Quaerite et invenietis — "Seek and you will find"
Amber's Vacation News: I know people are excited about enjoying some fun during their summer vacation breaks, and California has fantastic places to see and enjoy. For pure fun we recommend Sea World, Knott's Berry Farm and Six Flags Magic Mountain, which has 16 roller coasters! And of course the San Diego Zoo and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. And if you enjoy museums, there are exceptional ones including The Getty, the Norton Simon, the amazing California Academy of Sciences, and many more. However, if you haven't been in California in several years it's important to understand that things have changed in this state, and in many parts of the state they've changed dramatically. So, for your comfort and especially for your safety, Heather composed a Travel Advisory for anyone coming to California. It's very important to read if you're thinking about vacationing here, so please don't miss it.
Some entertaining and memorable quotes -
• Wise Quote: “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more,
so that we may fear less.” —Madame Marie Curie, physicist and twice winner of the Nobel Prize (1903 & 1911)
• Insightful Quote: “All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is
a function of power and not of truth.” —Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
• Prophetic Quote: “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm,” warned James Madison, in what today
must be considered as
a stunning understatement. —Federalist No.10, November 1787
• Funny Quote (showing that someone at CNN still has a sense of reality...and humor): Chyron (screen banner) running
on CNN as a panel of commentators struggle to find a way to criticize Elon Musk's
reorganization of Twitter (now 'X') -
“ELON MUSK DESTROYING FREE SPEECH BY ALLOWING PEOPLE TO SPEAK FREELY”
• Profound Quote: “Beliefs about the nature of life and the world give rise to repetitive patterns of thought and
consistent images in the inner eye of the mind. It is precisely those patterns of thoughts and images that create
all the experiences a
person encounters during their life. Be aware that this explains why
each person
perceives
endless proofs that their views of life
and the world are accurate. Their beliefs created their life experiences, yet
they
imagine that life created their beliefs. This inversion can be difficult to overcome.” —Himalayan Master Amrita
P.S.:
Michael rarely if ever takes anything too seriously, and has a unique
ability to find humor just about anywhere. So
for some Sunday chuckles, I'm including some of the satire he wrote 'cause it's
pretty funny...
There are three qualities that make a great
politician.
Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
After several safety incidents where parts of their planes blew off in flight, Boeing announced
that orders for their aircraft have slumped, even after an attempt to revitalize sales with the slogan,
"Well, They Don't Always Fall Apart," which met with customer resistance. In response, yesterday
the company released an important press bulletin insisting that their aircraft are "perfectly safe
when operated over unoccupied territory," provided that "there are no humans onboard."
Interview with Rashida Jones, president of the cable network MSNBC -
Interviewer: "With ratings plunging to a 23 year low, executives of MSNBC's parent
company wanted the network to eschew it's extreme-left bias and fabrications to focus
on objective reporting of real news. So what happened to the reorganization of MSNBC?"
Ms. Jones: "Well, after several difficult months we decided to ignore the order to do factual
reporting and go back to red-hot liberal propaganda. And that gave us a nice uptick in the ratings."
Interviewer: "Is there any chance that MSNBC's reporting is so toxic it will
rot the fabric of human civilization and plunge the country into darkness?"
Ms. Jones: "Yes, but that has to be weighed against the number of viewers we gained.
•(Note from Amber: That's funny because it's true. When MSNBC reports on any topic, it's not
fraught with meaning, it's fraught with MSNBC, aptly demonstrating that sitting in a host's chair
doesn’t make anyone an objective journalist any more than sitting in a garage makes them a car.)
Reminder: If at any point you wish to skip down to today's free books, just click on a down arrow like this > .
Good News from 2023 You Probably Didn't Hear
Surprise, Surprise! Believe it or not, some positive things happened in 2023.
Theses stories will come as a welcome relief, and will very likely come
as a surprise as well. Studies from the Giraffe
Conservation Foundation, NOAA, Royal Society Science, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Polar Bear Monitoring Group and others have been—in
what propaganda experts call "issue filtering"—entirely suppressed
by the corporate media and censored by social media platforms. The
results of these important studies received zero coverage on CBS, NBC,
ABC, CNN or MSNBC. The truth is of great value, to say the least, so if you love animals and the natural world, please take a minute to
relax, enjoy, and reflect! WAIT ... WHAT?
First, this is really wonderful. Giraffe populations are rising! Giraffe numbers are 20 percent higher than in 2015, an increase linked to dedicated conservation efforts. According to a recent analysis of survey data from across the African continent, the total giraffe population is now around 117,100, approximately 20 percent higher than the population of 97,500 in 2015, when the last major survey was published. Giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis) were once considered a single species, but recent genetic evidence shows there are likely four species of giraffe, three of which have increased considerably in number: the Northern giraffes, the Reticulated giraffes, and the Masai giraffes. The fourth, Southern giraffes, the most populous species, have remained relatively stable. Reported in February by the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, and published in the peer-reviewed research journal "Imperiled: The Encyclopedia of Conservation."
News from the Rainforest! Jaguars (Panthera onca) have been under pressure for decades from habitat destruction and hunting, and are listed as “Near Threatened.” Although a few Jaguar populations are still threatened in some areas, a new study found something remarkable. Here's the headline from 'Science News': "Huge Numbers of Fish-eating Jaguars Prowl Brazil’s Wetlands." A team of wildlife scientists from Oregon State University deployed 59 cameras in the Pantanal, an immense tropical wetland—the largest of its kind in the world that sprawls over parts of Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay—and collected more than 1,500 videos of jaguars. The researchers also rounded-up 13 jaguars (here kitty kitty) and fitted them with tracking collars to gain insight into the animals’ population density, movements and social interactions. Based on their data, they estimate that the Pantanal hosts the highest density of jaguars ever recorded, 12.4 animals per 100 square kilometers, nearly triple the population of earlier studies. Jaguars were also the most common mammal spotted on the cameras.
And here's some great Ocean News. Humpback whales in the South Atlantic have nicely recovered from
near-extinction! A new count shows the population off Brazil's east coast went
from about 450 in the 1950s to over 25,000 now. Royal Society Science researchers report the
population of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) that swim the seas
between South America and Antarctica has bounced back to about 93 percent of
the population’s previous levels. Of 14 known
humpback populations—seven in the Southern Hemisphere and seven in the Northern
Hemisphere—10 have shown almost complete recovery, according to NOAA.
And
this rebound is part of a global trend for dozens of other ocean species. "We're seeing an ocean that's teeming with life like we haven't seen since the '40s or '50s," Chris Fischer, founder of the research organization OCEARCH, wrote in the prestigious science journal 'Nature.'
Sea turtles are swimming happily as populations thrive! For millennia, humans have used both adult sea turtles and their eggs as a food source and for cultural practices. For example, the shell of the beautiful Hawksbill sea turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata, pictured) is prized for trinkets, jewelry, furniture inlays, etc. Yet greatly increased pushback from the public and numerous conservation efforts have seen poaching drop sharply, and populations worldwide are doing well. “The silver lining is that, despite some illegal harvesting, exploitation is not having a negative impact on sea-turtle populations on a global scale. This is really good news,” said marine scientist Jesse Senko, in research published in 'Global Change Biology'. “Contrary to popular belief, most sea-turtle populations worldwide are doing quite well,” he said. Additionally, the study pins down where—and by whom—sea turtles are being exploited, which helps conservationists target governments and communities for advocacy, said Emily Miller, an ecologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.
The Bald Eagle’s Soaring Return! The number of American bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) has skyrocketed since 2009, with more than 300,000 birds soaring over the lower 48 states, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists said in a March 24th report. As a result of conservation efforts, the bald eagle population has risen from a mere 417 nesting pairs in 1963 to more than 71,400 nesting pairs now, an increase of 17,000%, and there are an estimated 316,700 individual birds today. Bird lovers have hailed the eagle’s recovery and noted that the majestic, white-headed bird has always been considered sacred to Native American tribes and treasured by people all over the United States generally. Biologists conducted aerial surveys and worked with the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology to acquire information on areas that were not practical to fly over as part of aerial surveys.
And here's some great BUZZZZZ. After almost two decades of the media's relentless "bee colony collapse" coverage, a gold-standard source reveals something remarkable—there's been a stunning boom in the population of the industrious little honeybees in the U.S. The numbers from the new 'Census of Agriculture' shows that America’s honeybee population has rocketed to an all-time high, up 31 percent since 2007. The U.S. has added almost a million bee colonies, and we now have 3.8 million, the census shows. Since 2007, the honeybee has been the fastest-growing so-called "livestock" segment in the country, according to National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), a division of the United States Department of Agriculture. And that doesn’t count feral honeybees, which may outnumber their captive cousins several times over. Plus, the Census of Agriculture also shows the population of our beautiful wild ducks is up 12 percent, and the deer population is up about 7 percent.
Polar
Bears Are Doing Really Well! Remember all the dire claims that polar
bears are in danger, and may even become extinct? Turns out nothing
could be further from the truth. The newest data shows polar bear
numbers have grown significantly during the recent warming period.
The populations of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) have increased from between 5,000 and 10,000
bears in 1960 to between 22,000 and 31,000 today, based on estimates
from the Polar Bear Monitoring Group and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service. Litter sizes “are among the highest ever reported for 18 of 19 polar bear populations.”
Biologists were mistaken about how polar bears would respond to summer sea ice losses, and
have since learned why:
Polar bears evolved
between 6,000,000 to 350,000 years ago, so adapted to thrive in
climates that were alternately both much colder and much warmer than
today.
• Here's how it was explained to me by a Stanford geophysicist: "Over millenniums, the Earth's landmasses and oceans undergo vast changes—miles-thick
sheets of ice cover entire continents then recede, polar regions
experience ice-free
sub-tropical periods, sea levels rise and fall by many hundreds of
feet, rift zones and canyons form then gradually fill to become valleys
and
plains, mountain
ranges weather away while some, like the Himalayas, continue to rise,
and full-margin rupture earthquakes and supervolcano eruptions
dramatically change topography. To
the geologic eye, the Earth is a fluid form. In relatively recent
history,
evidence shows that polar bear populations thrived
during the Holocene climatic optimum, from 9000 to 5000 years ago,
which proxy data indicates was far warmer than at present."
• What's more, real world observations by Native Inuit Tribal Communities also crush the alarmist claims that polar bears are
endangered by reduced sea ice. An extensive analysis relying on native
reports concluded that 12 of 13 Canadian Arctic polar bear sub-populations
(92.3%) have been stable or growing in recent decades. During interviews with
four Inuit communities on their experience with polar bears, all
participants reported having more bear encounters in recent years than
in the past. “Back in the '50s, the '60s, and into the mid '70s, there were hardly any bears,” said an Inuit tribal elder. “There are too many polar bears now. Bears can catch seals even if the ice is thin, and in open water.”
Explore the Lost Knowledge of the Antediluvian Civilization of Ancient Egypt. Thousands of years ago a small Neolithic community in the region of the lower Nile abruptly rose to create the most majestic and enduring civilization of history. For centuries, devoted scholars have endeavored to penetrate the mysteries of Ancient Egypt. Champollion, founder of Egyptology, was the first of a thousand such men and women, living simply in the heat and dust, trying to read for us the riddle of the achievements of a mysterious civilization, to snatch from the secretive soil the science and technology, the art and literature, the history and wisdom of Ancient Egypt. By its side Sumeria's culture was but a crude beginning; not even the culture of Greece or Rome would surpass it, far less our own. What long lost knowledge underlies the unprecedented technology, artistic creations, and cultural sophistication of Ancient Egypt?
"Ancient Egypt presents us with an impenetrable mystery. How may we explain a Neolithic desert people spawning the most majestic civilization of history? Their rapid ascension from a primitive state to a previously unapproached zenith of technology and culture demonstrates advancements that utterly elude explanation. Many of their artistic and architectural productions are unequalled to this day. What could possibly explain vast technical knowledge and sophistication appearing so fully-formed so suddenly?" —Legendary Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, Archaeological Journal (1911)
The voluminous lore of ancient Egyptian tradition relates that in the antediluvian time of zp tpj (generally transcribed as Zep Tepi), the "first occasion" or "first time," mysterious, highly enlightened "gods" appeared in Egypt, bearing previously unknown technology and knowledge. The texts inscribed on the walls of the Temple of Edfu in Upper Egypt contain explicit descriptions of the time of Zep Tepi and the coming of the "bringers of knowledge," said to have occurred, the texts tell us, circa 18,000 B.C.
One of the most mystifying of the seemingly impenetrable puzzles of Ancient Egypt is the origin of the exquisite and lordly ancient Egyptian writing known as hieroglyphics. It appeared suddenly, as if out of nowhere, with no record or evidence of a long, slow development that would normally be the case with any sophisticated written language. Hieroglyphs were from the very beginning phonetic symbols. An earlier stage consisting exclusively of picture writing using symbols or illustrations of the intended word or concept cannot be shown to have existed in Egyptian history. In ancient times, hieroglyphic script was called mdju netjer—"words of the gods." Egyptian legends and traditions explain this quite simply: hieroglyphic writing was one of many "gifts of civilization" provided by Thoth, the Egyptian god-of-all-trades, who arrived in the region of the Nile in the time of Zep Tepi. Our current knowledge does not allow us to improve on this explanation.
An ancient papyrus found at Luxor (Thebes), now known as the ‘Turin Royal Canon’ or the ‘Turin King List,’ is of special interest. This ancient hieratic papyrus is considered by modern scholars to be the most extensive list ever found of Egyptian Kings as complied by the ancient Egyptian scholars themselves. The list in the ‘Royal Canon of Turin’ formulates the basis for most of the chronology that predates the reign of Ramesses II. The papyrus relates that—long before the “land of the Pharaohs” was ruled by “mortals”—beings who had come from “the heavens” were the first to arrive and reign over the region of the Nile. In the papyrus, these mysterious beings are referred to as ‘Gods’ and ‘Demigods.’ The final two lines of Column One of the list, titled “Gods of Ancient Egypt,” reads: "Venerables Shemsu-Hor, 13,420 years; Reign before the Shemsu-Hor, 23,200 years." Pause a moment for thought. Could the time-frames of such astonishing antiquity expressed in these ancient records and hieroglyphic temple texts be accurate? Who were these mysterious gods? Why did they come, and from where?
In the Sahara Desert of southern Egypt is an area known as Nabta Playa. Here an ancient stone calendar circle, along with 25 other megalithic structures, was identified by archaeologist Fred Wendorf in 1998. According to an extensive analysis by NASA astrophysicist Thomas Brophy and his team, three stones inside the Nabta calendar circle represent the belt of Orion, just as the three pyramids of Giza align to represent that same constellation. The stones of the Nabta Playa’s stone calendar circle and the corresponding stars in the sky aligned on summer solstice nights as they appeared circa 16,500 B.C. Based on these and other analyses, Brophy’s team concluded that the ancient builders of Nabta Playa possessed highly sophisticated astronomical knowledge, the type of knowledge we associate with advanced civilization.
The dates of the structures found at Nabta Playa are in line with the dating of the oldest sections of the Great Sphinx. Geological and seismic analyses, utilizing the weathering and erosion patterns correlated with the paleoclimatology and subsurface features, establish that the earliest portions of the Great Sphinx and the walls of the Sphinx enclosure date back to 11,000 B.C., and perhaps far earlier. Clearly, the alignment of pyramids at Giza and the stones of the megalithic calendar circle at Nabta Playa indicates that the constellation of Orion—which represented the god Osiris during pre-dynastic times—was of prime importance.
Plato (c. 428-348 B.C.) writes of Egyptian masters presenting him with historical records extending back some 18,000 years: "Egypt
has recorded and kept eternally the wisdom of the ancient ages, all
coming from time immemorial when gods governed the earth in the dawn of
civilization." Herodotus tells us that when Hecataeus of Miletus
(550-476 B.C.) boasted to the Egyptian priests that he could trace his
ancestry through fifteen centuries, they quietly showed him, in a
hidden sanctuary deep under the sands, the statutes of 345 high
priests, each the son of the preceding, making 345 generations since
their "gods" had appeared in the Nile valley and marking a timeline
extending back one-hundred-eighty centuries.
This ancient evidence reveals that a sophisticated Egyptian civilization existed long prior to the last glacial period, and most importantly prior to the ‘Younger Dryas Boundary’ cataclysmic event as well. The ‘YDB’ event, which occurred circa 10,770 B.C., is thought to have been caused by the impacts or air-bursts of several comets, resulting in massive shockwaves and firestorms sweeping across continents, initiating a 1200 year-long epoch of terminal environmental change and catastrophic extinctions, effectively wiping all but traces of early civilizations from the historical record.
Thank You for checking our book specials for the day. Also, if you wish you can subscribe to our community Mailing List to receive updates on book specials and other news. I'll send you a free book, and be assured that we are very respectful of our subscribers' time and privacy. All the best from all of the team here at Wisdom Masters Press, Amber
Next, something to consider, one example of really asinine (but pretty comical) Media Nonsense, by Amber:
Holy
cow, a lot of the "reporting" from the mainstream media, it
turns out, increasingly plumbs the depths of an alternative
universe
that readily embraces the absurd without even batting an eye. Instances of this
are abundant, and
they could pass for bitingly sharp, dark bits of satire on the American
media if they weren't everywhere in, you know, real life.
We believe that
detecting and correcting disinformation is the first step toward
creating
better-informed citizens, and that can best be accomplished by
presenting actual, truthful
observational data.
The loss of a fair, honest and objective press is a really big deal, so
this
is something all Americans need to be aware of, knowledgeable about,
and therefore fully alert
to.
• Here's a typical example, a very revealing exposé of the nefarious fear-mongering and false
narratives in the media. With the wildfires in the Texas panhandle—and constantly during the summer wildfire season—like crazed carnival barkers, the media went wild trumpeting claims about "record-breaking wildfires" and "the worst wildfires in history" and "record-shattering megafires" and so on. You know what I mean. And as you read this, please think
back to the apocalyptic reporting after the
Australian brushfires in 2020, and there's
this prediction from the 'Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Impact Assessment' published in 1990, over 32 years ago: "During this decade, there will be worldwide mass forest mortality linked to climate-change-fueled wildfires." So there's all of that,
and then there's the truth...
• FACTS:
The world's land area
is 57,510,000 square miles (148,940,000 sq km), which is 29.2% of the
Earth's surface (70.8% is water and ice). Around the turn of the century in 1900, an estimated 4.5% of the
land area of the world burned in wildfires every year, or an average of about 2,587,950 square
miles annually. By the year 2000, NOAA and the NCDC reported that this had declined to 3.2%,
or 1,840,320 square miles, a reduction of 29 percent. Then, over the last two decades, NOAA satellites
show an even further decline. In 2021, about 2.7% burned, and in 2022 just 2.4% burned, about 1,380,240
square miles. That's a REDUCTION of 47 percent in land area burned, some 1,207,710 fewer square miles
than in the early 1900s (an area the size of India), and 460,080 fewer square miles
than in 2000.
The current data is showing the total amount of land area burned in 2023 is estimated to have been 2.6% of the world's land area, approximately 1,543,750 square miles, a REDUCTION of 41 percent in land area burned over the last 120 years, some 1,044,200 fewer square miles than in the 1900s. Sources:
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geostationary
Satellite Data (2022), Washington, DC; the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), Asheville, NC;
and the Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton, NJ.
• FACTS:
In
the United States, the peak in the number of acres burned actually
occurred in 1930 with over 52,000,000 acres burned, compared to 7,577,000 in 2022, a DECREASE of 85%, and 2,634,000 acres burned in 2023, a DECREASE of 95% over the last 93 years. And the peak in the number of wildfires actually occurred in 1981 with about 244,890, compared to 69,988 in 2022, a DECREASE of 71%, and 55,570 wildfires in 2023, a DECREASE of 77% over the last four decades. Sources:
The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), the nation's center for
wildland fires, providing statistics that encompass lands managed by
all federal, state, local, tribal, and private agencies; Princeton Environmental Institute, NJ.
Note:
If you wish, you can verify all of the foregoing data with NOAA, the
National Climatic Data Center, the Princeton Environmental Institute,
and the National Interagency Fire Center via each of their respective
official Office of Communication. Make sure to put a specific request
in the subject line of your e-mail so it's directed to the right
department within each agency.
• •To the extent that reality still has any meaning these days, please keep this in mind -
There's
really no polite way to put this, but since the foregoing facts and historical data are quickly and easily available to
anyone who cares to check, it is the inescapable conclusion: When you hear media reporting anything like "wildfires are becoming more frequent" or "wildfires are burning more land than ever before," you're hearing total lies told by people who know them to be lies. Instances of these tragicomic spectacles are on screens everywhere, so beware.
• >>> Please take
a moment to consider the following examples of pure fabrications,
the media organizations that <<<
ran them,
and that doing so meant
abandoning every professional standard of honest, objective journalism:
CNN: "Climate-change-charged wildfires are burning more acres than ever before."
MSNBC: "Forests all over the U.S. have been experiencing the worst wildfires in recorded history."
CBS: "Climate change is making wildfires more frequent and more destructive than ever before."
PBS: "Historically extreme wildfires pose an existential threat to civilization."
NPR: "The U.S. is experiencing the worst wildfires in history."
USA Today: "Record-shattering megafires are destroying massive areas of U.S. forestland."
The Associated Press: "This summer marked the most destructive wildfire season in history."
The Washington Post: "Historically unprecedented wildfires are destroying massive amounts of forestland."
The New York Times: "Wildfires in the United States are becoming more frequent and burning a greater number of trees."
Well. Keeping in mind that the number of U.S. wildfires in 2023 was actually DOWN by 77% from its historical high, the amount of area burned was DOWN by 95%—and that in 1930, as one example, 1947% more trees burned than in 2023—we see that every one of those reports is calculated, outright disinformation. This
is an excellent example of the current state of the U.S. mainstream or
'legacy' media. A media expert from UC Berkeley put it this way: "Reporting
like that is a travesty; in journalism there is no ‘artistic license’
to grossly distort scientific data. Never trust a media outlet that does not
trust its public with the truth."
Freedom of speech encourages ideas, opinions, discussion and debate, but there is ONLY ONE SET OF FACTS.
“Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true. Many other things are believed simply because they
have been asserted repeatedly—and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence.” —Thomas Sowell
“Freedom of information is a fundamental human right, and the touchstone of all freedoms. For a press that is
afraid to let the people judge the truth in an open market, is a press that is afraid of the truth.” —John F. Kennedy
“The most valuable piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.” —Antisthenes (445-365 BC)
A Cautionary Note from Heather:
It is worth pausing here for a moment to consider that the absence of
truthful and fact-based media stories on issues of public concern is not the result of
sloppy or incompetent
research, it is intentional. Anyone can make an unfounded and often truly
ludicrous claim about anything—climate related, political, cultural,
whatever—and, without any proof, the story makes it into the media. This is a serious
matter. A professor of media at UC Berkeley Graduate School of
Journalism told me: “The
politicization of the media has become ubiquitous. The resulting
duplicity of attempting to misrepresent the scientific record in a
manner intended to deceive the public is as serious an infraction
against professional ethics as a journalist or politician can commit. When
that breach happens and the corrupt behavior of falsifications and
fabrications come to the fore, it explodes the illusion of objectivity.”
One of our neighbors, an atmospheric scientist at USF, holds today's media in especially low regard, noting that: “They betray contempt for the intelligence of their viewers” and “introduce an insidious corruption of scientific facts and objectivity.” He observed, “Science,
true science, is an indispensable candle in this darkness. Every
American has the responsibility to uphold the light of reason and truth
in the face of the media’s most shameless untruths and outrageous
propaganda.”
One of Stanford's definitive experts on the subject of media propaganda explained: “At
their heart, these propagandists are about premising the hard-left
political ideology of a small coterie of bi-coastal elites over the
rest of humanity. Their motivating passion for falsified reporting is
what they see as the right of their chosen group to manipulate and
exploit others with absolutely no regard for truth and without restraint from any
kind of law, human, moral, or divine.”
All of this is very well-stated, and it is interesting to see how
deeply affecting accounts of disinformation and heinous propaganda can be, and how it
moves otherwise restrained academic experts to unaccustomed pitches of
lyricism.
• Warning: The highly politicized media organizations we were told to be very wary of include, but are not limited to: CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The
Atlantic magazine, The New Yorker, the Associated Press, NPR, and PBS.
Additionally, others who are "often a few oozy footsteps worse"—hard-left
and extreme-left organizations that traffic in disinformation, hoaxes and
pure fabrications mixed in with other reporting—such as Vox, The
Guardian, Politico, USA Today, Salon, Alternet, Grist, FiveThirtyEight,
Slate, Raw Story, Mother Jones, The Nation, Scripps, TNR, Rolling Stone, Intelligencer, and the
like. So PLEASE beware! And as a critical warning for parents, Teen Vogue has an extreme-left indoctrination agenda, actually one of the worst, and it's for kids!
An Observation from Michael:
Amber’s article revealing the true wildfire data is outstanding, yet
simply getting the facts straight regarding climate issues is not
enough. Even though there is an abundance of valid information available,
widespread disinformation is creating a situation where people are more divided than ever.
Getting people to realistically address climate issues calls for more
than technology and reams of data—it requires understanding
human nature and human decision-making.
Researchers at Stanford University have
conducted research directed to understanding why people do—or don’t—take
certain stances on environmental concerns. Their studies reveal a
significant and growing ‘polarization’
of people’s views on climate issues.
Polarization happens when differences in beliefs spread further and
further apart, with one side fully embracing the ubiquitous climate
disinformation, and the other side fully aware of the scientific
climate realities. The study found that: “Everyone
eventually holds very strong views and virtually no one is left in the
middle. When you reach a point where a significant percentage of people
have inaccurate beliefs based on disinformation, it becomes much harder
to have productive discussions of any relevance.”
Polarization occurs on multiple levels,
primarily through the way we process information. People are
inclined to ‘biased assimilation’
of information—when someone hears new information, their acceptance of
it depends on whether it’s consistent with what they already believe.
Adding to the current extent of polarization is ‘homophily’—people
like to associate with people whose views are aligned with their own.
Not only are they not likely to accept different information, they’re not
likely to even hear it, because they’re only listening to people who
believe what they do. Because people only pay attention to sources they
agree with—and there are powerful vested interests working very hard
to promote disinformation that supports a purely political agenda—it
is difficult for accurate scientific information to penetrate.
Consider, for example, what happens with a person who reads:
a) Reports about wildfires coming from media outlets, yet also reads,
b) Reports of the factual data about wildfires coming from major
research centers. Reports ‘a’ and ‘b’ are in diametric opposition; the
media claims wildfires are horribly worse than ever before, yet the
warehouse of data compiled by top research centers shows that wildfires
are far less severe than at anytime in recorded history. What
determines which reporting that person will believe? One would think
that the source of
the information would be an important consideration, yet research
indicates that for many people the enormous difference in the
credibility of source ‘a’ and source ‘b’ plays little or no part,
showing how powerful biased assimilation, homophily, and the resulting
polarization can be.
Additionally, there’s a very dangerous category of polarization called 'affective polarization.' That’s how someone regards others who have different beliefs, and goes from, “Those people have the wrong views on climate change” to “They’re not good citizens, they’re not good people, they’re terrible.”
This, of course, is the most problematic. When someone begins to think
that the 'other side' is not redeemable—or are “deplorables” or "deniers" or even "evil"—it becomes extremely difficult to have functional discussions to move forward with
realistic programs.
Obviously, polarization has detrimental
effects on democratic processes when it affects peoples’ ability to
understand real problems versus fabricated “problems.” Environmental problems take on the form of social dilemmas, creating a
conflict between people who "virtue-signal" in the short term and the
collective interest of the country in the long term. Polarization between groups
impedes the cooperation that is required to implement effective
environmental decision-making by interfering with communication,
degrading trust and mutual understanding, and making it difficult to
engage in constructive debate.
As Amber's examples stunningly illustrate, the mainstream
media is actively spreading malicious disinformation, as is social
media, and it’s going to get worse. The incredible abilities of AI are
making it easier to disseminate polarizing disinformation and making it
far easier to identify and target specific groups who are vulnerable to disinformation. True 'freedom of the press'
and actual 'free speech' require not only the absence of political
manipulation, but the active seeking of authentic facts and the relentless pursuit of truth.
As we’re now seeing, the current tyranny in the media is not just the
one which conspires to spread and enforce uniformity of climate
propaganda
fables, but the tyranny that belittles and ignores facts,
and therein suppresses the truth.
• When
a clear understanding of reality is
revealed by data, it becomes important to have that as widely known as
possible. Nature shapes our future, irrespective of false notions held
by the public or falsifications spread by the press. Science works to
find the true nature of our world. The truth about reality is not
decided by the number of likes on social media, it is not dictated by
political speeches, and it is certainly not imposed by media lies.
Agenda-driven political activists and their operatives in
the media can try to distort or deny the facts any way they want, but
they
cannot create a non-existent reality by making up stories and reporting
on them as if they were true. Unlike all too many people, Nature cannot
be fooled.
•• The
extent of false reporting in the media and on social media
platforms has had real-world consequences. Clearly, the public is not buying the
hysteria and is unimpressed by the hysterics. A Gallup Poll shows that only 16% of Americans have "confidence" in newspapers to publish the truth, and only 11%
of Americans have "confidence" in television news to report the truth.
These are by far the lowest poll numbers for the U.S. media ever
recorded. This is a revenge the world sometimes takes upon the
iniquitous, that it entraps them by force of the very morality they
think themselves superior to. The constant lying comes from a lot
of politicians as well. As a neighbor of ours, a Nobel laureate, wryly observed: “Politicians are to telling the truth as cats are to swimming. They can do it, but they prefer not to.”
NOTE: If you'd like, you can subscribe to our community mailing list here and I'll send you this book as a FREE GIFT, the new edition of 'Mysticism in Nepal & Tibet, The Himalayan Journals of M.G. Hawking.' Composed from the journals of Michael Hawking’s five years in remote areas of the Himalayas, this volume transports the reader into regions of our planet that in all history only a handful of people have experienced, a journey that leads to the discovery of the most refined and powerful mystical knowledge possessed by the human race. This book presents an extensive anthology of excerpts from nine (9) books containing detailed narratives of Hawking’s various experiences and conversations with the truly extraordinary individuals he encountered in remote Himalayan regions of Nepal and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Includes a comprehensive book list with descriptions. 2023 Edition, e-reader page count 265 (estimated), ASIN: B06Y4T55VK.
Next, readers have been e-mailing us to recommend that the full and complete account of Michael's Himalayan adventures and experiences really should appear in our newsletter, especially for the sake of people discovering our books for the first time. They are certainly right, so...
Journey
into a fabled hidden world to experience a truly epic adventure.
This
captivating account is adopted from the archived journals of explorer
M.G. Hawking’s sixty-two months in remote regions of the Great Himalayan Range.
On an extended trek into a largely unexplored area of the vast frozen
fortress of the Himalayas, Hawking chanced on something extraordinary.
In a beautiful small village he encountered truly exceptional men and
women possessed of knowledge and abilities virtually unknown in the
Western world. Richly entertaining and enlightening, this is Hawking's
full memoir, one you will never forget. New Edition, e-reader page
count 1285 (estimated). For more information, please see the book's
Amazon page; the U.S. page here, the U.K. page here, the CA page here, the DE page here, the AU page here, for India and Nepal here, and for Egypt here. (This book is regular price.)
Please Note: When we issued this new edition with corrections and revisions, many of the book's previous reviews vanished, and all of them were 5-Star. Very disappointing after all our work, but we're consulting with Amazon to have them restored. Fortunately, some of the reviews were preserved, and I'll include them here —
"It's been a long time since I have not been able to put a book down. I read myself to sleep, over and over, day and night. This is my first experience with the author, and I was satisfied early on that he is telling us about an adventure that goes beyond anything that I thought was possible. Maybe you have read or studied reincarnation, other dimensions, telepathy, intuition, the subconscious, and all manner of what could be referred to as supernatural or afterlife. You have not read anything like this. The title of the book, nor my review, can adequately describe what you are in for. The last book that changed my life was 'Seth Speaks,' and that was 30 years ago. This book changed my life, this week."
"An adventure unlike any other. Hawking has achieved a master piece of philosophy and adventure combined with spiritual truths and romance. It is unlike any book I’ve read, and I’ve enjoyed the third reading as much as the first; which, because of the amount of spiritual teachings inside, multiple readings are almost certainly a requirement to extract every ounce of information available from the masters and adepts within the story. Highly recommended."
"Absolutely mind blowing! I am a long time student of the 'occult' and this book's knowledge far surpasses anything I have ever read in over 50 years of reading! Made abstract concepts clear. Truly life changing for me. You will be hooked on Hawking's book, which could change the evolution of the planet."
"Masterful and Engaging Adventure in the Himalayas. A masterful story of adventure and discovery. Hawking artfully brings together a cogent examination of philosophy and science intermingled with Eastern Adeptic Wisdom. I couldn’t get enough and groaned viscerally when the story ended. Highly recommended."
"Such
a book has long been needed for mankinds' awakening. MG Hawking's
detailed account of his time spent in the Himalayan Mountains is an
awesome adventure and one of personal enlightenment. Not only does he
relay his experience with his time among Adepts, but also gives the
reader his knowledge of physics and history of the area. He brings this
all together with a seamlessly flow of natural occurrences."
* * *
"A Rare Treasure. Hawking brings together an important anthology from an amazing number of adepts and masters with whom he engaged during a five-year trip to the Himalayas. What a rare resource! I took pages of notes; highly beneficial for anyone on the path to enlightenment."
"This book is life changing. Even as a person who has practiced visualization, energy work and "magic" and thought myself to know a bit about it, this book really transforms your entire belief of what is possible. I also love the scientific background of both the author and the ideals presented, for those whose intellectual mind needs "facts" to break through the doubt that is inherent in all of us from birth. Particle physics, the very essence of what we construe as our being, supports the widely held beliefs of the ancients, that the world we know is but the tiniest perception of what is real. This book is inspiring and gives us a glimpse into how to expand our consciousness and create the reality that we desire. I bought this book to expand my extra-sensory powers, and ended up expanding the entire world of my existence."
This book presents the scientific information and esoteric knowledge necessary to enable a properly equipped individual to attain true extrasensory and psychokinetic abilities. Psychokinesis and extrasensory perception refer to the utilization of consciousness in a manner enabling a person to influence or observe a physical system without direct physical presence or interaction, abilities increasing recognized in academic and scientific communities as part of the field of human ability.The quantum world builds the classical world. Everything in our classical,
macroscopic world is composed of microscopic units of energy—the quanta—acting
in unison. Consciousness and its various mental abilities are part of that
quantum physical universe. Since consciousness arises at the quantum level, the
features of quantum physics are involved in, and represent explanations for,
all the countless paranormal phenomena that have been observed through the
ages, and which modern researchers consistently observe in experimental
settings, including extrasensory perception and psychokinesis.
Both of the great revolutions in modern physics—relativity and quantum
theory—have revealed factors that play a fundamental role in the creation of
what we perceive as physical “reality.” They challenge the assumption that
there is a material reality that exists ‘out there’ at all. In past centuries
it was believed that the physical reality we experience around us exists
independent of our observations—in other words, that there is an actual, real
material reality. Advancements in quantum research have revealed that this is
demonstrably not the case.
“The world is a construct of our mind’s sensations, perceptions, beliefs, memories. It is convenient to regard it as existing objectively on its own. But it certainly does not.” —Erwin Schrödinger, Nobel Laureate
“The present laws of physics are incomplete without a translation into terms of mental phenomena. The laws of quantum mechanics itself cannot be formulated without recourse to consciousness.” —Eugene Wigner, Nobel Laureate
“The universe does not exist ‘out there,’ independent of us. We are inescapably involved in bringing about that which appears to be happening. We are not only observers. We are participators.” —Legendary Physicist John Wheeler
“All
matter originates and exists only by virtue of the existence of consciousness.
The mind is the matrix of all matter.” —Max Planck, originator of Quantum
Mechanics, Nobel Laureate
The personal experience of many of our readers demonstrates that the knowledge
presented in this book, when founded on a comprehension of scientific models of
consciousness, offers the illumination which, with diligent study and practice,
can enable the realization of very uncommon abilities, ones that can be
utilized to create a superlative life for both the practitioner and others.
*
*
*
“If
apart from the principles of consciousness one hopes to find the way,
it is like trying to twist a rope of sand. Those who know the
principles apply them in their daily life, with each and every thought
they think. And what of those who live without that knowledge? At the
end of each day they exhaust another empty cycle, and at the end of
days exhaust an empty life.”
—Kalika-Khenmetaten, Egyptian Masteress, circa 1370 B.C., quoted from our book 'A Great Master Speaks'
“The objects around us are simply symbols that transmit meaning. We create objects just as we create words, to express something, some meaning or knowledge. This constant creation of physical reality through thoughts and mental images is what we do, all of us. It is the attainment of the ability to do it with knowing purpose and intent that provides actual power and freedom. This is how our tradition views the true nature of physical objects, and this is why we can manipulate what you see as physical reality through the techniques I am teaching you.” —Mani Choejor, B’on Sorceress of the 4000-year-old Tibetan tradition inherited from the ancient kingdom of Zhang Zhung, quoted from our book 'Teachings of a B’on Sorceress, The Ancient Powers'
“The most important thing in life is to stop saying I should and start saying I will.
Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities.” —Charles Dickens
“Magic is believing in yourself; if you can do that, you can make anything happen.” —Johann von Goethe
“The two greatest days in a person’s life are the day they’re born and the day they discover why.” —Mark Twain
The story is told that Benjamin Franklin, when walking out of Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention in 1787, was
asked, “What sort of government shall we have?,” to which Franklin replied, “A constitutional republic, if you can keep it.”
“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
—Lord Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (c. 1850)
• Best Browsers for 2024: The right browser can make a huge difference to the way your internet works. It can protect you from malware, advertisers’ tracking, other online threats, and safely bring you the content you want. TechRadar reports that the best browsers for 2024 will be: #1) Mozilla Firefox, #2) MS Edge, #3) Opera, #4) Google Chrome. Firefox is our preferred browser and by far the best for privacy and malware protection. Edge is Microsoft's replacement for the now obsolete Internet Explorer, Opera is quite innovative with a distinctive interface and built-in VPN, and Chrome is the world’s most used browser, but it's a memory-hog and has serious privacy concerns as it includes a number of functions that send data from your computer to Google’s servers.
• U.S. Energy News: The U.S. led the the entire world in reducing carbon emissions in 2020, according to a report from the prestigious International Energy Agency: "The United States saw the largest decline in energy-related CO2 emissions in 2020 on a country-by-country basis with a fall of 140 million metric tons, or 2.9%. U.S. emissions are now down almost one gigaton (one billion tons) from their peak in the year 2000, the largest absolute decline by any country over that period." The International Energy Agency is a Paris-based organization with 29 member countries. And the U.S. Department of Energy reported: "The US leads the world in actual carbon emissions reductions by orders of magnitude compared to any other country." I think it's interesting that the United States' reduction of carbon emissions in 2020 was far ahead of any other G20 country, and vastly ahead of any country that remained a member of the Paris Climate Accord, yet I have never heard that fact reported by the corporate media.
• Life Science Discoveries: Dramatic new discoveries reveal that all the raw molecular ingredients of life are fully distributed throughout the Universe, both inside and between solar systems, on every rocky mass, and inside interstellar gas and plasma. Water is nearly everywhere, as is carbon. And young stars churn out amino acids and project them into stellar winds—the very amino acids that make up DNA and RNA. Comets and meteors carry these amino acids between solar systems. RNA building blocks have been found in solar systems 400 light-years away. Oceans on Saturn’s moons are teaming with nutrients. And the conditions that gave rise to unicellular organisms on Earth are present in ordinary gaseous cloud formations everywhere in space. So what are the odds that we find a planet that sustains life? They’re about the same odds that the remarkably courageous explorer Christopher Columbus, sailing west, would run into the Americas.
• How Many Planets?: In a related note, in January, the 'Institute for Theory and Computation' at the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics issued a fascinating report. Based on data from the Kepler Space Observatory, there are about 300 billion stars in our galaxy, and more than 10 trillion galaxies in the Universe. That means there are an enormous number of stars, and about 7.6% percent of them are class G stars (like our Sun), and almost all of them have planets. Based on the Kepler observations, it is estimated that a quarter of those class G stars have at least one rocky planet similar in size to the Earth and in the zone where life like that on our own planet exists. That means there are an estimated 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (a zetta) potentially habitable planets in the observable Universe. And there could be vastly more that exist out there, but are beyond our present ability to detect.
• N = R* • fp • ne • fl • fi • fc • L: That's the Drake equation, developed by Dr. Frank Drake in 1961, and is the probabilistic calculation used to estimate the number of active extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. The Drake equation can give a very wide range of results depending on the estimated values for its seven variable factors, a number of which are significantly conjectural. As such, the Drake equation is essentially both a philosophical and investigative device. Briefly, using data from NASA's Kepler Observatory and the European Space Agency, and replacing point estimates with probabilistic distributions, a conservative estimate yields a result of 560,000 extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy.I recently spent a lot of time looking for Winston. Winston is a cat, I think, at least until proven otherwise.
He left home after we switched to dry food. I finally found him, he had gone to the mountains and taken to hunting.
He likes it, so he's still there. All I do now is ride up on horseback every week or so to take him little boxes of ammo.
"The most valuable piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue." —Antisthenes (445-365 B.C.)
In today's world, truth has become so obscure and falsehood so widespread
that, unless we love and
actively seek the truth, we
cannot know it. This is an age of media when the lie has been made dogma,
when supression is a sanctified virtue, and evasion a sacrament. It is the age of words but the words
no longer have meaning, they have been subverted into absurdities. We believe that truth is profoundly
important and absolutely essential, and no argument or excuse or deception, no matter
how deeply believed,
can ever replace it. This section of our
newsletter is dedicated to that proposition. —M.G. Hawking
• The Media — Truth ... Going ... Going ... GONE, by Ashley: A recent Gallup poll found a whopping 86 percent of American adults say that U.S. legacy media outlets have "a great deal of bias" in their reporting, and a stunning 84 percent of Americans believe that "the media is to blame for political division in this country." The poll also revealed that 73 percent of Americans see bias in allegedly objective reporting as "a major problem."
"The object of life is not to be on the side of either the majority or the minority,
but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." —Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121-180)
• Media Reporting vs. Facts: Skeptical? I found so many instances of categorically false reporting during my research that I could literally write dozens of pages of examples of how the corporate media has become this country's "vox mendacium" ("voice of lies"). Really, much of their reporting has become utterly devoid of reality. To illustrate this, I wanted to provide at least ten examples, but Michael limited me to just four, based on the legal principle, "Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus," a Latin phrase meaning "false in one thing, false in everything." So here are just some examples of actual, verified facts versus media stories that clearly reveal the extent of the media's corruption and complete contempt for the public's intelligence.
1. A Definitive Essay 2. Restoring America 3. Hurricane Facts 4. Wildfire Facts 5. Mask Facts (new window)
I recognize that in today's world there are many people who care more for agendas and ideologies than realities, and those who belittle, ignore or refuse to believe any truth that contradicts convictions they have chosen or have been impelled or coerced to believe. So, I will open with a cautionary note by remembering the wise observations of two brilliant minds.
1. A Definitive Essay - The Curious Tragedy of The Atlantic Magazine. Note from Ashley: A few months ago Amber and ran across something in 'The Atlantic Magazine' that was really over-the-top, so to say. Honestly, as I read the article, I felt like I had been dropped into a story that emerged from a Vulcan mind-meld of Salvador Dalí and Jeffrey Dahmer. So, after we read it we checked with professional sources and ... well, you're about to see why it's so bizarre. Later, we showed the story to Michael, and after he read it he wrote the following. I found it on his desk and I'm including it here as we feel it reveals some very important facts and insights.
By Michael: In
a recent brazen tome, The Atlantic Magazine—complete with a title so
maudlin it nearly preempts mockery—has gifted us with a climate
catastrophe tale so self-indulgent, so grossly stereotyped, so
demonstrably false, and so shameless that one is almost astonished that
they dared. "Climate Crisis Extreme Weather Events Generating Record Death Tolls Worldwide" screams the headline. This is not journalism.
The Atlantic's own sacraments apparently
involved searching for the most grotesque fear-mongering—something so
bloodcurdling it would gut all happiness from children and cause the
elderly to despair of enduring—so you may forgive them if their search,
in failing to find facts, ultimately led them up their own asses. Not
unexpectedly, what they did not find in that darkness was any
resemblance of reality.
The actual reality—the truth—reveals one of the greatest accomplishments of modern civilization:
Comprehensive analysis from the OFDA/CRED International Disaster
Center, The Global Change Data Lab, and the Institute for Health
Metrics and Evaluation shows a dramatic decrease
in the global annual death rate from all climate related events
(hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, landslides, extreme
temperatures) over the last century. Deaths have fallen from a high of
0.61 per 100,000 people in the 1920s, when records begin, to 0.04 per
100,000 people in the 2010s, a decrease of 93.4%.
The data for 2020 indicates a further drop to an estimated 0.031 per
100,000 people, an average decrease in climate related deaths of 22.5%
from the decade of 2010 to 2019.
And the International Disaster Center, Global Change Data Lab, and Institute for Health
Metrics released this report on 24 July 2023: "For 2022, the data is complete and shows a 98.7% reduction in the number of deaths from climate-related events over the period of the last 100 years. Additionally, 2022 shows a reduction of 58.8% in climate-related deaths from the year 2020."
Sources: The OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database (Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters), Université Catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium; The Global Change Data Lab, a co-operative organization of University
College London, University of Oxford, and the University of Bristol,
England, UK; and The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Population Health
Center, University of Washington, Seattle,
WA.
It
is important to understand that this kind of “reporting” requires the
The Atlantic Magazine—and they're scarcely the only one—to make four
critical decisions:
1) To
abandon every standard of professional journalism;
2) To reject
well-proven facts and reality in favor of a purely political-agenda-driven
narrative;
3) To fully renounce all ethical responsibility to be
truthful with their readers;
4) To willfully and intentionally compose,
publish, and/or otherwise publicize wholly false propaganda.
• Despite the Atlantic's story being intellectually imbecilic, it stands as a sort of
accomplishment in conjuring up deranged hallucinations of the world to fit
their "woke" ideology and serve their preening virtue-signaling and self-aggrandizement.
Preferring delusional nonsense to the study of reality itself, it
manages to combine the fey simplicity of a children’s horror tale with
near unreadable feats of lies and convolution, with a low cunning that
passes for intelligence.
• But
why? A brief look at an interview with the editor-in-chief of The
Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, will provide some insight. The
interviewer, a Stanford media researcher, described it as
follows:
Throughout our conversation, Goldberg conveyed his
concept of journalism as, quote, "A
highly educated class of opinion-molding tacticians continuously at
work adjusting the mental scenery from which the public mind, with its
limited intellect, derives its opinions."
Goldberg described his work with The Atlantic as a response to what he called a “transhistoric concern”: "The
requirement, for those people in power, to shape the attitudes and
voting behavior of the general population. The conscious and
intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the
masses is an important element in molding society. Those who manipulate
this unseen mechanism of society constitute an essential part of the
true ruling power of our country. We pull the wires which control the
public mind, harnessing old social forces and contriving new ways to
control the outcome of elections."
Such complete immersion in blind arrogance,
immorality, and egoistic illusions of elitist supremacy ventures well
into the realm of the sociopathic, yet it fully exposes the attitudes
underlying the agenda of the left's media apparatus and their maniacal
focus on upholding utterly false narratives at all costs, reality be damned.
• This
approach to "journalism" has not been without consequences. Billionaire
Laurene Powell Jobs (the widow of former Apple Inc. chairman and CEO
Steve Jobs) has majority ownership of The Atlantic Magazine. According
to a report from NBC News, the magazine lost a whopping $20
million in 2020, and another $16 million in 2021. The magazine is
dealing with a declining subscription base as readers realize it
creates stories that are later exposed to have been fabrications or
hoaxes. But major donors on the “woke-left” such as Laurene Jobs apparently
consider these losses a remarkably low price to pay for their
all-too-often successful endeavor to control the outcome of elections.
The Atlantic doesn’t exist to put out journalism but to create and control
narratives. And even with the sharply declining quality of its
"journalism", a sufficiently malicious or simply gullible "woke" media
establishment is more than
happy to lap it up and spread the propaganda around in a process sociologists and psychologists call ‘propagandic convergence.’
• According
to Stanford researchers, here's how propagandic convergence operates:
A narrative is fabricated by a malevolent actor to further a political
agenda, then circulated to various media newsrooms. Initially, knowing
it contains wholly false information, no media outlet is willing to
base a story on it. However, on occasion, often motivated by an event
that could relate to the
fictitious narrative—wildfire, flood, drought, hurricane, etc—one
news producer will decide to publicize the story. That decision is
often based on a risk/reward analysis imagining that the political
benefit of the story is worth the risk of it being exposed as
fabricated, and/or the perception that its readers/viewers are too
unsophisticated to realize the story is false, or simply based on the
old adage "never let the truth stand in the way of a good story."
Once it's published by a "news" organization
like The Atlantic Magazine, The New York Times, or similar media, other
news producers feel justified in running the story as well. When that
occurs, often literally within 24 hours, the same fabricated story—with slightly modified headlines—will
appear in numerous other publications, on television news shows,
websites and so forth, completing the cycle of convergence of pure
propaganda across the media spectrum.
• Here are a few examples of the same blatantly dishonest reporting from some of the media outlets who specialize in it: "Extreme Weather Events Taking An Unprecedented Toll on Human Life" (CNN); "Climate-Fueled Extreme Weather Events Having Deadly Consequences" (MSNBC); "Huge Death Toll From Extreme Weather Disasters" (The Washington Post); "Climate Change Causing All-Time Record Number of Deaths From Weather Disasters" (The New York Times); "Extreme Weather from Climate Change Increased Deaths by 68% in Populations Worldwide" (The Associated Press).
• The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge. This adage agreeably adorns the tale and nicely points the moral: Never dwell solely on a monomaniacal ideology. Those that do become
intensely myopic. It is as if a person, always shut in a room with one
small window through which nearby surroundings can be seen, believes that all
the things he sees belong to that window, and all things not seen do
not exist. (Adage from George Bernard Shaw.)
•
And so, the first and only law of the majority of the media's reporting
has become this:
There are no lies too big, and no such thing as
rock bottom.
That once respected media organizations—and certain politicians—are now
deeply invested in spreading baseless fabrications, viciously
slandering political opponents, and relentless fear-mongering, reveals
a lot about what they hope to gain, or believe they stand to lose.
Whatever the brilliance of the professional disinformation architects
within the media and political speech writers, the nature of their work
inevitably places them in an indefensible position in the contemporary
debate about partisan propaganda, truth in reporting, objectivity, and
public awareness.
Yet, no matter how dedicated to deception they
may be, they will never succeed in their effort to dethrone facts. Of
course, reality cannot be fooled. Truth will always validate truth as
the first principle of the Universe—what else can it do?
2. A Motivational Article by Kimberly - Let's Work to Restore America. The
last several years have obviously been pretty rough—economically,
politically, culturally, just about every way you can think of,
actually. It’s had a huge impact on Americans in every walk of life, everywhere, yet the reality of that
rarely receives any reporting from the legacy media.
You probably haven’t heard this, but a recent
Harris survey of focus groups nationwide shows a whopping 8 out of 10
Americans (84%) say the quality of life in the U.S. is "rapidly
declining," a new Gallup poll shows 6 out of 10 Americans (63%) describe the crime problem in the U.S. as either "very serious" or "extremely serious," a Monmouth University poll shows nearly 9 out of 10
Americans (88%) say “the country is headed in the wrong direction," and
a Gallup poll shows that only 23% of Americans have "confidence in the
presidency," the lowest poll numbers for a presidential administration
in polling history.
A new NBC poll shows 3 out of 4 Americans
(76%) said they “do not feel confident” that life for their children
will be better than it has been for them. That’s a shocking 81%
increase in “no confidence” from the same poll in January 2020. In many
ways, the core belief that today’s children will be better off than
their parents is the foundation of “The American Dream.” It's appalling
to see that dream dying so quickly.
• Why are people so unhappy and pessimistic?
Analysis of focus group discussions reveals that they remember and
often think about and discuss what the county was like just a few years ago. This
includes facts that are literally kryptonite to the media, things they
never mention. In 2019 and early 2020, inflation was 1.6 percent, the
lowest it had been in 50 years; mortgage interest rates were around 3
percent; median family income had reached the highest level in U.S.
history; unemployment was the lowest in half-a-century; unemployment
for women and minorities was the lowest in history; the poverty rate
was at the lowest level in over three decades; the country had achieved
energy independence, and in April 2020 the average price of regular gas
was $1.94 a gallon.
Moreover, in early 2020 the Consumer
Confidence Index was at an historic high and Americans’ average FICO
credit score had reached an all-time high, according to Ethan Dornhelm,
FICO's vice president for analytics, who attributed the record high
average credit score to what was "the best economy in many
generations." "Record wage growth and record high income minimized
reliance on debt to pay the bills, and the low-wage and middle-wage
sectors grew the most by far," Dornhelm said, adding, "This was welcome
news and yet another sign that the economy was working for more people
than ever before." The economy was working for more people than ever
before. That was then. And now?
•
"Now is the winter of our discontent,"
wrote Shakespeare in the famous
opening line of Richard III. This applies very well to our present
times as it creates a powerful motive for change. I spoke to several
scholars in the fields of political science and sociology, all of whom
expressed essentially the same observation, that America has entered a
phase resembling a “late-stage republic.” What this means is that
civilizations have a
“life-cycle”—they are born, they go through various stages of
development, and they
mature to flourish during the “main sequence” of their existence.
Yet, if their founding principles and values
are allowed to erode, they begin to decay, leading to the type of moral degeneration, decline of personal liberty
and safety, economic strife and societal deterioration now impacting much of our country. The United States, they say, is struggling with “corruption,
malfeasance, an uncontrolled influx of illegal migrants, a growing
failure to enforce essential laws, and the failure to reverse
destabilizing levels of cultural conflict.” Civilizations which decay like this, if it goes unchecked, eventually
collapse, generally devolving into authoritarian rule, or a structure
of “statism,” or disappear from history altogether.
Many of the structural components of statism
have been put in place over recent years. Statism is
a political system in which the government has complete centralized
control over a country’s media, industry, agriculture, transportation,
utilities, telecommunication, banks, courts, military, and all social
and economic affairs. Put another way, statism is the imposition of
absolute control of society by a small, elite group who rule over every
aspect of every citizen’s life.
There are no easy remedies, but it's essential that Americans defy the
cynicism and propaganda that autocrats and power-hungry politicians
depend on to manipulate public opinion. Without actual, well-demonstrated
facts—not Republican "facts" or Democrat "facts," and not certainly not the
fabricated narratives of today's media world—there can be no rational
debate over policies, no substantive means of evaluating candidates for
political office, no process to hold elected officials accountable to
the people, and no way to guarantee election integrity. Without truth, democracy is hobbled.
• The damage that has been inflicted on America
in recent years can be reversed. It will not be an easy or quick
process, much of the corruption will take years to repair, some may take decades,
but it can be done if we all work together. This can be accomplished by
leveraging our discontent to
put aside differences and biases and work together to reclaim our
country by restoring freedom, the rule of law, equal application of
justice, by supporting and protecting the U.S. Constitution, and by
assuring that government obeys the will of the people rather than the
other way around.
• Our
focus must be on reestablishing the
fundamental values on which our country was built. Patriotism and
Unity. Freedom and Self-reliance. Respect for Truth. Courage, Strength
and Optimism. Community and Family. Fairness, Equality and Justice.
This is profoundly important because the current
political debacle must not be observed with detachment—it is extremely
dangerous for the stability and future of our country, and we would all
be wise to remember this warning from President Abraham Lincoln: "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we
falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves
from within."
• If owing to biases, prejudices, and blind adherence to destructive ideologies, people fail to work together to demand and accomplish
a restoration of American, and a full renewal of its values, it will be another
matter. It will mark the beginning of a new story—the
story of ever more rapid decline of our country, the story of its
continuing deterioration, of its passing from one world into another,
of the initiation of Americans into a far different life than in past
decades. That will be a strikingly different story, one that will
mark the end of our original story of freedom, justice, opportunity,
and prosperity.
3. Hurricane Facts, and Please NOTE: Lest anyone carelessly misinterpret it, the purpose of the following is not to suggest that climate change is not occurring—it definitely is—but rather to provide information and data from top professionals and research centers which can assist in understanding facts that have been suppressed by the corporate media and censored by social media platforms.
• Hurricane Intensity: Using precise satellite data providing highly detailed, full-global coverage beginning in 1972, the prestigious Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University calculates what is called the “Accumulated Cyclone Energy” (ACE) index, a mathematical integration of hurricane storm wind speed and longevity. FACTS: The index shows a significant decrease in the trend of hurricane energy and intensity over the past 25 years, and the index is presently below the mean average.
• Hurricane Frequency: Also from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and using the same sophisticated satellite data providing highly detailed, full-global coverage, this chart shows the “Global Major Hurricane Frequency” beginning in 1981 and extending through August of the year 2021. FACTS: The index shows no increase in the trend of hurricane frequency over the past 40 years. And as you can see, the moving average of major global hurricanes is currently trending slightly downward.
• Next let's look at the longer-term data. NOAA keeps an historical data record called "U.S. HURRICANE STRIKES BY DECADE," which reaches back about 173 years to 1851. FACTS: The record of major hurricanes that made landfall since 1851 shows no upward trend in the number of major hurricanes over the last 173 years.4. Wildfire Facts: Given the reporting on wildfires over the summer, I think this is REALLY important to understand. For the last six years or so, every summer when the wildfire season rolls around, we see nearly hysterical reporting on how "climate change" is causing more frequent, larger and more intense wildfires. Joe Biden weighed in by saying that the year was "A record-setting wildfire season," and "We can’t ignore the reality that these wildfires are being supercharged by climate change." 'CBS This Morning' weather reporter Jeff Berardelli literally said that 2022 was "The worst fire season in history" and "Burned more acres than ever before." Considering the source, we better check and see if that's true. (This is the same guy that claimed the 2020 hurricane season was "extreme" and "unprecedented." It wasn't even remotely close.)
• Summary: Please take a moment to consider what these examples really mean, and there are dozens more. Such massive breaches of journalistic integrity are exactly what corruption looks like. Rather than basing their reporting on any investigation into the facts, the news directors, hosts or anchors simply made-up
those stories. They fabricated their reporting, not just without any regard for the actual facts, but in direct opposition
to
the actual facts.
If you were under the impression that the
corporate
media is objective, unbiased and report "just the
facts" or are "the most trusted name in news," then their behavior
should disabuse you of that notion. The social contract between journalist and
news consumer—“What I am telling you strictly happened”—has been
overruled in that they are incentivized to place all of
their observations and reportage into a wholly politicized narrative about "This is what I want it to mean"
rather than "This is what really happened." We know that many of these
journalists have a well-proved habit of fabricating their reporting.
That's been demonstrated over and over again, day after day, week after week.
NBC News anchor
Lester Holt recently gave a monologue on why objectivity, balance or “fairness” in journalism is
“overrated.” "I think it’s become clearer that fairness is overrated," Holt said. "The
idea that we should always give two sides equal weight and merit does
not reflect the world we find ourselves in."
Such a statement, coming from an allegedly objective
news reporter, is shocking. (I think it's what Darth Vader said just
before he started building the Death Star.) The
NBC anchor’s embrace of outright censorship surely ought to outrage any
constitutionally-minded and honest American. Holt's words align with a
frightening sentiment that the views of anyone who does not agree with
or challenges the media's far-left political agenda—in other words, over half of the country—must be muzzled at all costs.
The corporate media's "news"
divisions, in rebelling against the bridle of all professional
standards, have integrated partisan propaganda into so much of their
political reporting that it has diminished many of our quintessential
human capacities, such as intelligence, logic and reason. When coupled
with the social media platforms' overt censorship of free speech, it has overall
made today's media little more than a device for making the ignorant
more
ignorant and the crazy crazier.
The danger of this is clear, as very well expressed by the senior judge of the Washington D.C. Federal Circuit Court: "It
should be borne in mind that the first step taken by any potential
authoritarian or dictatorial regime is to gain control of
communications, particularly the delivery of news," wrote Judge Silberman in a libel case. "It
is fair to conclude, therefore, that one-party control of the press and
media is a threat to a viable democracy. It may even give rise to
countervailing extremism."
I feel like I need to get 'Born Free' as my ringtone. I remember taking a course at Oxford optimistically called “Literary
Journalism,” which makes me wince for a few reasons. First among them
is how we were exposed to a wide range of famous journalists, without
our professor discussing the fact that much of their work was
substantially fabricated. For weeks, I’d sit there thinking, “This is
incredibly revealing material, how did they get it?,” without my earnest young mind
considering that it was probably not as conveniently real as depicted, and
that “they just made it up” to support their political party and its “talking points” was a strong probability instead of a
cynical interpretation.
• A Critical Crossroads for the U.S., by Heather:
The ongoing crisis in the media has raised alarm for many of the closest international
allies of the U.S. who, with the sober, objective analysis allowed by distance,
have become increasingly concerned. I'm from Oxfordshire, I have
family members in the intelligence sector, and one of them alerted me to a classified study conducted in
the U.K. A private symposium composed of high-ranking members of the
intelligence and academic communities reached several stunning
conclusions regarding the current state of the U.S. media. The critical summary section of their report reads in pertinent part:
"The
majority of America’s principal broadcast and print media organizations
have explicitly abandoned the fundamental standards of journalism. Our
research found profoundly troubling aspects of political
reporting and information suppression, essentially eviscerating truth
and freedom of speech... The manner in which this developed and the
propaganda techniques they now commonly utilize have as their closest
historical parallel the practices employed in 1930s Germany by Joseph
Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry.
Should these dire conditions go uncorrected and a free press not be restored, there is a real question of
whether the constitutional republic of the United States will endure." —United Kingdom MOD Report (Ministry of Defense, sensu lato document), Oxford Brookes (2021)
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." —Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
• NOTE:
At our last party, I asked a UC Berkeley media analyst why a
really liberal newspaper like 'The Washington Post' would write the
sharp criticism of CNN and MSNBC that they did. In light of The
Washington Post being projected to lose around $100 million in 2023, he
said that it has to do with maintaining some degree
of credibility, and explained, quote:
"CNN
and MSNBC are not legitimate news sources and most everyone recognizes
that. I don't know anyone who takes them seriously, and
certainly no one should. Factual accuracy has nothing to do with their
stories, facts are typically obstacles to the intended impact of their
reporting, so they consider them to be irrelevant. They're not
journalists, they're activists, they're fabulists and storytellers.
"This is not an 'interpretation' of the current state of the U.S. media,
any more than dinosaurs are an 'interpretation' of the fossil record.
It is simply what CNN
and MSNBC
have become, and to a significant extent NBC, CBS and ABC also. It
helps to understand that we've arrived at a time when nearly every member of the corporate media is a far-left partisan. [Short laugh...]
Ashley, if they weren't media figures, they'd be considered nothing more than a
radical fringe of the hard-left. With a mix of their own social and
occupational homophily and progressive ideology, they view the world
through the most distorted lens imaginable. Rather than acting with
professionalism, they act on their partisanship by using distortion,
fabrication and emotional manipulation as political tools.
"Truth, objectivity, balance and
fairness—everything we work so hard to teach as the invariable
standards of professional journalism—have gone completely out the
window. The astonishing thing is that it's
allowed to continue. In media
monitoring and analysis projects across this country, and in most
European countries, both CNN and MSNBC are classified as 'Ideological
Propaganda Media' and fall in the same category as CCPPD, IRIB, and
KCNA." (CCPPD is China's state-media, the Central Committee of the Communist Party Publicity Department; IRIB is Iran's state-media, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting; and KCNA is North Korea's state-media, the Korean Central News Agency).
Best explanation ever. So obviously, in today's world we must be exceptionally
discerning where we get day-to-day news that's actually objective, factual, and
complete, so as much of the media persists in
their propaganda campaigns, please be very selective about
what corporate media, social media or other reports you believe.
— Wisdom Masters Press Team
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