Dr. Alan Turing vs the 'Scientology'/cult enigma.

Dr. Alan Turing (1912-1954)

Dr. Alan Mathison Turing is universally recognised as a giant figure in history - a brilliant mathematician, logician, codebreaker, computer scientist and major contributor to the Allies' victory during WWII. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_Machinery_and_Intelligence

Following on from work he began in 1941, in 1950, Dr. Turing published a paper, 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence,' in which he discussed the existing philosophical question of whether machines can think. He then proposed a test, in the form of a blind question and answer game, where computers would be used to try to convince humans that they were not engaging with machines, but with other humans. Thus, despite its appearance, the 'Turing Test' is not a high-brow parlour-game or even a scientific experiment to determine whether machines can think, but a rudimentary, logical test of whether an artificial mind can be made to appear to have the same cognitive capacity as the human mind. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Turing_test

In recent years, various people have suggested ways in which the 'Turing Test' can be reversed, but, as far as I am aware, no one has yet suggested that Dr. Turing's celebrated thoughts on artificial intelligence, can also be applied to the study of the cult/totalitarian phenomenon; for, due to their incapacity to engage with external reality, the inflexible core-adherents of totalistic* cults have often been compared to robots. However, the way that exploitative, self-perpetuating ritual belief systems bait, trap and enslave their prey, by reflecting common human instinctual desires (prosperity, health, happiness, freedom, security, etc.) as being obtainable in exchange for absolute subservience, can also be compared to a phenomenon which Dr. Turing did not live to witness - computer viruses. Had Dr. Turing been able to continue his work, he might have eventually felt the need to propose a rudimentary, logical test of whether an artificial mind can be made to appear to have the same ego-related capacity to become delusional as the human mind; for although cult adherents insist that no one is controlling them and that they are excercizing free-will, nonetheless, illogically, and without exception, they all see the world in mechanical two-dimensional terms ('negative vs positive', 'us vs them' , 'good vs evil' , 'winners vs losers' , etc. ), communicate in code-like thought-stopping language and obey their de facto programmers without question (no matter what suffering this entails).
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* Totalism

Professor Robert Jay Lifton 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jay_Lifton

In 1961 (after years of field-research, interviewing US servicemen and civilians held prisoner during the Korean War), Robert Jay Lifton (b. 1926) published, ‘Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism.’ In this standard, medical text-book, Lifton identified 8 ‘themes’ which, if present in any group, indicate that its members are being subjected to a mixture of social, psychological and physical pressures, designed to produce radical changes in their individual beliefs, attitudes and behaviour.

1). ‘Milieu control’ — the attempted control of everything an individual experiences (i.e. sees, hears, reads, writes and expresses). This includes discouraging subjects from contacting friends and relatives outside the group and undermining trust in exterior sources of information; particularly, the independent media.

2). ‘Personal or mystical manipulation’ — charismatic (psychologically dominant) leaders create a separate environment where specific behaviour is required; leading to group members believing that they have been chosen and that they have a special purpose. Normally group members will insist that they have not been coerced into group membership, and that their new way of life and beliefs are the result of a completely free-choice.

3). ‘Demand for purity’ — everything in life becomes either pure or impure, negative or positive, etc. This builds up a sense of shame and guilt. The idea is promoted that there is no alternative method of thinking or middle way, to that promoted by the group or by those outside it. Everything in life is either good or bad and anything is justified provided the group sanctions it as good.

4). ‘Confession’ — personal weaknesses are admitted to, to demonstrate how group membership can transform an individual. Group members often have to rewrite their personal histories and those of their friends and relatives, denigrating their previous lives and relationships. Other techniques include group members writing personal reports on themselves and others. Outsiders are presented as a threat who will only try to return group members to their former incorrect thinking.

5). ‘Sacred science’ — the belief in an inexplicable power system or secret knowledge, derived from a hierarchy who must be copied and who cannot be challenged. Often the group’s leaders claim to be followers of traditional historical figures (particularly, established political, scientific and religious thinkers). Leaders promote the idea that their own teaching will also benefit the entire world, and it should be spread.

6). ‘Loading the language’ — a separate vocabulary used to bond the group together and short-circuit critical thought processes. This can become second nature within the group, and talking to outsiders can become difficult and embarrassing. Derogatory names, or directly racist terms, are often given to outsiders.

7). ‘Doctrine over persons’ — individual members are taught to alter their own view of themselves before they entered the group. Former attitudes and behaviour must then be re-interpreted as worthless, and/or dangerous, using the new values of the group.

8). ‘Dispensing of existence’ — promotion of the belief that outsiders — particularly, those who disagree with the teaching of the group — are inferior and are doomed. Therefore, they can be manipulated, and/or cheated, and/or dispossessed, and/or destroyed. This is justifiable, because outsiders only represent a danger to salvation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Voegelin

Erich Hermann Wilhelm Voegelin (1901-1985), was a gifted German academic, who, in the decade preceding WW II (working largely-alone), produced an insightful explanation of ‘Nazism’ as a form of perverted religion or cult. Sadly, during the 1930s, few people took much notice of Eric Voegelin. 

Whilst teaching political theory and sociology at the University of Vienna, he published two books, ‘The Race Idea in Intellectual History’ and ‘Race and the State’. In these, he pointed out the elementary, mistakes which invalidated various, popular ‘racial theories’. In 1938, Voegelin (aged 37) tried to publish 'The Political Religions'. In this, he focused on contemporary totalitarian ideologies derived from the ‘racial theories’ which he’d previously criticised as absurd pseudo-science. He now pointed out the glaring structural similarities of these ideologies to religions. Courageously, Voegelin was comparing medieval pseudo-sciences and 'Gnostic' cults to the 'Völkish’ or ‘Pan-German’ movement and its terrifying post-WW I incarnation, the 'Nazi party'.

In 1938, the ‘Nazi’ leader, Adolf Hitler, had held absolute power in Germany for almost 5 years. He had just taken control of Austria. The self-gratifying ‘Aryan Master Race’ delusion was spreading like a virus. In essence, Hitler controlled his fanatical core-adherents by peddling as fact an emotionally, and intellectually, overwhelming comic-book fiction in which he was a morally and intellectually perfect Aryan super hero, the 'führer,' on a mission to save his 'pure and noble race' from the slavery of the world financial/political system which had fallen under the control of an 'evil secret society of degenerate sub-humans - Jews, Freemasons, Communists,' etc.

The dozens of books, essays and reviews which Eric Voegelin published during his lifetime, are almost impossible for the average person to take in.

Eric Voegelin

To give readers some idea of the scale of his thinking, Voegelin’s Major work, ‘Order and History’, began to be published in the USA in 1956 when he was aged 54, but it remained unfinished when he died 31 years later. In simple terms, Voegelin was as a philosopher-historian who took an elevated, and broad, view. He observed that, throughout human history, there have been periods of mass-alienation... following wars, revolutions, plagues, natural disasters, economic depressions, etc. ... during these periods, dangerous manipulators (acting like ancient, Gnostic Prophets by pretending moral and intellectual authority and offering some form of Utopian existence in the here and now) who at other times might be dismissed as absurd crackpots and charlatans, have found it much easier to become accepted as authentic Messiahs and to acquire a mass-following.

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Given a detailed knowledge of any Utopian totally positive fiction modifying the personalities and behaviour of the core-adherents of a particular cultic group, it would, therefore, be a relatively simple matter to program a machine to duplicate the adherents' systematic responses (or indignant refusal to respond), to a series of blind questions concerning the contents of the group's controlling narrative. In other words, the predictable answers given by deluded core-cult adherents, and those given by machines programmed to duplicate human minds dissociated from external reality, would be indistinguishable. 

College drop-out, malingering coward and fake scientist, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (1911-1986), posing as:

 America's greatest war hero.

e.g. You could ask a so-called 'Scientologist' or a computer (programmed to repeat the  fictitious Scientology' controlling-scenario as fact, and systematically to exclude as evil lies all quantifiable evidence challenging its authenticity) to set out a brief resumé of Lafayette Ronald Hubbard's many qualifications and achievements; particularly, his heroic role in WWII? - knowing that all core- 'Scientologists' have paid through the nose for the dubious privilege of being conditioned systematically to exclude all quantifiable evidence to the contrary as evil lies, and to believe without question that:

In the early 1930s, L. Ron Hubbard established himself at George Washington University as a ‘brilliant academic and sportsman’… a ‘dare-devil pilot and parachutist, renowned explorer, navigator and adventurer’… a ‘pioneering geologist, nuclear physicist, rocket scientist, philosopher, engineer and mathematician.’ 

During WW II, L. Ron Hubbard was a fearless warrior (the ‘most-decorated officer in the US Navy with 28 medals collected in every theatre of operations’)… a national hero (the ‘first American serviceman wounded in the Pacific, before Pearl Harbour’) who was ‘blinded and crippled saving the crews of his various ships’… a miraculous survivor, who ‘used the power of his mind to restore his own sight, and who twice defied the medical profession to return from the dead.’ 

After WW II, Hubbard became an ‘agent of US Naval Intelligence’ sent to ‘infiltrate and destroy a satanic Cult in California.’ He then became the world's leading 'nuclear physicist’… a genius in all fields of literary, philosophical, artistic and scientific, endeavour… a man who (working alone) eclipsed the work of mortal men like, ‘Aristotle, Socrates, Voltaire, Decartes, Freud, Darwin, Einstein, etc.’… for he’d acquired his own ‘superhuman wisdom' in 'heaven' during his 'two near-death experiences.'

Dr. Louis Jolyon West (1924-1999) senior psychiatrist, cult expert, charter member of the ‘American Family Foundation’ and mental-health advisor to the US Government. 

Readers are reminded that, in his later life, L. Ron Hubbard was diagnosed by one of America's foremost psychiatrists (Dr Louis Jolyon West) as 'suffering from psychopathic personality (like Adolf Hitler)', but that core-adherents of 'Scientology' are engaged in a never-ending war with psychiatry based on Hubbard's own paranoid beliefs that 'Dianetics' is an authentic and benign science, as opposed to psychiatry which is an exploitative 'Nazi pseudo-science,' and that the Holocaust was the work of 'psychiatrists controlled by evil extraterrestrials.'

In reality, Hubbard did spend two years (1930-1932) majoring in civil engineering at George Washington University, but there is absolutely no evidence to prove that he attended class. His grades were dreadful. Ironically, the evidence shows that Hubbard actually spent most of his time living the fantasy that he was a brilliant reporter, by writing drivel for the University’s weekly newspaper, the ‘Hatchet’ (a reference to George Washington’s boyhood, truth-telling, cherry tree-chopping escapade).

Hubbard also developed a passion for the new sport of gliding. In 1931, he took a holiday in the State of Michigan with a college friend and was taught to fly a light aircraft. Although he subsequently made numerous applications, Hubbard never passed his pilot’s licence. Later in 1931, a ludicrous story appeared in a Ohio newspaper, referring to ‘Ron Flash Hubbard, dare-devil speed-pilot and parachute artist.’ The following year, Hubbard published an article in a magazine called the ‘Sportsman Pilot.’ This was an even more ludicrous, and elaborate, version of his Ohio fantasies.

Hubbard then chartered a 200 foot Baltimore-based schooner, the ‘Doris Hamlin,’ and announced his intention to lead 50 fellow students on a 100 day, 5000 mile voyage around the Caribbean. He called this new fantasy the ‘Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition.’  He acquired the ship without any payment by pretending to have the support of the University of Michigan, the Carnegie Institute and the Metropolitan Museum, as well a contract with the New York Times and a potential contract with either Fox Movietone or Pathé News.

Hubbard’s ‘Expedition’ quickly turned into a farce. The schooner was blown off-course in a storm and ended-up in Bermuda. Then it was forced to put into Puerto Rico short of food and water. The Captain quickly discovered that he’d been dealing with a dangerous dreamer. In the face of his penniless customer’s empty legal threats, he returned the ‘Doris Hamlin’ to Baltimore. Subsequently, Hubbard published a series of ludicrous tales in the ‘Hatchet’ in which he pretended that the ‘Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition’ had been a ‘financial failure,’ but a ‘scientific success.’  By this stage, his University attendance record and grades were so bad that he was forced to quit his course.

Kicked out of college, Hubbard was sent by his increasingly desperate father (a US naval officer) to work as a Red-Cross volunteer on Puerto Rico, but, on arrival, he disappeared. Hubbard is believed to have taken a temporary job with a mining company.

Margaret 'Polly' Grub

In 1933, Hubbard (aged 22) returned to Washington and made pregnant, and married, Margaret Louise (‘Polly’) Grubb (1907-1963?), a farmer’s daughter, and glider enthusiast, from Maryland. The couple rented a house in Maryland. When their unborn baby was lost, Hubbard was struggling to make a living writing articles about flying.

A tale then appeared in the ‘Washington Daily News,’ in which ‘Ron Hubbard, a local adventurer,’ had returned from a ‘gold-prospecting trip in Puerto Rico to get married,’ and had ‘struck gold in Maryland.’  Soon, Polly Hubbard was pregnant again, but the couple were down to their last dollar. Hubbard was forced to discover his niche in life - pulp magazines. He first read as many of them as he could find (to absorb their formulaic style), and then he sent approximately 50 stereotypical pulp-stories (written in the first person) to various publications in New York city. He immediately started to earn decent money. 

Hubbard’s first customers included: ‘Popular Detective’; ‘Thrilling Detective’; ‘Phantom Detective’; ‘Thrilling Adventures’, etc. Shortly after the birth of his first child, Lafayette Ronald Jnr., Ron Hubbard travelled to New York. He paid a $10 subscription and joined the ‘American Fiction Guild.’

Hubbard became a father for the second time in 1936. His daughter was christened Catherine. The couple and their two children moved to South Colby, because Hubbard’s parents had recently retired there. ( Hubbard's father had achieved the US Naval rank of Lieutenant Commander in 1934).

In 1938, on a visit to New York City, Hubbard began pretending that he’d written his first philosophical book, ‘Excalibur,’ … this was going ‘to have a greater impact on people than the Bible’…it  was founded on his own ‘advancement of the theories of Darwin and Freud,’… all human behaviour was ‘based on the instinct to survive.’ At this time, Hubbard wrote a letter to his first wife, in which he stated:

‘…on the strength of the contents of Excalibur, I am going to go into politics and smash my name so violently into history that it will take on a legendary form.’

Years later, Hubbard told his literary agent, Forry Ackerman, that people who had read ‘Excalibur’ had either gone mad or committed suicide. He also claimed that whilst visiting his New York publisher’s office (in a sky-scraper), a reader had come in with a copy of Excalibur and promptly jumped out of the window.

Hubbard and John Campbell Jnr.

Hubbard’s publisher was John W. Campbell Jnr., an intellectual,  New York-based science-fiction author and editor, who later discovered some notable science-fiction authors, including Isaac Azimov and Robert Heinlein.

When Hubbard met Campbell in 1939, he was publishing a new magazine called ‘Astounding,’ later re-titled ‘Astounding Science-Fiction.’ Hubbard’s first yarn for Campbell’s magazine was the ‘Dangerous Dimension,’ which revolved around ‘teleportation.’ This, like all Hubbard’s plots, were stereotypical of the pulp genre — goodies versus baddies, written in the first person and set in outer-space. For a while, Hubbard abandoned science-fiction and ‘philosophy,’ and began writing ‘cowboy’ yarns for ‘Western Story’ magazine. With the outbreak of WW II in Europe, he rented a small apartment in Manhattan.

In 1940, Hubbard (aged 29) was granted membership of the prestigious ‘Explorers Club of New York.’ He wangled this, after pretending that he had supplied valuable data to the US Navy Hydrographic Office and the University of Michigan, during his expedition to the Caribbean in 1932, and that he had conducted a mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico in 1933, and had made various survey flights in the USA during the 1930s. Unfortunately, no one at the club verified Hubbard’s application. He immediately began styling himself as ‘Captain’  and he gave his address as th Explorers Club, East 70^th Street, New York City.

Later, in 1940, Hubbard published a series of science-fiction stories, culminating in a futuristic novel called ‘Final Blackout.’  In this, he described Britain, taken-over by a military dictatorship and then saved by a coup d’etat sponsored by the USA. Accusations followed that Hubbard was either a Fascist or Communist. At about this time, he started writing malicious letters to the FBI. In one, he denounced a hotel porter (who’d insulted him) as a ‘Nazi spy.’  

Hubbard then disappeared from New York, and, along with his wife, sailed his ketch to Alaska, flying the flag of the Explorers Club and claiming that he was ‘leading the Alaskan Experimental Radio Expedition 1940 — checking data for the US Navy Hydrographic Office and the US Coast, and Geodetic, Survey.’  The ‘Magician’ was loaded with expensive equipment supplied for free by various US instrument manufacturers. They had all been fooled by the counterfeit ‘Captain’ with the authentic Explorers Club address.

When Hubbard arrived in the town of Ketchican, his boat’s engine was broken, but he managed to free-load in Alaska by duping the owner of the only radio station. Hubbard was allowed virtually to take-over the Alaskan airwaves with a series of talks and interviews about his long life as an adventurer, explorer, scientist, pilot and best-selling author.

Ignoring a stack of new debts acquired in Alaska, Hubbard returned to his home in South Colby

In the Spring of 1941, L. Ron Hubbard hatched a plot to get himself commissioned into the US Naval Reserve. Spinning a web of typical narcissistic fantasies about his many qualifications and achievements, Hubbard persuaded various influential figures to appear to know him and support him; including his Congressman. He finally falsified an unbelievably-ludicrous reference from Washington's Senator, Robert M. Ford, who later admitted to having met Hubbard and to giving him a signed letterhead. 

Hubbard was duly commissioned as junior grade Lieutenant in July 1941, by means of what would appear to have been a criminal act. Due to what he'd put in his fake reference, Hubbard was first assigned to Navy Press Relations, but then, amazingly, he was accepted to train as an Intelligence Officer. Apparently, no one ever checked his puerile lies, because they bore the authentic signature of a US Senator.

In May 1942, the Philippines fell to the forces of Imperial Japan (out of 151 000 American and Filipino combatants 46 000 had been killed or wounded, and 100 000 taken prisoner), but Lieutenant Hubbard (who was posted to the Philippines, 6 months earlier), made sure that he was well clear of any danger. In April 1942, after the 3 month battle of Bataan, 60-80 000 American and Filipino POWs were forced to march 128 km. En route, the Japanese gave neither food nor water to their prisoners whom they considered to be sub-human. Consequently, POWs were only allowed to drink from filthy roadside ditches. The Japanese guards beat, bayoneted or beheaded those who became to weak to continue.

In December 1941 (after Pearl Harbour), Hubbard was posted to the Philippines. He got as far as Australia, but, at the start of 1942, he was sent back to the USA and branded ‘a self-important troublemaker’ by his superiors. He also left a stack of unpaid debts. Whilst training at a Submarine-Chaser Center in Florida, Hubbard began to pretend that he had received flash burns to his eyes when he was the Gunnery Officer on a destroyer, and bullet wounds in the back when serving as a commando behind Japanese lines.

In the Spring of 1943, Hubbard was posted to Portland, Oregon, and appointed Commanding Officer of the USS PC-815 (a brand-new, 280-ton, submarine-chaser). A tale then appeared in the ‘Oregon Journal’, in which Hubbard was falsely described as ‘a veteran sub-hunter of the battles of the Pacific and Atlantic, who had commanded 3 important scientific expeditions before the war.’ On the evening of the 18th. May 1943, PC-815 put to sea from Astoria, Oregon, on a training voyage to San Diego - 5 hours later, Hubbard ordered his young crew to battle-stations. He proceeded to attack (what he later claimed to be) ‘at least two Japanese mine-laying submarines.’ For 68 hours, Hubbard continued his imaginary ‘battle;’  PC-815 dropped 100 depth-charges and fired several thousands 20 mm machine-gun rounds. Eventually, 4 other US ships attended the scene. Despite Hubbard’s 18 page report of the ‘incident’ (which graphically described ‘periscope sightings’ and ‘oil rising to the surface’), an official enquiry decided that Hubbard had ‘probably attacked a magnetic deposit.’ Amazingly, Hubbard kept his command. At the end of May 1943, PC-815 was again ordered South to San Diego. On 28th. June 1943, Hubbard allowed his ship to stray into Mexican territorial waters where a number of 3 inch shells were fired from in the vicinity of the Coronados islands. As a result Hubbard was relieved of his command and branded as ‘below average… lacking in the essential qualities of judgement, leadership and co-operation’… etc. He then spent 3 months in hospital in San Diego, pretending to be suffering from ‘malaria, back-pain and a duodenal ulcer.’ Meanwhile, he informed his family that he had ‘been wounded whilst throwing an unexploded shell over the side of a ship.’

In 1944, after briefly serving aboard the USS Algol (a newly constructed, cargo/assault ship), Hubbard (aged 33) again managed to avoid active service in the Pacific. He was sent (at his own request) on a course in ‘Military government’ at the ‘Naval Training School, Princeton.’ Whilst there, he was invited by Robert Heinlein, to join a group of science-fiction authors. They had been asked by the US Navy to put forward ideas for dealing with the problem of Japanese suicide attacks. Detailed intelligence was made available to this group describing the belief system controlling the minds, and actions, of the young Kamikaze pilots. No solution was found.

John (‘Jack’) Whiteside Parsons (1914-1952). 

During the final year of WW II, Hubbard returned to a land-based naval post in California and reported sick. In August 1945, he took leave and visited a Bohemian commune installed in a mansion in nearby Pasedena. This was owned by an (outwardly respectable) research chemist and explosives expert, Jack Parsons 

Whilst studying at the University of Southern California in the 1930s, Parson learnt how to induce hypnosis. He also become attracted to the works of Aleister Crowley a.k.a. the ‘Beast 666’. Parsons managed to contact Crowley who immediately arranged for him to be initiated into ‘OTO’ (‘Ordo Templi Orientis’ or ‘Order of the Eastern Temple’), his ‘Satanic/Sex-Magic’ cult (formerly known as ‘Thelema’). When Parsons inherited his father’s mansion, he used it to create his own little kingdom based on ‘Crowleyanity’ (a perverted belief system which rejected all traditional moral codes and permitted its adherents do anything they pleased). Parsons constructed a ‘Secret Temple’ in his private apartment (where he performed ‘Satanic/Sex-Magic’ rituals), and he began collecting all sorts of weird and wonderful people (out-of-work actors, actresses, dancers, writers, mind-readers, etc.) by renting rooms and throwing wild parties. Hubbard identified Parsons as a egomaniac, who was living in a drug-fuelled fantasy world. He stayed at the mansion for several weeks and discovered that Parson’s was sending money to Crowley. However, both Hubbard and Parsons were apparently unaware that Crowley was an undischarged bankrupt and heroine addict, living in squalor in a boarding house on the South coast of England.

At the end of the war, Hubbard was admitted to a Military hospital in Oakland, California, suffering from ‘a suspected duodenal ulcer.’ He stayed there for 3 months before leaving the Navy in December 1945. Along with several hundred thousand fellow sailors, Hubbard was automatically awarded 4 General-Service medals. He immediately applied for a Disabled Veteran’s Pension, on the grounds that he couldn’t go back to work as a ‘$650 per month author,’ or keep his wife and children, because of ‘a duodenal ulcer, arthritis, back pain, malaria, conjunctivitis and a sprained knee.’ (Hubbard was subsequently granted an $ 11. 50 a month Disability Pension from the Veterans Association).

Alan Turing

L. Ron Hubbard

In many respects, L. Ron Hubbard, is the perfect antithesis of AlanTuring; for they were born within a few months of one another, and virtually all of the former's claimed qualifications and achievements were laughable fakes, whilst the latter's qualifications and achievements, were all authentic and impressive. In the adult world of quantifiable reality, without any thought for his own reward, Alan Turing actually achieved what  L. Ron Hubbard merely pretended to have achieved as part of his multi-million dollar cultic racket, i.e. Alan Turing altered the course of history and played a vital role in defending human civilization against the forces of evil. 

Geoffrey McCaully Quentin Hubbard

Furthermore, Dr. Turing was a courageous homosexual who died in highly- mysterious circumstances (possibly murdered or pushed into suicide) in 1954: whilst L. Ron Hubbard was a homophobic coward whose own (probably homosexual) son, Quentin Hubbard (b. 1954), died in highly-mysterious circumstances (possibly murdered or pushed into suicide) in 1976.

1931-1934, Alan Turing studied mathematics a Kings College Cambridge, graduating with a first class honours degree.

I935 Alan Turing (aged just 22) was elected as a fellow of Kings College. 

Alan Turing is the individual who, in 1936 (aged 24), set out and formalised the concepts which produced the Universal Turing machine - the first theoretical model for a general purpose computer. As a result, Dr.Turing is considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence. The central principle of today's computers (i.e. controlling the machine's operations by a program of coded instructions stored in a memory) was Alan Turing's idea.

(1936-1938) Dr. Turing studied mathematics and cryptology at Princeton University, obtaining a PhD in 1938.

During WWII, Dr. Turing (who had been talent-spotted and recruited by British Military Intelligence on his return to Cambridge in 1938) worked at the Government Code and Cypher School, Bletchley Park, where (by applying the principle that what can be constructed by a human mind: can also be taken to pieces another human mind) he developed various techniques for deciphering messages sent via the most-advanced version of the German 'Enigma' enciphering/deciphering machine. This electromechanical device (which had been in existence since the end of WWI), had previously been considered as completely secure. 

It is now a matter of historical record that, but for Dr.Turing, WWII would almost-certainly have dragged on at least until 1947, destroying the lives, liberty and happiness of many more men, women and children. 

Marian Rejewski                        Jerzy Rozycki                         Henryk Zygalski

When the wider picture is examined, Dr. Turing and his Bletchley Park colleagues could not have succeeded, but for the groundwork of Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski of the Polish Cypher Bureau. With the help of German documentation recovered by French military intelligence, in 1932, these three brilliant, young mathematician/cryptologists, first reverse-engineered the original Enigma machine using theoretical mathematics. Mechanical devices were then developed for deciphering intercepted-Enigma-encrypted radio messages, but after 1938, German cryptologists took the precaution of vastly-increasing the complexity of Enigma machines by adding extra rotors, and the Poles did not have the necessary resources to counter this sudden advance. Consequently, fearing an imminent German attack on their country, in July 1939, Polish leaders and intelligence chiefs handed over to British and French Military intelligence agents (stationed in Warsaw), everything that Polish cryptologists had managed to achieve. Subsequently, all tangible traces of this initial breach in the security of Enigma, were destroyed. 





The timely, secret transfer of Polish expertise saved neither Poland nor France from invasion, but it did enable Dr. Turing and his colleagues to develop a much more powerful, and rapid, electromechanical calculating machine capable of decrypting almost all intercepted, heavily-encrypted Enigma-messages. The resulting massive-flow of important up-to-date strategic intelligence that the British government and military, air and naval, commanders obtained via Bletchley Park, was itself given the code-name, 'Ultra' a.k.a. the 'Ultra Secret.' At various times during WWII, Winston Churchill felt obliged not to act on 'Ultra' intelligence for fear that, by doing so, German intelligence would realize what was occurring. However, even though the evidence of a near-total communications security breach often stared them in the face, the narcissistic leaders of the 'Aryan Master Race,' and their partners in crime, were evidently incapable of accepting that almost every move they ordered to be made, was known by their inferior opponents, before it was made.  

Winston Churchill reportedly told King George VI, that 'it was thanks to Ultra, that we won the War.' However, the 'Ultra Secret' remained closely-guarded until the 1970s, when the techniques involved, finally became out-dated. 



After the war, Dr. Turing (who had acquired a reputation as a charming, but eccentric, loner, prone to dramatic swings of mood) appeared to return to his previous academic career, but he continued to work in secret for GCHQ (the successor to Bletchley Park and equivalent of America's National Security Agency). 





Officially, in 1954, Dr. Turing (aged 41) committed suicide by eating part of an apple which he had injected, and/or coated, with cyanide poison. However, although cyanide was found in Dr. Turing's body and at his home, the remains of the apple (recovered from a bedside table next to his body), were never tested, and there are now a number of commentators calling for a full inquiry into Dr. Turing's enigmatic 'Snow White/ Wicked Queen'-style death; and particularly, to uncover what hidden role UK security services might have played.

In truth, Dr. Turing was effectively-executed in 1952 (aged 39), when he was arrested for, and convicted of, the (then) common criminal offence of 'gross indecency' (i.e. homosexual activity between consenting adults) and sentenced to chemical castration (i.e. as an alternative to a humiliating prison sentence, he was released on the condition that he accept female hormone injections for a period of 12 months). Given the fact that, in 1950s Britain, male homosexuals and  bisexuals, were often physically attacked as dangerous paedophiles, perverts and pariahs, and could, if convicted of 'gross indecency,' be imprisoned for life, the events surrounding Dr. Turing's arrest, have never been fully-explained; for he went to his local police station in Manchester to report that he'd been the victim of a crime, and gave an apparently reckless statement in which he openly-admitted that he'd been involved in a passionate relationship with a much younger man who turned out to be a thief.

Although, in 1952, very few people knew the extraordinary truth about Dr. Turing's central role in the defeat of tyranny, evidently, the British government (again led by Sir Winston Churchill) made no attempt to protect him and, instead, abandoned him to a fate which clearly he did not deserve. The fact that Winston Churchill partly built his own reputation in history by standing on the shoulders of intellectual giants (knowing that, for decades, they could not be given any credit), reveals his personal failure to intervene on behalf of Dr. Turing in 1952, to have been both morally-reprehensible and (surprisingly, for a Nobel Prize-winning historian) short-sighted. 

Werhner von Braun (centre left rear, in civilian dress)

What  Dr. Turing was forced to endure in silence, is almost unimaginable. Apart from the fact that (like thousands of other gay British men) he was punished for something over which he had no control, he must also of been fully-aware that, in 1945, a significant number of 'Nazi' scientists  - like ballistic missile inventor, Werhner von Braun (a member of the SS who designed Hitler's so-called 'revenge weapons' which caused death and misery to thousands of slave labourers, not to mention death and mutilation to thousands of British men, women and children) - had been allowed to escape all prosecution as war criminals, because the US government offered them amnesty in return for their expertise. Ironically, von Braun (who was born in the same year as Alan Turing), was already, in 1954, an important and wealthy man in the USA. Von Braun was even awarded the US National Medal of Science two years before his death in 1977 (but he was too ill to attend the presentation ceremony at the White House). Yet , even today, Dr.Turing's personal role in saving countless American lives and billions of dollars, has never been officially recognised in the USA.

Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein

In view of his own previous achievements (and his youth), Dr.Turing's unjust categorization as a degenerate, could easily have been recognised by the British government as being contrary to national interests, for the 'Nazis' had caused many of Europe's most-brilliant thinkers (like Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr) to flee to the USA, because, as Jews, they were also unjustly categorized as degenerate. These same European scientists, first took a leading role in persuading the US Government to commit funds to develop the Atomic bomb - knowing that the 'Nazis' were already on the same path. They then took a leading role in developing the Atomic bomb.

Unfortunately, in 1952, British Intelligence agencies, under pressure from their American counterparts, were operating a rule preventing known-homosexuals being given security clearance. Indeed, many gay men were being unjustly removed from key-positions in Britain (particularly, in the armed forces and civil service), because, mainly due to the illegality of homosexual activity, they were rightly considered to be easy blackmail targets. The previous year, British intelligence had been heavily-embarrassed when two of its agents, Guy Burgess and Kim Philby (both of whom were homosexuals who had been secretly groomed and recruited by KGB agents, when they were university students), had disappeared to the Soviet Union after passing secret intelligence to the Soviets for 20 years.Thus, after his arrest, Dr. Turing had his security clearance immediately revoked and he was excluded from GCHQ. Self-evidently, he must have been placed under M15 surveillance as a major security threat  - another possible defector and KGB blackmail target, but with access to the greater part of the Ultra Secret, and to Cold War, code-breaking techniques. 

In 1953, Dr. Turing is known to have been interviewed by British police officers, this time regarding a young Norwegian man who had been visiting with him. He is also known to have taken a holiday in Greece which, due to its proximity to the Soviet Empire, must have really got his MI5 case officers in a flap. However, the extent and nature of the British security services' contact with Dr. Turing in the two years prior to his death, has never been made public.

Although Dr. Turing's friends and family (who initially knew nothing of his historically-important work as a codebreaker) continued to believe that he died accidentally after handling cyanide during a chemistry experiment, other informed-observers have lately-concluded that there is a very strong likelihood he was silenced by MI5, who deliberately applied pressure on him knowing that he would crack and kill himself; for, after WWII, a number of captured Enigma machines were sold by the victorious Allies to developing countries whose leaders and intelligence chiefs had been led to believe that, in its most-advanced form, Enigma was still completely secure. In reality, and unbeknown to the coroner who pronounced a verdict of suicide, at the time of Dr. Turing's death, British, French and American intelligence agencies were all regularly intercepting Enigma-encrypted messages. These top secret communications (some of which must have contained commercially-valuable inside-information) might as well have all been written in plain language due to the computing techniques which Dr. Turing had developed for, and given to, his country.

Edward Snowden

Had Dr. Turing made a run for it and blown the whistle on the vast intelligence- gathering Enigma fraud (a la Edward Snowden), then all Hell might have broken loose.

On September 10th 2009, following an Internet-based campaign, British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, made an official apology for 'the appalling and inhumane way Dr. Turing was treated.' However, Mr. Brown conveniently failed to point out that this 'appalling inhumane treatment,' had been at the hands of a overtly-homophobic, but (in many cases) covertly-homosexual, British establishment, the hypocritical members of which had mostly-failed to recognise, let alone challenge, the rise of the pernicious 'Nazi' belief system, and whom Dr. Turing had secretly played a leading role in saving from destruction.

In May 2012, a private member's Bill was put before the UK House of Lords to grant Dr. Turing a statutory pardon for his criminal conviction of 1952. However, on December 23rd, 2013, it was announced that Dr. Turing had been granted a pardon under the (rarely-used) Royal Prerogative of Mercy.

L. Ron Hubbard

At this point, I would remind readers that the announcement of Dr. Turing's Royal Pardon came hot on the heels of the UK Supreme Court's absurd and dangerous ruling that a so-called 'Church of Scientology' (i.e. one chapter in a pernicious comic-book fiction cobbled together in the early 1950s, and peddled as fact, by Lafayette Ronald Hubbard )' is recordable as a place of meeting for religious worship, with the effect that a valid ceremony of marriage can be performed there.' 

The scale of the lie which this flawed judicial opinion ignored, almost beggars belief, for whilst Dr. Turing was at Bletchley Park engaged in the defence of civilization, L. Ron Hubbard was busy feigning various illnesses, in order to dodge active military service. Ironically, in the same year that the brilliant and heroic Dr. Turing met his death, malingering coward and charlatan, L. Ron Hubbard decided to dodge being prosecuted for medical fraud by altering the enigmatic settings on his own enciphering machine - steadfastly pretending that his 'Dianetics Foundation' was no longer medical and, therefore, under the new religious/spiritual' label of 'The Church of Scientology,' his profitable enterprise was 'protected by the US Constitution,' as well as being 'tax-free.'


David Brear (copyright 2014)