A note to Canada Big Brother AKA CSIS and CSEC (satire)

Disclaimer: the following is a rant re: countersurveillance in Ottawa.

To the nervous Nellies including the usual government agents monitoring my packets, archiving my web content, collecting my phone contents, and other things CSEC does "for our own good": Move right along. Nothing to see here. I am not worth the money and the time at all.

However, I recommend you monitor someone worthy like the late Ms Todd's ex-best friends and their ilk. They might still be manufacturing pornography, you know, in Grade 10 and 11. ;)

This is the truth but, as the Todd case proved, nobody can handle the truth because families would be torn apart and the children would suffer horribly, all due to the truth.

Golly gee whizz! I guess them CSIS got them some kiddie porn manufactured by a girl driven to suicide all due to lack of mother love, right Carole? :p

Anyway, like I said before, nobody who knows the case could handle the truth, so the mainstream media in BC collaborated with the RCMP using the premise that a poor little girl was stalked by an online predator. This was done to sell to the sheeple that the late Ms Todd was a victim.

This made me LOL.

Thanks for selling us a lot of BS, BC mainstream media. You averted a huge family crisis in the Lower Mainland and Central Fraser Valley, preventing massive unemployment caused by parents and their children unable to handle the whole truth, except on a very large stack of Bibles.

Speaking of which, had BC families actually attended church and read the Bible lately, they could avoid tragedies by NOT buying smartphones but buying old flip phones for their children. For the dumb phones are immune to simples hacks by blackhat hacker teenagers (mostly young males 10-24, with less than 5% young females 10-30).

Yes, I am implying most female hackers are never exposed until they finally stop hacking and have a good income starting from age 25.

How is this important to the Amanda Todd case? A few of Todd's female friends were inept hackers. The most skilled hackers have played the boys and made them cried. If you believe the myth that only men are hackers, then never forget Susie Thunder.




YMMV

Reputation (satire)

So let me get this straight, in certain cultures, there is a tradition such that a man must not visit a young unmarried woman alone lest the neighbours gossip, her reputation tarnished by the rumors, and a mob forms to cast some stones on the woman but rarely punishes the man.

And somebody mistook this for Islam?

Anyone who looks closely at this tradition can tell it is not Islam. Nor is it Judaism or Christianity, even though both Christians and Jews were known to do the same to their women.

What this is is an ancient tradition that was accepted into a religion to control women under the guise of "family honor" or similar weasel words designed to protect the reputation of men at the expense of the lives of women.

Carrying out such a tradition is not democracy but a devilish form of oppression against women that would offend even Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jesus, and Muhammed.

If I as a Buddhist know this, then why not a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim?

Yet this is the way I have as a kid: once when invited to a girl's place as a boy of 17, I objected to visiting her, saying, "What if the neighbours assumed the worst?" The girl replied "Nothing would happen anyway, so no one cares about the neighbours."

Because of the way I was raised, it was hard for me to visit her if she was unmarried and under 30. This is because before these post-modern times, society would think something was up if a man visited a young woman. Indeed, her reputation could be "ruined" by devilish gossip.

Today, people think nothing of such gossip and make light of rumors, because such talk is not inspired by any intention to protect both the man and the woman, but rather to make both of them look bad, just so the gossiper can look good.

Therefore, when a rumor is aimed to ruin a woman's reputation, it is hypocrisy to make it seem as though the man is some sex god. Such idle gossip is indeed devilish. As well, I condemn mainstream media when it does the same to celebrities.

FWIW IDC about Selena Gomez's chastity nor do I care about Justin Bieber's slide into the festivities that pass for modern life in Hollywood. Nor do I care about what passes for truth as broadcast by mainstream media. It is all propaganda designed to get people talking, so their own lives don't seem boring and dull.

Likewise, how can a religion be beneficial when it holds on to ancient traditions that oppress women in such a way?

A wise man once said "Let those who are without sin cast the first stone." This excludes men and women over the age of majority. Only children ought to be allow to stone that sinner. Surely this is a laughable suggestion, but is apt.

How does stoning make the participants become without sin? For murder is a sin, even when it is excluded as punishment for a crime concocted by rumors. It is a devilish thing to then make an exception to murder as capital punishment for a sin, when the only sin in most Abrahamic religions is to forget God Almighty.

Once does not forget God when one is stoning, for a representative of God commands his loyal flock to stone. It is thus not a sin to kill someone when God speaks through that representative. So then, could this be why Islamists kill? Could this be why David Koresh formed a cult?

And is this why the Hebrews slew Canaanites?

After careful consideration of the concept of such punishment for a sin, I am convinced that the punishment does not fit the crime since it promotes death and also the oppression of women. Additionally, it makes a man seem to be unable to control himself in the presence of a woman. As a result, I would not trust that man in a crowd of women. He could be the death of them yet.

Even so, I am not going to a young woman's place alone even if invited, because society might misunderstand my intentions.

If a Murder-Suicide Serial Killing is Domestic Terrorism, Then So is Child Abuse (Satire)

It's ironic that President Obama used the term "domestic terrorist" to describe the murder-suicide serial killer that killed women his age because he was a virgin. Yet he has never called a single pedophile a "terrorist" but may have used other code words like "monster".

IDK if a pedophile terrorizes children for years, that's a form of terrorism that is worse than what the deceased Rodger did to seven female victims. The harm is partially perpetrated by society when justice takes its time to gather evidence rather than acting to prevent it.

I know of children so scarred for life that they need strong medication to remain sedated and relatively harmless to self and others.

However, pedophilia is not always restricted to religionists but also occurs when a person with power and control over children puts his need to control others supposedly in his protection at risk. Thus, child soldiers may be considered possible victims of pedophiles. The child wives in primitive communities might also be victims.

Thankfully not everyone is on a power trip and clear heads do detect and give evidence against pedophiles.

Nobody has the right to abuse in any shape or form children. This includes cybersex. It is not loving to expose children to adult-orient chatter.

Be wary.

Report inappropriate content online but ask for GooglePlus to monitor them before shutting them down to complete a list of associates who prey on children.

As well, enable logs on Hangouts and archive evidence for GooglePlus when a pedophile appears. The evidence will support your case not the perpetrator.

Even pedophilia must be considered a terrorist act too, if the Rodgers serial killings are considered by the President of the US to be a form of domestic terrorism.

If spying on private citizens is a form of State terrorism, then abusing children is an act of terrorism against the safety and security of children.

Apart from that, I urge caution since one person's obscenity is another person's erotica. Applying an arbitrary rule that criminalizes erotica puts consumers of erotica in conflict with on-line anti-obscenity "mobs" and does violate freedom of speech.

This is why the NSFW adult communities have it right when they maintain an invitation only policy towards prospective members and a zero-tolerance towards images depicting children. It cannot be assumed that everyone is 18 and over. Instead, everything should be monitored and reported.

Let us rid the Internet of the domestic terrorists who terrorize children, be they pedophiles, child abusers and their ilk, through legal means, even if it leads to more close monitoring by authorities including the CIA, the FBI, the NSA and your local police.

Only through secure monitoring are we truly free.

---

Reference:

2014 Isla Vista Killings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_killings

Why Amanda Todd Killed Herself (satire)

this article isn't for the formalism of a normal article. so i'm not going to capitalize the appropriate words for the politically correct people.

anyway, i have sided with both parties in this tragic series of events. it was a teen suicide, which is a rising statistic among teens today, mainly due to unhealthy practices of self esteem raising in the public education system without the necessary checks and balances of exposing children to a wide range of ages in school.

all we do to children is raise them to be compliant workers, nothing more.

having said this, i don't believe public education is broken. i believe the government has broken it for us. with the incessant drive to make money, we are forgetting key values that my generation and the generations before it taught but that the modern world mocks.

this is also why more seniors are also committing suicide at growing rates too. all an old person has to do to die early is to be subject to care in an elderly care facility, and subject to chemical restraints for dementia when the best relief for dementia is daily exercise and the feeling of being useful in a society that focuses unhealthily on youth.

which brings us to Amanda Todd, the poster girl of online bullying, cyberstalking, and other maladies within this youth culture today.

last year we slut shamed miley cyrus, that irish girl, and amanda todd, among many other girls too numerous to name.

i don't have any respect for the shamers and the haters. you take your morally high ground today, but yesterday you might have been surfing for porn.

hypocrisy!

i could think of many reasons why amanda todd killed herself: the wrong people were paying attention to her, the cretins who mocked her and goaded her into killing herself, the perverts who wanted to have sex with her, and especially of all the lack of quality time with parents in an intact family.

however blame never solves anything. this is why the kody maxson outing as her so-called tormenter is off the mark. the real culprit is everyone who wished amanda would pick a better bleach next time.

people who want kids, before you even have one, remember this:

the internet will never be a safe place until you daily live the moral values you want your future children to have. so if you're a mouth breather on the Daily Capper, watching the crap on cameracapper, then i urge you, don't have kids. if you do, sell your computer.

over the years i have been many youtube account go stagnant when a pervert has scared a kid off the site. why? she's in grade school but she looks and acts 18.

all you perverts do is ruin the internet. without self control, all you have is your internet.

i pity you because without the internet you are nothing, a nobody, a bunch of people who would watch a person drown instead of saving her, because that's what you did from 2010 to 2012 as you watched this tragedy unfold and refused to help because nobody wants to be a hero or a blackmailer.

of course, given that the NSA is monitoring the Internet, and the FBI too, i wonder if the real reason why capping isn't exposed is because they are gathering evidence right now as we speak.

i supposed that's why nobody discusses it on googeplus. instead,everyone patted themselves on the back for stopping bullying.

out of all the kids that detest the bullying of amanda todd, few of them are brave enough to start an anti-bullying club in their school. that's because they're trained to be an audience, not a participant in society. public education has serve us so well.

what does that say about public education today?

me, i think the best role model for young girls online is not amanda todd, it's the porn star at duke university. at least, she's not drinking bleach, slitting her wrists or hanging herself.

Socratic Three Goods Defeats Narcissism (satire)

Socrates was said to have said that the chief goodness consists in the caring of the soul concerned with moral truth and moral understanding, that "wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the individual and to the state", and that "life without examination [dialogue] is not worth living".

As a Buddhist, I take it that by "the soul", Socrates implies the person who has a finite existence. Therefore, the first truth can be rewritten as "The chief goodness consists in the caring of the person concerned with moral truth and moral understanding." This implies that Socrates cared about other people because they were as ignorant as he was, but vain enough to think they knew a lot more than they actually did.

The remaining two goods are as depicted. For the second, by caring for another person's understanding of moral truth and moral understanding, "goodness bring wealth and other blessings".

Finally, the third good can be rephrased as "the unexamined life is not worth living, however each of us are only able to examine their life based on the previous two goods.

However, today's society appears not to have time to examine their life. As a result, people sometimes lack the ability to care for others with moral truth and moral understanding in mind. Instead, they are too busy tweeting or other wise distracted.

Eventually this may lead to a sense of entitlement if they were taught by their parents that they are unique. It also leads to a secret desire for fame, and if they cannot get it, notoriety. They also end up looking like selfish jerks. Such is how narcissists are made.

Thus a narcissist would deny that goodness brings wealth and other blessings. Instead, he would claim that "my good looks and natural charm bring wealth and blessings."

Then what of ugly men who are wealth? Do all of them come from good families? And of the ones who were originally poor, would being a conceited ass make them think they could but goodness for a pretty penny?

No and no, I say! The goodness arising from a person's caring and concern for other people allows him realize that wealth requires patience, perseverance and politeness.

It is these three attributes that mark the man who successfully applies the three Goods to validate the goodness that results in wealth and other blessings.

Do not tempted to give in to the ignorant craving of your ego. Think before you tweet, and above all, correct your typos! I have no desire to see your cleavage or your abs. I would rather let you tell me what's on your mind.

Wake up Sheeple!! (satire)

Attention Sheeple: wake up from the dangers of the status quo!

I feel that society is antisocial when it lies about itself via mass media e.g. promotes a heteronormative and sexist status quo at the expense of homosexuals and women.

As well, youth culture that promotes ageism is also antisocial.

Thus it is society that promotes antisocial behavior when it deems anything the minority thinks is cool to be uncool and counter to the status quo of conformity.

Social norms only promote what is supposed to be normal within a cultural group.

Such norms become antisocial when they promote group harmony at the expense of honesty between members of that group.

When society promotes sincerity by promoting falsehoods to maintain status quo while calling it truth and penalizes anyone who exposes it, the seeds of antisocial behaviour are sown.

Are you still willing to remain sheeple?

---

Originally written October 26, 2013 at 3:38 AM

The Craziness of Culture (satire)

One common misconception is that all mentally ill people are unpredictable and violent. Our society has an insatiable appetite for real-life horror stories about rapists, serial killers, and pedophiles, and the media is happy to provide us with them. As a result, we tend to put everyone with psychiatric problems under one label: crazy.

However, different cultures have different concepts of what constitutes a mental illness. Take suicide, for example. In Japan, suicide is, in most cases, not considered problematic, rather it can be an honorable act committed to save face or for a noble cause. Similarly, while the Koran prohibits suicide, "suicide bombers" are not generally considered "suicides" by their zealous supporters – they are martyrs for their cause. But in North America, someone who attempts suicide will likely be diagnosed with some form of psychological problem.

Some cultures are more susceptible to certain types of illness than others. Anorexia and bulimia are largely afflictions of the western world, while Japan has a whole separate set of disorders, many of which stem from their cultural expectation of hard work. One commonly documented Japanese condition called hikikomori (similar to agoraphobia) is characterized by a withdrawal from society due to stress and is said to affect large numbers of teenaged boys.

What about addictions? In North America, we believe in possession of a different kind: drugs, gambling, alcohol, or food are thought of as diseases that take over the victim and are difficult to expel. Again, we remove blame, but is it accurate to put a gambling addiction on par with, say, schizophrenia?
— Samantha Shepard, They're Possessed?, Medhunters dot com

Then again, is it accurate to use a manual of disorders decided by committee to diagnose what might be cultural eccentricities?

The social stigma of mental illness reflect a phobia of the mentally ill, a fear of psychosis which, instead of being relieved by education, is usually left to fester and sometime harm people who are themselves more harmless than the people who fear them.

Even people who are emotionally disturbed are loathe to admit that they might be going off the deep end, sometimes until it's too late. They minimize their suicide attempts and grow fearful that any outside inquiry might expose their suffering to the world.

Some of them even grow to fear strangers who often are concerned for their well-being, mainly due to the stigmatizing of their life.

Even though my own labelling of culture and society as the hotbed of mental illness is reactive, I also admit that both culture and society can be the source of mental health.

For eccentricity is merely an abnormal focus on behaviours that were once fulfilling but may have now become obsessions, like one has become possessed by some demon.

The ironic thing is, in ancient Greek society, it was once believed that each of us was born with a guardian angel which were called "daimons" - yes, the same modern-day demons that ignorant religious people pretend exist.

Sometimes, in respecting the expert's advice, we take it too far and reify his opinion, making it like a talisman. We do this with the advice of doctors when we interpret the directions on the label of medication — "take 1 capsule twice daily" — as meaning once in the morning and once at night when it could also mean taking two capsules at bedtime.

Likewise, it seems like psychiatry is turned into religion when psychiatrist rely too much on the DSM rather than on gut instinct.

From my perspective, the DSM is like a "Bible", the disorders being "deities" similar to "daimons." I feel they originate in behaviours used by people "diagnosed" with a "disorder" which soon stopped working to "protect" them from the suffering caused by "facing reality."

In short, the DSM descriptions interpret "daimons" which "possess" people as symptoms which involve fear, anxiety, insomnia, hypomania, mania, and sometimes psychoses.

This makes psychiatrists "exorcists".

Think about it: your doctor or psychiatrist replaces the priest. Your medications are the means to "exorcise" demons with names like influenza, chronic fatigue syndrome, cardiovascular disease and so on, as well as mental disorders such as schizo-affective, bipolar and so on.

For all the medications are for are to control and manage disease or behaviour so it doesn't annoy the neighbours.

Cultures which have a place for mental illness are the shamanic ones. If you have depression and aren't out harvesting the grain by hand like everyone else, then you could trade your produce for a special ritual that helps get rid of the "evil spirits". After a few hours, you are cured and ready to get up and help harvest the crops.

Today, civilized society waits until simple depression morphs into a mental illness sometimes needing a trip to the hospital and 48 hours in the psychiatric ward.

A person could cling all they want to the false belief that their childhood experiences are more important than making new ones that help us get over the trauma and transform the negativity into positive benefit.

If he were to tell any psychiatric doctor or nurse of that trauma, they will react out of fear to hospitalize him. This is because the telling of the long-lost trauma results in traumatizing the caregiver.

So, the mental health consumer learns quickly to deny the symptoms that are manageable, and tries hard not to perpetuate that trauma in her daily life. She does so by complying with medication and therapy.

In due time, mental health is maintained when the consumer is able to be crisis-free for more than six months.

---

Originally written: April 19, 2007 at 4:15 PM
Updated: February 1 at 9:50 PM

Mental Illness as Social Construct Manufactured by Society and the Individual

Contrary to what the psychiatrists have decided, mental illness is a rough collaboration between society and the individual based on society's opinion of the individual's mental state based on behavior without due care for its genesis in the individual's family of origin.

In sbort, mental illness, as well as mental health is a product of the complex interaction between the individual and society. It is not all in the head of the individual, but is always on the mind of each and every person they meet.

As well, mental illness is the product of social control in that society promotes the fallacy of liberty from coercion yet fails to place any guidelines on how to liberate the potential of the individual in a functional manner.

The Automatons of Social Activism

Freedom of the market is not applicable to society, because it will lead to control and rigid class structure based on the myth of individual freedom.

Indeed, the freedom that social activists strive for is based on the fallacy that freedom from coercion is a viable political outcome. The inherent violence in attempting to achieve such freedom shows that such freedom will always be subject to control by the elites of society.

For the ideal society free of rules will still require a method of social control, lest the alternative — chaos — lead to a feared breakdown of society.

The truth is, society does not need a centralized government to function — Gwangju is a good example of this. In the aftermath of the Park assassination of 1979, Gwangju formed an anarchistic society without central government, which threatened the control by the elites of South Korea of the Korean people.

In contrast, the freedom to create new ways of innovation is truly viable. Anything else is doomed to end in control of the People by the elites. A society that allows such control yet seeks to be free of it will continue to produce automatons, not people.

Ergo, social activism ought to focus on the freedom to be rather than the freedom from coercion which appears to be their current focus. By focusing solely on freedom from coercion, social activism will eventually result in the loss of the freedom their advocates fight for.

For freedom is actually about fulfilling your potential, not freeing oneself from coercion, which actually is a given within family dynamics.

So, yes, I'm all for sitting on your ass in Zen rather than this revolutionary bullshit.

---

Reference:

Gwangju: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju
Gawngju Democratization Movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Democratization_Movement

The Threat of Individualism

It's socially impossible to affirm that "I am an individual, apart from others."

For every one of us is in relationships with other people, be it family, friends or loved ones. Therefore, individuality is a myth designed to isolate us from each other.

We do not exist as individuals; we exist as people who do not determine our worth by the individual but by our communities.

Thus, the myth of the individual is found to be a most dehumanizing thing, because it actually isn't what makes us human, for it socially isolates each person.

For individuality is not freedom; yet each of us yearns for liberation from the group, even though the group needs us to ensure harmony.

Anyone who denies that the myth of individuality is the cause of our society breaking down should deal with living in a city with a population of 250,000 strangers.

Any criminal may be caught up in the myth of individuality. Indeed, it may be the cause of crime, because such a person is sure to have given in to his selfish needs.

Therefore, individuality, being the myth that it is, is a threat to humanity's survival as a society.

Crazy? It's not me!

I used to think I was crazy.

when i smiled, people ran! When i frowned, they laughed at me.

However when i cried, i was told to "get over it."

So far, i figured out that it's not me that crazy. It's society.

Daily Maily as English Satire

The Daily Mail Online is English satire at its finest.

The current headline for Nov. 13 2012 is proof of this.

"The Immoral Tax Avoider" — what kind of rubbish is this headline but the reporter being high and mighty???

It's no wonder I cannot read any article in the Mail Online without either thinking of the legacy of the British Empire and its effect on Third-world nation the UK later abandoned, or just laughing off the effect of revulsion for WASP society. >:)

For nobody really cares if tax avoiders are immoral. Us common folk are more concerned about dole supplements and public health commitments to keep us from dying from injuries sustained whilst working for corporations who may be run by tax avoiders who think common folk should be enslaved to make profits without sharing their wealth with the masses who helped them be that rich.

You know what's really immoral? A society that condones bullying amongst children and is ignorant of the fact that for every kid that is non-violent and socialized, there is a lot which is privileged to use violence to maintain the pecking order.

For the high and might rhetoric is all that is wrong with certain WASP societies like the one the Daily Mail is promoting these days! o_0

Tax avoiders immoral? Bully for them! >:)

Depression As Disease Manufactures Mental Health Consumers

Social isolation leads to the feeling of being left out of most of what happened to almost every one of my peers.

The only people who know what I was going through are close friends.

All that society sees is a socially inept man who is Asian. Then they make unconscious assumptions about cultural differences which influences their biases favouring the West.

This is highly inappropriate to my recovery from depression.

A more holistic pro-active choice would be to publicly object to the current manufacturing of "depression as a disease."

This isn't a disease: this is the result of all actors' participation in isolating depressed people from mainstream society until the depressed think that anxiety and resultant phobia are normal when they are not.

Normality demands so much of a person that most anxious people who later develop depression is stressed to the point of devloping neuroticisms.

Society's current "all or nothing" approach, complete with one-sidedness, only promotes the "depression as disease" to compliant mental health consumers.

It is this rampant consumerism which aids in manufacturing depression according to the mental health catalog DSM.

What a bag of coals the gift of diagnosis is!

Is Egypt Ripe for Democracy?

"Reports from the Committee to Protect Journalists show that 30 journalists and their support staff from both Egyptian and international news organisations have been detained, attacked or had their equipment confiscated in the past 48 hours.

In addition, there are reports that a number of civil society activists have been arrested following a raid on the Hisham Mubarak Centre for Human Rights, the, Egyptian Centre for Political and Social Rights and the Egyptian Centre for Housing Rights." - http://www.transparency.org/news_room/latest_news/press_releases/2011/2011_02_04_egypt

I doubt Egypt is ready for democracy, because the poor has been left out of the picture.

Approximately 25 percent of Egyptians are poor, with 14 million living in rural areas of Upper Egypt (south of Khartoum). They include tenant farmers and small-scale farmers, landless laborers, unemployed youth, and women. Few of them have visited Lower Egypt and Cairo.

If Egypt goes democratic, the fallacy that democracy permits corruption of youth and breakdown of society becomes more unreal and untrue.

Yet democracy does not make a nation strong; rather, it makes the voice of the people heard, providing a politically active outlet for activists willing to vote for democracy with their feet, marching for peace. Indeed, democracy may be a tool of the educated to share liberal ideology in an egalitarian manner but for the poor, it offers hope.

For the poor hope that one day, their children will prosper in a democratic Egypt.

Yet the military in Egypt seek to control this peaceful protest because of the irrational belief that such protests foment violence. In actual fact, the Egyptian military turn a blind eye to right-wing militias' help to "control" the democracy advocates in Cairo.

Why suppress democracy?

So that the average rural villager knows her place as servant to the rich. It also does her family no good to have her go to university, when she should be at home for the good of family and motherhood, despite the wretched conditions of birth.

Would Egypt's activists be willing to emancipate the rural poor? Who is to say?

I wonder how this change in Egypt will impact the rural poor trickling into the cities of Egypt in the name of democracy.

For the poor live in the reality of poverty, just barely getting by without any thought for politics, save for the threat of starvation and barely surviving in an unsafe world.

Update:

February 11, 2011: former President Mubarak reigns and leaves Cairo. Vice President Omar Suleiman announces on national TV that Mubarak has stepped down, and that the Egyptian military is temporarily in control. Jubilant crowds celebrate on Tahrir Square.

February 13: high level military command announces both constitution and parliament of Egypt is dissolved. Parliamentary election is to be held in September.

March 19: constitutional referendum is held. Democratic leaders delay election from September 2011 tp November 2011.

April 13: Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt (which is controlled by its military) orders Mubarak and his two sons detained.

August 3: Trial begins for Mubarak who is also investigated for Sadat's death.

October 9-10: Coptic Christian church is torn down in Aswan after Copts refuse to not display cross. In march from Shubra to Maspero, Egyptian army tries to escalate hostilities, first by broadcasting unfounded rumors Copts were attacking the military. Out of a crowd of 240 Copts,

November 28: Egypt holds its first parliamentary election since previous regime was in power. Turnout high and no reports of irregularities or violence. Members of some parties break ban on campaigning at polling places by handing out pamphlets and banners.

February 16, 2012: Coptic activist gets travel ban in Mespero incident. He calls it politicized.

June 2: Mubarak sentenced to life imprisonment.

July 8: Egypt's new president Mohamed Morsi call lawmakers back into session.

July 10: Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt negates decision by President Mohamed Morsi to call parliament back into session

August 2: Egypt’s Prime Minister Hisham Qandil announces 35 member cabinet comprising 28 newcomers including four from influential Muslim Brotherhood, six others and former military ruler Tantawi as the Defence Minister from previous Government

Freedom House rates Egypt as "Not Free". In their report, it turns out the military was controlling the show until the elections finished in early January 2012. There was regular harassment of NGOs whom the military targets accusing them of being controlled by foreign interests, despite the fact that most NGOs in Egypt are grassroots organizations.

Commentary:

Even though Mubarak had been sentenced to life imprisonment in June, today Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court still remains the pawn of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which had Mohamed Hussein Tantawi as Chairman and chief of state since February 11, 2011. He was only instated as Defense Minister three months ago only to retire on August 12.

Quite possibly Tantawi was a figurehead as Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. He was ordered by President Mosri to retire but retained as advisor. It has been speculated that the military junta plans to step down in exchange for immunity.

Until that time, the fruits of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution are not yet ripe for democracy.

---

Updated 20121117.0432

Reference:

Wikipedia: Egypt: Revolution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt#Revolution

Wikipedia: 2011-2012 Egyptian Revolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%932012_Egyptian_revolution

Mespero demonstrations in Octo 9-10, 2011 show Egyptian military in charge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maspero_demonstrations

USA Today: Train hits school bus in al-Mandara, Manfaloot district, Assuit:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2012/11/17/egypt-train-hits-school-bus-22-children-killed/1710935/

Wikipedia: Mubarak:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mubarak

Meditation on Friendship

Friendship transcends personal cliques. Indeed, a good friend is more likely to support unrelated friends of good standing than that unrelated person's group of fair-weather friends, some of whom might assure him of their undivided loyalty and devotion, only to lose their support when their devotion and loyalty is called into question by circumstances.

If we had no friends, then even our mothers would abandon us. For the friendless are the odd Johns of society, and few people tolerate them.

Yet I can tolerate all people, because I believe strong that to deny an offer of friendship based on who you (don't) know, one would have to have only the potential to understand the concept, not the ability to "be a friend to all and enemy to none".

In order to be a good friend, one ought to keep the ancient adage at heart: "Keep your best friend at arm's length, and your greatest enemy nearby."