Mitt Romney: Pure Class

Canadian Identity

The only time I've ever heard Canadian identity be described is in terms of contrast with the United States. Canadians have always been described as "exactly like Americans except for X, Y, and Z." The X, Y, and Z are the only place you will find anything approximating "Canadian culture."

The problem with Iran having nuclear weapons is that one cannot be sure that Iran is a rational actor. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction depends on all parties involved being rationally self-interested.

This Is Happening with Disturbing Regularity

Why don't all anti-gay Republicans just come out of the closet now and save us all the trouble? We all know they're overcompensating. Every last one of them. Here's more proof.

This one's pretty juicey, too. This guy is a senator from Idaho who voted in favor of cloture on debate over the Federal Marriage Amendment, and against cloture on a bill that would expand the hate crimes laws to include homosexuals. On the side he likes to bugger his bum-buddies in the bathroom.


According to a cop who had the misfortune of being in a public stall when this dude walked in, “I could see Craig look through the crack in the door from his position. Craig would look down at his hands, ‘fidget’ with his fingers, and then look through the crack into my stall again. Craig would repeat this cycle for about two minutes.”

The Wonderful Fount o' Fundies

Fundies Say the Darndest things has led me to yet another goldmine of fundamentalist lunacy. This guy, Bill Meuhlenberg, is especially interesting because of his sycophantic enthusiasm for my arch nemesis, Leon Kass. He's all with the "reproductive technology is destroying th family" bullshit.

The article to which I have linked is a review of the book, Biotechnology and the Assault on Parenthood by some stupid asshole. In the review, Meuhlenberg goes off on the ubiquitous paranoia about reproductive technology, surrogacy, and the like.

According to Meuhlenberg, "Indeed, if personhood is reduced to a simple collection of atoms and DNA, then any sense of human dignity and human rights disappears, for it is senseless to talk of atoms having rights." That would be true if people abandoned the recognition of sentience and self-worth as guarantors of dignity, which would not be the case in the implementation of any reproductive technology. He's right that it's senseless to speak of atoms having rights, because atoms don't have sentience, self-worth, or the capacity to suffer. It is senseless to bestow rights upon anything that either does not or can not value them. It is for this reason that it is just as senseless to bestow rights upon embryos.

The argument that usually follows from fundies when this assertion is made is that embryos have the potential to become something that can have the capacity to value rights. I feel, however, that the point at which this potential is given weight is arbitrary. An embryo has little more potential to become a person than a sperm does. Without a woman's body, an embryo has no more chance of survival than a sperm. Even if there were a significant increase in potential at the time of conception, a sperm still has some potential, but is still not regarded as having the dignity of a person, so potential alone is clearly not enough for a mass of cells to be deserving of rights.

Guys like Meuhleneberg are so paranoid that they believe allowing people to regard anything that happens to have human genes as less valuable than a thinking, feeling, reasoning human being will inevitably lead to denying rights to all human beings. They can't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that human dignity is based on more than just the possession of human genes.

Rove Gone?

Wow, Karl Rove resigned. I always thought he was a Loyal Bushy.

The idea that Karl Rove is resigning because he no longer agrees with the Bush administration seems bizarre to me. We all know he has no conscience, so he's not leaving as a matter of principle.

The only reasons I can think of for Rove's resignation are that he has been given some other career opportunity that is better than his current gig, of which I've seen no evidence, or the investigations that are being conducted are about to uncover something that would be very damaging to the Bush Administration if it were to be revealed while he is still a part of it.

I think he's quitting now, so Bush doesn't have to fire him when the really bad shit comes out.

Also, this is intersting:

Another Ex-Muslim Who Knows Dick About Islam

A week after this was filmed, Muslim clerics in Spain did in fact declare a fatwa against bin Laden.

Fabulous

Brownback vs His Lunatic Supporters

Sam Brownback proves he may not be as crazy as his base of support by distancing himself from Blogs4Brownback and the equally wacky Baptists For Brownback.

This is a statement released from the Brownback campaign:
“Baptists for Brownback is clearly a parody. Frankly, our campaign is flattered that an individual would take hours out of their day and sit behind a computer anonymously to make a parody of Senator Brownback and his consistent, conservative positions on the issues. It certainly is one of the weirder hobbies out there.”

While BFB and B4B look like parody sites, they sadly are not.

This is the reaction from BFB:
"Heavenly Father,

We humbly ask You to strengthen Sen. Brownback’s resolve to resist the forces of evil pundits and divisive presidential candidates who demand renunciation of those who support him"

What a bunch of screwballs.

Clearly B4B is in a state of denial:
"Does anybody think for even a second that someone charged with the great authority to speak on behalf of a presidential campaign would be so unprofessional as to dismiss a supporter with insults, without even having attempted to have contacted the supporter in question to verify the legitimacy of the site?

Come on! There is no way that someone in that position of authority would be that careless, reckless and unprofessional."

More Crazy Brownbackers

Here's a comment from Blogs4Brownback:
"Apes are just creatures twisted by Satan to mock Jesus by giving EVILolition credibility. Further more they are naturally lust crazed for human women. Since they are not natural creatures they should be exterminated forthwith as the tools of evil they are."

Slow News Day

Is there really nothing more important going on than a collapsed bridge?

This Is Priceless

Gee, I Wonder What Religion This Is

A 49-year-old was killed by police after trying to exorcise his granddaughter.

"A bed had been pushed up against the door; the officers pushed it open a few inches and saw Marquez choking his bloodied granddaughter, who was crying in pain and gasping, Tranter said.

A bloody, naked 19-year-old woman who police later determined to be Marquez’s daughter and the girl’s mother was in the room, chanting 'something that was religious in nature,' Tranter said."

Are All Fundies Anti-Palestinian?

This interesting article in the New York Times says that there is a significant chunk of evangelicals who are in support of a Palestinian state. It says that there are lefty elements within evangelicalism that are going against what I thought was the status quo for Bible Bangers.

"In the last year and half, liberal and moderate evangelicals have initiated two other efforts that demonstrated fissures in the evangelical movement. Last year, they parted with the conservative flank by campaigning against climate change and global warming. This year, they denounced the use of torture in the fight against terrorism."

This differs from the other evangelicals who support Israel unconditionally because the Bible tells them to and because they believe that Israel's expanse into the West Bank is necessary for Christ's return. Basically they support Israel so Jesus can come back and send all the Jews who live there to hell.

It's good to know that there are alternative voices among American hardcore Christians, but they are far from the loudest voices. There are still plenty of evangelicals who say that, “Bible-believing evangelicals will scoff at that message [that a Palestinian state is a good thing]."

There are still plenty of Christians who argue that, “The Palestinian people have never owned the land of Israel, never existed as an autonomous society." Because, of course, if a community of people that has cultivated a section of land for over a thousand years is not "an autonomous society," it should have no right to live there.

More Evidence That Christian Theocrats Exist in the West

This is from Fundies Say the Darndest Things.

"The most godly version of goverment is monoacry, god never institutes a democracy, and a woman is not to have authority over a man."

Lunatic Retards 4 Brownback

In one of the Republican debates, someone asked which of the candidates did not believe in evolution. One of the guys who raised his hand was Sam Brownback. But if you think he's crazy, you should check out his supporters.

When Will People Learn?

Looks like some guy from John McCain's presidential campaign office has been up to some naughty business.

"State Rep. Bob Allen (R), a foe of LGBT rights in Florida, is charged with offering the cop $20 for oral sex in a washroom at Veteran's Memorial Park in Titusville."

As Jon Stewart once said, how many of these anti-gay guys have to get busted in gay sex scandals before people realize that they're all gay!?

Auster Knows All That Is or Is Not Possible

Crazy Larry Auster is at it again. After reading an article that speculated on what life expectancies might be fifty years from now, Auster dismisses any possibility that we would live much longer than we currently do. Why? Because we'll never have the technology? Because it isn't scientifically possible?

No, because, "a species does not create its own nature, its nature is given to it by something beyond itself, by that from which all being comes, with some species given a larger portion of being, some less. The notion that human life could be extended, not merely by a few tens of years, but by thousands of years, is a fantasy born of the rejection of transcendence, and the resulting desire to make man into his own god."

So apparently we can never control our own biology because only god can do that. I only hope Auster lives long enough to see how stupid his beliefs are.

Slippery Logic

I've never liked slippery slope arguments, and here's why:


Inevitably some lunatic will say something retarded like installing faucets for cab drivers is only a few steps away from holocaust denial.

Unhinged indeed.

Hirsi Ali, the Right's New Hero

There are no Christians who want the bible to replace the constitution in any Western society? Is she blind!?

"Democracy is evil and contrary to God's law."
-Kent Hovind, anti-evolution propagandist

"I think democracy is the greatest system on earth, but that's it, it's just on earth and ultimately designed to destroy itself, because we have to give everyone equal freedom and ultimately that's going to destroy us. A perfect world is not going to be perfect until Jesus is truly lord."
-Becky Fischer, the chick who runs the Jesus Camp

She says that Islam calls for the murder of gays and adulterers and that "all this is in the Qur'an." Horseshit. None of it is in the Qur'an. The death penalty for adulterers was added later by Umar ibn al-Khattāb, one of Muhammed's followers. According to Reza Aslan, "the stoning to death of adulterers, a punishment which has absolutely no foundation whatsoever in the Quran but which Umar justified by claiming it had originally been part of the Revelation and had somehow been left out of the authorized text." [emphasis mine]

Umar was a notorious misogynist who was even forbidden to marry the sister of one of Muhammed's wives, because of how he was known to treat women. People who believe that adultery is punishable by death according to the Quran, be they Muslims themselves or some ignorant Westerners who want to make Islam look evil, have been lied to.

For someone who was raised a Muslim, she doesn't seem to know much about Islam. It's scary to think how many Muslims have the same perception of Islam as she does.

America Only

Conservatives scoff whenever someone points out that if the US doesn't abide by the Geneva Conventions or some other international agreement, then nobody else will, then they get all pissy when that's exactly what happens.

Several months ago, the US pulled out of an arms limitation agreement that was standing in their way of building their star wars missile defense program. Yesterday Russia said fine, if the US going to take the arms limitation agreement seriously, then we won't either. They were subject to an agreement that said they could only deploy so many tanks, ships, troops, etcetera, but that agreement has officially gone out the window.

According to the New York Times, "White House officials expressed immediate disappointment after the announcement from Moscow, but pledged to continue to meet with their Russian counterparts to resolve the dispute." Yes, they must have been so disappointed that the arms limitation treaties that they shit all over are no longer being taken seriously.

Christians Are Wonderful People

Leave Little Gore Alone

If you haven't heard, Al Gore's son, Al Gore III has been charged with the possession of marijuana and the fingers are wagging at him and the former Vice President. He's been in trouble for weed before, but hasn't given it up, apparently. This is the first I've heard of the kid, and although he's kinda weird looking, I feel sorry for him.

I'd have a lot more respect for the guy, however, if instead of "getting treatment" for his marijuana use (did he ever suck dick for marijuana?) he had said, "Yeah, I smoke weed. It's none of your business and it shouldn't be illegal, so fuck off."

Then he'd be my hero.

Holy Shit, I Agree with Ann Coulter

She was on Bill O'Reilly a while back and she said, "Hey, if you want to stop illegal immigration, allow them to sue for minimum wage benefits." Wow. This would really put a dent in the exploitation. Even if it didn't stop illegal immigration (it probably wouldn't stop it altogether) it would reduce the worst effects of it.

Vast Consensus Is Biased

I just saw this thing Jack Black did on The Daily Show about this website Conservapedia, this website that says Wikipedia is, as a whole, biased against Christians.

Now Wikipedia isn't perfect. If an article doesn't get a lot of traffic, errors and even blatant vandalism can go for days, sometimes weeks, before someone corrects them. That's not why these people are saying it's biased, though. They are saying that it's biased because of things like the fact that Wikipedia allows articles to use either the AD, BC dating system or the CE, BCE dating system.

That's right, they believe that failing to force people to use Christian dating notation is bias against Christianity.

Conservapedia claims not to be neutral where Wikipedia is not. Here are the first sentences from the Conservapedia and Wikipedia article for "Palestine." You tell me which one sounds more neutral:

Wikipedia:
Palestine (from Latin: Palaestina; Hebrew: ארץ־ישראל Eretz-Yisra'el, formerly also פלשתינה Palestina; Arabic: فلسطين Filasṭīn, Falasṭīn) is one of several names for the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River and various adjoining lands.

Conservapedia:
Palestine is the name given to the land of Israel by the Romans and others.

Dick Cheney Thinks We're All Retarded

This is a guy with such horrendously dark and disturbing secrets that he doesn't even want historians to discover them decades after his death. So in order to avoid obeying an order that says everyone in the Executive Branch has to give their records to the National Archives, he is now making the astonishingly, insultingly ludicrous claim that the Vice President, part of the White House staff and someone to gets into office by running in an executive election, is not a member of the Executive Branch.

This is an especially mind boggling claim considering that Cheney has previously claimed executive privilege in Cheney v. United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Either this guy is schizophrenic enough to be capable of a remarkable level of double-think that allows him to believe that he is entitled to executive privilege, but not a member of the Executive Branch, or he thinks everyone in the entire world is feces-throwingly retarded.

Gay Marriage Is Good for the Family

When people who are against gay marriage try to explain themselves, they always go back to arguing for the importance of the family. They argue that families are the basic unit of society, are necessary for the raising of children and providing a safety net for people during hard times. To undermine the family would mean more crime, alienated children and an increased need for government welfare programs.

I actually agree with them on all of these points. The illogical conclusion that they come to is that any change in what they consider the traditional family will undermine and destroy it. They believe that "traditional" sexual morality is what is necessary for the family to exist. This is why they are against gay marriage. However, does gay marriage really undermine these things?

There are three reasons marriage in general is good for society:

- The first is that it is an incentive for people to settle down and get a real job. If a guy wants to get married and have kids, he's got to show the women who want to get married that he's committed to raising a family. The same is roughly true for women. This motivates people to seek out more financial stability and deters them from anti-social behaviour. Having wanted children has also shown to make people more cautious and responsible, at least in general.

Since this is the case, why would you want to exempt homosexual couples from this? Why would you want people who would not otherwise marry to remain bachelors and spinsters? Even if you believe that homosexuality can be "cured" the statistics show that the majority o people who claim to be cured are actually just celibate. The celibate are not responsible for a family, and do not have the same motivation to seek financial and personal security, and as such are still a potential liability to society.

- The second reason is that marriage is a good environment in which to raise children. People who are against gay marriage believe that a same sex couple raising a child subject that child to obligatory motherlessness or fatherlessness. They believe that having a male role model and a female role model is best for a child. They may have a point, but given that homosexual couples rarely ever end up with unplanned children, while heterosexual couples frequently do, the stability of same sex parenthood would more than make up for the lack of a mother or father.

There may very well be disadvantages to growing up with two mothers and no father or two fathers and no mother, but they can't possibly be as bad as growing up with one mother and no father or one father and no mother, or with both parents who were financially and psychologically ill-prepared for parenthood. More homosexual couples would be a net benefit for children.

- Marriage's third benefit to society is the fact that it creates extended families and kinships. This was an important function of marriage in the middle ages. Royal families would marry their children off to the children of some other royal family in order to cement allegiances between kingdoms. Today, extending kinships means having a greater pool of people you can fall back on in the event that you hit hard times. This is good for society because it means there are fewer people dependent on government programs.

It is especially baffling that conservatives, who normally encourage people to go to their families instead of depending on tax-payer funded programs for their social safety net would sabotage a homosexual's ability to form an extended family through marriage. They don't seem to realize that they are just keeping many of them dependent on a big government nanny state.

So marriage in general lowers crime, is better for children, and reduces dependency on big government. All of these functions would be enhanced by extending the ability to marry to gay couples. Why would any conservative in their right mind be against that?

Asinine

I'm no fan of retarded kids who wear their pants around their knees. That's a trend that twenty years from now people will look back on and say, "What the hell was I thinking?" when they see pictures of themselves. Saggy pants are this decade's version of the mullet.

That being said, this is fucking asinine.

How the Great Depression Ended

A lot of right-wingers like to say that the Great Depression was prolonged and worsened by the New Deal, contrary to popular belief. They hate keynesianism and hate the idea that the Great Depression could have been repaired by government intervention. I've been reading Ayn Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and that book provides an interesting explanation of how the Great Depression ended.

"How was the problem of the depression finally 'solved'? By the favorite expedient of all statists in times of emergency: a war."

So World War II was an "expedient" of the "statists"?

I'm still looking into whether the the New Deal really made the depression worse or not and haven't made up my mind, but I did find this interesting survey. It asked economists and economic historians to evaluate the statement, "Taken as a whole, government policies of the New Deal served to lengthen and deepen the Great Depression." 51% of the economists disagreed and 74% of the historians disagreed. So we know what the consensus is.

Even if the Great Depression was not solved by the New Deal, it certainly was solved by government intervention. Keynesianism, the belief that government turn downs can be reversed by money introduced by the government into the economy, was very effective in ending the depression, regardless of what the righties like to believe. FDR did massive amounts of deficit spending to put government money into the economy via defense contractors and other industrial routes to priduce weapons and supplies for the war effort.

Even Milton Friedman, hardly a critic of the free market believed that the depression could have been prevented if the Federal Reserve had done more to prevent it. (The Rand book says they did too much by keeping interest rates artificially low.)

Brilliant!

Now this is a good idea.

Leftists Should Not Be in Favour of the Immigration Bill

Bush's plan to secure a source of cheap exploitable labour, and the "left-wing" Democrats' mindless aquiescence to it has been defeated. No I have no doubt that most people oppose this bill because they are inbred hicks who shudder at the thought of their country becoming overrun by brown people - who don't even speak English! *gasp* - or are worried that they'll take their jobs, even though they work for wages so low that their employers wouldn't be able to afford to offer many of these jobs if they had to pay any higher.

Anyone on the left should see a bill allowing people to stay in this country illegally as the same as a bill allowing people to work for below minimum wage. Both only open the door to exploitation.

Now, you don't have to round up every illegal and kick them out. The top priority should be to severely prosecute the people hiring the illegals. As George Carlin said, giving the death penalty to drug dealers will not deter them, if you want to stop the drug trade, you have to execute the white collar bankers who launder the drug money. This is the same. When the white-bred farmers and construction contractors who hire people illegally start feeling the heat, you'll see a lot fewer illegal immigrants. As soon as the undocumented workers realize they can't find any jobs, they'll head back home on their own.

If Nobody Did Anything Wrong, Why All the Secrecy?

I'm sure all the righties are going ape-shit over the conviction of Scooter Libby. After all, outing Valerie Plame wasn't even a crime, right?

Since that is apparently the case, why did Libby feel the need to lie about the disclosure of her identity? If there was nothing illegal, and nothing wrong with telling the world that Plame worked for the CIA, if the only reason they did that was to "set the record straight" about Joe Wilson's trip to Africa, why all the anonymity? Why does the person responsible for divulging this information feel they have to hide behind Robert Novak? What are they afraid of?

Jack Kevorkian and Conservative Sadism

Kevorkian has finally been released from prison just in time to live out his last days. He contracted Hepatitis C while researching blood transfusions in Vietnam, and it doesn't look like he'll live much longer than a year. One of the conditions of his release was that he not counsel or help anybody else who is dying and in pain.

After Kevorkian is dead, who knows if anyone else will take up his fight. Hopefully someone out there has the courage to fight against the sadistic, tyrannical notion conservatives have that life should be lived no matter how painful or humiliating. It's hard to listen to people who refuse to allow people to die in a time and manner of their choosing and not be convinced that they take a lot of pleasure in the idea of someone continuing to live despite their agony.

They claim to hold life as sacred, but are perfectly willing to watch it continue under twisted, humiliating and horrific conditions. To many of these people the American flag is sacred, and the flag code says, "When a flag is so worn it is no longer fit to serve as a symbol of the United States, it should be destroyed in a dignified manner." If you really regard something as sacred, you don't allow it to continue under undignified conditions. A person should be free to decide what is or is not dignified for them, and when they decide their life is so worn it is no longer fit to continue, they should be free to die in a dignified manner.

Evidence the Founding Fathers Were Not Christian

"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man."
- Thomas Jefferson

"The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites."
- Ibid

"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
- Treaty of Tripoli (signed by John Adams)

Let the Right-Wing Shrieking Begin

Pathetic

Well it looks like after a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, Bush will get his war funding, no questions asked.

Whether you like Democrats or not, you can't escape the fact that they are all a bunch of sackless jerk-offs.

Divide and Conquer

It was only a mater of time. Finally it's happening, the Republican party is turning against itself.

There are basically two kinds of Republicans, those who put capitalism above everything, and those who put capitalism second to things like "heritage," "morality" and "tradition." The former are in favour of Bush's immigration plan, the latter are strongly against it.

I'm hoping that the traditionalist Republicans break away from the rest and start their own party. Such a party will inevitably become overrun with bigots and never gain any popular, mainstream support. Once they're out of the picture, opposition to gay marriage, opposition to abortion rights, and asinine censorship laws will gradually go extinct.

Malkin and Her Sadistic Catch-22

Does she not realize that abortion providers are medical personnel who put medical confidentiality first, and should do so? What if a 13 year old girl had gone to her doctor instead of Planned Parenthood and told her doctor that her boyfriend was in his twenties? Forcing doctors to violate doctor-patient confidentiality would lead to thousands of girls not even bothering to go to doctors.

Of course Malkin and the rest of the fetus fuckers would love to see these girls kept out of doctors offices and "protected" from candid, comprehensive medical advice.

Should a Girl Have to Sabotage Her Boyfriend's Future to Save Her Own?

Michelle Malkin doesn't like how the MSM are ignoring investigative reporter Lila Rose. Rose posed as a 15 year old girl (in a state whose age of consent is 16) who had been impregnated by a 23 year old boyfriend, and went to Planned Parenthood to get an abortion. PP told her that if she filled out the application for an abortion and said she was 15, they would have to report it, meaning that her "boyfriend" would be arrested, but that if she lied on her application and said she was 16, she could get an abortion and PP would keep quiet about her being underage. This was all caught on camera and Planned Parenthood is threatening to sue.

Of course The Crazy People are going bat-shit because of this. They're upset that this isn't getting much mainstream attention and would much rather a young girl have to choose between destroying her life by giving birth to an unwanted child, which would mean fuck knows what kind of treatment at the hands of her parents, and destroying her boyfriend's life by subjecting him to a statutory rape charge. This is the kind of sadism that Jerry Falwell would be advocating if her were still choking back fifty Ding Dongs a day.

Still Crazy

Lawrence Auster thinks it's time for a military junta.

Another Thing the Dutch Do Better

Today's New York Times is saying what should have been obvious. Killing the people you're supposed to be "liberating" isn't going to win their affection. The Dutch approach is common sense and should be pursued more broadly.

I'll Be Very Impressed

If Giuliani wins in the Republican primary after your average Joe Six-Pack Bible Banger here's about this. I'll also be very amused at the idea of Republicans promoting a candidate that the Religious Right absolutely despises.

So far, Rudy's still ahead of the other candidates and the hardcore conservatives are predicting that people are going to catch on to his pro-choice, pro-gay, pro gun control, cross-dressing ways any minute now, and will soon turn away from him. This stuff isn't exactly a secret, however, and hasn't been for some time, yet he's still in the lead. Hopefully this is a sign that the Christofascists are starting to lose their influence.

Chocolate City Vs. Latka Town

Not long after hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the reconstruction efforts began, the town's mayor, Ray Nagin referred to the place as "Chocolate City" and said that it would be "a majority African American city." What was the MSM's reaction? Well, they, for lack of a better term, went apeshit. And of course all the righties denounced him as a racist, and to be frank, it was a racist thing to believe. It is racist to claim a city for a certain race and think, "Hey wouldn't it be great if this or that race were the majority here?"

The irony, of course, is that most of the people who screamed "racist" at Nagin were The Crazy People on the right who have absolutely no problem with Israel calling itself a "Jewish State." If Israel establishing a Jewish State isn't racist, why is Ray Nagin being favour of a "Chocolate City," racist?

Sarko's in, How Will France Deal?

Sarkozy is not Jean-Marie LePen, but he is "tough on crime" as they say in the states, and generally critical of the current state of France's immigration policies (despite being the son of a Hungarian immigrant). The largely immigrant suburbs have already said how they plan to respond. It's clear that things will likely get worse in France before they get better, but the reason why Sarkozy is not as loved by the right as LePen was has to do with his involvement with the formation of the Conseil français du culte musulman, an organization founded to give French Muslims a political voice.

As I've said before, the level of violence and unrest in France, while the result of deeper causes that need to be addressed, must be dealt with on the surface as well. I'm open minded about Sarkozy, and hopeful that he will bring the hammer down on the riots and violence, but worried that his attitude and inflammatory talk of "racaille" will undermine more cool-headed efforts to deal with the social problems that have caused these riots in the first place. He has made efforts to reach out to the Muslim community, and if there is ever a hope if assimilating Muslims into France, he will need there help.

Clearly My Knowledge of the Legislative Process Is Sorely Lacking

An interesting article in the New York Times, outlines the various proposals Democrats are now mulling over to get the troops out of Iraq. Looks like they have a few interesting options.

Hillary Clinton and Robert Byrd are proposing to "repeal President Bush’s war authorization" that "would require the president to seek new authority from Congress to extend the conflict beyond Oct. 11, 2007." The article doesn't explain, exactly how this could be done. Would they do it in the form of a bill? If so how could they keep bush from vetoing it like he did the last bill, and if not, how could this be done?

Even Horowtiz Is Sick of Auster's Lunacy

Thanks to an article on The Huffington Post, David Horowitz is no longer allowing Lawrence Auster's openly segregationist and sometimes outright racist rants on FrontPage.

This isn't the first time Auster's browbeating has gotten him in trouble with his fellow right-wing crazies. Michelle Malkin used to have him on her list of blogs, but took him off a few months ago and refused to explain why. If you read his stuff, though, it becomes pretty clear.

Now if only people would realize what a creep this guy is.

Can't Wait to See the Polls After This

Rudy Giuliani has long been the front-runner on the Republican side of the presidential race. I'll be watching to see how much they like him after the bible-bangers see this.

Woops

I had forgotten that the President's veto can be overriden if two-thirds of the Congress vote in favour of troop withdrawal. That would mean that the Democrats need to rally another 15 or so votes to get the bill through. That sounds tricky, but I think this is what they should be fighting for right now. If they keep sending the same bill to be vetoed while the troops go without funding, I don't think Americans' confidence in the Democrats will stay as high as it is.

Squeamishness Is Our Weakness

In pondering the current situation in the Middle East, I came upon the realization that it would very easy for the Iraqis to drive the Americans out of Iraq and the Palestinians to drive the Israelis out of Palestine, because of a weakness that most Westerners seem to share, one that seems linked to the Judeo-Christian tradition. That weakness is squeamishness. Most Westerners see violence and carnage and either become afraid, or disgusted. This does not seem as common outside of the West.

Westerners generally don't like violence and will only condone its use if they believe it is necessary to prevent more severe violence or protect their safety. The US got away with horrible violence against countries that were very peaceful largely because the American people were convinced that it was necessary to protect them from the Soviet Union. When the American people stopped believing this during the Vietnam War, they stopped supporting it.

This isn't just true of Americans. The British pulled out of India because they saw what their own military were doing to these people that posed no threat to them. The British lost in India and the Americans lost in Vietnam because they saw and read the things that were going on and were grossed out. Eventually they were convinced it wasn't worth having to see all that nasty blood and gave up.

Trying to fight the West with violence is doomed to fail as long as the West is better armed. A far more effective strategy is to fight the West by exploiting their weak stomachs. If Arabs want to defeat their aggressors, they need to do two things: they have to show the people of the West the brutality of their treatment, and, more importantly, they need to convince Westerners that they are no danger to their physical safety.

Incrementalism Is Often the Only Way

The NDP has single handedly propped up the Harper government by voting against the Liberals' Afghanistan withdrawal bill. Layton says that he has another date in mind that would get the troops even sooner. He's awfully ballsy to think that he can get this passed before 2009. Ballsy or stupid.

It would have been much safer for Layton to take an incrementalist approach to vote in favour of the 2009 withdrawal and then pushed for an earlier withdrawal date. In fact, this seems pretty obvious. Maybe there's something I'm missing, but to put who knows how many more Canadian lives at stake to gamble on getting a sooner withdrawal date is careless and irresponsible.

Why Didn't They Think of This Before Hand?

The Democrats should have seen it as obvious that Bush would veto their war funding bill if it contained any kind of stipulation requiring the troops to come home any time soon, but it seems like it's just now that they're getting together to come up with some kind of strategy that would allow them to show that they are taking a stand against the war (which is what they were elected to do) without denying the troops of funds.

So what are they gonna do? I don't think they have the balls to send another bill to Bush that would require a pull-out, but they can't just say, "ok, here's the money" with no strings attached. Are they gonna pass another useless non-binding resolution? The Democrats have never struck me as a particularly imaginative or creative bunch, so I can't wait to see how they'll deal with this.

Those Pesky Liberals

Overblown much?

Why is it that American conservatives, who for 13 years controlled Congress, still control the White House, and who have appointed 7 of the 9 justices of the Supreme Court are always whining about how powerful "liberals" are, and how they "control everything." How can liberals, who have such little actual power control so much?

It reminds me of that joke about the two Jews in the Weimar Republic. One of them is reading a Jewish run paper and the other is reading the Volkischer Beobachter. The guy reading the Jewish paper says to the other, "How can you read that right-wing garbage?" The second guy says, "Well, if I read the Jewish papers all they talk about is how many Jews have been killed in the progroms, all the synagogues that have been burned down, and all the Jewish businesses that have been vandalized. But according to the right-wing papers we all rule the world!"

Even the Soldiers Know the Military Is full of Shit

During the early part of the Iraq War, there was a girl named Jessica Lynch who we were told was taken as a POW by the Iraqis and rescued by US troops. We heard all of these heroic stories about how she valiantly fought off her captors.

Not long after the story came out, everyone not in a delusional state of denial could see it wasn't true. She was rescued, but not by the Americans. Not long after the Iraqi military picked her up, she was left at a hospital in Nasiriya where the staff protected her from the Iraqi military and even tried to return her to the Americans, but couldn't because the US troops kept firing on her ambulance. Some Iraqis told the Americans that she was being tortured, but even Lynch herself says that was all horseshit. In fact she was treated quite well, and the "daring rescue" that was conducted when the Americans finally got her out of the Iraqi hospital was an overblown fabrication.

Today there was a hearing in front of Congress in which Jessica Lynch herself told us that the military is full of shit and just wanted to use her as a propaganda tool.

Of course, the The Crazy People are pretty silent about the whole story.

The French Election

As predicted it has been narrowed down to a runoff election between Royal and Sarkozy. As much as I think the Gaullists are potentially a danger to France in the long run, I think that given the violence that has become almost routine in France's poorer neighbourhoods, a new approach to immigration must be taken.

It is interesting to note the the American "guest worker program" is remarkably similar to the program that brought so many poor people into France to be exploited and alienated by French society.

Limiting immigration should not be solely a right-wing issue, especially considering most of the poorer people brought into Western countries are brought there to do shit jobs and not only have to put up with the racism of the West, but also their contempt for the poor. Obviously these are problems that need to be addressed as well, but given the immediate danger that mixing poor people of colour with class contemptuous racists necessitates a more radical approach. Allowing poor, unskilled immigrants into the West is as bad for them as it is for us.

Someone Takes Auster to Task

Someone at Vanity Fair has discovered Lawrence Auster and wrote an article about him that sounds about right.

The Vanity Fair Article quotes a passage from Auster's website about an exchange between Auster and a reader named Mark E. about how black homophobes are the only homophobes not afraid to express their views, and should be embraced by prejudiced whites because they share a hatred of gays:

"I want to add [writes Auster to Mark] that if you are implying that blacks in general can be our ally against the left in saving the west, I think that is folly. The tiny number of blacks who are Western patriots--that is, blacks who love the West and who, as part of that love of the West, at least implicitly accept the West's historic white majority character--will join us without our having to make some special appeal to them of the type that 'conservatives' are always making to 'conservative' blacks and 'conservative' Hispanics, making that appeal to nonwhites the cornerstone of their politics."

That's pretty indicative of Auster's hilariously pig-headed rantings, but my favourite quote from that passage comes from Mark E. himself:

Most blacks I meet are "normal" people (I live in the "inner city") with normal views about things; but the white middle- and upper-middle class suburban educated types are really whacked, especially the women.

White women are the most destructive force in America. The feminizing of America, not what you miscall "liberalism," is the root of all rot.

Even the Righties Know Wolfowitz Is Indefensible

I hardly ever agree with Lawrence Auster as he is a lunatic, but even he sees how corrupt Wolfowitz is.

He quotes Alex Spillius from the New York Sun:
"It has often been said that Mr. Wolfowitz is a brilliant thinker and a terrible manager. His defenders say the current crisis smacks not of nepotism but poor administration and trying too hard to ensure someone he cared for was properly compensated."

To which Auster responds:

"Got that? That’s like saying that John Dillinger’s behavior did not smack of bank robbery but of trying too hard to get his hands on some cash."

Mo' guns, Mo' Problems

Like clockwork, The Crazy People™ are blaming the Viriginia massacre on anti-gun legislation. Virginia has a ban on concealed carried weapons on school campuses which is where all the righties are pointing their fingers. "If the kids at Virginia Tech had been armed and able to defend themselves, this never would have happened!" they say.

And of course, they have a point. Never mind that Virginia has no required waiting period, no required safety course, and not even a requirement that you even have to be a US citizen to buy a gun (which would have prevented this particular incident), the real problem is that all the other students were unarmed.

Think about it, this guy would have been stopped after only the first few killings if someone had been able to shoot back at him. And hey, the September 11th hijackers would have been stopped pretty quick if the airlines didn't have those stupid, commie anti-gun rules that keep you from taking your Glock on the plane with you. If the other passengers had been armed, those guys wouldn't have even made it to the cockpit before someone took them out. Sure you'd have a lot more planes crashing do to all the gun fights that would break out, but at least all the national monuments would be safe. The same is true in the general population. If you just let more people carry guns everywhere, sure there would be a lot more frequent gun use in disputes where fists would otherwise be used, but the enormous increase in small scale shootings would be worth it to prevent the occasional mass murder.

A McLuhanian Tyranny

The Don Imus fiasco is further evidence that what Marshall McLuhan said was right. Who says something coveys a stronger message than what is actually being said.

It is a factual, but still horribly tyrannical phenomenon that who you are, what you look like, etc. will influence how people interpret what you say. The only way to get your message out in way that best allows the message to be the message, is through anonymity, and even then, people will try to read into what you are saying things that aren't really there.

The Trap

I much enjoyed Adam Curtis's documentary The Power of Nightmares, and his newest film, The Trap is even better. The premise is that since the Cold War, the idea of what Isaiah Berlin called "positive freedom," that is, freedom to things, like freedom to housing, food and shelter, things that were supplied by the government in communist countries, has proven to lead to tyranny, because it inevitably undermines "negative freedom", freedom from government interference in a person's life. The goal of the West was guarantee negative freedom by eliminating as much positive freedom as they could, giving things over to market forces and reducing the role of the state in providing for the welfare of the people.

This approach grew out of and fed into a very cynical idea that everybody is out to serve their own interests only and that anybody who says they want power so they can use it for "the public good" is lying and not to be trusted. Game theory, the mathematical system that calculates what strategy any two or more competing forces should adopt to maximize their own advantage, became the new model of how society really behaves. The predictability of society then depended on the assumption that people actually acted only in their own rational self-interest.

There's an interview with the economist James M. Buchanan, who believes that anybody who truly does believe that they should be serving the public good is a "zealot" who must be gotten rid of, because these "zealots" will not act in the predictable way that strictly self-interested people will act. They only system that can be trusted is one that plays off of people's greed and selfishness, and uses those assumed patterns of behavior to establish a predictable order, i.e. market capitalism.

So in the West's current concept of "freedom," we are free to act selfishly, but any deviation from that and any organization or government that asks you to put your energy into something bigger than yourself or your immediate interests is strongly discouraged. Curtis points out that this "is a strange concept of freedom."

I have a few criticisms of this movie. One is that Curtis says that the paranoid, cynical idea that people always act in their own interest is something that came out of the rejection of Soviet Communism. This idea, however, has been around for lot longer. The American system of checks and balances was based on that assumption when it was designed in the 16th century. The other problem I have with this documentary is how he completely leaves out the influence of the religious right. This is a part of society that is asking people to sacrifice themselves for their concept of a greater good (although they too curiously subscribe to the cynical system of market capitalism.)

Overall, though, it was quite good. The conclusion Adam Curtis comes to at the end is that "we have to learn that not all attempts to do what is in the interest of the public good lead to tyranny." Interesting idea.

You can watch it here on YouTube. But be warned, it comes in 23 parts and is three hours long in total.

Morality Above Common Sense

A frequent argument I hear against the legalization of drugs is that "we don't want to endorse that kind of behaviour." This objection to legalization is often raised when all the practical and pragmatic objections have been debunked. You may be able to convince a moralist that drug legalization would allow drugs to be regulated, reducing the money that criminals get from it, and that treating drug addiction like a health problem would reduce drug addiction and save the tax-payers' money by keeping people out of prison who don't need to be there, but they'll still object to it because, "we don't want to endorse drug use, because it is immoral."

For these kinds of moralists, vague principals are more important than a society's actual welfare. They may even know that the War on Drugs is expensive, does little to deter people, bolsters the pockets of criminals and results in more severely drug addicted people, but they don't care. They would rather exacerbate the problems drugs cause than allow people to use them without punishment. Thus is the idiocy of moralism.

Goin' Green

Looks like Canada will get some Green Party MPs soon.

The Liberals have decided not to run any candidates in ridings where Green Party members are running and vice versa.

Jack Layton is predictably pissy about the whole deal.

*Update*

Looks like this is only for one riding, namely Elizabeth May's (the leader of the Green Party) riding.

Does Russia Want to See Iran Get Bombed?

I read in an editorial by Andrei Piontkovsky in the Globe & Mail the other day that the reason Russia is selling nuclear equipment to Iran and helped them build their reactor in Bushehr is not because they at all want Iran to have nuclear weapons or a nuclear program, but rather because they want Iran to take it as far as they can, inevitably provoking Israel to strike at their nuclear facilities. That way, heat from the Islamic world could be taken off of Moscow, and Iran would retaliate by attacking Saudi oil facilities, forcing people to buy a lot more oil from Russia.

Russia, however, has been aiding Iran and its nuclear program since 1995. Yelstin was in charge back then, did he have the same designs? This would have happened right in the middle of the first Chechen War, so I guess it's possible.

Another thing bugs me about this suspicion, though. According to Russia, Iran hasn't enriched nearly as much uranium as they say they have. If Russia's goal is to get Israel and the States paranoid and trigger happy, wouldn't they be saying the opposite?

Can Anybody from This Administration Do Anything Ethically?

I've trained myself never to stop being surprised by the new allegations I hear about members or former members of the Bush administration. They seem to be embroiled in some new scandal practically every week or two. Now it turns out that Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank and Rumsfeld's former deputy, is in trouble for helping his girlfriend, also an employee of the World Bank, get a raise and a transfer.

According to the MSM, Wolfowitz sent a memo to the World Bank VP telling him to give her basically whatever job she liked, then said that "bank ethics officials had been kept informed about the new post for his companion." Turns out there was a lot he didn't tell them.

Why do these guys keep exposing themselves like this? They should know by now that if they so much as pick their noses someone will be there to put it on the cover of the New York Times. Why do they still think they can get away with shit like this?

Imus Is a Douche and I Support That

I don't really care that Don Imus was fired, he has plenty of other options. I'm sure he'll find another venue.

Personally I think don Imus is a douchebag, and I wouldn't listen to him myself, but the world needs to let douchebags express themselves. If the douchebags are silenced, then they go underground, and it becomes all too easy for the rest of us to pretend they don't exist. And we'll all be worse off if the douchebags lurk among us unidentified.

Oh and Another Thing

Leave Elizabeth Edwards the fuck alone. She has maybe five years to live, let her do whatever the fuck she wants.

American Idol Blows

There are too many bloggers wasting to much time and energy watching and blogging about this show. I don't care how good a singer you are if all the songs you sing are shit. Pop music and R&B is arsenic to my ears no matter how well it is sung.

This show has been a scourge to modern music for too long and it's time we brought it down.

Common Arguments Against Global Warming pt.1

#1 "Of course the climate is changing. The climate has changed several times over the course of the existence of the world. This time is no different."

Yes, this time is different. Of all of the temperature changes we know about this is unique in scale and speed.

#2 "Global warming is caused by increases in solar radiation."

Solar radiation contributes, but the increases are not large enough to account for the amount of climate change that has occurred.

#3 "More CO2 is emitted from Volcanoes and other natural sources than by humans."

CO2 samples taken from ice cores show that the carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are greater than they have ever been. There have always been volcanoes and other natural sources of CO2, yet there has never been as much CO2 as there is now.

#4 "Global warming is caused by water vapor."

Yes, and there is more water vapor in the atmosphere due to increased temperatures. Water vapor is a green house gas that accelerates global warming, but since water vapor didn't increase in the atmosphere until the temperature increased in the first place, it is not the ultimate cause.

#5 "A few decades ago, all the scientists were saying that the Earth was heading toward a new ice age. They were wrong then, why should we believe them now?"

Scientists were actually right. Global temperatures were declining. What global warming critics don't mention is that scientists knew that man-made sulfate aerosols were what caused the decrease in temperatures and that eliminating the aerosols would ameliorate the effects on the climate. They were right. Sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere have deacreased significantly over the past thirty years and so have their effects. I expect that if we ever do reduce green house gases and stop global warming, the critics will refuse to acknowledge it as a result of those reductions. Instead, they'll continue to deny that there was ever a problem in the first place like they have regarding the effects of sulfate.

Even former critics of global warming are starting to realize their position was bullshit. Ronald Bailey, author of Global Warming and other Eco Myths now says, "Details like sea level rise will continue to be debated by researchers, but if the debate over whether or not humanity is contributing to global warming wasn't over before, it is now.... as the new IPCC Summary makes clear, climate change Pollyannaism is no longer looking very tenable." (Quote lifted from Wikipedia)

Thelema

Although Aleister Crowley still has some infamy, the religion he founded, Thelema, has few followers. I'm not a Thelemite myself, but I've long been interested in it. Unfortunately, there are few communities out there that really give it the in-depth examination necessary to understand it.

A quick search of Technorati brings up blogs like this that are kind of meandering and platitudinous about life as a Thelemite.

www.lashtal.com is the best website I've been able to find so far.

I'll post some more links to decent websites on the subject as soon as I find some.

New Nails

I don't usually post about music, but I see that Technorati's number 1 linked album is Year Zero by Nine Inch Nails. I've been listening to NIN since 1997 and seen them in concert twice. This is the best album they've done in probably ten years, but still given the taste of most bloggers on that site (Daughtry? Come on.) I'm surprised that the album is doing that well.

You can stream the whole album before it even comes out here.

Objectively Hilarious

If you waste as much time looking for political videos on YouTube as I do, you've probably come across this guy, Brandon Cropper. He's an objectivist who makes these really pompous pro-Ayn Rand videos.

His self-importance is indicative of the attitude of most objectivists.

No Motive

Something that global warming critics like to say is that it is "politically motivated." What motivation could a person possibly have to convince people of global warming if they didn't really believe in it? The idea that most of the world's scientists and politicians are just in the hands of the big enviro-dollar and that their job security is threatened if they don't tow the line is just silly.

Hmmm, if I were some shrewd scientist just looking to say whatever will get me the most money and job security, whom would I rather please? Exxon or Greenpeace?
Yeah, that's a tough one.

Iraq and Vietnam

What have both of these wars proven? In most previous wars, you had militaries fighting militaries. In WWII, when the militaries of Germany and Japan surrendered, so did the people. The people weren't committed to continue fighting. In Vietnam and Iraq you have a military fighting an entire country, military, civilians and all. These countries have people willing to keep fighting even after their militaries have been destroyed. Therefore I don't see how a victory in either of these places that would look anything like the neat and tidy victories of WWII is possible.

The War on Terror Helps Terrorists

Accoring to this article in The Guardian, a British study has concluded what should be obvious to everybody with a mind by now, that using violence and violence alone to fight terrorists is helping terrorists. The American's seem to think that everybody can be intimidated and frightened into doing what they say, but now that threat of invasion is much more real to Arab countries since the Iraq War, of course they're going to build up their militaries and pursue nuclear weapons with more fervor than ever before.

Those on the right like to say that these people hate us and would have developed these weapons to kill us anyway. If that's the case, why isn't Saudi Arabia doing that? That country is full of people that hate us, yet they aren't preparing their forces to fight the Americans. Why? Maybe because they know that Americans have no designs on that country? If these people can't be pacified through diplomacy and economic development, how do you explain the American alliance with Saudi Arabia? Why was Saddam Hussein not seen as threat during the Iran-Iraq War? The idea that these countries need to be democratized in order to have a peaceful relationship with the rest is clearly contradicted by this.

The righties also like to say that anybody who dares to speculate that maybe military solutions aren't the best solutions to the problem of terrorism are "traitors" who hate America, hate the West and want the terrorists to win. They seem too simple minded to get their heads around the idea that someone could sincerely believe that non-military solutions could be effective. They refuse to even entertain the notion that diplomacy could work, because I don't think they want it to work. They just want to see Muslims punished. They don't want peace, they don't even really want security. They want revenge, and they are willing to sacrifice their safety and the lives of thousands of their children in order to get it. These people are as big a threat to the West as the terrorists themselves.

Freaky Jesus

I just watched the documentary Jesus Camp, and I expected it to be off-putting, but I didn't expect to be as disturbed as I was. For those who don't know, Jesus camp is about a summer camp hosted by Evangelical Pentecostal Christians. They preach to the kids, get them to speak in tongues and teach them about how sinful the world is and how it's their job to fix it. The people who run this camp believe they are training an soldiers for God, so the approach they take to preaching to these kids uses a lot of military oriented language. The reasoning they give for the military theme of her preaching style is that "our enemies" are giving military religious training to their kids, so Christians have to out-fanaticize them.

When I think of a summer camp, I think of swimming and sports and archery and stuff, but nothing like that was shown in this documentary. The only scene that made this look anything like any summer camp I've ever seen is when some of the boys, (most of them were aged 10 to 12) were telling ghost stories in their cabin, until one of the couselors walked in and put a stop to it, because ghost stories are not "godly."

The main activity at this camp seemed to be the sermons, and the speaking in tongues. This documentary claims to be neutral, but it certainly does not put forth a flattering image of the Evangelical movement. There are a lot of scenes of young children spacing out, their eyes glazed over and faces quivering while they prayed. Many Christian groups and leaders, like Ted "I'm Straight Now, Honest" Haggard, who is featured in the movie, condemn the movie as anti-evangelical. However, the leader of this camp, and main focus of the movie, is Becky Fischer says she never felt exploited and has no problem with the movie. To any sane person of course, these people look like freaks. That the people who agreed to be in the documentary feel that this is the image they want to put out to the world is almost as disturbing as the image itself.

Becky Fischer is the kind of middle-aged trailer parkish kind of woman you'd see in the checkout line at Wal-Mart with a cart full of tubes of Pringles. She has a stupid haircut, (most of the people in this movie have really stupid looking haircuts) is hard to look at, and constantly has this bug-eyed look on her face like a lion eying a gazelle. Watching her spherical, turgid body sway around, ranting to a bunch of healthy looking kids like she's some kind of model of virtue for them to follow is especially off-putting and disturbing.

What disturbed me the most about how the parents in this film are bringing up their kids is the home-schooling. They teach them from creationist textbooks and emphasize to their kids that "science doesn't prove anything," and that evolution and global warming are all lies. At one point one of the kids says, "I think Galileo made the right choice to give up science for Christ." What the fuck!? Galileo? They never explicitly show these kids being taught that the sun revolves around the earth, but that's a disturbing implication that this might be the case.

The movie is framed with scenes of a liberal talk show host talking about the Evangelical movement and how dangerous is could become. At the end he interviews Becky Fischer and asks her what he thinks are the implications this kind of movement has for democracy. While paying lip-service to how she thinks democracy is the best system on earth, she says that since it allows everyone an equal voice "it will eventually destroy us."

The goals of the Evangelical movement are clear.

Global Warming Questions

Given the quantity and quality of scientists who say global warming is happening, and the shrinking voices of those who say it is not, I tend to believe that global warming is in fact happening. There is some contention, however, as to whether it is caused by human activity. There is a strong correlation between the rise in the levels of man-made CO2, and the rise in temperatures which heavily implicates human activity, but a correlation is not proof. This is where the global warming deniers step in. they say that the increase in solar radiation over the past few years is responsible for the warming, and that the rise in temperature is causing the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere rather than the other way around, or that there is some other reason for the correlation. I personally find this to be far fetched, because if the rise in CO2 is a result of higher temperatures, then you have to have to believe that the majority of the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere is not the result of human activity. If that's the case what else could have caused this? The deniers like to point out that more CO2 comes from volcano explosions than from industry, but have there really been that many more volcanic activity in the last 150 years that would explain why the levels of CO2 are so much higher than they were over the previous centuries?

We know that more greenhouse gases theoretically causes an increase in temperature. We know that human being have been producing a lot of greenhouse gases.

Is it really all that far fetched to believe that humans are causing this increase in temperature?

That being said, I think some of the things that environmentalists are saying are a little far fetched. Some would like you to think that this spells the end of life on Earth, or for the more restrained ones, the end of civilization. Now, come on. Sure, with all of the areas that would be flooded it would create a huge refuge problem that would cause severe worldwide economic problems, but would that really result in the collapse of civilization? And would the effects of global warming accumulate so quickly that we couldn't adjust to the changes in time?

I Think I've Found My Calling

Which Is the Real Culture of Death?

Christians like to say that those who support abortion, euthanasia, and physician assisted suicide are celebrating a "Culture of Death." They conveniently leave out people who are in favor of the death penalty, of course (with the exception of Pope JPII, at least he was consistent.)

But given that Christians believe that we should all sacrifice the pleasures of this life for access to heaven in the hereafter, are they really pro-life? They tell us to forgo the pleasures of the flesh, and that we have to do in this life what some deity tells us to, so we will be rewarded when we die. The whole idea that there is any form of existence superior to life, necessarily devalues life. Those in favor of abortion, euthanasia and suicide, however, hold life to such a high value that they won't allow it to be tarnished and desecrated by unwanted pregnancy and terminal illness. They revel in all the pleasures that this life offers and hold them far higher, than the promise of any reward that may be granted in death.

It is those who fantasize about an afterlife superior to real life that are truly celebrating a culture of death.

Media Puppets

Looks like the "confessions" that he sailors gave were more conditional statements edited to look like confessions.

According to the Daily Mail,

"Lt Carman said: 'At no time did we apologise.' He said that they always qualified their statements when interviewed, saying things like 'according to the information you have presented to us'. It appears these qualifiers were edited out of the versions broadcast."

Still, even qualified statements like that came far too easily from these guys.

Finally, a Rational Strategy

Any competent analyst can see that violence against Muslims, even against terrorists is the best way to help them recruit more terrorists. In too many cases, using violence against terrorists has proven to be like trying to kill weeds with fertilizer. It worked against Al Qaida in Afghanistan, although not so well against the Taliban, but in Iraq Operation Iraqi Freedom has been a more effective Al Qaida recruiting tool than anything they could come up with themselves.

So what should be done against terrorists? A story in today's New York Times tells us about Dutch soldiers taking a much smarter approach. A lot of the Taliban's power comes from the fact that many people are still dependant upon them, so the Dutch are focusing on building infrastructure and giving people an alternative.

In their own words, “We’re not here to fight the Taliban... We’re here to make the Taliban irrelevant.”

Also from the NYT article,

"Dutch officers also say the approach has yielded promising results here. Sometimes villagers have warned them of ambushes or roadside bombs, and in several villages the Dutch are rarely attacked. Since the task force began operations last August, it has not suffered a combat fatality."

A Recant at Last

The freed British sailors are now saying that they were well inside Iraqi waters and that they only confessed because they were told that if they didn't they would face seven years in Iranian prison.

Maybe the guys on the right about the behaviour of these sailors. They confessed when threatened merely with seven years in prison. No torture, not even a death threat. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and kept my mind open that they were telling the truth when they confessed, but now it's clear that these guys are clearly just a bunch of pussies.

They're Home and No Recant Yet

According to this article the hostages, although now home and safe from Iranian intimidation and torture, are not recanting their confessions.

They're practically saying that they had a great time.

"I would not say anything different to here and I will be completely truthful. I will definitely promote Iran actually, there is a lot of ignorance in the UK about Iran and the people."

"We had had a very pleasant stay under the conditions we were in. Obviously we were not tourists. All the treatment has been fantastic towards us and there is no bad feeling at all towards Iran."

Still waiting for a response from Tony.

A Very Pragmatic Religion

People who criticize environmentalism like to say that it is a "religion." They think it's based on faith, a concept of doomsday, and that we believe that driving cars and building factories and polluting the sacred air and water is a "sin" for which we will eventually be punished.

That's funny, I thought I wanted clean air because I have this strange aversion to breathing poison. I didn't know that the air was so holy.

Ahmadinewhatthefuckinejad?

So Iran is letting the hostages go. No negotiations, no daring MI5 rescue operation, just "*yawn* whatever, here are your guys back."

Ahmadinejad says, "When we think of Islamic kindness, we are not expecting anything in return." This makes me think there are one of two things going on here: either this whole thing was a stunt to allow Ahmadinejad to make himself look like the good guy by "pardoning" the Brittish hostages, which is quite contrived seeing as international law says that if someone illegally enters your waters, you intercept them and turn them back rather than capture them, or there was some kind of back door deal made that convinced Mahmoud of the wisdom of releasing these guys.

Given that Ahmadinejad really wants people to believe that, "really guys, I did this out of the kindness of my heart. No one is coercing me to release these people in any way," the latter situation seems somewhat more likely.

What I can't wait to see is whether the confessions that the captives gave will be recanted, and what the right-wing crazies are going to do/say if they aren't.

The Vacuum of the West

I'm not the first to point out that the wealth of the West has made its people fat and complacent, and left them content to work pointless jobs for base comforts and have no motivation to achieve anything beyond material accumulation. I'm no puritan myself. I enjoy material comforts, but I also have an appreciation for glory, beauty and creativity that far surpasses any desire for anything material. The contemporary Westerner has little appreciation for these things.

There are of course, Westerners who care about more than material comforts. Many devote a lot of time and energy to protests and railing against injustice on the left, and religion on the right. The left, however, does not devote itself to anything, only against what they see as being wrong. They offer nothing but guilt, repentance and flagellation. Those on the right, even the religious, focus more on the "evils" of homosexuality and obscenity than on the divinity of Christ.

The Muslim world has much the same problem as the Christian West. They are against more than they are for, and what they are for is some fantasy of an afterlife. They don't care about making the world better, they don't care about making people better, they only care about punishing and restraining people in order to achieve pipe dreams.

Both, however, make the left look pathetic. The left, largely, does not advance anything in this world or the next. They do have some sense of appreciation for glory and achievement, but what they find glorious is not the building of anything or the advancement of anything, but rather the destruction of authority. There is a lot of authority that needs to be destroyed, of course, but the left offers nothing in replacement.

Where Do They Expect All These Palestinians to Go?

Larry Auster, in his approval of a townhall.com article by Ben Shapiro, advocates the expulsion of the Palestinians from the West Bank. Here's a copy of the e-mail I sent him about what seems to me to be an oversight in that plan.

Hello Mr. Auster,

I read your response to Ben Shapiro's article on expelling the Palestinians out of the West Bank, and as difficult as any proposed solution to Israeli security would be to implement, this seems particularly implausible. Not only would Israel encounter resistance from the Palestinian population, but also any country to which the IDF would attempt to send the Palestinians would resist.

As much as Arab governments like to talk about the plight of Palestine, their not too fond of actual Palestinians, and few countries are going to be willing to take in 5 million poor and poorly educated refugees. Jordan, the most geographically convenient place to move the Palestinians, would obviously refuse since the PLO tried to overthrow their king in 1970. Israel would have to force open Jordan's borders in order to push through all the Palestinian refugees, and that would embroil Israel in a war with a country with which it has had a reasonably stable relationship for decades. The same is true of Egypt and the inhabitants of Gaza.

Given that the West Bank doesn't share a border with any other country, I don't see how these refugees can be moved to any other country short of flying them or trucking them en mass over Israeli soil to Jordan, Syria, or Lebanon, and I doubt that would be a logistically or economically possible thing to do to an unwilling population.

So where do you and Mr. Shapiro suppose Israel would put all of these people, and how do you expect the IDF to get them there?

Fusion Fraud?

According to this article a researcher at Purdue University has created nuclear fusion using sound waves. The scientific community and the government are so skeptical about this prospect that they all seem to be assuming that it is the result of fraud or error.

The Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, are investigating the discovery. Nobody at any other facility has been able to duplicate Purdue's results, but another scientist from LeTourneau University has been able to reproduce the experiment on Purdue's equipment.

A Theory of Divinity

Religion is the process of making up a reality beyond the one that really exists. The reason why people do this is because they are profoundly dissatisfied with reality. In part, this comes from the nature of human psychology. I think we are mostly designed never to be fully satisfied. We can nonetheless have a concept of what complete and total satisfaction would be like. All concepts of the divine are the result of imagining just such a thing.

Having given up on trying to find satisfaction in the material world, religions, especially Abrahamic religions, create a world where complete and unending satisfaction are granted.

Perfection, in the sense of something wholly satisfying, is something that most human minds crave, but are rarely able to find through the senses. The divine, therefore, can only be perceived by the imagination.

Thesis

I'm going back to university this year to upgrade my current major in political science to an honours in political science which requires doing a bachelor's thesis. I had been mulling over the idea of doing something about Islamic integration in Europe, and comparing the various immigration policies to see which has been most effective at integrating Muslims into society, but I was worried that that would be too touchy a subject for a liberal arts university.

Instead I'll be doing something about China. I'm not entirely what I'll do just yet, but I'm leaning in the direction of looking at Chinese investment in Africa and what effects it has had. I've also been considering looking at more philosophical aspects of Chinese foreign policy (I'm also doing an honours in philosophy), namely how amoral China has been in its pursuit of the resources it needs.

China's growing wealth and influence gives it a lot of power, but it seems unwilling to accept any responsibilty. Take Sudan. China has so much money invested in the Sudanese oil industry that if they gave a shit about Darfur, they could stop the genocide there in a matter of days. China's internal policies are just as robotically pragmatic. Not only do they restrict the number of children a couple can have, and often resort to forced abortions if that limit is breached, they are also one of the few remaining countries to openly practice eugenics. People of lower intelligence are forcibly sterilized.

I'll have to do some more research to find out how much this topic has been examined and whether I can come up with an original idea about the subject, but I think the area has a lot of potential.

Mohler

I just saw this thing on The Colbert Report about this guy named Albert Mohler who said basically the same thing I said in an earlier post, that we may someday have the ability to technologically remove any biological predisposition to homosexuality.

Mohler took a lot of heat for advocating such a practice, but would it really be that objectionable? I am in favour of gay rights, because I don't think whom you find attractive is as important as your ability to pursue a relationship with whomever may consent to have a relationship with you. I therefore think it would be far more preferable for a parent to remove biological urges for relations with the same sex than to force them to fit into some lifestyle that is not compatible with their biology.

So I don't have a problem with parents biologically inducing heterosexuality in their children, and I don't have a problem with parent's who choose to do the opposite.

Jeffersonian Democracy

One might be surprised by the fact that Thomas Jefferson had a hand in writing the US Constitution considering his advocacy of aristocracy and social stratification in a letter he wrote to John Adams.

The constitution does say that "all men are created equal," but does this really conflict with the idea of social stratification? Does the idea that all men are created equal mean that all men end up equal or should be treated equally? I don't think that that is what Jefferson believed. He believed that "there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents." He also said that "There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents." By this he means the traditional European concept of hereditary aristocracy.

I can't speak for everyone who had a hand in writing the constitution, but this seems to me to be evidence that Jefferson believed that equality of creation meant not that everyone should be treated equally, but rather that your status should be based rather on "virtue and talents" not the circumstances under which you were "created."

Jefferson considered the natural aristocracy, "the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society" and asks, "May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?"

Too bad that's not the kind of government the United states has now.

Highly Illogical

I consider myself generally to the left on most issues, but nonetheless I have a fascination with right-wing pundits and bloggers. Their arguments are often so ridiculous, they make me feel very intelligent by comparison. One of the blogs I often read is View From the Right. It's written by a dude named Lawrence Auster, who is a blatant racist (although he bristles at any charge of racism) who fancies himself a deep thinker.

This one article he wrote, "A simple proof of the existence of God," is delightfully audacious. His main premise is that the differences in the properties of hydrogen atoms and larger atoms suggest that those properties are not inherent to matter itself, but rather imposed from some force outside of the universe. In his words, these properties "are not material. They are mental." Therefore, I guess, he means to posit that the universe is governed by some intelligence.

I take issue with this for three reasons:

First, while physics doesn't yet explain why a basic unit of matter (the hydrogen atom) does not seem to have properties that would predict the behaviour of larger atoms that are largely made up of the same components, it does not necessarily follow that physics can't ever explain it.

Second, he assumes that there are no components below the level of protons and electrons that would have properties that explain the behaviours of all atoms at once. String theory and loop gravity theory posit that these components really do exist.

Third, even if there really is some force outside of the universe, outside of matter and space-time, that imposes these properties on matter rather than those properties being inherent, it doesn't necessarily follow that that force is intelligent or eve conscious. For the properties of matter to exist outside of the universe, all that is necessary is that information be stored and retrieved from some source. This does not require any kind of intelligence.

China: The New America

If you thought the ruthless and paranoid activities of the US and CIA during the Cold War were bad, wait until you see what China is capable of.

Although the Americans were certainly paranoid enough to really believe that the Soviet Union was going to conquer the US by sneaking in the back door of South and Central America and inspiring places like Guatemala to nationalize public resources, it also provided them with a pretty convenient excuse to pick a fight with any leader, democratically elected or not, who stood in the way of American companies looking to make a profit off of the resources of foreign nations. This wasn't just in South America, but Iran as well. When Mossadeq nationalized the oil industry, the British and Americans took him out and replaced him with the Shah who would guarantee that American and British money, uh, I mean "security" would be guarded from socialists. Of course, if the Shah hadn't been in power, there would have been no Iranian Revolution in the late 70s. Had there been no Iranian Revolution, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would not be in power today.

But China also has economic interests in various parts of the world, and their ability to protect those interests are getting ever stronger. The Chinese, however, can't use security concerns to justify their thuggery. There is no great military adversary to China so they can't say that they have to gobble up the oil in Africa (and in so doing, fund the Sudanese genocide) in order to keep that oil from falling into "the wrong hands."

Well, they could say that, but they have even less credibility than the Americans when they used that excuse, and we all know how credible the Americans are in those matters.

What Are Rights?

I believe in natural rights, but not in nearly the same way as most people who believe in natural rights. I believe that a person's nature should determine what their rights are, but that there is very little in common among humanity as a whole, and that the idea of a universal "human right" doesn't really make much sense. Each person has a nature that determines their proclivities and the conditions under which they would be able to live the best life possible.

Most human beings, typical human beings, are very similar in nature, but there are significant portions of humanity that don't fit in. These people deserve as much autonomy and self-determination as possible.

The desires and motivations that are deepest and most important to a particular human being are not entirely determined by biology. There are some inescapable motivations that are biologically dependent, but there are also some that are completely induced by environment and some that are a mixture of the two. These motivations are no less strong and basic than the purely biological ones. As such, societies that have been inducing certain values that have become inexorable in the members of those societies should have the autonomy to accommodate their people according to their natures.

The primary criticism of any theory of natural rights is that the way that a person "is" does not imply that that is the way this person "ought" to be. I agree with this assessment, but I agree with it because what a person "ought" to do is irrelevant if their nature forces them to do something. I believe that to say someone "ought" to do something, one is implying that they "can" do it. If a person's nature forces them to behave a certain way, it makes no sense to say that they "ought" not to behave that way. They have no choice but to behave according to their nature.

The one human characteristic that is significant for all of humanity is that there are people who will have a nature that is different from any other member of humanity, therefore the only universal human right that should be taken seriously is the ability to opt out of any society that doesn't recognize one's true nature. Anyone who wants to leave a particular country should be allowed to leave that country to seek one that will better accommodate them.

External Gestation

I consider myself fiercely pro-choice despite the fact that I really dislike abortion. The idea that a woman should be forced to carry a child to term is far more despicable than the fact that abortion is whithering away the populations of many countries and is just plain gross.

I don't like abortion, and I don't like forcing women to carry children they don't want and have no desire (and probably no ability) to raise. So for this, as with all things, I look to technology for a way to have my cake and eat it too.

One of the best things that we could invent is an artificial womb. I'm sure somebody, somewhere, is already looking for a way to gestate a kid from conception to birth without the need of burdening some poor lady's uterus. Not only could this provide more options to women prone to miscarriages, but, if a fetus or even embryo could be extracted from a pregnant woman, that woman would retain sovereignty over her body and the child she conceived would survive.

Now I'm sure some lovey dovey conservative fruitcakes will whine about how this would violate the bond between a mother and her child, but come on, if that bond were otherwise going to be severed with a coat hanger, it couldn't have been that strong in the first place. Kids who are put up for adoption would never know who their parents are anyway, so that's really a moot point.

An artificial womb would mean a more sustainable population and an end to abortions altogether without violating a woman's right to her own body. And who could be against that?

China's Ace in the Hole

It isn't news that China is gaining power, wealth and influence, but few people understand the role that their huge population will play in their future standing in the world. Right now it's seen as a liability, and it it is a liability for a socialist country, committed, at least ideologically to providing basic necessities to over a billion people. Given that the native populations of most Western countries are failing to reproduce at replacement rates, however, a population that has trouble keeping itself under control could be a profound advantage.

The countries at the top of the heap right now are either declining in population like Russia, or can only keep their populations afloat by inviting in millions of immigrants into the country. If the West is lucky, and those immigrants are able to adopt the culture and way of life that has kept Europe and its colonies prosperous, then there is little to worry about. If, however, those immigrants, who largely come from less successful countries, bring cultural traditions with them that are not conducive to the continuing prosperity of the West, then East Asia and especially China will take the West's place at the top.

There is plenty of room for criticism of the political situation in China, but whether you like the country or not, its population and the pro-prosperity culture it supports enjoy a security that the West does not.

No Flab for Me!

I'm still pretty young (only 25) but already, I'm scared to death of getting older and nothing exacerbates my fears more than seeing how much the kids I went to high school have let themselves go over the years. The guys and gals with whom I graduated have only been out of high school for seven years, but they're already getting fatter. I don't think anybody I knew back then is actually thinner now.

The more I see this, the more frightened I am by each new birthday cake.

YouTube Demons

Despite my avid interest in the occult, I'm a skeptical sort of guy. Since I was in high school I've been reading about Anton Lavey, Aleister Crowley and later, John Dee and the Ars Goetia. My primary interest in the stuff has always been aesthetic. I like the semiotics, poetry, and even the couture of the occult. I never really took it seriously, however, and have always had a giggle at those who do.

The Goetia, (a system developed by King Solomon to summon demons and get them to do your bidding) arouses an especially vehement skepticism in me, mainly because those who practice it claim to be able to summon visibly observable entities that they claim are absolutely not figments of their imagination. If this is the case, however, I think there would be more than just drawings of these things. If you can really see them, and they are really there, why has nobody photographed or video taped any of these things? You'd think YouTube would be loaded with Goetia videos.