I know this heading will attract vitriol and I’m not posting this to be deliberately inflammatory.
So don’t take it personally.
I live in a small remote country called New Zealand. The standard of living, average incomes etc of the average Kiwi are way less than in The United States.
However what we lack economically when measured against the largest economy in the world we tend to make-up in education, ability to adapt and a high degree of worldliness.
By in large New Zealanders know what’s going-on around the world and try to assist as best we can.
N.Z cares say about disasters happening in remote places.
N.Zers can even place these remote places on a map.
I think we ‘box above our weight.’
Cutting to the chase - in all my considerable travels I have yet to meet a more insular people than your average American (the states I’ve visited include CA, WA, CO, OH, IL, MA, NY, NJ and TX) I can say this hand-on-heart.
In my experience most Americans could not place New Zealand on a map nor for that matter answer a basic general knowledge question like “name a famous Englishman?”
I would more likely have more luck getting an answer to that question from a person from China or Brazil than I would a so-called educated American.
Americans only care about America and their own little myopic world.
The result from the Eastern Conference game would mean more to the average ‘Joe-Bloggs’ than the current humanitarian disaster in Pakistan.
This “don’t ask questions” and “never get outside the square” environment is the breeding ground and bedrock of all religions.
Religions flourish in countries where ignorance is endemic, the peoples never get to meet anyone else and see other perspectives on life.
This explains why America is still so into God, when in other comparable countries the populations are leaving churches in droves.
I rest my case with these two 'classic' videos - which never fail to amuse me:
Struggling to keep-up with demand from Christchurch’s poor to deliver food parcels, Kerry Bensemann’s (above) quasi-church charity ‘0800 Hungry’ has appealed to fellow Christians to assist the group.
These appeals to local Christians to become volunteers have largely fallen on deaf-ears and Bensemann is appalled at this apathy.
So without prompting sympathetic ‘non-Christians’ have stepped into the breech and said “Kerry we’ll help you sort out the food parcels and deliver them and we don't need God to talk us into it, like you."
But the pig-headed Bensemann is openly refusing to accept any volunteer who will not adhere to his dogma stating “I know it sounds really, really stupid, but you’ve got to understand how we’re set up.”
'Set-up' means the voices Bensemanns head commanding him to do Gods bidding's, in much the same way David Berkowitz heard his neighbours Labrador command him to go on a killing spree.
This stunning-refusal by the 0800 Hungry to accept help from the non-religious, was exposed in last Saturdays ‘Press’ newspaper & will in-effect all-but signal the end of Bensemann’s charity in its current form.
Naively Bensemann’s stand to prevent non-Christian participation, has signaled the beginning of the end of the charity.
He and his team have seemingly forgotten that 0800 Hungry relies on donations from the entire community.
The public can now see that 0800 Hungry is little more than a front for Bensemann’s church to recruit membership, from both with-in his circle of volunteers who arrive from other churches and the recipients of his charity.
The reason why other churches have largely ignored his appeals to help is they see 0800 Hungry as a rival & for good reason.
Atheists and non-Christians now see 0800 Hungry as a bunch of born-again bigots more interested in self-serving recruitment than genuine assistance to the needy.
More-ever Atheists as a group are incapable of charity according to those behind 0800 Hungry who are in regular contact & first-name basis with God.
In this piece of vitriol quoted in the paper Bensemann sums ups his group low opinion of Atheists using this analogy “It’s like sending someone who plays ping-pong out to play for The All Blacks.”
Last night New Zealand lost its first Serviceman in Afghanistan.
This is a sad day for all New Zealanders, and my heart goes out to the family.
Our countries role in Afghanistan is largely confined to reconstruction work – building roads, bridges and schools etc all of which comes at a cost to the New Zealand tax-payer.
Humanitarian assistance supplied to a country that lacks a shred of humanity.
Similar to every brave soldier who has been killed in this despotic, shit-hole of a country – the death of Lieutenant Timothy Andrew O'Donnell was a needless loss.
That’s him pictured above, the photo was taken-on the day he was decorated for bravery in Timor.
History tells us Afghanistan is an inherently corrupt. fickle and dangerous country.
It always has been and always will be, with or without overseas troops.
Afghanis live largely a patriarchal & superstitious existence - conditions that more resemble medieval times than a modern society you and I would recognise. One village hates the next village in the next valley, xenophobic tribes hate anyone who doesn’t share their gene pool, and to this heady-mix of hostile benevolence – you add the war-like, sexist teachings of Mohammad.
The way Afghan society is set-up perpetuates this system and a change of government here and there changes nothing at ground-level.
New Zealand has learnt, in the harshest fashion, the endemic problem of operating in Afghanistan.
Finish building a hospital in a township one day, and then have the recipients of this charity try-to-blow your brains-out the next.
Basically Afghanistan is a basket-case.
It can only change when its people show a will to do so, and to this date there has been scant indication this will happen in your or my life-times.
The best thing our respective Governments can do is contaminate Afghanistan’s borders with nuclear waste and prevent anyone entering or leaving the place on foot.
Patrol its mountainous borders at arms-length with a massive fleet of airborne drones with specific instructions to ‘shoot to destroy’ anything that moves.
Afghanistan is fucked-up because the people who live there are fucked-up.
Only the gullible and those that have mandates to substantiate the after-life believe in ghosts and the paranormal.
Ghosts are simply wishful thinking and a convenient excuse for explaining ‘what goes bump in the night.’
Proving ghosts are a man-made psychosis is in-fact very simple.
1.) Ghosts come in one form – that just happens to be human - which is conveniently what we bipedal-chimps want to see, and not say a dead cow hovering at the end of ones bed. Have you ever heard of the legend of oceans being haunted by ghostly plankton?
2.) Ghosts just happen to be nocturnal, preferring night-time to ‘do their thing’. So when you die you suddenly become adverse to daylight – right?
3.) Like the popular bug-eyed Aliens, modern ghosts are all stereotypical, with the same looks and characteristics. The standard ghost or spectre in China is that of a Chinaman. The standard ghost in an Inuit community resembles the locals and not a six foot six black-man.
4.) Purportedly ghosts have the ‘magical’ capabilities to travel through walls, levitate etc. Powers they didn’t have when they were alive. They move objects all the time – but never get behind the wheels of a car and drive, type a letter on a computer or light-up a Bensons and Hedges. When it comes to interacting with humans all ghosts want to do is scare the shit out of the living in the dead of night or flash their tits at us in photos. Aimless activity, no-one has been able to detect with any surety.
5.) Ghosts are allergic to large crowds. ‘The Ghost of Super Bowl’ or ‘The Ghost of F.A Cup’ – I don’t think so.
6.) Ghosts love hotels and pubs. When you die you head immediately to ‘your local’ for a pint. How else could you explain the disproportionately high number of pubs that are haunted? And it’s always old pubs that act as magnets to the living dead, rather than a Five Star Hilton.
7.) If you can walk through walls why don’t you simply drop through the floor as well?
8.) Why aren’t all ghosts totally naked?
9.) Seeing that potentially we living-humans share the planet with 60 billion spirits, comprising all of humanities dead – where do these hordes of living-dead spend their time? I mean where do they live? Caves? The bottom of the ocean? The stratosphere? Six to a house?
10.) Last but not least – there is not a shred of evidence.
Readers of this mornings ‘Press’ were greeted with the headlines ‘Christchurch – it’s a spooky town’ and a new re-hashed self proclaimed group of ‘paranormal investigators’ (photo above)
Their web site is http://www.ghosthunters.co.nz/ , which upon examination gives its mailing address as a post office box in Motueka (a town more renowned for its illicit drug trade rather than being a hotbed of living-dead)
This isn’t the first time our local newspaper has pandered to this motley-crew, comprised largely of what appears to be the over-imaginative, dateless and desperate.
Still everyone knows when creeping shadows, unidentifiable sounds combine with a journalist after a sensationalist story – it’s gotta be a ghost!
This is their head ghost-hunter, Anton Heyrick, pictured at the former Addington Prison, just a couple of months back.
Now one would suppose The Press may well have had the fortitude to ask Anton exactly what they had found in terms of evidence in their earlier search for apparitions at the Addington site, before their four-man team charged around other supposedly haunted sites in Canterbury.
But they didn’t need to ask a rational and logical question like that, now did they?
Along with the readers, of what was formerly was called a newspaper but is now little more than a tabloid - they already knew the answer to the million-dollar question “Hey fella, what have you found so far in terms of evidence?”
So far they found fucking nothing and they will find sweat fuck-all in terms of the after-life in any other places they care to stake-out – be it in Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand, Kazakhstan, Outer Mongolia or the back-blocks of The Amazon.
This is why: ghosts & spirits don’t exist.
The idea of ‘spirits’ or ‘gods’ stranded in a parallel existence, from which they communicate with those of the living with special abilities or can be detected by equipment purchased at Dick Smith Electronics, has in principal been about since time immemorial. The Delphic Oracle any one?
Life after death is a man-made invention.That’s why only dead humans communicate from an after-life, rattle chains in 13th century castles, and we don’t hear the barks from the deceased family Labrador coming from its old kennel.
If you believe in an afterlife and the ability for the 60 billion dead spirits to communicate (and seemingly so, only via psychics who charge for the privilege) with the 10 billion humans alive today and in some form survive-death, you must therefore believe that at some level:
*That every living minute of your life, is being snooped on by at least ten spirit beings, and they take an interest in you. Yes, that includes every time you have a piss, shag the wife, go to sleep etc. Why would these spirits be remotely interested in the mundane lives of you and me, when they can say voyeur the day to day activities of the drummer for Green Day? Following this logic is say Paris Hiltons shower room, the place to be in spooksville?
* What happens when the last living contact of these spirits dies? Who do they go around and watch then? Miss Hilton’s bed-room or the set of the next Porn Blockbuster - the living-world is your oyster. Why the fuck waste a single minute in a fucking re-converted Jail in Christchurch?
* All spirits apparently speak the same language, which fortunately means they avoid taking a crash Berlitz course in Serbo-Croation etc, the moment they pass-over.
* When you die you always prefer a crappy old building to live, the more derelict and unattractive the better. Ever heard of the ghost wandering the passages of the six-star Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai?
* In the after-life you retain the physical appearance and body at the moment of your death. With all those old people floating round it must be a fairly quite in the ‘after life’ and the zimmer-frame franchise-holder would be doing a roaring trade, along with sales in Viagra. Put it this way, I wouldn’t be opening a night-club in the next life. I pity the likes of Douglas Bader and invalids who must crawl their way through eternity - what a miserable existence it must be for these poor sods.
*If you are decapitated or placed in a vat of acid, you can still magically communicate and still keep your entire human-form when paranormal investigators open the cupboard you are hiding-in. Wow! Still on the positive, this leads to the conclusion that there's still hope for the ugly people in the after-life.
* The dead must take night classes. That’s so that when a bronze-aged peasant is called upon to communicate with a modern psychic, they know what say a ‘radio’ or ‘car’ is.
Lets be frank - the whole idea of dead talking to the living, spirits wandering spooky old houses is a load of crap.Those who claim to talk to the dead are nothing but crude charlatans with over active imaginations and a gift for cold-reading.
Those that chase ghostly spirits in the hope of finding evidence that when they die they get a second shot at things, are delusional and should get down to the pub and engage in sex more often (masturbation doesn’t count either)
In other-words start enjoying their one & only shot at life!
If we at all are honest as a society, we’d be open and say theist hypocrisy knows no bounds.
When are ‘we’ , the growing percentage of non-superstitious in New Zealand society, going to start say “enough is enough” and ‘return-fire’ using ironically the same rights Christians (and their allies) oh so conveniently see as theirs alone?
Let’s use these very-same ‘rights’ to bite them in the arse!
Time after time we’ve seen groups of Christians fighting every-step of the way to prevent medical breakthroughs, such as we see currently with stem-cell research and medicine.
As soon as medical/scientific advancements are in conflict with religion, like stem-cell is currently - castigation and obtrusion occurs.Protest is of course every-ones right, but later in the passage of time these evangelical protests are always proven to be self-centred platitudes, shown by history to be primordially laughable.
Inevitably what happens is at some later stage these very same protesters, or their loved-ones, needs to seek the same treatment they and their anointed representatives rallied so hard against.These two-faced, hypocrites have no compulsion seeking such treatment either.
On the other-hand God-fearing luddites are perfectly happy for others to be denied access to medical treatments, even if it means a miserable life or premature death for some other poor unfortunate – but only, if they themselves are not afflicted.
So as before you read my proposal, don’t feel any sort of compassion towards theists, for these very same individuals want to rob you and your closest of one of the basis rudiments of modern life - all to protect their beliefs. Always keep in the back of your mind, theists want their beliefs to over-ride yours – even if it means watching your own child die in a pitiless painful, fashion – when a cure is available, but denied to you because of their ancient superstitions.
Large tracts of so-called ‘loving’ Jesus followers in this country, want to deny childless couples the opportunity to have a family using medical treatments.
Cutting to the chase, what I’m suggesting is where resources are stretched in the health system, care is given to those who will appreciate it & respond. This is the same as an oncologist who opts to treat a non-smoking lung-cancer patient, ahead of one who continues to puff away.Therefore our health-system already rations medical care, so my proposition is not as radical as it first appears.Doctors, make ethical ‘life & death’ choices on daily basis and we don’t raise an eye-brow.
So where resources are stretched, why aren’t Health Boards using the discretionary powers available to them to allocate care to those who want it first?As an example, Catholics would automatically go to the bottom of IVF treatment.
Automatically no free contraception for Catholics either.
After-all their own ethical representatives have fought tooth and nail to get IVF banned. Yet, when it suits them Catholic couples will seek out the very-same treatment that they tried hard to prevent – so it’s hard to feel sorry for them. Besides they can call on their local Priest to assist (no, not in a Biblical sense but a pastoral role if that’s what you thought I was inferring to? Although I guess the first premise isn’t entirely out of the realms and would take some pressure off choir-boys)
Why shouldn’t a grateful, appreciative couple who wants a baby and have no objection to IVF treatment get priority over a couple who aren’t at all enthusiastic about the treatment due to ethical grounds?Further, the outcomes from couples who embrace a treatment such as IVF, are surely going to be more positive overall than those who are skeptical, and acting under duress, facing outside pressure to reject the ungodly procedure.
Based-on experience health-providers have a fair-idea which of the couples in this example are more likely to miss appointments, so precedency is both of benefit to the doctors and nurses but also ultimately the maligned, stretched tax-payer.
Our medical practitioners already respond to religious/cultural beliefs.Hospitals bow to pressure from the superstitious, giving them their own separate areas, actively assisting a policy of sectarianism and supporting a policy of privilege writing-it into law.
Jehovah Witness’s for example, are given the right to die rather than submit to a blood transfusion.
The religious precedent is already in existence – I’m merely taking the same entrenched statutory privileges bestowed on religion to their logical conclusion. Asking for exclusive rights is not a one-way street and should come with barbs.
If you don’t want stem cell treatment – we won’t give it to you.
If you don’t want fertility treatment – we won’t give it to you.
If you don’t want contraception – we won’t give it to you.
If you don’t want an abortion – we won’t give to you.
No exceptions.
Just don’t bother asking retrospectively for any of these things if say you are a Catholic, unless you want to pay or want to wait at the bottom of a long list.
We would then have the foundations of a separate health-system, only you and I wouldn't be funding the religious hospitals where the mortality rates would be on par with Cambodia.
Hypocritical theists can’t have it both ways when it comes to medical treatments that apparently so upset their invisible God ‘Yahweh’ and his emissaries on earth. On one hand theists can’t ask for a separate places to pray and do their thing at hospitals, demand rights that permit 'their own men' on-to the ward at the tax-payers expense, then in the next breath announce “we are the same and demand the same treatment.”
If all these two-faced theists all had true belief in their convictions, like say the witless but gutsy Jehovah Witness’s, there would be plenty of spare hospital beds for us Atheists, and over-flowing cemeteries with crosses on the graves.
So what is wrong with giving priority treatment to someone who wants it, over say someone who wants it stopped full-stop, or objects to it on ethical or religious grounds?
If it is exclusivity through extra rights, they want – let’s give it to them.
Let’s embrace those who abandon reason & science for superstition as it frees more beds for those who appreciate it.
Let the Hospitals and health-providers play their bluff when it comes to modern treatments that upset their sensibilities, let’s give them what they want & fought for.
It’s also high-time for theists to practice what they preach and abdicate themselves from mainstream medicine and get back to basics.
That’s to say: prayer and leeches.
Footnote: this is a re-hash of an earlier article I did.
Death with Dignity is back in the public arena and there is, I feel, a genuine ground-swell of support from Kiwi’s for some form of euthanasia to be on New Zealand statute-books (N.Z Herald Poll a massive 82% support from received from respondents)
But I know, realistically, this will never become law whilst we have National in power.
Back in 2003 Peter Brown (N.Z First) proposed his ‘Death With DignityBill’ and MP’s voted by conscience for it’s inception, rather than say Party lines. At least that was the way it was suppose to work in principal.
In practice most Nationals MP’s (added and abetted by United Future) voted against the bill, and as a result was it failed to pass by the close margin of 60 votes to 58.
Let’s take a look at the some of those, then opposition, National MP’s that voted ‘No’ seven years ago:
Trevor Mallard Wayne Mapp Gerry Brownlee David Carter Tony Ryall Bill English Judith Collins Paul Swain Phil Heatley
These names are familiar to all of us, and form the backbone of the current Government running our country.
If just two of those names from above had have voted ‘Yes’ euthanasia would now be a reality.
So don’t hold your breath.
The Reading of Peter Browns Bill and subsequent Parliamentary debate is available here. Rodney Hides impassioned speech is worth a geez.
In February Middleton Grange School in Christchurch, hired a 28 year-old guy to coach their girl's netball team (footnote: a male coaching a female sport like netball was surely a warning sign in itself?)
In case you are not from Christchurch, Middleton Grange is open to Christian children ONLY.
But mind-you - not just any Christian brats qualify - no siree.
Oh no, according to the righteous God-fearing folk who run Middleton Grange - Catholic’s need not apply.
Don’t even ask if your spawn happens to be an Atheist, Hindu or one of the other heathens doomed to ultimately burn in hells flames.
So back to the matter in hand - as it turns-out the part-time Netball Coach happens to be gay, and this touchy-fact gets back to The School Board.
As you would appreciate all Christians hate homos, and New Zealand is no exception to backward bigotry. Nothing gets a Christian zealot more worked-up than man on man sex and people spilling their seed for the fun of it.
The School Board at Middleton Grange was faced with the terrible realisation of having released a real-life sodomite onto its hallowed-grounds.
Their romper-festooned virgins needed protection from this inherently sinful man (not in a Biblical sense of the term of the word ‘man’)
So they simply fired him.
The coach departs to another school and subsequently complains to the Human Rights Department who rightfully demand that the School apologies. Middleton Grange also ended-up paying him reparations.
What is rather ironic in this whole affair is how on one-hand The New Zealand Government sees sexual discrimination as a crime worthy of admonishment, and yet in the next breath it is happy to allow Schools like Middleton Grange to openly discriminate based on a child’s beliefs?
“Our aim is to develop reflective, compassionate and articulatemen of Christian faith and hope who will give service and leadership in our world” (Mission Statement of Xavier College) Xavier College is a Jesuit school and one of Melbourne's most elite private boys Catholic colleges. Its fees are about NZ$18,000 a year so clearly the snobby Papist parents of brats who attend Xavier College, are well able to pay for an overseas school-trip to New Zealand for some outdoor recreation (read: skiing) and the accommodation-bill at the towns four star Goldridge Resort.
Evidently 16 boys from a total of 30 pupils, aged 14 to 17, saw the overseas-trip as a green-light to exhibit feral behaviour befitting of Jesuits – by undertaking a mass coordinated shop-lifting spree the day before their plane was due to fly them home.
The sixteen teenaged Catholic criminals roamed the streets of Queenstown on Saturday and stole clothing worth NZ$6,000 from at least seven stores.
Ultimately their thieving was detected by shop-owners and The N.Z Police became involved, as were the embarrassed teachers.
All the boys bags were searched and Queenstown police returned recovered stolen goods to businesses yesterday. Compensation for the clothing damaged when the boys tore off the security tags, was also paid for – by the schools representatives.
Remember folks: Catholic Education makes better citizens.
