The Western Lie Unraveled: Why I Condemn Israel, Not Hamas

If you've been following my social media posts, you will know that I've been an ardent critic of Israel's genocide in Gaza. Even so, there's something I need to get off my chest, and it's something I've been carrying with me for a while now. Please bear with me a minute.

I wish to state for the public record, that back in 2023 when Oct 7 happened and Israel began it's open bloody genocide in Gaza, I was still very much under the influence of most Western media and the narrative that Hamas were "terrorists", an "illegitimate" wannabe government pushing for an independent state in the middle of Israel, and essentially just a band of troublemakers and malcontents - as Israel had spent the last 80 years telling everyone. At the start, I was somewhat horrified by the publicized attacks by Hamas on "innocent Israelis".

But something was very "off" about the whole thing. 

Checkers’ Smart Trolley: Convenience or Corporate Callousness?

Checkers - our prime South African retailer - is trialing a new "smart trolley" that does the check-out as you put stuff in it. This means that thousands of people will very likely lose their jobs as check-out clerks and baggers. As always, it is the corporate types wearing fancy suits who think poor folk would make it on their small salaries if they just spent less, who really seem to think this sort of batshit crazy scheme is a good thing.

Because of course they do.

Our Nature, Our Burden

That "Star Trek" future? It'll never happen. Humans don't have it in us. 

Why do I say so?

Let me start at the beginning of the thought that led me down this path:

Humans want to believe they're ready to meet alien civilizations, and they can't even countenance each other, or domestic species that don't look like them... or have more then 4 appendages, or think they're better than.

Imagine the UFO door opens and a human sized spider emerges to greet the representatives of Earth... who run away screaming, shouting "kill it with fire!"

I think it's better that any alien nations watching our combative uncivilized species, keep on doing it from a safe distance. 

Forsooth Diderot, Viva Chromatica

In 50 more years, will those born after look back at where we are now, and think of the horrors we are witnessing today - war in Ukraine, fascism on the rise globally, the collapse of the USA and the slippage of its mask of pretend holiness - the raging, unchecked genocide in Gaza - like we look back now at the genocides committed by previous colonizing and cultures?

In South America? North America? Africa? Australia? New Zealand? Asia? In a hundred different lands, in a hundred different times, places and cultures - in a hundred different faces in black and white and grey staring back at me from pages and screens, from the other side of Time, in documentaries... their testimonies - evidence of lives that were shattered, minimized, dehumanized, ruined, forever changed and even extinguished in the hallowed names of God, Christianity and the almighty, pristine, blameless Western Civilization and its perverse denial of universal Humanity? 

What will this moment in time look like from 50 more years hence? Will it be, on a day when I'm no longer here on this Earth, in Gaza then as it is in Auschwitz now? In Treblinka? In a hundred new blood-soaked ash-strewn fields of horror and tragedy yet to come? Will they be preserved as horrors and outrage against decency and what it means to be human - as indecent and imperfect beings? Or memorials of shocked humanity, as splinters, burning, lodged in ravaged Conscience? Salves and tokens to be observed, respected in ways never shown the victims? Or mocked and dismissed as "fake news" or "woke liberal fantasy" by "influencers", apologists and revisionists? Or will they be long paved over in streets of greed, hotels, pleasure palaces and gilded with obscenity and vile, vapid towers of "Progress" and amnesia, whereon nasty wealthy scabs and carbunkles frolic and play?

I look back over my years, my half century, and hold in one hand all I was taught - by teachers, histories, the general narrative, popular beliefs, and in the other - all that I have learned. The incongruities between them - the disparities - are immense and horrifying. The world I thought I lived in is revealed as a bold-faced lie, a pleasant fascade to cover up for the lies, deceit, brutality, conquest and greed that twisted the world into what it is... to protect and invent the reputations and positions of powerful white "Christian" men subject to insatiable greed - and always has been.

Beware the tools, my children, the tools of the System: "civilization", "morality", "law and order", "education", "freedom" - all these are illusions easily distorted and subverted to serve it, but most dangerously of all these, is "religion" - and those who hold the power to wield these. 

Truth - in truth - is not subjective, nor objective. How we perceive it, or accept it - or not - is. But it remains true, regardless.

Diderot was right.

Please Pass the Shame: A Meal with a Side of Hypocrisy

Tonight I sit in a restaurant eating a lovely meal, when a news feed on a big screen catches my eye.

1.8 million Palestinian hostages in Gaza are being starved to death by Israel. Skeletal figures appear on the screen, motionless, fading, the sparkle in eyes lined with suffering, gone. The food sours in my mouth.

Israel calls it a "military operation" and the BBC reports Netanyahu says he's going to "expand" it.

No remorse. No horror. No regrets.

The BBC calls this outrageous display of blatant genocide a "war" - despite any sign of actual combat or military resistance - and interviews the brother of an Israeli hostage - who apparently has been starved along with his Palestinian captors. Who really starved him? Is that not Israel? Of course it is.

Some "war".

The Human Race Is A Psychopath

Thought for the day: psychology hints at serial killers starting off with a loss or absence of empathy for others, and then working up to torturing and killing animals, before culminating in the torture or killing of humans. Isn't it interesting that this is also true for humans as a species?

A Transphobic Transperson? How Does That Even Work?

*Ahem*

So this PM comes courtesy of a person who, unlike most of you here on FB, I have met in real life and knew personally. Let me regail you:

When Your Hole Is Full

So today I got gatvol. South Africans will know what that means - it means "your hole is full".

Yeah, I'm really angry about this.

I call this one: "Alright, I'll Fucking Do It, Then!"

What's this about? This morning I emailed a five page, properly formatted complaint with a dozen references and attachments to the SAHRC.

Devilsdorp - An Objective Review From A Truth-telling Perspective

Last night, as an "assignment" to aid in formulating the outline of content for my upcoming doctoral thesis for next year, I watched all 4 episodes of "Devilsdorp", and took notes. I found it a very interesting show. Here are my thoughts in brief:

A Response To Helen Zille's "The 'Trans' Debate Revisited"

On 23 April, Helen Zille made a social media post in which she doubled-down on her transphobic stance, chillingly throwing in the word "contagion" numerous times for good measure. Like transgender people are some sort of "disease" that spreads and endangers feminism - and society. Unlike TERFdom of course, whose apparent purpose is to "defend women's spaces" and "feminist gains" over the past century. (Insert eye-roll here).

First I'll repost her statement, and then address it beneath that. Be ready for a long read. And yes, have a "trigger warning" - and another, while you're at it. The last time I was this upset by reading material, it was when I reviewed "The Pink Agenda" and almost ripped the book in half. This cringeworthy post by a leading figure within South Africa's second-largest political party should set off an avalanche of outrage in anyone who doesn't have a zipper running down the backs of their human suits. It should beg the questions: 1) How did we not notice Zille's lurch toward far-right extremism before now? 2) What does her shift into the realm of red-hat-wearing conspiracy theory and hatemongering populism mean for the Democratic Alliance and its traditional base of liberal, "woke" supporters?

Decide for yourself.