Crichton foreshadows his death in Charlie Rose interview
By Brian O’Brien
11/4/2015
President Barack Obama and leaders from around the world will congregate in Paris on Nov. 30 for the Paris Climate Change Conference.
In Paris, our leaders will discuss efforts to avert a looming global catastrophe caused by manmade climate change.
As we have heard seemingly daily in the media for years now, the consensus of nearly all climate scientists is that humans are causing climate change and something must be done to save the planet from calamities of biblical proportions.
If Michael Crichton were alive today, no doubt he would to tell us his thoughts on the Paris Climate Change Conference, or at least on the science that will be used there to compel global action.
Unfortunately, his thoughts won’t be heard. Crichton died seven years ago today.
In 2008, the New York Times and most national media outlets informed us that Crichton had died “unexpectedly in Los Angeles Tuesday, November 4th after a courageous and private battle against cancer.”
During his lifetime, Crichton was a juggernaut in popular culture, producing best seller after best seller over a 40-year writing career.
He is the only person to have had the number one television show, the number one movie and the number one novel all at the same time, as Charlie Rose pointed out in an interview the year before Crichton’s death.
Even today, seven years after his death, Crichton’s impact is still felt. The number one movie in the summer of 2015 was Jurassic World, the latest film based on Crichton’s Jurassic Park books.
A year and nine months before his death, Crichton sat down with Charlie Rose for an hour-long interview that was aired on PBS on Feb. 19, 2007. Crichton looked healthy, trim and youthful. He might have been mistaken for being in his 40s if Rose hadn’t pointed out that he was 64. Rose, 65 at the time, looked older with baggy eyes, and appeared somewhat tired compared to Crichton, who showed no signs of the cancer that was to take his life the following year.
During the interview, Rose and Crichton were framed by a black background as they sat across from each other at a table. The interview started with a discussion about Crichton’s novel, Next, which was his latest release. Crichton and Rose discussed the plotline, which involved unethical firms that used DNA to create human/animal hybrids. Crichton talked of his research for the novel and his activism and opposition to the patenting of genes for profit, which he said was corrupting medicine and academia. Crichton told Rose that gene patenting was causing research institutions to become secretive regarding such things as new discoveries about cancer and other diseases, and that it was creating restrictions on scientific research.
About 20 minutes into the interview, Rose turned the conversation to Crichton’s previous novel about climate change, State of Fear. Rose said he wanted to put Crichton on the record regarding controversial assertions Crichton had made about global warming, that its effects were being exaggerated.
“Have you changed your conclusions with new evidence?” Rose asked.
“The Earth is definitely getting warmer,” Crichton answered. “It's gotten somewhere in the neighborhood of six- or seven-tenths of a degree Celsius warmer in the last 100 years. We are increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It's increased 30 percent over the last century. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. We would expect a 30 percent increase to have some influence on temperature. We are also doing lots of other things that effect the temperature as it’s measured in global temperature readings. We're cutting down the forests and doing croplands and all that, what's basically called land-use changes. The urban heat island also has an effect.”
“My conclusion is that we will have an eight-tenths of a degree warming increase in the next 100 years. So, I absolutely believe that warming is occurring, humans are involved and it's going to continue for the next 100 years.”
“So then what did you say that got everybody so upset at you?” Rose asked.
“I'm not a catastrophist,” Crichton answered. “And, oh, I said one other thing, too. I said I think it is not likely that carbon dioxide is going to prove to be the primary driver.”
“What do you think will be the primary driver?” Rose asked.
“I think the sun, and I think there are miscalculations from urban-land use, generally speaking,” Crichton said.
Rose asked Crichton if he had read the latest UN report about climate change and asked his thoughts on the consensus that global warming is occurring.
“I read what the scientists say, not what the politicians say,” Crichton said.
“Every good scientist that I talk to says to me 90 percent of the scientists agree on this,” Rose said. “Most of the scientists say we all agree on this, that it is catastrophic.”
Crichton replied that most people who discuss climate change don’t understand it. He said he was sympathetic to that because he didn’t understand it either until he started looking at the data. “Only when I went and looked at the figures, I said, wait a minute, tell me again why this is a catastrophe. I see that it's something that's happening. I see that it's important. What I said in my book, and I defy anyone to tell me I'm wrong, is I said nobody knows how fast it's going to get warmer and nobody knows for sure what the various contributions of the warming are, and I've predicted eight-tenths of a degree, and nobody knows that I'm wrong.”
“And nothing has happened since you wrote that book to change your mind about your conclusions?” Rose asked.
Crichton answered no. He said it was bizarre to him that people wanted to spend what amounted to $558 trillion to make changes to the global economy using as justification data that had not been validated.
He went on to say that people were adopting philosophical and emotional positions about the climate untied to the data and that people with strong opinions often did not understand the issues. “I understand that these ideas can take hold. And I understand that generally speaking the more extreme elements will push that, and the media is not interested in a balanced perspective.”
When Rose asked about Al Gore’s movie Inconvenient Truth, Crichton said that Gore was wrong on the issue of climate change. “It is a scientific matter that we need to look at with as dispassionate a way of seeing it as possible. And if we don't do that, we're just expressing rank prejudices,” Crichton said. “He's making arguments for which there is no data.”
Crichton told Rose that the future is unknowable. “Climate, according to the last UN report is a coupled, nonlinear chaotic system. Long-term prediction of climate is not possible. I don't think that a computer model cuts it. I'm not having it.”
Crichton said that crisis, tension, drama and disaster excite people, which he guessed was a factor in why climate change aroused passions in so many people.
“You know how much I like you,” Rose said. “You know, we've had more good conversations here than anybody has. Did you have trepidation about doing this? Because I think you're wrong, but I don't know, so therefore I can't prove it.”
“Yeah, I did,” Crichton said.
“Trepidation,” Rose interjected, “and say, ‘Why do I, Michael Crichton, need to go here? I mean, just keep my opinions to myself.’”
“I did. I didn't want to write it,” Crichton said. “I decided I wouldn't write it. I had breakfast with a friend of mine, a scientist who I hadn't seen in 30 years, and I told him my dilemma. And he said, ‘No, no. You have to write it.’ I said I might get killed for this. He said, ‘No, you have to write it.’ I would like to be able to say that as a result of that conversation I decided to write it. I didn't. I went home and I thought, you know, I'm not writing this. It doesn't matter. I'll, as you said, I'll keep my opinions to myself. I started to work on something else, and I felt like a coward. And I thought, what are you going to do? You have looked at the data and you really believe that it's an effect, and that we as human beings should be worried about lots and lots of other things.”
Crichton continued that climate change as an issue should be low on the totem pole compared to other problems, such as disease and global hunger.
“I want an environment that's great,” he said. “I don't think this is as important a problem as other people do. That's the essence of it.”
Rose then tried to change the subject, to future goals, to art, to directing movies, to regrets. But each time Crichton returned the conversation to climate change.
“Consensus science is not science,” Crichton said. “All this consensus stuff is about politics. The real question is about the science.”
When Rose asked if Crichton had any regrets, Crichton answered that he wasn’t the type to regret, and that what drives him is to try things that are new and difficult. “And, I'm actually, I mean, it sounds perverse to many people, I'm proud of having done the book about global warming. I knew that everybody was going to be against me, and I thought, this is what I believe, and I'm sorry, and I said it, and I did it, and I've taken just flak for it. But you know what? It is what I believe.”
“And you're proud that you did it because you went into rough seas,” Rose said.
“Very rough seas and nasty and personal and brutal and unfair and mean,” Crichton said.
Crichton said after 40 years of writing, he had never faced as much criticism and hostility as he had from writing State of Fear. But, he told Rose, time will pass. He concluded, saying, “I think I'm going to come out just fine.”
He was dead the next year.
Crichton earned his M.D. from Harvard. He knew more about medicine and cancer than most people. He was someone who believed in science, who was an activist for openness in science and for the sharing of scientific information. Yet, according to a statement from his family that was reported across the media, he died “unexpectedly” after “a courageous and private battle against cancer.”
There were no reports in the media about his last days, no interviews with his family about his courage during his private battle for his life, no last words, or heartfelt moments from the hospital bed with his wife, daughter, friends and family.
A review in the Wall Street Journal of the posthumous release of his last novel Micro mentioned that he worked on the book while receiving chemotherapy. Another review in the UK’s Telegraph told us a few more details.
“Mr. Crichton, who was intensely private, only told his closest family when he was diagnosed with lymphoma in early 2008,” Philip Sherwell told us in the Telegraph on Nov. 27, 2011. “Even when he was sick, he took his laptop to the hospital to work on Micro, which his wife said he viewed as one of his most significant works.
“But his doctors had been hopeful for his prospects before he died, suddenly and unexpectedly, on Nov 4--possibly explaining why he had not entrusted his plans for the rest of the book to anyone.”
Nothing else is publicly known about Crichton's death. One day he was with us and the next he was not.
You would think that a public figure, a doctor, who made his living writing about science and medicine would have written something about being diagnosed with cancer. But he left us no thoughts on his illness, at least nothing that has been released.
Crichton had brought down the wrath of the media and academia upon himself for writing State of Fear. His interview with Rose showed that he was deeply affected by this, but that he wasn't backing down. Why was the reaction to a thriller novel so focused and vicious, anyway?
If you watch what happens in Paris in the next few weeks, you will see that the threat of climate change is being used to justify the creation of global institutions with global enforcement and revenue-collection powers that are above the authority of nation-states. At the Paris Climate Change Conference and at other international meetings and conferences, plans for such institutions are being hammered out and finalized. To stop global warming, national governments are ceding sovereignty to international authorities. We are being asked to change our lifestyles and our standard of living. We are being asked to accept new taxes on our incomes and our activities to save the planet from catastrophe. Global governance is being planned and implemented. Preventing climate change is the justification.
In 2009, in a speech before the European Parliament, Belgian Prime Minister Herman von Rompuy accepted his appointment to the EU presidency, and told us that global governance was needed.
“We're living through exceptionally difficult times,” von Rompuy said. “The financial crisis and its dramatic impact on employment and budgets, the climate crisis which threatens our very survival, a period of anxiety, uncertainty, and lack of confidence. Yet, these problems can be overcome by a joint effort in and between our countries. 2009 is also the first year of Global Governance with the establishment of the G20 in the middle of the financial crisis. The Climate Conference in Copenhagen is another step towards the global management of our planet.”
In Crichton’s last years, he was effectively throwing doubt on the rationale that is being used to implement steps toward the global management of our planet. Crichton appealed to intellectually minded people who are willing to think critically about the things he was saying, but also to the masses through his best-selling thriller novel. He testified to the U.S. Senate about climate change and was invited to the White House to discuss the issue with President George W. Bush.
Crichton was independently wealthy, influential, with a voice that was internationally heard. He was a thorn in the side of global warming advocates who attacked him in the media for expressing his views. Regardless, Crichton's voice was resonating.
Another writer who brought down the wrath of the media upon himself and who might have sympathized with Crichton was the reporter Gary Webb. Webb reported in his Dark Alliance series of articles that the CIA was working with drug smugglers who were smuggling cocaine into American inner cities in the 1980s. Webb’s articles were attacked by the mainstream media. His reputation was smeared. He was driven from his job and then found dead in his apartment with two bullets in his head. The coroner called it suicide.
After his death, his reporting was vindicated and today is accepted as correct.
Before his death, Webb wrote an article, titled The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On, about his belief in journalism and how it had changed after his Dark Alliance articles were released.
“If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me,” Webb wrote. “I'd been working at daily papers for seventeen years at that point, doing no-holds barred investigative reporting for the bulk of that time. As far as I could tell, the beneficial powers the press theoretically exercised in our society weren't theoretical in the least. They worked. … And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job. It turned out to have nothing to do with it. The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress.”
If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that several high-profile working journalists have died suddenly and unexpectedly over the past decade or so.
Cancer. Heart attack. Car crashes. Plane crashes. Suicide.
Michael Hastings. Andrew Breitbart. Tim Russert. Mark Pittman. Peter Jennings. Gary Webb.
Probably the most consequential sudden death in the past decade and a half was that of JFK Jr. who died in a plane crash in 1999. JFK Jr. was the editor of the popular political magazine George. He was wealthy, famous, charismatic. He might have been president by now.
What if our freedom of the press and our freedom of speech are illusions? What if there is a power that rules our country that is working toward specific goals? What if journalists and writers who become obstacles to achieving those goals are being suppressed? What if, unlike your average gangbanger or Mafioso, this power does not use drive-by shootings or baseball bats to the skull to silence snitches? What if it conceals its work behind plausible causes of death?
All it takes to get away with murder in America is to get to the coroner and control the message in the media.
Georgetown professor Carroll Quigley told us in his book Tragedy and Hope that a secretive clique of international bankers rose to global dominance in the 19th century. These bankers used the power to create money to amass great wealth and power.
Quigley wrote, “The powers of financial capitalism had (a) far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.”
These powers of financial capitalism established institutions that live on today.
What if today, the powers of financial capitalism are using the threat of climate change to compel governments to give up sovereignty to global authorities above the power of nation-states?
Do you believe climate scientists can predict the future? Are you willing to give up our sovereignty and our national prosperity for a prediction?
What would Crichton tell us if he were alive today?
He would tell us that we cannot conclude from the present data that global warming is a threat to mankind. He would tell us not to take what the media says at face value, not to go along with the crowd, but to look at the data, think things over and come to our own conclusions.
In Paris, our leaders will discuss efforts to avert a looming global catastrophe caused by manmade climate change.
As we have heard seemingly daily in the media for years now, the consensus of nearly all climate scientists is that humans are causing climate change and something must be done to save the planet from calamities of biblical proportions.
If Michael Crichton were alive today, no doubt he would to tell us his thoughts on the Paris Climate Change Conference, or at least on the science that will be used there to compel global action.
Unfortunately, his thoughts won’t be heard. Crichton died seven years ago today.
In 2008, the New York Times and most national media outlets informed us that Crichton had died “unexpectedly in Los Angeles Tuesday, November 4th after a courageous and private battle against cancer.”
During his lifetime, Crichton was a juggernaut in popular culture, producing best seller after best seller over a 40-year writing career.
He is the only person to have had the number one television show, the number one movie and the number one novel all at the same time, as Charlie Rose pointed out in an interview the year before Crichton’s death.
Even today, seven years after his death, Crichton’s impact is still felt. The number one movie in the summer of 2015 was Jurassic World, the latest film based on Crichton’s Jurassic Park books.
A year and nine months before his death, Crichton sat down with Charlie Rose for an hour-long interview that was aired on PBS on Feb. 19, 2007. Crichton looked healthy, trim and youthful. He might have been mistaken for being in his 40s if Rose hadn’t pointed out that he was 64. Rose, 65 at the time, looked older with baggy eyes, and appeared somewhat tired compared to Crichton, who showed no signs of the cancer that was to take his life the following year.
During the interview, Rose and Crichton were framed by a black background as they sat across from each other at a table. The interview started with a discussion about Crichton’s novel, Next, which was his latest release. Crichton and Rose discussed the plotline, which involved unethical firms that used DNA to create human/animal hybrids. Crichton talked of his research for the novel and his activism and opposition to the patenting of genes for profit, which he said was corrupting medicine and academia. Crichton told Rose that gene patenting was causing research institutions to become secretive regarding such things as new discoveries about cancer and other diseases, and that it was creating restrictions on scientific research.
About 20 minutes into the interview, Rose turned the conversation to Crichton’s previous novel about climate change, State of Fear. Rose said he wanted to put Crichton on the record regarding controversial assertions Crichton had made about global warming, that its effects were being exaggerated.
“Have you changed your conclusions with new evidence?” Rose asked.
“The Earth is definitely getting warmer,” Crichton answered. “It's gotten somewhere in the neighborhood of six- or seven-tenths of a degree Celsius warmer in the last 100 years. We are increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It's increased 30 percent over the last century. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. We would expect a 30 percent increase to have some influence on temperature. We are also doing lots of other things that effect the temperature as it’s measured in global temperature readings. We're cutting down the forests and doing croplands and all that, what's basically called land-use changes. The urban heat island also has an effect.”
“My conclusion is that we will have an eight-tenths of a degree warming increase in the next 100 years. So, I absolutely believe that warming is occurring, humans are involved and it's going to continue for the next 100 years.”
“So then what did you say that got everybody so upset at you?” Rose asked.
“I'm not a catastrophist,” Crichton answered. “And, oh, I said one other thing, too. I said I think it is not likely that carbon dioxide is going to prove to be the primary driver.”
“What do you think will be the primary driver?” Rose asked.
“I think the sun, and I think there are miscalculations from urban-land use, generally speaking,” Crichton said.
Rose asked Crichton if he had read the latest UN report about climate change and asked his thoughts on the consensus that global warming is occurring.
“I read what the scientists say, not what the politicians say,” Crichton said.
“Every good scientist that I talk to says to me 90 percent of the scientists agree on this,” Rose said. “Most of the scientists say we all agree on this, that it is catastrophic.”
Crichton replied that most people who discuss climate change don’t understand it. He said he was sympathetic to that because he didn’t understand it either until he started looking at the data. “Only when I went and looked at the figures, I said, wait a minute, tell me again why this is a catastrophe. I see that it's something that's happening. I see that it's important. What I said in my book, and I defy anyone to tell me I'm wrong, is I said nobody knows how fast it's going to get warmer and nobody knows for sure what the various contributions of the warming are, and I've predicted eight-tenths of a degree, and nobody knows that I'm wrong.”
“And nothing has happened since you wrote that book to change your mind about your conclusions?” Rose asked.
Crichton answered no. He said it was bizarre to him that people wanted to spend what amounted to $558 trillion to make changes to the global economy using as justification data that had not been validated.
He went on to say that people were adopting philosophical and emotional positions about the climate untied to the data and that people with strong opinions often did not understand the issues. “I understand that these ideas can take hold. And I understand that generally speaking the more extreme elements will push that, and the media is not interested in a balanced perspective.”
When Rose asked about Al Gore’s movie Inconvenient Truth, Crichton said that Gore was wrong on the issue of climate change. “It is a scientific matter that we need to look at with as dispassionate a way of seeing it as possible. And if we don't do that, we're just expressing rank prejudices,” Crichton said. “He's making arguments for which there is no data.”
Crichton told Rose that the future is unknowable. “Climate, according to the last UN report is a coupled, nonlinear chaotic system. Long-term prediction of climate is not possible. I don't think that a computer model cuts it. I'm not having it.”
Crichton said that crisis, tension, drama and disaster excite people, which he guessed was a factor in why climate change aroused passions in so many people.
“You know how much I like you,” Rose said. “You know, we've had more good conversations here than anybody has. Did you have trepidation about doing this? Because I think you're wrong, but I don't know, so therefore I can't prove it.”
“Yeah, I did,” Crichton said.
“Trepidation,” Rose interjected, “and say, ‘Why do I, Michael Crichton, need to go here? I mean, just keep my opinions to myself.’”
“I did. I didn't want to write it,” Crichton said. “I decided I wouldn't write it. I had breakfast with a friend of mine, a scientist who I hadn't seen in 30 years, and I told him my dilemma. And he said, ‘No, no. You have to write it.’ I said I might get killed for this. He said, ‘No, you have to write it.’ I would like to be able to say that as a result of that conversation I decided to write it. I didn't. I went home and I thought, you know, I'm not writing this. It doesn't matter. I'll, as you said, I'll keep my opinions to myself. I started to work on something else, and I felt like a coward. And I thought, what are you going to do? You have looked at the data and you really believe that it's an effect, and that we as human beings should be worried about lots and lots of other things.”
Crichton continued that climate change as an issue should be low on the totem pole compared to other problems, such as disease and global hunger.
“I want an environment that's great,” he said. “I don't think this is as important a problem as other people do. That's the essence of it.”
Rose then tried to change the subject, to future goals, to art, to directing movies, to regrets. But each time Crichton returned the conversation to climate change.
“Consensus science is not science,” Crichton said. “All this consensus stuff is about politics. The real question is about the science.”
When Rose asked if Crichton had any regrets, Crichton answered that he wasn’t the type to regret, and that what drives him is to try things that are new and difficult. “And, I'm actually, I mean, it sounds perverse to many people, I'm proud of having done the book about global warming. I knew that everybody was going to be against me, and I thought, this is what I believe, and I'm sorry, and I said it, and I did it, and I've taken just flak for it. But you know what? It is what I believe.”
“And you're proud that you did it because you went into rough seas,” Rose said.
“Very rough seas and nasty and personal and brutal and unfair and mean,” Crichton said.
Crichton said after 40 years of writing, he had never faced as much criticism and hostility as he had from writing State of Fear. But, he told Rose, time will pass. He concluded, saying, “I think I'm going to come out just fine.”
He was dead the next year.
Crichton earned his M.D. from Harvard. He knew more about medicine and cancer than most people. He was someone who believed in science, who was an activist for openness in science and for the sharing of scientific information. Yet, according to a statement from his family that was reported across the media, he died “unexpectedly” after “a courageous and private battle against cancer.”
There were no reports in the media about his last days, no interviews with his family about his courage during his private battle for his life, no last words, or heartfelt moments from the hospital bed with his wife, daughter, friends and family.
A review in the Wall Street Journal of the posthumous release of his last novel Micro mentioned that he worked on the book while receiving chemotherapy. Another review in the UK’s Telegraph told us a few more details.
“Mr. Crichton, who was intensely private, only told his closest family when he was diagnosed with lymphoma in early 2008,” Philip Sherwell told us in the Telegraph on Nov. 27, 2011. “Even when he was sick, he took his laptop to the hospital to work on Micro, which his wife said he viewed as one of his most significant works.
“But his doctors had been hopeful for his prospects before he died, suddenly and unexpectedly, on Nov 4--possibly explaining why he had not entrusted his plans for the rest of the book to anyone.”
Nothing else is publicly known about Crichton's death. One day he was with us and the next he was not.
You would think that a public figure, a doctor, who made his living writing about science and medicine would have written something about being diagnosed with cancer. But he left us no thoughts on his illness, at least nothing that has been released.
Crichton had brought down the wrath of the media and academia upon himself for writing State of Fear. His interview with Rose showed that he was deeply affected by this, but that he wasn't backing down. Why was the reaction to a thriller novel so focused and vicious, anyway?
If you watch what happens in Paris in the next few weeks, you will see that the threat of climate change is being used to justify the creation of global institutions with global enforcement and revenue-collection powers that are above the authority of nation-states. At the Paris Climate Change Conference and at other international meetings and conferences, plans for such institutions are being hammered out and finalized. To stop global warming, national governments are ceding sovereignty to international authorities. We are being asked to change our lifestyles and our standard of living. We are being asked to accept new taxes on our incomes and our activities to save the planet from catastrophe. Global governance is being planned and implemented. Preventing climate change is the justification.
In 2009, in a speech before the European Parliament, Belgian Prime Minister Herman von Rompuy accepted his appointment to the EU presidency, and told us that global governance was needed.
“We're living through exceptionally difficult times,” von Rompuy said. “The financial crisis and its dramatic impact on employment and budgets, the climate crisis which threatens our very survival, a period of anxiety, uncertainty, and lack of confidence. Yet, these problems can be overcome by a joint effort in and between our countries. 2009 is also the first year of Global Governance with the establishment of the G20 in the middle of the financial crisis. The Climate Conference in Copenhagen is another step towards the global management of our planet.”
In Crichton’s last years, he was effectively throwing doubt on the rationale that is being used to implement steps toward the global management of our planet. Crichton appealed to intellectually minded people who are willing to think critically about the things he was saying, but also to the masses through his best-selling thriller novel. He testified to the U.S. Senate about climate change and was invited to the White House to discuss the issue with President George W. Bush.
Crichton was independently wealthy, influential, with a voice that was internationally heard. He was a thorn in the side of global warming advocates who attacked him in the media for expressing his views. Regardless, Crichton's voice was resonating.
Another writer who brought down the wrath of the media upon himself and who might have sympathized with Crichton was the reporter Gary Webb. Webb reported in his Dark Alliance series of articles that the CIA was working with drug smugglers who were smuggling cocaine into American inner cities in the 1980s. Webb’s articles were attacked by the mainstream media. His reputation was smeared. He was driven from his job and then found dead in his apartment with two bullets in his head. The coroner called it suicide.
After his death, his reporting was vindicated and today is accepted as correct.
Before his death, Webb wrote an article, titled The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On, about his belief in journalism and how it had changed after his Dark Alliance articles were released.
“If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me,” Webb wrote. “I'd been working at daily papers for seventeen years at that point, doing no-holds barred investigative reporting for the bulk of that time. As far as I could tell, the beneficial powers the press theoretically exercised in our society weren't theoretical in the least. They worked. … And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job. It turned out to have nothing to do with it. The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress.”
If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that several high-profile working journalists have died suddenly and unexpectedly over the past decade or so.
Cancer. Heart attack. Car crashes. Plane crashes. Suicide.
Michael Hastings. Andrew Breitbart. Tim Russert. Mark Pittman. Peter Jennings. Gary Webb.
Probably the most consequential sudden death in the past decade and a half was that of JFK Jr. who died in a plane crash in 1999. JFK Jr. was the editor of the popular political magazine George. He was wealthy, famous, charismatic. He might have been president by now.
What if our freedom of the press and our freedom of speech are illusions? What if there is a power that rules our country that is working toward specific goals? What if journalists and writers who become obstacles to achieving those goals are being suppressed? What if, unlike your average gangbanger or Mafioso, this power does not use drive-by shootings or baseball bats to the skull to silence snitches? What if it conceals its work behind plausible causes of death?
All it takes to get away with murder in America is to get to the coroner and control the message in the media.
Georgetown professor Carroll Quigley told us in his book Tragedy and Hope that a secretive clique of international bankers rose to global dominance in the 19th century. These bankers used the power to create money to amass great wealth and power.
Quigley wrote, “The powers of financial capitalism had (a) far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.”
These powers of financial capitalism established institutions that live on today.
What if today, the powers of financial capitalism are using the threat of climate change to compel governments to give up sovereignty to global authorities above the power of nation-states?
Do you believe climate scientists can predict the future? Are you willing to give up our sovereignty and our national prosperity for a prediction?
What would Crichton tell us if he were alive today?
He would tell us that we cannot conclude from the present data that global warming is a threat to mankind. He would tell us not to take what the media says at face value, not to go along with the crowd, but to look at the data, think things over and come to our own conclusions.
Brian O’Brien is the author of “The Tyranny of the Federal Reserve.”
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