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.


Providing carefully researched information since 1999. propertyrights@earthlink.net Websites: http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org and http://propertyrightsresearch.blogspot.com

Who loves ya, baby? What sage grouse really need & want

Who loves ya, baby? What sage grouse really need and want




August 11, 2009




By Julie Kay Smithson propertyrights@earthlink.net




I believe to my very core that responsible ranchers should never apologize for the many things they are doing right. Having driven many of the most rural roads of Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Oregon, New Mexico, Colorado, etc., I have witnessed evidence of the caring these strong families have poured into these places. If anything, they must be even more dedicated to these places than the farmers of the East, because forgiving weather conditions seldom happen in the West.

It is very important to me that my research be distilled into something that offers a means for those whose very lives and multi-generational family legacies, to understand the ways in which language has been used very effectively (until now) to put them out of business and off the land.

It is something considered by very few until now -- that words on paper could be such a powerful tool when employed against their honest blood, sweat and tears equity.

The sage grouse is far more important and precious to ranchers than most of them can even put into words, because it is a species that validates their reasons for getting into ranching in the first place: to make land and water burst with abundance in the form of, not only healthy cattle ranging the West, but also the inherent beauty of the arid places in America being helped, not hurt, by men with hope in their hearts and families, too.

The sage grouse is not the only one with an historic range, a mating dance, and the bond of family and offspring. So, too, it is with the ranchers and their families sprinkled across these wide-open places with strange-sounding names that keep calling, calling those whose devotion is evidenced in streams with green along their courses. Men, women and their children still make it their life's work to be part of the abundance, a help to the flora and fauna, a foundation upon which the deer and the antelope may not only play, but may also thrive.

Unkempt places, locked down and shut down, bear silent witness to lack of stewardship. One need look no further than the difference between a working ranch where Westerners show their love in ways not seen by most, but where a quiet pride exists every corner -- and one where the land is blowin' in the wind.

Water rights, grazing rights, property rights -- these rights are never taken for granted by ranchers, who are the real environmentalists.

Just as Patrick Henry remains a building block of America with his soul-stirring words, as powerful today as they were on March 23, 1775 -- "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me: Give me liberty or give me death!" Read his entire impassioned speech here: http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/henry-liberty.html -- so, too, our western neighbors hold true to the building blocks that feed our bodies good, healthful meat, and feed our souls the vast beauties of the places they call home, thereby keeping us free in this God-beloved land of America!



529 words.

Also posted on the Internet here:

http://www.klamathbucketbrigade.org/Smithson_Wholovesyababy081209.htm