Kobani

It is not too difficult to figure out that Recip Tayip Erdogan is a sack of shit, doing his best to lead Turkey to becoming an Islamo-fascist state.  Granted, some of the former military dictatorships were not especially great, but at least they were secular — and the current "democratic" rule depends on rural voters who have as much brain power as Tea Party Mississippians.

Democracy doesn't work all that well when most voters are morons — and, usually, they  are.  Of course, the alternative (which is not, really, an alternative) is plutocracy.  So, that's what we've got.

Erdogan is in a tough spot regarding Kobani.  Since Turkey is a NATO member (dating from when the generals were in control), it sort of has to support the USofA, but maybe not all that much.  After all, the Kurds defending Kobani are mostly PKK, which the USofA obliged Turkey by naming it a terrorist group.  Now, we're parachuting in supplies to the PKK to help it fight the Islamic State.

To me, the Kurds are the only group deserving USofA support in the Middle East, PKK inclusive.  I wouldn't be unhappy if we took the PKK off the terrorist list, chucked Turkey out of NATO  (along with a bunch of Eastern Euopean countries that never should have been added) and just sent the Kurds vast amounts of money and munitions.

They'll get things straightened out, and become a reliable partner in the region.

Ebola

I don't get it.  I don't get the panic, and I don't get the politicization.

Personally, I don't go around touching other people's bodily fluids, so I feel pretty safe.  I mean, if you see a pool of blood or vomit or diarrhea, are you going to stick your finger in?  Granted, the health care workers working with the infected are under greater threat, but as far as I know, none of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) workers in West Africa have been infected so far, and they've been the most aggressive health providers in the affected regions so far.

I've been giving twenty bucks a month to MSF for years, now.  I feel very virtuous, of course, but I'm still pissed off that the USofA is not directing money to MSF, which knows what the hell it's doing.

High School Football

There was an article in yesterday's Times about the arrest of seven high school football players from Sayreville, NJ, on charges of sexual assault on at least one fourteen-year-old freshman player out in the good old locker room.  The Times pussyfooted around a bit, but it seems that three of them are charged with anally raping the kid or kids.

Sports teams are kind of like prison — sex crimes are probably more about power than about sex.  The most amazing thing about this case is that a victim was willing to speak up, rather than just waiting a few years and relaying the abuse to some younger kid.  People blame the coach, but my guess is that the coach stayed out of the locker room for fear somebody might think he was a perv.

I'm generally against contact sports, and I'm against football more than all the others.  The combination of concussions and the sense of entitlement among players seems like more than a civilized society should be willing to accept — but then, who says we're civilized?  Maybe we should just bring back gladiatorial combat.  That way, half the assholes would wind up dead at the end of the "game."

Hong Kong

The young protestors are blissfully unaware that democracy means nothing.  The plutocrats are in charge everywhere, and will continue to be in charge, no matter how candidates for office are selected.  Well, at least, none of them has been killed yet.

Fucking stupidity

It seems, according to news sources, that some ridiculously large percentage of Republicans believe that Barack Obama is the Antichrist.  Really, you would think that might make them happy, because then the "end times" would be here, and they could all get sucked up to heaven in a giant godly slurp of "rapture."

How can you believe in "democracy" when so many people are so fucking stupid?  The big problem, it seems, is that stupidity is endemic.  The alternatives, needless to say, are worse.  Fuck them all.

Personhood

Read this!  Really!  YOU MUST read this!

Panic Attacks!

Ebola
Well, Dallas kind of screwed up, but I'm still not too terrified of an epidemic on this side of the Atlantic.  Now that the idiots have figured out that doctors and nurses really should talk to each other, and the CDC (not always perfect, but still pretty good) is involved, the USofA will get it worked out.  Getting it worked out in West Africa will be more difficult.

Beheadings
The latest terminology is "the group calling itself the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL."  I guess we don't want to offend the Saudis, whose state supported the Salafist, Wahabi ideology which was mainly responsible for the growth and financing of IS.  Now that we're producing more oil than the Saudis, though, maybe we could step on them a little harder.

Secret Service
I gather that a lot of black Americans think the SS (yes, the same acronym) is less committed to protecting their allegedly black president than they might have been to John McCain.  Personally, I think that assholes will be assholes, and that race is not a factor.  They're just incompetents.

Hong Kong
I am so afraid that those "Occupy" kids who are too young to remember Tiananmen will find themselves lying among the dead.  State Capitalism, I am inclined to believe, has to be worse than State Socialism — but, then again, maybe it's all just plutocracy.  It's always plutocracy.  Isn't It?