Sunday, May 13, 2007
Kids And Sex: The Kinsey Connection
Kids And Sex: The Kinsey Connection 6/1/1997
By Vanessa Warner, Trudy Hutch
Kinsey's misrepresentation of data did not end with the sexual abuse of children. June 1997 Family Voice*
SEXPERTS
HEFNER
The day was April 7, 1997. It began like any other, as children poured into an elementary school in Washington, D.C. The ringing bell echoed through the inner-city hallways, and the children settled into their seats while the fourth-grade teacher began his lesson on test-taking skills. When a student became disruptive, the teacher decided to bar him from the classroom. The student went to an adjoining room and coaxed several other kids to join him there.
What happened in that room has left parents raging and the community astonished. The children, ages 9-12-now out from under the teacher's watchful eye-began playing a game in the darkened room. Their game involved practicing sex on each other.
"When my daughter tried to leave," a distraught mother told The Washington Post, "a boy pulled her back into the room, told her to get down on the floor and that if she told anybody, he would bring a knife to school and cut everybody up." Another parent reported that at least two boys forced oral sex on her daughter.
What is even more appalling than a nine-year-old's sexual experimentation and sexual assault was society's response. The police closed the case within a week, arguing that the children's sex was "consensual" and therefore "no crime had been committed." D.C. law gives its stamp of approval to sex between children-as long as they are within four years of each other in age.
Even the executive director of a D.C. rape crisis center displayed a rather blasé attitude toward the incident. Admitting that fourth graders are generally not ready for sexual intercourse, Denise Snyder remarked: "From a legal perspective, if you try to say consensual sexual activity is illegal, then 6- and 7-year-olds playing doctor can become problematic."
Was the sex consensual? Even if the girls were lying about the force involved, why are officials so unconcerned? Maybe it's because what happened at that particular elementary school is not that uncommon. D.C. Board of Education President Don Reeves said, "If the media wanted to go around and look at other schools; they'd see incidents like that going on all the time."
What has happened to our society? The answer to that question lies with one man and the philosophy he perpetrated. In the 1940s, Dr. Alfred Kinsey revolutionized American culture with his ideas about human sexuality. Today America is reaping the grim consequences.
MOLESTERS PROVIDE DATA
Zoologist Alfred Kinsey sparked the sexual revolution with his reports on Sexuality and the Human Male (1948) and Sexuality and the Human Female (1953). Although many Americans are unfamiliar with his name, it would be difficult to find a person who has not been touched by his philosophy. Kinsey argued that deviant sexual activity is normal and natural, and that children are sexual from birth. He believed that society should not stifle any sexual activity.
How did Kinsey come to the conclusion that children are sexual? That is the most frightening aspect of his story. Kinsey was a silent partner in the molestation of 317 children. In chapter five of his 1948 report on the human male, Tables 30-34 present data on children's orgasms-beginning with five-month-old infants.
In a 1990 interview, Dr. C.A. Tripp (a Kinsey colleague), defended the 'legitimacy' of Kinsey's research. He said that Kinsey would "listen only to pedophiles who were very careful, used stopwatches . . ." How did the pedophile know when the infant reached orgasm? The children reacted by "groaning, sobbing, or more violent cries, sometimes with the abundance of tears.
"DEVIANTS="AVERAGE" CITIZENS
Kinsey's misrepresentation of data did not end with the sexual abuse of children. He deliberately falsified data about the total population.
Kinsey claimed that his 1940s population studies represented the "average American." However, the "statistically common behavior" cited in his reports did not reflect the sex lives of the busy housewife or the average factory worker. Instead of interviewing typical American homemakers and breadwinners, Kinsey focused on the fringe of society:
25 to 48 percent of Kinsey's subjects were in prison and/or were deviant males, of whom 1,400 were classified as sex offenders.
Kinsey classified prostitutes-or any woman living with a man for more than a year-as "married."
Kinsey's 'scientific' findings about childhood sexual behavior came from pedophiles-not "technically trained" experts-as he preferred to call them.
In an attempt to validate homosexuality, pedophilia, incest, and bestiality, Kinsey sacrificed scientific and intellectual honesty. He sullied his sample with those predisposed to sexual perversion-and then generalized his findings to represent the masses. Now Kinsey's philosophy has become as much a part of our culture as baseball. Yet it continues to confuse ideas about the nature of human sexuality.
Politicians, judges, and homosexual rights advocates still quote his reports. For instance, the most propagated myth of the homosexual rights movement-that one in every 10 Americans is 'gay'-was reaped directly from Kinsey's data. However, studies since the time of Kinsey have consistently proved this data false. The real figure is between one and four percent.HOMOEROTIC MODEL
Alfred Kinsey was especially fond of what is known as the homoerotic model. He gave self-stimulation and homosexuality precedence in his report on male sexuality. And marital sex was relegated to a few pages in the back of the book. "There were no questions as to how many heterosexual love affairs a person experienced nor what attributes were found sexually appealing in a partner; yet these questions were asked of homosexuals," said his co-author Paul Gebhard.
According to Kinsey, "[Human beings] do not represent two distinct populations-heterosexual and homosexual . . . The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects." He even went so far as to design a seven-point numerical system, commonly known as the "Kinsey Scale," to classify people. Heterosexuality rated a 0, homosexuality a 6 and bisexuality a 3. This scale at once equated homosexuality with heterosexuality and promoted bisexuality as the healthiest orientation.
This bizarre reasoning has literally changed the face of our country. We have gone from chastity to the sexual revolution and from there to special rights for homosexuals.
Today we live in a climate in which the popular American Airlines (AA) eagerly sponsors pro-homosexual events. As part of the radical gay lobby's celebration of TV star Ellen DeGeneres' "coming out"-on- and off-screen-AA co-sponsored a giveaway trip. The prize provided for two (homosexuals) to travel to Los Angeles for a taping of "Ellen."
Same-sex 'marriage' teeters on the brink of legalization; homosexual activists create youth groups to lure teens into their deviant lifestyle; and the latest fad on college campuses is to declare oneself 'bisexual.' Who could have guessed that one man's philosophy would start an avalanche of perversion and promiscuity that would rock the world?
KINSEY LEGACY: RAPE AND STDs
We don't have to go far to see the destruction Kinsey's philosophy has left in its wake. His advocacy of "free love" has resulted in crisis levels of rape, incest, and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
As more and more people have bought into Kinsey's idea that all sex is good sex, rape rates have risen to epidemic proportions. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that over 130,000 rapes occur in this country each year. The National Victim Center says the figure is actually much higher since many rapes go unreported. It estimates an astronomical 683,000 rapes annually-more than five times the number reported. A criminology study published in August 1990 found that one in five adult women will be raped at some point in their lives. Even worse-statistics in Delaware and Michigan reveal that one in four rape victims in those states were children under 10.
With the rise in rape, free sex, and the decline of morality, STDs have become a major threat to public health. The Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, recently published "The Hidden Epidemic." This report documents 12 million new cases of STDs annually. One-fourth of those cases are teenagers.
Clearly, Kinsey's concept of 'free sex' is costly-and anything but free.
FOUNDATIONS OF SEX ED
Despite the apparent failure of Kinsey's philosophy, it continues to serve as the foundation of sex education in America. Kinsey is the driving force behind values-neutral sex education in our public school systems; the promotion of homosexuality in the AIDS curriculum; the current push to teach elementary school children about sex; and Planned Parenthood's school-based, pro-abortion clinics.
Kinsey's idea of utopia was indiscriminate sexual activity spanning from childhood to adulthood-and as varied as possible. He believed that it was vital for children to engage in sex by age six before they picked up all of the 'cultural taboos'. He deliberately blurred the distinction between normal and abnormal sex, rendering religious and moral standards obsolete. Trained as a zoologist, Kinsey considered the sexual conduct of animals as his standard for human sexuality. (Yet most animals do not behave that perversely.)
SIECUS
The Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) was founded in 1964 as the educational arm of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. Co-founder Dr. Mary S. Calderone is the former medical director for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She boasted in a SIECUS report: "Few people realize that the great library collection of . . . the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington, Indiana was formed very specifically with one major field omitted: sex education. This was because it seemed appropriate, not only to the Institute but to its major funding source, the National Institute of Mental Health, to leave this area for SIECUS to fill." Not surprisingly, Kinsey co-author Wardell Pomeroy was a SIECUS founding board member.
The primary goal of SIECUS, according to Calderone, is to teach human sexuality "very broadly and deeply with awareness of the vital importance of infant and childhood sexuality." The May-July 1983 issue of the SIECUS Report adds that a child's sexuality should "be developed in the same way as the child's inborn human capacity to talk or to walk, and that [the parents'] role should relate only to teaching the child the appropriateness of privacy, place, and person-in a word, socialization."
This model of human sexuality ignores the fact that young children lack the emotional and physical maturity for sex. Researchers have discovered that a little girl's vagina does not contain the same pH level as an adult's, which leaves her more susceptible to venereal disease. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of cervical cancer.
Brain development-which is not complete until age 15-is also a significant factor in the maturation process of both boys and girls. How can little Johnny-who can't sit still in class, forgets his homework, and shirks his chores-be ready to enter into a responsible sexual relationship? He can't!
$ FOR SEX EDUCATION
SIECUS and groups like Planned Parenthood Federation of America work in conjunction with the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services. The government continues to dole out tax dollars to seduce our nation's children with Kinsey's lies and misinformation about sex.
"Girls and Sex," a SIECUS publication, teaches that premarital sex is healthy, fun, and good for marriages-key Kinsey concepts. It states: "Sex play with boys . . . can be exciting, pleasurable, and even worthwhile . . . it will help later sexual adjustment."
Remember the 'sexual revolution'? Aside from disease and a plethora of socio-economic problems, premarital sex also increases the likelihood of extramarital sex, and eventually, divorce. Clearly, this philosophy is a vicious assault on the family, the building block of our entire nation.
Parents need to understand that sex education as it is taught in schools today is not primarily about body parts, functions, and relationships in the nuclear family. Rather, it involves restructuring children's values and beliefs. The debate among sex educators used to be "Why are some people homosexual?" Now it has shifted to "Why are some people heterosexual?"
Dr. Judith Reisman, co-author of the book Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud, explains: "Since Kinsey implied that heterosexuality is abnormal-simply a symptom of cultural repression-there would be no need to 'change' the orientation of children. A hidden gay agenda in sex education would reach boys and girls before they are affected by societal 'restraints' and rescue them from the supposedly pathologic norms of exclusive male-female relating."
SEXOLOGY
So how did one man's report become the basis of American sex education? The answer lies in sexology-a relatively new area of study fundamentally built on Kinsey. Sexologists produce and approve our nation's sex education curricula.
The Manual for Accreditation published by the Commission on Accreditation of Human Sexuality Programs of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex recommends that sexologists complete such courses as: "Homosexuality (and bisexuality)," "Sexual Variations," and "Alternative Lifestyles." It also mandates a class called "History of Sexual Behavior," which propagates the Kinseyan philosophy on human sexuality. Students are forced to undergo hours of "sexual attitude reassessment"-that is, classes designed to restructure their value systems. Dr. Reisman and a co-researcher report that at New York University, "nude body" workshops are conducted in which participants are instructed to fondle the genitalia of same-sex students. And extra-credit is awarded for having an affair or going to a homosexual bar!
Is this the basis of a healthy perspective on human sexuality?
SEXUALIZATION OF CHILDREN
Under intense political pressure, the American Psychiatric Association normalized homosexuality in 1973. Yet four years later, 69 percent of these same professionals still believed that "homosexuality was usually a pathological adaptation as opposed to a normal variation." Only 18 percent believed it was normal. Is pedophilia the next perversion to be "normalized"?
Behind the growing legitimization of homosexual and peer sex among youth is the popularization of "intergenerational sex"-a euphemism for pedophilia.
Behavior Today reported, "A nationally recognized expert on sex offenders . . . stated that pedophilia . . . may be a sexual orientation rather than a sexual deviation. According to the magazine, this "raised the question as to whether pedophiles may have rights." Spokesmen for the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) have quoted Kinsey extensively in arguing for the right to have sex with under-aged boys. If pedophilia is no longer considered a mental disorder and the age of consent laws are lowered, who will protect our children?
Recently Jock Sturges, a $60.00 coffee-table book, featured explicit photographs of naked children (aged 5 through adolescence) posed erotically.
Such photos, the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court (U.S. vs. Wolf) ruled in 1989, violate the child pornography statutes. Yet today any pedophile-and even minors-can find this smut readily accessible at 163 Borders Bookstores nationwide. In fact, the book was so popular, its first print run sold out. In every form of the media, children are being turned into sex objects by our society.
Armed with Kinsey's statistics, feminists and pedophiles are also challenging parental authority. They clamor for "children's rights"-to privacy, to association, to family planning services. What about a child's right to grow up without being exploited? contrary to what sexologists may argue, a four-year-old cannot possibly enter into a consensual sexual relationship with an adult-or even another child. Nobody would suggest that children be allowed to smoke and drink or work for a living. Society is convinced that children are not ready to make responsible decisions regarding these adult activities. And any caring mother knows children are not ready for sexual relations.
BREAKING THE CHAINS
Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of Kinsey's report on male sexuality. As such, it is likely that advocates of Kinseyan sex education will stage widespread celebrations. But Kinsey has given us nothing to celebrate. Fifty years of his deception have moved our culture into a world of sexual and moral relativity. With this, we now have epidemic levels of rape, sexually transmitted diseases, illegitimacy, child molestation, promiscuity, pornography, and broken lives.
America has bought into the Kinsey lie far too long. As parents, educators, and concerned citizens, we need to stand up to this assault on our children. At last, someone is fighting back. Concerned Women for America has ignited a campaign designed to expose Kinsey's lie. Watch for information in future issues of Family Voice. And listen to our daily radio program, "Beverly LaHaye Live," for updates.
"With God's help, we can win this battle in our communities, our states-and even our nation's capital," says Beverly LaHaye, CWA Chairman and Founder. "America's children deserve a chance to grow up unfettered by the chains of premature sexualization."
What you can do:
Write letters to editors, your legislators, and school board members . . .
Watch for evidence of the Kinsey philosophy in your children's sex education curriculum . . .
Educate your friends, family, and church members on this issue.
SIDEBARS
SEXPERTS
The American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT) requires a Sexual Attitude Reassessment (SAR) Seminar for professional certification. Reassessment (originally called "Restructuring") was changed to "make the intent to influence thinking less obvious," according to sexologist Edward W. Eichel.
Dr. Wardell Pomeroy, Kinsey's co-author, described a typical SAR seminar: "We project several films onto a series of screens simultaneously. They vary in content from 'hard porn' homosexuality to milder loving themes . . . [T]he results are very interesting and useful." . . . Just how useful are they?
Dr. Mary Calderone, co-founder of SIECUS, embraced homosexuality after being subjected to this type of brainwashing. According to author Randy Engel, "She viewed a homosexual couple keeping house and then engaging in homosexual lovemaking (i.e., mutual stimulation and sodomy.)" She said, "I went out walking on air, because now I knew what homosexuals did . . . I felt good about them from that moment on." [Cited in "The Pivotal Role of SIECUS," The Wanderer, June 22, 1989, p.9].
Parents have reason to be concerned. Sex educators are now using this same method of sensory overload and disorientation to pervert our children in school. "About Your Sexuality," sponsored by the Unitarian Universalists, is an example of just such a program. And this program is making inroads into mainstream Christianity. If children enrolled in this sex education class have a problem accepting homosexuality, what are they told? To watch it over and over again . . . Get the picture?
HEFNER
No discussion of Alfred Kinsey would be complete without mention of the founder of Playboy magazine-the man who preached hatred against women, exploited children, and raged against the family.
Hugh Hefner read Kinsey's reports, founded Playboy magazine, and divorced his wife Millie. "We believe . . . we are filling a publishing need only slightly less important than one just taken care of by the Kinsey Report," he wrote in his first issue. Everybody makes reference to the "Playboy" philosophy, but Kinsey is the true point man.
In 1958, Kinsey won a court case allowing him to import pornography for his sex studies. The favorable ruling struck down Abraham Lincoln's 1865 postal laws, which outlawed vulgar materials. Heffner then used that precedent to petition for the right to distribute "obscenity" through the mail-igniting America's porn industry.
Before Hefner, real men scorned pornography. Real men had relationships with their wives. Even libertarian sex researchers concluded-much to their chagrin-that most men of the 1950s and 1960s actually "saved" themselves for marriage. They considered sex "too precious" to share with anyone but their wives. Premarital sex, they believed, was harmful.
But Playboy made commitment a dirty word. The magazine counseled men to love 'em and leave 'em-fast. It featured cartoons sexualizing children and phony letters from women extolling bizarre sex practices. It belittled marriage and encouraged drug use.
Years later, reports leaked out that Hefner had not only performed in a homosexual porn film, but had also admitted to long-term drug use. Was his revolution successful? The bitter fruit of his life's work is all around him: self-stimulation using pornography-instead of marital intimacy; rape; unplanned pregnancies and abortions; STDs; AIDS; fatherlessness; divorce; welfare moms; child abuse; juvenile crime; drugs; and deviant sex without love or commitment.
By Vanessa Warner, Trudy Hutch
Kinsey's misrepresentation of data did not end with the sexual abuse of children. June 1997 Family Voice*
SEXPERTS
HEFNER
The day was April 7, 1997. It began like any other, as children poured into an elementary school in Washington, D.C. The ringing bell echoed through the inner-city hallways, and the children settled into their seats while the fourth-grade teacher began his lesson on test-taking skills. When a student became disruptive, the teacher decided to bar him from the classroom. The student went to an adjoining room and coaxed several other kids to join him there.
What happened in that room has left parents raging and the community astonished. The children, ages 9-12-now out from under the teacher's watchful eye-began playing a game in the darkened room. Their game involved practicing sex on each other.
"When my daughter tried to leave," a distraught mother told The Washington Post, "a boy pulled her back into the room, told her to get down on the floor and that if she told anybody, he would bring a knife to school and cut everybody up." Another parent reported that at least two boys forced oral sex on her daughter.
What is even more appalling than a nine-year-old's sexual experimentation and sexual assault was society's response. The police closed the case within a week, arguing that the children's sex was "consensual" and therefore "no crime had been committed." D.C. law gives its stamp of approval to sex between children-as long as they are within four years of each other in age.
Even the executive director of a D.C. rape crisis center displayed a rather blasé attitude toward the incident. Admitting that fourth graders are generally not ready for sexual intercourse, Denise Snyder remarked: "From a legal perspective, if you try to say consensual sexual activity is illegal, then 6- and 7-year-olds playing doctor can become problematic."
Was the sex consensual? Even if the girls were lying about the force involved, why are officials so unconcerned? Maybe it's because what happened at that particular elementary school is not that uncommon. D.C. Board of Education President Don Reeves said, "If the media wanted to go around and look at other schools; they'd see incidents like that going on all the time."
What has happened to our society? The answer to that question lies with one man and the philosophy he perpetrated. In the 1940s, Dr. Alfred Kinsey revolutionized American culture with his ideas about human sexuality. Today America is reaping the grim consequences.
MOLESTERS PROVIDE DATA
Zoologist Alfred Kinsey sparked the sexual revolution with his reports on Sexuality and the Human Male (1948) and Sexuality and the Human Female (1953). Although many Americans are unfamiliar with his name, it would be difficult to find a person who has not been touched by his philosophy. Kinsey argued that deviant sexual activity is normal and natural, and that children are sexual from birth. He believed that society should not stifle any sexual activity.
How did Kinsey come to the conclusion that children are sexual? That is the most frightening aspect of his story. Kinsey was a silent partner in the molestation of 317 children. In chapter five of his 1948 report on the human male, Tables 30-34 present data on children's orgasms-beginning with five-month-old infants.
In a 1990 interview, Dr. C.A. Tripp (a Kinsey colleague), defended the 'legitimacy' of Kinsey's research. He said that Kinsey would "listen only to pedophiles who were very careful, used stopwatches . . ." How did the pedophile know when the infant reached orgasm? The children reacted by "groaning, sobbing, or more violent cries, sometimes with the abundance of tears.
"DEVIANTS="AVERAGE" CITIZENS
Kinsey's misrepresentation of data did not end with the sexual abuse of children. He deliberately falsified data about the total population.
Kinsey claimed that his 1940s population studies represented the "average American." However, the "statistically common behavior" cited in his reports did not reflect the sex lives of the busy housewife or the average factory worker. Instead of interviewing typical American homemakers and breadwinners, Kinsey focused on the fringe of society:
25 to 48 percent of Kinsey's subjects were in prison and/or were deviant males, of whom 1,400 were classified as sex offenders.
Kinsey classified prostitutes-or any woman living with a man for more than a year-as "married."
Kinsey's 'scientific' findings about childhood sexual behavior came from pedophiles-not "technically trained" experts-as he preferred to call them.
In an attempt to validate homosexuality, pedophilia, incest, and bestiality, Kinsey sacrificed scientific and intellectual honesty. He sullied his sample with those predisposed to sexual perversion-and then generalized his findings to represent the masses. Now Kinsey's philosophy has become as much a part of our culture as baseball. Yet it continues to confuse ideas about the nature of human sexuality.
Politicians, judges, and homosexual rights advocates still quote his reports. For instance, the most propagated myth of the homosexual rights movement-that one in every 10 Americans is 'gay'-was reaped directly from Kinsey's data. However, studies since the time of Kinsey have consistently proved this data false. The real figure is between one and four percent.HOMOEROTIC MODEL
Alfred Kinsey was especially fond of what is known as the homoerotic model. He gave self-stimulation and homosexuality precedence in his report on male sexuality. And marital sex was relegated to a few pages in the back of the book. "There were no questions as to how many heterosexual love affairs a person experienced nor what attributes were found sexually appealing in a partner; yet these questions were asked of homosexuals," said his co-author Paul Gebhard.
According to Kinsey, "[Human beings] do not represent two distinct populations-heterosexual and homosexual . . . The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects." He even went so far as to design a seven-point numerical system, commonly known as the "Kinsey Scale," to classify people. Heterosexuality rated a 0, homosexuality a 6 and bisexuality a 3. This scale at once equated homosexuality with heterosexuality and promoted bisexuality as the healthiest orientation.
This bizarre reasoning has literally changed the face of our country. We have gone from chastity to the sexual revolution and from there to special rights for homosexuals.
Today we live in a climate in which the popular American Airlines (AA) eagerly sponsors pro-homosexual events. As part of the radical gay lobby's celebration of TV star Ellen DeGeneres' "coming out"-on- and off-screen-AA co-sponsored a giveaway trip. The prize provided for two (homosexuals) to travel to Los Angeles for a taping of "Ellen."
Same-sex 'marriage' teeters on the brink of legalization; homosexual activists create youth groups to lure teens into their deviant lifestyle; and the latest fad on college campuses is to declare oneself 'bisexual.' Who could have guessed that one man's philosophy would start an avalanche of perversion and promiscuity that would rock the world?
KINSEY LEGACY: RAPE AND STDs
We don't have to go far to see the destruction Kinsey's philosophy has left in its wake. His advocacy of "free love" has resulted in crisis levels of rape, incest, and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
As more and more people have bought into Kinsey's idea that all sex is good sex, rape rates have risen to epidemic proportions. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that over 130,000 rapes occur in this country each year. The National Victim Center says the figure is actually much higher since many rapes go unreported. It estimates an astronomical 683,000 rapes annually-more than five times the number reported. A criminology study published in August 1990 found that one in five adult women will be raped at some point in their lives. Even worse-statistics in Delaware and Michigan reveal that one in four rape victims in those states were children under 10.
With the rise in rape, free sex, and the decline of morality, STDs have become a major threat to public health. The Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, recently published "The Hidden Epidemic." This report documents 12 million new cases of STDs annually. One-fourth of those cases are teenagers.
Clearly, Kinsey's concept of 'free sex' is costly-and anything but free.
FOUNDATIONS OF SEX ED
Despite the apparent failure of Kinsey's philosophy, it continues to serve as the foundation of sex education in America. Kinsey is the driving force behind values-neutral sex education in our public school systems; the promotion of homosexuality in the AIDS curriculum; the current push to teach elementary school children about sex; and Planned Parenthood's school-based, pro-abortion clinics.
Kinsey's idea of utopia was indiscriminate sexual activity spanning from childhood to adulthood-and as varied as possible. He believed that it was vital for children to engage in sex by age six before they picked up all of the 'cultural taboos'. He deliberately blurred the distinction between normal and abnormal sex, rendering religious and moral standards obsolete. Trained as a zoologist, Kinsey considered the sexual conduct of animals as his standard for human sexuality. (Yet most animals do not behave that perversely.)
SIECUS
The Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) was founded in 1964 as the educational arm of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. Co-founder Dr. Mary S. Calderone is the former medical director for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She boasted in a SIECUS report: "Few people realize that the great library collection of . . . the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington, Indiana was formed very specifically with one major field omitted: sex education. This was because it seemed appropriate, not only to the Institute but to its major funding source, the National Institute of Mental Health, to leave this area for SIECUS to fill." Not surprisingly, Kinsey co-author Wardell Pomeroy was a SIECUS founding board member.
The primary goal of SIECUS, according to Calderone, is to teach human sexuality "very broadly and deeply with awareness of the vital importance of infant and childhood sexuality." The May-July 1983 issue of the SIECUS Report adds that a child's sexuality should "be developed in the same way as the child's inborn human capacity to talk or to walk, and that [the parents'] role should relate only to teaching the child the appropriateness of privacy, place, and person-in a word, socialization."
This model of human sexuality ignores the fact that young children lack the emotional and physical maturity for sex. Researchers have discovered that a little girl's vagina does not contain the same pH level as an adult's, which leaves her more susceptible to venereal disease. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of cervical cancer.
Brain development-which is not complete until age 15-is also a significant factor in the maturation process of both boys and girls. How can little Johnny-who can't sit still in class, forgets his homework, and shirks his chores-be ready to enter into a responsible sexual relationship? He can't!
$ FOR SEX EDUCATION
SIECUS and groups like Planned Parenthood Federation of America work in conjunction with the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services. The government continues to dole out tax dollars to seduce our nation's children with Kinsey's lies and misinformation about sex.
"Girls and Sex," a SIECUS publication, teaches that premarital sex is healthy, fun, and good for marriages-key Kinsey concepts. It states: "Sex play with boys . . . can be exciting, pleasurable, and even worthwhile . . . it will help later sexual adjustment."
Remember the 'sexual revolution'? Aside from disease and a plethora of socio-economic problems, premarital sex also increases the likelihood of extramarital sex, and eventually, divorce. Clearly, this philosophy is a vicious assault on the family, the building block of our entire nation.
Parents need to understand that sex education as it is taught in schools today is not primarily about body parts, functions, and relationships in the nuclear family. Rather, it involves restructuring children's values and beliefs. The debate among sex educators used to be "Why are some people homosexual?" Now it has shifted to "Why are some people heterosexual?"
Dr. Judith Reisman, co-author of the book Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud, explains: "Since Kinsey implied that heterosexuality is abnormal-simply a symptom of cultural repression-there would be no need to 'change' the orientation of children. A hidden gay agenda in sex education would reach boys and girls before they are affected by societal 'restraints' and rescue them from the supposedly pathologic norms of exclusive male-female relating."
SEXOLOGY
So how did one man's report become the basis of American sex education? The answer lies in sexology-a relatively new area of study fundamentally built on Kinsey. Sexologists produce and approve our nation's sex education curricula.
The Manual for Accreditation published by the Commission on Accreditation of Human Sexuality Programs of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex recommends that sexologists complete such courses as: "Homosexuality (and bisexuality)," "Sexual Variations," and "Alternative Lifestyles." It also mandates a class called "History of Sexual Behavior," which propagates the Kinseyan philosophy on human sexuality. Students are forced to undergo hours of "sexual attitude reassessment"-that is, classes designed to restructure their value systems. Dr. Reisman and a co-researcher report that at New York University, "nude body" workshops are conducted in which participants are instructed to fondle the genitalia of same-sex students. And extra-credit is awarded for having an affair or going to a homosexual bar!
Is this the basis of a healthy perspective on human sexuality?
SEXUALIZATION OF CHILDREN
Under intense political pressure, the American Psychiatric Association normalized homosexuality in 1973. Yet four years later, 69 percent of these same professionals still believed that "homosexuality was usually a pathological adaptation as opposed to a normal variation." Only 18 percent believed it was normal. Is pedophilia the next perversion to be "normalized"?
Behind the growing legitimization of homosexual and peer sex among youth is the popularization of "intergenerational sex"-a euphemism for pedophilia.
Behavior Today reported, "A nationally recognized expert on sex offenders . . . stated that pedophilia . . . may be a sexual orientation rather than a sexual deviation. According to the magazine, this "raised the question as to whether pedophiles may have rights." Spokesmen for the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) have quoted Kinsey extensively in arguing for the right to have sex with under-aged boys. If pedophilia is no longer considered a mental disorder and the age of consent laws are lowered, who will protect our children?
Recently Jock Sturges, a $60.00 coffee-table book, featured explicit photographs of naked children (aged 5 through adolescence) posed erotically.
Such photos, the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court (U.S. vs. Wolf) ruled in 1989, violate the child pornography statutes. Yet today any pedophile-and even minors-can find this smut readily accessible at 163 Borders Bookstores nationwide. In fact, the book was so popular, its first print run sold out. In every form of the media, children are being turned into sex objects by our society.
Armed with Kinsey's statistics, feminists and pedophiles are also challenging parental authority. They clamor for "children's rights"-to privacy, to association, to family planning services. What about a child's right to grow up without being exploited? contrary to what sexologists may argue, a four-year-old cannot possibly enter into a consensual sexual relationship with an adult-or even another child. Nobody would suggest that children be allowed to smoke and drink or work for a living. Society is convinced that children are not ready to make responsible decisions regarding these adult activities. And any caring mother knows children are not ready for sexual relations.
BREAKING THE CHAINS
Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of Kinsey's report on male sexuality. As such, it is likely that advocates of Kinseyan sex education will stage widespread celebrations. But Kinsey has given us nothing to celebrate. Fifty years of his deception have moved our culture into a world of sexual and moral relativity. With this, we now have epidemic levels of rape, sexually transmitted diseases, illegitimacy, child molestation, promiscuity, pornography, and broken lives.
America has bought into the Kinsey lie far too long. As parents, educators, and concerned citizens, we need to stand up to this assault on our children. At last, someone is fighting back. Concerned Women for America has ignited a campaign designed to expose Kinsey's lie. Watch for information in future issues of Family Voice. And listen to our daily radio program, "Beverly LaHaye Live," for updates.
"With God's help, we can win this battle in our communities, our states-and even our nation's capital," says Beverly LaHaye, CWA Chairman and Founder. "America's children deserve a chance to grow up unfettered by the chains of premature sexualization."
What you can do:
Write letters to editors, your legislators, and school board members . . .
Watch for evidence of the Kinsey philosophy in your children's sex education curriculum . . .
Educate your friends, family, and church members on this issue.
SIDEBARS
SEXPERTS
The American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT) requires a Sexual Attitude Reassessment (SAR) Seminar for professional certification. Reassessment (originally called "Restructuring") was changed to "make the intent to influence thinking less obvious," according to sexologist Edward W. Eichel.
Dr. Wardell Pomeroy, Kinsey's co-author, described a typical SAR seminar: "We project several films onto a series of screens simultaneously. They vary in content from 'hard porn' homosexuality to milder loving themes . . . [T]he results are very interesting and useful." . . . Just how useful are they?
Dr. Mary Calderone, co-founder of SIECUS, embraced homosexuality after being subjected to this type of brainwashing. According to author Randy Engel, "She viewed a homosexual couple keeping house and then engaging in homosexual lovemaking (i.e., mutual stimulation and sodomy.)" She said, "I went out walking on air, because now I knew what homosexuals did . . . I felt good about them from that moment on." [Cited in "The Pivotal Role of SIECUS," The Wanderer, June 22, 1989, p.9].
Parents have reason to be concerned. Sex educators are now using this same method of sensory overload and disorientation to pervert our children in school. "About Your Sexuality," sponsored by the Unitarian Universalists, is an example of just such a program. And this program is making inroads into mainstream Christianity. If children enrolled in this sex education class have a problem accepting homosexuality, what are they told? To watch it over and over again . . . Get the picture?
HEFNER
No discussion of Alfred Kinsey would be complete without mention of the founder of Playboy magazine-the man who preached hatred against women, exploited children, and raged against the family.
Hugh Hefner read Kinsey's reports, founded Playboy magazine, and divorced his wife Millie. "We believe . . . we are filling a publishing need only slightly less important than one just taken care of by the Kinsey Report," he wrote in his first issue. Everybody makes reference to the "Playboy" philosophy, but Kinsey is the true point man.
In 1958, Kinsey won a court case allowing him to import pornography for his sex studies. The favorable ruling struck down Abraham Lincoln's 1865 postal laws, which outlawed vulgar materials. Heffner then used that precedent to petition for the right to distribute "obscenity" through the mail-igniting America's porn industry.
Before Hefner, real men scorned pornography. Real men had relationships with their wives. Even libertarian sex researchers concluded-much to their chagrin-that most men of the 1950s and 1960s actually "saved" themselves for marriage. They considered sex "too precious" to share with anyone but their wives. Premarital sex, they believed, was harmful.
But Playboy made commitment a dirty word. The magazine counseled men to love 'em and leave 'em-fast. It featured cartoons sexualizing children and phony letters from women extolling bizarre sex practices. It belittled marriage and encouraged drug use.
Years later, reports leaked out that Hefner had not only performed in a homosexual porn film, but had also admitted to long-term drug use. Was his revolution successful? The bitter fruit of his life's work is all around him: self-stimulation using pornography-instead of marital intimacy; rape; unplanned pregnancies and abortions; STDs; AIDS; fatherlessness; divorce; welfare moms; child abuse; juvenile crime; drugs; and deviant sex without love or commitment.
Labels: Sex
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Ben Stein - A few confessions
If they know of him at all, many folks think Ben Stein is just a quirky actor/comedian who talks in a monotone, and has a show called Winning Ben Stein's money. He's also a very intelligent attorney who knows how to put ideas and words together in such a way as to sway juries and make people think clearly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary, Sunday, 12/18/05.
Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart: I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important?
I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.
Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are.
If this is what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.
Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees.
It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.
I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution, and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.
Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?
I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too.
But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.
In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.
Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this Happen?" (regarding Katrina)
Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.
And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"
In light of recent events...terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.
Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.
Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said OK.
Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.
Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."
Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell.
Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.
Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.
Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.
Are you laughing?
Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.
Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.
Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary, Sunday, 12/18/05.
Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart: I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important?
I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.
Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are.
If this is what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.
Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees.
It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.
I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution, and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.
Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?
I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too.
But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.
In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.
Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this Happen?" (regarding Katrina)
Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.
And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"
In light of recent events...terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.
Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.
Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said OK.
Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.
Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."
Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell.
Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.
Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.
Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.
Are you laughing?
Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.
Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.
Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Why Americans Will Believe Almost Anything
The Doors Of Perception: Why Americans Will Believe Almost Anything
by Dr. Tim O'Shea
We are the most conditioned, programmed beings the world has ever known. Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased.
The doors of our perception are carefully and precisely regulated. Who cares, right?
It is an exhausting and endless task to keep explaining to people how most issues of conventional wisdom are scientifically implanted in the public consciousness by a thousand media clips per day. In an effort to save time, I would like to provide just a little background on the handling of information in this country.
Once the basic principles are illustrated about how our current system of media control arose historically, the reader might be more apt to question any given story in today's news.
If everybody believes something, it's probably wrong. We call that Conventional Wisdom.
In America, conventional wisdom that has mass acceptance is usually contrived: somebody paid for it. Examples:
· Pharmaceuticals restore health
· Vaccination brings immunity
· The cure for cancer is just around the corner
· When a child is sick, he needs immediate antibiotics
· When a child has a fever he needs Tylenol
· Hospitals are safe and clean.
· America has the best health care in the world.
· And many, many more
This is a list of illusions that have cost billions and billions to conjure up. Did you ever wonder why you never see the President speaking publicly unless he is reading? Or why most people in this country think generally the same about most of the above issues?
How This Set-Up Got Started
In Trust Us We're Experts, Stauber and Rampton pull together some compelling data describing the science of creating public opinion in America.
They trace modern public influence back to the early part of the last century, highlighting the work of guys like Edward L. Bernays, the Father of Spin. From his own amazing chronicle Propaganda, we learn how Edward L. Bernays took the ideas of his famous uncle Sigmund Freud himself, and applied them to the emerging science of mass persuasion.
The only difference was that instead of using these principles to uncover hidden themes in the human unconscious, the way Freudian psychology does, Bernays used these same ideas to mask agendas and to create illusions that deceive and misrepresent, for marketing purposes.
The Father Of Spin
Bernays dominated the PR industry until the 1940s, and was a significant force for another 40 years after that. (Tye) During all that time, Bernays took on hundreds of diverse assignments to create a public perception about some idea or product. A few examples:
As a neophyte with the Committee on Public Information, one of Bernays' first assignments was to help sell the First World War to the American public with the idea to "Make the World Safe for Democracy." (Ewen)
A few years later, Bernays set up a stunt to popularize the notion of women smoking cigarettes. In organizing the 1929 Easter Parade in New York City, Bernays showed himself as a force to be reckoned with.
He organized the Torches of Liberty Brigade in which suffragettes marched in the parade smoking cigarettes as a mark of women's liberation. Such publicity followed from that one event that from then on women have felt secure about destroying their own lungs in public, the same way that men have always done.
Bernays popularized the idea of bacon for breakfast.
Not one to turn down a challenge, he set up the advertising format along with the AMA that lasted for nearly 50 years proving that cigarettes are beneficial to health. Just look at ads in issues of Life or Time from the 40s and 50s.
Smoke And Mirrors
Bernay's job was to reframe an issue; to create a desired image that would put a particular product or concept in a desirable light. Bernays described the public as a 'herd that needed to be led.' And this herdlike thinking makes people "susceptible to leadership."
Bernays never deviated from his fundamental axiom to "control the masses without their knowing it." The best PR happens with the people unaware that they are being manipulated.
Stauber describes Bernays' rationale like this:
"the scientific manipulation of public opinion was necessary to overcome chaos and conflict in a democratic society." Trust Us p 42
These early mass persuaders postured themselves as performing a moral service for humanity in general - democracy was too good for people; they needed to be told what to think, because they were incapable of rational thought by themselves. Here's a paragraph from Bernays' Propaganda:
"Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of.
This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
In almost every act of our lives whether in the sphere of politics or business in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind."
Here Comes The Money
Once the possibilities of applying Freudian psychology to mass media were glimpsed, Bernays soon had more corporate clients than he could handle. Global corporations fell all over themselves courting the new Image Makers. There were dozens of goods and services and ideas to be sold to a susceptible public. Over the years, these players have had the money to make their images happen. A few examples:
· Philip Morris
· Pfizer
· Union Carbide
· Allstate
· Monsanto
· Eli Lilly
· tobacco industry
· Ciba Geigy
· lead industry
· Coors
· DuPont
· Chlorox
· Shell Oil
· Standard Oil
· Procter & Gamble
· Boeing
· General Motors
· Dow Chemical
· General Mills
· Goodyear
The PlayersThough world-famous within the PR industry, the companies have names we don't know, and for good reason.
The best PR goes unnoticed.
For decades they have created the opinions that most of us were raised with, on virtually any issue which has the remotest commercial value, including:
· pharmaceutical drugs
· vaccines
· medicine as a profession
· alternative medicine
· fluoridation of city water
· chlorine
· household cleaning products
· tobacco
· dioxin
· global warming
· leaded gasoline
· cancer research and treatment
· pollution of the oceans
· forests and lumber
· images of celebrities, including damage control
· crisis and disaster management
· genetically modified foods
· aspartame
· food additives; processed foods
· dental amalgams
Lesson #1
Bernays learned early on that the most effective way to create credibility for a product or an image was by "independent third-party" endorsement.
For example, if General Motors were to come out and say that global warming is a hoax thought up by some liberal tree-huggers, people would suspect GM's motives, since GM's fortune is made by selling automobiles.
If however some independent research institute with a very credible sounding name like the Global Climate Coalition comes out with a scientific report that says global warming is really a fiction, people begin to get confused and to have doubts about the original issue.
So that's exactly what Bernays did. With a policy inspired by genius, he set up "more institutes and foundations than Rockefeller and Carnegie combined." (Stauber p 45)
Quietly financed by the industries whose products were being evaluated, these "independent" research agencies would churn out "scientific" studies and press materials that could create any image their handlers wanted. Such front groups are given high-sounding names like:
· Temperature Research Foundation
· Manhattan Institute
· International Food Information Council
· Center for Produce Quality
· Consumer Alert
· Tobacco Institute Research Council
· The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition
· Cato Institute
· Air Hygiene Foundation
· American Council on Science and Health
· Industrial Health Federation
· Global Climate Coalition
· International Food Information Council
· Alliance for Better Foods
Sound pretty legit, don't they?
Canned News Releases
As Stauber explains, these organizations and hundreds of others like them are front groups whose sole mission is to advance the image of the global corporations who fund them, like those listed above.
This is accomplished in part by an endless stream of 'press releases' announcing "breakthrough" research to every radio station and newspaper in the country. (Robbins) Many of these canned reports read like straight news, and indeed are purposely molded in the news format.
This saves journalists the trouble of researching the subjects on their own, especially on topics about which they know very little. Entire sections of the release or in the case of video news releases, the whole thing can be just lifted intact, with no editing, given the byline of the reporter or newspaper or TV station - and voilá! Instant news - copy and paste. Written by corporate PR firms.
Does this really happen? Every single day, since the 1920s when the idea of the News Release was first invented by Ivy Lee. (Stauber, p 22) Sometimes as many as half the stories appearing in an issue of the Wall St. Journal are based solely on such PR press releases.. (22)
These types of stories are mixed right in with legitimately researched stories. Unless you have done the research yourself, you won't be able to tell the difference.
The Language Of Spin
As 1920s spin pioneers like Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays gained more experience, they began to formulate rules and guidelines for creating public opinion. They learned quickly that mob psychology must focus on emotion, not facts. Since the mob is incapable of rational thought, motivation must be based not on logic but on presentation. Here are some of the axioms of the new science of PR:
· technology is a religion unto itself
· if people are incapable of rational thought, real democracy is dangerous
· important decisions should be left to experts
· when reframing issues, stay away from substance; create images
· never state a clearly demonstrable lie
Words are very carefully chosen for their emotional impact. Here's an example. A front group called the International Food Information Council handles the public's natural aversion to genetically modified foods.
Trigger words are repeated all through the text. Now in the case of GM foods, the public is instinctively afraid of these experimental new creations which have suddenly popped up on our grocery shelves which are said to have DNA alterations. The IFIC wants to reassure the public of the safety of GM foods, so it avoids words like:
· Frankenfoods
· Hitler
· biotech
· chemical
· DNA
· experiments
· manipulate
· money
· safety
· scientists
· radiation
· roulette
· gene-splicing
· gene gun
· random
Instead, good PR for GM foods contains words like:
· hybrids
· natural order
· beauty
· choice
· bounty
· cross-breeding
· diversity
· earth
· farmer
· organic
· wholesome
It's basic Freudian/Tony Robbins word association. The fact that GM foods are not hybrids that have been subjected to the slow and careful scientific methods of real crossbreeding doesn't really matter. This is pseudoscience, not science. Form is everything and substance just a passing myth. (Trevanian)
Who do you think funds the International Food Information Council? Take a wild guess. Right - Monsanto, DuPont, Frito-Lay, Coca Cola, Nutrasweet - those in a position to make fortunes from GM foods. (Stauber p 20)
Characteristics Of Good Propaganda
As the science of mass control evolved, PR firms developed further guidelines for effective copy. Here are some of the gems:
· dehumanize the attacked party by labeling and name calling
· speak in glittering generalities using emotionally positive words
· when covering something up, don't use plain English; stall for time; distract
· get endorsements from celebrities, churches, sports figures, street people - anyone who has no expertise in the subject at hand
· the 'plain folks' ruse: us billionaires are just like you
· when minimizing outrage, don't say anything memorable, point out the benefits of what just happened, and avoid moral issues
Keep this list. Start watching for these techniques. Not hard to find - look at today's paper or tonight's TV news. See what they're doing; these guys are good!
Science For Hire
PR firms have become very sophisticated in the preparation of news releases. They have learned how to attach the names of famous scientists to research that those scientists have not even looked at. (Stauber, p 201)
This is a common occurrence. In this way the editors of newspapers and TV news shows are often not even aware that an individual release is a total PR fabrication. Or at least they have "deniability," right?
Stauber tells the amazing story of how leaded gas came into the picture. In 1922, General Motors discovered that adding lead to gasoline gave cars more horsepower.
When there was some concern about safety, GM paid the Bureau of Mines to do some fake "testing" and publish spurious research that 'proved' that inhalation of lead was harmless. Enter Charles Kettering.
Founder of the world famous Sloan-Kettering Memorial Institute for medical research, Charles Kettering also happened to be an executive with General Motors.
By some strange coincidence, we soon have the Sloan Kettering institute issuing reports stating that lead occurs naturally in the body and that the body has a way of eliminating low level exposure.
Through its association with The Industrial Hygiene Foundation and PR giant Hill & Knowlton, Sloane Kettering opposed all anti-lead research for years. (Stauber p 92). Without organized scientific opposition, for the next 60 years more and more gasoline became leaded, until by the 1970s, 90% of our gasoline was leaded.
Finally it became too obvious to hide that lead was a major carcinogen, and leaded gas was phased out in the late 1980s. But during those 60 years, it is estimated that some 30 million tons of lead were released in vapor form onto American streets and highways. 30 million tons.
That is PR, my friends.
Junk Science
In 1993 a guy named Peter Huber wrote a new book and coined a new term. The book was Galileo's Revenge and the term was junk science. Huber's shallow thesis was that real science supports technology, industry, and progress.
Anything else was suddenly junk science. Not surprisingly, Stauber explains how Huber's book was supported by the industry-backed Manhattan Institute.
Huber's book was generally dismissed not only because it was so poorly written, but because it failed to realize one fact: true scientific research begins with no conclusions. Real scientists are seeking the truth because they do not yet know what the truth is.
True scientific method goes like this:
1. Form a hypothesis
2. Make predictions for that hypothesis
3. Test the predictions
4. Reject or revise the hypothesis based on the research findings
Boston University scientist Dr. David Ozonoff explains that ideas in science are themselves like "living organisms, that must be nourished, supported, and cultivated with resources for making them grow and flourish." (Stauber p 205)
Great ideas that don't get this financial support because the commercial angles are not immediately obvious - these ideas wither and die.
Another way you can often distinguish real science from phony is that real science points out flaws in its own research. Phony science pretends there were no flaws.
The Real Junk Science
Contrast this with modern PR and its constant pretensions to sound science. Corporate sponsored research, whether it's in the area of drugs, GM foods, or chemistry begins with predetermined conclusions.
It is the job of the scientists then to prove that these conclusions are true, because of the economic upside that proof will bring to the industries paying for that research. This invidious approach to science has shifted the entire focus of research in America during the past 50 years, as any true scientist is likely to admit.
Stauber documents the increasing amount of corporate sponsorship of university research. (206) This has nothing to do with the pursuit of knowledge. Scientists lament that research has become just another commodity, something bought and sold. (Crossen)
The Two Main Targets Of "Sound Science"
It is shocking when Stauber shows how the vast majority of corporate PR today opposes any research that seeks to protect
· public health
· the environment
It's a funny thing that most of the time when we see the phrase "junk science," it is in a context of defending something that may threaten either the environment or our health.
This makes sense when one realizes that money changes hands only by selling the illusion of health and the illusion of environmental protection. True public health and real preservation of the earth's environment have very low market value.
Stauber thinks it ironic that industry's self-proclaimed debunkers of junk science are usually non-scientists themselves. (255) Here again they can do this because the issue is not science, but the creation of images.
The Language Of Attack
When PR firms attack legitimate environmental groups and alternative medicine people, they again use special words which will carry an emotional punch:
· outraged sound science
· junk science sensible
· scaremongering responsible
· phobia hoax
· alarmist hysteria
The next time you are reading a newspaper article about an environmental or health issue, note how the author shows bias by using the above terms. This is the result of very specialized training.
Another standard PR tactic is to use the rhetoric of the environmentalists themselves to defend a dangerous and untested product that poses an actual threat to the environment. This we see constantly in the PR smokescreen that surrounds genetically modified foods.
They talk about how GM foods are necessary to grow more food and to end world hunger, when the reality is that GM foods actually have lower yields per acre than natural crops. (Stauber p 173)
The grand design sort of comes into focus once you realize that almost all GM foods have been created by the sellers of herbicides and pesticides so that those plants can withstand greater amounts of herbicides and pesticides. (The Magic Bean)
Kill Your TV?
Hope this chapter has given you a hint to start reading newspaper and magazine articles a little differently, and perhaps start watching TV news shows with a slightly different attitude than you had before.
Always ask, what are they selling here, and who's selling it? And if you actually follow up on Stauber & Rampton's book and check out some of the other resources below, you might even glimpse the possibility of advancing your life one quantum simply by ceasing to subject your brain to mass media.
That's right - no more newspapers, no more TV news, no more Time magazine or Newsweek. You could actually do that. Just think what you could do with the extra time alone.
Really feel like you need to "relax" or find out "what's going on in the world" for a few hours every day? Think about the news of the past couple of years for a minute.
Do you really suppose the major stories that have dominated headlines and TV news have been "what is going on in the world?" Do you actually think there's been nothing going on besides the contrived tech slump, the contrived power shortages, the re-filtered accounts of foreign violence and disaster, and all the other non-stories that the puppeteers dangle before us every day?
What about when they get a big one, like with OJ or Monica Lewinsky or the Oklahoma city bombing? Do we really need to know all that detail, day after day? Do we have any way of verifying all that detail, even if we wanted to? What is the purpose of news?
To inform the public? Hardly. The sole purpose of news is to keep the public in a state of fear and uncertainty so that they'll watch again tomorrow and be subjected to the same advertising.
Oversimplification? Of course. That's the mark of mass media mastery - simplicity. The invisible hand. Like Edward Bernays said, the people must be controlled without them knowing it.
Consider this: what was really going on in the world all that time they were distracting us with all that stupid vexatious daily smokescreen? Fear and uncertainty -- that's what keeps people coming back for more.
If this seems like a radical outlook, let's take it one step further:
What would you lose from your life if you stopped watching TV and stopped reading newspapers altogether?
Would your life really suffer any financial, moral, intellectual or academic loss from such a decision?
Do you really need to have your family continually absorbing the illiterate, amoral, phony, uncultivated, desperately brainless values of the people featured in the average nightly TV program? Are these fake, programmed robots "normal"?
Do you need to have your life values constantly spoon-fed to you?
Are those shows really amusing, or just a necessary distraction to keep you from looking at reality, or trying to figure things out yourself by doing a little independent reading?
Name one example of how your life is improved by watching TV news and reading the evening paper.
What measurable gain is there for you?
Planet of the Apes?
There's no question that as a nation, we're getting dumber year by year. Look at the presidents we've been choosing lately. Ever notice the blatant grammar mistakes so ubiquitous in today's advertising and billboards?
Literacy is marginal in most American secondary schools. Three fourths of California high school seniors can't read well enough to pass their exit exams. (SJ Mercury 20 Jul 01)
If you think other parts of the country are smarter, try this one: hand any high school senior a book by Dumas or Jane Austen, and ask them to open to any random page and just read one paragraph out loud. Go ahead, do it. SAT scales are arbitrarily shifted lower and lower to disguise how dumb kids are getting year by year.
At least 10% have documented "learning disabilities," which are reinforced and rewarded by special treatment and special drugs. Ever hear of anyone failing a grade any more?
Or observe the intellectual level of the average movie which these days may only last one or two weeks in the theatres, especially if it has insufficient explosions, chase scenes, silicone, fake martial arts, and cretinesque dialogue.
Radio? Consider the low mental qualifications of the falsely animated corporate simians they hire as DJs -- they're only allowed to have 50 thoughts, which they just repeat at random.
And at what point did popular music cease to require the study of any musical instrument or theory whatsoever, not to mention lyric? Perhaps we just don't understand this emerging art form, right? The Darwinism of MTV - apes descended from man.
Ever notice how most articles in any of the glossy magazines sound like they were all written by the same guy? And this guy just graduated from junior college? And yet he has all the correct opinions on social issues, no original ideas, and that shallow, smug, homogenized corporate omniscience, which enables him to assure us that everything is going to be fine...
All this is great news for the PR industry - makes their job that much easier. Not only are very few paying attention to the process of conditioning; fewer are capable of understanding it even if somebody explained it to them.
Tea In the Cafeteria
Let's say you're in a crowded cafeteria, and you buy a cup of tea. And as you're about to sit down you see your friend way across the room. So you put the tea down and walk across the room and talk to your friend for a few minutes.
Now, coming back to your tea, are you just going to pick it up and drink it? Remember, this is a crowded place and you've just left your tea unattended for several minutes. You've given anybody in that room access to your tea.
Why should your mind be any different? Turning on the TV, or uncritically absorbing mass publications every day - these activities allow access to our minds by "just anyone" - anyone who has an agenda, anyone with the resources to create a public image via popular media.
As we've seen above, just because we read something or see something on TV doesn't mean it's true or worth knowing. So the idea here is, like the tea, the mind is also worth guarding, worth limiting access to it.
This is the only life we get. Time is our total capital. Why waste it allowing our potential, our personality, our values to be shaped, crafted, and limited according to the whims of the mass panderers?
There are many important issues that are crucial to our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. If it's an issue where money is involved, objective data won't be so easy to obtain. Remember, if everybody knows something, that image has been bought and paid for.
Real knowledge takes a little effort, a little excavation down at least one level below what "everybody knows."
HOSEA 4:6 "My people are destroyed from the lack of knowledge"
References
Stauber & Rampton, "Trust Us, We're Experts", Tarcher/Putnam 2001
Ewen, Stuart PR!: A Social History of Spin 1996 ISBN: 0-465-06168-0 Published by Basic Books, A Division of Harper Collins
Tye, Larry The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations Crown Publishers, Inc. 2001
King, R Medical journals rarely disclose researchers' ties Wall St. Journal, 2 Feb 99.
Engler, R et al. Misrepresentation and Responsibility in Medical Research New England Journal of Medicine v 317 p 1383 26 Nov 1987
Black, D PhD Health At the Crossroads Tapestry 1988. revanian Shibumi 1983.
Crossen, C Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America 1996.
Robbins, J Reclaiming Our Health Kramer 1996.
O'Shea T The Magic Bean 2000.
Inhibitory effect of conjugated dienoic derivatives of linoleic acid and beta-carotene on the in vitro growth of human cancer cells CANCER LETT. (Ireland) , 1992, 63/2 (125-133)
Inhibition of Listeria monocytogenes by fatty acids and monoglycerides APPL. ENVIRON. MICROBIOL. (USA) , 1992, 58/2 (624-629)
by Dr. Tim O'Shea
We are the most conditioned, programmed beings the world has ever known. Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased.
The doors of our perception are carefully and precisely regulated. Who cares, right?
It is an exhausting and endless task to keep explaining to people how most issues of conventional wisdom are scientifically implanted in the public consciousness by a thousand media clips per day. In an effort to save time, I would like to provide just a little background on the handling of information in this country.
Once the basic principles are illustrated about how our current system of media control arose historically, the reader might be more apt to question any given story in today's news.
If everybody believes something, it's probably wrong. We call that Conventional Wisdom.
In America, conventional wisdom that has mass acceptance is usually contrived: somebody paid for it. Examples:
· Pharmaceuticals restore health
· Vaccination brings immunity
· The cure for cancer is just around the corner
· When a child is sick, he needs immediate antibiotics
· When a child has a fever he needs Tylenol
· Hospitals are safe and clean.
· America has the best health care in the world.
· And many, many more
This is a list of illusions that have cost billions and billions to conjure up. Did you ever wonder why you never see the President speaking publicly unless he is reading? Or why most people in this country think generally the same about most of the above issues?
How This Set-Up Got Started
In Trust Us We're Experts, Stauber and Rampton pull together some compelling data describing the science of creating public opinion in America.
They trace modern public influence back to the early part of the last century, highlighting the work of guys like Edward L. Bernays, the Father of Spin. From his own amazing chronicle Propaganda, we learn how Edward L. Bernays took the ideas of his famous uncle Sigmund Freud himself, and applied them to the emerging science of mass persuasion.
The only difference was that instead of using these principles to uncover hidden themes in the human unconscious, the way Freudian psychology does, Bernays used these same ideas to mask agendas and to create illusions that deceive and misrepresent, for marketing purposes.
The Father Of Spin
Bernays dominated the PR industry until the 1940s, and was a significant force for another 40 years after that. (Tye) During all that time, Bernays took on hundreds of diverse assignments to create a public perception about some idea or product. A few examples:
As a neophyte with the Committee on Public Information, one of Bernays' first assignments was to help sell the First World War to the American public with the idea to "Make the World Safe for Democracy." (Ewen)
A few years later, Bernays set up a stunt to popularize the notion of women smoking cigarettes. In organizing the 1929 Easter Parade in New York City, Bernays showed himself as a force to be reckoned with.
He organized the Torches of Liberty Brigade in which suffragettes marched in the parade smoking cigarettes as a mark of women's liberation. Such publicity followed from that one event that from then on women have felt secure about destroying their own lungs in public, the same way that men have always done.
Bernays popularized the idea of bacon for breakfast.
Not one to turn down a challenge, he set up the advertising format along with the AMA that lasted for nearly 50 years proving that cigarettes are beneficial to health. Just look at ads in issues of Life or Time from the 40s and 50s.
Smoke And Mirrors
Bernay's job was to reframe an issue; to create a desired image that would put a particular product or concept in a desirable light. Bernays described the public as a 'herd that needed to be led.' And this herdlike thinking makes people "susceptible to leadership."
Bernays never deviated from his fundamental axiom to "control the masses without their knowing it." The best PR happens with the people unaware that they are being manipulated.
Stauber describes Bernays' rationale like this:
"the scientific manipulation of public opinion was necessary to overcome chaos and conflict in a democratic society." Trust Us p 42
These early mass persuaders postured themselves as performing a moral service for humanity in general - democracy was too good for people; they needed to be told what to think, because they were incapable of rational thought by themselves. Here's a paragraph from Bernays' Propaganda:
"Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of.
This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
In almost every act of our lives whether in the sphere of politics or business in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind."
Here Comes The Money
Once the possibilities of applying Freudian psychology to mass media were glimpsed, Bernays soon had more corporate clients than he could handle. Global corporations fell all over themselves courting the new Image Makers. There were dozens of goods and services and ideas to be sold to a susceptible public. Over the years, these players have had the money to make their images happen. A few examples:
· Philip Morris
· Pfizer
· Union Carbide
· Allstate
· Monsanto
· Eli Lilly
· tobacco industry
· Ciba Geigy
· lead industry
· Coors
· DuPont
· Chlorox
· Shell Oil
· Standard Oil
· Procter & Gamble
· Boeing
· General Motors
· Dow Chemical
· General Mills
· Goodyear
The PlayersThough world-famous within the PR industry, the companies have names we don't know, and for good reason.
The best PR goes unnoticed.
For decades they have created the opinions that most of us were raised with, on virtually any issue which has the remotest commercial value, including:
· pharmaceutical drugs
· vaccines
· medicine as a profession
· alternative medicine
· fluoridation of city water
· chlorine
· household cleaning products
· tobacco
· dioxin
· global warming
· leaded gasoline
· cancer research and treatment
· pollution of the oceans
· forests and lumber
· images of celebrities, including damage control
· crisis and disaster management
· genetically modified foods
· aspartame
· food additives; processed foods
· dental amalgams
Lesson #1
Bernays learned early on that the most effective way to create credibility for a product or an image was by "independent third-party" endorsement.
For example, if General Motors were to come out and say that global warming is a hoax thought up by some liberal tree-huggers, people would suspect GM's motives, since GM's fortune is made by selling automobiles.
If however some independent research institute with a very credible sounding name like the Global Climate Coalition comes out with a scientific report that says global warming is really a fiction, people begin to get confused and to have doubts about the original issue.
So that's exactly what Bernays did. With a policy inspired by genius, he set up "more institutes and foundations than Rockefeller and Carnegie combined." (Stauber p 45)
Quietly financed by the industries whose products were being evaluated, these "independent" research agencies would churn out "scientific" studies and press materials that could create any image their handlers wanted. Such front groups are given high-sounding names like:
· Temperature Research Foundation
· Manhattan Institute
· International Food Information Council
· Center for Produce Quality
· Consumer Alert
· Tobacco Institute Research Council
· The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition
· Cato Institute
· Air Hygiene Foundation
· American Council on Science and Health
· Industrial Health Federation
· Global Climate Coalition
· International Food Information Council
· Alliance for Better Foods
Sound pretty legit, don't they?
Canned News Releases
As Stauber explains, these organizations and hundreds of others like them are front groups whose sole mission is to advance the image of the global corporations who fund them, like those listed above.
This is accomplished in part by an endless stream of 'press releases' announcing "breakthrough" research to every radio station and newspaper in the country. (Robbins) Many of these canned reports read like straight news, and indeed are purposely molded in the news format.
This saves journalists the trouble of researching the subjects on their own, especially on topics about which they know very little. Entire sections of the release or in the case of video news releases, the whole thing can be just lifted intact, with no editing, given the byline of the reporter or newspaper or TV station - and voilá! Instant news - copy and paste. Written by corporate PR firms.
Does this really happen? Every single day, since the 1920s when the idea of the News Release was first invented by Ivy Lee. (Stauber, p 22) Sometimes as many as half the stories appearing in an issue of the Wall St. Journal are based solely on such PR press releases.. (22)
These types of stories are mixed right in with legitimately researched stories. Unless you have done the research yourself, you won't be able to tell the difference.
The Language Of Spin
As 1920s spin pioneers like Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays gained more experience, they began to formulate rules and guidelines for creating public opinion. They learned quickly that mob psychology must focus on emotion, not facts. Since the mob is incapable of rational thought, motivation must be based not on logic but on presentation. Here are some of the axioms of the new science of PR:
· technology is a religion unto itself
· if people are incapable of rational thought, real democracy is dangerous
· important decisions should be left to experts
· when reframing issues, stay away from substance; create images
· never state a clearly demonstrable lie
Words are very carefully chosen for their emotional impact. Here's an example. A front group called the International Food Information Council handles the public's natural aversion to genetically modified foods.
Trigger words are repeated all through the text. Now in the case of GM foods, the public is instinctively afraid of these experimental new creations which have suddenly popped up on our grocery shelves which are said to have DNA alterations. The IFIC wants to reassure the public of the safety of GM foods, so it avoids words like:
· Frankenfoods
· Hitler
· biotech
· chemical
· DNA
· experiments
· manipulate
· money
· safety
· scientists
· radiation
· roulette
· gene-splicing
· gene gun
· random
Instead, good PR for GM foods contains words like:
· hybrids
· natural order
· beauty
· choice
· bounty
· cross-breeding
· diversity
· earth
· farmer
· organic
· wholesome
It's basic Freudian/Tony Robbins word association. The fact that GM foods are not hybrids that have been subjected to the slow and careful scientific methods of real crossbreeding doesn't really matter. This is pseudoscience, not science. Form is everything and substance just a passing myth. (Trevanian)
Who do you think funds the International Food Information Council? Take a wild guess. Right - Monsanto, DuPont, Frito-Lay, Coca Cola, Nutrasweet - those in a position to make fortunes from GM foods. (Stauber p 20)
Characteristics Of Good Propaganda
As the science of mass control evolved, PR firms developed further guidelines for effective copy. Here are some of the gems:
· dehumanize the attacked party by labeling and name calling
· speak in glittering generalities using emotionally positive words
· when covering something up, don't use plain English; stall for time; distract
· get endorsements from celebrities, churches, sports figures, street people - anyone who has no expertise in the subject at hand
· the 'plain folks' ruse: us billionaires are just like you
· when minimizing outrage, don't say anything memorable, point out the benefits of what just happened, and avoid moral issues
Keep this list. Start watching for these techniques. Not hard to find - look at today's paper or tonight's TV news. See what they're doing; these guys are good!
Science For Hire
PR firms have become very sophisticated in the preparation of news releases. They have learned how to attach the names of famous scientists to research that those scientists have not even looked at. (Stauber, p 201)
This is a common occurrence. In this way the editors of newspapers and TV news shows are often not even aware that an individual release is a total PR fabrication. Or at least they have "deniability," right?
Stauber tells the amazing story of how leaded gas came into the picture. In 1922, General Motors discovered that adding lead to gasoline gave cars more horsepower.
When there was some concern about safety, GM paid the Bureau of Mines to do some fake "testing" and publish spurious research that 'proved' that inhalation of lead was harmless. Enter Charles Kettering.
Founder of the world famous Sloan-Kettering Memorial Institute for medical research, Charles Kettering also happened to be an executive with General Motors.
By some strange coincidence, we soon have the Sloan Kettering institute issuing reports stating that lead occurs naturally in the body and that the body has a way of eliminating low level exposure.
Through its association with The Industrial Hygiene Foundation and PR giant Hill & Knowlton, Sloane Kettering opposed all anti-lead research for years. (Stauber p 92). Without organized scientific opposition, for the next 60 years more and more gasoline became leaded, until by the 1970s, 90% of our gasoline was leaded.
Finally it became too obvious to hide that lead was a major carcinogen, and leaded gas was phased out in the late 1980s. But during those 60 years, it is estimated that some 30 million tons of lead were released in vapor form onto American streets and highways. 30 million tons.
That is PR, my friends.
Junk Science
In 1993 a guy named Peter Huber wrote a new book and coined a new term. The book was Galileo's Revenge and the term was junk science. Huber's shallow thesis was that real science supports technology, industry, and progress.
Anything else was suddenly junk science. Not surprisingly, Stauber explains how Huber's book was supported by the industry-backed Manhattan Institute.
Huber's book was generally dismissed not only because it was so poorly written, but because it failed to realize one fact: true scientific research begins with no conclusions. Real scientists are seeking the truth because they do not yet know what the truth is.
True scientific method goes like this:
1. Form a hypothesis
2. Make predictions for that hypothesis
3. Test the predictions
4. Reject or revise the hypothesis based on the research findings
Boston University scientist Dr. David Ozonoff explains that ideas in science are themselves like "living organisms, that must be nourished, supported, and cultivated with resources for making them grow and flourish." (Stauber p 205)
Great ideas that don't get this financial support because the commercial angles are not immediately obvious - these ideas wither and die.
Another way you can often distinguish real science from phony is that real science points out flaws in its own research. Phony science pretends there were no flaws.
The Real Junk Science
Contrast this with modern PR and its constant pretensions to sound science. Corporate sponsored research, whether it's in the area of drugs, GM foods, or chemistry begins with predetermined conclusions.
It is the job of the scientists then to prove that these conclusions are true, because of the economic upside that proof will bring to the industries paying for that research. This invidious approach to science has shifted the entire focus of research in America during the past 50 years, as any true scientist is likely to admit.
Stauber documents the increasing amount of corporate sponsorship of university research. (206) This has nothing to do with the pursuit of knowledge. Scientists lament that research has become just another commodity, something bought and sold. (Crossen)
The Two Main Targets Of "Sound Science"
It is shocking when Stauber shows how the vast majority of corporate PR today opposes any research that seeks to protect
· public health
· the environment
It's a funny thing that most of the time when we see the phrase "junk science," it is in a context of defending something that may threaten either the environment or our health.
This makes sense when one realizes that money changes hands only by selling the illusion of health and the illusion of environmental protection. True public health and real preservation of the earth's environment have very low market value.
Stauber thinks it ironic that industry's self-proclaimed debunkers of junk science are usually non-scientists themselves. (255) Here again they can do this because the issue is not science, but the creation of images.
The Language Of Attack
When PR firms attack legitimate environmental groups and alternative medicine people, they again use special words which will carry an emotional punch:
· outraged sound science
· junk science sensible
· scaremongering responsible
· phobia hoax
· alarmist hysteria
The next time you are reading a newspaper article about an environmental or health issue, note how the author shows bias by using the above terms. This is the result of very specialized training.
Another standard PR tactic is to use the rhetoric of the environmentalists themselves to defend a dangerous and untested product that poses an actual threat to the environment. This we see constantly in the PR smokescreen that surrounds genetically modified foods.
They talk about how GM foods are necessary to grow more food and to end world hunger, when the reality is that GM foods actually have lower yields per acre than natural crops. (Stauber p 173)
The grand design sort of comes into focus once you realize that almost all GM foods have been created by the sellers of herbicides and pesticides so that those plants can withstand greater amounts of herbicides and pesticides. (The Magic Bean)
Kill Your TV?
Hope this chapter has given you a hint to start reading newspaper and magazine articles a little differently, and perhaps start watching TV news shows with a slightly different attitude than you had before.
Always ask, what are they selling here, and who's selling it? And if you actually follow up on Stauber & Rampton's book and check out some of the other resources below, you might even glimpse the possibility of advancing your life one quantum simply by ceasing to subject your brain to mass media.
That's right - no more newspapers, no more TV news, no more Time magazine or Newsweek. You could actually do that. Just think what you could do with the extra time alone.
Really feel like you need to "relax" or find out "what's going on in the world" for a few hours every day? Think about the news of the past couple of years for a minute.
Do you really suppose the major stories that have dominated headlines and TV news have been "what is going on in the world?" Do you actually think there's been nothing going on besides the contrived tech slump, the contrived power shortages, the re-filtered accounts of foreign violence and disaster, and all the other non-stories that the puppeteers dangle before us every day?
What about when they get a big one, like with OJ or Monica Lewinsky or the Oklahoma city bombing? Do we really need to know all that detail, day after day? Do we have any way of verifying all that detail, even if we wanted to? What is the purpose of news?
To inform the public? Hardly. The sole purpose of news is to keep the public in a state of fear and uncertainty so that they'll watch again tomorrow and be subjected to the same advertising.
Oversimplification? Of course. That's the mark of mass media mastery - simplicity. The invisible hand. Like Edward Bernays said, the people must be controlled without them knowing it.
Consider this: what was really going on in the world all that time they were distracting us with all that stupid vexatious daily smokescreen? Fear and uncertainty -- that's what keeps people coming back for more.
If this seems like a radical outlook, let's take it one step further:
What would you lose from your life if you stopped watching TV and stopped reading newspapers altogether?
Would your life really suffer any financial, moral, intellectual or academic loss from such a decision?
Do you really need to have your family continually absorbing the illiterate, amoral, phony, uncultivated, desperately brainless values of the people featured in the average nightly TV program? Are these fake, programmed robots "normal"?
Do you need to have your life values constantly spoon-fed to you?
Are those shows really amusing, or just a necessary distraction to keep you from looking at reality, or trying to figure things out yourself by doing a little independent reading?
Name one example of how your life is improved by watching TV news and reading the evening paper.
What measurable gain is there for you?
Planet of the Apes?
There's no question that as a nation, we're getting dumber year by year. Look at the presidents we've been choosing lately. Ever notice the blatant grammar mistakes so ubiquitous in today's advertising and billboards?
Literacy is marginal in most American secondary schools. Three fourths of California high school seniors can't read well enough to pass their exit exams. (SJ Mercury 20 Jul 01)
If you think other parts of the country are smarter, try this one: hand any high school senior a book by Dumas or Jane Austen, and ask them to open to any random page and just read one paragraph out loud. Go ahead, do it. SAT scales are arbitrarily shifted lower and lower to disguise how dumb kids are getting year by year.
At least 10% have documented "learning disabilities," which are reinforced and rewarded by special treatment and special drugs. Ever hear of anyone failing a grade any more?
Or observe the intellectual level of the average movie which these days may only last one or two weeks in the theatres, especially if it has insufficient explosions, chase scenes, silicone, fake martial arts, and cretinesque dialogue.
Radio? Consider the low mental qualifications of the falsely animated corporate simians they hire as DJs -- they're only allowed to have 50 thoughts, which they just repeat at random.
And at what point did popular music cease to require the study of any musical instrument or theory whatsoever, not to mention lyric? Perhaps we just don't understand this emerging art form, right? The Darwinism of MTV - apes descended from man.
Ever notice how most articles in any of the glossy magazines sound like they were all written by the same guy? And this guy just graduated from junior college? And yet he has all the correct opinions on social issues, no original ideas, and that shallow, smug, homogenized corporate omniscience, which enables him to assure us that everything is going to be fine...
All this is great news for the PR industry - makes their job that much easier. Not only are very few paying attention to the process of conditioning; fewer are capable of understanding it even if somebody explained it to them.
Tea In the Cafeteria
Let's say you're in a crowded cafeteria, and you buy a cup of tea. And as you're about to sit down you see your friend way across the room. So you put the tea down and walk across the room and talk to your friend for a few minutes.
Now, coming back to your tea, are you just going to pick it up and drink it? Remember, this is a crowded place and you've just left your tea unattended for several minutes. You've given anybody in that room access to your tea.
Why should your mind be any different? Turning on the TV, or uncritically absorbing mass publications every day - these activities allow access to our minds by "just anyone" - anyone who has an agenda, anyone with the resources to create a public image via popular media.
As we've seen above, just because we read something or see something on TV doesn't mean it's true or worth knowing. So the idea here is, like the tea, the mind is also worth guarding, worth limiting access to it.
This is the only life we get. Time is our total capital. Why waste it allowing our potential, our personality, our values to be shaped, crafted, and limited according to the whims of the mass panderers?
There are many important issues that are crucial to our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. If it's an issue where money is involved, objective data won't be so easy to obtain. Remember, if everybody knows something, that image has been bought and paid for.
Real knowledge takes a little effort, a little excavation down at least one level below what "everybody knows."
HOSEA 4:6 "My people are destroyed from the lack of knowledge"
References
Stauber & Rampton, "Trust Us, We're Experts", Tarcher/Putnam 2001
Ewen, Stuart PR!: A Social History of Spin 1996 ISBN: 0-465-06168-0 Published by Basic Books, A Division of Harper Collins
Tye, Larry The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations Crown Publishers, Inc. 2001
King, R Medical journals rarely disclose researchers' ties Wall St. Journal, 2 Feb 99.
Engler, R et al. Misrepresentation and Responsibility in Medical Research New England Journal of Medicine v 317 p 1383 26 Nov 1987
Black, D PhD Health At the Crossroads Tapestry 1988. revanian Shibumi 1983.
Crossen, C Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America 1996.
Robbins, J Reclaiming Our Health Kramer 1996.
O'Shea T The Magic Bean 2000.
Inhibitory effect of conjugated dienoic derivatives of linoleic acid and beta-carotene on the in vitro growth of human cancer cells CANCER LETT. (Ireland) , 1992, 63/2 (125-133)
Inhibition of Listeria monocytogenes by fatty acids and monoglycerides APPL. ENVIRON. MICROBIOL. (USA) , 1992, 58/2 (624-629)
Thursday, October 05, 2006
The Death of Due Process
Peter Brimelow Archive
The Death of Due Process
By Peter Brimelow, Forbes Magazine, 12.11.00
Dressed to defend justice, Paul Craig Roberts says willy-nilly prosecutions are making the country unsafe.
"THE LEFT IS RIGHT: AMERICA (and Canada too) IS AN UNJUST SOCIETY." Startling words to come from Paul Craig Roberts, 61, an architect (as assistant secretary of the Treasury) of the Reagan tax-cut revolution and now a syndicated columnist and chairman of the Institute for Political Economy. But he's not talking about discrimination or the unequal distribution of wealth. The problem, he says, is this: "Americans are no longer secure in law - the justice system no longer seeks truth and prosecutors are untroubled by wrongful convictions."
Recently, with coauthor Lawrence M. Stratton, a lawyer, Roberts published The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice (Forum, $25). In it he blames the Reagan and Bush administrations' wars on crime and drugs for institutionalizing many of the problems he sees developing. In particular he blames the near-sextupling of assistant U.S. attorneys in the early 1980s for a fatal dilution in prosecutorial standards. The prosecutions are not making the country safer for the law-abiding. They are making it more dangerous.
Historically, Roberts argues, Americans enjoyed the protection of what were termed "the Rights of Englishmen" by 18th-century jurist Sir William Blackstone, whose Commentaries on the Laws of England was a bestseller in the 13 colonies. The broadest of these was the right to due process. That meant punishment by dint of laws and evidence rather than, as has been the case in much of human history and is still the case in much of the world, by dint of a dictator's fiat. A related notion is that there should be no bills of attainder, legislation designed to criminalize a specific individual.
Other rights: to have the confidential assistance of an attorney; to confront adverse witnesses; to be protected from self-incrimination; to demand that the prosecution prove not just an evil deed but an evil intention (called mens rea); and to be protected from retroactive laws. Another English concept was that the government should not go after people by making arbitrary attacks on their property.
Most of these protections were enshrined in our Bill of Rights. And yet most have been subtly but steadily eroded in the U.S., Roberts maintains. "They can seize anyone, and any property, at any time," he says of today's law enforcement agencies. For example, civil cases are now often criminalized, through "novel theories" of the law invented by prosecutors to target specific defendants - very much like a bill of attainder. Plea bargains, traditionally frowned on by English courts because of possible coercion, now conclude 90% to 95% of federal criminal cases, increasing the prosecutors' incentive to pile on indictments - in effect, torturing the defendant (as they have done to me and my family-vinny) - and, in the absence of a court test, reducing the incentive for careful, or even honest, police work. (as they have done to me and my family-vinny) You get an idea of what is going on when you see a newspaper story about a crime (often a white-collar crime) in which there is a detail like this: "If convicted on all counts, so-and-so would be subject to a sentence of 120 years." It seems that every misdeed becomes, in the statute books, a panoply of offences like money laundering and racketeering. By throwing a large statute book at a defendant, the prosecutor can blackmail the culprit (or an innocent person) into a plea bargain.
In the old days punishments were harsh, but they were not arbitrary. You could be hanged for stealing a sheep, but you would not also be charged with conspiracy to commit sheep stealing, wilful evasion of taxes on stolen sheep and diminishing the civil rights of the sheep owner. Attacks on property? Asset forfeiture, aimed at drug dealers when radically extended by Congress in 1984 but now covering 140 other offences, allows seizure on "probable cause" - i.e., at the discretion of police and prosecutors. Proceeds go to the seizing agency, creating a corrupting motive.
This erosion of Americans' historic protections has already caused some public scandal. The spectacle of innocents losing homes, boats and other property because tenants, customers and even passers-by were using drugs caused House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde to introduce legislation this year attempting to rein in forfeiture. Roberts himself got interested when he began writing columns about the Wenatchee, Wash. child sex-abuse case, one of several curious Salem-witch-trial episodes in which numbers of adults have been convicted on the word of children seized and coaxed by investigators into testifying to imagined events (as has happened to my children against me, vinny).
But much of the erosion of historic protections is in the area of white-collar crime-involving hitherto respectable, if less than universally loved, corporations and businesspeople. Roberts here cites, see FORBES (Dec. 1, 1997) in calling attention to the extreme punishments meted out to people involved in essentially civil disputes with the government. What we have at work is an unholy alliance between business-hating liberals and crime-hating social conservatives. Roberts says that the Clinton Administration Justice Department has even introduced a sort of affirmative action to law enforcement, demanding quotas of white-collar prosecutions.
The results, as laid out by Roberts, are certainly disturbing. Savings and loan financier Charles H. Keating Jr. was convicted of the crime of employing fraudulent bond salesmen, even though there was no evidence he knew of their activities, and the crime was not on the books when he supposedly committed it. His conviction was overturned on constitutional grounds after he served 4 1/2 years in jail. Washington lawyer Clark Clifford, then in his 80s, was indicted by the federal government in New York for allegedly accepting bribes in his role as chairman of First American Bankshares. His personal assets were frozen and his credit card was rejected when he tried to pay the chauffeur who drove him to the airport on his way back to Washington, D.C. The case against Clifford was dropped when his partner was acquitted. Exxon Corp. faced cleanup costs and civil tort damages after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, but it was also indicted for intentionally killing migratory birds without a hunting license and dumping refuse without a permit. This "novel theory" allowed the Bush Administration Justice Department to bring criminal charges, which carry massively higher penalties. "Despite the absurdity of the charges," notes Roberts, "Exxon lacked the confidence in our crumbling justice system to go to trial." It settled for a $125 million fine.
The conservative establishment has greeted Robert's apostasy with a stricken silence. His book has not yet been reviewed in the Wall Street Journal or National Review magazine, despite his long connection with both.
Still, conservatives in the field do concede that Roberts has a point, while disputing other aspects of his analysis. "This is something that must eventually surface as an issue with conservatives," says Walter Olson, editor of Overlawyered.com, a legal-reform Web site. "He's right that criminal law, in certain narrow areas, has been made a vehicle for extortion," says Edwin R. Jagels, a famously aggressive district attorney in Kern County, Calif. But Jagels rejects the idea of widespread prosecutorial misconduct and sees no alternative to plea bargains, given crowded dockets. Justice Stephen J. Markman of the Michigan Supreme Court similarly concurs, but adds: "The ultimate responsibility lies with Congress and its penchant for overly broad criminal statutes.
"Roberts, recently moved from D.C. to the Florida panhandle, is unyielding. "They may have dented crime," he says of his former allies, "but they've dented justice, too." With sweeping criminal laws the prosecutor can find some technical charge to hang on just about anybody.
Paul Craig Roberts is the author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.
The Death of Due Process
By Peter Brimelow, Forbes Magazine, 12.11.00
Dressed to defend justice, Paul Craig Roberts says willy-nilly prosecutions are making the country unsafe.
"THE LEFT IS RIGHT: AMERICA (and Canada too) IS AN UNJUST SOCIETY." Startling words to come from Paul Craig Roberts, 61, an architect (as assistant secretary of the Treasury) of the Reagan tax-cut revolution and now a syndicated columnist and chairman of the Institute for Political Economy. But he's not talking about discrimination or the unequal distribution of wealth. The problem, he says, is this: "Americans are no longer secure in law - the justice system no longer seeks truth and prosecutors are untroubled by wrongful convictions."
Recently, with coauthor Lawrence M. Stratton, a lawyer, Roberts published The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice (Forum, $25). In it he blames the Reagan and Bush administrations' wars on crime and drugs for institutionalizing many of the problems he sees developing. In particular he blames the near-sextupling of assistant U.S. attorneys in the early 1980s for a fatal dilution in prosecutorial standards. The prosecutions are not making the country safer for the law-abiding. They are making it more dangerous.
Historically, Roberts argues, Americans enjoyed the protection of what were termed "the Rights of Englishmen" by 18th-century jurist Sir William Blackstone, whose Commentaries on the Laws of England was a bestseller in the 13 colonies. The broadest of these was the right to due process. That meant punishment by dint of laws and evidence rather than, as has been the case in much of human history and is still the case in much of the world, by dint of a dictator's fiat. A related notion is that there should be no bills of attainder, legislation designed to criminalize a specific individual.
Other rights: to have the confidential assistance of an attorney; to confront adverse witnesses; to be protected from self-incrimination; to demand that the prosecution prove not just an evil deed but an evil intention (called mens rea); and to be protected from retroactive laws. Another English concept was that the government should not go after people by making arbitrary attacks on their property.
Most of these protections were enshrined in our Bill of Rights. And yet most have been subtly but steadily eroded in the U.S., Roberts maintains. "They can seize anyone, and any property, at any time," he says of today's law enforcement agencies. For example, civil cases are now often criminalized, through "novel theories" of the law invented by prosecutors to target specific defendants - very much like a bill of attainder. Plea bargains, traditionally frowned on by English courts because of possible coercion, now conclude 90% to 95% of federal criminal cases, increasing the prosecutors' incentive to pile on indictments - in effect, torturing the defendant (as they have done to me and my family-vinny) - and, in the absence of a court test, reducing the incentive for careful, or even honest, police work. (as they have done to me and my family-vinny) You get an idea of what is going on when you see a newspaper story about a crime (often a white-collar crime) in which there is a detail like this: "If convicted on all counts, so-and-so would be subject to a sentence of 120 years." It seems that every misdeed becomes, in the statute books, a panoply of offences like money laundering and racketeering. By throwing a large statute book at a defendant, the prosecutor can blackmail the culprit (or an innocent person) into a plea bargain.
In the old days punishments were harsh, but they were not arbitrary. You could be hanged for stealing a sheep, but you would not also be charged with conspiracy to commit sheep stealing, wilful evasion of taxes on stolen sheep and diminishing the civil rights of the sheep owner. Attacks on property? Asset forfeiture, aimed at drug dealers when radically extended by Congress in 1984 but now covering 140 other offences, allows seizure on "probable cause" - i.e., at the discretion of police and prosecutors. Proceeds go to the seizing agency, creating a corrupting motive.
This erosion of Americans' historic protections has already caused some public scandal. The spectacle of innocents losing homes, boats and other property because tenants, customers and even passers-by were using drugs caused House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde to introduce legislation this year attempting to rein in forfeiture. Roberts himself got interested when he began writing columns about the Wenatchee, Wash. child sex-abuse case, one of several curious Salem-witch-trial episodes in which numbers of adults have been convicted on the word of children seized and coaxed by investigators into testifying to imagined events (as has happened to my children against me, vinny).
But much of the erosion of historic protections is in the area of white-collar crime-involving hitherto respectable, if less than universally loved, corporations and businesspeople. Roberts here cites, see FORBES (Dec. 1, 1997) in calling attention to the extreme punishments meted out to people involved in essentially civil disputes with the government. What we have at work is an unholy alliance between business-hating liberals and crime-hating social conservatives. Roberts says that the Clinton Administration Justice Department has even introduced a sort of affirmative action to law enforcement, demanding quotas of white-collar prosecutions.
The results, as laid out by Roberts, are certainly disturbing. Savings and loan financier Charles H. Keating Jr. was convicted of the crime of employing fraudulent bond salesmen, even though there was no evidence he knew of their activities, and the crime was not on the books when he supposedly committed it. His conviction was overturned on constitutional grounds after he served 4 1/2 years in jail. Washington lawyer Clark Clifford, then in his 80s, was indicted by the federal government in New York for allegedly accepting bribes in his role as chairman of First American Bankshares. His personal assets were frozen and his credit card was rejected when he tried to pay the chauffeur who drove him to the airport on his way back to Washington, D.C. The case against Clifford was dropped when his partner was acquitted. Exxon Corp. faced cleanup costs and civil tort damages after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, but it was also indicted for intentionally killing migratory birds without a hunting license and dumping refuse without a permit. This "novel theory" allowed the Bush Administration Justice Department to bring criminal charges, which carry massively higher penalties. "Despite the absurdity of the charges," notes Roberts, "Exxon lacked the confidence in our crumbling justice system to go to trial." It settled for a $125 million fine.
The conservative establishment has greeted Robert's apostasy with a stricken silence. His book has not yet been reviewed in the Wall Street Journal or National Review magazine, despite his long connection with both.
Still, conservatives in the field do concede that Roberts has a point, while disputing other aspects of his analysis. "This is something that must eventually surface as an issue with conservatives," says Walter Olson, editor of Overlawyered.com, a legal-reform Web site. "He's right that criminal law, in certain narrow areas, has been made a vehicle for extortion," says Edwin R. Jagels, a famously aggressive district attorney in Kern County, Calif. But Jagels rejects the idea of widespread prosecutorial misconduct and sees no alternative to plea bargains, given crowded dockets. Justice Stephen J. Markman of the Michigan Supreme Court similarly concurs, but adds: "The ultimate responsibility lies with Congress and its penchant for overly broad criminal statutes.
"Roberts, recently moved from D.C. to the Florida panhandle, is unyielding. "They may have dented crime," he says of his former allies, "but they've dented justice, too." With sweeping criminal laws the prosecutor can find some technical charge to hang on just about anybody.
Paul Craig Roberts is the author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.
Friday, September 22, 2006
Secret Rumsfeld Meeting To Implement North American Union
Additional Titles
Other Richards Articles:
The Meltdown of Public Health and Personal Freedom
FDA Celebrates Hundred Years of Pretense
MoreRichardsArticles
Any North American Union will have military, political, economic, social, and healthcare strategies for implementation. The secret meeting held in Canada this past week brings to light just how seriously and quickly the Bush administration is moving on this issue.
SECRET RUMSFELD MEETING TO IMPLEMENT NORTH AMERICAN UNION
By Byron J. Richards, CCN
September 22, 2006
NewsWithViews.com
Health Freedom in Jeopardy
There he stood, a man with a captive audience of fellow anti-American neo-cons bent on one world government. His mission: to lay out the military and security integration of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The date: September 13, 2006. The place: Banff Springs Hotel, Alberta, Canada. The forum: a secret meeting of the powerful elite, a meeting that all of a sudden become not so secret. The man: Donald Rumsfeld, point puppet for the Bush administration’s planned integration known as the North American Union. This is serious government collusion behind the backs of the citizens of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It is government for the elite, not government representing the people.
The story was first leaked to Canadian freedom fighters. It did not make it into the mainstream Canadian press, but did appear in the local media. Our Canadian friends have supplied a complete list of attendees as well as the meeting agenda. This secret meeting came to my attention courtesy of John Hammell, president of the International Advocates for Health Freedom. Mr. Hammell has been following the planned North American Union very closely, especially as it relates to the destruction of health freedom in America. He is actively helping our Congressional leaders see the light and needs your support. Urgent action is needed by American citizens to stop this illegal shadow government.
NewsWithViews.com authors have been warning readers of this insidious plan to undermine our nation’s sovereignty for some time, including recent articles by Patrick Wood, Jerome Corsi and Tom DeWeese. Americans need to make this the most important issue in the coming elections.
The Elite Control of Healthcare and Health Options
The public health agenda is typically driven by secretive “national security” plans that, in the current political climate, are governed by the military, Big Pharma, the Department of Homeland Security and the FDA. As I explain in Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA’s Betrayal of America, these seemingly different branches of government and industry are seamlessly blended into one operational unit for the benefit of the elite. Public health has almost nothing to do with your personal health. In fact, totalitarian governments place the control of your health options at the top of their list.
Any North American Union will have military, political, economic, social, and healthcare strategies for implementation. The secret meeting held in Canada this past week brings to light just how seriously and quickly the Bush administration is moving on this issue. It also underscores the importance of a needed Congressional inquiry into the illegal collusion by the FDA and related agencies in Canada and Mexico known as the Trilateral Cooperation Charter.
The FDA, along with Canadian and Mexican health agency partners, has taken a blood oath to keep their activities secret. The FDA did not post this secretive Confidentiality Commitment on their website, apparently Canadian law made them post it. Why would the FDA omit letting Americans know that they are bound to secrecy? What rights do these government organizations have to conspire and plot behind the backs of citizens? They claim their agenda is to stamp our heath fraud—is it really???
Fraud is Now in the Eyes of the Beholder
The FDA tells us that the top priority of this collaboration is enforcement action on fraudulent weight loss products, especially those promoted on the internet.
The FDA plans to trample the rights of American citizens with their campaign. The FDA, Canada, and Mexico plan to define fraud in violation of United States law. Their definition: “The false, deceptive, or misleading promotion, advertisement, distribution, sale, possession for sale, or offering for sale of products or provision of services, intended for human use, that are represented as being safe and/or effective to diagnose, prevent, cure, treat, or mitigate disease (or other conditions), to rehabilitate patients or to provide a beneficial effect on health.”
The FDA is circumventing existing U.S. law known as DSHEA, which gives Americans access to many health options and information on how they work in the body. It is redefining U.S. law as fraud. Especially dangerous is the statement “to provide a beneficial effect on health.” Hundreds of different nutrients provide dramatic beneficial effects on health. Everyone knows that, especially the FDA and Big Pharma. Under the FDA definition of fraud, if the FDA has the opinion that a statement is misleading (and they always negate supplements no matter what evidence is shown to them) then they will brand a product as fraudulent and remove it from the market. This could easily be a highly effective nutritional supplement, a real threat to Big Pharma.
This is nothing but an effort to stamp out all competition to Big Pharma, which of course owns the FDA, a majority of the members of Congress, and the White House (it plans to own any administration that is elected). Big Pharma has billions tied up in weight loss drug development, drugs that will never work because they have dramatic and serious side effects.
As a clinical nutritionist I have helped thousands of people safely and effectively lose weight. I have formulated through my company, Wellness Resources, various products that when used in conjunction with diet and exercise have major beneficial effects on health, including products that assist healthy weight loss. Many other nutritional companies make excellent weight loss products. As the leading nutritional expert on the fat-hormone leptin, I know from first hand experience that individuals have many safe and effective natural options to lose weight and improve metabolism. I see it all the time. Hundreds of thousands of Americans know this to be true and can testify to notable improvements.
The government, especially the FDA, is actually a major contributor to the obesity epidemic. The FDA condones massive adulteration of our food supply to protect the profits of multinational agribusiness and junk food producers at the expense of human health, which are actually a major cause of obesity. Metabolism of our children is seriously damaged by government condoned chemicals. How can the FDA possibly define disease or judge fraud when they are actively causing disease and promoting real fraud?
There is no question that nutritional supplementation offers hope to undo the massive damage our government has done, help restore energy production in the human body, and help repair the human body to get some level of functional health back. The truth is nutritional supplements have a major ability to prevent many diseases and the science to back up the claims.
The FDA is doing everything in its power to prevent Americans from knowing how to get well, under the false guise of consumer protection or consumer safety. Nothing could be a greater health fraud than the FDA claiming to be an agency that cares about consumer safety. Americans are sick and tired of being poisoned to death by billions of dollars of truly fraudulent drugs by an agency that is now bent on becoming a drug company and by the highly toxic food supply condoned by the same agency.
United States courts have routinely ruled against the FDA’s perverse interpretation of DSHEA. To sidestep U.S. law, the FDA is now going into secret arrangements with Canada and Mexico to create a set of regional laws that they will seek to implement into the United States as part of the “harmonization” process of the North American Union and eventual world-wide harmonization through other regional trade agreements and Codex. Thus, cleaning up the filth at the FDA is a front line battle in preventing the North American Union.
© 2006 Truth in Wellness, LLC - All Rights Reserved
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Byron J. Richards, Founder/Director of Wellness Resources, is a Board-Certified Clinical Nutritionist and nationally-renowned health expert, radio personality, educator, and author.
Richards encourages individuals to take charge of their health, stand up for their health rights, and not blindly succumb to propaganda from the vested-interests who profit from keeping Americans sick. Author of Mastering Leptin and Fight for Your Health, Richards is now joining forces with health freedom leaders in the U.S. and throughout the world. Visit his health blog for up to date happenings. http://www.truthinwellness.com/
As founder of Wellness Resources, Inc. of Minneapolis, MN (since 1985), he has personally developed 75 unique nutraceutical-grade nutritional formulas. http://www.wellnessresources.com/
Charter Member of the International and American Associations of Clinical Nutritionists (IAACN) (since 1991) Richards has presented hundreds of educational classes to health professionals and individuals who want to take charge of their health!
E-mail: byron@truthinwellness.com
Home
I Am Angry
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a very accurate picture of what a sad state our countries, Canada and the United States, are in. And unless we wake up out of our induced, hypnotic stuper, it is going to get very much worse. So "WAKE UP" everybody!
I Am Angry
by Susan Fassanella
The Honorable Ron Paul’s piece on why Americans are angry really stirred me to respond. Mr. Paul’s piece speaks about many issues facing Americans today.
I am a 51-year-old woman. I have been married to the same man since 1976. I am the secretary/office manager for a small legal firm in the D.C. suburbs. My husband manages a wine and spirits store. I have two sons, aged 26 and 22. After realizing it wasn’t possible to support themselves and the government at the same time, both returned to the nuclear nest. Along with most people in my economic situation, I believe I am living what is supposed to be the American dream. I know why I am an angry American. I am frightened because America isn’t the same country it was when I was my children’s age. Allow me to share with you some of the reasons why I am an angry American.
1. I am angry because my government has been taken over by liars, thieves, thugs, deviants, and micromanagers. The propaganda it produces rivals that of the most fascist dictatorship.
2. I am angry that my government perceives my intelligence to be that of a jar of pickles incapable of making the smallest decision.
3. I am angry that my government takes it upon itself to shove its clucking nose into my pantry, medicine chest, bedroom, family room, doctor’s office, workplace, and everywhere else it thinks I need guidance to keep me safe from myself.
4. I am angry that the will of the American people is ignored on every issue imaginable. If voting really mattered, it would have been outlawed long ago.
5. I am angry that I am called a conspiracy theorist because I dare to think on my own and question authority and it’s lies.
6. I am angry that the more I read about 9-11 the more it looks like an inside job that was allowed to happen, enabling the Patriot Act to be conveniently enacted into law with the ensuing "war on terrah" following closely on its heels.
7. I am angry that the evil puppets in power think laws are created for the peon masses and it is their right to ignore the ones that get in the way of their agenda.
8. I am angry that the media has sold its soul to the evil forces running the world.
9. I am angry that my "leaders" have taken to calling my country the "homeland." It reeks of socialism.
10. I am angry that my government has invaded yet another sovereign nation and caused untold death and destruction based on a flimsy lie. I am expected to believe that weapons of mass destruction threatened my freedom and then I am told several years and billions of squandered dollars later that a massive intelligence network got the wrong information. A select group of businesses profit enormously from war. When Bush announced his intention to save Iraq from itself and that its oil would pay for the overthrow of Hussein, I laughed so hard I nearly choked. I remember the instability in the Middle East during the 1970s and the gas "shortages" that followed. I knew which direction gas prices would go. How stupid does Mr. Bush and his cronies think I am?
11. I am angry that the world stands silently by while my government bombs foreign lands with weapons containing depleted uranium and the news magazines wonder on their front covers why lung cancer has increased six-fold in the last year.
12. I am angry that Americans accept as gospel the propaganda that is routinely cranked out of the Washington lie machine. The lies become more transparent and brazen with each passing year, yet the only thing that seems to matter in living rooms across America is who will be the next American Idol.
13. I am angry that I am punished with high energy and gas prices and the resulting inflation because tree-hugging terrorists masquerading as environmentalists have handcuffed my country’s ability to produce its own energy. It would be easy to tell the Middle East what to do with their oil if restrictions on exploration and production were lifted in our own backyard.
14. I am angry that I am constantly admonished by minimalists for being a greedy consumer because I live where I choose, drive the vehicle of my choice, eat meat, and use tin foil to cover my leftovers.
15. I am angry that my life doesn’t belong to me anymore.
16. I am angry that I am required to obtain permission, fill out mandated paperwork in quadruplicate, and obtain the correct license or permit for just about everything imaginable. The tentacles of government are strangling my freedom, choice, and privacy at an alarming rate. The wrath of the machine is a constant threat should I dare do anything without leaving a neon paper trail and of course ignorance of the law is never an excuse.
17. I am angry that property rights are a thing of the past thanks to court-approved eminent domain theft.
18. I am angry that the Constitution is routinely declared irrelevant making it easier for a fascist police state and new world order to take over.
19. I am angry that legislation is in the works that will require me to carry "papers" to "prove" who I am. Another coming law I will ignore.
20. I am angry that my right to own and carry a firearm is drastically regulated and restricted.
21. I am angry every time I see a young person detained on the side of the road while cops paw through their possessions looking for anything that could enable them to be arrested and dragged through the criminal justice system. This has become so commonplace it is now the accepted norm.
22. I am angry that roadblocks are set up under the guise of keeping roads free of drunk drivers. What has happened to my right to travel freely? Why am I presumed guilty without probable cause? I am afraid to have a few drinks when I go out to dinner for fear I will be pulled over and end up in court-ordered drug rehabilitation.
23. I am angry when I read stories of Americans terrorized in airports and treated like common criminals by government minions after they have paid for the right to travel within a private system, yet pilots are blocked from carrying firearms.
24. I am angry that America has become a nation of busybodies. We are constantly bombarded with messages to be on the lookout for terrorists around every corner, report "suspicious activity," and rat on our neighbor whenever the opportunity presents itself. Is this not how the Nazis gained control of Germany and then most of Europe?
25. I am angry that the government requires me to sign a form every time I purchase a prescription. Whose business is it that I choose to take a thyroid medication, an antibiotic, a painkiller, an appetite suppressant, or any other substance? Am I dying of cancer? Am I facing debilitating chronic pain? Do I simply want to get HIGH? Heaven forbid someone out there might get their hands on something that might make them FEEL GOOD! No substance should be illegal or unobtainable. If a person wishes to self-medicate, that is their right. The government should not be in the business of criminalizing personal choices of any kind as long as those choices don’t infringe on another’s rights.
26. I am angry that my government meddles in the lives of people all over the world but looks the other way on the catastrophic issue of what to do with the millions of illegals who have crashed the gates of this nation. My country’s laws are ignored and mocked; yet I am told I must accept with open arms those who are here illegally. My taxes are used to educate their children in their native language. Hospitals are overrun with indigent people seeking medical care. Untaxed dollars earned in the underground economy are sent to the family back home while social services here are stretched to the limit. I read job want ads stating if you aren’t bilingual don’t bother to apply. What would happen to me if I placed an ad that said don’t bother to apply if your English isn’t understandable? Marches are conducted in my cities’ streets waving their countries’ flags as they shamelessly demand their "rights." I am told they deserve the same opportunities that brought my forefathers here. I am scolded that it is un-American to ask why they are not sent home. I am told that the term "illegal alien" offends them and that they prefer to be called "undocumented workers" and that my economy would die without them. I will happily pay more for fruits and vegetables if it means enforcing sensible immigration laws. But immigration isn’t about the cost of lettuce. It is another facet of an agenda that is bent on changing the face of America. When America is no longer a wealthy country of white European descent, it will be a place worse than anything Orwell could have imagined.
27. I am angry that my country is the only nation on earth who declares that a baby born on its soil is automatically an American citizen.
28. I am angry that the thugs that run my country don’t have the guts to declare English my nation’s official language.
29. I am angry that I have to search a package for English and push a button on every telephone system and ATM machine to continue in English.
30. I am angry that Washington, D.C.’s Metro is now being pressured to replace every station sign with bilingual verbiage to the tune of millions of dollars. Are bilingual road signs going to be the next mandated law of the land? I am currently forced to pay for voting ballots printed in 15 different languages and my tax dollars pay for interpreter services for people who are summoned to court for breaking laws. If English is the international language of the world, why isn’t it good enough to be the official language of the United States?
31. I am angry when I am told I am a bigot when I thumb my nose at political correctness.
32. I am angry when I wonder whether an expressed belief or opinion could land me in litigation if someone doesn’t like what I said and wants to silence my voice.
33. I am angry that diversity and sensitivity training is being forced on people whose only crime is to dare to speak freely.
34. I am angry that the symbols, customs, and roots of my Judeo-Christian country are being systematically outlawed because my culture offends newcomers. When we freely choose to go somewhere, are we not accepting the customs and cultures of that place? I am weary of being made to feel guilty for being an American.
35. And finally, I am angry that after working my entire adult life, I don’t see retirement in my life’s picture. My husband and I earn over a hundred thousand dollars a year, but by the time we pay federal taxes, state taxes, social security taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes, energy taxes, telecommunication taxes, savings taxes, fees, permits, etc., there isn’t much left. But please don’t think that I mind supporting every deadbeat and down-and-outer with his hand out for a piece of my pie that I worked so hard for. I love supporting the world. After all, it’s the American way, isn’t it?
July 5, 2006 Susan Fassanella [send her mail] was born in Washington, D.C. and resides in Frederick County, Maryland with her husband and two sons.
This is a very accurate picture of what a sad state our countries, Canada and the United States, are in. And unless we wake up out of our induced, hypnotic stuper, it is going to get very much worse. So "WAKE UP" everybody!
I Am Angry
by Susan Fassanella
The Honorable Ron Paul’s piece on why Americans are angry really stirred me to respond. Mr. Paul’s piece speaks about many issues facing Americans today.
I am a 51-year-old woman. I have been married to the same man since 1976. I am the secretary/office manager for a small legal firm in the D.C. suburbs. My husband manages a wine and spirits store. I have two sons, aged 26 and 22. After realizing it wasn’t possible to support themselves and the government at the same time, both returned to the nuclear nest. Along with most people in my economic situation, I believe I am living what is supposed to be the American dream. I know why I am an angry American. I am frightened because America isn’t the same country it was when I was my children’s age. Allow me to share with you some of the reasons why I am an angry American.
1. I am angry because my government has been taken over by liars, thieves, thugs, deviants, and micromanagers. The propaganda it produces rivals that of the most fascist dictatorship.
2. I am angry that my government perceives my intelligence to be that of a jar of pickles incapable of making the smallest decision.
3. I am angry that my government takes it upon itself to shove its clucking nose into my pantry, medicine chest, bedroom, family room, doctor’s office, workplace, and everywhere else it thinks I need guidance to keep me safe from myself.
4. I am angry that the will of the American people is ignored on every issue imaginable. If voting really mattered, it would have been outlawed long ago.
5. I am angry that I am called a conspiracy theorist because I dare to think on my own and question authority and it’s lies.
6. I am angry that the more I read about 9-11 the more it looks like an inside job that was allowed to happen, enabling the Patriot Act to be conveniently enacted into law with the ensuing "war on terrah" following closely on its heels.
7. I am angry that the evil puppets in power think laws are created for the peon masses and it is their right to ignore the ones that get in the way of their agenda.
8. I am angry that the media has sold its soul to the evil forces running the world.
9. I am angry that my "leaders" have taken to calling my country the "homeland." It reeks of socialism.
10. I am angry that my government has invaded yet another sovereign nation and caused untold death and destruction based on a flimsy lie. I am expected to believe that weapons of mass destruction threatened my freedom and then I am told several years and billions of squandered dollars later that a massive intelligence network got the wrong information. A select group of businesses profit enormously from war. When Bush announced his intention to save Iraq from itself and that its oil would pay for the overthrow of Hussein, I laughed so hard I nearly choked. I remember the instability in the Middle East during the 1970s and the gas "shortages" that followed. I knew which direction gas prices would go. How stupid does Mr. Bush and his cronies think I am?
11. I am angry that the world stands silently by while my government bombs foreign lands with weapons containing depleted uranium and the news magazines wonder on their front covers why lung cancer has increased six-fold in the last year.
12. I am angry that Americans accept as gospel the propaganda that is routinely cranked out of the Washington lie machine. The lies become more transparent and brazen with each passing year, yet the only thing that seems to matter in living rooms across America is who will be the next American Idol.
13. I am angry that I am punished with high energy and gas prices and the resulting inflation because tree-hugging terrorists masquerading as environmentalists have handcuffed my country’s ability to produce its own energy. It would be easy to tell the Middle East what to do with their oil if restrictions on exploration and production were lifted in our own backyard.
14. I am angry that I am constantly admonished by minimalists for being a greedy consumer because I live where I choose, drive the vehicle of my choice, eat meat, and use tin foil to cover my leftovers.
15. I am angry that my life doesn’t belong to me anymore.
16. I am angry that I am required to obtain permission, fill out mandated paperwork in quadruplicate, and obtain the correct license or permit for just about everything imaginable. The tentacles of government are strangling my freedom, choice, and privacy at an alarming rate. The wrath of the machine is a constant threat should I dare do anything without leaving a neon paper trail and of course ignorance of the law is never an excuse.
17. I am angry that property rights are a thing of the past thanks to court-approved eminent domain theft.
18. I am angry that the Constitution is routinely declared irrelevant making it easier for a fascist police state and new world order to take over.
19. I am angry that legislation is in the works that will require me to carry "papers" to "prove" who I am. Another coming law I will ignore.
20. I am angry that my right to own and carry a firearm is drastically regulated and restricted.
21. I am angry every time I see a young person detained on the side of the road while cops paw through their possessions looking for anything that could enable them to be arrested and dragged through the criminal justice system. This has become so commonplace it is now the accepted norm.
22. I am angry that roadblocks are set up under the guise of keeping roads free of drunk drivers. What has happened to my right to travel freely? Why am I presumed guilty without probable cause? I am afraid to have a few drinks when I go out to dinner for fear I will be pulled over and end up in court-ordered drug rehabilitation.
23. I am angry when I read stories of Americans terrorized in airports and treated like common criminals by government minions after they have paid for the right to travel within a private system, yet pilots are blocked from carrying firearms.
24. I am angry that America has become a nation of busybodies. We are constantly bombarded with messages to be on the lookout for terrorists around every corner, report "suspicious activity," and rat on our neighbor whenever the opportunity presents itself. Is this not how the Nazis gained control of Germany and then most of Europe?
25. I am angry that the government requires me to sign a form every time I purchase a prescription. Whose business is it that I choose to take a thyroid medication, an antibiotic, a painkiller, an appetite suppressant, or any other substance? Am I dying of cancer? Am I facing debilitating chronic pain? Do I simply want to get HIGH? Heaven forbid someone out there might get their hands on something that might make them FEEL GOOD! No substance should be illegal or unobtainable. If a person wishes to self-medicate, that is their right. The government should not be in the business of criminalizing personal choices of any kind as long as those choices don’t infringe on another’s rights.
26. I am angry that my government meddles in the lives of people all over the world but looks the other way on the catastrophic issue of what to do with the millions of illegals who have crashed the gates of this nation. My country’s laws are ignored and mocked; yet I am told I must accept with open arms those who are here illegally. My taxes are used to educate their children in their native language. Hospitals are overrun with indigent people seeking medical care. Untaxed dollars earned in the underground economy are sent to the family back home while social services here are stretched to the limit. I read job want ads stating if you aren’t bilingual don’t bother to apply. What would happen to me if I placed an ad that said don’t bother to apply if your English isn’t understandable? Marches are conducted in my cities’ streets waving their countries’ flags as they shamelessly demand their "rights." I am told they deserve the same opportunities that brought my forefathers here. I am scolded that it is un-American to ask why they are not sent home. I am told that the term "illegal alien" offends them and that they prefer to be called "undocumented workers" and that my economy would die without them. I will happily pay more for fruits and vegetables if it means enforcing sensible immigration laws. But immigration isn’t about the cost of lettuce. It is another facet of an agenda that is bent on changing the face of America. When America is no longer a wealthy country of white European descent, it will be a place worse than anything Orwell could have imagined.
27. I am angry that my country is the only nation on earth who declares that a baby born on its soil is automatically an American citizen.
28. I am angry that the thugs that run my country don’t have the guts to declare English my nation’s official language.
29. I am angry that I have to search a package for English and push a button on every telephone system and ATM machine to continue in English.
30. I am angry that Washington, D.C.’s Metro is now being pressured to replace every station sign with bilingual verbiage to the tune of millions of dollars. Are bilingual road signs going to be the next mandated law of the land? I am currently forced to pay for voting ballots printed in 15 different languages and my tax dollars pay for interpreter services for people who are summoned to court for breaking laws. If English is the international language of the world, why isn’t it good enough to be the official language of the United States?
31. I am angry when I am told I am a bigot when I thumb my nose at political correctness.
32. I am angry when I wonder whether an expressed belief or opinion could land me in litigation if someone doesn’t like what I said and wants to silence my voice.
33. I am angry that diversity and sensitivity training is being forced on people whose only crime is to dare to speak freely.
34. I am angry that the symbols, customs, and roots of my Judeo-Christian country are being systematically outlawed because my culture offends newcomers. When we freely choose to go somewhere, are we not accepting the customs and cultures of that place? I am weary of being made to feel guilty for being an American.
35. And finally, I am angry that after working my entire adult life, I don’t see retirement in my life’s picture. My husband and I earn over a hundred thousand dollars a year, but by the time we pay federal taxes, state taxes, social security taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes, energy taxes, telecommunication taxes, savings taxes, fees, permits, etc., there isn’t much left. But please don’t think that I mind supporting every deadbeat and down-and-outer with his hand out for a piece of my pie that I worked so hard for. I love supporting the world. After all, it’s the American way, isn’t it?
July 5, 2006 Susan Fassanella [send her mail] was born in Washington, D.C. and resides in Frederick County, Maryland with her husband and two sons.
