XLVI. Duck and Cover!

If you get all your information from the mainstream American media, you are probably aware that we are now gripped by a pestilence not seen since the days of oh, say the dreaded bird flu.

Seriously, to anyone who might be thinking that this is the beginning of the Apocalypse, might I point you to the words of the late, great George Carlin
(check out the beginning of part 2 as well):


Just be sure to stay away from the Chinese chicken...

XLV. Confick-you! (Or not, if you're smart)

Well, the computing world's latest gift from losers with too much time on their hands is called Conficker, and it's scheduled to go off just minutes from now--threatening to wreak havoc on Windows boxes worldwide.

While this irritates me to no end, and it is my opinion that spreading computer bugs should be one of the very few offenses worthy of capital punishment (all right, a slight exaggeration--but the sentiment comes across) the best we can do at this point is keep our own asses covered.

Don't get f-ed over by Conficker

XLIV. Five Yards for Encroaching Censorship

I am growing increasingly disturbed by the encroachment of police power into our daily lives. With each passing day another liberty seems to disappear.

Take, for example, this plan by the UK government. Presumably aimed at banning certain "controversial" types of manga drawings, it would give the government incredible control over the ideas people are allowed to express.

Not to defend any given type of idea, mind you. But, theoretically, if a government presumes the sole authority to label ideas as "obscene" then there is nothing stopping it from attaching this tag to any idea it wishes, given situational efficacy.

The real danger in this type of reactionary thinking is that it feeds into the agendas of those who would like to gain control over others.

For instance, why are images of nudity or sex considered obscene, but images of wanton violence so commonplace?

Is it, perhaps, that some people would like to take from you control of your own body, while simultaneously desensitizing you to the suffering of others?
Sounds kind of like an efficient, obedient war-making machine, doesn't it?

XXIX. So, What's the Real Story?

Quite often you hear of people who express doubts about, or dissent from some conventional point of view. Such people are labeled "conspiracy theorists" by rabid defenders of the status quo. This epithet is often uttered quite nastily, as though the person being labeled had just introduced into the room their personal effluvia. It is as if the mere utterance of such a deviation constitutes a transgression against all society.

The thing is, why does the term "conspiracy theorist" have a negative connotation? It merely means one who thinks about conspiracies and where they might exist. The term is completely neutral. Hell, I qualify as a conspiracy theorist--the Kennedy assassination, the drug war, and 9/11 are just a few of the things I regard with suspicion.

It seems people who question conventional notions often find themselves ridiculed and vilified by those who would rather be told what to think and believe.

XXVIII. It's Not Just about the Money...

Something just popped up in my mind, and I have to get it out.

This something is about money. Money--that thing we (in the West, at least) seem to spend our entire lives chasing, and which the vast majority of us will never have enough of.

When someone gets a job that pays more money than their current one, people expect them to be happy.

Everyone hopes to win the lottery jackpot--the prospect of getting lots of free money plus never having to work again will attract many.

But it's all fake.

Money is fake, that is.

In modern American society, instead of exchanging a good for a good, we use money to complete the deal. A long time ago, money was a representation of our country's actual wealth--specifically, of precious metals like gold and silver held by the Treasury. However, in the age of fiat currency, the "value" of money is an arbitrary determination made unilaterally by an institution with dubious links to private business, that the federal government has no real control over. This institution, the Federal Reserve, tinkers with interest rates whenever it feels that doing so would help big business--not to keep the currency in parity with some objective scale.

Money is now a completely imaginary thing, yet it has been elevated to a paramount position over our lives.

All the money chasing going on in our culture has collectively robbed us of the capacity to objectively consider what it actually is we're pursuing.

Money is treated as though it is the sole--or even the most important--economic currency. This is not remotely the case. Economics simply pertain to how we would rather spend our limited resources. Non-monetary considerations, such as pleasure, time, freedom, and stress seem to be largely ignored in the press and by our "representatives" when evaluating the economic state of our country. And I can tell you, nowadays there are plenty of livid, stressed-out, burnt-out Americans of all income levels.

But you probably won't read about it in the Wall Street Journal.

XXV. What's a Good Person to Do?

Now, I generally believe cultures should be left to their own devices--to develop as they will, and individual people should be free to move about to cultures that suit them. I'm certainly no-one who favors barging into other countries and telling the people there how they must live. Hell, the events of the past five years in the Middle East illustrate vividly the folly and futility of attempting to force a distant culture to live by one's own norms.

However, there are those occasional events that take aback even the most ardent defender of cultural relativism.

Living in fear: Tanzania's albinos

In Tanzania, 25 albinos have been killed in the past year.

The latest victim was a seven-month-old baby. He was mutilated on the orders of a witchdoctor pedalling the belief that potions made from an albino's legs, hair, hands, and blood can make a person rich.

Sorcery and the occult maintain a strong foothold in this part of the world, especially in the remote rural areas around the fishing and mining regions of Mwanza, on the shores of Lake Victoria.

Learning of such horrendous episodes gives even me the fleeting urge to storm Tanzania and engage in a massive re-education campaign.

Not even taking into account the massive discrimination albinos face in Tanzanian society--the thought of people being maimed to death because of superstitious beliefs--of people needing to bury their murdered relatives in concrete coffins to keep raiders away from what remains of the corpses--triggers an affective response of outright revulsion.
In this context, cultural relativism seems to fall away.

Much harder to argue with the right-wingers about intervention, when not
intervening leads to people being hacked to death for ridiculous reasons.

(Man, did I hate typing that.)

XVI. Ceaseless Parade of Pointless Rubbish

You don't need to worry about the ludicrously high price of oil, which looks to sap more money you don't even have from your bank account.

Don't fret that food is also getting more and more expensive. Hell, eating in a heated house with electricity all at once is overrated anyway.

Trouble not yourself with the enormous national debt, nor the individual debt which is seeing people thrown from their homes by the dozen, the middle class becoming the new poor, and the current poor becoming outcastes.

Never mind that trillions of dollars are circling the drain of an overseas military policy with dubious premises based on scant evidence, which is killing people by the thousand.

Forget all about those piddling little details...they're all hogwash!

You know what the real issues affecting America at this very moment are, though. Don't you?

That's right...MILEY FUCKING CYRUS! This girl's faux-nude photos are what we really need to be talking about! This is what's got American society hanging in the balance!

But that's not the only thing. Let's not forget Barack Obama, who is secretly fronting the presidential campaign of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Of course they share the exact same views. And this Wright fellow is clearly a dangerous radical.

The prophetic theology of the black church during the days of segregation, Jim Crow, lynching, and the separate-but-equal fantasy was a theology of liberation.

It was preached to set African-Americans free from the notion of second-class citizenship, which was the law of the land. And it was practiced to set free misguided and miseducated Americans from the notion that they were actually superior to other Americans based on the color of their skin.

The prophetic theology of the black church in our day is preached to set African-Americans and all other Americans free from the misconceived notion that different means deficient.
[...]
Black preaching is different from European and European-American preaching. It is not deficient; it is just different. It is not bombastic; it is not controversial; it’s different.

The unmitigated nerve of this black separatist! Can't he see that his toxic reverse-racist views are the reason this country is headed for its ruination?

UPDATE: It seems that Barack Obama has come to his senses. He has decided to run for the presidency himself, and has renounced the racist demagogue.



How poised and presidential of Mr. Obama! That's the kind of honor and loyalty we true Americans need in our President!

VI. The Gift that Keeps on Giving?

The Nigerian state of Bauchi has created a department to collect tithes for the poor, mandated by the Sharia law under which the state is governed.

Sharia wealth tax in Nigerian state

The Sharia Commission says it received just over $23,000 (£12,000) from top civil servants and traditional leaders.

Now the commission has started drawing up a list of individuals they believe should be paying Zakat.

They have sent out letters to more than 3,000 people warning if they don't pay the tax to the government this year they could be arrested and jailed for three months, fined, or given 20 lashes.

So, using resources that are already extremely tight to establish another bureaucracy is supposed to put more of those resources in the hands of the poor?

No, it's more likely that the generals will move into nicer digs, and the poor will be even worse off as the better-off have less to share.

But, hey--it's all in the name of religious duty, right? It's all good.

IV. King

Perilously stretching the meaning of "few" days, I figure that this is as good a time as any to post. Of course, today is the observation of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the United States. Two-thousand-eight, the fortieth anniversary of his death, has seen America make great strides in the direction of Dr. King's dream of a harmonious, integrated society. As I write this there is a good chance that, for the first time, a major political party might choose a black candidate to run under its presidential banner. Sadly, the recent negative discourse surrounding this very subject shows that there is still a long way to go. Regardless of one's skin color, beliefs or culture, the crux of Dr. King's philosophy is that what unifies humanity runs much more deeply than what divides it. The important thing to remember is that we're all in the struggle of life together.