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This week three planets were photographed in another solar system approximately 300 light years away from Earth –

– and Sarah Palin said she “hopes God will show her the way”^[1] in any future bid for the White House.

Isn’t it time we stopped listening to such drivel, and treated those who spout it with the derision they deserve? The image above shows objects so far away we cannot even begin to comprehend the distance. Science has revealed to us the very boundaries of the Universe, yet it has failed miserably to detect any indication of a “God”.

One hesitates to even pen the thought, for fear of the horror unleashed by the faithful and godly, but isn’t it just possible Sarah Palin’s ‘God’ doesn’t exist at all?

In fact, the truth is it “isn’t just possible” Sarah Palin’s ‘God’ doesn’t exist, it’s absolutely completely and utterly impossible for ‘It’ to exist.

Here’s why:

On present day estimates, our Universe is considered to contain approximately 200 billion galaxies. While they vary in size, our own galaxy – the Milky Way – is about average. It contains roughly 100 billion suns, the vast majority (it is conjectured) having planets revolving around them.

Given those figures, if you own a large enough calculator it’s possible to multiply 200 billion by 100 billion and come up with the number of suns in the known Universe. Of course, it won’t be a perfectly accurate figure, but for our needs it will serve well enough.

To most of us the figure arrived at will be meaningless – just as the figure of 300 light years (the distance to that other solar system) is equally meaningless. We cannot conceive of the speed of light, even though we can write it as a figure.

Because it utilizes the number ‘300’, it doesn’t initially appear so big, does it? Pah! It’s only three hundred light years away, just around the corner really. Well, in terms of the size of the Universe, it is.

Let’s consider those numbers more closely. In one year, light will travel through the Universe a total of 5.88×10¹² miles. In 300 years it will travel 300 times that distance. Perplexed? The distance in recognizable terms is actually 1,763 Trillion miles. And no, I didn’t work it out, WikiAnswers did, but I’ll believe them if you will.

Again, on initial observation that figure doesn’t appear all that large. Why? Because we are using ‘miles’ as the measurement, and we all know roughly how long a mile is. For a moment, forget the ‘miles’ and just dwell on the number ‘1,763 Trillion’.

Is it becoming a bit more mind-boggling now?

Compare that to the number of suns in the Universe. 200 billion galaxies multiplied by 100 billion suns in the Milky Way, produces the figure of 2.0 × 10²² suns, of which our own sun is just ‘1’. WikiAnswers refused to redefine that total as a sum with a host of zeros after it, because the page wasn’t big enough to fit them all on, so we can safely assume it’s a humongously large figure.

What, though, you may ask does this have to do with the existence of Sarah Palin’s ‘God’?

Before going further, let me clarify that I’m not attempting to prove the non-existence of any ‘Divine Being’, or ‘Beings’. I well accept the possibility that some Universal Grand Intelligence may have had a hand, or a foot, or even a flipper, in the design and construction of everything Universal.

Let’s take a moment to once again regard the staggeringly huge numbers we observed above, and then compare them to Sarah Palin, who, even in seven inch heels, will struggle to make six feet.

Given these facts, what are the odds of any ‘Divine Being’ having an awareness of Sarah Palin’s existence, let alone giving a toss as to whether she becomes president of a cosmically microscopic speck of dust?

To further confirm my opinions, George W Bush also had hallucinations he was called on by his ‘God’ to be president, and look what a God-Almighty mess he made of it.

It’s a sad fact that the majority of the human species can’t face up to being the equivalent of a worthless bevy of bacteria. They long to be something more glorious, much bigger, and more valuable. They go to enormous lengths to self deceive, inventing non-existent super-wraiths who’ll grant them immortality if they just bend the knee in supplication, then slaughter a few thousand of the super-wraith’s enemies, who just happen to live on the same tiny, insignificant, planet……..

Do you know how many tiny, insignificant, planets are floating about in the Universe?

No, neither do I, and I’m not even going to try to work it out, but it would prove to be a vastly larger number than any other integer quoted in this article.

^{[1] “Palin looks to God over 2012 bid”, BBC, November 11th 2008}

Filed under: Palin and the Stars

We’ve just suffered through another interminably dull and boring series of hypocritical antics involving pious prayers, poppies, and pomposity, from the so-called politicals and pundits, pontificating ever more profoundly and perversely than is their usual pleasure.

Yes, it was Remembrance Day, or Veteran’s Day, depending on whether you’re buried to the east or west of the pond, and it’s always good to put on a show for the dead.

In Britain, at the Cenotaph, parliament assembled as it does every year, all draped in the same black raincoat, with the same bedraggled nylon poppy propped into the buttonhole with safety pins and the odd spot of old chewing gum.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown led the prayer of remembrance, solemnly swearing to sheath the sacrificial knives, before repairing to his office and a quick check of how many British soldiers in Afghanistan had been killed or maimed that day. After all, the figures effect his ratings, and the election’s not that far away.

In America, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, a similar group of pathetic butchers perform the same grotesque ceremony. They offer similarly hollow pledges to the relatives and friends of those whose only remaining link to life is a name carved in a wall – along with a few million other fellow’s names – before slipping away for a quick Scotch and soda, or two, before luncheon.

I suppose we must thank God for their pomposity. After all, without it how could they live with themselves? The pomposity makes them feel useful, strong, capable of playing their war games, of condemning men and women to die for their whims, for their fancies. Without the pomposity, they could never find the audacity.

“Veteran’s Day” is a somewhat silly name, but then, it was chosen by politicians. After all, November 11th is the anniversary of the armistice that ended the First World War. They’re all dead. There’s no WW1 veterans left to have a “day” for.

“Remembrance Day” is much better, except that we’re expected to remember the wrong things. It’s a day to remember those who fell in the two great wars, is what we’re told. What on earth for? I’m sixty-two years old and knew nobody who fell in Flanders Fields, so what chance those much younger than I?

Here’s what I’d tell the young of today, both in Europe and America: the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month is a time to remember. It’s a day to recollect just how fucking stupid the human race has been, how cold-blooded, uncaring, murderous, and so unfeeling of our fellow beings that time and time again we’ve sunk to the greatest depths of depravity it’s possible for living creatures to attain. And we’ve done it because some low-life, petty, pompous, peer or president or politician decreed it.

If the young of today take the time to remember exactly that, every 11th of November, maybe, just maybe, when the politicians of tomorrow sound the fanfare to pack up the kitbags and shoulder the rifles, they’ll be told:

“Piss off and do your own dirty work.”

Filed under: Poppy Days

Africa always has been a magnet for the power-crazed politician, the militant madman, the diabolical dictator.

In the last fifty or so years, among many has stood out Ugandan Idi Amin, a former British army lieutenant who seized power and styled himself, “His Excellency President for Life Field Marshal Al Hadji Dr. Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular”.

In the eight years of Amin’s diabolical reign it is estimated half a million people were killed. So many bodies were thrown to the Nile crocodiles that at times the intake to the country’s hydro-electric plant became blocked by body parts. Thousands of Ugandan Asians were forced to flee the country, settling in Britain, Canada, and Australia.

Joseph-Désiré Mobutu reigned as president of Zaire for thirty-two years (1965–1997). He forced all TV news channels to show an image of him descending through clouds from the heavens, prior to every newscast.

In his spare time he tortured and hanged his rivals, and was a particularly close friend of Republican US presidents, Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. In 1968, Mobutu lured an ex-education minister out of exile with promises of an amnesty, only to have him tortured. While still alive, his eyes were gouged out, his genitalia ripped off, and his limbs amputated one by one.

Jean Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic proclaimed himself “Emperor” on December 4th 1977. It took a while as he’d been in power since overthrowing the CAR government of his cousin David Dacko in early 1966.

On March 4th 1974, Time Magazine carried an article on Bokassa, entitled, “Lord High Everything Else”. One paragraph reads:

The people of the C.A.R. know the importance of devotion and obedience: the hallmark of Bokassa’s reign is arbitrary and unpredictable terror. Government officials are frequently summoned at a moment’s notice to the presidential palace. If Bokassa is angry, they can expect anything from a drunken tirade to a personally administered presidential beating to instant imprisonment. Even harsher treatment has been meted out to the President’s political opponents, real or imagined. Michel Mounomboye, security chief at the time of Bokassa’s takeover, had his eyes torn out in front of his family before being executed. When Lieut. Colonel Alexandre Banza, who backed Bokassa’s grab for power, was accused in 1969 of planning another coup, he was dragged before a Cabinet meeting where Bokassa slashed him with a razor. Guards then beat Banza until his back was broken, dragged him through the streets of Bangui and finally shot him.”^[1]

Bokassa remained in power until he was overthrown by André Kolingba in 1981. At his trial he was accused of treason, murder, cannibalism, and embezzlement. The cannibalism charge was not proven, though all other charges were. He served six years in jail before being pardoned by Kolingba.

Before he died, in 1996, Bokassa proclaimed himself the thirteenth apostle and declared he’d had secret meetings with the Pope.

One of the scariest of Africa’s dictatorial madmen is still in power today.

Robert Mugabe has been responsible for the most appalling atrocities in his native Zimbabwe, and still confounds his critics by continuing to rule that nation despite a recent election that should have felled him and his cronies from government. He continues to defy the world, and the world sits around playing with its thumbs, and does nothing.

There is another ghastly figure presently loose in the jungles and plains of Africa, in Mobutu’s old stomping ground of Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. The very name is ironic. Today, there is little chance for democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Laurent Nkunda is a self-styled general of the rebel Rwandan Tutsi tribes. While a democratically elected government resides in the capital, Kinshasa, rebel forces roam the eastern area of this vast country killing, torturing, raping at will. Nkunda is their leader. His mission, he says, is to protect Tutsi tribesmen from attack by Hutu rebels who fled into the Congolese jungle after the Rwandan genocide of 1994. There can be little doubt his true aim is to overthrow the government and seize power.

Most of the rebel groups in the DR Congo agreed to be assimilated into the armed forces. Nkunda has always refused. His army is known to be several thousand strong, and while there are 17,000 UN peacekeepers in the country, no-one seems inclined to take on Nkunda.

His forces have committed some of the gravest atrocities known to man. Particularly brutal is their attitude towards women.

This, from Stephen Lewis, Canadian Ambassador to the UN from 1984-1988, and an expert on Africa (courtesy of “The Other Side Of Sixty”):

……in the case of the Congo, you have a war on women. You know, if I may make a somewhat more intellectual observation, rape is no longer a weapon of war. Rape has become a strategy of war. You rape women in such numbers, so savagely that you humiliate entire communities through the women. The women hold the communities together. On the continent of Africa, nothing happens without the engagement of the women, particularly at the grassroots, particularly on the ground. And what happens is that the entire community is subdued, oppressed, overcome by these roving bands of marauding militias, who rape the women, move the community off the extractive resources, which is what they want, or turn the women into sex slaves and the men into the laborers who do extract the resources. And it’s hideous, the consequences, and it’s been going on since 1996. More than a quarter of a million women have been raped. And what is so unfathomable about it is everyone in a position of power knows, and it continues. I’ll never never comprehend…..”^[2]

^{(Read more of this harrowing report at the link below)}

While Nkunda’s forces are not the only perpetrators of such crimes – government soldiers can be equally brutal and uncontrolled – his is the largest in the region.

Nkunda is well educated. He studied psychology at university level and speaks four languages. He uses religion, like so many of his ilk, to control his followers and justify his crimes. Nkunda calls himself a Pentecostal Christian and wears a lapel badge that says, “Rebels for Christ”.

Yesterday, UN Secretary Ban Ki Moon called for an extra three thousand UN troops to be sent to the DR Congo. Even if he gets them, it’s hard to imagine what they can do. The UN has a mandate not to interfere in the internal politics of another country, except in the case of genocide.

It’s time someone interfered in this war-torn nation, to prevent Laurent Nkunda from becoming the next Idi Amin, or Mobutu, or Bokassa, or Mugabe.

It’s time the world stopped sitting around playing with its thumbs, and did something.

^{[1] “Lord High Everything Else”, TIME, March 4th 1974}

^{[2] “Stephen Lewis”, “The Other Side Of Sixty”, November 11th 2008}

Filed under: Evil