Much attention has recently been paid to an article by Max Tegmark, in which he gives the odds of nuclear armageddon arising from the Russia-Ukraine war as one in six. It’s a highly reductive analysis (of the sort one might expect from someone with a mathematical background), which might explain both its apparent appeal and the trenchant criticism it has received.
Tegmark doesn’t document his chain of reasoning in any serious way – he just pulls probabilities out of thin air – so while it’s difficult to infer his prior assumptions, many who consider the risk of nuclear war to be high seem to make a few false assumptions:
- That the use by Putin of tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) would turn around the situation on the battlefield, absent a military response from the West.
- That the non-military consequences of the use of TNW wouldn’t be that dangerous for Putin.
- That increased support for Ukraine by the West would increase the risk of full-scale nuclear war, and decreased support would decrease the risk.
I’ll address each of these in turn.
Tactical nukes don’t smell like victory
There’s no clear way to define a TNW, but roughly speaking it’s a relatively short range, low-yield weapon – anything up to 30 kilotons, or perhaps as high as 100 kilotons. Regardless of the precise definition, everyone agrees that Russia has the world’s largest and most varied arsenal of TNW, with many Russian systems (such as the Iskander surface-to-surface missile) having been designed for both conventional and nuclear use. It’s debatable whether their doctrine on the use of TNW would really allow them to be deployed in the event of, say, the Ukrainian Army entering Crimea (would that amount to a threat to the “very existence of the state”?), or whether the Russian state apparatus – those who would have to sign off on it – would back Putin if he decided to use them. It’s also debatable whether individual officers would obey a launch order, knowing that the retaliation from the West could be personally fatal; but nevertheless, they do have the weaponry.
As discussed recently by Justin Bronk and also by William Alberque there are, broadly speaking, three possible scenarios for the use of TNW.
First, a “demonstrative” test in an unpopulated area (say, the Black Sea or the Novaya Zemlya Test Site). This would be tantamount to breaking the long-held “nuclear taboo” without any result except to strengthen Western support for Ukraine, and being extremely damaging for Russia and its interests around the world. This therefore seems very unlikely.
The next scenario would involve a strike against a Ukrainian population centre, which would definitely break the “nuclear taboo”. Again, the military value would likely be small, but the political fallout would be huge, not just from other countries but also from the Russian population – many of whom have relatives in Ukraine. Thus it would not only turn the world against Putin and the Russian political elite, it would make them vulnerable internally. The idea that such a strike would demoralise the Ukrainian military and population, rather than make them ever-more-implacably opposed to, and even more fiercely determined to defeat Russia, is at best questionable: the moral effect could, instead, be the complete collapse of the Russian will to fight. Again, this scenario is very unlikely.
This leaves the third scenario: battlefield use of TNW. The first problem here is that these weapons aren’t as devastating as people tend to think. For example, a simulation of a large (30kt) TNW airburst over Mariupol gives a result with significantly fewer casualties than what Russia “achieved” with conventional weaponry, and leaves the majority of buildings still standing. A simulated 10kt detonation wouldn’t really be life-threatening to humans much beyond a mile.
Such an attack wouldn’t necessarily confer any real military advantage unless there were large concentrations of Ukrainian forces in the blast/radiation zone – but this doesn’t match the Ukrainian disposition of forces. While Russia would have been able to destroy Azovstal and its defenders with a single TNW, other such concentrations of forces would be hard to find, let alone target in such a way that Russian forces wouldn’t also be in the danger zone (impossible on the front lines), meaning Russia would have to expend large numbers (dozens, or even hundreds) of nukes in order to destroy enough of the Ukrainian forces to achieve a strategic effect – and this would of course raise the risk of a Western military response very greatly.
But this brings us to the next problem, which is the effect on Russian forces. Regardless of what TNW could do to Ukrainian troops, there would also be the very considerable risk that Russian troops (already severely demoralised and prone to desertion) would be so stressed by witnessing the use of TNW that they might flee. They obviously don’t have hazmat suits and almost certainly no potassium iodide on hand, and while some of them may have been stupid enough to dig trenches near the Chernobyl NPP earlier in the war, I doubt they’re unaware of the possibility that deadly radioactive fallout could easily land on them. They might also believe that even being in sight of such a blast would make them vulnerable to radiation sickness or later cancers – and depending on the distance, that could well be true. It would take a brave officer to order an advance through an area recently hit by a nuclear bomb, with any assertions (however accurate they might be) that the post-blast risk would be minimal being scarcely credible.
But there’s another problem. As William Alberque notes:
Ukraine does not operate with a large enough concentration of forces to justify a 10–100 kiloton blast. Smaller nuclear weapons would be of even less use, as below 10 kilotons, their effects are overtaken by those of high-end precision mass-effect artillery, such as the Tornado-G and -S and the TOS-1M/1A and TOS-2, especially when using thermobaric warheads.
In short, not only could battlefield use of TNW in Ukraine be massively counter-productive for Russia, in the end it might only barely be more effective than conventional systems.
This is of course to assume Russian TNW systems actually exploded as intended, that the Ukrainian Army (with a roughly 50% kill rate) didn’t shoot down the missiles, and that they weren’t destroyed using HIMARS or other systems while being transported and prepared for use. Russia stores its nuclear warheads in a few well-known locations, and uses special troops and transport methods for nuclear warheads that would likely (though not definitely) be observed in advance. In addition, any build-up to the use of TNW would require Russia to ramp up its overall nuclear preparedness, which would be obvious to the West (and therefore Ukraine). Essentially, Ukraine would have advanced notice and could prepare accordingly.
Putin would also have to consider that the nuclear fallout could disperse over hundreds of miles and pose a serious risk to the civilian population not just in Ukraine, but also potentially in Russia. That’s unlikely to be popular. And the annihilation of significant parts of the territory that Russia seeks to conquer, while leaving behind a lot of irradiated material that could make certain areas uninhabitable (or at least agriculturally unproductive), would vitiate the purpose of the invasion to such a degree that Putin could hardly claim much of a victory.
Tactical nukes are no Wunderwaffe, and indeed Putin does seem to be aware that their value to him lies in having them, not using them – which is why he takes the greatest possible advantage by (implausibly) threatening their use every other week.
There would be a non-military response
There is of course the likelihood that Russian forces in Ukraine would be targeted and severely degraded by NATO following any use of TNW (thus losing Putin the war much more quickly), but less attention has been paid to the non-military ramifications of breaking the long-held “nuclear taboo”. This is presumably because the near-inevitable military response is far more exciting to consider, but what else might happen in the event that Russia used TNW in Ukraine?
One likely outcome is that Russia would find itself cut off not just by Western nations but also by China, India, Brazil, Hungary and other fence-sitters. In being cut off by China – on which it now depends very heavily – it could potentially lose not only a major hydrocarbon market but also the ability to import many goods, especially high-tech goods – without which it couldn’t rebuild its already heavily depleted military, not to mention the wider economy. And while this wouldn’t happen overnight, it could result in a total collapse of the Russian economy. The first against the wall would be Putin, but he might hope to survive as a puppet of Beijing – although that would depend on internal Russian politics, and partly on the Western non-military response. In short, walking away from Ukraine ought to be preferable to Putin than to lose Ukraine and his few remaining friends.
Breaking the nuclear taboo could also cost the support of usually-reliable countries like Iran and North Korea. Leaving aside the dubious fatwa against the use of nuclear weapons, Iran would have to consider that accepting the use of TNW could be to invite Israel to deploy them against Iranian nuclear facilities, some of which are buried deep underground to protect against conventional “bunker-buster” bombs; but in any event, it would greatly increase the odds of Israel launching strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities in the near term. Given this, it may not be an entirely unconnected fact that Iran has not accepted the results of the sham referenda in the occupied parts of Ukraine, which some consider might be a precursor to the use of TNW.
Even North Korea would likely have to condemn the use of TNW, not just due to pressure from Beijing, but also because it knows that a world in which nuclear weapons are actually used (rather than merely developed shoddily) would put itself at risk of a pre-emptive conventional or TNW strike from the US, which it most fears.
Further, there could be severe direct impacts on Russian elites resulting from the near-inevitable confiscation of all Russian-held assets in the West, and the possibility of serious divisions and political instability inside Russia that could be stoked by Western intelligence services, which (so far as is publicly known) have not attempted to meddle in post-Soviet Russian internal affairs. Besides information warfare and on-the-ground subversion of Russian politics, it’s even possible that more gung-ho outfits like the CIA might get into the already-popular Russian defenestration game.
In sum, Putin and his inner circle would have to consider that using TNW would be to paint a massive target on their own back, even in the absence of a Western military response.
“De-escalation” doesn’t mean weakness
As noted by Tegmark in response to some of his critics, the term “de-escalation” is often misunderstood. It doesn’t mean appeasement, capitulation or even necessarily some form of compromise.
In a hostage situation where armed police are surrounding a building and a negotiator is called upon to persuade the hostage-taker to give himself up, the means of de-escalation is to persuade the hostage-taker – from a position of strength, and in a calm and reasonable manner – that any of his escalatory options, such as shooting at the police or killing the hostage, will leave him worse off in the end. In short, “we have a bigger stick”.
Such it is with Ukraine. Reducing support for Ukraine in the face of Putin’s nuclear blackmail would only be the “first sip of the bitterest cup”, condemning Ukrainians to slavery and emboldening Putin (and others) to repeat the trick, greatly increasing the chances of facing a nuclear conflict of some kind further down the road, and leaving all countries not under a “nuclear umbrella” even more vulnerable to exploitation by the mad and the bad. It would also greatly incentivise non-nuclear states to develop nuclear weapons, and greatly decrease the credibility of a number of security guarantees (particularly the U.S. nuclear umbrella), causing a seismic shift in international relations and creating a much more dangerous world for us and future generations.
The correct means of de-escalation in this current environment is to communicate to Putin (and his inner circle) that nothing – including the use of nuclear weapons of any sort – will help his cause. Given that he may not yet have realised that he will lose this war, the best means of communicating that fact would be to increase Ukraine’s fighting strength, since if this is a dangerous moment for the world then it’s because the support so far provided has not been of the overwhelming kind. Providing modern tanks, jets and longer-range missiles would be truly decisive – and obviously so to the Russian population. This is Putin’s off-ramp in the face of a restless populace: “Don’t blame me, it was NATO wot dunnit.”
And thus can we purchase peace in our time for Europe.
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The evidence that the establishment is horribly corrupt and self serving is overwhelming.
The main obstacle to meaningful change is a public that fears the disorder and uncertainty that would come from change much more than it fears the abuse and predatory behaviour of the establishment.
What we are really up against is a public that doesn’t want to know.
The really frightening thing, is if this approach is taken, this thoroughly corrupt, unscrupulous company, is only one small (easily made undetectable) manufactured accident away from manufacturing another $70 billion. And we are just supposed to simply trust they wouldn’t do that.
Isn’t there disorder and uncertainty now because of the behaviour of the Establishment?
An odd thing to lie about if he’s just trying to impress his date. Hopefully the Republican controlled part of the Senate can use this to investigate. Get him and his boss in and ask them about it under oath. But I won’t be holding my breath.
Also for what it’s worth the MSM pretending this doesn’t exist tells me everything I need to know about it’s authenticity.
Senator Rubio has sent a letter to Dr Bourla.
https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=49178C21-9535-41E1-B484-DA62705568DA
That’s a great post.
Lets add to the above the fact the Daily Mail wrote on it then scrubbed it from their articles.
So that’s how deep they control things. It only took an hour or so for them to shut down the DM.
Now shouldn’t we be able to find out who made the call?
Im sensing some panic now. I think they thought they could just keep up the Psyop and push on through to phase 2. Davos indicates to me they are nervous. The game plan needed these injections to at least not hurt people too much.
Also the silence around the end of pushing jabs on healthy Brits under 50 is amazing.
Still I think my normy friends are just embarrassed to say anything now. No one likes to be this badly duped. Most people don’t want to ponder the consequences of the scale of this operation of deception. It’s hard to be red pilled.
In what way is Mr Walker unfortunate? He told the truth; I’m sure the Fact Checkers will be very impressed with him
I don’t watch any legacy media or go to any of their sites, but in the last couple of days I’ve taken one for the team and spent a while browsing the Mail and Express web sites. If that’s where people get their news they would have absolutely no idea of what is going on. No mention of dropping jabs for under 50s and certainly no mention that a Phizer Director has suggested that they are cooking up variants in their labs. The stranglehold on the media is absolute.
Did you read the comments at the Mail? I go to the DM all the time, not for the articles, which are filled with mistakes and just regurgitation of Reuter feeds and gossip tidbits put out by PR agents of “reality stars”, but for the comments. It probably has one of the most open comment sites in MSM (I’m sure they do still censor, but perhaps less than others).
The comments on vaxx-related articles are pretty clear – there is great scepticism, cynicism, distrust and anger. None of them are taking any more jabs, a lot know about the PV video. There may be one or two genuine hold-outs, but by and large the only positive comments are by people who are quite obviously paid to post their piss-poor comments.
The change from when the vaxx first came out is pretty vast – in March 2021 people were literally boasting about how ill the vaxx had made them, in some cases even putting them in hospital – that just proved how well it was working. It was like a Monty Python skit. The tide has definitely changed.
I didn’t get as far as the comments – not sure I have the strength to go back in there! I think you are right though from what I have seen elsewhere. People are waking up one at a time but it is not reflected in the media output.
The comments on YT are also gold and a great reflection of public opinion. For instance, the comments under the latest John Campbell vid I shared say it all really. It seems his followers have all been red-pilled along with him. I remember at the start when him and his fan club were all massive Covidians and clot shot zealots. Amazing really. I think it takes a critical mass of people learning the hard way for meaningful change to actually take place.
I agree but you do have to be careful about treating comments as a bellwether. Yes they show the way the wind is blowing, but I suspect there tends to be more of a binary switch to the prevailing comments than is a true reflection of opinion. I suspect once a certain volume of opinion is reached, much of the opposing view get crowded out and switch away. This works both ways. I always thought there was more opposition to lockdown and the vaccines during the pandemic proper than the comments appeared to show. But now things have switched around, I suspect the reverse is true.
Agreed, there was universal online commenting opposition in the runup to the 2011 attack on Libya for example. Made no difference, and the public polls suggested 80% of the public supported the attack. You could argue the polls were faked but anecdotally the people I knew who read the print media were in favour.
Sometimes satire isn’t so obvious. You’ve maybe seen this short piece that’s gone viral now. I read it as 100% satire anyways but some people aren’t so sure, reading the comments section. Actually the responses in the comments is the best part. An excerpt;
“As the world struggles to come to terms with the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, one question that continues to surface is why the unvaccinated didn’t do more to warn us about the potential dangers of being injected.
While well intending citizens lined up, did the right thing, and received their COVID19 vaccinations — now seeming to do more harm than good — their unvaccinated friends stood by and let them do it. Some of them said too little. Some said nothing at all.
Even though they knew what we didn’t.
Our blood is now on their hands.”
https://iqfy.com/unvaccinated-silence/
I’m calling this kind of thing a “deep spoof.”
It’s got the whiff of Babylon Bee humour all over it, lol.
There are some very funny articles on that website.
Does this article contain misinformation? I very much suspect that Mr Walker is now an ex-Pfizer executive
It doesn’t really matter if the video is a set-up. More and more people have been getting the uncomfortable feeling that something isn’t right for some time now. They know the excess mortality numbers are real, and don’t buy the continued claim that the authorities have no idea what is causing it – although they absolutely beyond any shadow of a doubt know that it is not the vaxx, also known by the scientific term “ABV”.
Drip drip admissions of myocarditis, heart attacks and now strokes due to the vaxx, after denying for so long – after all the lies most people simply won’t believe the authorities/Pfizer anymore. The fact that so few people are willing to take the poison anymore, even though it is still recommended, says they don’t trust what they’re being told.
I reckon we are going to start seeing Pfizer get the treatment that the unvaxxed got last year. Good, they really should be excluded from society, along with their fellow big pharma poison peddlers and the enabling regulators.
I expect Mr Walker is firmly under lock and key in some Governmental Institution.
This was the final straw.
The
Final
Straw
If these psychopathic degenerates think we’re going to sit idly by as they try and rape humanity they are deluded.
The butterfly is flapping its wings.
Entropy is increasing.
HUMANITY IS NOW IN OPEN WAR WITH YOU, YOU FILTHY SCUM OF THE EARTH.
Katherine Watt’s take on it all;
”In my view, the truth is that DOD and Pharma are jointly “in the business” of engineering and manipulating public fear of viruses for the purpose of developing population control weapons falsely labeled as preventatives, treatments and management tools: bioweapon [vaxx] passports and CBDCs tied to bioweapon [vaxx] submission.
Don’t fall for the fear campaign psy-op and informational weapons being circulated by Project Veritas (probably as unwilling, unwitting participants who just want to get scoops) and spun up by other people whose words have the effect of directing public anger away from DOD/HHS/US Gov/WHO and toward expendable Big Pharma.
Pharma must be prosecuted, for sure.
But Pharma could not have pulled off its part of the crime without the US Gov/DOD/HHS/WHO/BIS orchestration.”
Links to some other good substacks covering this topic.
https://bailiwicknews.substack.com/p/a-little-more-on-the-laser-pointerlimited
How are we seeing this footage if the iPad it was recorded on was “destroyed”???
The icloud….
What is horrifying to me is that mentally fragile, narcissistic charlatans like him can rise to the position he occupies (or did until this little one act play ended) in this day and age. It’s no surprise that this is what Pfizer are contemplating. But what is funny is that the “victim’s” response looks like he is straight out of a badly scripted drama that he saw on Netflix, for example. The hubris, the angst, the drama. The clutching of pearls. The pathetically weak and ineffectual demonstration of physical aggression. The declaration that he was only doing what ‘normal’ men do on a date. The playing of the race card. It was all so hilariously hammy and clunky that it can only be true. Nice one Project Veritas.
My view remains the same as when I first saw the video yesterday:
Walker is a comparatively junior scientist with only a limited view of what is going on in the company, but who was seeking to impress with his ‘inside knowledge’ after having been plied with a few drinks.
Take that sort of witness at what they are worth.
Yep Walker’s a fool, and I have doubts as to how much he really knows. But he may well have useful insights into what is going on within the company; nevertheless, we have to be careful not to put too much reliance on everything he says.
Sceptics always seek corroboration.
Agreed. We can’t call ourselves sceptics if we accept stuff at face value just because it suits OUR narrative.
Director of Research and Development – Strategic Operations, mRNA Scientific Planner… Doesn’t sound too “junior” to me!
How’s he supposed to conduct R&D if he has a limited view of what is going on in the company? Someone in his position must be absolutely up to speed on the latest developments – and have detailed knowledge of them, otherwise his job is pointless.
In my experience most people in R&D actually have quite a limited view of wider company affairs, rather they are concentrated on their own areas of expertise, often to the point of not understanding how those areas actually fit into a wider picture.
So far there has been no suggestion of any legal action. Until there is any legal action taken against Project Veritas one can make the assumption that what he said is the truth.
People love to make up great job titles for themselves, and pretend to be something greater than they are. Seen it a thousand times.
Walker does not appear to have the maturity our nous required to fill a senior position. That’s not to say he doesn’t work there or doesn’t know anything of course.
Maybe you’re right. But if this is true it lends credence to the authenticity of the video, at least. If you wanted to fake an interview ostensibly exposing a pharma exec, wouldn’t you pick a more educated-sounding bloke and dress him in a suit and tie and look all business-like?
The script is truly bizarre for a faked interview.
To steal a comment from Rumble:
When I’m on a date I always lie about gain of function too. Thats how you get another date.
Obvious diversity hires – black? tick gay? tick midget? tick -are perfectly capable of listening and repeating.
It is certainly real. I am surprised that so many doubt it. It is like they believe that the people running the show couldn’t possibly be that crass and stupid and lacking in discretion. They really can be and it isn’t rocket science to see why they have become so emboldened. It is bad enough to admit to yourself that there is a cabal of evil geniuses in charge but it is even more squalid to admit that you are ruled by the likes of this character, There is a term in Vedic philosohpy called Vibhatsya or self-disgust that is believed to lie at the root of depression. Vibuhatysa is one of the nine rasas or emotional mellows.
It still doesn’t really matter if the video is genuine or not. The description of so-called GOF research is accurate: It’s about trying to make viruses more dangerous to human via gene-editing using the pretext that this enables creating vaccines against these more dangerous viruses should a similar mutation appear naturally. At best, this is hair-brained as natural viruses reproduce quickly and in vast number and hence, they’ll always outcompete humans wrt testing viable mutations. At worst, this nothing but thinly camouflaged experimental bioweapon construction based on the (faint) hope that humans can devise something that’s both viable and effective (ie, more dangerous) which couldn’t occur naturally for some reason.
We just pass remarks back and forth that we know that we all agree with on this page. Of course this gives a certain sense of assurance and we have enough clever clogs and warriors to keep our islands alive I am convinced of that. The bulk or rump of the population has no idea about any of this I mean none at all. So given that the dam is breaking we have to calibrate the release to bring about the most beneficial result. I don’t really care if my next door neighbours are sad sacks of shit I believe that circumstances will arise in the next few months which will make all superfluos talk come to an end.
When I saw the first video, I thought no way has he got, what seems to be described as, a high profile job. Then I pulled myself together when I remembered watching, with disbelief, the behaviour of a recent prime minister – Boris Johnson. Proof indeed that some are promoted to roles way above their competence and social skills.
If you could make money on the way up and way down and introduce this or that to maximise profits – this is child’s play. I don’t even know why there is ajny lack of understanding given the business model. The question is, if you are that easily duped, do you deserve to be a victim of the genocide? You want to pay close attention to that because that is their MO. They talked about it in the 1980s, about a disease and then a vaccine would be essentially be an IQ test. They calculated wrong though because a lot od high IQ people have a very strong moral sense.But I am fairly certain about the calibration about the vaccine and its uptake.
Funny and horrifying at the same time. But really this is exactly the sort of thing that the Times muppets should be investigating and reporting. A reminder: this story has echoes of the behaviour by Pfizer reported in the Independent in 2014 by Oliver Wright (see links), who now works for the Times muppets. These people can censor all they like, but some of us still have hard copies of the newspapers etc. documenting the corruption in big pharma over many years.
Big Pharma lobbyists exploit patients and doctors | The Independent | The Independent
Revealed: Big Pharma’s hidden links to NHS policy, with senior MPs saying medical industry uses ‘wealth to influence government’ | The Independent | The Independent
(Refresh page to reveal full story?).
P.S. I hope Toby has done his darndest to make the Times muppets regret their slur against people in this comments section!
Pfizer were manipulating viruses? Well who’d of thought?
When the WHO declared the pandemic it meant pharmaceuticals could give their vaccines to the public without the years of testing. Bill Gates is a big donor for the WHO. The WEF book about the Great Reset was published just 3 months after the pandemic was declared and on page 33 is this: “…just to provide a broad and oversimplified example, the containment of the coronavirus pandemic will necessitate a global surveillance network capable of identifying new outbreaks as soon as they arise…”
I’m not convinced. You can’t actually watch the video of the “doctor” attacking the reporter via the link in the article. Maybe they have it and took it down but all you get when you click on the link is the headline and a bunch of other videos about US stories that also look dodge. In the interview itself, the guy looks off hushed on something and I guess he’s on what he thinks is a date.
“it depends on whether we come to our senses.”
Well so far…. fat chance.
I spotted this in New Scientist from November 2019 – just before “the pandemic”.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24432582-900-why-the-medicine-you-take-could-actually-be-bad-for-your-health/
This was the cover article in the paper version of the magazine that week.
The article is very revealing about the medicines approval process….especially this sentence:
“Since 2006, the EMA has been able to grant a ‘conditional marketing authorisation’ to new drugs that treat serious or rare disorders or respond to a public health emergency, but may not meet the standard level of evidence that they work.”
The article is headed “Why the Medicine You Take Could Actually be Bad for Your Health”. The cover of the magazine has a graphic that lists potential reasons for that, including “potentially deadly side effects”.
Like myocarditis, I guess.
The video of the sting taken down by YouTube for violating their rules. Will not say which rule though.
Maybe it is the hidden rule that says they, YouTube, must remain deep inside the rear end of Big Pharma – and destroy anything that could hurt their profits.
Truth makes no difference in a World where the liars are in complete control.
When the Catholic Church excommunicated (cancelled) Galileo and brought him before the Church Court, it wasn’t because he was spreading ‘misinformation’, in fact the Church from its own scholars knew he was right. It was because he threatened the Church’s authority, without which they would lose power and control.
The truth was no protection because the Church controlled all. Galileo lost his reputation, his job, was rejected by friends even members of his own family. When worse was threatened, gaol, torture, he was forced to recant.
Those who would control us, tell us lies to get our compliance so they can have power over us. They will do anything to prevent the truth undermining their authority and stopping that control.