Friends, do you ever ask yourself why it is that you sit among the crowds on or near the bottom rung of the societal ladder while, near the top, a handful of people seem to have it all: McMansions, luxury yachts, private jets, Castles in Spain, fabulous cars that cost millions, beautiful wives, notoriety, etc ? Do you think it’s unfair? Do you wonder how it happened?

The photograph gives you a clue.  The truth is that some people are born with a stacked deck. Perhaps its luck. Perhaps they are exceedingly cunning. Perhaps they have a ruthless streak. Perhaps they think that being honest is for ‘fools’. What ever it is, what ever they touch generally turns to gold. And, of course, the things that is common to all of them is they work on the age-old principle of ‘never giving a sucker an even break!’

Yes, folks, nobody ever got to the top of the ladder because they were selfless, generous, compassionate, caring, or altruistic. No way. People at the top usually leave a trail of penniless, bewildered suckers behind them. You often see them on television, people who invested in get-rich-quick schemes where the only one who got rich was the operator of the scheme.

You see them in the supermarkets trying to find bargains, buying the homebrands or food that is close to its use-by date.You see them on unemployment queues, driving old cars, living in near-slums or in the poor part of town, playing musical instruments in subways, asking for a dollar.

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Friends, sometimes when I’m writing posts about serious world issues I feel overcome by the extent  and number of the problems. Sometimes I even feel dirtied by them, pulled down, crushed.

The post I did on Honor Killings affected me deeply. I find it hard to accept that humans are capable of such cruelty, especially to wives and daughters. Of course there are many examples of human cruelty and barbarity. No nation is exempt, no race of people.

Today I offer you a little antidote to the horrors which the world often presents. It is a picture of beauty and tranquility, one without humans.

Take a few minutes and imagine if you can bees and birds and butterflies dancing on the flowers in this little wonderland, a warm, gentle breeze, goldfish swimming in the pond, dragonflies and skimming insects, no sound of voices, only the buzzing of bees and bird calls, the scent of the flowers, the slow movement of the sun, clouds wisping by, a lizard dozing in the warmth, ants gathering food for the coming winter.

Feel yourself caught in this colorful cocoon, safe from the world for a little while, as if in a wonderful dream…

There. I feel better. I hope you do too!

Peace.

Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.

Friends, today in the U.S. they remember  9/11. Lessons should have been learned from what happened on that fateful day. They weren’t.

What happened on that day was that the people who America had been attacking and killing fought back. A handful of them caused a huge amount of damage and casualties but only a tiny percentage of the damage and casualties America had been imposing on them.

So did America heed the lesson of 9/11? Of course not. They went out and increased their attacks against Muslims and they pulled other countries in with them, countries like Australia, Britain and NATO members.

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23-year-old Yildiz A. from Turkey was stabbed in the stomach six or seven times and her nose and ears and part of her lip cut off, then she was dumped in a field. She managed to crawl to the side of the road where a passing motorist took her to hospital.

Friends, the other day I came across an article that really shocked me. It was written by Robert Fisk, a journalist who I greatly admire, and it appeared in The Independent on September 07, 2010. It concerned the deaths of an estimated 20,000 women who are killed each year in so-called ‘Honor Killings.’

I have included a few excerpts from the article just to give you an idea of the horror inflicted on people by those who are clearly deranged by religious extremism and a feudal mindset. Fisk says:

“It is a tragedy, a horror, a crime against humanity. The details of the murders – of the women beheaded, burned to death, stoned to death, stabbed, electrocuted, strangled and buried alive for the “honor” of their families – are as barbaric as they are shameful.  Most of the victims are young, many are teenagers, slaughtered under a vile tradition that goes back hundreds of years but which now spans half the globe.

Men are also killed for “honor” and, despite its identification by journalists as a largely Muslim practice, Christian and Hindu communities have stooped to the same crimes.

Iraqi Kurds, Palestinians in Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey appear to be the worst offenders. But honor crimes long ago spread to Britain, Belgium, Russia and Canada and many other nations. Security authorities and courts across much of the Middle East have connived in reducing or abrogating prison sentences for the family murder of women, often classifying them as suicides to prevent prosecutions.

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Friends, a cleric in the U.S., Terry Jones,  is gaining notoriety by threatening to burn copies of the Koran on September 11. It seems this cleric thinks that Islam is evil although what burning Korans will do to correct this is unknown.

What the American cleric seems to have forgotten is that soldiers from his country, one which calls itself a Christian country, are currently over in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan killing Muslims by the thousands.

And why are they doing this? Because they believe if they kill enough Muslims using bombs, missiles, depleted uranium, cluster bombs, etc, peace will be achieved and Christian America will be loved and respected. The logic of this is beyond me.

What this bizarre ‘book-burning’ situation reveals is that religion is a divisive force in the world. Each brand of religion is in competition with all other religions for adherents. Each religion makes different claims to the faithful. Each religion, especially the mainstream ones, is very rich and very powerful.

Each religion preys on peoples’ gullibility. Each religion exploits its flock so that its clerics can live a very comfortable lifestyle. And each religion has a religious book upon which it bases its claims, a book that is thousands of years old which puts it in ancient times when human, in the main, were primitive, superstitious and uneducated.

The continuing existence of these holy books ties us to the distant past. It holds us back as we humans try to evolve.

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Winners are Grinners!

Friends, after 17 days of negotiation, the socialist-leaning Labor Party has been re-elected with the help of two Country Independents. Yes, Julia Gillard has been elected Prime Minister in her own right and the sun is shining once more.

I can’t tell you how stressed I was by the prospect that the Conservative Coalition was going to get back into government and continue on with their program to advance capitalism, to further enrich the wealthy, to further increase the gap between the rich and the poor,  to get back into bed with the Big Corporations, to allow the MSM to promote greed and right-wing policies, and to continue with their toadying to the American warmongers, etc.

I feel as though a tremendous load has been lifted from my shoulders, as if the world is cleaner, brighter, more full of hope.

Mind you, Julia’s grip on power is rather tenuous. She has 76 seats and the Opposition has 74. If someone dies or resigns, the situation could change. And her seats rely on some Independents being true to their promises.

But the interesting thing that has happened in Australia is that government, because neither of the two major parties gained a majority, may revert more to a collegiate model where consultation and consensus will become more important.

Of course, this is how Parliament should work. After all, in a democracy, each member of Parliament supposedly is elected to represent the interests of their constituents not the interests of the two major parties. I know in Australia this has not been the case until now.

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This is not God’s eye. It is a helix.

Friends, hang onto your hats! Today is probably the most important day in the history of the world. Why, you ask?

Stephen Hawking, the famous astro-physics genius, has told us in his latest book that there is no God! He has said (Stephen that is) that the Big Bang was merely the consequence of the law of gravity.

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” he writes in The Grand Design. “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going,” added the wheelchair-bound expert.

Now look, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. I have been banging on about the falsity of religion for years and finally, here is proof. Stephen, who despite suffering from a serious handicap for most of his life, has carefully considered how the universe came about. His intellect is so immense that it makes me feel dizzy.

After all these years of believing in God and the Devil, Stephen has set the record straight.  And what does this mean? It means that from today, across the world, millions of clerics are out of a job. Bishops and Cardinals in palaces are packing their bags and putting their robes in secondhand clothing stores.

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Recreation of a Neanderthal woman taken from bones, tissue, etc.

Friends, looking at our world critically, I mean, really critically, it is hard not to wonder whether what we are is shown in the photographs or, when the clothes and the artifice is stripped away,  what we are  is more closely related to our distant ancestors.

Of course, I don’t mean to look only at our physical differences which are obvious but to look at our behaviour. What then do we mean by behaviour? Humans exhibit an enormous range of behaviours. Men behave differently to women. Children behave differently to adults, etc.

The setting we find ourselves in affects our behaviour as does our upbringing. For example, most of us don’t spit or pass wind when we are at a dinner party. Neither do we fondle our genitals or those of others (although feet under the table have been known to do mischievous things). And we don’t usually rape another person at a dinner party or carry out a murder either even if, possessed by lust or hatred, we might want to. And, usually, we don’t tell the other guests that we sexually molest our children or animals or watch child porn, etc.

But in other settings, our behaviour might well be different. Take war for example or when we are part of a mob.

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Friends, Obama, who modestly claims that he leads the free world, has proudly announced that hostilities in Iraq are now over and all the troops are coming home. All the troops that is except for the 50,000 troops that are staying there to hold the hands of the Iraqis as they try to return their destroyed, divided country to the prosperous, thriving place it was before the liberating American invasion.

One American came home from Iraq some time ago. Major Tammy Duckworth lost both legs in Iraq when the helicopter she was piloting was attacked in 2004. She ran for senator from Illinois unsuccessfully in 2006 and subsequently became head of veterans affairs for the state of Illinois. President Obama nominated her to become the assistant secretary of veterans affairs in his government. This, of course, won’t return her legs or allow her to dance.

As well as the 4,000 plus dead and the 30,000 plus wounded like Tammy, the Bush-Obama exercise in Iraq has been a complete failure with Iraq still unable to decide who will govern it and still unable to stop suicide bombings and corruption. This reality contrasts with the Obama spin that suggests success in Iraq!

This photograph shows Obama in another role.  He is genuflecting at the Wailing Wall in Israeli-controlled Jerusalem. He is wearing a yarmulke or Jewish skullcap to show his strong affiliation with Israel who he, and a succession of Presidents,  have supplied with untold amounts of arms and money and support for the various atrocities and human rights abuses which the Israelis frequently carry out.

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