nakedemperor

Recently there has seen a rash of religious posting. I have noticed that there are not a few who find this objectionable. Personally, I feel like they are inane and irrelevant, sometimes I play with them sometimes I just laugh at them. But it is interesting that we see people using religious beliefs to make arguments about politics. It appears there is a considerable number of people in this country who would like to see the US become a Theocracy. And I do wonder if to some extent the US is a Theocracy, I can’t recall any President being elected who didn’t believe in Jesus. Some more extreme in their beliefs than others but all claim to be xtian.  

Can religion be kept out of politics? I’m not so sure. The vast majority of the world has a deity. Now if these people actually believe that their god is real then I suspect they feel it is incumbent on them to attempt to make their world and their respective governments in a fashion that is pleasing to their god.

   Being a dyed in the wool atheist, this trend is a little disturbing to me. I feel very much surrounded by people with beliefs that seem to me to be one step away from schizophrenia. I mean these people have invisible friends that they talk to and many feel their invisible friend answers them. They believe in disembodied spirits, the devil, miracles and Armageddon. These beliefs are irrational and no one can achieve national office with out claiming acceptance of the basic Christian tenants or at least not in my life time so far. I guess I would be less disturbed about what I consider wide spread irrationality if people had the good sense to keep it to themselves, but when people feel no shame about espousing ideas that are entirely irrational, it makes me wonder, just how far can this irrationality go, and then I look at the state of the world and US actions in the world and I get some idea how far it can go. 

 It’s about time for humanity to grow up and realize that religion is an evolutionary phenomenon and that god stories are culturally based stories and that none of the god stories are real but rather they are mans feeble attempt to deal with a mysterious universe, the complexity of consciousness and fear of mortality. Just the idea of god is so HUGE that for a human to attempt to explain god is amazingly arrogant and ignorant. But that’s a funny thing about ignorance it is usually accompanied by arrogance.

Today Democracy Now devoted the entire hour to a recent talk by Noam Chomsky. It’s an interesting hour and filled with facts about everything from Haiti to Afghanistan. Since I think the time spent reading my blog today would be better spent listening to Professor Chomsky I will simply post the link and shut the hell up. http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/3/noam_chomsky_on_crisis_and_hope  

President Obama is not willing to legally define the recent coup in Honduras as a coup. Apparently it is something that looks very much like a coup but doesn’t require the suspension of US aid. Hmm WTF Mr. Obama. A spade is a mutha fuckin spade, when the military takes the president out of office at gun point that’s a mutha fuckin coup. Why doesn’t Obama want to call it a coup, officially? Why doesn’t he want to cut off support to those who made this coup?

When the US legally defines an action as a coup in a democratic” country it is legally incumbent on them to suspend all US aid. But by dodging the coup bullet Obama can continue aid and just suspend military cooperation. These are some strange word games. The President of Honduras intends to return to his country and is being threatened with arrest. He plans to take the OAS president and 2 national presidents from Latin America with him. The outcome should be interesting.

 For some time the US has had most of Latin America in check but the times they are a changing.  We now see leaders willing to speak truth to power, leaders willing to resist US/IMF/WB domination and do what they think best for their country. The threat of a good example is increasing and the puppet masters in Washington are slowly loosing control.  

Nietzsche may have been wrong. There sure are a lot of people who have an invisible Daddy who lives in the sky. I do however think we would be better off if he had been correct in the assessment that “god is dead”.  God’s God’s role in geopolitics is a very destabilizing thing. We have a US leadership that can’t get elected if they don’t profess to be Christian and we have our world’s energy resources’ in the hands of relatively fundamentalist Muslims. 

  That said I would like to examine a bit of history, just a bit.

When the Soviets were fighting in Afghanistan the US leadership was supporting Bin Laden and his network and using the ISI (Pakistani Intelligence) as a go between. Then after the Soviet defeat we saw Bin Laden and Saddam Husain fall from grace in the eyes of Washington. Yet ISI and Pakistan remain important players in Washington’s efforts in Afghanistan. The US forces in Iraq facilitate the destruction of Sunni power which plays right into the hand of Iran and fundamentalist throughout the “Muslim” world. And we continually see Washington posturing to attack Iran. WTF OVER? Washington’s actions in Iraq dramatically enhanced Iran’s influence in the region.

Now maybe our so called leaders just have their heads up their asses or maybe they are still using fundamentalist believers to facilitate their hegemonic aspirations. But either way it seems both domestically and internationally the god factor is a threat to us all. When people think they know what “god” wants they are willing to do some pretty fucked up shit. Ya wanna have beliefs about god… Fine … But understand it’s just what you believe, you don’t KNOW anything about god. And for my money god is a fairy tale that is effectively used to control otherwise intelligent men and use them for unscrupulous purposes.

Almost every time I hear people speak of “Anarchism”, I have no Idea what they are talking about. And whats worse is I fancy myself to be a bit of an Anarchist. I ran across this video of Noam Chomsky explaining “Anarchism” an finally someone else was talking about what I thought about as regards “Anarchism”. Professor Chomsky has taught me plenty over the years and while I don’t always agree with everything he says I have HUGE respect for his opinions. At the link below you will find an explination of “Anarchism” by professor Chomsky that actually gives deffinition to the term “Anarchism” yet doesn’t frame it in dogmatic ideology. If ya got a few minutes check it out!

Peace

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G6kf7XM9Nk

For too long people have attempted to discredit positions on issues by labeling them with a derogatory “ism”, rather than simply argue the issue on its merritts. Isims are vague and ill-defined, the only person who knows what an ism means is the one who is defining it, isms are a way to pigeon hole ideas and not have to address what the ideas actually equate to, we can do better. Given the loose definitions of “socialism”, “capitalism” and “nationalism” there is not a nation on earth that is not a mixed economy, none of them are defined by any specific ism they are defined by the class interests within the country in question. Fuck all this ism’s bullshit. We can put away the rose tinted glasses that define our views and look with the naked eye at questions confronting us, truth knows no ism and isms know no truth.

“We sick an’ tired of-a your ism-skism game -
Dyin’ ‘n’ goin’ to heaven in-a Jesus’ name, Lord.
We know when we understand:
Almighty God is a living man.
You can fool some people sometimes,
But you can’t fool all the people all the time.
So now we see the light (What you gonna do?),
We gonna stand up for our rights!”

Bob Marley revolutionary poet extraordinaire

 Carl Boggs throws cold water on the so called liberals who want to pretend that Bush’s crimes are unique to his administration. Torture has been applied for years maybe its time for some of these liberal pundants to do a little history homework.

http://www.counterpunch.org/boggs06172009.html

Seems to me. . . There is some truth in the Buddhist axiom that the only thing you can do for anyone else is to make yourself a better person. . . Yet it only seems. I honestly don’t know shit. But it seems to me that the world is a violent and dangerous place. But strangely enough, I am not afraid, I am just curious. And experience has taught me that what makes me feel best is relieving suffering weather its my own suffering or someone else’s. Now I think the only thing I can identify that is important is how ya feel inside. Well, what a wonderful evolutionary compliment that humans should feel good about relieving suffering. Hmm but we also like to kill. . . hmm my but aren’t we the complex beings. . . but if there is a such thing as being a better person, I think it has something to do with compassionate action. . . Shoots that’s a tough standard I mean a new Benz would make me feel good but I don’t know how I could compare that feeling to feeding a hungry child. NOT EVEN CLOSE. I don’t think my perception is unique. But will humanity succumb to their baser instincts or will we use our evolutionary complements to control our future. I once heard a story about a country in Latin America where traditionally the poor would come to the houses of the wealthy at Christmas and the well to do would give presents to the poor children. This particular night when the needy arrived, the child of the house went and got some old toy to give to the poor kid at his door. The wealthy child’s father told him “No”, go get your favorite toy. After a good deal of child negotiations the boy reluctantly went and got his favorite toy. The father instructed the reluctant boy to go give his toy away. The boy went to the door and returned to the father in great excitement and ask the father “Can we do that again!”. Hmm could be just a story. But I think it does illustrates something inside all of us. (well with the exception of the severely psychotic and sociopathic; like Dick Cheney).

This in a nutshell is why I think we as a species must reject war and violence as a means of international conflict resolution. It is our capacity as compassionate beings that can insure our survival. Yes we are good at killing and yes clan/nationalist/tribal behavior has helped insure the survival of our species. But environments change and species who do not adapt, go away. Humans have an innate compassion as much as they have an innate need to dominate and defend themselves in groups, i.e. “us” and ”them”. But in a global community we are all us and since we have the ability to exterminate all of “us” we are all, all of us. Rise above, resist violence, resist support of violence. The late great comedian Bill Hicks once said there are only two choices “fear” and “love”. Choose love my brothers and sisters because fear can get our monkey asses killed. And the more of us who refuse to buy into fear the less killing and war we will all have to experience. And if we as a species can rise above all this SHIT the world is mired in, we can only do it on an individual basis, we cant wait for the Iranians to do it, we cant wait for al-Qaeda to do it, we got to do it our-self first. I think its called living by example. It damn sure ain’t easy, but humans have done plenty shit that ain’t easy. Aim high and keep your eyes on the prize. Because a “better world” ain’t up to the Iranians or Obama or the N. Koreans; its up to me and you, I’ll do what I can, I can only hope you got my back.

Peace 

Many people may not know Ricky Ross but he is a legend in his own time. Thanx to the CIA and the Contra leaders. Ross is someone who may not have made the radar of the average American but his story is truly fascinating. The late Gary Web is the man who initially gave us Ricky Ross’s story and what a story it is, drug dealing the CIA, and the beginning of the crack story. If you don’t know about Mr. Ross I encourage you to learn about him, Gary Webb’s book “Dark Alliance” is a good place to get some details but I will provide a couple links one is his blog. Ross recently got out of prison so now we can hear his voice and just maybe the brother has something to say. I don’t know I just found his site tonight but I have know about his story for years and what a story it is, check it out. His story shows just how useful drugs can be in funding wars.

Welcome back to the outside Ricky. Good luck to you.  

 http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200906/1243881382.html

Ricky’s blog site; http://freewayenterprise.blogspot.com/