History and Conspiracies
Today's depraved are the thrown away children of the past
Visit the Evidence Files Facebook and YouTube pages; Like, Follow, Subscribe or Share!
Find more about me on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Mastodon. Or visit my EALS Global Foundation’s webpage page here. If you enjoy my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thanks!
History
The Evidence Files is adding a history section. It makes sense, really. I have a graduate degree in history and even published historical articles back in my graduate school days. Moreover, as I am currently in the USA, I once again have access to my library collected over years at the university, though it is admittedly smaller than it once was. Sadly, I had to cull it a few times as I moved from home to home, but it remains robust enough. I specialized in the events taking place in China, and central and south Asia, an area whose history is not well known, especially among Westerners. But, it is replete with some truly wild stories, from the Tibetan red-faced warriors to the Great Game of Central Asia and beyond. I hope to bring some fascinating tidbits here for your entertainment and education from time-to-time.
During my stint enmeshed in the world of writing history, I was fortunate to meet some true titans of the craft. These extraordinary people provided just the inspiration a young(ish) college student needed. My history advisor at the University at Buffalo, Roger Des Forges, approached historical research in such a clinical way that even now I think he played a pivotal role in helping me develop my investigative skills that I later applied to the criminal world. His preeminent work, Cultural Centrality and Political Change in Chinese History: Northeast Henan in the Fall of the Ming came with glowing reviews. Historian John W. Dardess described it as “a remarkable and valuable work, based on a great deal of research in the original sources.” I remember meeting Yale historian Jonathan Spence, whose textbook The Search for Modern China spent weeks on the New York Times bestseller list… a textbook! Dr. Spence once cheekily told me that he always wanted to be a writer, but he just wasn’t clever enough to come up with his own material. So, he became a historian to ‘borrow’ others’ material. Good writing, he counseled, arises from passion for the subject. For me, and perhaps for Dr. Spence as well, there is little need for fiction. The human historical epoch has generated, and still does, so much material of interest that writers will never run out if they’re willing to put in the research. Sadly, Dr. Spence passed in December of 2021, depriving the world of a truly exquisite chronicler of our past.
James Millward, at Georgetown, helped me along in a critical moment while I was trying to uncover the legal and operational mechanisms of the Dalai Lama’s government in Tibet in the mid-17th century. I was part of a team working to translate the last known law code of the government of Lhasa. The language was cryptic, written in the Tibetan Umê script. That style of writing is challenging to decipher because it can be quite difficult to distinguish letters, especially handwritten ones, as they run together on a page. The meaning was often dependent on and borrowed from numerous obscure works. And of course the political context offered some motivation behind what was legally proscribed. Research on the historical interplay of central, south, and east Asian societies was not especially robust (compared to many other places, anyway), and it required being able to read a variety of languages to get anywhere close to capturing the whole picture. It was for that reason alone that I learned to read academic French, as many of the early works on the region were written by French diplomats and scholars. Professor Millward helped fill some crucial gaps because he understood many of the lesser known central Asian languages, and had written extensively on the history of their speakers. He graciously corresponded with me, providing numerous works and other resources to help me along.
The list of people who made my tenure in graduate school such a profoundly important, cherished period of my life is too long to outline here. I am eternally grateful for everyone with whom I had the great fortuity to meet and interact. I will make sure to mention them in the course of whatever I post here in the future where relevant.
The Uchen and Umê scripts of Tibeten, by Goran tek-en, CC BY-SA 4.0
Today when I hear the constant bashing of universities and experts, I think back on those days and lament on what the youth growing up in this society will miss out. I would say it is hard to imagine that the experiences I enjoyed would now be so maligned, but alas, history repeats. For those who think attacking things like critical race theory, wokeness, or the value of experts is a novel, clever feature of today’s society… I have a book to sell you!
Even a cursory glance at the events of the 20th century will put the novelty argument to rest. The despotic rarely show any creativity and today’s autocrats might be the lowest intellect of all so far, powered primarily by the ability to broadcast their nonsensical messages to ever more foolish-enough disciples through social media, bolstered by propaganda outlets with their own voluminous social media followings. Access to such bullhorns means today’s political criminals need not engage in cunning; rather they need only to shout whatever into the internet void—however vapid—as frequently as possible, the illusory truth effect on steroids. It will reach their pliant sycophants because they live and ‘learn’ only within their epistemic bubbles. The tyrants of the last century themselves were barely more innovative or original in their depravity than the buffoons of today. The historical pejoratives we use to appropriately paint our contemporaneous cretins—Nazis, brownshirts, red hats, etc.—emerged then as little more than cheap imitations employed by the 20th century’s unoriginal debauched. For they themselves borrowed from far more draconian, frightening, and inventive monsters of the past. This is not to elevate earlier history’s most dastardly, but to add context to those of the present infected with the Dunning-Kruger virus.
Anyway, introducing some of the obscurities of history may shed light on the events of now. Those of an independent mind, who simply lack the time or gumption to wade through the morass of disinformation posing as news, will hopefully find the parallels intriguing and informative. As I constantly work to do, I will include these pieces mixed in between other topics to avoid monotony or boredom.
Conspiracies and Crimes
If the era since November 2020 is any indication, politics in the USA entering the 2024 election cycle is on a path toward even more lawlessness, conspiracy theories, and coup attempts than before. I believe educating people on what is really happening is critical to preventing the collapse of the American political system into another cesspool of corruption that it was from 2016 to January 20, 2021. To avoid turning this platform into just another political newsletter, I have launched a new space that focuses exclusively on the political and legal world. Here, I will still drop the occasional posts that delve into politics, and of course will cover legal topics no matter how political. But, if you are interested in more comprehensive political coverage, that dives deeply into the issues of the day, I encourage you to head over to my Medium page.
I just launched my seminal piece called “Just Say We Won.” It is a near book-length exposition of the efforts by a none-too-small cadre of traitors who literally sought to overthrow the United States government via a ‘soft’ or ‘legal’ coup. It is difficult or impossible to read it and conclude anything other than that these folks quite literally wanted to end democracy. While that may sound like tired rhetoric, it becomes self-evident as you follow the day-by-day narrative of what occurred between about September of 2020 and January of 2021. And frankly, this very long, detailed piece does not capture even two-thirds of it. To read my piece on this conspiracy, click here. Here’s a brief excerpt:
********************
Just Say We Won
Donald J. Trump, who was the sitting President at the commencement of this criminal effort, once took an oath that says:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
He did none of these things.
Instead, Trump and his fellow plotters attempted to subvert the 2020 election in order to unlawfully install a single person — him — to arguably the most powerful office in the world. The sitting President, who took an oath to protect and defend against such sedition, orchestrated, participated in, and stood to benefit from the scheme…
…Deep into the night of November 3, 2020, dozens of loyalists of Donald J. Trump feverishly followed reports on televisions that tracked, virtually minute-by-minute, the vote tallies across the country. While reporters outlined the results across many races at all different levels, this cadre zeroed in its attentions on only one — the election for the US President. Only two candidates realistically faced off — one the former Vice President of a well-regarded two-term presidency, the other the incumbent. The hopeful in the room knew their odds of victory were long. Their candidate’s first term was nothing but disastrous, riddled with numerous criminal convictions, ethics-related resignations or firings, and scandal after scandal after scandal.
Despite an over-estimate of Joe Biden’s lead in the two weeks prior to the election by most polls, even accounting for a large error margin it was clear Biden would win by millions. And, well, he did. But Trump’s team had a plan for this. Well before that fateful night Steve Bannon— former Trump campaign manager and convicted criminal — revealed it to his compatriots, many of whom would later become conspirators: “What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner... that’s our strategy.” Bannon added that he believed:
[the chance of a] peaceful resolution of this is probably gone… Because the other three alternatives [are], either Biden’s up slightly and Trump says he stole it, right, and he’s not leaving. Or it’s undefined and we can’t figure out who’s leading, and Trump’s saying he’s stealing it, and he’s not leaving. Or, Trump’s leading, which is the one where they’re gonna burn the city down… This is a revolution.
Another felon in Trump’s circle, Roger Stone, made similar — if slightly more dramatic and profane — overtures. He told several associates, “I really do suspect it will still be up in the air. When that happens, the key thing to do is claim victory… Possession is nine tenths of the law. No, we won. Fuck you. Sorry. Over. We won. You’re wrong. Fuck you.” Stone added, “I said fuck the voting, let’s get right to the violence… We’ll have to start smashing pumpkins if you know what I mean” (10/13/22 Business Meeting; 39:14–39:50).
On election night, as the bad news poured in, disgraced attorney Rudy Giuliani purportedly stated, “just say we won.” Witnesses claimed that Giuliani was heavily inebriated. Regardless, while Bannon had conceived the misbegotten embryo of what became the Big Lie, a drunken Giuliani apparently birthed it.
Trump had been hinting for some time that he had no intention of relinquishing power, irrespective of whether he lost the election. In July 2020, he told Chris Wallace “No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t last time either.” This was his answer to whether he would accept the election results. Later, when asked directly if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power, Trump said “We’re going to have to see what happens.” Seemingly based on Bannon’s advice to just “say he’s a winner,” Trump told several people he would declare victory if it “looks like he’s ‘ahead’.” At the same time, when in front of the media, Trump denied that he would make a premature declaration, but complained about the fact that it takes longer than election day to determine the results. Nevertheless, before the final vote came in on election night, Trump publicly announced “We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”
Everyone in the Trump circle knew his loss was imminent. Evidence comes out regularly that proves it. But losing did not sit well with the highly unpopular celebrity-turned-politician. Instead, he opted to muster his loyalists — from the highest levels of his campaign to the lowest local politicos, and those in official positions of all levels — to engage in a vast criminal enterprise whose sole purpose was to undermine the election and install Trump into an office he pronouncedly lost. In short, Trump was “determined to stay in power” (DC Ind; pg. 1).
********************
Make sure to catch one of my classics, Are Microwave Ovens Killing You?
***
I am a Certified Forensic Computer Examiner, Certified Crime Analyst, Certified Fraud Examiner, and Certified Financial Crimes Investigator with a Juris Doctor and a Master’s degree in history. I spent 10 years working in the New York State Division of Criminal Justice as Senior Analyst and Investigator. Today, I teach Cybersecurity, Ethical Hacking, and Digital Forensics at Softwarica College of IT and E-Commerce in Nepal. In addition, I offer training on Financial Crime Prevention and Investigation. I am also Vice President of Digi Technology in Nepal, for which I have also created its sister company in the USA, Digi Technology America, LLC. We provide technology solutions for businesses or individuals, including cybersecurity, all across the globe. I was a firefighter before I joined law enforcement and now I currently run a non-profit that uses mobile applications and other technologies to create Early Alert Systems for natural disasters for people living in remote or poor areas.