Labour’s new generation

BBC News: “Defence Secretary Liam Fox, what are your thoughts of the leak of this letter, today?”
Liam Fox: “As a result of the terrible legacy left to us by Labour”.

What the hell? This has to be some sort of record. Usually it takes a Tory or Lib Dem, on average, about 2 minutes before they try to defend their ridiculous ideological cuts to public services, with the words “terrible legacy left by Labour”, however the Defence Secretary today not only managed it in less than two seconds, but also managed to fit it into an answer to a question that wasn’t actually asked. That’s almost impressive. I am going to start every answer now, with “due to the terrible legacy left by Labour”, even if it isn’t warranted. “Jamie, where are the car keys?” …. “Due to the horrendous legacy left by the Labour Government, I have put the keys on next to the phone.“

It was inevitable that the Conservative Party and it’s Right Winged friends in the Media would immediately begin to paint Ed Milliband Red the moment he won the Labour Leadership race. It is true, that Ed is further to the Left than his brother, and runner up to the Leadership, David Milliband, but Ed is certainly not far left unionist old Labour. Not by a long shot. Both have claimed in interviews very recently that they consider themselves socialists, but then defined what they believed socialism to mean, and both pointed out that the job of contemporary socialists is to admit that Capitalism is a fact of life now, and try to fill in the caps that capitalism leaves open to injustice and inequality.

I am waiting to see substance in the form of policy, from the new Labour leader, if he is going to win my vote in five years time. I would rather throw myself in front of a train than vote Conservative, and after the Lib Dems gave my vote to the Tories this year, even though my vote was an anti-Tory vote……. I wont be voting Liberal Democrat every again. As I suspect, a hell of a lot of others wont be voting Lib Dem again. They are a dead party, being propped up by the Tories. But in order for Labour to win back my vote, they have to really present a progressive alternative. I do think Ed is a better choice than David. David to me, whilst more charismatic than Ed, is too much of an extension of the Blair years. He represents the centre ground far more, and whilst Ed is certainly not some sort of Leninist as the Sun seems to be suggesting; he is a little more to the Left.

Their father is the ex Marxist theorist Ralph Miliband. Having a Marxist father would drive Americans insane with rage. Luckily, we’re not mad Americans, and we think far more rationally. My own political stance is far more in tune with Miliband Snr than both of his sons. As a boy, Ralph had stood at the grave of Karl Marx, in London, with his clenched fist raised, and vowed to fight for the rights of those less fortunate. Clearly living in a Marxist household, would have had profound affects on both Milibands, whom have since developed their own opinions. I cannot imagine their dad would have voted for either of them at the leadership election.

Ed’s speech was intriguing. I quite liked this:

Every day out of power, another day when this coalition can wreak damage on our communities, another day when we cannot change our country for the better.
And let us resolve today that this will be a one-term government.

The Conservatives (as pointed out in my previous blog) are winning the propaganda war because they have shaped the political discourse away from the fact that it was the private sector that caused the economic mess, and have somehow managed to blame the entire thing, on the Labour Government. The root causes of the Financial sector meltdown, can actually be traced back in a perfectly straight line….. to the last Tory government, curiously. This new Labour party needs to provide a different understanding of the problems, and bring the discourse away from the Right.

The Tories spent the last election campaign blaming Labour for not closing the roof when the sun was shining; in other words, not saving money when times were good.

This was a nice little addition:

The old way of thinking said that public services would always be second-class. But we defied the conventional wisdom.
I come from a generation that suffered school lessons in portacabins and crumbling hospitals. I tell you one thing, for the eighteen years they were in power the Tories did nothing to fix the roof when the sun was shining.

I had to disagree with Ed when he said:

This new generation that leads our party is humble about our past and idealistic about our future.

Firstly, both Miliband brothers had been in the previous Labour cabinet, and spent months sticking up for the way the Party was being run. Gordon Brown was the best man for the job, they both chanted constantly. My issue is, I consider myself an idealist. I was a Party of the left, to be run by thinkers and intellectuals, not the same old politicians we all despise. I don’t want a leader to simply be pandering to the popular opinion and conventional wisdom of the time. On immigration, I was a truly progressive politician who does not give in to the “I was born here don’t you know!!! Bloody pakis taking over!!” bigoted idiots, and then claim they aren’t bigots, just ordinary people worried about jobs. They are bigots. They are also only capable of responding to the conventional wisdom. The reality of migration, as I have said previously in blogs, is that it cannot be solved by closing Britain. The only way you fight immigration is firstly accepting that Britain’s colonial history has sent shockwaves through the centuries, that are still felt today throughout the Middle East and Africa. And secondly, accepting that Nation States and Capitalism are massively incompatible. And thirdly, you have to have a genuine commitment, internationally, to fight global poverty and inequality. Mexicans try for a better life by illegally crossing the border into America, because the balance of equality has tipped far away from them. Since the opening up of trade in Mexico, the Mexican class of poor has expanded, the Middle Class has contracted, and American business interests are flourishing. There are no health benefits, and no educational or societal benefits, and so the poor in Mexico are suffering. And then Americans wonder why they want to leave. They weren’t given any choice. It wasn’t a case of being freed. They have become trapped. And it is a similar story across the World. It is the root cause of mass migration. This is what needs to be conveyed to the public, if Labour want to be truly idealists and progressives.

I also liked this line, of Ed’s speech:

This generation wants to change our society so that it values community and family, not just work, because we understand there is more to life than the bottom line.

I have been waiting for a politician to point out that life is not just about what you do for work, for a very long time.

He then took a well deserved swipe at the Coalition’s debt reduction plans, with:

You see, it’s obvious really, when you cancel thousands of new school buildings at a stroke, it isn’t just bad for our kids, it’s bad for construction companies at a time when their order books are empty.
It’s not responsible, it’s irresponsible.
We must protect those on middle and low incomes. They did nothing to cause the crisis but are suffering the consequences.
I say the people who caused the crisis and can afford to do more should do more: with a higher bank levy allowing us to do more to protect the services and entitlements on which families depend.

He made a point, that struck a chord for me. Recently, my grandparents have become far less mobile. They are in the mid-80s, and they are in and out of hospital almost on a weekly basis. They cannot walk to the shop, and it’s a struggle for them to even wash their clothes. They have a new care worker, who spends most of the day washing for them, making sure they keep as mobile as they can, going to the supermarket for them, cleaning the house, cooking the food, she does absolutely everything, she’s on call at night. A real credit. People like her, are heroes in my estimation, and society should reward them. She is paid next to nothing. Miliband said:

What does it say about the values of our society, what have we become, that a banker can earn in a day what the care worker earns in a year? It is wrong.

If you’re a free market fundamentalist, it is perfectly fine that a banker or a businessman who spends most of the week playing golf, can earn in a day what a person who is actually providing a real social good, earns in a year. It is the height of human freedom apparently. If you are like me, you see something massively wrong and skewed in a system that allows that. And that is why you, like me, are not in the Conservative Party.

The Tories pointed out that Ed is only the leader now, because he received the backing from the Unions, and just how dangerous this is. They claim Ed Miliband must now be in the pockets of the Unions which apparently is a disaster. The media tends to agree. I wonder, why is it a disaster to have won the votes of the Unions, yet no one in the media bats an eyelid, at the fact that when David Cameron tried to argue the case for sudden and quick cuts, he presented a letter signed by a bunch of business leaders; one of whom was a man named Paul Walsh, owner of Diageo PLC, who according to a Guardian Report, have actively avoided tax for years. And a huge number of signitures on the list, including J Sainsbury, Philip Harris and Simon Wolfson, are all members of the Conservative Party! Why is that any different, or any better? why is a Country run in the interests of big business, based on long stressful soul destroying hours for fuck all pay, consider the height of a wondrous free society? Sir Peter Bonfield CBE, FREng, C.U.N.T of BT saw BT share price go from £14, to £5, under his control. He then left BT with over £6,000,000 whilst thousands of workers lost their jobs. Why are we listening to these people? The are the old, grey haired generation that has left my generation with no affordable homes, and a fucked climate. Thanks for that. I for one, am not going to pay attention to the old generation, for another second.

Finally, my favourite part of Ed Miliband’s speech, said like a true progressive:

Here is our generation’s paradox: the biggest ever consumers of goods and services, but a generation that yearns for the things that business cannot provide.
Strong families.
Time with your children.
Green spaces.
Community life
Love and compassion.

Overall, I have quite high hopes for this new generation of Labour. Although something tells me they aren’t going to be all that different to the last lot.

The power of rhetoric

When I was a toddler, I decided normal human words were not good enough, and so I invented my own words, for reasons I am unable to provide an adequate reason for. The remote control for the TV, I referred to as an ‘Ah Ah Ah’. My dad still calls it that. A spider, was a buru. And Santa, was Ge-a. I do not understand what made me see a spider, and say “Oh, there’s a buru.” It isn’t even like I attempted to say spider, and got it wrong. Buru sounds nothing like spider. There is no species of spider called a Buru. In fact, Buru is a tiny island in the Maluku Province of Indonesia.

In my defence, I was creating my own language. I didn’t need your English bullshit language, in which the plural of house is houses but the plural of mouse isn’t mouses. I wonder, how far would I have gone, had I not been taught English as soon as I started school? Would I have came up with my own vocabulary? Would I have came up with my own words, for situations that even the English language doesn’t have words for? I would absolutely love a word for the fact that the only door in the history of the World that doesn’t have a top or a bottom, is a door to a public toilet cubicle; the one door you want a top and bottom to exist, through fear that a friend might appear over the top, with a Phone camera, and ending in you having to close your facebook account. Surely that situation is enough to warrant a word? I would have came up with a name for that situation, had I been able to develop my own language.

Instead, I would just make my dad sing ‘heartbeat’ from behind the door, whilst he held my baby sister above the door, so it looked like she was really tall and singing. I was 2. Apparently, I found it fucking hilarious.

I was awesome.

Anyway, the point of this blog is the power of the spoken word. The Greeks and the Romans knew exactly how important it was. It was a tool used by the political and religious classes, to manipulate the population into doing exactly what they wanted. Cicero perfected the art of rhetoric. The three main devices used by the Orator, are pathos, logos and ethos. They are all features of manipulation. Pathos is defined as an appeal to the emotion of the audience. Logos refers to reasoning and logic. Ethos means to appeal to an audience’s sense of National pride, or Religious beliefs, or a Political ideology…. in other words, appealing to an abstract sense of community.

We see it politically all the time. John McCain during the run up to the 2008 Presidential Election gave a speech against Universal Healthcare in which he claimed that the British NHS refuses to treat patients over 75. Gasps of shock from the audience resonated throughout the hall. Political rhetoric that is simply untrue. I know it was an horrendous lie, and a manipulation of the audiences naivety, because my 83 year old grandma was being treated by the NHS, on that very day. To get away with such a ridiculous lie, and not be booted out of politics for it, shows just how nonchalent we have become politically. We don’t bother to check our facts, we simply wait for a politician to tell us. And the politicians know how useful this tool has become.

The Conservate-Lib Dem coalition defends every pointless cut it makes, by starting the answer with “as a result of the legacy of debt left by Labour”. Seriously, when you see a Tory or Lib Dem being interviewed, see how long you can count before they mention the “legacy of debt“. Simon Hughes of the Lib Dems got to 23 seconds today. Record! It is an attempt to justify, what they clearly are not comfortable justifying using the truth; their own ideology. BBC News asked a guy in a pub, what he thought so far of the Coalition. He said that they need to desperately get the debt reduced quickly. The journalist asked him why he thought that was. He couldn’t answer. Now, to me that suggests that he had simply heard time and time again the right winged rhetoric of the Tory Party, and thinks he sounds intelligent, if he simply repeats it. It shows that the Tories really did win the political discourse war, not with reasoned debate, but with easy terms, idiots can understand. He doesn’t bother checking facts for himself. Given that the Tory Party won the most seats at the election, it suggests that a large majority of people who will be badly hit by the cuts to public services over the next few years, voted Tory because they kept hearing the apocalypse-type rhetoric that public spending needed cutting immediately, or we’d all die. The Labour Party were useless at providing a differing opinion; a progressive narrative, and they paid for it. The current Labour leadership battle is nothing of any worth. The same centrist politicians who have been on the scene for at least the past five years, using the same rhetoric they use to win votes rather than challenge the centre-right monopoly on political and economic discourse that has become prevalent in recent years. None of them seem to be real progressives. On subjects like immigration for example, they pander to the Right and the media perception. It is a supremely complex issue, that deserves more than one view that only ever says there is a huge problem. They aren’t putting forward different, progressive views, or challenging the mainstream opinion. They are pandering.

On immigration, from both sides of the political scale, all we hear is that it is a problem. Immigrants are labelled illegal and dangerous. They apparently take our jobs and the only way to deal with it, is to ‘secure the borders’. That isn’t progressive. That is simply tying a weak bandage over a very deep wound. To truly deal with immigration, you have to work internationally to find out why mass migration occurs. Firstly, you have to accept that if your borders are open to capital and goods, closing your borders to labour is always going to cause huge Global inequality. Capitalism and Nation States are vastly incompatible. You need to truly be committed to eradicating poverty. You have to work internationally to force working standards across the World based on human rights. You have to allow smaller producers a better chance at survival against huge Western Corporations. You have to spread democracy that isn’t just about creating puppet governments who will open native markets to America business interests. There has to be a joint effect across the World, to fight global inequality. Then, migration will fall. Guaranteed.

What worries me, is that there has been an obvious systematic attempt to undermine all sections of the public sector, whilst keeping the failings of the private sector as quiet at possible. The vast majority of the British Public quite obviously felt uneasy at this, and didn’t buy into it at first, because during the most unpopular Labour government in generations, the Conservatives STILL didn’t manage to secure a majority. I would argue that they have no mandate to push through tough cuts now. The Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party both ran their election campaign on the idea of slower and less vicious cuts that the Tories proposed. The combined votes of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrat Party added up to just over 15,000,000. The Tories vote count, was just over 10,000,000. Therefore, 5,000,000 more people in the UK wanted slower and less vicious and less deep cuts than is now happening. We are hardly a beacon of democracy right now. So the idea that the British public felt that Labour had forced this horrendous debt that needed cutting deeply, immediately, was wrong.

The rhetoric works. The constant “We’re all in this together” from George Osbourne makes me squirm, and yet apparently people lap it up. I cannot understand why.

The reason people are so easily political manipulated, is because we simply don’t have time to understand and investigate for ourselves. We rely on what the politicians tell us around election time, and the Party with the loudest voice becomes the voice of truth, which is surely a logical fallacy. The loudest voices in the corridors of Whitehall, are those who represent money interests. Rich interests. Therefore those who tax avoid will always be less important to the political classes, than those who have no voice yet scrounge a few extra pound every month in benefits. And then the rhetoric starts. You’re an evil socialist if you think differently. You’re a communist if you suggest Big Businessmen should express some responsibility and not walk away with millions upon millions in bonuses whilst making thousands of workers redundant. It stinks of bullshit. Joined with our lack of time, and our indifference toward the continuously projected rhetoric (I believe it’s known as an appeal to ridicule), we are also……ya know……like……. totally……. like……….not bothered…….ya know………. because….. like we just…………want to……….get well drunk and stuff……..like……yeah? The poet Taylor Mali sums up what I am getting at beautifully, with:
<blockquote>
“And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we’ve become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!”
</blockquote>
An inarticulate mass, is a disinterested mesh of people whose lives consist of jobs they don’t like, long hours they wish they had more to themselves in their short lives, and one holiday for two weeks a year to look forward to and nothing else. It is no wonder we allow Politicians to presume to tell us that things will get better when they are in power. We will never be happy because our economy which is based almost entirely on consumerism (hence the easy credit bubble) ensures that we believe we will only be happy if we buy more shit we don’t need. Happiness can never depend on how much you own, only on how little you need.

I wonder if those poorer people who voted Tory know that the Tories wanted to ride the recession out with no stimulus or help for them. A large majority of them would have lost their jobs, and their homes had the Tories been in power. Not only that, but David Cameron voted against minimum wage legislation. He didn’t want minimum wage. I wonder if those poorer people knew that before they voted for him. The rhetoric worked, because it was the loudest and most coherently constructed. It didn’t matter that it was full of illogic and lies, because there was no opposite coherent message to counter it. And it has been that way for generations. Before elected politicians; we had Kings and Nobles; Cardinals and Popes who had supreme power, and they used Religious rhetoric (the Pope still does) to scare, and coerce, and manipulate at will. No one opposed it, because to do so would have meant certain death for heresy.

In 1517, Pope Leo X offered to sell pardons for sin, in exchange for a lot of money, in order to build St Peter’s. So poorer people, thought this was an easy way to heaven. It was actually just a way for the Catholic Church to build it’s power, and actually quite a novel way, given that it had spent the previous few centuries building it’s power, on violence and blood.

Skip a few centuries down the line, and the Pope has the nerve to refer to people like me as being a problem because I don’t believe in Organised Religion; whilst at the same time, telling people in AIDS ridden African Nations that hang on his every word, that condoms actually spread AIDS, and that God doesn’t accept condom use. Church rhetoric is far more dangerous than political rhetoric, because people do not do there own research, or think for themselves when it comes to politics or the Church, the difference is that the Church promotes ignorance, and unquestioning acquiescence.

World War II was the era of big, lasting, epic speeches filled with manipulative rhetoric. Hitler was arguably the king of propaganda through speech. He managed to turn an entire Nation against a minority, in much the same way as the American Right are doing with Islam right now, only better. Churchill was an excellent speaker. In a speech to the House of Commons in 1940 he said:
<blockquote>
You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.
<blockquote>

What Churchill decided to ignore, was that he was correct in referring to the Nazi regime as a monstrous tyranny, the British were at that time an Empire ourselves. The lands we owned were won by enslaving populations, murder and rape of the land. The reason I, and the rest of the UK is in a strong economic position in relation to most of the World, is due to the fact that we had a solid grounding based on exploitation that was still going on quite horrifically in Churchill’s time, and of which he was a supporter. We carved up Africa into Nations, based not on the hopes of the population, but on what best suited our imperialist vision and that of France.

We are made to believe that one ruler in government, telling us how to run our lives, is bad. It is big bad intrusive government; tyranny. But, when big business does it, and when our workplace tells us what it means to look and act in an abstract concept of “professional”, how to talk, how our faces should look, what jewellery we can wear, it is perfectly fine. It is the height of human freedom. When we work hard and government taxes us, we consider it to be a great evil. When business takes the money we have earned in a shift, and the majority goes to the man at the very top whilst we receive the bare minimum; it is great, it is ‘free’. Business is in essence, pretty totalitarian. It is a dictatorship. It is lots of little Stalinist states run by megalomaniacs. It certainly isn’t freedom.

In Australia, all I heard from Tony Abbott, was “Omg Labor’s debt is awful ARGH! Vote for me, to save you all from economic ruin“. The problem was, within three minutes of research, one comes to the inevitable conclusion, that the right winged Mr Abbocare if the way we carved up the map of Africa would provoke countless tribal wars and ethnic cleansing over the decades, we cared only for what suited us economically. If Africans suddenly rose up and wanted out of British control, we suppressed them with violence. We favoured dictatorial ethnic minorities in African nations because they had vicious hierarchical systems and so could be brought on side to help the Colonialists; the Fulani in Nigeria is a good example of this at work. The entire Empire, even during Churchill’s time, was based on the idea of social darwinism; we believed we were superior to the Africans and so had every right to exploit them. Would Churchill not consider this a ‘monstrous tyranny’ also?

Cicero would not be proud of the American Right Wing. The Tea Party brigade. The Glenn Beck obsessed idiots. They are playing the rhetoric game all wrong. It is not subtle, or intelligible, or even well crafted manipulative bullshit. It is just utter bullshit. Almost laughable. The Tea Party brigade have referred to Obama as a Nazi, a racist, a Communist, a Socialist, an immigrant, and an anti-American terrorist sympathiser. It stinks of bitterness, because this level of anger was never thrown at the most evil and horrific President America has had, well, ever: Bush. They seemed to keep quiet then. It feels simply that big business has funded a campaign to suggest that any universal benefit to the entire population that inevitably bites into their immense profits, is only turn America into some new USSR. It isn’t. But the voice of the enraged Right Wing is the loudest, and so history is rewrote to the will of the loudest.

The American Right Wing has a thing about rewriting history, in their favour. Any fact that seems to contradict them, they suggest is just Marxist propaganda. In Texas, the school board voted in favour of a curriculum that teaches the superiority of American Capitalism. No economists or historians were asked for their opinion on the curriculum. It will also try to inject creationism into science teaching. This annoys me the most. Purely because evolution is not a Right vs Left issue. It is fact. It is like trying to suggest in a school text book that actually, gravity might not exist at all. The religious fundamentalists do not seem to be able to differentiate between the word ‘theory’ in every day use, and ‘theory’ in scientific use. ‘Theory’ in scientific use is the explanation to explain the fact. So, gravity is the fact – that everything falls to earth if you drop it. Einstein’s theory, is currently what we use to explain why that happens. Similarly, evolution – being the idea that we are all descended from a common ancestor, is the fact. The theory that we currently use to explain it, is Natural Selection. In fact, the entire field of modern biology and medicine, is based on this. So when those board of education members get sick, they should perhaps pray instead of being treated by evil leftie evolutionary heretic doctors. To implant their skewed understanding of the World into a text book, for future generations to be indoctrinated with, is surely wrong at best, and pretty damn abusive at worst.

Southern America during the Civil War managed to convince very poor people, to fight for the right of their rich counterparts to own slaves. They billed it as a war over States rights. Yes, States rights to own and exploit black people. It’s odd because the North wanted slaves to be free. For some reason, southerners believed this would flood them out of the jobs market, and black people would now take all the work. The irony of the situation is that the black slaves already had their jobs. If i’m a rich man in Southern America and I can get a black slave to work my land for free, or pay a poor white man to do it, i’m obviously going to pick option one. So i’m so far unaware of why poor white people were so up for fighting on the side of the rich white folk. I’d suggest it was purely racist reasons. A form of racism that was created specifically to stop the poor white folk from joining hands with the poor black folk and fighting these rich bastards who held them both down.

President Bush spent eight years telling Americans that if they didn’t support the horrific imperialist ideals of the Republican administration, the torture, the innocent deaths and the illegal expensive wars; they were un-American. And now, we have a generation of Americans who seem to think that keeping quiet and waving a flag chanting U.S.A whilst their President wastes billions of killing innocent people in multiple countries, is the American way; but trying to correct a healthcare system that benefits no one but insurance companies, is un-American and Marxist. The power of rhetoric.

I have a new policy, of assuming that all politicians are the pocket of business and so will never say or do anything to benefit the population. That all business men are bastards from the day they are born, and have some kind of deeply totalitarian needs. And that spiders should be renamed ‘buru’.

I get bored

At work, when it is quiet, it is supremely quiet. I get bored quite easily. I usually take a book with me. Purely because the work itself is mind numbingly pointless. There is no social good. It is not improving my sense of self or helping to achieve any goal I have. So I take a book. However, yesterday I forgot to take a book. So I tried to concentrate on other things. Unfortunately, I was in a bit of a mood because earlier in the day, I discovered I had no milk to make tea. Being English, and having no milk for tea, is an horrific situation to find ones self in. Even now, I look back, and it makes me want to weep. When the Pope’s representative told the press that the UK was like the Third World (I watched that on my HDTV, which sits next to the XBox, and Laptop, near the second PC, in the window which over looks our two cars…… perhaps Bob Geldof should do a World concert for me and my obvious poverty stricken status), he meant with regard to lack of milk for tea, i’m sure of it. I had no milk for tea. Malnourished Ugandan orphans certainly have no milk for tea; quite clearly a link. We should listen to the Catholic Church more. They make SO much sense. So obviously it played on my mind all evening, to the point where I think I may have gone a little bit insane.

And this is the product of that insanity:

Contrary to the conclusion you may have drawn, I am not studying fine art.
I even gave him some new happy disco shoes, to celebrate.
I was trying to convey how my mood would change for the better, if I were to have some milk at home. Today I have milk at home. I thought this would make me happy. I even prepared to indulge in a happy dance.  And it did make me happy. For a second. But then, I spotted flying toward me, a flying spider. As if regular spiders aren’t horrendous enough. It had fangs, and blood dripping from them. It had a sting the size of a butchers knife pointed at me, and long hairy legs. Okay so I may be exaggerating. It probably wasn’t even a spider. They don’t fly. But this was huge. I kept my eye on it the entire time I made a cup of tea, and moved around the room methodically avoiding its evil gaze (when I wrote ‘evil gaze’ I giggled childishly because it sounds like ‘evil gays’. I’m not even Catholic. Or Right Winged American. Homophobic humour, I should get a job at Fox). I knew what it wanted, and what it wanted was to kill me. I am now locked in my bedroom, it is probably waiting outside. Although, it feels like it is on me somewhere. The same feeling I get if I walk face first into a cobweb. I presume the spider is on me. That is how this feels. It is probably waiting for me to sleep, and then it’ll bite me.  I will have to leave and enter my house from now on, through my second storey window, via a rope that I will craft out of old clothes. That is how serious this situation has become.

Anyway, after calming down a little, and deciding that having no milk is actually no big issue. I thought I would enter the realms of political and religious satire. And this is the result:

What an entirely pointless blog entry.

A Philosophical Question

I have been trying to reason out a Philosophical question that I have posed to myself recently. My mind is too tiny to come to a conclusion and draw a line under the entire thing. I need closure!

Feel free to leave your comments and philosophical logic, but please, if you’re a religious person, give me a reasoned consideration rather than empty religious dogma. For example, don’t start your sentence with “God wants…. blah blah blah”, because it is all conjecture, you are making it up, you do possess a level of objective truth, that I do not.

So, here’s my issue.
If we start from the contentious issue that everything that is, was created from nothing, I conclude that whatever created it all from nothing, was ‘outside‘ so to speak. If I, for example, were to create a tea cup, I cannot be part of that cup, I am the creator of the cup, I am outside of the cup. I see the cup from top to bottom, from front to back, from side to side. But I am not the cup. I perceive the entire cup. Similarly, if the creator of everything is outside of what he has created; time, light, space, life etc, then he presumably has it all set out in front of him, like a tapestry. He is not part of that creation, so is not affected by time, or light, and so cannot succumb to death or decay and aging, like the Matter that he created does. He is beyond that. He can see it from top to bottom, side to side. He can see the past, the present and the future, as if it were one. He preceded existence. He created existence. He is the height of perfection, there is nothing that he cannot do. If he wanted to create a stone that he could not lift, this wouldn’t be a paradox, it would be correct. He wouldn’t be able to lift it, if that were it’s purpose. The moment he decides the purpose is something different, he’d be able to lift it. He is the limit. If he couldn’t see everything, from beginning to end, the past the present and the future; he wouldn’t be perfect. Or the creator. If I created the cup, but can’t actually see the cup, that would be ridiculous.

So, therefore, he knew I would be an Atheist. In the same way that I knew the cup I made, would be white. I wouldn’t be shocked and disgusted if it were white, because i’d made it white. If I’d intended to make it blue, and it came out white, I would be a pretty bad creator. God, is considered perfect, he apparently doesn’t make mistakes. He knew a few of my friends would be gay. He created them Gay. He knew Dr Harold Shipman would be a murderer. He knows it all. There is no limit remember. He doesn’t start our path, he knows the entire route we will take, from beginning to end. So, given that our entire lives are pre-determined, why is this supposedly loving God, going to punish me for eternity, with the worst kind of pain, simply for not believing in him? I have no choice. I cannot force myself to believe in something that not only offends my sense of rationale, but also insults my sense of morality. I cannot change my belief, I can only follow my conscience. My conscience will always tell me that the God of all organised religion hinders and holds back the progress of humanity, all in the name of a fairy man in the sky.  It is ludicrous to me. To suggest God expects me to give up my heretical views, and start believing in him, purely because the consequences of non-belief, are horrific; is blackmail. In the same way that someone dedicated to Jesus is unlikely to give up their beliefs, I cannot in good conscience, give up mine But, say i’m wrong, which i’m willing to admit I may be. If i’m wrong, God knew I would think this way, so why is he punishing me?  I am not a bad person, so why punish me? What is it achieving? Why should I believe in a God like that?

Answers please.

The Pope in Britain

The Pope is in the UK for less than 24 hours, and he’s already calling the majority of us Nazis. The ex-Nazi Youth member, who brought back into Catholicism a bishop who claims the holocaust never happened and Jews are the enemy of Christ; the Pope turned leader of a mass child sex cover up, said:

Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.
I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a reductive vision of the person and his destiny.

It’s an often repeated manipulation, that Hitler was Atheist. He wasn’t. Nor did he wish to strip the State of religious influence. I’d go further, and suggest that centuries of anti-Jewish sentiment spewed by the Catholic Church, had far more influence on the anti semitic sentiment in Germany of the time, than non-belief ever had.

Hitler in 1922, said this:

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. .. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison.

Hitler in 1933, said this:

“Today they say that Christianity is in danger, that the Catholic faith is threatened. My reply to them is: for the time being, Christians and not international atheists are now standing at Germany’s fore. I am not merely talking about Christianity; I confess that I will never ally myself with the parties which aim to destroy Christianity.”

Hitler, also in 1933, said this:

“We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.”

Hitler in 1934, said this:

“National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary, it stands on the ground of a real Christianity.”

In 1939, Cardinal Orsenigo was sent by Rome to celebrate Hitler’s birthday. Pope Pius XII started an annual birthday celebration tradition for Hitler in fact. The Catholic Church each year would send “warmest congratulations to the Fuhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany”.

Here are some lovely Catholic Bishops, showing their love for The Nazis.

- You can tell they’re not Atheists, because we wouldn’t wear such pathetically elaborate costumes.

Here is a page from a German kids book, made by the Nazis:

It reads:
“When you see a cross, then think of the horrible murder by the Jews on Golgotha..“
Anti-Jewish propaganda, pointing out that Christians have a duty to hate Jews. Atheists didn’t say this. We didn’t want this.

In 1933, the Vatican and the Nazis signed the ‘Reich Concordat’ which in exchange for the Pope’s power over Catholics in Germany, meant that the Vatican would encourage Catholics in Germany to leave politics (at that time, they were very powerful) and allow the Nazis to centralise power, with no opposition. This allowed the Nazis to take full control of the Country, and progress to the next level, and we all know how that turned out. The Vatican said nothing on the issue. According to writer John Cornwell:

“On July 14, 1933, after the initialing of the treaty, the Cabinet minutes record Hitler as saying that the concordat had created an atmosphere of confidence that would be “especially significant in the struggle against international Jewry.” He was claiming that the Catholic Church had publicly given its blessing, at home and abroad, to the policies of National Socialism, including its anti-Semitic stand.”

In 2009, the Pope lifted an excommunication on a Bishop who is an out of the closet Holocaust denier. Bishop Richard Williamson, whom this Pope brought back into the fold of Catholicism, the same Pope who tells we Atheists that we are Nazis, claimed that Jews were the “enemies of Christ“. He blames Catholic Church corruption, on Jews. He claims Jews are fighting for World domination. He claims there is no evidence that 6 million Jews died in gas chambers in Nazi Germany. The Pope brought him back into the Catholic fold.

Perhaps the Pope should spend less time referring to Atheists as Nazis, and more time trying to rid his Church of systematic sex abuse, anti-semitic bishops, and changing its horrific stance on AIDS in Africa.

America’s tortured brow

- Reagan meets the Taliban and refers to them as Afghanistan’s founding fathers, despite their remarkable ability to deny even the most fundamental of human rights.

Prior to 1986 the UN’s judicial wing, the International Court of Justice was supported by the United States. However, all that changed in 1986. In that year, that fantastic year (my birth), Nicaragua became indescribably pissed off with the US’s involvement in supporting Right Winged terrorists in their country, that they bought a case against the US, to the Court of Justice. The charge was, that:

(a) That the United States, in recruiting, training, arming, equipping, financing, supplying and otherwise encouraging, supporting, aiding, and directing military and paramilitary actions in and against Nicaragua, had violated its treaty obligations to Nicaragua under:
Article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter;
Articles 18 and 20 of the Charter of the Organization of American States;
Article 8 of the Convention on Rights and Duties of States;
Article I, Third, of the Convention concerning the Duties and Rights of States in the Event of Civil Strife.
(b) That the United States had breached international law by
1. violating the sovereignty of Nicaragua by:
armed attacks against Nicaragua by air, land and sea;
incursions into Nicaraguan territorial waters;
aerial trespass into Nicaraguan airspace;
efforts by direct and indirect means to coerce and intimidate the Government of Nicaragua.
2. using force and the threat of force against Nicaragua.
3. intervening in the internal affairs of Nicaragua.
4. infringing upon the freedom of the high seas and interrupting peaceful maritime commerce.
5. killing, wounding and kidnapping citizens of Nicaragua.

The US defended itself, not by denying any of the above, but by suggesting that everything it had done in the region, all the terrorist activity and the dead civilians and the economic warfare, and the torturing, was justified because it was preemptively “exercising a right of collective self-defense” for the benefit of other Latin American countries.

As proceedings were clearly going against the US, the lawyers for this new Roman Empire, who answer to no one but themselves, decided to throw their toys out of the pram, by suggesting (and being the only Country to ever suggest) that the International Court of Justice is “semi-legal, semi-juridical, semi-political body, which nations sometimes accept and sometimes don’t.” This obviously setting themselves up to say that when the court inevitably finds in favour of Nicaragua, the US wont listen. And so that is exactly what happened.

The Court found that the US was guilty of attacking key infrastructure in Nicaragua, and arming, training and financing Right Winged terrorists in the Country, although admits that the US probably wasn’t directing the operations of the terrorists. They simply picked them, funded them, armed them, and then said “okay….GO!“. The court also found that the Nicaraguan government had absolutely no part in any arms flow between Nicaragua and insurgents in other Latin American Countries. It found that no Latin American Country had asked for US support in these matters.

The judgement reads:

“Decides that the United States of America, by training, arming, equipping, financing and supplying the contra forces or otherwise encouraging, supporting and aiding military and paramilitary activities in and against Nicaragua, has acted, against the Republic of Nicaragua, in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to intervene in the affairs of another State;”

Decides that, by laying mines in the internal or territorial waters of the Republic of Nicaragua during the first months of 1984, the United States of America has acted, against the Republic of Nicaragua, in breach of its obligations under customary international law not to use force against another State, not to intervene in its affairs, not to violate its sovereignty and not to interrupt peaceful maritime commerce;

Finds that the United States of America, by producing in 1983 a manual entitled “Operaciones sicológicas en guerra de guerrillas”, and disseminating it to contra forces, has encouraged the commission by them of acts contrary to general principles of humanitarian law; but does not find a basis for concluding that any such acts which may have been committed are imputable to the United States of America as acts of the United States of America;

Decides that the United States of America, by the attacks on Nicaraguan territory referred to in subparagraph (4) hereof, and by declaring a general embargo on trade with Nicaragua on 1 May 1985, has committed acts calculated to deprive of its object and purpose the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation between the Parties signed at Managua on 21 January 1956;

The list goes on.

America of course disagreed and ignored the verdict. Nicaragua took it to the UN Security Council, asking for all members to respect international law. The US Vetoed it. Because the US don’t like being told what to do. It is the equivalent of a murderer being found guilty, but then walking out of the court because he doesn’t like the verdict and saying “Yeah, I don’t really take it seriously now, i’m going home” and being allowed to.

Nicaragua then took it to the General Assembly, who passed the Resolution by 94 votes to 3. The 3 anti votes, being obviously the US…….. of course you can guess the second….. Israel, and the third being El Salvador, who at the time were the recipient of huge US aid, to fight the Left Wing uprisings in the Country. The US then tried its hardest since the decision, to discredit the ICJ for being a “hostile forum”, simply because the decision went against the US. I wonder if they’d have followed the same path of trying to discredit the ICJ, if the decision went their way. Something tells me they wouldn’t. And so Nicaraguans had to deal with even further American involvement in their Country. Reagan imposed tougher economic sanctions, and denounced the elections in Nicaragua as suspicious, despite the fact that Canada, Ireland, the European Economic Community and religious groups sent to oversee the elections all said that they were perfectly fair and free.

The US Congress then banned all funding to the Right Winged terrorists in Nicaragua, the Reagan administration carried on covertly. They did this by selling arms to Iran and sending the money gained, to the terrorists in Nicaragua. In 1996 it was revealed that the Reagan administration used money raised through drug trafficking to support the terrorists in Nicaragua. And today, those very same conservative Americans who masturbate furiously over the mere mention of Reagan, are claiming Obama is the one pissing on the Constitution, by trying to improve the Healthcare system. Fickle, despicable, moronic; the American Right Wing.

This is why it amazes me, that it was the Middle East that lost it’s mind first, and began fighting America. Muslim Extremists are the equivalent of the barbarians that sacked Rome. Pissed off at their treatment by this wretched superpower, but just as pathetic, barbaric, and evil as the bastards they are fighting.

Two days ago, marked 9 years since the September 11th 2001 terrorist atrocity in New York City. It was unquestionably one of the most vile and senseless attacks the World has witnessed. The inhumanity was beyond comprehension and it strikes me as utterly counter to human compassion and decency, to assume such an attack is justifiable. That being said, I cant help but wonder why we in the Western World are only ever exposed to this one side of the story.

Almost 3000 people died that day in 2001. Since then, and because of that act, 2071 soldiers have died in Afghanistan, 4736 soldiers have died in Iraq, 14,240 civilians have died in Afghanistan, and as many as 104,595 civilians have died in Iraq, with thousands upon thousands more displaced, starving, and living in poverty that they were not in prior to US led military action. One wonders what this has achieved? One also wonders why we never hear about those deaths? Why is a declaration of war considered a legitimate and almost entirely ethical justification for the deaths of almost 200,000 innocent people? Why are America not considered far far worse than the terrorists who attacked on 9/11? 3000 people is one building. 200,000 people, is an entire city. Imagine waking up, in your city, and finding everyone dead. Children included. How is that in any sense justifiable?

Does anyone in the West know the significance of the date April 28th 2003? I doubt it. It was the date that the Americans imposed a curfew on the people of Fallujah (if Iraqis invaded America and demanded people stay in their homes after a certain time, would Americans agree? No, of course not). The people defied the curfew, and the 82nd Airborne shot and killed 17, and injured over 70. Two days later, a protest in Fallujah against the shootings took place. The US shot two people dead. American terrorism and imperialism at its finest. The documentary ‘Fallujah: The hidden massacre’ gives compelling evidence of an even greater evil, committed by the US against ordinary civilians in Fallujah, including children. It shows footage of White phosphorus being used in residential areas, which breaches human rights conventions. It then shows us footage of children and other victims of the attacks, in the areas in which the White phosphorus was used. Ex soldier Jeff Englehart backs up the claims and the evidence by admitting the use of the banned substance. A Labour MP Alice Mahon pressured the British MOD to respond to the claims. The MOD then confirmed that US forces used MK77 during the invasion. The US defended its actions by saying they gave civilians enough time to evacuate. Overall, 39,000 homes were badly damaged and 10,000 destroyed, along with 60 schools, hospitals, and 65 mosques in Fallujah, by the US, in 2004. They have not been reconstructed. 32,000 compensation claims altogether. It is now 2010, and only 2,500 have received any form of compensation. Is America still convinced these people simply ‘hate our freedoms’?

We as a species seem to have instilled in us, a sense of revenge, as well as an impulse to assume we are the ones hard done by. American governments, including the Obama administration, play the innocent far too often. The usual story across the World, from Latin America, to Afghanistan, is America attempts to control a Country for resource purposes, the people fight back, America refers to them as evil, they refer to America as evil, America attacks and refer to themselves as freedom givers, the locals attack back and America refer to them as insurgents and terrorists, America attacks again, the locals attack again, and so on. All the time, Americans are shocked that anyone could dislike them for any reason, after all they assume quite amusingly that they are the beacon of hope and freedom. And so the cycle goes on. What does it achieve? Nothing.

Right now, the Muslim World assumes it is entirely innocent, and America assumes it is entirely innocent. Both are not innocent. Do I consider America to be terrorists? Damn right I do, quite horrific terrorists too. What is unnerving, and deeply regressive in terms of the history of humanity, is that both sides assume they are fighting a morally just war, for their own abstract concept; One side is fighting for their religion – a man made concept, something that doesn’t exist, a fairy tale. The other side is fighting for a Nation State – again, a man made concept that has no scientific or empirical worth, is not biological, is an archaic throw back to Colonialism, and is simply a social construct that certainly is not worth killing or dying for. It is unbelievably short sighted, because it will never end. America as a Nation are never likely to admit they have been utter bastards across the World for the past 50 years. Islam as a religion is never going to accept it has anger issues and takes its fairy man in the sky a little too seriously.

One problem, from a Western perspective, is that since 9/11 at least, we have had this us VS them mentality. We believe the West is right, and the Muslim World are evil bastards who we tried to help, but were beaten down for it. It emanates from America. We never hear stories of American terrorism; of which there are countless examples. We are made to believe the Office of President of the United States of America is an honourable office. It REALLY isn’t. It’s like the office of Roman Emperor. It means you have the power to impose your will on much of the World, through force if necessary and build a public reason for it, but keep the real reason private. It is an office of criminals. Very little more. The castle of the Presidency is built on pillars of sand, not rock. They will not talk about the fact that when Reagan was President, he helped to create the Mujahideen as an anti-communist force, despite the fact that they were also a very violent human rights abusers. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an ex Prime Minister of Afghanistan is currently on the run from America, who have him labelled as a ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorist’. This man is responsible for countless deaths. Yet, conversely. according to the book ‘Afghanistan, the bear trap: defeat of a superpower‘, Hekmatyar was the recipient of the most US covert funding (thought to be around half a billion dollars…….. apparently Tea Party activists didn’t really care about this) ever, and total immunity from the CIA for his role in the Drug trade.

During the Afghan-Soviet war, America funding the creation of over 35,000 religious schools throughout Afghanistan, in order to help train people against Soviets by teaching an extreme form of Islam in the hope that what the crazed Muslim extremists are doing now to America, would be aimed entirely at the Soviet Union. When their anger was aimed at the Soviets, America referred to them as Freedom Fighters. The moment that anger spilled over in the direction of America, they suddenly became known as terrorists. But, the Americans created the problems. They didn’t care if terrorism that they funded was being aimed at Americas enemies. They didn’t care how many people would die, from funding the creation of the monster of Islamic Extremism. It suited their needs, so it was fine. Now it is going against them, and they suddenly find it to be an evil that needs to be defeated.

President Eisenhower famously used his farewell speech to warn the US that the ‘Military-industrial complex’, in other words, private military and arms manufacturers, as a concept, runs entirely at odds with the objection of peace. That when a situation arises in which certain people and groups have material interests in being continuously at war, there can never be peace. Eisenhower said:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Today, this is more crucial a point, than at any time during the past fifty years. A fifty years in which the US has never had a moment where it has not been involved in the affairs of other Nations. The vast economy of the military machine, is the very source of international terrorism, and it is based entirely in the US. Eisenhower recognised it. I think we are all beginning to recognise it. Especially after Iraq.

There will never be an end to terrorism. Because terrorism is not limited to extreme Muslims. Terrorism takes on many forms, and one of them includes direct funding from the very superpower that in public appears to be so anti-terrorism, it goes beyond the realm of hypocrisy and becomes laughable. Whilst money exists, whilst Nation States exist, whilst America exists, and whilst Religion exists – terrorism will also exist.

Hate Jamie

I am pleased to announce that I have influenced someone enough, to send me a very touching email. He sought out my email address, and spent time crafting an extremely coherent and well thought out message, to which as you will see, I gratefully replied. (Click the image, to get the full view)

Following this, I then got this beautiful reply:

Instead of accepting my sexual invitation to “comprehend my islam” (admit it, you’d be proud too if you’d managed to create an innuendo out of comprehending a religion), he felt it necessary to tell me he was fucking my mother. Which is odd, because at the time of receiving this email, my mother was actually watching Eastenders. The BBC was fucking my mother, out of her licence fee contribution. Although, he does end the sentence with ‘not’, which I presume meant ‘now’. The T and W are far enough away from each other on the keyboard to suggest you’d have to be one chunky fingered illiterate nob end, to hit the wrong one. Unless of course, he genuinely meant ‘not’, in which case, the entire point of this email was to tell me that he wasn’t fucking my mother. Which is a relief. I don’t receive enough emails from people telling me they aren’t fucking a member of my family. It leaves me very paranoid. I end up thinking “Why is that man not approaching me to tell me he isn’t fucking my nan? He must be fucking my nan”. So I’d like to thank the sender of this emailing triumph, for taking the time out to reassure me that he is not in fact, having sex with my mother.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my first hate mail.
Yours sincerely,
Beaner fuck x

My favourite Bible stories

A line in a wedding ceremony I recently attended, read by the Priest was: “God loves those who fear him“. This made me feel a little uneasy. It is from Psalms, and it is a little unnerving. It suggests in order to be in favour with this maniacal overlord, you must be fearful of him. You must be frightened. God wants your love, through fear, God Corleone is probably a more apt name.

Opening any page of the Old Testament seldom produces anything other than shock and disgust from those of us who are not indoctrinated by its bullshit. The God of the Old Testament is merely a dictator of the most evil variety, with a number of genocides that would make Polpot stand in awe. A Stalin-esque figure demanding nothing but intense loyalty and the unquestioning acquiescence of ‘his’ people. A figure who wishes you to obey his every command, NEVER question him, and is even in control of the way you think. He demands you put all morality to one side, and put him above it. If you have no problem with homosexuality, and just wish that you should be happy with whomever you fall in love with; tough. God says it’s wrong, if you disagree, you’re going to burn in the pits of hell for an eternity of pain and torture……. but he loves you.

A totalitarian dictator, straight out of Orwell’s 1984, who, not content with inventing the concept of ‘sin’, and forcing upon an entire planet, even as innocents at birth; He decided that the only way to cleanse the World of a concept that He created in the first place, was to have His ‘son’ brutally murdered. The logic is ridiculous. An Ancient logic that deserves no sympathy or credence in 2010.

The idea that this God gave us all the gift of Free Will is inevitably problematic for the believer. Usually they worm their way out of an explanation, by inventing reasons why the situation regarding Free Will is as it is. They offer no proof, but then Organised Religion, and evidence don’t exactly mix very well anyway. Take the story of Abraham. In Genesis 17, we find Abraham at 99 years old, being told by God that he shall have a Son. Abraham had no choice in this. Nor does he have the freedom to call God an absolute maniacal despot when God tells Abraham that he is to cut the skin off of the penises of all who live in Abraham’s house, when they have reached 8 days old. Those children don’t have a choice. They haven’t asked for this. Why is it even necessary? Why can’t they just swear an oath, if God is really that paranoid that they might not believe in his laws? It is senseless. It is the work of an evil ruler, not an all loving God. The suggesting that God demands all of this because he loves us, is eerily familiar to when a wife cries and claims that her husband beats her, because he loves her. It is a mental illness. If a ruler today told all his people that in order to prove their loyalty, they must cut a bit of skin off their cock, surely he would be seen as a little over tyrannical? In any case, the idea that God gave His people Free Will whilst at the same time demanding innocent children be mutilated, and given no choice in the situation, is a little bit of a contradiction. No doubt Christians will find a way to squirm out of it.

Abraham is then told to kill his son. He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t say “Hang on a minute, i’ve chopped half his cock off, why do I have to kill him?” He just goes along with it. But our sneaky God doesn’t REALLY want Abraham to kill Isaac. So when Abraham has lured his son on a fake hunting trip, tied his son down to a stone, and held a knife above him, about to kill him, an angel stops him. God only wanted to test Abraham. He was perfectly happy to put Isaac through one of the worst ordeals he’s ever likely to face, by making him believe his dad is about to stab him to death on a stone block, just to prove to his rather paranoid and jealous self, that Abraham is willing to go that far to glorify this fickle dictatorial lunatic in the sky. This lovely little story features just after the story of Lot’s daughters who get Lot drunk and fuck him, because he’s all alone, after God, in an act of pure genocide, wipes out Lot’s entire city.

Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha. The Festival of Sacrifice. A celebration of the fact that Abraham was willing to kill his son. Now, in this modern age, if a man were to lure his son to an opening in a desert, struggle with him, fight with him, in order to subdue him and tie him down whilst he doubtless screams for his life, and the man then attempts to kill the boy, but stops at the final seconds because he claims an angel told him to; he’d be judged insane, he’d be thrown in prison. The child would be scarred mentally for his entire life. We’d celebrate the fact that the child survived such an horrific ordeal at the hands of a monster. Why isn’t Abraham, or God for that matter, considered a monster? I consider them both to be horrendous monsters. The same God, who, instead of fighting against child molestation, or poverty, or appalling disease and malnutrition, instead instructs his followers to build temples in which they can worship him and his oversized narcissism. This is not a God I want anything to do with.

It all appears in Genesis. Way before God gives Moses a bunch of pointless commandments and a few obvious commandments. Not that we needed to know not to murder people. We managed to get through thousands and thousands of years without destroying ourselves. In fact, the most violent section of the history of man, must be after Christianity is founded, and usually, due entirely to Christianity. The first few commandments, are all about trying to appease a jealous God. Do not have any other Gods. (That free will thing is slowly eroding again). Don’t make false idols. Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. Keep the Sabbath day holy. What a waste of commandments. Why not, Do not rape. Do not molest children. Do not keep slaves. Do not exploit people for money. Vindictive, jealous, dictatorial and monstrous – the God of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Jesus supposedly died to save us. Firstly, why did he have to die? Why did God, who is in control of everything, feel it necessary to brutally murder someone, simply to rescue humanity? What kind of sadistic mind comes up with that idea? And secondly, what did he save? From Jesus’ death until now, we have had countless religious wars, atom bombs, genocide far worse than anything in the Ancient World. Perhaps God was a little premature in sending us his Son. All Jesus’ death managed to create, was a far worse World than before, thanks entirely to the very fact that he was born in the first place. Did God not foresee the problems it might cause, creating this religion called Christianity? He is solely responsible for the mess Religion has created. For the people who have burnt to death for believing something different, for the limits placed on scientific advancement, for the religious wars. God is responsible entirely. And you can’t blame people. God knew people were flawed and full of Sin, not only that be he knows all; the past, the present and the future, and so knew exactly what was about to happen. God, is evil. Although, this of cause, is all conjecture… because God doesn’t actually exist. A fairy tale, to indoctrinate those less intelligent and easily suggestible section of humanity, who cannot think for themselves. A relic from an archaic time. Nothing more.

People who chose to believe in this God, or have been brought up in the faith, are not free. They have a need to be controlled. They need to be told what is right and wrong, rather than using their own intuition. They need a dictator full of rage and anger, and call it ‘love’. America is a country that prides itself on freedom, and yet paradoxically it is one of the most Christian nations on the Planet. Lives are ruled by a book written four thousands years ago, and with absolutely no evidence. They live their lives on fear and subordination.

I cannot, and will not ever submit myself to such an evil and vicious concept, as that of Organised Religion.

A Social Retardation

In Melbourne, Ash bought me a beautiful leather covered notebook with such thick and elegant pages, and an amazing fountain pen. In it, I will be writing any simple thoughts or observations I have; a sort of book of my own social commentary, in the hope that it’ll require me to try to understand the World I live in, a little better and develop my own way of perceiving certain situations that may arise. I then intend to expand on my thoughts, in blog entries on here. Today, I wrote a few lines in it, in my rather unique yet inapt handwriting, about how annoyed I am with what I have heard from a few English people since being back in the UK. The picture above shows my first page.

I have been back in the UK now for four days and already I’m starting to dislike many of the people who inhabit this otherwise beautiful island. I have heard the word ‘paki’ used to describe anyone with a slightly darker skin complexion, three times already.

The word ‘paki’ offends me. I am not Pakistani nor do I have a dark skin complexion, so it isn’t that which offends me. It is the level of profound ignorance required to imagine that using such a derogatory term, is a sensible idea. I have faith in humanity, but when such archaic bullshit is uttered, my faith in humanity takes a knock back, and that offends me. I am embarrassed to be part of a species that can be so flippantly abusive and illogical. It has no merit, there is no intelligent argument, it isn’t making a point or arguing a case, it is simply racist ignorance and for a society that is no longer living in the dark ages, and for a society that more often than not, refers to itself, quite comically, as ‘civilised’ the term ‘paki’ runs so contrary to that, it only proves to me that humanity is still at a plainly uncivilised stage of development, almost a nascent stage of evolution, still needing to grow up before certain social ills can ever be addressed. Quite paradoxically, children in a nascent stage of human development do not have these negative stereotypical preconceptions clouding their World view. They will pay cars with anyone, regardless of Nationality and skin colour. Children are at a progressive stage of social interaction, far beyond that of their parents and the adults who run their World. They are then taught quite severe regression when it comes to social interaction between cultures and Nations. They are taught superiority and exclusion. For humanity to progress to the next stage of social evolution, this has to change.

These prejudices run so deep, and provoke such anger, that they actually produce nothing of value, and only add to the misery from which they came. They are pointless. They are easy to use, when the alternative requires deeper thought and inquiry. They are the reason I wish to become a teacher, to try to infuse into the minds of the young, that they do not need to follow the path left by the older generations, and that the only way humanity can progress in their hands, is through thought and cooperation and throwing away the silly and worthless prejudices of the past, and move forward a decent way. I want to teach kids to think for themselves, and to question absolutely everything.

Those who use the term, are racist. It is doubtless that many use the term, and think it’s okay. They are ignorant to the fact that by using such terms, the meaning behind it aimlessly finds it way to the next generation of very suggestible idiots. And so the cycle of hate, distrust and suspicion continues. It would appear self evident, that the word ‘Paki’, which implies a sense of superiority of ones own culture, Nation and heritage, is a product of a 17th Century social construct known as Nation States and with it, the lugubriously abstract concept of Nationalism. It doesn’t really exist. Humanity created it. ‘Paki’ and ‘Brit’ and ‘Spanish’ and ‘Chinese’ don’t really exist. We created the concepts. There is no biological basis for defining someone by a Nationality. It is senseless. The only thing that most certainly is a biological actuality, is that we are all human, and nothing else. Not a religion, not a Nationality, and not a Race. Defining people solely on the basis of their apparent National heritage is what I consider to be a social retardation, but so strong a social retardation, that it also acts as a barrier to progress. A barrier, whose only by-product is an inevitable mix of anger, hate, oppression, superiority complexes, and inter-generational ignorance.

The negative connotations around the word ‘Paki’ wrongly educates our children to associate negativity with a particular group of people based solely on their skin colour (I wont say it is based on Nationality, because the word ‘Paki’ isn’t necessarily used to describe those born in Pakistan; it is used by the ignorant to describe anyone who looks slightly Middle Eastern or North African). Some will argue that they are simply using a term of Nationality, much like calling me a ‘Brit’. It is weak minded and a rather nonsensical and fatuous argument. The term ‘Brit’ or ‘Spanish’ or ‘American’ is used almost exclusively as a term of National identity, whilst ‘Paki’ is used entirely exclusively as a term of abuse. It has no positive connotations. It is not used as a term of endearment. It is used to express hate. And so the different motives around how the words ‘Brit’ and ‘Paki’ are used suggest that they are in no way similar.

It offends me that people can be so feckless, and weak. It offends me that a species that has so much potential and has already achieved a great deal in its short history, can stoop so low. It offends me that a social retardation, like rain water in a broken pipe, can not be contained, and will merely leak down onto the next generation and continue the cycle uninterrupted. Society, is in no way ‘civilised’.