Ironic Sarcasm

The Dutch have a saying, that translates to something like; it was the Finns again. Well, the “immigration critical” Dutch do. What they mean, is that as news of disturbance, or crime rarely tells us the ethnicity of purpetrators, they think it is a good guess they were not of “white” European descendant and Finns have been selected to be the model of these sort of unharmfull foreigners, as opposed to foreigners who one can recognize from among ethnic locals in the Netherlands as per the perplexion. This is an attempt to be sarcastic, but it fails totally, because they assume – as is typical for racists – that the Finns, based on their skin colour, are strangers to crime and disturbance.

The reason why Swedish “immigration criticals” have not adopted this Dutch catch phrace is, that it is not very good sarcasm at all, because it was actually used in Sweden in racistc context just few decades ago on the headlines of newspapers. “En Finne Igen!” Or “A Finn Once Again!” It messes up the narrative of one being able to recognize evildoers by the colour of their skin. Wich is about the most stupid – altough freightfully common – assumption.

The Finns were cheap labour immigrants for decades in the late 20th century Sweden. Many were lonely young men, who carried knives, as a continuation of the range roaming culture of their home and as protection from the locals angry at them for taking their jobs, women, benefits, or simply being an outsider and seemingly vulnerable (as there are always people who get satisfaction from attacking easy targets). The Finns often had limited language skills and a culture of heavy drinking (inherited from their fathers who had no other means of medicating their generational war traumas). These men did not move to Sweden because they really wanted, but because farming all the smallest farmsteads in Finland was slowly becoming economically impossible and because of both the post war baby boom and increased healthcare created far too many candidates to inherit the farms. In addition Finland had lost a major part of arable land in the war, so even as it is a scarcely populated country, there was over population, while Sweden had survived WWII virtually untouched. On the contrary, they had profited by selling steel to the Nazi warmachine. They had no idea what was wrong with the Finns and simply thought it was the fact that they are Finns and then expanded from a few misdeeds, that all Finns are dangerous knife weilding drunkards. It seemed like an obvious conclusion, because at point there were more Finns in Swedish prisons, than there were Swedes. This sort of storytelling appeals to people because it satisfies all fears and prejudices of strangers and offers a sensation of safety in a method of recognizing threats. It also paints a picture of the target group to be morally inferior, wich not only makes some people feel better about themselves, but excuses any exploitation towards the other group of people in the labour markets. The blame of increased crime can also be assigned to the origin of the newcomers instead of recognizing the real reasons, like increased economical division and outright poverty within society, or segragation of the immigrants to make them feel as outsiders for even generations to come.

Finns have been racially judged before. The USA had immigration policy, that was meant to favour “white” protestants. These were seen as better people, than anybody from the rest of the world. Finns, of course fit both of these definitions perfectly. However, they had many faulties in the eyes of the people, who had made up these preferances. Many Finnish immigrants to North-America were, once again the sort of lonely men as described abowe. When not, they were eager to organize workers unions. Wich was nothing short of Communism for their employers, wich after the Finnish civil war lost by Communists in 1918 was also true, as many on the losing side immigrated all over the world. So, to get rid of these troublesome people a reason was needed and of course it had to be their origin, thus they were deemed not “white”. It seems ridiculous, as Finns in general are tall blonds with blue eyes, but they were defined as mongols. The “evidence” for this racialition was found among things, like Finnish craniums being generally wider than those of the Germanic languages speaking nations. Not unlike the Nazies found Communism to be Jewish, when they needed to tell each other what was wrong with one or the other Communists had the fault of being Jews and Jews had the fault of being Communists, never mind the reality. The mind of the racist is increadibly flexible to fit the reality to that one fantasy they have.

Even in Canada there were signs outside bars, that banned entry from “Indians and Finns”. Initially the Nazies defined Finns among the indiginous or “Turan” peoples of Europe, that meant they were not “Aryan” conquerors, but “untermench”, subhuman. When the Finns fought hard in the Winter War against the Soviets and the Nazies needed allies on their “Manifest Destiny” of the conquest of Soviet Union, suddenly their view on Finns changed to fit that ridiculous aim. Now the Finns were seen as a mixed race of both Germanic and Turanian origin, but being led by Germanic Swedish speaking Finns. The Finns played along. Beaty contests were held and athletes sent to international sports events to prove that the Finns were, if not exactly Aryan, at least worthy of them. But they could not get rid of the too high cheek bones and wide craniums.

As the WWII drew to an end Finns could not stand the pressure of the Red Army and the German “superhuman” military was all but spent, the Finns turned coats and backstabbed their erstwhile helpers. After the war it became open for all to see what the logical consequences of racism are, as the concentration camps were revealed in the Nazi occupied territories. Further more, the lie about the Germanic super-race was inflated. The Colonial powers and their racist systems of exploitation became under suspect, as they could not be defended by other arguments, as those the Germans had used to justify their conquest of other countries. But even if civil liberties movement won great victories in the USA and the Colonial Empires crumbled, racism did not die out…

Even today it raises it’s ugly head, as it appeals to the stupid and morally challenged. It promises these, who have nothing to show for themselves, but who have grown up in a competetive culture, how they are supposedly more deserving, than some others, conviniently by fiat of being born to some particular group of people. As this is appealing to the downtrotten nitwit and to the priviledged nincompoop alike, it is an opportunity too good not to be exploited by the populist politician. Who then either flirts with it, or goes head on with it and in both cases moves the goal posts of the society just a little bit further towards Fascism. In reality this benefits nobody. Because, even if the populist politician gains power and their followers feel their prejudices becoming somehow more justified, what they have created is a less egalitarian and by far less safe society and they have released a value base in wich anyone may become the subject of racist violence. Just as the Finns could be defined lesser and not “white” enough, so could you.

 

Abortion

I probably should not talk about this because I am a middle-aged, flesh-eating, white male, but I have an opinion.

One thing, that we need to get clear first, is that nobody – absolutely nobody – is advocating for more abortions. The real issue here is, how to reduce them. Wether you think human rights should be appointed at the point of conception, or at birth the fact, that in societies where abortion is illegal more abortions do take place and they are often more dangerous to the woman, especially if they are poor, than in societies where abortion is legal. It should therefore be obvious, that simply banning them is not a good way to reduce them.

Nowhere is this discussion as heated as in the USA. I guess it is because no other country with secular constitution has as much religiously minded voters. Their sincerely held religious beliefs have been turned into a populist political tool dangled before them to provoke emotional, rather than rational reaction. It is an effective way to sway, misdirect and abuse voters in that it involves the sanctity of life, innocent and helpless subject to violence, the identity of the religious person as part of the group from wich they get their values and a problem that in real life there are no easy answers to, but to the ignorant and emotionally involved one can be seemingly presented.

The Supreme Court of USA decided a while ago to overturn the Roe vs. Wade descision in order to let the states to decide wether or not abortion should be legal. My opinion is, that thus the US Supreme Court has acted in contempt of their own constitution by enabling the states to impose the religious beliefs of some on others.

The idea that the soul begins at the moment of conception – true or false – is a religiously held belief. There is no evidence, that can back it up. Infact, there is no evidence of a soul existing at all. There is no organ, that holds this magical essence of a human being. Exept perhaps the brain, where other such imaginary things reside. One can use the word to poetically describe the persona of an individual, but let us not be hypocritical and claim that is the way state legistlators and their voters who wish to ban abortion see the issue. They are motivated precisely by superstition & their religious moralist beliefs, not by anything else. Hardly anything demonstrates this better, than the fact, that in this day and age of easy access to information, these legistlative bodies have decided to ignore all the research and facts about the issue. Facts, like the one that abortions are not actually much reduced by bans. They simply become more unhealthy and down right dangerous. Facts, like that abortions are reduced by sex education and easy access to free contraception. These matter not, as if the goal was not to reduce abortions, but simply punish the women who need one. They all need it to ask for one. Nobody, absolutely nobody has an abortion just because it is such a thrill. If anyone ever did, they would actually need it more than any other, as it would indicate them as even more unprepared for parenthood, than all the others who feel they need to go through it.

You simply can not make people to become more able parents by punishing them for having had sex. If you are under such a blatant misunderstanding, perhaps it would be best for the sake of any possible kids, you would reconsider becoming a parent your self?

Both the religious moralist motivation and the demand that a woman should sacrifice her body to sustain the developing embryo, claimed to supposedly hold same rights as a fully developed human individual – even if that were true and equal – are against everything the US constitution stands for.

The USA s just a nother country, albeit a fairly big one. I fear for the rest of the world. The USA has shown an example of the success of liberal policies. If this emotional and divisive issue continues to divert political power to other fascist agenda there, it may yet again become an issue in the rest of the world and good willing people all over the globe may become vessels for this stupidity. We have already seen it happen in the heart of Europe, in Poland. The attitudes of the world population stand in danger of hardening in so many issues, not just this. There are, of course, many roads that lead to the demands of controll of the lives of others and eventually Fascism, but this one is especially devious, because it sels itself as a means to protect the innocent and defenseless children, while it actually can not provide any protection to anyone. On the contrary, it sets the living, breathing women in danger, while the amount of abortion and especially late term abortions is likely to grow.

 

DEMOCRACY

Why has it failed the Russians so miserably?

An educated nation, that has been practicing democratic processes for over a hundred years and now look at them. The Duma of the tzar may not have been the most democratic system of governance, but it was a clear step forward in comparrison to the preceeding Feodalism. The Soviet Union was seen as an opposite to democracy in the West, but at it’s very core was an ideology of democracy. Communism is all about equality, but there can be no equality without equal right to descision making. The word “soviet” in the name of the country gives us a hint about the intention and practice of the revolutionaries, who founded the state. It refers to the local elected councils to whom the political power derived from the will of the people was supposed to come to. In reality though Russia remained a centrally governed empire, with well known results.

When the Soviet Union fell, there was surprizingly little violence. This was because it was dissolved by the people who led it. Not so much an uprising of the people. Sure there were demonstrations and even riots, but those were more about late salaries and general shortages of consumer goods. They were not suppressed with outright violence. Only in some fringe areas, like the Baltic states, was any of it about the indipendence and in that sense democracy. The dictatorial machine of violence had been gradually reduced since the death of Stalin and altough the time of Brezhnev saw little change in any direction, for he was the panultimate Conservative, when the changes finally came with the idealistic Gorbatshov, they merely opened the door for opportunistic populist Yeltsin.

I served in the Finnish military when the attempted coup against Yeltsin dissolved in violence. We were wary of what would follow. Everybody was relieved when a sort of stability was established relatively soon after the “piss-poor insurrection. Yet, what was established then to resolve the crisis was a nother centralization of power to one man.

Only a few years later the Communists were winning the elections. They stood long way a head of any competition according to all gallups. The West saw Yeltsin as representing democracy and decided to dabble in the elections to ensure a continuation of democracy. Yeltsin got massive loans for his campaign. In addition the Russian state supported his campaign with astronomical amounts of money. This money was cumulated by handing shares of state owned companies to private banks against loans. In effect, the banks loaned the funds of the government owned companies to the government and got paid by owning those companies hence forth. Such is the process of “privatization”. That is how the oligarchs of Russia emerged. In the West we call ours more politely just Capitalists. Yeltsin – a seriously ill man, whose condition was kept a secret – won, and increased the presidential powers.

Putin came out of nowhere. He was an opportunist and a populist, like Yeltsin before him. He was also a nationalist. Large number of Russians had risen economically since the fall of the Soviet Union, but even more had fallen. The populist promised to put the rampant oligarchs into order and he did. He made one of them into an example, a warning to the others, while the others were put to his service. This increased his popularity and made it more acceptable to ever increase his personal power. Like any good nationalist populist, Putin has promised to protect the society from corruption of values. He has made a league with the church and insured any rival religious groups are seen almost as enemies of the people, or Western agents – not such an alien role to some of these during the Cold War. At the same time the very real financial corruption, ever present in Russian society, has reached unpresidented heights. As is evident from the state of the Russian military. Capitalistic self interrest has been the top most value for the last thirty years.

Russians have for generations learned to fear a change, as it has brought them mainly insecurity. This insecurity begets Conservatism, with wich comes Authoritarianism, since it is based on the traditional values of Patriarchy, loyalty and obidience. Their democratic choises have brought turmoil, while their authoritarian leaders have offered stability – stability of misery to many, but relative wellbeing to others.

Are there nations, that are simply too immature to decide for themselves, to weild that power and end up giving it to some self centered authoritarian leaders, or is it, that democracy is fragile everywhere and we need to protect it ever from threats of authoritarianism, totalitarianism, oligarchy and ignorance?

Has Democracy failed the Russians, or have they failed it, like they appear very much failed at Socialism and Communism?

 

Do You Trust the Media?

I have recently run into several people, who tell me they do not trust the media. By what they mean big media companies, networks and newspapers. It appears many of them have lost faith in these institutions over a course of fairly short time span. One of them expressed, that the young do not believe everything they are fed by the media, but I do not think this is an age related issue, as such.

Many people who come from countries, where authoritarian governments controll the media, by persecuting and even killing journalists not abiding to the official “truth” have a somewhat justified mistrust in the major media. Many such people live in exile in countries where they do not understand the language to follow local or even international news. To some of them the customs and majority values are so alien, that despite of having a safe haven in their adopted country, they find hard to fit in and trust all what the surrounding culture has to offer. For such people news often come from social media, or other rumours in their immideate family, friends and compatriots in exile.

Today, however, there are plenty of people who have grown up in western democracies, where freedom of speech and freedom of press have been long held in high esteem. Why have people in such conditions lost their trust in media houses, that boast long tradition of journalistic integrity? Is it because of the modern digital format of news, that they are so rushed, that the fact checking is at times poor before publishing? Could it be, that in commercial interrests competition has led to a point where some news providers are more interrested in providing people with a perspective to news items a certain major consumer segment would like to hear, as opposed, or at least regardless, of the facts? It is easy to provide people angles to news items, that fulfil their expectations, preconceptions, fears and biases. The world is changing rapidly and nowhere is this more evident, than in the news. Especially to people who hold values simply assumed from parents and never dared, or having had tools to test them, is this constant change a frightenin thing. For as our understanding grows as we learn new things, it affects the facts we know, knew, or thought we knew and thus our values.

Where do the people who have lost their trust to “the mainstream media” get their newsfeed then? Entertainment tangles a lot in everyday news events. It is often produced with commercial interrest, or a value based political interrest and paints a very specific picture of events and public figures. As far as I can tell to many their newsfeed comes from all sorts of politically inclined small time media, whose commitment to factual reporting and resources to actually achieve any are limited, or unknown, but replaced with all the more political fervour. Some of their news appear to come from the social media rumours and as the digital platform offers a chance for any opinionated moron – myself included – to spout out their version of the “truth”, these two sources get mixed up.

 

Everyone is an Atheist

Not just the people who identify as an atheist – absolutely everyone is an atheist. You, me, everybody.

The Jew is an atheist about every other god exept the god of Abraham. The Christian is an atheist about Allah and the Muslim about Jesus. Even the most liberal minded polytheist, who accepts as gods gods they have never even heard of and thinks that all the gods in the world are mere manifestations of the same divinity, is an atheist about the versions of monotheistic gods, that demand they are the one and only god there is. Simply because the polytheist does not believe in that sort of god. Most people do not even believe in most versions of the gods they profess to believe in, exept perhaps on the most vague terms. When people get into specifics about the gods they do believe in, that is when the suspension of disbelief starts to crumble in the mind of the other person. Does this make the term atheist irrelevant? It does not.

We use the word atheist to describe a person who does not believe in any gods. However, it should be noticed, that it is our shared disbelief in all sorts of gods, that is the unifying factor between all of us and thus the right to not believe in the other man’s god is important to all of us. As such, it should also remind us that for the same reason laws must not be passed based on the alledged opinion, or authority of any gods, but based on the ethical evaluation of secular reasoning for harm and benefit of action, or inaction. If the gods are reasonable, they agree with such secular morals, if not, then to hell with them.

 

2nd Amendment

“They are trying to take our guns!”

In light of years of school shootings, staggering numbers of all sorts of gun related violence, and tragicomic amount of gun related accidental deaths, one might expect the US government and judical system might take a nother look at the regulatory laws on gun ownership. One could expect, that the frequent and needless deaths of children at least would have evoked a nationwide and fairly universal popular demand to set better laws to regulate guns more. Alas no. There are wide swathes of people with enough presence of mind to have done all this and even a few presidents who have tried to address the problem, but they have achieved hardly anything. Why?

“In countries where the government has all the guns, tyranny and dictatorship reign.”

The excuses people give in defence of their “constitutional right to bear arms” are mind numbingly stupid. These seem to be either appeals to personal insecurity due to a society where crime is abundant and every numbskul might be toting a piece, or insecurity about the chance that their own government might turn into tyranny and it needed to be opposed by the citizenry. One would think that the solution to the first source of fear would quite obviously involve attempts to develope a more efficient police force, a more equal society with less desperate people to turn to crime and at very least better regulation of guns, but for some reason there are plenty of people, who do not see any of those as solutions. Instead they would arm the teachers. The second problem stems from the time when the US constitution was written. It was made by revolutionaries wary of a global empire they were braking of from, in a time when the native nations of America were still strong and the firearms mentioned had not seen rapid development from the flintlock musket in over a hundred years. The “founding fathers” had very little reason to expect weaponry to change in the foreseeanble future. Certainly they could not pass laws concerning modern automatic firearms, or what the future may hold for us in that regard. Their concern about armed militias was a question of federal army being too weak to protect the land but powerfull enough to set up a dictatorship. The modern US military is one of the most powerfull and certainly the most expensive armed forces on the planet. It really does not require any help from some random militias and even less from some individual gun owners. None of the reasons it remains unused to set up a dictatorship in the USA is a deterrence of the abundance of gun owners in the country. Any insurrection based on the efforts of random dudes weilding their AR-15 rifles would propably be fairly one sided and short lived.

“Criminals can always get illegal guns.”

Where do illegal guns come from? They were all at some point legal. There are no hidden factories making illegal guns from scrap metal anywhere. Many illegal guns are left over from wars and smuggled across borders. Those are mostly military grade assault weapons professional criminals use, but weapons smuggling is a risky business, though profitable. But hey, why make aquiring guns difficult for the would be criminal? Just sell them what they want at the local supermarket. Many illegal guns come from burglaries. A weapon in the house is not a deterrence, rather an incentive for a burglary, even in places where anybody can just step into a shop and buy one without any backround checks. Just like jewellery is an incentive for burglary in places where they are readily awailable in shops. The guns used at school shootings are however hardly ever illegal. The disturbed individuals who decide to commit a suicide by proxy and go to a school, or some other public place to shoot at some innocent bystanders most often got their assault weapons legally from the shelf of a store, or from some relative or other who had their guns legally even though they were happles enough to keep their automatic guns not in locked steel cabinets (as required in many countries) but at something like their night desk – I guess for children to find and play with it.

“from my dead cold hands…”

From the excuses given to not restrict gun ownership in the USA it becomes obvious, that the underlying reasons come from fear. That makes the discussion difficult, because the people who defend the all extending “right” to bear arms do it from a deeply emotional standpoint. They have abandoned reason to the extent, that they do not want to discuss various options, rather their view is this fierce black and white set up, where the options are reduced to everybody should be able to have a gun, or none at all. Their world seems to not hold the option of restricting guns from people who obviously can not handle the responsibility of carrying kone . This raises the question of how many of them are so dangerous imbecils, that indeed they do have every right to fear the possibility of being the type of people who would and should not be allowed to own a gun, if ever the licence to carry a gun (as in the rest of the western countries) was restricted.

 

Greenland

Some 1000 years ago Erik the Red named a land he found while in exile from Iceland. The name he came up with was an obvious rea-estate scam. Let us face it, the land is not very green at all. It is a wasteland coverd with ice. However, he managed to lure some immigrants, who had become fed up with the land owners in Iceland, and were desperate enough to move just about anywhere.

A few days back a nother real-estate salesman Donald Trump proposed for the US to buy Greenland from Denmark. When both the Danish and the Greenland autonomy premiers had dryly commented, that it is not for sale, Donald decided to cancel his visit to Denmark. That is, he decided to cancel a visit to a long standing ally of the US, based on the fact, that they are not willing to give up ground for the US…

How does this work in the mind of Donald and his supporters? That if a country is not willing to negotiate to cesede ground for the US, they deserve a diplomatic slap? What if Denmark offered to buy a part of the US? What if they had been willing to exchange Greenland for, let us say, Alaska? Would Donald have continued with the negotiations? What about if they were ready to make the exchange for Greenland for Texas? Why not?

Or is this supposed to only work out so that the mighty and powerfull may make such suggestions to the smaller and weaker parties? What if China offered to buy Alaska? China is by far bigger and definetily mightier than the US. In military strength it far surpasses the the US. The US may have the most expensive military, but wars are not won by throwing away money. Otherwise the US would have won in Vietnam. They did not. Wars are won by motivation, production, an economy that withstands war and by sheer numbers of men. Do I need to add, that in all these respects China has more than the US.

We all should want a world where the strong are not allowed to bully the weak. Not on personal level, nor on the level of nations. Even China, should want that there be no bullying. Because even if every sixth person on the planet is a Chinese, the other five are something else. Through this sort of behaviour as with Denmark, Donald seems to imply by his slogan about “making America great again” some sort of wish to return to the days of the big stick policy, when some nations abused the weakness of others to make themselves rich. That is the capitalists of some nations abused the natural resources of other nations to make the capitalists rich. This is a logical standpoint for the political movement and social class he represents. Let us be honest though. It was a world where great many had to suffer for precious few to be happy and we have not emerged from it yet. Freedom should not mean the freedom to exploit others. Yet again, what else is capitalism, other than the right to exploit the spoils of the work of others? How much, seems to have no boundaries to the person who is here to compete with others, not to coexist.

Why is it that the poor, or a middle class person in the US would vote for Donald? He is not on their side. He is obviously on his side alone and with him is the money. He presents himself as opposed to the social elite, but he is born and bred part of this elite, it is only his behaviour, that makes him seem like an uneducated peasant. In every other way he presents the interrests of the elite of the highest standing and wealth. Is it because they hope, that if the US capitalist fares well, something might drop off from his table to the table of the common man? Or is it simply because they can relate to him because of his skin colour (hobgoblin orange hue), or as the obvious moron, who is the president and it gives them hope, that since such an obvious nincompoop has had economic and political success, they might too? Perhaps it is, because they fear the alternative of a woman, or yet a nother coloured person having power? Why is it, that this notion fears them so? Is it because, they DO realize their priviledges and hate the idea, that by example a the society around them would grow to accept, that such priviledges as based on being a man, or “white”, or heterosexual might become obsolete?

 

Race Realism

When we observe dogs, or horses, we percieve obvious differences between various races of these domesticated animals humanity has selectively breeded for thousands of years. A dog is a dog, it is within the distinct species type, wether a chihuahua, or a great dane.

Are humans any different? No. We are biological entities as much as our pets and beasts of burden. There seems to be these distinct differences between human races alike as there are for example between different breeds of cows. Some are bigger, some have darker skin colouring than the other and so on and these are easily recognizable features.

Or are they? We have stereotypes of racial human features, but even though a vast majority of people may fall under those types, at least in some outside features, what is the actual difference? What about all the people who do not fall under this or that stereotype? Whose stereotypes should we abide to and why? These stereotypes are very much the product of our subjective and sometimes collective minds. The expectations loaded to these stereotypes are also often very unfair towards any individual at all and filled with tribal selfrighteousness, by assuming the features shared by the person holding a specific stereotype are seen as virtues by themselves and any differences as symbols of some sort of defincency. In addition the idea is so muddled, that the cultural aspects of our heritage get confused with what is genetical all the time. Further more, these cultural constructs are equally confused with not just percieved races, but to genders age groups and indeed social groups as well.

Studies of varying social groups and selecting correlative information from those to the ethnic heritage of some groups tells us absolutely nothing about race in reality, but it is often enough used to confirm biases of the existing stereotypes. However correlation does not mean causation.

Realistically speaking, race stereotypes assume all sorts of evolutionary (or unnaturally created) differences between stereotypically nominated groups of people, that can not be demonstrated by any scientific methodology. There exists this ridiculous missunderstanding about evolution, that it causes all things change towards some specific goal and at an equal speed at that. So, that if hereditary groups of people have varying skin colours, their intellects should vary somewhat equally and if these groups are found to have a difference in their economical situation or how often  these groups of people living nominally within the same culture end up in prison, that would somehow indicate some genetic causation to the group ending up in criminal careers (or at least being caught at doing the thing against the social norm of a society). In reality, we do know that powerty and social segragation based on an imaginary stereotype of race or an imaginary stereotype of the poor people do cause crime, while we have absolutely no show that any specific genetics of people with certain kind of perplexion was any cause at all to criminal behaviour. Evolution pushes for change by the simple logic of positive mutation to be more likely to survive long enough to produce the next generation. Nothing more. When a species spreads to new environment for wich it was previously adapted it picks up some mutations that benefits that goal. Perplexion may change over generations according to how much sunlight is awailable to better adapt the new environment, wether the skin needs to protect itself from overt sunshine, or alternatively does it need to let more of sun radiation through from a very limited amount of the sun light awailable in the environment. Human brains have had no such dire demands from varying environments. It seems quite obvious that the brain, is our most adaptive organ as it is, without any major change. There is no soul, we are our brain and it is the same regardless from wich population group on the planet we are descended, since it evolved to be as it is today within a very small group of people who were the ancestors of all of us on the planet today who call ourselves human.

I write this as a “white”, middle aged, male and having lived my entire life in the rich western world. I am painfully aware of my priviledge to even be able to write about this and other issues in my blog, that could be deadly dangerous to other people elswhere.

Realistically speaking race is an issue in societies with history of abuse of people with different perplexion from the ones who held power. Or a cultural norm used when ignorant people get scared of different looking people who come from outside of their very limited cultural experience world.

I find it annoying how loosely the term of race is weilded about in western and especially in American culture even today. For example, in science fiction the imaginary intelligent species originating from various different planets are referred to as “races”. Even if these characters were played by actors wearing mere green rubber mask to make them different enough from humans of planet earth, they most certainly would not be just of different “race”. The products of a completely different ecology and evolutionary trail, separated by the void, would not share none what so ever genetical similarity to us humans and should not be called a “race” under any pretence. This may seem harmless fiction of the most imaginative and farthest from the reality we do live in, but the stories deal often enough with very human problems and they are watched because the audiences can relate to the stories however fancy they are. Hence, implying that there are races and that race differences are an issue may be harmfull. Sure, it may also be a beneficial way for the film makers to remind us about how artifical the entire concept of race is. Yet, when “white”captain Kirk kissed his “black” crewmate in the sixties TV-series Star Trek, it was both a brave step forward by the film crew and a sad show of the racial prejudices of the surrounding society as Kirk had allready kissed green alien “women” and it had been seen as OK, as long as the actor was a “white” woman.

Even today the stereotypes of race are there hidden in plain daylight. When the issue of race comes up, it is about the people of colour or in other words of people of different race, than some race normative people, that is the so called “white” people. More seriously, than in popular culture, though not necessarily any more effectively, these ideas are everyday confused in politics. I just read about two lady candidates in some election in California where it seemed to be an issue that for the first time there were two women candidates and that they were “people of colour”. One had Indian heritage and the other Latin heritage. Neither looked anything but “white” to my eyes, even though I come from Finland where on average there are more of us blue eyed blondes, than in most other countries.

It would be ideal, if it was not an issue at all, that these candidates were “people of colour” or that they were women. However, it remains an issue for as long as such a pervaisive amount of racial and gender stereotypes affect the thinking of the people. It seems the stereotypes need first to be turned, before they can be erased.

 

 

Who was behind the 9/11?

How wonky is this? The US is now considering legal action against Saudi-Arabia for the 9/11 terror attacks. Now some 15 years after the event, the US has suddenly come to the conclusion, that it might have been the Saudis all along who were behind the attacks. I sure hope they have made a better research on this issue than when they attacked Iraq on the pretense, that Saddam was somehow behind the terror attack, or that the Iraqi government had some weapons of mass destruction concealed on trucks driving around the country. That went well. Did it not?

First of all, if it ever was a justified reason to attack a country because it has weapons of mass destruction, would that actually not make the 9/11 attacks then justified? The US arguably has more such weapons than any other nation on the planet and has used them against other sovereign nations, sometimes even without provocation.

The entire idea, that the Iraqis were stupid enough to ride chemical weapons around their country in trucks, when their roads never were exactly in condition to make it even remotely safe, was as ridiculous when it was first suggested as it is now, that we know the Iraqi government was not concealing any secret weapons of mass destruction. Sure they had had them, we know this because the US and former West-Germany sold them to Saddam, in the 1980’s. Why? That is when he used these weapons of mass destruction against the Kurdish minority in northern Iraq, but nobody was even interrested about them then. Why? These weapons only became an issue, when the Bush administration saw them as an excuse to attack Iraq, to profit by war, to controll the oil rich country (remind me, in wich sort of business was Bush himself involved with) and to deliver a revenge to the scared and angry US citizens.

Ahead they went and brought the might of not only the US but the British military as well on the worst enemy of Saudi-Arabia. Yes, they dislodged a terrible tyrant in the process, who had reigned for decades as their very own puppet. Starved the oil rich nation and drove it into chaos for years and possibly for generations to come. In the end they managed to remove the Sunni-led government, and replace it with a Shia-led government. As a result Iran has become the closest friend the Iraqi government. Good work with that Bush! The Sunnis, who previously were considered to be the more moderate of the two major sects of Islam have moved towards the radicalized fanatics all over the world. It is the former officials and officers of the Iraqi government, whom the US provisional goverment in their absolute and divinely guided wisdom decided to depose and shut outside of the future Iraq, who have now formed the ISIL. Thank you very much. Exdellent job! Is this movement towards Islamist radicalization exactly what Osama Bin Laden would have wanted for?

Osama, the main architecht of the 9/11 attacks was executed, along with some of his unarmed relatives, by the US military on foreign soil, without even the permission of the Pakistani government. He was from a leading Saudi family, but apparently only just now 15 years later have the US officials managed to make the connection. I wonder how long is it going to take them to make the next obvious connection, that he was also a product of the CIA operation of using Islamists against the Soviet occupation of Afghanishtan?

No, I am no conspiracy theorist. I do not think it has all been deliberate. Instead, I think it is a very good example of what sort of crap historically challenged people achieve in positions of power to wich they are elected by uneducated and ignorant populations, as they singlemindedly move towards a short term goal, the ethics of wich they have based on some imaginary nonsense. Sadly often motivated by the opportunity get even richer as if being rich was some sort of measure of a human being.

In an undirect result, as some of the Muslim people have moved towards cultural, religious and political radicalization, so have all the idiots and fanatics pushing out of the woodwork in the western world. Ignorant western people are scared about their mirror images of conservative right wing religious types in Islamic culture and even acting out their hatred. Typically they are still in denial of the actual threat we are facing from pollution and the human induced climate change. Their fear of the other, who is just like them, is taking much of our focus and resources from an actual threat we need to face together as humanity. Can one still hope for the best?

 

 

 

Death & Taxes

Most people do not think about death too much, because it is an unpleasant thought. Many people have been led by superstitious cultural heritage to tell themselves they or their loved ones are not going to die at all, but continue in some sort of pelasant paradise after their bodies die out. Some people have managed to provide themselves an income by providing a service of rituals that perpetuate this baseless, but pleasant notion. There are even a few, that get some form of sick satisfaction from the idea that bad people will suffer for an eternity in this assumed afterlife. No surprice the definition for the bad people is typically tribally moralistic, that is, people who are not part of the “tribe”, or “club” that has certain tenets and rituals.

Death is inevitable, but many a cultural movement, that are built around the blatantly obvious form of wishfull thinking, that it is not and there is some form of afterlife, have managed to make themselves exempted from being taxed. Some of them even get support from other taxpayers and indeed they all collect a form of taxes themselves to provide the income to their ritual experts. This is a widely accepted situation in almost any given society. Why?

A couple of years back here in Finland the government decided to stop collecting fees for owning a TV-set and provide funding for the national radio and TV broadcasting network YLE (much like the BBC in Britain) by taxes instead of the previous obsolete method of collecting money. The new tax was named the YLE-tax according to the name of the national and government owned broadcasting company. Now the vice president of the youth section of the (True) Finns party Aleksi Hernesniemi, has launched a citizen campaign to stop the YLE-tax. This is possible through a nother new law we have, wich is that if you can collect 50 000 names to support an initiative, the parliament has to have a discussion about the matter. This is how our new marriage equality laws for example were finally led to the parliament vote.

The main complaint against the YLE-tax is about it being unfair, as it is a network under political guidance. Hernesniemi complains also about the bad quality of the programmes as provided by YLE channels. It is sometimes very difficult to fathom how stupid people are. The president of the political guidance for YLE has been for almost a year a member of the same party as Mr. Hernesniemi. Is he now complaining against his fellow party member, or what? To what is he comparing the quality of the programmes as sent by YLE? One can argue, that the newest series by HBO, that the YLE keeps sending are not quality programme, but that is a rather subjective view at best and they do get high ratings. YLE sends out a wide range of movies, other entertainment and documentaries from around the globe and it provides those online to be watched at the convinience of the audience. I have watched a variety of commercial channels, and none can compare with quality, or wider selecltion to that as sent by YLE. Yes, it is true, that YLE does not produce Big-Brother type of social porn, send out ridiculous “documentaries” such as produced by for example the History channel and that their news are “biased”, to research the facts behind the news stories before airing them out, instead of spouting out racist hatred. Like some small time private tabloids, that are not even members of the journalistic unions have done. That can hardly be called partisan bias, even though the party of Mr. Hernesniemi has based much of it’s xenophobic populism on such.

I for one would much rather see news from a company led by constitutional and journalistic principles and a democratically chosen political guidance to regulate that those principles are held, than by newscompanies led by the popular vote of the viewer masses, advertising sponsors and the preferances of billionare owners. In any case , it can not be argued, that one or the other was any cheaper to me. If anything the commercial channel is prone to be more expensive, because not only does it need the money to run it, but it must also provide for winnigs of the owners. I either pay for the service through some form of taxes, or by the extra cost in products for advertising them.

So, indeed there are ways to awoid taxes, even if there are no ways to awoid death. However, it should be observed how much it is going to cost us, to awoid the taxes.