trumanitarianmission

Hitler the politician was right that a rapturous sense of catastrophic time creates the potential for radical action. When an apocalypse is on the horizon, waiting for scientific solutions seems senseless, struggle seems natural and demagogues of blood and soil come to the fore.

Full article:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/16/hitlers-world-may-not-be-so-far-away

As Hitler demonstrated, humans are able to portray a looming crisis in such a way as to justify drastic measures in the present. Under enough stress, or with enough skill, politicians can effect the conflations Hitler pioneered: between nature and politics, between ecosystem and household, between need and desire. A global problem that seems otherwise insoluble can be blamed upon a specific group of human beings.

Aaah, well…I’m just going to sit on me porch, drink some beers and observe the impending doom to the back drop of some real old rock and roll…

listening to the Ashes on BBC Radio 5 live Xtra

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/cricket/32809781

Some of the banter between the commentators remind me of Cook and Moore without the vulgarity and with the cricket.  Very entertaining chit chat.  Persuaded me to buy a digital radio to plonk in he kitchen to catch up on this next time.

Certain remarks of mine to an Italian journalist have been widely misrepresented in the UK press, and on various websites. Contrary to reports, my remarks were not about Islam, but about Islamism – perhaps ‘extremism’ would be a better term. I grew up in a Muslim country – Libya – and have only warm memories of a dignified, tolerant and hospitable Islamic culture. I was referring in my interview to a tiny minority who preach violent jihad, who incite hatred and violence against ‘infidels’, apostates, Jews and homosexuals; who in their speeches and on their websites speak passionately against free thought, pluralism, democracy, unveiled women; who will tolerate no other interpretation of Islam but their own and have vilified Sufism and other strands of Islam as apostasy; who have murdered, among others, fellow Muslims by the thousands in the market places of Iraq, Algeria and in the Sudan. Countless Islamic writers, journalists and religious authorities have expressed their disgust at this extremist violence. To speak against such things is hardly ‘astonishing’ on my part (Independent on Sunday) or original, nor is it ‘Islamophobic‘ and ‘right wing’ as one official of the Muslim Council of Britain insists, and nor is it to endorse the failures and brutalities of US foreign policy. It is merely to invoke a common humanity which I hope would be shared by all religions as well as all non-believers.

Ian McEwan, June 2008

http://ian-mcewan.blogspot.co.uk/2008_06_01_archive.html

Without trying to set up more rigid dogma, here are some thoughts from the British Humanist website which I wholeheartedly agree with:

Humanists think for themselves about what is right and wrong, based on reason and respect for others.

Humanists find meaning, beauty, and joy in the one life we have, without the need for an afterlife.

Humanists look to science instead of religion as the best way to discover and understand the world.

Humanists believe people can use empathy and compassion to make the world a better place for everyone.

On Atheists:

“There is no need for us to gather every day, or every seven days, or on any high or auspicious day, to proclaim our rectitude or to grovel and wallow in our unworthiness.  We atheists do not require any priests, or any hierarchy above them, to police our doctrine.  Sacrifices and ceremonies are abhorrent to us, as are relics and the worship of any images or objects (even including objects in the form of one of man’s most useful innovations: the bound book).  To us no spot on earth is or could be “holier” than another: to the ostentatious absurdity of the pilgrimage, or the plain horror of killing civilians in the name of some sacred wall or cave or shrine or rock, we can counterpose a leisurely or urgent walk from one side of the library or the gallery to another, or to lunch with an agreeable friend, in pursuit of truth or beauty.  Some of these excursions to the bookshelf or the lunch or the gallery will obviously, if they are serious, bring us into contact with belief and believers, from the great devotional painters and composers to the works of Augustine, Aquinas, Maimonides, and Newman.  These mighty scholars may have written many evil things or many foolish things, and been laughably ignorant of the germ theory of disease or the place of the terrestrial globe in the solar system, let alone the universe, and this is the plain reason why there are no more of them today, and why there will be no more of them tomorrow.  Religion spoke its last intelligible or noble or inspiring words a long time ago; either that or it mutated into an admirable but nebulous humanism, as did, say, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a brave Lutheran pastor hanged by the Nazis for his refusal to collude with them.  We shall have no more prophets or sages from the ancient quarter, which is why the devotions of today are only echoing repetitions of yesterday, sometimes ratcheted up to screaming point so as to ward off the terrible emptiness.“

C. Hitchens, God is not great, (New York, Atlantic, 2007), p.7.

were built like this.

I had to titter out loud watching Madonna get yanked off her step performing what can only be described as a lady gaga-esque catch-up; a pretentious bit of over-elaborate costume and stage design, intended to deflect criticism of a waning voice, a waning “star” and a tired and dull jingle.

Let us remind ourselves of the days when Stars were awesome fuckers!

I use Mr Harris as my profile photo because he was a force of nature, like the Burton!  I like looking at the age-weary face, inscrutable and yet intimidating.  You just know that fag is going all the way down to the filter.

If it makes my gay dog any gayer then I better not give her any!

That’s all we need.  Free Speech Forever!

Imagine there’s no heaven*
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too ….fuck yeah!

* it’s not an imagining at all, merely a rational thought.

N.B. (To self) Remember that having rational thoughts or merely exercising my civil liberty of freedom of speech can get me shot or blown up.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/disgruntled-rbs-worker-writes-hilarious-open-letter-to-russell-brand-after-anticapitalist-publicity-stunt-leaves-him-hungry-9930135.html

I can’t stand the aggressive, bullying, rich, fake-southern twat!

Also, when you watch http://www.channel4.com/programmes/steph-and-dom-meet-nigel-farage

you realise that Nigel Farage is an utter cretin!  How could anyone vote for that oily snake?