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There has always been a struggle by the people against the gratuitous accumulation of wealth and power. So the inequality we live with today is a problem that humanity has been grappling with since is inception. Tariq Ali explains how in this passage:
[…]
In Sparta in the third century BCE, a fissure developed between the ruling elite and ordinary people following the Peloponnesian Wars, and those who were ruled demanded change because the gap between rich and poor had become so huge it couldn’t be tolerated. A succession of radical monarchs, Agis IV, Cleomenes III and Nabis, created a structure to help revive the state. Nobles were sent into exile; the magistrates’ dictatorship was abolished; slaves were given their freedom; all citizens were allowed to vote; and land confiscated from the rich was distributed to the poor (something the ECB wouldn’t tolerate today). The early Roman Republic, threatened by this example, sent its legions under Titus Quinctius Flamininus to crush Sparta. According to Livy, this was the response from Nabis, the king of Sparta, and when you read these words you feel the cold anger and the dignity:
“Do not demand that Sparta conform to your own laws and institutions … You select your cavalry and infantry by their property qualifications and desire that a few should excel in wealth and the common people be subject to them. Our law-giver did not want the state to be in the hands of a few, whom you call the Senate, nor that any one class should have supremacy in the state. He believed that by equality of fortune and dignity there would be many to bear arms for their country.”
Now if I can just find the the right people to negotiate with in front of mysteriously bottomless pits, with a THIS…IS…CANADA snarly overture primed, I too believe we can punt our way to a better country. :)
I can see it now, a special guest Gerard Butler meets Steven Harper…
[Source: Counterpunch]
Probably not what you expected, but still accurate and interesting. :)
Vaccination is one of those medical topics in which people tend to lose their shit. As it happens, you can also risk losing your children if you decide to embrace the foolishness that is the anti-vax movement. Here is a story of a mother’s close encounter with easily preventable childhood diseases.
Learning the Hard Way: My Journey from #AntiVaxx to Science
“I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me. Emotionally I’m a bit raw. Mentally a bit taxed. Physically I’m fine. All seven of my unvaccinated children have whooping cough, and the kicker is that they may have given it to my five month old niece, too young to be fully vaccinated.
We’d had a games night at our house in March, my brother-in-law had a full-blown cold, so when the kids started with a dry cough a few days later I didn’t think much of it. But a week after the symptoms started the kids weren’t improving, in fact they were getting worse. And the cough. No one had a runny nose or sneezing but they all had the same unproductive cough. Between coughing fits they were fine.
Then a few days later at midnight I snapped. My youngest three children were coughing so hard they would gag or vomit. I’d never seen anything like this before. Watching our youngest struggle with this choking cough, bringing up clear, stringy mucus – I had heard of this before somewhere. My mom said I had it when I was a kid. I snapped into ‘something is WRONG’ mode.
I jumped on Google to type in “child cough.” My kids had all but one symptom of pertussis, none of them had the characteristic “whoop.” But they had everything else.
We had vaccinated our first three children on an alternative schedule and our youngest four weren’t vaccinated at all. We stopped because we were scared and didn’t know who to trust. Was the medical community just paid off puppets of a Big Pharma-Government-Media conspiracy? Were these vaccines even necessary in this day and age? Were we unwittingly doing greater harm than help to our beloved children? So much smoke must mean a fire so we defaulted to the ‘do nothing and hope nothing bad happens’ position.
For years relatives tried to persuade us to reconsider through emails and links, but this only irritated us and made us defensive. Secretly, I hoped I would find the proof I needed to hold the course, but deep down I was resigned to only find endless conflicting arguments that never resolved anything. No matter if we vaccinated or not, I thought, it would be nothing more than a coin toss with horrible risks either way.
When the Disneyland measles outbreak happened my husband and I agreed to take a new look and weigh the evidence on both sides. A friend suggested I write out my questions so we could tackle them one by one. Just getting it out on paper helped so much. I only ended up with a handful of questions. But more potent than my questions were my biases.
I just didn’t trust civic government, the medical community, the pharmaceutical industry, and people in general. By default, I had excluded all research available from any major, reputable organization. Could all the in-house, independent, peer-reviewed clinical trials, research papers and studies across the globe ALL be flawed, corrupt and untrustworthy?
The final shift came when I connected the dots between a small, but real measles outbreak in my personal circles this time last year. But for the grace of God, our family was one step from contracting measles in our mostly under-or-unvaccinated 7 kids. Maybe we could have weathered that storm unscathed in personal quarantine. But in the 4 highly contagious days before any symptoms show we easily could have passed on our infection to my sister’s toddlers or her 34-week-old son in the NICU.
When I connected the dates for everyone involved it chilled me to the bone. I looked again at the science and evidence for community immunity and found myself gripped with a very real sense of personal and social responsibility before God and man. The time had come to make a more fully informed decision than we did 6 years ago. I sat down with our family doctor and we put together a catch-up vaccination schedule for our children.
That schedule that was supposed to start the week after I found myself in the waiting room of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) with my 10-month-old son, waiting to confirm if he had whooping cough.
I said before that the irony isn’t lost on me that I’m writing this from quarantine. For six years we were frozen in fear from vaccines, and now we are frozen because of the disease. My oldest two are getting better, the youngest four are getting worse and fast. Ottawa Public Health has been so helpful and communicative, trying to get us the help we need while keeping the community safe. We are under quarantine and starting antibiotics. Tonight, the baby started ‘whooping’. I did the right thing going to the hospital when I did. I can only hope this painfully honest sharing will help others.
I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest. Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear. I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk. I want them to know that we tried our best to protect our kids when we were afraid of vaccination and we are doing our best now, for everyone’s sake, by getting them up to date. We can’t take it back … but we can learn from this and help others the same way we have been helped.
Vaccination is a serious decision about our personal and public health that can’t be made out of fear, capitulation or following any crowd. No one was more surprised than us to find solid answers that actually laid our fears to rest. I am confident that anyone with questions can find answers. I would only advise them to check your biases, sources and calendar: Time waits for no parent.
– Edited by Leslie Waghorn
Rolling the dice with your children is irresponsible – making that choice for other children is reprehensible.
All of the following has been cribbed from David Futrelle’s We Hunted the Mammoth – Thank you David for doing the heavy lifting on this one.
“The Honey Badgers — a mostly female A Voice for Men spinoff group known for its unlistenable internet “radio” shows — was sent packing after conventioneers complained about their connections to #GamerGate — a nine-month-long orgy of harassment targeting outspoken women in gaming and their supporters — and their alleged disruption of a panel devoted to women in comics.
According to Calgary Expo officials, the group was kicked out for “actively disregarding” the Expo’s efforts to provide “a positive and safe event” for attendees.
The Calgary Expo has a clear policy when it comes to who it admits to its show and the standards that must be followed.
“The Comic & Entertainment Expo Committee does not tolerate harassment of any type at any of its events. Harassment can take many forms. It may be, but is not limited to, words, signs, offensive jokes, cartoons, pictures, posters, e-mail jokes or statements, pranks, intimidation, physical assaults or contact, or violence.”
What did these people do? Let’s look at a sample of their work:
David Futrelle continues:
“I’m no lawyer, but it seems to me that this in itself would be enough to get the Honey Badgers booted from the Calgary Expo. A group that literally sells rape joke t-shirts and coffee mugs to raise money for itself is a group that doesn’t belong at a convention that’s trying to be “positive and safe” for its attendees.
Add to this their connection to #GamerGate — a hate movement — and A Voice for Men — a hate group — and it’s pretty clear that Calgary Expo officials had more than enough justification for their decision to send the Honey Badgers on their way.”
And there is the news from the land of reason. If we head over to the other side inhabited by privileged members of the oppressed majority, we see a much different picture being painted. I’ve already done a post on how amazing cogent Lucian Maverick is, but the fun-house version of reality and desperate seriousness of his words begs for reproduction (from Free Speech Doesn’t Mean Much to SJW’s – A response to the Calgary Expo):
“Who knew that Canadians were cool with fascism? Neato. Let’s not beat around the bush here. This wasn’t done for equality or because people felt unsafe or anything like that. Anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or has an agenda. Or both. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”
I’m calling the LoLcopter in early on this one. Lucy Maverick is excels at making shit up. The reason the Honey badgers were expelled from the Calgary expo was because they violated the rules and terms they agreed to when they set up a booth there. See David Futrelle’s piece on as to exactly why they were given the boot.
“Let’s put all our cards on the table – this is censorship. What Calgary Expo has done is censor opinions that, professionally, disagreed with someone else. Seriously, did you all listen to that audio that was taken in Mundane Matt’s video? Did that sounds like someone being threatening and hateful? Did that sound even remotely like a person who was waving a gun around or wanting to hurt anyone? No, it didn’t. It was a reasonable discourse between two people. Yet, because they were associated with GamerGate, the Authoritarian, McCarthy wannabes in the SJW clique had to get them thrown out. And, what’s more, banned from any future attendance of such expos. Something that is going to hurt the career of Alison Tieman, since she now cannot promote her artwork. She drew the comics that Honey Badger Brigade had at her booth. It’s nice to see that Calgary Expo is also in favor of destroying women’s careers. #EqualityExpo my ass!”
LoL. When you go against your booth rental agreement – you get booted. Maybe LM should read the Calgary Expo Faq, it would stop the raging stupid.
“As for you, Calgary Expo, you kowtow to these people too, and you better believe that there is such a thing as bad press. I’m going to make sure it gets out. I’m going to make sure that people know that you are an organization that promotes censorship and has no problem ruining the careers of women. Which is what you’ve done. You’ve destroyed a woman’s ability to promote her artwork at comic book expos. Honey Badger Brigade raised over $10,000 to get to your bigoted expo. I hope you don’t give them their money back, so they can sue your asses. You people make me sick.”
Sadly this is the more cogent of the two whiny-pissbabies we’ll be observing today. From the more unhinged column we have the frothy commentator the Right Vidya. From his post: Time to Take the Gloves Off, #gamergate! :
“Likewise, there is the very recent event at the Calgary Expo, where a group of pro-#GamerGate women were forcibly asked to leave, because their booth sold #GamerGate merchandise. It doesn’t matter if they’re a threat or not: the end goal for SJWs is the complete and utter annihilation of #GamerGate and anyone who supports #GamerGate. From there, they can proceed to push their “convert or perish” doctrine onto gaming unopposed.”
Again, full marks for making shit up but lets make this about me and my supposed right to be misogynistic asshole while gaming. Whiny man-babies be pissed about having to treat women like people after all.
“These are not rational, reasonable human beings. There is no “negotiations” with them. They demand nothing short of total compliance. They do not want peace, they do not want compromise, they do not want coexistence. They want the systemic silencing and marginalization of everyone who is not on their side. Everything is filtered through their worldview: their compassion and empathy is purposefully crippled in order to maximize their effectiveness. Their perception of events is dictated through ideology. Their reactions to events are only based on dogma. They have surrendered their individuality to the greater good.”
You can’t make this stuff up. RV is having a tantrum because the old shit won’t fly anymore and nothing shall stand in his way to preserve the status quo.
“We need to treat them like enemies. We have to be more aggressive, more brutal, more vicious. Stop yelling at each other over petty stuff like someone calling @srhbutts a dude- he’s the enemy, he doesn’t matter, whatever helps push him out of the picture is good. Leave your perceptions of “right” and “wrong” at the door. This is a culture WAR, not a culture disagreement. War is an ugly, brutal thing, and we must take an ugly, brutal approach in handling our enemy. We cannot stop until we are entirely certain that fandom will be safe from the SJW menace.”
Give me fandom or give me death!!! :) Male entitlement, written large by Gamer Gate, and individuals such as Lucy Maverick and RV is a large toxic pool of quarter baked ideas, straw versions of opposing arguments and great deal of “waaaaaaaa”.
Adults are watching, and adults are laughing. :)
Another great run down on this drama is available from House Mouse Queen on her Blog Mancheeze.
Too good not to reblog. :)
Recently on John Zande’s blog I had the opportunity to participate obliquely in a conversation with a religious believer. David, from all appearances, clutches his religious ideals tightly and furtively resists all attempts of being reasoned with and of course, reasoned at.
As David rambled on it became clear that he just was not getting it. My attempt to clarify the argument for David went like this:
“David: You immediately dismiss anything supernatural which means you aren’t interested in truth.
JZ: Again, do you accept that Dionysus turned water into wine?
David: No, as I have already stated, but once again that is a misdirection of what we are actually discussing.
A point that could be taken here is that David, you claim not to believe in the magic that Dionysus allegedly performed. Here, you are actually in agreement with the atheistic proposition that people with magical powers don’t exist.
The next step though is applying the logical extension of the argument – that people with magical powers don’t exist – to your claims.
Which leads to this:
Why believe in christian magic, but not Greek magic?
You are being hypocritical when you say the other people’s magic doesn’t exist, but “clearly” your particular magic does.”
David didn’t reply. How could he without resorting to circular reasoning of one flavour or another? JZ and other people followed David back to his own electronic squirrelly-lair of a blog and were promptly banned while attempting to reason through pronouncements similar to the mongrel-droppings he left on JZ’s blog.
This post seems like it is all about David, but really what I want to talk about is his behaviour in the face of simple arguments that obviously call his system of beliefs into question. Clearly, having your most cherished beliefs called into question provokes a defensive reaction – I can relate to that when I peer outside of my carefully curated collection of blogs that I follow with regards to my views on socialism (gasp) and feminism (double gasp).
Espousing views on the benefits of social democratic rule and the quaint(?) idea that women are people too invokes a bevy of negative responses, jadedly cynical ‘skepticism’, and plain old vanilla rejection of my arguments/ideas. Nothing (sadly) new about this state of affairs.
It is tiring having to introduce dudes (especially ‘liberal’ dudes) to the basic arguments of feminist theory and critique – especially when they exhibit the same sort of stonewall-ish reactions that David does to new information that challenges their world view (Feminism isn’t about hating men?? Unpossible!). When a valid counterpoint is made though I try to adapt to the new knowledge and rework my positions to accommodate this new more correct version of reality or at least acknowledge the validity of the point (I’m not always successful, my biases run true and deep.). I realize that I am not an authority on any particular topic and thus my arguments are not immutably true by default; and thus when it comes to arguing I try to stick to arguments that can be reasonably supported with facts.
Being aware of my fallibility affects how I argue and how I perceive the arguments of others. I don’t see a lot of this sort of introspection when it comes to those, like David, who espouse and attempt to defend religious belief. To have a zone in my argumentation where I’m automatically correct because “GOD” – seems like a huge red flag when comes to one’s epistemology and world-view.
I’ve had the benefit of not being inculcated with religious tomfoolery – but at the same time I think I lack understanding of what it is like to be a true believer and how one goes about cracking that particular sort of nut. How does one approach people whose first instinct is to clutch their tendentious ideas and then tenaciously defend said ideals with a streak of intransigence tempered with ignorance, that would make most people just throw up their hands?
We’ve all been there and seems to me that the only answer is time. Either they are ready to listen or the are really not ready to listen. Not following this prescription just wastes everyone’s time.
More than you’d think really. Human beings seem to intrinsically value fairness and equality and yet, as of today have constructed societies based on moving as far away as possible from any sort of equitable norm.
Take note of the piece on John Rawls and how using the Veil of Ignorance idea as a cognitive filter for making decisions. I think it is a great idea adding to the list of processes one should go through in making tough decisions in the personal, moral and political sphere.
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