Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

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FTR#‘s 1297 and1298: The End and The Beginning, Parts Four and Five

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“Polit­i­cal language…is designed to make lies sound truth­ful and mur­der respectable, and to give an appear­ance of solid­i­ty to pure wind.”

— George Orwell, 1946

EVERYTHING MR. EMORY HAS BEEN SAYING ABOUT THE UKRAINE WAR IS ENCAPSULATED IN THIS VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24

ANOTHER REVEALING VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24

Mr. Emory has launched a new Patre­on site. Vis­it at: Patreon.com/DaveEmory

FTR#1297  The End and the Begin­ning, Part 4.

FTR#1298  The End and the Begin­ning, Part 5.

Sit­ting Bul­l’s Bur­ial place
Pho­to Cred­it: Wikipedia

Intro­duc­tion: Because we are doing a volu­mi­nous Patre­on site with three talks a week with Mr. Emory (with machine tran­scripts), bi-week­ly talks with bril­liant researchers unknown to most peo­ple (with machine tran­scripts) and writ­ten, foot­not­ed arti­cles, the writ­ten descrip­tions to the For The Record shows will be atten­u­at­ed.

Patreon.com/DaveEmory

The writ­ten descrip­tions will fea­ture sum­maries of the dis­cus­sion in the broad­casts, plus the arti­cles and/or excerpts includ­ed in the pro­grams.

These pro­grams con­clude a five-part series set­ting forth why Mr. Emory feels we are head­ed for “Ye Ol’ Last Roundup” and offer­ing some insights into what he feels is the meta­phys­i­cal nature of real­i­ty and why that offers some hope. His out­look is heav­i­ly influ­enced by Bud­dhism.

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence plays a large role in the analy­sis Mr. Emory presents, includ­ing a ter­ri­fy­ing devel­op­ment which will per­mit AI’s to read the human mind from afar!

Klaus Schwab
Pho­to Cred­it: Wikipedia

The first pro­gram reviews the Third Reich and apartheid roots of the Schwab fam­i­ly and the Nazi intel­li­gence con­nec­tions of Hen­ry Kissinger’s work at Har­vard.

After not­ing that the Viet­nam-era defo­liant Agent Orange was part of an over­lap­ping series of DARPA projects whose strate­gic ratio­nale was “counter-insur­gency,” Mr. Emory notes the Nazi/Paperclip ori­gins of Agent Orange, as well as the prob­a­ble role of DARPA in the devel­op­ment of SARS CoV‑2.

After review of Biden’s new “can­cer moon­shot” and the strong prob­a­bil­i­ty that is will serve as a front for the use of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy for the devel­op­ment of  bio­log­i­cal weapons, Mr. Emory reviews the ear­ly man­i­fes­ta­tion of glob­al­iza­tion that result­ed in the rise of glob­al fas­cism.

A paper writ­ten by a mem­ber of the New York Fed­er­al Reserve opines that the 1918 flu epi­dem­ic set the stage for the rise of Nazism in Ger­many. Was some­thing like that intend­ed with Covid-19?

Sub­sum­ing the theme of these pro­grams, Mr. Emory recounts the words of Chief Sit­ting Bull at the Pow­der Riv­er Coun­cil. Those words encap­su­late his view of what this soci­ety has become.

After review­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing sci­en­tif­ic dis­cus­sion about the “tone” that may very well have start­ed the Big Bang ori­gin of the uni­verse, Mr. Emory high­lights a book that has influ­enced him great­ly–The Physics of Immor­tal­i­tyIt may, per­haps, be com­fort­ing to some to believe that it is prob­a­ble that, in the end, right­eous­ness will pre­vail.

1a.   “Schwab Fam­i­ly Val­ues” by John­ny Ved­more; Unlim­it­ed Hang­out; 2/20/2021.

. . . . In this Unlim­it­ed Hang­out inves­ti­ga­tion, the past that Klaus Schwab has worked to hide is explored in detail, reveal­ing the involve­ment of the Schwab fam­i­ly, not only in the Nazi quest for an atom­ic bomb, but apartheid South Africa’s ille­gal nuclear pro­gramme. Espe­cial­ly reveal­ing is the his­to­ry of Klaus’ father, Eugen Schwab, who led the Nazi-sup­port­ed Ger­man branch of a Swiss engi­neer­ing firm into the war as a promi­nent mil­i­tary con­trac­tor. That com­pa­ny, Esch­er-Wyss, would use slave labor to pro­duce machin­ery crit­i­cal to the Nazi war effort as well as the Nazi’s effort to pro­duce heavy water for its nuclear pro­gram. Years lat­er, at the same com­pa­ny, a young Klaus Schwab served on the board of direc­tors when the deci­sion was made to fur­nish the racist apartheid regime of South Africa with the nec­es­sary equip­ment to fur­ther its quest to become a nuclear pow­er. . . .

. . . . While at Har­vard, Schwab was taught by Hen­ry Kissinger, who he would lat­er say were among the top 3–4 fig­ures who had most influ­enced his think­ing over the course of his entire life. . . .

1b. Amer­i­ca’s Nazi Secret by John Lof­tus; Trine Day [SC]; 2010936158; p. 11

. . . Kissinger was recruit­ed as a pro­fes­sion­al spy for Dulles short­ly after the end of the war in Europe. Although there is no evi­dence that he per­son­al­ly recruit­ed Nazis, Kissinger ran the intel­li­gence file room where records of Nazi recruit­ment were kept. He then trans­ferred to Har­vard where he spe­cial­ized in recruit­ing for­eign stu­dents for espi­onage. Lat­er he worked for Dulles dur­ing the glo­ry days of Office of Pol­i­cy Coor­di­na­tion (OPC). He was hired as a con­sul­tant for a pri­vate group known as Oper­a­tions Research Office, which planned to use for­mer Nazis as agents behind Russ­ian lines in the event of World War III. Men­tion of Kissinger’s clas­si­fied work was cen­sored from the orig­i­nal man­u­script of this book. . . .

2a. “The Things They Left Behind” by Eliz­a­beth D. Samet” [Review of The Long Reck­on­ing: A Sto­ry of War, Peace, and Redemp­tion in Viet­nam by George Black]; The New York Times Book Review; 4/09/2023; p. 16.

. . . . Black focus­es his atten­tion large­ly on Vietnam’s Quang Tri and Thua Tien provinces along the Laot­ian bor­der . . . . “All the worst lega­cies of the war were con­cen­trat­ed here,” he writes, “an area small­er than the State of Con­necti­cut. . . . The nation also unleashed more bombs on Quang Tri alone than had been dropped on Ger­many dur­ing World War II. . . .

. . . . A mas­sive defo­li­a­tion cam­paign to reduce cov­er for Viet­namese ambush­es, known as Oper­a­tion Ranch Hand, began in 1961. Soon, the U.S. gov­ern­ment began to autho­rize crop destruc­tion as well. Black describes Ranch hand as “with­out prece­dent in his­to­ry, using all the tools of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy and air pow­er to lay waste to a country’s nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment.” By con­trast, when the destruc­tion of Japan’s rice crop had been pro­posed in 1944, Adm. William Leahy, Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roosevelt’s chief of staff, “vetoed the idea, say­ing it would vio­late every Chris­t­ian eth­ic I have ever heard of an all known laws of war.”

Black offers var­i­ous mea­sures of the result­ing dev­as­ta­tion to the Viet­nam-Laos bor­der­lands. Per­haps none is more sug­ges­tive of the mag­ni­tude than this sta­tis­tic: “Between 1964 and 1973, U.S. air­craft flew 580,344 sor­ties over Laos, which aver­aged out to one every eight min­utes, 24 hours a day for nine years.”. . .

7b. The rav­ages of the high­ly tox­ic defo­liant Agent Orange are well doc­u­ment­ed, felling Amer­i­can G.I.‘s and Viet­namese and Laot­ian com­bat­ants and civil­ians. The toll is ever-mount­ing as diox­in is part of the South­east Asian land­scape and water­scape now, and a vari­ety of hor­rors con­tin­ue to plague the res­i­dents of that area.

What has not received as much pub­lic­i­ty is the doc­u­ment­ed fact that the poi­son was devel­oped by Friedrich “Fritz” Hoff­man, one of the Third Reich alum­ni brought to the U.S. under Project [or “Oper­a­tion”] Paper­clip.

” . . . . Under the umbrel­la of the CIA’s Secu­ri­ty Research Ser­vices, [CIA orga­ni­za­tion] Mor­wede was among the front orga­ni­za­tions pro­tect­ing Nazi chemists trans­port­ed to the US, includ­ing Dr. Friedrich ‘Fritz’ Hoff­man, a major ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the largesse of the Paper­clip pipeline.

“In the late ‘50s, Hoffmann’s work for the CIA and Fort Det­rick includ­ed devel­op­ment of lethal chem­i­cal agents to be used as weapons in Viet­nam, proof that the dis­hon­or­able was just over the hori­zon when John Kennedy took office. One of these weapons, the hor­rif­ic and now-infa­mous Agent Orange, was autho­rized for use in Viet­nam in Novem­ber 1961 (imple­ment­ed in ’62 under Oper­a­tion Ranch Hand) . . .  By 1962, . . . Dow Chem­i­cal, was mass-pro­duc­ing Agent Orange under spec­i­fi­ca­tions per­fect­ed by Hoff­mann and his team at Fort Det­rick. . . .”

Hoff­man’s imprint on the research con­tin­ues to be felt, guid­ing those on the path­way to obtain­ing com­pen­sa­tion for the poi­son’s destruc­tive effects.

“. . . . Fritz Hoff­man was one of the ear­li­est known U.S. Army Chem­i­cal Corps sci­en­tists to research the tox­ic effects of dioxin—possibly in the mid-1950s but for cer­tain in 1959—as indi­cat­ed in what ha become known as the Hoff­mann Trip Report. This doc­u­ment is used in almost every legal record per­tain­ing to lit­i­ga­tion by U.S. mil­i­tary vet­er­ans against the U.S. gov­ern­ment and chem­i­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers for its usage of her­bi­cides and defo­liants in the Viet­nam War. . . .”

7c. Coup In Dal­las: The Deci­sive Inves­ti­ga­tion into Who Killed JFK by H.P. Albarel­li, Jr. (For­ward by Dick Rus­sell); Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2021 by H.P. Albarel­li, Jr. and Lin­da O’Hara; ISBN 978–1‑5107–4031‑0; pp. 185–186.

. . . . Under the umbrel­la of the CIA’s Secu­ri­ty Research Ser­vices, [CIA orga­ni­za­tion] Mor­wede was among the front orga­ni­za­tions pro­tect­ing Nazi chemists trans­port­ed to the US, includ­ing Dr. Friedrich “Fritz” Hoff­man, a major ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the largesse of the Paper­clip pipeline.

In the late ‘50s, Hoffmann’s work for the CIA and Fort Det­rick includ­ed devel­op­ment of lethal chem­i­cal agents to be used as weapons in Viet­nam, proof that the dis­hon­or­able was just over the hori­zon when John Kennedy took office. One of these weapons, the hor­rif­ic and now-infa­mous Agent Orange, was autho­rized for use in Viet­nam in Novem­ber 1961 (imple­ment­ed in ’62 under Oper­a­tion Ranch Hand), with the stat­ed objec­tive of “improv­ing road and water­way vis­i­bil­i­ty and clear camp perime­ters” so that “greater num­bers of ene­my troops could be killed.” A year ear­li­er, two of the nation’s lead­ing cor­po­ra­tions, Schlum­berg­er Ltd. of Hous­ton, TX, and Dow Chem­i­cal of Mid­land, MI, com­bined forces to form a shared divi­sion named Dow­ell Schlum­berg­er, to pro­vide exper­tise and pump­ing ser­vices for the US oil indus­try, which would, of course, thrive dur­ing (the impend­ing) all-out war in South­east Asia. By 1962, Dowell’s par­ent, Dow Chem­i­cal, was mass-pro­duc­ing Agent Orange under spec­i­fi­ca­tions per­fect­ed by Hoff­mann and his team at Fort Det­rick. . . .

7d. Oper­a­tion Paper­clip  by Annie Jacob­sen; HC Lit­tle, Brown and Com­pa­ny; Copy­right 2014 by Anne M. Jacob­sen; ISBN 978–0‑316–22104‑7; p. 388.

. . . . Fritz Hoff­man was one of the ear­li­est known U.S. Army Chem­i­cal Corps sci­en­tists to research the tox­ic effects of dioxin—possibly in the mid-1950s but for cer­tain in 1959—as indi­cat­ed in what has become known as the Hoff­mann Trip Report. This doc­u­ment is used in almost every legal record per­tain­ing to lit­i­ga­tion by U.S. mil­i­tary vet­er­ans against the U.S. gov­ern­ment and chem­i­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers for its usage of her­bi­cides and defo­liants in the Viet­nam War. . . .

8a. In his book–one of the most impor­tant in recent memory–Yasha Levine sets forth vital, rev­e­la­to­ry infor­ma­tion about the devel­op­ment and func­tion­ing of the Inter­net.

Born of the same DARPA project that spawned Agent Orange, the Inter­net was nev­er intend­ed to be some­thing good. Its gen­er­a­tive func­tion and pur­pose is counter-insur­gency. In this land­mark vol­ume, Levine makes numer­ous points, includ­ing:

  1. The har­vest­ing of data by intel­li­gence ser­vices is PRECISELY what the Inter­net was designed to do in the first place.
  2. The har­vest­ing of data engaged in by the major tech cor­po­ra­tions is an exten­sion of the data gathering/surveillance that was–and is–the rai­son d’e­tre for the Inter­net in the first place.
  3. The big tech com­pa­nies all col­lab­o­rate with the var­i­ous intel­li­gence agen­cies they pub­licly scorn and seek to osten­si­bly dis­tance them­selves from.
  4. Edward Snow­den, the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion, Jacob Appel­baum and Wik­iLeaks are com­plic­it in the data har­vest­ing and sur­veil­lance.
  5. Snow­den and oth­er pri­va­cy activists are dou­ble agents, con­scious­ly chan­nel­ing peo­ple fear­ful of hav­ing their com­mu­ni­ca­tions mon­i­tored into tech­nolo­gies that will facil­i­tate that sur­veil­lance!

Sur­veil­lance Val­ley by Yasha Levine; Pub­lic Affairs Books [HC]; Copy­right 2018 by Yasha Levine; ISBN 978–1‑61039–802‑2; p. 7.

 . . . . In the 1960s, Amer­i­ca was a glob­al pow­er over­see­ing an increas­ing­ly volatile world: con­flicts and region­al insur­gen­cies against US-allied gov­ern­ments from South Amer­i­ca to South­east Asia and the Mid­dle East. These were not tra­di­tion­al wars that involved big armies but gueril­la cam­paigns and local rebel­lions, fre­quent­ly fought in regions where Amer­i­cans had lit­tle pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence. Who were these peo­ple? Why were they rebelling? What could be done to stop them? In mil­i­tary cir­cles, it was believed  that these ques­tions were of vital impor­tance to Amer­i­ca’s paci­fi­ca­tion efforts, and some argued that the only effec­tive way to answer them was to devel­op and lever­age com­put­er-aid­ed infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy.

The Inter­net came out of this effort: an attempt to build com­put­er sys­tems that could col­lect and share intel­li­gence, watch the world in real time, and study and ana­lyze peo­ple and polit­i­cal move­ments with the ulti­mate goal of pre­dict­ing and pre­vent­ing social upheaval. . . .

8b.  Sur­veil­lance Val­ley by Yasha Levine; Pub­lic Affairs Books [HC]; Copy­right 2018 by Yasha Levine; ISBN 978–1‑61039–802‑2; p. 15.

 . . . . Ranch Hand got going in 1962 and last­ed until the war end­ed more than a decade lat­er. In that time, Amer­i­can C‑123 trans­port planes doused an area equal in size to half of South Viet­nam with twen­ty mil­lion gal­lons of tox­ic chem­i­cal defo­liants. Agent Orange was for­ti­fied with oth­er col­ors of the rain­bow: Agent White, Agent Pink, Agent Pur­ple, Agent Blue. The chem­i­cals, pro­duced by Amer­i­can com­pa­nies like Dow and Mon­san­to, turned whole swaths of lush jun­gle into bar­ren moon­scapes, caus­ing death and hor­ri­ble suf­fer­ing for hun­dreds of thou­sands.

Oper­a­tion Ranch Hand was mer­ci­less, and in clear vio­la­tion of the Gene­va Con­ven­tions. It remains one of the most shame­ful episodes of the Viet­nam War. Yet the defo­li­a­tion project is notable for more than just its unimag­in­able cru­el­ty. The gov­ern­ment body at its lead was a Depart­ment of Defense out­fit called the Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Born in 1958 as a cash pro­gram to pro­tect the Unit­ed  States from a Sovi­et  nuclear threat from space, it launched sev­er­al ground­break­ing ini­tia­tives tasked with devel­op­ing advanced weapons and mil­i­tary tech­nolo­gies. Among them were project Agile and Com­mand and Con­trol Research, two over­lap­ping ARPA ini­tia­tives that cre­at­ed the Inter­net. . . .

9a. “A.I. to Read Your Mind Is Up Next” by Oliv­er Whang; The New York Times; 5/2/2023.

9b.  From Intro­duc­tion to Anti-Fas­cist Books

In the decades since the end of the Sec­ond World War, much has been writ­ten about the war and fas­cism, the dri­ving force behind the aggres­sion that pre­cip­i­tat­ed that con­flict. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, much of what has been said and writ­ten has failed to iden­ti­fy and ana­lyze the caus­es, nature and method­ol­o­gy of fascism—German Nation­al Social­ism or “Nazism” in par­tic­u­lar. A deep­er, more accu­rate analy­sis was pre­sent­ed in lit­er­a­ture pub­lished before, dur­ing and imme­di­ate­ly after World War II.

SpitfireList.com is pleased to present a num­ber of books pub­lished dur­ing that peri­od. Almost all more than 50 years old, these works embody a more com­plete, pro­found analy­sis of the his­tor­i­cal forces that dom­i­nat­ed the events of that time and, more impor­tant­ly, our own. Where­as much con­tem­po­rary lit­er­a­ture on the sub­ject presents fas­cism (and Nazism in par­tic­u­lar) as an aber­ra­tion, the phe­nom­e­non was an out­growth of major polit­i­cal forces and dynam­ics that dom­i­nate and con­trol con­tem­po­rary events and process­es.

Some of the books pre­sent­ed here illus­trate the extent to which fas­cism (Nazism in par­tic­u­lar) was an out­growth of glob­al­iza­tion and the con­struc­tion of inter­na­tion­al monop­o­lies (car­tels). Key to under­stand­ing this phe­nom­e­non is analy­sis of the Webb-Pomerene act, leg­is­lat­ed near the end of the First World War. A loop­hole in the Anti-trust leg­is­la­tion of 1914, it effec­tive­ly legal­ized the for­ma­tion of cartels—international monopolies—for firms that were barred from domes­tic monop­o­lis­tic prac­tices.

Decry­ing what they viewed as exces­sive and restric­tive “reg­u­la­tion” here in the Unit­ed States, U.S.-based transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions invest­ed their prof­its from the indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s abroad, pri­mar­i­ly in Japan and Ger­many. This process might well be viewed as the real begin­ning of what is now known as “glob­al­iza­tion.” [FTR#’s 99, 361, 426, 511 and 532 present an overview of the rein­vest­ment of the wealth gen­er­at­ed by the Amer­i­can indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s in Ger­man and Japan­ese strate­gic heavy indus­try. It was this cap­i­tal that drove the engines of con­quest that sub­dued both Europe and Asia dur­ing the con­flict.]

We also note that the fail­ure of Amer­i­can indus­tri­al and finan­cial firms to invest their cap­i­tal in U.S. infra­struc­ture con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the onset of the Great Depres­sion, depriv­ing Amer­i­can indus­try of the monies need­ed to sus­tain the engines of indus­try and com­merce. . . .

10.  Sit­ting Bull at the Pow­der Riv­er Coun­cil

The fol­low­ing words were spo­ken by Sit­ting Bull at the pure­ly Indi­an “Pow­der Riv­er Coun­cil” of 1877, as recount­ed by men who were present to Charles A. East­man (author of Indi­an Heroes and Great Chief­tains):

“Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has glad­ly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love! Every seed is awak­ened, and all ani­mal life. It is through this mys­te­ri­ous pow­er that we too have our being, and we there­fore yield to our neigh­bors, even to our ani­mal neigh­bors, the same right as our­selves to inhab­it this vast land.”

“Yet hear me, friends! we have now to deal with anoth­er peo­ple, small and fee­ble when our fore­fa­thers first met with them, but now great and over­bear­ing. Strange­ly enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of pos­ses­sions is a dis­ease in them. These peo­ple have made many rules that the rich may break, but the poor may not! They have a reli­gion in which the poor wor­ship, but the rich will not! They even take tithes of the poor and weak to sup­port the rich and those who rule. They claim this moth­er of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neigh­bors away from her, and deface her with their build­ings and their refuse. They com­pel her to pro­duce out of sea­son, and when ster­ile she is made to take med­i­cine in order to pro­duce again. All this is sac­ri­lege.”

“This nation is like a spring freshet; it over­runs its banks and destroys all who are in its path.”

“We can­not dwell side by side. Only sev­en years ago we made a treaty by which we were assured that the buf­fa­lo coun­try should be left to us for­ev­er. Now they threat­en to take that from us also. My broth­ers, shall we sub­mit? or shall we say to them: ‘First kill me, before you can take pos­ses­sion of my father­land!’ ”

12a. A study released by US Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences at the request of the Depart­ment of Defense about the threats of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy con­clud­ed that the tech­niques to tweak and weaponize virus­es from known cat­a­logs of viral sequences is very fea­si­ble and rel­a­tive­ly easy to do:

“Syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy rais­es risk of new bioweapons, US report warns” by Ian Sam­ple; The Guardian; 06/19/2018

The rapid rise of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy, a futur­is­tic field of sci­ence that seeks to mas­ter the machin­ery of life, has raised the risk of a new gen­er­a­tion of bioweapons, accord­ing a major US report into the state of the art. . . .

“ . . . Advances in the area mean that sci­en­tists now have the capa­bil­i­ty to recre­ate dan­ger­ous virus­es from scratch; make harm­ful bac­te­ria more dead­ly; and mod­i­fy com­mon microbes so that they churn out lethal tox­ins once they enter the body. . . In the report, the sci­en­tists describe how syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy, which gives researchers pre­ci­sion tools to manip­u­late liv­ing organ­isms, ‘enhances and expands’ oppor­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate bioweapons. . . . Today, the genet­ic code of almost any mam­malian virus can be found online and syn­the­sised. ‘The tech­nol­o­gy to do this is avail­able now,’ said [Michael] Impe­ri­ale. “It requires some exper­tise, but it’s some­thing that’s rel­a­tive­ly easy to do, and that is why it tops the list. . . .”

 12b.“Biden Picks Biotech Exec­u­tive to Lead New Bio­med­ical Research Agency” By Sheryl Gay Stol­berg; The New York Times; 09/12/2022

 . . . . Dr. Renee Wegrzyn is Pres­i­dent Biden’s choice to lead the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, which is aimed at dri­ving bio­med­ical inno­va­tion.

Pres­i­dent Biden, sketch­ing out a vision for “bold approach­es” to fight­ing can­cer and oth­er dis­eases, announced on Mon­day that he had select­ed Dr. Renee Wegrzyn, a Boston biotech exec­u­tive with gov­ern­ment expe­ri­ence, as the direc­tor of a new fed­er­al agency aimed at pur­su­ing risky, far-reach­ing ideas that will dri­ve bio­med­ical inno­va­tion.

Mr. Biden made the announce­ment at the John F. Kennedy Pres­i­den­tial Library and Muse­um in Boston, on the 60th anniver­sary of the for­mer president’s “moon­shot” speech that ush­ered in an era of space trav­el. He used the occa­sion to reit­er­ate his call to “end can­cer as we know it” — the tag line for his own “can­cer moon­shot” ini­tia­tive. . . .

. . . . Mod­eled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the new agency is known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. (In the argot of Wash­ing­ton, where every agency has an acronym, the defense research agency is called DARPA and the health agency is ARPA‑H.) . . . .

. . . . Dr. Wegrzyn is a vice pres­i­dent for busi­ness devel­op­ment at Gink­go Bioworks and the head of inno­va­tion at Con­cen­tric by Gink­go, the company’s ini­tia­tive to advance coro­n­avirus test­ing and track the spread of the virus. She also worked at DARPA and its sis­ter agency, the Intel­li­gence Advanced Research Projects Activ­i­ty. . . .

. . . . The agency already has an act­ing deputy direc­tor, Adam H. Rus­sell, also a DARPA alum­nus, who has been lay­ing the tech­ni­cal infra­struc­ture and oth­er ground­work to get the new agency off the ground. . . .

. . . . In addi­tion to announc­ing his intent to appoint Dr. Wegrzyn, Mr. Biden issued an exec­u­tive order on Mon­day estab­lish­ing a biotech­nol­o­gy and bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing ini­tia­tive intend­ed to posi­tion the Unit­ed States as a leader in the field and to cen­ter drug man­u­fac­tur­ing in the coun­try. . . .

13a.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renee_Wegrzyn

. . . . From 2003 to 2006, Wegrzyn worked as a post-doc­tor­al research fel­low at the Euro­pean Mol­e­c­u­lar Biol­o­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry. From 2006 to 2008, she worked as the assay devel­op­ment group leader for Adlyfe, a biotech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny based in Que­bec. In 2009, she was a senior sci­en­tist at Meso Scale Dis­cov­ery and in 2012, she was a fel­low at the Johns Hop­kins Cen­ter for Health Secu­ri­ty. From 2009 to 2016, she worked as a senior lead tech­nol­o­gist at Booz Allen Hamil­tonFrom 2016 to 2020, she served as a pro­gram man­ag­er in the Bio­log­i­cal Tech­nolo­gies Office of DARPA, where she spe­cial­ized in syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy and biose­cu­ri­ty. Since 2018, she has been a senior advi­sor to the Nuclear Threat Ini­tia­tive.[3] In 2020, she joined Gink­go Bioworks as vice pres­i­dent of busi­ness devel­op­ment.[4]. . . .

14. Cit­ed by numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing The New York Times, Bloomberg News and Politi­co, the study under­scores some of our asser­tions con­cern­ing the fas­cist and extreme right-wing ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the pan­dem­ic. 

This time­ly and very impor­tant study will be ref­er­enced in future dis­cus­sion of the psy­cho­log­i­cal, soci­o­log­i­cal and socio-eco­nom­ic aspects of the Covid-19 out­break.

Kris­t­ian Blick­le’s analy­sis under­scores points we have made about the demo­graph­ic, eco­nom­ic and psy­cho­log­i­cal dev­as­ta­tion the pan­dem­ic is hav­ing on the body politic.

A new aca­d­e­m­ic paper pro­duced by the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank of New York con­cludes that deaths caused by the 1918 influen­za pan­dem­ic “pro­found­ly shaped Ger­man soci­ety” in sub­se­quent years and con­tributed to the strength­en­ing of the Nazi Par­ty.

“The paper, pub­lished this month and authored by New York Fed econ­o­mist Kris­t­ian Blick­le, exam­ined munic­i­pal spend­ing lev­els and vot­er extrem­ism in Ger­many from the time of the ini­tial influen­za out­break until 1933, and shows that ‘areas which expe­ri­enced a greater rel­a­tive pop­u­la­tion decline’ due to the pan­dem­ic spent ‘less, per capi­ta, on their inhab­i­tants in the fol­low­ing decade.’ . . .

“. . . . The paper’s find­ings are like­ly due to ‘changes in soci­etal pref­er­ences’ fol­low­ing the 1918 out­break, Blick­le argues — sug­gest­ing the influen­za pandemic’s dis­pro­por­tion­ate toll on young peo­ple may have ‘spurred resent­ment of for­eign­ers among the sur­vivors’ and dri­ven vot­ers to par­ties ‘whose plat­form matched such sen­ti­ments.’ The con­clu­sions come amid fears that the cur­rent coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic will shake up inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics and spur extrem­ism around the world, as offi­cials and pub­lic health experts look to pre­vi­ous out­breaks for guid­ance on how to nav­i­gate the months and years to come. . . .”

“Fed Study Ties 1918 Flu Pan­dem­ic to Nazi Par­ty Gains” by Quint Forgey; Politi­co; 5/05/2020.

A new aca­d­e­m­ic paper pro­duced by the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank of New York con­cludes that deaths caused by the 1918 influen­za pan­dem­ic “pro­found­ly shaped Ger­man soci­ety” in sub­se­quent years and con­tributed to the strength­en­ing of the Nazi Par­ty.

The paper, pub­lished this month and authored by New York Fed econ­o­mist Kris­t­ian Blick­le, exam­ined munic­i­pal spend­ing lev­els and vot­er extrem­ism in Ger­many from the time of the ini­tial influen­za out­break until 1933, and shows that “areas which expe­ri­enced a greater rel­a­tive pop­u­la­tion decline” due to the pan­dem­ic spent “less, per capi­ta, on their inhab­i­tants in the fol­low­ing decade.”

The paper also shows that “influen­za deaths of 1918 are cor­re­lat­ed with an increase in the share of votes won by right-wing extrem­ists, such as the Nation­al Social­ist Work­ers Par­ty” in Germany’s 1932 and 1933 elec­tions.

Togeth­er, the low­er spend­ing and flu-relat­ed deaths “had a strong effect on the share of votes won by extrem­ists, specif­i­cal­ly the extrem­ist nation­al social­ist par­ty” — the Nazis — the paper posits. “This result is stronger for right-wing extrem­ists, and large­ly non-exis­tent for left-wing extrem­ists.”

Despite becom­ing pop­u­lar­ly known as the Span­ish flu, the influen­za pan­dem­ic like­ly orig­i­nat­ed in the Unit­ed States at a Kansas mil­i­tary base, even­tu­al­ly infect­ing about one-third of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion and killing at least 50 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide, accord­ing to the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion.

Ger­many expe­ri­enced rough­ly 287,000 influen­za deaths between 1918 and 1920, Blick­le writes.

The paper’s find­ings are like­ly due to “changes in soci­etal pref­er­ences” fol­low­ing the 1918 out­break, Blick­le argues — sug­gest­ing the influen­za pandemic’s dis­pro­por­tion­ate toll on young peo­ple may have “spurred resent­ment of for­eign­ers among the sur­vivors” and dri­ven vot­ers to par­ties “whose plat­form matched such sen­ti­ments.”

The con­clu­sions come amid fears that the cur­rent coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic will shake up inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics and spur extrem­ism around the world, as offi­cials and pub­lic health experts look to pre­vi­ous out­breaks for guid­ance on how to nav­i­gate the months and years to come.

15. “Lis­ten Close­ly: From Tiny Hum Came Big Bang” by James Glanz; The New York Times; 4/30/2001.

Two detec­tors in Antarc­ti­ca have dis­cov­ered minute pat­terns in a glow from pri­mor­dial gas­es, pos­si­ble traces of the cos­mic match that ignit­ed the Big Bang and led to the cre­ation of the uni­verse 14 bil­lion years ago, astronomers announced here today.

The pat­terns, astronomers said, were prob­a­bly cre­at­ed by micro­scop­ic process­es — ener­gy fluc­tu­a­tions at the quan­tum scale — that were at work when the uni­verse was a tiny frac­tion of a sec­ond old and small­er than a human fist. . . .

. . . . The new obser­va­tions do not see the quan­tum fluc­tu­a­tions direct­ly, but instead have found traces of colos­sal waves, much like sound waves, that the fluc­tu­a­tions prob­a­bly set in motion, roil­ing the young uni­verse. . . . .

. . . . The lead­ing the­o­ry of how the uni­verse could have explod­ed out of the pri­mor­dial noth­ing­ness, known as the the­o­ry of infla­tion, pre­dicts that the quan­tum fluc­tu­a­tions should have rat­tled the uni­verse in such a way that it res­onat­ed like a vast organ pipe, with one main tone, or wave­length, and a series of over­tones or har­mon­ics.

Last year, the Boomerang team detect­ed the main tone but found no clear evi­dence for the over­tones, rais­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the infla­tion the­o­ry could be wrong. Since much of the infor­ma­tion about the fluc­tu­a­tions, like their rel­a­tive inten­si­ty and spec­trum, would reside in the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the over­tones, those results raised the prospect that few rem­nants of the ini­tial spark might be found. . . .

. . . . .The results also pro­vide major sup­port for ideas close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Dr. David Schramm, a Chica­go cos­mol­o­gist who died in a plane crash late in 1997. Dr. Schramm and his col­leagues worked out a the­o­ry, unre­lat­ed to infla­tion, using trace ele­ments cre­at­ed in the Big Bang explo­sion to gauge the amount of ordi­nary mat­ter in the uni­verse.

Those val­ues agree close­ly with the amounts deduced from the inten­si­ty of the sound wave over­tones; that inten­si­ty is affect­ed by the slosh­ing of mat­ter in the sound waves’ peaks and troughs. . . .

. . . . For exam­ple, the new obser­va­tions con­firm that most of the cos­mos seems to be made of so-called dark mat­ter and dark ener­gy, pos­si­bly par­ti­cles or ener­gy lurk­ing some­where in space but still nev­er detect­ed direct­ly. Dr. Turn­er, of Chica­go, said skep­tics might well term that pic­ture ”the absurd uni­verse, or the pre­pos­ter­ous uni­verse.” . . . .

16. The Physics of Immor­tal­i­ty by Frank J. Tipler; Dou­ble­day, New York, 1994. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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