Transition Announcement

What was once a blog for thoughts on prescribed readings henceforth becomes a repository for my thoughts upon important subjects.

Nothing to do with Anything

So, out of curiosity, I decided to 'calculate' my 'carbon footprint', googled the term, and tried three different services. One was carboncounter.org, a local [to portland] based aplication, another was climatecrisis.net, which was ?affiliated? with an inconvenient truth, and the last was the nature conservancy. I produce 15, 8, and 33 tonnes of carbon yearly, respective to each website. Wait, what? Same types of questions at each place, answered them all as similarily as I could, and got three vastly different answers. Okay then. Guess I'm not going to believe in all that without being more discerning than usual.

Security? Bah.

Why do governments think that they need to protect their citizens by stealing sensitive information about them when it's already been proven that governments are notoriously bad about keeping and using that information appropriately? Need I remind everyone of the times, yes, that's plural, and within the span of a week, intelligence documents were left on a train? [For details see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7449255.stm] Forgotten, like an umbrella. I guess in the states that shouldn't be a problem, since civil servants don't take public transport here. The Patriot Act is the singlemost irresponsibly invasive bunch of tripe of a law ever. For those who argue 'only the guilty need fear the information collected', I say Bah! Humbug! Don't we live in the Age of Identity Theft? Some criminal, or terrorist for that matter, could use the 'innocuous' information collected and lost to impersonate me, thereby making me guilty of all the things they commit in my name. See, the Patriot Act does what the TSA does with all their new regulations: make the terrorists smarter. The harder something is to make happen, the smarter the person who eventually makes it happen. And meanwhile, your average civilian suffers horrible inconveniences and possible recriminations due to illkept data.

Motivation?

Why would people allow themselves to be dehumanized in the manner described by Huxley? That's my biggest question, how the 'brave new world' came into being in the first place. There's nothing 'brave' about it; anyone who would allow that to happen to themselves, their offspring, is a bleeding coward. Yellow-bellied, lily-livered, gnat-brained, godforsaken coward. For all the conclusions the story comes to, I cannot but get stuck on this question every time I read it. I can understand the 'advantages' of a system that allows corporate manufacture of consumers, but not what cataclysmic event could convince people to go along with it.

The Nature of Terrorism

So, on 30 November, the BBC posted an article online entitled "The Age of 'Celebrity Terrorism'", a response to government and news speculation into the cause of the Mumbai attacks last week. To read the article, here's the address. Otherwise, I'll try to paraphrase.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7755684.stm

Paul Cornish lays out his interpretation of how the attacks on Mumbai have changed the face of terrorism. Before, and as in V for Vendetta, terrorists laid out their purpose. This dictated the kind of response they received. In Mumbai, the attackers left everything to be infered by the government.

'And perhaps so little is known of the terrorists' cause, because they simply did not feel the need to have one. [...] This could also have been a plan which had a large gap where mission, cause or vision statement ought to have been.'

Instead of terrorism with a purpose, 'we have come to the point where casually self-radicalised, sociopathic individuals can form a loose organisation, acquire sufficient weapons and equipment for a few thousand dollars, make a basic plan of action and indulge in a violent expression of their generalised disaffection and anomie.'

He also points out that at least one terrorist was wearing 'versace' [or a rip off]. Where V wears a mask, the Mumbai terrorists made no effort to hide their identity, but wore 'designer' clothes. Makes a person wonder.

Creation of Empowerment

Fascism unites people through their insecurities, not their strengths. Our critical culture has bred "confidence issues". Perhaps this is due to the competitive nature of capitalism; perhaps due to the culture of entitlement that identifies the haves and the have nots. Regardless, the current society in America is one which promotes victimization and therefor violence.
When reality clashes with what is purported to be reality, disenfranchisement occurs. When there is talk of a level playing field, but all monetary aid given to school districts for special programs goes to ESL classes, or special ed. classes, the majority comes to know that the playing fied is being leveled against them. When a student isn't being challenged to their full potential because the teacher is stretched too thin by dealing with the students who should have been held back for whatever reason, society fails that student, and that student will either teach himself or ensure that others cannot learn either. Probably through violence. When a teacher neglects to spend time with the student who has no difficulty with the subject matter, that student can become starved for attention, and jealous of whatever group seems to be dominating the teacher's time. As Time is a zero-sum entity, this inequality fractures society, leaving it ripe for fascist agendas.

Perhaps a biblical Job-ism

When comparing Hitler's vision of fascism to Mussolini's, Hitler at least succinctly outlines his critique and vision. He believes in the holiness of natural selection, and that man must aid this process by mating only with men who equal himself. Suffering promotes improvement. Only when he brings his mistaken assumptions about Jews into the mix does he cease for a moment to make rhetorical sense. [I have no clue where the first came from, but once that is established, the rest simply build upon it] He then goes on to outline the supreme lack of logic in his opponents' methods of creating an ideal, 'peaceful' society "we would have to wage wars in order to arrive at pacifism". When the strongest are all that's left, he agrees that this kind of peace might be attainable, but so long as there is suffering to weed out the weak, let the weak suffer. Especially since "all great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning." America travels the path to sure destruction with her new president elect, a prime example of 'defilement of the blood'.

The urge to preserve the species leads men to form governments. As such, the stare is but the "organization of a community of physically and psychologically similar living beings for the better facilitation of the maintenance of their species". The state, however, requires the sacrifice of the individual for the betterment of the species; suffering for improvement!