offguardian--2020-12-15--The Covid-19 Data is a ‘Travesty’

The Covid-19 Data is a ‘Travesty’

Although people have tragically died from Covid-19 , the way the Covid-19 death data is recorded in many countries around the world has produced , and continues to produce , an inflated death toll .
This inflated death toll has then been , and continues to be , used by fascist-style bureaucracies , in conjunction with scientific priesthoods , to terrify the general public into obedience .
One of the most basic laws of statistics is that correlation does not equal causation .
Although this may sound complicated , it ’ s not .
It simply means that just because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or to put this another way , a close relationship between two things in the world , this does not mean that one thing is causing the other thing to happen .
A third factor may be causing the correlation that is observed for instance .
As an example , there is usually a correlation in many countries between cold weather and people buying more goods in shops , or online , but this increase in buying is not caused by cold weather .
Instead , it is caused by the Christmas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and it just happens to be the case that the weather is usually cold in December in many parts of the world that celebrate Christmas .
So , even though there is a correlation between cold weather and increased buying patterns , cold weather does not cause increased buying patterns , but the Christmas period causes people to buy more goods .
Furthermore , the correlation that is observed between two things in the world may just be a product of random chance .
This has led people to point to some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that there was a correlation between margarine consumption and divorce rates in the Maine between 2000 and 2009 .
There was also a correlation between per capita cheese consumption and the number of people who died by becoming tangled in their bedsheets , or the number of people who drowned by falling into a pool and films Nicholas Cage appeared in .
Once again , correlation does not equal causation .
If we turn our attention back to the Covid death data , just because someone has tested positive for Covid-19 and died @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aside for a second that some tests are known to give false positives ) , that does not mean that Covid-19 caused that person to die .
Yet , the main figure certain countries around the world are using to express Covid-19 deaths is simply recorded , or coded , as essentially any death involving a positive Covid-19 test within 28 days of death .
Because correlation does not equal causation , simply recording Covid-19 deaths as any deaths involving a positive Covid-19 test within a given period of time is an extremely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have died .
For instance , in the UK , the main figure being used for Covid-19 deaths is coded , as stated on the official Coronavirus website , as the… This completely ignores the problem of causality , and thus , produces a much larger death toll than there actually is .
For instance , if someone has had an underlying heart condition for 10 years , and has a heart complication and dies , their death was most likely mainly caused by the heart condition that has plagued them for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had tested positive for Covid-19 for the first time within 28 days of them dying , that person could be included as a Covid-19 death in the UK , if all is required to be categorized as a Covid-19 death is simply a positive test result .
For those who understand that the way you code deaths dramatically changes the number of deaths you get , the UK authorities kindly illustrate this for us .
There is a second number recorded by UK authorities which codes deaths as… By coding deaths this way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ compared to when deaths are coded as… Despite the UK authorities having two ways to code Covid-19 deaths however , none of them are particularly accurate in my opinion .
This is because the positive test figure does not deal with the issue of causality , and the death certificate figure only mentions Covid as needing to be “ one of the causes ” of death , rather than “ the primary cause , ” in addition to the death certificate figure not explicitly demanding the need for a positive Covid-19 test result @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the United States , we find similar issues with the Covid-19 data .
One of the main figures the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) is reporting as the total number of provisional Covid deaths in the United States – which stands at 241,906 deaths at the time I am recording this audio – is presented as… If we dig a little deeper , this number is based on “ deaths with confirmed or presumed COVID-19 , coded to ICD–10 code U07.1.
” If we continue to dig , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calculated .
The CDC ’ s website states that : There are many potential problems with coding Covid deaths this way .
One problem is again this issue of Covid-19 being listed as “ a cause of death , ” as opposed to the primary cause of death .
If we look at the technical notes , the CDC ’ s website provides more details : Even though this 92 % of cases where Covid was listed as the underlying cause of death is more compelling , 8 % of 241,906 is still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deaths .
Furthermore , if we dig deeper still to understand how robust this data is , we find out from an April report by the NCHS , titled : Guidance for Certifying Deaths Due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 ( COVID–19 ) , which is still linked on the CDC ’ s website where it provides details on its data , that it is acceptable to “ report COVID–19 on a death certificate without ” the need for the patient to test positive for Covid-19 : Even though I understand that this report @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a death to be recorded as being due to Covid-19 , the patient actually has to test positive for Covid-19 .
In my opinion , there needs to be a more robust categorization of what constitutes a Covid-19 death , as the previous , and seemingly current ways of recording Covid-19 deaths are somewhat vague and imprecise , arguably producing an inflated death count .
From my perspective , the main figure countries should use to categorize Covid-19 deaths has to include ( 1 ) the need for the patient to test positive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the need for a medical professional to examine the patient and conclude that Covid-19 was the primary , or underlying , cause of death .
This should be the main figure that officials and the media then quote , because the average person who hears what the latest death count is on a 2-minute news segment presumes that this figure actually expresses how many people have died of Covid-19 – not with Covid-19 , not with suspected Covid-19 , but actually of Covid-19 .
Countries could have a secondary number of Covid-19 deaths @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many factors in death , but the main death toll has to establish that the individual had Covid-19 , and that Covid-19 was the primary , or underlying , cause of death .
From my interpretation , the way many countries have and continue to categorize Covid-19 deaths produces an inflated death count , giving a distorted impression of the scale of Covid-19 .
Many would argue that the authorities in various countries around the world are well aware of this issue , and are using statistics to generate fear .
To be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , scientist , or medical doctor , although I did take a few classes in statistics and research methods as part of my degree in Politics at university .
But don ’ t just take my word for it that the Covid-19 data is a mess in various ways .
Jamie Jenkins , the former Head of Health Analysis at the Office for National Statistics , has called the Covid-19 data , in the context of Britain , a ‘ travesty ’ in various ways .
Additionally , it is important to note @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a key feature of tyrannical regimes down through history .
In the Soviet Union for instance , the Stalinist government constantly suppressed or delayed the release of statistics that contradicted their agendas , and only released data that supported their initiatives .
Today , history looks to be repeating itself once again .
Governments around the world are selectively using statistics in a way that inflates the scale of the Covid pandemic .
For instance , over the past month or two , there has been a clear shift in the emphasis that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the number of positive Covid-19 cases .
Yet with this shift in emphasise , both parties have largely failed to contextualise why this was always going to be the case once mass testing began .
It doesn ’ t take a rocket scientist to work out that even if the Covid-19 tests being used are 100 % accurate , the more tests you conduct , the more positive cases you are going to find .
If we take the UK for example , the number of virus tests being conducted has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
On the 1st of May for instance , just under one million virus tests had been conducted in the UK .
On the 1st of December , over 40 million virus tests had been conducted .
In November alone , approximately 9 million virus tests were conducted in UK .
Therefore , it is no surprise that there were more positive cases in November than there were in May .
The number of positive cases only becomes even 1 % relevant if there has been a consistent number of tests being conducted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ officials a base to compare too .
Furthermore , what percentage of tests are producing false positives ?
How sensitive are these tests ?
What is the margin of error in these cases , as some tests are reportedly picking up fragments of dead viruses from infections months ago that are no longer a potential issue ?
There are questions over the validity of the Polymerase Chain Reaction ( PCR ) test for instance , a popular test used .
Kary Mullis , the inventor of the PCR test has said that “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As John Lauritsen , who quoted Mullis in a 1996 article on the use of PCR tests for HIV patients , wrote : In the context of using the PCR for determining a Covid-19 infection , a spokesperson for Public Health England recently told Reuters that… Thus , it is important to ask whether many of these positive Covid test results are merely from some tests picking up fragments of dead viruses that no longer pose a risk of infection ?
Furthermore , it is important to establish what type of people are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases , it is completely irrelevant if a young , healthy person , who is not obese , and who does not have any underlying health conditions , tests positive for Covid-19 .
This is because statistically , as I understand it as someone who is not a medical doctor , it is extremely unlikely that a young , healthy person will have a bad reaction to Covid-19 , and they may not even know they were ever infected .
Additionally , I would like to bring to your attention a recent story @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vaccine .
A report in the Independent newspaper states that the UK government has given Pfizer legal indemnity for its vaccine rollout , which protects the pharmaceutical giant from being sued by people who experience any potential issues with the new vaccine .
NHS staff who will be administering the vaccine , are also protected .
Furthermore , it was reported that the Department of Health and Social Care has confirmed that the government would add the new coronavirus vaccine to the list of vaccinations covered by the Vaccine Damages Payments Act .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ a one-off £120,000 payment to people who are permanently disabled ” or injured as a “ result of a listed vaccination.
” Needless to say , this is a worrying sign – I will link the full article in the description .
If we turn our attention back to the question of statistics , there are clearly major issues with the way the Covid-19 death tolls and positive cases are being calculated and measured .
However , the notion that governments around the world that are behaving in a fascist-style manner are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is nothing unsurprising to those who understand history .
As George Orwell wrote in his book 1984 , where he used historical truths and his own insights to predict how a global dictatorial regime of the future would operate , explained : There are many more issues with the Covid-19 data , including the fact that flu deaths in parts of October reportedly decreased in Britain and the United States compared to weekly and monthly five-year averages , which in part may be because these deaths have been included as Covid-19 deaths .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the main point to emphasize here is simply that there are lies , damn lies , and then there ’ s statistics .

by Insight History
Although people have tragically died from Covid-19, the way the Covid-19 death data is recorded in many countries around the world has produced, and continues to produce, an inflated death toll. This inflated death toll has then been, and continues to be, used by fascist-style bureaucracies, in conjunction with scientific priesthoods, to terrify the general public into obedience.
Correlation Does Not Equal Causation
One of the most basic laws of statistics is that correlation does not equal causation. Although this may sound complicated, it’s not. It simply means that just because there is a correlation between two variables, or to put this another way, a close relationship between two things in the world, this does not mean that one thing is causing the other thing to happen.
A third factor may be causing the correlation that is observed for instance. As an example, there is usually a correlation in many countries between cold weather and people buying more goods in shops, or online, but this increase in buying is not caused by cold weather. Instead, it is caused by the Christmas period, when people spend more money, and it just happens to be the case that the weather is usually cold in December in many parts of the world that celebrate Christmas. So, even though there is a correlation between cold weather and increased buying patterns, cold weather does not cause increased buying patterns, but the Christmas period causes people to buy more goods.
Furthermore, the correlation that is observed between two things in the world may just be a product of random chance. This has led people to point to some funny correlations, such as the fact that there was a correlation between margarine consumption and divorce rates in the Maine between 2000 and 2009. There was also a correlation between per capita cheese consumption and the number of people who died by becoming tangled in their bedsheets, or the number of people who drowned by falling into a pool and films Nicholas Cage appeared in.
Once again, correlation does not equal causation.
Inflated Death Data
If we turn our attention back to the Covid death data, just because someone has tested positive for Covid-19 and died sometime after (even if we put aside for a second that some tests are known to give false positives), that does not mean that Covid-19 caused that person to die. Yet, the main figure certain countries around the world are using to express Covid-19 deaths is simply recorded, or coded, as essentially any death involving a positive Covid-19 test within 28 days of death.
Because correlation does not equal causation, simply recording Covid-19 deaths as any deaths involving a positive Covid-19 test within a given period of time is an extremely poor way to measure how many people have died. For instance, in the UK, the main figure being used for Covid-19 deaths is coded, as stated on the official Coronavirus website, as the…
number of deaths of people who had had a positive test result for COVID-19 and died within 28 days of the first positive test.
This completely ignores the problem of causality, and thus, produces a much larger death toll than there actually is.
For instance, if someone has had an underlying heart condition for 10 years, and has a heart complication and dies, their death was most likely mainly caused by the heart condition that has plagued them for a decade. However, if that person had tested positive for Covid-19 for the first time within 28 days of them dying, that person could be included as a Covid-19 death in the UK, if all is required to be categorized as a Covid-19 death is simply a positive test result.
For those who understand that the way you code deaths dramatically changes the number of deaths you get, the UK authorities kindly illustrate this for us. There is a second number recorded by UK authorities which codes deaths as…
people whose death certificate mentioned COVID-19 as one of the causes.
By coding deaths this way, there are thousands more Covid-19 deaths compared to when deaths are coded as…
people who had had a positive test result for COVID-19 and died within 28 days of the first positive test.
Despite the UK authorities having two ways to code Covid-19 deaths however, none of them are particularly accurate in my opinion. This is because the positive test figure does not deal with the issue of causality, and the death certificate figure only mentions Covid as needing to be “one of the causes” of death, rather than “the primary cause,” in addition to the death certificate figure not explicitly demanding the need for a positive Covid-19 test result.
US Death Data
If we turn our attention to the United States, we find similar issues with the Covid-19 data. One of the main figures the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is reporting as the total number of provisional Covid deaths in the United States – which stands at 241,906 deaths at the time I am recording this audio – is presented as…
all deaths involving Covid-19.
If we dig a little deeper, this number is based on “deaths with confirmed or presumed COVID-19, coded to ICD–10 code U07.1.” If we continue to dig, we can better understand how this number is calculated. The CDC’s website states that:
“The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) uses incoming data from death certificates to produce provisional COVID-19 death counts. These include deaths occurring within the 50 states and the District of Columbia… COVID-19 deaths are identified using a new ICD–10 code. When COVID-19 is reported as a cause of death – or when it is listed as a “probable” or “presumed” cause — the death is coded as U07.1. This can include cases with or without laboratory confirmation.”
There are many potential problems with coding Covid deaths this way. One problem is again this issue of Covid-19 being listed as “a cause of death,” as opposed to the primary cause of death. If we look at the technical notes, the CDC’s website provides more details:
“Coronavirus disease deaths are identified using the ICD–10 code U07.1. Deaths are coded to U07.1 when coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19 are reported as a cause that contributed to death on the death certificate. These can include laboratory confirmed cases, as well as cases without laboratory confirmation. If the certifier suspects COVID-19 or determines it was likely (e.g., the circumstances were compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), they can report COVID-19 as “probable” or “presumed” on the death certificate (5, 6). COVID-19 is listed as the underlying cause on the death certificate in 92% of deaths (see Table 1).”
Even though this 92% of cases where Covid was listed as the underlying cause of death is more compelling, 8% of 241,906 is still a relatively large number, over 19,300 deaths. Furthermore, if we dig deeper still to understand how robust this data is, we find out from an April report by the NCHS, titled: Guidance for Certifying Deaths Due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID–19), which is still linked on the CDC’s website where it provides details on its data, that it is acceptable to “report COVID–19 on a death certificate without” the need for the patient to test positive for Covid-19:
“An accurate count of the number of deaths due to COVID–19 infection, which depends in part on proper death certification, is critical to ongoing public health surveillance and response. When a death is due to COVID–19, it is likely the UCOD and thus, it should be reported on the lowest line used in Part I of the death certificate. Ideally, testing for COVID–19 should be conducted, but it is acceptable to report COVID–19 on a death certificate without this confirmation if the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty” (p.2-p.3).
Even though I understand that this report was published in April, surely for a death to be recorded as being due to Covid-19, the patient actually has to test positive for Covid-19. In my opinion, there needs to be a more robust categorization of what constitutes a Covid-19 death, as the previous, and seemingly current ways of recording Covid-19 deaths are somewhat vague and imprecise, arguably producing an inflated death count.
From my perspective, the main figure countries should use to categorize Covid-19 deaths has to include (1) the need for the patient to test positive for Covid; and (2) the need for a medical professional to examine the patient and conclude that Covid-19 was the primary, or underlying, cause of death. This should be the main figure that officials and the media then quote, because the average person who hears what the latest death count is on a 2-minute news segment presumes that this figure actually expresses how many people have died of Covid-19 – not with Covid-19, not with suspected Covid-19, but actually of Covid-19.
Countries could have a secondary number of Covid-19 deaths where Covid is recorded as one of many factors in death, but the main death toll has to establish that the individual had Covid-19, and that Covid-19 was the primary, or underlying, cause of death.
From my interpretation, the way many countries have and continue to categorize Covid-19 deaths produces an inflated death count, giving a distorted impression of the scale of Covid-19. Many would argue that the authorities in various countries around the world are well aware of this issue, and are using statistics to generate fear.
Covid Data is a ‘Travesty’
To be clear, I am not a statistician, scientist, or medical doctor, although I did take a few classes in statistics and research methods as part of my degree in Politics at university. But don’t just take my word for it that the Covid-19 data is a mess in various ways. Jamie Jenkins, the former Head of Health Analysis at the Office for National Statistics, has called the Covid-19 data, in the context of Britain, a ‘travesty’ in various ways.
Additionally, it is important to note that the manipulation of statistics has been a key feature of tyrannical regimes down through history. In the Soviet Union for instance, the Stalinist government constantly suppressed or delayed the release of statistics that contradicted their agendas, and only released data that supported their initiatives.
Imprecise Tests
Today, history looks to be repeating itself once again. Governments around the world are selectively using statistics in a way that inflates the scale of the Covid pandemic. For instance, over the past month or two, there has been a clear shift in the emphasis that the government and the media are placing on the number of positive Covid-19 cases. Yet with this shift in emphasise, both parties have largely failed to contextualise why this was always going to be the case once mass testing began.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that even if the Covid-19 tests being used are 100% accurate, the more tests you conduct, the more positive cases you are going to find. If we take the UK for example, the number of virus tests being conducted has been increasing month-by-month since May of this year.
On the 1st of May for instance, just under one million virus tests had been conducted in the UK. On the 1st of December, over 40 million virus tests had been conducted. In November alone, approximately 9 million virus tests were conducted in UK. Therefore, it is no surprise that there were more positive cases in November than there were in May. The number of positive cases only becomes even 1% relevant if there has been a consistent number of tests being conducted over many months, as this gives officials a base to compare too.
Furthermore, what percentage of tests are producing false positives? How sensitive are these tests? What is the margin of error in these cases, as some tests are reportedly picking up fragments of dead viruses from infections months ago that are no longer a potential issue? There are questions over the validity of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test for instance, a popular test used.
Kary Mullis, the inventor of the PCR test has said that “quantitative, PCR is an oxymoron.” As John Lauritsen, who quoted Mullis in a 1996 article on the use of PCR tests for HIV patients, wrote:
PCR is intended to identify substances qualitatively, but by its very nature is unsuited for estimating numbers. Although there is a common misimpression that the viral load tests actually count the number of viruses in the blood, these tests cannot detect free, infectious viruses at all; they can only detect proteins that are believed, in some cases wrongly, to be unique to HIV. The tests can detect genetic sequences of viruses, but not viruses themselves.
In the context of using the PCR for determining a Covid-19 infection, a spokesperson for Public Health England recently told Reuters that…
detecting viral material by PCR does not indicate that the virus is fully intact and infectious i.e. able to cause infection in other people.
Thus, it is important to ask whether many of these positive Covid test results are merely from some tests picking up fragments of dead viruses that no longer pose a risk of infection? Furthermore, it is important to establish what type of people are testing positive for Covid-19? In most cases, it is completely irrelevant if a young, healthy person, who is not obese, and who does not have any underlying health conditions, tests positive for Covid-19. This is because statistically, as I understand it as someone who is not a medical doctor, it is extremely unlikely that a young, healthy person will have a bad reaction to Covid-19, and they may not even know they were ever infected.
Pfizer Given Legal Protection for Covid Vaccine
Additionally, I would like to bring to your attention a recent story I read in relation to the Covid-19 vaccine. A report in the Independent newspaper states that the UK government has given Pfizer legal indemnity for its vaccine rollout, which protects the pharmaceutical giant from being sued by people who experience any potential issues with the new vaccine. NHS staff who will be administering the vaccine, are also protected.
Furthermore, it was reported that the Department of Health and Social Care has confirmed that the government would add the new coronavirus vaccine to the list of vaccinations covered by the Vaccine Damages Payments Act. As the Independent notes, this gives “a one-off £120,000 payment to people who are permanently disabled” or injured as a “result of a listed vaccination.” Needless to say, this is a worrying sign – I will link the full article in the description.
If we turn our attention back to the question of statistics, there are clearly major issues with the way the Covid-19 death tolls and positive cases are being calculated and measured. However, the notion that governments around the world that are behaving in a fascist-style manner are using statistics to seemingly control the population is nothing unsurprising to those who understand history. As George Orwell wrote in his book 1984, where he used historical truths and his own insights to predict how a global dictatorial regime of the future would operate, explained:
“Even the written instructions which Winston received, and which he invariably got rid of as soon as he had dealt with them, never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed: always the reference was to slips, errors, misprints, or misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy.
But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty’s figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of time you were expected to make them up out of your head” (Orwell, 2008: 43).
Curious Drop in Flu Deaths
There are many more issues with the Covid-19 data, including the fact that flu deaths in parts of October reportedly decreased in Britain and the United States compared to weekly and monthly five-year averages, which in part may be because these deaths have been included as Covid-19 deaths.
In the interest of time however, the main point to emphasize here is simply that there are lies, damn lies, and then there’s statistics.


offguardian--2020-12-15--What Joe Biden’s Electoral College “Victory” Really Means

So , the electoral college cast their votes , and they handed Joe Biden the Presidency .
The decision was never in any serious doubt .
We ’ ve been over the evidence the election was rigged , we ’ ve discussed at length the potential corruption of postal ballots ( historically the least safe way to vote , and most liable to fraud ) .
There ’ s no need to go over it again .
Given all that , it was inevitable the Electoral College would vote Biden in , and the lawsuits would be turned out of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go to the trouble of fixing a nationwide election and without knowing you have the judges and bureaucrats on-side first .
When you ’ re staging a coup , the vast majority of the work is behind the scenes – securing the loyalty of soldiers and officials and media mouthpieces .
You don ’ t actually act until the last minute , one frenzied moment of violent change , then a steady period securing of your position .
Donald Trump ’ s cause has been largely hopeless since well before polling day .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ way or another .
Likely peacefully , thanks to some backroom deal .
What his many millions of supporters do after that is anyone ’ s guess…there is definitely a potential for chaos .
At this point the question isn ’ t “ was the election fixed ?
” , the question is “ why was the election fixed ?
” The issue here isn ’ t whether or not America ’ s democracy is corrupt , anyone paying attention can see that it is ( and has been for decades ) .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ it so obvious , and what is so important about Biden being President ?
Is it about the Iran nuclear deal , Wearing masks ?
Funding the WHO , or staying put in Somalia ?
Unlikely .
These are policy changes you can bring about through passive resistance , bureaucratic red-tape , or simply straight up saying you did them when you didn ’ t .
You don ’ t need to stage a coup to keep 700 soldiers in Somalia .
So what would be worth all the trouble ?
Perhaps for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should look back at the last US election so openly and obviously subject to creative vote distribution : Bush vs Gore in 2000 .
The 2000 election was almost certainly fixed .
It was clearly very important that George W. Bush became President , and with him came his coterie of neocon warmongers and puppetmasters .
Less than a year into his Presidency , 9/11 happened .
Less than two months after that , the US invaded Afghanistan .
The war on Terror had begun , and Iraq , Syria , and Libya @ @ @ @ @ @ @ blaze .
It wasn ’ t just about starting a few wars , either .
It was about a “ single catastrophic and catalyzing event ” triggering monumental changes in the way the world works .
It was about Gitmo and Drone Strikes and Enhanced Interrogation Techniques .
It was about normalising execution without trial , constant surveillance and keeping people scared .
It was about the Patriot Act “ temporarily ” halting people ’ s fundamental freedoms…forever .
A huge policy shift that cemented Imperial power abroad , enforced draconian discipline at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the entire planet .
I would expect something similar for Joe Biden ’ s contrived presidency .
But what form will it take ?
Will it be due to the Covid19 “ pandemic ” , or can we expect another “ catalysing event ” ?
It could be the Great Reset , or the Green New Deal .
Or both .
While Biden will likely endorse , and even reinforce , US troops all over Africa and the Middle East , his flagship policy is likely to be domestic rather international , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brutal authoritarian consolidation of control in a flimsy “ progressive ” disguise .
Whatever it turns out to be , it will be sea-change in the way the world works .
The Deep State don ’ t stick their necks out this far for anything less .

Kit Knightly
So, the electoral college cast their votes, and they handed Joe Biden the Presidency. The decision was never in any serious doubt.
We’ve been over the evidence the election was rigged, we’ve discussed at length the potential corruption of postal ballots (historically the least safe way to vote, and most liable to fraud). There’s no need to go over it again.
Given all that, it was inevitable the Electoral College would vote Biden in, and the lawsuits would be turned out of court unheard. You don’t go to the trouble of fixing a nationwide election and without knowing you have the judges and bureaucrats on-side first. When you’re staging a coup, the vast majority of the work is behind the scenes – securing the loyalty of soldiers and officials and media mouthpieces. You don’t actually act until the last minute, one frenzied moment of violent change, then a steady period securing of your position.
Donald Trump’s cause has been largely hopeless since well before polling day. He will be forced aside, one way or another. Likely peacefully, thanks to some backroom deal. What his many millions of supporters do after that is anyone’s guess…there is definitely a potential for chaos.
At this point the question isn’t “was the election fixed?”, the question is “why was the election fixed?”
The issue here isn’t whether or not America’s democracy is corrupt, anyone paying attention can see that it is (and has been for decades). The issue is why are they making it so obvious, and what is so important about Biden being President?
Is it about the Iran nuclear deal, Wearing masks? Funding the WHO, or staying put in Somalia? Unlikely. These are policy changes you can bring about through passive resistance, bureaucratic red-tape, or simply straight up saying you did them when you didn’t. You don’t need to stage a coup to keep 700 soldiers in Somalia.
So what would be worth all the trouble?
Perhaps for a possible answer to this question we should look back at the last US election so openly and obviously subject to creative vote distribution: Bush vs Gore in 2000.
The 2000 election was almost certainly fixed. It was clearly very important that George W. Bush became President, and with him came his coterie of neocon warmongers and puppetmasters.
Less than a year into his Presidency, 9/11 happened. Less than two months after that, the US invaded Afghanistan. The war on Terror had begun, and Iraq, Syria, and Libya would all be caught up in the blaze.
It wasn’t just about starting a few wars, either.
It was about a “single catastrophic and catalyzing event” triggering monumental changes in the way the world works. It was about Gitmo and Drone Strikes and Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. It was about normalising execution without trial, constant surveillance and keeping people scared.
It was about the Patriot Act “temporarily” halting people’s fundamental freedoms…forever. A huge policy shift that cemented Imperial power abroad, enforced draconian discipline at home and totally changed the political landscape of the entire planet.
I would expect something similar for Joe Biden’s contrived presidency. But what form will it take? Will it be due to the Covid19 “pandemic”, or can we expect another “catalysing event”? It could be the Great Reset, or the Green New Deal. Or both.
While Biden will likely endorse, and even reinforce, US troops all over Africa and the Middle East, his flagship policy is likely to be domestic rather international, and political rather than military. Some brutal authoritarian consolidation of control in a flimsy “progressive” disguise.
Whatever it turns out to be, it will be sea-change in the way the world works. The Deep State don’t stick their necks out this far for anything less.


offguardian--2020-12-16--Beethoven in the Age of  Endarkenment

Beethoven in the Age of  Endarkenment

Ludwig van Beethoven was baptised on 17 December , 1770 , and so was probably born on the 16th .
I remember the fuss made by the mainstream media on the occasion of his 200th anniversary just 50 years ago , but where are the mainstream media now ?
I ’ ve heard nothing from them so far in the UK about the 250th anniversary .
Could that just be because of the current obsession with COVID-19 and the lockdown , or could there be some other reason for this silence ?
After all , Beethoven is still just as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , even if playing live music in concert halls is being made impossibly difficult by The Powers That Be .
Could it possibly be that reviving the memory of a dissident could be dangerous for the current world order ?
After all , all sorts of dissidents today are being censured by the big corporations of Silicon Valley .
Medical experts in various fields are being suppressed , merely because they challenge the wisdom of the World Health Organisation , an organisation heavily infiltrated by the elites of Silicon Valley .
Such wisdom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political classes , and by ‘ churnalists ’ who get paid per thousand words rather than per thousand facts .
According to one analyst : That is a sentiment that many of us have encountered , particularly during the present century .
I know the feeling well .
I was an unlikely dissident .
I ’ ve never been a member of a political party .
I had always voted for ‘ moderate ’ parties , in the belief that they represented sensible , moderate policies .
From the age of 13 onwards @ @ @ @ @ @ @ BBC news every day , because I knew that democracy depended on people knowing what was going on .
In 2003 things began to happen , both at the national level and on a personal basis in a small society for language teaching reform , which led to my observation that the ‘ moderates ’ , whilst talking peace were making war , and parliamentary ‘ extremists ’ were saying , “ Hang on … Where ’ s the evidence ?
” , and now I see that some ‘ extremists ’ who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There ’ s now a palpable sense of frustration and even anger throughout the population at the shenanigans of the UK ’ s government spokespeople .
But who is the government ?
It doesn ’ t seem to be the Cabinet , or even the Prime Minister , whose only skill seems to be as a wordsmith , acting as a frontman for The Powers That Be .
Things aren ’ t making sense to people , and many are developing a deep sense of anxiety as they try to make sense of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being mentally ill .
I read recently that the German state of Saxony has allocated a couple of dozen places in psychiatric hospitals for those who can not be persuaded to conform to government regulations on COVID .
This is despite the fact that tens of thousands of real medics are now speaking out against such draconian laws .
People need to talk , and to be listened to .
I have spent many hours talking with such people .
Much of this was within our London-based current affairs group , Keep Talking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the idea of keeping evidence of likely state crimes current , rather than letting it be dumbed down and forgotten about by the mass media .
Talking about such things in the light of current events seemed to be the only antidote .
Gradually , we realised that our group had , too , a therapeutic value .
Some people need to be listened to .
Certainly that applied to Beethoven two hundred years ago .
The quote I gave is from an article by historian Chris Wright , professor of history at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and it appeared in an article in Dissent Magazine headed ‘ The Revolutionary Beethoven ’ : “ Beethoven was a child of the Enlightenment and remained so his whole life ” , Chris Wright explains .
He was born in Bonn , a town “ steeped in the most progressive thought of the age [ … ] but it was Schiller whom Beethoven worshipped ” .
Chris Wright describes Schiller as “ the poet of freedom , impassioned enemy of tyrants everywhere ” .
Schiller ’ s Ode to Joy , which Beethoven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , was about freedom , as the final verse makes clear : To many , the words , as presented in Beethoven ’ s Choral Symphony , represent the brotherhood of man , according to the line “ Alle Menschen werden Brüder ” ( All of mankind become brothers ) in the first verse .
The choral part has been used by a wide variety of groups for that purpose .
The EU ’ s website comments that this is a vision that Beethoven shared , and Beethoven ’ s musical theme became @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but ironically , they add , “ There are no words to the anthem ; it consists of music only .
In the universal language of music , this anthem expresses the European ideals of freedom , peace and solidarity ” – though they don ’ t say one of joy .
There has been speculation that the original title of the poem was ‘ Ode to Freedom ’ [ An die Freiheit ] .
The purpose of the change would have been to bypass the censors , they say .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have to wonder whether that was to avoid the attention of the censors .
Professor of German at the University of California , Gail K Hart , wrote an essay on ‘ Schiller ’ s “ An die Freude ’ and the Question of Freedom ’ , in which she states : The Schiller Institute exists to apply his ideas to ‘ the contemporary world crisis ’ .
Gail Hart sees the sense in the idea that ‘ Freude ’ could be a replacement word for ‘ Freiheit ’ , but doubts this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doesn ’ t always fit in .
My own thought on this was that ‘ Freude ’ could also have been used in the verses , but that in the title it could have been a substitute word not for ‘ Freiheit ’ but for ‘ Friede ’ , which means ‘ peace ’ .
So the concept of ‘ freedom ’ which Gail Hart describes was not just the esoteric philosophy behind Schiller ’ s use of the word , but also the brutal reality of getting around state censorship .
Such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the contemporary world crisis ’ , though perhaps that would not have been so obvious to the author when the essay appeared in the German Studies Review in October 2009 .
Censorship in England has traditionally been more subtle .
George Orwell wrote in an essay , The Freedom of the Press , intended as an Introduction to his novel Animal Farm , but cut out by the publishers , in which he stated : However , since the end of the Cold War there has been a growing attitude of Political Correctness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Political Correctness was increasingly being enforced by marauding mobs , particularly in the streets of London , closing down all sorts of meeting , with menacing facial expressions , and cries of ‘ Fascists !
’ and other expressions of abuse .
Indeed , their tactics were overwhelmingly a matter of name-calling , rather than engaging with the arguments .
Increasingly , schoolchildren had to be guarded in what they would say at school , because otherwise they could be subject to a police officer knocking at their door in the evening under @ @ @ @ @ @ @ legislation .
In various countries of Europe one can not question details of the official version of the massive pogrom which took place under the National Socialists following Kristallnacht , without risking a jail sentence .
In the UK one can be hauled up in front of magistrates for the same questioning , if someone claims that they are offended .
A former mayor of London was suspended from the Labour Party for mentioning ‘ The Transfer Agreement ’ between the National Socialists and the Jewish Agency for Israel , a branch of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , even though one of the main books on the subject was authored by a Zionist Jew .
Under lockdown , people could be arrested and subjected to hefty fines for going about their normal business , and expert medical opinion on the ‘ pandemic ’ can not be expressed on social media without the risk of being banned .
In the UK we are moving closer and closer to government by decree , and to the Stalinist censorship that that entails .
In May of 2020 another article appeared in a left-wing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : ‘ Marking the 250th anniversary year of Beethoven ’ s birthday , Thomas Gibbs paints a picture of someone who loved his art and hated royalty in equal measure ’ .
Beethoven dedicated his third symphony to Napoleon , only to tear up the title page on hearing that Napoleon had declared himself Emperor .
I just have to wonder what Beethoven would have thought of the leaders of the Russian Revolution 90 years after his death , or of the current Labour Party in the UK , whose leader is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ This revolutionary spirit inhabits much of his work [ … ] The Beethovenian idée fixe is that of freedom … For many listeners , this sense of struggle comes through the music and is ultimately what makes it so compelling ” , Gibbs wrote .
Certainly it is for me .
This is what brought me back to Beethoven , in the ‘ Age of Perversion ’ , as a friend of mine calls it .
I remember making the point in the 1970s that the class system in England was withering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now think it is as strong as ever , but disguised .
Tony Blair would clip his t ’ s in order to sound more ordinary ( to Londoners ) , but he still had an aristocratic air about him .
He could manipulate people with words , and gain their confidence , virtually abolishing government by Cabinet , and launching a war of aggression against Iraq with the support of the Labour Party .
Aristocrats used to react by saying “ Impertinance !
” ; now they call you paranoid , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us disbelieve much of what we hear from the mainstream media , and some get quite angry .
Others say the ’ ve stopped watching BBC news .
I switched to Channel 4 News in about 2007 , but now they seem just as bad as the BBC was in 2007 .
I need to follow the news in the mainstream to know the latest propaganda , but I now call it ‘ Storytime ’ .
I get my relief from turning to the piano .
It was with that in mind that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an old book of Beethoven sonatas that I had struggled with in my youth .
In particular , I looked again at the slow movement of his Grand Sonata ( number 4 , opus 7 ) .
I had first heard this around 1960 , played on a gramophone record by Walter Gieseking .
It sounded to me like modern music , with ideas I ’ d not encountered before in classical music .
Even though I learned to play the notes , I had some difficulty in fully understanding it .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Perversion ’ it made much more sense .
I put some notes together and recorded it for some piano friends , and explained in a couple of sentences what I ’ ve just explained in this essay .
Beethoven was advancing ideas of The Enlightenment ; now that we are coming to the end of the Age of Enlightenment his music again has a resonance if we understand what much of his music was really about .
I was delighted that they understood the sentiments , and one person commented that many people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ music better .
Only when I turned to the Internet to research the background to that music did I come to the realisation that the following month would be Beethoven ’ s 250th anniversary .
Thomas Gibbs takes as his prime example the iconic beginning of Beethoven ’ s Fifth Symphony .
He writes : Marat was rather extreme , in wanting to kill off the aristocrats who opposed the revolution .
I hadn ’ t been campaigning for political reform : only for checking facts and separating truth and lies , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gave a talk at a British Esperanto Congress , shortly before they turned on me for supposedly being “ critical of the committee ” , in which I took those iconic four notes as an example of the relationship between language and music .
The iconic rhythm , with the triplets , as in ‘ DI di di DA ’ , would arrest the listener ’ s attention , like an urgent knocking with a trungeon on the door .
But it ’ s not what Beethoven wrote .
This was an adaptation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this in the age of Romanticism , as interpreted by a comfortably brought up , but gifted , composer .
I can imagine such a beginning being followed up with a dramatic but flowing melody .
However , Beethoven puts no special accentuation on the first of those four notes .
By default , the theme is ‘ di DI di DEE ’ , and this is the theme he follows up on .
Mendelssohn ’ s interpretation is about waking up the listener , whereas Beethoven ’ s theme , for me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It sounds urgent , emotional , and a little breathless .
I think we must all have woken up at some time feeling like that , wanting to get something off our chest , perhaps thinking about something from the previous day .
I don ’ t think this is programme music ; it just goes through the gammut of emotions that must have been running through Beethoven .
Many people must be experiencing something similar during Lockdown , on the realisation that we are now entering the Age of Endarkenment .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ DEE ’ should now become the calling signal for the Lockdown Resistance .
I had just written these words when I broke off for lunch , switched the radio news on , and within seconds heard someone say , “ I can ’ t calm down ” .
That ’ s exactly it , and it ’ s come to the surface , even amongst the English , as people fail to recognise that in politics , if things don ’ t make sense , then they ’ re probably not meant to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2014 in The Historical Journal titled BEETHOVEN AND THE SOUND OF REVOLUTION IN VIENNA , 1792–1814 by an academic from Cambridge University .
On Beethoven ’ s Fifth Symphony he wrote : I think that catches the spirit , but I can not imagine such music being a parody of anything in the French language ; it is so very Germanic .
Beethoven ’ s music did not appeal to the French public until after his death , and I ’ m not sure when Beethoven would have had an opportunity to hear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I think , he would have heard German rhetoric in the same style .
But in any case , the above academic rhetoric could only apply to parts of the Fifth Symphony ; the second movement consists of a lovely flowing melody , and Beethoven ’ s music , in a different mood , did lead on to the Romantic era .
Yet a contemporary admirer of Beethoven , the concert pianist Ignaz Moscheles , described the same effects , but in a positive way : This appeared in the Editor ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Beethoven , by Anton Schindler in 1841 .
Schindler explained Beethoven ’ s thinking in bringing together his piano sonatas , giving as one consideration , to “ define the nature of musical declamation ” .
“ On this last topic ” , Schindler wrote , “ Beethoven went beyond the generally received idea .
He maintained that poetical and musical declamation were subject to the same rules ” .
I had no knowledge of this when I gave my talk at the Esperanto Congress ; I was just trying to demonstrate the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It seems that the idea of Schiller and Beethoven on the brotherhood of mankind permeated through the generations .
Ignaz Moscheles ’ s son , the painter Felix Moscheles , was one of the founders of the Esperanto movement in Great Britain , becoming the first Honorary President of The London Esperanto Club .
The great ideal of Esperanto had itself been a product of the Enlightenment .
Felix Moscheles was the Godson of Felix Mendelssohn , who advanced the idea of ‘ politics of reconciliation ’ in the Prussian state in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Haskala , the Jewish Enlightenment .
A later Honorary President of The London Esperanto Club was concert pianist Frank Merrick , whom I had the pleasure of interviewing in 1976 on the occasion of this 90th birthday .
He had been imprisoned as a Conscientious Objector and put into solitary confinement for a while during the First World War .
“ It was torture ” , he told me .
He jokingly claimed to be in the ‘ apostolic succession ’ , having been the last pupil of Leschetizky , whose teacher @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It seems there ’ s another apostolic succession , too : one of peace , freedom and the ‘ brotherhood of man ’ ( no offence to women ) .
So if Beethoven had enemies during his lifetime , could it be that some want Beethoven to be eradicated from history now ?
The Chicago Tribune on 30 December , 2019 , published a commentary : ‘ Beethoven was born 250 years ago .
To celebrate , how about we ban his music for a year ?
’ .
‘ Canceling Beethoven is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world ’ , ran a headline in the New York Post .
Many advocates of truth , freedom , and the ‘ brotherhood of mankind ’ ( no offence to women ) have been marginalised .
A denigration campaign began following the death of British journalist Robert Fisk , who revealed truths about the current wars that others wouldn ’ t talk about .
The outstanding journalist who brought the Enlightenment to ordinary folk in England with the advent of mass literacy was WT Stead , who introduced the ‘ New Journalism ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scandals in high places , and worked incessantly for peace .
He told his ( false ) friend Cecil Rhodes that he should have been put in prison for trying to start the Second Boer War , and when that war did start , led the Stop The War Committee .
He anticipated the Great War , and told the Czar of the danger , then wrote an account , ‘ Peace and War ’ , on a visit to Tolstoy at the same desk at which Tolstoy had written ‘ War and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was an ardent campaigner for peace , and an Esperantist .
Indeed , it was an article of Tolstoy ’ s that got the Esperanto magazine banned in Russia for a while .
Like Beethoven , Tolstoy was an ardent opponent of aristocratic privelege .
He was a keen pianist , and drew inspiration from Beethoven , even if he thought Beethoven ’ s later compositions too esoteric .
As for Stead , the Establishment took their revenge .
Stead died in the Titanic tragedy , and his name has been airbrushed out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to revive his name for the centenary of the Esperanto association in the UK , for which WT Stead had been the most influential of the founders , that evoked denunciations from within the association .
I was so flabbergasted that I decided in 2004 to investigate , and that got me banned in various Esperanto circles .
Good people who are a little too successful in advocating peace , freedom and the ‘ brotherhood of man ’ ( no offence to women ) are , it turned out , constantly being marginalised @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so I delved further , and found more .
Fifty years ago Beethoven survived the ravages of Congress for Cultural Freedom , an operation run by the CIA following the Second World War .
Its purpose was “ to promote an idea : that the world needed a pax Americana , a new age of enlightenment , and it would be called the American Century ” , explained British historian Frances Stonor Saunders in her book Who Paid the Piper : The CIA and the Cultural Cold War ( US title : ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the World of Arts and Letters ) : On the musical side they organised an International Conference of Twentieth Century Music in Rome in 1954 , under the directorship of Nicolas Nabokov , a “ White Russian emigre who had lived in Berlin before emigrating to the US in 1933 ” .
The festival had a heavy concentration of atonal , dodecaphonic composition , featuring new composers .
Susan Sontag wrote : Frances Stonor Saunders reported on an exchange with conductor Pierre Boulez , himself a leading figure in avant-garde music , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ larded with insults ” : This brought to mind an incident in about 1960 , when I submitted some piano pieces to my school music appreciation teacher , who put a red ring round the title , ‘ Three pieces in A minor ’ .
“ Why has it got to be in any key ?
” , he asked .
I explained to him that otherwise we would be starting off from the Stone Age .
I couldn ’ t understand his enthusiasm for twelve-tone music .
Of course , you can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tones , as you can with pots and pans , but where was the drive for this movement coming from ?
Beethoven was driven by having something to say , and in finding new ways of expressing himself ; the twelve-tone music was driven , I felt by a destructive force .
Now that I understand that it was being propelled by the CIA , I can understand much better what was going on around me in a musical sense in that period of my life .
If it doesn ’ t make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to , whereas Beethoven ’ s music was supposed to make sense , and to many people did , and became more popular in posterity , whereas the twelve-tone-music stayed where it was : in academia .
The attempt to hijack European culture continues to this day , and this is now most evident in the field of journalism , as Udo Ulfkotte elaborated in his book ‘ Gekaufte Journalisten : Wie Politiker , Geheimdienst und Hochfinanz Deutchlands Massmedien lenken ’ , which eventually appeared in English as ‘ Presstitutes : Embedded in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Put simply , Beethoven was not American .
Musical tastes vary , but the message that Beethoven was trying to get across should be remembered , because there are now powerful people who would like it to be forgotten .
The mad times that Beethoven lived in are returning , and Beethoven ’ s message is just as relevant today as it was in his time .
I just have to wonder how Beethoven would now be reacting to this Age of Darkness , initiated by the Clamp Down , long-awaited in some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in perpetuity by The Great Reset .
Anyone with Enlightenment ideas may well find himself being targeted .
If Beethoven were to talk of his political experiences at our London-based Keep Talking group I would not be in the least surprised to find ourselves surrounded by a menacing mob of slogan-shouters , calling him a ‘ Fascist ’ , ‘ Antisemitic ’ , ‘ Misogynist ’ etc .
much as they have done to previous meetings , and as they have done to concerts by Jewish anti-Zionist jazz musician Gilad Atzmon , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to know how Beethoven would turn such disruptions into his Tenth Symphony .
Perhaps he would have based his slow movement on John Lennon ’ s Imagine .
John Lennon was a musician who was promoting peace and the ‘ brotherhood of man ’ ( no offence to women ) , and was eliminated just forty years ago .
In 1970 we even considered inviting John Lennon to be the Patron of the 1971 Universal Congress of Esperanto in London , having been advised that the Queen would be unlikely to accept .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ would have written his Tenth Symphony , except that he would have done it brilliantly .
The Schiller Institute is circulating a resolution internationally for the Year of Beethoven .
The preamble probably describes the situation more as it is in the US than in the UK or Europe , but , as we have seen , what happens in the US will eventually cross the Atlantic .
“ A degraded picture emerges ” , the preamble states : I signed the petition , and I just hope that the coming performances of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the true beat of ‘ di DI di DEE ’ , to drive forward the march for ‘ Friede ’ , ‘ Freude ’ and ‘ Freiheit ’ , and against cancel culture in the Age of Darkness which is descending upon us .
Ian Fantom MSc is an Information Scientist with a background in Physics .
Since retiring he has investigated the collapse of the Esperanto movement in the UK , and become engaged in the 9/11 Truth movement .
Following disruptions in that movement he co-founded the ‘ Keep Talking @ @ @ @ @

Ian Fantom
Ludwig van Beethoven was baptised on 17 December, 1770, and so was probably born on the 16th. I remember the fuss made by the mainstream media on the occasion of his 200th anniversary just 50 years ago, but where are the mainstream media now? I’ve heard nothing from them so far in the UK about the 250th anniversary.
Could that just be because of the current obsession with COVID-19 and the lockdown, or could there be some other reason for this silence? After all, Beethoven is still just as popular as he was 50 years ago, even if playing live music in concert halls is being made impossibly difficult by The Powers That Be.
Could it possibly be that reviving the memory of a dissident could be dangerous for the current world order?
After all, all sorts of dissidents today are being censured by the big corporations of Silicon Valley. Medical experts in various fields are being suppressed, merely because they challenge the wisdom of the World Health Organisation, an organisation heavily infiltrated by the elites of Silicon Valley.
Such wisdom is being brainlessly passed on by the political classes, and by ‘churnalists’ who get paid per thousand words rather than per thousand facts.
Dissident
According to one analyst:
Beethoven was so political that, by the end of his life, some of his friends refused to dine with him: either they were bored of his constant politicizing or they feared police spies would overhear him”.
That is a sentiment that many of us have encountered, particularly during the present century.
I know the feeling well. I was an unlikely dissident. I’ve never been a member of a political party. I had always voted for ‘moderate’ parties, in the belief that they represented sensible, moderate policies. From the age of 13 onwards I always tried to listen to the BBC news every day, because I knew that democracy depended on people knowing what was going on.
In 2003 things began to happen, both at the national level and on a personal basis in a small society for language teaching reform, which led to my observation that the ‘moderates’, whilst talking peace were making war, and parliamentary ‘extremists’ were saying, “Hang on … Where’s the evidence?”, and now I see that some ‘extremists’ who are talking war are making peace.
There’s now a palpable sense of frustration and even anger throughout the population at the shenanigans of the UK’s government spokespeople. But who is the government? It doesn’t seem to be the Cabinet, or even the Prime Minister, whose only skill seems to be as a wordsmith, acting as a frontman for The Powers That Be.
Things aren’t making sense to people, and many are developing a deep sense of anxiety as they try to make sense of the nonsensical. Some are castigated as being mentally ill.
I read recently that the German state of Saxony has allocated a couple of dozen places in psychiatric hospitals for those who cannot be persuaded to conform to government regulations on COVID. This is despite the fact that tens of thousands of real medics are now speaking out against such draconian laws. People need to talk, and to be listened to. I have spent many hours talking with such people.
Much of this was within our London-based current affairs group, Keep Talking. The origin of that name was the idea of keeping evidence of likely state crimes current, rather than letting it be dumbed down and forgotten about by the mass media.
Talking about such things in the light of current events seemed to be the only antidote. Gradually, we realised that our group had, too, a therapeutic value. Some people need to be listened to. Certainly that applied to Beethoven two hundred years ago.
The quote I gave is from an article by historian Chris Wright, professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and it appeared in an article in Dissent Magazine headed ‘The Revolutionary Beethoven’:
In the year of the great composer’s 250th birthday, we can retune our ears to pick up the subversive and passionately democratic nature of his music.”
The Enlightenment
“Beethoven was a child of the Enlightenment and remained so his whole life”, Chris Wright explains. He was born in Bonn, a town “steeped in the most progressive thought of the age […] but it was Schiller whom Beethoven worshipped”.
Chris Wright describes Schiller as “the poet of freedom, impassioned enemy of tyrants everywhere”. Schiller’s Ode to Joy, which Beethoven set to music in his Ninth Symphony, was about freedom, as the final verse makes clear:
Rettung von Tyrannenketten,
Grossmut auch dem Bösewicht,
Hoffnung auf den Sterbebetten,
Gnade auf dem Hochgericht!
Auch die Toten sollen leben!
Brüder, trinkt und stimmet ein,
Allen Sündern soll vergeben,
Und die Hölle nicht mehr sein. Rescue from the tyrant’s fetters,
Mercy to the villain e’en,
Hope within the dying hours,
Pardon at the guillotine!
E’en the dead shall live in heaven!
Brothers, drink and all agree,
Every sin shall be forgiven,
Hell forever cease to be.
To many, the words, as presented in Beethoven’s Choral Symphony, represent the brotherhood of man, according to the line “Alle Menschen werden Brüder” (All of mankind become brothers) in the first verse. The choral part has been used by a wide variety of groups for that purpose.
The EU’s website comments that this is a vision that Beethoven shared, and Beethoven’s musical theme became the EU’s anthem in 1985, but ironically, they add, “There are no words to the anthem; it consists of music only. In the universal language of music, this anthem expresses the European ideals of freedom, peace and solidarity” – though they don’t say one of joy.
There has been speculation that the original title of the poem was ‘Ode to Freedom’ [An die Freiheit]. The purpose of the change would have been to bypass the censors, they say. The final verse was withdrawn, and I have to wonder whether that was to avoid the attention of the censors.
Professor of German at the University of California, Gail K Hart, wrote an essay on ‘Schiller’s “An die Freude’ and the Question of Freedom’, in which she states:
Schiller has a certain visibility as the ‘poet of freedom’ and … has developed a strong brand identification with ‘freedom’. An effective illustration from the current political sphere is his central place in the iconography of the Lyndon LaRouche Movement, which calls its cultural arm the ‘Schiller Institute’. LaRouche lays claim to Schiller because of his freedom-loving ‘republican opposition to oligarchic tyranny”
The Schiller Institute exists to apply his ideas to ‘the contemporary world crisis’. Gail Hart sees the sense in the idea that ‘Freude’ could be a replacement word for ‘Freiheit’, but doubts this interpretation, saying that ‘Freiheit’ doesn’t always fit in. My own thought on this was that ‘Freude’ could also have been used in the verses, but that in the title it could have been a substitute word not for ‘Freiheit’ but for ‘Friede’, which means ‘peace’.
Gail Hart explained:
…Schiller worked for freedom. As a young man he wrested freedom from the jaws of Absolutist dominion when he fled the Duchy of Württemberg and its Duke, who had, on threat of imprisonment, forbidden him to write…
So the concept of ‘freedom’ which Gail Hart describes was not just the esoteric philosophy behind Schiller’s use of the word, but also the brutal reality of getting around state censorship.
Such an interpretation would apply today in ‘the contemporary world crisis’, though perhaps that would not have been so obvious to the author when the essay appeared in the German Studies Review in October 2009.
Censorship in England has traditionally been more subtle. George Orwell wrote in an essay, The Freedom of the Press, intended as an Introduction to his novel Animal Farm, but cut out by the publishers, in which he stated:
The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news – things which on their own merits would get the big headlines – being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
However, since the end of the Cold War there has been a growing attitude of Political Correctness, and in the Cameron-Thatcher era that Political Correctness was increasingly being enforced by marauding mobs, particularly in the streets of London, closing down all sorts of meeting, with menacing facial expressions, and cries of ‘Fascists!’ and other expressions of abuse. Indeed, their tactics were overwhelmingly a matter of name-calling, rather than engaging with the arguments.
Increasingly, schoolchildren had to be guarded in what they would say at school, because otherwise they could be subject to a police officer knocking at their door in the evening under the government’s ‘extremism’ legislation. In various countries of Europe one cannot question details of the official version of the massive pogrom which took place under the National Socialists following Kristallnacht, without risking a jail sentence. In the UK one can be hauled up in front of magistrates for the same questioning, if someone claims that they are offended.
A former mayor of London was suspended from the Labour Party for mentioning ‘The Transfer Agreement’ between the National Socialists and the Jewish Agency for Israel, a branch of the World Zionist Congress, in 1933, even though one of the main books on the subject was authored by a Zionist Jew.
Under lockdown, people could be arrested and subjected to hefty fines for going about their normal business, and expert medical opinion on the ‘pandemic’ cannot be expressed on social media without the risk of being banned. In the UK we are moving closer and closer to government by decree, and to the Stalinist censorship that that entails.
Returning to Beethoven
In May of 2020 another article appeared in a left-wing website, Counterfire. It was headed: ‘Marking the 250th anniversary year of Beethoven’s birthday, Thomas Gibbs paints a picture of someone who loved his art and hated royalty in equal measure’.
Ever a master of himself, the composer didn’t care for royalty […] “Prince, what you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am of myself” […] Franz II allegedly refused to have anything to do with Beethoven, on the basis that there was ‘something revolutionary in the music’. And what friendship the composer had with Goethe was ended abruptly in 1812 when, walking together in the park, he disdainfully shunned the passing Empress,”
Beethoven dedicated his third symphony to Napoleon, only to tear up the title page on hearing that Napoleon had declared himself Emperor. I just have to wonder what Beethoven would have thought of the leaders of the Russian Revolution 90 years after his death, or of the current Labour Party in the UK, whose leader is a member of the neoconservative Trilateral Commission.
“This revolutionary spirit inhabits much of his work […] The Beethovenian idée fixe is that of freedom … For many listeners, this sense of struggle comes through the music and is ultimately what makes it so compelling”, Gibbs wrote. Certainly it is for me.
This is what brought me back to Beethoven, in the ‘Age of Perversion’, as a friend of mine calls it. I remember making the point in the 1970s that the class system in England was withering away, but others disagreed. I now think it is as strong as ever, but disguised. Tony Blair would clip his t’s in order to sound more ordinary (to Londoners), but he still had an aristocratic air about him. He could manipulate people with words, and gain their confidence, virtually abolishing government by Cabinet, and launching a war of aggression against Iraq with the support of the Labour Party.
Aristocrats used to react by saying “Impertinance!”; now they call you paranoid, or other names. Nowadays, many of us disbelieve much of what we hear from the mainstream media, and some get quite angry. Others say the’ve stopped watching BBC news. I switched to Channel 4 News in about 2007, but now they seem just as bad as the BBC was in 2007. I need to follow the news in the mainstream to know the latest propaganda, but I now call it ‘Storytime’. I get my relief from turning to the piano.
It was with that in mind that a few weeks ago I picked up an old book of Beethoven sonatas that I had struggled with in my youth. In particular, I looked again at the slow movement of his Grand Sonata (number 4, opus 7). I had first heard this around 1960, played on a gramophone record by Walter Gieseking. It sounded to me like modern music, with ideas I’d not encountered before in classical music.
Even though I learned to play the notes, I had some difficulty in fully understanding it. But now, in the ‘Age of Perversion’ it made much more sense. I put some notes together and recorded it for some piano friends, and explained in a couple of sentences what I’ve just explained in this essay. Beethoven was advancing ideas of The Enlightenment; now that we are coming to the end of the Age of Enlightenment his music again has a resonance if we understand what much of his music was really about.
I was delighted that they understood the sentiments, and one person commented that many people come back to Beethoven and understand his music better. Only when I turned to the Internet to research the background to that music did I come to the realisation that the following month would be Beethoven’s 250th anniversary.
Music and Language
Thomas Gibbs takes as his prime example the iconic beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. He writes:
The 5th symphony, considered by many to be a watershed moment in this stylistic transition, is brimming with sly references to music of the revolution. In fact, a little detective work leads straight to words written about murdered revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat: ‘We swear, sword in hand, to die for the republic and for human rights’.”
Marat was rather extreme, in wanting to kill off the aristocrats who opposed the revolution. I hadn’t been campaigning for political reform: only for checking facts and separating truth and lies, but I get the message.
I once gave a talk at a British Esperanto Congress, shortly before they turned on me for supposedly being “critical of the committee”, in which I took those iconic four notes as an example of the relationship between language and music. The iconic rhythm, with the triplets, as in ‘DI di di DA’, would arrest the listener’s attention, like an urgent knocking with a trungeon on the door.
But it’s not what Beethoven wrote. This was an adaptation by Mendelssohn, and I can understand this in the age of Romanticism, as interpreted by a comfortably brought up, but gifted, composer. I can imagine such a beginning being followed up with a dramatic but flowing melody. However, Beethoven puts no special accentuation on the first of those four notes.
By default, the theme is ‘di DI di DEE’, and this is the theme he follows up on. Mendelssohn’s interpretation is about waking up the listener, whereas Beethoven’s theme, for me, is about his own inner feelings. It sounds urgent, emotional, and a little breathless. I think we must all have woken up at some time feeling like that, wanting to get something off our chest, perhaps thinking about something from the previous day.
I don’t think this is programme music; it just goes through the gammut of emotions that must have been running through Beethoven. Many people must be experiencing something similar during Lockdown, on the realisation that we are now entering the Age of Endarkenment. Perhaps the rhythm ‘di DI di DEE’ should now become the calling signal for the Lockdown Resistance.
I had just written these words when I broke off for lunch, switched the radio news on, and within seconds heard someone say, “I can’t calm down”. That’s exactly it, and it’s come to the surface, even amongst the English, as people fail to recognise that in politics, if things don’t make sense, then they’re probably not meant to.
I came across an essay from 2014 in The Historical Journal titled BEETHOVEN AND THE SOUND OF REVOLUTION IN VIENNA, 1792–1814 by an academic from Cambridge University. On Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony he wrote:
The first four notes of the Fifth achieved their overwhelming effect through ‘a piling up of sonority’ that permeates the entire symphony, embuing it with an obsessive, convulsive, repettitive rhetorical trajectory. Recent scholarship has detected a similar propensity towards repetition, rhythm, even incantation in the oratorical techniques of the revolutionary demagogues. Speeches delivered to the National Assembly were replete with ‘sudden exclamations and incongruous juxtapositions; repeated patterns and formulas; the deployment of sequences of short phrases; and dynamic call and response patterns’. Robespierre’s oratory, according to Patrice Gueniffey, both ‘terrorized and … annihilated’ by deploying doses of ‘suspense and equivocation’ when fingering traitors, and by establishing a cadential monotony when ‘confronting the hostility of the Assembly’. What followed was a deliberate inundation of the senses that resulted in the activation of terror. Hooting, finger-pointing, outright panic: the reactions to this rhetoric in Paris were effusive and public. ‘It was no longer applause’, remarked Jean-Baptiste Louvet, ‘but convulsive stamping’. The effects of the Fifth Symphony – its subversion of all melodic narrative, its obsessive redeployment of the opening rhythmic fragment – are, in many respects, musically congruent with the oratorical techniques of the Revolutionaries.
I think that catches the spirit, but I cannot imagine such music being a parody of anything in the French language; it is so very Germanic. Beethoven’s music did not appeal to the French public until after his death, and I’m not sure when Beethoven would have had an opportunity to hear such French rhetoric.
More likely, I think, he would have heard German rhetoric in the same style. But in any case, the above academic rhetoric could only apply to parts of the Fifth Symphony; the second movement consists of a lovely flowing melody, and Beethoven’s music, in a different mood, did lead on to the Romantic era.
Yet a contemporary admirer of Beethoven, the concert pianist Ignaz Moscheles, described the same effects, but in a positive way:
“… while I felt my mind fascinated by the prominent idea, and my enthusiasm kindled by the flashes of his genius, his unlooked-for episodes, shrill dissonances, and bold modulations, gave me an unpleasant sensation. But how soon did I become reconciled to them! All that had appeared hard, I soon found indispensable. The gnome-like pleasantries, which at first appeared too distorted — the stormy masses of sound, which I found too chaotic — I have, in after-times, learned to love”.
This appeared in the Editor’s Preface to a book The Life of Beethoven, by Anton Schindler in 1841. Schindler explained Beethoven’s thinking in bringing together his piano sonatas, giving as one consideration, to “define the nature of musical declamation”. “On this last topic”, Schindler wrote, “Beethoven went beyond the generally received idea. He maintained that poetical and musical declamation were subject to the same rules”.
I had no knowledge of this when I gave my talk at the Esperanto Congress; I was just trying to demonstrate the same semantic structures in language and music.
The Apostolic Succession
It seems that the idea of Schiller and Beethoven on the brotherhood of mankind permeated through the generations. Ignaz Moscheles’s son, the painter Felix Moscheles, was one of the founders of the Esperanto movement in Great Britain, becoming the first Honorary President of The London Esperanto Club.
The great ideal of Esperanto had itself been a product of the Enlightenment. Felix Moscheles was the Godson of Felix Mendelssohn, who advanced the idea of ‘politics of reconciliation’ in the Prussian state in accordance with his grandfather’s ideas on Haskala, the Jewish Enlightenment.
A later Honorary President of The London Esperanto Club was concert pianist Frank Merrick, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing in 1976 on the occasion of this 90th birthday. He had been imprisoned as a Conscientious Objector and put into solitary confinement for a while during the First World War.
“It was torture”, he told me. He jokingly claimed to be in the ‘apostolic succession’, having been the last pupil of Leschetizky, whose teacher Czerny was a pupil of Beethoven. It seems there’s another apostolic succession, too: one of peace, freedom and the ‘brotherhood of man’ (no offence to women).
So if Beethoven had enemies during his lifetime, could it be that some want Beethoven to be eradicated from history now? The Chicago Tribune on 30 December, 2019, published a commentary: ‘Beethoven was born 250 years ago. To celebrate, how about we ban his music for a year?’. ‘Canceling Beethoven is the latest woke madness for the classical-music world’, ran a headline in the New York Post.
Many advocates of truth, freedom, and the ‘brotherhood of mankind’ (no offence to women) have been marginalised. A denigration campaign began following the death of British journalist Robert Fisk, who revealed truths about the current wars that others wouldn’t talk about. The outstanding journalist who brought the Enlightenment to ordinary folk in England with the advent of mass literacy was WT Stead, who introduced the ‘New Journalism’.
He upset the Establishment by investigating scandals in high places, and worked incessantly for peace. He told his (false) friend Cecil Rhodes that he should have been put in prison for trying to start the Second Boer War, and when that war did start, led the Stop The War Committee. He anticipated the Great War, and told the Czar of the danger, then wrote an account, ‘Peace and War’, on a visit to Tolstoy at the same desk at which Tolstoy had written ‘War and Peace’.
Like Stead, Tolstoy was an ardent campaigner for peace, and an Esperantist. Indeed, it was an article of Tolstoy’s that got the Esperanto magazine banned in Russia for a while. Like Beethoven, Tolstoy was an ardent opponent of aristocratic privelege. He was a keen pianist, and drew inspiration from Beethoven, even if he thought Beethoven’s later compositions too esoteric.
As for Stead, the Establishment took their revenge. Stead died in the Titanic tragedy, and his name has been airbrushed out of history. It was my attempt to revive his name for the centenary of the Esperanto association in the UK, for which WT Stead had been the most influential of the founders, that evoked denunciations from within the association.
I was so flabbergasted that I decided in 2004 to investigate, and that got me banned in various Esperanto circles. Good people who are a little too successful in advocating peace, freedom and the ‘brotherhood of man’ (no offence to women) are, it turned out, constantly being marginalised. I became another victim, and so I delved further, and found more.
Hijacking European Culture
Fifty years ago Beethoven survived the ravages of Congress for Cultural Freedom, an operation run by the CIA following the Second World War. Its purpose was “to promote an idea: that the world needed a pax Americana, a new age of enlightenment, and it would be called the American Century”, explained British historian Frances Stonor Saunders in her book Who Paid the Piper: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (US title: ‘The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters):
Whether they liked it or not, whether they knew it or not, there were few writers, poets, artists, historians, scientists or critics in post-war Europe whose names were not in some way linked to this covert enterprise. Unchallenged, undetected for over twenty years, America’s spying establishment operated a sophisticated, substantially endowed cultural front in the West for the West, in the name of freedom of expression,”
On the musical side they organised an International Conference of Twentieth Century Music in Rome in 1954, under the directorship of Nicolas Nabokov, a “White Russian emigre who had lived in Berlin before emigrating to the US in 1933”.
Nabokov explained:
…we are going to have a composers’ contest that is unlike any other competition ever held. Twelve young and promising but internationally unknown composers are to be invited to Rome, all expenses paid. Each will bring a score and these will be performed…”
The festival had a heavy concentration of atonal, dodecaphonic composition, featuring new composers. Susan Sontag wrote:
For Nabokov, there was a clear political message to be imparted by promoting music which announced itself as doing away with natural hierarchies, as a liberation from previous laws about music’s inner logic. Later, critics would wonder whether serialism had broken its emancipatory promise, driving music into a modernist cul-de-sac, where it sat, restricted and difficult, tyrranized by despotic formulae, and demanding an increasingly specialist audience. Towards its ‘squawks and thumps’ […] we were deferential – we knew we were supposed to appreciate ugly music…”
Frances Stonor Saunders reported on an exchange with conductor Pierre Boulez, himself a leading figure in avant-garde music, who “wrote a furious letter, larded with insults”:
Nabokov, he [Pierre Boulez] said, was encouraging a ‘folklore of mediocracy’, nurtured by pretty bureaucrats who were obsessed with the number twelve – ‘A Council of Twelve, a Committee of Twelve, a Jury of Twelve – but who understood nothing of the creative process,”
This brought to mind an incident in about 1960, when I submitted some piano pieces to my school music appreciation teacher, who put a red ring round the title, ‘Three pieces in A minor’. “Why has it got to be in any key?”, he asked. I explained to him that otherwise we would be starting off from the Stone Age. I couldn’t understand his enthusiasm for twelve-tone music.
Of course, you can make some interesting impressionistic sound with twelve tones, as you can with pots and pans, but where was the drive for this movement coming from?
Beethoven was driven by having something to say, and in finding new ways of expressing himself; the twelve-tone music was driven, I felt by a destructive force. Now that I understand that it was being propelled by the CIA, I can understand much better what was going on around me in a musical sense in that period of my life. If it doesn’t make sense, it’s not supposed to, whereas Beethoven’s music was supposed to make sense, and to many people did, and became more popular in posterity, whereas the twelve-tone-music stayed where it was: in academia.
The attempt to hijack European culture continues to this day, and this is now most evident in the field of journalism, as Udo Ulfkotte elaborated in his book ‘Gekaufte Journalisten: Wie Politiker, Geheimdienst und Hochfinanz Deutchlands Massmedien lenken’, which eventually appeared in English as ‘Presstitutes: Embedded in the Pay of the CIA’.
Put simply, Beethoven was not American. Musical tastes vary, but the message that Beethoven was trying to get across should be remembered, because there are now powerful people who would like it to be forgotten. The mad times that Beethoven lived in are returning, and Beethoven’s message is just as relevant today as it was in his time.
Cancelling Culture
I just have to wonder how Beethoven would now be reacting to this Age of Darkness, initiated by the Clamp Down, long-awaited in some circles, and about to be set in perpetuity by The Great Reset. Anyone with Enlightenment ideas may well find himself being targeted.
If Beethoven were to talk of his political experiences at our London-based Keep Talking group I would not be in the least surprised to find ourselves surrounded by a menacing mob of slogan-shouters, calling him a ‘Fascist’, ‘Antisemitic’, ‘Misogynist’ etc. much as they have done to previous meetings, and as they have done to concerts by Jewish anti-Zionist jazz musician Gilad Atzmon, and many others.
I would just love to know how Beethoven would turn such disruptions into his Tenth Symphony. Perhaps he would have based his slow movement on John Lennon’s Imagine. John Lennon was a musician who was promoting peace and the ‘brotherhood of man’ (no offence to women), and was eliminated just forty years ago.
In 1970 we even considered inviting John Lennon to be the Patron of the 1971 Universal Congress of Esperanto in London, having been advised that the Queen would be unlikely to accept. I don’t know how Beethoven would have written his Tenth Symphony, except that he would have done it brilliantly.
The Schiller Institute is circulating a resolution internationally for the Year of Beethoven. The preamble probably describes the situation more as it is in the US than in the UK or Europe, but, as we have seen, what happens in the US will eventually cross the Atlantic. “A degraded picture emerges”, the preamble states:
Our education system hardly conveys any knowledge of classical culture, our so-called youth culture is dominated by a cult of ugliness, and classical culture itself is under massive attack. For decades now, post-war theater companies have invented new abysses of hideousness, productions of Shakespeare or Schiller have become unrecognizable, opera stages have also become battlefields for some time, on which the perverse fantasies of various directors are played out, and now self-styled modern composers are even molesting the compositions of Beethoven, evidently because they are unable to create anything themselves. This must be stopped! The time has come to launch a counter-offensive! […] The Year of Beethoven, in which many Beethoven compositions will be performed all over the world, offers a wonderful occasion for us to recall the best of our cultural tradition in western culture and to oppose it to the moral downward trend of the past decades.
I signed the petition, and I just hope that the coming performances of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony will begin with the true beat of ‘di DI di DEE’, to drive forward the march for ‘Friede’, ‘Freude’ and ‘Freiheit’, and against cancel culture in the Age of Darkness which is descending upon us.
Ian Fantom MSc is an Information Scientist with a background in Physics. Since retiring he has investigated the collapse of the Esperanto movement in the UK, and become engaged in the 9/11 Truth movement. Following disruptions in that movement he co-founded the ‘Keep Talking’ group in 2010.


offguardian--2020-12-18--WHO (finally) admits PCR tests create false positives

Warnings concerning high CT value of tests are months too late…so why are they appearing now ?
The potential explanation is shockingly cynical .
The World Health Organization released a guidance memo on December 14th , warning that high cycle thresholds on PCR tests will result in false positives .
While this information is accurate , it has also been available for months , so we must ask : why are they reporting it now ?
Is it to make it appear the vaccine works ?
The “ gold standard ” Sars-Cov-2 tests are based on polymerase chain reaction ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nucleotides – tiny fragments of DNA or RNA – and replicating them until they become something large enough to identify .
The replication is done in cycles , with each cycle doubling the amount of genetic material .
The number of cycles it takes to produce something identifiable is known as the “ cycle threshold ” or “ CT value ” .
The higher the CT value , the less likely you are to be detecting anything significant .
This new WHO memo states that using a high CT value to test for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ false-positive results .
To quote their own words [ our emphasis ] : They go on to explain [ again , our emphasis ] : Of course , none of this is news to anyone who has been paying attention .
That PCR tests were easily manipulated and potentially highly inaccurate has been one of the oft-repeated battle cries of those of us opposing the “ pandemic ” narrative , and the policies it ’ s being used to sell .
Many articles have been written about it , by many experts in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s been commonly available knowledge , for months now , that any test using a CT value over 35 is potentially meaningless .
Dr Kary Mullis , who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the PCR process , was clear that it wasn ’ t meant as a diagnostic tool , saying : And , commenting on cycle thresholds , once said : The MIQE guidelines for PCR use state : This has all been public knowledge since the beginning of the lockdown .
The Australian government ’ s own @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a court in Portugal ruled they were not fit for purpose .
Even Dr Anthony Fauci has publicly admitted that a cycle threshold over 35 is going to be detecting “ dead nucleotides ” , not a living virus .
Despite all this , it is known that many labs around the world have been using PCR tests with CT values over 35 , even into the low 40s .
So why has the WHO finally decided to say this is wrong ?
What reason could they have for finally choosing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to that is potentially shockingly cynical : We have a vaccine now .
We don ’ t need false positives anymore .
Notionally , the system has produced its miracle cure .
So , after everyone has been vaccinated , all the PCR tests being done will be done “ under the new WHO guidelines ” , and running only 25-30 cycles instead of 35+ .
Lo and behold , the number of “ positive cases ” will plummet , and we ’ ll have confirmation that our miracle vaccine works .
After @ @ @ @ @ @ @ false positives , miscounting deaths “ by accident ” , adding “ Covid19 related death ” to every other death certificate…they can stop .
The create-a-pandemic machine can be turned down to zero again .
…as long as we all do as we ’ re told .
Any signs of dissent – masses of people refusing the vaccine , for example – and the CT value can start to climb again , and they bring back their magical disease .

Warnings concerning high CT value of tests are months too late…so why are they appearing now? The potential explanation is shockingly cynical.
Kit Knightly
The World Health Organization released a guidance memo on December 14th, warning that high cycle thresholds on PCR tests will result in false positives.
While this information is accurate, it has also been available for months, so we must ask: why are they reporting it now? Is it to make it appear the vaccine works?
The “gold standard” Sars-Cov-2 tests are based on polymerase chain reaction (PCR). PCR works by taking nucleotides – tiny fragments of DNA or RNA – and replicating them until they become something large enough to identify. The replication is done in cycles, with each cycle doubling the amount of genetic material. The number of cycles it takes to produce something identifiable is known as the “cycle threshold” or “CT value”. The higher the CT value, the less likely you are to be detecting anything significant.
This new WHO memo states that using a high CT value to test for the presence of Sars-Cov-2 will result in false-positive results.
To quote their own words [our emphasis]:
Users of RT-PCR reagents should read the IFU carefully to determine if manual adjustment of the PCR positivity threshold is necessary to account for any background noise which may lead to a specimen with a high cycle threshold (Ct) value result being interpreted as a positive result.
They go on to explain [again, our emphasis]:
The design principle of RT-PCR means that for patients with high levels of circulating virus (viral load), relatively few cycles will be needed to detect virus and so the Ct value will be low. Conversely, when specimens return a high Ct value, it means that many cycles were required to detect virus. In some circumstances, the distinction between background noise and actual presence of the target virus is difficult to ascertain.
Of course, none of this is news to anyone who has been paying attention. That PCR tests were easily manipulated and potentially highly inaccurate has been one of the oft-repeated battle cries of those of us opposing the “pandemic” narrative, and the policies it’s being used to sell.
Many articles have been written about it, by many experts in the field, medical journalists and other researchers. It’s been commonly available knowledge, for months now, that any test using a CT value over 35 is potentially meaningless.
Dr Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the PCR process, was clear that it wasn’t meant as a diagnostic tool, saying:
with PCR, if you do it well, you can find almost anything in anybody.”
And, commenting on cycle thresholds, once said:
If you have to go more than 40 cycles to amplify a single-copy gene, there is something seriously wrong with your PCR.”
The MIQE guidelines for PCR use state:
Cq values higher than 40 are suspect because of the implied low efficiency and generally should not be reported,”
This has all been public knowledge since the beginning of the lockdown. The Australian government’s own website admitted the tests were flawed, and a court in Portugal ruled they were not fit for purpose.
Even Dr Anthony Fauci has publicly admitted that a cycle threshold over 35 is going to be detecting “dead nucleotides”, not a living virus.
Despite all this, it is known that many labs around the world have been using PCR tests with CT values over 35, even into the low 40s.
So why has the WHO finally decided to say this is wrong? What reason could they have for finally choosing to recognise this simple reality?
The answer to that is potentially shockingly cynical: We have a vaccine now. We don’t need false positives anymore.
Notionally, the system has produced its miracle cure. So, after everyone has been vaccinated, all the PCR tests being done will be done “under the new WHO guidelines”, and running only 25-30 cycles instead of 35+.
Lo and behold, the number of “positive cases” will plummet, and we’ll have confirmation that our miracle vaccine works.
After months of flooding the data pool with false positives, miscounting deaths “by accident”, adding “Covid19 related death” to every other death certificate…they can stop. The create-a-pandemic machine can be turned down to zero again.
…as long as we all do as we’re told. Any signs of dissent – masses of people refusing the vaccine, for example – and the CT value can start to climb again, and they bring back their magical disease.