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China's Human Flesh Search Engine
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times has an interesting article about Human-flesh search engines — renrou sousuo yinqing — that have become a phenomenon in China: they are a form of online vigilante justice in which Internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their wrath. The goal is to get the targets of a search fired from their jobs, shamed in front of their neighbors, or run out of town. It's crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online — with offline results. 'In the United States, traditional media are still playing the key role in setting the agenda for the public,' says Jin Liwen. 'But in China, you will see that a lot of hot topics, hot news or events actually originate from online discussions.' In one well known case, when a video appeared in China of a woman stomping a cat to death with the sharp point of her high heel, the human flesh search engine tracked the kitten killer's home to the town of Luobei in Heilongjiang Province, in the far northeast, and her name — Wang Jiao — was made public, as were her phone number and her employer. 'Wang Jiao was affected a lot,' says one Luobei resident. 'She left town and went somewhere else.' The kitten-killer case didn't just provide revenge; it helped turn the human-flesh search engine into a national phenomenon. Searches have also been directed against cheating spouses, corrupt government officials, amateur pornography makers, Chinese citizens who are perceived as unpatriotic, journalists who urge a moderate stance on Tibet and rich people who try to game the Chinese system."
and "Anonymous is not your personal army" seems to have held up pretty well against gaming.
... amateur pornography makers, Chinese citizens who are perceived as unpatriotic, journalists who urge a moderate stance on Tibet and rich people who try to game the Chinese system."...
Because we don't want too, thats why.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
but in a US style society which values individual interests over those of society, things could go bad very quickly.
Sounds like mob rule to me.
This is 4Chan made in China.... or dare I say ChinChan...
Also known as Mature Bullying
any in flesh searches that is not approved by the government would be as successful as the one to hunt down the moderate Tibet journalist.
At least over here the internet mob justice is willing to affirm that it's not anyone's personal army.
...of the find-a-person sites common on the US Internet around 10 years ago. They were frequently promoted with banner ads and I tried one of their free trials once to find an astonishing amount of info on someone close to me (address, car and mortgage info).
I wonder if we have any here that connect an online ID with a person's name?
While the public might be a good detective, it certainly is a bad judge. Given the current technology (need I say photoshop?) a picture or a video can be faked by e.g. a malicious stalker who is after destroying a persons reputation. Posting the results of such a witch hunt without the accused having the possibility to respond to the accusation and defend hirself violates a basic human right.
sounds pretty anti-authoritarian-mob justice to me...
totalitarian states usually want the monopoly on exacting punishments.
We've been doing this in the USA (and Europe) for at least a decade now. Almost every time a video of animal abuse appears online, people track down the person, contact their employer, drive by their house, threaten and abuse...
What about this story makes it unique about China and not just pointing and saying "look at those silly yellow fascists"?
Searches have also been directed against amateur pornography makers
This thing should be banned immediately
It looks to me like modern mass gathering. We all know what a charismatic leader and with a few pugilistic punch lines can do to the mass mob. You are innocent until proven guilty and this is a one sided witch hunt and strongly against peoples right to privacy. It is a good thing in some cases, but bad in most.
Great - the Cultural Revolution 2.0 - along with vigilantism, denouncements & public humiliation. Awesome, just what everyone needed; yay China. Sigh.
reddit
After local newspapers wrote self-described wolf woman severed a lost dog's head, a US-based human flesh search engine posted IM logs, IRC logs, and phone calls with the suspects about the incident along with the suspects' personal information.
Skinner: Oh, there's no justice like angry-mob justice.
Lenny: I'm gonna burn all the historic memorabilia.
Moe: I'm gonna take me home a toilet.
Willy: Well, there'd better be two.
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/4F06.html
There's been similar cases in the Western world too. Not to the same extent, but it has happened. This is our future, where privacy has gone the way of cavemen and dinosaurs.
"She's a witch!!"
...and it's nothing new, even if the tools and techniques are modern.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I've seen the no effective anonymous at work. Then came the chinese botnets, job was done. I gather on social networking and vigilante justice level they are also more effective than US kids sending pizzas and cartboard boxes.
Now instead of crushing people with tanks and being internationally embarrassed
they can use a bunch of sock-puppet bloggers to go out and incite a mob against
anyone they like... sweet!
Well, things are progressing, as age-old human desires and idiosyncracies get adapted and ridden along modern technologies. Really nothing new and yet still astounding.
However, it'll get a lot more interesting, when there's an economic incentive for tracking down people and performing certain....actions: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Assassination_politics
Given the degree to which people are conditioned to respond in Pavlov'ian fashion for gaining a material benefit the old and formerly philosophical question question of 'How much is a human life worth?' may at last be answered...
Nothing new in concept here, although the implementation is updated :-), The Chinese have been using similar systems of group responsibility as far back as the Qin dynasty (200BC or so). Bao Jia is a later (~1000AD) derivation that might be considered related to what's going on here too (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baojia_system)
Is that the lynch mob went after someone killing a kitten. That's new certainly something new and implies that the west's cultural obsessions with animal welfare and cuteness are taking hold.
... The chinese equivalent of 4Chan and anonymous?
Odd that you just happen to leave out the corrupt goverment employees being hunted. Showing that this is a citizens effort, not a government one.
In the west, we the people just let the bankers get away with the hardship they caused. Like in Iceland. Not one of the bankers has been arrested.
No, this has nothing to do with dicatorship. And americans love this idea, it is the basis of the superhero.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm not convinced with this lady stomping on kittens story. Can we test this search engine further with Lord Mandelson's photo?
We've got all these technological advances, all these wonderful new toys, but all we can do is reinvent the frigging lynch mob.
right...
How is this any different from collaborative e-stalking?
This has been done before, at least here in the US. The most recent example I can recall was one woman being accused of "threatening" to murder her ex-boyfriend using mortuary lab equipment (article here), when the sole evidence for this accusation was from a Facebook status update. Additionally, while China has their "BBS"es, we have Facebook, which is essentially human flesh-search made (sort of) easy. This would have catalyzed the manhunt against the husband in the article, since him and his ex-wife would have most likely been Facebook friends, and people could have collected information from using whatever was on his profile (unless he kept quiet on it, something not many people do).
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/06/10/1614227/Online-Vigilantes-Or-Crowdsourced-Justice
I lost my sig.
i know the moronic big brother meme is popular here, but when you are confusing top down control with bottom up vigiliantism, you've truly destroyed all sense of credibility with this completely intellectually bankrupt idea
the 1984 meme has gotten to the point where "something bad happened in society" (--insert creative reasoning--) "therefore, we are becoming orwellian"
folks: orwell wrote a pleasant fiction a long time ago. it was good criticism of totalitarian societies at the time. like: ussr. not democracies (you know, governments accountable to voters?) like the uk or the usa. (also reference "animal farm")
so it made its way into a lot of high school reading curricula as a tool, ostensibly, about the dangers of totalitarian states. but in some amazing turn around, according to some sort of high school stoner logic, mixed with a lot of pink floyd i suppose, it became a critique in people's minds of the democracies they lived in
whu?
1984 bears no relation to reality in modern democracies. repeat: 1984, orwell, big brother bearsa NO RELATION to reality unless you live in an autocracy. please stop confusing science fiction with reality in western societies
if anything, this sort of vigilantism in this story is proof of LITTLE brother: for example, rodney king. that you are "oppressed" by your fellow citizens with cell phone cameras. and in fact, the STATE is hemmed in and hamstrung by citizens with cameras (a la rodney king). how does that fact jive with orwell's fiction?
1984, orwell, big brother: it would all make sense if the state had a monopoly on technological advance. it doesn't. as such, 1984, orwell, big brother: failed, dead meme, useless way of thinking about your world. please get over your fanboy reasoning. your braindead. stop citing orwell and 1984. it is NOT instructive as to the real world you live in unless you are in a GENUINELY authoritarian state. and even then, such as this story, its not even totally the case! just look at iran and twitter too
STOP CITING ORWELL PEOPLE PLEASE. IT FAILS
thanks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
One of the problem with spam laws is that the enforcement of laws is so weak compared to the number of people spammers make miserable and the time and resources they steal--o boo, hoo, they declared bankruptcy and had to serve two years in prison. What really needs to happen to high-profile spammers is that they need to be dragged from the courtroom where they have been found guilty and then dragged to their deaths before cheering, spitting mobs and film crews. Maybe display the corpses in gibbets outside of their ISP's office.
Yes, mobs are terrible, but laws without teeth lacking the ability the cross boarders suck too.
After the March 2008 Tibetan uprising across the three provinces of Chinese-occupied Tibet during which a few Chinese (both uniformed and settlers) were killed and a dozen more died while hiding when Chinese-owned shops were set alight and over two hundred Tibetans were killed by the Chinese army and paramilitary and over two thousand Tibetans simply went missing (dead or kept in horrendous secret prison camps) there were demonstrations across the world featuring mostly freedom-supporting foreign nationals and occasionally angry Chinese Communist Party-organized "fen qing" defending Chinese imperialism and colonialism in Tibet.
During one rare demonstration at the Duke University featuring both sets of campaigners, a young Chinese student Grace Wang, who also had Tibetan and Western friends and who had mastered the art of respectful debate, tried in vain to mediate between the two groups of protesters. Here is a quote from the Washington Post article ("Caught in the Middle, Called a Traitor") on what happened next:
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
... for instance, those who code systems, or supervise the developement, of all the naugthy and dangerous systems for internet control...
what's impressive to me is that even in china, where they pretty much eat anything "everything with 4 legs except the table" they are repulsed by simple cruelty
in other words, animal rights activists: there is a code, understandable by all meat eaters, that eating meat is not cruelty, its simple sustenance. meanwhile, the divide between that understanding, and the simple understanding that needless cruelty to animals is disgusting is stark, clear, and universally understood. common chinese repulsion to that video, the same people famous for eating dogs, civet cats, whatever, they are equally repulsed at that video as your average morrisey listening mopey animal rights activist in the west
animal rights activists: people are repulsed by cruelty, universally and fundamentally, and they understand the difference between the need for sustenance and unnecessary vile behavior. and they genuinely are two different things. sorry: meat is not murder
and frankly, hound that fucking bitch and the cameraman too
if you've seen that video, even the most law and order obsessed amongst us would be grabbing the pitchfork and letting out a throaty cry for some mob vigilante justice on that bitch
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
as religious fundamentalist documents that color your every impression of what happens in your society and are you obsessed with cramming every development in society into the mold of what happens in those stories?
if no, then you completely understand my point, and your sarcasm is off target
because there really are people posting here, and that you meet in real life, who think of orwell as some sort of religious prophet about the coming armageddeon. that every sign and signal and portent of news from real life is merely evidence of the coming state of big brother and 1984 as reality. the same as any other idiotic apocalyptic cult
and don't even get me started on the ayn rand libertarian morons
look, along with l ron hubbard, these 3 writers from the 20th century have become posthumous cult leaders of a sort of pseudoreligious fan boy delusional confusion of reality and fantasy. if you understand why bible thumping christian fundamentalists and quran thumping muslim fundamentalists are retarded and dangerous, then you also understand why those who have to cram in and see every bit of the human condition as a twist on orwell, as the same sort of cretinous fundamentalist thinking
its perfectly normal and useful to use the iliad and the odyssey, or the bible, or the quran, or orwell, or rand, or even l ron hubbard, as useful commentary and insight and stories about humanity. its NOT useful to be so obsessed with one particular tale that it colors your every perception of reality
so if the iliad and the odyssey is the prism from which you view all of human condition, does that make you a homerian fundamentalist? ;-P
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
this is excellent
I have some bankers to lookup; the feathers are ready and the tar's warming nicely... Thanks, The West
it is imperfect
but it is clearly ideologically superior to societies that are not democratic, at least according to me, not you apparently
there are limits on my freedom in a democracy. some are stupid, and i fight them, some limits are natural and i accept them. but i would like to know why these limits are in any way comparable to the limits on someone's freedom living in north korea or cuba
i call them totalitarian societies. you say there are no totalitarian socities. i would like you to tell me how the rulers of cuba, iran, north korea, or china came to power. i would like you to tell me how barack obama or gordon brown came to power. and finally i would like to know according to what amazing logic you equivocate these two (very different) paths to power
xenophobia is an interesting topic. i would like to know what the hell that has to do with totalitarianism in your mind. all societies are xenophobic to some degree or another. and it seems to me, that the more totalitarian a society, the more the xenophobia. you apparently see nothing but the same totalitarianism and xenophobia everywhere
frankly, you're a fucking moron
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
'fess up, who here clicked because it said "flesh search engine" and mentioned naughty Chinese women and their kitties?
Yeah, I knew it.
4Chan is just the English phenomenon of 2chan.
It's a Japanese channel, but lots of Chinese on the front page.
As far as I know, the concept originated in East Asia.
They give an example of a woman who posted a video of animal cruelty in China and how people on the Internet tracked her down and posted her information. In the U.S. a boy posted a video anonymously of him torturing a dog. People on the Internet spread the word and within 24 hours the poster had been identified and was being charged by the local DA. His name and information was also posted on the Internet. So, this isn't unique to China.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
as often as i have
every single story remotely concerning social trends or government policy like this story, some moron has to cite orwell
and look at the top level comment we are posting under: this little brother style of vigiliantism here is obviously the OPPOSITE of what orwell imagined, but the idiot still has to cite orwell AND he gets modded up as insightful
so its obviously not the majority as you say, but this 1984 derivative stupidity does have a lot of resonance nonetheless
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Let's for the moment ignore the question of why someone would stomp a cat to death with high heels, gloss right over the question of why someone would film themselves stomping a cat to death with high heels, and head right into the most salient question:
Why would someone who filmed themselves stomping a cat to death with high heels put the video on the web?
Seriously, WTF is going through these people's heads. What did she think was going to happen? "YouTube.cn Featured Video of the Day!" or something?
Comment of the year
and democracy is obviously not the same as mob rule
and democracy is obviously superior to totalitarianism, autocracy, military juntas, theocracies, monarchies, etc. democracy is not perfect. its simply BETTER than all other alternatives
everyone in the world deserves the rights and freedoms and self-determination of living in a democracy
do you not agree with that?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Does anyone else see this mob-sourcing thing for what it really is? I wouldn't be surprised if it were an unconscious effect of the little 'shadow government' the Chinese have imposed over their net. The Chinese government employs poltico-bots to troll forums enforcing the will of the government, who says that these guys don't have a hand..a heavy hand in spreading the frenzy? Also to clarify, the baojia system is probably not really to blame for this. It's a system that essentially exerts feudal control over a handful of families. In reality it isn't very much different than a community organization, or even a corporation. In the old days they were mostly used to raise local militia against bandits and invaders. They were pretty much the foot soldiers and local garrisons during the many invasions and rebellions between the Ming Dynasty and WWII.
The subtle difference in these two case, is that the Chinese are genuine vigilantes - carrying the punishment themselves.
Whereas, in Dusty's case, the citizen merry helped the police finding the necessary elements, in order to let the police conduct a full investigation and the guilty abuser having a fair trial.
In one case the system is circumvented and could lead to arbitrary abuses - vigilantes attacking people doing things that they just dislike based on their own personal distastes.
In the other case a fair system is working as it should, just receiving help from motivated people.
Crowd sourcing some help for a normally functioning Police and Justice: Ok.
An entirely autonomous vigilantes system which also work as jury, judge and executioner: Not Ok.
Well, of course, TFA's example being China, one could argue that they lack a *non-corrupt* police and a *fair* trial. The State would also have persecuted people merely suspected of doing things as reprehensible as
amateur pornography makers, Chinese citizens who are perceived as unpatriotic, journalists who urge a moderate stance on Tibet and rich people who try to game the Chinese system.
It's basically just crowd-sourcing the State-Approved Though Police (and throwing in a story about animal abuse, just to shed some positive light on the whole activity).
But translate it to western world to get my point :
- I just don't want to be beaten to death by a group of vigilantes composed of a high number of Christian Fundamentalists who thinks that pre-marital sex is one of vilest sins.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It's just more apparent since we can see it online.
...and more searchable.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I've seen several cases of Western-world organized cyber-bullying that were "morally justified" in the eyes of the bullies.
For better or for worse, our newspapers do a good, er, I mean effective job of shaming most public figures that need to adjust their behavior. When they don't, such as small-town public figures who are buddy-buddy with the local papers/Fourth Estate, you see online and offline whisper and not-so-whisper harassment and shaming campaigns. Some are more effective than others.
You also see "name and shame" campaigns when someone or some group's values are different than the 4th estate, such as campaigns to "out" quietly-gay politicians and other public figures in circles where it will matter.
There are also "name and shame" campaigns for people who have offensive-to-someone/some-group views - pro-choice, anti-abortion, pro-recreational-drug-use, anti-recreational-drug-use, too-liberal, too-conservative, etc. There are also similar campaigns for people who have past criminal or ethical lapses, with the idea that anyone who would trust anyone who has a history of __insert_crime_or_ethical_lapse_here__ is either stupid or himself immoral.
You also see it routinely in adolescents, but you can blame much of that on the lack of maturity of the cyber-bully adolescents.
Most of these are small, localized, and don't have much effect. Some are offline, some are online, some are both.
In the case of criminal-history and poor-money-management histories though, these are institutionalized in the form of criminal-background-check, sex-offender, and credit-history databases. You also see people's political leanings made public in voter-registration or primary-election-voting records, which are generally public.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Anyone who still believes in the myth of southern hospitality needs to visit the Topix message board for any town, large or small, in the south.
Sent from my iPhone
"the pediatrician assaulted by confused pedophile hunters"
1) All pediatricians should love children. Those who don't are in the wrong career.
2) if you read the etymology of the word "pedophile" before its commonly accepted definition, it's easy to get confused if you don't have/don't use a brain.
3) Vigilantes typically don't have/don't use their brain.
As valuable as Megan's-law lists can be when they are limited to ex-cons who are still a danger to society (e.g. your "very high risk" sex offenders and equivalent-risk violent-, financial-, DUI-, and other- offenders), a list of very-dangerous-vigilante-predators would be far more useful.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
and cut hypocritical elitist crap like 'mob justice' and so on. this is direct democracy at work : people brought the case into the light, people provided evidence for it, people judged it, people executed the judgment. this is the way democracy was supposed to be.
but instead of this, we have 'representatives of the representatives of the representatives to the power of n' system in politics. you elect someone who has been able to secure enough funds and connections to get into public through privately owned media channels, s/he gives some promises to you on some broad issues. then the person goes on, and creates laws and rules with 200 or so of similar other people who were elected, WITHOUT ASKING anything to public. rarely does any public reaction invoked by people can change the nature of laws.
so basically, there is no democracy. there isnt representative democracy either, because the representative you elect does not represent you in any respect.
in the end, we end up living under rules and laws that are made by a group of elected few, who were elite enough to have necessary private social connections. this is what we call 'establishment'. you cant influence establishment, cant change their mind, cant force them to do anything. they are basically little different than aristocracies of old.
but on the other hand there is that 4chan and this china phenomenon. these ARE people. these are 'the people' which is mentioned in 'we, the people'. you can call out to them, you can plead with them, and you can change their mind. leave that aside, public consciousness is something that constantly evolves, even if noone does do anything to that extent. it WILL get better over time, just as it got better gradually starting from late 1600s until modern age.
instead of ridiculing or despising, you all should be supporting it and trying to find ways to better it, for it is the true form of democracy that is to be. the people, but this time, directly by the people.
Read radical news here
from forums.puppies.org: "93 User(s) are reading this topic (93 Guests and 0 Anonymous Users)".
And it's still early...
Because justifiable indignation is just where it *starts*. Vigilantism always starts out with noble motives, but ends up with witch hunts. The mass molestation witch hunts of the 1980's are a great example. They started out well-intentioned, but quickly devolved into a mass hysteria that destroyed a LOT of lifes (there are innocent people still in prison to this day because of what happened during that time).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This is only as good or bad as the people whose morality is enforced.
Stomping a cat to death with high heels - I'd probably do a lot more than run someone out of town for that... pornography, I'd do nothing whatsoever.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
any other religious evangelist
i'm not interested in your retarded religion of orwell
he was a good writer. he wrote good stories. i especially enjoyed animal farm
i also read the bible. it had some good stories, also a lot of violence. that is the beginning and ending of my intersection of christianity
what i do is i accumulate wisdom from many different sources of enthusiasm and enlightenment in the world. what i don't do is latch onto one particular work or another as the end all be all story of everything
i honestly believe if more people thought this way about their literary heritage, this world would be a far better place. in the world of fundamentalists, the orwellian clan is only a small nagging one, and i am not really worried about it to the extent of say, the christian and muslim fundamentalist assholes. but i am entirely entitled to call people out on their obsession with orwell as intellectually unhealthy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
the usa HAS strong protection for minority rights
and the USA is NOT a democracy, it is a constitutional republic.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
the term democracy is not a technical term, it has a common meaning
the usa is a democracy. it is also a constitutional republic. there is no conflict between those two statements if you understand that words are not technical specifications
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i would like you to appreciate that the term "democracy" is not so narrow as you understand
the usa is a democracy, it is called a democracy by many people in the usa and abroad, both common and influential, since it was founded. for every practical purpose, to call the usa a democracy is perfectly valid, reasonable, appropriate, and correct
at the very best, you are only speaking as some sort of asperger's syndrome sufferer with a mediocre death grip on a completely pointless triviality about technical versus common language
go froth pointlessly over there with the grammar nazis or kindly shut the fuck up
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
No, the USA doesn't have strong protections for minorities, unless you're using the term to describe race or gender. But I'm using it in the more traditional sense. As in, a minority of people like me believe that parents should solely be footing the bill for their own childrens eductation. Democracy allows them to fill out a piece of paper before pointing a gun at me and telling me I have to contribute. Mob role simply eliminates the filling out of the piece of paper. Oh yes, the theft is more civilized I suppose, but its still theft.
Its not "obviously" superior, which is why our founders didn't implement it. Of course we've undone much of that over the last 200 years, which is why we are at this point today.
Everyone deserves rights and freedom and self-determination; democracy takes mob rule and formalizes it so that it seems morally ok for 51 people to push around 49.
"While you believe that your position is justified and other people are "wrong", it's clearly not universal, both have cultures behind them, not some kind of constant government control that forces people to pretend that they disagree with you."
this is the highest form of patronizing idiocy there is
1. that you confuse my opposition to tyrannical governments with the some sort of opposition to the people living under those tyrannical governments. my opinion is in solidarity with people suffering under totalitarian governments. their totalitarian governments are illegitimate, they do not represent the wills of their people. in a democracy, the government is composed of the will of the people. do you understand the fucking basics here?
2. that these tyrannical governments are part of the "culture" of someone else. as if ancient korean or cuban culture supports hardcore communism, which, if you will recall, was imported from extremely traditional cuban and korean places like marx's germany and stalin's russia/ georgia. tyrannical governments do not defend the culture of their lands, do not defend their people. they are illegitimate parasites off of the people, because the people have no voice in the structure which rules them BECAUSE THEY AREN'T DEMOCRACIES. duh
3. there is constant government control of the media in totalitarian societies. are you denying this out of complete ignorance or blind foolish stupidity?
my position is 100% correct: every person on the face of the planet deserves democracy. this is no extension of some sort of western or american imperialism onto others, because what i am asking for is nonwesterners to rule themselves. how is this imperialism? the only thing i am defying is the governments which are not composed of the will of the people they rule over
my words in fact are not western or american, they are HUMAN. my opinion is simply acceptance of a HUMAN standard and an opposition to illegitimate forces that would DENY people their rights. are north koreans or cubans slaves? is this what their culture teaches them? this is what you are telling me is true. which makes you a patronizing and condescending asshole and ethnocentric to boot, as your opinion is derived on a foreign reading of someone else's culture, while my reading simply appeals to human standards of decency and rights. so i speak in solidarity with north koreans and cubans, while you speak in haughty distant judgment of their "culture" (ie, their parasitical governments)
the only entities that would deny people their own SELF-DETERMINATION is the entrenched power in that country that stands to lose, and completely deluded WESTERN morons like yourself
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
the usa's government constantly consults the will of the people, and so it is constantly realigned with the people's will. so you can criticize democracy all you want, but this simple truth about democracy makes it better than all other governments because it makes democracy much more stable than other government types. its legitimacy is constantly being refreshed
meanwhile, in nondemocracies, the will of the people drifts apart from the will of the ruling class, whether monarch or totalitarian or oligarchy or theocracy or whatever. it may happen slowly, it may happen fast, it may happen in fits and starts, but nondemocracies experience an unstoppable increase in illegitimacy in the eyes of their people. there is no reconciliation between the people and the government built into the structure of the government, so no reconciliation happens. its a drifting apart
therefore, all nondemocracies are doomed the day they are born. it is only a matter of time before the agenda of the people and the agenda of the ruling class becomes horribly distant, and society disrupts
so the future of the world is pandemocracy. its simply a matter of time, no effort needed: its the only fix we know of to a simple, organic problem that no society can escape in any other way except adherence to democracy. people living in nondemocracies may have no experience or knowledge of democracy. if so, they are doomed to cycling between periods of revolution and tension: build up, release, build up, release, until such time they understand and finally adapt democracy. when they do that, they've just installed a pressure release valve in their society, and so there is no need for revolution anymore. it is perhaps distant for some countries, but if that society is composed of human beings, democracy is inevitable
tell me of another way to unify the will of the government and the will of the people than democracy (which is simply directly consulting their will, can't get simpler than that) and democracy will become a secondary governmental choice. until such time, democracy is the only valid, legitimate, and ideal form of government possible, over any population of human beings
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
and democracy is obviously superior to totalitarianism, autocracy, military juntas, theocracies, monarchies, etc. democracy is not perfect. its simply BETTER than all other alternatives
Democracy hasn't been tried very often. The closest we've ever seen was in Classical (C. 600-320 BC) Athens, and history tells us that democracy was hardly inimical to autocracy, or the rise of demagogues or military juntas.
everyone in the world deserves the rights and freedoms and self-determination of living in a democracy
I can just see the average American citizen being whipped with red paint and forced to attend an Ekklesia (assembly) to assert their democratic right, which is also a duty. The whining would never stop.
You have done a lot of sounding off on democracy and Orwell in this discussion, without leaving us much evidence that you have done any reading on or of either. Democracy is an elusive beast that demands of its citizens as much as it confers, while Orwell was writing allegories and commentaries on trends that he saw happening in society. Many aspects of what he wrote has particular resonance today for the simple reason that they have turned out to be literally prophetic.
Orwell wasn't creating "memes". That term was coined by Dawkins in the '70s, and refers to something completely different. Orwell was writing about the inherent baseness of which the human species is capable, and to put this under the heading of a "meme" or a "pleasant fantasy" is to trivialise it beyond recognition.
If you commit an act found objectionable by some, do they have the right to act against you? Perhaps not legal right, but morally can you allow yourself to abide silently while something you think is wrong goes on? When should your moral respect for others' privacy outweigh your own principles? How easy is it to convince yourself that "it's just the internets, I don't and can't know the whole story, so I'll just treat potential evil as passing diversion?" I think privacy should be viewed in a contractual sense. In some cases you expect another party to actively protect your privacy, such as between you and your doctor. Strangers who come upon publicly available but unknown information about you do not have that obligation, though perhaps the medium they choose to broadcast it to the world has.
"You may still argue that other people's cultures are objectively inferior or underdeveloped,"
1. why do you confuse judgment of a government with judgment of a culture?
2. why do you confuse judgment of a government with judgment of a people?
you understand why i can't take anything you say seriously if you can't understand the different between these simple concepts, right? if you can't see the difference in those concepts, and say that i am attacking someone's culture when i am only attacking their illegitimate government, i can only conclude you are incredibly stupid or massively deluded
you do understand that to equate a people or a culture with the government that lords over them is complete intellectual failure on your part, right?
this is what i am saying, please listen very carefully to the extremely basic logic in these words:
a north korean, or a cuban, or a brazilian, or a vanuatuan, or anyone, who is a human being, is my equal, and deserves the same as i do. because they are MY EQUAL. because they are a HUMAN BEING. i say this as a HUMAN BEING. not an america, or a westerner
meanwhile, ANY GOVERNMENTAL ENTITY, that does not offer its citizens the same rights as i do, is illegitimate. illegitimate in the most strict sense of the word: if it is not a representative of the will of the people it lords over, it represents only a narrow ruling class
a government is ONLY legitimate if it represents the will of the people it governs. do you understand why? not in terms of any propaganda, but in terms of a simple ability to function coherently for a sustained period of time
finally, i don't know of any human culture that exists that says the people in that culture are happy being slaves. if there are slave holding SOCIETIES, i am certain those who own the slaves will defend that practice as an aspect of their "culture", but this is of course a a confusion of culture and government, like you fail to see the difference. and the slaves won't speak up, out of fear
you have to understand that there are universal truths about what it means to be human, that no culture can abrogate, out of simple logic: no human culture can exist that defies simple human psychology. do you see that? and self-determination, unless you are a pack animal, is a simple human desire, not a western desire, not an american desire
if any of this gets pass your current wall of massive blindness, then you may begin your trip out of this delusion that currently defines your ignorant words
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yup. It's much easier for the Police State if there's already a policeman inside everybody's head, but having one next door will do - and the Internet means everybody's next door.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Ob. XKCD reference
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You can obtain sustenance of equal quality from a vegetarian diet. The only reasons to eat meat are if you believe in human exceptionalism or if you're unable to obtain better food.
Who, exactly do you want to be beaten to death by?
Angelina Jolie ;)
No, by Angelina Jolie 's tits .
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
i believe in the existence of carnivores
do me a favor: feel your teeth for me for a moment
feel between your front teeth, your incisors, and your back teeth, your molars
what do you feel?
jagged teeth known as CANINES
designed by evolution, god, whatever you believe in, for the sole purpose of ripping and tearing flesh
you are a carnivore, you eat meat
understand the truth of what you are
understand the truth of the world you live in
right now, in the siberian taiga, or the african serengeti, or the brazilian rainforest, there are hundreds of herbivores, crying out in sheer terror, having their throats ripped out, their lungs suffcated, or simply being disemboweled and fed upon while still drawing breath, all the while in horrible excruciating pain, terror, and slow miserable death
furthermore, it has been this way, every day, multiple times every second, day and night, for HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS
this is the reality you live in. this is the natural order of things, designed by god or evolution or whatever. it is simply the truth of existence
are you exempt from this reality?
it is not i who believe in human exceptionalism, it is you
i simply believe in the existence of carnivores
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
is only a fallacy when it concerns observations about how humans behave to each other
the naturalistic fallacy is not a fallacy when it governs your relationship with NATURE
duh
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Fake some data which shows medium-high-level political figures stomping on cats. Chinonymous vs the Ruling Party should settle things one way or another.
if that were true, you would spend your time attempting to reason with chimpanzees (take a look at the chompers in that mouth) to keep them from eating meat. additionally, you would hold chimpanzees to the same moral failure for eating the meat they frequently hunt with cruelty, even when other food options are around
but you don't
why? well gee, there must be something special about this human-human interaction going on, i have no idea what it is
pffffffffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"contrary to what US propaganda tells you, those governments rule at consent and with support of those people"
well, i'm going to tell someone that you prefer mexican food over chinese food. if you protest, i'll say it is my culture not to consult you when i represent your interests, and its only western propaganda that you think that you should be consulted before something is done in your name without your consultation
pfffffffft
what a load of horsecrap
you either consult the people, or you don't. if you don't, you don't represent the will of the people. its pretty simple logic. i would like you to tell me the magical method in which a government can act in the name of the people... and never actually consult their will. meanwhile, to hide behind the veil of "culture" as the reason this is acceptable is completely lame and completely disrespectful of the people whose culture you are so denigrating, by portraying their culture as something in which they are happy to be slaves
a democracy's government constantly consults the will of the people, and so it is constantly realigned with the people's will. this is possible in any human culture that exists, ever has existed, or ever will. it is completely compatible with simple human nature, regardless of any cultural differences. so you can criticize democracy all you want, but this simple truth about democracy makes it better than all other governments because it makes democracy much more stable than other government types. its legitimacy is constantly being refreshed
meanwhile, in nondemocracies, the will of the people drifts apart from the will of the ruling class, whether monarch or totalitarian or oligarchy or theocracy or whatever. it may happen slowly, it may happen fast, it may happen in fits and starts, but nondemocracies experience an unstoppable increase in illegitimacy in the eyes of their people. there is no reconciliation between the people and the government built into the structure of the government, so no reconciliation happens. its a drifting apart
therefore, all nondemocracies are doomed the day they are born. it is only a matter of time before the agenda of the people and the agenda of the ruling class becomes horribly distant, and society disrupts
so the future of the world is pandemocracy. its simply a matter of time, no effort needed... its the only fix we know of to a simple, organic problem that no society can escape in any other way except adherence to democracy: legitimacy. people living in nondemocracies may have no experience or knowledge of democracy. if so, they are doomed to cycling between periods of revolution and tension: build up, release, build up, release, until such time they understand and finally adapt democracy. when they do that, they've just installed a pressure release valve in their society, and so there is no need for revolution anymore. it is perhaps distant for some countries, but if that society is composed of human beings, democracy is inevitable. its the lowest point in the gravity well: all other government types are not stable. so societies may bounce around types, but eventually, they reach the most stable state: democracy, the only government in which legitimacy is refreshed
tell me of another way to unify the will of the government and the will of the people than democracy (which is simply directly consulting their will, can't get simpler than that) and democracy will become a secondary governmental choice. until such time, democracy is the only valid, legitimate, and ideal form of government possible, over any population of human beings, because of its ability to manufacture legitimacy. this observation trumps all other features of other governments: your government doesn't matter if it is seen as illegitimate and social strife rises and rises until...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
For all I know that's exactly what I'm doing. The only reason I'm discussing this with you in particular is because you seem intelligent and rational enough to understand; whether or not your favorite food is termites on a stick changes nothing.
chimpanzee behavior?
does hyena behavior bother you?
if so, why?
if not, why?
you have a conceit: humans should not eat meat. it is a conceit full of holes. the question is: why can't you see those holes?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i am a human being. i need only that premise to make my argument. you meanwhile, are buried in small ugly pointless tribal vendettas. you think you make your point by playing against american or russian identity, as if i am going to somehow attack or defend one or the other. as if i need either identity to make my point, as if i care about russia or the usa. fuck the usa, fuck russia. who cares about mindless nationalist nitwits? the coming age is pandemocracy. simply study the trendlines of history friend
resistance is futile. who am i? a westerner? an american? no, i am a human being, i am shed of such barbaric identities. your grandchildren will live in my world, and know the fruits of my ideology. i am not an imperialist, i am here to dissolve all empires. i am the ideology whose enemy is mindless indefensible nationalism: as silly as any religion. that you cross arbitrary pointless invisible lines and POOF human nature is suppose to be altered somehow? really? you believe that? you cross the urals, you cross the rio grande, you cross the bosporus, you cross the caucasus, and POOF fundamental human nature is radically altered? does gravity work differently too? please. a human being is a human being is a human being. the template of culture is but a frivolous fluid thing that changes only inconsequential tribal ephemera. go anywhere, and you find the same mix of the sad, the angry, the organized, the psychotic, the hopeful, the hopeless, the self-defeating, the industrious, etc. human nature is a constant across time and space
in the future, no one will call themselves russian, or american, or german, or canadian. there will be no identity save human. it is the trendline of history. study your history: in any expanse of current day empire: russia, china, arabia, usa, etc., in the distant past there used to exist thousands of identities and languages. go over one valley and it would be a completely different nation. but those old imperial centers dissolved, incorporated, and assimilated. so now where were thousands of identities, now there is only russian. where before there were thousands of identities, there is only han, etc
now extrapolate into the future. currently, we have old imperial centers: moscow, beijing, washington dc, london, tokyo, consuming and obliterating historical identities in their sphere of influence. this will only continue, unabated, unstoppable, in an era of jet air travel and the internet, all identities assimilating, converging, merging, until there is only one: human
so i'm sorry, sad little cynical misanthrope. you are in the dustbin of history. soon, thoughts like yours will only exist in a bit of dust in some empty old skulls. so what does it feel like to watch history pass you by?
i've enjoyed talking to you, antediluvian. its instructive and alternatingly comical and frightening, to be a tourist amongst the barbaric cruel ethnocentric thoughts of dead eras. now die, dinosaur
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it