A challenge for you: write a post with the 10 biggest hoaxes in human history (and/or American history if you prefer).

I have a few suggestions for your consideration: darwinism, big bang theory, Anne Frank’s diary (arguably the 2nd most read book in history), Germans being the bad guys in the two world wars (they weren’t angels either), 6 million jewish deaths in concentration camps (the question here is the number not the event), Pearl Harbor (?), the sinking of the Lusitania (?), 9-11 (ouch!), atheism, you name it; the list is huge.

Along with your other lists, this one could be the first pill to make people aware of the “Matrix”.

I’m very curious to see your thoughts on this.

Roger

Lest anyone think that we are beyond this chicanery now, remember that Reagan’s wife had a witch in the White House and Tony Blair and his wife underwent a pagan “rebirthing” ceremony in Mexico while he was was the Prime Minister.

Monsters indeed, but not English. At least not most. Of course, the Red Shields are not really German either.

One day I will do a post on the 10 greatest Jewish monsters in history. It is going to be a Herculean task to whittle the choices down to so few.

Cromwell ought to be on this list! Drogheda! And as Daryl Hart notes in the current Ordained Servant, C was not even good to Presbyterians in Northern Ireland. The man was a scoundrel.

In another novel, Rendezvous with Rama, Clarke begins his story with another world-transforming event: An asteroid slams into southern Europe. The day it slams down is September 11, 2077. Clarke says of the aftermath:

“After the initial shock, mankind reacted with a determination and a unity that no earlier age could have shown.”

So in Clarke’s fantasy world we have cataclysms and monoliths and we have 2001 and September 11 as dates of human transformation.  In the real world we had on September 11, 2001 the cataclysmic destruction of two monoliths.  We can safely assume that Clarke is not a prophet. The question, then, is are these dates and events coincidental or is somebody making an inside joke?

Yes, Sir Winnie’s mother, Jennie Churchill (née Jerome), was American. And, yes, because she was a slut, we cannot be sure who his father was. It is probable, though, that Lord Randolph was indeed the culprit. The reason is that Randolph and Jennie were wed in the British Embassy in Paris three days after they met on April 15, 1874. British nobility do not tend to get married in the fashion so it was most likely a shotgun wedding. That Little Winnie arrived just 7 1/2 months later on November 30 gives even further evidence.

I don’t have G. Martin’s eight volume whitewash/hagiography of Sir Winnie, but I am curious to know what kind of yarn he spins out of this.

Eliza-

Your question is difficult to answer here. I plan to write a post on Clarke someday.

Quickly though, my reason for putting him on the list is that I have a theory about Clarke and his science fiction. I believe his books advance occultism along with his scientism. This may sound strange since Clarke is thought to be the pure scientific science fiction writer. But as Lewis made clear in That Hideous Strength, scientism and occultism are two sides of the same coin.

Clarke’s books are filled with occult themes. Take Childhood’s End. What is the event that makes humanity grow up? The rule of demons on earth.

“There was no mistake. The leathery wings, the little horns, the barbed tail — all were there. The most terrible of all legends had come to life, out of the unknown past. Yet now it stood smiling, in ebon majesty, with the sunlight gleaming upon its tremendous body, and with a human child resting trustfully on either arm.”

In his 2010: Odyssey Two, his sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey (2001 was co-written with Stanly Kubrick), the last section is title “Lucifer Rising” and is about how Jupiter had been turned into a star and became the only sun that later humanity would ever know.

Clarke is pushing the same religion as the cryptocracy: A world-unifying religion based on science and the occult. I don’t think this is a pure coincidence. In many ways I believe Clarke is the prophet (or at least a prophet) of this religion.