At the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, the conservative senator Stephen Douglas wielded racist sentiment like a katana. Lincoln was rather ambivalent toward the issue of slavery, only opposing it because of the instability of the slave system. Nevertheless, Douglas capitalized on the prejudices of the American public of the age, and went as far as to say that Lincoln was…
anti-slavery?
150 years ago, abolitionism was a radical fringe movement. In the white-centric society, few stood up for the rights of the slave-drivers’ “property”.
Even 50 years ago, civil rights took center stage. In the conservative former slave-states, previously unquestionable Black codes and Jim Crow laws that dominated the scene for a hundred years were put into question.
Now, of course, we live in a world where racial equality is a basic right guaranteed under the law (unfortunately, not always in practice). The thought of racial discrimination is worrisome for most, and slavery is positively repulsive. Scientific advances, such as the elucidation of inheritance principles, have morphed our society into one where discrimination on the basis of immutable genetic traits is unjust. Race is one of these genetic trates, mental capacity is another, and disease is a third.
Stepping back for a second, we can see that societies tend to become more liberal as time goes on. Discrimination based on race and other genetic factors, once considered part of the natural order, is now more or less gone (or at worst, not publicly displayed).
Today’s main civil rights debate is that of sexual orientation. Homosexuality in ages past was (and in some places, still is) taboo. Homosexuals have historically been discriminated against with society’s most brutal treatments - ostracization, and in some cases, reeducation or execution.
Clearly, the treatment of homosexuals has improved exponentially over the past few decades. However, there is one hurdle remaining to complete equality: marriage.
The trump card for advocates of homosexual rights - and therefore, civil rights - is slowly being revealed, though. Scientists studying the Drosophila fruit fly last year found that they could turn homosexuality on and off by modifying a gene. While the results are only preliminary, they do suggest that homosexuality has a genetic basis. Hopefully, as further research is done into this, it will strike the death blow for anti-gay marriage campaigns. If homosexuality really is genetic (which, judging by these results, it does seem to be), then discrimination of any kind by virtue of sexual orientation will die.
Nevertheless, as time goes on, chances are, all opposition to gay and lesbian rights will phase out, regardless of scientific study. If past history is any indicator, then as history progresses, we will see society slowly progress as well. Harmful tradition and prejudice are always fighting a losing battle against time. Though conservatives might be able to delay the inevitable, the truth - everything that is right and just - will always go marching on.
Stay tuned over the next week for my take on a hilariously misguided campaign: “Protect Marriage”, which aims to ban gay marriage in California.
Watching the presidential debate tonight was both worrisome and relieving for me. I was glad to see many important issues addressed. I wasn’t so keen on how the issues were being handled.
First of all, I was pleased to see that the issue of Pakistan, so often neglected in presidential campaigns, came up. Pakistan-US relations are a good example of the doublespeak that has often plagued US foreign policy. For instance, Pakistan, for most of its history, has not been a democracy. The country is extremely unstable, with democratic periods lasting for only brief spasms in the turbulent history of the nation. In fact, even the Pakistani incumbent has a history of corruption. Yet despite the abuses in Pakistan, the U.S. has displayed (mostly) unflagging affection for the country. Even after this Thursday’s US-Pakistan skirmish, Condoleeza Rice said that the US would still support Pakistan as a key ally in the global war on terror. This seems very dubious to me. As demonstrated by last week’s massive bomb blast at the Marriott in Islamabad, Pakistan definitely does not have the ability to maintain security–even in its own capital city! As a result, it is hard to believe that Pakistan would be able to effectively secure the somewhat lawless outer regions of the country. And of course, it’s pretty hard to reconcile their seemingly good relations with their skirmish earlier this week.
McCain pledged to continue the current policy toward Pakistan, which I don’t believe is at all a good one. Terrorism in the area is caused by a deep hatred of all things Western - a belief that is aggravated by Western military activity. The military often kills civilians (even if by accident), and that gives people a reason to hate their families’ killers. This effect is almost certainly responsible for the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan. In any case, the only way to seal the wound is to remove the salt. By removing US military presence from the area, extremists will have a harder time finding people that hate the US enough to die for their hatred. As a result, continuing military aid is a terrible idea for the sake of the security of America.
The two candidates sparred a lot on the economy, but I didn’t see any progress being made there, with both candidates basically repeating their own arguments. Obama did make a good point that we should learn from the mistakes of the current financial failure to help prevent future ones, and did discuss how McCain’s economic policies were plagued with at least a certain degree of doublespeak. But despite his eloquent delivery, it appeared that the economic debate was more or less in a deadlock.
I think the most interesting aspect of the debate was the Iraq War. Here McCain brought up one of the central points of his campaign - that McCain is a more experienced senator. McCain cited multiple times 2007’s troop surge, which reduced insurgent activity in the turbulent country. Nevertheless, I believe that using the troop surge as an example didn’t give too much legitimate credibility to McCain’s stance. As Obama pointed out, McCain seemed to avoid mentioning the first three years of the war, which, by all standards, turned out to be a complete mess. McCain made quite a mistake by using the Iraq War as an empirical example of his good judgment, because now we know that the benefits of the war for the US people have been questionable at best. The Iraqi civilian deaths notwithstanding (though they number in the hundreds of thousands), the American and coalition casualties are soon to exceed those from the 9/11 attacks. Fewer and fewer Americans support the Iraq war, and thus continuing to support the war is a risky maneuver.
As for the outcome of the debate: it’s very difficult to judge which side won, if any. From a logical standpoint, Obama might have won the debate thanks to his sheer number of arguments. But McCain’s experience was memorable because McCain kept repeating that point. Though Obama logically might have won, his victory is nevertheless hollow because he wasn’t memorable enough - so he didn’t gain any traction. The debate didn’t have any turning points, and it probably won’t change any opinions about the two candidates. But the debate spoke volumes about the course of this country over the next four years.
Sorry for my extremely long hiatus. I hope to update this blog with more frequency over the coming months.
Australia is famous for a supposedly idyllic lifestyle, “mateship”, an opera house, funny accents, and kangaroos.
The country is also going through the worst drought in its recorded history.
Since 2003, the country has been completely parched. Rainfall has been at a record low—the last time Australia received so little rain was 108 years ago, during another infamous drought. This time, the drought is aggravated by some of the highest temperatures on record. Most of the affected territories have effected water-conservation laws, but it may have come too late. Australia’s industries have already been severely and adversely affected—their cotton industry especially harshly. Compounded with a 37% slash in water usage, Australia’s cotton industry has suffered a 66% reduction in production.
The country has changed politically too. Concerns over climate change prompted the public to oust the climate-change denier John Howard (who was incumbent for almost 12 years) and replace him with Kevin Rudd. Only nine days after his election, Rudd’s administration ratified the Kyoto Protocol. Australia’s per capita carbon dioxide emissions are second only to the United States, making this a significant milestone for backers of the Kyoto treaty.
Global warming has a significant impact on drought. As the global climate warms, rainfall patterns change. Most importantly, rainfall is redistributed—wet areas get wetter and dry areas get drier. In essence, rainfall trends get amplified—and the price for us to pay is extreme weather, including drought.
Whatever the cause, the lack of water is having a very palpable impact on world society. Notable examples include Southern Spain, South India, Darfur, and the Middle East.
The Murcia Situation
Water disputes of a different kind have manifested themselves in southeast Spain. The province of Murcia historically has been arid, but poor water management and misuse of resources have served to aggravate the effects of one of the worst droughts on record. Despite the extreme aridity, Murcia has seen the construction of water-hungry swimming pools, golf courses, resorts, and large farms. Agricultural water is largely used to grow crops such as lettuce, which require ample irrigation. Corrupt business practices abound; investors classify vacation resorts as “farms” and golf course grass as “crops” in order to obtain water normally set aside for agriculture. Combined with corrupt political practices, the situation is coming to a breaking point; a black market in water now flourishes, and average water prices are three times higher than usual. While riots have not broken out yet in Murcia, it is reasonable to expect that they will soon. After all, you can’t fool all the people all the time. (Read more about this here).
The Kaveri River Dispute
The Kaveri (sometimes spelled Cauvery) river in South India has been the focus of intense controversy since the early 1990’s. The river’s drainage basin provides most of the water for the states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and the Union Territory of Puducherry (formerly Pondicherry). For much of its history, India has been divided up into petty kingdoms, often constantly at war with each other. As a result, ethnic tensions in India have always been elevated, often sparking violence over competition for limited resources. Unsurprisingly, the sum of each of the water claims of the different states is far over the actual availability of water.
When a tribunal set up to resolve the dispute ruled in favor of Tamil Nadu, riots broke out in Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka. Fearing for their lives, several thousand Tamil families left Karnataka. However, one might write this off as sporadic communal violence. The fact that there are so many ethnic groups in India suggests that there will be a lot of ethnic conflict. Water, being so necessary to our lives, is certainly worth fighting for.
Nevertheless, the violence seen here pales in comparison to another “water war” fought on a different continent: Africa.
Drought and Darfur
Decades of ethnic tension in Darfur reached a breaking point in 1983 and 1984, as rains failed during both years. The resulting drought and famine led to the overthrow of the incumbent president, Gaafar Nimiery.
Whether due to climate change or freak weather, a slew of other climatic problems struck the region in succession over the next two decades. Most importantly, increased desertification made water even more scarce in the already arid region. By 2003, when the current iteration/incarnation of the Darfur genocide began, water was already a precious commodity in the parched land.
While there are many causes of the Darfur genocide, the scarcity of water is certainly an important factor. Just like in the Kaveri River dispute, water served (and still serves) as a trigger to ignite long-standing ethnic tensions.
Looking forward: The Middle East
India and Sudan definitely do have a history of ethnic violence, so water-related tensions serve to ignite the metaphorical pile of kindling. However, even in more democratically-oriented but drought-plagued societies such as Australia, water plays a powerful political role.
It should be safe to expect that the next large-scale water-related conflict will be in the Middle East. The aforementioned empirical examples share a few similarities:
Competition for water—where the demand for water exceeds the supply.
Arid conditions for at least part of the year.
Water mismanagement, or unequal sharing of water resources.
A lack of political, economic, or social unity.
There is one area of the world I have not mentioned so far that meets all these criteria: the Middle East. Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims have been locked in a rather thorny conflict for one and a half thousand years, satisfying criterion 4. The desert conditions ensure that water is a precious, difficult to obtain, and rare resource. Up to now, disputes have mostly been handled diplomatically in the Middle East. However, that may not last very long. Unequal water sharing between Israelis and Palestinians has helped to heighten the already high tensions between the two groups; Israel also controls most of the water resources in its area. Nevertheless, a far more pressing concern plagues the future of the two countries: the supply of water is dwindling. The Jordan River has slowly been drying up, and the supply from aquifers is on the decline, forcing Israel to import water from Turkey in exchange for military technology. Undoubtedly, unless Israelis and Palestinians mutually agree on peace terms soon, the situation could easily spiral out of control.
Even between other Middle Eastern countries, the risk of war is still extant. Much of Iraq’s water, for instance, comes from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Both of these rivers start in Iraq’s neighbor to the north, Turkey. Historically, Iraq and Turkey have not been on excellent terms; just last year, Turkey was beginning an invasion of Iraq before diplomatic pressure stopped the mobilization.
Cooperation is the key
Clearly, the world needs to rethink its policies toward water. It may be slightly optimistic to hope for total cooperation, but that is the best way to avert what could become a very thorny world conflict. Only with equal and fair sharing of water is it possible for the world to not have a water war.
Current manifestations of water disputes have largely been affected by climate change and global warming. The UN projects that in Murcia, precipitation will drop 20% by 2020 as a result of increased temperatures and changing rainfall patterns. Potential water conflicts will also need to be dealt with on the global warming front. By minimizing the effects of global warming, it will also mitigate the consequences of droughts.
While there are enormous barriers to creating a global water-sharing plan, fair and equal sharing plans can certainly be achieved on a local scale.
We remind you that the views expressed in this editorial are not necessarily indicative of the views of the editorial board of the Bourgeois Buffoon. Please see our disclaimer for further details.
When the communists in Vietnam took over, there was widespread opposition and a pro-democracy movement. In defense of their own government, the government of Vietnam resorted to “reeducation” camps and arrests on a huge magnitude. The same thing happened in North Korea, and Iran, among many other countries.
That itself is terrible. No one should be tortured, murdered, or even arrested for their belief system. This was the backbone of the American constitution and has secured our rights here for many years.
Sadly, this is not the case for the four students who were killed on May 4th, 1970 in Kent State University. Along with thousands of others, a semi-violent protest against the Vietnam War took place on that date, with angry students throwing rocks and other projectiles at national guardsmen. Consequently, in massive retaliatory disparity, the guards fired upon them, killing four.
Even today, in Guantanamo Bay, alleged “terrorists” are being held without habeas corpus or many rights that we Americans enjoy today. Many of the prisoners face forced sleep deprivation and cold cells, among others. These “terrorists” too have lost a conflict. Perhaps they fought for ending the occupation of Iraq. Perhaps they are completely innocent. If this continues, we shall never know.
More candidly, let’s look at the case of Mordechai Vanunu. He was a nuclear technician working for the Israeli government during the 70s and 80s. In a moral dilemma over the Osiraq incident and Israel’s own budding nuclear program, he alerted the British press with information about Israel’s program. Catching wind of this, the Mossad (Israel’s intelligence agency) convinced Vanunu to go to Italy for a vacation (with an attractive Mossad agent), where he was kidnapped, smuggled aboard a freighter, and taken back to Israel. The Mossad did this in Italy to avoid the diplomatic fallout that would harm ties between the UK and Israel if the kidnapping had taken place in the UK. In Israel, he was placed under eleven years of solitary confinement and a decade more of imprisonment.
The United States never protested this, because it was a winning situation for the nation. If Vanunu had truly been successful, Israel would be forced to formally admit that it had unauthorized WMDs, thus making it impossible for the US to send aid there. Given that the US is sending 30 billion dollars in military aid to Israel over the next decade, it would be a big blow for Israel and the US if Vanunu had “won” the conflict. The US would no longer have a powerful ally in the middle east, and Israel would no longer have the aid so essential to its survival.
Once again, I’m not lambasting the people of Israel, or any other country for that matter. I’m criticizing bad government decisions made, and how it rather starkly contrasts with the reality of the situation.
Just about a year ago, the Baltic state of Estonia went offline. Botnets, immense networks of hijacked computers, poured billions of hits onto Estonian government and commercial websites, and the Estonian servers, attempting to shoulder many times their normal load, gave up. Tensions were elevated-Estonians blamed the Russian government, who naturally denied involvement. For nearly three weeks, this siege continued. Eventually, the architect of Web War One was traced down to a Russian student living in Estonia’s capital, Tallinn (though any others involved, if any, are still at large).
Estonia is quite a vulnerable country to cyber-attacks. Besides being a reasonably small country, but just like other leading high-tech countries, it banks heavily on its computers to keep databases and necessary records stored. Other countries on that list of high-tech leaders include France, Germany, the U.K., and of course, the U.S.
After 9/11, the U.S. has become increasingly paranoid about safety—what with the border fence in the Southwest and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Accordingly (as of May 2008), the U.S. has not suffered from any major terrorist attack.
To say that, though, is perhaps slightly outdated. Just as the Internet has evolved, security systems have evolved. Terrorism, on the other hand, has evolved too—only faster. Flesh-and-blood terrorism is getting phased out of developed countries as security systems improve. The stringency of an American airport’s security screening has to be witnessed to be believed—and despite the greatly increased inconvenience, this strategy seems to be working. Terrorist incidents since 9/11 have mostly occurred in the Wild West of the Middle East: mostly in Lebanon, Israel, and Iraq. There have been a few scattered incidents elsewhere, but they have been relatively infrequent and not at all crippling: bombings in Madrid and the Red Square caused minor panic but had little long-term effects. Terrorist attacks in India are side- and after-effects of Partition-era Hindu-Muslim tension. As far as flesh-and-blood terrorism—Terrorism 1.0—goes, the last crippling attack was 9/11, and the United States admirably recovered from that tragedy.
The attack on Estonia was somewhat crude—more of a coordinated mail-bomb attack than a nuke, one might say. It used a technique called DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service, in which sites are flooded with traffic. Usually, the servers cannot cope, and the site and its associated services go down. DDoS attacks have been used for years, and server administrators have learned how to thwart these barbarians at the moat. As a result, Estonia could eventually selectively block the offending IP addresses.
Despite that fact, the Estonian attack is quite alarming—it was perpetrated by only one person (that has been caught so far). The fact that one person can cause such a significant degree of harm makes that one person incredibly powerful. And whose army, one might ask? The largest botnet in the world is estimated to have over 350,000 zombie computers. At this moment, they might be used simply to sent a few billion spam messages per day, but, as the Estonian attack shows, the potential for truly malicious use is incredibly palpable. A rogue nation has enormous power in computing.
Even some of our most solid sites are vulnerable. Did you think that YouTube could go down? No one really did. It services hundreds of millions of videos per day—terabytes upon terabytes of data. Surely, it had the capacity to deal with intense traffic spikes? Not quite so. When Pakistan blocked access to YouTube earlier this year, a mistake on the part of an ISP technician caused intense traffic spikes that shut down YouTube. Thanks to quick negotiation, though, the service came online within an hour.
Would the same happen if a malicious country hijacked a U.S. site? Botnets are located largely in the U.S., comprised of unsuspecting home users, thus eliminating the possibility of simply blocking external access to U.S. websites. An Estonian-style hunt for IP addresses would need to ensue, wasting days or even weeks of productivity—and crippling the U.S. economy. The U.S. can be likened to a porcupine, with tough outer defense. Attacking from the Internet would send a barb through the soft underbelly of the animal. A malicious nation, or a terrorist organization with a large Internet presence, could easily take down the world’s most powerful country.
The U.S. is certainly at a precarious position today on the Internet. Our borders are comparatively secure, but the wires are not. Terrorism 1.0 is inconvenient for terrorists—getting past the gauntlet of security checks, the Coast Guard, and/or the Border Patrol is difficult and risky. The Internet is a medium without these checks, and a strike there would strike closer to home than any incident in memory.
ADDENDUM: added July 4, 2008
It appears like history is repeating itself. Just a few days ago, the neighboring state of Lithuania suffered an attack of a different sort. After announcing a ban on the display of Soviet symbols, hackers defaced Lithuanian web sites with anti-Lithuanian slogans and Soviet imagery.
Fortunately for Lithuania, intelligence forewarned them of the impending attack, and the country managed to curtail a significant ammount of the potential damage. [The New York Times]
The Last Prophet, Medivh, gave a dire warning to King Terenas. It proved to be the costliest mistake Terenas ever made in his troubled reign atop the throne of Lordaeron…
A sundered soul, from sight of night had fled Sargeras‘ hate, that once had flowed so keen;
as once, the whole, by Titan’s might, possessed.
Aware of late, the sun now grows within
Prognostication’s evil, trumpet marked
the rage of old; he knew the warning keen,
and sought to save the free realms from the dark
He flew to ancient castled realm of men;
The palace sides, commanding fortress walls,
There through the painted tacit helm and hence
the falas tides, in spanning courtly halls
He came with might in thunder’s staggered force
with flying plumes in blizzard nether storm.
The flame of lightning’s yonder jagged course
the cry in runic wizard’s feathered form. Continue reading »
This is a Shakespearean sonnet (14 line-structure, 3 quatrains and a couplet, alternate lines rhyme, and iambic pentameter) written in memory of my best friend, the Weighted Companion Cube from Portal .
It helped me through the chamber seventeen
before I killed it—what a dreadful act!
The greatest buddy I have ever seen
My heart is sad: a piece it did subtract.
Some hearts was painted on its cubic flanks
The color rose and white and black and gray
The blocky corners featureless and blank.
I set a record–burned without delay.
The voice of GLaDOS overrode my mind
And fratricide it ordered me to do
My conscience slowly, surely, was maligned
My moral judgment quietly subdued.
Forev’r shall live the story of the cube
My only friend who burned up in the tube*.
*I’m referring to the Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator.
Obviously, this would make sense to you only if you’ve played the game Portal. If you haven’t, well, play it! It’s definitely one of the better games released in the past few years and definitely the most creative. First-person puzzlers are awesome!
On the other hand, if you are short on funds, try Narbacular Drop, the spiritual precursor to Portal.
Computers are one of the greatest inventions of humanity, designed by some of humanity’s most brilliant people. With all due respect, though, their brainchildren, while enormously useful, have been subjected to some serious pain due to developers’ negligence. Here are a few examples from my personal experience.
Canon’s ZoomBrowser software for its digital cameras is truly terrible, and with other, superior tools such as Picasa, it’s also a tad bit redundant. Maybe the developers knew that when crafting the software…
Aaah, the heady old days of Firefox 1.0. This is a minor glitch fixed in 1.5, but it still retains its humor. Considering the amount of number-crunching going on in the browser, I’m surprised they didn’t catch this before, while the otherwise excellent browser was still in beta.
One of Windows Vista’s improved (or worsened) features is that it is more of a granny OS than anything since the days of Microsoft Bob. For instance, now the OS is kind enough to let you know that it is crashing*.
I like myself a lot, thank you very much! A rather bizarre glitch on the Facebook app Honesty Box.
Once, while browsing on Answers.com, I came upon this gem. Be careful, guys, when writing your code. Remember all the cases! And while on the subject of ads:
(Click on the image to enlarge). A rather odd juxtaposition, don’t you think? Lending Tree & mortgage fraud…
The future of software is in good hands!
* Before I get my house stormed by Microsoft zombies… explorer.exe was crashing in this case, not the entire OS.
**I’m not affiliated with any of the companies/products mentioned above. I took these screenies too =).
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.”
… said Salvador Dali, though this applies to me, too.
No, I’m not exactly bourgeois, and no, I’m not (at least, I hope I’m not!) a buffoon. And just like any madman will tell you, I’m not mad. And don’t get me wrong, I’m NOT communist!
This is about the thoughtless tangents of a thoughtful mind: musings, poetry, and yes, madness. Naturally, that last point is open to interpretation. Call it what you must; madness is perceived, and it’s also relative.
Enjoy the blog, and please don’t leave your trash behind.
Whether due to climate change or freak weather, a slew of other climatic problems struck the region in succession over the next two decades. Most importantly, increased desertification made water even more scarce in the already arid region. By 2003, when the current iteration/incarnation of the Darfur genocide began, water was already a precious commodity in the parched land.
Estonia is quite a vulnerable country to cyber-attacks. Besides being a reasonably small country, but just like other leading high-tech countries, it banks heavily on its computers to keep databases and necessary records stored. Other countries on that list of high-tech leaders include France, Germany, the U.K., and of course, the U.S.
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