Jim Beers: The Danger of Propaganda

FREDERICKSBURG (VA.) FREE LANCE-STA April 12, 2006 This article, that
achieved wide circulation, lauds a beaver dam that plugged a man-made dam
that had existed "since the 1700's". The grateful farmer was featured
because Federal "wetland" regulations had precluded him from fixing the dam
due to costs and red tape. Totally missing from the article was any
question about the legality or appropriateness of such Federal wetland
regulations, the insanity of letting a beaver do what a human (landowner) is
prohibited from doing, or the far more important harms that uncontrolled
beaver populations wreak annually. No, this bit of animal rights puffery is
meant to complement the article that ran several weeks ago in our N.
Virginia paper wherein a County "naturalist" whined on about how fortunate
we are in this county to have beavers building dams to "hold back flood
water". For the rest of you, our County is heavily populated, has an annual
budget over $3 Billion, and won't grant a 1-foot variance for a friend to
build a garage on his house (but beaver dams are to be tolerated wherever
they might occur).

By terry glavin

This widely circulated article from Canada bemoans the failure of the
central government in Ottawa to give complete protection to the "Interior
Fraser Coho salmon" a "Close cousin of the Columbia River Coho". Also
mentioned is the fact that the central government gave more protection to
the "Scotian Shelf northern bottlenose whale" while not giving "more"
protection to either the "North Atlantic" or the "Newfoundland or Labrador"
or the "Laurentian North" or the "Maritimes" cod. The radical professors
and extremist organizations in both nations are in the midst of splitting
hairs everywhere. This fishery sophistry about how the "sky is falling"
everywhere because this part of the "northern" or the "shelf" or such and
such waters is down is merely a smokescreen to close fisheries, declare
"marine sanctuaries" (i.e. wet wilderness) and extend the authority of
environmental and animal rights movements through expanded central
government surrogates. No mention is made of unmanaged seal or sea lion or
whale predation on the salmons or cod of concern. No mention is made of the
impact of marine mammal population or fish populations on the salmon or
their food or habitats. No solution is mentioned but closure of commercial
fisheries. The original alarms of 35 years ago in the US and the UN about
"species" have devolved into absurdities as transparent as any of the
self-serving lies put forth by the Stalins of yesteryear or the Mugabe
government of today.

Meet the neighbors

By Mary Battiata

This feature from the Sunday Washington Post Magazine goes on at great
length with fictional historical maps, gratuitous reference to trappers and
trapping, and the usual puffery about "living with" coyotes like beavers, no
matter what. While a western coyote in an old and rare leg hold trap is
featured in a half-page photo, and "biologists" are shown "examining" signs
and other etceteras, and two pups "play" with their mommy in another photo,
and 4 other photos show coyotes running around urban setting much like a pet
dog; there are no photos of killed or injured pets or the children attacked
by coyotes. Buried in the nine pages is a reference that in Vancouver,
British Columbia alone there have been "six reported coyote attacks on small
children" recently. Not to worry though, evidently only "tabloid
newspapers" reported them. No mention is made of the numerous attacks
elsewhere. Like sharks and wolves and cougars, the impression is left that
we know about all attacks of the past hundreds of years (we do not) and it
is mostly our fault anyway. Culling will only make us "up to our ears in
cats and rats" (a lie). Historic western controls are dismissed as
ineffective (they were and are not). Coyotes are credited with reproducing
more when their numbers are low "unlike deer and Canada geese"; another lie
since all three and nearly all animals do this. Canada is given credit for
developing humane traps while the fact that the US spent millions to do so
goes unmentioned. Ninety percent of this piece is silliness directed at
children by activists about coyotes controlling rats and deer and being
"wilderness" and, worst of all like the beaver, an animal we cannot and
should not do anything about except to tolerate and study them. Any harm
they cause is "our fault" for feeding them or misbehaving in their presence
(we didn't "puff up or we ran, or looked away, etc.) or because of illness
on the part of the poor coyote. In other words, they are sacred and should
be wherever and in whatever numbers "government" and "scientists" permit
(that is whatever the animal does like cows in India).

Mother, toddler injured in attack in national park Updated: 12:51 a.m. ET
April 14, 2006 This article further heightens the absurdities of animals in
our midst and the decreasing value of human life that is masked by faux
concern for animals. After this National Park Bear kills the little girl
and puts her mother and brother in the hospital a park employee "fired a
shot" that scared the animal off. Why didn't he kill it? "Dogs failed to
pick up the bear's trail". With all the "humane" efforts to kill bear
hunting and the use of dogs, where are "bear" dogs supposed to come from (it
takes years and lots of dedicated work to train a pack)? There were "only 56
documented killings of humans by black bears in North America in the past
100 years."

Says who? Based on what? How many injuries? Where? How many on un-hunted
and unmanaged Federal lands? According to "Rangers at the Cherokee National
Forest" " a disease, tumor, or parasite might have made the animal more
aggressive". Who believes this stuff? If I said that about a pit bull or
Doberman that attacked someone, I would be run out of town on a rail but say
it about a bear or coyote or wolf and everyone just nods and purses their
lips. The truth is that for decades the national parks have NOT MANAGED
these predators or the large mammals on the National Park and the National
Forests are getting just as bad. There are TOO MANY bears and other large
predators on many of these areas and they have no fear of people as they are
live trapped and coddled like spoiled children which is just what "Rangers"
and much of the public has come to think of them. Information about
populations and incidents are both unreliable and unavailable to the public
much like the secret information about the government and radical groups for
two years as the Ivory-billed Woodpecker hoax was conceived and implemented
in secret. My Freedom of Information Request for information regarding that
secret two-year period of government collusion with certain groups) was
denied by government lawyers because after 30 plus years in the US Fish and
Wildlife service I did not show that I would "understand" the documents I
requested.

This current spate of distortions and propaganda is not unusual. Current
attempts to get millions of Federal dollars to control a bark beetle
infestation that has destroyed millions of acres of Colorado forests, while
good for reelecting Colorado politicians, fails to mention in all the news
releases that the bark beetle is a NATIVE SPECIES. If it were an "Invasive
Species" you can bet every news release would be focused on that aspect as a
means of getting Federal Invasive Species (synonymous with Native Ecosystem)
Authority and a Federal mandate. The fact that logging mills are closing
all over the West (like slaughterhouses all over the country) and bear and
cougar dog packs are also disappearing all due to purposeful
government/radical legislation and enforcement goes unmentioned. The fact
that while wolves decimate Montana elk herds and government (both state and
federal) either deny it is caused by wolves or blame other factors (disease,
habitat, global warming, etc.) the historic elk winter counts go undone or
are flown at varying times to make historic data worthless as the wolves
multiply and spread.

It has gone on so long now that we, like those Germans of yesteryear, accept
this stuff. Rewards and no accountability and government secrecy all play
their part. Like the Colorado "professor" that made all the awful
statements about 9-11 and was shown to have lied about his background to get
a racial set-aside position at the University, or the Colorado teacher that
showed his geography class biased and blatantly political videos: government
employment is sacrosanct and unaccountable. They kept their jobs with a
smile and an arrogant return to work that merely encouraged others. Like
the Alabama teacher running for partisan office that showed his math
students a profane and blatantly hateful (of the President) film during
class and then keeps teaching and any discipline is kept secret: truth,
skill, and accountability no longer matter. Like the Federal Congressman
that requested an audit of the US Fish and Wildlife Service administration
of the hunting and fishing excise taxes and then he and the US Fish and
Wildlife Service and even the General Accountability Office refuse to
divulge what is being audited or why and audit was even requested. Be it
Federal "Rangers" or "environmental reporters" or "Park employees" or
"biologists" or "researchers" or "auditors" or politicians, the rights and
welfare of citizens are disparaged in a fog of half-truths, distortions, and
outright lies intended to justify radical hidden agendas.

The purpose of government is to first and foremost protect the rights of
its' citizens, not to destroy them. The purpose of scientific inquiry is to make
facts, as best we can determine, available to the people and their
government TO INCORPORATE in, but not to dictate, day-to-day
decision-making. Further, in the Republic that is and has been the United
States of America, it is repugnant for government to be a tool of
restricting rights of some at the behest of others or even, unimaginably, on
behalf of wild or domestic animals.

Plants and animals, ecosystems encompassing all manner of human presence,
and human societies have and will continue to fluctuate and evolve due to
myriad factors. The current fad of excusing any native wild thing as
sacrosanct and any non-native thing as bad is wrong-headed. To further
emphasize only the beneficial aspects of wild things interacting with and
occurring in proximity to human habitation and activities is a purposeful
disservice meant to further diminish the understanding of the young and
urbanites of the need for management and control of species both in numbers
and distribution. Extending this propaganda to justify eliminating all uses
of natural resources by never having enough of any subgroup of any species
that are in turn the justification for marine sanctuaries, wilderness, and
other land closures from roadless areas on public lands to "habitat" taken
without compensation on private property is not only a truly terrible
perversion of government power but is ultimately a practice that perverts
our government back to the sort of uncaring dictatorship our Founding
Fathers fought and died to overthrow.

Whether it is politicians keeping their activities secret or bureaucrats
growing their power or reporters and news media publishing propaganda the
effect is the same, a public slowly being brainwashed to accept radical
agendas serving government and extremist groups. Beaver create much damage
and even disease and should be kept in low numbers around suburban areas,
excluded from urban areas, and kept in numbers and distributions throughout
rural areas consistent with the needs and desires of the people in those
areas of individual states. Ditto for coyotes. Bears on Tennessee public
lands (including National Parks) should be kept below levels where they
become either nuisances or certainly before they reach dangerous levels
given human uses and activities. Salmon and marine mammals should be viewed
holistically and sustainable commercial exploitation consistent with marine
mammal diversity (not abundance) should place human uses equal to any
biological hair-splitting or reluctance to address marine mammal
overabundance. Not one cent of public money should have been or should be
spent on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker until and unless it is proven to exist;
such abuse of the public Treasury should be punished. Native bark beetles
should be exterminated in so far as possible and non-native brown trout,
pheasants, and efficient roadside groundcovers (as but a few examples)
should be encouraged and enjoyed. Logging mills, like slaughterhouses,
should not be allowed to slowly disappear as a result of wrong-headed laws
and regulatory strangulation. Public employees from teachers to bureaucrats
shown to have lied in performance of their duties should be fired
expeditiously, like criminals, as deterrence to others.

Finally, newspapers and reporters and teachers that pump out this propaganda
should be called on it publicly and we should all make it our business to
not just shake our heads when we read or hear this stuff. We should write
the paper, phone the editor, e-mail the authors, talk to the teachers and
school administrators and tell them why they are wrong and ask them to
retract what they wrote or correct such things in the future. If they
persist you know where they are coming from and you should tell others to
drop the newspaper or go to the principal or just publicize what is going
on. People can make up their mind. It is really like campaign finance
reform, if people know when they vote who is giving what to whom, they will
do the right thing.

- If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others. Thanks.

- This article and other recent articles by Jim Beers can be found at
http://jimbeers.blogster.com (Jim Beers Common Sense) or at
http://www.jimbeers.net

- Jim Beers is available for consulting or to speak. Contact:
jimbeers7@verizon.net

- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist,
Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow.

He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and
Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western
Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the
Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security
Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress;
twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60
Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to
expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Centreville,
Virginia with his wife of many decades.

The Danger of Propaganda - ACHTUNG!