Category Archives: Press Fraud

BEHIND THE TRAYVON MARTIN PSY-OP

BEHIND THE TRAYVON MARTIN PSY-OP

THE FICTION OF THE GROUP IN THE MATRIX

by Jon Rappoport

April 23, 2012

www.nomorefakenews.com

“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it.” — Edward Bernays, in Propaganda (1928).

“Professionals in my field work for a client. They put their finger on their client’s competitor and say, ‘This is the enemy. How can we paint him as a horrible cartoon?'” — Ellis Medavoy, retired propaganda operative — who is interviewed extensively in THE MATRIX REVEALED.

President Obama said if he had a son, he’d look like Trayvon Martin. Yes, but what would that son BE like?

Does that matter? Is it trivial? Is the distinction irrelevant?

This is the essence of the decades-long psy-op to convince Americans that their identity is completely wrapped up in their ethnicity, or their skin-color, or their religion, or their gender, or some other group of which they’re a member.

AS OPPOSED TO IDENTITY AS A FUNCTION OF WHO THEY ARE AS INDIVIDUALS.

Remember INDIVIDUALS?

That outmoded concept?

It’s outmoded for a reason.

It’s been scrubbed from the record.

Mass media can’t really deal with individuals. It’s not possible. Mass media can’t really get down to the essentials of what an individual IS. It doesn’t work. Putting too much attention on distinct and unique individuals, apart from stereotypes, would actually DESTROY THE WHOLE ILLUSION PRESENTED BY MASS MEDIA.

Mass media absolutely depend on cartoons and stereotypes and groups. Without them, the the whole industry would collapse like a stack of wheat in a tornado.

And as these cartoons are presented, day after day, the attention span of readers and viewers shortens. It’s all shorthand. It’s all shortcut. It’s all sketchy imagery.

And finally, we have a sitting president who goes there. Yes, Mr. President, that son would look like you, but who would he BE? Do you see the difference?

Heritage this, tradition that, legacy here, ancestry there, pre-racial, post-racial, it all comes down to the fact, whether anyone likes it or not, that the individual EXISTS, and no amount of false leads are going to change that.

The powerful group that emerged from the US psychological-warfare department, after World War 2 (see Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, 1945-1960, by Christopher Simpson, Oxford University Press, 1994), had to find a new role for itself, and it literally invented the (pseudo) science of mass communication research—bankrolled primarily by the Department of Defense and the CIA.

One of its jobs was the promotion of group stereotypes.

Mass communication research was touted as a new discipline. But it was quite old. Pre-WW 2, one of its leaders was Walter Lippman. Simpson, in The Science of Coercion, explains how Lippmann viewed the landscape as early as 1922:

“[Lippmann] contended that new communication and transportation technologies had erected a ‘world that we have to deal with [that is] politically out of reach, out of sight, out of mind.’ The ‘pictures in our heads’ of this world—the stereotypes—‘are acted upon by groups of people, or by individuals acting in the name of groups…representing government [and these pictures] cannot be worked unless there is an independent, expert [elite] organization for making the unseen facts [of the new world] intelligible to those who make the decisions.”

In other words, since none of us will ever have a chance to meet the overwhelming number of people who live in the world, we’ll have to rely on stereotypes of them, and in this distorted maze, our esteemed leaders will have to take all their cues and knowledge from some collection of “experts” who interpret “real” perception and meaning for them.

A totalitarianism worthy of 1984.

In his chapter, “The CIA and the Founding Fathers of Communications Studies,” Simpson highlights the work of Hadley Cantril, who established the Princeton Learning Center, which morphed into a CIA-funded broadcast service. Cantril also assisted in reorganizing the US Information Agency (CIA front) under JFK. He invented a survey technique that “would revolutionize US election campaigns during the 1980s.” What began as a focus on US mass-communication ops abroad later came home to roost.

And so this universal psy-op has come to pass. It has thoroughly infected society, aided of course by media.

Groups define and oppose each other through images and cartoons and stereotypes. But it’s gone much further than that. The disease of group consciousness has pushed individuals into seeing themselves and presenting themselves as nothing more than group members. Proudly so. Absurdly so. They’ve tried to make the stereotypes into facts.

Some groups, in politicizing themselves, have ladled on the self-esteem routine to substitute for anything they might actually accomplish in the world, preferring to rely on slogans and assertions that amount to dust in the wind—actually torpedoing their chances of success.

It’s exactly parallel to the child who is told, in this case by his teachers and parents, that he’s very, very special, over and over, until the child is living in a never-never land.

Working for a definable cause as part of a group is one thing, but taking on one’s own identity as nothing more than “group member” is a disaster.

At the core of this op is desertion of self by the individual himself. Yes, every individual is unique. That’s true. But it has to play out. The individual has to take his own actions and his own path. If not, he picks out a disseminated cartoon, glues it to his face, and marches forward in lock step toward Nowhere.

So Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman become symbols of groups, and the hostilities broaden. And repulsive operatives who make their living pushing these symbols show up and do their work.

What’s the end game? A society fractured into opposing camps, your basic nut house, where every group ultimately looks to government for answers, money, help, favors, deals.

The psy-op moves all the way into dependance. And that was always the point of it. That was the plan for “reorganizing” a nation.

In the long run, those honorable groups who have labored for just change are forgotten. They fade into oblivion. What takes their place are the delusional ones, and the ones who are consciously run, from above, by planners who want to see this kind of mangled society.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. It starts by saying the world, as it really is, is incomprehensible, and therefore we have to build cartoons of various groups; doing this is “a good idea” and it will facilitate our thoughts and actions. The prophecy ends with so many people buying into those cartoons that they play those roles to the hilt and assert they ARE the cartoons and nothing more.

But I’ll tell you this. Somewhere, lurking in the background, there are still many, many individuals who know they are individuals. And their day will come, because the universe of cartoon characters is such bad theater the show will close. Ticket sales will evaporate.

It’s important to understand the root: promoting a nation as a collection of groups. This IS Collectivism at work. Collectivism isn’t done by considering a country one homogenous mass of people. Not right away. First you need competing and hostile groups. You encourage them to present themselves as cliches, as animations, as actors in a play.

You move into phase two when you show these groups that their best chance of success is to get help from government. That’s the key. It doesn’t matter whether a group hates government. So what? You bring them around to thinking government is their best shot.

And, of course, government complies. Government holds out a helping hand. Money, hope, favors. You’ve now funneled the energy of groups right into the official bureaucracy. The problem solver.

You’re not, for example, telling a group it should start an urban farm and grow its own food. You’re not telling them how to start their own businesses and actually make them work. You’re not telling them how they can buy land and live in a community. You’re certainly not telling them the whole group concept is flawed and they should—each person—discover what it means to be an individual.

Individual power, action, vision is completely off the table.

These stereotyped groups are actually training grounds for membership in the bigger group: a whole society absorbed in government.

It’s all preparation for the ultimate lesson: the needs and demands and entitlements of the many obliterate the needs of the individual.

The word “individual” comes from Latin roots. In=not. Dividere=to divide. Individual=not divided. “Can’t be divided.” The individual is the fundamental, the basic. It’s what you come to, finally, when you analyze a group. The individual. It’s what you come to when you scrape away the stereotypes and cartoons and generalities and other “group characteristics.”

Of course, if you mount and push forward a psy-op that ADDS ON characteristics to the individual, especially if those characteristics are going to be self-sabotaging, and if the individual isn’t ready to invent his own future, he’ll bite. He’ll buy. He’ll join up.

This is what the “social science” of “mass communications” is all about. As the name implies, it’s an academic field that starts out with the assumption and lie of a MASS. From that point on, it’s all manipulation.

But why should people realize this? They’re floating on propaganda that lets them know the world is a horrible mess and we simply don’t have time to stop and consider the strange, outmoded, and discredited idea of the individual. In fact, wasn’t it the unbridled individual who led us into the mess? Didn’t “he” destroy the fabric of life? Didn’t he make millions of people starve? Didn’t he start all the wars? Didn’t he oppose group consciousness all along? Aren’t we, in fact, repairing the damage done by the individual? Isn’t he the ultimate virus that corrupts? Shouldn’t we wipe him out forever and install the Group as the indivisible unit of life? Then we’ll be happy. Then we’ll be free. Then we’ll all live in harmony. Then we’ll evolve to the next stage:

ABSORPTION INTO THE WHOLE.

You might be surprised at how many people want this. Economic absorption, political absorption, social absorption, mystical absorption.

Selling out Self is big, big, business.

I’ll leave you with this — as an illustration of how thick and dense group identity, as opposed to individual consciousness, can be built:

As reported by Heather Mac Donald in City Journal (July 14, 2011), the University of California at San Diego has decided to MANDATE a new graduation requirement. The key concept, the University states, is cultivating a “student’s understanding of her or his identity [focusing on] African Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, Chicanos, Latinos, Native Americans or other groups [through the lenses of] race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, language, ability/disability, class or age.”

Translation: Through every means and category possible, we’re going to plug and wire you into a group, and from that platform you can continue the psy-op that pours all of society into the funnel of government and away from who you are: YOU.

Jon Rappoport

The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

THE TRAYVON MARTIN OPERATION

THE TRAYVON MARTIN OP

NBC LIES, EDITS 911 ZIMMERMAN CALL

WILL DO “INTERNAL INVESTIGATION”

THE STORY GOES MUCH DEEPER

APRIL 2, 2012. Let’s start here. The racially divisive Trayvon Martin case was shoved up a false ladder by NBC News. As reported by Eric Wemple in his Washington Post blog post of 3/31/12:

Begin Washington Post blog post:

“NBC told this blog today that it would investigate its handling of a piece on the ‘Today’ show that ham-handedly abridged the conversation between George Zimmerman and a dispatcher in the moments before the death of Trayvon Martin. A statement from NBC:

‘We have launched an internal investigation into the editorial process surrounding this particular story.’

“Great news right there. As exposed by Fox News and media watchdog site NewsBusters, the ‘Today’ segment took this approach to a key part of the dispatcher call:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.

“Here’s how the actual conversation went down:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

“The difference between what ‘Today’ put on its air and the actual tape? Complete: In the ‘Today’ version, Zimmerman volunteered that this person ‘looks black,’ a sequence of events that would more readily paint Zimmerman as a racial profiler. In reality’s version, Zimmerman simply answered a question about the race of the person whom he was reporting to the police. Nothing prejudicial at all in responding to such an inquiry.

“In an appearance on Fox News’s ‘Hannity,’ Brent Bozell, president of the conservative Media Research Center, called this elision on the part of ‘Today’ an ‘all-out falsehood’ — not just a distortion or misrepresentation.

“And it’s a falsehood with repercussions. Much of the public discussion over the past week has settled on how conflicting facts and interpretations call into question whether Zimmerman acted justifiably or criminally. That’s a process that’ll continue. But one set of facts in the [sic] is ironclad, and that’s the back-and-forth between Zimmerman and the dispatcher. To portray that exchange in a way that wrongs Zimmerman is high editorial malpractice well worthy of the investigation that NBC is now mounting.”

End of Washington Post blog.

My comments:

Assuming the Washington Post has its story straight, what NBC did wasn’t a mistake. It was intentional, and it was done to inflame the narrative about George Zimmerman. It wasn’t just some sort of “rush to judgment,” it was a false-flag operation designed to provoke mass reaction and create more racial tension.

Who at NBC was responsible? How is the network going to spin its “internal investigation?” Who, if anyone, is going to be hung out to dry? How many people at NBC were in on this operation?

Now here is where the story goes deeper. First, Obama inserted himself into the narrative in a very personal way, when he told the world if he had a son, he would look like Travyon Martin. This wasn’t playing DOWN the tension, it was playing it UP.

It was the president’s signal to his supporters to move ahead with the narrative—in an election year. It then became a cost-versus-risk proposition ABOUT the election. As in: can we make this situation do us more good than harm?

And clearly, the decision was: more good.

As Trayvon protests gather strength all over the country, the outlines of a campaign become clearer. The intentional escalation of this black-versus-white tension will play directly into the notion of an implied threat: don’t dare elect Romney. Don’t do that. Don’t put this stereotypical white man in the White House.

And NBC just handed Obama a favor with its corrupt editing of the 911 call, with its RACIALLY INFLAMING editing of that call.

And why shouldn’t NBC do a favor for the president? After all, NBC is a joint venture between Comcast and GE. GE was one of Obama’s big supporters in the 2008 election campaign. As we speak, Obama and his minions are still trying to push a high-speed-rail bill through Congress that will benefit GE to the tune of billions of dollars, because a division of GE is the leading manufacturer of diesel-electric locomotives. GE and Obama are in an embrace. Obama appointed the former GE CEO, Jeff Immelt, to head up the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Obama bailed out GE to the tune of $16 billion, during the financial meltdown.

These are not small matters. Get a favor, do a favor, especially when billions are on the table.

And now that the racially divisive Trayvon Martin promotion is on the move, there are other ripples. Commentators have been mentioning that the Supreme Court Justices, in their deliberations on Obamacare, might be thinking about the social consequences of a No vote. Would there be riots in the streets? These pundits weren’t even referring to the Trayvon Martin escalations. Add THAT into the volatile mix, and who knows what Justice might change his mind from No to Yes, “to preserve order?”

It was clearly within the White House’s power, a week ago, to try to minimize the rhetoric about the Martin case. They could have leaned on Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and told them back off. They could have taken legal action against the New Black Panther Party, after its Wanted poster for Zimmerman was issued. But Eric Holder, the Attorney General, had already given the Panthers a green light after he apparently looked the other way when members of the Party staged a voter-intimidation moment during the 2008 election-vote. And Obama himself, of course, could have spoken vastly different words about Martin’s death. But none of that happened. Instead, it was full speed ahead.

Finally, when you add up the differences and similarities between Obama and Romney, it’s clear that on the vital issues—like Globalism and a continuing mega-corporate-government world juggernaut, both men are in the same camp. Both men are, as Clinton was, as both Bushes were, on the same basic Team.

Therefore, what difference does it make who wins the next presidential election?

And if that is true, the present promotion of racial strife is a box within a larger box. In one sense, it is being worked to help Obama win. But in the bigger context, it is divide and conquer along racial lines because, to make Globalism succeed, every possible means has to be employed to weaken, divert, demoralize, polarize, and destabilize the one holdout against Globalism: the American people.

Major ops have more than level. They are played to produce advantages for more than one reason.

And so it is with the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case.

Jon Rappoport

The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

#2, NEWS ROUNDUP IN A MAD WORLD

JUNE 13, 2011. On a distant planet called Z-D54, historians worked in a cloister to decode the meaning of news events that had occurred hundreds of years earlier on a “seedling place” called Earth.

It wasn’t easy. There was the language barrier, of course. But more importantly, the sheer strangeness of the news reports, and the events being summarized, revealed a cultural barrier one researcher called “as puzzling as discovering a life form based on chemistry we would assume was lethal.”

Dr. Zzrrg, the director of the research project, stated, “We’re grappling with the fact that those people seemed obsessed with lying. Either their information ministry regularly dispensed falsehoods, or the events being reported were staged by psychotic individuals. It’s hard to tell which.”

Interestingly, the research team has created what it believes would have been “true headlines” for that time period on Earth. It’s using these headlines as a kind of template to assess the degree of variance and distortion present in ancient Earth culture.

WE ARE MEDIA. WE LIE. BELIEVE US ANYWAY.

POPULATION CAN NO LONGER DISTINGUISH WHAT IS TRUE.

MASS HYPNOSIS ON EARTH RENDERS ALL REPORTS OF EVENTS SUSPECT.

NEWSPAPERS REPRESENT HIDDEN INTERESTS DETERMINED TO DECEIVE THE PUBLIC.

SMALL EVENTS, LARGE EVENTS. WE’LL TWIST THE DETAILS.

MILLIONS CONFESS: WE PREFER CONTRADICTIONS AND FAIRY TALES.

The research team claims that if such headlines had, in fact, been dispersed widely in the Earth civilization, people might have awakened and seen their “information age” as a “fabulous joke.”

ITEM: Greece is bankrupt. So, to bring in small amounts of cash that will change nothing, it’s auctioning off “pollution credits” to factories in other EU countries. These credits will allow those factories to put more tonnage of CO2 into the air. Hmm. First of all, Greek factories are closed down right now. In protest of economic belt-tightening policies of their government. You know, a bit of irony. Then we have this: CO2 has never been proved to cause a dangerous level of global warming. Unless you want to believe scientists whose main business is PR, scientists who refuse to debate, in a neutral forum, many other scientists who claim dangerous warming is a hoax. Can somebody write a Broadway musical based on these tortured happenings? Maybe put Socrates in the lead role as the man who exposes all the inherent absurdities. Curtain goes up at 2 in the afternoon, cast takes bows at midnight…

ITEM: Scientists discover genetic link to migraines. Forget the catchy headline. Reading down to the end of the story, the researchers say the three genes in question could be involved in merely a 10-15% increased risk of migraines. And the genes don’t really give doctors the ability to make a diagnosis. Uh-huh. Well, good. Check back with us in 30 years.

ITEM: In these bad economic times, Obama is advising Americans to save a little bit of what they earn. Wow, let me recover from that revelation. Almost as good as Bush telling Americans after 9/11 to go shopping. So…go shopping, but don’t buy that underwear spangled with rhinestones. Is that the takeaway from our two most recent presidents?

ITEM: Two new pending EPA pollution regulations would hammer the coal industry and cause utility bills in the US to go up 11 to 23%. Financial justification is thousands fewer lung problems and hospital visits. Pick your poison. But think about this. Government as King Kong health insurer can justify ANYTHING based on “lower health costs.” Like: You must wear a titanium vest while driving your car, because chest injuries in auto accidents are a major health expense. Sex without wearing five condoms is a punishable offense, because health costs for treating STDs are skyrocketing. Or: every child must be screened for mental disorders to save greater treatment costs later. Basically it’s this: “WE INSURE, YOU OBEY.”

ITEM: Oh my God, oh my God, the Republicans are trying to defund NPR. You kidding? Have you ever really listened to All Brain DamageConsidered? It’s like a horrible sleeping pill that doesn’t work. Leaves you drifting in an undefined space, where the world is being saved by reasonable and well modulated Baby Boomers. Tip to John Carpenter—seed of a horror movie there. A great one.

ITEM: The New York Times corporation has been on a major re-fi campaign, exchanging its old debts for new debts. It’s in a deep financial hole. Is it too big to fail? Would a succession of presidents make sure it’s bailed out, just to keep a million or so self-important people on the Eastern seaboard from committing suicide?

RUMORS: Obama’s high-speed-train project is designed to get voters to the polls in 2016. Look for another Bush to emerge in time for 2012. He’ll be drafted after a deadlock at the convention and give his acceptance speech in Spanish, from a helicopter hovering over the Cal-Mex border.

ITEM: Medical drugs are safe. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Here, from the FDA, is a list of drug recalls that have been enacted SO FAR IN 2011 ALONE–

2011 Recalls

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

 

WHITE HOUSE ON THE LINE

INVENTING MEDIA REALITY

MAY 12, 2011. As I’ve been writing, reality is basically invented. It can emanate from the individual or from a source like the media.

People forget that the tone of media pieces, the content, the attitude, the language, the imagery, the juxtaposition of items are all geared to produce a reaction. It’s imagination at work.

So you can either feast on THEIR imagination, or use your own.

You can accept their invention of reality or you can create your own.

Most people, obviously, prefer to fold up their tent and accept the world invented by media. It’s easier. It’s more comfortable. It’s less challenging.

And this vast audience can always resort to the time-honored excuse: THE MEDIA JUST REPORT THE FACTS.

Is that so?

Is that basically what’s going on?

Now we’re going to be getting messages from “the authorities,” even from the White House, inserted into our cell phones. Overrides. The messages will appear no matter what we’re doing with the phones.

This is media, too. Invention of reality. Attempts to induce a climate of fear.

Forbes: “…90-second text messages to users [interrupting all ongoing cellphone calls] during certain emergencies, such as a terrorist attack…The program will be launched in New York City by the end of the year, with the rest of the US getting their own…”

I was in my bathroom scrubbing the toilet, when the president called me.

He said there was a 50% chance a terrorist might be targeting a Wienerschnitzel in downtown San Diego.

Only twelve miles away.

I said, “Do you think it’s a nuke?” But he didn’t answer. He just kept talking.

I walked into the living room and clicked on the TV. There he was again. Delivering the same message.

Was I supposed to vacate the house? Hide in the garage? Drive north on the 5 to LA?

No info on that.

I went into the kitchen and the toaster was beeping, but there was no bread in it. Had to be another version of the alert.

So I shouted at the top of my lungs, “WHERE’S BIN LADEN’S DIALYSIS MACHINE?”

Deathly quiet.

The TV shut itself down. The toaster stopped beeping.

There was a knock on my front door.

I ran over and opened it. A man in a suit, whose features you would never remember, was standing there.

“What do you know about the dialysis machine?” he said.

“Nothing!” I said. “That’s the whole point! Didn’t they find it in the house?”

“No,” he said.

“Did bin Laden have a kidney transplant?”

“No.”

“Then where was the machine? How could he stay alive?”

He shook his head.

“You know what I think?” I said. “He died in 2001, of kidney failure, and since then he’s been living as a construct. It costs a lot of money to make a good one. You have to pour major cash behind it. Even if most of the videotapes were amateur-hour productions, add up all the column inches and air time, it’s a high-ticket item.”

My cell buzzed. I took it out of my pocket.

The voice said, “This is the president. I just want to tell you you’ve just won an all-expenses-paid cruise to New Zealand!” The phone lit up and bells started ringing.

“You did it,” he said. “It was the dialysis machine. You caught the most obvious clue. Congratulations!”

“What about the terror alert?” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “That wasn’t me. I’m in Florida. They have my voice and image on file. They work it any which way. A random number generator decides when we broadcast the alerts.”

The man in my house left.

I went back in the kitchen and put an English muffin in the toaster. I pressed the red button. No beeps.

INVENTING MEDIA REALITY

HERE COMES GLOBAL COOLING

MAY 10, 2011. I offer this piece, not to dig into the science, but to show how strong the media effect is. Thirty-five years ago, newspapers and magazines were drumming up support for a global cooling scare.

Notice the language in this April 28, 1975, Newsweek article, “The Cooling World,” by Peter Gwynne. It has the same rhythms today’s warming pieces display, the same transitions, the same reliance, of course, on experts.

It’s all about INVENTING REALITY, because the 1975 Newsweek reporter—or today’s highly confident journalists and smirking pundits—have no idea what they’re talking about. They’re simply taking their cues from people they accept as experts. And then fabricating the whole business. Cooling, warming—none of them has ever really thought about the state of the science. None of them has even turned a layman’s mind, armed with some degree of logic, to the statements and methods of the climate researchers. They’re personally clueless.

Their editorial meetings should really go this way: “Okay, boys, we’ve got the quotes from the expert researchers, so now we know which way to go. It’s cooling (or warming). From here on out, make it up. Make it sound somber, inject apprehension and fear, you know how it works. We want that dignified tone in our pieces. Of course, we have no idea what the hell we’re doing. Not really. We’re just the messengers. But who cares? Give it your best shot. Invent reality.”

Newsweek, April 28, 1975. The ironies in this piece, knowing what we know now about the warming media campaign, are so thick you’ll need a de-fogger. And if you think the subsequent media shift from cooling to warming was simply a matter of discovering new iron-clad data, I have a villa in the center of the Arctic I’m dying to sell you. Here is the 1975 Newsweek article:

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.

“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

 

AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH Dr. Barbara Starfield: Medically Caused Death in America

by Jon Rappoport

December 9, 2009

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On July 26, 2000, the US medical community received a titanic shock to the system, when one of its most respected and honored public-health experts, Dr. Barbara Starfield, revealed her findings on healthcare in America.

The landmark Starfield study, “Is US Health Really the Best in the World?,” (for pdf, here) published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, came to the following conclusions:

Every year in the US there are:

* 12,000 deaths from unnecessary surgeries;

* 7,000 deaths from medication errors in hospitals;

* 20,000 deaths from other errors in hospitals;

* 80,000 deaths from infections acquired in hospitals;

* 106,000 deaths from FDA-approved correctly prescribed medicines.

* The total of medically-caused deaths in the US every year is 225,000. That’s a total of 2.25 million medically-caused deaths in the US every decade.

* This makes the medical system the third leading cause of death in the US, behind heart disease and cancer.

The Starfield study is the most explosive revelation about modern healthcare in America ever published.  The credentials of its author and the journal in which it appeared are, within the highest medical circles, impeccable.

Yet, on the heels of Starfield’s astonishing findings, although media reporting was extensive, it soon dwindled.  No major newspaper or television network mounted an ongoing “Medicalgate” investigation.  Neither the US Department of Justice nor federal health agencies undertook prolonged remedial action.

All in all, it seemed that those parties who could have taken effective steps to correct this mind-boggling situation preferred to ignore it.

On December 6-7, 2009, I interviewed Dr. Starfield by email.

What has been the level and tenor of the response to your findings, since 2000? 

My papers on the benefits of primary care have been widely used, including in Congressional testimony and reports. However, the findings on the relatively poor health in the US have received almost no attention. The American public appears to have been hoodwinked into believing that more interventions lead to better health, and most people that I meet are completely unaware that the US does not have the ‘best health in the world’.

In the medical research community, have your medically-caused mortality statistics been debated, or have these figures been accepted, albeit with some degree of shame? 

The findings have been accepted by those who study them. There has been only one detractor, a former medical school dean, who has received a lot of attention for claiming that the US health system is the best there is and we need more of it.  He has a vested interest in medical schools and teaching hospitals (they are his constituency).  They, of course, would like an even greater share of the pie than they now have, for training more specialists.  (Of course, the problem is that we train specialists—at great public cost—who then do not practice up to their training—they spend half of their time doing work that should be done in primary care and don’t do it as well.)

Have health agencies of the federal government consulted with you on ways to mitigate the effects of the US medical system?

NO.

Since the FDA approves every medical drug given to the American people, and certifies it as safe and effective, how can that agency remain calm about the fact that these medicines are causing 106,000 deaths per year?

Even though there will always be adverse events that cannot be anticipated, the fact is that more and more unsafe drugs are being approved for use. Many people attribute that to the fact that the pharmaceutical industry is (for the past ten years or so) required to pay the FDA for reviews—which puts the FDA into a untenable position of working for the industry it is regulating. There is a large literature on this.

Aren’t your 2000 findings a severe indictment of the FDA and its standard practices?

They are an indictment of the US health care industry: insurance companies, specialty and disease-oriented medical academia, the pharmaceutical and device manufacturing industries, all of which contribute heavily to re-election campaigns of members of Congress. The problem is that we do not have a government that is free of influence of vested interests. Alas, [it] is a general problem of our society—which clearly unbalances democracy.

Can you offer an opinion about how the FDA can be so mortally wrong about so many drugs?

Yes, it cannot divest itself from vested interests. (Again, [there is] a large literature about this, mostly unrecognized by the people because the industry-supported media give it no attention.

Would it be correct to say that, when your JAMA study was published in 2000, it caused a momentary stir and was thereafter ignored by the medical community and by pharmaceutical companies?

Are you sure it was a momentary stir?  I still get at least one email a day asking for a reprint—ten years later!  The problem is that its message is obscured by those that do not want any change in the US health care system.

Do medical schools in the US, and intern/residency programs in hospitals, offer significant “primary care” physician training and education?

NO. Some of the most prestigious medical teaching institutions do not even have family physician training programs [or] family medicine departments. The federal support for teaching institutions greatly favors specialist residencies, because it is calculated on the basis of hospital beds. [Dr. Starfield has done extensive research showing that family doctors, who deliver primary care—as opposed to armies of specialists—produce better outcomes for patients.]

Are you aware of any systematic efforts, since your 2000 JAMA study was published, to remedy the main categories of medically caused deaths in the US?

No systematic efforts; however, there have been a lot of studies.  Most of them indicate higher rates [of death] than I calculated.

What was your personal reaction when you reached the conclusion that the US medical system was the third leading cause of death in the US?

I had previously done studies on international comparisons and knew that there were serious deficits in the US health care system, most notably in lack of universal coverage and a very poor primary care infrastructure. So I wasn’t surprised.

Has anyone from the FDA, since 2000, contacted you about the statistical findings in your JAMA paper?

NO. Please remember that the problem is not only that some drugs are dangerous but that many drugs are overused or inappropriately used.  The US public does not seem to recognize that inappropriate care is dangerous—more does not mean better.  The problem is NOT mainly with the FDA but with population expectations.

… Some drugs are downright dangerous; they may be prescribed according to regulations but they are dangerous.

Concerning the national health plan before Congress—if the bill is passed, and it is business as usual after that, and medical care continues to be delivered in the same fashion, isn’t it logical to assume that the 225,000 deaths per year will rise?

Probably—but the balance is not clear. Certainly, those who are not insured now and will get help with financing will probably be marginally better off overall.

Did your 2000 JAMA study sail through peer review, or was there some opposition to publishing it?

It was rejected by the first journal that I sent it to, on the grounds that ‘it would not be interesting to readers’!

Do the 106,000 deaths from medical drugs only involve drugs prescribed to patients in hospitals, or does this statistic also cover people prescribed drugs who are not in-patients in hospitals?

I tried to include everything in my estimates.  Since the commentary was written, many more dangerous drugs have been added to the marketplace.

106,000 people die as a result of CORRECTLY prescribed medicines.  I believe that was your point in your 2000 study.  Overuse of a drug or inappropriate use of a drug would not fall under the category of “correctly prescribed.”  Therefore, people who die after “overuse” or “inappropriate use” would be IN ADDITION TO the 106,000 and would fall into another or other categories.    

‘Appropriate’ means that it is not counter to regulations.  That does not mean that the drugs do not have adverse effects.

Some comments from the interviewer:

I’m aware there are reports, outside the mainstream, which conclude far more than 225,000 people in the US die every year as a result of medical treatment.  For example, see the work of Carolyn Dean, Trueman Tuck, Gary Null, Martin Feldman, Debora Rasio, Dorothy Smith.

This interview with Dr. Starfield reveals that, even when an author has unassailable credentials within the medical-research establishment, the findings can result in no changes made to the system.

Yes, many persons and organizations within the medical system contribute to the annual death totals of patients, and media silence and public ignorance are certainly major factors, but the FDA is the assigned gatekeeper, when it comes to the safety of medical drugs.  The buck stops there.  If those drugs the FDA is certifying as safe are killing, like clockwork, 106,000 people a year, the Agency must be held accountable.  The American people must understand that.

As for the other 119,000 people killed every year as a result of hospital treatment, this horror has to be laid at the doors of those institutions.  Further, to the degree that hospitals are regulated and financed by state and federal governments, the relevant health agencies assume culpability.

It is astounding, as well, that the US Department of Justice has failed to weigh in on Starfield’s findings.  If 225,000 medically caused deaths per year is not a crime by the Dept. of Justice’s standards, then what is?

To my knowledge, not one person in America has been fired from a job or even censured as result of these medically caused deaths.

Dr. Starfield’s findings have been available for nine years.  She has changed the perception of the medical landscape forever.  In a half-sane nation, she would be accorded a degree of recognition that would, by comparison, make the considerable list of her awards pale.  And significant and swift action would have been taken to punish the perpetrators of these crimes and reform the system from its foundations.

In these times, medical schools continue turning out a preponderance of specialists who then devote themselves to promoting the complexities of human illness and massive drug treatment.  Whatever the shortcomings of family doctors, their tradition speaks to less treatment, more common sense, and a proper reliance on the immune systems of patients.

The pharmaceutical giants stand back and carve up the populace into “promising markets.”  They seek new disease labels and new profits from more and more toxic drugs.  They do whatever they can—legally or illegally—to influence doctors in their prescribing habits.  Some drug studies which show negative results are buried.  FDA panels are filled with doctors who have drug-company ties.  Legislators are incessantly lobbied and supported with pharma campaign monies.

Nutrition, the cornerstone of good health, is ignored or devalued by most physicians.  Meanwhile, the FDA continues to attack nutritional supplements, even though the overall safety record of these nutrients is good, whereas, once again, the medical drugs the FDA certifies as safe are killing 106,000 Americans per year.

Physicians are trained to pay exclusive homage to peer-reviewed published drug studies.  These doctors unfailingly ignore the fact that, if medical drugs are killing a million Americans per decade, the studies on which those drugs are based must be fraudulent or, at the very least, massively incompetent.  In other words, the whole literature is suspect, unreliable, and impenetrable.

At the same time, without evidence, doctors off-handedly tout their work with great confidence.  Some years ago, a resident at a major New York hospital harangued me about the primacy of controlled studies.  She boasted, in passing, that the hospital’s heart-bypass surgery team was considered the best in the city, and one of the best in the country.  I asked her for a reference.  Was her statement a combination of folk-wisdom and rumor, or was there a proper study that confirmed her opinion?  A bit chagrined, she admitted it was hearsay.  I was sure she would repeat her tune, however, many times.

Claiming evidence where there is none, and denying the evidence that the medical system does great harm, are apparently part of the weave of the modern Hippocratic Oath.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails here.