Thursday, November 08, 2018
Donation page
If you find my work valuable, please consider a donation to allow me to continue to do my work. I live off a very low income and every little bit helps. Thank you.
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
Spot the Language 19
Максим (Кроха) практически не скрывал своих противоестественных страстей. Никого не стесняясь, он заходил к очередному любовнику и принимался за черное дело. Свидетель такого цирка, оттого ушедший из МП, тогда неосторожно заглянул в помещение и, увидев, чем занимается правящий архиерей, сказал:To mother! Mother! Holy Mother! Glory to Mother!
- Паскуда, хотя бы панагию снял…
В свое время еще существовавший Совет по делам религий был обезкуражен многочисленными неблаговидными выходками одного Члена Синода. Поводом послужило несколько письменных заявлений уборщицы. Суть заключалась в следующем.
- У меня – строгий рабочий день,- сообщала глупая тетка.- В 19.00 я оканчиваю работу и ухожу домой. По трудовому договору я обязана до этого сделать мокрую уборку в помещении. А я захожу в митрополичий кабинет – а они там безобразят.
- Как это? – испуганно интересовались чиновники.
- А так,- не сдавалась представительница пролетариата.- Они друг дружку употребляют прямо на письменном столе и мешают уборке. Я им говорю: «Кончайте быстрее. Мне надо убираться и уходить». А они – ни в какую, только сопят. Ну, я их мокрой тряпкой попыталась разогнать. Так они мне стали угрожать увольнением. Я так это дело не оставлю!..
Но особенно хорошо:
Вспомнилась мне, когда-то прочитанная стенограмма одного заседания в обкоме КПСС, кажется, Волынской области. Там что-то сильно требовались зоотехники, скотники, доярки и т.д. Речь шла, если помню правильно, о селе Торчине. Но каков официальный ответ местного партийного руководителя:
- Зоотехникiв немаэ. Абу пип, абу милиционэр. Скотникiв тэж немаэ…
И вот так везде - абу пип, абу милиционэр, а скотникiв немаэ.
It was 1910-1914. It was before King-Crane already, yet the cruel imperialists were already carving up and feasting on Arab lands, and Mother sat down to eat. Dining on Ottoman's choice cuts, as she had always lustily dreamed. The hate, the hate for Ottoman, the burning hate.
Well, no man will stand for being eaten alive, and in Ottoman's mansion, a great mutiny arose with the finest of his sons, the Young Men. There was a rising on the Bosporus and they had murder in their eyes.
Little did history realize the significance of those days, the rise of the Young Men, that it would lead to a war that shattered all things, the Great Imperialist Slaughter as the Left snorted amid heaves, half a decade hence. Who today yet connects the two tremors? Ah, but it is true. The War, the war, the maddest of all the horrible wars, a war for no reason!
It was 1914 and it was 1915 and it was war, the worst war the world pretended it had ever seen.
Mother was beaten and nearly died at Tannenburg and Masurim Lakes as a Hun went mad.
Mother crawled back scrambling to the Hinterland, where no man could ever beat her for good. With her, a 100,000 man Czech Legion, traitors to a one, rallying to the cry of their own flesh and blood. There was war in Galice, in the Pallid Lands. There, in a Sallow Land, the fight stalemated for years, and a million of Mother's sons never did breathe again.
Brusilov, in 1916, opened the door, and Mother grabbed the tallest Carpathian peaks. In reaching for the sky, a million more sons were trampled dead. At home there were riots and frustration with the dying, the long dying and the sadness of the dying. The monarch toppled and the people dreamed that they ruled. It was March 1917, and the world was shaking.
Mother was dragged to Brest-Livotsk, raging and snarling all the way and clawing with her nails. At gunpoint, she signed, and they cruelly hacked away her flesh. "Mother! Holy Mother!" the people cried, as they always did in this cruel enraptured land.
"For land, for bread, for peace," the wild peasant crowds longed and roared, and revolution shook the land. In Red and White, the blood ran across the wheezing land for years.
Wrangel and Denikin grabbed the South, and Kolchak grabbed the East. 40,000 Czechs, turncoats in the Great War, changed colors again and the rails were seized.
It was 1921, we were at a seaport, just us. We watched in terror, you and me, as the sailors raged and burned, and 400 brave ones fell. We ran from the flames and the soldiers bullets mowing down men.
Agile and adaptive as a snake, from privation, the state went to NEP and won the bloody war. The people had no food, they shrunk, huddled and then died, and no one knew how many starved, but starving was a normal way here, like the endless forests and the mean soil.
Everyone from other lands pitched in to the fight, everyone against Mother, as usual, but in the end the People prevailed as the peasants cheered. To this day, the Ruling Class of the World trembles with rage at this horrible blow.
The saga of Mother, the strange, sad, terrible and beautiful saga of Mother, so proud but so backwards and full of rage, like a wild woman living in the woods with her head held high, does not end here, but here we shall end our tale. Even today, she rises again, and no one can figure her out.
Those wily Eastern ways, and the eternal resentment of the West. The icy wind blows, she throws back another hard drink, and listens to her great composers. The bookshelves heave with her authors, the greatest lettermen that walked on soil. Her pride and her pain and her rage. She tosses back another drink as the wind howls.
It is late, she is beautiful, blond and blue yet alone again, and she rages at the snowy drifts fighting her sills. Mother is horny and she wants sex again and again, wants the world, wants to do the world, and the men are all drinking again, drinking and singing, drinking and fighting, drinking and sleeping. There is death everywhere, but there always is and always was, as death is part of Mother as dear as her very heart.
She will rise again.
Like her or not, always respect Mother. The way you respect a Grizzly Bear. Imperious yet crippled, she demands you look her in the eye and give her her due.
The War Project Versus the Nice Project
The War Project is interfering with the Nice Project. Here I am, sitting and practicing being nice while no one is around in the middle of the night, and memories of war shake in my bones.
Upstairs, it's the War Channel. It's on most nights. Screaming and yelling bloody murder. Hate and rage, crashing and smashing, mad screams of insane people. This is normal. The War is normal.
There's an Hispanic couple upstairs who are at war. There may be others at war too. I think people are on drugs. I hope no one is armed. I hear them screaming and yelling bloody murder at each other, crashing and burning across the room, like a herd of antelope on an African plain. The cops got called. A couple of times.
Inquiries are met with smiles. There are no blows exchanged, the woman is a fighter, everything is fine. Don't believe it. When people scream like that, fists and objects fly. They are trying to kill each other. Nothing will happen until some day, someone may end up dead. This is how these things tend to end.
Next to them, upstairs, are Black people. A young Black woman and her huge Black boyfriend are trying to kill each other, or at least trying to beat each other up.
It was on earlier tonite, the Fights. You can turn on the Fights here just about any nite. Just open your ears.
The war went on on the sidewalk before, earlier in the night, but I looked outside and could not see. Only voices, I heard, disembodied voices. Fighting, fighting, yelling and fighting.
The war went on outside, earlier in the evening. The police pulled up outside my window, three cars, stayed there half and hour, talking to some young Hispanic men. I opened the window and watched the friendly people in blue.
The news just came in, two local kids locked up, the War goes on, two soldiers off the streets. You cheer for the blue men who take away 16 year old POW's. Where? Anywhere but here. Anywhere.
The gangster rap pounds away a good part of the day, from computers and radios. It's not exactly a message of peace and love. It's a message of hate, rage and crime, sociopathy packaged as art. It gets into your bones if you're not careful, your inner psychopath emerging in your tensing veins.
You shut all the windows and tell everyone not to look outside. The world out there and the world in here, and never the twain shall meet, or at least not tonight.
Dammit, I'm trying to be nice.
How can anyone be nice in a place like this?
Video killed the radio star, and the War Project is killing the Nice Project. What's a guy to do? Pour another glass.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Upstairs, it's the War Channel. It's on most nights. Screaming and yelling bloody murder. Hate and rage, crashing and smashing, mad screams of insane people. This is normal. The War is normal.
There's an Hispanic couple upstairs who are at war. There may be others at war too. I think people are on drugs. I hope no one is armed. I hear them screaming and yelling bloody murder at each other, crashing and burning across the room, like a herd of antelope on an African plain. The cops got called. A couple of times.
Inquiries are met with smiles. There are no blows exchanged, the woman is a fighter, everything is fine. Don't believe it. When people scream like that, fists and objects fly. They are trying to kill each other. Nothing will happen until some day, someone may end up dead. This is how these things tend to end.
Next to them, upstairs, are Black people. A young Black woman and her huge Black boyfriend are trying to kill each other, or at least trying to beat each other up.
It was on earlier tonite, the Fights. You can turn on the Fights here just about any nite. Just open your ears.
The war went on on the sidewalk before, earlier in the night, but I looked outside and could not see. Only voices, I heard, disembodied voices. Fighting, fighting, yelling and fighting.
The war went on outside, earlier in the evening. The police pulled up outside my window, three cars, stayed there half and hour, talking to some young Hispanic men. I opened the window and watched the friendly people in blue.
The news just came in, two local kids locked up, the War goes on, two soldiers off the streets. You cheer for the blue men who take away 16 year old POW's. Where? Anywhere but here. Anywhere.
The gangster rap pounds away a good part of the day, from computers and radios. It's not exactly a message of peace and love. It's a message of hate, rage and crime, sociopathy packaged as art. It gets into your bones if you're not careful, your inner psychopath emerging in your tensing veins.
You shut all the windows and tell everyone not to look outside. The world out there and the world in here, and never the twain shall meet, or at least not tonight.
Dammit, I'm trying to be nice.
How can anyone be nice in a place like this?
Video killed the radio star, and the War Project is killing the Nice Project. What's a guy to do? Pour another glass.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
New Sex Poll
A sex poll came out 2 1/2 years ago, but I am only just now hearing about it. Oh, well, it seems like sex is always leaving me standing at the station these days.
The articles on the poll deal with teenagers having lots of oral sex, apparently instead of intercourse. The article all act like this is horrible, but I actually think it is good. Despite my feast or famine bachelor life, I actually do love sex, and I am a sexual liberationist. The articles mostly fuss on and on about all of the diseases one can acquire from oral sex.
First of all, this is part of an insane national neurosis we have long had in this nation about sex. Europeans have long commented on it. We are Puritans yet we demand that Americans be having sex continuously. Even if they are not married. Even if they are not 18.
Yes, it is true. There's a $6 billion dollar a year porn industry and we are in the midst of a Mass Hysteria called Child Molester Hysteria. Although there are reasons to worry about adult sex abuse of children, I really fear that this is part of our neurosis about teenagers, especially teenage girls, having sex.
Child Molester Hysteria, the way I understand it, pretty much makes it illegal for teenage girls to get laid. If she does it, the guy's a molester, no matter what his age is. It is understandable that conservatives, Christians, married men and vaginized males of all types would be behind this Protect Our Teenage Girls! bullshit. What doesn't add up is that the feminists are behind it too.
Yep, feminists, the very women who ought to supporting teenage girls who choose to have sex, who ought to even be urging girls to learn to have an orgasm by age 15 since science shows waiting longer increases the odds she will never get one, are leading the charge of this preposterously chivalrous, putting girls on a pedestal nonsense.
Anyway, on the article . Article says, teenagers not screwing so much, good. Having oral sex instead, bad. Why is it bad? Because, the article worries, you can get VD. What sorts of VD can you get? Well, syphilis, warts (HPV), gonorrhea and herpes. Well, let us look at this notion.
As far as cunnilingus goes, it would be quite hard to catch much of anything from doing that. You would be better off to worry about getting hit by a meteor. So go ahead and do it! To your heart's content! She'll love ya for it, guys!
Now, onto fellatio. It is true that one can get gonorrhea of the throat from doing this, but it's not a common problem, except maybe in the gay community. Syphilis is quite rare outside the gay community, and you always just very noticeable symptoms. So it's not much to worry about.
About herpes, well, one out of every six adults has it anyway and it won't kill you. It comes on strong at first, then it fades to an annoyance, and there are drugs that take out the flareups. So no worries.
HPV is much more troubling here since research shows that you can catch it in your throat, and it apparently can lead to throat cancer. I'm at a loss for words about this, but I don't think it's the worry of the century.
Lesbianism got a lot of writeup in the study. Apparently 14.4% of young women aged 20-24 have tried it with another female. That's interesting, but it's got to be higher than that. Only 6.5% of males that age have done it with another guy. Those figures have got to be wrong.
What's interesting is that whenever they go out and do these face to face surveys about sex and dope, they come with some very low figures for both gay sex and dope. No one wants to fess up to being a fag or a doper, even if they were only gay for a day, or if they didn't inhale.
But recently a new study allowed persons to answer questions about sex and dope anonymously via computer in a locked room. They were assured repeatedly that there would be no way to link up their computer answers with their actual selves, since the testers themselves were not grading the tests.
As one might expect, scores for sex and drug use for young Canadians were much higher when the answers were submitted via computer privacy than via face to face.
The authors considered that maybe people were making stuff up on the tests, but then rejected that. Testers had been closely questioned before about the importance of being honest on their answers. If they were inclined to make stuff up, they were asked not to take the test.
The numbers for current homosexual behavior among this group of young Canadian males were about 13-14%. Most of it seemed to be what we would call opportunistic homosexuality, or bisexuality, among especially single males. I don't intend to have sex with males myself, but as a young men I saw epidemic levels of opportunistic male homosexuality all around me among young males, especially single ones.
This was in Southern California in the late 1970's and early 1980's.
Other studies have shown some fairly high levels of males experimenting with homosexuality. Kinsey got 37% lifetime, but his work has been questioned. The Playboy Survey of the 1970's got 25% lifetime, and I always thought that was about right.
The same computer surveys above also found remarkably higher drug use among respondents than face to face surveys found, especially of hard drugs like PCP or heroin.
One of the major findings of the study was that more and more straight folks are getting into anal sex. 40% of men have tried it, and 35% of women have. That's about double previous surveys. Gay men have always gone in for this kind of sex bigtime for obvious reasons. I'm not going to say much about this for myself except to say I don't have much interest in that sex act.
Porn has made anal sex very popular, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea.
As a sexual liberationist, I really don't care how people do it. I think people ought to consider that there may be a health downside to this type of sex. I have seen reports on bulletin boards of women aged 30 or so who had lots of anal sex in their 20's who know have to wear a type of diaper because they have lost some control over their bowels. That's called anal incontinence.
I don't know how much anal sex you have to have before something terrible like this happens to you, but it's something people might want to think about before they jump into anal sex too much.
There are all sorts of gay rights types and sex educators that say there is no way this can happen to you if you practice anal sex the right way, but I wish they would spell out their theory in clear science so it's something more than a crap shoot.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
The articles on the poll deal with teenagers having lots of oral sex, apparently instead of intercourse. The article all act like this is horrible, but I actually think it is good. Despite my feast or famine bachelor life, I actually do love sex, and I am a sexual liberationist. The articles mostly fuss on and on about all of the diseases one can acquire from oral sex.
First of all, this is part of an insane national neurosis we have long had in this nation about sex. Europeans have long commented on it. We are Puritans yet we demand that Americans be having sex continuously. Even if they are not married. Even if they are not 18.
Yes, it is true. There's a $6 billion dollar a year porn industry and we are in the midst of a Mass Hysteria called Child Molester Hysteria. Although there are reasons to worry about adult sex abuse of children, I really fear that this is part of our neurosis about teenagers, especially teenage girls, having sex.
Child Molester Hysteria, the way I understand it, pretty much makes it illegal for teenage girls to get laid. If she does it, the guy's a molester, no matter what his age is. It is understandable that conservatives, Christians, married men and vaginized males of all types would be behind this Protect Our Teenage Girls! bullshit. What doesn't add up is that the feminists are behind it too.
Yep, feminists, the very women who ought to supporting teenage girls who choose to have sex, who ought to even be urging girls to learn to have an orgasm by age 15 since science shows waiting longer increases the odds she will never get one, are leading the charge of this preposterously chivalrous, putting girls on a pedestal nonsense.
Anyway, on the article . Article says, teenagers not screwing so much, good. Having oral sex instead, bad. Why is it bad? Because, the article worries, you can get VD. What sorts of VD can you get? Well, syphilis, warts (HPV), gonorrhea and herpes. Well, let us look at this notion.
As far as cunnilingus goes, it would be quite hard to catch much of anything from doing that. You would be better off to worry about getting hit by a meteor. So go ahead and do it! To your heart's content! She'll love ya for it, guys!
Now, onto fellatio. It is true that one can get gonorrhea of the throat from doing this, but it's not a common problem, except maybe in the gay community. Syphilis is quite rare outside the gay community, and you always just very noticeable symptoms. So it's not much to worry about.
About herpes, well, one out of every six adults has it anyway and it won't kill you. It comes on strong at first, then it fades to an annoyance, and there are drugs that take out the flareups. So no worries.
HPV is much more troubling here since research shows that you can catch it in your throat, and it apparently can lead to throat cancer. I'm at a loss for words about this, but I don't think it's the worry of the century.
Lesbianism got a lot of writeup in the study. Apparently 14.4% of young women aged 20-24 have tried it with another female. That's interesting, but it's got to be higher than that. Only 6.5% of males that age have done it with another guy. Those figures have got to be wrong.
What's interesting is that whenever they go out and do these face to face surveys about sex and dope, they come with some very low figures for both gay sex and dope. No one wants to fess up to being a fag or a doper, even if they were only gay for a day, or if they didn't inhale.
But recently a new study allowed persons to answer questions about sex and dope anonymously via computer in a locked room. They were assured repeatedly that there would be no way to link up their computer answers with their actual selves, since the testers themselves were not grading the tests.
As one might expect, scores for sex and drug use for young Canadians were much higher when the answers were submitted via computer privacy than via face to face.
The authors considered that maybe people were making stuff up on the tests, but then rejected that. Testers had been closely questioned before about the importance of being honest on their answers. If they were inclined to make stuff up, they were asked not to take the test.
The numbers for current homosexual behavior among this group of young Canadian males were about 13-14%. Most of it seemed to be what we would call opportunistic homosexuality, or bisexuality, among especially single males. I don't intend to have sex with males myself, but as a young men I saw epidemic levels of opportunistic male homosexuality all around me among young males, especially single ones.
This was in Southern California in the late 1970's and early 1980's.
Other studies have shown some fairly high levels of males experimenting with homosexuality. Kinsey got 37% lifetime, but his work has been questioned. The Playboy Survey of the 1970's got 25% lifetime, and I always thought that was about right.
The same computer surveys above also found remarkably higher drug use among respondents than face to face surveys found, especially of hard drugs like PCP or heroin.
One of the major findings of the study was that more and more straight folks are getting into anal sex. 40% of men have tried it, and 35% of women have. That's about double previous surveys. Gay men have always gone in for this kind of sex bigtime for obvious reasons. I'm not going to say much about this for myself except to say I don't have much interest in that sex act.
Porn has made anal sex very popular, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea.
As a sexual liberationist, I really don't care how people do it. I think people ought to consider that there may be a health downside to this type of sex. I have seen reports on bulletin boards of women aged 30 or so who had lots of anal sex in their 20's who know have to wear a type of diaper because they have lost some control over their bowels. That's called anal incontinence.
I don't know how much anal sex you have to have before something terrible like this happens to you, but it's something people might want to think about before they jump into anal sex too much.
There are all sorts of gay rights types and sex educators that say there is no way this can happen to you if you practice anal sex the right way, but I wish they would spell out their theory in clear science so it's something more than a crap shoot.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Crazy Women Ahoy, Pull the Anchor and Leave
Ah, crazy women! I suppose if I were really nuts, I would not mind a crazy woman. After all, I would probably deserve her, right? Sad thing is, I am hopelessly prejudiced against crazy women. I don't like em. I discriminate.
I have enough problems of my own to deal with without crazy women on top of everything else.
I remember this one crazy woman, I broke up with her, and she goes and punches a hole in the wall! Whoa, baby, hold onto your horses! I broke up with you? Hell, you should be happy!
She used to swallow handfuls of acid tabs (like five hits at once) when we went out on dates. She drank like a fish. She would smoke any kind of weed you gave her and probably take any kind of drug too. All her friends were fags and she specialized in the sickest fags of them all, the ones in Hollywood who loved masochism. She regaled me with their tales of how these guys required welts raised two or three inches before they were satisfied. Her idea of a good time was going to an LA fag bar. That was what she did most of the time, as she was almost a full-time fag hag. She also had straight boyfriends, apparently, as she did like men and sex. Going to an LA gay bar is not my idea of a good time.
One night she was drinking like a maniac and she grabbed four or five tricyclic antidepressants and tossed them down. I protested and she cried out that this was for all of the misery that she was in. So she was deeply psychiatrically ill, as you can see. Diagnosis: Borderline Schizophrenia, which nowadays goes to Borderline Personality Disorder.
She had a weird way of talking, and we would go out and it seemed that she would act so crazy and weird in public that I would be embarrassed to even be seen with her. She spoke in weird metaphors and it really started annoying me. I'm kind of like neurotic, "staring off into space like a weirdo" nuts, but I'm not "stark raving acting out bats" nuts like that. Forget it. I told her, "Hey, look, you are just too nuts for me," and she freaked. I wonder if she is still alive. She was also quite a masochist as far as sex went, but I could not really get into that too much. Anyway, most females are like that to some degree or another, let's face it. It goes hand in hand with being female.
She was always telling me about stories where she was meeting guys who would pull knives on her, rape her, threaten to kill her, torture her, etc. One time it was a whole group of guys and she gangbanged them all. Whopeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Except they were all pulling knives on her and trying to torture her and threatening to kill her at the time. She was quite proud of her gangbanging experience, but my best friends heard about it and were totally freaked out and appalled, saying she was a disgusting slut pig whore. That was true of course, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
She also liked women a little bit, but only a little. She really loved young boys, as she called them, and delighted in having sex with teenage boys, especially around 13 years old. Her Mom was schizophrenic and had tried to stab her to death in her sleep when she was a little girl, and I guess it was all downhill after that. She had all these weird seemingly different personalities that she would fade in and out of all the time. Now, I'm into channeling myself, but this sort of thing really ought to be controlled in order to work best, otherwise you just seem like a street person or a potential maniac.
Later she accused my best friend of hitting a baby in the EEG lab where he worked. According to everyone else, it never even happened, but she insisted and insisted. I think maybe they fired her, but I forget.
I saw her once later, she came over to the folks house in the daytime, and you know how that goes. I was 27 years old, graduated USC with post-BA degree, back living at home again, teaching school full-time, smoking lots of dope, going nuts, but couldn't get it together enough to move out. Dumb or what?
The culmination of the sex act on my end left her all pissed off, but I thought it was funny that when I kissed her goodbye at the car, I swear some of the middle aged neighbor ladies were laughing and smiling and giving me the thumbs up?
One housewife even sneaked outside and gave me a great big beaming smile. Who says women don't like guys who score?
Women ain't all bad, guys.
Red Revolution For Bangladesh
Bangladesh seriously needs revolution. Thank God the Maoists have taken up arms there to overthrow the system. They have not done too well, they are completely insane, and the Islamists have united against them, but we must wish them well. After all, only the Maoists are fighting to get rid of the system, the system that kills so many.
Reasons.
Electricity is scarce and most do not have access to clean water. Roads are in terrible shape and agriculture is lagging far behind where it ought to be.
In other words, it is a total capitalist South Asian clusterfuck. Get rid of it.
Even more reasons.
⅓ of rural Bangladeshis are landless (for contrast, 50% of Central American rural ppl are landless). All land reforms since independence have failed.
Truth is, if you are landless in Bangladesh, I would wager that you are probably starving. The land question is clearly the heart of the matter here. If someone disagrees that giving these folks land will keep them from starving, please speak up in the comments.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Reasons.
Electricity is scarce and most do not have access to clean water. Roads are in terrible shape and agriculture is lagging far behind where it ought to be.
In other words, it is a total capitalist South Asian clusterfuck. Get rid of it.
Even more reasons.
⅓ of rural Bangladeshis are landless (for contrast, 50% of Central American rural ppl are landless). All land reforms since independence have failed.
Truth is, if you are landless in Bangladesh, I would wager that you are probably starving. The land question is clearly the heart of the matter here. If someone disagrees that giving these folks land will keep them from starving, please speak up in the comments.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Black IQ Gains in the US
These scores are taken from this paper, and indicate varying scores for IQ tests and semi-IQ tests taken over about 30 years. As you move down in each individual row, you move into revised versions of the tests in more recent years. Standard deviation is not all that relevant to me, but may make sense to someone else.As you can see, White adult IQ (age 25+) in the US is now 102.9 or 103 rounded off. Black adult IQ (age 25+) has increased in recent years to 89.1. There remains a 13.8 point gap between Blacks and Whites.
Ok, let us take a look at Black and White IQ's in the US.
These scores above are over roughly 30 years or so, and all tests are standardized as more or less IQ tests, though there is a lot of controversy over whether or not the AFQT is really an IQ test, since it mostly just questions what you learned in high school, and if you did not learn much in high school, which I suspect is the case with a lot of Black students, your score is going to be low on that test.
It is true that Murray and Herrnstein in The Bell Curve treat AFQT as an IQ test, but that is really their problem. A casual glance at this chart indicates that Blacks seem to have made some definite gains on White in the IQ department over the past 30 years. This is something no one wants to talk about, since all talk about this whole subject is just completely banned.
On the Stanford-Binet, the B-W gap shrunk from 13.6 pts to 10.8 pts, a gain of 2.8 pts for Blacks. White scores actually declined by .7 pt, and Black scores went up by 2.1 pts. The S-B is probably given to both adults and children.
The WISC is the children's IQ tests. It is here that Blacks have shown the most massive gains of all. Blacks gain 5.3 pts, while Whites gain .9 pt, and the B-W gap declined from 15.9 pts to 11.5 pts, a gain of 4.5 pts for Blacks. Black adults gained 2.3 pts on the WAIS and White adults gained 1.2 points. There is not much difference.
The WAIS is given to adults of all ages and is now normed even for older adults, I believe. The B-W gap declines from 14.6 pts to 13.5 pts, a .9 pt improvement. I realize that this is not much of an improvement, but US Black adults have shaved the B-W IQ gap by about 1 pt over 30 years.
Considering claims that the gap is set in stone for all time, this does count as very real progress. Even more important that according to the WAIS, Black adults can no longer be said to have IQ's of 85!, as the White Nationalists scream and scream.
WAIS puts Black IQ at 89.1. That is definitely getting up towards the level of some European White groups. For instance, Serbs and Croats both have IQ's of 90. 89.1 is not all that different from 90.
For the WAIS under age 25, the scores are a bit better. Blacks shrunk the gap from 14.2 points to 11.7 points. That's a really significant reduction. Blacks raised scores by 3.9 points, while Whites only went up by 1.4 pts.
On the AFQT, which I am not even really counting, the gap declined from 18 points to 14.4 points. It is here that we are really getting into the hardcore achievement gap stuff, but as you can see in the real IQ scores above, the huge gap does not have to do so much with raw brains as with failure to learn much in high school.
The median gap between Black and White adults, young and all adults conflated, is now 12.6 IQ points, not 15 IQ points.
The median gap between Black and White kids, with some adults conflated, is now 11.1 points, not 15 IQ points.
The median gap between mixed Black and White kids and adults is now 11.6 points, not 15 IQ points.
Blacks of all ages conflated have gained a median 3.1 IQ points over 30 years on average, and Black children have gained 5.3 pts. Whites of all ages conflated achieved an average 1.1 IQ points gain over that period, with White children showing no special gains relative to adults.
The median reduction in the B-W gap for both Black adults and children combined over 30 years has been on the order of 2.7 IQ points . Black kids reduced the gap by 4.5 points. Philippine Rushton and Charles Murray have actually acknowledged that Blacks have closed the gap by "a couple of points". Jensen and Gottfredson will probably never come around.
The median Black IQ for both Black adults and children conflated is now 91.3, not 85. For Black children, it is 91.7, not 85. For Black adults under 25, it is 90.9, not 85. For Black adults of all ages, it is 89.1, not 85.
There are those on the other side who like to pull up plenty of modern studies that, compared to the above, show little or no gains in Black IQ. That is interesting, but we should at least point out that there are a number of IQ tests out there that are showing significant Black gains and Black reduction of the famous 1 standard deviation IQ gap.
Those who charge that US Blacks "have an IQ of 85!" (implying they are idiots) need to be seriously challenged, at least to hedge their responses, as there is good evidence that it is now 91.3, not 85. The continuous refrains of the 15 pt B-W IQ gap in the US also need to be seriously challenged, as it appears that on many tests the gap is now on the order of 11.6 points for Blacks of all ages, not 15 pts.
Debaters ought to adjust their talking points in light of these new realities. Any refusal to do so borders on hate propaganda against Black folks, as if they don't have enough problems as it is.
References
- Dickens, William T. & Flynn, James R. October 2006. Black Americans Reduce the Racial IQ Gap: Evidence from Standardization Samples. Psychological Science.
Dickens, William T. & Flynn, James R. Common ground and differences
Forthcoming: Psychological Science
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
That Long Newspaper Spoon
This book really ought to be mandatory reading for all second graders, by the way. On the end of that long newspaper spoon? A mean gruel and lies, cons and mind-heists.Let's see what's on the end of that long newspaper spoon...William Burroughs, "Naked Lunch" (1959).
Let us look at a few recent topics: How I Helped Moved a Factory To Mexico, from Business Week, actually a pretty good business publication. This article goes to show you the sheer insanity of the US government. Sure, global forces often more or less mandate taking plants out of the country.
The factory in the US closes, and $18/hour workers lose their jobs. The jobs go to Mexico, where the same work pays $3/hour, including benefits. Since $3/hour is not nearly as good as $18/hour, the flood from Mexico to the US continues.
Almost no one in Mexico is starving. As an illegal alien farm worker from Oaxaca told me over drinks at the bar about Oaxaca, "Comida, si. Dinero, no." In Oaxaca, there is plenty of food, but no money. So everyone heads up here. Why, cuz they are starving? No, so they can buy 27 inch color TV sets.
US workers lose when US jobs are shipped overseas, then lose once again with the mad, lunatic illegal alien invasion that is ruining US working class jobs all over our nation. We have been shipping jobs to Mexico wildly since NAFTA in 1994.
One would think that this flood of jobs to Mexico would have resulted in a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration, but in fact, 1994 approximately coincides with a total explosion in the illegal immigrant tsunami to the US.
After NAFTA, workers and consumers in the US, Mexico and Canada all lost ground. Got that? Workers in Mexico, the US and Canada all got screwed by NAFTA. Some say they never made it up since either. Only business cleaned up, and only some businesses at that.
All free trade agreements between disparate nations, that I can tell, are going to have the exact same effects as NAFTA. Probably all free trade agreements that the US has negotiated since NAFTA have had similar effects, probably on a smaller scale.
Workers, consumers and public all get screwed. The environment takes a massive hit. Crappy Mexican trucks flood our highways and destroy them. All free trade agreements are always sold with the same load of crap that NAFTA was, as benefiting workers, consumers, the public, and hell, even the environment, why not?
Nearly the entire US media, from top to bottom, is in on this lie, and if you only read the MSM, you will never figure out the con. Workers, consumers, the public, the environment, and lots of small businesses get screwed by NAFTA-bullshit, and on top of that, we get an avalanche of illegal aliens.
Wow, what a deal! Hail NAFTA! Hail free trade!
File under lies, lies, and more lies: As reasonable folks may have guessed, Business Week (once again, heads up to a good capitalist magazine) columnist Ed Wallace informs us that there is no gas shortage. No gas shortage, no oil shortage, no nothing like that.
Has the media ever told us that? No. Have the politicians ever told us that? No. What do the media and pols tell us? That there is a gas and oil shortage! Why is there a gas and oil shortage? Oh, so many things! Especially, rising demand in China and India! Oh, but what a load of crap that is!
We are also told that we are somewhere near Peak Oil (but no one knows when that hits or what it even means) and this is the cause of the problem. Forget it. Peak oil implies a supply-demand equation, and no such mathematics is working like that here.
The cheerleaders for capitalism tell us that one of the great things about capitalism is supply and demand. It is true that this is an excellent way of fixing prices, and it is possible that socialist economies ignore this at the risk of their extinction. But oil prices have nothing to do with supply and demand! Nothing!
The fundamentals of the oil and gas market are exactly the same as when oil was $60/barrel back in 2006. Whether the market can go back to the $20/barrel in 2002 is not known; possibly it cannot. Check out this great, prophetic Tom Friedman column from that year wondering if the Iraq War will shoot oil to the horror of $60/barrel.
But as far as supply and demand go, oil ought to be no more than $60/barrel and I assume that gas should be no more than $2/gallon or so. So why is it $120/barrel instead of $60?
Because capitalism doesn't necessarily work on supply and demand. The rest is just sheer speculation. Traders are pulling their money out of the sinking dollar and plunking it right into oil and other commodities, and it's sure been a nice ride all right. Just a bunch of speculators bidding the price up like crazed buyers at an auction; that's all it is. That's the cause of your $4/gallon gas.
Oil reserves are at their highest levels since 1999. Gasoline reserves are at their highest levels since 1993 (!) But surely demand is rising, China and India and all that? Nope, demand has been falling all year now and will probably fall even into the summer.
On the other hand, oil refineries are not necessarily doing that well at all, at least according to them. They are getting killed by high oil prices on the one hand and low gasoline demand on the other. In order to make a decent profit, refineries have deliberately cut back oil production. The purpose of running the refineries at low speed is to push up the price of gas even further.
Distillates such as airline fuel and diesel have seen their prices so through the roof, and there are shortages of these, but they are deliberately created by the industry. If there were, why are we exporting more distillates than we are importing. Not only that, but imports of distillates have crashed by some 40% in a year.
It would seem that in all of this insanity something like a National Industrial Policy would be called for. For decades, countries South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan and now China, not to mention most of Western Europe, have done just that.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that capitalism with no government (free market neoliberalism) is an orchestra of great musicians with no composer. At some point, it's the economic equivalent to an insane asylum or an elementary school playground.
We can also see that that all of the feverish nostrums peddled by the politico-media Lying Classes are loads of garbage? We need to fly to Saudi Arabia and beg the Saudis to turn up the oil spigots! We need to drill in the Arctic!
We need to drill everywhere, off the beach next to your house! We need to get rid of environmental regulations and taxes that make gas so expensive! And last but not least, the favorite of right-wing liars everywhere, we need more refineries!
We do not really need any of these things, at least at the moment. The oil refineries lie is one of the most evil of them all. It is probably peddled by the stinking garbage in human forms that run the oil industry itself.
The line goes like this:
-Oil is high!
-Why is it high?
-Hardly any new refineries since (insert year)!
-Why not?
-Evil environmentalists! Evil regulations! They've made it impossible to build new refineries!
-(sputtering) Bastard environmentalists and regulators! Get rid of them so we can build more refineries!
-Yes, yes, yes!
The thing is, this whole line is just an incredibly devious lie peddled by Oil Company Scum and their gargoyle allies in government and media and rightwing politics. No regulations have gotten in the way of building any new refineries in the US.
The industry itself has flat out refused to build new oil refineries in the US because industry does not want to create more refinery supply. Low numbers of refineries are good for keeping gas supply low and prices high. The conversational ruse above is designed to get rid of existing environmental and other regulations at existing plants.
This ethanol mandate crap is about to do the same thing to food prices. My advice if you are worried about your money to put it into food stockpiles, preferably non-perishable. Food is going to go up in value quite a bit soon - it is already - and it is not going to be pretty.
It's looking ugly and it's going to get uglier. We socialists have in general done a superb job of feeding people and a way better job of feeding people than capitalism has (despite the Mt. Everest of capitalist lies about how socialism starves people) and hopefully a hungrier world will find more socialist-oriented policies are better for filling the belly.
My bullshit detector was screaming the other day when Yahoo Headlines shouted in my ear that Congress was going to be briefed on how evil North Korea was helping wicked Syria build a diabolical nuclear reactor.
I remember well when Israel bombed the plant in question.
I looked into the story extensively at the time and my conclusion was that Syria was building a chemical weapons plant, not a nuclear reactor plant, at the site. The North Koreans are experts at chemical weapons stuff and the Scud missiles to shoot them with, and that was apparently why they were there.
Now there is reportedly a new video showing that evil Syria was just about this far (index and thumb nearly touching) from building a devilish nuclear power plant, to build nuclear bombs with, to load on missiles, to shoot at Israel, to kill all the Jews!
To kill all the Jews! To kill all the Jews! To kill all the Jews! To kill all the Jews! To kill all the Jews!
Holocaust 2. Holocaust 2. Holocaust 2. Holocaust 2. Holocaust 2. Holocaust 2.
This is obviously a Jewish media cabal influenced article, and all such articles include the Holocaust Porn fetish typical of most Jews nowadays.
The Holocaust traumatized them, but they'd already predicted it for millenia, and it had already been attempted over and over according to them, because Jews really do love to believe that their enemies have been trying to exterminate them all from day one!
The whole history of the Jews, according to them, is Jews fending off mad Final Solution attempts by Persia-Nazis or Roman-Nazis, or Russian-Nazis, or Arab-Nazis, or This-Nazis or That-Nazis.
You can't understand the Jew until you get to the Holocaust Porn thing. It's not just his own death; that's bad enough. The baddies are never going to be satisfied with one Jew. They are going to do every single last one of them.
Understanding this helps shed light on phenomena like Zionism: Go Nazi ourselves, steal some land, arm to the teeth with nukes, and dare the anti-Semites to wipe us out.
How bout Iran? Does Ahmadinejad want to kill one Jew? Course not. He wants to kill them all.
Does the PLO and Hamas just want to kill a Jew here and there for sport? Nope, they want to "destroy Israel" = code for kill all the Jews.
Why do Jews need to go to Israel? Because evil whatever-Nazis in the Diaspora are getting ready to kill all the Diaspora Jews.
For Chrissake man, it's porn! It's Holocaust Porn! It's a fetish already. How else to explain the absolutely sickening and clearly unhealthy Jewish obsession with the horrors of the Holocaust. Holocaust museums, coming soon to a city near you. Holocaust Museum, my Jewish girlfriend took me to visit her very own, this was an essential part of our romance.
What's a Jew reading these days? Oh, a Holocaust novel. Or maybe some non-fiction, surely with a Holocaust twist somewhere in there. Hollywood has a Holocaust hard-on . Seems every year there's more and more Shoah tales.
I do not have enough information yet to look into the North Korean - Syria reactor thing yet, but I have studied Syria's nuclear program in the past. My take was that Syria has been working on a nuclear program for about 25 years now but has made little headway due to shortages of money, technology, brains, etc.
This is actually quite common; many smaller countries have similar nuclear projects in the ruts. People just do not get it. Rome was not built in a day, and neither was any nuclear program. They require a highly developed economy and always take years and often take decades to even get going.
Even when they do, there is one problem after another. The super brains like A. Q. Khan of Pakistan are few and far between, and he's under house arrest.
So let us say I am somewhat skeptical that Syria was about "this close" to building a nuclear weapon.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Why Mayor Nagin Fired 3,000 Employees
On October 4, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin announced
that the city of NOLA was going to lay off up to 3,000 employees. This
announcement has been reverberating across the malignancy known as
Rightwing America ever since. Usually it goes something like this:
"Ray Nagin left the city during the flood, and went to Texas! Then when he came back, he callously fired 3,000 employees!" This is typically said with the quivering lips and bugged eyes of your normal, everyday raving Bush cultist-dittohead.
This nugget comes as part of a much larger package apparently titled, "Rightwing Talking Points Against Nagin and [Louisiana governor] Kathleen Blanco".
I assume this garbage was cooked up in the usual sewers associated Karl Rove, dittohead talk radio and the criminal gang called the Republican Party. The package seems devastating towards Nagin and Blanco, but apparently a lot of is just crap or sophistry of one type or another, as we expect from the Liars Brigades.
Now, when I first heard this, I was mystified. I still can't answer a lot of the charges, you can go here to see a lot of the tidal wave of BS Rush Limbaugh has been defecating lately.
Meanwhile, how about the troubling issue of why Nagin fired 3,000 employees. In a previous post, I suggested that this was because the city was flat broke. My theory has been confirmed in an excellent letter I just received, which I will republish below. The author shall remain anonymous.
Mr. Lindsay, in your post on October 19, you state:
It is the sole provider of garbage and sewer and water, and it gets paid for that. New Orleans also gets money from gambling, unlike some other cities and states. Surprisingly, this is also how Louisiana gets its income. Taxes and gambling. It gets the vast majority of its sales tax from (surprise) the largest city in the state--New Orleans. It gets most of its gambling revenue from (shock) New Orleans.
It also taxes the port of New Orleans, and gets a cut of the import taxes, I imagine. The only thing it doesn't get that New Orleans gets is utility income (and it probably got a cut of NOLA's).
Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, that tax base was completely wiped out. Not just one section of it. All the sections simultaneously. No more ticket revenue (which is substantial for any city). No more sales tax. No more gambling, or liquor taxes, or topless bars to "regulate" with taxes.
No more guests staying in hotel rooms (although apparently FEMA is taking care of that at $90 a night in a city with zero other guests, can you imagine?). No more utilities. No more anything . For the next five years.
Now you may say that all of that income is still occurring, and most of it is. On a tiny scale. But the infrastructure of the city is set up for a huge scale. It's like a family of four, that has a two earner income of $300,000/yr, and both of them get laid off.
They still have a mortgage and two car payments, and tuition, and a living standard consistent with a $300,000/yr income, but their income is bupkis. Or $200/wk unemployment.
Only, it's actually worse than that.
Not only have they lost their jobs, not only do they have to continue making payments on a $300,000/yr lifestyle, but that lifestyle has disappeared (the house has blown over, the cars are wrecked, the pool is underwater) and they have to pay for a new lifestyle elsewhere in addition to making payments on the old lifestyle, all with no income.
So not only is New Orleans still trying to pay for a $300,000/yr lifestyle on a $200/wk budget (so to speak), but they've actually picked up additional expenses, on a massive scale.
Even downsizing all non-essential personnel, they still can't make it. What do you need a municipal court staff for if no one drives a car there, and the cops are far too busy to write a ticket for running a non-existent stop sign? Even downsizing, their expenses far, far outstrip their income.And Bush isn't going to pick up the slack either.
Not only that, but they can't look to their own state government for help, because it is in trouble. Because its cash cow, the jewel in its crown, its primary revenue source, New Orleans, has been slaughtered.
The state, and all the southern cities, not just New Orleans, and not just Louisiana, really, are hemorrhaging money. These entities are actually bleeding out faster than money can possibly be pumped through.
They have run through all their resources, all their reserves, and are now stealing or "borrowing" from the resources of their employees, many of whom are working for free (or on a very reduced schedule while their own bills pile up), on Bush's empty promise that someday in the future, he'll make them whole. While big fat government contractors (including the Red Cross) soak up all the available cash.
So yeah. I'd say that there's nothing "apparent" about it, and there is no "perhaps." The city of New Orleans, the surrounding parishes and cities, and almost certainly Louisiana, are bankrupt.
They have no asset base, no income source of any moment, huge past debts that they cannot service, and more current expenses than you or I can even imagine. I can't even begin to understand that people couldn't see this would be true from the instant the levees broke.
I would like to point that the media has not shed any light at all on this apparently obvious truth about why the city and state are broke. This exemplifies the extreme rightwing corporate nature of what is really the US controlled propaganda (read: totalitarian-like) media.
"Ray Nagin left the city during the flood, and went to Texas! Then when he came back, he callously fired 3,000 employees!" This is typically said with the quivering lips and bugged eyes of your normal, everyday raving Bush cultist-dittohead.
This nugget comes as part of a much larger package apparently titled, "Rightwing Talking Points Against Nagin and [Louisiana governor] Kathleen Blanco".
I assume this garbage was cooked up in the usual sewers associated Karl Rove, dittohead talk radio and the criminal gang called the Republican Party. The package seems devastating towards Nagin and Blanco, but apparently a lot of is just crap or sophistry of one type or another, as we expect from the Liars Brigades.
Now, when I first heard this, I was mystified. I still can't answer a lot of the charges, you can go here to see a lot of the tidal wave of BS Rush Limbaugh has been defecating lately.
Meanwhile, how about the troubling issue of why Nagin fired 3,000 employees. In a previous post, I suggested that this was because the city was flat broke. My theory has been confirmed in an excellent letter I just received, which I will republish below. The author shall remain anonymous.
Mr. Lindsay, in your post on October 19, you state:
Apparently, these unfortunate layoffs are being done because Hurricane Katrina caused a financial hurricane in the the NOLA city government - the city's finances are simply devastated. In such dire financial straights, perhaps mass layoffs are understandable."Apparently"? "Perhaps"? Look, the city of New Orleans, like almost all cities, gets its income from taxes. It taxes the port authority. It taxes the hotel rooms. It taxes liquor. It taxes property. It taxes sales of nearly everything. It taxes for violations of various laws (we call them tickets and fines).
It is the sole provider of garbage and sewer and water, and it gets paid for that. New Orleans also gets money from gambling, unlike some other cities and states. Surprisingly, this is also how Louisiana gets its income. Taxes and gambling. It gets the vast majority of its sales tax from (surprise) the largest city in the state--New Orleans. It gets most of its gambling revenue from (shock) New Orleans.
It also taxes the port of New Orleans, and gets a cut of the import taxes, I imagine. The only thing it doesn't get that New Orleans gets is utility income (and it probably got a cut of NOLA's).
Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, that tax base was completely wiped out. Not just one section of it. All the sections simultaneously. No more ticket revenue (which is substantial for any city). No more sales tax. No more gambling, or liquor taxes, or topless bars to "regulate" with taxes.
No more guests staying in hotel rooms (although apparently FEMA is taking care of that at $90 a night in a city with zero other guests, can you imagine?). No more utilities. No more anything . For the next five years.
Now you may say that all of that income is still occurring, and most of it is. On a tiny scale. But the infrastructure of the city is set up for a huge scale. It's like a family of four, that has a two earner income of $300,000/yr, and both of them get laid off.
They still have a mortgage and two car payments, and tuition, and a living standard consistent with a $300,000/yr income, but their income is bupkis. Or $200/wk unemployment.
Only, it's actually worse than that.
Not only have they lost their jobs, not only do they have to continue making payments on a $300,000/yr lifestyle, but that lifestyle has disappeared (the house has blown over, the cars are wrecked, the pool is underwater) and they have to pay for a new lifestyle elsewhere in addition to making payments on the old lifestyle, all with no income.
So not only is New Orleans still trying to pay for a $300,000/yr lifestyle on a $200/wk budget (so to speak), but they've actually picked up additional expenses, on a massive scale.
Even downsizing all non-essential personnel, they still can't make it. What do you need a municipal court staff for if no one drives a car there, and the cops are far too busy to write a ticket for running a non-existent stop sign? Even downsizing, their expenses far, far outstrip their income.And Bush isn't going to pick up the slack either.
Not only that, but they can't look to their own state government for help, because it is in trouble. Because its cash cow, the jewel in its crown, its primary revenue source, New Orleans, has been slaughtered.
The state, and all the southern cities, not just New Orleans, and not just Louisiana, really, are hemorrhaging money. These entities are actually bleeding out faster than money can possibly be pumped through.
They have run through all their resources, all their reserves, and are now stealing or "borrowing" from the resources of their employees, many of whom are working for free (or on a very reduced schedule while their own bills pile up), on Bush's empty promise that someday in the future, he'll make them whole. While big fat government contractors (including the Red Cross) soak up all the available cash.
So yeah. I'd say that there's nothing "apparent" about it, and there is no "perhaps." The city of New Orleans, the surrounding parishes and cities, and almost certainly Louisiana, are bankrupt.
They have no asset base, no income source of any moment, huge past debts that they cannot service, and more current expenses than you or I can even imagine. I can't even begin to understand that people couldn't see this would be true from the instant the levees broke.
I would like to point that the media has not shed any light at all on this apparently obvious truth about why the city and state are broke. This exemplifies the extreme rightwing corporate nature of what is really the US controlled propaganda (read: totalitarian-like) media.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
The Counselor Project
Well, had my first therapist appointment in quite a while the other day. I didn't even want it, and I was totally paranoid about it. Why had I been given this appointment, anyway? How the Hell did that happen?
I went back inside a doctor's the other day and a secretary said wearily, "What is it now, Robert?" like I'm some miserable idiot who can't stop worrying, which is true.
All this fueled the old paranoid thoughts, and I restarted the Get It Together Project again.
So I went in. Middle aged Hispanic female, and I hate female therapists. In fact, I typically refuse to ever be seen by one. I got sent to counselor due to being on meds and admitting to smoking weed a few times last fall. Real easy.
I'm convinced that I am insane.
"So, do you think that I act strange, weird, bizarre, odd?" I actually believe that all of this is true.
"No, not at all, you seem quite normal. Why do you ask?"
"Do I seem really nervous, anxious, wiry, like I can't settle down?" I actually believe that I am way too nervous and non-relaxed.
"Actually, no. You really do seem quite relaxed here." Points to my relaxed posture.
"Hmm, so do I seem hostile?" I actually believe that I am totally hostile, cruel, evil, mean, and low down, like a bipedal 6-foot rattlesnake with a permanent bad hair day and an immortal resting bitch face.
"No, not at all. Actually, you seem friendly, and if you were hostile, I would simply order you out of the room."
"So, do I seem unfriendly and not warm?" I am convinced that this is the main problem these days.
"No, not at all. You actually do seem like a friendly person."
Therapy goes on.
I tell her I am worried about checking out hot young chickies because I am afraid they will think I am a dirty old man and they will file a public complaint against me.
"Go ahead and look all you want! You are a single man, of course you want to look at all of the pretty women!"
You know, sometimes I just love Hispanics. They are so backwards on all this sex stuff, and they just assume that all males are total pigs when it comes to sex, but they figure that it is hopeless and we are incurable, so they just chalk it up to nature.
She then informs me that I may be lacking in social skills.
"So, do you think that I am lacking in social skills in here in right now?" I am convinced that I am one of the biggest social idiots on the globe.
"No, no, not at all, your social skills are excellent. Why do you ask? But perhaps elsewhere, there are problems in the social skills."
Ok, now my head is really spinning.
I need to stop doing weed.
I need to stop drinking.
"Why do you have two glasses of wine a night?"
"Why do you go to the bar?"
Well, I quit?
"Oh, the bar, the bar, why do you go to the bar?"
I don't anymore, but I am broke.
On and on it goes.
She points out that I'm hardly even trying to meet anyone. I think I'm busting butt night and day on the Woman Project. Really, where are you going, she asks? I tell her I am going to the Catholic Church Project to work on the Woman Project.
She almost starts laughing. "You expect to get laid in church?" I think she says.
"Sure." I say, lying as usual. "I just tell em I am God, and that they will worship at my cross because God wants them to. Works every time."
"Plus, most women who go to Catholic Church are in religious ecstasy, and that usually means they are also horny," I offer pitifully.
"They want to have sex with God. Just tell them you are God to them, and you're in like Flynn," I suggest dubiously.
She's laughing. "You expect to get laid at a church? What are you, a fucking idiot? No ever meets anyone in church. Church is one thing, fucking is another. Two different planets," I hallucinate, hearing voices.
It's very nice to meet a woman who is aggressive about sex and has a man's best interest at heart, which is getting laid of course, as nothing else in a man's life matters at all. Most female therapists are totally insane about sex, which is why I never want to deal with them.
Doctor wrote I was depressed. Was I depressed?
Course not, I scoff.
She looks surprised.
Have I ever been arrested? Twice for pot, possession.
Have I ever been in prison, as if this is the most normal thing to do? No, thank God.
Have I ever been charged with child molesting? No, I have not, nor have I ever been investigated for it by the police.
Have you ever attacked anyone? No, not really. I mean I did, but they all deserved it, you know?
Have you ever attempted suicide? No, we don't do that.
Have I ever been suicidal? Not for 23 years! I say proudly. She looks dubious.
Have I ever been hospitalized? No, we don't get hospitalized, and I will never be hospitalized, unless I get about 20 times crazier than I am now and I just can't function at all.
The Hospital Project is never going to happen. Nor is the Kill Myself Project. The Kill Others Project has, sadly, been put on indefinite hold for the time being. The Molest Kids Project never even got going, thank the Lord above. The Criminal Project is way back in the hippie dope-dealing past.
My whole life, nothing really grievous or monumental or devastating or audacious has occurred. Truth is, I have been a bit of a bore, the guy who lives in town 15 years and the cops yawn when someone asks them about him.
The Counselor Project is over. I'm fine, nothing is wrong. The Counselor Project will be continued into the future, with uncertain results.
And they don't believe in chemical good times, because they only see the bad end that I have almost never seen in my entire life.
The Counselor Project is just something to be played, like everything else in life. You play the Counselor Project or it plays you, one or the other. It's nothing, really. Anyone can do it.
Katrina Death Toll Lowered to 1,356
Updated December 19, 2008:
The unofficial death toll for Hurricane Katrina fell by six to 1,356 on Thursday, October 26. The total number of bodies received in Louisiana mortuaries from the storm is now at 1,062, however, it has been determined that 12 of those people were not killed by the storm, but instead died from other causes.
Louisiana is continuing to discover about one new body every day on average, but they body recovery rate is clearly declining rapidly. My previous posting noted that relatives of some supposed Katrina victims, including a fellow named Jason Zito, were upset because their loved ones were included in the death count, while the protestors said that in fact, the so-called hurricane victims had died from other unrelated causes.
Just under 50% of the bodies have been identified, a sorry figure, but quite a bit higher than previous tolls. It looks like major progress is finally being made in identifying bodies. Also, the cost of Hurricane Katrina, a little-reported story, is now estimated at an incredible $200 billion.
Furthermore, the city of NOLA seems destined to be devastated far into the future, as I noted in a previous post recently. Estimates are that the future population of NOLA will be reduced by an astounding 50% and the city's budget will be hammered by a 2/3 reduction. 250,000 homes are uninhabitable, a surreal figure.
Republican talking heads continue to hammer on the issue of the initial death toll being inflated. But as the "Numbers Guy" column in the Wall Street Journal notes, such overestimates are commonplace in the early days after a disaster and also occurred after 9-11.
An earlier column by the same author deals with the whole array of issues surrounding of death tolls and tolls of the missing after wars and disasters.
Topics include how accurate they are, counts of the missing, why tolls vary, how long it takes to get a real count and how they determine if someone actually died in the storm. The first column notes that the inflated dead, missing and evacuee totals after the storm were reported by various outlets ranging across the political spectrum.
It is simply not appropriate to use the excessive initial death estimate of Katrina as a liberals-are-evil-liars talking point, and it's vaguely disrespectful to the victims and their loved ones anyway as the suggestion is,"Hey, Katrina wasn't so bad after all." Recommended reading.
The roundup:
1The Ohio victims are Cassondra Ground, 19, of Monroeville, Ohio and Thelma Niedzinski, 84, of Norwalk, Ohio. Both were killed in a car accident near Monroeville, Ohio on August 30, 2005. The Ohio State Highway Patrol felt that a wet road caused by Hurricane Katrina caused the car accident. See Ohioans Focus on Helping Katrina Victims, by Jay Cohen, Associated Press , August 31, 2005
2The Kentucky victim was Deanna Petsch, 10, of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. On August 29, 2005, she fell into a Hurricane Katrina-swollen ditch in Hopkinsville and drowned. See Storm Surge: State Gets Soaked, City Avoids Major Flooding, Homes, Life Lost in Hopkinsville , Sheldon S. Shafer and James Malone, The Louisville (Kentucky) Courier-Journal, August 31, 2005
353 of the 57 hurricane evacuee deaths occurred in Texas after evacuating the storm; the total includes two suicides in Texas. Two more evacuees died in Tennessee. Two other evacuees died in an unknown location.
I consider all of these deaths to be storm-related, and it is my understanding that authorities felt they were hurricane-related also. The evacuees section is particularly controversial.
Critics have suggested that the evacuee death toll of 57 deaths is simply a normal death toll for the huge number of evacuees. Yet the figure of 57 dead is far lower than the number of evacuees who died after the storm - a very large number of evacuees died post-Katrina, but the vast majority of them are not included in this tally.
For example, this tally mostly includes evacuees in Texas, omitting the huge number of evacuees from Louisiana, for whom a dubious zero deaths are recorded. Furthermore, evacuees in very poor health or on the verge of death post-Katrina never even made it to Texas; they were evacuated to hospitals, often via airplane.
It is my understanding that officials consider the 57 deaths (mostly in Texas) that occurred very soon after the hurricane to be hurricane-related. Apparently most of the deaths were exacerbated by the stress of the hurricane. The two suicides in Texas have also been questioned.
However, they both occurred very rapidly after the storm and I understand that they are considered to be hurricane-related. There have been many more suicides post-Katrina that are not yet included in this tally.
This section needs further research. Critics with valid data helping to clarify the evacuee death toll are encouraged to email me at the email address at the top right of this page. See 57 Evacuees Reported Dead; At Least 2 Committed Suicide, Steve Quinn, Associated Press, September 15, 2005.
Rightwing talking point 1: Sure, Cuba can evacuate people well in a hurricane, but that's because they don't have a free society. In a free society such as ours, the Cuban evacuation model cannot be emulated.
A commenter named "flick100785" on the Usenet newsgroup alt.terrorism.world-trade-center answered this challenge better than I ever could on October 3. I quote (edited):
I would like to request that someone please show me a single evacuation plan for any major US city that even claims that it is humanly *possible* to get 100% of the city's population out in only three days.
Because this is an impossibility, a potent federal response - in particular, a large federal search and rescue team that is on the ground and moving within 12 hours of the disaster -is necessary. If the National Guard or Coast Guard has a comprehensive plan ultimately supplied by the Commander in Chief, it is surely possible to get our men in uniform there and have them setting up basic operations within 12 hours.
Furthermore, attacks on Nagin's response need to note that the NOLA government did far better than any previous disaster run had predicted.
Rightwing talking point 3: Because Nagin failed to evacuate his city, the federal government is absolved of all responsibility for any Katrina deaths. And anyway, it's the residents' fault for not being prepared for disasters.
Is it really ok for NOLA citizens to have to wait for four whole days for any reasonable federal response to a disaster that the Feds knew about at least three days before it occurred?
What sense does it make to demand that residents all keep "survival kits," or a three-day supply of water or a generator to keep their insulin cold? Just how long should we have to wait for a federal response to a disaster or terrorist attack, anyway?
Rightwing talking point 4: The examples of the city of Houston during Hurricane Rita and the states of Alabama and Mississippi during Hurricane Katrina show that large US cities and whole regions of states can indeed by evacuated very quickly.
Houston, Mississippi and Alabama prove nothing of the kind. In Houston, literally thousands of motorists ran out of gas on the clogged freeways, frozen to a near-halt, trying to get out. Many who were running out of gas decided to turn around and go back home before their gas tanks did run empty.
On the day before Rita hit, officials finally rounded up some gas tankers and sent them to the crawling highways to try to refuel all the stalled motorists. On the same day, Houston emergency officials told these same stranded motorists to please turn around and go back home (into the wrath of Rita).
Officials indicated it was too late for them to make it out of Rita's path to safety. Officials finally implemented contra-flow on the highways (both directions on a 2-way highway going the same day), but this was done much too late.
Regarding Alabama, residents of Mobile have informed us that most of Mobile was not evacuated; the vast majority simply refused to leave.
And if Mississippi did such a great job of getting 100% of its population out of the way, how did 228 Mississippians die in the storm? In fact, the available evidence indicates that NOLA did a much better job of evacuating people than Mississippi did.
This post was written with the assistance of valuable posts from "Robin" on the alt.politics.democrats Usenet group.
The unofficial death toll for Hurricane Katrina fell by six to 1,356 on Thursday, October 26. The total number of bodies received in Louisiana mortuaries from the storm is now at 1,062, however, it has been determined that 12 of those people were not killed by the storm, but instead died from other causes.
Louisiana is continuing to discover about one new body every day on average, but they body recovery rate is clearly declining rapidly. My previous posting noted that relatives of some supposed Katrina victims, including a fellow named Jason Zito, were upset because their loved ones were included in the death count, while the protestors said that in fact, the so-called hurricane victims had died from other unrelated causes.
Just under 50% of the bodies have been identified, a sorry figure, but quite a bit higher than previous tolls. It looks like major progress is finally being made in identifying bodies. Also, the cost of Hurricane Katrina, a little-reported story, is now estimated at an incredible $200 billion.
Furthermore, the city of NOLA seems destined to be devastated far into the future, as I noted in a previous post recently. Estimates are that the future population of NOLA will be reduced by an astounding 50% and the city's budget will be hammered by a 2/3 reduction. 250,000 homes are uninhabitable, a surreal figure.
Republican talking heads continue to hammer on the issue of the initial death toll being inflated. But as the "Numbers Guy" column in the Wall Street Journal notes, such overestimates are commonplace in the early days after a disaster and also occurred after 9-11.
An earlier column by the same author deals with the whole array of issues surrounding of death tolls and tolls of the missing after wars and disasters.
Topics include how accurate they are, counts of the missing, why tolls vary, how long it takes to get a real count and how they determine if someone actually died in the storm. The first column notes that the inflated dead, missing and evacuee totals after the storm were reported by various outlets ranging across the political spectrum.
It is simply not appropriate to use the excessive initial death estimate of Katrina as a liberals-are-evil-liars talking point, and it's vaguely disrespectful to the victims and their loved ones anyway as the suggestion is,"Hey, Katrina wasn't so bad after all." Recommended reading.
The roundup:
Louisiana: Thur., October 27: 1,050 Mississippi: Wed., October 19: 228 Florida: Wed., October 19: 14 Alabama: Wed., October 19: 2 Georgia: Wed., October 19: 2 Ohio1: Fri., September 23: 2 Kentucky2: Fri., September 23: 1 Evacuees3: Tues. October 4: 57 Total: 1,356Footnoted totals are controversial. Explanations for controversial totals follows:
1The Ohio victims are Cassondra Ground, 19, of Monroeville, Ohio and Thelma Niedzinski, 84, of Norwalk, Ohio. Both were killed in a car accident near Monroeville, Ohio on August 30, 2005. The Ohio State Highway Patrol felt that a wet road caused by Hurricane Katrina caused the car accident. See Ohioans Focus on Helping Katrina Victims, by Jay Cohen, Associated Press , August 31, 2005
2The Kentucky victim was Deanna Petsch, 10, of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. On August 29, 2005, she fell into a Hurricane Katrina-swollen ditch in Hopkinsville and drowned. See Storm Surge: State Gets Soaked, City Avoids Major Flooding, Homes, Life Lost in Hopkinsville , Sheldon S. Shafer and James Malone, The Louisville (Kentucky) Courier-Journal, August 31, 2005
353 of the 57 hurricane evacuee deaths occurred in Texas after evacuating the storm; the total includes two suicides in Texas. Two more evacuees died in Tennessee. Two other evacuees died in an unknown location.
I consider all of these deaths to be storm-related, and it is my understanding that authorities felt they were hurricane-related also. The evacuees section is particularly controversial.
Critics have suggested that the evacuee death toll of 57 deaths is simply a normal death toll for the huge number of evacuees. Yet the figure of 57 dead is far lower than the number of evacuees who died after the storm - a very large number of evacuees died post-Katrina, but the vast majority of them are not included in this tally.
For example, this tally mostly includes evacuees in Texas, omitting the huge number of evacuees from Louisiana, for whom a dubious zero deaths are recorded. Furthermore, evacuees in very poor health or on the verge of death post-Katrina never even made it to Texas; they were evacuated to hospitals, often via airplane.
It is my understanding that officials consider the 57 deaths (mostly in Texas) that occurred very soon after the hurricane to be hurricane-related. Apparently most of the deaths were exacerbated by the stress of the hurricane. The two suicides in Texas have also been questioned.
However, they both occurred very rapidly after the storm and I understand that they are considered to be hurricane-related. There have been many more suicides post-Katrina that are not yet included in this tally.
This section needs further research. Critics with valid data helping to clarify the evacuee death toll are encouraged to email me at the email address at the top right of this page. See 57 Evacuees Reported Dead; At Least 2 Committed Suicide, Steve Quinn, Associated Press, September 15, 2005.
Rightwing talking point 1: Sure, Cuba can evacuate people well in a hurricane, but that's because they don't have a free society. In a free society such as ours, the Cuban evacuation model cannot be emulated.
A commenter named "flick100785" on the Usenet newsgroup alt.terrorism.world-trade-center answered this challenge better than I ever could on October 3. I quote (edited):
You see, the Cubans have stocks of emergency supplies for all because they have no class of redneck Yuppies who refuse to pay taxes.Rightwing talking point 2: Nagin's NOLA government failed to get the NOLA population evacuated in a timely manner.
And it happens to be progress for a state to grow from commanding people to leave land they've farmed to "forcing" them to accept help in fleeing a hurricane.
The very American idea that one is "free" sitting on a rooftop with your dawg and a cooler of rapidly warming beer is a redneck fantasy.
By definition, people in this group who post here to the effect that that is anything else other than a redneck fantasy are NOT in the situation which they seem to define as "freedom", because none of the people actually up s---'s creek in Nawlins owned laptops themselves, or, if they did, were able to connect to the Internet.
Indeed, we can more or less reconstruct the mental processes of clowns who here believe this crap. Basically, "government", to them, means the contemplation of their own wasted and degenerated super-ego, which, under the haze of their defective character, represents the super-ego's dreary commands to be a f-----g human being, like that of their long departed ex-wife.
In their fantasy life, they find it erotically charged to think of themselves partying on a roof like the "Cullud" people, but only in fantasy, and they defend therefore the freedom of shadows.
It is a uniquely American savagery to replace compassion by this content-less form of freedom.
I believe it was Baudrillard who shows how Disneyland has trained Americans to think in virtualized forms about real issues.
Or as T. S. Eliot, who happened to be an American poet after all, wrote:
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed in white and brown
Til human voices wake us and we drown.
I would like to request that someone please show me a single evacuation plan for any major US city that even claims that it is humanly *possible* to get 100% of the city's population out in only three days.
Because this is an impossibility, a potent federal response - in particular, a large federal search and rescue team that is on the ground and moving within 12 hours of the disaster -is necessary. If the National Guard or Coast Guard has a comprehensive plan ultimately supplied by the Commander in Chief, it is surely possible to get our men in uniform there and have them setting up basic operations within 12 hours.
Furthermore, attacks on Nagin's response need to note that the NOLA government did far better than any previous disaster run had predicted.
Rightwing talking point 3: Because Nagin failed to evacuate his city, the federal government is absolved of all responsibility for any Katrina deaths. And anyway, it's the residents' fault for not being prepared for disasters.
Is it really ok for NOLA citizens to have to wait for four whole days for any reasonable federal response to a disaster that the Feds knew about at least three days before it occurred?
What sense does it make to demand that residents all keep "survival kits," or a three-day supply of water or a generator to keep their insulin cold? Just how long should we have to wait for a federal response to a disaster or terrorist attack, anyway?
Rightwing talking point 4: The examples of the city of Houston during Hurricane Rita and the states of Alabama and Mississippi during Hurricane Katrina show that large US cities and whole regions of states can indeed by evacuated very quickly.
Houston, Mississippi and Alabama prove nothing of the kind. In Houston, literally thousands of motorists ran out of gas on the clogged freeways, frozen to a near-halt, trying to get out. Many who were running out of gas decided to turn around and go back home before their gas tanks did run empty.
On the day before Rita hit, officials finally rounded up some gas tankers and sent them to the crawling highways to try to refuel all the stalled motorists. On the same day, Houston emergency officials told these same stranded motorists to please turn around and go back home (into the wrath of Rita).
Officials indicated it was too late for them to make it out of Rita's path to safety. Officials finally implemented contra-flow on the highways (both directions on a 2-way highway going the same day), but this was done much too late.
Regarding Alabama, residents of Mobile have informed us that most of Mobile was not evacuated; the vast majority simply refused to leave.
And if Mississippi did such a great job of getting 100% of its population out of the way, how did 228 Mississippians die in the storm? In fact, the available evidence indicates that NOLA did a much better job of evacuating people than Mississippi did.
This post was written with the assistance of valuable posts from "Robin" on the alt.politics.democrats Usenet group.
Halloween costume of the year for 2005
With this unique do-it-yourself costume that recreates an indelible image from the prisoner-abuse scandal at the US Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, your child will be the hit of the neighborhood this Halloween.
It's easy! Instructions:
Take a sheet of 24"x38" black cardstock paper. Next, fashion a cone from the cardstock. Cut a hole in the cone big enough for the face of your youngster. The cone with the face hole will go over your child's head. Now take two yards of black felt and drape it over your child.
For the finishing touch, see if you can round up some leftover wires you may have lying around the house somewhere and place one long wire in each hand. For an extra touch of reality, you can attach the wires to a box and have your child stand on the box. Done! Simple, quick and impressive! Who ever thought torture could be so much fun?
Total cost: Under $20.
Total time: Under two hours.
Image from The Stranger, a very interesting alternative paper from Seattle.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Ted Westhusing An Apparent Suicide
Updated
February 7, 2008: An update to this piece, discussing conspiracy
theories on whether or not Ted Westhusing was murdered by contractors,
is here.
Having followed the story of the death of Col. Ted S. Westhusing, the highest-ranking US officer killed so far in the Iraq, since June 5, the date he died, it is with a heavy heart and much trepidation that I have finally arrived at the conclusion you read in the headline, that Ted's death was a suicide. Westhusing was a professor in the English Department at the US Military Academy at West Point who volunteered to go to Iraq.
Officially, Ted died of a non-combat injury at Camp Dublin near the Baghdad Airport. As of June 16, the date of Westhusing's funeral at West Point, the military was still conducting an investigation into the death, which could have been caused by accident, homicide or suicide. A blog posting on the No More Apples blog on Wednesday, June 8, along with many other clues, leads me the suicide theory.
The posting stated that the blogger, Motherlode, had heard on CNN's American Morning show that morning that Westhusing died of a single gunshot wound.
Photo of Motherlode here. She is the Director of Communications at a Fortune 250 construction company in Dallas, Texas. The implication is that he may have committed suicide, which seems odd given his basic character and the lack of reports that he was depressed.
In a later post, On Col. Westhusing's Death, Motherlode attempted to explain why she felt that Barbara Starr's reports from the Pentagon on June 8 made her feel that Westhusing may have been a suicide. Motherlode apparently received several letters from irate people accusing her of maligning the memory of this fine officer.
I managed to find a transcript (no longer available online) of Barbara Starr speaking to Soledad O'Brien and Bill Hemmer on CNN's Morning Show on June 8. If you read it you can see why the CNN show got Motherlode thinking. Starr says:
The next comment was just posted the other day by one of Westhusing's cousins, whom I am not going to name. Part of his (edited) comment is reproduced below (my comments are in brackets; the bolding of certain words was done by me):
I recently found a nice, but odd, obituary for Ted on a site for the West Point Class of 1983 (Ted graduated from West Point that year), with a great picture of a young Ted. This obit has very nice eulogies of Ted. His obituary is on the same page as a classmate, Lori Good Loucks. Sadly, Loucks seems to be an obvious suicide.
Lori was bipolar (manic-depressive), and in the midst of an episode of psychotic depression when she died of an unstated cause in a mental hospital. Although Dr. David A. Nash (West Point '83), administrator of the website, has assured me in an email that Ted's obit was next to Lori's purely by accident, the site does have sort of a Twilight Zone feel to it due to the speculation about the cause of Ted's death.
On the morning of June 8, I started getting search engine hits for "Ted Westhusing suicide", some from military sites like Centcom. That's what first got me thinking along those lines. I have now received many more search engine hits like that, including some more from the military. I didn't get my first "Ted Westhusing homicide" until today.
At this point, after spending hours investigating this story, we can rule out everything except accidental death and suicide. After adding up the clues, including the excessive silence typical and suggestive of shame and the strange silence of the investigative team, my best theory is that Ted committed suicide. But we really need to wait for the full investigation to have a final say on the matter.
For a long time, I thought the suicide theory didn't make sense due to Ted's superior character and life, which seemed to be the ultimate negation of the death instinct. At first glance, Ted seemed one of the people least likely to commit suicide.
Charles, the author of the fine blog The Fulcrum and a former classmate of Ted's, echoed my sentiments on comments on his site (no longer online). But Charles had not seen Ted since West Point (Ted and Charles were students at West Point in the early 80's). But the comments of Ted's cousin, quoted above, show that Ted Westhusing, the man who seemed like Superman, was really just as human as measly you and me.
In a way, Ted's suicide is terribly disturbing. For if a man like Ted, a warrior who stood tall as the tallest of men, the last man in the world you would think of as a suicide, can kill himself, then the world is a stranger and scarier place. Suicide, always mysterious, is more baffling than ever. And far more, maybe even all of us, are capable of killing ourselves, even if we don't think we are, a thought that strikes terror deep to the bone.
When he died, Ted was near the end of his deployment in Iraq, and was due to return to West Point this summer. Before he left, he was said to be very enthusiastic about going to Iraq to train Iraqi troops. Ted was also one of the nation's top experts on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which he apparently felt was over-diagnosed. Sounds like Ted was a real suck-it-up type.
Camp Dublin, where Ted died, is a very poorly-known US base that is probably located just outside Baghdad Airport. Dublin is apparently located adjacent to Camp Sather, a large US Air Force base inside Baghdad Airport on the west side. Camp Dublin may be located somewhere just west of the airport.
An overhead photo of Baghdad Airport is here; Camp Dublin is possibly located to the left of the area sketched in red on the photo, near the solid white line that represents the large runway on the west side of the airport. An overhead photo of the airport in comparison with the rest of Baghdad is here.
Many on the ground photos of Baghdad Airport are here. Photos of Camp Sather. Here airmen at Camp Sather walk amidst blackout conditions - the camp went to blackout as a force protection measure - after a major guerrilla attack in Baghdad.
Here Air Force Staff Sgt. Kristina Baker and her dog Rex are seen searching a car carrying equipment to set up a coffee shop on Camp Sather. The airmen at Camp Sather live in a relative luxury that would make most US forces in Iraq jealous. See here for details on the "luxurious" Air Force accommodations at Sather.
There is another reason that Camp Dublin is not widely-known. The camp was apparently set up to train the emergency-response unit (ERU) of the Iraqi police, an elite force. The ERU's duties are to carry out high-risk missions like hostage rescues and searches and arrests of high-value targets. The program is very rigorous, with a dropout rate of 70%. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld visited Dublin recently.
Here is a rare photo of Camp Dublin. At Dublin, Westhusing was serving as Senior Advisor for the Counter Terrorism Special Operations training program under the U.S. military’s Civilian Police Assistance Training Team (CPATT). That title apparently means he was in charge of training the ERU unit at Camp Dublin.
Here is the only photo I could find of Westhusing at Camp Dublin; in the photo, he is praising ERU forces for storming a training building and shooting targets of hostage takers without shooting the targets of the hostages or shooting each other. A hostage taker target peppered full of holes by Westhusing's ERU is here.
He had taught English at West Point since 2003. In his extremely distinguished career, he held a variety of staff and command positions in Army airborne units and in Army's 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea.
Westhusing was very highly educated, holding an incredible three separate doctorate degrees. His degrees were in philosophy, Russian language and military strategy. I do not think I have ever heard of any American getting three doctorates before!
Articles about Ted's unbelievable achievements, transcripts of his talks and presentations, and articles about him in general are here. Ted served as a consultant for the Discovery Channel's program on the Greek Trojan Horse. He also consulted on the movie Troy.
I realize I oppose this war, but Westhusing sounds like a fascinating guy, and I would have been honored to meet him. Great minds, great men, great souls and great spirits like Ted don't come along too often.
As noted above, Ted was buried at his beloved West Point, where he graduated, an incredible third in his class, in 1983. Ted leaves behind a wife, Michelle, of West Point, and the couple's three children, apparently two boys and one girl, all under age 12.
Anyway, tip of the hat and a toast to Colonel Ted S. Westhusing, an inspiration for all, and a prayer for his worldly soul, wherever it may be. As they say in Latin America when a great person, especially a fighter, dies, "Ted Westhusing, Presente!" Note: This idiom is not easily translated. It means something like, "Three cheers"; except it's said after the death of a hero, and it's often said in a tone of spirited defiance.
Those who are unconvinced and prefer conspiracy theories, there are theories out there on the Net (no longer archived) that Ted was double-crossed and shot dead by one of the Iraqi police he was training.
The shame of a top officer being killed inside a US base was so great that the military is covering it up. Lauren Westhusing, Ted's niece and a fine soul, doesn't believe Ted was a suicide in her comment here, but she may have her reasons for believing that.
Me? I am about done with this story. Surely, as Ted's death continues to percolate through the media, we will hear more moving eulogies, theories and counter-theories about his death, and accusations of tarnishing Ted's character. A lot more back and forth, in other words. Unless there is something really newsworthy that adds to this piece, I will not be covering all of that.
I may add some more about Ted's life and achievements, and will add the findings of the military investigation, assuming they eventually wrap it up and publicize the findings.
Let us now close with some eulogies for Ted. From Eric Alterman's column, look for comments by Joseph Alferio, Dr. James R. Goetsch Jr., Charles Perez, Bruce Henke and finally, Major Bob Bateman from Iraq. From The Fulcrum blog, a neat little eulogy.
Having followed the story of the death of Col. Ted S. Westhusing, the highest-ranking US officer killed so far in the Iraq, since June 5, the date he died, it is with a heavy heart and much trepidation that I have finally arrived at the conclusion you read in the headline, that Ted's death was a suicide. Westhusing was a professor in the English Department at the US Military Academy at West Point who volunteered to go to Iraq.
Officially, Ted died of a non-combat injury at Camp Dublin near the Baghdad Airport. As of June 16, the date of Westhusing's funeral at West Point, the military was still conducting an investigation into the death, which could have been caused by accident, homicide or suicide. A blog posting on the No More Apples blog on Wednesday, June 8, along with many other clues, leads me the suicide theory.
The posting stated that the blogger, Motherlode, had heard on CNN's American Morning show that morning that Westhusing died of a single gunshot wound.
Photo of Motherlode here. She is the Director of Communications at a Fortune 250 construction company in Dallas, Texas. The implication is that he may have committed suicide, which seems odd given his basic character and the lack of reports that he was depressed.
In a later post, On Col. Westhusing's Death, Motherlode attempted to explain why she felt that Barbara Starr's reports from the Pentagon on June 8 made her feel that Westhusing may have been a suicide. Motherlode apparently received several letters from irate people accusing her of maligning the memory of this fine officer.
I managed to find a transcript (no longer available online) of Barbara Starr speaking to Soledad O'Brien and Bill Hemmer on CNN's Morning Show on June 8. If you read it you can see why the CNN show got Motherlode thinking. Starr says:
"If it comes to it, they will conduct what they call a psychological autopsy. That will be conducted by Army medical personnel. That is the standard procedure in all of these cases. They will try and determine what factors were at play and what did happen here."My comment on Motherlode's later post is on her site, followed by her response. An irate comment by a poster telling those of us reporting on his death to butt out follows. The irate poster makes some interesting points about the possibility of Westhusing dying of an accident, but unfortunately, if you read his post, he actually ends up also suggesting Westhusing may have been a suicide.
The next comment was just posted the other day by one of Westhusing's cousins, whom I am not going to name. Part of his (edited) comment is reproduced below (my comments are in brackets; the bolding of certain words was done by me):
Was it an accident? There is pure danger, as Anonymous mentioned, everywhere, yet that wasn’t what I think caused his death. Motherlode, you mention "accusations that you had maligned Col. Westhusing's reputation".In a further (edited) comment (no longer available online) this morning by the same cousin on The Fulcrum blog, he elaborates further on his theory:
Seeking the truth is admirable, and we all can only sort through what we believe are true facts and come to a hypothesis, as Robert clarified. In all the press I have been searching, it is here in these blogs that I think the truth is closest to the honest answer that I am searching for. Thank you all.
In a letter my mother (RL: Possibly Westhusing's sister?) sent to me over a month ago regarding Ted, it mentioned that he was frustrated with all the distrust, lying and killing by the contractors and also by the Iraqi police amongst each other and in police cases where they were supposed to be protecting people.
He felt it was unsolvable. He had asked for prayers, saying they were "really needed now". The letter mentions that he was fed up with the Army and was getting out. I read this and then put more facts together …one bullet, non-combat, closed casket, no info from military to the public and it seems like the worst may have happened.
I am sad, too, that I think...and I am thinking out loud, to be frank and honest, and striving for the truth in this crazy war where facts are hard to get. I say it looks like he may have committed suicide, by piecing facts and emails and Internet news and blogs together.A story on June 16 about Westhusing's funeral contained quoted Army spokeswoman Martha Rudd about the investigation into Ted's death:
I don’t want to cause problems by claiming this. I just want to know what happened. If it did happen, as I suspect, I would like to know why. Actually, I think the world might need to know the effects of what is going on. Thanks, Robert, for your well-covered blog.
"It's ongoing. When someone dies in Iraq or Kuwait that's not a combat death, the death is investigated. It doesn't mean there is anything criminally suspected here," she added.Take note of that last comment, which definitely seems to rule out homicide. That leaves us with accident or suicide. And why conduct a "psychological autopsy" (see Barbara Starr's comments above) in the case of an accident? Rudd's comment rules out homicide, while Starr's seems to rule out accidental death. By process of elimination, that leaves us with only suicide as the sole remaining cause of death.
I recently found a nice, but odd, obituary for Ted on a site for the West Point Class of 1983 (Ted graduated from West Point that year), with a great picture of a young Ted. This obit has very nice eulogies of Ted. His obituary is on the same page as a classmate, Lori Good Loucks. Sadly, Loucks seems to be an obvious suicide.
Lori was bipolar (manic-depressive), and in the midst of an episode of psychotic depression when she died of an unstated cause in a mental hospital. Although Dr. David A. Nash (West Point '83), administrator of the website, has assured me in an email that Ted's obit was next to Lori's purely by accident, the site does have sort of a Twilight Zone feel to it due to the speculation about the cause of Ted's death.
On the morning of June 8, I started getting search engine hits for "Ted Westhusing suicide", some from military sites like Centcom. That's what first got me thinking along those lines. I have now received many more search engine hits like that, including some more from the military. I didn't get my first "Ted Westhusing homicide" until today.
At this point, after spending hours investigating this story, we can rule out everything except accidental death and suicide. After adding up the clues, including the excessive silence typical and suggestive of shame and the strange silence of the investigative team, my best theory is that Ted committed suicide. But we really need to wait for the full investigation to have a final say on the matter.
For a long time, I thought the suicide theory didn't make sense due to Ted's superior character and life, which seemed to be the ultimate negation of the death instinct. At first glance, Ted seemed one of the people least likely to commit suicide.
Charles, the author of the fine blog The Fulcrum and a former classmate of Ted's, echoed my sentiments on comments on his site (no longer online). But Charles had not seen Ted since West Point (Ted and Charles were students at West Point in the early 80's). But the comments of Ted's cousin, quoted above, show that Ted Westhusing, the man who seemed like Superman, was really just as human as measly you and me.
In a way, Ted's suicide is terribly disturbing. For if a man like Ted, a warrior who stood tall as the tallest of men, the last man in the world you would think of as a suicide, can kill himself, then the world is a stranger and scarier place. Suicide, always mysterious, is more baffling than ever. And far more, maybe even all of us, are capable of killing ourselves, even if we don't think we are, a thought that strikes terror deep to the bone.
When he died, Ted was near the end of his deployment in Iraq, and was due to return to West Point this summer. Before he left, he was said to be very enthusiastic about going to Iraq to train Iraqi troops. Ted was also one of the nation's top experts on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which he apparently felt was over-diagnosed. Sounds like Ted was a real suck-it-up type.
Camp Dublin, where Ted died, is a very poorly-known US base that is probably located just outside Baghdad Airport. Dublin is apparently located adjacent to Camp Sather, a large US Air Force base inside Baghdad Airport on the west side. Camp Dublin may be located somewhere just west of the airport.
An overhead photo of Baghdad Airport is here; Camp Dublin is possibly located to the left of the area sketched in red on the photo, near the solid white line that represents the large runway on the west side of the airport. An overhead photo of the airport in comparison with the rest of Baghdad is here.
Many on the ground photos of Baghdad Airport are here. Photos of Camp Sather. Here airmen at Camp Sather walk amidst blackout conditions - the camp went to blackout as a force protection measure - after a major guerrilla attack in Baghdad.
Here Air Force Staff Sgt. Kristina Baker and her dog Rex are seen searching a car carrying equipment to set up a coffee shop on Camp Sather. The airmen at Camp Sather live in a relative luxury that would make most US forces in Iraq jealous. See here for details on the "luxurious" Air Force accommodations at Sather.
There is another reason that Camp Dublin is not widely-known. The camp was apparently set up to train the emergency-response unit (ERU) of the Iraqi police, an elite force. The ERU's duties are to carry out high-risk missions like hostage rescues and searches and arrests of high-value targets. The program is very rigorous, with a dropout rate of 70%. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld visited Dublin recently.
Here is a rare photo of Camp Dublin. At Dublin, Westhusing was serving as Senior Advisor for the Counter Terrorism Special Operations training program under the U.S. military’s Civilian Police Assistance Training Team (CPATT). That title apparently means he was in charge of training the ERU unit at Camp Dublin.
Here is the only photo I could find of Westhusing at Camp Dublin; in the photo, he is praising ERU forces for storming a training building and shooting targets of hostage takers without shooting the targets of the hostages or shooting each other. A hostage taker target peppered full of holes by Westhusing's ERU is here.
He had taught English at West Point since 2003. In his extremely distinguished career, he held a variety of staff and command positions in Army airborne units and in Army's 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea.
Westhusing was very highly educated, holding an incredible three separate doctorate degrees. His degrees were in philosophy, Russian language and military strategy. I do not think I have ever heard of any American getting three doctorates before!
Articles about Ted's unbelievable achievements, transcripts of his talks and presentations, and articles about him in general are here. Ted served as a consultant for the Discovery Channel's program on the Greek Trojan Horse. He also consulted on the movie Troy.
I realize I oppose this war, but Westhusing sounds like a fascinating guy, and I would have been honored to meet him. Great minds, great men, great souls and great spirits like Ted don't come along too often.
As noted above, Ted was buried at his beloved West Point, where he graduated, an incredible third in his class, in 1983. Ted leaves behind a wife, Michelle, of West Point, and the couple's three children, apparently two boys and one girl, all under age 12.
Anyway, tip of the hat and a toast to Colonel Ted S. Westhusing, an inspiration for all, and a prayer for his worldly soul, wherever it may be. As they say in Latin America when a great person, especially a fighter, dies, "Ted Westhusing, Presente!" Note: This idiom is not easily translated. It means something like, "Three cheers"; except it's said after the death of a hero, and it's often said in a tone of spirited defiance.
Those who are unconvinced and prefer conspiracy theories, there are theories out there on the Net (no longer archived) that Ted was double-crossed and shot dead by one of the Iraqi police he was training.
The shame of a top officer being killed inside a US base was so great that the military is covering it up. Lauren Westhusing, Ted's niece and a fine soul, doesn't believe Ted was a suicide in her comment here, but she may have her reasons for believing that.
Me? I am about done with this story. Surely, as Ted's death continues to percolate through the media, we will hear more moving eulogies, theories and counter-theories about his death, and accusations of tarnishing Ted's character. A lot more back and forth, in other words. Unless there is something really newsworthy that adds to this piece, I will not be covering all of that.
I may add some more about Ted's life and achievements, and will add the findings of the military investigation, assuming they eventually wrap it up and publicize the findings.
Let us now close with some eulogies for Ted. From Eric Alterman's column, look for comments by Joseph Alferio, Dr. James R. Goetsch Jr., Charles Perez, Bruce Henke and finally, Major Bob Bateman from Iraq. From The Fulcrum blog, a neat little eulogy.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
The Yezidis - A Mysterious Kurdish Religious Sect
Update February 7, 2008. About two years after the publication of this post, I wrote an update to this article, Do the Yezidis Worship the Devil? which goes into much more detail about the religion.
Saturday, June 25:
2 German soldiers went missing in Afghanistan and are presumed dead.
Afternoon: An explosion at a NATO munitions store near an airbase in Rustaq, the capital of Takhar Province, left 2 German soldiers missing and presumed dead. 1 soldier and 7 Afghan civilians were wounded. Rustaq is 190 miles north of Kabul and close to the border with Tajikistan.
Madrid - 7 PM: A car bomb went off shortly after a phoned warning by the ETA Basque nationalist guerrillas. Photo of the blast here. For background on the armed Basque movement, which this blog supports, see my post here.
*****
Kurdistan: Since hardly anyone has any idea about who or what the Yezidis are, an introduction is in order. The Yezidis are a minority religious group that lives in Northern Iraq, Eastern Turkey, Eastern Syria, Armenia, Northwestern Iran, Georgia, Russia and Germany.
Some estimates put the number of Yezidis at 100,000. However, Yezidi spokesmen say there are 600,000 Yezidis, mostly in Iraq. Other estimates put the number of Yezidis as high as 2 million. There are 10,000 Yezidi refugees in Germany. German Yezidis have created a home page to help introduce others to their religion, but unfortunately it is all in German.
The Yezidis are more of a religious than an ethnic grouping. All Yezidis are Kurds and they all speak Kurdish. In Iraq, most of them live north of Mosul and in the Sinjar Mountains near the Syrian border. There are also Yezidis in Tel Afar, Mosul and the city of Sinjar. Iraq's Yezidis are seizing Iraq's democratic moment to press for their rights for the first time.
Yezidis, who actually admit to "worshiping the devil", have long been persecuted by Muslims as heathens and devil-worshipers. Although it's true that the Yezidis worship a peacock angel they call Lucifer, they are basically good, upstanding, moral people. They are not in any way analogous to the actual devil-worshipers who exist in the West, like Anton Levay's Church of Satan (COS), etc.
Note:This blog received a letter from a COS member who claimed that I was defaming the Church of Satan. I honestly did not think such a thing was possible! Upon review, the COS does not exactly promote the doctrine of the "evil Satanists" of popular conception.
Instead, they are some sort of ultra-selfish, hedonistic, Ayn Rand objectivist-libertarians. Although that's not an objectively evil philosophy, it's pretty noxious from my point of view.
My conclusion is that the COS are just a bunch of Republicans without the crazy fundamentalist Christian nonsense. Bush and all of his reactionary supporters should join the COS, but they are too uptight and puritanical to do it. Aside from the hedonism aspect, all forms of far right and ultraright politics would fit right in with the COS.
My German Communist friend tells me that the COS also has a fascist aspect that they try to hide and is not obvious on first glance. I think he is onto something. Apologists from the reactionary COS are invited to respond via email, or politely, via comments. Until then, I urge all progressives to approach the reactionary COS with utmost caution.
I know the orgies and dope parties sound like a blast, but there is nothing progressive about objectivism! A good progressive statement is (fist in the air): "Down with the COS!" If you like dope and orgies, there are plenty of fine progressive folks to party with, so there is no need to lie down with reactionary dogs like the COS.
Yezidis do not believe in Heaven or Hell, and they do not regard Satan, who they regard as the Chief of the Angels, as evil. Instead, he is sacred. The Yezidis feel the devil created the world and is de facto in charge right now. From the perspective of my life at the moment, those scenarios seem distinctly possible.
Yezidis are allowed to eat pork, unlike Muslims. But bizarrely, they cannot eat lettuce (because the Kurdish word for lettuce rhymes with their word for devil) or wear yellow (!).
Like the Zoroastrians, Yezidis do not accept converts - a tendency which may result in the end of Yezidism with time. Yezidism shares many things with Zoroastrianism, and some commenters regard it as either a Zoroastrian sect or a religion with roots in Zoroastrianism.
My opinion is that a synthesis between Zoroastrianism, Islam, Judaism (!) and pre-religious paganism is more accurate. It is likely the Yezidism predates all of these - Zoroastrianism, Islam and Judaism - in fact, it may be one of the oldest extant human religions.
Somewhat similar to the caste system of Hinduism, another ancient religion, Yezidis have seven levels of initiation, or classes. The classes are princes, sheiks, senators, seers, ascetics and the community of the faithful. The large faith community class makes up 70% of the community.
This split, with a small elite sect who retain most of the (oral) knowledge of the religion and a large majority of mere followers who are kept in the dark about most of the religion, is also similar to other "secret" religions in the area, including the Sabeans, the Druze and Alawi.
The Alawi of Syria and Lebanon are a highly divergent Shia sect, a split-off from the extremist Nusairi split early in the history of Shiism. Although the Druze call themselves Muslims, it is probable that they are not Muslims at all since their religion is so divergent. Instead, like Bahaism, the Druze religion is more properly considered to be related to Islam rather than part of Islam proper.
The Druze date back to the 1100's and also seem to be the result of a Shia split, similar to the split that birthed Alawism. Both sects persisted via extreme tribalism, refusing intermarriage, accepting no converts, keeping their religion secret, pretending to be Muslims to avoid persecution while still practicing the religion in secret, and especially, seeking shelter in the difficult, mountainous terrain of the Levant.
The Sabeans or Mandeans of Iraq are probably the last remains of the ancient Gnostic religion; they may also be former Diasporic Sephardic Jews (!) who split off from Judaism in Iraq around the year 600. The Mandeans also worship the North Star, revere John the Baptist and consider Jesus Christ as the font of all evil on Earth!
In Yezidism, marriage across classes is strictly forbidden, again reminiscent of Hinduism. Although the new Iraqi regime is basically a puppet regime of US colonialism, at least the Yezidis do have three members of the new Iraqi Parliament, all elected on the Kurdish list.
Saddam's regime persecuted the Yezidis first for being Kurds, and second for their religion, as they were viewed as heathens. Yes, Saddam's regime was not completely secular. Under Saddam's extremely racist, fascist-like, Sunni Arab Nationalist regime, Yezidis, Kurds, Assyrians, Shia and Turkomen were all persecuted by the Ba'ath Party.
For instance, Assyrian Christians were denied an identity by the Baath and referred to as "Kurdish Christians". The Baath forbade the use of the Assyrian or Turkoman languages in the schools. Yezidi religious studies have been banned in Iraq since 1963, the year of the Baathist coup.
In its censuses, Baathist Arab nationalist racists called the Yezidis "an Arabic people", clearly a falsehood. Saddam's racist Arab regime engaged in ethnic cleansing of the Yezidis on several occasions. Usually, the Yezidis were driven off their land onto other lands, and their land was given to nearby Arabs.
In 1978, 126 Yezidi villages in Sinjar were "collectivized" into 10 villages, while 10 villages near Dahuk were destroyed and the villagers were forced into another village. The new villages created for the Yezidis lacked even basic health care, and it was hard to earn a living. Arab invaders who colonized Yezidi lands forbade the Yezidi from herding animals, and the new villages the Yezidis were pushed into lacked decent pasture.
In 1997, two Yezidi teachers from Elqush were arrested by Saddam's sadistic intelligence services and tortured until they agreed to stop teaching the Yezidi religion, an act of naked fascism.
In the same year, in Ayn Sufna, Baathist racist fascists stole 1,500 Yezidi properties and gave them to racist Arab and Kurdish tribes in the region. Saddam's army surrounded a Yezidi village in 2000, but left after the Yezidis staged a defiant demonstration.
In the no-fly zones formed by the allies in the Kurdish Regional Government area of Iraq instituted after the Gulf War, the Yezidis have fared much better than they did under Saddam.
They liberated many villages that were seized by Arab colonists, and now school classes in the Yezidi religion are even taught in areas where there are good numbers of Yezidi pupils. However, since the US invasion, the Yezidi situation in some ways has worsened.
The entire north of Iraq has come under the control of Kurdish racist fascist parties, the KDP and PUK. These parties are lately promoting a sort of Kurdish Sunni racism which attacks Sunni and Shia Arabs, Shia, Christian and Yezidi Kurds and Assyrian Christians - in short, everyone who is not a Sunni Kurd.
The racist Sunni Kurds succeeded in preventing large numbers of all of these groups from voting in the election in February.
In the case of the Yezidis, Kurdish racists never even allowed polling stations to open in a number of Yezidi zones. Racist Sunni Kurds have been attacking and ethnically cleansing Assyrian Christian villages in the north for decades now, a process which accelerated when the Allies granted the Kurds their Kurdish Zone in 1991.
This is a continuation of long-standing Kurdish Sunni Muslim Nazi-like racism against Assyrian Christians extending back to the 1920's. In that decade, Kurdish Muslims gleefully slaughtered huge numbers of Assyrians in a naked display of Islamofascism that reached genocidal proportions.
Formally, the Yezidi religion was founded in the 1100's by Sheikh Uday bin Masafel al-Amawi. Uday was born in Damascus but died in Shaikan in northern Iraq. His tomb in Shaikan is now Yezidism's holiest site. As noted above, many scholars trace Yezidism to one of the world's oldest extant religions, Zoroastrianism, founded in ancient Persia.
Traditionally, Yezidism is variously regarded as either an offshoot of Zoroastrianism or Shia Islam. Those who say the Yezidis are Shia hold that they are an extreme Shia "Sevener" Ismaili sect similar to the Druze and the Alawi (see discussion of the Alawi and Druze above).
A better analysis is to regard Yezidism as a syncretic mix between Zoroastrianism and Shia Islam.
Others note Judaic traits in the Yezidis; some suggest that the Yezidis are former Jews who broke away from Judaism and formed a new religion. Indeed, some theorists that the Kurds in general are former Jews. See Rabbi Joe Katz's Eretzyisroel site for more on that interesting theory, which may have some validity.
The best analysis would leaven the Zoroastrian-Shia syncretism of Yezidism with dollops of Judaism and tablespoons of ancient paganism, while noting the Yezidism is probably older than any of its parts except for the pagan.
Oddly enough, the Yezidis have a monk and nun class, men and women who dress in white and have taken a vow of celibacy. Yezidis are also said to be sun worshipers, in another similarity with Zoroastrianism.
A famous Yezidi, Sharfadin, has a tomb in Sinjar. Sharfadin also serves as a personified sun god. Note that sun-worship is one of the most ancient of human religious tenets, dating back to the Egyptians and probably beyond.
The leader of the Yezidis is a prince called mir, or mireh shekha. The Yezidi religion is passed down orally through families and officially, there are no Yezidi religious texts. However, closer analysis seems to reveal that there are a couple of Yezidi holy books, but they are hidden by followers, and their existence is denied to outsiders.
Outsiders have somehow managed to get a hold of a couple of copies of these holy texts, or at least parts of them, and they have been published, both in print and on the Internet. Some say that these supposed Yezidi holy texts are actually fakes and that no extant holy texts exist, as all knowledge is oral.
I glanced through the material in these texts along with an analysis of them. Shall we say that Yezidism is an immensely complex religion and that this article does not begin to tickle out an understanding of it?
Kakaism is another Kurdish sect that is very similar to Yezidism. It arose 1,000 years ago in northern Iraq due to conflicts between the Umayyad rulers of Islam and the Zoroastrian priesthood. Kakais, like Yezidis, are forbidden from cursing Satan on religious grounds. Hence, many Muslims see them, like the Yezidis, as devil-worshipers. There are 300,000 Kakais in Kurdistan.
*****
Saturday, June 25:
2 German soldiers went missing in Afghanistan and are presumed dead.
Afternoon: An explosion at a NATO munitions store near an airbase in Rustaq, the capital of Takhar Province, left 2 German soldiers missing and presumed dead. 1 soldier and 7 Afghan civilians were wounded. Rustaq is 190 miles north of Kabul and close to the border with Tajikistan.
Madrid - 7 PM: A car bomb went off shortly after a phoned warning by the ETA Basque nationalist guerrillas. Photo of the blast here. For background on the armed Basque movement, which this blog supports, see my post here.
*****
Kurdistan: Since hardly anyone has any idea about who or what the Yezidis are, an introduction is in order. The Yezidis are a minority religious group that lives in Northern Iraq, Eastern Turkey, Eastern Syria, Armenia, Northwestern Iran, Georgia, Russia and Germany.
Some estimates put the number of Yezidis at 100,000. However, Yezidi spokesmen say there are 600,000 Yezidis, mostly in Iraq. Other estimates put the number of Yezidis as high as 2 million. There are 10,000 Yezidi refugees in Germany. German Yezidis have created a home page to help introduce others to their religion, but unfortunately it is all in German.
The Yezidis are more of a religious than an ethnic grouping. All Yezidis are Kurds and they all speak Kurdish. In Iraq, most of them live north of Mosul and in the Sinjar Mountains near the Syrian border. There are also Yezidis in Tel Afar, Mosul and the city of Sinjar. Iraq's Yezidis are seizing Iraq's democratic moment to press for their rights for the first time.
Yezidis, who actually admit to "worshiping the devil", have long been persecuted by Muslims as heathens and devil-worshipers. Although it's true that the Yezidis worship a peacock angel they call Lucifer, they are basically good, upstanding, moral people. They are not in any way analogous to the actual devil-worshipers who exist in the West, like Anton Levay's Church of Satan (COS), etc.
Note:This blog received a letter from a COS member who claimed that I was defaming the Church of Satan. I honestly did not think such a thing was possible! Upon review, the COS does not exactly promote the doctrine of the "evil Satanists" of popular conception.
Instead, they are some sort of ultra-selfish, hedonistic, Ayn Rand objectivist-libertarians. Although that's not an objectively evil philosophy, it's pretty noxious from my point of view.
My conclusion is that the COS are just a bunch of Republicans without the crazy fundamentalist Christian nonsense. Bush and all of his reactionary supporters should join the COS, but they are too uptight and puritanical to do it. Aside from the hedonism aspect, all forms of far right and ultraright politics would fit right in with the COS.
My German Communist friend tells me that the COS also has a fascist aspect that they try to hide and is not obvious on first glance. I think he is onto something. Apologists from the reactionary COS are invited to respond via email, or politely, via comments. Until then, I urge all progressives to approach the reactionary COS with utmost caution.
I know the orgies and dope parties sound like a blast, but there is nothing progressive about objectivism! A good progressive statement is (fist in the air): "Down with the COS!" If you like dope and orgies, there are plenty of fine progressive folks to party with, so there is no need to lie down with reactionary dogs like the COS.
Yezidis do not believe in Heaven or Hell, and they do not regard Satan, who they regard as the Chief of the Angels, as evil. Instead, he is sacred. The Yezidis feel the devil created the world and is de facto in charge right now. From the perspective of my life at the moment, those scenarios seem distinctly possible.
Yezidis are allowed to eat pork, unlike Muslims. But bizarrely, they cannot eat lettuce (because the Kurdish word for lettuce rhymes with their word for devil) or wear yellow (!).
Like the Zoroastrians, Yezidis do not accept converts - a tendency which may result in the end of Yezidism with time. Yezidism shares many things with Zoroastrianism, and some commenters regard it as either a Zoroastrian sect or a religion with roots in Zoroastrianism.
My opinion is that a synthesis between Zoroastrianism, Islam, Judaism (!) and pre-religious paganism is more accurate. It is likely the Yezidism predates all of these - Zoroastrianism, Islam and Judaism - in fact, it may be one of the oldest extant human religions.
Somewhat similar to the caste system of Hinduism, another ancient religion, Yezidis have seven levels of initiation, or classes. The classes are princes, sheiks, senators, seers, ascetics and the community of the faithful. The large faith community class makes up 70% of the community.
This split, with a small elite sect who retain most of the (oral) knowledge of the religion and a large majority of mere followers who are kept in the dark about most of the religion, is also similar to other "secret" religions in the area, including the Sabeans, the Druze and Alawi.
The Alawi of Syria and Lebanon are a highly divergent Shia sect, a split-off from the extremist Nusairi split early in the history of Shiism. Although the Druze call themselves Muslims, it is probable that they are not Muslims at all since their religion is so divergent. Instead, like Bahaism, the Druze religion is more properly considered to be related to Islam rather than part of Islam proper.
The Druze date back to the 1100's and also seem to be the result of a Shia split, similar to the split that birthed Alawism. Both sects persisted via extreme tribalism, refusing intermarriage, accepting no converts, keeping their religion secret, pretending to be Muslims to avoid persecution while still practicing the religion in secret, and especially, seeking shelter in the difficult, mountainous terrain of the Levant.
The Sabeans or Mandeans of Iraq are probably the last remains of the ancient Gnostic religion; they may also be former Diasporic Sephardic Jews (!) who split off from Judaism in Iraq around the year 600. The Mandeans also worship the North Star, revere John the Baptist and consider Jesus Christ as the font of all evil on Earth!
In Yezidism, marriage across classes is strictly forbidden, again reminiscent of Hinduism. Although the new Iraqi regime is basically a puppet regime of US colonialism, at least the Yezidis do have three members of the new Iraqi Parliament, all elected on the Kurdish list.
Saddam's regime persecuted the Yezidis first for being Kurds, and second for their religion, as they were viewed as heathens. Yes, Saddam's regime was not completely secular. Under Saddam's extremely racist, fascist-like, Sunni Arab Nationalist regime, Yezidis, Kurds, Assyrians, Shia and Turkomen were all persecuted by the Ba'ath Party.
For instance, Assyrian Christians were denied an identity by the Baath and referred to as "Kurdish Christians". The Baath forbade the use of the Assyrian or Turkoman languages in the schools. Yezidi religious studies have been banned in Iraq since 1963, the year of the Baathist coup.
In its censuses, Baathist Arab nationalist racists called the Yezidis "an Arabic people", clearly a falsehood. Saddam's racist Arab regime engaged in ethnic cleansing of the Yezidis on several occasions. Usually, the Yezidis were driven off their land onto other lands, and their land was given to nearby Arabs.
In 1978, 126 Yezidi villages in Sinjar were "collectivized" into 10 villages, while 10 villages near Dahuk were destroyed and the villagers were forced into another village. The new villages created for the Yezidis lacked even basic health care, and it was hard to earn a living. Arab invaders who colonized Yezidi lands forbade the Yezidi from herding animals, and the new villages the Yezidis were pushed into lacked decent pasture.
In 1997, two Yezidi teachers from Elqush were arrested by Saddam's sadistic intelligence services and tortured until they agreed to stop teaching the Yezidi religion, an act of naked fascism.
In the same year, in Ayn Sufna, Baathist racist fascists stole 1,500 Yezidi properties and gave them to racist Arab and Kurdish tribes in the region. Saddam's army surrounded a Yezidi village in 2000, but left after the Yezidis staged a defiant demonstration.
In the no-fly zones formed by the allies in the Kurdish Regional Government area of Iraq instituted after the Gulf War, the Yezidis have fared much better than they did under Saddam.
They liberated many villages that were seized by Arab colonists, and now school classes in the Yezidi religion are even taught in areas where there are good numbers of Yezidi pupils. However, since the US invasion, the Yezidi situation in some ways has worsened.
The entire north of Iraq has come under the control of Kurdish racist fascist parties, the KDP and PUK. These parties are lately promoting a sort of Kurdish Sunni racism which attacks Sunni and Shia Arabs, Shia, Christian and Yezidi Kurds and Assyrian Christians - in short, everyone who is not a Sunni Kurd.
The racist Sunni Kurds succeeded in preventing large numbers of all of these groups from voting in the election in February.
In the case of the Yezidis, Kurdish racists never even allowed polling stations to open in a number of Yezidi zones. Racist Sunni Kurds have been attacking and ethnically cleansing Assyrian Christian villages in the north for decades now, a process which accelerated when the Allies granted the Kurds their Kurdish Zone in 1991.
This is a continuation of long-standing Kurdish Sunni Muslim Nazi-like racism against Assyrian Christians extending back to the 1920's. In that decade, Kurdish Muslims gleefully slaughtered huge numbers of Assyrians in a naked display of Islamofascism that reached genocidal proportions.
Formally, the Yezidi religion was founded in the 1100's by Sheikh Uday bin Masafel al-Amawi. Uday was born in Damascus but died in Shaikan in northern Iraq. His tomb in Shaikan is now Yezidism's holiest site. As noted above, many scholars trace Yezidism to one of the world's oldest extant religions, Zoroastrianism, founded in ancient Persia.
Traditionally, Yezidism is variously regarded as either an offshoot of Zoroastrianism or Shia Islam. Those who say the Yezidis are Shia hold that they are an extreme Shia "Sevener" Ismaili sect similar to the Druze and the Alawi (see discussion of the Alawi and Druze above).
A better analysis is to regard Yezidism as a syncretic mix between Zoroastrianism and Shia Islam.
Others note Judaic traits in the Yezidis; some suggest that the Yezidis are former Jews who broke away from Judaism and formed a new religion. Indeed, some theorists that the Kurds in general are former Jews. See Rabbi Joe Katz's Eretzyisroel site for more on that interesting theory, which may have some validity.
The best analysis would leaven the Zoroastrian-Shia syncretism of Yezidism with dollops of Judaism and tablespoons of ancient paganism, while noting the Yezidism is probably older than any of its parts except for the pagan.
Oddly enough, the Yezidis have a monk and nun class, men and women who dress in white and have taken a vow of celibacy. Yezidis are also said to be sun worshipers, in another similarity with Zoroastrianism.
A famous Yezidi, Sharfadin, has a tomb in Sinjar. Sharfadin also serves as a personified sun god. Note that sun-worship is one of the most ancient of human religious tenets, dating back to the Egyptians and probably beyond.
The leader of the Yezidis is a prince called mir, or mireh shekha. The Yezidi religion is passed down orally through families and officially, there are no Yezidi religious texts. However, closer analysis seems to reveal that there are a couple of Yezidi holy books, but they are hidden by followers, and their existence is denied to outsiders.
Outsiders have somehow managed to get a hold of a couple of copies of these holy texts, or at least parts of them, and they have been published, both in print and on the Internet. Some say that these supposed Yezidi holy texts are actually fakes and that no extant holy texts exist, as all knowledge is oral.
I glanced through the material in these texts along with an analysis of them. Shall we say that Yezidism is an immensely complex religion and that this article does not begin to tickle out an understanding of it?
Kakaism is another Kurdish sect that is very similar to Yezidism. It arose 1,000 years ago in northern Iraq due to conflicts between the Umayyad rulers of Islam and the Zoroastrian priesthood. Kakais, like Yezidis, are forbidden from cursing Satan on religious grounds. Hence, many Muslims see them, like the Yezidis, as devil-worshipers. There are 300,000 Kakais in Kurdistan.
*****
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
