The Aquarian Peanut Gallery

Terra Nova: The Horde is Evil

2006-05-18T15:56:00.000+10:00

Terra Nova: The Horde is Evil

While I appreciate the questions you've raised here, Mr Castranova, I will admit that I feel that some of your answers definitely leave something to be desired. I want to reply to some of these points. I'm posting on my blog primarily due to the size constraints in the comments column on the article's page.

There are good reasons for playing evil characters - to give others an opportunity to be good, to help tell a story, to explore the nature of evil.

This in particular is something which I think perhaps should have been given more consideration in the rest of the article. Evil is not a word with a simplistic definition, customarily speaking.

My son (age 3) was afraid of my character. He was afraid of the Undercity. And that's just from the imagery

As a toddler and up until around the age of four, the appearance of the Count from Sesame Street caused me particular consternation when he appeared on the screen. I don't, personally, consider most of the imagery associated with the Forsaken to be substantially more disturbing than the Count was, however. My primary character is actually a Forsaken Mage, and given that my race of choice in Warcraft 3 were also the Scourge, I feel to some degree qualified in answering this point.

I would have joined you in defining the Scourge as "evil"; unreservedly so. My use of them in Warcraft 3 was almost entirely motivated by aesthetic considerations; I will admit to having found Nerubian architecture highly appealing.

The Forsaken, however, are an entirely different matter. Given that the Scourge were completely under the control of Ner'zhul, (and I mean completely, in terms of mental superimposition) I don't feel that it could be effectively argued that individual beings within the Scourge had a large degree of choice regarding their actions. Given that the Forsaken have become divorced from the Scourge, however, their situation is not the same. They can, admittedly, choose to continue behaving in an entirely evil manner, or they can choose to attempt to atone for their earlier actions as members of the Scourge. Thus, I consider the acts of any individual member of the Forsaken to be their responsibility and their responsibility alone; I do not feel that a moral generalisation regarding the whole of Forsaken society is appropriate. An analogy here which you may find comfortable would be to think of people who have been freed from any number of real world groups who employ the use of mind control. The superimposition of a false personality can cause a given individual to behave in ways which they would never consider outside the group's environment, and once removed from said group's environment, their original personality and individual ethical model are free to re-assert themselves.

I think there is another point here that needs to be made about the Undercity, and that is that aesthetic choice does not necessarily go hand in glove with moral position.

While I would not refer to myself as Gothic in the entire, formal sense of the word, I will admit that my own aesthetic taste in some respects perhaps does tend towards that which could be considered disturbing by mainstream standards. I have, I will admit, undergone severe psychological trauma at times in the past, and consider that that factor may have something to do with my own aesthetic predisposition; however, I do not in my own case consider it an indication of my being "evil." As an aside, my younger brother has been very firm friends for a number of years with another teenager who perhaps could be described as Gothic in a definite sense, and whose mother is a practicing Wiccan, as well as having a very dear friend online myself who is also a committed Wiccan. These three individuals are also among the most genuinely altruistic and hospitable people that I have ever known.

The point here is that moral judgements about individuals should not be made, I believe, merely on the basis that the initial external appearance (or certain other sociological choices, such as religion) of said individuals is disturbing to one's own cultural sensibilities. Apart from often being inaccurate, such judgement is also likely to quite rightly be found highly offensive by its' recipient.

If my undead warlock were an extension of myself, something I was pursuing for mere enjoyment, then it ought to be a troubling question for me, sholdn't it? Why am I finding pleasure in expressing myself in a form that frightens 3-year-olds?

There are myriad things in contemporary society which could be found traumatic not only by 3 year olds, but presumably by older people as well. I do not necessarily advocate that a 3 year old should be playing WoW, nor do I feel that the environment should necessarily be one in which a 3 year old could be comfortable. Adulthood brings with it complexities and ambiguities in a great many different forms, and it could also be said that even if you yourself were committed to behaving in an entirely sterile way, you could not legitimately control the behaviour of others such that, in a game like WoW, your 3 year old could entirely avoid seeing things which were likely to upset him. I suspect, for example, that you would not wish for your 3 year old to be able to witness two adults engaging in sex, even if it were occuring in the context of a loveing, monogamous relationship, and an entire absence of any form of deviancy on the part of the two adults concerned. My point is that there is nothing wrong with said adults in that context making love; it is normal, healthy, and indeed essential for the survival of said relationship. However, many of us with young children would also agree that despite it being normal for the adults, it is still likely something that a young child could find disturbing, (or at the very least highly confusing) and hence, not something that the children should be exposed to.

You might then turn around and say that in the context of sex, that's true, but that the analogy doesn't hold for a necromancer. My own answer (and I realise that this would not hold for others) to this would be to say that my own choice of magic-using characters is generally one made entirely based on pragmatism; that is, that it makes a lot of sense to me that a magic-user is going to have a major survival advantage in a partially magically-based environment. It is also true that in a real-world sense, I am not a person with a lot of physical strength, and thus would not mentally approach a fight in the same way as someone who did. My own approach there is based on either avoidance or intellectual problem solving, and I find it much easier to carry that approach over into a game rather than attempt to create a new model for dealing with conflict which is entirely hypothetically based.

A necromancer could be seen as a character who attempts to borrow the physical or melee capability from corpses due to not posessing physical strength himself. Given that he deals with the dead in this manner, it probably makes sense in the minds of Blizzard's artists to associate a certain amount of (perhaps sensationalistic or theatrical in some instances) Gothic imagery with the character.

You might then still say that a necromancer raising the dead in such a manner has connotations which are disturbing; I would agree with regards to my own sensibilities, which is why I do not have a necromancer character myself.

My assertion is that this is a genuine and significant moral issue that everyone who chooses an avatar needs to think about. Morally compulsory.

Again, that depends on whether or not your perspective is based purely on what characteristics that character has available with regards to solving in-game problems, (from an entirely mechanistic/pragmatic point of view) or that you view your avatar as potentially having implications beyond the game itself. I personally do not; in my own mind the game is just that; a game. Using a mage character within the game does not mean that afterwards I'm going to go outside and want (or expect to be able) to throw fireballs at a next door neighbour.

And hence the choice of Undead, by a scholar, as an act of self-expression (rather than study, exploration, serving as a foil, etc.), is questionable from the standpoint of personal integrity.

That's your perspective, and you're completely entitled to it. My perspective is that it is an individual's own choice, and that it also doesn't necessarily reflect on said individual's integrity at all.

In advancing these positions, I am upending a number of apple carts.

You're stating opinions. That in itself I have no problem with. What does somewhat concern me is that your perspective seems to be that your own way of looking at some of these things is the only possible way...and with all due respect, it isn't.

But what I sense is a passionate and arational commitment to denying the presence of ethics at all in the choice of how we play.

I originally started playing as an Alliance character, and only started my Horde character because all of my local offline friends had Horde characters, and I wouldn't have been able to communicate with them in-game otherwise.

However, as time went on and I read more about the backstory, I actually started viewing the Horde as being a lot more morally desirable than the Alliance, to be honest. The Orcs are shown to have only been behaving in an excessively militaristic fashion in the first two games because of external spiritual influence; influence which, in the context of the game's universe, would have been largely impossible to resist. They were basically enslaved, given the equivalent of temporary genetic engineering, (the bloodlust) and then told that fighting was the only chance they had to end said condition of enslavement.

Once they were freed, however, they started behaving in an entirely different way. They saved both the Tauren and the Trolls from extermination, and their primary goal after that simply became the foundation of their own nation.

On my own server anyway, (Jubei'Thos) Horde characters are close-knit, and we help each other. High level characters actively work to protect lower-level characters from Alliance attacks. We have a number of high level Alliance characters, (mostly elves usually it seems; the race who apparently can do no wrong in many people's eyes) who specifically attack "nursery" areas in a manner which I consider enormously cowardly. Of course in their minds, they're probably mounting attacks against the "unclean, evil Horde." Try being on the Horde side of the fence in such a scenario; you start to see things a bit differently.

Also, in terms of Orcs being monsters, I've never read about a single literary universe which had elves where they were not genocidal, xenophobic, hypocritical snobs who saw themselves as the Master Race; in Dragonlance in particular, they even try to exterminate each other. Ditto for the Humans; They're "civilised" and anyone who is different gets labelled a monster or savage whether they actually are or not.

One more thing: Offline, I'm autistic, and was born early enough (in 1977) that autism wasn't anywhere near as commonplace when I was a child as it is today. I know what it is like to be included in group scenarios purely for comic relief; I also know what it's like to be literally considered non-human. My parents have verbally asked themselves what they did wrong to have given birth to me, and my father once said that if I'd been alive in Germany at the time of the Holocaust, I would have been at the head of the queue being led into the gas chambers, alongside the others who were sent there.

I'm proud of being a member of the Horde, and when I truly think about it, I wouldn't want an Alliance char now. They can have the humans and elves; the "beautiful people." They can have their concentration camps and their belief that they're the exclusive flower of civilisation.

We on the other hand can continue to have our proverbial Big Tent, co-operate with each other, and help each other; we'll have the "freaks," the outcasts and "monsters", the people they don't want.

Loktar Ogar!

The Fractured Singleton: Free Open Source Support: The Bad and the Good

2006-04-20T13:32:00.000+10:00

The Fractured Singleton: Free Open Source Support: The Bad and the Good

this is a response to on my new local wiki to the above link and several others like it, which I am hoping will be able to offer people some assistance.

Red Hat's silent Linux coup de tat

2005-05-18T19:10:00.000+10:00

Microsoft to buy Red Hat? Say it ain’t so | Open Source | ZDNet.com

If this were to happen, the GNU Project (and most likely Linux as an operating system) would be finished. By supplying the degree of development hosting/facilities that they have, and investing their own staff in the development of the packages, Red Hat have in effect hijacked large portions of the GNU Project's software, including such critical packages (to a GNU/Linux system) as Glibc. In doing this they have also demonstrated understanding of one key fact which Microsoft have not grasped...Namely, that the Linux kernel itself is only a single piece of software, and that the lion's share of the userland is comprised of GNU Project software. Control the GNU Project (as Red Hat now effectively does, at least in very significant portions) and you control the operating system itself. The GNU Project in a very real sense ceased to be free software from the moment its development moved to sources.redhat.com.

But wait, I hear you say. All of the GNU Project's software is licensed under the GPL. Surely the GPL would protect the software even if Microsoft bought out a large number of its developers? If Microsoft were to stop with the acquisition of Red Hat itself, then yes, it would. However, considering that Microsoft's next step would almost certainly be to close the source of these packages, the GPL would very rapidly become a legal inconvenience. In that event, the only thing they would need to do would be to step on the FSF itself, which they could probably very easily do by financially seducing whichever members of its' development base they didn't get with the acquisition of Red Hat, and the foundation's legal team. Richard Stallman has in truth retained very little genuine relevance these days, and is for the most part now considered a fanatical crackpot. Microsoft would find isolating him from his organisation to be simplicity itself if they were to seriously attempt it.

Then again, the above would probably not be necessary. Red Hat have already demonstrated that the functional equivalent of removing access to source code is possible with Glibc. Glibc in particular was a highly complex package to begin with...but Red Hat have been progressively working to raise that level of complexity to such a degree that the package will eventually be unusable to anyone but the company itself. Given what a crucial component a C library is to an independent operating system, and how few viable alternatives exist because of the level of complexity inherent in the package, Red Hat's hijacking of this package will essentially mean that not only will the creation of truly new Linux distributions no longer be possible, but it will essentially end the possibility of creating new GNU compatible operating systems in general. Red Hat have in essence done exactly that which was advocated for Microsoft by VinodV in the first and second Halloween Documents:- Glibc's use as the lynchpin of new Linux distributions or GNU compatible operating systems has been rendered impossible by raising Glibc's level of complexity to undiscoverable and near proprietary levels.

Embrace and extend: Take a standard, add proprietary functionality, don't document it or provide specifications for it. If you ensure that the proprietary functionality you add is sufficiently crowd-pleasing in nature, it will become so popular that the open standard will grow to be considered irrelevant and obselete, and people will become dependent on your own closed, non-free product. End of story, as far as people genuinely doing their own thing with software is concerned.

Add to that the fact that high level members of Red Hat's staff have joined the Open Source Initiative, and the picture of Red Hat's subversion of Linux (and with OSI, potentially the legal arm of the entire FOSS movement) is complete. Linux is now being held in a stranglehold by the company, although it may not be readily visible as yet...All Microsoft's acquisition of Red Hat would essentially do is drive the final nail into the coffin.

Why I Do Care About Terry Schiavo - A Response

2005-03-31T14:11:00.000+10:00

Why I Don't Care About Terry Schiavo

I consider this article rather insensitive. Yes, I agree that we should not allow our emotions to be manipulated by the media. Yes, I agree that the American media are making a sick, depraved circus of Terry's situation, like they do with just about everything else. And yes, it's no secret that I consider George W Bush and Co. to be a group of thoroughly evil human beings. It doesn't surprise me in the least that that government and its theocratic fascist constituency are exploiting Terry's situation to further their own political agenda, which they seem to be able to do with virtually any incident that occurs these days.

There's a difference though, between pointing out that people should most definitely not be exploiting Terry's situation for their own gain, and expressing indifference to Terry's suffering in itself. The fact that there are ghouls in the world who would use the plight of a starving, semi-comatose woman to further their own ends does not in any way deligitimise said woman's anguish. I don't believe, for the record, that Terry is or would be completely oblivious right now...I think she would be in a tremendous amount of fear, confusion, and pain. I don't want to wallow in those things for the sake of wallowing in them, but I do feel for this woman.

I don't think it's pandering to anybody for me to empathise with her, or that it's allowing myself to be led by the media. I simply feel concern for her and desire a positive end to her suffering, in whatever form that can come. I also would like the media circus to end as much as anyone, but I know sadly that it won't.

The other thing a lot of people need to consider is that given what life on this planet is going to be like for the next ten years or so I suspect, Terry will most likely be better off if she does die. I don't believe the world's going to be destroyed in the same sense that the Christian fundamentalists do...but I do believe that the current period corresponds with what virtually every culture on the planet has at one time or another predicted as being the end of society as we know it. That doesn't mean things aren't going to go on in some form...I think they will...but it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Terry should be allowed to go in peace.

Can We Dare Believe It?

2005-02-01T16:17:00.000+11:00

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan

The critical analysis of George W Bush's recent inaugural speech by Peggy Noonan, a woman who by all accounts has been a long and steadfast advocate of Bush, is cause for cautious, but nonetheless breathless optimism. When I read her words, I find myself experiencing the minute beginnings of an emotion almost never felt in connection with neoconservatives - hope. I find myself daring to believe that maybe somewhere in the depths of her soul, there is the faint stirring of the possibility that maybe - just maybe - Bush and his government have been mistaken about Iraq and the involuntary export of democracy at gunpoint...and that by extension, this crack in her belief could somehow be widened such that she might eventually be willing to concede the idea that again, maybe - just maybe - Bush is also wrong about a whole lot of other things.

For so long those of us who have been greatly disturbed by Bush's reign of horror and blood have had to try and accept the idea that his advocates were completely immune to reason or the voice of conscience. That for them, perception was entirely subjective and voluntary...that dissenting or contradictory information would simply be met with oblivion, as though it did not exist. Peggy represents the possibility that maybe - just maybe - that is not always the case. Maybe with some of them, we *can* get through.

Maybe, some can realise that underneath all the whitewash, propaganda, and spin, the invasion of Iraq has been wrong...hideously and murderously so.

Maybe, some can realise that Iran would be far worse.

Maybe, some can realise that after Iraq, after Iran, Bush will eventually bring his unending hunger for blood and repression back home, resulting in the confiscation of first remaining freedom, and then lives.

And maybe - just maybe - those who are able to see George W Bush for who and what he truly is will somehow be able to start to drive back his isolation, seperation, and fear...before it is too late.

Thank God for you, Peggy...and I do not invoke Bush's God here either. I invoke here the God of those of us who know that love and the creative impulse - the impulse to create life, rather than to destroy it, as was done in Fallujah and elsewhere - are the primal driving forces of our infinite Universe, and that that Universe is unspeakably greater, more varied, and more filled with possibility than the majority of Christians ever can or likely will know. Know, however, that in questioning Bush's speech, you have done far more than you may realise. You have potentially lit a small, flickering light in the midst of a sea of darkness so great that many have questioned whether they would ever see its end. Thank you.

Votes In - For Me, Jury's Still Out

2005-01-31T03:57:00.000+11:00

MSNBC - MSNBC Front Page

The front page at MSNBC has a rather poignant photograph of an Iraqi man at a polling place, explaining the vote to his baby daughter. In a simplistic way it's a beautiful image, but as I look at it I force myself to remember the myriad of photos that came out of Fallujah on Google that were nowhere near as pleasant.

And so now we will wait and see what happens. As I wrote in response to the Art of The Blog, assuming it isn't a rigged game (a BIG if, there) and the result is a government of American-sponsored quislings, as was the case with Karzai in Afghanistan, this election could be a very good thing. Of course, the real challenge is going to be keeping it afloat in the face of the Iranians. I have always believed, as I wrote in a previous article, that if there was any positive reason for the US to be in Iraq, it is that once the Americans leave, we will almost certainly see an Iranian sponsored Shi'ite theocracy establish itself in Iraq within six months. Even assuming he stays in office, Allawi's fibreglass regime would be less than powerless to stop it...he can't even hold back domestic unrest, let alone an Iranian tidal wave...especially considering that Shi'ites are already the majority in Iraq.

And then of course there are the Kurds...Wildcards always keep things interesting. As a current headline on Antiwar.com says, the Kurds are planning on demanding an important post in the new Iraqi government. I find myself thinking however, that demanding by no means is the same as getting. I am predicting that rather tragically, when the dust settles the Shi'ites will announce to the other factions in the country that they are now firmly in charge...and that if said other factions aren't happy with that state of affairs, their two forms of remedy are exile or lead poisoning.

As far as America going to Iran is concerned, my money says that it will happen, but rather disastrously and only very briefly once a) Shrub and his keepers find out what an almighty hornets' nest they've stirred up by going there, and b) domestic America finally wakes up (I'm thinking around 2008 for this one, when Pluto finally goes into Capricorn) and forcibly removes the Palpatine wannabes in the White House (Rove, Cheney et. al.,) even if Shrub himself decides to go quietly.

Interesting times, these. Interesting times.

Defending Terrorism?

2005-01-23T17:55:00.000+11:00

Defending Terrorism?

>How about having an actual election in a few days (as opposed to those in which Saddam got >100% of the vote)?

Assuming that the elected government resulting from such an event is a) genuinely Iraqi, and not merely an American sponsored collective of previously exiled Iraqi quislings, such as the notorious Ahmed Chalabi, b) somehow manages to be at least reasonably inclusive/representative of Iraq's various ethnic groups, (a difficult prospect, I am willing to admit) and c) most especially achieves a genuinely representative result that is not rigged in the favour of any particular group, (and I don't just mean the Americans here either) then yes, I would agree with the idea that an Iraqi election would be an extremely positive event...and I would also agree with the concept that such an election, if successfully held, could be the beginning of a hopefully more stable Iraqi society.

The security situation is of course still precarious as well. I would be open to the idea that an election might have a substantially greater chance of success if the foreign muhajedeen were able to be expelled from the country. While I do not believe, as per some reports, that foreigners are entirely or even primarily responsible for violence inside the country, I do believe that they are greatly exacerbating a situation which would otherwise be sufficiently volatile on its own.

>BTW – Fallujah is not destroyed. The bomb factories, the weapons caches, etc. are now gone, as >are the terrorists who inhabited the city.

That is not entirely consistent with what I have read so far from other sources. However, I am willing to concede that it appears to be notoriously difficult to obtain truly objective information. One of the main problems with issues such as this (which from what I've read has been at least partially the reason for the creation of the blogosphere itself) is the inability to obtain information that is totally free of propaganda. I have tried to track down some more information on Fallujan bomb factories specifically, and uncovered this article by Max Boot in the LA Times, among others. Irrespective of whether the numbers themselves are correct, I will admit that I found this article to be rather heavily propagandist in tone, but not necessarily moreso than others I have read from either side of the partisan fence. Propaganda would seem to be an unavoidable side effect of war.

>The question, though, seems to be that, unless I am mistaken, you would find it more palatable
>if they were able to go to work without terrorists bombing them because they were living under
>a despot’s rule (as the terrorists wish).

No, not at all. What I am worried about is whether the Iraqis genuinely are going to obtain self-rule, and this is not something I feel is threatened purely by the occupation, either. I have often worried that when the occupation ends, an Iranian-sponsored Shi'ite theocracy would appear in Baghdad inside of six months later, especially seeing as the Shi'ites are a majority in Iraq. The problem is that Iraq seems to be staring down the barrel of essentially either becoming an American possession on the one hand (in order to keep the other countries at bay), or ending up with proxy rule from either Iran or possibly Syria/Saudi Arabia on the other. I want to see the occupation end, but I also want to see Iraq gain genuine self-rule...and none of the other countries around it seem to be willing from what I've seen to allow that to happen. They virtually all seem to have some kind of interest in it.

>And, do you, like a commenter I had a while back, want to claim that the U.S. troops actively
>try to kill civilians?

Realistically speaking, soldiers, regardless of nationality, kill people. Soldiers also in many cases, regardless of nationality, periodically rape, loot, and commit attrocities. Killing people (and engaging in barbaric and destructive activities generally) is what soldiers are trained and very often temperamentally inclined to do, particularly in volunteer armies. A minority become soldiers specifically because they enjoy killing people, and being a soldier gives them a certain amount of latitude to do so. This scenario also is not Star Trek, and the US army are not the Federation...They're human, and presumably also of a dubious educational level in many instances as well, again as soldiers usually are. They also (as is normal for humans of either gender, though males perhaps slightly moreso) presumably have copious amounts of testosterone and adrenaline present in their bloodstream...two hormones which are well known for encouraging violent acts. In addition, the generation currently serving in Iraq have to a degree been raised since birth on a steady cultural diet of nihilistic, gothic music and highly sociopathic, computer generated graphic violence, often accompanied with equally extreme demonological/dark pagan imagery. (Doom 1-3, Diablo 1-2, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel etc) I could accept that this material may not necessarily have increased their inclination towards violence, but at the very least it would have desensitised them to it.

Also, if there are any among the US troops who believe that Iraq was connected with 9/11, then given human nature it is not outside the realms of possibility that they would want to exact what they might see as revenge. Doubtless you will perhaps argue that such is entirely justified...however there are those of us who have doubts as to whether or not Iraq and 9/11 actually are related to each other, and we are generally even more doubtful that even assuming Sadaam was somehow connected with it, that this means that the average Iraqi was also.

Why don't we understand?

2005-01-23T01:37:00.000+11:00

The Art of the Blog: Terror Against Freedom

>When will the Left understand that the terrorists are fighting against freedom itself and not just
>the U.S.?

The reason why we cannot fully understand or accept this statement is because it is at least partially erroneous. It is based, at least to a degree, on an emotive oversimplification of the situation in Iraq.

(From Merriam-Webster's)
Main Entry: free·dom
Pronunciation: 'frE-d&m
Function: noun
1 : the quality or state of being free: as a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : INDEPENDENCE c : the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous <freedom from care> d : EASE, FACILITY freedom> e : the quality of being frank, open, or outspoken freedom> f : improper familiarity g : boldness of conception or execution h : unrestricted use freedom of their home>
(End quote)

Please give me concrete examples...even one would suffice...of how exactly the US military's presence in Iraq has increased the freedom of that country's population according to the definition above. I am not being sarcastic or making a rhetorical statement here, either...I would genuinely like to know, if someone can tell me, how it is that the invasion of Iraq has improved the standard of living for Iraq's population...if this has indeed happened, as many people seem to maintain. I also understand that a likely argument here would be the removal of Sadaam Hussein. If Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallujah, and several other attrocities had not occurred, I would be able to agree with the concept that Sadaam's removal has been a blessing for the country. However, it does Iraq no good to remove a murderous dictator if those who remove him themselves begin to behave just as badly as he did.

I would be as happy as the next person if freedom by this definition genuinely had been established in Iraq...however, from everything I've seen, the opposite is in fact true. Iraqi people do not in many cases have access to basic utilities...many of them are not free to leave their homes for fear of being bombed or shot, and so they are thus unable to engage in their livelihoods or perform tasks which for most other people are part of daily life. To me, this is not freedom. Freedom should include things like the freedom to work...the freedom to go outside one's home without fear of getting one's head blown off.

To answer another of your points however, that the "terrorists" are now attacking "Muslims"; There are at least two major groups currently engaged in geurilla/insurgent activity in Iraq at this time, as most of us know...Iraqi citizens themselves, who are engaged in an insurgency based on nationalistic motivations, and foreigners (who would be much closer to the definition of your use of the word "terrorists" I suspect) from Syria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, who are using the invasion of Iraq as an excuse/opportunity to further their own violent agendas, whatever they may be...they appear to have several motivations for being in Iraq, and as you say, assisting the genuine Iraqi national resistance (which I believe does exist) does not appear to be one of them for the most part.

If you could define more concretely what you mean by terrorists being "against freedom itself," we could talk about that...Indeed, I would like to. I can only assume that what you mean is that you believe that these people desire an anarchic, neofeudal/warlord oriented society such as the one currently existing in Afghanistan and Somalia, among other places. It is very possible that to a degree anyway, this could perhaps be true...and I would also agree with the concept that such a society would, at least in theory, be more conducive to the creation/breeding of armed individuals, who would then definitely have the *potential* to become terrorists. The problem with invading such countries however is that in order to pacify them, the occupying army is then forced to behave in ways similar to the dictator/terrorists themselves...as has happened in Iraq.

Aren't Natural Disasters Bad Enough?

2005-01-22T09:40:00.000+11:00

W and Dostoevsky- by Justin Raimondo

Given the degree of environmental upheaval that has been predicted for the period between now and 2012, I find myself thinking that a President wanting to play Darth Vader is the very last thing the world needs at the moment. Although I'm assuming it wouldn't have been, I would have considered it supremely appropriate for the Imperial March to accompany Bush's steps up to the podium to deliver the address.

The deeply tragic irony of course is that although the kneejerk response of many who are supposedly right wing would be to label me a Communist, (I'm actually not, as even this profile doesn't entirely fit me...I'm more moderate than what it describes, for the most part) the rhetoric of Bush's speech had Bolshevik echoes as Justin claims, which is something that I find frankly terrifying. Communism was no answer...It was a murderous mistake, as was extreme fascism. Yes, maybe I veer slightly towards what I've heard referred to as the left...but from everything I've seen, that is only because I care about people and because I genuinely want to apply the Golden Rule with regards to my own behaviour...that means I try not to have any double standards. Ergo, the reason why I don't believe in war/killing people is because I know how much I myself don't want to be killed. I also believe that violence is the easy thing to do...It is so much easier to destroy than it is to create...to take life rather than to give or sustain it.

The true political answer in my mind though can only be moderation...because if you go too far to an extreme in either direction, it causes people to die in enormous numbers. There has to be a balance. The other thing about balance is that it is a scenario in which everyone else's political opinion, regardless of whether you agree with them or not, can survive. I might not agree with some of the things I've seen here, but I would never advocate taking away the right of Glenn Reynolds or anyone else for that matter to express their opinion...Again, mainly because I know how much I want and need to be able to express mine. The other thing is, diversity of opinion is something we need if we're going to figure out better solutions to problems...if everyone thinks the same way, everyone is also going to adopt the flaws present in that particular line of thinking...because no human ideology is or can be perfect.

Bush's supporters might wonder why I think he is so terrible, but despite the number of times Bush used the words liberty and freedom in his speech, Iraq has given us ample demonstrations of how in reality Bush's administration applies those principles. The primary thing Iraq's population stands any chance of being liberated from is their lives...and the same goes for the rest of the Middle East from what I've been seeing.

I just find myself hoping that given everything we're likely going to experience in the next seven years, that humanity truly can make it. I think we can survive...but I also think it's going to get pretty rough before it gets better.

Oh, my aching head

2005-01-17T17:36:00.000+11:00

I went to my father's place for a barbecue on Saturday night and drank far too much alcohol. I'm not sure whether it's age or what but for some reason it's taking me longer to recover than ever before...My head is still aching fairly severely.

I'm probably going to have to try and lay off it more or less completely...I don't think I partake any more than the usual once-per-quarter binge that most people seem to engage in these days, but even that seems to be too much for me now. I guess I'm getting too old. ;)

Moving in

2005-01-14T21:17:00.000+11:00

I've moved over here from LiveJournal. Although the setup here looks rather more professional generally, the main reason why I've moved is because I wanted TrackBack support. Although I don't think Blogger has TrackBack natively, there's an add-on thing which I created a membership for a week or so ago...hallogen or something I think it's called.

Anyway, I'll be writing commentary on various things here, rather than simply replying to posts on Slashdot as I had been earlier. I also like commenting on politics.

A few other things I might as well get out of the way, so that those who aren't going to like my views anyway can have advance warning. I like to be courteous and considerate where I can. ;-)

I've been rated on various political spectrum sites as being a Libertarian Socialist...My score results usually seem to put me in a fairly similar area to Gandhi in particular ideologically...although I'm not sure how accurate that is because I certainly don't believe in pacifism in *all* instances...I generally only think conflict should be engaged in after a LOT of deliberation, though. But I'm definitely not the being of light he was (as you can probably already tell *grin*) and I don't actually want to be either, to be honest...I think I'd find it rather boring. I also consider myself well and truly a member of what the neoconservative movement has called the "reality based community." Sorry, guys. ;-)

I'm also not sure how much of the *Socialist* part of the LS term really applies to me either. I'd definitely describe myself as anti-authoritarian...enthusiastically so...but I don't really think of myself as enormously left wing. Then again, I've noticed that if you don't agree these days with the idea that corporations should be able to rape and pillage whenever/wherever they please, and to hell with the consequences, you're immediately labelled a foaming-at-the-mouth Marxist. So I guess I can't really win on that score.

The Kiersey test identified me as an INTP (Inventor). I'm also rated as an EAS (Explorer) by Richard Bartle's MMORPG test. And (for good measure, so that anyone who disagrees with my posts has some really juicy ammunition with which to make fun of me) my average IQ test score is generally around 150. Astrologically speaking (Western tropical, non-sidereal system) I'm a solar Aquarian in the 11th house with Moon in Capricorn in the 10th house, Venus/Chiron/AC in Aries, and north node in Libra in the 7th house. I might post a jpg of my chart from Astrodienst at some point if anyone's interested.

These factoids aren't necessarily meant as brags...the Lib Socialist datum and astrological stuff definitely isn't. It's more to help potential readers sketch out a mental image of who I am/where I'm coming from.

I was going to list in bullet form a more brief description of my interests so you'd know EXACTLY what to expect, but then I thought, where's the fun in that? It'll be far more gratifying for you to get drawn in slowly (hopefully) with less idea of what to anticipate. *grin* Besides which, what I'm interested in now isn't necessarily what I'm going to STAY interested in in the future.

I'm really interested in getting the Blog This button working for my browser, although I use Firefox so unfortunately I have no idea whether it'll work for me. Internet Exploiter still seems to be the universal standard these days for some inexplicable reason. The endlessly long arm of Darth Bill can be held responsible for that, I suppose. ;-)

Anywayz, I'm off to find out about that and get Trackback working. I really want Trackback...After all, what on earth is the point of verbally abusing someone unless you can then make them aware of it? ;-)

the lil lioness =^.^=

2005-01-14T20:58:00.000+11:00

the lil lioness =^.^=

Interesting...The first Aussie blog I've seen yet. It feels strangely very jarring whenever I run into anything Australian online most of the time...because I realise that although I live in Australia physically, I'm not really there mentally/psychologically at all, (I spend most of my time online, and generally communicate with people from other places) and have not been for a long time. So there can be a very strange disconnect.

Yahoo! News - Bush Regrets Language That Hurt U.S. Diplomacy

2005-01-14T19:25:00.000+11:00

Yahoo! News - Bush Regrets Language That Hurt U.S. Diplomacy

It's times like these when I truly find myself wondering exactly what it is that Bush's advocates and supporters see in the man. The number of diplomatic and oratorical gaffes and blunders he has made truly boggle the mind. Credit where it is due though, I suppose...Even one of his halting, supremely linguistically challenged apologies is better than none at all, if only marginally.

I find myself feeling the same kind of grim fascination with regards to the Bush administration's reputation these days as possibly was felt by those witnessing the final moments of the sinking of the Titanic. You never know where the next explosion is going to come from, or which piece of wreckage is going to be the next to fall off the larger, disintegrating structure.

...in the outer...: is the West morally superior?

2005-01-14T18:35:00.000+11:00

...in the outer...: Your take

Short answer: No.

Long(er) answer: No, and the fact that it thinks it is is probably in itself one of the main reasons why it isn't. But you mentioned the Judeo/Christian element in the question as well. That is an important element. I've attended a number of churches over the years, but the last one I attended was a local Pentecostal church. I observed there a trend which I'd seen in other churches as well, although probably not to as marked a degree as at this particular church. The observed phenomenon was a large percentage of the congregation being afflicted with varying degrees of mental/emotional instability...hysteria and symptoms associated with panic/anxiety disorders were probably the most common. The other thing was, the people in question knew they had problems...but they simply believed that if they continued to pray and engage in the activities of the church, they would eventually recover. The problem is that they did not, and when I suggested they seek secular therapy (simply because what they were currently doing obviously wasn't working) I began to be seen by some of them as evil.

The bottom line is, I believe Christianity as it has been traditionally observed and practiced, has been found to both be rather oblivious concerning certain aspects of human nature, and therefore incapable of dealing with certain aspects of contemporary human life. Homosexuality is probably the greatest single example of what I'm talking about here. Although there are a lot of people who probably still don't advocate it for their own reasons, the fact is that quite a large number of people want and are going to be gay, irrespective of heterosexual desires/opinions. The original Christian answer to this would apparently simply be to kill the people in question. Given the number of people currently on the planet who fall into the homosexual category, I hardly think that is a humane or civilised response, even coming from people who may still oppose homosexuality as a concept. This is only one example however...There are many others which illustrate issues that I believe Christianity in a formalised sense has become theologically ill-equipped to deal with.

I think it is very important to emphasise here that this is in no way a statement about Jesus Christ as an individual at all...Rather, the disenchantment that I have experienced in the last few years has been a product almost entirely of the extraneous theological framework which has grown up *around* Christ in the two thousand years since his departure. Christianity as a complete religion has adopted and integrated a lot of other elements over the years...Paganism has almost always been a tremendous influence on Catholicism, as one example. Southern Baptists and various other hardcore Evangelicals should be aware of that. For anyone who is interested, there is a fantastic site here which talks about the possible pagan origins of the concept of Hell in particular, and notes the similarities to the Greco-Roman depiction of Hades/Tartarus. This would also tend to bear out my observation that the more ardent/fanatical an Evangelical or Pentecostal Christian is, the less likely they are to know about these kinds of things...Precisely because they are taught that independent research and thinking is the height of evil. I dismiss this however as the worst form of spiritual and intellectual cowardice. The very first criteria of any religion worth preserving in my mind is its ability to withstand critical analysis. Another question I think Evangelicals would do very well to ask themselves is, "What is my internal emotional state?" The reason why I mention this is because although the apostle Paul writes about one of the fruits of the Spirit being love and soundness of mind, what I experienced at church myself was customarily almost exactly the opposite. The usual stance, as Karen Horst Cobb puts it, was "so much to fight, so much to destroy." It's normal and entirely appropriate for people with some sort of code of ethics and conscience to have certain things that they are opposed to the idea of...but I tend to think that such can also be taken to a deeply ugly extreme...Especially if you're trying to validate the concept in your own mind that you're a member of some kind of supposed last bastion of human morality.

I know I am a sinner. I know like everyone else, I screw up on a fairly frequent basis. However, I also know that it is completely self-defeating and worthless to base my entire life around a preoccupation with that fact. The other thing Evangelicals need to have a good hard look at is...if we were originally sinners, and Christ dying/being ressurected removed our sin, then the concept of it is not something we should have to continue to be obsessed with. This is just another of their countless logical inconsistencies...but then again, it's probably worth remembering that in reality their belief system exists within a complete vacuum as far as logic is concerned, anyway.

Moving away from Christianity, another point I could make about the inferiority of contemporary Western society is, among other things, it's overwhelming reliance on oil. The nihilist in me thinks it's going to be extremely amusing to watch everyone start running around like chickens with their heads cut off once peak oil hits. The infuriating thing about this is, given hydrogen's availability, the only real reason why society is still dependent on oil is the amount of money certain people would stand to cease making if we weren't.

Yet another argument that could be made against the moral superiority of Western society is the existence of wonderful places like this, and other such cities where seemingly almost the entire local economy is based on pornography and prostitution. Given my recent critique of Christianity, people are probably going to wonder why I would bring this up. My answer is that I don't like extremism on either side of the fence. I don't believe in damage being done to human beings in any form, whether it's Christian psychological/spiritual abuse of the likes of this on the one hand, or something closer to the Vegas kind on the other. The story pointed to by that last link is fictional, but I believe it does a good job of portraying at least one type of underlying mindset that accompanies pornography.

So...Corrupt, damaging, filthy, exploitative, demoralising, and inefficient...is Western society morally superior? Hell no.

"Gee Brain - What are we going to do tomorrow night?"

2005-01-14T15:18:00.000+11:00

MartiniPundit

I might not agree with much else of what I've seen on this site, but this post expresses a sentiment I *can* relate to. Mind you, I suspect my own reasons for considering the UN irrelevant differ considerably from those of the Martinipundit. I consider the UN to be not much more than just another attempt by just another group (the Third World, in this case) to feather its own nest and seek world domination...whereas I suspect the Martinipundit's dislike of the UN comes primarily from the fact that it is not under the control of his beloved Genghis Bush, and is therefore not serving Bush's own quest for the aforementioned world domination. And before anyone accuses me of being a racist because of the above possibly perjoritive use of the term "Third World," I will emphatically state that I am not. Rather I am someone who observes that the desire to take over the world appears to be a universal human tendency, regardless of the ethnicity or point of origin of the person/s involved. So saying there's a UN conspiracy to take over the world is not in itself racist...because as I said, from what I've seen *everyone* wants to. Although I will say I for one do not. A substantially large amount of money would be nice, yes...but rulership of the planet would entail a beaurecratic nightmare on a scale I can barely begin to imagine...and I'm far too lazy to have any desire whatsoever for that sort of thing.

The New York Times > Washington > Search for Illicit Weapons in Iraq Ends

2005-01-14T03:24:00.000+11:00

The New York Times > Washington > Search for Illicit Weapons in Iraq Ends

I find myself wondering, now that it would appear that my own and many other people's original belief that there never were WMD in Iraq to begin with has been confirmed, how the advocates of the current war will respond. Best guess is they'll just shrug it off...presumably because it's something they don't really have an answer for.