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In my one meeting with Brand, sometime in the early 70s, I found him to be a petty bureaucratic-minded authoritarian, uninterested in any ideas not his own and unwilling to look into anything new no matter how important it might be. He seemed totally fixated on his gradiose ideas and showed no trace of curiousity about those of anyone else, including world-class thinkers whose names, though not their concepts, were well-known to him.

Nothing in this laudatory biographical sketch in any way changes the very negative impression I formed from meeting him. As a long-time environmentalkist, I conclude the environmental movement-and the earth- are better off without him.

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I can't' believe you, Michael Shermer, has fallen for this space age snake oil guru's totally anti humanitarian credo. Anyone who urges people to act as "gods" has got to be either a

new Hitler or just off his rocker. Brand is not and never has been someone with a truly ecological conscience or intellect. He is not alone in having a fevered imagination and an ability to inspire others to believe in bullshit. He is fact, for us environmentalists who have been in the movement, hands-on, for decades, a complete fraud and phony. It isn't the first time that someone with his uncanny talent as a New Age magician transfixed the public. People are always looking for new saviors and new adventures and all of these turn out to be fantasies that contradict science as well as human frailties and failures. Brand made his own

Brand out in California, not surprisingly, where anyone with the ability to speak could organize

a new religion and attract new converts. Brand's brand is no different. It is a one=man religion with no relevance to the real world or real people. It is a manifestation of a giant ego, almost a God fixation. This takes advantage of people who are insecure, weak, threatened or marginalized in a society increaisngly susceptible to half-price sales of snake oil (species of snake unknown but it behooves us to take extreme care). Brand is a manipulator of the first rank. That you actually have accepted his teachings despite your personal skepticism and atheism is astounding. You have a lot more to learn. I wish you luck.

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