It appears Big Brother was annoyed by the recent discussions. Why am I not surprised?
RE
Big Brother came in and cleaned us out. We don't have a backup. The Forum Database was disconnected from the Main Page and the Diner for several hours. I got online with the service provider, and was informed the server that has the Diner Database was having trouble. They had us down for about eight hours. The whole site was down as I have been tying the main page and the forum together so the database has to be available on the entire website.
When the database came back Big Brother Biden had purged our discussion of shadow-banning and other You-Tube fuckifications. All I can do is re-post the proof of my shadow banning because I have it on my local machine.
I hope Veg can re-post what he posted.
The lesson to learn from this is that You-Tube is only following orders. There is no absolution with that discovery for them. But we know who is doing it. The Feds are on our ass. It is a damn good thing we do not break any laws. And it is disappointing they do.
While they had us down I watched 'How to Blow Up a Pipeline', and this experience makes me more radical than I was before we were fucked with. Watching people fight against big brother while big brother is taking a toothbrush to your database is inspiring.
All Diners should watch it.
I'd post it here but we have had enough trouble for now. We don't want copyright issues, and the film is less than a year old. Here is the trailer.
* Last nights shenanigans began with me losing internet at home.
Title: - Doomstead Diner YouTube Censorship
Post by: K-Dog on Feb 24, 2024, 02:17 PM
Re-posting the proof of shadow-banning which Homeland Security took down.
To makes sure this was real, I took the screenshots eight hours after I knew the shadow ban happened. One is from Germany and the other is from my own computer. I like a dark theme.
I am pretty much shadow banned everywhere I go. Content seems irrelevant now. Yesterday I checked a comment and found another ban. I only checked because I know I am a target. There was absolutely nothing in the comment to warrant a ban. I can't even remember what the comment was. It could have just as well been about basket weaving. The algorithms are here.
If I am this fucking special I should get paid. How about $100 for every post deleted. So far the Diner is owed about $800. That's right Mr. Federal Government, I want a hundred bucks for every fucking post you deleted. Such an agreement will make what you did legal. Until we get paid what you did is theft. RE, VEG and I expect to be paid. Thirty days should be enough time to send me a check.
And making people follow me around town again is only going to PISS ME OFF. But not in the way you wish. I'll just get stronger.
**********************************************
And I can re-post what was deleted from the Thom Harman's show emails.
My Email:
QuoteFrom: K-Dog <kdog@chasingthesquirrel.com> Subject: your censorship Date: Feb 23 2024, at 10:42 am To: thom@thomhartmann.com
It disappointing that you have let extreme ideologues do moderation in your tube chat.
Some months ago I used the word 'Nazi' in a comment and was told never to use that word or I would be banned. And I am. Watching your feed I heard you use the word three times in 15 seconds.
Most people never know they are shadow-banned, but I do. I have to check frequently if my own website has been - 'modified'. It has happened.
https://chasingthesquirrel.com/
To be clear. I can leave a comment in your you-tube feed. I can see the comment but if I go to a remote connection I am banned because my comment is not there.
You are responsible for this. Shadow-banning goes beyond simply not letting someone comment. Your deception is despicable.
How this started.
My use of the term Nazi was in regard to you and your feelings abut Trump. It was not an insult. It was only an expression that you have extreme feelings about the man. So do I.
Where I was going with it was there is a danger of not seeing the forest through the trees. Unlike you, I see both American political parties as corrupt. You seem to think the Democratic Party is a shining light on a hill. When it comes to the Democratic Party you are a Nazi in my opinion with blind faith in your cause. I see the Democratic party as the other side of the capitalist duopoly coin. We can agree to disagree.
Keith Hayes K-Dog
The response from Thom's webmaster:
QuoteHello
We do not actively monitor comments on YouTube. No comments have been removed by us. If you can see them In one place but not another, then that suggests that it is YouTube that is managing what you see. We have no control over what YouTube do.
Best wishes.
-Nigel-
Webmaster, Thom Hartmann Program Web: www.thomhartmann.com
* Doing a daily backup would cost more money and the only deep pocket around here right now is our webmaster, and my pocket is not so deep.
Title: - Doomstead Diner YouTube Censorship
Post by: K-Dog on Feb 24, 2024, 04:35 PM
Tucker Carlson, Mike Benz & the Censorship State of America
Some comrades in the bay area had a great conversation about online censorship. They reference a Tucker Carlson interview with Mike Benz. Here is that interview.
It is a strange thing that Tucker C has become a lightning bolt for enlightenment, but stranger things have happened.
* You will get more out of the TC interview if you listen to the comrades first.
Mike Benz is saying what I have known for twenty years. All attempts at meaningful change will be stopped by security forces. Meaningful change challenges existing arrangements, and existing arrangements are set by the owners of security forces.
Doom is a feature of the system. Baked in the cake.
Title: - Doomstead Diner YouTube Censorship
Post by: RE on Feb 24, 2024, 04:57 PM
I figured as much. I wonder if we contacted a tech reporter or political reporter about 1st ammendment issues for the MSM with the evidence if we could get one to write a story about it for one of the more lefty newzpapers? Maybe Der Spiegel or the New Yorker or Aljazeera?
Wise idea not to further provoke our Babysitters by being bad little boys, although even just resurrecting the thread could be enough for another round of redaction. Unfortunate about the backup issue, on my old host I could take my own backups daily for free if I wanted to, but I was lazy and rich in those days so I paid the extra fee to have it done automatically. Couldn't read the backups on my home computer because I didn't have MySQL installed, but I'm sure you could.
Invoicing them for the deletions isn't a bad idea, you should bill by the hour for downtime as well as administrative fees and a Pain & Suuffering penalty. 8) Standard consulting fee on the tech work, say $250/hr.
RE
Title: - Doomstead Diner YouTube Censorship
Post by: K-Dog on Feb 24, 2024, 05:08 PM
Quoteif we contacted a tech reporter or political reporter about 1st amendment issues for the MSM with the evidence if we could get one to write a story about it for one of the more lefty newzpapers?
Nobody cares, when you first realize how bad things are, the natural reaction is to be up in arms. Get the pitchforks out. Lefties, the serious hard core ones do know what is going on, because being a target of the FBI is synonymous with being Left in America. That has been true for a hundred years. But hard core leftists are rare. Rare enough to make no fucking difference. Not so funny the way that happened, because Marxism has a lot to offer.
You find out people don't and won't believe what is going on. It is too far outside what the average American thinks America is. People think it is no big deal, and only bad people have something to worry about. Their Overton window is painted over black. The government fucks us with our own dick, and we have nothing to say about it. Most people think it feels good.
Expect to start getting obscure references to microwave weapons and how the government beams dissidents with them. That sort of info is planted on people who need too be made to look crazy to everyone else. By them. You have been officially defined as disturbed. Be smart enough to figure out making you look crazy, or actually be crazy is a way to control you.
Operational Security is well advanced.
Title: - Doomstead Diner YouTube Censorship
Post by: K-Dog on Feb 25, 2024, 12:22 AM
Today's documentation. Note the page which has my comment has 22 comments but the page the world sees with my comment missing has 24 comments. Mine and another are missing. WHAT YOU SEE
The video is a good listen. I enjoy Nick's interviews. It is too bad I am not considered human enough to communicate with other people using You Tube chats.
This is my comment that is shadow-banned. This time if it becomes un-shadow-banned I will not delete this post. I was gracious enough to do that last time. That is futile. Our government is out of control.
QuoteThe shock that could bring people together could also manifest as chaos and complete social collapse. Keeping people ignorant which seems to be what the keepers of existing arrangements are now doing by pervasive censorship makes the odds of chaos manifesting greater than the odds of people coming together.
Because they won't be ready. American Tankies with their censorship industrial complex made them that way!
Title: - Doomstead Diner YouTube Censorship
Post by: K-Dog on Feb 28, 2024, 11:16 AM
It appears Big Brother was annoyed by the recent discussions. Why am I not surprised?
RE
What really might have done it, is me describing how 'they' block an email. 'They' may want you to know about it, so 'they' duplicate ever sentence in your email twice. Then all sentences are repeated three times. Then multiple copies of the email are returned to you.
We can't have victims comparing notes.
I can't remember if this has happened to me three or four times. The last time it happened was a couple of years ago.
* Obviously a private company does not do this kind of fuckification. It is easy to blame You Tube or the Alphabet company, and they are not blameless. But they are puppets on a string. Willing puppets, but puppets they are.
Title: Today's shadow ban.
Post by: K-Dog on Feb 29, 2024, 12:58 PM
These are the easiest posts to make. When you have been targeted by the US government and all comments you make are shadow banned. Generating a post like this is EZ. All I have to do is get on line anonymously. Fantasy Girl(https://chasingthesquirrel.com/doomstead/custom_avatar/avatar_24_1704054775.png) took the what you see pic for me in Amsterdam.
I watched this video. This idiot does not know that climate deniers are in charge of five-eye censorship. And he is Ok with Fascism Lite. Smart people know that censorship is a slippery slope, and any censorship will lead to total disenfranchisement of all dissent. Exactly what power wants.
Smart people are not in charge of this shitshow. Maybe that is why it is a shitshow?
FYI: recently there have been many bots allegedly from Russia and Iran on my tracking globe recently. They practically live here. Using VPN's to check the site remotely tells me that this website is banned in both Russia and Iran.
I wish AGENT SMITH had better things to do (https://duckduckgo.com/i/a746d5db.jpg) . I really do.
And the truth is there are plenty of important things for him to do. Banning me is not one of them.
Title: - Doomstead Diner YouTube Censorship
Post by: K-Dog on Mar 02, 2024, 10:12 AM
Why bother with another shadow-ban demo. I can do that tomorrow. I will bust it up.
Quote from: K-Dog on Today at 04:05 AM We have our own Uncle Joe.
Back up your work. Re-post anything I miss.
Or at least our own full time case manager. I wonder how many agents he has under him reviewing daily posting? What is the salary for that job? Do you think it pays better than 6 figures? For $250K/year + a fully paid spot in a private luxury apartment complex with 24/7 female CNAs on premises to call for help recruited from modeling agencies wearing a white mini skirt and halter top as uniforms, I will quit writing doom and write techno cornucopian propaganda instead. he facility should also have a chef graduated from the Cordon Bleu cooking school with your daily meals cooked to order from any 3* star restaurant from the Michelin guide. I should also get my daily sponge bath in a hot tub with the CNAs wearing their birthday suit only. Free high speed internet with fully paid subscriptions to all paywall sites, including streaming video like netflix and disney. and a 6' HD OLED monitor to watch video from my heated massaging electric reclining italian leather lift chair with 3 motor seat leg and backrest controls as well as on motorized casters and lazy susan to rotate it thru 360 degrees with 12 computers at 6 position around the clock. I should also have a motorized fridge and mini bar stocked with booze and snacks I can control via voice recgnition and will mix my drinks and roll over and hand them to me with a robotic arm. That's a very fair deal, IMHO.
RE
Title: - Doomstead Diner YouTube Censorship
Post by: K-Dog on Mar 29, 2024, 12:13 PM
Watch List Newz.
(https://duckduckgo.com/i/a746d5db.jpg)
This topic is now in an area where only members can see it. It is not visible by surveillance bots unless they log in.
Our recent attack by the men in black pants and white shirts sanitized our database. I have addressed that problem. One of the things the motherfuckers did was set the permissions on this topic and the 'Overshoot' topic, so that essentially only RE and I could see it.
Title: - Doomstead Diner YouTube Censorship
Post by: K-Dog on May 03, 2024, 01:10 PM
Things started off well. I almost watched it live and that let me leave the first comment. Doug Lain replied, I responded and he replied again. I have a thoughtful response to that reply and it advocates for civil disobedience. More of it or the status quo will continue to indulge in war crimes. Blowing up people is all the rage.
But when I see the comments below The Left Can't Make Use of the Gaza War? video to respond to Doug Lain I see our convo has been Truncated. Big Brother prevents me from continuing the conversation.
Doug Lain knows about government censorship in a way few people do. He would understand what happened to me. He knows such things go on. But that has nothing to do with this particular censorship incident. Unless.............
* Hearing the game author say he has balls of steel made my day. I needed it, Too many nimrods have pissed me off today and I needed some sanity.
Title: - Doomstead Diner YouTube Censorship
Post by: K-Dog on Jun 27, 2024, 03:29 PM
I have new proof of my perpetual You-Tube shadow-ban.
But why post it? Nobody cares.
Title: - Doomstead Diner YouTube Censorship
Post by: TDoS on Jun 27, 2024, 03:44 PM
Of course nobody cares. Not even surprising. It would like be me running off to REs old reddit and complaining there about web forums doing it, what's the point? Surly might even agree with me...and then ban my comments there!
The internet is great! Herd think and follow the leader across the board...or else! Just kick back and enjoy being part of the herd!
Cool job by the way, old computer stuff.
Title: - Doomstead Diner YouTube Censorship
Post by: RE on Jun 27, 2024, 07:54 PM
It is old stuff, part of a bygone era when the internet still held the promise of an open forum of communication where anyone could set up theit own Blog or Webzine and many different ideas and perspectives would be available to read and participate in.
Remember the early days of Blogging, wher Bloggers actually became semi-famous and had lots of readers on many different topics? The blog hosting services were free and there was minimal advertizing on the header or sidebar. On the Solstice, I went to check George Mobus' old blog, Question Everything. A few years back he cut down from about twice a month to 4 times/year, on the solstice and equinox. His last blog was Spring 2021.
Ugo Bardi ran Cassandra's Legacy (https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/) until 2023. He got targeted by TPTB and moved to open the Seneca Effect.
On March 2, 2011, I started the blog that I titled "Cassandra's Legacy." 10 years later, the blog had accumulated 974 posts, 332 followers, and more than 5 million visualizations (5289.929). Recently, the blog had stabilized at around 2,000-3,000 views per day. It is now moving to a different site with a different title: "The Seneca Effect"
The reasons for this move are not because I wanted to. I was forced to change. Cassandra was a small blog, by all means, but I always had the sensation that it was not without an impact on the nebulous constellation of the people, high up, whom we call "the powers that be" (the PTBs).
Seneca Effect has a Paywall. I love Ugo, but sorry I don't do paywalls. Individually they aren't much, but the whole beauty was in being able to go to many different blogs getting different perspectives. Ugo wants $6/mo for just basic membership. $55/year which is a better deal. Howwever, for this price I could subscribe to the NYT, Bloomberg or the WSJ, which would provide a whole lot more content than Ugo generates. Not that I think they're better sources quality wise, just they provide a whole lot more stuff. If I was to start paying, who to use my limited funds on? The Economist? Der Spiegel? Scientific American? I can't pick just a couple, so I don't buy any of them. Which sorely limits what is available to read anymore.
The advertizing with the popups, the paywalls, and targeting by TPTB did plenty of damage to blogging as a medium, but that wasn't the end of the problems. You also had the extremists, remeember the Gates of Vienna blog? The Norwegian shooter who mowed down a few hundred kids was a poster on that blog, which spewed Nazi rhetoric out like candy on Halloween.
Then of course the degeneration of the Commentariat on any blog with worthwhile information that did not follow the accepted narrative of TPTB, loading up with trolls of all kinds, some paid by goobermint, others who were just hobbyists who would flood the commentary with disinformation and ad hom attacks. Most bloggers would start out welcoming the idea of free speech, but it didn't take long for everyone to start moderating and removing comments. For a long time I operated by fighting fire with fire, getting into long Napalm Contests, where the commentary would escalate up in insult level and scatological language to thermonuclear levels. It was fun in a way,but it undermined any serious attempt at discussion and drove away the "nice" people who find such stuff appalling. So I finally joined the crowd and started axing posts and banning members who were persistent jackasses.
In any event, blogs are an anachronism now and so are forums. Social Media is the meme now, but that is little more than a popularity contest with trivial content. The MSM sites are just propaganda organs for TPTB. Scientifically oriented sites are loaded with techno-hopium, including even the most ecologically and environmentally aware ones. There are ZERO websites where you can engage in free and open discussion with intelligent and well informed people. The internet has morphed into strictly an entertainment and sales medium, tightly controlled by a few corporations that closely monitor all the traffic and marginalize anything that doesn't fit the narrative of perpetual growth and the myths of democracy, free markets and capitalism.
In this ocean of enshittification, the Diner floats along like a relic from another time when the Internet held promise and a few people could gather together to talk about the day's events. What people used to do before that in bars and barber shops and beauty parlors. Those places are all gone now also.
Once upon a time there was Camelot. Now there are only ruins and recollections of what might have been.
RE
Title: - Doomstead Diner YouTube Censorship
Post by: TDoS on Jun 28, 2024, 02:47 PM
Quote from: RE on Jun 27, 2024, 07:54 PMIn this ocean of enshittification, the Diner floats along like a relic from another time when the Internet held promise and a few people could gather together to talk about the day's events. What people used to do before that in bars and barber shops and beauty parlors. Those places are all gone now also.
Interestingly, not quite. I have a barber shop. It isn't near where I live, but every time I'm in town, that is where I go. The only place I go. Otherwise the wife occasionally takes a crack at it. He is just a barber, doesn't do shaves, he bought the place from the prior barber, quit his job and began barbering himself. I've never seen a single person pay him in anything other than cash, $10 each. We usually give him $15. We talk the size of our gardens, the cars we drive (pickups and older ones like he and I do), the Colonel (not a nickname but his old rank) and I got into a great conversation last time I was there about the ongoing "invasion" of America, he was terrifically entertaining, educated and logical. There was a young man in there as well, mentally challenged in some way, lost his cash on the way to the shop. The barber frequents the gym the young man runs the front door and concession stand for, he traded his haircut for free waters when the barber and his wife go there a few times a week to exercise. I swear, half the people in there didnt' really need a haircut, were just getting trimmed a little.
No different of a barber shop than when I was a kid.
The wife says I am just old, and being sentimental. I tell her she just doesn't know why I like the place...and it has nothing to do with how they cut my hair or trim my beard.
Not quite gone, if you roam the land widely and keep your eyes open.
Title: - Doomstead Diner YouTube Censorship
Post by: RE on Jun 28, 2024, 05:43 PM
There's an "old fashioned" Barber Shop up here as well in the valley, with the red/white pole and old chairs built like tanks also. Rettro, they do hot lather straight razor shaves also. However, the couple of times I used it there were not a dozen guys getting shaves talking politics. I was the only guy in the shop. 2 Barbers waiting for customers. Meanwhile, the local Unisex Salon in the next strip mall has 5 cutters working.
Sure, there are still some old Irish Pubs around also, but it's a statistical thing. They also are relics, throwbacks to another era when people in a community actually met and talked to each other. Sewing circles and Bridge Clubs, go watch the Ponies run at the track or just hang at the OTB parlor. These things exist sometimes, but they're not part of the culture and way of life. People are much more solitary and isolated.
RE
Title: - Doomstead Diner YouTube Censorship
Post by: TDoS on Jun 28, 2024, 09:15 PM
Quote from: RE on Jun 28, 2024, 05:43 PMSure, there are still some old Irish Pubs around also, but it's a statistical thing. They also are relics, throwbacks to another era when people in a community actually met and talked to each other. Sewing circles and Bridge Clubs, go watch the Ponies run at the track or just hang at the OTB parlor. These things exist sometimes, but they're not part of the culture and way of life. People are much more solitary and isolated. RE
I can go for it being a statistical thing. But in Appalchia, far more common than the more "advanced" parts of the country. Used to be more common out west as well, but that is greatly diminished since folks began buying up land and 2nd homes in beautiful spots along the Rockies.
Single barber, small town, one owner/barber, went in 1 day and there were 5 waiting, didn't have the time that morning. Went back the next and there were only 3...2 or 3 more came in after me (including the Colonel) and it was quite homey.
I can name some bars along the Montana/Canadian border as well that haven't been consumed by California 2nd home buyers. Rural, and not too near major attractions (like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon or ski areas).
There must be some places like that left in Alaska. Last time I was in Seward, it looked remotey enough. Homer maybe? Didn't spend enough time in Fairbanks to decide it was more big towney or small towney when I was there last. Hyder Alaska might qualify. Whitehorse in the Yukon? Never got a chance to roam around there to know for sure. Could probably name some towns on the Canadian side of the Great Plains, but haven't been there to see if they've changed in 20+ years now.
Title: The Seneca Effect - Ugo Bardi
Post by: RE on Jul 01, 2024, 05:57 AM
Quote from: RE on Jun 27, 2024, 07:54 PMUgo Bardi ran Cassandra's Legacy (https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/) until 2023. He got targeted by TPTB and moved to open the Seneca Effect.
On March 2, 2011, I started the blog that I titled "Cassandra's Legacy." 10 years later, the blog had accumulated 974 posts, 332 followers, and more than 5 million visualizations (5289.929). Recently, the blog had stabilized at around 2,000-3,000 views per day. It is now moving to a different site with a different title: "The Seneca Effect"
The reasons for this move are not because I wanted to. I was forced to change. Cassandra was a small blog, by all means, but I always had the sensation that it was not without an impact on the nebulous constellation of the people, high up, whom we call "the powers that be" (the PTBs).
Seneca Effect has a Paywall. I love Ugo, but sorry I don't do paywalls.
Although I didn't contribute any of my limited funds to Ugo's retirement income, dropping my email addy in before it asked for money put me on the mailing list for the blog. It automatically sends any blog published as an email. You can't comment this way, but you do get to read whatever he publishes.
Today's musing was about propaganda and how misinterpretation is often promulgated as truth. He focuses on Malthus, the famous 18th Century Doomer Nostradamus who predicted population overshoot and famine, along with attributing to him beliefs like the poor should be encouraged to haave poor hygiene so they would die off preferentially. Malthus is also held up by Denialists as an example of Doomers who were wrong in their prediction. Ugo demonstrates here how this isn't true at all, and is just a typical gimmick of misquoting and taking lines out of context by other ideologues later on.
Since I'm sure Ugo won't mind, I'll reprint all his blogs here on the Diner as soon as I get them in my email. We'll begin with today's. We can discuss his stuff here on the Diner. -----------------------------
We are All Joe Biden (and Malthus was not a Reptilian) Ugo Bardi Jul 1
(https://ecp.yusercontent.com/mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2Fw_523%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F0fc7fbae-118b-438a-9606-ea9fcd51fae2_1024x1024.jpeg&t=1719838404&ymreqid=ec5629fb-754d-bc31-1c4c-1c000101b500&sig=QRVB4f_fk7Vx6RNn2Pua9A--~D) Thomas Malthus as a Reptilian in a library holding a book titled "Essay on Population"
Thomas Malthus was not an evil Reptilian alien, but propaganda has turned him into one.
This post was inspired by Joe Biden's disastrous performance at the recent presidential debate with Donald Trump. It generated much sneering at poor Biden, showing, among many other things, how cruel our society can be—too much, really. But what impressed me most was how far from reality both debaters were. And how far from reality most of us are, or at least, are moving in that direction. I was writing in 2016 that "we are swimming in propaganda, drinking propaganda, eating propaganda." Reality is fast becoming one of those "unknown unknowns" that Donald Rumsfeld mentioned, and you don't have to be suffering from senile dementia to lose track of what's going on. So, let me discuss an example that appeared on my screen a few days ago. Just one among many.
Recently, a post from the Corbett Report appeared in my mailbox. It was an old report from 2011, but it had resurfaced from the depths of the Web. It went viral and received several comments on the social platform where it was posted and on the site where it had been posted year ago. Its success was, as usual, because it repeated and reinforced memes already present in people's heads. (and never forget Daniel Dennett's definition of human beings as "meme-infested apes")
It wouldn't be worth commenting on this low-level screed, but I thought I would mention it to you as an example of how easily reality can be hacked, cut to pieces, mashed, cooked, hashed, and boiled until it becomes a gray goo that can be described in whatever way the cooks want it to appear: nouvelle cuisine or slop from the mess hall. What difference does it make?
So let me cite from the Corbett site:
Malthus himself, an Anglican minister, wrote that: "We are bound in justice and honour formally to disdain the Right of the poor to support," arguing for a law making it illegal for the Anglican church to give any food, clothing or support to any children. Not content with consigning thousands of children to death for the misfortune of being born poor, however, Malthus also advocated actively contributing to the deaths of more of the poor through social engineering:
"Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlement in all marshy and unwholesome situations. But above all we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and restrain those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they are doing a service to mankind by protecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders."
The beauty of this is that it is a complete invention. Try as you may to find these words in the link where they are supposed to originate, and you can't. Maybe they were proffered by Reptilian aliens, but they do not exist anywhere in Malthus's "Essay on Population." Malthus was a prolific writer, and he left a corpus of many letters. But, a search using the usual engines returned nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nul. صفر.
In another post (see below), I already commented on how a sentence from one of Malthus's letters could be hacked out of the original text and presented as recommending genocide. It is clear from the complete text that Malthus was a generally benevolent person, not a bloodthirsty reptilian. In that case, at least the sentence was there. But here, no. It is invented from scratch, it doesn't exist anywhere else.
But the best of all was that none of the post's commenters (hundreds) wondered about the origin of what they were reading. Any lie goes once it is printed, and it suits the taste of readers.
Do you think the Corbett report is an exceptional case of madness that somehow found a way to appear in a Website? Not at all. Just look for keywords such as "eugenicist," "The Club of Rome," and "Malthus," and you'll find plenty of stuff that is not better than the Corbett report example.
Just as a more recent example (2023), from "The Atlantic" Magazine, you find
China's one-child policy can be directly traced to Limits to Growth, the Club of Rome's famous Malthusian screed warning of resource shortages and overpopulation.
Yes, except that if you follow the chain of references, you arrive to a 2005 paper by Susan Greenhalgh that's a pure fantasy based on no data, as I described in a post of mine.
And so, what is truth? We have been asking ourselves this question for two thousand years and still haven't found the answer.
h/t my friend Mera Te Aì 'Enge'ite, chief scientific officer of the Reptilian Starfleet.
From Cassandra's Legacy, 2016 (slightly edited) Malthus, the prophet of doom: Why bother reading the original when you can simply cut and paste from the Internet?
An excerpt from the book I am writing, "The Seneca Effect," that contains a chapter dedicated to the Irish famines. Above, the reverend Thomas Malthus (1766 - 1834)
The demolition of Thomas Malthus' work in our times is often based on accusing him of having predicted some awful catastrophe to occur in the near future, sometimes on a specific date. Then, since the catastrophe didn't occur, it follows that Malthus was completely wrong and nothing in his work can be salvaged. It is a well-tested method that was successfully used against "The Limits to Growth," the report to the Club of Rome that appeared in 1972.
Except Malthus never made the "wrong predictions" attributed to him, just as "The Limits to Growth" never made wrong predictions, either. There are no specific dates in Malthus' book "An Essay on the Principle of Population" for where and when famines or other catastrophes should occur. For instance, Malthus says that,
Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource of nature. The power of population is so superior to the power in the Earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction; and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague, advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.
— Malthus T.R. 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Chapter 7, p 44
You can surely say it is doomerish, but not something you can define as a "wrong prediction." Events similar to Malthus' description really occurred before Malthus's time, and in the "Essay," he normally refers to historical cases, especially those that occurred in China.
So, Malthus was not babbling about dark and dire things to come; he was describing and analyzing well-known events in his time. However, few people today seem interested in looking up the original text and prefer to maintain that "Malthus was wrong" by repeating the legend. And, by the way, even if Malthus had been guilty of "wrong predictions," that doesn't mean infinite population growth could occur on a finite planet.
The other way to demolish Malthus's ideas is to paint him as evil, in the sense that he had proposed or favored mass extermination as a consequence of his ideas. This is also a common legend and a great injustice done to Malthus. Over the great corpus written by Malthus, it is perfectly possible to find parts that we find objectionable today, especially in his description of "primitive" people whom he calls "wretched." In this respect, Malthus was a man of his times, and that was the prevalent opinion of Europeans regarding non-Europeans (and maybe, in some cases, still is, as described in the book "Can Non-Europeans Think?" by Dabashi and Mignolo, 2015).
Apart from that, Malthus' writings are clearly the work of a compassionate man who saw a future that he didn't like but that he felt was his duty to describe. Surely, there is no justification for criticizing him for things he never said, as it can be done by cutting and pasting fragments of his work and interpreting them out of context. For instance, Joel Mokyr, in his otherwise excellent book titled "Why Ireland Starved" (Mokyr 1983) reports this sentence from a letter that Malthus wrote to his friend David Ricardo,
The land in Ireland is infinitely more peopled than in England; and to give full effect to the natural resources of the country, a great part of the population should be swept from the soil.
Clearly, this sentence gives the impression that Malthus was advocating the extermination of the Irish. But the actual sentence that Malthus wrote reads, rather (Ricardo 2005) (emphasis added):
The land in Ireland is infinitely more peopled than in England; and to give full effect to the natural resources of the country, a great part of the population should be swept from the soil into large manufacturing and commercial Towns.
So, you see that Malthus wasn't proposing to kill anyone; rather, he was proposing the industrialization of Ireland to create prosperity in the country. Nevertheless, legends spread easily on the web, and you can see the truncated sentence by Malthus repeated over and over to demonstrate that Malthus was an evil person who proposed the extermination of the poor. Did Professor Mokyr truncate this phrase himself? Maybe not, but he was at least careless in cutting and pasting something that he read on the Web without worrying too much about verifying the original source.
The Web, indeed, is full of insults against Malthus. You can find an especially nasty (and misinformed one) attack against him at this link, where you can read that, yes, the Irish famine was all the fault of Malthus, who misinformed the British government, who then refused to help the poor Irish, who then starved - all based on that truncated sentence.
Sometimes, I feel we are swimming in propaganda, drinking propaganda, eating propaganda, and even being happy about doing that.