Is Potato...

 

Russian men respond to Putin’s call-up of recruits to replace the casualties of the Ukrainian war – er, sorry, 'special military operation’ - by heading en masse to the borders. Hundreds of thousands rush to escape the draft. These men are workers; middle-managers, I.T. specialists, psychologists, lawyers, accountants, clerks, line-workers, craftsmen and laborers. 

According to the New York Times, at least 200,000 have left Russia as of Sept 28^th. That number is probably a vast underestimate. In the last four days, the independent Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, reported that 261,000 military-aged men were estimated to have left. Some have committed suicide rather than answer Putin’s call-up. There are reports of Russian men crippling themselves to avoid conscription. 

The ones who have left Russia will be joined by wives who are also workers who contribute to the Russian economy, not only as vital employees but as consumers whose purchases are the foundation of the economy.

 

None of these workers and consumers will be replaced. Draft-aged men (18 to 27 years) will not replace those who have left the work-force. They will be conscripted into the armed forces where, ill-trained, ill-equipped and ill-fed, they will be forced to fight a war for which they have no spirit. 

How does the Russian economy react to this upheaval? It can only be detrimental in a monumental way. Coupled with the effects of international sanctions, the COVID pandemic and the dire specter of nuclear Armageddon, Putin and the other Russian oligarchs are staring down the barrel of a gun with their own fingers on the trigger.

A top Russian economist warns in Fortune magazine that the Russian economy will collapse by winter. The Russian economy will go right into the crapper; there is little alternative.

Science illiteracy

One serious irk I have is when people try to refute science when they have no understanding of the science they’re referencing. This happens all the time amongst amateur apologist for ‘god’ – particularly the god of the Bible.

One such amateur apologist might begin by claiming that they can disprove Evolution. When asked to defend their argument, they immediate go to abiogenesis; ‘Well, where did the first cell come from?’ glossing over their claim to disprove evolutionary theory by natural selection completely and pole-jumping to abiogenesis. 

When abiogenesis is explained briefly to them, the apologist jumps the rails again to question the ‘Big Bang’ cosmological hypothesis. 

(Citing the ‘Big Bang’ seems to bring some delight to the apologist; I think because it’s an easy phrase to say and is alliterative and easy to remember. They seem torevel in the silly, simplistic image, thinking that the image is debilitating, derogative and deleterious to a counter-argument.)

Once the ‘Big Bang’ is discussed as a concept even the garbled cogency of the initial claim to refute evolutionary theory gets chucked in the bin, generally.  

If led back to the initial claim, (i.e. Evolution is wrong!) the apologist will attempt to assert a complete dearth of transitional creatures and/or fossils - easily refutable - before returning to the cycle of non-sequitur and rail-jumping obfuscation. 

One wants to scream.

Science is refuted by better science. Yet, there are some apologists who attempt to refute science by offering no evidence and falsely citing their timorous, erroneous grasp of the theories of science as the proposed evidence to refute science.

Huh?

One retort, when backed into a corner, is ‘Well, what I’m doing is just what science does.” This reveals just how ignorant the speaker is about the scientific method; as if scientific method was just a gaggle of dudes in lab coats seizing on any and every hare-brained, disjointed notion and holding onto it for dear life. 

Infuriating.  Read a fucking book.

“I’m talking about infinity," states our hypothetical apologist - "… a bigger infinity.”

Oooh! Are we flabbergasted yet? Flummoxed by deputies?

What does this say about your ‘’god’?

… that 'father/god' designed a scenario, a world, in which there are people who are totally unconvinced of the presence or even the existence of a god but who would be immediately convinced if the ‘god’ revealed himself in a ‘Road to Damascus’ moment. Would that be too much for your ‘god’ to do?

Couldn’t It (father/god) provide a personal revelation to everybody on earth at the same time? How ‘bout to just a few people? Penn Gillette, maybe. 

Ricky Gervais… ?

Richard Dawkins…?

If god appeared to any of them, the world would change. If your god could do that, why hasn’t it?

It’s not that this is desired or yearned for; it simply meant to point out that a solution to non-belief in any specific god would be, could be swept aside by such a manifestation. 

Creation!

 

Creationists all assume that the almighty, all-knowing magic genie snapped his fingers (always gender specific, as that’s the historic vernacular of ‘god’-talk) and poof, presto-change-o a universe! 

Bob’s your uncle and there we are - all in one go. 

7 days and dusted. 

 

Next up: creatures and plants and minerals and stuff to put on a specific, tiny blue marble, way off of galactic center of a ho-hum spiral galaxy of billions of planets for whatever reason an no reason whatsoever. 

(‘god’ works in mysterious ways, right?) 

Booga-booga.

Adam and Eve poof right into existence in a lovely garden where everything is perfect and the lion lays with the lamb and everything is sustained by the grace and will of the magic genie – who is now called ‘Father’. 

(So, we’re dealing with the prevailing patriarchy of the particular tribes who told these stories)

‘Father’ tells Adam and Eve to go forth and multiply while having dominion over all the earth.(as this blue marble is now called). 

(…Ahem.. why this ‘god’ couldn’t have snapped his cosmic finger again to populate this tiny iron-cored rock is inconsequential to the absurdity of this story.)

Anyway…

 

Cool! Adam says. 

(Eve already knows her place, it seems.)

“Hold on!” the Father says – “The catch is that you can’t eat the fruit off those two trees; one tree yields the knowledge of good and evil, the other eternal life. Clear?”

 

Well, a challenge made is a challenge met, so a talking snake/serpent

(!, yes, a talking snake/serpent (!)– mysterious ways, again…) 
persuades the woman...

(women… am I right or am I right!?) 

...to eat the fruit from the first tree cited by ‘Father’.

Oddly enough, the snake/serpent convinces the woman (!) to eat the 1st fruit, the knowledge of good and evil - rather than the 2^nd   one, which would have magically endowed them with eternal life – again for no reason. 

 

(A mystery right? Eternal life would’ve given them the power to live long enough to eat the other fruit, but I digress.)

 

Well, Eve eats the fruit of the 1^st tree and so does Adam 

(a wimp; p-whipped already! Am I right?). 

‘All-Father’ kicks them out of the ‘Garden’ to live lives of hardship and death on this little ball of rock that the ‘Father-god’ made… just for them(?) or something… 

 

Then, Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve show up. (Never mind your mental double-take...) Cain kills Abel out of rivalry over sacrificial offerings to the ‘Father-god’. So already, these two are squabbling over which one ‘Father’ likes best. (sound like a TV sit-com, yet?)

 

All things do not go swimmingly... 

(another little detail that the ‘all-knowing Father-god might have fore-seen… ahem)

Eventually, Adam and Eve and Cain (?) populate the earth. Or at least this one dusty corner of the middle-east. 

(Various reasons are presented by apologists explaining how such a trio might have loads of off-spring in a rather short period of time, but incest is never mentioned. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink… )

 

The talking snake (who is the baddie in this little screwy tale) gets off scot-free to do mischief at other times. ‘Father/god’ does happen to curse all snakes to crawl on the bellies as a punishment (!) 

Huh? 

The tale reminds one of the goofy ‘Just-so Tales’ of Kipling; How the elephant got its trunk, how the bear lost its tail. 

Codswallop!  

BTW, this herpetological baddie is actually ‘Lucifer’, a fallen angel and now known as Satan. More on him later.

 

Then, ‘He/Father/god’ kicks back and, strangely enough, no more is heard of him until a certain, minutely small group of humans who lived together in tribes on the dusty plains of Palestine told this psychotic tale - as they herded goats and avoided killing each other while getting killed by neighboring tribes (who had apparently forgotten that they were all related).

 

This one group, the Israelites, started getting messages from ‘father/god’ (known as Yahweh – a name forbidden to be uttered) along with visions and signs that ‘He’ was back in the game, as it were, and was not at all pleased with the way things were going.

 

This wacked out nonsense goes on and on with loads of magic and wrath and blood and slavery and bloody sacrifice and this part would not be in the sit-com. One ‘message’ gotten was to slaughter this group and that group like the Midianites; man, woman, child and live-stock(!) 

 

(It hadn't slipped the all-knowing Father/god’s 'mind' that all people were kin. However, they had worshipped another 'father/god' and, according to apologists, deserved to die.) 

 

That in a mish-mash, is a synopsis of the ‘creation’ myth of those poor saps who accept this garbage as ‘father/god-given fact.

Don't get me started on Noah's Flood.

 

“It’s in the Bible and the Bible is the word of god cuz the Bible says so…”

White Evangelicals (Again)

 

White Evangelicals.

If that shop-worn phrase brings harps and halos to mind, you’ve been brain-washed.

White evangelicals is a euphemism. 

It’s a euphemism for theocratic fascists. 

Does that seem harsh? It doesn’t sound like Aunt Bessie sewing quilts in the church basement, does it? No. It wouldn’t. It wouldn’t because quilting bees in church basements is a very benign enterprise. 

Now, imagine that the quilt that Aunt Bessie and company are making features the face of the Tangerine Beast – TFG – with a banner that reads ‘Stop the Steal’ or ‘Trump Won!’ with the stars and bars as a back-ground. Still benign? 

Preachers spewing anti-vax/anti-mask twaddle from their TV studio chapels. Evangelicals hopping up and down in a toddler-like rage that ‘Geezus is my vaccine!’; bloated braggarts of ‘god’ telling their congregations that MEDIA stands for ‘Most Evil Demon in America’! 

Say fecking what? 

This ain’t Aunt Bessie taking cookies to the doddering, widowed pastor. The modern pastor may very well own a sizeable real estate portfolio or even a small fleet of private jets. 

Think not?

Consider the mega-churches; temples to the grift that keeps on giving and forgiving. They represent a most substantial outlay of capital. Considerable moolah has been invested in grandiose tabernacles on expansive and luxurious tracts of land. 
(Sorry if this disillusions you but that money does not fall from the sky – no matter how righteous you are.) 

Investors want return on their investment. ROI. Bilking the gullible is the basic business plan. Wow ‘em with stage-craft and baffle ‘em with bullshit. That’s a proven method of getting a sustainable return on investment, quarter on quarter. 

Here’s the pitch:

‘Want to be delivered from perdition? Send a check or money order in an amount that hurts.’ Go without food. Let your dog skip its visit to the vet. Let your husband skip his medication or his chemo. Cut corners anyway you can but send the ‘Good Lord’ your dough. As George Carlin brilliantly observed, "God Loves you... and he needs money."

Harsh, right? Indeed, it is. Conning gullible folks out of their savings is despicable. Promising a pie-in-the-sky happy-ever-after prance in the clouds for eternity - redeemable only after you’re dead - is simply evil

Puny god!

 

“Puny god!” 

One can hear the Incredible Hulk grunt it at Loki or Thor, both sons of Odin, a father/god.

Keeping that in mind, one can hear the same voice talking to a different son of a  father/god.

“Puny god.” 

Can’t answer prayers. Can’t feed the hungry or heal the sick – no matter the flimsy tales that comprise the miracles of G-zus. 

Miracles supposedly done 2000 years ago. None with a shred of evidence.

 

And fast-forward to now? Crickets. 

Bone cancer in children? Meh.

Eye-ball eating worms? Meh. 

Malaria? You get the picture.

 

Got a cancer victim you’re paying for? Prayer and pure chance are neck and neck for effectiveness. It is just as likely that remission is a lucky fluke than as a result of prayer. It matters not how fervent the supplication might be.  

“Puny god.”

There are lots of stock answers regarding the seeming disregard for the troubles of humanity.

War?: ‘Free will’

Hurricanes?: Punishment for exercising free will.

Plague?: Yeah, punishment again for being humans doing the ‘free will’ thing. (Not choosing to be a toady to the Lord, for example.) 

‘My will be done!’ or else it's bunions and rain-storms of blood for y'all.

Or your car keys get misplaced. Watch out!

 

Of course, all that Old Testament warrior/god stuff morphed into the sweet, loving New Testament god/son of G-zus in a peculiar unilateral, self-serving deal: Sonny-boy, G-zus, is sacrificed to ‘Itself’ for crimes against Itself by creatures It ‘created’ which acted as predicted by Itself and violated a secret law made by Itself in a secret test for obedience of the creatures which It, Itself, knew would fail the test and be expelled from paradise to suffer, toil and die just as It knew would happen. 

Huh? 

Does that story make any sense to anyone not already deluded by a god-spell?

Let’s try a different telling of the down-the-rabbit-hole tale:
‘God’ creates Adam and Eve in order to keep ‘him’ company and to know, love and worship ‘him’ as the be-all, end-all. First, he creates them in a lovely garden -  a paradise – where their every need is taken care of. Their every innocent want and desire is met by the supreme generosity of the ‘god/father’. 

Then father/god poses the pair a little problem regarding the fruit of two trees in the garden; one the tree of eternal life, the other the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  

Why? 

Surely ‘god’, the all-knowing, would already know the result of this test, so why bother?

Puny god. 

Then a talking snake (yes, a talking snake!) convinces Eve to eat the fruit of the 2^nd tree; the one of knowledge. 

(Not my first choice either, but it’s not my story.)

So, what the father/god knew would happen, happened and the father/god got supremely miffed about the very thing the father/god knew would happen. God/father kicks them out of paradise to toil and suffer and die. 

(Not to mention how it was the talking serpent (!) had access to the paradisiacal garden in the first place.) 

How nice.

Puny god.

The Pelosi 'Problem'

 

Nancy Pelosi has Landed! And left…

After her trips to Singapore and Malaysia, Speaker Pelosi landed in Taiwan at the Taoyuan Airport.

 After much hysteria ginned up by the MSM, Pelosi landed thumbing a collective nose at Beijing and President Xi.

After living on this island for more than 30 years, it must be said that the general feeling of the people on Taiwan has been understated at best. All the while that USA MSM was airing clips of military activity, there was little concern.  Xi blustered and bloviated about egregious, drastic action and the people of the Republic of China didn’t even manage a shrug. 

 

Since 1949, Beijing has threatened Taiwan. Taiwan is plenty used to hearing sabers rattling and grimaced alpha-male visages.

That is not to say that there is no threat from the People’s Liberation Army. No. There is always the threat. It’s just that the threat has been so commonplace that, like earthquakes and typhoons, the threat is simply taken as part of the fabric of life. 

 

But let’s look at this with a clear-head. If Xi wants to slit his own throat, he’s capable. He’s capable of bringing to ruin the ‘China Miracle’ of economics. He’s capable of tossing the PRC onto the rubbish heap of international diplomacy. He’s capable of risking and losing blood and treasure in a military escapade. He’s capable. The PRC is capable.

However, what will they gain other than a blasted rock peopled with die-hard insurrectionists? To be honest, Xi has little to gain and everything to lose by attacking Taiwan. 

 

Perhaps first and foremost is $$$! Taiwan is the source of loads – the lion’s share – of investments on the Mainland, second only to the USA. It’s clear; attack Taiwan, threaten Taiwan’s democracy and all financing from the USA, the E.U. the UK, Japan, So. Korea, Canada, Australia, etc, etc will be pulled.

Attack Taiwan and any of the political prestige enjoyed by the PRC will be forfeit. Beijing will be an international sick man once more.

Attack Taiwan and any diplomatic leverage would be undone. One likely response would be the recognition of Taiwan by the UN and other international organizations which have thus far balked under pressure from Beijing.

 A militarily assault would be far more demonstrative in immediate effect. It would be a gruesome, bloody folly. It is close to an impossibility for the PRC to launch a successful amphibious invasion of the island nation. It would be expensive in both blood and treasure. One need only look at the difficulty that the Russians are having in Ukraine and consider that all the Russians had to do all was drive up the road to Kiev! Comparatively, the PRC has 100 miles of ocean – the Taiwan Strait – acting as a deep-water protective moat. 

The US 7th Fleet stand on the ready nearby, as well as the Japanese navy, the So. Korean navy, the Philippine Navy, the UK Navy, the Aussie navy, etc... Not what anyone would call a ‘walk over’.

 

Moreover, should the invasion succeed, sad as that possibility is, Taiwan would be turned into a blasted rock without any commercial value except as volcanic slag. Taiwan is fortified from stem to stern and has been since the early 1950s. Pill-boxes stand at the ready on every hill-top and at every juncture. (Fact; until rather recently a hike in the mountains or a day at the beach required a military ‘hall-pass’ for national security reasons.) Furthermore, should such an all-but-impossible military invasion succeed, any of the remaining population would be a die-hard insurgency that would take a generation to subdue. 

 

Ask the Russians. Ask the Americans re: Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam.

 

Much needs be said and done in support of Taiwan. It must be stated that the situation - while superficially comparable to the Russian invasion of Ukraine – has many critical details which are critically different.

In short, unless the PRC wishes to slice its own throat (hint: it doesn't) it will continue to use the ROC as a diplomatic anomaly and its ‘situation’ as a red herring.

 

It has little choice because there is far too much Taiwan money invested in Mainland enterprises. Far too much American, Canadian, Aussie, Japanese and British money to toss in the rubbish. 

The Lion of C.S. Lewis

 

C.S. Lewis had it right. ‘God’ did not. 

Lewis chose a massive lion with the power to speak and influence hearts as his representation of the ‘Christ’ in his Narnia series. 

 

Why, then, did ‘god’ determine that the best incarnation for a proposed ‘savior’ and deliverer of a ‘New Covenant’ to rule human society should be a member of a back-water, illiterate community subjugated by the Roman Empire without status, education or influence?

 

That is an immensely vital question to be answered by any who assert to being followers of the Christ or by anyone seeking to affirm or deny the veracity of the claim made by Christians for millennia that Y’shua ben Yosef of Nazareth was divine. 

Or at the least noteworthy.

 

Imagine if the god of the Old Testament had sent a creature of the characteristics of Lewis’ Lion, Aslan to deliver the new covenant. Would that have not been a most remarkable, historic and earth-shattering event? One which historians of the age would have most assuredly documented and broadcast throughout the Roman Empire? 

Would that not have been far more miraculous and divine incarnation than an itinerate preacher – one of dozens – who purportedly proclaimed the imminence of the ‘End Times’ and an establishment of ‘God’s Kingdom’ on Earth? Would not that have been the stuff of legends, irrefutable and well-reported? 

 

Imagine a majestic, massive beast, a golden lion with the power of speech to stir the hearts of men; who epitomized goodness, justice and mercy. Imagine that ‘Y’shua ben Yosef’ was not a lowly carpenter of questionable means and without the least appreciable pedigree. Imagine that he was endowed with super-human strength and wisdom. Combine that with the reported miracles – raising the dead, healing the leprous, walking on water, changing water to wine, etc. - performed by such an exceptional and astounding creature as a talking lion. Would that not have been reported and noted by every historian of the era?

 

If a human’s imagination can conceive of such a thing in the fantastical kingdom of Narnia, why then, it must be asked, would a maximally powerful and intelligent entity such as ‘god’ not do so? Why would ‘god’ choose to place the New Covenant in the hands of rag-tag group of disciples of an itinerate preacher who made nary a ripple amongst those of his provincial area?

 

To be clear, the person known as Jesus of Nazareth from the Christian gospels is almost totally unknown and unaccounted for; the circumstance surrounding his reported birth are seriously doubted by all historians. The single entry by Flavius Josephus, a first-century Romano-Jewish historian and military leader, has been adjudged a forgery. 

 

The supposed census declared by Augustus Caesar was never declared. There is no record of such a declaration ever being made; meaning that the instigation of Joseph and Mary’s trek from Nazareth of Bethlehem never happened. The story of the birth at Bethlehem falls apart like wet bread.

 

The Slaughter of the Innocents commanded by Herod the Great, king of Judea never happened, either. Such a command must surely have raised the hackles of the People of Judea but nothing outside the Gospel of Matthew was ever reported. The Slaughter never happened.

Further, as meticulous as the Romans were in record keeping, no trial before Pilate was ever recorded and by extension, reports of neither the torture nor crucifixion of Jesus have ever been discovered outside of the Gospels. 

 

Moreover, the multitude of parallels between the Jesus story and the tales of Gilgamesh, Osiris and Mithra most definitely call into question many of the details given of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection as simple plagiarism or generous ‘borrowings’.

 

None of these obvious vagaries would have been possible had ‘god’ been as creative and imaginative as the Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis.