Small blue planet

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Once upon a time, there was a small blue planet, carelessly floating inside an infinite universe. On every continent, plant and animal species lived in perfect harmony, for the good reason that no one species could dominate the others. If, for example, a species proliferated in too great numbers, it would either be reduced in number due to a lack of plants to eat for herbivores, or due to a lack of prey for carnivores. Simple but brutally effective! Read More

Caged Congolese teen: Why a zoo took 114 years to apologise

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RAEL’S COMMENT: Apologies are not enough. A huge amount of money should be paid to the country where he was abducted and to his family descendants.

 

Ota Benga was kidnapped from what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1904 and taken to the US to be exhibited. Journalist Pamela Newkirk, who has written extensively about the subject, looks at the attempts over the decades to cover up what happened to him.

More than a century after it drew international headlines for exhibiting a young African man in the monkey house, the Bronx Zoo in New York has finally expressed regret.

The Wildlife Conservation Society’s apology for its 1906 exhibition of Ota Benga, a native of Congo, comes in the wake of global protests prompted by the videotaped police killing of George Floyd that again shone a bright light on racism in the United States.

During a national moment of reckoning, Cristian Samper, the Wildlife Conservation Society’s president and CEO, said it was important “to reflect on WCS’s own history, and the persistence of racism in our institution”.

He vowed that the society, which runs the Bronx Zoo, would commit itself to full transparency about the episode which inspired breathless headlines across Europe and the United States from 9 September 1906 – a day after Ota Benga was first exhibited – until he was released from the zoo on 28 September 1906.

But the belated apology follows years of stonewalling.

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Melbourne woman choked by Victoria Police as she resists arrest for not wearing a face mask

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RAEL’S COMMENT: That’s for not wearing a mask even having a medical certificate proving she cannot wear one. Next is forced vaccination. Those supposed to protect citizens from criminals are abusing people. It’s time for a world revolution.

 

Melbourne woman claims to be choked around the neck as she resists arrest by Victoria Police. This has been a reoccurring issue throughout Victoria ever since the newly introduced law stating that face masks are compulsory in Melbourne, while in a public area. However, there are exceptions. Could this have been dealt with differently? Should she have handed over her letter of exemption to Police? Beware: some of the language in this video may be offensive to some viewers.

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Sophia Narwitz: Victimhood has become a cult that wants you to suffer forever. I know because I broke free of its grasp

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RAEL’S COMMENT: Whatever happened to you in the past is not you now. You are, only if you are in the now. Not in the future, not in the past: just now. Trauma from past events are just self-maintained illusions and good excuses to avoid dealing with the only thing that matters: now. Happy new you!

 

Victim culture is pervasive. From gaming to politics, an endless cycle of hurt feelings has tainted all it touches. But in a society where depression is skyrocketing, it’s time to call out a mindset that is ruining people’s lives.

My childhood, teens, and much of my 20s were not good to me. Having grown up in an abusive home where I experienced sexual, mental, and physical abuse, only to go to school where I was relentlessly bullied, I often found myself in a dark space. Throw in a violent rape around my 20th year of existence, and needless to say I was not a happy individual.

Through the eyes of my younger self, all I knew was victimhood. A sentiment backed by my experience with so many different forms of abuse. It was through that lens which I saw the world. I defined myself by my victim status, and I wanted to be treated as such.

By the time I was 25, I wasn’t living a good life. Suicide attempts were the norm, and I desperately sought out people who would coddle me. My coping mechanisms were poor, and I continually regressed into a weaker headspace, coaxed on by the people I filled my life with who treated me as a baby. Nowhere was I pushed to get stronger and I hit a phase where I was only ever upset.

I expand upon my history as such, because through all the coddling, babying, and safespacing I surrounded myself with, my anger, depression, and suicidal tendencies didn’t improve. I remained perpetually miserable. Never finding a leg to stand on because I didn’t have the strength to do so. I was stuck in a pit of despair because I refused to teach myself how to climb. These are the trappings of victim culture.

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