Incredible Blog

After a long hiatus i'm finally writting again for my old blog, the incrediblog. Just to get warmed up before i start shooting out every thought that crosses my head i want everyone to take a minute and just watch this insane clip that someone edited from the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, it seriously is one of the most inspiring things i've ever heard in my life and i hope you enjoy it.

On my last entry i wrote about the influence of the United States over the ongoing Mexican war on drugs. Mexico is the US's primary drug supplier, heroin, cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines, but not all of those drugs are made in Mexico. Today we'll take a look at how Mexico is hopelessly fighting for a lost cause, how the US government is indirectly causing bloodshed on Mexican streets, and how Mexican authorities use Marijuana as a scapegoat to give out the international impression that their anti-drug efforts are working...




Satan's flower.


Before we can talk about an illegal substance like marijuana, we have to first know why a natural plant that grows on the ground was made illegal while cabbage is free to run amuck. Marijuana has been used since 7000 B.C, and it was made illegal during the Reagan administration. Marijuana has had different uses thought history, at one point 90% of the worlds ships were made out of hemp, the word canvas comes from the latin cannapaceus (made of hemp), but it wasn't until the early 1900's that cannabis was used for recreational purposes. When Mexican immigrants came to america after the 1910 Mexican revolution, they were hired as cheap laborers on local farms, the Mexicans brought marijuana with them, farms that didn't hire Mexicans pushed for a ban on "preparations of hemp" or "loco weed".

During this time, the United States was also dealing with alcohol prohibition, which lasted from 1919 to 1933.  Alcohol prohibition was extremely visible and debated at all levels, while drug laws were passed without the general public’s knowledge. National alcohol prohibition happened through the mechanism of an amendment to the constitution.

In the eastern states, the problem was attributed to a combination of Latin Americans and black jazz musicians. Marijuana and jazz traveled from New Orleans to Chicago, and then to Harlem, where marijuana became an indispensable part of the music scene. Once again, good old racism played a big part on outlawing cannabis, newspapers at the time made statements such as: “Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice.”.

 The San Fransico Examiner wrote: “Marihuana makes fiends of boys in thirty days — Hashish goads users to bloodlust. “By the tons it is coming into this country — the deadly, dreadful poison that racks and tears not only the body, but the very heart and soul of every human being who once becomes a slave to it in any of its cruel and devastating forms…. Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters. Hasheesh makes a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get him….”


Two other fear-tactic rumors started to spread: one, that Mexicans, Blacks and other foreigners were snaring white children with marijuana; and two, the story of the “assassins.” Early stories of Marco Polo had told of “hasheesh-eaters” or hashashin, from which derived the term “assassin.” In the original stories, these professional killers were given large doses of hashish and brought to the ruler’s garden (to give them a glimpse of the paradise that awaited them upon successful completion of their mission). Then, after the effects of the drug disappeared, the assassin would fulfill his ruler’s wishes with cool, calculating loyalty.

For the last couple of months i've invested my time on doing a bit of research about the ongoing war on drugs that has cost Mexico the incredible number of 35 thousand deaths in the last 4 years, it seems to me that 35000 dead citizens is a painfully high price to pay for keeping drugs out of the streets, and with a number that high, the war better be working, sadly, it isn't, the war on drugs was lost before it started, the table is tilted, greed, addiction, intimidation and corruption prove to be an overpowered enemy of this otherwise noble cause, and on this series of blog entries, i will try my best to show you why Mexico is fighting an unfair battle.



Like a Candy Shop


The United States of America is pound for pound the undisputed biggest drug consumer in the world, and that doesn't include alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs, the reason behind this  is probably because its one of the largest countries in the world, most of its drugs come from Mexico and there are consumers there, but the US has almost two times the population of Mexico, the ammount of drugs consumed on both countries is unknown, but its estimated that drug cartels make billions of dollars a year from illegal drug trade. Forbes estimates Joaquin Guzman Loera, the biggest drug lord in mexico, to have a personal wealth of over 1 billion dollars. According to the CIA World Factbook,  the United States is the "world's largest consumer of cocaine...Colombian heroin, and Mexican heroin and marijuana; major consumer of ecstasy and Mexican methamphetamine; minor consumer of high-quality Southeast Asian heroin; illicit producer of cannabis, marijuana, depressants, stimulants, hallucinogens, and methamphetamine; money-laundering center".

This of course became a top priority for the american government, most of its drugs, if not all of them are smuggled from the mexican border, so the best solution back in 2006 was to politically pressure mexican president Felipe Calderon into taking strong actions against the mexican drug cartels that for many years had become part of Mexico's social and political structure. Calderon's undeclared war against the cartels triggered the biggest violence wave and blood bath in the country since it's civil war in 1910. Much like the ruthless drug war in Colombia during the late 80's and early 90's, mexican streets became a shooting range for police, soldiers and drug cartel henchmen, every corner of their society has been affected, civilians, clergy men and politicians have all been killed during this ongoing struggle.

Official numbers estimate that around one thousand minors have been killed because of gunfights, over 15 deaths have been caused by mexican soldiers that have shot civilians that didn't stop on different checkpoints on the country's roads, including one american citizen named Joseph Proctor who in August of 2010 was not only murdered by mexican soldiers but they also planted an AR-15 rifle on his hands and claimed that Proctor had attacked them first, it took 6 months for the united states to pressure mexican government who finally in December 2010 arrested 5 soldiers, Proctor's case was the third that year that accused soldiers of killing innocent civilians and planting evidence on their bodies.

Tamtampamela posted this video last night on her own account, about 10 minutes later, she took it down along with her whole account, almost immediately after that, this user created an account called tamtampameia, and reuploaded the confession video there. He made up the description saying that she decided to take down all the videos, like she did that for the good of everyone, that is not true, she deleted her account and nobody knows why, maybe she had second thoughts about coming clean and she was too slow to take the video down before someone downloaded it.

As i listen to this woman's ramble about how the monkey in the sky is so wonderful, i can't help but to play in my mind the videos of cars and people being swept away by the sea, the faces of children that have been injured, whose parents are missing, i can picture the expression of despair and sadness of the thousands that have lost a relative, and those who are currently being evacuated from their towns because of a nuclear threat.

The woman on this video goes by the name of Pamela M Foreman, and as you can tell from her other videos, she might be a troll, doing a parody of the average religious fundamentalist, someone would even say that she did this video as a joke, well, this video is missing something that most jokes have, its missing all the funny, i looked for it and couldn't find it, this isn't comedy, and judging from all the ratings and comments on her videos, nobody thinks she's even remotely funny, if she's trying to troll people for about 30 videos without the majority of her viewers even noticing that she is trying to be funny then she is as insane as the very same people she's trying to make fun of.

If i was her and i had a channel with over 2 thousand subscribers i would've taken a break from my usual immature "comedy" videos to express myself and give out my real thoughts about this terrible tragedy that goes on in Japan, i would've used those subscribers to promote charity and donations towards the needy Japanese, maybe instead of making a video i would've sent a bunch of bottled water so that it might help a couple hundred out of the thousands of people that don't have any in Fukushima, not poke fun at them with the stupidest monologue that ever came out of a youtuber's mouth, troll or not the things she says on that video are beyond stupid, people now have heir address, name and phone number because of her latest "joke".

I consider myself a big fan of comedy, specially stand up comedy, i probably wouldn't even have an atheist blog today if it wasn't because i found out about George Carlin or Lewis Black, and just like amateur guitar players that practice all the time and get really good at identifying talented guitarists, i write all the time, i have unreleased stand up comedy material, and i tend to be very critical on myself and others when it comes to comedy, and i couldn't find a single video from Pamela that made me even giggle but i do have to admit that she can act like a crazy person, maybe it just comes out naturally for her.

After a while of debating or arguing with creationists its inevitable to start hearing the same old tired arguments, and the same old tired questions, the only thing they prove is ignorance towards the opposition's set of beliefs or arguments. I'm writing up this small list of 10 questions i hear the most, they are in no particular order, they are all equally annoying.

Atheism is just like religion, don't you guys worship Darwin (or science)?


No, atheism is not an organized group of people that promotes false hope, asks for money, doesn't pay taxes, advertises door to door, pushes their beliefs into others, wears funny clothes and hats, kills in the name of god or flies planes into buildings thinking they'll get virgins after they die.

So i had a birthday party for a cousin on my house yesterday and things are kinda tight so i'm gonna have to bump the article till tomorrow, on the meantime i'll leave you with Richard Dawkin's latest documentary about Faith Schools, its divided in 4 parts, enjoy!.

Why isn't she saluting the flag?, why isn't she singing the anthemn?, -she's a witness- A witness?, like from the government?, -no you idiot, a Jehovah's witness-

I recall having that short conversation with a friend when i was around 9 years of age, i knew about Witnesses before i knew about atheists, a few blocks south of my house there was a Mormon temple and a Jehovah's witnesses kingdom hall. I have a troubled cousin that had drug problems who got converted to JW and she is heavily criticized by my mostly Christian family because she can't come to birthday parties because she isn't allowed to do so by her church, and by that i mean, if she's spotted by a fellow witness, she could be denounced and brought up to her church's elder to face some form of punishment, but my family doesn't understand that, because they know very little about the whole religion, so to make it easy for them, i'll show you what Witnesses actually believe...

Irreducible complexity is the term creationists use to point out that something as complex as the human eye could not have come from natural selection, but only from a designer, they ignore the fact that in the animal kingdom there are eyes far more developed that the human eye, and a lot of underdeveloped eyes. In the UK there's a TV show called "Bang Goes the Theory" and they featured Richard Dawkins on one of their episodes, he explains the different types of eyes, how they work and how they easily evolved, it really is something worth watching.

On a little side note, i realize there's a lot of new viewers on the blog who might be wondering why i just wrote something very short and posted a video, i write a new article every monday, wednesday and friday, every other day i post news or videos that i find interesting, with that being said, here's Dawkins explaining the eye...

Judging from the recent survey that indicates 50% of Americans don't know what the Koran is, i think its pretty safe to guess that most people think Scientology is a celebrity club, celebrities like John Travolta, Tom Cruise and even Danny Masterson are profiting members of the church of Scientology. Why?, what is scientology?.

I have a couple of news you might be interested in, currently i'm working on tomorrow's article, one that everyone can enjoy, it's about a certain celebrity cult that believes in aliens and god like powers, here's an article from the BBC about it...

In 2007, while investigating the Church of Scientology for Panorama, reporter John Sweeney had a dramatic on-camera confrontation with a church spokesman named Tommy Davis. The church was accusing the reporter of bias and it attempted to stop the documentary from being broadcast - a campaign backed by Scientology A-lister John Travolta. Sweeney has returned to investigate the church again.

Tomorrow you'll read my take on Scientology and why i believe there should be more documentaries and more public demonstrations against it and why i think there aren't. There's just something about Scientology that makes me think when people stop believing in Jesus, they'll turn to Scientology, lets hope i don't get abducted between today and tomorrow.

Here's an interesting article, according to a recent study, atheists and agnostics are more knowledgeable about religion than muslims, christians and jews...

A majority of Protestants, for instance, couldn't identify Martin Luther as the driving force behind the Protestant Reformation, according to the survey, released Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Four in 10 Catholics misunderstood the meaning of their church's central ritual, incorrectly saying that the bread and wine used in Holy Communion are intended to merely symbolize the body and blood of Christ, not actually become them.

And also...For comparison purposes, the survey also asked some questions about general knowledge, which yielded the scariest finding: 4% of Americans believe that Stephen King, not Herman Melville, wrote "Moby Dick."


God Bless America!

Thanks to the awesome comments on the last entry, Gambling For Salvation, it came to me that i had to give out an explanation of what atheism and being and atheist means to me, of course the word atheism means "without gods" and any atheist is considered someone who rejects the idea of a creator god. But it isn't a religion or an organization, it doesn't have a set of rules, you don't need to go somewhere once a week to reinforce your atheism, there are no atheist pastors that guide you whenever you are having problems.

To me being an atheist doesn't just mean i don't believe in god, it is much more than that, even though the correct term would be a critical thinker, i rather say that i'm atheist, its a stronger word, stigmatized maybe by popular misconceptions, hell, atheists are the least trusted people in america. Whenever i say i'm an atheist, i mean i don't believe in god, demons, ghosts, exorcisms, homeopathy, and pretty much every other unfounded belief in the world, a true skeptic, a doubter, a non-believer, a naturalist, a rationalist. Anyone that spends more than 30 minutes with me during the day can easily notice it, i'm the guy that doesn't go with the flow whenever someone makes an unbelievable claim, of course to be like that you need a bit of a sense of humor so you don't come out as a complete ass, people are very touchy when you call them out on their bullshit.

FeedBurner is a google service that allows you to place an rss image like the one on my sidebar so your readers can easily subscribe to your blog and follow it thrugh a feed reader or get updates via e-mail, the best part of using FeedBurner is that you can set up google AdSense on it so you can make extra money from it aside from your blog.

To create a feedburner account simply go to http://feedburner.google.com, accsess with the same email you have your blog registered on, and the system will automatically detect your blog, follow the instructions and you are done, now, here's when the tricky part begins, you now need to utilize every tool FeedBurner gives you, when you are done setting up FB for your blog, you'll see this screen:

You are at a table playing blackjack with a king and a nine on your hand, chances are that if you ask for another card, you will go over and lose it all, so your best bet is to keep what you have and play it smart, stay safe, no need to risk it, you don't even have to think about it, to ask the dealer to hit you would be stupid, suicidal, you would lose it all, so, you do what's best for you. Blaise Pascal understood this perfectly.

Pascal's wager is the idea that even though the existence of god can not be proven, a person should wager for his existence because there's a lot to win from it, doing otherwise would mean damnation in the fires of  hell. Pascal thought the safest bet would be to believe in the Judeo-Christian god of the bible, as if an omnipotent being couldn't tell if your belief was sincere or not. I'm not sure how god would react if he finds out you just had faith out of convenience, if you want to be serious about it, thats it for the wager, its over, but if you really want to bury Pascal's gambit, then what if Pascal was waging on the wrong god?.

Thanks to the fantastic response on my last column titled Why Do You Care?, tomorrow i'll be writing something about Agnosticism, my views on it, and why i think it's not the right posture to take on this subject. Today i'm gonna leave you with a couple of news that i thought were interesting.

Italian authorities seized euro23 million ($30 million) from a Vatican bank account Tuesday and said they have begun investigating top officials of the Vatican bank in connection with a money-laundering probe. Yes people, the vatican might be involved in money laundering, so now our good friend Pope Ratzinger not only has to deal with pedophile priests and nazi atheists but now mobster activities inside the church, is the catholic church really going down?, are we close to seeing the end of Catholicism?.

Mother Earth could have parted the Red Sea, hatching the great escape described in the biblical book of Exodus, a new study finds. Carl Drews of the National Center for Atmospheric Research made a study that shows strong winds could easily make the effect that the sea is being parted, of course the study does not pretend to show the bible is true, it shows how it could have happened, it's not saying that it did happen at all, there's absolutely zero evidence for that, no archeological evidence, nothing, already i've seen a couple of article titles that say "SCIENCE PROVES BIBLICAL MIRACLE".


To wrap this thing up, i'll leave you with an awesome video that i just saw last night, it's funny, it's well done, it gets the point across, enjoy it and be sure to come back tomorrow for the article about Agnosticism.

If you've ever dared to express your atheism in any public place, even if its just on a message board, chances are, someone has told you something around the lines of why do you care about what people believe?, live and let die man. Seems a very neutral, logical point of view, it's almost something i would agree with...if the religious weren't out there shoving their beliefs down everyone's throat, claiming that anyone that doesn't believe in what they believe is either a fool or has a "hole" in their life, threatening people left and right with hellfire, damnation and eternal torture in the lake of fire.

Socially, the table is tilted on the religious's favor, they are the good guys, the ones that promote morality, atheists are the godless beings that care for nobody but themselves, take social networks for example, on my personal Facebook as i've stated before, 100% of my family are balls out Christians, most of  them don't believe in evolution because all they know about it is that popular image of the monkey to human scale, so constantly i have to read their posts asking for prayers for another family member or friend who is sick or is going through some tough times, some just love posting bible passages, or the occasional warning about how the end of times is near.

I was planning on writing something for the blog today, but i saw a documentary on one of the facebook pages i'm subscribed to and i was outraged to say the least, it's unimaginable that on this day and age, children are being tortured and burned to death because of religious belief. Please take the time to at least watch the first minutes of the video i'll embed i guarantee you will be as outraged as i am, i'll have the other videos linked below. i will leave you with the intro made by The Atheist Advocate, be sure to check him out.

Christians say they no longer commit acts of violence in the name of their religion. Children in Africa's Niger Delta were being denounced by Christian pastors as witches and wizards, and then killed, tortured or abandoned by their own families. Following the introduction of the Child Rights legislation and an increase in financial support for a British charity providing a refuge for affected youngsters, the program returns to find out what happened to some of the people featured in the first film. This is one of five, if you can stomach it!!!

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5 (Final)