It's only coincidence that we also sell the suckers to other countries.
Does anyone know who exactly is manufacturing them in this country? Does it in any way tie back to Olin Chemical or Bradley? I intend to find out exactly where the money's going (at least so far as it is public record), but no point in reinventing wheels.
Um, Bane, most of my peers here *make* Star Trek references on occasion. At least one of the bloggrolled have *written* Star Trek novels. Do you not know of the dangers of assumption? I think I'm probably a little more familiar with this group than you are. (Frex, I'm sure someone here will have the link to that old Dr. Seuss-ST:TNG fic/filk thing that did the rounds in Usenet back in the day, or at least remember it.)
You're giving newbies a bad name. Or living down to the stereotype, whichever.
(There needs to be a FAQ, which states the relevant facts in re the Nielsen Haydens' professional and religious associations, and other important points like the cryptic threads on ML etc, not just to consolidate it all for newcomers, but so that, in time, there will be an opportunity for someone to shout, "READ THE FAQ!!!" and the ancestral ghosts of internet tradition will be appeased.)
I see you got the Vox. (Like the Pox, but with no known antibiotic cure.) He can't resist tracking down who's saying things about him, but I notice that he doesn't dare to beard s.z. in her lair, nowdays, for one. No force of logic or empirical evidence can penetrate the skull of Bonehead!Man or his minions.
--Oh, and they're *not* sock puppets, not in the usual Mary Roche sense. You're dealing with a hive mind here, like the Borg with VD as their Queen. If you want to see *scary* read through the comments at that "Pogroms R Us" post, and note his defenders. Particularly the women. (To think that I once laughed off the notion of "colonized minds"--!) Or paraliterate Bandar-log who were hanging around an English mission too long and picked up the trappings of Church ritual, perhaps.
I'm still amazed that this wasn't already widely known in the SF profession, given that the Beale dual-identity was linked quite a bit in June, and the Vox Collective have been witnessing a very unsavory sort of Christianity rather loudly to the blogosphere for some time now.
Frankly, I think the only way to clear your decks of them is to beam them to a Klingon ship. One way or another, the problem would be dealt with...
See? He thinks he won. He never answered anyone, he never obeyed any of the rules of logic, he never acknowledged that his premises were proven false, he was the source of ROFL fits and inhalation incidents from here to Ultima Thule since June, and he thinks he *won.*
Blondesense, Trish, I gotcher popcorn here, if you want to pull up a chair... (Just to warn you guys, he will never concede. He'll just change the subject, declare victory, and leave.)
[decloak via Elizabeth Bear]
Zounds, you guys didn't already KNOW that Vox Day aka Beale was a Wingnut Extraordinaire?! He's been a Figure of Fun among the more...uninhibited out in Left Blogistan, particularly of the female-friendly bent, since at least early last summer.
Echidne of the Snakes, Bartholemew's Notes on Religion, Trish Wilson, Dark Window, and yours truly have all featured our favorite skinhead-with-a-flaming-sword who preaches misogyny and bloodshed and privilege, this past year.
He thinks that we shouldn't have the right to vote.
He thinks that we don't belong in the workplace, except in brothels, because that's what we'd really rather do anyway, since we're lazy.
He claims to be a Libertarian, but then endorses positions so Authoritarian, they'd make the Persians look like liberals.
His Wingnut Daily column he owes to the fact that his father helped set it up, as discovered by Bartholemew via WoC.
And given that his "hard" sf experience consists of one co-authored game tie-in novel, and the rest of his books are Explicitly-Didactic Angelic Warfare stories (think Frank Peretti without the energy or characterization and twice as long) aka "fantasy," that he would pick a fight on this subject with the rest of his chosen profession just seems to finally lay the longstanding question, "Vox Day, sophisticated ironist or batshit crazy?" to rest...
It occured to me belatedly that "trifecta" is not strictly correct. Yes, we do have acceptance of torture, yes, we do have acceptance of the principle of farming it out to less-scrupulous satraps, yes, we do have the attitude that the lives of Arabs are in and of themselves than the lives of Americans - but underlying it all, so large that it cannot be seen any more than the whale (or seaturtle) we have mistaken for an Island because it is under our feet, the one thing which is most important and congruent in this typical example of espionage/action-adventure/technothriller memeage:
Disrespect for the Law.
The standard of the Clancyesque-milsf attitude towards torture is that of course we must do it secretely, because the wimpy, effeminate, civilian leadership just doesn't understand how things are in the real world, so we must protect them from themselves as well as from the knowledge of what we have to do to keep them safe and happy...
All of conservativism is embodied in this, then: the Strong Father setup [aka Mama Corleone, aka "Mater Si, Magistra Non!"], the inverted social order of the Ksatriyah Complex, the "unprincipled ideallism" that leads directly to Minitrue and Minilove. It is the mindset that led to the ascendence of Oliver North as a folk hero, and the trashing of John Kerry as counterpoint.
We are now admitting to contemplating the use of Death Squads in Iraq, btw. (And people wondered why they were putting John Negroponte in place after his performance in the 80s!) I ought as a Taoist Christian to hate to say I told you so, but I only hate the fact that I have to, to be honest. Undoubtedly this will go just as well as when we did it in that abberation from Americanism, Vietnam, or that other abbertation, Central America, or that other time when we forgot American Values in Haiti, or that other other time in the Philippines, or...
decloaking -
MoDo has been as blind to trends as so many on the Left for so long - it isn't just movies, and it isn't just since 2001 - Tom Clancy was mainstreaming the ethical nature of torture, when committed by the right people upon the wrong sort, back in the mid-90s.
I don't have any Clancy around the house, but I have a similar bit of tripe that I posted back in June on Nothing New - a brief exerpt from Infectress, by Cmdr. Tom Cool, USN, 1997:
----
"Do you know what is one of the most difficult challenges in repressing low-intensity conflict, terrorism and insurgency?" Carrington asked.
"No."
"Defeating the enemy without becoming him," he said. "In pursuit of noble goals, we must be careful when we undertake to break the law."
"Which crimes are we contemplating, Mr. Carrington?"
"Those will become evident momentarily. Let me lay them out for you. What do you know about the Mexican terrorist group Punto Uno?"
"Punto Uno is an environmental terrorist group that thinks the world's population needs to be imploded to a tenth of its present size. The population times point one. Punto Uno. Small group, quiet, well-connected, mysterious, more interested in networking and building infrastructure than in premature violence. When they act, they do so violently but anonymously. Pound for pound, one of the world's most dangerous groups. I like them in the long haul."
"It would seem that you know a lot about them."
"No, I don't. No one does. I've taken an interest in them since I had some indications a few years ago that they had connections with Infectress."
Carrington smiled, tilting his head back and studying Diane down the length of his nose. "Infectress, yes," he said. "That is the connection that I thought you might be interested in. We shared your information about the DNA splicer with the Mexican Interior police. Based on that tip, the Mexicans chose to redeem an undercover source, a son of a murdered policeman who had been living as a terrorist since he was eleven years of age. The undercover source had managed to become a member of a three-member Punto Uno clandestine cell. One member of the cell killed herself during the attempted arrest. The other was taken alive. One Miquelangelo Cabeza de Vaca. An accomplice of Infectress. He smuggled the DNA splicer into and then out of Mexico."
Diane smiled, but tremulously, as if she were afraid to hope the news was as good as it seemed.
"That's … strange. I didn't see that on the secure net."
Carrington shifted in his seat. He cleared his throat. "Cabeza de Vaca has been taken into special custody by the Mexican police."
"Special custody?" Diane's eyebrows lowered. "Do you mean incommunicado?"
"That's right. The Mexicans don't care to openly arrest terrorists. This is the lesson they think they've learned. They arrest a terrorist, they get a dozen bombings. Or they get a high-level kidnaping, such as the one last year, when the Zapatistas seized the governor of Chiapas and ransomed him for a mere commando-in-training. When they can, they prefer to snatch the terrorist and hold him incommunicado until they're finished interrogating him. Then…well…" Carrington shrugged.
Diane spoke her mind. "Special custody? That's not arrest. That's a violation of habeas corpus. That's kidnaping, that's state-sponsored terrorism. And I think that you're also suggesting torture and murder."
Carrington studied Diane's face. "That's…correct, Diane. That's what happens down there now. What do you think about that?"
Diane snorted. "I think it's horrible. I'd never tolerate it here in America.
Carrington smiled slowly. "Neither would I, Diane. Once a government allows its police to kidnap, torture and murder - good words, good plain words - then it cannot defeat the enemy, because it has become the enemy. And I'll arrest the first agent I discover who's guilty of such crimes. And I won't, I can't allow my Bureau to participate even as silent witnesses in such acts, even on foreign soil. So … just so you know. The Mexican Ministry of the Interior holds Cabeza de Vaca. In return for the tip, they have invited the Bureau to participate in his interrogation. As a matter of policy, we intend to refuse.
The unspoken offer seemed to hang in the air between Carrington and Diane. She realized that Carrington wanted someone to participate in the interrogation, but that he needed someone he could trust, someone motivated, someone whose connection with the Bureau allowed for the hope of plausible denial of Bureau foreknowledge and sponsorship. He needed someone exactly like Diane.
She held up her hand, palm toward Carrington. She tried to assmilate the information that Carrington had just shared with her. She considered it from several angles. The situation grew more ugly the more she looked at it.
What separated her from Infectress, once she decided that the ends justified the means? That it was all right to torture and kill one individual in order to save any number of other lives?
Her mother had brought her up with a lifelong respect for the law. Her mother had taught her that the law was something greater and nobler than human behavior. Diane believed that to abandon the law was to revert quickly to savagery. She had seen enough savagery in her life to know what horror and agony it engendered.
Her innermost voice spoke quietly but surely. This was wrong. She would have to let this opportunity pass.
Looking up into Carrington's cold, appraising eyes, however, she knew that she would not listen to that quiet voice. She would listen to the voice which did not whisper, but spoke with force. Mad for the blood of Infectress, this voice demanded that she go.
"I'll go."
----
Trifecta here - extraordinary rendition, deserved torture of terrorists, and by the time we get to the end of the book, nuking Ay-rabs for the salvation of the rest of the world.
I can find it starting as early as the 60s in Alistair Maclean, too. It's a stock trope of male-targeted genre fiction: We do it reluctantly (usually) and with some angst, because we are the Good Guys, but since they are heinous bastards and it's for The Common Good, without guilt or shame...and only the wusses, the bleeding-heart moral-relativist ninnies who thus display their unfitness for leadership, object.
Oh heck, I might as well give Greg the courtesy of a final answer, tho' he won't see it that way:
If I say that I received a good training in advanced math from my school, and that it therefore does a good job in teaching this subject generally, and yet I can't do long division, let alone calculus, people outside me would be perfectly justified in saying that I was wrong.
You're saying that your praised program taught you sound critical thinking and communication skills, and therefore can potentially do so for others.
I say that you haven't done anything to demonstrate your assertion, and your fabrication of a straw man at the end of your last response doesn't do anything to make me change that opinion.
Two (count 'em, two) posts about Landmark is "endless"? In a context of it being given as part of Greg's prescription of intellectual cure for what ails the Left in re rational discourse?
Oookay. Back to lurking.
Well, no, Greg, you're saying that Landmark taught you good things and made you feel better, and so far you haven't shown that it taught you much of value, and not everything that makes you feel better is actually good for you. So you *think* that Landmark was good for you, and therefore is objectively at least potentially good, and you *could* be right, but objectively that isn't certain. (There is another nuance in that what is and isn't objectively beneficial is complicated in a Rube Goldberg sort of way, where someone tries to do harm or engage in a selfish activity and it backfires - "they dig pits and fall into them" it says somewhere in the Psalms - or something which is objectively harmful turns out to have a good consequence too, like me being raised by sexist theocons around disciples of Weyrich and Viguerie, which wouldn't seem like much of an advantage on the face of it, but which means I know a hell of a lot about how the framing of the Right works because up until the mid-late 80s I was actually actively *doing* it, to other people. (I am a handshake away from Katherine Lopez and Rich Lowry, for pete's sake; I could have been Simone Ledeen, there but for the grace of God a Heritage intern I--)
Tina, Patrick and Teresa have articulated it already pretty well, and Lucy's made one of the corrections I was going to make in re the Civil Rights movement, but yes, it darn well makes a difference if you're talking to a) someone who is lying and knows it and is profiting from it; b) someone who doesn't give a damn what hurts others so long as they get theirs; c) someone who doesn't want to know what hurts others and has their hands clapped over their ears, their eyes closed as they hum with all their worth, and d) someone who is struggling with the anguish of the cognitive dissonance between what they are witnessing with their own senses and reason and what they have been told by groups a, b, c.
It *is* a waste of time to reason mildly with a and b. All you can do is debunk them, expose them, hold the Wallaces and their minions to scorn before the whole world. They know damn well they're not telling the truth, and if you try to argue with them, they will play you and crush you. Saruman can't be won over by being nice to him, but he'd really like it if you tried.
Likewise Ugluk. Your average Meocon - and s/he might be a very "nice", giving, caring person, who is simply okay with the idea of napalming strangers to keep herself safe or slowly poisoning strangers' children to the economy strong - is threatened by almost anything, and you cannot *be* nice enough to avoid threatening this type, who are very narcissistc. (Ekaterin's husband Tien is a good example.)
However, being nice *might* work with group c - except they also have a hell of a lot to lose, even if they aren't actively profiting the way the architects of the System are. They have self-respect, identity, and may have to give up their way of life - all of which are expensive in different ways. (Been there, done that.) And historically, they don't respond to ireneic overtures - as the mammoth history of the Civil Rights movement I'm reading reveals. They need to go on thinking they're justified by God and man in what they do, which just happens to keep them on top of the heap.
Again, historically, shaming them with images of their sins on national TV worked, where 80+ years of trying to be nice and reasonable got nothing but in fact, backsliding, up to 1950, w/re social justice.
The only people who might be both reachable by niceness and turned off by being harsh, are group d. Numerically, how many are there in that wavering non-committed conservative group? I don't know, I don't think it's all that many personally. It took harsh shaming - specifically, the shaming realization that my own side was as bad as the Left said we were, thanks to Anita Hill, Tailhook, and the ongoing Clinton savaging to push me from c to d. Given that the Right largely stays in our own echo chamber, and reads only "safe" publications and media, what the Left was *actually* saying is often irrelevant - when I encountered it unmediated by Hegemony propaganda, it was more than a little surprising to find how much of it I already agreed with, at least in principle. (Whoa, you mean they're *not* trying to have all Christianity obliterated, ban Shakespeare, and mandatory sterilizations for everyone?)
"You're not being nice" is, historically, a way of shutting up legitimate dissent, not only, but particularly, among and against women. What it really means is "You're making me uncomfortable!" but frankly? That's a prophet's job. Isaiah wasn't about making people feel good about themselves and not threatening their self-esteem, Amos wasn't, and neither was the MLK who said, "There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being thrown across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July, and left standing amidst the piercing chill of an Alpine November...If we are wrong - Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer and never came down to earth! If we are wrong - justice is a lie!"
Bruce, as an ex-conservative, I have to say you're right, and yes, it *is* depressing. "Even the Devil can quote Scripture," is the correct Xtian response to those "godless atheist-pagan-feminist liberals" who try to point out the hypocrisy and contradictions by say, invoking the Beatitudes. Either you are with us, or against us, and if you are With Us you can do no wrong, all your actions are Justified (q.v. Deal Hudson), and if you are Against Us you can do no right, and everything you do is of the Evil One.
Until and unless your head is rammed against these contradictions often enough to make a dent in it, *and* you have enough of intellectual integrity to be unwilling to just accept Authority on Authority's own sake (as an ex-friend told me I should do, in fear and trembling, for daring to say that the theology of the Passion was heretical when Father So-and-so, who is so orthodox and devout, said otherwise) there's no escape for the person caught in this.
Plus, there's not much chance of ever being able to frame it in a way to reach them by being more ameliorating and sympathetic.
Because you're also playing into the "liberals are pussies" meme and by trying to be openminded, proving that you're mushminded and irrational as well as unprincipled - "openminded" is an ancient term of scorn among conservative intellectuals, with much GKC-derived witticism - as well as the "All Cretans are liars" trap.
Grimth is objectively the correct response to this realization, which doesn't mean that you shouldn't take care to get your chemistry in order, but no, it isn't all you.
Greg, "I liked it/I didn't like it" may be subjective, a statement of irrefutable truth.
"It was beneficial for me" is not.
I know people who self-medicate with alcohol, or with prayer, rather than seeking professional help.
Both types assert that because it makes them feel good, and they don't perceive any damage, that this is benefical and not harmful.
That doesn't make it so.
(And if your "don't have an abortion" is the level of framing discourse you got from it, well, I'm really not impressed: to those of us in the prolife community - remember, I was one of those single-issue voters, once upon a time, and probably the only person here to vote not only for Bush I, but also for Buchanan & Keyes in primaries, in those indoctrinated years, and to not vote in 2000 because of those pastoral warnings about not being allowed to vote "pro-abortion" - what you're saying is the equivalent of "Against rape? Don't rape anyone." You don't seem to know us "Red Staters" as well as you think.)
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| 2004 | 5 |
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