a no tolerance policy

In August of 1990 when Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait the US launched Operation Desert Shield channeling American air, sea and ground forces into and around Saudi Arabia on the pretext first of preventing Saddam from launching an invasion there as well:



This saw a mass deployment of US troops onto Saudi territory, however even though the Saudis were happy to "rent" a superpower to do all the necessary fighting it wasn't ready to tolerate the various faiths of the foreign soldiers that were ready to fight and die for their land!

Not only were coalition troops on station in Saudi Arabia not allowed to drink any alcohol, they were also not allowed any Bibles, Saudi customs officers confiscated Bibles, the Jewish soldiers were not allowed hold any religious services on Saudi territory.

The Americans found a way around this by instead sending the Jewish soldiers via helicopter to ships in the Gulf to hold their services there instead!

Before the January 15th UN deadline date was announced for Saddam to pull his forces out of Kuwait Operation Desert Shield was expected at the time to last a long time, the large coalition military presence was indeed very costly to maintain.



* $1.2 billion a month for the American military machine
* $2.2 billion for the large amount of air power
* $4 billion for the Muslim allies sent to the Saudi Desert

All of this and the fact that the coalition forces (comprising of Western GIs) helped neutralize Saddam Hussein's Iraq and in turn ensure Saudi Arabia's safety, while despite this their way of life wasn't even tolerated!

religion in this 21st century

In this new 21st century there are more atheists arising in western society than any other time in history, technology (specifically the internet) has made the world much much smaller, anyone from anywhere can talk to anyone from anywhere (except North Koreans of course).

Everyday advances are made in science (which in itself is slowly proving creationism and other aspects of Christianity to be falsehoods), so when we hear in the news that some Saudi family is suing a genie over alleged harassment and then having a court coming to the conclusion from medical sciences that Epilepsy is not caused by evil genies many of us make the ignorant assumption that Saudi Arabia is a backward cave society that just found its way out of the 7th Century.

That however could not be further from the truth, Saudi Arabia has a society well advanced from their Nomad heritage!



A lot of their wealth comes their vast amounts of oil reserves that they sell in large amounts mainly to the United States who are close friends with them, however the Saudi's didn't like US troop bases in their country at all!
Which is why in 2003 American forces pulled out not to strain political relations.

The thing is religion seems to be part of the state over there, it has an infamous religious police called the mutaween, who have the power to arrest unrelated men and women caught socializing, seize products regarded as "un-Islamic" and strongly enforce how Muslims dress and what they eat!

In March 2002, they forcibly barred schoolgirls from escaping a burning school in Mecca because the girls were not wearing head scarves and black coats. Consequently, 15 girls died and 50 were injured!

Reading that last paragraph and thinking about it really does put a lump in my throat!

King Abdallah had this to say a few days ago:

"If God wills it, we will then meet with our brothers from other religions, including those of the Torah and the Gospel to come up with ways to safeguard humanity," he added. The king, who is the guardian of the holy sites of Mecca and Medina, said the major faiths shared a desire to combat "the disintegration of the family and the rise of atheism in the world"...

According to the official Saudi Press Agency King Abdullah said "I have noticed that the family system has weakened and that atheism has increased. That is an unacceptable behavior to all religions, to the Koran, the Torah and the Bible. We ask God to save humanity. There is a lack of ethics, loyalty and sincerity for our religions and humanity."

This comes at the same time they are having more stricter measures on what Saudi people can view or read off the internet, internet activity in internet cafes is being strictly monitored and some 10,000 websites are blocked every month!
It's almost like the Saudi monarchy fear that its people might become self aware or become infected from that malignant disease that sometimes enters the human brain known simply as common sense.


I actually saw this sign in Dublin!

People should be free of that kind of stuff, I don't mind religions imposing their will in the media to the general public (even though it can be used to dumb down people significantly) but changing the law to meet a religions demands of standards, that is when you know society is going further and further back into the Dark Ages, I thought I couldn't be more upset with my country after they introduced that blasphemy law, and picked the time when we were getting poorer and knee deep in a recession to do it!

Anyway I think I've done enough ranting.

Bottom Line: Religion is what you feel in your heart, it doesn't have to be what you feel in your head, but if you don't honestly feel anything in your heart you're an atheist, you're not cold hearted, you might be a little further up there on the productivity scale but you shouldn't as a human be forced into anything you don't believe in.

Life is far too short for that!

Christians or Atheists; the most annoying of the two

I have stated before that debating, protesting or mocking a persons religion or beliefs on the internet goes on the slam a door on your dick on the productive scale.

But atheists and Christians on the internet have both annoyed the hell outta me (equally) so I decided to have my say on this;

To start this off I don't consider myself neither a christian nor an atheist but rather agnostic which is;

a person that believes nothing is known
or can be known in the existence or nature
of God or anything beyond material
phenomenon; a person who neither claims neither
faith no disbelief in God

I don't get why atheists dislike agnostics some even referring to them as 'sub believers', this makes little sense to me, I don't believe in the Christian God which is what most atheists spend their time bashing, the Bible wasn't written word for word by God, in fact it wasn't written by God at all but by man a few decades after Jesus ascended to heaven after rising from the dead that is.

Although I agree on most things atheists preach as being more true than what Christians preach, but these days on the internet everywhere I turn they seem to be looking into mythology, already rejecting God and wanting to figure out the truth that they say they already know (the truth on the existence of a God).

A thing that annoys me about Christians is the fact that they protest that Hitler was an atheist, although this isn't true and it has been proven that Hitler was born a Roman Catholic and continued to reference 'God' in many of his speeches he's a person both parties don't want to be involved with, which makes me wonder why Christians continue to state it and bring it up when referring to atheists when it isn't true!

Anyway not to get sidetracked;

Another reason why I'm agnostic is the fact that the the universe is utterly enormous, Earth is smaller than a grain of salt on a beach in regard to the rest of the universe, and atheists preach that there is no divine power or God anywhere in the universe that we know piss all about!



The bus campaign in London by the atheists in the last couple of years show signs (like above) that I totally agree with, Christianity has you believe that you have an afterlife that will be better than this one yet committing suicide to get their sooner is a sin (yes people actually think like that).

I still refer to myself as "a good Christian" even though I don't believe in God or the afterlife but want to live out this life the best I can rather than wasting it waiting for the next one!

p.s. the title may be a little misleading since I have come to the conclusion that both Atheists and Christians are equally annoying.

is a blasphemous libel really a libel when referring to scientology?

A couple a week ago there was speculation about bringing in a blasphemous law into Ireland meaning that any citizen of the Republic of Ireland who protests a religion could end up having the Gardai come to their house and arrest them.

This annoys me because it was in fact people protesting outside the Church of Scientology that had the government consider bringing in this law, so say if I protest scientology as being a bullshit religion I could get arrested.

Even if it is;

Protesting or mocking people about their religion on the internet goes on the slam a door on your dick on the productive scale, I believe you should believe in your own religion and then shut up about it and not try and spread it and change the world with it:



So those people up in Dublin protesting scientology probably had a reason, to understand what I'm about to say about scientology you have to get the basics of what the religion is about and what they believe in.

The picture below is a man called L. Ron Hubbard a science fiction writer who wrote the foundations of the religion.



What he claims is the following:

75 million years ago there was a federation of planets headed by the evil lord Xenu, Xenu's planets were overpopulated so he had countless aliens gathered up and frozen, the frozen aliens were put on Xenu's galactic cruisers which were exact copies of DC-8 airplanes except they had rocket engines, they were then dropped into volcanos on Earth, they were now dead but the souls however were sucked into the sky by giant soul catchers Xenu had, they were then taken to a soul brainwashing cinema where they were forced to watch days of brainwashing material telling them that all other religions are a lie, the souls were then released where they roamed Earth confused and finally found human hosts to grab onto, which today causes all of our problems and fears.

Think I'm making this up, just listen to L. Ron Hubbard say it:

Click here to listen (1.8MB mp3)

So they believe that all our emotions are caused by the washed up alien souls in our bodies and we needed to be cleansed by paying them, ask yourself, if Tom Cruise is one of the most important people in the church why isn't he cleansed and one dimensional cardboard person like the humans in Battlefield Earth?

As I just said before and I'll say it again "believe what you want to believe and then shut up about it."

While this scenario would make the world a much better place a religion that calls all other religions lies and everybody on the planet a washed up alien soul until they pay their life worth's (financially that is) to their church.

And now my government is putting my countries law on their side, I mean seriously c'mon!