EXTREME MISANTHROPY

Suppose someone used genetic modification to create a virus with the kill power of Ebola and the gestation period of AIDS? And it was an air borne virus. Someone with the virus riding on bus could infect all the other passengers and the driver by just breathing and everyone breathes. Just imagine. With the long gestation period it would have taken ahold on most of the human race before people started showing symptoms. Doctors and scientists would be dropping dead before they could find out where the virus came from. We wouldn’t stand a chance. And best of all, it would have no effect on other species. Maybe some of the higher primates with their similar DNA would be infected but because of the small, vital genetic difference the worst it could do was give them a bad cold.
Of course, there are some with a natural immunity to AIDS and Ebola. They would have to be immune to both and then they would live on, watching their family dying off, helpless. But they couldn’t reproduce because a carrier of the virus would pass it on to the baby in the womb, resulting in infections or bloody miscarriage.
No other living thing would be touched by it.
When it was realised that this was cutting a swathe through the human population unhindered, imagine the terror, seeing people dying and not knowing if you’d got the infection or not, not for years. Everyone would become anarchists, putting themselves and their own first. People are dying, daily so why waste time being kind and putting others first? Everyone would fight for their own survival. The social, legal and economic systems would come apart and we would be reduced to lower than cavemen, helplessly trying to survive, maybe out of jealousy attacking and killing those with a proven immunity, or even those who didn’t show symptoms due to not being infected. Smaller and smaller groups would wander the wastelands fighting over every scrap of food, using guns and knives to gain the upper hand before succumbing to the effects of the virus. Apocalyptic religions would take ahold. Small fiefdoms, policed by ruthless soldiers in the pay of the local monarch would spring up. Mass suicides would be the order of the day. And over it all the bloody spectre of the virus that brought low the human race.

Told you. Total misanthrope, me.

A LOCAL EVENT

I suppose it’s my fault, as I’m not really into local history, but today is the first I’d heard of this disaster. Actually, I noticed, and was attracted to, the commemoration sculpture and it was this that led my to finding the plaque.
The area today? It’s factories and rows of compact flats, with wide roads that contain very little traffic, at the back of a main road.

ALL THE BEST (YEAH!) IN THE LONG RUN

Nobody on this earth needs more than two children.
This planet is full and is getting to be overcrowded because everyone insists in their ‘right’ to punch out as many sprogs as possible. There are even treatments, free, paid for by our taxes,* on the NHS, that ultimately produce more of the annoying little bleeders than nature would allow. Other species are being pushed into smaller and smaller ‘reserves’ to make room for the pressure that comes from needing more land, more space, for more human beings.
The more I read the headlines, of ’success stories’ when childless couples can finally be natural parents, and then how other species are granted, by human beings, a tiny part of the planet without fear of being pushed out, I want to spew up stuff I’ve never eaten.
Human beings exploit, eat, experiment on, hunt, ill treat, members of other species, for science, for food, for fun, whose hooves or claws or wings or flippers or teeth they are not worthy to clean. We take all we can, and leave behind a poisoned wreck, strewn with the dead of species whose only crime was to want to share the land with us. There is a huge list of species extinct, wiped out, due to the human propensity for industrialised mass murder. We spend money to help other species from being harmed by ourselves. Human beings, in their everyday activities, are more dangerous to other species than any nuclear war would be to human beings. Our behaviour is even changing the climate. And instead of leaving it, we insist on making more and more of us, the ultimate parasites, to exploit and destroy even more. Because it’s a right, and not to have children is selfish, because children are our future, and we should make as many as we can.
No one needs more than two children.
You know (seriously) what the best thing would be for this planet? For a virus, purposefully made, to alter the DNA of and make every human male sterile. That’s right. Unable to reproduce. We’d all die out within the next say one hundred years, but while we were around, once the panic had subsided, followed by a hopeless scramble to fertilise, we would start accepting, and with acceptance comes understanding. We would be a lot kinder to our ill, our poor, our orphans, our old. Because we wouldn’t have to waste all that energy we’re wasting on making mini me’s just because we can. Once the last of us died, the earth would have a chance to heal itself from centuries of the murderous, parasitical human disease it now suffers from.
God, I hate human beings, me.

*I pay tax, at a reduced rate due to being a single person, and being disabled, but I pay tax.

TO CURE BOREDOM

If ever you’re bored and can’t find anything interesting to occupy your time, stick on a CD of ’70’s music, preferable of the disco genre, you know, the O’Jays, Rose Royce, Tina Charles, The Village People and the Bee Gees etcetera, then sing along in an educated British accent. Don’t change any of the lyrics or the idioms. You’ll end up laughing. . .

LEFT-HANDER ALERT!

And look who’s left-handed.

He’s also a first-born left-hander. He holds the pen awkward as well, like I do, like all lefties forced to adapt in so many ways to a rightie world.

POLLS, ET AL

Have you ever taken a poll?
Do you know anyone who has ever taken a poll?
I certainly don’t. I know my social life is very limited (almost down to nowt, these days) but isn’t the drill that the pollsters pick you out if you’ve got a land line telephone and are on the electoral register? So technically you could never leave the house yet STILL be asked to take part in a poll. The small number of people I know enough to ask have also never been asked to take a poll. (I took a poll). Yet polls are still being taken. For example, the Guardian newspaper took a poll of 1,011 adults on climate change, as part of this new 10:10 initiative, which basically means we should all lower our carbon emission by 10% during 2010. The result is, basically, 71% reckon climate change is humanity’s fault, but 61% admit that they could do more in the fight against it, with 32% believing that they did enough.
This is just a run-up to a burst of personal, disgustingly offensive smugness.
I’ve never been on a plane.
I take my own bags to the shops, rather than use eco-harmful throwaway plastic carrier bags.
All the rooms in my house use eco-friendly light bulbs. (Those crazy shaped beggars that always remind me of mazes).
I don’t drive. (I go on buses everywhere).
I rarely have my heating or lighting on. (Not at all upstairs).
I recycle everything recyclable.
I regularly kill several human beings, all under the age of forty, a week to help cut the general carbon footprint.
(I was joking about the last one).
But seriously, I am dead into this reducing the carbon footprint business. Not because I care about what kind of earth I leave for any indirect descendants, but for the sake of other species who will be innocent victims in our massive eco-crime.
Mind you, back to the poll, 52% believe there is nothing that can be done to combat global warming, it’s too late, we’re going to end up globally warmed anyway. I am not that cynical, yet. For the sake of other species, we have got to keep trying.

THE RETURN HOME ETC+

On the 20th of August, a certain chap named Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi left Scotland to return home to Libya to die. He had prostrate cancer and according to doctors only a few months left. This single has caused an international uproar, and the ire of the US has been firmly aimed at Scotland, with calls for a boycott on Scottish goods, even from the Scots themselves.
Back now, in time, to December 1988. Pan Am Flight 103, ‘Clipper Maid of the Seas’, was cruising over southern Scotland when a bomb on board ignited, killing everyone on board, the majority of who were US citizens on their way home for Christmas. The ruined plane came apart and parts crashed onto the small town of Lockerbie where eleven people were killed. The death total was finalised at 270, the majority, 189 of which were American citizens. The explosion was so violent and so total that the crew of ‘Clipper Maid of the Seas’ didn’t even have time to send a distress signal.
Forward again, to May 2000, when, after much wangling ad diplomatic actions, two men were finally extradited from Libya to the Netherlands stand trial under Scottish law for what was to be known as the Lockerbie bombing. One was Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, who was found not guilty. The other was Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi. He was found guilty in the May of 2001 and sentenced to life in prison for the murders. There was how it rested until this year, August, the Scottish Justice Secretary, a one Kenny MacAskill, decided to release the dying Megrahi on compassionate grounds, allow him to die at home. Megrahi was met by cheering crowds off the plane, some waving Scottish flags, and treated to an audience with Muammar al-Gaddafi, Revolutionary leader of Libya. A bit like meeting the Queen, the US President and the Prime Minister all rolled into one. He was treated, in other words, like a celebrity hero.
Now, in case you haven’t guessed, we come to the point as to why Scotland is facing a boycott. A murderer, a mass murderer, has been freed and allowed to go home and treated like a hero, and Scotland is responsible. Now, Megrahi has not been pardoned, so he is still the guilty one, the only one ever deemed responsible for the Lockerbie bombing.
But once the steam of indignation has been wiped off the window of truth, and you can see through, it’s just possible that Megrahi was set up. The only evidence came from clothes wrapped around the remains of the suitcase bomb, which were said to have been sold to Megrahi by a one Tony Gauci in Malta. That was it. No other evidence linked our Libyan sick man to the bombing. It’s possible that Gaddafi excepted the verdict because he no longer wanted to be the head of a country that was a byword for terrorism. It’s possible that Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was sacrificed by those who wanted to see closure. Not on purpose. There were clothes with the bomb, and our Maltese shop keeper Tony Gauci claimed to have sold them to Megrahi, but isn’t it just possible that the whole thing was rushed through as quickly as possible. Before you shout ‘give over! Are you a terrorist lover?!’ Think on this;
The only reason why Lamin Khalifah Fhimah was found not guilty was because he had an alibi that put him somewhere else other than Malta at that time.
Use reason; the man is still guilty in the eyes of the law, and he’s only got three months to live. I know it must be hell to see someone whom you believe is responsible for the brutal, bloody death of someone you love more than your own heart let go, but a lot of the Scottish victims families, who are suffering just as much as those of the other nations, weren’t happy with his conviction. They’d rather see no closure and an innocent man go free than rub their hands with glee at the thought of someone, who just might not have done it, be locked up. And if he was sacrificed on the altar of international politics, (a story is going around that Libya and Scotland did a deal; let the chap come home and you can have our oil. How true it is I’ve no idea) he’s still going to die. That’s why he was sent home, on compassionate grounds, to die. It’s not as if he’s going to spend the next thirty years or so admired and feted by the Libyans, doing the rounds of chat shows, getting money, perhaps writing a best-selling book. He’ll be dead before Christmas.
And he’s still officially guilty.
And the rest of Scotland aren’t to blame.

Meanwhile, in the Midlands in the UK, a small girl child has been found strangled in the cab of a wagon, while her Mum’s boyfriend who had taken her out as a treat on delivery trips, has been found hanging from a cord within walking distance.

IS IT RIGHT TO BLAME?

I’ve been thinking a bit about global warming (or climate change if you want to be more pc), and wondering if human being’s actions are really causing the earth’s thermostat to malfunction and cause all kinds of weather-born disasters.
Have you ever seen the film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’? Exciting stuff! But the premise is because human beings have pumped a lot of greenhouses gases, a byproduct of fossil fuel, into the atmosphere, it’s caused the air to heat up so much that massive lumps of the Arctic ice break off and sort of dilute the amount of salt in the sea. This caused the North Atlantic current (which is a stream of air that circulates roughly around the Northern hemisphere and keeps the temperature decent) to go haywire and draw air down from the troposphere (very high up) which causes huge storms and leaves the whole of the Northern hemisphere in a new ice age. If I’m giving an honest appraisal, what it does for science, Philip Pullman does for religion in ‘His Dark Materials’, but the fact is, although much slower and less dramatically than in the film, the climate is changing. I think most of us, even us non scientist types, if we are open-minded enough, and old enough, can detect a change in the weather from years back. For example, I’ve personally noticed it rains a lot more, in volume as well as frequency, than it used to, and apart from the odd cold snap, in the UK the winters are warmer and wetter, as are the summers. We also, generally have more weather than I recall from my younger days in the Seventies, in this tepid zone of ours.
But here’s my point; is it really humans that are causing it?
Now, regular readers of this blog will know that I am a total misanthrope, I don’t really like my fellow humans in general, but I can honestly say I don’t know if we parasites in clothes can take all the blame. After all, using reason, no one can honestly say the burning of greenhouse gases caused the last ice age. Nor can any reasonable person (and by ‘reasonable person’ I mean someone normal and not a fundie Christian) blame humans for the cataclysmic unheavals that caused the death of the dinosaurs.
Actually, I wouldn’t mind if we were the cause of some event that would wipe us out. It would bloody well serve us right. So long as we don’t take any other species with us.

A KILLING AND A SAVING-THOUGHTS ON THE SUBJECTS

So, the names are out.
The torture killers of baby P are out in the public domain. As soon as the court order to kepe their identities secret ran out, before an application could be made to renew it, the names and faces were all over the Internet and other media sources. No, I’m not going to give the details. This is a blog from a deist Brit misanthrope, not a red top site. You can find them if you’re interested.
As you can imagine, the backlash has been mostly vicious, with snuff-novel level descriptions of what should be done to the three ‘monsters’ who killed this little angel. Actually, they are not monsters or animals, but human beings like everyone else, like the Nazi concentration camp guards and the Hutus in Rwanda, and (and I’m genuninely upset about this) Baby P is not an angel, he’s not anything, he’s dead, but never mind that.
Anyhow, apparently, some of the most angry repsonses are those who aren’t happy about them being given new id’s when they are realised from gaol. The consensus seems to be that if they aren’t hanged or tortured they should live the rest of their lives in fear, like Baby P, and the same people who wanted to know who they were are now complaining that they will have to pay their tax money to provide protection when these three get out.
Fair enough; let’s get into the mind of an ordinary avarage person who is sickened by what happened in that council owned house in Haringey. Suppose the calls to the government to bring back hanging are heeded. Suppose these three end up on the gallows on the end of a rope. What then? Seriously, what then? What will this hanging achieve, apart from a feeling of self satisfaction that revenge has been taken? Will this save a child’s life?
Now before you answer, remember that a while back baby farming, the system of taking babies from say unwed Mothers or poor families, was a common event. More often than not the baby ended up dead at the bottom of a canal or somewhere. This happened when a body could be hanged for stealing. Plus, Myra Hindley and Ian Brady committed four of their five murders when hanging was still on the books. I’m sure you’re getting my point. Hanging didn’t save Pauline Read, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett or Lesley Ann Downey or all those poor unwanted sods killed at the hands of baby farmers. One of the most famous British hangman concluded his memoirs by saying that hanging did nothing but satisfy the desire for revenge. It didn’t make people think twice about taking a life. It was no deterrent.
I bet I know what you’re thinking; All right, what do we do with these evil baby killers, you left-wing excuser for evil acts? Let ‘em go to kill again? Treat ‘em with houses and new id’s and protection all on our tax money? No, I didn’t say that, and if you dig deep enough into my real feelings, you will see that I think that Britain today is soft on crime, due to the liberal bias which has permeated every section of legal society. But hanging them will just kill them, it won’t make much of an inroad on the abuse that leaves children dead which is at such a pace that new cases are being uncovered weekly. What should we do with child killers? What should we do with people who would torture a toddler until his little exhausted body shut down due to the level of abuse it was forced to take?
Study them. Talk to them. Ask them why they did it. If they refuse to take part in the study, give them some extra punishment, take away something they enjoy doing in the confines of their gaol setting. If they take part, well, they’re doing it for the good of everyone. Surely no one could argue that a killer’s human rights are being infringed for having their priviledges taken away for refusing to explain to the authorities what they got out of killing a toddler. Take the results and study them. Perhaps if it’s discovered why these things happen, a system can be put into place to finally stop it happening again. Maybe (and me with my DNA tops upbringing attitude) it can be discovered that a criminal behaves as they do because their brains are wired wrong. Maybe, just maybe, if money and time is concentrated on studying instead of locking away and forgetting or hanging, it will be discovered there is a genetic component then, like with various genetic illness, some tablet or injection or surgical procedure can be formed to keep the killing thoughts under control.
It will save tax payer’s money in the long run a lot more than spending money on skimming the surface, whenever a baby is killed or some other outrage is committed by someone who has a history of such actions.
Yes, even people like Ian Huntley and Ian Brady (although from what I’ve read Ian Brady won’t involve himself because he’s given up on being alive, he just wants to die, so no removal of priviledges would entice him) Rosemary West, Peter Sutcliffe, Steve Wright, Denis Nilsen (I can imagine Denis Nilsen especially absolutely loving being brought from his banal gaol life into the spotlight of being taken notice of). Don’t lock them up and forget them, for a red tops to occasionally discover something about them to engage us in fresh waves of indignation and calls for the death penalty.
After all, hanging, locking up and throwing away the key, or violent mob threats has not cut into the crime figures, who knows reasoning and studying might.
And that’s what it’s all about, right?

Another point caught my attention; Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Who’s them, you might ask. They are two US journalists who in June happened to cross over into North Korean territory only to be arrested and sentenced to hard labour for spying. But the best part is yet to come. Bill Clinton, ex US president and husband of the present US Secretary of State (what is that job? Is it like our Home Secretary or Foreign Secretary or what?) went into this rogue state, all alone, with only his diplomatic status as protection (I don’t think he’s even got an offical position in the US government) and talked to Kim Jong-il the leader of North Korea. He went into a state considered to be a grave enemy of the US and democracy and all that is fair and decent and went right to the leader and engaged him into reasoned talk. And you know what? It worked. Bill Clinton came home and brought Laura Ling and Euna Lee with him, after getting a pardon for them from Kim Jong-il. He reasoned with a man who is supposed to be head of a country that is one of the axis of evil and which should not ever be diplomatically engaged with.
That is absolutely amazing, in my books, and this man is worthy of all kinds of praise. All right, he might have misbehaved with a lady not his wife in the past, but by reason, he’s got a silver tongue.
Plus, he’s a left-hander. A first-born left-hander to boot.

HARRY POTTER

What did you think when you read the title to this posting? I can bet it was a strong emotion either for or against. That’s how it works. No one is indifferent towards Harry Potter. They are either in raptures about it or hate it with a passion. If you think I’m exaggerating, you try it. Go up to someone you know (even if it’s just an acquaintance)* and say ‘Harry Potter’ to them. Watch their reaction. It’s either ‘Harry Potter has got kids reading and therefore the youth crime rate has dropped to nothing and he really should be elected as god of the universe’ or ‘Harry bloody Potter! I’m sick of hearing about him. I don’t get the attraction at all. He’s just an annoying little nuisance.’ It’s topical with the latest film in the series coming out and spread all over every advertising hoarding and web site and with clips playing on those film advertising screens you get high up in shopping centres.
What do I think? I’ve never read a word or seen a clip from Harry Potter. All right, it might have got ‘the kids’ reading, but it’ll never be ‘His Dark Materials’. Harry is no Lyra!
ng h**

*I wouldn’t recommended saying it to a total stranger. They might think you’re a loony.
**Lyra tab was here!

LACK OF VICTORY, LACK OF JOY

The last British Wimbledon men’s* finalist winner was Stockport born (yeah!) Fred Perry (yes, the clothing line is named after him) back in 1936. This year, Andy Murray has got further than any male else since 1942.
And now. . .
Andy Murray has been beaten by American Andy Roddick in the Wimbledon semi-final.
I’m not going to say anything else.

*Although the ladies final was won by Brit Virginia Wade back in 1977. Jeremy Bates and Jo Durie won the mixed doubles for Britain in 1987.

STUPID PHILOSOPHY ITSELF

I’ve been thinking about racism and racists and, well, it’s not evil, it’s stupid.
That’s right. Stupid. How in the name of all that is right and reasonable can a body dislike someone because they have a different amount of melanin in their skin, or speak a different language or happen to be born on a different part of the same planet? It’s just not logical.
That’s it.

AN INTERESTING CONSIDERATION

If you translate all the best into Latin you get totus optimus.
I have no life. It is official.