Nelson Mandela once said: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” If, education is the most powerful weapon in the world who is battling to control it?
The health of individuals and whole populations has concerned philosophers, scientists, doctors and governments for decades. Scientists seek answers through experimentation, doctors seek to cure and governments impose rules, regulations and to a greater or lesser extent the flow of information.
Hippocrates once said: “There are, in effect, two things, to know and to believe one knows; to know is science; to believe one knows is ignorance.” So how do we know? Well for many of us we will attend schools that instil us with knowledge, seemingly from people who are wiser and more accomplished. Yet the system of of learning is controlled by those in authority. Governments often work with other institutions to ensure what knowledge is communicated to its citizens. Traditionally the source of information has been the Church and Science. In the early days both sought dominance over the other.
Today in the UK we have a national education system and a curriculum that is overseen by
government. Within this system we have the following types of schools: Academies, Community, Faith, Foundation, Free and Grammar. All are expected to deliver a curriculum recommended by government. But, within the government framework there is a degree of freedom to introduce new subjects or alternative teachings. In America the Rockefeller's were an early sponsor of education John D. Rockefeller Senior made a $1 million dollar donation to The General Education Board which had risen significantly to $43 million dollars by 1907. In 2020 many American schools, colleges and universities receive donations from private donors and foundations these Donors include: The Rockefeller Foundation, The Gates Foundation and until recently The Donald J Trump Foundation to name just a few. In the UK we have seen an expansion of the private sector in education through the introduction of academies and private finance initiative funded schools. Concerns have been raised previously not only about what is taught in these schools but also conflicts of interest and the increasing influence of international corporations. There are more International Corporations involved in education than ever before – two obvious examples include Google and Apple, both of which are well poised to play an increasing role in providing educational services for a profit. As Governments allow private donors to finance education should we not be asking why a donor is investing money in an education system, school or college? After all, if education is a powerful weapon should we not be concerned who is wielding the weapon and controlling the battlefield? There is a balance between delivering education and controlling the flow of information. When we allow a government to impose controls or remove barriers to individuals and corporations investing in the system, the system can be abused and manipulated.
In Nazi Germany children were taught that people of Aryan descent: Germans, Swedes, Icelanders, Norwegians, Danes, English, & Dutch were superior to Eastern Europeans, Blacks and Jews. Germans in Nazi Germany were übermensch, super-humans. The notion of a super-human race was reinforced through imagery.
The Übermensch is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1883). In Nietzsche's work the Ubermensch will act as his own God, giving himself morality and value as he sees fit according to him alone. The Ubermensch is neither slave or master as he does not impose his will upon others. The Ubermensch is an independent individual who has the power to banish herd instincts from his mind and become a master of self-discipline. The Nazi's clearly utilised the concept to justify their actions and policies. They wanted the German people to see other races as inferior, they were happy to impose their believes, but when it came to the military they encouraged all ranks to think independently. A free thinking indoctrinated soldier is quite a juxtaposition, but it ensured that if a military unit lost its commander there was always someone well placed to take charge. Having created a society of Ubermensch the Nazis had to find a solution to those it considered inferior.
Posters such as this reinforce the notions of Ubermensch and untermensch. Which in turn led to medical experimentation, eugenics and the holocaust. To ensure the genetic purity of the Third Reich, Nazi Germany implemented selective human breeding through The Lebensborn project. Heinrich Himmler founded the Lebensborn project on December 12, 1935, the same year the Nuremberg Laws outlawed intermarriage with Jews and others who were deemed inferior. Germany’s birthrate was decreasing. Himmler’s goal was to reverse the decline and increase the Germanic/Nordic population of Germany to 120 million. Himmler encouraged SS and Wermacht officers to have children with Aryan women. He believed Lebensborn children would grow up to lead a Nazi-Aryan nation. the racial pseudo-science of eugenics. Mixed-marriages between an Aryan and a member of a “lesser race” were forbidden, and the Nazis forcibly sterilised hundreds of thousands of people whom they viewed as mentally or physically unfit. The Lebensborn project undoubtedly was the precursor to the holocaust.
With the Nazi indoctrination of German Society, science and medicine was co-opted by the Nazi's. Many Professors and Doctors were elevated to high ranking positions in the SS, Luftwaffe, Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine and in time many would start experimenting on those they considered sub-human.
Professor Ernst Holzlöhner (left) and Dr. Sigmund Rascher (right). The victim is wearing an experimental Luftwaffe garment.
The experiments the Nazis conducted can be divided into three categories: Experiments to advance Nazi racial and ideological goals, experiments in military personal survival using prisoners as test subjects and experimental drug treatments. The discovery of these barbaric experiments led to the Nuremberg Medical Trials or Doctors’ trial which commenced on the 9th December 1946 and concluded on the 20th August 1947. The charges they faced, although not all as some were later dropped included: 1 Conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. 2. War crimes: performing medical experiments, without the subjects' consent, on prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, in the course of which experiments the defendants committed murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts. 3. Crimes against humanity: committing crimes described under count 2 also on German nationals. 4. Membership in a criminal organisation, the SS. Some of the defendants were acquitted others sentenced to death or given life sentences. In the aftermath of the trials a set of ten ethical principles for human experimentation was established and the The Nuremberg Code was created. The first tenet of the code stated that voluntary consent is essential and that individuals should also have the capacity to consent. Knowing the barbaric actions of the Nazi regime and the creation of the Nuremberg Code we of course can now breathe easy. An educated society would never allow propaganda to sway our thoughts and emotions or allow scientists, doctors and governments to perform experiments on its own people. A brief history of post war non-consensual experimental research. In 1966 Dr Francis Peyton Rous was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine yet some 25 years earlier in 1941 Rous wrote to virologist Thomas Francis: "It may save you much trouble if you publish your paper... elsewhere than in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. The Journal is under constant scrutiny by the anti-vivisectionists who would not hesitate to play up the fact that you used for your tests human beings of a state institution. That the tests were wholly justified goes without saying." Rous was referring to an experiment that Francis and some of his colleagues conducted on patients at several Michigan mental institutions who had without consent had the flu virus sprayed into their nasal passages. Admittedly, this experiment was before the Nuremberg Code but did such experiments stop? Operation Sea-Spray was a 1950 U.S. Navy secret experiment in which Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii bacteria were sprayed over the San Francisco Bay Area in California. From September 20 to 27, 1950, the U.S. Navy released the pathogens off the shore of San Francisco. Based on results from monitoring equipment at 43 locations around the city, the Army determined that San Francisco had received enough of a dose for nearly all of the city's 800,000 residents to inhale the particles. On October 11, 1950, eleven residents checked into Stanford Hospital for very rare, serious urinary tract infections. Although ten residents recovered, one patient, Edward J. Nevin, died three weeks later. The UTI patients were all deemed to have acquired the infection in hospital. In 1963, 22 elderly patients at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in Brooklyn, New York were injected with live cancer cells by Chester M. Southam, who in 1952 had done the same to prisoners at the Ohio State Prison, in order to "discover the secret of how healthy bodies fight the invasion of malignant cells". The administration of the hospital attempted to cover the study up, but the New York medical licensing board ultimately placed Southam on probation for one year. Two years later, the American Cancer Society elected him as their vice president From 1954 through to 1966 the CIA ran Operation Midnight Climax which consisted of a web of CIA-run safe-houses in San Francisco, Marin County, California, and New York City. It was established in order to study the effects of LSD on non consenting individuals. Prostitutes on the CIA payroll were instructed to lure clients back to the safe-houses, where they were surreptitiously plied with a wide range of substances, including LSD, and monitored behind one-way glass. September 2020 So why is all this important in 2020? Well the reason it is important is very simple, we have a World Health Organisation that receives donations from pharmaceutical companies, foundations such as The Rockefeller, Bill and Melinda Gates, GAVI and many others. These organisations are not only producing medicines and vaccines they are influencing the policies of the WHO and national governments. Instead of highlighting these conflicts of interests the media has become complicit in promoting the policies. Meanwhile academics are jumping on the populist agenda accusing challengers of government agenda of being sick?
While many social media users call them far worse. When did it become a crime to question government policies. Are we heading towards a fascist state in which the population collaborate with the ruling power. The media inform the people that those who attended the demonstrations were conspiracy theorists, fascists and alt right in an attempt to disparage all who attended. They fail to mention that many not all of the people in the image below stood on a platform to share their views.
Those that did not attend but whose names appear have questioned government policies and strategies highlighting weaknesses in research, statistical analysis and recording. Are we seriously saying that we should ignore their concerns and shut down all debate and discussion?
In Australia a pregnant woman was arrested allegedly for organising anti-government protests. Is this the sort of society we want for our children. Thank you for taking the time to read. Regardless whether you agree or disagree with my comments please share and discuss.