Saturday, April 28, 2007

Traces Of The Original Paradise

The Book of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament of the Bible, gives the location of the original Garden of Eden, the paradise that God created for human beings to live in until those plans changed because of sin. The garden was vast and must have contained a luxuriant variety and number of plants. The land on which the garden is located is now mostly desert and it may seem to an unbeliever that the story could be a myth. But then a vast amount of oil was discovered under that sand. We know that oil is formed of the remains of ancient plants that became buried. It looks as if the oil in the Middle East bears witness to the existence of the Garden of Eden.

Another thing that attracted the disdain of skeptics for hundreds of years was the claim of the biblical prophecies that the final war of the world would begin over the Middle East, into which Israel would be re-established. Why would the world go to war over all of that sand? But once again, the discovery of the oil along with the development of modern technology changed the picture entirely. The past few decades have shown just how willing nations are to plunge into war over the Middle East. After Armageddon, the world will be restored to the paradise that God intended with Jesus reigning in Jerusalem and directly administering the world.

Another event that I would like to mention is the flood in the Book of Genesis. It has been established that there is a layer of clay under the ground in Mesopotamia that could have only been deposited by a vast amount of water. There are relics of human settlements both above and below the layer of clay. After the work I have done with glaciers in the Niagara and Toronto areas and in England as detailed on my other blogs, I can tell you that there is nothing at all unusual about such a flood. The relatively quick melting of glaciers could easily cause such a deluge and if we wish to get an idea of what the flood must have been like, anyone who was in New Orleans or the sorrounding area when the storm hit in 2005 can tell you.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Secular Salvation

The stories from the Bible were so important for so long that they have permeated every part of western civilization in at least some way. Have you ever noticed, for example, that most of the fairy tales that have been read to children for centuries can be seen to be reflected in the Bible? So many of those stories are largely Bible stories with the religion taken out and new characters put in. It is fairly easy to see that the writers of those stories were raised on the Bible stories.

Likewise, the idea of salvation as presented in the Bible has been with us for so long that it will inevitably influence our patterns of thought and our way of seeing the world. It is easy to see that today, the biblical idea of salvation by the death of Jesus has been replaced by various secular forms of "salvation" following the same pattern.

The goal of people used to be to live a life pleasing to God so that they would spend eternity in heaven with him. Today, we have the same kind of feeling toward "striking it rich" in some way. All we have to do is win the lottery or emerge victorious on American Idol and we will be all set, we will have it made. Eternal salvation does not even enter the equation or does so in a very watered-down kind of way.

The truth is that we are not "all set". A person could obtain all of the money in the world, then get hit by a car or be killed by the next school or mall shooter, and spend eternity in hell. Even if that does not happen, when they face God, all of it will mean absolutely nothing. We need to pay much more attention to being "all set" for eternity instead of just for our brief lives.

Another form that secular salvation takes today is being "connected" with others, in other words, being popular. How often do we hear on the news "He was such a loner, and then one day he walked in with an assault rifle and killed everybody. If only he had been more connected this would not have happened".

First of all, this form of secular salvation is incorrect. Sir Isaac Newton was a loner who was definitely not connected and never seems to have had any real friends. Yet, he never killed anybody and spent his time establishing that there is a force called gravity that runs the universe, developing calculus, starting the modern science of physics by breaking down sunlight with a prism and explaining why and, making the science of astronomy that we have today possible by figuring out how to make a telescope with mirrors, instead of lenses, so that the instrument could me made much larger and more powerful. Altemio Sanchez, in contrast, was gregarious and popular everywhere he went and yet has been convicted of being the unknown serial killer that haunted Buffalo for over twenty years.

Maybe if the killer at Virginia Tech University had been connected with God, this would not have happened. When someone really internalizes the fact that there is an eternal judgement that everyone must face and their residence for all of eternity is at stake, they usually tend to modify their behavior accordingly.

Don't get me wrong, it is great to be connected and popular. I am absolutely stunned at how many readers I have. But as with money, this will be of no avail when facing God. It will only be the salvation offered by the sacrifice of Jesus that will be of benefit.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

The End Of The World As We Know It.

Are you aware of the real meaning of current events? The prophecies of events that were to precede the end of civilization as we know it were made long ago in the Bible. These events are coming together right now.

Chapter 21 of the Gospel of Luke warns that the End of the World must occur in the same generation as the Jews' return to and control of Jerusalem after a long absence. This return happened in 1967 following the re-establishment of Israel in 1948 after 1,836 years of exile. Since then, a multitude of other related prophecies have fallen into place.

This means that the world as we know it cannot go on that much longer. Luke 21 foretells an increase in earthquakes and "wars and rumors of wars" for the Last Days, a prophecy that speaks for itself. The devastating tsunami of December 26, 2004, was caused by an underwater earthquake and came almost exactly a year after another devastating quake levelled the ancient city of Bam, in Iran. Within a year of the tsunami, a devastating earthquake occurred in northern Pakistan on October 8, 2005. While the war in the summer of 2006 between Israel and Hizbullah was going on, there was yet another tsunami in Indonesia. The almost-continuous warnings of terrorist attacks could be considered as 'rumors of wars'.

We are also warned about false teachings and that some in this time will falsely claim to be Christ as did Jim Jones, Mehmet Ali Agca, David Koresh and, the kidnapper of Elizabeth Smart. Many people misunderstand the Bible prophecies because they think only of the War of Armageddon. A cataclysmic world war will happen, but the next step in fulfillment of the prophecies is a temporary time of peace and prosperity in a world of unity and must happen first, before the War of Armageddon. A resurgence of interest in the apocalyptic prophecies often happens when a war or terrorist attack happens but, this is somewhat misleading.

The world is coming together economically in the process known as 'globalization'. The 90s was the decade of the internet, which in effect is a global web promoting a one-world system. The 00 decade so far is the decade of a global battle against terrorism. The only real way to shut down terrorism is to create the means to keep track of anyone anywhere in the world. Which would, of course, put the system in place for the one-world system necessary to fulfill the biblical prophecies.

The unified world must some day fall under the influence of the dynamic political leader of the Last days known in the Bible as the Antichrist. This man will be from a unified western Europe. The reason for this is that the Book of Daniel (written about 700 B.C.) foretold that the Antichrist will come from the people who kill the Messiah (Jesus) and destroy the Sanctuary (The Jews' Temple). This turned out to be the Romans. The core of the European Union is the same area as the old Roman Empire.

The European Union has greatly expanded in size in 2004 and is now probably the most important economic and political entity in the world. When the Europeans introduced a common currency, the euro, it was worth only about 80 cents U.S. but is now worth about $1.50 U.S.

Aside from the one-world system, the basic structure of this future unified world already exists in the form of the United Nations. The world will move toward global unity so that the Antichrist can exercise full control. Although it sounds positive, a unified world of global cooperation is actually a deceptive stage for the Antichrist.

Many times in our television age the world has been changed by one dynamic personality. In a globalizing world, there is nothing unusual about a great leader arising, able to influence the whole world. Look at what global figures Princess Diana and Pope John Paul II became. This would have been impossible even a few decades ago.

The Antichrist will not be obviously evil, not at first. He will seem to have all the answers. Picture the Antichrist as a personality like John F. Kennedy multiplied by about a thousand. But the Antichrist is actually the Son of Satan just as Jesus is the Son of God. After the world puts it's faith in him, everything will collapse into cataclysmic wars and other tribulations.

THE WAR

The world will live in peace and prosperity for a time until it is shattered by an invasion of the Holy Land which will start the final war of the world. The Book of Ezekiel, chapter 38, forecasts this cataclysmic war. After the restoration of Israel and the reestablishment of control over Jerusalem, Israel is to be attacked by an enemy to the "uttermost north". This attack must come after the world falls under the influence of the Antichrist and will start the great war. The only nation that fits this description is Russia and Moscow is due north of Israel.

Remember also that Iraq was an ally of Russia just as Israel is an ally of America. Russia, with a long tradition of anti-Semitism, will be able to justify it's attack on Israel since if America can invade one of it's allies, it can attack one of America's allies. Since the end of the Cold War, Russians have chafed under condescending treatment, especially by Americans, and intend for Russia to regain it's place of great influence in the world.

The Bible is clear that the world's final war will begin in the Middle East. Today it is the world's center of conflict, trouble and, terrorism. The world, beginning with the United States, has shown how willing it is to plunge into conflict in the Middle East. Oil, along with religion, has made the Middle East into possibly the most important region on earth. It now appears that the days of cheap oil are finished and this only makes the Middle East more important to the world.

The old biblical prophecies of the great war at the End of the World beginning in this region can now be seen to make perfect sense. Ezekiel 38:5 prophecies that this northern invader will be allied with Persia (Iran), Libya and, Ethiopia. The U.S. has long regarded these nations as a source of trouble. Libya and Ethiopia were allies of the Soviet Union. The King James Version of the Bible gives the modern names of these nations, other versions may give the ancient names. The president of Iran that was elected in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former mayor of Teheran, has put a lot of effort into reviving the 1979 revolution. He has called publically for the destruction of Israel.

The great war must happen, but the progress toward a unified world must happen first. The First Book of Thessalonians 5:3 states that a false sense of peace and safety will precede great destruction. Remember what an unexpected jolt the 9/11 attack was? Just when the world seems to be at peace, another war erupts. The final war of humanity will follow a similar pattern.

I believe that the 9/11 attack as well as the other terror attacks since then may have been allowed by God to jolt those people who believe that "This can't happen here" into thinking differently. The Twentieth Century, despite it's great technical and medical progress, was the century of brutal dictatorships and grotesque wars. In a globalizing world, there is nothing unusual about a worlwide dictatorship followed by a devastating war.

There have already been two world wars, three if you count the Napoleonic Wars as a world war. There is nothing unusual about another world war, which would fulfill the biblical prophecies, because the world is just about as troubled as ever.

Pay no attention to writings of psychics like Nostradamus. The prophecies of Nostradamus are so vague as to be meaningless and most of his specific prophecies were in the Bible 1,500 years before Nostradamus' time. Also, pay no attention to anyone saying that the world will end on a certain day. The Bible states that no one knows the exact day, although we can know the general time. Remember that a lot of falseness and deception must be expected.

The Second Book of Timothy, chapter 3, foretells extensive sin, lawlessness, greed and, ignorance toward God in the Last Days. Don't these things abound right now? Our society has lost it's foundation due to a straying from God's Word. The world without God cannot possibly avoid trouble.

THE BOOK OF REVELATION

The Book of Revelation contains some seemingly mystifying prophecies. Chapter 16 foretells men in the Last Days being burned by the heat of the sun. Right now the ozone layer is weakened and would go even faster following a nuclear exchange, exposing the planet to deadly ultraviolet rays. The priest and evangelist scandals also fit into the prophecies; along with a lot of false, unbiblical religion. The Second Book of Thessalonians 2:3 predicts a "falling away" by many Christians, including many churches, near the world's end.

The Book of Revelation 13:17 foretells that everyone will have a "mark" for economic purposes in the Last Days. Just about everything you do can be tracked now. There are microchips that can be inserted unobtrusively under the skin of an animal or person and read to give information about the animal or person.

In Europe and Japan, there are bar code readers on cell phones that retrieve a text message with a phone call to give detailed information about a product when a bar code is read. The world is ever more dependent on cell phones but when combined with GPS technology, the location of cell phone calls can be pinpointed relatively easily. All of this would be ideal for helping to track terrorists but would also be there for use by the Antichrist enforcing order in the coming one-world system.

The Book of Revelation also makes it clear that diseases will be a part of the Tribulation. Many people believe that we can already see the Tribulation taking place in southern Africa, which is ravaged by AIDS. Although this does not mean that destruction by AIDS is the fate of the entire planet.

Chapter 18 of the Book of Revelation should be of great interest to us. I am certain that this chapter refers to the United States, and by extension, the rest of North America. It concerns a "Mystery Babylon" in the Last Days of the world just before the Second Coming of Christ. It could not be referring to the original Babylon because it had long since passed from the scene by the time the Book of Revelation was written toward the end of the First Century A.D. by St. John.

That is why it refers to "Mystery" Babylon. It is a nation in the Last Days that spiritually resembles Babylon. The original Babylon was a nation of great wealth and power but was also idolatrous and very sinful. Down through history, Babylon has evoked images of idolatry and decadence.

The chapter foretells that this "Mystery Babylon" will be utterly destroyed by fire in one hour. It is impossible for a nation to be destroyed by conventional fire in one hour. But what if St. John is referring to nuclear explosions? When God gave him a vision of all of this happening, there was no word in the vocabulary for nuclear explosion. It also foretells that people at sea in ships will be horrified by the smoke from the burning of Mystery Babylon. Could this be referring to the sight of mushroom clouds from the nuclear explosions?

This also shows conclusively that this cannot be referring to the original Babylon because it was in the desert, far away from the sea. The U.S. has a very long coastline and is the destination of tens of thousands of cargo ships from across the world. It also reads that after the sudden destruction of Mystery Babylon, merchants across the world will mourn because no one buys their goods any more. This fits with the fact that today the U.S. is by far the world's great importer of goods from other countries, as well as services due to the outsourcing used by so many American companies. Most countries try to avoid doing a lot of importing from other countries but the U.S. is the one great exception, with a voracious appetite for foreign goods, not to mention oil. Ironically, the original Babylon was in what is now Iraq, with which the U.S. has so entwined it's history.

These are monumental days we are living in. God's prophecies will be fulfilled. The Gospels promise that Jesus, the Son of God, will remove his people from the Tribulation. You still have time to accept Christ as your Savior. Everyone has sinned but there is still a chance to repent.

The Word of God must not be ignored. God wants you to be a part of His Kingdom. Simply knowing about Jesus is not enough. You must devote your life to Him. Right now, ask God to guide you and accept Jesus as your Savior. Begin reading the Bible, it is better to read the New Testament first. The prophecies in the Bible have an amazing record of fulfillment.

The agonizing death of Jesus, a sacrifice for sin, and the events of his life are foretold all over the Old Testament. No other religion can prove itself like this. The world could have been a real paradise if the people had followed God. Think of all the people you know. What will become of them during this holocaust? Please inform them about this.

SPECULATION ABOUT THE MARK OF THE BEAST

I have been thinking about the "mark" that the Antichrist is supposed to put on people in the last days of the world according to biblical prophecies. All across the world, this has become the stuff of folklore that people will have a mark on them in order to buy and sell things. Can anyone seriously believe that hundreds of millions of people all over the world are going to line up to have such a mark put on them. I have become certain that this is not going to happen.

In discussing the Book of Revelation and similar prophecies, we have to remember that God gave a vision of future events to a person of ancient times, who described what they saw as best as they could. St. John, author of the Book of Revelation had not the slightest concept of modern technology.

Let's consider Revelation chapter 9, verses 3-9. St. John described "locusts" having a terrible sting. He also describes them as "scorpions" and as the locusts appearing like horses prepared for battle and as having crowns. To make it even more strange, these creatures are described as having hair like women and faces like men and their wings make a sound like many horses and chariots.

But the mystery ends if we consider that this is a perfect description of a military helicopter of today dispensing some kind of nerve gas or chemical weapon. Such a helicopter resembles both a locust and a scorpion. A helicopter makes a sound like many horses running. It's rotors look somewhat like a woman's long hair. The face of the pilot can be seen through the window. The "crown" is simply the rotor housing of the helicopter.

Now, let's go to verses 17-19. These verses describe what St. John sees as "horses with heads like lions" accompanying a great army of 200 million soldiers from the east in the final days of the world. From out of the "mouths" of these horses come fire, smoke and, brimstone which causes great destruction.

Consider a battle tank. When seen from the side, it's turret resembles the head of a male lion with a mane. Brimstone is the old word for sulfur (sulphur) and is one of the ingredients of gunpowder, which propels shells and bullets from guns. If the "mouth" is the cannon of the tank, this explains why fire, smoke and, destruction comes from it.

Now, considering St. John's obvious descriptions of tanks and helicopters, why should we not think that this legendary "mark" that people will have is not actually a mark at all but some other modern technology that he could not begin to comprehend? John writes that people will have such a mark on their right hands or their foreheads.

What about cell phones (mobiles)? They comes in two basic forms, handheld and headset. If there is one technology that is really taking over the world, it is not computers or cars but these phones, there is more and more that they can do virtually every year. Many countries that never had good land line networks are skipping that stage altogether and many in the west are giving up land line phones and only using cell phones.

St. John saw visions of people using hand-held phones to conduct business and described it as a "mark". He could imagine a cell phone even less than a tank or helicopter. In many countries today, such phones can scan a bar code and download information about the product or buy from a vending machine and have it put on the phone bill.

So what about the number that goes with the mark, 666? It says that this number is the "number of a man" For most of human history, people were assigned names rather than numbers. But today, virtually everyone in the world does have a number, a phone number.

Most country codes for international calling and area codes, such as those in North America, are of three digits just like 666. What is the mystery? This is simply a prefix or part of a phone number. Through cell phone (mobile) records, all that a person has dome can be kept track of. A cell phone can be pinged to determine a person's location by GPS coordinates. It will be said " What are those silly people talking about, no one is putting any "mark" on anyone, how can this be the Antichrist?"

MIRACLES IN THE LAST DAYS

One of the reasons that the Antichrist will be successful in deceiving the world in the Last Days is the idea that all miracles come from God. This is not true at all. Satan is a powerful spiritual being that has always been able to work miracles. The Bible tells us that occult and psychic phenomenon has it's source in Satan.

The work of Satan is hindered by the presence of the Holy Spirit in the believers. When those believers are removed from earth to make way for the Tribulation, Satan's power will have full reign on earth for a period of seven years until Jesus returns. Satan was once a high-ranking angel of God who became proud of himself and decided to exalt himself to be at least equal with God. Some of the other angels followed him and are now known as demons. The purpose of human history, capped by the tribulation period, is to show that it is only God's ways that work, not Satan's or man without God.

During the Tribulation, with God's Holy Spirit temporarily removed from the world, the Antichrist will amaze the world with his miracles and people will think that he must be from God. He will make fire come down to earth from the sky and will make a statue of himself come to life and praise him. The deceived world will be astounded.

How Destructive Is Television?

Even if the content of television was fairly innocent, it would still have a damaging effect on our patterns of thought if watched more than a very moderate amount. The very nature of television and movies is that it is necessary to pack a story, eventful and complex enough to provide entertainment, into a very limited amount of time. This inevitably distorts reality and most viewers cannot prevent it from inevitably distorting their patterns of thought.

Real people are extremely diverse and complex. In order to squeeze a story into the required time frame, it becomes necessary to resort to gross over-simplification and stereotyping. A television program or movie rarely has the time to portray a character in all of their natural complexity like books do without this over-simplification. These patterns will inevitably affect viewers' thought patterns over time and they will carry this thinking out into the real world. The result will be the lumping of people together and pre-conceived notions of what a person will be like. Written stories, in contrast, not only can develop a character fully but exercise the reader's imagination in doing so.

The artificial compression of time that is unavoidable in television affects the conception of time in the entire society when we watch as much television as we do. We have a very short concept of time as a whole. How did we get ourselves into this mess of being dependent on the oil in the Middle East to continue our way of life and setting the earth's climate on a collision course with disaster at the same time? By very short-term thinking, thats how. The Y2K crisis at the turn of the millenium turned out to be pretty much a non-crisis, but it was another clear example of large scale short-term thinking.

In order to pack a story into a very brief time span, television and movies must make heavy use of non-verbal communication and cues. I believe that this greatly distorts communication between human beings, particularly between those from different countries or groups and between those who watch a lot of television and those who don't. Excessive reliance on non-verbal cues in communication definitely promotes misunderstandings. Television takes every little thing about a person; the way they walk, their expressions, gestures and demeanor and loads it all with meaning.

In reality, such things may mean nothing. But someone whose thought patterns are affected by television will read meaning into perceived non-verbal gestures anyway. This certainly invites misunderstandings of all description. On a television studio set, everything in the scene has some meaning and makes some contribution to the story. Every little thing "means" something, which in the real world may mean nothing. Television producers have, in effect, created a non-verbal supplement to the standard spoken and written language.

Misunderstandings are inevitable when some people "speak" this television non-verbal language while others don't. This is especially true with persons of different cultural background. I, for example, have not watched an ordinary television show in years and the non-verbal elements of communication mean relatively little to me. I find the loading of everything with meaning as is done on television to be ridiculous in the real world.

Romance has always been a prominent feature of entertainment in television and movies. But what does this do to distort life in the real world? Suppose a guy smiles at a girl, what does it mean? Maybe it means nothing but it the distorted non-verbal language of the screen, he must be trying to hook up with her. Suppose a guy goes to a place of business and there is a girl that works there. Obviously he must be going there because he wants to go out with her. Why, because that's the way it works in the movies, that's why.

Television fills up our lives with entertainment. That inevitably causes us to feel that we have a kind of right to be entertained. What would normally be the private lives of people are considered to be public entertainment on television. This has created a tabloid culture where many people feel that they have the right to be entertained by the lives of others. What should be nobody's business but their own is considered as legitimate entertainment.

I believe that television has distorted society even more than we have thought. A person might say or write something about some topic and there may be those who think that there is a hidden sexual innuendo to it because that is the way it works on television or in the movies.

Television bombards viewers with ads and entertainment. This gives the impression that quiet reflection or reading is somehow abnormal because it does not fit into the television studio set, when the reality is that it is the world of television that is distorted. Spending one's life being bombarded with ads gives the impression that "I am the center of the universe, everyone wants my attention, everything revolves around me".

What is the problem with our trying to be an example to the world of what a society should be? Paris Hilton is the problem, or at least one of the symptoms of the problem. The obsession with her antics is significant not for what it indicates about her but for what it indicates about us. While she was in court for traffic issues, news helicopters filled the sky overhead. Not from paparazzi, but from "real" news organizations. Before her, there was the similar national (and international) obsession with the twisted, tragic life of the late Anne Nicole Smith.

Given obsessions such as these, why on earth would anyone across the world want to use our society as an model? Unless it is a model of what they do not want to be like. It is the public in general who create lives such as these with the constant obsession with the private lives of others for entertainment.

The main reason that we are so hated across the world is what people see of us on television. If they got to know many of the average people, most people might like us. Instead, there are many thousands of people who would sacrifice their own lives to kill some of us. They do not embrace what our society has to offer, they vociferously fight against it.

TELEVISION AND GUN MASSACRES

I had no sooner completed the posting above, than the horrible shootings occurred at Virginia Tech University. I maintain that it is television that is the foundation of the wave of such shootings in recent decades. Here is my reasoning.

These horrific and seemingly senseless massacres began on a large scale in the Sixties with the Charles Whitman sniper shootings at a university in Texas. Part of the inspiration for this may have been the assassination of John F. Kennedy a few years prior, also in Texas.

What changed about the world to produce such mindless horror? Guns are a focal point of the problem but rural American boys have grown up with guns for more than two hundred years so guns alone cannot be considered as the reason. Likewise, there has been poverty, great income disparities and, crime in America since the beginning. The wild west was legendary for it's bad guys and shoot-outs, at least until the frontier was declared closed in 1890. But even then, massacres of completely innocent people because the killer was mad at the world, such as happened at Virginia Tech, were virtually unknown.

Another period that was legendary for it's crime was the 1930s. Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde, Ma Barker and, Machine Gun Kelly have become the figures of a twisted kind of folklore. But even here, the goal of such figures was simply money, usually obtained by bank robbery. As a general rule, as long as bank employees cooperated and made no effort to resist a robbery, no one necessarily got hurt.

But in the Fifties, another factor emerged. America was building it's postwar suburban prosperity and television became a feature of most homes. Westerns and cops-and-robbers shows involving an abundance of guns were a staple on television from it's inception. The generation that reached adulthood in the Sixties was the first to have grown up with television.

This is the time that the massacres began to be a frequent news story, as well as a general increase in crime as a whole. The thing that was so different was the senselessness. This was not the bad guys of the west in a shootout over gold. It was not the bank robbers of the Thirties after cash. It was twisted individuals, many from prosperous homes, who were mad at the world and were seeking a glorious death in their own distorted minds and were striking back at society and bringing thirty or so people along with them at the same time. How can anyone say that television is not the driving force behind this?

TELEVISION DISTORTS REALITY

A major destructive effect of television is simply how it distorts viewer's perceptions of the way things work in the real world. We read stories of people doing things that they see on television, such as jumping out of one moving pickup truck into another, and getting killed or seriously injured while doing it. But examples like that are only the most obvious ones. What about warfare and the way that television shapes the public perception of it?

The majority of the public, aside from those that do a significant amount of reading, get their idea of how warfare operates mainly from what they see on television. It is true that war movies can serve as a military recruiting tool. The trouble begins with the short concept of time promoted by television and movies. Television became a staple of homes in advanced countries in the decade following the end of the Second World War. A flood of movies and programs taking place in that war was a part of television from the beginning. The first TV program that I recall watching was "The Rat Patrol".

World War Two seemed to be made for the television that would become widespread in the following decade. When two conventional military forces face off, the war tends to consist of a series of battles. The two forces will clash followed by a period of resupply and reorganization followed by another battle with the side that got the worse of the previous battle tending to retreat in order to regroup and the other side trying to press it's advantage.

The battles in the Pacific Theater of the war, with two military forces together on a small island, would naturally be intense but relatively short. The battles in Europe, where the armies had room to maneuver, would be a little less intense but the ground war had more of a continuous nature to it than the sporadic island hopping in the Pacific. Those battles, whether in the Pacific or in Europe, fit perfectly into a two or three hour movie. In addition, the large-scale amphibious landings of the Second World War could be readily reenacted with all the required drama and adrenaline.

The generation that reached adulthood in the Sixties was the first to have grown up with television. That is where the trouble began. The mid-Sixties brought the Vietnam War. It was about as different from the Second World War as night is from day. It was largely a guerilla war with the VC, meaning Vietnamese Communists or Viet Cong, supporting their allies in Communist North Vietnam against South Vietnam and it's ally, the United States.

In early 1968, the Communists launched what is known as the Tet Offensive. Targets across South Vietnam were suddenly attacked in a vast offensive operation. The American public perceived the fact that even though U.S. forces had been in the country for more than three years, the enemy was capable of striking cities and military bases all across South Vietnam at will, as well as massacring thousands of civilians in the City of Hue. So, the war effort must be unsuccessful and Americans were essentially dying there for nothing.

The facts were completely different. For the Communists, the Tet Offensive was not a success at all. They were hoping that the operation would promote a large-scale people's uprising in South Vietnam, which did not happen. Most attacks on urban areas were repulsed in a short time, fighting continued only in Saigon and Hue for longer. The attempt to overrun Khe Sanh, the large U.S. base in the northern part of the country was not successful. Most importantly, the VC suffered heavy losses that put it out of action as a major combat force.

Nevertheless America was, by this time, a nation steeped in World War Two movies. This is what defined the public conception of what warfare was and how it worked. The people wondered what had been accomplished in the previous years of involvement in Vietnam if the enemy was capable of launching massive strikes all over South Vietnam anytime they felt inclined to do so.

A drawn-out insurgency war without the classic battles and amphibious landings in the movies just did not get any sympathy. In those World War Two movies, there was no doubt who was the good guys and who was the bad guys. There was no doubt about the goals of the war, to get the front line to the enemy's capital city and have him sign the armistice on the dotted line. It was all as simple as a football game.

In contrast, everything about this war was so murky. Was the thoroughly corrupt government of our allies really the "good guys"? Why did the war drag on year after year with no way to really know if we were making progress? There had been no Pearl Harbor style attack on America, why was this war even necessary? Events were just not unfolding like they do in the movies.

Warfare is only one way that television distorts the way viewers perceive things as working in the real world. Another is crime. I don't mean the promotion of crime by the portrayal of it on television, that is already obvious. Television also has a great effect on the operation of the judicial system.

It was recently in the news that more than two hundred people in America have been freed by DNA evidence, many after spending more than twenty years in prison. Clearly, the judicial system has very serious faults. I believe that a major part of the problem is that when the average citizen reports for jury duty, most of what they "know" about crime and courtrooms is what they have seen on television.

Friday, April 6, 2007

The Trouble With News

I would like to point out what I consider a major obstacle to world peace. It is the news. The vast majority of news is bad news of some type as opposed to good news. This is due simply to the very nature of news. Basically, good news isn't news, it's bad news that is news. Bad news is often spectacular in nature, while good news tends to be mundane. Even when good news does come suddenly, it is often the reversal of previous bad news, such as miners being rescued after a mine collapse.

Have you ever noticed that when you read news of foreign countries, you hardly ever read anything good? It is almost all bad. But we should understand that this is what I will term "news distortion". The news informs us of what is happening, but in doing so distorts our view of the world. This is not done purposely but is due to the simple fact that good news isn't news while bad news is news. If all we ever read about a certain foreign country is bad, we will naturally tend to develop a negative concept of that country because of the inevitable news distortion. I am certain that this is a significant barrier to world peace.

History has the same downward slant. Most of history is about wars. The history of human beings is basically a history of warfare. History is just the news of the past and concerns itself with changes in the status quo, which are usually accompanied by warfare. If you read the history of a particular country, a major part of what you read will be about it's wars and if you read today's news in that country, you will most likely read one bad thing after another. Countries usually only look good in the news when compared with other countries where the news is even worse. Clearly, the most fortunate countries are those which are rarely in the world news.

My solution is a monthly publication of which I have been virtually a life-long reader. I find that National Geographic Magazine is an excellent counterbalance to the news. It has plenty of news and history in it but the focus is on daily life and ordinary people and what is important in the world.

It is an American magazine but focuses on the entire world. It has a very broad range of features and gives a very realistic view of the world and beyond. It counters the inevitable news distortion. My belief is that it should be required reading for anyone who deals with the world outside their own country. And I do not work for National Geographic nor did they hire me to promote it.