A new propaganda video created by an extreme environmental activist is making its way into America’s classrooms and The New York Times loves the whole idea. Enviro obsessive Annie Leonard, Greenpeace member and activist, has created a 20 minute video filled with anti-capitalist, anti-American propaganda to encourage kids to eschew “stuff,” calling the presentation “The Story of Stuff.”
Leonard’s propaganda piece is so anti-American she even begins her video by saying that her “friends” say she should describe the United States by using the symbol of a military tank because “it’s true in many countries and increasingly in our own.” And why is a tank “increasingly” the symbol of the USA? Because “more than 50% of our federal tax money is going for our military.” Naturally, this misleading propaganda doesn’t mention that a large portion of that federal military spending ends up going to the weekly pay and health care of our soldiers, something apparently Ms. Leonard is against. She goes on to say that a government’s job is to “take care of us, that’s their job.” Here she is trying to promote dependency and proves that she has no clue what a government is really for — especially in the U.S. system.
Leonard also starts the intro of the piece off saying that “some people matter more than others” in an effort to impress on kids that “the system” is evil and that “some” people are of lesser value as far as our system is concerned. Again, this is a clear abrogation of the simple truth that everyone in the U.S. is equal under the law but that the individual’s own abilities makes them what they are.
Naturally her symbol for “the corporation” is a bloated, fatcat with a top hat and a huge dollar sign on its stomach. Leonard claims that “the corporation looks bigger than the government because the corporation IS bigger than the government.” Of course what is misleading with this is that the business community is not “the” corporation. There are many thousands of corporations world wide, so presenting business as an evil “the corporation” is starkly anti-capitalist, unrealistic and dangerously simplistic for kids.
Her second chapter is the “explanation” of what “extraction” is. Leonard calls extraction “a fancy word for natural resource exploitation, which is a fancy word for trashing the planet.” Well, you can see where this is going, I am sure. From here every chapter shows how evil production, invention, capitalism, and economies are as kids are told that everything we eat, wear, and every tool we use is one more step toward destroying the planet.
Despite the fact that this is pure anti-American, anti-capitalist propaganda with no balance and no real economic or scientific truth, The New York Times celebrates this thing in its Sunday, May 10 piece. The Times story oos and ahs over this “sleeper hit” that has seeped into our nation’s classrooms and is awed that it caused one little boy to wonder if he should want to buy a set of Lego toys because toys are now thought to be evil thanks to Leonard’s film. Imagine frightening a kid so bad that he is afraid to want a toy! This is the level of zealotry we are talking about.
The Times is quite in love with the little film and makes sure to inform us that “educators” highly recommend it. “But many educators say the video is a boon to teachers as they struggle to address the gap in what textbooks say about the environment and what science has revealed in recent years,” the Times assures us.
Still, at least the Times gave the other side of the story, though it did wait until the end of its coverage to do so. The last few paragraphs detail a single parent that stands against the video and reports of a school in Montana that has decided not to use the propaganda flick in its classrooms.
I would suggest that if you are a parent you find out quickly if this anti-American video is being shown in your schools without your knowledge. I am sure it is a “sleeper hit” because teachers of far left ideology are sneaking it into classrooms without alerting parents.
(Photo credit: Eros Hoagland for The New York Times)
Steve Maley
KnightsofMalta
Great Another Retraining the left bring out
oklahomajon Tuesday, May 12th at 6:49AM EST (link)Itell you beteewn these people and peta Rush always said that they pretty much socialist and pretty hes much right on that all they want is poorer people and bigger goverment coarse al gore just want more moneyh in his pocket and the h—- with everybody else
Just one more reason why
arel Tuesday, May 12th at 7:12AM EST (link)it is important to talk to you children. If you don’t shape them someone like this will.
Arel
I never understood why
Praying (Diary) Tuesday, May 12th at 8:46AM EST (link)my mother spent all those years driving from Cincinnati to the Ohio capital in Columbus to “fight against what was happening to public education” in the 60s and 70s… My dear mother passed away in 2004 and I didn’t have my political awakening until last fall, so I can’t talk to her about this now, but I do want to say “Thanks Mom” – more people need to stand up and speak out and try to stop this nonsense – it was bad back then, but it is a thousand times worse now!!!
No!!!11!1!!1!1! The Bilderbergers are coming
I just watched this travesty of a video
jackhammer Tuesday, May 12th at 8:02AM EST (link)and it seems like the sort of thing our social studies teacher would have shown in hgih school,a dn the sort of thing we would have torn apart as a class. When I think back to my high school and elementary days I remember there being a good portion of leftist whackos there, ones who would make up politically correct “facts” that all turned out to be fabrications…and I remmber a classroom full of people who knew they were whackos adn didn’t buy into any of it.
but that was when we were in 8th grade and up, so maybe showing this to kids of an age where they are still intereted in Lego might be a different thing…but it is typical for those indoctrination loving teachers. Motivate your kids to be the rabble rousers with teachers liek that…fill them with info, and let them loose on them….teachers can’t stand when they are shown up by students….
Agreed
mikefisk (Diary) Tuesday, May 12th at 8:31AM EST (link)It’s been a while since I was in K-12 public school, but the alarming thing about this is that such “educational” materials have been surreptitiously placed into the school curriculum as far back as even I can remember in school (I started first grade twenty years ago, and they had similar stuff being showed then). I think the only real difference is that they are starting to try to draw more things into the equation for people to hate in terms of “saving the planet” than they used to… back then, it was just one’s parents and McDonald’s that were the “enemy”…
“Once within the maw of Leviathan, degree of digestion is irrelevant.” – Michael Fisk
9.25, -4.77
OMG -- I raged after one minute
danielhill2008 (Diary) Tuesday, May 12th at 8:34AM EST (link)I tried, but couldn’t watch more than a couple minutes of this “work”. I have a very bright 10-year-old nephew (thank God my kids are grown) who exhibits some behavioral problems in school, and when his dad, my brother, tries to talk to him about what’s wrong, he says he’s worried about global warming, war, torture, etc. He’s probably seen this video. I’ve told my brother more than once, get him out of that school.
"It's the governments job to take care of you."
davo119 Tuesday, May 12th at 4:48PM EST (link)I made it through 2′ 21″ before I pulled the plug. I’m making an assumption here. I assume the entire presentation is an amplification of this statement.
Since “Global Warming ” has run out of steam the wacko’s are all ready with a new version. They probably have infinite variations on the same theme.
Btw why can’t you run a linear system on a finite planet? What does one have to do with the other?
http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~david/handouts/linear-systems/linear-systems.html
She is using jargon to mystify the spellbound children. It is, in fact, nothing but shameless propaganda.
Never give in! Never! Never! Never!
Wow, this woman really is a nutjob.
scottbomb (Diary) Tuesday, May 12th at 8:35AM EST (link)Or maybe just a leftist liar. Is there a difference?
www.HowObamaGotElected.com
“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism’, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” – Norman Thomas, U.S. Socialist Party presidential candidate 1940, 1944 and 1948
Some people conserve, Some never will
citadelsdaughter Tuesday, May 12th at 9:42AM EST (link)School children learn that conservation of our nation’s resources is a good thing. Some will decide to turn off the lights when they leave the room, Some children will still need reminding. Teaching responsibility is a constant process. Anyone who has taught children in home or in school knows that the most effective learning occurs when a lesson is reinforced repeatedly and in various ways. This video is one aspect of larger message that starts when a child is first told “Leave the campsite cleaner than you found it”
you're missing the point, I think.
randy streu (Diary) Tuesday, May 12th at 9:54AM EST (link)Nobody is saying students shouldn’t be taught that it’s an okay thing to turn out the lights when you leave a room, or throw your garbage in a trash bin. They ARE saying this video is propagandistic, anti-American CRAP.
Blogging also at
SLC Republitarian
The Minority Report
This is the ultimate strategy to annihilate American Exceptionalism
civil truth (Diary) Tuesday, May 12th at 10:13AM EST (link)Indoctrination of our children that America is a blight upon the world and that our system of governance needs to be overthrown and replaced by a pristine, utopian fantasy of saving the world that is an apology for the need for wise, leaders to force everyone to conform to their plans by controlling every aspect of their life in the guise of environmentalims.
Parodying proselytizing religion, it starts by seeking to convict the listeners of their sins and guilt (in this case against the planet), identifies evil devils against whom the listeners are to be stirred up into anger and cast out (the military, the Corporation, energy companies, free enterprise), and the path of salvation (a government run by benevolent leaders who know what’s best for us all).
And although I didn’t read this specifically in the review, I am sure that American is also condemned uniquely as an enemy of the world (ravenous consumers of an unfair share of the world’s goods, exploiter of workers in other nations) and presumably the source of the world’s ill, and we need to make atonement to the world and adopt some supargovernmental agency’s authority over our laws and actions to put up in our rightful place.
What the film ignores is the other side of the facade – what happens to those who don’t conform; the persecution, the arrests, the forced reeducations coupled with torture and executions. The verdict of history as to the outcome of totalitarian utopias.
And the children are being groomed to become the storm troopers, the brownshirts to impose this vision – and eventually the prison guards and executioners.
The greatest evil…is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern. -C.S. Lewis
http://www.gmsplace.com/
I wonder how long it will be before
TNJim (Diary) Tuesday, May 12th at 10:34AM EST (link)this thing is required viewing like Gore’s “An Inconvenient
LieTruth” was? Of course, alternate opinions in the ensuing discussion won’t be allowed or at least may result in a failing grade. It’s just so pitiful and enraging how these people use the kids to gain and maintain their power and influence on society, because that’s exactly what it is.