0001 - Libya (not cutting. cope.) What's Happening in Libya Explained is a primer on the situation that gives the very basic historical background behind the current conflict
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The Guardian reported that 150 soldiers in Benghazi had been killed by other soldiers for refusing to fire on demonstrators. Other news sources are giving a smaller number, but agreeing that substantial amounts of soldiers are defecting to the revolution. The pilots who defected to Malta rather than bomb civilians are heroes, I think, as are all the protestors who are fighting for the rights of the ordinary citizen.
Wackily, I have found myself wondering whether constitutional monarchy is actually the best political model despite everything I would have thought, since Morocco and Jordan have also had big protest movements that were treated with respect and which have resulted in ongoing dialogues with no guns waving.
As to Christchurch, I think all my friends there are alive, but at least two families no longer have homes. Just awful stuff. That beautiful city is so broken.
I want the pilots who defected to Malta to come back and bomb the fuck out of the leadership. >.> I mean, might shouldn't mean right, but when you're facing someone you know will mow you down if you don't stay behind the line in the sand, it really becomes a question of who takes the first shot. :\
I've never really cared about forms of government; I think it's all good as long as the people are happy (and are taken seriously if they become unhappy). I've always thought that all forms of government can work out okay if there are decent people running the show. Unfortunately for some reason, decent people are in chronically short supply in the upper echelons of pretty much everywhere. And I'm not even sure anymore if it's power that corrupts or if the easily corrupted are simply more likely to seek it.
Glad all your friends seem to be okay! It's really awful what's been happening in your neck of the woods lately. :\
I'd pick anarchy over tyranny any day Me too. The funny thing is, I don't think humans would ever be able to actually exist in true anarchy, at least not in our currently evolved state. It would take thousands of years of de-socialisation for us not to seek social order of some sort. The universe may strive towards entropy, and we are beings of the universe, but we are not the universe.
Watch yourself, I'm starting to think of you as the meme creata...this can only end badly.
I am both fascinated and horrified by things going on right now in the world. I am also having a hard time with the belief held by some that morals don't translate across cultures. If you want to talk actual law in actual places, yeah, sometimes they don't. But you can't tell me that the law is always right, and that some things technically condoned by law aren't wrong.
I can be a killa and creata at once: I can be Meme GOD. >:D
morals don't translate across cultures Yeah, that's been giving me a lot of trouble as well, and I honestly used to think I had no absolute moral benchmark: that the rightness/wrongness of something had to always be judged in context. And I do think that's true generally speaking, but my brain is apparently far too primitive to comprehend how military firing on civilians can be judged right. I mean, I can see how one who considers other people fundamentally below oneself would think it only right and proper to swat them like the insects they are. But I also think there's no justification for such an outlook if one wants to call oneself a human. Some of us *cough* may be more solitary-inclined than others, but we are fundamentally a social species, and none of us can walk alone the whole way. It is completely terrifying that some of the people who genuinely see themselves in a class of their own are out there ruling countries. :\
Oh yeah, there was news that .50 BMG bullets have been used on civilians. Those are the kind that are usually used to, if I remember hearing correctly, blast open things like walls and stone structures. It's nothing short of genocide. Along with some tweets/statements being made by medical people that there's stuff being used that's either never been used on humans before, or it's stuff that no one's ever seen before.
Summary: The horrible shit that some people will do to stay in power. The list just keeps on growing.
I've read that stuff on Tumblr and Twitter, but I'm treating those reports as rumours until there's something more substantiated. I mean, in a few IRC channels I lurk around in, there have been reports of alien technology being deployed, hardcore conspiracy-theory stuff. And some people believe it! Though I think even if all of that is false, genocide is certainly being committed against the Libyan people. It doesn't matter what kinds of weapons are being used to perpetrate it
( ... )
Oh no :( Hopefully they're just caught up in what's happening and will surface soon! ♥♥♥
You're right definitely that it's difficult to call it genocide by the strict definition -- I tend to use "massacre" and "genocide" interchangeably even though that's not correct (when I first learned the word, that's what I thought it meant, and it turns out it's really difficult for me to unlearn foreign words /o\).
That is not okay, culture and ideology be damned to hell.
Fucking word.
Governments are only needed to administrate the nation's resources according to what the people living in it want and need. Blah blah they can do it whichever way they want to so long as they've got pretty damn clear that everyone has rights that nobody else is entitled to take away. I can't believe that there are honestly people who sympathise with people in power 'defending themselves' this way. kjhfdgjhdf *gives world a good kick*
(And I might steal the music thingy, meme-unkillah, tah! :D)
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Wackily, I have found myself wondering whether constitutional monarchy is actually the best political model despite everything I would have thought, since Morocco and Jordan have also had big protest movements that were treated with respect and which have resulted in ongoing dialogues with no guns waving.
As to Christchurch, I think all my friends there are alive, but at least two families no longer have homes. Just awful stuff. That beautiful city is so broken.
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I've never really cared about forms of government; I think it's all good as long as the people are happy (and are taken seriously if they become unhappy). I've always thought that all forms of government can work out okay if there are decent people running the show. Unfortunately for some reason, decent people are in chronically short supply in the upper echelons of pretty much everywhere. And I'm not even sure anymore if it's power that corrupts or if the easily corrupted are simply more likely to seek it.
Glad all your friends seem to be okay! It's really awful what's been happening in your neck of the woods lately. :\
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(The comment has been removed)
Me too. The funny thing is, I don't think humans would ever be able to actually exist in true anarchy, at least not in our currently evolved state. It would take thousands of years of de-socialisation for us not to seek social order of some sort. The universe may strive towards entropy, and we are beings of the universe, but we are not the universe.
Thanks! :D I love that song SFM. T_T
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I am both fascinated and horrified by things going on right now in the world. I am also having a hard time with the belief held by some that morals don't translate across cultures. If you want to talk actual law in actual places, yeah, sometimes they don't. But you can't tell me that the law is always right, and that some things technically condoned by law aren't wrong.
Reply
morals don't translate across cultures
Yeah, that's been giving me a lot of trouble as well, and I honestly used to think I had no absolute moral benchmark: that the rightness/wrongness of something had to always be judged in context. And I do think that's true generally speaking, but my brain is apparently far too primitive to comprehend how military firing on civilians can be judged right. I mean, I can see how one who considers other people fundamentally below oneself would think it only right and proper to swat them like the insects they are. But I also think there's no justification for such an outlook if one wants to call oneself a human. Some of us *cough* may be more solitary-inclined than others, but we are fundamentally a social species, and none of us can walk alone the whole way. It is completely terrifying that some of the people who genuinely see themselves in a class of their own are out there ruling countries. :\
Reply
Summary: The horrible shit that some people will do to stay in power. The list just keeps on growing.
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You're right definitely that it's difficult to call it genocide by the strict definition -- I tend to use "massacre" and "genocide" interchangeably even though that's not correct (when I first learned the word, that's what I thought it meant, and it turns out it's really difficult for me to unlearn foreign words /o\).
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Fucking word.
Governments are only needed to administrate the nation's resources according to what the people living in it want and need. Blah blah they can do it whichever way they want to so long as they've got pretty damn clear that everyone has rights that nobody else is entitled to take away. I can't believe that there are honestly people who sympathise with people in power 'defending themselves' this way. kjhfdgjhdf *gives world a good kick*
(And I might steal the music thingy, meme-unkillah, tah! :D)
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You've got my vote!
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YES EXACTLY
/late comment is late. I was sure I replied to this but when I went looking for it to link someone to it, I realised I didn't! /o\
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