Unknown And Unsung

If you only consume Western media, you'd hardly know that Jakarta had a terrorist attack yesterday.  Yes, unless you regularly check RT, al-Jazeera, Xinhua, or other global media outlets, the fact that seven people died and dozens were injured in an IS-like attack using bombs and handguns in one of the busiest and most tourist-infested parts of town would have slipped completely by you.

The Guardian had ongoing updtes, but no Fox, no Drudge, no NYT, not even Rense bothered to notice.  Seems that unless the attack is in Paris, LA or Koeln, it just doesn't really matter.

That may be a good thing.  Perhaps if ISIS and their jihadiots realize that attacks in Indonesia just don't get the media attention they are looking for, they will leave us the hell alone.

The story goes that a couple of guys wearing bombs walked into the Starbucks in Sarinah, one of the oldest and most well-known commercial districts in the city.  They thankfully blew themselves up and gunmen waited outside to pick off customers running out the door.  Meanwhile, a couple of jihadiots attacked the traffic police post across the street with something the police said looked like grenades.  This led to a chase and gun battle that went on for several hours and held the city's denizens in rapt attention.  Streets were shut down, causing a massive traffic jam that only someone who lives in Jakarta could appreciate.  This may have been a tactical move, since a get-away on Jakarta streets is virtually impossible under normal circumstances.

In the end, five and the seven dead were the jihadiots, while the other two were a Canadian and an Indonesian national.

In a macabre sort of way, this is all rather amusing, since the jihadiots were so inept they managed to kill themselves in a 2.3-to-1 ratio.  I mean, detonating two bombs in an enclosed space and firing into a crowd of panicked caffeine addicts seems like it would do a lot more damage.  But no, in the aftermath were primarily greasy spots where jihadiots had stood.

Now granted, Indonesians don't have the Texian's advantage of having shot guns since they were old enough to hold them, but you'd think a couple of bombs would do a bit more than they did (though thankfully not).  Perhaps the long trench coats they were wearing to hide the devices were so heavy as to dampen most of the blast, which is what I imagine just to make the absurdity even funnier.

What we have learned, though, is that people wearing trench coats in a country where it is eternal summer are probably up to no good, and you should quickly walk away.

In any event, if this is the best that ISIS can muster around here, then we remain far more afraid of Laurel and Hardy or the Three Stooges, than of the local jihadiots.  We can say, though, that ISIS has shot itself in the foot in more ways than one, since this sort of thing is likely to be a big turn-off to folks around here.  Even if I were radicalized and ready to fight, I sure wouldn't hook up with these yokels.

Don't mean to belittle the tragic loss of two innocent lives, but I do most certainly mean to laugh my ass off at a bunch of self-important jihadiots who think they are going to take over the world like this.

Sorry boys, I am not only not terrorized, I am laughing in your general direction.

News Trifle

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/08/09/Obama-Blames-Underestimating-ISIS-on-Bad-Intelligence

So let's get this straight, Mr. Empty Suit...

The US, which operates the world's - and history's - most egregious and powerful espionage infrastructure, that includes billion-dollar facilities in Utah, hundreds of whirly-gigs in orbit, and has turned the nation of Iraq into a puppet regime did not see the ISIS coming?

And what was that?  The puppet government in Iraq doesn't have the will to fight for, with, against (choose your own preposition here) a bunch of yodels that gathered billions of dollars and piles of weapons without anyone finding out?

So, any old yahoo can gather up a bunch of wild-eyed mercenaries, amass piles of crowd-funded dollars, buy huge caches of weapons, and the US espionage infrastructure would never catch it?

So what you're really saying, Mr. Empty Suit, is that none of the groping, jack boots and Constitution shredding achieves a single thing, other than the illusison of safety?

And what about all those folks swarming over your southern border?  Could it be that bad "intelligence" is allowing a bunch of wild-eyed yahoos to import a bunch of mercenaries, amass piles of armaments, and collect billions in crowd funding?

Are we all really that stupid to have bought into this whole security state?

Riding Madison Avenue

Let's see if we can get this straight:

Ebola kills just shy of 1,000 people, and it's a global emergency.
Israel kills about 3,000 Palestinians, and no one notices or cares.
Kiev has killed somewhere around 1,000 good folks, and the only thing that gets people jumping are the 290 souls on MH17.

Just wanted to put that in perspective.

Looky here:

"CDC estimates that each year roughly 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) gets sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne diseases."

What's that?  You mean that 2/3s more Americans die each year of food poisoning, than have died globally of ebola (to date, of course)?  And (this is going to hurt) a thousand people out of 7.5 billion is what...less than 1% of the population?  (you do the math)  So, fewer people have died in the recent ebola outbreak than were killed by cars in North America in 1909?

You'll excuse me if I don't panic.

I have found that life is much healthier and less stressful when I completely ignore "authorities", "experts" and "media" (AEM).  These people all makes livings off of scaring the shit out of large numbers of people, who then turn to the AEM for guidance and comfort. It's a huge bloody scam, folks.  They are playing like Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo in that silly little film called "Outbreak".  Seriously, go watch it again and then read the AEM headlines.  It's like a freakin' script!

Which brings us to ISIS (most of our fan mail centers on our uncanny ability to connect non sequiturs).

Here in Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority nation on Earth, ISIS YouTube videos have been banned, the organization is being demonized and word on the street is that many of the recruiters for ISIS are Western Europeans - which tells you a lot about who is behind it.

At this point, you eyes are glazed over and your brain is trobbing as you try to find the link between ISIS, the Ukraine, ebola, Israeli war crimes, and car accidents.  So I'll help you out.  The link is "fear".

At the highest levels of the AEM, a bunch of morally bereft jerks are sitting in their posh Riviera flats, smoking cigars and laughing as the people of the world run around in a panic out of fear of manufactured boogymen.  You've got a virus that was manufactured and patented, you've got an ostensible nation that was created by Western oligarchs (the Ukraine), you've got another nation that was destroyed by western oligarchs (Palestine), a terrorist organization created and funded by western oligarchs (ISIS), and a machine that was created by western oligarchs (the car).  See the thread here?

Out of sheer panic, you will allow yourself to be rounded up (Outbreak) and inoculated with God-knows-what.  Out of desperate fear, you will support more war in Iraq and back Israeli war crimes.  In blind terror, you will ignore the geopolitical games in a country that doesn't really exist (the Ukraine).  And in pure desperation, entire nations will behave exactly as the musty old bastards on the Riviera planned for us.

Yes, folks, it's time for us to tune out the AEM and take back our lives.  We are being herded like ruminating animals, and if we stray too far in any direction, there are mental cattle-prods to coax us back into line.

Hell, most of this crap in the world is just the US doing a bit of Madison Ave. marketing.  Problem-reaction-solution.  Poor Ukraine gets pooped on by Russia - Uncle Sugar to the rescue.  Poor Africa gets sick with (Daddy's) fear bug, Uncle Sugar to the rescue.  Poor Israel gets scared of some righteously angry Palestinians - Uncle Sugar to the rescue.  The Muslim world gets overrun by a mystery organization that didn't exist a few months ago - Uncle Sugar to the rescue.

It's the perfect image rehab plan, as any top-flight PR firm would script it.  Take a weakness - in this case, Uncle Sugar's need to kill people - and turn it into a virtue - Uncle Sugar bombs the bad guys and cured diseases that he created with the "untested" secret cure that he tucked away for just such a moment as this.

In other words, folks, what you are witnessing is a massive campaign to rehabilitate Uncle Sugar's tarnished reputation.  This is Public Relations/Spin Doctoring 101.  Look it up.

Maybe I'm just weird.  To me, this whole friggin' charade is so transparent.  I guess that's what Obama meant when he said his time as emperor-du-jour would be the most transparent in history.  But a lot of seeming intelligent folks have been sucked into this script without seeing the Big Picture.  I won't publish the reader mail I've gotten on this topic, because I don't want to embarrass anyone, but honstely folks, it's all a bag of wool being pulled over your eyes.

Turn off the AEM and stop watching all those psycho-social training films (Outbreak).  The proper film to watch at thsi point to properly open your brain synapes is "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb".  It's about as accurate a portrayal of who's really in charge here as I've ever seen.

If you feel yourself starting to panic, put a bag over your head, breathe deeply and steadily, and remember that in 2012, 33,561 people died in North America from cars.  The Ukraine, ISIS, Israel, and ebola all put together are a mere fraction of that number.

Amazing how a little perspective clarifies things.

Why Worry About Facts?

"Do you want to accompany me go to the chruch?" she asks in the standard Englishnesian syntax.

Can't think of anything I would less like to do, frankly. Two hours of hellfire and damnation speeches interspersed with over-loud rock-beat music and people speaking some kind of jibberish sold as 'the language of the angels.' Just doesn't appeal to me, especially since they generally completely mangle the facts.

"But it's Christmas," she protests.

Exactly. One of the most fact-deprived holidays of the christian calendar.

"It's Jesus' birthday. You must go to church," she protests.

Ah, just the opening I was hoping for. I love it when people step in the middle of their own ignorance. She's holding her modern mistranslation of previously mistranslated versions of The Book. I ask if I may see it.

I flip to Matthew. Ah, here it is...the shepherds were tending their flocks in the firlds when angels appeared in the heavens. I avoid the temptation to go into the validity of UFO sightings in biblical times and stick with the facts.

So, Jesus was born on December 25th, right?

"Yes, of course," she confidently replies.

I open Google and search for average weather patterns in Israel, a country which did not exist 2,000 years ago. Just as I suspected. December is the coldest, wettest and windiest month of the year. What damn fool shepherd would be tending his flocks in the fields in the dead of winter? But just to be sure, I look up current weather conditions in Bethlehem, a city which did not exist 2,000 years ago. Hmmm...10C, which is what? 50F, with a chance for rain. Sounds like perfect camp-in-the-field-with-sheep conditions to me.

"Things were different back then," she protests.

Oh, so global warming has made the region colder in the last 2,000 years? A familiar argument. Al Gore's been using it also. I understand. It's difficult when facts get in the way of a good story. So I click over to Roman fastivals, since Rome was around 2,000 years ago.

Would ya look at that...December 25th is the Roman fastival of the Birth of the Invincible Sun God. Gee, do you think there's a connection? After all, every modern christian faction is a break-away from the ROMAN church, which is a vestige of the ROMAN empire, which celebrates its rituals in basilicas, which originally were ROMAN indoor markets.

I'm just sayin'.

She has that blank look on her face that tells me that, like most christians, she has already turned off and tuned out. Most people don't want to hear facts that get in the way of fun fairy tales. But, I'm on a roll here.

So I launch into how Buddha and Mohammad were actual historical figures, whose lives are independently documented. Even Hinduism has evidence that their panteon may be based on actual, historical people and events millions of years ago, though the jury is still out. Christianity, however, requires one to take on faith that there was someone named Yeshua, who was a carpenter by trade, and who, at the age of 30, changed the world, leaving not a single historical trace of his existance.

However, there are remarkable similarieties between his story and a much older one, the story of Osiris, Isis and Horus. It's all there: virgin births through miraculous means, death and resurrections (using trees and 3 days, no less), betrayers (Seth), physical ascentions into heaven, all of it. There's even the strange way that Egypt keeps popping up in the whole Gospel storyline, not to mention numbers like 3, 13, 33 and so on.

It's still early and I haven't had enough coffe yet, so I avoid getting into the whole discussion on the etimological similarities between the names Osiris and Jesus, or the wine and bread rituals used by Egyptians and christians alike.

I really didn't want to get into Amun Ra, the highest of all Egyptian gods, the father Sun, whose name is used by many major religions when imploring the deity for favors. "Amen," "amin," "ohm," nearly everyone says, after they pray fro victory or wealth or another man's stuff. Nor did I want to get into the whole symbolism of the single eye of Amn Ra, or the All-Seeing Eye, or even the Indonesian word for "sun," matahari, which literally means 'eye of the day.'

She was still blankly staring at me, waiting for my response. Facts had completely unphased her. It's always the same argument. You have to make a leap of faith. You have to clear your mind and accept Jesus into your heart. And really, that's the problem. I can't turn off my rational mind and just swallow fairy tales as truth, especially when someone wants my hard-earned money to tell me that I'm a sinner for not following blindly in just the right way.

Nor can I accept religion. To me, it's just pro sports writ large. This team against that team. these players are stronger than those players. Killing millions to prove that this fairy tale is 'mo betta' than that one.

I can't believe that three gods are really just one. I can't believe that peace comes through war. I can't believe that love is proved by hate. I can't believe that law is established through chaos. My mind refuses to accept that black is white. I even have a hard time suspending disbelief at the movies. All I see up there is special effects, actors, lighting, camera angles, propaganda.

A control system is a control system, no matter how benign it purports to be. I do not follow. i do not lead, for that matter. I just present facts, research and think. Then I act on what I find.

I sure as hell don't want to be berated, sung to and babbled at for two hours, then asked to pay for the priviledge.

She was still waiting for my answer, as if my 38 minute diatribe had simply not occured.

OK, if it makes you happy, I'll go with you.

"Good, go take a bath," she ordered.

Now them's fightin' words.