The use of Reason and reasonable argumentation, the reclaiming of the idea of Progress and the struggle against dogma. In this post-modern world, reinventing Enlightenment is of the utmost importance.

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Mind the… Gap

My...porn dream



Last night I had a terrible dream/vision of what porn really is.

It was very disturbing indeed. With God's grace I have abstained from porn for over 3 months now, and I thank Him every day for it.

In the dream I was on a computer and was surfing a porn website. I was searching through all the movies looking for one specific one I wanted. I would download one, fast forward through it to see if it was the one I wanted, then move on to the next.

I don't remember exactly what I was looking for, but I came across one that wasn't like the rest. It started out like a normal porn, then it began to shine of evil.

The porn actors began to speak to me in the movie. They began to speak profanities and curses to me.

The evil escalated and immediately the porn movie turned into the most vile brew you could ever imagine. It was like flashes of demonic and disfigured creatures, if you took the scariest part of every scary movie ever made you might come close to what I saw.

You see, the main actors were George Bush, Tony Blair, Ben Laden the wancker from Iran and, worse of all...they were all making love inside a nuclear facility!

Nuns with guns


The President of the Fascist States of America and the “new” Pope are fraternally bound. They are offspring of ideological war, of the Cold War. As the years go by and hence past settles as dust into history, one needs reminders of how the battle between power and multitude was once fought. Back then, in late 60s and 70s, there were guerrillas and guns in South America, they were fighting as they do now in Iraq, against American imperialism. Back then, as now radical clerics abounded, of various sorts, and one such group became known as the "liberation theology". They were far from an homogeneous crowd but from Mexico to Paraguay their mission was alike, to join in struggle their communities against poverty and coercion. Some merely preached rebellion from their privileged pulpits – Porfirio Miranda’s Marx and the Bible for instance, others carried guns and joined the guerrillas, as in Nicaragua or Haiti. It was romantic but both genuine and effective.

It is at this historical juncture that the Bushes and the Pope met. Such radical priesthood, and nunhood, was a danger to the authority of the client regimes of America as well as to the wealthy orders and reactionary theology of the Catholic Church. A double strike was devised, from America came counter-revolutionary training and funding for paramilitary to promptly massacre radical priests. But crucially, from the Vatican came excommunication for dissent, so that these assassinations would go unpublicized and unscrutinized.

Who was paying for the paramilitary? Ronald “the cowboy” Reagan and his vice-president George Bush signed the checks. Who was excommunicating the priests? The Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, aka the Holy Inquisition under its more politically correct name, was Cardinal Ratzinger. Religion is political.

Editorial note

this site is not Islamophobic. It is however against organised involvement of religion in policy making, especially when that policy making entail nuclear energy and its offspring nuclear weapons. Iran, along with other middle easterns countries is an example of Religious democracies where policy is heavily influenced by what muslind consider their holy book, The Koran. At back to enlightenment we consider The Koran an historical book to be taken with a pinch of salt. we hold the same opinion for the Holy Bible and other religious ouevres.

Monday, January 30, 2006

Thought of the night...

Nuclear energy for Iran?









The Iranian government considers the Holocaust a pack of lies. They even hold debates where they prove the Holocaust never existed. Should Iran be allowed nuclear power?

Sure, of course
.

Google, Courage, lies


The Unknown Rebel, single handed, halted a column of tanks converging on Tiananmen Square, China, for more than half and hour. The year was 1989.
The tanks were there because some students and peasants were also there, demanding Democracy. Instead they got bullets.

Nobody knows what happened to this man. He was nineteen and vanished the very same day. But, at least in the West, his moving example, his message that a single man can make a difference, lives on. Too bad that Google, in its dealings with the Chinese Government, prefers to ignore it:

Google World google China

Thought of the day...


The ideology of cultural conservatism which sees enlightenment and art as simple antitheses is false, among other reasons, in overlooking the moment of enlightenment in the genesis of beauty. Enlightenment does not merely dissolve all the qualities that beauty adheres to, but posits the quality of beauty in the first place.

Theodor Adorno

It takes a son of a bitch


It takes a son of a bitch to deny this. Only a son of a bitch would dream to come up with something like this.

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Kick him out


This man conducted a terrorist war in Iraq, without UN approval, against public opinion. This man failed miserably in this little war of his, a war that drags on and on, leaving a trail of blood and pain throughout the fields and cities of Iraq. Do not believe me? Go and see here. But before you do, take heed, it might hurt, the truth always hurts.

This man says he does not approve of torture, and yet we know that torture centers run by US personnel do, in fact, exist around the globe. We just need to check BBC News.

This man approved an infamous eavesdropping program on his own citizens and, yet, he calls it surveillance.

I'm not an American myself; but in this global world of ours, whatever happens in American politics has far reaching impact. So, to the american friends I say, join them, kick him out.

Thought of the week


However much I may sympathize with and admire worthy motives, I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes. Mahatma Gandhi

Saturday, January 28, 2006

What now, my lovely Hamas?

Bloguing on Death row


Back to the Enlightenment is against the death penalty. Furthermore, I think that those in power, with the help of mainstream media, usually portray convicts on Death row as vicious animals.

Before, we could never really get the other face of the coin. The thoughts, the emotions of men and women that would be locked up for years in the Death Row, waiting for final execution, and, perhaps, final deliverance.

The blogosphere is changing this state of affairs, though. Meet Vernon. A prisoner on Death row and read what he has to say in a blog were his thoughts and emotions are being registered. You can even leave questions.

It comes with a catch: you only have untill February 6.

Friday, January 27, 2006

Tenebrae

Holy Trinity


The world is going through a time of crisis and questioning. Two world wars, genocide, nuclear proliferation, Neoimperialism, and, today, 2006, the Middle East crisis, at least for now. You may call me what you wish: dreamer, utopist, stupid. Alas! I believe in Man.


In the Enlightenment, mankind was a mere child who had just discovered how to use their hands and feet. Every path was available for us to tread. God, as the Deists claimed, had created the Earth and now is up to us to shape it.

In time, Father, Son and Holy Spirit has been replaced by Reason, Justice and Progress. This is my trinity! This is the trinity Time and certain men have corrupted to serve their intents. Let us go back to Enlightenment, where there was confidence in Reason, in Science, in Letters... in Man.

Violence...Sometimes pays


As you all know if you have read my previous post, (if not go and read it you rhetorical sons of bitches) little old me was so preoccupied.... cause...he had smashed a a piece of glass...

Well, the thing was, little old me had forgotten his keys inside his house, and it was very late, it was freezing and I had only a T-Shirt to cover my Beautiful Torsos. So, I had three options:

A – Smash a fucking window

B – Call a locksmith and pay something like £150 to get inside

C – Go to one of my mates, in the middle of the night, begging for lodging

Obviously, I went with A. Why? Because whenever I go to my mates I bring happiness not problems (that is the reason why I have mates); because between paying £50 for a new window and £150 to keep the old one, I would rather go with the former. (Yeah, I’m not that stupid).

Furthermore, let me enlighten you on another trivial issue: by the good offices of one of my mates (Paul, manager of the Wine Store voted the UK’s best off licence in 2004) I finished up paying only 30 quid for the broken glass…

How typically idiotic of me, was it not?

And may all the acts of violence be so easily erased as mine.

The price of violence...



Or how to make a complete arsehole of oneself in less than three hours

What to do when, late in the evening, you decide that you just need a can of beer? What to do when, wearing nothing but a T-shirt, and with only a couple of pounds in your pocket, you bang your house door behind you and immediately realize that you have locked yourself out?

What to do, when you live in a foreign land, don’t know procedure; don’t have a mobile phone or an internet connection, no friends to turn to?

You go to the wine shop, your original destination; to Paul, the manager, for advice.

What to do, when he tells you “pick the lock” and even gives the odd tool? You try; you try hard for two hours, in sub-zero temperature - and fail, extremely so.

What to do, when you go back to Paul, a man with whom you discuss politics, for more advice, and he says: “Be violent, my pointy-headed-pseudo-leftist-intellectual-friend, be violent. Smash a fucking window, It will make you fell good and will get you out of the cold.

And so I did, as you can see by the pic. Paul’s advice, however, if it did get me out of the cold proved bad in more than one way. Smashing the window didn’t make me feel good at all. I had a terrible night pondering over the entire affair.

Yet, the worse was to come in the early morning. The door now has a brand new glass, exactly like it had before my fierce deed.

Price of violent accomplishment: 50 pounds.

Clashes: It be guns


According to reports, rival gangs of foollwers of both Hamas and Fatah exchanged gunfire in the town of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, leaving at least two people injured.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Brave New World


It is a beautiful future. A lovely down rises in the Middle-East, with the victory of Hamas. And we celebrate, because we are completely under the spell of nihilism.

Palestine. Israel. Holy Land.

More blood will flow, rivers of blood to be precise. It will not take long.
Thank you Mr Bush. Thank you Mr Blair. Thank you Mr Sharon.

Iraq War: “A historic blunder”


Before the invasion of Iraq all the people who, for some reason or other, opposed the impending war were branded as Anti-Americans; Leftists. Now, Pandora’s Box has been opened and Iraq is proving to be a blunder, a fiasco of gigantic proportions.

Everything has failed. The insurgents continue to kill and be killed. The country is a mess. Democracy? Yeah, more likely a Shiite Islamic Republic will eventually overcome.

And this was also, the neo-cons said, a way to assure a peaceful resolution to the israelian-palestinian conflict. Well, Hamas has just won the parliamentary election in Palestine. We must thank Mr Bush and Mr Blair for that. They have managed, with the intervention in Iraq, to fuel unmitigated hate towards the West, and Western ways.

So, we are anti-Americans, right? So why the hell an American senior general says that the war on Iraq is “a historical blunder”?

Bye Bye, George


Sayonara George. And may I just take a minute to say: go fuck yourself. You made it even more difficult for all of us who want an end to the Irak blunder.

May the force be with us


Hamas has won the election for parliament in Palestine.

The problem with this is that Hamas regards Palestine, including all of present-day Israel, as an Islamic homeland that can never be surrendered to non-Muslims. Hamas asserts that individual and community struggle (jihad) to wrest control of the land from Israel is a religious duty for all Muslims.

May the force be with us all

From a 2 cent philosopher


Socratic questioning:
Do we talk to each other or at each other?

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Bloguing an audience


There are three main aspects related to the building up of an audience in the blogosphere. First, content, second style and third posting regularity. Audiences must be cultivated. If you have a blog about babies don’t post porn, audiences will turn away from you. You must keep a content trend to the whole affair.

The blogosphere is the world of the ephemeral, of the transient and this brings us to style. Make your posts short and make them good: align text, add good visual aids to the post in question. It is not that sometimes you can’t write your 1000 words diatribes. Just don’t over do it. Most bloguers will blog away when they see a 1000 word post.

The best way to lose whatever chance for creating an audience is to stop posting. If you do not post regularly audiences will turn their backs on you.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Spot the differences


Meet the DNA of the HIV virus, a global killer. HIV kills by wrecking your immune system. It is transmitted by unprotected sexual intercourse and blood transfusion.


Meet the logo of the World Economic Forum, another global killer. The WEF kills by wrecking your social economy, it starves you to death. It is transmitted by unprotected "free" trade and capital inflows.

SURVEILLANCE? NO SHIT...


Spying on you fellow citizens, without a warrant, against the Law, against basic civil liberties, now has a new name. President Bush and associates just discovered gun powder.

Apparently, the whole affair of the infamous eavesdropping program is nowadays better addressed to, by the administration, as the SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM. Orwellian, is it not? Peace is War, Love is Hate, right?

INTERNAL NOTE


All for one and one for all!

Dear contributors

With the arrival of Student our team is complete. We are the three Musketeers. Student is our D'artagnan and Arrebenta is our spiritual mentor. Why do we write in English? Because English is the language of the World. We aim high. Enlightenment just started, and we will probably never build an impressive audience. Nonetheless, we should try. Why? Because I think we all have something worthwhile saying.

Nevertheless, remember, it is not just what we say; it is the way we say it. We will be better and better with time. Now, let us blog!

Monday, January 23, 2006

Fight, fight, always fight back


So, this nutter won the presidential election in Portugal. Remember the guy? We had some posts on him and his bizarre idea for an European californication. Hell! We even had a poll (one of the boxes on your right) on the issue.

He is going to be president now. You know what little old me has to say about it? Read the fucking title and look at the thought of the day.

Thought of the day...


"I'm patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it."

Edith Sitwell

Sunday, January 22, 2006

WIPED OF THE MAP


As you all know the president of Iran (idiot on the photo) has this dream of wiping Israel of the map. Some people think this is merely rhetoric for internal consumption. I happen to disagree. I am very aware of the strong links between for instance Hamas and Iran. I think this nutter is for real when he utters all of his violent and racist diatribes.

Now, as we have discussed previously, Iran is going ahead with its nuclear program, and we all know that it is not a matter of electricity.

However, personally, I think they should re-think their entire policy on the nuclear issue. They should stop and think a little: some people might just as well wipe the full program of the map… Remember, they have done it before, in Sadam's Iraq.

Incidentally, the man with the hood is being escorted to his death ceremony, in the good old days of the Islamic revolution.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

BRAVE NEW WORLD


French president Chirac has resurrected the Cold War thesis for using nuclear weapons as a deterrent. Chirac says that any country that launches terrorist attacks on France will by atomized. This is great. Now Chirac’s talking! I say fucking nuke them all to kingdom Kong!

There is only a slight problem I would like to ask Mr Chirac in order to be further enlightened on the subject…

How the fuck are you going to determine (and prove) that a terrorist attack was launched by a given country? Do you think that, if a particular country decides to sponsor terror attacks, it is going to advertise its deeds?


Nevertheless, I think I know what Chirac really means: In a Machiavellian way he is just sending an hidden message to Iran. It is a good message. I read it like this: Watch out you mother fuckers! Not only I, Chirac, am a big boy but also I have bigger weapons (at least for now) than you, the Iranians. So I’m forced to say that I completely subscribe to this razor-sharp declaration. It is a good example of real politick put into action. The iranians of course, got the gist of it.

Friday, January 20, 2006

The cure to all ills



As the caption goes: "picks you up when your low... calms you down when your tense!" Fancy a fag?

Iran: the path to war


It is finally a certainty. Iran is going ahead with its nuclear program either we like it or not. And it is going to prove impossible to stop them. I thank Bush and Blair for that. Those idiots have spread their forces in Iraq so much that now they cannot effectively ponder military options in Iran.


Iran will have nuclear power. Their resolve, their commitment in this issue is total. If not why would Iran’s government be doing this?

Thursday, January 19, 2006

IT'S THE LAW, STUPID!


The Congressional Research Service [CRS] in the US produced a report that concludes: “the Bush administration’s limited briefings for Congress on the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping without warrants are ‘inconsistent with the law.’” You can read it here.

Mindgames & paranoia



By now you all must know that I really enjoy playing mind games. What I really do not like is when they back fire in my face. The other day I had to go to Spain. I was exhausted and preoccupied that day; don’t ask me why, I just was.

A very good friend was supposed to meet me at the airport. From there on we would go to his place where we were supposed to have dinner at eight. I was in charge with bringing a bottle of wine.

When I arrived, my friend was not there. I phoned him four times and nothing. My next move was to go to one of those internet machines they have at airports. Now, when I was about to insert coins this pop up showed itself on the monitor. It was a message. It read like this: "From someone, something to someone. Dinner at eight in my house, bring the wine!"

Shit, I was stiff frozen! What the fuck could this be? Well, apparently, it was just a coincidence because my friend finally showed up. And informed me that his phone had been out of order. And so I forgot the whole incident and enjoyed a few days rest.

However, when I got back home, on the living room table there was a letter. It read like this: “Without keys! For the second time we have been in this house and judiciously changed the position of some objects! Check your reactions! You guinea-pig!..” Now this is something very strange. I know that I share my house with two others. I also know that my house keys have been in several hands in the past; nonetheless I could live without this kind of mind-game.

Thought of the day...


Aimer et penser: c'est la veritable vie des esprits. Voltaire

Monday, January 16, 2006

Anonymity in the blogsphere: possibilities





Most bloguers are somewhat anonymous persons. Even when they give a full profile of themselves (or at least that will be your first impression) most of them are still anonymous, in the sense that their audience is minimum. This assumption seems at first clear as crystal and not open for debate. It is not that simple, though.

The blogsphere, for all its anarchic resonance, is an organized world, where individuals gather around similar interests, likes, dislikes, or have other bonds, such as real life family ties and friendships. Individuals will blog were they think it is good for them to blog. If I am into fast cars I will not join the crochet bloguing community. In a way, the claim that anonymity is the rule in the Blogsphere is refuted by this simple fact: people will blog with people they like, with people with whom they have affinities. They will create bonds with other bloguers (links) and their anonymity will be the lesser the greater are the bonds they create with others.

Nevertheless, anonymity does have its advantages, the main one consisting in the possibility of creating several personas for oneself. By acting in such way you can approach groups you are interested to interact with as if you were an equal, that not being the actual case.

You can lie and get away with it. All you need are some more or less refined linguistic and technical skills, to help sell your fake creation. It also means that you can interact with different people without hurting susceptibilities; groups with whom you share some interests might have different values from others you also share interests with. If you like fast cars and crochet at the same time, having two personas will prove useful. For your fast car persona you probably want a macho type bloguer. For your crochet persona the exact opposite.

Cultivated anonymity helps you interact within one or more given communities in different and interesting ways. Also, if you are conducting research on bloguers behavioral patterns, it will be interesting to see how they react to your different personas. You can even have several personas to interact within the same community.

Nevertheless, before you decide going on yet another anonymous tour, you must remember this is not an easy affair. Anonymity of this kind demands a very skillful use of language. If in real life there is something called fingerprints, in the blogsphere there are linguistic fingerprints. And there is also a more technical side to the issue. Blogs today come with trackers, i.e., devices by which the owner of a blog can track down visitors to their own servers, check the actual time they spent at the blog, entry and exit page, page views and also the precise date, to the minute, of a given visit…

Thought of the day...

Hide yourself, conceal yourself from thy self, maybe then you might escape your own demons.

Friday, January 13, 2006

George in da house


The Right Honourable George Galloway is the firebrand member of Parliament from the anti-Iraq war coalition party Respect. George is a former Labour MP who defected from the party in protest for its warmongering in the Middle East. He is one of the most competent spokespersons for the antiwar movement in Britain.

This respected and important political figure, after being elected to the House of Commons, decided to join another house, the House of Celebrity Big Brother. Alongside the pornographer Jodie Marsh, the pierced-up Dennis Rodman and the past mistress of coach Sven Goran-Ericsson, George smokes remorsefully his Cuban cigars. No doubt George thought the Big Brother house was a perfect platform to play havoc on Labour’s Iraq adventure, but he has been thoroughly censored. The Producer of Big Brother has excused the program by saying that broadcasting rules in Britain determine that any political statement must be accompanied by a counter argument. Because no one in the house cares a sod about politics, or George for that matter, there is no debate.

Can anyone play the system? Can the system be used against itself? George thought he could use the ultimate reality TV show against the ultimate crimes of reality, and he is being proven wrong. Gorgeous George that’s not the way!

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Thought of the day...


"What luck for rulers that men do not think." Adolf Hitler

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Christian gals do it better...


But I don’t mean the tart in the photo, although she is quite popular (the most popular Portuguese character worldwide). I mean true Christian, young, un-married, hot gals. Gals that actually believe in God, the Holly Trinity, miracles and all the other rubbish.

How do I know truly hot Christian gals do it better? Well (I will not discuss my sex life here) it’s the SIN thing... Truly hot Christian gals believe that sex before marriage is a SINFUL activity. But SIN comes in with TEMPTATION.

So, when they finally cave in to TEMPTATION, (that is if you’re good enough persuading them) they will FUCK like if the DEVIL was in FULL possession of their hot wet bodies; they will drift into PERDITION and give you the best sex EVER!

PS - What about hot muslim gals?

Thought of the day...


"Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? " ( Matthew 23:33 ). Jesus, addressing a group of bystanders who thought he was full of shit.

Monday, January 09, 2006

One from my turf...


When one walks into the Learning Centre facility at the University of Birmingham (in the UK, not Alabama) one is greeted by this notice. Take a minute and read it.

Now, do you….GET IT?

The LEARNING CENTRE is, supposedly, a place where people learn stuff, namely languages. Can any of you readers go and tell the people at the LEARNING CENTRE about this?

And…If any problems you get, do not mention me. I already HAVE too many problems and do not wish to pick a fight with them.

Look who is back...


Hey, he is back! Just when we thought he was to busy cave dwelling, Ben Laden is back in Business! Check it out here.

Thought of the day...


"Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself." Cicero.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

1984 TODAY

"Should the National Security Agency be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States?"

This question was in a national poll in the US. The results: 64 said YES, and if you do not believe check here.
However, there is a small detail missing in the question; three words that make all the difference: Without a Warrant.

Thought of the day...


"Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning." Erwin Rommel

Saturday, January 07, 2006

The rise of God


Ever since the Enlightenment started, God lost battle after battle to Reason. The greatest of them all God lost it to Darwin.

Finally, believers were cornered into admitting that believing in God was merely an act of faith – not of Reason.

And that was fine, because the Enlightenment is tolerant in spirit and one of the values of the Enlightenment is everyone can believe whatever he/she choses to believe, so long as it does not conflict with Reason and a reasonably ordered society.

So why is it that this blog is named Back to the Enlightenment? One of the reasons is the one you read here and here and here and this list could go on and on and on. Darwin is under siege. So is Reason.

Thought of the day...


"Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash." George S. Patton