February 27, 2006
(...So Nothing Like France)
Despite the ingrained sectarianism rampant around Britain's remaining slice of Ireland, there's a political disconnect emboldened with power and status in the actual Republic that is more dangerous than any of Saturday's burnt cars and shattered windows.
The conflict and the continuing Republican identity of repression and marginalization have become such permanent features of the landscape that the Republic's politics have almost entirely adapted to them. Ireland's headstrong emergence as a major first-world nation has, in many ways, globalized the political debate and resulted in an elite level of politics that would rather skim over Ulster and offer almost American-esque lofty condemnations of those still fighting 1922.
When Irish Anarchists critique the brazen nationalism and factionalism at fault on both sides we are utterly correct. But when such enlightenment glosses over the conflict we risk legitimizing in some way the marginalized positions of the passionate.
Unlike say a Klan march in the United States, the plans for an Orange demonstration in Dublin engendered a absolute consensus of avoidance rather than confrontation in the Anarchist community. Arrogant and slimy bastards though such Unionists may be, even the most hardline of Republican politicians knew a response was unquestionably bad politics. For everyone.
But whenever such a resonant social identity of disenfranchisement as strong as the Republican cause mixes with economic balkanization and an in-your-face flash point the results aint gonna be pretty. An Indymedia photographer tried to explain in this wonderful report.
"Essentially, our mistake was to assume that political protests need to be organised by somebody. In general this is true and I don't know of any other event that has taken place in Dublin in the last 20 years which happened without being organised or planned by some organisation or other. The riots of central Dublin were an exception to this rule, no organisation planned them and almost nobody saw them coming.
[...]
An instinctive nationalism and a strong sense of identity for their own community is the real political expression of the urban poor in Dublin. The idea that the loyalist paramilitaries could come and march through their city, by the GPO - ground zero of Irish republicanism - was sufficiently provocative to enrage these people on a much deeper level than any of the habitual attacks on their living conditions or economic lives could possibly do. They are used to being at the bottom, to being shat upon by the rest of society, but their nationalism and sense of community identity is one thing that gives them pride in themselves - allowing the loyalists to march through their city and to disrespect their identity would be a full frontal assault on their pride and pride is all they have.
[...]
Anybody who is familiar with the patterns of sectarian rioting in the North knows that although the rioting is normally controlled, to a greater or lesser extent, by paramilitary groups, the vast majority of the participants are local youths who are not members of any political organisation - exactly the same section of society as those who rioted in Dublin and indeed the same section of society who are almost always the ones to riot - from Paris to Argentina it is the impoverished youth on the margins of society who riot, having nothing to lose and little fear of authority.
[...]
In this self same community, only a few hundred yards away from the flash-point, a local man by the name of Terrence Wheelock died in highly dubious circumstances while in custody and it is widely believed that he was beaten to death by the Gardai. Indeed beatings in custody have become so common for local youths that they are hardly remarked upon and almost accepted within 'polite society'. These are people who have little or nothing to lose, who take pride in the fact that they have no fear, who are accustomed to being powerless and trodden upon by the state and who have a deep rage about this state of affairs, a rage which is generally expressed in a self-destructive way.
[...]
The Gardai were visibly shocked by the reaction to their attempt to clear the road. None of the yellow-jacketed guards had been issued with helmets and several went down with head injuries in the initial wave of fighting. Even the riot police looked shell shocked as a massive wave of projectiles beat down upon their shields. Fearless teenagers danced up to their lines taunting them and receiving batons across the head without seemingly caring for their own safety at all. This was an explosion of rage from the poorest and most marginalised in society and an explosion the likes of which had not been seen in Dublin for decades.
[...]
Behind the lines of the rioters, looting broke out. Although I didn't observe it, witnesses report that several women from the inner city were seen filling bags full of shoes from the shops and engaging in a bit of 'discount shopping'. The police were not even nearly in a position to do anything about it. They had lost control of the city and were mostly just trying to protect themselves as the riot was now almost entirely an anti-police and anti-state affair. As they did their best to protect themselves, the looting continued and sections of the crowd also targeted various prominent symbols of capitalism - all the banks in the area had their windows broken as well as the nearby McDonalds."
Despite the ingrained sectarianism rampant around Britain's remaining slice of Ireland, there's a political disconnect emboldened with power and status in the actual Republic that is more dangerous than any of Saturday's burnt cars and shattered windows.
The conflict and the continuing Republican identity of repression and marginalization have become such permanent features of the landscape that the Republic's politics have almost entirely adapted to them. Ireland's headstrong emergence as a major first-world nation has, in many ways, globalized the political debate and resulted in an elite level of politics that would rather skim over Ulster and offer almost American-esque lofty condemnations of those still fighting 1922.
When Irish Anarchists critique the brazen nationalism and factionalism at fault on both sides we are utterly correct. But when such enlightenment glosses over the conflict we risk legitimizing in some way the marginalized positions of the passionate.
Unlike say a Klan march in the United States, the plans for an Orange demonstration in Dublin engendered a absolute consensus of avoidance rather than confrontation in the Anarchist community. Arrogant and slimy bastards though such Unionists may be, even the most hardline of Republican politicians knew a response was unquestionably bad politics. For everyone.
But whenever such a resonant social identity of disenfranchisement as strong as the Republican cause mixes with economic balkanization and an in-your-face flash point the results aint gonna be pretty. An Indymedia photographer tried to explain in this wonderful report.
"Essentially, our mistake was to assume that political protests need to be organised by somebody. In general this is true and I don't know of any other event that has taken place in Dublin in the last 20 years which happened without being organised or planned by some organisation or other. The riots of central Dublin were an exception to this rule, no organisation planned them and almost nobody saw them coming.
[...]
An instinctive nationalism and a strong sense of identity for their own community is the real political expression of the urban poor in Dublin. The idea that the loyalist paramilitaries could come and march through their city, by the GPO - ground zero of Irish republicanism - was sufficiently provocative to enrage these people on a much deeper level than any of the habitual attacks on their living conditions or economic lives could possibly do. They are used to being at the bottom, to being shat upon by the rest of society, but their nationalism and sense of community identity is one thing that gives them pride in themselves - allowing the loyalists to march through their city and to disrespect their identity would be a full frontal assault on their pride and pride is all they have.
[...]
Anybody who is familiar with the patterns of sectarian rioting in the North knows that although the rioting is normally controlled, to a greater or lesser extent, by paramilitary groups, the vast majority of the participants are local youths who are not members of any political organisation - exactly the same section of society as those who rioted in Dublin and indeed the same section of society who are almost always the ones to riot - from Paris to Argentina it is the impoverished youth on the margins of society who riot, having nothing to lose and little fear of authority.
[...]
In this self same community, only a few hundred yards away from the flash-point, a local man by the name of Terrence Wheelock died in highly dubious circumstances while in custody and it is widely believed that he was beaten to death by the Gardai. Indeed beatings in custody have become so common for local youths that they are hardly remarked upon and almost accepted within 'polite society'. These are people who have little or nothing to lose, who take pride in the fact that they have no fear, who are accustomed to being powerless and trodden upon by the state and who have a deep rage about this state of affairs, a rage which is generally expressed in a self-destructive way.
[...]
The Gardai were visibly shocked by the reaction to their attempt to clear the road. None of the yellow-jacketed guards had been issued with helmets and several went down with head injuries in the initial wave of fighting. Even the riot police looked shell shocked as a massive wave of projectiles beat down upon their shields. Fearless teenagers danced up to their lines taunting them and receiving batons across the head without seemingly caring for their own safety at all. This was an explosion of rage from the poorest and most marginalised in society and an explosion the likes of which had not been seen in Dublin for decades.
[...]
Behind the lines of the rioters, looting broke out. Although I didn't observe it, witnesses report that several women from the inner city were seen filling bags full of shoes from the shops and engaging in a bit of 'discount shopping'. The police were not even nearly in a position to do anything about it. They had lost control of the city and were mostly just trying to protect themselves as the riot was now almost entirely an anti-police and anti-state affair. As they did their best to protect themselves, the looting continued and sections of the crowd also targeted various prominent symbols of capitalism - all the banks in the area had their windows broken as well as the nearby McDonalds."
February 26, 2006
(Untold Parables)
Octavia Butler is dead. I felt her work to be largely overrated and somewhat tokenized, but even so her accolades were far from undeserved.
Though her novels often cut all too precise and limited a cut, her individualistic stance within the SF literary community was much needed and, in an age of mega-personality writers who often seem more wired than inspired, I deeply admired her aggressively hermetic life. When gauging the superconnected field of modern SF it was almost cathartic to cast the mind's eye to some unassuming cafe in Seattle and reassure oneself that behind some cold cup the shy giant kept watch on us all.
I always delighted in her work, grasping a sense of connection, beyond the ostensible flaws my critic's brain snagged against, that rang with such humanity. An accepted loneliness that made me want to jump dancing into the streets, climb a tree and weep at the distance between my arms and the world.
I passed up Fledgling with excuses and cultural prejudice. Now the idea of going back and finishing my duty weighs too heavy to consider and yet too heavy to neglect. Damn it all.
Octavia Butler is dead. I felt her work to be largely overrated and somewhat tokenized, but even so her accolades were far from undeserved.
Though her novels often cut all too precise and limited a cut, her individualistic stance within the SF literary community was much needed and, in an age of mega-personality writers who often seem more wired than inspired, I deeply admired her aggressively hermetic life. When gauging the superconnected field of modern SF it was almost cathartic to cast the mind's eye to some unassuming cafe in Seattle and reassure oneself that behind some cold cup the shy giant kept watch on us all.
I always delighted in her work, grasping a sense of connection, beyond the ostensible flaws my critic's brain snagged against, that rang with such humanity. An accepted loneliness that made me want to jump dancing into the streets, climb a tree and weep at the distance between my arms and the world.
I passed up Fledgling with excuses and cultural prejudice. Now the idea of going back and finishing my duty weighs too heavy to consider and yet too heavy to neglect. Damn it all.
February 25, 2006
(More On Dubai)
Matthew Yglesias succinctly responds to the ludicrous attempt to paint skeptics as racists.
"And, look, ally or not, the UAE isn't a strategic partner of the United States in the way that the UK is. The number of countries who have British-style security relationships with the United States can be counted on one hand, if not one finger. [...] A private British firm operates in the context of the rule of law; a state-owned enterprise in Dubai . . . not so much. These are different countries in a thousand ways that have nothing to do with skin color. Pretending not to see the difference is childish and absurd."
And Left-Libertarian Brad Spangler dissects the underlying moral issue.
"The real solution to this problem, and future repetitions of it, is for the people to organize to assert their joint ownership of the property in question independent of any government."
He goes on to use free-market analysis to explicitly call for IWW direct action. A solution that just about made me cream my pants over its semi-plausibility and all around wicked-awesomeness. I just wish talk wasn't so cheap for @ncaps.
Matthew Yglesias succinctly responds to the ludicrous attempt to paint skeptics as racists.
"And, look, ally or not, the UAE isn't a strategic partner of the United States in the way that the UK is. The number of countries who have British-style security relationships with the United States can be counted on one hand, if not one finger. [...] A private British firm operates in the context of the rule of law; a state-owned enterprise in Dubai . . . not so much. These are different countries in a thousand ways that have nothing to do with skin color. Pretending not to see the difference is childish and absurd."
And Left-Libertarian Brad Spangler dissects the underlying moral issue.
"The real solution to this problem, and future repetitions of it, is for the people to organize to assert their joint ownership of the property in question independent of any government."
He goes on to use free-market analysis to explicitly call for IWW direct action. A solution that just about made me cream my pants over its semi-plausibility and all around wicked-awesomeness. I just wish talk wasn't so cheap for @ncaps.
(Dubai And What It Means)
In geopolitics there's much talk of strong power and soft power.
To many of the liberals I'm forced to deal with on a daily basis the problem with the invasion of Iraq was an incongruous shift between soft and hard. Suddenly we're the big bully. And Liberals were raised on the concept that big bullies don't win.
When Liberals look at the Bush Administration they see the same type of slack-jawed kid who stole their lunch money back in school. Understandably, they don't like this at all.
Not only does this hard power reduce domestic politics to the most base and immature of power struggles, but it casts America into a role they think utterly unsustainable.
In the cultural divide, Blue State identity has aggregated around those social and economic locales where soft-power is indisputably superior to hard-power. Abstract, unseen, manipulatory or cultural lines of power bear the only reality and the application of physical or obtuse power is both wholly alien and wholly ineffectual.
The very concept of jocks, of cowboys or other gunslingers is utterly ridiculous. As in their place modern social complexities create a supposedly universal dynamic of power that is fluid and highly intelligent.
Bill Gates is seen as getting places not because he's a generic anti-jock --in the classic "geek" sense-- but because he understood and wonderfully applied the viciousness of soft power. That's how things work in the Blue States. Hard power always loses to soft power. Always.
Thus at the core of the Bluestate revulsion for the Bush Administration lies two things: An inability to deal with the concept of a domestic discourse based in obtuse hard power. And a desperate fear of being part of the application of hard power.
In fact the core of the Liberal anti-war movement can be entirely summarized by the position that soft-power is universally stronger than hard-power. Every time I talk to liberals about the war their great fear is how this will hurt American power. How Bush has made us unpopular, has destroyed American power.
Because ultimately they want power just as bad. It's just that their cultural upbringing has left them longing for a different flavor of power.
But that's not to imply at the same time that the Bush Administration is entirely guided by the light of hard-power. Certainly Rove's conservative movement understands little else. But it's the neo-conservative movement that has become the defining force in this Administration and they're geeks in a much truer sense than the aforementioned liberal impression of Bill Gates.
The neo-conservatives see international power in terms of frameworks and structures. Ultimately the path to "National Leadership" lies in creating deeply interconnected international framework of lower-level power while at the same time abolishing all but one higher-level power. The neo-conservatives want this grand power centralized in the US. They want it directly applied by nation-to-nation chains of power and they want it stabilized by the global market.
Now I've got my critiques of their nationalistic strategy, but that's not to say I don't think an 'end-of-history' power structure can be worked out. My point is simply that their strategy, if played out correctly, will result in the emergence of a self-perpetuating power system that will resolutely guide humanity over the coming centuries into absolute fascism or annihilation (as if there's a difference).
Now the neo-conservatives, thinking themselves proponents of freedom, may eventually lose the heart to efficiently concrete further power in the face of the enemies their system of social identities will provoke. At which point the established global level of power and oppression would move away from a US-centered nature. But I doubt it would dissolve.
What hope the neo-conservatives think they have in the face of such predictions lies in the utilization of a certain type of unseen soft power. Contentment. Apathy. Misdirection.
The global corporatist market.
The idea is pretty simple. If we get everyone caught up in the multinational game of wage-slavery then we'll undercut the problems of national identity that our campaign for power will generate.
If they're playing World of Warcraft and watching the latest Tom Cruise flick then they're less likely to rebel. (Besides, just what does liberty mean if not the right to fight for the rank of Grand Marshal on your server?)
The corporatist market is inclusionary. It dissolves and de-targets righteous anger.
Thus this New American Century is really based in a two pronged campaign: Seeking to neutralize emergent nationalistic threats like Putin and China by the strategic destabilization of uppity Cold War debris like the Middle East. And seeking the further establishment of a uniform global market run by a distributed elite.
The Bush Administration pretty much runs both of these campaigns separably.
Allowing unsightly attention brought to the WTO was Clinton's mistake. The Bush Admin has a far more hands-off approach. They allow the business elite to continue strengthening their new international power structures but, aside from a few pre-election Rove games, there's a feeling that it's a separate ball game. The Bush Admin focuses on direct geopolitical strategy and the international market runs around filling in all the jobs. When the old-boy networks inevitably create some crossover at the top of the Administration it's considered natural happenstance in the market and disregarded as of little import.
But corporations are not passive little results of free-market economics. They are incredibly active coagulations of power. And in the dynamic of international geopolitics it is as ludicrous to disregard the positions and maneuverings of corporations as it would be to ignore militant transnational religious movements.
When a state-owed corporation of the UAE is given management of US ports there's a degree of innate geopolitical value in the situation. Now I've developed some high respect for the machinations of this Administration and there certainly could be all manner of far-reaching and complicated connections involved that would make the goodwill we'd gain somehow outweigh turning port control over to the fucking UAE. But a little research shows this highly unlikely. This wasn't a complicated deal. This was an automatic response.
Because how could business-as-usual possibly screw us over geopolitically? The free market will never rebel against the US of A. Corporations naturally love us. They're fucking corporations after all. Fucking fuzzy-wuzzies.
That's why, as I wrote before, we've had no problem selling off the Caribbean to PRC corporations.
Don't you get it? They're not evil commies anymore! They have corporations now. Yay!
Now I aint no genius. And I'm definitely not on board with all this "National Leadership" bullshit. But I've got some kinship with our national culture of liberty and would hate to see it undercut by abject national failure in the grand arena. So I feel a tad obliged to mention something about the basic nature of power. Power has a great many avenues. And when you dismiss one flavor as inferior or irrelevant to another, chances are you're gonna let yourself get screwed by it. At first it'll undercut you in ways you didn't expect or cared about. Then you'll try and define the new one by its connection to the forms of power you're more respectful of. And by the time you finally wake up and dissolve your assumptions about the differences it just might be too late.
Anyway, in conclusion, aw hell it's just the Eastern Seaboard. Who the fuck cares?
In geopolitics there's much talk of strong power and soft power.
To many of the liberals I'm forced to deal with on a daily basis the problem with the invasion of Iraq was an incongruous shift between soft and hard. Suddenly we're the big bully. And Liberals were raised on the concept that big bullies don't win.
When Liberals look at the Bush Administration they see the same type of slack-jawed kid who stole their lunch money back in school. Understandably, they don't like this at all.
Not only does this hard power reduce domestic politics to the most base and immature of power struggles, but it casts America into a role they think utterly unsustainable.
In the cultural divide, Blue State identity has aggregated around those social and economic locales where soft-power is indisputably superior to hard-power. Abstract, unseen, manipulatory or cultural lines of power bear the only reality and the application of physical or obtuse power is both wholly alien and wholly ineffectual.
The very concept of jocks, of cowboys or other gunslingers is utterly ridiculous. As in their place modern social complexities create a supposedly universal dynamic of power that is fluid and highly intelligent.
Bill Gates is seen as getting places not because he's a generic anti-jock --in the classic "geek" sense-- but because he understood and wonderfully applied the viciousness of soft power. That's how things work in the Blue States. Hard power always loses to soft power. Always.
Thus at the core of the Bluestate revulsion for the Bush Administration lies two things: An inability to deal with the concept of a domestic discourse based in obtuse hard power. And a desperate fear of being part of the application of hard power.
In fact the core of the Liberal anti-war movement can be entirely summarized by the position that soft-power is universally stronger than hard-power. Every time I talk to liberals about the war their great fear is how this will hurt American power. How Bush has made us unpopular, has destroyed American power.
Because ultimately they want power just as bad. It's just that their cultural upbringing has left them longing for a different flavor of power.
But that's not to imply at the same time that the Bush Administration is entirely guided by the light of hard-power. Certainly Rove's conservative movement understands little else. But it's the neo-conservative movement that has become the defining force in this Administration and they're geeks in a much truer sense than the aforementioned liberal impression of Bill Gates.
The neo-conservatives see international power in terms of frameworks and structures. Ultimately the path to "National Leadership" lies in creating deeply interconnected international framework of lower-level power while at the same time abolishing all but one higher-level power. The neo-conservatives want this grand power centralized in the US. They want it directly applied by nation-to-nation chains of power and they want it stabilized by the global market.
Now I've got my critiques of their nationalistic strategy, but that's not to say I don't think an 'end-of-history' power structure can be worked out. My point is simply that their strategy, if played out correctly, will result in the emergence of a self-perpetuating power system that will resolutely guide humanity over the coming centuries into absolute fascism or annihilation (as if there's a difference).
Now the neo-conservatives, thinking themselves proponents of freedom, may eventually lose the heart to efficiently concrete further power in the face of the enemies their system of social identities will provoke. At which point the established global level of power and oppression would move away from a US-centered nature. But I doubt it would dissolve.
What hope the neo-conservatives think they have in the face of such predictions lies in the utilization of a certain type of unseen soft power. Contentment. Apathy. Misdirection.
The global corporatist market.
The idea is pretty simple. If we get everyone caught up in the multinational game of wage-slavery then we'll undercut the problems of national identity that our campaign for power will generate.
If they're playing World of Warcraft and watching the latest Tom Cruise flick then they're less likely to rebel. (Besides, just what does liberty mean if not the right to fight for the rank of Grand Marshal on your server?)
The corporatist market is inclusionary. It dissolves and de-targets righteous anger.
Thus this New American Century is really based in a two pronged campaign: Seeking to neutralize emergent nationalistic threats like Putin and China by the strategic destabilization of uppity Cold War debris like the Middle East. And seeking the further establishment of a uniform global market run by a distributed elite.
The Bush Administration pretty much runs both of these campaigns separably.
Allowing unsightly attention brought to the WTO was Clinton's mistake. The Bush Admin has a far more hands-off approach. They allow the business elite to continue strengthening their new international power structures but, aside from a few pre-election Rove games, there's a feeling that it's a separate ball game. The Bush Admin focuses on direct geopolitical strategy and the international market runs around filling in all the jobs. When the old-boy networks inevitably create some crossover at the top of the Administration it's considered natural happenstance in the market and disregarded as of little import.
But corporations are not passive little results of free-market economics. They are incredibly active coagulations of power. And in the dynamic of international geopolitics it is as ludicrous to disregard the positions and maneuverings of corporations as it would be to ignore militant transnational religious movements.
When a state-owed corporation of the UAE is given management of US ports there's a degree of innate geopolitical value in the situation. Now I've developed some high respect for the machinations of this Administration and there certainly could be all manner of far-reaching and complicated connections involved that would make the goodwill we'd gain somehow outweigh turning port control over to the fucking UAE. But a little research shows this highly unlikely. This wasn't a complicated deal. This was an automatic response.
Because how could business-as-usual possibly screw us over geopolitically? The free market will never rebel against the US of A. Corporations naturally love us. They're fucking corporations after all. Fucking fuzzy-wuzzies.
That's why, as I wrote before, we've had no problem selling off the Caribbean to PRC corporations.
Don't you get it? They're not evil commies anymore! They have corporations now. Yay!
Now I aint no genius. And I'm definitely not on board with all this "National Leadership" bullshit. But I've got some kinship with our national culture of liberty and would hate to see it undercut by abject national failure in the grand arena. So I feel a tad obliged to mention something about the basic nature of power. Power has a great many avenues. And when you dismiss one flavor as inferior or irrelevant to another, chances are you're gonna let yourself get screwed by it. At first it'll undercut you in ways you didn't expect or cared about. Then you'll try and define the new one by its connection to the forms of power you're more respectful of. And by the time you finally wake up and dissolve your assumptions about the differences it just might be too late.
Anyway, in conclusion, aw hell it's just the Eastern Seaboard. Who the fuck cares?
February 23, 2006
(Yes)
"If Mozilla permit the sale of copied versions of its software, it makes it virtually impossible for us, from a practical point of view, to enforce UK anti-piracy legislation."
That's the point you rat bastards. Now die already.
"If Mozilla permit the sale of copied versions of its software, it makes it virtually impossible for us, from a practical point of view, to enforce UK anti-piracy legislation."
That's the point you rat bastards. Now die already.
February 21, 2006
(For The Record)
Holocaust denying is an issue of free speech. Lying is protected speech. There is no instance of free speech whatsoever that could conceivably excuse government action. When ever any government thinks it can regulate society's transfer of information, humanity moves deeper into a cesspit of inevitable fascism.
That said. I've nothing against individuals kicking the shit out of self declared Nazis. Free speech is a matter of drawing one last, desperate moral line. Anti-fascist action is about short-term, ends/means tactics. Pre-emptive counter action. It's about warfare to save humanity from the most extreme and entirely conscious proponents of absolute power.
Governments? The moment we let them get free reign on such tactics is the moment the popular conception of legalism transforms into full-fledged fascism.
Holocaust denying is an issue of free speech. Lying is protected speech. There is no instance of free speech whatsoever that could conceivably excuse government action. When ever any government thinks it can regulate society's transfer of information, humanity moves deeper into a cesspit of inevitable fascism.
That said. I've nothing against individuals kicking the shit out of self declared Nazis. Free speech is a matter of drawing one last, desperate moral line. Anti-fascist action is about short-term, ends/means tactics. Pre-emptive counter action. It's about warfare to save humanity from the most extreme and entirely conscious proponents of absolute power.
Governments? The moment we let them get free reign on such tactics is the moment the popular conception of legalism transforms into full-fledged fascism.
February 20, 2006
(Privatized Ports)
I know I'm not particularly partial to either forms of power coagulation, but it don't take much smarts to realize that the corporate flavor will never coexist peaceably with the nationalistic.
Of course, you know, all this outrage would have been nice back in early 2001. When we let a dummy corporation of the PRC steal the largest dry dock on the west coast and ship it to the Bahamas to cement China's hegemony over the Caribbean. I remember hanging at a Portland barbeque with our port's utterly dejected union organizer and watching literal storm clouds set in while the Chinese openly packaged up the goddamn thing.
Fucking idiots.
I know I'm not particularly partial to either forms of power coagulation, but it don't take much smarts to realize that the corporate flavor will never coexist peaceably with the nationalistic.
Of course, you know, all this outrage would have been nice back in early 2001. When we let a dummy corporation of the PRC steal the largest dry dock on the west coast and ship it to the Bahamas to cement China's hegemony over the Caribbean. I remember hanging at a Portland barbeque with our port's utterly dejected union organizer and watching literal storm clouds set in while the Chinese openly packaged up the goddamn thing.
Fucking idiots.
February 19, 2006
(Beggars In Spain)
Of all technological developments to come, it is the eradication of sleep that surprisingly fills me with the most dread anxiety and base repulsion.
I can't help suspecting that the human sleep cycle is more than arbitrary physical malady but fundamental component of our very mental evolution. The Earth has been rotating through day and night for four billion years. Our ecosystem's entire evolution has been grounded in this reality since before cellular life. It seems implicit that, with our own individual existence so deeply rooted in the on-off cycle, the simplistic biological processes of chemical recharging may pale before an unseen psychological and possibly even momentarily philosophical necessity.
That's not to take an anti-progress stance; I simply question the profound internal consequences of immediate post-sleep augmentation. So few of us even begin to understand the subcognitive environments that buffer our own standing waves. If the consequences of smart sleep-compensation hacks are, in fact, of a self-destructive nature, will we find out in time to stop the emergence of new economic norms? There is, of course the issue of the cultural and classist structures emergent in any situation where such augmentation is available the upperclass. But in this case it’s the diaspora of augmentation that most threatens. What happens when sleep becomes the luxury of the wealthy?
An underclass so desperate to keep up that it ends up directly zombifying their consciousness?
...Five chagillion points to those of you who got the title reference!
Of all technological developments to come, it is the eradication of sleep that surprisingly fills me with the most dread anxiety and base repulsion.
I can't help suspecting that the human sleep cycle is more than arbitrary physical malady but fundamental component of our very mental evolution. The Earth has been rotating through day and night for four billion years. Our ecosystem's entire evolution has been grounded in this reality since before cellular life. It seems implicit that, with our own individual existence so deeply rooted in the on-off cycle, the simplistic biological processes of chemical recharging may pale before an unseen psychological and possibly even momentarily philosophical necessity.
That's not to take an anti-progress stance; I simply question the profound internal consequences of immediate post-sleep augmentation. So few of us even begin to understand the subcognitive environments that buffer our own standing waves. If the consequences of smart sleep-compensation hacks are, in fact, of a self-destructive nature, will we find out in time to stop the emergence of new economic norms? There is, of course the issue of the cultural and classist structures emergent in any situation where such augmentation is available the upperclass. But in this case it’s the diaspora of augmentation that most threatens. What happens when sleep becomes the luxury of the wealthy?
An underclass so desperate to keep up that it ends up directly zombifying their consciousness?
...Five chagillion points to those of you who got the title reference!
February 18, 2006
(The Red Star To Be Filmed)
Sometimes I feel like we in America don't capitalize off of Soviet iconography the way we should. There is something unerringly cool about the crisp steel lines of Soviet communism. And, let's face it, Russia as a whole is an under-exploited fountainhead of badassery.
Extreme Authoritarian Communalist societies may be horrific travesties in real life, but stylistically they're totally awesome!
Seriously. We've turned Pirates and Ninjas into aesthetic goldmines. Why not Soviets?
Anyway the producers behind The Red Star understood this lack and filled it with as much Evil Komunist Kitsch as possible. Steel grey lines, sharp red blossoms and a dreary fuzz of blonde-white-blue that coats everything. And then they added in gigantic flying battleships of death, nanotech enhanced sorcery and whole fucking lot of oversized Kalishnikovs.
How does that not scream wicked awesomeness? In the Cold War our parodies and scare films of the USSR were at best weak tea. We were so wrapped up in the seriousness of the damn thing that we didn't take enough time aside to really figure out how to most enthusiastically solidify the Soviet 'feel' into a trashy genre unto itself. And almost everything we did was done in open contrast. Little if any work was done writing epic adventure into the lives of true stalwart Soviets themselves.
Now we're finally getting at it.
Sometimes I feel like we in America don't capitalize off of Soviet iconography the way we should. There is something unerringly cool about the crisp steel lines of Soviet communism. And, let's face it, Russia as a whole is an under-exploited fountainhead of badassery.
Extreme Authoritarian Communalist societies may be horrific travesties in real life, but stylistically they're totally awesome!
Seriously. We've turned Pirates and Ninjas into aesthetic goldmines. Why not Soviets?
Anyway the producers behind The Red Star understood this lack and filled it with as much Evil Komunist Kitsch as possible. Steel grey lines, sharp red blossoms and a dreary fuzz of blonde-white-blue that coats everything. And then they added in gigantic flying battleships of death, nanotech enhanced sorcery and whole fucking lot of oversized Kalishnikovs.
How does that not scream wicked awesomeness? In the Cold War our parodies and scare films of the USSR were at best weak tea. We were so wrapped up in the seriousness of the damn thing that we didn't take enough time aside to really figure out how to most enthusiastically solidify the Soviet 'feel' into a trashy genre unto itself. And almost everything we did was done in open contrast. Little if any work was done writing epic adventure into the lives of true stalwart Soviets themselves.
Now we're finally getting at it.
February 15, 2006
(At What Moment Does Charity Become Commodification?)
There is, apparently, a steep waiting list for adopting children with Down syndrome. There is, I think you know, not exactly an overwhelming waiting list for general adoption.
Now, one could mark the discrepancy up to the impulsive specificity of would-be-parents. In the same way that media coverage of glamorous disasters can fuel disproportionate attention and charity. The idea is, after all, that the orphan in the wheelchair is in more dire need than the orphan playing marbles with his little chimney-sweep friends. But, though such ostensible rationale is very persuasive and could easily justify these differences in terms of good hearted short-distance thinking, the disparity and the demonstrated attitudes involved strikes me far more as an economic indicator of social desires with a commodified resource.
People don’t want to buy individuals. They don’t want the personal threat of having to treat with another human being. Consumers want something safe. It’s about aggregating control over anything that could affect one’s immediate life. And children are looked at as things.
If one is beset by the personal desire or social obligation to raise children then it makes sense to gravitate towards stronger control over the resulting situation. Rather than a relationship, buyers want an identity.
It’s been true across gender divisions. It’s been true with race or any other construct. And it’s true with ageism.
No one wants to deal with the rascally chimney sweep because to do so is to invite a far more uncontrollable and humane encounter than with the cripple, who one safely assumes will forever exist in a state of debilitation, dependence and indebtedness. Though the disadvantaged often equate a more substantial investment of time and energy on the part of their keepers, such is done so to the tangible benefit of hierarchy and unthinking stability.
Along with the social prestige and levers that can be bought by such assumed martyrdom comes another piece of mental furniture. Though the acquisition of such disadvantaged children lends no ostensible physical benefit in terms of Marxist labour-hours or the like, the psychological and sociological reduction of individuals to roles and parts is in entirely the same tradition of the chattel. After all, it was never the physical wealth generated by slavery that really mattered, but the implicit psychological death of social power that is motivated by fear and laziness.
There is, apparently, a steep waiting list for adopting children with Down syndrome. There is, I think you know, not exactly an overwhelming waiting list for general adoption.
Now, one could mark the discrepancy up to the impulsive specificity of would-be-parents. In the same way that media coverage of glamorous disasters can fuel disproportionate attention and charity. The idea is, after all, that the orphan in the wheelchair is in more dire need than the orphan playing marbles with his little chimney-sweep friends. But, though such ostensible rationale is very persuasive and could easily justify these differences in terms of good hearted short-distance thinking, the disparity and the demonstrated attitudes involved strikes me far more as an economic indicator of social desires with a commodified resource.
People don’t want to buy individuals. They don’t want the personal threat of having to treat with another human being. Consumers want something safe. It’s about aggregating control over anything that could affect one’s immediate life. And children are looked at as things.
If one is beset by the personal desire or social obligation to raise children then it makes sense to gravitate towards stronger control over the resulting situation. Rather than a relationship, buyers want an identity.
It’s been true across gender divisions. It’s been true with race or any other construct. And it’s true with ageism.
No one wants to deal with the rascally chimney sweep because to do so is to invite a far more uncontrollable and humane encounter than with the cripple, who one safely assumes will forever exist in a state of debilitation, dependence and indebtedness. Though the disadvantaged often equate a more substantial investment of time and energy on the part of their keepers, such is done so to the tangible benefit of hierarchy and unthinking stability.
Along with the social prestige and levers that can be bought by such assumed martyrdom comes another piece of mental furniture. Though the acquisition of such disadvantaged children lends no ostensible physical benefit in terms of Marxist labour-hours or the like, the psychological and sociological reduction of individuals to roles and parts is in entirely the same tradition of the chattel. After all, it was never the physical wealth generated by slavery that really mattered, but the implicit psychological death of social power that is motivated by fear and laziness.
February 14, 2006
(China Got Idea For Censorship From US)
...Doesn't understand all the fuss.
I was going to write some snark about finally boning up and adopting the orwellian excuses that all the hip, modern governments are using these days. But then I read this line, "If you study the main international practices in this regard you will find that China is basically in compliance with the international norm," and just about cried.
...Doesn't understand all the fuss.
I was going to write some snark about finally boning up and adopting the orwellian excuses that all the hip, modern governments are using these days. But then I read this line, "If you study the main international practices in this regard you will find that China is basically in compliance with the international norm," and just about cried.
(Attempts At Honest Theory)
It's really quite delightful to see so many people in the physics community so suddenly moving away from dark matter. In fact... it's hard not to print out all the papers and run around campus throwing them like confetti.
It's really quite delightful to see so many people in the physics community so suddenly moving away from dark matter. In fact... it's hard not to print out all the papers and run around campus throwing them like confetti.
February 13, 2006
(Progress In Nepal)
Violently overthrowing kings is a time-honored rite of passage for modern nation-states. But replacing the government with a Maoist regime? ...Like asking your favorite teacher to prom.
Oh, I suppose it could go well. But the rest of us are going to look suspiciously at you no matter what.
Over here the glitz-media have tied the recent upheaval to the death of a single protestor, but far more atrocious human rights abuses have been pretty much continuous on both sides for the last ten years and Amnesty has capitalized off this surge of global interest to righteously drone on about stuff like the "highest number of reported 'disappearances' in the world."
There's been no official report from Nepal but sources close to the embattled country say it's been crying and threatening to lock itself up in its room forever, or at least till its complexion gets better and the US re-invites it to the arms fairs.
Violently overthrowing kings is a time-honored rite of passage for modern nation-states. But replacing the government with a Maoist regime? ...Like asking your favorite teacher to prom.
Oh, I suppose it could go well. But the rest of us are going to look suspiciously at you no matter what.
Over here the glitz-media have tied the recent upheaval to the death of a single protestor, but far more atrocious human rights abuses have been pretty much continuous on both sides for the last ten years and Amnesty has capitalized off this surge of global interest to righteously drone on about stuff like the "highest number of reported 'disappearances' in the world."
There's been no official report from Nepal but sources close to the embattled country say it's been crying and threatening to lock itself up in its room forever, or at least till its complexion gets better and the US re-invites it to the arms fairs.
February 12, 2006
(Strike-Breaking In Iran)
It never fails to amaze me that the government most attatched to the bloodthirsty fundamentalist image manages to reign over one of the most culturally liberated and globalized populaces in the Islamic world. But somedays no amount of religious rhetoric can temper the rage of old fashioned economic injustice. I blame rock & roll.
It never fails to amaze me that the government most attatched to the bloodthirsty fundamentalist image manages to reign over one of the most culturally liberated and globalized populaces in the Islamic world. But somedays no amount of religious rhetoric can temper the rage of old fashioned economic injustice. I blame rock & roll.
(Nooooooo!!!)
"In the cartoon controversy, it’s the French who’ve been courageous, the Americans and British spineless."
-Theodore Dalrymple.
"In the cartoon controversy, it’s the French who’ve been courageous, the Americans and British spineless."
-Theodore Dalrymple.
(Solutions To The Threat Of Tiered Internet)
" To a left-wing rag like The Nation, the answer is to huff and puff about more regulation. But more regulation would do nothing to attack the telcos’ real power position, which is the physical constraints on the last mile. The truly pro-freedom anwer is to enable the free market to take that power position away from them.
Wireless mesh networking — flocks of cheap WiFi nodes that automatically discover neighboring nodes and act as routers — is the technology that can do that. With the right software, networks of these can be self-configuring and self-repairing. It’s pure libertarianism cast in silicon, a perfectly decentralist bottom-up solution that could replace wirelines and the politico-economic choke-point they imply. "
-Armed & Dangerous.
" To a left-wing rag like The Nation, the answer is to huff and puff about more regulation. But more regulation would do nothing to attack the telcos’ real power position, which is the physical constraints on the last mile. The truly pro-freedom anwer is to enable the free market to take that power position away from them.
Wireless mesh networking — flocks of cheap WiFi nodes that automatically discover neighboring nodes and act as routers — is the technology that can do that. With the right software, networks of these can be self-configuring and self-repairing. It’s pure libertarianism cast in silicon, a perfectly decentralist bottom-up solution that could replace wirelines and the politico-economic choke-point they imply. "
-Armed & Dangerous.
(Interlude)
Amid all this public awakening to the second coming of Rock & Roll, Ike Reilly's Whatever Happened to the Girl in Me [mov] remains the best music video ever produced and a valuable addition to the culturesphere.
Just so you know.
Amid all this public awakening to the second coming of Rock & Roll, Ike Reilly's Whatever Happened to the Girl in Me [mov] remains the best music video ever produced and a valuable addition to the culturesphere.
Just so you know.
February 11, 2006
(Once More, With Unrepentant Bias)
First off, links to Kinsley, who does a nice job agreeing with me, and then, out of some buried sense of 'fairness,' on to aNaRcHo AkBaR who deeply differs with me in focus and mid-word capitalization policies.
This is going to be my last post on the subject. I just can't write any more about the cartoon riots. No matter how simply I begin it inevitably devolves into vicious cursing and screaming. Exclamation points, bold font, witty prose and pulsing pressure behind my forehead.
I realize I'm not entirely unbiased on this issue. Free-speech issues have sent me ballistic as far back as I can remember. But, no matter how I look at it, I can't see anyway such bias could be seriously blinding me.
Of all the public psychoses we're dealing with, the issue of free-speech is infinitely more important than racist hate mongering, poor personal choices or even religious "tolerance." Ultimately information is the basis of every single interaction between individuals. Any discussion or social analysis of how we interrelate begins and ends with how we approach information.
Today's global society has developed several implicit layers of social discourse. Broadly this can be seen in agglomerations of what we consider personal, internal moral choices, what we consider political, externally enforceable norms/behaviors, and what we consider cultural, arbitrary allegiances/identities. The Anarchist knows that these are false distinctions, but they have developed to secure the memetic boundaries of the modern constitutional state and they've been extraordinarily useful in securing relative increases in liberty across the world.
People may be culturally opposed to homosexuality and yet not try to use the state apparatus to secure physical enforcement of their cultural ideal. People may feel a personal moral obligation to be nice in the checkout isle, and yet fail to write their congressmen demanding a new law enforced by video surveillance.
This splitting of the discourse into separate levels is constantly assailed and corrupted because it's easy to exploit the arbitrary nature of cultural issues to create a memetic monster of social outrage.
Clinton can talk about Medicare reform all he likes; it'll never have the animal power and manipulability of Rove's culture wars. But even then he had to work on it, had to make sure he chose the right people and played them well. Even though bluestate/redstate mobbery can ultimately give Bush the power to tear down any and every memetic ideal of the separation and let whatever arbitrary political nonsense they like reign unconstrained, it's an uphill battle.
Even in Germany, where they outlaw political parties and fine holocaust deniers, there's still a sharp slope between the levels I mentioned. No matter how bad it gets the power-mongering politicians and demagogues still accept the position of free-speech advocates and always defensively claim that they are as well.
That's not to build up something that isn't there. Fines against profanity have, for example, carved out a strong niche. But, even then, proponents of such hideousness still demonstrate various ingrained levels of fear and guilt when called out on their aesthetic censorship.
On the issues that matter? Only corporations with teams of intellectual-property lawyers come close to effecting the sort of censorship that would oppose visual parodies. And we all hate corporations when they do that. Such economic bullies and parasites deserve to be crushed with all force possible. But even considering outlawing our mutual right to parody and insult people’s faiths? That shit’s such an unbelievable jump that, from the point of view of the painful advancements the global culture has made, all other issues become irrelevant. Was Jyllands-Posten fanning flames or making a valuable stand?
I don’t care.
Doesn’t matter a single drop.
Once the people who somehow had the supreme arrogance to demand that another country deny its citizens’ rights... and did so without demonstrating even the frailest understanding what free-speech was all about... (as well as everyone justifying, glossing over or making excuses for them)... once they no longer exist in my universe, have been removed from any capacity of power or cease to have any influence whatsoever. Then I will bother to spend energy decrying the stupidity of islamophobic attitudes.
But there is a difference. When Penny-Arcade has Jesus run around waving heavy-metal signs, or when Sinfest... sinfests, no one cares. We make fun of religion on a regular basis. We laugh at our sacred cows. We’re not dicks. Or at least we keep the dick-i-tude on other levels. Don’t be not-us. Don’t try to turn this into corrupt, hypocrite "West" versus some valuable culture.
"The west would do the same thing," is plain wrong and, "the west doesn’t have a perfect record so it doesn't matter" is just stupid. There's a sharpness of degree in this conflict that should make every enlightened member of the global culture go for their guns.
Even I'm spitting mad and I know how the Bush Administration plans to manipulate this anger to further their great imperial campaign.
Goddamn it.
If the "centrists" and "moderates" appealing for calm and getting mad at the popular outrage really mean it. Just fucking apologize already. And really mean it. Accept the reality that information-based insults don't matter. Shouldn't matter. If blind-faith is for losers who can't bother thinking, getting offended because of that faith is for bigger losers.
So, you know, to summarize. You need to fully accept that the god/meme/ideal of free-speech is better than all others. ...Otherwise some thoughtful folks are gonna support having a fire-from-the-heavens competition and I worry that it could get really, really, really ugly. For you.
First off, links to Kinsley, who does a nice job agreeing with me, and then, out of some buried sense of 'fairness,' on to aNaRcHo AkBaR who deeply differs with me in focus and mid-word capitalization policies.
This is going to be my last post on the subject. I just can't write any more about the cartoon riots. No matter how simply I begin it inevitably devolves into vicious cursing and screaming. Exclamation points, bold font, witty prose and pulsing pressure behind my forehead.
I realize I'm not entirely unbiased on this issue. Free-speech issues have sent me ballistic as far back as I can remember. But, no matter how I look at it, I can't see anyway such bias could be seriously blinding me.
Of all the public psychoses we're dealing with, the issue of free-speech is infinitely more important than racist hate mongering, poor personal choices or even religious "tolerance." Ultimately information is the basis of every single interaction between individuals. Any discussion or social analysis of how we interrelate begins and ends with how we approach information.
Today's global society has developed several implicit layers of social discourse. Broadly this can be seen in agglomerations of what we consider personal, internal moral choices, what we consider political, externally enforceable norms/behaviors, and what we consider cultural, arbitrary allegiances/identities. The Anarchist knows that these are false distinctions, but they have developed to secure the memetic boundaries of the modern constitutional state and they've been extraordinarily useful in securing relative increases in liberty across the world.
People may be culturally opposed to homosexuality and yet not try to use the state apparatus to secure physical enforcement of their cultural ideal. People may feel a personal moral obligation to be nice in the checkout isle, and yet fail to write their congressmen demanding a new law enforced by video surveillance.
This splitting of the discourse into separate levels is constantly assailed and corrupted because it's easy to exploit the arbitrary nature of cultural issues to create a memetic monster of social outrage.
Clinton can talk about Medicare reform all he likes; it'll never have the animal power and manipulability of Rove's culture wars. But even then he had to work on it, had to make sure he chose the right people and played them well. Even though bluestate/redstate mobbery can ultimately give Bush the power to tear down any and every memetic ideal of the separation and let whatever arbitrary political nonsense they like reign unconstrained, it's an uphill battle.
Even in Germany, where they outlaw political parties and fine holocaust deniers, there's still a sharp slope between the levels I mentioned. No matter how bad it gets the power-mongering politicians and demagogues still accept the position of free-speech advocates and always defensively claim that they are as well.
That's not to build up something that isn't there. Fines against profanity have, for example, carved out a strong niche. But, even then, proponents of such hideousness still demonstrate various ingrained levels of fear and guilt when called out on their aesthetic censorship.
On the issues that matter? Only corporations with teams of intellectual-property lawyers come close to effecting the sort of censorship that would oppose visual parodies. And we all hate corporations when they do that. Such economic bullies and parasites deserve to be crushed with all force possible. But even considering outlawing our mutual right to parody and insult people’s faiths? That shit’s such an unbelievable jump that, from the point of view of the painful advancements the global culture has made, all other issues become irrelevant. Was Jyllands-Posten fanning flames or making a valuable stand?
I don’t care.
Doesn’t matter a single drop.
Once the people who somehow had the supreme arrogance to demand that another country deny its citizens’ rights... and did so without demonstrating even the frailest understanding what free-speech was all about... (as well as everyone justifying, glossing over or making excuses for them)... once they no longer exist in my universe, have been removed from any capacity of power or cease to have any influence whatsoever. Then I will bother to spend energy decrying the stupidity of islamophobic attitudes.
But there is a difference. When Penny-Arcade has Jesus run around waving heavy-metal signs, or when Sinfest... sinfests, no one cares. We make fun of religion on a regular basis. We laugh at our sacred cows. We’re not dicks. Or at least we keep the dick-i-tude on other levels. Don’t be not-us. Don’t try to turn this into corrupt, hypocrite "West" versus some valuable culture.
"The west would do the same thing," is plain wrong and, "the west doesn’t have a perfect record so it doesn't matter" is just stupid. There's a sharpness of degree in this conflict that should make every enlightened member of the global culture go for their guns.
Even I'm spitting mad and I know how the Bush Administration plans to manipulate this anger to further their great imperial campaign.
Goddamn it.
If the "centrists" and "moderates" appealing for calm and getting mad at the popular outrage really mean it. Just fucking apologize already. And really mean it. Accept the reality that information-based insults don't matter. Shouldn't matter. If blind-faith is for losers who can't bother thinking, getting offended because of that faith is for bigger losers.
So, you know, to summarize. You need to fully accept that the god/meme/ideal of free-speech is better than all others. ...Otherwise some thoughtful folks are gonna support having a fire-from-the-heavens competition and I worry that it could get really, really, really ugly. For you.
February 09, 2006
(But With Finesse & Subtlety)
Google News juxtaposed Putin's overtures to Hamas and the Administration's LA propaganda right next to one another. I chuckled for minutes.
...And then I was reminded that the Administration is going to get their Patriot Act as well as a bunch of centrist muslims and western liberals making excuses for those arrogantly demanding censorship. ...While the EU ponders media codes.
Geopolitics may have its humorous moments, but in the end we all get screwed.
Google News juxtaposed Putin's overtures to Hamas and the Administration's LA propaganda right next to one another. I chuckled for minutes.
...And then I was reminded that the Administration is going to get their Patriot Act as well as a bunch of centrist muslims and western liberals making excuses for those arrogantly demanding censorship. ...While the EU ponders media codes.
Geopolitics may have its humorous moments, but in the end we all get screwed.
February 07, 2006
(Congressional Staffers Attack Wikipedia... Resulting Chaos Made Articles Better)
If you don't understand dynamic systems yet, Xeni has a good breakdown for you. See investigative reporting! See politicians looking stupid! See the redundancy of consensus-based information! See how truth naturally emerges in a free society!
If you don't understand dynamic systems yet, Xeni has a good breakdown for you. See investigative reporting! See politicians looking stupid! See the redundancy of consensus-based information! See how truth naturally emerges in a free society!
(Pacifying Iran)
There's been a lot of talk of outbreak of violence over the cartoons being a deliberately timed counter-move by Iran to bring a stronger hand of cards to the Security Council. No doubt Iran's agent provocateurs worked overtime on this issue. But, no matter how big of an effect they may have had, I can only see their involvement as a deep miscalculation.
George Bush could not have planned this better if the CIA had any Islamic provocateurs worth a damn on their payroll.
The riots in France? Oppressed underclass versus upperclass European racists. No matter how much the LGF armchair warriors screamed about a "clash of civilizations." In the end they sounded like idiots and most people felt some degree of sympathy for the stringy multiracial kids throwing bricks at the French police. I mean, come on, this was France under attack.
The cartoon lynch mobs? They actually fucking hate our freedoms. Suddenly the old bullshit propaganda has become a legitimate point. No matter how many people setting fire to the embassies were getting paychecks from Iran, the rest of the populace sat at home and justified them. That's a rotten society.
It's one thing when folks sit at home, buy the hate filled propaganda of religious loonies and justify outlawing gay marriage to themselves. It's another when they're so rabid as to openly justify attacking another country for having a freedom as crucial and as widely accepted as "free-speech".
New Zealand and Denmark? Seriously man. You got to choose a couple great enemies in the Western world and you decided to beat on the straight-A students who volunteer over at the senior center? How's that for image building?
New Zealand is famous for sheep, kiwis, women’s rights and opposing nuclear proliferation.
Denmark makes little chocolates.
You think there's any country in the whole goddamn world who'll back out of a coalition of the willing now?
Yeah, you'll get to re-polarize yourself as the leading figure in extremist Islam. But at what cost? You douchebags don't really understand the concept of end-game do you?
Ultimately it doesn't matter what the Islamic world thinks. It doesn't matter whether you eclipse the Sunnis in radical cred. Because when you deal with Nuclear weapons the conventions of international restraints break down. Washington and Jerusalem are relatively hovering over the button. And all could take to set that precedent is a feeling of support at home. Support which your little power play in the middle-east is in terrible danger of concreting.
I've been trying to explain it. They'll press that button. Because the issue you chose is not one that's debatable over here. Opposing free-speech like you have is not a slick little political maneuver. It's suicide. To an Imperial power like the US it doesn't matter how strongly you may have drawn the "Us v. Them" lines. Because we think we've got the great eraser.
If disarming Iran means polarizing the Islamic world against us, we're okay with it. Hey, you've put Europe and the rest of ye olde "free world" on our side. What more could we possibly want. Some darkies? Some towel-heads? Have you not been paying attention to the neoconservative movement? They don't understand polarization. They're okay with making three enemies for every one they kill. They were raised on the old European wars of attrition. Where it doesn't matter how much you subjegate a people, because uprisings aren't inevitable. They think of people as getting up one morning and thinking who cares if the US holds absolute imperial power --fighting it takes too much energy-- lets go play golf. They really, truly believe that Empire can last.
And they've somehow think they can graft classic republican liberty onto their empire. They're very smart people, but they've turned the wrong avenue in psychosis-ville and done the elaborate mental gymnastics neccessary to think that power and freedom can coexist. They are dangerous. You are nothing compared to them.
There's been a lot of talk of outbreak of violence over the cartoons being a deliberately timed counter-move by Iran to bring a stronger hand of cards to the Security Council. No doubt Iran's agent provocateurs worked overtime on this issue. But, no matter how big of an effect they may have had, I can only see their involvement as a deep miscalculation.
George Bush could not have planned this better if the CIA had any Islamic provocateurs worth a damn on their payroll.
The riots in France? Oppressed underclass versus upperclass European racists. No matter how much the LGF armchair warriors screamed about a "clash of civilizations." In the end they sounded like idiots and most people felt some degree of sympathy for the stringy multiracial kids throwing bricks at the French police. I mean, come on, this was France under attack.
The cartoon lynch mobs? They actually fucking hate our freedoms. Suddenly the old bullshit propaganda has become a legitimate point. No matter how many people setting fire to the embassies were getting paychecks from Iran, the rest of the populace sat at home and justified them. That's a rotten society.
It's one thing when folks sit at home, buy the hate filled propaganda of religious loonies and justify outlawing gay marriage to themselves. It's another when they're so rabid as to openly justify attacking another country for having a freedom as crucial and as widely accepted as "free-speech".
New Zealand and Denmark? Seriously man. You got to choose a couple great enemies in the Western world and you decided to beat on the straight-A students who volunteer over at the senior center? How's that for image building?
New Zealand is famous for sheep, kiwis, women’s rights and opposing nuclear proliferation.
Denmark makes little chocolates.
You think there's any country in the whole goddamn world who'll back out of a coalition of the willing now?
Yeah, you'll get to re-polarize yourself as the leading figure in extremist Islam. But at what cost? You douchebags don't really understand the concept of end-game do you?
Ultimately it doesn't matter what the Islamic world thinks. It doesn't matter whether you eclipse the Sunnis in radical cred. Because when you deal with Nuclear weapons the conventions of international restraints break down. Washington and Jerusalem are relatively hovering over the button. And all could take to set that precedent is a feeling of support at home. Support which your little power play in the middle-east is in terrible danger of concreting.
I've been trying to explain it. They'll press that button. Because the issue you chose is not one that's debatable over here. Opposing free-speech like you have is not a slick little political maneuver. It's suicide. To an Imperial power like the US it doesn't matter how strongly you may have drawn the "Us v. Them" lines. Because we think we've got the great eraser.
If disarming Iran means polarizing the Islamic world against us, we're okay with it. Hey, you've put Europe and the rest of ye olde "free world" on our side. What more could we possibly want. Some darkies? Some towel-heads? Have you not been paying attention to the neoconservative movement? They don't understand polarization. They're okay with making three enemies for every one they kill. They were raised on the old European wars of attrition. Where it doesn't matter how much you subjegate a people, because uprisings aren't inevitable. They think of people as getting up one morning and thinking who cares if the US holds absolute imperial power --fighting it takes too much energy-- lets go play golf. They really, truly believe that Empire can last.
And they've somehow think they can graft classic republican liberty onto their empire. They're very smart people, but they've turned the wrong avenue in psychosis-ville and done the elaborate mental gymnastics neccessary to think that power and freedom can coexist. They are dangerous. You are nothing compared to them.
(Banditry And Solidarity In China)
"Hundreds of angry farmers and peasants attacked the armed guards that were holding activist Chen Guangcheng under house arrest. ...Chen Guangcheng was born a blind peasant, but taught himself to be a lawyer that fought for the poor and disadvantaged." -Bombs & Shields
"Hundreds of angry farmers and peasants attacked the armed guards that were holding activist Chen Guangcheng under house arrest. ...Chen Guangcheng was born a blind peasant, but taught himself to be a lawyer that fought for the poor and disadvantaged." -Bombs & Shields
February 06, 2006
(Wherein I Catch Myself Thinking Genocidal Thoughts)
It's interesting that my immediate response to September 11th, in regards to the Islamic world, wasn't aggravation but dismissal.
Oh, come on. Are you really sucking Cheney's cock that much? What a fucking useless geopolitical bloc. In the last fifty years, Al Queda is the most dangerous you could produce? Al Queda is about as tame a threat to civilization as FARC. What are they going to do? Win? Can you imagine that? It's utterly preposterous. Giggle-worthy.
Oh, they'll kill a whole bunch of folks. And that's bad. They're total dicks afterall, and we all know that. But terrorism isn't goal oriented, it's conflict oriented. Osama's not out to usher in some grand global paradigm change, he's out to feel good about himself and get high off the feeling of power. Fucking playboy. These (and most) terrorists don't have an end plan. They have pre-pubescent machismo, a worship of conflict.
They're just a byproduct of the drive to turn the entire world into nothing more but a neoliberal thunderdome of competition-for-competition's-sake. A scary thought, if there was some sort of external mediating force in the world that actively conspired to keep any one meme or power structure from gaining supreme control in our global free market of state oppression.
But there isn't.
Terrorism is just fuel for imperialism. And, though the Us v. Them nature of nationalistic power inspires violent and animalistic resistance, it only can only further the strength of those committed to the enactment of their own dynasty of leadership.
In this conflict imperialism must, by its own principles, face facts and eventually devolve into absolute fascism. Any freedom is a danger to the state. In a state built on factional violence, security can only be secured by the physical confinement and psychological destruction of its every individual constituent. There are many such emergent threats today. The WTO. China. Our own neo-conservative movement.
Al Queda is an after school club compared to these.
With cheese and crackers passed out by the adults.
They could nuke Houston tomorrow and it'd be a horrific tragedy. A great event on the historical timeline. And they should all burn in the fires of hell. But it's like focusing all our outrage and condemnation on a particularly violent battalion while ignoring the instigating forces behind the war they're caught up in or even who they're directly fighting for.
Honestly, I think they’re pathetic by any scale. I thought that the day I watched the towers fall and I think it today. ...The difference is that today a part of me feels like nuking the whole goddamn Islamic world until --as the seminal bumper sticker puts it-- they glow green.
It's not rational. It's instinctive. And I'm ashamed. But perhaps not as much as my progressive upbringing would expect. I still can't rationally conceive of Islamic rule as a possible world future. But apparently throw in a few protests against free speech and I turn into a righteous maniac.
What can I say?
I'm an American. I'm an Anarchist.
I do not believe in respecting authority. I do not believe in respecting closemindedness. These are non-negotiable. These are the fundamental tenants of my society. These are the tenants of being counted as a human being.
Community figures keep playing "the centrist" and explaining that some lines have to be drawn between freedom of speech and indecency.
Indecency is farting at dinner party. Freedom of speech is about the core ethic necessary for any social communication whatsoever. There is no line. They’re completely fucking separate topics. On completely separate levels. One is about morality. The other is about picking your nose in public.
If something "profoundly offends" you, it's an embarrassing character flaw on your part. Not something to be flaunted. What are we supposed to do? Tiptoe around what an immature person you are?
Maybe I'm angry at the protestors for exposing just how frailly the ideal of free speech has been accepted in the west. A few hours ago I re-signed a bunch of papers swearing up and down my intent to comply with FCC regulations while on the air. Last week’s story on the corporate blitzkrieg for “tiered” internet still rings in my ears. And I was just reminded that the Bush Administration’s legislation against trolling is still on the books.
But watching the angry faces burning embassies for daring to provide rights to their citizens has given me a sense of absolute vertigo. Gazing down the absolute precipice of such animal fascism is it any wonder that I am left kicking and screaming against the night air?
Long ago I dismissed neo-Nazis as not even worthy of any political plan attempting their redemption. I feel sorry for the souls that were driven to embrace the skinhead identity in Europe and America. But when I see a swastika-tattooed forehead I no longer see the individual behind it. I can only see an enemy soldier. A rifleman engaged in a war against humanity. An obstacle rather than a human being. I could slaughter an infinite number of self-styled Nazis without the bloodshed ever overwhelming my conscience. My mind simply cannot perceive the fractional levels of humanity left under the memetic structures of full-fledged Nazism. It’s a personal imperfection, but I’ll sleep well for a few more years. What's more, given a good opportunity I would slaughter said Nazis.
On a certain level I don’t want to know how life functions under the relatively infinitesimal degrees of morality available such mindsets.
I do not understand a society where it is considered okay to say the things that have been said in the last week by Muslim leaders. I do not understand a world where people can be so supremely arrogant as to think righteous cultural anger affords them the power to make such demands as UN sanctions or national-level apologies. (No matter how realistically sentiments of racist hate-mongering may have fueled Jyllands-Posten’s yellow journalism.)
I don’t get it. Unlike September 11th, it cannot be easily abstracted back to geopolitical strategy and power-mongering. This is not planned. This is not a situation imposed on high from some elite class of world leaders. This is an issue of on-the-ground internalization.
And there is a part of me that doesn’t want to live in a world where I have to ponder the nuances of "views" held by people who can so openly oppose freedom. There is a part of me that wants to preserve what little altitude the discourse on free-speech has achieved. I want it clear cut. I do not want there to be a visible slope by which our values can slough down into nothingness. At the very least I want politicians wincing at the thought of being accused of standing against free-speech in any way. I do not want a society where they can easily bat away such a basic ideal, where they delight and actively pursue attacking that ideal.
I don’t want to live in that world. And that's not a civil minded contention between adults. It's my fists versus any animal that would dare take us there.
Do you hear me?
I understand the plight of those caught behind the borders of this hideous cultural entity. I understand the distinctions between countries, subcultures and religious movements within what's crudely called the "Islamic World." My heart goes out to the radicals fighting their power systems. They'll get all the solidarity they ask for.
But, to all the centrists sitting at home across the islamic world and making justifications for the trash on the streets, I have some advice: Don't. This is not a debatable issue. Every word of support or "moderation" you make just further concretes the insidious little idea that you, as a people, are beyond saving. That you have positioned yourself, your "cultural" identity, against liberty. ...And freedom --with the common empathy and individual actualization that comes part n' parcel-- is the only thing that really matters. You truly want an anti-islamic and islamophobic movement? Keep it up.
We got serious issues in every country in the world.
But to see protestors get shot and killed... and to sympathize with the cops who shot them? How the fuck did you drive me to this point?
Fuck this shit. You are no longer allowed at our table. Go fucking eat with the pigs.
It's interesting that my immediate response to September 11th, in regards to the Islamic world, wasn't aggravation but dismissal.
Oh, come on. Are you really sucking Cheney's cock that much? What a fucking useless geopolitical bloc. In the last fifty years, Al Queda is the most dangerous you could produce? Al Queda is about as tame a threat to civilization as FARC. What are they going to do? Win? Can you imagine that? It's utterly preposterous. Giggle-worthy.
Oh, they'll kill a whole bunch of folks. And that's bad. They're total dicks afterall, and we all know that. But terrorism isn't goal oriented, it's conflict oriented. Osama's not out to usher in some grand global paradigm change, he's out to feel good about himself and get high off the feeling of power. Fucking playboy. These (and most) terrorists don't have an end plan. They have pre-pubescent machismo, a worship of conflict.
They're just a byproduct of the drive to turn the entire world into nothing more but a neoliberal thunderdome of competition-for-competition's-sake. A scary thought, if there was some sort of external mediating force in the world that actively conspired to keep any one meme or power structure from gaining supreme control in our global free market of state oppression.
But there isn't.
Terrorism is just fuel for imperialism. And, though the Us v. Them nature of nationalistic power inspires violent and animalistic resistance, it only can only further the strength of those committed to the enactment of their own dynasty of leadership.
In this conflict imperialism must, by its own principles, face facts and eventually devolve into absolute fascism. Any freedom is a danger to the state. In a state built on factional violence, security can only be secured by the physical confinement and psychological destruction of its every individual constituent. There are many such emergent threats today. The WTO. China. Our own neo-conservative movement.
Al Queda is an after school club compared to these.
With cheese and crackers passed out by the adults.
They could nuke Houston tomorrow and it'd be a horrific tragedy. A great event on the historical timeline. And they should all burn in the fires of hell. But it's like focusing all our outrage and condemnation on a particularly violent battalion while ignoring the instigating forces behind the war they're caught up in or even who they're directly fighting for.
Honestly, I think they’re pathetic by any scale. I thought that the day I watched the towers fall and I think it today. ...The difference is that today a part of me feels like nuking the whole goddamn Islamic world until --as the seminal bumper sticker puts it-- they glow green.
It's not rational. It's instinctive. And I'm ashamed. But perhaps not as much as my progressive upbringing would expect. I still can't rationally conceive of Islamic rule as a possible world future. But apparently throw in a few protests against free speech and I turn into a righteous maniac.
What can I say?
I'm an American. I'm an Anarchist.
I do not believe in respecting authority. I do not believe in respecting closemindedness. These are non-negotiable. These are the fundamental tenants of my society. These are the tenants of being counted as a human being.
Community figures keep playing "the centrist" and explaining that some lines have to be drawn between freedom of speech and indecency.
Indecency is farting at dinner party. Freedom of speech is about the core ethic necessary for any social communication whatsoever. There is no line. They’re completely fucking separate topics. On completely separate levels. One is about morality. The other is about picking your nose in public.
If something "profoundly offends" you, it's an embarrassing character flaw on your part. Not something to be flaunted. What are we supposed to do? Tiptoe around what an immature person you are?
Maybe I'm angry at the protestors for exposing just how frailly the ideal of free speech has been accepted in the west. A few hours ago I re-signed a bunch of papers swearing up and down my intent to comply with FCC regulations while on the air. Last week’s story on the corporate blitzkrieg for “tiered” internet still rings in my ears. And I was just reminded that the Bush Administration’s legislation against trolling is still on the books.
But watching the angry faces burning embassies for daring to provide rights to their citizens has given me a sense of absolute vertigo. Gazing down the absolute precipice of such animal fascism is it any wonder that I am left kicking and screaming against the night air?
Long ago I dismissed neo-Nazis as not even worthy of any political plan attempting their redemption. I feel sorry for the souls that were driven to embrace the skinhead identity in Europe and America. But when I see a swastika-tattooed forehead I no longer see the individual behind it. I can only see an enemy soldier. A rifleman engaged in a war against humanity. An obstacle rather than a human being. I could slaughter an infinite number of self-styled Nazis without the bloodshed ever overwhelming my conscience. My mind simply cannot perceive the fractional levels of humanity left under the memetic structures of full-fledged Nazism. It’s a personal imperfection, but I’ll sleep well for a few more years. What's more, given a good opportunity I would slaughter said Nazis.
On a certain level I don’t want to know how life functions under the relatively infinitesimal degrees of morality available such mindsets.
I do not understand a society where it is considered okay to say the things that have been said in the last week by Muslim leaders. I do not understand a world where people can be so supremely arrogant as to think righteous cultural anger affords them the power to make such demands as UN sanctions or national-level apologies. (No matter how realistically sentiments of racist hate-mongering may have fueled Jyllands-Posten’s yellow journalism.)
I don’t get it. Unlike September 11th, it cannot be easily abstracted back to geopolitical strategy and power-mongering. This is not planned. This is not a situation imposed on high from some elite class of world leaders. This is an issue of on-the-ground internalization.
And there is a part of me that doesn’t want to live in a world where I have to ponder the nuances of "views" held by people who can so openly oppose freedom. There is a part of me that wants to preserve what little altitude the discourse on free-speech has achieved. I want it clear cut. I do not want there to be a visible slope by which our values can slough down into nothingness. At the very least I want politicians wincing at the thought of being accused of standing against free-speech in any way. I do not want a society where they can easily bat away such a basic ideal, where they delight and actively pursue attacking that ideal.
I don’t want to live in that world. And that's not a civil minded contention between adults. It's my fists versus any animal that would dare take us there.
Do you hear me?
I understand the plight of those caught behind the borders of this hideous cultural entity. I understand the distinctions between countries, subcultures and religious movements within what's crudely called the "Islamic World." My heart goes out to the radicals fighting their power systems. They'll get all the solidarity they ask for.
But, to all the centrists sitting at home across the islamic world and making justifications for the trash on the streets, I have some advice: Don't. This is not a debatable issue. Every word of support or "moderation" you make just further concretes the insidious little idea that you, as a people, are beyond saving. That you have positioned yourself, your "cultural" identity, against liberty. ...And freedom --with the common empathy and individual actualization that comes part n' parcel-- is the only thing that really matters. You truly want an anti-islamic and islamophobic movement? Keep it up.
We got serious issues in every country in the world.
But to see protestors get shot and killed... and to sympathize with the cops who shot them? How the fuck did you drive me to this point?
Fuck this shit. You are no longer allowed at our table. Go fucking eat with the pigs.
February 03, 2006
(Plotting & Planning In A Garden Under The Sea)
I have always maintained that, of all species, the Octopi will be the first to rise against us.
The inceptive battle of our coming apocalyptic war can be viewed here.
I have always maintained that, of all species, the Octopi will be the first to rise against us.
The inceptive battle of our coming apocalyptic war can be viewed here.
February 02, 2006
(I Am Most Assuredly Not Perfect)
Shit like this pretty much continually sends me into a murderous rage. If climbing over the piles of bodies doesn't teach them their lesson, then I will.
Fuck any waste of tissue that "thinks" their frail cultural sensibilities could ever fucking justify the coercion or constraint of free-speech.
RIAA suits. Soccer moms. "Islamic" demagogues. It doesn't matter. May each and every person justifying power in the name of "decency" rot in hell.
...Total props to the European publishers who found their souls and stood against the supremely arrogant bastards. I'd publish NAMBLA trash if it made enough of these walking corpses feel like I spat in their face.
UN sanctions for daring to let one's own citizens speak freely?! Jesus.
Addendum: I just wish the Old Continent's sudden attack of conscience didn't ring so hollow.
Shit like this pretty much continually sends me into a murderous rage. If climbing over the piles of bodies doesn't teach them their lesson, then I will.
Fuck any waste of tissue that "thinks" their frail cultural sensibilities could ever fucking justify the coercion or constraint of free-speech.
RIAA suits. Soccer moms. "Islamic" demagogues. It doesn't matter. May each and every person justifying power in the name of "decency" rot in hell.
...Total props to the European publishers who found their souls and stood against the supremely arrogant bastards. I'd publish NAMBLA trash if it made enough of these walking corpses feel like I spat in their face.
UN sanctions for daring to let one's own citizens speak freely?! Jesus.
Addendum: I just wish the Old Continent's sudden attack of conscience didn't ring so hollow.
February 01, 2006
(Human-Animal Hybrids)
This is a legitimate issue. Not because it unto itself poses any great ethical quandary. It doesn't. Aint nothing wrong with playing with genetics. Borrowing neat bits of code from animals and sticking them in our own DNA is nothing revolutionary. Either in tech or morality. It's pretty simple.
1. Know what you're doing. Don't just stitch and see. Take time to learn the fucking language rather than jumping ahead and splicing genes together.
2. Don't make alterations to unwilling individuals.
3. Don't make alterations to potential individuals that would put them at a disadvantage to the human norm.
4. Do what ever the fuck you like to yourself.
Simply put: No stitching Monsanto bugkillers into your sweat glands. No stealing damsels and turning them into giant rabbits. No creating an underclass of gorilla-autistics. And no getting your glowing ectoplasm on my upholstery.
These are ultimately non-issues. They're the same damn ethical codes we've always followed.
But there's no getting around the fact that, for a relatively brief period, some people are going to make it an issue.
Oh, there'll be all the usual anti-technology cries about "playing god" and the like. But what it'll really grind down to is future-shock. Technology is just the manner by which we manipulate the physical world. Your computer is technology. The carriage is technology. The stick you poke ant-hills is technology. It's all fucking technology. The means by which you interact with matter. Your body is technology.
Everything we think of as human history was spurred by the drive to understand the material world around us. And, consequently, the ability to more efficiently apply ourselves in relation to it.
Now there's some really interesting stuff in the way this relates and overlaps with the drive for freedom. But I want to save that for the spat I've got going with the anarcho-primitivists.
The luddites the Bush Administration is catering to don't worship God. They worship the control their present situation presents them over their fellow man. They worship the selective absence of knowledge. They rejoice in humanity's abject internal turmoil (corporatism, the nation state system, etc.) because it gives them a battleground to fight it out with one another without ever having to face the awful specter of progress.
They want a world where technological progression is nothing more than smaller iPods. Where the effects are cosmetic and don't change the underlining social reality.
In order to maintain the status quo this social movement has tried to secure several no-go zones in today's modern discourse. People claim the church doesn't adapt. In contrast, religious social identities have adapted extremely fast.
Today people hold fast to a number of brand new religious myths. The greatest of which, in my opinion, is the widespread belief (widely spread in the 60s & 70s) that physics is 'turtles all the way down.' That is to say, that the universe is ultimately unknowable in any real sense and/or that physics itself will only offer more and more esoteric mysteries (Big particles behaving one way are made of smaller particles behaving completely differently are made of...) and/or that any final Grand Theory will only make sense as an arbitrary mathematical relation carved by an exterior unknowable power.
But I digress.
The second greatest of these modern myths is modern Christianity's worship of Genetics.
The entire abortion debate has been popularly usurped by the Biology debate. A fertilized egg is biologically classified as Homo Sapiens. And that makes killing it the same as killing any other member of Homo Sapiens. By embracing meaningless taxonomy they completely side step the philosophical issue of individual existence.
Screw thinking, the myth goes, what makes you you is your body not your mind. Your mind is just a consequence, an illusion, of your body. Thus, when they talk of the classic soul, they don't think of it as a guiding force bringing life to the mind. They think of it as a mystical quantity of "identity" that attaches itself to the body.
(Presumably God has read up on the terminology of modern Biologists and now pops a new soul into existence with every egg's fertilization.)
The implausibility of God's actions being dictated by the 1s & 0s of chemical information never occurs to them because, and here's the kicker: We shouldn't look at the code.
Since they're trying to mysticize living organisms along to the popular illusion that there's something metaphysically unique about a paramecium that cosmologically differentiates it from a flu virus or a crystal growth or a star or a plain ol' rock... it becomes absolutely necessary that they keep DNA mystical.
Magic!
Not the boring mathematics of large-scale molecular chemistry.
Apparently there's a magical percentage of similarities that split the line between different humans and different animals. (Makes you wonder when they're going to deny six-fingered people the vote.)
They fear individual empowerment. They fear societal change. They fear thinking.
These are the people who want to bite off just enough of the apple to learn how to oppress their fellow man but don't have the balls to finish it up and then clean up the mistakes we've made along the way.
They want to dwell forever in the same old world. A world that, through mantaining public ignorance and constraining information, lends itself towards infrastructure enslavement and social hierarchy. It comes from a psychological fixation with being "on top". --Not in the sense that wealth and power can supply individual technological liberation at the cost of the slaves maintaining the technology, but rather from the mechanistic, nihilistic psychopathy of domination and control.
'Damn it, you crazy kids! If man was meant to fly he'd have been born with wings!' Well today we are born into a world of wings.
And cosmetic wings crafted by some future genetic splicer would be just as much innert pieces of technology as the metal tubes soaring from JFK international. There's no difference. No divinely enforced line between my hands and the keyboard upon which I type.
Of course, I'm not running to the first Hot Topic that offers custom RNA algorithms. I happen to like the body I was born with. Granted there were a few flaws and I'm still not too happy with having to wear corrective lenses. But, even though I'll totally making fun of the first otaku catgirl I see, the issue brought up by the Bush Administration is the serious extension of a much broader war against technological development.
It's a battle that I'd fight even if it was only a matter of freedom of expression for creepy Thunder-Cats enthusiasts. But it's not just old 80s reruns. Genetics is a really broad field. It is, after all, the current operating system of choice for 100% of Humanity. Opening up the source code is more than a matter of principle, it's a matter of sanity. Sharks developed an immunity to cancer 200 million years ago. I think it's about time they shared.
Fuck you, old man. The Wright brothers correctly returned. Man was born with wings of the mind.
This is a legitimate issue. Not because it unto itself poses any great ethical quandary. It doesn't. Aint nothing wrong with playing with genetics. Borrowing neat bits of code from animals and sticking them in our own DNA is nothing revolutionary. Either in tech or morality. It's pretty simple.
1. Know what you're doing. Don't just stitch and see. Take time to learn the fucking language rather than jumping ahead and splicing genes together.
2. Don't make alterations to unwilling individuals.
3. Don't make alterations to potential individuals that would put them at a disadvantage to the human norm.
4. Do what ever the fuck you like to yourself.
Simply put: No stitching Monsanto bugkillers into your sweat glands. No stealing damsels and turning them into giant rabbits. No creating an underclass of gorilla-autistics. And no getting your glowing ectoplasm on my upholstery.
These are ultimately non-issues. They're the same damn ethical codes we've always followed.
But there's no getting around the fact that, for a relatively brief period, some people are going to make it an issue.
Oh, there'll be all the usual anti-technology cries about "playing god" and the like. But what it'll really grind down to is future-shock. Technology is just the manner by which we manipulate the physical world. Your computer is technology. The carriage is technology. The stick you poke ant-hills is technology. It's all fucking technology. The means by which you interact with matter. Your body is technology.
Everything we think of as human history was spurred by the drive to understand the material world around us. And, consequently, the ability to more efficiently apply ourselves in relation to it.
Now there's some really interesting stuff in the way this relates and overlaps with the drive for freedom. But I want to save that for the spat I've got going with the anarcho-primitivists.
The luddites the Bush Administration is catering to don't worship God. They worship the control their present situation presents them over their fellow man. They worship the selective absence of knowledge. They rejoice in humanity's abject internal turmoil (corporatism, the nation state system, etc.) because it gives them a battleground to fight it out with one another without ever having to face the awful specter of progress.
They want a world where technological progression is nothing more than smaller iPods. Where the effects are cosmetic and don't change the underlining social reality.
In order to maintain the status quo this social movement has tried to secure several no-go zones in today's modern discourse. People claim the church doesn't adapt. In contrast, religious social identities have adapted extremely fast.
Today people hold fast to a number of brand new religious myths. The greatest of which, in my opinion, is the widespread belief (widely spread in the 60s & 70s) that physics is 'turtles all the way down.' That is to say, that the universe is ultimately unknowable in any real sense and/or that physics itself will only offer more and more esoteric mysteries (Big particles behaving one way are made of smaller particles behaving completely differently are made of...) and/or that any final Grand Theory will only make sense as an arbitrary mathematical relation carved by an exterior unknowable power.
But I digress.
The second greatest of these modern myths is modern Christianity's worship of Genetics.
The entire abortion debate has been popularly usurped by the Biology debate. A fertilized egg is biologically classified as Homo Sapiens. And that makes killing it the same as killing any other member of Homo Sapiens. By embracing meaningless taxonomy they completely side step the philosophical issue of individual existence.
Screw thinking, the myth goes, what makes you you is your body not your mind. Your mind is just a consequence, an illusion, of your body. Thus, when they talk of the classic soul, they don't think of it as a guiding force bringing life to the mind. They think of it as a mystical quantity of "identity" that attaches itself to the body.
(Presumably God has read up on the terminology of modern Biologists and now pops a new soul into existence with every egg's fertilization.)
The implausibility of God's actions being dictated by the 1s & 0s of chemical information never occurs to them because, and here's the kicker: We shouldn't look at the code.
Since they're trying to mysticize living organisms along to the popular illusion that there's something metaphysically unique about a paramecium that cosmologically differentiates it from a flu virus or a crystal growth or a star or a plain ol' rock... it becomes absolutely necessary that they keep DNA mystical.
Magic!
Not the boring mathematics of large-scale molecular chemistry.
Apparently there's a magical percentage of similarities that split the line between different humans and different animals. (Makes you wonder when they're going to deny six-fingered people the vote.)
They fear individual empowerment. They fear societal change. They fear thinking.
These are the people who want to bite off just enough of the apple to learn how to oppress their fellow man but don't have the balls to finish it up and then clean up the mistakes we've made along the way.
They want to dwell forever in the same old world. A world that, through mantaining public ignorance and constraining information, lends itself towards infrastructure enslavement and social hierarchy. It comes from a psychological fixation with being "on top". --Not in the sense that wealth and power can supply individual technological liberation at the cost of the slaves maintaining the technology, but rather from the mechanistic, nihilistic psychopathy of domination and control.
'Damn it, you crazy kids! If man was meant to fly he'd have been born with wings!' Well today we are born into a world of wings.
And cosmetic wings crafted by some future genetic splicer would be just as much innert pieces of technology as the metal tubes soaring from JFK international. There's no difference. No divinely enforced line between my hands and the keyboard upon which I type.
Of course, I'm not running to the first Hot Topic that offers custom RNA algorithms. I happen to like the body I was born with. Granted there were a few flaws and I'm still not too happy with having to wear corrective lenses. But, even though I'll totally making fun of the first otaku catgirl I see, the issue brought up by the Bush Administration is the serious extension of a much broader war against technological development.
It's a battle that I'd fight even if it was only a matter of freedom of expression for creepy Thunder-Cats enthusiasts. But it's not just old 80s reruns. Genetics is a really broad field. It is, after all, the current operating system of choice for 100% of Humanity. Opening up the source code is more than a matter of principle, it's a matter of sanity. Sharks developed an immunity to cancer 200 million years ago. I think it's about time they shared.
Fuck you, old man. The Wright brothers correctly returned. Man was born with wings of the mind.
- The author does not recognize or accept the legitimacy of any law relating to the regulation of information.
Neither is any copyright or pretense to 'intellectual property' assumed by the author in the slightest nor will any degree of capitulation be wrestled from the author in regard to another's presumptions of authority on matters of supposedly illegal speech. 100% anticopyright
