Hi, All.
This is my initial WordPress blog site, created many years ago before I started paying for my own domains and professional hosting.
My current blogs are under the lamke.org domain – http://www.lamke.org.
You can primarily find me on Google + at https://plus.google.com/u/0/+ChristopherLamke.
Hi. This is Chris Lamke.
My blog is now at http://facticity.org. See you there!
I just read an article on Wired News about the continued refusal of some music artists to make their work available on iTunes and similar sites. Some artists’ apparently feel the integrity of their work is compromised when fans are allowed to buy and listen to individual songs instead of the whole album. That sounds reasonable to me. In order to maintain the purity of an artist’s vision, I think the artist should have almost absolute control over how their work is packaged and sold.
Other artists believe they are not being sufficiently compensated for their work when it is sold online. According to the article, Ed “Punch” Andrews, manager for both Bob Seger and Kid Rock, told Wired News that artists used to receive about 30 cents for a 99 cent download, but once the record industry realized the money to be made through online sales, many companies reworked their contracts so that artists now receive less than 10 cents of the same 99 cent download.
I like to pretend I’m a tolerant guy, but we need to rid ourselves of these parasites. I suggest exiling the RIAA and the rest of the record industry to a remote island and letting nature take its course.
Israel is showing its terrorist colors again, following no rules but its own. It clearly doesn’t understand the meaning of “ceasefire”, having just sent commandos into Lebanon to conduct an unspecified operation against Hezbollah, resulting in at least one commando death.
Israel has also used cluster bomb shells in the current war, resulting in vast numbers of unexploded cluster bomblets that are now killing and injuring people returning to their homes in Southern Lebanon. The bomblets have already killed several children and wounded several more, showing once again that Israel considers those outside its borders expendable at best and perhaps potential terrorists. Of course, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If my child, sibling, or parent was killed by the Zionists, I would very likely end up in the ranks of Hezbollah. It’s just human nature.
Finally, Israel has just arrested the palestinian deputy PM, ostensibly because he is a member of Hamas. While I understand that Hamas is a very dangerous organization, this man was selected as part of a democratic process. So while the world continues to demand that Palestine give up terrorism for peaceful democracy, Israel seems intent on destroying any attempt by the Palestinians to organize peacefully. Israel’s stance, like that of the United States, seems to be that if you keep kidnapping or killing leaders you don’t like, then eventually the people will choose some “friendly” leaders. Of course, it’s difficult to imagine a Palestinian leader that both the Palestinians and Israel would approve of. The arrest of yet another Palestinian official merely strengthens the position of those who want to destroy Israel and weakens the voice of moderates (like President Mahmoud Abbas) who are looking for a way to peacefully coexist.
After formally accepting a ceasefire resolution, Israel felt that it was necessary to go out with yet more blood on their hands, destroying more houses, gas stations, and killing at least one more child in air strikes. What good could this possibly have done? I wonder what the jet pilots think as they fire their missiles and drop their bombs. What do they tell themselves as they personally kill innocent women and children for their motherland and perhaps for their faith? I wonder what the politicians think of their war crimes.
As much as we concentrate on the threats of radical Islam, threats that are fueled by fears and hatreds we daily inflame, it’s the Christians and Jews (through their political proxies the U.S., Israel, Serbia, etc.) who have done most of the killing in the last decade or two.
As much as I detest Hezbolla, they have behaved far more humanely than the Israelis in this situation. To me, and I suspect to the world at large, Hezbolla acted as the only defense against a major power bent on destroying the Lebanese people. Israel has definitively given up any claim to moral legitimacy.
Perhaps the United States will someday get a leader with some basic wisdom, one who will withdraw political, monetary and military support for Israel in its current form. Then we can offer Israel some nice conflict-free land in the Dakotas or Alaska and thus finally right the injustice done by the U.N. in founding Israel in its present location. Certainly, there would be some that would stay put and fight it out, but their stand would be short-lived and with the return of the land to the rightful owners, we would put to rest one particularly virulent source of hatred and conflict.
I have watched with horror the continued destruction of Lebanon at the hands of Israel. What started as a gross overreaction that played into the hands of Hezbollah has turned into a human disaster. Israel’s indiscriminate murder of non-combatants, and especially women and children, has placed it on the same level as Hezbollah.
Israel has fully come into its own as a terrorist state. They have long exhibited occasional terrorist behavior, disregarding international law whenever it has been convenient to their cause or their outrage, and each time the world has forgiven them due to their extremely difficult position, being located as they are in the midst of mortal enemies. I still feel sympathy for Israel’s plight, and I am aware of the Jewish people’s long and extremely painful history, but personal suffering is not an excuse for visiting this injustice on others.
What justification do I have for calling Israel a terrorist state? Let’s go over a few of the behavioral traits of other entities deemed “terrorist”:
1. Terrorists use violence as a tool to instill terror in a person or group of people, generally to effect a social or political change the terrorists regard as favorable. Is this not exactly what Israel is doing in Lebanon right now, trying to generate such an overwhelming sense of terror and helplessness that the people of Lebanon will abandon Hezbollah and let Israel exterminate it? Of course, this is having the opposite of the desired effect. When you feel terrorized and helpless, you turn to anyone who might be able to help you stop those terrorizing you, or who can at least retaliate on your behalf.
2. Terrorists value their goal more than any human life and do not consider human life, even innocent human life, as sacred. Violence toward the innocent is acceptable to a terrorist if it involves less risk to him or furthers his goal. Israel’s bombing of buildings as likely to house innocents as militants, as well as the killing of observers inside a well-known and well-marked U.N. outpost, shows clearly that only Israeli life really matters to Israel, just as the U.S. has shown for years that it values only so-called “American” life.
3. Terrorists recognize agreements and rules, even ones they previously agreed to, only insofar as it benefits them. They consider themselves a special case not subject to rule of law.
Indeed, Israel has chosen to act in this way for some of the same reasons that other so-called terrorist states have chosen this path. Israel’s physical safety and its way of life are clearly in danger from its enemies. Israel wants to effect “beneficial” social and political change in its real and perceived enemies, and perhaps because it lacks the resources to wage its campaigns justly, it is doing what it feels it must, without regard to justice or the sanctity of life.
Note that I’m not sympathizing with Hezbollah. They are a cancer that must be removed to enable a healthy Lebanon. It is well known that they use civilians to shield themselves from the greater military powers they confront. But Israel, by its willful abdication of the last shred of its moral high ground, has caused this cancer to metastasize more than it could in many years on its own.
In case you’re thinking that the United States also falls into the category of terrorist state based on the above criteria, I have to say I agree. Particularly under the current administration, the United States has shown itself to be nothing more than a huge barbarian state imposing its own will on everyone else, because it thinks it can with impunity. The world at large knows that George Bush and his cronies are war criminals by the very standards used to judge other less powerful persons, yet most nations feel powerless to challenge the US and thus remain silent.
Finally, I feel compelled to state the obvious: that the United States, by its support for Israel’s current action, shares further responsibility for the murder of innocent life. If there was a God, W would be in for a long spell of roasting in the pit. I can almost picture the God of Jonathan Edwards holding Bush, Cheney, and the rest at arm’s length with a look of divine loathing on his face.
Hello, world!
My name is Chris and this is my first attempt at keeping an online journal. I have tried for many years now to develop myself into the kind of person that leaves the world a better place than he found it. I have tried to seek truth wherever it may be found, holding nothing sacred. I intend to write here about my search for truth and my observations on the world as it is and as it could be.
I’ve had to read plenty of stilted, overly dense, and jargon-filled writing in my time and I found it very unhelpful. So I’ll try to keep the writing here as light-weight and jargon-free as possible. Also, my children are all beginning readers and I’d really like it if they read this blog once in a while.
Note that I named this blog skeptikos because the other (less pretentious) candidates I could think of were taken. Also, skeptikos is a Greek word meaning to look about or examine, which is a good description of both my adult life thus far and my purpose for this blog.
In any case, I hope you enjoy the writing.
All this, and less 