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The page below, dating from before the 2016 referendum, details the arguments presented by the supporters and opponents of Brexit.
For an analysis of the history of Brexit and its background from Churchill to 2020, see ► Brexit a short history.

Brexit: the UK left the European Union on 30th January 2020.

With its solid Conservative majority, the House of Commons passed the legislation necessary to allow the UK to leave the European Union on 31st January.
In practical terms, little will change, as Britain enters a "transition period" during which it will continue to abide by EU rules and regulations, and contribute to the EU budget.
2020 is a year of hard bargaining, and whatever deal is negotiated between the UK and the EU, there will be a large part of the UK population who will think it is a bad deal.
The arguments over Brexit did horrendous damage to the UK, to its social fabric, and to its international reputation. The country remains deeply divided. Bland words from politicians about "healing the divides" make reassuring soundbites, but will do little to bring the country back together again.
Brexit may now be "done", but so too is the damage, which will take many years to heal.

Before the General Election of December 2019, many former leading moderate Conservatives, including former Prime Minister John Major, and Margaret Thatcher's former deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine, did the unthinkable and encouraged people not to vote for Boris Johnson's new type of Conservative party.

REMAIN - Britain should remain in the EU

LEAVE - Britain should leave the EU

The parties (official or majority position before the referendum)

The Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrat Party, the Scottish Nationalist Party, Plaid Cymru, the Green Party

UKIP (UK independence party), the BNP (British National Party), the EDL (English Defence League), the DUP (Democratic Unionists, Ulster), Respect

A few people and personalities...

Politicians: David Cameron, Jo Cox MP, Jeremy Corbyn, George Osborne, all living former Prime Ministers,
Personalities: Bob Geldof, Benedict Cumberbatch, J.K.Rowling, Elton John, Jeremy Clarkson, David Beckham, Victoria Beckham, Simon Cowell, Bear Grylls, John Le Carré, Daniel Craig, Jamie Oliver
Scientists and businessmen: Stephen Hawking ,thirteen UK Nobel-prizewinners, Richard Branson, Alan Sugar, Mark Carney,
And outside the UK
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Angela Merckel

Post-referendum update:
Kelvin MacKenzie - columnist and former editor of the Sun newspaper, regrets having encouraged people to vote Leave.

Politicians: Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Nigel Lawson, George Galloway, Michael Gove, John Redwood, Lord Owen, Jacob Rees-Mogg,
Personalities: Ian Botham, Joey Essex, Katie Hopkins, Elizabeth Hurley, Joan Collins, Michael Caine
Scientists and Businessmen: Richard Desmond, James Dyson
Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, French National Front's Marine Le Pen

Post-referendum update:
Since the autumn, most Conservative MPs and many Labour MPs, starting with Prime Minister Theresa May, have suffered from chronic amnesia, and voted in favour of triggering Article 50... forgetting that they campaigned against Brexit in the referendum campaign nine months earlier.

And outside the UK

Voter groups according to opinion poll surveys : majority voting intentions.

REMAIN
Young voters (under 30): 63%
Voters aged 30-39 : 58%
Voters aged 40-49 : 52%
University graduates: 62%
Those with A levels or equivalent: 53%
University students: over 75%

LEAVE
Older voters (over 60): 56%
Voters 50-59: 52%
Voters with no qualification higher than GCSE: 57%

How other nations will see Britain if we leave Europe

How do you want other nations of Europe to consider Britain after June 23rd? As a reliable partner, or as the one that walked away?
If Britain leaves the EU, we will lose a massive amount of goodwill from people elsewhere in Europe. As well as damaging the UK's own economy, a vote for Brexit is likely to set off a domino effect that damages economies throughout Europe. When this happens, angry fingers will be pointed at Britain, as the nation that deliberately wrecked the EU. And we'll have to live with it for at least two generations to come.
It is pure fantasy to suggest that other countries of Europe will continue to look up to the UK as, in many respects, they do now. They will not. Britain will be isolated, shunned, as the country that turned its back on the rest of Europe.

Other governments of Europe will not be happy with Brexit; but a British Brexit will actually be a salutary event for Europe, and even if it does cause an initial recession in Europe, it will not take long for other countries to appreciate that Britain was actually the first country to "liberate" itself from the burden of the European Union.
Britain will once again be seen as the country that saves Europe, as we did by our action in two world wars. Nationalist parties in other countries of Europe will follow Britain and reclaim their sovereignty; eventually there will be no more European Union.

Leaving the European Union would allow us to choose our own immigration policy; that is true; but it is not going to stop immigration. Asked by the BBC if the Leave campaign's "chosen immigration" policy would actually guarantee to cut the number of immigrants, Boris Johnson carefully avoided answering the question.
Then on 19th June, he said; " I am pro-immigration, my friends. I am the proud descendent of Turkish immigrants. And let me stun you, perhaps, by saying I would go further. I am not only pro-immigration, I'm pro-immigrants". And these words from the leader of the "Leave" campaign that has suggesting that it would drastically reduce immigration to the UK.
The fact is that if the British economy is to prosper, it cannot do so without recruiting large numbers of skilled and unskilled workers from other countries. If they don't come from our own continent, Europe, they will have to come from other continents.
In no way will leaving the EU stop immigration to the UK.
EU immigration is a great asset to the UK economy, and people from EU countries pay a lot more in taxes than they receive as benefits.
Immigration is always an emotive issue that appeals to people's sense of nationalism. It is easy, and sometimes satisfying, to blame others for our perceived ills. Of course, in the event of a Brexit, the economic downturn that will follow will make Britain a far less attractive country compared to other parts of Europe, we'll all be poorer, and immigration from the EU will fall of its own accord. But that would really be an own goal.

We need to reclaim our borders, and to have the right to determine our own immigration policies for people from the European Union, just as we control immigration from other parts of the world.
Immigration from other countries in Europe accounts for just under half of all the immigration to the UK; and at present we cannot control it.
Britain cannot continue to let in an unlimited number of immigrants from other parts of Europe. If we leave the European Union, we will be able to use a "points system" to restrict immigration from the European Union to people for whom there are jobs available in the UK, and people who speak proper English.
Today, for instance, there is a shortage of cooks to work in Bangla-Deshi restaurants in the UK; but restaurant owners cannot recruit from Bangla-Desh. By choosing our own immigration policy, we will be able to cap the number of migrants from other European countries, and bring in more people from Commonwealth countries, such as cooks from Bangla Desh.
Immigration from other parts of the EU, notably from southeast Europe, has driven down wages in the UK. Reducing immigration from the EU will thus lead to higher wages for many unskilled jobs as employers recruit British employees to replace migrant workers who accept lower pay.
We will also keep more of the young people that we educate in the UK, as there will be less opportunity for them to go and work abroad, if there is no longer free movement of people between Britain and the countries of continental Europe.

Post-referendum update:
Many prominent Leavers now admit that leaving the EU will not actually reduce immigration more than a fraction, if Britain wants to continue to benefit from Access to the European single market.
In addition, the "Leave" victory has unleashed a wave of xenophobic and racist incidents in the UK, with police reporting a 57% increase in such acts compared to before the referendum.

Britain in the world : a question of reputation and influence

Britain is stronger in Europe than out.
We have everything to gain from remaining as a constructive member of the European Union.
Europe is (as long as it remains united) one of the four major players on the world scene, and Britain is one of the three major nations in Europe. Alone we will lose this influential position.

Britain can have more influence as a sovereign nation than just as a part of the EU. Britain can be an equal partner with the USA, with China, with Russia and the EU.

Trade and economy: can Britain perform better in the EU or outside it ?

The vast majority of economists in Britain and other countries warn that Britain leaving the EU would be an economic disaster.
The EU is the world's largest economic area. Britain will be more successful economically as part of the EU, than outside it. If we leave, we will still have to take account of EU rules and regulations if we want to trade with the EU; but we will no longer be able to influence them and help to shape them.
A Brexit would mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, as international firms that need a base in the EU relocate offices and plants to Ireland or to the continent.
The "Remain" campaign don't have the monopoly of "believing in Britain". We all "believe in Britain"; but believing in Britain is not some magic trick that will let us defy the economic odds.

57% of the UK's car production is exported to the EU countries, according to the SMMT.
A vote for Brexit is certain to have a negative impact on this.... if only from EU consumers who are furious about the UK leaving the EU. There have already been calls in Europe for consumers to boycott British products if Britain damages the European union economy by voting to Brexit. But it is likely to be much more negative than this, leading to plant closures and job losses in the UK motor industry and is subcontractors, many of them small firms.
In addition, in spite of the claims by Leavers that Britain can't target export markets outside the EU because of EU rules, the UK car industry's biggest export market is the USA... followed by China. Not only can we export outside the EU; we can do so with great success.
SMMT: Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. - 2016

A handful of neo-liberal British economists believe that Britain could do better by leaving the EU.
British business is hampered by bureaucratic red-tape from Brussels. Even the 80% of British companies that do not export have to follow EU rules on standards, employee rights, union representation, health and safety, paternity leave and other bureaucratic red tape; this is a burden on small businesses.
If we leave the European Union, we can bring down the cost of labour in the UK, so that firms can hve manufacturing plants here in the UK, rather than exporting their production facilities to countries with low labour costs.

Besides, big companies will want to keep their operations in the UK and will only relocate as little as possible, as Britain without EU red-tape will be a more attractive place to do business.
We need to believe in Britain.

EU intervention and interference, and the concept of the EU

Over the last 40 years, membership of the EU has actually been very beneficial to the UK. When we joined back in 1976, Britain was "the sick man of Europe". Becoming part of the world's largest union of independent states has helped our economy, our wealth, our science and development, and our status on the world stage.
Much of the "interference" that the "out" campaign so dislikes is actually legislation to protect the rights of ordinary people, to protect the environment, to protect consumers, to force phone companies to reduce roaming charges, or to require greater transparency from financial operators to combat money-laundering and tax evasion.
In addition, the biggest burdens on business in the UK today have nothing to do with the EU. For instance", the new "living wage", a major cost to business, is intervention by the UK government, not by the EU.
The EU is a force for peace and stability in a continent that has long been fractured by wars and national rivalries. It was set up, and still functions, to defend and promote peace, democracy and democratic institutions throughout Europe.
The last thing Europe wants is to return to being a continent divided by rival nationisms, as it was in 1914 or 1939, with the consequences that we all know. Many Brexiteers seem to imagine that a Brexit will turn the clock back to some golden past, when Britannia ruled the waves and the Empire.But no amount of imagining will bring back the past.

Government intervention, and even more so EU intervention, interferes with natural market forces, therefore is bad for the economy. By leaving the EU, Britain will take back control and be able to get rid of a lot of unwanted Brussels legislation in fields such as consumer protection or employee rights.
Freed from unnecessary bureaucratic intervention, British firms will become more efficient and profitable.

The European Union is an attempt to deprive the nations of Europe of their independence and sovereignty, by the creation of a massive European superstate run by unelected bureaucrats. Boris Johnson likens the European Union to Adolf Hitler, in the way that it is trying to unite Europe under a single authority.

Most businessmen, and in particular the leaders of exporting companies and large companies, agree that leaving the EU would seriously damage their business and employment opportunities in the UK.
There are some who feel "Big business wants the UK to remain in the EU for its own interests, for its big profits." Well maybe it does... But profitable businesses create jobs; and their profits mostly go to big investors, notably our pension funds.
A Brexit will hit our big companies and our small ones; and while it may mean some people don't get fat-cat bonuses, a far bigger impact will be that a lot of ordinary people lose their jobs, or can't get the jobs that have been moved to the Continent or to Ireland. And pensions will be smaller if business are less profitable.

A minority of business leaders and company owners dislike the EU because it imposes an extra cost, and extra rules on their freedom to act. These include EU workplace legislation, social legislation, employee rights, and standards. Some business leaders also complain that EU legislation restricts Britain's freedom to set up bilateral free-trade agreements with non-Eu countries.
James Dyson (whose company has moved all its manufacturing from the UK to southeast Asia) wants to leave the EU on account of European vacuum cleaner energy regulations, and because the EU requires vacuum cleaners to be equipped with different types of plug for different countries.

Jobs, mobility and employment

The free movement of people within the EU has been of massive benefit to Britain. Many of our firms and public services could not survive without recruiting workers from other parts of Europe. Actually, EU citizens working in Britain pay more in taxes than they take back in benefits. And millions of Britons live and work in other countries of Europe, where they enjoy the same services and benefits as other EU citizens. If we leave the EU, all this will change.
Many firms depend on labour from the EU to do jobs that British workers cannot or do not want to do.
There are some 65,000 EU nationals claiming jobseeker's allowance in the UK : but that is only half the picture. 2.5% of Britons who live in other EU countries are also claiming unemployment benefits in those countries, notably in Ireland, Germany and France.. which is a similar rate.

The free movement of people within the EU has led to millions of people from Europe coming to Britain to benefit from our welfare system. They put pressure on our hospitals, our schools, our housing, our roads; and ordinary British people are having to bear the cost of this .
The influx of workers from eastern Europe has been driving down wages in some sectors, and ordinary British workers have suffered from this. Leaving the EU will allow wages to rise again.

News: 9 June. Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, chairman of the House of Commons health select committee, has quit the "Leave" campaign over its untrue claims about the health service, and will vote to remain in Europe.

Remaining in the EU is vital for the National Health Service. The NHS benefits from EU research grants, and from the free movement of specialists within the European Union. Many of our leading specialists are from other EU countries. The argument that EU immigrants are breaking the NHS is a lie. Thanks to the EU health-care agreement, hundreds of thousands of UK citizens have a free EHIC card, and thus get treatment on health services in other countries of the EU. Arrangments are reciprocal. Everyone benefits, including holidaymakers. "Healthcare tourism" is very marginal... and it works both ways.

According to the Daily Express, "Uncontrolled immigration has put a huge strain on A&E waiting times." Leaving the European Union will reduce pressures on limited resources. A number of leading figures in the "leave" campaign have misgivings about the way the health service is run.

According to Nigel Farage, there is plenty of room for cuts in the NHS; and according to Boris Johnson, people should be made to pay for certain services so that they "value them more". Tory MEP Daniel Hannan claimed on American television that the NHS has been a "60 year mistake", and that a national healthcare system is not a good way to run healthcare in any country.

The cost of belonging to the EU

Belonging to the EU costs us 0.34% of our wealth: domestic taxation in Britain, by contrast, costs us 35% of our wealth - 100 times more. The small cost of belonging to the EU is actually is vastly outweighed by the benefits of membership. Though leaving the EU might allow some of our richest people to get even richer, it would make most ordinary people poorer.
The figure of "£360 million a week" banded about by the Leave campaign is seriously wrong, as it does not take account of what we get back. The real figure is less than half.... and a good bit of that pays the salaries of the thousand or so UK nationals employed by the EU civil service

Belonging to the EU costs Britain billions of pounds each year, money that could far better be spent on reducing taxation, or spending more on our public services. There is no point at all going on spending all this money to pay for unnecessary bureaucrats in Brussels, or to pay the salaries and expenses of MEPs.

Post-referendum update:
Most senior Leave campaigners have now backtracked on the idea that £360 million a week could be saved and spent on the NHS . The figure had been widely condemned as wrong, before the vote, but the Leave campaign continued to use it.

The consequences of leaving the EU

For the last 70 years, Britain has basked in an aura of goodwill from other nations in Europe, as the nation that saved Europe. In 1939, inspired by great Europeans like Churchill, we went to war for Europe and we didn't count the cost. With the help of our allies, we won, and Europe has been grateful to us ever since.
If Britain leaves the EU, Britain will change from being the nation that saved Europe to the nation that abandoned it, or maybe that contributes to a major crisis in the EU, by unleashing nationalisms all over the continent.
It is pure wishful thinking to imagine that in this new Europe, the UK will benefit from any special favours. Europe will not listen to us, and we will not be in a position of force to make them do so. As a small island off the coast of a disgruntled Europe, our future could be very bleak.
According to the IMF, a British exit from the EU would be likely to have serious consequences for both Sterling and the UK stock market, damaging investment, pensions, and the UK's balance of trade. Experts suggest that sterling could rapidly fall by 10 -20 % against the dollar.... which will make everyone in Britain poorer, by considerably increasing the cost of foreign holidays and everything we import.
In addition, if Britain leaves the EU, the remaining countries will certainly lay out the red carpet to attract international investment away from Britain and back into the EU.... and to develop an international financial centre in the EU that will eventually rival and maybe overtake London.
It would take a few years, but it is foolhardy to imagine for one minute that the EU would just acquiesce to having Europe's major financial hub in a nation that is no longer part of the Union.

Britain has everything to gain from leaving the European Union, then negotiating lots of bilateral trading deals, visa deals and citizen exchange deals with other countries.
Freed from EU rules and bureaucracy, the UK will be free to negotiate deals that are in Britain's best interest, and this will be far more beneficial to British business than being obliged to set up international deals in the framework of the European Union, as happens now.
Since Europe exports more to Britain than Britain exports to Europe, European countries are going to do whatever we ask them to do, to make sure that their firms can still compete in the UK market. They are not going to erect trade barriers.

If Britons vote to leave the EU, there will quite likely be short term consequences on the stock market and for the value of sterling; but these will not last long.
A fall in the value of Sterling will make the cost of holidays abroad more expensive, and will drive up the cost of imported goods - cars, computers, electrical goods, but not by a lot. But on the other hand, it will make British goods cheaper, so our exporting companies will be more competitive in international markets, which will generate more jobs.
As for the IMF, their predictions are not always right.

Besides, London is so well established as the world's leading financial centre, that this will not change whether we remain in the EU or leave it.

Collateral consequences - the future of the UK and Europe

All opinion polls show that Scots and Welsh voters will vote strongly in favour of remaining in the EU.
Any victory of the "leave" campaign in the UK as a whole would open the floodgates towards victory for Scottish nationalists in a new Scottish Independence referendum, leading to a breakup of the United Kingdom within maybe less than five years. Nicola Sturgeon has already said that a new referendum could be organised.
This will leave England even more isolated - on the outside of Europe and no longer even a United Kingdom.
If Britain leaves the EU, the whole EU may rapidly collapse... which will have catastrophic geopolitical and economic consequences for Britain, Europe and the West in general

If Britain leaves the EU, this will weaken the cohesion of the EU and encourage Eurosceptics in other countries to demand referendums too. The new EU that emerges from this will be much weaker and less attractive than the UK. which will benefit from being out. In this new order, the Scots will prefer to remain with a stronger independent UK, than with an increasingly uncertain European Union.
If Britain leaves the EU, other countries with strong nationalist movements may follow, leading quite quickly to a collapse of the European Union. This will allow all the nations of Europe to regain their sovereignty and take back their authority - which will be a good outcome

Post-referendum update:
Brexit has been widely welcomed by far right nationalist and xenophobic parties across Europe

Why is the British NHS (National Health Service) under pressure?

The NHS has featured prominently in the Brexit debate; sadly, the facts and figures quoted have often been misleading. A reality check shows that the problems with the NHS are British problems, and nothing to do with the EU. Other major EU countries have better funded and staffed heath services than the UK does. Most recent figures available from the World Bank.

The NHS is overstretched NOT because of pressure from EU migrants, but because our sovereign governments choose to spend less on it than others ; we have less GPs, less hospital beds, and less nurses and midwives per population than other major EU countries. Even Italy and Portugal pay a higher share of their GDP on their health services than the UK does. No wonder the NHS is overstretched. And this is a 100% sovereign situation.
For several years now, the UK media have highlighted the massive problem of the lack of hospital beds in the UK, with the sick and the injured waiting for hours on stretchers in hospital corridors until a bed becomes available. Noone who takes the trouble to check out the figures will be surprised that people have to wait in hospital corridors until a bed is available. Relative to its population, the UK has less than half the number of hospital beds of France, Germany or Belgium.
Europe is not part of the problem of the NHS; by helping provide the health professionals we do not have enough of, it is part of the solution.

If you are still undecided, look at the arguments again, weigh up the pros and cons and draw your own conclusions.
Which parties are in favour of remaining in the EU, which parties want to leave? And which of these parties do you have most sympathy with? Which of these parties have the competence to run the United Kingdom ? And what solution do they or their leaders recommend?
Which of thepersonalities in either camp do you have confidence in?
Objectively, which arguments are most credible ?

1. If you still don't really understand the issues, you are not alone. They are not all easy to follow; they have to do with economics, finance, politics, geopolitics, nationalisms and a whole lot more. Not everyone masters these.

2. Who will be most affected by the result of the Brexit referendum? Obviously, those who will have to live with it for longest. The young. And what future do they want ? 63% of the under 30's want Britain to remain in the EU. Older voters: don't jeopardize your childrens' future.

3 Why do some business leaders and politicians want Britain to leave the EU?
Well, it takes all sorts to make a world, and even clever and intelligent people do not always agree. And in business and politics, there are plenty of intelligent clever and ambitious people, who can disagree strongly on many things. Some are motivated by deep-held ideology, others by loyalty to a cause, others by personal ambition, others by a dislike of anything that restricts their liberty.

In the world of business : there are businessmen, fund managers and financiers who dislike anything that limits their ability to make money or take risks. The EU has pioneered rules and regulations to bring more transparency into banking or stop money-laundering. It has placed disclosure obligations on investment funds, many of which operate out of secretive tax havens such as the Cayman Islands or Bermuda. Unsurprisingly, many fund managers and their friends in politics object out of principle to these limits to their "freedom".

In the world of politics: Most (but not all) of the MPs and other influential people in Britain who want to leave the EU are politically on the far right - the right wing of the Conservative party, or even further to the right. Their desire to leave the EU is not motivated by rational argument, but by neo-conservative ideology. The political far right, is traditionally nationalistic, sovereignist, and anti big-government. This is true in the UK and the USA, just as it true in other countries. Throughout Europe, far-right parties are anti-EU, and looking forward to a Brexit for inspiration. Paradoxically, the same goes for a number of parties of the far left, for whom the EU is a tool of capitalism and big business.
Moderate, middle-of-the-road politicians and parties are generally in favour of remaining in the EU.

History shows us however that when far-right nationalists take control, the results are not usually very happy. Just think of two recent examples - Milosevic in Serbia, or Galtieri and the generals in Argentina. Their rhetoric sounded good to the people, they appealed to nationalistic emotions, and they blamed outsiders for their country's woes (in Serbia's case the Bosnians, in Argentina's case, the British); but their results were calamitous for their countries.
Being nationalistic is not at all the same as being patriotic. Patriotism is a love for your country. Nationalism is imagining that your country is better than others.

Footnote.
1. As reported in many news media. The Kremlin is refusing to make any public comments on Brexit, fearing (quite logically) that any announcement of a Putin backing for Brexit would be counterproductive, in the way that French National Front leader Marine Le Pen's planned UK Brexit support visit was blocked by Brexiteers as being more likely to damage the Brexit campaign than help it.See numerous articles
2. Percentages from YouGov poll as reported in the Daily Telegraph, 26 Feb 2016

Copyright :
© Andrew Rossiter and About-Britain.com 2016 - 2020
Photo Marcha gainst Brexit. By John Briody
Licence Creative Commons 2.0

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For or against Brexit | arguments and people

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The page below, dating from before the 2016 referendum, details the arguments presented by the supporters and opponents of Brexit.For an analysis of the history of Brexit and its background from Churchill to 2020, see ► Brexit a short history.

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t 1.30pm on Thursday, a long queue snaked along the pavement outside Newcastle's O2 Academy, a concert venue in the heart of the city. Many of those waiting were wearing England football shirts and all were in excitable mood.

The immediate issue of national importance that preoccupied the gathering crowd was how long it would take to get into the hall chosen by hundreds of Geordies as the place to watch England play Wales in Euro 2016.

So when asked about how they would vote in this Thursday's EU referendum, and whether they would do so, they were initially thrown. "Woooaaahh," a young man shouted as he turned to his friends. All then joined in a louder, soaring cry and burst into laughter before, one after another, declaring themselves for Brexit. The loudest, a young man who claimed he was called Paul but who his mates insisted was Mike, said Nigel Farage was a "good bloke" who spoke sense.

Paul/Mike said he had listened to the arguments on both sides, thought "a lot of lies have been said", and had decided for himself. "I have an eye on the pros and cons. We have the best engineers in this country. The Japanese will still want to buy from us whether we are in or out won't they? I'm voting for out."

Further back in the queue, another group of friends, a quieter bunch, met the referendum inquiry with a pensive calm. They were for remain, to a man. David Brocklehurst, a housebuilder, was in no doubt that it would be best for him and his country. "I am for staying in. There will be a shock to the economy if we leave. Our jobs would be at stake. There would be less houses built." One of his mates said he was worried about political uncertainty compounding the economic damage. "It may be exaggerated, what they say about a shock. But it worries me. There will be a negative effect."

Newcastle is a solidly red city: its MPs are all Labour and the city council is Labour-run. If votes in the referendum were to follow party loyalties, Newcastle would be overwhelmingly for Remain, and if this were reflected in other Labour strongholds, David Cameron would be home and dry.

Instead, after months of bruising campaigning on the biggest issue to have been put to the British people in a generation, it is a city divided, in a country split down the middle. Today's Opinium/Observer poll shows that with three days to go, it's a dead heat:

■ 44% of UK voters are for Brexit and 44% for remain, with 10% undecided;

■ 64% of Labour voters want to stay but 27% are still for leave;

■ 50% of Conservatives back remain and 43% leave.

Last week, in a final effort to shift more Labour voters to Remain, Cameron gave centre stage to senior Labour figures, who fanned out across the country to make the case for staying in. There was even a joint appearance by George Osborne and his Labour predecessor as chancellor, Alistair Darling, at a Hitachi plant in Kent to try to show Labour people that remain was not just a Tory cause but their cause, too. Gordon Brown toured the north. Former home secretary Alan Johnson was in Newcastle on Thursday. But was it working?

For every remain supporter in Newcastle, there seemed to be another for leave. Jim Henderson, a retired watermark engineer, said he would take his lead from his grandchildren. And what did his grandchildren think? "They are all for out," he said with a broad smile. Immigration was a huge issue for him and his family. The north-east has one of the lowest ratios of immigrants of any part of the country - just 2%, according to the Labour MEP for the area, Paul Brannen - but it will still be decisive for many.

Ciara McCrory, a 19-year-old healthcare adviser, said she had been following the debate closely. "My dad is a taxi driver. He says there would be more work if it weren't for immigration and all the Polish people. So I will vote to leave." But walking down the road behind her, Ian Farrimond and his wife, Lindsay, who are missionaries, said there was no question that the country would be stronger inside the EU. "I just have a strong gut feeling we are safer and better off in. But I don't have any confidence about the result. It really terrifies me," said Lindsay.

Remain campaigner Alan Johnson, the former Labour home secretary, has been touring the country and visited Newcastle last week. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Others were simply unsure which way to go. David Phillips, a farmer from near Hexham, said he was undecided but leaning towards remain. "I am not sure yet, but I think probably we have to play along with this [the EU]. The working class has made up its mind to vote to leave, but I think we may be better staying in. I just want to do what is best for the country."

The only view that was pretty much universally held by people on the streets was that both campaigns had lacked credibility and had been peddling scare stories which had left them cold, dismissive of politicians' rallying cries and determined to decide for themselves. The phrase "scare stories" was on everyone's lips.

Our Opinium survey bears this out. For all the sound and fury of both campaigns on this most far-reaching of issues, political leaders of both sides are not seen as credible by the people they have tried to convince or scare, whether it is remain on the damage to the economy or leave on the threat of more waves of immigration. Cameron is seen as "convincing" by just 24% and "not convincing" by 63%, while the score for Corbyn is little, if any, better - 20% saying he has been convincing against 58% who say the reverse. Boris Johnson, heading the leave camp, scores best, with 38% saying he has been convincing, while 48% say he has been unconvincing.

Criticism of the campaigns' failure to serve a genuinely interested electorate is not confined to voters. Many leading politicians now accept that something has gone badly wrong. In an interview with the Observer, former Tory chancellor Kenneth Clarke said the whole referendum campaign had been a "bizarre political experience". The Remain camp's efforts to " dramatise the erudite reports of the Treasury and Bank of England" had not worked, he said. On the leave side, "too many of the respectable politicians" had made "rather guilty echoes" of the bigotry and prejudice of Farage. Political leaders had voiced views they did not appear to believe in, and people could see through them.

"I won't name the leading figures, but there are people in the leave campaign who would never have dreamt of raising anti-immigrant arguments because they are not anti-immigrant in their politics," Clarke said. "But I am afraid they have been tempted to make anti-immigrant noises once they realised that their cause might win on that ticket." The result of all this, Clarke has concluded, is that a great swell of the population felt confused and angry at having to make this decision in a referendum that should never have been called. "Ever since the referendum started, I thought it a complete gamble," Clarke said. "And I remain completely unsure which way it is going to go." It was all now in the "lap of the gods".

"The political opinion of the sensible, intelligent electorate is more confused and more angry on this occasion than is usually the case in a general election," Clarke added. "People have not been impressed by the campaigning. They do feel they don't know enough about it. And they are slightly uncertain as to which way to vote. One thing I am encouraged by is that a growing number of people think that they should vote."

Kenneth Clarke: 'Ever since the referendum started, I thought it a complete gamble.' Photograph: Felix Clay/The Observer

Some 80% of the polling conducted by Opinium was carried out before the dreadful news of the murder of the Labour MP for Batley and Spen, Jo Cox, began to dominate the news bulletins from Thursday evening onwards. Both sides suspended campaigning out of respect and because it seemed so utterly inappropriate to continue. When it resumes in earnest on Tuesday - after parliament has been recalled on Monday for a day of tributes - the remain and leave camps say the remaining 48 hours will be far more sober than before.

No one knows how, or whether, the death of Cox - who was strongly in favour of remaining in the EU and had praised the way in which immigration had enriched the country - will affect the result. Privately the remain camp believe it will make it harder for their opponents to campaign aggressively on immigration and the need to turn our backs on the EU. When the suspect charged with Cox's murder, Thomas Mair, was asked to give his name in court on Saturday he said "death to traitors, freedom for Britain". The opposing theory, voiced by people on both sides of the argument, is that muted campaigning in the vital last few days will make it more difficult for remain to turn things back in their favour, after a string of other polls have showed leads for Brexit.

The first results from 382 local authority areas will be announced early on Friday. Sunderland is expected to be the earliest; soon after will come the result from Newcastle. Nick Forbes, the Labour leader of Newcastle city council, was campaigning outside the railway station on Thursday afternoon. He said that fears about immigration had shifted things in favour of leave in the previous days. The Brexit vote was stronger in surrounding rural areas and small towns than in the city itself. The result in the city has to be clearly for remain for his side to win nationwide. "My guess is that if there is not a 60% remain vote in Newcastle, we are in serious trouble," he said.

With so many voters still undecided, and so little time left for both campaigns to make decisive arguments, the atmosphere, not just in Newcastle, but across the country will be tense indeed in the early hours of Friday.

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EU referendum voters unconvinced by scare tactics: 'I just want to do what's right'

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t 1.30pm on Thursday, a long queue snaked along the pavement outside Newcastle's O2 Academy, a concert venue in the heart of the city. Many of those waiting were wearing England football shirts and all were in excitable mood.

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With a little over two months to go before UK referendum on its membership of the European Union (EU), politicians and business leaders on both sides of the debate are accusing each other of "appalling," "ridiculous" and "absurd" scare tactics to sway voters.

The political debate over whether the U.K. should stay within or leave the 28-member political and economic bloc is becoming increasingly heated and polls suggest a tight race between the Leave and Remain vote.

The referendum has split the country's political establishment with politicians from the main parties joining competing campaign groups "Vote Leave" and "Britain stronger in Europe."

Immigration, EU laws and regulations and the cost of the U.K.'s membership of the EU are all key issues in the debate.

Read More EU Referendum: Official campaigns kick off

Luke Johnson, chairman of Patisserie Valerie and one of several business leaders who are backing a "Brexit" (for the U.K. to leave the EU), told CNBC that he was worried that Brussels - a byword for the EU's institutions - was a threat to the U.K.'s sovereignty.

"Obviously Britain will always remain part of Europe, it is a question of whether we remain part of the EU, which is a large bureaucracy run out of Brussels and Strasbourg," Johnson told CNBC.

"I worry that it is a growing threat to our democracy, I think that we lack control over our own borders, I worry that with ever closer union we will be forced at some point into the euro zone which is clearly a failed project," he said.

"Vote Leave" is backed by several prominent politicians, including London mayor Boris Johnson and Justice Secretary Michael Gove, both members of the Conservative party whose leader and Prime Minister David Cameron, is campaigning to stay in a reformed EU.

On Monday, Conservative Finance Minister George Osborne issued a 200-page document warning that the U.K. would be "permanently poorer" outside the EU. According to the document, each U.K. household could be the equivalent of £4,300 worse off by 2030 - a 6 percent reduction in the U.K. economy.

Later, Osborne defended the Treasury's latest analysis that after Leave campaigners said the figures were "absurd." Justice Secretary Michael Gove delivered a response to Osborne's document on Tuesday in which he accused Remain campaigners of treating people like "mere children." During his speech in London, he also accused the Stay camp of conjuring up "bogeymen" and making dire predictions about the consequences of leaving the EU.

"The City of London would become a ghost town, our manufacturing industries would be sanctioned more punitively than even communist North Korea, decades would pass before a single British Land Rover or Mr Kipling cake could ever again be sold in France and in the meantime our farmers would have been driven from the land by poverty worse than the potato famine," Gove joked.

Patisserie Valerie's Johnson, who has a variety of business interests in the U.K., said that "scare tactics" were being used by the pro-EU camp and that he believed certain costs of living would decrease rather than rise, as Remain campaigners believe.

"The truth of the matter is actually food costs in this country would almost certainly fall if we left the EU because they create huge barriers so that high-cost producers within the EU have special preference...the idea that if we were no longer part of the single market everything would go up in cost is simply an error."

The pro-EU camp has united some unlikely bedfellows too with Prime Minister Cameron and the opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn both in the Remain camp. Corbyn, a strident detractor of the EU over the years, declared last week that he supports the Remain campaign but critics said his endorsement of staying in the bloc was half-hearted.

Anthony Watson, the chief executive of fintech startup Uphold and chair of the Labour's Business & Enterprise Council, told CNBC that he believed the scare tactics used by both sides were "appalling" and ridiculous."

"The biggest issue for the British electorate is not necessarily which party is saying what in terms of whether they're in or out, I think the biggest issue is the manner in which they're having the conversation."

"What I mean by that is that the scare tactics are quite appalling. As a voter, I find it quite disgusting that Iain Duncan Smith (a Conservative politician in the Leave camp) will use the terrible atrocities in Paris to justify leaving Europe saying we'll be far more secure as a nation when of course, the individuals who conducted those terrible atrocities were French nationals," he told CNBC Europe's "Squawk Box" on Monday.

Watson, who is in the Remain camp, said some arguments from the Remain campaign were equally "ridiculous" as their rivals in the Leave group.

"I think the "In" campaign are equally ridiculous in their view. We're the fifth largest economy in the world, a member of the Group of 7 (G7) and permanent member of the UN Security Council so the idea that we're going to fall off a cliff tomorrow if we leave Europe (is ridiculous)," he said.
- CNBC's Karen Tso contributed reporting to this story.
Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.

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Getting scary? 'Appalling' tactics used in Brexit debate

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With a little over two months to go before UK referendum on its membership of the European Union (EU), politicians and business leaders on both sides of the debate are accusing each other of "appalling," "ridiculous" and "absurd" scare tactics to sway voters. The political debate over whether the U.K.

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Then... Trump blames scientists for COVID 19 problems

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Then... Trump blames scientists for COVID 19 problems

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Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci as US President Donald Trump dismisses a question during an unscheduled briefing after a Coronavirus Task Force meeting at the White House on April 5, in Washington, DC. Photo: AFP

After attempts to throw mud at China and WHO failed, the Trump administration, embattled with a new round of COVID-19 flare-ups, has found a new target to blame: its own scientists.

The Trump administration's latest buck-passing tactic is meant to divert public attention from its failed control over infections, and secure itself more votes as the election nears. But experts warned it may backfire this time as Americans widely admire scientists such as Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Despite his leading role in the US fight against COVID-19, Fauci has been sidelined by the White House, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.

Citing a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the Post reported that Fauci "no longer briefs Trump and is never in the Oval [Office] anymore."

The report said Fauci had not spoken to Trump since "the first week of June."

This comes after the US saw flare-ups of infections last week. The country reported its highest single-day infections--more than 68,000 cases--on Friday, and its daily coronavirus death toll rose after months of decline.

The Trump administration has failed to contain the virus before the election, which is only four months away, and Trump is losing support, said Zhang Tengjun, an assistant research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, noting that the situation has propelled him to find a new scapegoat.

"Because scientists like Fauci, rarely agree with Trump on the latter's COVID-19 prevention measures, they have become easy targets." But Zhang warned that sidelining scientists will only worsen the viral situation in the country, and will cost Trump large numbers of swing voters, as Americans admire those scientists.

Dr. Fauci is the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and, until recently, the public face of the administration's coronavirus response. In a podcast interview with the FiveThirtyEight website on Thursday, he said some cities had done well in controlling the outbreak: "But as a country, when you compare us to other countries, I don't think you can say we're doing great. I mean, we're just not."

Home to more than 300 million people, the US has confirmed more than 3 million COVID-19 cases, or one in every 100 people. But Liang Manchun, an associate research fellow at the Institute for Public Safety Research of Tsinghua University, said the actual COVID-19 infections would be five or ten times more, as many asymptomatic people or those who have not received testing are out there.

Fauci has played key role in the White House decision-making, Liang said, noting it is not a smart decision to blame him at a time the US needs him most.

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Trump administration makes scientists 'new scapegoats'

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Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci as US President Donald Trump dismisses a question during an unscheduled briefing after a Coronavirus Task Force meeting at the White House on April 5, in Washington, DC.

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Trump BLAMES OTHERS for environmental problems

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Trump BLAMES OTHERS for environmental problems

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President Trump likes to take his Thanksgiving turkey with a side of skepticism.

It's been an autumn tradition since at least 2011, when the future president made what appears to be his first public statement on climate change.

Naturally, it came by tweet: "It snowed over 4 inches this past weekend in New York City. It is still October. So much for Global Warming," Trump wrote Nov. 1, 2011.

Roll forward one year. Superstorm Sandy had just brought New York to its knees, and Trump was at it again: "Do you believe @algore is blaming global warming for the hurricane?" he asked on Twitter, referring to the former vice president.

A few days later, Trump used the plight of Sandy's victims to goad climate change believers. "It's extremely cold in NY & NJ - not good for flood victims. Where is global warming?" he tweeted.

Roll forward six years to last Tuesday. California was engulfed in its second consecutive year of record wildfires. The Camp Fire had just incinerated the city of Paradise, and Trump, defying scientific evidence linking wildfire to climate change, found another scapegoat.

"There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor," he said.

An E&E News review of Trump's comments on climate change shows that the president has used 10 scapegoats to dismiss the challenges associated with rising temperatures.

Scapegoat: "A person who is blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, especially for reasons of expediency."

Here they are:

For years, Trump has been picking fights with other countries, especially rising economic powers like China and India. Much of the president's bilateral scapegoating has come in the trade sphere, but some of his most noteworthy climate comments strike at the two Asian tigers.

He fired his first climate tweet at China in 2012: "Let's continue to destroy the competitiveness of our factories & manufacturing so we can fight mythical global warming. China is so happy!"

Three days later he tweeted again: "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."

This was the raw material of the much-referenced Trumpism that climate change is "a hoax." The president later said he was joking. Sort of.

Trump fully globalized his climate scapegoating on Nov. 19, 2012.

"The World Bank is tying poverty to 'climate change,'" he tweeted. "And we wonder why international organizations are ineffective."

His U.N. climate bashing escalated from there. As a presidential candidate, Trump promised "we're going to cancel the Paris climate agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs."

He called the U.N.'s Green Climate Fund a "scheme to redistribute wealth" out of the U.S. And last month, Trump marginalized a dire warning by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N. body, by suggesting that the 91 scientists who wrote the assessment lacked credibility.

"It was given to me," Trump said of the report. "And I want to look at who drew it. You know, which group drew it. Because I can give you reports that are fabulous, and I can give you reports that aren't so good" (Climatewire, Oct. 10).

The United States' most enduring friendships have been strained by Trump's disdain for climate action. It's no coincidence for Trump that the "job-killing" multinational agreement to reduce global greenhouse gases takes its name from the French capital, Paris.

Trump announced his intention to quit the Paris Agreement in June 2017 (Climatewire, May 27, 2016).

Germany and France are among the president's favorite climate scapegoats. He has accused Group of Seven members of undermining trade opportunities via carbon regulation, and he ridiculed both countries for their aggressive clean energy transitions.

Some mainstream German politicians have echoed the U.S. president, according to Craig Morris, the author of a book on Germany's energy transition. Trump also exited a G-7 summit in Quebec early last summer, citing disagreements with France and Canada over trade, but also because he refused to participate in talks related to the Paris Agreement (Climatewire, June 11).

After the Trump-infused "birther" movement lost momentum in early 2011 - and President Obama skewered Trump at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner that April - Trump found what he believed to be a new vulnerability in Obama's foreign and domestic policy.

By spring 2012, Trump was posting some of his first tweets about Obama "wasting" billions of dollars on climate change, including through foreign aid and financial commitments to the U.N. global warming program.

"According to @BarackObama the War on Terror is over ... but global warming is a national security threat ... Feel safe?" Trump tweeted on May 4, 2012. The following January, Trump predicted that Obama would "push major global warming legislation early in his second term."

It didn't happen. What did happen was the Paris Agreement and a series of executive actions known as the President's Climate Action Plan. Almost all of these programs have been rolled back or detoothed by the Trump administration.

"We have ended the war on American energy - and we have ended the war on beautiful clean coal," the president said in his first State of the Union address last January (Climatewire, Jan. 31).

It may be the most bruising job in Trump's government.

Just ask Marcy Rockman, who until last week was a National Park Service climate adaptation coordinator before quitting in frustration. "My reason for leaving is a series of pressures from the NPS that required me to spend ever more time and energy fighting for the right to exist and perform basic tasks," Rockman said in a tweet (, Nov. 15).

Scientists outside government have also felt the burn. Long before he became president, Trump called climate experts "hoaxters" and "wiseguys" who peddled in "bullshit." More recently, Trump touted his own ability to parse sound science from bad, saying he had "a natural instinct for science."

Here's looking at you, California.

The president believes your heat waves, droughts, fires and mudslides are of your own making. In August, Trump scapegoated California environmental laws for the state's chronic water stresses, saying Gov. Jerry Brown (D) "must allow the Free Flow of the vast amounts of water coming from the North and foolishly being diverted into the Pacific Ocean."

Peter Gleick, a hydroclimatologist and co-founder of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute, wrote in The Washington Post that Trump's comments were "unmitigated nonsense and dangerous thinking."

Trump also scapegoated Puerto Rico's leaders after Hurricane Maria, including an unsubstantiated claim that the government inflated the storm's death toll as part of a Democratic conspiracy to make him look bad. The death toll was based on established research methods and conducted by George Washington University.

Trump's scapegoating of renewables is partly personal and partly political.

The first strike came when a Swedish firm proposed an 11-turbine wind farm in the North Atlantic off Aberdeen, Scotland. The turbines, Trump argued, would sully the view from Trump International Golf Links, a resort the Trump Organization bought in 2006.

According to Politico, Trump tweeted about the wind farm 60 times between 2012 and 2015, mostly to whip up public opposition to the project. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump transferred his negative view of wind (and solar) power to the United States.

In a radio interview, Trump described the dominant clean energy technologies as "very problematic," "very expensive" and "not working on large scale."

None of the assertions was true (Climatewire, Oct. 27, 2016).

As president, Trump's imposition of tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels has sent the industry into a tailspin, causing developers to freeze or cancel $2.5 billion worth of solar projects, according to Reuters. Wind energy has continued to grow.

This group of climate scapegoats includes Obama, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic leaders in Congress, as well as critics like former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and California billionaire Tom Steyer.

All have crossed swords with Trump on climate change, and Trump has counterattacked with vigor and venom. Steyer, who has financed and fronted a Trump impeachment campaign, received some of the president's choice insults after criticizing Trump in a CNN interview.

"[Steyer] comes off as a crazed & stumbling lunatic who should be running out of money pretty soon," Trump tweeted. "As bad as their field is, if he is running for President, the Dems will eat him alive!" (Climatewire, Oct. 29).

Bloomberg, who called Trump a con man and a hypocrite in a speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, met the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement with a $15 million contribution to the United Nations. Bloomberg has also indicated he might run for president in 2020 as a Democrat.

In response, Trump said the Democratic Party would "eat him up," adding, "You know, you have a lot of people running. I'm hearing names that are shockingly bad, but they're nasty."

Much of Trump's climate scapegoating has relied on social media.

David J. Park, an expert on climate change communication at Florida International University, said the president is particularly good at "unwarranted extrapolations" and "transference" of facts to deflect, obfuscate or sow confusion about climate change.

He tries that during interviews too. Several journalists have recently touched on the links between climate change and natural disasters. Under questioning, Trump has made baby steps toward acknowledging that climate change is real.

But he never forgets to muddle the message, Park said.

"I think something's happening. Something's changing, and it'll change back again," Trump told CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl on "60 Minutes." "I don't think it's a hoax, I think there's probably a difference. But I don't know that it's man-made."

Unpack that.

A New Yorker by birth, Trump has often seemed annoyed by Mother Nature, especially her colder months.

Perhaps that explains his Thanksgiving preference for Mar-a-Lago, the South Florida estate he purchased in 1985. In his year-ending tweet of 2017, Trump returned to one of his early climate scapegoats, that climate change doesn't match up with his weather expectations.

"In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year's Eve on record," Trump said. "Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!"

Michael Mann, the Pennsylvania State University climatologist and one of Trump's most ardent climate critics, called Trump's assessment "moronic" (Climatewire, Jan. 2).

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WHITE HOUSE: Trump's 10 scapegoats on warming. Here's the list

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President Trump likes to take his Thanksgiving turkey with a side of skepticism. It's been an autumn tradition since at least 2011, when the future president made what appears to be his first public statement on climate change. Naturally, it came by tweet: "It snowed over 4 inches this past weekend in New York City.

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Trump BLAMES China and the WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO) for Covid:  scapegoats

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Trump BLAMES China and the WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO) for Covid:  scapegoats

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On Friday, President Donald Trump declared that the United States would be terminating its relationship with the World Health Organization (WHO). It was a decision both immoral and likely illegal. It also encapsulates the most questionable aspects of the president's leadership style: his penchant to blame others for his mistakes, his refusal to share the global stage politely with other actors, his indulgence of blind self-interest, and his utter contempt of science.

Trump cited issues he formally raised on April 15 in a White House statement, in which he charged the Geneva-based United Nations agency with "mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic" and claimed that "WHO repeatedly parroted the Chinese government's claims that the coronavirus was not spreading between humans ... [and] praised the Chinese government's response throughout January." Two weeks later, Trump ordered the U.S. intelligence community to formally investigate WHO and its relationship with China, amid allegations from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that what he called "Wuhan virus" was either manufactured in or leaked from the Chinese city's biosafety level 4 laboratory, equipped to handle the most dangerous pathogens. This claim, which Pompeo has repeated many times, had been largely rejected by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which said it "concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified."

Like a petulant child, Trump has repeatedly claimed that the deaths of more than 100,000 Americans to COVID-19 were somebody else's fault: China or WHO. "We're doing very serious investigations. ... We are not happy with China," Trump said during an April 27 White House news conference. "There are a lot of ways you can hold them accountable. ... We believe it could have been stopped at the source. It could have been stopped quickly, and it wouldn't have spread all over the world." Three days later, Trump went deeper: "It's a terrible thing that happened. Whether they made a mistake or whether it started off as a mistake and then they made another one, or did somebody do something on purpose," China started the pandemic.

Top Republican leaders have told me that party polling consistently reveals that China-bashing is immensely popular among Trump supporters and that the "blame China" theme can help reelect the president in November, offsetting some of the disdain many Americans have for his handling of the country's COVID-19 crisis. Recently published polls show party divides on these issues. For example, in a CBS News poll, 67 percent of Republicans said the new coronavirus was manmade, while only 30 percent of Democrats agreed. A Pew Research Center poll found that most Americans held negative views of the Chinese government and President Xi Jinping but Republican views were consistently more unfavorable. Another survey found 73 percent of Americans, from both parties, saying the Chinese government bears some responsibility for COVID-19 deaths in the United States.

Public opinion about WHO is more complicated. A Politico/Morning Consult poll in late May found 43 percent of Americans surveyed rating the agency's performance poor or "just fair" versus 48 percent rating it good or excellent. Asked to assess the U.N. agency's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, 35 percent judged it insufficient, 40 percent thought it adequate, and 9 percent said WHO was doing "too much" to fight the virus.

That ambiguity hasn't deterred the administration from targeting WHO. On May 18, at a virtual gathering of WHO's World Health Assembly, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told representatives of 194 nations: "We must be frank about one of the primary reasons this outbreak spun out of control. There was a failure by this organization to obtain the information that the world needed, and that failure cost many lives." Azar called for an independent review of WHO's performance in the pandemic. Azar was followed by Chinese Health Minister Ma Xiaowei, who announced that China would give an additional $2 billion, above its annual dues, to WHO.

Xi told the same May gathering of the World Health Assembly that he would support an investigation of the early days of the Wuhan outbreak but not until the global crisis had calmed down worldwide. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and his staff, for their part, have already delivered detailed accountings of the agency's activities and statements in December and January. But some crucial context is needed to understand both the organization's successes and failures. Under its 1948 constitution, WHO serves and deals with nation-states-not civil society, NGOs, private industry, or groups of physicians. Just as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rarely contradicts statements or data issued by any state, WHO cannot typically contradict a nation.

Chinese authorities most certainly did downplay the Wuhan epidemic in December and January, grossly understating case numbers in daily reports to WHO; insisting the virus was only spread from animals in a market, which they closed; and denying that human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 was possible. Physicians in Wuhan who tried to warn the medical world about the emergence of a SARS-like pneumonia virus were severely penalized, as were independent Chinese journalists. One key doctor sounding the alarm, Li Wenliang, died of COVID-19 in early February, and his colleague Ai Fen disappeared in April. Beijing authorities turned down January requests from WHO to send an independent scientific team to Wuhan, and nothing resembling accurate case numbers was officially reported until Jan. 19. Four days later, Wuhan was locked down.

That lockdown ultimately prevented a catastrophic epidemic that, according to a multinational team of independent researchers, would have likely infected more than 7.7 million Chinese, rather than the 114,325 estimated as of the end of February. On the other hand, if China had locked Wuhan down a week earlier, on Jan. 16, some 75,000 fewer people could have been infected. According to two epidemiologists, the United States, which started social distancing under White House guidelines on March 16, might have spared 90 percent of the nation's deaths had it gone on lockdown two weeks earlier, on March 2. That's a decidedly uncomfortable finding for the White House.

The central White House allegation, therefore, is that China's coverup led to an underestimate in Washington of the scale of the COVID-19 outbreak and an inability to recognize the need to prepare the United States. Moreover, because WHO didn't publicly contradict Beijing's claims, and twice declined to declare an official public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) before finally doing so on Jan. 30, the Trump administration accuses the agency of colluding with Beijing-in essence, of being a co-conspirator.

But the president's accusations come despite ample evidence that the U.S. intelligence community provided the White House with detailed, urgent assessments of the Chinese outbreak in December and January and that U.S. personnel assigned to WHO continually fed detailed reports from Geneva.

Implicit in Trump's charges against WHO is that he acted decisively as soon as the organization provided information about the urgency of the situation. The president has repeatedly insisted that his administration took swift action in late January, when he ordered the cessation of travel from Wuhan and other parts of China. In March, Trump claimed that travel restrictions "saved a lot of lives" and that by late March the numbers saved grew to "probably tens of thousands." And at a White House briefing on April 7, Trump said: "I was called all sorts of names when I closed it down to China. ... If I didn't do that, we would've had hundreds of thousands more people dying."

But a recent stunning study executed by the evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona has thrown serious doubt on the travel restrictions hypothesis. By analyzing the genetic details of thousands of SARS-CoV-2 viruses, Worobey and his team discovered that the earliest case in the Seattle area, considered patient zero for the United States, did not actually spawn the American epidemic. That individual who arrived from Wuhan to Seattle on Jan. 15 did pass his virus on to a handful of other people, but then, the spread stopped. Though travel restrictions were in place in February, some 40,000 people-including U.S. citizens-entered the country afterward, and one of them arrived in the Seattle area between Feb. 13 and 19, spreading the virus and starting the West Coast epidemic.

Similarly, Worobey's group showed that the earliest Wuhan-to-Europe cases identified in early February never sparked outbreaks, but a traveler from Hubei to Italy arriving sometime between Feb. 7 and 14 started the huge Lombardy epidemic. And viruses found in New York City are genetic descendants of that Italian outbreak, which arrived sometime around Feb. 20, weeks after travel restrictions went into place.

In other words, if the Worobey analysis holds up-and he is a scientist who has built his career on similar genetic mapping of HIV and influenza outbreaks-most hard-hit nations got slammed with the coronavirus after travel restrictions were instituted and after WHO issued its PHEIC. And that includes the United States.

Nevertheless, tensions and blame have only escalated between the Trump and Xi governments, exacerbated by the National People's Congress vote this week to revoke crucial aspects of Hong Kong's freedoms and democracy. Both Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington have strongly condemned Beijing's effective revocation of the 1997 U.K.-China pact guaranteeing the territory of Hong Kong relative independence until the middle of this century. And Chinese leaders have counterattacked in a war of COVID-19 words.

On May 28, the Chinese state media outlet People's Daily labeled Trump's domestic response to COVID-19 "incompetent" and the American death toll "one of the darkest moments in U.S. history." Mincing no words, the editorial denounced Trump personally: "While there are many factors at play, a key factor behind the high numbers was the Trump administration's mishandling of the coronavirus crisis. ... America, the most powerful country on the planet with the most sophisticated medical technologies, did not have to lose so many lives to coronavirus. The Trump administration squandered vital time as the coronavirus spread across the country. ... [T]he grim milestone is a failure of epic proportions on the part of the Trump administration." The next day, Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from WHO.

In all likelihood, Trump can't legally pull the United States out of WHO without giving the agency a large amount of money and can't unilaterally do so without a vote of approval from Congress, according to the global health legal expert Alexandra Phelan of Georgetown University. Though the WHO constitution does spell out how a nation may withdraw, Phelan says, it is clear that a departing country must settle all its debts with the agency. And joining WHO required U.S. Senate ratification. Exiting would require Senate approval, payment of all debts, and a full year's notice. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks such things, U.S. dues, which are assessed based on national GDPs, have ranged year by year between $107 million and $119 million over the last decade. In addition, the United States commits up to $400 million annually in voluntary support, making it the single largest donor to WHO. The 2020-2021 budget for WHO is $4.8 billion. The Trump administration has been a scofflaw, having never paid $81 million of its dues in 2019 and none of its $118 million for 2020. And $900 million in Obama administration commitments made for 2018-2019 have not been honored by the Trump White House.

If Trump can get over the congressional and financial hurdles, he still faces significant moral hazards. Most of the agency's spending is on health programs for the world's poorest and most vulnerable. In addition to the loss of U.S. funds, WHO is facing a $1.3 billion shortfall in funds from other sources and cost overruns due to emergencies, including the Congolese Ebola epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Immunization programs worldwide, including the polio eradication effort, have suffered thanks to lockdowns and diversion of public health and medical personnel to the COVID-19 fight. On May 22, a host of international organizations, including WHO, warned that 80 million children under the age of 1 were at risk of acquiring measles, diphtheria, polio, and other vaccine-preventable diseases. With the United States withdrawing its financial support from WHO, those vaccination efforts will likely suffer further setbacks.

The U.N. estimates that 130 million people could sink backward into extreme poverty due to the pandemic's impact on the global economy, creating further health needs. Malaria programs worldwide have been disrupted by supply chain issues and lockdowns, which have interrupted the delivery of mosquito nets, drugs, and testing equipment.

In addition to imperiling the lives of the poorest of the world's poor, the United States is, by quitting WHO, sending more signals to the world that the Trump administration intends to go its own "America First" way in the coronavirus fight. But the rest of the world is hurriedly forming trade and research alliances, committing to working together to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19. Some of these collective deals have been forced inside WHO; others are regional pacts-the Trump administration has joined none. While it is certainly possible the first effective vaccine is invented and developed by a U.S. company, it is at least equally likely the innovation will come out of China, Europe, Asia, or perhaps Latin America-and the American people might find themselves at the bottom of the list for access to the life-saving supplies because Trump opted out of all international agreements and cooperation.

"We need to be engaged with other countries for the benefit of people who spend their time in places like Detroit," former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said this week. "This is not primarily a moral issue. This is a forward defense of our national security interests."

Trump screwed up his tariff fight with China in 2019, forcing enormous subsidies for American farmers facing bankruptcy due to the loss of grain and livestock exports. When COVID-19 first appeared, Trump was trying to realign trade deals with China, so he confidently told a gathering of financial elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that China had the epidemic under control and that there was nothing to worry about. When it turned out that the epidemic was a pandemic, Trump issued the travel restrictions and assured Americans that there was nothing to worry about. As it became obvious that there most definitely was a great deal for Americans to worry about, amid national spread of the coronavirus and a wildly chaotic federal response, Trump blamed China. It didn't take long for the U.S.-China blame game to grow toxic. Then the president added WHO onto his list of scapegoats.

The pain for this childish abhorrent behavior will now be felt on the COVID-19 battlefields and in every poor community that relies on U.N. agencies for emergency food, child immunizations, essential medicines, and guidance. Trump's decision to punish others for his own failings is no surprise at this point in his presidency-and still completely reprehensible.

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Trump Scapegoats China and WHO-and Americans Will Suffer

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On Friday, President Donald Trump declared that the United States would be terminating its relationship with the World Health Organization (WHO). It was a decision both immoral and likely illegal.

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3 reasons people confess to crimes they didn't commit: they want the interrogation to stop

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3 reasons people confess to crimes they didn't commit: they want the interrogation to stop

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Just how common are false confessions? A lot more common than many people know. For instance, according to the Innocence Project, more than 25 percent of wrongful conviction victims who were later exonerated by DNA evidence originally made a false confession to police.

So what could possibly motivate innocent individuals to confess to crimes they did not commit? Well, there are several possible reasons, including:

- They are lied to by police: Unfortunately, it is perfectly legal for police to use deceptive tactics when interrogating suspects. In some cases, law enforcement will lie and claim that they have already collected significant forensic evidence to prove a person's guilt, even though they may have no evidence at all. When facing such claims, an innocent person can easily feel pressured into confessing.

- They want to avoid harsher sentences: In many cases, police may tell suspects that the evidence is so strong that they are going to be convicted no matter what, but if they provide a confession, their sentence will be more lenient. Even when the so-called "strong" evidence doesn't exist, an individual may feel like they have no choice but to confess in order to avoid a lengthy prison sentence or the death penalty, even if the confession isn't true.

- They want the interrogation to stop: Police interrogations can last for hours. Oftentimes, the stress, lack of rest and manipulative interrogation techniques can get the better of even innocent individuals. They just want it to stop, and they will do anything they can to get this to happen, including confessing to something they didn't do.

While you may believe you would never admit to a crime you didn't commit, the truth is that you never know how you will react to intense police questioning until you are the one being interrogated. Unfortunately, though, false confessions are merely one of many reasons why people are wrongfully convicted of criminal offenses.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Edelman & Edelman, P.C.
For nearly 60 years Edelman & Edelman, P.C., has been New York City's premier law firm for representation in complex, negligence and civil litigation matters. Our attorneys continue to amass an impressive record of multimillion-dollar settlements and precedent-setting verdicts in cases ranging from scaffolding falls to wrongful conviction and incarceration.

Copyright Edelman & Edelman, P.C.

Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this publication at the time it was written. It is not intended to provide legal advice or suggest a guaranteed outcome as individual situations will differ and the law may have changed since publication. Readers considering legal action should consult with an experienced lawyer to understand current laws and.how they may affect a case. For specific technical or legal advice on the information provided and related topics, please contact the author.

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3 reasons why people confess to crimes they didn't commit

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3 Reasons Why People Confess to Crimes They Didn't Commit

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Just how common are false confessions? A lot more common than many people know. For instance, according to the Innocence Project, more than 25 percent of wrongful conviction victims who were later exonerated by DNA evidence originally made a false confession to police.

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People who confess to crimes they didn't commit

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People who confess to crimes they didn't commit

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(Image credit: Shutterstock)

The confession has been called the king of evidence, as good as a conviction. And so it seems incredulous that innocent people would incriminate themselves by confessing to something they didn't actually do.

But more than 300 men and women, after spending months, years, even decades in U.S. prisons, have been exonerated of crimes they originally confessed to during the past 60 years, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, a program run by the University of California, Irvine; the University of Michigan Law School and the Michigan State University College of Law . That's more than 10% of the 2,551 recorded exonerations since 1989.

So, we're left to ask this perplexing question: Why do innocent people confess to crimes they didn't commit?

"There's never been a doubt that confession is the most powerful form of incriminating evidence in court," Saul Kassin, professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, told Live Science. The key to understanding why someone confessed is often buried in the interrogation process, he said.

Often, these confessions come after hours of relentless interrogation, Kassin said. Take Bob Adams, a Syracuse man who was freed from jail in January after spending eight months in prison for a homicide he falsely confessed to. A recording of the interrogation showed Adams was asked the same questions for hours while he was intoxicated, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard who first covered the story. Police claimed to have evidence against Adams that didn't exist - a legal, but controversial tactic, according to Kassin. Eventually, Adams confessed and was held in prison awaiting trial until an eyewitness confirmed he wasn't guilty.

Innocent people, like Adams, often go into the interrogation thinking that they had nothing to worry about, no reason to call a lawyer, Kassin said. They're blind-sided by assertions that they're guilty and the evidence police claim to have against them. The confession comes, often, when the suspect feels trapped, like they have no way out. They forget about their "right to remain silent." Some of them even internalize the confession, meaning that during the interrogation they, too, become convinced that they are guilty.

In other cases, people might confess just to get out of the interrogation room, thinking that they'll easily be cleared later once more facts come to light, Kassin told Science magazine .

People from all walks of life falsely confess, but young people and those with mental disabilities are the most vulnerable, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. In fact, 49% of false confessions exonerated by DNA evidence were from people under 21, according to the Innocence Project, a nonprofit that uses DNA evidence to free the wrongly convicted.

Moreover, people who are stressed, tired or traumatized while talking with police are more likely to give false confessions, Kassin told Science magazine.

That said, innocent people typically can't put together a false confession on their own, said Kassin, who's spent his 40-year career studying false confessions. A confession is more than just a simple, "I did it." It's a detailed narrative of how, when and where a crime was committed - details an innocent person normally wouldn't have. A 2010 by Brandon Garrett, a law professor at Duke Law in North Carolina, reviewed the Innocence Project database and found that 95% of false confessions contained facts about the crime that were spot-on accurate, but known only to police.

"We are supposed to be amazed that the suspect has these intimate details," Kassin told Live Science. But it's not surprising. "[Police] ask leading questions. They show photographs. They take them to the scene of the crime." Suspects are given the information they need to confess, he said.

Interrogators may know how to produce a good confession, but they aren't the only ones at fault. Once someone has admitted to a crime in rich detail, nearly everyone believes it, including forensic scientists. Once a confession is made, it sets in motion a forensic confirmation bias, a 2013 study in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition suggested. Like with any confirmation bias, once forensic scientists have heard about a confession, they are more likely to seek, perceive and interpret evidence that confirms what they think they already know, according to the study.

This is critical because the confession alone isn't enough to get a conviction - it must be corroborated with additional proof. So, almost every false confession is backed by erroneous evidence, Kassin said. Like in the case of Rober Miller, an Oklahoma man charged with murder, robbery and rape. After Miller falsely confessed, forensics only considered blood and saliva samples that could have matched Miller and disregarded other samples saying they could have been from the victim, according to a case report from the Innocence Project. This misinterpretation of evidence led to Millers conviction, and also got the actual perpetrator off the hook.

"Forensic analysts who aren't blinded to a confession will be biased in their analysis," Kassin said. "It affects their interpretations of polygraphs and fingerprints."

The unexpected number of false confessions since the early 1990s, however, has ushered some safeguards into place. Twenty-five states now require interrogations be videotaped in their entirety, and a 2019 study in the journal Behavior Science & the Law showed that jurors perceive long interrogations as less credible. Maybe we will even see fewer exonerations in the next decade, Kassin said.

Even so, the system isn't very effective at evaluating the merits of a confession once it happens. We need to change the way people think about confessions, he said.
Editor's Note: This story was updated to fix the title of Brandon Garrett, who is a law professor at Duke Law.

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Donavyn Coffey - Live Science Contributor

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Why do people confess to crimes they didn't commit?

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(Image credit: Shutterstock) The confession has been called the king of evidence, as good as a conviction. And so it seems incredulous that innocent people would incriminate themselves by confessing to something they didn't actually do. But more than 300 men and women, after spending months, years, even decades in U.S.

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Why people confess to crimes they didn't commit

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Why people confess to crimes they didn't commit

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A false confession is an admission of guilt for a crime for which the confessor is not responsible. Such confessions can be made voluntarily, perhaps to protect a third party, or induced through coercive interrogation techniques. Research into exonerations has found that countless numbers of innocent people have been convicted, imprisoned, and sometimes sentenced to death after confessing to crimes they did not commit. Studies have found that subjects with low intelligence or with mental disorders are more likely to make such confessions. Young people are particularly vulnerable to confessing, especially when stressed, tired, or traumatized, and have a significantly higher rate of false confessions than adults. False confessions are distinguished from forced confessions where the use of torture or the threat of physical harm is used to induce the confession.

To the average person, the possibility that someone would confess to a crime they did not commit seems highly unlikely and makes little sense. The Innocence Project in the United States says that such confessions occur because of:

Real or perceived intimidation of the suspect by law enforcement

Use of force by law enforcement during the interrogation, or perceived threat of force. See forced confessions

Compromised reasoning ability of the suspect, due to exhaustion, stress, hunger, substance use, and, in some cases, mental limitations, or limited education. Young people who do not understand their rights and are taught to please authority figures are particularly vulnerable.

Devious interrogation techniques, such as untrue statements about the presence of incriminating evidence

Fear, on the part of the suspect, that failure to confess will yield a harsher punishment

False confessions can be categorized into three general types, as outlined by American Saul Kassin in an article for Current Directions in Psychological Science:

These confessions are given freely, without police prompting. Sometimes people incriminate themselves to divert attention from the actual person who committed the crime. For instance, a parent might confess to save their child from jail. Alternatively, people sometimes confess to a notorious crime for the attention they receive from such a confession. For instance, about 250 people confessed to the 1932 kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby which received headlines around the world. Approximately 500 people confessed to the murder of Elizabeth Short (known as the " Black Dahlia") in 1947 which also received enormous media attention - some of those who confessed were not even born when she died.

Another example of a voluntary confession occurred in 2006, when John Mark Karr confessed to the murder of a six year old JonBenét Ramsey in the United States. Karr had become obsessed with every detail of her murder and, ten years after her death, he was extradited from Thailand based on his confession. But his account did not match details of the case, and his DNA did not match that found at the crime scene. His wife and brother said he was home in another state at the time of the murder, and had never been to Colorado, where the murder occurred. His confession was so clearly false that prosecutors never charged him with the crime.

These confessions are given to escape a stressful situation, avoid punishment, or gain a promised or implied reward. An example of a stressful situation is the typical setting of a police interrogation; these are often conducted in stark rooms with no windows or objects other than a table and two chairs. For suspects, the room becomes reality, and this creates serious mental exhaustion for the individual being questioned. After enough time, suspects may confess to crimes they did not commit in order to escape what feels like a helpless situation. Interrogation techniques, such as the Reid technique, try to suggest to the suspect that they will experience a feeling of moral appeasement if they choose to confess. Material rewards such as coffee or the cessation of the interrogation are also used to the same effect. People may also confess to a crime they did not commit as a form of plea bargaining in order to avoid the risk of a harsher sentence after trial. People who are easily coerced are known to score high on the Gudjonsson suggestibility scale and are highly vulnerable to making false confessions.

In Canada, courts of law have recognized that in some circumstances, interrogators coerce suspects into confession using a "bluff" technique whereby innocent suspects are told by detectives that there is substantial evidence against them, which pressures the suspect to confess. This pressure has been shown to push innocent suspects into false confessions.

A 2010 study from John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York (CUNY) used laboratory experiments that test how the use of the bluff technique correlates with confessions gained from innocent parties. Subjects were instructed to complete a task on a computer, then were falsely accused of a transgression, such as crashing the computer or collaborating with a colleague, to improve their task performance. Bluff evidence, false evidence, and unreliable witnesses were used to test their effect. In the first test, 60% of the subjects confessed to the experimenter to pressing a computer key they had been instructed to avoid when, in fact, they had not; an additional 10% admitted to pressing the key to a study observer. A second group that tested subject reactions to charges of cheating produced nearly identical percentages of false confessions. The authors note, "innocent people who stand accused believe that their innocence will become apparent to others ... which leads them to waive their Miranda right to silence and to an attorney."

The confessions are those in which the person is so affected by the interrogation process, they come to believe they have actually committed the crime. This occurs when "A suspect comes to believe in his or her own guilt, despite having no memory of committing the crime. For this to happen, it is believed that the suspect must lack confidence in his or her memory of an event or time period. An interrogator can take advantage of this weakness, sometimes unwittingly, through highly suggestive questioning and proffered explanations for the suspect's alleged lack of memory. The suspect is unable to detect errors and deflect the suggestions; and begins to adopt them until he or she finally comes to accept guilt".

The incidence of false confession, and its causes, are likely to vary from one country to another. The rate also varies depending on the methodology used to measure it. Some studies only use confirmed cases where DNA proved the person who confessed was in fact innocent and has been exonerated by a court. This mostly applies to murder and rape cases. For instance, in the USA, the Innocence Project reports that since 1989, 375 offenders have been exonerated by DNA. Twenty-nine percent of them confessed to the crime for which they were convicted, but were then exonerated. As at July 2020, twenty-three of the 104 people whose cases involved false confessions had exculpatory DNA evidence available at the time of trial - but were still wrongfully convicted. According to the National Registry of Exonerations in the United States, 27% of those on the registry who were accused of homicide, but were later exonerated, gave false confessions. However, 81% of people with mental illness or intellectual disabilities also confessed when accused of homicide.

Offenders may also be exonerated by means other than DNA evidence. In the USA, 2,750 people have been exonerated in the last three decades - 9% of whom were women. Nearly 73% of women exonerated in the last three decades were convicted of crimes that never took place at all, according to data from the National Registry of Exonerations. Their alleged "crimes" included events determined to be accidents, crimes that were fabricated and deaths by suicide. About 40% of female exonerees were wrongly convicted of harming their children or other loved ones in their care.

Other studies use self-report surveys where offenders are asked if they have ever falsely confessed to a crime, although there may be no way of checking the validity of such claims. These surveys apply to confessions to any kind of crime, not just rape and murder. Two Icelandic studies based on self-report conducted ten years apart found the rates of false confession to be 12.2% and 24.4% respectively. A more recent Scottish study found the rate of self-reported false confessions was 33.4%.

False confessions greatly undermine the due process rights of the individual who has confessed. As Justice Brennan noted in his dissent in Colorado v. Connelly,

"Our distrust for reliance on confessions is due, in part, to their decisive impact upon the adversarial process. Triers of fact accord confessions such heavyweight in their determinations that 'the introduction of a confession makes the other aspects of a trial in court superfluous, and the real trial, for all practical purposes, occurs when the confession is obtained.' No other class of evidence is so profoundly prejudicial. 'Thus the decision to confess before trial amounts in effect to a waiver of the right to require the state at trial to meet its heavy burden of proof.'"

Coerced false confessions have been used for direct political purposes. The systematic use of coerced confessions of political prisoners to extract public recantations for propaganda purposes has occurred in the twentieth (and twenty-first) century in Stalin's Soviet Union, Maoist China and, most recently, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Simon Marshall was a Canadian rape suspect who was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for five years in 1997, largely based on his false confession to the crime. Later DNA testing established that he was innocent. It is believed that his mental disability, resulting in limited intellectual capacity, contributed to his being vulnerable to coercion and making the false confession.

In 2007, thirteen men and women, ranging in age from their early 50s to mid-70s, were arrested and indicted in Japan for buying votes in an election. Six confessed to buying votes with liquor, cash and catered parties. All were acquitted in 2007 in a local district court, which found that the confessions had been entirely fabricated. The presiding judge said the defendants had "made confessions in despair while going through marathon questioning."

In 1666, Robert Hubert confessed to starting the Great Fire of London by throwing a fire bomb through a bakery window. It was proven during his trial that he had not been in the country until two days after the start of the fire, he was never at any point near the bakery in question, the bakery did not have windows, and he was crippled and unable to throw a bomb. But, as a foreigner (a Frenchman), and a Catholic, Hubert was a perfect scapegoat. Ever maintaining his guilt, Hubert was brought to trial, found guilty, and duly executed by hanging.

Stephen Downing was convicted and spent 27 years in prison. The main piece of evidence used against him was a confession he signed. He had agreed to this after an 8-hour interrogation which left him confused, and his poor literacy skills meant he did not fully understand what he was signing.

Stefan Kiszko was convicted of murder in 1976, in what was later described as "the worst miscarriage of justice of all time". One of the main pieces of prosecution evidence was a confession he made after three days of police questioning. After almost 16 years in prison, Kiszko was exonerated in 1992. --> When asked why he had confessed to a crime he did not commit, Kiszko replied, "I started to tell these lies and they seemed to please them and the pressure was off as far as I was concerned. I thought if I admitted what I did to the police they would check out what I had said, find it untrue and would then let me go".[citation needed ]

In 1973, 18-year-old Peter Reilly of Litchfield County, Connecticut, was convicted of murdering his mother. He had signed a detailed confession after first discovering and informing of the crime, and then being detained and interrogated for many hours with little sleep. During this interrogation, with no lawyer present, he agreed to undergo a polygraph, which he was wrongly told he had failed, and was persuaded that only he could have committed the crime. He was sentenced to six to sixteen years for manslaughter but freed on appeal in 1976.

In 1988, Nancy DePriest was raped and murdered at the Pizza Hut where she worked in Austin, Texas. A coworker, Chris Ochoa, pleaded guilty to the murder. His friend, Richard Danziger, was convicted of the rape. Ochoa confessed to the murder, as well as implicating Danziger in the rape. The only forensic evidence linking Danziger to the crime scene was a single pubic hair found in the restaurant, which was said to be consistent with his pubic hair type. Although semen evidence had been collected, a DNA analysis of only one gene was performed at the time; even though Ochoa had this gene, it was known also to be present in 10-16% of individuals. Both men received life sentences with no possibility of parole.

Years later a man named Achim Marino began writing letters from prison claiming he was the actual murderer in the Pizza Hut case. The DNA from the crime scene was tested, and it matched that of Marino. The DNA of Ochoa and Danziger was excluded from matching that evidence.

In 2001 Ochoa and Danziger were exonerated and released from prison after 12 years of incarceration. While in prison, Danziger had been severely beaten by other inmates and suffered permanent brain damage.

In the Central Park jogger case of 19 April 1989, five teens aged from 14 to 16 were among 10 suspects arrested for the rape and assault of a female jogger, as well as assaults on other victims in the park. Four confessed on videotape to the crime of attacking and raping the jogger and implicated each other in the attack. One had implicated others in his statement, but refused to sign it or to be videotaped, after his mother joined him at the station. The five youths later repudiated these confessions as false and coerced, refused plea deals, and maintained their innocence. The five were: Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, and Kharey Wise.

In 1989, the police learned that none of the suspects' DNA matched that associated with semen in two samples left in and near the victim. Both samples belonged to a single source, an unidentified "sixth" man. In 2002, Matias Reyes, a convicted murderer and serial rapist, confessed to officials and provided an affidavit that he was solely responsible for the rape and attack of the jogger. His DNA matched that obtained from the crime scene. Following an investigation by the DA's office, which recommended vacating the convictions of the four men, New York state justice Charles J. Tejada vacated the convictions of four of the five defendants on 19 December 2002 (who had all completed their sentences by then.) One was out of custody and not covered by this action. Four had served between six and seven years in prison; Wise was tried and convicted as an adult and was not released until the summer of 2002, serving nearly 12 years. In 2014 the five men received a settlement from New York City, and in 2016 an additional settlement from New York State.

Jeffrey Mark Deskovic was convicted in 1990, at the age of 16, of raping, beating and strangling a high school classmate. He had confessed to the crime after hours of interrogation by police without being given an opportunity to seek legal counsel. Court testimony noted that the DNA evidence in the case did not point to him. He was incarcerated for 15 years.

Juan Rivera, from Waukegan, Illinois, was wrongfully convicted of the 1992 rape and murder of 11-year-old Holly Staker. Although his DNA was excluded from that tested in the rape kit, and the report from the electronic ankle monitor he was wearing at the time (while awaiting trial for a non-violent burglary) established that he was not in the vicinity of the murder, he confessed to the crimes. Rivera had been interrogated for several days by police using the Reid technique. It is a type of police interrogation that has become known in studies for eliciting false confessions. His conviction was overturned in 2011, and the appellate court took the unusual step of barring prosecutors from retrying him.

Rivera filed a lawsuit against a number of parties, including John E. Reid & Associates, who developed the Reid technique. Reid contends that Rivera's false confession was the result of the Reid technique being used incorrectly. Rivera was taken to Reid headquarters in Chicago twice during his interrogation for polygraph tests. These were inconclusive, but a Reid employee, Michael Masokas, told Rivera that he failed. The case was settled out of court with John E. Reid & Associates paying $2 million.

Gary Gauger was sentenced to death for the murders of his parents, Morris, 74, and Ruth, 70, at their McHenry County, Illinois farm in April 1993. He was interrogated for more than 21 hours. He gave the police a hypothetical statement, which they took as a confession. His conviction was overturned in 1996, and Gauger was freed. He was pardoned by the Illinois governor in 2002. Two motorcycle gang members were later convicted of Morris and Ruth Gauger's murders.[citation needed ]

The West Memphis Three (Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley) were convicted for the 1993 murders of three 8-year-old boys. At the time of the alleged crime, they were 16, 17, and 18 years old. One month after the murders, police interrogated Misskelley, who has an IQ of 72, for five hours. He confessed to the murders and implicated both Echols and Baldwin.

Misskelley immediately recanted and said he was coerced to confess. Although his confession contained massive internal inconsistencies and differed significantly from the facts of the physical evidence revealed, the prosecution continued. Misskelley and Baldwin were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole (LWOP); Echols was convicted and sentenced to death.

For the next 17 years, the three men maintained their innocence. In August 2011, testing of DNA evidence was found to be inconclusive; it included DNA from an unknown contributor.

Prosecutors offered the three men a deal if they pleaded guilty: to release them for time served. They accepted the Alford plea but said that they would continue to work to clear their names and find the real murderer(s). They were released after eighteen years in prison.[citation needed ]

Danial Williams, Joseph J. Dick Jr., Derek Tice, and Eric C. Wilson are four of five men convicted in the 1997 rape and murder of Michelle Moore-Bosko in Norfolk, Virginia. The convictions of the four were based largely on their confessions, which they have since maintained were coerced after hours of interrogation, during which the men were played off against each other over time. The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project considers this a miscarriage of justice. Moore-Bosko's parents continue to believe that all those convicted were participants in the crime.

Williams and Dick pleaded guilty to murder, as they had been threatened by the potential of being sentenced to death at a jury trial. They were sentenced to one or more life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole. Tice was convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to death. Wilson was convicted of rape and sentenced to 8½ years in prison. Three other men, Geoffrey A. Farris, John E. Danser and Richard D. Pauley Jr., were also initially indicted with the crime through accusations by others, but their charges were later dropped before trial as Tice would not testify against them. The supporters of the Norfolk Four have offered evidence that purports to prove that the four men are innocent, with no known involvement or connections to the incident. No physical evidence supported their cases. Tice's conviction was overturned, and Williams and Dick received governmental pardons, clearing their names. The four received a settlement from the city of Norfolk and state in 2018.

The fifth man, Omar Ballard, was indicted in 2005 after his DNA was found to match that at the crime scene. He had informally confessed in 1997 but withdrew his statement after being pressured to implicate the four other men. He pleaded guilty to the crime in 2009 in order to avoid the death penalty. A serial rapist and murderer, he was apprehended and sentenced to prison after he pleaded guilty to other crimes of violence against women, and confessed to acting alone. also convicted in the crime. He was sentenced to 100 years in prison, 59 of which were suspended. He is the only man whose DNA matched that found at the scene. He confessed to committing the crime by himself, and said none of the other men indicted and tried were involved. Forensic evidence is consistent with his story that there were no other participants.

Michael Crowe confessed to the murder of his younger sister Stephanie Crowe in 1998. Michael, 14 at the time, was targeted by the police when he seemed "distant and preoccupied" after Stephanie's body was discovered, and the rest of the family grieved. After two days of intense questioning, Michael admitted to killing Stephanie. His confession was vague and lacked detail; he said he could not remember committing the crime but believed he must have done so based on what the police were telling him. The confession was videotaped by police and showed Michael making statements to the effect of, "I'm only saying this because it's what you want to hear." His admission has been cited as a classic example of a coerced false confession during police interrogation.

Joshua Treadway, a friend of Michael's, was questioned and gave a detailed confession after many hours of interrogation. Aaron Houser, a mutual friend of the boys, was questioned and did not confess but presented a "hypothetical" and incriminating account of the crime under prompting by police interrogators using the Reid Technique. All three boys subsequently recanted their statements, claiming coercion.

Crowe's confession and Houser's statements to police were later thrown out as coerced by a judge; part of Treadway's confession was also ruled inadmissible. Later all charges were dropped against each of the three boys. Prosecutors later charged an unrelated party with the crime. His defense team argued that the three boys who were first charged had been responsible.

The charges against the three boys were dismissed without prejudice (which would allow charges to be reinstated at a later date) after DNA testing linked a neighborhood transient, Richard Tuite, to Stephanie's blood. Embarrassed by the reversal, the Escondido police and the San Diego County District Attorney let the case languish without charges for two years. In 2001 the District Attorney and San Diego County Sheriff's Department asked that the case be taken over by the California Department of Justice.

Tuite was convicted of the murder in 2004, but the conviction was overturned. At the second trial in 2013, the jury found him not guilty. The murder of Stephanie Crowe remains unsolved. In 2012, Superior Court Judge Kenneth So made the rare ruling that Michael Crowe, Treadway, and Houser were factually innocent of the charges, permanently dismissing the City of Escondido case against them.

A TV movie was made about the case called The Interrogation of Michael Crowe (2002).

In 2000 Corethian Bell, who has a diagnosis of mental retardation, was accused of murdering his mother, Netta Bell, after he had found her body and called police in Cook County, Illinois. Police questioned him for more than 50 hours. He said he eventually confessed to the murder of his mother because police hit him so hard he was knocked off his chair, and because he thought that if he confessed, the interrogations would stop. He believed that he would be able to explain himself to a judge and be set free. His confession was videotaped, but his interrogation was not. At the time Cook County prosecutors were required to videotape murder confessions, but not the preceding interrogations. With his confession on tape, Bell was tried, convicted, and sentenced to jail.

When the DNA at the crime scene was finally tested a year later, it matched that of a serial rapist named DeShawn Boyd. He was already in prison after having been convicted of three other violent sexual assaults, all in the same neighborhood as the Netta Bell murder. Bell filed a civil lawsuit, which was settled by the city in 2006 for $1 million.

Kevin Fox was interrogated for 14 hours by Will County, Illinois, police before he confessed to the 2004 murder of his 3-year-old daughter, Riley. He was convicted and sentenced to jail. His confession was later ruled to have been coerced. Because of DNA testing, police later identified Scott Eby as the killer. He was a neighbor living a few miles from the Fox family at the time of Riley's murder. Police identified him as the killer while he was serving a 14-year sentence for sex crimes. After questioning and confrontation with the DNA results, Eby confessed and later pleaded guilty.

Kevin Fox was released after serving eight months in jail. The Fox family eventually won an $8 million civil judgment against the county government.

Laverne Pavlinac confessed that she and her boyfriend murdered a woman in Oregon in 1990. They were convicted and sentenced to prison. Five years later, Keith Hunter Jesperson confessed to a series of murders, including that of the woman. Pavlinac had become obsessed with details of the crime during interrogation by police. She later said she confessed to get out of the abusive relationship with the boyfriend. Her boyfriend purportedly confessed in order to avoid the death penalty.[citation needed ]

Sture Bergwall, also known as Thomas Quick, confessed to more than 30 murders in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland while incarcerated in a mental institution for personality disorders. He had been committed after being convicted of less serious crimes. Between 1994 and 2001, Bergwall was convicted of eight murders, based on his confessions. All of these convictions have now been overturned on appeal as he was found to have made false confessions and been incompetent to stand trial.

These are confessions given by prisoners to other inmates while in custody. "Jailhouse informants who recount their fellow prisoners' 'confessions' are often used by the state as witnesses in criminal prosecutions. It has recently become public knowledge that such confessions are easily fabricated."

When examining the particulars of false confessions and wrongful convictions, studies have documented that many problems originate in the interrogation phase of the investigation. At this stage, coercion may lead to an extraction of a false confession from the detained suspect. The widespread solution has been to video record custodial interrogations in order to monitor the process by defense and other parties.

Until the 1980s, most confession evidence was recorded by police and later presented at trial in either a written or an audiotaped format. Today, it is estimated that more than half of the law enforcement agencies in the United States videotape at least some interrogations. 97% of these agencies and departments have found them useful. From 1989 to 2013, twenty-five states in the US passed laws requiring taping of interrogations in criminal cases.

In England and Wales, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984 built certain protections into the questioning process, including the requirement that all suspect interviews be taped.

It is widely believed that videotaped interrogations and confessions allow for a more complete and objective record of the police-suspect interaction. In addition, they serve as a visual and auditory representation that can be interpreted more fluidly by fact finders (the judge and the jurors) during the trial proceedings. Moreover, those who advocate videotaping interrogations argue that the presence of the camera will deter the use of coercive methods to induce confessions and will provide a record to evaluate thoroughly the voluntariness and veracity of any confession.

Psychological research suggests that evaluations of videotaped confessions can be affected by the camera perspective used at the initial recording. In the United States and in many other countries, interrogations are typically recorded with the camera positioned behind the interrogator and focused squarely on the suspect. Research indicates that the camera perspective influences assessments of voluntariness, coercion on the part of the detective, and even the dichotomy of guilt.

Extensive empirical data has been collected in this area, based on manipulating the camera perspective: to a suspect-focus (the front of the suspect from waist up and the back of the Detective's head and shoulders), detective-focus (the front of the detective and the back of the suspect), and equal-focus (the profiles of both the detective and the suspect were equally visible) perspective.

For example, mock police interrogations resulting in a confession and videotaped simultaneously from the suspect-focus and equal-focus perspectives were presented to participants in one of the following formats: subject-focus videotape, equal-focus videotape, audiotape recording, or written transcript. The participants' perceptions of the voluntariness and coercion of the confession were assessed via questionnaire. Videotaped confessions taped in the suspect-focus view resulted in judgments of relatively greater voluntariness, notably when compared to both audiotapes and transcripts, which are assumed to be bias free. Equal-focus videotapes produced voluntariness judgments that did not differ from those based on either audiotapes or transcripts.

The manner in which videotaping is implemented holds the potential for bias. This bias can be avoided by using an equal-focus perspective. This finding has been replicated numerous times, reflecting the growing uses of videotaped confessions in trial proceedings.

Camera perspective bias is a result of fundamental attribution error and, more specifically, illusory causation. People commit attribution error when they ascribe causality to people or environmental entities to which they are attending. Illusory causation occurs when people ascribe unwanted causality to a stimulus simply because it is more noticeable or salient than other available stimuli. Illusory causation is perceptual-based, meaning it occurs because salient information is registered and perceptually organized differently from nonsalient information. In regards to camera perspective bias, the perspective of the camera determines which interactant (detective or suspect) is salient and which one is nonsalient.

Visual perspective is important in determining attributional differences between interactants. In early demonstrations of illusory causation, observers viewed a causal, two-person conversation. Visual perspective was varied by the differential seating of the observers. After the conversation ended, observers rated each interactant in terms of the amount of causal influence he or she exerted during the exchange. The results revealed that greater causality was attributed to whichever person observers happened to be facing. This was determined by their seating position, a factor that is entirely incidental and should therefore have had no bearing on causal judgments. Observers who sat where they could see both interactants very well viewed both subjects equally in terms of causality.

Attributional complexity is the ability to efficiently deduce causality in necessary situations. High levels of attributional complexity do not alter the effects of the camera perspective bias. Participants separated in low attributional complexity and high attributional complexity groups according to individual differences, showed no significant differences in the camera perspective effect that was still present in both groups. Therefore, possessing a high level of attributional complexity does not shield one from the camera perspective bias in videotaped confessions.

Changes in camera perspective are accompanied by changes in the visual content available to the observer. Using eye-tracking as a measure and monitor of visual attention, researchers deduced that visual attention mediates the camera perspective bias. That is, the correlation between camera perspective and the resulting bias is caused by the viewer's visual attention, which is decided by the angle of the camera. This provides evidence that differences in visual content may also mediate bias.

Judges conduct an omnibus hearing with prosecutors and defense counsel to decide on the voluntariness and the admissibility of a confession when its legitimacy is disputed. Likewise, it is the job of jurors to decide on the voluntariness of the confession, which ultimately leads to the dichotomous decision of conviction. Research shows that a judge's requirement-of-proof instruction to a mock jury (the defendant is presumed innocent, the burden of proof is on the prosecution, and guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt) has more impact on jurors' verdicts when made prior to the presentation of evidence than when made after the presentation of evidence.

Therefore, the timing of judicial instruction (before or after the presentation of the confession) can be a potential moderator of the camera perspective bias. When participants are given judicial instruction emphasizing the need to be cognizant of reliability and fairness in evaluating the confession and, in some cases, directly alerting mock jurors to the potentially prejudicial effect of camera perspective, the camera perspective bias persists. This is true whether the instruction precedes or follows the presentation of the confession. The sampling of jury-eligible adults facilitated a realistic, fact-based trial simulation allowing the results can be generalized to real courtroom situations.

Judges play a crucial role in determining what confession evidence juries are allowed to consider. It is possible that their greater knowledge, experience, and understanding of the law can mitigate them against the camera bias effect. Yet, experts (judges and law enforcement officers) presented with suspect-focus, detective-focus, and equal focus versions of a videotaped confession replicated prior data patterns, indicating camera bias perspective. Thus, relevant expertise provides no defense against the influence of camera perspective.

Accountability (or blameworthiness) does not alter camera perspective bias even though high accountability yield a more careful and thorough processing of information. Failed attempts have been made to mitigate camera perspective bias by manipulating the amount of accountability participants feel while viewing a confession. Accountability is manipulated by telling participants that they will later have an opportunity to justify their judgments of voluntariness to a trial judge. More specifically, in a high-accountability group, participants are told that a local judge has agreed to meet with them to review their judgment and determine if the manner in which they arrived at their judgment is correct. In the low-accountability condition, no mention of meeting with a judge is made; instead participants are left with the impression that their responses will be confidential and anonymous. Participants view either the subject-focus or equal-focus version of the confession. Ratings of voluntariness in both the high-accountability and low-accountability groups show camera perspective bias.

Criticisms regarding psychological research concerning jury simulation claim that it lacks in ecological validity. According to these criticisms, moving closer to a high standard of ecological validity is required for psychological science to sway the skeptical legal community. One issue cited through archival data collection addresses the popular use of college undergraduate students, which is especially detrimental in jury simulation because of the relative infrequency with which college students serve on actual juries. According to the criticism, this hinders "the feasibility of generalizing from simulation studies to the behavior of real juror." In order to satisfy the skeptical nature of the law community, as discussed above, researchers began using jury-eligible adults instead of undergraduate students.

Another limitation to camera perspective bias research is that the majority of interrogations/confessions that have been used as converging evidence include simulations of a trial evidence rather than actual trial information. Therefore, there is no evidence demonstrating the camera perspective bias generalizes to authentic videotapes recorded by police that depict actual suspects and interrogators. Researchers have thus begun comparing judgments of voluntariness and guilt of the suspect in each perspective condition (suspect-focus, equal-focus, and detective-focus, audio-only, reading only) using authentic, recorded interrogations. The investigations demonstrate the camera perspective bias found in previous studies.

Research indicates that an equal focus perspective produces relatively unbiased assessments of videotaped interrogations. However, many members of law enforcement may consider the equal-focus view unsatisfactory because it does not provide a full-face view of the suspect, and thus important information in the expression cannot be presented. Investigation into the dual-camera approach revealed that this perspective eliminates the usual camera perspective bias on voluntariness and guilt judgments, but it was no better than the infamous suspect-focus condition in terms of its impact on the ability to accurately distinguish between true and false confession.

To aid criminal-justice practitioners and legal policy makers to achieve sound and fair policy, psychologists presented the following recommendations based on the body of research:

Custodial interrogations recorded in their entirety with the camera positioned so that the resultant videotape displays an equal-focus or detective-focus perspective.

If an interrogation has already been videotaped from a suspect-focus perspective, it should not be used. Rather, the use of an audio track or a transcript derived from the videotape should serve in its place.

The dual-camera approach is not advised because it does nothing to moderate actual accuracy of judgments.

Police use persuasive manipulation techniques when conducting interrogations in hopes of obtaining a confession. These can include lying about evidence, making suspects believe they are there to help them or pretending to be the suspect's friends. After enough time and persuasion suspects are likely to conform to the investigators' demands for a confession, even if it was to a crime they did not commit. One of the most important findings in guilt manipulation research is that once guilt is induced in the subject, it can be directed into greater compliance with requests that are completely unrelated to the original source of guilt. This has important implications for police interrogation because guilt induction is recommended in manuals on police interrogation.

A 2010 study conducted by Fisher and Geiselman showed the lack of instruction given to entry-level police officers regarding the interview process. They stated in their research that, "We were discouraged to find that police often receive only minimal, and sometimes no, formal training to interview cooperative witnesses, and, not surprisingly, their actual interview practices are quite poor." While many officers may develop their own interview techniques, the lack of formal training could lead to interviewing with the purpose of simply completing the investigation, regardless of the truth. The easiest way to complete an investigation would be a confession. Fisher and Geiselman concur, saying, "It seems to be more on interrogating suspects (to elicit confessions) rather than on interviewing cooperative witnesses and victims". This study suggests that more training could prevent false confessions, and give police a new mindset while in the interview room.

Psychological research has explored camera perspective bias with African American and Chinese American suspects. African Americans are victims to strong stereotypes linking them with criminal behavior, but these stereotypes are not prevalent towards Chinese Americans, making the two ethnicities ideal for comparison. Participants were randomly assigned to view mock police interrogations developed using a male Caucasian detective questioning a Caucasian, Chinese American, or African American male suspect regarding his whereabouts at a given time and date. All interrogations were taped in an equal-focus perspective. Voluntariness judgments varied as a function of the race of the suspect. More participants viewing the Chinese American suspect and the African American suspect versions of the interrogation judged the suspect's statements to be voluntary than did those viewing the Caucasian suspect version. Both the African American suspect and the Chinese American suspect were judged to have a higher likelihood of guilt than the Caucasian suspect. Racial salience bias in videotaped interrogations is a genuine phenomenon that has been proven through empirical data.

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A false confession is an admission of guilt for a crime for which the confessor is not responsible. Such confessions can be made voluntarily, perhaps to protect a third party, or induced through coercive interrogation techniques. Research into exonerations has found that countless numbers of innocent people have been convicted, imprisoned, and sometimes sentenced to death after confessing to crimes they did not commit.

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Why did some animals confess to crimes they didn't commit, thereby leading to their execution?

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Why did some animals confess to crimes they didn't commit, thereby leading to their execution?

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I recently re-read George Orwell's anti-Soviet fable "Animal Farm" for the first time since high school, and I found myself at a loss to explain one of the book's darkest scenes to the student I was tutoring.

In this scene, Napoleon (Orwell's stand-in for Stalin) consolidates his power over Animal Farm (i.e., the Soviet Union) by accusing a group of pigs of conspiring with the exiled Snowball (i.e., Trotsky) to undermine the revolution. The pigs, having been coerced by Napoleon's dogs (i.e., the secret police), confess to being agents of Snowball.

When they had finished their confession, the dogs promptly tore their throats out, and in a terrible voice Napoleon demanded whether any other animal had anything to confess. The three hens who had been the ringleaders in the attempted rebellion over the eggs now came forward and stated that Snowball had appeared to them in a dream and incited them to disobey Napoleon's orders. They, too, were slaughtered. Then a goose came forward and confessed to having secreted six ears of corn during the last year's harvest and eaten them in the night. Then a sheep confessed to having urinated in the drinking pool−urged to do this, so she said, by Snowball−and two other sheep confessed to having murdered an old ram, an especially devoted follower of Napoleon, by chasing him round and round a bonfire when he was suffering from a cough. They were all slain on the spot. And so the tale of confessions and executions went on, until there was a pile of corpses lying before Napoleon's feet and the air was heavy with the smell of blood.

Why, my student wanted to know, would these animals confess if they knew they were going to be executed?

His next question was even more insightful: Did the animals even commit the crimes to which they confessed? Some crimes, such as the goose stealing corn, seem plausible, and the hens really did rebel, but the murder of the old ram sounds completely absurd. The tendency to echo Napoleon's propaganda by blaming the phantom scapegoat Snowball further suggests that many of these confessions are fiction.

I found the first part of my answer in "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens. As Dickens describes the mass guillotinings of the French Revolution, he alerts his readers to "a species of fervour or intoxication," causing unnecessary executions due to "a wild infection of the wildly shaken public mind."

Like Orwell, Dickens portrays innocent men and women clamoring for execution at the hands of a bloodthirsty revolutionary regime. But why?

According to Dickens, the French Revolution degenerated into a death cult, with the guillotine replacing the Cross as the instrument of mankind's salvation. Christians hope to reach a heavenly paradise by placing their faith in Christ and expressing that faith through good works.

Revolutionaries, on the other hand, seek to create an earthly paradise by killing everyone who stands in their way. Execution thus becomes the sacrament by which the community is purified. Those who truly believe in the future utopia promised by Marx or by the leaders of the French Revolution will naturally be drawn to partake of it.

Marxism is more rigorous and unforgiving than any religion in its call for total commitment to the cause, a standard of which all people (and animals) must necessarily fall short. If I, a sinful man (or hen or goose or sheep) who had tried and failed to live up to the revolutionary ideal, believed that I could best hasten the arrival of heaven on earth by allowing myself to become a victim of sacred state violence, the temptation would certainly be strong. Whether the goose stole the corn or not, it is easy to imagine why he felt he had no choice but to embrace his own execution. Having been deceived into feeling a revolutionary reverence for death and driven to despair by the demand for total ideological orthodoxy and orthopraxy, what else could he do?

The second part of my answer came from an article titled "Why Do People Admit to Crimes They Didn't Commit?" According to this article, almost 30 percent of people exonerated by DNA evidence originally confessed to crimes of which they were innocent. The author lays most of the blame for these false confessions on police, who are legally permitted to lie to suspects in order to extract confessions. Here's one example:

[I]n 1988 Martin Tankleff was convicted of murdering his parents on Long Island. Detectives told Tankleff-who was 17 at the time-that they had found a lock of his hair in his dead mother's hand. They also falsely reported that his father said Tankleff had committed the crime before losing consciousness and later dying. Both assertions were lies. Tankleff initially believed he must have done it, saying, 'My father never lies.'

As soon as I read the line, "My father never lies," I understood what Orwell was getting at. Tankleff's words, implying more trust in authorities than the truth, sound eerily similar to one of the slogans of Animal Farm: "Napoleon is always right." He never lets a good crisis go to waste. If Napoleon can convince the other animals that their revolution is constantly threatened from within and without, then there is no limit to the power he can seize to protect them from these largely imaginary threats.

Napoleon has trained the other animals to trust his propaganda more than their own memories. If he says there was sabotage, then there was, and if no one admits to it, then that's as much as to say that Napoleon was wrong, which is a metaphysical impossibility. Someone must confess. It's easy to imagine a long silence in which any number of animals think to themselves, I don't remember doing anything wrong... but it must have been me!

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, totalitarian regimes force ordinary people "to participate in lies," and Orwell shows just where that leads: the corruption of the human soul and eventual death.

Fortunately, Solzhenitsyn also offers a way to resist totalitarianism, urging his readers to acknowledge that goodness does not exist in a pure form in any human being or social class and to live by a simple creed: "Let that [lie] come into the world, let it even reign supreme-only not through me."

This post, "How Totalitarians Force Confessions From Innocent People," by Grayson Quay was originally posted on Intellectual Takeout.

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How Totalitarians Force Confessions From Innocent People

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I recently re-read George Orwell's anti-Soviet fable "Animal Farm" for the first time since high school, and I found myself at a loss to explain one of the book's darkest scenes to the student I was tutoring. In this scene, Napoleon (Orwell's stand-in for Stalin) consolidates his power over Animal Farm (i.e., the Soviet Union) by ...

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Why did some animals lie and admit acts that they didn't commit, thereby leading to their execution? 

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Why did some animals lie and admit acts that they didn't commit, thereby leading to their execution? 

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One of the things that I did not understand about Animal Farm is why the animals, after the hen's rebellion, simply came forward to confess their crimes.

Napoleon offers no incentive for coming forward. He does not threaten anything against animals that have committed a crime and do not confess, nor does he offer any inclination that he even knows who has committed any crime, other than obviously understanding that there must have been ringleaders in the hen's uprising.

Yet, having seen other animals executed by the dogs for committing crimes, animals continue to come forward and admit that they broke the law, and are summarily executed in front of the rest of the congregated animals.

Particularly the rebellion leaders coming forward first seemed particularly strange, as they must have known their punishment would be severe. They were already questioning the authority of Napoleon, so to suddenly submit to him would surely be in their worst interests?

There is also no hint that these were false confessions manufactured by the pigs in order to establish a firm hand against dissenters, mostly because I can't see how anyone would be encouraged to confess falsely if they had just witnessed that their punishment would be death.

And if the hens who did spearhead the rebellion were not the ones who confessed and were executed, then I can't imagine that the pigs would quash the rebellion effectively, it would simply strengthen the resolve of the hens who started the first rebellion.

Did this somehow reflect a real event that happened in Russia? And if it did, was it accurately represented in terms of people confessing their own crimes and being punished after witnessing the punishments of others?

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Why did the animals in Animal Farm confess to their crimes?

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One of the things that I did not understand about Animal Farm is why the animals, after the hen's rebellion, simply came forward to confess their crimes. Napoleon offers no incentive for coming forward.

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There are a number of reasons why victims stay with their abuser. It is important to note that victims do not stay in abusive relationships because they enjoy being abused. Rather, they have very real, compelling reasons for staying.

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There are a number of reasons why victims stay with their abuser. It is important to note that victims do not stay in abusive relationships because they enjoy being abused. Rather, they have very real, compelling reasons for staying.

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Why victims don't stand up for their rights or get out of the situation

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Why victims don't stand up for their rights or get out of the situation

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11 Reasons Why People in Abusive Relationships Can’t “Just Leave”

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When many people hear that someone is in an unhealthy or abusive relationship, their first question is, “Why don’t they leave?” Here are 11 of the many reasons that someone in an unhealthy situation might stay with their partner.

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Donald Trump regularly says he is a victim of witch-hunts

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Donald Trump regularly says he is a victim of witch-hunts

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Since his inauguration on January 20, 2017, US President Donald Trump has tweeted the words "Witch Hunt" (always with or in capitals) 337 times, or roughly once every three days in his presidency.

As the US Senate's impeachment trial looms, it is timely to place witch hunts into some historical perspective.

Although the term did not come into common usage until the 1950s - when Arthur Miller wrote his play The Crucible - it refers to the witchcraft persecutions that took place in Europe and America from around 1450 to 1750.

The victims have sometimes been estimated at up to nine million, but modern estimates put the total number in Europe across 300 years as somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000. Although some men were accused and executed, the victims of the witch hunts were mainly women, often socially and economically marginalised.

Wicked women

Although there are significant variations across countries and regions, the incidence of women among those prosecuted runs at about 75-80%. In the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts in 1692-3, around 78% of those accused and convicted were women.

These Salem trials are the only witch trials to which Trump has specifically referred and he has judged them as affording the defendants more proper judicial process than him. By the end of these trials, nineteen people had been hanged, one man was pressed to death with heavy stones, and several had died in prison.

Nearly 200 people were accused of practising demonic magic. It is unlikely any of them would agree with the President's characterisation of his treatment.

All Eve's fault

Commonplace in Christian thinking was the idea the evidence for the weakness of women, and their capacity to be "seduced" by Satan, was grounded in the story of Eve in the Garden of Eden.

She was "the weaker vessel" compared to Adam as one biblical text (1 Peter 3.7) put it. Thus, it was believed, women were more prone to the temptations of Satan and thus more likely to be witches.

At the popular level too, women were more likely to be perceived as witches. This is, at least in part because, more often than men, they were on occasion just that. Many women who were persecuted were in the magic or cunning business.

The cunning or wise folk were practitioners of benevolent magic. They used herbal and magical medicine to heal the sick and the bewitched, find buried treasure, identify thieves, tell fortunes, induce love, and undo malevolent magic. But cunning women could turn nasty. Cursing, angry women with the imagined power to do harm were perceived as dangerous disturbers of the social order.

Demons, sex and sabbaths

The witchcraft persecutions were driven by Christian theorising about the Devil and his minions. Witches were thought to do evil but they were also heretics.

In his translation of The Malleus Maleficarum, a late medieval text on witchcraft first published in 1486-7, scholar Christoper S. Mackay wrote that this sorcery had six hallmarks: a pact with the Devil, attendance at Satan's debauched assemblies (called " sabbaths "), sex with the Devil, aerial flight, maleficent magic and the slaughter of babies. None of the President's so-called "witch hunters" has accused him of any of these activities, so far.

It is likely such cults never existed, and that the witch hunts were the outcome of fears of ideological and social enemies - a hidden "other" working from within society to destroy it.

An allegory

It is not a matter for surprise, perhaps, that such a theory should later arise in the Western world, itself tormented by the fear of the subversive Communist operatives within its democracies.

Miller's 1953 play about the Salem witch trials was an allegory of the persecution of suspected communists by the American state, spearheaded by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.

From Miller's The Crucible and the McCarthy investigations, there is a straight line to Trump's understanding of a witch hunt - the American state as the inquisitor and persecutor of an innocent individual.

That confessions to impossibly horrible crimes, and fingers pointed at others, were extracted from supposed witches in Europe and Scotland was often the consequence of torture. By contrast, in England, torture was not used to extract confessions nor to "finger" others.

In England, despite King James's book Daemonologie in 1597 which outlined his belief in witchcraft and the death penalty for those that practised it, it was earthly crime and not demonic dealing that dominated the courts.

Thus, in England, witchcraft persecutions were the consequence of village tensions, of interpersonal conflicts, and of economic difficulties. This was the understanding of witchcraft outlined by English sceptic Reginald Scot in his 1584 book The Discovery of Witchcraft:

She was at my house of late, she would have had a pot of milke, she departed in a chafe because she had it not, she railed, she curssed, she mumbled and whispered, and finallie she said she would be even with me: and soone after my child, my cow, or my pullet died, or was strangelie taken.

The enchanted world

Witchcraft beliefs were deeply embedded in early modern societies among both demonologists in priestly and courtly circles and in the rural and urban masses. They reflect a world radically different from ours, although vestiges of it live on in conservative Christian circles still.

It was a world of ever-present "natural" disasters, both collective and individual - events like the death of a child, the lameness of a pedlar, a wife's madness, a child's frightening tantrum, the death of livestock, fires, floods and famine.

In the early modern period, the distinction between the natural and the supernatural was anything but clear.

Elements of the natural world were closely interwoven with reports of supernatural experiences - the appearance of a spectre, talking animal spirits, sex with the Devil, a corpse bleeding in the presence of its murdering witch, levitating children and flying witches, ghosts and goblins, and a punishing God. In the witchcraft persecutions, the natural and the supernatural worlds clashed in reckoning.

Historians take seriously the persecution, torturing, and executions of innocent men and women for crimes that they could not have committed in an enchanted world most of us no longer believe in. Their deaths were among the darkest historical moments in Western civilisation.

It borders on the ludicrous to hear the US President, touted as the most powerful man in the world, complain of being persecuted like a witch. The deaths of those convicted of witchcraft should not be demeaned and belittled by irresponsible, inaccurate, and plainly ignorant statements.

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You think this is a witch hunt, Mr President? That's an insult to the women who suffered

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Since his inauguration on January 20, 2017, US President Donald Trump has tweeted the words "Witch Hunt" (always with or in capitals) 337 times, or roughly once every three days in his presidency. As the US Senate's impeachment trial looms, it is timely to place witch hunts into some historical perspective.

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Modern day witch-hunts and Day against witch-hunts: mostly in Africa

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Modern day witch-hunts and Day against witch-hunts: mostly in Africa

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Akua Denteh was beaten to death in Ghana's East Gonja District last month - after being accused of being a witch. The murder of the 90-year-old has once more highlighted the deep-seated prejudices against women accused of practicing witchcraft in Ghana, many of whom are elderly.

An arrest was made in early August, but the issue continues to draw attention after authorities were accused of dragging their heels in the case. Human rights and gender activists now demand to see change in culture in a country where supernatural beliefs play a big role.

But the case of Akua Denteh is far from an isolated instance in Ghana, or indeed the world at large. In many countries of the world, women are still accused of practicing witchcraft each year. They are persecuted and even killed in organized witch hunts - especially in Africa but also in Southeast Asia and Latin America.
Read more: Ghana: witchcraft accusations put lives at risk

Witch hunts: a contemporary issue
Many women in Ghana are pushed to live in so-called witch camps because they are rejected by society

Those accused of witchcraft have now found a perhaps unlikely charity ally in their fight for justice: the Catholic missionary society missio, which is part of the global Pontifical Mission Societies under the jurisdiction of the Pope, has declared August 10 as World Day against Witch Hunts, saying that in at least 36 nations around the world, people continue to be persecuted as witches.

While the Catholic Church encouraged witch hunts in Europe from the 15th to the 18th century, it is now trying to shed light into this dark practice. Part of this might be a sense of historical obligation - but the real driving force is the number of victims that witch hunts still cost today.

Historian Wolfgang Behringer, who works as a professor specializing in the early modern age at Saarland University, firmly believes in putting the numbers in perspective. He told DW that during these three centuries, between 50,000 and 60,000 people are assumed to have been killed for so-called crimes of witchcraft - a tally that is close to being twice the population of some major German cities at the time.

But he says that in the 20th century alone, more people accused of witchcraft were brutally murdered than during the three centuries when witch hunts were practiced in Europe: "Between 1960 and 2000, about 40,000 people alleged of practicing witchcraft were murdered in Tanzania alone. While there are no laws against witchcraft as such in Tanzanian law, village tribunals often decide that certain individuals should be killed," Behringer told DW.

The historian insists that due to the collective decision-making behind these tribunals, such murders are far from being arbitrary and isolated cases: "I've therefore concluded that witch hunts are not a historic problem but a burning issue that still exists in the present."

A pan-African problem?
A picture of so-called witch doctors in Sierra Leone taken roughly around the year 1900

In Tanzania, the victims of these witch hunts are often people with albinism; some people believe that the body parts of these individuals can be used to extract potions against all sorts of ailments. Similar practices are known to take place in Zambia and elsewhere on the continent.

Meanwhile in Ghana, where nonagenarian Akua Denteh was bludgeoned to death last month, certain communities blamed the birth of children with disabilities on practices of witchcraft.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it is usually the younger generations who are associated witchcraft. So-called "children of witchcraft" are usually rejected by their families and left to fend for themselves. However, their so-called crimes often have little to do with sorcery at all:
'Children of witchcraft' in the DRC
"We have learned of numerous cases of children suffering rape and then no longer being accepted by their families. Or they are born as illegitimate children out of wedlock, and are forced to live with a parent who no longer accepts them," says Thérèse Mema Mapenzi, who works as a mission project partner in the eastern DRC city of Bukayu.

Mapenzi's facility was initially intended to be a women's shelter to harbor women who suffered rape at the hands of the militia in the eastern parts of the country, where rape is used as a weapon of war as part of the civil conflict there. But over the years, more and more children started seeking her help after they were rejected as "children of witchcraft."

With assistance from the Catholic missionary society missio, Mapenzi is now also supporting these underage individuals in coping with their many traumas while trying to find orphanages and schools for them.

"When these children come here, they have often been beaten to a pulp, have been branded as witches or have suffered other injuries. It is painful to just even look at them. We are always shocked to see these children devoid of any protection. How can this be?" Mapenzi wonders.

Seeking dialogue to end witch hunts
Thérèse Mema Mapenzi is trying to help women and girls accused of being "children of witchcraft"

But there is a whole social infrastructure fueling this hatred against these young people in the DRC: Many charismatic churches blame diseases such as HIV/AIDS or female infertility on witchcraft, with illegitimate children serving as scapegoats for problems that cannot be easily solved in one of the poorest countries on earth. Other reasons cited include sudden deaths, crop failures, greed, jealousy and more.

Thérèse Mema Mapenzi says that trying to help those on the receiving end of this ire is a difficult task, especially in the absence of legal protection: "In Congolese law, witchcraft is not recognized as a violation of the law because there is no evidence you can produce. Unfortunately, the people have therefore developed their own legal practices to seek retribution and punish those whom call them witches."

In addition to helping those escaping persecution, Mapenzi also seeks dialogue with communities to stop prejudice against those accused of witchcraft and sorcery. She wants to bring estranged families torn apart by witch hunts back together. Acting as a mediator, she talks to people, and from time to time succeeds in reuniting relatives with women and children who had been ostracized and shamed. Mapenzi says that such efforts - when they succeed - take an average of two to three years from beginning to finish.

But even with a residual risk of the victims being suspected of witchcraft again, she says her endeavors are worth the risk. She says that the fact that August 10 has been recognized as the World Day against Witch Hunts sends a signal that her work is important - and needed.

Hunting the hunters - a dangerous undertaking

For Thérèse Mema Mapenzi, the World Day against Witch Hunts marks another milestone in her uphill battle in the DRC. Jörg Nowak, spokesman for missio, agrees and hopes that there will now be growing awareness about this issue around the globe.

As part of his work, Nowak has visited several missio project partners fighting to help bring an end to witch hunts in recent years. But he wasn't aware about the magnitude of the problem himself until 2017.

The first case he dealt with was the killing of women accused of being witches in Papua New Guinea in the 2010s - which eventually resulted in his publishing a paper on the crisis situation in the country and becoming missio's dedicated expert on witch hunts.

But much of Nowak's extensive research in Papua New Guinea remains largely under wraps for the time being, at least in the country itself: the evidence he accrued against some of the perpetrators there could risk the lives of missio partners working for him.
Maxwell Suuk and Isaac Kaledzi contributed to this article.
Not much has changed for centuries, apart from the localities involved when it comes to the occult belief in witchcraft, says Nowak while stressing: "There is no such thing as witchcraft. But there are accusations and stigmatization designed to demonize people; indeed designed to discredit them in order for others to gain selfish advantages."

Africa's exiled 'witches'

Hopeful

The women in the "witch villages" know that they cannot return to their families. Yet, many of them still hope for a small miracle. Ann-Christine Woehrl's photos gave them a new sense of confidence and pride. For some of the women, it was the first time they had seen an image of themselves. A book showing a selection of Woehrl's photos will soon be published.

Author: Silke Bartlick / kbm

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Witch hunts: A global problem in the 21st century | DW | 10.08.2020

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Witch hunts are far from being a thing of the past - even in the 21st century. In many countries, this is still a sad reality for many women today. That is why August 10 has been declared a World Day against Witch Hunts.

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The House Committee on Un-American Activities 1940s

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The House Committee on Un-American Activities 1940s

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House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) , The Great Depression of the 1930s was a time of political instability in Europe and the United States. In 1938 the United States House of Representatives created a committee to investigate threats to the national security and potential subversion. The committee was named the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities and Propaganda in the United States. It was often called the Dies Committee after its chairman, Martin Dies, an extremely conservative Democrat from Texas.

In 1945 the Dies committee was replaced by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In the early postwar years, as the Soviet Union moved from being a wartime ally to an international threat, the committee began to look aggressively for Communist subversion. So immoderate was the committee that it often trampled on the rights of witnesses. The committee gained international notoriety in 1947 when it sought to expose Communists in the motion picture industry. Many Hollywood notables testified, and many reputations were ruined. Some film personalities were blacklisted-unable to get work-for years, sometimes simply because they refused to "name names." The prosecution of Alger Hiss, a State Department official and former adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt, also focused international attention on the committee. During the Hiss hearings of 1948 a new Republican House member, Richard M. Nixon, played a prominent role, one that helped him win a seat in the Senate in 1950 and the vice-presidential nomination in 1952.

In the early 1950s the committee's work was overshadowed by the more sensational exploits of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin. His campaign of persistent and reckless charges that Communists held high posts in the government lasted until he was censured by the Senate in 1954. The committee continued its work, but its reputation had been tainted by association with McCarthyism. It was abolished in 1975.

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house committee on un-american activities

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House Committee on Un-American Activities

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House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) , The Great Depression of the 1930s was a time of political instability in Europe and the United States. In 1938 the United States House of Representatives created a committee to investigate threats to the national security and potential subversion.

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McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare 1940s-1950s Americans afraid of Communists, leads to a witch-hunt

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McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare 1940s-1950s Americans afraid of Communists, leads to a witch-hunt

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you can read the same thing in wikipedia in French to better understand what happened

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McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism, and socialism, and especially when the accusations are false or unproven and are made in a public and attention-grabbing manner.

The term originally referred to the controversial practices and policies of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy and covers the period of the late 1940s through the 1950s. It was characterized by heightened political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals, and a campaign spreading fear of alleged communist and socialist influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents. After the mid-1950s, McCarthyism began to decline, mainly due to Joseph McCarthy's gradual loss of public popularity and credibility after several of his accusations were found to be false, and sustained opposition from the U.S. Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren on human rights grounds. The Warren Court made a series of rulings on civil and political rights that overturned several key laws and legislative directives, and helped bring an end to the Second Red Scare. Historians have suggested since the 1980s that as McCarthy's involvement was less central than that of others, a different and more accurate term should be used instead that more accurately conveys the breadth of the phenomenon, and that the term McCarthyism is now outdated. Ellen Schrecker has suggested that Hooverism after FBI Head J. Edgar Hoover is more appropriate.

What would become known as the McCarthy era began before McCarthy's rise to national fame. Following the breakdown of the wartime East-West alliance with the Soviet Union, and with many remembering the First Red Scare, President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order in 1947 to screen federal employees for possible association with organizations deemed "totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive", or advocating "to alter the form of Government of the United States by unconstitutional means." The following year, the Czechoslovak coup by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia heightened concern in the West about Communist parties seizing power and the possibility of subversion. In 1949, a high-level State Department official was convicted of perjury in a case of espionage, and the Soviet Union tested a nuclear bomb. The Korean War started the next year, significantly raising tensions and fears of impending communist upheavals in the United States. In a speech in February 1950, McCarthy claimed to have a list of members of the Communist Party USA working in the State Department, which attracted substantial press attention, and the term McCarthyism was published for the first time in late March of that year in The Christian Science Monitor, along with a political cartoon by Herblock in The Washington Post. The term has since taken on a broader meaning, describing the excesses of similar efforts to crack down on alleged "subversive" elements. In the early 21st century, the term is used more generally to describe reckless and unsubstantiated accusations of treason and far-left extremism, along with demagogic personal attacks on the character and patriotism of political adversaries.

The primary targets for persecution were government employees, prominent figures in the entertainment industry, academics, left-wing politicians, and labor union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive and questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person's real or supposed leftist associations and beliefs were often exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment and the destruction of their careers and livelihoods as a result of the crackdowns on suspected communists, and some were outright imprisoned. Most of these reprisals were initiated by trial verdicts that were later overturned, laws that were later struck down as unconstitutional, dismissals for reasons later declared illegal or actionable, and extra-judiciary procedures, such as informal blacklists by employers and public institutions, that would come into general disrepute, though by then many lives had been ruined. The most notable examples of McCarthyism include the investigations of alleged communists that were conducted by Senator McCarthy, and the hearings conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

The historical period that came to be known as the McCarthy era began well before Joseph McCarthy's own involvement in it. Many factors contributed to McCarthyism, some of them with roots in the First Red Scare (1917-20), inspired by communism's emergence as a recognized political force and widespread social disruption in the United States related to unionizing and anarchist activities. Owing in part to its success in organizing labor unions and its early opposition to fascism, and offering an alternative to the ills of capitalism during the Great Depression, the Communist Party of the United States increased its membership through the 1930s, reaching a peak of about 75,000 members in 1940-41. While the United States was engaged in World War II and allied with the Soviet Union, the issue of anti-communism was largely muted. With the end of World War II, the Cold War began almost immediately, as the Soviet Union installed communist puppet régimes in areas it had occupied across Central and Eastern Europe. In a March 1947 address to Congress, Truman enunciated a new foreign policy doctrine that committed the United States to opposing Soviet geopolitical expansion. This doctrine came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, and it guided United States support for anti-communist forces in Greece and later in China and elsewhere.

Although the Igor Gouzenko and Elizabeth Bentley affairs had raised the issue of Soviet espionage in 1945, events in 1949 and 1950 sharply increased the sense of threat in the United States related to communism. The Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb in 1949, earlier than many analysts had expected, raising the stakes in the Cold War. That same year, Mao Zedong's communist army gained control of mainland China despite heavy American financial support of the opposing Kuomintang. In 1950, the Korean War began, pitting U.S., U.N., and South Korean forces against communists from North Korea and China.

During the following year, evidence of increased sophistication in Soviet Cold War espionage activities was found in the West. In January 1950, Alger Hiss, a high-level State Department official, was convicted of perjury. Hiss was in effect found guilty of espionage; the statute of limitations had run out for that crime, but he was convicted of having perjured himself when he denied that charge in earlier testimony before the HUAC. In Britain, Klaus Fuchs confessed to committing espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union while working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory during the War. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested in 1950 in the United States on charges of stealing atomic-bomb secrets for the Soviets, and were executed in 1953.

Other forces encouraged the rise of McCarthyism. The more conservative politicians in the United States had historically referred to progressive reforms, such as child labor laws and women's suffrage, as "communist" or "Red plots", trying to raise fears against such changes. They used similar terms during the 1930s and the Great Depression when opposing the New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Many conservatives equated the New Deal with socialism or Communism, and thought the policies were evidence of too much influence by allegedly communist policy makers in the Roosevelt administration. In general, the vaguely defined danger of "Communist influence" was a more common theme in the rhetoric of anti-communist politicians than was espionage or any other specific activity.

McCarthy's involvement in these issues began publicly with a speech he made on Lincoln Day, February 9, 1950, to the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia. He brandished a piece of paper, which he claimed contained a list of known communists working for the State Department. McCarthy is usually quoted as saying: "I have here in my hand a list of 205-a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department." This speech resulted in a flood of press attention to McCarthy and helped establish his path to becoming one of the most recognized politicians in the United States.

The first recorded use of the term "McCarthyism" was in the Christian Science Monitor on March 28, 1950 ("Their little spree with McCarthyism is no aid to consultation"). The paper became one of the earliest and most consistent critics of the Senator. The next recorded use happened on the following day, in a political cartoon by Washington Post editorial cartoonist Herbert Block (Herblock). The cartoon depicts four leading Republicans trying to push an elephant (the traditional symbol of the Republican Party) to stand on a platform atop a teetering stack of ten tar buckets, the topmost of which is labeled "McCarthyism". Block later wrote:

"nothing [was] particularly ingenious about the term, which is simply used to represent a national affliction that can hardly be described in any other way. If anyone has a prior claim on it, he's welcome to the word and to the junior senator from Wisconsin along with it. I will also throw in a set of free dishes and a case of soap."

A number of anti-communist committees, panels, and "loyalty review boards" in federal, state, and local governments, as well as many private agencies, carried out investigations for small and large companies concerned about possible Communists in their work forces.

In Congress, the primary bodies that investigated Communist activities were the HUAC, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Between 1949 and 1954, a total of 109 investigations were carried out by these and other committees of Congress.

In the federal government, President Truman's Executive Order 9835 initiated a program of loyalty reviews for federal employees in 1947. It called for dismissal if there were "reasonable grounds ... for belief that the person involved is disloyal to the Government of the United States." Truman, a Democrat, was probably reacting in part to the Republican sweep in the 1946 Congressional election and felt a need to counter growing criticism from conservatives and anti-communists.

When President Dwight Eisenhower took office in 1953, he strengthened and extended Truman's loyalty review program, while decreasing the avenues of appeal available to dismissed employees. Hiram Bingham, chairman of the Civil Service Commission Loyalty Review Board, referred to the new rules he was obliged to enforce as "just not the American way of doing things." The following year, J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bomb, then working as a consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission, was stripped of his security clearance after a four-week hearing. Oppenheimer had received a top-secret clearance in 1947, but was denied clearance in the harsher climate of 1954.

Similar loyalty reviews were established in many state and local government offices and some private industries across the nation. In 1958, an estimated one of every five employees in the United States was required to pass some sort of loyalty review. Once a person lost a job due to an unfavorable loyalty review, finding other employment could be very difficult. "A man is ruined everywhere and forever," in the words of the chairman of President Truman's Loyalty Review Board. "No responsible employer would be likely to take a chance in giving him a job."

The Department of Justice started keeping a list of organizations that it deemed subversive beginning in 1942. This list was first made public in 1948, when it included 78 groups. At its longest, it comprised 154 organizations, 110 of them identified as Communist. In the context of a loyalty review, membership in a listed organization was meant to raise a question, but not to be considered proof of disloyalty. One of the most common causes of suspicion was membership in the Washington Bookshop Association, a left-leaning organization that offered lectures on literature, classical music concerts, and discounts on books.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover designed President Truman's loyalty-security program, and its background investigations of employees were carried out by FBI agents. This was a major assignment that led to the number of agents in the bureau being increased from 3,559 in 1946 to 7,029 in 1952. Hoover's sense of the communist threat and the standards of evidence applied by his bureau resulted in thousands of government workers losing their jobs. Due to Hoover's insistence upon keeping the identity of his informers secret, most subjects of loyalty-security reviews were not allowed to cross-examine or know the identities of those who accused them. In many cases, they were not even told of what they were accused.

Hoover's influence extended beyond federal government employees and beyond the loyalty-security programs. The records of loyalty review hearings and investigations were supposed to be confidential, but Hoover routinely gave evidence from them to congressional committees such as HUAC.

The FBI engaged in a number of illegal practices in its pursuit of information on communists, including burglaries, opening mail, and illegal wiretaps. The members of the left-wing National Lawyers Guild (NLG) were among the few attorneys who were willing to defend clients in communist-related cases, and this made the NLG a particular target of Hoover's; the office of the NLG was burgled by the FBI at least 14 times between 1947 and 1951. Among other purposes, the FBI used its illegally obtained information to alert prosecuting attorneys about the planned legal strategies of NLG defense lawyers.

The FBI also used illegal undercover operations to disrupt communist and other dissident political groups. In 1956, Hoover was becoming increasingly frustrated by Supreme Court decisions that limited the Justice Department's ability to prosecute communists. At this time, he formalized a covert "dirty tricks" program under the name COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO actions included planting forged documents to create the suspicion that a key person was an FBI informer, spreading rumors through anonymous letters, leaking information to the press, calling for IRS audits, and the like. The COINTELPRO program remained in operation until 1971.

In March 1950, McCarthy had initiated a series of investigations into potential infiltration of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by communist agents and came up with a list of security risks that matched one previously compiled by the Agency itself. At the request of CIA director Allen Dulles, President Eisenhower demanded that McCarthy discontinue issuing subpoenas against the CIA. Documents made public in 2004 revealed that the CIA, under Dulles' orders, had broken into McCarthy's Senate office and fed disinformation to him in order to discredit him and stop his investigation from proceeding any further.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities (commonly referred to as the HUAC) was the most prominent and active government committee involved in anti-communist investigations. Formed in 1938 and known as the Dies Committee, named for Rep. Martin Dies, who chaired it until 1944, HUAC investigated a variety of "activities", including those of German-American Nazis during World War II. The committee soon focused on communism, beginning with an investigation into communists in the Federal Theatre Project in 1938. A significant step for HUAC was its investigation of the charges of espionage brought against Alger Hiss in 1948. This investigation ultimately resulted in Hiss's trial and conviction for perjury, and convinced many of the usefulness of congressional committees for uncovering communist subversion.

HUAC achieved its greatest fame and notoriety with its investigation into the Hollywood film industry. In October 1947, the committee began to subpoena screenwriters, directors, and other movie-industry professionals to testify about their known or suspected membership in the Communist Party, association with its members, or support of its beliefs. At these testimonies, this question was asked: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States?" Among the first film industry witnesses subpoenaed by the committee were ten who decided not to cooperate. These men, who became known as the " Hollywood Ten", cited the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech and free assembly, which they believed legally protected them from being required to answer the committee's questions. This tactic failed, and the ten were sentenced to prison for contempt of Congress. Two of them were sentenced to six months, the rest to a year.

In the future, witnesses (in the entertainment industries and otherwise) who were determined not to cooperate with the committee would claim their Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. William Grooper and Rockwell Kent, the only two visual artists to be questioned by McCarthy, both took this approach, and emerged relatively unscathed by the experience. However, while this usually protected witnesses from a contempt-of-Congress citation, it was considered grounds for dismissal by many government and private-industry employers. The legal requirements for Fifth Amendment protection were such that a person could not testify about his own association with the Communist Party and then refuse to "name names" of colleagues with communist affiliations. Thus, many faced a choice between "crawl[ing] through the mud to be an informer," as actor Larry Parks put it, or becoming known as a "Fifth Amendment Communist"-an epithet often used by Senator McCarthy.

In the Senate, the primary committee for investigating communists was the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS), formed in 1950 and charged with ensuring the enforcement of laws relating to "espionage, sabotage, and the protection of the internal security of the United States". The SISS was headed by Democrat Pat McCarran and gained a reputation for careful and extensive investigations. This committee spent a year investigating Owen Lattimore and other members of the Institute of Pacific Relations. As had been done numerous times before, the collection of scholars and diplomats associated with Lattimore (the so-called China Hands) were accused of "losing China", and while some evidence of pro-communist attitudes was found, nothing supported McCarran's accusation that Lattimore was "a conscious and articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy". Lattimore was charged with perjuring himself before the SISS in 1952. After many of the charges were rejected by a federal judge and one of the witnesses confessed to perjury, the case was dropped in 1955.

McCarthy headed the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953 and 1954, and during that time, used it for a number of his communist-hunting investigations. McCarthy first examined allegations of communist influence in the Voice of America, and then turned to the overseas library program of the State Department. Card catalogs of these libraries were searched for works by authors McCarthy deemed inappropriate. McCarthy then recited the list of supposedly pro-communist authors before his subcommittee and the press. Yielding to the pressure, the State Department ordered its overseas librarians to remove from their shelves "material by any controversial persons, Communists, fellow travelers, etc." Some libraries actually burned the newly forbidden books. Though he did not block the State Department from carrying out this order, President Eisenhower publicly criticized the initiative as well, telling the graduating class of Dartmouth College President in 1953: "Don't join the book burners! ... Don't be afraid to go to the library and read every book so long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency-that should be the only censorship." The president then settled for a compromise by retaining the ban on Communist books written by Communists, while also allowing the libraries to keep books on Communism written by anti-Communists.

McCarthy next turned his attention to the case of a U.S. Army dentist who had been promoted to the rank of major despite having refused to answer questions on an Army loyalty review form. McCarthy's handling of this investigation, including a series of insults directed at a brigadier general, led to the Army-McCarthy hearings, with the Army and McCarthy trading charges and counter-charges for 36 days before a nationwide television audience. While the official outcome of the hearings was inconclusive, this exposure of McCarthy to the American public resulted in a sharp decline in his popularity. In less than a year, McCarthy was censured by the Senate, and his position as a prominent force in anti-communism was essentially ended.

On November 25, 1947, the day after the House of Representatives approved citations of contempt for the Hollywood Ten, Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, issued a press release on behalf of the heads of the major studios that came to be referred to as the Waldorf Statement. This statement announced the firing of the Hollywood Ten and stated: "We will not knowingly employ a Communist or a member of any party or group which advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States..." This marked the beginning of the Hollywood blacklist. In spite of the fact that hundreds were denied employment, the studios, producers, and other employers did not publicly admit that a blacklist existed.

At this time, private loyalty-review boards and anti-communist investigators began to appear to fill a growing demand among certain industries to certify that their employees were above reproach. Companies that were concerned about the sensitivity of their business, or which, like the entertainment industry, felt particularly vulnerable to public opinion, made use of these private services. For a fee, these teams investigated employees and questioned them about their politics and affiliations.

At such hearings, the subject usually did not have a right to the presence of an attorney, and as with HUAC, the interviewee might be asked to defend himself against accusations without being allowed to cross-examine the accuser. These agencies kept cross-referenced lists of leftist organizations, publications, rallies, charities, and the like, as well as lists of individuals who were known or suspected communists. Books such as Red Channels and newsletters such as Counterattack and Confidential Information were published to keep track of communist and leftist organizations and individuals. Insofar as the various blacklists of McCarthyism were actual physical lists, they were created and maintained by these private organizations.[citation needed ][further explanation needed ]

Efforts to protect the United States from the perceived threat of communist subversion were particularly enabled by several federal laws. The Hatch Act of 1939 banned membership in subversive organizations, which was interpreted as being anti-labor legislation. The Hatch Act would allow for the reduction of influence of the Workers' Alliance, which was claimed to have been created by the Soviet Union based on a model of their unemployed councils. The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act of 1940 made the act of "knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the ... desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association" a criminal offense.

Hundreds of communists and others were prosecuted under this law between 1941 and 1957. Eleven leaders of the Communist Party were convicted under the Smith Act in 1949 in the Foley Square trial. Ten defendants were given sentences of five years and the eleventh was sentenced to three years. The defense attorneys were cited for contempt of court and given prison sentences. In 1951, 23 other leaders of the party were indicted, including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union. Many were convicted on the basis of testimony that was later admitted to be false. By 1957, 140 leaders and members of the Communist Party had been charged under the law, of whom 93 were convicted.

The McCarran Internal Security Act, which became law in 1950, has been described by scholar Ellen Schrecker as "the McCarthy era's only important piece of legislation" (the Smith Act technically antedated McCarthyism). However, the McCarran Act had no real effect beyond legal harassment. It required the registration of Communist organizations with the U.S. Attorney General and established the Subversive Activities Control Board to investigate possible communist-action and communist-front organizations so they could be required to register. Due to numerous hearings, delays, and appeals, the act was never enforced, even with regard to the Communist Party of the United States itself, and the major provisions of the act were found to be unconstitutional in 1965 and 1967. In 1952, the Immigration and Nationality, or McCarran-Walter, Act was passed. This law allowed the government to deport immigrants or naturalized citizens engaged in subversive activities and also to bar suspected subversives from entering the country.

The Communist Control Act of 1954 was passed with overwhelming support in both houses of Congress after very little debate. Jointly drafted by Republican John Marshall Butler and Democrat Hubert Humphrey, the law was an extension of the Internal Security Act of 1950, and sought to outlaw the Communist Party by declaring that the party, as well as "Communist-Infiltrated Organizations" were "not entitled to any of the rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies." While the Communist Control Act had an odd mix of liberals and conservatives among its supporters, it never had any significant effect.

The act was successfully applied only twice. In 1954 it was used to prevent Communist Party members from appearing on the New Jersey state ballot, and in 1960, it was cited to deny the CPUSA recognition as an employer under New York state's unemployment compensation system. The New York Post called the act "a monstrosity", "a wretched repudiation of democratic principles," while accused Democratic liberals of a "neurotic, election-year anxiety to escape the charge of being 'soft on Communism' even at the expense of sacrificing constitutional rights."

In addition to the federal laws and responding to the worries of the local opinion, several states enacted anti-communist statutes.

By 1952, several states had enacted statutes against criminal anarchy, criminal syndicalism, and sedition; banned communists and "subversives" from public employment, or even from receiving public aid; demanded on loyalty oaths from public servants; and severely restricted or banned the Communist Party. In addition, six states had equivalents to the HUAC. The California Senate Factfinding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities and the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee were established by their respective legislatures.

Some of these states had very severe, or even extreme, laws against communism. In 1950, Michigan enacted life imprisonment for subversive propaganda; the following year, Tennessee enacted the death penalty for advocating the violent overthrow of the government. The death penalty for membership in the Communist Party was discussed in Texas by Governor Allan Shivers, who described it as "worse than murder."

Although right-wing radicals were the bedrock of support for McCarthyism, they were not alone. A broad "coalition of the aggrieved" found McCarthyism attractive, or at least politically useful. Common themes uniting the coalition were opposition to internationalism, particularly the United Nations; opposition to social welfare provisions, particularly the various programs established by the New Deal; and opposition to efforts to reduce inequalities in the social structure of the United States.

One focus of popular McCarthyism concerned the provision of public health services, particularly vaccination, mental health care services, and fluoridation, all of which were denounced by some to be communist plots to poison or brainwash the American people. Such viewpoints led to collisions between McCarthyite radicals and supporters of public-health programs, most notably in the case of the Alaska Mental Health Bill controversy of 1956.

William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of the influential conservative political magazine National Review, wrote a defense of McCarthy, McCarthy and his Enemies, in which he asserted that "McCarthyism ... is a movement around which men of good will and stern morality can close ranks."

In addition, as Richard Rovere points out, many ordinary Americans became convinced that there must be "no smoke without fire" and lent their support to McCarthyism. The Gallup poll found that at his peak in January 1954, 50% of the American public supported McCarthy, while 29% had an unfavorable opinion. His support fell to 34% in June 1954. Republicans tended to like what McCarthy was doing and Democrats did not, though McCarthy had significant support from traditional Democratic ethnic groups, especially Catholics, as well as many unskilled workers and small-business owners. (McCarthy himself was a Catholic.) He had very little support among union activists and Jews.

Those who sought to justify McCarthyism did so largely through their characterization of communism, and American communists in particular. Proponents of McCarthyism claimed that the CPUSA was so completely under Moscow's control that any American communist was a puppet of the Soviet intelligence services. This view, if restricted to the Communist Party's leadership is supported by recent documentation from the archives of the KGB as well as post-war decodes of wartime Soviet radio traffic from the Venona project, showing that Moscow provided financial support to the CPUSA and had significant influence on CPUSA policies. J. Edgar Hoover commented in a 1950 speech, "Communist members, body and soul, are the property of the Party."

According to historian Richard G. Powers, McCarthy added "bogus specificity" to "sweeping accusation[s]", gaining support among "countersubversive anticommunists" on one hand, who sought to find and punish perceived communists. On the other hand, "liberal anticommunists" believed that the Communist Party was "despicable and annoying" but ultimately politically irrelevant.

In addition, it was often claimed that the party didn't allow members to resign; thus someone who had been a member for a short time decades previously could be thought a current member. Many of the hearings and trials of McCarthyism featured testimony by former Communist Party members such as Elizabeth Bentley, Louis Budenz, and Whittaker Chambers, speaking as expert witnesses.

Various historians and pundits have discussed alleged Soviet-directed infiltration of the U.S. government and the possible collaboration of high U.S. government officials.

Estimating the number of victims of McCarthy is difficult. The number imprisoned is in the hundreds, and some ten or twelve thousand lost their jobs. In many cases, simply being subpoenaed by HUAC or one of the other committees was sufficient cause to be fired.

For the vast majority, both the potential for them to do harm to the nation and the nature of their communist affiliation were tenuous. After the extremely damaging " Cambridge Five" spy scandal ( Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, et al.), suspected homosexuality was also a common cause for being targeted by McCarthyism. The hunt for "sexual perverts", who were presumed to be subversive by nature, resulted in over 5,000 federal workers being fired, and thousands were harassed and denied employment. Many have termed this aspect of McCarthyism the " lavender scare".

Homosexuality was classified as a psychiatric disorder in the 1950s. However, in the context of the highly politicized Cold War environment, homosexuality became framed as a dangerous, contagious social disease that posed a potential threat to state security. As the family was believed to be the cornerstone of American strength and integrity, the description of homosexuals as "sexual perverts" meant that they were both unable to function within a family unit and presented the potential to poison the social body. This era also witnessed the establishment of widely spread FBI surveillance intended to identify homosexual government employees.

The McCarthy hearings and according "sexual pervert" investigations can be seen to have been driven by a desire to identify individuals whose ability to function as loyal citizens had been compromised. McCarthy began his campaign by drawing upon the ways in which he embodied traditional American values to become the self-appointed vanguard of social morality.

Some of the notable people who were blacklisted or suffered some other persecution during McCarthyism include:

In 1953, Robert K. Murray, a young professor of history at Pennsylvania State University who had served as an intelligence officer in World War II, was revising his dissertation on the Red Scare of 1919-20 for publication until Little, Brown and Company decided that "under the circumstances ... it wasn't wise for them to bring this book out." He learned that investigators were questioning his colleagues and relatives. The University of Minnesota press published his volume, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920, in 1955.

The nation was by no means united behind the policies and activities that have come to be associated with McCarthyism. The critics of various aspects of McCarthyism included many figures not generally noted for their liberalism. In his overridden veto of the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, President Truman wrote, "In a free country, we punish men for the crimes they commit, but never for the opinions they have." Truman also unsuccessfully vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act, which among other provisions denied trade unions National Labor Relations Board protection unless union leaders signed affidavits swearing they were not and had never been Communists. In 1953, after he left office, Truman criticized the current Eisenhower administration:

It is now evident that the present Administration has fully embraced, for political advantage, McCarthyism. I am not referring to the Senator from Wisconsin. He is only important in that his name has taken on the dictionary meaning of the word. It is the corruption of truth, the abandonment of the due process law. It is the use of the big lie and the unfounded accusation against any citizen in the name of Americanism or security. It is the rise to power of the demagogue who lives on untruth; it is the spreading of fear and the destruction of faith in every level of society.

On June 1, 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Maine Republican, delivered a speech to the Senate she called a " Declaration of Conscience". In a clear attack upon McCarthyism, she called for an end to " character assassinations" and named "some of the basic principles of Americanism: The right to criticize; the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought". She said " freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America", and decried "cancerous tentacles of 'know nothing, suspect everything' attitudes". Six other Republican senators- Wayne Morse, Irving M. Ives, Charles W. Tobey, Edward John Thye, George Aiken, and Robert C. Hendrickson -joined Smith in condemning the tactics of McCarthyism.

In 1952, the Supreme Court upheld a lower-court decision in Adler v. Board of Education, thus approving a law that allowed state loyalty review boards to fire teachers deemed "subversive". In his dissenting opinion, Justice William O. Douglas wrote: "The present law proceeds on a principle repugnant to our society-guilt by association.... What happens under this law is typical of what happens in a police state. Teachers are under constant surveillance; their pasts are combed for signs of disloyalty; their utterances are watched for clues to dangerous thoughts."

One of the most influential opponents of McCarthyism was the famed CBS newscaster and analyst Edward R. Murrow. On October 20, 1953, Murrow's show aired an episode about the dismissal of Milo Radulovich, a former reserve Air Force lieutenant who was accused of associating with Communists. The show was strongly critical of the Air Force's methods, which included presenting evidence in a sealed envelope that Radulovich and his attorney were not allowed to open.

On March 9, 1954, See It Now aired another episode on the issue of McCarthyism, this one attacking Joseph McCarthy himself. Titled "A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy", it used footage of McCarthy speeches to portray him as dishonest, reckless, and abusive toward witnesses and prominent Americans. In his concluding comment, Murrow said:

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.

This broadcast has been cited as a key episode in bringing about the end of McCarthyism.

In the mid and late 1950s, the attitudes and institutions of McCarthyism slowly weakened. Changing public sentiments heavily contributed to the decline of McCarthyism. Its decline may also be charted through a series of court decisions.

With this court decision, the private blacklisters and those who used them were put on notice that they were legally liable for the professional and financial damage they caused. Although some informal blacklisting continued, the private "loyalty checking" agencies were soon a thing of the past. Even before the Faulk verdict, many in Hollywood had decided it was time to break the blacklist. In 1960, Dalton Trumbo, one of the best known members of the Hollywood Ten, was publicly credited with writing the films and .

Much of the undoing of McCarthyism came at the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren. As Richard Rovere wrote in his biography of Joseph McCarthy, "[T]he United States Supreme Court took judicial notice of the rents McCarthy was making in the fabric of liberty and thereupon wrote a series of decisions that have made the fabric stronger than before." Two Eisenhower appointees to the court- Earl Warren (who was made Chief Justice) and William J. Brennan, Jr. -proved to be more liberal than Eisenhower had anticipated.

The Warren Court made a series of rulings that helped bring an end to the McCarthyism.

In 1956, the Warren Court heard the case of Slochower v. Board of Education. Harry Slochower was a professor at Brooklyn College who had been fired by New York City for invoking the Fifth Amendment when McCarthy's committee questioned him about his past membership in the Communist Party. The court prohibited such actions, ruling "...we must condemn the practice of imputing a sinister meaning to the exercise of a person's constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment... The privilege against self-incrimination would be reduced to a hollow mockery if its exercise could be taken as equivalent either to a confession of guilt or a conclusive presumption of perjury." In addition, the 1956 Cole v. Young ruling also greatly weakened the ability to discriminate in the federal civilian workforce.

Another key decision was in the 1957 case Yates v. United States, in which the convictions of fourteen Communists were reversed. In Justice Black's opinion, he wrote of the original "Smith Act" trials: "The testimony of witnesses is comparatively insignificant. Guilt or innocence may turn on what Marx or Engels or someone else wrote or advocated as much as a hundred years or more ago... When the propriety of obnoxious or unfamiliar view about government is in reality made the crucial issue, ...prejudice makes conviction inevitable except in the rarest circumstances."

Also in 1957, the Supreme Court ruled on the case of Watkins v. United States, curtailing the power of HUAC to punish uncooperative witnesses by finding them in contempt of Congress. Justice Warren wrote in the decision: "The mere summoning of a witness and compelling him to testify, against his will, about his beliefs, expressions or associations is a measure of governmental interference. And when those forced revelations concern matters that are unorthodox, unpopular, or even hateful to the general public, the reaction in the life of the witness may be disastrous."

In its 1958 decision in Kent v. Dulles, the Supreme Court halted the State Department from using the authority of its own regulations to refuse or revoke passports based on an applicant's communist beliefs or associations.

The political divisions McCarthyism created in the United States continue to make themselves manifest, and the politics and history of anti-communism in the United States are still contentious. Portions of the massive security apparatus established during the McCarthy era still exist. Loyalty oaths are still required by the California Constitution for all officials and employees of the government of California (which is highly problematic for Quakers and Jehovah's Witnesses whose beliefs preclude them from pledging absolute loyalty to the state). At the federal level, a few portions of the McCarran Internal Security Act remain in effect. However, the act's detention provision was repealed in 1971. The McCarran Act's Communist registration requirement was declared unconstitutional in the 1965 Supreme Court ruling in Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board as well. The McCarran Act's Subversive Activities Control Board, which enforced the law's investigation requirement for persons alleged to be involved in "subversive activities," was officially abolished through Congressional legislation in 1972 as well.

McCarthyism also attracts controversy purely as a historical issue. Through declassified documents from Soviet archives and Venona project decryptions of coded Soviet messages, the Soviet Union was found to have engaged in substantial espionage activities in the United States during the 1940s. The Communist Party USA also was substantially funded and its policies controlled by the Soviet Union, and accusations existed that CPUSA members were often recruited as spies.

Liberal anti-communists like Edward Shils and Daniel Moynihan had a contempt for McCarthyism. Sociologist Edward Shils criticized an excessive policy of secrecy during the Cold War, that led to the misdirection of McCarthyism, which was addressed during the 1994-1997 Moynihan Commission. As Moynihan put it, "reaction to McCarthy took the form of a modish anti-anti-Communism that considered impolite any discussion of the very real threat Communism posed to Western values and security." After revelations of Soviet spy networks from the declassified Venona project, Moynihan wondered: "Might less secrecy have prevented the liberal overreaction to McCarthyism as well as McCarthyism itself?" He described the situation during the McCarthy era as "ignorant armies clashed by night". With McCarthy advocating an extremist view, the discussion of communist subversion was made into a civil rights issue instead of a counterintelligence one.

In the view of some contemporary commentators, the revelations from Venona and other archives on espionage, stand as at least a partial vindication of McCarthyism. Some such as Goldberg feel that a genuinely dangerous subversive element was in the United States, and that this danger justified extreme measures. The opposing view holds that, recent revelations notwithstanding, by the time McCarthyism began in the late 1940s, the CPUSA was an ineffectual fringe group, and the damage done to U.S. interests by Soviet spies after World War II was minimal. Historian Ellen Schrecker states, " in this country, McCarthyism did more damage to the constitution than the American Communist Party ever did."

Historian John Earl Haynes, while acknowledging that inexcusable excesses occurred during McCarthyism, argues that some contemporary historians of McCarthyism underplay the un-democratic nature of the CPUSA. At the same time, Haynes, who studied the Venona decryptions extensively, argued that McCarthy's attempts to "make anti-communism a partisan weapon" actually "threatened [the post-War] anti-Communist consensus", thereby ultimately harming anti-Communist efforts more than helping them. Of the 159 people who were identified on lists used or referenced by McCarthy, evidence only substantially proved that nine of them had aided Soviet espionage efforts-while several hundred Soviet spies were actually known based on Venona and other evidence, most were never named by McCarthy.

A number of observers have compared the oppression of liberals and leftists during the McCarthy period to 2000s-era actions against suspected terrorists, most of them Muslims. In The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism, author Haynes Johnson compares the "abuses suffered by aliens thrown into high-security U.S. prisons in the wake of 9/11" to the excesses of the McCarthy era. Similarly, David D. Cole has written that the Patriot Act "in effect resurrects the philosophy of McCarthyism, simply substituting 'terrorist' for 'communist'."

From the opposite pole, conservative writer Ann Coulter devotes much of her book to drawing parallels between past opposition to McCarthy and McCarthyism and the policies and beliefs of modern-day liberals, arguing that the former hindered the anti-communist cause and the latter hinder the War on Terrorism. Other authors who have drawn on a comparison between current anti-terrorism policies and McCarthyism include Geoffrey R. Stone, Ted Morgan, and Jonah Goldberg.

Since the time of McCarthy, the word McCarthyism has entered American speech as a general term for a variety of practices: aggressively questioning a person's patriotism, making poorly supported accusations, using accusations of disloyalty to pressure a person to adhere to conformist politics or to discredit an opponent, subverting civil and political rights in the name of national security, and the use of demagoguery are all often referred to as McCarthyism.

The 1951 novel The Troubled Air by Irwin Shaw tells the story of the director of a (fictional) radio show, broadcast live at the time, who is given a deadline to investigate his cast for alleged links to communism. The novel recounts the devastating effects on all concerned.

The 1952 Arthur Miller play The Crucible used the Salem witch trials as a metaphor for McCarthyism, suggesting that the process of McCarthyism-style persecution can occur at any time or place. The play focused on the fact that once accused, a person had little chance of exoneration, given the irrational and circular reasoning of both the courts and the public. Miller later wrote: "The more I read into the Salem panic, the more it touched off corresponding images of common experiences in the fifties."

The 1976 film starring Woody Allen dealt with the McCarthy-era Hollywood blacklist. The film was made by those blacklisted: producer and director Martin Ritt; writer Walter Bernstein; and actors Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, Michael Murphy, John Randolph, Lloyd Gough, and Joshua Shelley.

Guilty by Suspicion is a 1991 American drama film about the Hollywood blacklist, McCarthyism, and the activities of the HUAC. Written and directed by Irwin Winkler, it starred Robert De Niro, Annette Bening, and George Wendt.

The 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck by George Clooney starred David Strathairn as broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow and contained archival footage of McCarthy.

Haynes, John Earl. "The Cold War debate continues: A traditionalist view of historical writing on domestic Communism and anti-Communism." Journal of Cold War Studies 2.1 (2000): 76-115.

Hixson Jr, William B. Search for the American right wing: An analysis of the social science record, 1955-1987 (Princeton University Press, 2015).

Reeves, Thomas C. "McCarthyism: Interpretations since Hofstadter." Wisconsin Magazine of History (1976): 42-54. online

Selverstone, Marc J. "A Literature So Immense: The Historiography of Anticommunism." Organization of American Historians Magazine of History 24.4 (2010): 7-11.

Badash, Lawrence (October 30, 2007). "Science in the McCarthy Period: Training Ground for Scientists as Public Citizens". Oregon State University. Archived from the original on February 5, 2008.

Beyer, Mary & Michael Beyer (January 2006). "McCarthyism Today". International Journal of Baudrillard Studies. Archived from the original on October 1, 2006.

"McCarthyism / The "Red Scare"". Dwight D. Eisenhower Online Documents. Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum, and Boyhood Home. Archived from the original on November 1, 2013.

Rusher, William A. (Fall 2004). "A Closer Look Under The Bed". Claremont Review of Books. Claremont Institute. Archived from the original on January 27, 2012.

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McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism, and socialism, and especially when the accusations are false or unproven and are made in a public and attention-grabbing manner. The term originally referred to the controversial practices and policies of U.S.

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Trump language: full article from The Atlantic

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Trump language: full article from The Atlantic

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The president's rhetoric is dangerously populist in nature, and the left doesn't know how to fight it.

Staff writer for The Atlantic

Bryan Woolston / Reuters

This article was updated on August 18, 2019 at 3:08 pm.
Perhaps it isn't possible to establish a direct connection between the El Paso massacre and the president. Anticipating that Donald Trump would be held responsible, the killer insisted in an online rant that his own white-supremacist views predated the 2016 election, and that blaming the president would be "fake news." Perhaps the killer's denunciations of a "Hispanic invasion" and of Democratic politicians using "open borders" to achieve political power resembled the president's language by sheer coincidence. Perhaps the killer's retweets and shares of Trump's Twitter posts can't be laid at the president's feet.

Terrorism in America isn't state-sponsored, and Trump isn't the kind of strongman who orders his followers to commit acts of violence. He's like a boy who starts tossing matches near a gasoline spill to see what happens. He rouses ugly emotions and lets the chips fall, in the belief that he'll come out on top. At a rally in the Florida Panhandle he raised the specter of the Border Patrol turning violence against migrants: "We can't let them use weapons ... I would never do that. But how do you stop these people?"

Having set the image loose, Trump could only smile and pause for the roar of approval when a woman in the crowd yelled, "Shoot them!" He didn't put the words in her mouth, but he made it likelier that someone would speak them. He didn't urge a massacre of Latino shoppers on the Texas border, but he made it possible for a 21-year-old white supremacist to think he had the president's support.

Recommended Reading

George Packer: Is America undergoing a political realignment?

In the days before this past weekend of horror, I read a book called The Language of the Third Reich by the German scholar Victor Klemperer. Klemperer, a Jew who was married to a non-Jew, survived the entire Nazi reign in Dresden. His diary of those 12 years, published posthumously in the 1990s, recorded daily life under the Third Reich so scrupulously, so objectively, with such attention to ordinary detail, that the reader lives through the almost too-familiar story of Germany's descent into barbarism as if each step were as shocking, unbelievable, and yet inexorable as it was to him.

Klemperer was a literary historian, and to preserve his mental balance under Nazi rule he used his diary to continue doing the academic work from which, as a Jew, he was officially banned: He studied the language of the Third Reich. He recorded how, after Hitler took power, certain words in various forms- Volk, fanatisch-soon became ubiquitous in public and in private; how religious terms imbued the ruling ideology; how euphemisms such as evacuation and concentration camp were coined to make massive crimes sound bureaucratically legitimate; how the German language grew impoverished and uniform; how Nazi language became a total system outside of which Germans could no longer think, and which did the thinking for them, to the bitter end.

Klemperer's diary is the work for which he became famous, but he intended it only as raw material for a book he wrote right after the war. The Language of the Third Reich is little known compared with the diary, but it deserves a place on the shelf of essential books on totalitarianism. In a chapter on fascist rhetoric, Klemperer wrote:

"But a speech was not only more important than it had been previously, it was also, of necessity, different in nature. In addressing itself to everyone rather than just select representatives of the people it had to make itself comprehensible to everyone and thus become more populist. Populist [ volkstumlich] means more concrete: the more emotional a speech is, the less it addresses itself to the intellect, the more populist it will be. And it will cross the boundary separating populism from demagogy and mass seduction as soon as it moves from ceasing to challenge the intellect to deliberately shutting it off and stupefying it."

Klemperer seems to be describing Trump's speeches-the raw rhetoric that incited a crowd in North Carolina to chant "Send her back!" and a woman in Florida to shout "Shoot them!" After the El Paso killings, the Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, a native of the city, called Trump's demonizing language "reminiscent of something that you might hear in the Third Reich, not something that you expect in the United States of America." In a period in America when mass killings and hateful presidential rhetoric are both at all-time highs, it's a forgivable analogy. But Trump's populism-the politics of championing the common people against their supposed enemies, evoking strong emotions in demotic language- is American. That's why it's been successful, and consistently underestimated by Trump's opponents.

The language of the Third Reich-Hitler's speeches, Goebbels's newspaper articles, books of Nazi theory, government diktats, the pervasion of all these through everyday life-kept the German people in a state of perpetual fervor, bordering on hysteria, to the last cataclysmic days of the war. Every day was historic, the highest word of praise was fanatic, and Hitler's rants against Jews and other enemies were also summons to superhuman feats of exertion and sacrifice on behalf of the highest cause-Führer and Fatherland. The appeal of Nazi language was emotional and irrational, as Klemperer wrote, but it didn't just lower those who came under its spell. It also aroused the most sinister form of inspiration in history.

Compare this to the language of Trump's populism. There's not a breath of inspiration in it. The crowds attend his rallies for red meat-Hillary Clinton, Ilhan Omar, Mexicans, the media, corrupt "elites" of various kinds-and go home satisfied. Nothing whatsoever is asked of them. Their hero never paints a convincing picture of what American greatness would like look-whenever he tries to sound in any way idealistic, as in his Fourth of July speech at the Lincoln Memorial, a false note strains his voice, and you almost think he's about to crack a smile. There's no purpose higher than fun, excitement, and power-his own and that of his people, the "real" people.
Adam Serwer: What Americans do now will define us forever
Populist rhetoric can be uplifting-think of William Jennings Bryan's "cross of gold" speech at the Democratic Convention in 1896. But the populism of Trump, his followers, and his party brings the cruel, cynical atmosphere of Jersey Shore to national politics. It levels everyone downward together. A recent study by three Italian political scientists found that the longer Italians are exposed to trash TV, the more likely they are to vote for populist candidates (on both the left and the right). It's hard to believe the same isn't true in this country.

The Nazi project required neologisms and euphemisms to shape the minds of the German people ideologically and habituate them to shocking practices. Party leaders were always out in front of the Volk. But Trump doesn't create anything new-he amplifies existing bigotry and vulgarity by getting rid of taboos. He takes language that's already popular at the level of talk radio, reality TV, social media, and sports bars, and uses it at the highest level of power. Here's a tweet from one of his Twitter fans, @ThatTrumpGuy, calling attention to a video from the Mexican border: "BOOM! Watch these Homeland Security officers go beast mode on some liberal protesters who were in their way." That's the authentic sound of Trump's populism. His followers like to cite his language as a virtue: He says what ordinary people think and politicians are afraid to say. But it turns out that whipping up hatred of outsiders, minorities, the weak, and the desperate doesn't require any special courage.

The strength of Trump's populist language lies in its openness. It requires no expert knowledge and has no code of hidden meanings. It's attuned to some of the strongest currents in American pop culture, and it gives rise almost spontaneously to memorable slogans-"Build the wall," "Lock her up," "Witch hunt," "No collusion," "Make America great again." It's the way people talk when the inhibitors are off. It's available to anyone who's willing to join the mob. Susan Hunston, an English professor at the University of Birmingham, in the U.K., made a study of Trump's speech and found it utterly unlike that of most other politicians: "There is, then, evidence that Trump's language is highly distinctive, but that this distinctiveness aligns him with scenarios of casual conversation. Although his language, both in content and in style, is odd for a political leader, it is familiar to his audience. It is the true language of populism."

For decades conservatives used an intellectual language that befit a movement of ideas. William F. Buckley favored obscure words of four or five syllables; Ronald Reagan championed the mandarin syntax of the columnist George Will; Newt Gingrich liked to talk about a struggle for American civilization. But with the rise of right-wing media, populist language began to seep into conservative discourse like a bad-smelling gas. During the Trump era it's become the lingua franca of the American right. A few pro-Trump conservatives have tried to give his politics a high gloss-for example, the University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax, arguing for the exclusion of immigrants coming from what Trump called "shithole countries," uses the phrase cultural-distance nationalism. But attempts at elevation never stick. Trumpism without trash talk loses its essence.
Read: Make America white again?
The crudeness of Trump's rhetoric makes it both dangerous and politically potent. By contrast, the language of the contemporary left is anti-populist. Its vocabulary, much of it taken from academia, is the opposite of accessible-it has to be decoded and learned. Terms such as centered, marginalized, intersectional, non-binary, and Eurocentric gender discipline separate outsiders from insiders-that's part of their intent, as is the insistence on declaring one's personal pronouns and showing an ability to use them accordingly. Even common words like ally and privilege acquire a resonance that takes them out of the realm of ordinary usage, because the point of this discourse is to create a sense of special virtue. Many of these changes happen by ambush-suddenly and irrevocably, with no visible trail of discussion and decision, and with quick condemnation of holdouts-which gives them a powerful mystique.

The language of the left creates a hierarchy of those who get it and those who don't. Mastering the vocabulary is a way of signaling entry into a select world of the knowing and the just. The system is closed-there's an internal logic that can be accepted or rejected but isn't open to argument or question. In this sense, though much of the language of the left has academic origins, its use in the public square is almost religious. The abandonment of language that brings people in rather than shutting them out is one of the left's many structural disadvantages in American politics today.

For most of U.S. history, from Thomas Paine to Eugene Debs to Martin Luther King Jr., the left had a populist language of its own. It used a simple vocabulary and spoke in universal moral terms that appealed to the basic goodness in people rather than inventing a sophisticated hierarchical code to label their ills. It created insiders and outsiders, but they weren't divided between the knowing and the unilluminated, the woken and the sleeping. The populism of the left posed the same opposition as Trump's-the people against the elites-but with very different sets of characters.

You still hear notes of this language in the speeches of Senator Elizabeth Warren, with her talk of a "rigged" economy. Though she's spent most of her adult life in universities, she speaks with a natural plainness that reminds you of her prairie origins. But she's running for the presidential nomination of a party whose new activists think in and are constrained by a hermetic language of the chosen few. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, another candidate, has embraced it with the zeal of a convert, and at times Warren seems to come under its influence. Trump, with his sadistic instinct for the weaknesses of others, has learned how to hurt Democrats by using divisive rhetoric and waiting for them to walk into a trap of self-enclosure they can't see. He won't hesitate to use an event as terrible as El Paso to keep this logic working in his favor. A force as dark and powerful as Trump's populism can be defeated only by an equal and opposite force.

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The Left Needs a Language Potent Enough to Counter Trump

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The president's rhetoric is dangerously populist in nature, and the left doesn't know how to fight it. Staff writer for The Atlantic This article was updated on August 18, 2019 at 3:08 pm. Perhaps it isn't possible to establish a direct connection between the El Paso massacre and the president.

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Trump's language is dangerous: it divides people

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Trump's language is dangerous: it divides people

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excerpts from the article (next item) in THE ATLANTIC

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Orwell's message when the sheep bleat "Four legs good"

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Orwell's message when the sheep bleat "Four legs good"

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What we say and how we say it is important. Oversimplified language opens the door to totalitarian and authoritarian regimes

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Should animals have the same rights as humans? 

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Should animals have the same rights as humans? 

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A chimp is closer to a human than to a snail. Is an autonomous chimp higher on the scale than a human with dementia?

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A New York court will resume hearing a case this week about the possible illegal detention of two chimps at a university lab.

Lawyers acting for the chimps, Leo and Hercules, want them to be moved to an animal sanctuary. Researchers at Stony Brook University are using the chimps for research on physical movement.

In a potentially significant ruling Judge Barbara Jaffe at one stage suggested the chimps had the right of habeas corpus - the ancient legal principle under which the state has an obligation to produce missing individuals before a court.

But having initially used the words "habeas corpus", the judge subsequently struck them out, suggesting the court does not consider the animals to be legal persons.

Hercules and Leo's lawyers say they are not too dispirited as the court is still asking the university to justify why they are holding the chimps.

The case follows another ruling in New York last year, where a judge said a chimp was not entitled to the same rights as people.

'Speciesism'

The idea that animals could be considered legal persons with rights is relatively new.

But in centuries past animals were quite frequently involved in court cases in which they were put on trial. Most were found guilty of offences such as murder and assault. Punishments included the hanging of animals found guilty.

Opponents of the concept of animal rights argue that since animals have neither a sense of morality nor an understanding of their duties towards others, they can't have rights. Others, in turn, dismiss such views as "speciesist".

Attempts to understand the nature of animal behaviour have sometimes taken the form of highly unusual experiments. In one case a chimp called Nim was brought up with a New York family.

The chimp's full name, Nim Chimpsky, was a play on words. The philosopher Noam Chomsky had argued that animals do not have an innate understanding of grammar and that humans are uniquely hardwired to comprehend language.

The family raising Nim hoped to prove that the chimp in their midst would be capable of grammatically structured sign language. The experiment also focused on Nim's sense of morality.

New Yorker Jenny Lee was 13 years old when Nim, then an infant chimp, was introduced to her family and became her "brother". She believes that even if Nim could not be persuaded to stop biting people, he did display some behaviours that seemed quite human.

"He quickly understood how to say sorry and when sorry was appropriate," Ms Lee told Newshour Extra. "He would very delicately kiss the tears off my cheek."

Animal cases through time

1266: In the earliest extant record of an animal trial - a pig was executed in Fontenay-aux-Roses

1654: English Civil War leader Oliver Cromwell bans cockfighting, dog fighting, bull baiting and bull running. The law was later overturned

1981: The first US conviction for animal abuse against an experimental laboratory is achieved, after an undercover investigation by animal rights activists

1992: Switzerland amends its constitution to recognise animals as beings and not things

1993: Release of The Hour of the Pig. The film, set in 15th Century France, depicts the life of lawyer Bartholomew Chassenee who represented animals accused of crimes

1999: New Zealand grants basic rights to five great ape species, banning their use in research, testing or teaching. This is considered the greatest legal success in the history of animal rights

2002: Germany amends its constitution to guarantee rights for animals, becoming the first EU country to do so

2015: A New York court considers whether chimps are legal persons

Human moral code

But animal rights sceptics believe that even if Nim had some humanlike characteristics and some basic communications skills that does not justify blurring the lines between humans and other animals.

"We have to put into different categories, ourselves - humanity that is - and the rest of the living world," says the leading British neurobiologist, Prof Sir Colin Blakemore.

Prof Carl Cohen of the University of Michigan, Anne Arbor shares that view. Animals, he argues, do not know anything about morality: "Animals do not commit crimes, animals are not attacked for their moral views. Rights are a concept special to the human moral code," he says.

While humans have an obligation not to cause animals needless suffering, he argues, that does not mean animals have rights, as the concept is alien to them.

Utilitarian argument

Not all of those seeking to protect animals rely on rights arguments.

Others argue on the basis of utilitarian calculations of maximising happiness and reducing misery. Factors to consider would include the degree of an animal's autonomy, sensitivity to pain, level of sentience, self-awareness and ability to hold preferences.

Undermining a chimp's autonomy, for example, could be taken as increasing its misery. The greater an animal's capacities, the more misery it would experience.

In terms of intelligence and emotional complexity chimps, the argument goes, have more in common with humans than they do with snails. It is a line of reasoning that offers relatively little protection to animals with fewer capacities.

Weakening the distinctions and blurring the lines between humans and animals could have grave implications for humans.

If a healthy chimp, for example, has greater autonomy than a human with dementia then might there be an obligation to look after the chimp ahead of the human?

Advocates of animal liberation have also argued that differing sensitivities to pain might be another relevant consideration in establishing what interests animals have.

Some have even suggested that there may be a case for stopping predation. In other words it might be morally necessary to prevent a zebra living in the wild from being torn to shreds by a lion.

For more on this story, listen to Newshour Extra on the BBC iPlayer or download the podcast.

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Should animals have the same rights as humans?

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A New York court will resume hearing a case this week about the possible illegal detention of two chimps at a university lab. Lawyers acting for the chimps, Leo and Hercules, want them to be moved to an animal sanctuary. Researchers at Stony Brook University are using the chimps for research on physical movement.

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an analysis of animal rights; do animals have rights? 

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an analysis of animal rights; do animals have rights? 

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The case against animal rights

A number of arguments are put forward against the idea that animals have rights.

Animals don't think

Animals are not really conscious

Animals were put on earth to serve human beings

Animals don't have souls

Animals don't behave morally

Animals are not members of the 'moral community'

Animals lack the capacity for free moral judgment

Animals don't think

St Thomas Aquinas taught that animals acted purely on instinct while human beings engaged in rational thought.

This distinction provided the frontier between human beings and animals, and was regarded as a suitable criterion for assessing a being's moral status.

Animals are not really conscious

The French philosopher Rene Descartes, and many others, taught that animals were no more than complicated biological robots.

This meant that animals were not the sort of thing that was entitled to have any rights - or indeed any moral consideration at all.

Animals were put on earth to serve human beings

This view comes originally from the Bible, but probably reflects a basic human attitude towards other species.

Christian theologians developed this idea - St Augustine taught that "by a most just ordinance of the Creator, both their [animals'] life and their death are subject to our use."

St Thomas Aquinas taught that the universe was constructed as a hierarchy in which beings at a lower level were there to serve those above them.

As human beings were above animals in this hierarchy they were entitled to use animals in any way they wanted.

However, as C.S. Lewis pointed out:

Animals don't have souls

Christian theologians used to teach that only beings with souls deserved ethical consideration.

Animals did not have souls and therefore did not have any moral rights.

This argument is no longer regarded as useful, because the idea of the soul is very controversial and unclear, even among religious people. Furthermore it is not possible to establish the existence of the soul (human or animal) in a valid experimental way.

This also makes it difficult to argue, as some theologians have done, that animals should have rights because they do have souls.

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This article discusses whether non-human animals have rights, and what is meant by animal rights.

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Analysis of how humans think of animals, pets, fish and farm animals

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Analysis of how humans think of animals, pets, fish and farm animals

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Animal welfare experts warn our pets could suffer during the coronavirus pandemic, including from abuse or abandonment.

When we hear about animals being neglected, we're often outraged. Consider the revelation of the mistreatment of racehorses at a Queensland abattoir, or the man who decapitated a kookaburra. These stories left many of us shocked and appalled.

But harm to animals is common in our society. Tens of billions of animals are killed in farms and slaughterhouses every year. Their deaths are sometimes truly horrific. Humanity's relationship with animals is dysfunctional: humans love animals yet simultaneously perpetrate extreme violence against them. This is not only bad for animals. It's bad for us too.

But humans and animals cannot simply end their relationship and part ways. We have to share a world. So we have to forge a better relationship. The hard question is: what shape should that new relationship take?

Differing standards for humans and for animals?

Here's an ethics thought experiment. Five humans are dying of organ failure. The only way to save their lives is to kill one healthy person, harvest their organs, and transplant these into the five dying people. Is it morally acceptable to kill the one to save the many?

If you're like most people, your answer is a firm "no". Humans have a right to life and can't be killed in service of the greater good. This is an example of what's known as a deontological judgment.

Read more: If you don't eat meat but still wear leather, here are a few facts to chew on

But now let's change the scenario. Suppose you are the manager of a sanctuary for chickens. An infectious virus is spreading through the sanctuary and you have to decide whether to kill one infected chicken or allow the virus to spread throughout the sanctuary, killing a larger number. Now what?

When confronted with the chicken scenario, many will say it's acceptable to kill the one to save the many. Your responsibility as manager of the sanctuary is to promote the aggregate health and well-being of all the chickens in your care. If this means you have to kill one chicken to save many more, so be it. This is an example of what's known as a utilitarian judgment.

When we think about cases where animal lives are at stake, we often tend to think in utilitarian terms. When we think about cases where human lives are at stake, we often tend to think in deontological terms.

Shutterstock/zlikovec

Animal activists put to the test

Even animal activists, committed to a view of animals and humans as moral equals, may be inclined to see animals and humans from these differing perspectives.

At an animal activist conference in Melbourne last year (before the pandemic) we divided the audience into small groups and gave them different scenarios featuring different species.

Only 35% of those considering chicken cases said it was wrong to kill one chicken to save the many, whereas fully 85% of those considering human cases decided it was wrong to kill one human to save the many. An informal experiment, but it seems to illustrate a very human tendency to think of animals and humans according to different standards.

That tendency has been observed in many contexts. Robert Nozick influentially discusses a bifurcated view along these lines in his 1974 classic Anarchy, State, and Utopia. But the question of whether such a view can be attributed to ordinary people is only recently being rigorously studied by psychologists such as Lucius Caviola at Harvard University.

Read more: Illegal hunters are a bigger problem on farms than animal activists - so why aren't we talking about that?

Beyond psychological research, we can look to institutions for evidence that this sort of bifurcated view is widespread, as we have argued elsewhere.

For example, when animals are used in scientific experimentation, researchers are mainly expected to show the benefits outweigh the costs: a utilitarian standard.

But when humans are used, characteristically deontological considerations, such as consent and autonomy, are brought to bear; a cost-benefit analysis isn't enough.

So we tend to be more utilitarian about animals than about humans. Yet we also don't see all animals from a purely utilitarian perspective. Think about your family dog. Would your conscience allow you to kill her to save five other dogs?

Shutterstock/unoL

Three perspectives

The upshot: humans seem to be capable of seeing animals in at least three very different ways.

First, we're able to regard animals as objects that exist solely for the sake of our use and enjoyment and that don't matter in themselves. For an example, consider the way the fishing industry treats bycatch as disposable.

Second, we're able to regard animals as beings who matter in themselves yet who are fundamentally interchangeable with others. That's a utilitarian perspective. It's the perspective you occupy when you endorse killing one pig to save five. Such a view is defended by world-renowned Australian philosopher Peter Singer, among many others.

Third, we're able to see animals as beings who not only matter in themselves, but who also have rights, such as the right to life, or the right to bodily integrity, or even the right to liberty.

Perhaps it's strange to see farmed animals that way, but it's not so strange to see non-human family members such as cats and dogs in that way. And famous philosophers such as Tom Regan have argued a vast range of animals ought to be seen in that way.

The future of human-animal relations

Currently, many of us see most animals as mere things, the way fishermen typically see bycatch. And this might continue into the future.

But that'd be a tragedy. Despite their differences from humans, animals are conscious individuals with their own welfare, and so do matter in themselves. Recognising this will be an essential step in reducing the tremendous amount of unnecessary suffering and death that humans inflict on animals.

The simple recognition that animals are not mere things is in itself of massive importance, but it's also only the beginning of the work we have ahead of us. As a society we must confront deep and difficult questions about whether animals have moral rights and, if so, what those rights might be, and how (if at all) their rights differ from those of human beings. Philosophers have been debating such questions for decades but haven't reached consensus (yet).

Such questions must be addressed before we can we hope to find a new relationship with animals that fully recognises and respects our obligations to them.

Read more: Not just activists, 9 out of 10 people are concerned about animal welfare in Australian farming

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People hate cruelty to animals, so why do we do it?

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Animal welfare experts warn our pets could suffer during the coronavirus pandemic, including from abuse or abandonment. When we hear about animals being neglected, we're often outraged. Consider the revelation of the mistreatment of racehorses at a Queensland abattoir, or the man who decapitated a kookaburra.

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NOT FOR SENSITIVE PEOPLE but Paul McCartney made a video about the horrors of factory farms and slaughterhouses

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NOT FOR SENSITIVE PEOPLE but Paul McCartney made a video about the horrors of factory farms and slaughterhouses

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In the U.S. today, 99% of animals used for food live on massive industrial "factory farms," where they're crammed by the thousands into wire cages, metal crates, or other extremely restrictive enclosures inside filthy, windowless sheds. These animals will never raise their families, root around in the soil, build nests, or do anything that is natural and important to them. Most won't even feel the warmth of the sun on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they're loaded onto trucks headed for slaughterhouses.

The factory farming industry strives to maximize output while minimizing costs-always at the animals' expense. The giant corporations that run most factory farms have found that they can make more money by squeezing as many animals as possible into tiny spaces, even though many of the animals die from disease or infection.

Animals on factory farms endure constant fear and torment:

They're often given so little space that they can't even turn around or lie down comfortably. Egg-laying hens are kept in small cages, chickens and pigs are kept in jam-packed sheds, and cows are kept on crowded, filthy feedlots.

Antibiotics are used to make animals grow faster and to keep them alive in the unsanitary conditions. Research shows that factory farms' widespread use of antibiotics can lead to antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten human health.

Most factory-farmed animals have been genetically manipulated to grow larger or to produce more milk or eggs than they naturally would. Some chickens grow so unnaturally large that their legs cannot support their outsized bodies, and they suffer from starvation or dehydration when they can't walk to reach food and water.

When they've grown large enough to slaughter or their bodies have been worn out from producing milk or eggs, animals raised for food are crowded onto trucks and transported for miles through all weather extremes, typically without food or water. At the slaughterhouse, those who survived the transport will have their throats slit, often while they're still conscious. Many remain conscious when they're plunged into the scalding-hot water of the defeathering or hair-removal tanks or while their bodies are being skinned or hacked apart.

You can help end this abuse. Order a copy of PETA's free vegan starter kit for tips and recipes to help you go vegan today.

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Factory Farming: The Industry Behind Meat and Dairy | PETA

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In the U.S. today, 99% of animals used for food live on massive industrial "factory farms," where they're crammed by the thousands into wire cages, metal crates, or other extremely restrictive enclosures inside filthy, windowless sheds. These animals will never raise their families, root around in the soil, build nests, or do anything that is natural and important to them.

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This is QUITE SHOCKING- you may not want to look at it: factory farming and animal abuse

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This is QUITE SHOCKING- you may not want to look at it: factory farming and animal abuse

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Animal Equality | International Animal Protection Organization

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According to the United Nations, the number of industrial livestock sent to slaughter each year is equivalent to eight times the human population on planet Earth. At no other time in history have so many animals died or suffered so much throughout their lives.

Factory farming is the main cause of animal suffering and abuse. These silent victims have been converted into machines that generate meat, milk, and eggs. These animals are sentient beings with a desire to live, but we take that life away.

These images show us the reality of an industry that is hidden from us so well. If you ever think about helping animals, there is no better time than now. With every meatless meal, you can help make these images a part of the past.

This way you will do your part to create a better world for all, including the animals.

This is a factory farm. These big windowless sheds with artificial light are the living spaces of the innocent animals that end up packaged at the supermarket. Without even realizing it, these sinister places are all around us.

The interior looks like something out of a nightmare. Animals are turned into machines that produce meat at the cost of unimaginable suffering from the day they are born. In this picture we see pigs in cages so small they can't even turn around. This is considered standard and acceptable to the industry.

The life of pigs is one of confinement and abuse. These intelligent and sensitive animals suffer greatly. Their eyes often speak of sadness and frustration that stems from a life without sun, fresh air, friends, and natural stimuli.

Those born weakest often die without veterinary care. Their short, anonymous lives often lead them to the trash bin. They never get to experience even the slightest gesture of compassion.

Like products of an assembly line, chickens used for meat are stacked in boxes and sent to fattening farms, where they live for about 42 days, they are sent to the slaughterhouse.

They will never get to meet their mothers. They will never feel their protection and care, only the harshness of humans of the food industry. In this picture, a chick is vaccinated before being sent to the fattening farm. Every year, millions like him go through the same torment.

With little hope of surviving in the first place, weak chicks are thrown directly into the trash bins and are either suffocated or crushed with clubs. These animals do not receive any individual veterinary care. Not a single penny is spent on them; the meat industry prefers them dead.

Caged and unable to move, the poor ducks from the foie gras industry experience a living hell from the day they are born. They spend the entirety of their short lives confined. They are fed with a long tube inserted down the esophagus to bring the food directly to the stomach and liver to ensure that it fattens quickly and unnaturally.

High and low temperatures on farms are common. The extreme conditions in which they live have consequences. Animals are in no condition to withstand such a harsh environment. In this image, a duck from the meat industry has collapsed and can no longer stand.

The dairy industry is responsible for one of the cruelest production cycles that exist: the mother cows are artificially inseminated, are separated from their calves at birth, and the milk that was intended for their young is stolen away. When they stop producing milk, they are inseminated again. And so the cycle continues. Their male children will be killed shortly after birth for veal, and the females will become the next generation of dairy cows that go through this cruel process.

The egg industry keeps tens of thousands of hens (sometimes hundreds of thousands) in giant farms. Up to six of them live in small cages with little to no room to move. They cannot even spread their wings. The egg-laying rate is so high that after a year and a half these hens are exhausted and sent to the slaughterhouse.

The extreme conditions in cages stress them to the point that they peck each other in frustration. Due to this, and in addition to their weakness, they lose their feathers. To avoid greater complications, the ends of their sensitive beaks are cut off shortly after birth. This process is incredibly painful for them.

For many animals, the only time they see and feel the light and warmth of the sun will be during the trip to the slaughterhouse. Transport conditions are incredibly inhumane: animals are crammed into large trucks, sometimes traveling long distances, without food or water. These images do not reveal a compassionate world.

Photography: francescoscipioni

All farm animals end up in the same place: the slaughterhouse. If their lives were miserable, their deaths are a nightmare. Stunned, hung upside down, decapitated...all after witnessing others who have gone before them. No animal deserves such a cruel life or death. When will we learn to show solidarity? When will we learn to respect our fellow planet companions?

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Why Factory Farming Is The Largest Cause Of Animal Abuse In History | Animal Equality | International Animal Protection Organization

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According to the United Nations, the number of industrial livestock sent to slaughter each year is equivalent to eight times the human population on planet Earth. At no other time in history have so many animals died or suffered so much throughout their lives. Factory farming is the main cause of animal suffering and abuse.

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George Bush said there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq so the USA invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein.

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George Bush said there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq so the USA invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein.

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a reporter tells the story in a short video

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Remember the Bush administration's response to 9/11?

On Sept. 8, 2002, just a year after the terrorist attacks on New York City, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told CNN: "We don't want the smoking gun (of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or WMD) to be a mushroom cloud."

The nation was still raw - fertile ground for the Bush administration to make the case that weapons of mass destruction should never be allowed to fall into the hands of terrorists.

But were there actually WMDs in Iraq? And what was that country's tie to the 9/11 attacks?

The plan then-President George W. Bush had was twofold: Argue that the government of dictator Saddam Hussein had ties with al-Qaeda terrorists, and that Saddam had chemical and possibly biological weapons, and the potential for developing a nuclear bomb.

That plan led to the invasion of Iraq. Now a reader wants to know: Whatever happened to those WMDs cited by Bush to justify the war?

I was in Baghdad in the weeks before the invasion and then during the military operations that followed as an embedded USA TODAY journalist with U.S. troops, who crossed from Kuwait into Iraq in March 2003. The conflict lasted nearly a decade and claimed the lives of more than 4,400 U.S. troops.

I share my experiences and what the troops did (and didn't) find as they searched bunkers for potential weapons in this Ask USA TODAY video answer, above.

Have a question of your own? Send it to us using #askusatoday on Twitter. Or post it on this story page via Facebook. We'll take a look and try to post a video answer.

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Whatever happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? Ask USA TODAY

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Remember the Bush administration's response to 9/11? On Sept. 8, 2002, just a year after the terrorist attacks on New York City, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told CNN: "We don't want the smoking gun (of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or WMD) to be a mushroom cloud."

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The USA invaded Iraq because "they had weapons of mass destruction WMD". It wasn't true. Read paragraph 10 and the last 4 paragraphs of this article

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The USA invaded Iraq because "they had weapons of mass destruction WMD". It wasn't true. Read paragraph 10 and the last 4 paragraphs of this article

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At War

J.D. Maddox in Baghdad in 2003. Credit... via J.D. Maddox

I rolled west from Baghdad in a convoy of soft-side Humvees. It was a morning in late June 2003, and I had traded a bottle of whiskey for the use of an American military police detachment as protection for a daylong mission to Abu Ghraib prison. As an intelligence officer for the Department of Energy assigned to the Iraq Survey Group - the American-led team searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - I was scheduled to interview an Iraqi prisoner who had been captured weeks before, on suspicion of transporting stolen nuclear material. I couldn't know it that morning, but the interview would entirely change my perspective on America's involvement in Iraq, and set me on a decades-long course of struggling with the false narratives used to persuade us to march into that conflict and other ones.

I gripped my pistol tightly as we moved along in the doorless vehicles, occasionally pointing it in the direction of anything that came near the convoy. I had borrowed the weapon - no more than a party favor in that bacchanal of R.P.G.s and gold-plated Kalashnikovs - from a fellow intelligence officer, who asked me to return it with all of its bullets.

As we approached the outskirts of the prison, the road narrowed, and we drove through a frenetic marketplace. During Saddam Hussein's long rule, families of Abu Ghraib prisoners had made the area their home, and many stayed there after Hussein had released his prisoners in the lead-up to the war. As our oversize vehicles stalled traffic and disrupted local business, men cursed us and spat on the ground. A butcher stared me in the eyes and hacked deeply into a hanging goat carcass. Children came within an arm's length, demanding handouts and laughing mockingly.
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Finding the entryway to the prison was a relief - until an American service member explained that a convoy had been struck just outside the facility by a roadside bomb the day before, severing one soldier's spine. A young guard manning an M60 machine gun waved us in while keeping his weapon aimed in our direction. I hardly felt safer than I did outside - the place was under a constant threat of attack.

There was a sense of anxiety in every facility I visited in Iraq, but the American soldiers at Abu Ghraib had an unusual look of dread and contempt in their eyes. The place felt completely detached from the headquarters I'd been dealing with in Baghdad, and I could tell their isolation was affecting them. At the time I knew nothing about the horrific human-rights abuses that took place behind those prison walls and would be revealed to the world 10 months later, but I could sense that everyone I encountered was on edge.

This was my first deployment to a "shooting war." I had previously served in the Army, but by the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, I had left the military to go into nuclear-counterterrorism operations for the Department of Energy. I had privately questioned the motive for going into Iraq, suspicious of the way the administration had shifted its justification over time, but I still chose to go. Secretary of State Colin Powell's now-notorious United Nations speech on Feb. 5, 2003 - when he argued that Saddam Hussein's regime had developed weapons of mass destruction and posed an imminent threat - assuaged any reservations I might have had. "Every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources," he said. "These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence." There was no more trustworthy spokesman, I thought at the time.

A few months later, I deployed to Qatar and then to Iraq. The Iraq Survey Group would scour the countryside, excavating purported W.M.D. sites and interrogating dumbfounded Iraqi military officers. There was a core group of true believers who led the effort and controlled every meeting. The rest of us followed their lead, unsure what to expect. After just a short time with the group, I had little belief that we would find any nuclear weapons. During late-night rants, my fellow intelligence officers debunked the stories that the Iraqi government had access to African uranium, had developed special centrifuges or was driving biological-warfare trailers around the country. But nobody said anything during work hours. That argument had already been made and lost in Washington.

Instead, I eventually focused my work on counterterrorism questions. I felt that I could best carry out my duty and contribute something useful by following up on more realistic threats. A terrorist named Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, then presumed to be affiliated with Al Qaeda, was reportedly active in the region and had supposedly shown interest in nuclear weapons. I wanted to know everything I could about his operations, and I thought the man arrested for transporting illicit nuclear material could potentially provide a link to al-Zarqawi's network.

At Abu Ghraib, I interviewed my subject in an outdoor holding pen under a tent in a large courtyard. A double line of concertina wire separated me from what seemed like hundreds of prisoners. A few of them threw rocks that landed at my feet as I made my way to the tent. The intense heat of the sun soaked right through the canvas roof, my desert camouflage uniform and my body armor, and it felt like it was boiling my blood. A guard brought my subject. I offered him a cold bottle of water. He cried.

My line of questioning was simple: Tell me about the nuclear material you were transporting. His answers also were simple: I wasn't transporting nuclear material; I didn't do it. For a while I assumed his tears were a ploy. I applied greater pressure: Stop lying to me; tell me where you got it; we know everything. His crying intensified.

In the famous deck of cards that depicted Hussein's henchmen, my subject wouldn't even rank as a two of clubs. The truth is that this old man - caught with car parts patched together to look like a small radioactive-material container - was no more than a con artist. He probably just wanted to make some cash by selling the fake material to a sucker. Almost certainly he was crying in front of me out of genuine despair.

But my questions were unrelenting. I was determined to eke out any details that could offer clues about Al-Zarqawi. A colleague in the tent gave me a confused look, and later commented that my face was indecipherable during the interrogation. My subject protested his innocence and even tried to take my hands in his, pleading for his family's security. In the end, I turned to the interpreter and whispered, "He doesn't belong here." He promised to tell the commanding officer. My comment was as much about the absurdity of the whole situation as it was about the prisoner's innocence. I had risked the lives of a dozen soldiers to be there - only to find a small-scale confirmation of the ludicrous false premises under which we had invaded and occupied Iraq. The Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were no more than a bit of improvised sham, a con man's counterfeit goods. In the process I had stumbled into one of the darkest places in wartime Iraq and into the most revealing truth of the conflict: Nobody belonged there.

When I returned to Washington, some weeks later, it was clear to me that people who hadn't served in Iraq knew little of what was really going on. A friend asked me how the search for weapons of mass destruction was going. I responded wryly, "Well, I'm back, aren't I?" I avoided explaining the enormity of it. I relied on funny stories of swimming in Uday's pool or peeing in Hussein's golden toilets to escape the conversation.

When the Iraq Survey Group's interim progress report was released, in October 2003, the truth became unavoidable. It offered a thinly veiled admission of failure to find any convincing evidence of recent W.M.D. activity. I had often justified my participation as my duty, but that claim began to sound more and more like an excuse for blind adventurism. It became impossible to square my American sense of free will - our image of ourselves as empowered citizens participating in informed choices - with the reality of the way that we were hoodwinked into going along with the invasion of Iraq. I had been taught throughout my childhood and my military training that America conducts wars based on just cause, but the reality emerging from Iraq was that we had been compelled by deception.

A few months later, in April 2004, CBS News broke the story of torture at Abu Ghraib prison, revealing that American guards, maybe even some of the people whom I had seen at the prison, had beaten and abused prisoners. I was horrified. There had been little to stop me from harming my interviewee there, but doing so would have required moral bankruptcy. The actions of the guards at Abu Ghraib invalidated the American idea of liberation that I believed in. To me, the cruelty and abuse of power represented a perversion of American values.

In that moment, it became clear to me that the administration's public narrative of the war was exactly what drove us to that dark place. The time-tested tropes of war for freedom and war of liberation had been used masterfully, and had been enabled by false claims of the Hussein regime's involvement with Al Qaeda. We were fighting in a fantasy and our leaders knew it, even while we were there, yet we persisted.

I was repulsed by the idea that we could have been so easily manipulated. For a time I considered ending my government career. But I also felt that walking away would make me powerless to do anything to push back against the administration's dishonesty. Instead, I refocused my intelligence career on understanding the underlying causes of war. Later, as an adjunct professor, I spent time developing an assessment of historical false justifications, and taught on the subject. To this day, I'm chastened by the memory of my experience at Abu Ghraib, and I'm haunted by the unknown fate of my interviewee. Like many veterans, I carry a deep desire to prevent another conflict like the invasion of Iraq, fueled by my understanding of the war's absurdities. But I'm struck by the power of our national momentum toward going to war - especially unnecessary ones - and alarmed that this momentum seems nearly impossible to halt.

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The Day I Realized I Would Never Find Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq (Published 2020)

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At War I rolled west from Baghdad in a convoy of soft-side Humvees. It was a morning in late June 2003, and I had traded a bottle of whiskey for the use of an American military police detachment as protection for a daylong mission to Abu Ghraib prison.

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How 9-11 and exaggerated fears caused continuous U.S. military presence in Arab countries

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How 9-11 and exaggerated fears caused continuous U.S. military presence in Arab countries

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A dispassionate analysis of the data does not change the horror of terrorism or the pain and loss caused by even one death, but it should drive home the point that 9/11 was an outlier both in terms of lives lost and where it occurred. And its outlier status strongly suggests another 9/​11‐​type event in the U.S. was a near impossibility even before America launched its expansive war on terror.

Curiously, while the attacks of September 11th were unprecedented, success did not require a large terror network. Nineteen men executed the mission. Financial costs were minimal, consisting of several pilot training slots and airfare for the attackers. The technical training required for mission success took place in plain sight here in the United States, not in some clandestine Afghan training camp. All the terrorists legally entered the country through the Visa system. One of the pilots lived with his flight instructors. After departing the U.S. for vacation, two successfully argued their way back into the country by assuring American agents that they were authorized to be here on student visas, specifically so they could attend pilot training school.3 The genius of the attack did not derive from any organizational structure or material largesse, rather it originated within a creative and visionary mind that foresaw an attack method never before attempted and that only Tom Clancy had apparently conceived of in his fictional work, Debt of Honor.

If the preceding argument is correct, the burden of proof shifts to proponents of the claim that U.S. combat operations have prevented another 9/11. They should be called on to lay out an argument of how U.S. military force has managed to prevent a small group of like‐​minded men from again coming together and launching a mega‐​attack. Additionally, defenders of such a claim should explain how air strikes and invasions have wiped out terror finances to the point that groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State can no longer fund a handful of pilot school slots (or whatever their current modus operandi might be).

The most obvious arguments for why another 9/11 has not taken place, then, seem to be 1) the already discussed point that such an unprecedented attack, by definition, cannot be easily replicated and 2) homeland security efforts have been quite successful. After 9/11, the U.S. government ushered in dramatic changes, creating the Department of Homeland Security in the "largest reorganization in the United States government since World War II." The FBI substantially shifted its focus from "traditional criminal investigative areas" to making "the prevention of another terrorist attack" its top priority. Congress passed The USA Patriot Act and other legislation to facilitate intelligence gathering and sharing on potential terror threats. And, financial costs for homeland security rose an estimated $800 billion.4

And those efforts have worked. The Heritage Foundation reports that while Islamist‐​inspired terrorists have plotted at least 101 attacks against the homeland since 2001, law enforcement thwarted virtually all of them. In those 16 years, Islamist‐​inspired terrorists have only managed to execute a successful attack every two years, on average, killing fewer than six per year. That represents less than 0.0004 percent of all American murder victims during the same period. Even lightning has averaged nearly three times as many fatalities.5 And, none of those who carried out these more recent attacks fit the 9/11 terrorist profile. Instead, they were all either U.S. citizens or they had become radicalized after coming to America.
False Assumption #2: Military Operations Have Reduced the Terror Threat
The number of Islamist‐​inspired terror groups and their associated fighters have substantially increased since 9/11, and the increase appears to be in response to U.S. military operations rather than despite them. In Iraq, for instance, U.S. forces failed to restore the state's monopoly on the use of force after removing it during the invasion. That misstep created the opportunity for an explosive civil war. In Afghanistan, the effect was not as severe, but after the U.S. invasion, the security situation did deteriorate back to pre‐​Taliban levels.

In the five years before 2001, al Qaeda and the 13 like‐​minded groups identified by the Department of State averaged approximately 32,000 total adherents. In the 16 years since, those numbers have jumped to an estimated 44 groups with more than 109,000 members (despite the U.S. military claiming to have killed more than 60,000).6 At least three factors likely explain this counterintuitive finding:
McChrystal Math
In 2003, then‐​Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked whether "we [are] capturing, killing, or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us." Six years later, General McChrystal offered an answer: "Let us say that there are 10 [insurgents] in a certain area. Following a military operation, two are killed. How many insurgents are left? Traditional mathematics would say that eight would be left, but there may only be two, because six of the living eight may have said, 'This business of insurgency is becoming dangerous so I am going to do something else.' There are more likely to be as many as 20, because each one you killed has a brother, father, son and friends, who do not necessarily think that they were killed because they were doing something wrong. It does not matter - you killed them. Suddenly, then, there may be 20, making the calculus of military operations very different."7 That does not mean some terrorists and insurgents don't need to die, but it makes clear that in fights like this one, the calculus is not so simple. One kill does not bring America one terrorist closer to victory.
No Monopoly on the Use of Force
U.S. military operations unwittingly degraded the host‐​nation governments' monopoly on the use of force in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. As a result, terror groups have benefitted from the increase in ungoverned spaces and the states' incompetent security forces. The Afghan government, for instance, barely controls or influences half of the country despite a defense and security force of nearly 365,000. Conversely, before sent fleeing by U.S. forces, the Taliban controlled or influenced 90 percent of the country with just an estimated 35,000 forces.8

The security studies literature indicates that civil wars occur where the opportunity for rebellion exists. For example, ineffective or non‐​existent security forces increase the opportunity for civil war because their failure to monopolize the use of force increases rebel viability, making it more likely rebels will initiate attacks against their government.9
Terror Recruitment Fueled by U.S. Military Strikes
As part of the war on terror, America has conducted military operations in at least eight Muslim‐​majority countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Niger. Polling clearly shows the use of U.S. military force has inflamed grievances among Muslims. A survey of 11 Muslim‐​majority populations, for example, found that more respondents agreed than disagreed with the statement, "The United States' interference in the region justifies armed operations against the United States everywhere." That trend even held true among the citizens of supposed U.S. allies like Kuwait, Jordan, and Iraq. Osama bin Laden expressed the roots of this sentiment back in the 1990's. He referred to the "American crusader forces" and "American occupiers," as he railed against the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's two holiest sites. Later, in the midst of the Iraq war, his deputy, Ayman al‐​Zawahiri, echoed that sentiment as he exhorted a subordinate leader, "The Muslim masses...do not rally except against an outside occupying enemy, especially if the enemy is firstly Jewish, and secondly American."10
False Assumption #3: Mental Health Doesn't Matter (Except for Returning U.S. Service Members)
It is ironic that the U.S. military has paid so much attention to the mental health of returning veterans, while ignoring trauma's effects on allied foreign populations and how those effects might impact their governing and warfighting capacity. Joint doctrine on counterinsurgency notes that the current war has "the population as its focus of operations." In recognition of the population's importance, America's warfighters have tried to learn the history, cultural norms, and languages of countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. General Petraeus emphasized the point, noting that "the human terrain is the decisive terrain."11 Yet, despite the evidence suggesting its likely impact on the war, the mental health status of those populations has gone unexamined.

Here is the basic argument: more exposure to traumatic events like war, torture, and rape results in more mental illness, substance abuse, and diminished impulse control. Taken together, mental illness, substance abuse, and diminished impulse control make people more violent, more aggrieved, and less capable. While this may sound new and controversial to warfighters, mental health and trauma scholars have been talking about these linkages for decades.12

In the case of Afghanistan, studies indicate 29 to 50 percent of the population currently suffer from PTSD. And when you add in depression, the numbers may rise as high as 68 percent. Because of all the torture, rape, war, and domestic violence that Afghans have been subjected to over the past 40 years, not only do they suffer from substantially elevated mental illness rates, but they are also afflicted by substance abuse problems twice the global average and climbing, as well as diminished impulse control. An example of the latter occurred in 2010 during my military service there. An argument erupted between two Afghan colonels in their operations center. The colonel we all loved because of his bravery proved no rhetorical match for his counterpart. However, instead of ending the argument or walking away, he unholstered his sidearm and drew down on the other Afghan colonel. Thankfully, an American military officer was nearby and literally stepped between the two Afghans and prevented the potential loss of life.

When combined, more mental illness, substance abuse, and impulse control problems make Afghans more likely to use violence against one another to resolve problems and achieve their goals. No wonder, then, that more than half of surveyed Afghans indicated they have been the victim of assaultive violence versus a paltry four percent of the populations in low trauma nations.13

When U.S. service members fighting in the war on terror show signs of mental health problems, many actions are taken. First, they are removed from the trauma environment. Then, they receive the needed medical care, which may include prescription drugs. Additionally, their military responsibilities are curtailed for a time, so they can focus on recovery and avoid adding unnecessary stress into their lives. Finally, a commander might temporarily revoke their authority to bear arms to minimize the threat they could pose to themselves or others.14

But Afghans, Iraqis, and others caught in the war on terror face just the opposite reality. Extremely high rates of trauma continue, and they have no reasonable chance of treatment. For instance, experts describe Afghanistan's mental health capability as "nonexistent," qualified providers as "an acute shortage," and in general terms, "chronic mental illness has been left unattended in Afghanistan for decades."15 In addition, America and the international community placed additional responsibilities on Afghans, which likely added to their stress. Specifically, the international community pushed democracy on Afghanistan, arguably the best yet hardest form of government to do right. To succeed, democracy requires a legitimate, capable, and responsive government and an engaged populace. After 40 years of the severest traumas, Afghans' abilities are so reduced and their society too fractured for such a demanding form of government. No surprise, then, that the Afghan government ranks as more corrupt than 96 percent of all other nations and the country receives Freedom House's lowest rating-"not free."16

In response to all the trauma and the negative changes which often accompany it, Afghans should be expected to resort to violence as a means of goal achievement and problem resolution more often than a low trauma population. In addition to making people more violent, all the trauma likely fuels more civil war in two other ways: by increasing grievances and creating more opportunity for civil war.17 A person who has been tortured, raped, or exposed to war violence has, by definition, a very real and enduring grievance against the perpetrator or the group that the perpetrator belongs to. Civil war scholars have long believed that grievances are what motivate citizens to organize and take up arms against their government.

Trauma should also increase the opportunity for civil war by making the government and security forces less effective. For instance, severe and repetitive trauma exposure often leads to mental illness, substance abuse, and physiological changes to parts of the brain (e.g., amygdala, basal ganglia). In turn, those three factors conspire to lower individual IQ, diminish the ability to reason and plan, decrease attention span, and reduce the capacity for trust.18 A government and security force increasingly forced to recruit from such a population will become less effective over time, and ineffective security forces make civil war more possible.
Conclusion
The war on terror has now entered its seventeenth year. Military operations appear to have expanded into Niger and potentially other countries. Forces are surging back into Afghanistan and an indefinite military presence in Syria appears to be current U.S. policy. All of this appears to be driven, in large part, by three false assumptions. In reality, though, the war on terror has done little to prevent another 9/11, and all of the military force employed abroad has not made Americans any safer. That suggests the United States should step back from the war on terror by ratcheting down the use of military force abroad, while emphasizing internal homeland security measures and external intelligence sharing.

Finally, the years of trauma have taken their toll on Afghans, Iraqis, and others, resulting in extremely high rates of mental illness, substance abuse, and diminished impulse control. And those factors will likely fuel civil war into the future, whether the United States stays in the fight or not.
End Notes
1. See, for example, polls and surveys from the Chicago Council, Rasmussen Reports, and Polling Report available at http://​www​.pollingre​port​.com/​t​e​r​r​o​r.htm, http://​www​.ras​mussen​re​ports​.com/​p​u​b​l​i​c​_​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​m​o​o​d​_​o​f​_​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​/​w​a​r​_​o​n​_​t​e​r​r​o​r​_​nov08, and https://​www​.thechicago​coun​cil​.org/​s​i​t​e​s​/​d​e​f​a​u​l​t​/​f​i​l​e​s​/​s​u​r​v​e​y​_​t​e​r​r​o​r​-​a​c​t​s​-​a​n​d​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​s​_​2​0​1​6​0​8​2​2​-​2.pdf.

2. Data comes from the Global Terrorism Database, available at https://​www​.start​.umd​.edu/gtd/.

3. As noted in the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States' report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, the hijackers entered the United States with approved visas, though some provided false information or employed other fraudulent techniques, https://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/911_TerrTrav_Monograph.pdf;

9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2004) 224, 227-229, https://9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf.

4. Elizabeth Bazan, The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: An Overview of the Statutory Framework and U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review Decisions (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, [updated] 2017), https://​fas​.org/​s​g​p​/​c​r​s​/​i​n​t​e​l​/​R​L​3​0​4​6​5.pdf; Watson Institute - Brown University, "Homeland Security Budget," Costs of War, September 2016, http://​wat​son​.brown​.edu/​c​o​s​t​s​o​f​w​a​r​/​c​o​s​t​s​/​e​c​o​n​o​m​i​c​/​b​u​d​g​e​t/dhs; Neta Crawford, United States Budgetary Costs of Post‐​9/​11 Wars Through, Costs of War Project, 2017, http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2017/Costs%20of%20U.S.%20Post-9_11%20NC%20Crawford%20FINAL%20.pdf pp. 2-3; Department of Justice, The External Effects of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Reprioritization Efforts (2005), iii, https://​oig​.jus​tice​.gov/​r​e​p​o​r​t​s​/​F​B​I​/​a​0​5​3​7​/​f​i​n​a​l.pdf; Robert Mueller, "Testimony Before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Science, the Departments of State, Justice and Commerce, and Related Agencies," September 14, 2006, https://​archives​.fbi​.gov/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​s​/​n​e​w​s​/​t​e​s​t​i​m​o​n​y​/​t​h​e​-​f​b​i​-​t​r​a​n​s​f​o​r​m​a​t​i​o​n​-​s​i​n​c​e​-2001

5. David Inserra, "Foiled Plot in Miami Is 99th Terror Plot Against US Since 9/11," November 1, 2017, http://​www​.her​itage​.org/​t​e​r​r​o​r​i​s​m​/​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​a​r​y​/​f​o​i​l​e​d​-​p​l​o​t​-​m​i​a​m​i​-​9​9​t​h​-​t​e​r​r​o​r​-​p​l​o​t​-​a​g​a​i​n​s​t​-​u​s-911; A. Trevor Thrall and Erik Goepner, "Step Back: Lessons for U.S. Foreign Policy from the Failed War on Terror," Cato Institute Policy Analysis #814 (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2017), 6, https://​object​.cato​.org/​s​i​t​e​s​/​c​a​t​o​.​o​r​g​/​f​i​l​e​s​/​p​u​b​s​/​p​d​f​/​p​a​-​8​1​4.pdf; and Laura Geggel, "Lightning deaths hit a record low in 2017," Fox News, January 3, 2018, http://​www​.foxnews​.com/​s​c​i​e​n​c​e​/​2​0​1​8​/​0​1​/​0​3​/​l​i​g​h​t​n​i​n​g​-​d​e​a​t​h​s​-​h​i​t​-​r​e​c​o​r​d​-​l​o​w​-​i​n​-​2​0​1​7​.html.

6. A. Trevor Thrall and Erik Goepner, "Counterinsurgency Math Revisited," Small Wars Journal Blog, January 3, 2018, http://​small​warsjour​nal​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​c​o​u​n​t​e​r​i​n​s​u​r​g​e​n​c​y​-​m​a​t​h​-​r​e​v​i​sited, derived from Department of State Country Reports on Terrorism 2000 through 2015 and Stanford University's Mapping Militant Organizations Project.

7. Donald Rumsfeld, "Global War on Terrorism," memo to select Department of Defense leaders, October 16, 2003, https://​fas​.org/​i​r​p​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​0​3​/​1​0​/​r​u​m​s​f​e​l​d​1​0​1​6​0​3.pdf; Stanley McChrystal, "Speech on Afghanistan," delivered before the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, United Kingdom, October 1, 2009, https://​www​.real​clear​pol​i​tics​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​2​0​0​9​/​1​0​/​0​1​/​g​e​n​_​m​c​c​h​r​y​s​t​a​l​s​_​a​d​d​r​e​s​s​_​o​n​_​a​f​g​h​a​n​i​s​t​a​n​_​9​8​5​3​7​.html.

8. Bill Roggio and Alexandra Gutowski, "LWJ Map Assessment: Taliban Controls or Contests 45% of Afghan Districts;" Erik Goepner, "Afghanistan's Biggest Obstacle is Its Government," Orange County Register (November 1, 2017), https://​www​.ocre​g​is​ter​.com/​2​0​1​7​/​1​1​/​0​1​/​a​f​g​h​a​n​i​s​t​a​n​s​-​b​i​g​g​e​s​t​-​o​b​s​t​a​c​l​e​-​i​s​-​i​t​s​-​g​o​v​e​r​n​ment/; and Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2001 and Freedom in the World 2017 (2001 and 2017), https://​free​dom​house​.org/​r​e​p​o​r​t​-​t​y​p​e​s​/​f​r​e​e​d​o​m​-​world.

9. Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler, and Dominic Rohner, "Beyond Greed and Grievance: Feasibility and Civil War," Oxford Economic Papers 61.1 (2009): 1-27; James Fearon and David Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," American Political Science Review 97.1 (2003): 75-90.

10. See the Arab Barometer http://​www​.arab​barom​e​ter​.org/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​o​n​l​i​n​e​-​d​a​t​a​-​a​n​a​lysis, FBIS, "Compilation of Usama Bin Laden Statements: 1994 - January 2004," January 2004, https://​fas​.org/​i​r​p​/​w​o​r​l​d​/​p​a​r​a​/​u​b​l​-​f​b​i​s.pdf, and Ayman al-Zawahiri's letter to Abu Mus'ab al‐​Zarqawi, https://​ctc​.usma​.edu/​w​p​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​u​p​l​o​a​d​s​/​2​0​1​3​/​1​0​/​Z​a​w​a​h​i​r​i​s​-​L​e​t​t​e​r​-​t​o​-​Z​a​r​q​a​w​i​-​T​r​a​n​s​l​a​t​i​o​n.pdf.

11. Joint Staff, Joint Publication 3-24 Counterinsurgency (2013), III-4, http://​www​.jcs​.mil/​P​o​r​t​a​l​s​/​3​6​/​D​o​c​u​m​e​n​t​s​/​D​o​c​t​r​i​n​e​/​p​u​b​s​/​j​p​3​_​2​4.pdf; Leo Shane III and Kevin Baron, "Petraeus confirmation hearing, live" Stars and Stripes, June 29, 2010, https://​www​.stripes​.com/​b​l​o​g​s​-​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​/​s​t​r​i​p​e​s​-​c​e​n​t​r​a​l​/​s​t​r​i​p​e​s​-​c​e​n​t​r​a​l​-​1​.​8​0​4​0​/​p​e​t​r​a​e​u​s​-​c​o​n​f​i​r​m​a​t​i​o​n​-​h​e​a​r​i​n​g​-​l​i​v​e​-​1​.​1​0​9​2​2​6​#​.​W​k​-​o​a​L​enEdU.

12. Chris Brewin et al., "Memory for Emotionally Neutral Information in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Meta‐​Analytic Investigation," Journal of Abnormal Psychology 116, no. 3 (2007): 448-63; Pia Pechtel and Diego Pizzagalli, "Effects of Early Life Stress on Cognitive and Affective Function: An Integrated Review of Human Literature," Psychopharmacology 214.1 (2011): 55-70 ; Zachary Steel et al., "Association of Torture and Other Potentially Traumatic Events with Mental Health Outcomes among Populations Exposed to Mass Conflict and Displacement," JAMA 302.5 (2009): 537-549; Darrel Regier, Mary Farmer, and Donald Rae, "Comorbidity of Mental Disorders With Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse: Results From the Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) Study," JAMA 264, no. 19 (November 21, 1990): 2514; Timothy Weaver et al., "Comorbidity of Substance Misuse and Mental Illness in Community Mental Health and Substance Misuse Services," The British Journal of Psychiatry 183, no. 4 (September 2003): 304-31.

13. Catherine Panter‐​Brick et al., "Violence, Suffering, and Mental Health in Afghanistan: A School‐​Based Survey," The Lancet 374, no. 9692 (September 2009): 814; Hillary Wildt et al., "War Trauma, Psychological Distress, and Coping among Afghan Civilians Seeking Primary Health Care," International Perspectives in Psychology: Research, Practice, Consultation 6, no. 2 (April 2017): 82; Annette Gerritsen et al., "Physical and mental health of Afghan, Iranian and Somali asylum seekers and refugees living in the Netherlands," Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 41.1 (2006): 18-26; Israel Bronstein, Paul Montgomery, and Stephanie Dobrowolski, "PTSD in Asylum‐​seeking Male Adolescents from Afghanistan," Journal of Traumatic Stress 25.5 (2012): 551-557; Steel et al. "Association of Torture..."; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, "Drug Use in Afghanistan: 2009 Survey. Executive Summary" (Kabul, Afghanistan: UNODC, 2010) 3, 6, http://​www​.unodc​.org/​d​o​c​u​m​e​n​t​s​/​d​a​t​a​-​a​n​d​-​a​n​a​l​y​s​i​s​/​S​t​u​d​i​e​s​/​A​f​g​h​a​n​-​D​r​u​g​-​S​u​r​v​e​y​-​2​0​0​9​-​E​x​e​c​u​t​i​v​e​-​S​u​m​m​a​r​y​-​w​e​b.pdf; Dianne Tice, Ellen Bratslavsky, and Roy Baumeister, "Emotional Distress Regulation Takes Precedence over Impulse Control: If You Feel Bad, Do It!," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80, no. 1 (2001): 53; Michael Norko and Madelon Baranoski, "The Prediction of Violence; Detection of Dangerousness," Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention 8, no. 1 (February 2008): 76; Hepp et al., "Prevalence of Exposure to Potentially Traumatic Events and PTSD," 154; Barbara Lopes Cardozo, "Mental Health, Social Functioning, and Disability in Postwar Afghanistan," JAMA 292, no. 5 (August 4, 2004) 575, 579; Willem Scholte, Miranda Olff, and Peter Ventevogel, "Mental Health Symptoms Following War and Repression in Eastern Afghanistan," JAMA 292, no. 5 (August 4, 2004) 589-590.

14. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, "How Common is PTSD," PTSD: National Center for PTSD(October 3, 2016), https://​www​.ptsd​.va​.gov/​p​u​b​l​i​c​/​P​T​S​D​-​o​v​e​r​v​i​e​w​/​b​a​s​i​c​s​/​h​o​w​-​c​o​m​m​o​n​-​i​s​-​p​t​s​d.asp.

15. Cardozo, "Mental Health, Social Functioning, and Disability in Postwar Afghanistan," 576; Panter‐​Brick et al., "Violence, Suffering, and Mental Health in Afghanistan," 813.

16. See Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index at https://​www​.trans​paren​cy​.org/​c​o​u​n​t​r​y/AFG and Freedom House's Freedom in the World at https://​free​dom​house​.org/​r​e​p​o​r​t​/​f​r​e​e​d​o​m​-​w​o​r​l​d​/​2​0​1​8​/​a​f​g​h​a​n​istan.

17. Fearon and Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War"; Collier, Hoeffler, and Rohner, "Beyond Greed and Grievance,"

18. Brewin et al., "Memory for Emotionally Neutral Information in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder"; Pechtel and Pizzagalli, "Effects of Early Life Stress on Cognitive and Affective Function"; Fu Lye Woon, Shabnam Sood, and Dawson Hedges, "Hippocampal Volume Deficits Associated with Exposure to Psychological Trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Adults: A Meta‐​Analysis," Progress in Neuro‐​Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry 34, no. 7 (October 1, 2010): 1181-88; Deborah Weber and Cecil Reynolds, "Clinical Perspectives on Neurobiological Effects of Psychological Trauma," Neuropsychology Review 14, no. 2 (June 1, 2004): 115-29; Anke Karl et al., "A Meta‐​Analysis of Structural Brain Abnormalities in PTSD," Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 30, no. 7 (2006): 1004-31.

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The False Assumptions Fueling America's Endless War

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A dispassionate analysis of the data does not change the horror of terrorism or the pain and loss caused by even one death, but it should drive home the point that 9/11 was an outlier both in terms of lives lost and where it occurred.

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false documents and false beliefs increase Islamaphobia

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false documents and false beliefs increase Islamaphobia

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Although anti-Muslim sentiments certainly existed long before 2001, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the response to them intensified anti-Muslim tropes, namely the presumption that Islam is inherently violent or that Muslims have a propensity for terrorism. Since 9/11, specific individuals have turned Islamophobia into an industry, scapegoating Muslims to further their own agendas.

Like other forms of intolerance, however, Islamophobia can be objectively assessed. Empirical studies are an effective means of exposing this prejudice, one that plagues both sides of the political spectrum.

Anti-Muslim rhetoric

The rhetoric of Canadian conservative author Mark Steyn is typical of right-wing Islamophobia. For instance, Steyn claims that " most Muslims either wish or are indifferent to the death of the societies in which they live."

Likewise, Dutch politician and right-wing populist Geert Wilders refers to the Qur'an as " a source of inspiration for, and justification of, hatred, violence and terrorism in the world, Europe and America." British conservative political commentator Douglas Murray suggests that to reduce terrorism, the United Kingdom requires " a bit less Islam."

Prominent left-wing commentators also contribute to the same scaremongering stereotypes as their conservative counterparts. For example, American neuroscientist and new atheist Sam Harris asserts that " there is a direct link between the doctrine of Islam and Muslim terrorism."

Similarly, American comedian and television producer Bill Maher believes that there is a " connecting tissue" of intolerance and brutality that binds 1.6 billion Muslims to terrorist groups like ISIS. And Somali-born Dutch American activist and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali states that " violence is inherent in the doctrine of Islam."

None of these characterizations, however, are sufficient from a scholarly viewpoint. Self-evident positions and gross exaggerations tend to detract from the main issue: whether the depiction of Muslims as violent extremists is misleading.

Most Muslims reject violent extremism

Globally speaking, Muslims overwhelmingly reject suicide bombings and other forms of violence against civilians in defence of Islam. Studies found that Muslims view such extremism as rarely or never justified, including 96 per cent in Azerbaijan, 95 per cent in Kazakhstan, 92 per cent in Indonesia and 91 per cent in Iraq.

The 2016 report What Muslims Want, the most extensive research of British Muslims ever conducted, found that nine of 10 British Muslims reject terrorism outright. When asked "To what extent do you sympathize with or condemn people who commit terrorist actions as a form of political protest," 90 per cent condemned these actions, five per cent didn't know and three per cent neither condemned nor condoned political acts of terror.

That's hardly "most Muslims," as Steyn contends.

When a large-scale global survey asked if "attacks on civilians are morally justified," similar results were found when comparing Muslim attitudes to the general public in France, Germany and the United Kingdom. In fact, the responses were almost indistinguishable: French public (one per cent) versus Muslims in Paris (two per cent); German public (one per cent) versus Muslims in Berlin (0.5 per cent); and British public (three per cent) versus Muslims in London (two per cent).

In North America, research outcomes were strikingly similar. In a 2016 Environics Institute survey, only one per cent of Canadian Muslims endorsed the following statement: "many" or "most" Muslims in Canada support violent extremism. When asked if killing civilians for political, social or religious reasons can ever be justified, a 2017 Pew Research Center survey found that 84 per cent of American Muslims confirmed that it is "never/rarely" justifiable.

Because 12 per cent of American Muslims replied that violence against civilians can be "sometimes/often" justified, anti-Muslim activists argue that hundreds of thousands of Muslims remain radicalized. The qualitative responses of Muslims are quite revealing in this regard: violence is permitted if attacked, both as individuals and as a nation. In other words, in self-defense. When the U.S. general public was surveyed, their answers were practically identical: 83 per cent and 14 per cent respectively.

Contrary to Maher's belief that the world's Muslims support terrorist organizations like ISIS, most people in countries with significant Muslim populations have an overwhelmingly negative view of ISIS, including virtually 100 per cent of respondents in Lebanon, 94 per cent in Jordan and 84 per cent in the Palestinian territories (10 per cent of Palestinians had no opinion of ISIS).

False assumptions

Islamophobia is an apt term for classifying inaccurate assumptions concerning Muslims and Islam. Those forwarding an anti-Muslim agenda believe that their viewpoints are coherent, but as Eli Massey and Nathan J. Robinson point out, the function of a prejudice " leads us to believe that our generalizations are based on reason and evidence, even when reason and evidence actually point in an entirely different direction."

The main assertion that Muslims largely support extremist violence is groundless. Because Islamophobia distorts the western image of Muslims, scientific studies serve as an important corrective in two important ways. First, they expose Islamophobic attitudes that have gripped the West since 9/11 and second, they help to decrease the spread of anti-Muslim vitriol by providing a rational forum for discussion.

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Islamophobia in western media is based on false premises

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Although anti-Muslim sentiments certainly existed long before 2001, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the response to them intensified anti-Muslim tropes, namely the presumption that Islam is inherently violent or that Muslims have a propensity for terrorism. Since 9/11, specific individuals have turned Islamophobia into an industry, scapegoating Muslims to further their own agendas.

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Operation Northwoods. The US government used fake documents to justify an attack on Cuba in 1962

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Operation Northwoods. The US government used fake documents to justify an attack on Cuba in 1962

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Operation Northwoods was a false flag operation against American citizens that originated within the US Department of Defense of the United States government in 1962. The proposals called for CIA operatives to both stage and actually commit acts of violent terrorism against American military and civilian targets, blaming them on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba. The possibilities detailed in the document included the remote control of civilian aircraft which would be secretly a repainted US Air Force plane, the possible assassination of Cuban immigrants, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, blowing up a U.S. ship, and orchestrating terrorism in U.S. cities. The attacks on Americans were not supposed to be violent, while the attacks on Cuban refugee boats were supposed to be "real or simulated", with the maximum extent of wounding them for media publicity. The proposals were rejected by President John F. Kennedy.

Fidel Castro had taken power in Cuba in 1959 and began allowing communists into the new Cuban government, nationalizing U.S. businesses and improving relations with the Soviet Union, arousing the concern of the U.S. military due to the Cold War. The operation proposed creating public support for a war against Cuba by blaming it for terrorist acts that would actually be perpetrated by the U.S. government. To this end, Operation Northwoods proposals recommended hijackings and bombings followed by the introduction of phony evidence that would implicate the Cuban government. It stated:

The desired result from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.

Several other proposals were included within Operation Northwoods, including real or simulated actions against various U.S. military and civilian targets. The operation recommended developing a "Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington", which involved the bombing of civilian targets themselves, which was to be blamed on the "irresponsible" Cuban government to paint a false image of Fidel Castro and misinform the American public.

The plan was drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and sent to the Secretary of Defense. Although part of the US government's anti-communist Cuban Project, Operation Northwoods was never officially accepted; it was authorized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but then rejected by President Kennedy. None of the false flag operations became active under the auspices of the Operation Northwoods proposals.

The main Operations Northwoods proposal was presented in a document titled "Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)," a top secret collection of draft memoranda written by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The document was presented by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on 13 March 1962 as a preliminary submission for planning purposes. The Joint Chiefs recommended that both the covert and overt aspects of any such operation be assigned to them. The previously secret document was originally made public on 18 November 1997, by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board, a U.S. federal agency overseeing the release of government records related to John F. Kennedy's assassination. A total of 1,521 pages of once-secret military records covering 1962 to 1964 were concomitantly declassified by said Review Board.

"Appendix to Enclosure A" and "Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A" of the Northwoods document were first published online by the National Security Archive on 6 November 1998 in a joint venture with CNN as part of its 1998 Cold War television documentary series-specifically, as a documentation supplement to "Episode 10: Cuba," which aired on 29 November 1998. "Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A" is the section of the document which contains the proposals to stage false flag terrorist attacks.

The Northwoods document was published online in a more complete form, including cover memoranda, by the National Security Archive on 30 April 2001.

In response to a request for pretexts for military intervention by the Chief of Operations of the Cuba Project, Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, the document listed methods, including false flag provocations, and outlined plans, that the authors believed would garner public and international support for U.S. military intervention in Cuba. According to the documents, the plan called for several steps to be taken in an attempt to provoke Cuba into an action against the United States, then blame it for "hostilities" carried out by the U.S. against its own military base at Guantanamo; these would be followed by executing offensive operations there against tactical Cuban civilian targets and military emplacements, leading to "large scale United States military operations":

1. Since it would seem desirable to use legitimate provocation as the basis for U.S. military intervention in Cuba, a cover and deception plan, to include requisite preliminary actions such as had been developed in response to Task 33 c, could be executed as an initial effort to provoke Cuban reactions. Harassment plus deceptive actions to convince the Cubans of imminent invasion would be emphasized. Our military posture throughout execution of the plan will allow a rapid change from exercise to intervention if Cuban response justifies.

2. A series of well coordinated incidents will be planned to take place in and around Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.

3. United States would respond by executing offensive operations to secure water and power supplies, destroying artillery and mortar emplacements which threaten the base.

4. Commence large scale United States military operations.

In addition to Operation Northwoods, under the Operation Mongoose program the U.S. Department of Defense had a number of similar proposals for actions to be taken against the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro.

Twelve of these proposals come from a 2 February 1962 memorandum entitled "Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass or Disrupt Cuba," written by Brig. Gen. William H. Craig and submitted to Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, the commander of the Operation Mongoose project.

The memorandum outlines Operation Bingo, a false flag plan to "create an incident which has the appearance of an attack on U.S. facilities (GMO) in Cuba, thus providing an excuse for use of U.S. military might to overthrow the current government of Cuba."

It also includes Operation Dirty Trick, another false flag plot to blame Castro if the 1962 Mercury manned space flight carrying John Glenn crashed, saying: "The objective is to provide irrevocable proof that, should the MERCURY manned orbit flight fail, the fault lies with the Communists et al. Cuba []." It continues, "This to be accomplished by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans."

Even after General Lemnitzer lost his job as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Chiefs still planned false-flag pretext operations at least into 1963. A different U.S. Department of Defense policy paper created in 1963 discussed a plan to make it appear that Cuba had attacked a member of the Organization of American States (OAS) so that the United States could retaliate. The U.S. Department of Defense document says of one of the scenarios, "A contrived 'Cuban' attack on an OAS member could be set up, and the attacked state could be urged to take measures of self-defense and request assistance from the U.S. and OAS."

The plan expressed confidence that by this action, "the U.S. could almost certainly obtain the necessary two-thirds support among OAS members for collective action against Cuba."

Included in the nations the Joint Chiefs suggested as targets for covert attacks were Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Since both were members of the British Commonwealth, the Joint Chiefs hoped that by secretly attacking them and then falsely blaming Cuba, the United States could incite the people of the United Kingdom into supporting a war against Castro. As the U.S. Department of Defense report noted:

Any of the contrived situations described above are inherently, extremely risky in our democratic system in which security can be maintained, after the fact, with very great difficulty. If the decision should be made to set up a contrived situation it should be one in which participation by U.S. personnel is limited only to the most highly trusted covert personnel. This suggests the infeasibility of the use of military units for any aspect of the contrived situation."

The U.S. Department of Defense report even suggested covertly paying a person in Castro's government to stage a false flag attack against the United States: "The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe one of Castro's subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on [the U.S. Navy base at] Guantanamo."

Kennedy rejected the Northwoods proposal. A JCS/Pentagon document, a memo by Lansdale entitled MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT, 16 MARCH 1962, reads: "General Lemnitzer commented that the military had contingency plans for U.S. intervention. Also it had plans for creating plausible pretexts to use force, with the pretext either attacks on U.S. aircraft or a Cuban action in Latin America for which we could retaliate. The President said bluntly that we were not discussing the use of military force, that General Lemnitzer might find the U.S. so engaged in Berlin or elsewhere that he couldn't use the contemplated 4 divisions in Cuba." The proposal was sent for approval to the secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, but was not implemented.

Following presentation of the Northwoods plan, Kennedy removed Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, although he became Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in January 1963. U.S. military leaders began to perceive Kennedy as going soft on Cuba, and the President became increasingly unpopular with the military. A rift had already reared during Kennedy's disagreements with the service chiefs over the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 and flared up again with his June 10, 1963 announcement of a unilateral U.S. Test Ban Treaty.

Physical documentation on Operation Northwoods became declassified through the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. This act declassified a total of four million documents, including Operation Northwoods, and was made available through the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. However, public knowledge of Operation Northwoods did not come until 2001 with the release of a book by the author James Bamford titled Body of Secrets.

On 3 August 2001, the National Assembly of People's Power of Cuba (the main legislative body of the Republic of Cuba) issued a statement referring to Operation Northwoods and Operation Mongoose wherein it condemned such U.S. government plans.

1. ^ U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)", U.S. Department of Defense, 13 March 1962. The Operation Northwoods document in PDF format on the website of the independent, non-governmental research institute the National Security Archive at the George Washington University Gelman Library, Washington, D.C. Direct PDF links: here and here.

2. ^ "U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba". ABC News. 7 January 2006.

3. ^ "1962 US Joint Chiefs Of Staff Operation Northwoods Unclassified Document Bolsheviks NWO". Internet Archive. 1962.

4. ^ "Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense. Subject: Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)" (PDF). The George Washington University. 13 March 1962. p. 11.

5. ^ Ruppe, David (May 1, 2001). "U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba". ABC News.

6. ^ Mike Feinsilber, "At a tense time, plots abounded to humiliate Castro," Associated Press (AP), 18 November 1997; also available here.

7. ^ "The Records of the Assassination Records Review Board," National Archives and Records Administration.

8. ^ Tim Weiner, "Documents Show Pentagon's Anti-Castro Plots During Kennedy Years," New York Times, 19 November 1997; appeared on the same date and by the same author in the New York Times itself as "Declassified Papers Show Anti-Castro Ideas Proposed to Kennedy," late edition-final, section A, pg. 25, column 1.

9. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, ^ "Appendix to Enclosure A: Memorandum for Chief of Operations, Cuba Project" and "Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A: Pretexts to Justify U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba," U.S. Department of Defense, c. March 1962. First published online by the National Security Archive on 6 November 1998, as part of CNN's Cold War documentary series. "Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A" is the section of the Operation Northwoods document which contains the proposals to stage terrorist attacks.

10. ^ "Cold War Teacher Materials: Episodes," Archived 2007-01-26 at the Wayback Machine and "Educator Guide to CNN's Cold War Episode 10: Cuba," Archived 2007-01-26 at the Wayback Machine Turner Learning (Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.).

11. ^ Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A: Pretexts to Justify U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba Archived 2008-08-13 at the Wayback Machine, media.nara.gov, accessed 3 September 2009

12. ^ Bohning, Don (2005). The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-1965. Potomac Books. p. 105. ISBN 978-1-57488-675-7.

13. ^ James Bamford, Chapter 4: "Fists" of Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency From the Cold War Through the Dawn of a New Century (New York: Doubleday, first edition, 24 April 2001), ISBN 0-385-49907-8.

14. Mike Feinsilber, ^ "Records Show Plan To Provoke Castro," Archived 2005-08-24 at the Wayback Machine Associated Press (AP), 29 January 1998.

15. ^ Lansdale Memo of 16 Mar 1962. This memo records a high-level meeting in the White House three days after McNamara was presented with Operation Northwoods.

16. ^ Davis, Tracy C. "Operation Northwoods: The Pentagon's Scripts for Overthrowing Castro." TDR, vol. 50, no. 1, 2006, pp. 134-148. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4492663. Accessed 4 Mar. 2021.

17. ^ "Statement by the National Assembly of People's Power of the Republic of Cuba," National Assembly of People's Power of Cuba, 3 August 2001; also available here Archived 2007-09-28 at the Wayback Machine.

Jon Elliston, editor, Psywar on Cuba: The Declassified History of U.S. Anti-Castro Propaganda (Melbourne, Australia and New York: Ocean Press, 1999), ISBN 1-876175-09-5.

The Full Operation Northwoods document in both JPEG and fully searchable HTML format.

Scott Shane and Tom Bowman with contribution from Laura Sullivan, "New book on NSA sheds light on secrets: U.S. terror plan was Cuba invasion pretext," Baltimore Sun, 24 April 2001.

Ron Kampeas, "Memo: U.S. Mulled Fake Cuba Pretext," Associated Press (AP), 25 April 2001.

Bruce Schneier, "'Body of Secrets' by James Bamford: The author of a pioneering work on the NSA delivers a new book of revelations about the mysterious agency's coverups, eavesdropping and secret missions," Salon.com, 25 April 2001.

David Ruppe, "U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba; Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba," ABC News, 1 May 2001.

"The Truth Is Out There-1962 memo from National Security Agency," Harper's Magazine, July 2001.

Chris Floyd, "Head Cases," Moscow Times, 21 December 2001, pg. VIII; also appeared in St. Petersburg Times, Issue 733 (100), 25 December 2001.

National Security Archive, "Pentagon Proposed Pretext for Cuba Invasion in 1962", April 30, 2001.

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Operation Northwoods was a false flag operation against American citizens that originated within the US Department of Defense of the United States government in 1962. The proposals called for CIA operatives to both stage and actually commit acts of violent terrorism against American military and civilian targets, blaming them on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba.

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Personal liberties are taken away by laws and governments because of the threat of Covid. That may be ok but there is no end to the use of those restrictions even after Covid is over.

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Personal liberties are taken away by laws and governments because of the threat of Covid. That may be ok but there is no end to the use of those restrictions even after Covid is over.

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As the Covid-19 pandemic spread across the globe, harsh measures were gradually introduced. Governments have begun to limit individual rights and privacy. The media and politicians, as well as some virologists and medical professionals, have stirred up panic. Those who question the necessity of taking drastic steps are intolerantly marginalized and branded as either idiots or radicals.

The success of Western democracies is based on the guarantee of freedom and human rights. The United States Declaration of Independence and constitution provide citizens with unalienable rights that include liberty and the pursuit of happiness (which is not guaranteed, as it is defined individually), as well as privacy and property rights. The constitution's objective was to protect the individual from the state. Tolerance and freedom of opinion were also protected.

Stealing freedoms

Property rights have since become restricted because of ever-expanding regulations and excessive taxation. The high tax burden is not solely a result of the governments' tendency to overspend. Leftist ideologies and populist slogans demanding "more equality" also play a role in raising taxes.

Many of the present guidelines appear unjustified. And there has been no reliance on individual responsibility

Waves of regulations are steadily narrowing the boundaries of individual activity and increasing the state's power over citizens. Unfortunately, this is a global phenomenon.

In 1998, the so-called great eavesdropping law ( grosse Lauschangriff) was passed in Germany. It allowed security agencies to plant surveillance devices in suspects' homes without approval from a judge. The measure was highly contested at the time. In 2014, the European Parliament enacted a directive requiring telecommunication and internet providers to retain all communication data for two years and make it available to law enforcement agencies upon request. Every EU citizen is now treated as a suspect. The Court of Justice of the European Union considered the directive to be "a wide-ranging and particularly serious interference with the fundamental rights to the respect for private life and to the protection of personal data, without that interference being limited to what is strictly necessary." The EU Parliament was supposed to amend the directive but has failed to do so, and it remains in force.

In many cases, the measures enacted to contain Covid-19 encroach upon personal rights. Such extraordinary circumstances can require restrictions, but they should have a clear expiry date. Many of the present guidelines appear unjustified. And there has been no reliance on individual responsibility. The governments' approach toward citizens has been shockingly paternalistic; they treat the population like misbehaving children.

This month, Germany passed the Infection Protection Act - a law "for the protection of the population in the event of an epidemic situation of national concern." Again, this is a power grab, giving the authorities more leeway to restrict personal freedom, privacy and entrepreneurship. For example, it allows state institutions to trace individuals and store their data.

Germany is not the only European country to have introduced such measures. The 2014 data retention regulation has turned the EU into a vast surveillance zone. Now, Covid-19 gives governments even more power over citizens. The notion that the constitution should protect people from the state has been effectively discarded.

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Governments are invoking the threat of the pandemic to curb citizens' rights

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As the Covid-19 pandemic spread across the globe, harsh measures were gradually introduced. Governments have begun to limit individual rights and privacy. The media and politicians, as well as some virologists and medical professionals, have stirred up panic. Those who question the necessity of taking drastic steps are intolerantly marginalized and branded as either idiots or radicals.

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The impact of Covid measures on human rights and freedom of expression in Europe

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The impact of Covid measures on human rights and freedom of expression in Europe

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The impact of COVID-19 on human rights and the rule of law - Our action

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covid, coronavirus, human rights, rule of law, covid19, legal instruments, council of europe

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Trump's agents persuaded scientific agencies to modify their information to make it correspond to what Trump said

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Trump's agents persuaded scientific agencies to modify their information to make it correspond to what Trump said

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Political appointees have repeatedly pressured Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials to manipulate reports, in order to make them more closely align with President Donald Trump's public statements about the pandemic, according to a new report from Politico's Dan Diamond.

Diamond writes that "CDC officials have fought back against the most sweeping changes," but the report finds that Trump appointees have nevertheless succeeded in politicizing public health and the response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has now killed more than 193,000 people in the US. These officials have reportedly worked to suppress reports on the ineffectiveness of hydroxychloroquine (a drug Trump has routinely touted as being effective against Covid-19), as well as to have the agency change published reports on the risks of the coronavirus and on who might be blamed for infections.

According to Diamond, these political appointees - who are part of former Trump campaign official and current Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Michael Caputo's team - review the agency's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, and have also modified the reports' language to make them more sympathetic toward the president.

Modifying what are meant to be scientific, nonpartisan reports to more closely align them to the president's views is concerning in part because Trump has repeatedly downplayed the pandemic, engaged in magical thinking about how it might end, and has outright lied. New revelations this week from journalist Bob Woodward show that the president has done all of this while deliberately misleading the country about the severity of the virus.

Neither HHS nor the CDC have responded to a Vox request for comment.

Caputo, who was installed by the White House in April this year, has no health care background or expertise to speak of. Some prominent members of his team do, however - a fact Caputo has used in his defense, citing the input of one of his advisers, Paul Alexander, on the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWRs) as evidence that his team's interference with CDC work is not politically motivated.

"He digs into these MMWRs and makes his position known, and his position isn't popular with the career scientists sometimes," Caputo told the New York Times Saturday. "Nobody has been ever ordered to do anything. Some changes have been accepted, most have been rejected. It's my understanding that that's how science is played."

Alexander was formerly an assistant professor of health research at Canada's McMaster University, and has been accused before of using his position at HHS to promote findings that run counter to the CDC's. For instance, Friday's report follows another Politico scoop earlier this week, which chronicles efforts by Alexander to curtail public comments by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert and a frequent target of the Trump administration.

According to Politico's Sarah Owermohle, Alexander also attempted to block Fauci from warning about the importance of mask-wearing for children and from explaining the value of Covid-19 testing for young children and college students. In an email, Alexander reportedly argued, incorrectly, that "There is no data, none, zero, across the entire world, that shows children especially young children, spread this virus to other children, or to adults or to their teachers."

More than half a million children in the United States have tested positive for Covid-19, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the number of child cases climbed sharply last month as children began to return to school in some parts of the country. More than 100 children have died from the virus.

A pattern of politicized public health guidance

Even before this week, there was abundant evidence that the Trump administration has been working to politicize the US's previously nonpartisan, internationally renowned public health infrastructure. Just last month, the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for convalescent plasma as a Covid-19 treatment; the decision has been widely criticized, including by the National Institutes of Health, and FDA chief Stephen Hahn was ultimately forced to walk back incorrect comments about the treatment's effectiveness shortly after the EUA was announced.

There was also the hydroxychloroquine debacle earlier this summer, where the FDA first granted and then rolled back an EUA for the unproven antimalarial drug over concerns its use was causing dangerous side effects. Trump has nevertheless repeatedly and baselessly boosted the drug as a silver bullet for Covid-19, even claiming that he was taking it as a prophylactic.

An HHS decision this month to award a public relations contract worth more than $250 million to a small market research firm in Virginia has also raised worries about politics infringing on public health. With fewer than 60 days until the general election, the contract tasks the firm with finding a way to "defeat despair and inspire hope" about the coronavirus. House Democrats this week launched an investigation into the contract, describing it as a taxpayer-funded "political propaganda campaign" in a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar.

And Trump and his appointees haven't just gone after the agencies designed to guide America's public health response; they have politicized even the most basic tenets of public health in a pandemic. For instance, the president has long refused to wear a mask - even asking others to remove them in his presence - and continues to hold largely unmasked and non-distanced political rallies, both at the White House and across the country.

That kind of politicization has consequences: As Vox's Brian Resnick has documented, the president's politicization of the federal government's response - and his dedication to promoting ineffective treatments - has resulted in widespread vaccine skepticism. The president has touted rapid progress in vaccine development, even promising one as soon as October. But given vaccines normally take years to develop, many wonder whether a rushed Covid-19 vaccine, particularly one endorsed by Trump, would be safe.

That's because the Trump administration's efforts to manipulate public health for political purposes and gaslight the country into believing the US response to the virus has been anything but a colossal failure have chipped away at public confidence. Trump's opposition to basic safety measures has almost certainly already cost lives - former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, for example, died of Covid-19 this summer after attending a Trump rally featuring little masking and social distancing - and widespread vaccine skepticism could cost many more.

Politico's Friday revelation is just the latest manifestation of Trump's deep politicization of public health - and as the US continues to report tens of thousands of new cases of Covid-19 per day for the sixth straight month, there's little reason to believe that will change anytime soon.

Millions rely on Vox's journalism to understand the coronavirus crisis. We believe it pays off for all of us, as a society and a democracy, when our neighbors and fellow citizens can access clear, concise information on the pandemic. But our distinctive explanatory journalism is expensive. Support from our readers helps us keep it free for everyone. If you have already made a financial contribution to Vox, thank you. If not, please consider making a contribution today from as little as $3.

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Trump officials are reportedly manipulating the CDC's Covid-19 reports

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Political appointees have repeatedly pressured Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials to manipulate reports, in order to make them more closely align with President Donald Trump's public statements about the pandemic, according to a new report from Politico's Dan Diamond.

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Does the British government manipulate its citizens like "stupid" children concerning Covid19? 

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Does the British government manipulate its citizens like "stupid" children concerning Covid19? 

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The Prime Minister announced this week new measures the government plans to put in place when the country's second lockdown ends on 2 December. It'll be a return to the hastily-abandoned tiered structure of restrictions, varying between regions, but toughened up. Things will then be relaxed a bit over Christmas before being tightened once again from the end of December. But the government has been accused of trying to 'manipulate' public opinion by trying to 'instill a certain emotional reaction in people' rather than just giving us the facts and justifications straight. In short, the charge is that we're being treated like children. Is the government guilty of infantilising us and, if so, does it matter?

Boris Johnson has always had a reputation for using colourful language. This is not surprising since his old day job used to be as a journalist. Or perhaps that might better be described as being an arresting wordsmith. A journalist is usually expected to be in the business of reporting the truth but the reputation Mr Johnson built for himself through his newspaper columns depended more on their colourful bravura than on their truthfulness, which was often just as well. For a politician to be a talented wordsmith is usually an asset. It certainly was for his hero, Winston Churchill. President Kennedy once remarked that Churchill had 'mobilised the English language and sent it into battle'. We can all think of recent political leaders whose use of language was so grey and dull that nothing they ever said has stuck in the memory.

The Prime Minister has been deploying this talent since the beginning of the pandemic. Right at the start, when presenting a graph showing the likely steep rise and eventual fall in the number of cases of infection and of death forecast if nothing were done to stop it, he quipped that his task was to 'flatten the sombrero'. He said too back in March that he was absolutely confident he could 'send the coronavirus packing' (and within twelve weeks at that). And in May he said he'd have a 'world-beating' track-and-trace system up and running by June. (He didn't, and still hasn't.)

His defenders would say this sort of 'booster' talk, so characteristic of his personality, is necessary and valuable in a crisis because it's vital for boosting morale (though it might be pointed out that Churchil took a rather different view, telling the British people in 1940 that all he could offer them were 'blood, toil, tears and sweat'). His critics, however, protest that what Mr Johnson's language and his promises show is that he is taking us for fools, or treating us like children who have to be jollied along, when what he should be doing is treating us like responsible adults and simply giving it to us straight.

He could be said to have been at it again on Monday when he presented MPs with his 'Covid-19 Winter Plan'. During the course of his statement, delivered from his enforced isolation in Downing Street, he said: 'This virus is obviously not going to grant us a Christmas truce. It doesn't know it's Christmas, Mr Speaker.'

To some this will seem no more than a typical Johnsonian turn of phrase. It's certainly not one you could imagine coming from the mouth of Theresa May or Gordon Brown. But to others it will seem at the very least patronising: we as adults are very well aware that a virus 'doesn't know it's Christmas' and will rather think it's the sort of thing a teacher might say to a class of six-year-olds when she's trying to make them understand that this Christmas isn't going to be like last Christmas. She might even go on to say, as the Prime Minister did, that " 'tis the season to be jolly careful".

Some people will protest that drawing attention to what is, after all, just a bit of light relief in an otherwise typically stodgy prime ministerial statement (no doubt drafted by a civil servant) is to make a mountain out of a molehill. Except that this small item of evidence of the infantilising use of language seems to fit into a much wider charge, that the government is more generally not treating us like responsible adults in its handling of the pandemic but is instead manipulating us as though we were children.

That seems to be the view of Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, the chairman of the Winston Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge, at least with regard to the way the government has been deploying facts and statistics during the pandemic. Speaking to the Public Administration Committee of the House of Commons on Tuesday, Professor Spiegelhalter said the government was developing a track record of using 'spurious' data to frighten the public into acquiescing in the restrictive policies it was imposing. His point was not to challenge the policies themselves, and still less to pooh-pooh the seriousness of the threat posed by the virus. Rather, he questioned the government's use of statistics to justify them. He said: 'I don't want to ascribe motivation to anyone, of course. But if someone was really trying to manipulate the audience and frighten them and persuade them that what was being done was correct, rather than genuinely inform them, then this is the kind of thing they might do.'

He cited the bandying around at the beginning of the pandemic of the possibility of 500,000 deaths if no action were taken. And he referred to the citing, at the time of the imposition of the second lockdown, of 'worst-case scenarios' of numbers of infection doubling every week and of reaching 49,000 by the end of October (the actual number turned out to be 14,000). He went on: 'What I'm objecting to strongly is the fact that such spurious data and graphs were being presented to the public as a justification for the decisions that were being made. There is good data available and yet at some point the need to persuade people, to instill a certain emotional reaction in people seems to take over at really quite a high level of decision-making.'

What he clearly meant by 'a certain emotional reaction' was fear.

If he's right it is perhaps ironic that the people he is accusing of selectively using statistics to generate fear for their own political purposes are the very people who accused their opponents of operating 'Project Fear' during the EU referendum campaign. (We are about to discover whether or not those fears were justified.)

The point about fear is that it's what parents deploy in trying to get children to do something they might not want to do, and on the perfectly justifiable grounds that children may not yet know enough to realise for themselves what the prudent thing to do might be. No one is denying there is plenty concerning Covid about which we should most certainly feel alarmed. The issue is whether we need to be frightened by dodgy statistics in order responsibly to react to the threat.

According to Professor Spiegelhalter, we don't. Earlier in the pandemic he said: 'The public out there who are broadly very supportive of the measures, they're hungry for details, for facts, for genuine information and yet they get fed what I call this 'number theatre' which seems to be coordinated really very much more by the No 10 communications team rather than genuinely trying to inform people about what's going on.'

If what he alleges is true, then it is tantamount to the government treating us all like children. But if so, does it matter? Those who think it does would argue that if we are treated like children, eventually we become like them. That's to say, we become inured to depending on others to take decisions for us, just as parents do for children. We cease to see ourselves as responsible adults, who make our own decisions and must live with the consequences, and instead become dependent and then blame others for whatever may happen to us. Both fecklessness and victimhood are the result. This is bad not only for us as individuals but it's bad for society as a whole. It leaves power wholly with those who take the decisions but they may end up taking the wrong ones. Indeed they most certainly will if they are unchallenged and, in a democracy, they will be challenged only if there is an electorate of informed, responsible adults who know enough to draw conclusions for themselves and make their own decisions to turf one lot out and install others who might do better.

The point here is not that governments shouldn't take decisions on our behalf. Of course they should - it's their job. But, the argument goes, they shouldn't do so as parents telling us that the reason they have to is that ' the virus doesn't know it's Christmas'. Rather, it has to take them because some things (public health being a prime example) simply can't be left to the lottery of what might ensue if everyone were allowed just to do their own thing according to their own lights. When the good of all of us is at stake, governments have to step in and act. But in doing so they should treat us as responsible citizens who can handle the facts and deserve to be given them unvarnished so that we can make up our own minds whether the government's decisions are the right ones or not.

To some, all this will seem like idealistic wishful-thinking. We're already children, they'll say - just take a look at city centre pubs on the eve of lockdown. So we need to be treated like children. And that means putting the frighteners on. If a little selective use of statistics serves as an aid in doing so, then so be it. And that's all the government is doing by leaning heavily on 'worst case scenarios' and reminding us that the virus isn't going to call a truce at Christmas. It's all for our good.

What's your view? Do you think the government is guilty of treating us like children, talking down to us and manipulating statistics to put us in a state of fear, or not? And if it is, is it right or wrong to do so?

Let us know what you think.

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John Humphrys - Covid : Are We Being Manipulated Like Children? | YouGov

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The Prime Minister announced this week new measures the government plans to put in place when the country's second lockdown ends on 2 December. It'll be a return to the hastily-abandoned tiered structure of restrictions, varying between regions, but toughened up.

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Governments manipulation or the government doesn't know and makes mistakes from lack of knowledge?

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Governments manipulation or the government doesn't know and makes mistakes from lack of knowledge?

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Synopsis: Initial responses to the COVID-19 outbreak have varied, seemingly irrespective of regime type. This pieces sheds light on the motivations of political leaders and whether they manipulated their public or held illusionary beliefs.

Keywords: COVID-19, transparency, misinformation, regime type, populism

Many of us do not believe what politicians say. We often suspect that they hide bad news and exaggerate good news. And one can argue that we want them to lie, to portray our future as better than one could realistically expect it to be. As a slogan proclaimed in May 1968 in Paris, "We Want Promises." Imagine a politician who would say, "Things are going to be bad and there is little we can do about it." He or she would suffer at the polls.

In the language of game theory, this is an equilibrium: We want the politicians to lie; politicians know we want them to lie; so they lie. But it is also possible that politicians misinform not because they are trying to manipulate us but because they hold illusory beliefs themselves.

Which brings us to the reactions of a selection of political leaders to the outbreak of COVID-19:

China

It is clear that the Wuhan authorities were initially trying to hide from the central leadership the information that something wrong was happening on their terrain. The first cases of a mysterious illness among people frequenting the Huanan Seafood Market occurred in mid-November 2019 but the presence of the disease was publicly acknowledged only on December 31 and only after an alarm was sounded by some Wuhan doctors on social media. The information was immediately censored and its authors were admonished by the Public Security Bureau of Wuhan.

But here comes the question: What did the Wuhan authorities and subsequently the central leaders believe about this new disease?

In its public communique on December 31, the Wuhan Health Commission claimed that "obvious signs of human-to-human transmission have yet to be discovered, and no medical staff are known to have contracted the illness." Its message on January 11 was the same. Only by January 15 the very possibility that the virus can be transmitted from person to person was raised, "... but the risk of sustained human-to-human transmission is low." It was not until January 20 that Dr. Zhong Nanshan, the leading expert on coronavirus who dealt with SARS in 2003, announced in a TV interview that coronavirus is transmissible between people. In the following days the leadership frantically mounted a campaign to prevent the spread.

France

The Chinese Foreign Ministry communicated to other governments the information about the mysterious disease in Wuhan on January 3. What no one knew is whether the disease would travel outside China and how dangerous it is.

By March 1, there were 87,500 known cases of infection in the world but 80,000 of them in China. Already 130 cases and two deaths were reported in France and the government adopted initial albeit timid measures to contain the epidemic, isolating everyone who had recently returned from China and people who had contact with them. But the government simultaneously issued assurances that "the situation is under control" and that "this virus is not more dangerous than the flu" so there was little public anxiety about it.

"...one can also err by being too alarmist..."

Still on March 4, when France had 212 known cases and four deaths, the spokeswoman of the Government stated in a radio interview, "We are not in an epidemic stage," citing the fact that each year the flu affects 2.5 to 3 million people in France.

By March 12, the situation was alarming. That day, the newly formed Scientific Council informed the President that letting the virus run its course could lead to infection of half of the population and hundreds of thousands of deaths. By evening, the President ordered a quarantine and several other measures.

On the other hand, one can also err by being too alarmist: in 2008 the French Ministry of Health spent 1.5 billion euros on flu vaccines and only 8% of the French vaccinated, leading to an accusation of wasteful spending against the Minister, Roselyn Bachelot-Narqui. What is a mistake in omniscient retrospect need not be irrational before uncertainty unveils.

US

The reactions of Donald Trump to the crisis are summarized by the Washington Post. On January 22, when there was just one case in the US, Trump assured, "We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's going to be just fine." On February 10, "Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away." On February 28, "It's going to disappear. One day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear." On March 10, when there were already 615 confirmed cases and 22 deaths, "We're prepared, and we're doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away." When someone invokes miracles, there is apparently nothing we need to do but hope and wait.

Manipulation or illusion?

Can we tell which political leaders knew better but tried to manipulate our beliefs and which were deluding themselves?

One piece of evidence is censorship: Algeria, Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela are among countries where publicizing information about the virus became punishable by law. Short of this prima facie evidence that the rulers are hiding something, we have to assume that they do not have self-defeating tendencies, that if they were lying only to others they would not have exposed themselves to danger.

Here again are some facts. The Wuhan People's Congress (more than five hundred people) held a meeting on January 11. President Xi held several private meetings, and travelled domestically and abroad on 17-18 January, still not wearing a mask. President Macron visited an old-people's home and attended a theatre play on March 6. President Trump continued to hold rallies, received Brazilian President Bolsonaro at Mara Lago, and kept shaking hands when people were already dying in the US.

"Why did some political leaders react - and comprehensively so once they decided to act - and others did not?"

Politicians do have motives to engage in wishful thinking, wanting to reassure and to avoid panic. They may also be instrumental, reserving the optimistic messages for themselves and delegating the distressing ones to others: Xi abdicated the management of the crisis to Premier Li Keqiang, Trump to state governors. But if they truly believed that the virus is highly contagious and potentially mortal, would they have gathered, attended public events, or travelled? It is likely that they truly underestimated the danger, to others as well as to themselves.

Why did some political leaders react - and comprehensively so once they decided to act - and others did not? The difference does seem to cut across regimes. China and France were late in recognizing the danger; Taiwan and Vietnam reacted as soon as they learned about Wuhan. The list of those seemingly prone to illusions contains many leaders who have demonstrated little regard for democratic institutions: from Xi to Lukashenko, to Maduro, Trump, Bolsonaro, Ortega, and Johnson. But it also includes several leaders with solid democratic credentials, Macron and Pedro Sanchez among them. And it does not include Viktor Orban, who seized the opportunity to deal another blow to democracy.

Indeed, one may have expected that "backsliding" populists would have exploited the crisis to take command, declaring a state of emergency and declawing all other institutions. And yet, most them, including Putin, disclaimed responsibility and advocated inaction for as long as they could. Perhaps a future systematic analysis will reveal something more intelligible from the patterns which puzzle us at the moment.
This article is part of the series "Governance, in crisis." To read the other articles, click here.
Photo by Kayla Velasquez on Unsplash

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Government responses to COVID-19: Manipulation or illusion? * The Global

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Synopsis: Initial responses to the COVID-19 outbreak have varied, seemingly irrespective of regime type. This pieces sheds light on the motivations of political leaders and whether they manipulated their public or held illusionary beliefs. Keywords: COVID-19, transparency, misinformation, regime type, populism Many of us do not believe what politicians say.

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Fake news: Oil companies pay this young woman to influence on Youtube : Climate change is not a problem

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Fake news: Oil companies pay this young woman to influence on Youtube : Climate change is not a problem

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the anti-Greta Thunberg

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The “anti-Greta” Thunberg debuts on Fox News with a message of hope for young people.

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It is nice to see this. Unlike high-school dropout Greta Thunberg, Naomi Seibt is an accelerated student and has a background in science and psychology. She received a degree in BA (Business Admin…

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another teacher's padlet with students' comments

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The Trump Era reminds journalists of Animal Farm

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The Trump Era reminds journalists of Animal Farm

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read the article in THE OBSERVER (courtesy of Mrs Coatanea)

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Following President Donald Trump's inauguration, the Left's must-read book was George Orwell's Published in 1949, the dystopian novel predicts a world of authoritarian thought control, and it shot to the top of Amazon's best-seller list. This summer, a 1984 play from London is opening on Broadway, co-produced by none other than Scott Rudin. There have been countless media references to the novel, including Paul Krugman's op-ed in The New York Times on May 8, "Party Like It's 1984."

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is also getting a second wind. In her 1985 book, the powerful have reduced fertile women to reproductive slaves for the elite's infertile wives. Already released as a film (with the screenplay by Harold Pinter), the book has now reappeared as a miniseries on Hulu. Part of the marketing plan is to make the story an allegory to the Trump administration. Almost everyone is having fun with the comparison.

But these are the wrong books to read and shows to watch. A much more relevant work is Orwell's 1945 novella Animal Farm. As in 1984, he imagines a harsh political landscape. Yet, Animal Farm is much subtler-and more powerful-than 1984 or the improbable Handmaid's Tale.

There is no sign that there is or will be any effective thought control or political repression as described in 1984. Democracy seems as powerful as ever: The courts "on an island in the Pacific" effortlessly tie up Trump's immigration orders and the ratings on late night television's anti-Trump rants are through the roof. The bogeyman in the night, Trump, seems to fade with each morning's sunrise of policy reversals and statements like, "I don't stand by anything." The White House and the Republican-dominated Congress barely agree on a few basics, such as a budget.

Animal Farm envisioned a somewhat different scenario for political promises. Writing about the Russian Revolution's failures, Orwell imaged a farm that overthrew its human master and replaced him with a collective leadership of pigs. These clever pigs promised to reorganize society along egalitarian (populist) lines with the animal workers being rewarded for their labor on a just and fair farm. Mirroring Russia, where Stalin replaced Trotsky and Lenin's vision with the Gulag camps and a system of brutal repression and corruption, the ruling pigs of Animal Farm gradually became human-like and their promises of change forgotten.

The leaders of Animal Farm maintained thought control by obscuring the facts with smokescreens. In this way, the allegory to the Trump administration is dead on. Executives from Wall Street, once lambasted by Trump as "get[ting] away with murder," are now in charge. The "currency manipulator" to be punished on Trump's first day in office, China, is now a strategic ally helping to fend off North Korea.

Trump's transformation into a golf course habitué after roundly criticizing his predecessor's golf outings is right out of Animal Farm. Then, there is the NAFTA withdrawal-a pillar of his platform that is not happening.

That the populist Trump has offered unprecedented access to some of the largest corporations in America in exchange for their millions of dollars of donations is another page straight out of Animal Farm. The entire façade of governance in Animal Farm was meant to placate the horses, sheep and chickens with feel-good slogans and false agendas. Trump's "drain the swamp" mantra would have been an appropriate Animal Farm infrastructure slogan. The pigs, who were afraid they would lose control of the farm, created imaginary threats as a tactic to bind their subjects. How is this different from Trump's alerting us to the threat of Mexican rapists?

Orwell, who had perhaps the most brilliant political mind of the twentieth century, even anticipated the phenomenon of fake news. The historic Battle of the Cowshed, in which the animals liberated the farm from the humans, was told and retold with fake news added as the pigs began to squabble. New spins on the facts were constantly required. Thus, a true hero of the Battle of the Cowshed, Snowball, was later reported to have sided with the humans. Even Trump's deleted tweet about how it was an "honor to host [Palestinian] President Mahmoud Abbas" at the White House was foreseen in Animal Farm, as writing on the barn wall was changed and erased as politically necessary. The animals could not recall the original writings or how they were altered.

Orwell even anticipated Sean Spicer. The pigs have a spokespig named Squealer who is in charge of reconciling the irreconcilable and parsing the absurdities of non sequitur pronouncements from the pigs' administration. To read Squealer's spin on the changes in farm policy is a literary treat no reader will ever forget.

So, if you are looking for allegorical literature to understand today's politics, Animal Farm is a great guidepost. It is much more politically relevant than 1984 or Handmaid's Tale. It should be the next book to jump to the top of Amazon's bestseller list. Do yourself a favor and secure a copy fast.

Jonathan Russo has been observing and writing about the Mid-East, domestic politics and China for decades. In the last 10 years his articles have been published in The Huffington Post, Times of Israel and his own site JavaJagMorning.com. He's been an executive in New York media world for over 40 years and resides in Manhattan.

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'Animal Farm' Perfectly Describes Life in the Era of Donald Trump

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Following President Donald Trump's inauguration, the Left's must-read book was George Orwell's Published in 1949, the dystopian novel predicts a world of authoritarian thought control, and it shot to the top of Amazon's best-seller list. This summer, a 1984 play from London is opening on Broadway, co-produced by none other than Scott Rudin.

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Is it possible to have leaders in a utopian world?

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Is it possible to have leaders in a utopian world?

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What type of leadership and/or government is possible in a utopian world?

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How do rules help create or destroy a utopian ideal?

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How do rules help create or destroy a utopian ideal?

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French researchers publish their work (in English) about how rules are necessary, however, the fact that rules exist destroys the utopian ideal

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caricatures and cartoons about the consequences of ignorance

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caricatures and cartoons about the consequences of ignorance

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Definitions and characteristics of Dystopia

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Definitions and characteristics of Dystopia

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on Mr Ko's English website

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Caricatures and cartoons for manipulation/ mind control/ advertising

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Caricatures and cartoons for manipulation/ mind control/ advertising

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(note: "by-laws" are local laws for a city)

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Photos of the Women's March were modified

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Photos of the Women's March were modified

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This is the full article on-line (for the preceding subject) in the New York Times

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F.B.I. Search of Trump's Home

A photo from the march displayed at the National Archives was altered to blur signs that were critical of President Trump or might be offensive, officials said.

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Officials on Saturday turned around a photo of the 2017 Women's March at the National Archives that was altered and posted a statement. Credit... Leigh Vogel for The New York Times

The National Archives and Records Administration, which calls itself the country's record keeper, apologized on Saturday for altering a photo of protesters at the 2017 Women's March that blurred out references critical of President Trump.

"We made a mistake," began a statement the archives released on Saturday.

The photo of protesters holding signs was part of an exhibit, "Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote," which examined the struggle of women to gain the right to vote.

But signs critical of the president that appeared in the photo - including one that said "God Hates Trump" - were doctored to blur out Mr. Trump's name, according to The Washington Post, which first reported on the alterations.

Initially, in a statement to The Post, an archives spokeswoman defended the decision and said "modifying the image was an attempt on our part to keep the focus on the records."

"As a nonpartisan, nonpolitical federal agency, we blurred references to the president's name on some posters, so as not to engage in current political controversy," the spokeswoman, Miriam Kleiman, said.

But by Saturday afternoon, three museum officials were seen turning around the photo display, which was a lenticular image that from one perspective showed the 2017 Women's March and from a different perspective shimmered to a 1913 photo of a women's demonstration on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The display was positioned so that only a blank canvas could be seen. Officials then posted a statement to the public that also apologized for the alterations.

"In a promotional display in this spot, we obscured some words on protest signs in a photo of the 2017 Women's March," the statement said. "This photo is not an archival record held by the National Archives but one we licensed to use as a promotional graphic. Nonetheless, we were wrong to alter the image."

The statement said the display would be replaced "as soon as possible with one that uses the unaltered image." It also said that a review would begin immediately into what happened.

This statement was posted on the back of a photo that was turned around on Saturday at the National Archives. Credit... Leigh Vogel for The New York Times

"As the National Archives of the United States, we are and have always been completely committed to preserving our archival holdings, without alteration," the statement said.

The controversy unfolded as tens of thousands of women gathered in Washington and other cities on Saturday for the fourth Women's March.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters, galvanized by the 2016 election of Mr. Trump, came to Washington in January 2017.

They also marched in cities across the country, holding signs about issues as diverse as abortion, sexual assault, equal pay, voter suppression and environmental protection.

One of the photos of the Washington march, taken by Mario Tama, a photographer for Getty Images, showed a sea of protesters holding signs criticizing Trump, The Post reported.

The National Archives, which featured the photo in its exhibit, blurred Mr. Trump's name on a sign that originally read "God Hates Trump." Another sign "Trump & GOP - Hands Off Women" also has the word Trump blurred out, The Post reported.

A sign with the word "vagina" was also blurred and the word "pussy" was erased from another sign. The references to the female anatomy were a rebuke of Mr. Trump's comments about women in a 2005 recording that captured him boasting how he used his celebrity status to force himself on women, even groping their private parts.

Those words were altered because the museum has many young visitors and there was concern they might be inappropriate, Ms. Kleiman told The Post.

Rinku Sen, a president of the board of directors for the Women's March, on Saturday called the alterations a "symbol of the degradation of democracy."

"The National Archives are our public historians and historians are not meant to change history but to report it," she said. "To me, it says that censoring women is a thing that people think they can do."

The decision was criticized by historians and archivists who said changing the photo was a violation of public trust.

"Museums, archives, and stewards of our historic artifacts should absolutely never change or alter visual or written content in primary sources," said Rhae Lynn Barnes, a professor of American Cultural History at Princeton University. "That is something totalitarian governments do."

She added: "American history is hopeful and uplifting and triumphant, but it's also dark and disturbing. Our job is to hold both of those truths and tensions together and properly contextualize the past so current and future generations can make up their own minds about the significance of what happened and empower themselves."

Archivists follow a strict code of ethics that forbids them from altering any images put into the public record, said Kathleen Roe, who was an archivist for 40 years at the New York State Archives, where she served as director of archives and records management.

The National Archives decision to display an altered photo is "really disappointing" and could undermine the faith of the public in archivists in general, she said.

"We are charged with providing access to the record as it exists not to the record as we wish it would exist or how it should be made to look for certain situations," Ms. Roe said. "If there is any place that you should be able to go to for the record as it was recorded it is in government archives."

The "Rightfully Hers" exhibit "examines the relentless struggle of diverse activists throughout U.S. history to secure voting rights for all American women," the archives said in its description of the exhibit.

The exhibit features more than 90 records, artifacts, photographs and other items meant to capture the advances of women as they struggled for decades to secure the right to vote. The exhibit opened in May and is scheduled to run through January 2021.

A Post reporter, Joe Heim, noticed the photo during a chance visit to the museum, he said on Twitter.

Ms. Sen said the altered images would likely infuriate women and encourage them to continue protesting the Trump administration.

"We're here to represent ourselves directly and exercise democracy directly, and we're not going to be shut down," she said.

Leigh Vogel contributed reporting.

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National Archives Apologizes for Altering Image of 2017 Women's March (Published 2020)

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F.B.I. Search of Trump's Home A photo from the march displayed at the National Archives was altered to blur signs that were critical of President Trump or might be offensive, officials said. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month.

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Photos of the Women's March on Washington were modified

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Photos of the Women's March on Washington were modified

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After Trump's election, women marched on Washington, but when one museum displayed photos of the demonstration, they changed them. Now they apologize.

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"Make American great again" really means "Make America white again"

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"Make American great again" really means "Make America white again"

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There are many articles, videos and cartoons/caricatures about this idea. You can also analyze the propaganda used in this type of message

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President Trump has made over 15000 lies or false statements since he became President

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President Trump has made over 15000 lies or false statements since he became President

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The Fact Checker is keeping a running list of the false or misleading claims Trump says most regularly. Here's what you need to know. (Video: Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

In 2017, President Trump made 1,999 false or misleading claims. In 2018, he added another 5,689, for a total of 7,688.

Now, with a few weeks still left in 2019, the president already has more than doubled the total number of false or misleading claims in just a single year.

As of Dec. 10, his 1,055th day in office, Trump had made 15,413 false or misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker's database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement he has uttered. That's an average of more than 32 claims a day since our last update 62 days ago.

In fact, October and November of this year rank as the second- and third-biggest months for Trumpian claims. They are exceeded only by October 2018, when Trump barnstormed the country in a desperate - and unsuccessful - effort to thwart a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives. Both Octobers had more than 1,100 claims, with an average of nearly 40 claims a day.

A key reason for this year's jump: The uproar over Trump's phone call with Ukraine's president on July 25 - in which he urged an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden, a potential 2020 election rival - and the ensuing House impeachment inquiry. Nearly 600 of the false or misleading claims made by the president in the past two months relate just to the Ukraine investigation.

The president apparently believes he can weather an impeachment trial through sheer repetition of easily disproven falsehoods.

For instance, more than 60 times he has claimed that the whistleblower complaint about the call was inaccurate. The report accurately captured the content of Trump's call and many other details have been confirmed. Eighty times, Trump has claimed his phone call with the Ukrainian president was "perfect," even though it so alarmed other White House officials that several immediately raised private objections. This is a talking point that even Trump's Republican defenders have trouble repeating.

Three claims about the Ukraine investigation have now made it on our list of Bottomless Pinocchios. (It takes 20 repeats of a Three or Four Pinocchio claim to merit a Bottomless Pinocchio, and there are now 30 entries.) Besides the claim about the whistleblower, the two other claims on the Bottomless Pinocchio list are that Biden forced the resignation of a Ukrainian prosecutor because he was investigating his son Hunter and that Hunter Biden scored $1.5 billion in China after hitching a ride on Air Force Two with his father.

Trump crossed the 10,000 mark on April 26. From the start of his presidency, he has averaged nearly 15 such claims a day.

About one in five of these claims are about the economy or jobs.

As he approaches a tough reelection campaign, Trump's most repeated claim - 242 times - is that the U.S. economy today is the best in history. He began making this claim in June 2018, and it quickly became one of his favorites. The president can certainly brag about the state of the economy, but he runs into trouble when he repeatedly makes a play for the history books. By just about any important measure, the economy today is not doing as well as it did under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton - or Ulysses S. Grant. Moreover, the economy is beginning to hit the head winds caused by Trump's trade wars, with the manufacturing sector in an apparent recession.

About one in six of Trump's claims are about immigration, his signature issue - a percentage that increased earlier in the year when the government was partially shut down over funding for his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, his second-most repeated claim - 235 times - is that his border wall is being built. Congress balked at funding the concrete barrier he envisioned, so he has tried to pitch bollard fencing and mostly repairs of existing barriers as "a wall." He tried to redirect funds from other projects but run into trouble with the courts. The Washington Post has reported that the bollard fencing is easily breached, with smugglers sawing through it, despite Trump's claims that it is impossible to get past. As of October, the Trump administration had acquired just 16 percent of the private land in Texas it needs to build the president's border barrier, with less than four miles completed.

Trump has falsely said 181 times that he passed the biggest tax cut in history. Even before his tax cut was crafted, he promised it would be the biggest in U.S. history - bigger than Ronald Reagan's in 1981. Reagan's tax cut amounted to 2.9 percent of the gross domestic product, and none of the proposals under consideration came close to that level. Yet Trump persisted in this fiction even when the tax cut was eventually crafted to be the equivalent of 0.9 percent of GDP, making it the eighth-largest tax cut in 100 years. This continues to be an all-purpose applause line at the president's rallies.

On 175 occasions, Trump has claimed the United States has "lost" money on trade deficits. This reflects a basic misunderstanding of economics. Countries do not "lose" money on trade deficits. A trade deficit simply means people in one country are buying more goods from another country than people in the second country are buying from the first country. Trade deficits are also affected by macroeconomic factors, such as currencies, economic growth, and savings and investment rates.

The president frequently offers inflated estimates for trade deficits with various countries and insists they are being reduced on his watch, even though they are climbing.

The president's constant Twitter barrage also adds to his totals. Nearly 20 percent of the false and misleading statements stemmed from his itchy Twitter finger.

Trump's penchant for repeating false claims is demonstrated by the fact that the Fact Checker database has recorded nearly 400 instances in which he has repeated a variation of the same claim at least three times.

Even as Trump's fact-free statements proliferate, there is evidence that his approach is failing.

Fewer than 3 in 10 Americans believe many of his most-common false statements, according to a Washington Post Fact Checker poll published in 2018. Only among a pool of strong Trump approvers - about 1 in 6 adults in the survey - did large majorities accept several, although not all, of his falsehoods as true.

The award-winning database website, created by graphics reporter Leslie Shapiro, has an extremely fast search engine that will quickly locate suspect statements the president has made. We encourage readers to explore it in detail. We recently added a new feature that provides a URL for every claim that is fact-checked, allowing readers to post the link on social media.

We intend to publish our next update of our count on Jan. 20, the third anniversary of Trump's inauguration.
Note: The Fact Checker welcomes academic research of the Trump claims database. Recent examples include work done by Erasmus University Send us facts to check by filling out Sign up for The Fact Checker The Fact Checker is a verified signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network code of principles weekly newsletter this form , University College London and the University of California at Santa Barbara. You can request our data files with an explanation of your research plans by contacting us at factchecker@washpost.com.
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Analysis | President Trump has made 15,413 false or misleading claims over 1,055 days

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In 2017, President Trump made 1,999 false or misleading claims. In 2018, he added another 5,689, for a total of 7,688. Now, with a few weeks still left in 2019, the president already has more than doubled the total number of false or misleading claims in just a single year.

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American history textbooks don't tell history the same way, depending on where you live...

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American history textbooks don't tell history the same way, depending on where you live...

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Two States. Eight Textbooks. Two American Stories. (Published 2020)

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We analyzed some of the most popular social studies textbooks used in California and Texas. Here’s how political divides shape what students learn about the nation’s history.

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an interview with Noam Chomsky about /1/ surveillance technology and losing freedom /2/ climate change and pollution /3/ nuclear weapons and the threat of war /4/ US mutlinational companies' domination of the world: all based on lies and manipulation

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How do you deal with 25 years of fake news?

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By Dhruti Shah
BBC News

How do you survive 25 years in the fact-checking business?

Snopes began as a forum for sharing and investigating urban legends and cool folklore.

But in a world where "fake news" dominates, where disinformation is a part of the political sphere and misinformation touches every single corner of the internet, what is it about this online encyclopaedia which has made it become the go-to bible for many fact-checkers?

And how is it evolving to deal with the current landscape?

The Snopes website and social feeds have become a reservoir of bizarre facts, political nuggets, investigative journalism into hard-hitting subjects - as well as the most weird stories you can imagine.

From questions around President Donald Trump's tweeted policy suggestions to queries around Disney's Goofy and whether he is actually a cow, there seems to be very little that the fact-checkers haven't had to cast a sceptical eye over.

News events keep the trending list of top 50 rumours current with a question over the veracity of images emerging as a result of Hurricane Dorian popping up. But often older debunks turn up again and again such as ones focusing on a story about 'dangerous cosmic rays passing close by the earth' and viral 'deathbed warnings' by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

David Mikkelson, the co-founder of Snopes, says: "People come to look up things they've encountered on the internet and find out whether they are true or not.

"We're hoping that the site doesn't end up like this permanently but that's the niche we're in right now. We're like a number of other sites that fact-check mostly political items. But we still look at the sort of odd things people post on Facebook and elsewhere and examine the sorts of urban legends we started out with years ago."

Of course there are regular debunks his team come across again and again. Mr Mikkelson says: "There are certain stories that never go away. There's a note that says if you are using an ATM and someone pulls out a gun on you, then if you enter your PIN (personal identity number) in reverse it will summon the police. That comes back again and again.

"And there's that message that is always circulating on Facebook that states that Facebook is about to make all your private messages public or urging people to assert copyright over everything they have ever posted. It doesn't matter how long ago these rumours started or how frequently they've been debunked - they come back time and time again."

Mr Mikkelson, who is based in Tacoma, Washington, says that he's no longer surprised by the variety of topics that his team of 15 spread out across the country now end up covering but they do have rules about what they will cover.

"The standards we use for fact-checking are about going after what most people are questioning or asking about.

"We don't make any judgments about what's too silly or obvious or frivolous or not important enough."

However he added that sometimes he found it disconcerting what the audience considered to be important and how it was sometimes very different to what his team would consider reporting.

"There may be rumours of a chemical attack against civilians in Syria and all sorts of rumours about whether that happened and who was involved. There are questions around did the government do it; was it an outside force etc and that doesn't get much interest.

"But then you might have a ridiculous story about something like a woman giving birth in an elevator and it gets millions of views."

He said the team got their ideas from a variety of sources from emails to queries posted on Facebook to tools showing them what was trending across Google, Twitter and Reddit.

Some articles could take just several minutes to pull together and stamped as "fake" as the source from which they came would be a site known for pumping out misinformation.

"Other things can take days or weeks and we have to track down stories, locate various experts, wait for people to get back to us or in extreme cases try to get access to records using tools like the Freedom of Information Act."

The site has a section dedicated to debunking fake images - describing it as fauxtography - and most recently, it's come out stating that it's trying to avoid using the term 'fake news' with Mr Mikkelson preferring to use the label 'junk news' instead. In August, Snopes revealed a new rating system including identifying content which its creators have described as satire.

In a note published on the Snopes site, Mikkelson states that it's important to cover humour and satire and highlight the viral stories that fall under this label - such as a dog pictured with a slice of ham on its face with a note stating it had been badly burned.

"Our mission is to service that audience as best we can by providing them with accurate and helpful information. It's not our job to disparage them for being confused by something that appears ridiculous to others, or to disdain them because it's their "own fault" for misunderstanding the "obvious," or to ignore them because they're puzzled by something that wasn't deliberately created to fool them."

While Snopes remains a valuable resource for fact-checkers - it has more than 235,000 followers on Twitter and 690,000 followers on Facebook alone - it has had a bumpy few years.

Snopes pulled out of a fact-checking partnership with Facebook earlier this year, choosing not to renew its contract.

Mr Mikkelson had co-founded Snopes with his then wife Barbara. The couple divorced and Barbara sold her share of Snopes' parent company Bardev Inc to five individuals in 2016 who at that point were all associated with a company called Proper Media. But Mr Mikkelson is now locked in a litigation battle with a number of ex-business associates from the company regarding the commercial interests of the site with numerous court dates called.

Snopes has been fundraising for money to help with its costs.

While Mr Mikkelson is optimistic that Snopes will survive, he says that he doesn't know exactly what the site's future will look like until the dispute is resolved.

The site also comes under attack over the stories it covers and is regularly accused of being biased but Mr Mikkelson states this is "an occupational hazard" when a company is involved in fact-checking: "It doesn't matter how impartial you were, there is always some subset of the audience that is determined to believe what they want to believe."

"We're an element of pop culture now and we're a vital part of the journalistic world. But we're also a business with multiple employees now and it's a very different challenge to be heading up a business to operating a hobby site.

"We've lasted this long and it's a pretty good bet that we are resourceful. We are always going to be here one way or another."

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Snopes: How do you survive 25 years debunking fake news?

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By Dhruti Shah BBC News How do you survive 25 years in the fact-checking business ? Snopes began as a forum for sharing and investigating urban legends and cool folklore.

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Lock Her Up!  Trump supporters shout in unison at all rallies

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Lock Her Up!  Trump supporters shout in unison at all rallies

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It means they want Hillary Clinton to be put in jail because she used her personal email account to send government work email messages

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RNC 2016 Chant: 'Lock Her Up' Goes Mainstream

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Trump is accused of dealing with Russia, so he accuses Hillary Clinton of being the true criminal who dealt with Russia

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Trump is accused of dealing with Russia, so he accuses Hillary Clinton of being the true criminal who dealt with Russia

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Trump's tells the press that 4 American Congress-women of diverse origins who criticized his policies should "go back to their country" (however, they are Americans).

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Trump's tells the press that 4 American Congress-women of diverse origins who criticized his policies should "go back to their country" (however, they are Americans).

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And he whipped his crowd into a frenzy about locking up Hillary Clinton - before insisting post-inauguration that the idea of prosecuting his Democratic opponent is "just not something I feel very strongly about."

President Donald Trump returned to a familiar tactic Thursday of blaming others for a problem many believe he created, tossing his own base under the bus to deflect outrage from GOP allies on Capitol Hill and beyond.

It's a throwback to a field-tested Trump playbook: push the rhetoric further than some allies can handle, then tiptoe back to shrug off responsibility.

Days after Trump encouraged four freshman Democrats - Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts - in a pair of tweets to "go back" to other countries, his supporters backed him up Wednesday night by chanting "send her back" about Omar, the only one of the four congresswomen who was born outside the United States.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump reprimanded his supporters who had launched into the racially incendiary chant at a North Carolina campaign rally. Trump, who said he was "not happy" with the episode, claimed that he tried to stop the crowd by "speaking very quickly," at no point mentioning that the chant began only seconds after he told the crowd that Omar "looks down with contempt on the hardworking American" and "has a history of launching vicious, anti-Semitic screeds."

Indeed, the president pushed his adoring audience all the way to the edge and then continued attacking Omar once the chant they started died down. But as more and more Republicans piled onto him Thursday, Trump responded by suggesting it was his audience - not he - who had crossed a line.

"I disagree with it," he said of the chant.

It is hardly the first time the president has denied involvement in a controversial action or comment that, intentionally or not, he provoked.

At a campaign rally the day of the 2016 Iowa caucuses, then-candidate Trump told his supporters to "knock the crap" out of any protesters - promising to cover their legal fees if they did. But one month later, when an anti-Trump protester was sucker-punched at another rally in Arkansas, his campaign aides said they "obviously discourage this kind of behavior."

In another instance from 2016, Trump drew praise from former Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke after he reposted a quotation from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. He later distanced himself from Duke during a series of cable news interviews.

Close allies of the president said they see no reason to believe he will end his attacks against Omar or her three progressive colleagues, who together make up a group known as "the squad."

"Send her back is over the top. It's not appropriate," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). But otherwise, "you can expect [Trump] to continue."

"I wouldn't dare say he'd change his style. And if he does, it won't be much," added Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). "The way I view it is, I wouldn't give four freshmen that much attention."

While Trump threw Republicans a bone by disavowing the chants midday Thursday, the damage had already been done to senators who have repeatedly urged him to focus on issues, highlight the booming economy and avoid personal attacks.

"You don't want it to get personal, you hope it doesn't, but unfortunately it has," said Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.). "I think it is good for him to paint a contrast on the philosophies, policy positions, issues, because I think that gives the American people a clear choice."

"The chants were offensive. And very unfortunate and they do not speak well of that crowd," said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah). Trump has "a special responsibility to unite Americans regardless of our ethnicity, race or national origin. I feel that he failed in that regard."

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) likened the rally to a "rock concert" where crowd control is impossible and said "people are reading too much" into the chants. But he suggested that a more fertile area of attack would be singling out Omar's support for the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement aimed at winning concessions for Palestinians from Israel.

"If we focus on what Omar just proposed yesterday with respect to BDS against Israel, I want the American people to know that stuff," Tillis said. "If we do that, the American people are going to have enough."

But Trump has shown no sign of a course correction, despite distancing himself from his supporters' controversial chant. Even some of his campaign advisers said they worry he will make matters worse while he's visiting his Bedminster, N.J., golf club this weekend. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are scheduled to speak at a private campaign event there Friday night, while the president's schedule for the rest of the weekend is unknown.

One administration official said Trump bragged about the tweets he posted last Sunday, in which he urged Omar and her colleagues to "go back" to where they came from, after seeing reports that his support among Republicans had increased after the off-message attack. (A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday showed the president's net approval among GOP voters rising 5 percentage points since a poll taken last week.)

"I'm not relishing the fight. I'm enjoying it because I have to get the word out to the American people," he told reporters before arriving in Greenville, N.C., on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Republicans are weighing how to move forward. They insist - and have privately told Trump and Pence - that the president will benefit more if he focuses on his party's ideological battle with progressive Democrats instead of fanning the flames of racism.

Many GOP lawmakers spent all week deciding how to condemn Trump's tweets without raising his ire and earning themselves an angry phone call or the threat of a primary challenger. Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), who is seeking reelection in a diverse state, declined to talk about the episode, as did Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who had gently criticized Trump earlier this week.

"I don't know if all of this is strategic or shoot from the hip. I have no idea," said one exasperated Republican senator who insisted on anonymity after speaking previously about Trump's outburst earlier this week. "I'm done on this issue."

Trump campaign officials also dodged questions about the president's tweets and the chant that broke out at his Wednesday rally. Tim Murtaugh, communications director for Trump's 2020 campaign, instead criticized the "socialist ideas" he claims have been espoused by "the squad" and other Democrats.

"The Squad, as they call themselves, are now the leaders of the Democrat Party," Murtaugh said in a statement. "Americans don't like it when elected officials consistently disparage this country."

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Trump's field-tested strategy: Whip up a frenzy, then disavow

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And he whipped his crowd into a frenzy about locking up Hillary Clinton - before insisting post-inauguration that the idea of prosecuting his Democratic opponent is "just not something I feel very strongly about."

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Donald Trump:  insults and calling names (or name-calling)

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Donald Trump:  insults and calling names (or name-calling)

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how to berate others

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On the 4 July, US Independence Day, the country launched its most powerful missile yet, an intercontinental ballistic missile, which they said was capable of "hitting anywhere in the world".

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Deranged! Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un's war of words

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On the 4 July, US Independence Day, the country launched its most powerful missile yet, an intercontinental ballistic missile, which they said was capable of "hitting anywhere in the world".

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Donald Trump and Kim Jung Un "I'm the biggest and the baddest and the best" : the war on words to be Number 1 ...

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Donald Trump and Kim Jung Un "I'm the biggest and the baddest and the best" : the war on words to be Number 1 ...

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April 30: Trump gives North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a backhanded compliment, calling him, "a pretty smart cookie."

During an interview with a CBS news program, Trump noted that Kim came to power at the age of 27 - in 2011 - and had to fight to hold on to that power.

"He's dealing with obviously very tough people, in particular the generals and others. And at a very young age, he was able to assume power. A lot of people, I'm sure, tried to take that power away."

So, Trump concluded, "obviously, he's a pretty smart cookie."

May 1: Even when Trump attempts to be diplomatic it comes across as bombastic, saying he would be "honored" to meet, face-to-face, with the North Korean leader: "If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it."

Clearly aware of the power of his declaration, Trump added: "We have breaking news."

The two sides technically remain at war. The Korean Armistice signed in July 1953, merely froze the conflict that began in 1950. A line was drawn along the 38th parallel dividing North and South Korea.

May 11: North Korea's UN Mission accuses US and South Korean intelligence agencies of plotting to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, calling the unsubstantiated claim a "declaration of war."

The statement added that a "Korean-style anti-terrorist offensive will be commenced to mop up the intelligence and plot-breeding organizations of the US and South Korea. And for good measure, the statement went on to say that North Korea will "hunt down and mercilessly smash every single one of the terrorist maniacs of the CIA and the South Korean" Intelligence Service.

May 15: Trump warns in an interview with Reuters news agency that a "major, major conflict" with North Korea is possible. He adds that the "era of strategic patience" with North Korea is over.

May 26: At the G20 meeting in Hamburg Germany, Trump vows the threat posed by North Korea's development of long-range missiles and its nuclear program "will be solved."

June 29: Referring to meeting with his South Korean counterpart at the White House and the subject of North Korea, Trump said: "We're going to have tremendous discussions tonight."

July 5: North Korean state media described leader Kim Jong Un as "feasting his eyes" on an ICBM, which is said to be capable of carrying a large nuclear warhead.

"With a broad smile on his face," Kim urged his scientists to "frequently send big and small 'gift packages' to the Yankees," the state-run news agency said, an apparent reference to continuing the parade of nuclear and missile tests Kim has ordered since taking power in late 2011.

August 4: North Korea condemns US imposition of travel ban to the communist country, calling it "a vile measure to limit the people-to-people exchange so as not to allow the US citizens to see the true picture of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"Now is the time for the Trump administration to come to its senses and make a decision to abandon its hostile policy," the statement continues. "We will always leave our door wide open to any US citizen who would like to visit our country out of good will and to see the realities with their own eyes."

August 5: The UN Security Council votes unanimously for tough new sanctions against North Korea. Trump hails the vote, saying the sanctions will have "very big financial impact!" He also thanked Russia and China for backing a measure that either one could have vetoed.

August 7: Pyongyang blasts the UN sanctions, saying it would make the US pay a "thousand-fold for all the heinous crimes" committed against North Korea.

August 8: US President Donald Trump seeks to outdo Pyongyang in rhetorical bombast, warning of "fire and fury like the world has never seen," against North Korea.

He also warned that "North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States."

bik/ng (AP, Reuters, AFP, dpa)

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Donald Trump - Kim Jong Un 'war of words' timeline | DW | 09.08.2017

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April 30: Trump gives North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a backhanded compliment, calling him, "a pretty smart cookie." During an interview with a CBS news program, Trump noted that Kim came to power at the age of 27 - in 2011 - and had to fight to hold on to that power.

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here is a short powerpoint on fake news that may inspire you

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Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm: dystopian novels

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Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm: dystopian novels

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t times, the authority of a group of people becomes displaced due to discontent among the populace. When this vital authority is removed, another one must take its place in governing the body. George Orwell and William Golding both illustrate different outcomes of such a situation in their novels Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies respectively. In both stories, a stable government is replaced by a volatile, even hostile environment. These books share the same concept in that a new government can easily appear to be better than the former one, when in reality it could be much worse.

In both stories, the former government is seen as absolutely necessary to take down, no matter what the cost. Mr. Jones of Animal Farm delegates many strenuous tasks to the animals of his farm including pulling carts, sowing, laying eggs, etc. but keeps the profit to himself. Naturally, the animals do not like being bossed around and therefore become very angry and designate Jones as an enemy to their welfare. The only thing on the animals' minds is to overthrow the terrible leader of the farm, not thinking of what they would do with power in their own hands. In Lord of the Flies, Ralph gives the job of tending the fire going to some of Jack's hunters, only to become furious when they let it go out, missing a possible chance of rescue. The children only do what they find fun, making them rebel against Ralph's logical way of managing things. Because they dislike following their jobs assigned by Ralph, they blindly migrate to Jack's side, advertised as the opposite of Ralph's tribe -- fun. The desire for change, as shown here, blinds the intuition of people on who is right, causing them to rebel harshly against authority.

Even when the leaders of both groups become as terrible or even more terrible than the previous leaders, the people still comply with the new standards. When Napoleon kills some supposed traitors, other animals question Napoleon but do not stop him from killing. Napoleon, showing off his attack squad of dogs, effectively stops opposition, controlling his subjects through fear. Because the animals are so afraid of Napoleon's strength, they accept Napoleon's beliefs. In Lord of the Flies, when Jack tortures Robert, Roger, unsure of if the torture was ethical, just goes along with it. Roger, along with many other children on the island, wants to fit in and obeys Jack out of a lack of a better option. The children despised the logical, rule-based society of Ralph and just went with the only other option, driven by a desire to have fun and play. Although a leader may seem attractive because they are different than the old leader, the new leader could be as bad as the former one.

When the new government gradually becomes a violent, turbulent society, the citizens begin to follow the new government with the idea that the former society was worse. In Animal Farm, Napoleon often conjures outrageous rules, telling the animals to follow or Jones would come back; the animals of course comply. The vision of the past society is unclear, so the animals accept this new society, assuming their past government was worse. Despite what the new society would become, the animals just let their issues be and were glad to not have the old society. In Lord of the Flies, Piggy is killed after being crushed by an intentionally dropped boulder, and the members of Jack's society do not even question the murder. As innocent children, members of Jack's tribe likely wonder if it were moral to kill enemies. Because the new society allows killing and promotes it, the children never speak up and just accept it to be part of the society. A new society of change appeals to the people -- even if the changes are worse -- because they automatically view a different society as a better society.

These two stories illustrate well that a new society can often bring change that makes the society worse than what it started as. While it may seem attractive to get rid of the evils of a current government, a new, but more evil government may emerge. Change does not necessarily mean for the better. These books firmly illustrate the fact that a different society is not always a better society.

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A Comparison of Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies

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At times, the authority of a group of people becomes displaced due to discontent among the populace. When this vital authority is removed, another one must take its place in governing the body. George Orwell and William Golding both illustrate different outcomes of such a situation in their novels...

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Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm: Dystopian novels

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Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm: Dystopian novels

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Animal Farm Vs. Lord Of The Flies As seen by Kate Cellucci Similarities Lord of the Flies Jack Hitler "Listen all of you. Me and my hunters, we're living along the beach by a flat rock. We hunt and feast and have fun. If you want to join my tribe come and see us. Perhaps I'll let

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With the movie release of Catching Fire onNovember 22, trilogy fans are excited to watch the next installment of the young-adult fiction series on the big screen. Although the many fantastical elements of the Hunger Games series make it alluring to fans, author Suzanne Collins was inspired by current events, crises and politics more than you might think.

Four College of Charleston professors show how the government, scientific advances and sociological elements of the Hunger Games' Panem - post-apocalyptic America - is not so fictitious after all.

1. Power disparity.

The people of District 12 (protagonist Katniss' home), specifically those in "the seam" are poor, working class folk who struggle daily to put food on the table. Even the wealthier among them, the mayor and his family, for instance, are still confined to the district, unable to rise in power or status.

Sociology Professor Idee Winfield studies distribution of power and wealth. She notes, "There are a lot of similarities between Panem and the world we live in today. In the U.S. the gap between the upper and lower classes is growing wider; we're seeing conditions similar to those that have caused young adults to bring radical change to countries around the world, and to the conditions that threaten to start a revolution in the Hunger Games.

"If you look at the Arab Spring uprisings, educated young adults frustrated with the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of people who disregard the needs of the poor and unemployed propelled the uprisings."

2. Celebrity

No country in the world idolizes celebrities like the U.S. does. Some theorists suggest America's emphasis on celebrity culture is tied to the Latin concept of panem et circenses, or "bread and circuses," a concept used to distract the populace from their problems. The name Panem comes from that concept. In the book, the Hunger Games contestants become celebrities who distract the people of the 12 districts from the inequalities that define their lives.

"If you look around and see how pervasive reality TV is in our lives, how frequently we make celebrities out of nothing, you'll notice that distraction is everywhere," Winfield said. "Celebrities are always in the news next to updates about politics and wars. The Hunger Games take the idea of celebrity and distraction to a more extreme level through the circus that is the annual Hunger Games"

3. Totalitarian Government

President Snow, the dictator who rules Panem, is not the kind of president you'd vote for - because there is apparently no voting in Panem. The idea of democracy is gone, replaced by totalitarian fascism. Snow serves himself and his supporters and poisons those who challenge him.

Professor of Political Science Claire Curtis studies utopias and dystopias, commenting, "A dystopia is supposed to be a fictional world that's significantly worse than the world the author comes from. It's written to critique the author's own world. Collins' dystopia includes both a post-apocalyptic setting and a totalitarian government.

"The U.S. government, as we understand it, didn't survive the post-apocalyptic fallout that resulted in the government of Panem. So Collins is both critiquing the patterns of consumption and environmental degradation that put us on a path where one faction is able to control the survivors. Collins seems to have little faith in the sustainability of our world and in our capacity to effectively resist the rise of this centralized power."

4. Biological Advances

While genetically engineering new species with one specific purpose (i.e. the Mockingjay) may not yet be possible, biotechnology and genetic engineering advances go beyond genetically modified foods and cloned sheep.

Biology professor Christopher Korey argues that the technology to identify and reproduce hyper-specific qualities in different organisms isn't as far off as it seems. "Scientists have created bacterial and viral life from scratch already. People are also working on genetically engineering a type of salmon to mature faster," he said. "Cross-breeding between species is trickier because if you can get offspring they are often sterile, but the technology to genetically modify animals already exists."

5. Censored communication

One crucial element of the Hunger Games government's power is its ability to minimize or eliminate communication between districts. This helps prevent free speech and commiseration from sparking a revolution.

"Today you see countries like China and Russia where freedom of speech and access to information is filtered, censored and even criminalized," Professor of Communication Amanda Ruth-McSwain said. "Recently, there has been significant controversy over the efforts of U.S. government agencies in monitoring our communication - not censoring, monitoring - and it's unsettling to the American people from both a trust and a control aspect. So clearly there is a difference between where we are with communication surveillance and that of the Hunger Games, but perhaps not as much as we'd like. "

For more information, contact Idee Winfield at winfieldi@cofc.edu, Claire Curtis at curtisc@cofc.edu, Christopher Korey at koreyc@cofc.edu or Amanda Ruth-McSwain at ruthmcswaina@cofc.edu.

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5 Ways the Hunger Games is More Realistic than you Think

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With the movie release of Catching Fire on November 22, Hunger Games trilogy fans are excited to watch the next installment of the young-adult fiction series on the big screen.

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We love The Hunger Games every bit as much as the next superfan, but these recent news stories have us wondering if we're headed toward a dystopian future similar to the one lived by Katniss and all her kin.

Hungry children aren't fiction

District 12 is one of Panem's poorest, but it's not the only district where children go hungry. Katniss and Peeta, as the movie's protagonists, are very sensitive to the imbalances they witness while on their Victory Tour, whereas citizens in the Capitol seem oblivious to the fact that people are starving and suffering in other districts.

Sound familiar?

The sad truth is an unbearable number of children are starving all over the world, and a considerable number of disadvantaged children are right here in the United States. According to a report by the National Center on Family Homelessness, nearly 2.5 million American children were homeless at some point in 2013. That's one in 30 children!

A planet in jeopardy

It may not get a lot of focus in the movie, but in the book, the Games come about as the result of warring that happened after a loss of natural resources due to global warming. In Book 1, when Katniss narrates the reaping, she tells us that the mayor of District 12:

"...tells the history of Panem, the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America. He lists the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained. The result was Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen districts, which brought peace and prosperity to its citizens."

While we're not seeing mass food shortages in the States yet, we are seeing higher prices for certain items at the grocery store, and we could see some of our favorite items disappearing from our grocery shelves completely. For instance, drought-stricken California grows 95 percent of America's avocados, but some farmers are letting their farms go dry due to exorbitant water prices. The Golden State is also seeing lower numbers of salmon because of the drought.

Don't care about salmon or avocados? What about chocolate? Yep, chocolate is on the endangered list, too.

Coal mines are really, really dangerous

Katniss' district is responsible for all of the coal mining in Panem. The workers toil in underequipped mine shafts that occasionally blow up, trapping and even sometimes killing everyone inside. But that couldn't happen in the States, right?

Wrong.

NPR just ran an in-depth news report on the insane lack of regulations on coal mines in the States. Turns out, a total of 2,700 mining company owners have failed to pay nearly $70 million in delinquent penalties over the past 20 years.

These mining companies get fined for safety violations, but there aren't enforcements in place to make them actually pay the fines, much less fix the violations. So the millionaires and billionaires operating the mines can continue to reap profits off the backs of their underpaid employees. And we mean literal backs - one of the miners NPR interviewed spent two hours pinned under a slab of rock, hitting the panic button on his radio between blackouts, before someone finally came to rescue him.

Bread and circuses are Hollywood's bread and butter

Am I the only one who thinks the The Hunger Games' rabid press tours look a little too much like the rabid press tours that are roundly criticized in the movie? The entire franchise centers around Panem's obsession with riches, fame and artifice, the whole doing it's best to point out just how frivolous and destructive such grotesque displays of grandiosity are, and yet The Hunger Games is still a movie. It still needs to be promoted, to be premiered, to sell tickets! Which puts it the film in the super awkward position of needing to engage in its own promotional frenzy, contradicting the very themes the movies are built on.

Some of the headlines we can't wait to click on out here in the real world could be pulled directly from the Capitol's news. Can't you hear Caesar Flickerman inviting you to check out Jennifer Lawrence's new dress or learn Elizabeth Banks ' makeup tricks? That's because Hollywood is a circus... and, just like the Capitol circus in the film, Hollywood distracts us from the fact that:

The rich keep getting richer

NPR recently reported that, according to a new study published by Oxfam, just 1 percent of the world's population controls nearly half of the planet's wealth.

And if that statistic doesn't make you want to punch a banker, these stats will:

The world's 85 richest people own as much as the poorest 50 percent of humanity.

In the U.S., where the gap between rich and poor has grown at a faster rate than any other developed country, the top 1 percent captured 95 percent of post-recession growth (since 2009), while 90 percent of Americans became poorer.

So, although we may not see wealthy Americans wearing white pancake makeup with hand-cut paper butterfly eyelashes on their lids walking around in head-to-toe purple roses and professionally coiffed blue wigs, we're not really that far off.

Oh, wait...

OK, so other than the occasional celebrity rock star, we don't see a lot of our one-percenters brandishing their wealth by wearing The Hunger Games fashion. We just see them buying million-dollar mansions, private jets and wearing watches that cost more than most people's homes.

At least they aren't rounding up our children and making them kill one another for entertainment... yet.

The exploitation of children

The The Hunger Games are the ultimate reality TV experience, and you know there are scary people out here in the real world who kind of wish the film's murder games were real. We don't want to know those people.

But we can't ignore the fact that a great many of us find a lot of pleasure in reality TV. From The Real Housewives series to Duck Dynasty and everything in between, audiences never seem to get tired of watching "real" people on their TVs. And for the most part, reality TV can be chalked up as harmless fun or a guilty pleasure. But as recent news about Here Comes Honey Boo Boo demonstrates, our "harmless" entertainment can come at a big cost when it involves children.

Life imitating art: Thai protesters arrested for using The Hunger Games salute

When Suzanne Collins invented the film's by-now-distinctive three-finger salute as a sign of admiration from District 12 citizens, I bet she had no idea it would one day become a cause for arrest in Thailand. But that is exactly what happened earlier this year when Thai protesters began using the symbolic gesture as a sign of protest.

Obviously, the film's themes of class oppression and totalitarian rule struck a nerve with the people of Thailand. As Brad Adams, director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, told Time, the The Hunger Games salute is "a symbolic act of peaceful defiance."

And yet, most fans here in America seem to skim over the film's message, seeing the movie's extravagant sets, costumes and fight sequences as pure entertainment instead... panem et circenses, indeed.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 opens in theaters on Friday, Nov. 21.

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These real-life similarities make us wonder if The Hunger Games could really happen

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We love The Hunger Games every bit as much as the next superfan, but these recent news stories have us wondering if we're headed toward a dystopian future similar to the one lived by Katniss and all her kin. District 12 is one of Panem's poorest, but it's not the only district where children go hungry.

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or this one

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The seemingly fictional plot of The Hunger Games provided us with entertainment and enjoyment, although it has occurred to me that that some of the themes reflect some of the very real present day themes in today's society. Now of course there is no such thing as an actual Hunger Game, and definitely no event that involves children fighting to the death, however, the topics that it addressed seemed to hit close to home.

Warning: If you haven't seen the movie, don't read this post.

One of main themes was the application of "Districts" and their associated trades. Power plant workers, coal miners, and lumber were just a few of the trades represented in each district, similar to the same concept of unions that we have today. A rough explanation of a labor union is, "an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members (rank and file members) and negotiates labour contracts (collective bargaining) with employers. The most common, but by no means only, purpose of these organizations is "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment"

These "Districts" have been grouped in order of their trade and the rebellions they participate in were a result of the unfair working conditions and unjust laws.

Another more obvious theme that can be seen in the movie and our society is the apparent divide of the rich and poor. One of the most recent events that supports this theme is the Occupy Wall Street protests. See link below for more detail:

One of the main goals behind the the protest was the unrighteous divide of the 1% Wall Street rich and the more common 99% of the working class. In the movie the working class encounters problems such as lack of food, shelter, clothing -- the bare necessities that we are accustomed to. Whereas, the other half of the people in the movie were exposed to the finer things in life ranging from decadent pastries to glamorous costumes and wardrobe. Needless to say the lifestyles of the rich and the poor are made very apparent in the movie.

Another theme that's present in our society and the movie is the obsession with celebrities and fame. I found myself finding a lot of similarities between the Hunger Games contestants and those on shows like American Idol and The Voice. Both have stylists that dress them up to make them look more dazzling and attractive, and both have mentors that help guide them through the process.

I'm not sure if Suzanne Collins intentionally wrote the trilogy to reflect some of the common themes in society, but it seems that there are a lot of cross overs and correlations that beg the question, are the odds ever in our favor?

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The Hunger Games Themes That Apply to Our World Today

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I'm not sure if Suzanne Collins intentionally wrote the trilogy to reflect some of the common themes in society, but it seems that there are a lot of cross overs and correlations that beg the question, are the odds ever in our favor?

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you can compare dystopian novels to our world. See articles such as this one

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The scary similarities and how this dystopian fiction may be a wake up call!

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"Newspeak" is the name given to the new terms that dishonest leaders invent to manipulate their citizens.  (Think of Squealer and his "tactics"). (See also under the column "Propaganda" the video by Scott Taylor. enemies have "insurgents" while friends have "protestors" or "demonstrators").

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Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate that is the setting of the 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell. In the novel, the Party created Newspeak to meet the ideological requirements of Ingsoc (English Socialism) in Oceania. Newspeak is a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to limit the individual's ability to think and articulate "subversive" concepts such as personal identity, self-expression and free will. Such concepts are criminalized as thoughtcrime since they contradict the prevailing Ingsoc orthodoxy.

In "The Principles of Newspeak", the appendix to the novel, Orwell explains that Newspeak follows most of the rules of English grammar, yet is a language characterised by a continually diminishing vocabulary; complete thoughts are reduced to simple terms of simplistic meaning. The political contractions of Newspeak- Ingsoc (English Socialism), Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), Miniplenty ( Ministry of Plenty)-are described by Orwell as similar to real examples of German and Russian contractions in the 20th century. Like Nazi ( Nationalsozialist), Gestapo ( Geheime Staatspolizei), politburo ( Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), Comintern ( Communist International), (collective farm), and (communist youth union), the contractions in Newspeak, often syllabic abbreviations, are supposed to have a political function already in virtue of their abbreviated structure itself: nice sounding and easily pronounceable, their purpose is to mask all ideological content from the speaker.

The word "Newspeak" is sometimes used in contemporary political debate as an allegation that one tries to introduce new meanings of words to suit one's agenda.

Orwell was interested in linguistic questions and questions pertaining to the function and change of language. This can be seen in his essay " Politics and the English Language" (1946) as well as in the Appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four. As in "Politics and the English Language", the perceived decline and decadence of the English Language is a central theme in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Newspeak. In the essay Orwell criticises standard English, with its perceived dying metaphors, pretentious diction, and high-flown rhetoric, which he would later satirise in the meaningless words of doublespeak, the product of unclear reasoning. The conclusion thematically reiterates linguistic decline: "I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this may argue that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development, by any direct tinkering with words or constructions."

Orwell's main objection against this decline of the English language is not so much based on aesthetic grounds, but rather that for him the linguistic decline goes hand-in-hand with a decline of thought, the real possibility of manipulation of speakers as well as listeners and eventually political chaos. The recurring theme in Nineteen Eighty-Four of a connection between authoritarian regimes and (authoritarian) language is already found in "Politics and the English Language":

When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find - this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify - that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

Newspeak is a constructed language, of planned phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, like Basic English, in which Orwell showed interest while working at the BBC during the Second World War (1939-1945), but soon came to see the disadvantages of. Newspeak has considerable similarities to the system of Basic English proposed by Charles Kay Ogden in 1930. Basic ('British American Scientific International Commercial') English was a controlled language and designed to be an easy-to-learn English with only 850 core words. Like Newspeak, the Basic vocabulary is classified into three categories, two of them with two subcategories. The classification systems, however, do not coincide.

The political purpose of Newspeak is to eliminate the expression of the shades of meaning inherent in ambiguity and nuance from Oldspeak (Standard English). In order to reduce the language's function of communication, Newspeak uses concepts of simple construction, such as pleasure vs. pain and happiness vs. sadness. Additionally, goodthink and crimethink linguistically reinforce the State's totalitarian dominance of the people of Oceania. The Party's long-term goal with regard to the new language is for every member of the Party and society, except the Proles-the working-class of Oceania-to exclusively communicate in Newspeak, by A.D. 2050.

In Newspeak, English root words function as both nouns and verbs, which reduce the vocabulary available for the speaker to communicate meaning. For example, think is both a noun and a verb, thus, the word thought is not functionally required to communicate the concepts of thought in Newspeak and therefore is not in the Newspeak vocabulary.

As personal communication, Newspeak is to be spoken in staccato rhythm, using words that are short and easy to pronounce. The Party intends to make speech physically automatic and intellectually unconscious in order to diminish the possibility of critical thought occurring to the speaker. English words of comparative and superlative meanings and irregular spellings were simplified into regular spellings; thus, better becomes gooder and best becomes goodest. The prefixes plus- and doubleplus- are used for emphasis (for example, pluscold meaning "very cold" and doublepluscold meaning "extremely cold"). Adjectives are formed by adding the suffix -ful to a root-word, e.g. goodthinkful means "Orthodox in thought."; while adverbs are formed by adding the suffix -wise, e.g. goodthinkwise means "In an orthodox manner".

The intellectual purpose of Newspeak is to make Ingsoc-approved thoughts the only expressible thoughts. As constructed, Newspeak's vocabulary communicates the exact expression of sense and meaning that a member of the Party could wish to express. It excludes secondary denotations and connotations. The linguistic simplification of Oldspeak into Newspeak was realised with neologisms, the elimination of ideologically undesirable words, and the elimination of the politically unorthodox meanings of words.

The word free still existed in Newspeak, but only to communicate the absence of something, e.g. "The dog is free from lice" or "This field is free of weeds". The word could not denote free will, because intellectual freedom was no longer supposed to exist in Oceania. The limitations of Newspeak's vocabulary enabled the Party to effectively control the population's minds, by allowing the user only a very narrow range of spoken and written thought; hence, words such as: crimethink (thought crime), doublethink (accepting contradictory beliefs), and Ingsoc communicated only their surface meanings.

In the story of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the lexicologist character Syme discusses his editorial work on the latest edition of the Newspeak Dictionary:

By 2050-earlier, probably-all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron-they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of The Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like Freedom is Slavery when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

Newspeak words are classified by three distinct classes: the A, B, and C vocabularies.

The words of the A vocabulary describe the functional concepts of daily life (e.g. eating and drinking, working and cooking). It consists mostly of English words, but they are very small in number compared to English, while for each word, its meanings are "far more rigidly defined" than in English.

The words of the B vocabulary are deliberately constructed for political purposes to convey complex ideas in a simple form. They are compound words and noun-verbs with political significance that are meant to impose and instill upon Oceania's citizens politically correct mental attitudes required by the Party. In the appendix, Orwell explains that the very structure of the B vocabulary (the fact that they are compound words) carries ideological weight. The large amounts of contractions in the B vocabulary-for example, the Ministry of Truth being called Minitrue, the Records department being called Recdep, the Fiction Department being called Ficdep, the Teleprogrammes Department being called Teledep-is not done simply to save time. Like with examples of compound words in the political language of the 20th century-Nazi, Gestapo, Politburo, Comintern, Inprecor, Agitprop, and many others-Orwell remarks that the Party believed that abbreviating a name could "narrowly and subtly" alter a word's meaning. Newspeak is supposed to make this effort a conscious purpose:

[...] Comintern is a word that can be uttered almost without taking thought, whereas Communist International is a phrase over which one is obliged to linger at least momentarily. In the same way, the associations called up by a word like Minitrue are fewer and more controllable than those called up by Ministry of Truth. This accounted not only for the habit of abbreviating whenever possible, but also for the almost exaggerated care that was taken to make every word easily pronounceable.

The B words in Newspeak are supposed to sound at least somewhat nice, while also being easily pronounceable, in an attempt to make speech on anything political "staccato and monotonous" and, ultimately, mask from the speaker all ideological content.

The words of the C vocabulary are scientific and technical terms that supplement the linguistic functions of the A and B vocabularies. These words are the same scientific terms in English, but many of them have had their meanings rigidified in order to, just like with the A vocabulary, attempt to prevent speakers from being able to express anti-government thoughts. Distribution of the C vocabulary is limited, because the Party want the citizens of Oceania to know only a select few ways of life or techniques of production. Hence, the Oldspeak word science has no equivalent term in Newspeak; instead, these words are simply treated as specific technical words for speaking of technical fields. The C vocabulary gave the Party the ability to invent the technology they use to enforce their laws, such as the telescreens they use to spy on the proles.

Newspeak's grammar is greatly simplifed compared to English. It also has two "outstanding" characteristics: Almost completely interchangeable linguistic functions between the parts of speech (any word could function as a verb, noun, adjective, or adverb), and heavy inflectional regularity in the construction of usages and of words. Inflectional regularity means that most irregular words were replaced with regular words combined with prefixes and suffixes. For example, the preterite and the past participle constructions of verbs are alike, with both ending in -ed. Hence, the Newspeak preterite of the English word steal is stealed, and that of the word think is thinked. Likewise, the past participles of swim, give, bring, speak, and take were, respectively swimmed, gived, bringed, speaked, and taked, with all irregular forms (such as swam, gave, and brought) being eliminated. The auxiliaries (including to be), pronouns, demonstratives, and relatives still inflect irregularly. They mostly follow their use in English, but the word whom and the shall and should tenses were dropped, whom being replaced by who and shall and should by will and would.

"Un-" is used to indicate negation, as Newspeak has no non-political antonyms. For example, the standard English words warm and hot are replaced by uncold, and the moral concept communicated with the word bad is expressed as ungood. When appended to a verb, the prefix "un-" communicates a negative imperative mood, thus, the Newspeak word unproceed means "do not proceed" in Standard English.

"Plus-" is an intensifier that replaces very and more; thus, plusgood replaced very good and English words such as great.

"Doubleplus-" is an intensifier that replaces extremely and superlatives; to that purpose, the Newspeak word doubleplusgood replaced words such as fantastic and excellent.

"Ante-" is the prefix that replaces before; thus antefilling replaces the English phrase "before filling."

"Post-" is the prefix that replaces after.

In spoken and written Newspeak, suffixes are also used in the elimination of irregular conjugations:

"-ful" transforms any word into an adjective, e.g. the English words fast, quick, and rapid are replaced by speedful and slow is replaced by unspeedful.

"-d" and "-ed" form the past tense of a verb, e.g. ran becomes runned, stole becomes stealed, drove becomes drived, thought becomes thinked, and drank becomes drinked.

"-er" forms the more comparison of an adjective, e.g. better becomes gooder.

"-est" forms the most comparison of an adjective, e.g. best becomes goodest.

"-s" and "-es" transform a noun into its plural form, e.g. men becomes mans, oxen becomes oxes, and lives becomes lifes.

"-wise" transforms any word into an adverb by eliminating all English adverbs not already ending in "-wise", e.g. quickly becomes speedwise, slowly becomes unspeedwise, carefully becomes carewise, and words like fully, completely, and totally become fullwise.

Therefore, the Oldspeak sentence "He ran extremely quickly" would become "He runned doubleplusspeedwise".

This is a list of Newspeak words known from the novel. It does not include words carried over directly from English with no change in meaning, nor does it include regular uses of the listed affixes (e.g. unbellyfeel) unless they are particularly significant.

The novel says that the Ministry of Truth uses a jargon "not actually Newspeak, but consisting largely of Newspeak words" for its internal memos. As many of the words in this list (e.g. "bb", "upsub") come from such memos, it is not certain whether those words are actually Newspeak.

ante - The prefix that replaces before

artsem - Artificial insemination

bellyfeel - The blind, enthusiastic acceptance of an idea

blackwhite - To accept whatever one is told, regardless of the facts. In the novel, it is described as "...to say that black is white when [the Party says so]" and "...to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary". (See also 2 + 2 = 5)

crimestop - To rid oneself of or fail to understand unorthodox thoughts that go against Ingsoc's ideology

crimethink - Thoughts and concepts that go against Ingsoc such as liberty, equality, and privacy, and also the criminal act of holding such thoughts. Frequently referred to by the standard English "thoughtcrime".

dayorder - Order of the day

dep - Department

doubleplusgood - The word that replaced Oldspeak words meaning "superlatively good", such as excellent, fabulous, and fantastic

doubleplusungood - The word that replaced Oldspeak words meaning "superlatively bad", such as terrible and horrible

doublethink - The act of simultaneously believing two, mutually contradictory ideas

duckspeak - Automatic, vocal support of political orthodoxies

equal - The same in amount or quantity. Not used in the sense of having equal rights or freedoms.

facecrime - A facial expression which reveals that one has committed thoughtcrime

Ficdep - The Ministry of Truth's Fiction Department

free - The absence and the lack of something. "Intellectually free" and "politically free" have been replaced by crimethinkful.

fullwise - The word that replaces words such as fully, completely, and totally

goodthink - A synonym for "political orthodoxy" and "a politically orthodox thought" as defined by the Party

goodsex - Sexual intercourse only for procreation, without any physical pleasure on the part of the woman, and strictly within marriage

goodwise - The word that replaced well as an adverb

Ingsoc - English Socialism (the political ideology of The Party)

joycamp - Labour camp

malquoted - Inaccurate representations of the words of Big Brother and of the Party

Miniluv - The Ministry of Love, where the secret police interrogate and torture the enemies of Oceania (torture and brainwashing)

Minipax - The Ministry of Peace, who wage war for Oceania

Miniplenty - The Ministry of Plenty, who keep the population in continual economic hardship (starvation and rationing)

Minitrue - The Ministry of Truth, who manufacture consent by way of lies, propaganda, and distorted historical records, while supplying the proles (proletariat) with synthetic culture and entertainment

Oldspeak - Standard English

oldthink - Ideas from the time before the Party's revolution, such as objectivity and rationalism

ownlife - A person's anti-social tendency to enjoy solitude and individualism

plusgood - The word that replaced Oldspeak words meaning "very good", such as great

plusungood - The word that replaced "very bad"

Pornosec - The pornography production section (Porno Sector) of the Ministry of Truth's Fiction Department

prolefeed - Popular culture for entertaining Oceania's working class

Recdep - The Ministry of Truth's Records Department, where Winston Smith rewrites historical records so they conform to the Party's agenda

rectify - The Ministry of Truth's euphemism for manipulating a historical record

ref - To refer (to someone or something)

sec - Sector

sexcrime - A sexual immorality, such as fornication, adultery, oral sex, and homosexuality; any sex act that deviates from Party directives to use sex only for government approved procreation

speakwrite - A machine that transcribes speech into text

Teledep - The Ministry of Truth's Telecommunications Department

telescreen - A two-way television set with which the Party spy upon Oceania's population

thinkpol - The Thought Police, the secret police force of Oceania's government

unperson - An executed person whose existence is erased from history and memory

upsub - An upwards submission to higher authority

Fiction:

Burgess, Anthony. Nineteen Eighty-Five. Boston: Little Brown & Co, 1978. ISBN 0-316-11651-3. Anthony Burgess discusses the plausibility of Newspeak.

Green, Jonathon. Newspeak: a dictionary of jargon. London, Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985, 1984. ISBN 0-7102-0673-9.

Klemperer, Victor. LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii: Notizbuch eines Philologen.. Original German language editions.

Klemperer, Victor & Watt, Roderick H. LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997. ISBN 0-7734-8681-X. An annotated edition of Victor Klemperer's LTI, Notizbuch eines Philologen with English notes and commentary by Roderick H. Watt.

Klemperer, Victor & Brady, Martin (tr.). The language of the Third Reich: LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook. London, UK; New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone Press, 2000. ISBN 0-485-11526-3 (alk. paper). Translated by Martin Brady.

Young, John Wesley . Totalitarian Language: Orwell's Newspeak and Its Nazi and Communist Antecedents. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991. ISBN 0-8139-1324-1. John Wesley Young wrote this scholarly work about Newspeak and historical examples of language control.

The Principles of Newspeak

George Orwell's 1984

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Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate that is the setting of the 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four , by George Orwell. In the novel, the Party created Newspeak to meet the ideological requirements of Ingsoc (English Socialism) in Oceania.

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wikipedia says....

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Are we losing our self-identity? Do we know who we are in this world of social media and herd mentality?

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Are we losing our self-identity? Do we know who we are in this world of social media and herd mentality?

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an article on this phenomenon

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Have you heard about the endangered species of the tree octopus? 

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Have you heard about the endangered species of the tree octopus? 

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go to this website and please, help save the tree octopus.

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Help Save The ENDANGERED

From EXTINCTION!

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

Rare photo of the elusive tree octopus
(Enhanced from cropped telephoto)

The Pacific Northwest tree octopus ( Octopus paxarbolis) can be found in the temperate rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula on the west coast of North America. Their habitat lies on the Eastern side of the Olympic mountain range, adjacent to Hood Canal. These solitary cephalopods reach an average size (measured from arm-tip to mantle-tip,) of 30-33 cm. Unlike most other cephalopods, tree octopuses are amphibious, spending only their early life and the period of their mating season in their ancestral aquatic environment. Because of the moistness of the rainforests and specialized skin adaptations, they are able to keep from becoming desiccated for prolonged periods of time, but given the chance they would prefer resting in pooled water.

An intelligent and inquisitive being (it has the largest brain-to-body ratio for any mollusk), the tree octopus explores its arboreal world by both touch and sight. Adaptations its ancestors originally evolved in the three dimensional environment of the sea have been put to good use in the spatially complex maze of the coniferous Olympic rainforests. The challenges and richness of this environment (and the intimate way in which it interacts with it,) may account for the tree octopus's advanced behavioral development. (Some evolutionary theorists suppose that "arboreal adaptation" is what laid the groundwork in primates for the evolution of the human mind.)

Reaching out with one of her eight arms, each covered in sensitive suckers, a tree octopus might grab a branch to pull herself along in a form of locomotion called tentaculation; or she might be preparing to strike at an insect or small vertebrate, such as a frog or rodent, or steal an egg from a bird's nest; or she might even be examining some object that caught her fancy, instinctively desiring to manipulate it with her dexterous limbs (really deserving the title "sensory organs" more than mere "limbs",) in order to better know it.

Map of estimated tree octopus maximum range, including spawning waters

Tree octopuses have eyesight comparable to humans. Besides allowing them to see their prey and environment, it helps them in inter-octopus relations. Although they are not social animals like us, they display to one-another their emotions through their ability to change the color of their skin: red indicates anger, white fear, while they normally maintain a mottled brown tone to blend in with the background.

The reproductive cycle of the tree octopus is still linked to its roots in the waters of the Puget Sound from where it is thought to have originated. Every year, in Spring, tree octopuses leave their homes in the Olympic National Forest and migrate towards the shore and, eventually, their spawning grounds in Hood Canal. There, they congregate (the only real social time in their lives,) and find mates. After the male has deposited his sperm, he returns to the forests, leaving the female to find an aquatic lair in which to attach her strands of egg-clusters. The female will guard and care for her eggs until they hatch, refusing even to eat, and usually dying from her selflessness. The young will spend the first month or so floating through Hood Canal, Admiralty Inlet, and as far as North Puget Sound before eventually moving out of the water and beginning their adult lives.

Why It's Endangered

Route 101, separating the rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula from Hood Canal

Although the tree octopus is not officially listed on the Endangered Species List, we feel that it should be added since its numbers are at a critically low level for its breeding needs. The reasons for this dire situation include: decimation of habitat by logging and suburban encroachment; building of roads that cut off access to the water which it needs for spawning; predation by foreign species such as house cats; and booming populations of its natural predators, including the bald eagle and sasquatch. What few that make it to the Canal are further hampered in their reproduction by the growing problem of pollution from farming and residential run-off. Unless immediate action is taken to protect this species and its habitat, the Pacific Northwest tree octopus will be but a memory.

The possibility of Pacific Northwest tree octopus extinction is not an unwarranted fear. Other tree octopus species-including the Douglas octopus and the red-ringed madrona sucker-were once abundant throughout the Cascadia region, but have since gone extinct because of threats similar to those faced by paxarbolis, as well as overharvesting by the now-illegal tree octopus trade.

Tree Octopus hat from 1923

The history of the tree octopus trade is a sad one. Their voracious appetite for bird plumes having exhausted all the worthy species of that family, the fashionistas moved on to cephalopodic accoutrements during the early 20th Century. Tree octopuses became prized by the fashion industry as ornamental decorations for hats, leading greedy trappers to wipe out whole populations to feed the vanity of the fashionable rich. While fortunately this practice has been outlawed, its effects still reverberate today as these millinery deprivations brought tree octopus numbers below the critical point where even minor environmental change could cause disaster.

While efforts were made in the past to preserve remaining tree octopus habitat, these were met with resistance by the timber industry, which has traditionally viewed the tree octopus as a nuisance, both because the octopuses favor the valuable, moss-shrouded trees of old growth forests-pitting conservation needs against lucrative sources of lumber-and because octopuses hiding among felled trees often gummed up sawmills and stained pulp vats with their ink.

Traveling sideshow exhibits, such as this one by Glen "Bones" Hartzell from 1942, demonized tree octopuses to the ignorant masses
(Click to enlarge)

These nuisances led many loggers to regard tree octopuses as bad luck, resulting in the pointless killing of octopuses on sight at logging camps in a misguided attempt at eradicating the troublesome species. Anti-octopus sentiment was so strong among loggers that some even began to fear that the octopuses were prone to attacking humans.

These fears were fueled in no small part by gratuitous stories involving tree octopuses harassing lumberjacks and distressing damsels in Northwestern-themed pulp magazines of the 1930-40s and variously "nipping", "entangling", or "suckering the flesh" of the heroes of men's action magazines of the 1950-60s. (The magazine publishers depended on cheap paper made from wood pulp and were glad to contribute to the anti-octopus propaganda campaign of the timber industry.)

To this day, misunderstanding and fear of these gentle creatures can still be found among many old timers, although education campaigns-and special octopus-separators installed at sawmills-have largely halted the practice of tree octopus eradication.

How You Can Help

More Tree Octopus Information

Posters motivate the citizenry to action! Post them!

Tree Octopus FAQs - Frequently asked questions, now with answers.

Tree Octopus Sightings - Includes photos of and behavioral research on the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and other tree octopus species.

Tree Octopus In The Media - appearances of tree octopuses, both real and fictional, in the media and popular culture.

Research On Other Tree Octopus Species:

The author of this article and its subsections is Lyle Zapato.
This site is not associated with any school or educational organization,
other than the Kelvinic University branch of the Wild Haggis Conservation Society.
Not to be confused with the Pacific Northwest Octopus Tree.

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Information about the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and what you can do to save it.

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Have you heard about the dangers of DHMO?  Read this website to learn all about DHMO and its dangers.

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Have you heard about the dangers of DHMO?  Read this website to learn all about DHMO and its dangers.

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https://www.dhmo.org/
in English at the link above.
Translated in French at the site below

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comptes rendus
FAQ : DHMO
effets du DHMO sur l'Environnement
monoxyde de dihydrogène et cancer
études et recherches sur le DHMO
le DHMO dans l'industrie laitière
la conspiration du DHMO
Éditorial: la vérité sur le DHMO
la fausse alerte au spam par email
Ajoutez un lien vers DHMO.org à votre site Dépêches & Renseignements NOUVEAU
inscrivez-vous pour recevoir les bulletins périodiques d'information sanitaire de DHMO.org.

BIENVENUE
Bienvenue sur le site Web du Groupe de recherche sur le monoxyde de dihydrogène (Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division - DMRD), présentement situé à Newark (Delaware, USA). La polémique relative au monoxyde de dihydrogène n'a jamais été plus largement débattue, et le but de ce site est de fournir une documentation de référence objective ainsi qu'un forum de discussion publique.

Explorez nos nombreux comptes rendus , parmi lesquels la FAQ DHMO , qui donne une introduction complète sur le sujet, ainsi que des rapports concernant l' environnement , les cancers , les recherches en cours, et un exposé sur le véritable usage qui est fait du DHMO dans l' industrie laitière .

Le succès de ce site dépend de vous, en tant que consommateur conscient des dangers du monoxyde de dihydrogène. Vos commentaires et suggestions sont les bienvenus.

Écrivez-nous!

En raison du volume élevé de courrier que nous recevons, nous ne pouvons pas toujours répondre à chacune de vos lettres. Cependant, nous les lisons toutes.

informations associées National Consumer Coalition Against DHMO

Greenpeace
Français, écrivez à votre député

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Groupe de recherche sur le monoxyde de dihydrogène - informations sur le monoxyde de dihydrogène

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comptes rendus FAQ : DHMO effets du DHMO sur l'Environnement monoxyde de dihydrogène et cancer études et recherches sur le DHMO le DHMO dans l'industrie laitière la conspiration du DHMO Éditorial: la vérité sur le DHMO la fausse alerte au spam par email Ajoutez un lien vers DHMO.org à votre site Dépêches & Renseignements NOUVEAU inscrivez-vous pour recevoir les bulletins périodiques d'information sanitaire de DHMO.org.

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snopes.com is a fact-checking wegsite. You can read lots of amazing fake news and learn the truth about the story. Why not choose one of these stories and report to the class about it? You could certainly relate it to Squealer and Napoleon in Animal Farm.

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Trump lied when he said "The crowd at my inauguration was the biggest in the history of the USA"

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Trump lied when he said "The crowd at my inauguration was the biggest in the history of the USA"

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The Washington Post analyzes Trump's statements and tells the truth about them

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The Washington Post analyzes Trump's statements and tells the truth about them

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You can see many more examples on-line

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That 🤬 Obama!  Don't worry, Donald Trump will put out all of Obama's 🤬 fires!
See "Citizens for Trump" on Facebook: the comments people write about Obama and Trump

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the most amazing news stories : read some amazing stories at the site above, now!

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Websites check the facts on fake news

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Mrs Trump wore a jacket that said "I really don't care, do u?" to visit an immigrant detention center.  Read the tweet reactions.

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Mrs Trump wore a jacket that said "I really don't care, do u?" to visit an immigrant detention center.  Read the tweet reactions.

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A leader is commander in chief so he has to "look the part" (medals, salutes, weapons).  Compare to the pig Napoleon.

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A leader is commander in chief so he has to "look the part" (medals, salutes, weapons).  Compare to the pig Napoleon.

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instructions for presenting the topic "herd mentality"

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instructions for presenting the topic "herd mentality"

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There are many more caricatures on herd mentality on-line

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expressions and CARICATURES  dealing with "herd mentality"

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expressions and CARICATURES  dealing with "herd mentality"

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"get on the bandwagon"

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Donald Trump's press secretary invented the term "alternative facts" to avoid saying "lies"

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Donald Trump's press secretary invented the term "alternative facts" to avoid saying "lies"

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Fake news given by Donald Trump is analyzed regulary: the wall between the US and Mexico, for example

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Fake news given by Donald Trump is analyzed regulary: the wall between the US and Mexico, for example

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2016 Presidential election manipulated by Google and Cambridge Analytica (video from Youtube)

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If you can access Pinterest, there are many many subjects on "Alternative Facts" (the "Newspeak" for "Lies" invented by the Trump Administration)

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Trump creates an alternative reality and he wants you to join him there

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Trump creates an alternative reality and he wants you to join him there

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2018/07/25/daily-202-trump-creates-an-alternative-reality-and-he-wants-you-to-join-him-there/5b57c83e1b326b1e64695515/
The Washington Post article (click on "browse for free")  July 25 2018
(the motto of the Washington Post is "Democracy Dies in Darkness")

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Trump treats FOX news like state-run television

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Trump treats FOX news like state-run television

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https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/01/media/fox-trump-reliable-sources/index.html
(NEWS= les informations télévisées)
President Donald Trump uses the channel Fox News to express his point of view and demands that they only give his point of view
2:47-3:43  they look like news but they're not
4:10- 4:45 the 2020 election
6:00 - 6:20 lies, exaggerates and "spins"
6:48 - 7:18 how journalism works, obstruction of a shared truth

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"What you're seeing and reading is not what's happening"

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"What you're seeing and reading is not what's happening"

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https://www.truthorfiction.com/did-u-s-president-donald-trump-say-what-youre-seeing-is-not-whats-happening/
Donald Trump and George Orwell

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"What you're seeing and reading is not what's happening" (words of Donald Trump, President of the USA)

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"What you're seeing and reading is not what's happening" (words of Donald Trump, President of the USA)

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https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-44959340/donald-trump-what-you-re-seeing-and-what-you-re-reading-is-not-what-s-happening