Think Of The Children!

You might have picked up from my post about Stephen Conroy’s plan for increasing government control of the internet by forcing an ISP level filter on us that I have an extra special contempt for the typical family values argument about the supposed need to ‘protect’ the children.

As I already stated in the previous post, if a parent wants their child protected… that is their responsibility. This applies to the Internet, and it also applies to every type of Old Media outlet. If a parent is worried about the degenerate rubbish that a child might stumble upon online, they can either supervise their child on the computer or download free filter software that doesn’t force anything on anyone else. Everyone wins. If they don’t want a child watching Jerry Springer… keep them away from the TV at the time its on… or watch another channel with them at the time… or better yet, give them a book to read or send them outside to play. Hell… take the time to calmly explain to a child why degenerate rubbish is bad… help them to understand it so they can reach that conclusion on their own rather than just having to blindly trust and obey the ‘authority figure’.

Of course, these ‘family values’ voters who want more censorship, who want more government control look like they’re too lazy to make that kind of effort as a parent… or perhaps they’re too insecure about their level of skill as parents and they feel the need for the omnipresent power of the State to charge in on a white horse and smite what they perceive to be the threat to the children.

That they would accuse those opposed to censorship of being in favour of degenerate rubbish is a clear appeal to emotion… and their most prominent emotion is fear. Its as if those who do not feel their fear are somehow in among the degenerate losers whose questionable media content is inciting this fear. There is nothing rational about it.

Of course nurturing the children is important… ensuring they grow up with as little nastiness in their lives as possible (not that easy when they’re being herded by threat of legal action into the holding pens we tend to call schools, divided by age and set down in front of a teacher who needs to be respected as the current authority figure ‘or else’). And I certainly see how constantly improving how we as a society raise our children is important in ensuring a brighter future for humanity as a whole (for the most part we’re definitely doing a better job of raising our children than our medieval Dark Age ancestors).

But for all the need to ensure our children are properly nurtured, the last thing they need is to have to be ‘protected’ but the ultimate omnipresent authority of the government. I have to ask how a child is supposed to learn to be an intelligent, responsible adult capable of managing life in a free society when they’re being constantly smothered by authority for most of their upbringing, whether it be parents, teachers, government or even ‘God’. If you want them to avoid degenerate rubbish in the media… help them to understand why it is bad… impart the knowledge upon them that will allow them to draw that conclusion on their own. There always comes a time in a person’s life where their capacity to thrive depends on their ability to make their own value judgments, and by invoking some kind of authority to censor everything robs them of the opportunity to develop those skills.

Importance Of The Internet

So I’d say I’ve done a pretty good job of establishing just how upset my country’s government makes me with their plan to impose a Chinese style internet filter on us. I also said I’d explain why I consider the internet to be perhaps the most important technology of our time.

What the internet has caused in the years since it became widely available is a torrential downpour of information that would have otherwise been difficult to obtain. Before we had the internet, just about all of the information we received about the world outside of our immediate communities came from television, radio, newspapers and magazines… what we nowadays refer to as ‘Old Media’.

For a time, the Old Media was enough… and since there was nothing better anyway, it was important… after all it was better to have than no news of the outside world at all. If advocates of the Old Media were to say to us twenty years ago just how important television and radio are to society, they’d definitely have a point.

But the problem with the Old Media… what was always the problem with the Old Media is its inaccessibility to the masses. I can remember a time when it was always such a big deal when your name appeared in a newspaper or magazine (I can remember being so excited as a teenager when a letter I wrote to PC Powerplay ended up in there… how pathetic is that )… and an even bigger deal when one’s voice was heard on the radio, or their face was shown on television. Even if it was for just one second and had no substance to it.

But the point I’m getting to here is that because of the great expense that goes into broadcasting on radio and television, and printing newspapers and magazines for a wider audience than just a school or college campus, you’d often find that the information made available on the Old Media tends to be either sensationalized drivel or outright propaganda. They are very selective when it comes to what makes it into the final cut, and its pretty much guaranteed that they will not be allowing anything that threatens their profit margins (thus they try to keep ‘controversial’ opinions to a minimum, except when blasting them), upsets their well-connected political butt buddies (like giving third parties any more attention than the token amount needed to maintain the facade of being ‘fair and balanced’), or undermines their control of the flow of information (you’ll hardly ever see ‘current affairs’ programs talk glowingly of the internet).

Now the internet… what we refer to as ‘New Media’ does not have the problem of this great expense that’s needed to maintain it. It costs me nothing to write in this blog… were I to try and make a magazine, however, I’d have to go to great expense buying all the paper, the printers and the marketing to get the magazine sold. Anyone can upload a video to YouTube for nothing but the price of their camera, whereas to make a TV show they would have to pitch an idea to network executives who would have to decide if its worth the expense to give the project the green light, because it costs them a lot of money for the cameras they use, as well as paying the crew, and not to mention how much real estate a studio takes up. Anyone can record a podcast for much less expense than the cost of running a radio station with a strong enough signal to reach beyond the neighbourhood.

The internet places the power to control the flow of information into our hands. Every last one of us who uses the internet can reach a global audience at but a tiny fraction of the expense of the Old Media outlets. Of course, this is both its greatest blessing and its darkest curse. While it does bring to light valuable information that the Old Media wouldn’t be caught dead broadcasting or printing, and while it allows us to air the more difficult questions that the Old Media refuses to ask, let alone try to find the answer for, it also allows a forum for crackpots like these paranoid conspiracy nuts (I mean the ones who can’t differentiate between a ‘theory’ and a ‘fact’).

But for all the problems the internet has, in terms of some of the rubbish you would find on it, it becomes a valuable skill to be able to sift through the junk and find the absolute gems nestled deep within the pile of information that has accumulated in the decade or so the internet has been commercially available for a greater number of people.

So what I am getting at… I consider the internet to be the most important technology of our time because information is power… and the affordability of the internet… of blogs… of YouTube channels and podcasting all place that power into our hands. The flow of information is with all of us, and not just a handful of super rich politically connected media moguls.

Of course, said moguls are fighting this… everything I’ve seen of A Current Affair that is to do with the Internet is more often than not negative. They’ll never talk about the brilliant videos on YouTube… only the cyberbullying that a small number of teenagers might engage in. The Old Media continue to protest that we do not appreciate how important they are… even as their content is coming from deeper and deeper in the garbage piles. Governments around the world are looking into means with which they can ‘regulate’ the internet (totalitarian countries like China and Iran have already done so, and if Conroy gets his way, we’re next).

The fact is that nowadays, we don’t have to put our trust in the mindless talking heads on the evening news to get our news. We can do our own research and come to our own conclusions based on multiple accounts of current events spanning across a diverse cross-section of points of view. We get a more complete picture of what’s going on… of the possible answers to all the hard questions that we need to get past in order to move forward.

And more relevant to anarchism… part of doing away with the State is to do away with the perception that we ‘need’ it. Of course that’s going to take time… most likely time that spans beyond our lives… but when it comes to the path of liberty, the life without rulers herding us around with their weapons and their laws and their coercion… we’re still taking baby steps right now… and one more of these baby steps away from Statism is to set information loose and to take the control of its flow away from those in power.

So there’s my long winded explanation of why I get upset when the government moves to increase its control of the internet.

Am I Being Too Hard On Conspiracy Theorists?

Hard to believe that I’m thinking these thoughts given how dismissive I usually am of conspiracy theorists… particularly the ones who believe things about how the Illuminati, who are the pawns of an evil race of reptilians from another dimension, are working behind the scenes to establish a New World Order… a One World Government with the power to rule over us all with mind control and all the rest of that nasty stuff.

There is, after all, absolutely no tangible evidence of there actually being this ‘New World Order’… of course we do have a small handful of elites in charge of everything… but that is hardly a new thing. Sure… we seem to be moving in a general direction away from the currently dying system of sovereign ‘nation-states’ towards unity. Yes, we definitely cannot trust those in power, or those who seek power.

But until I see one of these reptilians with my own eyes, in its natural form… until verifiable proof emerges that the Illuminati are even real comes out… well I’m just not going to take the theories seriously.

But that’s the thing really… they are just theories. And like many theories, you will have a continuum of how zealously the theory is believed… from the 100% skeptical to the 100% certain the theory is fact. Perhaps these theories about NWO and Illuminati and Reptilians are fine… the problem isn’t that people raise them, or believe in them as such… its more the crazy lengths many of the believers go to. I mean I certainly have a lot more respect for Matt Bellamy or Charlie Sheen than… say… Alex Jones. Matt Bellamy and Charlie Sheen seem to be seriously contemplating some of these theories… particularly about 9/11… but at least they’re not being crazy about it (I dunno… might be biased in Bellamy’s case… Muse is one of my favourite bands and Bellamy is musically and lyrically gifted). Alex Jones on the other hand… well I’ll let TYT’s Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian do the talking here…

It sounds as if its way too personal for him, and he’s narcissistic enough to believe that ‘the man’ is after him… that he’s important enough and dangerous enough to the establishment that they want to kill him one day.

Seriously… if they wanted to kill him, he’d already be dead. Do you really think that the U.S. government in its current size, with all of its secretive organizations, and not to mention Dick Cheney’s secret executive assassination ring within the CIA wouldn’t be able to kill this one crackpot if they wanted to? Chances are despite his fame, either they don’t know about him, or he’s just seen as too much of a kook to be a threat.

And for those who do contemplate these theories without being completely batshit about them… the crazy conspiracy nuts who yell and scream the loudest and make a scene are doing them a disservice. Hell… they’re doing a disservice to everyone who questions the establishment. I often find myself wondering if my writings on this blog about Anarchism and my frequent perusal of Anarchist YouTube Videos and Freedomain Radio podcasts might land me in trouble one day despite the fact that I am just one man, and I am too much of a pacifist to be any kind of threat to such a great big overpowered leviathan like a government.

Wouldn’t be easy to realize my dream of getting out of Australia if I was on a no-fly list, would it?

Anyway… when it comes to conspiracy theorists… I’ve probably made the mistake of tarring all of them with the same colourful brush, lumping them with the likes of Alex Jones, which isn’t fair at all… it would be like lumping all anarchists with the Unabomber, all left-wingers with Stalin and all right-wingers with Hitler. So… when it comes to the conspiracy theorists… at least the ones that don’t get as riled up and shout and bark like Alex Jones… its probably not helpful to try to predetermine their disposition, and so I will try to stop that habit and encourage others to at least try it.

Australian Internet Screwed

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/15/2772467.htm

So… Stephen Conroy, and the Rudd government have decided to ignore the warnings of prominent experts with internet service providers, thousands upon thousands of people concerned about government attacks on freedom of speech online, and reality itself, and has given the internet filter the green light.

Expect to see it put to the vote some time next year… and expect ridiculous ad hominem attacks against anyone who opposes this great leap toward fascism as well as the same the tired old ‘WE HAVE TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN’ nonsense that always gets the so-called ‘family values’ ticket rolling.

It really is an insult to any self-respecting adult every time their government decides that they need more power to control what kinds of material we as mature adults are allowed access to. I will go so far as to say one thing likely to offend the ‘adults’ who support censorship… especially of this magnitude… which is quite easily comparable to that of totalitarian countries like China and Iran… the ‘adults’ who support this must have some serious issues to think themselves, as adults, to be too untrustworthy with the free flow of information that they would bend knee to a government and beg… yes… BEG for them to take away their own rights.

Well I’m not cool with this. If they don’t want to look at the degenerate crap that’s driven them into such a shark-like frenzy… they don’t have to. If they want the children protected from said degenerate crap… well they can protect their own children by supervising their internet usage. As for other people’s children… ITS NONE OF THEIR GODDAMN BUSINESS!!!

As an adult with the full mental faculties to decide for myself what I deem appropriate or inappropriate for myself, and any children I will one day be a father to… I say this is not acceptable.

/sigh unfortunately… since Stephen Conroy is set on this path, despite the reality of what he’s proposing… despite the many ISPs who opted out of the tests of this filter because it was unworkable… despite the very loud outrage from anyone with any shred of respect for liberty (many of which probably even voted Labor in 2007, unfortunately I’m one of them… and no… this was not a platform they were running on)… it feels like there may be no hope.

See this is precisely why you must never… EVER place your trust in politicians. They will sacrifice all common sense, decency and policy firmly grounded in reality in the name of expediency. Supposedly Stephen Fielding, the senator of the so-called ‘Family First’ party holds the balance of power in the Senate. Labor want his crucial vote for other policy issues, and they will give up some of our liberty to get it.

Anyway… sorry I’m riled up right now… this is a hot issue that means a lot to me. I’ll make another post soon where I will go into detail about why I consider the Internet to be the most important technology of our time. But suffice it to say, any move to impose a repressive Chinese style censorship regime that will degrade the quality of service (which is precisely what experts with ISPs that opted out of the tests warned us about) is going in the exact opposite direction to where we need to be heading… especially given how crappy our internet is already down here in the Seventh Layer of He… er… I mean Australia.

They’re NOT Here To Help

When considering people in government, its best not to be so naive as to believe that they all seek office for the sake of helping the public at large. Though it is a mistake I often made in the past… perhaps born of some desperate hope that this time, things might actually change… this time, the politician won’t break their promises and prove to be just one more in a long list of pathological liars.

Those of us who at some point in our lives have cared about the spectator sport of mainstream statist politics would likely understand where I’m coming from here. The politician is, after all, a particularly dangerous breed… especially when they’re oratorically gifted. Obama is certainly much more eloquent than Bush… and so the world just loves him like he were some kind of saviour, even before he’s done anything of what he said… and of what he has done… its mostly the opposite.

Over on the other side too, the politician so easily compels suspension of disbelief. You have the typical ‘family values’ ticket hypocrite. He could be married and banging three women and two men on the side, and yet his pious gibberish about ‘family values’ will strike the right chord among family values voters. You also have the corporate shill, who doles out fistfuls of bank bonds to the ‘defense contractors’ of the military industrial complex, debasing the currency of the nation to fund the empire and with the right words, even libertarians of the right-leaning bent will laud him for his words on fiscal responsibility.

When I could finally hammer that last nail in the coffin of my past statism and push it into the ground to rot, one way I felt liberated was in the inoculating effect it had on my mind. I found myself listening to politicians and pundits whose every word I clung to like Linus Van Pelt clings to his security blanket… and their words just sounded so empty. The words of politicians in their speeches and press conferences have become so devoid of meaning.

Realizing at long last that emptiness of their words… that was the first taste of true freedom I’ve had the pleasure of savouring. I no longer have to care which figurehead wins the election. I no longer have to lose sleep if that right-wing turd sandwich beat that apparently-left-wing-but-really-slightly-less-right-wing-than-the-other-guy douche. It is ultimately irrelevant.

Of course were an apologist of the State to read something like this… I can certainly preempt many of their rebuttals. They would say that there is a difference between the candidates. Sure… at a superficial level, one candidate may be less hostile toward… say… gay marriage (which, by the way, is a religious matter and has no place in politics anyway). Sure one candidate will dole out bigger social security cheques and pay public school teachers a slightly higher salary. But does either candidate have less interest in maintaining the empire? Does anyone in politics able to make it to the top really have the balls to stand up to the military industrial complex and the Wall Street bankers and the Zionists?

Issues where candidates differ are somewhat superficial… at least compared with the real issues that demonstrate how irredeemably evil and inherently violent the State itself is. Obama promised to get out of Iraq you say? Well he did set a timetable so we’ll have to wait and see… but I won’t hold my breath. He said the war would be over in Afghanistan in 18 months… don’t be ridiculous… the much dreaded ‘Graveyard of Empires’ can’t be won that easily (if it can even be won at all). He said he’d close Gitmo… but ‘terrorist’ suspects, many of which were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time will likely still be held without trial… somewhere else.

The promises politicians make… the sweet, sweet candy of their pleasant words of hope and change… of preserving tradition and morals and family values… of pulling the brakes on the atrocities committed in the name of ‘freedoms’ we’re told we have but are quickly swept aside in the name of expediency… they’ll say anything to get your vote. They’ll do the opposite to be able to afford to run a campaign long enough to get your vote, however… so don’t hold your breath if you’re expecting them to do anything more than a weaksauce token gesture that changes nothing so they can then say ‘hey… I couldn’t get the whole thing done first time… you’ll have to reelect me so I can finish the job’

It just galls me that voting is mandatory in Australia. Yes… down here, your participation in the machinery of the State… even your consent the State apparently needs in order to function and still be called a ‘democracy’… they force it out of you. If you don’t vote… you get fined… which, of course is revenue for them and you have to pay up if you don’t want any further trouble in the form of a larger fine or eventually jail. So either way, there’s no legal way to refuse to give the State your consent to ‘govern’ you.

So… no… politicians… they are NOT here to help you. The sooner the majority of the population realizes this… well… I can’t predict how that is going to turn out after a few skulls are cracked in the unrest that would follow… but I like to hope that we can one day be rid of politicians and all of their empty promises of freedom and weaksauce token gestures that are hardly change at all.

I highly doubt it will happen in my lifetime, barring some major cosmological event such as that predicted by the Mayan Calendar… but given some of the recent events beyond even the control of the omnipresent iron fist of the State, its entirely possible that we’re seeing the next dramatic shift in that direction.

Sponsored By Centrelink

Before I begin, for the benefit of those who might read this who aren’t Australian or know about Australia’s welfare system… Centrelink is basically the government agency that pays unemployment benefits and social security.

Now that I have that out of the way…

This afternoon when I went to the supermarket, I walked past a man with a most curious (and offensive… as I’ll explain below) T-Shirt with the message ‘Sponsored by Centrelink’ on it.

Clearly its drawing attention to his status as unemployed and living off the system. It reminds me of yet another similar statement on a sticker on the rear windshield of a souped up ute (ute, short for utility is what we call a pickup truck) which said ‘SEX, DRUGS, AND ON THE DOLE’

It gets me to wondering what this world is coming to when there is a market for merchandise for people who are living off the largess of the welfare state to advertise their (often permanent) state of unemployment as if they were proud of it.

I see it as what is clearly an unintended, yet always inevitable consequence of state run welfare. Of course, its difficult for anyone critical of the way a welfare system is run to touch it without being accused of being callous toward the disadvantaged and uncaring of the plight of the poor.

I am in no way saying that the elderly, disabled and poor don’t deserve help. But when you have this entire segment of the population that make no contribution to society… who don’t work and just take handouts given by a statutory agency funded by the government at the expense of middle class taxpayers, and just about every encouragement for them to stay there and not try to make something of themselves… it does throw the whole system into question.

I imagine much of what’s wrong with these people is that they’re instilled with a sense of learned helplessness… they are born into this situation and are brought up in such a way that they will follow the same pattern. And of course, with baby bonuses also being awarded to parents for each child they pop out into the world, its not hard to imagine that this is a growing segment of the population. Compare their incentive to pop out more kids with the disincentive for the middle class working population from having children, given that people who work are living busier and busier lives trying to keep themselves above water, never mind adding a child to the equation.

It isn’t hard to see how unsustainable this system is… and the scary thing is the consequence of freezing unemployment benefits and baby bonuses. Unrest would be more or less inevitable at this point. Unfortunately I see unrest as inevitable anyway, given that the cost of keeping these people cashed up is only going to rise over time as these proudly unemployed have plenty of incentive to pop out more babies who are more likely than not to go the same way through life.

I am not talking about every unemployed person here… nor am I saying that life on the dole is pleasant at all. I was unemployed for quite some time myself… though I never got any benefits (and in retrospect I’m glad I didn’t… though my anxiety disorder did make it almost impossible for me to get a job, seeing as how the very thought of an interview could trigger a panic attack).

And my heart does go out to other people who want to improve their situation and need some help to get things moving. My criticisms of welfare do not apply to those who would rather be able to get off it because that’s where I’d be were I to have received benefits in the years before I started working. I’d have lost a lot more sleep than I have been were I to be a part of a system in which my survival depended on involuntary funding from working taxpayers. Why would I want that on my conscience?

I just don’t like the idea that dole bludgers can feel proud of their status, living off the largess of the system they aren’t contributing to.

Anarchic Influences

There are plenty of potential influences that could steer someone in the direction of Anarchism. Some find their way through books, some through movies, and others through the internet, particularly YouTube whose anarchist community has been growing considerably these past few years.

I’d like to share some of the stones I stepped on in my path towards anarchism, and the forks in the road I’m encountering at this point in the road.

Firstly… I often find myself wondering if I always had anarchic tendencies, rooted deep within my subconscious. I mean… I could never conform, I never joined a ‘clique’, despite my academic capabilities, I had little interest in school. Most of all, I found nothing but contempt for the authoritarian style of teaching typical in an Anglo-Saxon society as proud of its ties to the British crown as Australia is.

But my open and overt declaration to being an anarchist is a fairly recent development… in fact it was probably only this year that it even so much as entered my mind as a potential solution to the problem of an overbearing, excessively intrusive state that is wholly owned by corrupt corporate interests.

So what events have taken place that helped in driving me away from Statism?

Well first of all has been the election of Kevin Rudd in 2007. Yes… I was overjoyed when he won. Just the mere fact that we were finally rid of John Howard after eleven years of that arrogant little dweeb and his Neo-conservative agenda. But months to years later, other than a public apology to the Stolen Generation, not a whole lot has changed. Part of me knew that the major parties were both in the pockets of our corporate oligarchs. Its only recently, however that I’ve decided to pass on the Kool-aid.

Second is… of course… the economic meltdown. Keynesian Progressives and Austrian Libertarians alike were not surprised that it happened (of course, they have opposite explanations as to why it happened). But what it has done to my world view is hammer home the point that what we’ve had for the past thirty years or so… this vapid, ravenous consumer culture, planned obsolescence in the designs of our products, rampant casino ‘capitalism’ unchecked by governments ready to bail these fools out when their investments go sour… its not sustainable, it has caused a great deal of anguish across the world, and its diminished the value of life more than any guilt-oriented religion of two thousand year old sand people can possibly do.

Then we have Obama… to some: the Black Jesus of the 21st Century come to save the world from the sleazy reptilian scum that have brought us to the brink… to others: the Anti-Christ of biblical prophecy come to impose his Satanic agenda upon us with his microchips, barcodes, Cash For Clunkers, Cap’n'trade and the death panels out to kill your grandma. I have to admit being washed up in the global euphoria of Obama being president for a small while. Certainly he is smarter and more eloquent than any of the monsters of the Bush Administration… and he did promise CHANGE. Unfortunately we’re not seeing a whole lot of that… seeing as how he was just as ready to dish bailouts to the morons that helped create this economic catastrophe as Bush.

Anyway… those are the major events, such as they are that set the context for my transition away from being the pathetic apologist of the State I once was.

One day in late 2008-early 2009, I let my curiosity take me on a bit of a trip… I did a search on YouTube for the term ‘wage slavery’ given that one anxiety I’ve had about entering the workforce is that I would become just another cog in this evil machine. I came across videos of some of the prominent anarchists of YouTube such as Mr1001Nights and Buddhagem. This was the first tantalizing taste of anarchism and it had me hooked. I also delved into some of what Noam Chomsky had said and written… I’d heard the name but never realized him to be an anarchist up to that point… I only really knew him for his criticisms of American imperialism.

So I did some research, finding a bit about the different schools of thought, of course, struggling to find which one is where I fit (I’m still in the midst of that struggle as of writing this). On the side I also found the Zeitgeist Movement… and when it comes to Zeitgeist: The Movie… much as I enjoyed the segment on the origin of religion, I take the rest with the tiniest grain of salt. As for Zeitgeist Addendum, and the Zeitgeist Movement itself, I do find the Venus Project to be an interesting concept… I’d like to see it actually attempted if it hasn’t been already. Even if it does end up falling flat… trying new things is what is most likely to get us out of this deep hole we’ve found ourselves in since much of what we’ve already done just isn’t working so well anymore.

But anyway, going back to anarchy, I also discovered Stefan Molyneux and Freedomain Radio. I definitely have some issues with Anarcho-Capitalism as I’ve seen it presented… but I still figure its important to listen to that perspective anyway, I’ve found some of the issues that mire the ‘left-leaning’ types of Anarchism through listening to this perspective. Besides… the philosophical side of FDR has given me plenty to think on as well… and I’m particularly fascinated by what is discussed there about how to better raise our children to be more voluntaristic, less violent and better able to live to their potential. And yes I’ll admit that I’ve picked up on some of the terms he uses.

Anyway… yet another musing here in my attempt at making sense of my shift towards Anarchism. In trying to chart the map to where I’m supposedly headed it probably does help to think back to the roots of it all. There are probably some deeper causes than what I’ve put down here, but I figure I ought to start with the more obvious ones.

Bob Marley Did 9/11

No… don’t get excited… don’t get hysterical… don’t be all like ‘dude! he’s dead!’… what I say here is drawing an analogy between the Bush Administration re: 9/11 and Bob Marley. To begin with, lets start with an episode of Seth McFarlane’s Comedy Cavalcade…

See where the analogy fits? What I’m saying is that the Bush Administration is guilty of killing thousands of Afghans and Iraqis simply by having used the overwhelming power of the State to impose their geopolitical agenda on those countries. They are guilty of authorizing torture, and Dick Cheney himself has gone on air a fair bit, smugly boasting about how the tortures he authorized ’saved American lives’.

There is no shortage of real crimes of the Bush Administration… real wrongs that they should be held accountable for. Doesn’t it seem a little excessive to try and argue (without the necessary extraordinary evidence) that 9/11 was an inside job? Its exactly like trying to nail Bob Marley for having shot the deputy when he is confessing to having shot the sheriff.

Anyway… nothing new here and I’m definitely far from the first person to argue a point along these lines, but just a thought.

Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri From My Anarchist Perspective Part 4 – SMAX Factions

Here are my thoughts of the SMAX factions (excluding the aliens of course)…

Cybernetic Consciousness – Led by a creepy young woman who calls herself Prime Function Aki Zeta-5, these guys are pretty much the transhumanists… the title of this faction makes it obvious that their ideology is the Cybernetic future society. Basically, the citizens of this faction share their brains with intelligent computer programs… apparently the result of a freak computer accident that brought Zeta-5 into existence. Now… I found these guys somewhat scary… the whole idea of sharing brain space with a computer program… but I suppose it depends wholly on whether the relationship is symbiotic or parasitic. Are you in control of yourself… or does the computer program control you? I couldn’t find any sufficient answer to that. But I imagine having a synthetic intelligence within your own consciousness may unlock undreamed of potential… and enhance the capacity for logic and critical reasoning, and thus the perceived need for a state to herd people around with guns may not be there at all.

Free Drones – Ah yes… Foreman Domai… this game’s source of Australian pride Anyway… since nationality is hardly of any relevance in this setting that hardly matters… what does matter is that Domai and those who follow him are the disaffected masses… something of a proletarian army aiming all of its guns against any bourgeois oppressor in their sights. In the past I had a fair bit of respect for these guys, and the battle they fight… unfortunately, I can’t condone revolution, however righteous its cause is, if the means of carrying it out are violent. Its somewhat ironic that in the end, their favoured social engineering choice is the Eudaimonia future society… I mean violent revolution is what they’re all about… and the idea that universal happiness can be achieved at gunpoint is bitterly laughable.

Data Angels – Headed by infamous hacker Sinder Roze, this is one of the factions of ‘anarchic’ tendency. They make the free flow of information into an art… a ‘jazz’ as the Datajack herself describes it. Being hackers of no particular ideology… I wonder if they do what they do ‘for the lulz’ as Anonymous do. The name of their first base, Data DeCentral illustrates how their society is likely structured… no central ‘administration’ or ‘bureaucracy’ to speak of. Sounds like a dream if it gets to the point where such a system can work.

Nautilus Pirates – Captain Svensgaard doesn’t really have any ideology so to speak… though it seems that the pirates favour the Power social engineering choice… so it would probably pay to consider these guys Spartans at sea. They call themselves pirates… they favour Power… so I imagine them to be employing violence to achieve their goals… whatever they may be at any particular moment.

Cult of Planet – Somewhat of a fusion between the Gaians and the Believers, if you could ever think that possible. They are headed by a creepy child ‘prophet’ named Cha Dawn, who claims that the Planetmind speaks directly to him (well she speaks to every faction leader to be fair… at least in the mid-late eras), and that he has the task of dismantling civilization and maintaining the pristine, mostly untouched state the Planet was in with all its xenofungus and mindworms. Of course… ignoring the extremist environmentalist position with their primitivist tendencies, they are a cult… and as we’ve seen from thousands of years of religious strife we’ve yet to recover from… cults are dangerous.

Climate Change Controversy

So… I haven’t really said anything about ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ or anything like that. The most significant part of my opinion about this matter is that it is far too politicized. There are too many people with certain vested interests in one side or the other on this issue. Industrialists, for example have a vested interest in disproving the theory that human actions have negatively impacted on our climate… they don’t want to cut back on emissions if they deem it ‘bad for business’. And its certainly the case that people in government… particularly the authoritarians of the left-leaning persuasion ought to jizz themselves at the thought of another issue that they can use to invoke enough fear to be able to demand an expansion of their own power.

So I’ve been hearing a bit about a leaked series of emails about inaccurate climate change data. Supposedly numbers were fudged and statistics manipulated to try and promote the view that climate change is happening.

My reaction to this: I don’t think that this does anything to discredit the whole of the climate change idea… nor does it strengthen the case of the deniers. It only proves that a couple of scientists decided to fudge their numbers.

Now I have no doubt that the climate is changing… after all its so much hotter in the summer these days than I can remember from the past (hell… it was 43 degrees celsius today and summer hasn’t even officially started yet). I don’t doubt the possibility that it is a long term impact from heavily polluting dirty industry. But I also don’t doubt the possibility that sunspot activity or some other naturally occurring phenomenon either planetside or elsewhere in the solar system may have done it. All I know is that many of the so-called ‘authorities’ on the issue of climate change are charlatans either looking to make money or gain power through liberal guilt, or through irresponsible industrial practices respectively.

I know what I say here doesn’t help in finding the answer about the issue of climate change… I’m just saying… a bit of skepticism of both sides is healthy. I trust the motives of Al Gore about as little as the motives of the well-connected oil tycoons. Whatever the truth may be… it would serve us well to do away with the crooks and liars on both sides.