Friday, April 09, 2004
:: I hope this ridiculous new Alamo movie gets people talking about how the defenders of the Alamo were fighting for the right to own slaves:
"All free white persons who emigrate to the republic...shall be entitled to all the privileges of citizenship.'
"All persons of color who were slaves for life previous to their emigration to Texas, and who are now held in bondage, shall remain in the like state of servitude... Congress (of Texas) shall pass no laws to prohibit emigrants from the United State of America from bringing their slaves into the Republic with them...nor shall Congress have the power to emancipate slaves; nor shall any slaveholder be allowed to emancipate his or her slave or slaves...no free person of African descent either in whole or in part shall be permitted to reside permanently in the Republic without the consent of Congress."
"All persons, (African, the descendants of Africans and Indians excepted,) who were residing in Texas on the day of the Declaration of Independence shall be considered citizens of the Republic and entitled to all the privileges of such."
Funny how little's changed in Texas since then, what what?
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:: Hiatus Well, between server issues and general business surrounding Holy Week, I'll be taking a minor hiatus from blogging until further notice.
Oh, well, I may blog lil' tidbits, but no Thomas or longwinded treatises for a while. FYI.
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Thursday, April 08, 2004
:: Sigh. Yet another story that would be hilarious if it wasn't so frickin' audaciously scary:
The Observer has obtained a remarkable email sent to the press secretaries of all Republican congressmen advising them what to say when questioned on the environment in the run-up to November's election. The advice: tell them everything's rosy.
It tells them how global warming has not been proved, air quality is 'getting better', the world's forests are 'spreading, not deadening', oil reserves are 'increasing, not decreasing', and the 'world's water is cleaner and reaching more people'.
"And cotton candy grows on the trees, and magic buttercups are free for everyone, and happy fuzzy bunnies love the children!" Feh.
::
:: Rice TEST-ifies Eh, the whole thing is a farce, in my opinion. I could give two shits about Rice's involvement pre or post 9-11. I want to know what happened *on that day*. Why did chimpy stay in that classroom reading books? Why weren't fighter jets scrambled like they were supposed to have been? How did a plane crash into the pentagon so easily after they *already knew* the other planes were crashed by terrorists? Why did it fit so neatly in with PNAC's "another pearl harbor" statement? how could atta's passport have been found a few blocks from the wreckage, fully intact, mere hours after the crashes? WTF?
Nobody can stop or predict every terrorist attack, but when one happens, there are ways to lessen the blow. This is what failed us on 9-11, not anyone's prognosticatory powers. Until we get these answers, it may as well have been a conspiracy of shapeshifting reptiles directed by the evil Queen of England.
The thing that REALLY pisses me off about rice's testimony is that after all the hemming and hawwing about getting her to testify, the bushies agreed, but only if the commission agreed to see chimpy and cheney *together*, behind closed doors. If anything, it smells like an elaborately planned ruse to me, designed to keep those responsible out of the spotlight. And if that sounds too conspiratorial, remember what's at stake for these assholes if the worst case scenarios hold true. Oh, I don't think they're *too* concerned about doing time, but can you imagine how terrifying it must be for Rice, Cheney, Bush et al to consider the public humiliation and downright shame? They're quaking in their boots because their cardboard reality might come apart at the seams, revealing them as the frail, spineless, brainwashed, spindle-fingered, pathetic tools they really are.
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Tuesday, April 06, 2004
:: Hooray! We're not the only nation of pinheads!
Real people that some believe never existed
Ethelred the Unready King of England 978 to 1016 - 63 per cent
William Wallace 13th-century Scottish hero - 42 per cent
Benjamin Disraeli Prime minister and founder of the modern Tory party - 40 per cent
Genghis Khan, Mongol conqueror - 38 per cent
Benito Mussolini, Fascist dictator, 33 per cent
Adolf Hitler - 11 per cent
Winston Churchill - 9 per cent
Real events some people believe never took place
Battle of the Bulge 52 per cent
Battle of Little Big Horn Scene of Custer's last stand - 48 per cent
Hundred Years' War 44 per cent
Cold War - 32 per cent
Battle of Hastings, 15 per cent
Fictional characters who we believe were real
King Arthur , mythical monarch of the Round Table - 57 per cent
Robin Hood - 27 per cent
Conan the Barbarian - 5 per cent
Richard Sharpe , fictional cad and warrior - 3 per cent
Edmund Blackadder - 1 per cent
Xena Warrior Princess - 1 per cent
Fictional events that we believe did take place
War of the Worlds , Martian invasion - 6 per cent
Battle of Helms Deep , Rings Trilogy - The Two Towers - 3 per cent
Battle of Endor , The Return of the Jedi - 2 per cent
Planet of the Apes , the apes rule Earth - 1 per cent
Battlestar Galactica , the defeat of humanity by cyborgs - 1 per cent
::
:: In the meantime, you can download Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture" here . . . for free, of course. From the homepage:
Lawrence Lessig could be called a cultural environmentalist. One of America’s most original and influential public intellectuals, his focus is the social dimension of creativity: how creative work builds on the past and how society encourages or inhibits that building with laws and technologies. In his two previous books, CODE and THE FUTURE OF IDEAS, Lessig concentrated on the destruction of much of the original promise of the Internet. Now, in FREE CULTURE, he widens his focus to consider the diminishment of the larger public domain of ideas. In this powerful wake-up call he shows how short-sighted interests blind to the long-term damage they’re inflicting are poisoning the ecosystem that fosters innovation.
All creative works—books, movies, records, software, and so on—are a compromise between what can be imagined and what is possible—technologically and legally. For more than two hundred years, laws in America have sought a balance between rewarding creativity and allowing the borrowing from which new creativity springs. The original term of copyright set by the Constitution in 1787 was seventeen years. Now it is closer to two hundred. Thomas Jefferson considered protecting the public against overly long monopolies on creative works an essential government role. What did he know that we’ve forgotten?
Lawrence Lessig shows us that while new technologies always lead to new laws, never before have the big cultural monopolists used the fear created by new technologies, specifically the Internet, to shrink the public domain of ideas, even as the same corporations use the same technologies to control more and more what we can and can’t do with culture. As more and more culture becomes digitized, more and more becomes controllable, even as laws are being toughened at the behest of the big media groups. What’s at stake is our freedom—freedom to create, freedom to build, and ultimately, freedom to imagine.
(Tip o' the keyboard to Paul)
::
:: Server issues means blogging may be intermittent for a while. At least it's not Blogger's fault this time . . . .
::
Monday, April 05, 2004
:: In the comments to the post on Rwanda, JimmyT of The Joint says:
Noticed your post about Rwanda today. I've decided to darken my blog . . . . the day the genocide started ten years ago, as a show of support and mourning for the people of Rwanda. Ten years on, and no high level diplomats have felt the necessity to visit the country for their memorial ceremonies.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID;=4738424
Once again, in a way, the world is turning it's back on this small country.
I have no other way to spread this idea, other than a few shot-in-the-dark emails. If you like the idea, replace your main page with html that displays a black frame, and maybe a short explanation of why your page is dark, maybe a link to a page explaining the history of the genocide.
http://www.yale.edu/gsp/rwanda/
If you can't do that, maybe just mention the anniversary. And spread the word. It's a small gesture, but it would be nice and right for the blogsphere to make a statement.
In a post on his blog, he mentions that Wednesday is the day he'll be blacking out his weblog. We'll be doing the same.
::
Friday, April 02, 2004
:: Can you figure out how to beat the FLASH MIND READER?
I'm pretty sure I've figured out how it works. . . .
::
:: Rwanda and the Nature of Evil Wednesday, April 7 marks the Tenth Anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. For those of you who missed it last Thursday, Frontline's "Ghosts of Rwanda," a two hour documentary about the Rwandan genocide, should be required viewing for anyone concerned about the root of evil and the intricacies of interventionist foreign policy. Watching bureaucrats in the State Department and the United Nations stand around arguing over the "precise legal definition of genocide" while 800,000 people were massacred-- it was easily one of the most intense, moving television experiences I've ever had. Now, I'm a pacifist by nature, but, as my friend Beth said, "a few thousand UN Troops armed with squirt-guns would have had a significant effect."
The atrocity of the world's willingness to look the other way during the genocide was a disgusting tossed salad of egoism, latent racism, and nationalism that made one want to cringe. When Clinton said, essentially, that we wouldn't intervene because it wasn't in our "interests" to do so, you wanted to reach into the screen and grab him by the lapels and shake him so hard that his lil' red nose would just pop right off. When one of the survivors of a massacre described how, mutilated by machetes, she had to hide under a pile of corpses for 43 days while dogs ate the remains of the bodies, you wanted to curl up into a ball and hide under the couch cushion out of shame for humanity.
Although I don't know that I could sit through it again, I appreciated the show for providing some disturbing insight into the nature of evil. I maintain, or try to, that an act of evil is an act which devalues the individual through objectification. When one no longer views another individual as a free, valuable, self-contained being, but instead as just a thing to be dealt with, one commits an evil act. One of the U.N. officials who was stationed in Rwanda at the time described this evil, with tears in his eyes, by informing us that, in order to assuage their guilty consciences, the killers would have to continue killing. In other words, killing one individual made them feel guilt. However, if they stopped killing, that guilt would eat them up because it was due to a unique experience. They had to continue killing, to "make it a part of them" through objectification, turning it into a routine process, in order to face the massacres they committed every day.
Why does this evil exist? It's quite obviously a question everyone struggles with, and I believe it's because it's self-perpetuating; our inability, as individuals, to experience that which others experience allows us to commit evil acts. Sure, it's all well and good to say "genocide is evil," or "rape is evil," or "racism is evil," but can one draw lines? What about bureaucrats who stood by dickering over semantics and policies while hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered? Didn't they, indeed, objectify those individuals who were being massacred, refusing to identify with them for egoistic or nationalistic reasons? Can anyone deny that the following notes from the show's timeline describe evil in action?
April 28: The press ask State Department spokeswoman Christine Shelly whether genocide is happening. Her response carefully tries to avoid the word: "we have to undertake a very careful study before we can make a final kind of determination."
Day 21-- Estimated Death Toll: 168,000
May 1: A Defense Department discussion paper, prepared for a meeting of officials having day-to-day responsibility on the crisis, is filled with cautions about the U.S. becoming committed to taking action. The word genocide is a concern. "Be careful. Legal at State was worried about this yesterday -- Genocide finding could commit [the U.S.] to actually 'do something.'"
Day 25 -- Estimated Death Toll: 200,000
Of course, this all underlines a major and unfortunate quality of evil: it forces us to deny the individuality and humanity of those who commit evil acts. In other words, although it may be a "lesser" evil, it is no less evil to claim that certain people were evil incarnate. By writing this essay, I am committing an evil act-- it's the nature of the beast. I am passing a subjective judgement on those involved, even though I wasn't there, I'm ignorant of the vast majority of the information surrounding the situation. I am objectifying those involved because it's my only option, trying my hardest not to devalue those people in the process.
Of course, I don't think that anyone at all is inherently, essentially evil. To me, evil isn't a noun, it's a verb. It's something that is done, be it thinking, or killing, or fleecing, or ignorning. I believe that the potential exists in each one of us for infinite acts of evil, or infinite acts of goodness, but to claim that someone is "inherently" evil is to fall into the same logical traps that fundamentalists and predeterminists fall into-- attributing evil to the "other," some externality.
General Romeo Dallaire, The U.N. General who was in Rwanda at the time, was a tragic hero, a helpless character, who did everything in his power to help as many people as possible. In a particularly memorable sequence, he described meeting with the leaders of the militias who were perpetrating the genocide, "bargaining with the Devil," he called it. He described how he walked into the room and, as he shook hands with the various militiamen, something snapped in him, and he no longer saw them as "human." They had literally changed, he said, into some kind of nonhuman entities. In an interview with one of the militiamen, the fellow said, essentially, that the Devil had possessed them, that as they walked through a church with machetes, slaughtering thousands of people, they were possessed by a palpable evil presence, Satan himself.
Tragically, I see a problem in the above examples (and here I commit an evil act once again, as I have no way of sharing these individuals' experiences): evil isn't "non-human," or an externality. Rather, it's all too human. It's something humans do to one another. In a masterful post about the recent atrocious lynchings of American mercenaries in Fallujah, Billmon reminds us of this fact by posting comments from some right-wing individuals who believe that those acts were so "evil" that we should respond by committing genocide. He links to a thread in which we find the following comments (no link provided-- no free traffic for these folks. Emphasis mine.):
We can't accept this behavior without giving an example.
Being inert will multiply the number of our enemies and of the appeasers.
Bomb the whole neighborhood, destroy every single house in a two miles range. These are really animals.
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Time to stop our fair and balanced treatment of these animals.
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Thousands crucified sounds about right. These people only seem to respect power and strength. They also have a perverse fascination with death and mutilation. Let's give them a spectacle they will soon not forget.
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the people of Fallujah deserve the treatment that Nazi Germany showed villages of resistance fighters
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FUCKING ANIMALS!
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Sacrifice our souls? Is that really one of thier standards chats when behaving like animals? How ironic.
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These animals are in the street because the Iraqis have allowed anarchy to reign and are annihiliating htier (sic) better angels.
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"Civilians" be damned, that crowd needed a good strafing -- or cluster-bombing. *Somehow* we need to clampdown on these animals.
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No, the worst thing we could do is let these animals use our troops for target practice and death cult blood rituals.
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To call them animals is demeaning (to the animals - since they would never do this) and it can't begin to capture the savagery of these things.
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It is time to eradicate the town of Fallujah from the face of the earth---Make these animals homeless!
Again and again and again, these people are described as animals. Now, of course what the individuals in Fallujah did was utterly revolting and atrocious, and yes, evil, and the perpetrators should come to some kind of justice (*legal* justice). However, when, in the comments, the humans who committed these crimes are described as "animals," they are devlaued as individuals, which automatically opens the door for proclamations like the following:
My feeling is that we can never win the war against militant fundamentalist islam by any action we take in the middle east short of genocide.
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Fucking savages! Genocide...G-d forgive me for saying so, but genocide is the only solution to the "Islamic Problem" at this juncture.
No thought is given as to *why* the mob in Fallujah acted as they did. No consideration is given for the fact that they are living under an occupation, after having suffered under a brutal dictator. No mention is made that this is *war*, and, as hideous and awful as the attacks were, this kind of thing happens in war-- what did you expect? Just as with the killers who had to kill more to assuage their guilt, evil doesn't allow for self-examination, because if one examined one's self, one might identify that evil and have to face one's own immorality.
This is one of many examples of evil feeding on itself through the dehumanization of the individual. There is a very, very fine line between a warblogger calling for the extermination of an Iraqi city, and a Rwandan Hutu calling for the extermination of an entire ethnicity. The logic both parties use to arrive at their conclusions is identical: I do not like X. Therefore X is not human. Therefore it is ethically and morally acceptable, and personally satisfying, to eliminate X, as X is not as valuable as me.
Of course, it seems to me that in order to defeat evil, all one has to do is follow a simple dictum: BE COMPASSIONATE AT ALL COSTS! For all of the hideous terror, "Ghosts of Rwanda" was punctuated by acts of incredible heroism and courageousness. The Embassy worker who saved hundreds of Tutsis by making them "Americans for a day," the Red Cross worker who grabbed the Hutu leader by his lapels and told him "You are going to lose this war," the Senegalese U.N. soldier who ran a sort of "underground railroad" against the orders of his superiors, the Adventist missionary who stayed after all other Americans left and saved an orphanage by confronting the orchestrator of the genocide, the U.N. workers who sat, weaponless and sleepless, outside of a church full of refugees and kept the killers at bay with their very presences, even General Daillaire, who just wanted to do something, anything to save lives-- these individuals understood compassion. None of them had to kill anyone to receive some sense of "justice"-- their concerns weren't for themselves, for a sense of heroism or nationalism or egoism. They honestly, brutally felt for the victims and did everything possible to save them, acting at great risk to their own well-being time and time again. Compassion is what makes a hero, and, as objectification through denial of the worth of others is at the root of evil, so placing supreme value, even greater value on others is at the root of all that is good.
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Thursday, April 01, 2004
:: This is really cool! This guy wants to start the Apocalypse and summon the Messiah by projecting a holographic Temple over the Dome of the Rock. It's a fascinating article.
I disagree with his theology/reasoning, but I think he should give it the old college try.
::
:: Gospel of Thomas 74
Scholastic Translation:
74. He said, "Lord, there are many around the drinking trough, but there is nothing in the well."
FP Translation:
74 He said, "Lord, there are many around the fountain, but there is nothing in the well."
Brother Tom:
74. He said, "Lord, plenty of people are gathering around the fountain, but the well is dry."
COMMENTARY: Is Jesus addressing the Lord? Or, is this one of the disciples addressing Jesus? Who knows? It doesn't change the meaning too much either way, seems to me. In Gnostic code, drinking something is the equivalent of learning about the Way (thus, in Saying 13, Thomas becomes "drunk" on Jesus' teachings). Whomever the speaker, his words seem to indicate that many people are thirsty for the truth, but the truth cannot be found.
Regular readers know by now that I like to try to expand upon the Sayings with a bit of historical context. Seems to me we can't *really* understand Jesus's Sayings without certain cultural nuances that would be obvious to the listener, but have basically been obliterated by time. Now, when we hear "well," we picture a jack-n-jill type stone well with a wooden bucket and crank. Historically, however, the Saying actually concerns cisterns. We know that Jesus was a master of metaphor, often choosing everyday objects to explain exceptionally profound concepts.
While doing a bit of research for this Saying, I stumbled across a page which talks a bit about cisterns in Israel (emphasis mine):
Furthermore, cisterns were dug by hand out of solid rock and were plastered so they would hold water. They needed constant care because the plaster tended to fall off, which allowed the precious water to leak out. When a cistern failed to hold water, it created a desperate situation for the people who depended on it.
So, we can expand upon this Saying a bit. Why would a cistern be empty? It's possible that it hadn't rained, but if that was the case, then why would people gather around the cistern? Seems to me it's more a matter of a cistern, in this case the world, that's fallen into disrepair or neglect due to its imperfection, which means that the knowledge of the Way seeped out of it.
Note also that a dry cistern meant for a "desperate" situation. The speaker, be he Jesus or a disciple, is literally pleading for the desperate crowd around the well. Truly, as some of us know all too well, seeking for Truth in this deranged universe is certainly a desperate act. The speaker pleads on our behalf, asking the God, or the Logos residing in Jesus, to provide Truth for the thirsty crowd.
::
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
:: GAAAARRRHG!!! What kind of FUCKED UP value system are we living in, people??!!?? I can't FUCKING believe this crap:
But Costco's kind-hearted philosophy toward its 100,000 cashiers, shelf-stockers and other workers is drawing criticism from Wall Street. Some analysts and investors contend that the Issaquah, Wash., warehouse-club operator actually is too good to employees, with Costco shareholders suffering as a result.
So it's a BAD IDEA to treat your workers FAIRLY if it costs the SHAREHOLDERS???
I mean, WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING HERE? Our society is SICK! Doesn't ANYONE see this article as UTTERLY REVOLTING? GAH!
You know what? FUCK YOU, WALL STREET. FUCK YOU and your insistence that making money is more important than allowing people access to medical care and fair wages. God's GREEN Earth, this is the kind of thing that actually makes me HOPE there's a Hell, because apparently some people could USE a few THOUSAND years of MISERABLE TORTURE! FUCK you million-dollar assholes who sit in comfortable, air-conditioned offices playing with peoples' lives as though those lives were just more NUMBERS IN A COLUMN, or oranges waiting to be juiced. Fuck you and the EVIL GODS you serve. You lick the filth off of the fingers of DARK and BRUTAL masters, and your chains may be golden, but they're still CHAINS.
Bleh. Okay, outrage still present, but insane rant over. . . .
What do you think, a little too odd and maniacal? I was kind of going for the "crazed street preacher" feel. Original link via Unknown News.
::
:: Wait a second . . . First we have this, from Sunday:
The FBI warned Texas oil companies this week that refineries and pipelines might be targeted for attack sometime before the November elections.
The warning was about a hazy threat from overseas that Houston-based FBI spokesman Bob Doguim called "unconfirmed and uncorroborated."
An e-mail warning sent Tuesday to the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association said, "It is alleged that this will purportedly occur near Election Day."
While refiners have been alerted to possible attacks before, NPRA security director Maurice McBride said, this one was different because it was specific to Texas and to a time frame.
Today there's this:
BP Plc, the third-biggest U.S. oil refiner, said a unit at its oil refinery and chemical plant in Texas City was on fire following an explosion.
Fire crews are working to put out the blaze, which has been downgraded to a ``a lower level of emergency,'' Annie Smith, BP's manager of public affairs for the Gulf Coast region in Texas, said by telephone. No injuries have been reported.
Smith said she didn't know what caused the fire. ``We don't have any awareness of outside'' involvement in the explosion, she said.
It's either an incredible coincidence, or the two items are connected. Which do you think it was? Either way, shouldn't this get a little more attention?
::
:: Operation Desert Badger? Okay, call me whatever you'd like ("you so CRAY-zee!"), but I'm in the camp that BushCo, if not complicit in the events of 9-11, were at the very least aware that something major was scheduled to happen that day. I think they knew specifics.
Why? Stuff like this: Operation Desert Badger.
::
:: Taxi Cab Philosophy So I get into the cab this morning, and my driver looks almost identical to character actor Abe Vigoda, except for a rounder chin. He wore a traditional "cabbie's hat," and, no sooner had I clicked my seatbelt closed and told the guy I was headed to work than be began an absolutely amazing drone/rant about the state of life in the United States. His voice sounded as deep as Andre the Giant's, but far more Eastern European and far more monotonous, almost a steady drone with lack of any emotion other than existential outrage.
I've attempted to recreate the feel of his rant below. If I'd had a tape recorder or notepad, my transcription would be better, but I'm giving it a go from memory, which is still relatively fresh. Also, if you want realism, interject an "okay," "right," "oh, I agree," from me on occassion, which I employed to keep him talking. Fascinating!
CABDRIVER: Peh, work. All these motherfuckers who talk about a bad economy, what the fuck do they know because the economy never changes. It's always about everyone working for the fucking top one percent. Free? You call us free, and don't get me wrong, this isn't a bad country, but nobody's free here. You work your whole life, you don't have a house or car, you want a house or car and you have to make payments, psheh, how is that free? Even slaves, they worked, they had shelter and food. Shelter and food, the essentials, if we are to be free, they must be free. You work your whole life for that fucking one percent, it doesn't matter what political party, because they just keep the economy the same, everything costs right above where you are, and you make forty thousand dollars a year? Your house will cost 300,000 dollars. You make fifty? It will be 400,000. It doesn't matter because this is how the one percent keeps their wealth, and this is how they manifest themselves here. Motherfuckers bring you up to think hey, what is freedom? Freedom is money and sex, so you go out, you go on a Friday night and you get yoiur pussy, and then the two of you are supposed to buy a house and work the rest of your lives for the top one percent, and then retire when you're too old to do anything and then pfft! What is freedom? Freedom is when you can fucking leave and live your own life, but these motherfuckers and they're all the same just do the same goddamned thing for eight years at a time. You can't leave if you're paying for a house, for a car, for some asshole's giant yacht. People say Clinton was so great, but he fucking was the same, and even if he's great, what happens after eight years and things change. What we need is, I don't wanna say an evil person, but like a good kind of dictator, you know! [Laugh.] No, I just mean they say we're a free democracy, but we're not free, and we're not a democracy, and I've lived here since 1960, which is when it all started.
Anyhow, he went on like that for a while. It was excellent. And, he's absolutely right.
::
