When I started finding out about Gang Stalking or rather the elements of what was happening to targets, I thought it would be a simple matter of exposure and awareness.

Making people aware that this was happening and finding a responsible legal or political figure to help get this stopped.

Instead what I found was nasty conspiracy after conspiracy. I don’t just mean ours but others. I found that many had come before trying to expose what was happening. Most of the true people only getting so far, before having accidents, dying of cancer, etc.

Then there was the world of shrills, disinfo agents, people giving you 90-95% truth mixed in with about 5-10% of lies and it was their lies you had to try to watch out for.

My greatest surprise was that this is not something new, at first I really thought that the targeting might have something to do with 9/11 and that the informant thing was only recent.

The more research I did, I realised that this system went back to England, the colonies and even before that.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/docs/SnitchSystemBooklet.pdf

I thought it would be a matter of making people aware that this is happening and then surly people would do the right thing and we would get this stopped, boy was I wrong. People don’t do the right thing, they often look the other way and turn a blind eye to injustice. They feel powerless and unable to stop what is happening. They like what is happening, are fully in league and see no reason to stop it. Then there are those who would like to see this system changed.

At first I could not understand how so many people could be a part of what was happening, what I was seeing was far greater in number than any Stasi figures, I had come across. I saw people that I knew, stranger, business owners, co-workers, etc who were a part of what was happening.

On subsequent snooping, I was able to find out more from some of the people who knew about the city wide program, as I was calling it at the time. However it’s not city wide, and it goes beyond borders. Intelligence agencies not only sharing information, but collaborating to destroy lives. If we had real newspapers and real journalists this would not be that hard to figure out, but our media is controlled, and though some would like to write about this, they most likely are not allowed to in one regard or another.

What I found as I researched were other scandals, open secrets, which is what I consider this to be. It’s not a secret, but an open secret. Many people know the bear-bones of what is happening, they may not understand that people are dying, or being tortured, but with the information being put out, it’s not hard to figure out.

http://gangstalking.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/your-government-knows/

I found that sexual abuse of children in large part continues because this system is being protected. We could stop this, but they are part of the sacrifice of this system. Many such as Senator De Champ have exposed this, other have exposed international pedophile rings, protected by people in high places, who are some of the main consumers. Nothing gets done. You have low level arrests, but to shake the system and truly get this stopped would require more, and that does not happen.

http://gangstalking.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/jiverly-wong-letter-from-a-ti-perspective/

You have mass shootings, due to these types of investigations, and people cry and act all outraged. I remember when the Jiverly Wong shooting happened, there was not enough condemnation of him, outrage after outrage, and yet when it came time for the public to truly do something to get this stopped, such as stopping or curtailing these investigations, nothing. So these victims die, but the true culprit this system that saw fit to harass this man for 18 years till he snapped and killed, gets away with it.

Other have gone on shooting sprees for similar reasons. The German shooter who shot up his highschool, Peeka Eric gave similar reasons for the mass murders. Yet it’s easier to write him off as crazy, then to pay attention to what was really said.

http://gangstalking.wordpress.com/2007/11/11/so-you-want-a-revolution-2/

[quote][b]Collective deindividualization is a phenomenon where individual will be trained as part of the mindless herd controlled by state, corporation, church or some other organization, group, ideology, religion or mass delusion system and adopt it’s rules, morality and codes of conduct. This phenomenon has been familiar in all despotic, authoritarian, totalitarian, monarchist, communist, socialist, nazi, fascist and religious societies troughout history. Also, the modern western democratic republics have the same phenomenon. It is just done so that people will think they are free and don’t realize they are being enslaved. Majority of people in society are weak-minded and ignorant retards, masses that act like programmed robots and accept voluntarily slavery. But not me! I am self-aware and realize what is going on in society! I have a free mind! And I choose to be free rather than live like a robot or slave. You can say I have a “god complex”, sure… then you have a “group complex”! Compared to you retarded masses, I am actually godlike. [/b]

[b]Totalitarian governments rule people through education system, consumerism, mass media, monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force (police, military) and laws discriminating people who think differently than the majority. Democracy… you think democracy means freedom and justice? You are wrong. Democracy is a dictatorship of the moral majority… and the majority is manipulated and ruled by the state mafia. Modern western democracy has nothing to do with freedom or justice; it is totalitarian and corrupted system. Laws are made over the heads of the people and people are being brainwashed to support the system and connected to the institutional structures immediately after their birth. Societies are being ruled by manipulative and charismatic politicians who only care about the interests of majority, and who do not base their decisions on reason but emotions and feelings of the masses. These masses let the authorities of state to make all the important decisions for them. The masses will get an education, they study, get a job, go to work and vote in elections. They think they are free and don’t criticise or question the system. They have become robots. It is like a constructed mechanism in mind, that leaves little choice for an individual to think, talk and act independently. [/b][/quote]

From what he wrote in this letter it seems he was quite aware of this system, but didn’t want to be a part of it. No one wants to be a slave. But it seems some will live with it. I think his life was wasted. I believe he had tried to wake people up on Youtube and other means, and even with the following that he had, he still did not see things changing and thus lashed out. Sad, he thought his actions would set off a revolution, but how can they? Look at the sheeple that you are dealing with. In some regards his life was wasted, I really wish that he had kept writing and posting videos instead of doing this extreme action. In researching this shooting it was very sad.

If more people like him who wake up, who seem to be on the inside, then maybe they in time can make the difference. I think they have a better chance of reaching the sheeple, because they are acquainted with the system.

At the end of the day making people aware is only a part of it. Recently I had someone was whining and crying that their secret was being told. Here I am being targeted by this creepy system, that is torturing me and (irritating) me, and then I have some semi brain dead sheeple bitching about how their secret is not being protected. We don’t expect children to protect the secrets of pedophiles who are abusing them, why would the sheeple expect targets to keep the secrets of a state that is abusing and torturing them? Anyways same issue, different perspective.

What reviewing the instances of children being abused by the church, state, pedophile rings, politicians, etc, has taught me is that people will willingly and actively cover for this system. It was not kept a secret because people were not willing to speak out, it’s because when they did speak out they were ostracized, prosecuted, paid off, or silenced. Societies prevailing attitude at the time determined these kids fate.

People don’t like to rock the boat. Most times when the truth comes out there is a brief moment of awareness and then people go back to business as usual.

http://gangstalking.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/when-the-truth-finally-comes/

People are apathetic at times. It can happen. This is for many a minor inconvenience, remember most people see one piece of the whole puzzle, the blood is spread so thin, that it hardly makes a difference.

How to get this prevailing attitude to change? It can change, I have seen it change. We have to keep exposing what is happening. I saw one target say that they were scared to tell their story, and I was thinking, how will you ever be confident enough? If targets don’t stand up to this system then who will?

People have to do what makes them comfortable, if someone is not ready or uncomfortable, then so be it, but three years ago, there was the David Lawson book, a few websites, and no where near the awareness that there is now.

If each person take the initiative, then it can change. People right now in some cases believe that they are doing something good, remember in Nazi Germany the citizen thought they were doing something good, in many cases. When people feel empowered, think that they are helping a cause, or are a part of something greater than themselves, they can be and are capable of some of the worst atrocities.

This time period is no different. Light must continually be shone into the darkness.

Two alleged Congolese militia leaders plead not guilty to war crimes and crimes against humanity in The Hague…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: ocean city. The blog is also related to: second city.

Desteni Productions
Video Response to BlissWeaver
Part 2
November 18, 2009

Hey! This is part 2! Darryl with Desteni Productions, and this another clip in regards to Cari AKA BlissWeaver, who had a problem with the 2012 ascension prophecy that we made a couple days ago.

Right. Okay, Cari, again, this is not an attack on you. This is not something that insult or humiliate of offend you in any way. I hope not, anyway. This is just a point; some responses to what you’ve said, and they’re directed at the response [made by BlissWeaver to the Desteni 2012 clip], okay? All right.

One thing that you said, is something that I have heard a million times from these people who profess “love” and “life” and “positive” and “beautiful” metaphysical feelings and emotions – is that suffering is “useful” for “learning.” Or, suffering is what people have “chosen” to endure. Or, suffering is vital to “provide lessons.” I do not know why the people who profess “Love,” “Light,” “Higher Consciousness” would have such a callous disregard to other people’s suffering.

You know, the same people who have the Candy Land Metaphysics of “Everybody is One,” “We’re All One,” “We’re all thoughts of God,” “We’re all the same,” “We’re all One Entity, one gestalt of being, one great chain of being,” “We’re all One, we’re all beautiful, bright, radiant things.” But, these same people disregard the suffering as something beneath them. Something that can’t reach them. Something that they have “spiritually evolved” out of. It’s like, “Oh, I’ve made it! God loves me! Oh, you guys will have to stop suffering and come up here with me!” I mean that’s just silly. It’s selfish. It’s silly. And it’s callous. And it’s like these people have both polarities – they the polarity going of callous disregard and “Oh, Love and Light.” And they’re the same thing. I find it disgusting, actually, that whole point of suffering. As the comment you mad, Cari – the comment’s disgusting – that you said: “To think that one can relieve another’s suffering is Ego-Trip.”

So if I can extrapolate that point: Martin Luther King was on an ego-trip. Abraham Lincoln was on an Ego-Trip. Mahatma Gandhi was on an Ego-Trip. Nelson Mandela was on an Ego-Trip. Jesus was on an Ego-Trip. Mother Theresa was on an Ego-Trip. Mother Theresa. Maybe she was. If we’re gonna be on Ego-Trips, we might as well try to alleviate the suffering of others.

As long as we’re going to spit in the faces of people, of beings that tried to alleviate the suffering of others, we might as well call it an Ego-Trip. If we can just spit in their faces or rub what they’ve done or accomplished or what they tried to do in the dirt, as long as we can do that, we should just call it an Ego-Trip. Just to complete the whole point, there, just to put a cap on it.

I think what an Ego-Trip is actually, what I think an Ego-Trip is actually, is professing “Light” and “Love” and “Beauty” and disregarding the “Ugly.” Disregarding the Grotesque, disregarding the Rejected, Disregarding the Dark, Evil Places that can’t find acceptance anywhere – that’s an Ego-Trip, to think that you above or Better than anybody else, Better than people who suffer.

I know you don’t think that. I know you don’t think you’re better than people who suffer. And I know you don’t think that you’re better than people who are concerned about other people’s suffering. But to say, “To think that one can relieve another’s suffering is an Ego-Trip,” I would have to ask you, do you really believe that? I don’t have to wonder that, because you don’t believe it – it’s just a statement, like al the other statements you’ve made. But this statement, you denigrate and sully the accomplishment of people who did actually – got off their butts and did something about it.

Now, take that for what it’s worth. What we are doing as Desteni, are producing people… raising awareness – and these people that we’re producing will stand as the point of common sense. We want our Principles acknowledged; the Principles of Life and the Principles of what is best for all: Equality and Oneness. All these things you’ve read about and seen on the videos. We’re not just going to make videos about – we’re gonna do something about it. And Expect that you will Spit in our faces while we are trying to correct what needs corrected. We don’t care. You know, we’re not gonna take it personally when you spit in our face. We expect a lot of people who like things the way that they are, to have the same reaction. We’re not going to be stopped. And in the end, you’ll thank us. So I think that’s all I have to say.

To supplement my previous post on Henry Kissinger, here is a telling little clip from the famous “Nixon Tapes” which were declassified earlier this decade.

Courtesy of Lapham’s Quarterly:

Nixon: See, the attack in the North that we have in mind… power plants, whatever’s left—POL (petroleum), the docks…. And I still think we ought to take the dikes out now. Will that drown people?

Kissinger: About two hundred thousand people.

Nixon: No, no, no… I’d rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that, Henry?

Kissinger: That, I think, would just be too much.

Nixon: The nuclear bomb, does that bother you? I just want you to think big, Henry, for chrissakes. The only place where you and I disagree is with regard to the bombing. You’re so goddamned concerned about civilians, and I don’t give a damn. I don’t care.

Kissinger: I’m concerned about the civilians because I don’t want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.

I saw this at Pharyngula today. I have to write on it.
The creationist cretins at Answers in Genesis have posted a note on their site by Bodie Hodge, actually a response to an email for advice, in which Hodge actually condones telling the truth. Don’t get your hopes up.

I often wonder if a Nazi soldier asked if someone was there hiding and they told the truth before God, could the Lord have in mind a greater purpose? Could God have used that person to free a great many people who ultimately died in the Holocaust? Or have done something to stop the war earlier? Or cause a great number of Jews and Nazi’s to come to know Christ? It is possible, but we simply cannot know. And one should not dwell too long on “what ifs” anyway.

…

Let’s consider again the Nazi-Holocaust situation: there seems to be a conflict in the situation to lie before God to try to save someone else’s life. The result is often called the “greater good” or “lesser of two evils.”

I’ve been told in the past that the lesser of these two evils would be to lie to save a life—hence the common phrase “a righteous lie.” This is often justified by appealing to the command to love our neighbor (Romans 13:9).

…

Consider this carefully. In the situation of a Nazi beating on the door, we have assumed a lie would save a life, but really we don’t know. So, one would be opting to lie and disobey God without the certainty of saving a life—keeping in mind that all are ultimately condemned to die physically. Besides, whether one lied or not may not have stopped the Nazi solders from searching the house anyway.

“All are ultimately condemned to die physically” Bodie Hodge, 2009.

FUCK! HAS THIS SHITHEAD NO HEART AT ALL?

None of the people shown being arrested here are worth the sin of a lie to save, according to Bodie Hodge.
Of course, no one has come for his kids yet.

If the Nazis come looking for Jews, Gypsies, communists, homosexuals, intellectuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, blacks, cab drivers, poets, or however, you can lie. You can cheat. If you think it is a good idea to help their quarry get away, you do violence to the nazis. Fuck ‘em.

Even the Jains understand this better (well, except for killing the nazis bit). They say it is OK to lie to a hunter to save the life of a deer. Certainly a lie to save humans is justified.

I wonder what this fuckwit would do if the nazis came to his door looking for his kid who had helped some other people excape. Would he lie to save the life of his own child?  Jesus said  healing and saving lives on the Sabbath was within the law (rabbinic Judaism-often villified for being legalistic, teaches the same). This jackass thinks you can’t suspend the ban on lying to save a life. Hopefully one day Hodge will be travelling in some country where the police have extraordinary powers and he needs someone to tell a little white lie to save his ass. Let’s see how he likes having others do onto him and he preaches others should do unto other innocent people.

From Tablet Magazine: A New Read on Jewish Life

Here is something a lot more inspiring morally than Atrocities in Genesis.

Garden of The Righteous

“Even now it is difficult to know how best to remember the Holocaust. It is especially difficult to know how to teach it to children in a way that will give them strength and so that the Holocaust will be appropriately remembered. One special element in that education process is teaching about the non-Jews who risked their lives and dared to try to save Jews during World War II. Yad Vashem, the Memorial Museum and Archives to the Six Million in Jerusalem, has identified 50,000 such “righteous gentiles”, many of whom it has recognized by planting trees in their honor in a Garden of the Righteous.      (bold added)

EDITED TO ADD: I had originally posted a picture form wikipedia said to be SA men arresting Jews on Kristallnacht (1938). There is some doubt expressed in the comments below about the authenticity of that picture so I switched it to the two above. The image is here.

Technorati Tags: honesty,, Answers+in+Genesis, nazi, Holocaust, Righteous+Person, Golden+Rule, Ten+Commandments, Jews, atrocities, morality, Bodie+Hodge, Bible, Christianity, Christ

Hit the jump for this week’s more notable releases.

• Dashboard Confessional – Alter The Ending
• The Starting Line – Somebody’s Gonna Miss Us [DVD]
• Switchfoot – Hello Hurricane
• Biffy Clyro – Only Revolutions
• Coalesce – OX EP
• Take It Back! - Atrocities
• Flyleaf – Momento Mori
• We Came As Romans – To Plant A Seed
• Dead To Me – African Elephants
• The A-Gang – EP
• Joy Electric – Favorites At Play

What a great way to start out a day… This is excerpted from a conversation I just finished with someone.

me: seriously! don’t know how to take a joke haha

well, i guess it depends on the joke. like, i’ve heard people say “you just dont know how to take a joke” when I call them out on racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc, bullshit.

and i think that’s a little different. i also don’t really make jokes relatiing to that stuff

b———: i’m of the opinion that everyone deserves to be made fun of somewhat.. because people are goofy creatures
i believe in equal opportunity making-fun
especially of friends lol

me: yeah, i don’t really think that making fun of stuff people can’t help really works but to each his own

b———: haha i really love it when people do things that they are stereotyped for… like black people and fried chicken.. always makes me laugh because it’s pretty much true… but then again, fried chicken is the shizzle

me: it’s true about black people and fried chicken?
you’re fucking kidding right?

b———: hah around here it is

me: …………
wow.
uhm that’s a pretty fucked up thing to say. like, really.

b———: shrug meh, maybe it is.. but as for the people i’ve met, i’ve found it to be a fairly true statement

me: wow. okay, i’m going to go now.
bye.

I’m sorry I even said “bye” to the douche. Blocking that motherfucker.

A paragraph from a book called The Heart of Asia : a history of Russian Turkestan and the Central Asian … by Francis Henry Skrine, Sir Edward Denison Ross, given below, enclosed in <<>>. 

<<It would be unjust to omit mention of Kutayba’s zeal in in propaganda of Islam. Narshakhi has much to tell us of his pious exertions in the town of Bokhara. On each of his four expeditions thither, he compelled the inhabitants to accept the faith of Mohammed, but as soon as his back was turned, they reverted to idol-worship. In A. H. 94, Kutayba built on the site of fire-temple, a large mosque where prayers were read Friday; a reward of 2 direms was given to every attendant in order to assure the permanent conversion of the people. Kutayba quartered an Arab in every house, who played the dual part of spy and missionary.>>

Analysis:

The book has been written by Christians, who being neutral parties have mentioned the zealous actions of Kutayba. Three times the people of Bokhara rejected the faith ‘compelled’ (word used by the authors) upon them by Kutayba. But Kutayba refused to acknowledge the lack of genuineness of interest of the people in the new faith. So, he bribed people with money. Today, the descendants of those misfortunate residents of Bokhara should know the truth. If they feel this injustice, should exercise their right this injustice by reverting to the faith of their ancestors.

I highly recommend Philip Caputo’s “A Rumor of War,” which I have just completed.  Caputo was a Marine lieutenant who served for nearly a year in Vietnam and later went on to become a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.

The book is a work of non-fiction, a virtual day by day account of the madness that was Vietnam.  The author takes pains to make no overt political analysis or judgment, but along the undercurrent flows the unmistakable notion that political ambition and mindless bureaucracy at the highest levels sent hundreds of thousands to senseless death and suffering.

For me the experience of reading “A Rumor of War” was a reminder, one that in truth I shouldn’t need, that the United States has a long history of wartime atrocity.  It didn’t all begin with George W. Bush.  From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli; from tubercular blankets and other forms of genocide perpetrated on the First Nations peoples to training grounds for Latin American Death Squad colonels at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Here’s what I learned about U.S. military practices in Vietnam forty some years ago that have eerie echoes today:

Although on paper the U.S. military treated prisoners of war according to the Geneva Conventions, they routinely turned over captured suspected Viet Cong to the ARVN (South Vietnamese Army) to be tortured and killed.  This has been the case with the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan where prisoners have been turned over to local armies for torture and death; not to mention extraordinary rendition.

In Vietnam Mai Lai was probably the tip of the iceberg.  U.S. ground forces routinely used white phosphorous grenades to incinerate entire villages.  Apparently U.S. supplied white phosphorous was used by the Israeli military in its recent massacre of civilians in Gaza.

The military leaders in Vietnam were obsessed with kill ratios.  They wanted favorable stats on the number of Viet Cong killed.  The policy handed down was as follows: if it’s dead and it’s Vietnamese, then it’s VC.  One thinks of Colombia, a U.S. client state, where U.S. trained Colombian military have gone as far as killing civilians and dressing their corpses as guerrillas in order to up the count.

Caputo points out certain ironies, that, for example, it was forbidden to execute a Viet Cong prisoner while it was legitimate to kill him at long range; that it was forbidden to use white phosphorous grenades on civilians while at the same time napalming them from the air.  He concluded that when in doubt you could always get away with killing at a distance with high tech weapons.  Today’s overall U.S. military strategy from Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan is to bombard with so-called smart weapons.  Unmanned Predator Missiles are a favorite.

In Caputo’s account we see U.S. marines growing frustrated and vengeful towards Vietnamese villagers who gave aid to the Viet Cong.  This is a natural reaction because, after all, it is the Viet Cong who are intent on killing U.S. marines.  It is what led to a number of atrocities committed against Vietnamese civilians, including children and the elderly.  A marine, of course, has been trained to the bone to take orders without question.  That he should be in Vietnam, 10,000 miles from home, fighting a guerrilla army made up of Vietnamese for the purpose of Vietnamese national liberation – this is not supposed to occur to him.  So, while the war criminals in Washington, those who put him there in the first place for reasons that have nothing to do with the fundamental interests of either the Vietnamese or the American people, act with impunity; the marine grunt finds himself turning into a desensitized and dehumanized killing machine.

The tragic and undeniable conclusion is that fundamentally no lessons were learned from the Vietnam debacle (where hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese were killed and wounded).  You do not win the “hearts and minds” of a people (much less instil democratic values and institutions) by invading a country with overpowering weaponry administered by soldiers inculcated with racist stereotypes and triumphalist attitudes.  Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, extraordinary rendition, CIA torture chambers: these are today’s atrocities.

As the song goes: “When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?”

By Maria J. Dass, The Sun Daily, Nov. 1, 2009

Former Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg, aided by Sami Al-Hajj(standing) demonstrates how he was shackled at the camp.

KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 30, 2009): The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission today heard harrowing testimonies about the atrocities committed against the Guantanamo Bay detainees, which included psychological torture and routine humiliation.

A total of seven detainees including Sudanese journalist Sami Al’Hajj, and British nationals Moazzam Begg and Rahul Ahmed testified today about the atrocities that took place in the camps including how they were shackled, stripped naked in front of female soldiers, thrown naked into makeshift cells made with barbed wires, injected with substances and subjected to mental torture to the point they hallucinated.

Begg was detained in January 2002 in Pakistan, said he was told that there was no specific reason for his arrest except for the fact that he “fit a profile”.

Continues >>

Note: I had such a hard time deciding which of these are worse than the others I finally gave up and decided not to put them in any particular order.

1. You can reverse engineer the meaning of certain Bible passages to argue that the Bible isn’t at odds with science, but unless you rewrite history, it’s obvious that teachings in the Bible have held science back in the past, and there are currently people in the world trying to use Bible passages to hold back science today. Without Christianity the world’s knowledge of science would be more than it is today. That means we would have solved more problems, people would be living longer and suffering less. That’s isn’t a trivial matter.

2. The world has tried out a lot of different kinds of governments in the past to varying degrees of success. None have failed so consistently on damn near every level as theocracy. And even if a government is secular it will still merge to some degree the major religion in the country’s moral code and the official laws of the government.

Christianity has been tried as a full blown theocracy, and it has been tried to play a minor role in establishing laws. Both methods have resulted in far more human rights abuses than steps taken advancing society. It’d done a little, but we could be a lot farther by now if we hadn’t been held back overall by Christianity.

3. Christianity likes to claim it loves everybody, but if you look at the history of Christianity you will spend an awful lot of time looking at the oppression of minorities and full blown slavery. Whenever you have a group who is supposed to be more favored by God than everybody else and everybody else is so horrible and evil that they deserve to be tortured for eternity , and especially when the central God-figure of your religion casually mentions that you should treat your slaves well…you can be sure oppression and slavery are going to come out of that. It should be no suprised that it did because it was inevitable.

4. No experiment has failed so totally and yet been held onto for so long than prayer. Somewhere out there in the world is someone praying for a starving third world child. Somewhere else out there is a starving third world child praying for some rich, SUV-driving, Starbucks drinking, Gucci purse carrying, church attending, Christian to get up off their fucking ass and do something about the problems in the world.

Prayer doesn’t work. You know what does work? Work. Go do some. You want to spend some time on your knees imagining something? Imagine this. Imagine a world in which any moment anybody in history had ever spent praying…had instead been spent getting shit done. Imagine what a clean world we’d live in.

5. A happy worker is a hardy worker. A depressed worker is too busy feeling bad about themselves to muster up the energy to work. Apply this concept on the scale of an entire nation. If the nation is happy they’re going to be working hard and looking toward preparing for the future. A depressed nation is going to mope about and spurn subcultures like Emo. They’ll be too busy working about the moment and thinking about their problems to much about it.

Well, you tell an entire nation that their righteousness is like filthy rags and they deserve to burn in Hell and they’re lucky they’re getting out of it because someone paid their debt, but now their ass belongs to the loan shark who fronted them. And nothing they do is good enough for that wonderful old man who helped them out when they were in need. Never mind the fact that they were in need because the old surly bastard kicked them out of his house and left them stranded in the streets with no clothes and no idea where you are. And when they found their way back home the old man told them they’d run away and were in trouble for it.

Aside from the fact that this has resulted in countless lost hours of productivity…that’s some harsh shit to get someone to believe. That’s child abuse. That’s immoral, and anyone who teaches people that bullshit should be shunned by society. You certainly don’t want to let your children near them.

1. Anyone who works with kids will tell you that in order to get kids to behave and have the lessons you teach them last you need to set firm rules with them that are realistic and productive. Then you have to stay firm with them but never over punish them.

Granted, there are a few common sense rules in the Bible that are good, but when take every single one of them into account you find vagueness, contradictions, absurdities, immorality idolized and morality demonized. It’s all over the place. And sometimes you’re forgiven and sometimes you’re not. And the determining factor of whether or not you’re forgiven or punished as whether or not you believe in a story. You think little kids wouldn’t exploit that loophole if those were rules in a elementary class room? Of course they would. And what would that teach them? That rules are stupid.

This causes two problems. One, people’s lives suck because their minds are all twisted and they’re living in this warped reality and the behavior patterns they think are supposed to work best keep fucking their lives up and they can’t figure out why. Two, these haphazard morals are made into civil law you start punishing innocent people who are often doing as much or more for society than people who believe in the law so strongly they never break it. You also dry up your resources chasing good people that you can’t chase all the bad people. The moral of the story is that you wouldn’t be in this pickle if you don’t base your laws on mythology.

2. Remember what I said about unconditional forgiveness based only on the condition that you believe a fairy tale? Let’s explore this in a little more detail. If you firmly believe that the threat of the death penalty is strong enough to dissuade people from breaking the law then you had better believe that the promise of unconditional release and immunity is strong enough to entice people into breaking the law. Christian doctrine creates an environment that encourages (or at least excuses) inhumane behavior.

3. Christianity places subservience as one of its top (if not the top) virtue/s. This is great for a nation if you want everyone to be slaves. This is terribly bad for a nation that wants to progress and grow uniformly strong. If you want a nation to excel you need to teach your children that genius is the highest virtue. A society raised on those values will create beauty you could never imagine possible. But we haven’t done that. We’ve taught people they’d dogs who deserve to be beaten. It should be no surprise that every night on the news are stories about people acting like beaten dogs and tearing each others faces off.

4.On a similar note, teaching people that faith is better than doubt cuts to the very heart of humanity’s potential. Every advancement we’ve made in science, government, economics, the humanities, etc. were achieved through the scientific use of doubt. Ignorance is the root of all evil, and knowledge is the root of all virtue. Telling people they have to stay dumb or you’ll beat them is the worst way imaginable to try to create a thriving community.

5. Someone once said you can judge a society by its criminals. What’s that say about America that we place the clergy on such a high pedestal.

Imagine if the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster stopped paying taxes and when the tax man showed up they claimed religious exemption. They’d be thrown in jail for tax evasion and labeled as con men. Well, all religion is mythology. That means every member of the clergy is a con man whether they realize it or not.

Imagine if all the money that any mafia or gang in America had ever made had actually been put to good use in society. Now imagine that times a million. That’s what would have happened if we hadn’t been handing over our money to the religious mafia all these years.

6. Teaching people that they shouldn’t enjoy themselves and that if they do enjoy themselves they should feel deeply, cripplingly guilty about it…

hurts them worse than if you’d just outright beat them. At least those wounds would heal.

So if you don’t like the way Kim Jong Il, Stalin, Hitler, or Saddam Hussein treated his people you should be furious with the pope, Billy Graham, or anyone else who preaches religion.

Samantha Power on the evolving nature of the response of the US government and US citizens to mass atrocities such as genocides.

The second part of the video is about Sergio Vieira de Mello.

Other posts on caring for what happens in the world and doing something about it, are here, here, here and here. More on international intervention, humanitarian intervention and peacekeeping.  More on genocide. More human rights videos.

Why is there no outrage about war criminals living among us, asks Gideon Boas… From The Australian. Full story

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Over the last several months, three bills have been introduced addressing the gun registry (C-301, S-5, C-391).  Each of these has been met with opposition so vehement, that I’ve been left scratching my head.

Time and again, the same tired arguments are trotted out by the Gun Control Lobby.  Time and again, those arguments are proven to be inaccurate or just plain wrong.  Yet they continue to repeat them ad nauseum at every available opportunity.

This leaves me with more questions than answers. 

• Where is this irrational fear and hatred of a simple object coming from?
• Why does the anti-gun crowd cling so desperately to the same clichéd opinions when there is no evidence to support them?
• Why do they think that because they are offended by something, that someone else should be forced to change?
• Why don’t they see anything wrong with the government taking away people’s basic human rights in the name of “public safety”?
• What gives them the right to project their fears and insecurities onto 7 million law-abiding citizens?

 And most importantly, and most disturbing for me 

• Is all of this vitriol really about guns?

You see I can’t help but wonder: why all this noise?  Why this big global push for civilian disarmament?  No doubt, many of the “boots on the ground” naively tow the party line (this blogger immediately comes to mind) and truly believe that an unarmed populace would be safer.  But I find it impossible to fathom that the people running the show have such pure intentions.

Anyone with even the most limited knowledge of history is aware of the atrocities that humans have visited upon one other throughout time.  Before the gun, it was the sword, and the spear, and sticks, and stones, and bare hands.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the cause of violence isn’t the tool being used, but rather the person who is wielding it.

So what’s really going on?  Is all of this clamouring over guns really as superficial as the public has been led to believe?  Or is it merely a distraction, an entertainment, to keep us occupied while something else is being orchestrated in the wings?  Or scarier still, is this all part of a larger Orwellian scheme to disempower the people as governments and corporations insidiously worm their way further into our private lives?

I have no idea who coined this phrase, but it has been attributed to Benjamin Franklin:

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”

Whoever said it, I can’t say that I disagree.  Because when only the military and the police are armed, the people don’t stand a chance.

West African states order an arms embargo on Guinea over the mass shooting of opposition supporters last month…. From BBC News. Full story

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I was walking past a sidewalk sale in Fort Greene recently when I spotted a couple of yellowed copies of Architectural Digest, one from 1979 and the other from 1981. For 25 cents a piece, I had to have them. I thought, oh for sure there will be some inspiration to be had on these venerable pages…holy cow! I still can’t believe what I found. Not only is it some of the decor unfairly atrocious, it’s also some of the worst photography ever published. Just try to count how many giant plants are blocking the frame or casting lurid shadows on the coldly lit walls. And tell me, were lamps really so out of fashion then? Were we only allowed to use track lighting?

The only thing that stemmed the flow of blood from my poor offended eyes was the ads, which are flat-out hilarious.

Out of all the photos, they choose the one with wrinkly sofa cushions and a lavender bed sheet curtain??

Does this room have walls?

Flinstones, meet the Flinstones.

The photographer was like a cat who wouldn’t leave the house plants alone.

Mmm, this cozy living area makes me want nothing more than to light some bodega candles and curl up with a good book.

Ethel Merman’s house. She has matching drapes.

I think there needs to be a revival of ads with article-length text.

There are no words.

GUATEMALA CITY – Tens of thousands of indigenous people took to the streets across Latin America on Monday to protest the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s 1492 discovery of the Americas.

A Guatemalan native cries over the death of a demontrator in Guatemala City protesting against the celebration of Columbus Day, in Guatemala City, October 12

Columbus Day is celebrated as the Day of Hispanic Heritage in Latin America, but protesters marked the holiday as a reminder of the atrocities Spanish conquistadors wrought on indigenous people throughout the region.

In Guatemala City, 19-year-old demonstrator Imer Boror was killed and two were wounded as Maya Indians blocked entry points into the capital to protest their government’s mining policies.

Protesters were marching on what they called the Day of Dignity and Resistance of the Indian People, protest leader Juana Mulul told AFP, saying the movement “is purely in defense of Mother Earth and our territory.”

In a gesture toward reconciliation with indigenous groups, a special roundtable appointed by President Alvaro Colom after the incident was to meet with 14 poor farmers late Monday to discuss their demands.

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