The Business of Religion versus the Science of Evolution.

Let's first define the word theory.  Theory, a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural and subject to experimentation.  

The Theory of Evolution, is a conjectural explanation of the origins of life on earth that grows and changes as evidence is found and scientific methods expand to determine the proper sequence of the totality of evolution.

The Theory of Creation, is a widely believed postulate that has no basis in fact and is believed exclusively on faith and is the basis of the Business of Religion.

The truth is that evolution is a theory, expanding and defining points as learning progresses.  Detractors tell us that it is incomplete and wrong.  And the truth is, it is wrong.  There are multitudes of tiny details that don't mesh and it may take centuries to determine an accurate and viable timeline of evolution.  It is a daunting task, trying to find fossil remains of living things that existed beginning 3 billion years ago right up to the beginning of civilization.  That part is kind of hard, they aren't that easy to find, there aren't all that many of them.  It would be easy certainly if every living creature had gone to a specific place and cast its dying body into a heap for future scientists to pick up and have a timeline of evolution that was easy to follow and orderly.  Sort of a Moses thing with the creator directing it, that would have helped.  However, it didn't happen that way and so those that find that sort of work interesting make it their lives' passion to try and find ever more bone fragments and fossils and piece them together into a cohesive and believable timeline.  I don't like to get dirty, and it all sounds kind of messy and uninteresting to me.  I do like to look at the made up skeletons in the museums though.  The thing is, it's a work in progress and has been growing, changing and defining our existence here for a little over a hundred years or so.  It isn't perfect, it isn't even believable in its entirety, and it changes and grows all the time. 

But then the business of religion has had centuries to fine tune their theory.  Religion started a long time ago, the first guy that looked up at the stars and determined that the same shapes returned with the changes in the seasons and predicted such, were the first holy men.  The more accurate the predictions of natural phenomena, the greater was their place in primitive societies.  And the less those guys had to do back breaking work in the fields and wherever.  The true Business of Religion was born.  Learn, predict, preach, come up with stories explaining it all and poof, the masses provide for you.  It worked then, it works now.  As society grew, the stories had to keep pace and the explanations of the natural world along with the nature of society itself grew as well.  Thus we were given such stories as Pandora's box, the ferryman on the river Styx, and of course, the Creation Theory.  That, was a great one.  It has lasted a good two thousand years with only moderate changes to it and revisions as needed.  And even though supporters state it is the same as was passed down by word of mouth for years and written on papyrus, there were changes.  People like my brother, a real born again christian likes to point out that scholars spend their whole lives pouring over texts and scraps of papyrus to determine the meaning of words written centuries before and how those words have changed in the translations from Aramaic to Greek to Hebrew to Latin to English.  Religious scholars won't admit it has all changed, yet they work on clarifying those changes all the time.  There again, not my cup of tea, sitting around all day staring at a text and discussing with other people of similar ilk how the loop on a letter might be construed as meaning something different in a specific context.  Sheesh, not my cup of tea at all.  But then whereas I like to look at dinosaurs, the work and lives' labors of these guys doesn't hold any interest at all for me.  The end result though of all this speculation is a workable and profitable Theory of Creation.  And it is indeed the basis of the Business of Religion.  A very profitable business that is not for profit and for the masses, tax deductible.

The point here for all this drivel is that science isn't perfect, religion wants desperately to be, yet isn't.  Most people do in fact ask the questions, why are we here and what happens when we die.  Science doesn't have viable definitive answers for the first and nothing for the second.  Religion answers both, but solely on the basis of faith.  Faith isn't a bad thing at all.  I have faith in my beliefs, and they answer both questions in a viable believable concept.  Hmmmm, maybe I should start my own religion.  I hear it pays well.

The Almighty Con. Canola.

The big con to the world.  The Almighty Con.  Canola.  It is touted as the healthiest of any vegetable oil and yet it really isn't.  There has been, and still is, a lot of controversy and a whole lot of misinformaion, speculation and hype on the internet about Canola.  I don't like it, I don't eat it, I don't recommend anyone use it, except in the fuel tank of your diesel.  So I thought I would tell you why.  Let's start with a bit of history.

Back in the seventies it was rapidly becoming clear that research was pointing out that polyunsaturated vegetable oils, especially corn and soy, were not the healthy alternative to saturated fats.  The health industry still promoted use of polyunsaturated instead of saturated fats based on research done in the fifties. (all of which has since been proven to be incorrect)  A cheap and readily available substitute was needed and where there is a need, there will be a product to fill it.  That product was the end result of nearly a decade of research into the foundations of genetic manipulation.  Even though the Canadian Oil Council flatly denies that canola was developed through any sort of Genetic Modification, the truth is you can't always have what you want.  And here, the truth is that the process isn't exactly like the GM technology of today, but the people that developed canola did in fact use very primitive gene splicing technology to develop the stuff.  They even wrote a book about it, "The Rape of Canola".  Anyway, that's a story for another time.  Here, the reason for doing all this was because Rape was, and still is, the plant that produces more oil per acre than any other plant in the world.  The original Rape, was not very useful for humans because it contained a high amount of Erucic Acid which is actually a long chain polyunsaturated fatty acid.

The result of the genetic manipulation was a new Rape plant that yielded a new product, LEAR, which stood for Low Erucic Acid Rapeseed.  Kind of an ugly name.  Marketing gurus thought that Canola was better, and so they made it so.  To bad they just couldn't make all the ugly problems of the stuff go away as well.  Erucic acid in fact is a very ugly problem and it does in fact destroy brain tissue by eating away the myelin sheath surrounding nerve cells and it has been known to cause heart lesions.  These are in part some of the reasons that internet detractors of canola state that the stuff causes mad cow disease.  They are only partly correct, once the canola processors figured out that they needed to process the cake leftover from oil production with lye to breakdown the erucic acid, the mad cow problem sort of dissipated. I guess you should know that the stuff leftover after they press out the oil is called cake, and that in the late seventies and eighties, the Canadians didn't want the stuff so they exported it all as cheap cattle feed.  And guess who bought it all, well, England.  Sort of a coincidence as to when and how the whole mad cow thing started. 

In 1982 the Canadian Institute for Food Science and Technology published a paper that looked at the interaction of saturated fats with LEAR oil and soybean oil. They killed off a whole bunch of rats in their research to determine that when saturated fats in the form of cocoa butter were added to the diets, the rats in both groups had better growth and a significant lowering of heart lesions. their conclusion was,  "These results support the hypothesis that myocardial lesions in male rats are related to the balance of dietary fatty acids and not to cardiotoxic contaminants in the oils."  The Canadian Canola Council conclusion that LEAR, canola, is healthier because of the mix of fatty acids was thusly disproved by their own research.  And the study was not in fact a long term feeding study using rats not prone to cardiovascular defects.  The problem with the CIFST study showing that the erucic acid wasn't responsible is disputed by the NCBI study the same year about the stuff.  "Rapeseed oil has a growth retarding effect in animals. Some investigators claim that the high content of erucic acid in rapeseed oil alone causes this effect, while others consider the low ratio saturated/monounsaturated fatty acids in rapeseed oil to be a contributory factor. Normally erucic acid is not found or occurs in traces in body fat, but when the diet contains rapeseed oil erucic acid is found in depot fat, organ fat and milk fat. Erucic acid is metabolized in vivo to oleic acid. The effects of rapeseed oil on reproduction and adrenals, testes, ovaries, liver, spleen, kidneys, blood, heart and skeletal muscles have been investigated. Fatty infiltration in the heart muscle cells has been observed in the species investigated. In long-term experiments in rats erucic acid produces fibrosis of the myocardium. Erucic acid lowers the respiratory capacity of the heart mitochondria. The reduction of respiratory capacity is roughly proportional to the content of erucic acid in the diet."

Canadian researchers looked at Canola oils again in 1997. They found that piglets fed milk replacement containing canola oil showed signs of vitamin E deficiency, even though the milk replacement contained adequate amounts of vitamin E. Piglets fed soybean oil-based milk replacement fortified with the same amount of vitamin E did not show an increased requirement for vitamin E. Vitamin E protects cell membranes against free radical damage and is vital to a healthy cardiovascular system. In a 1998 paper, the same research group reported that piglets fed canola oil suffered from a decrease in platelet count and an increase in platelet size. Bleeding time was longer in piglets fed both canola oil and rapeseed oil. These changes were mitigated by the addition of saturated fatty acids from either cocoa butter or coconut oil to the piglets' diet. These results were confirmed in another study a year later. Canola oil was found to suppress the normal developmental increase in platelet count.

Finally, studies carried out at the Health Research and Toxicology Research Divisions in Ottawa, Canada discovered that rats bred to have high blood pressure and proneness to stroke had shortened life-spans when fed canola oil as the sole source of fat. The results of a later study suggested that the culprit was the sterol compounds in the oil, which "make the cell membrane more rigid" and contribute to the shortened life-span of the animals.

These studies all point in the same direction, that canola oil is definitely not healthy for the cardiovascular system. Canola oil is associated with fibrotic lesions of the heart. It also causes vitamin E deficiency, undesirable changes in the blood platelets and shortened life-span in stroke-prone rats when it was the only oil in the animals' diet. Furthermore, it seems to retard growth, which is why the FDA does not allow the use of canola oil in infant formula.  When saturated fats are added to the diet, the undesirable effects of canola oil are lessened.

Some basic info on fat

SATURATED FATTY ACIDS are chains of carbon atoms that have hydrogen filling every bond. In foods, they normally range in length from 4 to 22 carbons. Because of their straight configuration, saturated fatty acids pack together easily and tend to be solid at room temperature. Butter, tallows, suet, palm oil and coconut oil are classified as saturated fats because they contain a preponderance of saturated fatty acids. Saturated fats are stable and do not become rancid when subjected to heat, as in cooking.
MONOUNSATURATED FATTY ACIDS are chains of carbon atoms that have one double bond between two carbons and therefore lack two hydrogens. Normally they range from 16 to 22 carbons. They have a kink or bend at the position of the double bond so the molecules do not pack together as easily as saturated fatty acids. Monounsaturated oils tend to be liquid at room temperature but become solid when refrigerated. Olive oil, peanut oil, lard, rapeseed and canola oils are classified as monounsaturated oils. The most common monounsaturated fatty acids are palmitoleic (16 carbons), oleic (18 carbons) and erucic (22 carbons). Monounsaturated oils are relatively stable and can be used for cooking.
POLYUNSATURATED FATTY ACIDS have two or more double bonds. As there is a bend or kink at each double bond, these fatty acids do not pack together easily and tend to be liquid, even when cold. Polyunsaturated oils are very fragile. They tend to develop harmful free radicals when subjected to heat and oxygen, as in cooking or processing. Soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil and flax oil are polyunsaturated oils. Omega-6 fatty acids have the first double bond at the 6th carbon from the end of the fatty acid chain. The most common omega-6 fatty acid is linoleic acid, which is called an essential fatty acid (EFA) because your body cannot make it. Omega-3 fatty acids have the first double bond at the 3rd carbon. The most common omega-3 fatty acid is the EFA alpha-linolenic acid. The consensus among lipid experts is that the American diet is too high in omega-6 fatty acids (present in high amounts in commercial vegetable oils) and lacking in omega-3 fatty acids (which are present in organ meats, wild fish, pastured egg yolks, organic vegetables and flax oil). Surfeit of omega-6 fatty acids and deficiency in omega-3 fatty acids has been shown to depress immune system function, contribute to weight gain and cause inflammation.

The three types of omega-3 fatty acids involved in human physiology are ALA(found in plant oils), EPA and DHA (both commonly found in marine oils)

Excess omega−6 fatty acids from vegetables oils interfere with the health benefits of omega−3 fats, in part because they compete for the same rate-limiting enzymes. A high proportion of omega−6 to omega−3 fat in the diet shifts the physiological state in the tissues toward the pathogenesis of many diseases: prothrombotic, proinflammatory and proconstrictive

What is "The News" and what do you need to know.

Last week I wrote about the world wide conspiracy involving big pharma, and the media. (Conspiracy).  I had some friends tell me (AGAIN) that I'm nuts.  There is no conspiracy within the national media to keep any specific information from the masses.  Hmmm, I'm not sure how to respond to people that say things like that.  Are they just clueless, or do they really believe that all the bad things happening in the world that they don't know about don't really happen.  And that those things aren't real, because their favorite smiling maiden on the news didn't tell them, so in their mind, it didn't happen. 

Let's look at some stuff.

Slave labor, specifically child labor.  In 2012 Nestle corporation announced that they were going to end the practice of child slave labor in the production of cocoa in the African country of Cote de Ivorie.  The Ivory Coast for those with older globes.  Their plan, "The Nestle Cocoa Plan" entailed building schools for communities, requiring those processors to certify that no slaves did the labor and the big one, providing over a million new cocoa trees for the communities there.  And of course Nestle wanted to capitalize on their great spirit and make their "Crunch" bar into the dream product with labeling that defined their acheivements in their humanitarian endeavors.  Nice stuff.  Except it is all a bunch of hooeey.  The Ivory Coast provides about 15% of the cocoa for Nestle, and their plan does little, well, it does nothing to stop slave labor in other regions.  What does the worldwide media say about all of this.

• ABC News - a search for Nestle child labor or slave labor brings up nothing.  A search for Nestle itself brings up all the gross stuff about horsemeat in their canned crap, but nothing about child labor, nor anything about the company destroying indigenous populations by destroying water supplies.
• CBS News - same searches, nothing regarding child labor.  There is a very nice CBS report about how Nestle announced they would not use cloned meat in any of their products.  At this time.  But nothing about child labor.  
• NBC News - same searches, nothing.  Well, nothing bad other than the usual recalls for glass in stuff and horsemeat.
• Fox News - are you surprised to hear, same thing?  

I don't understand, this was big news back in 2012.  It was written up on Forbes, CNN and, well, that's about it.  I think that maybe since Nestle made a big deal about spending a few bucks to stop child slave labor in the production of their cocoa that they the masses might get the mistaken idea that they actually encouraged it in the past.  And the thought might get into the masses that they were only spending a few bucks to stop the practice in an area that the predominate method of production involved slave labor and that the United Nations as well as the World Health Organization brought the practice to the media attention in 2011.  That might be part of the reason Nestle decided to spend a few bucks to try to halt the practice.  Well, that and they could get a more consistent cocoa product by providing the cocoa cultivars that they wanted to the growers there.  Nestle certainly wouldn't want any of those concepts to interfere with the thinking of the masses watching news stories about their actions.  Nestle is one of the largest food manufacturers in the world, and they advertise their products via news media, that don't report anything bad they do.  Or maybe that is just my opinion.

What about Giles-Eric Seralini?  Seralini is a molecular biologist teaching at the University of Caen since 1991.  This is the guy that has been on the forefront of effects of the endocrine system and related  research for a couple decades.  He is, or was, respected in his field, and his research up until he dared to go up against the all powerful Monsanto corporation, has been unquestionable.  Now however, not so much.  He is a contributor to numerous scientific rags and has been published extensively in the science community for years.  No one has ever heard about him until 2012 when he discovered that feeding GM corn laced with residual Roundup as is normally available in the marketplace, causes cancerous tumors in rats.  If you go to the major news sites and search for Seralini, you find....

• ABC News - absolutely nothing
• CBS News - the most information available.  A two paragraph blurb about the report and of course how Monsanto says it was poorly done, and a second article about how the research story was retracted by the publisher.  
• NBC News. - the story about the retraction only, and that was slanted.  It was almost horizontal.
• Fox News - reported the story about the report after it was published, but nothing else.  Nothing.

So is that a conspiracy?  Whether or not you personally don't think GM foods are harmful, the fact that a researcher performing a long term feeding study of GM foods on rats causing cancer should have been on every single news report on every TV station in America.  GM crops are in nearly every processed food in America, anything that questions the safety of those crops is NEWSWORTHY.   Anything that affects your health is newsworthy.  You can make the decision to buy GM foods only if you have information that allows you to make an informed decision.  Yes, the Seralini report was retracted by the rag that published it, but it wasn't retracted because it was inaccurate, it was retracted because the sample was determined to have been to small to definitively state that GM crops cause tumors.  That is news as well.  But you have to report it first. 

I guess the big deal here is that we just don't know what else is going on the world, because we aren't told about it.  We are the mushroom sheeple.  Fed shit, kept in the dark and led down the path that our masters want us to go. 

But it isn't a conspiracy in anyway. 

Some crap about your food. Literally.

Food is sort of a magical thing that varies all over the world with different cultures prizing things that some people would consider pretty gross and disgusting.  It is all about culture, and how your specific culture and the concepts and cuisine with which you were raised give credence to the foods of other cultures.  Some people eat head cheese, other people won't even touch pork.  I like snails, stinky cheese and the end result of grated vegetables fermenting for several weeks while other people think those things are the most disgusting things ever.  Spoiled, and rotten.  Well, to each his own I suppose, I draw the line at eating fish eyes and processed food.  And anything from most any fast food purveyor of their own specific poison.  Our government on the other hand has a problem with determining what is good for its citizens and what is bad for them.  Raw milk cheeses are illegal here in the US, but high capacity magazines for semi and auto weapons as well as a huge variety of weapons that are easily converted to full automatic, are available everywhere.  Something wrong there.  I mean really, the best cheese in the world, and it must be smuggled in.

But our government is trying, they do have people in positions to make policy that must in fact have some sort of ethics and so we have rules for manufacturers to adhere to in attempts to keep diseases and deaths to minimums.  And some of those rules are scary.  Take for instance the rules about some spices on the market.  For a container that holds about 10 grams of a spice, the jar can contain up to 30 parts of insects, a couple of rodent hairs and a part of a turd.  Peanut butter is even cleaner, the same stuff is allowed, but only in 100 grams, so it's one tenth as filthy.  But this one will scare you, for the same 100 grams of chocolate, twice as much stuff is allowed.

That's dead shit in all our food, and believe me, the FDA has standards of crap allowed in everything in the supermarket.  But what about live stuff.  One of the weirdest things that the FDA has ever done is to approve the use of bacteriophages.  Live viruses, bacteriophages are sprayed on processed meat in the concept that they will attempt to kill the listeriosis bacteria that are pretty deadly to humans.  Of course the all powerful and all knowing FDA and USDA would never think to clean up the cows raised in CAFO situations where the animals living in their own shit have listeriosis bacteria living all over their bodies and in their intestines.  And since modern slaughter methods are geared toward making money instead of keeping the meat clean, the spread of the bacteria all over the meat is a daily routine that constitutes the weird spraying of live viruses on the meat to keep us healthy.  Seems like a long convoluted path to follow where a simple solution, like cleaning up the method or raising the animals, is more costly than the bizarre.  The real weird part about it is that the FDA says meat processors don't have to put the fact they spray live viruses on their products on the label anywhere.  And in case you think this is fantasy, here is a great article on the practice (VIRUSES on our FOOD)

For me one of the weird things that the FDA allows into our food supply is silicon dioxide.  They say it's non-toxic, and it won't hurt you.  But why is it there?  Really, silica is about as close to ground glass as you can get and it is put in processed meat, spice mixes, anything dry, breakfast cereals and many pharmaceuticals.  It's a filler, and yeah you probably would have to eat a lot of it to die, we just don't know if the reason intestinal problems are so rampant in modern society is because of the large amounts of silica we ingest every day.

When I was younger I was a strict vegetarian.  For about eleven years I was very strict about it and one of the things that I wouldn't eat was any gelatin product.  After I began to eat some poultry again, and pork, I still wouldn't eat gelatin.  How they made the stuff just kind of grossed me out.  And today, it isn't any different, the method of making gelatin is still gross.  They take beef bones and hides, (see above stuff about how bad meat is) boil them down and retrieve the gelatin.  The really gross part about this is that the USDA emphatically states that brains and spines of steers that are over 30 months old can't be used for human consumption.  The reason is that they probably contain prions that cause Bovine Spongeform Encephalitis.  Mad Cow Disease.  The feds say they might be there, probably are, and that cooking them doesn't destroy them.  But it's okay to make gelatin out of them.  I can't figure that part out.  

A long time ago I decided that I would draw the line at cannibalism.  The Jeffrey Dahmer thing and the soccer team in the mountains, well, kind of gross.  Americans as a whole I think, probably think the same way.  But most people eat products every single day made from, well, humans.  I'm not making this up.  One of the ingredients that is very popular with the baking industry in America is L-Cysteine.  It is a dough conditioner and works amazingly when paired with some other nasty chemicals to make softer lighter fluffier bread. The problem is that L-Cysteine is made by taking human hair and dissolving it in solvents and from that they remove the stuff.  Most of the commercially available stuff comes from China, where a cottage industry exists that buys hair from anyone that will sell it to them.  Not exactly cannibalism, but it's mighty close, and just plain gross.

One last thing to gross you out about your food, is something called Castoreum.  This one is classified by the FDA as a natural flavoring and therefore doesn't have to specifically be listed by its actual name on the label as an ingredient.  Manufacturers can just put "Natural Flavor" on the ingredients.  Castoreum, in reality is harvested from beavers and a few other mammals in the same family.  It is a secretion harvested from the animal's anal glands.  It is very odoriferous, and when blended in foods it resembles vanilla and raspberry.  Not really crap, but right next to it.

So the thing I'm trying to point out to you the reader is that there is a lot of stuff in our food and it is up to you to decide what you are comfortable with eating.  Be aware, there's a lot of crap out there.

This is what we are told, this is the reality. And it's kind of gross, and scary.

Back in the 70's, Monsanto was advertising their premier product Roundup as being "As safe as putting water on your plants".  The company made billions from selling this herbicide all over the world.  Billions.  They invented it, they did all the requited EPA testing for toxicity and environmental impact studies.  They themselves declared it harmless and they sold it to everyone from giant agribusiness farm corporations to the guy with grass growing in the cracks in his driveway.  The stuff was harmless, Monsanto itself said it was.  The company making the stuff.  The company that refused to admit that dumping a million pounds of PCB wastes into the streams near their plant in Arkansas had anything to do with 90% of the townspeople contracting horrific cancers.  They've never lied to anyone.  And all of their testing is rigorously done and totally unbiased.  That's why they advertised that Roundup was safe, environmentally friendly and harmless.  The first year that Monsanto held the patent on glyphosate, they sold a million pounds of the stuff.  Last year, they and now other manufacturers sold a hundred million pounds of it world wide.

Lately though, researchers around the world are looking at those safety results. And it don't look good.

That might be the reason that in 2007 the French government took Monsanto to court and won a judgement against the agrigiant for deceptive advertising practices and declared that Roundup, is not safe as advertised.

Yikes.

But it is after all, the French.  It isn't like they can be believed about anything.  They sort of fudge the truth a bit.  If you listen to them talk, they were all part of the Resistance in the War, they all did their part to end the oppression of the fascists by surrendering enmasse and forcing the Germans to feed them.  Every French whore that gave a German an STD was a hero of the republic.  You know, they just have exceptional views of themselves.  Not unlike a certain ex-wife of the author here.  So in reality, does that judgement seven years ago mean anything?

Well sort of.  Of the nearly three hundred reports I found showing the toxicity of Roundup, this one stands out probably because of where it was printed.  Scientific American.  A lot of people tell me I get my info from unreliable sources, but here we have a well known publication ( S A article )  telling us how the problem with toxicity is a real threat to humans and the environment.  To sum it up, the herbicide glyphosate really is not all that toxic, if used properly and according to directions, it won't kill you.  The problem is that Monsanto mixes the weedkiller portion of Roundup with "inert ingredients" and the EPA doesn't give a crap about them.  They are looking at the actual "active ingredient" or the glyphosate portion of the total package, and the stuff that does all the harm, although it doesn't kill the weeds, is the stuff that is not so great for humans and the environment.  It isn't important, according to the EPA, because it is not the "ACTIVE" ingredient.

Yikes!

Reread that paragraph, in it is a big portion of the problem, "if used properly and according to directions"  We have this mentality not just here, but all over the world; if a little bit is good, then a whole lot is going to be better.  From wine, women and good old rock and roll, (and of course chocolate) we as humans want to garner the most benefits from that which we can.  The reality is that last year one hundred million pounds of the stuff was sprayed on farms, fields, golf courses and driveways all over the world. And the adjuvant "inert" portion of the herbicide is in lakes, streams, rivers and in the groundwater of most of the world.  So far one researcher has taken the step of testing blood of a significant number of urban German citizens.  Measurable amounts of Roundup were in their blood.  All of them.  

In the March 2014 issue of the industry magazine "Toxicology" is an article written by some researchers that tested the effect of glyphosate on brains of fetal rats.  They tested both acute and chronic exposure.  The results were startling.  Roundup in even minute concentrations of as little as .00005 ppb affected the brain development of fetal rats.

Last year the EPA raised the allowable limits of glyphosate residue on farm crops to 200 ppb at the request of farmers, ranchers and Monsanto. 

Bon appetit!

It's a conspiracy. And it affects YOU!!!!!

So how do conspiracies work anyway?  I mean if you look at Webster, a conspiracy is : an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot. That's a bit scary, evil plans and all.  There is also this definition as well:  any concurrence in action; combination in bringing about a given result.  And I think that this is where I want to focus my attention.  Any concurrence in actions, with a given result.  With that as a defining concept then we can see that conspiracies happen daily, and we are all duped.

I don't mean the whacko conspiracy about how the twin towers were brought down by planted explosives and no planes actually ever flew into them, but more realistic, believable conspiracies.  Like the big pharma drug company Merck actually put specific antigens that cause cancer into DPT and MMR vaccines in the 80's and 90's.  And how monkeys were used to grow specific virus antibodies for human usage and it was the introduction of simian antibodies that were in fact the precursors of the HIV epidemic.  Yeah, it was caused by Merck and company, and thousands of cancer patients have contracted their cancers, because they received vaccines.  

The truly sad thing here is that it is in reality, a fact. Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the leading researchers for Merck is the man behind the development of nearly three dozen individual and specific vaccines.  He has been honored with lifetime achievement award from the World Health Organization, National Science Award and the list goes on and on.  Yet before the man died he admitted to doing the unthinkable.  Having SV40 viruses that cause cancers in vaccines for humans.  Using simian subjects for growth of virus bodies and probably inadvertently putting HIV into the human population.  And worst of all, in his own words he called vaccine technology the "...bargain basement technology of the twentieth century."  So why is all this a conspiracy?  Well because basically it is a concurrence of actions, with a given result.  The result was that the company made money.  Lots of money.  

 

Well, I suppose that in reality, they did these things, and found out about them afterwards.  A cover-up, not a conspiracy.

 

In May of 2013 the drug manufacturer Ranbaxy, a company in India that makes a large percentage of the drugs used here in America, was fined 500 million dollars for selling drugs that were found to be ineffective, not what they were labeled, containing foreign substances and manufactured in filthy conditions.  I'm pretty sure that the company knew what they were doing, so that was a conspiracy.

 

Gardisil is a new vaccine that was developed to prevent transmission of the human papilloma virus and is touted as a means to stop cervical cancer.  After the vaccine was approved the manufacturer Merck was found to have fabricated a large part of the research and that the truth was that the vaccine in reality actually had a greater probability of causing cervical cancer than preventing it and that not in one single instance had the vaccine prevented HPV.  The vaccine has been on the market for 4 years and is responsible for over two hundred deaths, and over twenty thousand serious adverse reactions.  I think that is a conspiracy

Last year GlaxoSmithKline paid the largest fine ever, 3 billion dollars.  The fine was for price fixing, fraud and collusion to defraud Medicare and Medicaid, fabricated safety data on its products and deceiving the FDA about the effectiveness of many of its products.  GSK didn't even fight the FDA, they admitted their guilt, paid the fines and it was back to business.  I think that was a conspiracy.  They knew what they were doing, they kept doing it, and they made money.  Lots of money.

In 2009 Pfizer, the largest drug company in the world, was ordered to pay the families of Nigerian children for experiments on those children that left them dead or severely damaged.  The thing is, Pfizer didn't tell the parents, or the children they were going to be part of a human experiment and that they might be killed as a result of the process.  In reality, that was a violation of the Nuremberg Code signed into international law back in 1947 to stop such atrocities from ever happening again.  They were trying to keep anyone from doing the kinds of things the Nazis did to humans during the war.  Pfizer is above the law however, and was ordered to pay five hundred US dollars for each child killed or maimed.  I think that was also a conspiracy.

I mentioned the GSK fine above, the largest ever.  Here are the top twenty fines ( FDA Fines )  All against drug companies for doing business using practices that are illegal.  They know they are doing things that are illegal, and yet they continue to do them, even after their competitors are fined for doing exactly what they themselves do and all with the corporate hope that they won't get caught and can continue to make tons of money.  I think that is a conspiracy as well. 

 

"Society can no longer afford to leave the balancing of individual rights against scientific progress to the scientific community"

I think that most everyone that reads this bit of fluff here today will read it and say to themselves that it is all a bunch of hooeey and that none of this stuff actually happened.  Most everyone will say that none of these stories made it to the major media news, and so most everyone never heard about it.  That doesn't mean it all isn't true, it just means that the biggest conspiracy that affects the lives of most everyone in this country is the one that happens every single day; the sanitizing of the news for your viewing pleasure.  Major news stories about major corporations will never be seen or read quite simply because if the populace knew about the atrocities perpetrated by those major corporation then they might not remain complacent consumers, buying all the crap shoveled into their minds via the news and entertainment media.  The conspiracy exists, it's just that I don't always think that it is a collusion between heads of corporations along with government leaders all in secret meetings plotting to destroy Americans.  No, it's just a simple conspiracy, people doing things that make them money, and hiding the truth about the actions of companies that advertise in the media, so they will keep on advertising.  

Is that really a conspiracy, or is it just plain greed?

My beliefs. You asked for it, here it is. In all its, well, for lack of a better term, glory.

I have alluded to my system of beliefs on several occasions here in the past, and for those that follow the blogs of my brother, ( Crazy and Crazier ) know that we spar frequently about religion.  And although I am a bit wordy at times, his blogs are over the top and he would never use five words to explain something when two thousand dis separate concepts and quotes will confuse you better.  Anyway, I have gotten a few comments via emails from three people that read my blog.  They asked me to explain my beliefs that I mention here.  My brother on the other hand, doesn't think too highly of any concept that isn't, biblical.  And has expressed his belief to me that because I am an atheist, I therefore do not have any underlying moral principles.  That one was a bit hard to accept since my beliefs are based on the ultimate morality.  And because after you read this in its entirety you will see that I am in fact, god.  And as such, I believe in myself.  I believe in god.  But, I suppose that ignorance can in fact lead to speculation.  And thus, here are some concepts that I believe in.

In the beginning, there was existence.  Universal thought, universal goodness, the light of life, individual, yet a conglomerate of the one, in total being the existence of the universe.  Once, part of the whole wanted to be one within itself.  Part of the whole broke away from the universe and became one with itself, and became the first sin, vanity.  And it was wrong, vanity is not a universal goodness, and so came back to the universe to become once again, whole.  The path to oneness was set, and 7 trials were to be undertaken by those of the vain in order to once again know the joy of universal existence and oneness.  That's the genesis of Edgar Cayce in his readings of the universe.  It doesn't necessarily mean much, it is pretty simplistic, but then think about it, isn't the biblical version basically kind of, well, simplistic as well.

Anyway, this existence is the 3rd step that all of us need to go through to understand the significance of the ultimate morality, and once we have seen the path and we achieve oneness, we can pass to the next step.  This is the really simple part, the ultimate morality is, do good.  Those that lie, cheat, steal, murder, and anything else that does not ultimately lead to good, are doomed to repeat their existence here in the reality of the 3rd step until those lessons are learned.  Now it gets fun.  We, all of us, all life, is made up of the force of the universe, light.  This kind of goes a little toward Carlos Castaneda back in the seventies.  He taught that each of us has an internal dialogue going on that tells us, this conglomeration of living light that what we think we see is a construct developed for us and we see that reality only because our internal dialogue constantly tells us that it is what we have been directed to see.  Whew, and if you stop the internal dialogue, then you see the world for what it is, a world populated with light, living beings made up of light.  We all play roles here on this earth, roles that we ourselves chose before our birth.  We chose the circumstances of our lives in order to acquire new opportunities to grow based on our circumstances.  Sounds pretty unscientific, but in reality all of that stuff about astrology really does have a basis in truth and is dependent on our selection of circumstances and all of that is determined for us as we are shot out from the universal existence back toward our trials here on this earth.  And we pass through specific points of the sky, specific points in the zodiac.  I'm not explaining it very well, Cayce in fact explains it quite well and makes it a lot more believable. 

 So, pretty kooky so far huh?  But then again we must begin to look at some of the stuff that scientifically shows us how feasible all of these ideas actually are.  Let's look at the basic proof, the Kirilian Effect.  It is possible to photograph people in their more basic state, their aura.  Yeah, hippy talk, but the aura exists, we see it as a reality, we know it changes based on health and attitude.  It's a real thing.  As is the Synesthesia effect, wherein certain people are able to perceive the senses as they overlap and their cognizance allows them to have a closer view of reality with the added bonus of increased creativity.  Probably from a closeness to the ultimate goodness of the universe.  Here is where some of the concepts overlap with teachings from our past.  Some of the finest minds of our existence have been close to our basic goodness of the universe and through their synesthesia they have been capable of achieving a oneness that has given them insights into our universe that sets them apart and has given them a place in our history.  The Budha, Confucius, Muhammad, the Bab, and the Christ.  All, synesthetic.  All, prophetic.  So, get ready for the big one, do I think that one or more of them actually spoke to god, or is god?  Well yeah.  In as much as each of us is a part of the ultimate good in the universe, which could possibly be considered, god, then sure, they in fact conversed synestheticly with, themselves, the universe, and ultimately for each of them, god. 

This is a quick overview of my view of the universe.  It might seem a little third grade-ish in the way I presented it, and I agree.  There are better renditions.  The readings from Cayce are a lot to take in, and of course for me they make a spectacular broad basis for a unique view of the universe.  There is a lot more in there for me, but one must realize that it all comes down to the basic concept in this universe.  No matter what you believe in, we all at the basic tenets of all beliefs throughout this earth, believe in the same thing.  The basic morality is to do and be good.  Don't ever tell me that isn't at the heart of all religions, because it is, I know it, I've believed in it most of my life.  And I live it.