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There are more like you than you think.

Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor / Unsplash

“I think 3C is being hopeful and conservative.”
– Ruth Cerezo-Mota an expert in climate modelling at the National Autonomous University of Mexico

A recent survey of 380 leading climate scientists conducted by The Guardian has revealed the profound unease these experts feel as they examine the ongoing damage humanity has inflicted on the natural world.

One prominent voice in the survey, Ruth Cerezo-Mota, a climate modeling expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, expressed her deep despair:

“Sometimes, it feels almost impossible not to feel hopeless and broken. After witnessing the flooding, fires, and droughts around the world—all consequences of climate change—and experiencing the fury of Hurricane Otis in my own country, I was hopeful that governments would start heeding scientific advice for the benefit of the people.”

“The turning point for me was a meeting in Singapore—it was then that everything made sense, but it plunged me into deep depression. It was a very dark period in my life where I was just surviving.”

“We continue our work because it’s necessary. It prevents those in power from claiming ignorance. They might say they don’t care, but they can’t deny they didn’t know.”

“I believe projecting a 3°C increase is both hopeful and conservative. A 1.5°C rise is already serious, and frankly, I see no clear commitment from any government to stay below this threshold.”

She is not alone. 77% of surveyed climate scientists believe we are on a path to at least 2.5°C warming this century.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Divide and Conquer: The Government’s Propaganda of Fear and Fake News

April 25, 2024

Divide and Conquer: The Government’s Propaganda of Fear and Fake News

“It is the function of mass agitation to exploit all the grievances, hopes, aspirations, prejudices, fears, and ideals of all the special groups that make up our society, social, religious, economic, racial, political. Stir them up. Set one against the other. Divide and conquer. That’s the way to soften up a democracy.”― J. Edgar Hoover, Masters of Deceit

“Nothing is real,” observed John Lennon, and that’s especially true of politics.

Much like the fabricated universe in Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show, in which a man’s life is the basis for an elaborately staged television show aimed at selling products and procuring ratings, the political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population.

Take the media circus that is the Donald Trump hush money trial, which panders to the public’s voracious appetite for titillating, soap opera drama, keeping the citizenry distracted, diverted and divided.

This is the magic of the reality TV programming that passes for politics today.

Everything becomes entertainment fodder.

As long as we are distracted, entertained, occasionally outraged, always polarized but largely uninvolved and content to remain in the viewer’s seat, we’ll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny (or government corruption and ineptitude) in any form.

Studies suggest that the more reality TV people watch—and I would posit that it’s all reality TV, entertainment news included—the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between what is real and what is carefully crafted farce.

“We the people” are watching a lot of TV.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Purpose Of War According To George Orwell (1984)

April 17, 2024

The Purpose Of War According To George Orwell (1984)

Some food for thought from George Orwell’s ‘1984’…

Does anything really ever change? (emphasis ours)

The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.

Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society. From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations. And in fact, without being used for any such purpose, but by a sort of automatic process — by producing wealth which it was sometimes impossible not to distribute — the machine did raise the living standards of the average human being very greatly over a period of about fifty years at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.

But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction — indeed, in some sense was the destruction — of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tomorrowland Has Fallen!

January 5, 2022

Tomorrowland Has Fallen!

Has anyone else noticed just how odd it is that so many people on the progressive end of our cultural landscape are frantically trying to convince everyone that the Omicron variant, the latest mutation of the Covid-19 cold virus, really is the end of the world? I freely grant that a lot of people are ill just now—that’s what usually happens in the temperate zone’s winter, you know, when the latest respiratory viruses make their rounds. I grant just as freely that hospitals are scrambling to keep up—many of them have laid off up to half their staff as a result of vaccine mandates, after all, and they’re being besieged by mobs of people who have been convinced by the media that ordinary cold symptoms mean they’re about to die.

The result is a collective frenzy being eagerly fed by a great many people. Of course it’s not surprising that the corporate media would push scare stories at full volume. Whoring out the news to sell advertising space is their stock in trade, and “if it bleeds, it leads” has taken precedence over responsible journalism since before there was responsible journalism. Still, this isn’t limited to the media. A great many people seem remarkably eager to insist that the pandemic can’t be winding down. In that eagerness I sense the approach of convulsive change.

Granted, a case can be made that there are practical if unmentionable reasons for this habit of sedulously cultivated panic. To begin with, as Freddie deBoer has pointed out in a trenchant post, being terrified of the Covid virus has become a venue for status competition among members of the privileged classes. It’s an old story, at least as old as that fine fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea.”…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fear and Inflation — The Timeless Policy Tools of Discredited Systems

December 12, 2021

Fear and Inflation — The Timeless Policy Tools of Discredited Systems

If you’re wondering why the media, markets and mandates are making less sense despite a constant flow of hard facts contradicting their message, it’s critical to watch what is done rather than said by the policy makers behind the fear and inflation “new normal.”

The Latest Fed-Speak Translation: From “Transitory” to “Persistent” Inflation

To the extent there’s anything exciting about a cornered Jerome Powell, he was at least able to drop some bombshells at his November 30^th meeting before Congress, including a truly cutting-edge observation and fear that inflation forces are “more persistent” and that it’s now time to retire the word “transitory” regarding the same.

Well, Jerome, we could have told you that long, long ago, but this, of course, is no shocker…

More Taper-Talk (Distraction)

Perhaps more “exciting” was his not-so-subtle announcement that the Fed plans to begin a discussion at its next meeting to accelerate the Fed taper by a few months.

Hmmm…

Despite the fact that any Fed Taper will in substance be a “non-taper” given backdoor liquidity tricks from the Standing Rep Facility and FIMA swap lines, the optics of such continued taper-talk will be negative for almost all assets save for the USD, the VIX trade, so-called “safe-haven” Treasuries and possibly gold.

Bitcoin’s Troubles

Needless to say, BTC didn’t respond too well, dropping by 20% in the wake of Powell’s double-speak; as of this writing, it rose by 9% in less than 24 hours.

Such dramatic price swings, in our opinion, confirm that cryptos (despite “consolidation” and “adoption” pains) will never be stores of value but rather volatile (and yes, exciting) speculation assets—though we know the crypto circles (who will likely also ignore recent warnings [raised by Jintao Ding] of quantum hacker risks) will strongly disagree.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Market Volatility Is Troubling, But This Is the Real Problem

July 25, 2021

Market Volatility Is Troubling, But This Is the Real Problem

Photo by Rémi Boudousquié

If you were awake at all this week, you caught glimpses of the stock market drama. Maybe you tuned it out? Here’s a quick recap:

Monday. Huge sell-off, the worst one-day decline since October 2020.

Tuesday: Big rebound recaptured 80% of Monday’s losses.

Wednesday: Rally continues, Monday’s losses fully recouped.

Thursday: Stocks rise a bit, ended the day up.

Friday: All major indices up, near their record highs.

And that’s just the numbers… Financial media headlines were absolutely schizophrenic. We saw everything from “Dow Plunges on Covid Resurgence” and “Speculators Flee Suddenly Volatile Market” to “Wall Street Ends Higher, Powered by Strong Earnings, Economic Cheer.”

Economic cheer? Let’s take a closer look at that last article…

It starts with the typical bullish post hoc rationalization for the market’s response: “robust corporate earnings and renewed optimism about the U.S. economic recovery fueled investor risk appetite.”

Yay Wall Street! Stocks tried to go down and failed, everything’s all better. Move along, nothing to see here…

Amid all the hysteria, there were a few interesting tidbits: this CNBC article and another published on Monday both emphasized market volatility. Both titles read like a PR firm’s damage control efforts: “Don’t make this mistake,” and “volatility can be a good thing.”

Don’t be afraid of volatility! It’s a good thing!

While volatility can be troubling for investors, experts caution against any hasty selling when markets fall. In addition, slumping stock prices can be a prime buying opportunity that investors should take advantage of.

Volatility is a “normal part of the process of investing.” And if your stocks go down, well, buy more of them!

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

COVID and the Noble Lie

May 25, 2021

COVID and the Noble Lie

“Unethical”… “dystopian”… “totalitarian”…

These are the words of the British government’s primary scientific advisory bunch — the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour, by title.

These scientific advisors presently droop their heads in shame. For these are the very words they employ to describe their own conduct.

They concede: Last March their wicked counsel encouraged government officials to wildly inflate the true viral threat.

Only a pitiless torturing of facts — argued these men and women of science — could terrify the public into locking themselves in, locking themselves up, locking themselves down.

The London Telegraph:

In March [2020] the Government was very worried about compliance and they thought people wouldn’t want to be locked down. There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance, and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear.

Fear came ladling out by the ton.

Millions and millions would perish in agonies scarcely describable, they howled. The hospitals would overflow into the streets, they screeched.

Only the near-cessation of all public life could cage the menace.

The halfway men, the men counseling a measured response… were drummed out of court.

“Using Fear Smacks of Totalitarianism”

Group psychologist Gavin Morgan, confessing his atrocities:

Clearly, using fear as a means of control is not ethical. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government. By nature I am an optimistic person, but all this has given me a more pessimistic view of people.

A pity, it is, that this fellow is not a Daily Reckoning reader.

We would have squeezed the optimism from him long ago… and pumped in an implacable pessimism.

It would have spared him an awful letting-down, a massacre of his innocent delusions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/msm-has-officially-declared-theres-a-fourth-wave-of-covid-19

April 1, 2021

MSM Has Officially Declared There’s A “FOURTH WAVE” Of COVID-19

The mainstream media has officially declared that we are now going through the fourth wave of COVID-19. Is it odd that somehow most of us missed the first, second, and third waves?

Fear and panic and living a life terrified because the media told you to do not account for a “wave” of infections of a disease with only a 99.98% survival rate. And yet, the MSM is still pushing the “fourth wave” narrative, even though allegedly 146 million doses of the experimental gene therapies have been injected into people in the United States. Just because people are scared and the government goes full dictatorship does not mean there were any waves of anything.

The United States has reported an average of 65,000 new cases in the last seven days, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), up about 10,000 cases per day since the most recent low point two weeks ago, according to a report from The Hill. Of course, these numbers are likely completely made up. No one trusts these numbers anymore. and the rulers know it.

Apparently, we all missed the third wave. It was in January, according to the ruling class’ propaganda outlets:

Those figures are well below the January apex of the third wave of infections when a quarter-million people a day were testing positive for the virus. – The Hill

They actually want us to believe that even though the current “numbers” are well below the high of the third wave, we are somehow magically in the “fourth wave.” It’s astonishing that so many are still falling for this, but it is also, at the same time, refreshing to see so many figuring it out.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

mainstream media, mac slavo, shtfplan.com, pandemic, lockdowns, control, fear, panic,

Fear is the New Smart

March 8, 2021

Fear is the New Smart

Auguste Renoir The umbrellas 1881-6

The Washington Post said recently: “The anti-vaccine movement is comparable to domestic terrorism, and must be treated that way”, while the Guardian had this:

“When it comes to shifting attitudes to vaccines, it is crucial to distinguish between public information campaigns that seek to educate the public and those that seek to persuade them,” said Philipp Schmid, a behavioural scientist researching vaccine scepticism at the University of Erfurt. “[..] if you don’t proactively tackle the problem at all, you end up playing catch-up with the anti-vaxxers. In a way, governments have to work on a parallel vaccine rollout – immunising the public against science denial.”

But WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris said: “it’s very important for people to understand that at the moment, all we know about the vaccines is that they will very effectively reduce your risk of severe disease. We haven’t seen any evidence yet indicating whether or not they stop transmission.” And Dr. David Martin claimed: It’s Gene Therapy, Not a Vaccine. One might add: It’s not science, it’s a sales job.

Now, I don’t know exactly who the WaPo refers to when they say “the anti-vaccine movement”, or that German guy with “the anti-vaxxers”, but it appears there is a widespread movement going on to promote mRNA vaccines, both by governments and by the press. And we’re not supposed to ask questions. Well, I’m sorry, but I make a living asking questions. And I think asking questions is not just everybody’s right, it’s an obligation. So don’t come at me with “domestic terrorism” or “anti-vaxxers”, a term that has nothing to do with the topic to begin with. Asking questions is not the same as being against something.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

One Man’s Terrorist Is Another Man’s Freedom Fighter

February 13, 2021

One Man’s Terrorist Is Another Man’s Freedom Fighter

In order for tyranny to be established, people who love freedom must first be demonized.

It seems like this would be an easy historic fact to accept, however, it’s very common for state propagandists and establishment shills in the media to cloud the argument. The conflict between the political left, globalists, conservatives and patriots is awash in misdirection. This article is my appeal to cut through that engineered fog, but before anything else is discussed, we need to recognize a fundamental truth:

If leftists and globalists were not trying to take away our individual and inherent liberties, then we conservatives and moderates would have no reason to fight.

The political left and the globalists are the ONLY people consistently using censorship, mob intimidation, violence, economic ransom, subversion and government oppression to get what they want. And, what they want is control; there is no denying it.

Again, let’s think about this for a moment: Who are the real villains in this story? The people who want to be left alone to live their lives in quiet freedom? Or, the people that want to forcefully impose their will on the world by any means necessary?

They can call it “progress”, they can call it futurism, they can call it the “great reset”, they can call it Utopia, but there is no getting around the reality that leftists and globalists have a vision of the world that is distinctly hostile to independent thought. What’s worse is, they think THEY are the good guys.

Conservatives and constitutionalists are “monsters” to them. Why? Because we exist and we refuse to comply. That is all there is to it. Otherwise, we have done NOTHING to them except defend ourselves in the most limited ways.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How the State Spreads Mass Hysteria

December 18, 2020

How the State Spreads Mass Hysteria

The history of mass hysteria, or mass sociogenic illness is fascinating. Cases of mass hysteria have been documented since the Middle Ages. Let me just mention a few of the more recent cases.

When a radio play by Orson Welles, War of the Worlds, was broadcasted in 1938 shortly after the suspension of the Munich agreement, the play allegedly caused panic among listeners, who thought that they were under attack by Martians.

Another intriguing case is an episode of a Portuguese TV show called Strawberries with Sugar. In the episode, the characters were infected by a life-threatening virus. After the show, more than three hundred students reported similar symptoms as the ones experienced by the TV show characters such as rashes and difficulty breathing. Some schools even closed. The Portuguese National Institute for Medical Emergency concluded that the virus did not exist in reality and that the symptoms were caused by mass hysteria.Similarly, on Emirates flight 203 in September 2018, dozens of passengers started to believe they were sick after observing other passengers with flu-like symptoms. As a consequence of the panic, the whole flight was quarantined. In the end only a few passengers had a common cold or the seasonal flu.

It is well known that there exist nocebo effects, which are the opposite of placebo effects. Due the placebo effect, a person recovers from an illness because she expects to do so. When we suffer a nocebo effect, on the other hand, we get ill just because we expect to become ill.1 In a self-fulfilling prophecy, the expectation can cause the symptoms. Anxiety and fear exacerbate this process.2

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Cycle of Climate Fear Tactics

October 26, 2019

The Cycle of Climate Fear Tactics

QUESTION: Thank you for your interesting writing on climate change. I take it you see the cycle as natural and this fear seems to flip back and forth between warming and cooling as you published various news articles. Do you rank this as just fear-mongering?

ANSWER: If we look just since 1895, the media loves to print headlines of fear. That they know people will then read. Therefore, this fear has alternated between global cooling and warming scares and at times they have even been overlapping. The first period was from 1895 until the 1930’s when the media was promoting we would all die from a coming ice age. Then it flipped with some overlap during the late 1920’s until the 1960’s when we would all die from global warming. Then it flipped again back to a coming ice age during the late 1950s which lasted into the late 1970s.

Now we are back to we will all die in 12 years from global warming. This time, the socialists have used it to justify dramatically raising taxes and seizing the economy for central control as was the case under Communism.

Doom & Gloom and fear-mongering seem to sell. I see this as absolutely a joke, but the joke is on us for the socialists are smiling – I gotcha now!

‘There Is No Climate Emergency’: Scientists Call for Reasoned Debate

October 2, 2019

An iceberg behind houses and buildings outside the village of Innarsuit, an island settlement in the Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland. (Magnus Kristensen/AFP/Getty Images)

‘There Is No Climate Emergency’: Scientists Call for Reasoned Debate

The message was clear: “There is no climate emergency.”

With those five simple words, a global network of scientists and professionals attempted to inject reasonableness and decorum into what should be a robust discussion about a complex scientific and public policy issue, but has instead degenerated into an ever more intense mud-slinging contest over the years.

People on one side of the argument dismiss their opponents as wild-eyed socialists attempting to leverage public fear and ignorance to further their political agenda. On the opposite side, people dismiss those who disagree with their supposedly settled scientific conclusions as nothing more than knowing shills or ignorant dupes of evil energy interests.

In between those extremes that are so popular with armies of public relations professionals, who shape the messages of public interest groups and professional politicians to maximum effect, are a not-so-quiet silent majority of scientists and professionals who take a more measured, reasoned view of the science when considering the supposed climate emergency some say we’re facing.

A group of 500-some scientists and professionals signed on to the “European Climate Declaration” that was released last week. This simple, short, and understandable statement proposed how analysis of any public policy issue involving complex science should be approached from a reasoned, fact-based perspective.

Statements such as “97 percent of climatologists agree that anthropogenic climate change is occurring” isn’t a statement of fact, it’s an opinion twice removed. It’s an opinion that involves evaluation of the legitimacy of how the results of the poll in question were sorted to dismiss some answers and allow others, and it’s an opinion in terms of how representative the sample size is with respect to all climate professionals.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Extinction is Stalking Humanity

July 28, 2019

Extinction is Stalking Humanity

I have previously written a summary of the interrelated psychological, sociological, political-economic, military, nuclear, ecological and climate threats to human survival on Earth which threaten human extinction by 2026. See ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’.

Rather than reiterate the evidence in the above article, I would like to add to it by focusing attention on three additional threats – geoengineering, medical vaccinations and electromagnetic radiation – that are less well-known (largely because the evidence is officially suppressed and only made available by conscientious investigative activists) and which, either separately or in combination with other threats, significantly increase the prospect of extinction for humans and most (and possibly all) life on Earth by the above date, particularly given the failure to respond strategically to these interrelated threats.

Before doing this, however, let me emphasize, yet again, that it is (unconscious) fear that is driving all of these crises in the first place and fear that underpins our collective failure to strategically address each of these interrelated threats in turn. And, as I have explained elsewhere and reiterate now, if we do not address this fear as a central feature of any overall strategy for survival, then extinction in the near term is certain. See, for example, ‘The Limited Mind: Why Fear is Driving Humanity to Extinction’.

So, beyond the usual issues that are considered imminent threats to human survival – particularly nuclear war, ecological collapse and climate catastrophe based on dysfunctional political, economic, legal and social institutions – let me briefly outline some of these other threats and, once again, invite a strategic response to each and all of these threats so that we give ourselves some chance of surviving.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Selling Fear and Amusement: News as Entertainment

December 27, 2018

Selling Fear and Amusement: News as Entertainment

The news media have contributed to our deteriorating—but entertaining—political situation. Mr. Trump is President partly because he is entertaining. My research on TV news shows that the promotion of the politics of fear is a byproduct of entertaining and sensationalized reports to build audience ratings. Contemporary news practices have increasingly been wedded to new information technologies that provide visuals and images, particularly portable cameras and smart phones. The entertainment format of much of U.S. TV news promotes the use of video or other visuals that are dramatic, conflictual, and emotional. Screen images dominate broadcast news as well social media. Investigations of news coverage of numerous local, national, and international news reports reveal how our current “news code” operates. Basically, TV tells time with visuals. Although the intent may be to use visuals to tell a story about something, the logic in use amounts to telling a story about the visual at hand. Events that are more likely to satisfy these format criteria are more likely to be broadcast.

Our work over the last 4 decades also demonstrates that politicians and others who provide visual events and dramatic performances are more likely to receive news coverage. We have documented the profound effects this format-driven media coverage has had on social institutions ranging from sports, news, politics, education, and religion.

Contemporary news practices continue this trend. Indeed, even the prestigious evening network newscasts have adopted this approach, especially as social media have provided seemingly ubiquitous videos of a wide array of events, many of which are posted on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc. As newscasts seek higher ratings, it should not be surprising that they have adjusted their selection of news items to include visually interesting bits that have already been viewed—or gone viral—on the internet and social media.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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