The Politics of Hair

Some of you may be aware that very recently Iran banned certain types of haircuts as being too Western and too decadent. Pathetic because a genuinely powerful, secure, confident, democratic nation should never have to worry about the haircuts of it's citizens. As if haircuts can bring an entire nation crashing down? That kind of 'not one domino shall fall' bullshit will be the death of them...here's hoping.

The kind of haircuts Iran have taken umbrage with are mullets...

Ponytails....

And elaborate spikes (whatever that means)...

Naturally, the hairstyles these backward fucks approve of are just as fucking diabolical, shit like bouffants, quiffs and 90's throwback curtains...

Gel, however, can be used if sparingly. I kid you not.

I swear, some people are clinging so desperately to a bare modicum of power that they actually think this undignified flaying around at moral decay makes them look strong. Iran is not alone in this of course, the UK is blighted with Broken Britain (Copyright. All Rights Reserved) bullshit and America is contorting itself into ever more vulgar, vile and grotesque positions over the non-Mosque that is at least two blocks away from the place formally known as the World Trade Centre.

Whilst Iran may be an extreme example of the politics of hair, with thuggish militia forcing vigorous trims on Iranians with degenerate haircuts, it is not alone in connecting hair with some kind of insurgency.

North Korea controls the hair-do's of it's citizens, demanding exacting standards and seemingly, a desire for all males to look identical because long hair, naturally, drains you of your mental powers...

In Iraq barbars have been murdered by retarded religious bigots for distributing Western haircuts, while Indonesia hopes to bring in laws regarding suitable hairstyles and many other countries around the world are hatching similarly idiotic plans.

I don't know what it is about Islam and it's intolerance of good hair cuts, it makes me laugh that their God is so petty and envious that the way a human wears their hair can anger the daft twat, that and eating pig...like any omnipotent motherfucker would give a shit about tedious shit like that. We make our silly, pointless Gods in our own image, wracked with insecurities and weakness.

Facial hair is a whole other can of worms, ironically, considering how much Islam hates a good do, it loves a big beard, long the preserve in the Western world of real-ale drinkers, folk aficionados and pedophiles.

Iran has only just accepted the goatee, which is a horrible little beard, whilst Somalian Islamic militants (following a line led by the Taliban in Afghanistan) has instructed all men to grow beards but sans moustache; which is clearly flawed as a good moustache establishes a man as a true gentleman and a God amongst his hairless peers.

Haters of beards include Turkmenistan, Albania in the 1970s and Japan right bloody now, where beards are are deemed quite unpleasant but shit like this is perfectly acceptable...

Currently, I am rocking a beard because of filming commitments but normally I am resplendent in a fine moustache and proudly so, mainly because it's an excellent social device by which to measure the intelligence of anyone you're engaging with. If they are compelled to mention Hitler, The Village People or P0rn then they are an idiot and you can, pretty much guilt free, erase them from your life with no major loss.

And woe betide any loon that tries to police my facial hair and hair-do...

Forced Into the Closet by Violence

I have blogged before on the awful state of Lesbian/Gay/Bi-Sexual/Transgender civil rights in many developing nations around the world. Whether it be brutal anti-lesbian violence in South Africa, which actually is the only African country to have the rights of LGBT people written into it's constitution (not that that stops disgusting acts of "corrective" rape, beatings and murder...what a vile idea), or the catalogue of murders and legal repression in the Muslim worlds and the Caribbean, of their LGBT communities.

Being a "developing country" it seems is a perfect excuse for being backwards, excusing cruel and unusual behaviour by claiming it is crucial a part of the indigenous culture and preserving the way things have always been, in the face of ever-advancing Western cultural mores.

It is Africa that has recently thrust itself into the hideous spotlight of homophobia and criminalising natural behaviours. Whether is be Malawi deeming homosexuality unnatural and indecent; Burundi criminalising gay sex; Zambia connecting homosexuality with Satanism, or Uganda offering up the death penalty for anyone homosexual. 

The list goes on, with most of them leaning on ancient, colonial anti-sodomy legislation (something that India has just repealed in a huge step forward) and being encouraged by an infestation of American conservative evangelical Christians, peddling their homophobic nonsense.

It is not just Africa of course that fines, lashes, whips and imprisons it's homosexuals. Iran and Afghanistan both put them to death but it is in Iran's legislation that an interesting facet starts to appear, one that is shared by many of these homophobic nations.

In Iran, lesbians are only put to death upon the fourth conviction for the "crime" of homosexuality, they are, in a sense, let off the hook for the first three indiscretions (aside from the 300 lashes they would have received) and in many of these backward nations, lesbianism is not even mentioned in the law books; as if love between women is of a lower threshold and value perhaps or, just whisper it, offering a titillation factor to this chauvinistic, moral weaklings.

It is a truism to suggest that how a country treats it's vulnerable is a good measure of how well it treats the rest of it's citizens and by the current state of LGBT rights in many developing nations, this does not bode at all well.

Robert Mugabe Has a New Best Friend!

As the two mentalists meet, allies in being utterly wacky and killing people who dissent, a firm handshake is shared, a handshake seemingly supervised by a Jew. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hides his loathing of the Jew well behind a rictus smile. Mugabe grins inanely, not being too sure what a Jew is.

With the Jew still loitering in the background, soon to be shot, Mugabe and Ahmadinejad double up on the handshake, making it a virtual hand sandwich. However, smiles quickly fade as the clamminess of the anti-Semite's skin upsets the mad old African ballbag, who keeps his "claws of death" (as he named them) in tip-top shape. The alliance of lunacy is in the balance...

  

Embarrassed by his clammy palms and realising the bat-shit crazy old loon is literally slipping from his grasp, Ahmadinejad throws caution to the wind and moves in for the reach around and embraces the mentally unbalanced honky-hater. Smiles all round as Mugabe loves this kind of man on man shit and anyway, the Arab makes him feel tall.

A quick change of suits after the successful (if slightly wet) handshake and full on cuddle, leaves the two dictators in a confident and sartorially smooth mood, so much so, that the two unlikely gays hold hands and prance about an airport where Mugabe has all the whites shipped out of the country and blames everything on the British.

The Horror of Iran

I have kept silent on the terrible situation in Iran because, quite frankly, I don't have an answer, or a 'take' or really an idea of what should be done and the best way for us, as in the West, to respond.

Should we merely make vocal claims of support, shouting across the Elburz Mountains to be dismissed as interfering Westerners, sowing seeds of selfish regime change and perhaps scuppering the chance for some level of reform? Or should we engage in diplomatic tit-for-tats, discuss sanctions and shake our heads disapprovingly at the way the protesters are being suppressed so violently, when we ourselves struggle with handling public displays of disaffection?

I have no idea but I do know that any Western involvement will only cause harm and even without it, those in power in Iran use the West as a whipping boy to terrify and galvanise it's followers.

Regime change is not our place, even though watching the protesters being killed, beaten and treated so terribly makes me feel desperate to do something to help them, makes the fire of indignation rise up...but surely Iran must go on it's own journey and be all the better for it. Intervention will not bring lasting change (see Iraq for reference).

I don't even know to what degree the election was fixed, I have a feeling that some of it was hashed but I also know the West has underestimated the lack of appetite for reform in the vast majority of the country, which for all intents and purposes is quite conservative.

I wasn't even going to blog on it, until the crisis in Iran got it's media martyr in Neda Agha-Soltan, it's very own YouTube horror story, a young female protester who was shot dead and whose last moments; as the blood runs from her mouth and nose, were captured on film, a document of the very real cost of protesting in Iran, a crushing and heartbreaking reminder of how high the stakes are to many Iranians and what thousands are willing to risk in order to voice their pain at this stolen election.

Oh the horror, oh the utter horror...

I Told You So...(Merry Christmas)

As we approach the end of 2008, I'm getting all reflective and I was reading through some old blog posts and I found this one from Sunday 12th November 2006. (That's right, two freaking years ago bitches!)

It's called "America's First Black President?" and in a nutshell, I make the case for Obama winning in 2008...which he did. Obviously. How prescient was I? My favourite bit of seeing into the future is:

"More importantly, 2008 is the right time for him to strike: the GOP by then will be further weakened, the nation fishing around for dynamic change; there will be no incumbent and no vice-President to deal with. In short, there is a golden opportunity for the Barack Obama to become the first black President. Here’s hoping…"

Reading the comments is fun, from a fear that the colour of his skin is too much of an issue, to sad digs at how black people can't be in charge of anything.

So in smug celebration of my greatness, here is an Obama themed photo montage for ya'll...

Before I go and smother myself in my own smugness, a few things caught my eye to ponder on over the Christmas period, the deteriorating situation in Guinea for one and the call for help from the government there, which I fear will fall on deaf ears as there is no oil...

Then there is a nasty reminder of what things could be like for us bloggers in the West, with news that Vietnam is cracking down on bloggers and banning them from posting things that undermine national security, incite violence or disclose state secrets. Oh and they must be written in clean and wholesome language...I'd be fucked then...

Spare a thought also at this time of the year for the 31.5 million Americans on food stamps, $24 per week per person it hard to swallow at the best at times but even more so, as Sadhbh Walshe points out, when the US government is bailing out private enterprise left, right and centre.

And finally, I know what I'll be watching on TV tomorrow (aside from my complete collection of The West Wing): Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is delivering an alternative Christmas message on Channel 4, which is brilliant, offensive and bizarre, all at the same time.

Cool.

Merry Christmas to all my readers, friends and loved ones; I'll even extend season's greetings to all the blog asshats that bug the shit out of me.

Peace.

Who is the World’s Worst Dictator?

The bathroom sink was leaking at our flat, so we called up the guy who helped us do a lot of the work on our place last year called Abror, who also happens to be from Uzbekistan. This led to me discovering the world’s worst dictator…

Uzbekistan has a pretty bad leader, number 9 on Parade’s list of the world’s worst dictators in fact: Islam Karimov. Abror and I discussed his terrible human rights infringements; indeed one of the reasons Abror left with his family was this nasty little man, who of course had many years of support from the Bush regime who found his willingness to torture “enemy combatants” very useful in the war on a noun. Brilliant.

Parade’s top 20 of dictators makes for interesting reading; the old faces are still sadly present: North Korean loon Kim Jong-il, the epitome of a mad dictator Robert Mugabe who is literally starving his country to death, the real problem in Iran, Sayyid Ali Khamenei, Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi (although his attempts to sidle up the US government via oil exports is quite stomach turning), Syria’s Bashar al-Assad who looks the least like a dictator and more like an accountant and Fidel Castro’s brother Raul.

Aside from our great ally Islam Karimov, we have other pals on the list of evil: King Abdullah, who rules that epitome of backwardness that is Saudi Arabia, has oil (and awful facial hair) so does what he wants to the people of his nation, indeed Saudi Arabia has one of the most female repressive regimes in the entire world. The West pretend to not like Hu Jintao and the cruel Chinese Communist powerhouse but we need their goods and money more than ever to prop up our economies and we even gave the bastards the Olympics, which just about takes the biscuit considering the Chinese utilize forcible abortions and control all aspects of thier citizens life.

Another top buddy on the list is Pervez Musharraf, who has suspended Pakistan’s constitution, closed the courts and had political opponents killed, Bush of course said: “Musharraf has advanced democracy in Pakistan.” Our final homie on the list is Hosni Mubarak, who often slips under the radar as an utter cunt because he’s been at it for so long but don’t forget that he loves to torture and has ruled Egypt under ‘Emergency Law’ (thereby bypassing all human rights and civil liberties) for 27 years. Once again, brilliant.

Africa, unfortunately, has far too many names on the list, aside from Mugabe it includes: Idriss Deby of Chad who luckily for him is oil rich so his errors are forgiven, Meles Zenawi in Ehiopia who constantly wars with another awful dictator in Eritrea Isaias Afewerki. Knocked off the top spot to number two is Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, who is currently overseeing one of the world’s worst genocides and humanitarian calamities. Bringing up the rear are two very bizarre African rulers, Swaziland’s King Mswati III who is the last absolute monarch in Africa and has overseen the largest rise in AIDS/HIV on the planet as well as crippling any efforts at democracy. Teodoro Obiang Nguema, whose regime in Equatorial Guinea is one of the world’s most corrupt, oppressive and undemocratic, joins him on the mentalist list because not only does he boast about being a cannibal but he says things like: “I am God and I’m in permanent contact with the Almighty…I can decide to kill without anyone calling me to account and without going to hell.” It goes without saying that Condoleezza Rice met with him and wants to build a working realtionship to establish alternate oil sources...

If so many people weren’t dying because of all this, it’d be funny…

The Holocaust Conference

Nothing turns my stomach more than those people that try and somehow downsize the systematic evil of Nazi Germany’s Final Solution and dress it up as genuine academic research, when really it barely masks their anti-Semitic worldview.

The Holocaust Conference in Iran is a deeply unsavoury event that unfortunately seems to find many supporters in the more ignorant elements of the blogosphere. Regular readers will know that I am no fan of Zionism and the regime currently in power in Israel, regular readers will also know that I am a vigorous defender of free speech, even in the most extreme of circumstances (such as this sham of a conference) but that doesn’t mean I cannot voice my displeasure at those that believe this mock conference is anything other than a crude, idiotic stab in a wet paper bag.

The Holocaust Conference purports to investigate the details of the Holocaust but contains not one single academic or historian that is an expert on the matter, more importantly, the sheer wealth of data on the Holocaust provides such an undeniable wall of evidence that crushes all doubt of the size and scale of the genocide that debate is at best pointless and at worst, rooted in utterly corrupt and anti-Semitic values. What is the point, other than to cause distress and sow the seeds of racism, of arguing whether 5 million or 8 million Jews died?

The point seems not to lay with the Holocaust at all but rather that it led to the formation of the state of Israel, its role in the psyche of Zionism and as an excuse for the brutal expansionist policies of Israel. It also seems to be some pathetic attempt at a tit-for-tat testing of the Western world’s free speech ideals in the face of those silly cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which is an easy win for the West as we haven’t burned any flags yet or got ourselves in a rage over two-dimensional images.

Frankly, there are some events in world history that are above such petty minded exercises in political game play and it is so vulgar, so disrespectful of all those that died, to try and demean events in order to score political points. Those involved are cowards, they do not dare to honestly expose their anti-Semitic views and they would rather hide them behind the dead bodies of Dachau, Auschwitz and Belzec than stand up for their so-called beliefs.

We cannot go back and remove the state of Israel; whose formation rose from the ashes of those slaughtered, we need to move forward, together, for a peaceful solution in the Middle East which will involve compromise on all fronts. Of course there are Zionists who use the Holocaust for political leverage, those that justify acts of terror under the umbrella of those terrible events in the past and these people stand shoulder to shoulder with all those that abuse the memory of the Holocaust and use if for political advancement.

I shall leave you with an image from the personal photo album of a member of the Einsatzgruppen, who labelled it ‘The Last Jew of Vinnitsa’, it documents the moment that the last of some 28,000 Jews in the Ukraine village of Vinnitsa was put to death. It speaks volumes in this time of empty, desperate language.