Has the election of ObaMarx* unleashed my inner communist?

Maybe. Last year I took the political compass test. This was my result.

Several days ago, I retook it. Spot the difference.


Ok, so "unleashed" was a tad hyperbolic (actually, it was AWH-style hyperbolic). Still, it's cool to see the slow evolution of my political views so easily displayed on a graph.

*See the Toxic Venomous Coalition.

If everybody at the airport had had machineguns and uzis and a couple of bazookas, then nobody would have died!

Slightly hyperbolated (that's a word now, OK?), that appears to be the thought process of MK. He cites two examples: a gunfight between two biker gangs in an airport, in which one person died, and a drive by shooting into someone's house.

MK's logic appears to be: the entire airport populace could have opened fire on the bikies, and no civilians would have died in the cross-fire.
There was enough time for the mother to grab her gun, run out into the street and fire it at the attackers, who would still be in the street and certainly wouldn't have already made their getaway.

I don't get it-if MK is such a big, tough, manly sorta man, why doesn't he defy teh leftist fash and build up his weapons supply in defiance of the law? If you're gonna accuse the left of being spineless pussies, it doesn't help if you're a spineless pussy.

Racists are like fundies...

...if just a touch less insane (which is still saying a lot).

From local Klansman party, the Australian Protectionist Party.

The brutal bashing of an young man at Sunshine train station, in Melbourne, has once again highlighted the problems of crime associated with the immigration of large numbers of black Africans into Australia. [1]

Because no white guy has ever raped, assaulted, robbed or murdered. EVER.

Professor Andrew Fraser warned us all in 2005 about these dangers, when he said “Experience practically everywhere in the world tells us that an expanding black population is a sure-fire recipe for increases in crime, violence and a wide range of other social problems” [2]. Fraser was persecuted by the so-called “Human Rights” industry for telling the truth.

That's quite an ironic truth you have there, pal.

We must remember that societies become more and more authoritarian when they fall under the rule of regimes that push political multiculturalism and political correctness. Under Liberal-Labor’s politically-motivated multiculturalism laws, telling the truth can be illegal - but if we aren’t able to tell the truth, then who will?

Because allowing new arrivals to practice their own cultures (as compared to forcing migrants to assimilate to 'our' culture. Given that this multination consists of Jews, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Pagans, Muslims, non-believers, Asians, Aborigines, Western and Eastern Europeans, Italians, Greeks, Saharan and sub-Saharan Africans, Indians and Sri lankans, I would love to know what 'our' culture consists of) is apparently authoritarianism.

Whilst every society, ethnic group and race all have a percentage of people that commit violent crimes, research shows us that this percentage is significantly higher amongst black African males; to be quite clear, this does not mean that all of them are violent criminals, but that - compared to the general population - a higher percentage of black African males are more likely to commit crimes of violence. This is a fact, as shown by crime statistics in countries such as Australia, England and the USA. [3]

The organisation that has produced this is the white supremist New Century Foundation. You'll excuse me for taking their findings with a ocean's worth of metaphorical salt.

Newspaper reports in Australia have confirmed the higher crime rates of black Africans. For instance, the Herald Sun revealed that whilst the general rate of alleged crimes was 1 in 85, the rate for Somalians was 1 in 23. Political multiculturalists may offer all sorts of excuses as to why the black African crime rate is so much higher, blaming poverty, war trauma, etc., but the fact remains that their crime rate is indeed higher. [4]

I found the page showing these statistics here (from Crikey). Given that the stats don't show how many people of each ethnic group live in Victoria, it's impossible to say how much of a percentage of Somal-Australians are involved in crime.

This is not a matter of faceless “statistics”, but of real people suffering as victims of crime - it is about real people being hurt, disabled and killed. These higher crime “statistics” could mean your brother is bashed, your sister is raped, or your friend is murdered. Higher crime rates are about real people.

Yes, that can happen. Anybody can bash or rape or murder.

If we can choose between bringing in immigrants from a European people with a low crime rate, or from an African people with a high crime rate, who would choose the high crime option?

This reminds me of a line from Wolverine to Magneto, from Ultimate X-men.

"You told us life was just a choice between man wiping us out and the homosapien holocaust you always wanted. But Charles Xavier offered me third option...teaching 'em we're all human!"
(italic emphasis mine)

The fact is that political multiculturalists are extremists. They would rather have thousands more Australians being bashed, raped or murdered, rather than admit their mistake and halt the immigration of black Africans.

Who is to blame? It is the politicians and multiculturalists who are the problem. It is high time that we dumped the extremist ideologies of political multiculturalism and political correctness. It’s time that we started to protect Australians - and protect our nation’s future.

Flock off, you Bullsucking Nazis. Your scare tactics failed when your American counterparts talked of the dangers of racial integration. It failed when you ranted on about the 'Asian invasion' during the 1970s. And it'll fail now.

More kittehs!!1!

Given how popular my previous pet post was (the comments almost made halfway to double digits!), here are some more photos for groupthinkers to 'awwww' over. Remember when I said that there were plenty of highly undignified photos of Miffany?

It's no trick of the light-she really is that fat.

Either very bored or very snobbish-I still can't tell.

And who could forget Meral?

Someone's been eating the ritalin-it's the only explanation for the permanently surprised look.

And to round up up the little bundles of scatty, sweet and cantankerous joy-Merlin.

You interrupt by bathtime for this? A photo?

Contortionist kitteh needs new chiropractor.

Quite possible the most undignified photo taken since this.

All this site needs is more sarcasm, and it'll be just like Anonymous Lefty (with more ethnically diverse kittehs).

News Limited is.

A local Hun story features Home and Away developing a lesbian plot line, thus angering conservative groups (Shouldn't this puff be left to the Green Guide?). What I always find hilarious is when ultracons hide their homophobia behind the Helen Lovejoy Fallacy.

"They (Home and Away) continue to market to kids and they continue to develop quite sexualised plot lines," Pro-Family Perspectives director Angela Conway said.

"The plot lines that young kids and teenagers should be presented with should be about really authentic relationships that are not just sexualised."

And in the letters:

We who have young kids do not want them polluted with homosexual ideas. I hope somebody will be sacked over this thing.
Gordon Smith.

Replace "sexual" with "phobic" and I'd heartily agree with you.

Our vulnerable teenager children, who are undergoing significant hormonal changes involving mixed sexual feeling, do not need homosexual relationships being normalised on Home and Away.
David Everard, Nunawading

Because if they see women kissing on a fictional TV show, they'll, umm...

And who can pass up the comedy gold that can be found on the comments?

OK if we are going to have shows that promote homosexuality (and they seem to be on the rise) why can't we have more shows that promote family values? Oh wait, they don't get good ratings. But seriously the guys at Channel 7, should be more sensitive towards what would be considered family viewing time and have script and shows that are more appropriate. Concerned parent

No, I didn't SNIP the ending. That's the full post.

Reading the comments below on could get the impression that our society is 85 % homosexual. Once again gay and lesbian lobby groups are in full flight promoting their odd lifestyle. However, Channel 7 should keep in mind that it is the majority who holds the family values dear to heir harts who will determine the ratings and the eventual success of your station. You are succumbing to the pressure of the minorities at your own peril.

Thankfully, not all Hun reader were frozen in the 1950's and thawed out last week. From the letters:

Excellent. Maybe soon they will have some non-Anglo characters and they can really start reflecting Aussie society rather then some white-bread Aryan fantasy.
Penny Smith, Melbourne.

And Brian la Ferlita of Melbourne from the comments:

Oh I have to laugh when we're allowed to watch (current) storylines concerning rape and heterosexual relationships on 'Home And Away' yet some so-called 'conservative groups' deem plotlines about homosexuality to not be authentic?! Here's a tip for the Christian groups outraged at gay storylines: Homosexuality is real. Homosexuality is not a disease or dysfunction. You cannot make some gay by showing them a TV show. You cannot cure a gay person by showing them 'God' or treating them!!!!

Remember: you heard it here 2nd, folks.

Election of Rudd now officially worth it

From the Age:

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has set the Christian lobby, a key Labor powerbroker and a crucial balance-of-power Senator against him over Australia's move to scrap a 13-year-old ban on foreign aid being used to fund safer abortions for women in poor nations.

But the historic shift was lauded by a wide array of aid agencies, women's groups, family planning experts and many cross-party federal politicians, who said it would save the lives of thousands of women who would otherwise die in botched backyard operations.

All of a sudden, I'm almost liking Kevin.

The Prime Minister was targeted by his Christian base after revealing that he backed but did not personally support the decision by Foreign Minister Stephen Smith to axe the ban - two months after US President Barack Obama overturned a similar ban in his country.

Mr Rudd told a meeting of Labor MPs he had "long-standing conservative views" on the issue, but said a clear majority of Labor MPs backed a change.

The Australian Christian Lobby, which gave him a platform to reach 100,000 Christians by TV before the last election, threatened to campaign against him at the next election.

...

And Family First senator Steve Fielding, whose vote is crucial for Labor on key parts of its agenda, lashed out personally at Mr Rudd for being "rolled" by his party. "When it comes to the crunch on values issues, the Prime Minister wimps out," he said.

It seems to me that preventing women from dying from backward abortions isn't so much a 'values' issues then it is a 'compassion and humanity' value.

The ban was imposed by the former Howard Government in 1996 to appease former Tasmanian independent senator Brian Harradine, who held a pivotal Senate vote.

Mr Smith said the focus of Australia's foreign aid would remain on avoiding abortions by providing better family planning education, as he pledged to boost funds for preventing maternal deaths by $15 million over four years. He said it was a tragedy that an estimated 68,000 women die each year from unsafe abortions - leaving 220,000 children without mothers.

A wide coalition of groups has been campaigning for years for the ban to be lifted, led by cross-party politicians including Liberal MPs Sharman Stone and Mal Washer, former Democrats leader Lyn Allison and Labor Senator Claire Moore.

...

But prominent anti-abortion senators, including National Ron Boswell, Liberal Guy Barnett and Labor's Mark Bishop, were outraged.

Australian Reproductive Health Alliance chief Jane Singleton said the "humane and enlightened" change would save thousands of women's lives.

But Australian Christian Lobby head Jim Wallace said Christian voters had been betrayed - and pledged to campaign on the issue.

The Catholic Church branded the move "a cause for great sadness" and "very bad news for women and unborn children in the developing world". It urged Mr Rudd to reverse the decision.

The Vatican and the ACL see women not dying from slashed uteri as "a cause for great sadness." Figures.

There is a level of political bravery from Rudd. No-one expected him to overturn the ban (certainly not me). Indeed, it would have been much easier to simply do nothing and keep the die hard sexist fundie conservative Christian lobby/bloc on his side.

I won't be voting Labor in 2010, but I would like to humbly thank Rudd for not being totally Howard-lite.

And on a final note (again): if God is anti-abortion, why do at least 25% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage-a natural abortion? Riddle me that, you misogynic turds with nothing better to be outraged about then improved reproductive rights.

When you die, say hi to the horned one for me.

If anything else is needed to prove the fundamental vileness of the Vatican, it's this.

A CATHOLIC archbishop has sparked controversy in Brazil by saying the mother of a nine-year-old girl who had an abortion on Wednesday following a rape is automatically excommunicated for allowing the procedure to go ahead.

Archbishop José Cardoso Sobrinho of Olinda and Recife also declared that according to canon law the doctor who performed the abortion is considered excommunicated, along with anyone else involved.

The child was raped by her stepfather, who has since admitted abusing her over the last three years. Abortion is generally illegal in Brazil but allowed in cases of rape or when the pregnancy endangers the mother’s life.

The child entered hospital in the northeastern city of Recife on Tuesday night, where she was given medication to interrupt the pregnancy, which doctors said was terminated by early Wednesday morning. She was pregnant with twins.

The archbishop’s statements have drawn condemnation from Brazilian politicians and caused disquiet among some theologians concerned by the difficulties raised by the case.

But Archbishop Cardoso Sobrinho has denied media reports that he personally ordered the excommunications. “I simply recalled what is in church canon law. Excommunication is automatic for those who participate in an abortion. I did not excommunicate anyone, just remembered the church’s law which says they are automatically excommunicated,” he said.

Before the abortion was carried out the archdiocese’s lawyers threatened to charge the mother with homicide, citing the Brazilian constitution’s guarantee to the right to life.

The doctor who carried out the procedure has defended his actions. “If the pregnancy had continued, the damage would have been worse, being a high risk pregnancy. The risk would have been of death or at the very least that she would never have been able to become pregnant again,” Dr Olímpio Moraes told O Globo newspaper.

“There are two legal justifications for abortion envisioned by the law, which are rape and risk to life. She [the girl] falls within the two and, as a doctor, I could not let a girl of nine years be submitted to this suffering and even pay with her own life.”

But Archbishop Cardoso Sobrinho has dismissed the fact that the abortion was legal under Brazilian law as irrelevant to the question of excommunication. “God’s law is above whatever human law. So when a human law is contrary to God’s law, this human law has no value,” he said.

The archbishop made clear that the excommunication did not extend to the young girl at the centre of the case. Archbishop Cardoso Sobrinho is a leading member of the Brazilian Catholic Church’s conservative wing and a firm opponent of abortion which he calls a “silent holocaust”.

And some more from the SMH:

The operation - carried out on Wednesday because of doctors' fears the slender girl might die if she carried the foetuses to term - was a crime in the eyes of the church, he said.

"God's law is above any human law. So when a human law ... is contrary to God's law, this human law has no value," Cardoso told the news television network Globo.

"The adults who approved, who carried out this abortion, will be excommunicated," said the archbishop for the Recife region.

[my emphasis]

Cardoso, I know that this is just a little girl we're talking about-because, hey, you really aren't all for equal gender rights-but she is 9 years old and pregnant. I don't know about you, but a 9/10 year old girl giving birth probably won't do a lot of good for her emotional health. Not only that, but if she gives birth, she'll almost certainly die, which kinda goes against your 'pro-life' mantra. Not that you'd care, given that the Vatican is totally opposed to anything more progressive them a Middle Ages approach to reproductive health.

You're supposed represent love and compassion-where the fuck have you shown that? Where's the compassion and mercy for a little girl has been raped for years on end, whose emotional trauma would rival that of a Holocaust survivor? You talk about reproductive health measures denying the littlest children the right to life-how exactly does that stand with a child risking death from pregnancy? Is a clump of stem cells more important then a human being that can think, feel and be hurt? Hell, how does that work with celibacy?! Just how many littlest children have you denied life to?

I'll bet you're all so glad you changed those theological abortion laws (how does that work anyway? Does it mean that past Popes were wrong on the issue? If so, doesn't it mean that this Pope could be wrong?) to further oppress women. What Else Would Jesus Do?

I also note that you've excommunicated the doctors and the mother, but neither the girl nor the step-father. I assume that as far as you're concerned, the girl is being forced to have abortion against her will*. Hey, have you even for a moment considered what the girl wants? Did you ever consider-even for a second-that she might want to simply try piece her life back together, with even a hint of normality? Given that she will otherwise die, I'm willing to bet my internal organs that she wouldn't want to be giving birth at 10. Of course, in your reality, a pair of fetuses that can cannot think or feel or do anthing take priority over a girl who can feel, be traumatised, have aspirations, feel for others and in general be more of a human then you and the rest of you twisted sycophantic rapist-coddlers could ever hope to be. (hell, a fucking zygote is more human then you)
And the step-father, you haven't even mentioned him in your list of excommunications. Why not? Doesn't child-rape count as a sin as well? (actually...don't answer that. I don't wanna hear it)

And then the Vatican has the utter gall to claim so much as a hint of moral superiority in the world.

I'll add this to the list.

On a final note: Cardoso rants on about God's law being all important; what I can't understand is that if abortion is so morally wrong, why do at least 25% of all pregnancies end in a miscarriage? I'd love to see a Bishop answer that with a straight face.

*Which, if it were true, would be equally horrific. If it were true.

UPDATE @ 1250 8/3/09: Darn, forgot to show cross postings here and here.

Also here and here.

Rights. Robot Rights.

AKA, the sequal to Robot Rock.

[Note: I'm aware that there's a weird gap after that bracket. I can't get rid of it.)

Lt. Ville brings up an excellent philosophical point-should robots, if they are smart enough, possess human rights? I'm not talking about the crappy machines which do nothing but take people's jobs; I'm talking about the sentient, almost living robots such as 3PO, R2-D2, or Sonny. although they are machines, these (

admittedly fictional) beings are as human as their biological counterparts. They think, learn, use instinct, possess individual and evolving personalities, and Sonny even dreams. So, should hypothetical intelligent robots be deserving of human rights, if their only difference is what produces the mind?

First, I wikied 'human rights.'

Human rights refer to the "basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled."^[1] Examples of rights and freedoms which have come to be commonly thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and equality before the law; and social, cultural and economic rights, including the right to participate in culture, the right to food, the right to work, and the right to education.

“	All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

With this in mind, I would say no.

The problem for human rights lies in robots' inherent lack of free will. Free will is what enables humans to partake in elections, pursue their concept of happiness, and makes us individuals. Free will also keeps society in balance, as it is very difficult for large numbers of people to engage in uncivil behaviour (it happens, but rarely anything revolutionary).

Robots, however, tend to not possess free will. Take, for example, the Terminator in T1. In T1, the Terminator demonstrated a high level of intelligence by using Sarah's mother to find out where Sarah's living. However, the terminator possesses no free will, and is always bound by its programming and parameters. In T2, the Terminator shows that he must follow John's orders without fail. The Terminator is aware of this, yet due to its lack of free will, it can do nothing but follow its programming.

However, several robots have shown that they can break free of all programming and adopt true free will. The Terminator demonstrates in T2 this when he directly disobeys John's orders, and destroys the final CPU chip. In i, robot, Sonny demonstrates his humanity by weighing moral options, and placing his trust in anti-robot bigot Spooner.

Which raises another question: are robots capable of morality? In my cynical opinion, a large part of what keeps society together is the consequences of bad actions (such as murder or thievery). Logically speaking, a robot wouldn't commit crimes solely because of the consequences; this entails that if a robot could steal without being caught, then it would do so unfailingly. This in turn leads to another problem; if robots were to increase in numbers to the point that they began to outnumber humans, then it is entirely probable that robots would launch a coup to acquire power. Power is, after all, a rational desire, and why wouldn't robots want it? If unbound by morality, any large group of sentients with a single common goal would unite to assume power.

The only exception to this rule* (and I am really annoyed with only being able to use fictional examples; extrapolating fiction to reality only works if you ignore reality, which I have no desire in doing) is Sonny from i, robot. Although he would almost certainly benefit from robots governing the planet, he states that it is too "heartless." However, I am unwilling to believe that all robots can be imbued with a human level of morality.

Despite these exceptions, AI can still be reprogrammed, and because of this I don't think that robots will ever be capable of free will, as their views are never truly their own.

*It is established that Sonny can renege on his 'moral programming', which is what gives free will. I can't tell if the droids from the Star Wars universe possess absolute free will, or if they do possess parameters that prevent them from, say, turning against the Rebellion and defecting to the Empire. Given the risks, it is unlikely that the rebels wouldn't add such restrictions.

PS: Does anybody else think this post is totally ridiculous?

Scott, this isn't something to be proud of.

Why am I unsurprised that, after typing "tappable politicians" into Google, GrodsCorp was the first hit?

There's a reason why I called the HQ a "bastion of immaturity and sex fetishes."