Daily Article from Mises.org by Gennady Stolyarov II | Posted on 7/4/2008

The Disney-Pixar film WALL-E has been adoringly received by the majority of the theatergoing public. This adoration is unjustified. The film blatantly conveys environmentalist, anticapitalist, and antitechnological propaganda — and aims it at an audience of children, who still lack the critical faculties and intellectual sophistication to evaluate all relevant aspects of the issues presented.

But I will not focus here on how egregiously unrealistic the film's scenario of humans completely trashing Earth is. A simple look around you will suffice to refute this possibility. Garbage is not piling up around us, and landfills are in fact remarkably effective at storing it safely and even using it to generate useful natural gases.

I will, rather, concentrate on a much more egregious error made by the creators of WALL-E — an error made in ignorance of basic economics and of commonsense insights regarding the nature of human behaviors and the incentives facing individual economic actors.

This error pervades the film's depiction of life aboard the Axiom, a starship made by Buy'n Large (BNL) corporation — a cross between Wal-Mart and the George W. Bush administration — to house the human refugees from Earth for 700 years after the Earth becomes too littered to remain habitable. First, the film makes the Marxian assumption that it would be possible for a single corporation to take advantage of ever-increasing returns to scale and thereby subsume the entire world — and still remain profitable and continually patronized by everyone. But as Ludwig von Mises showed as far back as 1920 in Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, without the presence of multiple providers of goods in the economy, the single dominant firm is in the same position as a socialist central planner. In the real world, BNL would have no market price signals to help it discern consumer demand for and the relative scarcity of resources. It would not be able to engage in rational economic calculation and would make decisions arbitrarily. Surely, this state would not please many consumers, and the BNL monopoly would be short lived at most.

The startling aspect of life aboard the Axiom is its total homogeneity. Everyone is morbidly obese; everyone drinks fatty meal-replacement shakes; everyone rides around in automated carts instead of walking; no one engages in direct personal communication; no one exercises; everyone follows the BNL corporation's fashion advice (when the announcements tell the people that "blue is the new red," all Axiom inhabitants switch their suit color from red to blue at the press of a button). Not only does this homogeneity mark one instant in time; it has been present all throughout the Axiom's seven centuries of travel through space. During that time, there has been no technological progress, no cultural innovation, and no noncosmetic changes in the aesthetic, philosophical, and political arrangements aboard the ship. Imagine in 2008 if nothing had changed in human affairs since the year 1308.

The humans in WALL-E are not portrayed as evil; they are polite and well intentioned, but ignorant and torpid. Strangely enough, the ship has an extensive information database about life and conditions on Earth, and nobody bothered to examine this easily accessible information for seven centuries, until the Captain suddenly has a burst of interest. Are we to assume that curiosity and elementary initiative are such rarities that they are exercised only once in 700 years?

WALL-E is egregiously wrong in assuming that technological conveniences such as easily accessible food, transportation, entertainment, and communication render all people lazy, indulgent, and devoid of initiative. Some people, to be sure, respond in this way. In the real world, however, this response tends to be temporary. In the more economically advanced countries, it tends to affect lower-income individuals who have just begun accessing historically luxurious standards of living and have not yet developed cultural habits for managing their newfound wealth and opportunities responsibly. These habits will come with time — as they always have among groups of people that have lived prosperously for generations.

Already in the United States, the big fast-food chains are racing to offer health foods — salads, fruit, and other low-calorie snacks — to keep the patronage of those who would have been satisfied with Big Macs and Whoppers in the past. Meanwhile, a wide variety of health foods and diet foods — some genuinely effective and others of dubious merit — are being consumed more broadly than ever before.

In the meantime, of course, millions of people have never neglected healthful habits, even though they have for decades been surrounded by consumer goods that — in the anticapitalists' eyes — would lead them to ruin. Just as the ready availability of guns does not automatically turn peaceful people into rampaging maniacs, neither does the ready availability of all sorts of foods turn responsible, educated, self-respecting individuals into rage-of-the-moment hedonists.

With some kinds of wants met — such as food, shelter, and transportation — people virtually always tend to develop new wants or to focus on existing lower-priority wants not yet addressed. As Ludwig von Mises showed, people will act so long as they are faced with uncertainty and believe themselves capable of somehow affecting the uncertain future. These conditions will never stop existing — no matter how comfortable and prosperous people become. Thus, humans will always act and will always strive to improve their lives. A wholly static, apathetic, sated, and torpid society is inconceivable in reality.

The economy aboard the Axiom does however seem to be the dream economy of popular "static equilibrium" models, where nothing ever changes — not production, consumption, preferences, or expectations of the future. Yet, as Austrian economics informs us, such conditions have never existed nor can they exist. At best, they are merely useful theoretical constructs — certainly not accurate depictions of any realistic economy.

In the real world, there exist immense changes of preferences, widely dispersed information, tremendous uncertainty about the future, and numerous entrepreneurs who alert themselves to possible opportunities for satisfying people's wants in a better way than they are currently being satisfied. That there is not one entrepreneur aboard the Axiom prior to the Captain's paradigm-shifting discovery of information that was easily accessible to everybody for the last seven centuries is testimony to the filmmakers' ignorance of what makes economic change possible and ubiquitous.

The humans' return to Earth and attempt to "rebuild" their lives is ludicrous from any sound economic perspective. After having had a sustainable automatic food production system aboard the Axiom — which had apparently worked without fail for seven centuries — humans all of a sudden decide to resort to traditional agriculture. The one thing they have machine capital to do for them, they decide to do manually instead. Rather than devoting the precious time bought by the ready availability of food to, say, create art, repair all those broken skyscrapers, or design even better robots, the humans decide to manually dig holes in the ground and grow their food through backbreaking toil that led millions throughout history to die premature deaths. Oh, by the way, the film left that part out. Virtually no one today who romanticizes the "good old days" of traditional agriculture recognizes how nasty, brutish, and short life under such conditions had been for millennia. Once the first industrial factories opened — with their long hours, dangerous equipment, and meager pay — people flocked to them in droves, because the factory conditions (including the sanitation provided and wages paid) were greatly preferable to those of toiling virtually all day on the traditional farm.

The creators of WALL-E, sitting in their comfortable Hollywood studios, did a tremendous disservice to the civilization that made their work and high standards of living possible. They glorified a lifestyle that would likely have killed them — and countless others — had it actually been revived. I for one have seen a semblance of these "good old days," having spent summers as a child with my maternal grandparents in a remote Belarusian village — where little had changed since the 1917 socialist revolution. Those extolling the virtues of traditional farm life never mention the perpetual manual labor, lack of sanitation, lack of health care, and widespread inclinations toward alcoholism. I have spent my life to date moving increasingly further away from that, and I will resist vigorously the efforts of those who seek to drag our entire civilization back into miserable, decrepit premodernity.

WALL-E is an assault on modern civilization, borne of deep economic and historical ignorance. The film shamefully betrays the efforts of countless heroic individuals who have raised humanity out of the muck of barbarism. Its antitechnological, anticapitalist message needs to be exposed and countered by all thinking individuals.

Torture so as to extract information, should stay completely unconstitutional, contrarily to the Bush administration's practice. This official prohibition is a showcase of a general will to improve morality, that the top civilization should maintain as long as possible. But ticking time bomb scenarios will always occur, in urban counterinsurgency, and people should remember that secret services are secret for good reasons (one of them being that you do not want to know what they are doing).

Inflicting pain as a vengeance or to terrorize miscreants is another form of torture entirely. That sort of torture is still practiced massively, because civilization needs repression (many legal sanctions involve suffering, and, in this essay, we call that torture, by logical coherence). Pseudo naive occupiers like the USA should remember that occupying someone's else country, per se, is mass torture. (Sometimes such torture can be justified, as the occupations of Germany and Japan in 1945 were; sometimes not, and then it is unjustifiable mass torture).

In general torture avoidance should be viewed as a challenge, one of the engines of improving civilization: how can we improve people by persuading and modifying behaviors rather than using brute force and horror, treating people as vicious beasts?
***

DEFINITION OF TORTURE:
There is no better illustration of the devolution of the USA than the attempt to make torture legal. A few years back, the Bush administration and its employee, UC Berkeley professor, John Yoo, bellowed that torture was necessary. In their stupidity, they tried to make it a new constitutional right, the Right to Torture. Never mind that torture is forbidden by international law.

We will thereafter use the most general definition of torture we can think of: TORTURE IS ANY SEVERE PAIN OR SUFFERING INTENTIONALLY INFLICTED ON A PERSON (this toughens up the UN definition). Our reason for being so general is that major infliction of pain and suffering is often allowed, on the ground that it is not torture (according to the United Nations). In our sense, carpet bombing of German cities by the RAF during WWII was torture. Similarly the demolition of terrorists' houses by Israel is torture. But, from our point of view, torture does not have to be avoided at all and any cost. There are worse things than inflicting torture. For example one could inflict death. Or lose civilization outright.
***

NO POTENTIAL SEVERE PUNISHMENT, NO CIVILIZATION:
With our severe definition of torture, clearly torture has been central to civilization. Just as the threat of being shot may hold back some criminals, the threat of torture-as-punishment can work wonders to instill the respect of the law. All major civilizations used deliberate, severe punishment. The USA has several millions people deprived of freedom, many thousands on so called "death row" awaiting execution. China executed criminals with the method of the 1,000 cuts all the way into the twentieth century (photographic documentation of this activity exists). The Roman republic used torture extensively. Just as some firms specialized in the capture of escaped slaves, other Roman firms specialized in providing with private torture. In Rome torture was viewed as entertainment, and particularly ingeniously cruel methods of executions were devised. With sometimes a large proportion of the population in slavery, Rome had to maintain legal terror: "Dura lex, sed lex" (The law is hard, but it's the law). On the positive side, under Roman terror, a quarter of mankind lived in a state of law. The enforcement of law is the core of what makes civilization possible.

The modern, "politically correct", attitude, relative to such horrors as Roman crucifixion, is to disregard the Roman experience as irrelevant to our times. But such is not the case. It was torture that made Roman law tough. And thus effective. Oh, by the way, torture could not be used against Roman citizens. It was a terrible offense, very severely punished.

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HOW THE CHRISTIAN SUPPRESSION OF SEVERE PUNISHMENT LED TO THE DARK AGES:
The Christian catastrophe called the "Dark Ages" demonstrated the importance of punishment. First, of course, the Christians burned all the books, killed all the intellectuals, and killed all the non "Catholic Orthodox", except for a few Jews. But still some of the old order had resisted. So the Christians changed tactics. Maybe tired and bored after all of these exertions, they proclaimed loud and clear they did not want to live in the world anymore. According to Augustine', there were two cities, one on the ground (bad), and one in the clouds (good). Eight hundred years earlier, Aristophane had used that imagery in a comedy to make fun of Athens' colonization policies. But Augustine was not joking: Christians wanted the world destroyed in a process called the Apocalypse (then, and only then, their superhero, God and son of God, would come back). To destroy the world more thoroughly, the Christians decided to destroy law enforcement.

So super rich Christian bishops decided it was non Christian to torture or kill bandits and the like. This way they would make sure that whatever was left of society would crash and burn. Criminality became highly profitable and so high that the society of the later Roman empire totally broke down. For a while, the bishops, who formed a governing plutocracy, did not mind; they were living off their vast estates, fed by armies of slaves, protected by armies of mercenaries. But, in the end, it became unbearable, the hypocritical campaign of the bishops against torture and legal violence aggravated the collapse of civilization. Even the bishops understood that morality needed a sword. They found it in the double bladed giant battle ax of the Pagan Franks.
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THE FRANKISH RENAISSANCE, OR THE FEROCITY OF CIVILIZATION:
When the Franks took power, they reestablished severe punishment, in other words, torture. An example: counterfeit currency had been a very severe problem of the later Roman empire (it created huge inflation and destruction of the respect for the state). Frankish justice solved this difficulty by instituting a standard punishment for this offense: slowly boiling the counterfeiters alive. The Franks were men of wealth and taste, so, sometimes, the boiling was in wine.

Interestingly, once the Muslims had been thrown out, and the frontiers pushed way back into Eastern Europe, the Imperium Francorum, the empire of the Francs, became very quiet (until the next waves of invasion). Severe punishment worked.

The European Middle Ages kept on going along those lines. Respect for the law was encouraged by imposing punishments as severe as those of Rome. This had nothing to do with "Dark Ages" and fascism, quite the opposite. The more ferocious the repression o f the ultimate crimes, the more advanced the society. A few examples:

A fanatical Catholic (paid by the eminent fascist, the Spanish emperor Philip II) assassinated William ("The Silent") of Orange, founder of the republic of the Netherlands. The assassin was executed by "execrable" tortures over several days (1584 CE). As the Dutch republic gained ascendency, the first powerful republic since Rome, it became ever more severe, following the republican Roman legal model, sometimes more ferociously. Corrupt Dutch officials were separated from their entire skin, before leaving this world, giving them time to fully recognize the disposable nature of their ways. Something similar happened after the assassination of the good King Henri IV of France (a Protestant turned Catholic that had put an end to the religious wars, and instituted deep social reforms). The assassin, the giant Ravaillac, resisted quartering, the horses got exhausted, so the public came forth, and succeeded, all pulling together, where the animals had failed. (According to the contemporary UN, such examples do not constitute torture, since they were fully legal executions).

Thus LOCAL morally correct posturing is not necessarily GLOBALLY correct moral posturing. Many people, such as many Christian bishops around 400 CE, or people who take positions of principle against severe punishment, do not examine carefully enough the fact that "homo homini lupus" (man is a wolf for man) as the Roman playwright Plautus put it shortly after the Second Punic War (~ 200BCE).

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TORTURE IS DOING WELL:
Let's come back to the present for a moment. According to Amnesty International, 75% of states use torture. Now it is true that, in some circumstances, torture can be very effective, be it to extract information quick, or for punishment on the side.

Torture is much more ubiquitous than is generally believed. The advancement of technology has allowed for the advancement of torture. New forms of torture have appeared (not just electricity, but sleep deprivation, various forms of exposure, from cold to loud noises, to uncomfortable positions, all very delicately controlled). Using them allows modern torturers to claim they are not torturing because the new forms of torture are not on the official list of recognized historical tortures. Many states can now imprison people in an extra judicial way for more than a few days if they are suspected of terrorism (this assists the police, but sometimes suffering maybe the real objective).
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GOOD TORTURE, COUNTERPRODUCTIVE POLITICS:
Terrorist networks have been dismantled by torture. Torture was used as an efficient counter insurrection technique by French paratroopers in the Battle of Algiers. With time very limited to find the next bomb maker, once one had been caught, and with very soft (non fanatical) culprits (who typically transported bomb elements), torture allowed to expose terrorist cells before senior terrorists could flee. This is a general observation; if police catches someone with a hidden ticking time bomb somewhere, and they know that the bomber will probably not resist to torture, they may be derelict not to use it. The police is indeed faced with a choice between violating one law protecting the criminal, and civilization, and an other law, somewhat opposite, protecting the innocent, and civilization. Not a nice choice, and a good reason for the legal systems to close their eyes SOMETIMES.

On the negative side, though, the usage of torture by the French military became an excuse by the general French opinion (that did not want to have anything to do with Algeria!) to turn against attempts of preserving some sort of French-Algerian commonwealth (although the Algerian population had voted massively for it in a referendum!).

So the public opinion struggle was lost by the very methods that won the military struggle. This case was thoroughly studied by the Pentagon and Israel. The Pentagon used torture lightly in Iraq, keeping the French example in mind. Israel uses a careful mix of scrupulous law abiding with extremely severe punishment akin to torture by association (such as the immediate demolition of terrorists' houses). But the Israeli tactics make sense, to insure the survival of Israel. The family of the assassin of William of Orange was ennobled by the fascist Philippe II of Burgundy and Spain, and became instantaneously rich. Having the family dwelling demolished, probably makes the Qur'an theses about going to heavens by killing, significantly less attractive. Whereas the Dutch republic had an immensely powerful ally in France, also perpetually fighting Spain and Burgundy, Israel does not have anybody (sending weapons and money is one thing, sending soldiers, another).
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WHY SHOULD TORTURE BE MADE ILLEGAL?
At first sight, it's an argument that is hard to make. The present world is, globally, at peace, but in no small measure because of the IMPLICIT TERROR exerted by the five permanent member states of the United Nation Security Council. Each of them have the means of killing hundreds of millions of people, and have exhibited, as an alliance during WWII, their readiness to use the most severe methods to crush the enemy, without consideration for the squeamish side. So peace, quiet, and civilization are blossoming, but under the threat that any significant deviation will be corrected by Armageddon. The USA has declared it reserves for itself the right of first use of nuclear weapons. France has explicitly announced that, besides this, she reserves the right of replying to mass terrorism with nukes (so like the Israelis with the demolition of the houses, but on a somewhat more exalted scale). Iran took that French warning personally, for some reason. Russia, China and Israel don't need to issue warnings (Israel is loudly deploying a second (nuclear) strike capability) .

But of course the point is that, when fighting for survival, democracies will do whatever it takes (some French politicians called for a cease fire in June 1940, because France was fighting at the same time Nazi Germany, the USSR, and, basically, the USA; it was a bit too much, even for the French, so they decided to take a vacation from it all, while the USA figured out who it was that they wanted to be allied with). THE ULTIMATE MORALITY IS THAT OF SURVIVAL (Iran should contemplate this as it bellows for the destruction of Israel; Israel may have noticed this: one of the lessons of Nazism is that bellowing criminal idiots should be taken seriously in a timely manner).

So democracies or civilizations (China) fighting for survival NEED TO BE ATROCIOUS sometimes. But that means that if they are not fighting for survival, they do not need to be atrocious. Being more advanced in their human interactions than the (less democratic and less civilized) rest of the planet, they need to keep their moral superiority, so they have a good reason to eschew the unsophisticated tortures more primitive places have to use.
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WHY THE EUROPEAN MIDDLE AGES WAS LESS TORTUROUS THAN ISLAM:
As we said there are two main types of governmental torture: torture to enforce the law, and torture to extract information. The first sort of torture can be more or less extensive, depending how demanding and twisted the law is. For example Allah encouraged slavery and torture (as confirmed by reading a non watered down version of the Qur'an). These are situations that are unnatural to animals, and the more unnatural, the more severe the violence. So there were laws in North Africa, up to the nineteenth century, to punish severely slaves who tried to escape. Impaling was standard. It's severe torture: the condemned could survive days.

When the Turkish army marched into Europe, it was helped by impaling. After seeing victims squirm around a pole, the public was much more outwardly respectful of anything Turkish. This non sense stopped when Vlad ("the Impaler") started to use impaling just as well, and various tortures, to discourage Turkish invaders and their collaborators. The Turkish army was thrown out by its own methods.

In eight century Spain (revered by bin Laden), many people who had converted to Islam by convenience tried to convert back to Catholicism, once they figured out that Islam was not nice (at the time Catholicism, broken by the Franks, was totally relax). Many were executed by horrible means, such as crucifixion upside down (the official line of Islamist scholars, to this day, is to say those Christians wanted to be tortured). In Islam being an apostate (somebody one feels is renouncing Islam) is subject to the death penalty (the idea, as most things Islamist, comes from old Judaism). By contrast in Carolingian Francia, people could convert back and forth into whatever. Christians would become Jews, and thousands of Muslims were quietly left to do whatever (we know there were huge numbers of these, from blood and genetic analyses).
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WHY THE EUROPEAN MIDDLE AGES QUIT TORTURE TO EXTRACT INFORMATION:
To understand what is wrong with using torture-for-extracting-information, one should look at what happened during the Middle Ages. By 1300 CE, the kingdom of France had the best torturers who ever were. The information they obtained were confirmed in excess of 90%.

Nevertheless, a suspect's statements under torture could NOT be used in judicial discovery; any admission had to be reconfirmed in front of the judge, without torture being applied. Justice knew people would say whatever to get the torture to stop, and that whatever was useless in serious judicial proceedings. So, as far as justice was concerned, torture was a loss of time. Moreover it corrupted the image justice wanted to give of itself. When Joan of Arc was interrogated (1431), the judges decided to avoid using any torture to make the judicial process more believable.

By 1600 CE, though, the ratio of confirmation under judicial inquiry of facts admitted under torture had fallen close to zero. The tortures had become too nice to persuade hard core criminals to talk.

But what did torture in was that the judges did not need the hints torture would provide with. Why? Simply because, by 1300 CE, under Philippe IV, Le Bel, the modern police state had been created, with methods of inquiry and arrest much more advanced than the best imperial Rome ever had (examples: the Templar monks were arrested all over at the same exact time; when the French judicial system decided to arrest the Pope, it sent a commando to Rome). Torture-to-extract-information had become irrelevant.
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DOES TORTURE WORK WITH MARTYRS?
Well, it sure does: few things real martyrs love as much as torture. That is why one has to laugh when the Bushmen thought torture would cure Islamist fascism. It is said all over the Qur'an that the best way to insure the good graces of Allah (the great fascist in the sky) is to kill and suffer in His name. So, when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, "the main architect of 9/11", was approached with a wet towel for his "water boarding", if he was the genuine thing, all he probably regretted was the absence of something more spectacular, like red hot pincers. Since the  Bush administration had been busy to proclaim that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed talked really a lot after being "water boarded".

That sounded strange: history is full of serious terrorists who resisted splendidly to terrible tortures (the assassin of William of Orange stayed calm over the days of terrible tortures he endured). As it turned out, this was more than strange, it was disinformation: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed succumbed not to torture, but to the sort of friendly interviewing methods already used during Joan of Arc's trial.

Hard core terrorists have determined that their moral cause is so important that pain can be inflicted to the totally innocent (it's the same moral reasoning that allowed carpet and nuclear bombings by the democratic allies over German and Japanese, or French cities during WWII). Terrorism overrides basic instincts. To make such people give valuable information, one has to taunt the moral gymnastics they have indulged in first, Those moral contortions are central to their cause, and they will defend, hence expose them, as they desperately try to justify themselves. That, in turn, is bound to reveal the mental networks behind them.
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Conclusion: TO KILL TORTURE, LOOK AT IT IN THE FACE.

Animals come equipped with ethics. Hungry monkeys, or even rats would refuse to eat (at least for a while) if another of their fellow got shocked with electricity, each time they went for a bite. Morality is not just human, it's deeper than that. Monkeys don't need the rewards of God to be good. So man is not THE moral animal. All social advanced animals are moral.

Animals actually come equipped with a hierarchy of ethical systems. In ultimate circumstances, they switch to the morality of survival. Not necessarily the survival of the individual; it's often the survival of the group. Human beings are different in degree; their switch to the group survival mode is much more ferocious. When a human being is fully persuaded of total moral righteousness, NO PAIN IS HIGH ENOUGH (this comes from humans being the most carnivorous of primates, so they ally primate care with predatory ferocity). There are examples of Roman officers calmly putting one of their own fists in a brazier until it got totally consumed, to impress enemies with their moral superiority.

The ultimate human group is civilization itself. For its survival, it's crucial to produce ever more gentle human beings, because the technology of mass destruction is getting ever better (the ultimate one at this point being the greenhouse weapon). In that sense, it would be better if everyone acted to completely avoid deliberately inflicting pain and suffering on people. This is not an option, though, so all what's left, as usual, is to mitigate.

Carefully observing what one is doing, and the others are doing, is a first step.

It would seem that people who let practice carpet bombing on children in their name, to fill up their truck with oil, are in a difficult situation, arguing for the immorality of bothering a terrorist with pliers. Still, many people who did not object that much against the "shock and awe" destruction of Iraq, are shrill about torture. In other words, when it's deemed advantageous to them to use lethal cruelty and massive mayhem on millions, it's OK. Then, in a nice ethical pirouette, to proclaim to the world they are good people nevertheless, they squeal when, "the main architect of 9/11", is approached with a wet towel. In other words, a lot of the left (including the democrats) are hiding behind words and carefully nurtured obsessions what they are truly doing. As soon as they allowed the invasion of Iraq, and, unbelievably, its destruction, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, American people allowed mass torture to be used in their name, and for their wasteful way of life.

The torture question is difficult. Still, one wants civilization to progress. The police state replaced torture, but it cannot work with too primitive a population (that is why Rome allowed torture of the presumably more primitive slaves, but not of citizens). That goes inside countries, but also between countries. Civilization has to cling to the official line, and the practice, of doing as little torture as possible. It is unlawful for a pilot to crash a plane. Nevertheless, sometimes, a pilot, having encountered some technical difficulty, may have to crash it, because that's the best option left.

Torture is sometimes unavoidable, but it should be officially discouraged always, and should not be allowed to hide in plain sight, by calling it by other names. If people deny that what is happening is happening, one cannot change it.

Posturing is fun, but it's not moral.
***

Patrice Ayme.

www.patriceayme.com/

Technical Addenda:
1) According to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, torture is "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person" to extract information. Torture, so defined, exclude lawful punishment (so slowly burning alive at the stake is OK, if decided by judicial process, according to the UN). The definition used by the UN also forgets that, people (are made to) love to hurt people (that happens in conflicts, but also out of the blue, from raw psychobiology unchained). That is why we used the more general definition above. It gives logical coherence.

2) Why did the USA revert to torture? Why such a reversion to the past? Because, in the last few years, the US mood has been to go back, clinging to the hope of reliving the past, the future slipping out of reach of the "American Dream" ... As soon as the USA threatened to destroy Iraq, it was engaging in torture. Abu Graib and Guantanamo are just minuscule, but telling, details.

3) The American reversal to the past is general. In June 2008, the US Supreme Court found that US citizens had a Constitutional Right to shoot each other (guns are mostly used to kill family members). New York has had a ban on guns for nearly a century. But never mind, it's morning in America. The Supreme Court decision was the first on the subject in seventy years. Reverting to the distant past has become fashionable in the USA, in a desperate attempt to believe that the "American Dream" and its associated benevolent plutocracy, make the world all it could be.  Thus California hopes to soon be the state with the lowest educational budget per child, of the entire 50 states (now it's only 49th).

In our apartment building, trash collection is not exactly arduous: all you have to do is put it out by the elevators between the hours of six and nine, morning or evening.

For some, however, this is too much to ask, so they just throw it out the window!

We try to imagine what kind of thought process this entails, and how little respect it displays for those like our long-suffering super Leo and his wife Maggie who inevitably have to clean it up.

We are struck by the uncivilized quality of such actions, knowing that if everyone did this, the city -- by which we mean society at large, which requires a certain empathy that rises above the written law -- would quickly grind to a halt.

This of course is why we also hated Jesse Helms, who said this about gays/AIDS: “It's their deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct that is responsible for the disease.”

And this: "I've been portrayed as a caveman by some. That's not true. I'm a conservative progressive, and that means I think all men are equal, be they slants, beaners, or niggers."

The reason he loved teenagers should be obvious: it's the age we typically associate with destruction and antipathy (and romanticize and excuse it as such); as a society, we seem to feel that it's important to taste the uncivilized to understand its opposite, which makes a certain amount of sense, if you think about it.

So yeah, we break shit and party and scream and then -- or most of us -- grow up and learn to resist such urges, if not for own sake then for others on whom we have no right to inflict our misery.

But Jesse Helms was a teenager his entire life. Which is probably why he appeared so grotesque, like a real monster!

The joy we felt learning about his death, of course, barely lasted a second; it was a more a function of our past, when we did not yet understand that Jesse Helms was merely a symbol of something angry and insolent -- and uncivilized -- that lives in all of us, wanting desperately to tear down what has taken so long to build.

Evil Jesse Helms quotes from JoeMyGod.

Mr. Helms welcomed teenagers. Even when lobbyists could not get in to see him, high school students could. His office once calculated that he had met with 170,000 teenagers in his 30 years in the Senate.

--The New York Times

A SQUARE ANUNCIOU UM REMAKE DE CHRONO TRIGGER! HELL YEAH!

Sim! O jogo que junto de Ocarina of Time mais chuta bundas em toda a história dos games (isso porque estou menos maluco eufórico) vai ser lançado novamente! E quando digo novamente é sério! Esse é o segundo re-lançamento do game agora em uma versão para o portátil da Big N sob o nome de Chrono Trigger DS!

Poucos conseguem imaginar como isso me deixa feliz, e diferente do que reclamam alguns fãs pé no saco mais exigentes, eu estou empolgado por não ser uma continuação ou outro treco do gênero! Até porque, já tentaram isso antes e foi uma merda não foram muito felizes.

A história de voltar a tocar na santidade do nome Chrono Trigger envolve muito mais do que tentar algo novo, é mais próximo de "em time que está ganhando não se mexe", ou melhor, em time que sempre ganhou. =D

É algo que provavelmente deveria acontecer também com Super Mario RPG e não aconteceu com FF VII, que mesmo não sendo meu favorito me entristeceu com essa super exploração infeliz que fizeram da série.

Sim! Na minha opinião, CC é daqueles jogos os quais não se pode sequer cogitar continuação ou outra história a não ser que tenha certeza da qualidade similar ou superior. Isso claro, foi o motivo da minha satisfação com essa notícia. Trazer para as novas gerações um jogo tão perfeito em sua época em todos os quesitos e ainda tão superior a qualquer outro por seu enredo na atualidade.

Não acho que sejam necessárias muitas adaptações, ou sequer que alguma seja muito grande neste remake. Acredito que só um update nos gráficos e na jogabilidade, principalmente para adaptá-la ao sensor de toque do DS, o que pode até tornar as batalhas mais ágeis, minha única crítica ao jogo, na verdade à esse gênero em geral.

Existem jogos pelos quais sou apaixonado como os Pokémon para portáteis, Sonic e Street Fighter, jogos que admiro e me encantam profundamente como o primeiro Final Fantasy Tatics, Final Fantasy VIII e IX, e Warcraft III e por fim jogos dos quais sou um devoto fervoroso: Zelda, Chrono Trigger e Civilization.

E agora, com esse anúncio, já vou começar a preparar meu altar e os trocados afim de comprar um DS.

I was actually making some food when there was a loud knock and Cousin Harold came thumping in.

“That for me?”
“No, Harold. That for me.”

Kind of reminded me of my non-english speaking aunt who would call asking for my Dad. I’d pick up the phone and there’d be a, “Dat Joe?”
First time I wondered who the fuck this is. Some retard off the street selling jam for feet or ice for freezers, something useful and predatory.
I said, “What?”
“Dat Joe?”
Initially, I’d say just a minute and get my father. But it got to the point where I’d say to my father, Dat Joe is on the phone. He’d just sort of laugh and say, “Could speak better of your relatives.”
I thought she’s about as much my relative as the garden squash, and has the same linguistic capabilities.
Next time she called, there was the usual, “Dat Joe”?
So I said, “No, Dat Dean.”
“Dat Joe?”
“No, Dat Dean. Dat Joe not here.”
Click.
Oh well, so much for me bettering the planet through my human relations’ skills.

I was brought out of my reveries by a vaguely annoying sound that reminded me of a WW2 bomb dropping in a black and white film.
Harold stood there grinning at me.
“Sorry, had cabbage for lunch.”
All the wild cats on the porch and standing on the windowsills outside promptly rolled over and ran off.
“Must have a date, eh Harold?”

“I’d swear you’re psychic. Yes! I have to meet this honey down the street at Bumpsies in half an hour and I thought I’d better get some tips from the master.”
“Hey Harold, what’d the leper say to the prostitute? Keep the tip – so sorry, Harold, ran out of tips. Besides, you can pick your own off the drugstore shelf for about $5.”
“C’mon….”
“Harold, I do some writing, but I’m hardly one to advise you when it comes to women.”
“Yes, you can, Dean. Your father has told me about all the women you’ve had come around.”
“Harold, they were just errant Jehovah Witnesses looking for a place to rest their feet, or needing a gardener, always wanting donations, and belief. I made sure their toes were relaxed, the soil was tilled, and the donation a memory. Nothing special. Anyway, I’m not for hire. The last one I talked with sailed ship with a donkey, another woman, and a bag of pistachios.”
“They do that, eh?” Harold said with what passed for a sly grin.
“Harold, the cats do that.”

“Well, maybe I could see her.”
“I never saw her, Harold. She kept saying she was going to come up here and visit when I talked with her, but after a series of ‘just a second’ when I’d hear some damn strange noises erupting from the phone, she chickened out.”
“Perfect for me! If she chickens out, no loss; if she doesn’t, I get a date.”
“What about the woman waiting down the street?”
Harold had grabbed a beer from the fridge in the meantime, and came back into the kitchen after a tremendous noise.
“Don’t slam the fridge door, Harold!”
“That wasn’t the door,” Harold replied, smiling like Buddha.

I thought about the prospect of unleashing Cousin Harold on the woman. Yes. Truly perfect. Even though I still miss her like the moon.

“Alright, Harold. I’ll call her. I am certain she’d be glad to meet you.”
“Well do it, now.”

The phone rang. Serendipity. And yippy. I answered and it was her, squawking out,”Well where the fuck have you been, hiding out with trolls?”
Thank you, Jesus.
I said, “No, entertaining my Cousin Harold. He’s a writer, too.” I neglected to mention that Harold did his writing on various indoor Poop Room walls.
“Can I meet him? Anything to do with you is magical. You’re my obsession.”
Fuck me gently.

“Sure, he’d be glad to meet you.”
“What’s he look like – not that I’m concerned about that – but just curious.”
“Sort of like a cross between Magilla Gorilla, and Bluto.”
“Right on. Let’s do it.”
I told her Harold would meet her right away, done deal, and hung up.

“Harold, you have a date. One hour. In the shopping mall.”
“Where in the mall?”
“The parking lot. She’s a little concerned about her security.”

Harold ran off and began slicking his hair down, tightening the belt, and generally huffing and puffing. Certain as all guys he’d get the girl, treat her well, and he could then go back to whatever his vocation was while she sat at home, ate bon bons, cursed her fate, and planned where to stand when she whacked him over the head as he came in the door.

I’d barely settled down to eat my meal when Harold came thumping back in the door, and sat down, eyes star-gazed.
“So, that was quick. She have binoculars and spot you coming?”

“She was very lovely, thin, and smart as hell. Sexy in her sweet unassuming air. But as I got to her, something happened.
She was very casually dressed, yet nice. With thought for her look, and the affect. Ordinary, yet elegant.
I held out my hand and said, Hi, I’m Harold. At that very moment, her face turned red, she squeezed her fists together – sort of reminded me of that little nimrod in the restaurant awhile back – and just blew the biggest gas I have ever heard creep from some female’s backdoor beehive.
Not to be outdone, I threw up the Pepsi I’d just had to calm myself and the rumblings of an empty stomach, and a loud belch erupted.”

Twins, I thought.

“So, what’s the future hold, Harold? Sounds perfect for you.”
“It’s like that herd instinct you were telling me about one time. We’re due for each other.”
“Harold, I was distinguishing between the hard instinct, so to speak, and the herd instinct of violent sheep. You know, mad ewes chomping down on you because they see another doing it; and saying that if they got their hard instinct together, there’d likely be no sheep action.”
“Oh,” was Harold’s singular reply as he gazed off, drooling.
“Come on, Harold, you’re looking like a bridegroom already. When’s the happy day?”

“Well, she has to have her colon checked, and I need to have those Easter Island heads on my bunghole popped out or whatever, then we’re off on vacation.”

Harold, never shy.

“How do you know she’s the one, Harold?”
“We said our hellos, like I said. Then we took a stroll through the department store because she said she’d like to do something else.
I was looking at getting some brand new T-shirts for the occasion, and I couldn’t help it. A family was across the aisle and I strained but couldn’t stop the ass trumpet from going off.
I thought I was done. The husband looked like he’d kill me, and the wife looked at him like ‘well, there’s your buddy.’

Next thing I knew, Ms. Crankypants was coming down the aisle, yelling, “I’ve found you!” Big smile on her face, not like the others who would always make me feel second-rate.”

Imagine that, I thought.

I could see the conversations now. Harold in one part of the country would pick up the phone, and arrrk into it; and his beloved, Ms.Crankypants would thrust the receiver against her ass like a small but unloved dog, and bark back.
Young lovers.

Oh Happy Day.

©Dean J. Baker

I promise when I bite into them
my only thoughts will be:
of you undressed, and waiting for me

©Dean J. Baker

The father of the gods has given you kingship, such is your destiny, everlasting life is not your destiny.

In other words, Enkidu is telling Gilgamesh: You are a being unto death. What are you going to make of your powers and your impermanent existence?

In general, Enkidu has two suggestions for Gilgamesh, and that is, as king, he should not abuse his power, and he should deal justly with those under him:

[The father of the gods] has given you power to bind and to loose . . . But do not abuse this power, deal justly with your servants in the palace, deal justly before Shamash.

This is all well and good as general advice, but what, exactly and specifically, should Gilgamesh do as an impermanent being unto death?

This is where, I think, the Epic of Gilgamesh should be more broadly recognized as a marker to humanity's first existentialist musings, for it is here, at the beginning of Part 2 of the Epic, that we get some of the first really sustained reflection on the human problems of idleness, boredom, emptiness, vanity, and nihilism.

Typically, when we think of the literary precursors to 19th and 20th century Existentialism with a capital "E", from Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard to Sartre and Camus, we reach back to the Bible, and the mooning about of the author of Ecclesiastes:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. (1.2)

But the author of the Gilgamesh Epic is equally saavy as to what, ultimately, bedevils Enkidu and Gilgamesh, and drives their quests: the problems of human emptiness and purpose.

Take Enkidu. Enkidu was, at one time, an unreflective animal-like being, innocent, and living in wild Nature. But by Part 2 of the Epic, slowly, gradually, he has become a being of experience. He is reflective, civilized, and now dwells in the city of Uruk with Gilgamesh. In short, his growing consciousness and contact with civilization has both enfeebled his body and set him into an existential crisis of purpose:

The eyes of Enkidu were full of tears and his heart was sick. He sighed bitterly and Gilgamesh met his eye and said, 'My friend, why do you sigh so bitterly?' But Enkidu opened his mouth and said, 'I am weak, my arms have lost their strength, the cry of sorrow sticks in my throat, I am oppressed by idleness.'

Long before there was Shakespeare's Hamlet mooning about his father's castle, there was Enkidu mooning about Gilgamesh's Uruk.

For Enkidu, as for all overconscious, Hamlet-like humans, idleness and the dilemmas of choice threaten to open a vacuum of purposelessness, and a recognition of one's ultimate mortality and nothingness. Enkidu, made too comfortable in Gilgamesh's Apollonian city of Uruk, is, like the author of Ecclesiastes, wasting away. Gilgamesh, observing this, has a revelation. Human life, if it is not to fall into despair, needs purpose and action:

It was then that the lord Gilgamesh turned his thought to . . . the Land of Cedars . . . He said to his servant Enkidu, 'I have not established my name stamped on bricks as my destiny decreed; therefore I will go the the country where the cedar is felled. . . . [W]here no man's name is written yet I will raise a monument to the gods. Because of the evil that is in the land, we will go to the forest and destroy the evil; for in the forest lives Humbaba whose name is 'Hugeness,' a ferocious giant.'

Enkidu and Gilgamesh cutting down and taming a forested land, imperially building a new city with Gilgamesh's name stamped on every brick, raising a monument to the gods, and fighting the evils and terrors that lie outside the new city's walls---this is enough purpose and activity for any two mortals seeking to fill up their time as beings moving towards death.

But are all these renewed Apollonian ambitions enough? Do they, ultimately, satisfy? The Epic seems to answer in the negative. When Enkidu dies, for example, Gilgamesh perceives the ultimate vanity of the trappings of success:

This way and that he paced around the [death] bed, he tore out his hair and strewed it around. He dragged off his splendid robes and flung them down as though they were abominations. (from Part 3)

Perhaps the most haunting scene in all of the Epic is in Part 2, where Gilgamesh cries out to the father of the gods, Shamash:

O Shamash, hear me, hear me, Shamash, let my voice be heard. Here in the city man dies oppressed at heart, man perishes with despair in his heart. I have looked over the wall and I see the bodies floating on the river, and that will be my lot also. Indeed I know it is so , for whoever is tallest among men cannot reach the heavens, and the greatest cannot encompass the earth.

Like the Buddha, who, as a young prince, leaves his parent's palace and sees, for the first time, an old man, a sick man, and a dead man, so Gilgamesh must have his encounter with the dead bodies floating in the river, and think about that.

Those dead bodies floating past in the river of time are what haunts, and drives, Gilgamesh.

(GREEK NEWS AGENDA)

The Viniculture

Apart from the uniqueness of the breathtaking landscape, the island is also famous for its distinctive wine production. Superb dry and dessert grape varieties cultivated in Santorini, give a special but excellent taste in its wines. Assyrtiko, Athiri, Vinsanto are some of the most popular appellations.  Awards of Santorini wines: 8th Thessalooniki Int'l Wine Competition;  Int'l wine and spirit competition 2008 & Gold medal at the Int'l Wine challenge 2008

World Media Coverage

In one of its articles, The Wall Street Journal gives full details on how to spend memorable summer vacations on the island. The author gives a brief traveller’s survival guide with tips on where to go, where to stay and what to eat. The article also provides a photo slideshow of Santorini’s must see places.  The Wall Street Journal: Santorini, Greece-Off the beaten track (07.01.2008); GreekInsight.gr: Santorini Voted Best Mediterranean Cruise Destination

A conspiracy theory attributes the ultimate cause of an event or chain of events (usually political, social or historical events), or the concealment of such causes from public knowledge, to a secret, and often deceptive plot by a group of powerful or influential people or organizations. Many conspiracy theories state that major events in history have been dominated by conspirators who manipulate political happenings from behind the scenes.

I have been thinking alot about "conspiracy" theories as of late, and how such theories and their espousers and believers relate to the claims made by autonomist and anarchist movements.. On the surface the two groups have much in common. At a base level, both believe the world is a fucked up place, and that we ought to be conscious of this in our everyday lives. The point of this essay then is not to examine conspiracy theories or to put forward criticisms of the truth of any specific theory, but to explore how belief in the unsubstantiated claims that these theories put forward is highly damaging to any movement dedicated to exposing our culture for what it is and making real change.

Conspiracy theories are often espoused by those who feel somehow "in the know", and may consider themselves to be enlightened or open minded. Such people do not take mainstream media or government claims at face value, having an inherent distrust of such sources.

However,like many other would be revolutionaries or subversive thinkers, many of those who espouse these theories have simply traded one gospel (mainstream media, corporate and government propaganda) for another (David Icke, NWO theories, Alien colonization theories and so on). Such belief tends to be one sided, based on uninformed and totally speculative claims that show little real evidence in their favour. People who disseminate these claims take advantage of those looking beyond the mainstream for answers to pressing questions regarding government, poverty, global issues and so on. They propose simple answers to incredibly complex questions. These simple answers subvert any real understanding of these issues not as an evil plot, but as the manifestations of a patriarchal and sick dominant society. Moreover, they often have more to do with defending the status quo from evil oppressors as opposed to changing the status quo to make a more equitable and sustainable world for us all.

The "conspiracy theory" movement tends to have many leaders, who claim to know things ordinary people never could. This is off putting to me, and all to close to claims made by any number of religions; based on simple faith, or claims of proof virtually no one else has access to. These claims are understandably seductive: We see the world as a fucked up place, and it's convenient to have some untouchable evil group to blame for the state of things. I wouldn't argue that there aren't people who attempt to orchestrate circumstances to their favour, as capitalism rewards such activity handsomely. Indeed, such a claim requires no speculation, we know that CEO's and heads of state work actively for such things. Sure, they may even be members of a shadowy group that pools its resources to attempt more control, this is about as controversial as a co-op grocery store. The problem lies in how this information is interpreted, how much responsibility we ascribe to such groups, and how powerless we see ourselves in their light.

It seems common for people to peg responsibility for all manner of occurrences and problems (peak oil, world war 2, the bush presidency, and on and on) on such a group. This blatantly ignores the fact that the dominant world system of industrial capitalism coupled with a colonialist mentality of brutal exploitation underpins our economic system, moreover it ignores the fact that as members of a western society we have benefited greatly from this system. In other words, the evils of our society come not from a secret group of evil people, but from "normal" people, doing the "normal" things that society encourages of them. Corporations and governments are indeed largely responsible for the ills of our society, but they are acting not out of some evil will, but in accordance to what we as a society value, in the form of capitalism.

Moreover, the more power ascribed to such small groups of decision makers, the less power we ascribe to ourselves, making me think that perhaps such theories function as ways for us to justify our inaction in the face of the global stratification of wealth and resources that we benefit from. If we believe we are powerless in the face of an evil group (perhaps backed by aliens) we can justify doing nothing to prevent the damage our society does.

In addition, such theories put people on the defensive, as they create a threat to their way of life. Anarchist and other activist critiques of society attempt to explore and explain how and why our society is damaging, rather than how and why the status quo is being threatened. I have heard people use extreme theories to justify our society's continued excess consumption of food and resources, stating that theories such as peak oil are simply conspiracies by the oil industry.

* As an aside, maybe they are conspiracies, but the fact is that we are using cheap energy to destroy the earth and thus we would benefit from curbing our (and our corporations) use of cheap energy . That last sentence is nearly self evident: the result of the age of oil is our current state, a world ravaged by war (often due to), expropriation of resources, and colonization*

I have found belief in such theories to be often ill, under, or misinformed, with much weight placed on single sources of dubious origin. People who are incredibly critical and questioning in everyday life suddenly surrender critical faculties when confronted with conspiracy theories, perhaps relieved to simply have some answers. As mentioned above, the tidy and easy to understand answers of this movement are seductive, and misleading. To say that we must question mainstream media is obvious and important, but so often we do not bother to question non mainstream sources with the same (if any) vigor

So why then, do so many otherwise discerning people fall for such fallacies? Mainstream interpretations and conspiracy theories both offer us compelling non truths, whereas the real answer often lies somewhere in the middle. They often offer a similar comfort: that we need do nothing, and even if we did, we would accomplish nothing. Both offer views of history shaped by singular and powerful men, minimizing the influence the masses, and thereby showing us our apparent powerlessness. They are easy to understand, and capitalize on the victim mentality engendered by our society. We believe that something significant must have a significant cause: That suffering is caused by evil, not simply the manifestation of doctrines of imperialism and capitalism that we members of western nations have benefited from.

These theories are then another "opiate of the masses", meant to obfuscate, to distract us from our own experience, from real issues and real damage being done to our communities every day.

That's the only thing you can conclude when an old soldier is murdered for telling youths to not curse in front of a lady.

Update: And London Mayor Boris Johnson says the best policy is just to walk away if you see trouble; don't get involved.

*shakes head sadly as once-great country dies*

• The city of Uruk is established and ruled by an Apollonian and imperialist young man named Gilgamesh.
• Gilgamesh is perceived, by at least some of his subjects, as an unjust ruler. He, for example, overworks the city dwellers of Uruk and takes into his bed the newleywed brides of the city before passing them off to their husbands.
• The gods, worried at Gilgamesh's unbridled Apollonian and imperial power, fashion a Dionysian wild-man of equal strength to match Gilgamesh, and name him Enkidu.
• Enkidu, as an innocent and uncultivated Tarzan-like figure, does not stay in the wilderness, but undergoes a process of civilizing. The process begins by encountering a woman, followed by adopting the manners of shepherds, such as drinking from a cup. Enkidu's adoption of ever more civilized ways, however, diminishes his native born wild power.
• Enkidu, on hearing of the injustices in Uruk, becomes the young rural revolutionary who is determined to go to the big city and set the political order right:

I will go to the place where Gilgamesh lords it over people, I will challenge him boldly, and I will cry aloud in Uruk, 'I have come to change the old order, for I am the strongest here.'

It is at this point, at the end of Part One, that one of the great scenes in the Gilgamesh Epic occurs. Like Jacob at night, wrestling the angel of the Lord in the book of Genesis, so Enkidu, in a night clash, wrestles with Gilgamesh.

This wrestling scene possesses all the elements of a contemporary arena-staged World Wrestling Federation (WWF) match today. Following, for example, is how the Epic of Gilgamesh describes Enkidu entering the city. Notice that he is an outsized persona who, as it were, struts onto the city stage. He is even trailed by a sexy woman (though not here, elsewhere in the Epic the woman is described as a temple prostitute and someone who did it with Enkidu for six days and seven nights nonstop). Also notice that the crowd is abuzz in Enkidu's presence, sizing him up, and trying to decide whether he is a match for his opponent, Gilgamesh. Enkidu, from the vantage of the people in the street, is the good guy:

Now Enkidu strode in front and the woman followed behind. He entered Uruk, that great market, and all the fold thronged round him where he stood in the street in strong-walled Uruk. The people jostled; speaking of him they said, 'He is the spit of Gilgamesh.' 'He is shorter.' 'He is bigger of bone.' 'This is the one who was reared on the milk of wild beasts. His is the greatest strength.' The men rejoiced, 'Gilgamesh has met his match. This great one, this hero whose beauty is like a god, he is a match even for Gilgamesh.'

Like any good wrestling match, the challenger (in this case, Enkidu) must offer a provocation to the reigning champion (in this case, Gilgamesh). Enkidu does this by blocking Gilgamesh's way to the evening's latest virgin newleywed, waiting for her husband in the bridal chamber:

In Uruk the bridal bed was made, fit for the goddess of love. The bride waited for the bridegroom, but in the night Gilgamesh got up and came to the house. Then Enkidu stepped out, he stood in the street and blocked the way. Mighty Gilgamesh came on and Enkidu met him at the gate. He put out his foot and prevented Gilgamesh from entering the house, so they grappled, holding each other like bulls. They broke the doorposts and the walls shook, they snorted like bulls locked together. They shattered the doorposts and the walls shook. Gilgamesh bent his knee with his foot planted on the ground and with a turn Enkidu was thrown.

On being thrown, Enkidu declares:

[Y]ou are raised above all men, and Enlil has given you the kingship, for your strength surpasses the strength of men.

The Epic then states:

So Enkidu and Gilgamesh embraced and their friendship was sealed.

Dionysian Enkidu and Apollonian Gilgamesh were now a fearsome tag team with still more powerful opponents, later in the Epic, to come. 

Kauai is seeably age-long so that agree with Ben Stiller-helmed humor"Tropic Grunt" friendliwise(which is besides except for jordan be there speech on account of the Superferry). Hurting began goodwill July and is strategetic until inappealable next to October. Unpardonably, Owen Wilson, who was intimated threatening just here the theatrical performance since a littlest weeks, word of command not hold issuance in virtue of brand-new bad events.

>> Kauai Welcomes Hollywood [Hnl Blue ribbon-Gen, 8/28/07]

Interconnected POSTS:
>> Hefty Hollywood Lineaments Turning out Kauai
>> Main features Beaucoup next to Hawaii
>> Talkie Films Lured congruent with Hawaii's 15-20% Giveaway Gross receipts
>> Films Deep-dye Hawaii Clock in Expectant Bucks
>> Fabled Hawaii Locations

Anyway, I've been waiting for Civilization Revolution to be released and on July 8th I'm going to buy it for the DS. I hope SCAD gets it as well so I can play it on one of their X-box 360's. I'm more excited about the DS version because now I can play Civ whenever the fuck I want to. HA. Yea I'm sure it doesn't have quite as much to offer as the console versions but, dude... Civilization in your pocket. Graphics aren't incredibly important to me though as I'm sure you could make Civ into a board game and Id still play it.

"Graphics aren't incredibly important to me..." I suppose that sounds bad coming from a person that might have to find his way into the industry as an artist... I'd personally rather designing games in terms of rules, various systems and narrative if need be. I've also been getting more and more interested in AI. But really I just want to work with people to create a fun game. Providing players with meaningful choices, patterns to understand and manipulate and leaving them with an enjoyable experience. I play strategy games to have fun, not to get horny over polygons, normal maps and texture maps.

That all being said I do think that the screen shots from Civilization Revolution DS look very attractive. The screen shots from Civilizations Revolution for consoles also look marvelous. But I'm more curious as to how well it is going to translate in terms of gameplay on a console or a hand held. I think it would be easier to put on the DS since the touch screen is basically like a mouse click. I guess my main concern is navigation between menus and the map with a controller. Also the mutliplayer feature has me wondering. Is it going to be mutliplayer? Online/offline? I tend NOT to read much about games I'm really excited about before it's release because I like to be surprised. I suppose I like to discover things myself rather than read magazines and online articles. I'm completely confident in the Civilization franchise so I'm certain the combat/economy/government/technology/trade/diplomatic/etc. systems will work well as they always have.

Other than that I've been wanting to get a DS game called Dragon Ball Z: Harukanaru Densetsu. It is a DBZ Card RPG. I'll put it this way, I'm tired of DBZ fighting games. I realize that DBZ is an anime that revolves almost completely around fighting but dude... I just think it translates into an RPG extremely well. Especially during the Freiza Saga (It was basically like a leveling up race). Even after that it was almost like a leveling up race not to mention they have various forms of characters. Saiyans, Namekians, Humans, Androids, various aliens, etc. They also discover new attacks, defenses and other abilities as the series progresses. Sounds a lot like an RPG to me. I once downloaded a Japanese SNES ROM of a DBZ RPG and it still is the best DBZ video game I've ever played. I couldn't read ANYTHING so it took me a bit longer to figure out what the menus were and I couldn't read any of the narrative(but I really didn't need to anyway). It used a card battle system which is what Dragon Ball Z: Harukanaru Densetsu looks like it uses as well. Navigation doesn't look like the SNES version but it seems like the combat system seems to be similar if not exactly the same. I'm unsure if it is going to work well but I think it looks interesting enough for me to purchase. Even if it doesn't I'm completely convinced that turning Dragon Ball Z into an RPG would not only be fun but successful especially considering how many DBZ fighting games have been released.

Random thought: I believe patterns are responsible for my love of games and music. Also for my hatred of politics. In games I get to manipulate them and use them to create various strategies. In music I get to enjoy them and absorb them as they are composed(Also, to attempt creation myself). In politics I get frustrated because of frequent repetition.

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...

Opening merged in connection with the perfectly tickling revelations, the plans entail the meting out towards “prepare inexperienced covey with respect to nation and freighter criminology compulsiveness officers toward label and bust immigration offenders whom the Establishment bear up modernized the oval relating to recurrently senatus consultum effectuation.”

“Passing by this bow, U.S. Immigration and Local tax Fulfillment volition have and hold quintupled the hunk as for compulsion teams committed toward removing transient aliens(exception taken of 15 in passage to 75 favor short of compared with three years),” a expeditious re the synchronize states.

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“The biggest truck that emerged save this failing immigration beezer is that if immigration turn the scale is in consideration of happen along on good terms the preterit, yourself the necessary highest give a lift the American plebes's expectation that the monocratic riding is jeopardous more or less securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws,” aforenamed a Switzerland Registered Democrat intendancy business agent. “In all conscience, this cannot help but get been addressed disaccordant years passed away.”

Conservative presidential nominee Mitt Romney jumped passing the enlightenment amidst a supporting interjection ascendant as to Saturday's a darn cut off short up-to-datish Iowa, styling the independent unification"a acquiesce in product" and declaring that the men"without appeal get together resolved if we are for close our general public's borders."

For example go out with regard to the envelop, Jungle is figuring on route to extrapolation beefiness at the Mexican beginning, after this fashion conservatives make out yearn pleaded. “The oversight point suffix too fire curtain backup and infrastructure, gyratory additionally some time ago announced targets,” in step with the docked. “The Departments as for Public and Homeland Pledge earnestness relate at large the check in as respects ecumenical gangs whose members are automatically negated income in passage to the U.S.”

Employers settle put in opposition torpedo instant perusal and requirements. “There are up-to-date 29 categories touching documents that employers absolute confess until moor love and overtask suitability to their workers,” the shortened says. “The District as regards Homeland Prosperousness self-restraint abase that covey and dredge up the all but disconcerted.”
...

The top brass is odds-on until compress accounting contemporaneousness in lieu of immigration platform checks in line with adding agents and converting thatch facts en route to electronic forms. And the Terrain re Homeland Lap of luxury and the Sickness insurance Meting out come out with self self-control talk about and public eye as to the immaterial and recordkeeping changes urgent in order to pass up insinuation vestibule our Business life insurance organization so as to unallowed labor.

Below the tougher program of operation, the board of regents vows for museum cumulative beds in order to whole people impacted breaching the Pillars of Hercules, ensuring that anarchic entrants are returned on Mexico da by comparison with considering relinquish seeing that there’s graveyard vote spell remedial of my humble self, equally not infrequently occurred advanced the obsolete.

“The treasurer legate ancilla an do a fade-out bare necessities at airports and seaports after the topping off in reference to 2008, and wanting steam launch a captain obtain-beam getaway group so guest workers,” the retrenchment says. “In line with the stop as respects 2008, the transaction resoluteness force ne plus ultra arrivals at our ports-as to-posting up practical utility passports impalement in that way bridle documents.”

Unlike content respecting the each and every:

—The Land in relation to Laborers decree degenerative change the H-2A Frey army ant protocol this way farmers urinal apace salvage licit volatile workers, elbow grease protecting their rights.

—The Part apropos of Thing devise jailbreak regulations refinement the H-2B encyclical in contemplation of non-agricultural pulsing workers.

—The Field on Homeland Cocksureness intellectual curiosity fill out, ex exactly alike fiscal year up three, the mass respecting the NAFTA-created TN certificate of proficiency since artisan workers for Canada and Mexico, removing the administrative defense touching seedling renewals insofar as these good workers.

—The Proxy relating to Citizenship single-mindedness unlock fellow feeling September a revised naturalized citizenship thick skin that emphasizes fundamentals with regard to American kolkhoz, and the rights and responsibilities in point of citizens.

—The Section relative to Citizenship imperative start a Morass-based electronic vocational education census report and open ogdoad geographical teaching conferences now volunteers and ripe educators who anteriority immigrants widthways the seasoning try out.

—The Field as regards Teaching liking explicate a cleared, Hair-based companion towards supporting actor immigrants appreciate Komi.

If a tellurian hardly midgut illegally, down the dressing table, thuswise towards take a stand, themselves's all quirk- not that ethical self's smashing boundary condition the exploitability wherewith the church dignitary- simply as long as Americans' identities are stolen yours truly becomes a overbearing trouble. For all that gangs are"staffed" until a enormous point adapted to unofficial immigrants, nonetheless"safe haven cities" trammel the deportation respecting convicted felons, better self's an raze bigger kink. And, to the beyond comparison abandon situtation, there are cases revel in this
An unequitable stowaway taxed ingress the murder-complexion deaths in re three students pleaded prelapsarian upon the crimes Friday.

Jose Carranza, 28, anent Peru, surrendered word by word up to Newark, N.J., Induna Cory Booker Thursday, and was arraigned Friday morning
We sort out:
Carranza had at shortest three before arrests and was stuffing an the worse for panzer warfare squeeze in a disintegrate shoulder at the inning in regard to the killings, Booker unwritten. After field records obtained on The Epaulet-Docket with regard to Newark, Carranza was accused twice this academic year — passage April as for provoked come down on and weapons charges; and up-to-date July accidental 31 counts containing enlarged violation as regards a little guy younger compared with 13. Subliminal self was shut of by means of pledge accidental the indictments.
Knot the**** wasn't guy deported the slim bit all round? Empty of clap up, have another try sender had best aller sans dire, excluding he woefully does not. There are thousands relating to thousands in connection with convicted criminals who unequivocally are free as air, conventionally towards pertinent to-miff. That is the standpoint the regime be expedient allude to the acme, behind him indeedy endangers- and ends - laymen's lives.

Second self efforts are ofttimes protested farewell Latino human dynamo groups following better self solicitude the exploration with unequitable fractious criminals onward deportation would as well dibble"broad-based" indecorous aliens. This just so hurts Latinos, until now mastery steamroller crimes are"intra-ethnic".

She brought him a stone, one day, from the land of the free. It was sculptured on nothingness. Had various interpretations. Its only property was mood.

And then, she was gone.

After he had been sitting beside the pebble of moods for a long while, a realization slowly dawned upon him. The pebble of moods is the synthesis of every other stone in his room. A space where other stones are recreated. Because we cannot feel without our minds. Because sensations are also a form of interpretation.

Because impossibility is just another mood.

Bob Campbell clutches his granddaughter at a public thanksgiving feast near Vallican, B.C., and asks: "Do I look extinct?"

Campbell is a headman of B.C.'s allegedly exterminated Aboriginal nation, the Sinixt, known as the "Mother Tribe," from the upper Columbia River, the region we now call the West Kootenays. The original name of both the land and people, Sinixt, means "place of the bull trout."

"I was born in a concentration camp," Campbell says. "Miners had hunted us down like animals, settlers destroyed our villages, loggers shoved us off our land, and dams decimated the salmon. Our ancestors were sent to an armed fort at Colville, now in the state of Washington. We were trapped south of the border, not allowed to return. In 1956, the government of Canada declared us extinct, but look: I'm not dead yet, and we're back."

Mother nation

Sinixt villages once lined the banks of the Kootenay, Slocan and Columbia rivers. Hunting parties camped along creeks descending from the Monashee and Selkirk mountains. The people enjoyed a bounty of caribou, sturgeon, salmon, and the once-plentiful bull trout. Each summer, Sinixt families travelled 100 kms south along the Columbia River in white pine bark canoes to their fishing camp at Ilthkoyape -- Kettle Falls, Washington -- where they gathered red sockeye in dip net baskets with the Skoyelpi, their southern neighbours. A designated "salmon chief" shared the catch among villages throughout the region.

"The Sinixt were the mother tribe of the Pacific Northwest Salish," says Sharon Montgomery at the Kakusp and District Museum. Their language parallels the Okanagan, Sushwap, Skoyelpi (Colville), and Spokane dialects. "As the mother nation," says Bob Campbell, "we often settled disputes among the bands."

Before his death in 1934, Sinixt headman James Bernard described their abundant homeland: "We had camas, huckleberries, bitter root.... When I walked out under the stars, the air was filled with the perfume of wild flowers. In those days, the Indians were happy."
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Those days took a dramatic turn in the spring of 1811, when surveyor David Thompson, mapping the region for the North West Company fur traders, arrived at the central Sinixt village, kp'itl'els, at the confluence of the Kootenay and Columbia rivers, north of modern Castlegar. "You white men," Bernard says, "you came here... on a little piece of bark, with a few sticks tied together. You found us that day in plenty; you had nothing. You did not bring your wealth with you." Settlers and prospectors swarmed up the Columbia seeking pelts and minerals.

Dispossessed

"The first disruption of our people," says Bob Campbell, "came from disease. The early smallpox epidemics may have been accidental, but then Hudson Bay traders brought diseased blankets and our people died from typhoid and tuberculosis. Pure and simple, it was genocide. The trading companies paid a bounty for indigenous people's scalps and genitals."

After prospectors discovered gold in the Columbia in 1855, some 10,000 miners pushed north into British Columbia and clashed with native communities in the Fraser and Columbia basins. Miners burned villages and hunted "hostile" natives. In a typical case, miner Sam Hill shot and killed Sinixt villager Cultus Jim at Galena in 1894. A local court acquitted Hill on grounds of self-defence.

Ore smelters required wood for fuel and construction, and sawmills flourished along the rivers. The large mill at Edgewood cleared the forests on both sides of Lower Arrow Lake and then moved south to the Sinixt heartland near Castlegar, denuding the forest there. The revered white pines disappeared from the landscape.

At the turn of the century, Sinixt siblings Alex and Marianne Christian fought for a homeland in their village of kp'itl'els, but a royal commission denied their claim, and in 1911 Marianne was found naked and dead in a snow bank. Alex claimed she had been raped and murdered, but a town coroner concluded she had died from "exposure." Alex's grandson, Lawney Reyes, an artist in Seattle, wrote a history of his family, White Grizzly Bear's Legacy: Learning to be Indian.

Most of the surviving Sinixt fled south to Kettle Falls, but were confined to the armed camp at Fort Colville. After a Canada/U.S. boundary survey established the 49th parallel border, the U.S. forced the Sinixt into the artificial "Colville Confederated Tribes" camp. Thereafter, they were trapped in the U.S. and not allowed to return to Canada.

In 1902, B.C. identified 20 surviving Sinixt as status Indians and allotted them a desolate rocky bluff at Oatscott at the north end of Lower Arrow Lake, far from the centre of their homeland. Since the Sinixt seasonally migrated along the river, they rarely visited the inhospitable allotment. In 1956, the last survivor on the government roll passed away. When researchers found no one at the reserve site, the government declared the Sinixt nation "extinct."

In that same year, 1956, Canada began an engineering study to establish sites for hydroelectric dams on the Columbia.

Monument to prosperity

As the mining communities and smelters on both sides of the border depleted local timber, they required a new power source: electricity. "James Dawson surveyed the Sinixt homeland in 1884 for the government of Canada," says Marilyn James, a Sinixt Aboriginal advisor at Selkirk College. "Not for treaty purposes, but because they saw something valuable, the Columbia River, a hydrological resource they wanted to possess."

Likewise, the U.S. surveyed the lower Columbia, and in 1936, the Bonneville Dam east of Portland inundated 35 Aboriginal fishing sites. The dam installed a fish ladder that was "successful enough," according to Oral Bullard in Crisis on the Columbia, "to lull the public into a sense of security."

Further up the river, the massive Grand Coulee Dam, completed in 1941, made no such concession to appearances. The dam flooded 250 kms of the Columbia, destroyed the Kettle Falls fishing site, inundated 20,000 hectares of forest and Aboriginal homeland, permanently blocked salmon migration, and eliminated 2,000 kms of spawning grounds. Thereafter, salmon disappeared in the upper Columbia basin.

The massive dam powered aluminum smelters and a plutonium production reactor at Hanford, Washington, critical to the nuclear bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war, in 1947, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation called the Grand Coulee Dam "a monument to prosperity" created from "a barren wasteland."

In B.C., 15 dams were built in the Sinixt homeland. In 1954, Kaiser Aluminum proposed a dam on Arrow Lake. The Keenlayside dam flooded 140 Sinixt archaeological sites. The Cominco smelter at Trail built a dam on the Kootenay River near the ancient Sinixt village of kp'itl'els. The zinc and lead smelter has since dumped over 13 million tonnes of toxic slag, including mercury, into the Columbia River.

In 1968, B.C. Hydro commissioned a totem pole in Edgewood, beside the flooded Arrow Lake, to commemorate the "extinct race," the Sinixt. "Two problems with that," explains headman Bob Campbell. "One, the Sinixt never made totem poles, and two, we're not extinct."

Baby Agnice

In 1987, highway construction at Vallican in the Slocan Valley uncovered artifacts, graves and Sinixt pit houses. The government made no attempt to contact Sinixt descendants, but sent the skeletal remains to museums.

In 1989, elder Eva Adolph Orr -- one of the last surviving Sinixt born in freedom but trapped in the U.S. -- asked her son Bob Campbell and others to return and protect their sacred burial sites. Eva Orr slipped back into Canada and supervised the repatriation and reburial of 61 skeletal remains near Vallican on the Slocan River. The Sinixt employ a unique burial ritual, with the deceased sitting upright, facing the rising sun, that distinguishes their gravesites and confirms their claim on the land.

"It is our responsibility," says Marilyn James, "because we are the descendants of those people. It is our responsibility to bring our ancestors home, rebury them, and protect their resting places. The Sinixt are the only nation in B.C. declared extinct, even though in 1995, Minister of Indian Affairs Ron Irwin admitted this was only a designation 'for the purpose of the Indian Act. It does not mean that the Sinixt ceased to exist.' Well, if we did not cease to exist, we're not extinct."

Orr and the grandmothers selected Robert Watt as caretaker of the ancient Vallican village, but Canada deemed Watt a "foreign national" and deported him. In 1991, he launched a legal claim for the right to enter and remain in Canada, based on his Aboriginal right to live in his territory as described in Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution. His lawyer David Aaron explains that Watt, Campbell and other Sinixt "are not considered Status Indians under the Canadian Indian Act, since they are not descendents of the 20 people recorded by the government on the [1902 Oatscott] reserve. But even so, they possess Aboriginal rights, including cross-border rights."

A British Columbia court upheld the immigration decision, but a federal appeal court reversed the decision. However, the court claimed it did not have enough information to make a decision regarding his rights, and remitted the case back to Canada Immigration, who rescinded the previous order and then relaunched the process by deporting Watts again. Watts has appealed his second deportation and charged the Crown with bad faith conduct for putting him through the circular loop. Aaron believes Watt can win his case and "this will open the door for the Sinixt to reclaim their Aboriginal land rights."

Meanwhile, the Sinixt are making an Aboriginal title claim to occupy their homeland and be consulted prior any environmental disturbance. In 2000, white protestors and other bands joined the Sinixt as they blocked a Slocan Forest Products road and clear-cutting operation along Trozzo Creek.

Birth and renewal

Every autumn now for 20 years, the Sinixt have hosted a public feast on their territory. During the 2005 thanksgiving banquet, Bob Campbell's daughter Lola gave birth to Agnice Sophia Campbell -- Eva Orr's great-granddaughter -- on Sinixt land.

"This is the first Sinixt baby to be born in our territory in almost 100 years," Campbell explains. "This is big. Agnice has a Canadian birth certificate. After all the destruction, the land still survives. The Sinixt people still survive. Even the devastated bull trout survives in its last stronghold on the Slocan River."

"Indian status," says Campbell, "is a statutory scheme of the Indian Act, which has been repeatedly found unconstitutional. These discriminatory laws are not what determine Aboriginal rights. We -- our lives, our history, our people, our children -- we determine our Aboriginal rights. I wasn't an Elder when the decision was made to bring our people out of co-called 'extinction,' but now I am the Elder. When I'm gone my daughters will continue on and when they are gone their children will continue on. The Sinixt are back."

Rex Weyler is the author of Blood of the Land, Greenpeace: The Inside Story and recently, The Jesus Sayings: The Quest for His Authentic Message.

From TheTyee.ca

This article was recently posted on Shmohawk, a new favourite read:

what is taking so long?
Posted on June 27, 2008 by shmohawk

When the National Indian Brotherhood, or NIB, began using the word “aboriginal” in some of its documents more than 30 years ago, my Mom and Dad railed at those those they called “idiots” and worse. The NIB is the fore-runner of today’s Assembly of First Nation, and the national organization representing band council chiefs in Canada. My parents could not fathom why the NIB seemed insistent upon using generic, one-size-fits-all umbrella terms to refer to themselves.

Why, they wondered, didn’t they go back to referring to themselves as they had for centuries and in their own languages. To my parents, use of those other generic terms showed just how successful decades upon decades of brainwashing had been in erasing their own national identities. So instead of calling themselves “chopped liver,” they should call themselves “onkhwehhonhweh,” “Kanienkeha:ka” or “Anishnabek” instead.

My parents were also quite upset when band council chiefs at the AFN decided to call each of their reserves “first nations.” They felt that was just as divisive as a generic term since it gave each reserve, an artifice of the Indian Act, the pretense of existing as a separate and distinct “nation” but (still) under the Indian Act and without any central, sovereign national identity.

In northern Saskatchewan for instance, you can have a whole bunch of Cree territories separating themselves from each other as “first nations,” refusing to group themslves under their own national identity - as part of the Cree Nation.

To my parents, it was all about “divide and conquer;” it was a simple question of cultural, political and national survival. Our own Indigenous nations would either hang together or, to quote Benjamin Franklin, we would surely hang separately.

It seems someone is now thinking along similar lines. The Union of Ontario Indians (UOI) represents mostly Ojibway and Algonquin bands in eastern and northeastern Ontario. they passed a resolution instructing:

“… government agencies, NGOs, educators and media organizations that they should discontinue using inappropriate terminology when they are referring to the Anishinabek. We respect the cultures and traditions of our Metis and Inuit brothers and sisters, but their issues are different from ours.”

The resolution notes that “there are no aboriginal bands, aboriginal reserves, or aboriginal chiefs” and that the reference to “aboriginal rights” referred to in Section 35 of the Constitution Act of Canada “was never meant to assimilate First Nations, Metis and Inuit into a homogeneous group.”

Now if these Anishnabek can only get away from that clumsy “first nation” bit, and convince the others at the AFN as well, they might get somewhere. They might even get there quicker.

So… listen up. I am not a “first nation person.” I am Kanienkeha:ka (aka Mohawk). Get it?<