REALity September 2014
One should be skeptical about the information provided by the mainstream media. This is due to the fact that the media plant falsehoods in order to promote left wing/progressive policies to mislead the public. That is, the media believe that the public can be influenced by falsehoods if they are repeated often enough. As a result, these falsehoods promoted by the left and relentlessly amplified, like a megaphone, by the mainstream media, are constantly repeated so that they become accepted dogma, or perceived as conventional wisdom, no longer to be questioned by the public. We should not be fooled by this attempt to manipulate us.
Some of these planted falsehoods are as follows:
- Income Splitting Will Only Help Upper Income Families
Left-wing interest groups and feminists loudly objected to income splitting for families with children under 18, promised by Prime Minister Harper during the 2011 federal election if the budget is balanced. The latter is likely to occur in 2015, and, accordingly, the howls of dissent against income splitting have resounded across the land. For example, the left-wing Broadbent Institute claims that income splitting will disproportionately benefit only a small number of Canadians, while ignoring lower income families. In reaching this conclusion, the Institute took into consideration all families – even those who pay no income tax, families with no young children, single parents, etc. Of course, such families won’t benefit from income splitting! However, they do receive other benefits not available to many single-income families.
A single-income family usually pays much higher taxes when compared to a two-income family with the same household income. Splitting the income for tax purposes with a lower income spouse, or non-working spouse in families with children 18 years or younger, would benefit 46% of families (nearly half of families with children under 18 years of age). That’s a lot of families. Feminists call income splitting “bribing women to stay at home” (they want all women in the paid work force and not dependent on a male earner). Corporations also don’t like income splitting as it may take individuals out of the work force because income splitting provides families with a choice for a spouse not to enter paid employment. Left-wing bureaucrats and think tanks seem to want tax money to be distributed to the lower income groups only, and never to higher income groups, even though they experience discrimination under the tax system. In short, the left doesn’t think middle-income and higher-income families should have equality in the tax system.
- Parents Want Institutional Child Care
According to polling carried out by the Vanier Institute of the Family in February 2005, and the Institute of Marriage and Family (an associate of Focus on the Family), in May 2013, three-quarters of Canadians believe it is best for young children under six to be at home with a parent.
The second choice is a relative taking care of the child, followed by neighbourhood, home child care. Coming in last in choice is institutional child care. Both studies also found that parents prefer that government money go to them directly, rather than to schools or public child care institutions.
- There Are Long Waiting Lists For Child Care Spaces
Parents planning on placing their child in child care, some even without making the final decision on childcare, place their child’s name on a number of child care lists just in case they may need the space in the future. Most of these applications, however, are never followed up by the parents. Despite this, the so-called “waiting lists” for spaces, are waved about by child care advocates to indicate the “need” for spaces, when, in fact, these lists are meaningless.
- There Is A Large “ Unmet Need” for Contraception In The Developing World
In 2012, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reported a staggering “222 million women have an unmet need for contraception”. This is false. In 2011, the Guttmacher Institute (an associate of Planned Parenthood) surprisingly admitted that the data revealed that only 8% of women in Africa, when asked why they did not use contraceptives, attribute their non-use to a lack of access. There is little demand for contraception among African women for reasons of religion, health (side effects), culture and other factors, such as a desire for large families. Also, it was found by researchers that natural family planning methods not only work well, but are successfully used by large numbers of African women. Surveys by the UN have completely ignored natural family planning in determining so-called “unmet needs” for contraception. The demand for contraceptives is even less in Latin America (4%) and (6%) in Asia.
This falsehood of “unmet needs” for contraceptives is almost entirely based on appeals by population controllers for increased funding.
- Most Hate Crimes Are Based on Sexual Orientation
Homosexual advocates claim that homosexuals/lesbians are overwhelmingly targets of hate crimes. This is false. Statistics Canada stated, in its 2014 report, that there were 1,414 hate-motivated criminal incidents in 2012, up 82 from 2011.
These hate crimes were as follows:
- One half of the incidents involved racial or ethnic motives (21% aimed at blacks);
- 30% involved hatred towards a particular religion, including crimes targeting Jews, Muslims and Catholics. (17% of the incidents were against the Jewish population);
- 13% of incidents were motivated by sexual orientation;
- 6% were motivated by reason of language, mental or physical disability, sex, age or some other characteristic, such as occupation or political belief.
All hate crimes are disgusting and unacceptable, but let’s put them in perspective and not embellish the facts by falsehoods.
- Marijuana is Not Addictive or Harmful
A definitive, comprehensive review of the current state of scientific knowledge on marijuana was published by leading U.S. drug scientists in the June, 2014 issue of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.
According to this study, it is false to claim that marijuana is not an addictive drug, and that it is not harmful.
Specifically, the analysis reveals that marijuana can produce addiction and withdrawal symptoms. About 9% of marijuana users develop addiction to the drug, which increases to 17% if marijuana use begins in the adolescent years. If marijuana is used daily, addiction increases 25% to 50% among its users.
The report also states that there is a strong association between marijuana use and diminished lifetime achievement, motor vehicle crashes, and symptoms of chronic bronchitis. Moreover, there is a relationship between marijuana use and abnormal brain development; progression to the use of other drugs; schizophrenia; and depression and anxiety.
The report also stated that over the past three decades, the potency of marijuana, measured by concentration of Tetra Hydro Cannabinol (THC), has increased by about 300 percent and, therefore, previous studies on marijuana no longer apply.
The report concluded:
Marijuana is a drug of abuse that produces serious adverse health consequences. Increasing the availability and social approval of marijuana use through its legalization (for medical or “recreational” uses) is not in the interest of the nation’s public health or public safety.
- Drug Injection Sites Reduce Harm and Save Lives
Research on the Vancouver Drug Injection Site was carried out by the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, which reported that the site reduces harm and saves lives. This is false.
The B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS carried out its research, not for scientific purposes, but for the purpose of supporting the political objective to continue operation of the injection site.
This conclusion is based on the fact that these researchers had a conflict of interest in their research in that they had previously been lobbyists and advocates for the establishment of the injection site in 2001.
Under the Access to Information Act, it was learned that between 2003 and 2011, these advocates from the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, received $18 million from the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) to carry out its research on the Vancouver Injection Site. All the studies (over two dozen of them) by these researchers were peer reviewed only by supporters of the drug site. Also, the researchers, contrary to standard scientific procedure, refused to share their data with other researchers so that their studies could be replicated. Without exception, these advocates/researchers for the drug injection site concluded that the injection site was reducing harm and death rates for addicts. Their most recent study on Insite was published in the medical journal Lancet on April 18, 2011. This study was pivotal in the decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, handed down on September 30, 2011, against the attempts by the federal Minister of Health to close down the injection site.
According to this 2011 study, because of the presence of the injection site, there had been a 35% reduction in overdoses in the 500 metre radius around Insite, while the rest of Vancouver decreased by 9%.
However, an international team, consisting of three Australian medical doctors, (including an epidemiologist and two addiction medicine specialists), a Canadian academic and an American psychiatrist found serious errors in the study, which entirely invalidated its findings.
In addition, the B.C. Coroner’s report showed that overdoses actually increased by 14%, or 11% when population-adjusted, between 2002, the year before Insite opened, and 2005, the final year of their study period.
However, during the arguments before the Supreme Court on this issue, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin stated that, “Insite has saved lives and improved health”. This conclusion was also repeated numerous times throughout the court’s written judgment. It is not without significance that intense publicity was given to the questionable Lancet study during the week of the court hearing. Since the results of the study were published during the week of the hearing, this gave the narrowest window of time to provide any critique of the study. No further evidence was admissible to the Supreme Court after the hearing held May 12, 2011 to raise questions as to the credibility of the study, as well as other questionable studies submitted in evidence by the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.
Children Are Not Harmed By Same-sex Parenting
In order to promote the notion that same-sex relationships are equal to heterosexual ones, it is necessary for homosexual activists to promote the falsehood that children of same-sex couples are as healthy or, perhaps even healthier, than children raised by their opposite-sex biological parents. To promote this concept, “studies” on same-sex parenting have been carried out. These are not studies in the true sense, but merely propaganda pieces promoting a political objective.
Biased pro-homosexual researchers followed flawed procedures, not in accordance with standards of ethics and science, in order to achieve their pre-determined results. For example, instead of carrying out research on randomly selected individuals, as required, researchers pre-selected the participants in their studies by advertising in homosexual publications and websites and by distributing flyers to social and support groups in the homosexual community. That is, the researchers actively pursued and selected participants, who were told the purpose of the study, which was to make homosexual parenting appear successful. These factors obviously influenced the responses of the participants.
The children of these same-sex couples were not interviewed in the studies. Instead, only the parents were interviewed. They were asked to give their opinion on the effectiveness of their parenting and their views of their children’s physical, mental and social wellbeing. Naturally, the same-sex couples considered their parenting skills to be excellent, and that their children doing well was due to their being so successfully raised.
The most recent of such studies on same-sex parenting was a 2014 Australian Study of Child Health in Same-sex Families (ACHESS) conducted at the University of Melbourne. The study applied the same failed methodology used in other studies on same-sex parenting, such as failing to use randomly selected participants. The Australian study, as was intended, generated only positive headlines in one country after another by the ever obliging mainstream media, which never questioned the credibility of the study. On the contrary, the media reported the conclusions from the study as absolute fact, rather than the fantasy they actually were.
These are only some of the falsehoods deliberately planted in the media. Other falsehoods will be explored in the next issue of REALity.