Another Day, Another Dead Girl (reluctantly revisited yet again... and again)

From NST Online, 19 September 2007

"HOW COULD ANYONE DO THIS?" screamed the New Straits Times headline of 19 September 2007. Here we go again, whipping up public outrage over what is undeniably a hideously grotesque and macabre case of child molestation, sexual abuse, and murder. However, I can't help wondering: what's the link between repressed sexuality, false piety, and the erotic underbelly of brute force? This is certainly not the first time something so horrific has occurred. Indeed, there was a period when you couldn't turn the pages of any tabloid without reading about yet another child rape, sex murder, or straightforward case of torture.

Nine years ago, the entire nation was stunned by the audacious abduction, rape and murder of Canny Ong; soon after this a 10-year-old girl named Nurul was molested and strangled by a security guard.

Then there was the outrageous case of a pretty Chinese jogger who was abducted in broad daylight, raped, and killed by a carload of unidentified men. (I'm reminded of a chat I had with popular stand-up comedian Jit Murad who was shocked and depressed by the inane mutterings of the Malay cabbie who had chauffeured him to the theater. The man kept leering at pretty Chinese girls on the street and let slip that he wished he could rape them all. Abolish the religious barriers and that cabbie would probably have fantasized about dating them all.)    

More recently, just over seven years ago, a 28-year-old Mongolian interpreter named Altantuya Shaariibuu was abducted and possibly raped before being shot in the head and blown to smithereens with C4 explosives. Two members of the Unit Tindakan Khas (UTK) - an elite police unit specially trained for "swift response" and mainly assigned as personal bodyguards to ministers - stand accused of this gruesome deed. For sure the crime is far more heinous when the "victim" is a mere child; but, ultimately, violence against women (or for that matter young boys) must be classified as psychopathological, regardless of age.

Wherein lies its origins, this twisted impulse to intimidate, dominate, subjugate, and violate? Is brute force hardwired into our neural circuitry, as an integral part of the survival instinct, and do we all unconsciously play the game of predator and prey? Come to think of it, violence pretty much underlies the whole patriarchal concept of control and power. Strip away the legalistic gobbledygook and you'll see the latent threats woven into every contract - ultimately the State has apparent power over its subjects because it controls the police (secret or otherwise) and military.

If you examine what goes into the training of a policeman or soldier, you'll find that empathy, compassion, sympathy, and understanding are usually NOT part of the curriculum. Are trainee policemen and soldiers encouraged to "try a little tenderness"? On the contrary, the entire training program is designed to "toughen up" the young recruit, transform boys into men, into efficient androids, conditioned to obey authority and carry out orders without engaging the mind or the heart. It's hardly surprising, then, that in the majority of cases, perpetrators of extremely brutal crimes turn out to be rogue policemen or soldiers. Okay, many are security guards - but most security guards come from a police or military background. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that almost all security agencies are owned and operated by former uniformed personnel.

Hell on Earth at Abu Ghraib (photos from antiwar.com

Why do people react with shock and dismay when their own children turn into monsters soon after they enlist in the police force, a covert agency, or some branch of the military? Look at what happened at Abu Ghraib. Clean-cut American kids, shipped off to fight an immoral "war" in Iraq, suddenly turn feral - reveling in unimaginable acts of cruelty and perversity. Here we are, in the 21st Century, and every day we are confronted by the ugly fact that something as diabolically evil as Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo Bay exists, with the tacit approval of American citizens - indeed, of the so-called Civilized World (let's be honest, if we were upset enough about wartime atrocities and violent abuses of human rights we would long have initiated diplomatic and economic boycotts of just about every nation on Earth).

Remember all the official propaganda about Soviet Gulags and Nazi concentration camps? Well, what about the CIA's "rendition" program - outsourcing the interrogation and torture of "suspected terrorists" to less squeamish countries? Deep down, aren't we all quite capable of unnameable acts of savage brutality - especially when carried out in the sanctimonious name of God or King, Race or Religion - or some Great Leader or other? (ISA detainees during the Reformasi Era not so long ago reported that the Special Branch officers "interrogating" them were in the habit of saluting each other with fanatical cries of "Hidup Mahathir!")

Indeed, political expediency has always been the mother of "evil necessities" like May 13 or 9/11 - or for that matter every war ever instigated in Man's bloody history.

Obviously, there are thousands - perhaps even millions - of skeletons waiting to tumble out of humanity's subconscious cupboard. James Joyce wasn't kidding when he wrote: "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."

Rather than get hysterical and demand the public lynching of guilty parties - or allocate more funds to beef up the forces of law enforcement - it would serve each of us much better to quietly examine the belief systems we grew up with and ask ourselves how these have contributed to our fears, obsessions, and compulsions.

Take the belief in Heaven and Hell, for example: do all those who claim to be Christian (or Muslim) seriously believe that anyone who doesn't accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior (or Muhammad as the Last Prophet) will end up burning forever in some sort of Haw Par Villa Hell?

Any "God" who decrees "eternal perdition" and constructs a mega-sized medieval torture chamber to punish infidels and backsliders (and there are bound to be countless multitudes of us) can only be regarded as a demented tyrant - and therefore unworthy of endorsement or worship.

My point is simply this: the basis of all inhuman acts can be found in religious superstition, whether we're dealing with Aztec priests who rip the beating hearts from the cut-open chests of sacrificial victims, or Catholic bishops who preside over witch hunts and burnings at stake, or mad mullahs who forcibly separate "infidel" mothers from their "Muslim" children and condemn to death anyone who decides to try on a different belief system. And if you require concrete evidence of the insanity underpinning all creeds extolling Race and Religion, look no further than the Talmud. Indeed, you don't even have to delve into the obscurantism of the Jewish scriptures; just read Deuteronomy in the Old Testament and you'll be stunned at the bloody-minded jingoism embedded in a supposedly "holy" book!

Here's a pertinent quote from anti-Zionist polemicist David Duke's controversial book, Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening to the Jewish Question (published by the Free Speech Press in 2007):

In contrast to the universalism of the New Testament, the Old Testament is extremely ethnocentric. It repeatedly identifies the Israelites as a “special people,” or a “Chosen People," and it painstakingly traces the genealogical descent of the Children of Israel. Many thought-provoking passages forbid the intermarriage of Jews and other tribes. In the book of Exodus, Moses responds to Israelites who had sexual relations with Moabite women by ordering that the Moabites be executed. In Ezra, God commanded those who married non-Israelites to cast off their wives and even the children of such unions. Some of the bloodiest writings I have ever read detailed the Jewish people’s annihilation of their tribal enemies. The massacres of Canaanites, Jacobites, Philistines, Egyptians, and dozens of other peoples are gruesomely recorded in the Bible. In today’s terminology, we describe the slaughter of entire peoples as genocide. Old Testament Jews spared neither men, women, children nor even the animals and pets of their enemies.

What have we here? An Old Testament deity that comes across pretty much as a cruel, ruthless despot and tyrant, more feared than loved by his worshipers. As the gods receded from human memory and were replaced by Kings and Queens, what remained unchanged were the attributes of ruthless cruelty, despotism and tyranny as the hallmarks of strong leadership. And as Kings and Queens began to surrender their authority and power to secular ministers and bureaucrats, the State as a corporate entity arrogated those attributes in the name of maintaining Law and Order.

Nevertheless, the Iron Hand of harsh punishment must, of necessity, be concealed within the Velvet Glove of slick PR. Far easier and more efficient to create a social order wherein people police themselves and one another through ideological imprinting. Hence "the education system" wherein young minds get formatted and have their basic behavioral software installed. Of course, no system is perfect - and every so often the long-repressed feral nature (the Mr Hyde side of our multi-layered personalities, our Gollum selves, if you prefer) will erupt onto the front pages of our daily newspapers. That respected pillar of society and stalwart Rotarian, Dr Jekyll, everyone is shocked to learn, is a closet pedophile, a child molester, perhaps even a cannibal!

How could anyone do this? Sexually abuse a child to death and dispose of the body in a sports bag. Well, C4 explosives would have been real handy but they're rather hard to come by, since only the Defence Ministry has possession of this substance, I'm told.

Outrage is indeed a positive thing. Let's have a little more of it, ladies and gentlemen. But, please, let's be very brave and look in the mirror first and see what murderous Balrogs lurk in the unvisited subterranean depths of our poor, over-indoctrinated psyches.

[First published 19 September 2007. Reposted 19 February 2015]

This Has NOTHING To Do With Religion! (repost)

From Malaysiakini, 13 Jan 2009

I was absolutely flabbergasted when I read this report in Malaysiakini a few minutes ago. This can't be happening, I thought. It's certainly one of the most absurd - nay, insane - things I've come across thus far outside of Nigeria, Somalia, and Saudi Arabia.

Don't these blithering idiots realize: CORPORAL PUNISHMENT IS A MILLION TIMES MORE "SINFUL" THAN DRINKING BEER?

Can't stand the taste of beer myself but I have lots of friends of all colors and creeds who drink - and not one of them is remotely a "bad" person just because they enjoy a couple of beers.

What's going on here is the ugly face of a dying patriarchy, trying to scare people into obedience to benighted, irrelevant, meaningless and barbaric laws invented by the falsely pious for the sole purpose of controlling others.

The question that springs to mind is this: if we're going to practise "tough love" in the interest of running "a tight ship" - then why not cane those found guilty of wilfully destroying the environment for private profit? Or those who have been caught demanding kickbacks and bribes? These are far more serious crimes, with long-term negative consequences that affect the entire nation.

Beer-swigging Muslims are in the same category as pot-smoking teenagers. They number in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. There aren't enough canes to go around if we're going to start caning every "offender." The National Fatwa Council could advise all Muslims who prefer to imbibe Al-Kohol rather than Al-Koran to keep a cane handy with which to flagellate themselves when they go home. Nevertheless, I think the hangover from overindulgence suffices as punishment.

Every Muslim on this planet has a sacred duty to speak out and defend the honor and integrity of his or her faith from being so hideously besmirched by fundamentalist bigots and time-warped fanatics such as those who advocate corporal punishment for activities some people deem pleasurable and which don't actually cause any harm to anybody (except to their own health if done in excess).

The worst disease plaguing humanity has always been the deformed consciousness of rabid control freaks who hide behind the façade of "morality" in their obscene lust for power over others.

I'd rather be in the company of a boisterous platoon of beer-drinkers than spend even one minute with any human whose worldview resembles that of a Spanish Inquisitor.

May God in her wisdom terminate once and for all the bloodlines of these hypocritical killjoys - unless their children end up marrying Germans.

So be it!


I know it's another nine months to Oktoberfest but after reading that ludicrous news report I just have to soothe my nerves with some gratuitous images of buxom beer-swilling Bavarian beauties. Prost!

[First posted 14 January 2009. Reposted 5 April 2020] 

Understanding Pedo, Necro & Coprophilia (revisited)

I’ve noticed a spate of sensational stories about child marriages, child prostitution and assorted pedophilic perversions. Apparently the Dirty Old Man Syndrome is erupting everywhere: in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Belgium, Britain, Germany, the USA, Israel, Australia, even (or should I say especially?) halal countries like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Malaysia.

I was tickled to find a self-help organisation for pedophiles called the North American Man-Boy Love Association of which the late poet Allen Ginsberg (shown at left) was a member. He was once quoted in the New York Times as saying: “It’s a discussion society, not a procurement organization. I myself don’t like underage boys. But they have a right to talk about the age of consent. I see it as a free speech issue, a discussion of the law.”

Pedophilia is nothing new, the cynic opines. To the cynic there’s never anything new. Ecocide, exploitation, rape, genocide, venality, skullduggery - it’s all been done ever since way back when. Which isn’t saying anything at all except: “Look, don’t bother me, I have problems of my own and bills to pay.”

Perhaps viciousness and perniciousness have always been part of the human melodrama. However, we haven’t always had the benefit of worldwide media (and social media) coverage of these apparent aberrations. Hence we must accept the challenge of honest, open discussion - followed by deep, quiet contemplation. That’s the only hope we have of transmuting our tragedies into cogent collective learning experiences, if not actual comedies, since it’s not easy to laugh when an 11-year-old daughter of a friend’s friend (or, worse, your own) has just been gang-banged by a pack of demented ruffians or, worse, abducted by human traffickers.

This is no light topic we’re delving into here. One might have to ruminate through a whole shelf of densely-worded books to study the problem in depth. Nonetheless, a hysterical demand for “stiffer penalties” or “beefed-up security” is no way to resolve anything. Already we are far too punitive in our approach to eradicating crime. No doubt there are instances where a quick tight slap or a sharp rap on the knuckles or a well-timed shout could be highly effective in preventing the recurrence of wrongdoing - but generally we are, as a species, dangerously prone to scapegoating and too goddamned reluctant to accept responsibility for whatever happens in our cozy little artificial realities.

Violent, invasive behavior like rape or molestation arouses deep and ancient fears in the social psyche. It is my contention, however, that such occurrences compel us to investigate their root-causes, to look within our own taboo systems for clues that might help us resolve certain internal conflicts.

Questions of power - and powerlessness - must be raised. Events that manifest externally are often metaphors of internal conditions and circumstances. Patterns of psychosis and neurosis researched by generations of Freudians, Jungians, Reichians and Transactional psychologists need to be re-evaluated and collectively understood.

Sigmund Freud’s ground-breaking theories on the Oedipus/Electra Complex, wherein he postulated an incipient erotic tension that invariably exists between Sons and Mothers, Daughters and Fathers - and inversions of these “complexes” along homosexual lines - seem to have fallen out of favor in recent decades. But no metaphor worth its weight in words has a use-by date: there is always a grain of truth in these generalizations that can help us look beyond the surface of actions and events.

When confronted with such unpleasant “facts of life” as robbery, rape, slavery, tyranny and the fascinating variety of abuses we keep inflicting on each other, I tend to examine my own preprogrammed prejudices a little more closely. It’s so easy to feel fear and loathing towards some projected Monster at the threshold of our comfortable domesticity. But it’s far more enlightening, I feel, to nose around the seldom-visited, cobwebby crannies of our own “unconscious” where, to be sure, we are bound to stumble on some moldy skeletons locked away from public, and even private, scrutiny.

Name the deed. I have committed it sometime, somewhere in the illusory privacy of my innermost thoughts. As folk-poet Bob Dylan once wryly sang: “If my thought-dreams/could be seen/they’d probably put my head/in a guillotine.”

I’m talking about the uneasy mixture of attraction and repulsion we all feel in the face of a ghastly accident or when we hear of some unspeakable act. An enraged husband chopping his wife into tiny bits and turning her into a curry. A necrophilic morgue attendant caught with his pants down. A scoutmaster coaxing campsite blowjobs out of his pet cubs. A deranged warlord dining on the raw livers of his murdered enemies. A wild-eyed mind-controlled "terrorist" blowing himself up along with a tentful of infidel stormtroopers. A veteran coach offering his post-pubescent athletes full-body rub-downs as a regular part of his training regimen. Now this last “unspeakable act” I readily admit might have caused me to feel fleetingly regretful that I never took sports seriously enough.

Have I ever “lusted” after a minor of either sex? Yes and no. Yes, because I have encountered extremely adorable children whom I thoroughly enjoyed dandling on my lap and cuddling wholeheartedly. No, because it has never occurred to me that I should stick my prick into any of those tiny, tender orifices.

Sensual pleasure is not necessarily confined to the genitals - and I believe there is absolutely nothing despicable about being openly sensuous. Take household cats and dogs for example: are they bashful about demanding their daily quota of affectionate fondling?

All living things emanate a vibrant electromagnetic field which can be charged up through bioenergetic contact with a sympathetic field. It is, in fact, an important factor in the maintenance of good health and a general sense of well-being. (Readers interested in exploring this further should read Wilhelm Reich’s seminal work, The Function of the Orgasm.)

However, where brute force, coercion, and fear tactics come into the picture, we have to diagnose the behavior as pathological. There’s a world of difference between seduction and rape, between persuasion and compulsion. And, most importantly, there is always a need for mutual respect and love. A society that repeatedly exhorts young people to respect their elders is definitely out of balance with itself. Respect must always be reciprocal and spontaneous. It must be won honestly, not elicited at gunpoint or by wielding the cane.

Without this basic understanding, is it any wonder that our do-as-I-say-don’t-do-as-I-do forms of parochial authority have generated such a horrific spectrum of abuses, particularly of disenfranchised factions like children, women, animals, indigenous cultures and “illegal immigrants”?

Here it may be useful to turn our attention to the work of Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979) - medical doctor, psychoanalyst, classical scholar and cosmological theorist extraordinaire. Having given up his medical practice to study with Freud and Jung, Velikovsky next got involved in helping his father compile a monumental history of Hebraic culture. Before long Velikovsky was fluent in several ancient languages, and found himself completely engrossed in his research. A gestalt of pre-Christian lore began to form in his fertile mind, leading to the publication in 1950 of his first book, Worlds in Collision.

In a nutshell, Velikovsky’s hypothesis was that the Earth had undergone at least one cataclysmic trauma within human memory, when an electromagnetic derangement of the solar system caused Venus and Mars to approach perilously close to our planet, resulting in dramatic aberrations of her spin, axial inclination and the temporary collapse of her magnetic field. Needless to say, the havoc was nightmarish beyond comprehension. Entire civilizations were erased with barely a trace. Continents drifted thousands of miles apart, radically altering the very surface of the Earth and her climatic zones.

When the dust finally settled, the human survivors had regressed into animality, totally amnesiac about the horrors of the cosmic holocaust that had hit them like a million nuclear disasters all at once. The only way to heal and move on was to quickly forget. But buried deep within the collective psyche of the human race, distrust and resentment of God (or the gods) had formed the seed of a primal existential angst that plagues us to this day.

And thus perpetual doubt and egoic insecurity festered in the racial memory, erupting now and again in amok episodes amongst the scattered tribes. The irrational urge to ravage and plunder in quasi-ecstatic surrender to the wild promptings of the Id became the basis of human history. After each release of pent-up primal rage, the rampaging hordes would suddenly turn into farmers, artisans, merchants and philosopher-scientists. This Jekyll-and-Hyde pattern of human behavior, and the inner conflicts it engendered, produced a schizoid dichotomy in our moral sense:

Daddy beats us when we are Bad. He says we must be Good. But we can see that Daddy does Bad things sometimes. We want to be like Daddy. We shall be Good when Daddy is watching us - but when he isn’t we can be as Bad as we want.

In 1955 Velikovsky published Earth in Upheaval - augmenting his original hypothesis with fresh evidence supporting his catastrophe theory. By this time the American scientific community had been alerted to the threat that Velikovsky posed to the entire edifice of academic dogma. He was dismissed as a charlatan, a quack, merely a publicity-seeker. Velikovsky was primarily a medical doctor and psychoanalyst; he had no business venturing into the archeological, paleontological and cosmological domains. Catastrophe theory? Totally beyond the pale, outrageous and amateurish, if not outright crank.

To make sure no paradigm shift would be triggered by this maverick scholar, the university community browbeat Velikovsky’s publisher (who specialized in academic works) into rejecting all his future manuscripts. In effect the publishing firm had no choice: if it continued to entertain Velikovsky, it would lose all its lucrative textbook contracts. And so Velikovsky was forced to use a non-academic publisher, which seriously undermined his credibility in the eyes of the reading public. It wasn’t till after his death in 1979 that scientific evidence from various space probes began to validate many of his cosmic scenarios.

As a development of his catastrophe theory, Velikovsky had put forward a clear diagnosis and prescription for the healing of the human psyche. Beyond a certain point, protective amnesia was counter-survival. We had to convert our cellularly-ingrained traumatic experience into conscious memory. This cathartic release of the genetically-transmitted emotive charge would ultimately lead to maturity and wisdom, a coming of age of humanity.

In short, Velikovsky was advising the human race to see a shrink. Or at least recognize the critical need for uncensored deep memory retrieval and rituals of reconciliation as a prerequisite of emotional healing. We now have the benefit of a broad spectrum of unorthodox emotional therapies developed since the late 1960s which have yet to be incorporated into orthodox healing practices. I suspect the powerful pharmaceutical companies that dictate medical practice are adamantly opposed to these alternative approaches - mainly because these remedies and cures do not involve prescription drugs.

Now this long digression on Velikovsky is necessary to our discussion - if only as a demonstration of how stubbornly reluctant humans are to confront the mystery of our origins and to acknowledge the abysmal gaps in our historical memory. By refusing to face the truth for fear of its “nastiness” - in other words, to “save face” - we are prepared to go on living in a neurotic hell of programmed unawareness, rather than endure the brief pain of remembrance, acceptance, reconciliation, forgiveness of our own so-called sins and therefore others’ - which is an absolute requirement for true happiness and contentment. But, no, we insist on blaming it all on somebody else. And thereby keep missing the opportunity for authentic self-knowledge, ultimately the only kind of knowledge that won’t destroy us.

What, then, do we make of our assorted “philias”? Why can’t pedophiia simply be an unconditional and uninhibited love of our young? What’s so wrong with us that we have to carry it to the crazy extreme of wanting to screw  them? Is it because we have been made to feel ashamed of our need to fondle and caress and cuddle? In a community of sexually fulfilled adults, every child would be vouchsafed the inviolability of his or her innocence. For in such a community, guilt itself would not exist.

What of necrophilia - the erotic abuse of the dead? Is it not a twisted form of ancestor worship? Or perhaps a chromosomal crossover from our hyena and vulture days, the heady days of drooling carrion-eating? Personally I don’t feel at all turned on by cadavers, but I can vaguely understand how an extremely shy or timid person could be forced into fornicating with the non-living - simply because the dead don’t tell tales or talk back and they can’t refuse, reject or resist. But, then, wouldn’t it be more hygienic (and politically correct) to discharge one’s libidinal excesses on a lifesized inflatable sex doll? Could I myself be lured into such a macabre sexual experience? Over my dead body!

On the reverse side of necrophilia, our myths abound with instances where a Queen or Goddess has succeeded in getting herself impregnated by a deceased husband. The Egyptian Goddess Isis was said to have conceived her son Horus after her consort Osiris had been murdered and cut to pieces - simply by using his severed member as a dildo while reciting ritual incantations.

I mentioned coprophilia - an obsession with shit - and now I’m beginning to regret it, because the subject can get really messy.

But the relationship between toilet training and military discipline has long been observed, particularly by that eclectic savant and student of bizarre behavior, Robert Anton Wilson - who, in his revealing study of conditioned reflexes, Prometheus Rising, drew attention to the sphincter-contracting fear of paternal punishment around which soldierly training revolves. Being tight-lipped, tight-assed, constipated, scared shitless - or, conversely, loose-mouthed, loud-bottomed, diarrhetic, flatulent, artillery arsed - are expressions commonly heard in army barracks.

As an amateur fecologist myself, I have developed an elementary theory about the universal truthfulness of shit. Hunters rely on its traces when stalking their prey. One can glean an astonishing amount of information from the careful analysis of fecal matter. Indeed the study of fossilized dung is a formal academic discipline in its own right, known as scatology. You can tell exactly what the subject had for breakfast (input) simply by scrutinizing his, her, or its droppings (output). Unfortunately modern sanitation has made it extremely difficult to become an authority in this field.

Coprophilia as a neurotic syndrome has been sagely commented upon by no less an expert than Stanislav Grof (pictured right), former Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and later Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Prof. Grof’s theory of the Basic Perinatal Matrix - conditions and circumstances surrounding one’s birth experience - constitute an immeasurably valuable model of early trauma patterns.

For example, the tortuous process of being squeezed through the birth canal - with its attendant anxieties and horrors, mixed in with sensory data like the aroma of urine and feces and blood, plus the slimy sensation of slithering down a stygian tunnel towards the light - often imprints the psyche with a confusion of violent, hellish images, which later results in a tendency to will into being the violent, hellish reality of war.

The entry into physical reality for many of us is a pungent, panic-inducing, life-threatening event full of gory, gooey, ghoulish subconscious memories that can result in an unconscious hankering for a return to the safety of the womb - in other words, the sanctuary of the fetal domain where no irksome responsibilities reside, where the All-Sustaining Mother provides and protects, where no decisions have to be made and therefore no possibility of error or failure exists. This results in a chronic sense of anomie or alienation - an inability to feel for others.

Grof was convinced that a person’s predisposition towards optimism or pessimism depended largely on whether his or her experience of birth was smooth or rough.

Most clinical psychiatrists are of the opinion that such theories are basically a load of crap. They prefer the biochemical solution of dosing the “mentally ill” with synaptic suppressors and assorted tranquillizers. In effect, these practitioners tend to follow the conventional unwisdom of ignoring the causes while forcefully attacking the effects of disease. If they were transferred to a law court, they would be advocates of corporal and capital punishment. Stiffer penalties, beefed-up security, and so on.

What Grof - and a growing number of his more adventurous colleagues - advocate is “pneumocatharsis”: holotropic therapy, deep breathing, hypnotic regression techniques that trigger dramatic death/rebirth experiences in the subject. In other words, a good honest look down our own genealogical and reincarnational time tracks. In recent years I have personally investigated and benefited hugely from emotional healing modalities like Systemic Family Constellation and Lindwall Emotional Releasing. If you feel you could do with some internal clearing, I strongly recommend you explore these powerful self-healing methods.

No blame, no shame. The name of the game is opening to the truth. For the truth, as Velikovsky was only trying to remind us, shall set us free.

[This article first appeared in the December 1996 issue of Journal One. It was published here 24 April 2007, reposted 27 October 2013, 29 March 2016, 6 July 2018, 24 April 2020 & 7 May 2023]

Hmmm.... warped tendency... or what?

Saving Up for Sufiah Yusof (back by popular demand)

What a fabulous fiasco it turned out to be, the hue and cry over the recent revelation by a scabious Murdoch-owned tabloid (News of the World) that a female math prodigy who entered Oxford University at 13 was now working in Manchester as a "£130-an-hour hooker" ten years later. Why the hue and cry? Simply because the girl, Sufiah Yusof, was supposedly Muslim, one of five children born to a Pakistani father and a Malaysian mother.

Like everybody else I found the story intriguing enough for me to poke my nose into it - and what I found online was a series of provocative poses uploaded as a slide show by the News of the World. Now I must admit I took an instant shine to Sufiah, especially after watching an interview with her. She came across as a highly articulate, self-confident, sexually liberated young woman who had consciously decided to embark on a lucrative career as a professional erotician. Luscious bod too.

"I've had some of the best sex I've ever had working in this job," she says candidly. Sufiah sounds totally British, so it's rather odd that some Malaysians still believe they have some sort of claim over her as a "princess of the soil." The truth is, what Sufiah does with her life is none of their fucking business, no pun intended. Okay, during the Mahathir era the Malaysian government did sponsor Sufiah's studies in the hope that she would someday do her motherland proud. But dammit the kid was only 12 at the time and it was her dad Farooq who came up with this insane and cruel method of "accelerated learning" designed to hydroponically produce academic geniuses. Not surprisingly, Farooq Yusof was recently jailed for molesting two 15-year-old students who were taking home tuition from him. You can imagine what sort of relationship Sufiah had with her dad.

But this blogpost isn't about Sufiah Yusof, even though she inspired it. What I want to talk about is the erotophobia of the Abrahamic religions which has turned repressed sexuality into a multi-billion dollar industry.

The crux of the problem is that morality has become inextricably linked to sexual behavior when morality and sex have very little to do with each other. Cutting edge thinker Robert Anton Wilson often wrote about the conflict between what he called the logogram and the biogram. Morality is part of the logogram - a set of assumptions and beliefs conjured by the verbal mind. Sexuality is part of the biogram - a reproductive strategy activated by biochemical, bioelectrical and sensory processes that do not take their cues from the analytical mind.

In other words, the language-processing conceptual mind creates artificial boundaries and limitations and then assumes they are real and universal; while the body operates on a complex series of autonomous programs triggered by the endocrinal and hormonal systems, evolved over billions of earth years.

The late great Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (left) theorized that sexual repression is the source of many psychological and social problems. The split between mind (logogram) and body (biogram) causes us to destroy each other and our planet, Reich believed, and is the underlying cause of warfare. Reich saw the ability to lose ourselves in sexual ecstasy as the ultimate measure of well being. He held that neurosis is none other than the sum total of all chronically automatic inhibitions of natural sexual excitation, and everything else is the result of this original disturbance. Reich's psychotherapeutic goal was to restore the primacy of our sensual nature. To really let go during the sexual experience. Not just an orgasm but a complete, full release. For Reich, a key question was: Why did people support the Nazis? Reich found that several things went together in Nazi Germany:

* Strong paternal authority
* Sexual repressiveness
* authoritarian values
* reactionary political ideologies


Sexual desires naturally urge a person to enter into all kinds of relations with the world, and to enter into close contact with others in a variety of forms. If these urges are repressed, they can only express themselves within the narrow confines of the family. In patriarchy, there is much more emphasis on sexual control than in matriarchy. If all the wealth passes through the father, you want to be very sure who the father is. If it passes through the mother, there is less concern as to who the father is. Monogamy will cease to be presented as the only legitimate form of sexual bonding. [Brief summary of a paper by Victor Daniels of Sonoma State University]

E.F. Baker, in an essay on Reich published in the Journal of Orgonomy wrote:

"Reich could only conclude that sex, which was formerly believed to be solely for reproductive purposes, had the vitally important function of maintaining a stable energy level within the organism. It would follow, then, that without sexual repression, there would be no neuroses. This is indeed the case in those societies that are sex-affirmative, such as the Trobriand Islanders.' Such societies are matrilineal in structure. In western civilization (and most Asiatic and other countries), a patriarchal form of social structure exists which is sex-negative. We have, therefore, to be concerned with the social cause of sexual problems and hence neuroses. Our whole society is oriented against true sexual freedom and, from infancy on, every effort is made to inhibit and repress any sexual manifestations. Boys and girls alike are severely reprimanded for any curiosity about the other's body, and adolescents who engage in sexual relations can be severely punished. Thus, only a few are allowed to grow up with a natural sexual attitude, and yet, when they marry, they are supposed to be able to function. Few find or attain a satisfying sexual relationship even in our day when youths are boldly showing their sexual interest and demanding its fulfillment."

So why would anyone be willing to spend £130 (approximately RM870) just for a sexual romp with Sufiah Yusof? It's simply because she has figured out that the majority of men can't find sexual gratification at home and are happy to pay handsomely for a really fantastic fuck. Few women, once they're married and have children, bother to remain sexually appealing to their husbands. By specializing in the erotic arts, Sufiah capitalizes on fulfilling male fantasies of carefree, no-holds-barred sexual play. If an occasional evening out with somebody like Sufiah Yusof can help maintain a man's sanity, then that £130 can be considered money well spent.

Those who believe Sufiah Yusof needs to be saved from a life of sin and godlessness are themselves most likely to suffer from acute sexual repression. Growing up in a patriarchal culture and indoctrinated with erotophobic beliefs that equate pleasure with immorality, the existence of a sexually liberated female like Sufiah threatens the fundaments of their belief systems.


If I were living in the vicinity of Manchester, I might be sorely tempted to look Sufiah up. Not with the thought of saving her, of course, but it would be absolutely delicious to have a juicy discussion on algorithms and integral calculus with her while nonchalantly peeling off her algebra. Well, I'd better start saving up. This foxy lady who began life as a math genius doesn't come cheap!

THE SUFIAH YUSOF INTERVIEW (WITH NEWS OF THE WORLD)

[First posted 13 April 2008. Reposted 27 November 2013 & 22 September 2020]

CIVILIZATIONS reprise)

"Civilizations, like the penis, rise and fall, and when the towers and the battlements crumble into the earth, they return to the embrace of the Great Mother." ~ William Irwin Thompson

 [First posted 28 December 2022]

The Next Time You Say "Amen"... Think What You're Doing (No Kidding!) A Timely Repost

AMEN happens to be the evil demiurge that corrupted ALL scriptures on Earth with his total control agenda. Also spelt AMON or AMUN, the name itself means "The Hidden One" - the invisible "almighty god" mere humans are expected to believe in and worship as a matter of faith.

When Marduk (known as Ra in Egypt*) became dissatisfied with rulership of both Upper and Lower Egypt, he moved his operational base to Babylon where he began to plot his own rise to deific supremacy, while in Egypt he continued to be worshiped as AMEN RA (Ra the Unseen), making sure his priesthood was as corrupt and wicked as they come.

Marduk it was who systematically infiltrated all belief systems with his antisexual, antifeminine doctrines which gradually developed into the austere, humorless, warlike dogmas that are today the root cause of diseased patriarchal religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The Evil Priesthood of AMEN RA is at work in ALL faiths - and their task has ever been to subvert the individual's ability to reconnect with his or her own Inner Authority - causing the masses ultimately to seek false comfort in official dogma and established institutions.

Naturally the AMEN priesthood is most influential in modern times disguised as Academia.


That's right, they have traded their priestly robes for professorial ones... and have effectively gained a monopoly on molding the psyches of the entire population through licensing and "legitimizing" all professions with their power to confer degrees and diplomas on those who meekly submit to their intellectual formatting.

Don't talk to me about AMEN. Raises my blood pressure! If you MUST say something utterly meaningless at the end of every prayer or invocation, why not stick with "So it is!" or "So be it!" If that sounds too pompous to you, just settle for "HYMEN" (at least you're paying tribute to the Blessed Virgin!)

In Malaysia the Cult of Amen successfully disguised itself as the monoethnic, monolithic political party called Umno - sometimes called "Ameno" by its detractors. But beyond Umno, AMEN RA's deadly influence has spread throughout all levels of business and politics - and has co-opted all religious institutions, turning them into agencies of mind control. The unholy intention is to rigidify your thought processes.

How can you tell when a belief system is basically Amenist? 

Primarily, Amenism is anti-Nature and anti-Life - and this fear of organicity manifests as erotophobia, which regards human sexuality as sinful and therefore taboo unless sanctioned by the blessings of an Amen priest (or civil registrar).

AMEN RA regards himself as a "supernatural" being - and therefore has no love or respect for the natural environment. Ultimately, AMEN RA is obsessed with POWER OVER OTHERS - but, ironically, he has no power over his own irrational mood swings. When overcome by rage, AMEN RA literally goes berserk, runs amok, and transforms into the God of War, Moloch, who feeds on blood sacrifice. The Temple of Moloch on Earth is better known as The Pentagon.

When at peace, AMEN RA takes the form of Mammon, the God of Money, and it is this deity that rules the Barisan Nasional - and all those who mistake property for prosperity, money for true wealth, and brute force for power.
___
* Or Murdoch in Mediaspeak? :-)

For more background on and insight into the psychic virus called AMEN, read Akhunaton the Extraterrestrial King by Daniel Blair Stewart (Frog Books, 1995).

[First posted 3 September 2008, reposted 10 October 2014 & 3 July 2016]

HOW MEN GET THEIR LOOKS (TAKE TWO)

These sketches are so hilariously inspired they deserve to be immortalized...















I don't know who drew these brilliant cartoons or I'd have included a link to his site (it's almost 100% certain the artist is male). My darling daughter forwarded these to me many, many years ago. Guess I'm an archivist at heart! First posted 14 December 2011]