Happy New Year

Jihadi Colin has a message for all you undesirables.

Shape For A Moment

I was born in the fiery birth of the universe

Atoms torn from the stuff of time

Ripped from the incandescence of the Big Bang

Cooled into the blazing nuclear heat of the furnace

Of blue-white stars, nuclei smashed together into things

Strange and new

In the galaxy-spanning eruption of supernovae

I was scattered across the expanding universe

As gas, as cosmic dust

As the stuff that congealed to stars anew.

And I was born again

Aglow in the rushing dark,

Joined, broken, merged and joined

Things made from things,

To be scattered once more.

And then I was an accretion disk

Clotting around another sun

Into a planet where the sky rained

Electric fire on a chaos of mud and water

Long chain molecules twisted to life

And I was in it.

Drinking in the sun. Chewing carbon,

Putting forth leaves

Clawing my prey to the ground on a long gone plain.

Living, eating, being eaten

Dying a moment, to live in a moment

As something else once more.

And so, here am I

That had been stars, and will be stars again

For this moment, a hairless ape on a ball of rock.

This body, these thoughts

But a shape for a moment

Of matter indestructible

Born in the instant of the universe

And living as long as the universe does

So what does this moment mean?

This consciousness that will wink out in a moment

As meaningful as a spark of light

Here now, now gone.

So tell me, why should I be sad?

Sadness will die with today.

And tomorrow, that which was once a star, and will be a star again

Will live on as a lump of clay.

Copyright B Purkayastha 2016

[Image Source]

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PCstan

Everyone knows my less than flattering opinion about liberal snowflakes and political correctness, but there’s a point where both cease to be a joke and go so far as to be a positive danger.

For instance, there’s a strange kind of racism where liberals of one race or ethnicity, which is historically dominant, go out of their way to ignore, or excuse, the crimes of a member of another – historically subjugated or discriminated against – ethnic or racial group merely on the basis of this person’s skin colour or genetic makeup.

We’ve seen this, for example, in the last eight years when a blood-soaked mass murderer was insulated from blame for his endless war crimes merely because of the colour of his skin. I don’t need to name this individual; you all know whom I’m talking about. But though he’s an extreme example, he’s hardly alone. Here’s a few instances of what I mean.

In India we have liberals bending over backwards to justify crimes committed by individuals, or groups, among Muslims or Dalits (the lowest rung of the Hindu caste system), for example, because of the (perfectly true) fact that as communities they have faced horrendous levels of discrimination. This has reached the farcical level of liberals supporting the extremely retrogressive mullahs of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, who insist that a Muslim man can, under Islam, divorce his wife merely by uttering the word “talaq” thrice. This is a perversion of Islam and also banned in numerous Muslim nations...including Pakistan...but that cuts no ice with liberals.

Similarly, I’ve always thought that liberals are actually in love with the likes of al Qaeda and ISIS. Their only problem is with the in-your-face, quite unashamed brutality unleashed by these vermin, especially the latter. If only they didn’t have to, you know, see the beheadings and the immolations, the bound prisoners’ bodies, the impaled corpses in churches, and so on, they wouldn’t even hold back from expressing their open admiration. It would be the love that finally dared to speak its name. That al Qaeda, and, even more, ISIS, make absolutely no secret of their hatred and contempt for these same liberals makes no difference; they’ll love them anyway.

Pictured: Brave freedom-fightin' ISIS headchopper

That’s why they cheer for the jihadis in Aleppo and go on “protests” against Russia when it bombs them; that’s why they organise “marches on Aleppo”, almost certainly funded by the British government. That is why I’d find it really hilarious if they march right into the welcoming arms of al Qaeda, or, even better, ISIS. It would make my day.

Allied to this is another and equally pernicious kind of racism: one where certain races and classes of people are treated like children, whose precious little lives shouldn’t be messed up by such things as modernity or thinking for themselves. This, of course, makes it easy to justify colonising them and stealing their resources; India suffered two hundred years of British colonial rule justified, in its later stages, by the claim that the natives were “children” who couldn’t be trusted to rule themselves and so deserved and needed “adult” supervision by the white masters from across the seas. It’s also the justification for “humanitarian” wars – the poor natives need to be saved from themselves, or their own governments, by who else but the enlightened West.

Tony Blair, in the days before he openly became George W’s personal valet, called for, as I recall, “enlightened double standards” in the West’s dealings with the rest of the world. That was the moment when I realised that he was going to be a neo-imperialist cheerleader. Nothing he did beyond that point was a surprise to me...though it was to a lot of other people who should have known better.

I was reminded of all this during the ISIS-inspired kamikaze lorry attack a few days ago in Berlin, which killed twelve people. According to the media, the perpetrator, Anis Amri, had been under surveillance by the police, but they’d stopped watching him because they concluded that he was nothing more than a small time drug dealer.

Let me repeat that: in Germany, a nation which is in the forefront of spying on its own citizens and trying to limit their access to inconvenient media sources, being a drug dealer is apparently not a crime worth being arrested for.

Of course, if you utter opinions contrary to the official narrative, that would be a crime, though.

I rest my case.

  

Oh Rudolf Had A Baby

Oh Rudolf had a baby

He called him Reindeer Jim

Put him on Santa's sleigh

To teach him how to dream.

"Someday, sonny, when you're a little older

Your antlers budding through

I'll take a Christmas off

And leave the pulling up to you.

"An obese sod is Santa Claus

Not stingy with his whip

He gets all the milk and biscuits

Us reindeer? Not a sip.

"The elves slave worse than robots

The toys he gifts to make

But I'll tell ya the bitter truth

For truth and honesty's sake.

"Kids in sweatshops in Cambodia

Bent over machines night and day

Make the dolls that Santa hohohos

And get for them just no pay.

"That's why I drink so much!"and Rudolf

Took the time to sneeze twice -

"I may be a little tipsy 

But I'll give you some advice.

"Find a way to get noticed

A red nose would do fine

If I hadn't already acquired that

By overindulgence in wine.

"That'll make you go places

Though Santa may drop dead

From a heart attack, the obese prat

Or a kick to his bloody head.

"But it's a great job I'm on

In songs my name shines bright

Just as my alcoholic nostrils

Make the way so light.

"Now go and fetch my rubbing cloth

And shine up my nose, I say

Or I'll give you a hiding

And not a wisp of hay.

"Ol' Santa he's a coming

My! He's grown fatter still!

To drag him round this planet 

I need to eat my fill.

"So you'll go without supper

And so will your mumsy too

But it's in a good cause, Jimmy

As must be clear to you.

"Children around the world want toys

And corporations slobber with delight

At all the shopping going on

On this Christmas night.

"Such joy and cheer we'll bring

Jimmy boy, soon you'll know

Now get out of my stable

And bugger off and grow."