A plea to President Trump
Voice over
In his recent interview with Chris Cuomo, Dr. Robert Redfield explained how he made one of the most difficult decisions of his career: shutting down Fort Detrick. Fort Detrick is the army base that hosts USAMRIID, which is located in Frederick, Maryland - just outside of Washington DC. From 1943 to 1969, it was home of the US Biological Weapons Program. Once that was disbanded, it became the US DoD "biological defense" program. Under that program, some of the world's most dangerous pathogens, such as Ebola, Anthrax and Smallpox, have been experimented with at that location. It also stored some of the world's most dangerous pathogens. In the early 2000s, it was at the center of the weaponized anthrax attacks. The government concluded early on that Fort Detrick was where those anthrax spores were derived from, although there is contradictory evidence suggesting an alternative source involving a large non-profit contractor company which does a lot of business on behalf of the NIH/DoD/"Biodefense" industrial complex. Dr. Redfield served as the director of the CDC from March 2018 to January 2021. In that role, he made what he called the most difficult decision of his long career, and shut down Fort Detrick in August 2019. It stayed shuttered until April 2020. Fort Detrick is the largest employer of Frederick County, MD, so it was a very big deal. Dr. Redfield shut down the US biological defense program at Fort Detrick because of a pattern of repeated failed safety violations that he says placed the citizens of Frederick, MD at great risk. Many of us have speculated for years just exactly what that risk was. The whole episode was shrouded in mystery, but my understanding at least partially involved a new research laboratory designed to house non-human primates within which Ebola experiments were planned. At least one of the issues involved problems with air handling, reminiscent of one of the key issues that cropped up at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fast forward to the latest revelations by Congress (from the House Energy and Commerce Committee press release).
This documents that, in the case of NIAID, we have an institute that finds it acceptable to lie and obfuscate to Congress, and so far, there is no accountability other than more Congressional investigations. All of this reeks of an institutional culture of chronic arrogance, entitlement, and disregard for fundamental biohazard safety considerations. Dr. Bernard Moss, the scientist at the heart of this controversy, has not been subpoenaed, nor has his scientific staff that we know of. There is no question that gain-of-function work was performed, and relatively recently, too. The only question is how far did these experiments go.
NIAID, via Eco Health Alliance, clearly funded the creation of SARS-CoV-2-WIV. They are at least partially responsible for the millions of deaths that this genetically modified virus caused. NIAID has been involved in gain-of-function work with influenza that was so dangerous that it triggered the Obama administration to put a hold on gain-of-function research, which was lifted under Trump. NIAID also funded H5N1 (avian influenza) gain of function research, which led to the moratorium on GOF research under the Obama administration. NIAID is out of control. With a budget of 6.1 billion, it controls a vast empire for which there is no accountability and which actively stonewalls congressional oversight attempts. NIAID has repeatedly failed to put Americans' safety first and foremost. NIAID has failed to put the safety of the citizens of the world first and foremost. I am calling for a complete shutdown of NIAID. The current NIAID mission statement reads:
They have long since abandoned their core mission in favor of biologic "defense," gain-of-function research, and doing the bidding of big pharma. Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, NIAID has known it is at least partially responsible for the creation of the virus named SARS-CoV-2. It has had years to come clean and to fix its organizational and cultural issues. Instead, it has lied, obfuscated, and hidden the evidence of its responsibility for what happened. NIAID's organizational culture is arrogant and has a deep-seated sense of entitlement. I propose that research at NIAID be shut down and the institute shuttered systematically and carefully. Of course, this must be done in a responsible manner - with biological tissue and pathogen banks being carefully preserved and assessed, but much of this archiving function is already outsourced to independent contractor companies. Then, two new research institutes can be formed. One focused on infectious diseases, and the other on immunologic and allergic diseases. Leadership in these institutes should be completely replaced. The institutes should be focussed on what can work to provide benefit to the majority of Americans. The good example of how NIAID has ignored effective solutions being the use of Vitamin D with A, K, and zinc to boost the immune system. Another great example is how they have fought the use of generic drugs to fight infectious diseases despite a long track record of such drugs being effective in both the early and late stages of respiratory disease. How to do this? Recently, President Biden and Congress founded ARPA-H. The same pathways that allowed this new institute to come to fruition can be used to start these two new institutes. The time to act is now, or at worst, certainly come January 20th, 2025. Today, I am in Austin Texas, filming a High Wire Episode with Del Bigtree - This will be aired live today at 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern.
The season finale of FallOut will air Friday at 9:00 PM Eastern. This episode will be about our farm and homestead - The stars of the show are emu and goose. Jill and I are really looking forward to this one! Look for the teaser in the Friday funnies tomorrow!  |
Thursday, June 13, 2024
Fwd: Last Straw: NIAID Must Be Shut Down
Saturday, March 23, 2024
Start of chemical foods
The Holocaust genocide committed by the German Nazi regime, by facilitating the regime's generation and tabulation of punch cards for national census data, military logistics, ghetto statistics, train traffic management, and concentration camp capacity.[1]
Summary
In the early 1880s, Herman Hollerith (1860–1929), a young employee at the U.S. Census Bureau, conceived of the idea of creating readable cards with standardized perforations, each representing specific individual traits such as gender, nationality, and occupation. The millions of punched cards created for the population counted in the national census could then be sorted on the basis of specific bits of information they contained—thereby providing a quantified portrait of the nation and its citizens.[2]: 25 A circuit-closing device was used to electromagnetically record the data represented by the perforations. The technology enabled searching for individuals using the traits as search terms.[3]
In 1910, the German licensee Willy Heidinger established the Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft (German Hollerith Machine Corporation), known by the abbreviation "Dehomag".[2]: 30 The next year, Hollerith sold his American business to industrialist Charles Flint (1850–1934) for US$1.41 million(equivalent to $44.3 million in 2022).[2]: 31 The counting machine operation was made part of a new conglomerate called the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR).[2]: 31 Flint chose Thomas J. Watson (1874–1956), the star salesman of the National Cash Register Corporation, to head the new operation.[2]: 38–39 In 1923,[4] the German licensee Dehomag became a direct subsidiary of the American corporation CTR.[2]: 44 In 1924, Watson assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer of CTR and renamed the company International Business Machines (IBM).
Black details an ongoing business relationship between Watson's IBM and the emerging German regime headed by Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party(NSDAP). Hitler came to power in January 1933; on March 20 of that same year he established a concentration camp for political prisoners in the Bavarian town of Dachau, just outside the city of Munich. Repression against political opponents and the country's ethnic Jewish population began immediately. By April 1933, some 60,000 had been imprisoned.[2]: 44–45 Business relations between IBM and the Hitler regime continued uninterrupted in the face of broad international calls for an economic boycott.[2]: 45 Willy Heidinger, who remained the chief executive of Dehomag, the German subsidiary of which IBM owned 90%, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Hitler regime.[2]: 50
On April 12, 1933, the German government announced plans to conduct a long-delayed national census.[2]: 54 The project was particularly important to the Nazis as a mechanism for the identification of Jews, Roma, and other ethnic groups deemed undesirable by the regime. Dehomag offered to assist the German government in its task of ethnic identification, focusing upon the 41 million residents of Prussia.[2]: 55 This activity was not only countenanced by Thomas Watson and IBM in America, Black argues, but was actively encouraged and financially supported, with Watson himself traveling to Germany in October 1933 and the company ramping up its investment in its German subsidiary from 400,000 to 7,000,000 Reichsmark—about $1 million (equivalent to $22.6 million in 2022).[2]: 60 This injection of American capital allowed Dehomag to purchase land in Berlinand to construct IBM's first factory in Germany, Black charges, thereby "tooling up for what it correctly saw as a massive financial relationship with the Hitler regime".[2]: 60
Black also cites documents regarding a "secret deal" that was made between Heidinger and Watson during the latter's visit to Germany which allowed Dehomag commercial powers outside of Germany, enabling the "now Nazified" company to "circumvent and supplant" various national subsidiaries and licensees by "soliciting and delivering punch card solution technology directly to IBM customers in those territories".[2]: 61 As a result, Nazi Germany soon became the second most important customer of IBM after the lucrative U.S. market.[2]: 110 The 1933 census, with design help and tabulation services provided by IBM through its German subsidiary, proved to be pivotal to the Nazis in their efforts to identify, isolate, and ultimately destroy the country's Jewish minority. Machine-tabulated census data greatly expanded the estimated number of Jews in Germany by identifying individuals with only one or a few Jewish ancestors. Previous estimates of 400,000 to 600,000 were abandoned for a new estimate of 2 million Jews in the nation of 65 million.[2]: 110
As the Nazi war machine occupied successive nations of Europe, capitulation was followed by a census of the population of each subjugated nation, with an eye to the identification and isolation of Jews and Romani. These census operations were intimately intertwined with technology and cards supplied by IBM's German and new Polish subsidiaries, which were awarded specific sales territories in Poland by decision of the New Yorkoffice following Germany's successful Blitzkrieg invasion.[2]: 193 Data generated by means of counting and alphabetization equipment supplied by IBM through its German and other national subsidiaries was instrumental in the efforts of the German government to concentrate and ultimately destroy ethnic Jewish populations across Europe.[2]: 198 Black reports that every Nazi concentration camp maintained its own Hollerith-Abteilung(Hollerith Department), assigned with keeping tabs on inmates through use of IBM's punchcard technology.[2]: 351 In his book, Black charges that "without IBM's machinery, continuing upkeep and service, as well as the supply of punch cards, whether located on-site or off-site, Hitler's camps could have never managed the numbers they did."[2]: 352
Major changes were made for the 2002 paperback editions on Three Rivers Press/Time Warner Paperbacks[5][6][7] and the 2012 expanded edition on Dialog Press.[8] In the updated 2002 paperback edition, the author included new evidence of the connection between IBM's United States headquarters and its Polish subsidiary during Nazi occupation.[5][6][7] In 2012 Black published a second expanded revision with more documents. The 2012 expanded edition provides 32 pages of new photographic and documentary evidence.[8]
IBM's post-invasion Polish subsidiary
A revised 2002 paperback edition provides additional evidence that IBM New York established a special subsidiary in Polandcalled Watson Business Machines to deal with railway traffic in the General Government. Edwin Black asserts that IBM did so after the September 1, 1939 Invasion of Poland by Germany, and continued this business relationship during the Holocaust in Poland. Watson Business Machines operated a punch card printing shop near the Warsaw Ghetto.[5]
In a 2002 editorial in the SFGate, Black documented that this Polish subsidiary reported to IBM Geneva which in turn reported to IBM New York. Black further states that IBM's European general manager reported directly to Thomas Watson Sr., that some machines in Poland were sent to Romania to assist in the Jewish census there, and that these Polish machines were later replaced.[6]
In his book, Black quotes Leon Krzemieniecki, the last surviving person involved in the administration of the rail transportation to Auschwitz and Treblinka, as stating he knew the punched card machines were not German machines, because the labels were in English. Black details how income from the machines leased in Poland was sent through Geneva to IBM in New York.[5][6]
Ongoing sales
Edwin Black details how IBM not only leased Nazi Germany the machines, but then provided continuous maintenance service, and sold the spare parts and the special paper needed for the customized punch cards.[9]
After the publication of the 2012 expanded edition, he wrote for the Huffington Post, "The punch cards, machinery, training, servicing, and special project work, such as population census and identification, was managed directly by IBM headquarters in New York, and later through its subsidiaries in Germany, known as Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft (DEHOMAG), Poland, The Netherlands, France, Switzerland, and other European countries." He added that the punch cards bore the indicia of the German subsidiary Dehomag.[10]
Reception
IBM's response
Though IBM has never directly denied any of the evidence posed by the book, it has criticized Black's research methods and accusatory conclusions.[11] IBM claimed it does not have any other information about the company during its World War II period or the operations of Dehomag, as it argued most documents were destroyed or lost during the war.[12]
IBM also claimed that an earlier dismissed lawsuit, initiated by lawyers representing concentration camp survivors, was filed in 2001 to coincide with Black's book launch.[12] Lawyers for the Holocaust victims acknowledged the timing of the lawsuit to coincide with Black's book release, explaining their public relations strategies played an important role in their record of achieving Nazi-era settlements totaling more than $7 billion without winning a judgment.[13]
After the publication of Black's updated 2002 paperback edition, IBM responded by stating it wasn't convinced there were any new findings and there was no proof IBM had enabled the Holocaust.[5][7] IBM rejected Black's assertion that IBM was hiding information and records regarding its World War II era.[14]Several years previously, IBM had given its corporate records of the period to academic archives in New York and Stuttgart, Germany, for review by undefined "independent scholars".[7]
In early 2021, Black published the 20th anniversary edition with special public events and a syndicated article stating that in twenty years, "not a comma has been changed", adding that "IBM has never requested a correction or denied any facts in the book."[15][16][17]
Wikipedia editing controversy
In 2010, Black reported on unidentified Wikipedia editors marginalizing his research on IBM's role in the Holocaust.[18] It is not clear whether the editors involved were IBM employees, but Black states that, "[they were] openly fortified by official IBM corporate archivist Paul Lasewicz using his real name, and others"; Black nevertheless calls Lasewicz a "man of integrity" and points out that he deferred taking the lead because of potential conflict of interest and then recused himself entirely.[19][20]
Critical response
The book was published on February 11, 2001, simultaneously in 40 countries in 14 languages, with numerous subsequent expanded editions, and hundreds of published reviews in many languages have appeared.[10]
At the first edition release in 2001, Newsweek called the book "explosive", adding, "backed by exhaustive research, Black's case is simple and stunning. ... Black clearly demonstrates that Nazi Germany employed IBM Hollerith punch-card machines to perform critical tasks in carrying out the Holocaust and the German war effort ... Black establishes beyond dispute that IBM Hollerith machines significantly advanced Nazi efforts to exterminate Jewry."[21]
In 2003, the American Society of Journalists and Authorsacknowledged IBM and the Holocaust with its award for Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year.[22]
Richard Bernstein, writing for The New York Times Book Reviewabout the original 2001 first edition, said "Edwin Black makes a copiously documented case for the utter amorality of the profit motive and its indifference to consequences" but that Black's case "is long and heavily documented, and yet he does not demonstrate that IBM bears some unique or decisive responsibility for the evil that was done".[23]
In a 2001 review in the Los Angeles Times, historian and UCLAprofessor Saul Friedlander wrote, "The author convincingly shows the relentless efforts made by IBM to maximize profit by selling its machines and its punch cards to a country whose criminal record would soon be widely recognized. Indeed, Black demonstrates with great precision that the godlike owner of the corporation, Thomas Watson, was impervious to the moral dimension of his dealings with Hitler's Germany and for years even had a soft spot for the Nazi regime."[24]
In another review of the first edition, David Cesarani of Southampton University stated that Black provided "shocking evidence" that IBM in America continued to provide punch cards and other services to the Nazis "in defiance of Allied regulations against trading with the enemy."[25]
In a 2001 review of the first edition in The Atlantic, Jack Beattywrote, "This is a shocking book ... Edwin Black has documented a sordid relationship between this great American company and the Third Reich, one that extended into the war years."
Prof. Robert Urekew's review in the Harvard International Reviewstated: "Black's meticulous documentation reveals an undeniable fact: after the outbreak of the World War II, the IBM corporation knew the whereabouts of each of its European-leased machines, and what revenues it could expect from them."[26]
After the updated paperback edition in 2002, Oliver Burkemanwrote for The Guardian, "The paperback provides the first evidence that the company's dealings with the Nazis were controlled from its New York headquarters throughout the second world war."[5] Sam Jaffe in Businessweek wrote: "With exhaustive research, Black makes the case that IBM and Watson conspired with Nazi Germany to help automate the genocide of Europe's Jews."[citation needed]
Reuters reported in 2002 that historians on Black's research team stated the paperback edition had used newly discovered Nazi documents and Polish eyewitness testimony to link IBM's U.S. operations directly to the Third Reich operations in Poland.[citation needed]
Several reviewers publicly retracted their negative reviews, with signed written apologies and donations to Holocaust museums, including reviewers in The Jerusalem Report, Nature Magazine, AudioFile magazine, Annals of the History of Computing, and the World Association of International Scholars.[27]
Related legal actions
In February 2001, an Alien Tort Claims Act claim was filed in U.S. federal court against IBM for allegedly providing the punched card technology that facilitated the Holocaust, and for covering up German IBM subsidiary Dehomag's activities.[13][28]There was no evidence in the suit that IBM officials in New York explicitly ordered that technology be supplied to the Nazis with the understanding it would be used in concentration camps; however, lawyers representing victims of Nazi oppression claimed Dehomag's founder Heidinger expressed pride in giving Hitler data that could be used in "corrective interventions", and pledged to "follow his orders blindly".[13] In April 2001, the lawsuit was dropped after lawyers feared the suit would slow down payments from a German Holocaust fund for Holocaust survivors who had suffered under Nazi persecution.[28] IBM's German division had paid $3 million into the fund, while clearly avoiding admission of liability.[28]
In 2004, the Roma human rights organization Gypsy International Recognition and Compensation Action (GIRCA) filed suit against IBM in Switzerland.[28] However, the case was dismissed in 2006 under the relevant statute of limitations.[29]
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said in a 2015 unrelated lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court against IBM, "We point out the disturbing parallels between IBM's actions vis-Ã -visSouth Africa and Nazi Germany: IBM New York purposefully 'facilitated gross human rights abuses by the Third Reich.'"[30][31]
References
- Preston, Peter (February 18, 2001). "Six million and counting". The Observer. guardian.co.uk. Retrieved June 14, 2001.
- Black, Edwin (2009) [2001]. IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation (Paperback) (Second ed.). Washington, DC: Dialog Press. OCLC 958727212.
- Jefferson, Brian (2020). Digitize and Punish: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. p. 20.
- Elkin, Larry M. "IBM: A Centenarian's Imperfect But Impressive Recall". Business Insider. Retrieved 2022-01-13.
- Burkeman, Oliver (March 29, 2002). "IBM 'dealt directly with Holocaust organisers'". The Guardian . guardian.co.uk. Retrieved July 31, 2017.
- Black, Edwin (May 19, 2002). "The business of making the trains to Auschwitz run on time". Editorial. SFGate. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved July 31, 2017.
- Grace, Francie (March 27, 2002). "IBM And Nazi Germany: Researcher Has New Documents On World War II Conduct". CBS News.
- "Edwin Black Seeks to Prove IBM's Involvement in Holocaust". William S. Boyd School of Law. University of Nevada, Las Vegas. November 13, 2012. Retrieved October 26, 2017.
- Beatty, Jack (April 2001). "Hitler's Willing Business Partners". The Atlantic. Retrieved October 2, 2021.
- Black, Edwin (2012). "IBM's Role in the Holocaust — What the New Documents Reveal". Huffington Post. Retrieved October 23,2017.
- Bazyler, Michael J. (2005). Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America's Courts. New York: New York University Press. p. 303.
- IBM Press Room (February 14, 2001). "IBM Statement on Nazi-era Book and Lawsuit". Press Release. Armonk, New York.
- Feder, Barnaby (February 11, 2001). "Lawsuit Says I.B.M. Aided The Nazis In Technology". The New York Times. Retrieved October 1, 2017.
- IBM Press Room (March 29, 2002). "Addendum to IBM Statement on Nazi-era Book and Lawsuit". Press Release. Armonk, New York. Archived from the original on February 5, 2021. Retrieved July 13,2021.
- Black, Edwin (February 8, 2021). "IBM and the Holocaust — 20 Years of Corporate Denial". The Times of Israel.
- Black, Edwin (February 8, 2021). "IBM and the Holocaust—20 years of corporate denial". Israel National News.
- Black, Edwin. "Barnes & Noble Launch Event for IBM and the Holocaust hardcover 2021 re-issue | The Edwin Black Show". The Edwin Black Show.
- Black, Edwin (April 12, 2010). "Wikipedia—The Dumbing Down of World Knowledge". The Cutting Edge News. Archived from the original on January 31, 2018. Retrieved May 23, 2019.
- Black, Edwin (April 12, 2010). "Wikipedia—The Dumbing Down of World Knowledge". Editorial. History News Network. George Washington University. Retrieved May 23, 2019.
- Barillas, Martin (April 9, 2010). "Martin Barillas: Wikipedia Blocks Users in Response to Edwin Black Article". History News Network. Retrieved May 24, 2019.