Dear friends,
I am noticing with some dismay that some (many?) of you are still firmly the mental clutches of the “conspiracy theories” logical fallacy. The reactions to Koenig’s articles about Ebola and HIV are typical of that kind of logical derailment. So it is hight time that I state a few basic assumptions of this blog.
1) A “conspiracy theory” is, a priori, a good thing. Why? Because the world is chock full of conspiracies. What is a conspiracy? It is a secret plan of a group of people. Does any of you really believe that with 16+ “intelligence” agencies in the USA there are not thousands of conspiracies hatched every day by tens of thousand of professional people just here, in the USA? Don’t you know that corporations conspire too? What do you think antitrust laws are all about? Do you know that the criminal code is also full of conspiracy crimes? So here is the deal: if you want to understand what happens behind the smokescreen thrown before you by the corporate media and government official you HAVE TO spend most of your time looking into conspiracy theories. Put simply – if you reject conspiracy theories you are blind. Period.
2) I don’t give a damn about my “credibility” or the “credibility” of my blog. I don’t deal in “credibility”. “Credibility” is an “argument of authority” which assumes that something coming from “A” is credible because it comes from “A”. This is not what I want for this blog. In the Saker community I want everybody to be critical of everybody and everything and to only judge an arguments in its own merits (or lack thereof). If tomorrow Poroshenko or Joe Biden write a good piece I would not hesitate to publish it. Not because I endorse it (I only endorse what I write!), but to foster an intelligent discussion. In other words, “credibility” is something attached to an argument, not a person.
3) In order to reject a hypothesis we have to first look into it. Unless we develop an 1984-like automatic rejection without analysis capability, there is no way for your to evaluate a thesis without being exposed to it. A hypothesis is just that – a “maybe” or “what if”. If it passes a preliminary stage of acceptance, and if it becomes formalized, it becomes a theory. Then, that theory can be tested, in particular in its ability to predict. Only then can it be proven false. In the case of Ebola and HIV all I hear is side “A” claiming that it was created by the US government while side “B” says that this is not so. In the meantime, NOBODY is offering any kind of halfway intelligent discussion of the hypothesis. Instead the hypothesis is dismissed prima facie as a “conspiracy theory”. Those who do that apparently fail to realize that if, as this hypothesis states, the US government had something to do with the creation of HIV or Ebola then by definition this was a conspiracy and, again, by definition only a conspiracy theory could help prove that.
What is wrong with you guys?! Has basic logic just become extinct?!
4) Last but not least – this blog is about *freedom of thought*, something sorely needed in our single-thought and completely monolithic society. I feel that freedom implies the freedom to make up you own mind and therefore to be exposed to something which is wrong or untrue. All of the media and 95% of the blogosphere is busy trying to establish “credibility” like a dog peeing in the four corners of a room to establish its territory. I say let them aspire to “credibility” if they so chose – I aspire for *freedom*. I want this blog to be a place where people can present odd, “heretical”, rejected, crimethink and otherwise persecuted ideas. Let them come here, present them, and if you disagree with them – tear them apart with facts and logic, be ruthless, don’t leave them a place to hide from your merciless analysis. But don’t rejected them without that, without this “trial by comments” in which all of us are jurors.
It just so happens that I remember some very well informed people telling me in the late 1980s early 1990s that HIV had all the signs of having been engineered. Is there a reason to reject such a hypothesis prima facie? Not if you know anything about the history of biowarfare research, especially by the US government. That I know for sure. But I personally have no opinion about HIV and no opinion about Ebola. Frankly, I don’t have the time to form an opinion about them (oh yes, I don’t consider having an opinion a “right” of some kind. Having an opinion is the result of a painstaking and long process of analysis at the end of which you sometimes, not always, end up with an opinion). To be very honest, I don’t particularly care. But I care that others care and that is why, I posted these articles by Koenig because I know for a fact that others (which shall remained unnamed) have chickened out from posting them, probably for reasons of “credibility”.
I don’t care much about this specific topic, but I do care, immensely, about the intellectual freedom of this blog. And I will never, ever, let considerations of “credibility” stand in the way of this blog’s intellectual freedom. There are plenty of really, truly, totally “credible” and “respectable” blogs out there. Somebody got to be free and non-respectable and I very deliberately chose to be part of that “fringe lunatic conspiracy theorist” with “zero credibility” which does not let the society’s doxa tell me what I should, or should not, post.
:-P
The Saker
How many years have vaccinations existed for?
How many people have been vaccinated?
How many lives have been SAVED by all those vaccinations?
How many major highly contagious diseases have been largely eliminated by them?
BILLIONS.BILLIONS.
How many have died from vaccine contamination??
A few thousands.
I am specifically referring to contamination, I do not want to hear stories about side-effects or ADD or mercury poisoning etc, which are not fatal and happen, if at all, to small numbers. We are talking about supposed campaigns to KILL OFF POPULATIONS on a large scale.
The bird flu false panic may have been used as a chance to make huge profits on unnecessary vaccines. Maybe. BUT this would not have worked unless vaccination had an excellent track record for wiping out dangerous REAL diseases.
That the process was hijacked ONCE for evil profit-making purposes does NOT prove that the whole concept of vaccination is evil and profit-motivated.
To use that one example as a reason for eliminating vaccinations is asking for all those fatal diseases to come back again. WHO THEN IS THE REAL KILLER??? what better way to kill off millions and be FREE OF ALL BLAME, than to scare people into refusing vaccination in large numbers?
Get real, anti-vacc people, can’t you see you’re being manipulated again?
No heroes Joat,but a damned fine rant nonetheless.
XbNB
It’s your blog, Saker. But for me, something helpful seems to turn more into a nuisance, more of the “white noise” on the internet. Why? To make it short: Both the labeling of dissidents as “conspiracy theorists” and the propagation of conspiracy theories are tools of domination, the first because it leaves the majority without a voice, the second because it leaves them without any idea what is really happening to them (us) and why.
So, if you insist on the first point and turn a blind eye to the second, then you don’t miss half of the task, but the whole.
@ Mulga Mumblebrain who said…
Your first point is excellent, and I’ve lost count of the times that I have seen seemingly intelligent people refuse to acknowledge that their denunciation of ‘conspiracy theories’ thereby denies the existence of conspiracies themselves,
C’mon mate. that is plain wrong. If you claim ALL disease is caused by bacteria, denying the existence or role of viruses, and I call you an idiot for thinking so, does that mean I am denying the existence of bacteria? If you aay aircraft condensation trails are actually poison sprays, and I tell you that is total bunk, how does that mean I deny the existence of conspiracies per se? If you claim dogs are the same family as cats, and i say nonsense, am I denying the existence of dogs?
“Conspiracy theory” means believing there IS a conspiracy where none has been shown to exist (or worse, where one has been shown to NOT exist). There are various levels of likelihood/unlikelihood involved here, true, ie negatives are hard to prove. But when all the “evidence” for something consists of “the government is evil, they’ve done bad things before, they’ve lied about it before, so this fantasy I just made up might be true, you never know…..” that is unmitigated BS, not evidence. And I shall continue to call it as BS. That does not mean I deny the existence of conspiracies per se. Of course they exist. But not EVERYTHING is a conspiracy.
Such conspiracy theories are particularly bad when they don’t even make any attempt to prove the conspiracy exists,just make the bald statement and expect everyone to believe it, often on the authority or credibility of the author. This is my main constant objection to Peter Koenig, who seems to be allergic to producing evidence for anything he says…and lately seeks to increase his “credibility” by listing Vineyard of the Saker among sites that publish his writings. Saker is free to keep publishing him (at least it leads to some great debates) but I will call his BS every time I see it. The day anyone is prevented from doing so is the day this site dies.
@ anonymous who said
It is not just that they have long been repressing natural therapies- but that they chose to shut down ongoing natural therapies for ebola patients that have been proved to be effective by the Department of Defense. Why? Timing is everything. We cannot overlook this.
Repressing natural remedies is a function of the pharmaceutical companies not wanting any low-price competition. In fact it is often not low-priced, a lot of “natural remedies” now are quite expensive, but the money is not going to them, so….
Much more seriously, where is your EVIDENCE for your claim about natural remedies proven to work for Ebola? I do know of one major vendor of nano-silver claiming this (let’s be fair and understand that these bans cut into HIS profits). What proofs do you have ? (ideally please not claims by the company that has a dog in the fight).
@ Angelo who said…
Kat Kan — The image on Wikipedia is not quite what you presume. HIV has never been isolated, you might want to research the topic a bit more.
Here is a helpful forum where some are truly looking for the answers – http://forums.questioningaids.com/showthread.php?t=8964&highlight=isolated
As I said, you’d better get cracking editing Wikipedia then. But I think they will quickly revert it, when they find you are basing your claim on a FORUM of amateurs (no proven expertise at any rate) who are rejecting claims that HIV has been isolated because, in their opinion, some rules made up in 1973 were not followed.
You really do have to look at “does this person know what he’s talking about”. I do NOT SAY to automatically accept everything from an “authority”. But I AM saying, an authority, who is that because he actually works in the field, is more likely to KNOW than random people with no education in that field (or perhaps in any other). Officially published scientific findings can NOT be totally false, there is no WORLD conspiracy to falsify new discoveries, Because there is fierce competition between scientists, especially when something new comes up, many who wanted to be first will rip into the new finding, trying to pick holes in the method and results. Furthermore drug companies will go to great lengths to GET IT RIGHT, as on that depends their ability to make profitable drugs to treat it.
If you want to keep insisting HIV has not been isolated, be my guest. But don’t ask me to share your belief based on random forums of random strangers.
Re your HIV positive friends who never injected…and who did they have sex with? bearing in mind women can have, and pass on, HIV? and how are they (or you) proposing they got it?
@ juliana who said
Now, here is simply the danger in some ‘conspiracy theories’ – they pose too much power to the psychopaths, and they instill irrational fears. ……
…You see, she was frightened unnecessarily and that caused her death. I don’t want that to happen to anyone, and that’s what exaggerated stories like forced quarantine and poisoned vaccinations will cause to happen …
YES. PRECISELY.
How much of these scare-mongering theories are promoted by THEM to instill fear in people? Look what can be done if people are made afraid enough? would the Patriot Act be accepted if we had NO TERRORISTS? would people let their sons and daughters go die in war if there were NO TERRORISTS? (never mind who funded and armed them in the first place).
They really must be laughing, getting their work done for them by the victims themselves.
katkan
What is your issue? really?
You are acting in a classic bullying fashion
All I read is you chastising a bunch of pretty well informed people as if they are your inferiors.
Who the heck do you think you are?
You lobbed the first adhominem in name calling “Conspiracy theory”
You have moved the goal posts and used appeal to authority over and over
Appeal to authority is just another logical fallacy. You know that right?
You wave science around in way that leads me to believe you are some kind of fanatical religious adherent- the cult of scientific omnipotence
Science is no more perfect or immune from politics, lies, hoax, & manipulation then anything else
As for the allopathic medical establishment? Don’t get me started! The numbers of people that die every year in the US alone due to allopathic medicine are staggering and it’s kept very quiet in order to keep belief shored up and profits pouring in!
More people die in that manner then from terrorism and yah, we don’t have a war on big medicine and all it’s exploits
“conspiracy theory” doesn’t mean a dam thing
Its entirely a derogatory name
It is equivalent to just another ad hominem based on yet more appeal to authority.
Has it ever occurred to you that you are mistaken? You might just be. Entertain that thought for a bit.
“They really must be laughing, getting their work done for them by the victims themselves”
“Appeal to ridicule”- hahaha
heads up saker, you may have trouble here. IMO
Thank you, Kat Kan. I am not sure what Penny is on about. To me the visceral response to the claims in the article serve to promote hysterics and irrational behaviors that will be an excuse to clamp down as they did after 9/11. We have to remember that the ptb use chaos as an opportunity to flex their muscles. A prudent response such as evidenced by Russia is the only way forward, in my view.
Saker wants to post all sides; that is his right. We have a right to reasonably disagree and keep the comments section free of ad hominem attacks (in this I agree with Penny. The term ‘conspiracy theory’ isn’t ad hominem at all because a theory isn’t a person.
@ Kit Kan
There was aa big smallpox vaccine conspiracy in Kansas City in 1921. It is know because of court records: it ended up disvovered by a watchdog group and taken to court, and won.
Details here:
Vaccine Induced Disease Epidemic Outbreaks
True Ott, PhD
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/trueottvaccineinducedepidemics24aug09.shtml
I remind you that for every conspiracy that is detected, many, many more go undetected (i.e. are succesful). Your notion that the only conspiracies are those that are actually discovered is rather silly.
Kat Kan, you have been a valuable contributor, bringing news fron Novorossiya, but I don’t understand your stance on our suspicions about viruses and bacteria. You are trying to put the lid on our serious concerns. There are bioweapons out there and some commercial companies are suspected of having engineered controlled epidemics for economic reasons. After the swine flu scare, the latter is the talk of some european governments, I can assure you. They were being had.
AIDS targeted the gay community in the US, but in Africa the virus was heterosexually transmitted and it was more dangerous. Don’t you find that strange? I do and I reserve the right to ask questions without asking somebodys permission. That does not mean I have all the answers, but everything starts with posing the right questions, as philosophers say. Instead of respecting this our right, you say we must produce proofs. How are we to do that? We are laymen in search of answers and you demand the impossible. If the elite wants to test an ebola strain in Africa, do you think we can easily find the proof? Of course not, but we can take note of what is happening and try to understand it.
When you take a look at what has happened to Africa, especially in subsaharan Africa, you will notice the continent has been under different attacks for years. Africa exported food in the 1950s. In the 60s, there was a balance between imports and exports, and in the 70s Africa depended on imports and not only because of a growing population. Do you remember Idi Amin, the leader of Uganda, a couple of decades ago? He challenged the British Empire and soon after his country had a cruel civil war. Zimbabwe was likewise disobedient and was punished with economic means. I don’t defend what was done against white landowners, but imo, warfare is waged against African blacks, who don’t fall in line.
It has been said AIDS started in Haiti. I am not at all surprised. To this day, neither Paris nor London are willing to admit their welltrained soldiers were defeated by former black slaves on Haiti. When Napoleon wanted slavery back, the slaves successfully revolted against the French army. Brave and welltrained French soldiers were trapped in the swamps and succumbed to different illnesses. A British expeditionary force met the same faith. Ever since, for about two hundred years, the country, one of the poorest in the world, has been economically punished. When two Roman legions were annihilated by the Germanic tribes, Rome pretended they had never existed, but they couldn’t punish the Germanic tribes. Our present imperial powers don’t have that problem with the Haitians. British and French friends, did you learn about this in school?
Ebola, AIDS and SARS are dangerous, but that does not mean they are used, if they are used, for largescale genocide. You miss the point. Bad news keep us on our toes and that usually means we look for help from our rulers. That being said, we have indications the elite wants to cull the human population. According to the Georgia Guidestones, the human population should be 500.000 millions in the future. New 3D technology, computers and robotics will change society in the coming twenty years. Drivers will not be needed when trucks are computer controlled. Many will lose their jobs in the future and I see no debate about it. We are useless eaters in this new world. Don’t you think the elite has longterm plans for us? All indications are the old, the unemployed and the sick are expendable. A controlled new plague can do the job. Our leaders are insane, so don’t be surprised if we have lost trust.
The first report about the success of nano silver came from Africa, not from the US company that sold it. Also note two US banks are said to go after the company. If that is true, don’t you recognize typical elite behaviour?
Saker. Even when you’re on holidays, you’re plugged in.
@Kat Kan
Never mind that Mr.”True” Ott proposed to you by Mr. Anonymous, he even is lying about his own curriculum vitae :-D
http://www.waronwethepeople.com/fraud-alert-pursuant-true-ott-bio/
Joat said…@ 24 November, 2014 20:06
“Caveat Emptor!”
From this phrase you appear to exhibit a level of integration into the opponents’ world view – I’ll spare you and others the German – and practices; caveat emptor usually being translated as buyer beware, placing the “responsibility” and risk on the “individual”.
BTW said…@ 23 November, 2014 22:18
“If “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the looking glass” could be made compulsory reading all over the world”
They are in some places, with others.
After all Mr. Dodgson died.
at mostly al th Anonymouzses
@ Anon
the link yo9u gave me about deliberate vaccine
Whole population of all Kansas City Missouri was only 160,000 in 1921 so if “tens of thousands” got sick, thazt must have made the news — and made historym too. How did they all fit into a hospital which would may be at most 200 beds for a town that size??
In actual historic fact, there WAS an outbreak of smallpox in Kansas City that year. A total of 290 people were infected and a total io 103 died. Only ONE of the dead ones had been earlier vaccinated (32 years earlier). Children in schools WERE vaccinated after the outbreak started, and NONE OF THOSE caught the disease.
I wson’t bother showing how wrong all the other claims of that article are.
I beg you PLEASE double and triple check things before believing them. Anyone can write a fancy story with lots of links (none of whih proved any of their claims, by the way). They can be mistaken, or they can be lying on purpozse, or they may be agents of the government spreading scary lies on purpose.
Sometimes people just make stuff up and we don’t know why. This looks like one of those. The same story shows up heaps of times, even translated into other languages. But it is all the same story from a single source. There is absolutely NO OTHER source for the supposed court case or anything else in the story, NO OTHER SOURCE. Real events get lots of different reports on them. Real events causing thousands of deaths end up in Wikipedia, too.
Please, everybody. Stop crying WOLF. If you believe every single thing is a conspiracy. you are blinding yourself to the times that REALLY ARE. So you can’t protect yourself against the next one.
Get smart. Get choosy. Triple check before believing anything.
I am not trying to put the lid on these concerns. Tjhe concerns are VERY REAL. The evidence for some cases is very real. For many others, it is just rubbish to confuse everyone. Get smart. Learn to pick the difference.