Global Nation Organization

Last week, I was in San Diego for a trade show. It was my first visit to that part of California. No doubt, it is a great city, with lots of open spaces. The first night my husband and I stayed at the Hilton on Harbor Island. It was a beautiful location, with great sunsets across the harbor. Plus, we were struck by the enormous numbers of people jogging along the harborway. Trust me, this isn’t something you see here in Orlando. They really seemed to take physical fitness seriously in California, or at least, in San Diego.

The following three nights we stayed at the Homewood Suites Liberty Station. Again, there was a public access area along the hotel grounds, with joggers passing along a waterway. It seemed there wasn’t a single place in San Diego, where we didn’t see young people jogging.

At first we wondered if it was because of all the military bases in the area. We assumed being fit was a prerequisite of their occupation. But it didn’t matter where we were; downtown, along the Convention Center in a mall parking lot, people everywhere were jogging. And not just in parks, but along the streets. At the convention center there were groups of people racing up and down a very tall and very steep staircase that rested between two buildings. So, it was really disturbing to have been there last week, when 17 year old Chelsea King disappeared.

Sadly, as we all know by now, her life ended badly. She was assaulted, raped, murdered and then buried in a shallow grave at the same park where she had been jogging. How strange to have an abundance of wonderful parks available to the citizens of San Diego, while at the same time, knowing those open spaces are hunting grounds for sexual predators.

Mind you, this isn’t the first time a woman or young girl has been abducted while jogging in a park. Who can forget a very controversial disappearance in 2001 of Chandra Levy. At the time it was believed she was killed by U.S. Representative Gary Condit of California. In the end, it turned out to have just been another opportunistic killing by a sexual predator as she went for a jog in the park.

This afternoon while my husband and I were driving home from work, he suggested women should start carrying mace with them when they go jogging. On the news they suggested women run with a dog, or a companion. I have a much better solution.

Women should strap a gun into a shoulder or hip harness on top of their jogging outfits. Trust me; no sexual predator would ever assault a woman jogging with an exposed firearm. End of story!

We all want to help the homeless. But, at what cost and who pays for it? Better to help them, help themselves. Everyone has a right to life, but no one has a right to take from another so that they can live.

I recently asked my friend’s little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be president some day.

Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, as I asked her, “If you were president what would be the first thing you would do?”

She replied, “I’d give food and houses to all the homeless people.”

Her parents beamed.

“Wow… what a worthy goal.” I told her, “But you don’t have to wait until you’re president to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, rake my yard, and sweep my walks, and I’ll pay you $50. Then I can drive you over to the grocery store where homeless guys hang out, and you can give them the $50 you earned to use toward food and a new house.”

She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, “Why doesn’t the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?”

I said, “Welcome to the Republican Party.”

Her parents still aren’t speaking to me.

A couple of weeks ago I watched a report on Plumpy’nut, a solution to childhood malnutrition in a foil pouch It is a mixture of peanut paste, vegetable oil, milk powder, sugar, vitamins and minerals, blended to create a high protein and energy rich food. In the program, a doctor from Medecins Sans Frontieres called it a miracle. I would have to agree. Within two days on Plumpy’nut a child can gain as much as one pound, rejuvenating them and taking them from near death to healthy. An unopened foil pouch is shelf stable for two years. An open pouch needs no refrigeration. Because the food is so energy dense, a child only needs to eat a little to get a lot of nutrition.

The story amazed me, but within the program, they showed the children feeding on Plumpy’nut amidst total squalor. I wondered–what kind of future is waiting for them. The world saves them from infant mortality, only to endure a life of extreme hardship and insurmountable suffering.

Does a humanitarian ever ask the inevitable question: In a world of rising birth rates and declining resources, it is prudent to save every child.

Obviously, no parent would ever want his or her child to be the one to starve. I am not advocating we should let the hungry starve. No, instead I am asking, is the world doing enough to insure those children minds are fed as much as their bellies? Is the world creating opportunity in an ocean of poverty?

That is the next challenge. Hunger solved, now do not leave them idle, for trouble will follow. An educated society is a civil society. Education leads to commerce, commerce leads to jobs, jobs lead to satisfaction. The only thing poverty leads to is an early death, anger and hostility.

While Islamic society in some Middle Eastern countries seem to be heading backwards, I do believe (at least I hope so) that the situation can be turned around. However, it will be up to the Muslims themselves (not their Mullah’s) to decide how they want to govern their lives.

It will be up to Muslims to stand up against the use of the Qur’an as a vehicle for subjugation and suppression of individual rights.

If it is being distorted for political gains, then get that message out. If it is not distorted and in fact, quite literal, then decide if those laws, which were established for a period 1500 years ago, are relevant in this time.

It will be up to Muslims to intercede when a Mullah calls his followers to arms over silliness such as cartoons and teddy bears.

It is not up to America, Great Britain or any other country to do it for you.

Wars can rage on for thousands of years…as we can see. Ultimately, it will be up to Muslims to make the choice to live freely, with peace and the willingness for cooperation and a deep desire for hard work.

Life truly can be better.

The past will always be hungry for a foothold in the present. Don’t let it eat you alive as it tries to obliterate the future.

Mind you, this is true for anyone of any religion or society. Whether it is the anarchy of the Congo, or the bombed out villages of Afghanistan, individual people themselves have to refuse to participate in activities that are contrary to progress.

It is up to only you, if you have the courage.

I do not know about you, but I find statistics fascinating. The other day I was looking at a population data table on Geo Hive that contrasted the ratio between males and females, country by country. What I saw was quite a surprise. In some Muslim countries, the ratio is two men for every one woman. Now this might seem like an ideal environment for women, thinking they would have their pick of men, but the causes of this disparity should send any woman screaming for her life as far away from Islam as is possible.

Generally, in nature the ratio of males to females is one to one. This is even true for humans, deviating only marginally in either direction. Often after wars, the percentage of males in the human population goes down slightly. In the animal kingdom, evolution has provided biological mechanisms to insure there is a balance of males to females.

So, I wondered: How is it that in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar the ratio of men to women is greater than 2/1, in Kuwait 1.5/1, Bahrain 1.34/1, Oman 1.26/1, and Saudi Arabia 1.22/1?

Initially, when I first wrote this, I only came up with two possibilities. However, upon further study, I found that at birth the ratio of males to females in Muslim countries is close to one to one. For example, here is the population by gender statistics from the United Arab Emirates per age group.

at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.047 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 2.743 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 1.849 male(s)/female
total population: 2.19 male(s)/female (2007 est.)

Clearly something tragic is happening to females after age 15. Therefore, instead of two possibilities I realized there was a third - honor killings.

“Honour” killings of women can be defined as acts of murder in which “a woman is killed for her actual or perceived immoral behavior.” (Yasmeen Hassan, “The Fate of Pakistani Women,” International Herald Tribune, May 25, 1999.) Such “immoral behavior” may take the form of marital infidelity, refusing to submit to an arranged marriage, demanding a divorce, flirting with or receiving phone calls from men, failing to serve a meal on time, or — grotesquely — “allowing herself” to be raped. In the Turkish province of Sanliurfa, one young woman’s “throat was slit in the town square because a love ballad was dedicated to her over the radio.” (Pelin Turgut, “‘Honour’ Killings Still Plague Turkish Province,” The Toronto Star, May 14, 1998.)

The next possible cause of such a disparity between males and females is a type of honor killing, called female infanticide. This is where “a society values male children to the point that producing a female is considered dishonorable, shameful, or an unacceptable investment to the individuals.”

The final and most likely the largest contributor for the disparity between males and females is that census counters do not include females when polling the population. We know that Muslims regard women as property, so like a slave, they are not considered a human and thus not counted.

I suspect the causes of an enormously greater number of males to females in Muslim countries are due to a mixture of both honor killings and undercounting. In either case, this bodes poorly for women who are unfortunate enough to be living in those lands. It demonstrates the impact of Islam’s violation of basic human rights - the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious to me Islam has declared war on its female population.

Please click this link to open a table that shows the Population Data Sorted by Gender Ratio

I have posted a retraction on the conclusions I have drawn here at my post titled, Erratum:Islam’s War on Women .

Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.

…the number of women abused and even killed by their husbands seemed to be going up and that brutality toward women had become “almost normal.”

…in one town, Shabunda, 70 percent of the women reported being sexually brutalized.

After reading the article below, of which I have selected three quotes above, my entire being tells me to kill the men who are raping all the girls and women in the Congo and across Africa. Just shoot them as you find them. No trial, no jury of their peers; just kill them on the spot.

It seems to me they have failed the ‘human’ fitness test. Savagery is neither animal nor human. It is some other life-form that has no place in society. To the boys and men who have reached this pathologic psychosis of murder and mayhem, life has no meaning. It is as if they are rabid dogs. Kill them because they will surely kill you or me. And for the survivors, round them up and immerse them in an education program that teaches boys and girls how to live with stress of being alive during hardship. A program that teaches respect for a life that is worth living for.

Brutality requires brutal measures.

October 7, 2007

Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

New York Times

BUKAVU, Congo — Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist, cannot bear to listen to the stories his patients tell him anymore.

Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.

“We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,” said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo’s rape epidemic. “They are done to destroy women.”

Eastern Congo is going through another one of its convulsions of violence, and this time it seems that women are being systematically attacked on a scale never before seen here. According to the United Nations, 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu Province alone, and that may be just a fraction of the total number across the country.

“The sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world,” said John Holmes, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. “The sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity — it’s appalling.”

The days of chaos in Congo were supposed to be over. Last year, this country of 66 million people held a historic election that cost $500 million and was intended to end Congo’s various wars and rebellions and its tradition of epically bad government.

But the elections have not unified the country or significantly strengthened the Congolese government’s hand to deal with renegade forces, many of them from outside the country. The justice system and the military still barely function, and United Nations officials say Congolese government troops are among the worst offenders when it comes to rape. Large swaths of the country, especially in the east, remain authority-free zones where civilians are at the mercy of heavily armed groups who have made warfare a livelihood and survive by raiding villages and abducting women for ransom.

According to victims, one of the newest groups to emerge is called the Rastas, a mysterious gang of dreadlocked fugitives who live deep in the forest, wear shiny tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys and are notorious for burning babies, kidnapping women and literally chopping up anybody who gets in their way.

United Nations officials said the so-called Rastas were once part of the Hutu militias who fled Rwanda after committing genocide there in 1994, but now it seems they have split off on their own and specialize in freelance cruelty.

Honorata Barinjibanwa, an 18-year-old woman with high cheekbones and downcast eyes, said she was kidnapped from a village that the Rastas raided in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her delicate neck. The men would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her, she said.

“I’m weak, I’m angry, and I don’t know how to restart my life,” she said from Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where she was taken after her captors freed her.

She is also pregnant.

While rape has always been a weapon of war, researchers say they fear that Congo’s problem has metastasized into a wider social phenomenon.

“It’s gone beyond the conflict,” said Alexandra Bilak, who has studied various armed groups around Bukavu, on the shores of Lake Kivu. She said that the number of women abused and even killed by their husbands seemed to be going up and that brutality toward women had become “almost normal.”

Malteser International, a European aid organization that runs health clinics in eastern Congo, estimates that it will treat 8,000 sexual violence cases this year, compared with 6,338 last year. The organization said that in one town, Shabunda, 70 percent of the women reported being sexually brutalized.

At Panzi Hospital, where Dr. Mukwege performs as many as six rape-related surgeries a day, bed after bed is filled with women lying on their backs, staring at the ceiling, with colostomy bags hanging next to them because of all the internal damage.

“I still have pain and feel chills,” said Kasindi Wabulasa, a patient who was raped in February by five men. The men held an AK-47 rifle to her husband’s chest and made him watch, telling him that if he closed his eyes, they would shoot him. When they were finished, Ms. Wabulasa said, they shot him anyway.

In almost all the reported cases, the culprits are described as young men with guns, and in the deceptively beautiful hills here, there is no shortage of them: poorly paid and often mutinous government soldiers; homegrown militias called the Mai-Mai who slick themselves with oil before marching into battle; members of paramilitary groups originally from Uganda and Rwanda who have destabilized this area over the past 10 years in a quest for gold and all the other riches that can be extracted from Congo’s exploited soil.

The attacks go on despite the presence of the largest United Nations peacekeeping force in the world, with more than 17,000 troops.

Few seem to be spared. Dr. Mukwege said his oldest patient was 75, his youngest 3.

“Some of these girls whose insides have been destroyed are so young that they don’t understand what happened to them,” Dr. Mukwege said. “They ask me if they will ever be able to have children, and it’s hard to look into their eyes.”

No one — doctors, aid workers, Congolese and Western researchers — can explain exactly why this is happening.

“That is the question,” said André Bourque, a Canadian consultant who works with aid groups in eastern Congo. “Sexual violence in Congo reaches a level never reached anywhere else. It is even worse than in Rwanda during the genocide.”

Impunity may be a contributing factor, Mr. Bourque added, saying that very few of the culprits are punished.

Many Congolese aid workers denied that the problem was cultural and insisted that the widespread rapes were not the product of something ingrained in the way men treated women in Congolese society. “If that were the case, this would have showed up long ago,” said Wilhelmine Ntakebuka, who coordinates a sexual violence program in Bukavu.

Instead, she said, the epidemic of rapes seems to have started in the mid-1990s. That coincides with the waves of Hutu militiamen who escaped into Congo’s forests after exterminating 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during Rwanda’s genocide 13 years ago.

Mr. Holmes said that while government troops might have raped thousands of women, the most vicious attacks had been carried out by Hutu militias.

“These are people who were involved with the genocide and have been psychologically destroyed by it,” he said.

Mr. Bourque called this phenomenon “reversed values” and said it could develop in heavily traumatized areas that had been steeped in conflict for many years, like eastern Congo.

This place, one of the greenest, hilliest and most scenic slices of central Africa, continues to reverberate from the aftershocks of the genocide next door. Take the recent fighting near Bukavu between the Congolese Army and Laurent Nkunda, a dissident general who commands a formidable rebel force. Mr. Nkunda is a Congolese Tutsi who has accused the Congolese Army of supporting Hutu militias, which the army denies. Mr. Nkunda says his rebel force is simply protecting Tutsi civilians from being victimized again.

But his men may be no better.

Willermine Mulihano said she was raped twice — first by Hutu militiamen two years ago and then by Nkunda soldiers in July. Two soldiers held her legs apart, while three others took turns violating her.

“When I think about what happened,” she said, “I feel anxious and brokenhearted.”

She is also lonely. Her husband divorced her after the first rape, saying she was diseased.

In some cases, the attacks are on civilians already caught in the cross-fire between warring groups. In one village near Bukavu where 27 women were raped and 18 civilians killed in May, the attackers left behind a note in broken Swahili telling the villagers that the violence would go on as long as government troops were in the area.

The United Nations peacekeepers here seem to be stepping up efforts to protect women.

Recently, they initiated what they call “night flashes,” in which three truckloads of peacekeepers drive into the bush and keep their headlights on all night as a signal to both civilians and armed groups that the peacekeepers are there. Sometimes, when morning comes, 3,000 villagers are curled up on the ground around them.

But the problem seems bigger than the resources currently devoted to it.

Panzi Hospital has 350 beds, and though a new ward is being built specifically for rape victims, the hospital sends women back to their villages before they have fully recovered because it needs space for the never-ending stream of new arrivals.

Dr. Mukwege, 52, said he remembered the days when Bukavu was known for its stunning lake views and nearby national parks, like Kahuzi-Biega.

“There used to be a lot of gorillas in there,” he said. “But now they’ve been replaced by much more savage beasts.”

I have to laugh whenever someone tries to talk me into religion. To think billions of people believe some supernatural being thought us into existence 6,000 years ago. It is so clear that the universe operates under certain natural laws. How those laws came into existence and what they truly are, THAT is a mystery. Everything in the universe changes state. From hydrogen atoms colliding within our Sun to form helium, to small imperceptible beneficial mutations in life-forms over billions of years that resulted in the human species.

To believe in a book (regardless of flavor) that was so clearly written by MEN to control people and to a greater extent, women, is nothing more than submission to oppression. Religion exists to fatten the wallets and the belly’s of the clergy. Nothing more.

I agree with the sentiments expressed in the following article and thought I should share it.

Homa Arjomand

www.nosharia.com

September 18, 2007-09-17

Personal Freedom and Religion speech at University of Toronto, Mississauga

I need to begin my speech with this statement “the more one distance from religion the more one can gain personal freedom”.

Historically human needed to create religion to explain the unknown phenomenon such as existence of life, reasons for death in order to provide comfort for the fear of unknowns. Religion also provides very simple answers “Only God Knows” to many complicated and complex questions and doubts. Despite the progress and knowledge in history, civilization and science, religion remains as a heavy leash on the man’s neck. The more mankind was able to explain the unknowns and the relationships of him to the nature, the more he was able to distance himself from religions clarification for the same phenomenon.

I believe a religious individual has no personal freedom as he surrenders himself over to a force that has no boundaries, no regulation and grounds. Philosophically and practically, those individuals do not value their influences in changing the world and they do not think they have will power to do so.

One may ask then how millions of religious individuals are in fact making some actual changes in the environment? My answer to this question is clear. These people in reality are not effectively religious during their actions they take to change the world. These individuals no longer expect their God to provide them with food, clothing and shelter as they take their own destiny in their own hand, they do not blindly follow most of the unreasonable commands from their religious leader; but despite the above mentioned facts, these religious individuals do not intend to make an effective change in their environment. As the result they hand over the
control to their worldly Gods. In some cases because of their real life situation and their ambition to end the injustice that they experienced, these individuals are forced to act against their own religions rules and actually do enforce some reforms by pushing back their religious boundaries, by engaging against the current politically and socially.

Once more, I need to emphasize that despite the fact that the above question may always be a subject for the academicians, nowadays the same question arises in a much larger scale across the entire society. Not too long ago if someone would ask what is the relation between personal freedom and religion? The answer was very clear for almost everyone except for Fundamentalists and that was religion and personal freedom contradicts each other. It was in fact part of everyone’s knowledge as the above-mentioned question was answered during a long process of progress of science since the Reno sans. At that time people found no need to resolve these contradictions but today because the domain of religion globally has been grown substantially, the above contradictions need to be clarified once more, or even needs to be proven how religion limits the personal freedom, We also need to be reminded of struggle that humanity took part for centuries to free mankind from religions and religious dogmas. Due to growth of conservatism and their support to the religious groups for the past three decades, this already answered old questions need to be spelled out once again.

My personal approach is since the answer to the question is obvious; it is up to the religious groups to prove that the religions are not contradicting personal, civil, scientific and political freedom. And they are the ones who have to explain their aggression against human, women, children and civil rights for the thousands of years. It is time for them to apologize and condemn their act.

To make the philosophy discussion short, I must say religion has limited my personal freedom along with millions of other individuals. In fact I should say religion has destroyed many of individuals’ personal rights and mine too.

In countries, where religions run the state, the personal freedom has no meaning at all; the personal freedom of millions are scarified directly by religious rules and its horrific state system. On one hand the religious state denies the fundamental rights of woman as an equal citizen and recognizes women as a second-class citizen, practically women legally have become the men’s slaves in those countries. Before I explain how the personal freedom being undermined by religion we need to define the personal
freedom first. In this discussion, I would use Islam as the base of my debate, mainly because I am more familiar with this religion in theory and in practice and also because Islam has not been challenged in any aspects. In addition I believe that all other religions would have similar and common elements.

The first and the most essential point I would like to discuss are about “personal and civil freedom”. My attempt is to provide a general definition of these rights.

In my opinion personal freedom is the one that provides the individuals to grow and enhance his ability. It also allows him to be distinguished and the same time to understand its unity with the society. An individual can demonstrate his talent and it empowers him to shape his destiny, at the same time the personal freedom is relative and it depends upon the stages of progress in the society.

On other hand religion basically defines human as being created by super natural power, where its essence has been ordained by God, as the result human being has no control over his destiny and has no rights, therefore he is considered to be a being who is obliged to obey the law of God in order to gain and enjoy his prosperous in the after life. The above definition can be explained by the following instances:

. The first instance is the right to live and be immune of any violence against body and mind, while in Islam execution, dismember,
bloodshed and even assault on children are acceptable and allowed which is define as punishment of a crime in relate to blasphemy, rubbery and permitting marriage to children of 9 years old. As one can clearly see the right to live, Immunity of body and mind against any violation is simply being undermined in Islam

. The unconditional freedom of speech, expression and believes are the rights that have never been acknowledged in any religions, specifically in Islam. The only political party allowed is the party of God and that is Hezbollah. Any criticism to Islam or the holly book of Koran is considered heresy and punished by Islamists. Selman Rushdie and Danish caricaturist have not been forgotten. One does not need to remind you how Islamists treated Jews and Bahaeis and there is hardly any need to mention about the atheists. The Islamists ( the political Islam) saw the seeds of hatred against other groups. This is because in their view Islam is the last and the most complete religion in the world. And for the ones who do not intend to convert to Islam, the least punishment is to pay religious tax. All these violation can be multiplied when it comes to women and children’s rights in Islam. In Islam the rights to divorce for women has no meaning, men have the custody of the children. Women receive half of inheriting compare to men. The witness of two women is equivalent to one man. Beating women is permitted in Islam. Women will be stoned to dead if they have relationship out of marriage. In Islam men can have four wives, and abortion is heavily punished.

. In the instance of National sovereignty, Islam only recognizes one nation and that is the nation of Islam, therefore independency cannot be accepted.

. In Islam exploitation and slavery are not being condemned. All Imams and profits had slaves. Child abuse, child labour and child exploitation is permitted in Islam.

. When it comes to music and entertainment, there are many of restrictions or conditions apply, specifically where women are involved. Dancing is prohibited. Women involve in sports is strongly condemned in Islam.

. Where science and scientific advancement are concerned a huge conflict arises. The animosity of Islam with science cannot be exactly portrait, because within last centuries there were not many frontiers and scientists who brought new idea in science and advancement in order to see the reaction of Islamic leader. But this is the nature of all the religions and Islam not to accept any scientific theory. In this instance Christianity has darker history. Nobody, even the one who did not study the history knows
the fate of Jordano Bruno and Galilae and the burning of witches.

One can add pages to this list in such way that at the end we will not see any light to the end of tunnel, as it was in the dark ages.

But human being found his way to persuade and guaranty the individual, social and political freedom. French revolution was one of the greatest and goriest example for people to follow, even in twenty first century the citizens of many countries are enjoying the fruit of this revolution. Experience and aftermath of the revolution suggest that we need to have such a radical progressive movement in order to up root the religious from the education, justice system and state. This is our task, the task of civilization to regain personal freedom, peace and comfort. And this cannot be possible without challenging the religion industries. Freedom seeker and we as a secular have enormous responsibility to unite and motivate the whole society toward this goal.

This article is about electronic dating, but even more so about the meaning of identity. What has this got to do with Frankenstein, Stalin, the Internet and the search for the ideal partner?

Wikipedia. Org writes, quote: “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is an 1818 novel written by Mary Shelley at the age of 19, first published anonymously in London, but more often known by the revised third edition of 1831 under her own name. It is a novel infused with some elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement. The title refers to a scientist who learns how to reanimate flesh and creates a being in the likeness of man out of body parts taken from the dead. In modern popular culture, people have tended to refer to Frankenstein’s monster as “Frankenstein” (especially in films since 1930). It was also a warning against the “over-reaching” of modern man and the Industrial Revolution, alluded to in the novel’s subtitle, The Modern Prometheus. The story has had an influence across literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories and films. Unquote”
Well stated. Human beings seem to have the inherent tendency to shape the world according to their wishes, and, more often, desires. And there remains the question, what identity is about, in the first place. As always, there is a field of different opinions.
One of the most radical ideas expressed about identity is the one by Russia’s dictator Stalin. He came, some eighty years ago, to the conclusion that the individuum is the spot, “where certain qualities and influences come together.” It meant that human beings could be generated and molded at will – to create the ideal communist cross-bread. Great stuff. Accordingly, he had military vehicles built for the standard, average soldiers. There was no button to shift the seat. One year, there was a shortage of food in the country. It motivated the dictator to kill the (excess) folks, who couldn’t be fed. Wikipedio. Org writes, quote:
“ Confiscations of grain and other food by the Soviet authorities under his orders contributed to a famine between 1932 and 1934, especially in the key agricultural regions of the Soviet Union, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and North Caucasus that resulted in millions of deaths. Many peasants resisted collectivization and grain confiscations, but were repressed, most notably well-off peasants deemed “kulaks“.” unquote.
The other extreme is the ideal of the loner, fully in control of him- or herself, a integrated cosmos of mind, wishes, beliefs, only resonsible to himself, and far away from the rest. Some kind of egomaniac Howard Hughes, I presume.
I believe there are at least three levels of identity:
1.     The so-called physical identity, documented by passport, identity card, fingerprint, driving license, eye color, body parameters;
2.     An emotional identity – the outer world one is connected to – families, clans, husbands, wives, pets, parishes, political parties, sokker clubs etc. It could be compared to a ring of mushrooms – sticking out off the ground alone, but connected by rootlets in the topsoil.
3.     A spiritual level. Affinities here are difficult to define, and may transcend our current notion of time and space.
Not surprisingly, human beings have come up with different concepts of happiness. On one hand lies the happiness of the loner, who’s in control of everything.  The other extreme exemplifies the happiness of giving up and becoming member of a larger entity, which saves precious mental brainpower, and lets emotions run wild.
Others again give up the physical realm and dwell in spiritual spheres.
Assuming we don’t get spiritually ballistic or indulge in perfect loneliness, one wishes to have a partner. But how to find the right one? Electronic dating suggests to tie up with a large database, and combine the elements of desire according to one’s past experiences of happiness. This means assembling elements and aspects of long-gone temporary happiness into something new and hopefully rewarding – kind of a Hollywood remake. It’s a looking-backwards approach, that blocks possibilities of a genuine new experience, and what life really has got to offer. It also means carving out “the ideal” partner personality from reality – by ignoring such vital elements as family, and emotional identity.
In brief, electronic dating is a mix of Stalin, Frankenstein, Howard Hughes and other approaches. Congratulations! Push the orange button and you’re going to meet your Ms. or Mr.  Frankenstein.
© 2007 by Franz L Kessler
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

As we approach the sixth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attack on the United States of America, I want to write very briefly about all the 9/11 conspiracy websites, blogs and protesters, that claim Muslim terrorists did not plan and execute the plane hijackings into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. What the conspiracy theorists want people to believe instead is that 9/11 was an inside job, created and carried out by the US government and even our president. I want to especially call attention to how groups like the various ‘truth’ movements claim 9/11 was created by our president as a pretext to war in Iraq. I am going to show you in one simple step how wrong you all are.

I won’t waste time debunking all the 9/11 myths, Popular Mechanics has done a terrific job proving none of you are engineers, but are fairly good disseminating propaganda. Anyway, I am digressing so let me get to it.

The US government, especially George Bush and Dick Cheney, did not conspire to fly two commercial airliners into the World Trade Center, a third into the Pentagon and fourth one that failed to crash at its intended target, flying instead into an empty field in Pennsylvania. The reason I can say this so conclusively, even without reading a single debunk article (even though I have read them) is this: How can the US so perfectly pull off a job like 9/11 yet fail to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

If 9/11 were a pretext to a war in Iraq, then surely George Bush and company could have figured out a way to plant nuclear weapons around Iraq.

‘Nuff said!

Madonna — Get Together

Please watch the above video. The Fountainhead - Howard Roark Speech (Ayn Rand)

There are three kinds of people in the world; doers, pretenders and nothing’s. Doers and pretenders are both learners, anxious to possess knowledge. But pretenders use their knowledge to make it easier for them to pretend at doing. The third type of persons are the nothing’s; people who do not contribute anything to society, parasites. They might be rich, they might be poor, but they do absolutely nothing. They live on the dole, either from the government, a charitable organization or their family.

Doers and pretenders can be either leaders or followers. They can be successful or failures. At the surface you might be asking yourself, “What difference does it make if one is a doer or a pretender if the end game is the same?” Well, I’ll tell you. I believe doers get more satisfaction out of life. A doer, even in their failure, enjoys a certain sense of achievement, the knowledge they DID something. They worked their mojo to the max, they reached higher with their own effort. If they were to fall down while doing, they accept it as an opportunity to do more next time; or to do better. They do no ride others coattails. They are the coattail. They achieve, so that others may copy.

Now, a pretender could be in a position of leadership. But, because they are a pretender, we can be assured, their creations will not be original; or their perhaps, not even their own. And quite often, the product of their work has little value. To imitate a pretender is dangerous too. Whenever you make a copy of a copy, you lose some clarity on each generation away from the original. Quite interestingly, a pretender is more like a nothing, than a doer. Both the pretender and the nothing are essentially both parasites of varying degrees.

However, a pretender might be more interesting to know. They are after all, actors. Not the kind you see in film and media, but everyday people, sucking up to their friends, neighbors, and bosses; stealing ideas and latching onto others.

For a pretender and a nothing to survive, they need conflict. They need a messy world so they can hide in that whirlwind of activity. Pretenders and nothing’s are the consummate manipulator’s, convincing doers to give up their worth, for the others furtive happiness.

If there are too many pretenders and even more nothing’s, the world will find itself on a precipice of dying. Pretenders and nothing’s, are both like an algal bloom, choking off all the oxygen in an ecosystem. So, choose for yourself, do you have the courage to be a doer, or will you just coast through life, leaving behind nothing of value as a pretender or worse, a nothing? Choose your path; don’t let others choose it for you. It is your life.