Terror roots

Today the Western world is concerned with stopping those crazy terrorists from the Middle East and surrounding areas. How did this all begin? That all depends on how far back you want to go in the history of the world. There are lots of theories about the origins of war in human history but the simple fact is that signs of warfare are evident from our earliest known humans.

Wars have also been fought for lots of different reasons from people needing more room for an expanding population to needing to move because of droughts or other disasters wrecking their homelands and lots of other reasons. Societies sometimes clashed due to cultural differences and sometimes that cultural reason was religious in nature.

Our clashes today are mostly based on economics, politics or religious differences between Muslims and Christians. The history of clashes between these two groups goes all the way back to the earliest days of these religions. They fought wars back and forth over control of the city of Jerusalem. Then there were invasions or wars by Alexander the Great, Chandragupta Maurya, and Genghis Khan. All of these groups acted like terrorists invading, looting and pillaging the areas they entered and sometimes defeated. Then there were all the Crusades which were the Christian equivalent of Jihad or holy war. I hear people today talking about how Muslims must be terrible vicious people to declare holy wars but the Christians were doing it first. Both groups consider Jerusalem a part of their holy history and so does the Jewish religion. Holy wars are nothing new and neither is harsh brutal terrorism of invading armies. Some people say terrorism only relates to activities since dynamite became readily available to equal out the powers of destruction between large armies and smaller ones. Dynamite has been replaced by C4 plastic explosive today. But come on if you were farming and a few thousand knights came marching toward your farm burning everything in their path and raping and murdering I think you would experience some terror. The power they used included the implied threat of if you do not bow down to us this is what we will do to you and your people. So they used threats to intimidate their intended targets, just like terrorists do today.

In the mountains of Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan with its difficult terrain it was fairly easy to build small compounds and defend them from invaders. That is what we have today in these areas, a bunch of anarchistic warlords ruling over their small compounds. They haven't really ever been defeated and they likely never will be so fighting a war over there to defeat them is not going to be successful. So why are we there? The British and the Russians have already demonstrated how impossible it is. What makes the U.S. think that they will fare any better? Sure the U.S. wanted to go in and punish them because of 911 but where does it end? Why is there no dialogue going on between the religions to come up with a peaceful solution? Is humanity just doomed to forever engage in Holy warfare until there is a once and for all world war and there is just one religion left? I hope not. It is time to start talking, settle the differences, stop killing each other and learn to live in peace.

Travel blog is not returning

Well I guess it is time to announce the end of my travel blog. I haven't been able to write in it for almost a year now so I am admitting to myself that I will never be finishing it. I love to travel and I love to write about it but my brain just will not let me do it any longer. My pain levels have been too high to focus on anything like remembering what happened and when it happened. Also the depression from the pain leads me to focus on the darker side of life leaving my writing too bleak, devoid of the zest for life I used to have during my travels and before pain took over control of what's left of my brain.

Pain messes with your brain big time I have discovered. Over the last week my major high pain has been relatively low but instead of feeling good about that all I notice is all the smaller pains like my sore joints and my arthritis. I don't feel those pains when I have high pain even though they are still there. It is just that when the high pain takes over that is all I feel. Then the other problem when my pain goes down like this is that I live in fear of my major pain returning because when it does my depression plunges into an abyss that is horrible. It is actually easier to adjust to a constant pain level, even if it is high, than to a pain that varies in intensity like mine does. But the end result is that because of these health problems, I just don't have it in me to continue the travel blog. I will continue to blog on days when I have enough energy and mental strength to actually say something. From now on I will just blog about nothing...just whatever mood or topic strikes me. Don't expect any earth shattering essays.

I know my writing is discombobulated these days but I am not writing for anyone except myself so I don't really care. If you don't like what I write, comment on it, or just leave. I don't care about anything anymore so my inhibitions are only slightly moderated and I could say just about anything about anyone (if I haven't already) or about anything. (go ahead and ask me a question about something if you want to see what I mean) I am not doing this to offend anyone. I have already heard back from some of those that have felt offended. Privacy for me has become a rather moot point. From the way I have been feeling lately due to the pain and depression, I may slide into total insanity for all I know. That could be interesting to an outside observer or it could be troubling but either way I just don't care. So you have been warned, read on at your own peril especially if you have messed with me at some point in my life.

I never defend myself by the way. I have been that way most of my life. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing I am not sure. I brush off attacks from others about my integrity or character and things without comment. So name calling at me doesn't really hurt me. It does, however, tend to make me think less of a person that calls that communication. That is why I always post those negative name calling comments, they make me laugh when I read them. A better way would be to state an opposing viewpoint in a clear concise argument that might make me change my point of view which I am ready and willing to do if you convince me. I could and have made some mistakes in my writing but I do correct them when I find them or they are pointed out to me. For instance I used Johnson instead of Nixon by mistake at one point and when it was told to me I checked my dates and I was wrong. I also don't respond well to statements from people that try to say something did or did not happen when that person was not even present at the event under discussion or they were physically present but they were three sheets to the wind under the influence of drugs and alcohol which does not make for a very accurate eyewitness report. Just because someone doesn't like or agree with something I say does not make it a lie or mistake or something like that on my part.

So on with the new format...

Father's Day

Well it is approaching Father's Day again. I do not celebrate it with my father. My father and I have not gotten along for as far back as I am able to remember. During my days growing up, all I remember of him are his biting hurtful words to me and his totally negative attitude toward me. He also often enough resorted to physical demonstrations of his dislike for me. For whatever reason he only acted like this to me not the rest of my siblings. Although now he treats my older brother with pretty much the same contempt. That surprised me because growing up my older brother was the pride and joy who could do no wrong. I think our father changed his attitude to my brother over differing political points of view but I am not able to say exactly.

I have no idea what triggered my father's animosity aimed in my direction. As a young adult I often wondered about what his motive was for this behavior. My first thought was maybe he isn't my biological father or something but I quickly stopped trying to figure it out since by then I was no longer living under his roof. I thought what the hell difference does it make now anyway if we don't get along. We don't have to get along. We can just go our separate ways and live our own lives and forget the past animosity. Well that doesn't work out so well. He always was very good at acting in public like he was the nicest guy in the world but then when he was alone with me outside of the hearing range and sight of others he would start digging at me as meanly as he could. When I was finally old enough and large enough to fight back it was too late to ever have even a civil relationship with him. The day that happened was when I returned home from Madison after the police had wrongly arrested me during the antiwar riots in the late sixties. He very harshly mouthed off at me then charged me like he was going to get physical but I stood up to him and he backed down. I left that day and never looked back. We went for years without any contact. I wandered around the world for years and became a father myself. My parents came out to visit after the birth of my first son. I got along well with my mom but my father was still the same spiteful mean spirited person. Some things just never change.

Today, my siblings do not understand why I am so "mean" to their loving father by talking openly about my experiences with him. They do not believe their father could have ever acted so cruelly to me. They accuse me of making up lies about him. It is true that he treated them much differently than he treated me. I am happy for them. I am the bad guy now in their eyes. My father very carefully cultivates that with them. He knows exactly what he is doing. I do not understand the why of his motives for his continuing animosity and I never will but it is the reality for now and for ever as far as I can see. So I have pretty much lost any relationship with the rest of my siblings and extended family over this. There is nothing I can do about that since it is their decision. I guess that was what my father wanted, me out of the family. I won't say it doesn't hurt but I have gone past this to just live my life in peace. I don't want any animosity in my life. There is entirely too much of it in the world. My children are also losers in this silly situation because they miss out on lots of extended family contact. There will be no Father's Day celebration between my father and myself. To everybody else though, Happy Father's Day!

Obamacare

The title of this post is misleading. I am appalled that the United States has such a messed up medical care distribution system. The rest of the world has already come around to treating healthcare as a human right that is best served up on an equal footing to everybody without regard to ability to pay or any other criteria. But here in the U.S. care is only doled out based on your ability to pay or by your insurance provider's rules. If you have neither you are stuck. Sure the claim is that no one is turned away that needs medical care in an emergency but the reality is totally different than that standard.

I have been having medical problems for the last twenty years. At first when I was earning good money and had good insurance through an HMO my healthcare was great. But then I got worse and became totally disabled. I could no longer work so I no longer had income to pay the premiums on my HMO. I was converted to Medi-care/Medi-cal coverage. At first that went fine because they paid for my same HMO coverage that I had been buying myself all along. But then one day the HMO was allowed to dump me because I was costing them too much. Suddenly I had to resort to county provided healthcare. Sure the theory is that you can choose your own provider and pay through medi-care but the fact is there are no longer any doctors or facilities that accept the low payments paid by Medi-care so your only choice is the county hospital. So that is where I ended up.

My first appointment took over a year to get. They screened me at that appointment and told me to make a followup appointment. That was another ten months later. I was able to go to a small community clinic to keep my prescriptions filled for all my pain control meds but my health problems were beyond the capabilities of the physicians assistants and the overworked general practitioner at the small clinic. I needed specialists and surgeons not a shot for measles.

After a few years of almost no medical care at all I was finally referred to the specialists I needed. They each checked me out and passed me on to another specialist with each new doctor or clinic or hospital having their own lengthy wait for new patients to get in. I ended up most recently at Stanford Hospital for diagnostics and treatment. For the last two years I have been wading through their system getting lots of tests and being seen by various specialists. I never made it to the end of their system because my health coverage changed yet again.

When Obama announced his recently passed ObamaCare he gave a great speech in which he said that now all Americans would get healthcare equal to the quality of care he himself or the senators that passed the bill were getting. Well that is not true in any sense.

I have now been assigned to a County of Alameda HMO called Alliance for Health. As soon as I was assigned to the HMO Stanford Hospital told me I was no longer able to be seen there to finish my assessment and treatment at their Stanford Cancer Clinic. I have spent about 40 hours on the phone trying to contact the new HMO I was assigned to but have only spoken to a human twice and each time I was told that they would have to call me back. They have never returned my calls despite my verification of the correct phone number etc. I have given up now. I refuse to spend another minute of my life grovelling for healthcare. I would rather just let cancers and anything else just kill me. If this is the kind of healthcare the president and senate enjoy I would be shocked.

I do not blame Obama for this situation. I put the blame on the American Medical Association. They have manipulated the state of medical care in this country for decades by limiting the number of doctors available and price fixing medical care. Medical care in this country is about six times more expensive than the rest of the developed world. Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that the U.S. has the number one medical care in the world when by any impartial study it is more like 37th or 38th from the top. The AMA is the entity behind the brainwashing. They have done a very good job. But they do not do a very good job of providing medical care to those that need it...only to those who can shell out the high fees they extort. Anybody like me that complains is made out to be a fool or worse some kind of communist or socialist or something. But the truth is that medical care in this country is not based on a free and open market. The entire market is manipulated. From the number of doctors allowed to the fees charged it is all planned to drive the price as high as it is able to go. Well I give up in defeat. I am too weak to do anything about this situation. When my current meds run out I will just die and the system will go on. It is as simple as that--just modern genocide of the poor and medically indigent. It is the American way.