Artist's impression of Sacha Stone

"What fresh hilarity is ensuing from Sacha Stone (failed rock star, impresario of the ITNJ troupe of jurisprudential cosplayers, aspirant New Age / Libertarian guru and Friend of Riddled)?" asked absolutely no-one. For Sacha has more grifts in his scampire of websites than anyone not called 'Trump', but there is always room for another. So welcome to the 2019 New Earth Festival -- a Gathering-of-the-Tribes / Youf-Radicalising Event at the NewEarth Haven some beach-side bait-shop in Bali, in the manner of Fyre Festival Redux.


After long labours in the Photoshop Forge his graphic-art minions have wrought new logos, though sticking to their house style of spirograph-fucked-a-biohazard-sign mandalas.



Research reveals that there was a 2017 forerunner. If this was hugely hyped by well-remunerated Social-Media Influencers and Thought Leaders through Snapchat and Instagram, I would not know, but anyway it left no footprint on the Interducts other than Sacha's own Faceborg videotics and on-line pantechnicons of stolen artwork.



By the time we enter the Land of WTF, it is too late to back out of the dumbassery rabbit-hole:

Te Kaha is a Maori Wisdom-Keeper beloved by many including the sisters and brothers of the NewEarth Project, having traveled from his sacred home in New Zealand to Bali, Indonesia for Symposium Workshop and Panel Talks at the Ancient Futures Festival at the NewEarth Haven, 2017.
“As a whaanau we made a choice to return to the Rohe Potai Oo Tuuhoe to grow our tamariki (children) in the ways of our tipuna (ancestors), on land stolen from us at the point of a gun. As a result we live on a mountain, off the grid, home-educating our tamariki (children), rewilding ourselves and regenerating the whenua (land) by planting an abundance of trees, growing our own food with permaculture practices and becoming the voice of the whenua.”
To read more about this extraordinary way-shower Te Kaha, and Pounamu please visit...

WTF? "Wisdom-Keeper"? Way-shower"? Someone trained a neural network on 'Black Elk Speaks', and Grey Owl, and the dialog of every noble-savage character from Rider Haggard novels, and the websites of 17 different cultural-prostitute scammers pimping Vision Quests and Sweat Lodges and Spirit Animals and initiation into ancient tribal lore, to see what it would spew out spontaneously. The outcome was evidently Te Kaha ("The Strength"), who lives sustainably on a mountain in touch with the land, off the grid with only his children and his Whānau and his Faceborg page, webstore and promotional page at Sacha's "NewEarth University", speaking only in Papyrus font. Except when he is accruing air-points with flights around the world, monetarising tribal spirituality and the Traditional Māori Way of Childbirth.


Naturally Te Kaha has a sideline selling greenstone spirit-treasures pendants, which have all the authenticity of a jade vaginal egg from Goop, i.e. likely to be machine-milled Chinese nephrite if not 'cultured stone': he purports to speak forNgāi Tūhoe["the first nation people of Aotearoa (New Zealand), representing and sharing the ancient knowledge of his people"], but there is no pounamu in the Urewera region where that particular tribe resides, nor a great tradition of pounamu carving. I would not be too astonished if Te Kaha's real name is Derek and he lives in a nice middle-class suburb in North Auckland when he is not in costume with facepaint moko for imparting wisdom to halfwit Londoners at Māori Childbirthing Seminars.

Of course this is all a digression. But before we proceed, do take a moment to look around the on-line campus of Sacha's NewEarth University, where you can buy a degree in spirituality, and the curriculum features courses in "Owning Your Strawman" (i.e. the usual Sovereign-Citizen flimflam about "Learn this one trick to escape from financial obligations, debts and tax arrears -- Banks hate it!").

The real topic here, relevant to our interests at the Riddled School of Gorse-Flower Ikebana and Bafflegab Appreciation Society, is the "World Health Sovereignty Summit" - a 3-day immersive symposium following the Festival.

Artist's impression of Sacha Stone #2

But wait, there's more! - in the form of a further two days of legal-robe dress-up games from Sacha's ITNJ playmates who have appointed themselves to be a Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Chemtrails. All this and a sex / drugs / music / Balinese-culture beach party for financially-surfeited children, can you feel the synergy?

The Summit is a gabfest of Alt-Med scammers and lobbyists ready to speak out for Fraudster Freedom. Just look at the clown-car cavalcade of mountebanks. Have you ever seen such a shower of charlatans?


One notes on first glance that for the big-hitters in the medfraud industry, the invitation to attend was below their dignity ("Confirmation pending"). But Jim "Bleach Enema" Humble was desperate enough to accept, as was Marco Ruggiero, "inventor of Immortalis Klotho Formula, expected to become recognised as one of the greatest innovations in health-science history". Crivens! Humble and Ruggiero are old associates.

Further down the list, we meet Errol Denton, "Harley Street doctor and blood analysis spcialist who has been targeted and professionally molested by elements within the British medical establishment for his pioneering and highly effective methods of treating cancers and other serious illnesses. He is an ITNJ Expert Witness". Which sounds better than "Unqualified fraudster and convicted felon". Anyway, who wants to be molested by amateurs?

And beside him, Robert O. Young, "one of the world’s most accomplished health science innovators and practitioners... developed methods and products which routinely treat and cure complex health conditions. Targeted by rogue elements within the US medical establishment he is an ITNJ Judicial Commission Expert Witness". Which sounds better than "Unqualified fraudster, fined $105m for talking a customer into painful suicide". I didn't even know that his 44-month sentence was over.

These curious images first appeared in PubPeer threads four years ago. They are ostensibly Transmission Electron Microscopy enlargements of Ag₂S or Ag nanoparticles, though with the replicated skulls or masks in motion across a backdrop of nanodetritus, they could easily be cover art for a Bauhaus or Wire bootleg album.



The response of the journals' editors, after F.-X. Coudert alerted them to the presence of Hallowe'en-themed 80s prog-rock covers, was mixed. In the case of the left-hand Figure 1c, from Kumari, Chandran and Khan (2014) - the later-submitted of the two, by a few days - the paper was eventually retracted, for this and other repetitions.

"Self-portrait with Skulls"

In the case of the right-hand Figure 1c, from Alam et al. (2014), the authors assured the editors that the identical particles 'A' and 'B' had not been cloned in Photoshop, and the editors accepted that assurance:

“Author […] stated that they were not duplicated. We accepted his statement and have no information that contradicts it.”

They did eventually publish a Corrigendum, replacing Figures 1c and 1d with completely different images. We'll come back to Fig 1d.

The wrong figures were submitted for Fig. 1c and d in the above referenced article. The correct figures are attached below. The authors regret for the error.

Did I mention that both journals are published by Elsevier?

I described the skulls as 'in motion', because there is a third version, with the skulls in an altered arrangement, while the material of which they are composed has changed to 'citric-stabilised magnetite' Fe₃O₄:

Equilibrium and kinetic studies on adsorptive removal of malachite green by the citrate-stabilized magnetite nanoparticles

Perhaps they are being juggled.


At any rate, the retraction and correction focussed attention on a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) image present in both original versions as Figures 1d or 1b, though identified as Ag and as Ag₂S nanoparticles.


The intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic who hang out in PubPeer discussion threads were quick to point out that overlapping enlargements of the same Giger-esque particulate landscape appeared in three other papers... shifting their allegiances to ZnO, ZnO, and a ZnO / CdO composite.

And we shouldn't forget "Toxic potential of iron oxide, CdS/Ag₂S composite, CdS and Ag₂S NPs on a fresh water alga Mougeotia sp" (2015), in which Figure 1 is a tour-de-force of versatility. Three of its four panels consist of further enlargements from the same Protean nanoscape, variously rebranded as iron oxide AND CdS AND Ag₂S NP. Did I mention that all these papers have one author in common?


That team's microphotographic virtuosity does not end there. Further anonymous / pseudonymous scrutiny brought to light a sparser selection of nanodetritus in four-fold repetition, variously identified as colloidal-silver nanites; Titania / TiO₂ [Oberon not included]; Ag again; and ZnO. In that fourth appearance the fragments of nanodandruff have been shuffled around and recomposed within the digital image, with particle reduplication to maximize the aesthetic effect.


Our author of interest was not content with the scruffy, slightly-foxed imperfection of these images, and worked with his students in the quest for neatness and technical elegance:

For the past few years my students are working continuously in my laboratory to get hexagonal shaped ZnO NPs and we could achieve the same. The results were so perfect and TEM images were taken until we get very low noise and perfect hexagonal structure. The low noise was avoided by adjusting the contrast of the image.

They responded to his challenge with these Platonic visions of geometrical purity:

"Influence of humic acid on the stability and bacterial toxicity of zinc oxide nanoparticles in water" (2015)

"Interaction of colloidal zinc oxide nanoparticles with bovine serum albumin and its adsorption isotherms and kinetics" (2013)

We should also admire these two versions of a hexagonal ZnO crystal, affected by exopolysaccharides in one case and by capping agents in the other, which have left the crystal's internal structure unchanged while radically revamping the other contents of the micrographic frame. And changing its scale.


But appreciation of electron-microscopy manipulations should not distract us from the group's real metier, which lies in synthetic spectroscopy. "Unregistered Submission" at PubPeer brought together XRD patterns from five publications (and five materials). Here 'XRD' is X-Ray Diffraction: a crystal reflects an incident beam of X-rays at certain specific angles where the spacing of atoms along some plane within the crystal lattice matches the X-ray wavelength, allowing the crystallographer to characterise that arrangement of atoms and confirm or falsify what it's supposed to be. XRD does not require a single large crystal... like a rainbow, forming from light bouncing off a random cloud of raindrops without the need for a single large prism to refract the sunlight, it can work on a powder of tiny crystals (nanoparticles) in random alignments.


But there is inevitable noise in any diffractogram: small-scale fluctuations smearing out the flanks of the diffraction-angle peaks and ploughing up the flat baselines between them. Bear in mind that it is the business of the future noise to be dangerous different each time.

The earliest XRD trace in this set was from 2013 - at the bottom, here - and it seems to be the original. The material was ZnO. The small peak at 2θ = 18° was surplus to requirements, so in the 2014, 2014 and 2015 versions it was replaced by copy-pasting a small-angle squiggle (conceivably a signature).

The Solar Energy paper from 2015 ("Photocatalytic activation of CdS NPs under visible light for environmental cleanup and disinfection") is a special case where the target of the X-ray beam had changed to CdS nanoparticles. This required the creation of a new diffractogram by cutting the original one into peaks and baseline squiggles and reassembling them in new locations, copied where necessary.

Once you taste the joys of copy-pasting squiggles it is hard to stop. Akhil (2016) brought multiple variations on a theme together in one place: ostensibly independent measurements of ZnO NPs, separately synthesized while fine-turing their surfaces with ethylene glycol, polyvinyl alcohol, polyvinylpyrrolidone and gelatin. They differed only in the duplicated stretch spliced into the middle of each exhibit, with the bulk of the 2013 XRD pattern remaining constant.


As crystal-lattice fingerprints, these are nonsense; how could any competent reviewers accept these Photoshop [or MS Paint] confections?
But wait, there's more from S. Sudheer Khan's team! Please admire "Fig. 3. X-ray powder diffraction analysis of ...(b) CdS/Ag2S composite", from Jagadeesh et al (2015).

The next two XRD patterns were not reconstructions of the 2013 ZnO original. Both supposedly came from experiments with iron oxide. One is Figure 3(a) from Jagadeesh again; the second is Fig. 1(d) from Mishra, Chandran & Khan (2014) (which is the Malachite Green paper we encountered near the start). Both are Frankenstein-style patchwork productions. Neither is at all authentic.



Finally, a relatively subtle piece of digital retouching. Perhaps there was a gap left by removing a peak in the wrong place, to be bridged with what appear to be small, laterally-compressed Airedales. Closing the circle, this is Figure 1(e) ("XRD pattern of freshly synthesized Ag NPs") from Alam et al. (2014) - the corrected Spectrochimica Acta paper with which we began.


The authors had an opportunity to amend this Figure when they replaced 1(c) and 1(d), but passed it by, so I guess they still stand by 1(e).

As always, I am only showing the shiniest objects from the PubPeer threads, which readers should explore for themselves. More could be said about S. Sudheer Khan's colleagues at the same institution:

This paper is by authors from VIT Vellore. Several papers from this institute in Vellore have been discussed in Pub Peer. In the present case there is an extensive recycing of the same figures / data. It is hoped that the authorities of VIT Vellore will look into this and start taking approriate action to stop this practise.

Indeed, the "digital dandruff" image is not original to S.S.K., and its first two appearances [above] were in papers without his co-authorship; his colleagues passed it on when they had finished with it, like a half-sucked lollipop. But anyway, this is really a concern for Indian scientists. I am more interested in the whole saga as a symptom.
Crap papers are written for any number of reasons. The general theme that as long as "science" is seen as a Good Thing, people will be keen to pretend that their mental effluvia count as "science" - even if they would be rejected from collections of Vogon Poetry. So we rely on the journals and their tradition of peer review to function as the Gate-Keepers of Academia... keeping the Literature unsullied by displays of gratuitous incompetence; by word-wooze churned out by seat-warming drones for CV-polishing and career enhancement; by alt-med grifters engaged in cargo-cult science and white-coat cosplay; by fabrications intended to camouflage someone's political agenda as Objective Fact.(thereby forcing all these different kinds of interlopers to launder their productions through journal-shaped dumpsters from predatory publishers, in the form of paid press releases in paper disguise).

But here the gate-keeping was an abject failure. The gates are wide open and so many Trojan Horses have trundled into Troy that the streets are congested and there is no space for the townspeople to go about their business. Emblazon the Wall of Shame with the names of the offending journals:

This would be easy to understand if these were Open Access journals, with the authors paying for the expenses of science publication (including the publishers' profits!)... for arguably the OA paradigm discourages publishers from rejecting papers and imposing standards any higher than a Limbo bar, thereby turning down money [**cough** Frontiers]. But in this case the offenders were subscription-model journals (where readers pay for those expenses, which generally means "university libraries"). In fact the list is dominated by Elsevier assets - the Evil Empire of science publishing. Colloids and Surfaces B boasts of an Impact Factor of 3.997.

A contributing factor could be the dominant market positions of a few publishers. Or it could be the journal editors, who are often fighting to increase the prominence and prestige of their particular specialty (that's why they became editors!), even at the cost of padding out the page-count of their journals with empty pixels. But why bore you with my speculations, when I could be boring you with more examples of research malfeasance?
So a challenger appears! Again, commended to our attention by F.-X. Coudert. The aptly-named Ali Fakhri [Young Researchers and Elites Club, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran] is at present represented in PubPeer by 1623 threads of post-publication enquiry - the same number asmore than Sudheer Khan but they are all recent papers from the last three years (in contrast to Khan who took eight or nine years to enliven the literature with his creations).

Fakhri's talents include liquid chromatography (Fakhri & Nejad, 2016):


...and patchwork Fourier-Transform Infrared spectra (Gupta et al. 2017)


However, his specialty consists of the production of XRD scans for a diversity of nanotechnology materials, plotted in a way that highlights the pixel-level jaggies of noise replicated across them.




Peaks duplicate and shift location like jumping genes, within single Figures and between papers. They bring to mind the Māori legends of migratory mountains.

The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.

These patterns are especially noteworthy for their baselines - the flat-line, diffraction-free, noise-only stretches between the peaks - where we find the noise repeated like a tape-loop or a music sample in some aspiring rapper's demo track (Fakhri & Kahi 2017).


Two more variations on the theme of graphene-oxide XRD:



Sometimes these reverberant noise sequences are assembled from smaller units, in the manner of trains, and it is tempting to turn them into animated GIFs in which they chug across the diagram trailing smoke. Sometimes they even find their way into XRD patterns made up for more than one paper.




The pinnacle of Fakhri's art practice was arguably Fakhri et al (2017), with two plots of XRD residuals - that is, the difference between the noise-ridden data and a theoretical angular distribution as predicted by a diffraction model with optimized parameters. These tracks of isolated noise are invented, bearing no discernible relationship to the purported "data", but even so they are identical across much of their angular range. The author could not be bothered fabricating two different noise tracks... or perhaps the duplication was deliberate, a challenge to the journal's editors and reviewers, boasting about the fictitious nature and daring them to challenge it.

This is what keeps bringing me back to the nanotechnology field (or Advanced Materials Science if you prefer). These are not marginal journals (IJBM has an IF of 3.909). Many of the people publishing in them - perhaps even the majority - are not fakes and frauds. But how are readers to tell which is which?


Editors and reviewers looked at these 16 papers and thought "Yes, this is how XRD patterns are supposed to appear, full of rap-music samples, migratory mountains and toy train sets". Someone looked at these energy-dispersive Element Maps (Hosseini et al, 2018) and thought "Sulphur atoms in these MnS₂ particles are distributed in multiple copies of Freytag's Pyramid? That seems about right".


Fakhri et al (2019) include "Fig. 3 EDS elemental mapping of the of CoS₂–SiO₂-1/CS nanocomposites":

The Si and O panels, at least, were not obviously constructed from extensive use of the Clone stamp. Mind you, the Cobalt panel mostly looks plausible enough, except for the zone which was filled in with a repeating tow-truck motif.

Having started this post with TEM shenanigans, we should probably finish the same way:



The right-hand image nominally portrays a "CdSe quantum-dots-decorated SnO2 nanotube", but I like to think that it is really a digital plant-stem, suffering from an infestation of Photoshop scale-bugs.

Fakhri is not bound to a regular team of co-authors, and juggles a diverse list of collaborators (I surmise that he is invited into multiple projects to lend his X-ray diffraction skills). It does not do to think of all the well-intended researchers whose own work in these projects could become collateral damage in the event of any retractions.

So here's a photo of a Dalek inna paint-shop.

Life here in the Shire is insular and parochial but the isolation is balanced by advantages, such as being too small a market to attract the great media empires from across the border through Breeland. In particular, the Nazgûl News Corporation [founder: Mouth of Sauron] has seen no profit in absorbing the Shire media. Thus we miss out on their agenda of fostering

1. incurious gullibility;
2. pants-wetting fear of dusky Southrons; and
3. the crank-magnetism philosophy that once you accept one imbecilic conspiracy theory (like climate-change denialism), you should embrace an entire panoply of imbecilic conspiracy theories (or for short, the Republican Party Platform) to keep it company.

Nevertheless, a certain demographic of hobbits feel the need for conspiratorial ideation and end up embracing six impossible things before breakfast all by themselves, without encouragement, guided only by the principles that "Credo Quia Absurdum" and "Everything is true; nothing is permitted".

Which is a circumbendibus way of introducing the topic of the Great 1080 Panic.

H/t Naomi Arnold

"1080" here is Sodium Fluoroacetate, a toxin secreted by some Breeland Australian plants to discourage their consumption by mammals. It is a convenient and practical way to control populations of the various mammalian pests that European colonists entertained themselves by introducing into the Shire New Zealand. But perhaps the 'fluoro' part of the name triggers morphic resonance with longer-standing antifluoridation purity-of-essence obsessions; or the numpties confound 1080 with chemtrails because it is often distributed across NZ native forests as pellets, dropped from planes. Anyway, there is an anti-1080 lobby, convinced that the air-dropped pellets kill native birds (by falling on them, or by toxic emanations and miasmata) rather than the ground-based mammals who eat them. They are unwilling to trust their lying ears, let alone the dead-mammal / live-bird data collected by ecologists at the Department of Conservation or by independent groups.

In the Good Old Daze, 1080 agitation was the exclusive preserve of hunting enthusiasts, who are traditionally opposed to effective control of noxious species - mustelids and possums, but especially goats & pigs & deer - seeing little point in saving native species from extinction when they can't hunt those species. But then in the US and the UK and across Old Yurp, political entities weaponised the Crazy Conspiracy Truther crowd and harnessed them in the cause of rightwing politics. The NZ counterparts were left at a loose end [see above: no Nazgûl Media] and I can only suppose that they feel envious. In lieu of David Icke and QAnon and Pizzagate to cater for their need for drama and irrationality, they finally rallied around this 1080 cause. At least it harmonises with existing Purity-of-Body-Fluids alarm about electrosmog and GMOs and chemtrails and vaccination and 5G mobile telephony in children's ice-cream.

Thus the Shire has experienced such alarums and excursions as an anti-1080 bioterrorist extortion threat (and a conviction). Bird carcasses with various combinations of tyre-tracks and bullet-holes were flung into Parliament to dramatise the death-toll from 1080 (and to emphasise the sincerity of the carcass-flingers' concern for avian life). When campaigners couldn't sabotage a 1080 program they sabotaged a non-1080 program of pest control instead. If this is a grassroots movement, it suffers from a serious infestation of grassgrubs. The only remedy, I suspect, is to play up the natural green origins of sodium fluoroacetate and rebrand it with a Harry-Potter / Homeopathy name in cod-Latin.

Anyway, welcome to an excitable world, inhabited by anthropomorphic personifications of 10-Tesla Crank Magnetism... like Bronwyn Llewellyn (who also shows up in the fringes of UK 'Satanic Ritual Abuse' panics, but who will adopt any Suppressed-Truth Conspiracy Revelation that follows her home, as long as it is daft enough). Though she is a Trump-licking US refugee so arguably does not count. Or EnvironWatchRangitikei, who is a home-grown self-radicalised crazy as far as I am aware.


Also, to admire these scenes from the Hikoi of a Poisoned Nation. Basically this is Alan Gurden and Emile Leaf, professional flingers of roadkill / gunshot-wound avian collateral-damage (by appointment to the NZ Parliament). They are marching the leadth and brength of NZ under the auspices (one never encounters a single auspix on its own) of the Māori Government of Aotearoa because of course they are.




Well-spotted, youngling! It is indeed the 1834'United Tribes' ensign of national independence, which has been adopted into the iconography of UK Light-Brownshirt protesters to symbolise the illegitimacy of the UK gubblement, for reasons they could not conceivably explain. Previously featured here.

Now here in the Shire, the 1834 flag has been revived in recent decades to serve a range of purposes.

• A. A reminder of broken promises from NZ's colonial-history shitshow, and of the unbroken nature of Māori claims to self-determination.
• B. When hung on the wall of a student flat, an emblem of the staunchness of the occupants' right-on politics.*
• C. Camouflage for various lowlife scammers and extortionists operating under the cover of A.

We have previously encountered a few examples from that parade of pelf.

"None of us would have known about the United Tribes flag if John Wanoa hadn't told us about it."

John Wanoa - floridly querulant crazy person and con-man manqué - variously claims to be of Moriori descent, a Moai, and of the Tahitian / Hawai'ian / Easter-Island Royal Bloodline, though not "Māori" (because that is a fake word made up by English usurpers). But that has not stopped him co-opting the flag as part of his own artistic practice, to bolster his claim to be the real King of England. Don't ask me how that works... ask those UK protesters who chose Yellow to be their heraldic colour.


So now would be a good time for a Brief History of Maori Govts of Aotearoa!

1. The 2002 version, a.k.a. the New Zealand Armed Intervention Force, which caused some perturbation at the time on account of gun collections, military training, and a propensity for demanding money with menaces... also their Declaration of War upon the established gubblement. All now co-opted for John Wanoa's artistic practice. Membership of this group of "Maori radicals" / extremists was dominated by one Kelvyn Alp and his white supremacist cohort. Alp subsequently opted for mainstream politics and was last seen trying to flog his MGA passport as a valuable historical memento.

2. A 2005 MGA declared in the East Cape area by Sue Nikora... I do not know if the 1834 flag featured in her scheme for extorting money from moteliers. John Wanoa has made the pilgrimage to Nikora to pay homage to her role in this tradition.

3. A 2008 MGA declared by Nellie Morton in Whangaparoa. This is still extant, and has a Faceborg page, primarily focused on microchip implants.

4. I figure that the current MGA is probably different from the 2002 version, with less white supremacy. The contact details on its webpage are shared with the Maniapoto Tribal Govt and The Gazette of Nu Tireni - New Zealand, so I will go out on a limb and speculate that all three entities are likely the same couple of grifters in Hamilton. They sprang into being in August 2017 and solemnised their claim to represent all Māori in New Zealand by sending a gloriously pompous submission to a tax-reform commission (as one does), spelling out the framework for a transfer of power. That document further sets out their stance against water fluoridation and 1080 pest control, though regrettably chemtrails go unmentioned.

The MGA's primary or Other Other Operation consists of sending fictitious demands for 'rates' or 'lease' demands to the owners of attractively covetable properties in the area, and claiming ownership of those properties when money is not forthcoming, in the hope that the actual owners will pay them something to just piss off.

Their interest in the 1080 crusade is of a similar shake-down nature. As well as encouragement for the Gurden-Leaf excursion, legal-cosplay 'liens' and 'interlocutary orders' - ripe with legal-looking flimflam - are dispatched to anybody or entity involved in or supporting the use of 1080.



An uncharitable interpretation is that they are waiting for someone to pay them to just go the fuck away.

* For a previous generation of students, that role was filled by the Tino Rangatiratanga flag, but that is passé, has specific political-party associations, and has the disadvantage of looking like a beach-towel.

Dog auditions for a role in an all-dog production of "Endgame".

Casting scene from 9th Configuration

What follows is a joint investigation of Smut Clyde and Tiger BB8 who tracked a string of fraudulent nanotechnology data and uncovered a maze of seemingly unrelated yet secretly connected Chinese authors, a treasure trove of reusable figures, diabetic rats rising from the dead to be treated with nanoparticles or with a “herbal” soup, depending on the language of publication. Most English papers even have give-away titles: “Fabrication of…”, an attempt at humour maybe.

The main characters here are a certain fabricator named Junyi Shen, who did a doctorate at Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and his new boss Hui Cai, professor of Traditional Chinese Medicine with a desire to cure all diseases with fabricated nanoparticles. Because the civilian Dr Cai works in a military hospital in Nanjing, he sports an army rank which is equivalent to Colonel, and a bunch of medals, epaulettes and other military insignia to prove it.

In brief: Shen apparently set up a peer review ring between Nanjing and Shanghai, where he and other academic crooks use same images of brains or cells, flow cytometry plots or nanoparticle distribution histograms all over again (only Shen knows where all those originally got fabricated), with the end result that same figure appeared in papers which share no common authors. The context it was used in varies: different diseases, different treatments, and occasionally the pictures get rudely photoshopped, for example to make a healthy brain look like an infarcted one. Sometimes the rats were allegedly treated with ginseng-flavoured nanoparticles, sometimes they were described as force-fed with a “herbal” soup which was not entirely herbal after all. But because the papers are either English or Chinese, who would have noticed, right? Smut Clyde and Tiger BB8 did.

Weapons of Mass Fabrication

Is it time for another dive into PubPeer threads, to exploit the unpaid labour of anonymous contributors there? Apparently it is. Along the way I learned that if you put googly eyes onto a slice of partly-necrotic rat brain, it turns into a guineapig.

This post will be shorter than usual as I only touch on seven papers. All fall under the rubric of 'drug delivery"... the goal of encapsulating or binding some drug so that it arrives or concentrates at some targetted spot in the body, where it is released from its bonds at a desired pace. In practice 'encapsulation' means 'nanotechnology'. Thus four of the papers came out in International Journal of Nanomedicine from Dove Press (a pay-to-print open-access publisher that once earned Jeffrey Beall's disapproval for having negotiable reviewing standards, later acquiring higher ideals when it was bought by Taylor & Francis). Two other papers appeared in Artificial Cells Nanomedicine and Biotechnology (the Taylor & Francis group's own home-grown addition to their open-access stable).

Entering into detail: three of the seven papers involve a rat model of cerebral ischaemia (treatment of strokes, to discourage the insulted brain cells from self-destructing after blood-flow is resumed). They hail from Hui Cai's laboratory at the

Department of Integrated Traditional and Western Medicine, Jinling Hospital, School of Medicine, Nanjing University, Nanjing.

In this helpful summary diagram, they're enclosed by the central angular box.
The English Collection

• 1. "Ginsenoside Rg1 nanoparticle penetrating the blood–brain barrier to improve the cerebral function of diabetic rats complicated with cerebral infarction" Shen et al. IJN (2017).
• 2. "Fabrication of a nano polymer wrapping Meg3 ShRNA plasmid for the treatment of cerebral infarction" Shen et al. ACN&B (2018).
• 3. "Fabrication and evaluation a transferrin receptor targeting nano-drug carrier for cerebral infarction treatment" Shen et al. ACN&B (2019).

The other four were brought to us by a looser network of researchers in Shanghai. Two aim to improve the targetted toxicity of chemotherapy drugs;
But these are not the only actors in the dramatis personae. Prepare yourself for FACS histograms, distributions of nanoparticle size, drug-release curves, and a cast of images that were supposed to illustrate distinct conditions but overlap.

From (2):


(5):

(6) and (7):


One cannot read much into these, although the post-publication reviewers at PubPeer can be commended for their eagle vision, while the authors and publishers can be urged to correct the errors.

Oh yes, and some appetising slices of rodent brains. To provide the cerebral ischaemia in (2), a fine thread was pushed up the carotid artery of each rat, far enough to occlude the middle cerebral artery on that side and interrupt the blood-flow. Thus Figure 6, where the white zones have been stained to depict the damaged areas: largest in column (B), where the rats received no treatment after blood-flow resumed. Brains in column (A) received no maltreatment other than the slicing.


A similar process in (3) - though using a peptide / ginsenoside / 'nanocarrier' combination instead of nanoencapsulated RNA plasmids - produced that paper's Figure 5.


The punchline here is that the brains shown in Column (3)(B) are the same as in (2)(A), only flipped vertically, with the contrast turned up to "garish" and half of each slice bleached out in Photoshop. The texture of the matting is the same; the shadows and the reflected highlights are identical. (3)(A) shows the same slices as well, though with a change in the lighting. It is tempting to apply skeptical statistical scrutiny to the analyses of the measurements, but this becomes less urgent if the phenomena being measured never existed outside of Photoshop.

Recall the team's affiliation: "Department of Integrated Traditional and Western Medicine". It illustrates the awkward quandary that Chinese researchers face. Last year an official edict against data-faking shenanigans came down, and was widely reported, with its warnings of condign punishment. This new policy coexists with the official state support for TCM ('traditional Chinese medicine'), under which researchers are expected to find the ingredients of TCM to be at least as effective as drugs from other sources, i.e. data-faking is compulsory. (their situation could best be compared to that of Russian geneticists during the Lysenko epoch). Some wondered at the time whether the policy would be enforced with majestic impartiality, or just against poorly-connected out-of-favour individuals. Is it too early to ask how the crackdown on fraud is going?

The expectation operates at the institutional level, and the upper echelons and PIs in any Institute of "Integrated Traditional and Western Medicine" must necessarily be appointed for ideological rigour, perhaps to the exclusion of competence and incorruptible integrity. So in (1) and (3), Hui Cai's team addressed a component of ginseng squeezings ('ginsenoside Rg1'), which seemed to discharge their responsibilities enough to let them experiment with RNA plasmids in (2).

Anyway, here is Hui Cai, in uniform with a multicoloured barcode on his chest. Jinling Hospital is a military asset, operated by the People's Liberation Army (the commercial, corporate role of the PLA, as a special sector of the Chinese economy, far outweighs its ostensible purpose of winning battles).

Moving along, Leonid's readers will be familiar with FACS flow-cytometry plots: measuring the level of protein markers on the membranes of cells and using them as coordinates to locate each cell as a point in a 2D distribution. I am no expert on this technique but it does not seem normal for the distributions to have sharp-edged voids punched out of them, as if sliced with a cookie-cutter (3).


Of course FACS data can be plotted as 1D distributions, histograms plotting the number of cells counted at each level of a single membrane marker. Here, from (2),

"Figure 2. In vitro MPO RBE4 cell targeting assay. The cell targeting detected by flow cytometry assay (A–D) .... In vitro flow cytometry analysis of the MPO targeting. (A) RBE4 cells incubated with PBS, (B) RBE4 incubated with control plasmid, (C) RBE4 incubated with Meg3 plasmid, (D) RBE4 incubated with MPO".

And from (3),

"Figure 2. ... RBE4 targeting of PATRC was detected by flow cytometry method. (D,1) RBE4 cells incubated with PBS; (D,2) RBE4 incubated with iTP (10 μg/ml); (D,3) RBE4 incubated with PATRC (containing 10 μg/ml TP); (D,4) RBE4 incubated with TP (10 μg/ml)."

It is not good when "RBE4 cells incubated with PBS" and "RBE4 incubated with iTP" follow identical distributions.
Nor is it reassuring to find that "RBE4 incubated with control plasmid" and "RBE4 incubated with Meg3 plasmid" follow the same distributions as "(A) HUVEC cells incubated with PBS showed fluorescence intensity of 3.75, (B) HUVEC cells incubated with P40 (50 mg/ml) with fluorescence intensity of 10.4".


Here I have broadened the scope to include papers from the Shanghai network, and (4) in particular, for those authors provided a third set of charts for a third set of FACS conditions (Figure 5).

So "RBE4 incubated with TP (10 μg/ml)" and "HUVEC cells incubated with PAMCN (equal to 50 mg/ml mNGR) with fluorescence intensity of 99.77" again behave with surprising similarity. There is a single pool of histograms, and two groups of researchers are dipping into it any time they need to illustrate a purported experiment. Who acquired that pool, and how it came to be shared between laboratories, these remain a mystery.

Coincidences continue when we follow our curiosity to the 'Arthritis' pair of papers. Here are two charts from (1) and (6). The only difference seems to be whether it is triptolide or ginsenoside Rg1 being progressively released from different carriers and fitted with exponential curves.


Mirabile dictu, many of the same data points appeared for a third time in (7), albeit with an additional measurement at time = 120 hours, and a concomitant shift on the vertical axis. Given the high confidence of the values (indicated by the error bars on some points), the convergence is a remarkable finding, worthy of a publication in its own right.


The authors of (6) and (7) responded, explaining the convergence on the familiarity of the materials - poly-γ-glutamic acid-grafted di-tert-butyl L-aspartate hydrochloride [PAT] versus poly-γ-glutamic acid-grafted l-phenylalanine ethylester copolymer [PPT]. They did not venture an opinion on the Nanjing team's possession of the same chart.

One mystery remains. As noted by 'Indigofera Tanganyikensis', initiating this thread of inquiry, a single size distribution characterises the nanoparticles in five of these seven papers. In the helpful diagram above, they're enclosed by the dotted curved line.

Shanghai to Nanjing and back

As mysterious as it is, why would seemingly unconnected groups of authors share same figures and plots across their separate papers? To solve the mystery, let’s track the authors’ background and their publications in Chinese journals.

The first clue came from the funding source of the three Junyi Shen papers from the Nanjing group. A single grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) that was tied to no-one in the author list of these Shen papers, not even to the Nanjing Jinling Hospital where the authors work. How can this be? Why would the signatory principle investigator (PI) of this grant, Dr. Bangjiang Fang from Shanghai University of TCM, sponsor the research in Nanjing Jinling hospital, without being included as a co-author himself, without having at least his university listed as the place where the research was conducted?

A search on Chinese scientific publication database Zhi Wang (Zhi Wang means The Web of Knowledge) and Wan Fang academic database revealed a connection between Shen, the first author of the Nanjing papers, and Fang, the PI of the NSFC grant.

Records at Wan Fang (right) show that Shen earned his PhD on “TCM version” of internal medicine from Shanghai University of TCM in December 2016 under Dr. Fang and yet another source showed that Shen subsequently received a postdoctoral fellowship from Nanjing Jinling Hospital to train under his new postdoc mentor, Dr. Hui Cai, the senior and corresponding author of the Nanjing papers.

During his career from 2012 to 2019, Shen authored or co-authored 17 journal papers in Chinese listed below (herein we shall call them The Chinese Collection). Among them, papers 3 and 4 were written together with both his Shanghai professors and Nanjing colleagues, 1, 2, and 5-7 were with his Nanjing community only, and papers 8-17 feature only Shanghai professors and lab mates. These papers provided the figure data later published in the English-language papers. The experimental procedures changed in between, yet the pictures stayed the same.

The Chinese Collection

1 人参皂苷Rg1纳米颗粒的构建、表征和体外功能研究. 沈俊逸;赵智明;刘春丽;壮雨雯;徐文俊 东南国防医药 2019-01-20
2 复元醒脑汤对糖尿病脑梗死大鼠BMECs的影响及miRNA-320的调控机制研究. 沈俊逸;赵智明;刘春丽;壮雨雯;徐文俊 天津中医药 2019-01-12
3 复元醒脑汤对糖尿病脑梗死大鼠microRNA-503及CCNE1、CDC25A蛋白表达的影响及对促进血管新生的实验研究 沈俊逸;方邦江;赵智明;刘春丽;壮雨雯;徐文俊;蔡辉 中国中医急症 2018-11-15
4 复元醒脑汤对糖尿病脑梗死大鼠BMECs的影响及microRNA-503的调控机制研究 沈俊逸;方邦江;赵智明;刘春丽;壮雨雯;徐文俊;蔡辉 浙江中医杂志 2018-10-16
5 复元醒脑汤对糖尿病脑梗死大鼠神经缺损行为及糖脂代谢的干预作用 沈俊逸;赵智明;刘春丽;壮雨雯;徐文俊;蔡辉 西部中医药 2018-07-15
6 复元醒脑汤对糖尿病脑梗死模型大鼠梗死体积的影响及其分子机制研究 沈俊逸;赵智明;刘春丽;壮雨雯;徐文俊;蔡辉 江苏中医药 2018-05-05
7 OX26单克隆抗体耦联的人参皂苷Rg1纳米载药系统促进脑梗死后血管和神经新生的实验研究 沈俊逸;赵智明;刘春丽;壮雨雯;徐文俊;蔡辉 医学研究生学报 2018-04-15
8 复元醒脑汤对糖尿病脑梗死大鼠脑组织梗死体积及形态学影响的实验研究 凌丽; 沈俊逸; 陈淼; 方邦江 中国中医急症 2018-02-15
9 复元醒脑汤对糖尿病脑梗死大鼠脑组织SDF-1、CXCR4、VEGF基因及蛋白表达作用的研究 沈俊逸; 方邦江; 凌丽; 陈振翼; 王晓翠 中国中医急症 2016-08-15
10 方邦江教授论治慢性阻塞性肺疾病急性加重期经验初探 戴彦成; 王丹; 沈俊逸; 耿赟; 方邦江 云南中医学院学报 2015-10-30
11 方邦江教授序贯防治中风病学术思想撷英 凌丽;沈俊逸;耿赟;鲁婵婵;王蓓 世界中医药 2014-12-02 12:07
12 microRNAs在糖尿病脑梗死发病中的作用 杨婕; 耿赟; 陶丽; 沈俊逸; 方邦江 上海医药 2014-07-10
13 方邦江教授治疗急重症临床验案举隅 王蓓; 鲁婵婵; 耿赟; 沈俊逸 中国中医急症 2014-04-15
14 方邦江教授治疗外感热病验案举隅 戴彦成; 沈俊逸; 曹敏 中国中医急症 2014-04-15
15 方邦江教授治疗外感热病验案举隅 戴彦成; 沈俊逸; 曹敏 中国中医急症 2014-03-15
16 复元醒脑汤对糖尿病脑梗死大鼠脑组织梗死体积的影响 赵平;沈俊逸;魏俊平;王宏;陈宝瑾 上海中医药大学学报 2013-09-25
17 复元醒脑汤对糖尿病脑梗塞大鼠胰岛素抵抗干预作用的实验研究 方邦江;周爽;沈俊逸;王宏;陈淼 成都医学院学报 2012-08-29

Apparently, it was during that his 4+ years in Shanghai University of TCM when Shen had the chance to publish together with a group of people who are professors or lab mates in the same university; however, these people were all different from the Shanghai group of authors on the English Collection papers above (4-7).

Now we have 3 groups of authors to parse:

• The Nanjing group, including first author Shen, the PI Cai, and others in Nanjing Jinling Hospital. This group published in both Chinese and English, using grant support from Dr. Fang from Shanghai University of TCM. Their English papers did not include Fang as co-author while two of their Chinese papers had Fang on board;
• The Shanghai-Fang group, including Shen, his advisor Fang (the PI), and others in Shanghai University of TCM. This group published no English papers in this case;
• The Shanghai-Liang group, including Li Zhang, Qianqian Liang from Shanghai University of TCM, and others, but without Shen. Some of them, e.g. Jing Huang, are from East China Normal University, also located at Shanghai. This group has been very productive and published in both Chinese and English, involving multiple NSFC grants and grants from other major funding agencies in China.

Shanghai-Liang group has never published together with the other 2 groups. Although Shen never published with this group together, that did not prevent him from providing the Shanghai-Liang group with pictures from the shared pool of goodies used in his English Collection papers 1 to 3.

As postdoc with the Nanjing group, Shen was particularly productive in 2018 and 2019, publishing 7 papers in Chinese journals (Chinese Collection 1-7) and 3 in English journals. In his 2017 paper (Shen et al IJN 2017, English Collection paper #1) with his Nanjing colleagues, Shen conveniently used 2 sets of photos of rat brain slices from two of his Chinese papers published with Shanghai-Fang group (Zhao, Shen, et al Academic Journal of Shanghai University of TCM, 2013, Chinese Collection #16) and with his current Nanjing team (Shen et al, 2018, Jiangsu TCM, Chinese Collection #6).

Also in that 2017 paper with Nanjing colleagues (Shen, et al IJN 2017, English Collection #1), the endothelial cells of Shen’s diabetic stroke rats that were treated with tail vein injection of ginseng nanoparticles had identical matrigel tube formation patterns in vitro as the cells from rats treated with oral gavage feeding of TCM herbal soup in his 2018 and 2019 Chinese papers (Shen et al Tianjin TCM 2019 and Shen et al Jiangsu TCM 2018, Chinese Collection #2 and #3). In these two Chinese papers, the treatment group of Shen’s rats was gavage fed with a TCM herb soup “Fuyuan Xingnao Decoction” and the effect of this soup was assessed for two different pathways of miRNA-503 and miRNA-320. Again, miraculously, the endothelial cells of those rats demonstrated identical tube formation results in both pathways, all because of the special TCM herb soup!

Maybe now is a good time to mention the “herbal” soup contains dried leeches.


It was not only the gulping of herb & leech soup and the venous infusion of ginseng nanoparticles which showed identical treatment effect for induced stroke in Shen’s diabetic rats: also having a stroke or not was only one image manipulation away in-between. A diabetic rat on which no stroke was induced (Sham surgery group) in Shen’s 2018 Chinese Collection paper #6 used to exist before, as a stroke-induced diabetic rat in Shen’s English Collection paper #1 from 2017, with its cerebral cortex deformed with supposedly infarcted brain tissue. The infarctious deformation was caused by some Photoshop stretching.


Of course, we should not forget that previously celebrated nanoparticle release curve, re-appearing once again in Shen’s latest publication, his January 2019 paper in Military Medical Journal of Southeast China.

Acknowledgements got to a certain “Morty”, Elisabeth Bik, and friends in China for their help with compiling the Chinese Collection.

The Chinese and English Collections

Now, if you are interested to try that all at home, here is the recipe for the miraculous Fuyuan Xingnao Decoction aka Awake Your Brain soup, concentration: 388g/L. Vegetarian & vegan warning: contains leeches!

Mention the Illuminati in just onetwothree little blogposts and the comment-spam invitations come flooding in to join the Illuminated Nigerian Brotherhood.

WELCOME TO THE GREAT BROTHERHOOD. Do you want to be a member of Illuminati as a brotherhood that will make you rich and famous in the world and have power to control people in the high place in the worldwide .Are you a business man or woman,artist, political, musician, student, do you want to be rich, famous, powerful in life, Join the Illuminati brotherhood cult today and get instant rich sum of. 2 million dollars in a week, and a free home. any where you choose to live in this world and also get 20,000,000 U.S dollars monthly as a salary %2026 BENEFITS GIVEN TO NEW MEMBERS WHO JOIN ILLUMINATI. 1. A Cash Reward of USD $800,000 USD2. A New Sleek Dream CAR valued at USD $500,000 USD 3.A Dream House bought in the country of your own choice 4. One Month holiday (fully paid) to your dream tourist destination. 5.One year Golf Membership package 6.A V.I.P treatment in all Airports in the World 7.A total Lifestyle change 8.Access to Bohemian Grove 9.Monthly payment of $2500,000,000 USD on Agents of Fortune peter bello

Are our frequent allusions to the covert, almost invisible activities of Tristero rewarded with invitations to join that elusive organisation? ARE THEY BOGROLL. The Tristero crowd are not clear on the concept of "How to Recruit Minions and Tighten Your Grasp on Power".

Other favourite subjects for the comment-spam advertisers are
(1) An insight into what they perceive of Riddled readership.

Making love with a sex doll cannot be considered cheating your wife or girlfriend. It is not a human, although it can feel and touch like one. on Sex-doll technology& Anonymous

and (2) Academic scamferences.

Thanks for sharing useful information. on ... Joel Matthew
Thanks for sharing useful information. on Futurological Congress conference alerts 2019

Someone in the empire of mockademic-tourism grifts operating out of Flat 4A, Girija Apartments (Chennai) [TechnoArete / ARDA / Academic World Research / Conference Alerts etc.] thought that it made sense to extrude advertisements for those grifts where they could be read by prospective South Asian customers, i.e. appended to a blogpost pointing and laughing at those grifts.

This whole made-up spirit-animal full-moon naming shite, dreamed up by journamalists to make the world stupider, is just getting silly now.

The strategic stockpile of Stupid was running low again, and there was talk of drilling for Stupid within areas of national significance (i.e. the Garden Bar at the Old Entomologist), so we lowered Little Tim down one of the older, non-performing wells to unblock it. And there was a GUSHER OF STUPID:

Support gathering outside the Royal Courts of Justice to support Lyn Thyer as Big Pharma 's henchmen attempt to Extradite her to France ... for having the audacity to develop an EFFECTIVE CANCER TREATMENT!

This has to do with Lynda Thyer (née Banks), who played lab-coat dress-up scientist for David Noakes for a while, writing paper-shaped advertisements for magic-protein GcMAF that he could sign his name to and pump out through parasitical journals, and pretending to test the output of his man-shed / Magic Protein manufactory for biological activity. She qualified for this position by being the sister of Noakes' other employees, Trevor Banks and Leslie Hutchings (née Banks). Noakes only heard of the stuff and grasped its commercial scamming potential through Ian R. Crane, so it is very generous of the latter to credit Noakes & Thyer with "developing" GcMAF.




As a speaker at the 2016 GcMAF scamboree in Moscow, Thyer presented cures of pancreatic cancer and autism in children. Since Noakes' ImmunoBiotech fraud went tits-up, she shifted her affection to a supplement-pill grift, though she could still be found vouching for the efficacy of GcMAF in Letters to the Editor (titling herself "Biomedical Scientist" and citing her own worthless screeds as evidence)... like other forms of Showbiz, GcMAF grifting is hard to give up.



The outcome of that March 12 court appearance are not clear. There is chatter on the Interweb about "Next Hearing somewhere 27/28 March 2019", so it was probably premature of Another Kiwi to LOL so hard that our tongues hung out and Evangeline van Holsterin [Head Barmaid at the Old Entomologist] called us LOLlards.

The presence in that crowd scene of some yellow-jacket light-brownshirt jamoke is our regular reminder that for all the New Age stylings of the Paranoid Ideation ecosystem, it lies far to the right on the political spectrum, focused on purity of race as much as of Bodily Fluids. Thus it was not an entire surprise to learn that the persecution of Mrs Thyer is all the fault of Teh Joos.


By now our attention has refocused on Mr Crane, a person of interest to Riddled on account of his career as an impresario of Conspiracy performance. He is hand-in-glove [insert "body-appendage-in-receptacle" metaphor of your choice] with the National Health Foundation, who recognise his "Codex Alimentarius" contributions to their campaign against food-purity / supplement-safety regulations, for he is all about the freedom of supplement pimps to lie about their products without unfair fact-checking. But his interests range farther than that; few pies on the Alt-Reality buffet are left un-fingered, and Crane is also ringmaster of the annual "Alternative Views" Conspiracy Circus.

Just look at the line-up of speakers for this year's AV10. Did you ever see such a parade of pelf, such a charlatan charivari?

There's never a drone when you want one

Clive de Carle [top centre] is a familiar face, notable for its punchability the broad-spectrum unspecific nature of his medscam claims and activities... show Clive a bank, and he will mount it.

Found any rabbits down there?

Gemma O'Doherty [middle row] is apparently well-known in Ireland as a neo-nazi Ethnic Nationalist opinionator-turned-politician, who last year ran to be Uachtarán na hÉireann on a platform of expelling dusky people and the thieving gypsies. GO'D has gone so far down the antivax / anti-fluoridation rabbit-hole that only the soles of her feet are visible, from which position she is inciting her followers to kill critics of her brand of med-fraud (e.g. friend-of-RiddledFiona O'Leary), I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.

Oh hi there Horwood House, are you sure you want to be the venue for these people? Do your facilities include their kind of beerhall?

According to Ms O'Doherty, the week-old mass-murder in Christchurch was a False Flag operation, staged by the Deep State Globalists to cast blame on innocent Ethnic Nationalists. According to Ian Crane, it was staged by Teh Joos (to punish New Zealand for being insufficiently supportive of Israel).



Crane himself may or may not be a raging antisemite... opinions differ. As a career grifter, Crane's first responsibility is to say whatever will convince his customers that he is the Expert, with insider access, the man who sees through the Veil of Delusion, the man they should pay for insights into what goes on behind the scenes. To that end he will feed them Protocols-of-the-Elders-of-Zion Rothschilds-run-everything antisemitism some of the time, and rabid white-genocide islamophobia the rest of the time. Consistency is not an important criterion.

The other Conspiracist perspectives on the Christchurch mass murder [these are Conspiracists so it is vital that there must be perspectives; the alternative would be to leave consensus reality in place, and that would set a dangerous precedent] are

(iii) it didn't happen at all, but was faked by Crisis Actors; and
(iv) it did happen and ideally was just the first of many such events.

It is tempting to think of Ian Crane, Gemma O'Doherty, and the other speakers arguing over these incompatible beliefs, but cognitive dissonance is unknown to conspiracists. They are vast, they contain multitudes, and there is plenty of room in their heads for contradicting views because so little else is going on there.

...goes to one from 7-½ years ago, about immoral porpoises.


Slave all day over a hot keyboard and this is the sort of thanks you get.

All this probably makes sense to Daryl Payan but I am not going to ask for explanations:

BEST BAND-NAME EVAH
I eagerly await their cover version of 'The Final Countdown'.

...it would be a Tower Kebabel.

A recent retraction notice gave away little information, other than "editor's request". The ex-paper had been in disfavour - with critics arguing that the small samples of sheep robbed the results of rigour and left them indistinguisable from chance - but papers flawed in far worse ways continue to stink up the scientific literature.


The important issue addressed by Asín et al. (2018) was that of autism in sheep, and whether this is caused by the neurotoxic ingredients of vaccines. It is certainly not the only "vaccine neurotoxin / autism" paper to find its way into print. Perhaps the Devil-Sheep were the problem.



I have already written about that burgeoning antivax genre, but in the context of the Frontiers stable of journals. This post could be summed up as a compilation of outtakes, involving other journals... most notably, the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, with a special mention for the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology. From another perspective, this post is a sequel to a J.Inorg.Biochem.-related saga of shenanigans and retractions involving Gene Expression in Vaccinated Mice. Either way, there will be Satanic Sheep. Mice with indestructible crystalline diamond brains who can shoot laser beams from their third-eye pineal glands. Also, diet secrets of the Israeli Defense Forces, and ASIA - not just a 1980s Arena- / Prog-rock band with Roger Dean album covers, but also 'Autoimmunity Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants".



There is much to be said for this new concept of defining syndromes not by their pathognomonic symptoms but by the purported cause. It means that anyone unconvinced by your claim will accept the crucial part by the act of repeating the name, placing it above critique. If only White, Sharpe and Chalder had written about "Unconscious Malingering Syndrome" in their reports on the PACE trail, rather than "ME / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome", they would have forestalled all the bickering about their shifting of goalposts to ensure successful outcomes. But I digress.

Meet the Aluminions

Those of us adept in the dark forgotten arts of 'memory' will recall a widely-entertained theory from the late 1980s, whereby the root cause of Alzheimer's Disease was aluminium (perhaps on account of alliteration). Anxious people traded in their aluminium cookware for cast-iron skillets. After no end of epidemiology and laboratory work the theory succumbed to hostile evidence and fell by the wayside, but no crap idea in psychology is ever abandoned completely, which is why we have a loose network of researchers who are convinced that the neurotoxicity of aluminium is vastly under-rated (or suppressed by the agents of the Industry) - in particular, the aluminium compounds used as an adjuvant in some vaccines (to reduce the amount of actual antigen required in the vaccine, by rousing the immune system from Amber to Red Alert). A sense of persecution, minority status, and Cassandra-like Voices-in-the-Wilderness neglect sometimes inspires these 'Aluminati' to a level of rhetoric more usually expected from manic street preachers.


I write "loose network of researchers" because this is more charitable than "more intellectually inbred than the Hapsburgs and the 18th-Dynasty pharaohs".

“Biopersistence and brain translocation of aluminum adjuvants of vaccines”, Gherardi et al.
“Clinical features in patients with long-lasting macrophagic myofasciitis”, Gherardi et al.
“The mobilization of aluminum into the biosphere”, Pogue & Lukiw
"Elevated brain aluminium and early onset Alzheimer’s disease in an individual occupationally exposed to aluminium: a case report”, Exley & Vickers
“Slow CCL2-dependent translocation of biopersistent particles from muscle to brain”, Khan,... Exley,... Gherardi & Cadusseau

The Venice Biennales of this network are the Keele Aluminium Meetings, held under the auspices of the Birchall Centre of Keele University, most recently at a Mexican resort. An arrangement exists with J.Inorg.Biochem.[perhaps the Birchall prestige has beglamored the editors] to publish each meeting's Proceedings in a special issue of the journal, with rigorous peer-review and a guest-editorial role for Prof. Chris Exley. Though the peer-review Homers sometimes nod and the legendary Shaw-Tomljenovic fake-data mouse study slipped past, doomed though it was to subsequent retraction.

Luján

Only one component of context remains. In 2010, a group of veterinary scientists (González, ...& De las Heras) reported an outbreak of a mystery neurological disease [which is always the BEST KIND of neurological disease!] in several Spanish sheep-flocks manifesting sometimes in a chronic wasting form of kidney failure and sometimes as acute ovine excitation. They could not establish the etiology (as you may have guessed from the word "mystery") but speculated about a link with a Europe-wide vaccination program against BTV or "Blue-Tongue", a virus which has crossed the species boundary from Chow dogs and Australian lizards.


A second team of Spanish veterinary researchers discovered the same condition in a 2013 paper, and made their bones in the Aluminati by ascribing it to the AlOH adjuvant in the BTV virus (on the basis that no other explanation occurred to them). Team leader Lluis Luján was also the last author of the Asín paper where we began. I do not know if they had ruled out the possibility of "meteorites impacting the affected farms and bringing ultrasidereal phenomena, unidentifiable in colour and inimical to terrestrial life".


Whatever caused the outbreak, it has gone away, while BTV vaccination continues. This has not deterred Luján et al. from conducting a series of studies in which red satanic devil sheep on one's left shoulder whisper the counsels of temptation, while green angelic virtue-sheep on one's right shoulder urge the pathway of righteousness until one collapses under the weight of two sheep.


NO WAIT I tell a lie. Studies in which the vaccinated sheep invariably exhibit strange physical stigmata while losing language, theory-of-mind and social skills, becoming autistic. Two were published in journals edited by a Professor Shoenfeld, of whom more below: one inImmunologic Research (co-authored by Shoenfeld), the other inAutoimmunity Reviews (co-authored with Gherardi, of whom more below). A third paper was co-authored with Chris Exley, so regularappearances and collaboration at the Keele Meetings were not far away. The common themes throughout were (1) woefully inadequate numbers, and (2) a studious erasure of González et al (2010) from history.


Also there is a movie on the way. I eagerly await a remake of 'Black Sheep'.

When Dr Luján became one of the editors of "Controversies in Vaccine Safety", along with Chris Shaw, Claire Dwoskin and Lucija Tomljenovic, it was a supergroup of Antivax All-Stars! Co-editor Dwoskin's relevant qualification here is "Outraged Mother"... she believes that "Vaccines are a holocaust of poison on our children’s brains and immune systems", and that there are no neuroatypical or challenged children, only cases of "vaccine damage"; so there are no "controversies" either, only proven accusations.


Her other qualification is "One half of a family fortune", which places her and the antivaccine lobby-group Dwoskin Family Foundation in the centre of the Aluminati, funding sympathetic research through the Children's Medical Safety Research Institute (CMSRI). Here "Medical Safety" is code for "banning vaccines". Members of the Aluminati are prominent on the Institute's Scientific Advisory Board, enjoy its hospitality at Caribbean get-togethers. They benefit from its financial generosity, e.g. research grants and sponsorship for Keele Aluminium Meetings.

As for "Controversies in Vaccine Safety", it is only available through those slightly dubious booksellers who can also source copies of the Necronomicon, "The King in Yellow", Whiffle's "On the Care of the Pig" and Volume 5 of Knuth's "Art of Computer Programming". The list of contributors was a Who's Who of Aluminaries[where "who's who" is an unsuccessful anagram for "clown-car-crash"], but the publisher got cold feet, authors pulled out, and nothing of value was lost.

As noted upstream, the editor of Pharmacological Research was coy on the reasons for retracting the Devil-Sheep / Angel-Sheep paper. But the staff writer for CMSRI is a Celeste McGovern, who likes to play dress-up games as Independent Journalist (a lofty pulpit from which she can accuse pro-vaccine authors of being on the payroll of Big Pharma), and she has DARK SUSPICIONS of a CONSPIRACY AT WORK. She also has access to the confidential correspondence between Luján and the journal editors, from which to cherry-pick selective quotes.


Suffice to say that any given Elsevier journal is an epitome of scientific objectivity and the voice of consensus when it accepts a CMSRI paper, but a contemptible cats-paw for Pharma-industry manipulation if it retracts one. To publish with them is now a betrayal of one's antivax purity. We can only marvel at the power of the vaccine lobby, and how it can compel Chris Exley to publish the Keele Proceedings through J.Inorg.Biochem despite his call for a boycott... to sit until until three days ago on the Editorial Board of J.Trace.Elem.Med.Biol., a soft touch for Antivax Science (including his own papers)... not to forget stovepipes like Toxicology.

McGovern paints Luján as a saintly figure - both man of science and humble son-of-the-soil willing to listen to farmers - while his predecessors González et al (2010) disappear from the account completely. We also learn that David Hawkes (a critic of junk science) is both a "small-fry virologist" and a malevolent master-mind: a veritable Fantômas singlehandedly responsible for all the reversals and humiliations inflicted upon antivax scientists, probably including this one.

Gherardi

The scene now shifts to a French school of Aluminati led by Roman Gherardi.

Any survey of their work should begin with the most intemperate Letter to the Editor to be published in an academic journal (Toxicology, 2017b) since Galileo and Kepler and Brahe established disputatious defamation as a literary genre. The tone is one of injured amour-propre, and a magisterial dignity, not to be endangered by stooping to the level of commoners:

We do not consider that we should now spend our time pointing out why the criticisms are either scientifically inept or simply ill-informed opinions.

This was a response to an earlier(2017) Letter from David Hawkes [the same one] and Joanne Benhamu, questioning the ethics approval, and Conflicts of Interest, and the interpretation of results, in "Non-linear dose-response of aluminium hydroxide adjuvant particles: Selective low dose neurotoxicity" (Crépeaux et al. 2017a). In the eyes of Crépeaux et al. (2017b), to ask questions was an act of lese-majeste (while the journal Editors were equally culpable for publishing Hawkes & Benhamu without first asking their permission). They accused Hawkes & Benhamu of fabricating their qualifications and affiliations (the same accusations were published concurrently by Celeste McGovern of CMSRI, raising the prospect of a coordinated attack), and handed down an ex-cathedra declaration that their Letter could never have passed peer-review.

The outrage arose because Letters should meet the same standards and leap the same hurdles as a conventional Paper. The corollary follows that the retraction of a Letter to the Editor is as damaging to the authors' reputations as that of a paper. This being the fate suffered by Crépeaux et al. (2017b) when the journal editors belatedly checked its defamatory tone with their hot-'n'-juicy lawyers. Resplendent in messy details, the saga made its way to RetractionWatch. Then the Retraction was retracted, and replaced with an updated version, while Crépeaux et al. was also replaced with a less actionable response... evasive of Hawkes' questions rather than dismissive of them.

But the real claim to fame for Gherardi and his cohorts is perhaps their discovery of MMF, Macrophagal Myofasciitis (MMM in French), a condition designed to use up all the 'i's left surplus when 'aluminium' is telescoped into the barbarous form 'aluminum'. Originally MMF was characterised by an inflamed, persistent lump (lesion) at the site of a vaccination, combined with a lingering pervasive malaise (starting from two days to 23 years after the injection), and it was unknown outside the borders of France, for only Gherardi's colleagues have the necessary training and sensory acuity to diagnose it. In subsequent papers, the diagnostic criteria were relaxed, so that a persistent post-vaccination lump became optional - in effect turning 'MMF' into an alternative label or causative theory for ME/CFS.

Effort went to co-opt existing lobby / support groups for ME/CFS and enlist them to Gherardi's antivaccine crusade. A new group was founded, 'E3M'[which is French for 'astroturf'], purporting to speak for Chronic Fatigue / MMF victims. Through the vaccine-safety agency ANSM, it successfully lobbied the French gubblement to invest €150,000 in Gherardi's research, with the active assistance of other members of the Aluminati (Exley, Shaw and Shoenfeld all vouched for his academic eminence and probity at a 2012 press conference). Specifically, to pay for FLUORESCENT NANO-DIAMONDS.

Sadly, the gubblement ignored the policy implications of Gherardi's research (i.e. "stop vaccinating!"), leaving Gherardi miffed and disgruntled and complaining to the press of CENSORSHIP. More to the point they declined to cough up a further €550,000 for his research to continue.

Laboratory mice did not become crystalline and indestructible and empowered with pineal-gland laser beams... I lied about that part. The goal was for the nanodiamonds, mixed with a dose of vaccine adjuvant, to bind with colloidal particles of aluminium hydroxide (alum), thereby serving as a tracer of where the adjuvant particles ended up in a murine carcass. €150,000 paid for two studies: one varying the dosage of ND/adjuvant potion, the other to trace the progression of the NDs through a rodent's body by varying the time between administration and sacrifice / autopsy of the subjects. Neither provided the desired results.

In the authors'conceptual framework, colloidal particles migrate to the brain, where they wreak neuroinflammatory havoc. They are borne there by phagocytic immune cells - which have evolved to operate as an limb-to-CNS lymphatic shuttle service for aluminium - then crossing the Blood-Brain-Barrier and transferring to the brain's own immune-system microglia cells. Mice, where a few centimetres separate the site of an injection from the brain, were the obvious choice to model the human situation, where the distance to travel is an order of magnitude greater.

Post-mortems of the research program occupy many threads at Pubpeer, which delve into more detail than one could ever require. Suffice to say that to accommodate the results within this framework required post-hoc rationalisations, Ptolemaic epicycles, and the benign neglect of inconvenient data points. Nanodiamonds could not be found in brains when they should be. Behaviours shifted their diagnostic value between 'normal' and 'autistic', depending on which experimental group displayed them. With five dosage groups to choose between, the authors had the luxury of presenting one selection of four groups in a preliminary presentation and another selection in the final paper (dropping the 133-µg group and adding the 400-µg group), but they still could not produce a coherent narrative of the dose / migration relationship.

That is to say, concerns go further than those raised by Hawkes and Benhamu in their Letter that sparked the unseemly brouhaha. Hypotheses were more migratory than colloidal alum particles. As for the time-course aspect, it seems that the brainwards migration of alum / ND tracers all occurred before the first cohort of mice were slain and dissected, or else hadn't yet happened in the final cohort when they made their sacrifice to Science; or both.

Shoenfeld

We return now to 'ASIA', that clinical / litigation concept introduced by Prof. Y. Shoenfeld and dubbed "Shoenfeld's Syndrome"by his more ardent admirers. The final 'A' in the acronym, 'Adjuvants', is interpreted liberally, stretching to accommodate silica breast implants and allowing Shoenfeld to subsume siliconosis under the ASIA umbrella. MMF has also been annexed as one of the manifestations of this Protean entity, and by extension, ME/CFS.

Shoenfeld does not limit his practice to aluminium-compound adjuvants, which would mean restricting his focus to HPV and Hep-B vaccines as the prime causes of autoimmune conditions. Squalene is on the list, so as to annex 'Gulf War Syndrome' as another manifestation [vaccines administered to participants in the Gulf War did not contain squalene]. Concerned for their autoimmune potential of adjuvants in the oral Polio vaccine and MMR vaccine, Shoenfeld has called for research (he may not have thought through the implications of "oral", or the absence of adjvants in MMR). Indeed, he first appeared on the scene as a beneficiary of Wakefield's MMR fraud, as part of theExpert Witness fee bonanza from the UK Legal Services Commission.

We have encountered Dr Shoenberg already several times in the co-authorship lists of papers by Gherardi, Luján, Exley, etc. He is a prolific author, although sometimes his writing comes to the attention of the Regrettable Metaphors police.

Unraveling the soul of autoimmune diseases: pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment adding dowels to the puzzle
Immunologic Research (2013)
S. Colafrancesco , N. Agmon-Levin , C. Perricone , Y. Shoenfeld

This Guest Editorial finishes:
All these papers light the idea that unraveling the soul of autoimmune diseases is like playing chess, and with every discovery, we are adding new moves to the game. The pathogenesis, disease and treatment are the rook, bishop and knight pointing at checkmating ADs.
So autoimmune diseases have a soul, which is evidently knitted, so it unravels. Which is like playing chess... where the disease is the bishop, allied with its pathogenesis (the rook), pitted against the treatment (the knight). This is not any form of chess I am familiar with, so it is just as well that "we are adding new moves to the game".
At the same time it is a puzzle. To which new dowels are being added. That is where the metaphor lost me.

Bonus bad metaphor:

Anyway, the occasional retracted depublished papers are only a small fraction of his total output. They may reappear in journals closer to Shoenfeld's editorial control. Just saying, it is not a good look to argue that a retracted paper was only criticised because of its key role in your paid testimony as an Expert Witness in litigation, and that this conflict of interest demonstrates its validity.

Indeed it is [very] strange; after one year of being in the journal and after extensive peer reviews of the paper suddenly we received a letter from the editors that SOMEBODY criticized the paper extensively??, it looks very strange and unprecedented. yet indeed at this time we have used this paper in Court for vaccine compensation to show that autoantibodies penetrate cells. Is it coincidental ????????

The first English-language entry in Shoenfeld's CV is a 1982 manual on diet and exercise, promoting the fitness regimen of the IDF for a wider readership. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. The book was not reviewed raptly at the time, and inspired an intriguing exegesis, but the Amazon reviews are positive.

When not writing papers on his expansive vision for autoimmune disease ("Everything is Autoimmune Until Proven Otherwise"), or founding journals to spread that vision, Dr Shoenfeld is an impresario of conferences.

Just look at the 4th International Symposium on Vaccines! (April 6, 2016, in Leipzig.

IN COLLABORATION WITH CMSRI

• What role do vaccines play in inducing autoimmunity?
• Are there safe vaccines for genetically prone subjects?
• Can we vaccinate against autoimmune diseases?
• What is the role of adjuvants and/or molecular mimicry in vaccines inducing autoimmune diseases?
• Is it safe to vaccinate patients with autoimmune diseases?

Everything you wanted to know about vaccines and autoimmunity in one symposium.

With Chris Exley and Claire Dwoskin as co-chairs, you might expect a standard gathering of Aluminati. However, the liturgical displays of performative paranoia were enlivened on this occasion by the presence of Mark Geier, struck-off medical malpractitioner, who has evidently traded.in his old scam of "curing mercury-toxicity autism through chelation and chemical-castration drugs" for new expertise as an autoimmunologist.

Fleeing a rising sense of disgust, let us look instead at the 5th International Symposium on Vaccines (May 6th, 2018, in Lisbon) - sponsored by CMSRI. Chaired this time by Christopher Exley and Romain Gherardi, and subtitled "Aluminium Adjuvants And Autoimmunity" for the benefit of anyone unsure of the overall message. No-one especially egregious features in the program and most of the presentations were rehearsals for the 2019 Keele Meeting.

"But," you ask, "What have these events - regrettable though they may be - what have they to do with Dr Shoenfeld? Shoenfeld was not even a speaker!"

The answer is that these were satellite meetings - no, that is too weak a word, they were core events - of the 10th and 11th International Congresses on Autoimmunity, and these are very much Shoenfeld-related activities. They were front-page components, promoted to Congress attendees as "Everything you wanted to know about vaccines and autoimmunity in one symposium".


I don't which is more revealing: the endorsement from Claire Dwoskin, thanking Shoenfeld and the Congress for their contributions to the anti-vaccine cause; or the decision to include that endorsement in Congress advertising, as supportive of its brand.


The ICAs appear to be tailored for naive newcomers, vaguely aware that there exists a new medical specialty of "autoimmunity", and wanting to up-skill quickly and get in on the ground floor. Is it just me, or does this whole "join the family" aspect of the Congresses sound ominously cult-like? Then the indoctrination begins, and the initiation rituals, and there is NO TURNING BACK.


Fortunately, the Autoimmunity Network - the "family" you are invited to join - turns out to be an innocuous compendium of advertisements for Shoenfeld's books, for his Elsevier journal Autoimmunity Review, and for future ICAs, with a side-link to Shoenfeld's biography and CV (a useful resource for preparing this). Imagine my relief.

Outside of antivax circles, and the recipients of an education through ICA, few accept that the concept of ASIA is valid, or even meaningful.

Coda

I set out to write a brief overview of the intellectual context to the Asín-Luján paper but things spiralled quickly out of control. There is no space left for the parts played by Chris Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic, so I content myself with referring you to all the coverage elsewhere.

In one interview, Shaw's enthusiasm was on the wane for "dabbling" in vaccine research. He has also distanced himself from several retracted papers, explaining that his involvement in them went no further than signing his name as co-author. Nevertheless, he and Tomljenovic prepared a presentation for this year's 13th Keele Meeting. Like their contributions to the 12th, 11th and previous Meetings, it was an under-powered pilot study, and the Abstract is a gallimaufry of cherry-picked equivocal results allowing no overall conclusion other than Further Research is Necessary.

The observed neurodevelopmental alterations did not have a linear relationship with vaccine doses and seem to be transient in age.
These results suggest that follow up studies are required...

Meanwhile Tomljenovic has renounced Darwin and found religion, of an eccentric Charismatic Creationist / Judaic form where God speaks to her directly, but evidently He failed to pass on useful advice like "Use enough mice in your studies for rigorous and meaningful results".

Enquiring minds are wondering whether the Meeting organisers will continue with the promise to publish the Proceedings in an issue of J.Inorg.Biochem.; or break the arrangement and find an alternative outlet, in accordance with Chris Exley's new policy of boycotting Elsevier.

They are also wondering whether the egregious Del Bigtree's invited presentation to the Meeting will feature in those peer-reviewed Proceedings.

I hope Keele University are proud of all this.

The Brocken Spectre is a phenomenon seen from a mountain peak, looking down on clouds or fog with the sun behind one. "Brokenspectra" is a term I made up just now for unnatural wavelength functions - X-ray or IR or Raman spectra (and including X-ray diffraction patterns as honorary members of the club) - stitched together from spare parts, preferably in a laboratory in a Carpathian castle while angry peasants gather at the gates with pitchforks and torches.

Here is one to whet your appetite. I think it is some kind of mutant bar-code containing a hidden message.

Li et al. 2017

Jin, Shen & Sun, 2014

And another. It is remarkably similar to my EKG after the second double-shot espresso of the morning.

Leonid's readers will be disappointed by the absence of manipulated Western Blots from today's post. Instead there are electron-microscopy images of a protean nature, shifting their identities on every appearance; and Brokenspectra, including the first sightings from the high-end extreme of EXAFS (Extended X-Ray Absorption Fine Structure), which may serve as some consolation. Also versatile scholars in the Renaissance mould of Aldrovandi or Athanasius Kircher, breaking out from the narrow confines of their nominal specialty to publish in physical chemistry; and there are unusual patterns of citation. The central characters are Yubing Sun of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a prolific and well-funded researcher at Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences (Institute of Plasma Physics) and North China Electrical Power University (NCEPU); and his frequent co-author, Xiangke Wang - Sun's boss at NCEPU.

But we should begin at the end: with


[1]. Enhanced adsorption of Zn(II) onto graphene oxides investigated using batch and modeling techniques (2018).

This excursion into advanced materials science is atypical for the lead author Min Pan, of Xiamen University of Technology, whose career centres on the treatment of sewage and slaughterhouse wastewater. The paper raises some concerns, as featured in a PubPeer thread. In particular, Figure 1 sets out to characterise the Graphene Oxide (GO) in various ways. But stuttering in the XRD contained in panel 1(E) hints at some heinous malfunction in the diffraction equipment.


Figure 1(B) is a TEM (Transmission Electron Microscope) image of the experimental GO, but a section of it had previously been enlarged and slightly rotated [at right] to illustrate GO3, in [2]:


[2]. Tuning the chemistry of graphene oxides by sonochemical approach: Application on adsorption properties (Yubing Sun et al., 2015).

The SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) image of the experimental GO had previously illustrated "HOOC-GOs" when it appeared in Fig 1(B) [right] of [3]:


[3]. Adsorption and desorption of U(VI) on functionalized graphene oxides: a combined experimental and theoretical study (Yubing Sun et al., 2015).

In fact Fig 1 of [3] has undergone some remarkable migrations. For convenient referral I show it over at the right. As noted, Panel 1(B) is a SEM of "HOOC-GOs". Except when it illustrates "sulfonated graphene oxide" (GO-OSO₃H):


Note that one image is not simply an enlarged detail of the other: they overlap, each with its own unique segment, suggesting that two sets of authors cut down a single larger Ur-version, in different ways. Note also that this is now a different paper: we have set Min Pan's oeuvre aside for the moment, and turned to Ting Yao, of the Air Force Logistics College in Xuzhou. Yao has published on aspects of aviation oil and remediation of contaminated environments. But at some point she gained access to a supply of rare-earth elements and wrote [4]:


[4]. Adsorption of Eu(III) on sulfonated graphene oxide: Combined macroscopic and modeling techniques (Ting Yao et al, 2016).

Figure 1 of [4] characterises the GO-OSO₃H in several ways, including an XPS spectrum [1D, right] which is indebted to the carboxylated GO of [3].


Don't fear that the other panels of Figure 1 from [3] have been neglected. Panel 1(C) is postponed until [20]. As for 1(A), we find it illustrating an application of GO, in Figure 1 of paper [5] from Min Pan:

[5] The highly efficient adsorption of Pb(II) on graphene oxides: A process combined by batch experiments and modeling techniques (Xiaoming Huang & Min Pan, 2016).

But we have not finished with Ting Yao's work. At left below is Figure 1 B, a FTIR spectrum characterising B subtilis, from

[6] Biosorption of Eu(III) and U(VI) on Bacillus subtilis: Macroscopic and modeling investigation (Yao, ...& Li, 2016).


It is shared at right, in common with the lower FTIR spectrum of Fig 1D in

[7] Adsorption of U(VI) on sericite in the presence of Bacillus subtilis: A combined batch, EXAFS and modeling techniques (Sun et al. 2016).

Now the final and corresponding author of [6] was Fengbo Li, a new arrival in the dramatis personae. His scholarly endeavours at Huangshan University have focused on applications of a soil fungus, Paecilomyces catenlannulatus - in particular, its potential for sequestering and bioabsorbing heavy metals. There is a recurring theme here, of dealing with environmental contaminants of the breathtakingly-toxic and sometimes radioactive variety, reflecting the downside of China's industrial transformation. Anyway, Li serves as a link to a third cluster of researchers with their own pair of papers.


[8] Adsorption of U(VI) on magnetic iron oxide/Paecilomyces catenlannulatus composites
[9] Macroscopic and Microscopic Investigation of U(VI) and Eu(III) Adsorption on Carbonaceous Nanofibers (Sun et al. 2016).

Progressing quickly to a second paper from these authors, its Fig. 1(A) (a FT-IR spectrum for P. catenlannulatus) reveals an unusual repeated feature, rather resembling a front view of a sofa. Somehow it is turning into an airliner seating diagram.

[10] Detoxification of U(VI) by Paecilomyces catenlannulatus investigated by batch, XANES and EXAFS techniques (Fengbo Li, Xiaoyu Li & Pu Cui, 2018).

The paper also provides a useful segue to EXAFS. To repeat, this is high-end materials science. I would expose the shallowness of my understanding if I tried to explain EXAFS. The crux, though is that at high enough resolution, the fine structure of an X-ray absorption line contains clues to the crystalline neighbourhood of the atoms absorbing those X-rays (because the probability that a photon will dislodge an electron is modulated by the energy-dependent interference between that dislodged electron, as a wave, and neighbouring atoms / bonds). A computation-heavy weighted Fourier transform from the frequency into the spatial domain makes these clues explicit.

The only source of sufficiently pure monochromatic X-rays is a synchrotron beam-line, and these are not desktop laboratory devices (though there is one in Shanghai). So not many people are active in the field. Evidently Fengbo Li qualified for access to the Shanghai installation (as well as access to radionuclides), resulting in Figure 6(B) [left], where the bottom profile is an EXAFS spectrum for "U-loaded P. catenlannulatus incubation time = 7 days, pH 4.5, CU(VI) = 20 mg/L."

Unexpectedly, all three spectra are replotted from counterparts in Fig. 7(B) [right], from

[11] Simultaneous adsorption and reduction of U(VI) on reduced graphene oxide-supported nanoscale zerovalent iron (Sun et al. 2014).

To sum up: we have three small clusters of researchers located around China, repurposing images and results from the large, productive Sun / Wang group. In comments in Pubpeer, Sun and Wang have expressed dismay at these acts of intellectual piracy, while preferring not to speculate about exactly how the other groups obtained the Ur-versions. Those clusters are not entirely disjunct: Fengbo Li of the third group was corresponding author on Yao's paper [6]. Li has also collaborated with Sun, most recently in 2018 (see [12] below). I should note that much of the pirated material was published in the Journal of Molecular Liquids, which benefits from Xiangke Wang's presence on its Editorial Board; it is a pity that papers [4], [5], [6], [8] did not cross his desk and alert him to these misdeeds.

Perhaps in compensation, there are some unusual patterns of citation (as promised above). In [4], 26 out of 44 references invoke the work of Y. B. Sun. In [5]. 15 out of 44. I am not convinced that they all crucially relevant.




Citations, of course, have become the currency of the academic-publishing economy. Like viewers' votes in a Reality-TV show, they drive the Impact Factors of journals, and of individual papers. Summed across papers, they define the importance and determine the career paths of the authors, removing the need for science administrators to understand anything of what people might have contributed before promoting them or bestowing tenure. Roles on Peer-Reviewer panels and Editorial Boards are determined by citations in all their majestic objectivity.

27 out of 51 references in [6] invoke Y. B Sun. In [8], 27 of 47. This might strike some as immoderate.



This creates an incentive for authors to pack self-citations into every niche of their own References sections, or as peer-reviewers, to render judgement that a manuscript is unpublishable until it contains 12 citations of one's own work; though these are generally deprecated. Citation cartels at the level of journals - mutually-beneficial exchanges of backrolling and logscratching between editors - are derogated in the same way.

In [10], 23 of 38 citations. In [12], 20 of 56 citations. Here [12] is the Li / Sun collaboration foreshadowed above:

[12] Plasma-grafted amidoxime/metal–organic framework composites for the selective sequestration of U(vi) (Fengbo Li, Xiaoyu Li, Pu Cui & Yubing Sun, 2018).



Now [12] commends itself to our attention partly for Figure 1(B), a FT-IR spectrum for an amidoxime/metal–organic framework composite or AO/MOF, containing odd segments of self-similarity.


Those features were already present when the spectrum was published a year earlier - vertically compressed - as the upper, red profile in Figure 1(C) of [13]:

[13] Plasma-Facilitated Synthesis of Amidoxime/Carbon Nanofiber Hybrids for Effective Enrichment of 238U(VI) and 241Am(III) (Sun et al. 2017).

Indeed, the two papers shared any number of results, despite the difference between AO/MOFs and "Amidoxime/Carbon Nanofiber Hybrids". Xiangke Wang was dismayed by the theft but we have yet to hear from Sun, the author in common.


EXAFS results were shared.

In fact these spectra make a third appearance! They are also Figure 5 [at left] of [14]

[14] The influence of nanoscale size on the adsorption–desorption of U(vi) on nano-Al oxides (Wan et al. 2018).

In that third home, two of the spectra donned new identities as uranium-sequestering nano-alumina and nano-corundum. The uppermost spectrum (U(vi) in isolation) is unchanged for R(Å) < 2.2, but for R(Å) > 2.2 it is flat. The absence of a third peak piqued the curiosity of an EXAFS expert in a Pubpeer comment but the best explanation is that the output was edited.

There is just time to admire two Brokenspectrum from [14] before continuing: To the right, some experimental hiccoughs have perturbed Figure 5(A), showing XPS analyses for the two aluminium oxides.

We are now within Sun's canon but there is no space to be exhaustive (readers are invited to explore the relevant PubPeerthreads). I shall quickly select a few representative Brokenspectra.

[15] Determination of chemical affinity of graphene oxide nanosheets with radionuclides investigated by macroscopic, spectroscopic and modeling techniques (Ding et al, 2014).

[16] Enhanced adsorption of ionizable aromatic compounds on humic acid-coated carbonaceous adsorbents (Sun et al. 2012).



[17] Highly efficient enrichment of radionuclides on graphene oxide-supported polyaniline (Sun et al. 2013).

[18] Mechanistic insights into the decontamination of Th(iv) on graphene oxide-based composites by EXAFS and modeling techniques (Sun et al. 2017).



The upper one on the right is really the Prague skyline.


I really want to concentrate on the EXAFS analyses, for they are the point of difference for this group. So it was natural to take seven raw-data and transformed spectra for functionalized GO, in Figure 4 of [3] [below, left], and compare them against the transformed spectra [right] for "uranium-containing nZVI/C composites" at different pH / time combinations, from [19]. Mirabile dictu, four of them are the same!

[19] New Synthesis of nZVI/C Composites as an Efficient Adsorbent for the Uptake of U(VI) from Aqueous Solutions (Liu et al. 2017).

The similarity is not complete, for when the 2015 "rGOs_U/pH8" profile was repurposed to be "U^(VI)O₂²⁺ in 2017, it was edited to be flat for R(Å) &rt; 2.5.


As always, there is more, and I am compelled us if by a gaes to take those seven spectra from [3] and compare them again... four of them also appeared as Fig. 4 in [2], this time representing sonochemically-tuned Uranium-sponge GO variants.


More curious still, although the raw data are the same, the Fourier-transformed versions of these EXAFS spectra do not match. There are only two main humps instead of three, which is like recalculating a camel and ending up with a horse. How does this happen?

Now that we are back on the subject of [3], with the functionalized GOs, it may be time to wonder why the FT-IR spectra for GOs and rGOs are identical, down to pixels of noise, except for a 10% horizontal stretch.


Readers might be worried about Panel 1(C) from [3] - a crumpled paperbag of a reduced-GO sheet, seen via SEM. Don't worry, it has not been neglected, and was transformed back into GO [here at right] to become Figure 1(A) of [20].


[20] High sorption of U(VI) on graphene oxides studied by batch experimental and theoretical calculations (Wang et al. 2016).

And going back to the Graphene Oxide SEM of [3] Fig 1(A), there are two other reported sightings. One was in Supplementary Figure S1A of [21], which again described the subject matter as GO, so the main concern is that a different microscope had reportedly created the image.

[21] Mutual effect of U(vi) and Sr(ii) on graphene oxides: evidence from EXAFS and theoretical calculations (Cheng et al., 2017),

The second was in Fig. 1D [right] of [22], where in the manner of a master-criminal from sensationalist fiction, the material had changed its identity, and was calling itself a "mesoporous Al2O3/EG composite".


[22] Enhanced adsorption of Eu(III) on mesoporous Al2O3/expanded graphite composites investigated by macroscopic and microscopic techniques (Sun et al. 2012)

What is one to make of all this? Sun and Wang have reached the pinnacle of Physical Chemistry success, and ascended into the High-Citation empyrean (assisted by a certain degree of self-citation). When you have gained access to (1) exotic materials, and (2) a synchrotron X-ray beamline, with (3) software and (4) grad students to write the manuscripts, then a stream of publishable papers is guaranteed (along with the funding to ensure that (1)-(4) continue). There should be no need to manipulate spectra, and duplicate results, and extract different, incompatible spectra from single sets of data.

In particular, there should be no need for groups of outsiders to this niche of materials science, embellishing their academic records with papers consisting of images from Sun & Wang, text in the style of Sun & Wang, and citations to Sun & Wang. One's papers (and the broader plot arcs they build) should already be attracting citations from other researchers in the field. Assuming, of course, that other researchers in the field can replicate one's results and calculations.

More people were writing about Goofle Ngram Viewer in 1820 than in any subsequent year.

Putting pigs in pokes and cats in bags were very popular activities in the mid-1930s.
The frequencies of pig-poking and cat-blanketing were inversely related in the first half of the 19th century; then the correlation became strongly positive.
No-one knows why.

"Let's re-enact 'When Prophecy Fails' as a real-time broadcast across social media, but instead of the deranged and disappointed cultists expecting UFOs, their saviour is a scrophulous brain-damaged scammer-manqué from New Zealand," said absolutely no-one. Yet the scriptwriters of the Reality Studio heard the unspoken plea, and it came to pass.

Now I am inclined to believe that John Hoani Wanoa is a character from an unpublished sequel to Hadrian VII, written by Thomas Pynchon in a rare collaboration with Alfred Bester, who escaped from the fictive dimension into more corporeal reality. The alternative explanation is that he is a natural-born citizen of Consensus Reality who broke his brain in some dramatic irreversible way (about the same time as he discovered the Kaipara Harbour Tidal Generator scheme and decided to profit from his own scam version thereof), resulting in

1. The fabulation of imaginary ancestries for himself, variously featuring the Moriori, Tahitian / Hawai'ian / Rapanui princely bloodlines, and English royal dynasties.

2. Ingestion of the legal-truther systems of longer-established grifters (notably "Rev." Kevin Annett and his "International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State"; and a NZ tradition of 1834 Tribal-Independence conmen), all regurged in a macaronic logorrhoea of cargo-cultic worship-words.

3. Appropriation of the 1834 Confederated Tribes flag as a mystical, all-powerful emblem of KING WILLIAM IV ADMIRALTY MARITIME LAW SOVEREIGNTY and QUEENS BENCH.

4. A conviction that any property he likes the look of must have been stolen from his royal ancestors, therefore really belonging to him, needing only stern letters written in a macaronic logorrhoea of worship-words to ensure its restitution. Or failing that, physical invasion.

5. Under-punctuated 4000-word rants to UK politicians, in a macaronic logorrheia with the worship-words curiously capitalised.

I would like you to FREEZE the NWO AGENDA 21 CLAIMS to this GOLD TRUST FUND till we get there for the TRIAL between the VATICAN and QUEEN and MOAI BENEFICIARIES please.
I would like you to FREEZE the ADMIRALTY COURT MARTIAL LAW of KING WILLIAM IV FLAG SEAL JURISDICTION MANIFESTATION BONDS CARGO MERCHANT ADMIRALTY MARITIME LAW over USA CANADA AUSTRALIA and NEW ZEALAND immediately the date of this KINGS ORDER online HIGH COURT OF ADMIRALTY COURT HEARING TODAY 27/7/14
NO one is Authorized to use KING WILLIAM IV FLAG SEAL JURISDICTION LEGALLY as of this KINGS ORDER INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC NOTICE today. It will be posted on facebook shortly as a consequence of any ACTION against those THIRD FOURTH PARTIES to this "KING WILLIAM IV ADMIRALTY & "QUEEN VICTORIA MOAI HAPU NATIVE TRUST FUND CLAIM"

Let's face it, that alternative explanation is far less plausible.

Another Kiwi has a third explanation for Mr Wanoa's apparent existence, holding him to be a chapter of "1066 And All That" which somehow attained sentience, but I am not convinced.


The other side of the equation, anyway, is the ragtaggle pack of conspiracist Truthers who found Wanoa's congeries of delusions to be congenial building-blocks for constructing their own stately pleasure-domes of belief. Thus they affect to believe [for values of "belief" which may be imaginary, and are certainly not rational] that

1. John Wanoa is the True Surrogate King of England, Scotland, etc..

2. Upon arrival in the UK, Wanoa will be elevated to the throne by mass acclamation among the Armed Forces and constabulary - allowing him to topple the corrupt established legal system of elitist "lawyers" and "judges" and restore the old system of Common Jurisprudence and King's Bench.


It is not clear which author or literary tradition is responsible for them. Evidently, though, their author is not afraid of broad-brush heavy-handed satire, and not concerned whether characters behave with plausible intelligence.
So these insufferable cargdrongos sent off money to John Wanoa or his proxies, with some uncertainty whether each £25 was a donation, or the purchase of one of the 999,999,999,999 nominal shares in his fantasy tidal-power not-a-business, or a deposit securing the right to purchase a share when he gets around to arranging a magical way to transfer shares that bypasses brokers and Stock Exchange. That's the "scammer-manqué" part of the story.

Wanoa bought his ticket to the UK, as the first step on the triumphant Return-of-the-King march on Westminster that would see an end to the usurpation of power (along the way, visiting the High Court to regularise his claims to an office building in Auckland that rightfully belongs to him because he likes the look of it; and securing the £27 billion bequest owed to him by Lloyd's Bank... because some conmen once pulled a classic Advance-Fee scam on him and stole his retirement savings by promising a bequest while claiming to work on Lloyds' behalf).

It turned out, though, that he travelled on a tourist visa, having failed to apply for a work visa, or the specific "Restoration of Legitimate but Supplanted Royalty" visa. Thus he was turned back at the Border Security desk and put on the next plane to Hong Kong. His arrival without ££ may not have helped (proposing to support himself for the length of his visit by way of mendicancy and appeals to the eleemosynary impulses of strangers); not his openness on social media about his gallows-related intentions for the incumbent sovereign.

So I did not get to open a celebratory bottle of King's Landing after all. To prove that I am not MAKING THIS ALL UP, here are some of the nimrods raggling and taggling at a rally in St James Park. They are literally wrapped in that 1834 flag from a short-lived though entertaining episode of NZ colonial history, convinced that it will protect them from bailiffs and repo-men and child-welfare agencies, much as Ghost Shirts protected the Sioux Ghost-Dancers from the bullets of the US cavalry. Their Old Suspender* addressed them in a video chat by smartphone, but forgot to turn on the sound at his end. More at Hoaxtead Research.



What now? Will the Cargo-Cult members recognise the falseness of their beliefs and realign to a slightly more reality-related scholium of thought? Or will they resolve the cognitive dissonance (to the extent that it is recognised) by doubling down, destroying all their food and starving en masse? Leon Festinger is not optimistic.

Conditions[edit]

• A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he or she behaves.
• The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual's commitment to the belief.
• The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief.
• Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief.
• The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence that has been specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, the belief may be maintained and the believers may attempt to proselytize or persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct.

* Old Suspender:


Bonus Pretenders:

Can you write a Faceborg entry by muzzle-loading a random pile of words into a blunderbuss and firing them at the screen? The possibility never occurred to us at the Riddled Research Laboratory but fortunately here is John Wanoa (rightful KING WILLIAM IV SURROGATE KING OF UK) to put it to empirical test:


He seems to be angry, and concerned for the state of England, watching from exile but unable to intervene as it teeters on the edge of anarchy... his recent attempt to assume his throne and extend his sceptre of authority across the realm being thwarted, by Border Control and a little mix-up involving visas. It is hard to be sure, though, for Wanoa is writing in a kind of quark-soup gramtax, or synmar as it may be.
This is actually our goal with the Riddled High-Energy Jargon Accelerator, where we bang nouns and verbs together at high enough velocity to recreate the conditions of the Big Babel - restoring the broken super-symmetries between strong and weak declensions, and between parts of speech, in a veritable neologasm of fresh verbal coinage - in the search for the God Participle. And I must say in passing how disheartening it is to see shameless charlatanswho aren't us teaching this stuff at £70 / lesson as "Quantum Grammar" which will confound the Excise Men and other enemies of freedom (like General Semantics, but updated and dumbed down to better profit from morons).


So Greenish Hugh and Louis Carthorse spent a marathon 8-hour session reviewing Mr Wanoa's prodigious logorrhoea, and before they slumped into catatonia, they were able to table the following older sample of Wanoarrhage. The catatonia may have been related to those three pints of Moai Beer.

"But who is this Eru Manukau, Uncle Smut?" asked absolutely no-one. For he features regularly in Wanoa's eccentric scholium of thought. Usually capitalised, and mercifully bereft of the special colon-centric punctuation associated with Quantum Grammar, or any other kind.

PARAMOUNT MOHI TE MAATI MANUKAU IV AND HIS SON ERU MANUKAU WITH HIS LAWYERS IN LONDON.

BUT NOW the 20 STATE GOVERNMENTS have signed an agreement with the NEW MAORI GOVERNMENT OF NEW ZEALAND The HEAD OF STATE Ariki ERU MANUKAU under the Protectorate of the 20 Government Sovereign STATES signed in ROME Please go to my WEBSITE to see pictures of the PRINCE OF MALTA and ERU MANUKAU and LAWYERS attesting to this EVENT

I HAVE ALL THAT WHAKAPAPA HERE from Te Maati Manukau IV Founder of the Confederation of Tribes direct to Westminster and "Vatican City" Corporation MALTA KNIGHTS TEMPLAR and "City of london" Corporation London UK
MOHI MANUKAU AND I SENT 20 OF THESE FLAGS TO HIS SON ERU MANUKAU IN MALTA FOR THE NWO NEW WORLD ORDER ST JOHN ORDER IN 2008 JUST BEFORE MOHI MANUKAU DIED
HERE IS PRINCE PETER WITH ERU MANUKAU AND I BELIEVE THE POPE TOOK THEM FROM THEM INTO THE VATICAN NWO 8 POINT STAR OF ST PATRICK CHURCH ORDER AS TITLE TO THE WORLD IT IS KING ERNEST AUGUSTUS V I AM NOMINATING AS THE KING OF BRITAIN UK HANOVER TO RESCUE THE FLAGS AND 8 POINT STAR OF ST PATRICK BACK INTO WESTMINSTER PARLIAMENT UNDER KING ERNEST AUGUSTUS V SOVEREIGN MONARCHY REIGN 2016 INHERITANCE INSIDE THE WAITANGI MARAE KINGS BENCH COURT 28 OCTOBER 2016 WAITANGI

However we the INDIGENOUS MORIORI First Nations People CLAIMED the QUEENS CROWN before HELEN CLARK can Claim it for herself and JOINED 20 Government Sovereign States who confirmed MAORI GOVERNMENT is the Recognized TRUE SOVEREIGN of New Zealand and so ERU MANUKAU who is in ROME is the HEAD OF STATE in a New WAITING MAORI GOVERNMENT who has a QUEEN ELIZABETH 11 APPROVAL with the 20 STATES to come back to New Zealand and Take up the NEW GOVERNMENT and since the GOVERNOR GENERAL called ANAND SATYANAND DISSOLVED New Zealand Parliament he will have a PROBLEM opening New Zealand’s Parliament up after the winning Elections because the New Ministers have NO QUEEN to SWEAR their ALLEGANCES to because WE the MORIORI MAORI have the CROWN NOW and so they have to all BOW TO MAORI the SUCCESSORS Democracy is OUT THE WINDOW after that ERU MANUKAU is in talks with your United States Ministers and President Bush right this very present time talk about the FREE TRADE AGREEMENT the Prime Minister of New Zealand signed with USA without the QUEEN and after QUEEN ELIZABETH11 was removed of her BRITISH CROWN and her SOVEREIEGNTY by the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and in doing so her surrender also Removed “HER MAJESTY TITLE” from New Zealand and its Government Guess what The Government is still using her name after she had gone and signed the AMERICA FREE TRADE AGREEMENT with NEW ZEALAND FRAUDULENTLY UNDER FALSE TITLE OF CROWN from their Government AUTHORITY Business called “HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN IN RIGHT OF NEW ZEALAND[...]”

Crivens! It is as if Samuel Beckett suffered a temporal-lobe seizure and only had a teletype machine through which to express the revelations flooding into his brain on a beam of pink light. I hope you were paying attention as there WILL BE A QUIZ. Anyway, Eru Manukau is evidently the HEAD OF STATE of the legitimate MAORI GOVERNMENT-in-exile of New Zealand, with plenipotentiary powers, in regency or satrapy or vassalage to Wanoa himself (Suzerain King of Everything). Alternatively, Foreign Minister of that Govt.-in-Exile.

TAKE NOTICE THAT YOU ARE ACUSED THE NAMED PERSONS SEVERALLY DIDN’T REBUTT ALL OUR MORIORI PUPONGA MANUKAU CLAIMS HISTORIC LAND CLAIMS before 4pm on the 30th September Our MARAE COUNCIL NOW determined with ERU MANUKAUForeign Minister of MAORI CROWN SOVEREIGN GOVERNMENT now BILL CHARGED HELL EN CLARK to be extradited back here for TRIAL

Our other Foreign MinisterEru Manukau 9 years away should be back from Rome with our Putea next month I am the Tumuake of the Confederation of United Tribes of Aotearoa Nu Tireni here in Auckland Leading the TU TONU TAHI HAWAIKI MARAE as the Land and Energy Minister of Maori Sovereign State Government for real now Registered in the United Nations ahead of the NZ Government presently with Eru Manukau where our Flag is We have both contributed 9 years of work completed now We all need to register our names into the Sovereign State under the Confederation after I have done so myself in order to get the funding for the Land Blocks and all our projects I been talking about for years is here now

But Eru and his fraudster father Te Maati Mohi Wiremu (William) Manukau were mentors to Wanoa: inspirations, and the source of half of the grifty notions comprising his artistic practice. Devising spurious ancestry-based claims to other people's property? In 1996 the Manukau father-&-son team, presenting themselves as "trustees of the Manukau Māori Trust Board", were asserting their ownership of Puketutu Island, to the entertainment of the Māori Land Court.

There was also a complicated stoush at the Waitangi Tribunal, involving a runanga established to represent tribal interests in the ultimate deposition of assets of the New Zealand railways (which were being privatised, as was the custom of the day) - but enlivened by the irruption of young Eru, arguing that he represented the claimants and should receive all assets and compensation on their behalf.


As connoisseurs of such things, here at the Riddled Institute of Maledictive Linguistics we would like to hear more about that "extraordinarily intemperate and aggressive language".

Remember Wanoa's Maoi Crown Royal / Moai Powerhouse Banks[designed as the Share Holders Bank Account under TagPay France Administered by the new Bank Manager from ANZ Bank Auckland New Zealand very experienced in Commercial Banking philosophy. Will appear in every Country in the World as Electronic Money Transactions against the British Pound Note at the present time]? Totally modelled on Eru's "Sovereign Global Bank Aotearoa" / "Maori Central Bank".

The SGBA is a glorious contribution to the gaiety of nations, with its Haast-Eagle-inspired logo, as awesome as an army with banners; a single Crivens! is not enough, more crivenage please. It instantiates the Maori Electronic Gold Currency System, with a 2% transaction tax and a plethora of diagrams.

SGBA officers are HM Ariki Manukau... it is not clear when Eru ascended to the nobility and conferred upon himself the title Ariki. "With 28 yrs experience and expertise in International Law, Banking & Finance, economic development, taxation and the implementation of the New Maori Nation's diplomatic relations, economic and financial systems and the electronic digital gold backed currency worldwide." Along with "Mr Robert H. Ptak CEO & Director of Treasury Operations & Security Intelligence and HRH Dr Percy Tamayo, Director Member, Legal, Financial & Economic Advisor to the Bank, whom form the Maori Central Bank's Core Management Team." Who further styles himself 'Grand Vizier'. This is truly high-concept grifting.

The SGBA was earlier based in New Zealand (i.e. Aotearoa), but the Reserve Bank of NZ was not well-pleased with the nebulous claims being made on its behalf. Hence the relocation to less well-defined financial jurisdiction, with the Austrian domain name, registered by "Ariki Manuka" of "SGBA Holdings HK Ltd" from an office in Hong Hong.

The Bank was an outgrowth or excrescence of the early-2000s Maori Government of Aotearoa... which is to say, a Maori-autonomy affinity fraud, which co-opted a 1834 Tribal-Independence flag to wrap itself in legitimacy. See here for its pseudohistory. The MGA acquired a military wing in the form of the NZ Armed Intervention Force (i.e. Kelvyn Alp and his cohort of white supremacists), but primarily existed for extortion and selling bogus passports to overstayers desperate to acquire citizenship.


The current abode of HM Eru Manukau is no better defined than the Bank's... sometimes in his Hong Kong office suite, sometimes negotiating in Rome with the Vatican and the Prince of Malta. He does have a physical address somewhere, from which to disown and disclaim any conmen taken on as Ambassadors by his Government-in-Exile.

Satere does not LEGALLY represent Aotearoa Ambassador At Large to The Americas for the Maori Sovereign Tribe of Te Atue E Wa. I know this for a fact because i was able to get Ariki Eru Manukau's personal address, who said, and i quote, "Sorry to hear that you have fallen victim to Mr Karenhatase private scam.
Please be advised that Mr Karenhatase was fired from our organisation several months ago for UNAUTHORISED issuing of a guarantee and abuse of his position."

One can safely say, without fear of contradiction or defamation lawyers, that when someone claims to be running their own bank, backed and underwritten by "52,414 metric tonnes in gold bullion ingots" bequeathed by a fictitious though fabulously wealthy dynasty of Indonesian Sultans, then fuckery and fraudulence are afoot.

The time is right for a "Goldfinger" / "Importance of Being Earnest" mash-up novel.