08 Apr Who Are THEY?

“Truth is stranger than Fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”

How’s this idea for a new sci-fi/horror movie? Here’s the setup: on a small planet in a remote galaxy, a shadowy group of powerful corporations control all the major media on the planet. They effectively control how almost all the planet’s citizens think, consume, and behave.

This “corporatocracy” has used its great power to convince the citizens they must kill and eat certain of their fellow creatures in order to survive. The creatures are gentle, easily overpowered and enslaved for ongoing harvest by agents of the corporatocracy.

Some of the corporatocracy operate a massive factory where billions of the creatures are bred, grown, and slaughtered every day, around the clock. It’s a huge, sprawling operation that now occupies more than half the habitable space on the planet. To achieve peak production and profitability, the factory commits mass confinement and mechanized mutilation of the creatures– it’s a horror show of blood and gore on a planetary scale.

Others among the corporatocracy have experimented on the creatures and discovered biochemical and genetic manipulations that have perfected the creatures for high-volume production. These breakthroughs in biochemistry and genetics have now doubled and tripled profitability.

Almost all the processes engineered by the elites generate enormous amounts of environmental toxins. The toxic byproducts work their way up the food chain and become concentrated in the bodies of the creatures, and ultimately the citizens as well.

As for the citizens, their mass consumption of the creatures’ flesh and secretions has had a tragic but profitable side effect: the unwitting citizens have become addicted to the flesh foods, and it’s made them sick, diseased and ravenous.

Some among the corporatocracy have conducted covert experiments on the citizens as well. They’ve invented medicines to treat their diseases, to which the diseased citizens have become further dependent. The medicines are engineered to manage only the symptoms of disease while allowing the citizens to continue their addictions, making them easier to control, and exponentially increasing the powers and profits of the elites.

Like the citizens, the elites of this corporatocracy have developed their own insidious addictions; they’ve become obsessed, perverted in their pursuit of power and profit. They’ve been so reckless in exploiting their planet’s resources – the fragile ecosystem is now so decimated – the small planet is now spiraling toward total ecological collapse…

But a small group of citizens have managed to escape mind control by the corporatocracy. Either to heal their own disease, or out of concern for their planet, or out of mercy for the creatures themselves– they have stopped eating the creatures. As their addictions to the flesh foods subside, their sensibilities recover and they awaken to the vast deception, corruption, and destruction perpetrated by the corporatocracy.

The awakened are growing in numbers now. But more than ever, the elites remain obsessed in further escalating production and profits, even as ecological collapse begins to spiral out of control.

The corporatocracy aggressively suppresses the awakened: its agents bully, brutalize and imprison the awakened. Its mass communications of mind control spin into overdrive. The awakened are effectively branded as radicals, alarmists, criminals, outcasts. Their claims are dismissed as conspiracy theory, paranoia, junk science. Even some among the awakened have begun to second-guess the real urgency of their own impending doom.

Of course, the diseased and addicted mainstream citizenry remain easily manipulated and placated…

And so the citizens are thus variously divided against each other and against their own collective self interest. The corporatocracy builds faster, stronger, and bludgeons onward…

That’s as far as we’ve gotten to-date on the plot line for our horror show. What do you think? We’re still working out the ending, and we welcome your input…

Indeed, how would you react if such a corporatocracy here on Earth were profiting from the diseases and suffering they cause us? If they’re driving our planet to the brink of ecological collapse? If they’re using the mass media to confuse and divide us against our own collective interest? If even your own family and friends were so placated, they were blind to the planetary crises and mass cruelty of which their obedient, ravenous patronage is the root cause?

What if here on Earth, we only have, say, ten years or so to save ourselves from runaway ecological collapse? Five years?

What if the elites have simply accepted our demise, and they’re perpetuating mass deception now just to preserve power and ensure an orderly collapse ahead? What if they have built bunkers and spaceships to save themselves while the masses die off?

What if it were all really true; how would you wage your response?

What if the situation here on Earth is pretty much exactly that horror show? That our corporate-funded media and corporate-funded science are deliberately underestimating, obfuscating the impending ecological catastrophe that is now underway. What if it’s all fully dependent on our blind obedience and patronage, our intellectual laziness and cowardice to challenge our own self-destructive desires for comfort and security?

What if we’ve just been ravenous fools, willingly manipulated and divided against each other and our own collective self interest; even the very survival of our own species?

What if the shadowy conglomerate here on Earth is, say, the triad industries of BigMeat, BigPharma and BigChemical? What if all we have to do to end their mass cruelty and destruction; to end their manipulation of our desires and our health; to end their virtual enslavement of us– is to just awaken each other and convince each other to Just. Quit. Buying. Their. Shit?

How would we awaken each other with the commensurate urgency that such a moment in history requires? For example, if your house is burning down around you, how would you save your sleeping brothers and sisters from the fire?

Of course, this is your house that’s on fire, this is your family, these are “your people.” Some might awaken and join you in the search, but you know some would only just chastise you: “Stop yelling!” they’d scold. “You sound shrill!’ ‘You’d be much more successful if you’d just tone it down a bit,” “You’d catch more flies with honey,” they’d tell you.

And with more patience than you know the moment deserves, you’d point to the flames and you’d plead, “…but our house is on fire.”

…Such is the mess that we find ourselves in.

Dear brothers and sisters, indeed our house is on fire. And the corporate-funded media and corporate-funded science are deceiving us. You must dig deep through the big pile of corporate propaganda out there; seek out the independent voices who are pushing past the lies to expose the Truth. Do the research and connect the dots yourself*.

What you’ll find is that the Sixth Great Mass Extinction of Species on Earth is now well underway. We’re now losing up to 200 species of wildlife everyday, and it’s being caused by us. It’s happening fast too. Where other extinction events happened over hundreds or thousands of years, this one is happening in just decades*.

The same drivers of this mass extinction crisis are also the leading drivers of climate change. And climate change is far more urgent than we’ve been led to believe. The intensity and frequency of super storms and wildfires are now on track to double every decade*. That’s not a slow, linear progression; that’s rapid, exponential escalation for which we have no historical precedent.

Every year now, new storms, wildfires and floods exceed worst-case projections and set new historic records. With each new season, record-breaking heat waves, cold snaps, mudslides and droughts around the world are the new norm.

With each new disaster, the breaking news keeps us glued in to watch the wreckage and carnage unfold. With each tragic story told, we are reminded that we are the lucky ones- this time… And when the live TV coverage goes to commercial break, all irony is lost on us as actors pitch new food products, pharmaceuticals, diet fads, and shiny new cars to us.

We’re being cajoled, herded, lied to. It’s easily the grandest, most dangerous lie ever told. And those who are deceiving us are the very ones who are responsible for causing these planetary crises – with our help:

The #1 drivers of this mass extinction crisis are global deforestation* and climate change*. And the #1 cause of global deforestation and climate change is Global Animal Agriculture (GAAg)*.

If you doubt this, please consider these three key facts about Climate Change that corporate-funded science and corporate-funded media will never admit to in a public forum:

(1)  In a ten year timeframe, GAAg is the leading driver of human-caused greenhouse (GHG) emissions. That’s right: in a ten year timeframe, GAAg puts more GHGs into the atmosphere than all other sectors of human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels*. But that’s not GAAg’s only contribution to Climate Change…

(2)  Climate change isn’t just caused by GHG emissions. It’s a dual, interdependent system of GHG “emissions” and GHG “sequestration”. Corporate-funded science and corporate media talk mostly about GHG emissions but rarely mention GHG sequestration. Our forests, soils and oceans draw down or sequester GHGs from the atmosphere to help balance GHG concentrations, but half the world’s forests and soils have been destroyed, mainly for GAAg.

(3)  GAAg now occupies about 60% of all lands on Earth now used by humans. About half the world’s forests and soils have been decimated by humans, and GAAg is the leading cause.

GAAg’s destruction of our forests and soils has obliterated whole ecosystems, decimated wildlife populations, escalated the acidification of our oceans, and accelerated climate change exponentially.

Get this: if just half the lands now used by GAAg were returned to their native forests, the restored forests would sequester more carbon than has been added to the atmosphere by humans since the beginning of the industrial age (1750)*.

Read that again: If just half the lands now used by GAAg were returned to their native forests, the restored forests would sequester more carbon than has been added to the atmosphere by humans since the beginning of the industrial age.

[[The total we put into the atmosphere is around 540 Gigatons of Carbon (GtC). About 300 GtC that we put into the atmosphere has been re-absorbed by the ocean and land.]]

Some independent scientists believe that most of this sequestration could be accomplished in just 20 years or so*.  And it wouldn’t just stall climate change but reverse it– at least for the next half-century while the energy sector transitions from fossil fuels to renewable energies.

Yes of course, we still must transition to renewable energies, but Al Gore’s solar panels and windmills will not end the mass extinction of species now underway. Nor will they save us from the burgeoning chaos of climate change. The window of opportunity for renewable energies to forestall climate change has long since passed; the benefits of renewable energies will not be felt in this century, especially not by the wildlife now on the brink of mass extinction the world over.

The most efficient and cost-effective way to reverse climate change and halt mass species extinction is the mass transition of society to a Vegan diet.

If Bill McKibben has done all the math, then surely he knows this. To be sure, GAAg and their corporate-funded scientists know this.

Did you know this? Most folks do not. Most of us haven’t a clue how urgent this moment in history is for the animals, the Earth, and us– and how urgent the need for the mass transition of society to a Vegan diet.

How have we been so fooled? How have we been so distracted from the urgency of these mounting crises, and so blind to their obvious, most practical solutions? How has our thinking and worldview been so carefully constructed that we no longer think for ourselves?

Could a corporatocracy really have such vast and sweeping powers to have so completely fooled us? If you follow global politics and economics much, you’re probably not surprised at such speculation. But you will likely be shocked to learn just how deep the rabbit hole goes (and goes, and goes…).

It’s well documented that meat and dairy (MAD) consumption is the leading cause of heart disease, cancers and diabetes. That the Vegan diet can actually prevent and even reverse those diseases. And that “a well-planned Vegan diet is appropriate for all stages of the  life-cycle including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence.”*

Yet the diseases of MAD consumption remain the leading causes of human death and suffering, and thereby, the leading drivers of global healthcare costs. In fact, 10 out of the 12 top-selling pharmaceutical products worldwide are medicines which treat diseases of MAD consumption*.

It’s also well documented that chemical pesticides and fertilizers cause mass disease in humans as well. These industrial chemicals poison our wildlife and pollute the environment on a global scale. But did you know that the #1 application of these chemical pesticides is to grow feed crops for farmed animals? Indeed, over 70% of all grain grown in the US is used for farmed animals, including about 80% of the soy and 90% of corn.

What most folks don’t know is that the chemical pesticides used on these feed crops are also major drivers of asthma, autism, birth defects, diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, and several types of cancer*. So not only do industrial pesticides enable cheap, high-volume livestock production for the BigMeat companies, these chemicals also create an endless supply of sick and diseased customers for BigPharma as well.

Taken altogether then– BigMeat and the industries of BigPharma and BigChemical (which both depend on BigMeat for their majority revenues) all combine to make a massive, interdependent corporatocracy with total financial assets that rival the world’s top global economies. Taken together, these industries- this “Meatocracy” – contribute to more cruelty, disease, pollution and environmental destruction than all other sectors of human activity combined.

But the rabbit hole goes deeper: an in-depth analysis of the major shareholders of most all the top companies among the Meatocracy reveals a stunning fact: the major companies across these vast industries are all controlled by just four major shareholders. The “BigFour” financial holding companies of Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street and Fidelity are the top shareholders of all the major publicly-held companies among the Meatocracy.

Deeper still, this same BigFour that own controlling interests in BigMeat, BigPharma and BigChem are also majority shareholders of the top global “BigMedia” conglomerates. BigMedia controls almost all the mainstream media you know, including 90% of all TV, cable, print, and online news and programming.

When we discovered the interrelations of BigMedia, these findings began to seem a bit fantastical. But a double-check and triple-check of the sources reveal it most certainly is the case. It certainly explains the veritable blackout in mainstream media about BigMeat’s role in mass species extinction and climate change– and the inter-dependencies among those industries which are causing these global crises.

Continued below…

Further, the BigFour are also majority shareholders of “The Top Ten Companies That Make the Biggest Political Donations” to both major political parties in the U.S.

The BigFour even own the controlling shares of Facebook, Google and YouTube! If you’re an independent journalist or online activist who focuses on animal liberation or on exposing corporate control of the political establishment, chances are you have likely experienced systematic censorship of your online posts to audiences across Facebook and Google**.

And what about scientific research? In the late 1960s, about 60% of all research was funded by the federal government. Now more than two-thirds of all research is funded by major corporations. And the federal government itself has been co-opted by lobbyists from major corporations. For example, when the EPA conducted the first nationwide study on the air quality effects of large-scale animal production, BigMeat companies, not taxpayers, paid for that study.

Do you think we can trust those results?

Advocates of independent research say that “this corporate takeover of science has created ‘a contested terrain’ where facts are increasingly contingent on whoever is funding the research.*”

Just how deep does this rabbit hole go? The numbers are staggering, nearly  incomprehensible. Get this: the BigFour financial companies that control the “Meatocracy” even own the majority shares in the biggest companies among BigBanks, BigDefense and BigOil. With the support of the CIA, these major power interests make up the “Deep State” that U.S. General Wesley Clark has openly accused of warmongering in Africa, South America, and the Middle East to seize control of their oil reserves*.

So the same BigFour financial companies that are driving climate change and mass species extinction via the Meatocracy, are also primary stakeholders in the Deep State which is pillaging war-torn countries for oil profits.

Does this sound like a real-life horror show to you? It’s the truth. Please feel free to check the facts yourself.

Altogether then, the BigFour have combined “assets under management” of over $15 Trillion dollars plus Tens of Trillions of dollars more in “assets under custody and administration.” This means the BigFour effectively have access to more financial power than all the world’s major economies combined.

Wow!

It’s stunning, isn’t it? If this immense concentration of influence and powers seems the stuff of conspiracy-fiction to you, you’re not alone. As the esteemed American scholar Noam Chomsky has said of this global corporatocracy, “The general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.” It’s why Pulitzer Prize winning author Chris Hedges has said that the world has “undergone a corporate coup d’etat… where corporate power has in fact seized the media, academia, and all levers of democratic reform to render the citizen impotent.”

But are we done? Certainly, we can no longer depend on the corrupted political process to fix climate change or mass species extinction, much less end the warmongering for oil. Political demonstration against crooked politicians is just street theater now. Mass political protest is the relic of a bygone era when the levers of democracy were still intact, when our votes still counted.

So long as their gas stations, supermarkets and slaughterhouses aren’t interrupted, the corporatocracy bludgeons onward. The only real vote we have now- the only power we have left– is how we spend our consumer dollar.

So what about our consumer powers? Couldn’t we all “just quit buying their shit?” Unfortunately, we don’t yet have sufficient alternatives to fossil fuels to wage an effective consumer boycott of the warmongering for oil.

But we do have abundant alternatives to the meat and dairy products of the Meatocracy. It’s a veritable house of cards– the Meatocracy– it is wholly reliant on the continued entrancement and obedience of its consumers. So a robust and enlightened consumer boycott of all products of the Meatocracy would cripple the death-grip it has on us.

It would require a strategic re-targeting of mass protest, from the steps of the senate to the parking lots of supermarkets. From the halls of congress to the gates of the slaughterhouses.

It would require a “full and glad surrender” of our egoic desires by which the Meatocracy placate and control us: our blind lust for the food comforts of meat and dairy. It would mean that we have finally awakened to our own self-destruction.

It would mean that we are finally awakening to our own power. The fall of the Meatocracy would send shock waves that, in time, would tumble the global empire of the BigFour.

Of course, an enlightened revolt against the Meatocracy wouldn’t just mean a consumer boycott of its products. It also means the resolute rejection of the Meatocracy’s foundational mythology: the Big Lies that the consumption of animals is a manifest destiny of human prosperity.

This Big Lie runs deep. We humans have been conditioned for generations, brainwashed since birth that the complete lives of other sentient species are ours to use for nothing more than our food entertainment. That their forced-breeding and mechanized slaughter are necessary to make “Happy Meals” for our children. That the milk derived from industrial scale rape and enslavement of their young females ”builds strong bones” in us humans and “does a body good”.

The veil of “dominion” that now separates us modern humans from other animals has become twisted and perverted by the Meatocracy. It must be torn away now, so that we can face ourselves with full clarity and see the true monsters that we modern humans have become.

We are facing a stark, binary choice: evolve into a new culture of normalized nonviolence or go extinct clinging to our current mainstream culture of normalized violence. Today, in an average minute, we kill 2-6 million animals worldwide. Every sixty seconds, we enact an orgy of carnage upon our fellow sentient beings. Is it any wonder that the celebrated Jewish author and journalist Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote, “In relation to them, all people are Nazis. For the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.” Normalized, monstrous violence is at the very core of our civilization, even if most people don’t want to see it, like “the good Germans” of the Nazi era.

World leaders are like deer in the twin headlights of species extinction and climate change, frozen into inaction as Nature barrels down, destroying our monstrous civilization with fires, floods, droughts and extreme weather. Our institutions are corrupted through and through with corporate money as they pretend that the carnage we commit upon our fellow beings has little to do with the calamities we face. Like Don Quixote, they prefer to tilt at fossil-fueled windmills instead.

Whatever the reason for our evolutionary detour into carnism over the millennia- it doesn’t matter now. Our petty visions of grandeur that the consumption of animals is somehow vital, noble, or even spiritual have been co-opted by agents of the Meatocracy and used against us. We’ve been manipulated to forsake the betterment of our own health and well being. We’ve been programmed to betray our noblest faculties of empathy, civility, and fairness.

Over generations, we’ve been enculturated into a society of ever ravenous consumers, codependent in the denial of our mutually assured self destruction. So an enlightened revolt against the Meatocracy must necessarily include a sober acknowledgment of our own corruptibility. We’re not mere victims but willing collaborators until we confront the lies that we’ve told them we want to hear.

Most urgent to our Revolution now is to challenge the great deception that the Meatocracy has manufactured about Climate Change. Their corporate-funded science has cultivated a mainstream misconception of climate change that is built on half-truths which together make up one Big Lie. It’s a grand misdirection that for decades now has kept us running in circles, chasing impossible solutions. And all the while, behind the scenes, the corporate powers have continued to trash our planet and climate and push us to the very brink of ecological collapse.

The Big Lie is that Climate Change is just a one-dimensional problem caused by human-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and primarily the GHG emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. But this explanation is a gross oversimplification. Climate change is a bit more complex– it’s a reciprocal system of GHG emissions and GHG sinks.

More specifically, climate change is the interplay of two basic natural processes: the Greenhouse Effect and the Carbon Cycle. If you weren’t stoned or skipping school that day, you likely learned about those processes in Earth Science class back in 9th grade.

The good news is that these processes are straightforward and easy to understand. As 7-year old “Vegan Evan” explains in his This is My Video About Climate Change,

“…it’s pretty simple actually: energy from the sun warms the Earth. And as the Earth warms up, heat rises from the Earth up into the sky. Some gases in the atmosphere TRAP some of the heat. These are called “Greenhouse Gases”. Greenhouse gases radiate heat back down to Earth. The more greenhouse gases in the sky, the warmer it gets on Earth. This is called the “greenhouse effect.”

Then Vegan Evan explains the Carbon Cycle:

“Our forests, soils, & oceans help BALANCE the greenhouse effect: they draw down and absorb [or sequester] the greenhouse gases from the sky. Normally, our forests, soils, & oceans help keep Earth at an average comfy temperature of about 60 degrees. It’s a good thing! for ALL life on Earth.”

Vegan Evan continues:

“But our forests, soils, & oceans are being destroyed… Humans have now cleared over HALF the forests on Earth! About 60% of all land now used by humans is used to farm animals for food! Grazelands and feed crops destroy the soils. And the loss of our forests and soils means more greenhouse gases stay up in the sky. More greenhouse gases in the sky means more heat here on Earth. Scientists call this “Global Warming.” And that’s what’s causing Climate Change.”

We double-checked Vegan Evan’s claims and he’s right, GAAg now occupies approximately 57% of all lands now used by humans*. But the corporate-funded science does not take into account the total loss of sequestration due to all lands now occupied by GAAg, the “Opportunity Cost” of our MAD consumption. Why on Earth not?

This glaring omission of “half the world’s forests and soils” sequestration is a stunning error in mainstream climate science. It has been variously questioned by a handful of top independent environmental scientists (as well as 7-yr old Vegan Evan). Yet the corporate media has never explored this massive controversy.

Further– corporate-funded science has used some fuzzy math to distort the discussion on greenhouse gas potencies. They use an “arbitrary” 100-year timeframe (they openly admit that it’s arbitrary) which portrays carbon dioxide (CO2) as the most potent GHG.

Of course, we don’t have 100 years to fix climate change. We have maybe 10 years or 20 years at best or ZERO years at worst to forestall runaway climate change scenarios*. So, why wouldn’t scientists use a 10-year or 20-year timeframe to determine GHG priorities?

This is not an insignificant question. For the past 22 years, GHG potency has dominated international negotiations on how member nations should prioritize GHG reductions. And for the past 22 years, member nations have focused almost all negotiations on reducing CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.

Of course, we still don’t have sufficient alternatives to fossil fuels, so for the past 22 years, international negotiations have accomplished exactly nothing to reduce GHG emissions. Quite the opposite, GHG gas emissions from all major sectors of industry have continued to escalate and intensify climate change. We’re now on the verge of runaway climate change scenarios.

Still, the corporate-funded science and corporate-approved international negotiators maintain the 100-year standard and remain focused on CO2 emissions. Why do you think they are doing this?

It will help to know that the leading driver of CO2 emissions is fossil fuels from the energy sector, whereas the leading driver of methane (CH4) emissions is livestock production from GAAg.

So maintaining focus on CO2 emissions has effectively kept all the attention on fossil fuels for which we have no immediate alternatives, all the while distracting attention from the CH4 emissions from global livestock production for which we do have immediate and widely available alternatives. It’s effectively a shell game of distraction and misdirection that has served to protect status quo profits across both those industries, isn’t it?

This shell game makes perfect sense if you view it from the perspective of the BigFour financial companies. They own controlling interests in dominant companies across both BigMeat and BigOil as well the peripheral industries among the Meatocracy and the DeepState. So it’s all about protecting the power structure of the BigFour.

How do we begin to awaken our sleeping brothers and sisters who would join us in taking on such an incredible concentration of power? It’s a classic David and Goliath scenario. How do we neutralize it and save ourselves and our planet?

For starters, we need to understand “What Do THEY Want?“