When I read George Orwell’s book 1984 — in the year 1984 — it seemed absurd to me that a government or government-controlled newspaper would ever consider deleting the past to control how people think.
How naïve was I?
And Forbes? The pinnacle of respectability and integrity?
I learned the truth about Forbes a few years later when I met Steven Forbes. He dropped by to meet with me after his magazine had just published a very complimentary story about my company — asking for a nice big whack of advertising. The fact that none of my clients was ever likely to read Forbes didn’t matter. That’s how business is done at the crap end of that industry.
So it doesn’t come as a big surprise that Forbes seems to have its own Winstons busy redacting the past.
In George Orwell’s book 1984, the protagonist, Winston, works at the Ministry of Truth, where his job was to rectify past newspaper issues which, in hindsight, gave an undesirable version of the truth.
Here his is at work:
‘The Times’ of the nineteenth of December had published the official forecasts of the output of various classes of consumption goods in the fourth quarter of 1983, which was also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. Today’s issue contained a statement of the actual output, from which it appeared that the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston’s job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones.
Back in 1990, Forbes published a scathing story about the WHO titled
“Why The WHO Faked A Pandemic.”
To say the article was damning would be an understatement. Forbes tore the WHO a new non-deadly virus infected ass hole.
It slammed the WHO from changing the definition of a pandemic from a widely spread severe disease to a widely spread disease. In other words, the WHO enabled itself to declare a pandemic over a common cold.
It also quoted WHO Director-General Chan saying, [The pandemic] should be used as a weapon against “international policies and systems that govern financial markets, economies, commerce, trade and foreign affairs.”
All rather damning. And certainly not something that gels with the current party line.
So in October 2020, the Winston employed by Forbes (or The Party) went and deleted the story from Forbes’ website. Bang. Gone. That’s not history folks. It’s just been declared unhistory.
To be fair, they haven’t deleted everything. Other similar articles remain, such as “The Pandemic That Wasn’t” although this was an opinion piece rather than editorial, and didn’t quote the WHO DG suggesting that world governments could use the pandemic to their advantage.
Another question about why the WHO changed its definition of a pandemic. The WHO claims they never did. Maybe, but the webpage changed:
2008: (Emphasis added)
An influenza pandemic
An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus appears against which the human
population has no immunity, resulting in epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths
and illness. With the increase in global transport, as well as urbanization and overcrowded
conditions, epidemics due the new influenza virus are likely to quickly take hold around the world.
(source)
2009:
What is an influenza pandemic?
A disease epidemic occurs when there are more cases of that disease than normal. A pandemic is a
worldwide epidemic of a disease. An influenza pandemic may occur when a new influenza virus
appears against which the human population has no immunity
(source)
So why did they do this? Well, apparently a bunch of countries had binding agreements to purchase vaccines for the developing H1N1 virus which would only be triggered if the WHO declared a level six pandemic, and the WHO couldn’t declare a pandemic under the pre-2009 definition.
I’m not suggesting that the WHO, which is substantially funded by pharmaceutical companies could be influence by pharmaceutical companies.
Nor am I suggesting that Forbes deleting history has anything to do with influence by the WHO, world governments, or pharmaceutical companies.
And let’s face it, there is a non-zero chance that everything done was the for betterment of the world and had absolutely nothing to do with money.
P.
