Doug's Darkworld

I’ve been working on a  number of dedicated posts, but none has hit that point where it can be whipped into shape in an hour or two, so, a few random observations on the the world as it careens by. As always, stuff just keeps on happening.

Well, big fires in California. Not much else to say, it’s a price we pay for suppressing fires for a century. All that deadwood has to burn off sooner or later. I’m sorry for those who lost everything, but this was an entirely predictable event that both as a society and individuals we had the means to prevent. It’s not that hard to build a house that won’t catch fire. Nor that hard to build suburbs that have decent firebreaks.  Sometimes I think humans are little better than ants.  Moving right along, as we are on the topic of California, a girl kidnapped when she was eleven has turned up alive, held captive for nearly two decades by a religious nutbar. Sadly while this is a terrible case, it’s a lot less unusual than many would think. IE there are lots of women trapped in similar circumstances,  so this case says more about our culture and society and religions than many people would be comfortable with. In other words,  clearly fodder for a future Doug’s Darkworld blog.

In international news, the compassionate release of the convicted  Lockerbie bomber got some people upset. Two points. Compassion is a good thing, it’s what makes us the good guys. Secondly, this guy didn’t blow up the Pan Am flight out of the blue, this was part of a nasty confrontation involving the USA, Iran, Israel, and Libya. And the role played by the USA and Israel is not completely beyond reproach. Indeed, it involves the USA shooting down an Iranian airliner, and Israel broadcasting fake terror broadcasts from Libya to convince the USA that Libya was a sponsor of terrorism. Yeah, some ally they are. In any event the Lockerbie bombing is a smaller part of a bigger uglier picture. Again, that sounds like something I should blog about someday.

I was reading that France made wearing the burqa illegal, a burqa of course is the head to toe covering that women in some Islamic areas wear whenever they leave the home. I have mixed feelings about the ban, but I can’t say I object. While I am a staunch defender of people being allowed to wear what they want if it’s for religious reasons, the burqa has nothing to do with religion and is a purely cultural artifact. If one moves to a western country, I think it goes without saying, that you don’t automatically get to bring all of your culture with you. Otherwise people would be allowed to bring slaves with them just for starters. And since the burqa is largely (if not entirely) about keeping women in a subservient position in society, I don’t have  a problem with it being outlawed. And I should add that it’s the face covering part that is primarily being outlawed, though France outlawed wearing the Islamic head scarf in schools as well.

It gets worse. The latest controversy is a woman who was thrown out of a public pool in France for wearing a burquini. A burqini is a burqa designed for swimming in. The lady in question and her burqini are illustrated above. The claim is that this had nothing to do with religion, it’s just that French public pools have strict requirements about what one can wear, and for sanitary reasons it’s pretty minimal. Me are required to wear speedos for example, which apparently comes as a shock to American men visiting France. Oh well, I’m sure the French will sort it out, they survived Caesar and Hitler, a few Muslims arguing about appropriate women’s wear isn’t going to bring about the end of French civilization and culture. In fact the French have a pretty good track record at stopping Islamic invaders, for those who forget, the French were the ones who stopped the Islamic invasion of Europe in its tracks.

In American domestic politics, if one wants to find out what real leftists think, check out this site: Not My Tribe. I find it an interesting read, but my main point here is that so many think that the Democrats and Obama are leftists, when in fact they are only symbolically to the left of the Republicans. I mean, neither party is actually advocating leaving Iraq and Afghanistan. We have a choice between Democratic interventionism or Republican interventionism abroad and between deficit spending or more deficit spending at home. Yeah, some choices. In other web site news, I came across Sourcewatch. Basically, there’s a lot of fake grassroots organizations these days, and with this site I can at least see who is behind what article. Granted neither of these site  above can be described as  truly balanced, but that goes for any web site. Even Doug’s Darkworld, but at least unlike many, I am at least trying for a certain amount of objectivity, if one tries to be objective, one can be sure of offending almost everyone! It’s the secret to my amazing lack of popularity.

Coming soon: How to Survive the End of the World in 2012, What if there was no USA?, and I reveal my incredible plan to end all war while still keeping our military parades and obscene “defence” spending.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used for profit, is central to illustrating the post, and frankly I couldn’t find any credit or copyright info on the very main stream site where I found it. Credit: TimesOnline I guess. The title of this post? That’s from an upcoming post about “Movie sequels that will never and should never be made.” Others would include “Batman Conceived” and “Batman, the Gestation.” Suggestions welcome.)