Hacks With Blogs

I just got done watching Contagion and loved it. I liked the realistic and human portrayal of everyone involved, from the governments, the WHO, the CDC, and the individual doctors and epidemiologists. Spoiler alert - if you haven't seen it yet, there may be a few spoilers in this post.

The other thing I found refreshing in it was that it just may be the only movie I've seen that involves a major (fictional) epidemic that wasn't the result of some vast government/shadow organization conspiracy. While yes, I love stories such as Outbreak, the Stand, and the Andromeda Strain, each one of them involves government conspiracy on some level. With this, it's easy to forget that most viruses and bacteria indeed have their origins in nature.

It's often the same story - some deadly disease gets out. Turns out the disease has origins as a potential bio-weapon being studied by the government. Then some ambitious blogger investigative reporter exposes it all and saves the day. As for Andromeda Strain, it would be the more recent re-make of the movie that follows that unfortunate cliche, rather than the book I linked to above.

In Contagion though, it followed a more realistic pattern of events. The WHO, CDC, and others banded together to try and stop it. Of course, every such organization is made up of humans. Humans who have human fears and concerns... and families. Then of course there is the blogger who millions see as a hero.

For some reasons, a lot of people trust relatively anonymous (even if they use their real names) bloggers over actual politicians and reporters who have some accountability. Maybe it's because we're so used to depictions of masked heroes of the people. Surely, a blogger doesn't have any ulterior motives, right?

Well, my ulterior motive is a black Dodge Challenger, dammit! Of course, that doesn't mean that I'm getting one by blogging about anything and everything that comes to mind. Of course, I'm not actually expecting to get one from this, either. The point is that yes, even bloggers are human and have human motivations and the like. With that, we are held at near-zero accountability. Go ahead, set a blog up yourself. Anyone and everyone can. There's no real verification of one's identity who does set up a blog. You could say you're some Deep Throat type of government insider when the reality is that you're just making fries at some fast food joint while you live in your mom's basement. I could tell you that the sky is actually pink and purple plaid, but that there's a mind-control government conspiracy to make us think it's blue... and there would be no real repercussions on my end. The blogger in Contagion faked being sick to peddle a miracle cure the governments were supposedly withholding. The blogger got rich. People panicked. People got killed. But hey, he got rich because they trusted his talk of conspiracies.

Seeing this lack of accountability (and often truth) is a big part of why I started blogging. I rather hoped I could offer an alternative. As for me getting rich... not bloody likely. I'll keep shamelessly pandering to Dodge for a Challenger, mostly in jest, until I can afford one... but the only money I make on this blog is from those little ads on here. Not the links I post to Dodge or Amazon or where ever else, but just those Google ads.

So again, I try to post things that can be fact-checked, and I do try to keep honest. On the rare and unlikely occasion that I get access to an inside source (as I did in regards to Zombie Muhammad), I try to check on their reliability and see how the facts I'm provided fill in the gaps in what everyone else is told. In other words, I try to keep things honest. I have little, if any, reason to do otherwise.

Re: Zombie Muhammad

I think on my first post on this blog, I said I don't claim to be a news breaker. This may be an exception. I'm sure you recently have heard the news about the Muslim who supposedly attacked the atheist "Zombie Muhammad," and the Muslim was let go. If not, here you go.

You can see how easy this is to sensationalize upon without getting the full story. Figure, there's the video... there's a recording of the proceedings. All that good stuff. That's the big reason I didn't figure this was really worth blogging about before now. I knew there was something more than was being reported, but without any kind of inside information, why bother? It inevitably degenerates into a screaming match with little to prove my point.

Well, an anonymous source did come to me. I'll leave it up to the source as to whether or not they want to self-identify, but I'll have no part in that. While one may question the reliability of an anonymous source (I often do), this source did fill in gaps. I hadn't even paid attention to this case all that much until now, more out of frustration toward this kind of mentality than anything. I don't believe that there is a hidden agenda to turn this country over to Sharia. Not one of any scale to worry about, anyway. I find myself more concerned over the Christian extremists - while I fully respect an individual's right to beliefs, extremists of any kind are dangerous, and I cannot support any religion being forced on others.

So, let's take a look at this case now. If there is video of an incident, people generally will agree with the accuser without bothering to watch the video. The site that I linked to above does have the video in question.

I've watched this video. I don't see an attack. I hear "Zombie Muhammad" dramatically screaming that he's being attacked. But, my source says that Zombie Muhammad carried a Styrofoam sign. Now, I think we all know that Styrofoam is generally pretty fragile. It'll snap easier than a twig with any rough treatment. Zombie Muhammad's sign was undamaged. Not only that, but he had no injuries. Whether the guy was attacked or not, "attack" without injuries seldom gets any punishment, especially for someone who was being deliberately provoked and has an otherwise clean record. Seriously, go sit in at your local court sometime. My understanding is that it's all public, anyway.

Next, we have the recording of the proceedings. The atheist claims he had the judge's permission to record the hearing. According to my source, he did not. Thus, he recorded it illegally. With this, he also altered the tape, which brings us to my next point:

My source tells me that the judge is not a Muslim, as claimed by the atheist and a bunch of conspiracy theorists. While Constitutionally speaking (Article VI, Paragraph 3) this shouldn't matter, to say the least, I'm going to give the conspiracy theorists the benefit of the doubt in that this could mean a certain bias. Especially if it seems the judge announced his religion as being Islam. But the point is however that this judge is decidedly not a Muslim, and if I trust nothing else my source told me, I would still trust this as being fact.

Here's the thing, as I see it: there are atheists, and there are anti-theists. An atheist doesn't believe. An anti-theist isn't content with not believing - they tend to have a special kind of insecurity. The same kind of insecurity we see from the most rabid evangelicals. The anti-theists are about hatred for religion, and those who follow a religion. Zombie Muhammad guy is an anti-theist, and not above orchestrating a character assassination to get his way. Because of that, he put both the judge and the Muslim at high risk. I don't doubt that they are both receiving a lot of threats.

So, truly... when you hear an outrageous conspiracy theory, there is honestly a good chance it's a load of crap. In this case, I believe it is. There are gaps in the evidence wide enough to drive a truck through, and those gaps were filled in nicely by what my source told me. For Christians, would you not be tempted to "attack" or at least push away a "Zombie Jesus" that was belligerent toward you and deliberately trying to provoke you? Yes, we have freedom of speech and of religion, but keep in mind that all freedoms go both ways. Muslims have a right to their religion, so long as their practices don't involve harming others, or forcing it on others. Yes, I'm aware of Muslim doctrine involving this, but so does the doctrine of every mainstream religion. It's a matter of what people choose to act on.

Conspiracy Theories

I've mentioned early on that I have a strong distaste for conspiracy theories. They make people scared, and people do dumb things when they are scared. An extreme example would be the holocaust in Nazi Germany. The Jewish people have been the scapegoats throughout much of their history. I know of one Jewish person who summed up the Jewish holidays as, "they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat." Hitler was successful in blaming a Jewish conspiracy for all the world's problems, and with that... well, you know the rest.

I'd actually be really amused by many conspiracy theories if not for the dangers they presented. I've heard of one where the world is supposedly run by reptilian Illuminati shape-shifters from outer space. I've heard of chem trails - the theory that the trails some jets leave behind are chemicals aimed at eventually exterminating the human race, or that they are from the government doing secret experiments on us to see what happens when we're exposed to various chemical or biological agents. Then there's the theories about HAARP... the belief that this project secretly controls the weather and such like. More well known are the theories that 9/11 was an inside job, that Obama is a Muslim and not a US born citizen, and the still-enduring theories about the Jews trying to take over the world.

Don't misunderstand me - I am aware that the government has done some pretty shitty things, and that there have been some pretty scary real life conspiracies - the Tuskegee experiment, MK-ULTRA, Operation Northwoods, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, STD experiments in Guatemala, and several others.

What I do ask however is that people question everything, including those who tell them to question everything. Just because someone comes up with a neat, dramatic, and scary sounding conspiracy theory doesn't make it true. Look at actual evidence. Don't just trust someone's word that it came from an insider. Look at science. Look at motivation. 

If someone tells you not to trust the mainstream media, ask why. The mainstream media, while far from perfect, at least has accountability. They can be biased, they can choose to report... but if they tell an outright lie, they can be held accountable. Us hacks with blogs though are another matter. I could tell you the sky is actually pink with purple polka-dots, but MK-ULTRA has us thinking it's blue... and no one could do anything about it, because 1) I have such a small fan-base as it stands (although strangely, this blog gets almost as many hits from Russia as it does from the US), 2) I'm fairly anonymous, 3) I'm probably dirt poor and therefore not worth suing, and 4) I don't claim to be the news.

The thing is that the internet does put all kinds of info at our fingertips, but a lot of it is false information. Make sure the information you get is from a reliable source, or can actually be backed up from a reliable source. Know the difference between news and commentary/opinion. And seriously, question everyone - especially those who tell you to question everyone.