Why "Je suis Ankara" is not "Je suis Paris"

Update (23 Mar 2016): 

After a lot of feedback from people about this post, I realized that I owe the reader an update and an explanation. Namely, I am adamently opposed to any form of violence. I sympathize and support the peace loving citizens of Turkey and any other country for that matter in their struggle against terror, whether its coming from terrorists or (in the case of Turkey) their current government. That being said, I want to emphasize that the this post examines WHY "Je suis Ankara" did not make the same buzz as "Je suis Paris" according to my personal opinion. Apologies to anyone who took this text out of context by suggesting that I hold a grudge against the Turkish people. So, without further ado:

I started writing this article last night (21st March) and since I was too tired to finish it, I left it for today. Upon waking up today, I saw the terrible news about the Brussels airport bombing, which made me angry beyond words and also reinforced my resolve to give my insight of a particularly annoying statement that has been circulating around social media.

Namely, in the wake of the terror bombings in Ankara and Istanbul after that, there has been a growing number of social media posts on social media, as well as questions directed at me from people close to me. These questions and posts are of the flavour:

"You were 'je suis Paris' will you also be 'je suis Ankara' ?"

In other words, will we see the same amount of sympathy and media coverage for Ankara as we did for the terrorized cities in EU?

I do understand that the reason for this line of posts and questionning, is evidently the fact that hype created on social and other media for the bombings in Turkey was considerably lower that that of the Paris attacks. This is a fact! What I do not understand (well actually I do and will share it) is why most of the more informed population are persisting to neglect that they know exactly why this is occuring - and using the ignorance of the less informed as messengers (via shares and retweets) to parade a political statement that has nothing to do with the actual cause of the apparent downplaying of the tragedies in Turkey.

Let me start by saying that regular European media like TV and papers, did actually fully cover the events in Turkey as they unfolded. In fact, before today, Istanbul was still amongst headlines in most cases. So, what happened with the social media, governed by ordinary people?

I will start by telling you a short story about a childhood experience of mine.

The Guy With The Crackers

I was about 15 or 16 years old in my second year of high school. My grandfather had just passed away, so there was a lot of commotion at my parents place. I had to get out for some air. 

Outside were these four kids, about 15 years old, one of which had a bunch of short fuse crackers in his hand. Short fuse crackers are small gunpoweder filled devices used to make a small bang as in to scare people. 

This guy was picking on a bunch of other kids (couple of years younger than him) resting with their bikes. He would light one and toss it towards them. When they blew they would startle the kids on their bikes. He threw at them about 4 crackers. The kids on the bikes were constantly ignoring him because they were afraid to get into a conflict since the cracker guy and his friends were obviously bullies. 

At one point, he lights a fifth cracker. This time something bad happened. The cracker happened to have a defective fuse which caused it to explode in his hand just as he lit it. The combustion was enough to rip open the pointer and middle fingers of his right hand! He was in agony for about a minute, until the guy from the shop nereby came out with some hand paper wrapped his fingers after which the three friends escorted their cracker kid friend away in pain.  

I was feeling sorry for the kids on their bikes, up to that point. But for the cracker kid, I was more shocked than I was sorry for. I was afraid for him but can't say that I actually felt any sympathy. 

The End.

The moral of the story here is: if you play with fire, you will get burnt. However, the point I want to make here actually, is the fact that Turkey, governed by an autocratic borderline-extremist dictator Erdogan, is playing with fire. Erdogan is playing with fire in Turkey's name, by his indirect support for ISIS. 

This indirect support comes in the form of his perpetual agression against the Kurdish people, one of the main enemies of ISIS, as well as his evident dislike of Israel, the reasons for which point directly to his support for turning the state of Turkey into an islamic state - hence radicalization.

Fortunately, just as the liberal citizens of Turkey are aware of this, so is the population outside of Turkey and EU in particular. So, when one utters the words "Je suis X", one is actually wanting to identify not only with the victims and the people of X, but with the ideals and freedoms that X stands for. 

In the case of Paris, these ideals are the well known: liberte egalite fraternite. These are ideals which resonate positively to the human mindset. However, in the case of Ankara, given its current  borderline radical political agenda and the recent civil unrests there,  it is more than obvious that supporting such an agenda means supporting the infringement of basic human rights to say the least.

This is why social media did not pick on "Je suis Ankara" with the same pace and hype as it did for Paris or Eu in general for that matter.

My Thoughts on Religion

Religion is a psycological cancer. Here is why...

Before any further confusion, lets get one thing straight. I am an atheist. In fact I would more consider myself as an ANTItheist since I solidly believe that religion is not only worthless but also harmful to humanity. Therefore the less religious influence the better for all of us as a species. Most of the time (due to ignorance, or simply a bad text) articles like this have apsolutely no influence. But there exists a minute chance that it may trigger a gram of doubt in a religious mind. Just the thought of this makes it worthwhile to write.

I also want to clarify that my entire optinion about religion being humanities greatest lie, is a result of my own accumulated life experience, reading through materials on faith, which were to me ambiguous as well as trying to shed light on simple questions like, if faith is supposed to be good, then why is there so much suffering as a result of it ? Questions like these beg a very open minded and careful study into how exactly is it that faith manifests itself and in turn affects our judgement. There are tons of very very good non biased studies about this on the internet. Having looked at a lot of it I decided to contribute my thought as well.

It all begins as a mistep in childhood, which is a direct result of our parents, society or both. The very idea of faith in religious context carries the intrinsic notion of yielding to human authority. To allow the anomylous class of supernatural entities into our belief system we have to accept another humans hearsay as reality. With the proposed entities inaccessible to our senses, there is no other way to approach the issue. Of course if they were accessible to our senses they would by definition no longer be a matter of faith to believe they existed.

Some people still point to 'holy' books as evidence, which is something similar to me saying for instance:

"dragons that breathe fire really do exist, cuz i just played with one on DOTA (a game i play quite a bit)".

Now let's analyze that statement for a second. What exactly am i doing there?

I am proposing the existence of a impossibly non-aerodynamic, fire breathing tyrannosaurus rex, without the ability to submit any form of evidence. This type of statement would automatically without any real scrutiny fall under category "jokes" or "he is batshit crazy", depending on how much I would insist on its truth or the look on my face when I make the statement.

Now let's assume I read that same proposition from a very old book, written by someone who actually existed and claimed to have seen these events, which by the way also propose probable things like:

"...and in the world where dragons live it rains a lot!"

would that qualify as more probable? No, it wouldn't. Hence, books describing supernatural events, creatures and processes for which there is again no evidence amounts to the same thing - hearsay (or popularly referred to in my community as REKLA KAZALA).

Hearsay - is information received from other people that cannot be substantiated. This is also one of the reasons why hearsay is not admissable as evidence in any legal court. since people can:

• Misremember
• Unwittingly repeat lies they have been told or
• Deliberately lie for any/all of the following reasons:
• To blend into the situation
• Out of malice
• To protect themselves or others

But, what is most important is that people give conflicting accounts. As adults, we know that these flaws make hearsay an apsolutely unworkable basis for the determination of truth or reality.

But many people choose to disregard all this awareness, eventhough every single problem I just mentioned is apparent in religious context. Especially the problem with conflicting accounts. Conflicts not only between religions but also within the same religion.

Why do people disregard awareness when religious statements are in question (even the most improbable ones)? The answer is:

Indoctrination!

Its no coincidence that religious indoctrination tends to take place in childhood. It is a fragile time in our lifes, where not only our critical faculties are not yet developed, but also egocentricity in children is at a maximum.

The honorable thing to do would be to respect your childs amazing brain by giving it FACTS. If you're going to teach your child about religion, teach it about all religions without bias. Preserve all the inconsistencies without excuse or rationalization. Don't go cherry-picking the more socially acceptable parts and leave out the barbaric, inhumane and appalling passages.

Make it clear that these are beliefs, NOT facts!

Irrational internal conflics are actually the basis of religions. This is a topic which I am writing about for one of my next blogs.

Truth of the matter is that religion teaches beliefs as fact. We tend to transfer (knowingly or unknowingly) this knowledge to our children also as fact! Inconsistencies are denied, awkward questions are discouraged and other religions are dismissed or even demonized. To justify our weaknesses, we will try convincing any sceptic or even ourselves that 'my child is free to think whatever he/she likes', while at the same time accepting as apsolute truth conflicting religious scripture.

This form of psychologic manipulation is called doublethink.

Doublethink in effect shuts down a childs ability for congitive dissonance - where conflictivg ideas should naturally arouse conscious tension - and force critical thinking. In effect, you are incapacitating the cilds ability to excel at what we humans are best at - critical thinking!

Later in life, children like this will have a very hard time recovering from the systematic abuse of their fragile minds in early life. As adults, this abuse continues in the form of preachers. Of course when it comes to dogma their strategies are limited. Dogma relies on authority. So a normal adult to adult exchange of ideas is out of the question. This is why preachers talk to adults like school children (usually from a higher point like stage or altar). The trouble preachers have with adults is that is that in order to get compliance, the targeted adults must accept them as a legitimate AUTHORITY for superstitious ideas, this is where the brainwashing from childhood comes into play!

I could go on writing about this forever. Actually i sort of feel tempted to, but i would like to leave some for other blogs too. My general point was to introduce to you why I have such an utter hate for religion! It is simply poison, and begins from childhood.

Having lived most of my life in Macedonia, I am still happily surprised that I turned out differently from the majority. In fact, it's a very simple way of looking at it. NOTHING NEEDS TO BE WORSHIPPED - thats my motivational thought! Worshipping is basically fulfilling a need which DOESNT EXIST!

We are good because we want to be! We can be even better if we want to be. We don't need gods or any other forms of deception for that.

Thats all for now! I promise there will be more on religion!

Eid Ul Adha : The unabridged story of a dream

A short biblical story of a man who was commanded by god in his dreams

It is that time of the year, when about 30% of the population in my country is in full joy, celebration and forgiveness. Most of the streets in northern part of Skopje, soaked with the blood of hoofed 4 legged animals, are filled with men walking side by side with their sons, going house to house in celebration. I have always wondered why instead of sacrificing animals in public display, one cannot just simply buy meat? Hence, this conscious tension led me to do a little research into the story of how Eid Ul Adha (or as it is known here as Bajram) came to be.

Please be warned however! Although I have numbed down the violence in the story to the best possible effect as to not lose context, I would still rate it as PG 18. Anyway, it all started out 4-5 millennia ago (before man invented todays modern religions) in a place called Canaan (somewhere in modern-day Israel).

A self-declared religious guy called Abraham (originally Abram in Hebrew or Ibrahim in Arabic), after a full days work in the desert decided to call it a night. Although he had a mild headache from all the desert sun reflecting off his head, little did he (or anyone for that matter back then) know that overexposure to the high heat and UV factor of the sun could mess up cognitive abilities. Nonetheless, he crept under the sheets with one of his wives and fell fast asleep.

All of a sudden, in his sleep, the man heard a voice calling out to him: 'Abraham!'. Lowe and behold, it was god himself speaking to Abraham in his dreams.

'What the....', thought Abraham.

'Here am I' said god sounding like Yoda from Star Wars. 'Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I shall tell you.' (Genesis 22:1-2, R.S.V.)

Abraham was confused at first since his only son for 13 years was called Ismael! But since god works in mysterious ways ( I mean wtf he can beam thoughts into the guys head whilest he's asleep)

But being a deeply obedient believer and loving of his god, he decided to obey the request, beamed into his head through his dream. So, he got up and went to his friends to explain what god had commanded him to do. Curiously enough Abraham's friends didn't have any objections as to what he was about to do. In fact they supported his exemplary devotion to the god which spoke to him in his dream. However, he had one more person to convince. His 13 year old son Ismael, who was chosen by god to take one for the team! I mean, he couldn't just drag the kid to a mountain and cut open his throat just like that. He had to at least explain to him why first!

Abraham immediately went to Ismael and explained to him his dream about slaughtering him. Surprisingly enough Ismael was thrilled at this idea. In fact, he was so cock-a-hoop about it that he couldn't wait for his dad to get on with it!!! So, off they went, blissfully rejoicing at the fact that they will be carrying out the good gods will.

At the sacrificial stone, Abraham pulled out his knife (which he had prepared earlier for the solemn occasion), whilst his Ismael made himself comfortable on the slab of stone. In no time at all, Abraham was cheerfully at his son's throat, eyes closed, cutting like there's no tomorrow! At that point, he opened his eyes to check on his progress and to his dismay, he witnessed the most unbelievable thing! God had pulled a Houdini on Abraham. He had replaced his son Ismael with a lamb! The good god's intentions had only been to test Abraham's faith in him. Indeed, Abraham passed the test with flying colors. Ismael was kind of relieved to hear this. And so, both father and son

They lived happily ever after (the old fart lived to be over 170 years old apparently).

The End!

Moral of the story:

I am not really sure about this one, but apparently this is story is why the celebrations on Eid Ul Adha are about. Of course since several millennia passed from that time, there have been a little additions and instructions appended to it, as to what to do with the meat of the poor creature being slaughtered etc. But nevertheless that is the story in a nutshell.

Millions of people follow this demented ritual every year in the name of a god who somehow feels pleased every time a hoofed 4 legged animal gets decapitated.

I hope this has been an interesting and informative read.

Until next time!