Are we as a society being kept from discussing the big issues?
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https://www.privateinternetaccess.c...s-the-importance-of-privacy-defense-in-depth/
[h=1]Google Chrome Listening In To Your Room Shows The Importance Of Privacy Defense In Depth[/h]
Yesterday, news broke that Google has been stealth downloading audio listeners onto every computer that runs Chrome, and transmits audio data back to Google. Effectively, this means that Google had taken itself the right to listen to every conversation in every room that runs Chrome somewhere, without any kind of consent from the people eavesdropped on. In official statements, Google shrugged off the practice with what amounts to “we can do that”.
It looked like just another bug report. "When I start Chromium, it downloads something." Followed by strange status information that notably included the lines "Microphone: Yes" and "Audio Capture Allowed: Yes".
Without consent, Google’s code had downloaded a black box of code that – according to itself – had turned on the microphone and was actively listening to your room.
A brief explanation of the Open-source / Free-software philosophy is needed here. When you’re installing a version of GNU/Linux like Debian or Ubuntu onto a fresh computer, thousands of really smart people have analyzed every line of human-readable source code before that operating system was built into computer-executable binary code, to make it common and open knowledge what the machine actually does instead of trusting corporate statements on what it’s supposed to be doing. Therefore, you don’t install black boxes onto a Debian or Ubuntu system; you use software repositories that have gone through this source-code audit-then-build process. Maintainers of operating systems like Debian and Ubuntu use many so-called “upstreams” of source code to build the final product.
Chromium, the open-source version of Google Chrome, had abused its position as trusted upstream to insert lines of source code that bypassed this audit-then-build process, and which downloaded and installed a black box of unverifiable executable code directly onto computers, essentially rendering them compromised. We don’t know and can’t know what this black box does. But we see reports that the microphone has been activated, and that Chromium considers audio capture permitted.
This was supposedly to enable the “Ok, Google” behavior – that when you say certain words, a search function is activated. Certainly a useful feature. Certainly something that enables eavesdropping of every conversation in the entire room, too.
Obviously, your own computer isn’t the one to analyze the actual search command. Google’s servers do. Which means that your computer had been stealth configured to send what was being said in your room to somebody else, to a private company in another country, without your consent or knowledge, an audio transmission triggered by… an unknown and unverifiable set of conditions.
Google had two responses to this. The first was to introduce a practically-undocumented switch to opt out of this behavior, which is not a fix: the default install will still wiretap your room without your consent, unless you opt out, and more importantly, know that you need to opt out, which is nowhere a reasonable requirement. But the second was more of an official statement following technical discussions on Hacker News and other places. That official statement amounted to three parts (paraphrased, of course):
1) Yes, we’re downloading and installing a wiretapping black-box to your computer. But we’re not actually activating it. We did take advantage of our position as trusted upstream to stealth-insert code into open-source software that installed this black box onto millions of computers, but we would never abuse the same trust in the same way to insert code that activates the eavesdropping-blackbox we already downloaded and installed onto your computer without your consent or knowledge. You can look at the code as it looks right now to see that the code doesn’t do this right now.
2) Yes, Chromium is bypassing the entire source code auditing process by downloading a pre-built black box onto people’s computers. But that’s not something we care about, really. We’re concerned with building Google Chrome, the product from Google. As part of that, we provide the source code for others to package if they like. Anybody who uses our code for their own purpose takes responsibility for it. When this happens in a Debian installation, it is not Google Chrome’s behavior, this is Debian Chromium’s behavior. It’s Debian’s responsibility entirely.
3) Yes, we deliberately hid this listening module from the users, but that’s because we consider this behavior to be part of the basic Google Chrome experience. We don’t want to show all modules that we install ourselves.
If you think this is an excusable and responsible statement, raise your hand now.
Now, it should be noted that this was Chromium, the open-source version of Chrome. If somebody downloads the Google product Google Chrome, as in the prepackaged binary, you don’t even get a theoretical choice. You’re already downloading a black box from a vendor. In Google Chrome, this is all included from the start.
This episode highlights the need for hard, not soft, switches to all devices – webcams, microphones – that can be used for surveillance. A software on/off switch for a webcam is no longer enough, a hard shield in front of the lens is required. A software on/off switch for a microphone is no longer enough, a physical switch that breaks its electrical connection is required. That’s how you defend against this in depth.
Of course, people were quick to downplay the alarm. “It only listens when you say ‘Ok, Google’.” (Ok, so how does it know to start listening just before I’m about to say ‘Ok, Google?’) “It’s no big deal.” (A company stealth installs an audio listener that listens to every room in the world it can, and transmits audio data to the mothership when it encounters an unknown, possibly individually tailored, list of keywords – and it’s no big deal!?) “You can opt out. It’s in the Terms of Service.” (No. Just no. This is not something that is the slightest amount of permissible just because it’s hidden in legalese.) “It’s opt-in. It won’t really listen unless you check that box.” (Perhaps. We don’t know, Google just downloaded a black box onto my computer. And it may not be the same black box as was downloaded onto yours. )
Early last decade, privacy activists practically yelled and screamed that the NSA’s taps of various points of the Internet and telecom networks had the technical potential for enormous abuse against privacy. Everybody else dismissed those points as basically tinfoilhattery – until the Snowden files came out, and it was revealed that precisely everybody involved had abused their technical capability for invasion of privacy as far as was possible.
Perhaps it would be wise to not repeat that exact mistake. Nobody, and I really mean nobody, is to be trusted with a technical capability to listen to every room in the world, with listening profiles customizable at the identified-individual level, on the mere basis of “trust us”.
Privacy remains your own responsibility.
[h=3]About Rick Falkvinge[/h]Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and is a political evangelist, traveling around Europe and the world to talk and write about ideas of a sensible information policy. He has a tech entrepreneur background and loves whisky. Read more of his articles on his website.
[h=1]Google Chrome Listening In To Your Room Shows The Importance Of Privacy Defense In Depth[/h]
Yesterday, news broke that Google has been stealth downloading audio listeners onto every computer that runs Chrome, and transmits audio data back to Google. Effectively, this means that Google had taken itself the right to listen to every conversation in every room that runs Chrome somewhere, without any kind of consent from the people eavesdropped on. In official statements, Google shrugged off the practice with what amounts to “we can do that”.
It looked like just another bug report. "When I start Chromium, it downloads something." Followed by strange status information that notably included the lines "Microphone: Yes" and "Audio Capture Allowed: Yes".
Without consent, Google’s code had downloaded a black box of code that – according to itself – had turned on the microphone and was actively listening to your room.
A brief explanation of the Open-source / Free-software philosophy is needed here. When you’re installing a version of GNU/Linux like Debian or Ubuntu onto a fresh computer, thousands of really smart people have analyzed every line of human-readable source code before that operating system was built into computer-executable binary code, to make it common and open knowledge what the machine actually does instead of trusting corporate statements on what it’s supposed to be doing. Therefore, you don’t install black boxes onto a Debian or Ubuntu system; you use software repositories that have gone through this source-code audit-then-build process. Maintainers of operating systems like Debian and Ubuntu use many so-called “upstreams” of source code to build the final product.
Chromium, the open-source version of Google Chrome, had abused its position as trusted upstream to insert lines of source code that bypassed this audit-then-build process, and which downloaded and installed a black box of unverifiable executable code directly onto computers, essentially rendering them compromised. We don’t know and can’t know what this black box does. But we see reports that the microphone has been activated, and that Chromium considers audio capture permitted.
This was supposedly to enable the “Ok, Google” behavior – that when you say certain words, a search function is activated. Certainly a useful feature. Certainly something that enables eavesdropping of every conversation in the entire room, too.
Obviously, your own computer isn’t the one to analyze the actual search command. Google’s servers do. Which means that your computer had been stealth configured to send what was being said in your room to somebody else, to a private company in another country, without your consent or knowledge, an audio transmission triggered by… an unknown and unverifiable set of conditions.
Google had two responses to this. The first was to introduce a practically-undocumented switch to opt out of this behavior, which is not a fix: the default install will still wiretap your room without your consent, unless you opt out, and more importantly, know that you need to opt out, which is nowhere a reasonable requirement. But the second was more of an official statement following technical discussions on Hacker News and other places. That official statement amounted to three parts (paraphrased, of course):
1) Yes, we’re downloading and installing a wiretapping black-box to your computer. But we’re not actually activating it. We did take advantage of our position as trusted upstream to stealth-insert code into open-source software that installed this black box onto millions of computers, but we would never abuse the same trust in the same way to insert code that activates the eavesdropping-blackbox we already downloaded and installed onto your computer without your consent or knowledge. You can look at the code as it looks right now to see that the code doesn’t do this right now.
2) Yes, Chromium is bypassing the entire source code auditing process by downloading a pre-built black box onto people’s computers. But that’s not something we care about, really. We’re concerned with building Google Chrome, the product from Google. As part of that, we provide the source code for others to package if they like. Anybody who uses our code for their own purpose takes responsibility for it. When this happens in a Debian installation, it is not Google Chrome’s behavior, this is Debian Chromium’s behavior. It’s Debian’s responsibility entirely.
3) Yes, we deliberately hid this listening module from the users, but that’s because we consider this behavior to be part of the basic Google Chrome experience. We don’t want to show all modules that we install ourselves.
If you think this is an excusable and responsible statement, raise your hand now.
Now, it should be noted that this was Chromium, the open-source version of Chrome. If somebody downloads the Google product Google Chrome, as in the prepackaged binary, you don’t even get a theoretical choice. You’re already downloading a black box from a vendor. In Google Chrome, this is all included from the start.
This episode highlights the need for hard, not soft, switches to all devices – webcams, microphones – that can be used for surveillance. A software on/off switch for a webcam is no longer enough, a hard shield in front of the lens is required. A software on/off switch for a microphone is no longer enough, a physical switch that breaks its electrical connection is required. That’s how you defend against this in depth.
Of course, people were quick to downplay the alarm. “It only listens when you say ‘Ok, Google’.” (Ok, so how does it know to start listening just before I’m about to say ‘Ok, Google?’) “It’s no big deal.” (A company stealth installs an audio listener that listens to every room in the world it can, and transmits audio data to the mothership when it encounters an unknown, possibly individually tailored, list of keywords – and it’s no big deal!?) “You can opt out. It’s in the Terms of Service.” (No. Just no. This is not something that is the slightest amount of permissible just because it’s hidden in legalese.) “It’s opt-in. It won’t really listen unless you check that box.” (Perhaps. We don’t know, Google just downloaded a black box onto my computer. And it may not be the same black box as was downloaded onto yours. )
Early last decade, privacy activists practically yelled and screamed that the NSA’s taps of various points of the Internet and telecom networks had the technical potential for enormous abuse against privacy. Everybody else dismissed those points as basically tinfoilhattery – until the Snowden files came out, and it was revealed that precisely everybody involved had abused their technical capability for invasion of privacy as far as was possible.
Perhaps it would be wise to not repeat that exact mistake. Nobody, and I really mean nobody, is to be trusted with a technical capability to listen to every room in the world, with listening profiles customizable at the identified-individual level, on the mere basis of “trust us”.
Privacy remains your own responsibility.
[h=3]About Rick Falkvinge[/h]Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and is a political evangelist, traveling around Europe and the world to talk and write about ideas of a sensible information policy. He has a tech entrepreneur background and loves whisky. Read more of his articles on his website.
muir
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Austerity is a giant scam. Read article by clicking on link below:
http://www.thebcgroup.co.uk/What_Exactly_is_Austerity_V1.0.pdf
http://www.thebcgroup.co.uk/What_Exactly_is_Austerity_V1.0.pdf
muir
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http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/06/18/the-devious-matrix-called-psychiatry/
[h=1]The Devious Matrix Called Psychiatry[/h]
Jon Rappoport, Guest
Waking Times The war on free consciousness
Pushing the individual into a blind alley
Pushing society into a blind alley
Concealed facts exposed
Not only Constitutional freedom and Bill-of-Rights freedom, but liberation of the power of individual thought and imagination and invention. Because those qualities are unpredictable, open-ended, and limitless. This is where long-term revolution begins.
So naturally, I’ve investigated the premier “science” that claims to have the best understanding of the mind: psychiatry.
I was neither surprised nor shocked to discover that psychiatry is a fraud, a pseudoscience.
Yet, this “science” is accorded special treatment and licensure and favored status by governments around the world. Why? Because untold numbers of patients can be diagnosed and drugged with highly toxic substances, and even held against their will in closed wards. Dissidents can be contained. Whole populations can be convinced they are either “mentally healthy” or “mentally ill,” as if those two fictional categories described some highly significant status.
But of course, this is not where we find ourselves. Psychiatrists are considered lofty authorities. They are called as expert witnesses in criminal trials. Then can, in many cases, arbitrarily force their will on patients. They are called upon by media to render their analyses. They occupy sanctified chairs at universities.
So…with that introduction, let me present information which has not been broadly communicated to the public.
The bible of the psychiatric profession, the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), published by the American Psychiatric Association, is now in its 5th edition. It lists some 300 official mental disorders by name, as well as the criteria which allow licensed psychiatrists to diagnose these disorders in patients.
And yet, in the DSM, there is not one defining laboratory test for any of those 300 disorders. No blood test, no urine test, no antibody test, no brain scan, no genetic assay.
This is supposed to be a science.
But there are no defining tests. Instead, there are groupings and clusters of behaviors, which committees of psychiatrists have decided constitute specific mental disorders.
Does this seem outrageous? Impossible? Let me prove it to you.
On April 29, 2013, at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) website, Director Thomas Insel, the highest ranking federal mental-health official in the US, published a blog commentary: “Transforming Diagnosis.” Insel wrote (4/29/2013):
Again: Not any objective laboratory measure.
That’s called a death sentence.
If anyone paid attention to it.
It’s on the order of the US Attorney General holding a press conference and admitting that every one of its criminal prosecutions, going back 70 years, was based on fraudulent cooked evidence.
If you or your child is ever in the presence of a psychiatrist who gets up on his high horse, makes a diagnosis, and tries to foist drugs on you, you might pay attention to Thomas Insel’s statement, tell the psychiatrist who Insel is, and read his statement out loud, in the sober and somber style of a mortician.
Ditto if you’re dealing with a teacher, school counselor, psychologist, or principal who thinks he knows anything at all about “mental health.”
Courtesy of Dr. Fred Baughman (ADHDfraud.net), I have two more smoking guns.
The first is a letter, dated November 10, 2008, sent from Supriya Sharma, MD, a director general of Health Canada, to a private citizen (name withheld).
Health Canada is the equivalent of the FDA in America.
Dr. Sharma is “responding on the Minister’s behalf”—the Health Minister of Canada, a post roughly comparable to the US Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Here is Dr. Sharma’s key passage:
The second smoking gun is an email sent from the FDA, dated March 12, 2009, to Dr. Baughman. It was written by Donald Dobbs, Consumer Safety Officer, Division of Drug Information, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. It refers back to Health Canada and smoking gun #1:
Psychiatrists can tap dance all they want to about “remarkable progress,” “new breakthroughs,” “the need for more research money,” “chemical imbalances,” but they’re just blowing smoke.
Perhaps psychiatry qualifies for status as a speculative hypothesis, on the level of “Jesus studied healing in Atlantis”— but in what universe does the profession deserve the unqualified backing of the federal government; the ability, under certain conditions, to have citizens placed in psych-ward lockdowns; and the indulgence of courts to hear testimony from “experts” about the mental state of defendants?
Yes, there are certainly people with severe problems. They show all sorts of signs of these problems. But the causes can stem from a variety of circumstances, and any health practitioner worthy of the name would approach each unique patient to find out what is relevant.
A deep nutritional deficit? A toxic drug or environmental chemical? Physical abuse? Extreme poverty? An ongoing threat to safety? Isolation? Confusion about the future? A disastrously poor education? Hormone imbalance? A praiseworthy refusal to accept cultural norms and the consensus of friends? Unemployment? Etc.
No need to invent 300 so-called mental disorders.
Here are two more pieces of information that attest to the unconscionable fraud that is psychiatry.
Dr. Ronald Pies, the editor-in-chief emeritus of the Psychiatric Times, laid the chemical-imbalance theory of mental disorders to rest in the July 11, 2011, issue of the Times — in Psychiatry’s New Brain-Mind and the Legend of the “Chemical Imbalance” (behind pay wall) — with this staggering admission:
The problem was, researchers had never established a normal baseline for chemical balance. So they were shooting in the dark. Worse, they were faking a theory. Pretending they knew something when they didn’t. That’s still the case.
In his 2011 piece in Psychiatric Times, Dr. Pies tries to cover his colleagues in the psychiatric profession with this fatuous remark:
And second, if all well-trained psychiatrists have known, all along, that the chemical-imbalance theory is a fraud…
…then why on earth have they been prescribing tons of drugs to their patients…
…since those drugs are developed on the false premise that they correct an imbalance?
Here’s another nail in the coffin: It’s a statement made by a prominent expert on an episode of PBS’ Frontline series. The episode was: “Does ADHD Exist?”
Science, as opposed to a preferred special interest, demands confirmation of its assertions. That means physical tests. Definitive tests. You claim a disorder exists in the brain, you present a physical test that confirms it.
Again, you can search the entire DSM, the bible of psychiatry, and try to find one such defining test for a diagnosis of any of the 300 so-called mental disorders, including the old standby, schizophrenia, and you’ll go begging. You’ll come up empty.
Think of the range and influence and power of psychiatry. Think about its partnership with central governments and pharmaceutical companies. Think about its ability to pronounce people insane or mentally ill, and what it can then coercively visit on such persons.
Think about all the politicians and pundits who blithely refer society’s problems to the “need for more psychiatric treatment” and “earlier intervention” (with toxic drugs).
You’re interested in staged events? The entire profession of psychiatry, from top to bottom, is a staged event.
It claims that millions and millions of people, including very young children, are suffering from disorders that have never been proven to exist.
As disturbing as this fact may be to some people, there it is.
Of course, many will respond with disbelief. “A total fraud? That couldn’t be because there are professionals who know science and they say…”
I don’t care what they say. I don’t care what the consensus is. You want to play the game called science? You play by the rules of the scientific method. Otherwise, get out and play another game. Read tea leaves in restaurants. Buy a Ouija board. Interpret the wrinkles on an elephant.
Or just admit you’re doing preliminary research and haven’t found your way.
But don’t push people around with the claim that you’re engaged in science.
Here is a mind-boggling twist. One of the great psychiatric leaders, who has been out in front inventing mental disorders, went public. He blew the whistle on himself and his colleagues.
His name is Dr. Allen Frances, and he made VERY interesting statements to Gary Greenberg, author of a Wired article: “Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness,” (Dec.27, 2010).
Major media never picked up on it in any serious way. It never became a scandal. It managed to fly below the radar.
Dr. Allen Frances is the man who, in 1994, headed up the project to write the then-latest edition of the psychiatric bible, the DSM-IV.
In an April 19, 1994, New York Times piece, “Scientist At Work,” Daniel Goleman called Frances “Perhaps the most powerful psychiatrist in America at the moment…”
Well, sure. If you’re sculpting the entire canon of diagnosable mental disorders for your colleagues, for insurers, for the government, for pharma (who will sell the drugs matched up to the 297 DSM-IV diagnoses), you’re right up there in the pantheon.
Long after the DSM-IV had been put into print, Dr. Frances talked to Wired’s Greenberg and said the following:
That’s on the order of the designer of the Hindenburg, looking at the burned rubble on the ground, remarking, “Well, I knew there would be a problem.”
After a suitable pause, Dr. Frances remarked to Greenberg, “These concepts [of distinct mental disorders] are virtually impossible to define precisely with bright lines at the borders.”
Obliquely, Frances might have been referring to the fact that his baby, the DSM-IV, had rearranged earlier definitions of ADHD and Bipolar to permit many more diagnoses, leading to a vast acceleration of drug-dosing with highly powerful and toxic compounds.
Finally, at the end of the Wired interview, Frances went off on a quite intriguing foray, advocating what amounts to a mass-population placebo effect which would justify the existence of the entire psychiatric profession.
Yes, a name, but also, with that name come the drugs.
For example:
Adverse effects of Valproate (given for a Bipolar diagnosis) include:
In 1986, The International Journal of the Addictions published a most important literature review by Richard Scarnati. It was called “An Outline of Hazardous Side Effects of Ritalin (Methylphenidate)” [v.21(7), pp. 837-841].
Scarnati listed a large number of adverse effects of Ritalin and cited published journal articles which reported each of these symptoms.
For every one of the following (selected and quoted verbatim) Ritalin effects, there is at least one confirming source in the medical literature:
This psychiatric drug plague is accelerating across the land. See the website SSRI Stories for accounts of people committing suicide and homicide while on (or dangerously withdrawing from) drugs like Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil.
And Dr. Frances is somehow let off the hook. He’s admitted in print that the whole basis of his profession is throwing darts at labels on a wall, and implies the “effort” is rather heroic—when, in fact, the effort leads to more and more poisonous drugs being dispensed to adults and children, to say nothing of the effect of being diagnosed with “a mental disorder.” I’m not talking about “the mental-disease stigma,” the removal of which is one of Hillary Clinton’s missions in life. No, I’m talking about MOVING A HUMAN INTO THE SYSTEM, the medical apparatus, where the essence of the game is trapping that person to harvest his money, his time, his energy, and of course his health—as one new diagnosis follows on another, and one new toxic treatment after another is undertaken, from cradle to grave. The result is a severely debilitated human being (if he survives), whose major claim to fame is his list of diseases and disorders, which he learns to wear like badges of honor.
Thank you, Dr. Frances.
Psychiatry. Not a science.
It pretends to be.
By any definition, that makes it a hoax.
Imagine this: “Mrs. Jones, your son has a heart-valve problem. How do I know? A few colleagues and I looked at his eyebrows, got together over drinks, and decided we should wheel him into surgery right away. Diagnostic tests? Why no. We don’t test. We chew the fat. We concur. We collude.”
In the arena of “mental health,” that’s the method of psychiatry.
If you feel confident that new frontier research will lead to a better system, look up some of the brain-projects DARPA, the technology arm of the Pentagon, is forwarding.
Here is one: sdtimes, February 17, 2015, “DARPA’s Brain interface…”:
From there, researchers will surely try to accomplish the same feat with memories.
These scientists are working for the Pentagon. What could you possibly worry about?
Instead of utilizing the enormous amount of coercive programming outlined in Orwell’s 1984, an alteration closer to the source (the brain) is performed.
Now you see it, now you don’t.
Under this program, what faculty would be dumped at the side of the road, like some useless appendage that might, at one time, have been considered useful?
Imagination.
What need for it now, when programmers can change, at will, within the visual cortex, what people see?
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)
[h=6]About the Author[/h] The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon Rappoport was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29[SUP]th[/SUP] District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.
[h=1]The Devious Matrix Called Psychiatry[/h]
Jon Rappoport, Guest
Waking Times The war on free consciousness
Pushing the individual into a blind alley
Pushing society into a blind alley
Concealed facts exposed
“Psychiatry does more than define mental disorders. It purports to describe actual states of mind, and it coalesces and freezes those descriptions in such a way that people believe these states of mind exist. They don’t. They’re fictions. Fantasies. This is an enormous landscape of consciousness-programming. It’s actually reduction. Like many systems before it, psychiatry tries to reduce the possibilities of wide-ranging free consciousness. Throughout history, people have always been afraid of mind freedom. ‘What will people with free minds do?’ ‘What will society become if people’s minds are free?’ I can tell you: society would change radically, right down to its foundations.”
(The Underground, Jon Rappoport)
Over the past 30 years, my work has always returned to freedom of the individual.(The Underground, Jon Rappoport)
Not only Constitutional freedom and Bill-of-Rights freedom, but liberation of the power of individual thought and imagination and invention. Because those qualities are unpredictable, open-ended, and limitless. This is where long-term revolution begins.
So naturally, I’ve investigated the premier “science” that claims to have the best understanding of the mind: psychiatry.
I was neither surprised nor shocked to discover that psychiatry is a fraud, a pseudoscience.
Yet, this “science” is accorded special treatment and licensure and favored status by governments around the world. Why? Because untold numbers of patients can be diagnosed and drugged with highly toxic substances, and even held against their will in closed wards. Dissidents can be contained. Whole populations can be convinced they are either “mentally healthy” or “mentally ill,” as if those two fictional categories described some highly significant status.
If psychiatry were merely recognized as an experimental hypothesis, and so-called professionals diagnosed one another and applied labels to one another and drugged one another, in order to assess the outcome, as any scientist would, before subjecting the public to his idiosyncratic notions…well, fine. I could understand that.But of course, this is not where we find ourselves. Psychiatrists are considered lofty authorities. They are called as expert witnesses in criminal trials. Then can, in many cases, arbitrarily force their will on patients. They are called upon by media to render their analyses. They occupy sanctified chairs at universities.
So…with that introduction, let me present information which has not been broadly communicated to the public.
The bible of the psychiatric profession, the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), published by the American Psychiatric Association, is now in its 5th edition. It lists some 300 official mental disorders by name, as well as the criteria which allow licensed psychiatrists to diagnose these disorders in patients.
And yet, in the DSM, there is not one defining laboratory test for any of those 300 disorders. No blood test, no urine test, no antibody test, no brain scan, no genetic assay.
This is supposed to be a science.
But there are no defining tests. Instead, there are groupings and clusters of behaviors, which committees of psychiatrists have decided constitute specific mental disorders.
Does this seem outrageous? Impossible? Let me prove it to you.
On April 29, 2013, at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) website, Director Thomas Insel, the highest ranking federal mental-health official in the US, published a blog commentary: “Transforming Diagnosis.” Insel wrote (4/29/2013):
“In a few weeks, the American Psychiatric Association will release its new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)…
“The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been ‘reliability’ – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure.”
Not any objective laboratory measure.“The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been ‘reliability’ – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure.”
Again: Not any objective laboratory measure.
That’s called a death sentence.
If anyone paid attention to it.
It’s on the order of the US Attorney General holding a press conference and admitting that every one of its criminal prosecutions, going back 70 years, was based on fraudulent cooked evidence.
If you or your child is ever in the presence of a psychiatrist who gets up on his high horse, makes a diagnosis, and tries to foist drugs on you, you might pay attention to Thomas Insel’s statement, tell the psychiatrist who Insel is, and read his statement out loud, in the sober and somber style of a mortician.
Ditto if you’re dealing with a teacher, school counselor, psychologist, or principal who thinks he knows anything at all about “mental health.”
Courtesy of Dr. Fred Baughman (ADHDfraud.net), I have two more smoking guns.
The first is a letter, dated November 10, 2008, sent from Supriya Sharma, MD, a director general of Health Canada, to a private citizen (name withheld).
Health Canada is the equivalent of the FDA in America.
Dr. Sharma is “responding on the Minister’s behalf”—the Health Minister of Canada, a post roughly comparable to the US Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Here is Dr. Sharma’s key passage:
“For mental/psychiatric disorders in general, including depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and ADHD, there are no confirmatory gross, microscopic or chemical abnormalities that have been validated for objective physical diagnosis.”
Dr. Sharma is readily admitting that the diagnosis of mental disorders has no basis in actual science.
The second smoking gun is an email sent from the FDA, dated March 12, 2009, to Dr. Baughman. It was written by Donald Dobbs, Consumer Safety Officer, Division of Drug Information, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. It refers back to Health Canada and smoking gun #1:
“I consulted with the FDA new drug review division responsible for approving psychiatric drug products and they concurred with the response you [Dr. Baughman] enclosed from Health Canada.
“Psychiatric disorders (as Health Canada refers) are diagnosed based on a patient’s presentation of symptoms that the larger psychiatric community has come to accept as real and responsive to treatment.”
Could there be a better description of unscientific consensus?“Psychiatric disorders (as Health Canada refers) are diagnosed based on a patient’s presentation of symptoms that the larger psychiatric community has come to accept as real and responsive to treatment.”
Psychiatrists can tap dance all they want to about “remarkable progress,” “new breakthroughs,” “the need for more research money,” “chemical imbalances,” but they’re just blowing smoke.
Perhaps psychiatry qualifies for status as a speculative hypothesis, on the level of “Jesus studied healing in Atlantis”— but in what universe does the profession deserve the unqualified backing of the federal government; the ability, under certain conditions, to have citizens placed in psych-ward lockdowns; and the indulgence of courts to hear testimony from “experts” about the mental state of defendants?
Yes, there are certainly people with severe problems. They show all sorts of signs of these problems. But the causes can stem from a variety of circumstances, and any health practitioner worthy of the name would approach each unique patient to find out what is relevant.
A deep nutritional deficit? A toxic drug or environmental chemical? Physical abuse? Extreme poverty? An ongoing threat to safety? Isolation? Confusion about the future? A disastrously poor education? Hormone imbalance? A praiseworthy refusal to accept cultural norms and the consensus of friends? Unemployment? Etc.
No need to invent 300 so-called mental disorders.
Here are two more pieces of information that attest to the unconscionable fraud that is psychiatry.
Dr. Ronald Pies, the editor-in-chief emeritus of the Psychiatric Times, laid the chemical-imbalance theory of mental disorders to rest in the July 11, 2011, issue of the Times — in Psychiatry’s New Brain-Mind and the Legend of the “Chemical Imbalance” (behind pay wall) — with this staggering admission:
“In truth, the ‘chemical imbalance’ notion was always a kind of urban legend — never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists.”
For decades, the whole basis of psychiatric drug research, drug prescription, and drug sales has been: “we’re correcting a chemical imbalance in the brain.”
The problem was, researchers had never established a normal baseline for chemical balance. So they were shooting in the dark. Worse, they were faking a theory. Pretending they knew something when they didn’t. That’s still the case.
In his 2011 piece in Psychiatric Times, Dr. Pies tries to cover his colleagues in the psychiatric profession with this fatuous remark:
“In the past 30 years, I don’t believe I have ever heard a knowledgeable, well-trained psychiatrist make such a preposterous claim [about chemical imbalance in the brain], except perhaps to mock it…the ‘chemical imbalance’ image has been vigorously promoted by some pharmaceutical companies, often to the detriment of our patients’ understanding.”
Absurd. First of all, many psychiatrists have explained and do explain to their patients that the drugs are there to correct a chemical imbalance.
And second, if all well-trained psychiatrists have known, all along, that the chemical-imbalance theory is a fraud…
…then why on earth have they been prescribing tons of drugs to their patients…
…since those drugs are developed on the false premise that they correct an imbalance?
Here’s another nail in the coffin: It’s a statement made by a prominent expert on an episode of PBS’ Frontline series. The episode was: “Does ADHD Exist?”
PBS Frontline Interviewer: Skeptics say that there’s no biological marker—that it [ADHD] is the one condition out there where there is no blood test, and that no one knows what causes it.
Barkley: (Dr. Russell Barkley, professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center): That’s tremendously naïve, and it shows a great deal of illiteracy about science and about the mental health professions. A disorder doesn’t have to have a blood test to be valid. If that were the case, all mental disorders would be invalid…There is no lab test for any mental disorder right now in our science. That doesn’t make them invalid.
Rarely will you hear a scientist make as bold and definitive a statement against his own interests as that one. And Barkley was so egregiously ignorant about what science is that he spoke with blithe confidence.Barkley: (Dr. Russell Barkley, professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center): That’s tremendously naïve, and it shows a great deal of illiteracy about science and about the mental health professions. A disorder doesn’t have to have a blood test to be valid. If that were the case, all mental disorders would be invalid…There is no lab test for any mental disorder right now in our science. That doesn’t make them invalid.
Science, as opposed to a preferred special interest, demands confirmation of its assertions. That means physical tests. Definitive tests. You claim a disorder exists in the brain, you present a physical test that confirms it.
Again, you can search the entire DSM, the bible of psychiatry, and try to find one such defining test for a diagnosis of any of the 300 so-called mental disorders, including the old standby, schizophrenia, and you’ll go begging. You’ll come up empty.
Think of the range and influence and power of psychiatry. Think about its partnership with central governments and pharmaceutical companies. Think about its ability to pronounce people insane or mentally ill, and what it can then coercively visit on such persons.
Think about all the politicians and pundits who blithely refer society’s problems to the “need for more psychiatric treatment” and “earlier intervention” (with toxic drugs).
You’re interested in staged events? The entire profession of psychiatry, from top to bottom, is a staged event.
It claims that millions and millions of people, including very young children, are suffering from disorders that have never been proven to exist.
As disturbing as this fact may be to some people, there it is.
Of course, many will respond with disbelief. “A total fraud? That couldn’t be because there are professionals who know science and they say…”
I don’t care what they say. I don’t care what the consensus is. You want to play the game called science? You play by the rules of the scientific method. Otherwise, get out and play another game. Read tea leaves in restaurants. Buy a Ouija board. Interpret the wrinkles on an elephant.
Or just admit you’re doing preliminary research and haven’t found your way.
But don’t push people around with the claim that you’re engaged in science.
Here is a mind-boggling twist. One of the great psychiatric leaders, who has been out in front inventing mental disorders, went public. He blew the whistle on himself and his colleagues.
His name is Dr. Allen Frances, and he made VERY interesting statements to Gary Greenberg, author of a Wired article: “Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness,” (Dec.27, 2010).
Major media never picked up on it in any serious way. It never became a scandal. It managed to fly below the radar.
Dr. Allen Frances is the man who, in 1994, headed up the project to write the then-latest edition of the psychiatric bible, the DSM-IV.
In an April 19, 1994, New York Times piece, “Scientist At Work,” Daniel Goleman called Frances “Perhaps the most powerful psychiatrist in America at the moment…”
Well, sure. If you’re sculpting the entire canon of diagnosable mental disorders for your colleagues, for insurers, for the government, for pharma (who will sell the drugs matched up to the 297 DSM-IV diagnoses), you’re right up there in the pantheon.
Long after the DSM-IV had been put into print, Dr. Frances talked to Wired’s Greenberg and said the following:
“There is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit. I mean, you just can’t define it.”
BANG.
That’s on the order of the designer of the Hindenburg, looking at the burned rubble on the ground, remarking, “Well, I knew there would be a problem.”
After a suitable pause, Dr. Frances remarked to Greenberg, “These concepts [of distinct mental disorders] are virtually impossible to define precisely with bright lines at the borders.”
Obliquely, Frances might have been referring to the fact that his baby, the DSM-IV, had rearranged earlier definitions of ADHD and Bipolar to permit many more diagnoses, leading to a vast acceleration of drug-dosing with highly powerful and toxic compounds.
Finally, at the end of the Wired interview, Frances went off on a quite intriguing foray, advocating what amounts to a mass-population placebo effect which would justify the existence of the entire psychiatric profession.
“Diagnosis [as spelled out in the DSM-IV] is part of the magic…you know those medieval maps? In the places where they didn’t know what was going on, they wrote ‘Dragons live here’…we have a dragon’s world here. But you wouldn’t want to be without the map.”
Translation: People need to hope for the healing of their troubles; so even if we psychiatrists are shooting blanks and pretending to know one kind of mental disorder from another, even if we’re inventing these mental-disorder definitions based on no biological or chemical diagnostic tests—since the tests don’t exist and we’re just juggling lists of behaviors—we’re still doing a good thing, because people will then believe there is hope for them; they’ll believe it because we place a name on their problems…
Yes, a name, but also, with that name come the drugs.
For example:
Adverse effects of Valproate (given for a Bipolar diagnosis) include:
- acute, life-threatening, and even fatal liver toxicity;
- life-threatening inflammation of the pancreas;
- brain damage.
- intercranial pressure leading to blindness;
- peripheral circulatory collapse;
- stupor and coma.
- serious impairment of cognitive function;
- fainting;
- restless muscles in neck or face, tremors (may be indicative of motor brain damage).
In 1986, The International Journal of the Addictions published a most important literature review by Richard Scarnati. It was called “An Outline of Hazardous Side Effects of Ritalin (Methylphenidate)” [v.21(7), pp. 837-841].
Scarnati listed a large number of adverse effects of Ritalin and cited published journal articles which reported each of these symptoms.
For every one of the following (selected and quoted verbatim) Ritalin effects, there is at least one confirming source in the medical literature:
- Paranoid delusions
- Paranoid psychosis
- Hypomanic and manic symptoms, amphetamine-like psychosis
- Activation of psychotic symptoms
- Toxic psychosis
- Visual hallucinations
- Auditory hallucinations
- Can surpass LSD in producing bizarre experiences
- Effects pathological thought processes
- Extreme withdrawal
- Terrified affect
- Started screaming
- Aggressiveness
- Insomnia
- Since Ritalin is considered an amphetamine-type drug, expect amphetamine-like effects
- Psychic dependence
- High-abuse potential DEA Schedule II Drug
- Decreased REM sleep
- When used with antidepressants one may see dangerous reactions including hypertension, seizures and hypothermia
- Convulsions
- Brain damage may be seen with amphetamine abuse.
This psychiatric drug plague is accelerating across the land. See the website SSRI Stories for accounts of people committing suicide and homicide while on (or dangerously withdrawing from) drugs like Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil.
And Dr. Frances is somehow let off the hook. He’s admitted in print that the whole basis of his profession is throwing darts at labels on a wall, and implies the “effort” is rather heroic—when, in fact, the effort leads to more and more poisonous drugs being dispensed to adults and children, to say nothing of the effect of being diagnosed with “a mental disorder.” I’m not talking about “the mental-disease stigma,” the removal of which is one of Hillary Clinton’s missions in life. No, I’m talking about MOVING A HUMAN INTO THE SYSTEM, the medical apparatus, where the essence of the game is trapping that person to harvest his money, his time, his energy, and of course his health—as one new diagnosis follows on another, and one new toxic treatment after another is undertaken, from cradle to grave. The result is a severely debilitated human being (if he survives), whose major claim to fame is his list of diseases and disorders, which he learns to wear like badges of honor.
Thank you, Dr. Frances.
Psychiatry. Not a science.
It pretends to be.
By any definition, that makes it a hoax.
Imagine this: “Mrs. Jones, your son has a heart-valve problem. How do I know? A few colleagues and I looked at his eyebrows, got together over drinks, and decided we should wheel him into surgery right away. Diagnostic tests? Why no. We don’t test. We chew the fat. We concur. We collude.”
In the arena of “mental health,” that’s the method of psychiatry.
If you feel confident that new frontier research will lead to a better system, look up some of the brain-projects DARPA, the technology arm of the Pentagon, is forwarding.
Here is one: sdtimes, February 17, 2015, “DARPA’s Brain interface…”:
“The U.S. Defense Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced it is developing a brain interface to inject images directly into the human visual cortex via a ‘cortical modem’ chip implanted in the brain.
“…DARPA Biological Technologies chief Phillip Alvelda, the project’s lead scientist, explained that the implant is the size of two stacked nickels. The direct neural interface would eliminate the need for augmented or virtual reality glasses or headsets. The technology is in early development, currently with the ‘visual fidelity of something like an early LED digital clock,’ according to Alvelda.”
“…DARPA Biological Technologies chief Phillip Alvelda, the project’s lead scientist, explained that the implant is the size of two stacked nickels. The direct neural interface would eliminate the need for augmented or virtual reality glasses or headsets. The technology is in early development, currently with the ‘visual fidelity of something like an early LED digital clock,’ according to Alvelda.”
In other words, this research is aimed at altering human perception in real time. You are looking at X in the physical world, but you’re seeing Y. And the programmers decide what Y will be.From there, researchers will surely try to accomplish the same feat with memories.
These scientists are working for the Pentagon. What could you possibly worry about?
Instead of utilizing the enormous amount of coercive programming outlined in Orwell’s 1984, an alteration closer to the source (the brain) is performed.
Now you see it, now you don’t.
Under this program, what faculty would be dumped at the side of the road, like some useless appendage that might, at one time, have been considered useful?
Imagination.
What need for it now, when programmers can change, at will, within the visual cortex, what people see?
“Yes, at one time we had psychiatry, which, to be frank, was an absurd cartoon of a science. But we did manage to codify it and license it under the aegis of government, which was the real accomplishment. It gave us considerable control over the population. Then we took a natural next step. We applied far more precision to the study of the brain, and we moved that research from civilian government agencies into the military, where it truly belongs. Programming the brain in great detail is too important to be left in the hands of people who retain some shred of conscience…”
Forewarned is forearmed.
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)
[h=6]About the Author[/h] The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon Rappoport was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29[SUP]th[/SUP] District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.
muir
Banned
- MBTI
- INFJ
http://www.globalresearch.ca/nanopa...l-brains-via-magnetic-field-new-study/5456936
[h=2]Nanoparticles Enable Remote Control Brains Via Magnetic Field: New Study[/h] By Nicholas West
Global Research, June 19, 2015
Activist Post 18 June 2015
A couple of years ago, a story emerged about scientists working on “Smart Dust” - nanoparticles that could be employed as sensor networks for a range of security and environmental applications. This was followed by the more literal version of Smart Dust, which was designed to open pathways to establish a human brain-computer interface.
The brain system was labeled “Neural Dust” and was intended to “monitor the brain from the inside.” Inventors speculated that a network of nanoparticles injected into the brain could measure electrical activity in neurons, then use ultrasound to form a two-way transfer of data. This theoretically would lead to the reading, generation, or alteration of information – i.e., mind control. Most disturbingly, at the time, is that their theories had entered the testing phase and showed some success, albeit on a beetle.
New research released by Florida International University indicates that this area of testing has now advanced to mice. Their conclusions and statements about what they have found and where they believe all of this is headed is even less comforting than previous discoveries.
I have posted the full FIU press release below, with emphasis and my comments added. Naturally, their press release highlights only the potential benefits of this technology. One can’t outright deny those possibilities, but we also must put it into perspective knowing what we do about DARPA’s mission to apply this militarily. For key background into that research please read “7 Future Methods of Mind Control” and the explosive details that came to Activist Post from an Arizona State University whistleblower about what led him to reveal his intense concerns, “Secret DARPA Mind Control Project Revealed: Leaked Document.”
Perhaps most telling, though, is that once again the ethical framework is completely missing. With all of the ways that we have seen humans abuse one another to achieve dominance and control, are we still willing to let these experiments continue without question? Once we reach the nanoscale with full wireless integration, do we really expect that “opting out” will be a future possibility?
Nicholas West writes for Activist Post and TechSwarm.
[h=2]Nanoparticles Enable Remote Control Brains Via Magnetic Field: New Study[/h] By Nicholas West
Global Research, June 19, 2015
Activist Post 18 June 2015
A couple of years ago, a story emerged about scientists working on “Smart Dust” - nanoparticles that could be employed as sensor networks for a range of security and environmental applications. This was followed by the more literal version of Smart Dust, which was designed to open pathways to establish a human brain-computer interface.
The brain system was labeled “Neural Dust” and was intended to “monitor the brain from the inside.” Inventors speculated that a network of nanoparticles injected into the brain could measure electrical activity in neurons, then use ultrasound to form a two-way transfer of data. This theoretically would lead to the reading, generation, or alteration of information – i.e., mind control. Most disturbingly, at the time, is that their theories had entered the testing phase and showed some success, albeit on a beetle.
New research released by Florida International University indicates that this area of testing has now advanced to mice. Their conclusions and statements about what they have found and where they believe all of this is headed is even less comforting than previous discoveries.
I have posted the full FIU press release below, with emphasis and my comments added. Naturally, their press release highlights only the potential benefits of this technology. One can’t outright deny those possibilities, but we also must put it into perspective knowing what we do about DARPA’s mission to apply this militarily. For key background into that research please read “7 Future Methods of Mind Control” and the explosive details that came to Activist Post from an Arizona State University whistleblower about what led him to reveal his intense concerns, “Secret DARPA Mind Control Project Revealed: Leaked Document.”
Press release
A Florida International University professor and his team this month published news of a scientific breakthrough that could lead to the noninvasive treatment of Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Researchers remotely manipulated the electric waves that naturally exist in the brains of mice, a feat that has far-reaching implications for medicine.
The journal Nanomedicine is featuring the paper by Sakhrat Khizroev, a professor with dual appointments in the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and the College of Engineering & Computing.
Using a previously reported FIU-patented technology, researchers began by intravenously administering magneto-electric nanoparticles, or MENs, in mice. With a magnet placed over the head (also read about the “God Helmet” - N.W.) of each subject animal, the particles were pulled through the blood-brain barrier, where they “coupled” the externally created magnetic field with the brain’s intrinsic electric field. This enabled researchers to wirelessly connect their computers and electronics to neurons deep within the brain.
The researchers then sent signals via computer to the MENs, which responded by modulating (or changing from low to high and back again) the frequency of the brain’s naturally occurring electric waves. The resulting pulses created “deep-brain stimulation” that has implications for treating Parkinson’s and other disorders. It stands in contrast to the existing method of deep-brain stimulation, which involves invasive surgery to implant an electrode in the brain and a battery-operated medical device elsewhere in the body.
Worth noting, while the modulation was taking place, researchers had a view of the electrical activity within the brain. This feedback was sent from the MENs to a computer, allowing the researchers to confirm what was taking place.
In a nod to the increasingly personalized nature of medicine, Khizroev believes that MENs could one day be programmed to accomplish any number of medically related procedures to treat various disorders, among them Alzheimer’s and autism. When properly targeted, the particles could, for example, be used to repair cells or destroy plaques. Khizroev also believes that MENs could potentially remain in place within the brain for extended periods to release drugs on a set schedule.
“This study is a critical stepping stone to opening a pathway to understanding the brain and treating many neurodenerative disorders,” Khizroev says. “With this connection, we could see and repair, when necessary, all the electric circuitry deep in the brain.”
*** End of press release
The remote analysis and manipulation of the human brain clearly opens the door for remote mind control, as one man’s treatment of a legitimate disorder becomes another’s tool for simply changing perception. And even if it doesn’t reach that level, this technology also seems to be a boon for Big Pharma as they work in tandem with the medical establishment to ensure that everyone has some sort of disorder in need of revision. For a full explanation on that topic, Jon Rappoport’s article “Obamacare: watch out, here comes ‘predictive modeling’” is a must-read. Also see transhumanist and a Director of Engineering at Google, Ray Kurzweil’s hope for Human Body 2.0 with roving nanobots to repair us from the inside out.A Florida International University professor and his team this month published news of a scientific breakthrough that could lead to the noninvasive treatment of Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Researchers remotely manipulated the electric waves that naturally exist in the brains of mice, a feat that has far-reaching implications for medicine.
The journal Nanomedicine is featuring the paper by Sakhrat Khizroev, a professor with dual appointments in the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and the College of Engineering & Computing.
Using a previously reported FIU-patented technology, researchers began by intravenously administering magneto-electric nanoparticles, or MENs, in mice. With a magnet placed over the head (also read about the “God Helmet” - N.W.) of each subject animal, the particles were pulled through the blood-brain barrier, where they “coupled” the externally created magnetic field with the brain’s intrinsic electric field. This enabled researchers to wirelessly connect their computers and electronics to neurons deep within the brain.
The researchers then sent signals via computer to the MENs, which responded by modulating (or changing from low to high and back again) the frequency of the brain’s naturally occurring electric waves. The resulting pulses created “deep-brain stimulation” that has implications for treating Parkinson’s and other disorders. It stands in contrast to the existing method of deep-brain stimulation, which involves invasive surgery to implant an electrode in the brain and a battery-operated medical device elsewhere in the body.
Worth noting, while the modulation was taking place, researchers had a view of the electrical activity within the brain. This feedback was sent from the MENs to a computer, allowing the researchers to confirm what was taking place.
In a nod to the increasingly personalized nature of medicine, Khizroev believes that MENs could one day be programmed to accomplish any number of medically related procedures to treat various disorders, among them Alzheimer’s and autism. When properly targeted, the particles could, for example, be used to repair cells or destroy plaques. Khizroev also believes that MENs could potentially remain in place within the brain for extended periods to release drugs on a set schedule.
“This study is a critical stepping stone to opening a pathway to understanding the brain and treating many neurodenerative disorders,” Khizroev says. “With this connection, we could see and repair, when necessary, all the electric circuitry deep in the brain.”
*** End of press release
Perhaps most telling, though, is that once again the ethical framework is completely missing. With all of the ways that we have seen humans abuse one another to achieve dominance and control, are we still willing to let these experiments continue without question? Once we reach the nanoscale with full wireless integration, do we really expect that “opting out” will be a future possibility?
Nicholas West writes for Activist Post and TechSwarm.
In the hands of somebody highly empathetic and skilled, it could be an incredible tool. Then again, People may find themselves detached from the direct results of their actions even more easily, just trying to use the technology in a benign manner. I think that the inclination of the psychiatric industry would be to force many people into things "for their own good". They would be creating zombies; people could ask themselves, "how would this make me feel if I didn't actually need it"? They could be used to violate people's wills in terrible ways.
Eventually, maybe with their use, people will come to realize that we are all robots, and the natural implication would be to find the best software for society to run in general, such that there wouldn't be a need to worry so much about things like gun control. Everybody has a reason for doing everything; the goal ought to be a world where people don't feel compelled to use extremes. The environment we, altogether, collectively provide for each other determines how we act. Building the framework for everyone to live happy lives would be an enormous step to Heaven on Earth. Inherent in that is the centrality of compassion. There are people who already know about the operation of such technology.
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muir
Banned
- MBTI
- INFJ
Yeah....you're right and compassion comes from the heart so the process you're talking about is one where humanity gets back in touch with its heart
These days emotions seem to be demonised and anything out of a stepford wives plastic, faked, stuck-on smile is categorised as some 'disorder' or another
This makes people feel like if they cannot provide said plastic smile around the clock on demand that something must be wrong with them so they go to the doctor for a synthetic drug, emotional labotomy!
we are emotional beings....we're supposed to laugh when we're happy, cry when we're sad and orgasm when we're aroused
All these emotions are our birthright as human beings...grief is my birthright, sadness is my birthright, happiness and joy too are my birthright as is anger and remorse
I make no apologies for feeling them all and letting them all flow through me
People need to dare to feel more
The concern with the smart nanotech dust is that nanotech can access the brain through aerosols that contact the skin. This means they could be sprayed from planes in 'chemtrails'
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muir
Banned
- MBTI
- INFJ
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...-world-health-organisation-says-10338363.html
[h=1]One of world's most used weedkillers 'possibly' causes cancer, World Health Organisation says[/h]
[h=3]The agency classified 2,4-D as 'possibly carcinogenic' just months after finding another popular herbicide 'probably' caused cancer
[/h]
Lizzie Dearden
Tuesday 23 June 2015
One of the most widely used weedkillers in the world has been classed as “possibly carcinogenic” after more than 70 years on the market.
Researchers at the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) cancer division found that the results of scientific studies into 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, known as 2,4-D, were too mixed to be conclusive.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classed it as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”, which is a step below the category of “probably” causing cancer.
The herbicide has been widely used to protect agricultural crops, forestry, grass and bodies of water from weeds and invasive plant since it went on the market in the 1940s.
Greenpeace is among the groups to demonstrate for tighter restrictions on herbicides
Dow AgroSciences, which uses 2,4-D as a component in its Enlist Duo product, claims there are more than 1,500 products that have it as an active ingredient.
It claimed the IARC's classification was flawed and was “inconsistent with government findings in nearly 100 countries” that have affirmed the safety of 2,4-D when used as labelled.
John Cuffe, from Dow AgroSciences’ regulatory division, claimed no other herbicide had been “more thoroughly studied” and listed research in the US, Canada and Europe that had recently found 2,4-D does not increase the risk of cancer.
[h=5]Read more: Roundup weedkiller ingredient 'probably carcinogenic'
Roundup weedkiller banned from French garden centres
Colombia to stop spraying glyphosate weedkiller on its cocaine[/h]A review by the European Food Safety Authority earlier this year found that 2,4-D, as currently manufactured, was “unlikely” to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans.
The IARC said it decided on the “possibly carcinogenic” classification because there was “inadequate evidence in humans and limited evidence in experimental animals” of ties between 2,4-D and cancer.
It said that epidemiological studies provided “strong evidence that 2,4-D induces oxidative stress ... and moderate evidence that 2,4-D causes immunosuppression.”
In March the World Health Organisation also said the active ingredient in Roundup is 'probably carcinogenic to humans'
Dana Loomis, a deputy section head for IARC, said the most important studies reviewed showed mixed results, and a “sizable minority” judged the evidence as stronger than others did.
Among the research presented to IARC was an analysis funded by a Dow-backed task force that found no ties between 2,4-D and many cancers.
Environmental and consumer groups have been lobbying regulators to tightly restrict its use but the product has been defended by agricultural groups and chemical companies as an important agent in food production that does not need more restrictions.
Pesticide Action Network UK estimates the value of the global market for 2,4-D at more than $300 million (£190 million).
Its fact-sheet said that there were “major data gaps” in research on its effects on human health and wider environmental risks and “concerns about long term adverse effects of 2,4-D on human health and water pollution”.
2,4-D was one of two herbicides used in Agent Orange
It was one of two herbicides used to make Agent Orange, the chemical used by the US military to deforest jungles and destroy food crops in the Vietnam War.
The Vietnamese government has claimed that up to three million people suffered from illnesses caused by the toxic chemical and birth defects and disability have also been attributed to it.
Monsanto, one of the nine wartime government contractors who manufactured Agent Orange, which included a herbicide called 2,4,5-T that was contaminated with an extremely toxic dioxin compound, said a "causal connection linking Agent Orange to chronic disease in humans has not been established".
WHO's findings come three months after the IARC found another popular weedkiller - glyphosate - was “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
It is the world’s most-used herbicide and the key ingredient in Monsanto Co's Roundup weedkiller and other products.
IARC classifications do not carry regulatory requirements but can influence regulators, politicians and the public.
Following the glyphosate classification, some companies and government officials moved to limit its use.
Additional reporting by Reuters
[h=1]One of world's most used weedkillers 'possibly' causes cancer, World Health Organisation says[/h]
[h=3]The agency classified 2,4-D as 'possibly carcinogenic' just months after finding another popular herbicide 'probably' caused cancer
[/h]
Lizzie Dearden
Tuesday 23 June 2015
One of the most widely used weedkillers in the world has been classed as “possibly carcinogenic” after more than 70 years on the market.
Researchers at the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) cancer division found that the results of scientific studies into 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, known as 2,4-D, were too mixed to be conclusive.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classed it as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”, which is a step below the category of “probably” causing cancer.
The herbicide has been widely used to protect agricultural crops, forestry, grass and bodies of water from weeds and invasive plant since it went on the market in the 1940s.
Dow AgroSciences, which uses 2,4-D as a component in its Enlist Duo product, claims there are more than 1,500 products that have it as an active ingredient.
It claimed the IARC's classification was flawed and was “inconsistent with government findings in nearly 100 countries” that have affirmed the safety of 2,4-D when used as labelled.
John Cuffe, from Dow AgroSciences’ regulatory division, claimed no other herbicide had been “more thoroughly studied” and listed research in the US, Canada and Europe that had recently found 2,4-D does not increase the risk of cancer.
[h=5]Read more: Roundup weedkiller ingredient 'probably carcinogenic'
Roundup weedkiller banned from French garden centres
Colombia to stop spraying glyphosate weedkiller on its cocaine[/h]A review by the European Food Safety Authority earlier this year found that 2,4-D, as currently manufactured, was “unlikely” to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans.
The IARC said it decided on the “possibly carcinogenic” classification because there was “inadequate evidence in humans and limited evidence in experimental animals” of ties between 2,4-D and cancer.
It said that epidemiological studies provided “strong evidence that 2,4-D induces oxidative stress ... and moderate evidence that 2,4-D causes immunosuppression.”
Dana Loomis, a deputy section head for IARC, said the most important studies reviewed showed mixed results, and a “sizable minority” judged the evidence as stronger than others did.
Among the research presented to IARC was an analysis funded by a Dow-backed task force that found no ties between 2,4-D and many cancers.
Environmental and consumer groups have been lobbying regulators to tightly restrict its use but the product has been defended by agricultural groups and chemical companies as an important agent in food production that does not need more restrictions.
Pesticide Action Network UK estimates the value of the global market for 2,4-D at more than $300 million (£190 million).
Its fact-sheet said that there were “major data gaps” in research on its effects on human health and wider environmental risks and “concerns about long term adverse effects of 2,4-D on human health and water pollution”.
It was one of two herbicides used to make Agent Orange, the chemical used by the US military to deforest jungles and destroy food crops in the Vietnam War.
The Vietnamese government has claimed that up to three million people suffered from illnesses caused by the toxic chemical and birth defects and disability have also been attributed to it.
Monsanto, one of the nine wartime government contractors who manufactured Agent Orange, which included a herbicide called 2,4,5-T that was contaminated with an extremely toxic dioxin compound, said a "causal connection linking Agent Orange to chronic disease in humans has not been established".
WHO's findings come three months after the IARC found another popular weedkiller - glyphosate - was “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
It is the world’s most-used herbicide and the key ingredient in Monsanto Co's Roundup weedkiller and other products.
IARC classifications do not carry regulatory requirements but can influence regulators, politicians and the public.
Following the glyphosate classification, some companies and government officials moved to limit its use.
Additional reporting by Reuters
muir
Banned
- MBTI
- INFJ
http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...anned-across-eu-says-new-report-10334080.html
[h=1]Fracking poses 'significant' risk to humans and should be temporarily banned across EU, says new report[/h]
[h=3]A major scientific study says the process uses toxic and carcinogenic chemicals and that an EU-wide ban should be issued until safeguards are in place
[/h]
Andy Rowell
Saturday 20 June 2015
A major new scientific study has concluded that the controversial gas extraction technique known as fracking poses a “significant” risk to human health and British wildlife, and that an EU-wide moratorium should be implemented until widespread regulatory reform is undertaken.
The damning report by the CHEM Trust, the British charity that investigates the harm chemicals cause humans and wildlife, highlights serious shortcomings in the UK’s regulatory regime, which the report says will only get worse as the Government makes further budget cuts.
It also warns of severe risks to human health if the new Conservative government tries to fast-track fracking of shale gas across the UK. The “scale of commercial fracking” unleashed by the Government’s eagerness to exploit the technique “should not be underestimated”, it cautions.
[h=5]Read more: Lancashire fracking in doubt following critical report
Fracking turning US into bigger oil producer than Saudi Arabia[/h]The report is due to be published tomorrow – in the week that Lancashire county council votes on two highly contentious planning applications to frack in the county by the company Cuadrilla. If approved, they will be the first commercial fracking sites in the UK.
Last week, council planning officers recommended approval of fracking at one site, Preston New Road, but opposed a second site, Roseacre Wood, but only on traffic concerns, not pollution from fracking itself.
The charity says it will send copies of the report to the Lancashire councillors before they vote.
Late last year, New York became the first US state with significant shale gas reserves to ban fracking for health reasons. Howard Zucker, New York’s acting health commissioner, said he had identified “significant” public health risks and the state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, compared fracking to passive smoking, a practice that wasn’t understood as a health risk for many years.
The CHEM Trust report also focuses on the potential health effects of the hundreds of chemicals, along with sand and water, that fracking companies use to prise open rocks. It warns of “significant” pollution to air, groundwater and surface waters and threats to wildlife.
Some of these toxic chemicals have been linked to breast, prostate and testicular cancer in humans as well as coronary heart disease, the report says. It outlines how 38 fracking chemicals are “acutely toxic for humans” and a further 20 are mutagenic, or known or possible carcinogens.
The report gives specific examples of hazardous materials used in fracking, including chemicals “associated with leukaemia in humans” and “toxic to sperm production in males”. The trust warns it is “particularly concerned about the use of hormone-disrupting chemicals”.
It is also asking for full disclosure of the chemicals that will be used in the fracking process. Many of the chemicals used in the process remain secret. In the US, nearly 300 products used in fracking fluids contain at least one secret chemical.
The report warns of concerns about “the current regulation of fracking” in the UK, which has “weak points”. Since the passage of the Infrastructure Bill last year, “it is no longer clear how well groundwaters will be protected”. It is particularly concerned that “ongoing cuts in regulatory authorities” will only make matters worse, especially any cuts to the regulator, the Environment Agency, which lost 15 per cent of its staff last year.
Specific issues about fracking in Lancashire are raised, including the suggestion that fracking could harm wildlife in the Wyre estuary, which is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, home to 11 wading bird species of international importance and three of national importance, as well as important orchids and insects. “There is clear potential for fracking to cause serious pollution incidents with major impacts on the UK especially areas of recognised wildlife interest” the study concludes.
The report makes numerous recommendations to protect health, groundwater and the British countryside. These include no fracking operations near drinking water aquifers, the undertaking of environmental impact assessments for all fracking sites, and effective monitoring even after fracking operations have stopped.
[h=5]Read more: Rise of US fracking causes shift in North Sea oil
Company gains permission to drill for gas in North York Moors
Beer drinkers claim fracking poses 'threat to quality of real ale'[/h]Dr Michael Warhurst, the executive director of CHEM Trust, said: “Our investigation has identified key problems with the way fracking is regulated and monitored. Given the potential for pollution and damage to ecosystems, CHEM Trust is calling for a moratorium on fracking in Europe until our recommendations are in place”.
A spokesperson for the Environment Agency said: “We take the environmental risks associated with oil and gas exploration and production very seriously, including hydraulic fracturing for shale gas, and are committed to ensuring that people and the environment are protected.
“Our regulatory controls are in place to protect people and the environment.”
[h=1]Fracking poses 'significant' risk to humans and should be temporarily banned across EU, says new report[/h]
[h=3]A major scientific study says the process uses toxic and carcinogenic chemicals and that an EU-wide ban should be issued until safeguards are in place
[/h]
Andy Rowell
Saturday 20 June 2015
A major new scientific study has concluded that the controversial gas extraction technique known as fracking poses a “significant” risk to human health and British wildlife, and that an EU-wide moratorium should be implemented until widespread regulatory reform is undertaken.
The damning report by the CHEM Trust, the British charity that investigates the harm chemicals cause humans and wildlife, highlights serious shortcomings in the UK’s regulatory regime, which the report says will only get worse as the Government makes further budget cuts.
It also warns of severe risks to human health if the new Conservative government tries to fast-track fracking of shale gas across the UK. The “scale of commercial fracking” unleashed by the Government’s eagerness to exploit the technique “should not be underestimated”, it cautions.
[h=5]Read more: Lancashire fracking in doubt following critical report
Fracking turning US into bigger oil producer than Saudi Arabia[/h]The report is due to be published tomorrow – in the week that Lancashire county council votes on two highly contentious planning applications to frack in the county by the company Cuadrilla. If approved, they will be the first commercial fracking sites in the UK.
Last week, council planning officers recommended approval of fracking at one site, Preston New Road, but opposed a second site, Roseacre Wood, but only on traffic concerns, not pollution from fracking itself.
The charity says it will send copies of the report to the Lancashire councillors before they vote.
Late last year, New York became the first US state with significant shale gas reserves to ban fracking for health reasons. Howard Zucker, New York’s acting health commissioner, said he had identified “significant” public health risks and the state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, compared fracking to passive smoking, a practice that wasn’t understood as a health risk for many years.
The CHEM Trust report also focuses on the potential health effects of the hundreds of chemicals, along with sand and water, that fracking companies use to prise open rocks. It warns of “significant” pollution to air, groundwater and surface waters and threats to wildlife.
Some of these toxic chemicals have been linked to breast, prostate and testicular cancer in humans as well as coronary heart disease, the report says. It outlines how 38 fracking chemicals are “acutely toxic for humans” and a further 20 are mutagenic, or known or possible carcinogens.
The report gives specific examples of hazardous materials used in fracking, including chemicals “associated with leukaemia in humans” and “toxic to sperm production in males”. The trust warns it is “particularly concerned about the use of hormone-disrupting chemicals”.
It is also asking for full disclosure of the chemicals that will be used in the fracking process. Many of the chemicals used in the process remain secret. In the US, nearly 300 products used in fracking fluids contain at least one secret chemical.
The report warns of concerns about “the current regulation of fracking” in the UK, which has “weak points”. Since the passage of the Infrastructure Bill last year, “it is no longer clear how well groundwaters will be protected”. It is particularly concerned that “ongoing cuts in regulatory authorities” will only make matters worse, especially any cuts to the regulator, the Environment Agency, which lost 15 per cent of its staff last year.
Specific issues about fracking in Lancashire are raised, including the suggestion that fracking could harm wildlife in the Wyre estuary, which is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, home to 11 wading bird species of international importance and three of national importance, as well as important orchids and insects. “There is clear potential for fracking to cause serious pollution incidents with major impacts on the UK especially areas of recognised wildlife interest” the study concludes.
The report makes numerous recommendations to protect health, groundwater and the British countryside. These include no fracking operations near drinking water aquifers, the undertaking of environmental impact assessments for all fracking sites, and effective monitoring even after fracking operations have stopped.
[h=5]Read more: Rise of US fracking causes shift in North Sea oil
Company gains permission to drill for gas in North York Moors
Beer drinkers claim fracking poses 'threat to quality of real ale'[/h]Dr Michael Warhurst, the executive director of CHEM Trust, said: “Our investigation has identified key problems with the way fracking is regulated and monitored. Given the potential for pollution and damage to ecosystems, CHEM Trust is calling for a moratorium on fracking in Europe until our recommendations are in place”.
A spokesperson for the Environment Agency said: “We take the environmental risks associated with oil and gas exploration and production very seriously, including hydraulic fracturing for shale gas, and are committed to ensuring that people and the environment are protected.
“Our regulatory controls are in place to protect people and the environment.”
muir
Banned
- MBTI
- INFJ
http://www.commondreams.org/news/20...oster-online-conformity-and-obedience-exposed
[h=1]Online "Conformity" and "Obedience" Exposed[/h] Internal memo from secretive British spy unit exposes how GCHQ and NSA used human psychological research to create sophisticated online propaganda tools
by
Jon Queally, staff writer
"Among other things," The Intercept reports, "the document lays out the tactics the agency uses to manipulate public opinion, its scientific and psychological research into how human thinking and behavior can be influenced, and the broad range of targets that are traditionally the province of law enforcement rather than intelligence agencies." (Photo: Getty Images)
With never-before-seen documents accompanied by new reporting on Monday, The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman are offering a more in-depth look than ever into how a secretive unit of the UK's GCHQ surveillance agency used a host of psychological methods and online subterfuge in order to manipulate the behavior of individuals and groups through the internet and other digital forms of communication.
According to the reporting, the latest documents, which were leaked to journalists by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden,
Greenwald and Fishman argue JTRIG's self-documented exploits are most notable because of their "extensive use of propaganda methods and other online tactics of deceit and manipulation" that are not only reserved for "suspected foreign enemies" or criminals, as the agency continues to claim, but have also been used against other groups and individuals that the agency deems threatening or "politically radical."
As Common Dreams reported in February of 2014—when the existence of JTRIG was first made public—the GCHQ has used the unit to develop and deploy a complex series of "dirty tricks," "propoganda," and "false flag" operations designed to spy on selected targets who included not only "suspected terrorists" and "criminals" but also diplomats, journalists, and activists.
Included in the new JTRIG memo is this detailed look at the manipulative online tactics developed by the group:
The reporting also highlights the internal memo's focus on "manipulation" and how the GCHQ hoped to foster both "conformity" and "obedience" among those targeted:
Read The Intercept's full reporting here. And links to the new published documents follow:
[h=1]Online "Conformity" and "Obedience" Exposed[/h] Internal memo from secretive British spy unit exposes how GCHQ and NSA used human psychological research to create sophisticated online propaganda tools
by
Jon Queally, staff writer
"Among other things," The Intercept reports, "the document lays out the tactics the agency uses to manipulate public opinion, its scientific and psychological research into how human thinking and behavior can be influenced, and the broad range of targets that are traditionally the province of law enforcement rather than intelligence agencies." (Photo: Getty Images)
With never-before-seen documents accompanied by new reporting on Monday, The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman are offering a more in-depth look than ever into how a secretive unit of the UK's GCHQ surveillance agency used a host of psychological methods and online subterfuge in order to manipulate the behavior of individuals and groups through the internet and other digital forms of communication.
According to the reporting, the latest documents, which were leaked to journalists by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden,
demonstrate how the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), a unit of the signals intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), is involved in efforts against political groups it considers “extremist,” Islamist activity in schools, the drug trade, online fraud, and financial scams.
Though its existence was secret until last year, JTRIG quickly developed a distinctive profile in the public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the unit had engaged in “dirty tricks” like deploying sexual “honey traps” designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks, and generally warping discourse online.
Among the most troubling revelations is a 42-page internal JTRIG memo that describes in detail how the elite unit developed, maintained, and apparently sought to expand its "scientific and psychological research into how human thinking and behavior can be influenced" in order to increase its ability to "manipulate public opinion" via online tools like email, social media, video, discussion forums, and other platforms.Though its existence was secret until last year, JTRIG quickly developed a distinctive profile in the public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the unit had engaged in “dirty tricks” like deploying sexual “honey traps” designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks, and generally warping discourse online.
Greenwald and Fishman argue JTRIG's self-documented exploits are most notable because of their "extensive use of propaganda methods and other online tactics of deceit and manipulation" that are not only reserved for "suspected foreign enemies" or criminals, as the agency continues to claim, but have also been used against other groups and individuals that the agency deems threatening or "politically radical."
As Common Dreams reported in February of 2014—when the existence of JTRIG was first made public—the GCHQ has used the unit to develop and deploy a complex series of "dirty tricks," "propoganda," and "false flag" operations designed to spy on selected targets who included not only "suspected terrorists" and "criminals" but also diplomats, journalists, and activists.
Included in the new JTRIG memo is this detailed look at the manipulative online tactics developed by the group:
The reporting also highlights the internal memo's focus on "manipulation" and how the GCHQ hoped to foster both "conformity" and "obedience" among those targeted:
Read The Intercept's full reporting here. And links to the new published documents follow:
- MBTI
- INFJ
- Enneagram
- 9 Mediator
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...-world-health-organisation-says-10338363.html
One of world's most used weedkillers 'possibly' causes cancer, World Health Organisation says
The agency classified 2,4-D as 'possibly carcinogenic' just months after finding another popular herbicide 'probably' caused cancer
Lizzie Dearden
Tuesday 23 June 2015
One of the most widely used weedkillers in the world has been classed as “possibly carcinogenic” after more than 70 years on the market.
Researchers at the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) cancer division found that the results of scientific studies into 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, known as 2,4-D, were too mixed to be conclusive.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classed it as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”, which is a step below the category of “probably” causing cancer.
The herbicide has been widely used to protect agricultural crops, forestry, grass and bodies of water from weeds and invasive plant since it went on the market in the 1940s. Greenpeace is among the groups to demonstrate for tighter restrictions on herbicides
Dow AgroSciences, which uses 2,4-D as a component in its Enlist Duo product, claims there are more than 1,500 products that have it as an active ingredient.
It claimed the IARC's classification was flawed and was “inconsistent with government findings in nearly 100 countries” that have affirmed the safety of 2,4-D when used as labelled.
John Cuffe, from Dow AgroSciences’ regulatory division, claimed no other herbicide had been “more thoroughly studied” and listed research in the US, Canada and Europe that had recently found 2,4-D does not increase the risk of cancer.
Read more: Roundup weedkiller ingredient 'probably carcinogenic'
Roundup weedkiller banned from French garden centres
Colombia to stop spraying glyphosate weedkiller on its cocaine
A review by the European Food Safety Authority earlier this year found that 2,4-D, as currently manufactured, was “unlikely” to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans.
The IARC said it decided on the “possibly carcinogenic” classification because there was “inadequate evidence in humans and limited evidence in experimental animals” of ties between 2,4-D and cancer.
It said that epidemiological studies provided “strong evidence that 2,4-D induces oxidative stress ... and moderate evidence that 2,4-D causes immunosuppression.”In March the World Health Organisation also said the active ingredient in Roundup is 'probably carcinogenic to humans'
Dana Loomis, a deputy section head for IARC, said the most important studies reviewed showed mixed results, and a “sizable minority” judged the evidence as stronger than others did.
Among the research presented to IARC was an analysis funded by a Dow-backed task force that found no ties between 2,4-D and many cancers.
Environmental and consumer groups have been lobbying regulators to tightly restrict its use but the product has been defended by agricultural groups and chemical companies as an important agent in food production that does not need more restrictions.
Pesticide Action Network UK estimates the value of the global market for 2,4-D at more than $300 million (£190 million).
Its fact-sheet said that there were “major data gaps” in research on its effects on human health and wider environmental risks and “concerns about long term adverse effects of 2,4-D on human health and water pollution”.
2,4-D was one of two herbicides used in Agent Orange
It was one of two herbicides used to make Agent Orange, the chemical used by the US military to deforest jungles and destroy food crops in the Vietnam War.
The Vietnamese government has claimed that up to three million people suffered from illnesses caused by the toxic chemical and birth defects and disability have also been attributed to it.
Monsanto, one of the nine wartime government contractors who manufactured Agent Orange, which included a herbicide called 2,4,5-T that was contaminated with an extremely toxic dioxin compound, said a "causal connection linking Agent Orange to chronic disease in humans has not been established".
WHO's findings come three months after the IARC found another popular weedkiller - glyphosate - was “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
It is the world’s most-used herbicide and the key ingredient in Monsanto Co's Roundup weedkiller and other products.
IARC classifications do not carry regulatory requirements but can influence regulators, politicians and the public.
Following the glyphosate classification, some companies and government officials moved to limit its use.
Additional reporting by Reuters
Oh crap.
I have sprayed more 2,4, D than any other person I know...and I've gotten it on me like bathing soap.
Shit....
muir
Banned
- MBTI
- INFJ
Time to go organic!
muir
Banned
- MBTI
- INFJ
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...ill-extremism-disruption-orders-david-cameron
David Cameron to unveil new limits on extremists' activities in Queen's speech
Prime minister will announce counter-terrorism bill including plans to restrict harmful actions of those seeking to radicalise young people
David Cameron will tell the national security council that Britain has been a ‘passively tolerant society’ for too long. Photograph: Scott Heppell/PA Patrick Wintour Political editor
Wednesday 13 May 2015 00.01 BST Last modified on Wednesday 13 May 2015 18.29 BST
A counter-terrorism bill including plans for extremism disruption orders designed to restrict those trying to radicalise young people is to be included in the Queen’s speech, David Cameron will tell the national security council on Wednesday.
The orders, the product of an extremism task force set up by the prime minister, were proposed during the last parliament in March, but were largely vetoed by the Liberal Democrats on the grounds of free speech. They were subsequently revived in the Conservative manifesto.
The measures would give the police powers to apply to the high court for an order to limit the “harmful activities” of an extremist individual. The definition of harmful is to include a risk of public disorder, a risk of harassment, alarm or distress or creating a “threat to the functioning of democracy”.
The aim is to catch not just those who spread or incite hatred on the grounds of gender, race or religion but also those who undertake harmful activities for the “purpose of overthrowing democracy”.
They would include a ban on broadcasting and a requirement to submit to the police in advance any proposed publication on the web and social media or in print. The bill will also contain plans for banning orders for extremist organisations which seek to undermine democracy or use hate speech in public places, but it will fall short of banning on the grounds of provoking hatred.
It will also contain new powers to close premises including mosques where extremists seek to influence others. The powers of the Charity Commission to root out charities that misappropriate funds towards extremism and terrorism will also be strengthened.
Analysis It wasn't just Lib Dems who opposed Theresa May's counter-extremism plans
Analysis: previous objections from Tory ministers such as Greg Clark and Nicky Morgan may account for some notable omissions from the latest proposals
Read more
Cameron will tell the NSC: “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone. It’s often meant we have stood neutral between different values. And that’s helped foster a narrative of extremism and grievance.
Advertisement
“This government will conclusively turn the page on this failed approach. As the party of one nation, we will govern as one nation and bring our country together. That means actively promoting certain values.
“Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Democracy. The rule of law. Equal rights regardless of race, gender or sexuality.
“We must say to our citizens: this is what defines us as a society.”
The home secretary, Theresa May, will say: “The twisted narrative of extremism cannot be ignored or wished away. This government will challenge those who seek to spread hatred and intolerance by forming a new partnership of every person and organisation in this country that wants to defeat the extremists.”
The proposals arose out of the response to the killing in May 2013 of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, south-east London, and the murder of Mohammed Saleem in Birmingham a month earlier.
A separate bill will be introduced later in the parliament to revive and extend the so-called snoopers charter, which would include the retention of records of phone calls, emails and other data.
David Cameron to unveil new limits on extremists' activities in Queen's speech
Prime minister will announce counter-terrorism bill including plans to restrict harmful actions of those seeking to radicalise young people
David Cameron will tell the national security council that Britain has been a ‘passively tolerant society’ for too long. Photograph: Scott Heppell/PA Patrick Wintour Political editor
Wednesday 13 May 2015 00.01 BST Last modified on Wednesday 13 May 2015 18.29 BST
A counter-terrorism bill including plans for extremism disruption orders designed to restrict those trying to radicalise young people is to be included in the Queen’s speech, David Cameron will tell the national security council on Wednesday.
The orders, the product of an extremism task force set up by the prime minister, were proposed during the last parliament in March, but were largely vetoed by the Liberal Democrats on the grounds of free speech. They were subsequently revived in the Conservative manifesto.
The measures would give the police powers to apply to the high court for an order to limit the “harmful activities” of an extremist individual. The definition of harmful is to include a risk of public disorder, a risk of harassment, alarm or distress or creating a “threat to the functioning of democracy”.
The aim is to catch not just those who spread or incite hatred on the grounds of gender, race or religion but also those who undertake harmful activities for the “purpose of overthrowing democracy”.
They would include a ban on broadcasting and a requirement to submit to the police in advance any proposed publication on the web and social media or in print. The bill will also contain plans for banning orders for extremist organisations which seek to undermine democracy or use hate speech in public places, but it will fall short of banning on the grounds of provoking hatred.
It will also contain new powers to close premises including mosques where extremists seek to influence others. The powers of the Charity Commission to root out charities that misappropriate funds towards extremism and terrorism will also be strengthened.
Analysis It wasn't just Lib Dems who opposed Theresa May's counter-extremism plans
Analysis: previous objections from Tory ministers such as Greg Clark and Nicky Morgan may account for some notable omissions from the latest proposals
Read more
Cameron will tell the NSC: “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone. It’s often meant we have stood neutral between different values. And that’s helped foster a narrative of extremism and grievance.
Advertisement
“This government will conclusively turn the page on this failed approach. As the party of one nation, we will govern as one nation and bring our country together. That means actively promoting certain values.
“Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Democracy. The rule of law. Equal rights regardless of race, gender or sexuality.
“We must say to our citizens: this is what defines us as a society.”
The home secretary, Theresa May, will say: “The twisted narrative of extremism cannot be ignored or wished away. This government will challenge those who seek to spread hatred and intolerance by forming a new partnership of every person and organisation in this country that wants to defeat the extremists.”
The proposals arose out of the response to the killing in May 2013 of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, south-east London, and the murder of Mohammed Saleem in Birmingham a month earlier.
A separate bill will be introduced later in the parliament to revive and extend the so-called snoopers charter, which would include the retention of records of phone calls, emails and other data.
muir
Banned
- MBTI
- INFJ
wow...so that's some pretty messed up stuff coming from the UK government there and also from snowden on what the UK intelligence services are upto
UK spies going on public forums and messing with the heads of forumites...but there it is in the articles above in black and white; many of us knew it was happening and have even suspected some people we have debated with of being government shills...who knows...there are also some genuine idiots out there
However these are worrying developments and i just can't seem to get them out of my mind
The british prime minister david cameron is trying to squash the EU human rights act in the UK. This would mean that any british citizen persecuted by the british government could then not appeal to the European court of human rights; which means the british government could do whatever they liked to their own citizens
Cameron has also made a speech to the UN saying that anyone questioning 911 or the 7/7 bombing or ISIS is an 'extremist'; of course some people would say that he is only speaking to muslims living in the UK but he clearly is not....he is clearly speaking to anyone in the UK who is questioning the government
He says the government is to tackle all forms of what he calls 'non-violent extremism' which is basically anyone who criticises the government
[video=youtube;BP_HJfd_gvE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP_HJfd_gvE[/video]
Cameron is also seeking to increase the legal powers of UK spies to spy on their own public. This is being called the 'snoopers charter'
It basically allows them to hack into peoples computers, to store their texts, emails, phone calls and so on and to see their browsing history
The clip i posted of the ritchie allan show earlier in this thread (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJDkV5cY23s) mentioned that they could use these powers to plant incriminating evidence onto peoples computers. Also it says that peoples data is not secure so it can be tampered with. I take that to mean that they could tamper with your browsing history to make it look like you had looked at stuff you hadn't eg radical extremist sites or illegal porn etc
As the leaked info from snowden posted above says they have also set honeytraps for people and laid traps of links to 'uncensored sites' which presumably means the intended target clicks on a link and that then takes them to some dodgy site
if the authorities then have your browsing bistory then they can claim you have browsed the planted site
if they looked at mine all they'd find is the same old alternative media sites and the INFJ forum!
But the point is you don't have to have done anything wrong...they can make it look like you have
Some might say i'm being paranoid but Cameron has also recently said the following:
“For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone. It’s often meant we have stood neutral between different values. And that’s helped foster a narrative of extremism and grievance.This government will conclusively turn the page on this failed approach. As the party of one nation, we will govern as one nation and bring our country together. That means actively promoting certain values. Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Democracy. The rule of law. Equal rights regardless of race, gender or sexuality. We must say to our citizens: this is what defines us as a society.”
This is some pretty alarming rhetoric to be coming out of a government and it basically means that freedom of speech is dead in the UK. This is a watershed moment in the slide into fascism that i have been documenting here on the forum for a number of years now. Pretty incredible that in the same speech cameron can claim to be upholding freedom of speech whilst at the same time threatening anyone who exercises that right!
It has led to scottish comedian Frankie Boyle saying the following:
“Immediately after his re-election [Cameron] announced: “For too long we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens so long as you obey the law we will leave you alone.” A statement so far to the right that it conceded the political centre ground to Judge Dredd.”
Joking aside...camerons words represent a very clear threat to people who have been publically questioning the offical narrative on events. The message is clear: ''shut up or we will persecute you and we don't care if you are not breaking any laws we will persecute you anyway''
This makes me angry for a number of reasons. First of all because i didn't vote for camoron and his eton pals and neither did most brits or hardly anyone from my patch north of the border
Secondly it is my right as a member of a democracy to be able to criticise the government
Thirdly i grew up knowing the generation of men who fought in the second world war and was aware of my family's contribution in both the great wars and for the loses it suffered and medals it won. I look at my country now as it slides into fascism and i wonder what the sacrifice of all those young lads whose names are on the memorials in every village, town and city up and down my country was for as well as the suffering of the lads who came home and their families that then had to rehabilitate them
What was it all for if their grandsons and granddaughters can't even question their government when they know them to be lying sons of bitches who are selling their people out to the banksters in the city of london, without fear of being persecuted?
However these guys don't care about that...they don't care that it wasn't the royals or the bankers or the wretched politicians who won those wars but the people themselves....it was the lads off the streets and fields of britain and their women-folk who supported them who won it; they didn't start the war but they paid for it and saw it through to its end
So it's with a fair bit of regret that I am going to take a holiday from speaking about 'conspiracy theories' or of criticising the government until such time as i feel it is safe to do so again, which if cameron and his paymasters get their way will be never
I hate to allow their words to have a chilling effect on dissent but there are a few things going on at the moment so who knows what will materialise in the coming years. Obviously cameron and the banking cabal he works for hope it will be their new world order that comes to the fore but there are a growing number of people who are aware of these issues now and a quarter of a million people just marched against austerity in London so people are indeed waking up and no matter how many people the government and their intelligence services stitch up or silence through other means there will be more and more discussions about these matters online and offline
So a few possible developments include a greek exit from the eurozone leading to problems for the german central bank and the other european banks which leads to a global economic crisis that makes 2008 look like a picnic....who knows where that scenario will end?
Then there is the referendum on whether the UK should stay in the EU that is to be held next year. If the UK leaves the EU the SNP party in Scotland will call for another referendum on whether or not Scotland should remain in the UK!!!
Scotland could of course call another referendum at anytime on the grounds of camerons broken promises for new powers to scotland or his double dealings over renewable energy
So things are pretty fluid at the moment and we'll just have to wait and see where the chips fall but you can be sure that cameron and his paymasters in the city of london will be putting their PR machine into action to try and fearmonger the Uk public into staying in the EU
I also feel that his rhetoric about 'extremism' is not empty words and that they do mean business.
The crazy thing is that the only section of scottish society that doesn't want independence is the one now retiring
Also it is the older generation who have voted the tories in as the UK government so if cameron and his buddies think they will be able to keep getting away with this shit they are sorely mistaken because in a generation time the demographics will have totally changed
The older generation are thatchers little brats who have grown up being told only to think of themselves and sure enough all they think about now is their own pensions. They are the generation who has allowed all the banker corruption and MP's expenses corruption and child abuse in the establishment to go on and now they are using their votes to stop the younger generation putting it all right.....but they won't be here forever and the younger generation all know that 911 was an inside job
So....we'll see how things pan out but until such time as freedom of speech is restored i will be ceasing online activity; i appreciate i am small fry but at the same time i reckon i'll be on some government watch list as undermining the governments false narratives online is now seen as a form of activism and 'extremism', no less, by the tory government
The UK government has made its clear warning and I am going to heed that (albeit in protest)
I'll drop into the forum for a couple of days after this to check PM's if anyone wants to speak to me about these issues but after that i'll be away for a while. It's a shame i enjoy keeping up to date with events and discussing them but things are going a little bit crazy here in the UK so I'm gonna take a back seat for a while and see how things develop, knuckle down, pay my taxes, keep my nose clean and try and stay clear of cameron and his insane and openly fascistic government
goodnight..and good luck
UK spies going on public forums and messing with the heads of forumites...but there it is in the articles above in black and white; many of us knew it was happening and have even suspected some people we have debated with of being government shills...who knows...there are also some genuine idiots out there
However these are worrying developments and i just can't seem to get them out of my mind
The british prime minister david cameron is trying to squash the EU human rights act in the UK. This would mean that any british citizen persecuted by the british government could then not appeal to the European court of human rights; which means the british government could do whatever they liked to their own citizens
Cameron has also made a speech to the UN saying that anyone questioning 911 or the 7/7 bombing or ISIS is an 'extremist'; of course some people would say that he is only speaking to muslims living in the UK but he clearly is not....he is clearly speaking to anyone in the UK who is questioning the government
He says the government is to tackle all forms of what he calls 'non-violent extremism' which is basically anyone who criticises the government
[video=youtube;BP_HJfd_gvE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP_HJfd_gvE[/video]
Cameron is also seeking to increase the legal powers of UK spies to spy on their own public. This is being called the 'snoopers charter'
It basically allows them to hack into peoples computers, to store their texts, emails, phone calls and so on and to see their browsing history
The clip i posted of the ritchie allan show earlier in this thread (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJDkV5cY23s) mentioned that they could use these powers to plant incriminating evidence onto peoples computers. Also it says that peoples data is not secure so it can be tampered with. I take that to mean that they could tamper with your browsing history to make it look like you had looked at stuff you hadn't eg radical extremist sites or illegal porn etc
As the leaked info from snowden posted above says they have also set honeytraps for people and laid traps of links to 'uncensored sites' which presumably means the intended target clicks on a link and that then takes them to some dodgy site
if the authorities then have your browsing bistory then they can claim you have browsed the planted site
if they looked at mine all they'd find is the same old alternative media sites and the INFJ forum!
But the point is you don't have to have done anything wrong...they can make it look like you have
Some might say i'm being paranoid but Cameron has also recently said the following:
“For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone. It’s often meant we have stood neutral between different values. And that’s helped foster a narrative of extremism and grievance.This government will conclusively turn the page on this failed approach. As the party of one nation, we will govern as one nation and bring our country together. That means actively promoting certain values. Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Democracy. The rule of law. Equal rights regardless of race, gender or sexuality. We must say to our citizens: this is what defines us as a society.”
This is some pretty alarming rhetoric to be coming out of a government and it basically means that freedom of speech is dead in the UK. This is a watershed moment in the slide into fascism that i have been documenting here on the forum for a number of years now. Pretty incredible that in the same speech cameron can claim to be upholding freedom of speech whilst at the same time threatening anyone who exercises that right!
It has led to scottish comedian Frankie Boyle saying the following:
“Immediately after his re-election [Cameron] announced: “For too long we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens so long as you obey the law we will leave you alone.” A statement so far to the right that it conceded the political centre ground to Judge Dredd.”
Joking aside...camerons words represent a very clear threat to people who have been publically questioning the offical narrative on events. The message is clear: ''shut up or we will persecute you and we don't care if you are not breaking any laws we will persecute you anyway''
This makes me angry for a number of reasons. First of all because i didn't vote for camoron and his eton pals and neither did most brits or hardly anyone from my patch north of the border
Secondly it is my right as a member of a democracy to be able to criticise the government
Thirdly i grew up knowing the generation of men who fought in the second world war and was aware of my family's contribution in both the great wars and for the loses it suffered and medals it won. I look at my country now as it slides into fascism and i wonder what the sacrifice of all those young lads whose names are on the memorials in every village, town and city up and down my country was for as well as the suffering of the lads who came home and their families that then had to rehabilitate them
What was it all for if their grandsons and granddaughters can't even question their government when they know them to be lying sons of bitches who are selling their people out to the banksters in the city of london, without fear of being persecuted?
However these guys don't care about that...they don't care that it wasn't the royals or the bankers or the wretched politicians who won those wars but the people themselves....it was the lads off the streets and fields of britain and their women-folk who supported them who won it; they didn't start the war but they paid for it and saw it through to its end
So it's with a fair bit of regret that I am going to take a holiday from speaking about 'conspiracy theories' or of criticising the government until such time as i feel it is safe to do so again, which if cameron and his paymasters get their way will be never
I hate to allow their words to have a chilling effect on dissent but there are a few things going on at the moment so who knows what will materialise in the coming years. Obviously cameron and the banking cabal he works for hope it will be their new world order that comes to the fore but there are a growing number of people who are aware of these issues now and a quarter of a million people just marched against austerity in London so people are indeed waking up and no matter how many people the government and their intelligence services stitch up or silence through other means there will be more and more discussions about these matters online and offline
So a few possible developments include a greek exit from the eurozone leading to problems for the german central bank and the other european banks which leads to a global economic crisis that makes 2008 look like a picnic....who knows where that scenario will end?
Then there is the referendum on whether the UK should stay in the EU that is to be held next year. If the UK leaves the EU the SNP party in Scotland will call for another referendum on whether or not Scotland should remain in the UK!!!
Scotland could of course call another referendum at anytime on the grounds of camerons broken promises for new powers to scotland or his double dealings over renewable energy
So things are pretty fluid at the moment and we'll just have to wait and see where the chips fall but you can be sure that cameron and his paymasters in the city of london will be putting their PR machine into action to try and fearmonger the Uk public into staying in the EU
I also feel that his rhetoric about 'extremism' is not empty words and that they do mean business.
The crazy thing is that the only section of scottish society that doesn't want independence is the one now retiring
Also it is the older generation who have voted the tories in as the UK government so if cameron and his buddies think they will be able to keep getting away with this shit they are sorely mistaken because in a generation time the demographics will have totally changed
The older generation are thatchers little brats who have grown up being told only to think of themselves and sure enough all they think about now is their own pensions. They are the generation who has allowed all the banker corruption and MP's expenses corruption and child abuse in the establishment to go on and now they are using their votes to stop the younger generation putting it all right.....but they won't be here forever and the younger generation all know that 911 was an inside job
So....we'll see how things pan out but until such time as freedom of speech is restored i will be ceasing online activity; i appreciate i am small fry but at the same time i reckon i'll be on some government watch list as undermining the governments false narratives online is now seen as a form of activism and 'extremism', no less, by the tory government
The UK government has made its clear warning and I am going to heed that (albeit in protest)
I'll drop into the forum for a couple of days after this to check PM's if anyone wants to speak to me about these issues but after that i'll be away for a while. It's a shame i enjoy keeping up to date with events and discussing them but things are going a little bit crazy here in the UK so I'm gonna take a back seat for a while and see how things develop, knuckle down, pay my taxes, keep my nose clean and try and stay clear of cameron and his insane and openly fascistic government
goodnight..and good luck
Last edited:
[video=youtube;5GgflscOmW8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GgflscOmW8[/video]
AJ_
Site Supporter
- MBTI
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Wait...the state might lie about things in order to have more power and control?
[video=youtube;9bVjyotC3kg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bVjyotC3kg&spfreload=10[/video]
Noble Lie: In politics, a noble lie is a myth or untruth knowingly told by an elite to maintain social harmony or to advance an agenda. The noble lie is a concept originated by Plato as described in the Republic.
[video=youtube;9bVjyotC3kg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bVjyotC3kg&spfreload=10[/video]
Noble Lie: In politics, a noble lie is a myth or untruth knowingly told by an elite to maintain social harmony or to advance an agenda. The noble lie is a concept originated by Plato as described in the Republic.
muir
Banned
- MBTI
- INFJ
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796
The US roots of nazi eugenics
by Edwin Black Edwin Black is the author of "IBM and the Holocaust" and "War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race," from which the following article is drawn.
Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a co-called "Master Race."
But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.
Eugenics was the racist pseudoscience determined to wipe away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in twenty-seven states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.
California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the Twentieth Century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate and Polytechnic benefactor Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles M. Goethe, as well as members of the California State Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.
Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Stamford, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.
Stanford president David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race and blood" in his 1902 racial epistle "Blood of a Nation," in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.
In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation's social service agencies and associations.
The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, trumped up confinement or forced sterilization.
The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.
Much of the spiritual guidance and political agitation for the American eugenics movement came from California's quasi-autonomous eugenic societies, such as the Pasadena-based Human Betterment Foundation and the California branch of the American Eugenics Society, which coordinated much of their activity with the Eugenics Research Society in Long Island. These organizations--which functioned as part of a closely-knit network--published racist eugenic newsletters and pseudoscientific journals, such as Eugenical News and Eugenics, and propagandized for the Nazis.
Eugenics was born as a scientific curiosity in the Victorian age. In 1863, Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, theorized that if talented people only married other talented people, the result would be measurably better offspring. At the turn of the last century, Galton's ideas were imported into the United States just as Gregor Mendel's principles of heredity were rediscovered. American eugenic advocates believed with religious fervor that the same Mendelian concepts determining the color and size of peas, corn and cattle also governed the social and intellectual character of man.
In an America demographically reeling from immigration upheaval and torn by post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was everywhere in the early twentieth century. Elitists, utopians and so-called "progressives" fused their smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire to make a better world. They reinvented Galton's eugenics into a repressive and racist ideology. The intent: populate the earth with vastly more of their own socio-economic and biological kind--and less or none of everyone else.
The superior species the eugenics movement sought was populated not merely by tall, strong, talented people. Eugenicists craved blond, blue-eyed Nordic types. This group alone, they believed, was fit to inherit the earth. In the process, the movement intended to subtract emancipated Negroes, immigrant Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans, Jews, dark-haired hill folk, poor people, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the gentrified genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists.
How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to kill their bloodlines. The grand plan was to literally wipe away the reproductive capability of those deemed weak and inferior--the so-called "unfit." The eugenicists hoped to neutralize the viability of 10 percent of the population at a sweep, until none were left except themselves.
Eighteen solutions were explored in a Carnegie-supported 1911 "Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeder's Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population." Point eight was euthanasia.
The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in America was a "lethal chamber" or public locally operated gas chambers. In 1918, Popenoe, the Army venereal disease specialist during World War I, co-wrote the widely used textbook, Applied Eugenics, which argued, "From an historical point of view, the first method which presents itself is execution… Its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated." Applied Eugenics also devoted a chapter to "Lethal Selection," which operated "through the destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the environment, such as excessive cold, or bacteria, or by bodily deficiency."
Eugenic breeders believed American society was not ready to implement an organized lethal solution. But many mental institutions and doctors practiced improvised medical lethality and passive euthanasia on their own. One institution in Lincoln, Illinois fed its incoming patients milk from tubercular cows believing a eugenically strong individual would be immune. Thirty to forty percent annual death rates resulted at Lincoln. Some doctors practiced passive eugenicide one newborn infant at a time. Others doctors at mental institutions engaged in lethal neglect.
Nonetheless, with eugenicide marginalized, the main solution for eugenicists was the rapid expansion of forced segregation and sterilization, as well as more marriage restrictions. California led the nation, performing nearly all sterilization procedures with little or no due process. In its first twenty-five years of eugenic legislation, California sterilized 9,782 individuals, mostly women. Many were classified as "bad girls," diagnosed as "passionate," "oversexed" or "sexually wayward." At Sonoma, some women were sterilized because of what was deemed an abnormally large clitoris or labia.
In 1933 alone, at least 1,278 coercive sterilizations were performed, 700 of which were on women. The state's two leading sterilization mills in 1933 were Sonoma State Home with 388 operations and Patton State Hospital with 363 operations. Other sterilization centers included Agnews, Mendocino, Napa, Norwalk, Stockton and Pacific Colony state hospitals.
Even the United States Supreme Court endorsed aspects of eugenics. In its infamous 1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…. Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This decision opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes's words in their own defense.
Only after eugenics became entrenched in the United States was the campaign transplanted into Germany, in no small measure through the efforts of California eugenicists, who published booklets idealizing sterilization and circulated them to German officials and scientists.
Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to legitimize his anti-Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific facade of eugenics. Hitler was able to recruit more followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that science was on his side. While Hitler's race hatred sprung from his own mind, the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America.
During the '20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic scientists cultivated deep personal and professional relationships with Germany's fascist eugenicists. In Mein Kampf, published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. "There is today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States."
Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the American eugenics movement. "I have studied with great interest," he told a fellow Nazi, "the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."
Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenic leader Madison Grant calling his race-based eugenics book, The Passing of the Great Race his "bible."
Hitler's struggle for a superior race would be a mad crusade for a Master Race. Now, the American term "Nordic" was freely exchanged with "Germanic" or "Aryan." Race science, racial purity and racial dominance became the driving force behind Hitler's Nazism. Nazi eugenics would ultimately dictate who would be persecuted in a Reich-dominated Europe, how people would live, and how they would die. Nazi doctors would become the unseen generals in Hitler's war against the Jews and other Europeans deemed inferior. Doctors would create the science, devise the eugenic formulas, and even hand-select the victims for sterilization, euthanasia and mass extermination.
During the Reich's early years, eugenicists across America welcomed Hitler's plans as the logical fulfillment of their own decades of research and effort. California eugenicists republished Nazi propaganda for American consumption. They also arranged for Nazi scientific exhibits, such as an August 1934 display at the L.A. County Museum, for the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association.
In 1934, as Germany's sterilizations were accelerating beyond 5,000 per month, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe upon returning from Germany ebulliently bragged to a key colleague, "You will be interested to know, that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought.…I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people."
That same year, ten years after Virginia passed its sterilization act, Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State Hospital, observed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "The Germans are beating us at our own game."
More than just providing the scientific roadmap, America funded Germany's eugenic institutions. By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410,000 -- almost $4 million in 21st-Century money -- to hundreds of German researchers. In May 1926, Rockefeller awarded $250,000 to the German Psychiatric Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, later to become the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry. Among the leading psychiatrists at the German Psychiatric Institute was Ernst Rüdin, who became director and eventually an architect of Hitler's systematic medical repression.
Another in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's eugenic complex of institutions was the Institute for Brain Research. Since 1915, it had operated out of a single room. Everything changed when Rockefeller money arrived in 1929. A grant of $317,000 allowed the Institute to construct a major building and take center stage in German race biology. The Institute received additional grants from the Rockefeller Foundation during the next several years. Leading the Institute, once again, was Hitler's medical henchman Ernst Rüdin. Rüdin's organization became a prime director and recipient of the murderous experimentation and research conducted on Jews, Gypsies and others.
Beginning in 1940, thousands of Germans taken from old age homes, mental institutions and other custodial facilities were systematically gassed. Between 50,000 and 100,000 were eventually killed.
Leon Whitney, executive secretary of the American Eugenics Society declared of Nazism, "While we were pussy-footing around…the Germans were calling a spade a spade."
A special recipient of Rockefeller funding was the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin. For decades, American eugenicists had craved twins to advance their research into heredity. The Institute was now prepared to undertake such research on an unprecedented level. On May 13, 1932, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York dispatched a radiogram to its Paris office: JUNE MEETING EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS OVER THREE YEAR PERIOD TO KWG INSTITUTE ANTHROPOLOGY FOR RESEARCH ON TWINS AND EFFECTS ON LATER GENERATIONS OF SUBSTANCES TOXIC FOR GERM PLASM.
At the time of Rockefeller's endowment, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, a hero in American eugenics circles, functioned as a head of the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Rockefeller funding of that Institute continued both directly and through other research conduits during Verschuer's early tenure. In 1935, Verschuer left the Institute to form a rival eugenics facility in Frankfurt that was much heralded in the American eugenic press. Research on twins in the Third Reich exploded, backed up by government decrees. Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt, a eugenic doctor's journal he edited, that Germany's war would yield a "total solution to the Jewish problem."
Verschuer had a long-time assistant. His name was Josef Mengele. On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz. Verschuer notified the German Research Society, "My assistant, Dr. Josef Mengele (M.D., Ph.D.) joined me in this branch of research. He is presently employed as Hauptsturmführer [captain] and camp physician in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Anthropological testing of the most diverse racial groups in this concentration camp is being carried out with permission of the SS Reichsführer [Himmler]."
Mengele began searching the boxcar arrivals for twins. When he found them, he performed beastly experiments, scrupulously wrote up the reports and sent the paperwork back to Verschuer's institute for evaluation. Often, cadavers, eyes and other body parts were also dispatched to Berlin's eugenic institutes.
Rockefeller executives never knew of Mengele. With few exceptions, the foundation had ceased all eugenic studies in Nazi-occupied Europe before the war erupted in 1939. But by that time the die had been cast. The talented men Rockefeller and Carnegie financed, the institutions they helped found, and the science it helped create took on a scientific momentum of their own.
After the war, eugenics was declared a crime against humanity--an act of genocide. Germans were tried and they cited the California statutes in their defense. To no avail. They were found guilty.
However, Mengele's boss Verschuer escaped prosecution. Verschuer re-established his connections with California eugenicists who had gone underground and renamed their crusade "human genetics." Typical was an exchange July 25, 1946 when Popenoe wrote Verschuer, "It was indeed a pleasure to hear from you again. I have been very anxious about my colleagues in Germany…. I suppose sterilization has been discontinued in Germany?" Popenoe offered tidbits about various American eugenic luminaries and then sent various eugenic publications. In a separate package, Popenoe sent some cocoa, coffee and other goodies.
Verschuer wrote back, "Your very friendly letter of 7/25 gave me a great deal of pleasure and you have my heartfelt thanks for it. The letter builds another bridge between your and my scientific work; I hope that this bridge will never again collapse but rather make possible valuable mutual enrichment and stimulation."
Soon, Verschuer once again became a respected scientist in Germany and around the world. In 1949, he became a corresponding member of the newly formed American Society of Human Genetics, organized by American eugenicists and geneticists.
In the fall of 1950, the University of Münster offered Verschuer a position at its new Institute of Human Genetics, where he later became a dean. In the early and mid-1950s, Verschuer became an honorary member of numerous prestigious societies, including the Italian Society of Genetics, the Anthropological Society of Vienna, and the Japanese Society for Human Genetics.
Human genetics' genocidal roots in eugenics were ignored by a victorious generation that refused to link itself to the crimes of Nazism and by succeeding generations that never knew the truth of the years leading up to war. Now governors of five states, including California have issued public apologies to their citizens, past and present, for sterilization and other abuses spawned by the eugenics movement.
Human genetics became an enlightened endeavor in the late twentieth century. Hard-working, devoted scientists finally cracked the human code through the Human Genome Project. Now, every individual can be biologically identified and classified by trait and ancestry. Yet even now, some leading voices in the genetic world are calling for a cleansing of the unwanted among us, and even a master human species.
There is understandable wariness about more ordinary forms of abuse, for example, in denying insurance or employment based on genetic tests. On October 14, America's first genetic anti-discrimination legislation passed the Senate by unanimous vote. Yet because genetics research is global, no single nation's law can stop the threats.
This article was first published in the San Francisco Chronicle and is reprinted with permission of the author.
- See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796#sthash.uqA7zLtg.dpuf
The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics
The US roots of nazi eugenics
by Edwin Black Edwin Black is the author of "IBM and the Holocaust" and "War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race," from which the following article is drawn.
But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.
Eugenics was the racist pseudoscience determined to wipe away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in twenty-seven states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.
California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the Twentieth Century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate and Polytechnic benefactor Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles M. Goethe, as well as members of the California State Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.
Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Stamford, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.
Stanford president David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race and blood" in his 1902 racial epistle "Blood of a Nation," in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.
In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation's social service agencies and associations.
The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, trumped up confinement or forced sterilization.
The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.
Much of the spiritual guidance and political agitation for the American eugenics movement came from California's quasi-autonomous eugenic societies, such as the Pasadena-based Human Betterment Foundation and the California branch of the American Eugenics Society, which coordinated much of their activity with the Eugenics Research Society in Long Island. These organizations--which functioned as part of a closely-knit network--published racist eugenic newsletters and pseudoscientific journals, such as Eugenical News and Eugenics, and propagandized for the Nazis.
Eugenics was born as a scientific curiosity in the Victorian age. In 1863, Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, theorized that if talented people only married other talented people, the result would be measurably better offspring. At the turn of the last century, Galton's ideas were imported into the United States just as Gregor Mendel's principles of heredity were rediscovered. American eugenic advocates believed with religious fervor that the same Mendelian concepts determining the color and size of peas, corn and cattle also governed the social and intellectual character of man.
In an America demographically reeling from immigration upheaval and torn by post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was everywhere in the early twentieth century. Elitists, utopians and so-called "progressives" fused their smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire to make a better world. They reinvented Galton's eugenics into a repressive and racist ideology. The intent: populate the earth with vastly more of their own socio-economic and biological kind--and less or none of everyone else.
The superior species the eugenics movement sought was populated not merely by tall, strong, talented people. Eugenicists craved blond, blue-eyed Nordic types. This group alone, they believed, was fit to inherit the earth. In the process, the movement intended to subtract emancipated Negroes, immigrant Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans, Jews, dark-haired hill folk, poor people, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the gentrified genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists.
How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to kill their bloodlines. The grand plan was to literally wipe away the reproductive capability of those deemed weak and inferior--the so-called "unfit." The eugenicists hoped to neutralize the viability of 10 percent of the population at a sweep, until none were left except themselves.
Eighteen solutions were explored in a Carnegie-supported 1911 "Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeder's Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population." Point eight was euthanasia.
The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in America was a "lethal chamber" or public locally operated gas chambers. In 1918, Popenoe, the Army venereal disease specialist during World War I, co-wrote the widely used textbook, Applied Eugenics, which argued, "From an historical point of view, the first method which presents itself is execution… Its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated." Applied Eugenics also devoted a chapter to "Lethal Selection," which operated "through the destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the environment, such as excessive cold, or bacteria, or by bodily deficiency."
Eugenic breeders believed American society was not ready to implement an organized lethal solution. But many mental institutions and doctors practiced improvised medical lethality and passive euthanasia on their own. One institution in Lincoln, Illinois fed its incoming patients milk from tubercular cows believing a eugenically strong individual would be immune. Thirty to forty percent annual death rates resulted at Lincoln. Some doctors practiced passive eugenicide one newborn infant at a time. Others doctors at mental institutions engaged in lethal neglect.
Nonetheless, with eugenicide marginalized, the main solution for eugenicists was the rapid expansion of forced segregation and sterilization, as well as more marriage restrictions. California led the nation, performing nearly all sterilization procedures with little or no due process. In its first twenty-five years of eugenic legislation, California sterilized 9,782 individuals, mostly women. Many were classified as "bad girls," diagnosed as "passionate," "oversexed" or "sexually wayward." At Sonoma, some women were sterilized because of what was deemed an abnormally large clitoris or labia.
In 1933 alone, at least 1,278 coercive sterilizations were performed, 700 of which were on women. The state's two leading sterilization mills in 1933 were Sonoma State Home with 388 operations and Patton State Hospital with 363 operations. Other sterilization centers included Agnews, Mendocino, Napa, Norwalk, Stockton and Pacific Colony state hospitals.
Even the United States Supreme Court endorsed aspects of eugenics. In its infamous 1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…. Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This decision opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes's words in their own defense.
Only after eugenics became entrenched in the United States was the campaign transplanted into Germany, in no small measure through the efforts of California eugenicists, who published booklets idealizing sterilization and circulated them to German officials and scientists.
Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to legitimize his anti-Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific facade of eugenics. Hitler was able to recruit more followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that science was on his side. While Hitler's race hatred sprung from his own mind, the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America.
During the '20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic scientists cultivated deep personal and professional relationships with Germany's fascist eugenicists. In Mein Kampf, published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. "There is today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States."
Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the American eugenics movement. "I have studied with great interest," he told a fellow Nazi, "the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."
Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenic leader Madison Grant calling his race-based eugenics book, The Passing of the Great Race his "bible."
Hitler's struggle for a superior race would be a mad crusade for a Master Race. Now, the American term "Nordic" was freely exchanged with "Germanic" or "Aryan." Race science, racial purity and racial dominance became the driving force behind Hitler's Nazism. Nazi eugenics would ultimately dictate who would be persecuted in a Reich-dominated Europe, how people would live, and how they would die. Nazi doctors would become the unseen generals in Hitler's war against the Jews and other Europeans deemed inferior. Doctors would create the science, devise the eugenic formulas, and even hand-select the victims for sterilization, euthanasia and mass extermination.
During the Reich's early years, eugenicists across America welcomed Hitler's plans as the logical fulfillment of their own decades of research and effort. California eugenicists republished Nazi propaganda for American consumption. They also arranged for Nazi scientific exhibits, such as an August 1934 display at the L.A. County Museum, for the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association.
In 1934, as Germany's sterilizations were accelerating beyond 5,000 per month, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe upon returning from Germany ebulliently bragged to a key colleague, "You will be interested to know, that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought.…I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people."
That same year, ten years after Virginia passed its sterilization act, Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State Hospital, observed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "The Germans are beating us at our own game."
More than just providing the scientific roadmap, America funded Germany's eugenic institutions. By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410,000 -- almost $4 million in 21st-Century money -- to hundreds of German researchers. In May 1926, Rockefeller awarded $250,000 to the German Psychiatric Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, later to become the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry. Among the leading psychiatrists at the German Psychiatric Institute was Ernst Rüdin, who became director and eventually an architect of Hitler's systematic medical repression.
Another in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's eugenic complex of institutions was the Institute for Brain Research. Since 1915, it had operated out of a single room. Everything changed when Rockefeller money arrived in 1929. A grant of $317,000 allowed the Institute to construct a major building and take center stage in German race biology. The Institute received additional grants from the Rockefeller Foundation during the next several years. Leading the Institute, once again, was Hitler's medical henchman Ernst Rüdin. Rüdin's organization became a prime director and recipient of the murderous experimentation and research conducted on Jews, Gypsies and others.
Beginning in 1940, thousands of Germans taken from old age homes, mental institutions and other custodial facilities were systematically gassed. Between 50,000 and 100,000 were eventually killed.
Leon Whitney, executive secretary of the American Eugenics Society declared of Nazism, "While we were pussy-footing around…the Germans were calling a spade a spade."
A special recipient of Rockefeller funding was the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin. For decades, American eugenicists had craved twins to advance their research into heredity. The Institute was now prepared to undertake such research on an unprecedented level. On May 13, 1932, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York dispatched a radiogram to its Paris office: JUNE MEETING EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS OVER THREE YEAR PERIOD TO KWG INSTITUTE ANTHROPOLOGY FOR RESEARCH ON TWINS AND EFFECTS ON LATER GENERATIONS OF SUBSTANCES TOXIC FOR GERM PLASM.
At the time of Rockefeller's endowment, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, a hero in American eugenics circles, functioned as a head of the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Rockefeller funding of that Institute continued both directly and through other research conduits during Verschuer's early tenure. In 1935, Verschuer left the Institute to form a rival eugenics facility in Frankfurt that was much heralded in the American eugenic press. Research on twins in the Third Reich exploded, backed up by government decrees. Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt, a eugenic doctor's journal he edited, that Germany's war would yield a "total solution to the Jewish problem."
Verschuer had a long-time assistant. His name was Josef Mengele. On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz. Verschuer notified the German Research Society, "My assistant, Dr. Josef Mengele (M.D., Ph.D.) joined me in this branch of research. He is presently employed as Hauptsturmführer [captain] and camp physician in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Anthropological testing of the most diverse racial groups in this concentration camp is being carried out with permission of the SS Reichsführer [Himmler]."
Mengele began searching the boxcar arrivals for twins. When he found them, he performed beastly experiments, scrupulously wrote up the reports and sent the paperwork back to Verschuer's institute for evaluation. Often, cadavers, eyes and other body parts were also dispatched to Berlin's eugenic institutes.
Rockefeller executives never knew of Mengele. With few exceptions, the foundation had ceased all eugenic studies in Nazi-occupied Europe before the war erupted in 1939. But by that time the die had been cast. The talented men Rockefeller and Carnegie financed, the institutions they helped found, and the science it helped create took on a scientific momentum of their own.
After the war, eugenics was declared a crime against humanity--an act of genocide. Germans were tried and they cited the California statutes in their defense. To no avail. They were found guilty.
However, Mengele's boss Verschuer escaped prosecution. Verschuer re-established his connections with California eugenicists who had gone underground and renamed their crusade "human genetics." Typical was an exchange July 25, 1946 when Popenoe wrote Verschuer, "It was indeed a pleasure to hear from you again. I have been very anxious about my colleagues in Germany…. I suppose sterilization has been discontinued in Germany?" Popenoe offered tidbits about various American eugenic luminaries and then sent various eugenic publications. In a separate package, Popenoe sent some cocoa, coffee and other goodies.
Verschuer wrote back, "Your very friendly letter of 7/25 gave me a great deal of pleasure and you have my heartfelt thanks for it. The letter builds another bridge between your and my scientific work; I hope that this bridge will never again collapse but rather make possible valuable mutual enrichment and stimulation."
Soon, Verschuer once again became a respected scientist in Germany and around the world. In 1949, he became a corresponding member of the newly formed American Society of Human Genetics, organized by American eugenicists and geneticists.
In the fall of 1950, the University of Münster offered Verschuer a position at its new Institute of Human Genetics, where he later became a dean. In the early and mid-1950s, Verschuer became an honorary member of numerous prestigious societies, including the Italian Society of Genetics, the Anthropological Society of Vienna, and the Japanese Society for Human Genetics.
Human genetics' genocidal roots in eugenics were ignored by a victorious generation that refused to link itself to the crimes of Nazism and by succeeding generations that never knew the truth of the years leading up to war. Now governors of five states, including California have issued public apologies to their citizens, past and present, for sterilization and other abuses spawned by the eugenics movement.
Human genetics became an enlightened endeavor in the late twentieth century. Hard-working, devoted scientists finally cracked the human code through the Human Genome Project. Now, every individual can be biologically identified and classified by trait and ancestry. Yet even now, some leading voices in the genetic world are calling for a cleansing of the unwanted among us, and even a master human species.
There is understandable wariness about more ordinary forms of abuse, for example, in denying insurance or employment based on genetic tests. On October 14, America's first genetic anti-discrimination legislation passed the Senate by unanimous vote. Yet because genetics research is global, no single nation's law can stop the threats.
This article was first published in the San Francisco Chronicle and is reprinted with permission of the author.
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The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics