumption.’

From Third World to First

The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 by Lee Kuan Yew  (Oct 3, 2000).  Note:  although older, it is useful to read this book before the Grand Master’s Insights book, below. Some comments on the Amazon website: Lee Kwan Yew had a clear vision, set himself clear goals…. Above all, what led to his success is his execution skills…. Although Singapore is a free market economy, its philosophy concerning workers and employees are caring and genuine, unlike in the United States….His views regarding leadership and a wide range of management issues are profound….. Read this book to be inspired.

Lee Kuan Yew

The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World by Graham Allison et al., 1 Feb. 2013.  Some comments on the Amazon website: Lee excels in pithy evaluations of regional and national strengths and weaknesses. At his best, the man is a cross between Confucius and Machiavelli. (Washington Times)……..”I found myself engrossed this week by the calm, incisive wisdom of one of the few living statesmen in the world who can actually be called visionary. The wisdom is in a book, “Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States and the World,” a gathering of Mr. Lee’s interviews, speeches and writings…He is now 89, a great friend of America, and his comments on the U.S. are pertinent to many of the debates in which we’re enmeshed.” — Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal.