To me this entire story positively reeks of stagecraft. But, even if we take it at face value it demonstrates how screwed up our food system really is.
MONDAY, JAN. 26, 2015 PHOTO In this Monday, Jan. 26, 2015 photo, cows are milked on one of the carousels in a milking parlor on the Fair Oaks Farms in Fair Oaks, Ind. Fairlife, which is rolling out nationally in coming weeks, is the product of a joint venture between Select Milk Producers, a dairy cooperative, and Coca-Cola. The product is filtered to have more protein and less sugar than regular milk. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Here’s the story in tiny nutshell: The McCloskeys were sued for animal cruelty at their dairy farm following an undercover employee’s secretly videotaping several instances with four workers involved. Now a settlement has been reached:
Completely denatured milk sold as natural, tasty and healthy
The Fairlife ads, cartoon milk dresses. Classy.
A $21 million Settlement has been reached in a class action lawsuit filed against Defendants The Coca-Cola Company (“TCCC”), fairlife, LLC (“fairlife”), Fair Oaks Farms, LLC (“FOF”), Mike McCloskey and Sue McCloskey (“the McCloskeys”), and Select Milk Producers, Inc. (“Select”), relating to fairlife and FOF Milk Products. The lawsuit alleges that Defendants falsely labeled and marketed certain dairy products produced using milk from cows that were allegedly not treated humanely. Defendants deny all allegations and have settled this lawsuit to avoid further litigation.
The Court has not decided who is right.You may submit a Claim Form to receive 25% of the average retail purchase price, up to $100, for your purchases of fairlife Milk Products and FOF Milk Products, if the products were purchased for personal use and not for resale, and were purchased on or before April 27, 2022. Claim Forms submitted without Valid Proof of Purchase will be capped at a Cash Award of up to $20 and Claim Forms submitted with Valid Proof of Purchase will be capped at a Cash Award of up to $80, subject to certain adjustments (upward and downward) depending on the number of claims submitted.
So, there’s video evidence, but the Court has not decided who is right. Must be so confusing, poor kids.
But you get some money anyway if you can come up with your milk purchase receipt, potentially from 2015. Brilliant.
In an interview the McCloskeys talk about all the fantastic improvements they’ve made to garner public trust once again in their dairy products since the video’s release, and the broad coverage of ‘the scandal’ by MSM (I do believe they neglected to mention the product line was owned by Coca-Cola, but I may have missed that part and really do not care to re-listen. It was annoying enough the first time listening to Mike Rowe pander to these creeps).
What I did hear in the interview was how proud the McCloskeys are now of their complete video surveillance system, how they are well on the road to becoming ‘Net Zero’ so that they can help curb climate change as responsible business owners, and how very excited they were to see the gleam in the eye of the school children who came there to tour their facilities and were so thrilled to see cows being milked by carousel machine.
Now they might grow up to become mechanical engineers, Mrs. McCloskey beamed!
I’m so excited for our Green future too, aren’t you?!
Have you ever experienced unrequited love? Ever love someone who was so out of your league they didn’t know you existed? Ever been horribly, unfairly, unceremoniously jilted by a lover? Ever love someone for years who treated you like shit most of the time? Ever love someone who turned out to be completely different than the one you thought you fell in love with?
Ever tried to muster up feelings of love for someone or something you did not, could not, love?
And yet still, despite its ephemeral nature—from its meaning, to its translation, to how it is individually experienced—some of our greatest thinkers, philosophers, social critics, poets, not to mention a good chunk of pop culture, still repeats “Love is the answer.”
We should love everyone and especially nature. That’s what’s wrong with the world, they insist, not enough love. And every time I hear this, I roll my eyes, even when it comes from someone I love.
Most recently I heard it in an interview coming from Wendell Berry (link). How someone so inspiring, who has led such a charmed and wholesome and respectable life, who now at an advanced age seems so wise, could repeat such nonsense confirms for me only one thing: “We don’t see things for what they are, we see them for what we are.”
Love is the answer to the West’s problems, they say, because you take care of what you love. And the younger thinker and social critic Paul Kingsnorth agrees with him.
How lovely.
Now here’s a homework assignment I’d love to give to these fools. Kingsnorth likes to study tribal cultures, which I think is really cool. He likes them because they have a solid home in nature, unlike Westerners. And I agree. So, I think he should ask all those tribal folks their opinions about this ‘love’ solution so many Western thinkers keep harping on about.
My bet is, it doesn’t translate. At all. I bet he’d have to write an entire essay for them about what he means by love in the first place, let alone how he expects that will solve anything.
How do you make someone love you? Or care about you? I have a difficult time imagining a more monumental task. And yet, somehow those who care about nature are tasked with getting those very great many, like the Technocrats and their vast entourages, to not only love it, but to respect it, to care for it, to nurture it even. Seriously?
What a debilitating delusion they are spewing. And not just once or twice out of an understandable desperation. But constantly, for decades now.
Yet to call it out for the obvious shallow fantasy that it is, I become the bitch.
Well then, so be it. Let me play that role for a minute or two right now.
Imagine Mother Nature is your very own mother. Maybe you love your mother, let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. You love her, but your sisters love her more. And your mother and your sisters are screaming at you—“You don’t love me!” “You don’t care about me!” “You are exploiting me and you must stop!”
How will you respond to their shrieks and demands of love and care? Deny your lack of love, perhaps? Maybe yell back that they are all wrong about you? Maybe ask what they mean by that?
You might be so sure of your love that you ask what you can do to prove it?
Maybe Mom replies she wants you to write her a poem professing your loving feelings. So you do. You go even further, and you write 10 poems and throw in a tediously long essay to boot. And you’re very proud of your efforts and you feel you’ve really captured the intense love you have for her.
And she says she likes them, even the tediously long essay. In fact, everyone who loves her also agrees how perfectly you’ve captured those feelings of love through your words. Astonishing.
But, after all, those are just words, and you said to love her is to care for her, so she wants to see some action.
So with the same zeal you wrote the ten poems and tediously long essay you tackle the part where your loving words become caring actions.
You chop wood and carry water for her. You refrain from any negativity in her presence, because she doesn’t like it. You insist that everyone in her company, through shame or coercion or even force, abide by her rules and preferences.
At long last, she is satisfied with your efforts. You can feel the power of her appreciation filling your heart and coursing through your veins.
She tells you, “Child, you are a true master of loving care!”
“Except, you see, there’s so many children over there who don’t love me. And their lack of love for me is upstaging your love. Their lack of love is demonstrably more powerful than your true love. What can you do about this?”
And you reply, “Great Mother, don’t you worry, I can make them love you like I do!”
Really? Can you? What makes you so sure about that?
You read them your poems, and they smirk. Then they read your tediously long essay and shrug. You show them your admirable work in fetching wood and carrying water for your Great Mother, and they respond by clear cutting your forest and damming your river.
Then they tell you their favorite joke, laughing all along.
The joke goes like this: There were these three dudes on a yacht. One was an American, another was Russian, and the third one was Mexican. They were all drinking and getting boastful as drunken men like to do.
The Russian said, “In my country, we have so much vodka we can afford to throw it away!” And he takes a full bottle of vodka and throws it into the ocean.
They all laugh harder. So, the Mexican says, “In my country, we have so much tequila we can afford to throw it away!” And he takes a full bottle of tequila and throws it overboard.
And they all laugh harder still. Then the American says, “Well, in my country we have so many . . .
And he picks up the Mexican and throws him overboard.
The Russian and American look at each and howl with laughter. And the American blurts out between guffaws, “Tough love!”
To The Holy Spirit
O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken, Who in necessity and in bounty wait, Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken, By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate.
Anyone who has been able to see through the Scamdemic surrounding Covid1984 should now be able to connect the dots in the manufactured climate crisis.
Climate Change is the Red Herring of global weather control efforts.
“It is now increasingly difficult to get a job in physics without working for the military, in plant biology without working for agribusiness giants, in chemistry without working for the chemical industry, or in medical research, without working for drug companies. Myself, I joined global change research, not because it was lucrative, but because I was inspired by the mysteries of the oceans, atmosphere, and how life controls our climate, and concerned that the balance of these systems was in grave danger from our pollution. But in this era of “wealth creation”, such inspiration is no longer considered a valid driving force for science. We must all be seen to make money. Insecure young scientists may feel particularly that “beggars can’t be choosers”, and put their efforts into climate engineering. I already know colleagues drawn into this..
The “wealth creation” concept implies a marketable product. A healthy, beautiful, diverse planet belongs to nobody and cannot be sold, therefore there is little money to be made investigating it. The message that we should consume less fossil fuel cannot be sold. On the other hand, industry can sell oil, coal, electricity, and then later the same companies can sell the technology – probably the price will have to be paid by future governments – to fix the problems they have caused: pipelines to the deep sea, rockets to the stratosphere, fertilisers for the ocean. This is also good for the national growth statistics: it is the classic story that if we make a mess and then have to clean it up, money changes hands twice so the economy seems to be booming and we are all working hard.
However, we will not find the world a better place as a result! The technical fix is good for business and GNP figures, but not so good for the rest of us. The irony is summed up well by the title of another RITE project: “A study concerning Global Environmental Improvement through the development of air-pollution-philic plants” (plants which love pollution)!
And to make this money, the companies will have to file patents on their new technology. As noted above, RITE already has many patents. Can we envisage patents for controlling the oceans, algae, forests, deserts, stratosphere? There is already an enormous outcry against genetic engineering patents. Will we now have to pay royalties to live in a world with a stable climate, something which we used to take for granted in the preindustrial age?
With patents will also come secrecy. This is inefficient, encouraging duplication of work and propogation of stupid ideas. It is also dangerous, if we have no warning of proposals before they are actually tried out on our only planet. And many climate engineering schemes which might be beneficial for one community might be harmful to another, we all have a right to know and respond to what is planned.”
“And even if a climate engineering scheme is truly reversible, this implies that it will not be long lasting. To offset the accumulated greenhouse gas warming, future generations would have the burden of continuously engineering the climate to stay cool. The engineers have to face not only the problems of predicting biogeochemistry and dynamics, but also to get international cooperation and money to sustain it. Economists still assume that growth will continue for ever, and that we will always be able to develop more technology to cope with the legacy of the past. They do not include in their models the possibility of a collapse of world social order, and with it, the programmes to artificially cool an otherwise overheated planet.” https://arizonaskywatch.com/article/articles/Climate_Engineering_1996_Ben_Matthews.pdf
Yes, it’s a thing and it sounds a lot like modern slavery.
Social Impact Investing. Doesn’t that sound super? Now the corporations and governments, through their other super sounding ‘Public-Private Partnerships’ (the latest fancy phrase for fascism) will be openly programming your children, no more beating around the bush about it.
This is about surveillance, its proliferation and its management. It’s also exactly why I quit teaching. It became painfully obvious within the university systems involved with educational technology that this was the direction they were heading years ago.
They tried to sell it to us all wrapped in glowing marketing slogans, appealing to teachers’ better instincts to help their students. Most teachers, like 99% of them, bought it, no questions asked. Surveillance does not help people, it life-squashes them. It is not a long-term motivational strategy either, it does not help with coaching, all it does is invade folks’ minds and lives.
Of course, they are going to say everything you want to hear—they know we need a heavy coating of sugar to take our medicine. It’s all about helping the poor, raising all boats, no child left behind, build back better bullshit.
But “Pay for Success Financing” is not about helping people, it’s about making money off poverty. Like the old saying goes:
“If shit had value, the poor wouldn’t have asses.”
Please folks, stop buying their propaganda! They’ve got our number, because they’ve got our data. They know how to outfox the Left, the Right, the churchies and the anarchists, and everyone in between. And they want the children. They want to own the next generations forevermore and from cradle to grave.
They are expert snake oil salesmen and they would swindle their own grandmothers, so imagine what they’d be willing to do to yours!
Alison McDowell calls it out—the soft global coup—and breaks it down so well in this video, I cannot recommend it enough.
I’ve been noticing for years, as so many others have as well, that the online world is being transformed into something quite unrecognizable.
I noticed this incremental shift long before the “Fact Checking” era began, but not long after I got removed from the blogging platform I’d been blogging at for years, before I started this blog.
It was mere annoyance at first, at the little things. Why can’t I find recipes anymore by independent bloggers? I thought DuckDuckGo was supposed to be a more neutral search engine. Why is it all becoming so commercialized and institutionalized? So many ads, so much repetition, so few unique voices. If I didn’t know the exact name of the specific bloggers’ recipes I wanted to find the only links that come up in my searches are for the ‘big name’ mainstream mega-platforms, like Betty Crocker, Saveur, Food Network, listed over and over again. The original content creators that made the web what it is are being systematically squeezed out.
And it’s not just about controversial content, as Truthstream Media is pointing out in this new video. Mel aptly describes it as the latest Potemkin Village.
This morning I got this message (below) in my inbox. Now, it’s been some years since I’ve blogged for GRIT, and that stint didn’t last long even back then, because the stupid rules were already starting in at that point, and changing constantly, and I found it too annoying to try to keep up with them, considering it was supposed to be a labor of love (ie, no one’s getting paid for all the free content we provide).
Now it seems they don’t even want free content anymore from mere bloggers.
Dear GRIT blogger:
During the past 10 years, you have offered your know-how generously, supplying millions of readers with the actionable advice that has enabled so many households and farms to turn country living dreams into reality. The work you do — and the wisdom you transfer to the digital page — underpin more resilient, connected communities. Also during the past decade, the Internet evolved immensely.
When we started the GRIT blogging program, we were on a mission to supply a rapidly growing online readership with timely — even daily — information, free of the page and time constraints faced by the print edition of the magazine. We also were largely free of rules; blogging was in its “Wild West” period. As online writing evolved, search engines placed increasingly complex, and ever-changing, “web rules” around what content is featured in search results. Meanwhile, blogging as a format and cultural phenomenon underwent its own transitions. These factors have led us to make a tough decision.
No more bloggers at GRIT.
Looks to me like the WorldWideWeb is being Walmarted. I believe in business parlance that’s called Vertical Integration.
A proper tongue-lashing for Covidian cultists and other State-teet suckers. And, a prime example of the ‘divine masculine’ that too many will mistake for ‘toxic masculinity’ because the truth is not there to make you feel even more cozy and comfortable than you already are.
Forgiveness must be earned before it is bestowed.
And, another glimmer of hope from Academy of Ideas!
“It is impossible for any clear-headed person to suppose that the ever more destructive stupidities of war can be eliminated from human affairs until some common political control dominates the earth, and unless certain pressures due to the growth of populations, due to the enlarging scope of economic operations, or due to conflicting standards and traditions of life, are disposed of. To avoid the positive evils of war and to attain the new levels of prosperity and power that now come into view, an effective world control, not merely of armed force, but of the production and main movements of staple commodities and the drift and expansion of population is required. It is absurd to dream of peace and world-wide progress without that much control.”
“So, in relation to science—and here the word is being used in its narrower accepted meaning for what is often spoken of as pure science, the search for physical and biological realities, uncomplicated by moral, social, and ‘practical’ considerations—we evoke a conception of the Open Conspiracy as producing groups of socially associated individuals, who engage primarily in the general basic activities of the Conspiracy . . . The contemporary mind realizes the evils of production for profit and of the indiscriminate scrambling of private ownership more fully than ever before, but it has a completer realization and a certain accumulation of experience in the difficulties of organizing that larger ownership we desire. Private ownership may not be altogether evil as a provisional stage, even if it has no more in its favor than the ability to transcend political boundaries.”
“In 1932, Wells gave an Oxford speech championing a global order run by liberal fascists saying: “I am asking for liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis”. This was not paradoxical when one realizes that the rise of fascism was never a “nationalist” phenomenon as popular history books have asserted for decades but rather was the artificial consequence of a supranational financier-oligarchy from above who wished to use “enforcers” to bend their societies to a higher will.”
“Although the bodies of Wells, Russell and Huxley have long since rotted away, their rotten ideas continue to animate their disciples like Sir Henry Kissinger, George Soros, Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, Lord Malloch-Brown (whose disturbing celebration of the Coronavirus as a golden opportunity to finally restructure civilization) should concern any thinking citizen. The idea of a “Great Reset” expounded by these modern mouthpieces of history’s bad ideas signals nothing more than a new Dark Age which should turn the stomach of any moral being.”
I remember well the first time I heard the expression ‘learned helplessness’. My mom used the term and I didn’t understand it. I asked her to explain, which went something like, “As if a man is actually incapable of doing the laundry.”
Some time later I heard it used again, only this time in reference to a woman who wouldn’t dream of changing a tire because she might break a freshly manicured nail.
These are benign examples of a much more serious issue. A little co-dependency amongst family and friends can be a very good thing. It reminds us we need each other, and it’s nice to be needed, as long as it’s not too needy. 🙂
But there is a much more nefarious kind of learned helplessness that is proliferating in our society and because it’s being sold by some very slick salesmen it goes on, continually championed by those who should know better. US.
This is the kind of dependency that fosters anxiety and dis-ease, because it promotes frustration, alienation, victimhood, powerlessness. Under the guise of convenience, comfort, safety, and even fun, we have allowed ourselves to become dependent on criminals, sociopaths, martyrs, tyrants dressed up as experts and beneficent leaders and stars.
Food, water, shelter, health, energy, entertainment, protection. These are all crucial aspects of human life we’ve willingly outsourced to others. Gone are the days for the vast majority who cooked from their own gardens, played and sang tunes around the fire pit, cared for their own ill, built their own homes. How many generations must we go back to know a time before politicians were household names and stock markets dealt only in livestock?
How many folks believe we have it so much better in our ultra-civilized modern world because they’ve bought the propaganda of their oppressors, those who actively promote and celebrate our dependency as progress?
There is a wellspring of peace of mind knowing that if you ever dare say “Take this job and shove it” you won’t end up homeless and hungry.
If you could do one thing in the new year to release the yoke of dependency just a bit, or a bit more, what would you do?
Happy New Year from the wee homestead, y’all, thanks for reading!
I remember the good ole days, from like, a decade ago. There was suddenly the mandate that everyone change their lightbulbs for some ‘common good’ reasons that escape me now.
What doesn’t escape me is at the time I thought, WTF?! I’ve longed considered ‘the government’ just a euphemism for ‘the mafia’, but surely, with this sort of escapade, now it will be obvious to everyone. Same tactics, only ‘legal’: Extortion, bribery, coercion, racketeering. Not to mention the ‘soft’ tactics.
Where will it end? Come on folks! I ventured forth on my social media quest. I was still on Fakebook back then. To the response of yawns and crickets and eye rolls and unfriending and the usual. Everyone clamored about to get their lightbulbs installed.
Now, here we are. As the old Virginia Slim ad boasted: You’ve come a long way, Baby!
No boobs, hmmm . …
It’s baffling, but I am far from surrendering to the mobsters and their minions. And in my own little way, I’ve come a long way, too. It’s very encouraging and refreshing for me to find like-minds in places I’d never have thought to look before. 🙂
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation, To call upon a neighbour and to say: “We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight, Unless you pay us cash to go away.”
And that is called asking for Dane-geld, And the people who ask it explain That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation, To puff and look important and to say: “Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you. We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”
And that is called paying the Dane-geld; But we’ve proved it again and again, That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation, For fear they should succumb and go astray, So when you are requested to pay up or be molested, You will find it better policy to say:
“We never pay any one Dane-geld, No matter how trifling the cost, For the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that plays it is lost!”
