North Korea, Chill the fuck Out

So everyone has heard of North Korea's rampant warmongering as a result of their insecurity about the size of their penis nuclear weapons. They've been throwing around threats and generally trying to scare the shit out of everyone. For some people, it's worked, a lot of people are paranoid about getting hit by a nuke. A lot of people, however, aren't very worried.

Let's start here. Let's take a look at the culture the North Korea has right now. There isn't all too much information about the aptly named "Hermit Kingdom", but there have been a few brave souls that have ventured inside and escaped with a glance of what it looks like to be on the inside. The biggest thing is also the scariest; the indoctrination. North Koreans are brainwashed from birth to worship their "great leaders" Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un. And when I say worship, I mean literally worship. They hold their leaders in great esteem with a cult-like fanaticism, from how you're supposed to address them, to how you're supposed to take a picture of them. In a style not dissimilar to 1984, everyone feels watched, and no one knows if anyone around them is legitimately loyal to their leader, or just too scared to dissent in any way, shape or form.

The level of education and technology is far behind any of the countries North Korea is threatening to attack. It looks like they're pretty much stuck in the early 80's. There are barely any cars on the road, computers look like this, and warehouses full of modern medical equipment that other countries have donated but none of the North Korean doctors know how to use. A few years ago there was a documentary about a humanitarian doctor that came to North Korea to cure patients suffering from cataracts. Most of them had progressed so badly, that they were completely blind, and when they could finally see, instead of thanking the doctor, all the credit went to their "great leader".

In the same documentary, they interviewed a family and asked them "Can the great leader do anything wrong?" The family just stared back, as if they didn't understand. When they tried to take a picture of Kim Jong Il's statue, the camera man laid down in front of it to get a better angle, and the North Korean "tour guides" went ripshit.

The original idea behind to politics of North Korea was the idea that if they remained completely united and loyal, they could conquer any country, no matter their size, education, training or technology. At least the military branch of North Korean truly believes this, and they're crazy enough to try and follow through with it.

The worst part of this is, Kim Jong Un himself was raised and indoctrinated in this very culture, and he's the one with his finger on the trigger. The threat of a nuclear attack on another country from North Korea is very real. Kim Jong Un seriously believes he can take on the rest of the world and win, and there's only a few ways that a war like that will end. All of them end very quickly.

As soon as North Korea launches a nuclear missile at anyone, war is going to break out. Even if the missile gets taken down by anti-air defenses, it would be an act of extreme, unwarranted aggression, meaning war. If the attack is on the US, the US goes in and slaps their shit. If the attack is on South Korea, the US goes in and slaps their shit. If the attack is on Europe, most of Europe will go in and slap their shit. If North Korea attacks anyone, they get their shit slapped. There is absolutely no favorable outcome for North Korean, not a realistic one at least.

The only real fear is where the North Koreans strike first, because it's the only strike they're going to have. As soon as its out of the way, everyone has an excuse to invade and slap their shit shitless.

So this is my message to North Korea:
Chill the fuck out. You are trying to play a game where the only winning move is not to play.

More Sketches from my Notebooks

I dunno. Thought it was pretty cool. I think is was during an art class.

Isn't this a pokemon?

Shrooms man...

Steampunk is incredible

I don't even know.

Why the Equality Movement is not like Kony 2012

I've seen a lot of people changing their profiles to the equality symbols in support of gay marriage. I have also seen a lot of opposition to this trend (The trend of equality symbols itself, not the actual gay marriage issue). Today I'm going to give my two cents on these kind of trends.

Lets wind the clocks back a year. Lets wind them back to the Kony 2012 movement. This is a prime example of a completely useless trend that got absolutely nothing done. This is what happened. In 2003, the Invisible Children foundation was formed. Almost a decade later, they release a half-hour video about what happened in Uganda in 2003. A bunch of people saw the video and jumped on the bandwagon. Instead of doing something that would actually helped, people just joined Facebook groups and changed their profile pictures instead of doing something that might actually help, like donating money or joining the Invisible Children foundation and become active members. Nope, people just changed their profile pictures and pretended it did something.

This same thing happened with a movement aimed at ending child abuse. Instead of donating, joining a police force or volunteering at a foundation, people just changed their profile pictures and considered themselves moral human beings.

The same thing is happening with the DOMA and Proposition 8 issues. People are changing their profile pictures and thinking that it does something. Useless right?

Wrong.

The difference between those failed movements is this. With Kony 2012, and the Anti-Child Abuse movement, the solutions are things that require actual involvement and actual work. The Equality movement is different, because there is no foundation to donate to, no places to volunteer at. (EDIT: This point is moot, but sending a message affects this movement far more than movements such as Kony 2012 or the aforementioned anti-child abuse movement.) The only thing that anyone can do is send a message. There are multiple ways of sending a message. There's the conventional writing a letter to a Supreme Court Justice (yes, they actually read the letters), there's marching in front of the Supreme Court waving signs, and in this day and age, there is Internet activism. If enough people take up the cause and change their profile pictures, it would definitely get media converge. Media that would reach the eyes of Supreme Court Justices.

Some people argue that Supreme Court Justices don't care about public opinion. This is simply not true. Yes, they never go up for reelection, but that doesn't mean they don't care about what people think. When the Supreme Court Justices make a decision, they have to completely understand the implications of the decision they make. As some of the greatest legal minds of the generation, they realize that, unless they have some sort of input, they can't fully encompass all of the viewpoints and facets of the issue. That's why people write letters, asking them to consider their point of view.

In theory, the Supreme Court Justices are purely there to decide whether or not laws, propositions, bills, ect, are constitutional or not, and whether or not they conflict with previous laws, bills, ect. In a perfect system, the Supreme Court Justices would be unanimous in their decisions, but the problem is that people are people. They have biases, opinions and values they uphold that may differ from their peers. The constitution and civil rights are up for interpretation. A liberal interpretation would consider marriage between people of the same sex a civil right, and put that above the states' rights to define a family. A conservative interpretation would do just the opposite, putting the states' rights above individuals' rights.

Two sides of the coin, two different interpretations of the law, both arguably constitutional. It all comes down to which opinion, liberal or conservative prevails. The Equality movement is showing support for the liberal ideas, and there are anti-gay marriage movements showing support for the conservative view.

Besides, trying to convince the Supreme Court Justices is not the only goal of the movement. The movement is also showing support for all the gay couples in the country during this stressful time for them, their marriage hanging in the balance. Seeing a huge group of people very clearly and simply showing their support is bound to be a huge comfort, encouraging them to fight for the things they believe in. Encouraging them to fight for equal rights. Encouraging them to fight for their ideals.

Encouraging them to fight for love.

Manifest Desitiny

The reason I dislike the US really boils down to those two words.

Manifest Destiny.

For those of you who don't know, (American) manifest destiny was the idea around the time of Louis and Clark that the United States created its own destiny to take over the entire continent. The only reason this idea existed was because the US wanted to justify their greed. It was the idea that the white man was the only civilized thing in the world, that industrialization and assimilation were the only way to go and that Native Americans were all dirty brutes no one cares about.

Today people use Manifest Destiny to try and justify the century and a half long decimation and genocide of the Native American people.

Yes, genocide.
Because of the United States and their rampant greed and petty superiority, over 95% of the Native American people were killed. That means that less than 5% of the earth-loving, respectful, peaceful and culturally rich original inhabitants of this land actually have any sort of claim to the land around here. This genocide was not only condoned by the US government, but even sponsored. Here's just a few examples.

-In 1763, American soldiers handed out blankets infected with smallpox at Native American reservations.

-The 1820 Indian Removal Act, also known as the Trail of Tears forced over forty five thousand Native Americans off of land originally reserved for them by the government, and then forced them onto a huge trek comparable to a Nazi death march. Thousands of the evicted men women and children died from overexposure. The lands that were freed up by this act were settled by whites.

-The 1862 Homestead Act essentially gave away Native American land for us to farm and cultivate. The Native Americans were never informed, just forced off the land with muskets and rifles, forced to flee the homes they had inhabited for generations.

-It is believed that the US had a policy of exterminating buffalo in the guise of hunting to kill off the source of the Native Americans' livelihood. Native Americans revered the buffaloes, they were a central part of their culture. When they killed a buffalo, they used everything, they left nothing behind, because to them, the buffalo was sacred, they depended on the buffalo to survive. In their time, buffaloes literally coated the great American plains. Columbus described the plains "black, and ... as if in motion", from the sheer number of buffalo that inhabited the area. We don't see that today because of over-hunting back in the 18th and 19th centuries. We killed the buffalo, and the Native Americans starved.

Nothing justifies genocide. Don't give me that chickenshit "Manifest Destiny" or "Social Darwinism". Here were a people that respected the earth, they nurtured it, grew corn, worked with it, had a thriving and beautiful culture, and the US decided they would have none of that, and now we have pollution, global warming, all these problems with the ecosystem.

A Native American man was asked by a newspaper, "Where did the white man go wrong?" He replied "White man find land, Indians running it, no taxes, no debt, plenty buffalo, plenty beaver, clean water, women did all the work, medicine man free, Indian man spend all day hunting and fishing; all night having sex. Only white man dumb enough to think he could improve system like that."

Fuck You Peter Singer

Today I came across an old article from the New York Times dated September 5th, 1999. It was called The Singer Solution to World Poverty. At first it seems it's for a good cause, but it quickly turns into a bigoted, insulting, hypocritical and narrow-minded rant on how everyone is a terrible fucking monster for not donating every penny they've ever made to charity. His entire premise is the idea that every penny you make that doesn't go towards necessities for life should go to charity. He makes several arguments trying to guilt his readers into donating to charities. He uses tactics like false dilemmas and incredibly implausible and unrelated arguments like choosing between a child a sports car or having children's organs harvested for a TV.

Let's start here. Say we do what Peter Singer proposes. We donate all the money we make that we would otherwise spend on luxuries. Well, that felt good, look my neighbors are doing it too, looks like the whole nation just donated all of their luxury money to UNICEF  How great! Now we can rest in peace knowing we did the right thing. I'm kind of hungry, let's go to the bank to take out some necessity money for food. Oh shit, the bank is closed. Oh shit, all the banks are closed. Oh shit, the entire fucking economy is absolutely demolished because nobody spends anything other than the bare necessities. Now everyone's still in poverty,  UNICEF can't buy any more medicine or food because the dollar has collapsed and there's no one left in the US that makes medicine anymore, because the entire economy is gone.

Nobody wins, everybody lives in poverty, the world is set back decades in terms of technology and development because of some dumbfuck that thought this would actually work.

People have the right to buy what they want, they have the right to choose how they spend their hard-earned money (notice I said "hard-earned". Fuck mega-corporation CEOs). You can't force people to give away everything they don't spend on necessities on charities. If you do, you end up with a situation not dissimilar to the Soviet Union, where you're expected to work hard for no real, tangible gratification, you're just a cog in society.

We need to buy luxuries to keep the economy running. The economy isn't just this big machine that manufactures money, it's a series of tubes that circulates money. It's the entire cardiovascular system the the nation. If you start taking too much money out of the system, the system starts to die. We can take out a little, like donating blood, before allowing the money to replenish a bit and balance out from the other world economies.

Besides, just donating money is just treating the symptom instead of the problem. It's like giving blood transfusions to someone with a massive wound that won't stop bleeding. If we're going to fix third world countries, it has to be by establishing a powerful foundation for a successful society by building infrastructure like schools, hospitals and farms instead of just buying the things they produce. They need to be able to prosper autonomously before any real progress out of the third and second world can be made. Everyone knows the old saying, "Catch a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime." They need some sort of industry that brings in a substantial amount of money into their country, something solid and constant. Turns out there already are a lot of these things in third world countries, minus the solid income. Mega corporations like Nike or Apple that take advantage of third world labor laws and child labor. The infrastructure is there, it's just that these greedy assholes don't pay the workers enough. They're mega corporations, they have the money to do this, but they don't because of greed. If they were to pay third world workers even half of the US minimum wage, things there would start to improve because they would have money to spend. Money to spend on school, food, housing, and luxuries. They would have money to store in banks and to spend on whatever they wanted. They would have enough money for an economy, and therefore, progress.

So let's create economies instead of destroying them Peter Singer. Or maybe we should kill some disabled babies instead. Babies that could end up being geniuses like Rain Man or write books like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. The issue of abortion is a woman's control over her own body. Once the baby is born, it's no longer an issue with her body, now it's the baby's body. You are literally killing innocence that could become something great, no longer because the mother doesn't want to go through the extremely painful and stressful process of having a child, but because it's disabled. Here you are talking about "Let's save these poor third world country children, it's not their fault they were born into poverty", yet somehow it's the child's fault if they're born disabled. Fucking hypocrite.

When I was discussing this with some friends, it was brought up that the original article could be intentionally bigoted and over-the-top to guilt us into donating. If so, it didn't work. It actually made me not want to donate just to spite this guy who's arrogant enough to think that would work. You see this 200 dollars I could spend on charity? I'm going to buy a new graphics card instead because of your self-righteous and pretentious douchebaggery. I thought you were a "utilitarian" Singer, and consequences are the only thing that matters. What about the consequences of intentionally writing a bigoted piece of bullshit and insulting your readers enough that they lose any motivation to "be a good person" in an effort to spite you.

Now I'm not saying you shouldn't donate to charities, I'm saying don't do it because of this dumbass. Do it because it's the right thing to do. The purpose of this post is not to discourage you from donating to charity, but to consider alternate solutions that might be more effective, and to point out what a fucking moron Peter Singer is.

The New York Times opens his article by describing him as:
"A contentious ethicist explains why your taste for foie gras is starving children."

I'm pretty sure they misspelled "pretentious".

Nothing Proper about your Propaganda

Yesterday I got my hands on a piece of christian propaganda. It was just a questionnaire to be filled out in Sunday school, 16 questions, no biggie. These questions, though they were opinion questions, had an obvious "right" answer for all of them. So naturally I filled it out myself.

1) Do you believe in "Absolute truth"?

-Yes as a matter of fact I do.

2) Do you believe that some things are right sometimes and wrong at other times?

-Absolutely. The world is far more complicated than many would like to admit, and there are countless situations that go far beyond a simple black and white, right or wrong choice. For instance the Kholberg Heinz Dilemma, or a Hobson's Choice. There is not always a right or wrong answer.

3) Do you believe that, in some cases, abortion is okay?

-Yes, it is not anyone's choice but the pregnant woman's, and arguably the father's. It is never right to impose the belief of a few on the majority, especially when the few aren't affected at all.

4) Do you believe that you should always tell the truth, no matter what?

-No, lies can be used for good. If everyone told the truth, the Diary of Anne Frank would be a hell of a lot shorter.

5) Do you believe, in some situations, it is okay to live with someone before you're married?

-No, everyone who ever had a college roommate should be burned at the stake. What a stupid question.

6) Do you believe it is okay, in some situations, to talk behind people's backs?

-Disregarding the fact that this is pretty much completely unavoidable, I'd say not unless you can pull off a Tyler Durden.

7) Do you believe it's okay to stretch the truth or life if it means not hurting someone's feelings?

-In some situations, yes.

8) Do you believe it's okay to cheat on your homework?

-You are NOT getting through high school if you don't cheat on your homework at least once.

9) Do you believe that if you are a pretty good person and you don't do anything too bad, that you will go to heaven when you die?

-This was one thing that always bothered me about the Christian faith. Under their dogma, a good, moral person who did everything they could to better society and help those around them would still go to hell if he happened to be an atheist. Personally, I try to live by a quote from Marcus Aurelius.

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."

10) Do you think that it is okay to get revenge on someone?
-Not necessarily revenge, but retribution, yes. A righteous fury is a force that can drive people to do great good, like in the case of Gandhi  or great evil, as in the recent case of Christopher Dorner. Retribution, or revenge  if you will, is not good or bad, it is a neutral force.

11) Do you think that, in some situations, smoking is okay?
-Personally I don't smoke, but I'm pretty sure someone out there could come up with a really damn good excuse to smoke.

12) Do you think in some situations stealing is okay?
-See question 2

13) Do you think that other religions other than Christianity are true and useful?
-I have never found a real reason Christianity is any more valid than Islam or Hinduism. From an objective, unbiased standpoint, it's easy to observe that most religions actually just say the exact same thing in different ways. They might have different story lines and minor discrepancies in terms of what you can eat or wear, but the core message of nearly every religion is "Be a good person". They all have their populations of extremists, but for the most part, religions generate healthy, social, functioning members of society. From an objective standpoint, it honestly doesn't matter what religion you follow, because in the end, if you do it right, it all amounts to the same thing.

14) Do you think it is okay to watch MTV?
-Only if you're okay with having terrible taste in television.

15) Do you think it is okay to listen to secular music?
-Why the hell not? Unless you're trying to brainwash people or something. Oh wait...

16) Do you think it is okay to have a lot of stuff and not share with the rest of the world?
-This is the reason I am a socialist. Funny how most stereotypical republicans are christian right?

You Cannot Corner the Dorner

Today I am going to defend a man who killed four people and left three others wounded.

Today I am going to defend a man was who the subject of one of the largest manhunts conducted by the LAPD.

Today I am going to defend a man many people already hate

Today I am going to defend Christopher Dorner.

First, let me get this out. I do not condone Dorner's killings, they were horrendous and brutal. What I am opposing is the media's and police representation of a man who felt he was forced into his actions. I am opposing the brutality, corruption, and the alleged "blue line" within the LAPD force, I am supporting what Christopher Dorner felt he stood for, the righteous vengeance of everyone at the mercy of the bias of a corrupt officer.

I do not endorse or condone Chris Dorner's actions. But he is a grizzly reminder of what corruption can do to a good man, how anger can manifest itself when not controlled.

The LAPD was extremely overzealous trying to track down this man. It's understandable why they would be angry. Chris Dorner exposed their fraternity, and along with it the corruption it entailed. They did everything they could to demonize and slander Dorner's image, so much so that it backfired. They were a little too eager to get this guy. They shot up two cars trying to find him, and shot two innocent people. Why? Because the cars they drove looked kind of like the one they were looking for.

Is this the state of our law enforcement today? Is it sad that I would rather be locked in a room with Chris Dorner than one of these LAPD officers? What kind of an idiot would shoot at a car that might have the guy they're looking for? Was there no way to make sure? Was in impossible to, oh I don't know, look through the damn window before going guns a'blazing at those poor people.

As it turns out, the victims were women. I guess maybe if they were on the hefty side, it might be kind of reasonable that you could mistake them for a 270 pound black man (no offense to the victims, I wish them a speedy recovery and lots of money in the impending lawsuits). No, as it turns out, the police are just that stupid, because the car wasn't even the same color, and didn't have the right licence plate. There was absolutely NO reason to just start shooting. Hell, they didn't even give any warnings before they unloaded their clips. Just "Hey lets shoot up the car, who cares if it might not be the right guy, it'll be fun!".

I understand that he's an armed ex-cop, but there's one of him, you could have called in backup, had them surrounded and made damn sure it was him before you started shooting. At that point, you shouldn't have to shoot, because if it was him, you'd have him in the open, with very little cover, completely surrounded. You'd be able to take him alive.

Nope says the LAPD. We just shoot people. 'Murrica!

At first I might have doubted Dorner's motivations, but after seeing the absolute stupidity of the police force in this fiasco, I have to say, I really see his point.

In the final showdown, they may have had him trapped, surrounded hopeless, but Christopher Dorner really had a point. We see it in his manifesto, and the actions of the LAPD in the manhunt, his death will not have been in vain. If this is what he had to do to reveal what really goes on in the police force, so be it, now we know. They may have cornered him in a burning cabin and found his charred body, but we the people will make sure,

that you will not corner the Dorner.