tcpip | Whilst the world falls apart, I'm actually enjoying myself.

greylock informs us that if you're a fundamentalist Christian the latest invasion of Lebanon by Israel is cause for celebration because the Rapture is coming!

zey provides this image of the special love that Israeli children are being enculturated with. Let's sort this out. Hezbollah kills eight and captures two Israeli soldiers. Israel responds with an invasion of Lebanon, killing almost three hundred civilians, wounding a thousand and displacing half a million. Strikes on Lebanon's civilian infrastructure include Beirut airport, ports, grain silos, bridges, roads, factories, medical and relief trucks, and the country's largest dairy farm Liban Lait. If Israel wants to deal with Hezbollah they should offer military and police support to the Lebanese government, not launch an invasion of a sovereign state that has a tenuous religious balance and semi-democracy. As Antony Lowenstein points out, this action will to generate more terrorists.

Back at home, Wealth gap in Australia. Latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that almost 60 per cent of Australian households' wealth is owned by the richest 20 per cent of households, while the bottom 20 per cent own just 1 per cent. I'd bet my meagre dollars it's even more disproportionate in land values too. Appropriately from the cream of society (the rich and thick) Young Liberals chant "We're racist, we're sexist, we're homophobic". Malcom Fraser's takes Trotsky's dictum of equating the head of a facist with the pavement. "Where people are being racist or discriminatory in their comments or policies, wherever they are, they ought to be clobbered," he said..

So whilst all these disasters are happening I've been having a great time. Work this week at both Borderlands and Naturelinks has been interesting; the former involving some great hardware repairs and the later required moving and re-establishing a network and associated remote desktop requirements and so forth - there's even a 80 metre trench being dug to connect two buildings. Further, I've been working on yet another website this time for a PR company who pay quite well indeed. Off-hours, The Norman Britian RetroAD&D game continues to be great fun and this Sunday we're playing Cybernoia, which

imajica_lj has been saying very nice things about. Also on Sunday, a person of no less greatness than

claudine_c is speaking at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on her rural health work in India. Finally, the bunny, Astaroth from the second summoning, is doing well. And whoever the anonymous stranger who sent me a dozen virtual red roses, thanks!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

jahbulon.livejournal.com

GOLD hahahaha...

From:

tcpip.livejournal.com

Not surprisingly, it's been a conversation killer ;-)

But seriously, words are contextual. I mean, there's a negro band called Niggers With Attitude, feminist Inga Muscio has a reclaimed the word 'Cunt' in her book of the same title and so on.

From:

splodgenoodles.livejournal.com

Cunt is one of my favourite words.

I own my cunt. So if I call you a cunt, well...

And no one minds when we call people dicks.

From:

tcpip.livejournal.com

It is interesting that all the "rude words" come from the anglo-saxon working class roots; cunt, fuck, shit etc and such terms are consider vulgar.

But if we use the Latin equivalents as practised by the ruling class; vagina, coitus, faeces etc. we're simply being educated.

From:

tcpip.livejournal.com

Not surprisingly, it's been a conversation killer ;-)

I spoke to soon. They're still going on about it.

From:

jahbulon.livejournal.com

Where is this 'debate' occurring?

From:

omnot.livejournal.com

'Retard' simply means 'slow'. "Abnormally low temperatures can retard crop growth." etc. When used to describe people with assorted mental deficiencies, it's quite mild. Almost sweetly euphemistic, in a way.

'Fucktard', though is a beautiful word in context.

From:

zey.livejournal.com

IIRC, a 'fucktard' is a retarded person used for sexual recreation purposes. The story going that, while they might drool a bit, they're awfully enthusiastic.

From:

omnot.livejournal.com

*boggle*

I'm just going to sit and blink and hope that someone verifies or otherwise.

From:

tcpip.livejournal.com

Hooray for teh Internets

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fucktard

From:

omnot.livejournal.com

Thank you. I was too scared to google.

From:

tcpip.livejournal.com

Retard means not just slow, but backwards, retrograde.

It still works with crop growth being retarded.

Apparently I missed the revolution when it came to mean something politicall incorrect.

From:

omnot.livejournal.com

I really like the use of the word 'fucktard' as it differentiates between genuine intellectual deficiency and willful, malicious stupidity. The use of the word 'fuck' effectively conveys the outrage and exasperation the observer feels. I'd define a fucktard as someone who willfuly behaves in a way that is irrational and harmful.

I've heard the word 'retard' applied as an adjective in derogatory fashion for as long as I can recall. Usually in a context that made me feel that it was the intellectually retarded people who should take umbrage at the comparison, as the alleged 'retards' were often doing blatantly stupid, stubborn and destructive things when they were in posession of ample capacity to avoid it. I feel that such misuse is the cause of the adjective 'retard' coming to be seen as an offensive one. If people were to start calling rightful fucktards 'person with intellectual impairment' in a derisive manner, that expression, too would lose favour.

(If it does, I'll be sure to send you a memo.)

From:

tcpip.livejournal.com

That is spot on.

From:

tcpip.livejournal.com

http://community.livejournal.com/anarchists/1845580.html

From:

omnot.livejournal.com

*facepalm*

That's 'special'.

From:

tcpip.livejournal.com

Somehow I don't think these anarchists will ever be leading a revolution.

Could you imagine the arguments they'd have writing a manifesto?

From:

jahbulon.livejournal.com

I cannot believe that guy actually said "yes" to "are you proposing limits on speech". Way to show your true colours buddy. Totalitarian anarchists eh?

(deleted comment)

From:

tcpip.livejournal.com

And such limits will be enforced by the anarchist police force, the borders will protected by the anarchist army etc.

From:

jahbulon.livejournal.com

It is strange that an anarchist would make an appeal to the moral majority to strengthen their argument. Am I correct in assuming that most of the goons in that community are little more than talking heads?

On anarchism: "Are you still an anarchist?"

It was a hard question to answer, because it forced me to compare the man I'd once been with the man I'd allowed myself to become.

"Anarchists..." I began and then faltered. "No political philosophy I ever heard of loves the human race as much as anarchism. Every other way of looking at the world says that people have to be controlled, and ordered around, and governed. Only the anarchists trust human beings enough to let them work it out for themselves. And I used to be that optimistic once. I used to believe that and think like that. But I don't, any more. So, no - I guess I'm not an anarchist now."

Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

I guess

eyelidlessness doesn't trust himself enough not to think bad things about disabled people whenever he hears the word retard, thus we must all be prevented from using it.