History of the World: Global Revolution and Australian Genocide

The History of the World Part 6 – Revolution

BBC (2018)

Film Review

Episode 6 focuses mainly on attitudinal changes occurring in the 17th and 18th century that would lead to the overthrow of royal rule in the southern half of North America, France, and Haiti.

The episode links the rise of revolutionary ideas rather simplistically to Galileo’s challenge (attributed to his invention of the telescope in the early 17th century) to official Catholic dogma placing the Earth (rather than the sun) at the center of the solar system. s revolve around the earth. They neglect to mention a Catholic cleric named Nicolaus Copernicus was the first to propose a heliocentric view of the universe 100 years earlier.

The film also oversimplifies the root causes of the US War of Independence. While they accurately depict efforts by Samuel Adams and other wealthy merchants and landowners use of the hated Stamp Tax to stir up the Boston mob, historical evidence suggests their key motivation in declaring independence was George III’s ban on settler expansion into Native American territory west of the Appalachians. As Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz reveals in The Indigenous History of the United States, the main purpose of the Stamp Tax was to finance British troops to evict settlers who were illegally squatting on Native land.

By 1789, Louis XVI had bankrupted the French royal treasury by financing the American rebels. Punitive new taxes on the middle class (the nobility, typically, refused to pay tax) would trigger a mass insurrection that removed the king from power. Yet only seven years after the revolutionaries declared France a republic, the same middle class would allow Napoleon to declare himself emperor of France.

In 1791, inspired by the French Revolution, the slaves of Haiti would revolt, overthrowing their white plantations owners and declaring their independence from France.

One of the longest segments of this episode concerns the British settlement of Australia, following its “discovery” by Captain James Cook. Beginning in 1787, British judges would sentence petty criminals (many of them children) to hard labor in Australia. Thanks to the European “Enlightenment,” it was no longer politically acceptable to hang British poor who stole food to survive.

By 1900, 80% of Australia’s aboriginal population would be wiped out , thanks to colonial policies that allowed British settlers to steal their lands by hunting and massacring them.

The film ends with a bizarre segment extolling Dr Edward Jenner for his role in promoting the use of smallpox vaccine. Historic evidence reveals that inoculation for smallpox first originated in China in 1000 AD and was practiced in Turkey and Africa long before making its way to Europe.

 

 

The Hidden History of Smallpox Vaccine

Suzanne Humphries – Dissolving Illusions

Dr Suzanne Humphries (2017)

In this video, board certified nephrologist Suzanne Humphries explodes the myth that mass vaccination was responsible for eradicating small pox in the developed world.

She begins by describing the vaccine’s development by Edward Jenner in the 18^th century. Jenner’s decision to inject children with pus from cows infected with cowpox was based on his theory, which has never been proven, that it would protect them from developing smallpox.

A close examination of the medical literature reveals Jenner’s vaccine was never effective against the most virulent form of smallpox. In England an 1871 outbreak of smallpox, after 33 years of compulsory vaccination (leading to unprecedented levels of sickness and death in healthy children), would lead to first anti-vaccine movement by outraged parents. By 1889 when they finally overturned compulsory vaccination, only 15% of parents were complying with the law – they preferred risking imprisonment and seizure of their property to jeopardizing their children’s lives.

Humphries goes on to discuss more recent smallpox outbreaks in vaccinated populations – in 1945 in 100% vaccinated US troops and in 1972 in Yugoslavia, where over 95% were vaccinated.

Most interesting, however, is her description of George W Bush’s abortive attempt to mass vaccinate Americans in 2003. This initiative was based on alleged intelligence that “terrorists” were planning to attack the US with weaponized smallpox virus.

The project was scrapped after the CDC ruled that patients would have to give informed consent acknowledging the vaccine was more likely to kill them than small pox (the CDC predicted 285 deaths in otherwise healthy individuals). The required package insert revealed that small pox vaccine is contraindicated in patients under 18 and those with a personal or family history of heart disease, diabetes or elevated cholesterol.

Humphries maintains that smallpox vanished from the developed world (in 1979) for the same reason as other infectious illnesses, such as typhoid, scarlet fever and cholera. The infectious epidemics that scourged 18^th and 19^th century slums were largely the product of contaminated drinking water, near-starvation diets, overcrowding and poor hygiene. As smallpox virus is only transmitted through direct physical contact, most 19th century cases were transmitted by doctors, nurses and carers who failed to wash their hands.

At the end of her talk, Humphries compares doctor’s superstitious attitudes towards non-evidence based vaccinations to blood letting, another common medical treatment in the 19^th century. Owing to the power of Big Pharma and the failure of medical schools to expose students to the extensive  medical literature about vaccination drawbacks, doctors (like Humphries) who raise legitimate concerns about vaccine safety continue to be treated like criminals and quacks.