"on God's business"

on this easter sunday i think it appropriate to point out one of the many atrocities that the roman catholic church has perpetrated  it has much blood on it's hands. it's various 'crusades' have in fact been genocides.

some will claim that such an assertion is biased against the church, but i think it's well documented and reflective of well informed and unbiased opinion.

at the bottom is a link to the best website i've discovered that covers a crusade. this particular one took place in the south of france in the early 13th century, and was precipitated by a rebellion against catholic doctrine and corruption. it involved wholesale slaughter of civilians (perhaps more than a million of them) by the crusaders,  which considering the much lower population back then, makes it an even more 'impressive' wholesale slaughter in terms of percent. here's a quote regarding this crusade from the first page of the website:

It was a formal crusade in the full sense of the word - preached and directed by the papacy, and offering participants the remission of sins and an assured place in heaven. The Crusaders regarded themselves as being "on God's business" and referred to themselves as "pilgrims".

below is a brief description of what this 'crusade' entailed from the same page:

Terror tactics included mass indiscriminate slaughter as at Béziers and Marmande (and planned for Toulouse), various attrocities as at Bram and Lavaur, and mass burnings as at Minerve, Lavaur, Les casses and Montsegur.

https://www.cathar.info/cathar_wars.htm

sex work

'sex work' is a distasteful term to me. it implies that what a 'sex worker' does is unpleasant, distasteful. i prefer to look at the practice of buying or selling sexual favors as something which when engaged in freely, not under duress, is mutually agreeable and rewarding. i also think it's natural and nothing to be ashamed of, no reason to be stigmatized or criminalized. quite the contrary.

getting paid or rewarded for providing sexual pleasure and fulfillment to another is good. paying or rewarding someone for providing sexual pleasure and fulfillment is good. at it's best, 'sex work' isn't work at all. there may be an imbalance of pleasure, an imbalance of passion, but just because the provider receives less pleasure and fulfillment, they can still derive pleasure and fulfillment in this 'work'. in that case it's literally and figuratively a labor of love.

shame and fear

certain terms for parts of female genitalia are derived from words ( in latin or some other ancient language? ) meaning basically 'parts to be ashamed of''.

i've become vehemently anti-christian as i've come to understand christianity's basic precepts or dogmas better, and what purpose might be served by them. for example, nothing is more central to christian 'faith' than the assertion of human 'sinfulness', with 'sin' being an offense to god. basically, this dogma is that humans are either inherently bad or we exercise our 'free will' so badly that we offend god. for this, we ought to be ashamed. if we aren't, there's something wrong with us. if we aren't, we can't truly repent or be forgiven. and that's a huge problem, because all talk aside of the christian god being 'loving', this is a god u don't want to be opposed to or alienated from. this is a judgmental and punitive god. this is a god to fear. eternal damnation is a fate infinitely worse than death. it's infinitely worse than anything we can imagine. christianity is a faith of ultimate shame and fear.

shame and fear aren't unique to christianity. they're probably a key component to all or most civilized religions, by design. better minds than mine have concluded that modern religion is a tool of social control, the 'opiate of the masses'. shame and fear diminish our sense of self, or self esteem. faith in the claims or decrees of  'authority' empower 'authority' and disempower us.

religion has long been a tool used by elites. religion and 'authority' go hand in hand.

in christianity the idea or definition of sin is often closely aligned with the idea that unfettered desire or passion is offensive to god, something to be ashamed of, something to be afraid of, something to be suppressed. this is why genitalia related terms like 'pudendum'  have shameful connotations. they represent body parts which arouse erotic passion. this induced dogmatic puritanical shame and fear are why we're so repressed. neurotic, hypocritical. confused. conflicted. and often pathologically destructive when it comes to 'romance'.

"Once you're a Catholic, you're always a Catholic—in terms of your feelings of guilt and remorse and whether you've sinned or not. Sometimes I'm wracked with guilt when I needn't be, and that, to me, is left over from my Catholic upbringing. Because in Catholicism you are born a sinner and you are a sinner all of your life. No matter how you try to get away from it, the sin is within you all the time."   -madonna

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Like_a_Prayer_(song)#Background_and_inspiration

social isolation in america

I'm not very serious about moving to a spanish speaking country like mexico or costa rica because if i was, i'd be trying to learn the language. I'm not because i don't have much aptitude for it and because therefore it seems like drudgery, plus i'm very uncertain re. whether i surreally want to leave the u.s.. 

i have been watching a few videos on youtube about expat life in costa rica and one of the things that's struck me is how friendly the natives apparently are there. To me, this is in marked contrast to my experience of america, but that's probably due in part to my own internal alienation.

the other night i watched part of a sensationalist true story, the kind that corporate lamestream tv seems to love, no doubt in part because sensational true stories are attention grabbers (also, the ones the tv networks like to showcase involve individuals behaving atrociously, criminally, involving the police, who by contrast appear to be the 'good guys', and one thing i've become hyper- aware of since becoming a 'conspiracy theorist' is that corporate media appears to bend over backwards to portray law enforcement in a positive light, while minimizing and rationalizing away their own atrocious abuses of power).

this story involved a very religious mormon mother who had gained an internet following for the videos she posted advocating 'tough love' parenting. Turns out she was horribly abusing her 2 youngest children, apparently in an attempt in her sick mind to keep them away from 'evil' or to discipline them. She was keeping them tied up, virtual prisoners in their own home, with inadequate food and water. Somehow her 12 year old son escaped and emaciated, went over and rang the doorbell of a neighbor.

this neighbor had surveillance camera by his door which recorded audio, so one could hear the interaction between him and the boy who sought his help. The boy meekly asked if he would do a couple of favors for him. After a brief pause, this neighbor, a grown man, replied with apparent annoyance 'what do u want'?.

to me, this exchange is rather emblematic of how socially isolated and consequently unempathetic americans, or at least many of us, have become towards one another. Here's this kid in rather obvious distress asking for help and his neighbor is not immediately sympathetic, but rather openly hostile.

i've become very used to being alone. in a way i like it because i've attained the view that my fellow americans (and probably, by extension, sheeple in general) are generally quite stupid and unrelatable to me, But in another deeper way, this way of life is pretty lonely and unsatisfying. This makes me wonder if i might fare better socially outside the u.s., but i'm also inclined to think that i probably won't, and that i would in fact miss this american culture where it's quite normal and ok to not know one's neighbors.

i'd love to know what's your take on this issue?

on motherhood and 'pro-life' religion

I've been thinking a bit about my troubled nephew. i'm pretty sure most if not all of his troubles stem from growing up a lone child in a single parent household in a society which doesn't promote communal childcare with a mother who didn't seem to know how to nurture, or to be more blunt, who didn't seem to love him.

i think the same applies to me somewhat, although i had 2 parents. neither of them seemed to take much interest in me. plus back in the 50s i guess parents in western societies or at least here in the u.s. were encouraged to be rather negligent regarding infant needs, as it was thought they'd spoil their child if they responded to it's cries too much. although i can't recall being an infant it's easy to imagine that i wasn't held or nurtured nearly enough, considering the way my parents treated me when i was older. i've read from multiple sources that infancy is a critical time of development and that it's especially important for infants to be held a lot and be given oodles of attention/love.

this is something 'pro-lifers' don't seem to get at all when they insist that women who get pregnant but don't want to carry the child to term for whatever reason be forced to. if a woman doesn't want to become a mother she's probably not going to be a good one. and the child is going to absorb her lack of attachment and suffer for it and probably be affected for the rest of it;s life, adversely.

similarly they don't seem to get that life itself can become burdensome or tortuous, especially for those with a terminal illness like cancer. this makes me hate and not understand them. i can only think of them as dogmatic, brainwashed. i especially hate the catholic church and other religious sects which promote the 'pro-life' view. i think of them as sick and evil, don't u?

also, regarding the catholic church and other puritanical religious sects, i've long reached the conclusion that with regards to human sexuality, their 'morality' is designed to minimize pleasure and maximize reproductive consequences, which i regard as just plain stupidcrazy, unless one takes into consideration the conspiratorial view that the church's function isn't to promote human well being, but rather to promote a sort of deadened human spirit which is more amenable to being controlled and exploited by 'authority'. and as u ought to well know by now, i am a 'conspiracy theorist'!

boner pills

 Now that i'm 65, most days my libido is practically gone. beautiful young girl/women who used to knock me for a loop now only impress me. they don't arouse me like they used to. no doubt my testosterone levels have crashed from what they were decades ago. i can still have orgasms once or twice a week; 40 years ago it was once or twice daily.

i'm a bit amused and agitated by the drugs and pills advertised to aging men like me to artificially enhance or prolong our sex lives. 'low t' isn't a disease, it's a fact of life the older one gets. and why take a pill to get an erection if one isn't aroused enough for it to occur naturally? i don't get it. but, i don't get a lot of things my fellow humans, or at least many of them, do, say, and believe. don't get them at all. it's like we're different species or inhabiting different worlds.

i think sex is best when one's young. that's another thing that bothers me about boner pills and drugs designed to artificially enhance male libido as men age. it seems to me my society is adamantly opposed to 'under age' youth having sex (especially with 'adults'). no doubt this includes lots of old men who spend lots of money in a vain attempt to hold on to youth. same can be said for old women who spend lots on surgery or other things to look younger.

when it comes to sex it seems my society has it backwards. i say let the children play, and let us old folks age with grace and dignity. and by god or whatever, let's celebrate sexuality throughout our short lives, rather than stigmatize and criminalize consensual behavior (and not deny the ability to consent to youth).

how the left is destroyed globally

 as usual, abby rules. in this video she interviews vincent bevins about his book THE JAKARTA METHOD: WASHINGTON'S ANTICOMMUNIST CRUSADE AND THE MASS MURDER PROGRAM THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD and allows him ample freedom to discuss some of the dirty details regarding how communism was suppressed in the 20th century and is still being today. bevins knowledge of his subject is impressive indeed. on an even playing field of ideas capitalism loses. only via ruthless violent deceitful repression does it win.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up3-lOiO9L8

eyewitness truth in gaza hospitals

 once again abby martin tells it like it is, this time with the help of a heroic doctor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REnN_dLtrLA

crazy courage

a 25 year old man who was in the u.s. air force recently self immolated outside the israeli embassy. aaron bushnell. i'll remember aaron. how calm, articulate, and resolute he was. an act of crazy courage of a kind i've never had.

i've thought from time to time of the morality of self sacrifice as an act of protest or a desperate attempt to draw attention to issues like dystopia and doom. but that takes some crazy courage, i'm too addicted to staying alive, and it's so so easy to rationalize such thoughts away. easy and convenient.

this is an outstanding discussion! it highlights the courage, compassion, and selfless determination of aaron bushnell without losing sight of the just cause he died for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATQl2G14pEQ