Cold Case Hammarskjöld & Why it Matters

This was one of the craziest documentaries I've ever seen. It's simultaneously a murder mystery, investigative journalist effort, purveyor of insane theories (and possibly truths), and dark comedy all at once.

➡️ "This could either be the world's biggest murder mystery or the world's most idiotic conspiracy theory. If the latter is the case, I am very sorry."

 ➡️  "Conspiracy theory for senior citizens" 😆

Why does this still matter? For one thing, do you think these huge corporate interests and governments that seek to dominate and exploit others are a thing of the past? GET. REAL.

Links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=nSW6CMndAeI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dag_Hammarskj%C3%B6ld

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/15/750812549/an-unreliable-narrator-a-trail-colder-than-pickled-herring-cold-case-hammarskj-l

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Mini%C3%A8re_du_Haut-Katanga

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commission_(South_Africa)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/20/south-africa-weird-sinister-apartheid-mercenary-saimr-keith-maxwell

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/south-africa-apartheid-aids-saimr-plot-infect-hiv-virus-black-cold-case-hammarskjold-documentary-a8749176.html

Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/ 

Transcript

This transcription was made by Otter.ai and I'm certain it has typos. Please forgive them!

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now, here's your host, Sara Causey. 

Hello, Hello, and thanks for tuning in. In today's episode, I want to review my recent watching of the documentary, Cold Case Hammarskjöld. It is one hell of an insane ride, I can honestly say I have never watched a documentary quite like it before in my life. It somehow manages to simultaneously be an investigative journalist effort, a documentary, a murder mystery, a purveyor of really insane conspiracy theories, although possibly some of the so called conspiracy theories are true. And then also a dark comedy all at once. There are in the midst of these really horrifying tales of really disturbing and deranged individuals, stories of genocide, stories about apartheid, their odd moments that are laugh out loud, funny. It is, it is a very different kind of film. And naturally, the question will come up well, it's been so long ago, why should anybody still care if your Bellwether is normally to talk about the job market and how the job market and the broader economy tie together? Who should even still care about what happened to Dag Hammarskjöld. And it's interesting, because towards the beginning of this film, when the two filmmakers Mads and Goran are getting to Ndola, where the plane crash had happened, they're making small talk with the cab driver. And when they tell him the purpose of their trip, he's like, Ah, so long time ago. And mad says yes, it is what we would call a cold case. And he's like, okay. And it made me think of the newscast I saw on the 60th anniversary of the JFK Pop Pop, when they were going to have on a reporter who was in Dallas at that time. And a couple of the younger guys were like, oh, yeah, that's interesting. Wow. You could just tell they had no true interest, no sincere interest in hearing what this man had to say. It's also amusing because at one point in the documentary, Mads actually says this is conspiracy theory for senior citizens, because only the old people even remember hashtag hammer sholde was, I have to admit, I did laugh out loud at that moment. So just as a recap, I didn't really do this, in my episode, reviewing Ravi Somaiya, is great book, the golden thread, which by the way, the golden thread is a much more conservative. And what I would probably call a much more traditional journalistic effort towards determining who caused the death of dag hammer sholde. There is no smoking gun at the end of the book, you're not going to come to a conclusion of it was for sure this one person or it was for sure this one group nit is left open to interpretation. And Ravi does it in a much more traditional way. Whereas the filmmakers of cold case hammer sholde are pretty out there. Also, to give you an indication, they show up with pith helmets and they say we need these pith helmets to protect our Scandinavian skin. And they have metal detectors and shovels along with two Cuban cigars so that when they find the wreckage of the Albertina, they can celebrate and then you're in says to Mads, I don't smoke. It's just it is a weird, weird comedy. But if you're not familiar with the basic background, let's go over to wiki pedia for a moment. Dag Hammarskjöld was a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second secretary general of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. As of 2023, he remains the youngest person to have held the post having been only 47 years old when he was appointed. Hammarskjöld's tenure was characterized by efforts to strengthen the newly formed un both internally and externally. He led initiatives to improve morale and organizational efficiency while seeking to make the UN more responsive to global issues. He presided over the creation of the first UN peacekeeping forces in Egypt and the Congo, while personally intervened to defuse or resolve diplomatic crises. Hammer shield second term was cut short when he died in a plane crash while enroute to ceasefire negotiations. During the Congo crisis, hammer shell was and remains well regarded internationally as a capable diplomat and administrator. And his efforts to resolve very various global crises led to him being the only posthumous recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. And in fact, US president JFK called Hammer sholde, the greatest statesman of our century and quote, there are some really interesting parallels. You know, I come to the whole dag hammer sholde conspiracy theory, weird plane crash situation by way of JFK, because it was mentioned in Oliver Stone's film JFK revisited. And I thought, I really don't remember hearing anything about this plane crash and then the plane cart tucked in the collar when I was in school. I'm pretty sure dag hammer sholde was more or less a paragraph or two in a textbook. But I would have remembered something that significant that sort of stands out in the brain. There are some definite parallels there. You're talking about somebody that was the youngest person to have held the post only 47 When he was appointed, considered to be a great statesman, someone who maybe if maligned at the time has sort of been lionized somewhat turned into a martyr post playing crash. There are some interesting parallels I think, between the hammer sholde story and the stories around JFK and the subsequent Pop Pop. It captures our imagination of nothing else. Now if you go over to NPR, you will see a fairly scathing Movie Review titled an unreliable narrator a trail colder than pickled herring Cold Case Hammarskjöld. And this we read unless you're of a certain age, which, which the documentarian say this is conspiracy theory for old folks, which just totally cracks me up. Unless you're of a certain age or a United Nations history buff, chances are you've never heard of dag hammer sholde, the UN's second secretary general and a man noted for his commitment to protecting newly independent African nations from their colonial masters. Hammer shields integrity earned him many corporate and Western State enemies, which is one reason why sabotage was suspected when his plane crashed in 1961. As it neared touchdown in the small town of indole. It Zambia then called Northern Rhodesia, killing him and most of the crew you aren't you won't learn a whole lot more about Hammarskjöld the man from Danish filmmaker Mads Brugger satirically jovial inquiry into the crash because it's not long before Cold Case hammer sholde lifts off into a docu thriller that carries us deep into some frightening corners of global skullduggery. In the words of the director who appears early and often as a goofy guide in his cheerfully ham fisted process. The cause of hammer shoulders death was either the world's biggest mystery or the world's most idiotic conspiracy theory. If the ladder a dead pan burger apologizes up front. A while later, when the trail to hammer shields possible murderers seems to run cold, the director announces that he didn't care much about him anyway, all of which may give you some idea that this film's unsettling tonal weirdness and narrative unreliability and quote, perhaps, I mean, you don't really in this film, ever completely lose the sense that you're being entertained. There are some cloak and dagger like type moments where they're trying to track people down or showing up at somebody's house. It's very like, you know, it's like American tabloid TV sometimes where they just show up at somebody's house and try to catch them off guard by sticking a microphone in their face. I mean, you do get some of that in this film. And as is pointed out by NPR, there are these moments of like weird satire and joviality that punctuate a film about a very heavy topic. The format of the documentary itself is also very unusual. This is another point where in thinking back, I don't believe I've ever seen anything quite like it, because Mads decides to dress all in white, as a nod to whom he calls the film's villain. I don't want to jump too far ahead, because that person is named Keith Maxwell and apparently always dressed in white because he had some navel fixation. I will get there because that whole part of the story, really, if you think about this in two halves, half of it is about dag hammer sholde. But then the other half of it becomes about Keith Maxwell and the mercenaries and the sidebar and you're just Whoa. By the time you get into that and and accusations of willful genocide and secret laboratories and all of that you're like, Oh, my God, I hope this isn't true. I hope I pray that none of this is true. Because if even a scintilla of it is true, it is so freaking disturbing. Super disturbing at 1.1 of the typists has moved to tears and I understand why I felt the same way but this is the format so he's dressed all in white and he'll he'll he's sitting in a hotel room with a typist. He has two different typists that he is sort of bouncing ideas around. Like, do you think these theories are crazy? What do you think? What do you even think about the title of this film? A really weird format, but things start to pick up steam for me when they start at what they call chapter one, which is around the 832 mark, if you're gonna watch this on YouTube, which you can do free of charge, by the way. Chapter one is titled people need to know about contango, a short explanation about Moi͏̈se Tshombe, and the Katanga crisis union miniere, mercenaries etc. So at that point in the film, that's when they start to talk about corporate control, and how according to them, union miniere really installed Tshombe to be a sort of puppet politician. They also brought in mercenaries to make sure that their interests were protected. And if you're not familiar with all of this, which to be honest with you, I wasn't either until I started to go down this weird hammer Shoal rabbit hole. I wasn't familiar with this either. Because let me tell you, you know, you think about 1980s Midwest America, we're not we're not going down these rabbit holes, then no way. They're not going to talk about the brutality of colonization, they're not going to talk about the brutality of what the Belgians did in the Congo. They're not telling you that this is this is stuff you have to go back and learn later as an adult. So to get a broad overview of union miniere, you can go to the Wikipedia page, which reads the union miniere was a Belgian mining company with minority British share. I don't think that's unimportant, which controlled and operated the mining industry in the copperbelt region in the modern day Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1906 and 1966. Its primary product was copper, but it also produced tin, cobalt, radium, uranium, zinc, cadmium, germanium, manganese, silver and gold. Union miniere was part of a powerful group of global copper producers. By the start of World War Two, the society general controlled 70% of the Congolese economy. Okay, now if we scroll down to look at this, this more relevant period of time to the hammer sholde documentary. During its heyday union miniere held quasi governmental power in Catania and operated schools, dispensaries, hospitals and sporting establishments and had enjoyed virtually unlimited funds. In 1959, Belgian profits from the union mini era were in excess of 3.5 billion Belgian francs, and export duties paid to the Congolese government constituted 50% of the government's revenue. There were times when the Belgian colonies tax on the union miniere accounted for up to 66% of its revenues. It is reported that a 1960 union mini air had annual sales of $200 million Holy smokes, had produced 60% of the uranium in the West 73% of the cobalt and 10% of the copper and had in the Congo 24 affiliates including hydroelectric plants, chemical factories and railways. $200 million in 1960, can you imagine? Can you imagine? That is a lot of money. Right? So if we if we go down to the section about after Congolese independence, we read the Belgian Congo became independent in June 1960. After a brief period of political unrest, Katanga province seceded unilaterally from the Congo to form the state of Catania under Moyes to Shami. Fearing that the Congos left leaning political leaders, especially Patrice Lumumba would nationalize its holdings, the union miniere supported to Chabi and became a major force within the new state and still allowed for Belgium and international control. During the provinces succession, the union transferred 1.2 5 billion Belgian francs which they've put in parentheses would be the equivalent of 35 million US dollars into Tommy's bank account and advance on 1960 taxes, which should in fact, have been paid to Lumumba as government. In 1963, the secession was ended and contango reintegrated into the Congo. Now you're in who is a Swedish aid worker, and we're also seeing you're in in this documentary with Mads Yoran wrote in 2011 that he believed that the death of then you in Secretary General dag hammer sholde was a murder committed in part to benefit mining companies like Union miniere after hammer sholde had made the UN intervene in Kondos contango crisis at through a call for intervention by Prime Minister Lumumba, you're in based his assertion on interviews with witnesses of the plane crash near the border of the DRC, Zambia and on archival documents in quote. So you're talking about a very, very powerful and very, very wealthy company, to the point where they can essentially install a puppet government and give them insane amounts of money. And do you not think that the same thing would be impossible in today's world? That's another reason why I feel like past is prologue. And it's so important to understand these things. In my opinion, in America, we live in crony capitalism, we do not have a free market economy, we do not really have a free society. It's a dog eat dog for the peons, and the plebs, whereas it's socialism for the wealthy. They don't have to use moral hazard. They don't have to worry about failure, they get deemed too big to fail, too important to fail. And then they get bailed out to the tune of 100 cents on the dollar. Whereas john and jane Q Public don't get that same luxury. These companies are so vast, they're so powerful. They're so controlling. When you look at the statistics about really, what five or six companies at this point own all of the media connect the dots people we're not that far removed from these stories about what happened with the JFK pop pop and what happened to jackhammer Shoal, we're just not after setting the stage Mads and you're in go back to what they believe to be the crash site, where the materials that remained that weren't confiscated, and taken to like a warehouse. Those remains of the plane itself were buried. So they go out there with their two shovels and their pith helmets and their metal detectors. And they find an area where the metal detectors are set off. Quite clearly they begin to dig and then wouldn't you just know it, some official shows up and tells them that they don't have permission to dig out there. And Mads is like, well, I'd rather beg for forgiveness than ask permission. And the guy laughs was like, No, you really shouldn't do that. You need to take yourself and get out of here. So he smokes a cigar anyway, even though they haven't really found much of anything. And about the 18 minute mark, they talk about a man named Charles South Hall. This name also appears in Robbie's book, the golden thread. So South Hall was an agent of the Nov. Sierra alpha, back in the 1960s. And he was stationed in Cyprus, and he was part of this listening post, if you will, for, for lack of a better term. And one of the other moments where I genuinely laughed out loud is that Matt, Matt's in your inner talking about the Nov Sierra alpha in this film, and Mads is like, it's basically this American organization that spies on the whole wide world. I did laugh out loud at that. I was like, Well, you're not lying there. So Charles Sal Hall, he's in Cyprus, at the time of this crash, and he had been called to come into work and was was told like you need to get yourself out here tonight something bigs going down. So he gets into work, and they have intercepted this communique from NDola. And this person is talking about seeing a transport plane and it's coming low. The lights are on, there's the sound of gunfire. And this person in the communique, they've intercepted says I've hit it, I see flames, the plane is crashing. And this person was allegedly identified to have been a like a Belgian pilot slash Belgian mercenary with the nickname The Lone Ranger. So we're starting to get into a little bit more of the intrigue and about that point of like, well, who is this guy? The Lone Ranger, and then you know, is South Hall story credible? How does all of this fit together? They also speak to a photographer who was there to photograph the accident site as well as the bodies No, there's there's no polite way to say that. And they make mention of the the reality that dag hammer sholde body was not burned. All of the other victims of the plane crash were severely burned some to the point of being way beyond recognition. Dag hammer. sholde is not his body is in surprisingly good condition considering now does he have fatal injuries? Yes, absolutely. But he's not burned the way that the other victims of this plane crash were and he has this plane In card the ace of spades tucked deliberately into his collar. Very odd situation. And the photographer indicates that he was told don't say anything to anybody. Just keep this information to yourself. From there, the documentary around the 28 minute mark starts to segue into the information that becomes pivotal to the entire rest of the film. And it's about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and some documents that were declassified by them. If you're not familiar, that commission was to try to get justice to try to have victim impact statements and to try to heal after the specter of apartheid. Ravi talks about this in his book The golden thread I will read now from chapter 34, which was operation to be known as Celeste. In this Ravi writes. In 1998, Archbishop Desmond Tutu headed the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It was a sweeping effort to deal with 34 years of brutal apartheid in a court that sought both an honest accounting of the repression and reconciliation between the races rather than retribution for those crimes. Its three year mandate had expired the month before and to to was set to depart before a report was delivered to Nelson Mandela later that year, but something inconvenient had happened at the last moment, on August 19, to two and a cozy pattern cardigan and a blue tie blinked against flashing cameras, as he took his seat behind the table in a municipal building. Above him hung a banner that read truth, the road to reconciliation, reading from notes, he gravely intoned that the Commission had discovered in the course of its investigations into apartheid crimes, documents purporting to be from a South African institution called the South African Institute for maritime research, discussing the sabotage of the aircraft in which the United Nations Secretary General dag hammer sholde died on the ninth of September 17 slash 1819 61. The Commission had been unable to verify them, he said but given our commitment to transparency, we feel that apart from being handed the documents to the or excuse me, we feel that apart from having handed the documents to the Minister of Justice for further investigation, we should release the key documents we have found. The documents consisted of eight letters headed with a grand crest and elaborate Gothic font over an image of the Greek goddess Nike enlisted the institute's address as the fifth floor of a rundown building on De Villiers street, near the park train station in South Africa's largest city, Johannesburg and quote, and it tells about various men giving themselves rankings like Commodore commander Captain and then some mercenary that goes by the code named Congo red.

And it lays out a plot that involves both the Charlie India alpha as well as British intelligence in the death of hammer sholde. Now, Ravi is very clear in his book, talking about how because there's just photostats, there's copies of copies of these things. And there hasn't been like the ability to forensically examine and authenticate these documents because of having possession of the originals. We really don't know. And they get into this in the in this documentary as well. This could just be an elaborate hoax. It could be some weird, crazy fraud, that somebody thought would be funny to perpetrate on everybody. It is super weird. But the documentary itself turns a lot more of its focus onto this simer organization. Who were they what were they doing? This is certainly a case where you hope that most, if not all of the things discussed in relation to simer are just fake. I hope it is a hoax. I hope it is a bunch of just crazy people that weren't actually doing what they claimed to be doing. But we don't know. They produce this photograph and they also talk to potgieter the photographer who has apparently the only known photo in the world of this so called commodore of Sylar, Keith Maxwell and it for me now this is just my opinion. There's definitely kind of an L Ron vibe there because the guy would always dress in white and had some kind of fixation on naval history. So I immediately thought of that organization that also has a naval type, dress and rankings and just thought this is weird. This seems like some kind of weird cult, except it's apparently a cult of murder for hire. super weird. Now if we go to the Guardian, they have an article from January 20 2019, coos and murder the sinister world of apartheid secret mercenaries. In this we read Keith Maxwell, the self declared commodore of the South African Institute for maritime research or the simer like to dress up on special occasions in the garish costume of an 18th century Admiral, with a three cornered hat, brass buttons and a cutlass. Ordinary members of his organization were expected to show up in crisp naval whites gathered together in upmarket restaurants or the quiet of the Wimmer pawn naval base in South Central Johannesburg. They had the era of eccentric history buffs, Maxwell talked about the group's roots in a Napoleonic era treasure hunting Syndicate, and told outsiders it was still focused on deep sea exploration. But appearances were deceptive. Beneath the bizarre trappings lurked a powerful mercenary outfit. That members claim was entwined with the apartheid state and offered soldiers for hire across the continent. It was a clandestine operation. We were involved in Coos taking over countries for other leaders said Alexander Jones, I shit you not, who has detailed his years as an intelligence officer with the group, not the same Alex Jones from the states by the way, but the man and they do interview him in this cold case, hammer sholde. His name is apparently Alexander Jones. We couldn't make this up. So I'm always leaders described themselves as anti communist to him at the same time, but the group was underpinned by racism. He said, we were trying to retain the white supremacy on the African continent. And among its leaders most dramatic claims was that it was behind the mysterious 1961 plane crash that killed UN Secretary General dag hammer sholde and 15 other people. Last week, the observer revealed evidence linking an RAF veteran Yan Vaughn racing him to the tragedy. Now new documents and eyewitness accounts shed light on the alleged role of Sylar, which claimed responsibility for the crash in secret papers and its own recruitment drives. And quote, I'm gonna been in because one of the people that they talk to, in this documentary is like, well, this can't be anything official. It can't be anything legit. Like it would never be tied to a real intelligence organization, for example, because they would never put these things down on paper. They would never ever, ever keep a record of something like this. So this has to be people just playing games. I would have known about it if they were active, I would have known this is not real. And I thought about that quote, you know, never believe anything until it's officially denied. I found that interesting. So I'll continue to read from the guardian. It is not clear a van recent GM who told a friend he had shot down hammer shields plane without knowing who was on board had any ties to the group, any command could have come through an intermediary. But Jones was clear that SanMar liked to claim ultimate responsibility for killing the UN chief photos of the crash site and wreckage with purported members of the group standing nearby feature and and a presentation made to potential members when he joined three decades ago. He said they didn't tell us at that point in time that it was hammer sholde. They just said that they had taken out a very high profile political opponent, Joe Jones told filmmakers investigating the crash, which refers to Cold Case hammer Shoal. Maxwell himself apparently also claimed Simon had brought down the plane and a handwritten memoir about the group that ended up with a family of asylum or veteran hammer shields death came amid a post colonial race for resources in Africa. A champion of decolonization, he made powerful enemies with his support for newly independent states and opposition to white minority rule. On his final flight, he was heading for a secret meeting to try to broker peace and recently independent Congo. The country was on the brink of collapse after its Catania province key to national wealth because it held most of the country's rich mineral deposits declared independence, Western mining interest back the rebels. Jones claims he answered asylum our advertisement in a South African newspaper three decades ago, and served for several years, he decided to speak out because he felt he needed closure. And because young South Africans should know the truth. Anybody that resisted any white form of manipulation on the African continent, Simon was prepared to go and quell those for a price Jones said and that is the one thing that dag hammer sholde was totally against. He wanted every country for the people of that country. He was killed because he was going to change the way that Africa dealt with the rest of the world financially and he was a threat. I'm going to butt in here and say yet again, past is prologue. Do you not think that the same things whether you believe sigh Mar is a real organization? You think this Jones guy is just pulling everybody's leg? That's really beside the point. Do you not think that those same types of powerful interests and those same types of suprema supremacists and colonizers, do you not think that those people just magically, like okay, do you think they magically vanished? Do you not think that they still exist on planet Earth today? Just long pause there, so you can contemplate that for yourself. Then nobody waved Magic wand in the 1940s, and caused Nazi ideology to go away. And I was struck by the whiffs of Nazi ideology the whole time that I was watching this documentary. I mean, to me, it just feels so front and center, you're talking overtly about white supremacy. But then we also get into spreading of viruses, which I think is also when you when when we read about the horrors that happen in World War Two unit 731. What happened in the concentration camps, the way that people were intentionally affected? Well, Wow, just wow. Not Don't Don't think for one second that all of that stuff just vanished because the Allied Powers won the second world war. On that note, something that is discussed very front and center in this documentary, is this function that Maxwell had of passing himself off as a doctor. They even find one of his old offices that still has a sign up bearing his name. Now, could that have been faked? Could somebody have run out there and put that sign up, and the whole thing was just done for our entertainment? That is possible. Apparently, according to witnesses, people who actually lived in these countries, they verified that Maxwell was some kind of weird cuckoo quack doctor that would only treat black Africans, he would not treat white Africans. And he never actually helped anybody to recover from an illness. So we had this reputation of preying on people who didn't have any rights. They were impoverished, they were under the subjugation of apartheid. They couldn't, they couldn't do anything to retaliate against him for quackery. That's bad enough, just just that, but then you start to get into the further information we get in this documentary that he was part of a plot to intentionally infect people with the AIDS virus. This made news on the independent I will read from that article now. It's titled South African paramilitary unit plotted to infect black population with AIDS. Former Member claims. The byline reads group said to have spread the virus at the behest of Keith Maxwell, eccentric leader of the shadowy South African Institute of maritime research, who wanted a white majority country where the excesses of the 1960s 70s and 80s have no place in the post aids world and quote, that's terrifying. We definitely now are talking about Nazi Germany level bullshit. This is crazy. In listening to it in the documentary, I thought, Oh my God, I hope that this isn't true. But what if it is one of the typists in hearing Mads talk about the story started to cry and said this is gruesome. And it is it is gruesome, it's horrifying. Maxwell claims in his memoir that he went to a lab funded by the United States where they were doing biological warfare experiments and trying to figure out ways to weaponize viruses. He has some type of falling out with the person running the lab and is expelled, but it forever, like foments his interest in being able to weaponize viruses. And there are people in these villages who say that he was giving inoculations that weren't real shots. But instead, we're infecting people with HIV. Now you have scientists who say that's highly unlikely it would be very difficult for that to happen. I'm just going to put it to you to decide for yourself. I don't know I wasn't there. This whole thing, Keith Maxwell could be a complete fake. The documents could be completely fake. This could all just be misinformation or disinformation. And that's something that's mentioned in the documentary that we're at. And I think it may also be mentioned, to some degree in Robbie's book to this idea of this could just be Soviet era propaganda. Somebody from the KGB, somebody with sympathies to communism could have made this up to try to make the Americans look bad. It could all be fake. Maybe so and I hope and pray to God that it is. As I said earlier in this episode, if even a scintilla of this information is true, it is horrifying, deeply disturbing. In terms of the film, there seems to be in the same way that Ravi has this kind of undercurrent, an unstated like hmm, you know, it seems like maybe the government's and the intelligence agencies and these corporations that were making mega bucks from exploiting Africa, it seems like maybe they want a DAG hammer sholde out of the way, things that make you go, Hmm, that's more overtly pushed in the documentary, you get a much clearer sense from Mads and from your end that they definitely suspect foul play. They don't believe that the plane crash just due to pilot error just due to pure accident. But when you look at the playing card in the collar, for example, there are people in the documentary who allege that that was a calling card left from the Charlie India alpha, to let them know to let other people know of their involvement as if to say if you get in our way this can happen to you as well. Is that true? I don't know. I don't know. This whole documentary could be a descent into utter madness. At times. It reminded me a lot of Maury Terry's book The Ultimate Evil because he starts out talking about David Berkowitz and the sons plural of Sam. But then we go off to Roy Raiden and Robert Evans and we're in California and we're talking about Arliss Perry, but then we're in North Dakota and we're talking about suppose a devil worshippers, and then we're in Yonkers, and we're talking about suppose a devil worshippers and it's like, Holy crow. This book is going all over the place. It's all interesting, but it takes you on one hell of a bizarro journey. Is every bit of it true? I don't know. The main conclusion that I walked away from when I read the ultimate evil is that I don't think it's possible that David Berkowitz acted alone, just by sheer information that came from the witnesses from people who were shot but survived and from people who were eyewitnesses to the crimes. The description that they gave of some of those assailants because there was more than one assailant description. Some of those assailant descriptions could not possibly have been David Berkowitz. If you're talking about seeing a man who was tall and thin, with long, Sandy blond hair, and then you look at David Berkowitz, there's not the same two people. It can't be. In fact, it was alleged that one of the shooters was actually a woman. I don't think there's any way possible that David Berkowitz was the only shooter by his own admission, he was one of the shooters he just wasn't the Son of Sam, there was a group of sons of Sam. And he also admitted that he made up the whole story about the dog being possessed of a demon and telling him these things. He was trying to get an insanity plea by by saying the devil made him do it and all of that. I would say after reading more Terry's book, that's the only solid conclusion that I could come to was that there had to have been more than one shooter. And the whole thing about the dog being possessed of the devil was a fraud. From the very beginning, he was not completely crazy. And he didn't allege that because he really believed it. It was it was a ploy. What I would say after having read Robbie's book, the golden thread and the now having watched Cold Case, hammer sholde. I don't think it's an accident. I don't think that the plane just crashed out of random pilot error. When you look at the amount of time that the plane was unattended on the runway, it could have met with some kind of explosive. Somebody could have planted something on there. There could have even been a hijacker who stayed on board. It is very weird. That hammer shoulders body was not burned like everybody else's. Why would that be? There's something really weird about that. So I don't think it was just a garden variety plane crash due to pilot error. I think it met with foul play. Now who was behind the foul play? That's the finger that nobody really wants to point. It could be like with Lumumba. And the information that appeared in the London book review. We did it. Yeah, that was us. At some point, there may be this kind of revelation that comes out about dag hammer sholde. That van recent Gam guys supposedly that had ties to the RAF had taken credit for it and said that he did it but he didn't know that it was dag hammer sholde. He was just told like a soldier for hire to go take that plane down. But he didn't have any idea that hammer sholde was on it. Again. We don't know that that could be fake. He could he could be a patsy. Hey, stick your hand in the air and admit to doing this just so intelligence agencies don't have to take any heat for it. We don't know. Nobody wants to point a firm finger. But it certainly could be that at some point down the road documents get declassified and some government or corporation takes credit for doing it. We're already at the point now, where not a lot of people would care. There's a handful of people who would but not a lot of people even know who dag hammer sholde is or would give a shit. And that's a shame to me. As I said before about the Kennedy pop up. It's not about lionizing any politician or any political group or lionizing, the UN. For me, it's about trying to get to the truth and it's it's about showing people if they would do it, then and they will do it now, these ideologies have not gone away, these very powerful people that are willing to cut your throat in order to make massive amounts of money. They're still alive and well. They may change from one generation to the next. But greed is greed. They talk about that in the documentary, people are greedy. They want to keep their hands on that money and all those natural resources and they'll do whatever they have to to get it. Do. I think it's possible that in addition to the evil that was apartheid, and this very obvious, overt racial subjugation, is it possible that there were also biological weapons being used against people to try to retain white supremacy and colonial era roll by European nations? Hell if and yeah, I do. It is possible. I'm not telling you for certain that it happened. I'm just saying Does it exist in the realm of possibility? Whether Simon did it or not? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's possible. It's possible. It's easy to sit back and say, well, JFK, pop, pop, doesn't matter anymore. Dag hammer, sholde. Plane crash doesn't matter anymore. I feel like those are the same types of people that say, I don't care about the economy. I don't care about the job market. The only time I give a damn about what's going on in the job market is when I need to be involved when I'm hunting for a job, then I'll care but otherwise I don't give a rip. Then they get blindsided. And they want everybody to feel sorry for them. The onus is on you to wake up. The onus is on you to wake up and to take care of yourself. In terms of recommending the documentary I would for pure entertainment if nothing else, it is one of the craziest things I have ever watched in my life. It takes you down some very interesting rabbit holes and interviews some some interesting people. At one point Mads says that he has spent a journey interviewing a lot of elderly white liver spotted men in an effort to get to the truth and I did that was another laugh out loud moment in the film for me. Stay safe, stay sane, and I will see you in the next episode. 

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