Fright-wing proponents offer their fellow travelers the false comfort of rigid certainty in a changing world—dividing the world into good versus evil, us against them. Fundamentalism has a powerful appeal for people who feel powerless, especially when it gets dressed up as an ideology or attaches itself to a party label.
But when you pull the curtain back on fright-wing politics, behind the all-or-nothing demands, apocalyptic warnings and the addiction to self-righteous anger, you’ll see that fear is the motivating factor: fear of the other; fear wrapped up in a flag; fear calling itself freedom. The fright-wingers are recycling scripts that are decades old. But it is not the language of the true leaders that have changed the world, as they like to believe. These true leaders warned about the dangers of faction—fright-wingers enflame it. These true leaders were focused on uniting the nation, their nation—fright-wingers try to divide it.
They are selling the same old snake oil that merchants of political paranoia have been selling for most of history. The federal government has been accused of tyranny and trying to restrict states’ rights since the debate to ratify the Constitution. The specter of a sinister plot to create a one-world government goes back almost a century to fights over the League of Nations against the backdrop of the Bolshevik revolution. It was carried forward by the John Birch Society, which drew recruits with its talk of U.N. troops invading the United States through the southern border with the approval of alleged Manchurian candidate and Soviet spy Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Days before John F. Kennedy’s assassination, 5,000 flyers were distributed in downtown Dallas, featuring side-by-side photos of Kennedy in profile and face forward, like a mug shot. Below it read “WANTED FOR TREASON” with this list of charges:
• Betraying the Constitution (which he swore to uphold): He is turning sovereignty of the U.S. over to the communist controlled United Nations: He is betraying our friends . . . and befriending our enemies.
• He has illegally invaded a sovereign State with federal troops.
• He has been caught in fantastic lies to the American people.
These accusations still echo from fright-wingers today. Nothing has really changed and the fright-wingers still pretend that their platform is solid truth.
But there is one interesting change observable in recent times and that is the part played by the mainstream media. The pioneering television journalist Edward R. Murrow said, “To be persuasive, we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful.”
Truth, or course, doesn’t come tailor-made for any one ideology or political party. But fright-wing politics has become an industry unto itself, and it is thriving at a time when the old news industry, aspiring to objectivity dominated by print reporting and the network evening news, seems to be fading. The fragmentation and self-segregation we are experiencing with television, radio and the Internet exacerbates our political differences while they decrease the confidence we had in the honesty and integrity of journalism altogether.
A case in point is the recent appeared in the somewhat mainstream Mother Jones under the dramatic title:
CIA Backs $630,000 Scientific Study on Controlling Global Climate
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/cia-geoengineering-control-climate-change
The report even carries this ridiculous graphic:
It's ridiculous because it's a picture of a tsunami, which was caused by an earthquake and has absolutely nothing to do with either climate or the weather. The actual article ends with a nod to conspiracy theorists:
"The CIA's decision to fund scientific work on geoengineering will no doubt excite conspiracy theorists. The last time the government tried to do cutting-edge research related to the atmosphere—with the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), which aimed to protect satellites from nuclear blasts—people speculated that it might be a death ray, a mind control weapon, or, worst of all…a way to control the weather."
It's too bad HAARP (one of the favorites of conspiracy theorists everywhere) was recently shut down for lack of funding: http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130717/alaska-s-controversial-haarp-facility-closed-will-it-come-back-online
So what is the CIA's actual involvement in all of this? Here's what one of the panel members, Ken Caldeira had to say:
"There is no 'CIA study'.
There is a National Academy study that is funded by NOAA, NASA, the CIA, and the National Academy itself.
All of these parties had a hand in developing the charge to the committee which is publicly available here:
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?key=49540
Neither NOAA, NASA, nor the CIA have anything more to do with this study other than receiving the final committee report. You too will receive this same report.
The panel members are listed here: http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/CommitteeView.aspx?key=49540
We are a diverse groups of academics who share a commitment to openness, free-exchange of ideas, and transparency.
I am on record decrying many abuses by the US intelligence community including what I consider to be criminal drone attacks, secret wars, surveillance, etc. If I thought that somehow our report was going to help the CIA do something nefarious, you can be sure that I would not be a participant.
I want the US gov't to think through the situation that lies before us with respect to climate change. If a careful "thinking through" could occur, I think it would result in greatly increased emphasis on transforming our energy system into one that does not rely on using the atmosphere as a waste dump."
And regarding the actual project? Let's see:
"Project Scope
An ad hoc committee will conduct a technical evaluation of a limited number of proposed geoengineering techniques, including examples of both solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) techniques, and comment generally on the potential impacts of deploying these technologies, including possible environmental, economic, and national security concerns. The study will:
- Evaluate what is currently known about the science of several (3-4) selected example techniques, including potential risks and consequences (both intended and unintended), such as impacts, or lack thereof, on ocean acidification,
- Describe what is known about the viability for implementation of the proposed techniques including technological and cost considerations,
- Briefly explain other geoengineering technologies that have been proposed (beyond the selected examples), and
- Identify future research needed to provide a credible scientific underpinning for future discussions.
The project has support from the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. intelligence community, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The approximate start date for the project is March 2013; a report is expected be issued in fall 2014."
So that's it. The CIA is not studying anything, they are just contributing the the funding a study on a topic that has potentially great geopolitical implications, and hence is of national security concern. It's no more nefarious than the studies they do on education demographics in Africa, or farming methods in Bangladesh, or anything else that goes into the World Factbook.
The above paranoia is typical of the peddled nonsense so readily found today. In this case it was fueled by a mainstream media source and then transformed in the hands of fright-wingers forever eager to fabricate fear wherever they can. Observe now how this story transforms:
CIA is Funding Government-Led Chemtrail Project: Spy Agency to Help Study 'Security Impacts' of Geo-Engineering
http://www.globalresearch.ca/cia-is-funding-government-led-chemtrailing-project-spy-agency-to-help-study-security-impacts-of-geo-engineering/5343414
There is so much nonsense paraded as fact in the above article that it would take a separate essay to deconstruct it all but one notable example of bunk can be found here:
"Indeed, as we reported last year, a Harvard University project experiment funded by Microsoft founder Bill Gates saw thousands of tonnes of sulphur particles sprayed over New Mexico as part of a geoengineering study, despite the fact that even staunch environmentalists have warned the project could have catastrphic affects on the earth's eco-system.
The paragraph provides a link to this article: http://www.infowars.com/gates-funded-experiment-to-spray-atmosphere-with-sulphur-particles/
And we are told:
"'David Keith, one of the investigators, has argued that solar geoengineering could be an inexpensive method to slow down global warming, but other scientists warn that it could have unpredictable, disastrous consequences for the Earth’s weather systems and food supplies,' reports the Guardian."
Very interesting but...here is what the article doesn't tell you about the Guardian source:
http://www.businessinsider.com/david-keith-says-guardian-story-is-substantially-fabricated-2012-7
"Substantially Fabricated".
The article claims:
"In 2008, a KSLA investigation found that a substance that fell to earth from a high altitude chemtrail contained high levels of Barium (6.8 ppm) and Lead (8.2 ppm) as well as trace amounts of other chemicals including arsenic, chromium, cadmium, selenium and silver. Of these, all but one are metals, some are toxic while several are rarely or never found in nature."
But what it does not tell us is that the reprter of the original report made a mistake and retracted the claim because no unusual levels were found. You can find a summary here:
http://contrailscience.com/barium-chemtrails/
It is indeed interesting that Mother Jones entered the discussion is a most dishonest manner and it is surely yet another indication of how even mainstream media is now a peddler in fright-wing politics. The deceptive story is now even replicating in other mainstream sources:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cia-backs-630000-study-into-how-to-control-global-weather-through-geoengineering-8724501.html
Behind the fright-wing movement there are powerful interests spinning the truth so that certain agendas are persuadable in the public mind. You will find these interest groups even in broader topics such as climate change and the snake-oil they deal in is not difficult to expose:
Is it not time that we take political discussion back and away from these proponents of fear?
