Real quick for the record. Two Americans have been beheaded –what this means is that these men in masks throw a tied up and blindfolded man down on the ground, they then take long knives and they saw the mans neck until it comes off. Sometimes they start from the front and sometimes they start from the side. The whole time they are sawing the man is screaming madly, like an animal, the most desperate screams you have ever heard. When the knife gets to the throat or voice box the screams start to change depending on where the knife is; the man is still alive and he is still in dire pain, and his screams start to sound like a pig at slaughter; his body wiggles and struggles as men hold him down and the one man keeps sawing away at his neck trying to get his head off.

This has happened twice this week to us here in America. For those who don't know about it, they go about their days. For those of us who have seen the footage we will never be the same. I am changed inside and outside. I am confused as to what we should do. The president of France said yesterday at the UN meeting that America shouldn’t have attacked Iraq and that by doing so we opened up a Pandora’s box. He then left early and did not stay for president bush’s speech.

Today the president of the United States spoke at the UN. He smiled and posed for pictures. I felt ashamed and disgusted that he could smile at all for pictures because not less than two days ago two innocent Americans had their heads sawed off and it was broadcast all over the world. the families must be so grief stricken that they can probably not take being alive right now. I pray to God they did not see the footage. I do not dislike our president. I respect him. and honestly he seems like a good old boy that you cannot help but dig. But I feel that he needs to be acting more aware of what just transpired. He needs to be in mourning right now in the public eye. He needed to hold a candle light vigil for these innocent victims of his war. He needs to be dressed in black and showing the world that he is taking the losses of this war of his seriously and that it isn't all just business to him.

Kofi Annan has said that the American president broke the law by invading Iraq. And again today after the president spoke he gave a speech that said that now we are seeing laws broken everyday and a complete disregard for the law. Of course he did not specifically mention America, but it was obvious from the attitude he has had about our invading ever since we first started talking about it. The general tone of the UN nations is that the president is a defiant pit bull that goes around doing whatever he wants regardless of public opinion or law. Of course they are right; we have been doing that now for the last fifty years. Ever since we dropped the bombs on Japan. But bush has stepped it up even more now.

Still, as a citizen, I'm not sure if that's not exactly what we need right now to fight all these freaky little terrorist groups that are popping up. I mean, if it comes down to it, maybe we just need to bomb the shit out of every Muslim nation in the world till there are barely any left to attack us; and the thing about it is that bush is probably the best man for that job. You can tell that he wouldn’t be against doing something like that. Like when Truman dropped those bombs on Japan, I forget the exact number and don't feel like looking it up, but I think he killed more than 300,000 people. Japan has been our bitch ever since. And because of that bombing we have things like walkmans and plasma TVs so thank God for that.

Maybe bush and his evil consorts are right. Maybe we just need to kill a lot more Islamic people until we get all the terrorists. We’ve killed over 40,000 Iraqis in this new war. Imagine that. 40,000 people in little under two years dead... frankly I still think my friends and I got it right years ago: take some cool American companies and open them up all over the Middle East. Dell, compaq, Microsoft, American express, McDonalds, and put these people to work. These men are so happy to saw other peoples heads off or fly planes into buildings or drive cars into cafes with dynamite up their bum, all because they think it is going to give them some honor. And you couldn’t talk an American or a German or an English man into that for a million bucks; because we just have too much honor in our hearts already. I mean maybe for a million, but I doubt it. But these people, they just must really not feel a lot of honor inside of themselves, in order that taking these actions for the sake of honor are making them feel so good about themselves.

The Myth Of Faith

Last screening: the last samurai with tom cruise. Hello?! This movie ROCKED!!! Tom is fucking great in this film as always. He's one hundred percent.

It is five am and I cannot keep my eyes open. I must sleep. But I will take some notes before I do because I was inspired by the movie. I was reminded that as the Jews of Europe were innocently slaughtered by the millions in world war two, they were praying the whole time. And as the Chinese government murdered the Tibetans for their own selfish profit and gain and burned down over fifty percent of their monasteries, the Tibetans were a devoutly religious people who were praying the whole time as well. Of course we know where that got them. We only need look to the highly spiritual Native American peoples and their unfortunate demise in the face of the barbaric Europeans (supposed puritans) who conquered the Americas to see clearly the error in depending on a God or a faith for our survival. Success on earth has always come about through brute force, strength, military might, and money; not through prayer or faith or being kind or honest or generous or a good person. If anything, these practices and characteristics, regardless of how noble they are or how devoutly attached some of us are to them, have always worked against the innocent and enlightened among us. As a people we enjoy glorifying noble people once they are dead or fictionalized. But we rarely allow them to live too long.

It is a distinctly human phenomenon that I have begun to call the myth of faith – this belief that God is on our side if we do the right thing or try to be spiritual or good or religious. When we are young and still growing, it is preached to us; how important it is to believe in God, to have faith, to pray, to be good people, to be kind and honest and generous. But as we get older and study our history we are soon struck by the inconsistencies in these teachings as to they relate to what has actually transpired on the earth since we have been here. How indeed it has always been the strongest and the cruelest and the richest of us who have won the battles, and shaped the world we have lived in. It has never been the most devout, or the kindest, or the gentlest, or the most honest or the most religious.

And even if it has been at times the most religious who have won the wars and controlled the events of history, as was the case with the roman empire’s clutch on western civilization, or the Muslim domination through the latter half of the first millennia ad, or the Christian slaughter of the Americans, the most religious has never equaled the most righteous or the purest or the nicest. In other words, it is rare that a people who have dominated in the name of their religion have ever embodied much of the teachings of that religion in their practices, especially not in their business of trying to take over the world.

When we think of the winners of the great battles that have shaped the world into what it is today, whether we are thinking of Julius Caesar, or Alexander the great, or Napoleon or the catholic Church/Roman Empire, or Mohamed and his loyal band of Muslim freedom fighters who conquered half of Europe, or the Christian Crusaders who took much of it back, or the European settlers who murdered entire populations of indigenous peoples in their quest to conquer the continent of America, we can clearly see that it has never been the morals and values of our youth that have helped guide these victories. [Spain and Portugal murdered over one hundred and fifty million native peoples in south and north America. England and Holland another fifty million in north America. That's 200 million innocent people murdered by people most of us can still call our ‘ancestors.’] It has always been the secular qualities of sheer force, brute strength, and having more money than the defeated that has enabled these victories. God and religion have never played into it, even though God and religion are almost always used as a driving force or a justification or a reason to go to battle in the first place.