Blumudus

Charlie Gard executed by the wannabe Übermenschen

In-depth (fastidious) analysis of a post-human, anti-human authoritarian act (+a side of tasteful disinformation). A.1. Presto, Godwin! In the worldview of the Nazis, the Jew wasn’t just a mortal enemy; it was seen as some unsightly subhuman, a thing, a disgusting thing. They rounded up millions of pacific, respectable and productive people, mostly (at least in the West) from the well-off, and (when they weren’t killing them immediately) they let those poor souls wither away in concentration camps, as terminally-ill, bony shadows of humans, fighting for their life like scared rats, begging for a morsel of moldy food. That’s when the self-appointed Übermenschen (the Superhumans), the “Aryans”, could triumphantly point…

12 random thoughts you now want to read

1. If you’re so fortunate to marry a woman who has no idea of what the classic sci-fi movie Alien is about, I said to myself, you can’t miss this opportunity: get her to watch it while she’s 8 months pregnant. That’s what I did with my wife. She remained unfazed. Notwithstanding that unwieldy blob inside her which is often bulging out in a few spots and seems on the brink of rupturing her belly to come out right then. Strong woman. 2. (Spoiler Alert) …and so it happened that we married within a week from The Big Bang Theory‘s Leonard and Penny marriage, and now we’re awaiting the birth of our firstborn daughter while watching…

Describing the next political crisis in graph terms

Plus some obligatory ramblings about Islam. A comment posted under my article discussing the fickle behavior of voters inspired me to further elaborate on the nature of the political crisis ahead of us (Europeans, at least). The idea being: we’re facing a phase of instability, characterized by erratic election results but no significant choices being made, other than letting the current course continue unabated (top-down economic policies, EU mega-state “integration”; restrictions on freedom of speech, especially for non-Muslim religious groups; moral decay, gradual abolition of the family, culture of death; ethnic substitution through immigration). I compared the current situation, with many changes of direction but no real movement, to the…

Charlie Gard and the euthanasia slippery slope

Update: here’s my follow-up article discussing the sad epilogue (and the surrounding media obfuscation). A death sentence for little Charlie Gard. But there’s hope! A 10-month old infant from London, depicted in the photo. Suffering from an extremely rare degenerative disease. UK judges and even the European Court of Human Rights have decided he must be killed, allegedly for his own good. Notwithstanding the efforts made by his parents, even raising the necessary funds to transfer him to the USA to get an experimental treatment, the will of the doctors of the hospital where he’s kept alive with a respirator is that of letting him go. They don’t see his life…

Reshuffling. Or: About The Capricious Voter

Philippines, electoral advertising in the streets

Pretending to change the rules of the game while being predictable and misinformed. Recent General Elections in the UK and France, plus local mayoral races in Italy, represent good examples of a puzzling trend: voters ostensibly voting to upset the forces in power, or at least those forces that seem stronger at the moment, as if the unwashed masses wanted to evade control (while actually failing at it). As if moderation and wisdom were embodied by an erratic behavior that isn’t fully committed to any cause or political project, instead rushing to support the latest movement or political figure promising “change”, then at the next opportunity punishing that very same party…

Ty Cobb and Alex Schwazer: victims of fake news

Ty Cobbs in action, sliding in third base

2 Athletes, 2 very different stories Tyrus Raymond “Ty” Cobb was a legendary baseball player active between 1905 and 1928. He still holds some MLB records, including best batting average. But his reputation has been ruined by fabricated stories, mostly about his purported racism. Alex Schwazer is an Italian race walker, 2008 Olympic Champion, who was disqualified twice for doping offences: at first, in 2012, because he was cheating; eventually, in 2016, because he wasn’t. A new man, deeply changed, he was dead serious in his quest to fight doping. Did someone decide he was an inconvenience for a world of Athletics that got used to turn a blind eye on…

What is or isn’t homophobia

2 French policemen attack a peaceful protester against gay marriage

I just realized that today is the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. I come very late to the party, so excuse my unpolished manners. Sooo. Homophobia is an imaginary mental disorder. Its definition was created towards the end of the 20th Century and popularized in the 21st. Turns out that centuries of civilization zoomed by without people coming up with a similar idea. Until now. Lucky us. The idea of being afraid of homosexuals. Going to great lengths to prove that you’re not. Embrace nonsense, fall right in line, or else. Homophobia comes quite handy as an instrument for oppressive -nominally democratic- regimes censoring free speech,…

Does Marine Le Pen stand a chance?

UPDATE– She lost, as predicted. Since Macron’s victory is even more pronounced than was indicated by the polls when I wrote my article (in fact it seems people gradually increased their support for the creepy puppet guy in the last few days before the election), I might add there’s one obvious, additional effect in place. The natural instinct for moderation that is part of our DNA, so to speak, has been quietly exploited to reinforce the transformational trend: more EU, more immigration, more gender theory indoctrination in schools, more euthanasia, more globalization, more appeasement efforts to reach out to Islamists, less freedom of speech. Since this revolution is the new…

Lent fasting & abstinence: do they make sense?

When I was in nursery school the nuns taught us to make some small sacrifices, which were labeled fioretti (literally: small flowers. This word expresses the idea of a small offer to the Virgin Mary). Good deeds, of course, but typically focusing on the effort itself, not on obtaining tangible results. I have a vivid memory of the small poster on the wall where we glued our tiny paper flowers, regular shapes comprised of a few red petals and a yellow circle in the middle. One flower for each fioretto (sacrifice) made: we felt rewarded for being good. And proud of the accomplishment! I don’t remember instead the specific subject of my…

Palm Sunday Rivulet of Consciousness

At mass We gather in scattered groups; the place isn’t far from our small church. A nice blue sky. Children carry in their hands the traditional braids made of palm fronds. Every adult holds a bunch of olive branches. I notice -again- a stark contrast with my old parish in Northern Italy: here in the South it seems they love large quantities of stuff. Each of the most resourceful parishioners gathered enough branches to supply the whole congregation back in the North. Odd: people here use to wish a happy Palm Sunday. Never heard of that. After mass we’ll exchange a olive branch with our friends and acquaintances: a nice, simple…

Syria, Sarin & Red Pills

A surprisingly widespread reaction to anti-Assad propaganda (UPDATED) As you probably already know, yesterday tens of people have been killed in Idlib, Syria, seemingly as a consequence of chemical weapons being released in the air. Horrible images of civilians and children, gasping for air or already dead, have been disseminated around the mediasphere. According to reports, the Syrian Army attacked the rebel-controlled territory using Sarin gas. The source: a so-called Observatory for Human Rights, a well-known propaganda operation based in London, part of an international concerted effort to remove the Syrian President Bashar Assad from power, favoring the “rebels” (essentially ISIS, Al-Qaeda spin-offs and their allies) that are at war with the…

Are victims of terrorism relevant?

Seriously. This is one of those stale tropes that periodically emerge from the collective consciousness of the oh-so-smart liberals: the threat of terrorism “is way overblown”. Americans stand a greater chance of dying while slipping in their bathtubs than at the hand of terrorists. Barack Obama used to quote this factoid, as it was reported by the New York Times a year ago. Building on the concept, the ineffable NYT columnist proceeded to explain us that we (as a species) are unable to correctly judge risks, overreacting to measly acts of terror while failing to grasp the danger posed by Climate Change™. We’d need to get properly educated… Back then, the news item everybody…