TBR News January 2, 2020
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. January 2, 2020:“Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.
When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.
I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.
He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.
He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.
It is becoming more and more evident to even the least intelligent American voter that Trump is vicious, corrupt and amoral. He has stated often that even if he loses the
election in 2020, he will not leave the White House. I have news for Donald but this is not the place to discuss it.
Trump aches from his head to his toes
His sphincters have gone where who knows
And his love life has ended
By a paunch so distended
That all he can use is his nose
Commentary for January 2:” The American print media is collapsing because of the news sites on the Internet. And these sites are now begging for money and jamming their pages with ads for everything from Bitcoin to mechanical douché bags. Soon, I anticipate, we will see a flood of ads announcing the coming of the Rapture or the best techniques for the handling of snakes. And the Internet is full of horrible, concocted conspiratorial stories and allegations that sound like someone in a paper nightgown is scrawling with crayons in a group therapy session.
Planet X is coming soon, probably bringing a reborn L. Ron Hubbard and Jesus himself.
The next earthquake will have been caused by secret atom bombs controlled by the Skull and Bones Society and all vaccines now contain concentrated goat milk, designed to cause infected toenails and proliferation of deadly ear wax.
Next can we expect Fat Donald to appear at a public meeting dressed in a white toga and claiming God wants him to be King of America?
If one believes in Planet X, Donald’s elevation is something to accept. Without question.”
The Second Coming
by W.B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The Table of Contents
• Wily coyotes take up residence at Trump’s New York City golf course
Blessed Prozac Moments
• Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones ordered to pay $100,000 in Sandy Hook case
• Infowars
• Encyclopedia of American Loons
• “Xenu planet,” the father of Planet X
• Donald Trump Is Also the Anti-Vaxxing President
• A STUDY OF ASSASSINATION
• The Season of Evil
Wily coyotes take up residence at Trump’s New York City golf course
Once confined to the western states, the wolf’s adaptable smaller cousin has been carving out a niche in urban areas
January 1, 2019
by Oliver Milman in the Bronx, New York city
The Guardian
Donald Trump has a $269m golf course in New York City that is regularly prowled by feared, largely nocturnal individuals that instinctively prey upon those they deem smaller and weaker.
We are, of course, talking about coyotes.
The shrewd canines have spread so far from their ranges in the western US that they are now making unlikely homes in cities on the east coast, including beside the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point, a landscaped sward frequented by visor- and chino-wearing golfers in the faintly incongruous setting of the Bronx.
“The staff at the golf course think the coyotes are cool,” said Chris Nagy, a wildlife biologist and co-founder of Gotham Coyote, a collaboration of researchers who study coyotes in New York. “But there’s a point where if the coyotes are getting annoying and worrying the golfers, then they’ll change their minds.”
As humanity chews through landscapes for housing, farming, roads and mining, ecologists have warned of the Earth’s sixth great extinction, with about a million species now endangered. But some creatures have proved flexible in the face of this onslaught, even blossoming in the new circumstances.
Coyotes, unfussy eaters that can cover large distances in search of a suitable home, are one of the winners in this denuded age.
Cities like New York and Detroit, where redevelopment or economic blight has left urban sites bereft of humans, are increasingly being colonized by coyotes, as well as other opportunists such as raccoons, opossums and even bobcats. Researchers have found a riot of non-human carnivores dwelling in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina, and Washington DC.
New York’s coyote families
Ferry Point Park is a pleasant respite from the city, dotted with redbud trees and affording a grand vista of the Manhattan skyline across the East River. But it is hemmed in by the dense housing of the Bronx and cleaved in two by the Whitestone Bridge, which funnels thousands of cars through every day.
It is perhaps surprising that this park, like several in the Bronx, can play host to highly urbanized coyote families. Coyotes, a smaller relative of the grey wolf, weigh up to 50 pounds and are popularly associated with the wide open spaces of the American west. But the animals are highly adaptable and, having thrived rather than dwindled from human expansion and persecution, have pushed east, making it to New York state in the 1940s.
In 2012, Nagy and his colleagues got confirmation via camera traps that coyotes had established themselves in New York City itself, although this shift probably happened earlier. Since then, coyotes have turned up in lower Manhattan and on the roof of a bar in Queens. Last year, one intrepid animal was seen roaming the streets of Harlem before being cornered by police in midtown Manhattan and tranquilized.
We’re finding coyotes like almost everything or at least can survive on almost everything,” Nagy said as he trudged through the scrub and reeds in search of the Ferry Point camera trap.
“A pack of wolves would need, like, the whole county. But not coyotes. They’ve lived kind of underfoot of both wolves and people for thousands of years. And so they’ve evolved to survive metaphorically running among the feet of the giants.
“They’re my favorite animal. And I liked them before I started studying them. They’re clever. We’ve tried our best to eradicate them and they’ve thwarted us at every turn. I really admire that, I guess.”
The park, and the adjacent Trump golf course, has become the favoured locale for a coyote named Neil by researchers. Nagy’s camera traps showed that Neil and a female companion had pups last year, only for the female to then die. The pups, probably lacking proper supervision, were seen scampering on the greens once they were safely clear of golfers.
“They were wandering all over the place in the morning,” Nagy said. “And so when the first round of golf would start, the pups were running around the course. We heard stories that the pups were taking sandwiches out of people’s golf carts.”
Coyotes don’t do well in urban areas unless they learn to be circumspect around people, so the pups soon limited their roaming to earlier hours of the night. Donald Trump Jr may be an avid hunter but killing coyotes isn’t permitted in New York, even if you are attempting to sculpt a placid vision of nature on a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course that your family business built on a former landfill.
Nagy finds the camera trap, strapped to the base of a tree, and removes its casing. Before he replaces the batteries he flicks through the viewfinder to see what it has captured in the previous two months. There is a startled-looking rabbit and an obese raccoon before Nagy lets out an “oh”.
Along with Neil there appears to be a newcomer – what could well be a female mate. “So maybe he found a girlfriend,” Nagy said. This female, remarkably, has seemingly penetrated miles of dense urban sprawl to stumble across Neil and potentially start a new family.
There appears no obvious end to the onward march of coyotes in New York, although the busier tourist drawcard of Central Park in Manhattan might prove tricky due to the animals’ wariness of humans.
Coyotes will almost always run away from human activity, although they will stare down dogs if they approach dens and there is a very small chance of an attack on people if they are seen as a source of food.
Respect
“We encourage all New Yorkers and visitors to respect coyotes and give them plenty of space,” said a New York City Parks spokeswoman. “Healthy coyotes that are not fed or otherwise conditioned to approach humans will do their best to avoid human contact. They can even be beneficial to humans by helping to control the rodent population.”
Most people who live in cities don’t see or even think of coyotes but the ongoing expansion of urban wildlife provides an opportunity for a more harmonious relationship to nature, evolved from the days when bison were nearly wiped out or when bears were routinely slaughtered.
“In a broader sense there needs to be a reckoning of how we relate to the rest of the living world,” Nagy said.
“Our theory with coyotes was: kill them all, they’re no good. And they’ve not allowed us to do that. So now we have to think, I hope, a little bit more logistically about it.”
Blessed Prozac Moments
In these times, as earlier, many of the public thrive on conspiracy theories because it gives them a feeling of being part of something large and thrilling.
I have studied conspiracy stories for years and have come to the conclusion that 99% of them are the result of stupidity and the attempts to cover it up.
“But the birds were seen flying the other way! Isn’t that significant? Daily Kos has an excellent article on these suspicious birds, written by a Famous Scientist (who doesn’t want his name used, of course)”
Bureaucracies are filled with people who couldn’t get a real job and whose government paychecks ought to be gift-wrapped.
Governments are desperate to prevent any kind of a public uproar that might disturb the status quo so they lie, not to cover up plots but to cover theirs, and others, political asses.
The recent mine tragedy and the mis-reporting of the survival is a typical example. The underlying cause of this is gross neglect and criminal carelessness not only on the part of the cost-cutting owners but the lax, and under Bush, criminally negligant pro-business regulatory agencies.
Now, look for both management and government to conspire to blame the mine problems on something that won’t expose them for the conspirators they are.
And how will they accomplish this? By use of the friendly media and, most important, by having their pet “bloggers” and paid website managers concoct weird stories about death rays, missing cell phones, secret gas leaks, alQuadea trained gophers intent on industrial sabotage and on and on.
The credulous public, ever frantic for more and increasingly thrilling conspiracies to nurture their small egos, will get their hands on these inventions, water and fertilize them and send them around to others with their own little invented additions.
In the end, the criminal stupidity is effectively masked by the created images and management and government can prepare for the next disinformation campaign.
Those who believe in mysterious conspiracies ought to recognize that they have become unknowing parts of a real conspiracy, the conspiracy of obfuscation, lies and official disinformation.
This applies, equally, to the Katrina disaster, the SEA tsunami, 911, the Kennedy assassination, severe weather events, ship sinkings and on and on. Pick one of the above and Google it to see that the number of breathless conspiracy sites proliferate like fungus after a good rain.
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones ordered to pay $100,000 in Sandy Hook case
Infowars host used his show to promote the theory that the shooting, which killed 20 children and six educators, was a hoax
December 31, 2019
AP
A Texas judge ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay $100,000 (£76,000) in another court setback over the Infowars host using his show to promote falsehoods that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax.
Jones is being sued for defamation in Austin, Texas, by the parents of a 6-year-old who was among the 26 people killed in the Newtown, Connecticut, attack.
State district judge Scott Jenkins ruled on 20 December that Jones and his defense team “intentionally disregarded” an earlier order to provide witnesses to attorneys representing a Sandy Hook father who brought the lawsuit, Neil Heslin. Jenkins also denied Jones’ request to dismiss the lawsuit.
An attorney for Jones did not immediately comment Tuesday. Jenkins’ orders were first reported by The Daily Beast.
Jones operates Infowars in Texas. He is fighting similar lawsuits in Connecticut brought by other families of Sandy Hook victims for promoting a theory that the shooting was a hoax. A 20-year-old gunman killed 20 first-graders, six educators and himself at the school, after having killed his mother at their Newtown home.
The families said they have been subjected to harassment and death threats from Jones’ followers because of the hoax conspiracy.
Jones has since acknowledged that the Sandy Hook killings occurred. His attorneys have defended his speech in court as “rhetorical hyperbole” and deny it was defamation.
In June, the father of 6-year-old Noah Pozner, one of the Sandy Hook victims, won a defamation lawsuit against the authors of a book that claimed the shooting never happened.
Infowars
Wikipedia
InfoWars is a far-right American conspiracy theory and fake news website owned by Alex Jones. It was founded in 1999, and operates under Free Speech Systems LLC.
Talk shows and other content for the site are created primarily in studios at an undisclosed location in an industrial area in the outskirts of Austin, Texas The InfoWars website receives approximately 10 million monthly visits, making its reach greater than some mainstream news websites such as The Economist and Newsweek.
The site has regularly published fake stories which have been linked to harassment of victims. In February 2018, Jones, the publisher, director and owner of InfoWars, was accused of discrimination and sexually harassing employees. InfoWars, and in particular Jones, advocate numerous conspiracy theories particularly around purported domestic false flag operations by the U.S. Government (which they allege include the 9/11 attacks and Sandy Hook shootings). InfoWars has issued retractions various times as a result of legal challenges. Jones has had contentious material removed, and has also been suspended and banned from many social media websites, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Apple, and Roku.
InfoWars earns revenue from the sale of products pitched by Jones during the show. It has been called as much “an online store that uses Mr. Jones’s commentary to move merchandise”, as a media outlet.
While Jones has stated, “I’m not a business guy, I’m a revolutionary”, he spends much of InfoWars’ air time pitching health-enhancement and survivalist products to loyal viewers. As a private firm, InfoWars and its affiliated companies (“a web of limited-liability companies”) do not have to make public financial statements, so that observers can only estimate its revenue and profits.
Prior to 2013, Jones focused on building a “media empire”. By 2013, Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon estimated that Jones was earning as much as US$10 million a year between subscriptions, web and radio advertising, and sales of DVDs, T-shirts, and other merchandise.
That year, Jones changed his business model to incorporate selling proprietary dietary supplements, including one that promised to “supercharge” cognitive functions.
Unlike most talk radio shows, InfoWars itself does not directly generate income. It gets no syndication fees from its syndicater GCN, no cut of the advertising that GCN sells, and it does not sell its three minutes per hour of national advertising time. The show no longer promotes its video service (though it still exists), and has not made any documentary films since 2012. Virtually all money is made by selling Jones’ dietary supplements to viewers and listeners.
The diet supplement products sold on InfoWars are “largely produced by Dr. Edward F. Group III, a Houston chiropractor and founder of dietary-supplement-maker Global Healing Center”.
A lesser source of revenue for InfoWars are its “money bomb” telethons, which resemble “public-radio fund drives”, except that InfoWars is a for-profit institution. Charlie Warzel reports that “three former InfoWars employees told BuzzFeed News that a money bomb could easily raise $100,000 in a day”.
As of 2014, “operations were bringing in more than $20 million a year in revenue … according to testimony Mr. Jones gave in a court case”. Most of his revenue in 2014 “came from the sale of products like supplements”, according to records “viewed by The New York Times” including Super Male Vitality and Brain Force Plus, which supposedly increase testosterone and mental agility respectively.The 2014 court proceedings also show that InfoWars was successful enough for Jones and his then-wife to be planning to “build a swimming pool complex … featuring a waterfall and dining cabana with a stone fireplace. Mr. Jones bought four Rolex watches in one day in 2014, and spent $40,000 on a saltwater aquarium. Assets of Jones and his wife at the time “included a $70,000 grand piano, $50,000 in firearms and $752,000 in silver, gold and precious metals”.
The loss of social media platforms from being banned by Facebook, YouTube, Apple, Spotify and Pinterest may have led to appeals by Jones to viewers: “The enemy wants to cut off our funding to destroy us. If you don’t fund us, we’ll be shut down.”
Controversies
Promotion of conspiracy theories and fake news
InfoWars disseminates various conspiracy theories, such as speaking against the HPV vaccine and claiming that the 2017 Las Vegas shooting was part of a conspiracy.
InfoWars advocates New World Order conspiracy theories, 9/11 conspiracy theories, chemtrails, conspiracy theories involving Bill Gates, supposed covert government weather control programs, claims of rampant domestic false flag operations by the US Government (including 9/11) and the unsupported claim that millions voted illegally in the 2016 US presidential election. Jones frequently uses InfoWars to assert that mass shootings are conspiracies or “false flag” operations, claims which are often then spread. This has been characterized as Second Amendment “fan fiction”.
Infowars has published and promoted fake news, and Jones has been accused of knowingly misleading people to make money As part of the probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, Infowars was investigated to see if it was complicit in the dissemination of fake news stories distributed by Russian bots.
From May 2014 to November 2017, InfoWars republished articles from multiple sources without permission, including over 1,000 from Russian state-sponsored news network RT, as well as stories from news outlets such as CNN, the BBC, and The New York Times which Salon said were “dwarfed” by those from RT.
Claims of false flag school shootings
InfoWars has regularly accused mass shootings of being false flags and survivors of them as crisis actors by the United States government. InfoWars host Alex Jones has promoted the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting conspiracy theories. Jones was widely criticized for claiming that the Sandy Hook massacre was “completely fake” and “manufactured”.
In March 2018, six families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, as well as an FBI agent who responded to the attack, filed a defamation lawsuit against Jones for his role in spreading conspiracy theories about the shooting.In December 2019, InfoWars and Jones were ordered to pay $100,000 in legal fees prior to the trial for another defamation lawsuit from a different family whose son was killed in the shooting.
Jones has also accused David Hogg and other survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting of being crisis actors.
Harassment by InfoWars viewership
InfoWars promoted fabricated Pizzagate claims. The fake claims led to harassment of the owner and employees of Comet Ping Pong, a Washington, D.C. pizzeria targeted by the conspiracy theories, including threatening phone calls, online harassment, and death threats. The owner sent a letter to Jones in February 2017 demanding a retraction or apology. (Such a letter is required before a party may seek punitive damages in an action for libel under Texas law).
After receiving the letter, Jones issued an apology in March 2017. Alex Jones said that “I want our viewers and listeners to know that we regret any negative impact our commentaries may have had on Mr. Alefantis, Comet Ping Pong, or its employees. We apologize to the extent our commentaries could be construed as negative statements about Mr. Alefantis or Comet Ping Pong, and we hope that anyone else involved in commenting on Pizzagate will do the same thing.” InfoWars also issued a correction on its website.
InfoWars reporter Owen Shroyer also targeted East Side Pies, a group of pizza restaurants in Austin, Texas, with similar fake “Pizzagate” claims. Following the claims, the pizza business was targeted by phone threats, vandalism, and harassment, which the co-owners called “alarming, disappointing, disconcerting and scary.”
Chobani retraction
In 2017, InfoWars (along with similar sites) published a fake story about U.S. yogurt manufacturer Chobani, with headlines including “Idaho yogurt maker caught importing migrant rapists” and “Allegations that Chobani’s practice of hiring refugees brought crime and tuberculosis to Twin Falls”. Chobani ultimately filed a federal lawsuit against Jones, which led to a settlement on confidential terms in May 2017. Jones offered an apology and retraction, admitting that he had made “certain statements” on InfoWars “that I now understand to be wrong”.
Sexual harassment and antisemitism claims
In February 2018, Alex Jones was accused by former employees of antisemitism and sexual harassment of women staff members. Jones denied the allegations.
Two former employees filed complaints against Jones.
Removals from other websites
On July 27, 2018, Facebook suspended the official page of Alex Jones for 30 days. The website claims that Jones participated in hate speech against Robert Mueller. This was swiftly followed by action from other bodies- on August 6, Facebook, Apple, YouTube and Spotify all removed content by Alex Jones and InfoWars from their platforms for violating their policies. YouTube removed channels associated with Infowars, including The Alex Jones Channel, which had gained 2.4 million subscriptions prior to its removal. On Facebook, four pages associated with InfoWars and Alex Jones were removed due to repeated violations of the website’s policies. Apple removed all podcasts associated with Jones from its iTunes platform and its podcast app. On August 13, Vimeo removed all of Jones’ videos because they “violated our terms of service prohibitions on discriminatory and hateful content”.By February 2019, a total of 89 pages associated with InfoWars or Alex Jones had been removed from Facebook due to its recidivism policy, which is designed to prevent circumventing a ban.In May 2019, President Donald Trump tweeted or retweeted defenses of people associated with InfoWars, including editor Paul Joseph Watson and host Alex Jones, after the Facebook ban.
Jones’ accounts have also been removed from Pinterest, Mailchimp and LinkedIn. As of early August, Jones still had active accounts on Instagram and Twitter.Twitter, however, ultimately decided to permanently deactivate Jones’ account as well as the InfoWars account in September 2018.
Jones tweeted a Periscope video calling on others “to get their battle rifles ready against antifa, the mainstream media, and Chicom operatives”.In the video he also says, “Now is time to act on the enemy before they do a false flag.” Twitter cited this as the reason to suspend his account for a week on August 14. On September 6, Twitter permanently banned InfoWars and Alex Jones for repeated violations of the site’s terms and conditions. Twitter cited abusive behavior, namely a video that “shows Jones shouting at and berating CNN journalist Oliver Darcy for some 10 minutes during congressional hearings about social media.” On September 7, 2018, the Infowars app was removed from the Apple App Store.On September 20, 2018, PayPal informed InfoWars that they would cease processing payments in 10 days. The reason cited was that Infowars’ “promotion of hate and discrimination runs counter to our core value of inclusion.”
from Encyclopedia of American Loons
Jon Rappoport
Jon Rappoport is a deliriously insane “independent researcher” and blogger. According to his bio, he “has lectured extensively all over the US on the question: Who runs the world and what can we do about it?” For the last decade, however, he has “operated largely away from the mainstream” because, as he puts it, “[m]y research was not friendly to the conventional media.” Indeed. His independent research encompasses “deep politics, conspiracies, alternative health, the potential of the human imagination, mind control, the medical cartel, symbology, and solutions to the takeover of the planet by hidden elites.”
He is, for instance, a germ theory denialist, and in his post “Germ theory and depopulation” (discussed here) he argues that “[i]n general, so-called contagious diseases are caused, not by germs, but by IMMUNE SYSTEMS THAT ARE TOO WEAK TO FIGHT OFF THOSE GERMS” (yes, the capitalization is in the original). Indeed, “GERMS ARE A COVER STORY. What do they cover up? The fact that immune systems are the more basic target for depopulation and debilitation of populations.” The main tool is of course vaccines, which are weapons the nefarious powers that be use to kill off, well, it is a bit hard to see, partially because Rappoport’s post is mostly all-caps from there. At least HIV is a cover story as well.
He has a similar screed on flu vaccines on whale.to if that’s the kind of stuff you fancy reading. It is barely grammatical, but at least he gets his enthusiastic anger across rather well.
Currently Rappoport seems to write on various topics for InfoWars. Recently, for instance, Rappoport and InfoWars dubbed Rep. Tim Murphy’s bill seeking to reform the way the government addresses mental health services a “diabolical legislative package,” since Rappoport thought the legislation would require almost all children to take “psychiatric meds,” and that the bill will ultimately give the federal government “a monopoly of the mind.” Yeah, that’s the way he rolls.
Diagnosis: Hysterically crazy; and his influence is probably not quite as limited as his level of crazy should suggest.
Alex Jones
Alex Jones is the guy who has yet to meet a conspiracy theory he doesn’t endorse, no matter how batshit insane it is (and, interestingly, no matter how much it conflicts with other conspiracy theories he already believes). For at least ten years he has predicted, in his rather popular radio program, the imminent roundup of Americans by the New World Order.
In addition to his radio program, he is also the director of several straight-to-video documentaries, and he runs the websites Infowars and PrisonPlanet (for those who wish to avoid the site itself, it is detailed here).
Some conspiracy theories endorsed by PrisonPlanet are:
• The Bilderberg Group (or Skull and Bones, or the Freemasons – it depends on the day, it seems) controls some/most/all governments in the world as well as the economy.
• The New World Order will kill almost everyone. Vaccine programs seem to be just one of their methods – of course Jones has endorsed Andrew Wakefield as a martyr. To get a feel for the level it is pitched at, you may want to check out this one – or then again, maybe not.
• In fact, Hurricane Katrina was merely an opportunity to test out the FEMA concentration camps.
• And the tsunami in south-east Asia in 2004 was man-made.
• 9/11 was (of course) an inside job.
This is, of course, only a selection; in general it is hard to find a loon that Jones does not take seriously. He is basically a living embodiment of whale.to.
Other bizarre antics are chronicled on his wikipedia page. Apparently the ravingly mad and utterly dense (but British) Vicount Monckton views PrisonPlanet as a legitimate news outlet. That explains a lot.
The interesting thing about Alex Jones’ reasoning is that he does not seem to run with the common fallacy ‘authorities (e.g. scientific) say X; I don’t like X; hence there must be a conspiracy’, but rather with the inference rule ‘everything is part of a conspiracy; authorities say X; hence X is false’ (which is a fallacy as well, of course, but a somewhat more interesting one).
Now, some may think Alex Jones is batshit crazy, and he is. But surely he is beaten by Lorie Kramer, who believes that Alex Jones is a pawn created by the New World Order to divert attention. Seriously. And if that is not enough, this site, run by Gary & Lisa Ruby, claims that Jones is part of a scientologist conspiracy to take over the world and demolish Christianity. I guess this is what you risk when you start to gain notoriety in the hyper-paranoid and chaotic field of conspiracy theory.
Among Jones’s more notable collaborators is the equally insane Paul Joseph Watson, who may consider himself indicted by this entry as well (he does not deserve a separate one). Watson is, among other things, behind this, uh, illuminating screed.
Diagnosis: The ur-loon. Extremely famous and frighteningly influential, but one suspects that he would be able to convince anyone who were not already at least mildly unhinged. Jones may be partly in it for the money, but there is little question that he actually believes much of whatever falls out of his mouth.
James Henry Fetzer
James Henry Fetzer (born December 6, 1940) is a former professor of the philosophy of science at the University of Minnesota Duluth and a conspiracy theorist. In the late 1970s, Fetzer worked on assessing and clarifying the forms and foundations of scientific explanation, probability in science, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of cognitive science, especially artificial intelligence and computer science
In the early 1990s, Fetzer began to promote John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, later 9/11 conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial, conspiracy theories regarding the 2002 death of Senator Paul Wellstone and Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting conspiracy theories since the multiple fatalities in 2012. He cofounded Scholars for 9/11 Truth in 2005, and claims that the United States government, Israeli government and Israeli Mossad are involved in these and other conspiracies. Fetzer’s allegations and speculations have drawn strong criticism
On October 16, 2019, a jury in Wisconsin awarded Leonard Pozner $450,000 for defamation. Pozner’s son Noah, 6, was the youngest person killed during the mass shooting that left 26 people dead, including 20 children around Noah’s age. The book’s publisher, Moon Rock Books, personally apologized to the Pozners and agreed to take the book out of circulation.
“Xenu planet,” the father of Planet X
The Church of Scientology accept that intelligent life exists throughout the universe and has for millions of years. Xenu, a galactic overlord, features prominently in their mythology. Xenu’s actions have direct influence on how humanity on Earth has developed. However, this information is available only to Scientologists of considerable rank inline with their acceptance of revealing the truth is stages as followers are properly prepared. 75,00,000 years ago, Xenu headed the Galactic Federation, which was an organization of 76 planets that had already existed for 20,000,000 years. The planets were suffering a tremendous problem with overpopulation. Xenu’s draconian solution to the matter was to gather large numbers of people, kill them, freeze their thetans (souls), and transport the frozen thetans to Earth, which they called Teegeeack. The thetans were left in the vicinity of volcanoes, which were, in turn, destroyed in a series of nuclear explosions.
Members of the galactic Federation eventually rebelled against Xenu, fighting him for six years before he was finally captured and imprisoned on a planet that today is barren desert. Within the “mountain trap” on this unnamed world, Xenu still lives.
How The Story of Xenu Influences Scientology Belief
The thetans who were captured and exploded on Earth are the origin of body thetans. Each human has his or her own thetan, which Scientologists purify through auditing until the practitioner reaches a state of Clear. While a Clear’s own thetan is now free of destructive engrams, his physical form is still inhabited by body thetans: clusters of these ancient, executed thetans.
Clears work with the body thetans through a system similar to auditing, assisting the body thetans to get past their own traumas, at which point they leave the Clear’s body. All body thetans have to be so processed before a Clear can reach the state of Operating Thetan, wherein one’s thetan is completely free of external limitations and can fully express it’s true potential, including operation outside of a physical body.
Public Acknowledgement Or Denial of Xenu
Scientologists are not made aware of Xenu until they have reached a stage known as OT-III. Those who have not reached this rank frequently actively avoid any materials that refer to Xenu, considering it improper and even dangerous to read them. Those who have reached the rank of OT-III often publicly deny the existence of the Xenu myth, although this might be more understandable in the light of the idea that such knowledge is dangerous to the unprepared.
The Church of Scientology has, however, effectively admitted to the mythology for many years. The Church actively pursues legal action against those who attempt to publish Xenu-related materials via copyright law. In order to claim copyright on a piece of material, however, one has to admit that the material does, in fact, exist and that they are the author of it.
“Sorcha Faal” and the Planet X invention
Sorcha Faal turns out to be a nom de plume for David Booth, a retired computer programmer from New Hampshire who stirred up limited controversy in conspiracy circles with the promotion of his book ‘Code Red: The Coming Destruction of the United States 2004.’ Booth claimed the book originated in a “consecutive ten day dream he alleged he experienced in 2003 in which he saw a large sized planetary body pass close to Earth causing an explosion. This was then built up into the story about ‘Planet X’ a heretofore unknown planet in our solar system on a very long, elliptical orbit. In May 2003, it was alleged by the lunatic fringe that the non-existant “Planet X” would pass close enough to the Earth to affect it in some way, causing it to flip over (what many call a “pole shift”) and spur many other huge disasters. The end result was solemnly predicted be the deaths of many billions of people. There are a large number of web pages, chat rooms and books about Planet X and its horrible effects on the Earth. So the question is, does this planet exist, and did it come close enough to Earth in May 2003 and cause great catastrophes?
Donald Trump Is Also the Anti-Vaxxing President
by Chris Roberts
The Observer
Donald Trump is best understood as an influencer, in the sense that he doesn’t really do shit, at least not things like accomplishing tasks or performing labor, physical or mental. As a very big rich boy floating through life on a raft of his father’s money, America’s bronzed and lowing lie machine’s interests in business or government are limited to himself: That is, branding and promotion.
This political “brand”—demonizing outsiders, denigrating experts and making rash and outlandish promises to vulnerable people that even a snake oil salesman would find immoral—is not original. Every thuggish political hack currently running an important country follows some version of this formula. This is because, as the regrettable 20th century demonstrated, this formula works. And so an individual who is quite likely infirm or unstable and who has politics as sophisticated as those of a bored and spoiled child frying ants with a magnifying glass is in nominal control of the United States, a patently dangerous situation that has become normal—and dangerous to everybody, including those who swallow the rhetoric.
Trump is promoting white-nationalist conspiracy theories. These have inspired mass killings. Trump also encourages people to shun possibly the most significant breakthrough in medicine. A direct line can be drawn from Williamsburg, Brooklyn— where a measles outbreak, caused by a mass refusal to vaccinate children for this disease, has caused a public-health crisis—to the president and other braying sophists.
In Williamsburg, home to one of New York City’s communities of ultra-Orthodox Jewish people, a coordinated and baseless scare campaign—led by rabbis peddling debunked conspiracy theories, including the claim that vaccines are linked to autism—is convincing Hasidim to shun vaccinations. (The outbreak seems to have started after a traveler returned to New York from Israel, where many religious Jews also shun vaccinations, and where a baby girl whose parents refused to vaccinate her died, the country’s first measles death in 15 years.) Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared a public-health emergency and is employing the courts, where resistors plan to fight the mandatory shots with a lawsuit. Neither data nor compulsion are working. Nor is a counter-campaign, led by Hasidic nurses. This episode shows how difficult it is for facts to recover and overtake fake news once the false narrative spreads—especially if the false narrative slides neatly into a groove prepared by, say, the president of the United States.
How did we get here? And how does the doctrine of anti-vaxxing persist when close to 300 people have fallen ill? Why were anti-vaxxing videos so popular and so lucrative on social media that YouTube had to be shamed into de-monetizing them? At the core is distrust of outsiders and dismissal of expertise. At the core of anti-vaxxing are the same values promoted by Donald Trump and Fox News in their ouroboros of bullshit.
As Laurie Garrett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Coming Plague recently pointed out in Foreign Policy, “[t]here is a strong link between the rise of populism and anti-vaccination sentiments.” Economic anxieties like the 2008 financial meltdown have convinced people that nobody knows what they are talking about. Despite reams of data to the contrary, this has created the vector for far-right charlatans to convince their people both that foreigners are the enemy, and that government vaccination programs are bogus.
The irony is that Trump is right about disease spreading in the United States, but completely wrong about the source. In an attempt to stir up a xenophobic panic, Trump has claimed that migrants arriving in the country from the global south carry with them infectious diseases. There is absolutely no source for this, no data or even anecdotes, aside from patently racist beliefs about migrants and danger and film. There is no sign or science that newcomers to the United States refuse life-saving vaccinations when they are available. They often come here because the situation in their home country has deteriorated to a level of chaos where vaccines are no longer available.
Meanwhile, those who do refuse vaccinations are often bathed in privilege. Abuse of this status imperils others. Rich people in Silicon Valley, tweeting buffoons in Trump’s inner circle, rabid MAGA automatons auditioning for roles in the Barry Goldwater administration—these are the people spreading diseases in the United States, and doing so because the brand-conscious president is spreading his gospel that smart people are dumb and wrong like rancid margarine across a moldering crust of bread.
A STUDY OF ASSASSINATION
from a CIA manual
DEFINITION
Assassination is a term thought to be derived from “Hashish”, a drug similar to marijuana, said to have been used by Hasan-Dan-Sabah to induce motivation in his followers, who were assigned to carry out political and other murders, usually at the cost of their lives.
It is here used to describe the planned killing of a person who is not under the legal jurisdiction of the killer, who is not physically in the hands of the killer, who has been selected by a resistance organization for death, and who has been sele cted by a resistance organization for death, and whose death provides positive advantages to that organization.
EMPLOYMENT
Assassination is an extreme measure not normally used in clandestine operations. It should be assumed that it will never be ordered or authorized by any U.S. Headquarters, though the latter may in rare instances agree to its execution by members of an associated foreign service. This reticence is partly due to the necessity for committing communications to paper. No assassination instructions should ever be written or recorded. Consequently, the decision to employ this technique must nearly always be reached in the field, at the area where the act will take place. Decision and instructions should be confined to an absolute minimum of persons. Ideally, only one person will be involved. No report may be made, but usually the act will be properly covered by normal news services, whose output is available to all concerned.
JUSTIFICATION
Murder is not morally justifiable. Self-defense may be argued if the victim has knowledge which may destroy the resistance organization if divulged. Assassination of persons responsible for atrocities or reprisals may be regarded as just punishment. Killing a political leader whose burgeoning career is a clear and present danger to the cause of freedom may be held necessary.
But assassination can seldom be employed with a clear conscience. Persons who are morally squeamish should not attempt it.
CLASSIFICATIONS
The techniques employed will vary according to whether the subject is unaware of his danger, aware but unguarded, or guarded. They will also be affected by whether or not the assassin is to be killed with the subject hereafter, assassinations in which the subject is unaware will be termed “simple”; those where the subject is aware but unguarded will be termed “chase”; those where the victim is guarded will be termed “guarded.”
If the assassin is to die with the subject, the act will be called “lost.” If the assassin is to escape, the adjective will be “safe.” It should be noted that no compromises should exist here. The assassin must not fall alive into enemy hands.
A further type division is caused by the need to conceal the fact that the subject was actually the victim of assassination, rather than an accident or natural causes. If such concealment is desirable the operation will be called “secret” ;; if concealment is immaterial, the act will be called “open”; while if the assassination requires publicity to be effective it will be termed “terroristic.”
Following these definitions, the assassination of Julius Caesar was safe, simple, and terroristic, while that of Huey Long was lost, guarded and open. Obviously, successful secret assassinations are not recorded as assassination at all. The head o f Thailand and Augustus Caesar may have been the victims of safe, guarded and secret assassination. Chase assassinations usually involve clandestine agents or members of criminal organizations.
THE ASSASSIN
In safe assassinations, the assassin needs the usual qualities of a clandestine agent. He should be determined, courageous, intelligent, resourceful, and physically active. If special equipment is to be used, such as firearms or drugs, it is clear that he must have outstanding skill with such equipment.
Except in terroristic assassinations, it is desirable that the assassin be transient in the area. He should have an absolute minimum of contact with the rest of the organization and his instructions should be given orally by one person only. His safe evacuation after the act is absolutely essential, but here again contact should be as limited as possible. It is preferable that the person issuing instructions also conduct any withdrawal or covering action which may be necessary.
In lost assassination, the assassin must be a fanatic of some sort. Politics, religion, and revenge are about the only feasible motives. Since a fanatic is unstable psychologically, he must be handled with extreme care. He must not know the identities of the other members of the organization, for although it is intended that he die in the act, something may go wrong. While the Assassin of Trotsky has never revealed any significant information, it was unsound to depend on this when the act was planned.
PLANNING
When the decision to assassinate has been reached, the tactics of the operation must be planned, based upon an estimate of the situation similar to that used in military operations. The preliminary estimate will reveal gaps in information and possibly indicate a need for special equipment which must be procured or constructed. When all necessary data has been collected, an effective tactical plan can be prepared. All planning must be mental; no papers should ever contain evidence of the operation.
In resistance situations, assassination may be used as a counter-reprisal. Since this requires advertising to be effective, the resistance organization must be in a position to warn high officials publicly that their lives will be the price of rep risal action against innocent people. Such a threat is of no value unless it can be carried out, so it may be necessary to plan the assassination of various responsible officers of the oppressive regime and hold such plans in readiness to be used only if provoked by excessive brutality. Such plans must be modified frequently to meet changes in the tactical situation.
TECHNIQUES
The essential point of assassination is the death of the subject. A human being may be killed in many ways but sureness is often overlooked by those who may be emotionally unstrung by the seriousness of this act they intend to commit. The specific technique employed will depend upon a large number of variables, but should be constant in one point: Death must be absolutely certain. The attempt on Hitler’s life failed because the conspiracy did not give this matter proper attention.
Techniques may be considered as follows:
1. Manual.
It is possible to kill a man with the bare hands, but very few are skillful enough to do it well. Even a highly trained Judo expert will hesitate to risk killing by hand unless he has absolutely no alternative. However, the simplest local tools a re often much the most efficient means of assassination. A hammer, axe, wrench, screw driver, fire poker, kitchen knife, lamp stand, or anything hard, heavy and handy will suffice. A length of rope or wire or a belt will do if the assassin is strong and agile. All such improvised weapons have the important advantage of availability and apparent innocence. The obviously lethal machine gun failed to kill Trotsky where an item of sporting goods succeeded.
In all safe cases where the assassin may be subject to search, either before or after the act, specialized weapons should not be used. Even in the lost case, the assassin may accidentally be searched before the act and should not carry an incriminating device if any sort of lethal weapon can be improvised at or near the site. If the assassin normally carries weapons because of the nature of his job, it may still be desirable to improvise and implement at the scene to avoid disclosure of his ident ity.
2. Accidents.
For secret assassination, either simple or chase, the contrived accident is the most effective technique. When successfully executed, it causes little excitement and is only casually investigated.
The most efficient accident, in simple assassination, is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. Elevator shafts, stair wells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve. Bridge falls into water are not reliable. In simple cases a private meeting with the subject may be arranged at a properly-cased location. The act may be executed by sudden, vigorous blows of the ankles, tipping the subject over the edge. If the assassin immediately sets up an outcry, playing the “horrified wit ness”, no alibi or surreptitious withdrawal is necessary. In chase cases it will usually be necessary to stun or drug the subject before dropping him. Care is required to ensure that no wound or condition not attributable to the fall is discernible after death.
Falls into the sea or swiftly flowing rivers may suffice if the subject cannot swim. It will be more reliable if the assassin can arrange to attempt rescue, as he can thus be sure of the subject’s death and at the same time establish a workable alibi.
If the subject’s personal habits make it feasible, alcohol may be used [2 words excised] to prepare him for a contrived accident of any kind.
Falls before trains or subway cars are usually effective, but require exact timing and can seldom be free from unexpected observation.
Automobile accidents are a less satisfactory means of assassination. If the subject is deliberately run down, very exact timing is necessary and investigation is likely to be thorough. If the subject’s car is tampered with, reliability is very lo w. The subject may be stunned or drugged and then placed in the car, but this is only reliable when the car can be run off a high cliff or into deep water without observation.
Arson can cause accidental death if the subject is drugged and left in a burning building. Reliability is not satisfactory unless the building is isolated and highly combustible.
3. Drugs.
In all types of assassination except terroristic, drugs can be very effective. If the assassin is trained as a doctor or nurse and the subject is under medical care, this is an easy and rare method. An overdose of morphine administered as a sedative will cause death without disturbance and is difficult to detect. The size of the dose will depend upon whether the subject has been using narcotics regularly. If not, two grains will suffice.
If the subject drinks heavily, morphine or a similar narcotic can be injected at the passing out stage, and the cause of death will often be held to be acute alcoholism.
Specific poisons, such as arsenic or strychnine, are effective but their possession or procurement is incriminating, and accurate dosage is problematical. Poison was used unsuccessfully in the assassination of Rasputin and Kolohan, though the latter case is more accurately described as a murder.
4. Edged Weapons
Any locally obtained edge device may be successfully employed. A certain minimum of anatomical knowledge is needed for reliability.
Puncture wounds of the body cavity may not be reliable unless the heart is reached. The heart is protected by the rib cage and is not always easy to locate.
Abdominal wounds were once nearly always mortal, but modern medical treatment has made this no longer true.
Absolute reliability is obtained by severing the spinal cord in the cervical region. This can be done with the point of a knife or a light blow of an axe or hatchet.
Another reliable method is the severing of both jugular and carotid blood vessels on both sides of the windpipe.
If the subject has been rendered unconscious by other wounds or drugs, either of the above methods can be used to insure death.
5. Blunt Weapons
As with edge weapons, blunt weapons require some anatomical knowledge for effective use. Their main advantage is their universal availability. A hammer may be picked up almost anywhere in the world. Baseball and cricket bats are very widely distributed. Even a rock or a heavy stick will do, and nothing resembling a weapon need be procured, carried or subsequently disposed of.
Blows should be directed to the temple, the area just below and behind the ear, and the lower, rear portion of the skull. Of course, if the blow is very heavy, any portion of the upper skull will do. The lower frontal portion of the head, from th e eyes to the throat, can withstand enormous blows without fatal consequences.
6. Firearms
Firearms are often used in assassination, often very ineffectively. The assassin usually has insufficient technical knowledge of the limitations of weapons, and expects more range, accuracy and killing power than can be provided with reliability. Since certainty of death is the major requirement, firearms should be used which can provide destructive power at least 100% in excess of that thought to be necessary, and ranges should be half that considered practical for the weapon.
Firearms have other drawbacks. Their possession is often incriminating. They may be difficult to obtain. They require a degree of experience from the user. They are often easily traced.. Their use is consistently over-rated.
However, there are many cases in which firearms are probably more efficient than any other means. These cases usually involve distance between the assassin and the subject, or comparative physical weakness of the assassin, as with a woman.
(a) The precision rifle. In guarded assassination, a good hunting or target rifle should always be considered as a possibility. Absolute reliability can nearly always be achieved at a distance of one hundred yards. In ideal circumstances, t he range may be extended to 250 yards. The rifle should be a well made bolt or falling block action type, handling a powerful long-range cartridge. The .300 F.A.B. Magnum is probably the best cartridge readily available. Other excellent calibers are . 375 M.[. Magnum, .270 Winchester, .30 – 106 p.s., 8 x 60 MM Magnum, 9.3 x
62 kk and others of this type. These are preferable to ordinary military calibers, since ammunition available for them is usually of the expanding bullet type, whereas most ammunition for military rifles is full jacketed and hence not sufficiently lethal. Military ammunition should not be altered by filing or drilling bullets, as this will adversely affect accuracy.
The rifle may be of the “bull gun” variety, with extra heavy barrel and set triggers, but in any case should be capable of maximum precision. Ideally, the weapon should be able to group in one inch at one hundred yards, but 21/2″ groups are adequate. The sight should be telescopic, not only for accuracy, but because such a sight is much better in dim light or near darkness. As long as the bare outline of the target is discernable, a telescope sight will work, even if the rifle and shooter are in total darkness.
An expanding, hunting bullet of such calibers as described above will produce extravagant laceration and shock at short or mid-range. If a man is struck just once in the body cavity, his death is almost entirely certain.
Public figures or guarded officials may be killed with great reliability and some safety if a firing point can be established prior to an official occasion. The propaganda value of this system may be very high.
(b) The machine gun.
Machine guns may be used in most cases where the precision rifle is applicable. Usually, this will require the subversion of a unit of an official guard at a ceremony, though a skillful and determined team might conceivably dispose of a loyal gun crow without commotion and take over the gun at the critical time.
The area fire capacity of the machine gun should not be used to search out a concealed subject. This was tried with predictable lack of success on Trotsky. The automatic feature of the machine gun should rather be used to increase reliability by placing a 5 second burst on the subject. Even with full jacket ammunition, this will be absolute lethal is the burst pattern is no larger than a man. This can be accomplished at about 150 yards. In ideal circumstances, a properly padded and targeted ma chine gun can do it at 850 yards. The major difficulty is placing the first burst exactly on the target, as most machine gunners are trained to spot their fire on target by observation of strike. This will not do in assassination as the subject will not wait.
(c) The Submachine Gun.
This weapon, known as the “machine-pistol” by the Russians and Germans and “machine-carbine” by the British, is occasionally useful in assassination. Unlike the rifle and machine gun, this is a short range weapon and since it fires pistol ammunition, much less powerful. To be reliable, it should deliver at least 5 rounds into the subject’s chest, though the .45 caliber U.S. weapons have a much larger margin of killing efficiency than the 9 mm European arms.
The assassination range of the sub-machine gun is point-blank. While accurate single rounds can be delivered by sub-machine gunners at 50 yards or more, this is not certain enough for assassination. Under ordinary circumstances, the 5MG should be used as a fully automatic weapon. In the hands of a capabl e gunner, a high cyclic rate is a distinct advantage, as speed of execution is most desirable, particularly in the case of multiple subjects.
The sub-machine gun is especially adapted to indoor work when more than one subject is to be assassinated. An effective technique has been devised for the use of a pair of sub-machine gunners, by which a room containing as many as a dozen subjects can be “purified” in about twenty seconds with little or no risk to the gunners.
While the U.S. sub-machine guns fire the most lethal cartridges, the higher cyclic rate of some foreign weapons enable the gunner to cover a target quicker with acceptable pattern density. The Bergmann Model 1934 is particularly good in this way. The Danish Madsen SMG has a moderately good cyclic rate and is admirably compact and concealable. The Russian SHG’s have a good cyclic rate, but are handicapped by a small, light protective which requires more kits for equivalent killing effect.
(d) The Shotgun.
A large bore shotgun is a most effective killing instrument as long as the range is kept under ten yards. It should normally be used only on single targets as it cannot sustain fire successfully. The barrel may be “sawed” off for convenience, but this is not a significant factor in its killing performance. Its optimum range is just out of reach of the subject. 00 buckshot is considered the best shot size for a twelve gage gun, but anything from single balls to bird shot will do if the range is right. The assassin should aim for the solar plexus as the shot pattern is small at close range and can easily destroy the head.
(e) The Pistol.
While the handgun is quite inefficient as a weapon of assassination, it is often used, partly because it is readily available and can be concealed on the person, and partly because its limitations are not widely appreciated. While many well known assassinations have been carried out with pistols (Lincoln, Harding, Gandhi), such attempts fail as often as they succeed, (Truman, Roosevelt, Churchill).
If a pistol is used, it should be as powerful as possible and fired from just beyond reach. The pistol and the shotgun are used in similar tactical situations, except that the shotgun is much more lethal and the pistol is much more easily concealed.
In the hands of an expert, a powerful pistol is quite deadly, but such experts are rare and not usually available for assassination missions.
.45 Colt, .44 Special, .455 Kly, .45 A.S. (U.S. Service) and .357 Magnum are all efficient calibers. Less powerful rounds can suffice but are less reliable. Sub-power cartridges such as the .32s and .25s should be avoided.
In all cases, the subject should be hit solidly at least three times for complete reliability.
(f) Silent Firearms
The sound of the explosion of the proponent in a firearm can be effectively silenced by appropriate attachments. However, the sound of the projective passing through the air cannot, since this sound is generated outside the weapon. In cases w here the velocity of the bullet greatly exceeds that of sound, the noise so generated is much louder than that of the explosion. Since all powerful rifles have muzzle velocities of over 2000 feet per second, they cannot be silenced.
Pistol bullets, on the other hand, usually travel slower than sound and the sound of their flight is negligible. Therefore, pistols, submachine guns and any sort of improvised carbine or rifle which will take a low velocity cartridge can be silenc ed. The user should not forget that the sound of the operation of a repeating action is considerable, and that the sound of bullet strike, particularly in bone is quite loud.
Silent firearms are only occasionally useful to the assassin, though they have been widely publicized in this connection. Because permissible velocity is low, effective precision range is held to about 100 yards with rifle or carbine type weapons, while with pistols, silent or otherwise, are most efficient just beyond arms length. The silent feature attempts to provide a degree of safety to the assassin, but mere possession of a silent firearm is likely to create enough hazard to counter the advantage of its silence. The silent pisto l combines the disadvantages of any pistol with the added one of its obviously clandestine purpose.
A telescopically sighted, closed-action carbine shooting a low velocity bullet of great weight, and built for accuracy, could be very useful to an assassin in certain situations. At the time of writing, no such weapon is known to exist.
7. Explosives.
Bombs and demolition charges of various sorts have been used frequently in assassination. Such devices, in terroristic and open assassination, can provide safety and overcome guard barriers, but it is curious that bombs have often been the implement of lost assassinations.
The major factor which affects reliability is the use of explosives for assassination. The charge must be very large and the detonation must be controlled exactly as to time by the assassin who can observe the subject. A small or moderate explosive charge is highly unreliable as a cause of death, and time delay or booby-trap devices are extremely prone to kill the wrong man. In addition to the moral aspects of indiscriminate killing, the death of casual bystanders can often produce public reactions unfavorable to the cause for which the assassination is carried out.
Bombs or grenades should never be thrown at a subject. While this will always cause a commotion and may even result in the subject’s death, it is sloppy, unreliable, and bad propaganda. The charge must be too small and the assassin is never sure of: (1) reaching his attack position, (2) placing the charge close enough to the target and (3) firing the charge at the right time.
Placing the charge surreptitiously in advance permits a charge of proper size to be employed, but requires accurate prediction of the subject’s movements.
Ten pounds of high explosive should normally be regarded as a minimum, and this is explosive of fragmentation material. The latter can consist of any hard, metallic material as long as the fragments are large enough. Metal or rock fragments should be walnut-size rather than pen-size. If solid plates are used, to be ruptured by the explosion, cast iron, 1″ thick, gives excellent fragmentation. Military or commercial high explosives are practical for use in assassination. Homemade or improvised explosives should be avoided. While possibly powerful, they tend to be dangerous and unreliable. Anti-personnel explosive missiles are excellent, provided the assassin has sufficient technical knowledge to fuse them properly. 81 or 82 mm mortar shells, or the 120 mm mortar shell, are particularly good. Anti-personnel shells for 85, 88, 90, 100 and 105 mm guns and howitzers are both large enough to be completely reliable and small enough to be carried by one man.
The charge should be so placed that the subject is not ever six feet from it at the moment of detonation.
A large, shaped charge with the head filled with iron fragments (such as 1″ nuts and bolts) will fire a highly lethal shotgun-type slug to 50 yards. This reaction has not been thoroughly tested, however, and an exact replica of the proposed device should be fired in advance to determine exact range, pattern-size, and penetration of fragments. Fragments should penetrate at least 1″ of seasoned pine or equivalent for minimum reliability. Any firing device may be used which permits exact control by the assassin. An ordinary commercial or military explorer is efficient, as long as it is rigged for instantaneous action with no time fuse in the system. The wise [illeg] electric target can serve as the triggering device and provide exact timing from as far away as the assassin can reliably hit the target. This will avoid the disadvantages of military or commercial high explosives are practical for use in assassination. Homemade or improvised explosives should be avoided. While possibly powerful, they tend to be dangerous and unreliable. Anti-personnel explosive missiles are excellent, provided the assassin has sufficient technical knowledge to fuse them properly. 81 or 82 mm mortar shells, or the 120 mm mortar shell, are particularly good. Anti-personnel shells for 85, 88, 90, 100 and 105 mm guns and howitzers are both large enough to be completely reliable and small enough to be carried by one man.
The charge should be so placed that the subject is not ever six feet from it at the moment of detonation.
A large, shaped charge with the head filled with iron fragments (such as 1″ nuts and bolts) will fire a highly lethal shotgun-type slug to 50 yards. This reaction has not been thoroughly tested, however, and an exact replica of the proposed device should be fired in advance to determine exact range, pattern-size, and penetration of fragments. Fragments should penetrate at lea st 1″ of seasoned pine or equivalent for minimum reliability.
Any firing device may be used which permits exact control by the assassin. An ordinary commercial or military explorer is efficient, as long as it is rigged for instantaneous action with no time fuse in the system.
The wise electric target can serve as the triggering device and provide exact timing from as far away as the assassin can reliably hit the target. This will avid the disadvantages of stringing wire between the proposed positions of the assassin and the subject, and also permit the assassin to fire the charge from a variety of possible positions.
The Season of Evil
by Gregory Douglas
Preface
This is in essence a work of fiction, but the usual disclaimers notwithstanding, many of the horrific incidents related herein are based entirely on factual occurrences.
None of the characters or the events in this telling are invented and at the same time, none are real. And certainly, none of the participants could be considered by any stretch of the imagination to be either noble, self-sacrificing, honest, pure of motive or in any way socially acceptable to anything other than a hungry crocodile, a professional politician or a tax collector.
In fact, the main characters are complex, very often unpleasant, destructive and occasionally, very entertaining.
To those who would say that the majority of humanity has nothing in common with the characters depicted herein, the response is that mirrors only depict the ugly, evil and deformed things that peer into them
There are no heroes here, only different shapes and degrees of villains and if there is a moral to this tale it might well be found in a sentence by Jonathan Swift, a brilliant and misanthropic Irish cleric who wrote in his ‘Gulliver’s Travels,”
“I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most odious race of little pernicious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”
Swift was often unkind in his observations but certainly not inaccurate.
Frienze, Italy
July 2018-August 2019
Chapter 46
In the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the household settled into a sort of pleasant routine. Breakfast was not too early, lunch at one and dinner always at eight. Chuck practiced singing exercises in the main hall while the others either came to listen to him or busied themselves with things of small matter.
There was a computer set up in the library, a device that no one but Chuck had been able to use and he only seldom. Claude, on the other hand, was adept in its use and spent several hours a day on the Internet, primarily researching the current art market.
The LeBec car, at the constant prompting of an annoyed Gwen, was finally dug out of the snow bank by the three men and pushed out into the cleared roadway. The top had been crushed by the weight of snow and all of the windows were shattered.
The road grader had stopped his activities at the end of the road, some fifty yards to the east of the entrance to the driveway, and had cleaned out the turnaround circle.
There was an attempt to start the car using the late LeBec’s keys but the battery was very dead. Finally, the car was pushed down to the turnaround, and a path straight through the woods and up a slight incline was ground out with the heavy-duty snow blower. It took all of their muscle to work the car up onto the top of the incline and when they had achieved this, not without a good deal of sweat and cursing, they rested and enjoyed a small lunch prepared by Gwen and brought up on the ATV, the snowmobile being useless on the cleared roadway.
Sandwiches and hot chocolate having been consumed, the car was manhandled forward until it suddenly shot down the slope, stopped for a moment at an obstruction caused by a small bush half-buried in the snow and then flipped up and over, falling down some hundred feet to crash through the ice of a deep pond at the bottom of the cliff.
The trio watched the effusion of bubbles and the rainbow sheen caused by leaking gasoline on the black surface of the pond.
“How deep is that lake?” Claude asked Chuck.
“I haven’t tested it but the car certainly has vanished completely. Maybe about thirty feet down. It’s on my property so I doubt if anyone will be poking around in it.”
“Are there any other lakes around here?”
“Are you kidding? This is northern Minnesota and all they have here are lakes, trees, black flies and mosquitoes. There are two good lakes on this property and I have seen both of them. One is more or less shallow and the other is quite deep. Why?”
“I love to swim and you don’t have a pool.”
“When I checked them out, the deep one was pretty cold, even in autumn.”
“I don’t mind.”
“You’ll have to wait for spring.”
“I don’t mind that either.”
Claude had no idea why his hosts wanted to dump a crushed car into a frozen lake but as a good guest, he decided not to concern himself with the matter.
Claude’s car had its ruptured fuel line repaired eventually and in the second week of December, it was driven up to the house and put into the garage. The idea that Claude would leave as soon as his car was repaired was never mentioned again. He had proven to be an excellent companion and aside from Lars, who was jealous of him, he was gradually being considered as one of the family. The next day after Claude’s car had been garaged, it snowed heavily and the road quickly became impassable again. Claude was happy to be as far away from Chicago as he could get, safely hidden from the eyes of those who wished to do an injury to him. He found the company interesting, the food excellent and the privacy beyond price.
He was unaware that the frozen corpse of LeBec, the pancaked car’s former owner, was lodged just outside the window of his room, or that the putative assassin had died in his current, very comfortable bed
When the road was cleared again, Chuck got up very early one morning and, without telling anyone where he was going, drove all the way down to Duluth. Here, he bought Christmas ornaments at a very upscale store and dozens of presents which he had gift-wrapped. There would be no Christmas cards that year because there was no one to send them to but in one sex-oriented novelty store, he bought a large dildo that replicated the reproductive equipment of an African American, wrote the name of his late cousin on it with a marker pen and persuaded the disgusted clerk to gift wrap it.
“It’s for my mother,” he said with a smile but the clerk, who was very religious and only worked in the place out of desperation, did not think the sentiment was either amusing or appropriate, considering the holy season now at hand.
Chuck bought a mailer bag, stuffed the object into it, carefully wrote out his uncle’s name and address on it and for a return, put down one of the largest bank buildings in San Francisco. He waited in line for a half an hour at the post office, had the proper stamps put onto the package and then stuck it into another envelope, which he addressed to Mr. Lew. Inside was a Christmas greeting and a request to take the package to the nearest San Francisco post office and mail it.
What his uncle would do when his secretary brought it to him was speculative but because his uncle had no sense of humor, it would probably be taken to the police. He could visualize the disgusted, or perhaps thrilled, secretary hauling the immense object out of her purse and handing it to a desk officer.
He thought seriously about sending portions of LeBec to Collins, whose private address and unlisted telephone number was in LeBec’s little phone book but then decided that it was one thing to enrage his dimwitted uncle and quite another to annoy a murderous police official.
Because the local store did not have a good selection of food, he bought a very expensive smoked Virginia ham, even more expensive caviar, a large, frozen goose, cans of lobster bisque, English cookies, truffles, tins of paté de foie gras, five hundred dollars worth of wines and champagne, endives, garlic, pie fillings, fresh ground Colombian coffee and enough miscellaneous material to feed the household in great splendor for another two months.
On the trip back, he listened to several Bach cantatas on the van stereo system to better prepare him for the coming festivities. Some sort of a neo-Viking ceremony might be more in keeping with the architecture but other than having a human sacrifice, Chuck could not decide what this ceremony might consist of. There could be no virgin sacrifices because no one in the house was a virgin, except, perhaps Claude.
(Continued)
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