Dan Williams of kla.tv interviews James Corbett about the recent Forbes article warning the hoi polloi not to do their own research.
They discuss the agenda behind this exhortation and why independent thinkers doing their own research is the bedrock of any truly free society.
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Transcript courtesy kla.tv:
Dan: So James, back in July I read an interesting article on forbes.com, and it was an editor’s pick so it must have been good, and the title of the article was: “You must not do your own research when it comes to science.” And I kind of had a chuckle and it struck me right away. And of course the gist of the article was: Well look, all of us normal people, we have jobs, we’ve got families, wives, responsibilities, we couldn’t possibly have enough time to research the important issues especially concerning medicine, and therefore you need to defer to the experts. After all I´m not an epidemiologist, so, okay, sounds reasonable. Can you find any flaws in that logic?
Corbett: I can find a few and I will encourage people at this point to go watch the video that I did on this subject called: “Don’t Do Your Own Research – #PropagandaWatch!” where for my regular propaganda watch series I dealt into this article. And not to perform a performative contradiction here and tell you: ”Don’t look at his article!” Because of course, I think you should! You should research. You should study things for yourself. So I have a link in the show-notes for that video, not to forbes which clearly wants the clickbait, rage-click, “Hey, what is he talking about click”, and they get the advertising dollars. I will lead them to archive.is where it does not go to their servers, they do not get the money for it, so I would suggest people would check that link. But do read the article and look at the argument that is being made, which, as you say, at the surface level sounds reasonable enough. But as soon as you start to dig into the details it becomes, shall we say, “problematic” to use the lingo of the moment.
Just as sort of the surface level approach to this, a level that I’m sure everyone can understand regardless of political persuasion: We have in the western system of jurisprudence that is derived from the English common law and all of that, we have the idea of a “jury of your peers”. That in a court of law, when you are trying to prove murder or whatever it is, you have to convince these twelve peers that this or that happened. And you bring in the experts to make their case and this expert says this and that expert says that. But ultimately it is the twelve peers – the people who are not experts who may or may not have any sort of accreditation, may or may not have any familiarity. It is the job of the experts to convince these people, the regular folk that their viewpoint on this is the right one.
That is the model one would presume that people in the media would be promoting. “We’re here to bring you this expert opinion, this opinion and we are putting it in front of you and then you decide.” Remember when that used to be the tagline?: “You decide.” No, no, not any more. You are not competent to make your own decisions about conflicting reports from expert opinions. We tell you now what those opinions should be.
Which as it was recently noted by Derrick Broze over at The Last American Vagabond. He had a great article up about “Are we in an anti-science-society?” or something along those lines. People can look up the exact headline. And he makes the point that they constantly try to say that the people these days are pushing an anti-science objective because they are against vaccination or they are against this or they are against that. When in fact it is the people who are promoting that viewpoint, who are themselves anti-science, in the real sense, because science is not a body of facts. And if you disbelieve these facts then you are anti-science. No! That is not what science is. Science is a methodology, it is a tool for coming to understanding that rests on skepticism and doubt, and not believing anything 100% wholesale all for eternity, “I swear on this book of science that I believe these things.” No! We come to our own conclusions based on the evidence that is presented to us.
And yes, 100%, people will make errors. They will have poor judgement on these things. But, so be it. That is freedom. People will come to erroneous conclusions, but that is actually how we progress. We build on mistakes of the past. That is what science is actually about. So media telling people that they must believe the experts that we select actually puts the media in the position of being the god-emperors of this universe of science that they are trying to promote. Because they get to decide which experts you have to listen to and which experts you shouldn´t hear at all. And I think anyone with two brain cells to rub together will understand that this comes from a perspective of an agenda that is being pushed.
Dan: Agreed. After I read the article I just jotted down four quick points on why I thought, “Well, no, you can’t just defer to the seven o’clock news experts.” And if I could run through each point and you could say: “agree, disagree.”
Number one: the experts can be wrong as you just said! Right?
Corbett: Yes, exactly.
Dan: Number two: experts serve other interests, besides the public’s interests mainly their own financial interests.
Corbett: The only quibble with that is “mainly.” Some may be purely financially motivated or mostly financially motivated, others might have other motivations. But you are right, that again there is no such thing as an objective viewpoint in science or anything else and everything is a question – well I mean it does, in our system as it works today, it does rest on funding. So who is funding this study and why and for what purpose? And what results are they excluding, etc.? As you say, the excluded context is manifold.
Dan: Right and can there be any better case example of expert opinion that might be influenced just a bit by financial interest when it comes to say vaccines and the new Covid vaccine coming up?
Corbett: Yeah, exactly. Of course the pharmaceutical companies literally have a vested interest in promoting a certain line on vaccination safety and efficacy. And anything that goes against that is literally against their bottom line, so do you think they would fund studies that are showing problems with their safety and efficacy? Of course they would not. Would they spend money in terms of just marketing in a sense to denigrate people who are denigrating their product, of course they would. Any business would do that, but that is exactly why we have to know their business interests and there has to be disclosure of those kinds of financial ties as part of our, the general public’s ability to understand these experts and their motivations.
Dan: Right. My third point is: There are experts out there who might not be getting on the seven o’clock news and one group of experts might disagree with another group of experts. So who do we choose? What do you think about that point?
Corbett: Yeah, no, that is exactly right, and that’s what I am saying with regards to the media putting themselves in the position of rulers, essentially, by saying, “You have to trust the science, but we will only present you this science. We won’t present you these scientists, we won’t present you this, what we present to you is the truth.” And that puts them, the media, actually in the position—it’s not even the scientists then that are holding all the cards, it’s the media that decides you get to hear this viewpoint, you don’t get to hear that viewpoint. And actually we see specific examples of that, of researchers like a Knut Wittkowski or a John Ioannidis, or name a million others during this current Covid [situation], who in the past would have been and have been heavily and prominently featured in mainstream science reports, but now their viewpoint is not being discussed because it goes against the agenda that is being pushed. So now you don’t get to hear those scientists. “Oh, those are quacks now that we have decided they’re quacks.”
Dan: Right, right. My fourth and last point was that even the consensus experts themselves, forget about the other experts we’re not allowed to hear, the consensus experts themselves contradict themselves and they, they send out contradicting information.
Corbett: Yes, the idea that there is a monolithic, singular message here, again is—we have to understand—this is a media construction. The narrative is created at the narrative layer of what the media is saying and they will use this quote and this piece of evidence and this study. So it’s not even—yeah, as you say—it’s not these scientists are approved scientist in everything they say, no this, this thing helps us to put forward the narrative and this thing and this thing. So, again, it’s the people who are creating that narrative who again are putting themselves in charge. It isn’t hard to see why people in the media would argue that the media gets to decide what is right and wrong and you just have to sit there and listen.
Dan: Right, right and specifically to the corona virus, examples where they disagree themselves over time is obvious stuff like: In a pandemic the infected should be quarantined. That was yesterdays thinking right. But now in a pandemic everybody should be quarantined. Here is another one, yesterday’s experts: masks don’t help. OK, that was as of late as April or May. I think it was from the CDC or Fauci. New expert consensus: you need masks to defeat this virus. Yesterday’s experts: we need to put Covid patients on ventilators. New expert consensus: we ain’t pushing that. Old expert consensus: this is a this is a big one and this came from the Canadian Health Minister, I think I saw it on your video a month or two ago, I think her name is Tam and she says, well, first, the old expert consensus—most recently this would be promoted by Gates and company—we’ll be able to get back to normal when we have a vaccine. New expert consensus: the vaccine though absolutely necessary is no silver bullet. We are looking at continued strict measures for two or three years. Have you seen that one?
Corbett: Yes, yes I’ve seen all of the things that you’re talking about there, all of the seeming contradictions. And of course the obvious counter rebuttal to that would be to say, “Yes this is how science works. We believed something yesterday. We got new evidence. We adjusted our theories accordingly. So we thought masks were ineffective. Now we know they’re effective.” OK, now present the evidence for that. Now lay that case out and explain it to me in a way that I understand.
But on top of that, on top of that you also have to say: well then people who were questioning those experts back when that was the expert consensus opinion being presented by the media several months ago, they were wrong and people were right to question them. But are we allowed to question? Because I thought we have to just believe the science. And the science was wrong, but we should have believed them even though they were wrong? It’s nonsensical on its face. You have to do mental pretzel knots to try to come to some sort of conclusion that you should never think of these things. You should never question anything.
Anyone who tells you never question anything is by definition, I would say, your enemy in some sense, your intellectual enemy at the very least and should be treated as such. My message accordingly, has always been and will always be to do your own research. Quite explicitly: do not believe what I am saying. Please look at the sources. And that’s why I always list the sources on everything that I do.
And actually I gave a talk on that concept of open source journalism several years ago at the FOSSA (free open source software arena) conference in France. And in that presentation I highlighted how back in the day, the New York Times, you could go to their website and you could read an article on their website! Wow, you know, we’re living in the future world, you can read articles on the web! But there you could read through an entire article and there would not be one hyperlink to any information. And fast forward to 2013 or whenever I gave that talk – and oh you could find maybe one or maybe two hyperlinks in an article but it would just be linking to other New York Times articles, of course. It wouldn’t be linking to the source documents. They would write entire articles about this document that was just released by the government or this thing, this new study but they wouldn’t link to the study. They wouldn’t link to the document. Again, because they want to be the arbiters of the truth and they do not trust you, you poor plebs with this valuable information that only we can read and interpret.
Dan: Oh, that reminds me of recently with one of my relatives. You know, I have a west-coast family, so I don’t talk about this much, but at one point I said: Ok I have gone in enough, I have seen enough, I should send them the best article I have seen on this Covid situation – it came from a University of Oregon professor. And it was chuck-full of references and hyperlinks and all to doctors, researchers, institutions, universities, and I sent it. And my relative sent me back something – and he says: Ah, that guy is just armchair quarter-backing, look, take a look at this – and you know, it was a 40-minute talk by Bill Gates with no hyperlinks, no references.
When I read the article, it took me about a day and a half to say to myself: “Hm, I wonder what Corbett thinks about this”. And wow was I happy to see it took you like 3 days to make a 25-minute video on it. It was great. And I said to myself, you know as a supplement to that I wonder if we could talk about a couple of instances, historical instances, they could be distant or recent where we have really shot ourselves in the foot by just believing the experts. And I think that the clearest example of these kinds of things when it comes to war—and I’m thinking of say Colin Powell’s speech in front of the UN and how all the experts lined up behind him. Interestingly there were a few experts that weren’t lining up behind him, but suddenly they didn’t become experts anymore, and I think of Scott Ritter – and I think of – who is the general? Norman Schwarzkopf himself – he looked into it and he decided “no, the experts are wrong, we shouldn’t get into this war.” You notice how those guys are in the wrong expert group when they don’t agree with the 7 o’clock news theme.
Corbett: Right, Yeah.
Dan: So, anyway, and I was also thinking about possible examples of where we’ve ignored the experts and where we had said “no, we’re not gonna listen to a consensus” and the public is going to go against it. And in my case I thought of – let’s see – our secretary of State, John Kerry, during the Obama administration was standing up there saying that we need to go put boots on the ground in Syria. And there was actually a public outcry against that one. So in that case we didn’t listen to the experts. We ignored them, and for our own benefit, I think. Can you think of any other examples in medicine, in war, in – I don’t know – war and drugs or something where listening to the experts has really been the wrong approach – I mean, there is lots, right?!
Corbett: Yeah, there is. In fact my mind boggles, I’m thinking of really any of the works that I do that doesn’t in some way address this very question. I think, everything that I do is based on this. But of course we have to make the little asterisk and stipulate that when we say “experts,” again, we are talking about the certain approved experts that are—at least in this particular case—bolstering a particular narrative that’s being used to forward a particular agenda, and to then thereby exclude any other “expert” opinion. I personally have developed an aversion to that word “expert.” That is not to say that there are not authorities on certain subjects who have spent their entire lives diving into it and know it a lot better than other people, but “expert” is generally a word that is used simply to turn people’s brains off and to stop them from functioning.
So, as you say, I think, the most obvious examples and the most pressing examples are the ones that have led the nation—whatever nation you happen to be in—into war. Time and time again throughout history, those have generally been, for at least the last couple of centuries, the result of outright lies. Specifically because of course back in the day you could just have a king issue a proclamation “we are at war” and you are at war, but in some sort of democratic society, however loosely or tightly you define that, you have to motivate the public for war and the only way that can be done is through some version of war atrocity propaganda, false flag terrorism, something along those lines, to make the public believe that their enemy is a vital, present threat that’s here right now and we have to go after them.
So, my examples that I would bring up in this context would be something like the Gulf of Tonkin incident which we know now 100% from NSA intercepts and others, the second incident at any rate did not happen, and yet, that was at least the trigger for what became really the Vietnam war. The escalation of that war at any rate. And we know that was a cynical lie that was being forwarded by McNamara and others that knew that the incident that they were talking about didn’t take place, but that was just the fig leaf of justification.
Again, people—unfortunately with these types of things we run into the wall: yes, of course, do your own research—but at that time in 1964 what kind of research could people have done, because the intercepts and the NSA analysis, that was all behind the wall of secrecy. No one knew about that for 50 years until it was finally released to the public. So how do you prove that they are lying when you don’t have the research? But that’s actually just a further bolstering of the idea that we need transparency, and we need the public to be able to examine evidence. Because when it is behind that wall of classification and secrecy, then all sorts of lies—that are demonstrable lies—that get exposed half a century later—take place—and those lies lead us to war.
Another example of course is 1953, Operation TPAJAX – which was a CIA/MI6 operation to destabilize Iran and overthrow Mohammed Mosaddegh as the president of Iran. And again: we now know that it has been a long known—but it was finally “confirmed” shall we say by the release of CIA documents back in 2013, Obama gave a speech about it, yes, we went in and overthrew the government of Iran. It was on the record. And as I covered recently on my program, just in the past couple of weeks there is this new documentary that now confirms MI6 involvement—again, not that we hadn’t known it but confirmes some of the dates, names and places of MI6 involvement in that operation.
That again—the public is fed a certain story—the real story is happening under a cover of secrecy, because the public cannot do their own research in these cases, this is once again why transparency needs to exist in a number of important facets and ways. And another example in fact of how the media responds to this —I included the mention in that video on “Don’t do your own research”—about Chris Cuomo on CNN saying to his audience: “It’s illegal for you to hold these stolen Wikileaks documents, but it’s okay for us, the media.” which of course is 100% false. It is not illegal to have Wikileaks documents, to download them. They are out there now, it is not illegal to own them. But the media wants you to believe that you literally cannot even look at these documents. Only they can look at them and interpret them for you, and that I think that is just such a window of insight into the ways that these people operate in their mindset, which again, is that the media will control the narrative and they will tell you what to believe.
Dan: Yes, you know, an interesting thing is, in some cases, like, you could say, okay, before 1995, 1996, How did we find out the information we needed to make a correct choice about whatever war the US is going to get into? And I guess now, we don´t have an excuse, right? We can search for it ourselves. But even when we learn new information, sometimes they still try to push a different narrative.
And one of the things I was thinking about where we listened to the experts and we got bitten for it was the war against Spain. The US-war against Spain. Wasn´t it Randolph Hurst who said: ”Give me the pictures and I`ll give you your war!” And I thought: “ Well, ok. There´s where we needed, like we say, we needed propaganda to convince the public, to go into a war.
Well, talking about experts I just went to a history channel article online and the title was: “Did yellow journalism fuel the outbreak of the Spanish-American war?” And, they say:” No! No! Absolutely not, absolutely not.“ And it begins: ”No serious historian of the of the Spanish-American war period embraces the notion that the yellow press of Hurst and Pulitzer fomented or brought on the war with Spain in 1898, says Joseph Campbell, a professor of communications at American University.” So they’re still trying to downplay the fact that yes, the press has an absolute crucial role in this.
Corbett: I would have to read that specifically but I might actually agree. In that the yellow press didn´t foment the war. It didn´t really cause the war. It ginned the public into the war hysteria that allowed the democratic process to pass this war, essentially make it part of the governments processes. But the war itself was motivated by much deeper motivations. It was sold to the public through the press and that.., I don´t know, I`d have to read that article, but I´m assuming they are playing on that distinction and hoping people won´t notice.
Dan: Well, in any case, we both agree that wars do have to be sold to people and that is the job of the press.
Corbett: Absolutely. Without public support this cannot function. And that´s again exactly why they want to consolidate and to control all sources of information and to tell you what you can and cannot look at and what you can and cannot research.
Dan: Right. Great, well James we will definitely link to your video, your 25 minute video and then people can get a link to the original forbes article and not have to go straight to their page and give them the hits. Just to finish up here: a year ago I did an interview with Scott Horton and I finished up with YNP-10. And having you on here with your encyclopedic knowledge—I am kind of getting sick of Covid myself—and I thought we might cover a couple of other topics real quick. But in a quick ratatap form. I have ten questions and I wonder if you could answer yes no or pass. It’s called YNP-10, and if you want to leave a comment on any one of them that’s fine with you, would you be up for that?
Corbett: Let’s do it.
Dan: Ok, here we go.
Number one: did Jeffrey Epstein run an extensive blackmail operation using underage sex slaves?
Corbett: Yes
Dan: Number two: would the US and the world be better off if anyone connected to Jeffrey Epstein was barred from positions of power and influence?
Corbett: Yes. Qualification: it depends on what you mean by connected? But yes in any meaningful sense of “connected,” yes.
Dan: How about they, they took a flight on the Lolita Express, they went to Sex Slave Island.
Corbett: Yes I’d say that is connected, yeah, absolutely.
Dan: Or even one of his New York soirees in Manhattan.
Corbett: Right. Yeah, yes.
Dan: Three: Google may be worse than useless for finding the truth, but wouldn’t you say we can count on honest and untainted search results from DuckDuckGo, startpage etc?
Corbett: No
Dan: Why not?
Corbett: uhm because I don’t think that—there is no such thing, I think, as meaningful unbiased search. I mean there, unless you’re simply returning based on keywords the number of times that keyword pops up in the search results or something. That is the only objective unbiased way to form search results. And that is useless because then people just start gaming it and start putting the words on the screen a million times to make it pop up in the search results, so you need some sort of algorhythm that will shape and will rank certain things higher and lower. So there is going to be a bias in search results, which is why I think the answer is not DuckDuckGo or startpage or bing or whatever, SwissCows or SearX. No, it’s every search engine: you compare results and hopefully come to a better triangulation of the search results your looking for.
Dan: Got it.
This is a tough one you might have to be careful. Should homogenous Japan be punished with sanctions for not accepting more refugees from war torn developing countries such as Syria?
Corbett: No. Punished by who? No.
Dan: Yea that’s an obvious one for me too.
Five: Do you think Assad purposely and repeatedly gasses his own citizens?
Corbett: No.
Dan: Ok, six: Do you think Iran is itching for a fight with the US and simultaneously plotting to “wipe Israel of the map.”
Corbett: No.
Dan: Seven: Do you think since Venezuela is an economic basket case and suffers under corrupt socialist rule, a coalition of free countries led by the US should invade and spread some democracy down there?
Corbett: No.
Dan: Ok, Eight: Do you think that in the minds of the powers that shouldn’t be, it’s really truth that needs to be suppressed and banned not lies.
Corbett: In the minds of the powers that shouldn’t be?
Yes.
Dan: Nine: did the Israeli pilots know they were shooting at a US Navy ship when they attacked the USS Liberty?
Corbett: Yes.
Dan: Ok, and well you know they claim they didn’t know.. you knew that?
Corbett: Yea but, I am pretty sure there is NSA intercepts that have been declassified now. I do have that listed in a video that I did called “A Brief History of False Flags,” I believe. I’ll have to double check that reference but yeah, I am sure its admitted, or not admitted because they don’t talk about it, but at any rate the evidence is there that one hundred percent they knew.
Dan: Right, ok James none of your answers have surprised me. Last one I don’t think you will surprise me here either. Maybe!
Will James Corbett come to his senses take Bill Gates advice and get the vaccine for himself and his family?
Corbett: No. At least not, not like that, no. No no, I reserve the right to choose what medical interventions I take and my family takes and no one gets to tell me what to do, in that matter.
Dan: Ok, well on that note Mr. Corbett thank you very much for the interview it was enlightening and – Thank you very much.
Corbett: Thank you
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