Anna von Reitz: a cautionary tale

Updated 5/9/2022

I have followed the website annavonreitz.com since there were under 300 numbered postings there. (Now there are over 2500.) I came to trust her info, have filed the paperwork she recommended, and have used it in "court." Result: "Case Dismissed." (See https://everythingiknewwaswrong.blogspot.com/2019/10/my-recent-court-appearance-and-what-it.html/

However, I have found logical and factual flaws in almost half of her recent Facebook posts, and don't recommend them to others, although I do post links on Facebook to the accurate ones individually. Specifically, of the most recent 29 posts on her website, I can only recommend 15. The others have errors that she should not have let slip by; they are not worthy of her previous high-level "Shinola sensor," namely, numbers 2549, 2553, 2556-58, 2560, 2564-67, 2569, 2570, 2573, 2575, and 2576-78.

I usually enjoy Anna's writing style, though she has a few idiosyncrasies which probably bother only a semipro editor like myself; she consistently reverses the proper uses of it's and its, strings various numbers of hyphens together to stand in for a dash and uses "script" instead of "scrip" (for a provisional certificate of money). She also uses the phrase "usurp upon" instead of simply "usurped." If these were her only errors, I would not be writing this.

Some of Anna's recent failings may result from a workflow that overpowers her ability to fact check, but as her audience has grown immensely, she has a much greater responsibility to ensure the accuracy of her assertions. Too often, she seems to assume that people or sources she trusts will be correct, without checking for herself. I have learned the hard way that for every question of fact, there's at least one answer that's probable, logical, and completely wrong.

Like other iconoclasts I respect and have followed, such as the late Robert David Steele,* she is not immune to the error of assuming the falsity of statements of people who have a demonstrated history of spreading misinformation and disinformation, assuming that any position they take must be the opposite of the truth, and automatically denying credence to anything promulgated by anyone with a trusted pedigree in the mass media or the academic world. I understand this failing; as a younger man, I have succumbed to it myself. I have counted myself as a member of a series of "tribes" over time, including those labeled Republican, Conservative, Libertarian, Green, and even Democrat (when Bernie Sanders was running in a primary). 

The tribes you think of as "political parties" are, and have always been, political lobbying groups organized as, and functioning as, private corporations (as Anna will remind you). You probably regard "Conservative" and "Libertarian" as ideologies, but that characterization is also off the mark. They are more like the Rotarians/Kiwanis/Elks/Moose...private clubs that function as tribes and are mostly manipulated at their "higher levels" by unseen cliques, not unlike the Masons.

Tribes always have allies and opponents, friends and enemies. In post 2564, Why Do I Support President Trump? http://annavonreitz.com/supporttrump.pdf Anna states, "I don’t care (about) and I am sick of the so-called intelligentsia trashing this man, and saying that he is “not credible” and “not acceptable.” Donald Trump is the only President in my lifetime who has kept — to the best of his ability— every campaign promise he made. Every single one.” She was “surrounded at dinner” by “elegant and well-educated people” who were trashing Trump for all the wrong reasons (please see her post above for details), and proceeded to defend him. Her take on Trump is at odds with the reality that most others see easily. For example, she says Trump’s record “speaks for itself…I trust and respect this man…(He has) the Spirit of Truth in his heart…he always tells the truth as he sees it…Donald Trump is the most “credible” man I have seen in the Oval Office in a long, long time…” 

On my planet...(well, see my commentary on her post number 2566, below).

Here are a few examples of how Anna has, like me, succumbed to tribal loyalty instead of following her usual analytical rigor in her recent postings. She recently shared an anonymous set of pro-Trump talking points with this post on her website, number 2566: "Here's What I Am Talking About and What You Need to See." It was borrowed from an "anonymous source." http://annavonreitz.com/hereiswhatiamtalkingabout.pdf

Someone on Reddit posted the same list, asking for fact-checking of the list. Here was my response:

"This is a list of “accomplishments we should thank Trump for," mostly bills (written by others) and executive orders signed, intended to counteract the implied anti-Trump media bias. Many items seem targeted to surprise "the left." My search on DuckDuckGo (they don't track you like Google) hit pay dirt. I found the “anonymous source” for the list, and a blog of someone who did his own fact-checking. It saved me the trouble of doing it myself; many thanks to “The Grey Zone:” https://debaumer.wordpress.com/2020/05/18/trumps-truths-and-the-bigger-story-part-1/ and https://debaumer.wordpress.com/2020/05/18/trumps-truths-and-the-bigger-story-part-2/

Of course, what we should look at is what Trump has DONE, not talking points from his supporters. What he's done to the country mirrors what he did, for example, to Atlantic City: use other people's money to build his wealth, stiff his contractors, extract all the value from the fruits of the borrowed money, enrich himself, his friends, benefactors and family (a constitutional violation), bankrupt his businesses, then blame everyone but himself for the results. He "drained the swamp," then refilled it, placing lobbyists pledged to destroy federal agencies in charge of those agencies, rolling back environmental protections, and hobbling America's economy with his tariffs, spending a huge proportion of his time tweeting and golfing (after a campaign promise not to take vacations or golf). He has enriched himself through massive weekly junkets to his own golf courses at Federal expense, putting up his massive entourage (including Secret Service agents) in his own hotels, and set new records for lies-per-day by a single politician. 

He minimized the danger of covid-19, claiming it would magically disappear, and has threatened State Governors who seek to (prudently) delay "reopening" the country. Pence claimed that "we've flattened the curve," on the very day when new cases and deaths reached new peaks; the US now leads the world in new cases and total deaths (over a million deaths as of May 1, 2022), while countries that compelled mask use and social distancing at the start of the crisis are now able to reopen. The US is now a country from which other countries are restricting travel, for their own safety. He has motivated mental health professionals to form a campaign to remove him for being unstable and putting the nation and planet in danger. While this is just a partial list of his incompetence and malfeasance in office, it should be enough to scare the crap out of any sane person. (By the way, I did not vote for Hillary.)"

Another instance of Anna's lack of research on topics outside her areas of expertise is her claim that no atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945 because if they had been, Hiroshima and Nagasaki would still be uninhabitable today (which is not the case). See her post number 2423, Face the Liars -- And the Truth http://annavonreitz.com/facetheliarsandthetruth.pdf

"...it is complete --- and obvious --- bunk. If atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki, those cities would still be uninhabitable today and would remain uninhabitable for thousands of years beyond today."

Anna recommends, when fact-checking her assertions, that we do our own research. I did so, and found the explanation for the lack of persistent radioactivity simple, straightforward and logical. Try a search for "current levels of radioactivity in Hiroshima and Nagasaki." One result: https://gizmodo.com/why-can-people-live-in-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-now-but-1451250877. Here's the gist of it: 

"Little Boy was a uranium-fueled bomb about 10 feet long and just over two feet across, that held 140 pounds of uranium and weighed nearly 10,000 pounds.

"When it exploded as planned, nearly 2000 feet above Hiroshima, about two pounds of uranium underwent nuclear fission as it released nearly 16 kilotons of explosive force. Since Hiroshima was on a plain, Little Boy caused immense damage. Estimates vary but it is believed that approximately 70,000 people were killed and an equal number were injured on that day, and nearly 70% of the city’s buildings were destroyed. Since then, approximately 1,900 people, or about 0.5% of the post-bombing population, are believed to have died from cancers attributable to Little Boy’s radiation release."

Anna asserts (without proof) that "The plain and simple truth is that what was used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a new kind of "dirty" incendiary bomb. Oh, it's terrible, no doubt about that--- but it's not an "atomic" bomb. The governments of the world lied through their teeth and kept right on lying, anyway. They still teach this lie in public schools all over the world."

Incendiary bombs don't produce radiation. The firebombing of Dresden destroyed that city as thoroughly as did our atomic bombs, but it took thousands of them to do the job, not two. Deaths from radiation from "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" are well-documented—direct radiation from the blasts, not delayed radiation from fallout. Equally well-documented are the then-secret development of those bombs by the Manhattan Project, and films of their testing in Nevada. (How absurd is it to claim that these were "not atomic bombs?")

So, how can the relatively-rapid return of radioactivity levels to near-normal be explained? At another link, https://cebudailynews.inquirer.net/150776/radiation-hiroshima-nagasaki, we read: 

"The radioactive particles from the atomic bombs 72 years ago were supposed to render both cities uninhabitable for thousands, and millions, of years.

“Today, the background radiation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the same as the average amount of natural radiation present anywhere on Earth. It is not enough to affect human health,” according to scientific reports. But why? What happened? Why are these two cities in Japan safe again, so soon?

"Uranium-235 was used for the bomb over Hiroshima and Plutonium-239 over Nagasaki. The half-life of U-235 is 700 million years, the Pu-239, 24,000 years, if they had...exploded on the ground. Information from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Museums provided the answer to the mystery.

"Both bombs exploded high up in the air, 1,968 feet for Hiroshima and 1,800 feet for Nagasaki. They never hit the ground. The 139 pounds of U-235 and the 12 pounds of Pu-239 were pulverized into particles and the plume dissipated by the wind over land and mostly to the sea."

Mystery solved. So, what could have been Anna's purpose in writing this post? No mystery there.

"I am going to prove to you," Anna states, "that the commercial corporations that have been serving "as" our government, are Liars. I am going to do this using one fantastically famous example.

"The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, never happened.

"This Chestnut was so widely distributed and so universally believed, that it traumatized two generations of people and continues to haunt us today --- but it is complete --- and obvious --- bunk. If atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki, those cities would still be uninhabitable today and would remain uninhabitable for thousands of years beyond today...if they would lie about such a centerpiece of "world history" as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even seven-plus decades afterward, what else do you think they have lied about?"

I don't disagree that we have been, and continue to be, lied to by our so-called leaders, but accusing them of fabricating a "big lie" that turns out to be true does nothing but hurt her credibility, with no upside whatsoever.

The Covid-19 crisis has also put her set of trusted sources at odds with reality. Suffice it to say that she has given credence to the anti-mask crowd, supporting Trump's reactions to the Covid-19 crisis, blaming China for the problem, and at first denying, then minimizing, the scope of the problem. Result: Americans are being flagged as unwelcome plague carriers in other countries, some of which had early and effective responses which now allow their economies to reopen. Pence claimed that "we've flattened the curve" on the same day that new cases and deaths reached new peaks. Some of Trump's supporters, Republican legislators among them, have actually said that we must accept more deaths as the cost of preventing "economic disaster." Anna knows the cause of that disaster, and it's not the "rising expenses" of Social Security, Medicare, and other falsely-labeled "entitlements" as McConnell asserts; nor has it anything to do with viruses, or "fake" vaccines. It's the kleptocrat controllers who have, as managers of our current de facto system of corporate feudalism, usurping what was once a government of We the People, who have replaced our actual government with government-services corporations.

Even if all the anti-vax stories were true, they should not be echoed in Anna's writings, because they distract from her main mission. Will all the vaccinated be dead in two years from the hidden, planned effects of the "faux vaccines?" If so, unless she can find and communicate an antidote for this outcome, all she will have accomplished is to spread fear and despair. Vaccines have already saved many more lives than they have harmed. 

Please, Anna, stop shooting yourself (and your loyal supporters) in the foot by stepping outside your areas of expertise and spreading misinformation. We need you laser-focused on the goals of your movement, exemplified on your other main site, https://tasa.americanstatenationals.org.

* Robert David Steele fell victim to the anti-vaxxers who painted the Covid-19 pandemic as a "Plandemic," declined to be vaccinated and died of the virus in a hospital. Some continue to support the positions of those who portray Fauci and Big Pharma as evil, murderous villains, killing their victims for profit. (Full disclosure: I'm vaccinated. I'm also partly immunocompromised by chemotherapy for non-Hodgkins Lymphoma last year.) One of the websites he hosted now has posts like this one: https://robertdavidsteele.com/q-robert-david-steele-has-been-executed/

The man was much more than what your initial impression of him might be. He was once in the CIA and has said that he believes there are, indeed, CIA false-flag ops because he once created one (thankfully, no one died as a result). He had an operation to "unrig" our electoral system in partnership with Cynthia Mckinney, and had a modest (ahem) proposal to extend the concept of open-source computer code to "everything." It would be a worldwide economic and humanitarian boon to mankind if someone else takes up the mantle of his work on the project.

Do you believe the Earth is flat? (Here's why I don't.)

I’ve heard complaints that “people these days” (including kids) aren’t able to use reason, logic and just plain clear thinking to solve problems and discern truth. Celebrities like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, like Carl Sagan before him, are famous for making such complaints. So, I’ve decided to make my own modest contribution to the cause of lessening this problem, not by attacking specific dumb theories and beliefs, but by guiding the “misguided” to improve their aim at the bullseye of truth.

This quest began after reading online material posted by adherents of the “Flat Earth Theory.” Adherents have a checkered history, and contemporary “believers” fall into several categories, among them religious fundamentalists who wish to reconcile their literal interpretation of scriptures with some semblance of science, and others who have come to distrust All authorities who they’re convinced have agendas which include fooling the public to conceal secrets. Some of this group go to the extreme of believing that Everything that All authorities say are lies; what should be an obvious fallacy, pursued perhaps because of emotions of betrayal and anger.

My posts on “flat earth” websites and YouTube channels, I quickly realized from responses to these posts, were unlikely to convince any “true believers” of the errors of their ways. (As Mark Twain observed, “you can’t reason someone out of a belief that they weren’t reasoned into.”) I resolved to abandon such efforts as futile.

Recently, however, I encountered some flat-earth beliefs being promulgated by a smart person in the public eye who I greatly admired and respected. (I subsequently learned that, in response to negative feedback, he stopped speaking and writing publicly of this belief, without abandoning it.) “What’s going on here?” I wondered to myself. “How could this intelligent man go so far astray?” I set out to solve this puzzle, and I think I have found the key. It’s perhaps the primary argument of typical flat-earth proponents: the Earth looks flat. “Round-Earth theories” contradict the “common-sense” of our everyday perceptions, that we stand on a stationary earth, around which everything else moves. When a theory requires us to discard common perceptions, it seems (to “flat-earthers”) that it’s the theory which must yield, not our perceptions.

Apparently, many people of substantial intellect and sophistication are unwilling or unable to expand their conception of what’s real and true beyond the limitations of their perceptions. These limitations must not be allowed to become barriers to rational thought. Rather than a direct assault on the specific fallacies inherent in flat-earth theories, I decided to expose the limitations of our perceptions in general ways.

First, observe that while our “common senses tell us” that we perceive the world directly through our senses, this is provably not so. We do not really see with our eyes; they only project images on our retinas, which transmit signals to our brains, which decode them and form a mental construct of what we see. In the same manner, when we “touch” an object, we do not “feel” it with our fingers, we form a mental impression of the nature and locationof what we “touch,” through both visual interpretation and “mental mapping” of the spatial locations of our body parts relative to the object. (An excellent book by the late Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe, posits, among other things, that we perceive our own bodies in a holographic manner—which is how our finger can find our nose in the dark, and why amputees can sometimes feel itches in their missing limbs.)

Further, it cannot be said that we actually “touch” anything at all, in the sense of one solid object contacting another. On a submicroscopic scale, our nerve endings sense the proximity of “objects,” which are surrounded by electromagnetic fields which are repelled by corresponding electromagnetic fields outside our skin. Said another way, we neither touch nor see solid objects, because they do not exist as such; what we perceive as solid through our senses is, on a micro scale, almost entirely “empty space.”

An online search for “optical illusions” will quickly demonstrate how our visual apparatus can be completely deceived into seeing things that contradict our “common sense.” In a similar way, powerful microscopes or telescopes which permit us to see far beyond the limited scales of our unaided eyes reveal different aspects of reality that we could scarcely imagine without them. As an exercise in grasping the effects of scale, please view a video such as the one below, which allows us to travel in our imaginations to the very limits of the cosmos, both outwards to the edge of the observable universe and inwards to the smallest measurable distance (the “Planck length”): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfSNxVqprvM

In this video, our virtual viewpoint moves “outward and upward” away from human scale, in powers of ten. As we zoom outward, our virtual speed also increases by powers of ten. (Morgan Freeman narrates the journey.) At the limit of the observable universe (a limit imposed by the speed of light, not the ultimate size of the universe itself), the journey reverses to reveal the smallest currently-conceived building blocks of all matter, Quarks. However, the journey inward actually continues to the smallest distance in quantum theory, the Planck length, far smaller than quarks.

(For a more-comprehensive view of the scale of the total universe, see the websites and videos of Nassim Haramein.)

You may also see, in the right-hand column of “related” YouTube videos, an occasional “flat earth” promo. I recommend you wait until you finish this article before exploring any of those.

Now that you have some perspective on the vast scale of objects in the universe (if, indeed, they can be considered “objects,” which poses a slightly different question), and seen that our senses don’t tell us what we usually think they do, let me show you a local example of some of the illusions we commonly think of as “real,” and some productive ways to view these illusions that, I hope, will give you a different view of “common sense” than you had before.

Stay with me as I guide you astray, then reveal my misdirections. As I live near the ocean, I aimed my iPhone (on the Ventnor boardwalk) South for the start of the video.* What do your eyes seem to tell you? How did you answer the questions I posed? (Incidentally, the way I phrased my first question, "Which side is darker, the side towards the ocean or the side towards the land?" is in the form of a sneaky misdirection known as "begging the question,"** wherein a question is phrased such that a foregone conclusion is embedded within it; the questioner hopes you will take that conclusion for granted.) In this case, the “foregone conclusion” I sneak in is: “One side IS darker than the other.”

With the second question, the deceptive conclusion is removed, and the answer (left or right) seems correct regardless of the direction faced by the observer, a logical impossibility. However, the phrasing is still deceptive. By saying "Which side IS darker?" I ask you to accept what your eyes tell you as something “real,” rather than merely observed. If ANYTHING you see is "real," how does the "dark side of the boardwalk" change sides depending on the direction in which you look?

The answer to my final question, "What's happening here?" should now be apparent. Neither side of the boardwalk IS darker at any time; it's only your perception of the boards which changes, without the boards themselves changing in any way.

Now, consider the skeptic who has learned the many times and ways our government officials have lied to us (deceiving us with false-flag operations to garner public support for offensive wars, for example). He's learned that our media and our schoolteachers have, knowingly or not, supported these lies, and that every major-media outlet is monitored and controlled by CIA operatives (at least in all matters relating to "national security"). Why not be skeptical that the moon landing was real, and that it might not even be possible to orbit the earth? Suppose all that footage from the moon was faked, shot in a studio by Stanley Kubrick?

(Note that it's also possible for both scenarios to be correct: could it not be that some of the moon footage WAS fake, shot in advance as a "plan B" if our brave Astronauts didn't succeed in landing on the moon and/or returning safely, but the mission WAS successful, so the footage wasn't needed.)

Imagine this skeptic observing a rocket launch. He expects to see the rocket rise straight up and disappear into space, but instead it gradually curves to horizontal flight, then appears to dive toward the ground! Without comprehending or taking into account scale or perspective, what his eyes tell him makes no sense to him--unless space travel really IS impossible, because the earth is flat, and he's being deceived again?

What he's seeing when it looks like the rocket is diving into the ground is, of course, the rocket disappearing "over the horizon." From the point of view of the person in the rocket, the "skeptic" disappears under their horizon, while the rocket’s passenger sees the earth "turning underneath him." An observer on the moon might see rocket man's capsule going into earth orbit. All three views are "correct," from those different points of view.

Our "reality" is that we are always being "deceived" by our senses, if we take our sensory input at face value. So, let's not, and get a little smarter.

Anyone care to solve the puzzle I posed in the video, that is, why some of those identical boards LOOK (not ARE) darker? Here's a clue. "Shadows."

Can a flat surface cast a shadow? Is the boardwalk flat? (Imagine a level placed on it.) Now, take a camera with a macro lens on it, lie on your belly and get very close to that boardwalk. (The resulting picture may look like a mud flat that's been attacked with a rake.) Now, is the boardwalk flat? It's a matter of scale. From an unaided humans-eye view, yes. From a baby mouse's perspective, no. Which view is "right," and which is "wrong?"

Is the earth "flat?" Depends. Are you a man or a mouse?

**In true Orwellian fashion, the phrase "begs the question" is now being used as synonymous with "raises the question." In 5 years, will anyone remember that the phrase once described a sly mask for semantic deceit.

*Here’s the video URL from my original Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/macaddictjay/videos/10210359172998475/