TBR News June 24, 2020

Jun 24 2020

 

The Voice of the White House
Comments:
“The Internet has proven to be the greatest source of information since lunatic Christians burnt down the library of Alexandria. Anything being sought, be it an address or an in-depth analysis of Dead Sea scrolls, is there and is the main reason that the famous Encyclopedia Britannica has gone out of business.

At the same time, because it is open to one and all, the Internet is also a breeding ground for a legion of strange persons with a frantic desire to air their pet theses, themselves and their friends.

We see earnest discussions about the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy by mutant dwarves, the Sinister Truth about Hurricane Katrina, Tesla Death Rays used to bring down the buildings of the WTC, balanced with other information proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that Russian bombers were used. We also discover the evil plottings of the Illuminiati, a group that has been long gone, or that the Rothschild banking house had taken over the whole world. And from one source, now long  vanished, we discover that Houston was destroyed by a nuclear bomb set off by Jewish radicals or that the Fukishima disaster was really caused by an Israeli submarine, using German-made nuclear torpedos! And today the breathless media informs the world that a horrible plague is sweeping China, killing at least three people, and threatening the planet with population extinctions

Yes, the Internet can entertain as well as inform.

But the fact that the Internet has many independent news sites means the diminution of the print media and the television news stations. Since these are the propaganda control for the oligarchy, there is great distress in board rooms and from them to the halls of Congress. They would like to shut off the Internet so that the stupid, and tax-paying public can only see what they are supposed to and not what might be the truth.

Obama and Cass Sunstein tried to shut down anyone who dared to interfere with the propaganda machinery but they were not successful. Even a furious and highly delusional eccentric, Trump and his decaying machinery, can’t do it and if they continue to try, there will be very serious public reactions indeed.”

 

Trump’s Approval Rating

June 20

USA Rating

Approve     Disapprove

35%          65%

 

The Table of Contents

  • Huge Pandemic sweeps nation, millions dead!
  • New Claim That Enemies of U.S. Developed Trump in Lab
  • America’s Teachers Urge Trump to Use Time at Home to Repeat First Grade
  • The CIA Can’t Protect Its Own Hacking Tools. Why Should We Trust Government Privacy and Security Proposals?
  • The CIA undercover
    Approval of Trump’s coronavirus response sinks to lowest on record amid surge in cases: Reuters/Ipsos poll
  • Exclusive: Dozens of Republican former U.S. national security officials to back Biden
  • The Encyclopedia of American Loons

 

Huge Pandemic sweeps nation, millions dead!

June 24, 2020

Dr. Ethelridge Minge, DVM

Yesterdays Science Tomorrow

A shocking resurgence of the Corona virus is sweeping the United States, leaving millions dead in its wake.

The streets of New York are piled yards high with the dead and bulldozers are busy pushing them into the East River.

Maine is virtually depopulated and packs of wolves have been seen in Bangor eating the dead and dying citizens.

President Trump is moving his Southern White House from Florida to an unnamed island in the Caribbean and Congress has fled Washington.

Little Greta Thumberg was going to address a joint session of Congress on Friday demanding they not only halt climate change but stop the spread of Corona virus but events have caused her to sail back to Sweden on her motorized ironing board.

California is one vast charnel house and the odor of the rotting dead can be smelt even in Nevada.

With all America’s major cities blanketed by dying citizens, funeral directors are raking in huge profits. They often sell the same casket ten times while dumping the previous contents into supermarket dumpsters for their eventual compacting.

The remaining citizens are keeping alive by wearing WWII gas masks and eating only radiated candied goat meat.

Commercial aircraft have landed with their cabins packed with the dead and dying so travel by mule is recommended by the one WHO spokesman still in place.

Initially, the Chinese have been blamed but now it is believed that the culprits are from a hitherto secret lab in Lichtenstein.

President Trump’s exhortations to drink a cup of Drano for a certain cure are being attacked as “monstrous” by health associations but as Trump was sent by God Himself to save poor America from the wicked George Soros and his Antifa armored divisions, the sale of Drano has tripled in the last week.

Reuters has been listing the dead by shoe size but the Guardian is more interested in hat sizes.

Since most Americans do not wear hats, or ties, the figures are viewed as questionable by Advanced Scientists.

All of this could have been avoided, Judge Roy Moore has said, if only Americans would attend daily services at a Christian church.

Of his choice.

 

New Claim That Enemies of U.S. Developed Trump in Lab
May 4, 2020
by Andy Borowitz
The New Yorker

WASHINGTON, D.C. (The Borowitz Report)—Enemies of the United States developed Donald J. Trump in a top-secret biotech lab with the goal of wreaking untold havoc on the nation, a leading conspiracy theorist claimed on Monday.

The theorist, Harland Dorrinson, said that he has “conclusive evidence” that Trump was created by enemy scientists as the “ultimate weapon” to bring the United States to its knees.

“Having combed through binders of secret documents, I can say with a hundred per cent confidence that the person we have been calling Donald Trump was grown in a recombinant-DNA lab,” Dorrinson said.

“It’s the only possible explanation,” he added.

While the organism known as Trump appeared to be little more than a curiosity for the first seven decades of his existence, “seemingly designed for our amusement,” in recent days he has become “fully weaponized,” the conspiracy theorist asserted.

“In the past two weeks, he has urged Americans to defy public-health orders, to insert ultraviolet light inside their bodies, and to ingest bleach,” he said. “In a secret lab somewhere, enemy scientists are popping champagne.”

Comment: Scientists have also revealed that when Trump was born, the doctor looked at the placenta and told Trump’s mother that she had just birthed twins.


America’s Teachers Urge Trump to Use Time at Home to Repeat First Grade
March 31, 2020
by Andy Borowitz
The New Yorker

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump should use this time when he is staying at home to repeat first grade, the nation’s teachers are urging.

Carol Foyler, the executive director of the National Alliance of Elementary Educators, said that the homebound Trump has a “golden opportunity” to use remote learning to repeat the first-grade curriculum.

“At a time when many of our nation’s children are being homeschooled, this seems like the perfect time for President Trump to learn the basics of reading, writing, and math,” she said. “By June, he could be reading ‘Hop on Pop’ and ‘Go, Dog, Go!’ ”

She added that anyone at the White House would be qualified to homeschool Trump, “except Jared.”

Foyler acknowledged that the plan for Trump to repeat first grade had faced dissent from some of the nation’s teachers, who felt strongly that he should first repeat kindergarten.

“From an educational standpoint, the kindergarten curriculum is mainly devoted to socialization and getting along with others,” she said. “I think the ship has sailed on that.”

That disagreement aside, Foyler said that the nation’s elementary educators were prepared to offer Trump a broad array of online learning resources. “He will have everything he needs to repeat first grade while Dr. Fauci runs the country,” she said.

 

The CIA Can’t Protect Its Own Hacking Tools. Why Should We Trust Government Privacy and Security Proposals?
The very idea that our intelligence agencies could keep encryption bypasses secret is absurd.
July 23, 2020
by Andrea O’Sullivan
Reason

We are often told that law enforcement must have a way to get around strong encryption technologies in order to catch bad guys. Such a “backdoor” into security techniques would only be used when necessary and would be closely guarded so it would not fall into the wrong hands, the story goes.

The intelligence community does not yet have a known custom-built backdoor into encryption. But intelligence agencies do hold a trove of publicly unknown vulnerabilities, called “zero days,” they use to obtain hard-to-get data. One would hope that government agencies, especially those explicitly dedicated to security, could adequately protect these potent weapons.

A recently released 2017 DOJ investigation into a breach of the CIA Center for Cyber Intelligence’s (CCI) “Vault 7” hacking tools publicized in 2016 suggests that might be too big of an ask. Not only was the CCI found to be more interested in “building up cyber tools than keeping them secure,” the nation’s top spy agency routinely made rookie security mistakes that ultimately allowed personnel to leak the goods to Wikileaks.

The released portions of the report are frankly embarrassing. The CCI cyber arsenal was not appropriately compartmentalized, users routinely shared admin-level passwords without oversight, there seemed to be little controls over what content users could access, and data was stored and available to all users indefinitely. No wonder there was a breach.

It gets worse. Because the CIA servers lacked activity monitoring and audit capabilities, the agency did not even realize it was hacked until Wikileaks publicly announced it in March of 2017. As the report notes, if the hack was the result of a hostile foreign government like, say, China, the CIA might still be in the dark about the hack. Might there be other unknown breaches that fit this bill?

The report recommended several measures the CIA should take to shore up its internal defenses. Among the few that were not redacted: do a better job of protecting zero days and vetting personnel. Okay, so don’t make all of the same mistakes again: got it.

Well, it looks like even this goal was too ambitious for the CIA. Intelligence gadfly Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.), who first publicized the report, wrote a letter Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe stating that “the intelligence community is still lagging behind” three years after the report was first published. He demanded public answers for outstanding security problems in the intelligence community, such as a lack of basic practices like multi-factor and email authentication protocols.

What a snafu. It is absurd enough that the CIA of all places cannot even implement basic password protection programs. But when intelligence hacking units cannot even manage to protect its own hacking tools, our troubles multiply.

The CIA is unfortunately not uniquely incompetent among the intelligence community. The National Security Agency (NSA) found itself the victim of a similar zero day link in the 2016 Shadow Brokers dump. These are just two incidents that the public knows about. A culture of lax security practices invites attacks from all kinds of actors. We don’t know how many times such hacking tools may have been discovered by more secretive outfits.

Many policy implications follow. There is a strong case to be made that intelligence agencies should not hoard zero-day vulnerabilities at all but should report them to the appropriate body for quick patching. This limits their toolkit, but it makes everyone safer overall. Of course, foreign and other hostile entities are unlikely to unilaterally disarm in this way.

The intelligence community supposedly has a process for vetting which zero days should be reported and which are appropriate to keep secret, called the Vulnerabilities Equities Process (VEP). Agencies must describe a vulnerability to a board who decides whether it’s dangerous enough to need patching or useful enough for spying purposes.

For example, a vulnerability in some technology that is only used in China would probably be kept for operations. Theoretically, a vulnerability in some technology that is widely-used in the United States would be reported for fixing to keep Americans safe. As these incidents show, this does not always happen.

The VEP process is clearly insufficient, given these high-profile breaches. The very least the intelligence community can do is appropriately secure the bugs they’ve got. Efforts like Wyden’s seek to impose more accountability on these practices.

There’s a more general lesson about government efforts to improve security and privacy as well.

As implied earlier, we should strongly resist government efforts to compromise encryption in the name of law enforcement or anything else. Some of the most technically savvy government bodies cannot even secure the secret weapons they have not advertised. Can you imagine the attack vectors if they publicly attain some master encryption-breaking technique?

It also demonstrates the weaknesses of many top-down proposals to promote privacy or security. Government plans often attempt to sketch out master checklists that must be followed perfectly on all levels to work well. They can be time-consuming and burdensome, which means that personnel often cut corners and shirk accountability. Then when disaster inevitably strikes, the conclusion is that “people didn’t stick to the plan hard enough,” not that the plan was generally unrealistic to start.

There isn’t a lot that the public can do about seemingly out-of-control intelligence agencies failing to secure potent cyberweapons beyond making a fuss. “National security” and all that. But it does give us a powerful argument against granting more power to these insecure intelligence bodies to break strong encryption. Governments can’t even protect their secret cyber weapons. They almost certainly will not be able to protect a known backdoor into encryption.

The CIA undercover
June 24, 2020
by Christian Jürs

Since at least 1981, a worldwide network of ‘free-standing’ [i.e., no direct U.S. government ties] companies, including airlines, aviation and military spare parts suppliers, and trading companies, has been utilized by the CIA and the U.S. government to illegally ship arms and military spare parts to Iran and to the Contras. These companies were set up with the approval and knowledge of senior CIA officials and other senior U.S. government officials and staffed primarily by ex-CIA, ex-FBI and ex-military officers.

These CIA-controlled companies include Aero Systems, Inc., of Miami, Arrow Air, Aero Systems Pvt. Ltd of Singapore, Hierax of Hong Kong, Pan Aviation in Miami, Merex in Georgia, Sur International, St. Lucia Airways, Global International Airways, International Air Tours of Nigeria, Continental Shelf Explorations, Inc., Jupiter, Florida, Varicon, Inc., Dane Aviation Supply of Miami, Parvus, Safir, International Trading and Investment Guaranty Corp., Ltd., and Information Security International Inc., Zenith Technical Enterprises, Ltd., Mineral Carriers, Ltd.

During the Iran Contra affair, General Secord’s arms shipments, arrainged through the CIA, transferred weapons destined for Central America to MEREX CORP,  (MEREX INTERNATIONAL ARMS), Savannah, Ga. The Merex address  was occupied by Combat Military Ordinances Ltd., controlled by retired  military officer JAMES P. ATWOOD. Atwood, a retired  Liieutenant Colonel of U.S. Military Intelligence and later a CIA officer station in their Berlin office, was  involved in major arms trades with CIA-sponsored international buyers, specifically Middle Eastern Arab states.

Monzer Al-Kassar utilized the Merex firm for some of his weapons transactions with the Enterprise.  Merex weapons systems was founded by Otto Skorzeny’s associate Gerhard Mertins  in Bonn after the war and was considered a CIA proprietary firm. Mertex was close to and worked with the BND, the German intelligence service evolved from the CIA-controlled Gehlen organization. Atwood was involved with Interarmco, run by Samuel Cummings, an Englishman who ran the largest arms firm in the world. Cummings died in Monaco because he had looted his CIA employers and found that principality safer than Warrenton, Virginia.

Also connected with Atwood’s firm were Collector’s Armory, Thomas Nelson Prop, and a George Petersen of Springfield, Virginia, and Emmanuel (Manny) Wiegenberg, a Canadian arms dealer.and look into Atwood’s role in supplying weapons and explosives to the Quebec Libré movement. The head of the Canada Desk at the Company was actively encouraging this group to split away from Canada.   This is a chapter that the CIA does not want discussed.

 

The following have been identified as being involved in CIA rendition.

Aviation Worldwide Services, LLC, sister company to Presidential (see below), both owned by Blackwater, USA Melbourne, FL, mercenaries. 1371 General Aviation Drive, Melbourne, Brevard County, Florida 32935-6310

Aviation Worldwide Services LLC (AWS) is a sister company to Presidential Airways, Inc., both of which are owned by Blackwater USA, Melbourne, FL. AWS owns the planes, and Presidential Airways operates them. The company appears to provide air services to the CIA – flight records show that its N964BW has made at least two trips to the agency’s Camp Peary training facility and N962BW went there in May 2006 Another plane it owns, N968BW, flew from Washington Dulles International Airport to Camp Peary on March 13, 2007.

Bayard Foreign Marketing LLC is is alleged to have been involved in extraordinary rendition. Bayard is a “phantom company registered in Oregon State since August 2003. 755 Pittock Block, 921 SW Washington Street ,Portland, OR 97205 Located in Multnomah County, OR Plane Registered to Bayard. The following plane was formerly owned by Bayard and was registered to Premier Executive Transport Services, Inc. after December 2004: r-N8068V (now N44982; ex N379P, N581GA) – Gulfstream V – s/n 581 r-N44982 (ex N379P, N8068V, N581GA) – Gulfstream V – s/n 581

Keeler and Tate Management LLC (AVSPEC) Legal counsel for Keeler and Tate is Streven F. Petersen who is involved in political public relations. Petersen shares an office with Paul D.Laxalt and Frank R. Petersen  The following are identified according to Number, Maker Model, and Serial Number (as of January 2006). r-N313P (now N4476S) – Boeing 737-7ET – s/n 33010 (ex- Premier Executive Transport Services, Inc. r-N4476S (N313P) – Boeing 737-7ET – s/n 33010 (ex-Premier N313P)

Path Corporation Path’s address is that of Barbara-Cherix O’Leay a real estate lawyer. 413 Rehoboth Avenue / PO Box 305, Rehoboth Beach, DE 19971, Located in Sussex County, DEThe following planes are registered to Path: N120JM – Fairchild SA227-AT – s/n AT-577 N212CP – Cessna 208B – s/n 208B0531 r-N221SG – Gates Learjet 35A – s/n 182

Premier Executive Transport Services, Inc. is an aviation contractor. the company had originally been incorporated in Delaware on Jan. 10, 1994. “On Jan. 23, 1996, Dean Plakias, a lawyer with Hill & Plakias in Dedham, Mass., filed incorporation papers with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts listing the company’s president as Bryan P. Dyess. According to public documents, Premier Executive ordered a new Gulfstream V in 1998. It was delivered in November 1999 with tail number N581GA, and re-registered in March 2000 with a new tail number, N379P. It began flights in June 2000, and changed the tail number again in December 2003.”

Presidential Airways, Inc. is a sister company to  Aviation Worldwide Services, LLC  (AWS), both of which are owned by Blackwater, USA  Melbourne, FL.

S&K Aviation, LLC is involved in Extraodrinary Rendition S&K was “first registered in Florida in December 2003 and is an active company with a registered agent.”

Wells Fargo Bank Northwest NA, a subsidiary of  Wells Fargo & Company, is Trustee for the aircraft N168BF, a Raytheon Hawker 800XP with Serial # 258373.

Rapid Air Transportation, Inc. Planes Registered to Rapid Air 10606 Baltimore Avenue ,Suite 300 , Beltsville, Prince George’s County,  MD 20705-2131Rapid is the registered owner of the following planes. However, they are operated by Tepper Aviation, Inc. N2189MLockheed 382G-44K-30 – s/n 4582, N4557C Lockheed 382G-44K-30 – s/n 5027, N8193J Lockheed 382G-44K-30 – s/n 4796

Stevens Leasing, Inc. Stevens was incorporated by Mark E. Klass (see Devon Holding & Leasing, Inc.), who is now a judge in Lexington, NC. 8130 Country Village Drive, Suite 101 Cordova, TN 38016  Located in Shelby County, TN.Planes Registered to Stevens N173S – Beech B300 – s/n FM-4 N845S – Douglas DC3 – s/n 25509 (43-48248)  N4009L – Raytheon B300C – s/n FM-9 N4042J – Beech B200 – s/n BB-874

Tepper Aviation, Inc. is based at the Bob Sikes Airport in Crestview, Florida. The company has a long association with the CIA. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was widely reported to be flying weapons into Angola to arm the UNITA rebels. More recently, it has been linked with the practice of extraordinary rendition.  Tepper is closely connected  with Crestview Aerospace Corporation: it shares the same address, and Charles R. Shanklin is a director of both companies. Additionally, Tepper director Jack E. Owen was President of Crestview Aerospace until 2001. Tepper uses a Hercules aircraft, with the registration N3867X.

 

CIA Cryptonyms 

AE

CRYPT DEFINITION

AE       Soviet Union sources, in particular defectors and agents.

AEBARMAN    Soviet officer Yuri Ivonovich Nosenko, who defected in Feb 1964 with information about Oswald. His other crypts were AEFOXTROT and AEDONOR.

AEBURBLE     Stateside Soviet double-agent controlled by the FBI, and code-named TUMBLEWEED by the FBI. Actual name Guenter Schulz. AEBURBLE (TUMBLEWEED)’s information was what made the connection between Valeriy Kostikov and the KGB’s “Department 13.”

AEDONOR      Soviet officer Yuri Ivonovich Nosenko, who defected in Feb 1964 with information about Oswald. His other crypts were AEBARMAN and AEFOXTROT.

AEFOXTROT   Soviet officer Yuri Ivonovich Nosenko, who defected in Feb 1964 with information about Oswald. His other crypts were AEBARMAN and AEDONOR.

AEGUSTO       Yuriy Loginov, a KGB officer who became an in-place double agent for the CIA.

AELADLE        Anatoliy Golitsyn, a Soviet defector prized by CIA CounterIntelligence head James Angleton.

AE crypts see second list: AEBROOM, AECHALK, AEDIPPER, AEJAMMER, AEOBVERT, AEWILDFIRE.

AM

CRYPT DEFINITION

AM      Operations, organizations, and individuals relating to Cuba.

AMBANG-1     Manuel Ray Rivero, leader of the Revolutionary Movement of the People (MRP) and later Junta Revolucionaria Cubana (JURE).

AMBANTY       Paramilitary operation of internal resistance in Cuba, originally called AMCOBRA, rolled up by Castro in 1964.

AMBANTY-1    Colonel Abad (see AMBANTY).

AMBIDDY-1    Manuel Artime Buesa, a prominent Cuban exile who was in the Bay of Pigs invasion, in 1963 moved to Nicaragua as leader of operation AMWORLD.

AMBUD          Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC), Cuban exile organization formed on 22 Mar 1961 under U.S. guidance to unify various exile groups.

AMBUD-1       Jose Miro Cardona, first Prime Minister of Cuba under Castro, who left Cuba and headed the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC) exile group.

AMCALL-1      Reynold Gonzalez Gonzalez.

AMCANOE      Project of U.S. contacts for a resistance group in Cuba, incl. support of Unidad de Liberacion Nacional (ULN).

AMCANOE-1   Eduardo Garcia Molina.

AMCANOE-3   Antonio Jose Ramirez Mendez.

AMCANOE-7   Benjamin Acosta Valdes.

AMCANOE-9   Juan Amestoy Dominguez.

AMCAPE-1      Tad Szulc, New York Times journalist involved in AMTRUNK project, suspected by CIA of being hostile foreign agent.

AMCARBON-1           Al Burt, Miami Herald journalist used as source and “operational support” for CIA’s JMWAVE station.

AMCARBON-3           Donald Dean Bohning, Latin American editor of Miami Herald and CIA source.

AMCIGAR       Frente Revolucionario Democratico (FRD), aka Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front.

AMCLATTER-1           Bernard Leon Barker, Cuban exile and contract agent for CIA, worked with E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis. One of the Watergate burglars.

AMCLATTER-5           Alberto de Jesus Alberty Garcia.

AMCOBRA      Paramilitary operation of internal resistance in Cuba, renamed AMBANTY, rolled up by Castro in 1964.

AMCOVE        An “operation centered around an FI (Foreign Intelligence) net in Cuba to report intelligence information via Secret Writing.”

AMCOVE-1     Alejandra Sanchez.

AMDENIM-1   Alberto Fernandez Hechevarria, Cuban exile whose boat Tejana was used in anti-Castro activities.

AMEMBER-1   Julio Lobo, sugar magnate in Cuba and later an exile and donor to the anti-Castro cause.

AMFAUNA       Network of in-Cuba agents, nearly all women, providing military, political, and economic reporting, including reports on attempts to kill Castro.

AMHAWK       Manuel Antonio (Tony) de Varona, a leader in the Cuban Revolutionary Council and other anti-Castro exile groups.

AMHIM          Project for the “distribution of news and information bulletins and radio newscast tapes to addresses throughout Latin America” via AIP (Agencia de Informaciones Periodisticas).

AMHIM-2       Agustin Alles Soberon, worked under AMHIM project and also for Juana Castro’s radio program.

AMHINT-5      Isidro ‘Chilo’ Borja, early member of the DRE. Educated as an engineer in Canada, he controlled the group’s boats and headed the group’s military section in 1963

AMHINT-53    Luis Fernandez-Rocha, Secretary General of the Revolutionary Student Directorate (DRE).

AMHINT-56    Juan Francisco Blanco Fernandez, participated in DRE raids on Cuba.

AMICE-14      Miguel A. Diaz Isalgue, a “principal” in the AMTRUNK operation.

AMICE-27      Dr. Nestor Moreno, a “principal” in the AMTRUNK operation.

AMKHAN-2     Carlos Martin Ahrens Temple, Western Union employee in Cuba recruited by CIA agent Bernard Barker (AMCLATTER-1).

AMLASH         Rolando Cubela Secades, a Cuban doctor and official who was recruited in 1963 for an assassination attempt on Castro. Cubela was being given a CIA poison pen on Nov 22 when news of JFK’s death broke.

AMLEO           “An FI propaganda operation involving the exploitation of Capt. Jose Ricardo Rabel Nunez (AMLEO-3), a high-level defector who escaped from Cuba in an INRA plane on 6 December 1962.”

AMLEO-3       Capt. Jose Ricardo Rabel Nunez, “a high-level defector who escaped from Cuba in an INRA plane on 6 December 1962.”

AMLOUT-1      Raul Castro, brother of Fidel.

AMMUG-1      Cuban intelligence officer named Vladimir Lahera Rodriguez, who defected to U.S. via Canada in April 1964, and was interrogated about Oswald in addition to other matters.

AMNIP-1        Miguel Roche Monroy – Cuban DGI defector.

AMOT “Cubans in Miami (outside group) controlled by JMWAVE station who gathered information on Cubans, primarily from debriefing of Cuban refugees.”

AMPALM-4     Angel Fernandez Varela.

AMQUACK (AMQUACK-1)     Che Guevera, guerrilla leader and minister in Castro’s Cuba, killed in Bolivia in 1968.

AMROD          CIA operations against the Cuban intelligence service. One such operation involved planting false papers on Cuban Cultural Attache Teresa Proenza, to make it look like the Vice-Minister of Defense had betrayed the Soviet missile buildup in Cuba to the Americans.

AMSHALE-1    Antonia Veciana, leader of Cuban exile group ALPHA-66. Veciana told HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi that he had worked with a “Maurice Bishop” who Fonzi came to believe was CIA officer David Phillips.

AMSPELL        The Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, or DRE (Cuban Student Directorate). DRE delegate Carlos Bringuier had the famous altercation with Lee Oswald in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, and DRE members quickly spread information about Oswald after JFK’s assassination.

AMSTRUT-2    Juana de la Caridad Castro Ruz, sister of Fidel and Raul, who ran a radio program against her brothers’ regime.

AMSWIRL-1    Customs agent Cesar Diosdado.

AMTHUG        Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader who took power in 1959 and whose demise the U.S. began unsuccessfully plotting soon thereafter.

AMTRUNK      Operation for military overthrow of Castro’s government in 1963, promoted within White House circles but distrusted by CIA. Aka Plan Leonardo.

AMTRUNK-1   George Volsky.

AMTRUNK-9   Modesto Orlando Orozco Basulto.

AMTRUNK-10 Ramon Thomas Guin Diaz.

AMTRUNK-11 Carlos Pedraza Aguilar.

AMTURVY       An operation “designed for the purpose of conducting sabotage operations against Cuba. It consisted of a net of 13 AMTURVY assets whose primary function, apart from sabotage, was the preparation of target studies and analysis of sabotage operations.”

AMTURVY-1    Alturo Maria Jesus Varona [Alesso?].

AMTURVY-4    Enrique Diaz Fernandez.

AMTURVY-13 Mario Salabarria Aguiar.

AMUPAS-1     Viola June Cobb, who informed for CIA under crypt AMUPAS-1 while working for Castro, and played a role in the Elena Garro de Paz story, with Mexican crypt LICOOKY-1.

AMWAIL-1      Justo Carillo Hernandez, leader of Agrupacion Montecristi and a founding member of the Frente Civico Revolucionario (FRD), forerunner of the CRC.

AMWORLD     Plan to invade Cuba from offshore, primarily involving Manuel Artime (AMBIDDY-1), based in Nicaragua. Lamar Waldron (“Ultimate Sacrifice”) interprets this as the CIA’s portion of a JFK-sponsored coup plan set for 1 Dec 1963 involving Juan Almeida.

AM crypts see second list: AMADDER, AMANCHOR, AMART, AMBANG, AMBARB, AMBASE, AMBEACH, AMBLEAK-1, AMBLEAK-2, AMBLESS-1, AMBLOOD, AMBOA, AMBUCKLE-1, AMCALL, AMCARBON-2, AMCHALICE, AMCHAMPAGNE-1, AMCHEER-1, AMCHIRP-1, AMCOG-2, AMCONCERT, AMCORE-2, AMCROAK, AMCROW-1, AMCUBE-1, AMCUTLER-1, AMDATA, AMDAUB-1, AMDENIIM, AMDIP, AMDOT, AMECRU-1, AMFLORA-1, AMFOR, AMFOX, AMGABE-1, AMGLEN-9, AMGUPPY-1, AMHALF-2, AMHAWK-2, AMHICK, AMHINT, AMICE, AMILIAD, AMING-3, AMISLE-2, AMJAVA-4, AMKNOB, AMLAME, AMLIE, AMLIME-1, AMLILAC, AMLISP, AMLUNY, AMLYRIC-1, AMORP-1, AMOZON, AMNUBA-1, AMPACA-1, AMPAL-1, AMPALM-5, AMPAN-4, AMPANIC-7, AMQUAR, AMRALLY, AMRASP, AMRAVEL-1, AMRAZOR-1, AMRIPE-1, AMRUSTY, AMSAKI-1, AMSAUCE, AMSCROLL, AMSEED-3, AMSEVER-2, AMSHATTER, AMSIGH-2, AMSOUR, AMSPARK, AMSTASH, AMSTONE, AMSTRUT, AMSUM, AMSUMAC, AMSWEEP, AMTABBY, AMTAUP-1, AMTEASE-1, AMTHRIL, AMWARM, AMWEE, AMWHIP-1, AMWORRY, AMWREN, AMYUM.

GP

CRYPT DEFINITION

GP      Crypts related to the Kennedys, including JFK’s alleged assassin.

GPFLOOR Lee Harvey Oswald (post-assassination designation).

GPFOCUS Robert F. Kennedy, JFK’s brother and Attorney General in the JFK administration.

GPIDEAL President Kennedy.

HT

CRYPT DEFINITION

HT      See second list

HTLINGUAL CIA mail opening and mail cover program, operated from 1952 to 1973. Lee Harvey Oswald was one of this program’s targets.

JM

CRYPT DEFINITION

JM       See second list

JMBAR           Key West, Florida.

JMWAVE        CIA Station in Miami, training facility for anti-Cuban operations, existing on what is now the site of the Miami Zoo.

JM crypts to decode: JMDUSK, JMMAYFLY, JMNET, JMSPUR, JMZIP.

KU

CRYPT DEFINITION

KU      Divisions of the CIA itself.

KUBARK         CIA.

KUCAGE         CIA Psychological and Paramilitary Operations Staff.

KUCLUB         CIA Office of Communications.

KUDESK         Counter Intelligence (CI) division of CIA.

KUDOVE        Clandestine services of CIA.

KUSODA        CIA Office of Security.

KUTUBE         Foreign Intelligence (FI) division of CIA.

KUTUBE/D CIA “Staff D” responsible for SIGINT (Signals Intelligence – electronic intercepts), where the ZR/RIFLE executive action program was housed.

KU crypts: KUJUMP, KUWOLF.

LC

CRYPT DEFINITION

LC       See second list

LCFLUTTER Polygraph (“lie detector”) testing, sometimes referred to simply as “FLUTTER”.

LI

CRYPT DEFINITION

LI        Operations, organizations, and individuals related to Mexico City.

LIBIGHT Mail opening operation in Mexico City, with Soviet and/or Cuban targets.

LICALLA One of three photo surveillance sites under the LIEMPTY umbrella project. LILYRIC was an apartment which provided a view of the back of the Soviet Embassy compound in Mexico City. The other two photo sites were LIMITED and LILYRIC.

LICHANT-1 Unwitting asset Manuel Calvillo, who the HSCA failed to locate in its attempt to corroborate Elena Garro de Paz’s story regarding Oswald in Mexico City.

LICOOKY-1 Viola June Cobb, who informed for CIA under crypt AMUPAS-1 while working for Castro, and played a role in the Elena Garro de Paz story, with Mexican crypt LICOOKY-1 (aka LICOOKIE-1).

LIEMBRACE A Mexico City-based surveillance project, under the umbrella LIPSTICK project. LIEMBRACE included a surveillance team, a radio repairman, and a phototruck team.

LIEMPTY Umbrella surveillance project in Mexico City, formerly code-named LIPSTICK. Included a variety of sub-projects under it.

LIENTRAP Mobile surveillance team used to track Soviet operatives in Mexico City.

LIENVOY CIA telephone tapping program in Mexico City, targeting Cuban and Soviet embassies and run in conjunction with the Mexican DFS. Netted phone calls allegedy of Oswald. See also LIFEAT.

LIERODE CIA photosurveillance and tapping operation targeting the Cuban embassy compound in Mexico City (see refs for confusion on this). It is the LIERODE operation which allegedly failed to obtain photos of Oswald due to a camera breakdown.

LIFEAT           CIA telephone tapping program on a number of phone lines in Mexico City, collecting information on a variety of targets, including home phone lines of Soviet officers, the Yugoslav Embassy, and more. Project grew to include TELEX systems and microphone placements. See also LIENVOY.

LIHUFF-1 Alfonso Rudolph Wichtrich, Executive VP, American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico.

LIJERSEY Physical surveillance team operating in Mexico City. Renamed LIRICE in 1962.

LILYRIC One of three photo surveillance sites under the LIEMPTY umbrella project. LILYRIC was a 3rd story apartment across the street from the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, south of the LIMITED installation. The other two photo sites were LIMITED and LICALLA.

LIMERICK Soviet Embassy in Mexico City.

LIMESA          Extremely sensitive monitoring operation targeting Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, run by Staff D of CounterIntelligence. Used four-unit basehouse known as LIMUST.

LIMITED One of three photo surveillance sites under the LIEMPTY umbrella project. LIMITED was a fixed site right across the street from the front gate of the Soviet Embassy. The other two photo sites were LILYRIC and LICALLA.

LIMUST          A collection of four housing units used in the LIMESA project and other surveillance operations targeting the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City (actually, the exact distinction between LIMESA and LIMUST is not clear).

LIONION Photosurveillance project targeting Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. The purported failure of the LIONION installation to capture a picture of Lee Oswald in late September 1963 was a matter of concern and some disbelief in the HSCA’s investigation.

LIONION-1 Alberto Rodriguez Gallego, part of LIONION photography project targeting Cuban embassy.

LIPSTICK This Mexico City-based project was an “umbrella type project…consisted of multiline phone taps, three photographic sites, a mobile surveillance team and a mail intercept operation.” Under this project were LIMITED, LILYRIC, and LICALLA, LIEMBRACE, LIENTRAP, and possibly other projects. Renamed LIEMPTY.

LIRAVINE Mid-1960s project “for the purpose of consolidating into one administrative group a number of active Cuban informants,” including LIOLEO-1, LISICLE-1, AMSEVER-2, AMPACA-1, and LICARD-1.

LIRICE           Surveillance project targeting the Communist Party in Mexico City. Some of its agents were arrested and their CIA case officer detained by the Mexican Security Service and subsequently allowed to leave the country. Originally named LIJERSEY.

LITAMIL-7 Consuelo Esperon Perez, apparently employed as a secretary at the Cuban Embassy.

LITEMPO-2 Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, President of Mexico from 1964 to 1970. He was president in 1968 during the famous Tlatelcolco massacre. Diaz Ortiz was part of Mexico City station chief Win Scott’s LITEMPO program.

LITEMPO-4 Fernando Gutierrez Barrios, head of the Mexican secret police (DFS) from 1964 to 1970, and later held other Mexican government posts. Gutierrez Barrios was part of Mexico City station chief Win Scott’s LITEMPO program.

LITEMPO-8 Luis Echevarria Alvarez, Mexican Interior Minister in 1964 and President from 1970-76. Echevarria was part of Mexico City station chief Win Scott’s LITEMPO program.

LI crypts separate listing: LIARBOR, LICAGE, LICAPER, LICARD-1, LICOBRA, LICOMET-2, LICOWL, LICOZY, LIDANCE, LIDASH, LIDATE, LIDENY, LIEMBROIL, LIELEGANT, LIEMBRACE-4, LIEVICT, LIFEUD-22, LIFEUD-23, LIFIRE, LIFIRE-1, LIFIRE-2, LIFIRE-3, LIFIRE-4, LIFIRE-5, LIFTER, LIHABIT, LIHACK, LIHALT, LIJENNET, LIJULEP, LIKAYAK-2, LILIANA, LILINK, LIMAGPIE, LIMEW, LIMOUSINE, LIMOTOR, LIMYSTIC, LINILE-1, LINLUCK, LIOLEO-1, LIONHEART, LIOVAL-1, LIPAIL, LIPALLET, LIPAWN, LIRABBIT, LIREBEL, LIRING, LIROMANCE, LISAGA-1, LISAMPAN, LISASH, LISICLE-1, LITABBY, LITAINT, LITAU-3, LITEMPO, LITEMPO-1, LITENSOR, LIVACATE, LIVESTOCK.

OD

CRYPT DEFINITION

OD      Departments of the U.S. government.

ODACID         U.S. State Department.

ODBEAT         Defense Intelligence Agency

ODBOON        U.S. Customs Agency.

ODEARL         U.S. Department of Defense.

ODENVY        Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

ODFOAM        U.S. Secret Service.

ODIBEX         U.S. Army.

ODOATH        U.S. Navy.

ODUNIT         U.S. Air Force.

ODURGE        U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

ODYOKE        United States government.

PB

CRYPT DEFINITION

PB       Related to entire countries .

PBHISTORY    “Central Intelligence Agency project to gather and analyze documents from the Arbenz government in Guatemala that would incriminate Arbenz as a Communist.”

PBPRIME        United States of America.

PBRUMEN      Cuba.

PBSUCCESS   Project to overthrow Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954, involving David Morales, David Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, Henry Hecksher, and other officers.

PBSWING       U.S. Embassy or official installation.

QD

CRYPT DEFINITION

QD      See second list

QDBIAS         Pedro Diaz Lanz.

QDDALE         William D. Pawley.

QK

CRYPT DEFINITION

QK      See second list

QKFLOWAGE United States Information Agency.

WO

CRYPT DEFINITION

WO     Divisions of the CIA itself (see also KU).

WOFACT        CIA.

WOMACE       DDO – Directorate of Operations (formerly Directorate of Plans).

WOMUSE       CIA Counter Intelligence staff.

WO crypts to decode: WOBONE, WODISH, WOFIRM, WOLADY.

ZR

CRYPT DEFINITION

ZR      See second list

ZRALERT Use of hypnotism by Counter Intelligence staff in “certain operational situations.”

ZRCLIFF Southern Air Transport, a CIA proprietary airline .

ZRKNICK Intercept operation against Cuban espionage agents in Miami by FBI, sharing results with CIA.

ZRMETAL Washington, DC.

ZRRIFLE “Executive action” assassinations program set up in CIA in 1961 and run by Bill Harvey (other assassination programs preceded ZRRIFLE).

ZR crypts to decode: ZRBEACH, ZRCHEST, ZRPRIMA, ZRWAHOO.

OTHER (crypts not beginning with two-letter digraph)

CRYPT DEFINITION

RYBAT “Slug” indicating extreme sensitivity (ARRB defined as “secret”, but RYBAT often appears adjacent to “secret” which would seem redundant).

Other crypts without digraphs, or with digraphs not covered above: BKCROWN, LPDICTUM, WUBRINY, WUBRINY-1, WUSALINE.

Approval of Trump’s coronavirus response sinks to lowest on record amid surge in cases: Reuters/Ipsos poll
June 24, 2020
by Chris Kahn
Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) – American approval of President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has dropped to the lowest level on record, the latest Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll shows, as new COVID-19 cases surged and Trump was widely criticized for suggesting he wanted to slow down testing.

The June 22-23 poll also found that a majority of Americans want Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, to testify to Congress under oath, after he accused Trump in a new book of misdeeds, including seeking Chinese President Xi Jinping’s help to win re-election.

The poll shows that 37% of Americans approved of the way Trump has responded to the pandemic, the lowest on record since Reuters/Ipsos started asking the question at the beginning of March. Fifty-eight percent said they disapproved.

With a little over four months to go before the Nov. 3 general election, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, leads Trump by 10 percentage points among registered voters, according to the latest poll, down slightly from a 13-point lead in a similar poll last week.

Trump has been slow to publicly acknowledge the severity of the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 120,000 Americans so far, and he has pushed states to reopen before experts said it was safe to do so.

In his first post-pandemic rally, held in Oklahoma on Saturday, the president told thousands of supporters that testing was a “double-edged sword” and that he asked health officials to slow down testing in response to the public’s concern for the growing number of cases.

Administration officials said Tuesday that Trump did not, in fact, ask them to slow down testing, which is one way to track and eventually control the spread of the disease.

Cases have jumped by 25% nationally, according to the latest seven-day tally, led by spikes in a number of states such as Texas, Arizona and Florida that have been more lenient about social distancing.

Trump has steadily bled support among a broad swath of voters since March. Americans are increasingly critical of his response to the pandemic and a wave of protests in the aftermath of the May 25 police killing of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis.

Members of Trump’s Republican Party also appeared to be more pessimistic than at any other time during his presidency. Just 43% said they thought the country was headed in the “right direction,” the lowest level recorded by the Reuters/Ipsos poll since Trump entered office in January 2017.

Trump has faced an unusual outpouring of criticism from members of the military establishment such as James Mattis, his first defense secretary, over his militarized response to the protests. Most recently, Bolton said Trump was unfit to be president and accused him in his new book of routinely obstructing justice.

Fifty-eight percent of Americans – 81% of Democrats and 37% of Republicans – said they would like to see Bolton testify under oath about his experiences in the Trump administration.

Bolton, who refused to do so last year as part of the House of Representatives’ impeachment proceedings against Trump, appeared to confirm one of the investigation’s central allegations in his book, saying that Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter, as a condition to receiving U.S. security aid.

However, Americans appear to be less interested in another protracted impeachment investigation, so close to the election. Forty-one percent said they wanted Congress to open another inquiry into Trump, while 39% said they were opposed, and 20% said they were “not sure.”

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English, throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 1,115 adults, including 503 Democrats and 408 Republicans. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 3 percentage points.

Reporting by Chris Kahn; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Leslie Adler


Exclusive: Dozens of Republican former U.S. national security officials to back Biden
June 23, 2020
by Tim Reid
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Dozens of Republican former U.S. national security officials are forming a group that will back Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, people familiar with the effort said, in a further sign that President Donald Trump has alienated some members of his own party.The group will publicly endorse Biden in the coming weeks and its members plan to campaign for the former vice president who is challenging Trump in the Nov. 3 election, the sources said. It includes at least two dozen officials who served under Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, with dozens more in talks to join, the sources added.

They will argue that another four years of a Trump presidency would endanger U.S. national security and that Republican voters should view Biden as the better choice despite policy differences, the sources said.

The initiative is being led by John Bellinger III and Ken Wainstein, according to the people involved, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Both held senior posts under George W. Bush. Bellinger served as legal adviser to the National Security Council and State Department. Wainstein served as Bush’s homeland security adviser and as chief of staff to former FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Another member of the group, the sources said, is Robert Blackwill, who served as a foreign policy adviser under both Bushes and ambassador to India under George W. Bush. The group includes some independents and officials from outside the national security arena, the sources said.

“Trump pals around with dictators. He’s a real danger,” a person involved in the group said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The group could go public before the Democratic National Convention in August when Biden will formally become his party’s nominee, but a launch date has not yet been set, the sources said. Opinion polls show Biden with a widening lead over Trump.

Trump, who faced no significant opposition in seeking his party’s nomination for a second term in office, has drawn sharp criticism from numerous retired military leaders and former members of his administration in recent weeks. The criticism was prompted by Trump’s calls for a militarized response to protests in U.S. cities against racism and police brutality and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Other groups of anti-Trump Republicans also are opposing his re-election including the Lincoln Project, co-founded by George Conway, husband of Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway. It is running anti-Trump ads in key battleground states.

Bellinger, Wainstein and Blackwill have previously voiced opposition to Trump. They were among some 50 Republicans who signed an August 2016 letter after Trump had become the Republican presidential nominee, warning of the dangers of a Trump presidency and vowing not to vote for him.

Trump has expressed contempt for Republican and conservative figures who have opposed him, saying on Twitter last year that such “Never Trumper Republicans” are “human scum.”

‘BROADEST POSSIBLE COALITION’

TJ Ducklo, a Biden campaign spokesman, said Trump has mismanaged U.S. foreign policy and damaged relationships with foreign allies.

“Joe Biden is running for president to unite this country and undo Donald Trump’s chaos, and we are building the broadest possible coalition to do that, which includes Republicans who are horrified by what they have witnessed over the past four years,” Ducklo said.

Tim Murtaugh, communications director for Trump’s campaign, issued a statement making apparent reference to Biden’s 2002 vote as a U.S. senator authorizing the Iraq War launched the following year by George W. Bush.

“Not surprising that the same people who gave us endless wars that led to thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars wasted in the Middle East are siding with a fellow warmonger like Joe Biden,” Murtaugh said.

Trump has faced an unusual outpouring of criticism from members of the military establishment including from prominent retired generals such as James Mattis, his first defense secretary, and Colin Powell, who served as secretary of state under George W. Bush. Both denounced Trump’s response to the protests that erupted after the May 25 death of an African-American man named George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.

In addition, the current top U.S. military officer, General Mark Milley, expressed regret over joining Trump in a walk from the White House to a nearby church after protesters were forcibly removed by law enforcement authorities.

“Powell, Mattis, Milley – they have galvanized people to support Joe Biden,” the person involved in the new group said.

Powell already has endorsed Biden, saying Trump has “drifted away” from the U.S. Constitution and poses a danger to American democracy. Mattis accused Trump of trying to divide Americans.

Most recently, Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton said Trump was unfit to be president and accused him in a new book of misdeeds including seeking Chinese President Xi Jinping’s help to win re-election.

Reporting by Tim Reid; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Will Dunham

The Encyclopedia of American Loons

Jacquelyn McCandless

We will, after some consideration, skip Danielle & Andy Mayoras. Yes, their take on the Sarah Hershberger case, discussed here is misinformed and stupid – and reflects a rather common mindset that makes people think they can legitimately have their opinions count in fields where they have no expertise and said opinions nevertheless conflict with those of experts. Yet, we are willing to overlook lone-standing lapses of judgment and haven’t really found any other example of the Mayorases weighing in on woo.

Jacquelyn McCandless’s forays into nonsense are more thorough. McCandless is an anti-vaxxer. In particular, McCandless believes that heavy metals and vaccines, especially the MMR, are the trigger(s) of autism. They demonstrably aren’t. McCandless, however, does not only believe that they are, but that oral chelation will reverse autism, which it won’t. McCandless has nothing remotely resembling evidence that it will, but she – surely coincidentally – is, in fact, a practitioner of chelation therapy. Her beliefs about these issues have been published on the quack website Medical Voices.

McCandless is, in fact, an MD, though being a medical practitioner and having a professional degree is of course no guarantee that you understand how science and evidence work. She has also written a book, Children with Starving Brains: A Medical Treatment Guide for Autism Spectrum Disorder (contributors: Jack Zimmermann and Teresa Binstock) that we strongly recommend you to avoid. Apparently the book offers “a message of hope in the midst of a worldwide epidemic of autism, ADD and ADHD,” which the author suggests is triggered by “pesticides and heavy metals in vaccines”. There is no such epidemic. The rest of the book is basically one big, baseless toxins gambit aimed at the chemically illiterate.

Diagnosis: Pseudoscientist and conspiracy theorist. Yes, she is an MD, but anyone with a real medical condition would apparently do well to keep their distance. Dangerous.

 Jordan Maxwell

A.k.a. Russell Pine (real name)

Jordan Maxwell is a grand old man of American conspiracy theory, crackpottery and nonsense. His work is largely responsible for the nonsense peddled in the incoherent, made-for-the-Internet “documentary” Zeitgeist, and he has apparently been an important influence on David Icke: Maxwell has long claimed that the world is secretly run by lizards from another dimension. He was also, for a while, editor of the Truth Seeker Magazine, has produced “documentaries” for CBS, and – of course – hosted his own radio show. Maxwell considers himself the world’s leading expert in the occult, based on his powers of imagination and inability to comprehend the significance of aligning one’s belief with reality. He is accordingly notable for having pushed more or less any conspiracy theory or branch of pseudoscientific nonsense you could think of, from ancient aliens and the claim that there is a star-gate in Iraq that teleports people to a military base on Mars, to 9/11 conspiracies.

A main strain of Maxwell’s, uh, thought is astro-theology, an astrological reinterpretation of theology according to which religious doctrines are based on astronomical events. He is also notable for pushing the (rather popular) idea that Christianity is really a variant of the cult of Horus, a conclusion reached by focusing on some similarities and disregarding the vast number of dissimilarities. Maxwell is known to rant for hours about these issues, backed up with a couple of Bible quotes and perceived connections between various events and his presuppositions. Maxwell, however, has little actual knowledge of ancient cultures and belief systems, which is an advantage since it means that there will be fewer facts available to him that would constrain his interpretations.

Much of his work is (in the grand tradition of the insane rantings unfettered by reality or accountability starting with Isidore of Seville) based on drawing ridiculous conclusions about the world based on often imagined etymological connections and similarities in names and expressions. Of course, Maxwell arguably knows even less, if possible, about linguistics than about history, and the technique he applies is the one commonly known as paleo-babble. Some examples of Maxwell’s paleobabble are discussed here. One example: According to Maxwell, “[m]agic wands were always made out of the wood of a Holly tree. It’s made out of Holly wood. Hollywood is a Druidic establishment and the symbols, the words, the terms, the stories, are designed. Think about it. Think about how Hollywood does what they do. I’m not saying they’re evil, I’m just explaining how Hollywood works.” Calling for readers to think for themselves is an effective trick given the critical reasoning abilities required to listen to Maxwell in the first place. Of course, druidic cultures using magic sticks didn’t in fact make these sticks of holly. Bah. Details.

From his website you can currently purchase a set of 28 DVDs containing “the entire works of Jordan Maxwell” for the neat price of $ 570.

Of course, like so many conspiracy theorists of his ilk, Maxwell is himself the target of numerous deranged conspiracy theories (an example), and is often accused of being a tool for the New World Order.

Diagnosis: Utterly ridiculous, of course, yet Maxwell’s influence on contemporary conspiracy theories is significant – he’s been through them all, using techniques and assertions unconstrained by truth, evidence or rules for rational inference.

 Anthony R. Mawson

Some pseudoscientists have actual education and backgrounds in research, lending them a sheen of credibility in their pseudoscientific research endeavors. A striking thing about pseudoscientists’ attempts to do research, however, is how they systematically and deliberately avoid taking simple measures to validate their findings – they deliberately select biased samples, avoid blinding, neglect asking whether something works in favor of just looking at how it works (and consequently end up churning out garbage through strategies like p-hacking). It really is striking, insofar as it would often have been relatively easy to do it right – it’s almost as if they tacitly know that doing it right significantly lowers the chance of obtaining the results they want.

The research of Anthony R. Mawson is a striking example. Now, Mawson has a real education. He is also an anti-vaxxer and a fan of Andrew Wakefield who really, really want to deploy his skills in the service of anti-vaccine propaganda. Mawson is most famous for his “research” putatively showing differences in general health outcomes between vaccinated and unvaccinated kids, and that the unvaccinated ones are healthier (of course, even if it were true, which it isn’t, it would have been largely because those unvaccinated kids would not have died due to vaccine-preventable diseases because of herd immunity; Mawson’s fans are not able to comprehend this otherwise obvious point, however). To establish the results he wanted, Mawson conducted an internet survey among home-schooling parents, where the opportunity to participate was spread by word of mouth in anti-vaccine groups, and where the largely anti-vaccine parents would report their opinion and assessment of the general health of their children without consulting medical records. It doesn’t take much knowledge of scientific methodology to realize that such a survey is less than worthless (some further details here), and the really striking thing is: why would Mawson, for a study that apparently required substantial funding (seemingly from various anti-vaccine fundraising efforts) deliberately choose a sample like this, one that any elementary school kid would be able to tell you would make the results worthless, and – in addition – deliberately avoid taking into account measures (like medical records) that would provide any kind of control? How would you explain his choice of methodology if not by i) trying to make sure the data would end up “showing” what he wanted them to show and fearing that using a proper methodology apt to track reality would not yield the results he wanted; and/or ii) it matters less to pseudoscientists and denialists that the study is properly done and reflects reality, than that it exists and can be brought up in online debates and used to scare those who don’t know enough about the methodology (or don’t have time to look at it) to realize that it is complete shit? More details about why it is shit, in case you ever wondered, are here.

As an aside, one has to wonder about the competence of the people at the Institutional Review Board at Jackson State University who approved said study. And it’s not like the anti-vaccine crowd hasn’t tried to obtain the results they want by (deliberately) incompetently done phone surveys and Internet surveys before.

Well, the fruit of Mawson’s efforts, “Vaccination and Health Outcomes: A Survey of 6- to 12-year-old Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Children based on Mothers’ Reports,” was provisionally accepted by the bottom-feeding journal Frontiers in Public Health (which had previously published – before retracting – a study on chemtrails). Frontiers went on to pull it and eventually formally retract it, something that didn’t prevent antivaxxers from touting it. The peer-reviewers included Linda Mullin Elkins, a chiropractor at Life University – a “Holistic Health University” offering studies “within the fields of Chiropractic, Functional Kinesiology, Vitalistic Nutrition, Positive Psychology, Functional Neurology and Positive Business” – which suggests that Frontier uses a too-literal interpretation of “peer-review” for their reviews of garbage pseudoscience.

The study was then, without even attempting to correct for the glaring methodological shortcomings, published in Journal of Translational Science, a predatory pseudojournal published by Open Access Text, as “Pilot comparative study on the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated 6- to 12-year old U.S. children”. Details (including further details about the utter worthlessness and painfully obvious biases of the study) here. They even published a second study, as bankrupt as the first, using the same data set, in the same predatory journal; that one, too, was eaten up and promoted with gusto by antivaccine conspiracy groups and antivaccine advocates like Bob Sears – InfoWars was all over it, for instance, with delusional comments by one Celeste McGovern, described as  a “vaccine expert”, of Claire Dwoskin’s Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute, one of the antivaccine groups that funded Mawson’s “study”.

In 2011, Mawson filed a lawsuit against the Mississippi State Department of Health, alleging that the state health officer interfered with his position at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (his contract wsa not renewed) after promoting antivaccine talking points. The suit was dismissed in 2012.

Diagnosis: Pseudoscientist and conspiracy theorist. Yes, Mawson has a real education, but what he dabbles in is not science. Dangerous.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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