The Facts:Award winning investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson shows how “astroturf,” or fake grassroots movements, funded by political, corporate, or other special interests very effectively manipulate and distort mainstream media messages.
Reflect On:The printing press and mainstream media in general is quite young. We are living in an interesting time where the majority of people are starting to see through many lies, and it has paradigm shifting implications.
Ever since Operation Mockingbird, a CIA program to infiltrate mainstream media and spread disinformation and propaganda for the purposes of controlling the perception of the masses on several different topics, people have been waking up. That was decades ago, and today, it’s easy to see how mainstream media has been completely compromised by governments, intelligence agencies and corporations. We know this from several documents and several whistleblowers, as well as multiple mainstream media journalists. For example, a declassified document from the CIA archives in the form of a letter from a CIA task force addressed to the Director of the CIA details the close relationship that exists between the CIA and mainstream media and academia. The document states that the CIA task force “now has relationships with reporters from every major wire service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation,” and that “this has helped us turn some ‘intelligence failure’ stories into ‘intelligence success” stories,’ and has contributed to the accuracy of countless others.”
This is often why in the west, when it comes to the topic of war and terrorism, for example, we see a completely different narrative that goes against the narrative of multiple independent media outlets. Mainstream media has been used to justify the infiltration of other countries, like Syria, with ‘fake news.’ There are even whistleblowers from mainstream media in that realm as well, for example, Riam Dalati, a well known BBC Syria correspondent is one of many who created awareness about the fact that the supposed gas attacks in Douma were “staged.” You can read more about that here…
Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, who was a top German journalist and editor and has been for more than two decades, went on the record stating that he was forced to publish the works of intelligence agents under his own name, also mentioning that noncompliance would result in him losing his job. (source)
In the below eyeopening talk, veteran investigative journalist (and Former CBS NEWS investigative reporter) Sharyl Attkisson shows how “astroturf,” or fake grassroots movements, funded by political, corporate, or other special interests very effectively manipulate and distort media messages.
Edward Bernays, known as the father of public relations, sums it up best:
he conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. (Propaganda)…
H.L. Mencken, writing in 1927, summed up nicely my thoughts along these lines:
“Have you ever examined carefully the speeches made by the candidates in a Presidential campaign? If so, you know that they are of bilge and blather all compact. Now and then, true enough, one of the august aspirants to the Washington breeches is goaded or misled into saying something pungent and even apposite, but not often, not deliberately. His daily stint is simply balderdash.”
This last week trial began in Boston federal court for the current lawsuit in which a collection of Asian-American organizations are charging Harvard University with racial discrimination in its college admissions policies. The New York Times, our national newspaper of record, has been providing almost daily coverage to developments in the case, with the stories sometimes reaching the front page.
Last Sunday, just before the legal proceedings began, the Times ran a major article explaining the general background of the controversy, and I was very pleased to see that my own past research was cited as an important factor sparking the lawsuit, with the reporter even including a direct link to my 26,000 word 2012 cover-story “The Myth of American Meritocracy,” which had provided strong quantitative evidence of anti-Asian racial quotas. Economic historian Niall Ferguson, long one of Harvard’s most prominent professors but recently decamped to Stanford, similarly noted the role of my research in his column for the London Sunday Times.
Two decades ago, I had published a widely-discussed op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on somewhat similar issues of racial discrimination in elite admissions. But my more recent article was far longer and more comprehensive, and certainly drew more attention than anything else I have ever published, before or after. Soon after it appeared in The American Conservative, its hundreds of thousands of pageviews broke all records for that publication and it attracted considerable notice in the media. Times columnist David Brooks soon ranked it as perhaps the best American magazine article of the year, a verdict seconded by a top editor at The Economist, and the Times itself quickly organized a symposium on the topic of Asian Quotas, in which I eagerly participated. Forbes, The Atlantic, The Washington Monthly, Business Insider, and other publications all discussed my striking results.
Conservative circles took considerable interest, with Charles Murray highlighting my findings, and National Review later publishing an article in which I explained the important implications of my findings for the legal validity of the 1978 Bakke decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
There was also a considerable reaction from the academic community itself. I quickly received speaking invitations from the Yale Political Union, Yale Law, and the University of Chicago Law School, while Prof. Ferguson discussed my distressing analysis in a lengthy Newsweek/Daily Beast entitled “The End of the American Dream.”
Moreover, I had also published an associated critique suggesting that over the years my beloved Harvard alma mater had transformed itself into one of the world’s largest hedge-funds with a vestigial school attached for tax-exempt purposes. This also generated enormous discussion in media circles, with liberal journalist Chris Hayes Tweeting it out and generously saying he was “very jealous” he hadn’t written the piece himself, while many of his colleagues promoted the piece with similarly favorable remarks, while the university quickly provided a weak public response to these serious financial charges.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to myself or other outside observers, Harvard itself launched an internal investigation of the anti-Asian bias that I had alleged. Apparently, the university’s own initial results generally confirmed my accusations, indicating that if students were admitted solely based upon objective academic merit, far more Asians would receive thick envelopes. But Harvard’s top administrators buried the study and did nothing, with these important facts only coming out years later during the discovery process of the current Asian Quotas lawsuit...
Before we begin I should highlight that Bellingcat is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, which according to its own cofounder was set up to do overtly what the CIA had previously been doing covertly, namely orchestrating narrative management geared toward the elimination of governments which refuse to comply with US interests.
Imperialist propaganda firm Bellingcat has published a response to the ever-expanding OPCW scandal, and it’s got to be seen to be believed.
Before we begin I should highlight that Bellingcat is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, which according to its own cofounder was set up to do overtly what the CIA had previously been doing covertly, namely orchestrating narrative management geared toward the elimination of governments which refuse to comply with US interests. NED is funded directly by the US government, which means that Bellingcat is funded by the US government via an organization set up to promote imperialist regime change agendas. Bellingcat is also funded by Open Society Foundations, another imperialist narrative management operation.
Syria has been the target of what may be the most sophisticated propaganda campaign in history, and Bellingcat has been consistently rallying behind even the most transparently ridiculous tools of this campaign. This includes the notorious Bana Alabed psyop which at its height saw CNN staging a fake, scripted interview featuring a seven year-old girl assigning blame to Bashar al-Assad for an alleged sarin gas attack in Khan Shaykhun. Bellingcat’s stellar investigative work (which has been praised in fawning puff pieces by mainstream outlets like The Guardian and The New Yorker) concluded that this obvious propaganda construct was in fact nothing other than a little girl and her mother independently composing viral tweets, giving interviews and authoring books about how the Syrian government must be toppled via western interventionism.
Bellingcat’s latest phenomenal report on how you’re supposed to think about important geopolitical disputes, titled “Emails And Reading Comprehension: OPCW Douma Coverage Misses Crucial Facts“, addresses the leaked OPCW email which was recently published by WikiLeaks and various other outlets revealing that the OPCW omitted crucial information from its Douma report which indicated that a chemical weapons attack was unlikely to have occurred. I encourage you to go and check out Bellingcat’s new masterpiece for yourself. Don’t worry about giving them clicks; that’s not where they get their money.
The first thing you’ll notice about Bellingcat’s article is that at no point does it even attempt to address the actual inflammatory comments within it, such as the OPCW whistleblower’s assertion that the samples tested where a chlorine gas attack is alleged to have occurred in April 2018 contained levels of chlorinated organic compounds which were so low that it would be unreasonable to claim with any confidence that a chlorine gas attack had occurred at all. The whistleblower writes in the leaked email to the OPCW cabinet chief that the levels “were, in most cases, present only in parts per billion range, as low as 1-2 ppb, which is essentially trace quantities.”
As we discussed previously, early skeptics of the establishment Douma narrative highlighted the bizarre fact that when the OPCW published its Interim Report in July of last year its report contained no information about the levels at which the chlorinated organic chemicals occurred. Chlorinated organic chemicals occur at trace levels in any industrialized area, so they are only indicative of a chlorine gas attack when samples test at high levels. The email said they didn’t. The OPCW omitted this in both its Interim and Final Reports.
The whistleblower told journalist Jonathan Steele that the levels found “were comparable to and even lower than those given in the World Health Organisation’s guidelines on recommended permitted levels of trichlorophenol and other COCs in drinking water.”
“Had they been included, the public would have seen that the levels of COCs found were no higher than you would expect in any household environment”, the whistleblower said.
“The main point is that Chlorine gas degrades rapidly in the air,” Steele said. “So coming in two weeks later, you wouldn’t find anything. What you would find is that the gas contaminates or affects other chemicals in the natural environment. So-called ‘chlorinated organic chemicals.’ The difficulty is they exist anyway in the natural environment and water. So the crucial thing is the levels, were there higher levels of chlorinated organic chemicals found after the alleged gas attack than there would have been in the normal environment?”
“When they got back to the Netherlands, to The Hague where the OPCW has its headquarters, samples were sent off to designated laboratories, then there was a weird silence developed,” Steele continued. “Nobody told the inspectors what the results of the analysis was. It was only by chance that the inspector found out through accident earlier the results would come in and there were no differences at all. There were no higher levels of Chlorinated organic chemicals in the areas where the alleged attack had happened where there is some suspicious cylinders had been found by opposition activists. So it didn’t seem possible that there could have been a gas attack because the levels were just the same as in the natural environment.”
Bellingcat simply ignores this absolutely central aspect of the email, as well as the whistleblower’s point about the symptoms of victims not matching chlorine gas poisoning.
“In this case the confidence in the identity of chlorine or any choking agent is drawn into question precisely because of the inconsistency with the reported and observed symptoms,” the whistleblower writes in the email. “The inconsistency was not only noted by the FFM team but strongly noted by three toxicologists with expertise in exposure to CW [Chemical Weapons] agents.”
Bellingcat narrative management reaches bargaining stage on road to acceptance, now emphasising that OPCW final report downgraded its conclusion to suggest merely “possible” use of chlorine.
Bellingcat says nothing about these revelations in the email, and says nothing about the fact that the OPCW excluded them from both its Interim Report in July 2018 and its Final Report in March 2019, the latter of which actually asserted the exact opposite saying there was “reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon took place. This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.”
Bellingcat completely ignores all of these points, which are literally the only reason any of this is in the news at all, instead opting to make silly, pedantic arguments that the text of the email and the Interim and Final Reports indicate that some of the whistleblower’s concerns appear to have been partially addressed by OPCW leadership in its publications. To make this argument, Bellingcat highlights how some of the wording in the reports was changed to appear a bit less conclusive, such as changing “likely” to “possible” and changing “reactive chlorine containing chemical” to “chemical containing reactive chlorine”.
By highlighting these barely-significant changes Bellingcat attempts to spin the narrative that there was no internal OPCW coverup of its investigators’ findings at all, which is of course invalidated by the fact that its Final Report concluded that a chlorine gas attack had taken place despite the whistleblower clearly stating that there is no basis upon which to conclude this. It’s also obviously invalidated by the fact that not one but two whistleblowers have come forward, meaning they plainly do not feel as though their concerns were met.
“Ian and I wanted to have this issue investigated and hopefully resolved internally, rather than exposing the failings of the Organisation in public, so we exhausted every internal avenue possible including submission of all the evidence of irregular behaviour to the Office of Internal Oversight,” the whistleblower told Steele. “The request for an internal investigation was refused and every other attempt to raise our concerns was stone walled. Our failed efforts to get management to listen went on over a period of nearly nine months. It was only after we realised the internal route was impossible that we decided to go public”.
“Ian” is Ian Henderson, the OPCW ballistics expert whose Engineering Assessment was leaked this past May. Henderson concluded that, contrary to what the OPCW’s Final Report strongly implies, the cylinders found at the scene in Douma were more likely to have been manually placed there, i.e. staged. The anonymous whistleblower informed Steele that all but one of the OPCW’s investigative team agreed with Henderson’s assessment. This too was left out of all OPCW reports, and Bellingcat’s piece completely ignores it, instead writing only that “Three independent analyses by experts in three different countries were carried out, and all reached complimentary conclusions: the damage at the impact sites is consistent with the cylinders having fallen from height.”
With the temerity only an NED paycheck can get you, Bellingcat argues that this vapid pedantry which has no bearing on the actual story whatsoever completely invalidates all reporting on the OPCW scandal.
“Although this letter appears to be at least superficially damaging to the OPCW, after reading the actual reports published by the OPCW it is clear that this letter is outdated and inapplicable to the final Douma report,” Bellingcat concludes. “If the people covering this story had actually taken the time to read the letter and the FFM reports, they may well have chosen to publicize it in a very different manner.”
Google has helpfully made sure to place Bellingcat’s assertive-sounding gibberish at the very top of news results which come up if you do a search for “OPCW” today:
Empire apologists have taken this ridiculous, nonsensical line of argumentation as gospel and run with it on social media, sharing Bellingcat’s embarrassing faceplant with triumphant, chest-thumping captions.
“Just so all my followers are clear, Tucker Carlson and the merry band of alt left grifter idiots trying to convince you that 1 of the 257 chemical attacks in Syria was a false flag are wrong, again, and never even bothered to read the report they say is wrong,” tweetedNewshour‘s Danny Gold.
“So the letter written by the dissenting OPCW employee on Douma investigation was sent two weeks before the interim report was released and nine months before the final one. In the final one, the employee’s concerns were addressed. Where’s the cover up?” tweetedTelegraph‘s Josie Ensor.
“WikiLeaks et al are lying to you in defence of the Assad regime,” tweeted odious Syria narrative manager Oz Katerji.
Just so all my followers are clear, Tucker Carlson and the merry band of alt left grifter idiots trying to convince you that 1 of the 257 chemical attacks in Syria was a false flag are wrong, again, and never even bothered to read the report they say is wrong https://t.co/IRJQzC0VaL
“Despite the seemingly scandalous accusation in the leak, Carlson is misrepresenting the nature of the WikiLeaks documents and their significance,” MMFA claims. “Investigative journalists at Bellingcat found that the leaked letter was in fact referring to an ‘interim report’ issued in July of 2018, before the OPCW released its final conclusions. A side-by-side comparison shows that the concerns addressed in the letter ‘are present, or else are in modified form, in the final report.’”
Which is of course false, as explained above.
MMFA’s other claims are nothing other than simple regurgitation of the very reports that are now being invalidated by the leaks that Tucker Carlson highlighted on his show. Their entire argument boils down to “This old information is in contradiction to that new information,” which is of course the entire bloody point.
Tucker Carlson spreads disinformation about a deadly chemical attack in Syria https://t.co/aFtPwpUtE8
“These claims contradict and misrepresent the available evidence regarding the attack, the conclusions of multiple governments, and they are based on a Syrian and Russian misinformation campaign seeking to discredit investigators and absolve Assad of responsibility for the atrocity,” MMFA argues, linking to a 2018 BBC article saying Assad was responsible for the Douma incident, a 2018 Guardian article about the US government’s unsubstantiated claim to have secret proof of Assad’s guilt, and a 2018 Guardian article claiming that Russia is wrong about its skepticism of the western Douma narrative, respectfully.
Which is the same as saying “You’re wrong because we disagree with you. Here is evidence of our disagreeing with you last year.”
This is the best the spin masters can do, and the OPCW scandal is only going to unfold more. Should be fun.
…What if, on Thanksgiving Day, we are most grateful that we are free creatures made in God’s image and likeness? What if we can use our freedoms to reject the government?
Bolivian President Evo Morales was overthrown in a U.S.-backed military coup d’état earlier this month after Bolivian army generals appeared on television demanding his resignation. As Morales fled to Mexico, the army appointed right-wing Senator Jeanine Añez as his successor. Añez, a Christian conservative who has described Bolivia’s indigenous majority as “satanic”, arrived at the presidential palace holding an oversized Bible, declaring that Christianity was re-entering the government. She immediately announced she would “take all measures necessary” to “pacify” the indigenous resistance to her takeover.
The New York Times, the United States’ most influential newspaper, immediately applauded the events, its editorial board refusing to use the word “coup” to describe the overthrow, claiming instead that Morales had “resigned,” leaving a “vacuum of power” into which Añez was forced to move. The Times presented the deposed president as an “arrogant” and “increasingly autocratic” populist tyrant “brazenly abusing” power, “stuffing” the Supreme Court with his loyalists, “crushing any institution” standing in his way, and presiding over a “highly fishy” vote.
This, for democratic-minded Bolivians, was “the last straw” and forcing him out “became the only remaining option,” the Times extolled. It expressed relief that the country was now in the hands of “more responsible leaders” and stated emphatically that the whole situation was his fault; “There can be little doubt who was responsible for the chaos: newly resigned president Evo Morales,” the editorial board stated in the first paragraph of one article.
“Despite the changing media landscape and the financial troubles of old school journalism models – including the New York Times – it remains the agenda setter. Social media often use or respond to Times stories. It is still probably the single most referenced news outlet in the U.S. Other websites, like Yahoo get more hits, but they do not report or create their own stories. The New York Times still ranks as the top investigative and opinion setting news organization” he told MintPress News.
The first draft of history
Newsrooms across America are sent advanced copies of the Times’ front page so they will know what is “important news” and adjust their own coverage accordingly. In this way its influence extends well beyond its nearly 5 million subscribers, its output becoming the first draft of history. Yet, when it comes to U.S. intervention, the Times offers its “consistent support” for American actions around the world, Hudson says, claiming that the latest Bolivia example “very much followed this trend.” Indeed, there has rarely been an effort at regime change that the paper did not fully endorse, including the following six examples.
Iran 1953
In 1953, the CIA engineered a coup against the administration of Mohammad Mossadegh, installing the Shah as an autocrat in his place. Mossadegh, a secular liberal reformer, had angered Western governments by nationalizing Iran’s oil industry, arguing that the country’s resources should be owned by and used to benefit the people of Iran. The Shah presided over decades of terror and human rights abuses, finally being overthrown in the revolution of 1979.
The Times expressed a “deep sense of relief,” many felt that Mossadegh, a “fanatical power-hungry man” and a Kremlin stooge who had “wrecked the economy” in his “bid for dictatorship” had been deposed. The editorial board gave a warning to others who might try to nationalize industries owned by American corporations: “Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism,” it wrote, two days after Mossadegh’s ouster.
Brazil 1964
Like Mossadegh, Brazilian President Joao Goulart was far from a communist; the center-left reformer who had been in power since 1961 modeled himself after John F. Kennedy. He was overthrown in a U.S.-supported military coup d’état that brought about over twenty years of fascist dictatorship that saw tens of thousands of people arrested and tortured.
Two days after the event, the Times’ editorial board announced, “We do not lament the passing of a leader who had proved so incompetent and so irresponsible.” As with Bolivia, it refused to use the word “coup,” instead claiming that Goulart, who “had almost no supporters,” was deposed in “another peaceful revolution.”
One month later, a report entitled “Brazil relieved by Goulart’s Fall” claimed there was “no outcry or even concern” over the events, but instead a “widespread feeling of deep relief and optimism” in the country. It stated that all of Brazil had “written off” the “extremist” and “far leftist” “regime” and supported the “revolt” against him. In particularly Orwellian fashion, it claimed that the “nation appears to have been yearning” for a “political clean up” of “extremists,” applauding the widespread imprisonment of officials in the Goulart administration on the grounds that they were “communists.”
Chile 1973
The overthrow of the democratically-elected Chilean socialist Salvador Allende in 1973 and his replacement with the fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet is one of the most well-known and infamous events in CIA history. The fallout from Pinochet’s economic mismanagement and reign of terror continues to this day and provides the backdrop for the enormous anti-government protest movement currently engulfing the country.
As soon as Allende was elected, the Times began a campaign to demonize the new leader, claiming that Chile’s “free institutions” likely would not survive the “sharp turn to the left” he was proposing. The day after the coup, when Pinochet’s forces bombed the presidential palace and forced Allende to commit suicide, the Times editorial board blamed the President for his own downfall, just as it did with Morales and with Mossadegh, claiming:
No Chilean party or faction can escape some responsibility…but a heavy share must be assigned to the unfortunate Dr. Allende himself. Even when the dangers of polarization had become unmistakably evident, he persisted in pushing a program of pervasive socialism for which he had no popular mandate.
It also pre-determined that the very obvious involvement of the U.S. government, conducting a campaign of economic war against Chile, in order to “make the economy scream” in the words of President Nixon and Henry Kissinger to the CIA, was non-existent. The board advised that “It is essential that Washington meticulously keep hands off the present crisis…There must be no grounds whatsoever for even a suspicion of outside intervention.”
Venezuela 2002 and 2019
In April 2002, the U.S. government bankrolled and supported a coup attempt against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. In a consistent pattern, the Times editorial board came out to heartily endorse proceedings, again deliberately refraining from using the word coup. Two days after the event it noted:
With yesterday’s resignation of President Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator. Mr. Chavez, a ruinous demagogue, stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader, Pedro Carmona.”
And like with other coups, the Times immediately treated the idea of U.S. involvement as utterly impossible, adding, “Rightly, his removal was a purely Venezuelan affair.”
What was unique about this event was that the coup was dramatically overturned by hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, who convinced military units loyal to Chavez to retake the presidential palace. Since then, successive U.S. governments have dedicated significant resources to regime change in Venezuela. The Times also applauded self-declared President Juan Guaidó’s attempt to gain power earlier this year, presenting him as a man of the people, claiming he was “cheered on by thousands of supporters in the streets and a growing number of governments, including the United States.”
But as Guaidó’s attempt collapsed under the weight of its own unpopularity, the Times expressed its anger that Maduro, a corrupt Russian agent, who pushed Venezuela “to utter ruin,” remained in power. “It would be a great relief for Venezuela to be rid” of Maduro, the editorial board mused, “the sooner the armed forces evict the thieves” the better, it said, disappointed that, for once, it could not celebrate a successful U.S. coup.
Manufacturing consent
Studying the Times’ coverage of U.S.-orchestrated coup attempts, it becomes clear that there is a checklist of talking points it employs time and again to justify events.
Blame all economic and political problems on the government; ignore the effect of any U.S. sanctions.
Constantly present the targeted leader as a tyrannical autocrat crushing dissent, no matter what the reality is.
Insist that the leader is actually a Russian plant controlled by the Kremlin.
Refrain from using the word “coup”. Prefer instead words like “uprising”, “revolt” or “transition”.
Express ridicule at the idea that the U.S. could be involved in the affair.
Depict the new U.S.-backed rulers as democratically-minded and downplay any violence they commit in establishing their rule.
Blame the deposed leaders for their own overthrow.
To be sure, the New York Times is not the only major media outlet guilty of reflexively supporting every U.S. action around the world. TheEconomist and theWashington Post both came out to support the coup in Bolivia, as they had done before with Venezuela. But the Times’ position as “the paper of record” sets it apart in terms of importance.
This position makes it a crucial weapon in the propaganda war waged on the American people in order to manufacture consent for regime change abroad.
Book Review: EMPTY PLANET, Darrell Bricker, John Ibbitson, Little Brown Book Group, 2019, 288 pages, indexed. (Amazon.com)
There are apocalyptic books that alter the course of history. The Bible, for one. Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb, published in 1968, another. Since Ehrlich’s book predicted hundreds of millions of people would starve to death because of overpopulation, modern populations have groveled with family planning, birth control, abortion, forced population control (China) and imagined threats of famines and resultant environmental and climate disasters. Then this book:
EMPTY PLANET, The Shock Of Global Population Decline, by Canadian researchers Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson (Little Brown Book Group, 2019)
According to its authors, young women won’t need to forgo having babies to save the planet, they have already instinctively delayed or foregone childbirth for reasons of career, pursuit of wealth and autonomy, no covert or overt population control plans needed.
The postulation of the book is that in countries where urbanization is a trend and the standard of living and incomes are high, women are having so few babies as to imperil the required growth in their country’s future. Cultural changes, not any religious dictums or government regulations, are responsible for this monumental change.
But wait, outmoded ideas sometimes never fade away. Old ideas remain indelibly in the minds of people, particularly the doomsday ideas of Paul Ehrlich. If what EMPTY PLANET book says is true, then many are still mired in the past (notice the dates on these proclamations).
Joe Pfeifer, in his October 5, 2019 missive posted at ReporterHerald.com, says: “We should focus on the one root cause for all these catastrophes. Our planet cannot sustain the doubling of our global population that occurs ever 61 years… we have too many people.”
The world clearly can’t support 10 billion people living like Americans do today. – Science Magazine, July 1, 2005
“Consider adoption if you want children.”
– Sean Dennison, Oct. 9, 2019
Calls to have few or no children to fight climate change are common. Celebrities like Miley Cyrus and Prince Harry have become advocates for limited birthing. – Vox, August 20, 2019
Kevin Casey writing at com (November 20, 2019) says: “Climate changes is not the biggest threat to the world’s environment – we are… Now our numbers are out of control, and that presents us with limited options… Stop getting sidetracked by the climate change industry and recognize that the problem is our sheer numbers and blatant disregard for the planet’s health – not the climate… We need more global promotion of family planning, more female empowerment and government incentive to have fewer children—not more.”
In the quintessential argument over whether the planet is half-empty/half-full, the overpopulation mantra is paused by these startling recent headlines:
“Everyone knows that the world is overpopulated, or soon will be. But what if everyone is wrong.” — Steven Mosher, Population Research Institute, Feb. 8, 2019
“We’ve worried about overpopulation for centuries. And we’ve always been wrong.” — Vox 20, 2019
“The biggest problem the world will face is population collapse.”
— Elon Musk, Jack Ma, Aug. 30, 2019
There are some over-population prophets who are going to have to eat their words.
As Bricker and Ibbitson state in EMPTY PLANET, “All of this (talk about the end of plenty on our planet) is utterly wrong.”
Now, not tomorrow
Bricker and Ibbitson travelled the world to find out if the overpopulation is real or a myth. They didn’t come up with the hypothesis of their book from the confines of a library…
In Japan, women are not just forgoing birth, they aren’t even getting married or having sex! Women completely avoiding their biological destiny to procreate (share in creation of life with God). Will a sub-class of “uneducated” women arise who have all the babies? A large population of women now have no compunction to do what they were created for. Women in the 3rd world are having most of the babies now. And how does all this fly in the face of the Biblical unction to be “fruitful and multiply?” (Genesis 1:28) Bricker and Ibbitson say there will be no turning back. Women are changing the world and running and ruling over whole economies in a demonstrable way, for better or worse, like no despot could ever imagine.
Bricker & Ibbitson: “We won’t have to wait thirty or forty years to feel the impact of population decline. We’re feeling it today… We see it in every household where the children take longer to move out because they’re in no rush to settle down and haven’t the slightest intention of having a baby before they are thirty.”
Governments didn’t curb birth rates, women did
As women become more educated and urbanization progresses, birth rates decline. Gone is the allegory created by Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) of his Malthusian pond, that goes something like this:
A farmer’s pond had two lily pads but were doubling in number and size every day. The farmer was warned that it would choke the pond in 30 days. He didn’t worry about it for 28 days because it seemed so small. On the 29th day it covered half the pond. Then he only had one day to solve the problem. The pond is the earth. The lilies are human populations. But Malthusian predictions are not happening.
Lilies in ponds are programmed to incessantly grow given the right circumstances. Women are not mindless like lilies. Females, provided with education, food, housing and a career, have changed their minds and reversed the once thought-to-be-inevitable course of history…
The movie Soylent Green, portrayed events predicted to occur in the year 2022, went one step better – create a food from “people” who would voluntarily line up to die on time but unwittingly contribute themselves to the betterment of the planet by heading off food shortages at the same time.
Beyond pretend: covert population control
But population control is not just for pretend in movie houses. More cunning and veiled population control plans have been employed, such as covert geriatric euthanasia in England. There are reports Great Britain can’t afford to care for all of its aged, so it allegedly withholds water from the institutionalized elderly to produce fingerprint-proof death by dehydration in order to stave off financial collapse of the medical care delivery system there.
Another covert population control was allegedly implemented throughout impoverished nations. Catholic bishops allege The World Health Organization carried out tetanus vaccination programs that were laced with a hormone that would result in a loss of pregnancy. The World Health Organization withdrew the program when Catholic Bishops demanded the vaccine be independently tested…
An overt population control effort was the “one-child” policy imposed by the Chinese government in 1979, a “draconian rule that may be one of history’s greatest examples of unintended consequences,” says Bricker and Ibbitson…
The U.S. continued to permit tobacco smoking to be promoted on television unabated, knowing full-well habitual cigarette smoking takes 10 years off of life. The way government sees that is ten less years of having to pay out Social Security checks.
All of the above-mentioned covert population control efforts are not revealed in EMPTY PLANET. Population controllers aren’t going to come out of hiding and raise their hands in confession. These evil efforts to curb population are important to cite here if for no other reason than to raise suspicion and skepticism over any plans when governments claim they are doing something good for us.
One can imagine at some time in the future males being required to show some evidence to female partners that they have undergone a procedure to physically block their sperm from entering their vagina. This topic is deserving of a dedicated report at some future time when regulatory approval looms.
Forerunner
The 2014 epic documentary by filmmaker Jessica Yu, MISCONCEPTION, said overpopulation is a long-held myth. But who was listening then, and who is listening now?
EMPTY PLANET confirmed by others
Others back up Bricker and Ibbitson’s claims:
Steven W. Mosher, author of Population Control: Real Cists and Illusory Benefits, points to the The United Nations which “continues to beat the overpopulation drum… Our present problem is not too many babies; it’s too few babies… The rapid aging of the population, by reducing the amount of human capital available, will dramatically darken humanity’s prospects in countless ways… Try selling cars, houses, refrigerators – or anything else, for that matter – in a depopulating country. When millions of elders start liquidating their IRAs and 401(d)s to survive, the investment world crumbles… Stop telling us that we are having too many children already. Our long-term problem, which is now upon us, is too few children.”
EMPTY PLANET cites this data: the world’s ratio of younger workers to older retirees is 6.3 to 1.0. But by 2050 it will be 3.4 to 1.0. Several countries in Europe are close to 2.0 to 1.0.
What was once implausible is now possible. As an example of our rapidly changing world, Bricker and Ibbitson note that an 80-year old woman has a likelihood of out-living her 55-year old son who has a 17% risk of having a mortal accident.
Even liberal writer Daniel Kolitz, who is an advocate of less consumption, in his “Is The World Really Overpopulated?” treatise, posted at Gizmodo.com, says: “The richer a society that fewer children it produces… we expect increasing global wealth to manifest as slowed population growth and eventually population shrinkage.”
Elon Musk: “Most people think we have too many people on the planet, but actually, this is an outdated view. The biggest issue in 20 years will be population collapse. Not explosion. Collapse.”
If you want to hear Darrell Bricker and Darrell Ibbitson talk about the findings in their landmark book EMPTY PLANET you can tune in on YouTube, and what they call the defining event of the 21st century.
The longer a fiat currency is the coin of the land, the more one is led to believe that nothing should be in short supply, since everything is bought with money and money need not be in short supply.
What causes the seemingly unfounded confidence in socialism we encounter more and more in the news media and among political activists? In the Extinction Rebellion movement, for example, activists are quite certain they have learned that there is an alternative to markets as the means to economic prosperity. It’s a means that does not involve meeting the legitimate needs of one’s fellow men in the marketplace.
It is likely not a coincidence that most people living today have lived most of their lives in a world dominated by fiat money. It has now been nearly fifty years since the United States broke all ties between the dollar and gold. It’s been even longer since other major currencies were tied to gold at all. Consequently we now live in a world where the creation of wealth is seen by many as requiring little more than the creation of more money.
In this kind of world, why not have socialism? If we run out of money, we can always print more.
Unlimited Money Feeds the Myth of Unlimited Real Resources
The world was on a watered down version of a gold standard until 1971 when the US abandoned its solemn promise — the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement — to back the dollar with gold at $35 per ounce. Gold backing of a currency provided a solid intellectual foundation of reality that few even recognized existed within themselves; (i.e., that we live in a world of scarcity and uncertainty). This reinforced the idea that wealth has to be built. It cannot be conjured out of thin air, just as gold cannot be conjured out of thin air.
But fiat currency can be conjured out of thin air and in enormous amounts. The longer a fiat currency is the coin of the land, the more one is led to believe that nothing should be in short supply, since everything is bought with money and money need not be in short supply. Those who know only unlimited fiat money soon demand free healthcare and free higher education as a right. And why not? Unlimited money will pay for it. Into this never-never land comes demands for scrapping the fossil fuel underpinnings of our modern economy by those who understand nothing of how an economy works. But, apparently one does not need to understand technical limitations, because there are no technical limitations. The “barbarous relic” (gold) had once limited the money supply and thusly seemed to limit the supply of vendible goods. Gold has been replaced by unlimited fiat money. Now it seems that unlimited aggregate demand can be funded by unlimited fiat money, leading to a world of plenty. Designer of the Bretton Woods Agreement Lord Keynes says so in this very insightful short video.
Fiat Money Turns the World Upside Down
The psychological impact of a lifetime within a fiat money economy cannot be underestimated. One’s world is turned upside down. For many, financial success becomes prima facie evidence of exploitation of the masses rather than something to be admired and to which one could aspire also. With more wealth seemingly available at the click of a computer button, only an Ebenezer Scrooge would deny funding the latest demanded government program. If wealth is so easy to create, many conclude only greed and cruelty are what stand between us and far greater prosperity for all.
But that is the very reason that fiat money is so subversive to the social order. In a sound money economy any new spending program can be funded only by an increase in taxes, an increase in debt, or by cutting existing funding. There is a real cost to each of these options. There is a real cost to printing money, too, but the cost is hidden. One does not see malinvestment at the time of money printing. Price increases are delayed and uneven, due to the Cantillon Effect whereby the early receivers of new money are able to purchase goods and services at existing prices. Later receivers or those who do not receive the new money at all suffer higher prices and a reduction in their standard of living. Even then most people do not link higher retail prices with a previous expansion of the money supply.
It would be hard to invent a more effective method for the destruction of modern society. As Pogo would say, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Last month, Chicago was swarmed with protestors as public school teachers went on strike.
Civil society clearly made its presence felt during the strikes. Many proponents of government schools simply can’t fathom the idea of any non-state institution that is able to educate children. The Chicago teacher union protests demonstrated how quick civil society is able to fill in the void when the state becomes negligent in its duties (a common occurrence).
Kerry McDonald of Foundation for Economic Education wrote that 300,000 students spent “another day outside of the public school classroom,” thanks to this strike. For so much talk about public education being “for the children,” the decisions to publicly strike keeps kids from learning, while teacher unions hold out as long as possible before lawmakers gave them sweetheart benefits. To add insult to injury, these strikes are done on the taxpayer’s dime.
The topic of education tends to be sensitive in today’s polarized America. It’s no secret that education these days has substantial degrees of politicization and is treated as a universal right that the state must provide. However, some of McDonald’s observations in her piece reveal that private actors are more than capable of stepping up to the plate to provide children with a place of learning.
She noticed one interesting development in the midst of this strike, “Museums, churches, libraries, and a multitude of civic non-profits,” opened their doors to “children displaced by the teachers’ strike, and public parks and playgrounds abound.” Other organizations that provided a place for children to congregate during these strikes were the YMCA and its branches in Chicago. Per the CNN report, the YMCA helped provide programs that included “classes, swimming, math lessons, arts and crafts, and sports.”
Similarly, the city’s aquarium offered “immersive exploration opportunities for the children, along with an after-school care option.”
Civil society clearly made its presence felt during the strikes. Many proponents of government schools simply can’t fathom the idea of any non-state institution that is able to educate children. The Chicago teacher union protests demonstrated how quick civil society is able to fill in the void when the state becomes negligent in its duties (a common occurrence).
The freedom of association is a wonderful thing. Free people are able to craft solutions to the many problems we face. Although there are no quick fixes, free interactions in the marketplace allow people to muddle through and find existential problems they face in their daily lives. On the other hand, state coercion not only strips people of their agency as free individuals but also creates problems by removing important market mechanisms such as prices, profit & loss motive, etc. which are crucial for market innovation.
Historically speaking, America has had a rich tradition of education systems that were independent of the state — be it homeschooling, communal schooling, or private education. Such ideas of non-state education modules aren’t so radical when we look back. Understanding this history will allow us to use the tools of the 21st century to carve out freedom in the education sector. But first, we must get rid of the old dogma that the state must be in charge of education.
Big changes always start with changing foundational premises.
Thanksgiving is the oldest national holiday in the United States. However, it’s observation is not a continuous presence in American history. While the celebration of Thanksgiving predates even the founding of the nation, it was proclaimed by George Washington, then ignored by Thomas Jefferson. From then on, it was sporadically observed until Abraham Lincoln, who once again introduced a National Day of Prayer and Thanksgiving to the United States.
Indeed, it was Lincoln who set the day as the last Thursday in November. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt changed the day between 1939 and 1941, which was highly controversial. The days were called “Franksgiving.” Roosevelt changed the date because retailers communicated to him through the Retail Dry Goods Association and the Secretary of Commerce, that the late date of Thanksgiving that year (the last day of November) might negatively impact retail sales. It was considered bad form to put up Christmas decorations or put on Christmas sales before Thanksgiving.
If only we still lived in such times.
In 1942, Congress set Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday of the month, and here it has stood since then.
The Early Days of Thanksgiving
Harvest feasts date back centuries, with the earliest “thanksgiving” celebrations in the New World dating to the 16th Century with the French and the Spanish. The Commonwealth of Virginia had regular celebrations of this type dating back to 1607. The first permanent settlement, Jamestown, Virginia, had a thanksgiving celebration in the year of its founding, 1610.
Of course, anytime someone says “Thanksgiving,” one immediately thinks of the Pilgrims. “Thanksgiving” as we know it is generally dated back to when the Pilgrims first celebrated it in 1621. This was in response to a successful harvest, however, it was not the first of a consistent celebration. The Pilgrims celebrated this only sporadically.
No one is entirely sure when the Thanksgiving celebration took place. There was a three-day celebration following their harvest, sometime between September 21 and November 11, with the Feast of Michaelmas (September 29) being the most likely date. We do, however, know that all 50 surviving Mayflower passengers were there, as well as 90 Native Americans. The feast was cooked primarily by four women, all of whom were on the Mayflower. Two years later, in 1623, following another boat of colonists arriving, the first civil (not religious) Thanksgiving took place in July.
The Revolution to the Civil War
The day of national Thanksgiving jumped around until the founding of the nation. During the late Colonial period, the Continental Congress merely recommended the day be celebrated by the various colonies. Samuel Adams drafted the first national proclamation, issued in 1777 – something to remember when you tip back one of his beers while watching the game. Revolutionary Commander General George Washington set the date in December of that year to celebrate early revolutionary victories.
In 1789, President George Washington would proclaim November 26, 1789, to be a National Day of Prayer and Thanksgiving. This day also provides the roots for America’s National Day of Prayer. In 1795, Thanksgiving was celebrated, again by presidential proclamation, on February 19. President John Adams continued the tradition in 1798 and 1799. The tradition was undone by deist and skeptic President Thomas Jefferson. President James Madison revived the tradition in 1814, but it remained sporadic until the Civil War. Many governors proclaimed celebrations statewide.
In November 1863, however, President Lincoln made the celebration national again. He was inspired by an editorial series written by “Mary Had a Little Lamb” author Sarah Josepha Hale. Secretary of State William H. Seward wrote the proclamation. During this period, traditions were regional and some of the food is decidedly not what we would consider to be traditional Thanksgiving fare today (pigeon pie, for example).
Franksgiving
Franksgiving is one of those things like the court-packing plan that made FDR’s opponents squeal with laughter. FDR’s moving of the date of Thanksgiving caused his opponent in the previous election, Alf Landon, to compare him to Hitler. James Frasier, chairman of the Plymouth, Massachusetts board of selectmen heartily disapproved of the change.
The change caused a number of problems, not least of all holiday travel plans. Football teams around the nation played before empty stadiums because they couldn’t change their schedule. Many games were cancelled. In what is a familiar scenario to anyone who has followed 21st-century politics, Democrats narrowly supported Franksgiving (52 to 48), Republicans widely despised it (79 to 21) and most of America didn’t like it (62 to 38).
All told, 23 states and the District of Columbia recognized the new date, while 22 preferred the traditional date. The remaining three (Colorado, Texas and Mississippi) went with both dates, meaning there was plenty of time off for everyone. In 1940, 32 states and the nation’s capital went with Franksgiving, while the remaining 16 opted for what was called “Republican Thanksgiving.”
A report from the Department of Commerce issued in 1941, found that there was no difference in retail sales due to the day of the month. Indeed, barely more than a third of all retailers even observed Franksgiving. What’s more, only two out of every seven Thanksgivings would fall on a fifth Thursday rather than a fourth. Still, a joint resolution of Congress, signed into law by President Roosevelt, permanently moved the date to the fourth Thursday, where it has stood ever since. Most states concurred, and while revelry was on the back burner thanks to the war, Thanksgiving in its final form took root by 1945.
If you ever find yourself watching the Merrie Melodies cartoon Holiday Highlights, you’ll notice a reference to two different Thanksgivings – one for Republicans and one for Democrats – that will now make sense to you.
Texas was the last state to observe the traditional “last Thursday” Thanksgiving in 1956.
Thanksgiving Haters
While it has its roots in European harvest festivals, there is perhaps no more quintessentially American holiday than Thanksgiving. Americans eat more food this day than they will any other day of the year, including the Fourth of July and Christmas Day. Unsurprisingly, there are people who think that the celebration of Thanksgiving is shameful and should be abandoned.
Both liberal college professors and some Native American activists believe the traditional story of Thanksgiving has been whitewashed by conquerors. They believe in replacing the day with a National Day of Atonement and fasting. Other prominent Native Americans such as Tim Giago, who founded the Native American Journalists Organization, believe that the celebration of Thanksgiving is a synthesis of both European and Native American traditions and is, as such, uniquely American.
The rest of us, however, will enjoy stuffing ourselves with turkey, slipping into a tryptophan coma, and waking up just in time to catch the big game or the parade. Real Americans, as it turns out, would much rather enjoy a day off than complain.
