Brazil sticks it to the Church

 

The BBC story that caught my ear this morning was that the Brazilian government had announced that it will soon make oral contraceptives widely available. The government is even going to subsidise the pills so that the poor can also benefit.

The announcement unto itself might not necessarily have been world newsworthy, but the reaction of the Catholic Church apparently was. The Catholic Church is objecting to Brazil making oral contraceptives available and affordable because birth control leads to promiscuity.

That’s pretty rich coming from a bunch of celibate priests.

I have decided to take it upon myself to set the record straight because while I might not know more about promiscuity than some people, I can safely say I know a lot more about it than Ratzinger and his cronies.

So once and for all, these are things that do not lead to promiscuity: availability of birth control, sex education in school, video games, explicit song lyrics, and bare breasts on the beach.

These are things that may lead to promiscuity: natural instinct, natural sexuality, natural urges. Please note the frequent occurrence of the word ‘natural’.

I am an atheist and I have never believed in the concept of sin. However, for all of you religious people out there – if your god didn’t want us to do it, why did s/he make it feel good, and why did s/he make sure that we had these natural urges, which are often uncontrollable? If sex were just for procreation, then we would be more like animals and only go into heat once a year.

Remember kids – sex is not evil, but unwanted pregnancy is.

 

 

The BBC story is here.

Большая чистка

 

Bolshaya Chistka, or the Great Purge

Venezuelan dictator Hugo “Fidelito” Chávez is on his way to closing down a second television station within the space of a few days. First he closed Radio Caracas TV for allegedly trying to undermine the government, and now he is going after Globovision for allegedly inciting the people to kill him. But it’s not because he’s paranoid or anything like that, they really are out to get him.

Chávez has an interesting history with television, a twisted love-hate relationship. Obviously he loves state-controlled television, which never wavers in its support for him. But Chávez hates private television, not least because it has already once been a fundamental factor in his overthrow – see The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

Oh yes, Chávez is also suing CNN for allegedly linking him to al-Qaeda. But I think that’s just for fun.

Many people have been protesting the closure of RCTV; on the other hand, many people have been supporting it. The latter group are idiots.

Benjamin Franklin once said:

In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Who ever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.

Which is always interpreted to mean that a free press is essential for liberty, something that by now all educated people know is true.

Chávez is currently only about 4 months into the 18-month dictatorship he was granted. I am certain that by the end of it, there will not be a single truly independent publisher or broadcaster left in Venezuela. ¡Adiós, la libertad!

From Revolutionary to Dictator in 4 Easy Steps

 

Or how to become a megalomaniac and ruin your country.

Hugo Chávez is a charismatic leader. So is Fidel Castro, so were Hitler and Stalin. Chávez’s “Bolivarian Revolution” is based on the concepts of redistribution of wealth and social welfare.

Step 1 – 1992 – Chávez the revolutionary led a failed military coup.

Step 2 – 1998 – Chávez the politician was legitimately elected president of Venezuela.

Step 3 – 2002 – Chávez the controversial president survived a coup attempt.

Step 4 – yesterday – the Venezuelan National Assembly took the first step towards giving Chávez the dictator the unchecked power to rule by decree for 18 months.

Of course it absolutely boggles my mind that any group of legislators would voluntarily give so much power to one person. And moreover, it’s not the first time they’ve done it. The Enabling Act of 2000 had allowed Chávez to rule by decree for one year. Obviously the whole country belongs in an insane asylum.

But what really caught my attention today were the plans that Chávez has for Venezuela. According to the Washington Post, Chávez has announced that he intends to “nationalize key sectors of the economy, rewrite the country’s constitution to eliminate presidential term limits, strip the Central Bank of its autonomy, and put an end to foreign ownership of lucrative crude oil refineries.”

That means that telecommunications, electricity and natural gas, as well as the mining sector, are all likely to be nationalised. Property is going to be stolen from private individuals as well as from foreign corporations. This all sounds familiar because we’ve already had the grand experiment of socialism, and it failed.

I guess politicians don’t pay attention to history. Controlled economies and nationalised enterprises did not work in Central and Eastern Europe and they are not going to work in South America. Chávez’s socialism cannot succeed and he is going to run his country into the ground. Tragic.