Albinos Murdered In Tanzania Due To Superstition

From the grab bag of barking mad superstitious ignorance, I give you Tanzania's baby murdering witch doctoring.
Hard to believe that this savage(*) f#ck nuttiness still happens in the 21st century.
Let's face it, this is an insult to actual savages, many of whom would never imagine anything this perverted.
It is important to note that Tanzania is not completely untouched by civilisation, indeed they've had exposure to Christian ministry for centuries, and in a 2010 Pew survey 61.4% self identified as Christian. Still this obscene atrocity remains. Why? perhaps because ignorance is more profitable than wisdom.
Clearly education is the key to wiping out such backward behaviour,  and there has been plenty of opportunity to make that happen. If Christianity were the force for good that Christians claim it is, then surely educating people out of this nonsense would be a high priority. But instead, especially well publicised are West and Central African nations where we find churches promoting witch persecution, often directed at children while there preachers live lifestyles that many would envy in developed nations, but clearly East Africa is not immune to the glamour of destroying children for the sake of salacious ill founded fantasies about good and evil and so doing becoming a greater evil than harms with which they are they are faced by virtue of living in a world vastly more complex than the understanding that they have been given by their culture, their religious prelates, and what ever the education system has made available to the Tanzanian population. Many have been denied education in Tanzania but poverty a school fees (fees were waved in 2001) leaving many dangerlously ill educated.

Ignorant behaviour which harms children is far from exclusive to Africa of of course. Idaho, Oregon and other American states have considerable problems with religious exemptions allowing parents to medically neglect their children health problems, result child mortality 26 times the national average for faith health families. Here the ignorance is wilful, more than it is consequential to poverty and lack of opportunities for learning. And of then there is the anti vaccine hysteria and the measles epidemic.

Something is rotten in the disunited states of America

Grab the popcorn, the sugar free soda, buckle up, this will be a ride Stephen King never wrote - he hasn't got the imagination for this kind of horror.
A little while ago I saw this little bit on the the history of American foreign policy, often appauling it includes chainsaws, I kid you not.

But then, My facebook feed pointed me to the 1933 plot to take over the White House leading FDR to declare "I welcome their hatred". No one was ever prosecuted, But FDR, bargained them down to accepting the New Deal, and by them I mean executives of major corporates including Colgate, GM, General Foods, and GW's grand-daddy - Prescott Bush.

The BBC4 documented this plot.(Audio only)

Here is a US produced documentary of the incident.

This leads me to this documentary mostly drawn from hard news reports but includes segments from far right pontificators, Sheds light on a disturbing history of terrorist incidents in the US and the proliferation of ideas that drive it.

Fascism never disappeared. It just laid low, until it could get control and freedom for corporate press. The Powell Memo foreshadowed this, advocating that business interests seek political involvement beyond their direct interests, become more vociferous in the media for their interest. Few years later the SCOTUS delivered Buckley v Valeo declaring money is speech. In 2010 Citizens United declared corporation are people - which is against the documented intent of the framers of the constitution who would have said Corporations legal fictions and property, and accountable to the community before their bottom lines.

America has within it very dangerous elements, and Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck et al fan the flames of hate and barbarity, scaring the crap out of anyone who will listen long enough. And for what? the peace of mind of a few out of touch over indulged cry baby billionaires who have already too good for too long. Even the G20 has officially said income inequality is hurting economic growth. So at this point it can't be just to keep thing running, or even for there own good. Noises are coming out of the financial sector of another crash in the near future.

While WW II was haled as a war against fascism, it seems the world for all the noise and horrific spectacle only dealt with one arm of this angry beast and sidestepped having to deal with the rest of it. So now this generation is face with a broader more coordinated attack, through trade agreement, a surveillance industrial complex, endless wars. There are strong voices against this tyranny, but to make the song of freedom they need the the chorus of the informed public and the gusto of the angry citizen behind them to fix this mess.

I usually defend myself from the horror of this insanity with fiction that it is like a circus, or a poe. It is not working today. I need me some crazy Bryan Fischer.

John Key's #1 rejected State of the Nation speech for 2015

John key explains magic behind housing fix

John Key delivered his State of the National speech Wednesday last week. And it appears, the beehive still hasn't plugged all the leaks, because we can now present the #1 reject draft of the speech he delivered.

Ladies and gentlemen.
New Zealand is in good shape and getting better for our richest income earners.

We are making great strides in building a strong more prosperous country for overseas investors to buy from New Zealanders. A country where you can have a great life style after buying your share to exclude the nasty looking natives and earn a good income overcharging them on their rent. That progress is due to the hard work of New Zealanders who thanks to my mesmerizing smile don't know how much Our leadership has them tied up in obscurantist fantasy.

It is because of the rigid, shackling and delusion designed by Edward Bernays, over the last six years, Iron fisted and inflexible control. New Zealand is doing well compared to Greece, Kiribati, and Yemen.

The economy is growing, despite our best efforts. Employment is increasing which is good 'cause it keeps the serfs from paying us too much attention, but wages are rising and our plutocrat overlords don't like that. We thought crushing the unions more what put a damper on it but it wasn't enough.

Consumers are benefiting from low inflation, so the takers are getting more without having to work harder for it, damn we have to stop that. I'll tell you we have a long period of low interest rates, Please ignore Westpac bumping up Credit Card rates 0.5% last month.

We are growing new industries like ICT(which has been around for years) and manufacturing, despite us doing little to protect or encourage them. Especially in zero-carbon energy systems. We've made it illegal for the surfs to compete with our food industry, and we have expanded international education while cutting education for our serfs. We're making good progress in area like Welfare – finding new ways to deny help to our poor, Soon, we'll be able to deny them shelter, education – we've already halved the number of Post-grad students. And law and order, we still lock up lots of, well, not white people, for consumption of substance less toxic than alcohol.

New Zealanders, were so confused by our media spin, dirty politics and yellow journalism most of the either voted against their own self interest, or didn't vote at all. And those that understood how we are screwing them over were out numbered by the apathetic the credulous and my favourite - grin worshippers. I'm relieve to have successfully BSed my way into another three years of this nicely overpaid gig.
The election result allows New Zealanders to be exposed to a more fascist third term government than has been the case in the past. We have a fake mandate and a strong arm to achieve further steady devolution that delivers better results for share holders and serfdom to everyday New Zealanders. And there is much to do. I can tell you, there will be no slackening in pace. We have three busy years ahead of us. We must conquer Asia, Australia and the United States with the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, it's hard work even with Tim Grosser's Jedi Mind trick. We must also manage the many global risks, Union's seem to be onto us, Wikileaks keeps say embarrassingly true things about what we're doing with our overseas plutocrat friends. But worst of all Greece has figured out my bankster friends are the source of Europe's debt problem's, and many are arguing that if Germany can have its debts forgiven after that whole Nazi thing, then Greece should be let out of its crushing debts too. Worst still, it appears there is only so much stuff consumers can buy from China. We should look at buying the People's Republic of China, while the market price is low.

These and other factors, make it all the more important to continue improving our feudal economy, boosting our rapaciousness, and encouraging overseas investors to buy us out, so we can build an insecure and weaker New Zealand vulnerable to outside economic forces over which e have no control.

The Government's focus this term will be on our four priorities:

• Irresponsibility mismanaging the government finances
• building a more unproductive false economy
• delivering better public services for the deserving wealthy(American Express accepted)
• And continuing to sandbag the rebuilding of Christchurch

I want to talk to you today about housing, which is an important part of all these four priorities.

After the election, I appointed three minions to housing related portfolios.

Pulla Benefit is the Minion for Antisocial Housing, in charge of denying New Zealanders with the highest housing needs.

Shill “taxes pay for my houses” English is Minion irresponsible for Housing New Zealand which owns or leases 68000 properties.

And Slick “she's just a friend” Sith, Minion for Building and Housing.

So you can see that housing policy is important to this Government because we hate social responsibility and just giving people the stuff they need offends us like name calling us Tories, having poor people living next to us, or having it pointed out that we are putting profit above people.

One of the biggest long standing issues is the supply of new housing, particularly in Auckland. Partly driven by the decline and our neglect of regional New Zealand. Check out how we stuffed Napier Gisborne on that washed out railway, a fine piece of work.
Previous Governments have put this in the too hard basket.

We're actually doing something about it. Our Government is bringing one of the worst possible options we're just getting our rich friends in real-estate speculation to pocket the value of what we have lined up for sale.

We're waving magic wands so that houses plop out of thin air and directing the Adam Smith's “invisible hand” to squeeze them out of Carpenters and bricklayers.

We've passed new decrees, and made six councils swear blood oaths, including Auckland, to fast track tin sheds and shanty towns, and release more industrial waste sites for residential development.

Last Week, Slick Sith, announced his evil plan to modify the Resource Mismanagement Act to improve the supply and affordability of slum housing.

Already, we've created the illusion that our approach is working.

Residential construction increased 21% last year because the escalating housing market, funds building but has little to do with us. 24,000 more building consents were issued Auckland knew it had a problem and they didn't need us to tell them to fix it. This is the highest number since 2008, Yay housing bubble, Yay, speculators.

This growth is set to continue as industrial waste sites accelerate land availability and appropriations.

That will help ease the pressure on house prices, because we spend two hours every night before bed time praying to our money god to make sure it happens.

But we should also recognise that housing includes more than just prices.

Incomes have been rising faster than inflation despite our best efforts, and the serfs are feeling too confident about the future.
Interest rates are low, too low, which makes servicing a mortgage to easy.

These factors are actually supporting the growth in house prices in some areas, and a few of my bankster friends couldn't be happier. Serfs are assessing there own ability to pay, and bidding on that basis, as always.

It's often hard for serfs to save for a first home.

That's where the Government's new Home Shaft programme for first home buyers comes in.

It begins in April this year and we estimate it will hinder 90,000 people into their first tin shacks over the next 5 years.
On top of that we're improving the quality of Housing New Zealand Stock, to remind tenants they are in these “shit-holes” because being lazy takers they don't deserve better, if they want better, they have get to some of those new jobs that will magically vanish in the next recession or depression crushing any hope of real stability.

Nearly 300,000 homes are warmer drier, and healthier, thanks to the Greens, Labour and Mana making it politically impossible to ignore the problem of homes that were insufficient for meeting the UN's basic standard, We were fine with the black mould in the Housing New Zealand stock. We're rather peeved they made us take reasonable steps to address it.

For land lords with tenants on low incomes, the Government subsidises housing the rent they charge from a budget of $1.9 billion.

Around $1.2 billion of that is for the accommodation supplement, which helps private landlords. And a few mortgagees.

The other $700 million is to help the bottom line of HNZ and other antisocial housing institutions.


Antisocial-housing tenants have personal circumstances or financial circumstance that make private renting or home ownership impossible, but we'll call it “difficult” because we don't want then to have any idea of how much we've screwed them over before we do it some more.

They could be a sole parent, for example, an older person, or someone with mental health issues, all of whom we can write off as having made poor choices, so we can avoid responsibility for what we're about to do to them.

Often, they are receiving other assistance, like a benefit or disability support, more fool them they should have asked for an exploratory drilling tax break, worth $40m, instead they go for the chump change. Like I said, poor choices.

This issue – antisocial housing – is what I want to dissemble about today.

Until last year Only HNZ could get the most lavish assistance from the Government for its investment in housing stock, it wasn't fair, and private landlords were locked out, and had to settle for a pittance. For example, a measly $100pw, if they housed a single job seeker in Wellington.

But this is not the case any more, now they can fill in some paper work and get rubber stamped as an “approved community housing provider”, and get the much needed support previously only available to Housing New Zealand.

This level of support is exactly the same as the deal with Housing New Zealand so we believe it is completely fair that we are giving tax payers money to do what governments can do better unless people like us decide to sandbag it to get elected again.

The change took effect last April.

That is why we talk about “antisocial housing” rather than “state housing”. Because your housing no longer have to be state owned to get a highest level highest tax rebate on your real estate property.

It's an important change, that will fill the pockets of millionaires with change, mostly notes, but some change too.

Locally based providers can surveillance their tenant more closely, as the search and surveillance laws only go so far.

Providers that have a particular penchant for hassling certain types of tenants can integrate their style of persecution with other services.
Non-government housing providers can also bring new approaches and access to new sources of funding. For example, Water boarding, Deli products like roast-leg-of-tenant.

I'll distract you with a heart warming example of how we fool this credulous nitwit into thinking he's getting a better deal.

The DomPost had a story last month about Pulla Benefit opening new housing units in Wellington for people with disabilities.

He's obviously delighted to be moving into one of eight brand new and specially designed units that are owned by Accessible Properties, a community housing provider.

It bought the units with help from the Government Antisocial Housing Fund, which we established in 2011 to syphon tax dollars to the well off.

Its enforcers, er tenancy managers specialise in working over the people with disabilities.

Access Properties is getting the subsidy for some of its tenants paying income related rents.

Quite apart from the antisocial housing units of the development there are also 10 other units for sale in the general market so there will always be neighbours to act superior towards them.

As the article says this is the changing face of antisocial housing, I feel like we've done enough at this point, property developers are free to make off like bandits, but I'm told there's more.

It's not change for changes sake, there are rich people out there seriously addicted to tax money and there no tell what they'll do to us if we don't give it to them, they might even withhold campaign donate in the run up to an election.

And that is part of our wider approach, delivering more cash to people who could not possibly spend it all in a lifetime.

Currently only a small number of landlords are getting this special deal because of course we never solve problems, we only create an illusion that we are working on solutions, if we solve problems, it would be all over for us we wouldn't be needed. And being needed in this gig pays too well paid.

We want the number to grow over the next few years maybe to a few dozen.

We want a better range of providers to choose from, the richer the better. They're more grateful come election time.

In the meantime, we want Housing New Zealand to do the best job it can, We were impressed with the way they sat on a black mould report for months, we'd like to see that grow, we think they could get it up to years with some considered effort.

It will continue to be the biggest provider of antisocial housing in New Zealand until we can atrophy it by selling it off in parcels.

We're doing it partly because it is the trendy thing to do just look at Australia and United Kingdom. Of course, New Zealand has never imported policy from either of these countries the blew up in our faces. No body mention Novopay or Thatchernomics. Also selling state assets is some we do out of habit.

That's just one part of the Government's overall package of antisocial housing reforms, which has five objectives.

We are going to ensure that more people get into housing over the next three years, whether that is tun by Housing new Zealand or a community provider who will dedicate themselves to participating in bleeding the taxpayer dry, and demanding more in subsidies, neglecting maintenance and pushing out income related renters in favour of more affluent prospects.

The antisocial housing budget provides for around 62,000 income related rent subsidies per year.

We are committed to increasing that to a whopping 65,000 subsidies by 2017/18, which will cost an extra $40m per year. Yes, we're cheap.
In particular there will be an increase in antisocial housing in Auckland and Christchurch. But housing for working people in Christchurch will be left up to magic invisible hand of the market because those people have perfectly adequate tents in winter.

We're also concerned about people sleeping rough or in substandard accommodation. It makes us look bad like we don't care. We don't care, but we don't want people knowing that.

Pulla Benefit has given Ministry of Societal Disintegration, a big programme of work to help reduce pressure on organisations working the homeless, to help hide them, so people don't see we are neglecting our responsibilities.

This includes a paltry $500,000 cash injection for the emergency housing sector, a wider review of funding and the introduction of an emergency housing database, to keep track of the bodies in Auckland. We found the old scholastic note pad just wasn't up to the job any more.

MSD will work more intensively with people on the antisocial housing register who have less urgent needs, to help them into private rentals where possible at least until they fall too far behind on the rent because the accommodation supplement wont be enough.

And by increasing the number of antisocial housing places we'll be able to funnel more tax dollars to private renters and “antisocial housing providers” while they take the homeless of our hands and absolving us of our responsibility.

Our second objective is to help antisocial housing tenants independence, as appropriate argument can be used to swindle them into walking the risky tight rope of their lives without a net.

We want people to move out of antisocial housing, because the dislocation screws with their kids' education. We're really proud of schools with 25% pupil turnover rate, but we think the number can and should be higher. The best options are for them to move into unaffordable private rental, or to try for home ownership so we can accuse them of fraud, if they draw on private financing to obtain a deposit. We've done it before, it worked pretty well in discouraging state house renters from buy HNZ houses, we don't want poor people buying, only the deservingly wealthy.

Currently 3,300 are living in HNZ properties, but are earning too much to get an income related rent subsidy. The market renters could in many case go into private accommodation which will be more expensive than the market rents HNZ has been charging them, and these people may be better off out of work and back in an HNZ properties. Not much of an incentive to keep working, but at least some free market landlords will get something out of these people.

The Government has decided that an additional 3,000 tenancy reviews will begin over this year and the next, focusing on those we can bully into taking private rentals.

This will take the total number of persecutions to almost 5,000 over this two year period.

People will be hassled and cajoled to move into other housing if they are able to squeeze their four kids into a boarding house bedroom.

That frees up a place for Slick Sith, Crusher Collins, Shill English and my self to put up our couch surfing friends from Europe, Asia, and America. What? We own these houses too – they are publicly owned.

The third objective in this reform programme is to ensure that properties used for antisocial housing are the right size and configuration and in the right areas. Some we will have chop bits of, other will extend with Lego. If they're in the wrong place we just flatten them, and build new ones, sure it's more expensive. We just can't be arsed calling in the house trucks. Besides, at least now we can used modern dodgy building techniques, make like we're in a rush and build new leaky homes.

Around one of third HNZ homes are in the wrong, place. Often next to wealthy neighbours who can't stand the sight of the people who live in them.

Thirty percent of people waiting for antisocial housing need a one bedroom place but these places only make up nine percent of Housing New Zealand properties.

More houses are required in the bigger cities – Auckland in particular – and fewer in some other parts of the country. Of course we'd never suggest the people move to these places or develop economic policy that would make it desirable to live in these locations, because we are still neoliberals.

And many state houses are showing their age, because we wouldn't let HNZ have the money to maintain them properly, because we want the public to think we mismanage them and someone else can do it better for a profit.

Housing New Zealand is already working on its portfolio of properties – disposing of houses that are no longer required, or in the wrong place, and building new ones where they are needed. The in-sink-erator is really handy for much of this work.

We want to accelerate the process, to get the location and size of Housing new Zealand properties lined up with where people need them – well away from wealthy neighbours, investors and tourists.

The Government has decided to commission a strategic review of Housing New Zealand in the first half of this year. If we're lucky, some properties could be turned into for-profit-prisons.

Its asset management plans will be part of this review so we can ensure its properties are right for tenants, given Housing New Zealand's ongoing role as the biggest landlord in the country.

We will give more details when the strategic review is completed, until then deliberations will take place with greater secrecy afforded to operations of the CIA, NSA, GCSB, SIS, and TPPA negotiations.

Our fourth objective is to help increase the supply of affordable housing for people to buy, especially in Remuera, but only for those who can afford a million for a deposit.

How we manage antisocial housing can help with that.

Housing New Zealand is the biggest residential landowner in the country and could free up more land for housing development. One favoured option is move all the antisocial housing out of Auckland city into rural areas, leaving free space after demolitions to build multi million dollar mansions for American and Chinese buyers.

On a larger scale, there are opportunities to redevelop and revitalise whole state housing suburbs. These redevelopments could result in a mix of Housing New Zealand properties, other antisocial housing, affordable housing and higher cost homes.

Large and small redevelopments are under way.

In Auckland, for example, the Tamaki Redevelopment Company – a partnership between the Government and Auckland Council – is shafting existing tenants and gentrifying the suburb. It's delivering new antisocial housing along side affordable housing and other homes as a major “renewal” project. Where are the existing tenants? Who cares. We so laughed when Hone got arrested for dodgy parking while defending them.

We want to accelerate evicting tenants, and gentrifying whole suburbs, sleeping rough bronchitis and pneumonia will be good for them.

The government is still considering how this might happen. We want to be quick about it because we don't want the current pace to get ahead of us only to find evicted tenants can find places to live. We want them out on the street while there is still a housing shortage.

We could simply flog off large chunks of HNZ properties to housing development entities. They wont be in public ownership any more but oh joy for the lucky rich buggers who get a hold of those sweet assets.

But I want to emphasise again that the number of antisocial housing places across Auckland will increase as a result of what we are doing. Whether it will be enough is anyone's guess, we hope not, otherwise we'll be in the poo with the speculators.

And existing tenants will be marshalled like chess pieces, further disrupted their children's education as we can guarantee upto two extra relocations.

Out fifth and final objective, is to encourage and develop more diverse ownership of antisocial housing.

To some extent we can do that by involving community housing providers in redevelopment of crown land.

However, the overwhelming dominance of housing New Zealand leaves little room at the moment for non-governmental organisation to play a significant role – leaving my rich friends out in the cold.

But we can change that if community housing providers take ownership or management of some existing Housing New Zealand properties, so my rich friends can have an in. Sure, the tenants can stay, if they can tolerate slum lords.

The government is prepared to take cash, cheques, money orders, wire transfers or Paypal. As long as buyers are willing to give pinky swears that they will be nice landlords and property managers and deny profiting from misery. But, if the wodge of cash is big enough we may not hold them to that.

We may do that where there is a steady stream of tenants, and investors are keen to exploit them.

We'll look to selling 1000 to 2000 Housing New Zealand home over the following year, sure we're breaking a promise here, but I totally had my fingers crossed behind my back the whole time when I made them, so it is totally fine.

ROFLCOPTER! Free market Rulz!

Community housing providers may want to buy properties on their own, OK sure it's laughable, they don't have that kind of money lying around, so they can borrow from banksters, or pay day loan companies. Or other organisations providing equity or other services.

Properties will have to stay antisocial housing unless the government agrees, otherwise, and existing tenants will be housed for the duration of their need. Keep in mid though, we're easy to convince, just help us out come election time, or come have dinner with us for a mere $5000.

Selling properties in this way doesn't immediately reduce antisocial housing places, at least until our palms are crossed. It just means more of the tenancies will be precariously managed by non-governmental organisations who don't have the expertise. And may have ulterior motives or agendas counter to antisocial housing goals. Including discrimination against some minority groups. Especially some NGOs that wave booklet claiming members of these minorities are how did they put it? Oh, yeah “deserving of death”. Doesn't bother me too much.

We are very conscious that the sale of properties has to work for tax payers, least in the short term, because we are totally screwing them over in the long term.

We're looking to get a fair and reasonable sounding price, as we sell New Zealanders their own stuff, so they can flick it on to management companies which may be owned or bought by overseas conglomerates. Because it looks bad if we sell them to foreigners, but if we the let public do it for us, we don't get as much flack for it.

Sure, we'll pretend we're not selling them as private home or rentals, and we may not get book value, there might not even be much of a market at for them, so we might have consider changing how we market them. We understand North Dakota needs a fracking sock drawer.

Cabinet will review progress in November.

Property sales and large redevelopments will reduce the size of the Housing New Zealand portfolio. Yay – small government.

But it will continue to be by far the biggest provider of social housing in New Zealand (dag nab it), and we will ensure that in 2017 it'll provide at least 60,000 properties. It may have more than that, depending on how quickly transactions and redevelopments proceed.

Initially we will free up capital from these sales, which we'll use for housing and other capital projects (RoNS?) needed across government. But we'll be spending more each year on income related rent, subsidies. In summary, the package I've outlined today will help more people and families get social housing and we wont have to deal with them, of course they may have a harder time finding contacts for less well known providers. But that wont be our problem, hehe. Of course our opponents will say we should maintain our responsibility to develop social housing, because it's more efficient and cost effective, and while that's true it doesn't fit with our neo liberal vibe, nor does it allow us to gift wealthy acquaintances a piece of the commons from which everyone benefits, and now just our wealthy acquaintances. Especially, Shill's frocked friends with the dodgy bank in Rome. If we are to divest government of it social responsibility for long standing social problems we need to engage NGOs and corporations, They may help solve these problems, but one thing is for sure they better not do it al a loss, because profit is god. We're taking a different approach, we've seen models succeed only to be swept away by vested interests. We're chucking the problem straight at vested interests to save time. It's just one of many areas in which we will be working over New Zealanders hard over the next three years. Our programme is laying the foundations for a stronger economy and new Reich, unsustainable jobs erratic incomes vulnerable to the unstable neoliberal freemarket boom-bust economics. And we're making real progress in delivering better public services to moneyed New Zealanders. That takes constant hard work, they are so over-entitled, needy, and rapaciously greedy.

It takes a team working together and all heading the same direction to keep those moneyed snooty buggers happy.

And it takes a government without principle, empathy or conscience.

That's what I can promise New Zealand.

Thank you.

See Also
   Officially ratified speech delivery to weary nation.

On banning offensive racist publications

Many calls have been made in in recent times to ban publications for racist or offensive content. The highest profile target among  these is Charlie Hebdo. Such calls have been wrong for reasons not the least of which because Charlie Hebdo is has a pro-immigrant political position.

If we are to ban publications for racist or offensive content, then to be consistent, we must also ban The Bible and the Quran.  Woah! That's a big claim there!  And if you're offended, you're welcome, let us be united in our offence, because there is plenty to go around. Let's take a look at some of the worst ideas in human history.

Bible: Foreigners are chattel

The following passage shows that slaves are clearly property to be bought and sold like livestock, furniture or equipment.

    However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you.  You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land.  You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance.  You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way.  (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)
- Source

Bible: human trafficking and sex slavery.

The following passage describes the sickening practice of sex slavery.  How can anyone think it is moral to sell your own daughter as a sex slave? Additionally, it is not really improved much by the restraint against slave trading with foreigners.

    When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are.  If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again.  But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her.  And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter.  If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife.  If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment.  (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)
- Source

    Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the people went to meet them outside the camp.  But Moses was furious with all the military commanders who had returned from the battle.  "Why have you let all the women live?" he demanded.  "These are the very ones who followed Balaam's advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the LORD at Mount Peor.  They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the LORD's people.  Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man.  Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.- Source

Bible: Stone Women for extra marital sex

Sex is a natural and human act, fulfilling psycho-social needs and supporting healthy states of mind. yet this backwards text offers one of the most barbaric practices available to the human species in order to put an end to it.

    If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her ... and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: And the damsel's father shall say ... these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. ... But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die.(Deuteronomy 22:13-21)

Bible: The mark of Cain

This meme referring to Genesis 4:16 points to black/brown people being excessively violent, or at least that annoying them could have severe consequences. A meme that today for some, associates ethnic minorities with a propensity to violence. It is basically nonsense, but if one powerful ethnic group puts enough energy into disempowering another ethnic group, there will be blow back in the midst of the genocide. This is a human response it has little to do with ethnicity, or religion, except for what the oppressor group chooses to make of it. Just as American Christian settlers liabled indigenous "red skins" and "savages" for "manifest destiny", or as the Nazis liabled the Jews for the "The Creator" and "father land", and now as the far right wing liable Muslims for "racial purity", "Sovereignty" or "cultural preservation".

Koran: Jews are pigs, Christians are monkeys:

In Chapter five the Koran discusses the relationship Muslims should have with Christians and Jews, and goes on to use pejoratively compare them to other species. Demonstrating a version of the arrogant "chosen people" meme which earlier appeared in Judaic texts.

    O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.  (5:51)

    Shall I tell thee of a worse (case) than theirs for retribution with Allah ? (Worse is the case of him) whom Allah hath cursed, him on whom His wrath hath fallen and of whose sort Allah hath turned some to apes and swine, and who serveth idols. Such are in worse plight and further astray from the plain road.  (5:60)
- Source

Koran: Beat your wives

It does not matter that the associated haddiths say to beat her lightly, and to not leave a mark, the fact is, at the very least, this is psychological abuse, if we ignore the physical behaviour. This comes from the ideas like "Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will"(2:223) (ploughable land), chattel and to be managed and cajoled like children.

    "Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great." 

- Source

Conclusion

These much venerated texts certainly contain content that is racially and religiously charged as well as misogynistic and the above is just a miniscule sample of the horrors available to the easily offended. So these texts must also be excised from the public square if we are to avoid hypocrisy as we seek to ban cartoons dealing with issues of race religion or even their relationship to women.  It is likely critics will moan "Oh, you're cherry picking verses" or "you are taking it out of context". Even if this is so, presenting certain Charlie Hebdo Cartoons like the four Boko Haram sex slaves chanting "hands off our allowances" without the context of Marine Le Pen's comments that immigrants were having babies to get welfare benefits is also "taking it out of context". If you want to live in a society where ideas can be censored simply by having them misrepresented, you can, if you will stride into a functionally illiterate society ruled by near total ignorance, resembling  the 7th Century.

The plain fact of the matter is that in the centuries since these texts were written, many have learned to protect people and not ideas, but not everyone has caught up. Even the Pope has talked about giving his good friend a beat down for talking smack about his mother. It may be hard for anyone to hear "your mother is a whore", but if she is getting paid to entertain customers in a bordello, it is a fair call, and it doesn't necessarily mean there is anything wrong with her chosen profession, and if the person hearing these words is a borderline geriatric virgin in a frock, it about time they grew up and their mother is an impressive woman.  The debate over "offensive" cartoons is a distraction, one that extremist groups would perhaps like to paint as a clash of civilizations, whether this is wholly true is debatable, yes there is a clash of values, and of ideas, but censorship is no way to address these, such calls for censorship are like the calls of the child who says "shut up, stop saying Darth Vader is Luke father, it can't be true." (I knew that child a long time ago, he grew up and wrote this blog). I was recently asked about the anti-Semitic cartoons of the Nazi era. The answer I gave at the was not the best answer to be offered, I spoke out of my preference, which is to not have lies, liable, fabrications publish for the generation of hysteria, however my considered position is essentially "publish and be damned", and damned the Nazis would have been by an incredulous, more sceptical populace such that we see in France today. The Nazi regime was seeking to control it population by emotional manipulation. This is something a sceptic culture would be more immune to, when we examine issues of free expression, we cannot ignore freethought they go hand in hand. Credulity, as we say, is not a virtue and this is where the Nazis "lost it" so enthusiastic were they in anti-Semitic dogma of the church and their "Aryan" pseudo-science that failed to understand the real enemy was fascism and bigotry - left over from WW I and codified in the war reparations.

Let us entertain the notion of perspective. No one is saying satirical cartoons represent truth, meanwhile billions claims these holy books represent truth on a daily basis, with some willing to kill and die for that "truthiness"(sic). Satire is merely a tool to expose truth behind comments and opinions of the day, with many such comment frequently lies in service to ignominious agendas, such exposure serves a vital function. This function is of course despised by authoritarians. Regardless of the historicity of the Bible and the Quran, about which there are some serious questions to be asked, or even of their relative truth value, there are things of greater concern to humanity as a whole. How do we learn to live side by side in a globally connected world? How do we stop neoliberal fascism from extracting the wealth of the many only to be concentrated in the hands of the few(as Oxfam tells us this week, by next year, to world's wealthiest 1% own over half of all wealth). How do we stop poverty acting a recruiting tool for violent extremist ideologies? Not just that followed by Al Qaeda or ISIS, but also Stormfront, US patriot militias, KKK.

Author Karima Bennoune: Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here (Secular Conferen...

Legal professor, Karima Bennoune, Spoke The International Conference Religious right, Secularism and Civil Rights in London on October 11^th-12^th.

For Charlie

While some blame the victims, calling them arrogant and saying they had to know there would be consequences and their deaths are their own fault. Such comment ignore the arrogance of those who defend or employ the use of violence in response to offence taken from the ideas or critiques of those the disagree with.  Such sentiment violate the human right to freedoms from fear and violence.


They did know and they accepted that there may be consonances, and they accepted those consequence because the freedom to "speak your mind" was more important to them than the tyranny of unquestionable ideas. Europe had unquestionable ideas for which it considered "the right thing to do" to murder and torture in the defence of those ideas. Elements of French culture, have not forgotten this. and the can proud of the fact they have grabbed on to the value of free expression and held on like a bulldog.

Needless to say, conversations around the beer volcano will be filled with even more raucous laughter for now into the future.  Blasphemy is not only a human right, it is a moral obligation. Je Suis Charlie. The talent of the staff of Charlie Hebdo will surely be missed, I wish for those injured in the attack strong and speedy recoveries. Thanks indeed go to the medical professionals who skill and dedication give the victims the best chance at a return to health.

10 questions for atheists

I can play this game too.  Theists often ask questions that they think are show stoppers for atheist, or perhaps just conversation stoppers, hard to tell which, not that it matters much.  So Today Christian post 10 interrogatives, here are my answers, for what they are worth.

How Did You Become an Atheist?

1. I read about astronomy, then I read three chapters of Genesis. By then I knew cultures had many creation myths. And the first instruction the biblical god gives to Adam was justified by a lie, the serpent told the truth, and early modern English (kjv) was almost impenetrable to a 9 year old reader.

What happens when we die?

2. 130lbs of ape meat goes bad. What was it like not yet being conceived, they're a lot alike, probably.

What if you’re wrong? And there is a Heaven? And there is a HELL!

3. Free Beer, Lectures from Carl Sagan, classes with Bertrand Russell. Speeches, essays and articles from Christopher Hitchens.
Hell is borrowed and corrupted from earlier cultures which maintained a traditional underworld concept, and of course the Greeks had Hades. In order to develop and maintain the superiority of the new religion, the under world was cast as a terrifying place, a religious libel of sorts. so early Christians could our say "religion good the old religions is bad". It was marketing really, does your old can opener drive you nuts, does opening canned spagehtti require 911 on speed dial - Try the all new automatic Can-Reaper from K-Tel - only $99.99.

Without God, where do you get your morality from?

4. From the instincts naturally selected in social species. such instincts offer advantages to the species by creating greater opportunities to receive required resources and reproduce. Otherwise they come at the suggestion of the flying Spaghetti Monster.

If there is no God, can we do what we want? Are we free to murder and rape? While good deeds are unrewarded?

5. You can do what you want but some actions will reduce reputation while others enhance reputation. Some actions will lead to legal consequences. How ever there is also an instinct for altruism, so people tend to do good most of the time, an expectation of reward or punishment is not required, empathy helps a lot though. Bonus jugs at the beer volcano.

If there is no god, how does your life have any meaning?

6. My life has the meaning I choose. right now that means helping people understand things, including why fascism is not good for anyone. and why living a life in a fairy tale has hugely negative consequences. But I'm repeating myself.

Where did the universe come from?

7. No one knows, therefore the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it.

What about miracles? What all the people who claim to have a connection with Jesus? What about those who claim to have seen saints or angels?

8. Miracles as in rare poorly understood events, these happen from time to time, and when we do examine events and find an explanation, every time it's not magic. See also the Templeton study on heart by-pass patients . Anyone can get all hot and sweaty with a Ben Affleck or J Lo poster, just the same way that Julia Sweeney did with the Jesus portrait on her bedroom wall. The brain maintains models of people and characters, and under the right circumstance can induce perceptual experiences that feel very real. Google god helmet.

What’s your view of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris?

9. I don't always agree with everything they say, but they are, or were (Hitchen's is sorely missed for his way with words) great consciousness raisers. It is better to listen carefully to an opponents arguments directly rather than take second hand a few quoted words from an intermediary with little motivation for an accurate rendering of their thoughts. If you listen carefully the arguments Reza Aslan presented on behalf of Sam Harris, wasn't actually Harris' argument. such errors are common, it has much to do with the way humans unconsciously filter information in accordance with our preconceived notions.

If there is no God, then why does every society have a religion?

10. Not all societies are Human. It is unlikely that many of the non-human societies  have religion, Do buffalo pray? Religion is a cultural phenomenon, and not all societies have religion, the Piraha People of the Brazilian jungle have a strong sceptics culture. UK is Mostly agnostics, and mostly antitheist, even though
it is officially Anglican. However cognitive neuroscience points to a cluster of cognitive mechanisms that lend themselves to religious behaviour(disembodied cognition - thinking of how others might think, agency detection - part of threat detection and leads to false positives, Moral inferencing - how we guess at the best action, Theory of mind - how we model the thoughts of others). Each of these mechanism offer survival advantages, but can lead people away from understanding what is known. Agnosticism and atheism is growing, and it grows fastest where religious fundamentalist right is gaining or holding power. Faced with the prospect the fundamentalists could be in control people tend to find affinity for the Flying Spaghetti Monster and his free beer volcano. And since he created all the gods, they are his children, he knows how to talk to them to make them play nice, or at least he tries his best, but some of them don't take their meds.

See Also 
  Today Christian 10 Questions for Atheists.
  Today's image from Funny Atheism - Because religion is a joke

Some jokes aren't funny anymore

Often we find in our lives,  people - be they friend, family or strangers who are missing vital information about the way life on this planet works and they wind up doing some very strange things.

For example, if you go out and about on Venice Beach, or Central Wellington you'll find street preachers, the Salvation Army, Jehovah's Witnesses or even Mormons offering salvation. Sometimes, you don't even have to go out, they'll come to you. But there is something vitally important that they have completely missed. We are all already saved. While most of them may have noticed that no one is being flung into the asphyxiating vacuum of space by the centrifugal force generated by the Earth's spin, few understand or appreciate why this is. Pastafarians have long known of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, sauce be upon him, and his work keeping us all safely on the ground. We laughed when Newton published his delicious gravity satire in Principia Mathematica. Sadly, the gravity satire has since become an urban legend - a myth and it has over shadowed the reality.

The reality concerning our maintained proximity to the ground is that the Flying Spaghetti Monster uses his noodley appendages to apply pressure in order to ensure we all remain firmly in contact with terra firma, he's so effective centrifugal force accounts for only 3% of the force he applies. We praise him for he is noodley and his unconditional care for us. We know his care is unconditional because people who do some really un-noodley things are still here on the ground. As mentioned before we are not seeing people being flung into space where they would surely asphyxiate.

The Newtonian satire was of course intended to highlight mathematical principles Newton was expounding with a math-geek joke - like Pascal's wager. Sadly, this simple fact has been lost to many, giving rise to satirical religions in which people even claim that Pastafarianism - the one true faith built on evidence and trust in the Flying Spaghetti Monster's work - is a satirical religion. We often don't help ourselves when we confirm this comic assertion either because people can  miss the ironic inflection in our voice or sometimes we forget to use the correct inflection. It really is quite upsetting, especially when we see these other satirical religions taking on some mean schtick and then getting into really ugly jokes and pranks while the audience completely fails to follow along. Take ISIS (won't someone please take ISIS), here is bunch of dudes running around with their shtick about a couple of iconoclastic caricatures they like to call Mohammed and Allah - now these guys are just not funny, not even to people who play on the same sort of schtick, and when their jokes fall flat they lineup their former audiences up ditches and shoot them in the back of the head. I know nobody likes a critic, but really this is way too much.

Still others employing a schtick about witches in central and west Africa with children are really losing the plot. One mother wrapped a plastic bag around her young daughters arm and set it on fire after the girl not getting the joke, simply denied being a witch. If your jokes aren't funny, please avoid risky pranks on your audience - get better material, let your imagination be free - your audience will thank you. The girl found help from a local charity that looks after many more children who have failed to see the humour of many other parents and church leaders. Sadly this means their are many more stories like hers, and some of them are far worse. Some have had the children drank a mixture of alcohol, mercury and priest blood in an ironic take on the line "Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live" which they render as "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"(exodus 22:18). These children feel quite ill afterwards, and don't feel the slightest bit entertained.

The Israeli government with the IDF and Hamas with Hezbollah, along with a bunch of random fan boys and fan girls, keep pranking each other over a tent space schtick. Trouble is, while they keep doing this, others keep getting drawn into the comedy who'd really just rather get on with the business of making noodles and enjoying his complex carbohydrate goodness - ramen. But it becomes very difficult to boil noodles properly if at any moment half a city block suddenly collapses and turns your stove on its side. Also many struggle to see the funny side of a random rocket blowing up your car, especially if you happen to be in it at the time, but can their be a more balanced response? Consider a lampooning letter to the editor in the local newspaper, inviting them around for dinner and tweaking their nipples or putting a Mentos in an ice cube to serve with their coke? All these are much funnier, and you can all have a good laugh, enjoy some pasta together while working out how to clean up the mess.

Ultimately, His Noodliness wants us all help each other and be kind, it is one of his top suggestions. He's uncomfortable with unquestioned authority - a common theme in many of these satirical religions, especially Abrahamic satires. So he as made suggestions, rather than commandments, and hopes that people will use reason and see the validity of his ideas.

May have a pasta day, and may you be touched by His noodley appendages.

Sometimes in depth conversation is just not going to happen.

After David Cameron made a speech, in February, in which he offered deference to millions of peaceful Muslims, before making the point that UK resident Muslims should accept “British” values, pointing to tolerance and acceptance of non-belief, other belief, and of UK culture, like to encompass rights for women and LGBT people, no doubt many social media debates happened.

Deference to an audience that may feel threatened by criticisms of certain ideas associated with a broader superset of ideas in which they may be emotionally invested is appropriate, if for no other reason than not be heavily criticised in turn for making sweeping generalisations encompassing many who already agree that such a subset of ideas are worthy of criticism. Not doing so, some say, would lead to Cameron being called racist, but in any case would be counter productive.

One conversation I participated in went as well as any drunken brawl in a bar in that part of town where the police never go.

In early July, After a friend shared an article about Cameron's speech from the Telegraph. A mutual acquaintance (Q) made the statement that they would rather Islamic values than British “imperialistic” values. Apparently “values” of other groups means different things to different people and is subject to selection bias, which was evident in Q's remark.

To make a counter point I replied with an uncommented link to a Patheos page containing passages from the Tahir by Ayatollah Komeini. A description is bad enough, but to be truly disgusted you really have to read it. Caution – keep a barf bag handy.

The response that came back was disturbingly angry. And included an accusation of racism among “white atheists”. Q's response fit criticisms of leftists bowing to Islam for the sake of multiculturalism in to comments made by Pat Condell. I doubt Pat's critiques are representative of the left generally., but it would be a cheap-shot to use Pat's comment's as a retort. He does make the point that tolerance of the intolerant positions of Islam is inappropriate, and since the three of us all have gay friends the four major schools of though present a huge problem for people we care about. See Wiki.

A little stunned by the angry reply, I chose to point out how nice it was to have a reasoned discussion without name calling and ad hominem and left it at that. But, there were some big holes in Q's response.

Islam, of course, is not a race and history tells it is not indigenous to Iran, Nor is it entirely a necessary part of being Iranian, as Iranian atheists do exist as well as other faith groups including Ba'hai, and are vocal in social media. While the Tahir appeared in the context of Iran's Islamic Revolution. It is important to note many Iranians, who are mostly ethnically Persian, reject passages in the Tahir referenced above. Now a racist would saying thing about Persian physiognomy and cognition however that would be pointless, as the science suggest that there is little variation across ethnic groups, and indeed there is more variation within ethic groups.

People are good, not because of their religion, but often in spite of it, as Iranians themselves have shown by rejecting both the Tahir and the Hijab.

What's this about the hijab? Check out My Stealthy Freedom on facebook. Iranian women are photographing themselves without the head scarf required by the mullahs. Apparently, the regime is losing the culture war in Iran, Younger Iranians do not support their government, and many even despised the current regime. The old guard of the Islamic revolution is on borrowed time as it is being replaced by political and social progressives.

I highly recommend Bread and Roses, on Youtube. The show is hosted by Mariam Namazie from the UK based Council of Ex-Muslims. The will hope fully be aired on bootleg satellite TV so that it is available to Iranians looking for more information to help them understand what else is going on other than what the mullahs are saying.

You can have peace, over conservatism's cold dead corpse.

Is the GOP really concerned for the welfare of South America children or just racist?

While GOP politicians argue over what to do about a flood of mostly child refugees from South America as three nations are beset by genocidal insurgency, the quest is what is really going on here, and Why do they fiddle while Rome burns?

Nimby, perhaps, Texas GOP reps shipped a bunch of kids to California by bus. So That's plausable.

Racist, well ever since the dixie-crats jumped ship to the GOP this has always been in play.

Louie Gohmert likened the US's southern border to an unfenced swimming pool, while trying to demand the securing of the border. Unwittingly, in so doing he admits America is too dangerous for children.

Israel secured it's border, now how is that working out. By broad measure it is with the majority of Palestinians unwilling to accept a two state solution. the recent flare up, with the most spectacular horrors coming from the over use of military tools in what is essentially a social ans political problem.

See Also
   Raw Story - CNN schools GOP council woman South American Child exodus ethics

PS: Hi, Brenda

Bitching about NZ$570 Super for comfortable retirees.

Today's top story in the DomPost is about how the New Zealand Government is shelling out over a half billion on National Superannuation to well off senior citizens.

My guess is many of these retirees got to be so comfortable, by working through their productive years while saving and/or investing, Or put another way following the instructions of the 1% in a demand side economic environment which allowed them to do so. What makes things different to now is the economy was geared towards providing a decent income for working and middle class families, rather than geared towards extracting money from working and poor New Zealanders in exchange for shelter, food and services while compensating them has little as possible for their labour.

US income distribution since 1979,
New Zealand has followed a similar path.

Since then things have changed, back then working and becoming comfortably well off was a more reasonable proposition and a good thing because it showed demand side economics worked and there was a reasonable expectation that anyone could follow that path. Now, enter the age of Gordon Gecko. "If you're getting money you better be giving something back and I don't care how little you make, along as I make much more."

Are we now supposed to break this contract with these retirees who kept up their side of the bargain because national retirement planning has been a political foot ball for 40 years.

We knew the baby boomer bubble was coming in the 70's and we did the right thing, until Gecko-esque neoliberal doctrine over took the fourth labour government. An 8% tax was levied which when into compulsory savings. Norway does something like this, and retired Norwegians get to be very comfortable indeed. Our scheme died when Roger Douglas killed it.

The baby boomer bubble has loomed of every government for the last 30 years, and every one of them has done nothing more than punt it along for the next regime to deal with.  The problem is it's in no party's short term interest to increase costs on voters, which must be done in order to generate wealth.

Thomas Pikity's, Capital in the 21st Century points out that wealth grows at 4-8% per annum while income for workers grows at about 1% per annum. it also points to how wealth is becoming entrenched in a small number of wealthy families. I see little reason to deny working people the advantage of this wealth generating mechanism other than to those who are social dominance oriented and fear a large affluent middle class and the challenge it brings to their power in politics just as it did in the 60-70s when a strong middle class protested war, fought for women's rights and the end of segregation. Often meeting brutal and sometimes lethal violence from the establishment. such over top reactionary behaviour has not been abandoned, Operation 8, and mistreatment of the Occupy movement still rings loudly "Don't mess with the silver-back alpha ape". And yet mess with them we must if we are to have a decent society, rather than the brutal savagery of Social Darwinism.

I wonder how much the 1% will think something like "Pfffft nouvo riche, they're not like us, they are takers, cut them off!" No doubt someone will be looking to means test National Super. But is not a real solution to the problem at hand.

Around the 60-70s, there were about 6 working age people for each retiree, soon we will have just two working age people per retiree. and if that is not bad enough, neoliberal economics, especially since the 1980's has left wages stagnant, while productivity has almost doubled. and what's worse since the 1980s those entering the workforce are leaving higher education with a mountain of debt. And the work force they enter is often not the local workforce, preferring to seek higher remuneration overseas.

What would be a better solution? To leverage the wealth generating capacity of investment markets, with the financial transfer tax. It will also reduce the instability of markets, and maintain growth in the economy. This kind of tax has been implemented in Europe and is working well. Additionally, a capital gains tax, would fund a universal basic income, allowing poor and low income families to drive demand and drive economy growth creating more jobs. Also enforcing a maximum salary tied to the lowest wages in a company in a ratio. Thus ensuring company profits can be reinvested in staff and growing the business, rather than be syphoned off in obscenely inflated directors fees.  The economy would respond to this stimulus within 6 months ultimately raising the tax take.

America for all its faults did deal with the problem, they set up a social security trust fund that will fund the baby boomer retirees until around 2037. But Roger Douglas, or rather Rogernomics was not that smart.





Seriously it is time to put end to the economic model of the chiseling 1%.

See also
   Stuff.co.nz - Super for rich has 570m price tag

FSM: Cosmos is cool but...

The Flying Spaghetti Monster has been enjoying Neil deGrasse Tyson's new show, the remake of Carl Sagan's Cosmos:
I must say that the new Cosmos - A Space Time Odessy is a wonderful piece of televisual art. It clearly sets out the formation of the universe and the basics of the physics behind it.
There are two blind spots in it that I'm happy to fill-in here.
The origin of the Big Bang. Guilty! That was me, I was bored, I had no time for boredom, I had to invent that too.
Abiogenesis: Yeah that was me too, I created trees, and a midget. After that it is a bit of a blur. I woke up next to a beer volcano and a stripper factory.
Frankly, it hurts a little that I don't seem to be getting a mention. I wouldn't want equal time but a mention would be nice. But if there is one idea that I do like it is this gravity thing they keep talking about. It seems like such a huge labour saving device for me.
Some of you have noticed the universal expansion is accelerating, with the universe so spread out now I'm having a little trouble keeping it all together. At this point I so wish I had thought of using gravity when I created the universe, it would have meant that I could spend more time hanging out with my pirate navy, but it didn't seem important because it is such a weak force.
Now that I have mentioned my pirate navy, Please do stop shooting them at sea or arresting them for nonsense charges of "offending religious feeling". Please remember if you're not a Pastafarian Pirate you're in a parody religion. So be nice, please.

See also
  RawStory: Creationists demand equal time for "balance"

FSM: "take a breath... It's just a movie"

While critics from major thought traditions are hyperventilating over the atrocity that is Russell Crowe's new movie, The Flying Spaghetti Monster has issued a statement...

I get why people don't love this film, there is so much that is wrong with it. However, might I suggest, that everyone take a deep breath, count to 10, and release. It is just a movie, and as a movie it is an interesting piece of story telling which suffers from just one major flaw, its plot.

Bill Maher has commented on this film too.


Later, the Flying Spaghetti Monster said of Bill's critique “I find Bill's comment curious, because I don't recall any giraffes in it, perhaps there was a random Cosmos style edit in the reel or something.”

Turning back to the movie His Noodliness remarked “It's a grim fairy tale, not to be confused with Grimm Fairy Tales, despite obvious parallels.  I noticed many things, that were jarring about this movie like everyone's wearing pants, which would be so European in the 45 centuries to come.

The movie opens with 13 year old Noah getting a coming of age blessing from his father Lemech with the aid of a magic glowing snake skin. Rather than wearing robes, the pair are setting trends in the middle east with pants. They are interrupted when Dino (the reptilian dog) turns up, with an arrow in his side, Lemech goes to tend to the animal, at this point Tubal-Cain his cousin turns up with the rest of his hunting party. After a little chat Lemech is dead, and Noah is freaked out running away from the rocks he was hiding behind. This event could set a boy up for serious mental health issues in later life.

Next we see Noah (500) with his family. He and Ham are on a rocky hill side, they look for herbs, Ham picks a pretty flower and is gently admonished, by Noah who points out that the flower creates the “seed” that is scattered by the wind to make more flowers. These guys should go ahead and sign up with Greenpeace, and the scene begs the question why aren't Rick Perry the Koch Brother's conservationists? After they are done, Noah returns to camp to rest and he's having trouble sleeping, often a sign of psychological disturbance.

There is no specific mention of the angry old man not in the room in the early stages of the film he is merely referred to as “he” or “our lord”.

Naameh: Did he speak to you?
Noah: I don't know.... I think he's going to flood the world.

These wives have names, now that's novelty for ya. The name was given to various places in the Middle East, so applying this name to a person, may just be the killer app innovation this story needs.

Shortly after Noah decides to go see grandpa Methuselah. Along the way they find a young Ila, an injured girl and the last survivor of an over run settlement.  Noah, his family, and young waif are forced to run as Tubal-Cain and his hoards run them off as pretenders to his claim on the desolated settlement home to curious looking heavily engineered iron geothermal piping. As they run off Noah is KO'ed by rock people. When he awakes, he and his family are in a pit surrounded by rock people who mostly decide to leave them in the pit. But one of the rock people says “Follow me” and leads them to Methuselah for a cup of tea. Be wary of old men who live in caves offering peculiar tasting tea, the DEA may be watching the place.  At this point Noah hallucinates the ark in addition to his usual nightmares.

Clearly, it does not dawn on him that his imagination is running wild, because grandpappy just got him totally baked.

So far there has not been a single tree in site, nor any running water. Before Noah leaves the company of his grand father, the old man gives him a seed from the garden of Eden.

Noah plants the seed, and a day or two later the rock people show up, kind a peeved that Noah got help from one of their own, Noah makes his case as best as he can but they are unmoved until a spring pops up where the seed was planted and flowers, grasses and trees spring up the same we way see in Hanna-Barbera cartoons, or these days Sponge Bob Squarepants.  So impressed were they that the rock people were they decide to help build the Ark.  So the bible had it all wrong, Noah was really just the project manager. Of course Project managers always say they built this or that, so you can see how there is room for confusion.

We also see white pigeons/doves flying towards the constructions site, which begs the question, slugs, snails, turtles and crawling insects, weta. Later a massive flock of assorted birds self organises roosts in the Ark and are then knocked by magic anaesthetic smoke that has no effect on humans. Lets assume such a gas available, the suppressed metabolism of these birds could not be low enough to prevent them from starving over the course of a year without killing them so they would still starve even though they were asleep. Even though some bears hibernate in the wild, they aren't asleep the whole time.

There is a sequence that explains, the history of the rock people. Ancient text describes the as fallen angels encrusted with rock, because the angry old guy not in the room is mad at them for helping humans live better lives through technology. So yeah this angry old guy is an anti-science anti-technology whack-job working for Cthulhu – The Destroyer or is Thule – investigation pending.  Oddly these great aliens so well protected by the burden of the rock are strangely not impervious to iron age weapons and many of them were killed. Despite having an opt-out option available to them.

Ila, who has taken to dating Shem, has trouble coping with foreplay because of the scars from the attempt to kill her as a child have left scars. And she and Shem have been at it for a few years and she appears to be having fertility issues. So concerned is she, that she discusses leaving the family with Naameh. It appears that in her mind her only worth is in child bearing. Later this causes conflict.  Naameh, goes to Methuselah, and asks for help.

Some of the locals, from Tubal-Cain's settlement set a steel bear trap, Just how many of these have ever been found in pre-Sumerian archaeological digs requires some research.

Noah's depressive psychosis deepens, he comes to the conclusion that his family should just die out after the flood. Ham can't take to the plan and sets off to the settlement to find an innocent woman to bring home.

Meanwhile Ila comes across Methuselah is the forest, he claims to be looking for berries, and enlists her help. She find none, but then he notes that she has been a part of the family for so long, that he may as well give her his blessing, he reaches out and touches her belly with his hand (his hand yeah right), and poof – magic happens. On her way back to the boat, she runs into Shem and jumps him like a cow girl – Yeehaw!

Strangely and accidentally, Ham finds a girl his age in a pit of corpses, some of whom were her family. Rather than saying help me get out of here, she threatens Ham with a rock until he shows her that he means no harm with a rag full of bread crumbs. Dating was clearly cheap in this culture, not even a single goat exchanged. There they sit for a while until it starts raining. In the rush to get to the Ark the girl steps in the bear trap. Ham frees her but injured she cannot run, they are over run by Tubal-Cain's hoards, Noah pulls Ham out of the chaos.  Ham is not exactly grateful as Noah leaves the girl behind.

The hoards arrive at the ark and the meat grinder begins, with the rock people slamming the hoards like a scout troupe crushing roaches pouring out of a disturbed nest. The hoards do eventually start to get the better of the rock people, jamming pikes in the gaps. And here is where the opt-out clause kicks in the rock people say “Forgive me” and rip off the incrustation and explode into a light beam flying home and killing a bunch of the panicked hoards at the same time. I note that they could have done this at any time, in a safe location. Perhaps even worked out a plan with the angry old guy not in the room to avoid they mess he held them responsible for creating.

As the last of the rock people emigrate out of this crap-fest, flood waters wash off most of the hoards but Tubal-Cain pokes a hole in the side of the ark and stows himself away. He is later discovered by Ham,

Water spouts pop out of the ground around the ark. And a glimpse of the spherical Earth covered in hurricane weather, runs completely at odds with the flat earth model which was maintained until about 500bce or long after the authoring of the original Cuneiform or revised Hebrew text.  These water spouts, have inspired some to push a hypothesis referred to as the Bukkaki Theory in which the crust of the earth split open and the water under pressure spurted out thus explaining the water on other celestial bodies including the Moon, Mars and Europa. The hypothesis ignores several major flaws, the release of energy from such an event would bake, if not ionise everything in the biosphere, never mind the extra ordinary accuracy of striking these objects with a jet of water from random fissures in rocks.

Ham, despite being a nice young man, out of character decides to help Tubal-Cain in the hope of revenge for the loss of his girl friend. Mental disturbance from grief seems to run in his family.

The family settles in. Screams from the out side penetrate the wooden bulk heads of the ark. And the pinnacle of a mountain has a lot of adults on it getting hosed by big waves, No children are depicted among them, kinda weird this is a horror story right? And the story is supposed to be history say some. Perhaps they forget, or like to forget that the angry old man not in the room is committing mass infanticide at this point. Ham took 5 minutes to find an innocent and even he did not come up empty. This really is kind of like Chris Christie, punishing the innocent, to get back at the few he's mad at. Noah distracts the family from the howling by telling the story of the universe, which is accompanied by an animation sequence that could almost have been ripped from Cosmos, depicting something like big bang cosmology, followed by evolution with special creation tacked on like Eeyor's tale.

Tubal-Cain makes and interesting point to Ham “Your father fills the ark with sheep while children drown” Ham does do a deal with Tubal-Cain, and they plot to ambush Noah on the beast deck.

Ila reveals that she is pregnant and Noah loses his sh*t as his psychosis deepens. He steps out on to the loading ramp yells at the sky, ponders his navel, demands to be let off the hook, before deciding, boy's – meh, girls – gotta kill 'em. Shem's Pretty much has his dad's state of mind nailed saying “Are you mad?” At this point it truly is a miracle that Noah is not a milliner by trade.

Ham pops up and announces that the beasts are rousing and eating each other, a ruse so Tubal-Cain can beat the snot out of him. So the Death Match begins. Ham is kind of stunned by the violence of the brawling, Shem turns up and is KO'ed by Tubal-Cain who is determined to finish Noah himself. While this brawl is happen the ark runs around, convenient, because it stops Tubal-Cain finishing off Shem. Imagine Tubal-Cain's surprise when Ham overcomes his shock, takes his moment and puts the knife Tubal-Cain gave him under Tubal-Cain's arm pit. While dying Tubal-Cain notes that Ham has become a man and gives back Ham's grand fathers snake skin. There seems to be a nonsense here, real men, especially those in my pirate navy avoid killing, especially homicide, and yet every male character in this film has demonstrated a clear capacity and willingness to commit every kind of killing, and that includes the angry old man not in the room.


While the brawl goes on, Ila's twin girls arrive, Noah's wife tries to hide that they are girls, Noah not dissuaded and dagger in hand, finds Ila on top of the ark holding both infants crying. She pleads to let her calm them first, and sings an old song Noah sang to her the first night they met. This seems to give him time to cool off, nurturing instincts kick in and as he holds the dagger above the new born twins and finally relents saying he cannot do it. I would suggest that this moment makes the Noah character more moral/ethical than the angry old guy not in the room. And Scene.

Next we see the ark on top of a green hill, since all the vegetation had been under water for a year, where did this grass come from? The ark didn't carry seed.

It would not be a story about Noah without the drunk ass naked bit. But so much is missing from it, The text says Ham notices that dad is passed out drunk, and when Noah sobers up rather than being grateful that he got him help, he banishes Ham, Possibly for similar reasoning that Fred Phelps Sr. might have employed. 'cause nothing says gay like happening onto your drunk ass naked patriarch and calling for help. In this film Ham leaves of his own accord, without any prospect of finding a mate, he may be opting to just off himself, given the relationship with Noah is so completely in the toilet. But even if not, Noah's potential for instability and the treachery thing would unlikely to be resolved any time soon. To make matters worse, good counsellors were really going to be hard to find.

We finish with a blessing of the twins, and Noah says “.... be fruitful and multiply.” The camera pans up to the 100% high cloud covered sky, with a magic concentric rainbow, of precisely the kind excluded by the physics of refraction.

Reaction to the film has been mixed, Christians are hating it because it's not “historically accurate” enough for them. Muslims are hating it because it depicts Noah, who they hold as a prophet. And it might loose a bunch of money for the studio so the Jews may hate it too. And rationalist atheists, hate it because it is completely unrealistic in terms, of logistics and physics, its obscene globacidal violence, and a cast of characters that would be considered a bag of ass holes in any other dramatic production.

But remember it is just a movie. Humanity survived the final seasons of Dallas, it'll survive this, It may be two hours out of your life that you'll never get back, but it's not like anyone lied to the UN to start an unjustified war. Enjoy the popcorn. Or better yet get the Smurfs movie out on DVD.

See also
   Lunar Bukkake theory