nine… eleven…
All this 9/11 stuff is just making me angry.
Yes, I know, it was a horrible tragedy and thousands of people lost their lives. But it seems like we’re just wallowing in our tragedy.
This morning there was a special on MSNBC, talking about 9/11. It wasn’t enough to repeat the death count a few times… They actually broke it down into demographics. So many firefighters died, so many men died, so many women died, so many children were born without fathers afterwards, so many pregnant women died.
Really? Are we just trying to make people feel bad? Are we concerned that people might actually be getting over the tragedy?
If it were just a matter of memorializing the dead, that would be one thing… But these remembrances go far beyond that. They talk about how drastically the world changed on that day. They haul somebody in from the TSA to talk about how well they’ve protected us since then. The have various people come on and talk about the War on Terror.
The fact of the matter is that, while the 9/11 attack was a horrific tragedy… We’ve done more harm to ourselves in the years since then, than any terrorist could ever have hoped to.
We used the 9/11 attack as an excuse to launch a war in Iraq, without an actual declaration of war – which never made sense.
A religious extremist named Osama Bin Laden, operating out of Afghanistan, attacked us… And we attacked a secular nation that had nothing to do with Bin Laden.
Now, 10 years later, we’ve killed Bin Landen… And we’re mostly out of Iraq… But we’re still fighting a war. Thousands of innocent lives have been lost over the years. Billions of dollars wasted. And we’re still fighting.
But that isn’t the end of it. If all we’d done is wage a war that would be one thing…
But we also locked people up and detained them for years without actually charging them. We tortured people. We wiretapped our own citizens without warrants. We implemented all sorts of ridiculous “security” measures that’ve done nothing to protect us, but have dramatically limited the ability of our citizens to move freely within the nation.
It’s ridiculous.
blame it on the games
Slashdot | The Oslo Massacre and Violent Video Games
Media hysteria is once again blaming a real life massacre on violent video games. But looking at every single gaming reference in the Oslo killer’s manifesto shows that such accusations are ridiculous. He played games to unwind from plotting and used them to mask his activities.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
We started out with a terrorist attack… But once folks discovered that he was a Christian instead of a Muslim, he became an extremist and it’s just a massacre now…
And now it isn’t because he was a Christian fundamentalist, it’s once again the fault of violent video games.
The fact of the matter is that this guy was a Christian fundamentalist. A right-wing extremist. No amount of spin is going to change that. You may very well be able to deflect attention away from that fact, but you can’t change it.
This was a terrorist attack. The man was a terrorist. He was trying to use terror to force a change in policy – that’s pretty much the definition of terrorism.
But we’re going to minimize it and sweep it under the rug and pretend like this isn’t a serious problem… Because he’s Christian, and so are a bunch of folks here in America.
Stupid.
less cleavage, more carnage
Slashdot | Court on Video Games: Less Cleavage, More Carnage
John Landis said, “R is when you bare a woman’s breast, PG is when you cut it off.” That is apparently now also the law of the land regarding video games, according to the Supreme Court’s June 27th decision (PDF) overturning a California law that banned sales of violent video games to minors. I’m glad the Supreme Court struck down the law, but reading over the decision, I had the odd feeling that even though I agreed with the majority’s conclusion, the actual arguments made by the dissenters made more sense, primarily because of the hypocrisy of the majority in treating sex as more taboo than violence.
Yeah, because that makes perfect sense…
first amendment
Slashdot | US Supreme Court: Video Games Qualify For First Amendment
The United States Supreme Court threw out a California law prohibiting the sale of violent video games to minors. Notable in the opinion is a historical review of the condemnation of “unworthy” material that would tend to corrupt children, starting with penny-novels and up through comic books and music lyrics. The opinion is also notable for the odd lineup of Justices that defies normal ideological lines, with one conservative and one liberal jurist dissenting on entirely different grounds. In the process, they continue the broad rule that the First Amendment does not vary with the technological means used: ‘Video games qualify for First Amendment protection. Like protected books, plays, and movies, they communicate ideas through familiar literary devices and features distinctive to the medium. And the basic principles of freedom of speech… do not vary with a new and different communication medium.’
Absolutely awesome. It’s about time.
