Quantum Consciousness book cover    The Masters Speak book cover    Valley of Supreme Masters book cover    Ancient Egypt book cover    True Experiences with a Sorceress book cover    The Arrival Book Cover    A Great Master Speaks book cover    Antarctica and The Lost Civilizationbook cover

Wisdom Masters Press Newsletter

Quaerite et invenietis "Seek and you will find"

  Publisher of Books by M.G. (Michael) Hawking 
Newsletter Composer & Book Contributor:  Amber Chellings, M.Phil.
  Book Contributor & Content Coordinator:  Jenna Wolfe, Ph.D.
  Production Editor & Contributor:  Heather Cantrell, M.Litt.
  Publishing & News Supervisor:  Ashley Truesdale
  Graphics & Format Designer:  Kimberly Radcliff
  Production Assistant & Researcher:  Ella Radcliff
  Science Consultants: Caltech, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Oxford, Max Planck Institute, et alia
Free Books       More Book Specials       Newsletter Contents       Restoring America       Visualization Practice
Amber photo set5 image17Hi from Amber, thank you for visiting! So, it's Tuesday, October 15th. Hope your week is going well, safely and peacefully. Wow, mid-October already. Much like last year, this year seems to be passing so quickly.
     Today I have a Two Special Books offered at no cost for you to enjoy for your weeknight reading, plus several other deals! Michael says hello, and he wrote two helpful articles for this newsletter, so don't miss those.
    NOTE: Also, Michael occasionally writes articles for our community mailing list members, usually once or twice a month. The articles cover a wide range of topics, from AI to ancient civilizations, discoveries in astronomy, cosmology, and physics, archaeological discoveries, enduring ancient mysteries, and much more. We've received dozens of emails from members saying how much they've enjoyed the articles, so for everyone to enjoy, we posted eight of them to a new webpage here. They're all great reads, so have fun!
    Lots to do today, so just as it was getting light I went ahead and got the horses turned out, they all got frisky in the nice cool Peaches the kittymorning air (it's around 55° here in Mill Valley), which is always fun to watch. I usually update the book specials in this newsletter in the very early morning when it's peaceful and quiet here in our Mill Valley home. Well, except for when I was in our horse barn and discovered that whoever coined the phrase “Quiet as a Mouse” never accidentally stepped on one that was hiding under some hay. Shrill li'l thing, but he darted off to wherever mice go, so he was okay. Anyway, the dogs are still sleeping, so now, sitting in the study, I watch as my adorable    >
kitty "Peaches" crouches in front of the tall glass doors to the patio and flattens her little ears so she won’t be seen by the leaves whirling around outside
.
     Michael once cautioned me about having "too many cats." He really likes cats, but said that "too many" would "lend the house a zoo-like aspect." My first cat was Isabella (Michael calls her my "starter cat"), and now we have four house cats, three mousers that live in the horse barn, and a bunch of neighborhood cats that stop-by for visiting, a bite to eat, sparring matches with our cats, and the occasional sleep-over. So yeah, I'm afraid the "too many cats" ship has sailed, quite awhile ago. It's probably in Bora Bora by now. I tell people that we have "a number of cats," with whom we coexist in a balance between pure love and periodic open warfare.
     This is one of my favorite times to practice the happiness, prosperity, health and beauty affirmations and visualizations that Michael instructed us in and which Ashley, Heather, Kimberly and I perform every day. Done properly, they work quite effectively to manifest whatever you desire to experience, so we encourage everyone to do them as well. Those exercises can be found in many of our books, if you're interested.
    
Also, to receive notice of book specials, new releases and so forth, please subscribe to our community Mailing List. I'll send you a free book, and be assured that we are very respectful of our subscribers' time and privacy. Additionally, please note that Wisdom Masters Press does not tolerate any conflicts of interest. Aside from providing donations, we have no financial relationship with the charities, foundations, universities, research centers or any others discussed in this newsletter.   
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                  for example.
No writings, photos, graphics or material of any kind in this newsletter or in any publication from
                      Wisdom Masters Press was created in whole or in any part through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
                         We're very careful about this, and apparently we have more oversight than the U.S. Secret Service.

About our Books, by Michael:
   In the largest sense, our books deal with the most fundamental concepts about life and our world. The average person’s perceptual concepts of day-to-day “reality” do not have, nor have ever had, a fixed ontology. Multiple interpretations of “reality” are theoretically presented by the natural sciences, the social sciences, political science, diverse ideologies, as well as by various theologies. And those numerous versions of what constitutes reality clash in many profound aspects.
     By shaping our understanding of the world, concepts influence not only the reality we live in, but the reality we aspire to live in. And yet, those concepts have neither lucid nor fixed identities, but only contested and largely precarious histories. The concepts we have so far accepted about “reality” have led us to the present global situation, as well as our personal life situation, and the concepts we accept about reality will be crucial to the sort of world we will inhabit in the future.
     A valuable idea was suggested to me by the individuals I encountered in the Himalayas regarding the evaluation of those multiple and conflicting concepts of “reality.” They look at it this way—since attempting to ascertain what concepts represent "truth" is to set foot on a very slippery slope, to put it mildly, the driving question is not ‘What is the truth?’, but ‘What result does any given concept have in practice?
     This is a practical and highly effective approach. And therein lies the value—the concepts expressed to me by the masters, adepts, and the Ri-iha-mo penetrate to a deep and perhaps most fundamental level of reality. Their concepts point to a new paradigm of ideas, of realizations, of a profoundly deeper understanding of our world. A few examples:

The universe is a living thing, a cosmic unity of conscious process rather than a chaotic array of unrelated parts, as most believe.” Ri-iha-mo Proci
You have been endowed with a conscious mind to direct the nature, shape and form of your creations. All deep aspirations and unconscious motivations, all unspoken drives, rise up for the approval or disapproval of the conscious mind, and await its direction. Only when it abdicates its functions does it find itself at the mercy of events over which it seemingly but falsely appears to have no control.” Ri-iha-mo Aani
The prime concept is this: The content of your consciousness awareness becomes the content of your experience—it is what manifests as your outer reality. The inner manifests as the outer. That is the great understanding. That is the only rule.” Amrita
You form the fabric of your experience through your own beliefs and expectations. Your interpersonal ideas about yourself and the nature of reality directly affect your thoughts and inner images. You take your beliefs about reality as truth, and so do not question them. They seem self-explanatory. You perceive them as statements of fact, far too obvious for examination. Therefore they are accepted without question; they are not recognized as beliefs about reality, but are instead considered characteristics of reality itself. Frequently such ideas appear indisputable, so much a part of your beliefs that it does not occur to you to speculate about their validity. They become invisible assumptions, but they nevertheless form your personal experience.” Kalika-Khenmetaten
Creating your life is much like painting a picture. Space and time are your canvas, your mind’s thoughts and images are your brushes and blades, and grades of energy are the colors on your palette. You may paint your picture any way you wish; large or small, bold or subtle, colorful or drab, wonderful or terrible, pleasurable or painful, successful or disastrous, creative or destructive; whatever you believe and imagine your picture can be. Your creation is what you call life, eternally unfolding in each split-second of the now.” —Lemia

Do those ideas and concepts seem too unrealistic, too esoteric, or far too speculative? Then consider them in light of the insights from some of the modern world's most brilliant thinkers:

Science has taught us to think the unthinkable. One by one, the pillars of classical logic have fallen by the wayside as science progressed, from Einstein’s realization that space and time are not absolute but observer-dependent, to quantum mechanics, which demonstrates that elementary particles and the atoms they form are doing a million seemingly impossible things at once, with outcomes ultimately determined by conscious observation.” —Lawrence Krauss, Ph.D., Director of the Origins Project
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. In some strange sense, this is a participatory universe. Physics is no longer satisfied with insights only into particles, fields of force, into geometry, or even into time and space. Today we demand of physics some understanding of existence itself.” —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. I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” —Max Planck, originator of Quantum Mechanics, Nobel Laureate
A fundamental conclusion of the new physics acknowledges that the observer creates the reality. As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a mental construction. As pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: ‘The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. Get over it, and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial, it is mental and spiritual.’” —R.C. Henry, Ph.D., Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins
The present laws of physics are at least incomplete without a translation into terms of mental phenomena. The laws of quantum mechanics itself cannot be formulated without recourse to the concept of consciousness.” —Eugene Wigner, Nobel Laureate
Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms, for consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else. Quantum physics reveals a basic oneness of the universe. Multiplicity is only apparent; in truth, there is only one mind.” —Erwin Schrödinger, Nobel Laureate
Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” —Niels Bohr, Nobel Laureate
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
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” —Albert Einstein, Nobel Laureate

The experience of our readers and so many others demonstrates that these concepts offer the illumination, knowledge and guidance necessary to create a truly exceptional life. If thoroughly understood through patient study, fully integrated into your core belief system and practiced with unwavering diligence, this knowledge can transform your experience of this world in every positive way imaginable. “The power to change one’s life can come from a paragraph, even a lone sentence.”  —Heraclitus (540 - 480 BC)


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Today's Free Books        *                *
Note: In some countries books will be listed as free only if you're logged in to your Amazon account.

You can’t always teach people everything they need to know. The best you can do is provide them with what they
need to know when they need to know it.”  —Seymour Papert, world-renowned MIT mathematician and educator


  •  This is super. Here's an exploration adventure and discovery anthology you'll enjoy for your weeknight reading, one of our most popular volumes, Finding Shambhala: In The Valley of Supreme Masters. This book takes you on an unforgettable journey into a fabled realm to explore ancient knowledge and powers virtually unknown to the modern world. FREE on Amazon worldwide October 15th and 16th.

"Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved and still moves a sea of magic and sorcery.
Perhaps they will remain when all the works of our reason have passed away
."
—Will Durant, Ph.D., recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the Medal of Freedom

"Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook knowledge for magic; now,
when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake magic for knowledge
."  —Thomas Szasz

"Magic touches people in the way great art does. It lets them see the world with new eyes."  —Walt Whitman

Finding Shambhala book cover

Amazon 5 Stars   "An intriguing account that moved me on several levels and has left me with a yearning for more. Whilst the language used requires thought and consideration, the concepts offered deserve such thoughtful time spent."  

Journey into the world of a profound legend through this unprecedented first-hand account to explore a reality that for long millenniums has remained concealed under layers of myth, misdirection and secrecy. Beginning with the dawn of the ancient Qinghai-Tibet Plateau civilization of Zhang Zhung, throughout Asia there has endured an unwavering belief in the existence of a society of highly enlightened masters living in an isolated valley deep in the vast wilderness of the Great Himalayan Range.    
  
Transcribed directly from the journals and field notes of explorer Michael Hawking’s sixty-two months years in closed and largely unexplored Himalayan regions of Nepal, this book contains detailed accounts of Hawking’s encounters with truly extraordinary men and women in a remote mountain village, including first-hand narratives of the remarkable powers and abilities he witnessed, and in-depth descriptions of the esoteric knowledge that make such remarkable capabilities possible.

Chapters include:
     - Part I: Prelude -
The Legend of Shambhala I lam-yig
Author’s Introduction
The Knowledge of Shambhala
Exploring the Secrets of Shambhala
     - Part II: The Adventure -
The Finding
The Enlightening Dream
The Journey to Shambhala
     - Part III: Anthology Collection -
Foreword to the Anthology
Teachings of the Himalayan Masters, Their Secret Knowledge and Practices
True Experiences with a Sorceress of the ‘Four Portals’
A Great Master Speaks, Immense Powers of the Ancients Revealed, circa 1370 B.C.
Ancient Egypt, Extraterrestrial Origins
     - Part IV: Source Material Anthology -
‘In The Valley of Supreme Masters’ Book Series:
Book One - A Chronicle of Power - Part 1 - Revelations of a Paranormal Kind
Book One - A Chronicle of Power - Part 2 - A Series of Phenomenal Events
Book Two - A Magic Journey Into the Infinite - Part 1 - Paleohistory, Three Crowns, and a Princess Revealed
Book Two - A Magic Journey Into the Infinite - Part 2 - Into a Looking Glass Several Thousand Years Old
     - Part V Bonus Section: Ancient World Exploration -
Earth’s First Civilization: Antarctica, 55 Million B.C.

Here are some excertps from Finding Shambhala. Note: The number in parentheses following the book's title is a direct link to its U.S. Amazon page, in case you're interested in knowing more about it from the description and 'Read sample' feature.

What you are exposed to and what you are taught, from a very early age through your entire life, largely defines and determines perception, and that conditioning ordinarily excludes all but a tiny reflection of the true reality and the true nature of your inherent power. The reality of the masses is a consensual, communal reality. It is a pinhole through which they perceive only an infinitesimal portion of the Real.”  —Himalayan Master Amrita   (Quoted from A Chronicle of Power ASIN B00YLC044A)

The manifestations and results we create with visualization, once we initiate them, seem to come forth through fixed and invariable laws, but only because we perceive those results through our senses, which clothe all that they transmit in that dress of space, time and causality which our minds themselves have made. Nevertheless, we are beyond and above space, time, and the perceptions that we make. Each of us is a center of initiative force and creative power. Formulate your desire, then let your desire become action using the techniques of power I am teaching you. Your desire must be impeccably reflected in your thoughts and inner images—that is the magic. When you do this, in the inner world your desires are wholly fulfilled, immediately and effortlessly. In what you perceive to be the outer world, time may have to pass, circumstances change, or whatever, but that desire will manifest. It is law.”  —Mani Choejor, B’on Sorceress of the 4000-year-old Zhang Zhung tradition   (Quoted from True Experiences with a Sorceress of the Four Portals’  ASIN B01ICAW6JM)

Experience is the product of the mind—your conscious thoughts and images—propelled into being by feelings; it is also a product of unconscious thoughts and feelings. These together form the reality that you experience. You are therefore not at the mercy of a reality that exists apart from yourself, or is thrust upon you. Your innermost thoughts and images are translated into seemingly material structures that you call objects; these exist, in your perception, within a framework you call space. Others are translated instead into structures you call events, in your perception these seem to exist within a framework you call time. Both space and time are illusions, yet they represent your most basic assumptions, which simply means that you accept both and assume that your reality is rooted in a series of moments in time and in dimensions of space.”  —Kalika-Khenmetaten, quoted from her manuscript ‘The Golden Crown’ (circa 1368 B.C., ± 17 years)   (Quoted from A Great Master Speaks  ASIN B00TIYMKFM)

Your human species has been endowed with a conscious mind to direct the nature, shape and form of his and her creations. You are a creator translating your expectations into physical form. You see, the world is meant to serve as your reference point. The apparent appearance of your physical world is a replica of your inner thoughts. You can change that world at any time. You change it without knowing it. You have only to use your ability consciously, to examine the nature of your thoughts and feelings and project only those which agree with your expectations. They coalesce into the events with which you are so intimately familiar. I will teach you methods that will allow you to understand the nature of your own reality, and to point a way that will let you change that reality in whatever way you choose... and do not worry; you will better understand the power of visualization when you wish not to fall asleep because your reality is finally better than your dreams”  —the Ri-iha-mo (or Celestial) Aani   (Quoted from Ancient Egypt, Extraterrestrial Origins  ASIN B01N00WWJ1)

Remote sensing images from NASA test missions over Antarctica revealed what researchers say is evidence of an ancient settlement lying beneath 1.4 miles (2.3 kilometers) of ice. “There’s very little margin for error when it comes to individual photons hitting individual fiber optics, which is why we were so surprised when we noticed these structures on the imagery,” explained a NASA project scientist. “As of now we can only speculate as to what these features are ... there are possibly many other additional sites that are covered with ice. It just shows us how easy it is to underestimate the size, scale, and age of past civilizations.” Archaeologists who have examined the images believe that they show clear evidence of a large settlement or city beneath the ice sheet. “These are features of intelligently-made structures, resembling some sort of pyramidal and rectangular buildings. We clearly have here evidence of advanced engineering. The only problem is that these images came from Antarctica under two kilometers of ice that's been there for millions of years. That is clearly the puzzling part, and we do not have any explanation for this at the moment.”  —quoted from Earth’s First Civilization: Antarctica, 55 Million B.C.   (ASIN B07D1RC8DJ)

An outstanding introduction to Michael's experiences and encounters, and notably fascinating for anyone interested in exploring the realities behind the ancient legends of the Himalayan Shambhala. 2023 Edition Anthology, e-reader page count 302. A Kindle Unlimited Book. Free on Amazon worldwide
October 15th and 16th. For more information, please see the description and ‘Read sample’ feature on the book’s Amazon page. Find it for the U.S. here, for the U.K. here, for CA here, for AU here, for DE here, and for India and Nepal here. Thank you, and enjoy!

    And NEXT, in a rare offer we're offering this engaging book at no cost, Contact, Three True Encounters. I'm pretty excited about this. On it's release, this book became the #1 New Release in Amazon's 'Unexplained Mysteries' genre, and the #1 New Release in Amazon's 'UFOs' genre. This book explores a truly fascinating series of events and experiences. FREE on Amazon worldwide Tuesday, October 15th (only).

Contact book cover

COVER: Artist’s conception of possible events observed by ancient witnesses. The prehistoric Brahmaic and Egyptian
traditions relate that their mysterious “gods” and “bringers of knowledge” arrived in a “cosmic egg radiating brilliant light.”
The B’on theogony of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau’s ancient Zhang Zhung culture relates that their “king of the gods” arrived
from the emptiness of space in a “resplendent jeweled egg of lha of bright light.”

“From my knowledge of the universe, I can tell you that accounts of an ancient extraterrestrial presence on our
planet are the result of the rational efforts of extraterrestrial intelligence rather than the irrational characteristics
of terrestrial intelligence.”
  —Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate, recipient of the Franklin Medal, the National Medal of Science,
and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society

“We are not alone in the universe. When I learned that extraterrestrials really do exist, I wasn't too surprised. They have been coming here for a long time. But what did shock me is the extent to which the proof has been hushed up.”
  —Dr. Edgar Mitchell, Ph.D., Apollo 14 Astronaut (the sixth person to walk on the moon), recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal


“I think they were so worried that our sightings [astronaut sightings of UFOs] would panic the public that they started telling lies about it. And then they had to tell another lie to cover their first lie, and now they don’t know how to get out of their cover ups. It’s going to be so embarrassing to admit that all those past administrations told so many untruths, it will be humiliating getting out of it. But the truth is that there were a number of extraterrestrial vehicles out there cruising around.”
  —Gordon Cooper, NASA Astronaut and Aeronautical Engineer, one of the seven original Project Mercury astronauts


“The reality is that extraterrestrials have been coming to earth for millennia and have contributed considerably to our knowledge.”
  —Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Minister of Defense (1963-1967), member of Parliament (1949-1974)

“You know, there aren’t six people in this room who know how true this really is.”
  —President Ronald Reagan, whispering to Steven Spielberg at the White House on June 27, 1982 during a Presidential screening of 'E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'

Amazon 5 Stars  While in a remote region of the Himalayas, explorer M.G. Hawking and his companions experience three encounters with individuals they believe to be the true “celestials” or “star beings” of ancient legends. Explore these extraordinary encounters and the profound knowledge they reveal.

The experiences revealed in this book, insofar as extensive research indicates, have no counterpart in available world literature. The underlying concepts are present in a few ancient literatures, but no detailed description of a true encounter with the Ri-iha-mo, the legendary Himalayan celestial goddesses, or “mountain goddesses,” as the Tibetan term translates. Such accounts may exist, but have apparently remained sealed.

Who—or what—are the Ri-iha-mo? Throughout Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, and the Himalayan regions of India, there has endured an extraordinary ancient legend of “celestial” beings, the Ri-iha-mo, who, having arrived in an antediluvian era of prehistory, still dwell in a concealed inner region of the vast frozen fortress of the Himalayas. The earliest known reference to the celestials appears in extant fragments of the scriptures of the 4000 year-old pre-Tibetan Zhang Zhung culture of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, yet those texts refer in turn to writings several thousand years older than themselves, and additional references can be found in a number of ancient writings, and in the wisdom traditions of cultures throughout Asia.

The creation stories of cultures worldwide relate that their progenitors came from the sky, the stars, or the heavens. Ancient Egyptian texts speak of their “bringers of knowledge” coming from Orion and Sirius. Native Americans recount that their antecedents were the “Sky People” or “Star People.” Throughout South America there exists a richly analogous storehouse of legends describing the arrival of “Star Beings.”

The builders of Teotihuacan describe their gods as having descended from the heavens. The pre-Tibetan culture, the Mayan, the pre-Incan, the Sumerian, and so many others, all express the same story in diverse symbolic languages—their “gods” came from the stars, bringing advanced knowledge and the gift of civilization. Many of these cultures were greatly separated both geographically and chronologically, yet their creation stories are strikingly similar and, in some cases, essentially identical.

The B’on theogony of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau's ancient Zhang Zhung culture relates that their “king of the gods” arrived from the emptiness of space in a “resplendent jeweled egg” of “lha of bright light,” at which time “in the sky there appeared dazzling lights, melodious sounds in space, and many other wonderful occurrences.”

Are these ubiquitous traditions merely myths? Are they simply embellished legends passed down through generations beyond count? Or are they representative of some vaguely remembered and carefully preserved reality? Absent an ember, there can be no smoke; there is a kernel of truth in all such enduring creation stories and, especially in light of today’s astronomical knowledge, they cannot be easily, or wisely, dismissed.

Note from Amber: On June 25 2021, the US intelligence community released its long-awaited report on what it “knows” about the scores of mysterious flying objects that have been seen and recorded by the military over the last several decades. The next day, Michael and I spoke to several friends at Caltech and MIT who are aeronautical engineers, astrophysicists and specialists who study exoplanets, exobiology and so forth. It was fascinating. Briefly, several observations emerged.
     First, the UFOs, or UAPs as they call them (unidentified aerial phenomena), are absolutely “real physical objects." The official report states, "We absolutely do believe what we're seeing are not simply sensor artifacts. These are things that physically exist." No kidding. Apparently the years of claiming sighting were "swamp gas," "ball lightening," "weather balloons" and the like have finally come to a close. Many of the sightings were made by multiple radar contacts, infrared scans and other types of sensors. Even better, in at least 11 cases, pilots reported a "near-miss" encounter with the UAPs, and when flying close to them the UAPs reacted by stopping, turning, ascending and descending in ways indicating they were aware of the military aircraft, sometimes mimicking or evading the military pilots’
maneuvers.
     In one encounter, two Navy F/A-18 fighter jets were launched from a carrier to investigate a radar contact hovering at about 80,000 feet above the ocean. As the jets approached, the UAP abruptly decended from 80,000 feet to a few feet above the water. The UAP took about 3 seconds to decend 80,000 feet, meaning it traveled at a speed of 18,180 mph, and its sudden stop just above the water imposed a deceleration force of approximately 276 Gs.
     An F/A-18F pilot described the UAP he encountered as "an elongated egg or 'Tic Tac' shape about 46 feet in length, solid white, smooth, with no edges, nacelles, pylons, or wings, and with a discernable midline axis," which "took evasive action on being approached," and "effortlessly evaded interception."
The F/A-18 Super Hornet is capable of at least 1200 mph. (It's actual top speed is classified and likely much higher.)
     Second, they’re definitely not some secret military project of ours, nor are they something a foreign adversary like Russia or China might be fielding. “The UAPs exhibit flight characteristics that radically exceed any technology possessed by humans.” They are able to hover, travel at hundreds to thousands of miles per hour, make turns that impose extreme G forces, are able to travel in our atmosphere, in space, and also underwater. There have been sonar observations made by US submarines tracking objects going over 500 mph underwater, and diving to depths beyond the ability of sonar to track.
     So what are they? Naturally, there’s speculation that they’re extraterrestrial craft piloted by aliens
the word alien comes from the Latin term alius, “other”or robotic craft controlled by extraterrestrials. However, it was pointed out to us by a number of astrophysicists that they could very well be, and are perhaps more likely to be, vehicles used by a non-human race that lives on our planet, and which may have been here for millions of years. UAPs like the ones discussed in the report have been observed worldwide for uncounted centuries. There are extremely remote land areas on Earth that are scarcely explored, and vast areas undersea and under-ice that are beyond our reach to explore. Only 20 percent of the seafloor has even been mapped, making it a more mysterious place than the surface of Mars.

Our planet is about 4.543 billion years old and our species has only been here for the last 0.004% of the Earth's history. From our knowledge of the Milky Way Galaxy, we know that the Earth is a pretty attractive planet with conditions uniquely ideal for life. Thinking we're the only intelligent species that could ever have been here is pure hubris. Modern humans have existed for just a few tens of thousands of years. Who knows what sentient beings may have evolved here or may have come here in the vastness of the past billions of years of Earth's history, and what technology they may have?

We might expect intelligent life and technological communities to have emerged in the universe billions of years ago. Given that human society is only a few thousand years old, and that human technological society is mere centuries old, the nature of a community with millions or even billions of years of technological and social progress cannot even be imagined. What would we make of a billion-year-old technological community?”  —Paul Davies, Ph.D., Cosmologist, Chair of the International Academy of Astronautics

“It bears mentioning that the Milky Way is only one of hundreds of billions of galaxies so far visible to our telescopes, each with hundreds of billions of stars, and each of these has its own complement of planets,” Seth Shostak, Ph.D., Director of the SETI Institute told us. “Clearly, extraterrestrial intelligence could be millions or billions of years in advance of us.”

What does it mean for a civilization to be a million years old? We have had radio telescopes and spaceships for a few decades; our technical civilization is a few hundred years old. A civilization millions of years old is as much beyond us
as we are beyond a bush baby or a macaque
.”  —Carl Sagan, Ph.D.

Transcribed from the field notes of Hawking’s sixty-two months in the Himalayas, this book contains detailed narratives of the experiences he and his companions had with the actual Ri-iha-mo, revealing profound revelations about our Universe, our history, and our true nature, knowledge that can greatly assist in understanding ourselves, our world, and our role and power in creating precisely the life we desire. This is a truly incomparable book for anyone interested in expanding their knowledge and personal power, and deeply rewarding for anyone fascinated with the endless ancient accounts of extraterrestrial influences. Chapters include:

- Part One: Introduction -
    The Ancient Accounts
    Evidence of a Stunning Antiquity
    Our Universe
    Prologue from the Author
    Sources and Reference Citations
- Part Two: The Encounters -
    First Encounter
    Investigations and Insights
    The Ri-iha-mo in Ancient Literature
    Second Encounter
    A Third Illuminating Encounter
    Esoteric Knowledge of the Ri-iha-mo
    Reflections
    Visualization Practice Provided by the 
Ri-iha-mo Aani

2023 Edition, e-reader page count 300 (estimated, actual count varies with the reading device used). Free on Amazon worldwide Tuesday, October 15th (only). For more information, please see the ‘Read sample’ feature on the book's Amazon page. Available worldwide, including for the U.S. here, the U.K. here, for CA here, for AU here, for DE here, and for Nepal and India here. Enjoy!

*                *       More Free & Discounted Books       *                *      
Yosemite photo
While we were hiking near Yosemite NP, Michael and I saw a big flock of Bighorn sheep! Please note that anyone interested in studying consciousness and its most advanced abilities might be interested in our new guide, Quantum Consciousness, Psychokinetic and Extrasensory Powers, which is currently discounted (recommended primarily for strongly motivated, high-intermediate or advanced students.) Michael asked me to reduce the price of that book so anyone that's interested has access. A description of the book is located after the following book specials. If you have questions or comments, we can be contacted via e-mail: wisdommasterspress [at] gmail [dot] com. Thank you, Amber

Mysticism in Nepal and Tibet book coverNOTE: 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.

cute bunnyNext, 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...

In The Valley of Supreme Masters Full SeriesJourney 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, some of the book's previous reviews were lost, and all of them were 5-Star. Very disappointing, but we're consulting with Amazon to have them restored. Fortunately, some of the reviews were preserved, and I'll include them here

Amazon 5 Stars   "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."

Amazon 5 Stars   "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."

Amazon 5 Stars  "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."

Amazon 5 Stars   "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."

Amazon 5 Stars   "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."

And here are a few of the latest reviews

Amazon 5 Stars   "Knowledge that is not deeply known. Very simply a read that is hard to walk away from. I enjoyed being able to find material that I have believed had to exist but had not came across other than through the Edgar Cayce books. An amazing book and an awesome job."

Amazon 5 Stars

"The book is so expressive that it makes you feel like being amidst the Himalayan ranges and meeting the respectful masters and people yourself, imbibing the unconditional spiritual messages and practices shared by them. Thank you so much Michael. "

Amazon 5 Stars  "Beautiful and deeply profound. A beautiful mix of spirituality and science, it opened my mind and literally made me cry .... several times. One of the best books I've ever read. Thank you."

Amazon 5 Stars   "A journey to heaven for quantum lovers. A delightful and very well written journey into an exploring author’s five year exploration of a hidden kingdom. Vivid description of persons and the imagery by the author was exceptional."

  •  Next, Michael asked me to discount our volume, Quantum Consciousness, Psychokinetic and Extrasensory Powers: A Guide to Attaining True Paranormal Abilities. I was a bit surprised, but it's because the book can be especially helpful during these strange times. There's so much to say about this I scarcely know where to start. It contains information for motivated high-intermediate or advanced students working seriously toward the development of advanced abilities of consciousness. I think perhaps it's best to just let you read some of the reviews. If you have any questions, please let me know. Thanks, Amber
Quantum Consciousness book cover

Amazon 5 Stars  "I absolutely loved this book! An excellent book with so much information, I intend to read it again and again. I really enjoyed the layout and writing style, the referencing for further reading, and the excerpts provided on other titles in the series, which give a good overview on titles best read to continue the journey. Well done!"

Amazon 5 Stars  "Truly an inspiration. This book has given me the confirmation that there is more to my existence than what I learned as a child raised in the heavy handed mantle of religion. A must read for those who yearn to break free and open their minds to the infinite possibilities of life."

Amazon 5 Stars  "Great read. Gives very nice examples on how to do things like sight beyond sight..."

Amazon 5 Stars   "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."

Amazon 5 Stars  "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 only acceptable point of view is the one that recognizes both sides of reality—the quantitative and the qualitative, the physical and the psychical—as compatible with each other, and can embrace them simultaneously. It would be most satisfactory of all if physis and psyche (matter and mind) could be seen as complementary aspects of precisely the same reality.” —Wolfgang Pauli, Nobel Laureate

The so-called miraculous powers of a great master are a natural accompaniment to his exact understanding of subtle laws that operate in the inner cosmos of consciousness.” —Yogananda (A.D. 1893-1952)

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.

2020 Edition, 25 Chapters, 42 Subsections, e-reader page count 364 (estimated, actual count varies with the reading device used). Includes an Associated Material Anthology and Suggested Reading list. For more information, please see the ‘Read sample’ feature on the book's Amazon page. Available worldwide, including for the U.S. here, for the U.K. here, for CA here, for AU here, for DE here, and for Nepal and India here. (Note: Right now this book is discounted to $4.95 from its regular list price of $9.95.)

Amber shoot20 image02Thank 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. Cheers, Amber

        • • •
 
Note: To skip back to today's free books click here, or to other book deals click here  • • •
                                                
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Today's Newsletter - Table of Contents
This newsletter keeps expanding as there is so much to cover. A number of our subscribers suggested that I include a table of contents to assist in navigating. Most people like to browse by just scrolling around, yet if you're on a small screen like a phone or little tablet, an index can be helpful. Plus, you'll find links to external pages which contain articles with important information.
Part I:  Free Books, Book Specials, & Helpful Articles
  Today's Free Books here    Helpful Hint: Anytime you want to skip back to today's free books, click one of these > dn arrow.
  Other Book Deals and Special Discounts here
  A Note from Michael - About Our Books here
  Some Good News from 2023, by Amber hereand Yes, there really was some Good News!
  An Article by Michael - Visualization Techniques and Practices, Insights and Suggestions here
  A Truly Amazing Example of Media Nonsense here
  The Factual History of Heat Waves - If you're concerned about recent heat waves, given the media reporting that's
   understandable. If so, you'll want to read this selection of records showing the scientifically accurate, factual history
   of global temperatures and heat waves
here. You'll be glad you did!
  A Cautionary Note from Heather, and a Warning List of the Most Highly-Politicized Media Organizations here
Part II:  In Honor of Truth
  Media Report - The Ongoing Crisis, by Ashley. A Gallup poll indicates that only 16% of Americans say they have
    confidence in newspapers to report truthfully, and only a dismal 11% have confidence in television news. Here's why.
    Note from MichaelIn 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
    suppression is a sanctified virtue, and
evasion a sacrament. 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.

  Problems in the Climate Sciences - an Insightful Article including reports from the journal Science, the journal
     Research Policy, the American Meteorological Society, Stanford University, and others - by Ella here
.
  "The Curious Tragedy of The Atlantic Magazine" - a Definitive Essay by Michael here.   Note: If the loss of an
    objective, ethical and responsible press concerns you, this is a great read providing some very penetrating insights.

"Let’s Work to Restore America"  -  A Motivational Article by Kimberly here. The last few years have been pretty
     rough—economically, politically, culturally, about every way you can think of, and it's had a huge impact on Americans.
     A new Gallup poll shows that only 23% of Americans have "confidence in the presidency," the lowest poll numbers for
     an administration in polling history, a survey of focus groups nationwide shows a whopping 84% of Americans say the
     quality of life in the U.S. is "rapidly declining," a Gallup poll shows 63% of Americans describe the crime problem in
     the U.S. as either "very serious" or "extremely serious," and a Monmouth University poll shows an astonishing 88%
     of Americans say that “the country is headed in the wrong direction."
All of these conditions can be reversed and
     America can be restored to a free, safe and prosperous country!
Let's all work together to make that happen.           dn arrow
Part III:  Articles & Essays (on external pages)
  An Academic Study of Climate Disinformation, its Influence and its Sources, by Jenna here. Disinformation is a
    persistent scourge in efforts to disseminate accurate information with respect to climate issues. A new study examines
    the extent of the disinformation campaigns
orchestrated by certain vested interests, methods of combating harmful
    disinformation, and its sources, intent and political utilization
(updated 10 May 2024, opens in a new window).
  A Detailed Examination of the Four Most Common Climate Myths, by Jenna here. A comprehensive study involving
    over 6,800 people found the four most common climate myths people are exposed to
—the kind of narratives that many
    journalists call “too good to fact-check
and explains the actual facts behind each of those climate issues. This is an
    excellent and very important read for anyone concerned about climate change
(opens in a new window).
  California's Crisis, by Heather here (opens in a new window).  Some 300 major corporations moved their headquarters
    out of California over the last four years, according to Stanford University, with as many as two million native Californians
    moving out as well. (California lost over 850,000 residents in 2022-23 alone.)

        Update: On August 2nd, 2024, Chevron announced that it's relocating all its operations from California to Texas.
    America's second-largest oil and gas company is moving its global headquarters from California—its home state for
    more than 140 years
to Houston, Texas. Chevron said that the high tax rates and authoritarian regulations have made
    it increasingly difficult to do business in California, and that the high-crime environment, high housing costs, and low-quality
    schools have made it undesirable and too unsafe for its employees and their families to live and work there.

         San Francisco has become a wealthy ghost town. Walking through parts of the City now feels like occupying two worlds
    at the same time. In an older, now lost world, you'd be standing in a thriving
metropolis of business, commerce, art, and
    culture. In today's all-too-real world, the stores are closed, the lights are off, the windows are full of for-lease signs, and the
    streets are eerily empty. Long stretches of famous thoroughfares—Filmore Street, Market Street, Union Square, and
    Ghirardelli Square—are filled with vacant storefronts. More than two-thirds of all downtown retailers have closed, and the
    Westfield Centre
a shopping mecca that once housed over 70 top-tier retail brandsis closing, 27.1 million square feet
    of office space is empty, and as a powerfully revealing example of a city's decay, a 44-story building that cost $205 million
    to build in 2006 recently sold for $3.5 million, a "shocking 98 percent drop in value," according to the Wall Street Journal.
         A wealthy ghost town sounds like a paradox. So exactly what happened? Behind the darkened windows, there’s a deeper
    story, a momentous lesson about one-party political rule,
progressive” policies, and the failure to enforce fundamental laws
    essential to protect a society and its citizens. What has happened to California should serve as a profound wake-up call for
    everyone in this country. To paraphrase Robin Williams, "San Francisco isn’t the end of the world, but you can certainly see it
    from there
." This article examines the grim realities behind California's descent into darkness
(opens in a new window).
  Mask Facts - Stunning Revelations from the Federal Court that Struck-Down Mandates - Please Take Note. With a few new
    mask mandates popping up here and there, this is important information for everyone
, especially for concerned parents.
    Includes citations to over sixty (60) verified RCT studies—Randomized Controlled Trials, the 'gold standard' of medical
    studies—as published in top peer-reviewed medical journals
. A comprehensive report by Ashley here (updated 31
    November 2023, opens in a new
window).

Sea World orcasAmber's Vacation News:  I know people are excited about enjoying some fun during their fall or winter 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.                dn arrow

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

Reminder: If at any point you wish to skip back to today's free books, just click on an arrow like this > dn arrow.

Quick Space News & Important Facts for Voters

Perseverance's Next Mission: NASA's Perseverance rover has begun its most daring climb yet, embarking on a months-long expedition up the western rim of Mars' Jezero crater to a summit scientists have called "Aurora Park." Since landing on the red planet in February 2021, the car-sized lab has collected over 20 rock cores in four campaigns, traveling a collective 18 miles. Among Perseverance's contributions are rock samples supporting the theory that the crater was once a vast, watery lake around 3.5 billion years ago. The rover has discovered a number of tantalizing clues that life once existed on Mars (and may still). Some very promising rock samples require further analysis upon their return to Earth.
     Perseverance's latest journey will see the rover climb an estimated 1,000 feet in elevation, traversing slopes as steep as 23 degrees on rocky, uneven terrain. NASA scientists have identified two locations in particular for further study, with bedrock indicating that Mars once had a climate very different than today.

Historical Realities, by Amber: Okay, it's well into the election season, and wildly distorting reality is part of the fun. I get that, and yetin keeping with our mission of pursuing truth without regard to ideology or political biasthere are historical realities that people need to understand, regardless what political party they support or what their political orientation may be, and this is crucial to a fair democratic process. There are numerous facts about things that are being grossly misrepresented by many politicians and irresponsibly allowed to be repeated over and over on a number of media outlets.
     Some people may like these historical realities, some may resent them, but truth is important. Moreover, identifying liars is especially important as anyone that lies about one issue is inevitably going to lie about others. As Michael points out, "You have to approach politicians and the media like a lion, not a gazelle. Right now they’re playing voters like a used arcade game." The following are facts of record, easily verified by any number of (objective / non-biased) sources.
   FACTS:  Income data published by the IRS clearly show that on average all income brackets benefited substantially from the so-called "Trump tax cuts," with the biggest beneficiaries being working class and middle-income filers, NOT the top 1 percent, or "the billionaires," as certain politicians are claiming. A careful analysis of the IRS tax data, one that includes the effects of tax credits and other reforms to the tax code, shows that filers with an adjusted gross income of $15,000 to $50,000 enjoyed an average tax cut of 26 percent in 2018, the first year the 'Tax Cuts and Jobs Act' went into effect. Filers who earned $50,000 to $100,000 received a tax break of about 15 percent, and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 in adjusted gross income saw their personal income taxes cut by around 11 percent. By comparison, no income group with an adjusted gross income of $500,000 or more received an average tax cut of more than 9 percent, and the average tax cut for brackets starting at $1 million and up was less than 6 percent. This was published in, for example, The Wall Street Journal and The Hill.
   FACTS:  The previous administration took office in January 2017. By early 2019, inflation had been reduced 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 U.S. 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. Statistical data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows that both border encounters and successful illegal entries in 2019 were at the lowest numbers in 56 years, since 1963, and in 2020 were at the lowest numbers in 58 years, since 1962.

The Port Strikes - Why Did They Happen?: A massive dockworkers striketemporarly suspended until Januaryimpacted cargo movement through fourteen East Coast and Gulf Coast ports. The strike involved about 45,000 members of the 'International Longshoreman's Association' (ILA). This is the first such ILA strike in 47 years, since 1977. The media reported extensively on the strikes, but remained silent on the causes of the conditions that prompted the ILA to take such drastic action.
     The union members are "working-class" people, and they and their families have been devastated by the dramatic changes in the U.S. economy over the last few years. The longshoremen (and women) work full-time, yet can no longer afford even their most their basic living expenses. They need to have income sufficient to meet their greatly increased expenses, and that's what they are striking to achieve. But, after 47 years, how and why did they end up in such deep financial trouble?

   FACTS:  When the current administration took office in January 2021, the inflation rate was 1.4%. Just 16 months later, their policies resulted in the year-over-year inflation rate reaching 9.1 percent, the highest in over 40 years. This created a cascade of disastrous results. The USDA recently reported that food prices are up over 30% from 2020, outracing overall inflation of 20%, and a record 49 million people in the U.S.—including 16 million children—now cannot afford adequate food. Energy prices are up an average of 70% since 2020. The average family has to spend $925 more each month than it did in 2021—that's over $11,000 a year! An estimated 39% of American families are now unable to pay their bills.
    
KBB reports that car and truck repossessions are up by 52% from 2020, and up 23% from just last year. Mortgage interest rates are currently around 7.5%. A Harvard study shows housing in our country is now unaffordable for a record 22.4 million people, and over 50% of all renters. The National Association of Realtors reports that the average price of a home is now $426,900, up over 73% from 2020. And a recent study reveals that inflation is "putting over 50 percent of retirees at risk of running out of money," wrote the Wall Street Journal, as "rising prices require bigger withdrawals from retirement savings." The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 14.1% of adults aged 65 and older now live in poverty, an increase of 50% since 2020, meaning about 8 million older adults now live below the poverty line. And homelessness has reached a record high, with more than 650,000 people living in shelters or outside, up a stunning 32% from 2020.
   FACTS:  Moreover, according to official Homeland Security documents recently sent to Congress, as of September 1st the U.S has more than 10 million illegal aliens in the country who have either have been released into the nation’s interior or evaded the U.S. Customs and Border Protection since January 2021—more than the individual population of 36 of our U.S. states! The administration has refused to remove (deport) over 99% of those illegals, and only an estimated 22,000 of them are in detention facilities. On what officials call the 'non-detained docket,' the vast majority are free in cities and towns across the country, including over 2 million 'high-priority' cases of illegal aliens who have known criminal records, who are known career criminals, who have pending criminal charges in their home country, or who are known to have been associated with or have connections to active terrorist organizations.

Good News from 2023 You Probably Didn't Hear

Surprised?Surprise, Surprise!  Believe it or not, some positive things happened in 2023. These stories will likely come as a surprise, and may be perplexing to some. But many will find this very exciting, as Michael said, “Depending on how comfortable you feel with seismic shifts in what you once thought to be true.” 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               WAIT ... WHAT?
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!

GiraffesFirst, 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."

JaguarNews 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 Paraguayand 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.           dn arrow

Humpback WhaleAnd 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.'

Hawksbill Sea TurtleSea 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.                           dn arrow

Bald Eagle pairThe 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 Honey Beesource 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.       dn arrow

Polar Bear with CubsPolar 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 changesmiles-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.”                                                    dn arrow

Amber shoot20img77Next, something to consider, an excellent example of really asinine (and a little scary) 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 dark bits of satire on the American media if they weren't everywhere in, you know, real life. The following is based on our mission of truly understanding our world, which requires a rigorous pursuit of the truth, without regard to popularity or “political correctness.”

              We believe that detecting and correcting disinformation is the first step toward genuinely creating   
             better-informed citizens
and therefore better-informed votersand that can best be accomplished
           by presenting
truthful observational data.
The loss of an 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 very revealing exposé of the nefarious fear-mongering and false narratives in the media. With the typical summer wildfires in the Western U.S.and constantly during any summer wildfire season—like crazed carnival barkers, the media goes 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).NOAA geosurvey satellite 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 completed 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 decadesSources: 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 agenciesPrinceton 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, and the amount of area burned was DOWN by 95%in 1930, as one example, 1947% more acres burned than in 2023we 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."                                                                                                                                                                         dn arrow

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:  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.
     A sociologist from Stanford told me: The people spreading climate disinformation that creates stress, grief, and despair are so destructive they make the Manson family look like the Brady Bunch. At the same time they express 'great concern' about the emotional damage caused by climate anxiety, which has become a major mental health problem. That's like an arsonist complaining about noise from fire truck sirens.
     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, PBS, and Scripps. Additionally, others we were told 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, The Conversation, TNR, Rolling Stone, Intelligencer, ProPublica, HuffPost and the like. So PLEASE beware! And as a crucial warning for parents, the magazine Teen Vogue has an extreme-left indoctrination agenda, actually one of the worst, and it's for kids!                                                                                     dn arrow

An Observation from Michael: Amber’s article revealing accurate wildfire data is outstanding, yet simply getting the facts straight regarding climate issues is not enough. Even though an abundance of valid information is 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.
     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.   
DisinformationFakeNews     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. 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.
    When a clear understanding of reality is revealed by accurate data, it becomes important to have that as widely known as possible. That, however, is not happening. A new study by MIT reveals how scientists committed to accurate, honest climate reporting are no match for the post-truth narratives of the mainstream media. As one analyst put it, “The popularity of climate disinformation has triggered a boom in commentary from media people eager to repeat narratives they know to be false. When calculating if they might 'get away' with spreading known fabrications, they think only about if they could, and never consider if they should.” Another researcher added, “The propagandists are first-class manipulators of the truth. And they are cleverer and more relentless than you might think.”
    
Deceptive scare-tactic demagoguery from politicians and the media is counterproductive to fact-based discussions about climate change, and counterproductive to what is truly importantthe creation of realistic policies and long-term solutions that do not impose the kind of enormous socio-financial burdens and utterly unnecessary deprivations of personal liberties that are created by climate policies based on fabricated, false claims.                                                                                     dn arrow
Amber photo shoot12image18a  The extent of false reporting in the media and on social media platforms has had real-world consequences. Much of 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. As a neighbor of ours, a Nobel laureate, wryly observed:  “A majority of the legacy media's hosts and commentators are to telling the truth as cats are to swimming. They can do it, but they prefer not to.”

    Helping Families in 2024 - a request from Amber: As individuals and families across the country struggle with the impact of sky high food prices, rents, adjustable-rate mortgage payments, credit card payments, utility bills, brutal energy prices and inflation overall, food bank demand has been skyrocketing. Food banks have seen anywhere from a 285% to over a 430% increase in the number of visitors over the last 30 months.
     Obama economic adviser Jason Furman reports that, since 2021, families' spending power has dropped at “the fastest pace of decline in over 40 years,” with the average U.S. household with two working parents having lost the equivalent of over $11,000 in real annual income due to inflation
! (Even CBS News confirmed this analysis, stating:The typical American household must spend an additional $11,434 annually just to maintain the same standard of living they enjoyed in January of 2021, right before inflation soared to 40-year highs.”) Attempting to keep up with bills, Americans have been forced to use credit, and credit card debt has exploded to an all time record of $1.13 TRILLION, according to TransUnion and the Federal Reserve Bank.
     To clarify the reality of that enormous number, remember that a million is a thousand thousands, a billion is a thousand millions, and a trillion is a thousand billions. To illustrate this progression in a clear way, consider this: 1 million seconds is about 12 days, 1 billion seconds is almost 32 years, but 1 trillion seconds amounts to 31,710 years!

     One Important Way to Help: Before our get-togethers I ask people to bring a bunch of non-perishable food items, which they always do, and to which Heather and I add a bunch more then take to our local food pantry. Please, if possible, consider donating whatever you can to your local food banks to help all those in need. There are online resources that list food banks in your area; in the U.S. there's Feeding America, and in the U.K. there's The Trussell Trust. Or, in a browser like Firefox, just type "food bank" or "food pantry" and your city and state, or postal code. Thank you!                                                                   dn arrow

Visualization Practice - Some Insights and Suggestions

Amber at the Balloon FestivalHi, Amber here with what you might call a "technical" section. During the summer we went to a really fun balloon festival with our house guests and some friends from here in Mill Valley. When we got home we all enjoyed a nice BBQ and drinks out on our front patio. Later in the evening the subject of visualizations came up, mainly relating to how they sometimes work really well and at other times seem not to work at all. That ended up with Michael offering some insights and suggestions, along with relevant quotes from some outstanding sources. So I thought to pass along some of the conversation since it could be helpful!
     
Michael:  Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, makes an excellent point which applies to visualizations and also affirmations. He writes, "It is possible to fail in many different ways, whereas the path to success is narrow." Aristotle pointed out, for example, "There are numerous ways for an archer to miss her mark, but only one way to hit it. A last-minute tremor, a gust of wind, a tattered string, slightly twisted bow, inadequately feathered arrow or sudden cough; any of these can make the whole process go awry. Moreover, the archer who overshoots her mark misses by as much as the one who's arrow falls short."
     In the same manner, there are many ways for visualizations to fail—and thus, to disappoint and discourage—as they have very little tolerance when it comes to maintaining the demanding conditions necessary for success. Visualizations can be thought of as a concatenation of highly non-random, carefully circumscribed, strictly structured thoughts and images that must all come together to succeed, and at the same time keeping random, negative thoughts—such as doubt or failure—at bay.
    
VisualizationIn her manuscript, the Egyptian masteress Kalika-Khenmetaten asserts that visualization is the primary technique for manifesting. She writes, “When you visualize, you channel and project energy. Generating an image of a specific outcome you desire and holding it in your conscious awareness—the inner eye of your mind—gathers and projects precisely the energies required to crystallize that outcome in your personal reality. This projection of mental or psychic energy is not supernatural, nor is it beyond the ability of any person with the proper belief structure. Nor is such a result of visualization a miracle, although to some it may seem so.” (Note from Amber: The quotes above and below from Kalika, circa 1370 B.C., are contained in our book, A Great Master Speaks, ASIN B00TIYMKFM.)
     Michael:  From my experience, I can say that there is probably no practice so generally accepted yet so little understood as visualization. Many people you meet will tell you that they have had success with visualizations, yet equally as many will say will say they have not, or have had only minimal success. Any study of visualization will reveal contradictions which are strange and puzzling—a trivial request meets with success while one on an important matter fails. It is necessary to realize that in visualization certain laws are at work, ones which must be discovered, identified, understood, and fully integrated into your belief structure.
     Kalika puts it this way:In order to fully understand the enormous creative power of visualization, you must first realize that it is a process of natural law and will always work if all the elements are properly and accurately provided. If a visualization does not work, it means that one or more elements were missing, or the process was improperly performed. A well performed visualization is complex and there are as many elements that must be avoided as included.”
     As many of you know, Kalika’s manuscript, The Golden Crown, contains several highly technical discussions. In one of the methodological sections of her manuscript, Kalika discusses the manifestation potential of visualization and affirmation which is very relevant to our discussion. She calls this, as we translated it, “Degree of Manifestation Potential as Dependent on Individual Parameters.” In other words, these are factors that directly impact the potential for specific visualizations and affirmations to produce results.

Those parameters are as follows:
 1)  Degree of realization/recognition of the law that the contents of consciousness (beliefs, thoughts, images)
      invariably create all of your personal reality, and in mass create the shared reality of the world;
 2)  Underlying field of core beliefs, conscious or subconscious/unconscious;
 3)  Master (controlling) beliefs, thoughts and inner images;
 4)  Degree of intent to create reality desired (power of will);
 5)  Available energy;
 6)  Precreation of probability of desired reality from experiential line of possible realities (opening a space in your
       life, in a physical and psychological sense, to allow the desired result to flow into your life experience);
 7)  Certainty of result desired actually manifesting;
 8)  Clarity of thought and imagery;
 9)  Consistency of thought and imagery;
10)  Detachment from result.

The first three parameters involve your fundamental concepts and beliefs, which if incorrect or incomplete the potential for a visualization to manifest results is severely limited. Kalika explains it this way:Your thoughts and inner images have realities that spread outward; they group through attraction, building up areas of circumstances that finally coalesce in forms that you perceive as objects in space or as a series of events in time. Your interpersonal ideas about yourself and the nature of reality directly affect your thoughts and inner images. You take your beliefs about reality as truth, and so do not question them. They seem self-explanatory. You perceive them as statements of fact, far too obvious for examination. Therefore they are accepted without question; they are not recognized as beliefs about reality, but are instead considered characteristics of reality itself. They become invisible assumptions, but they nevertheless form your personal experience.”
     The fourth and fifth parameters involve your energy level and central intent; a weak, half-hearted or unfocused visualization will inevitably fail. The sixth parameter simply means that you must open the opportunity for what you desire to come into your life, it is always wise to make physical efforts to bring it about. In other words, it's easier to go through an open door than a closed one. The four remaining parameters involve focus and technique.
     So, when you work on a specific affirmation or visualization, design it carefully and then consider it in light of each of Kalika's ten parameters. It often helps to write out the affirmation or visualization on paper, slowly and methodically, taking the time to see what comes to mind as you do. This often exposes previously hidden or unnoticed beliefs.
     And don't be in a hurry, relax and enjoy the process. Remember, when teaching me advanced techniques of visualization, Mani told me, “The manifestations and results we create with visualization, once we initiate them, seem to come forth through fixed and invariable laws, but only because we perceive those results through our senses, which clothe all that they transmit in that dress of space, time and causality which our minds themselves have made. Nevertheless, we are beyond and above space, time, and the laws that we make; the laws are made in order to perceive, conceptualize, and understand the world of our experience. Each of us is a center of initiative force and creative power.”
     Mani Choejor instructed me this way:Formulate your desire, then let your desire become action using the techniques of power I am teaching you. Your desire must be impeccably reflected in your thoughts and inner images—that is the magic. When you do this, in the inner world your desires are wholly fulfilled, immediately and effortlessly. In what you perceive to be the outer world, time may have to pass, circumstances change, or whatever, but that desire will manifest. It is law.” (Note from Amber: Mani's quotes are from our book, True Experiences with a Sorceress of the ‘Four Portals’, ASIN B01ICAW6JM.)
    Michael:  I always remember what I was told by a Ri-iha-mo, one of the celestials who we knew as Aani. “In any complex visualization," Aani said, "you must have memorized the procedure, you must find a proper time and place, and you must attain a state of deep peacefulness before beginning. You must also practice the cadence of breathing before adding images in your mind’s eye. In so doing, you will breathe naturally without thought and can focus on the images. Images are the key.” And I will never forget her final words, and neither should you: "You will better understand the power of visualization when you find you wish not to fall asleep because your reality is better than your dreams. I need say no more."
                                              dn arrow

Quotes of the Day

“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)

Amber photo shootYNP image27Hi, it's Amber again. So first I want to thank Michael for suggesting the quote from Lord Tennyson, it is appropriately timely and wise. Next, before listing today's additional book specials, Ashley has a number of interesting news items you should be aware of. We believe this is important since so much (most?) of the U.S. media is thoroughly absorbed in their political theater du jour and ignoring many actual, real news stories, so we've been expanding our news section. Michael cautioned us against overdoing it, saying, "It's fun to be cranky about certain things, that's almost the entire point of Twitter, but when you're tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that professionals use water, and there's a reason for that."
     Okay sure, but Heather, Ashley, Kimmy and I argued that there is a terrible scarcity of objective reporting these days, and we receive tons of e-mails from our 
readers thanking us for revealing the real facts and truth, so we compromised. And anyway, that’s Michael, who tends to be fearlessly honest. Once, when we were in a theater, he exclaimed “Finally!” at the end of the movie 'Precious Cargo.' Which got applause. That's one of so many things about being with Michael, I realized that anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve. After all, how much do you sacrifice if you don't have the courage to recognize the truth?
You can skip back to today's free books here, or the Table of Contents here. Thank you, Amber
 
News Items - Researched and Compiled by Ashley 
Ashley shoot7 image12Here is some important information I learned from interviewing professionals from government agencies and a number of universities and research centers, and some interesting things I found in recent articles in scientific journals. I asked Michael if he wanted to add anything with respect to the current inflation and other terrible economic conditions in our country. He just said this:
           “When Mark Twain and fellow novelist William Howells stepped outside one morning,
     a downpour began and Howells asked, 'Do you think it will stop?
' Twain replied, 'It always has.'
And here's something totally fun and quite educational actually. If like us you enjoy visiting all the varieties of museumsArt, Natural History, Aerospace, Science and Technology, Archeology, and so on, here's a hint. Being from England, I've been keen on the British Museum since I was 5, and now they've created a virtual, interactive tour of the world appropriately called, "The Museum of the World." Pop onto their website here. Many other museums now have virtual tours as well. Enjoy!          

  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.

  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.

Exoplanets  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.
     At our Thanksgiving party, friends who are astrophysicists from Caltech and JPL said
based on the most recent Kepler survey data combined with new and detailed studies of exoplanet atmospheresthat extraterrestrial civilizations amongst the 300 billion or so stars in our galaxy could possibly number in the millions. But for now it's kind of like the Loch Ness "monster" of the Scottish Highlands; maybe there's something there, maybe there's not, and we'll probably never know for sure.

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                                              Amber's News & Fun Stuff                                                            up arrow

Vacation photo set 2After working with relief efforts for families in remote areas, or those suffering from abhorrently debilitating inflation, Michael and I really needed a minibreak. We were invited to visit friends in Panama, so we flew down in Rover and it was outstanding. We went hiking, snorkeling, SCUBA diving, jet skiing, skateboarding, and even some cliff "diving." (Holy cow, it was pretty high and scary at first, but when I jumped the first time it was really exciting, I went seven times.)
    This picture is from our friend's deck, which has a pool and a super view of   >
the
bay and ocean (that's me with my "drowned rat" look). We had breakfast
and elevenses out there, it was sunny, warm, and relaxing.


Skateboarding photo set
Okay, so here I am skateboarding in Panama with Michael and our friend Gina, headed downhill, but on a gentle decline. It was the first time I'd ever tried skateboarding. Michael and Gina were both really good at it and I really wasn't, but it was fun, especially when we rolled right up to a great little food truck for a late lunch of sancocho, a fantastic chicken stew (Panama's national dish). When we went skateboarding again the next day, I started really getting the hang of it. And I didn't fall once (hint - wear shoes). After returning home, we went up to Corte Madera and bought skateboards for Ashley, Kimmy and me, so we're going to try them out on some hills here in Mill Valley when we're not busy with work, research or traveling.
MichaelandAmber mountaintop
         Michael and I having fun on the top of a little rise we hiked   >
         up early one overcast and somewhat cooler morning. It was
         a beautiful place to do our daily health, happiness and
                                                     prosperity affirmations and visualizations (although twice
                                                     interrupted by mosquitoes easily big enough to engage in
                                                     aerial combat with the hummingbirds
).

Rover, our MU-2 in Panama And here's a picture of Rover, our MU-2 turboprop.
What a workhorse Rover is! Over the last 30 months we've flown much needed medical and other supplies into under-served and remarkably remote Indian Reservations, 33 or 34 times, I think, and met so many wonderful people. I took this just after we landed at the cute little airport in Panama. Faithful, comfy and really fast, with his massive thrust, high wing configuration and transport category airframe strength, Rover can use short grass or dirt landing strips, and with his narrow main-gear track even dirt or gravel roads, which we often do in the Southwest. In the air, there is the hum of a living machine, the beautiful abstractions on the flatscreen displays, the carefully considered backlighting of all the dials, knobs, switches and circuit breakers, and the gentle background whoosh of the air rushing by. In flight, Rover's cockpit is the deepest, most protective, most private, most amazing sort of home.Love Heart
 
Ashley's Sundry Musings of the Day
Ashley's musings of the day
Our dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with me in a car, just in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in my ear. And recently, while we were hosting a family from Portland who were staying with us for safety reasons while looking for a new home in Montana, I noticed that when kids pick up a cat by the tail, they learn something they can't learn any other way. I like having conversations with kids; adults never ask me what my third favorite reptile is.
And lately I've been wondering if clouds ever look down on the podium at a Rose Garden press conference and say,
"That one is shaped like an idiot."
And sometimes I wonder if my horses—all of them—got together and are conspiring to purposely mess with me.

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.
Winston the cat out hunting


In Honor of Truth

"The most valuable piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue."  —Antisthenes (445-365 B.C.)

       Media Report - The Ongoing Crisis

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

Media wolves  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."
     When asked whether they “trust the corporate news media to tell the truth,” only 14 percent of respondents agreed. 78 percent of those polled said they believed “the corporate news media misrepresents facts to push a political agenda.” And only a dismal 11 percent told Gallup they have a "great deal or quite a lot" of confidence in television news shows on NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, or MSNBC. Among registered independent voters, over 85 percent said they thought the news media misrepresented facts to push political agendas. The report further stated: "The nation’s politicized media environment has allowed for dangerous false narratives to take root in all segments of society at a time when factual, trustworthy information is especially critical to the future of our democracy." Credits: The Gallup Organization, Washington, D.C.; The Knight Foundation, Miami, FL.


In the following sections I go into considerable detail about the crisis in the media
because we believe it
is something that's extremely important for everyone to become
fully aware
of and understand in a thorough and comprehensive manner. The loss of a
free, honest and non-biased press represents a grave danger to our country.
   —Ashley
    
Media propaganda Please be aware that much of what's currently being broadcast through many of the corporate media outlets, rather than being based on supportable facts or truth, is politicized disinformation and cunning propaganda, often combined with truly absurd speculations and exaggerations. Of course, over the course of the last year or so, that became so obvious it was a no-brainer.
     You know the feeling—the one in which you hear a piece of "news" and instinctively sense that something is off. And even though you can't always pin down that intuitive reaction that you're being manipulated, maybe lied to, you can't quite forget it either. That's because honest, objective reporting has become very rare
.
     When I talked to anyone at our 4th of July party about the media, their tone turned grim. There was always an evident distaste, like taking a bite of bad fish, spit out with revulsion. By way of proof, consider two statements. First statement: "I love the media, they're fair, balanced, and honest." Said by no one, ever. Second statement: "I hate the media." Said by millions, just yesterday, and will be said by millions more today.
     Abraham Lincoln observed, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” Thankfully, Lincoln was right. Very reassuringly, as time passes, more and more people are becoming aware of media propaganda, with Gallup polls showing Americans' trust in the corporate media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” dropping to its lowest level in the entire history of polling.

     And yet, emboldened by a degree of success in promoting amongst certain demographics what experts from Berkeley, Stanford and UCLA tell us are some of the absolutely worst, most dangerous and most destructive myths ever widely circulated at any time in U.S. history, the corporate media has provoked a kind of delusional hysteria and are continuing to ramp-up their propaganda campaigns to batshit crazysorry, ridiculous—proportions.
     "Disinformation is their playbook," a media expert from Stanford told me. "What do they do if the truth about something contradicts their political agenda? They simply fabricate facts and figures as a way to undermine reality, and they are absolutely adamant when presenting them as being real." As
Bertrand Russell observed, "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves."

"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)

Lies not Trutjh

  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. Heat Wave Facts   4. Problems in Climate Science

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.

There are truths which are not for all men.”  —Voltaire (A.D. 1694-1778)
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”  —George Orwell

1.  A Definitive Essay - The Curious Tragedy of The Atlantic Magazine.  Note from Ashley: A few months ago Amber and I 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 truthreveals 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.
     NOTE: For more information and a very revealing chart from
'Our World in Data' please see Section 4 of "Examples
     of Climate Change Disinformation
" titled "Deaths resulting from climate change influenced events"
(new window).

The claim that "extreme weather events" are causing a "record" number of
human deaths is a staggering fabrication. The actual research data is easily,
readily and freely accessible, and it shows the truth is precisely the opposite.

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 narrativewildfire, flood, drought, hurricane, etcone 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 headlineswill 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?

Kimberly shoot7image122.  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, in every state, in every city, and at every income level.
     You may not have heard this, but an August 26th 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. What's driving this
overwhelming discontent?
     The USDA reports that food prices are up over 30% from 2020, outpacing overall inflation of 20%, and a record 49 million people in the U.S.—including 16 million children—now cannot afford adequate food. The average family has to spend $925 more each month than they did in 2020, and an estimated 39% of American families are now unable to pay their bills. A Harvard study shows housing in our country is now unaffordable for a record 22.4 million people, and over 50% of all renters. The National Association of Realtors reports that the average price of a home is now $426,900, up over 73% from the 2020 average! Homelessness has reached a record high, with more than 650,000 people living in shelters or outside, up a stunning 32% from 2020. KBB reports that car and truck repossessions are up by 52% from 2020, and up 23% from just last year.
     Energy prices are up an average of 70% since 2020. As of the end of August, Americans owe a stunning $220 billion in medical debt, up a staggering 70% from 2020. And a recent study reveals that inflation is putting "over 50 percent of retirees at risk of running out of money," as "rising prices require bigger withdrawals from retirement savings," said The Wall Street Journal. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 14.1% of adults aged 65 and older now live in poverty, an increase of 50% since 2020, meaning about 8 million older adults now live below the poverty line. On August 20, the New York Fed reported that more than 28% of Americans are searching for jobs—the highest rate in a decade.
     According to Homeland Security documents recently sent to Congress, as of September 1st the U.S. has more than
10 million illegal aliens in the country who have either been released into the nation’s interior or evaded the U.S. Customs and Border Protection since January 2021—more than the individual population of 36 of our U.S. states! Thousands are pouring in each day, and the administration has refused to remove over 98% of those illegals. Only between 22,000 and 38,000 of them are or will be in detention facilities. On what officials term the 'non-detained docket,' the vast majority are now free in cities and towns across the country, including over 2 million 'high-priority' cases of illegal aliens who have known criminal records, who are known career criminals, who have pending criminal charges in their home country, or who are known to have been associated with or have connections to active terrorist organizations.
     Historically unprecedented quantities of deadly drugs are flowing across the border. Customs and Border Protection reports that an estimated 4500 to 5000 Mexican cartel tenientes (lieutenants) with their sicarios (enforcers/hitmen) have penetrated into the U.S., responsible for setting-up sex trafficking and drug trafficking operations in cities and towns nationwide, resulting in a massive increase in overdose deaths, with over 112,000 Americans dying in 2023 alone.

     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.

   Analysis of focus group discussions nationwide reveals that people 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. For example, the success of the previous administration in controlling the influx of illegal aliens. Statistical data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows that both border encounters and successful illegal entries in 2019 were at the lowest numbers in 56 years, since 1963, and in 2020 were at the lowest numbers in 58 years, since 1962.
     In 2019 and early 2020, before the SARS-CoV-2 virus reached the U.S. from China, 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 Americaand a complete renewal of its valuesit 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 life, one that will mark the end of how we once lived with liberty, freedom, justice, opportunity, and prosperity.

Ashley shoot4image2063.  Heat Waves - Historical Facts, by Ashley, and Please Note: Lest anyone misinterpret it, the purpose of the following sections is not to suggest that climate change is not occurring—it definitely isbut 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 by social media platforms.
    According to CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC, NPR, PBS, the Associated Press, and many other media organizations, so far this year "more than 1,200 daytime high temperature 'records' have been broken," and that temperatures have been "unprecedented," and "the hottest in history,” and so on and so on. And that's not all.
     'The Washington Post' claimed that temperatures were "the warmest in the last 100,000 years." CNN decided to one-up them by claiming that the temperatures were "the hottest in 120,000 years," and 'The Hill' said the same. But most amazing, 'CBS Saturday Morning' plowed through every professional and ethical guardrail by claiming that recent temperatures have been
Ready? Don't be too sure"the hottest in three million years."
     These claims, when taken along with their sources, raise more red flags than a Chinese military parade.
So, I talked to several climate researchers, including a nice couple who are friends and neighbors and are both atmospheric scientists. I asked them if such reporting could be true. They said it depends on the "time frame" of the claims of "record breaking" temperatures. Regarding records, it's important to point out the obvious: Record-setting temperatures are relative to the time period of actual recorded thermometer measurements. For example, NOAA uses 1895 as the earliest year with sufficient data with which to compare to recent years. As an obvious result, the claims of the hottest temperatures in "100,000 years," or "120,000 years," or "three million years" are nothing more than a few deranged pantomimes in the theater of the absurd that is today's legacy media. So, lacking direct records that go back more than a hundred years or so, what do we know about past temperatures? Insights come from proxy records and extant, written historical records.
    On a long-term basis, the best overview of our planet's atmospheric temperature trend is derived from the “Marine Stable Isotope Record.” The oceans absorb most of the world's heat, so there's a direct correlation between deep ocean temperatures and global average surface temperatures. As a result, one of the most widely used proxies for determining global mean surface temperature through the past millions of years is the stable isotope record. The stable isotopes of oxygen are utilized to construct paleoclimatic reconstructions of deep ocean temperatures, as shown in this chart which I was provided by the American Geophysical Union, extending back about 67 million years. Note the steady decline since the Eocene epoch, when ocean temperatures averaged about 22.6 degrees Celsius higher than today, then a leveling off in the Oligocene and early-Miocene epochs, when ocean temperatures averaged about 14.1 degrees Celsius higher than today, then the resumption of a steep decline in ocean temperature, leading to the much lower range toward our modern times in the early-Holocene epoch.
Per the CBS claim: "Three million" years ago deep ocean temperatures averaged 7-8+ degrees Celsius higher than today,
   meaning that average global atmospheric temperatures were about 10-12 degrees Fahrenheit higher than in 2023 or 2024.
   A data analyst from the Geophysical Union told me that, at minimum, at least 700 million days during the last 3 million years
   were definitely much hotter than in recent years. (How did CBS decide to make such a ludicrous claim? Were they drunk?)

Ocean temperature graph

     The climatologists I spoke to also suggested that I talk to historians about the written historical records of extreme temperature events. So Heather and I called and spoke to professors at our alma mater, Oxford University, who were very helpful, and they in turn put us in contact with professors at Cambridge University and Yale University. We were provided with a great deal of information found in literature from parts of the world which have had written languages for thousands of years. I'm including a brief overview below. Again, this information is not meant to indicate that climate change is not occurring, but rather to show that there is much more to the story than what's reported by the media.
    Note:  Each of the following quotes comes directly from a reliable historical source and had to be confirmed by at least
                 two (2) additional credible sources to be included, and in most cases is recorded in dozens of historical records.
  "In 627, the heat across the continent [Europe] was so great that all springs dried up; water became so scarce that thousands
    of human beings died of thirst."
  "In 879, work in the field had to be given up; agricultural laborers persisting in their work were struck down in a few minutes,
    so powerful was the sun."
  "In 993, the sun’s rays were so fierce that vegetation burned up as under the action of fire. Nuts on the trees were roasted,
    as if in a baker’s oven."
  "In 1000, rivers throughout the continent ran dry under the protracted heat, the fish were left drying in heaps and putrefied
    in a few hours."  NOTE: Rivers running dry "throughout the continent" has never occurred in contemporary history.
  "In 1014 in France, and even in Switzerland, all the brooks and the rivers were dried up."  NOTE: ditto to the above.
  "In the summer of 1022, men and animals venturing in the sun fell down dying."
  "In 1132, rivers dried up, and the ground cracked and became baked to the hardness of stone. The Rhine in Alsace dried up."
  "Italy was visited with terrific heat in 1189; vegetation and plants were burned up; thousands of souls perished."
  "During the battle of Bela, in 1200, there were more victims made by the sun than by weapons; men fell down sunstruck in
    regular rows."
  "The sun of 1277 was severe; there was an absolute dearth of forage as the fields and forests were scorched and died."
  "In 1303 and 1304, the Rhine, Loire and Seine ran dry."  NOTE: Neither the Loire nor the Seine have ever run dry in
    contemporary history, and they have been running normally during the recent heat waves
.
  "In 1393 and 1394, great numbers of animals fell dead in the heat, and the crops were scorched up."
  "In 1538 and 1539, all the rivers across the continent were entirely dried up."  NOTE: Again, that has never happened in
    contemporary history, not even close.
  "England and Scotland suffered extreme heat in 1625; men and beasts died in scores. Meat could be cooked by merely
    exposing it to the sun. Not a soul dared to venture outside during the day."
  "In 1718, extreme heat forced London shops to be closed; the theaters were never opened for several months. Not a drop
    of water fell during six months."
  "In 1753, in London the thermometer rose to one hundred and eighteen degrees."  NOTE: The media claimed the "record
    high temperature" recently set in London was 104.5 degrees Fahrenheit, fully 13° lower than in 1753. (The Fahrenheit
    measurement scale was first introduced in 1724 by the German physicist Daniel Gabriel
Fahrenheit.)
  "In 1779, the heat at Bologna reached one hundred and twenty degrees; it was so great that a large number of people died."
   
NOTE: The media claimed the all-time "record" recently set in Bologna was 103.0 degrees Fahrenheit, which was at
    minimum 17
° lower than in 1779.
  "In July, 1793, the heat became intolerable. Vegetables were burned up and fruit dried upon the trees. The furniture
    and woodwork in dwelling-houses cracked and split up; meat became bad in an hour."
  "In Paris in 1846, the thermometer marked one hundred and twenty-five degrees in the shade."  NOTE: The media claimed
    the all-time "record" recently set in Paris was 108.7 degrees Fahrenheit,
which was at least 16° lower than in 1846.
Sources: The University of Oxford History Department, Oxford, UK;  The Joint Centre for History, Magdalene College and King's College, Cambridge, UK;  and Yale University Department of History, New Haven, CT.
Clearly, the recent heat waves, although significant, are hardly unprecedented, and much worse heat waves have occurred in the past. So why did climate specialists refer us to historians for the truth on "record" temperatures? Simply because historians have been "overlooked," so to say, and have not (yet) been subjected to serious political pressure or threats to cutoff funding to force them and/or their departments to hide or falsify facts contained in historical records.
  Temperature Records in the United States: Native Americans have lived on the North American continent for millennia, but unfortunately had no formal written language, and the many things the arriving Europeans subjected them to did not include inquiries as to past climate events. So, until many years after the arrival of European colonists from Spain, Portugal and Britain, there are no written records to identify heat waves on the North American continent similar to or exceeding the heat waves that occurred on the European continent. However, climatologists say that many of the same type of extreme heat events that are documented to have occurred in Europe from the 600s and onward would have happened in the U.S. as well, which is confirmed by substantial evidence derived from proxies such as pollens, tree rings, diatoms, forams, and so on.

Ella shoot3 image124.  Problems in Climate Science. Introducing Ella: Our team member Kimberly is from Sweden, and her younger sister Ella has come to join us (from Östermalm, Sweden) after graduating from Stockholm University. We're very happy she's here, we adore her. Since arriving, Ella has been surprised by the deceptions and distortions of reality she has seen from the U.S. media. Of course, we're pretty much used to it, but those kind of falsifications do not exist in Sweden, so to Ella it's astonishing. She's become rather fascinated with the TV news shows, and when she watches she sometimes turns to us with an amazed expression and asks, "Hur kan de ljuga så?" ("How can they lie like that?"). Good question. Michael has pointed out that it's actually reassuring since even with her rapidly improving but still incomplete knowledge of English, it's easy for her to spot the media's falsifications and fabrications. Ella wrote the following, some of which is translated from Swedish by Kimberly.
    We live in interesting times for the sciences. For the past several years, disciplines such as climatology and atmospheric science seem to have unlocked some of the mysteries of nature, or that’s the claim, and academics and laypeople alike couldn’t get enough of what they were reporting. The media, too, uncritically lapped up the narratives.
     Lately, however, the climate-science world has become mired in controversy. Researchers themselves have started to note that many claims and predictions have been debunked—such as, for just one example, the idea that hurricanes have become more frequent or more intense in recent years. Scholars writing in the journal Science examined the research “results” regarding hurricanes published since 2020 in a number of science journals and magazines and found that only 26 percent of those
results were consistent with the actual data. In other words, over 70 percent of the articles made claims that were diametrically opposed by the actual, factually verified data. In other words, they were wholly false.
     Multiple allegations of unethical data practices have emerged, many of them clearly proven. The misconduct has included so-called “p-hacking”—processing data in search of spurious correlations and publishing them as valid results—and even outright fraud, in which researchers have altered their data to fit a predetermined, "politically-correct" result. Although the majority of climate disinformation is intentionally created, some is the result of scientists engaging in what's called "pathological science." Pathological science is a psychological process in which a scientist—initially conforming to the scientific method—unconsciously veers from a rigorous methodology and begins an intractable process of what's called "wishful data interpretation," generally resulting from the observer-expectancy effect, cognitive bias, and/or the researcher's ideological belief system. Pathological science presents an often convincing but easily falsifiable claim, as is apparent when the claim is compared to the true and factual data.
     For example, regarding hurricanes, what does the actual data show? As Ashley illustrated, the comprehensive record of all hurricanes that have made landfall since 1851 shows no upward trend in the number of major hurricanes over the last 173 years. And there has been a 50 percent reduction in the number of major hurricanes (Category 3 or greater) making landfall in the U.S. over the last 90 years. These facts have been reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); Princeton Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory; U.S. Geological Survey; the National Hurricane Center; and the National Weather Service.
    Making climate disinformation worse is the media. Although media producers are certainly aware of the facts coming from NOAA, the National Hurricane Center, the National Weather Service and other research organizations, they consistently promote false claims, lies that they know to be lies. Consider a few examples: "Hurricanes have become more extreme than at anytime in history" (CNN); "Recent hurricanes are historically unprecedented" (MSNBC); "Climate change is driving record breaking hurricanes" (Vox); "Hurricanes have become cataclysmic due to climate change" (PBS); "Hurricanes have been getting worse every year as climate change fuels stronger storms" (CBS Mornings); "America and the world are getting bigger and more intense hurricanes" (NBC News); "Climate change is making hurricanes more powerful and more destructive than ever before" (NPR); "Climate Change Is Making Hurricanes Stronger" (New York Times headline).
     An editor of the 'Journal of Climate'—published by the highly respected 'American Meteorological Society' in Boston, MA—suggested that it is long past due to have the scientific community speak out against the prevalence of false reporting, intentional suppression of facts, false data and fabricated conclusions in the media's climate reporting. “We have now reached a point where those doing systematic reviews must start by assuming that any press report is fraudulent until they can have some evidence to the contrary,” he wrote.
     This is less hostile than it sounds. He isn’t saying that everything is fraudulent, but rather that everything should be evaluated starting from a baseline of “I don’t believe you” until it's definitely proven otherwise. Think of the airport-security workers who assume that you may be carrying contraband or weapons until you prove that you aren’t. The point is not that everyone is carrying something they shouldn't, but that everybody has to go through the appropriate procedures to be certain.
    Moreover, media news departments routinely refuse to respond to requests for access to the data underlying their reporting, despite stating their willingness to share it. An American Meteorological Society study found that of about 1,800 instances of "questionable climate reporting" for which the news producers indicated that their sources and data would be available on request, only 14% (252) of them responded to requests for their data, and a mere 6.7% (121) actually shared their data in a usable form. The reason for the media's reticence to share data may be this: When the 6.7% of the data actually provided from 121 "climate change" stories was analyzed, researchers found that 64% of that contained factually inaccurate statistics, while 73% contained sensationalized language promoting indisputably fraudulent claims. Many cited as their source other media stories, making for what I was told is "an echo chamber of fabrications." Can you imagine what would be found in the 93.3% of the "data" that the media refused to share with the American Meteorological Society researchers?
    A natural conclusion for people who are aware of the facts regarding climate events is grave skepticism about the climate-science field. People are bound to wonder if most of the published claims about climate change simply cannot be trusted.
     I get that, but I reject the notion that the whole field has been discredited.
As Ashley described, a peer-reviewed study recently published in three highly-regarded journals—Nature, Science News, and Nature Communications—titled 'Changes in Atlantic Major Hurricane Frequency Since the Late-19th Century', reached this conclusion, quote: "There are not actually more Atlantic hurricanes now than there were roughly 150 years ago," and "There has been a significant decrease in the trend of hurricane energy and intensity over the past 25 years." The study was a cooperative effort of the following: Geosciences Department, Princeton University; High Meadows Environmental Institute; National Hurricane Center; National Weather Service; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering, University of Iowa; and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton University.
     Those seven top-tier organizations chose to publish the truth
despite considerable political pressure to suppress the study, and knowing full well that their report would be entirely ignored by the mainstream mediaand those research organizations deserve sincere credit for their decision.
     Yet many other organizations involved in climate studies suffer from significant difficulties. Analysts at Stanford University attribute this problem to a series of study flaws. For example: Intentionally using "data samples that are far too small" or "too cherry-picked” to trust, "cases in which a result is made to seem valid because of mathematical sleight of hand but is effectively meaningless," "poor experimental design
," "invalid modeling tools," "grave modeling errors," "implausible and inadequately supported assumptions," "claims devoid of any scientific evidence," and—the most entrenched—"academic bias" caused by "career incentives to find predetermined results."
     Those incentives are brutal. In some fields, a professor needs to have published dozens of research articles to have a prayer of getting tenure (without which they are usually shown the door). Imagine studying for a decade through college and graduate school, then beavering away for perhaps another 10 years on research while managing a hefty teaching load, only to be in the position of betting your career on the up-or-out decision of a university committee. As one researcher wrote on Political Science Rumors, an anonymous message board where academics in this field can openly converse, “The tenure track is a dehumanizing process, because it treats us as apprentices until we’re at least well into our 30s and often significantly past 40.”
     At many universities, for research to be good enough for publication is often not good enough. The topic also has to be covered convincingly, the claims must elicit an emotional response, and ideally the findings should be consistent with the accepted narrative. Articles revealing factual, empirical evidence that hurricanes are neither more frequent nor more intense will not get much credit or publicity; but articles claiming that hurricanes have gotten much, much worse—now we’re talking.
     Not surprisingly, perhaps, this impulse to center on what's popular and politically-correct leads to problems. An article titled “Cheat or Perish?” in the journal Research Policy looked at the incentives in academia to cut corners or straight-up cheat. Its authors noted that although “carrots” can encourage work that is high quality, sometimes, to avoid possible defunding or controversy, they encourage the opposite; and even in outwardly dispassionate and non-biased research, “sticks” do not always deter misbehavior. The scholars wrote that fraud and misconduct in research are frequently intentionally overlooked or simply ignored. This means that the carrots heavily outweigh the sticks, predictably affecting the integrity of the work.
     Yet tenure alone does not necessarily eliminate the problematic incentives to publish false claims and conclusions. Senior researchers easily fall prey to hubris and fail to seek advice and constructive criticism. Research has also shown that people with more expertise in a field tend to react more poorly than those with less experience by becoming even more pedantic when they receive “dis-confirming feedback”—in other words, they don’t want to hear that their claims and conclusions are wrong.
     And the stakes rise a great deal in an era when climate scientists can become superstars outside academia, earning speaking engagements and lucrative book deals for their thrillingly disturbing findings. And
of course paid TV appearances as well, on media outlets to whom only the narrative matters, not the real facts, in particular the cable outlets CNN and MSNBC, yet also the networks CBS, ABC, and NBC.

    Summary, by  Ashley:  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 countrymust 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.

Heather set7 image2  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)

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  Media Analysis, by Ashley:  Of course, it has not gone unnoticed that the corporate media and many social media platforms are supressing free speech and censoring extremely important stories while promoting their own distortions and fabrications.
     According to the newest polls from the Gallup Organization, an estimated 220 MILLION American adults have lost all trust in the accuracy, objectivity and fairness of the media's "news" reporting, and for very good reasons. (Credit: The Gallup Organization, Washington, DC.)
     
The summary of an in-depth Stanford University study of the U.S. media concludes, as two illustrations of media corruption: "[C]ampaigns of the purely propagandist cable media MSNBC and CNN are indifferent to truth or truthfulness, knowledge or understanding, and follow a strategic and unrelenting transmission pattern to fully indoctrinate the target audience in a particular synthesis or perception."
     And Stanford reports that it's not just cable media
: "The narratives of broadcast media such as NBC, CBS, and ABC can be neutrally defined as systematic forms of purposeful persuasion designed to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and voting behaviors of a specified audience through the consistent utilization of one-sided, non-objective messages, in consort with ridiculing or suppressing elements of reality that do not fit within the accepted framework of their primary political agenda."
     If you've been watching any of the recent broadcast "reporting," you might think Stanford understated their findings. Then there's this—even the editorial board of the liberal newspaper 'The Washington Post' writes: "CNN and MSNBC long ago stopped being news outlets in the sense of going out to find facts ... their hosts, anchors and commentators have become hit-squads that do not investigate, do not have any regard for facts or evidence, and do not make any attempt at balance or fairness." Although a jaw-dropping example of "the-pot-calling-the-kettle-black," that pretty much sums it up.
  As Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently commented, "What I find most surprising is that CNN still exists." It does, kind of, but in the long run Mr. Musk may be on to something as their ratings have fallen well behind cable networks such as TLC, Discovery, Hallmark, and even Nickelodeon! A striking sign of their rating crisis is in the critical demographic of ages 25 to 54, the most important segment of viewers for advertising revenue, where their viewership is in a near free fall.
 According to Neilsen Media, CNN ratings have plummeted to a 30 year low,
and MSNBC to a 23 year low. Apparently it's not a good business model
to alienate viewers by broadcasting devious nonsense to the point of
getting beaten in the ratings by reruns of SpongeBob SquarePants
.
  Update: CNN's average primetime viewership dropped to the lowest level in 30 years, and the network’s ratings trail even those of MSNBC, which itself has seen a decline in primetime viewership to the lowest level in some 23 years. Executives of the media company Discovery are seeking to set a new course for CNN after merging with the network’s former parent company, WarnerMedia, earlier this year, putting some of the network’s most wildly partisan employees such as Brian Stelter, Jeffrey Toobin, Jim Acosta, Don Lemon and Brianna Keilar on "very shaky ground." Warner Bros. Discovery management wants CNN to eschew the network’s “red-hot liberal opining” and instead focus on objective reporting of hard news, but some Warner Bros. executives believe that the CNN brand is beyond repair.
     Update: Brian Stelter, "legal analyst" Jeffrey Toobin,
Don Lemon, and hyper-liberal White House correspondent John Harwood have all been axed. John Malone, a Warner Bros. Discovery board member and major stockholder commented, "I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing." That phrasing—especially the words "actually have journalists," which CNN currently doesn't—was applauded by media experts and especially by journalism professors who are avid to see a return to honest, objective, professional journalism.
     In a rational world, the leadership of
NBC-MSNBC would also immediately implement a dramatic course correction away from "pure propaganda" and "purposeful persuasion" toward at least some kind of responsible journalism, but as yet there is no sign that rationality exists there.

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.

The declarations of a thousand pundits are not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason,
and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”  —Galileo Galilei

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."  —Voltaire

Snow LeopardP.S.:  Only about 6,000 snow leopards are now left in the wild, down from some 9,000 in the year 2000! The WWF has a wonderful program where you can symbolically adopt a snow leopard. Donate and you'll help to save those still left, plus you'll get a snow leopard adoption kit (a cute snow leopard plush toy, tote, certificate, species info card, and a photo). And the WWF is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. If you wish, you can see the snow leopard adoption program here, and there are others as well. Thank you, Ashley

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                              Author: M.G. (Michael) Hawking                                                                   Assistants: Our 3 goofy dogs
                              
Newsletter Director & Contributor: Amber Chellings, M.Phil.                                           Our 4 (very) funny cats
                              Production Editor & Contributor: Heather Cantrell, M.Litt.                                                Our 7 beautiful horses
                              Publishing Supervisor: Ashley Truesdale                                                                          "Rover," our hard working
                              Graphics & Format Designer: Kimberly (Kimmy) Radcliff                                                   and much loved MU-2
                              Contributor & Content Coordinator: Jenna Wolfe, Ph.D.

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