Mike11

Well, a lot of students do spend time in the park just being ... ... ... "aware" ... ... ...

A mere 4 hr drive from here but no, I was not aware. Too busy trying to make a living to watch the news lol Well, we're a few minutes into the pre-game show, I know this as the guy with the loud speaker is aimed towards the library, and its not looking good. "1,2,3,4, Fossil Fuels Have Got To Go!" (Yah, that's bloody likely and not at all needless ideological puritanism at the expense of political possibility). "Hey Hey Ho Ho, Climate Change has got to Go!" (Sounds weird but I swear that's the slogan). And WTF is with the banging frying pans in front of the bloody library!?!?! They're loud you know. The speaker is talking about Canada's poor record, apparently worse than China and the States, in dealing with fossil fuel pollution controls. Given that a few months back Alberta surpassed Ontario as the economic heartland and our current political regime (which has a long track record of ignoring environmental problems of any kind, let alone global warming, exist) this doesn't surprise me. It does seem needlessly drastic though, ending fossil fuel consumption? Instituting clean power exclusively in its place? Not while Albertans are making 20$ an hour as hamburger flippers in a Micci-D's methinks. So yet another student protest sacrifices real progressive goals for ideological narcissism and I die a little inside. Mount Allison has this thing called the "Sackville Bubble", a small quiet, serene town (overlooking the gentle tides of the oceans offering up their life giving nourishment to our beautiful nature preserves and farmlands as even the birds meditate on the simple things in life); political motivation is harder to find than a needle in a hay stack, as such when politics does happen it tends to be alienated, inane and is seen by most as simply annoying.

GS, You might actually be aware of this campaign, its happening at Mount A in Sackville.

As timing would have it there is a major demonstration on campus today about Canada's lack of clean energy and reliance on fossil fuels. There will also be some kind of vote, I guess to show student solidarity with the cause. Right now in the library I'm staring at a huge 15*50 foot banner, "The Climate is Changing! Vote at 5:50!" with related signs across campus. No manifesto though so I'm not sure what exactly is being voted on, something windmills I think. There's also a lot of pamphlets being handed out on how to maximize the efficiency of appliances, how to get a dish washer to use half the normal energy, things like that. I think its good. Global Warming Efficiency is a good thing. The technocratic dream was about doing more with less not less with more. If I see some actual content or program its possible I'll vote for them

This article expresses why, IMHO, so many are violent towards Objectivism. There is Objectivism the Ethic and then there is Objectivism the Mythology. The latter would contain Israel The Galt-like, Native Americans The Uncivilized Horde of Cannibalistic Phantoms, Athens the Free! Athens the Rational!, Christopher Columbus the Enlightened Harbinger of the Good Qua Good! etc etc I know an Objectivist who was pretty pro-Israel due to the ARI, read a book, lost his faith, and now begins conversations by pointing out the USS Liberty and moving from there. No good comes of this propaganda.

The problem is not freedom, though freedom is the political expression of the solution. As I mentioned in another thread a short time ago I realized what humanity is capable of, not in the abstract hyper reality of "Man's Barbarity to Man" witnessed in the great crass banality of the Holocaust but in a very real human way. The almost supernatural monstrosity of the SS Soldier's psyche. The unnatural coldness, the "Iron Heart" that Heydrich was said to have. The Will to Knowledge possessed by Doctor Ewen Cameron or Shiro Ishii that cut through the human soul like a knife cutting butter. The mutilation and disfigurement of Humanity has existed in Churches, States, Businesses, it is omnipresent. Politics is just words on a page. Treating a human as something sacred is the real struggle. As for the article, I didn't mean to accuse you of a moral or intellectual flaw. The Middle East conflict is the most complex and heated one on Earth, someone who hasn't vested huge amounts of time on this can't be expected to see the problems in the article. The problem is the selection of facts, not the distortion of them. As MSK pointed out there is an underlying moral message in the article, that Israel ought to occupy the territories for the good of the Arabs (and, while he doesn't mention it directly here, the enrichment of Israel as well). This is an aggressive motive, all the other facts simply serve as cover for it. The fact that Power needs Terror can not be ignored. To take a "Pro-Israel" example, where would the absolutely corrupt Arafat have been without the IDF? How could he keep his people from asking where the billions were going if Israel were not perceived as an immediate existential threat? Or to use an example you allude to, remember how desperate the Federalists of the late 1700's were for war with France, it was the only way an elite could keep power out of public hands. A similar relationship existed in Israel. A dependent pool of workers half your own population is a valuable thing to have; and that is enough motive even without the "Greater Israel" dream of annexing all the land held by David. The more resistance is identified as a terrorist threat, the easier it is to keep a hold of such an economic value. That is how Palestinian anticolonial resistance is consistently framed by the ARI, "Why can't they just accept our superiority and serve us? Why do they need guns and a say in their own lives?" The history of Palestinian nonviolent resistance is of course erased from the narrative as is the will for a people for self determination, (as the article states, the honest Palestinian is a servile Palestinian, its only the evil agitators who scare them into supporting the dream of freedom). This is all very backward and very sick. Needless to say, the crimes of the Occupation to not exist in the world of the ARI. No right wing fascist expansionism, no Orthodox fundamentalists (During the Gaza pull out signs read 'To give up our Land is to defy our God!' and the like), no land theft, no water theft, no imprisonment for opening a business or factory in the territories (those economic laws of the Occupation are where the "Culture of Poverty" the ARI Roids love to intellectually masterbate to comes from), no banning of higher education, no aiding Hamas to offset the secular Intifadah, no banning of existing democratic institutions and no legal immunity for anti-arab violence from Jewish colonials. Never Happened. This isn't just the myopia of bias, it is staggering dishonesty toward undeniable reality. The truly amazing thing about that circus is they are idiots even by Israeli standards. The Israeli Right has never had any illusions about the morality of its enterprise. Jabotinsky, the founder of the Israeli Right given power from the 70's through to today, proclaimed (quite openly in his literature, this is open historic fact and not conspiracy) that the Palestinian Arab (He acknowledged the Palestinians existed as a nationality back in th 20's) would fight against colonial oppression and would require military humiliation and absolute repressive domination to accept what he described as the theft of their rightful land. This is the founder of Jewish expansionism (he was also friends with Mussolini and had Jewish kids goose stepping) showing a greater self awareness than Pope Peikoff the Rational.

Damn straight MSK. Its possible I'm just to hard on the ARI but self serving tomfoolery is the norm, at least as far as Eretz Yisrael is concerned. Look, I'm not a racist and I'm also a Jew but if I were part of an organization founded by Jews, run by Jews, and uses former IDF personnel as commentators then claimed to be truthful and honest about the Jewish State, would you not be skeptical? Especially since I identify Israel as The Good Qua Good (Except it may be too merciful) and address the arabs as barbarous enemies whom it would be a moral perversion to talk to (of course in the same article we have another piece of ARI bull shit, "Land was not 'stolen' from the nomadic tribes meandering across the terrain, any more than the early Americans stole this country from the primitive, warring Indians." I guess Lenny has never read a history book on America either, the Cherokee, Walking Purchase and Puritans come to mind. source ) If the organization was known for absolute Submission to the Will of the Guru's Divine bloody Interpreter, would you believe what I had to say about, anything? ... Stop Joel, don't want to get to angry.... Look, galtgultch, I don't blame you for taking the ARI at its word on this but these people are idiots at best, self serving racist imperialist bastards at worst.

My town isn't participating which is odd as its a university town which normally takes up these kinds of causes. I'll be switching off tonight, as will most of my friends but shutting off a public resource seems wrong - we don't close schools to highlight illiteracy. Our town has made some strides, we have energy efficient lights that direct all the light downwards and the dorms are being renovated with better materials to preserve heat and what not.

Righteous Victims By Benny Morris, Professor of History at Ben Gurion Universtiy Palestinian Identity By Rahid Khalidi, Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict By Mark Tessler, Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan Those are some books anyone interested in the conflict during the "Happy Days of Uncle Tom Colonialism" should read. Now... what to point out? That the ARI has historically denied Palestinians should ever have a State based on Israeli righteous revenge down to the fourteenth generation? That its leading propagandist served with the Israeli Army supporting its right wing Crusader ideals? That the ARI based on its own ethnic make up, propensity to mythologize and sheer warmongering is not an objective source .... ? And no, I have Zero interest in picking this article apart, I've argued about this before and don't want to. Those are some books to read, MSK will probably post an intelligent (but differing) view as well.

What that post reminded me of -- V: [Disguised as William Rookwood, meeting with Inspector Finch] Our story begins, as these stories often do, with a young up-and-coming politician. He's a deeply religious man and a member of the conservative party. He is completely single-minded convictions and has no regard for the political process. Eventually, his party launches a special project in the name of 'national security'. At first, it is believed to be a search for biological weapons and it is pursued regardless of its cost. However, the true goal of the project is power, complete and total hegemonic domination. The project, however, ends violently... but the efforts of those involved are not in vain, for a new ability to wage war is born from the blood of one of their victims. Imagine a virus - the most terrifying virus you can, and then imagine that you and you alone have the cure. But if your ultimate goal is power, how best to use such a weapon? It is at this point in our story that along comes a spider. He is a man seemingly without a conscience; for whom the ends always justify the means and it is he who suggests that their target should not be an enemy of the country but rather the country itself. Three targets are chosen to maximize the effect of the attack: a school, a tube station, and a water-treatment plant. Several hundred die within the first few weeks. Until at last the true goal comes into view. Before the St. Mary's crisis, no one would have predicted the outcome of the elections. No one. But after the election, lo and behold, a miracle. Some believed that it was the work of God himself, but it was a pharmaceutical company controlled by certain party members made them all obscenely rich. But the true genius of the plan was the fear. A year later, several extremeists are tried, found guilty, and executed while a memorial is built to canonize their victims. Fear became the ultimate tool of this government. And through it our politician was ultimately appointed to the newly created position of High Chancellor. The rest, as they say, is history.

Its always sad to see communication specifically designed to shut down communication. In the mind of the fanatic everything is certain, the sides are black and white, and nothing matters but the blood of our brothers shed by the enemy. It is a very comfortable place to be though. It requires no empathy and even less self criticism. I see no meaningful difference between the film itself and what it criticizes. The form of propaganda demands a hateful and ignorant isubstance doesn't it?

All I can contribute to this ethical issue is personal experience. When I was a child there was a vaccine being given in Cape Breton (a region known for its absolute medical incompetence), my Mother, deeply religious Pentecostal she is, felt "God tell her" not to have me vaccinated. The vaccination ended up with hundreds of kids severely sick, I think a few suffered permanent damage. Its not as simple as saying faith bad medicine perfect. Quite often there are very good reasons to reject medicine in favor of alternative therapies. We also know that religious persons live longer and more happily, with resulting psychosomatic effects, than the non religious so tying physical betterment to a family religious ritual is not entirely irrational. It reminds me too much of what Dawkins wants in Britain, I mean where's the line here? Its one thing to say beating your kid is wrong, quite another to rule the widely held beliefs of the parent are not only wrong but criminal as well. What did that lady say about basing ethics on extreme cases? The problem with this is I don't see how a general rule will not be derived from this case, a general rule so all encompassing it will be disastrous decided either way...

Thank You for sharing that, very nice quote.

We already knew about the brain. --Brant Sigh

brain broken, double posted

About Wael Al-Zarad, The Muslim Resurgence looks back to a past which does not exist. Muhammad's conquests, and those of the first Caliphs created a world civilization fusing Greek Iraqis, Jewish Spaniards and Arabs into a prosperous, open and progressive empire. Mathematics and medicine advanced considerably and the early Ummah was governed by Ijtihad, a process of free thought applied to Islamic knowledge without an entrenched and backward priesthood (later however through the Ash'arites this system gave way to fundamentalism). Jews, far from being spit on, experienced with Islam's blessing a Golden Age surpassing only that experienced in modern Anglo-American society. Sure these flowerings existed in areas where Islam was in a minority position but that Greek culture flourished in Iraq and Jewish culture in Spain for centuries speaks to the underlining openness of the Islamic society. Khurshid Ahmad writes in "The Nature of Islamic Resurgence" (this is a school text, no link, sorry), from an Islamic perspective, that the current resurgence is based on the structure of Westernization in the Muslim world as much as on Islam itself. As with Rome's European holdings, the Arab elite grew increasingly separate from the people's own beliefs, adopting western values and institutions in a way which represented a clear break from society. The repressive and corrupt nature of the regimes speak to this, as does the quagmire in Iraq and the near perfect fusion of populism and Islam in most of the Muslim world. I'm not trying to romanticize Islam, I just want to stress just how much though these current psychos are a major departure from the work of Muhammad and the early Ummah.

In a thread last year about whether Objectivism is a philosophy I mentioned it usually assumes something about the world, assumes it is self evident, than attacks any question about what the world is or how it was known as an attack on Man's Reason, His Virtue etc etc etc This thread shows symptoms of this I think.

I regret not reading his work. He did what looked like an interesting trilogy with Baxter I should have purchased while I had the chance.

This was more my internal monologue.

Well put. I think Robert McHitler is compensating for his illnesses, making big bombs to prove he's a real man.

I had a strange dream last night that kept me thinking. I was in the movie "1984", the good one with John Hurt. I turned Julia in the moment I saw her in the Two Minutes Hate. I was even allowed to prove myself by beating her. I don't really remember if I killed her or not, I think just beating her was enough to prove myself. I threw the diary out, I was going to keep my head down and stay out of trouble from that moment on. The delusion is there can be a resistance to evil that is greater than that evil itself. There was a Christian who harbored Jews during the war but the Nazis didn't know exactly where. After they tortured him he committed suicide knowing he would talk, their power was greater than his, they knew that life can be made worse than death. They had the power, he was the material to shaped at their discretion. After the war there was a doctor working in Canada named Donald Cameron who would administer mind destroying drugs to patients with postpartum depression or would keep people with common anxiety disorders in drug induced comas for days while bombarding them with degrading messages. What was the Chinese peasant thinking when the Japanese doctor, clothed in white and a gas mask, stood above and inspected his vivisected chest? Would he even have asked why? Maybe wondered when the rats infected with Plague ate at his flesh in his cell. "Oh God Oh God how can they do this to me?" A point in the mind, when it becomes dead to itself and you understand the need for your execution. Picture yourself looking into those dead eyes, the absolute power of them. You're not even a machine to that mind, you're a Maruta, a log to be chopped up then burned. The lie is that you wouldn't talk to the Gestapo after a few days with them. The lie is you wouldn't cave in and be silent while Hitler drove your nation mad. Some people did resist. Those people were not me or you. How can we even say "I would not submit" or "I would not go quietly into the ovens". We see good all the time, the great achievements of man but Evil requires something special. It requires the castration of emotion and humanity, it requires an Iron Heart. How does one defeat that kind of Will? You don't. You go along with it. You keep your head down and stay out of trouble.

Baal reminds me too much of one of my favorite films. The guy fighting is a Jew - http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=DVkQk9n3Q_I&feature=inbox http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=aAENkoLBqB8&...feature=related http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRUjy1Dhx-k&...feature=related

Someone should really add Valliant to ED

You're partially right, the entire Op-Ed said nothing of its point but the last section reads, "America must not repeat Canada's mistakes. As P. J. O'Rourke said, 'If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.' " Sounds like a comparison. Its saying"Don't go down Canada's road, things will get worse." Again, 0 proof of how America is better. I mean seriously, you think the author just decided to write about Canada for no reason? All the ARI material is about what ought to be done, though they bury this as far as possible to make it look like the display of fact. If the last sentence is a moral conclusion than the article was a moral argument, not a pointless text book look at Canada. The rational center is the rest of humanity that looks at the ARI and says, "Wow,that's psychotic" in the same way they look at others like Moonies and Stalinists.