The End is Coming (and other cynical musings)

We've moved!

2009-07-26T13:58:00.003-05:00

On to bigger and brighter things for the end. The blog will now take on a bi-weekly mandate na contains many more features to mess around with.

See you soon at www.endiscomingblog.com

End.

A voice that lives on in History

2009-07-18T09:40:00.005-05:00

July 17th, 2009 – Reporter, journalist, news anchor and personal hero of mine, Walter Cronkite has passed away at the age of 92. It is not necessary to find historical parallels between his career and others because he simply has become part of history. He was there to relate to us great events throughout the twentieth century first on news print, then on radio and eventually on television. Having the ear of millions, he was the voice of information for many decades and here, I remember his life as the voice of history through the extraordinary events he avidly, professionally and passionately covered.

Following his sports journalism in the thirties, Cronkite joined the United Press in the hopes of covering World War 2 and making a name for himself as Murrow would do in the London BBC offices covering the bombings of London itself or as Grossman would do for Soviet newspapers by reporting events of the Eastern front from Stalingrad. Greatly distinguishing himself, Cronkite was allowed to join a bombing run over Germany, to parachute down with the 101^st to cover the battle of the bulge and was even assigned to cover the Nuremburg trials of accused Nazi leaders in 1945-46.

He followed a brilliant war-time career with a permanent position at CBS in America. He was to be a late night news reporter but once again, his kindly demeanour and attention to factual detail brought him to the 1952 presidential campaign. After the victory of General Eisenhower and Cronkite’s brilliant coverage, CBS would have no choice but to keep Cronkite as the senior election correspondent for decades to come.

Garnering an array of ever more important shows and responsibilities, he was given the CBS evening news, the first such program in America on which he served from 1962 to 1981. It was here that he became an information superstar and was to champion the highest rated news program for most of his anchorship. Firstly in November of 1963, he was the mellow voice that tragically announced: “In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting”. He also kept us at the edge of our seats when Khruschev was amassing a nuclear arsenal in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He then upped the ante once again in 1969 and then again in 1970; he was the one to show us Apollo 11’s “One small step for [a] man. One giant leap for mankind” and Apollo 13’s gutwrenching “Houston, we have a problem”.

Opinions despite journalism

Further on, he became a more controversial figure. Keeping in mind he had the ear of Middle America, even president Johnson accepted popular defeat when Cronkite suggested that the Vietnam War was unwinnable. He remained a beloved figure or “uncle Cronkite” as people called him but was also seen as a pinko and communist sympathiser by some. History would prove his assessment of that war quite correct. He fell into further disfavour with high-powered circles when divulging and promoting the importance of the Watergate scandal in 1974; affair that would bring about the downfall of President Nixon.

In his retirement, Cronkite slowly became canonised as a legend of journalism and of the information world as well as an integral part of our conflicted 20^th century history. He would also occasionally return to print, to the microphone or online interviewing Margaret Thatcher in the 1983 British elections, providing voice-overs for the movie Apollo 13 in 1995 and in 2006, he was even blogging for the Huffington Post, calling for a withdrawal from Iraq.

His CBS chair was succeeded by Dan Rather (no slouch himself) and then Katie Couric but it will always be Walter Cronkite’s chair. He was the great witness and we will remember him as the soundtrack to the twentieth century’s events.

(Pictured: Middle row, second from left, Cronkite at Nuremburg reports on Herman Goering's arrogance - Cronkite is in Cape Canaveral speaking directly to Armstrong and Aldrin in Apollo 11 - Even in his later years, Cronkite insisted on reporting the Vietnam war as it happened.)

End.

Life Vs. Legacy

2009-07-10T12:23:00.004-05:00

July 10th, 2009 – Since all world news services just won’t stop talking about Michael Jackson and since Google is commemorating a birthday with their logo today, this blog entry will celebrate the life of Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943). Well-known, cherished and admired by some, he remains little-known by the public due to his eccentricities and due to defamation by his principal rival and contemporary fellow scientist, Thomas Edison.

Edison was a highly intelligent man and his mental capacity applied to much more than science. Intimidation, blackmail, extortion and plain theft led to this man accumulating over 1000 patents in his lifetime, from the lightbulb blueprints he forced someone else to sell him to the breakthroughs in electricity he directly stole from Tesla by having his laboratory raided.

Both Edison and Tesla gained respect and lucrative contracts in America at the turn of last century but whereas Edison turned his profit into more profit, Tesla ruined himself with increasingly bizarre experiments, some of which would eventually revolutionise the fields of magnetism and electricity and indeed usher in the second industrial revolution of mechanisation. In fact, our old television sets still use Tesla coils in them to regulate the image and Tesla, while working for Westinghouse, developed AC or Alternating current, the form of electricity still used by most of the world as a safe means of powering our homes. AC was deemed safer than DC or direct current (without any surge control) that Edison was pushing and eventually, Tesla’s undeniable testing results proved the preferable viability of AC.

Surprisingly, most of your day is made possible by this unknown Serb. It should be noted that Edison did not give up discrediting Tesla and AC at this point. In fact, he strapped copper sandals to an elephant in New York and proceeded to electrocute him using AC (the elephant had been sentenced to death for killing his trainer). The specific intent of this stunt was lost on the public because they still opted for Tesla’s admittedly safer electricity. Edison’s innovative euthanasia of the pachyderm only led him to patent another invention, a truly original one this time, the electric chair was commissioned by the American gouvernment for prisoner executions.

Never satisfied with fame or fortune, Tesla became increasingly reclusive in his old age, isolating himself in laboratories full of electric coils (the kind that shoot bolts of lightning 10 meters out of a chrome disk). Sitting amongst active lightning said it stimulated the thought process. Despite his status as a renowned “mad scientist” by this point, he was posthumously assigned the invention of the modern radio, of magnetic measurement scales, of robotic designs and of nuclear theories as well as his electric contribution.

Nikola Tesla died penniless and ridiculed yet we remember him today as an eccentric scientist whom virtuously gave up all personal ambition in the name of science, science from which we all benefit today.

(A charmingly eccentric Nikola Tesla - Don't let the "old-man" aspect of Thomas Edison fool you; he was a worse crook than Al Capone.)

Our Cherished Trainwrecks

2009-06-27T13:27:00.006-05:00

June 25th, 2009 – Famous peoples Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon and Michael Jackson have died, arguably before their time. As you may have heard from the non-stop 24-hour coverage on CNN, music networks, MSNBC, Foxnews, Late-night shows, the BBC and even weather and sports channels, Jackson was a music icon, an entertainment superstar and one of the most noticed human beings in history. As you may also have heard nowhere, Farrah Fawcett lost a battle with cancer a few hours before that and Ed McMahon died of old age a few days prior.

I am pleasantly surprised that the news coverage of the King’s death did not follow the usual pattern of canonisation as a paragon of virtuous living. Molestation charges, a Peter Pan complex, hair catching on fire, an extravagant and ruinous lifestyle, a dysfunctional family, the baby dangling, Bobo the monkey, Elisabeth Taylor, Elephant Man bones, rhinestone gloves and facial features changing over the years just as a marbled ice-cream cone left out in the sun have all been extensively covered to fill the dozens of hours retelling us what we already knew. Nevertheless, hundreds of people are remembering the Thriller by standing around the Apollo theatre where he once performed, beside his star on the Hollywood walk of fame or around the O2 arena in London where MJ’s death marks the cancellation of his 50 scheduled shows that were to take place in the next year, aiming to refinance his bankrupt estate.

All in all, say it good or say it bad, Michael Jackson has been in all of our lives, whether we wanted it or not, for decades. Consequentially, respect must be paid to the memory of an extravagant, cherished, pitied, spited and wholly bizarre man.

On the other hand, Farrah Fawcett was once on a TV show, inspired international arousal through posters and finally succumbed to medication abuse and general craziness, much like McMahon. These unfortunate celebrities missed their last attempt at a post-mortem comeback through simple bad timing.

Looking back on the entertainment industry, rarely has such a person sparked so much interest, I reiterate good and bad, from so many. Millions remember the influence and participation of these artists in their lives as much as a particularly good teacher or a nice aunt with that weird chin hair. It happens rarely, but certainly once in a while, there is a discernible pattern...

Power corrupts...

In 1980, as the Cold War was limping to an end and as AIDS and fluorescent spandex were just around the corner, John Lennon was tragically shot and killed in New York. As with MJ’s death, thousands flocked to the hospital where Lennon was being kept and to landmark spots where the Beatles and Lennon had shared life with the masses. There was also excessive media response here as everyone who ever met or saw him were interviewed. The bizarreness factor also followed as Paul McCartney declared his former colleague’s death “a drag” and Yoko Ono randomly decided not to hold a funeral.

Three years before, in an eerie foreshadowing of Jackson’s career and downfall, another “King” of music had long left behind a life of unlimited earnings, record-shattering sales and a slow decline into strange habits and a body churned through a fun-house mirror. Elvis Presley died of a heart attack at the age of 42 following years of medication abuse and a diet that would clog the arteries of a Chevy. To this day, unconditional fans continue to mourn the passing of the hip-swinging, crooning, bacon-and-banana-sandwich-eating entertainer. A final link between the kings and another nail in the coffin of Bizarre was Jackson’s short-lived marriage to Elvis’ daughter, a marriage that, as allegedly intended, ended all rumours of asexuality, inappropriate relationships with children and “weird” qualities in the artist until his death this week.

Finally, the strange rise and fall of cherished and loathed artists can go as far back as 1791. Sex, drugs and classical symphonies were staples in the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A child prodigy himself, he reached the peak of his career in his teenage years and had rapidly jumped from infancy to adulated debauchery, entirely skipping childhood. At 35 years old following unparalleled fame in the great courts of Europe, he succumbed to an undiagnosed illness (massive swelling, vomiting and the like) leaving astronomical debt due to his extravagant and clearly unhealthy lifestyle.

Mozart, Elvis, Lennon and Jackson are four artists whom stand above the others as outstanding musicians but especially as odd characters whom everyone loved to critique, love and hate. There will surely be another trainwreck along in the next few decades to entertain us and then to make us feel better about ourselves. The King is dead, long live the King.

(and bummer again to Fawcett and McMahon)

(Pictured: Mozart was greatly pressured by his father to perform and bring in the money - Photos of "Later" Elvis are hard to come by - Michael Jackson as we would like to remember him, in 1984.)

End.

A New Iran for Better or for Worse?

2009-06-12T10:46:00.002-05:00

June 12th, 2009 – 42,5 million Iranians are voting today; a record turnout has already been announced by the central Teheran gouvernment as well as by the myriad of international news agencies and democracy watch groups attending. The incumbent candidate, President Mahmoud Amadinejad, is seeking a second term with a conservative, hard-line Islam platform. This election would not be so interesting if there wasn’t an important contender with a real chance to win and a promise for great change. Candidate and former Prime Minister of Iran Mir Hossein Mousavi aims not only to eliminate gouvernment corruption and economic difficulties (we will see) but also to reform the Islamic state itself.

Primarily, Mousavi has promised the elimination of gouvernment-sanctioned discrimination and inequality towards women. Concretely, he wishes to overturn strict Islamic dress code requiring the concealing Hijab robe, to democratize education for them and to provide equal judicial rights on par with male Iranians. Finally, and most surprisingly, he wishes to abolish the institution of Iranian “morality police” whose job has been to imprison, whip and humiliate any woman who infringes the dress code or acts “unwomanly”.

Needless to say, the past weeks have seen massive (and when the Middle-East says massive they mean hundreds of thousands and up) demonstrations by women, students and generally the youth of the country for a new gouvernment that would do away with the archaic traditions of the past. Astonishing me still was a statement by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, technically the Iranian theocratic “Supreme Leader”, saying “I recommend them to just vote based on their own views and decisions”. This is surely a strange yet encouraging endorsement of democracy by one of the world’s last remaining religious head of state. On the other hand, president Amadinejad is not so fond of the concept and has tried to get the elections postponed or even cancelled, accusing his opponent of conspiring with Israelis to falsify documents and graphs to discredit him (I also have strange suspicions that the Israelis are responsible for the constant disgusting weather I’ve been having at home).

Don’t get me wrong, Iran is still far from being a free democracy; the Ayatollah, his Guardian Council and the President all retain an ultimate right to veto anything but this is a novel step in a radical direction for seemingly such a stable conservative and unified Muslim nation. I use the term “seemingly” because this is a country that can pop a revolution out of nowhere and completely change their situation if need arises.

Change changes everything...for about a week

Indeed until 1978-89, Iran was rooted in its rich heritage of Antique Persian and Greek monarchy and was thus administered by a Shah (King). Wasting away the country’s economy through sumptuous banquets, he entertained all western leaders to which he was fervently allied. Having had enough, the religious leaders of Iran, championed by the Ayatollah Khomeini, took to the streets by millions and forced the last Shah into exile. Then, by popular referendum, the country was declared an Islamic republic under the theocratic leadership of the Ayatollah that would no longer take sides in the Cold War. 1 year is all it took for a drastic and world-changing revolution. In fact, the western world had paid little attention to the Middle-East until then; now, I could argue it has been the central focus of international attention for almost a decade.

With the revolution, social freedoms were guaranteed, the Koran was applied to the administration of the country and a new Golden age was ushered; this was not necessarily so in practice. Whereas healthcare became affordable, literacy rates skyrocketed due to the obligatory reading of the Koran and standards of living steadily rose, women’s right were greatly reduced and a certain police state emerged enforcing a strict code of morality that, in some ways, became more oppressive that the old monarchy. This dichotomy combined with the time passed since the Iranian revolution have left kids finding it “impossible to understand what their parent were so passionate about”.

All in all, the election is not won yet for Mr. Mousavi yet on his shoulders lies a great burden of change along with a national historical memory of the pros and cons of past change.

(Pictured: Ayatollah Khomeini returns from exile and takes the helm of the country in 1979 - Amadinejad dosen't look like the type that would take defeat very well.)

End.

"Castaway" would never happen

2009-06-05T08:41:00.006-05:00

June 6th, 2009 – Air France flight 447 left Rio de Janeiro on May 31st, but never made it to its Parisian destination via Senegal. Instead, freak weather conditions downed the plain approximately 1,100 km off the coast of Brazil, a rough estimate at best. The official responses from implicated airports, Air France and the Brazilian gouvernment were unsurprising, we will hope for the best as we send out waves of reconnaissance crafts and rescue helicopters but there is very little chance anyone survived a 10 km high crash into the middle of the Atlantic. This stark reminder of airplane crashes’ universal fatality was then promptly forgotten by mainstream media in favour of some more wildly ridiculous false hope.

Throughout the week, more and more search vehicles were sent and news reports gave us the hopeful trail of radio signals, suspicious oil slicks and random debris. To say this is a needle in a haystack search is misleading; consider that the plane could be anywhere in a hundred kilometer radius and then consider that it can be anywhere down into a third dimension, hiding as far as 6 km on a dark and jagged seabed. Finally on June 5th, we were told some hard evidence pointed to the aquatic crash site, some floating debris. We all imagined a turbine or some fuselage boasting “447” on the side waiting to give up a black box and some perfectly preserved corpses waiting for a decent burial. Fast forward to today, June 6th, we are finally shown this “debris” and unfortunately told it did not come from the flight in question. And yes, this picture below is actually the crucial evidence they had, a non-descript wooden palette.

The media still holds out hope and pushes it onto the voyeuristic masses meanwhile any scientist could tell them that we probably won’t find anything this century. In fact, there are only 3 vehicles on this planet (all unmanned) that could even take a flashlight down to the seabed to painstakingly scrounge around for the plane (or pieces of it) crawling along like an old lady looking for her dentures in the dark…but instead of a bathroom counter it’s a few dozen football fields.

Forget about it

When thinking of downed crafts and recoveries, people may instantly evoke the “Titanic” find in the XXth century by James Cameron (or whatever). It must be said that this ship took decades to even find and it was in relatively shallow and clear water. A more appropriate parallel can coincidentally be found in the obscure pages of this week’s news.

In 2007, an American “deep sea treasure-hunting company” (no, I didn’t make that up) discovered the remains of the Mercedes, a Spanish naval frigate shipwrecked in 1804. Although buried in centuries of sediment and under a few kilometers of Atlantic Ocean, the Company followed ancient maps and investigative reports to forage around the seabed. With an incredible amount of luck, they fell upon what they were looking for as well as a bonus 500,000 Spanish gold and silver coins in the hull. The reason why it was in the news this week is that a US judge slapped the Company on the wrist and ordered them to return the Spanish ship and Spanish money to Spain (they will surely appeal under the US constitutional law of “finders keepers, losers weepers).

The first point here is that, despite great technological advances, the seafloor reaches down two kilometers further than Everest is high, we barely know how to even get there. We have built a few machines that can do the equivalent of scoop up sand with a colourful plastic beach shovel but we are extremely far from being able to survey anything down there at 1500 times the pressure we have at sea level. The second subsequent point then becomes that news services dishing out false hope (and as you have seen the word FALSE should be in meter-tall red letters) are just thoughtless little piggies cashing in on the misery of others and appealing to the darkest voyeur perversions of society.

…then again, they took this concept and made 9/11 their Woodstock. How can I be surprised now?

(Look at it, the Titanic was just begging for it - Evidence - The new Airbus models just look plain ridiculous.)

End.

Defcon 1

2009-05-28T08:15:00.004-05:00

Wednesday May 27th, 2009 – Kim Jong-Il, communist dictator of North Korea, has pulled out of the ceasefire agreement that ended the Korean War in 1953. After Jong-Il’s weeklong boasting of his new nuclear arsenal and testing of long-range launch systems, the automatic answer of the Western World (see US administered NATO) was to impose economic and diplomatic sanctions. This is already the umpteenth time that such penalties were imposed on Pyongyang and North Korean Communism and as we all see, it has had lasting positive results.

Jong-il announced the scrapping of the tenuous treaty that defined the South-North Korean border and averted a nuclear denouement during the cold war. The immediate effects are moderate although drastic: all foreign ships off of North Korea’s coast will be fired upon. Nevertheless, America and Europe are very worried but nowhere near as much as their Asian allies. Interviews with South Koreans and people from Japan unmistakably evoke Hiroshima and Nagasaki, events that have become cinematic in the West but which remain fresh on the alarmed minds of Asia.

There are clearly two options to the immediate aftermath of this act of war. Firstly, as has been the case multiple times before, the United-States will fold and offer oil, money and other economic incentives to coerce North Korea back into a less aggressive position. The caveat here is that President Jong-Il is clearly nearing the end of his life and may very well want to go out with a literal bang. Secondly, war could be declared on North Korea by a United Nations resolution (such a declaration has not formally happened since World War II) and a frantic invasion will be launched. Most probably within a day of declaration, troops will occupy Pyongyang at great loss of life in the hope of deposing the current government before they can launch everything. This second option may be weighing more heavily now on the minds of the deciders than ever because every passing day brings North Korea closer towards the technological ability to launch a preemptive global thermonuclear strike. Unfortunately, there is also a caveat here (apart from the obvious death of potentially millions), it is that President Obama and the Democrats are not necessarily the administration that would take such action after the Iraq debacle.

I am apprehensive and nervous for the near future, bearing the panic of the millions of people that can’t even put North Korea on a map and only know Kim Jong-Il as a funny Asian puppet in the movie Team America World Police.

A slap on the wrist

The historical parallel here is quite simple; imposing economic sanctions on a country that does something uneighbourly has NEVER solved anything. At best, it has postponed the inevitable.

In the 1930s for example, Japan launched a large-scale amphibious invasion of China, raping, pillaging and usurping as they went. The League of Nations (precursor to the UN) imposed heavy economic sanctions on the land of the rising sun and no, it did not convince Tokyo’s war council to drop everything and apologize. In fact, they left their seat at the League of Nations and would eventually declare war on all the western nations.

Similarly for Italy, Mussolini was penalized for his blatant and unfair invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, a desperate attempt to endow Italy with a colonial empire just like the big boys. It was unfortunately 30-50 years too late for that and France and England wagged their finger at Rome. It was no longer okay to subjugate the Third World…if you weren’t France or England that is. As a result, Italy also pulled out of the League of Nations and allied themselves with the only European power that didn’t shun them, Nazi Germany.

Finally, the United States has imposed an economic embargo on communist Cuba for half a century. The first result is that the Communist regime, championed by Fidel Castro who will seemingly never die are still as strong as they were in 1959. The second one is that the people suffer. Despite the extraordinary literacy rate and accessible universal healthcare system, it is very much a developing country with extreme poverty, limited human rights and no access to a Big-Mac or Coca-Cola.

In parting, I encourage you to read up on North-Korea, the 1953 Korean War armistice and the nuclear threat they pose today. It may soon be very much in the news and the cause of an international reshaping of alliances and war plans.

(Pictured: Cuba's Fidel Castro and the USSR's Nikita Khruschev teamed up during the Cuban missile crisis of 1963 - Russia is one of Communist North Korea's neighbours that is not so worried.)

End.

A Letter to Burmese General Than Shwe

2009-05-15T10:17:00.003-05:00

May 15th, 2009 – The South-East Asian country of Burma is administered by a military dictatorship that has refused to hold fair elections since their power grab in 1988. In fact, the leader of the only party that would oppose it, Aung San Suu Kyi of the National League for Democracy has once again been imprisoned based on fabricated charges. Without counting the possible next five years she will spend under house arrest, she has spent over half of the past two decades incarcerated at the hands of Burma’s fascist junta and their glorious leader, General Than Shwe. I doubt the good General would read this blog as is so I decided to blatantly address him in letterform.

My letter

O glorious General, we have been hearing in the news about your troubles with Mrs. Suu Kyi and her democrats. It must really be frustrating to have such dissidence when you worked so hard to stabilise your rule over Burma over the past 21 years. I mean, on top of Suu Kyi’s disciples demanding her release after the 2007 expiry of the maximum 5-year prison term you gave her and the Buddhist monks that violently protested last year, few countries on earth even recognise your administration. Seriously, you took power by military coup, lost 1990 elections to Suu Kyi’s party in a landslide yet ignored it, moved the country’s capital to a secret location and alienated most international organisation; some African countries have surely done as much and are still allowed in the United Nations, you really shouldn’t be singled out and punished like that.

I also understand that you plan on overturning the situation, holding free elections in 2010 and finally legitimising your claim to Burma in the eyes of international scoffers. Unfortunately, what will prevent Suu Kyi from running and winning again? I mean, you may be offering the omnipresent security and invasive censorship that the population needs to be safe but she’s offering insane things like public and private liberties, healthy international relationships, periodic elections and basically the right to choose.

Oh, ah, now I see. This week, there was a crazy American that swam across a lake to Suu Kyi’s house. He was arrested and then Suu Kyi was changed with breaching the terms of her house arrest. Pure genius, I see it now, you allowed this man to get there and now are going to sentence Suu Kyi to 5 more years, making her ineligible to run for elections next year. I salute your brilliant scheme General but next time you might opt for more subtlety, international attention seems to be catching on, especially the part where there are police officers and soldiers everywhere yet a man was able to enter the country and swim miles up to the supervised prison compound. At least your “electors” will never know about it, you effectively control all national media. What they don’t know can’t hurt them right?

I not only sympathise with your troubles but will also offer a friendly warning. You should know that, as has been proven time and time again, imprisoning political dissidents not only doesn’t stop their ideas, it amplifies them and makes things a whole lot worse.

Ring a bell?

For example, when the British gouvernment of India imprisoned Mahatma Gandhi for the first time in 1922, he came back stronger than ever, devising a new non-cooperation movement and united the hundreds of millions of Hindi and Muslim people in India. When they jailed him for a second sentence in 1942, he encouraged the Quit India non-violent sovereignty movement from prison, resulting in the non-cooperation of Indian elements withing the British army who were desperately needed and also in the final overthrow of the brave British masters in 1947.

Around the same time, Nelson Mandela was being tried for sabotage and sedition in South Africa. He actively fought against the state mandated racism called apartheid and never lost momentum or support despite spending 27 years in jail. For encouraging violent revolt against the white dominant caste, he was not only successful (in 1994) but was attributed a Nobel Peace prize for crying out loud. Could you imagine if Suu Kyi and her followers were actually fighting back? That’s not something we want to encourage now is it?

On to the ever-so-righteous United-States, they were not above incarcerating seditious elements of their population in the mid XXth century. Unfortunately, even they were not safe from the fermenting of revolutionary thought in prison. Malcolm X was jailed for inciting violence and racism against the dominant white race. While in prison, he converted to the fundamentalist “Nation of Islam” and became one of the most feared advocates for African-American rights in American history. And that’s the US, you should REALLY be careful.

Finally, it may not be the most tasteful example, but it definitely fits my model of imprisonment for dissidence - having some time to think - revolutionary movement is amplified and succeeds. Adolf Hitler gathered a few friends in 1923 and decided to overthrow the German gouvernment. It was a monumental failure and thus he was sent to jail. While there, he gained quite a following as he decried the “November criminals” who had surrendered Germany in WW1, the republican and democratic leaders that were now making the country weak and the international Jewry orchestrating all of this behind the scenes. I submit to you, General, that it was in prison that Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, the dogmatic document of the Nazi Party which would permit him to overthrow and assassinate all German officials in the 1920s and 30s.

You would think it would be easier to just kill Aung San Suu Kyi but unfortunately, if she dies of anything except ripe old age, no matter how “accidental”, it will immediately be determined to be your doing and your people WILL overthrow you. You should try something crazy like including her and her democratic party into your own gouvernment. I know what you’re thinking but it WOULD work. She could be your vice-president, you extend some civil liberties and some olive branches internationally and voilà. You would be an elected and legitimate leader of Burma without having the ever-pending threat of revolution or civil war.

Think about it, I’m just saying.

Good luck.

(Pictured: Don't kid yourself, Gandhi was a bad-ass - If you're not careful, this little Asian lady will be your end.)

End.

(PS: I would include a picture of you although no one has ever been allowed to photograph you. Bummer.)

Dijongate

2009-05-09T14:02:00.006-05:00

May 8th, 2009 –President Obama and Vice-President Biden went out this week to grab a bite at a Washington deli. Why it took two of MSNBC’s senior correspondents to cover the event is beyond comprehension. Why and how Fox News used the “event” as fodder to fuel the next two days of "news" is even more insane (or have we come to expect it from this “news” source). In fact, Fox came up with the term "Dijongate" to refer to President Obama's choice of condiments, good stuff.

Indeed, the President ordered a burger topped with mustard, “or do you have any hot mustard or Dijon" he rivetingly asked. The first problem here is that Fox News pundit Sean Hannity accused MSNBC of a cover-up as the two commentators spoke over Obama’s request for the devil’s mustard (surely offering a gripping history of world leaders and their favourite foods). I offer to Mr. Hannity that they were speaking over this mustard order because IT WAS A MAN ORDERING CONDIMENTS FOR A BURGER! For crying out loud, Hannity reeks of paranoia and I suspect the smelt it, dealt it axiom applies: it sounds like something a republican administration would have done, therefore... The second problem with “Dijongate” is that it is French, a people they do not like, and it is upper class, making president Obama an elitist liar that doesn’t really care about the working classes.

All of this, please keep in mind, because the president ordered a particular condiment sold at fast food chains across America. It’s as if the right-wing media desperately want attention since they lost their ally in the White House and have become complacent and jingoistic with their media coverage (jingoism – a terrific term meaning extreme patriotism and bias, aggressively promoting one’s country as better than anything else). At least, that is what I originally thought. Then, I remembered a few more examples during the Bush era and even a long time ago in the Woodrow Wilson era. It seems the conservatives are not above elevating mundane minutiae into national threats and consequently responding with the grossest and most ridiculous of overreactions.

That'll show them

As a recent example that we may all remember, in 2003, certain republicans in the US congress had enough of France opposing an invasion of Iraq. A simple “screw the French” could have sufficed as an inappropriate reaction from elected officials, but no, they went much, much further. They passed a congressional motion to have all gouvernmental cafeterias rename French fries and French toast as “freedom fries” and “freedom toast”. And yes, it was utterly ridiculous. In a relatively ignored yet truly hilarious response from Washington DC’s French embassy, the media were told “someone should tell them French fries are actually from Belgium". Conversely, over 75% of Dijon mustard produced on the planet is from Canada...

Further back, with the World War I hatred and fear of all things German, Britain and the US had already begun this tradition of a petty naming war. German biscuits in the UK were changed to “empire biscuits” which they remain today. The aristocratic family Battenberg and the royal house of Saxe-Coburg Gotha were also respectively changed to Mountbatten and Windsor (Oh yes, Queen Victoria, and therefore all the royal houses of Europe, are German). In the United States, the same lack of imagination as in 2003 brought about “liberty cabbage” instead of sauerkraut and “liberty measles” oddly needed to be “jingoed”, stealing them away from their preferred term “German measles”.

To nuance my historical argument, there certainly is a difference in context here. When it first happened, millions were dying at war. Then in 2003, September 11^th was not far behind, two wars were being fought in the Middle-East and most brown people were potentially just about to rape you. In 2009, with a nice juicy recession and some sexy bird flu to talk about, there was a news director somewhere that thought “Dijongate” was a valid and newsworthy story. It must be true what they say, TV will rot your brain, especially if you work in it.

It may seem innocuous and inoffensive but jingoism of the sort easily leads to discrimination and racism. The Hutu broadcasters of Rwanda were guilty of the same national and racial complacency in 1994. Historians now singularly point the finger at that radio station for provoking the 800,000 deaths that ensued.

Finally, jingoism leads to ultranationalism. To end with an oversimplification and overreaction on this particular blog medium that I own and direct, I boldly claim that it is people like Sean Hannity that elected Hitler in 1932 (Oh yes, Hitler was elected).

(Note: I have invented and own the copyright on the verb “jingoed”)

(Pictured: Hitler allegedly invaded France because of the lack of German mustard varieties (citation needed) - Obama loves a spicy burger.)

End.

Also in the news

- The Pope hilariously lectures Muslim leaders on the misuse of Religion for political gain.

- Vladimir Putin can sing - and can perhaps do much more we don't know about.

- Women of Kenya have gone on a sex strike to raise rape awareness - confused and horny, some men are suing them.

PANIC!

2009-04-30T15:45:00.003-05:00

April 30th, 2009 – Great Scott! A new strand of porcine influenza has stricken at the demographic and economic heart of Latin America and is rapidly spreading across the globe. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has thus assigned a five out of six to this public health threat, creating widespread fear and panic amongst the media-hungry masses. The dangerous disease, fatal even, is now effectively a level shy of full on pandemic such as the medieval Black plague, 19th century Smallpox or 20th century Polio and AIDS.

Thusly, I encourage all my readers from Vancouver to Minsk and Johannesburg to Hanoi to raid their local Wal-Mart in search of canned food, bottled water, face masks, latex gloves, batteries a portable toilet and a few gallons of anti-bacterial soap. Setting up a fortress of hygiene in your basement/nuclear fallout shelter/local underground parking for the next two years should be simple enough. I will establish why I am so sure that the pandemic of global proportions will subside in two years but first, let us take a look at our epic killer as portrayed by the media.

“Global pandemic”, “No one is safe”, “No cure or Vaccine”, “Run for the hills”, “Revenge of the Pork”, “Al Gore says I told you so” and “Worst than SARS, bird flu and West Nile virus combined” have been the headlines flooding our television sets and newsstands this week and I got some more news for you: it’s far from being over. If you remember what a fuss North America makes every year about West-Nile virus, you wouldn’t suspect that the mild disease only kills a handful of frail and/or elderly people every year. As for Bird Flu, we heard about it for years even though less than a thousand people died from it in South-East Asia and less than 50 in the Americas. I do not wish to belittle the death of 1000 South-East Asians, I am just putting into perspective that the media do not even remember the tsunami of 2004 that killed hundreds of thousands of the same people. To be blunt, a disease is more sexy because it is invisible and can potentially be everywhere at any time; it is fear. To be blunter, that disease is a million times sexier if it affects people with white skin. To prove a point and to inform those of you that don’t know, there still is no cure for AIDS. There are antiretrovirals available to us in the industrialised world that have greatly diminished the number of victims but millions are infected and dying in Africa = old and boring news.

Pig Vs. Human

Let us take a look at this disease; it is only prudent seeing as CNN won’t stop pestering me about proper hygiene when coughing and even the newspaper I work for has a daily update about where the disease has struck and when it will potentially get to a location near me, resulting in a painful and messy death. Porcine influenza or “Swine flu” boasts a misleading title associating it with pigs. It could simply be called the flu since it biologically and chemically IS the flu. The difference here, as with the old bird flu, is that they represent a distinct strand of the virus that mainly affects the animal they are named for. In very rare cases, the disease can be passed on to humans and even more rarely, it can be transmitted between humans. For the current “pandemic” of swine flu, there has been a minor mutation that allows its free transmission between humans, spreading as the regular flu does. This is the important point: the symptoms are mostly the same. Runny nose, congested sinuses, coughing, feeling weak, headaches, a slower immune system and a small chance of it progressing to pneumonia, sinusitis and other manageable infections will occur when you have the flu, human or otherwise. The second important point, if you really think about it, is that I am probably the first one to tell you what the symptoms of swine flu are. You see if the BBC News Service comes out and tells you that a lot of people are getting the flu in Mexico, there is no real story there. If they use words like “pandemic”, conceal the true risks of the disease, polish it up as a shiny new dangerous ailment and then tell you it is inching it’s way closer to your home, sneeze-by-sneeze they have found the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

That being said, porcine, avian and the good-old regular flu are no laughing matters. Thousands upon thousands of people die every year from their complications, mostly young infants, the elderly and immunocompromised people. It could even be called a pandemic but instead we accept this disease as an inevitable occurrence that strengthens our immune system and then we go on with our lives. I cannot accuse the media of doing their jobs excessively; I accuse them of hiding certain facts to focus on the more sensational aspects of their selling point (just like the make millions quick infomercials that spend 30 minutes telling you how much money each of these pretty people won with the advertised “method” or “system” but never tell you how). They will get some shiny awards in journalism and the rest of the world will panic unduly for something that is, for all intents and purposes, banal.

Now, to conclude with a historical link and to leave you feeling confused and ambiguous about this article, I present you with one of the deadliest pandemics of human history.

The great influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 was shadowed and intensified simultaneously by a period of great war in Europe although it was truly global. From inner Siberia to the South Pacific, the disease was similar to the common cold yet added a very strong propensity towards pneumonia and death. Over 50 million died worldwide although upwards of 25% of the world population was infected. Modern medicine was still no match for the disease and all responses rather revolved around spraying things, quarantines and campaigns against public spitting (things that could still work and that may be proposed soon across the world). Its origin is probably American yet the Americans blamed the Spanish…for kicks. This is why today; we may hear this disease and this episode referred to as “the Spanish Flu”. Its biology, its method of spreading and its incredible virulence remains unknown; what we do know is that it was porcine influenza, a simple mutation of swine flu.

(Pictured: Doctors sent to "help" victims of the medieval plague wore long-nosed masks containing fresh herbs; it was thought that smells carried diseases - A theory about how swine flu spreads to humans)

End.

A Fine Line...

2009-04-21T12:31:00.004-05:00

April 21st, 2009 – Former astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell has boldly announced that UFOs exist, Aliens are constantly visiting us and the ‘gouvernment’ has been concealing all these facts for many years. Furthermore, it all started in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico, where he coincidentally grew up. This astounding affirmation was made in honour of earth day (a gross misunderstanding of what that day is supposed to celebrate) and begs the follow-up question : just how more credible is this person when compared to the regular crazies?

I certainly wish to be fair to Dr. Mitchell; I do believe he is an extremely smart person, a great scientist and somewhat of a hero but a man is more than one thing he participated in, he is the sum of his wasted endeavours and crazy ramblings. Born in 1930, he was an incredible man who obtained a bachelor of science degree in industrial management, another Bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering and a Doctor of science degree in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT. He did this all within 10 years and while in the United-States Navy no less. He achieved immortality in 1971 when he left earth abord Apollo 14 and became the sixth man of 12 to ever walk on the moon. He retired from the Navy and NASA shortly after and then we began learning about the darkness behing the genius.

Firstly, he admitted during an interview that he attempted ESP communication with earth friends during his space mission, recording the unsuccessful data. Later, he wrote a book entitled ‘The Way of the Explorer’ in which he claimed that high-ranking officials in the US Army and eye-witnesses on site (none of which are named) personally told him about the Roswell crash of a space saucer and the recovery of several beings from another planet. Finally, he claimes that a young Vancouver boy named Adam Dreamhealer faith-healed his renal cancer in the early 2000s. The important thing to take away from this is that he personally has never seen any evidence of any paranormal phenomena and therefore, astronaut or not, he has no more credibility in this field than the other crazies. A further realisation to take away from this is that Dr. Edgar Mitchell seems to be bat-s*** crazy.

To be somewhat impartial, but rational, I must expose the events of Roswell, what the US gouvernment has said and admitted and what the crazies have deduced in return. It was July 1947 when the Air Field in Roswell, New Mexico, annouced they recovered a crashed ‘flying disk’. A later conference specified that the disc was a common weather balloon and pictures and samples passed out to the media confirmed this. At this point, the crazies may bring up the famous testimony of farmer William Brazel whom recovered some of the crash site, proving it was alien. Indeed, he found ‘rubber strips, tinfoil, and rather tough paper and sticks.’ Even more strange and outworldly, the next day he found ‘more patches of tinfoil and rubber.’ Finally, we were not alone in the universe, others have travelled hundreds of lightyears, defying the known laws of physic themselves and they did it with materials from Home Depot. Brazel’s account is actually true, there exists military record of his find and pictures including him and the contraption that he rebuilt from the debris. It was balloon-shaped, metallic-coloured and boasted a consipicuous absence of alien blood.

Sarcasm aside (if I must), there was a military cover-up. In 1997, a declassified report announced that the crashed craft in 1947 was a balloon but it was in fact part of a secret project called ‘Mogul’. This balloon was meant to detect sound-waves caused by Soviet atomic testing. Considering the US had used such a weapon in 1945, the USSR didn’t have it yet and the whole world had just come out of war, this is an extremely plausible explanation. On the other hand, crazies claim the existance of a massive cover-up in which the evidence of thousands of UFOs has been hidden for 60 years. To support this outlandish claim (pun intended), they seem to have no concrete evidence whatsoever that EVER showed up in the hands of the media. Take a moment to slowly understand that such a thing was not possible in the 80s and 90s, nevermind up until 2009 with internet technology and social networking sites.

Given these circumstances, big gouvernment and their plausible deniability wins whereas the crazies and their speculation lose. To close the matter, I will use Dr. Mitchell’s own words against him. He claimed that witnesses in Roswell came to him with their story because « they wanted to tell somebody reliable ». He was such a person, an eminent scientist and astronaut. Well, NASA represents hundreds of such people and declared today, following Mitchell’s announcement, ‘NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover-up about alien life on this planet or anywhere else – period.’

There it is, case closed, get back to work.

(Pictured: These 1947 newspaper headlines didn't cause trouble until 1978; fiction writers began the hysteria and lined their pockets - Dr. Edgar Mitchell -- Oh, and while we're at it, Bigfoot is a man in a suit and the Loch Ness Monster is a piece of wood and playdoh.)

End.

(Disclaimer : I do not confirm or deny that I have received a cheque for writing this blog from the Internet special ops branch of NASA’s interstellar denial division)

Democratising Easter

2009-04-12T07:09:00.003-05:00

This Sunday, April 12^th will see the worldwide celebration of Easter. Much more than an exclusively religious ceremony, Easter is one of the only such holidays that is observed by the faithful and seculars alike, and this, in almost every nation on earth. That being said, what are we celebrating every year at Easter? We know about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and about the chocolate-egg delivering bunnies but what has common-knowledge lost throughout the centuries to leave us with such of a logical gap.

Today, in the traditional sense, Easter is a Jewish and Christian observation of the end of Lent, a forty day fasting period leading to the death of the saviour/prophet Jesus and his resurrection and ascension to heaven three days later. Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Monday accompany the Easter Sunday celebration and host a variety of liturgical activities. Lighting of candles, chanting, readings from the Bible and a vigil for Christ mark the gist of the strictly religious aspect of Easter around the world as has been established over 17 centuries ago.

The early Hebrew Passover celebration commemorated certain events of the Bible long before Christ but following His crucifixion around 30-36 AD, the festival (called Pesach) would inextricably be associated with Jesus, the Last Supper, the Eucharist, the Crucifixion and Resurrection. It was finally at the first dogmatic meeting of the Christian church at the city of Nicaea in 325 AD that leaders of the Church decided Easter’s annual position. It had to be a Sunday, the holiest of days, and would continue to be established by the Hebrew lunar calendar. Consequentially, our calendar now establishes it every year as the first Sunday after the first full moon following the first day of Spring (anywhere between March 22 and April 25).

Syncretism

In the following centuries, as Christian missionaries and military campaigns diffused cultural traditions across old frontiers, the festival of Easter was not only adopted but modified and made particular to brand new cultures. They call “syncretism” the concept of merging aspects of two religions to create a brand new one and that is exactly what then happened to our Christian/Pagan Easter. Early in Anglo-Saxon Britain for example, a spring festival celebrating rebirth and fertility was held annually in honour of their goddess Eostre (equivalent of Greco-Roman Diana or Persephone). She symbolised spring and the dawn (rebirth of the rising sun every day in the East) that is why the English and Germanic-speaking worlds use the derived words “Easter” or “Ostern” whereas almost all other western languages derive from Hebrew (Pâques in French, Pascua in Italian, Paskar in Icelandic or Paskha in Russian). Further syncretism occurred when we incorporated the Scandinavian goddess Freya of flora and fauna to the festival and thus we retain Freya’s symbol, the bunny (specifically the hare) associated with Easter, as well as the Easter feast observed by all. Eventually, Eastern Europe augmented this now rich celebration with their traditional Slavic egg decoration. These pieces of art and symbols of spring fertility remain today as the intricately-ornate painted eggs of Bulgaria or the Czech republic and even the luxurious Faberge eggs of Russia but the entire world has adopted this cultural art once a year by decorating eggs or simply buying the deliciously colourful and chocolate ones.

Finally, the process of syncretism continues to this day as we discover new regional Easter traditions that may one day travel to every corner of the world. In Bermuda, symbolising the ascension of Jesus, young children build intricate kites and fly them only once a year on Easter Sunday. Mexican and German schoolchildren and businessmen have 2-3 weeks of vacation to reflect on the final times of Jesus. North Americans have invented the Easter-egg hunt and are the global champions of the “chocolate” facet of it all. In Africa, certain communities weave colourful clothing and celebrate through traditional dancing and a communal feast of fresh produce. In Scandinavia, children dress as witches (ancient symbol of Freya) and collect candy door-to-door. To finish the demonstration and to illustrate the wide variety of Easter regionalisms, Slovakia and the Czech Republic observe the holy day by having their men publicly whip or spank the women. This symbolic and painless tradition is supposed to guarantee health and beauty for the women during the coming year.

In conclusion, some purists claim that Easter has been corrupted over the centuries but I believe that through a long process of syncretism in religious doctrine, cultural tradition and regional practices, Easter has become a democratic and universal celebration with a specific and powerful meaning for all walks of life, none being excluded.

(Pictured: Ukranian Easter eggs - The lesser-known creepy Easter bunny)

End.

Money, Money, Money

2009-04-04T15:23:00.005-05:00

April 2^nd, 2009 – This Thursday, London hosted a summit meeting of the G20, an organisation of world leaders, international organisations and world financial institutions. As it was founded in 1999, it had a clear, if not vague, goal of fostering “sustainable economic growth and development”. It would no longer be a secret that in the epilogue of the Cold War, the capitalist world order would relegate the human experience to an economic equation. Indeed, in the current worldwide financial meltdown, we have seen the general decline of culture, democracy, good times and general standards of living. It is only natural that the great owners and transaction dealers of money meet in London to determine our future.

To this meeting were invited the heads of state of all important economic countries such as China, Germany, France, Russia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Canada (it should be mentioned that the Canadian Prime Minister went to the bathroom when all the other leaders were lined up for a picture – upon learning this, all Canadian citizens echoed what President Obama said at the time but with more scorn than smile: "Where is Canada?"). Furthermore, the United Nations, European Union, World Bank, World Trade Organisation and International Monetary Fund were invited to complete the roster of humanity's financial managers.

The short meeting ended with massive protests beyond the security perimeter and an agreed-upon investment plan within the walls of the most secure location in the Solar system at the time. 1.1 trillion dollars will now be given to worldwide development banks and the International Monetary Fund to boost world trade, increase lending to Third World countries and to generally help international commerce.

That being said, the G20 organisation is a very young concept and is not necessarily easy to compare to specific historical parallels. That is why the capitalist world order, its actors and money in particular link our subject to the recent past. As seen in London, money provokes and relieves all the ails of mankind and only those who have it can help those who lose it or simply enjoy burning it for entertainment. I submit to you the Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi. On behalf of Italians, Silvio was to participate at this summit as another serious head of state; too bad for the Italians he is a buffoon.

The Buffoon

He noticeably annoyed the Queen of England with his boisterous manners in London this week and angered Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany later on when they were both supposed to show up at an official ceremony together. Instead, Berlusconi answered a cell-phone call and talked for so long that the Chancellor lost patience and went on alone. He is inappropriate, loud, an admitted jokester and an alleged criminal but more importantly, he has more money than you or I could ever shake a stick at. This has made him invulnerable, powerful and basically invincible to the normal afflictions of men and women.

Beginning a career in banking and media in the 1960s, the Italian PM is today worth almost 10 BILLION US$, owns the AC Milan soccer team and directly or indirectly controls 90% of Italian newspapers and television stations. Over the decades, he has been brought to court for corruption, mafia connections, fraud, tax evasion, bribery of officials, blackmail and extortion yet he has a secret weapon that has permitted his criminal record to remain clean. You see, money brings power and owning billions of dollars while being the leader of a country allows you to: delay trial until a statute of limitations expires and you can go free, hire the greatest lawyers on the planet (the current French President Sarkozy used to be on Berlusconi’s defence team), manipulate most of the media coverage surrounding your trials and finally giving up and making a law declaring you immune from legal prosecution forever (law passed by Berlusconi in 2008).

As final proof of money buying more money and loads of smug happiness, here is my compilation of comments by the Italian Prime Minister on the topic of women. Keep in mind that he was re-elected despite all of this and has no future inclination to stop his foolish jokes, attitude and comments - he will simply throw dollars at his problems until they disappear as it seems to have worked in the past.

Top 5 sexist or chauvinist comments by Silvio Berlusconi that would normally land a middle-class person in court or in the infirmary with testicular torsion.

In May 2005, Berlusconi wanted to negotiate the hosting of a European Food Safety Authority meeting in Parma, Sicily rather than in Helsinki, Finland. Besides opening the negotiation by announcing on television that the Fins “don't even know what prosciutto is”, he also implied that he would “dust off my playboy skills” and seduce the female President of Finland, Tarja Halonen, into getting his way.

Later in 2005, he was in New York selling Italy as a prime market for future investment on Wall Street. It made international headlines when his main pitch was: “we have the most beautiful secretaries in the world”.

In 2008, without anyone asking him to comment on the particular subject, he blurted out in an open session of parliament: “the left (wing) has no taste, even when it comes to women”. He continued jamming his foot in his mouth by saying that it was simple fact that the right (Berlusconi’s conservative party)’s female politicians were much more attractive than the left (socialists) ones.

Again in 2008, the PM was being interviewed live on television during an electoral season and was being asked direct questions from the audience of voters. One young woman cordially asked about the lack of stable and paying jobs for her generation. Berlusconi simply answered that "with the smile that you have" should try marrying his son as a long-term career plan.

Finally, at the beginning of 2009, Berlusconi took his vapid humour to new levels of insensitivity, especially towards women. A new crime wave nationwide led to Silvio introducing 30000 new military controllers, ten times more than before. When asked by a female journalist if this would be enough to prevent the increasing cases of rape, he thoughtfully replied: "We would need as many soldiers as beautiful women and I don't think that would be possible, because our women are so beautiful". Please keep in mind that if you are an attractive young women travelling in Italy, the local Prime Minister cannot possible be persecuted for raping you. You are basically asking for it.

In lieu of a thoughtful conclusion tying up all of the loose ends, I will leave it up to former disco group ABBA. On the subject of the G20 round table of men and women controlling the world and one particular man at that same table whom effectively bought himself a license to kill, Annifrid, Bjorn, Benny and Agnetha offer the following words about our powerlessness in it all:

"Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich man's world
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man's world
Aha-ahaaa
All the things I could do
If I had a little money
It's a rich man's world”

(Pictured: Silvio Berlusconi souring relations with Spain by doing a cockold sign behind their foreign minister at an official photo op - A few years back, Berlusconi and Vladimir Putin of Russia went on a Russian talk show and when the host asked a difficult question of Mr. Putin, Berlusconi pointed "gun fingers" at her to indicte that the KGB is sooo gonna get her. She subsequently fled the country and Berlusconi publicly said that he found it hilarious - G20 meeting in London where Barack Obama (USA), Dimitri Medvedev (Russia) and Silvio are celebrating the joy of having money)

End.

Tea and the post-hoc trap

2009-03-27T13:08:00.005-05:00

March 27th, 2009 – A new food study brought to light by the BBC world news service has announced that drinking hot tea causes oesophageal cancer. The tube between mouth and stomach would be particularly targeted by oesophageal squamous-cell carcinoma (OSCC) or the most common form of the disease as suffered by 500,000 people worldwide. Carried out in Golestan province, Iran, the study lasted less than a year and focused on 300 Iranians diagnosed with OSCC, all of which drank an average of 1 litre of black tea per day.

Firstly, it would be a cheap shot on my part to question the scientificity of a study simply because it was conducted in a less than open theocracy like Iran, especially since there is so much more to question. Firstly, the researchers have seemingly fallen head-first in a post-hoc trap which is a statistical concept of error. It states that it is not because two events occurred one after the other that one necessarily caused the other. For example, the findings of this study could just as well stated that wearing sandals or eating bread causes OSCC because all the OSCC-affected test subjects were also exposed to those two factors. Secondly, their sample of 300 subjects was very small compared to the tens of millions inhabiting the region and the study was not conducted over the necessary time (5-10 years) that it should normally take to declare a universally consummated product as “cancerous”. Finally, knowing that tobacco and alcohol are proven to be the leading causes of OSCC and having red the study, I fail to see the chemical link between tea and cancer.

The “Hot” or the “Tea”

Indeed, browsing the detailed results of this study only seems to confirm that the temperature of the tea (70 degrees Celsius or more) has led some people to have more of a risk of developing OSCC than others. It could be as simple as the scalding tea wears down the barriers around your food pipe, leaving you more prone to infection and cancer (although this is in no way implied by the Iranian test masters). Whether through their own search for rapid fame and diffusion of results or whether by the BBC’s quest to make everything interesting at the risk of being blatantly misleading: “Steaming hot tea linked to cancer” is a very alarmist, misleading and potentially defamatory headline/baseless finding.

Pursuing this line of making sciency things sound more interesting and sciency, the BBC offers the advise of eminent British food specialists. These pearls of wisdom tell you to “wait a few minutes for your brew to cool from scalding to tolerable” or to “add milk, which cools it down”. Now, if only somebody would come along and tell me why my body gets all messed up when I drive into oncoming traffic on the highway…

Historic gullibility

To link this incredible story of a food fear (that is fabricated, will be in the miscellaneous section of your local news tonight and will soon be forgotten) with history, I invite you to research food specialists’ advice on egg consumption in the past 20 years. A hundred studies jolted the western world into mass-hysteria when they were shown to jack up cholesterol to heart attack levels. A hundred more would then indicate that it had amazing nutritional value and could possibly have magical curative properties (citation needed). Progressing past the twentieth century, I also bring you the Tomato in late XVIth century England.

Being grown in the New World for millennia, this pseudo-fruit only appeared on the European scene in the 1500s, brought back by the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors. Slowly making its way up north, it eventually creeped onto the British Isles and was immediately faced by two opponents on the culinary battlefield: xenophobia and paranoia. The Native American cultivators of this new “apple of love” (as they called it) were obviously savage and primitive and therefore these new atrocities had to be no good. Furthermore, the British were well-off and sophisticated, it only made sense that this thing was a poisonous “wolf in sheep’s clothing” devised by their Spanish rivals.

Despite prejudice and jumping to conclusions, there was a modicum of botanic science involved. Physician John Gerard was the first to plant the odd fruit in England and had quickly analysed its genetic makeup (as much as possible for 1590), correctly assessing that the tomato was of the same family as the fatal Nightshade plant and the toxic tobacco plant. Also, he avidly remarked that the stems and leaves of the tomato plant were an irritant to human skin (or “terrible poison” as he put it). On the other hand, he concluded that the overly moist and cold fruit could not possibly be beneficial to one’s health and was definitely poisonous. He claimed this knowing full well that it was eaten in the North American colonies and in Spain; he seems to have shared the “good enough for barbarian foreigners but never for me” attitude of the time and place.

The result of British disdain for foreign foods and seemingly scholarly endorsement for the fears was a 200-year ban of the Tomato in England. Through famines and droughts, the British populace were prisoners of their own ignorance and credulity in faulty research. To be fair, they grew plenty of the “golden” or “love apples” but used almost all of them for random medical practices (over the eyes for glaucoma) or for table decorations (they are pretty and shiny).

For what is probably the hundredth time I incite the peoples of the world to beware what media pre-chews and feeds them, especially when “statistics” and “scientific studies” are implicated. The saying goes Caveat emptor or “let the buyer beware”; in this case not only of what you literally buy but also what you “buy” as proven fact.

(Pictured: The book for all your historical tomato-related queries - a cancerlicious Maroccan tea service)

End.

Mitrehead

2009-03-17T09:30:00.008-05:00

March 17th, 2009 – Pope Benedict XVIth has not only refused to endorse condom use in AIDS riddled Sub-Saharan Africa but has also dubbed their use a mortal sin. If his Excellency has detailed test studies and investigation reports on the subject, he is certainly keeping them for himself while he boldly claims that the AIDS epidemic is ‘a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem’. To truly face and solve the AIDS crisis in the poverty stricken part of the world, his Popeness has offered many solutions. He suggests ‘spiritual and human awakening’, ‘sexual abstinence’ and finally ‘friendship for those who suffer’. We should definitely send a few billion dollars researching these solutions because they certainly sound like they don’t do as much as birth-control to me.

To say that abstinence should be the norm and that birth-control is unacceptable within the context of good, Christian living is an opinion. To order Sub-Saharan Africans to stop using condoms or face the eternal depths of hell, is an egregious crime. Keeping in mind that even the richest of these countries like South Africa has an infection rate of 18.1% of their population (aged 15-49, 2007 census by United Nations) and the poorest such as Swaziland has a 26.1% infection rate, having unprotected sex in Sub-Saharan Africa has a roughly 1 in 4 chance of being deadly through HIV/AIDS, never mind other STDs (Also keeping in mind that playing a round of Russian Roulette generally only has a 1 in 6 chance of death). Furthermore, rampant overpopulation in the region is not helped by the reported 11.6 million orphaned children due to HIV/AIDS related deaths. For the chief of the Catholic Church to state that condoms are evil and then to suggest they may even lead to increased rates of infection is a direct and undeniable contribution to the problem. Pope Benedict XVIth is therefore guilty of gross negligence, harmful propaganda and large-scale death due to carelessness.

Where is the outrage?

For some reason, this whole situation is not being decried by all (gouvernments, media, populations) and I propose a few reasons why. Firstly, rampant hypocrisy gives a positive image to the Vatican and sets aside the fact that it is partly responsible for the situation in Africa. For example, the new German Pope will soon be visiting Angola and Cameroon to urge the global population to help these poor countries out and to convince the leaders of both countries to halt their corruption. Secondly, This Pope continues a long Christian tradition of ethnocentrism which places utopian, Western values above all else and minimises the impact of policies because they don’t do much in the USA and Western Europe anyways. Indeed, the Vatican wilfully ignores the reality that Sub-Saharan Africans, Just as Asians or Americans WILL have sex except there will be very real consequences unseen elsewhere. In the meantime, North Americans do not bother themselves with Vatican anti-condom policies because 96% of American women already use some form of birth-control. Finally, this new declaration by Pope Benedict XVIth will be judged as banal by most for the simple reason that it is not original. There has been a long Catholic history of trivially demonising contraception.

Since late Antiquity, Catholicism has designated all personal pleasures a sin. In consequence, sex for any other purpose than procreation is a sin and as soon as the Vatican scientists perfect the cloning process, sex will finally be completely immoral and banned. Further on, with the invention of the birth-control pill, the mass-production of condoms and the sexual revolution of the late-sixties, a Papal stance had to be taken. In 1968, Pope Paul VIth declared all artificial contraceptives to be mortally sinful and reiterated that all forms of contraception are ‘always seriously evil’. Further on in 1997, Pope John-Paul II pursued a policy of denying real-life on goings and announced to a congress of African nations that the Condom ‘harms true love and denies the sovereign role of God in the transmission of human life.’ He also claimed to the end of his papacy that condoms would only contribute to the AIDS pandemic and prided himself on the Vatican HIV/AIDS treatment centers in the Third-World. Like his predecessors and successor, John-Paul II was not above the hypocrisy of contributing to mass-death by propaganda and carelessness yet saving face by helping those that are already infected.

Silver lining

In conclusion, I will salute the many Catholic officials that have opened their eyes to the inevitable spread of HIV/AIDS around the world without proper education on condom use (AND abstinence if one is so inclined) as well as safe-sex in general. For example, Felipe Arizmendi, a bishop of southern Mexico was almost booted out of the church in 2005 for claiming ‘If someone is incapable of controlling their instincts…they should do whatever is necessary in order not to infect others.’ In fact, many marginal members of the Church ARE contributing to the solution but the leading instances of the Vatican are firmly committed to being part of the problem.

To be clear, this is not a debate. The Popes are willingly encouraging the spread of HIV/AIDS in countries which do not have the necessary information resources to provide them with any other options. People have been sent to international tribunals for much less in history.

Something to think about your Piousness.

(Pictured - His Holiness John-Paul II was rather fond of the little saucer hat - Various American Bishops wearing their ceremonial Mitre (hat) - Pope Benedict XVIth rather likes sporting his golden Mitre AND Popemobile.)

End.

Stem Cells and Burnt Manure

2009-03-09T14:56:00.002-05:00

Monday, March 9th 2009 – President Obama strikes again and has ordered the legal ban lifted on stem cell research. This medical procedure sees laboratories harvest stem cells from embryos, umbilical cords and adult bone marrow that have just been formed and thus do not yet have an assigned task. The goal is to be able to dictate the future development of these cells into brain cells to treat Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s or new marrow to cure leukemia or nerve cells to reverse paralysis, or Lymphocytic, T and White blood cells to cure AIDS, etc. This new legislation ends an 8 year ban on any further breakthroughs in the field instituted in 2001 by none other than former-president George W. Bush.

Bush’s ban and subsequent vetoes to block a senate reversal of the ban were motivated religiously as he has often admitted to the public. Along with the Vatican and anti-abortion groups, Republicans have today renewed their disgust of stem-cell research by calling it a mistake and a ‘slippery slope’. Their argument is seemingly based on ethics and science because they do not wish us to ‘grow’ stem cells and thus encourage women to abort in order to contribute to medical cures that could or couldn’t be just around the corner. Furthermore, the ‘slippery slope’ refers to the inevitable and eventual cultivation of human beings through cloning that will be made possible by stem cells for the sake of procreation, harvesting organs and other Orwellian nightmares. I do not deny or mock these fears, they are certainly valid. The problem is that president Obama directly reassured these fears as soon as he lifted the ban: ‘…only research meeting strict ethical guidelines would be allowed, under no circumstances would stem cells be used for research into human cloning’. Perhaps groups that oppose the legislation simply read the headlines and jumped straight to the streets in protest. Also, the preoccupations of the opponents are frustrating to me because they claim scientificity, whereas they are clearly moral. And, if asked, the groups I mentioned will never shy away from affirming that these morals stem from their faith, their religious beliefs. President Obama can in no way be reproached for retracting politics and Church from scientific endeavour; this is how the American nation was painstakingly founded over two centuries ago.

To continue the logical thought of these opposition groups, we should allow and/or ban all medical research according to religious morals. Who says they have to be exclusively Christian morals?

In the late Ist century AD, a man named Pliny the Elder realised that knowledge could be simply forgotten unless someone writes it down. This is why he devoted his life to writing the Historia Naturalis or the Natural History of the World. From tomatoes to coal, to lavender and Kidneys, to chimeras and faraway giants, Pliny collected data (be it written, told, rumoured…) and put to paper everything known about everything at the time. In chapters 28 to 32, Pliny elaborates medicine, or more precisely, the pharmacological recipes known to Pliny that could cure all things. Based on his religious beliefs (certain substances are associated with certain Gods giving them certain properties) and his own brand of logic, Pliny gave us what was right, respected and morally acceptable as medical practice in the Greco-Roman world that began our era. For example, drops of pigeon blood mixed with a concoction of spleenwort, honey and red wine could be applied to a wool bandage and placed over the eyes to cure bloodshot eyes. Also, to get rid of pesky malaria (called Quartan fever at the time), one would bind a nail used in crucifixion to one’s head with a cotton bandage and sprinkle burnt manure over the nail. It sounds like magical nonsense to us but they felt as strongly about this as the Republicans, anti-abortion activists and Catholic clergy seem to feel against stem-cell research.

To conclude, medicine should never be impeded or promoted by religion. Otherwise, we again fall into the ‘whose religion is more legitimate game’ and although the Christian Churches would like to believe, they do not win this by default in a free world. I say Voodoo sacrificial rituals, Muslim abstinence from harmful alcohol and Scientologist consumption of fresh babies for eternal youth cannot be discounted in the legislation of scientific research if Catholicism indeed has a ‘moral’ say in it.

(Pictured: Pliny's Historia Naturalis - Stem cells with an added fluorescent marker.)

End.

Saddam 2: Judgement Day

2009-03-02T13:28:00.004-05:00

February 27, 2009 – Last Friday, US President Barack Obama announced an end to the war in Iraq. He elaborated a gradual plan that will reduce to zero the amount of American soldiers in Iraq by December 2010. This ambitious and hasty plan has clear goals to transfer all public and national security matter in Iraq to their own police and military forces. Furthermore, the withdrawal plan hopes very hard that the country’s radical factions will not quickly seize power as soon as the massive threat of American retaliation evaporates. Finally, there may exist a tacit objective in this plan: the patching up of the money haemorrhage that is the war in Iraq and to repatriate these much needed trillions of dollars back into the American recession.

Whereas most of President Obama’s new legislation since his inauguration day has been met with fervent opposition by members of the government, this measure was gladly supported by all involved. Iraq’s Prime Minister al-Maliki is confident his troops can efficiently replace the United States forces and American General Gates agrees. Democrats love the idea but then again, they would still give their left testicle (or ovary?) to please Obama these days. Finally, the Republican members of parliament and senate are timidly rejoicing that the troops and the financial resources supporting them are finally coming home. This war in Iraq seemingly no longer benefits anyone (not for oil, democracy, US presence in the Middle-East) and therefore it will end without opposition.

This all sounds nice and well but there seems to be a heavy amount of idyllic hoping in a plan that will remove 142,000 American soldiers from a heavily war-torn and politically unstable country in a short amount of time. If only there was a way to predict a realistic outcome to this policy. If only the United States had already invaded Iraq once before and then withdrew hastily. Oh gosh, they seem to have done the exact same thing in 1990-1991. What can we learn from this clear cycle of history repeating?

Firstly, we must contextualise both wars and see if their development and conclusion are similar enough or too different to compare.

Regarding the premise of both wars, Saddam Hussein was an equally major factor. He Invaded neighbouring Kuwait in 1990 and was generally threatening the region in 2003; the United-States thus deemed it necessary to directly intervene with the full might of their modern military. We could debate all-day about the ‘true’ motivations for both wars or how ‘legitimate’ they were but it definitely boils down to the threat to the Middle-East and world stability (both political and economic) that Saddam Hussein represented.

As for participants, we have an important difference between the two conflicts. It is well known that the United-States entered Iraq unilaterally in 2003 because the United Nations refused to condone the invasion of a country and the ousting of its government. The UN has always followed a strict non-intervention policy when faced with civil wars or internal conflicts; the situation was no so in 1990. Having invaded Kuwait, Saddam broke the UN’s prime rule: if one member country invades another, the United Nations will host a military action to defend the victim. This rule was established in 1945 to prevent the kind of expansionist incursions perpetrated by the Nazis from ever occurring again. This explains why dozens of countries including some whom did not participate in 2003 (Canada, France) and many from the Muslim world (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia) joined the United-States and the United-Kingdom to protect Kuwait and push back the Iraqi armies in 1991.

Now for ‘occupation’, there are other crucial differences: duration and degree. Following the highly successful expulsion of Saddam’s troops from Kuwait, the American troops followed them back into Iraq. The ground attacks were minimal yet the coalition bombarded all Iraqi installations (both governmental and civilian) for just under a year. They indeed controlled many regions of Iraq but did not in fact administer them politically as they do today. Following this year of successful pounding, the coalition troops stopped near Bagdad, turned around, and returned home. The United Nations would never have approved an American coup in another member country and President George H. W. Bush did not want to endanger the international image and relationships of the US. Although a controversial decision amongst the American people, Bush followed his allies to the negotiation table and permitted Saddam Hussein to remain in power. As for 2003, Saddam’s infrastructure was summarily destroyed, President W. Bush declared victory and Saddam was hung for crimes against his own people. This rapid sequence of events was followed by 6 years of ‘occupation’.

Finally as a result with the American withdrawal in 1991, the country of Iraq was completely destabilised even though the ruling power was allowed to remain in power. Saddam Hussein’s oppressive machine had been crippled and thus the ethnically and religiously diverse country rose up to install complete chaos. The southern Shiite Muslims and the Northern Kurds took the opportunity to voice their disagreement with Saddam’s unlimited power in Bagdad. The inevitable result involved massive terrorism by these factions and brutal repression by Saddam. With the coalition gone, the inhabitants of the Middle-East were able to return to dynastic and generational conflicts that concerned them much more than what boundaries are respected, who has what oil field and who supports the current government.

With this contextualisation and comparison, I fully expect a similar situation to occur at the end of 2010. The United States and United-Kingdom will instantly leave a vacuum measuring 150,000 soldiers, trillions of dollars and massive amounts of organisation and technology that the Iraqi government has no hope of possibly replacing. The dust will inevitably settle and the various factions will quickly forget the preoccupation of the Western visitors and will begin anew their fight for supremacy, be it religious, political or cultural.

I too will hope for the best as President Obama inspires us to do, but I will remain realistic in the face of historical evidence.

(Pictured: The aerial bombardment of 1991 demonstrated a monstrous technological gap between the US and Iraq - President Bush delivers his famous 'Mission Accomplished' speech on May 1st 2003, perhaps a tad too early.)

End.

2008 Poll Results and News Round-Up

2009-02-16T09:09:00.019-05:00

With a rather slow news week and a year 2009 well under way, here are the poll results for the second half of 2008.

The question was: "What is the next most likely global conflict", and the results were absolutely fascinating. Whether the news reflected tensions between Russia and the European Union, tensions within the Union or tensions in the Middle-East, the votes would dramatically shift towards a different answer.

Only 1% or 1 vote went to a war between South-East Asia and NATO. I find this theory interesting seeing as SE Asia would have a lot more soldiers than NATO and Indonesia IS the biggest Muslim country on the planet (and thus the biggest de facto enemy of America and its allies). Fortunately, relations between the two regions are friendly and stable.

A further 2% or 4 votes went to the option of an all-out African war. This low favour was very surprising considering the civil wars in Sudan, Algeria, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Malawi, Equatorial Guinea, Zimbabwe and Western Sahara to name a few. I found it only natural that the thousands of ethnic groups of the dark continent would eventually rise up to redefine their space (Ancient colonial boundaries imposed by European colonialists and based on natural resources rather than tribal and ethnic tradition). It seems as though others don't fear this apocalyptic outcome.

The third option, and my personal favorite, saw 7% or 12 votes go to a renewed war (maybe cold, maybe white hot) between the Russian federation and NATO. I can imagine the renewed struggle for Russian or American influence in ancient Soviet states, in China, in the Third World. I also imagine a renewed race to send a man to Mars by 2020 and to develop new bomb technology that would be reminiscent of James Bond-type deathrays. Oh well, people are not as obsessed with Putin and the good-old cold waras I am (impending nuclear doom makes you think).

More concretely, the prospect of a great European Union civil war seems to have roused my European fans. With 35% or 58 votes, all is not well with the great Euro family. Not everyone has been happy with the inclusion of poor countries in with the rich ones or about the favoritism certain countries seem to enjoy or simply the flat out racism involved with associating the different ethnic groups of Europe. I could imagine a scandinavian bloc negotiating neutrality just after invading the Baltic states. I can see Switzerland invading Luxembourg, Southern France and Northern Italy to creat a Great Switzerland. I can see Germany building a great big titanium wall around themselves sporting banners that say "we are staying out of this one". I can even see old Hapsburg descendants assassinate the parliaments of Austria and Hungary, recreating the legendary empire and subjugating the Balkans. I guess this will be for another time. This result long held the prime position in our poll yet the recent events of Israel and Palestine finally shifted it a different way.

With a whopping 55% or 90 votes, my readers believe that an invasion of the Middle-East is the context and catalyst of the next major global conflict. I thought long and hard how to interpret this and I came to the conclusion that the results could possibly have been very different if the poll was conducted in 2009. With a new Democrat in the White House and a general recession, bordering on depression for some, the potential invasion of a dozen countries is much less desirable for the Western powers. The United States would not dare invade anyone else at the moment due to lack of economic means and motivations. Furthermore, Obama is like Jesus II (the return) and would never do such a vile thing. I prefer another possibility than the classic American imperial war machine creeping up on the ancient biblical lands.

Since this poll result is not very specific, let me propose a differing context. With increasing consumer power and a growing middle class, China will soon need incredible amounts of fossil fuels to power their economy and society. Furthermore, major producers such as Russia, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Canada may not be so forthcoming to export all their oil to the same nation and thus create the next superpower to be dominated by. As reserves dry up by 2025-27, China may become desperate and will envisage the powering of their economy by any means necessary. They may offer to assist the American President (presumably Chelsea Clinton) to help out their mission in Iraq and anti-terror raids in Afghanistan and as such will slowly extend their communist influence in the region. By 2032, the Communist party of China will have organised elections in each Middle-Eastern country, influencing the election of Pro-China Communist presidents and ministers everywhere from Egypt to Pakistan. As such, the Middles-Eastern countries will vote in bloc to remove the Western military forces and will form a united confederation loyal to China. Around 2040, they will have a combined military force that will pressure the exodus of Israel and thus the ultimate recuperation of the Holy land.

It may seemed a bit far-fetched but if you are willing to fear an invasion of the Middle-East as the next global conflict, I propose that my way is the most probable since it follows a well-established historical pattern. In the 40s and 50s, the Soviet Union slowly began imposing their influence on specific countries. They eventually installed puppet gouvernments, close economic ties and even military unity and loyalty.

Round-up

Here is another intereting story going on this week - I also suggest a few interesting historical links to this story (click).

-Feb. 16th, 2009: 2 nuclear submarines collide
-Apr. 26th, 1986: Chernobyl Nuclear reactor goes critical
-Mar. 1st, 1954: US Bomb makes islands unihabitable forever

(Pictured: 1989, Chinese tanks confront protesting Students in Beijing, a clear sign that the officials of China do not mess around with such things as negotiation - The future overlords of Arabia)

End.

My intolerance is more righteous than yours

2009-02-09T10:26:00.004-05:00

February 8th, 2009 – An apocalyptic battle of ideas and influence is being waged worldwide on bus panels. In the blue corner, Ariane Sherine and verious atheist, non-believer and agnostic associations have begun publicity campaigns on public transpoortation in most major cities. Notably in London, 800 double-decker buses are circulating with the slogan ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’ In the red corner, David Larlham, his biblical society and the Catholic Church in general will soon begin a counter-attack by using the very same buses. Although less comical and certainly not original, the slogans will read : « Psalm 53 : the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. »

We can certainly question the motivations and projected goals of these two campaigns but there seems to be one clear message in each. Firstly, the Atheists have a tongue-in-cheek attitude towards the Church’s dogma and therefore thought it would be funny to waste a hundred thousand dollars on posters saying so (keep in mind they are not selling anything). Secondly, we have the Church that, once again in its infinite contempt for the little man and his personal opinion, has dubbed ‘idiot’ and ‘damned to the firy depths of hell’ anyone who disagrees with them.

OK, so my objective summation of the two points is actually heavily biased but hey, you cannot study history without holding a grudge for Religions. To me, this concept and it’s self-proclaimed officials have provoked slaughters, hardships and atrocities countless times in the name of higher morality. That being said, my regular readers will know that I cannot possibly be against the Church’s information or disinformation campaign, it is information and leaves personal decision in the hands of individuals. Going too far, The Catholics are now quite mad and have asked officials to step in and remove the atheist « propaganda ». These same officials then said that they will not « act as censors » and that the Atheists have just as much right to buy advertisement. Meanwhile, Atheist organisations are positively giddy that the Catholic clergy is playing their famous « whose religion is more credible » game with them that is usually reserved for more high-profile religions such as scientology.

I will leave you with two things, first a quote by Richard Dawkins (author of « the God Delusion ») on the subject. He said « I don’t object at all to the Christian ads that are going up, especially if they make people think. If more people think for themselves, we’ll have fewer religious people. » Secondly, I leave you with a historical list from my upcoming book. Here is a perfect example of the dire consqeuences that emerge from seemingly banal differences in opinion.

The Crusades
Although the term crusade could, and does, apply to hundreds of religiously-themed conflicts throughout History, the term classically refers to the eight Catholic/Muslim battles for the Holy Land, Jerusalem.

1. The first Crusade (1096-1099) – This conflict opposing “international” Catholics (allied with the Templar Knights) and Muslims (allied with the Jews of Jerusalem) is the only one in which the main objective, Jerusalem, was achieved by the Catholics. Led by a papal legate, the 100,000 crusaders’ main obstacle was to be dissension and quarrelling amongst themselves. Through distractions such as widespread Jewish extermination on their way, several leadership challenges, disease and random conflict, a mere 13,000 crusaders made it to the Holy Land. They were able to occupy the land only because the Muslims were even more divided than they were.

2. The second Crusade (1145-1149) – Following the conquest of Jerusalem, the Muslims had united under a new ruler (Zengi) and had gradually retaken the European territorial possessions. The French and Germans answered the Pope’s call for Crusade; a call which innovatively came with a promise of debt reduction and heavenly benefits from the Vatican. The 30,000 crusaders failed utterly in the Holy Land because their aim was too wide. Along with Jerusalem, they were fighting the Muslims in Spain (successfully) and pagans in North-East Germany (unsuccessfully). The Europeans were shaken to their core due to the failure of their divinely inspired and endorsed campaign.

3. The third Crusade (1187-1192) – 40 years later, a new Muslim Ruler, Saladin, effectively restored the Muslim temples of Jerusalem by destroying all Western presence. 25,000 French, German and English crusaders met an untimely setback when the German Emperor leading the new Crusade drowned in southern Turkey. Few soldiers remained determined to attack Saladin’s army and although they recaptured several cities and outposts around Jerusalem, they never had the strength to regain the Holy City.

4. The fourth Crusade (1198-1204) – With Germany in civil war and France at war with England, the fourth Crusade lacked royal blessing and money. The plan was to attack Egypt by sea and then zip up to Jerusalem by both the Mediterranean and on land through the Sinai. Things went wrong along the way. Firstly, the noblemen that were involved in the ordeal did not have the funds to pay the Venetian boatmakers. Secondly they accepted a bribe from the usurped king of Constantinople in exchange for their help regaining his crown. Finally, when the few remaining crusaders won the Eastern throne for him, the King did not pay and so their last push actually won Constantinople for the West. The warriors of God never made it near the Middle-East.

5. The fifth Crusade (1217-1221) – This time trying to avoid financial obstacles, the Pope set up an impeccable direct funding plan. The crusaders were to retake the above-mentioned Egypt plan yet a lack of Royal involvement and internal dissensions only permitted them to gain a small foothold on the Nile Delta.

6. The sixth Crusade (1228-1229) – German Emperor Frederick II took upon himself to declare his own crusade. With a well-mounted, German expedition, he assailed the Middle-East and negotiated with the Muslim leaders. Although he regained Jerusalem for the Catholic West, the Pope was irked and thus excommunicated Frederick. This is the technicality why we do not consider the sixth crusade a success.

7. The seventh Crusade (1248-1254) – During Frederick and the Pope’s quarrel, Turkish Muslims invaded Jerusalem and thus Louis IX of France organised his own Crusade with preliminary aims towards Egypt. Once again, despite fantastic organisation and strategy, a combination of dysentery, seafaring and underestimating of their enemies brought about very little success for the French Crusaders in Egypt, never-mind the Holy land.

8. The Last Crusade (1270) – A joint operation between Louis IX and Prince Charles of England aimed again for the Eastern Mediterranean coast, but also Tunis. Trying to destroy a maritime Muslim base in Carthage, Louis IX attacked the Tunisian coast and won just before dying of dysentery. At the other end, the English left Sicily by boat and were generally decimated by unfavourable weather. Both fronts were quickly abandoned and the Holy Land was effectively conceded to the Jews and Muslims forever.

(Pictured: A Crusade engraving showing Godly redemption in favour of slicing up Jews and Muslims - One of the London Buses in question)

End.

OMG! A GMO! NO WAY!

2009-02-02T13:47:00.005-05:00

January 29th, 2009 – Professor Pamela Ronald from the University of California-Davis has presented to the world a new strain of flood-resistant rice crop. Very few news outlets have even mentionned this revolutionary breakthrough but I certainly will and I hope you will agree it was important enough for your consideration.

Professor Ronald and her team spent the last 13 years genetically modifying rice crops, splicing in a gene that would make them much more resistant to water. After a three-year test in India and Bangladesh, the new crop was found to survive 5-6 times longer than conventional rice plants underwater and thus the farmers ultimately harvested 3-5 times more rice than usual. This highly successful experiment and test will mean that tens of millions of Asian and African and South-American inhabitants will not succumb to famine this year.

Mainstream media have largely ignored this achievement even though professor Ronald’s team has tried to inform the population. A more sensible and politically correct commentator might say that they were busy with the Superbowl, what type of shoes Michelle Obama was wearing and how much more money automobile companies will need before we want to buy their luxury cars again. I for one will be very blunt : the media and the liberal/leftist elites of North America have purposely ignored or sidelined this type of agricultural innovation for decades.

This new rice is not bio, it uses chemicals and pesticides and it is the very definition of a genetically-modified organism (GMO). Health nuts aside, Americans have constantly been told by do-gooders to eat certain product made from certain farms that meet a certain certification and ultimately that all-natural food will be healthier and more tasty. Because they firmy believe the benefits of their bio foods and because it has become a multi-billion dollar industry, the proponents of ‘health food’ or ‘all-natural’ products have spent countless millions in advertisement, popular polls and shifty research that demonize all GMOs. In the case I am citing and in many more in the past, it would sort of be arrogant and stupid of them to protest the feeding of the hungry and the preventing of famine; alhough if you take them to the letter and only grow ‘organic’ food as our ancestors did, our planet could only grow food for about 3 billion people (Who’s gonna tell the other 3.5 that they will now be shot in the head to save the culinary whims of the Western World?). This is why they simply ignored these types of innovation and convinced most media and most of the population to do the same. Case and point, I present to you Mr. Norman Borlaug.

Mr. Borlaug still works today at the age of 94 and although very little people have heard of him, he has probably had more positive impact on the planet and saved more people than Mother Teresa, Ghandi, Superman, Xenu and Jesus combined. Official and academic organisations have roughly calculated Mr. Borlaug’s impact on world society as ‘saving over a billion people from starvation’. How can I possibly not know about this man you might ask. My above explaination is the only theory that fits in my opinion (combined with the sad fact that the Western World rarely cares about the death of millions in Africa and Asia).

Norman Borlaug could have stayed in Minnesota where he received his PhD in 1942 but he went straight to Mexico and in a short decade, began a what researchers call ‘the Green Revolution’ worldwide. Being one of the first specialist of plant genetics, Borlaug developped high-yield and disease-resistant crops for Mexico, Pakistan and India. The result? In 1943 Mexico imported only half of the necessary wheat to feed its people, in 1956 they were self-sufficient and in 1964, Mexico was exporting half a ton of wheat every year. Today, he continues to improve crop genetics for sub-saharan Africa and South-East Asia, as if he hasen’t done enough.

In case you may think I made him up, you can check Mr. Borlaug’s profile by searching for the awards he was discerned including some of America’s greatest honours (the Presidential medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal), India’s top award for a non-citizen (Padma Vibhushan) and the freakin’ Nobel Peace Prize of 1970.

I like to think I did my part today : I will have spread the information of this great breakthrough to a few more people that would have never heard of it. I also subverted the hypocritical and egotistical designs of liberal/I know what’s best/bio food lobbies and finally I have taught a few people about Norman Borlaug, by many standards the greatest human being to have ever lived.

Here’s hoping that professor Ronald will also be okay with the inevitable shunning and obscurity she will have to toil with for the rest of her career.

(Pictured: Norman Borlaug with a few kids that definitely don't care that the only food they have was genetically engineered - Over half the world depend on rice as a primary source of food and living.)

End.

Pro-Death Vs. Anti-Choice

2009-01-27T08:47:00.009-05:00

January 24th, 2009 – Newly elected president Barack Obama has cancelled a law that prevented the financing of Abortion Funds. These funds are actually non-profit organisations that provide money and information about safe abortion clinics to the less-fortunate. They do a certain amount of work directly in the United States where there is no national healthcare and where private insurance rarely covers the services of an abortion clinic. More importantly, they provide funding to maintain information networks and safe abortion clinics internationally in the Third World. Almost instantaneously, the self-designated ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ interest groups released statements.

Firstly on the pro-choice or ‘the people not against abortion’, we have the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA). They greatly applauded president Obama for loosening the « stranglehold of women’s health accross the globe ». Also, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) was overjoyed to once again receive funding from America. This UN program assists Third-World nations that have crippling overpopulation problems and where many women die from self-abortion related injuries and infections.

In the opposite corner, the pro-life or ‘people against abortions’, we have the National Right to Life Commitee (NRLC). They also rapidly voiced their opinion by affirming that this new White House policy is ‘effectively guaranteeing more abortions by funding groups that promote abortion as a method of population control’. Further still in the depths of exaggeration we have the Vatican. A Spokesperson from St. Peter’s basilica accused Mr. Obama for his arrongance in thinking that he ‘can decide who lives or dies’. They reiterated that, unlike president Obama, the Pope, Catholics and baby Jesus are against the « slaughter of the innocents ».

As for me, I think both of these groups are tremendous wastes of time and space in a world where « black or white » has never truly existed. I personally abhor abortion and really think there are always viable alternatives to the medical procedure. Furthermore, I think that NOTHING should infringe on personal liberties and thus cannot condone the legal repression of groups that diffuse information about safe abortions. When a gouvernment chooses to eliminate public information services, that gouvernment is guilty of treason towards its people. They are telling their electors that the opinion of the elected elite is much more important than those of the masses of lesser people. They are saving the citizens from themselves because they know what is better for them. You may think I am being ironic (you would be right) but this is basically the justification of fascism that Benito Mussolini gave in the 20s when he invented the concept. Gross exaggerations of ‘stranglehold’, ‘population control’ and ‘slaughter aside’, the legal controversy in America really began a few decades ago…

In 1973, the famed ‘Roe Vs. Wade’ trial found that a woman could abort her child for any reason before the pregnancy reached the 28th week. Anti-abortion legislation having become illegal, pro-life groups could only pressure the gouvernment into cutting funding to anyone that provided any services or information concerning abortion. This led to the Mexico City Policy of 1984.

President Ronald Reagan signed this law that, to receive any form of federal funding, organisations had to sign a contract guaranteeing that they would ‘neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations’. It is my contention that, with more information, women who chose to abort could have opted for another solution yet the this regulation possibly left women to the only option they knew : abortion (ironic isn’t it?). With the signing of the policy in Mexico, groups such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation lost 20% of their funding and abortion information programs and clinics ceased to exist in Zambia and Ethiopia where rape is rampant.

Later on with the advent of a procreation friendly president Clinton, the Mexico City Policy was cancelled. Clinton said that it infringed personal freedoms of choice and information and that it ‘undermined efforts to promote safe and efficacious family planning programs in foreign nations’. This stood for eight years until…

…there came a man named Double-U who resumed the dictatorial undertones of the policy in 2001. As always, Mr. Bush truly believed in his convictions, stating that ‘taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for abortions or advocate or actively promote abortion, either here or abroad’. Although I strongly agree with the spirit of this statement, there are three major problems with the phrasing and wording. Firstly, the use of the word ‘should’ implies that he knows and is the ultimate decider (sic) of what is right and wrong. Secondly, these abortion funds were providing information about abortion, they were not handing out 2 for 1 coupons and airing sales clearance commercials on network television. Finally, although former president Bush’s morality tells him clearly that tax dollars should not go to abortion funds, it also has seemingly told him that the tax dollars SHOULD fund druglords in Afghanistan, the indefinite occupation of Iraq, bankrupt car companies, the Saudi royal family, a gigantic wall between the US and Mexico as well as teenage abstinence programs that continue to be complete failures (as shown by every polling firm in North America).

We loop back to President Obama’s renewal of Clinton’s policy. Abortion funds will once again be financed internationally and this fits perfectly into Obama’s announced promises. That being said, I have to apply the ‘I know what’s best’ probem to all four of them because there has never been a national referendum on the question, the president’s simply assume their opinion is in the best national interest. Although, a poll conducted in 2008 by Gallup showed that 54% of Americans think abortion should be allowed under certain circumstances and 28% believe that it should be legal under any circumstances. This has effectively left the aformentioned Vatican, NRLF, former presidents Reagan and Bush to impose the will of 17% of the american population on the other 83%.

In conclusion, I admit that anti-abortion sentiment is philosophical; mine certainly is. I believe in the right for any fetus to his or her potential life because it feels right for me and I truly believe in the concept. As such, I encourage information about the alternatives to abortion for women faced with the unfortunate prospect. On the other hand, the pro-choice sentiment is also philosophical and no more valid than the other concept. I think that a person’s personal rights should be defended at the cost of life and revolution if necessary and I clearly believe it is more important than my personal anti-abortion policy. My convoluted point is that it rarely boils down to philosophy but rather to practicality. Abortion is often seen as a quick solution to a terrible and life-altering problem and thus it will be accomplished no matter how much we legislate against it. We must never lose sight of the political capital aimed by politicians when they bring up abortion; they certainly know, just like the war on drugs and pre-marriage sex, that urge, impulse and practicality wins out over philosophy and religious doctrine every time.

Anti-information programs hurt democracy and If women are going to have an abortion one way or another, shouldn’t it be in a sanitised clinic and carried out by a professional? I definitely think so and for those that disagree, I respect your opinion and suggest you immigrate to Tehran or Vatican city where the gouvernment has made birth control, abortions and women voting illegal.

(Epilogue : It feels really good to write ‘former president Bush’)

(Pictured : In Ancient Cambodia, lack of information led to abortions by method of "mallet to stomach" - Even Soviet Russia had information programs about safe abortions, 1925 - President Obama was "Warholised")

End.

Rubbing Obama's Lamp

2009-01-19T13:38:00.004-05:00

January 20th, 2009 – An estimated 2 million people are expected this Tuesday for President-Elect Barack Obama and Vice-President-Elect Joe Biden to be sworn in as the American leaders of the next 4 years. Security will be extrordinarily over the top for this third president from Illinois and surely some organisers are aware that if just a hint of panic strikes the crowd we will have an unimaginable riot on our hands. That being said, Obama couldn’t care less, he is busy. In 24 hours, he will deliver his inaugural address, the most important speech of his life. Lewinskys, cherry trees, black lovechilds, watergates, misunderestimates and assasinations may be remembered for a while but it is the inaugural adress that can potentially traverse the centuries and grant immortality to an administration. In fact, the only four president that didn’t give an adress are Chester A. Arthur, Millard Fillmore, John Tyler and Andrew Johnson (better known as ‘Who?’). Furthermore, as some other columnists have stated, Obama is seen by the mainstream media as ‘ The Magic Negro’. He is supposed to project a royal sense of youthful confidence while he rectifies the recession, as he justifies the last 50 years of the civil rights movement, fulfills Martin Luther King’s ‘dream’, as he pulls all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan yet brings undying democracy to them, as he personally cures AIDS and as he never EVER lets Michelle forget she’s a woman. As for me, I will simply be happy with a memorable inauguration and with 8 years devoid of Bushes.

Here are some memorable inauguration ceremonies from past American presidents :

In 1776, George Washington was still very tainted by the absolute monarchies of the Old World and was accordingly regal. He spoke from an elegant carriage and gave out specific instructions that no one was to touch him and that no one was allowed to sit down in his illustrious presence. The next few presidents were much more careful of their projected appearance.

In 1829, president Andrew Jackson’s carrige from the Capitol to the White House was followed by the cheers of a thousand black and white men. They followed him rigth into the White House and were encouraged to go shake his hand. Witnesses described that day as being the first true expression of democracy in the western world since the rule of ancient Athens.

In 1861, another president from Illinois faced great hardships and hastely tried to solve them without success. Abraham Lincoln stated in his inaugural speech : “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so”. It denotes a great irony of history that the American civil war broke out days later and led to the emacipation of American slaves.

In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected at the head of a superpower and Adolf Hitler at the head of another. More than a threat from militaristic, Nazi Germany, FDR had to lift spirits and an economy out of the gutters of depression. He effectively did so with the radical economic policies of his ‘New Deal’ yet it all began with his inaugural address during which he reassured : “there is nothing to fear but fear itself”.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address is beyond my measly attempts at commentary and I will thus let an excerpt speak for itself, attesting to the timeless quality of his words : “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. ...Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. ...And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country”. He was specifically referring to the Cold War against Communism yet the words speak true throughout every major conflict that America has had or will ever encounter.

Finally, we will vividly remember George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2005 inaugurations as painful and embarrassing. First in 2001, he was the first president in a very long time who did not walk from the Capitol to the White House. From the thousands upon thousands of protesters booing and screaming at him, he was forced to jump into his limo and dash behing the gates of the White House, evading and actively ignoring critique for the next 8 years. In 2005, he didn’t even try to reconciliate with the people (with the war in Iraq and all, he was even less popular). There were even more protests organised by dozens of interest groups against the bumbling disaster-waiting-tohappen that was President Bush Jr..

On the 20th of January, 2009, it will be a welcome and refreshing change to see the Americans enjoy the leader they have chosen.

(Pictured: President Bush was figuratively beat up by bad approval ratings and literally when he choked on a pretzel and fell - Obama will grant three wishes to everyone who truly believes in him, or maybe not)

End.

61 years of vicious circles

2009-01-12T13:18:00.003-05:00

January 12th, 2009 – The Israeli-Palestinian conflict enters a third week as the Israeli army has begun encroaching on heavily-populated urban areas. Until now, the fighting was restricted to long-distance missile strikes by the Palestinian Hamas on Southern Israel (9 last night) and to strategic air strikes by the Israeli army on the Palestinian Gaza Strip (12 last night). Although the Israeli gouvernment denies its escalation of the conflict, a spokesman (Mark Regev) admits they are currently training thousands more infantry for a possible ground invasion of Palestinian territory. Furthermore, Mr. Regev insists that Israel’s military campaign into the Gaza Strip is purely defensive and aims to stop the Hamas missile strikes on its own land. Meanwhile, 15 Israelis have perished in the fighting and as many as 900 Palestinians, as much as a quarter of them being civilians, have lost their lives.

The human crisis provoked by the perpetual Israeli-Muslim conflict remains difficult to ascertain because the Israeli gouvernment has not allowed the international press access to the affected regions. It is also impossible for international aid workers to assist the damaged zones or for the local emergency services to possibly deal with the massive amount of casualties in Gaza therefore the casualties can only increase from here on out. The International community and especially the UN representatives to the Middle-East (former British Prime-minister Tony Blair), are promoting an immediate ceasefire yet both the HAMAS and Israeli heads of state have categorically refused to abide by the calls of peace: “Nobody should be allowed to decide for us if we are allowed to strike” claimed Israeli Prime minister Ehud Olmert.

We can seldom predict the future when analysing armed international conflicts yet this particular context provides us with an impressive amount of history. Indeed, we can observe several repetitions of brief, armed conflicts at regular intervals since the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. Additionally, one can observe the inefficiency of international mediation, especially by the United Nations who have been involved since the very beginning.

The UNTSO or United Nations Truce Supervision Organization was the very first peacekeeping mission attempted by the United Nations. Still operational today, it is therefore the oldest peace mission by the UN and has little or nothing to show for it.

Not 24 hours after the State of Israel was proclaimed (May 14th, 1948), a conflict broke out when an Arab league (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine) began attacking Israel. The UN quickly mediated a truce and the Middle East has been politically stable and peaceful ever since.

End.

…actually, you may have guessed that the truce lasted but a few days and the UN mediator was assassinated. The following decade was host to constant or even increasing blood shed as the Arab world reviled the Israeli presence on their ancestral lands and as the unarmed UN garrisons of UNTSO only had the mandate to observe and report possible violations of the successive cease-fire agreements. From their headquarters in Jerusalem and from their eventual observation posts across the Middle East, the UNTSO soldiers took note of Arab and Israeli complaints about the opposing side. You may again have guessed that this secretarial role played by the UN was largely reactionary to the conflicts of 1948 yet to this day; the mandate of the UN in the Middle East remains static and has never truly confronted the relational and diplomatic problems between the countries concerned. They have rather consisted of a minimal presence that observes and reports; it DOES nothing.

Further on in history, the Suez Crisis of 1956, the six-day war of 1967 and the Yom Kippur war of 1973 represent only three major examples of escalating tension, outbreak of war and international-community mediated truces. Again with the Israel-Lebanon conflict of 2006, the United Nations were completely powerless, and seemingly unwilling to intervene if we consider the unchanging nature of UNTSO’s mandate, to prevent Arab-Israeli violence and could only help evacuate tourists.

This weekend, Olmert confirmed that a renewed cease-fire was close and thus we will once again have a UN mediated agreement that will really only be upheld and eventually broken by the warring factions and in no way influenced by the limp-wristed interventions of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation.

(Pictured: Israel/Palestine in 1948 - Israel/Palestine in 2009)

Happy new year; now go and repeat history.

End.

Hitler was also a swell guy!

2008-12-29T11:20:00.006-05:00

December 29th, 2008 – A Russian television station held a month-long poll to determine who the greatest Russians were, as seen by the people. Close to 5 million votes propelled Alexander Nevsky at the very top of the 12 place chart. The Western World does not know much about Saint Alexander; simply put, he defended the Russian territory from invading Germanic and Mongol armies during the thirteenth century. He was a great man of the people and a paragon of Christianity. Second on the list is another relative mystery for the rest of the world, Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin. In office for a short period before the communist revolution (1906-1911), he is remembered for his vastly successful reforms in agriculture as well as his clever and brutal repression of revolutionaries. Once again, he is a valued man of the people and a symbol of stability. Further down on the list are the writers Pushkin (4th) and Dostoyevsky (7th), Revolutionary Lenin (6th) and a few of Russia’s most provocative and reformist politicians such as Peter the Great (5th), Ivan the Terrible (10th) and Catherine II the Great (11th).

Here is normally the part where I criticise and analyse the choices of the Russian people. Specifically, I would comment on the questionable prioritisation and incomplete public memory of these larger-than-life figures with my western glasses of capitalism, consumerism and greed. This would surely provoke Russians into brushing off my comments as random hatred by someone who knows nothing of Russian culture. It could also convince my western readers that I have no right to criticise the memory of History as seen by a different culture than mine. I would then promptly state that they are both wrong and that it is both my business and my duty to criticise the third rank on this TV poll, with 519,000 votes: Josef Vissarionovich Stalin.

Firstly, Stalin was not Russian; he was Georgian so I think it should disqualify him immediately. Secondly, Stalin is very much a part of world history and I have studied him through the goggles of the Russian revolutions, his reforms of the twenties and thirties, World War 2, his interaction with the Russian people, his command of the Red Army and his short-lived political legacy; I thus propose that the scope of Stalin’s actions goes well beyond Russia. Finally, when his successor Nikita Khrushchev renounced Stalin and all his accomplishments in 1956, it was not out of political gain but out of pure hatred for a man who is a stain on Russia, Georgia, Europe and the whole of Human history.

Let me expose some of the exploits of the great comrade Stalin. Immediately at Lenin’s death in 1924, he began his first of many political purges that saw the execution of many and notably the expulsion of Leon Trotsky, co-instigator of the Revolution. The Russians had just begun to elaborate their communist, egalitarian Utopia when Stalin decided this would be a secret dictatorship based on propaganda and the enrichment of himself and his friends. In the late 1920s and 1930s, Stalin forced the collectivisation of farming and agriculture. More than the immediate displacement and deportation of millions from Ukraine to Siberia, this policy resulted in the deaths of over 6 million of his own people from famine. Also around this time, Stalin was not satisfied by his initial political purge and therefore sent over 2 million political dissidents and counter-revolutionaries (these accusations were exclusively decided by Stalin) to Siberian work camps (gulags) and to the gallows for execution.

We will now transition into his greatest achievement, the repelling of the Nazi army and their ultimate victory during World War II. I can accept that some less educated or attentive Russians would think he was a notable character for this accomplishment but they must have stopped reading or listening right after ‘Stalin was the leader of the USSR during Berlin’s defeat in 1945…’. I think they would be quite surprised if they read on. Notably in Stalingrad, Stalin held back the Nazis with a pretty simple solution: if I send hundreds of thousands of hungry and mal-equipped soldiers towards the German bullets and tanks, they will eventually run out of ammo and will find it difficult to manoeuvre atop mountains of Russian corpses. The life expectancy for a Red soldier here was less than a day but there were plenty more where that came from. Stalin ordered the execution of 500,000 Prisoners of War (another courageous and moral policy) but in a way, he ordered over 20 million of his people to their deaths by arbitrarily throwing them at the German war machine for three years.

Quick math will let us bedevil the Nazis for the extermination of 6 million Jews, homosexuals and gypsies yet somehow Stalin gets a post-mortem crown of laurels for…I don’t know what exactly. Directly and indirectly responsible for the death of over 30 million of his own people, the Russians must be masochistic in their remembrance of history and their cultural heritage. Thankfully some hosts from the TV station in question pleaded for people to vote for others because Stalin was at the top of this chart ‘the Greatest Russian in history’ up until last week.

Next week, Nixon becomes America’s greatest president and the ultimate Frenchman in history will be the Marquis de Sade.

(Pictured: A mugshot from Stalin's youth; maybe people thought the award was for best mustache - These two were conspicuously missing from the poll)

End.

More than just a salad

2008-12-13T11:48:00.004-05:00

December 13th, 2008 – The inhabitants of Greece enter their seventh day of agitated protest. It was fomented by the killing (accidental we assume) of a young teenager by policemen last week. Everything points to a gouvernmental cover-up and to the officers being acquitted very soon therefore the victim’s family, their friends, their friends’ cousins and by extension the majority of the Greek people have gone ballistic. They have called for the immediate fall of the current parliament in Athens to replace this seemingly corrupt and uncaring administration yet Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis refuses to step down and trigger a fresh round of elections. Needless to say, the Greek capital is falling prey to rioting and massive vandalism. Furthermore, the police forces that are supposed to re-establish the peace are being directly targeted by the projectiles and bombs of the population. One could possibly call this civil unrest and frustration (as Karamanlis did) yet I am willing to side with the protestors and call it a revolution against a corrupt government.

Of course, being a historian, I am constantly terrified by earthquakes, fires and civil unrest that encroach on the priceless heritage of Greek history. Yet this time, it must be said that the people of today outweigh the concerns of the past. They would know, this is not the first time that the administrators of Greece go too far and are slaughtered in a legendary demonstration of violent revolution and nationalism.

Greek patriots declared independence in 1821 and had to fight with everything they had for eight years before they could accede to their sovereignty from the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. Vastly outnumbered, Greek volunteers had to take city by city back as the massive Ottoman reach could feed legion after legion of forced volunteers from Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Bulgaria… Somehow, through sheer determination to be free or die fighting, Greece was the first nation to break away from European empires and monarchy in the XIXth century. Although this was not the first time that an insurmountable hoard of foreign invaders aimed to subdue the Greek people.

In 480 BC, organised civilisation was blossoming and Greece was ancient. Although not a unified state, the various Greek cities that dotted the mainland as well as the littoral of the Mediterranean sea had a certain solidarity referred to as panhellenism. Athens, Thebes, Syracuse, Sparta, Corinth, Massalia and many others fought bloody wars against one another, often for economic superiority over the rest. One day, the Eastern world awoke and the Persian Empire threatened the panhellenic way of life and strictly regulated way of fighting. It was not perfect, but a tacit alliance held together the city states, offering a unified front against the millions of invading barbarians (the number may have been slightly exaggerated by Herodotus). But not really. Athens wanted Sparta to come defend Athens but the Spartans wanted to be stubborn so they just stayed home and waited to see how things would play out. Of course, the Athenians theorised more than they actually fought so they and their pathetic attempt at naval warfare were wiped out immediately, which brings us down to the Peloponnesian peninsula and to its timeless capital, Sparta. King Leonidas and 10,000 men under him confronted the Persian army (anywhere between 100,000 and 2 million) at Thermopylae. Unfortunately, the fairy tale endurance of the Greek people ends here because they succumbed quickly to the invading Persians (7 days) and the importance of their stand has been greatly exaggerated in recent history. They were simply a hiccup in King Xerxes’ invasion.

There is no great moral of the story here, except maybe “don’t piss off the Greeks; you wouldn’t like the Greeks when they’re angry”. They make the Rodney King affair and LA riots look like a vigorous backrub by comparison.

(Pictured: idealised version of the battle of Thermopylae - The Athens riot police have their hands full...so to speak)

End.

Hootenanny!

2008-11-26T16:57:00.004-05:00

November 26th 2008 – Gun stores in the Southern United States are one of the few market sectors that have not been affected by the impending economic depression. In fact, gun sales have increased as much as 50% in certain states, to the great joy of gun merchants. This is mostly due, we are told on the BBC news service, to the election of Barack Obama.

The second amendment to the United States constitution states that all American citizens have the right to bear arms. To make a long story short, this was originally included to protect the inhabitants of America from Muslim terrorists. Just kidding, citizens were encouraged to keep weapons in an eventual repeat to the American Revolution.

In the late 17^th century, the Americans felt oppressed by their British gouvernment and violently usurped it. To summarize, Americans are always supposed to scrutinize their gouvernment carefully and be able to violently overthrow if they step out of line. Sure it sounds outrageous today but the US constitution is a static document that holds true to tradition, far past what makes it anachronistic or inapplicable in today’s dynamic. Once again in the 1870s, this amendment was greatly useful to Southerners who could easily get their weapons and kill their president (the bearded one who boldly told them they couldn’t have slaves anymore).

Today, the second amendment allows Americans to carry guns and in a few States, to hide them on their person. Furthermore, the term “arms” seems to mean anything that throws a bullet really, REALLY fast. The 50% figure I stated earlier actually applies to the sale of AK-47s (Automatic Russian assault rifles) in Texas in the past few weeks. Some may claim that their guns are for hunting or for personal protection yet all statistics show they are WIDELY more likely to shoot a family member or pet than an intruder or fawn. In fact, the American National Rifle Association is much more straightforward with their justification of massive gun ownership: the constitution says they can so deal with it.

Where does President-elect Obama fit in with all of this? God-fearing southerners are apprehensive that as soon as the Democrats enter office, they will restrain the purchase and ownership of assault rifles. Many bring up that, by their own logic, Americans could purchase and store short-range nuclear missiles and f-16 jet fighters in their chicken coops if the term “arms” is universal. The NRA says that this way of thinking is ridiculous and derogatory yet somehow an Uzi (automatic firearm) and an AK-47 are perfectly normal things for every unbalanced person with a driver’s license to own. Texans and gunowners of the south are seeing the stupidity of this claim without anyone telling them and are running to gun stores as if the red coats were coming.

To a point, I sympathise with these gunowners, some may even call them patriots. These people are the vigilant guards of American democracy who would have never let a president plunge them into an economic nightmare (Hoover and Bush), break electoral law (Nixon), sanction and organise the murder of various world leaders (Reagan) or enter the country into an unjust war against all common sense and international agreements (Bush). I may be being sarcastic but...oh screw it, these patriots will never let a gay sing at the Superbowl halftime show, let Washington outlaw their Malboro fields or let the rest of America elect a Negro. Southern gunowners, TO YOUR LYNCHING TOOLS!

(Note to the American secret service – please note that I have nothing but respect for president-elect Obama, he is a contemporary FDR and Kennedy. I was only demeaning the crazy hillbillies)

(Note to the inhabitants of the Southern Red States – Your traditional and conservative ways are the cornerstone of the American culture. You are much stronger than these democratic pansies and their criticism.)

(Pictured: The American constitution in terrible resolution - A patriot)

End.

No they can't

2008-11-13T14:02:00.005-05:00

November 13th 2008 – The 44th president of the United States of America will be Barack Hussein Obama, an African-American man who seemingly didn’t have a chance in hell in the beginning. 21 months later, not unlike an action movie hero, he has figuratively slain various opponents (John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, John McCain, the southern US...) to emerge triumphant of the electoral college. Although the world will praise the Americans for their tolerant foresight and indiscriminate voting, it must be said that President-elect Obama is not without merit. Rarely has a candidate been able to remain eloquent and graceful during an entire campaign without succumbing to negative campaigning, a history of drug use and/or random mistresses. That being said, what can other nations learn from this passionate American experience?

The BBC News Service boldly asks if France would be ready to elect a president of Algerian descent, if the United Kingdom is ready to elect a Prime Minister of Pakistani ancestry or if Germany would elect a Chancellor of Turkish origin. It is a valid question because these countries contain a similar history of colonisation, exploiting minorities and an eventual assimilation of them into their contemporary citizenry as the US has known. The reporter then contacted the foreign minister of France, Bernard Kouchner with this query, understandably expecting a vague answer deflecting the issue. A surprising “non” was thrown at the journalist. The French minister applauds the Americans but affirms that Old Europe, and particularly France, still has a very long road to cross before a non-white President is elected. He calls Obama’s victory inspiring for the French people yet there is too much racism and ethnic repression (privately and publicly) for any of the 3 million Senegalese and Algerian French citizens to accede to any level of government.

As further proof of European backwardness concerning ethnic diversity in their parliaments, the Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, congratulated Obama last week on his victory by adding: “he is young, fit and has a great suntan”. He subsequently accused world media of being imbeciles when they wouldn’t laugh along with him.

Projecting us into the annals of history, I could definitely mention President Alberto Fujimori who became President of Peru from 1990 to 2000, despite his Japanese ancestry. Unfortunately, it is a quite obscure example and furthermore, his presidency ended in corruption and disgrace so it does not serve my cause very well. No, we will focus on the ancient Roman Empire.

Emperor Trajan (53-117 AD) is recognised for many accomplishments, not the least of which was the maximum extent of the Roman Empire (from Britain to Africa, Portugal to the Middle East). In this universal reign, the Romans were no longer exclusively the denizens of Rome. Being over 7 centuries old, Rome was now its Empire and vice-versa. Peoples had been conquered, colonised or assimilated centuries before and the new generations were de facto, Romans themselves. This universal citizenry was not only wishful theory but an accepted fact. This is how Marcus Ulpius Trajan, born in the Roman province of Hispanica (Modern-day Eastern Spain) became the leader of millions, without ever setting foot in the capital until then.

I will always be the first to call the ancient Romans and Greeks “enlightened” but this gap in time and philosophy is ridiculous. The French foreign minister claims that there are still mentalities to change yet their predecessors had the right idea two millennia ago. Perhaps time is not what Europeans need. Perhaps they either need to stop fostering the racism (officially and by other means) or simply acknowledge it, elect far-right parties and close their borders to immigration.

You are out of time M. Kouchner. It is time for a choice.

Congratulations to America for making yours.

(Pictured: Trajan's column in Rome - President-elect Barack Obama)

End.

Won't get fooled again?

2008-11-02T08:17:00.005-05:00

November 2nd 2008 – U.S. Vice-Presidential candidate (Republican), gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, has been fooled by French Canada. Famous for tricking heads of states and celebrities, the “masked avengers” are a Montreal-based comedy duo that called Mrs. Palin while imitating French president Nicolas Sarkozy. What Palin thought was a private conversation with the leader of France was aired on radio networks in French Canada and undoubtedly in the rest of the world soon enough. Palins’ glaring inexperience shone through once again as she acknowledged Steph Carse as the Prime minister of Canada (he is a country singer from the 90s, Stephen Harper is the current PM) and she subsequently remained befuddled and mute when the comedian evoked further talk of foreign policy. Finally, it could be debated that Mrs. Palin either has a good and trusting heart or else that she is not very smart for not picking up on subtle clues that this was not a head of state. These hints include the comedian saying "I just love killing those animals. Mmm, mmm, take away life, that is so fun," as well as "I'd really love to go [hunting], so long as we don't bring along Vice-President [Dick] Cheney." And finally "You know we have a lot in common also, because ... from my house I can see Belgium."

This week, a short comparison could easily be brought up with the republican presidential candidate in 2000, one George W. Bush. The problem is that for all his stuttering, difficulty pronouncing names and mediatised portrayal as a retarded squirrel, President Bush knew stuff. Sure he would take four or five shots at saying Serbia’s president was Vojislav Koštunica but he could definitely point to Serbia on a map and remembered meeting this individual before during his years of work in Washington. No, a more appropriate historical comparison would include the democratic vice-presidential nominee in the 1984 general elections.

Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter’s vice-President, won the democratic nomination that year (over Jesse Jackson and John Glenn I might add). He was up against Ronald Reagan and his VP, George H. W. Bush; everyone said the democrats would lose after a long stint at the White House but Mondale wanted to prove them wrong. To win, he thought he would need a stunt, a shocking story, an unavoidable elephant in the room. He chose Geraldine Ferraro as a running mate. Sure she had only been in politics for six years and was an established law enforcement officer (Special Victims Unit) before that, what was important was that she had no external genitalia. They would figuratively put her in a cage, sell tickets and shout “step right up!” At first it worked, human rights groups, women’s associations and everyone that didn’t want to be labelled sexist praised his choice and their polling numbers started rising. Then, people started realising that no matter if the person is a woman, man, latino, dwarf, paraplegic or albino transsexual, they needed to be able to do the job. Pardon my saying so but Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin are not in the running to be the winner of an edgy reality show, they actually have to govern a nation of 300 million as well as the largest economy and armed forces on the planet if they survive tribal council. If this actually was a walk-in interview kind of position, I seriously doubt that the job application would list “must not have a penis” as an important hiring criterion. But I digress... As a result, the Reagan/Bush ticket won in a landslide and Ferraro, the first woman to be on a major party ticket, went down in history as the woman who didn’t know how to campaign, constantly had her foot in her mouth and was generally overwhelmed by the demands of her potential job.

Unfortunately for Mrs. Palin, she will be remembered as the second to fit that description.

Have a good election and remember that it’s not about the issues or the qualifications; it’s about voting for a black guy or a woman.

(Pictured: The Mondale/Ferrero ticket and yes, it was the eighties - Sarah Palin joined by fellow woman, Hillary Clinton)

End.

What if God was one of us?

2008-10-20T16:36:00.004-05:00

October 16^th 2008 – A federal US judge has thrown out a case against God brought before him. After much deliberation, it was dismissed in a very rational and judicial manner. Since the defending party being sued (the Almighty) did not have a permanent address, He could not effectively be issued the papers indicting him. In simple terms, the American judicial system has established precedent and confirmed that God is homeless (and presumably a Vietnam War veteran). To offer further content, the case was brought about by Ernie Chambers, the senator of Nebraska, a man who is fed up with fundamentalist Christianity and a man who is disgusted by the ease with which anyone can sue anyone for any reason. He subsequently pulled an incredibly entertaining stunt where he demanded a permanent injunction against God. Using the Christian Bible’s definition of the Big Man (all-knowing and all-powerful) and by using this same Book’s account of His actions (floods, plagues, screwing around with Jonas and Job), Senator Chambers wanted to prevent any further “widespread death, destruction and terrorisation of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants” by God.

I certainly do not want to anger anyone, but I most certainly will in an inadvertent manner because this blog entry relates to faith. Although we count just a few major religions, there are hundreds of different catholic sects alone and therefore at least someone will be offended by every single aspect of someone else’s beliefs (see: medieval religion wars, Spanish Inquisition, Joan of Arc, September 11^th, Crusades, Henry VIII, Thomas Luther, WW2, conflict in Kosovo, Akhenaton, Tom Cruise, Bacchanals, the French Revolution’s Terror period, Mujahedin, campaigns in Gaul, Catharism, civilization or simply the general boredom Vs. bloodlust of mankind throughout history). Although many believe Senator Chambers has wasted everyone’s time, we must agree to his legitimate concerns about the extremist Christian factions of America as well as the omnipresent threat of a crushing American legal system.

Firstly, most Christians believe God to be an entity that looks like us (complete with beard and sandals), a few differences being the incredible power, knowledge and benevolence he subtly reveals to us. Secondly, they believe that the Bible has been written by God himself through his useful and versatile prophets, apostles and disciples. Thirdly, the American judicial system is not only based on an intricately worded corpus of legality, but also on a system of legal precedent whereas any legal decision can then be used as a judicial argument in later trials. By combining these three principles we can deduce a few things from the senator’s lawsuit.

Since God is a person and not a figurative model of existence, and that he murdered millions of peoples (and admitted to it without the slightest regret), He must not only be stopped from doing this again but must be imprisoned for humanity to have a chance at survival (He even tells us about how he will murder most of us in the Book of Revelations). Also, we can now bring fictional characters to court if enough people believe that they are real.

Finally, it is a real shame that God is homeless but I can’t be that surprised. As I alluded to above, America treats its heroes and ideal patriots worst than they do popstars; up to 25% of the homeless in the USA are veterans from the Gulf, Vietnam or Korean Wars. They are disposable thrills that end up in a gutter, used, violated and although people will keep selfishly referring to them with boastful pride, God and the Veteran will rot on the streets of America. This lawsuit opens the door to perhaps more urgent questions about the state of civilisation in the United States today.

(Pictured: God (right) again advertising naughtyness - Gary Sinise as Colonel Dan in Forrest Gump shares a dirty cardboard 2-and-a-half with God)

End.

A convertible, a hot young mistress and a hot-air balloon

2008-10-04T15:14:00.003-05:00

October 2nd, 2008 – A plane wreck has been discovered in the California Rockies. It is now confirmed that it was Steve Fossett’s plane, which disappeared over a year ago. An eccentric millionaire, Fossett was renowned for his death-defying stunts until it got the best of him in September 2007. He personally owned 100 world records including the first person to go solo around the world in an air-balloon. His last flight was performed solo in a small aircraft that was possibly swept up by a storm and smashed into the Rockies. Some people donate to charity and other go “Look what I can do!”.

Across the pacific, there is another eccentric man with too much money who loves to show off in the limelight. Richard Branson owns over 350 companies under his “Virgin” brand; it won’t stop him from risking his life in a hot air balloon (what is the deal with millionaires and balloons? A Phileas Fogg complex perhaps?). It is greatly surprising that he is still alive seeing that his own world record attempts such as the fastest crossing of the Atlantic and the circumnavigation of the globe by hot air balloon have been terribly unsuccessful. To be fair, Branson helped end South African apartheid along with Nelson Mandela and hosts a variety of environmental galas. Also to be fair, he is clearly a little bit bonkers in the head.

These two magnates have revitalized and even revolutionized economic sectors in the western world yet insist on nearly killing themselves for kicks. Is it simply because their life is not thrilling enough? Is it because they are constantly famished for fame? Is it because if YOU had a mid-life crisis and had a billion dollars in the bank, you would too? Is it because they are compensating for something..? All I know is that today, Steve Fossett is not a business man or a world record holder, he is a bag of spare parts strewn across Californian mountains that left a family in mourning to get his rocks off.

My point was short and sweet so I treat you to two more historical examples of money buying a nice sack of crazy instead of happiness.

The American Howard Hughes Jr. was a well-known industrialist in the early twentieth century. He also produced films, greatly advanced aeronautics technology and graciously funded humanitarian organisms. Then the mid-life crisis reared its ugly, crazy head. He became addicted to morphine, severely germophobic, a paranoid recluse and it has been said that his massive cash dealings with the Nixon family led to the Watergate scandal. In his home, he had his hair cut and nails trimmed once a year, surrounded himself with medical specialists and invited scores of Mormons to keep him company (even though he wasn’t one; he just had the feeling he could trust them). Most of this resulted from his numerous record attempts that often ended with a fiery wreck and a damaged Hughes. Today, we remember Mr. Burns’ portrayal of a crazy old man with Kleenex-box shoes in the Simpsons, not the philanthropist and visionary businessman.

Finally, taking a trip to ancient Rome, you may not be surprised that our last example is a Roman emperor. Although Nero and Caligula were notoriously unstable, Emperor Commodus better serves my point. Better known as Joachim Phoenix from Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator”, Commodus was the son of Marcus Aurelius and inherited a declining and severely threatened Empire. Nevertheless, this made him one of the richest men in the world and therefore a responsible and civically minded administrator…maybe not. He simply didn’t care for military life and instead, dedicated his reign to personally fighting in the Roman Coliseum. That’s right, chariot races, archery and gladiatorial combat; Commodus loved the crowd and certainly loved the figurative shooting of fish in a barrel. He particularly enjoyed slaying animals; he slaughtered, beheaded or impaled hundreds of lions, tigers, ostriches and elephants. He did not die in the Stadium yet we remember him as a creepy and unbalanced leader who permitted the downfall of Rome through Pride and Selfishness.

Two things to remember: people remember your death much more than your life, and money buys crazy.

(Pictured: Jules Verne's "around the World in 80 Days": source of rich-balloon fetish - What was found of Fossett and his plane.)

End.

... willow?

2008-09-26T12:20:00.003-05:00

September 24th, 2008 - The presidential campaign of the United States may slow to a halt as Republican candidate John McCain wants to postpone all debates and electoral appearances. Mr. McCain feels that the current economic crisis is more important than the electoral campaign and therefore all should stop while the different branches of gouvernment establish a short and long-term solution. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party insinuates that this is only a campaign tactic in the midst of waining support for the Republicans. Furthermore, Democrats argue that the electoral campaign is crucial to acertain the motives and personal solutions of the next President who will be thrust into a financial nightmare very soon.

Firstly, one would think that McCain's gesture is a noble one, embodying integrity and courage to adress the real issues. He seems to aknowledge the general boredom and indifference of the Amercian populace towards an endless election year filled with propaganda, super-delegates, debates, an electoral college and Bristol Palin. In parallel, he acknowledges that the small voter cares a lot more about his wallet, his mortgage and the potential evaporation of his retirement fund than this excercise in democracy. Conversely, these elegant realisations seem to explicitely imply that Mr. McCain offers a concrete solution to really engage and solve American economic preoccupations. He is not, it is a ploy. He will join the president in the White House and they will debate over a 700 billion dollar plan to bail out financial institutions that dug their own fiscal grave over the past decade. I fail to see how anything will change for the accountant or sales clerk in Montana if the proposed plan is successful and what Mr. McCain will contribute to it.

This brings me to another point. Very few senators and gouvernors have come to the apocalyptic realisation that if this insane amount of capital fails to refinance and rebuild America's financial institutions, this recession will inevitably progress into full-blown depression; the kind with suicides on wall street, massive bankruptcies and food coupons.

In the blue corner, there are two very valid arguments against postponing the upcoming presidential debate this Friday ; one of which they have not used and may find interesting if they read this blog. Firstly, president Bush may be ridiculed worldwide yet the man is president and has a full cabinet that administer the most powerful nation on earth; he has my respect for that. Having established my lack of animosity towards the character, even I have to admit that he is the last person that should be adressing the Nation about economic policy and fiscal resolution. Furthermore, his presidency ends at the end of this year and if anyone is certain of anything, it is that the US economic quagmire will still be there in 2009. This is why both candidates must establish their own economic foresight and convince the electors of their worth (Note to CNN – this will constitute what we actually want from you, not a 2 hour exposé on Sarah Palin’s glasses). This is not a time to postpone anything; it is actually the WORST time to postpone anything.

The second argument against halting this campaign brings us to the historical portion of today’s class. Mr. McCain declared that this financial crisis supercedes politics and that we must stop this campaign to adress it. After mush research, I have discovered that this has NEVER occured in the United State’s 232 years of existence.

That’s right, when James Madison won the presidency in 1812, the British and French were intercepting and sinking their commercial ships and funding Indian raids on the country (a few randy Canadians even took a boat ride down south and burnt down the White House). When Ulysses S. Grant campaigned and won his 1868 elections it was amidst a painful national reconstruction following a civil war and the secession of the South. In 1916, promoting an impossible agenda of neutrality, Widrow Wilson would not pause his campaign as tens of thousands of soldiers were dying in trenches. He won months before he sent his own troops to Europe. Perhaps the greatest president the Americans have ever had, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, courageously campaigned his way to four terms as president. First in 1932, he proposed a shiny « New Deal » to lift the country out of economic depression. He did not have the wait and see attitude that would have left incumbent Herbert Hoover (the president who clearly failed to prevent the crisis *wink) to dream up his own 700 billion dollar solution. Finally, if there was ever a time to halt a campaign and postpone a debate, it was in 1944 when president Roosevelt won his fourth term. Pearl Harbour had shocked American minds, dissipating the illusions that the war was confined to Europe and that the dreaded "Yellow Peril" was an uncivilised nuisance at best, as social darwinism had stipulated at the time. 10,000 people died every day during the war and conscription guaranteed that every American family was impacted in some way by the war effort. Nonetheless, the campaign raged on and two candidates proposed their plan of action to end the war victoriously, speedily and decisively.

Republican candidate McCain may have fooled the public into thinking he was a considerate genius but we can be sure that he underestimates the importance of the electoral process profoundly; no matter how drawn-out and boring people may find it.

(Pictured: President Roosevelt signing the declaration of war against Japan - John McCain, stopping a speech to point out a squirrel)

End.

THE END IS COMING...AGAIN!

2008-09-16T14:04:00.002-05:00

September 15th 2008 – Hackers have attacked the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) or the biggest and most expensive scientific experiment ever devised. Although causing minimal damage, these attacks come mere days after the collider conducted its first successful tests. You may not know what a Hadron collider is (much less a very large one) therefore I will tell you a story of immeasurable horror and how it may simply be a historical sequel.

Built underground across the Swiss-France border, this monstrosity is a circular particle accelerator. The “large” aspect of it comes from its 27 kilometers in diameter. It will be used for extensive and breakthrough nuclear research by spinning and smashing atoms, molecules and subatomic particles at speeds unseen as of yet by humanity and quite impossible in our immediate sector of the universe. I purposely used the grandest and vaguest terms to describe it so that you may see the elusive and mysterious glow of uncertainty that surrounds the machine and that has terrified extremist groups.

It may recreate the Big Bang and destroy the universe, it may produce a microscopic black hole and destroy the universe, it may create “strange matter” which theoretically transforms all connecting matter into unstable goop, destroying the universe and finally it could simply create a nuclear explosion that will kill us all. Unfortunately for the radical fear-mongers, the scientific parameters of the machine have been developed over the past 13 years (and 15 billion dollars) to produce limited effects and reactions that will be controlled and studied underground. No wonder CNN has covered 3 hurricanes continuously for the past two weeksinstead of this. If the Americans aren’t spinning the possible end of the world, there mustn’t be much credibility to the threat. That being said, there is a small possibility that we may all die very soon.

You see, even the scientists that have spent decades on the project have admitted that there is an infinitesimal chance of these catastrophic phenomena occurring, destroying the universe. We are talking one in a billion or so but that is assuming we currently possess all scientific knowledge that exists. We unfortunately know very little of the universe and its physical laws (scientists have proposed that over 95% of the Universe is unaccounted for, seriously, check it out). That is to say that the European Organization for Nuclear Research may be the next Manhattan Project who’s aims are noble and concern scientific advancement yet could end in human annihilation if it falls into the wrong hands.

In the early 1940s, the United States, England and Canada were arduously battling the Nazi agressor (or waiting for the Japanese to provoke them into doing so) and therefore these nations collaborated in an important scientific endeavour of defense and progress. Directed by J. Robert Oppenheimer and assisted by a plethora of specialists such as Albert Einstein, the project not only aimed to research the nuclear weapons that Nazi Germany were potentially developping but to create them as an incentive for peace. Oppenheimer and Einstein would never have though that their ingenious creation would become the angel of death for tens of thousands of Japanese civilians. Furthermore, they probably never thought that their research would lead to a terrifying 50 year stalemate where all industrialised countries would practise nuclear shelter drills in the utmost terror and where belligerent nations could potentially annihilate each other within a single day and a few buttons pressed.

Don't get me wrong, the LHC will not shatter the fabric of space-time, it will probably not even reveal the very interesting things that we are promised. It will slowly go back to being an unknown project that is just very big and very expensive (or will it...).

Have a nice week (please keep in mind it could be your last so go spend those RRSPs)

(Pictured: Trinity test, the first atomic bomb developped by the Manhattan Project - The LHC, a cross-section of the 27 km tube)

End.

Wind, Rain and Fire

2008-09-01T14:53:00.005-05:00

September 1st, 2008 – Hurricane Gustav has just made landfall in Louisiana. Funny enough, after the last 100 hours of constant coverage, we realize that we know very little of this hurricane, its trajectory or why people keep building homes in New Orleans.

Firstly, to address televised media, especially the Cable News Network (CNN), we only had to tune in during the past four days for an immediate and crucial update. An update of what you may ask? Of absolutely nothing I would say. We begin by visually sifting information from the two news tickers at the bottom and the blue storm watch bulletins on either side of the screen to be told that a hurricane hit New Orleans a while back and that this recent one will also contain winds and is going really fast. We proceed to see Anderson Cooper holding onto a telephone poll about 4 meters away from the hurricane screaming “This hurricane is windy and it’s raining sideways!”. Then, for the twelfth time in one day, the camera abruptly cuts out and the newsroom at CNN tells us not to worry; Anderson cooper may have been impaled by a Chevrolet but at least the population knows that a hurricane-prone region of the world currently has a hurricane and that it is a windy and rainy one. Lather, rinse and repeat. Lather, rinse repeat. Blah, blah, blah… You may think I am dramatically reducing their expert journalism to a minimum of cynical critique yet I promise you that in the last 4 days, CNN has not told us anything about Hurricane Gustav that a 10-year old couldn’t have guessed. It is important to know that there currently is a hurricane, several thousand citizens have been evacuated and there is a possibility of raising gas prices (exactly how and why, no one knows). But to pound out images, specialists and reports every hour, simply to promote fear should be below CNN and below basic journalistic integrity (obviously if we do not take into consideration the six months of non-stop fear mongering following September 11th, 2001).

Secondly, just as the inhabitants of southern Japan, Hawaii’s Western Islands, most of Florida and the Swiss Alps, the denizens of New Orleans inhabit a natural hazard zone…on purpose. Safe for the Third World deserts and flooding deltas of Southern Asia, the regions including frequent earthquakes, cyclones, avalanches, typhoons and volcanic eruptions are inhabited by people who have the means to move; especially if it means avoiding a violent death at any given time. I understand nationalism and regionalism. I understand a sense of belonging and community. I even understand a sense of tradition or a fear of change. What I will NEVER understand is someone believing that any one of the former justifications is enough to risk their life and their family’s life every day.

Taking into account modern transportation, internationalisms and globalization, uprooting your family and moving around is as easy as 123. Take these things away and you are left with the early modern cities of XVIIth and XVIIIth century Europe. Moving required braving the elements, disease, days or weeks of walking to the next towns and ultimately being shunned for being an outsider. Instead, generation after generation of very poor people littered the streets and overcrowded the few urban centers of the Old World. Ghettos sprouted like mushrooms and thus the great epidemics and deadly fires (being the greatest “natural” disasters of the time) of the last 700 years took place.

As an example, ironically not fitting my own profile, is the great fire of London in 1666. Burning down 90% of all houses, the fire spread rapidly throughout the poor districts of the city. It destroyed millennia of historical heritage from the Roman walls to the medieval infrastructure for 3 days, sparing the aristocratic domains. This was certainly not the first nor the last fire of London yet they rebuilt on top of the rubble for lack of options. This example does not fit my rant simply because of the adjective “deadly”. Somehow, this epic conflagration killed 8 of the city’s 80,000 inhabitants.

To New Orleans I say be strong, be careful and MOVE!

To CNN I say: If the people are watching you give the same 5 facts about rain and wind for four straight days, you must be geniuses.

End

(P.S.: Another more intangible reason for which people didn’t move after natural disasters during the Modern Ages was that they believed God did it. They obviously deserved it and God would do it again no matter where they would be.)

(P.P.S.: I always found it suspicious that the Great Fire of London happened in 1666. It is very possible that it never actually happened and was invented by the King to scare people out of smoking in bed.)

(Pictured: The Great Fire of London - Hurricane Gustav, CNN caption reads "Hurricane knows where you live and is coming to get you!")

The best Olympics ever

2008-08-19T19:15:00.004-05:00

August 19th 2008 – After 10 days of Olympic competition, three aspects of Beijing’s Games have maintained international attention. Firstly, the pretty little girl that didn’t sing as opposed to the ugly one that did. Secondly, the unfathomable amounts of money spent by the Chinese gouvernment to hold these Games. Finally, the mutant called Phelps and his status as greatest person to ever do anything in the universe.

Let us begin with the supposed controversy that the opening ceremonies involved trickery and deceit. Apparently, the little girl who sang the Chinese people’s anthem was only lip-synching to the lyrics of another little girl backstage. The western world has understood the concept of a pretty face presenting the work of an intellect in the shadows for at least a century. All western politicians have legions of speechwriters, image consultants, clothing experts and media liaisons to make the man (or black man) in power SEEM like the cleanest, best, friendliest and most confident leader possible. Furthermore, new media technologies now offer us the possibility of only seeing pretty people on television and in movies. They are not necessarily singing or acting as much as posing and mouthing at the camera. Fortunately, that is all we really want. We know of their marketing and manipulation tactics yet we are not outraged at MTV because they airbrushed an artist or at the shopping network trying to sell us a steak knife that cuts through cement. Why is China evil when they employ the exact same marketing tactics we’ve had for decades? And NO, it is not different because they are children. Regardless of what people say, not all kids are beautiful and you will notice that only the pretty ones have their faces displayed in the picture frames at Sears.

Also, some of the fireworks we saw on television during the ceremony were actually pre-recorded rather than live. Fireworks are unpredictable (wind, humidity, fog, misfires) and thus they backed up their multimillion-dollar display with recorded footage. Of the two billion people who watched the event, only a handful of zealous journalists noticed and exactly no one cared until the media told them to. The only difference it made was that we were much more entertained than if the thick smog hid the fireworks display.

On another note, the other day I saw Hugh Laurie stick his hand in someone’s open chest and pull out a tapeworm. I surprisingly still enjoyed the episode of house, knowing it was a plastic torso and worm. I also watched professional wrestling and could totally see that their punches weren’t landing. I was so disillusioned that I vowed to only watch sports that weren’t fixed in advance like boxing, televised poker and Baseball. My naïve self expected non-stop live presentation of realistic people in realistic situations from my television. I was sorely disappointed that Star Trek was not live feed from the International Space Station. Television is the fakest presentation of fake things happening to fake people (double all the fakes for reality television). There is nothing wrong with that, otherwise we would look out the window or go out instead of watch a fat person lose two pounds and cry for 35 minutes.

(I am kidding, nothing could ever convince me to watch baseball).

Moving on.

The Chinese Olympic Committee and the Chinese government have allegedly spent billions of dollars on these games. Just the opening ceremonies cost a cool 100 million dollars for a 4-hour show. Some people may frown upon a third-world nation that spends a percentage of its GDP on a two-week party but I say nay. The Chinese have an image to keep up and doing so requires them to spend more money, use more performers and win more gold medals than we can possibly imagine. In a measly four years, they have built massive sports infrastructure and developed competitive talent in sports they hadn’t even heard of a few years ago (see canoeing). I will not be ethnocentric and impose my values of democracy, human writes and feeding children on Hu Jintao and the Communist Party of China.

That’s right, we must not forget that China is a communist nation. As such, China spends more on international image than on rural infrastructure or long-term economic development (It worked well for the USSR). It is unfortunate but the evidence is there. Actually, they are not necessarily hypocritical about their designs by hiding them. It’s just that very little people speak Mandarin in the Western World and so we may instinctively think they are hiding something. We might have to wait a century before Chinese languages prevail over English and thus we will be one happy homogenous family (unlike the failure of the British, German, French, Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Russian, Swedish, Japanese and American empires before).

Finally,

These Olympics, we have been treated to the greatest amount of Gold Medals by a single athlete in a single Games ever. Michael Phelps has continuously volunteered for drug testing on top of mandatory tests therefore we cannot accuse him of any wrongdoing (Unless American chemists have developed undetectable performance-enhancers… I am just being paranoid, it could never happen). He seemingly deserves these medals and congratulations to him. It was exhilarating to see him swim and win until I noticed an odd trend. People are huddled around televisions to see the human-dolphin hybrid swim and are overwhelmed with emotion when he shatters the world record in a particular event. The thing is, he DESTROYED the Olympic record in one event and shattered the world records in the other 7. Furthermore, the other competitors that would invariably finish on the silver and bronze medal positions would also smash their personal best, national best and world record… I thought that world records where these limits of human performance that were only rarely pushed by a small increment… Have these swimmers been holding back dramatically during practice and competitions in the last decade or is there something more nefarious at work here. My suspicion is based on metaphysics rather than facts but here goes: I insinuate that the Chinese desire for ratings and notoriety is behind this. By somehow reducing the water resistance in their pool, even by a percent or two, they could guarantee the establishment of new and unbeatable records. Hence, we would be talking about the Beijing swimming events for the next few decades. Think about it, it sounds like they would have the resources and motive to do this… they are clearly hiding something.

Michael Phelps has the most gold medals and this criterion seems to be enough to designate him as the best Olympian of all time. Here are some other factors to be taken into account:

- Today’s wet suits have substantially decreased record times.
- In the first few Olympic games, swimming events took place in open sea.
- For an athlete competing in the triathlon, he would have to compete for 32 years to get 8 gold medals. There is one triathlon per Olympics and 497 swimming events.
- Half of the planet’s countries have little access to water (Africa), much less an Olympic swimming delegation. However, every country can run the 100 meters.
- The Chinese did something with the water.
- Former Olympians Pieter Van Den Hogenband and Ian Thorpe were not competing, leaving Phelps with relatively no competition.

I am not saying that Phelps’ accomplishment is not among the greatest athletic achievements of all time. I am just trying to nuance the absolutist terminology used by worldwide media this week (best, legend, God, Greatest, fish-boy).

My Gold medal for BEST Olympian still goes to Jesse Owens, a black man who won 4 gold medals (athletics) under Hitler’s nose in the 1936 Berlin games. He was constantly berated and jeered by the spectators celebrating their official German racism yet ran and jumped well ahead of his Aryan competitors. Once he came back to the United States as an Olympic hero, he was generously rewarded with a lucrative and dignified career racing against horses on a track. Life and History are generally unfair but it definitely sucks more for some.

Happy Olympic season, it is the greatest…

(Pictured: Jesse Owens, One-upping the Nazis - Freedom officers looking on at the pre-recorded fireworks display - Michael Phelps, NOT experiencing the side-effects of performance-enhancers)

End.

SSR Forever

2008-08-11T18:33:00.008-05:00

Friday August 8th 2008 – Although I would profoundly enjoy writing about the Beijing Olympics, and its politisation, Vladimir Putin has decided to deny me this happiness by invading the former soviet socialist republic of Georgia. I am well aware that Dimitri Medvedev is the current president of Russia yet somehow Putin is the one speaking to the media and attending the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympiads (on the very same hour that 150 soviet, sorry I mean, Russian tanks crossed the Russian border into Georgia). Since the invasion, thousands are dead in what few have correctly dubbed ‘’all-out war’’. Pointing fingers has begun therefore I though I would help you point your own instead of letting fox news do it for you.

One could say this began with the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the creation of Georgia in the early 1990s. Being a small republic in the Caucasus Mountains, Georgia has limited resources to affirm its independence and autonomy from its massive Russian neighbour/former overlord. Furthermore, just as Russia has to contend with the separatist peoples of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia (among many others), Georgia has two secessionist provinces: Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Both these regions are populated by a majority of ethnic Russians yet are internationally recognized as belonging to the Georgian central gouvernment within the established borders of its country. South Ossetia went on the offensive following the end of the cold war and declared itself an independent state in 1992, thus deepening the internal rift severely. To this day, none of the 195 countries of the planet (ironically including Russia) have recognized the legitimacy of this separation although Russia has granted them citizenship in 2007.

Now that the table has been set, we are ready for a point-counterpoint of the soviet…I mean Russian invasion in South Ossetia this Friday.

At first, Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili was sending armed forces to the separatist-held region for a week before the incident. The details and objectives of this operation remain vague yet there were no reports of violence or casualties by international observers. Saakashvili relates that he was simply trying to keep peace in the region and thus maintain the internal stability of his country (who is trying to join NATO). Suddenly, President Medvedev of Russia decided to send over 150 Soviet tanks into Georgia to help the peacekeeping effort (presumably after being told to do so by Putin). Two things strike me as strange with this occurrence: a) my father was a United Nations Peacekeeper for decades yet has never promoted peace by entering a region with 150 tanks b) What right does Russia have to enter another country and help when no one asked them? Medvedev evokes the right to protect all Russian citizens yet I fail to believe 150 tanks would be sent to Little Russia in New York if they were being turbulent.

The situation rapidly degenerated as Russia accused Georgia of ethnically cleansing the Russians of South Ossetia (1 day AFTER they invaded) to justify their actions and Georgia accused the Russian tanks and fighter jets of attacking civilian targets. They both deny any wrongdoing and listening to their official statements, you would think they are calmly having tea and biscuits in South Ossetia right now. Fortunately, international media are reporting the thousands of dead civilians and soldiers and heavily armed clashes in progress. We are told and vividly shown that the capital of the region, Tskhinval has been obliterated. Furthermore, Russia has invaded the other breakaway region of Abkhazia and is air bombing the Georgian capital, Tbilissi. Something must be done and everyone has an opinion about how and why.

The politicians of the world have a clear enounced goal: the immediate cessation of hostilities in Georgia. Most of them then suggest that Russia remove its tanks, apologize, promise they won’t do it again and go to bed without dessert. John McCain (Republican candidate for the United States presidency) even accused Moscow of attacking Georgia to undermine the Georgian adoption of western values such as freedom and democracy. Apparently everything east of Germany is a military dictatorship or communist wasteland; clearly McCain suffers from PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) from his Vietnam days (vote Obama). Unfortunately, it is not so clear, as I have elaborated. Georgia is possibly oppressing and even murdering the Ossetians who are ethnically and linguistically Russian. Furthermore, Georgia was a province of the Soviet Empire for half a century and therefore still has close economic, political and emotional ties to the motherland. Isn’t Russia correct in wanting to defend its people, even if it means shattering its own international relations, invading another country and possibly going to war? With the lack of transparency that has characterized the Russian government since the early XXth century and the suspiciously talkative President Saakashvili on the opposing side, we are heavily saturated with either our own wild guesses or abundant misinformation. I am absolutely sure it is in everyone’s best interest to stop the armed conflict and discuss a compromise (so that Russia doesn’t lose face and Georgia isn’t bombed off the world map). If we absolutely must assign blame, I leave you with an eerily similar parallel in history from 70 years ago.

The Sudetenland is a German name given to the western portion of the Czech Republic (formerly Czechoslovakia). In 1938 a man named Konrad Henlein led a separatist party in the Czech capital of Prague. He and 3 million of his fellow Sudeten-Germans had a historic attachment to the Fatherland and thus wanted to rejoin Deutschland. The 1930s had seen skirmish after skirmish erupt within the Czech region between the two ethnic groups without a proper diplomatic outcome foreseeable. Finally, seeing the plight of a German-speaking, German-cultured peoples of the Sudetenland, Germany sent tanks to invade and annex the region into their Kingdom. International outrage followed as Germany easily silenced the Czech guns, yet nothing concrete was done to punish the outrageous violation of the Czech nation. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain even went to Munich to meet with the Germans and signed a treaty (The Munich Accords) that formally agreed with the German imperative to protect their people in the Sudetenland as long as they no longer threatened any existing border in Europe. The Germans happily agreed; “Peace in our time” yelled Chamberlain as he exited the plane in London. They would not have to go to war with the Germans because their leader, chancellor Adolf Hitler had noble motives for taking a chunk of Czechoslovakia. The epilogue of this historical excerpt includes the annexation of Czechoslovakia as a whole, as well as most of Europe and over 50 million dead but that story is for another day.

(Pictured: British PM Chamberlain, French President Daladier, German Chancellor Hitler and Italian leader Mussolini signing the Munich accords - The Russian tanks of aid, justice and peace enter Georgia - Georgian shooter Nino Salukvadze and Russian shooter Natalia Paderina embrace as they receive olympic bronze and gold medals respectively this weekend)

End.

Heroes Shmeroes

2008-08-03T19:31:00.003-05:00

August 3rd 2008 – 11 alpinists have died climbing to the Himalayan summit of K2, the second tallest peak on the planet. At 8,611 vertical meters high, it is a mere 237 meters shorter than Everest yet just as treacherous and deadly. In fact, it is widely regarded as the most difficult ascent on earth and is prone to flash avalanches. Today, such a catastrophe is widely responsible for instantly suffocating a few, smashing others and stranding the remainder until they died of exposure to the –45 degree (Celsius) temperatures.

Only a handful of climbers have made it to the top of K2 and despite several serious attempts no one has ever successfully reached the peak in winter. This begs the question: why in holy heck are they doing this. There are two generally accepted answers to this: the first and most obvious one is that there are massive amounts of gold hidden within caves near the peak. The second possibility is more doubtful and is described by the climbers as “for the thrill of it”. Gandhi marched for salt, Anne Frank wrote a diary, Rosa Parks sat at the front of the bus and Imre Nagy kicked the Soviets out of Budapest (Wiki him, a very interesting historical character); ‘for the thrill of it”. Funny enough, these types of sacrifices in the face of injustice, prejudice or plain fascism today are barely as noticed as the great thrill seekers of Everest and K2.

This story is currently given the utmost importance on major news sites internationally. Meanwhile, a potential cure for stomach cancer was discovered in England yesterday and earlier today, over 140 people died in a massive accident in India. Unfortunately for the Indians, they are colored and nowhere near as interesting as the rich Scandinavian people that had enough free time to go kill themselves on K2, a few hundred kilometers north of India.

Don’t get me wrong, if these self-proclaimed heroes want to attempt this feat that makes no effort to hide its high probability of amputation and mortality, who I am to say they are as dumb as people who eat glass for other people’s entertainment. I just seriously don’t get why Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing, whom were the first to climb Everest in 1953, are on many lists of “Heroes” or “Pioneers” next to Martin Luther King Jr., Franklin D. Roosevelt, Florence Nightingale or Che Guevara. Hillary, at best, won the ultimate bragging rights when he made it back to his castle in New Zealand (Sherpa Tenzing went back to his straw hut and had a modest life as a tourist guide). He did not win the darn Nobel peace prize and to wrap up my point, it wasn’t any easier for Ernst Smied and Jürg Marmet to climb Mount Everest 3 years later; they were second to do so and thus apparently not worthy of the smallest amount of worship.

Ironically, the more clever ones out there may decry my hypocrisy since I have been talking in length about this event rather than the Indian hecatomb or medical breakthroughs. To you I would say that I am definitely doing it “for the thrill” and am definitely not ashamed to say I want the gold at the top of writers’ mountain. The burden remains on the reader, no one is twisting your arm, go to Wikipedia and read about Women’s rights in Iran or how to build a hybrid car out of discarded phone books. Long story short, the people want to worship Edmund Hillary and Neil Armstrong because we are so very lazy and when there finally is a first man that did something, we, by extension, did as well.

(Pictured: Sherpa Tenzing Norgay atop Mount Everest in 1953 - The Colossal K2 seen from Base Camp 1)

End.

100 years of investigations

2008-07-26T19:12:00.006-05:00

July 26th 2008 - Despite what some of you might think, the US Federal Bureau of Investigations actually exists. It was not created in Holloywood and subsequently featured in about 9 million movies. Exactly 100 years ago today, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the creation of the FBI as a gouvernmental organism in charge of National security. That mission has changed drastically during everyone of the past decade yet a constant remains that coloured people are suspicious (seriously, check 24).

Directly from my upcoming book (hint, hint publishers), here is my list of the 7 most noteworthy events in the FBIs tumultuous history.

1. Bordellos in Chicago (1908-1910) – The first responsibility of the Bureau at the turn of the century was to investigate the trafficking of European females in Urban America. Centering in Chicago and Boston, the FBI discovered and surveyed these illegal prostitution/slavery rings led by organised crime. This led to the passing of the “White Slave Traffic Act” of 1910, banning prostitution.

2. The hunt for Al Capone (1931) – The Italian-American “entrepreneur” famously imported and provided bootleg alcohol for Chicago citizens during the 1920s prohibition. Despite his illegal activities including extortion, racketeering and the organised murder of other gang members, the FBI were never able to gather sufficient proof of his wrongdoings. Stubbornly hell-bent on imprisoning him, the “untouchable” and incorruptible FBI agents of Elliott Ness gathered an elusive paper trail, leading to the arrest and conviction of Capone on charges of tax evasion in 1931.

3. The Lindbergh baby (1932) – Charles Lindbergh was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris in 1927. The universal attention this brought him led to the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh Jr. from his crib in 1932; a ransom note was left. President Hoover immediately pledged the help of the FBI who met little luck in their original search. It is only through a cunning plan of paying the kidnapper with marked bills that they tracked down a man called Bruno Hauptmann 2 years later. His trial was covered by worldwide media and rapidly ended with his execution. To this day, suspicions persist as to the validity of Hauptmann’s involvement as he denied it to his death; yet the FBI maintains that they had extensive evidence (such as the ransom money under his bed).4. McCarthyism (1950s) – Pioneered by senator Joseph McCarthy and greatly supported by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. This movement fostered an era of American paranoia and rampant anti-communism. All those suspected of soviet affiliations or communist tendencies were hastily rounded up and aggressively interrogated by the FBI. Needless to say, few of those investigated were spies yet their personal and professional lives were destroyed. It was a dark period for the FBI as the Freedom of Information act of 1975 exposed. Illegal phonetaps, opening private mail and organised theft were among the FBI actions condoned and used at the time that led to the arrest of important people such as Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Miller and Orson Welles. Freedom of opinion and ideology eventually overtook the discriminatory policies of the FBI and McCarthyism.

5. Siege of Waco, Texas (1993) – Cult leader David Koresh and his Davidian followers locked themselves in a ranch near Waco, Texas. Alleging the Davidians had illegal firearms, gouvernment officials raided the ranch; this prelude to the siege killed 4 officers and 6 cult members. The following 51-day siege was a media frenzy analysing the duel between Koresh inside and the FBI outside. Despite agile negotiations, the siege only ended when the FBI inadvertently set fire to the compound. 76 people burned alive in that ranch on live television.

6. The Unabomber (1978-1995) – Theodore Kaczynski, for a long time, was the model definition of a terrorist. Carefully sending 16 mail bombs over the course of 18 years, he terrified the American people. The FBI spent millions finding Kaczynski, going through the thousands of leads that were being phoned in daily due to the lack of a clear picture of him or of any real evidence. The culprit promised more deaths if his anarchist manifesto wasn’t published in 1995. Newspapers and officials agreed and the diffusion of this piece of evidence directly led to his identification and arrest.

7. Sept. 11th (2001) – With 3000 dead and another 7000 injured, the terrorist hijackings of 4 American chartered planes and their subsequent crash in the Pentagon and World Trade Center is the deadliest terrorist attack ever perpetrated on American soil. Although no agency was able to prevent such an occurrence, the FBI provided the names and pictures of the hijackers mere hours after the fact. The following investigation involved over 7000 agents who identified Osama Bin Laden and the terrorist group Al-Qaida as the culprits of the human tragedy. Theirs was a morose and difficult task as they identified who did it from overseas yet had to leave the rest to the CIA.

(Pictured: Al Capone - The emblem of the FBI - the Waco massacre)

End.

Hard day's celebration

2008-07-18T09:31:00.009-05:00

July 17th 2008 – Sir Paul McCartney of the Beatles will be presenting his only show of 2008 in North America this Sunday. Performing in Quebec City, Canada, it will be the first and probably the last time any Beatle ever plays in the old city. Despite the overwhelming honour of having Mr. McCartney play for them during the celebration of their 400th anniversary, residents and elected officials of the French-Canadian sub-nation are boisterously complaining.

That’s right, although it is probably only representative of a few zealous nationalists, many Quebec citizens, mostly artists, have written a passionate (which means very, VERY long) public letter saying that the British performer will represent all that was wrong with the English conquest of New France in the 1760s. Furthermore, they say that having Paul on Quebec City’s historic Plains of Abraham will be a boot to the face of the historic battle that occurred there in 1759 (which the French lost in less than an hour due to drinking and sleeping in). Freedom of opinion is a grand tradition; it permits the sensible and critical-minded ones of us to express concern while providing the others a means to embarrass themselves and entertain us. This freedom does not apply to our elected officials.

Three members of the Quebec parliament (Pierre Curzi, Daniel Turp and Martin Lemay) have endorsed the open letter demanding Sir McCartney not to show up due to the pervasive nature of his Mother tongue. These men are deprived of any private life or personal opinion for the duration of their mandate. This is not only my opinion as a citizen and elected representative of my student community and city but also it is a political reality in the post-WW2 era. The Members of Parliament are elected to speak and embody the preoccupations of their electors, not to influence them. In this case, their electors are saying “HOLY S*** PAUL F****** MCCARTNEY IS COMING HERE!?!?” and not “it’s tragic how this artist is from The United Kingdom, the very same country who conquered us many centuries ago and has passively tried to assimilate our culture ever since. I protest this event and will now listen to some light French elevator music”. I am usually very polite but these politicians must take their head out of their behinds and poke it outside to see and hear the people once in a while. I seriously hope these buffoons will not be reelected when everyone sees their arrogance and disinterest in the people they supposedly represent.

I would usually try to expose and somewhat justify the argument of the nationalists but this time, it is so ridiculous that I can do nothing but berate it with ridicule. Firstly, the 400th anniversary celebrations of Quebec City seem to reflect a general current in Canadian History. It is what the Germans would call Schultzkultur (Identity of guilt) or what Canadian author Granatstein described as a telling of our faults, mistakes and wrongdoings as a national history (in his book “Who Killed Canadian History?”). Not only must they relive events of failure, war, death and destruction from centuries ago, but the nationalists insists that no fun may be had today because of this. In an interview, the former Beatle seemed as confused as I was about the argument, stating that if it was a valid concern: “ I would never go to Germany and Germans would never come to Britain”. This comment may help the Quebec politicians reassess their self-importance and their willingness to say anything to be in a newspaper.

As a result, I am sure that the 12 or so ultranationalists that believe going to McCartney’s concert (a free outdoor concert I might add) is equal to giving XVIIIth century French King Louis XIV a slap in the face will remain home, sit down in front of a Canadian flag and scold it with cringed faces. The other 700,000 people of the city will happily flock to this once in a lifetime event, promptly forgetting it has ANYTHING to do with history. Good for them; happy concert and happy 400th birthday of progress, happiness and successes to Quebec City.

(Pictured: Battle on the Plains of Abraham in 1759 where the evil British conquered the ill-prepared French - The invader)

End.

Wedding Edition

2008-07-09T14:22:00.004-05:00

July 5th 2008 - Optimism is often reckless and in an effort of general laziness, a lack of news and the fact that I got married this weekend, this week’s blog will instead be a link to the site www.mentalfloss.com, as taken by cnn.com. Here is an interesting historical background of all things wedding. My favourite is the bouquet toss.

(Here is the link: http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/06/27/
wedding.traditions/index.html?iref=newssearch)

Have a nice week and sleep tight until the world ends next week.

(Pictured: Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's 1840 wedding - a bouquet)

End.

The Dark Continent

2008-06-26T07:56:00.004-05:00

June 27th 2008 – The southern African country of Zimbabwe will hold ‘’elections’’ this Friday in an unprecedented exercise in democracy. The ballot will oppose incumbent president Robert Mugabe who has held power since the independence of the nation in 1987 and the leader of the opposition Morgan Tsvangirai. Or at least it should... Unfortunately, Mr. Tsvangirai has withdrawn from the race earlier this week for reasons that were universally hailed as reasonable. Therefore, Mugabe will run unopposed and almost guarantees himself another win at the age of 84.

Over a month ago, a first round of elections gave Tsvangirai the win by a clear majority yet the 3 weeks delay before the results were announced made the international community quite suspicious about the actual “dead-heat” of the results. It is at this point that international observers from other African nations, the United Nations and the European Union left Zimbabwe to escape a possible civil war. It was then announced that we would have a second round of elections since the original poll was almost too close to call.

Since then, a few weeks have passed where Tsvangirai and the opposition have been imprisoned twice, hundreds of thousands of their supporters have been displaced, intimidated and killed and 86 of the opposition representatives have been assassinated. Fearing further violence, especially for the electors going to the polls this Friday, Tsvangirai threw in the towel, putting an end to this masquerade that President Mugabe has called a democracy.

Mugabe has used a Putin-like subtlety in his legendary respect for democracy: he originally made it a capital offense for the opposition to hold public meetings, affirmed that his presidency is a gift from God, banned international media under threat of imprisonment and death, said he would go to war if he lost and now, as the international community decries these mock elections, he claims that the Zimbabwean people will have the last word and only they can decide how democracy will apply to them.

President Bush and the entire United Nations Security Council have condemned the actions of Mugabe and confirm that they will disregard the results of Friday’s elections. Now, considering the extreme poverty of the Zimbabwean people, the international community can’t morally do much more than that. Mugabe actually holds his people hostage, knowing full well that the United States will not impose economic sanctions or even decrease aid payments, punishing the poorest of the poor. It is quite clear that President Mugabe does not have much to lose by acting like an African Tyrant of which we’ve seen so many.

For example, Charles Taylor ruled with a royal fist over Liberia for 7 years where he instated torture, amputations and the basic enslavement of the Liberians for his own enrichment, all for the liberation and greater good of his people. He is now on trial in The Hague for crimes of war. Further east, General Mobutu of the former Zaire held an iron martial fist over his country and stole all international aid money during his 32 year reign, all for the liberation and greater good of his people. He ended up with a fortune of over 4 billion dollars and recently died in exile. Finally, still further east, General Idi Amin presided over Uganda for 8 years in the 1970s. Up to 500,000 people could have been assassinated during his regime including: all Asians whom he deported, political opponents, various ethnic Ugandans and many more. He again humbly claimed the liberation of his people and then titled himself “ His Excellency, President for Life, Field Doctor Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular”. Amin fled to Libya when his people had enough and died there at the ripe old age of 80.

On the one hand, President Mugabe of Zimbabwe will say that we cannot understand the needs of his people; on the other hand, all the other African tyrants claimed the same motives before they were violently overthrown by the very people they wanted to save. All in all, there is currently not much that can be done to help the ACTUAL people of Zimbabwe (the ones that are scared of not feeding their family tonight rather than pleasing the international community with democratic elections). I guess we are simply lucky that Mugabe is not yet as violently “patriotic” and “heroic” as his dictatorial predecessors.

(Pictured: Conference of evil: President Mobutu of Zaire and his sponsor Nixon - A concerned President Robert Mugabe)

End.

Poll results Jan-June 2008

2008-06-17T10:53:00.002-05:00

June 17th 2008 – Here are the poll results for the first half of 2008:

Question: Which of the following countries is on the verge of returning to a system of monarchy/theocracy/dictatorship? Total number of votes: 357.

I must say I am quite surprised by the results since I specifically chose these countries at the beginning of the year, when tumultuous events were taking place in them.

In last place, Pakistan won 3% or 11 votes. Considering that in late December, President Pervez Musharraf suspended the constitution, declared martial law and his main opposition leader (Benazir Bhutto) was subsequently assassinated, this result is shocking. Pakistan could easily have remained in a military dictatorship indefinitely following these events although Musharraf has loosened his grip on power somewhat since then.

Next, Russia came in fourth with 8% or 28 votes. Again, this is confusing considering the drastic military, political and economic actions of Putin’s regime against Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, the Baltic States and the European Union so far in 2008. Furthermore, the fact that Putin hand-picked his successor after the end of his 2 terms, and that he basically named himself prime minster after that, circumvents all semblance of a stable democracy in the former soviet capital.

In third place, Canada gained 14% or 51 votes. I had originally entered this country as a joke and thought that the few votes for it would be jokes as well. Unfortunately, I can’t ignore the 14% it ended up with. Without a doubt, Canada is the most stable political entity of these 5 countries with a 130 year history of continuous democracy. Its current conservative government has lowered taxes, raised the age of consent to 16 and reinforced federalism throughout the land. I fail to see the threat of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s impending dictatorship.

In second place, just edging out Canada, we find Kenya with 15% or 53 of the votes. Considering the shambles that was the last election in which civil war was narrowly avoided, I fail to see why Kenya’s results are so close to Canada’s. As with most of the burgeoning African republics, a lengthy history of tribal monarchies and a trivial delimitation of territories during colonisation have made them prone to an eventual return towards a political tradition far from a stable democracy.

Finally, our grand number 1 is Japan with a staggering 60% or 214 votes. At the end of last year, President Shinzo Abe quit his position due to extreme exhaustion, a few ministers quit amidst corruption inquiries and another committed suicide due to allegations of money laundering. Furthermore, Japan suffers from excessive problems of overcrowding, poverty and suicide. Being a country that is over 98% homogeneously Japanese, the lack of immigrants also leaves us with a lack of ‘outsider’s insight’ into these societal problems. Therefore, perhaps this first place is well warranted for reasons beyond my understanding. That being said, Japan has comfortably established and maintained a stable democracy following the military imperialism of World War 2. The extreme right and left political elements are quite marginal and the constitutional monarchy in place does not seem to want a return to absolutism. I don’t believe we will soon see another Empire of the Rising Sun.

I wish my poll had a commentary section to understand the overwhelming lead that Japan gained or the lack of interest for Pakistan and Kenya in the first half of 2008. All in all, most Japanese news services are currently occupied with a massive earthquake that occurred this weekend as well as the rising costs of gas and of food. Much like the western world, Japan shows very little sign of wanting a monarchy/theocracy/dictatorship to replace the current liberal freedoms they enjoy.

It was a very informative survey that leaves me with many more questions than answer. A new poll will be up shortly.

(Pictured: The military flag of Japan and its tragic end in Nagasaki 1945, things they won't soon forget.)

End.

Crazy Clintons

2008-06-07T07:13:00.008-05:00

June 7th 2008 – Hillary Clinton will announce today the formal end of her 16 month campaign for the American Presidency. This leaves but one candidate for the Democratic Party nomination, Mr. Barack Obama to whom Mrs. Clinton should reluctantly offer her support. This concession finally concludes an unthinkably long and exciting race to the Democratic Nomination. We almost forgot that the bi-party race for President of the United States hasn’t begun yet. Without wanting to be racist or ageist, I must state the simple fact that the imminent 2008 elections will boil down to voting for a black man or a very old man. You would think ideas, campaign platforms or visions for the future will be important to the average American elector yet we all know the blue states will vote blue and the red states will vote red. The few swing states that actually matter will be swayed into either camp simply by how aggressive and poignant the negative campaigning will be. I strongly believe that Obama has an advantage and will win the race because it will be terribly difficult for McCain to subtly capitalize on his opponent’s blackness.

That being said, this blog entry is actually a salute to Hillary Clinton and to women everywhere who know there is nothing wrong with being a bitch. Barack Obama presumptively won the Democratic nomination weeks ago but confirmed his win on Tuesday by gaining over half of the total amount of possible votes. This simply means that, try as she might, there was no longer any possibility of her winning. Did that stop her? NOooooo, she was angry, disappointed and sad therefore she didn’t concede. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, over 80 hours since everyone knows it’s over and she still doesn’t give up and even encourages her supporters to donate more money to her campaign. Yes, it is shredding apart the Democratic Party, it is decimating the small amount of public interest left in this election year before it actually begins, it makes the United States appear divided and weak to the eyes of the world yet she is exercising her God-given right to be a bitch and no one can fault her for that. Some people say that she is vying for a Vice-Presidential slot but I believe it is a bit early to give any rational explanation to her behaviour. She has the right to be a bitch just as Obama has the right to humiliate his former-opponent when he announces his Vice-President: Mr. or Mrs. Anyone but Hillary.

It was an exciting race, for the Democrats that is, and now that it is over, many political analysts are drawing parallels between other great electoral clashes in American History. For your reading pleasure, here is a short list of equally enticing historical campaign battles from around the world.

1) 2004, Presidential elections of Ukraine between the incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych (Pro-Russia) and opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko (Pro-West). This election, dubbed the Orange Revolution, took several months to conclude amongst accusations of vote rigging, recount upon recount and several assassination attempts. The result was a new Ukraine under Yushchenko (who is still president) turned away from Moscow and towards the future.
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2) 2000, Presidential election of the USA between Republican candidate George W. Bush and Democratic candidate/incumbent Vice-President/Swell guy Al Gore. The campaign itself was uneventful; it was a former VP that operated in the tarnished shadow of Bill Clinton for 8 years and an admitted alcoholic whose dad was once president. The fun began in the three months of recounts and Supreme Court rulings that followed one of the closest electoral results in US history. In the end, Al Gore won the election with 50,999,897 votes against Bush’s 50,456,002 votes. Unfortunately, it is at this point that the world was told the USA existed in a parallel, electoral-bizarro universe where Bush won anyway.
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3) 1960, Presidential election of the USA between Republican candidate/incumbent Vice-President Richard M. Nixon and Democratic candidate/Playboy John F. Kennedy. This is actually the closest vote is America’s electoral history: 34,220,984 for Kennedy Vs. 34,108,157 for Nixon. It was an exciting race (with persistent rumours of vote theft) between these epic characters who fought about winning the Cold War, winning the Space Race, desegregating America and keeping those Germans down. This is in violent contrast with today’s preoccupation of Wheat producer’s subsidies, endless education reforms and ‘going green’. Although JFK won, both candidates went on to become some of the most notorious American Presidents in History.

4) 1933, German election for Chancellor between the National Socialists (Hitler’s Nazi Party) and the other parties (Franz von Papen). Von Papen had been Chancellor for many years during the economic downfall of the country (1929-1933) and his failure to cope with the consequences of depression led the German people to vote for people who could (to be fair, the Nazis quickly solved the economic problems of Depression, once in power). Thus, the relatively close elections of 1928 and 1932 preceded a landslide in 1933: Hitler was made chancellor and his party (NSDAP) won 43.9% of the votes while the second closest, the Socialists (SPD), won only 18.3%. Further proof of these extreme choices resides in the third strongest party during these elections, the Communist KPD with 12.3% of the vote. Although the rise of the Nazis had been foreseen for a long time, 1933 marks the beginning of our apocalypse that was 1939-1945.
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5) 1519, Imperial election of the Holy Roman Empire (Germanic) between Spanish/Austrian/Dutch King Charles Vth and French King Francis Ist. These men of legendary egos (without forgetting their contemporary British King, Henry VIIIth) battled for this throne that was to be decided by a vote of nobles. Although the title does not give any real power (Germany being 1000 different Kingdoms, principalities and republics at this point, each with different laws), it was a way of ‘one-upping’ each other between the rich monarchs of Europe. The new emperor was crowned by the Pope and with Charles Vth’s easy win; he effectively surrounded his perpetual enemy, the French.

I could probably write a book on interesting elections from around the world and throughout time yet for now, these are the five elections that strike me as immediately fascinating. I am no fool and I know fully well that the impending elections between Obama and McCain will never shoulder these historic events yet I must thank Hillary Clinton for the eclectic spice she added to what would have otherwise been a generally dull process.

(Pictured: A 1932 Nazi campaign poster demanding Freedom 'Freiheit' and bread 'Brot' - Crazy Clinton - possibly the first American President to be so skinny.)

End.