Halo Halo / Tiny Tips
Halo, halo
The observation by Doctor Samuel Johnson that, ‘Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all’ was recorded in 1763 in Boswell’s biography of Johnson. Well Doctor, you misogynist you, have you got egg on your face now because the first female Church of England archbishop of Canterbury has been appointed to the position? If that isn’t worthy of cheering around the flag-post what is? What …you didn’t know that and you don’t care? LOL. The only bishops of any value are those on the chess board.
A 2018 survey found that about ten million people identified as C of E. The C of E came into being because the English king at the time was told by the catholic pope that he couldn’t marry someone else so he said some rude words to the Vatican and made up his own religion so that that he could have as many wives as he wanted.
A religion that is basically irrelevant to the vast majority and has no impact on the daily lives of most is – whilst we continue to live in a social system that uses, or tries to use, religion as a method of control – arguably preferable to one that exercises a devastating impact upon the lives of those who blindly adhere to it.
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‘Man’s inhumanity to man / Makes countless thousands mourn!’ comes from a 1784 poem by Robert Burns, Man Was Made To Mourn: A Dirge. History is, unfortunately, littered with examples but what of Man’s inhumanity toward women in the name of religion? A September Daily Telegraph report stated that following a 6.6 magnitude earthquake in Afghanistan women were left to die because of Taliban rules forbidding unrelated men from having contact with them so all male rescue teams were forbidden to do so (tinyurl.com/2s3wbazf ).
Also in September In Morocco a feminist activist Ibtissame Lachgar was sentenced for the heinous crime (sarcasm) of ‘offending Islam’, to 30 months behind bars and a 5,500 dollar fine. She was arrested after posting online a picture of herself wearing a T-shirt with the word ‘Allah’ in Arabic followed by ‘is lesbian’ (tinyurl.com/55uj2f5z).
‘A fire on 11 March 2002 at a girls’ school in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, killed fifteen people, all young girls. Complaints were made that Saudi Arabia’s ‘religious police’, specifically the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, had prevented schoolgirls from leaving the burning building and hindered emergency services personnel because the students were not wearing modest clothing’ (tinyurl.com/mzcku99w ).
In Afghanistan a few years ago females between the ages of thirteen and twenty-one were imprisoned, for the heinous crime (more sarcasm) of having ‘failed’ a virginity test. The report said that that more than 200 young women and girls were incarcerated. Their release, it was said, would see them all expecting a future ‘full of shame, exclusion and poverty.’ ‘Although supposed to be imprisoned for only three months, many are held for a year or a year and a half’ (tinyurl.com/yz5uw7ke).
DC
The unrest reflected much deeper frustrations, including high unemployment, particularly among young people, growing poverty and anger at corruption and mismanagement. People see public resources channelled into luxury spending and infrastructure deals benefiting a few powerful figures connected to the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), while basic services and jobs are neglected (Inter Press Service News Agency, tinyurl.com/mubsr45w).
In 1978, Clive James reviewed the official biography of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982) by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, CPSU Central Committee. “I read the whole thing from start to finish, waiting for the inevitable slip-up which would result in a living sentence. It never happened.” James found it so dull that “If you were to recite even a single page in the open air, birds would fall out of the sky and dogs drop dead.” (MSN, tinyurl.com/9hw2skvv).
The announced $7 billion would be the biggest official tranche of funding to Ukraine’s drone industry so far. It’s close to the $6 billion that Ukraine’s defense minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said Kyiv needs to cover this year’s production of first-person-view drones, interceptors, long-range drones, and missiles. While new, Ukraine’s drone industry has increasingly been in the spotlight for producing cheap but effective weapons regularly being used to destroy Russian loitering munitions, armor, artillery, and production facilities (Yahoo, tinyurl.com/4y297a7m).
From an anarcho-communist perspective, this moment is not simply about one man’s death. It is about the world that produced both Charlie Kirk and the man who killed him. It is about capitalism’s ever-present violence, about the state’s monopoly on force, about the way political antagonisms are escalating into open bloodshed. It is about what happens when a society soaks every interaction in hierarchy, coercion, alienation, and humiliation, and then acts shocked when someone pulls a trigger…Wage labour itself is enforced by violence. If you refuse to work, you starve, or you are policed, or imprisoned. The entire edifice of private property rests on threat and force (The Slow Burning Fuse, tinyurl.com/4swnp9hw).
North Korea’s Kim vows to build a ‘socialist paradise’ [sic] (Morning Star, tinyurl.com/mpha8jxv).
Having a home of our own is essential to leading a dignified life, but in Venezuela, where access to housing is enshrined as a right in the Constitution, renting adequate accommodation is an unattainable luxury for hundreds of thousands of families, and buying property is almost impossible. Not only do market prices far exceed the average household income but inflation has also wiped out home loans, leaving citizens without access to financing (Equal Times, tinyurl.com/28k6m2sy).
There is no genetic or biological basis for dividing the human race into distinct “races”. There are just groups of human beings — all of whom came from Africa originally — who developed slightly different physical characteristics over time as they travelled to, and adapted to, different climates and environments (The Conversation, tinyurl.com/ycyfnpj5).
(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)