The Internet and Space

“Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid-twentieth century. It is incapable of meeting human needs that can be expressed only in collective terms, and its concept of competitive man who seeks only to maximize wealth and power, who subjects himself to market relationships, to exploitation and external authority, is antihuman and intolerable in the deepest sense. An autocratic state is no acceptable substitute; nor can the militarized state capitalism evolving in the United States or the bureaucratized, centralized welfare state be accepted as the goal of human existence. The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival. Modern science and technology can relieve men of the necessity for specialized, imbecile labor. They may, in principle, provide the basis for a rational social order based on free association and democratic control, if we have the will to create it.”
- Noam Chomsky, “Language and Freedom” (1970)

A recent tweet by Gleen Greenwald led me through a very important line of thought.

We are debating about torture.  It has become okay for us as Americans to consider at what point we cross a line from making someone uncomfortable to torturing them.  The crazy thing is, we are actually arriving at agreed upon, empirical lines of demarcation.  Case in point: I heard someone speaking on the radio yesterday and they were drawing a line between a detainee being slammed up against a wall 30 times as being torture, and less than 30 times as not being so.  To wit, 29 wall-slams is okay.  30 wall-slams, and you’ve tortured someone.  This sort of debate is dehumanizing.  It’s part of an overall strategy to get you to forget that you’re dealing with other humans and not cyborgs sent to kill us from the future like in some sort of sci-fi plot.

My point is the this: we have risen as a nation from the oppressive regimes of imperial monarchies, with liberty and freedom as our banner.  Now we are trying to toe an imaginary line between torture and not-quite-torture.  This concept has become acceptable or “normalized”.  You’re still consciously hurting another to save yourself.  This is not what I have been taught about the purpose of life.  This is not what I have been taught about the value of life.  This isn’t even what secular Americans have believed about life.  Americans, since the Revolutionary War, have believed, “we die so our children can be free.”  Today, it’s, “they die so our children can be free.”  Remind me how is that different than jihad.  Here, in this “debate,” life is being devalued.

“Torture” is a definition that floats with the shifting winds of our “morality”: today it’s 30 wall-slams, tomorrow, it may be 50.  We also seem to be sure of the definition of “terrorist”: today it’s Islamic fascist-driven jihad, tomorrow, mere christianity?  Who is setting these definitions and why do you trust them?

The Obama administration has just released the Bush OLC Memos justifying the use of torture.  Read them.

ACLU has them here.

I’ve never liked Coldplay.  I’ve always been indifferent to Coldplay.  That is until I heard the uncanny similarities between one of their hit songs (bonus points for anyone who can name the Coldplay song, because I can’t) and Kraftwerk’s “Computer Love.”  Kraftwerk’s song is my favorite song in the entire world.  My indifference towards Coldplay quickly froze in to a solid block of dislike.  Yesterday, that solid block of dislike petrified into absolute disdain.  Check out what NPR has covered.

Is Coldplay capable of writing their own hit songs?  I’m sure they can, but they almost certainly can’t write songs with any musical merit by themselves.

Note: to be fair, it is now my understanding that Coldplay “sampled” Kraftwerk.  Nevertheless, my last two sentences remain unaltered.  Further, if you really love an artist, do you pay homage by simply using one of their melodies as the melody for one of your completely unrelated song (I fail to see how the Coldplay track references Kraftwerk even slightly except via melody).  I would submit that Coldplay has merely taken an amazing melody, re-couched it in a completely different song and sold it to a multitude of people who may never know who is Kraftwerk.  Paying homage would have meant magnifying Kraftwerk’s melody.  Instead, Coldplay has taken their glory.  Of course, if the melody is truly sampled, Kraftwerk only have themselves to blame as they would have had to approved such a use.

Glenn Greenwald discusses here.

I would also like to proudly say that I am a member of EFF.  Please visit their website to see more about them.

A government of the people, by the people and for the people should have nothing to hide from the people.  It also should not be allowed to destroy due process owed to the people.

“The Times They Are A-Changin’” by Bob Dylan

Here.

I cannot think of anything more ridiculous than wanting to be back (in spirit or otherwise) at the day after the attacks on the World Trade Center.

In response to Beck’s 9 Principles and 12 Values:

Principle 5 - Ask Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Yoo and George W. Bush for their opinion on this.

Principle 8 - I can think of no other time when this was more false than on 9-12.

Principle 9 - Has Glenn Beck ever been on a plane or out of the country?  We have been made to answer to our government.  Glenn Beck’s party has almost single-handedly made it this way.  Hawkish foreign policy and suspension of civil liberties is what he meant for Principle 9.

The 12 values are just shy (maybe not even) of moral fascism.  Not to mention the last 8 years have fallen short of almost each and every one of those values.

Please, someone tell me that this is a joke.

“It is our duty to make the best of our misfortunes, and not to suffer passion to interfere with our interest and the public good.”

-George Washington 1778

The above quote was found on Glenn’s site.  Can anyone explain to me how a nation founded upon freedom and liberty being found guilty of torture  and suspension of civil liberties could be anything but “suffer[ing] passion to interfere with our interest and the public good?”

“We are now, there can be no doubt, in the final historical seconds of that crisis - a crisis that involves the end of history, our departure from the planet, the triumph over death, and the release of the individual from the body. We are, in fact, closing distance with the most profound event a planetary ecology can encounter - the freeing of life from the dark chrysalis of matter. The old metaphor of psyche as the caterpillar transformed by metamorphosis is a specieswide analogy. We must undergo a metamorphosis in order to survive the momentum of the historical forces already set in motion.”

-Terence McKenna “New Maps of Hyperspace”

What I find to be most interesting about this excerpt is that when something is true–no matter what you choose to believe–it’s true.  Other beliefs have to acknowledge it.  Idiosyncracies will vary, but the essence of truth is present where an honest pursuit of it has been made.

Andrew Sullivan has this.

I guess you have to commend Clinton for not beating around the bush with China.  She has made it perfectly clear that we as humankind would prefer to fix the economy rather than human rights injustices.

The end to Gitmo was rhetorical.  The American era of torture and violation of human rights lives on in deed.  Of course we can’t tell China to fix their own violations before we do business with them.  We’re not hypocrites.