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My Apologetics - July 2008

Did China fool the OIC to get the Olympics?

gosper
Kevin Gosper is sorry about the censorship.



There was reluctance in the minds of many when China first put in a bid for the Olympics. The memories of the Tiananmen Square Massacre were recent history and as a result China was considered an outside chance. Why would anyone dare reward an oppressive state with the largest spectacular on the planet? I could have said no one but somehow after a long period of lobbying China won the bid.


The catch for China was that it needed to get its house in order. I needed improve its human rights record; it needed to be more open and it needed to let the visiting international journalists freedom to do their job. The promise form the Chinese regime was that they would do their best.

The economic boom was in full force and China was moving from with the strength that would soon see it as an economic powerhouse. The old dictates of Maoism were replaced with a kind of Communist Capitalism where people were encouraged to make more money. Building and cities exploded into form and reach ever higher to the heavens that ironically Chairman Mao did not believe in. In the surface China was looking very close to being the new India.

Yet just below the surface of a freer society were the old oppressive powers of the regime. The ‘One Child Policy’ was still enforced; censorship was still enforced; China still executed more people than the rest of the world combined. On the technical side China connected itself to the internet then installed the most restrictive and comprehensive firewall in history. Dubbed the ‘Great Fire Wall of China’ it restricted all news from sites like Google to remove references to dissidents; human rights abuses; Tibet and especially the Tiananmen Square Massacre. In the other direction dissident websites and blogs were being tracked down with aid of Western IT giants. Cisco Systems helped install the Firewall on the Internet routers. Yahoo was involved in a well publicized case where they provided the identity of user who was arrested by the Chinese authorities. Western capitalism selling the rope that would Eastern Communist would use to hang their dissidents on?


In a recent report the Senior IOC member Kevan Gosper apologised to the world's media for misleading them about access to the internet. "Some IOC officials had negotiated with the Chinese to have some sensitive sites blocked," Gosper was reported as saying the added "If you have been misled by what I have told you about there being free internet access during the Games, then I apologise."

It was also revealed that New York Times, the BBC Chinese site, Radio Free Asia, al-Jazeera and Taiwanese papers were all blocked to International reporters

Far from being a free and open experience as was promised by the IOC there will heavy censorship and heavier monitoring of Internet activities. Gosper claims that he was unaware that the IOC officials had negotiated with China to allow such Censorship. Yet regardless of any apology or excuses these Olympics have already been tainted with the heavy hand from the aging but still powerful party machine.

Given the recent history of unrest in Tibet it is unlikely that Western Reporters will be allowed to do much more than provide a sanitized view of China. The losers in this negotiation are undoubted the Chinese people.
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The Dark Side of Blogging: Being Devoid of Empathy
dr
Just what the Doctor Ordered.

It may seem strange that that people can exist without the slightest amount of empathy in their souls. Yet such people do exist. I won’t bore you with details of the results of such thinking because such thinking is beyond reasoning with. To be absolutely ruthless a person need only be devoid of empathy not rational thinking.

People often talk about their own nobility as if it is a prize that hangs upon a wall and yet in a moment of heated anger they become no better than the beasts; worse in many ways because no beast can be as ruthless or as rationally determined to harm others as man can. We can easily justify crushing an enemy for the sake of a small amount of adulation, from a small pathetic crowd of cheerers. For the sake of a tiny victory, from of a tiny group, for a tiny amount of time a victory has become more important than anything on the planet. To be clever is one thing but to clever and ruthless is the most terrible thing. Clever people can be so logical and so determined that they can be without the slightest sympathy for another human.

Imperfect humans can demand a level of perfection that they would never be able to adhere to. They demand it because they love to judge others in a fraudulent test that is designed to make the victim fail so miserably. And when they fail, as is the purpose of the test, the next action is to punish the person mercilessly: to drive them off, to scorn them, to point and stare, to let fly with further accusations and to condemn. The pleasure that some people feel from sadism; the heights that they reach from degrading others as they degrade themselves.

I have very little time for the ruthless or those demanders of perfection who cannot match up to their own testing regime. This is not the way to use education and knowledge. Knowledge is not a weapon designed for the exclusive purpose of domination of others. Such ideas belong to the ruthless that make the most savage beasts seem tame in comparison.

There is a problem that occurs when people lose all empathy toward others because in that process they lose all site of what is most important in life. The people around them; their relationships; who they enjoy to be with and what they genuinely enjoy doing. The normal humanity that many of us take for granted can leave a human and what remain is an empty desire to do nothing else but win. There is no good or evil, just power and control. Like a giant game of chess, pieces are designed to be used or sacrificed to protect the king.

A person without empathy is like a cold empty shell that cannot feel what the normal emotions we feel, nor understand the pain that we feel or the distress that we see. It is a detached person that needs to pretend that they have these emotions in order to survive in the world. They know that they are different than others but need to pretend that they are like the rest of the world. They can pretend to have emotions or feelings for other whilst all the time seeing nothing but a ploy or a ruse to fool suckers and the weak. Yet if they fail they will feign these emotions only to escape long enough to start another attack. There is no such thing as mercy in without empathy and who on this planet can claim to be greater than the ones that they denigrate?
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The Dark Side of Blogging: Things I have learned about Extremists.
Purpose
The delightful results of Bigotry hidden in the Cloak of Martyrdom. By playing victim card you can say anything.

Fanatics often do not know that they are fanatics and so they are to be pitied more than despised. Often ignorant and manipulated with lies they act in ways that are normally revolting to their upbringing. Given a moment to thing straight the fanatic will realize that they have been duped into acting out the wishes of an extremist.

I don’t get along well with extremists in the ordinary sense. Whether they are left or right, religious or atheist they just don’t seem to like anyone who is not them or at least accepting of their suggestions. To an extremist the worst thing they can find is not an ideological enemy but a person who does not care for the extremes of either side. Yet extremists often do know that the mainstream would reject many of their policies if exposed to the light of scrutiny. So they hide many of these policies in layers of deception and behind flags of convenient victimhood. The Cloak of the Martyr fits well for those who set out to deceive others. Does this remind people of anything? Perhaps the term Oppressive Cults comes to mind. If you really want to understand the mind set of extremists then studying Cults is a fine introduction.

I could spend all day listing all the reasoning and psychological reasons why people become extremists but they usually boil down to a desire for absolute power over others. Often to offset deeper insecurities like feelings of worthlessness they need enemies that can be used as a whipping boy in moments of intense anguish. There is nothing like blaming others to hide your own mistakes and extremists are masters at shifting blame. Yet it is not the psychological problems that we should be concerned about as much as how the extremists project themselves into the world. They find a cause as their ‘Cloak of Nobility’ and ‘Moral High Ground’ to justify their underhanded and deceptive tactics. When the light of scrutiny is shone upon the activities of extremists then instantly the ‘Cloak of Martyrdom’ is wrapped around them as a diversionary tactic. It is the cowardly attack followed by the cowardly retreat that seems to be a common trait of many extremists. Passive aggressive is the new term that it has been given these days.

Tactics of extremists are often manipulative and deceptive with expressed purpose of reducing every issue down to a support base verses and evil straw man. If only they stuck to straw men then there would be few problems but ambitions of rebuilding the world in their own image require actual victims. They will engage in hate mongering; emotional manipulation; validating of peoples prejudices and bigotries for the expressed purpose of stopping any form of critical thinking being applied to their suggestions. It is not the fact that they do not have a point of view but the fact that they wish to crush all other points of view that makes them so extreme. The demonization campaign against a rival point of view is required to make the questionable elements of their proposals seem less extreme and repressive. Yet if the rival point of view has fewer faults than their own and the straw man arguments lose traction the extremist will resort to attacking individual in an unpleasant smear campaign. This is called ‘poisoning the water’ for those that have forgotten their high school education. The tactic is designed to associate anything a person says with evil. ‘Everything that Mr Black says is evil. Mr Black says it is wrong to speed there for speeding is right.’ Though banal and intellectually stupid the tactic often works, for a time. Bigotry is another emotional trigger that preys upon the ignorant and weak minded. It works because when you strip people of the veneer of civilization you will find the same primitive fearful and superstitious person that lived thousands of years ago butchering each other with ease. This is what Bigotry does to people it scratches off their exterior niceties and unleashes the ruthless savagery that lies just below the surface.

To what purpose would people spend almost every waking moment of their lives thinking of tactics to destroy enemies with smear campaigns? To what purpose do people invent diatribes and puff pieces that are filled with emotional and devoid of any substance? To what purpose do such people attempt to emotionally manipulate and trade upon ignorance? To what purpose do people compulsively lie? To what purpose do they wear the ‘Cloak of Martyrdom’? If you think the answer is that they do all this because they care deeply for you or anyone else on the planet then that is you naive choice.

Yet like many of my generation I was taught to be wary of those that speak in emotional terms and try to trade on anger. I was also taught to be aware of when people are trying to manipulate you by pandering to tired old prejudices and deep seated bigotries. I was warned that such people should be avoided because they have ambitions beyond any immediate bursts of popularity. Perhaps these warning are no longer being taught or they have so easily forgotten the lesson.


Editorial Comment:
Popularity is wimps.
Wrong is wrong when everybody is wrong and right is right when nobody is right.
Truth Does Matter.

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Mere Puffery: How to Write a Puff Piece and Sell the unsellable to the unsuspecting.
coolaid
Critics call this bad, but in the puff world it was preventing a population crisis

Puff pieces are the way that people sell something ordinary and sometimes unpalatable in such a way that to state it clearly would have most people running for the hills. How do we make thing that are so bad sound so good. No one who has a plan to set up death camps lays out their plans on the table and says ‘Here is where the gas chamber will be constructed.’ That would cause a critical amount of consumer resistance and the concept would struggle to find a sane purchaser. Instead the product was sold in a positive light of a Triumph of Will. If the sales pitch is done right it is never about pounding the crap out of anyone but rather it is about building a Better and Fairer Future. The Art of the sleight of hand can best be described as Mere Puffery. The Art of a Puff Piece is saying nothing but sweet positives and ignoring all the uncomfortable realities. Like dead people and ruined cities due to war


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Sri Lankan Ceasefire over before it starts
Analysis: July 2008
sl
The War Continues and even this map is no longer current

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Okay, Now Prove It!

July 24th 2008 03:17
Okay, Now Prove It!
see
To some this shows nothing but to others it show so much more.


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Comrade Square Pants and Captian Capitalism

I am not sure which is sillier


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Read Your Headline, skipped the text and Decided to blast you.

genes
I keep looking for the selfish gene but can't find it.

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Football Hero Awarded Order of Stalin for Services to Contrived Dummy Spitting.
axe
Try an axe it is quicker


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Failed Footballer awards himself Brownlow Medal for Services to Spelling Karl Marx
brown
The New Design of the Browlow Medal


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Don’t Preach about Censorship if you do not know anything about it (let alone spell it).
bomb
Censor this


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Time for some campaigning: Thank You Jib Jab

I guess I must be the only person left on Orble who could not care who wins the next election in the USA. Nothing personal but being an Australian it probably won't effect me that much. Not being able to vote makes it a little hard to get excited and even if I could I seem to have a choice between Alien and Predator


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Genetic Lysenkoism: Insulting history by repeating its mistakes from the opposite direction.

Not that history can be insulted in any way but I think that the title does convey a certain irony in the current war of ideologies


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Words can be Nectar or they can be Poison
Necta or Po
Lies with long noses or lies with short legs.

We can always mince words, change words, redefine words until what was said and what is written mean precisely what we want them to mean. Though some people may delight in the attention of those words of poison bring it is nothing more than the narcotic high that will ultimately be self destructive. History is written in words and when combed by those looking for something they will find it, even if it never happened. Choose the words you want and forget the other that matter and suddenly the good are evil and the evil are good


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Rationalism: Rationally we are just Robots designed to make more robots.
u

I came across a book, it was very important book, written by a very important man. Important people must be listened to because we know that they are important. If they were not important then why would they be writing books? So as you see writing a book and being important are the same thing. Having written the book the author is right because he is important and there for all he says is right. The code is run the machine is done. All praise the machine that is the universe


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Germaine Greer: She can dish it out but can’t take it.
greer
"Only Insane Reactionaries criticize me."

Perhaps Germaine Greer does not get or perhaps she has been living in her world of self-righteous sledging so long that she thought that she was untouchable. Having established her messiah like credentials with the angry feminists in a range of books she has tried to keep herself relevant by writing spiteful diatribes at random ideological enemies. Yet unlike a true intellectual discourse Greer relies upon poison pen letter and questionable evidence to make her case. Her own father was described as hypocrite when she discovered that he had changed his name at one stage. Her other enemy was Mother Teresa who oddly enough was alive when she launched her verbal diatribe filled with errors pontificating about how everyone should be judged against her standards. Even Steve Irwin was savaged within days of being killed by a stingray. Rather than offer a calm analysis of his life she delighted in the revenge of the animal kingdom. Even if the accusation had any merit (which it did not) to make such inflammatory statements as his wife and family had just heard of his loss brings the definition of utter nastiness to a new low


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Sri Lankan President offers talks with LTTE on one condition...
SL
Sri Lanka


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Does anyone else feel cheated by the i-Phone marketing smoke and mirrors?
iphone
The i-phone may be a gift from Dod.

I am convinced that I will need a new mobile phone soon. The old one is getting a little dodgy and unreliable. Unlike the current generation, (what letter is it now? A, Y, Z, Q?) who confuse needs and wants the real purpose of my phone is to make phone calls. No MP3 player, no camera, I know it has games but that fascination only lasted two seconds. Yet as it aged, unlike a fine wine, it did not become better with time. It seems that for some odd reason the modern electronic gadgetry of solid state circuits does not last forever. Like my previous phone they tend to die before I euthanize them in the name of owning a current status symbol. Yet when the poor little work horse is dying it is time to replace it with another younger model


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Raelians: Nothing like a good dose of Cult Hypocrisy before going out to protest.
rael
Hey look they have started using the swastika in the start of David again. In rainbow colours too.


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Few things have moved me as much as this letter.

It is a lot to read but worth it


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