Clerics! STFU!

It has occurred to me that if I had an American dollar for every time a cleric from one of the world’s major religions said something profoundly dumb, I would be pretty darned rich. If you threw in the insane things holy men of all the minor religions and cults say, I could possibly pay Mark Zuckerberg to like this post.

Why should what clerics say be of concern to us?

(a) Because credulous people tend to believe without questioning and then do stupid things, which may (and usually does) cause harm to others.

(b) Or, crazier people go further and act on these irrational utterances, which results in murder and mayhem.

In recent years, there’s been some real pearls of (un)wisdom emanating from the Middle East. These two recent incidences may on the surface seem harmless enough, but they do much long-term damage in my opinion:

Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi of Iran has issued a fatwa basically decreeing that high-speed internet is against Sharia and moral and human standards. What utter rubbish!

It’s quite obvious that this grand idiot has pulled this decree from out his arse, because no sacred religious text I ever heard off, even knows what high-speed broadband or the internet is. Furthermore, the Grand Arsehole of Iran has pretty fucked-up moral and human standards.

Then there’s ISIS. Yes, The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, so much in the news recently, whose utterly barbaric behaviour which would be the envy of the Mongols, have decreed that Philosophy and Chemistry are against the laws of God and are thus banned in schools in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

For the love of Thor, show me any religious text that states that Philosophy and Chemistry both, are against the laws of some obtuse God, and I will stomp and shit on that text.

Now hear me clerics and religious fundamentalists of the world. Shut The Fuck Up!

2014 = 205

Darwin Day

No, 2014 does not equal to 205. It’s just that this year and specifically this day, is the 205th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin.

The 12th of February is celebrated in mostly scientific and humanist circles as Darwin Day. Why humanist? Well that’s a long story; ask any fundamentalist Creationist. Don’t know any? Good for you.

Amazingly since the publication of his seminal work On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life in 1859, Charles Darwin has been both vilified and praised, and continues to be the subject of misinformation and abject lies. Fortunately modern science is slowly tearing apart the veil of ignorance and mischief that has plagued the Theory of Evolution originally postulated by Darwin and refined by others.

You will find a brief history of the origins of Darwin Day here.

Darwin Award

And on a somewhat lighter note… The Darwin Awards has nothing whatsoever to do with Charles Darwin, although had he be still been alive, I’m pretty certain he would appreciate the humour.

The Darwin Awards were dreamed up by people on USENET groups, a precursor to modern Internet Newsgroups or Forums. The idea was to award individuals who through an act of sheer stupidity eliminated themselves (usually permanently) from the human gene pool.

It’s therefore fitting that just two days prior to Darwin Day, a member of the human species (debatable really) was involved in what I would call an act of premature disintegration, boldly announced his candidacy for a Darwin Award with a bang.

If this report in an Israeli publication is true (note that I haven’t read it anywhere else), then the Iraqi suicide bomb instructor who during a training exercise blew himself and 21 of his students up, is a winner by miles. Unfortunately the 21 students, will just have to be satisfied with being a piece of history.

Bones of the Hills by Conn Iggulden [Book 3 in the Conqueror Series]

Upon completing the third book in this riveting series, I realized that each book had me feeling a little different emotionally about the great Mongol warrior Genghis Khan.

In the first book I felt nothing but admiration and respect for the young Khan who grew up surviving great odds to ultimately unite the Mongol nation under his rule. In the second book I was left in awe of his ability to command thousands of men from different tribes, and fascinated by his sharp mind and tactical planning, but just a little apprehensive about the savagery he could unleash. In the third book I continued to marvel at his ambition to conquer, but was angered by his estranged relationship with his oldest son, Jochi, and appalled at the death and destruction he could bring about at the wave of a hand.

But ultimately I had to relent and admire one of the great men of history. It was also sad to see the mighty Genghis meet his end, just as he was about to embark on a second round of conquest in China.

Bones of the Hills focuses more on his relationship with his sons Chagatai, Ogedai and Tolui, but more especially his bitterness towards Jochi, his eldest son who he thinks was conceived through the rape of his wife. We are also made painfully aware of the bitter rivalry and hatred between Jochi and Chagatai, the heir favored by Genghis. Through this rivalry we sympathise with Jochi for his bravery and principles, while despising the cowardice of Chagatai. While Conn Iggulden chose to have Jochi killed on orders from Genghis for the purposes of this narrative, historically that is mere speculation because the circumstances of Jochi’s death are not clear in the records.

Also in the third installment of the Conqueror series we learn more about Tsubodai, The most successful and fearsome general in the Khan’s army of warriors, as they conquer the Muslim lands of Afghanistan and present-day Iran and Iraq. This books focuses on the battles with the Shah and later his son Jelaudin.

Genghis eventually rebukes his favoured second son Chagatai to name Ogedai as his heir. We are also briefly introduced to Kublai, son of Tolui, Genghis’s youngest son, who is the focus of later books in the series and eventually his successor.

After the sedentary pace of the second book, Bones of the Hills moves along quite briskly and it’s hard to put down. The death of Genghis Khan at the end is quite unexpected and leaves one a little deflated. However there is the fourth book to look forward to…

Get Gaddafi!!!

Either Gaddafi has learnt a few things about survival from the Iraqi and Afghanistan conquests, or the USA is just pussyfooting around in Libya.

This prolonged campaign of bombing and bungling by the United States is not doing anyone any good. Why don’t they just get the job done and get the hell out of Libya? This prevarication is becoming tiresome, and the longer it goes on, the more lives that are lost unnecessarily.

Even South African President Jacob Zuma has failed miserably to convince the tyrant of Libya to vacate office, and they’re supposed to be bosom buddies. This is his second or third attempt, two of which required a personal visit to Libya. I wonder why? Something’s just not kosher with these trips, but I suppose only time will reveal the truth.

Will you guys please get Gaddafi so that the world can focus on that other tyrant, Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen…while the infighting erupts in Libya.

Wikileaks confirms that politicians are [insert most insulting word you can think off, then try again]

If you haven’t heard about, read or watched something on television recently surrounding the furore that has erupted around the leaking of confidential diplomatic documents by Wikileaks, welcome back to earth.

There has been much commentary about this unprecedented releasing of secretive government information, with most people (reasonable ones) supporting the leaking of the information to the public, and some who think that ordinary people should not be privy to it, citing all sorts of disingenuous arguments such as compromising state security, the sanctity of confidential interactions and the protection of innocent people. Disappointingly, some independent media sources fall into the latter category, which is rather nauseating, considering the media’s general stance on freedom of information.

Off course, the affected diplomats and politicians seem to be in an amusing frenzy, trying to save face, suck up, point fingers, threaten, grovel or just hide. One, Hilary Clinton, accused of encouraging  spying on UN Diplomats in the documents, labelled the leaks as an attack on America’s foreign policy interests and on the international community. What a load of bollocks! Talk about attacking foreign policy interests? Didn’t America attack Iraq and Afghanistan, and couldn’t these two countries be classified as foreign policy interests? To think I supported this bitch for President!

Here’s the thing about this whole incident. Politicians around the world demand a separate set of standards for themselves. They insist that ordinary plebs should be honest, transparent, respectable, diligent, hard-working, sympathetic, loyal, dependable, patriotic, law-abiding etc. They also demand that they should be exempt from these conditions. Lesser mortals than themselves are consigned to the role of mere voting fodder, and contributors to the treasury.

International relations are supposed to be simple. I’m convinced that if  ordinary people (intelligent, naturally) were allowed to foster and maintain relations between countries, we wouldn’t have a tenth of the problems we now have. But just add a politician and/or a clergyman to the equation, and international relations is doomed to be totally fucked up. Politicians and clergymen bring excess baggage into the arena. They need to create their own personal playing fields and they bring with them despicable tools like religion, culture, ethnicity, race, creed, clansmanship, tribalism etc. with which to sow the seeds of acrimony and unhappiness; the latter most useful for keeping them in power.

And these morons think that they can control information. They think that information belongs to them only; they demand total rights to all information that they have conveniently categorized as too sensitive for ordinary eyes. When there is a leak, they react with venom. Why? If all they were doing was above-board, they should have nothing to worry about. But the thing is all they are doing is not above-board…

According to Heather Brooke, writing in the Gaurdian.co.uk, “…when data breaches happen to the public, politicians don’t care much. Our privacy is expendable. It is no surprise that the reaction to these leaks is different.” She also reveals that:

Leaks are not the problem; they are the symptom. They reveal a disconnect between what people want and need to know and what they actually do know. The greater the secrecy, the more likely a leak. The way to move beyond leaks is to ensure a robust regime for the public to access important information.

Further:

Politics, however, has remained resolutely unreconstructed. Politicians, see themselves as parents to a public they view as children – a public that cannot be trusted with the truth, nor with the real power that knowledge brings.

And:

Much of the outrage about WikiLeaks is not over the content of the leaks but from the audacity of breaching previously [e]nviable strongholds of authority. In the past, we deferred to authority and if an official told us something would damage national security we took that as true. Now the raw data behind these claims is increasingly getting into the public domain. What we have seen from disclosures like MPs’ expenses or revelations about the complicity of government in torture is that when politicians speak of a threat to “national security”, often what they mean is that the security of their own position is threatened.

It’s quite clear from this latest leaking of information, that we are facing a new revolution with the onset of the digital age, as Brooke terms it, a revolution that politicians need to take cognizance off; the people want to know what the fuck is going on. Hide stuff from us at your peril!!!

More of the same at the start of a new year

People the world over look forward to the turn of the year, hoping for a better life and changes that will make the world a better place to live in. People are mostly disappointed as early as the end of the first week when they realize it’s going to be more of the same, or worse.

Thanks to an asshole wannabe terrorist who tried to blow up an American aeroplane over Detroit just before Christmas, international travel is going to be hell for some time to come. And that’s just because the American government, well and truly in paranoid mode again, are going to force the world into beefing up security at all major airports; which means that they are going to probe everyone’s ass for WOAD’s (weapons of aeroplane destruction). This is particularly bad news for anyone of African, Middle-eastern or Eastern origin; you just know that you’re going to be perved at very intensely by the airport security and customs officials. Worse still; now that there is American scrutiny on Yemen, it’s going to be very hard to get the Americans out of the Middle East forever, as everyone dearly wants.

Coming back to that dumb-ass terrorist who not only botched the bombing, but burnt only his own leg (and possibly the family jewels) in the process; he’s now learnt that messing with fundamentalist religious bullshit will only get you burned. Or did he? He’s probably wondering about those 72 disappointed virgins waiting in vain for him in fundamentalist heaven. Hopefully the Americans have incarcerated him alongside Bubba; which should keep his mind fixated on his own ass for a while. If only all suicide bombers were this incompetent, and blew only themselves and a few ugly cars up?

But alas; the recent spate of suicide bombings in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere over the holidays points to this becoming a favoured religious pastime in this new year. Martyrdom has never looked more appealing. It’s pretty much destroying everything in sight (in the Islamic world at least) to become the new religious chic. However, the portability of this fashion trend poses a serious threat to all countries that have already managed to drag themselves out of the bronze age. These religious nut-jobs can export their warped ideological cravings to almost anywhere in the world; no x-ray machines or perverted customs officials can stop them.

How did things get so out of hand? Are we ever going to usher in a new year free from war and terrorism and death and destruction?