Get the Picture?

Get the Picture?

Who stands to gain when orchards of fruit and nut trees, vineyards groaning 'neath the weight of plumping grapes and fields ripening with summer crops, are all rendered EXTINCT due to water shutoff?



August 14, 2009


By Julie Kay Smithson, researcher and consumer propertyrights@earthlink.net


Remember when you were a kid in school and were shown a picture and asked to pick out what didn't belong in the picture? It might have been a picture of a house, with a yard, porch, driveway, kids, and ... a giraffe sticking its head up from the back yard.

That was easy.

Here's another picture: spotted owls, tiger salamanders, Preble's Meadow jumping mice, Canadian gray wolves, Indiana bats, black-footed ferrets, polar bears, delta smelt, sage grouse, and ... the Endangered Species Act.

Not so easy, you say?

Once the truth emerges, it's actually even easier to decipher than the first picture. The answer is: the Endangered Species Act. It doesn't belong in the second picture because, truth be told, none of the species mentioned are in actual danger of "extinction." Entire communities of people -- including the Inuit of the Arctic -- are shoved toward actual extinction with this ruse.

Come ON, you say! The polar bear, surely! Didn't "they" prove the icecaps are disappearing?

What about the spotted owl? Wasn't logging to blame for "loss of critical habitat"?

Consider this axiom: When the emotions are twanged, the intellect is paralyzed. Many people -- otherwise intelligent and rational -- can be deceived if the ploy is delivered in such as way that it appears plausible.

What if the truth was that the polar bear was actually thriving in virtually all of its "historic range" and that icecaps, overall, were not disappearing worldwide?

What if the real threat to the spotted owl turned out to be the larger barred owl, which views spotted owls as menu items?

What if ... things were not as most people have believed?


What it means


Disinformation - False information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth. - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, May 2009. Function: noun. Date: 1939. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disinformation

Should people remain in a constant state of "Chicken Little / sky is falling" over whichever "poster species" has been trotted out for effect in order to exterminate responsible resource utilization in America?

What if loggers were never a threat to owls?

What if farmers, irrigators and ranchers were never a threat to smelt, salamanders and sage grouse?

What if beachgoers were never a threat to piping plovers?

What if the black-footed ferret had actually been imported from Russia and was not even a native species?

What if the "Preble's Meadow jumping mouse" was not even a distinct species, but merely an emotion-plucking name given to mice that are anything but endangered?

Who stands to gain when orchards of fruit and nut trees, vineyards groaning 'neath the weight of plumping grapes and fields ripening with summer crops, are all rendered EXTINCT due to water shutoff?

Consider the possibilities. Some call it 'conspiracy theory' when thoughtful people voice the probability that America's natural resources are being shut down in order to maintain them as collateral for bankers holding loans on our tanking economy.

Others wonder how litigious "environmental" and "conservation" organization groups seem to have figured out how to milk the apparent cash cow of the "Equal Access to Justice Act" in order to litigate endlessly. Certainly, many of "experts" in Washington, D.C., and other political hotbeds, may not be as "expert" as they'd have us believe. When cattle are plastered in the public consciousness as being somehow dangerous to our rangelands, how are they different from any other grazing animal? Is their domestic status somehow grounds for blacklisting them from eating and being raised / harvested for food? How is the raising of cattle in Brazil, Argentina, etc., less "harmful" to "the environment" than raising cattle in America and saving all that "fossil fuel" shipping food from thousands of miles to "nurture" our health? Locally grown food has been proven healthier for people, yet America's health is being drained in the form of her ability to be "food and fiber self-sufficient."

Will the salmon/suckerfish/smelt actually go extinct unless farming/irrigation/ranching go extinct?

No.

The "Endangered Species Act" appears to be the playbook for restricting/forbidding "activities" that have the "potential" to "adversely" impact any poster species. Substitute any "endangered," "threatened" or "candidate" species, change the location, and repeat as needed until there are no activities left that could be construed as AEI -- American Economic Independence.

Wherever we turn, we are expected to believe that, if we just use a little less, a little more less, and even more less -- Nirvana awaits. The truth is, no matter how little water farmers/irrigators use, it will always be "too much."

The truth is, no matter how few trees are grown and harvested in America, using the most efficient methods, it will always be "too many." "Old-growth" differs by tree species, and no trees live forever. Pines have shorter lifespans than redwoods. Oaks live longer than poplars. Once past their prime, decay and weather damage erode trees. Litigating forest harvest to a grinding halt is not "good for trees." It is good for someone wanting the public to believe that song and dance, but it is not "good" for trees, animals, birds, people, and the local and national economy. Perhaps the smoke inhalation factor benefits the "health care industry," but that is a left-handed "benefit."

"All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender, for it is all give and no take." - Mohandas Ghandi

Compromise, collaboration, cooperation -- result in eventual capitulation. Man is not the bane of Earth's existence. People are often very good for the earth. It's time they relearned that fact and stopped being reactionaries to "the Great Oz." Getting the picture is easy once the curtain is pulled back and the fellow with the megaphone is exposed!


976 words.


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