Vaxers Vexed by Vaccuous Antivaxers

I'm not here to tell you I have done all the research on this or that this side is right or the other side is wrong. But I do have a few points to bring up that concern me.

1. Vaccinations are expensive. Wouldn't you rather have no measles than measles? And how much would you pay for that? I'd say the vaccinations are worth the price we pay. Before coming to Indonesia I got a physical and some vaccinations. The physical wasn't too expensive but the vaccinations were over 600 bucks. But who's to say they haven't already saved me from coming down with something? I dunno. What I DO know is there is a lot of suspicious behaviour involved in this very public "debate" we have going on right now. And if there is one inalienable fact I have learned from life it's this: where there is money to be made, there is suspicious behaviour. In general I'm talking about lying, cheating, stealing, you know, the Greed triplets, but in the case of vaccinations I'm talking about other behaviour too. For instance, I can't be the only person who has noticed how all vaccinations have now been grouped into one category so no longer can a person have a problem with one of them without being accused of having a problem with them all. You don't like the sistotalcrunella vaccine? GET THEE BEHIND ME, ANTIVAXER!!! It's an old, old schoolyard argument ploy that makes legitimate beefs about questionable, new, not fully tested vaccines bayud... mmkay, while making people who have never heard of sistotalcrunella, can't pronounce it, don't even know it's a made up word, defend it like hissing, spitting, cornered wolverines.

Big pharma is guilty of a lot of suspicious behaviour. They've been tried, found guilty and fined for misinforming people who take their drugs. The motive was money, so the punishment was fines, sometimes in the billions of dollars. Companies like Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline are examples of huge companies that have been busted and fined for huge amounts. Here's an article with more detail. The following is a list of misconduct filed against the pharmaceutical giant Merck by some former employees turned whistleblowers: "failed to disclose that its mumps vaccine was not as effective as Merck represented, (ii) used improper testing techniques, (iii) manipulated testing methodology, (iv) abandoned undesirable test results, (v) falsified test data, (vi) failed to adequately investigate and report the diminished efficacy of its mumps vaccine, (vii) falsely verified that each manufacturing lot of mumps vaccine would be as effective as identified in the labeling, (viii) falsely certified the accuracy of applications filed with the FDA, (ix) falsely certified compliance with the terms of the CDC purchase contract, (x) engaged in the fraud and concealment describe herein for the purpose of illegally monopolizing the U.S. market for mumps vaccine, (xi) mislabeled, misbranded, and falsely certified its mumps vaccine, and (xii) engaged in the other acts described herein to conceal the diminished efficacy of the vaccine the government was purchasing."

If you will just look at X for a moment. Money. That's what it comes down to. And how can you blame pharmaceutical companies for doing what is encouraged, nay DEMANDED in all industry nowadays? Because we are shooting their product into our veins? Well then maybe we shouldn't have drug companies in charge of manufacturing these multi-billion dollar products. We should let the government take care of vaccinations because we all know the government will handle things more ethically and efficiently don't we? (DANGER: Sarcasm meter in the red. DANGER)

So you see the problem. On the one hand measles, mumps, rubella, polio, all kinds of diseases have been successfully suppressed by widespread vaccination. It works! On the other hand, Big Pharma lies. It's absurd to ask anyone to believe that "THIS time they're not lying even though they've lied almost every time in the past, made billions of dollars from it, haven't listed the ingredients on the syrum in that syringe the nurse is brandishing... Come on, coward, spike up! Or are you an ANTIVAXER?"

I recently started watching a TV show I've never seen before: "The West Wing." I don't know how I could have neglected such a good show for so long. Maybe my hatred of politics. Anyway, I've watched three episodes and in the second episode, (I think it was), POTUS gets a flu shot. He asks the doctor, "What is that?" The doctor says, "It's a flu shot." The President replies, "I don't need a flu shot." Then the most widespread and compelling argument for the flu shot I've heard so far is employed by the President's doctor, "You DO need a flu shot!" and he jabs him in the arm. "How do I know this isn't the start of a military coup?" asks the Prez. Well? Who's right, the doctor or the President? We're just supposed to put our complete trust in doctors? Like they never lie and are never bought by pharmaceutical companies? It's an awful lot to ask the average person to do. Although we do it safely a lot, who knows what is in that needle THIS time?

2. Vaccines are patented. I think of Jonas Salk who made the selfless gesture to all of mankind of NOT patenting his Polio vaccine. In an interview with Edward R. Murrow he famously asked, "Would you patent the sun?" Well knowledge can be a big bummer sometimes! It turns out that Salk may not be such a wonderful human being. The patent on his Polio vaccine actually was attempted unsuccessfully, but pretend I didn't say that, let's consider him a hero and his heroic statement for a while, shall we? Would this be a solution?

An awful lot of the problems with medicine are created by companies racing for patents. They are more likely to see the drugs as fully researched and safe if there is a rival company testing a similar drug and nearing a patent for it. NO! Would I suggest that scientists are sometimes influenced by money? Well, no, I'd say they, unfortunately, are almost ALWAYS influenced by money. Patent or perish. No matter how hard you try to preach ethics in science, there are grants available to people who work fast.

According to Howard K. Schachman, science has gone from "Publish or Perish" to "Patent and Prosper." Here is a very long but enlightening article written by a person who is an authority in the area. He goes through his extensive career in science and outlines the ways that money has changed the way scientific study is approached. Like I have often bemoaned here on my blog, Schachman also believes that scientists nowadays steer clear of looking into topics that have not been shown preference by science, (i.e. have not received funding for research), in the past. Therefore science has stagnated into a discipline in which a few areas are exhaustively over-researched and potentially ground-breaking areas are neglected due to lack of funding. Like the Aether and Matrix of Matter, (see previous post).

Since every aspiring scientist knows what's hot and what's not it has become such a cinch to write papers that the peer reviewers are being bombarded. This leads to the inevitable shortcuts such as giving more consideration to things like where the paper was published, the past publications and citations of the author, even the weight of the paper, rather than the content. To give some idea of how illegitimate the peer review process in science has become consider the gibberish generating program named SCIgen. This computer program has actually had 120 papers consisting of total gibberish PUBLISHED by peer reviewed scientific journals. In relevance the pseudo scientist under whose name these papers were submitted, Ike Antkare, was ranked number 21 by Google Scholar. Albert Einstein is ranked number 36.

So in 1980, based on a ludicrous cattle farming analogy in the paper, "The Tragedy of the Commons," by Garrett Hardin, the Bayh-Doyle Act was passed allowing patenting of medicines. Ostensibly when cattle are allowed to graze anywhere they want, the grass in their area will eventually be overgrazed. Ignoring the practice employed by even the most inept of cattle farmers of sectioning off land to allow for grass to grow in one area while another is grazed, Garrett Hardin extrapolated this weak analogy of bovine behaviour to humans and came up with the mantra of, "What was available to all was available to none." Along with being a justification for a helluva lot of greed, this lead to the commercialization of research and patenting. There is absolutely no application of this farming analogy to drug research and production. If the drug business were left open to all, would the supply of drugs just get used up? It's obscenely flawed logic but capitalism and greed don't usually depend on solid logic. Nor do the lawmakers who were no doubt influenced by lobbyists with fat wallets. Sausage and laws: two thing you don't want to know how they're made. THIS was in the West Wing too!

At any rate, share the profits of your newly developed drugs with the researchers and you have just compromised the standards and ethics of the entire process. This is what we have today. Numerous conflicts of interest have arisen when universities and drug researchers literally become too invested in their research. And the "Tragedy of the Anticommons" has also come into being. In raising the question whether patents can deter innovation, Heller and Eisenberg refer to the “Tragedy of the Anticommons” when “a proliferation of intellectual property rights upstream may be stifling life-saving innovations downstream in the course of research and product development.” Like so many things in our world, medical science has been diminished by the introduction of corporate thinking. Is it any wonder people, including antivaxers, don't trust anyone in the medical profession to be pumping anything into their bodies?

3. Vaccines fail. People who've been vaccinated against something get that thing. A lot. For example the flu shots every year have to include 2 or 3 strains of the flu that are most likely to be the big ones. Sometimes a new strain is dominant and the flu shot guessers didn't include it in the shots for that flu season so there's a huge flu epidemic. It happens. How often? You can find pretty believable people who would go from 0 all the way to 100%. It's absolutely mind blowing how there are completely contradictory speeches and papers by knowledgeable people constantly popping up. Who the hell are we supposed to believe??? I am inclined to say, "Follow the money," and it would seem the vaxers have more of that to gain here, but I'm just not sure. Apparently, as the Merck stats show, there's a lot of money to be made from class action lawsuits against drug companies too. Depending on the day, I can surf the internet and see the points of vaxers and say, "Look, you can't deny that a short time ago millions of people were contracting measles every year and thousands were coming down with complications like brain swelling that actually killed them. Then after measles vaccinations maybe 100 people got them and none died. This is awfully compelling evidence that we should all vax! No?"

The very next day I can listen to a talk by some medical doctor about how new, not fully tested vaccinations are being released and pushed by drug companies onto the public who are no more than human guinea pigs. And formaldehyde, aluminum, mercury, all kinds of crap in vaccinations is bad for us. Compelling evidence for the antivaxers. No?

But scroll up, waaaay up. This is only because of the phenomenon I talked about at the very outset of this post. The old, old, schoolyard argument ploy. Measles and flu vaccinations are not the same. Diptheria and smallpox vaccines are not the same. Ebola and sistotalcrunella vaccines are not the same. DUMMY! Give your head a shake! Why would any clear-headed person get all riled up at the behest of people who were grouping any two, or any others, together? It's just lazy logic! The truth of this whole controversy would probably be easily arrived at if not for the strong emotions and downright name calling, threatening, life-or-death allegiances people have wrongfully established with one side or the other. So that when the truth finally comes out, these people who have totally committed are either going to feel like dipshits or do the human thing: keep on fighting even though they KNOW they're wrong. I'm not convinced that this is not the case already. Either way if you are against all vaccinations, you're probably wrong and if you are FOR all vaccinations, you're probably wrong. What's wrong with weighing them all individually on their merits? Like logical people! "I don't like Oreos." "Cookie hater!" "I love Chips Ahoy!" "Yeah I like all cookies too." HOW STUPID ARE WE???

That said, I'm inclined to believe the medical doctors I've seen talking about how bypassing your natural immune system, which is what vaccines do, is gonna hurt in the long run. I have searched and searched for doctors who are defending vaccinations but they are much harder to find. This is simply because vaccinations have been removed from the curriculum. Just another thing that the chosen direction of science has bypassed. And there is likely a reason for it. My guess is the multi-billion dollar industry that vaccinations represent is something science wants to keep the youngsters, (and oldsters), motivated.

Oh I get my vaccinations for polio and measles and rubella, (which I think is German Measles although it doesn't sound like a German word. Sounds Italian. Like a pasta. Rubella con funghilli. (Rubella with mushroooms)) I'm not sure about the con. Does that mean with? I digress. But I'm still more than a little skeptical about some other vaccinations that people are pressuring other people into taking. I certainly don't think anything but an exhaustively tested and safe vaxination should be mandatory! I really don't think I'm expressing that Earth-shattering a point of view here either. But I have two distinct advantages over people who are witnessing the hostility between vaxers and antivaxers right now. 1. I have no wife, no kids, no church, no clubs, no boss, no responsibilities that make me afraid to express my balls out, actual opinion! I'm the least subjective person you're likely to ever meet! Right now anyway. 2. I have a TON of free time on my hands which I have been using to research all kinds of little topics such as this to make my blog more interesting for the 3 people who read it. 3. As mentioned in 1. I am objective and if you find any flaws in this reason PLEASE let me know! I just might change my mind and/or write another blog post outlining it.

So there you have it. As I said at the beginning, this is not written in defence of either side of the vaccine argument, but it is, hopefully, a call to reason for both sides. I don't think either side is right. But both have good points so they're not wrong either. This should not be so hard to reconcile given the many MANY vaccines there are out there. My final word is, think a little more reasonably, BOTH sides, and maybe we'll get this thing figured out.

For what it's worth, in episode 10, (I think), of The West Wing, the President gets the flu.

God, The First Mover, The Matrix of Matter, The Aether or atheism?

I've had several friends post this recently. Or some other version of it.

First of all let me say that I really, REALLY like Stephen Fry! He's hilarious and he's a formidable intellect. His comedy has made me laugh, his quiz show, QI, has made me think and laugh. He's well known for his charity work. The man is definitely someone to be respected and even emulated.

And this short vid. quickly went viral being posted and re-posted by mike dropping, check and mating atheists who considered this a brilliant, unassailable argument that would surely put to death the last vestments of belief in something so silly as God in any reasonable thinking person. And by some others.

I even saw it posted by a friend of mine who prefaced it with, "I am by no means an atheist but this was good. The response would be interesting." So being intrigued by the prospect of God's response to this atheist who, let's not forget, had just had his life's philosophical pursuits blown away by the existence of a God he was sure didn't exist, I thought about that. How might God respond to this former atheist calling him a capricious, stupid, cruel, monstrous, maniac? Certainly not the best thing to say to a capricious, stupid, cruel, monstrous maniac. Why would Stephen Fry say those things? Well, that's a good question.

It would be futile for Fry to present God with those arguments that had nurtured his earthly atheism, all of which God's existence has just disproved. I have heard famous atheists claim that if given solid evidence of God, they would acquiesce, but, dare I say God bless him, Stephen Fry just isn't one of them.

I'm not saying he didn't acquiesce on the existence part. He really has no choice if God is right in front of him. But he doesn't want to give up the fight. So he downshifts to sour grapes. "Okay the futility of my atheism notwithstanding, I don't wanna go to Heaven anyway, and here's why..." He now knows there is a God. He now knows there is a Heaven. And he's insulting God and refusing entrance into Heaven for some long held grievances that he feels he needs to air. Maybe I'm speculating here but I've seen this before and it puzzles me every time. I think this is that inexplicable contradiction within atheism that I just don't understand: people saying they don't believe in God because of some attrocities that he committed or allowed. How can you blame a God you don't believe in?

This reminds me of two things. The first is my favourite author, J.D. Salinger, who once wrote, "After all isn't cursing really just the lowest form of worship?" I think of all the past atheists I have known and few did not have the "God damn you God!" attitude that for the life of me I cannot understand in intelligent people.

The second thing I think of is how atheists seem to all agree that religion is just a blight on humanity and they generously sprinkle blame for a lot of things on religion and by extension, God. But to a man, woman and child if you ask them whether the Quran, Bible or any holy text or doctrine was written or even inspired by God, they'll say no. They HAVE to, otherwise a belief in God is implied. So then, really, religion has nothing to do with God at all, does it? It's just man's belief in a God and man's dogma, laws, rules, protocol, and behaviour that they hate. To be honest, I'm with them on this! A lot of people who believe in God are too simply because religion has lead to a lot of bad crap, but none of this crap is God's fault. It's stupid, stupid mankind.

So what it comes down to is you can't be a genuine atheist if you are like me and blame the world's ills on mankind because then none of that crap is God's fault. And you can't be a genuine atheist if you blame the world's ills on God because then you believe in a God you say you don't believe in. This answer Stephen Fry is giving is a great illustration of that connundrum.

I think of Charles Darwin too. So make that three things this brings to mind for me. Darwin was rounding into form midway through the 19th century when the movement away from God in many major areas of society was becoming popular. It flew in the face of widely held logic such as the early 1800's watchmaker analogy of William Paley. If you find a watch on the ground you naturally assume a creator due to the irreducible complexity of the watch. Obviously only a lunatic would give any credence to the concept that the watch could be formed by randomly occuring natural processes. Paley contended that even the simplest living creature was exponentially more complex than a watch and therefore living things had a Creator.

Darwin challenged this somewhat in his seminal publication "On The Origin Of Species," and many took him to be an atheist because of it. He never was. That's a huge misconception. At one point he said that he could be termed an agnostic but never an atheist. Darwin's reasoning was similar to the eye burrowing insect Fry talks about. Only Darwin found, among other natural horrors, a beetle that injects its prey with a paralysis syrum so that the poor victim can't move but CAN feel the beetle eating it alive! How could a loving God create such an attrocity? Darwin maintaned doubts until he died, but always maintained a belief in an Aristotilian, (300 B.C.), first mover and a creative force in the universe.

"It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist... I may state that my judgment often fluctuates. Moreover whether a man deserves to be called a theist depends on the definition of the term: which is much too large a subject for a note. In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.— I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind." Charles Darwin.

I put it to you that there really aren't many, if any, true atheists. I don't believe in aliens because I haven't seen proof. If this is a person's stance on God then they are not an atheist but an agnostic. If they say they don't believe in God for things they blame Him for, then they are an objecting believer. And if they say they are an atheist because they hate religion, then they are an ahumanist, not an atheist. I have heard no explanation to refute this theory of mine but would welcome one. I'm just saying that this is what it looks like to me.

I don't know many other reasons to be atheist but there could be some. Perhaps the thrill-seeking personality? If you believe in God and are wrong, oh well. If you don't believe in God and are wrong, fire and brimstone. "Oh yeah? That sounds like a dare to me!!!"

So anyway, I took a stab at what I thought God might have said in response to His plucky little critic, Stephen Fry. If I may be so bold, And God said, "Stevie-boy, what makes you so sure all the misery, injustice and pain were NOT man's fault? I know you denied me in your life on Earth but if every man had lived life like you, there would have been an AWFUL lot less of the evil you blame me for. Come on into Heaven."

"How can things like cancer and eye-burrowing, child-blinding pests be man's fault?" you might ask. Well, I'm glad you asked that question. There are many who maintain that we have everything we need on the planet Earth to make it either a heaven or a hell. I don't think I need to say which direction man's shortcomings, (mostly greed and pride), have trended toward. Instead of Utopia, man has chosen dystopia and along the way I believe there has been a great shift away from God that has robbed mankind of science and technology that could easily have rid the world of a great deal of its misery, including cancer and eye-burrowing insects, not to mention global warming, pollution, social and financial inequality, injustice, suffering, the whole shootin' match. And I'm not alone.

It may be uncomfortable for some to call the entity to which I refer "God," and great minds in the past have referred to that entity in other ways. I mentioned Aristotle's Prime Mover already. That's tantamount to God. Today the scientific bent is toward the Higgs Boson or a God particle, but the originators of quantum physics never intended it that way. Much like Darwin, their cause was hijacked by people who wished to take it in a more secular direction. Max Planck, who is credited as the father of quantum theory, and won the Nobel Prize in 1918 for it, said, "All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter."

The matrix of matter. More comfortable than just saying God. And then there was the guy who I think was the smartest of them all, Nikola Tesla, who believed in something he called the Aether, or Ether. He was an opponent of Einstein and since Einstein's theories fit better into the secular direction science was taking, he was the favourite. But Tesla caused Einstein a great deal of doubt.

"I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved, is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view." Well you can see his mistake. Referring to God was instant scientific suicide in his day. Even though Einstein admitted that if the Aether was detected, it would prove his theory of relativity wrong, and even though Tesla showed him an experiment that showed a pulse traveling at a greater rate than the speed of light, not many people heard about that.

Then in 1920 Einstein actually stated outright that the Aether exists! The theory of relativity is wrong! Again, not many people heard about that. Science politely told him to take his Nobel Prize and the money that comes with it and shut up. They were using that theory. "Only the existence of a field of force can account for the motions of the bodies as observed, and its assumption dispenses with space curvature. All literature on this subject is futile and destined to oblivion. So are all attempts to explain the workings of the universe without recognizing the existence of the ether and the indispensable function it plays in the phenomena.“

Tesla was silenced. But he's making a comeback. There's even a movie about his life coming out soon. And nowadays his theories are being used in research on, among other things, you guessed it, cancer! I read an article about a kid in Nigeria who created a solar and wind powered car out of mostly scrap. How many people who are financially disadvantaged because of man's improper stewardship of the planet have had ideas that could advance science and technology but they were never developed? How much has the left brain indoctrination we call "education" suppressed the creative forces of our species? How great could life be if everyone could be a scientist and science was truly science once again and open to ALL ideas, not merely the ones that coincide with its chosen direction?

We will never know, but I'd be willing to bet that if man hadn't messed up this world so efficiently, we would have solutions to plenty of things that plague this existence and cause people to become atheists. Including eye-burrowing insects. Then God wouldn't be subject to so much criticism or so many non-believers whether they call Him God, The First Mover, The Matrix of Matter, or the Aether. But that's just what I reckon. I could be wrong.

Happiness is...

The billion, trillion, ogighqgaeivhdignoi - illion dollar question is pretty clear: What is happiness and how can I get me some? What if you knew the answer? How much dough could you get from unhappy bazillionaires? A cool million? Well that's not all that stimulating nowadays is it? How about a billion? I bet you could get more. I bet you could get a number of dollars that we haven't made a number for yet. You could probably sell your secret to happiness for one ogighqgaeivhdignoi - illion dollars! In "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck wrote,

“If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich..."

A good place to start my literary inspection of what famous authors think of happiness. I like old Steinbeck. He was one of the few authors I READ instead of renting the movies of his books or getting the Cole's Notes. Of course I DID rent the movies too, they're pretty good, but I really DID read Steinbeck! Honest Injun! lol (see Valentine's post)

Steinbeck is one of many who will tell you that money can't bring you happiness. So I guess my idea of selling the secret to happiness would be a self-defeating process. Ironic at best. I guess I'll have to give it away for free then. But if I were to come up to you and say, "Friend, I have the secret to happiness and I'm going to give it to you absolutely free of charge," you'd think I was selling something wouldn't you? I would just have to be more careful in the selection of my words I suppose. But even if I could somehow convince you that I wasn't trying to sell you a product or attract you to my club or religion, I would have to convince you somehow that I was smart, or at least sane. And that could prove difficult to do...

"Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination." Mark Twain

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." Ernest Hemingway

Stephen King, (and I LOVE the fact that he's now included on lists like this with literary greats!), says, "Happiness should remain unexamined for as long as possible." I guess the examination of it, the thoughtful, intellectual evaluation of it, is what he is implying will destroy it.

Douglas Adams in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" wrote, "I'd far rather be happy than right any day." Again the old "ignorance is bliss" argument. And don't you kind of envy the blissfully ignorant who have no need of fact or reason or logic to mount an aggressive offensive against you? "Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story." Or a good argument, to take my own liberty with the quote. There is some debate as to whether Mark Twain said this or not so to avoid dispute I'll just credit it to, oh, Samuel Clemens.

"If you tell a big enough lie, and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed." Adolf Hitler

What? Hitler was an author! And it's a quote that segues nicely into my next one:

"The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better." George Orwell

Well? Isn't freedom about the biggest lie EVER? It's up there for sure. But anyway, back to our purpose, is the true source of happiness to be ignorant enough to not know that there are terrible people compromising your rights and freedoms and, indeed, your happinesses? THAT sounds contradictory too, doesn't it? If you remain ignorant to increase happiness, but that happiness is decreased, thus ends the ignorance. Ignorance can only lead to happiness if that happiness remains undiminished, no?

This leads us in two directions: 1. You can choose to break out of the ignorance and espouse the Thomas Hardy, Buddhist philosophy illustrated in the quote, "Happiness is a mere episode in the general drama of pain." Or 2. you can always fake it.

"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison to the overcompensation for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability." Aldous Huxley

Let's start with the second one. The "overcompensation for misery." I love that! How often we see it, as if the world actually HAS developed Huxlian Soma! (Soma was a "happiness" pill in "Brave New World") Wash that misery right outta your brain! Act as if. This really bugs me. Now I know it's nice to have upbeat, positive people in the room. Oscar Wilde said, "Some cause happiness wherever they go. Others WHENever they go." And really, what post with great literary quotes would be complete without one from Wilde?

Anyway, I like positive people as much as the next guy, but I don't like forced positivity. I think it's unnatural. Me and Fyodor Dostoevsky. "Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness." So I suppose it's a strategy to employ a kind of self-delusion and force your brain to somehow think happiness into existence.

"I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve." Jane Austen

"Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes." Charles Dickens.

A HA! Maybe this is the source of unhappiness! Our incessant expectation of happiness. Heck, the United States guarantees its citizens the right to the pursuit of happiness! Who are we to think we deserve happiness? Isn't that kind of arrogant? Is this just another example of the increasingly entitled mentality of the priveleged? How often do we bitch about a hard day even though most of the world has it worse than us? I'm guilty.

Just yesterday I woke up late. I had a day off work. I got on my computer and the wifi was excruciatingly slow! It passed in and out and interrupted my conversation with my friend, Paula, on Facebook as well as some games of Trivia Crack I was having. I was really annoyed! Then I went to the kitchen to make some brunch. The kitchen sink tap wouldn't shut off and when it's left on it squeals loud enough to hear in my room. It's been like that for months and nobody will fix it. Also annoying. The community fridge door was left open and my milk for my tea wasn't cold. All happiness-killers.

Then the POWER went out. So I took a shower, in the dark, and went into town to get some groceries. When I got out of the supermarket the sky was clear all around but it was raining a bit. I decided to walk home for the exercise. The sky was cloudless upwind yet miraculously the rain got heavier and heavier! A weather anomaly not unheard of in rainy season in Indonesia. I was soaked and so were my groceries by the time I got home. And, of course, the instant I got in the door the rain stopped.

The power was back on so I decided to turn on the air conditioner to cool off. Even though I was soaked with rain it was a warm rain. The batteries in my remote control for the air conditioner were dead. I had some batteries. Wrong size. Nobody in the place had the right size. I stood on a shaky chair in my room and with a spatula tried to hit the manual power button on the air con. It turned out to be just a light. There IS no manual way to turn the thing on. I went the entire night with only a couple hours of sweaty sleep.

I was bemoaning my plight when I came across, on my functioning internet, a list of famous authors' quotes on happiness. And it put it all into perspective. It might have been Kurt Vonnegut's quote, "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is." I have said for a while now that if I ever get a tattoo I'll get one that says, "Appreciate what you have." And I'll get it somewhere that I can see it a lot every day. So then I re-evaluated my day.

I had a day off for crying out loud! Free to do whatever I wanted, within reason. I had internet, such as it was, I had power to run my computer, I had a computer, and I had a place to live in which to put that computer. A desk, a chair, a coffee... I had a friend! Long time friend from high school, Paula, thousand of miles away and we were just shootin' the breeze. I had a fun game to play. We played Trivia Crack while we chatted. I had my health, my youth, I wasn't hungry or thirsty, I wasn't fighting a war, I actually had it pretty dog-gone good! Better than most people on the Earth. I made some nice spaghetti with meat sauce and some garlic toast, watched a couple movies I had somehow managed to get on my computer, and I had a really good day. And I was whining and complaining to Paula.

I think this is the purpose of my existence here. I have to cultivate this strategy for happiness. I'm not like Jack Kerouac who wrote, "Happiness consists in realising it is all a great strange dream." I don't think so. I could be wrong, or I could be thinking more clearly than a guy who liked to keep his mind in a semi-dream state of chemical alteration a lot and frequently wrote IN such a state. I think life is shit. Basically. If you look at all the brutal things happening with governments, corporations, banks and militaries all over the world, you could get pretty depressed. We're almost in a state of Orwellian dystopia now, some would say we ARE in one. It's pretty crappy and I have come to the conclusion that it ain't getting any better. But I believe it has a purpose in its unhappiness and, as Edith Wharton wrote, "If you make up your mind not to be happy, there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time."

As the Taoists say, "Find joy in the suffering." And there, my friends, is the key. Find your joy. I find joy in travel, eating, drinking, friends, new cultures, fishing, sports, writing, games, watching family and friends grow up, having good conversations, and hundreds of much simpler things. One author I was morally outraged NOT to find on the list I'm taking most of these quotes from is Tom Robbins. He wrote a story, I think you can find it in "Wild Ducks Flying Backward," about what he would order for his last meal on death row. It was a magnum opus about a tomato sandwich. That's it. A tomato sandwich that was so succulently described that after reading it I made myself a tomato sandwich.

I don't think we need to have grandiose strategies regarding our pursuit of happiness, I just think we need to train our overstimulated brains to slow down and appreciate the really great stuff we have. "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is." You don't need to be winning an Olympic gold medal or planting a flag atop Mr. Everest to utter these words. You could be eating a really great tomato sandwich.

I'm not saying I've nailed this strategy. I think I'll still be working on it till the day I die. It's TOUGH! But I need to keep reminding myself and striving to do it. For instance, I now want a tomato sandwich but I'm out of tomatoes. Instead of cursing the high prices of tomatoes at Ranch Market and the other tenants here for clogging the fridge with their food that just stays there month after month, goes bad and takes up space I could have used for tomatoes, I have to tell myself, "Hey, I still have some spaghetti sauce from yesterday. It has tomatoes in it." Call this overcompensation for misery if you like, but I'm going to eat some spaghetti with some nice garlic bread and a glass of milk. I'm pretty sure that is going to make me happy.

Almost Valentine's Day

It's almost Valentine's Day. As I get farther along life's path and nearer the grave, holidays change for me. I still like Christmas but not as much. Birthdays are only remembered because of Facebook. "Oh would you look at that. Three people are having birthdays today: Kelly, Sandy and ME! It's my birthday today? Oh yeah!"

I absolutely LOVE Halloween! I think I like it even better now! Thanksgiving, American Thanksgiving, Korean Chuseok, hey, any excuse to go all medieval on excessive amounts of food is A O K with me!

But Valentine's Day... Let's just say it's not my fave any more. It never really was. I remember Valentine's Days from early childhood. Not because of the love, because of the stress! When I was in gradeschool we had to give valentines to everybody in our classes at school. EVERYbody! I guess somebody thought that singling out girlfriends and boyfriends in gradeschool was just silly because for the lovers, they're too young to know what love is and for the kids that don't get valentines, they're NOT too young to know what social exclusion is. So we gave Valentines to everyone. I thought that was weird, and so did my other male friends because, although we were too young, (or at least I was), to fully understand what gay was, we all knew we weren't supposed to LOVE our buddies. Oh sure we could love them, but not LOVE love them. You know what I mean.

So being of a family somewhere near the bottom of the financial comfort spectrum, I remember getting those sheets of punch out valentines. Do you remember these?

They usually had one or two good ones and the rest were crappy. Which was good because I usually had one or two good classmates and the rest were crappy. Not like the richer kids in class who gave out cool valentines with REAL superheroes or even the ones from Mcdonalds. They had LOTS of love at Valentine's Day, especially if they attached Mcdonald's gift certificates to their valentines! Remember the valentines from Mcdonalds?

So on Feb. 13th I'd spend some time punching them out and choosing which classmate got which valentine. I'd usually start with the other boys. I'd try to find valentines with pictures of cowboys, spacemen, policemen, superheroes or masculine things like that even though they'd say things like "I'd like to rope you into being my valentine," "You're out of this world," "I arrest you for stealing my heart," or "You're my valentine hero!" I was okay with the inappropriate messages because the pictures carried more weight.

The Aquaman valentine would have been awesome cuz you could give it to a boy OR a girl! But you never got cool ones like THAT on the big punch-out sheets.

And there were never enough! After I took care of the main dudes in the class I had no really good pictures to give to the lesser guys. So they ended up getting the oddly shaped or impossible to understand selections.

What's "Scentimental" supposed to mean to a 7-year-old? Or even sentimental? I don't remember waxing nostalgic when I was 7. "I remember the old days, three years ago, before I had to go to school... Sesame street wasn't so bourgeois back then!" Never said that.

So then, on to the girls. You had to be careful here! Girls actually READ their valentines! But I found that attitude could usually trump most of the words on the valentines. You throw them at the chicks and say, "Here. Here. There ya go. Think fast. Incoming!" and they get the hint that your heart is really not that into it. BUT, if you had that one girl who you kinda dug, then it was a stressful ordeal! Should I toss her card at her with equal nonchalance or should I give her a little extra special chalance? Or maybe I should just wing her a valentine like the other girls but give her the one that had "You complete me," "You are special to me," or even, if I'm feeling extraordinarily daring, "I love you!" Should I sign my name with a heart beside it? Or maybe some exes and ohs for kisses and hugs? Or maybe just the ohs. Our relationship hasn't progressed to kissing yet. This was too much stress for a little boy! So I'd cave under the pressure and just give every girl whatever she got. If she was like Ralphie Wiggum and took "I Choo-Choo-Choose You" personally, whatever! So I'd just give out things like:

Can you IMAGINE giving these out nowadays? Kids would be sent home from school; social services would evaluate parents; kids would be sent to sensitivity classes; rules would be changed; laws would be made; blame would be assigned! "What's that supposed to mean? Your boy wants to BANG my daughter? Hmmm? And where did he learn that?" "My daughter happens to be one fifth Cherokee Indian, but I suppose you didn't know that did you?" "Bee? Bee? Are you gonna even TRY to tell me that has nothing to do with the birds and the bees? What kind of filthy-minded children is my daughter mixing with every day?!?!"

With so many people's moral outrage on a hair trigger these days it's probably a good thing we don't try to spread love around any more. That was the point though wasn't it? I think if you get right down to it, forget the fact that we have no idea about the reason we even celebrate Valentine's Day, shouldn't we have a holiday in which we all try to love one another? I don't mean kissy kissy touchy feely love, I mean at least a solid 24 hours of worldwide harmony. Stop the fighting and hating for just a day. Don't you think that'd be nice?

But getting back from Never Never Land, it's now about the more base and I'm sorry but, silly romantic love. Am I deranged or would any one else my age be cringing every time some woman you are "dating" or "going out with" or "going steady with," (ugh, cringe, cringe, cringe), called you her "BOYfriend?" Boy? 47 years old? Is it me or is everything about romantic love decidedly juvenile? Is it just me, (or is it just me and Louis C.K.), or do any other guys just have a hard time seeing a girl across the room and thinking, "Hmmm... Maybe that could lead to something NICE." Am I super negative or have I just lived too long to be that positive?

Love is grand. Divorce is about 50 grand. This is not just negative thinking, this is statistical fact! And if you could convince me that embittered divorcees think only of the early years, the good years, and forget about the bad years and the ugly divorce proceedings, I might be more willing to get on board the whole relationship thing, but I don't see that happening. I DO have friends and family with really good, long term relationships and I totally envy them, but I'd have to be bat shit crazy to think the rewards outweigh the risks. Wouldn't I?

I guess it happens, doesn't it? But to me? I'm like the Hulk with thick, (not green), skin that Cupid's arrows just bounce right off. Short of regressing to childhood or finding a time machine, I fear romantic love is just something I will avoid in books and suffer through in romantic comedies from now till I die. I doubt it'll make an appearance in my life. And for my part I don't even think I want it to. Too high risk. So, the following is my valentine for this year:

Just back off with that bow and arrow there, Cupid! You're outgunned.

Anatomy of a Terrorist

I don't want to flog a dead horse but I've been taking a bit of flogging myself from friends over here who insist that the Charlie Hebdo incident was all about Islam. If they were, I dunno, out of work drone pilots or in the internet surveillance racket I'd understand but they're mild mannered teachers like me. I'm also noticing that I get very few people commenting or liking my posts about this issue. Am I being ignored? I will not be ignored! (Fatal Attraction? Probly not let's move on). Being on what I'm calling and employment semi-hiatus right now, I realize that I have more time, and maybe more interest, to do research on this matter but is it that big of a leap to think these guys didn't just go from reading the Quran to suddenly slaughtering 17 people? If that's what the general perception is, and if the general perception is right, I'm in big trouble over here in 90% Muslim Indonesia! So why am I not the least bit worried? Let me splain:

It would be like a person in a Christian country getting nervous about THESE whack jobs.

Or take a look at this: It's Fox News, vaunted and respected giant in the industry, ahem, appologizing for having an "expert" on the state of Islam in Europe saying that there are "No-go zones" where non-Muslims fear to tread. Since they could find no evidence for it, (after they'd aired it), it's time to appologize to the court, have it stricken from the record and tell the jury to give it no weight in their verdict. Just another example of massive overreaction. I have a friend who plays professional soccer in England and he tells me that there ARE no-go zones, but that they have nothing to do with something as silly as religion. No they are about the far more important matter of which football, (soccer), team you support. If you walk down the wrong street wearing the wrong colour, you can be beaten up or even killed! "Football firms they're called. Soccer holliganism. But I don't see any news reports blaming the entire sport of soccer or the various rules in it's rule book.

I got to thinking as soon as I heard about the Charlie Hebdo attack and could not imagine any Muslim who didn't want the image of Allah to be seen, committing a high profile act of terrorism, in the name of Allah, (that's important because it makes it way MORE high profile), and expecting the cartoons of Allah to NOT be seen by hundreds of millions of people instead of maybe tens of thousands. But apparently I'm less apt to think of these guys as absolute drooling pussheads than a lot of people. I'm so rarely the positive thinking one!

First let me clarify my parenthetical remark: Have a guess at the percentage of terrorist attacks in all of the E.U. that are perpetrated by Muslims. Go ahead and see if you are within 20 or 30%. Bet you're not. I wasn't. Now I know the introduction of statistics will create all kinds of doubt. Well founded doubt and otherwise. And there will be people criticizing saying, "What do you define as a terrorist attack?" or other such things. Valid points. So take these stats with a grain of salt if you like. But know that there are plenty of other sources that show the same thing: the Muslims are responsible for a small minority of terrorist attacks in Europe and the U.S. The present state of fear and anti-Muslim sentiment and suggestions to prepare our countries for Muslim attacks just doesn't seem to be consistent with these numbers. Why are things this way? The simple answer is the media. Another word for terror is fear and it sells. Islamaphobia is real and it is being nourished by the media. But there are more complicated answers too.

And then when something happens like Charlie Hebdo that makes Islamaphobists say, "Finally! Now do you see what we're talking about?" guys like me, Jimmy Carter, Jon Stewart and some others in this post and in the news start saying things like there were other factors that contributed. It wasn't just a religious attack. This was a group of extremists. And you get people in high positions in the Islamic church condemning the actions and saying these were not real Muslims. I understand. It can get pretty frustrating for those looking to disparage and defame Islam. Nonetheless, I like the truth and I had a feeling this incident had more behind it than some crazed kids with visions of virgins dancing in their heads trying to uphold what they thought was the Holy Islamic law. I thought they were radical Muslims and I wanted to find out what or who had radicalized them.

Amity Coulibaly, the 3rd gunman who shot up the Jewish supermarket said, "The target was France in particular because of its obvious war on Islam and oppressed nations." I won't show all the research but they are involved in Syria, Ivory Coast, Libya, Nigeria, Mali, Algeria and the Central African Republic to name some. They did not, however, support the Iraq invasion. Remember how because of that France was hated so much in America that "freedom fries" were created and pro wrestling had a few French bad guys? Well all they had to do was agree to bomb the shit outta Syria with the U.S. and suddenly they were America's "oldest allies." French fries could be eaten again and wrestling bad guys lost their French accents.

Then I heard about Cherif Kouachi, one of the brothers, telling a French TV station just before dying that he had received funding and inspiration from Islamic Cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. The first thing I thought was, "Hmmm, maybe it WAS just a religious thing if a Muslim imam was a motivating factor. But I looked up the name.

I think the first thing I learned about this guy was that he was targeted and killed by a U.S. drone. That was in Yemen in 2011. Shortly thereafter, his son was also killed by a drone and I believe the article I was reading at the time said that he was "accidentally" killed by a drone. It may have been the NY Times article. They say he was "mistakenly" killed by a drone and leave it at that. "How the hell did that happen?" I thought. So I reckoned I might be onto something. I kept reading and it was like puzzle pieces falling into place. This guy is someone EVERYBODY should read about or study in school! I bet, even though there's no doubt he was complicit in a lot of terrorist activities, recruited and inspired countless young people to be trained in terrorism, there will be a movie made about him someday. His life is a veritable anatomy of a Muslim terrorist.

Seriously, at the time of his death there was little or no doubt of his connection to terrorist actions like Fort Hood, the Times Square bombing, the underwear bombing and others. But his real threat to anti-terror was his powerful oration and his great success attracting young men, even from English speaking countries, the kind of recruits that are most valuable to terrorist factions. I believe I read that he was ranked number two on the American most wanted, or most wanted dead list. So I was surprised when I began reading the chronological story of his life. He was not always that way. In fact he was the guy people talked to if they wanted to know the state of Islam in America. He was on TV shows, in documentaries, even spoke at the Pentagon and other political meetings. But then, shortly after 9/11 when America hastily enacted all kinds of strict anti-terrorism legislation and was able, through SAM's, (special administrative measures), to pretty much throw proper legal due process out the window when it comes to hunting terrorists or suspected terrorists, Anwar al-Awlaki was thrown in jail. No charges laid, no court hearing, he was just thrown in jail.

Try as I did to get any details on the specifics of his imprisonment, I couldn't find them. You'll notice the NY Times article just skips over that part. So does Wikipedia and a dozen other articles I've read. I came across one that said he accused the Jews of perpetrating 9/11 and was put in jail for that, and another that loosely tied it to some tribal conflict, and several that just commented on the whole incident using terms like "ambiguous" or "trumped up." The person who seemed to know the most about the story of Anwar al-Awlaki was a guy named Jeremy Scahill. He reckons al-Awlaki was imprisoned for his magnetic character, his ability to preach using the language of the streets and fluent English attracting a wide variety of young men to his cause, particularly U.S. and U.K. Muslims. Remember, at the time, his cause could not be proven to have anything at all to do with terrorism. Essentially he was put in prison for exercising his right to freedom of expression, but THIS kind of expression was considered an act of war. He stayed in jail for 18 months, 17 of which he spent in solitary confinement. That will mess ANYone up mentally! When he got out, and again I had a hard time finding info on why he was let go, he WAS radicalized! The official explanation for his release had been something to the effect of, "the U.S. no longer expresses a desire to keep him incarcerated." WHAT??? You KNOW if they had anything at all to hold him on they would have. He was railroaded! No doubt about it. I found myself wondering if I wouldn't want to run out and join an extremist faction after going through something similar.

I was sure I'd seen Scahill before on the Daily Show and heard that he had made a documentary called, "Dirty Wars" that dealt in more detail with al-Awlaki. So I got the movie and watched it.

WOAH! My blood ran cold and hot at the same time! I was chilled by the cavalier dispatching of humanity by the U.S. military and it angered me because again I was carried me down a psychological path I didn't wish to travel. I was forced to imagine just how I'd feel if loved ones of mine were summarily erased like the people Scahill shows in the doc. And I don't even HAVE kids of my own. I was relating to the man who said he wanted to declare jihad on America. There's no way of knowing but it made me wonder if I would't do the same thing in his position. It definitely shed a lot of light on why the terrorist hit list continues to grow and why it seems recruiters like al-Awlaki don't have much trouble finding people to join their radical groups. Could it be that these expensive, intensive and defensive anti-terror tactics were actually increasing terrorism? It seemed pretty obvious that that was the case. Could it be that that was their purpose? Certainly not! Could it? Really?

Is this just a massive make-work project for the U.S. military that will eventually lead to what they call "heightened anti-terror security" in other nations? There are already people speculating that the whole Charlie Hebdo attack was planned and carried out by Israeli or American intelligence to lead to just that. I have to admit to, again, giving the gunmen credit for intelligence enough to not leave their I.D. in the getaway car. That just looks suspicious to me. And THIS looks even more suspicious. Why did he kill himself? DID he kill himself? Where's the report. I don't know if there's fire here yet but I'd say there's smoke.

Heightened anti-terror includes more soldiers, guns, bombs, killing, violence, deterioration of civilian rights and freedoms, deterioration of rule of law and due process, and MASSIVE motivation and proliferation of the terror the anti-terror is designed to stop. Well it's already happening, isn't it? Britain and France are already negotiating for some and we've seen signs of it in other U.S. allied countries like my own, Canada. This post has a much higher chance of being viewed and I just might be flagged because of it. I'm not even kidding about that.

"I know David joins me when I say that we will continue to do everything in our power to help France seek the justice that is needed." Barack Obama said this meaning David Cameron, British Prime Minister. After reading the above and watching "Dirty Wars," this should scare the hell out of you!

Al-Awlaki was imprisoned for 18 months to, as Scahill says in the movie, "shut him up for a while until people forgot him." Then he was killed. Both without any charges laid, trials or due process. Then his son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old who had no ties to terrorism at all was killed by a drone bomb just a short time later. No explanation was ever given, no statement by Obama, no apology. About the only official who spoke about this supposed "accident" was Robert Gibbs, former White House press secretary and senior adviser to Obama's reelection campaign who commented the maybe he should have had a more responsible father.

The killing of 17 people in France inspired a million and a half people to take to the streets in protest. How many people do you think a story like this will radicalize or "INSPIRE?" Add to that the increasing number of stories of people who see friends and family killed by anti-terror forces like JSOC, (Joint Special Operations Command, the one Scahill documents in Dirty Wars), and you have a pretty good idea of why that kill list isn't getting any smaller. You also have solid reasons to believe Charlie Hebdo was not just about religion. But if you want one final link that is pretty darn hard to ignore it's this: There was another guy killed along with Anwar al-Awlaki. It was Samir Khan, the creative force behind "Inspire" the militant group's internet magazine. The official American position on killing him was that he was not a significant threat and was not intended as a target. "Whoops. Collateral damage." Muslim magazine man murdered for no reason but the contents of a magazine. Anybody else see a possible connection here?

At any rate, there are way too many articles to link to this about people being falsely imprisoned and rights being trampled on in the name of anti-terrorism. Here's one: Abdulelah Haider Shaye. Just do some surfing, folks. And whatever you do, don't miss the documentary "Dirty Wars."

Oh and by the by, it might interest some of you to research the history of France in Algeria from I think it was 1830 when they just cruised on in and massacred or captured the natives. Why? Do you really need to ask? It wasn't oil or natural gas. Back then the big industry was textiles and France had visions of cotton fields all across Algeria with the locals doiong the work and the French getting rich. Basically they made the, as they called them, "Arabs" their niggers. There was torture, beheading, attempted genocide, mistreatment, millions killed, it's a squalid tale.

And guess where the Kouachi family is from. But I guess that has nothing to do with anything. Please... You know there have been people who were captured by these radical Muslim factions and lived to tell about it. Here's the story of a French guy who was captured by ISIS. He doesn't seem to think they are doing it completely, or much at all, for religious reasons. I think he might know just a little bit better than the average person, no? Oui, oui, mon ami.

Toboggannists and Terrorists

It's an amazing world we live in!

Ever feel like we are going backwards in the name of progress? I'll start with the lighter issue: tobogganning, sledding, sliding, call it what you will, it's a criminal activity now in more and more places. "We just can't allow people to do such a dangerous thing!" When did, "We just can't allow people to..." become such a popular way to start sentences again? Who are the people who are allowing other people to do stuff? It's a fair question. Is it the majority? If so then it might not be a bloggable issue for me. I just watched an interview with an American judge who actually said, "If the people want this kind of system then we'll have this system. If the people rise up and say, 'Let my kids sled down that hill. We're not going to sue if something happens to them.' then we'll have that kind of system." This is a judge, folks. Granted it's on Fox so... here's the link, I can't link directly but: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152970459010238&set=vb.12795435237&type=2&theater

The important part was what he said just before the quotes. If the people want THIS kind of system, then we'll have this kind of system. What kind of system? It's a system in which anything a lawyer can convince a judge is worthy of liability becomes worthy of liability. We all know the system IS that way. If I am a moronic imbecile and I slip on a banana peel I can either take responsibility for my stupidity or if I happen to have a really good, (expensive), lawyer, I can sue banana growers, distributors, sellers and make sure NObody eats these dangerous, life-threatening, yellow-skinned disasters ever again. And according to this judge, who really ought to know better, the system is like this because the people want it that way. In fact it matters not what the people want, it matters what that one lame-brained, accident-prone nitwit with the high-powered attourneys wants.

So in answer to the question above about who "allows" everybody to do things, it would seem the answer is lawyers and stupid people. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's NOT the way most of us want things. But contrary to what this judge was saying, people don't get what they want any more. If they ever did...

Throughout history we've had these people who decided amongst themselves that they are just too clever to spare the world from their opinions and much too wise not to force their ideas and behaviours onto us all. They're called politicians. Government. Within reason they DO govern, but as our world marches on in reverse they have moved outside of reason and become meddling busy bodies who want to exercise their control far too comprehensively. Comprehensive control is necessary for situations of innocence or ignorance. And sometimes when danger has been shown. A class full of kindergarteners or a prison full of felons shouldn't be left to their own devices. But a country full of well-educated adults, I would argue that we need LESS supervision, not more.

Perhaps the "well-educated" is the problem here.

What is education like in YOUR country? There may be a link to how controlling the government is. And, as is almost always the case, it all ties in with greed and the lust for money somehow.

On to the more serious issue. There is another group of people that throughout history and still today has been greatly concerned with forcing their opinions onto others. They're known as religious zealots. If you are excited about your God and you want others to share the joy you derive from your religious walk, you are overstepping your proper place if you try to force it on someone who doesn't want it. Even if you believe that person is in danger of fire and brimstone, that person has an inalienable right to choose for him/herself. The same goes for people who are doing things that are against your religion or mock your God. They have a right, in my opinion, to do so and you are being awfully arrogant to believe that YOU know what's best for anyone but yourself. I think we all have a lifetime challenge just to determine THAT!

There is no reasonable argument to be made in favour of the three terrorists who caused the tragedy in France. The Charlie Hebdo massacre was reprehensible and wrong. Many people, as with any violence committed by Muslim extremists, are jumping to anti-Islam sentiment as if the entire religion killed those innocent people. That would probably have a lot to do with the above education situation. But these people, and there are many, are trying to convince the entire world that Islam is the big problem. Some of them just hate religion no matter which one it is and are enjoying the opportunity to blame some more bloodshed on religion. I'm not saying religion doesn't play a part. It obviously does. I'm saying there is another MAJOR motivator that is being systematically ignored. There was a Muslim policeman shot on video by the perpetrators. That would be a pretty good sign that religion was not the sole motivation here.

When I hear the word "terrorist," I think of this:

I have been conditioned to. I suppose it comes from many years of TV in Canada. In fact I have noticed, since moving to a country almost totally populated with Muslims, that I have a lot of negative connotations linked with the Muslim faith. When I see the Muslim religious clothing I often catch myself shying away from the person wearing it for no other reason than practically everything I have read, heard or seen to do with people wearing these clothes, has been negative. I didn't realize how entrenched and automatic this prejudice had become.

By the same token when I think of upstanding, respectable people, I have a habit of thinking of something like this:

That makes me laugh. I mean right out loud. Cuz sometimes ya gotta laugh, right? It's all a guy can do. Even though there is nothing at all funny about the terror and evil this trio has wreaked on the world, (and still continues to), it's absolutely hilarious how they are still thought of and treated like honourable human beings. This is a trifecta of death, destruction and douchebaggery almost without peers. I mean you would have to get historical to come up with better. Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, Chinese Communist Party leaders, Lex Luthor... Again, a little levity to cut the tension. It seems this is another issue that doesn't cross relligious lines. While there are hundreds of jokes about other religions and plenty of offensive things said, done and even drawn about other religions, it appears as though the Muslim extremists have yet to develop this grace under pressure, this ability to laugh in the face of death, this gift of tempering tragedy with humour.

I had never heard of Charlie Hebdo until this tragedy I admit. But I read that they are not so much anti-Muslim as anti-religion. In fact I've read that they take more shots at the Christians than they do at the Muslims. It's weird that you only ever hear of Muslim extremists getting so riled up about cartoons. That in itself is almost funny.

But back to the point, which picture do you think depicts the people more responsible for the tragedy? It's pretty easy to pick the picture of the actual perpetrators but I've read statements from their lawyer who says that the major factor in their desire to become Muslim militants was the Iraq invasion. There can be no doubt that a massive amount of what we see routinely called "terrorism" by the media is a direct result of worldwide western illegal occupation, exploitation, killing, torture, and, yes, terrorism in the name of the almighty Dollar.

We debate about other countries and we think it would be tragic to allow, for instance, the Taliban to take over the government of Pakistan. They want strict Muslim rule, total control of the government, Shariah law and they cannot be reasoned with. Two things: First of all who the hell is anybody to say that would be a bad thing? It's probably true that most of the Pakistani people don't want that but we're getting back to the meddlesome busy bodies when we ask ourselves why anybody but the people of Pakistan should be allowed to solve the issue. And secondly the third, and the major Taliban demand always seems to be forgotten about and that is simply for the Imperialist occupiers who are encouraging division and proxy warfare, crippling countries by imposing governments on them who will play ball, accept huge, high interest loans that they can never repay and leave them at the mercy of their debtors, weakening countries and stealing their natural resources, (mostly oil), to get their greedy noses out of Pakistan's business. Many believe that if THIS demand were to be met, in Pakistan and other countries, it would go a long way toward limiting violence and "terrorism" in Pakistan and around the world. Who can say for sure if a Pakistan under strict Muslim rule and Shariah law wouldn't be more peaceful and mellow than it is today? Take a look at Qatar. It's generally regarded, after Saudi Arabia, to be the strictest Muslim country in the world. They adhere to the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. They have Shariah law. They have an absolute monarchy. They allowed Canadian troops to launch missiles into Iraq during Desert Storm. I have a friend living there who says things are actually pretty laid back. You can drink alcohol or eat bacon if you buy a licence. They are okay with people who don't share their religious beliefs living among them. I hear Saudi Arabia isn't that different. A friend of mine living there recently posted a picture of himself and another man labelled, "Me and my Taliban friend." Maybe his Taliban friend posted the same picture on his Facebook page and labelled it, "Me and my infidel friend."

In the midst of all the Charlie Hebdo media coverage where a handful of people were killed, in Nigeria, Boko Haram massacred over 2000. That went largely unheard of. One of the motivators for Boko Haram is reportedly to reduce western influence, which has concentrated the wealth of the country among a small political elite to be replaced with Islamic fundamentalist government and Sharia law. One of the principles of Islam that I didn't know, and I think a lot of people are not aware of is the condemnation of usury. The Quran outlines a sacred mission to build a just economy in which everyone is treated with equity and respect. I won't cite the passages, (though I have checked them), but there are many promising painful doom to those who devour people's wealth through money lending, charging interest and usury. 30:39 "That which ye give in usury to increase on other people's property has NO increase with Allah, but that which ye invest as ZAKAT seeking Allah's countenance, hath increase manifold." Zakat is money given to help the poor, new converts to Islam, the needy, zakat collectors, slaves, stranded trevellors, debtors, and, you guessed it, those fighting for Allah.

When you look at the situation in Nigeria, a country 46.2 billion dollars in debt to money lenders and interest chargers like the World Bank, I.M.F., Paris Club, and recently another 3 billion dollars in loans were approved from China, one can see how the just economy of the Quran would be highly sought after. Not highly enough to justify massacres or kidnapping of school girls but it is easy to understand the feeling of helplessness Nigerians must have. Their country is rich in fossil fuels, agriculture, mining, even tourism, yet they are buried deep in debt. Throughout the world there are many countries in the same boat, and they are tired of it.

I believe it's pretty clear that the motivation for terrorist actions such as Charlie Hebdo has a lot more to do with political, economic and military interference than we are meant to know. The religion in some cases like Syria, is mostly a scapegoat. There is death, war, killing, torture and even combattants believe it's all about religion. Meanwhile the businessmen and politician who set up the war continue to pull the strings and the death toll rises all because of natural gas, pipelines and oil.

I think back to the days when "Occupy Wall Street" was in full swing. I will be occupying Wall Street soon myself. Ar ar. Anyway, the reporters and writers seemed to all get their information from the same source and they started parroting the same dismissive summation of the whole Occupy Wall Street movement: We just can't get a clear message. We're not sure what the actual message is. There seems to be no organized message to all this. What are they doing this for? We just don't understand! This feigned ignorance may have been encouraged by station owners, or politicians or paid off by wealthy oil and natural gas barons. I don't know. But they likely didn't have to pay many of them. Once a few major media players did it, the followers at smaller station, papers, magazines etc. jumped right into lock step. Then private citizens, who are kept too busy to do their own research, started regurgitating the mantras and swallowing the Soma and before we knew it the relevance of the movement faded.

Probably the most incredible thing about Charlie Hebdo, the Pakistani Taliban child massacre, the multiple mass killings in Nigeria, Yemen atrocities, the Ottawa shootings, the list gets added to every couple of weeks it seems... the most incredible thing about these actions is how they are always portrayed as completely unfounded, out of left field, cowardly, terrorist, unprovoked, mysterious, unwarranted incidents. In the minds of the perpetrators who have seen economic terrorism and suffered for it, there is an element to their actions that is not as much for Allah as revenge. They've seen innocents killed and they are responding in kind. It is not appropriate or acceptible but it is not a giant mystery the way we are constantly encouraged to believe. But the media is in lock step again and has been for quite some time. Unprovoked, cowardly attack, unwarranted, out of nowhere, shockingly random, indiscriminate, curious, confusing, TERRORIST actions. Why are they doing this? We just don't understand!

The solution couldn't be simpler. Stop illegally occupying countries. Stop aggressive and military capitalism. Stop exploiting the debt of the impoverished. Stop illegal and indiscriminate drone strikes. Stop scatter bombing. Stop torturing. Stop taking and doing whatever the hell you want because you have more money and power than other people!

But if you think a Muslim extremist is mentally unstable and impossible to de-program, I dare you to take a crack at talking Penis Cheney out of a barrel of oil. You'd have more success talking a pitbull out of a standing rib roast. The economic terrorists are more zealous than religious or even vengeful terrorists in my opinion. That money sickness is a tough thing to shake. Sorry to my friends who posted this and liked it but I have to give a link here to a bunch of Brits prattling on about the root cause of the situation in France. To divide the Muslims of France and to make other countries abide by Muslim law seems to be what they agreed upon as the root cause of these attacks. They flippantly dismiss foreign policy and people who have suggested this as a root cause and just agree it has nothing to do with it. I wonder if any of these guys are in the oil business, arms, surveillance electronics or any of the businesses that profit from aggressive foreign policy and military actions. Just imagine the shelling a person would take on this show if they say something like, "Now people don't even have to witness attrocities in person any more, they will be motivated to join extremist groups just by watching video like the Kouachi brothers." I would say limiting video that inspires hatred for foreign powers might be a bigger issue than laws or inter-Muslim conflict, and once again it would HAVE to be a more effective strategy in limiting or stopping these attacks. And I don't mean just stop filming militant foreign policy, I mean stop it altogether. They talk about other people dealing with secondary issues but they all seem to be perfectly happy with talking about the defences against terrorists and how to react to terrorism when it happens rather than being proactive and keeping it from happening at all. Here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1051109638239227&set=vb.283348121682053&type=2&theater

Their solution is to beef up anti-terrorist defences. Well this sounds reassuring but all it really means is more military, more killing, more privacy, rights and freedoms being eroded, more paranoia and more money for the war and terror profiteers. Any who believe this is not already the case should read this. This is far beyong invasive, busybody meddling! It's human rights violation. Both the C.H. employees and Syed Fahad Hashmi were exercising their rights to freedom of expression and were punished for the same "crime." The only difference between what is going on with Hashmi and what happened in the Charlie Hebdo incident is that the American treatment of Hashmi stops short of killing. But 2 1/2 years in solitary confinement? 70 years in prison? Reading the description of Hashmi's possible sentence under "Special Administrative Measures" makes me think I'd rather be dead. These SAM's allow anyone suspected of terrorism to be treated that way with flimsy evidence that would result in the case being thrown out under normal circumstances. It was his friend providing raingear and waterproof socks to Al Qaeda. Hashmi just let him use his room and cellphone. Many would say that that was just what he was sentenced for. His real crime was speaking out against American foreign policy and calling it terrorism. I don't know if this is the situation yet in France or England or any other country but it's what is being suggested. Do YOU want this? I don't! But for the people running the planet it's better than playing fair in the battle for world resources and money. For the terrorists this is just more motivation.

In the end Hashmi was sentenced to 15 years in federal supermax prison. Geez, if the wrong people read my blog, maybe I'll share a cell with him someday. As you might expect NObody has heard of Hashmi. With the C.H. artists on the fast track to martyrdom for dying for freedom of expression, I wonder why Hashmi is so anonymous even though he suffered for the same thing. Hmmmm... I'll post a picture of him. Maybe you can guess.

Yup, looks like he should be in prison, doesn't he?

Freedom of expression should not have a double standard attached to it. I even read that in 2009 a contributor to Charlie Hebdo name Maurice Sinet, who writes under the pen name of "Sine" was fired from the magazine for an article implying that Sarkozy's son married into the religion of Judaism for the money. Electronics heiress Jessica Sebaoun-Darty was his bride. Sine commented that "he'll go far, the lad." This was agreed by the magazine's editor to "incite racial hatred" and he was accused of anti-semitism and promptly fired.

So before you start hating, (or treating with contempt, as S.F. might correct), the C.H. gunmen for trying to limit freedom of expression and impose Islamic restrictions on the world let's think about this for a second. Extremist factions all know by now that stunts like this get worldwide attention. Sometimes THAT is a major reason for terrorist actions. Why is it so easy for intelligent people to believe these Muslim terrorists and the members of the faction they belong to, all just missed the pretty obvious idea that far from stopping the cartoons that they consider to be blasphemous, their actions will expose millions and millions more to them? How many people, like me, had never heard of the magazine before or seen one of its cartoons? Now we've seen many and haven't we all seen several "Je suis Charlie" Facebook posts by now? Stephen Fry, a guy I really like, and whose intellect I respect, just reckons they're idiots and says so here. It's just odd to me how incomplete our questioning of this event seems to be. These terrorists had some schooling. How is it so easy to just believe they're morons? Maybe we're still too angry to think straight.

I can relate to people who want to see the Kouachi brothers caught and strung up. I often fantasize about the politicians, bankers and businessmen who are destroying the world being lined up and shot. Violence is a natural first impulse. And I can admit that the motivation for the France attack could have more to do with things other than global economic terrorism. But for all we know that could be a major motivator and when they wanted to strike France for the evil that top 5 in the world oil and natural gas giant Total is responsible for, (for example), the terrorists could have just decided to kill two birds with one stone and hit that magazine where they mock the Prophet Muhammed. This terrorist act is probably not the best example for my point but the problem needs to be solved thoughtfully and diplomatically. And the way I see it our actions are incomplete without including in the dialogue some reference to the culpability of global business practices that stray well into our definition of terrorism.

Trying to stop violence with violence has not, and I believe WILL never work. I agree with one thing that lawyer on Fox said, "If the people stand up and say we won't sue, then that's the way it'll be." It's only NOT like that because the people haven't stood up. Well if the people stand up and tell the OTHER terrorists of the world to stop with the apocolyptic greed, then that's the kind of world we'd have. Peacefully and intelligently. I sure hope it happens.

Chinada Developing

Read this.

There's a wonderful little story for you! And in perfect keeping with the theme of this post, it took me several tries to post a link to the story here on my blog. No vids and now no links to stories? Is this 2015 or 1984? Anyway, it seems American drug company Eli Lilly wants to sue the government of Canada for 500 million bucks. That's a cool half billion to be paid by the taxpayers, that is, those Canadians who are poor and Pavlovian enough to think they have to pay them, NOT the actual government, who are the real culprits. No, the politicians just create the expenses, they don't pay them. This obliviousness to the concept of accountability is one of many ways Canadian politicians are a lot like children. What did they do this time? Remember NAFTA? Yeah well in it there is a section, ironically called "Chapter 11," in which foreign investors are provided protection from expropriation of their investments so the CAN'T go bankrupt. What that means is if Canada does anything that will affect the projected profitability of a foreign company, like pass a law that somehow limits said company's operations, that company is entitled to civil retribution.

What a sweetheart of a deal for the company! Even if the product your company deals in is found faulty and discontinued, you still pick up a paycheck. And who decides on what your FUTURE profits might have been?

It's a stupid deal. It's one of a great many stupid deals our governments have been forcing on a public who, by and large, would look at the deal and say, "Speaking of drugs, are you on some right now?" But let's look at the details and see just how stupid this is, shall we?

The drugs in question are 1. Straterra and 2. Zyprexa. Yup, sufficiently mediciney sounding names. Straterra is an ADHD drug and Zyprexa is for schizophrenia. I certainly don't want to be the judge hearing a case on the efficacy of a drug for either of these conditions of the mind that by their very nature are behavioural and therefore easy to fake or misdiagnose. But that's what happened. Due to the insistence of generic, (cheap), drug company Novopharm, who wanted a piece of this placebo action, these drugs were put on trial. And apparently Canada has stricter standards than a lot of other countries pertaining to such drugs. Canadians want them to work.

When the inventors of the two drugs applied for the patents they said or implied that they were superior treatments for the two mental conditions. Canadian judges ruled otherwise. Well of course Eli Lilly was outraged at the standards of Canada expecting pharmaceutical companies to supply people with drugs that actually WORK. Here is their defence and I'm not making this up, "Canada has an "elevated standard" when it comes to demonstrating the utility of a new drug and doesn't use the widely accepted threshold that demands only that patent holders show their invention has a "scintilla" of utility." See in other juris dictions, nobody was smart enough to notice that the Emperor was naked.

So for Straterra, Eli Lilly is seeking 100 million and for Zyprexa, (ruled on in 2009 and appealed in 2011, the very year the patent was to expire), they are seeking 400 million. 400 million for less than a year! There must be a LOT of schizophrenics in Canada! What makes you type that, Dave? Heh heh. Or maybe that drug is just a lot more expensive. Who knows how they come up with those numbers? It doesn't matter much to the government cuz they're not paying. The Canadian people are. Well, the REAL Canadian people...

On a related note, here's another story. Only this time I think it has to do with FIPA and not NAFTA. Remember the latest of the stupid, stupid deals our government signed? FIPA. I warned you about it when it happened back in October. We have already seen signs of it like the recently negotiated ability for Chinese to do business in Canada in their own currency without suffering multiple exchanges from Canadian to American then to Chinese again. Wasn't that nice of us! That was shoved down our throats while Stephen Harpoon was in China and could take no heat for it. Again pundits sang the praises of it but the only effects on the average Canadian will be higher taxes and more cheaply and easily exploited natural resources resulting in the inevitable deterioration of Canada's natural beauty.

With FIPA the Chinese got the very same kind of protection the Americans got with NAFTA. So if Canada passes environmental laws limiting fracking or protecting the country from non-stop oil spillage that pipelines will lead to, the Chinese can just sue us for projected profits. I remember all kinds of columnists and media pundits saying things like, "Don't fear the FIPA," when it happened assuring people that the process of litigation isn't worth it and would not be entered into but they no doubt said the same about NAFTA and look where we are now. And I have encountered no group of people more fond of exploiting Canadian litigious shortcomings than the Chinese.

This story hasn't much to do with the Chinese but it's just another nudge from our government so that we don't forget about FIPA, much as we'd like to. That said, the regulation of the internet will make the already slow and expensive Canadian internet slower and more expensive. Who do you think will pay for the internet police, Rogers? Bell? Hah! They didn't get those giant buildings in every major Canadian city by UNDERcharging customers! And with all the bandwidth the internet censors will usurp, we won't be able to download or stream anything anyway on our shitty 100-dollar-a-month internet! I have been to China and used the regulated internet there. It sucks. Just another way Canada is becoming more like China every day. Thanks Crime Minister Stephen Carradine! (a white guy trying to act Chinese. (Kung Fu (the TV series (David Carradine (young people, Google it!))))).

And please, dear reader, allow me a minor digression. Here it is World Jr. Hockey season again and more and more people have been making that part of their Christmas/New Year's holiday tradition. I have looked forward to Boxing Day for years for just that reason. I try to go to TSN.ca and watch the live streams of the games the way I have for many years now while overseas. What do I find? Sorry, you need a Rogers or Bell username or password to access this service. Well there you have the kind of companies Rogers and Bell are! EVERYbody in Canada has cable and will watch the games on it. The live stream on TSN is for the Canadians who are overseas. Overseas maybe because Canada is just getting shittier and shittier. Rogers and Bell just gave all of us a big middle finger there. I recently read in the National Post of Canada how TSN has made the World Jrs. a real part of Canadian culture. And here we are in an age when more than half of the people in Canada weren't born there, more Canadians than ever are working in some other country and we NEED our culture more than ever. Does Bell or Rogers give half a damn? No, they're obviously struggling companies who have to think of profits more than stupid things like Canadian culture. PLEASE somebody start a pirate cable company in Canada! Or maybe it would be good to see the Sony hackers bring down Bell or Rogers or both. They're just too big for their britches.

So I go to Wiziwig to get some live streaming World Jrs. Not as good as TSN and sometimes not available in English but guess what I find there. "Sorry, our site has been shut down by Big Brother." We are losing maybe the last bastion of true freedom in the world! The internet! This year you get a fine for downloading a movie, next year you buy a DVD and watch it at home with a guest who paid the manufacturers, producers, actors, and everyone associated with that motion picture NOTHING, and you are dragged out to the newly built stocks and given 20 lashes. We are progressing backwards, folks. Anyway, I found a Russian site and a couple other sites that have worked okay. I am thankful for people who share what they are paying for! They pay for cable and upload the program for free so those overseas or too poor can watch. Modern day Robin Hoods and the cable companies are Sheriffs of Nottingham.

But back to the topic, that's the problem with business these days and the reason they can do all this crap NObody wants them to. They are just too big. Imagine, just imagine if a big, giant oil conglomerate, or a group of them combined, decided that they wanted to mine for oil up in northern Canada where the nature is still pristine and habitats and ecosystems still remain fairly intact. In comparison to most of Canada they are relatively untouched. These massive oil companies don't want to waste any of their truckloads of money doing things the environmentally friendly way, they have decided to just, oh I dunno, sink some dynamite down to the ocean floor and explode it and see if any oil bubbles to the surface. Okay that's just an extreme example I pulled right out of my arse, but imagine if that happened. What could Canada do? Well first we'd need a whole bunch of people to know about it. That's tough when the oil companies buy off the media. But it could still happen if we keep our internet free. Then we'd need to make some petitions and stir up some moral outrage and after years and years of lobbying finally convince a corrupt government and a glacially slow legislature to outlaw oil mining with dynamite. But during all that time, boom, boom, boom! And then after that time, pursuant to the NAFTA and/or FIPA regulations, the offending oil companies would have civil recourse. They could sue Canada, (you and me), for losses that probably would have accrued if they had been able to do business... blah blah blah.

I keep asking this but how much more like China is Harper going to make Canada? You're saying, "Come on, Dave. You're being outrageous. That'll never happen." At least you're hoping. You might even be saying, "If something like that happened for SURE Canadians would revolt! I mean that's just ridiculous! Hell I would revolt if that happened! But it'll never happen." Well guess what, I DIDN'T just pull that outta my arse, it's happening. Are you gonna revolt? Are you gonna do something about it? Okay, now, in true Canadian style you're saying, "Well hold on here, maybe instead of revolting we could write some strongly worded letters or start a petition or march or do nothing and stay home and watch our expensive cable TV and surf our slow, Big Brother monitored internet."

I don't even know who it is with this crazy idea. It could be an American company or it could be a Chinese company or it might even be a company from somewhere else. Doubtful but... Does it matter? I am hoping to return to Canada someday and retire. I really hope it won't be as big a shock as it was the last time I returned. But I have this funny feeling it'll be even bigger. Canadians are being bullied by bureaucracy, Big Brother, banks and the boys on Bay Street. Right now there is something called the TPP that American politicians are trying to fast track into law. It's pretty much the same thing that has left Canadians helpless and will all but certify that the interests of the people are undermined in favour of amoral capitalism. IF this gets squashed the way it should, then there's a possibility that countries that follow the lead of America, like Canada, might smarten up and squash any similar situations. I don't know how likely that is but I sure hope SOMEhow Canada can see how the country is going down the crapper and do something about it. I'm just getting really really tired of seeing Canada fall apart.

I can't even watch the World Jrs! Well, yes I can, but I have to be really resourceful. Anyway, I feel like I'm cheering for the Canadian people even more than I'm cheering for our World Jr. squad. I have infinitely more hope for the hockey team than the people, let me say that right now. I think Canada will win the gold in a walk this year! Said that BEFORE they nuked the Danes 8-0. But I have so much less faith in our people! All I ever hear is bad news about Canada getting more and more corporate and Orwellian. I sure hope we can snap outta this soon! Before it's too late.

GO CANADA GO!