The Illusion: life is like a game of chess

I would like to think that my thoughts are my own, that my actions are my own and that my decisions are my own. Most would probably agree with me. But, I find it harder to draw the line between what is really mine and what I have been programmed to believe is mine. As I look around, there are subliminal messages everywhere I go, some more obvious than others. A billboard for McDonald’s on the freeway may catch my eye just long enough for me to respond by all of the sudden wanting a juicy burger. A commercial for a new, must-try mouthwash may not come as immediate, but next time I’m in the hygiene aisle I may grab that mouthwash instinctively. Even though I thought it was my idea to want the burger and the mouthwash, really my interest in them is because of a prearranged plan. Corporations are deciding what I want, and within them are a small group of people calling the shots. Not only does that group facilitate the means to manipulate us through the media, but they also gain power as they collect our money. We buy their items and we buy their ideas, jumping on the bandwagon of hot-button topics that the media shoves in our faces from week to week. Ideals and ideas are being bought and sold; do this, don’t do that, this person is bad, this person is good, that is wrong, this is right. Even when we think we are free to decide on our own, most likely our decisions are based on what we’ve been told. Behind all of it are people with money and power. And we are giving it to them without blinking an eye. As the rich are getting richer they are taking control, deciding what the layman sees, hears, buys and thinks. Life is like a game of chess, and the have-nots are playing the part of the pawns.
Let’s put this in perspective with some numbers.

According to Forbes’ 2015 list of the world’s billionaires there are 1,826 of them, with a combined wealth of over $7 trillion (Le). Of the billionaires, 526 of them are in the U.S., making them the largest group of billionaires of any country in the world (Le). If we include America’s less rich but still rich citizens, about 1% have assets totaling $5 million or more (Morath). That 1% are the people making the biggest moves in the game. Based off Forbes’ data, the richest 20% of the world’s population holds 94.5% of the world’s money (Phillips). This means that the rest of the world shares just over 5% of the cash that the upper crust has not captured in their web of wealth.

It’s been about two centuries since John Jacob Astor became the world’s first multimillionaire, and just under a century since the world saw its first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller. Astor and Rockefeller changed the meaning of wealth, showing that money was plentiful if you could figure a way to make it. They changed how the economy works by expanding their business ventures into multiple avenues and gaining power both politically and socially. Today, this process has not changed much. Except now there are more people in the pool of elite, with far more money, and they are monopolizing companies that influence the masses. The days of domination may have come a bit easier to Astor and Rockefeller because society in general was far less educated and literate than today. It may have been easier for them to make business decisions behind closed doors that wouldn’t have the transparency of today because of the Internet and mass media.

Today it seems that people have access to far more information than ever before. Many of us have dozens of channels on television to choose from, and have access to countless printed and digital news sources. What we may not realize is that our daily dose of information comes primarily from a small group of executives controlling most of them. The truth is, despite all of our choices, the media has never been more consolidated than it is today. Back in the ‘80s there were 50 media companies (Frugal Dad). Today, roughly 90% of the news and entertainment provided to our nation comes from six corporate giants referred to as “the big six” (Frugal Dad). Although television channels may have the same name as they did in the ‘80s, that’s only part of the illusion. Most of them have been through merging and acquisitions, consolidating them into a group controlled by 232 executives in the big six (Frugal Dad). This is hardly what I think our forefathers intended when they included in the First Amendment that there shall be freedom of the press. How free is a press that only tells people what 232 people deem important for them to hear? To put this in perspective, of the 318.9 million people in the nation during the 2014 census, those 232 executives make up less than a millionth of a percent of the population. Their values, perceptions, beliefs and interests are reflected in everything they choose to air or publish, essentially cultivating the minds of the masses.

With that in mind, consider how the web of ownership weaves through some of the biggest news corporations in the world. When broken down we start to see an oligopoly, with the big six cross-owning television, film, newspapers, magazines and digital news. Time Warner, part of the big six, includes assets such as HBO, TNT, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, CNN and Cinemax. Also part of the big six is Disney owning ABC, Marvel Entertainment, Pixar, History Channel, A&E and ESPN. Comcast is a new-comer to the group, and not only has over 22 million Internet subscribers, but they also own NBC, E!, Bravo, USA Network, SyFy, and Telemundo. CBS also finds itself in the big six with Showtime, The Smithsonian Channel, NFL.com, and publishing giant Simon & Schuster. Viacom joins the big six owning Paramount, MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, Comedy Central, Spike, CMT and BET. And the last of the big six, but certainly not least, is News-Corp with assets such as FOX, 20th Century FOX, and among their hundreds of news outlets worldwide are The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Time Magazine. All of this matters because these six companies and their many subsidiaries control all but 10% of what we see on television, read in the news, watch in movies and view online. Whether we like it or not, they have the power to manipulate us. If they don’t want us to know something then one of the 232 puppeteers can pull some strings, and poof, the information is gone from the public’s potential reach.

The big six aren’t the only ones making the decisions. Of the people that hold most of the world’s money, a large portion of them make their fortunes in pharmaceuticals, healthcare and financial businesses. Those businesses are synonymous with the big six because they rely on the media to advertise their products and ideals, and the media relies on them for advertising money to sustain their empires. For example, the Federal Reserve has had rumors surrounding its power for decades. Although its name implies it’s a government branch, it’s actually privately owned and controlled primarily by seven people (Federal Reserve Education). The Federal Reserve is responsible for domestic and international financial conditions including banking laws, monetary policy and e-commerce. The seven people in charge hold the majority vote on how the nation will respond in financial situations. Considering that, it makes sense why rumors of their control isn’t discussed in most mainstream media. If the media relies on advertisers and the advertisers rely on access to money, surely it wouldn’t be the right business move to tell the truth about the Reserve’s extremely unproportionate authority. Another example comes in the concept of preventative healthcare. As it is now, healthcare is designed for people after they are sick. One might think the media would hammer-home the importance of taking care of ourselves before the point of needing medical assistance, but healthcare is a booming business that makes money off of the unhealthy. If those companies need people sick in order to continue to make money, surely the media won’t suggest that society is becoming overloaded with drugs. Instead, they will saturate their advertising pages and commercials with the many drugs that can help with just about any problem. The drugs may cause side effects of more pain or symptoms, but hey, they have another drug or procedure for that in which to sell.

All of this is not to say that we don’t need media. I would be going against my own declared major of journalism if I was to say that. What I am saying is the amount of control put into the hands of a very small portion of society with a very big bank account is alarming. Let’s use Comcast as an example. In the last few years we’ve heard a lot about net neutrality, the concept of uncensored access to all content regardless of the source. The idea behind net neutrality is to allow free thought and free “surfing” of those thoughts with the information at our fingertips. Comcast holds the top spot for number of customers by almost twice as many as the second leading provider, Time Warner (Video Nuze IQ). We would be naive to think that, as the provider, they don’t have the ability to sway the information we see. For example, people that remember the tragic events of 9/11 may recall real-time video footage being posted on the Internet as events unfolded. I recall seeing such videos that were there one minute and gone the next. Someone decided to pull the plug on them, the reasons debatable, but the point is that it happened and is happening all the time.

Keeping in mind the concept of net neutrality, we must consider what the algorithms programmed into our computers are doing to sift the information a search engine presents us. Last year Google held the #1 spot in the market with almost 68% of all searches going through them (comScore, Inc.). Bing came in a far second with under 19% (comScore, Inc.). Some may say that the Internet is the First Amendment coming to life, however, every time we use a search engine there are about 60 things a computer analyzes to tailor the search to you. It considers location, interests based on past searches, and demographics. It essentially filters an information bubble for you to choose from subjects in which your computer, or the search engine, has chosen for you. While this may seem helpful to get to the things you want to see, how about all the things that the algorithm has decided not to show you? If you generally click on more liberal links, for example, then your computer will provide you more and more liberal links to further convince you of your beliefs. But what about the opposing side? Is it not important that you also have a chance to see the other side of the argument to cultivate a more well-rounded and informed point of view? Should it be left to the people at Google to decide what you will or will not see based off their calculations? These are questions we should consider when selecting links a search engine provides, potentially stopping our search before it has reached its greatest impact on our opinions. Food for thought: Larry Page, founder of Google, was #17 on Forbes’ 2014 list of the world’s billionaires and #9 on their most powerful people list. He is without a doubt one of the public’s puppeteers.

With all this being said, I’m not advocating to not use the Internet or read the news, because that would be unrealistic in the world we live in today. I am saying, however, that we consider where news is coming from, who is choosing it, and what affiliation they have. Instead of assuming that because it was on FOX or CNN, for example, consider that both of those entities are well documented as conservative in their beliefs, or shall we say that their executives are conservative in their beliefs. ABC or NBC, for example, are more liberal. But as we already discussed, all of these companies are owned by players in the big six. Getting news from only these outlets or from outlets like them according to the algorithms in our computers, is not giving us the big picture. We are, in actuality, getting information that has been selected for us. For this reason, people should consider getting news from a variety of places over multiple platforms to try and reach a place less biased than the realm of reality the big six has spawned. If we better educate ourselves on the many different sides to every story, it will hopefully uncover some truth that gives us a better perspective of how the world really works, not just how society’s elite wants us to think it does.

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Citations

“April 2014 U.S. Search Engine Rankings.” comScore, Inc. (2014). Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

Frugal Dad. “Media Consolidation: The Illusion of Choice.” Chart. Business Insider [New York], 2012. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

Le, Vanna. “The World’s Largest Media Companies 2015.” Forbes. Forbes.com, LLC.22 May 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

Morath, Eric. “Where are America’s Millionaires?” Wall Street Journal [New York]. Dow Jones & Company, 21 Jan. 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

Phillips, Michael M. “Very Rich Get Very Richer: Wealthiest 20% Hold 94.5% of World’s Money.” Wall Street Journal [New York]. Dow Jones & Company, 19 Jan. 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

“The Structure and Functions of the Federal Reserve System.” Federal Reserve Education.  Federal Reserve. 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

“Top U.S. Broadband ISPs Add Another 2.6 Million Subscribers in 2013.” Video Nuze IQ (2014). Broadband Directions. LLC. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

Corvallis resident responds to sexual assaults on campus

Stacey Cummings holds a disguised 2 million volt stun gun.

After repeated reports of sexual misconduct allegations in Corvallis last month, a concerned citizen had enough and jumped into action.

September was a busy month for sex crimes around the Oregon State University campus.

On Sept. 16 a woman reported being awakened in the middle of the night by a man in her bed rubbing his genitals on her, just a few blocks from OSU. On Sept. 23, a sexual assault was reported by a female who told police she was assaulted between Waldo Hall and Arnold Dining Center on the OSU campus. And on Sept. 29, a man allegedly stood outside a woman’s residence, naked and masturbating not far from campus. 

Corvallis resident Stacey Cummings is saddened by increased reports of the encounters women are facing in such alleged sexual assaults. Disturbed by the stories of young females around campus being sexually violated, Cummings decided to get involved. She began advocating for women to have a plan and to have protection in the event of an attack.

She joined a team of 10,000 others across the nation that have started selling self defense items designed specifically for women. Sleek, colorful and powerful, the items are from a line of non-lethal tools from a company called Damsel in Defense. The items are made compact and lightweight with women in mind. 

In the wake of September’s crime, Cummings is doing her part to educate coeds about having easy-to-use and affordable protection. Some of the tools include a 2 million volt stun-gun that looks like a camera, tear gas pepper spray for a keychain, a portable 120-decibel alarm designed to be moved from door to door, and a keychain striking tool capable of breaking glass or inflicting harm on an attacker.

“The best way to keep ourselves safe is to protect ourselves,” Cummings said. “I don’t know if there is such a thing as too safe.”

Being aware of one’s surroundings is important to help stop a crime before it happens. Equally important is have a plan and the potential to protect oneself in the event of a crime. In her observations, Cummings has noticed more and more people walking and texting at the same time. This kind of tunnel vision concerns her because so many crimes are those of opportunity. Someone not paying attention can be a potential target.

“I really want to get their phones out of their hands and get stun guns in their hands,” she said.

Many college students maintain schedules that involve walking around at all hours of the night whether to class, the library, the gym, or dorms. In the cover of darkness, predators can strike with little warning even for those that are paying attention. Having a tool to defend oneself could be the difference between a good and tragic outcome. 

Fear for the worst is what prompted Cummings to get involved.

“I think that a little bit of fear is healthy because that’s what keeps us safe. I don’t want anyone to think that I pray on fears, but it was the fear that motivated me.”

Crime on campus is not specific to any one campus. In a survey by the Association of American Universities in spring 2015, data from 27 universities titled AAU Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct dug deeper into what’s really happening on campuses. 

The study is one of the first to provide an empirical assessment of questions asked across a variety of campuses, and is one of the first to implement a uniform methodology to produce statistically reliable estimates. The survey answered questions such as: how extensive nonconsensual sexual contact is, how extensive sexual harassment and stalking are, to whom students are reporting the crimes to, and what stigmas surround sexual misconduct on campus.

The results speak for themselves. Sexual crimes on campus are happening everywhere. 

Of the 27 universities, 12 percent of all respondents reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact by physical force or threat of physical force. About 23 percent of all female respondents reported nonconsensual sexual contact, of which about half experienced penetration. Putting these numbers in perspective, essentially one in four women on campus have been, or will be, sexually violated.

“In order to curb these things there has to be a plan,” Cummings said.

To learn more about how you can protect yourself contact Stacey Cummings at 541-908-2090.

Responding to art's emotion

At noon on Thursday, Oct. 15, over 50 students stood shoulder-to-shoulder, packed into the SSH Gallery as they viewed vibrant paintings. They came to hear the artist and LBCC instructor, Dori Litzer, talk about her works on display. 

The collection, titled “Ourselves, Our Environment and Modernist Attraction,” has no immediate message upon first glance. The message comes in the eye of the beholder, possibly making the abstraction of the art part of its attraction.

Litzer returned to campus this term after her sabbatical, in which she took time to find her nonverbal self, she explained. Much of the emotion in her works depicts her journey addressing the ego and reality, and everything in between. 

The theme in the collection is based on her impression, perception and interpretation about things in this life, or things beyond life’s tangible form. She explained her belief that all people are spiritual beings in human form, and her art is a way to express and explore beyond existence. 

Modern art can require more personal interpretation than other art. It often uses a mash-up of abstract, strategically placed strokes of color, giving the overall impression of feeling. Sometimes it can even provoke the notion of dreaming. Litzer shared that she starts with one solid base color and then adds layers to create her desired effect.

Each painting hung centered on the stark wall under soft light. The music paired well with the theme of the show—Earth tones, Mother Nature and high emotion. Onlookers wandered between paintings and spoke quietly to each other about what they saw in each painting, often much different from one another. 

Litzer explained that she doesn’t paint looking at a photograph or at a particular object, but instead she paints from memory. A time, a place, a moment, a thought—all of which inspire her to translate a particular emotion onto canvas, she said. Relying on her senses, she paints as she sees things in her mind’s eye until she creates “the perfect stroke.” 

Sometimes it’s the essence of an experience that she intends on painting, she explained. The final product becomes a blend of color, shapes, swirls, and lines that come together as a congruent image imprinting itself of the onlooker, provoking specific and unique emotion.

She told how her lifelong love of water influenced the collection, referring to a time she fell into water as a child and opened her eyes to an underwater world for the first time. Many paintings in the collection contain vibrant blues, horizons, and whimsical curves creating the feel of water, even if water isn’t actually there. Water, she explained, is changing but permanent making it an intriguing subject in her creations.

A key word she conveyed to the crowd was optimism. She expressed that optimism is the central focus of her paintings, and in most paintings. Even if an image appears dark, she explained, the underlying message is often hope, thus having optimism. 

For one painting, titled “Rogue,” Litzer used darker colors than most of the others. Reds, blacks, and greens appear like a mischievous enchanted forest of sorts with blazes of hellfire scattered among the dark and light, as if elements of the world have gone wild in a fanciful illusion. The science of color and its impact on emotion may explain why this particular painting was the center of several audience questions.

She concluded her talk by comparing paintings to music in that they are meant to be enjoyed, and that paintings are often like poems because they suggest but don’t tell what to think. Art is language, she said, communicating with the observer in a personal and sometimes unexpected way.

Frozen moments in time: pictures do say a thousand words

Photography is a form of journalism that needs no words when the subject and composition capture a raw moment with authentic emotion. Such powerful photos are embedded in our history books and in the memories of many. This selection of moments are images that many know, and with the sight of them, automatically tell a story much greater than the image itself. These photos tell the tales of a century that saw much violence, war, sexual revolution, political revolution and social shifts, capturing time behind a lens and freezing it forever. They really do say a thousand words.

Martin Luther King made his "I have a dream" speech to over 200,000 people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.
 (photo by Leonard Freed)

This photo, although it appears candid, was staged in 1932 for publicity during construction of the Rockefeller Center in   New York City.
(photo credited to Charles C. Ebbets)

Marilyn Monroe stepped on top of a New York subway vent in 1954 and made history with this risque pose. 

(photo by Sam Shaw).

Gone but not forgotten.
(photo by Shivam Patel)

In 1945, American soldier George Mendoza heard news of the V-J Day victory in Times Square and kissed unsuspecting dental assistant, Greta Zimmer.
(photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt)

Vietnam police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan shoots Vietcong officer Nguyen Van Lem on a Siagon street in 1968.
(photo by Eddie Adams)

German SS officer Jürgen Stroop included this photo in his 1943 report about Warshaw Ghetto. The boy and his fate remain unknown.
(photo credit unknown)

Sharbat Gula was an Afghan teen in a refuge camp when she appeared on the cover of National Geographic.
(photo by Steve McCurry)

Breast cancer patient chooses marijuana

The use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, even though legal in Oregon since 1998, remains a topic of debate in both medical and civilian conversations. Many still consider it a mind-altering recreational drug with no medicinal value. The legal use for recreational purposes starting this month fuels the debate further. 

A doctor and patient talk about their experience using and prescribing the drug.

She’s a grandmother in her 60’s. Two years ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She’s one of the 220,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer each year, according to breastcancer.org. 

For her, the first year of treatment was the most painful. She experienced the most pain, not from the cancer, but from the treatment for the cancer. She was lucky if she had an appetite, and even luckier if she could eat. She was uncomfortable, and needed something to make the anxiety and pain go away.

For her, marijuana was the answer.

Living in Corvallis and not yet retired, she does freelance work for the state of Oregon. For that reason, she asked to remain anonymous in fear of retribution. But her message is clear.

“I believe in medical marijuana. It would be my pain regulator drug of choice.” 

After experimenting with prescribed drugs such as Percocet and codeine, she found that their side effects made her feel worse than she felt before taking them. They made her want to throw up. They brought on symptoms that made her want to take another drug to counteract them. She saw a potentially dangerous cycle if she didn’t try something else. 

Americans for Safe Access, a group of 50,000 members including medical professionals, patients and activists for medicinal use, agree with her regarding options for safer treatment than synthetic drugs.

“In terms of the research, there’s a lot of popular misconceptions of the use of cannabis, like it will destroy your brain,” said Christopher Brown, press secretary. “In reality, damage is pretty mild. There’s a lot less than a lot of other drugs prescribed by doctors.” 

She believes that more conversations should focus on the legal drugs prescribed to patients that are proven far more addictive and harmful than marijuana. During her cancer treatment, she once had a doctor prescribe her 85 oxycodone. She wondered how it was acceptable for them to give her drugs of that strength in bulk, but not for them to give her a medical marijuana card. 

Exhausted from the extra load of symptoms caused by her painkillers, she sought out a recommendation to use medical-grade marijuana. To her surprise, she found it didn’t make her feel sick like the other medications. In fact, she felt better.

“It’s the only thing I can use for pain management,” she said. “Percocet makes me deathly ill. Codeine makes me deathly ill. I really had no alternative, and overall it was more effective.”

Today, doctors struggle with the decision to associate their name with recommending marijuana for medicinal use. In part this is because it’s still illegal on a federal level; but many also are afraid of professional suicide if they are flagged for supporting it. 

“If you sign medical marijuana cards you often can’t get a job at hospitals. That scares doctors into not wanting to do it,” said a doctor serving the Willamette Valley. “It’s something that’s perfectly legal, but people in the community will scoff at it.”

The doctor asked to remain anonymous for the same reasons. But, his message is also clear. 

“I think it should be legal.”

He recommends appropriate patients to the drug. The bulk of his recommendations are for patients with chronic pain, PTSD, seizures, and cancer. 

“I always try to encourage them to do edibles or vaporizers,” he said. “The smoke is more damaging to their lungs.” 

Most of his patients come to him in severe pain, or in turmoil from the loss of bodily control they have with continued use of narcotic painkillers. Some patients come to him taking prescribed methadone and oxycodone, for example, and are scared of becoming physically dependent. 

“They want a natural option, not addictive, and something they have more control of than pain medicine,” he said. 

He explained that, while some argue that marijuana is addictive, studies have not proven it to be physically addictive.

“There’s a psychological dependence, which is different than addiction,” he said. “In one study 7 percent [of participants] saw addiction, which was the same percentage of the placebo effect.” 

More research and case studies are showing that the drug goes beyond a purely recreational drug. Even the American Medical Association changed its stance. In its 2009 Report of the Council on Science and Public Health, they recommended the “reclassification of marijuana’s status as a Schedule I controlled substance into a more appropriate schedule.” The report also supported ceasing “criminal prosecution and other enforcement actions against physicians and patients acting in accordance with states’ medical marijuana laws.”

If reclassified out of Schedule I, marijuana would no longer be bunched with drugs such as heroin and LSD. As described by the DEA, Schedule 1 drugs are “the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules” and have “no currently accepted medical use.”

As of October 2015, there are over 70,000 registered medical marijuana users in Oregon, according to the Oregon Health Authority. Of those, the Corvallis-based grandmother joins nearly 5,000 other cancer patients.

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Did you know...

• One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime.
• Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women.
• Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death among women.
• Each year it is estimated that over 220,000 women in the United States will be diagnosed with breast cancer and more than 40,000 will die.
• Although breast cancer in men is rare, an estimated 2,150 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer and approximately 410 will die each year.