Two sure fire table conversation killers - religion and politics

I know these are the two topics that you MUST avoid at a dinner party for fear of the designated black sheep label but hey, these are the two most important topics in my lil ol heart and this ain't no freakin dinner party. It's strange that we all have a sense of spirituality and faith no matter how shallow some may seem on the surface, pondering questions like 'Why are we here?' Yet religion is SUCH a taboo subject especially in Britain. Even fiery me very rarely talks about religion and that's still only with people who I'd trust with my life, and even then it's only at a surface level. In a society which is so liberated and free you're made to feel so uncomfortable and even foolish when speaking on something which permeates your every fibre, your body and soul; what you believe in.

Atheists or people who just plainly hate religion may think that people have always needed a comfort to bring them to terms with the hardships of life so we made up this concept of God or a higher spiritual being. That the main three monotheist religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are following the words of a book that was written by a bunch of men who thought that they were something special. That religions were just formed from cultures and their practices. That religions were made to brainwash people.

The latter has been said in front of me with no respect to my beliefs, my family and my intelligence. I theoretically retorted (when actually I just left the place immediately) with the fact that, fair enough if you think that these words were written by man but you believe newspapers today like The Sun like they were the word of God. If you don't believe in a supposed divine message that has the same principles coming from different countries centuries apart then you should also not believe everything written by so-called journalists who work for dodgy billionaires. Even if faiths were created to brainwash or guide people, they all preach doing good deeds and living your life in a humble peaceful way so what's actually wrong with that?

Religion is the main cause of wars and killing people they would reply. I would say Hitler was an atheist and was responsible for exterminating how many millions of Jews? Not to mention how many millions have been imprisoned, tortured and killed in the name of Communism (Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, the Soviet Union, China etc), a rejection of religion and God for the sake of the community and state, which is really just some old dictator. In modern times, segments of the secular West have gone to war in countries thousands of miles away from them in an apparent attempt to 'liberate' them killing thousands in the process, quite any oxymoron but that's another rant altogether. Clearly, people of faith and people without faith both cause insurmountable pain and suffering. To conclude, shit happens. And the last time I checked religion hasn't been the common denominator.


The Sun, Daily Mail et al 21st century line of argument against religion is; 'Look at the child abusing priests' and 'Bin Laden and all the other Islamic extremists'. Clearly you cannot expect even two next-door neighbours to act in unison  so why would you expect that from millions or billions of people from the same religion. Plus, if we believers were so brainwashed wouldn't every single one of us act homogeneously? Aaaah the governments of the world would love that!

 I'll save politiking for the next time...

See also http://raraproductions.blogspot.com/ & http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/

Let's just start from zero

The economy schonomy is all over the news and I don't know if it's just me but it's sooo boring, plus it's terribly depressing. We've been hearing about financial doom and gloom for years now, everything is all 'recession' this and 'slow growth' that. Governments are meant to be controlling/providing for us but the real control over all nations is the economy.

Aaaah the economy, all our lives and livelihoods rely on this thing getting better, oooh don't hurt the poor economy, it has to be fed anything it wants because it has to grow, it can't be restricted by government but yet it must be fed by government money. Well it sounds to me like this economy thing is the emperor in the emperor's new clothes. It's an idea which is enamoured and revered more than God yet it is non-existent and just totally crap.

Everything to do with bail-outs is coated with billions of dosh, where are these billions and now trillions coming from? Greece may get a trillion euros to save them from bankruptcy, America is in trillions of debt and no, all the debt is not owed to China as they are also in trillions of debt apparently. The International Monetary Fund lends out billions on a regular basis, especially to 'developing' countries like Somalia who owe 90% of the entire country's debt to them. How come the Bank of England can just pump billions to provide quantitave easing? Whatever the hell that means. Where did they get all this money from and more importantly, why don't they give it to me?!!

My point is if everyone is in debt, with little to no hope of paying it back this century, yet these random organisations which are meaningless to the ordinary person seem to have an abundance of cash, why don't we just either rob all this money they have or better yet just start from scratch. No-one's listening to the 99% as they allegedly have no resolution except to be anti-capitalist. Rampant capitalism obviously is not full proof or they wouldn't have to keep being rescued by taxpayer's money in a socialist fashion. The power of the West is slowly but surely dying out with the emergence of the Bric countries and nobody can estimate or underestimate the direction of the Arab Spring, so let's just forget AD and call this era PR- post recession and start from zero.

See also http://raraproductions.blogspot.com/ & http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/

Internet - platform for evil and good

It is undeniable that the internet has changed lives, on the smaller scale; if you need to know anything in an (almost) instant, there's no need to go to a library (ay?) phone a friend or ask the audience, but the most reliable source (sort of) is an extended, all encompassing version; asking an audience which comprises of millions or billions i.e. Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves etc. So what questions do you ask Google et al? Mundane but necessary things including directions, looking for jobs, comparing prices of big purchases and insurance, holidays.

But for me Google's best and worst invention is their sometimes ridiculous drop down suggestions, e.g. when I typed in Adam and Eve, one of their helpful suggestions was 'How did Adam and Eve make black people?' more racist suggestions I've found when typing in 'Why do black...' come up with 'Why do black people commit more crimes?' 'Why do black people have that black people smell?' 'Why do black people have big lips?' amongst other even more crude topics. I say best because it's good to know that whatever question you have asked has already been asked, but worst because it exposes just how stupid, ignorant and brain-dead apparently so many people are. You only have to look at the comments on any video on youtube to see how obsessed people are with race and being racist, for example, the tragic video of the two-year-old Chinese girl Yue Yue, run over and left to die served as an excuse for an American to launch a tirade on the entire Chinese race and to claim that this type of incident would never happen in the US as it is against American morals. We all also know the infamous video of the Malay student caught up in the London riots who was beaten and then robbed by people pretending to help him, somebody commented 'I felt so sorry for him but when I found out he was Muslim I then thought DIE BITCH DIE'.

I intended to write this as a counter to my previous doom and gloom blog but this is turning out differently... BUT on the upside, this particular victim had a twitter group set up for him to donate money and things to him whilst the Malay embassy was inundated with calls to help him out. All in all, this fund received £30,000, which he promptly donated to charity. In a cash-strapped era, this money was raised in a matter of days for one person! Not to mention, the people that came out to clean their streets after the havoc caused by the riots. So all faith in humanity is not lost! 

Furthermore, on a larger scale, it is an undeniable fact that the cheesily-named Arab spring would not have grown to the extent it has if not for the internet. The only region on the planet which did not even have pretend democracies finally had the chance on a wide scale to have their voice heard, and the world was actually interested. It was not conducted or coerced by the powers that be but actually by the people, their camera phones and the Libyan tweets that begged for a no-fly zone. Even in the countries which have very little internet access, we would never have known that people young and old are willing to demand for themselves what many of us around the world take for granted, which according to the last prophet of Islam is the greatest jihad (meaning struggle not war) 'speaking the truth to a dictator, even if you are killed for it'.

To conclude, the internet preserves that old chestnut that we all need to feel human - 'free speech' even if it means we have to be subjected to rants by loony hateful idiots, I would still say it's a worthwhile trade-off.

See also http://raraproductions.blogspot.com/ & http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/