This, I hope, will be a regular feature of my blog in which I conduct a sort of a ‘rant round-up’ of various events around the world that may not justify a rant of their own.  First up is something that occurred overnight (August 4) in Venezuela – an attempted assassination of President Nicolás Maduro in the country’s capital city, Caracas.

Fortunately, as far as I am aware, nobody – not President Maduro or anyone else – was seriously injured or killed.  However, after the attack, President Maduro – without a shred of evidence to back his claim – proceeded to blame neighbouring Colombia for the attack.  And, naturally enough being a politician, further claimed that Colombia and the U.S. were somehow collaborating in a ‘right-wing’ plot to kill him.  One of Mr. Maduro’s ministers went ahead another stage and blamed the right-wing attack as a support gesture after losing Venezuela’s election (another election in which accusations of vote-rigging were made) in May of this year.

However, the fact is we do not know who carried out the attack, or why.  An opposition group calling themselves Soldiers in T-Shirts (!), possibly one of the best monikers ever devised for a political group, claimed responsibility, but this has yet to be proven.

But ridiculous names for political groups is not the funniest – or let’s say, most ironic – fact about this news story.  No, that honour goes to the knowledge that the event at which Mr. Maduro spoke, and was televised live nationally, was an event to mark the 81st anniversary of the formation of the Venezuelan military in 1937.  And, being a military event, we see a number of long shots of them, all standing in neat rows along the main street.  When the programme cuts to them after the explosion, we see a few seconds of disorder among one of the groups, followed by the entire parade running away en masse from the scene of alleged danger!  Ah, a military to be proud of, folks, when there is a weapon-imposed danger on your doorstep, your army – designed and trained to keep you safe – will run away in a completely disorganised fashion yelling for their mummies to keep them safe!

BREAKING NEWS:  One of the Chuckle Brothers is dead!

Many of my fans from Facebook will be aware of my stance on Brexit.  While the EU – like anything created and run by human beings – is not perfect, it is still infinitely preferable to the chaos and disorder faced by the United Kingdom by leaving it.  And since the U.K. voted more than two years ago to leave, our Conservative government has been debating, arguing, summit-ing with senior European politicians over the best deal that Britain can get for itself after they leave the E.U., sometime next March, I believe.

I believe in democracy, and – assuming there was no demonstrable intervention by the Russians or anyone else – since the U.K. voted by a majority to leave, we ought to do so.  The Government is there to exercise the will of the people, in my view, or at least the majority if there is disagreement.  That’s my view and if you disagree, fine.

We vote for our politicians to act on our behalf in important negotiations to get the best deal for us as citizens of the United Kingdom, but unfortunately our current Conservative government are too busy being self-serving and inept to actually provide or even care about anything that could be beneficial to us as a collective (population) or as individuals.  Our Prime Minister, Mrs. Theresa May, is our most incompetent this side of Gordon Brown.  O.K., there’s only been David Cameron in between, but still, she’s fairly bloody useless.

As far as Brexit is concerned, one of Mrs. May’s ministers, Liam Fox, wrote in The Sunday Times this morning that the chance of a ‘no-deal’ Brexit is growing considerably as the days go by.  This, says Fox, is down to Brussels’ rejection of the idiotic proposals came out of the infamous meeting at Chequers, the PM’s summer residence, some weeks ago.  So, Liam, Mrs. May’s incompetence and a load of clueless Conservative cockups running about the place have nothing to do with it then?

Britain’s main problem is that those who voted for Brexit did so in the main because they believe that too many Europeans are getting into the country, taking jobs, stealing benefits and getting on buses first.  They saw the Brexit Referendum as a great opportunity to do that.  Other than that, people want everything just as it was before; trade, money, silly little rules about using metric measurements ought to be the same.  The European Union, quite rightly in my view, are saying, no, you can’t do that; if you want to leave the E.U., then you’re going to have to do it properly.  Even some of Mrs. May’s own party – Jacob Rees-Mogg and Priti Patel among them – are saying that to anyone who will listen.  Of course, the Tories are not worried one bit about the welfare of the citizens of the United Kingdom, are they?  Oh, no; they’re more concerned about the loss of trade and, as so many MPs are company directors, the money.

Religion.

This is a topic that I think about frequently; and it is one that has been on my mind this week, for no particular reason than it has been a topic of discussion to which I have been paying attention in my daily forays into the murky world of YouTube, in its context as a news/entertainment source, and in its context as a social media platform.  Of course, logic tells you that it cannot be both news and social media.  Once it does that, it crosses the line into what we now call ‘fake news.’  Never mind the fact that television, radio and the internet have all been presenting themselves as more or less all three for decades.  Political discussion programmes such as the B.B.C.’s Question Time or A.B.C. in Australia’s Q&A are all fake news by this argument because their primary purpose is entertainment, right?  Yes, they discuss current events, but they do it in such a way as to provide entertainment – guests who fundamentally disagree with one another, pre-approved questions from the audience, and so on.  Wouldn’t it be dull if they didn’t do that, eh?

But, I digress – a common feature in my rants, especially now that I an not encumbered by space or disagreeable guitarists.  Religion.  I think about it a lot.   Am I spiritual?  Probably.  Am I religious?  Absolutely, definitely, one hundred per cent not.

I disagree with religion, its principles and practices, fundamentally.  If there were ever a Question Time featuring myself against religion, it would make for great entertainment.  I do not deny anyone their right to believe in an afterlife, a god, even a messianic figure who came to Earth and was then publically humiliated and hung out to dry by a controlling, dictatorial spiritual being.  Fine, if that’s you, have a nice life.  But don’t expect me to believe it or I shall suffer eternal damnation, or to think that I am not exercising my free will.  One of the most humorous facets of religion is that it makes the believer feel he or she is ‘saved,’* or that God gave humans free will when religion is one of the easiest methods by which humans can be denied free will, is astonishing.

*Please note I am addressing, in the main, the Christian religion, although many facets of other religions such as Islam or Hinduism can be applied to my statements; where there are ideological or practical differences, I hope to be bright enough to point them out.  If not, please comment and I shall do my best to make the necessary corrections.  But be nice.

So, there is a God, and that God created everything that there is in the Universe in just six days.  On the seventh day, he rested.  What did he do?  What was there to do in a Universe that, in many parts, was created so recently it was still drying?  Science has discovered a great deal in recent centuries.  But there is still a great deal that is unknown.  If we were to draw a graph, and a line from the beginning of human existence through to now, we would see a line with a slow incline for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years, as we discovered (or invented) the wheel, fire, fashion and makeup (not necessarily in the correct order), followed by a sharp, almost vertical line during the last couple of centuries as we found trains, cars, planes, the internet and electric guitars.  Oh, and space.  The discovery of space is a big one, because, with our massive telescopes, we can see not only out into the darkest Universe but back, back, back in time almost to what scientists would call the Big Bang, while religious folk would refer to it as the Creation of the Earth.

You see, folks, if you have no idea what I mean, light travels at 670,616,629 miles per hour; and if the distance is so great that it takes light four years to get to you, say, then whatever it is you are looking at is the object as it was four years ago.  It’s why scientists say that something is four light years away rather than 2.351e+13 miles away – much longer and more difficult to understand.

The discovery of the Universe – or, more accurately, how mind-numbingly big it was – led to a branch of physics we call astrophysics, a side-project of physics, if you will, that uses physical and chemical principles and practices to come up with solutions to some of the greatest mysteries and puzzles of the Universe.  Theoretical physics, where mathematics and other models are introduced, also made its way into the equation, if you’ll pardon the pun.  Anyway, the point is that physics looks for answers and uses scientific and practical models to find them.  Religion uses faith and guesswork, none of which can be proven, and expects its followers to believe them unquestioningly while giving that religion lots of money.  That goes for all major religions.

Human beings are one of the Great Ape family.  Religious people don’t like that, humans were created by God to be special, but that aside, humans evolved as one of the lucky branches of the Great Apes.  Look at us against chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas, for example, and while you will see some similarities, you will also detect decided differences and count yourself lucky that you have an unbelievable level of intelligence compared to these animals.  Our brains are infinitely more complex, but there are some things we do in which we can spot similarities with these animals.

Watch a chimpanzee for a while and you will soon see that it will do anything for food; it will trick a fellow chimp, fight with it, or learn simple tips and tricks in order to get food.  Some have tried to prove that chimps are more intelligent than we thought.  They can be taught to eliminate numbers in sequence or to open and shut a series of doors to get to food that has been locked away.  But these scientists seem unaware that it is the food that is the primary object.  They learn that, if they do this, that or the other, whatever that is, they will get the food.  That’s all they care about.  They are not smart enough to know that what they are performing is a complex mathematical equation, or a specific series of doors in a specific order to get to the food.

Humans do the same thing.  Sorry to break it to you, comforted religious folk, but we do, and none of it more clearly explained that in the context of religion.  All of us, every one of us, I don’t care who you are, are or have wondered at some point in your life about where we have come from and, more importantly, where we are going.  Eventually, groups started to form and once it became clear that people would do anything to further those groups that seemed to express their own views on their ultimate destiny, the groups became religions that used the most fascistic methods to implement those beliefs on everyone in their society.  You will believe this or die.  And when you die, you will burn in eternity.  Wow!  Just like medicine show performers, or magicians, religious leaders realised that there was money in this.  Lots of it.  All they had to do was tell people that they must believe a certain set of tenets that they had drawn up, and they were home and dry.  One of the reasons that the 9/11 attackers were so willing to die for their cause was that they were told that if they did this deed, if they became martyrs, they would spend forever in eternity in the company of virgins.  And do what to them?  Exactly, despite not being human, with 70 virgins and 70 wives!  I mean, talk about the ultimate human male fantasy.  How can that possibly work in eternity?  I’m sorry, Islam, but that is utterly ridiculous.  And, of course, to make sure many of its millions of followers don’t think too long about this, Islam preaches very loudly that you are not allowed to question it, and you are taught not to like it if others – regardless of their religion – write about it.  Although there is a fascinating article on the subject written in a book review not long after 9/11 in the Guardian, reproduced here:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jan/12/books.guardianreview5

So, chimps solve the meaning of life without realising it simply to get a piece of fruit; humans, who have developed a far more complex way of bartering, will do anything, without any thought for the consequence, to get money, which will, in turn, get them whatever they want.  There is no difference in my mind, whatever the religion, or fantasy, it’s all the same.  There is so much I could write about religion that this rant could in theory almost literally go on forever, but out of deference to you, dear reader, I won’t.  Religion is a racist, sexist, derogatory to others, murderous, violent fantasy, and I won’t have anything to do with it, no sir.  Although I would not insult a scientist by claiming to be one, I certainly pay a fair amount of attention to astrophysics and similar, its conclusions based on as much scientific fact as is possible.  I enjoy conversations with astrophysicists that I know personally and much of the music I am making at the moment is along astrophysical lines.  Check out my album Piece Time III:

…and, furthermore, my latest work with the band Spiral Planet – like the Universe itself, an ever-evolving band of heavenly bodies – here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ-PEbs5M_5vcr6K3Fy93ZA

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