Marketing Failed Solutions To Shootings for Profit? Or Propaganda?

Selling massive amounts of merchandise for a cause whether it's "March for Our Lives" or many other so-called charities that start things off by raising money for their cause often without providing much if any of that money to the actual cause is now routine thanks to the marketing industry that seems to have controlled a large portion of these efforts.

This is also distracting people from the most effective solutions to all kinds of violence not just the school shootings that have become a much higher priority now that kids of wealthy people have been shot. As I've pointed out in several past articles including Prevention of violence has to address all causes, not just Guns! reasonable gun control is part of the solution, but availability of guns is not the only contributing cause of this violence and it's almost certainly not the most important one.

First of all, I don't agree with fanatical claims from gun rights advocates that this is part of a bizarre conspiracy to take away their guns, especially since if it were, it's been repeated so often without having any success, nor are there many high profile people that want to take all guns away; instead there are a large number of people demanding reasonable limitations to assault weapons and background checks to make sure violent people don't get guns.

And I certainly don't agree with their claims that the kids from Parkland are part of this alleged conspiracy!

However there is an enormous amount of evidence indicating far more coordination than the media is letting on and most of it seems to be for the benefit of the Democratic Party, which is also ignoring many of the most important contributing causes of violence, including child abuse leading to escalating violence or abandoned inner cities where there is much more violence all the time.

Furthermore, even though I would be skeptical of claims, without evidence that these kids are involved in a conspiracy to suppress the most effective education about violence prevention; there is evidence to indicate that they may being used by marketing people more interested in selling products, their ideology and political agenda; and that this effort has the same effect, even if those involved don't intend to do this. This includes those ripped jeans which Emma González was wearing on the cover of Time Magazine and at the rally, which contrary to what many people may believe, is a choice made by many people as a result of manipulative marketing campaigns that have been going on for decades, although those unfamiliar with marketing techniques might find this hard to believe; those that are familiar with them and their history would come to the opposite conclusion based on much better research.

But the strongest evidence of a major problem with the media coverage of this shooting and how to prevent it isn't what they do cover in the media it's what they ignore, or if they cover some contributing causes they do so only briefly while obsessively covering the debate about gun control, as if it's the only contributing cause and gun laws will solve the whole problem, which they won't even come close to, as I reported in my previous article.

I do recall a very brief segment about some of these kids from Parkland supporting efforts from kids in abandoned inner cities and several other comments from some of the same kids indicating that they support other efforts; however when I looked for anything but discussion about anything but gun control, just now, which is part of the solution as I indicated, I didn't find anything, instead finding an enormous amount of bickering with Laura Ingram and Steve King, who I disagree with but don't think he should be allowed to distract from additional issues anymore than he already has.

One of the most important contributing causes of violence that is almost never mentioned is early child abuse, including corporal punishment, leading to escalating violence; and Florida is one of the nineteen states that still allow it to be used in schools. This is often more likely to be allowed in schools in states that also are more inclined to use it more at home as well.The states that use it the most routinely make it into the top ten for murder rates one year after another. Florida is a large state which doesn't use it equally across the state but they did make it into the top ten in 2014 and some parts of Florida use it far more, especially disabled or minority students, than other.

This is the state where the Ingraham v. Wright case came from in 1977 which decided that it was constitutional to beat kids, even when it causes serious physical harm. Even though this decision allowed the continued use of corporal punishment there was a massive backlash leading many states to abandon it, although it didn't get much media attention, like many of the most productive solutions that actually work. At that time almost all states still allowed it in schools but now thirty-one have banned it and there are semi-regular efforts to ban it in many of the remaining nineteen states, yet hardly anyone hears about them.

This is a major opportunity to draw more attention to this contributing cause yet it's be ignored!

Another major contributing cause to violence is abandoned inner cities where many of the poorest people are forced to live in and multinational corporations are shipping their jobs overseas while dumping an enormous amount of pollution in their neighborhoods among other things including efforts to privatize their education systems and cut costs. Some of these Parkland kids have said that we should "arm our teachers with pencils, pens, paper and the money they need to" teach kids and do their jobs, which do doubt is a major part of the solution; however if you want to find all the details of how to put this in practice you won't find that from the traditional media.

If these kids are covering more details on this subject they must be on social media or in their town halls where is doesn't get nearly as much attention, but even that is buried with all the bickering over gun control.

One of the biggest contributing factors is poverty and income inequality, which the kids from Parkland don't have to worry about; and they've been raised in a culture where many of the contributing causes of this are overlooked and they have an incentive to keep it that way since they're the beneficiaries of this income inequality. This is rarely ever discussed; and when it is the reasons for it are almost always left out, especially if the mass media is discussing it.

The United States has a higher murder rate than other developed countries including Europe where the rate is about three per hundred thousand people compared to about five in the United States; however many of the countries that ban corporal punishment and provide better child care and education have a rate of less than one; there are over one-hundred-twenty-five cities with more than ten, which is double the national average and many of them are at least four to five times the national average, a few as high as forty, fifty, or even seventy-five murders per hundred thousand.

However there's little or no effort to inform the majority of the public about this; instead there's a massive school reform movement being pushed by the wealthy to cut funds for education in these cities even more while they don't hesitate to increase funds for law enforcement courts and prisons, which clearly don't work.

Another major contributing factor causing high rates of poverty and indirectly contributing to high violence rates is massive amounts of economic fraud and a large portion of this is accompanied by massive amounts of deceptive advertising designed to promote an enormous amount of overpaying or waste on the part of consumers. The most effective advertising, like all propaganda, which is essentially what advertising is, starts at a very young age when children are very impressionable, as some good researchers like Sociologists and economist Juliet Schor reported in her book "Born To Buy," and child psychologist Susan Linn reported in her book "Consuming Kids."



Understanding their research will help recognize how the marketing industry is influencing the protest movement and helping to replace discussion about productive solutions with massive efforts to sell merchandise and collect funds, and enormous amount of money which isn't necessary going to the cause they claim it is going to, instead often going to fund raiding expenses or in many cases even for profit fundraising for charities, believe it or not.

When the organizers of the "March for our Lives" campaign aren't talking about gun control or bickering with right wing extremists, the vast majority of their efforts, judging by media coverage, are for fund raising or selling merchandise promoting their tour. In the first week they raised three an a half million dollars, including several half million dollar pledges from celebrities like Oprah, George Clooney and a few others, according to an article cited below and they must have raised much more since then. How much of that money is actually going to their cause and how is it being spent?

I don't know; and I'm not convince they know either, it's not likely that they've ever been involved in this before. The father of one of the teens collecting the money for their charity says that “They’re being directed by people with knowledge of how to responsibly spend this money and it’s going to be very transparent. Every penny is going to be accounted for.” Would these people familiar with fund raising expenses and problems claim that, "every penny is going to be accounted for?” after reading enough about fund raising problems I doubt if they could honestly make that claim. They may have good intention as other fund raiser have had in the past but before it's all said and done it's almost never completely accounted for when the numbers get this big.

The article cited below say that the funds are being raised to pay for the rally which they had last weekend, and that any funds left over would be used to advance the cause one way or another, although it wasn't very specific; my best guess is that if there's any further discussion about the subject it won't be widely reported and the details will be buried, as it has happened in the past. Occasionally there's a few people that look closer and they almost always find problems, although they might not find people willing to listen.

I do know that almost no discussion reported on the media covered most of the contributing factors to violence, which can often be found in libraries for those willing to do their own research; but the media, which makes a fortune selling deceptive propaganda ads selling one scam after another and more selling ads for politicians that never keep their promises doesn't report on this research which could help reduce violence.

Did George Clooney or Oprah pledge large amounts of money to any of the past survivors shootings, that didn't come from wealthy communities? Did they make any effort to enable educators about the causes of violence to get their point across or expose marketing scams that help increase poverty which leads to more violence?

Not that I know of, after a quick search of the internet; however I did find settlements for eighteen million dollars from an insurance company bickering over unspent funds from Newtown and claims that they weren't getting anything from a Tim McGraw concert. Most shootings don't seem to collect much if any money, or at least not that's reported on the internet; however the high profile ones often collect an enormous amount of donations and there's eventually bickering.

Well over a million dollars was spent on the Sandyhook Memorial.

We worship memorials.

But we cut funds to schools for education and decline to inform the public about the biggest causes of violence so it can be prevented.

James Garbarino and Barbara Coloroso are a couple of the best researchers that I know of that might be able to educate the public about how violence escalates from an early age, yet they can't get more than a token amount of media coverage and most people ever even saw that. in addition to stopping child abuse from escalating James Garborino also expressed concerns about violence in the media.

Could that be part of the reason why he can't get any coverage? for what it's worth, after looking at some of these studies I suspect violence in the media is only a minor contributing factor, often if it's added to an abusive environment. Statistics about violence and murder rates going down as violence in the media has gone up seem to support this conclusion; at the same time thanks to education from Benjamin Spock and other reformers child rearing tactics and abuse has dramatically changed which indicates this is a much bigger contributing factor.

I don't mean to sound cynical but after all the hype dies down after a big event like this there is almost never much progress until another shooting when we start all over again. Also, as I said before Europe doesn't have nearly as big a problem with all this violence and they do a better job addressing some of these issues, which is presumably why and shows that we can too!

Another major contributing factor of violence, directly or indirectly, may be marketing itself, which the media and advisers to these kids, that have become super organizers over night are not likely to ever mention!

Seriously, marketing definitely contributes to violence the only question is how much, and how do we manage to get the discussion into the mainstream when the people that control over ninety percentage of national media have a massive incentive to cover it up or ridicule the idea if they can't avoid all discussion.

It's unlikely that marketing is the biggest contributing factor when it comes to causing crime; however it is a major contributing factor when it comes to increasing poverty, which few would argue is a major contributing cause of violence; and it's a major distraction so that the most important causes of crime aren't discussed. Also when they market a massive campaign for one single issue which only impacts a portion of violence drowning out all other discussion marketing creates the illusion of a solution where none exists. This is also done by relying heavily on celebrities including musicians that they often treat almost as experts on any given subject despite the fact that they often have no background on anything except entertainment, or perhaps propaganda.

Don't get me wrong I like music as much as anything else but when they constantly try to imply that having a fundraising concert for everything is the solution without discussing the contributing causes for problems it's a seriously screwed up sense of priorities.

One of the most obvious examples, which the media almost never talks about is the killings that have been going on for decades over hyped up overpriced sneakers or leather jackets for decades. These made the news much more often in the nineties before the media was consolidated into six oligarchies, but they never stopped, although the reporting has been buried where few people see it.

Amazingly one person came up with the brilliant idea of marketing a T-shirt saying "Aint' no sneaker worth killing for!" without discussing the causes leading up to this violence; or exposing marketing as a contributing factor of crime and violence! It's not uncommon for the trendsetters or celebrities to act shocked when their hype goes to far and pretend to oppose violence while not considering how their scams might contribute to it, or even being outraged if anyone else tries to sort out the casues.

Another is annual Black Friday riots which have been going on for decades, and for a while about six to eight years ago they went viral so much that the mainstream media even started to report on it more. This never ended, although once again the reporting on it is now relegated to the fringe; although retailers may have quietly partially addressed this problem without acknowledging the causes might be marketing.

After a lot of viral news stories during the holidays in 2011 to about 2014 they mentioned it less often but there's good reason to believe part of the reason is a new marketing campaign to start Black Friday early; however the result of that is that they have fewer riots shootings or stabbings on Black Friday but more throughout the months of November and December, so actual violence hasn't gone down. Another obvious indicator that marketing is causing more crime is demonstrated by the large number of annual thefts of massive amounts of Christmas decoration.

In the "Overspent American" Juliet Schor also cited at least a few statistics showing that crime increased as a result of massive amounts of marketing and it wouldn't be hard to find additional evidence to show that there's no doubt that marketing is a contributing factor of crime and violence, assuming people want to acknowledged the facts, which those involved in the political and media establishment don't.

Juliet Schor and Susan Linn also both reported about the increased use of peer pressure in marketing, and how it might be used to turn teenagers against each other if marketing through "trendsetters" or the "cool people" in the crowd becomes more important than friendships. This is a tactic that was researched decades ago by the Tobacco Industry, which later became widely used throughout all marketing industries, as their books show.



One of the tactics that the Tobacco Industry was exposed for using was intentionally using slotting fees to buy locations to stock their cigarettes where it would be easy for teenagers to steal them. The objective was to get them hooked while they were inclined to steal then they buy for life, and they compensated struggling convenience stores or grocery stores by paying them for the location of the products. This is a massive anti competitive tactic which the majority of the public is still not aware of and it increased crime.

I didn't know it at the time but I encountered another of the popular tactics used to get kids hooked, when a couple teenagers kept pulling out the tab, of their Marlboro's, and screaming, "Not a V-8" and giggling.

I had to ask what that was all about from another girl, and she informed me that if there was a "V-8" in a code that most people don't know about they could send away for a free pack of cigarettes. She also informed me that it was in an obscure ad that hardly anyone ever saw. The strange things is how they found out about it.

They were informed about this promotional advertisement from, "that kid," which led to the obvious question, "What kid?" "I don't knooow, just that kid, he came around for a while but he's gone now."

Or something like that, she was getting annoyed with that conversation, but it was odd and I never forgot it, until I read Susan Linn and Juliet Schor's books and realized this was one of the early marketing strategies from the Tobacco Industry that they later used on all products selling to teens.



Juliet Schor and Susan Linn also both wrote about several peer marketing strategies including the "Girls Intelligence Agency," (additional details in an article below as well as Schor and Linn's books) where they recruit young girls, often through their mothers, who might not fully understand what they're doing to invite their friends over and introduce new products and find out how they react to it. The marketers learn how to more effectively manipulate children this way with little or no regard for their social development or it it might be inclined to start arguments among kids when marketing becomes more important than friendship.

This is just a small part of their strategies to manipulate people through the cool people in a crowd, who often get free merchandise if they wear them and pressure their friends to buy them.



Now after seeing Emma González on the cover of Time wearing those pathetic torn jeans and wearing them again during the rally, I can't help but wonder whether or not she's intentionally part of a marketing strategies, or if she fell for it without realizing it and the marketing industry is taking advantage of her naivete. The automatic response to that assumption might be she just chose to wear that all on her own, but those familiar with marketing strategies might know better, even though this simple assumption seems credible to most it is false.

I know I might be playing into trends of kids that like rebelling against adults; however that doesn't mean they like doing so by being scammed by corporations that are studying how to manipulate them for all the wrong reasons. Marketing disposable jeans that are made to look like they're the latest style even though they cost more than better quality jeans that last longer isn't something new; but the earliest attempts failed miserably because kids recognized it for what it was, an obvious scam.

The first time I remember they tried to market this style was about the time they came up with pre-washed jeans, which most kids probably never heard of; and therefore they don't know that even the regular jeans without tears in them to begin with lasted three to four times as long as modern jeans. When buying jeans you used to have to be careful to buy them one size too large because they would shrink when you washed them, but once you broke them in they lasted over ten years if you kept them in circulation. For kids that meant hand-me-downs, which was the only way to get the torn jeans look because they lasted so long and it was often the tough poorer kids that didn't brag about their torn jeans.

People warned each other at the time that this was what was happening but some bought the pre-washed jeans, even though the intentionally torn jeans were a flop. Eventually consumers forgot about that, but apparently the marketing industry didn't and they began recruiting celebrities and the modeling and fashion industry to flaunt the fashion over and over again. This includes give away's to trendsetters that Schor and Linn wrote about and kept at it targeting kids when they were little from the cradle, before anyone could warn them about these scams.

Somewhere along they even began taking advantage of moms that wanted to be cool; the idea that mom's should be a child's best friend used to be frowned on partly for good reason but the marketing industry took advantage of it and even tried to encourage it, which is why some of these cool moms even allowed the slumber parties for their children controlled by the marketing industry without too many questions about manipulating kids.

To make a long story short, after decades of relentless modeling by cool people with these pathetic torn jeans Emma González is the marketing industries dream come true, if she really is modeling for them without being recruited by them, not that I want to knock her for being deceived by the marketing industry after she became famous as a shooting survivor, but sweeping it under the rug only makes it worse which is what the marketing industry is counting on.



They may have also been thrilled a few years ago with the mother of a Baltimore teen who was protesting police brutality, who saw him on TV then went over beating him in front of a camera in a video that went viral. She was also wearing stylish torn jeans and other expensive clothes that looked cool; and she was portrayed by many as the "Mom of the year" by many people including the mass media. This woman was living in a low income area yet she spent a lot of money on flashy clothes and thought the best way to discipline her child was to humiliate him in front of a crowd and beat him. I don't want to knock her anymore than Emma, but even though the media loved it and tried to present it as a good way to address the problem, there were many people with better education that understood that this wasn't the appropriate way to teach them to stay out of trouble, especially since there was a major problem with police violence that she remained silent about. this included some black people that were more familiar with better ways to address the situation.

Regrettably we have lower income people that try to compensate for their poverty by making them feel good spending what little money they have on flashy clothes increasing poverty; and rich people that think it's stylish to look like they come from the ghetto wearing clothes that cost a ridiculous amount of money and falls apart fast, yet it looks like it's gasngsta' style or something. And this marketing distracts people from the fact that the products are made in sweatshops designed to increase poverty even more!

They want us to believe this is fashionable for the resistance or revolution!

It's not just some of us old people that realize this is a scam! Many people familiar with alternative media outlets and propaganda techniques know it too! Sincere reformers practically never get on TV and they certainly don't get obsession coverage the way David Hogg and some of these other Parkland kids are getting; if the media thought they might challenge the political establishment they support they wouldn't be providing them this amount of coverage!

Gun rights conspiracy theorist have been saying this is just another false flag fabricated to take away their guns. Most rational skeptics find extraordinary claims like this hard to believe without extraordinary evidence, especially since they don't even claim to want to take away all guns, just reasonable regulations for assault weapons and background checks to make sure fanatics can't buy them, and they've been doing this a long time, if the conspiracies are right yet they're failing miserably.

However even though there's no evidence that I know of to support these claims there is some evidence to indicate there's a fair amount of organization going on and that some of it is politically motivated, and more is for profit. There's also an amazing lack of discussion about many other issues including early child abuse leading to escalating violence later in life or any of the contributing causes of violence that might be the responsibility of the oligarchies that control the media and the advertiser that provide their profits

A search for March for our lives advertisements and March for our lives T Shirts shows that a large portion of them are a very similar style which strongly implies that there's a centralized organization structure for the advertising campaign. At least one of them is sponsored by the organization named after Gabby Giffords, which is a Democratic organization focused solely on gun control. The article mentioned previously about fund raising says that the money they collect is for the organization of the rally which almost certainly includes this massive advertising campaign that only mentions one of the contributing causes to violence.

This looks more like a political movement to transfer power back from the Republican arm of the Corporate government back to the other arm, which pretends to be Democratic, without educating the public about many of the other contributing causes of violence; and unless educators that do know more about these causes or real grassroots organizers, not to be confused with the AstroTurf routinely manufactured by the pseudo-Democratic Party to pretend to be part of the resistance do more to point out the problems with this massive propaganda campaign and replace it with education about all contributing causes of violence, this is guaranteed to be a failure that is, at best limited to a few gun control laws and transfer of power back to Democrats, without any more changes that need to be made to address the vast majority of the problem.

They even managed to make it seem as if anyone that questions this movement might be associated with Laura Ingraham or Steve King (the Iowa representative not horror writer) in part of an us versus them political environment where the entire crowd of people across the country seems to be acting like a massive cult, or at least that's the image presented by the media and the one this propaganda is trying to encourage. I don't doubt that if people discuss it at the local level there will be some that do much better; but unfortunately, unless there are some well informed people at the local level, there will be many people that do follow blindly like cult followers accomplishing nothing, and acting surprised the next time this happens.





As I said before the most important contributing cause of violence is almost certainly not deceptive advertising and I went into more important ones in Prevention of violence has to address all causes, not just Guns! which includes a list of other contributing causes and studies to show how they contribute to violence; however, advertising does distract from discussion of these contributing causes, and in some cases contributes more directly. The following are some of the sources cited for this article, including some that show how much violence is potentially caused partially by deceptive advertising:

Why One of the Parkland Teens Was Barefoot on the Cover of Time 03/22/2018 This article seems to imply that there was no effort by Time Magazine to stage this photo; however the conclusions were based on tweets they found on the internet not an in depth interview. It strikes me as odd that they seem to think there was a lot of talk about her bare feet but none about Emma González's torn jeans which looks much more like fashion modeling, and stands out much more.

“What about OUR kids?”: Inner-city gun control activists back Parkland teens despite feeling ignored 03/13/2018

A Recent History of Sneaker Violence 11/26/2014

1,200 people are killed each year over sneakers 11/20/2015 Clearly exaggerated, there are about 15,000 murders in the USA each year and the ones over sneakers aren't likely to be almost 7% but there are many more than most people are aware of!

The Sad Truth About Violence at Sneaker Stores 02/29/2016

Your Sneakers or Your Life

10 Charities Overpaying their For-Profit Fundraisers

Commercial fundraisers swallow millions meant for charity 02/01/2014

Parkland students have a cause and $3.5 million. Here’s how they’re going to spend it. 02/21/2018 “That’s where the money is going,” Jeff Kasky said. “They’re being directed by people with knowledge of how to responsibly spend this money and it’s going to be very transparent. Every penny is going to be accounted for.” People familiar with past problems with massive fundraising efforts might think carefully before making this claim.

Everything You Need to Know About the March for Our Lives 03/23/2018

11 Sandy Hook Families: We're Getting No Money From Tim McGraw Concert 04/22/2015

Sandy Hook Charities Raise $28 Million, Nearly Half Unspent 06/30/2014

Families of victims of Marysville-Pilchuck High School shooting settle lawsuit for $18 million 08/01/2017

Marketing To "Tweens" Going Too Far? 05/14/2007

"We have chosen these influencers across the country," says Girls Intelligence Agency CEO Laura Groppe, "and we have 40 to 50,000 of these girls registered."

The GIA carefully cultivates girls like Danielle, Smith observes, and designates them "secret agents."

The most important thing in a secret agent, says Groppe, is "that her peers trust her opinion. … We have to approve them. You know, important strategic business decisions are being made off of this 8-year-old and her friends, so we have to make sure she's the right one."

.....

"The marketers are inserting themselves into these peer dynamics," says Juliet Schor, author of "Born to Buy."

She says marketers such as GIA, and other companies like it, are over the top. The host girl is "being taught that her friends are an exploitable resource. … She needs to get those friends over there, get that information out of them."

"It seems a little sneaky to me," says Mary Beth Vazquez, of Kinnelon, N.J., the mother of a tween.

Which version of the "Deep State" is the real thing?

Last Tuesday Morning Joe reported that 74% of the public believed in the "Deep State," treating this theory as if it's fringe and there must be something wrong with the public if they believe this absurd propaganda!

Then they quickly moved on to a discussion with Robert Gibbs about how McDonald's is trying to cut emissions by 36% acting as if there's no sense of irony!

See the incredibly obvious hypocrisy?

If you don't, relax, I won't make you admit you missed my point.

Robert Gibbs is one of many administration officials that routinely move from corporate America to the government and back again, in positions that the vast majority of us, without political connections, haven't got a chance to get hired at. This is standard operating procedure; and it's not limited to the government it also happens in the media, which controls which candidates get media coverage ensuring that only those the oligarchy approve of can get the name recognition they need to get elected, and this isn't fringe conspiracy theory either!

An enormous amount of the evidence showing that almost all, if not all administration officials, from any given candidate that gets enough media coverage, has connections within the political establishment that caters overwhelmingly to multinational corporations that finance virtually all campaigns, and most of this can be found on Wikipedia or other sources that are easy to find, assuming you actually look for it. Robert Gibbs apparently worked for John Kerry before, joining the Obama Campaign, but after leaving the Kerry Campaign he joined a little known "527 political group formed to stop the 2004 presidential campaign of Howard Dean which launched attack ads against Dean," (Wikipedia: Robert Gibbs) who was pretending to be a progressive at that time, then after leaving the Obama administration it wasn't long before he got a high profile job working for McDonald's, one of the oligarchies that virtually controls our government.

The government isn't always completely controlled by one or two oligarchies, although it often seems that way, but it comes close; sometimes some of the oligarchies compete against each other; but workers rights groups, antiwar groups, environmentalists and other human rights organizations have little or no influence compared to these multinational corporations.

Amazon hired Obama’s former press secretary Jay Carney to work for them shortly after he left office; Josh Earnest was hired by MSNBC as a commentator; both Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Hillary Clinton had close ties to Walmart and the list goes on and on. Timothy Geithner had ties to the banking industry before he was hired to oversee them, then after leaving office he joined the Council on Foreign Relations as a "distinguished fellow," and developed close ties to a private equity firm; Eric Holder worked for Covington & Burling, who represented many banks that he didn't prosecute as Attorney General before he became Attorney General and rejoined them afterwards making a fortune while they were never held accountable for the financial collapse in 2008 or many other things.

You can find many more administration members moving within the political establishment and large corporations in the lists of presidential administrations listed below or you can find the same thing by searching for Congressmen and their aides or the media as I have done several times in the past including some in articles s also listed below. Just last Tuesday about twelve hours after this conversation on Morning Joe Illinois nominated two representatives of the oligarchy for both major parties including a billionaire heir to a hotel empire and a private equity mogul, this is now becoming increasingly common after nominating Trump and Clinton for president, and previously nominating Bush and Gore or Kerry, all representing the wealthy and all very wealthy themselves while pretending to defend the middle class, although they no longer even try to do a good job pretending.



There should be little or no doubt that the political establishment, multinational corporations, six oligarchs controlling the mass media, and a handful of the highest profile other media outlets, also owned by billionaires are all controlled by a fraction of one percent of the public; and they can ensure that only candidates they support can get name recognition enabling them to get elected. Four years ago there was even a scientific study to tell people familiar with alternative media outlets already knew, that the US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy 04/14/2014; this was followed up be claims that their data was flawed, of course; however anyone that takes the time to look at the facts knows that the rich have much more influence than the poor or the middle class.

There's some evidence to indicate that scientific studies financed by people with an agenda can be influenced by that agenda; although in order to recognize this it is often necessary to read some of the studies to find them. The alternative is to trust an expert that you know or one chosen by others, perhaps the mass media, which will make you dependent on the conclusions of that expert.

Then at least one pundit from Morning Joe went on to say that the public needs to trust the FBI, now that they're dealing with the Austin serial bomber, to protect us, and at least one pundit on Morning Joe even went so far as to say that if there is such a thing as the "Deep State" that is what they need to protect us! No doubt some of the fringe conspiracy theorists might argue that this might be another false flag; and of course skeptics, rational or not, would justifiably say "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

As of this writing I don't know much about the serial bomber, and Tuesdays conversation on Morning Joe ridiculing those that believe in a version of the "Deep State" and claiming that if there was such a thing wouldn't have known that within a day he would be dead. However there's plenty of good research, without going into fringe conspiracy theories to show that the political establishment has been ignoring many of the best research to show how to reduce violence, like they do in Europe which has far fewer murders or violent crime than us.

According to Wikipedia's Lists of United States cities by crime rate, 250,000+ scroll down for smaller cities there are at least a hundred and twenty-five cities in this country with over twice the national average murder rate, which is sixty-five percent higher than Europe's average murder rate, and five times the murder rate of some of the states that do the best job providing child care education and preventing child abuse from escalating to further violence. Some of these cities have at least three to four times the national average and a few are as high as eight to fifteen times the national average. East St. Louis is about seventy-five per hundred thousand; while some of the least violent countries in Europe are less than one!



I've pointed out in numerous past articles that the media and political establishment routinely ignore the best research about how early child abuse leads to escalating violence or how cutting funds to schools and outsourcing jobs so working class people don't have the resources to address social problems; so I'll provide links below for those of you who haven't read it; but there's little or no doubt that the political establishment isn't making rational decisions that will help solve these problems. Instead of spending more on education they spend money on legal expenses to avoid court challenges to discrimination lawsuits and they have no qualms about spending enormous amounts of money on prisons, courts and wars based on lies even though they don't solve these problems, instead making them worse.

None of this would be what most people refer to as fringe conspiracy theory, and those who are willing can easily take the time to confirm some of the research behind it; however this sin't what they media establishment typically think of when they refer to a Deep State, although it is evidence of an oligarchy system, and could potentially be evidence of a more complicated conspiracy theory. Not that the most irrational theories are likely to hold up, though.

What the traditional media actually prefers to debunk isn't well thought out conspiracy theories or rational reviews of policies that work, that check facts and cite reliable sources; instead they prefer to debunk the exagerated stereotypes about the Deep State or perhaps the Illuminati.

In Cable News, that gets much more attention from the majority of the public they rely much more on ridicule and stereotyping with appeals to emotion; however this lower profile article, Is the Deep State real — and is it really at war with Donald Trump? 02/02/2018, does a slightly better job addressing the subject, although it still ignores many of the most important facts, and it is unlikely to nearly as widely read as Cable News is watched. At least them mention C. Wright Mills and Peter Dale Scott, who most people have never heard of, and they also mention a few of the most extreme activities carried out by the CIA that happened decades ago and were admit ed to, but they still dismiss, downplay or mostly just ignore the best research.

Not all conspiracy theorists that research the Deep State are as irrational as the mainstream media wants us to believe which is why they avoid covering many of the most important details. David Talbot, Fletcher Prouty, James Douglass, Noam Chomsky, Mark Lane, C. Wright Mills, Peter Dale Scott and many more are among the good researchers that raise major doubts about the official version of truth being presented by the mainstream media, which is presumably why they prefer to ignore them instead of ridiculing them. This is especially effective because it takes time for many people to read the details, and as Mark Lane reported Allen Dulles said when preparing the incredibly incompetent Warren Commission Report "People don't read," implying that he could get away with presenting this to the public since the majority of the public wouldn't check the facts. Unfortunately he was, for the most part right; however there have always been a few people who did read and check the facts including David Lifton who confronted Dulles, in the 1960s, while he went on tour in an attempt to defend the Warren reports. Dulles attempted to ridicule him but he wasn't among a crowd that was willing to go along with it and this was one of the last times, if not the last time he went to a public forum to speak where people would be willing to ask questions.

However, the mass media was much more willing to go along with the propaganda to convince the public that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman, even after the House Select Committee on Assassinations found that it had to be at least two shooters, they tried to patch together the original Warren Report. It's no surprise that a lot of people don't believe the official version on JFK's assassination; the big surprise is why so many people do; but that shows how effective relentless propaganda can be, and it's limitations.

The traditional media and government routinely say that keeping this information secret is necessary for national security reasons; however people that are familiar with lower profile declassified documents, news reports, often in alternative media outlets, or library books that don't get nearly as much attention are well aware of a long history of using this excuse to cover up enormous amounts of corruption and the fact that we fight one war after another based on lies.

The government and legal system has apparently made it possible for multinational corporations to take advantage of proprietary information or trade secrecy laws and non-disclosure agreements to make it illegal for people working for their companies or involved in legal disputes to inform the public about activities they know about. In many cases the public might not be allowed to know whether these laws are being used to cover up illegal or dangerous activities, although you would think this would clearly be illegal. recently there have been a few higher profile admissions about how these could be used to cover up sexual assault settlemnts with tax payer money by Congressmen and Trump's lawsuits against porn stars, reality TV contestants and models.

Recently on Anderson Cooper 360 CNN March 15, 2018 5:00pm-6:00pm PDT a friend of Michael Cohen, David Schwartz, discussed Stormy Daniel's contract saying, "it's a valid contract, as long as ec, llc signed that contract. These non-disclosure agreements are signed every single day. They're signed by CEOs, by legislators, doctors, lawyers, TV personalities." No one disputed this on Anderson Cooper, nor is it likely that anyone will, since a search of the internet for more information about these non-disclosure agreements indicates that David Schwartz is right, although most people don't recognize the implications of all these non-disclosure agreements.



These agreements involved keeping information secret that might have influenced the election; it's virtually guaranteed that the Emails released by Wikileaks were also subject to non-disclosure agreements; and they were also about psychological manipulation of the voters for the benefit of Hillary Clinton, her campaign and her campaign contributors. The traditional media expects us to believe that we shouldn't worry about all the attempts to manipulate the election exposed by Wikileaks and instead worry about the fact that computers were allegedly hacked by Russia. What's hardly even mentioned is that many of the most important issues are never discussed at all by the mainstream media.

I went into this more previously in Proprietary information is, by definition, a conspiracy Duuh; this is almost never mentioned in the mainstream media but when ever there's a major disaster or evidence of corporate corruption that might lead to it there's almost always information that was kept secret prior to that, often with the help of non-disclosure agreements or trade secrecy laws; and there's also an enormous amount of reporting from low profile sources to indicate that they're routinely being used to cover up an enormous amount of fraud.

Corner cutting that precedes many major controversies that eventually lead to deaths and lawsuits afterwards including toxic carbon monoxide in Ford Explorers, Firestone tire's shredding, keyless ignition's shutting off leading to accidents and presumably hundreds if not thousands more lawsuits that are reported over the decades briefly before being forgotten by the mainstream media. In many cases there are often people that know about corner cutting ahead of time sometimes coming forward as whistle-blowers, often facing retaliation and threats of legal action, possibly for violating non-disclosure agreements. In some cases they try to minimize the coverage of these agreements and hesitate to sue if it might expose standard practices, especially if it will make them public and guarantee even more losses.

These lawsuits are often settled, possibly with the signing of more non-disclosure agreements to prevent the public from knowing what went on or knowing how to prevent it from happening again. They also might prevent additional victims from knowing they might have a legitimate claim.

After Lisa McPherson died twenty years ago the Church of Scientology avoided prosecution and settled a civil suit with a non-disclosure agreement banning discussion of the event; then there have been dozens of disclosure about practices by Church of Scientology that are manipulative and involve enslavement abuse and much more, yet the government does little or nothing; after an accident with a Walmart truck Tracy Morgan initially spoke critically about Walmart but after the settlement he claimed they treated him very well; but he refused to discuss the details thanks to a non-disclosure agreement; many of us familiar with Walmart's practices and how they fight lawsuits tooth and nail find it extremely hard to believe that he didn't get much more in his settlement than any non-celebrity could ever hope to; and there are many other stories that pass through the headlines briefly which we don't know the whole story of.

If there's no Deep State or other conspiracies why would there be so many laws designed to prevent the majority of the public from knowing how decisions are being made.

And who's going to expose the Deep State?

Is Donald Trump?

Amazingly during the twenty-sixteen election there was an enormous amount of propaganda, mostly on alternative media outlets like Breitbart, Infowars and occasional Fox News or Donald Trump himself claiming that he was the one that would take on the Deep State and this was often backed up by an enormous number of online accounts spreading propaganda to back this up, perhaps this is part of the alleged Russian propaganda effort or something but the results are the same; and it's incredibly hard to believe that anyone would believe this bad propaganda, yet there are an enormous number of Trump supporters that still seem to think he's going to "drain the swamp."



How can even one person be stupid enough to believe that Trump is going to stand up to the oligarchy or the Deep State?

What makes anyone even think that Donald Trump sin't even a part of the Deep State? Do people believe that because he comes up with an enormous amount of loud mouth complaints about the Deep State or that he shows up on the alternative media outlets that mainstream media tells us are fringe like Infowars or Breitbart that he's not part of the Deep State? For that matter do they believe that Steve Bannon isn't part of the Deep State?

Steve Bannon is a former Wall Street investment banker; how often do politicians or media pundits like Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump pretend to stand up the same business interests they routinely work with only to show their true objectives after getting in office?

Donald Trump has always been part of the business world he pretends to stand up to and there was never any reason to believe he would keep his promises to stand up to them. His sister is even a Judge, which is a job that those without political connections could never get. This should have been incredibly obvious even during the campaign, but now that he's filled his cabinet with multimillionaires and billionaires any doubt there might have been should be gone!

The traditional media has been aware for decades that they can ensure candidates they support get an enormous amount of coverage and those they oppose can, in most cases, especially at the national or statewide level of large states, ensure that those they oppose never get the name recognition they need to get elected by simply declining to cover them. This isn't secret and many people in the grassroots movements that support alternative candidates are fully aware of this. Billionaires or celebrities routinely get all the coverage they need to get elected or at least have a chance, but those that get support from the grassroots levels or organizations that protect the environment, workers rights defend human rights or local control of schools only get coverage after an enormous amount of work, and then it isn't nearly as much.

The mainstream media gave Donald Trump enormous amounts of coverage for decades enabling him to get the name recognition he needed to be a viable candidate. They provided him a job at the Apprentice where he was able to develop an enormous following then they provided obsession coverage during the 2016 election enabling him to get even more support, even if he did criticize the media, and they criticized him, or perhaps because of it. The Republican Party has been studying how to manipulate their voters for decades, instead of addressing their legitimate concerns some of this has been virtually confessed to by Frank Luntz who's been doing dozens of focus groups to study how to influence voters instead of addressing their concerns for years if not decades, and the Democratic Party has been doing the same, which is why our government and corporate sector have become so extreme. There's good reason to suspect that they've known for quite a while that the voters were susceptible to demagoguery tactics and after being betrayed by traditional politicians manipulating their emotions one time after another they wanted what they perceived as a change.

Frank Luntz and many other political advisers were well aware that the right wing followers of the Republican Party were fed up with being betrayed but had little critical thinking skills that enabled them to know who to blame, and these people have been taught from birth to trust their leaders and have history of blindly following those that they consider their savior. These political operatives also understood that if they pushed the public too far then they might be more inclined to revolt one way or another. Many people from the working class might not realize it but political advisers going back to Machiavelli and earlier have been warning about this and it's even in the Declaration of Independence, which says, "all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed," yet tehy kept pushing their own voters to greater extremes.

Intentionally or not the mainstream media that is now going after Trump with their propaganda is what enabled him to get elected in the first place.

And the oligarchy controls a large portion of the alternative media outlets as well, either directly or indirectly. Most alternative media outlets focus on the smae subjects that are routinely brought up by the mainstream media, although they often provide a different point of view. For example, I'm now writing this about a discussion from Morning Joe; and many other media outlets cover what ever the mainstream media is obsessively covering on any given day, although many of the good ones do this to debunk the spin from the mainstream media.

However an enormous number of alternative media outlets are controlled mostly if not entirely by billionaires or other representatives of the mainstream media, including a few that aren't even hidden. Robert Mercer finances Breitbart; Pierre Omidyar finances the Intercept; and George Soros, the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation, the J.M. Kaplan Fund and others fund many alternative media outlets including Democracy Now that many people think of as being independent, although if people take time to check the funding pages they might find out otherwise.

So-called protest movements against the oligarchy from both the so-called right and the left (This reference is to left and right side of the congressional aisle falsely assuming that each side represents one segment of the public; actually they learn how to manipulate different segments of the public using different tactics, but turning both against each other) are being financed by billionaires, pretending to stand up to billionaires; and somehow they never manage to get much if any progressive reforms that actually accomplish their alleged goals!

Is it any wonder many people believe this is all a scam to distract the public from what's really going on?

If so then what is really going on?

Are they suicidal? Or delusional?

Because if they're not their current course of action will eventually destroy themselves as well as the rest of us, although the poorest people living in the areas getting the most environmental damage or subject to constant bombings in many parts of the world are guaranteed to go first if they keep on doing business as usual, especially with the escalating insanity in the Trump administration.

If they're not suicidal or delusional then they must have some plan to at least save themselves even if they don't care about the vast majority of the public, or at least they must think they do.

Are they going to terraform another planet so they can live on it with their rapidly developing technology?

Not a chance! And, even though this idea has been thrown out there as a possible solution decades ago by people like Carl Sagan and others, anyone with an once of basic sense knows that if we can't stop ourselves from destroying this planet we can't terraform another one; and I'm sure that when Carl Sagan threw this idea out, he didn't take it that seriously and was presenting it in a sarcastic manner.

By the way how can they be developing so much technology so rapidly if they're behaving in such an insane manner about everything else?

According to the ancient aliens conspiracy theorists, they're using technology that was obtained by aliens that they've been reverse engineering, if you believe that. The Ancient Aliens show as presented by the History Channel has so many blunders and absurd assumptions that it's hard to take them seriously; however they have pointed out a few major unsolved mysteries that the mainstream academic world pretends don't exist, including how they moved massive megaliths thousands of years ago.

As I pointed out previously rational skeptics are justified claiming that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; and experiments to replicate these efforts to move massive megaliths have failed miserably even though they often cheat; and they don't even try them with megaliths over forty tons.

Mainstream academics admit that the biggest megaliths moved by ancient civilizations are over seven-hundred tonnes, the Colossi of Memnon weighed seven-hundred-and-twenty tonnes and they were moved four-Hundred-and-twenty miles to a slightly higher altitude up the Nile River!

This isn't extraordinary enough evidence to prove all the absurd claims on Ancient Aliens; but it is extraordinary enough evidence to prove there's a major unsolved mystery and that we should be prepared to reevaluate many previous beliefs or claims from the scientific community that should make this impossible.

There are many more unsolved mysteries including UFO sightings, mystics, and alleged prophets; however few if any of them are quite so easy to recognize and major unsolved mysteries until sorting through the details, and the fringe conclusions many people come to are often as irrational as the poor excuses pseudo skeptics often use to dismiss them. One of these unsolved mysteries is why did they even let Donald Trump get elected in the first place. They've known how to do a better job providing propaganda to ensure that nutcases like him don't get the nomination; and there's good reason to believe that they also know how to run a better campaign for either Hillary Clinton or the pathetic bunch of clowns that ran in the Republic Party election after election.

They also know how to avoid pushing Israel, North Korea and many other countries to the brink of war without looking so clownish or avoid having an absurd war monger like John Bolton get into the administration.

Some of this might be unintended but they're creating an enormous amount of insanity when THEY DO KNOW BETTER, although those that don't pay close enough attention to all the insanity might not realize it!

Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were involved in way more than enough scandals that they should have been eliminated from consideration before the primary campaign even began. At one point on Howard Stern Donald Trump even laughed in front of Ivanka who also laughed when Howard Stern said something like he's not worried about sexual predators, he is one; and I'm reasonably sure that on another occasion also on Howard Stern that he admitted that he couldn't run for office because there would be too much baggage that would come out. There are plenty more stories about Hillary Clinton that were also public.

Yet the entire political establishment rallied behind Clinton and since the public was fed up with politics as usual, it's conceivable, especially for the people studying this that they could be rallied to a demagogue like Trump that pretends to be against the establishment, which is exactly what happened. This, alone, isn't enough to prove a connection to aliens; however it does open the possibility to different theories and if there is additional evidence from other sources ancient aliens might be one of the possibilities worth considering.

I've gone into this in a series of articles including the most recent one, Researching Poor, Slaves, Prisoners, To Benefit Ruling Class With Alien Technology? which includes additional links to past articles, including one about Steve Bannon who had previously worked for Biosphere Two before becoming a fanatical Climate Change denier, or just working for one and another one on the fundamentals of how known technology could potentially develop into the ability to travel to other solar system from a skeptics point of view with what I consider a rational use of Occam's Razor.

If it's possible for aliens to travel from one solar system to another than it could begin to explain many of these unsolved mysteries, including how technology is being developed so rapidly, assuming we had rational peer review, which we don't in the mainstream media right now. This is most likely to be accomplished, assuming it's possible at all, with long term space travel, using all the advanced scientist they have available to them, including artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, robotics, advanced propulsion, and more much of which is being developed rapidly now on Earth.

If this is what's been happening, then it could provide some hint about what their objective is and how they're trying to accomplish it. If it's not then there has to be some other explanation for many of the legitimate unsolved mysteries; and the evidence indicating that a small percentage of the public controls powerful institutions is still credible since it's not based on theory with inadequate evidence. Evidence to prove that is public record and can be found by anyone willing to look for it, assuming they don't rely solely on propaganda by mainstream media.

Some of my past speculation is about what aliens, assuming they exist and reached our planet thousands of years ago, might be trying to accomplish that they couldn't accomplish on their own planet or a planet without life. Leading possibilities might include researching a variety of things, perhaps including life on different planets and weather control of some sort. A lot of this sounds like science fiction, of course, however if climate change is caused by man, as most scientists now claim it is then it must be possible for some degree of control, which would almost certainly require a significant amount of research before it could be implemented.

Traditional scientists, including Michio Kaku, have admitted that they believe that it is possible to partially influence the weather and recommended some experiments with it; and the government has admitted to trying to do so with cloud seeding as far back as the Vietnam War. Lyndon Johnson gave a speech to congress in the sixties about climate change before the vast majority of the public was paying any attention to the subject and many people thought it was fringe. the response of some scientists, though was to search for far-fetched ways to experiment with weather control, which to the best of my knowledge has been unsuccessful.

Past speculation about this subject includes the fact that Steve Bannon has previously worked for Biosphere Two which was partially designed to study a controlled environment that could be used on another planet like Mars or to study the greenhouse effect and climate change. This means that he has to know more about this subject than he implies, and yet he became a climate change denier anyway without ever actually explaining why, except that he started working for a different billionaire who held different views. A conspiracy to study climate change, as far-fetched as it sounds, could partially explain this irrational and absurd behavior.

Additional speculation also includes research on prisoners potentially with help from alien technology several alleged whistle blowers claim the government has obtained from alien space crafty or from direct contact. All of these sources have major credibility problems, including Philip Corso, who might be among the most credible ones; however if it's even partially true then it must have a major impact on technological development. If there is something to this then there's a strong possibility that they're intentionally disclosing a lot of information through unreliable sources mixed in with lies so they can disclose things when and only when it suits their purposes.

If ancient aliens have been around for thousands of years and they influence the megalithic structures there's a strong possibility that they also influenced religion at it's early stages. some of the strongest evidence of this might be the alleged "Miracle of the Sun" at Fatima which Catholics although a review of the history of it might indicate that it's more likely to be a massive UFO sighting, which is far more likely than the sun entering the atmosphere, which many Catholics believe.

Some of the more widely recognized conspiracy theories about the alleged Illuminati, which supposedly means the "Illuminated Ones," often involve the Knights Templar who thought they were doing "God's work" according to most historical versions. They were apparently killed after a conflict with the pope, yet God was supposed to be on their side. There are many other stories about God allegedly making "covenants" with his people which often involve enabling them to win massive battles with God's help and blessings. In the Bible it says that God made a covenant with Abraham to allow his descendants to win battles conquering a massive empire; however when it suited God's purposes he allowed them to be sold into slavery and released in a dramatic fashion with alleged miracles to show how glorious God was; but when people displeased God for reasons they couldn't understand he allowed Babylon or the Romans to win. According to Exodus 14:4 and several other verses, before they were released from slavery in Egypt, instead of just telling Pharaoh to let his people go and making him compliment he "Hardened his heart" so that he would be disobedient and God used this obvious entrapment as an excuse to show how great hew as by terrorizing Egyptians to let his people go.

If God was as benevolent as religious people believe he is why wouldn't he maintain an open, honest line of communication and teach people to set up democratic institutions instead of arranging for them to fight one war after another where he's constantly switching sides so that he can chose the winner based on an undisclosed agenda? If God was as benevolent as religious people believe then he simply would do that unless either he doesn't exist at all, or they misunderstood him and he has an ulterior motive. The Ancient aliens theory could be the later.

Another thing that I began speculating about before the election was decided was whether or not the election was being rigged based on a far-fetched Biblical Apocalypse conspiracy theory which I admitted was hard to believe and should have been discredited; however, now that Donald Trump has been elected and there appears to be a growing chance that he'll get impeached for one reason or another instead of falling apart it may have gotten even stronger, even though it still seems insane. After Stormy Daniels interview on Sixty Minutes it may seem even more likely that he'll be impeached; however he's already gone through one scandal after another which should have ended his presidency or even prevented him from running in the first place yet this absurd charade keeps escalating.

This is exactly what the Democratic process is supposed to prevent and if we had a diverse media covering all issues and candidates fairly there's no way either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump could have ever gotten the nomination.

No doubt a lot of people would consider the ancient alien conspiracy theory insane, especially the one on the History Channel, which as I suspect is intentionally including an enormous amount of blunders so people won't take it seriously; and of course it is!

However the official version of truth as presented by the media and political establishment is also insane!

The only question is which insane version of truth is real the media's, mine, or some other version?

No matter how you look at it something insane is going on!

Speculation about impeachment began even before the election when they decided who the nominees were for both parties, who both had incredibly high negative ratings, yet the political establishment kept pushing them anyway.

If ether is something to the Ancient Aliens theory then those that refuse to even look at the evidence won't be able to figure out the whole truth; however even if you don't believe that, as I said before, there's plenty of evidence of an oligarchy that only hires people from a small class of people as indicated in some of the articles about administration members moving back and forth through government and the corporate world including a list of the cabinets for various presidents below for starters.

If anyone is interested I provided a more comprehensive list of all the articles about Ancient Aliens in Researching Poor, Slaves, Prisoners, To Benefit Ruling Class With Alien Technology? which includes all the various subjects summarized in this article with more details; and even without an ancient aliens conspiracy theory there's an enormous amount of research about how to reduce violence including the school shootings or high violence rates in abandoned inner cities that the media ignores which I covered more in Prevention of violence has to address all causes, not just Guns! This also includes additional articles and sources from mainstream academics which aren't considered fringe like those speculating about UFOs, although the best researchers aren't covered by mainstream media.



Scientology's Abusive Release Forms

CONFIDENTIALITY/NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT concerning the case of Estate of Lisa McPherson, etc. v. Church of Scientology, et a/,

DISTRUST IN CLEARWATER -- A special report.; Death of a Scientologist Heightens Suspicions in a Florida Town 12/01/1997

Excerpt from "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief" by By Lawrence Wright about non-disclosure agreements

Tracy Morgan refuses to testify under oath in Walmart insurance dispute 06/05/2017

Inside Gov Barack Obama Cabinet Members

Wikipedia: Confirmations of Barack Obama's Cabinet

Wikipedia: Presidency of Barack Obama

Wikipedia: Cabinet of Donald Trump

Wikipedia: Presidency of George W. Bush

Wikipedia: Presidency of Bill Clinton

Trump-Linked Firm Cambridge Analytica Harvested 50M Facebook Users’ Data 03/19/2018

McDonald's just hired former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs 06/09/2015

Amazon just hired Obama’s former press secretary Jay Carney 02/26/2015

NBC News signs former White House press secretary Josh Earnest 03/27/2017

Do you want to cut carbon with that? McDonald’s sets climate target 03/20/2018

Maryanne Trump Barry

What Is the Deep State? Even if we assume the concept is valid, surely it’s not useful to think of the competing interests it represents as monolithic. By Greg Grandin 02/17/2017 Includes list of detailed books exposing extensive corruption disclosed from reliable sources but not widely reported in traditional media.

Wikipedia: Deep state in the United States

Democracy Now Tags Indicted Multi-Millionaire Crook as a Whistleblower and Goes after Russia! 10/18/2013 Serious questions have arisen about how Democracy Now!, begun and developed with the resources of Pacifica Radio and grants from the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation, the J.M. Kaplan Fund and others, suddenly became independent and the effective property of Amy Goodman without recompense to Pacifica. This transfer apparently included valuable assets such as trademarks, ownership of years of archived programs, affiliate station access, and more. In a contract that remains secret, Amy Goodman is also receiving $1 million per year for a five-year period that began in 2002, according to Pacifica Treasurer Jabari Zakiya, to continue doing what has become Pacifica's flagship morning news program. This is more than double Goodman's officially stated stipend of $440,000 per year from Pacifica Radio. Democracy Now! receives indirect funding from George Soros, and direct funding from the Ford Foundation, the Glaser Foundation, Soros' Open Society Institute…

Aliens CREATED GOD… and now they want him back - shock claim of how religion began 03/30/2017

America Remains Drunk on Power 03/22/2018 “Data mining is not a new phenomenon. In fact, before Cambridge Analytica, Barack Obama mined data during his 2012 presidential campaign, and he was hailed as a political pioneer.

Contrary to Trump Propaganda Border Is Not A Battle Zone

Contrary to an enormous amount of propaganda from the fanatical fringe, often with the help of the mainstream media, there is no war on the Mexican Border and Hispanic Americans aren't going on wild killing sprees all the time, including undocumented immigrants. Only two out of over a dozen major cities that I found on or near the border have above average murder rates, and only one of those two is actually on the border; and both those are only moderately above the national average murder rates.

By contrast there are at least one hundred and twenty-five cities (listed on Wikipedia, List of United States cities by crime rate, 250,000+ scroll down for smaller cities, and presumably more that aren't listed there,) throughout the country that have more than double the national average murder rates, many of these are four or five times the national rate, and a few are even eight to fifteen times the national rate. Most of the cities with high murder rates are larger ones, until a couple of years ago the only one of ten with more than a million people with below the national average rate was San Diego, which is also the only one a short distance from the border.

Only seven or eight (based on the fifteen year average there's only seven, but in the past four years New York City has been below average,) out of thirty-five of the cities with more than half a million people are below average, and in addition to San Diego one of those seven is El Paso, which is directly on the border and the murder rates are less than half the national average and it has eighty percent Hispanic population. Brownsville, which is 94.4% Hispanic, is also on the border, and also has less than half the national average murder rate. Several of the other cities also have high Hispanic populations with low murder rates often less than half the national average even though many of these cities are low income, which usually correlates with higher murder rates; the biggest exception is Laredo, which is only about 10% above the national average rate not nearly as bad as the long list of abandoned inner cities with limited funds for education or other social programs that could reduce violence.

The enormous amount of hype is distracting the public from the fact that the biggest problem with violent crime isn't from Hispanics, at all, whether their illegal immigrants or not. They're also distracting the public from the lack of educational or economic opportunities in these abandoned inner inner cities and that there are enormous efforts to constantly cut funds that could be used to repair this problem before it escalates. Funds for education economic development and child care are far more effective than funds for courts and prisons, yet the later is the one the government is constantly funding, in a wasteful manner.

The hype demonizing immigrants is also distracting from other contributing causes of violence including early child abuse that leads to escalating violence, which may be even more important than the abandoned inner cities, and many other contributing causes including ones that are a result of corporate corruption, like gambling, insurance, pay day-lenders, union busting, and other activities increasing poverty which is a major cause of crime.



There are plenty of people in the media that fully understand one of the most fundamental principles of propaganda, often ironically attributed to Vladimir Lenin, "a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth," or at least it seems to, especially if it's accompanied by appeals to emotion, with other propaganda tactics like pseudo-patriotism encouraged by loud crowds supporting demagogues like Donald Trump. Another basic principle of propaganda is that this is far more effective if they can repeat their lies and they don't get challenged, which means that they must understand that by not constantly rebutting many of these claims they're allowing these demagogues to get away with it.

James Carville and George Stephanopoulos recognized that when Michael Dukakis didn't respond to false claims fast enough they stuck which is why they cam up with their famous rapid response team, which has been forgotten by the majority of the public now, but the political operatives in the media and in campaigns haven't forgotten this. Frank Luntz has virtually confessed that he's studying how to manipulate the public, and there are plenty of other people in the academic world, often working for major corporations or political parties with an agenda, that also understand basic pribnciples of propaganda and how to educate the public so they don't fall for these scams.

If they wanted to mention these basic simple statistics they could have and would have, yet instead of doing that the mainstream media provided an enormous amount of obsession coverage for one demagogues after another, leading up to Donald Trump. This includes Hillary Clinton, who once said that she "knows how to handle men who get off the reservation," which is an obvious racist and elitist comment demeaning Native Americans or other middle class or poorer people that use rough language.

As exposed in several of the E-mails released by Wikileaks, DNC Describe Wink And Nod Method For Bribes & Indoctrination Studies, Hillary Clinton and her advisers have also demonstrated that they understand how to manipulate the public, including Hispanic voters that she convinced to trust her, often with bad appeals to emotion including a famous scene where she took Karla Ortiz, a small child who was terrified she might be deported, into her arms and told her that she would prevent her from being deported, without reminding them of her previous statement that, "We have to send a clear message: Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. We don’t want to send a message that’s contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”" Hillary: Minors crossing border must be sent home 06/18/2014



The mainstream media is now obsessively trying to distract us from the content of these Emails which many people are quickly forgetting, and acting as if the people who leaked the information about their efforts to manipulate and indoctrinate the problem and that it's the divine right of the elites to study manipulation and fraud in secrecy, without addressing the legitimate concerns of the majority of the public, including the real contributing causes of crime and violence!

In a previous article about Immigration Policy And Outsourcing Are Virtual Slavery I cited credible reports from The Southern Poverty Law Center and The Sentencing Project showing that immigrants are much less likely to commit crimes than citizens and pointing out other problems with our current immigration policy including the fact that by driving them underground they make them less inclined to report crimes; and there's plenty more credible research providing additional details however this rarely ever gets mentioned by the traditional media. Occasionally they point out some of the most extreme views from Donald Trump and cite a few facts contradicting them, acting shocked that some members of the public would believe Trump's claims; however they fail to discuss how much obsession coverage they provide for his demagoguery or how it could be prevented if they provided more level headed coverage of the facts that they keep to a minimum.

They same media pundits provide obsession coverage for a small number of candidates supported by the political and media establishment while refusing to cover candidates that look into the higher quality research that is only reported on lower profile alternative media outlets that they treat as fringe. In addition to helping to rig the nomination for Hillary Clinton without reminding the public about how she clearly adopts some of the same policies as Donald Trump with slightly less rhetoric despite her promises to Karla Ortiz she also gave tacit approval to the Honduras coup (How Hillary Clinton Militarized US Policy in Honduras 04/05/2016 and Here's Why Activists Don't Buy Hillary Clinton's Justification for the Honduras Coup 07/17/2016) and a quick search of the internet turns up an enormous amount of fraud from the Clinton Foundation in Haiti among other places.

Like the Republicans the vast majority of the Democrats, if not all of them, supported by the establishment continue to ignore the history of our countries foreign relations which is actually contributing to violence around the world sometimes from immigrants that come from war torn countries. In many cases the conflicts in other countries are a result of our own government's activities including, most famously, coups in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile, as well as other activities from our government in Latin America.

It's tempting to say that the people in other countries know far more about the activities of our own government than people in the United States, and many people from reform movements often do, however, it is only partially true. If you watch some alternative media outlets close enough you might find some stories about well informed people educating the working class or poor about these activities, often citing far better sources than our own media does; however there are also stories about some of them observing their fellow countrymen falling for some of the same propaganda that we deal with here and believing it, even though it rarely stands up to scrutiny when people check the facts. They often use the same manipulation tactics that our own government does.

Regardless of how many people believe this propaganda there are facts that can be confirmed by those willing to do the research including additional research about how our government has been involved in many Latin America countries often supporting one tyrant after another contributes to high violence rates in Latin America countries that the United States has been manipulating for the benefit of multinational corporations. According to Wikipedia: List of countries by intentional homicide rate many of the countries the United States intervened in including Nicaragua, Honduras El Salvador, Panama, Guatemala, Haiti, Columbia, Venezuela, and Brazil have exceptionally high murder rates and it shouldn't be hard to find good research to show how efforts to destabilize these countries by tyrants supporting the financial interests of multinational corporations have contributed to these high rates of violence.

A few exceptions include Cuba which managed to stand up to the United States efforts to reinstall the same people supporting Batista and Chile which finally ousted Pinochet and managed to implement some major reforms on their own. The United States often tries to portray these high crime problems as justification for their intervention but there are numerous instances where their efforts to destabilize countries like Cuba and Nicaragua did far more harm than good and made the violence much worse.

Many of these immigrants are refugees from these countries and the reason they're fleeing is because they're unable to participate in the governing of their own country as a result of the damage done by the United States; and the same people that claim to defend democracy often vote to deprive them with the right to vote either here or in their own country.

If the media wanted to they could provide far more coverage for some of the best researchers for any given subject; however they're a for profit organization and as they've consolidated into six oligarchies they've abandoned almost all attempts to even pretend to look out for the best interests of the public, which anyone accustomed to looking at better research or alternative media might recognize, unfortunately many of the less educated people or people distracted by sports or celebrity worship, might easily fall for this propaganda.

In a series of previous articles listed below I went into some of the most important contributing causes to violence with a series of relatively simple studies comparing the states; even though these are somewhat rough and not peer reviewed each subject was also backed by additional sources that are peer reviewed, although most of it isn't widely available on mainstream media. This should be enough to show that anyone with access to a library and alternative media outlets sincerely trying to do better than the national media can almost certainly succeed without much trouble.

The subject I looked into the closest with a lot of previous articles using work from many credible researchers is how early child abuse, often involving corporal punishment, leads to escalating violence much later in life. Even though the best research involves far more detail one of the simplest statistics demonstrating how important this is, is the fact that the states which use corporal punishment the most, both at home and in schools routinely have the highest murder rates, and practically never make it into the bottom five, rarely into the bottom ten.



Corporal punishment and authoritarian upbringing is also a major contributing cause for racism and indoctrination teaching children to blindly obey their leaders and go along with the crowd even when the crowd is behaving in a fanatical manner like Nazi Germany. It makes them more susceptible to propaganda supporting wars based on lies, which we fight over and over again. It makes children more inclined to fall for propaganda designed to convince them to vote for politicians that routinely betray their best interests instead of listening to the grass roots candidates that are only covered in alternative media outlets that are often much more sincere than the ones promoted by corporations that control the economic system.



A large percentage of the public might be inclined to fall for many of these emotional appeals, especially if they're not informed about the leading causes of violence which is why many people have accepted the choice between two political parties that both represent the multinational corporations instead of the public.

These same corporations are the ones that are outsourcing jobs and trying to prioritize all the functions of government, including education, especially in low income area. they're rigging the economic system against the majority and using the poor for scapegoats taking advantage of bigotry to help convince some segments of the public to help support their agenda. these multinational corporations caused disadvantaged people to be herded into these abandoned inner cities and lobbied heavily to prevent them from getting the funds they need to educate their children and prevent all the violence that is taking place in these abandoned inner cities.

Both Parties are working for the same economic elites, while grassroots candidates that might actually support the best interests of the public can't get any media attention. Those that control economic, political and media establishments refuse to educate the public about the most important issues; instead using propaganda to distract them and convince them to vote against their own best interests as part of a divide and rule tactic enabling an economic system where a large segment of society does most of the work to make it function while a small segment of wealthy people takes the vast majority of the benefits, creating a state of virtual slavery disguised as democracy!



The following are the crime statistics for some of the biggest cities on or near the border with Mexico, they include reference to largest megachurches in these cities, which I reviewed in previous articles and found that there are higher murder rates in cities with megachurches than the national average; however even though, Hispanic Communities on the border have above average number of megachurches they also contradict that correlation as well, with below average murder rates:

El Paso Texas, 679,000, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 2.4 median household income in 2016: $43,200 80.7% Hispanic 13.1% White Abundant Living Faith Center 12,400; a total of four megachurches others range from 4,000 to 2,000

Brownsville Texas, 183,800, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 2.16 median household income in 2016: $36,584 94.4% Hispanic International Christian Center 2,000

Laredo Texas, 258,000, above average murder rate from 2002-16: 5.86 median household income in 2016: $36,195 96.4% Hispanic Iglesia Cristiana Misericordia 2,400

McAllen Texas, 142,200, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 3.53 median household income in 2016: $43,062 85.6% Hispanic Baptist Temple Church 2,000

Mission Texas, 83,550, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 2.41 median household income in 2016: $40,945 85.4% Hispanic Palm Valley Church 3,700

Del Rio Texas, 36,080, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 2.21 median household income in 2016: $43,061 85.4% Hispanic

Hidalgo Texas, 13,500, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 3.85 median household income in 2016: $38,525 98.4% Hispanic

Edinburg Texas, 87,640, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 3.01 median household income in 2016: $41,319 89.4% Hispanic

Alamo Texas below average murder rate from 2002-16: 2.23 median household income in 2016: $35,986 84.6% Hispanic

Yuma Arizona, 94,900, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 4.44 median household income in 2016: $42,731 58.8% Hispanic 33.3% White Hispanic

San Luis Arizona, 31,000, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 1.32 median household income in 2016: $33,313 96.8% Hispanic

National City California, 60,340, above national average but below state average murder rate from 2002-16: 5.59 between Chula Vista with rates of 2.69 and San Diego with a rate of 3.67 median household income in 2016: $44,901 65.8% Hispanic Cornerstone Church of San Diego 6,300

San Diego California, 1.38 million, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 3.67 median household income in 2016: $71,481 42.8% White 30.0% Hispanic The Rock Church congregation 14,000 or lower estimate of 12,864; total of seven megachurches with rest ranging from 7,000 to 1,800

Chula Vista California, 267,170, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 2.69 near San Diego with a rate of 3.67 median household income in 2016: $68,699 59.6% Hispanic EastLake Church 6,280

Imperial Beach California, 27,150, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 1.98 median household income in 2016: $51,109 51.5% Hispanic 31.9% White

In between these cities there are few major population centers so if there is one murder here or there, related to immigration or not, it will send the local rates for that area skyrocketing, which is typical for a very small percentage of rural areas that have rare murders.



Nowrasteh: Everything is Bigger in Texas — except the illegal immigrant crime rate 03/12/2018

Undocumented Immigration Doesn’t Worsen Drug, Alcohol Problems in U.S., Study Indicates 08/01/2017

Immigrants Do Not Increase Crime, Research Shows 02/07/2017

Reports find that immigrants commit less crime than US-born citizens 03/19/2017

The corporate media ignores the rise of oligarchy. The rest of us shouldn't, Bernie Sanders 03/16/2018

Because 'Corporate Media Ignores Rise of Oligarchy,' Sanders Says Rest of Us Must Fill the Void 12/1/2017

Bernie Sanders is right about the corporate media ignoring the rise of oligarchy; and when he discusses the issues he is far better on almost all of the other politicians that the media is willing to cover; in addition to providing poor coverage of the rise of oligarchy the media also provides poor coverage on causes of crime and many other issues.

His conclusion that the rest of us need to fill the void by providing alternative media outlets and taking advantage of the ones that are already there is also correct; however we need to rely on a more diverse source of media and candidates to represent us; and we need to be prepared to hold those accountable and switch if they seem to be caving to the oligarchy. Even though I like Bernie Sanders far more than any other establishment politician and agree with him on almost all the issues, when the nomination was rigged against him, he caved and declined to speak out about some of the worst rigging, instead endorsing Hillary Clinton, which is part of the reason why Donald Trump was able to get elected.

We can't get reform by relying on, or in some cases worshiping, any one candidate or media outlet; instead we need to teach the majority of the public to sort through the best media outlets and candidates and hold them accountable, moving as much of the decision making process to the public, not the representatives, as possible!



The following are some of my previous articles about contributing causes of crime including one about how organized gambling and Donald Trump's own Casinos, which had a high number of murders on the premises for a few years with minimal media coverage, are contributing to higher crime:

Las Vegas Massacre Is Just A Minuscule Fraction Of Gambling Crime Between 2008 and 2011, 1 in every 8 murders in Atlantic City took place at Trump's Taj Mahal casino

Scapegoating human trafficker to protect corporations?

Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation Should Become a Priority Again!

Ignored evidence linking corporal punishment, poverty and crime grows

Does lack of education increase violent crime? Religion?

How much does Income Inequality Affects Crime Rates?

States with high murder rates have larger veteran populations

Teach a soldier to kill and he just might

The tragedy of gambling politics in United States

How does gambling and gun control impact violent crime?

Politics, not technology, caused botched executions

Troy, Cameron, Gary all innocent? And executed?

Democrats do a bad job on crime; Republicans and the Media are worse!!

Politicians increase crime; Grass roots efforts reduce crime; Politicians steal the credit

Life Insurance and media companies are encouraging lots of murders

Union Busting adds to corrupt bureaucracy and incites crime