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November 10th, 2011

Update: Impressions After Seeing the Film

I saw Thrive and, on balance, I definitely recommend it.

With regard to eugenics, my concern about Foster Gamble seems to have been a case of guilt by association. The film actually mentions eugenics. While it would have been nice to see some kind of disclosure about his family’s involvement with those atrocities, Gamble seems genuinely interested in trying to help people move through a very difficult and disturbing learning curve about what has happened to the political and economic systems on this planet.

My concerns about how the alien issue would be dealt with (which I did not describe in the original post) were unfounded. This is a huge area of inquiry. It’s something that I follow very closely, but I don’t deal with it in public. So, let it suffice to say that of everyone interviewed in the film, I have the most problems with Steven Greer. Thankfully, Gamble used much more footage of Disclosure Project witnesses than he did of Greer. My position on the Disclosure Project has always been to consider what the witnesses have to say and ignore Greer. People like to point out the problems with Greer in an attempt to trash the value of what Disclosure Project witnesses have to say. Don’t make that mistake.

Obviously, individuals will choose to accept or reject different aspects of the film as they see fit, but if you like Cryptogon, my guess is that you would like Thrive.

—End Update—

A public relations firm has been trying to get me to promote an upcoming film, THRIVE: What On Earth Will It Take? After receiving a few emails from these people, I finally watched the trailer for the film.

Well, they succeeded in getting me to mention the film, but what follows is probably not what they had in mind…

Let’s take a look at the person behind this project:

Foster Gamble.

The last name should sound familiar to Cryptogon readers who happened to read, North Carolina’s Eugenics Victims Speak Out:

Eugenics was a scientific theory that grew in popularity during the 1920s. Eugenicists believed that poverty, promiscuity and alcoholism were traits that were inherited. To eliminate those society ills and improve society’s gene pool, proponents of the theory argued that those that exhibited the traits should be sterilized. Some of America’s wealthiest citizens of the time were eugenicists including Dr. Clarence Gamble of the Procter and Gamble fortune and James Hanes of the hosiery company.

The following excerpt is from, American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism by Nancy Ordover:

Sanger and her colleague Clarence Gamble focusses their efforts on eliminating not poverty but the poor. Sanger endorsed and enabled Gamble’s efforts to establish a direct link between welfare and sterilization in the southern states after World War II. Gamble’s vision was not his alone, and in the decades that followed, doctors, social workers, and government agencies took up the cause. Sterilization in the South was referred to as the “Mississippi appendectomy,” not only because it was so common but because medical staff relied on deception to obtain “consent.” Similar “protocol” was followed in clinics across the United States as hysterectomies and tubal ligations were performed on Chicanas, Puerto Ricans, African-Americans and Native Americans without patient (or, in the case of young girls, parental) consent. … For the poor and radicalized and criminalized, tubal ligation, hysterectomies, and vasectomies were never value free medical procedures. Rather, they were technological fixes imposed in individual bodies in lieu of meaningful correctives to economic inequality.

I respect some of the people who are interviewed for this film, while others promote rat poison. Most people have never heard about the American eugenics movement and my guess is that many of the people interviewed for this film haven’t either. The PR people who told me that the film is inline with many topics that I cover on Cryptogon are correct. But I also happen to know about eugenics. So, I just find it incredibly curious that a descendant of a monster is making a film about how to fix things.

But wait… The aliens are trying to give us free energy technology?

Nobody likes free energy or alien conspiracies more than me, but mix that stuff in with a family who was, without any doubt, associated with class and race based sterilization programs and where does that leave us? Man, I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to know.