“We can’t let you suffer anymore, old friend!”

Friends, a news items on assisted suicide was featured on CNN this morning. It was generated when a documentary showing the death in Switzerland of a 59 year old British Professor was shown on a British Television channel.

The poor man was suffering from a motor neuron disease that was gradually killing him. Bravely, he allowed his own death to be filmed in the hope that the mystery surrounding euthanasia might be dispelled and Britain might legalize it.

The British newspapers, those read by the working classes, were filled with outrage. It seems that death, which is a part of every life, should not be shown to those who live in case their sensibilities are ruffled.

The documentary further fueled the great debate between those who want euthanasia made legal and the ‘Care Brigade’ who think that dosing people up to the gills with addictive drugs for months or years is the way to go and the ‘Religiously Deranged Brigade’ who think that some mythical god of love wants people to suffer endless pain and humiliation until death finally comes.

In this ‘civilized’ world, CNN said, only four countries allow assisted suicide: Switzerland, Holland, Belgium and three states in bible-bashing America. Generally speaking these countries will help a terminally ill patient to die even if they come from a foreign country. Thank heavens there are a few enlightened civilizations in the world, eh?

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Pick The Villains!

Friends, it has become apparent to me that legitimate questions can be asked concerning who or what should be kept in cages.

We humans or course, being the only ones who build cages, get to decide who is put in them. Generally speaking it is of course ‘lesser’ creatures that are so imprisoned though, curiously, we do keep recalcitrant members of our own kind in cages called jails where they happily engage in drug taking and unnatural sex and quickly learn how to become hardened criminals.

I would argue that perhaps the bulk of humans should be kept in cages, treated as wild animals. Perhaps only people who are peaceable, who are generous, who are caring, who are rational  and humble and kind should be allowed to have freedom.

The rest, the ones who are: compulsively greedy, pathologically violent, obsessively sexually deviant, power-mad, religiously deranged, actively apathetic, brazenly brainless, definitely dishonest, largely lazy, drug addicted, sports crazed, serial gamblers, etc,  should be locked away where they can do no harm other than to themselves.

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Capitalism: a greed-based system where most are forced to struggle

or starve so that a few can live opulently!

Friends, probably you, like me, have been frightened by the dire daily news about the escalating global financial crisis, the one largely caused by America’s failure to properly regulate or oversee its major financial institutions.

Given the serious nature of the problem and the fact that it appears to affect most countries in the world, I expected that world leaders would get together and address the problem in a united way. I expected there would be some radical ideas put forward. I then expected to have them discussed and debated. Then I expected world leaders, in cooperation with financial institutions, to make dramatic changes to facilitate the running of a better and more fair world economy and financial system. Obviously, I expected too much!

What has happened is not a coordinated, rational approach but an ad hoc flurry of extreme measures, none of which address any of the major problems: we’ve had the dramatic lowering of interest rates, the throwing of billions of dollars at banks, financial institutions and insurance companies, the part takeover of some banks by some Governments, the guaranteeing of bank deposits and the showering of money upon taxpayers and urging them to spend, spend spend.

It’s as if those who rule us can’t get their heads around the idea that the way the world is run is deeply flawed.

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R.I.P.

Friends, this graphic photograph from Reuters shows an SUV graveyard. There they are, hundreds of them, all brand new, all lined up but nowhere to go. Don’t weep, please. Tears undo me every time.

Their huge gas tanks are eagerly waiting to be filled. Their leather upholstery is waiting to form around the voluminous rear end of a lead-foot driver, one who is caught up by the delusion that, if he drives this vehicle, somehow he is transformed into a modern manifestation of a cowboy. The truth is that he is an overweight, stodgy urban dweller who has never ridden a horse and certainly has no wish to. That takes courage, strength and a certain amount of skill.

He does however love a six-stacker C.D. with ten surround speakers and pulsing air-conditioning and the fact that, high above the road, he can block the view of everyone behind him with tonnes of gleaming metal and plastic that have been creatively fashioned to resemble a box just so that he can imagine that he is cross between a truckie and a cowboy, one who looks like Clint Eastwood and acts like Sylvester Stallone. Such is the power of human imagination! And clever marketing.

Of course, the reason that this is a graveyard is not because mankind is finally reacting to the dire threat of global warming and rapidly steering away from car use. And it is not to do with the high price of petroleum because it has mysteriously fallen from nearly $150 a barrel to under $50, a fall that makes many people suspicious about the machinations of the oil industry and tax-gathering Governments.

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The red area is indoctrinated!

Between your ears is a soft, grayish, electrically-charged mass of tissue which is called a brain. It is, in theory at least, used for thinking.

For most of the world’s people it is simply an organ contained in a bony repository, one which holds all the crap poured into it: by parents, teachers, friends, theologians, media proprietors, television proprietors, advertisers, book publishers, sports promoters, politicians, movie stars, singers, drug companies, alcohol manufacturers, car companies, large corporations, banks, insurance companies, academics…the list goes on and on, ad infinitum!

Our ‘thinking’ organ is, for most people, is a constant state of information overload. Little wonder then that it can’t get involved with actually thinking. You want some proof? What if I asked the question: who made the world? Probably most people in it would automatically answer God or Allah or Jehovah, etc, given the curious prevalence of religious belief. Others might say, who knows but something did?

Of course the person whose brain is actually thinking would probably ask after a short silence: “You ask ‘who’ but doesn’t that assume that it was made by a human or some theological personification of a human? Wouldn’t it be more correct to ask: what made the world given there is no evidence for the existence of any God?”

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It is difficult sometimes, surviving the hours that stretch from the moment we awake from our disturbed slumber until the bliss when our head touches the pillow and we can retreat from the reality of the world again.

I loved the movie called ‘The Hours’. The clever novel upon which it is based was written by Michael Cunningham and it was loosely based on Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I loved the movie yet I hated it because it cleverly encapsulates the darkness of life, its frustrations, its limitations, its harsh realities, its frequent boredom, its cruelty.

But it conveyed more than darkness. There were occasional moments of beauty, like the passing by of a butterfly, even deft touches of humanity and humour and nobility. The movie’s ending, the suicide of Virginia Woolf, her in a long dress walking into a stream with her pockets full of heavy stones, haunts me still.

Woolf had such talent but she was too perceptive, too sensitive, too ill-prepared to survive  what the world offered. Resultantly her life was often a torment and she dreaded those hours when her demons danced before her, taunting her, mocking her, those long hours when she saw life as it really was: full of limits, of false promises, of ugliness, of disappointment and betrayal, of mortality.

Sometimes I think sheeple are the happiest group of humans. Sometimes I even think that god-botherers are lucky. In a way I envy them both because they manage to avoid much of the reality of life. They certainly avoid the hours.

To be able to think, to reflect, to understand, is a two-edged sword!

INDOCTRINATION

Friends, since the previous post which highlighted Obama’s unfortunate speech, I have been carefully reading the comments it generated here and elsewhere and thinking a great deal about the question of just how much indoctrination Americans are subject to and whether this level and type of indoctrination is dangerous.

Obviously those Americans who comment on my blog are not the ones this article is directed at. It is directed at indoctrinated Americans who, without thinking, accept and believe that: they belong to the greatest country in the history of the world, that Americans are the greatest people in the world, that America should lead the world (by force if necessary), that America is favored by a Christian God, that Americans have the right to consume more world resources than any other nation, that the American Dream and Culture should be embraced by all the world’s people, etc.

Now I have chosen the term ‘Master Race’ deliberately because of its connotations with Germany and Hitler’s concept of a Master Race. Hitler believed that the Germans were a superior people and that they should rule the world using military force. With the aid of a few other nations, he almost succeeded in imposing his elitist delusions upon the whole world.

Of course the idea of a Master Race is a fiction. All nations are made up of individuals, all of whom are different. They differ widely in intelligence, body size and type, hair and eye colour, looks, degree of coordination and physical skills, personality types, etc. Given such diversity, to imagine that one group or race of people is superior to all others is simply foolish.

Hitler of course thought he could get around this reality by breeding a Master Race via careful selection and grooming of those considered to be superior and by getting rid of those who he considered to be inferior in gas ovens.

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Friends, I just read the full transcript of the speech that Obama made when he introduced the new members of his national security team, you know, Biden, Gates, Hillary Clinton, Jones, Rice, etc. It made depressing reading.

It was, like all American speeches, filled with eloquent flourishes and idealistic notions but it was not filled with any evidence that America is about to change its spots anytime soon. In fact, it contained lots of very disturbing statements like:

1. “We will show the world once more that America is relentless in the defense of our people, steady in advancing our interests, and committed to the ideals that shine as a beacon to the world.”

2. ” Our economic power must sustain our military strength, our diplomatic leverage, and our global leadership.”

3. ” In the world we seek, there is no place for those who kill innocent civilians (America killed over a million civilians in Iraq) to advance hateful extremism.”

4. “…American values are America’s greatest export to the world.”

5. “To succeed we must pursue a new strategy that skillfully using, balances, and integrates all elements of American power, our military, and diplomacy, our intelligence and law enforcement, our economy and the power of our moral example.”

6. “They (the security team) share my pragmatism about the use of power and my sense of purpose about America’s role as a leader in the world.”

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Friends, during the last few years I admit that I have not been kind to George Bush. I have been known to speak about him in terms that are…well…er, certainly not flattering.

As a child I was taught that if you can’t say anything nice about people, then don’t say anything. My dear old Mum, were she still around, would think that I’ve fallen short in that department but, ’tis human to err, isn’t it?

In an effort to put things right I’ve been thinking back over the Bush years trying to find something nice to say about him. It hasn’t been easy but I think I’ve finally found something that he will always be remembered for: George W Bush and his gang of Forty Thieves managed to reveal every flaw that exists in the American Constitution and in America’s political system!

Now this surely must rate as a triumph. There, before the eyes of 300,000,000 Americans, George exposed the Constitution, the hallowed Constitution that Americans are taught to worship from the moment they emerge from the womb, for the deeply flawed thing that it is. He showed that, as American President, if you declare war, you can become a dictator in the true and full Stalinesque sense of the word.

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Friends, in the wash up of Mumbai, there is a rather puzzling and disturbing aspect. I don’t know about you but I thought there must have been at least a hundred, maybe up to a 1,000 terrorists to have held a city of millions to ransom and killed 180 plus and injured so many. After all, constant reports told of terrorists being killed here, terrorists being captured there, terrorists playing hide and seek floor to floor, terrorists being interrogated, etc.

The truth is that it appears that there were ten (10) terrorists.

The attack began on Wednesday and didn’t finish until early Saturday morning. During that time, ten men attacked the main Railway station, A Jewish Centre, two fashionable hotels, Leopold’s Restaurent, the Cama and G.T. hospitals, the Bombay Municipal Corporation (Council) and the Vidhan Sabha which is the legislative assembly. This was despite the presence of thousands of Indian police, Indian troops, pick Indian commandos, and multitudes of excited, gibbering  representatives of the world media. The terrorists then settled into residence at the two hotels and the Jewish Centre and held the fuming authorities at bay for days.

Surely, even a Hollywood epic, you know one of those one that show a handful of Americans including Bruce Willis opposing and beating large, superior, evil enemy forces, wouldn’t make a movie with such a plot! I mean it defies probability.

And what is more, according to some reports, the ten men intended to kill 5,000 people including Hindus, Americans, Britons and Jews. That works out to be 500 each. Fortunately they fell far short of their objective (or is it that the Indian authorities, with American advice, exaggerated their ambitions for purely political reasons?).

No matter, let’s cut to the chase! What are the real implications of this dastardly attack? Continue reading →