How the internet sux. . . .

During my years as a journalist and newspaper editor on the USS Carl Vinson, (during my Navy career), I got to know how to read between the lines of error in fact, conjecture, and the difference between subjective and objective writing. In hard news, there is no room for editorializing, so only facts are reported and they are organized in an order of importance--the inverted pyramid style of writing. Before that, I was a Hospital Corpsman and we had a writing style for nursing notes that was acronym-ed: S.O.A.P. (subjective, objective, assessment and plan). Objective writing was paramount as a skill in both of my career paths.

Presently, the internet is giving the power of the pen to millions of end-users around the globe with various levels of education and writing experience. Some of them are active bloggers and write things that more than demonstrate their naivety or level of education and understanding of the world around them. This puts the power of the pen into the hands of dangerous people who claim to be subject matter experts on all sorts of topics. What's even more worrisome are the readers who believe everything that is committed to print.

It has also breed into our news services a new form of yellow journalism of the likes that hasn't been seen since the industrial revolution. Now, even the news agencies are hard to believe with all the contradictions and editorials being passed off as hard news to the masses. Blogs are quickly becoming a weapon of formidable power in the world. All you have to do is look at Morocco, Libya, Egypt and Syria to see prime examples of how a blog is capable of toppling long-standing regimes.  To get an informed and unbiased version of daily events is next to impossible. Couple that with special interest groups and the government constantly wanting to get into regulating of wireless media and the services it provides in many formats, an individual may be hard pressed to find any accurate news in another ten years. With all the disinformation flying around and people forcing their opinions upon each other, it's going to take a doctorate in newspaper reading to get any truth out of what news agencies are reporting.

Schools in the United States are ever-increasingly dependent on the Internet to teach students "facts" that they would have otherwise learned from utilizing a public or school library from encyclopedias and other reference books. It is hard to find teachers that still hold true to time-honored methods of teaching because the Internet has made eduction a microwaved TV-dinner solution to lesson planning. Shortcuts are being taken at every turn and the quality of education is not what it once was (and it was suffering before.)

Computers have promoted the natural tendency of man to be lazy by being a method of retrieving vast amounts of data without having to use thought or pick up a physical book. It's no wonder that so many of us Americans have grown fat, complacent, with a sense of entitlement. We don't even have to burn calories to pick up a book or walk to the library for "reference" materials when writing papers for college classes.

Now we have social networks like MySpace.com and facebook.com that are full of people that continue to promote biased and opinionated articles and circulating them with the tag of being newsworthy fact--the gospel according to. . . . . .

I recently read a comment post on facebook that had me rather stricken with disbelief. It was an article that claimed our CDC (Center for Disease Control) had covered up and manipulated statistical data that implicated vaccinations for childhood illness that contained mercury (a heavy metal) as a contributing cause to Autism. It's extremely doubtful that this is true, because the CDC is a closely monitored entity of our government and their mission is to protect the public health. This kind of activity would go against the very essence of the mission statement for the CDC. The person that promoted this article is just one in many dozens more that are creating a conspiracy theory for everyone's entertainment and to fuel the fires of anger that our charged and polarized country has been going through for quite some time.

I pointed out to this person that the article was full of errors in fact and its sole purpose is to confuse the issue and create disinformation--exactly what the author set out to do. That is why reading the news on the Internet is not always great--too many people get tainted versions of the "truth." Like this blog, it is my opinion and my opinion is based on the facts as I perceive them, therefore it is an editorial and of a biased nature. If I were writing an article for publication in the newspaper, I would be spending more time looking for hard facts and creating a hard news article.

What bothers me (marginally) about people and their ignorance is that they are picking battles about things that really don't have that much to do with them personally. So if the CDC says that 1 in 100,000 (I'm making this up btw) gets Autism directly related to vaccines with heavy metal in them, that is not really a stastic that would have me losing any sleep at night. Such a small minority is impacted negatively but the ever increasing majority is BENEFITING from vaccines everyday, year-to-year.

My first comment in the thread was: Problem is that regardless of the outcomes of either study, vaccinations have improved health of the masses and that people are living longer lives. This is just another disinformation plot designed to hurt or add more injury to cause dissension in world society. Just because our government can't exercise financially responsible behavior dose not a sadistic murderer make. You can choose not to immunize you babies and watch them die from MMR or be disfigured from polio. Don't buy this rot created to confuse you.

It was met with this by the host: Do you have shares in Big Pharma Brian? Did you even bother to read how CDC are fiddling the books? : — http://bit.ly/rq53Jk - I suspect not. Some vaccines in the past may well have been useful, but currently it's more of a business model than a healing modality that we're seeing.
Do your own research!
♥♪♫*¨*•.¸¸ ॐ

Big Pharma is his self-contrived euphemism for the large "evil" pharmaceutical companies. 

My next response: I don't claim to be a subject matter expert, but I seriously doubt you are either, no offense is intended. I like a good conspiracy theory, but it's important to understand that it is ONLY a theory, and not necessarily fact. 

Mind you, the article that this gentalmen is referring to is: Exposed: CDC deliberately manipulated, covered up scientific data showing link between vaccines containing mercury and autism

If you take the text "Exposed: CDC deliberately manipulated, covered up scientific data showing link between vaccines containing mercury and autism" and put it in the google.com search engine, you will get a dozen or more websites that the article is living on, so it has been proliferated among the "green establishment" of websites that practice holistic medicine and alternative approaches to mainstream health care. I am a firm believer that people should be able to have their medical needs handled however they would like, but when it comes to the health of the innocent, immunizations are required for good reason and if parents refuse to cooperate--this is MY OPINION--they should be formally charged with neglect.

And since this article shows up on several of these holistic/alternative med websites an nowhere else, that also further bolsters MY OPINION that this article is not based in fact, that it IS as I was able to think for myself, another sermonizing bullshit artists' method of perpetuating incompetence.

The thread continues with a response from another reader: Brian, vaccine safety has not been proven. Doctors claim that side effects and death are so uncommon they are almost irrelevant. Ask my neighbor whose son has a tumor and seizures if she feels his vaccine injury was irrelevant. Ask if she was told that this could have happened. Ask if she felt she had a choice in the vaccine matter. Ask a mom whose child DIED. Then ask one of the people (they are out there, I know a few) who have never receive ANY vaccine but are still alive and healthy adults today if they would have changed their parents decision. I know of a mom whose child got measles from getting the vaccine! Guess who does what little "safety" studies on vaccines that have been done? The makers of the vaccines! There is a revolving employment door between the CDC and the pharmaceutical companies. The makers of Gardasil are trying to call 20 some deaths and thousands of side effects nothing but coincidence. WAKE UP and smell the corruption.

http://www.gardasilandunexplaineddeaths.com/

The very fact that millions of Americans have been immunized without side effects or illness is a testament that vaccines ARE SAFE DUH!!!!


Another reader brings the Amish into the conversation: the Amish people havent had vaccines in 200 years or so of their history- and they have little or no instances of Autism. in the 3 rare cases they did have 2 of the children involved had received vaccines.<---------bullshit!

I HAD to respond to that statement as follows: I would think that the Amish don't have the same occurrences of childhood diseases present in world society simply because they live reclusive lifestyles by not mingling with the "English" like the rest of us living our mundane lives, lol. Essentially, they live in a closed society. I would not think that the Amish would be a great example, and the Amish DO get immunizations. Medicine is not considered a mechanized or technological resource to them. They are not foolish to deny medicine to their children. I have been in the Hershey Medical Center for Children and seen MANY Amish folks there with their families getting medical attention for their children. The Amish are also known to take part in utilizing other technologies such as cars, buses, trucks, and even been known to use a telephone now and again. I grew up in Pennsylvania. So the Amish argument is not a valid one either. I think that people are more prone to develop autism from heredity rather than from the EXTREMELY rare and unfounded case studies indicating immunizations as a cause. I was a Hospital Corpsman in the US Navy and I've been in third world Somalia and seen what happens to people that don't have the level of medicine as we do in the USA. Autism is a genetic trait anyway, has been found in the human genome. So this conversation is actually a moot endeavor. You can listen to tree-hugging politics and special interest groups as they have a similar goal as their lobbyist counterparts in DC--to confuse you and put their interests ahead of yours so you will pay them money. Swami, you should be ashamed of yourself for posting stuff like this. You call yourself a Swami? I'm so tired of people around the world blaming the USA for all that is evil and coveting what we have here. We have what we have because a vast majority of us has either worked very hard for it or died to make it possible for us to pursue it. I've been all over the world and seen beyond my own backyard and sometimes I think the US Government has an agenda for evil, but I remind myself that with political careers it's a foregone conclusion that there is going to be a natural tendency for corruption and greed of an elite few, putting their own needs before everyone else. But that is how ALL levels of human society function. If you are going to debate something like immunizations, which have saved billions of people from horrible deaths, it just makes anyone that disagrees with them look really foolish when the statistics are far beyond what would be considered irrefutable proof that they work. And since Autism is a genetic marker in the human genome, any study that is "funded" by a special interest group foreign or domestic about the "link" to immunizations is trumped. Common sense folks. I think it's entertaining that people post crap like this on the internet because their sense of entitlement directs them to do so--making them no different than OWS, or the greed on Wall Street they are protesting. It seems to bring both sides down to the same level by example. Wow.

Then the host of the thread replies: Brian, just as you have a very real passion and an opinion on this issue, so do I. I'm certainly not ashamed of myself, and in fact I'ill continue to post on all of the issues that deeply concern me. Vaccination and Big Pharma, being just one of them: — http://on.fb.me/l6jLoo - one of the great freedoms of Facebook and the Internet; here I can say virtually anything. Take it or leave it!

Many people will disagree with what I post, the dynamic nature of my friend list alone reflects that fact. But I'm certainly not posting stuff here to gain friends. I'm simply trying to alert people to reality and possibility of alternatives. I rarely seek push button friendship on Facebook either, and as I recall, it was you who made the friend request to me. Perhaps that was an error of judgement, you'll know what to do.

Either way enjoy the journey!
♥♪♫*¨*•.¸¸ ॐ

As if on que, the "amish" informed reader stated: lol well said Swam-eye... (can we start a cult now, lol)<----------I believe you already have sweetheart!

My response followed: The problem with internet news today is that it isn't always "news" but more propaganda. Just like your term "big pharma" there are protests from both sides of any argument. If I agree with you or anybody isn't the point and it's not even a friendship issue. The point is that people make arguments based off of what they read on the internet and about 90 percent of it is "virtually anything" that can be said. I choose to get my news from sources that are least likely to mimic yellow journalism of 100 years ago--a very hard thing to do in this socially and politically charged society. The issue of the article that started this spirited debate doesn't matter anyway, because autism is NOT caused by environmental influences but rather through its DNA marker in the human genome. It's hereditary. Genetic. That article you posted is so full of errors in fact that Fox News might just as well reported it. The other point I'd like to make is that there are a lot of other disorders that mimic Autism that ARE NOT autism. Doctors learn a new word and apply it to a group of similar disorders and make erroneous diagnosis all the time before they fully comprehend what is the real illness. Too many people have been harmed by that as opposed to the supposed cause of Autism through immunizations. I really think that it is unfortunate how people take these articles for gospel and not for what they are at face value--just another politically charged diatribe that has successfully done what the writer set out to do--confuse the issue for you by creating an argument that does not exist. What I think would be a worthy study is one based on how doctors have over-prescribed antibiotics so that it has created super-strains of MERSA and other bugs that are so resilient that people die from staph infections in modern hospitals. Now THAT is an argument that should be up for debate. Or the increasing numbers of children with peanut allergies, or gluten allergies and intolerance on the rise. Those would be worth while things to post about. Not scare tactics to prevent young and naive parents from getting their children's oral polio or MMR vaccinations. What I find distasteful is that this argument will go on an on if I continue to say anything beyond this post, that I will be critiqued for what I have said and it will be done in a nasty way--because that is what extreme left-wingers do (not saying that is you, but perhaps another reader chiming in.) Funny thing is that I consider myself to be a moderate in my beliefs, looking for some kind of balance in all I do or say. I only hope that anyone that reads the comments I have made understands the spirit in which they were written. And no, Swami, I don't own squat in stocks of any company. I understand that it is hip to be anti-establishment or anti-government, but just so you know where I am coming from, I was a US Navy Hospital Corpsman and a US Navy Journalist that has been all over the world. I also have a university education and my own business. Yet, I do not claim to be subject matter expert on any of what has been discussed here, but I do know enough to look at any argument and look at the sources before I believe anything of what I read. I have seen and met enough of the people of the world to have a pretty good understanding of the lemming attitudes of the masses, their ability to jump onto bandwagons of discontent because it's fun to have a self-righteous attitude and be right about everything all the time--while making wild assumptions and baseless accusations about people never met or even partially understood and all the while having a sense of entitlement (OWS) for things other people have earned. Wisdom comes from living and working life, not data and sure as hell not from facebook. I don't have to like your opinion Swami, and I can agree to disagree with you. Although, most of the time I see things you post and I find myself enjoying the conversations from the sidelines. But on this last topic I have to tell you my opinion in the hope that it will at least open your eyes to the bigger picture. Maybe you'll find it advantageous to look into multiple sources before believing all that you read on a "study" that is conducted by a special interest group. You should hear both sides of the argument before promoting either side of it. I don't think you did on this topic because if you had, I don't believe you would have promoted this article by posting it on your profile.

Then, another reader addresses me directly: --note how she takes it personally and how she's polarized--

If in fact you were referring to me as extreme left wing or as jumping on a an anti establishment bandwagon, you are terribly misled in your assumptions. I don't give a squat if anyone thinks I'm cool nor do I affiliate myself with any political party. I am a mother who cares enough about her children to not follow blindly what has been spoon fed to the masses. I have done hundreds of hours of research on this subject and until I feel something is safe or at least more beneficial than the risks I will not be making any decisions. Outside of the autism debate the cold hard truth is that children die, YES DIE from getting vaccines. And there are other serious side effects. Rare, but they do exist. Just like with many vaccine preventable diseases. Our grandparents got 1/10 of the vaccines our kids get today, yet mine are still vaccine preventable disease free. I got the chicken pox. My mom got the measles and the mumps. Do these diseases sometimes have serious complications? Sometimes, yes. About as rarely as vaccine side effects (or the ones they admit to anyway). When I asked my pediatrician why I should have my infant vaccinated against hep B two days after birth when no one in our home has it, his answer was "in case he has to get a blood transfusion and that transfusion happens to be tainted." Come on! They massively vaccinate every baby in the US in case they have to have a blood transfusion that might but very unlike could be tainted?! I feel that at one time vaccines may have and some vaccines still are beneficial, but because there was such a "godsend" reaction from the public, the pharmaceutical companies have used this to push more and more vaccines into the schedule that have not been fully tested for safety nor are they nearly as necessary. For anything but profit. Why else would the CDC keep hiring people from high up in these pharm companies and vice versa if there was no need to force these things through? I have found out, being a person who questions vaccines is quite uncool. As a matter of fact it's like being a modern day witch on trial. Swami should not be ashamed of himself as he is not trying to scare parents away from getting life saving vaccines but rather exposing a very real corporation that needs to be brought out into the open. My child's pediatrician never told me what could happen if I vaccinated...only what surely would if I did not. This happens every day. The biggest problem, in my opinion, is that the possible side effects are many times hidden and not often told to parent before they are told they "have" to get their child's immunizations. Informed consent is no longer a part of the vaccine/pediatrician/parent interaction, and because of this I feel that there are some ethics in question. Ethics of the FDA, the CDC and the pharmaceutical companies. Look at what they are doing with prescription drugs! You are now more likely as an American to die from taking your prescriptions than you are from a car accident. You have to admit that the pharm companies have become a big ugly machine, and giving them your unquestioning trust would be rather ignorant and complacent.

 

Here is my final response: I never called you any names Ms. Hatton. And I think that you are jumping on an anti-establishment bandwagon. I also seriously doubt you have done "hundreds of hours" of any research on this topic since there are not that many websites that say anything different than you already have mentioned here. My point, that was missed entirely, was two fold: Immunizations save more lives than they take albeit negligible to the masses and not to the victimized and exceedingly rare cases. And, the internet is full of disinformation and special interest groups from all sides of every argument. Pharmaceutical companies do a lot of bad things-I won't deny that. Many times there are cases the bring to light how they manipulate statistics to get CDC and FDA approval to get the drugs out to patients. But, you will note that when they are caught doing that, the government sanctions them and even allows for class-action lawsuits to bring about justice for victims. The problem is that one issue begets another yet another and another; and this is bureaucracy. The CDC or FDA cannot be held solely at fault and bare the blame for a rise in autism. The medical professionals and establishment has only just begun to understand the links or probable causes, and even recognizing ASD in the first place. It's like when the US Govt tells the country that unemployment is down the lowest it's been in several years when people are actually running out of benefits and therefore are not being reported as unemployed when they actually are. It's all on the spin that is put on statistics. And CoMed charging the CDC to do a criminal investigation based on their findings? Fat chance that's going to happen, they have no acute proof. The only witch trial (to borrow what you said about how you feel about yourself and the views of your opinion) is these "independent and nonprofit" organizations headhunting in the CDC and FDA. The irony. I don't have unquestioning trust, therefore I am not ignorant as you so labeled me. Do you have statistical data to backup your metaphoric comparison between taking prescription drugs and car accidents? Did you know that small pox was irradiated worldwide until some European nations and American parents refused to vaccinate their infants? Making that vaccine optional was a huge mistake in the USA. Now it's back because a foothold has been created by these people's inaction. Now that's ignorant and complacent.


The bottom line is that people believe in what they think is real, and not necessarily facts.

I like to write blogs and articles about this type of thing because it helps me to work through what I think is an injustice in our society: when people force themselves on each other over an idea that is false or implicates someone under false pretense. What I want to see are more articles and blogs about things like what I wrote on Feb. 26, 2009:

Introduction.
Most you that know me know that I spent a few years in the US Navy as a military correspondant on an aircraft carrier. One of the few jobs in my life that I really did enjoy and was good at was being a news writer. Lately, I have been reading foreign correspondence on world events, and I have also been spending a great deal of time talking with friends of mine that are from all over the country and from different generations or eras of time in our country. What I hear has me very worried about the future of America. Some of you may read this and be worried about my state of mind, but I think you should be worried about the state of union and how you may feel if anything I am about to publish in this blog or circulate in the form of political papers and ideas.

There is a lot going on and much to discuss. So here is one way that I deal with the aggravation I get when reading and watching the news. BTW, I have researched everything in what I am publishing here, so if you disagree, by all means, feel free. But if you are just going to sit by at an idle and do nothing but criticize without backing it up with hard facts and sources, don't waste my time.

My political views are mine, and are shared by many. Many people just don't know how to convey them in a written form. I do.
So here it is, the first installment of many more to come, as long as I am able and breathing:

An Inverted World

While the United States is in one hell of a mess of an economic crisis, much concern is being voiced about two other nations, China and Iran, which frankly, has me concerned right now. I can’t help but to wonder why the government is insisting on giving China a hard time over human rights issues. It’s really not any of our business, after all, China owns billions of dollars worth of 30 year bonds. At the rate the democrats in Washington are spending money that does not exist and printing up Federal Reserve Notes to meet their spending needs, our country will not be able to meet the interest payments, putting our patriotism to the test and our children’s lives/futures at risk of war.

Does Washington honestly think that the Chinese are going to write off billions of dollars in interest without an argument? Perhaps that’s what our government wants to have happen? The Chinese just looked at Hillary Clinton--when she arrived there during her last visit--with smugness and simply asked her with check book in hand “How much do you want now?” But why continue to bite the hand the feeds and be shitty with them about what goes on with their own people within their own borders? I am sure that the reason why Hillary Clinton did not feel the need to bring that up and read them the riot act is simply because she probably felt uncomfortable about it. So when she is criticized by democrats for not jumping down the Chinese throats over human rights issues, I have to wonder what the agenda of the Democratic Party is. Does any of this make any sense at all? The Democratic Party makes me think of that poor nerdy kid that would stand up within a crowd of bullies and cry “why can’t we just all get along.” And then right aftterward, turn around and kick the biggest of the bullies right in the balls.

Then again, most democrats of today are socialists, and card carrying members of the socialist party. If John F. Kennedy was to see what’s going on in D.C. today, he would have a fit, and he’s probably rolling over in his grave right now.

The other country of concern, Iran, is developing its nuclear program and has Russian engineers helping them. Kind of reminiscent of the cold war isn’t it? The Russians claim to be a democracy but they are helping a theocracy build its nuclear power plant thinking that they are going to be able to control Iran by being the sole supplier of enriched uranium. Iran is going to do what it wants. The Shah did what he wanted, The United Stated as created Iran to become the state that it is. The Shah started a push to modernize and westernize Iran after being reinstalled as leader of the fractured country in the ‘50s. So he used his secret police to carry out his wishes and this alienated the Shiites and poverty stricken. To understand Iran and Iraq, one has to understand the history of how those nations came to be. Because the United States was backing the Shah, the Shiites and other Islamic extremists and conservatives then turned to Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, who came to power once then Vice-president Saddam Hussein threw him out of Iraq.

The United States then backed Saddam Hussein who then decided to wage war on the Ayatollah’s regime, believing that once Khomeini was taken out of power that Saddam would stand down and remain diplomatic to America, which did not happen. Instead, this allowed Saddam to seize power of Iraq and murder or torture all of his opposition. So when the United States gets involved in the twisted affairs of the Arabs verses, Shiites, Kurds, and everyone else, all it does is make our nation look like a fool. Instead of actually studying history and understanding the dynamics of a region and finding a diplomatic solution from the beginning, we were all to concerned  with the Policy of Containment; keeping communism in its place.

The United States was so paranoid about communism spreading throughout the world when Russia succumbed to the Stalinists, we did everything in our power to try and prevent it by backing the underdogs that eventually did what we are doing to China: biting the hand that feeds. Essentially, we were well deserved and within our rights to go into Iraq and do what we did because it was our mess in the first place. It was the obligation of the United States to at least try to make some kind of sense out of the mess created by international intrigue and political maneuvering. Just as long as the United States learns that it cannot ever be involved with 3^rd world politics, we may be able to pull out of this tailspin toward our own destruction. Getting involved with leaders like that can be our undoing and has been for the last 60 years.

And it doesn’t stop there. As I mentioned before, the Democratic Party is continuing to pass legislation and print money that has no value to cover the debt we are in from their ridiculous spending habits over the last 25 years. This country has forgiven debt to other nations (France) that have stabbed us in the back (France) at every turn we make (France) and it makes me sick to think that after rebuilding them multiple times (France) that they just can’t seem to find it in their hearts to lend us a hand in return (Germany) after helping them (the rest of lower Europe).  Hell, they even trade with Iran (FRANCE) and Iraq (FRANCE) by sidestepping sanctions imposed against the regimes that kept on violating international laws by harboring known terrorist organizations.

I’m wondering if maybe we should just forget about the middle east and pull out now and just focus on fixing what’s wrong her on the home front and throw caution to the wind on international opinion. Let the useless United Nations deal with terrorists and see how long they last without the United States flipping the bill all the time. We should also not be importing any oil at all when our own country has more oil wells capped and standing by in the Dakotas than all the Middle East combined. Yes. That’s right. We are sitting and floating on oil over here and if we wanted to really just be spiteful and hurt the Arabs, all we would have to do and saturate the international market with our own oil. I believe that it would actually fix the world economy and cause a positive shift in the balance of power over a commodity that is very desperately needed.  We can still drill off shore wells, but it’s not necessary. We have enough oil and natural gas fields just in the lower 48 that will meet not only our own needs, but those of the world.

And if the tree huggers want to continue to follow Al Gore off the cliff over global warming, let them. Sounds like an unemployment solution if you ask me. The world is actually experiencing the warmer trend because Planetologists and paleo-environmentalists have already proven through studies of the Arctic and Antarctic ice cores they have drilled that there are warming trends right before an ice age. All it takes is one failed growing season here in the United States and we will have a global famine. Al Gore is an idiot and a plagiarist anyway, and that’s an inconvenient truth

I think that the Republican Party is just as guilty as the democrats when it comes to this spending bill and the treatment of our foreign relations over the last several decades since World War II. I think that the bipartisanship going on in D.C. is destroying this country. The Republicans are just as wrong as the Democrats because they have allowed the democrats to snow job the American people who have been bamboozled into thinking socialized everything is wonderful. Basically, this country is turning into the very thing it feared most during the cold war, only there won’t be any guns. Since the democrats want to take those away it only makes them “socialists” which by the very essence of its definition is “communism without guns.”  The very thought that D.C. even ENTERTAINED nationalism of the banks sickens me. The fact that they are giving the money they are printing up to banks that are failing also makes me sick. The money should go strictly to infrastructure programs that will EMPLOY AMERICANS and not MEXICANS who bring drugs and violence to our streets. (I’m not saying all Mexicans are bad, many of them are hard working, but need to be in their OWN country working, not here illegally.

So what has happened over the last ten years? Our government is turning into socialists while the Russians are a “loose fit” democracy. International opinion of our involvement in the Middle East is justifiably low, if anyone actually cracks open a history book, but our own allies are turning their backs on us one by one. Our economy is in the toilet while the Republicans deliberately let the Democrats seize power of the THREE BRANCHES of our own government, and they are doing this so that it will sign the death warrant of that party.  Meanwhile, Americans watch gasoline prices begin its slow climb upward again, losing their homes on subprime mortgages that were engineered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (both Federal companies—not private—both endorsed adamantly by the democrats since their creation by our government), and the unemployment rate sores as food lines begin to swell at local food banks.

Think about it. By the time Obama’s Whitehouse is done with the United States, we will be in the worst depression EVER in the history of our modern contemporaries throughout the world. Iran is becoming a nuclear nation because we created it. Russia is helping them do it and they are the democracy while we are the socialists.

We live in a world that is turned upside down and insurrection within our own nation is very plausible right now. The next civil war in this country is going to be about what party you belong to. And how this will work is the constitution is going to be shit on at every turn. Your rights as an American are going to be taken away one at a time and all the while you are going to think, “Wow, I am loved.” And when it is too late to do anything about it, this current administration will have disarmed the masses by taking away the right to bear arms, free speech, right to assemble, right to own property, right to the pursuit of personal gain through business ownership (also the right to pursue happiness) thus making it difficult for revolutionaries to challenge them. It is written in our own constitution that we Americans have the right to not only own guns, but to organize into our own militias and OVERTHROW a criminal government that does not FOLLOW the constitution by the letter!

Someone should send a copy of the Constitution to the Congress, Senate, and White House, because their actions seem to indicate that they don’t have one.

One word sums up how all this has come into being for our nation. COMPLACENCY

I only hope that I’m proven wrong, because in a few years, you could be arrested for reading this, and I will have been shot by a firing squad long ago for writing it. This is how nations fall. It has happened to democracies throughout history, because mankind is a derelict opportunist that will destroy anything that threatens the comfort and security of the elite few in the name of the unfortunate masses.  We are the oldest democracy in existence. If you like living in a land of the free and you are a true patriot, you will not only agree with this political paper, but you will do everything in your power as a true American to prevent the death of this country.

If you don’t know what that means, you might as well hand our country over to China right now and get it over with, because that is the slow death warrant that our bipartisan government officials are doing as you are reading this.

This is only the beginning. Will you have the stomach to live in the new world order, or will you do what is right by veterans who came before us and died to secure the freedom the we all seem to just take for granted and throw away at the voting booth every two and four years

If you do poorly at your job, your employer fires you. So why don’t we do the same for our politicians?
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So this very long blog entry has a very important point: Things don't change. I wrote that blog entry almost three years ago and things have only gotten worse. Now time will continue to move forward as we continually fall behind. What are YOU going to do about it?

Until next time!

Introducing Brian Hess . . . . . . .

I had a conversation with a friend today that got me to thinking that I definitely needed to start a blog about the stuff that goes on with me. As you know, blogging is for the person that has a lot going on. I am definitely a person with a lot going on, all the time. Never a day goes by and there isn't something of interest or dramatic. And I am a man that despises drama!

As I was going through the various websites, trying to figure out which one would let me use my Microsoft Word 2007 software, it would appear that none of them support it anymore. So, I opted to use my Google.com account, linking it with a Wordpress blog, and facebook, and myspace, all by way of MSN! That way I can kill all birds with one rock!

So, as you get to know me, you find out that I have a broad-sweeping and all-encompassing sense of humor that many times goes over people's heads, or gets misconstrued, and this can sometimes be the source of the drama I mentioned in my opening paragraph. I have a cynical sense of humor that has developed since I was growing up in a family of eccentric artist-types, and during the course of my ten-year-long naval career (not belly button--I'm not a dancer), and I have lived and traveled all over the United States, not to mention several countries I've visited.

This is not the first blog I have ever written, I have a very extensive blog on www.myspace.com/brianhess/blog that dates back to 2004. Unfortunately, myspace.com is a graveyard of sorts and they have screwed with the format of the blog page so much that even I would not want to surf back to the stone-aged version of myself. Funny thing is that I don't even like reading stuff that I wrote about my life seven years ago, because I am an ever-changing and growing human being. My views have changed quite a bit about personal issues and how I deal with people in general, and even some of my political blogs I find kind of "out of right field." I like to think that I have grown some wisdome about things, but there is a blog entry that I put in there that I really like, and it is about my theory on "Critical Mass." So I am going to attempt to cut and paste it here.

Critical Mass (dated April 5th, 2010)

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Is the end of the world really going to take place on 12/21/2012? Is the cliché hourglass going to drop its last grain of sand that night as the Earth, Sun, and center of our Milky Way Galaxy in a rare cosmic alignment as it does every 60 thousand years? Are we going to witness the enslavement of mankind by aliens returning to Earth with an ambiguous agenda on how to prepare earthlings for dinner? Is the end of Barrack Obama’s first term as president and the 2012 election going to usher in a New World Order that will determine the destruction of our way of life? Is it the effects of global cooling vs. global warming that will spawn the next civil war between scientists that blindly follow political idiots over the lemmings’ cliff? Or possibly, is it going to be the total breakdown of our economy and the boiling point being reached between Neo-Christian faiths and Islamic extremists?

Strangely enough, it may be a combination of any of the events that brings about the end of the world, but I think we, as humans, are doing the job just fine without the help of extraterrestrials, asteroids, nature, or politicians. I want to point out a few things that I have observed lately, that may make you think about what our role is in this world we live in.

It is possible for humans to learn to move on and forgive one another beyond the horrible scope of self inflicted holocausts, and those inflicted on our neighbors. It begins with the ancient societies that believed in multiple gods and burning offerings to them to appease their appetites for human blood, even though archeologists and anthropologists have discovered that this obviously didn’t work for the people of ancient Pompeii, Greece, Egypt, Rome, and the rumored/fabled Atlantis. For as sophisticated our minds are, we as humans are actually the stupidest creatures on the planet!

Everyone believes that we humans are the most successful creatures on Earth because we can create things with our hands that are equipped with opposable thumbs, and that we have an understanding of the world around us and the potential to do some many incredible feats through art, language, and ingenuity. Actually, despite our great gifts that the human race as a whole has taken for granted, society is not much different from the very nature of the universe in which we all live.

Many scholars who have made that observation and have written poems, sonnets, quatrains, papers, thesis after thesis, and spent many hours on the couch of a rich psychologist, but for what purpose other than to just waste paper and time writing and typing away their life, or well wishing for something better? It is a natural order that when specific conditions reach critical mass in all levels of existence, that there is some kind of explosion, after which there is a calm that follows.

The Big Bang theory demonstrates that a particle that was so small but so heavy and full of all the known energy in all existence reached critical mass, exploded, and is ever expanding. Now physicists believe that once the universe expands to the point just before ripping itself apart, it will collapse upon itself and start a new cycle all over again.

Interestingly enough, civilization has done that numerous times, reaching back over the last 6 thousand years. The Persians, Hebrew, Egyptians, Romans, Toltec’s, Aztecs, Incans, Mayans, Iroquois, Seminole, Hopi, Apache, Sioux, France, England, Germany, Vikings: the list goes on and on. Each society reaches a critical mass then blows up. Sometimes it’s just about the fight over resources for the benefit of the stronger civilization, other times it’s about the belief in a world that is civilized a different way. But it all comes right back to the same basic function of the universe: Critical Mass.

Humans started off as nomads foraging for food and when they learned that hunting together in packs brought down a larger beast for the warmth of their furs and the nutrition and survival of their off spring from the meat--then the nomads began to settle in groups. The groups then formed towns and villages, which later brought about cities and culture. When a new civilization enters the picture, the two try to coexist, until one loses its patience for the other and decides to absorb or cancel it out. When you look upon a world of civilization, you see a great deal of order-through-chaos, but as you zoom in on the Petri dish of chaos, you begin to see individuals again. Each individual is like a mini environment or civilization. We as individuals must meet the same basic needs to survive. We as individuals continue to worry about our neighbors and if we will be in direct competition for resources with them, therefore, we may start our own little personal wars.

It’s about a war over percentages. If I am your neighbor and you are angry with me because I park my brand new exotic car across the street from your house, then you will call the police and have it towed. Since it bugs the hell out of you that I would have something so nice and that you are still stuck driving that old 1976 Datsun B210 around that barely starts on a cold winter morning, you become a neighbor scorned. It doesn’t matter that I make more money than you because you have 5 kids and I have none. You don’t care why I have it, but that I have it. Any reasoning as to why my lifestyle is different from yours is irrelevant.

It’s human nature to be worried about everyone else in a selfish sort of context. This happens all the time with great nations. Russia was on an ever-expansionist conquest for resources and landmass. But with great acreage come great infrastructure expenses and the collapse of the huge government spread too thin. China has enormous land area and resources, but too many people to properly educate and plan supportive infrastructure for. Great Britain conquered and colonized many nations, but could not maintain the infrastructure to control rebellions around the globe. The United States is finding out that being a superpower in the world is a very expensive role, and that geopolitics is not necessarily the greatest defense mechanism keeping terrorists off of our own soil.

Where there are unhappy citizens in the world, there is the building of critical mass. Countries with great populations that are held in contempt by their own governments and held back by brute force or by financial means are on the verge of total collapse, and many times the new governments are not any better than the previous ones. This is not just true for the third world, but also for the United States.

I hear from so many people that it was George W. Bush’s fault that our economy is in the mess it’s in, and then in the same breath, they are blaming Obama for making it worse. My observation is that many people in our country are being fooled by politicians into thinking that they have our best interests in mind that they are writing into law better health care reform that they won’t even put themselves on. My observation is that our scholastic system has failed to provide education that is meaningful. Just the other day, an 18 year old employee of mine stated that he never heard of Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters, Irving Berlin, or of the movie “White Christmas.” Then, while taking a Washington State literacy exam, he was asked the question “Whose face was on the gold coin medallion given to the Indians in a gesture of peace from explorers Louis and Clarke?” One of the multiple choice answers offered was Bing Crosby.

How can our young Americans make informed decisions about who to elect into the government come voting day, when they don’t even learn anything about our own culture: Americana? How can a person justify blaming George W. Bush for something that he only had a very small part of? How can these same young people rally or have even half the education to have an intelligible conversation about politics when our own schools can’t even teach the basics of life in American History?

The End of the World is being wrought by our own hands, and it starts in the home, continues into the schools, and it all overseen by the Federal Government. It is, and has been the agenda, of the Democratic Party, to destroy the common man’s ability to make intelligent and educated decisions, have money and capitalist gain to improve themselves, and be able to provide for their families without socialized EVERYTHING. Another way of putting it is simply to call it Marxism.  Stalin had taken the Marxist ideals (through third-part interpretation through Lenin) and twisted it into his own kind of communist/socialist regime which has been called Stalinism. Now we have a really big problem in the United States.

The Democrats will have you believe that socializing everything so that the Federal Government owns it all is the best way to run the country. What they do is they create the illusion that the federal ownership is actually a “federally funded program.” This is not a conspiracy theory, it is conspiracy fact. It is well known in educated circles that F.D.R. (Franklin Delano Roosevelt), was a “card carrying member of the communist/socialist party” in the 1920s and 1930s. But in those days, they were just considered to be “progressive democrats.” Strangely enough, these “progressives” began to gain more political power and eventually, over many decades, have not only been able to usurp the control of the legislative and executive branches of our federal government, but many of them have control of larger state governments that have great masses of resources. 

So in a sense, the Democratic Party has reached critical mass. They now control the House of Representatives, The Senate, and the Oval Office. We’ve handed the country over to incumbent Communism.

This does not let the Republicans off the hook though. I personally believe they allowed this to happen, DELIBERATELY, in the hopes that by “throwing the last election” in 2008, allowing this abomination into the presidency will be political suicide for the arch nemeses for the Republicans.  Allowing the Democrats to destroy the country and drive it into a deep depression, will allow for the Republican philanthropists—perhaps philanderers is a better term—to swoop in and declare the obvious choice for redeeming the United States back to its former glory—sounds much like a Fascism.

But that is not where the critical mass stops, because in the midst of all we are seeing here in our own borders, there is an even bigger problem coming to a frothy boil—Islam vs. Christians.

Something that everyone in the world must be made clear on—the Koran says nothing of killing anyone in the name of Allah for the non-conversion of non-Islamic or Muslim faiths. Like we have in the USA with the left wing and right wing Christians (that is ultra liberal vs. ultra conservative) Islam has these same extremes. All religions have this issue, and each have come to critical mass several times over thousands of years, often pitted not only against each other, but each having internal strife. The Reformation of Martin Luther, the struggle of Jewish leaders in the practice of the Cabal, Muslim vs. Islamic law/society (one is more progressive than the other), and the destruction of religions no longer practiced. What is it that brings about this critical mass within a religion: money and power? 

Islamic extremist don’t seem to be as interested in money as they are just interested in invoking their power over others that are weaker, or unexpected victims of a more powerful or influential group of people. They don’t have a true “religious” agenda, although many of them “think” that they do. It’s mostly about having control over someone else and try to get a retaliation in a cause and effect role, just to support their own agenda. It is their way of getting vindication for what they view to be centuries of harassment from the Western World of Christian/Catholic nations trying to impart their way of life onto them. The only problem with war is that it creates war mongering. 

Now we live in a world society where we have no ability to move about from one country to the next without worry and security measures being taken to just have basic tourism without the threat of terrorism. The main reason why the USA got involved in the Middle East is because we created a bigger mess of an already messy situation, but instituting and granting sovereignty to nations in former Persia that should never have happened in the first place. Iran and Iraq would be one large example of that, but most of all, our sympathy toward Israel has gotten us into hot water with the Arab world in ways that we could not have ever imagined. 

However, this does not justify Palestinians behaving badly—since the Gaza strip and most of Israel was not even inhabited by Palestinians except for nomadic tribes that had no education, infrastructure, or government to take the barren wasteland and swamps and turn it into prime real-estate that—now—Palestinians must have! Funny how they were not opposed to the creation of the state of Israel until AFTER the new nation turned the land into something that was desirable.

But it still all comes down to one thing: Critical Mass. How do you avoid it? Can it even be avoided? Only time will be the judge of that. And hopefully, we will find that relief valve soon—for the sake of future generations.

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Okay, now my theory of Critical Mass goes deeper. Every system in the universe is born of the same physics. Critical Mass is inevitable. Mind, body and spirit are all part of this too. How we interact with our world demonstrates this. So the Universe was born from Critical Mass, and is expanding exponentially. Once it as reached the point just beyond the limit of expansion, it will implode. Another type of Critical Mass.

Our bodies are born of Critical Mass from moment of conception to the time of our deaths. And like the Universe, we live in cycles of various mass ejections (like the stars), intermingle with other people and situations (like galaxies colliding), change in our growth and understanding (like the three states of matter: solid liquid and gas), and a million more metaphoric relationships can be played in comparisons as vast and as numerous as the events in our universe. And everything is doing one thing simultaneously--spinning and growing older.

Being a human being with a cognitive mind and understanding of our universe and being able to see a broad-sweeping view of ALL THERE IS TO SEE is our own and greatest potential. It is what makes us like God. If you take the Christian view that God created man in His image, then we have the potential to break free of, or live in harmony with the very essence of the universe. There is order in chaos. What will you do to understand it?