Blogger Bill

It’s been almost a month since I posted. I find it hard to think of something I’m going to think is interesting to people, and that’s because most of my thought processes I do not consider would be of interest to anyone else, even though they are to me. The other reason is that I make too many mistakes while typing, and I get anxious about that. It irritates the buggery out of me, because I think that after all these decades I ought to be able to type properly, but I can’t do it to my satisfaction. I transpose letetrs insdie words (just like that), and don’t hold down the shift key strongly enough, so capitals get missed out.

I have an underlying anxiety that I handle by doing only what I want to do in my life, as far as I can manage and try to be philosophical about the rest. And by pills, mainly analgesics for chronic back pain. the pain is pretty bad, and constant. I wake up to, and go to sleep over it. Last night I slept 9½ hours!

Today I breakfasted, read The Age, got on the computer, where I read the ABC news, Facebook (where I have a presence and a bunch of 43 ‘friends’), checked out some simple editing of my Fungi Home Page , where I correctly capitalized all of the 200 or so names of species in my species index list and uploaded the corrected page to my web page.

Then I got on the piano and played some carols, as I’m doing a paid gig at a retirement village in a week or so - just a bit of practice to get me up to speed.

For lunch I had a pork and salad sandwich and nibbled some celery and lettuce, plus a cup of strong coffee. Then I read more of my current book called “The Next Hundred Years”, in which the writer analyzes the world and tries to guess what might happen. It’s a field called geopolitics, and I find it quite interesting. Apparently America will stay dominant, Russia will disintegrate, France and Germany will weaken, Poland and Turkey will become very strong and expansive, the Caucasus, Eastern Europe and the Middle East will become turbulent and weakened, China will disintegrate a bit, and Japan will become very powerful in the Pacific, to the extent that Japan and the USA might be in conflict. Israel will stay strong. Space technology will expand, and become important militarily.

He doesn’t have a lot to say so far about militant Islam, which I think will become problematical to everyone. nor does he discuss nuclear proliferation and the effects of any use of nuclear weapons by smaller states such as Iran or Pakistan. Nor does he discuss the consequences of the effects of a further major terrorist attack on American politics, which I think could be telling.

And to my amazement, so far he hasn’t tackled the problem of anthropogenic climate change or even just global warming. I think that’s because he’s a conservative American academic and probably not a “believer” in these things. I think he’s wrong, and the geopolitical results of of those events will be tremendous, with changes in agriculture leading to mass migrations, water and food wars and huge suffering and turmoil.

I’m glad I won’t be around to see it all happen, in a way - not that I have any choice. But I view my death with equanimity. The way I feel most days is such that I don’t want it to have to go on for too many more decades!

Anyway, after a bit of a read I went for a walk around the “duckpond”. which as about a 2 km walk to a nearby park with a lake with ducks. It was quite hot and sunny, and I kept of getting waves of pain and faintness that comes upon when I walk a bit too fast. I’ve had it checked out several times by and “exercise test”, where I walk on a treadmill wired up to and ECG and so on, then immediately on stopping have a Doppler ultrasound. I came up with no disorders showing, which is a relief. The thing is, that I only get faint and painful in the head and chest when I do a brisk walk along the street or even just a quick putting out the bins!! It doesn’t happen when I do the exercise stress test!!

I came back from the walk, and lay on the bed in the dark, listening to the ABC on the radio, whereby I slept on and off for a couple of hours. Now I’ve come and typed this stuff in, for what it’s worth.

Now it’s getting on to teatime, so will have some cheese and biscuits, with a glass of sherry. Tea will be the second portion of a meal I cooked last night, namely beef in oyster sauce, with rice, which was a great success. I’m looking forward to it. Then it will be an evening of TV viewing, restricted to the ABC and SBS. It would have to be a bloody good film for me to view it on commercial TV, which I hate, mainly because of the ads, but also for the whole moronic mentality, with an emphasis on the trivial, the celebrities, the sport, and contrived “scares”, “crises” and such like.

We enjoy our TV so much more since we got a fairly large digital set, where everything is so much clearer and brighter. It’s something we can do together, whereas otherwise for me it’s books and the computer, and for her it’s gardening, housework, cooking and knitting - more or less, although we do overlap quite a bit - except that I don’t do knitting and she loves it!

I suppose that about eleven I’ll get back on the computer and she’ll go to bed. On the computer I’ll do some work with my graphics program, Paint Shop Pro 8. I need to create some headers for my fungi pages with images of fungi in them. For that I need to learn more about manipulating ‘layers’ for images editing. It’s not as easy as it looks. This morning I did some searching on the net for images of fungal hyphae/mycelium that I can overlay onto my graphics header panels. I’ll get there.

So that’s my day so far. They say that as you age you need to keep your mind active and engaged. I think I’m doing OK on that, as well as getting a bit of exercise.

Roll on the week!

Saudi Arabian authorities have beheaded and crucified a man convicted of killing an 11-year-old boy and his father.

The Saudis claim to stick to the letter of the Koran for the administration of their pure Islamic state. This is what Islamic jihadis all around the world are fighting to attain. It is a tenet of Islam to try and dominate any society (including ours if they can manage it.) In Islam there is no distinction between religious matters and socio-political matters. Muslims claim that the Koran offers a complete blueprint for any society, including the criminal justice code.

I must say that the prospect disgusts me. Such a process must be fought against tooth and nail.

What an repulsive society is Saudi Arabia! What a religion!

On the other hand it must be said that, for example, the USA has many people still on death row, and many states will have capital punishment on the books. There are some parts of the Bible that are pretty vindictive and bloody

What about the doctrine that the biblical God is a God of love, but also requires the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sins? Hence the crucifixion of Jesus. Something not quite right about this distasteful idea, methinks.

But beheading followed by crucifixion sounds so primitive and vindictive, doesn’t it? It kind of doesn’t figure - if you really wanted someone to suffer, why not crucify them first, for maximum agony, followed by beheading if you must.

Uuuurrgh!

Well, it’s been over a month since we arrived home from our 6-week caravan holiday in Central Australia, and it took that long before could no longer withstand the blandishments of television. But that’s not bad, is it? And we only ever watch ABC TV or SBS. But even the latter’s ads are becoming more and more brainless, aren’t they? As bad as commercial TV, which we only ever watch if that nice David Rabbitborough is telling us some more about Nature, of course. Snobs, we are.

In the caravan we have no TV, by choice, and because there’s no room. You can tell, because when you walk around the caravan parks at night you can see the blue glow from within their darkened shells and you know everyone’s watching TV. Probably the usual American drivel loaded with guns, crime, murder and sex. Or some totally brain-dead sitcom where people behave like we are afraid real Americans might really behave.

But at night in our superior caravan we read books. Lots of books. I read one (1) on a scientific study of whether or nor alternative medicine really works, and guess what - it doesn’t. That’s why it’s still “alternative”, because if it worked, everyone would be using it. And I read a deep one (2) about the sociology of Australian culture and politics - or was it the culture of Australian politics and sociology? Doesn’t matter - just so long as I can feel superior. No - just joking - I think…

And I read one (3) about the word of Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, in crap places like Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, DR of Congo, Bosnia, Kosovo, etc. Some of them have been literally crap places, because there are descriptions of the health workers actually paddling around in blood and faeces amidst the refugees. That was really sobering and infuriating. Infuriating that the UN can be so manipulated by the major nations of the world. The USA, Russia, France, Britain, and a horde of Islamic and African nations have a lot to answer for in some court of justice that unfortunately does not exist. Hundreds of thousands of humans suffer and die just because there are political struggles based on religion, or on the fight for ultimate control of territories and future resources such as petroleum and minerals. Very disturbing books, some of these.

In our caravan holidays we have a portable radio which may or may not pick up the local ABC radio stations - commercial is always useless for decent news, and loaded with inane ads and ghastly pop music. We almost never buy newspapers, by choice. We enjoy just talking together about our travel, reading our books, having the occasional chat with fellow travellers, and listening to the radio.

And so when we came home we chose to continue the relatively media-free existence. But we do read The Age daily - Glenyce first, then myself, later in the day. Often I barely bother, because I must confess to missing the internet while I was away. Occasionally I logged on to an internet café, usually to get the weather forecast, which is important when you’re on holiday.

But one major activity we do relish when away is writing our diaries. Every night before bedtime we get out our A4 exercise books and write about our day’s activities. Individually we write about the country we’ve seen, the sights we’ve seen, the people we’ve met, and the way we felt. Each night we write a page or a number of pages, and then when we’ve each finished we swap books and compare notes. It’s aways very interesting to see the differences and similarities of our daily stories. What’s more we find it an excellent exercise for our minds to sit down in this disciplined way and. string sentences together.

In our recent trip I wrote 92 A4 pages in my diary. One day it’s my intention to type it into my web site and together with photos, create an illustrated diary of our journey that might be of interest to others. That would be a big task, but I’ve done it before. In 2001 we did a 3-month caravan tour across to WA, which is illustrated in my web site as Bill Leithhead’s WA Trip Diary.

A whole blog item and no complaints about health or money!

References for books if you’re at all interested:-

1. Singh, Simon and Ernst, Edzard, “Trick or Treatment - Alternative Medicine On Trial”, Bantam Press, 2008.
2. Davis, Mark, “The Land of Plenty: Australia In the 2000s”, Melbourne University Press, 2008.
3. Orbinski, James, “An Imperfect Offering: dispatches from the medical frontline”, Text Publishing Melbourne Australia, 2008.

This is not going to win me many friends, but I want to declare my support of the right of the country of Israel to exist in peace. I am not Jewish and there is no family connection with Judaism; rather, I am an atheist with distant family connections to Denmark, Scotland and England.

It was during the last eruption of fighting between the Lebanese Hezbollah and Israel that I took to following the happenings closely, from both sides. Israel has been fighting for its life ever since it was formed in 1948 and is still doing so against potentially 201 million Arabs and other Muslims. It is a democracy with a free press. Its population range from the intensely religious Jews to the mostly more or less secular majority; among its citizens are Arabs and people of many other origins. It has been a place of refuge for millions of Jews who have been persecuted in countries from all over the world, but particularly Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia Africa and the Middle East. I believe that this is just.

I know that tens of thousands of Arabs fled Israel during the fighting after the declaration of nationhood for Israel, but the Arabs from all sides did attack Israel. In later conflicts Israel gained more territory, and Arabs left that, too. There are many web sites that cover all this history, which is complex in the past and still is, today. Of course, there are many injustices that stem from this mess, and I hope things eventually settle down. But I doubt it, because the Arabs, and in particular the Palestinian Arabs, have been cursed with bad leadership. In particular, Yasser Arafat gained nothing for his people and stole hundreds of millions of funds, most of it aid, donated by various countries. The current leadership of Hamas in Gaza and the PLA in the West Bank can do nothing but continue to swear to drive the Israelis into the sea. meantime their people suffer. No doubt these leaders also are kleptomaniacs.

During the last Lebanon conflict I realised that the anti-Israeli movements and forces are very good at manipulating the world media to make things out to be far worse than they are. The effects of bombing and rocketing were continually faked, casualty figures were inflated, damage was exaggerated, and the mainstream press went along with it because there seems to be a bias in favour of the poor, long-suffering Palestinians.

But the Palestinian refugees were tolerated for a while by places like Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon but kept in poverty and herded away into other places. Currently, Hamas in Gaza constantly manipulate the images of suffering which is no worse than any other poor country, even when Israel closes the checkpoints because the Gazans are firing rockets at random at the civilians in Sderot and Ashkelon. But when the Israelis left from Gaza they handed over working farms, glass-houses and industrial plants which the Gazans literally trashed, leaving nothing for themselves to utilize. What stupidity!

It is by no means certain that Israel will win any future conflict. If that happens, then we can be sure that the Arabs will engage in bloody war crimes that the world has hitherto witnessed only in Rwanda. Arabs will not hesitate to use their modern weapons to kill each and every Israeli, man, woman and child.

Hence my support for the nation of Israel. My wish is to see the Palestinian Arabs and Israelis live in peace together, but if it war, then I am on the side of the Jews.

I went to the Crown Casino in Melbourne last Wednesday night. Their promotional video (Note 1) shows how luxurious and extensive are their facilities. They promise a “experience that will linger in your mind forever”.

Well, it really did impress myself and my wife, but not in the way they intended. We were there to have dinner in a relatively modest bar and bistro called The Pub; they offered a Wednesday night meal deal of Porterhouse Steak and a pot of beer for $12. I was with an ad hoc group of friends who occasionally have a meal and a chat in various venues.

Last night’s dinner was for eighteen people, and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. We all swapped anecdotes, experiences and opinions on almost everything. Six of our group were there for the first time. But the evening drew to a close and we wended our various ways home.

But as Glenyce and I had never been to this giant, complex venue, (more by design that by accident), we thought we had better have a look before we launched. It was quite an eye-opener. Apart from many lavish shops, restaurants, cafés, bars, theatres and night clubs, there is a huge gambling area that seemed to go on forever. This was absolutely staggering in its size and scope.

Hundreds of poker machines stretched in all directions, garishly glittering lights hypnotising the players as they spun the machines in the hope of a big win. That, of course, will only impel them on to the vain hope in another big win before their assets vanish down the tube. I have friends who’ve been seriously damaged by this mind-set; one of them is essentially destitute.

But, of course, I know that many people get a lot of pleasure from the pokies and all the other types pf games - poker, roulette, and so on. And of course, vast sums arrive in the coffers of the state of Victoria, much of it earmarked for those support for unfortunate citizens who have a gambling problem! Moreover, of course, Crown Casino can offer much free or subsidised entertainment because of the cross-subsidy from the afore-mentioned gamblers. It might be that our $12 cheap meal was possible in this way, so perhaps that sort of makes me a hypocrite!

The thing is, all of this has no charms at all for my wife and myself. In the past I have actually put a dollar or two through a pokie, but mainly to see what it’s all about. And for me, it’s about nothing! It intrigues me that an activity that is hugely attractive for millions of my fellow humans has absolutely no impact on me whatsoever. There seems to be a distinct psychological divide between people like me and people like them.

I wonder if it’s genetic?

I’m not religious (I’m an atheist), I try not to moralize about it, and my beef really is how powerful the whole thing seems to be for the punters. But for us, it just looks and feels crass and tatty.

Perhaps I’m getting old and conservative. That’s a worry!

Note 1: Caution: Streaming video requires broadband ADSL and runs for 3 mins.

When I first started this blog, I resolved to keep it going with regular, well-written (well - for me) pieces. There are too many blogs set up that fall into a heap after a series of boring, narcissistic, banal pieces. That seems to be a norm.

Since August 21st I’ve fallen in a heap, with depression, anger, and hopelessness, and a trapped, toxic feeling. In that state I don’t feel like sharing it in here, as it tends to drag others down. It also sounds absolutely pathetic, and I despise myself well enough without inducing others to do so.

And the damnable thing is that depression seems to rob me of writing ability, if indeed I had any in the first place.

Since the New Orleans tragedy I have been watching in horror and sadness as the full enormity of it unfolded across the screens of the internet and the TV. I have never had the money to travel, and will never be there. But I have seen many good TV documentaries about the place, and read much, as well.

I know much of its history, and the place it has in the emergence of my favourite music, jazz, in its many forms. I enjoy playing jazz piano, and also drums, and must have played jazz pieces many thousands of times. So, for me, it is personal.

It is also personal because I am appalled by the behaviour of the Bush government in war, in deceits, in lies, in its stupidities, its sucking up to evangelical Christian groups, its slashing of social welfare, and so on.

And the underbelly of the USA has been exposed by the Katrina catastrophe in such a way that the perfidy and incompetence of the administration from G.W. Bush downwards. And I am also shocked by the gun-happy, primitive behaviour exhibited at the lowest levels of society.

Like everyone else, I don’t where this will lead, but I wish my American brothers and sisters the best in future, and hope that the hurricane and flood disaster can be used by all people of good will as a means of healing and making whole that amazing country.

Here are two links that express much of what I want to express:-

The Superdome: Monument to a Rotten System
Why Thousands May Die

And as a valuable source of many pertinent articles - you need to scroll well down to find the many useful links:-

Progressive Review

Finally, in tune with a nation whose reins have been taken over by the religious nutcases, this site explains that God did it to punish the gays:-

REPENT AMERICA - CALLING A NATION IN REBELLION TOWARD GOD TO REPENTANCE

What more can I say, and what more will happen?

Former Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld has weighed into the debate about the glaringly obvious short-comings of the Indonesian justice system. here is a news item from the ABC (the emphases are mine):-

“Former Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld says it is impossible to understand the difference between the sentences handed to convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby and radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir for his role behind the Bali bombing.

Bashir’s 30-month sentence has been reduced by four months as part of an automatic review of Indonesian prison terms.

The former judge is president of Australian Legal Resources International, which has been helping train judges in Indonesia.

He says the Indonesian legal system has improved in recent times but is still far from perfect.

“I’m not defending Corby but the disproportion between a sentence for a marijuana crime, as opposed to the Bashir intervention is very obvious and completely impossible to understand,” he said.

Schapelle Corby was convicted of trafficking four kilograms of marijuana inside her boogie-board bag, and sentenced to 20 years in prison.”

This just supports my remarks in the previous blog item, doesn’t it?

From ABC news today, we see that a younger son of previous president Suharto not only earlier on received a lenient sentence for the murder of a judge, but to celebrate a “national day”, his sentence has been further reduced.

“The youngest son of former Indonesian president Suharto received an 11-month plus 35-day reduction to a 10-year prison sentence he is serving for the murder of a judge”

Indonesia’s Supreme Court in June reduced the term to 10 years without explanation. “

This man is serving time for murder! He killed a man - a judge, no less - in cold blood!!

And yet Australian woman Schapelle Corby was jailed for 20 years for importing 4kg of marijuana leaves and buds.

Whatever you might think of the seriousness of cannabis as a drug, to me there does seem to be an astonishing disparity between the sentences.

There has been no report yet of any reduction to Ms. Corby’s sentence because of the Independence Day celebrations.

The situation continues to disgust me. I wonder what you think. You can comment below.

Convince me I’m wrong to continue to be outraged by the behaviour of the peculiar system of justice in our (unfortunately) nearest large neighbouring country.

Last Saturday the Literary Review of “The Age”, a Melbourne broadsheet, contained an excellent scholarly dissertation on the topic of Bullshit. It was a edited extract from a book, “On Bullshit”, by Harry Frankfurt (Princeton University Press, 2005 (see review blog). The author is emeritus professor of philosophy at Princeton.

I found the article not only amusing, but very enlightening, in the sense that it helped me to realise a couple of salient points about the idea of bullshit, which is dear to every Australian’s heart. Not only are we Aussies pretty good at it, we always suspect it , and in our twisted way I think we quite enjoy it! I certainly do - that must be obvious to readers of this blog!

Here are some of the passages I enjoyed in the article.

“The production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled - whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others - to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.”

And here is quoted the advice a child was said to have received from his father: “Although I was only seven when my father was killed, I still remember him very well and some of the things he used to say … one of the first things he taught me was, “never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through. “

The article helped me to realise that it is probably true that most people don’t bullshit on purpose (although that certainly happens), nor in an effort to tell lies. But, rather, they bullshit to bluff their way through a situation where they are out of their depth.

I know I have probably done so countless times. And sometimes I probably was not even aware of it, but just hoped for the best! In my role as a jazz piano player, I played quite often with a bandleader who would often turn around to the rest of us at the end, and say “I think we got away with it again!”

It all reminds me of the old saying in connection with looking for an explanation of some political disaster or other shambles, “When choosing between a stuffup and a conspiracy, go for the stuffup - that’s more likely to be the truth.”

I am reminded of my mother’s advice, “When it looks like you’re going to be in a fight … talk your way out of it!”

That always worked for me!!

NOTE: I recommend a look at the amusing Bullshit Gazette, also called the Massachusetts Institute of Tauroscatology (Google links).

My note:- The word is concocted from tauros=bull and skatos=shit.

Yesterday I wrote an essay where I tried to untease my feelings and ruminations about the Corby trial and so I put it this blog as a whole Page essay headed “Why Am I So Angry About Schapelle Corby’s Jailing in Bali?”

Then I discovered that a software hiccup doesn’t yet allow Comments on Page items. I have found a software change that will do that, but until I tinker gingerly with the PHP code required, I have decided to put the sub-headings from that essay into this post, which should thus be read in conjunction with that 2,200 word essay.

Here are the sub-headings in the essay:-

• A History of Bloodyminded Indonesian Behaviour
• Distrust of Islam and Resentment of Islamic Preachiness
• Bali is a Country I See as Occupied By Indonesian Invaders
• The Corrupt and Inhumane Prison Conditions
• Indonesian Hypocrisy and Self-righteousness
• The Peculiar Conduct of the Trial and Strange Behaviour of the Judges
• Comparison with Holland
• Disproportionality of the Sentence
• Relative Harmlessness of Cannabis as a Drug
• Corruption and Crime Amongst Airline Staff in Australia

Yes, I am no doubt woefully ignorant about history, sociology, religion and politics. yes, I know I will hurt someone and be extremely annoying to others.

Don’t ask me why! I don’t know the answer to that - and believe me, I do think about it!

You tell me!!

On Friday, Australian woman Schappelle Corby was found guilty of bringing in 4.1kg of cannabis, fined US$10,535, and jailed for 20 years. As she is 27, that essentially ends her fertile life. There is outrage in Australia, and political games are well under way.

See a dedicated web site here and another one here.

As at least 50% of younger Australians have used marijuana at some stage, and are well aware that it is relatively harmless, the idiocy of the law is obvious. Moreover, the circumstances of her arrest and trial in Bali, are peculiar and even outrageous, in Australian eyes. And notwithstanding the fact that similar laws for drugs apply in Australia, and other ASEAN countries, the injustice is obvious to many.

One aspect that strikes me on the matter is covered by this extract from another Australian blogger, tastyworm.com, and I quote:-

Prosecutor Wiswantanu was quoted as saying:

Australia has been very generous to Indonesia and Bali. After the terrorist bombings in Bali in 2002 and the tsunami and subsequent earthquakes in 2004/2005, Australians donated time, millions and millions of dollars and in some cases lives were lost - in an effort to help. If Shapelle Corby is found guilty - Indonesia will suffer the finanical consequences - I can assure them that a good majority of people won’t want to holiday somewhere where they may end up before a firing squad for a crime the didn’t commit. Oddly enough, these thoughts aren’t very enticing.

You can read more in tastyworm.com, an excellent Australian blog whose author has a lot to say on the matter, and with whom I agree wholeheartedly.

The recent hoohah over the now unsubstantiated rumour that the Yanks had tortured Guantanamo prisoners by flushing the Koran down the dunny led to riots and deaths in some Muslim countries. What’s new about death in those places? I posted earlier about that.

I now see a juicy item in an interesting US political blog that appears to stir the pot more vigorously than ever. We read that:-

This week Newsweek published a controversial article in which an anonymous source is quoted who claims that White House officials had a life size blow up doll of Allah delivered to the Oval Office where it was repeatedly sodomized time and time again by President Bush and his staff while pictures were taken.

If that isn’t designed to stir up those Muslim ant’s nests of nonthinking automatons who purport to be intelligent human beings, then I’ll go he!

Let me hasten to add that I have nothing against the millions of intelligent and thoughtful men and women who follow Islam in a balanced and humane way. If people feel impelled to have a one-way love affair with an imaginary friend, then good luck to them providing they don’t force it on everyone else. Unfortunately, that compulsion seems to be inbuilt into the monotheistic “desert” religions, and that’s when they come to regard people like me as their inferior, and consequently as their enemy!

Thanks for nothin’, bishops, popes, mullahs, ayotollahs and their fellow travellers!! I’m perfectly happy to be goin’ to Hell, Hades or Gehenna rather have to put up with you lot for eternity.

In a delicious follow-on to the above Blowup Allah Doll article the fascinating web site called The Mad Guerilla Brigade continues on with the fun. I wonder how many Muslim crazies will so irony-challenged that they once more foam at their snaggle-toothed mouths and kill even more innocent human beings.

Not that crazy Muslims are the only ones doing that - the Yanks and their subservient states like our own fair country, Australia, have become pretty good at that, too, in their own blundering way.

Here is an update on my recent blog item, Muslims Flushed at Koran Flush.

It now seems that, owing to an error by a reporter, the killing and destruction by Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan was a mistake.

It was reported today that the news item telling the world that Americans trying to extract information from jailed Muslim terrorists in Guantanamo had resorted to threatening to flush the Koran down the toilet, or threatening to do same, was in fact an error.

As the news spreads around the world that this was an error, can we assume that the bloody mad fanatics and their blood-thirsty Mad Mullahs will repent and make amends.

Possibly not, if the past is anything to go by, because in the ghastly, nasty world of Islam, it will presumably be regarded as the will of Allah. Life is cheap in Muslim countries.

What will the next Muslim atrocity be? I am quite sure that we won’t have long to wait!

Wait until a few more of these disgusting countries have nuclear weapons, and then we’ll see how destructive and vicious can be the behaviour of humans with their minds contorted and twisted by religious dogma.

They might even out-do the crazy and distorted behaviour of the current nation whose leaders have their minds distorted by religious, economic and political dogma - the United States of America, where the Christian fundamentalists are on the ascendency.

That sanctimonious old windbag Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen died and today got a State Funeral in Queensland. He awarded himself the knighthood.

Read the truth about the bastard in Crikey.com.

What I hated and still hate in his surviving family and his unctious old wife Lady (Pumpkin Scones) Flo is the sheer hypocrisy in wearing their faith like sergeants’ stripes, but ignoring all the corruption, violence and suffering that occurred during his gerrymandered reign as Premier in the 80s.

There is something about dogmatic forms of belief, such as some Christianity and some Islam, that numbs the brain, which then fails to make the connections between beliefs and the morality as really practised in real life.

You can read all about that in Richard Dawkin’s paper on Viruses of the Mind, also called “memes”, where certain ideas (memes) seem to take up residence in one’s mind, distorting the view of reality like a computer virus contaminates the functioning of a computer.