Fiat Lux

A sign that something is wrong in America is when Ann Coulter can make Henry II statements, pass them off as a joke and people say that that makes it OK. If society has decayed to the point that making a joke about your political opponents swallowing rat poison is acceptable, then unfortunately that's a bad thing.

There are lines that should not be crossed, and using humor as a way to say "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest" is one of them.

Attention, kiddies: for freedom of religion practice safe sects.

A group of clerics just declared Ahmadinejad's election illegitimate:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/world/middleeast/05iran.html?partner=rss&emc=rs

.....

This, boys and girls, is why attempting to turn the clock back to the Caliphate of Ali is an utter failure. You can only go so far as a government based on an imminent arrival of God, otherwise reality will rear its ugly head and squelch your messianic dreams....

It's difficult to decide who to loathe more: the Fundamentalists, to whom my being born hearing-impaired is a sign that the Fall has sunk into me more than others (Memo to self: Declare your supervillain name to be The Fallen.) and thus the Devil is more deep in me than it is in others. So...thus, it comes to pass that since I wasn't healed, that it's the Devil working in me stronger because I didn't have enough Faith. Oh...my. Such delightful Southerners you are.

And on the other hand....I've got the Secular Progressives to whom those born with disabilities should simply be aborted. I was born hard-of-hearing, and so thus I shouldn't exist. I'm too much of a social burden. Gee....and who was it that whined and howled and bitched and moaned about the failure of compassionate conservatism the last eight years? And you fuckers want people like me aborted (whereas the other side would put me through endless exorcisms)? Let's see....nonexistent v. existing as the Devil's playground.

Yippie-ki-yay, I get the choice between the Domination and the Combine. Wonderful. >.>

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I reject the entire modernist point-of-view in favor of a complete and utter reactionary viewpoint that would like to see this idiocy abolished. That'd do more to solve Clinic-Bombing Fundamentalism and the eugenics-worshiping Left than anything else would.

Namely a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-style world where superheroes are real, the topic is solely fictional heroes instead of pastiches or entirely original creations.....and it is exactly what such a world would look like.

For instance, it integrates the League itself as the world's oldest superhero team, and the precursors of supervillains as the Illuminati and the pirates, who develop their own affiliations of villains to counter the League, including the immortal Cro-Magnon (and really pissed off at racism, because Cro-Mags were before the gene for white skin evolved) Vandal Savage in his guise as Othello, Moor of Venice. Then you've got the first proto-supervillains as Nemo, Robur, and Mors, while the first superheroes are my charming takes on Mr. Hyde and an earlier incarnation of Etrigan the Demon and Jason Blood, as well as Jason Hex, who ends up fighting with Science-Pirate Miguel Loveless on the side of James West.

Then supervillains have a brief swing to the threatening and monstrous side with Fu Manchu and El Hombre Lobo against pulp heroes like Doc Savage and Sherlock Holmes. This is followed by an increasingly-dark take on them, first with the relatively clownish gimmick villains of the 1930s like the Joker and Moloch the Mystic, who make World War II immensely bloody across the entire planet, so that no continent emerges without heavy losses, and then the Cold War has Doctor Manhattan for the USA, the Mandarin for China, and Superman for the USSR.

The 1970s are a brief period where everything seems the same....then it all hits the fan when a robotic alien force of monstrous machines hardened on millions of years of warfare suddenly hits in the early part of the 1980s, followed by a second invasion of a demonic Dimension Lord named alternately at various times, Ahriman, Mephisto, Trigon, and the Fallen/Unicron, which attacks the Earth-Decepticon War and forces a melee a trois.

That one-two punch leads to a much crueler and much nastier generation of heroes and villains alike, where the Laughing Man, who is basically the Dark Knight Joker and the second villain to hold the name of the Joker, is the epitome of the villains....and Wolverine and the second Comedian and Spawn are those of the heroes.

The 21st Century sees it get worse, with the sudden arrival of Trigon's half-human daughter, and a war between two mystical forces, Sebastian Blood, aka: the Antichrist, the Dajjal, and allies like Baron Mordo and Yasunori Kato....v. Trigon's daughter, Doctor Strange, and Doctor Fate. This mystical war causes the villain-hero conflict to deteriorate from black and grey morality to black and black morality as the hidden mystical side finally sends this world of vigilantes over the edge into a collapse of democracy into a mess of authoritarian regimes as the complete disappearance of moral differences between the heroes and villains turns governments into dictatorships.

As a self-proclaimed superhero fanatic, I can safely say that sometimes the ideas of fiction should stay fictional. People who like the idea in comic books of Superman throwing down with Solomon Grundy might think differently if two bruisers are fighting a massive battle in the middle of a densely populated area.

Let's ponder a scenario in a world where the little hurdle that even the superpowers that could make you millions in Siegfried and Roy break the laws of physics, let alone the individuals like Bruce Banner/Hulk and Susan Storm.

Let's say there's a city the size of say....metropolitan Austin, Texas. Let's say two Metahumans are pissed off at each other because one thinks the other one cheated on his girlfriend, which the other one knows never happened at all. Now, let's define their powers. Both are your standard-issue Bruiser superhuman, large, super-strong, and invulnerable with all required secondary powers. Both are approximately equal in strength.

Now, let's decide the argument comes into a fight in a public square. The sight of large super-strong invulnerable individuals throwing down in public would definitely create thousands of dollars of property damage the taxpayers would have to pay, it would likely guarantee at minimum injuries, possibly deaths from the ever-present desire to hurl cares at one's opponents. And neither of these two individuals would be capable of hurting each other for a long time or really feeling what their little tussle is doing to downtown Austin.

Er.....that would go down well. In terms of superhero universes, Watchmen is the most realistic scenario where superpowers result in people dressing up in long underwear.

My kind of thinking is, if you've got superpowers, even assuming that, why the Hell would you go be a Vigilante Man unless you're already a Far Rightie? Why not go make millions by becoming a showman? Or sign up in the police department or the army? Or Hell, why not become a con artist founder of a major religion? After all, if you can heal people and do other stunts like certain religious figures, why not con people into believing a certain Second Coming has happened?

The concept of superpowered individuals has so much more potential than merely vigilantes. Pity so little of it is explored....though in all likelihood, a person who actually has the powers to go try to single-handedly fix the mess that is and always will be civilization and the desire to do so will at least try, only in a realistic scenario, superhumans may dislike him as much as anyone else.

Edit-Let's not forget that it was after World War II that eugenics and internment and all that became retroactively anti-American. Superhumans with powers that have a negative bent, even if they've never once thought about becoming a villain, or superhumans that are obviously inhuman might well be incarcerated in a modern-day concentration camps. And your stereotypical Nightcrawler or Raven-style half-human hybrid might be tortured to provide phlebotinum.

After all....they're only half-human. Surely something that isn't entirely human isn't covered by the concept of human rights....right? There'd be damned little to stop a much more technologically advanced world, because the unscrupulous assholes that are politicians even in democratic countries could easily exploit a never-ending source of things. And who's going to complain about torturing something that's half-demon? They are, after all, half an evil creature. Surely we should make evil work for good, eh?

In short, a world with superhumans might have the 1970s terror groups turn into battling squads of superhuman extremists, a great majority of superhumans who shun costume fascism and a much more dangerous arms race and all kinds of sick and twisted possibilities...among which is the idea of potentially making things like the Evangelions a reality, robots derived from the soul of Dark Things. After all, reality broke the first time a superhuman appeared, and you can't ever go back to the way things were....

I hear the carols singing, voices carried upon the great north wind,

Shouts of glee and gloom upon the morn.

There is nothing but the void of silence, as I gaze out in evening,

Star upon star in the expanse of the heavens.

Gaze I upon these stars so numerous, tiny dots all a’twinkling,

Then I sense with gaiety and wonder,

The great and awesome World that Is, and the World that Will be,

Instead of black gloom and the awaiting of despair seems but to be happiness for an

Eternity.

Getting into a debate over whether or not Christianity in its medieval guise or Islam in its medieval guise was worse.

Well....the comparison is simple. What happened to the Copts and the Maronites and the Christians in Anatolia when Muslims ruled them? What happened to Islam in Sicily, in the Balkans, and in Spain and Portugal? What is the difference between the two communities? And last I checked, outright heretical Moslem sects like the Alawis and the Druze are still extant. When's the last time the old Arians or the Cathars have been seen in Europe? And also....it wasn't Islam that had massive wars over petty doctrinal differences like the Fourth Crusade and the Wars of Religion in Europe. There was never a Moslem Magdeberg or St. Bartholomew's (which my umpty-great-great grandpa orchestrated, BTW). In the absence of liberal democracy to restrain the Church, Christian will kill Christian, as the Church is not capable on its own of producing the kind of toleration that exists today.

After all, the first use of "Kill them all for Christ will know his own" was during the Cathar Crusade when the Catholic general was asked how to distinguish Cathar from Catholic....

Not that Islam was without its faults, it does have them. But given the choice between Medieval Europe or the Abbasid Caliphate....I'll take the Caliphate any day of the week. No priests would be wanting me burned as a heretic (one big reason the peasants of Egypt and Syria loved the Moslems so much was that the Byzantines were not immune to the Western ill of hating other Christian sects so much that Christian killed Christian). And I would be free to co-exist peacefully with other sects like today.

How the Hell did Woodrow Wilson become an icon of equal rights for everyone?

I mean, this is a guy that passed Sedition Acts (a time-honored American tradition), engaged in outrageous civil rights violations (interning one's political opponents like Eugene Victor Debs is a big no-no in any society that wants to pretend to be civilized), segregated a previously unsegregated environment (the Federal Government), triggered a Ku Klux Klan revival (his little "like watching history written in lightning" comment), targeted political minorities (his raids and launching the first Red Scare), targeting ethnic groups that were a bit slow in assimilating (the Germans and ensuring a law was passed that completely forbade teaching in any language other than English. Um....last I checked, Dobbs's ilk didn't quite get that far in the last eight years), engaged in some of the most outrageous colonial wars of an outrageous era (nearly starting a war with Mexico because he was pissed the wrong top banana came out of the Revolution, innumerous invasions of Latin America), and deliberately politicized the one treaty which if enforced would have ensured that Germany would at least have somewhat gotten on its feet slower, participated in two invasions of Russia during a civil war there, and lied us into one of the world wars.

And this guy's a hero? O.o

Maybe I should go into politics after all...heh, heh, heh. If he can get a good reputation....who wouldn't be able to?

So.....the morning I leave for our trip: it started with a trip to Iuka, Mississippi. The first night we didn't actually get to Iuka, we stopped in Jackson. I spent that night pretty much relaxed and enjoying the first day of what I expected would be an awesome vacation. My expectations were justified. The next day, we got there and started a bunch of days filled with fishing and rainstorms, neither of which (fortunately) connected with each other.

Didn't have much opportunity for self-expression outside my journal. Then, after we leave Iuka, we go to a hotel in Nashville. Shitty place and there's a tornado warning. In the whole period that was going on, I had my own room for a night and watched The Dark Knight on TV.

I managed the Convention with pretty much ease, walking around and visiting workshops. A shitload of useful technology there, and it was damned impressive, overall. I particularly was interested in young hard-of-hearing individuals getting activistic. I spent the period asking questions about how this starry ideal was to work in reality.

Will have more later. I'm a tired sonofabitch.

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Must....self...flagellate...

In all seriousness, I'm starting the return trip from what has been the most awesomesauce vacation I've had in a long time (that it's the only one I've had in a long time has somewhat to do with that). I will be making a little recounting post tomorrow.

Look for either a chimpanzee or my default avatar. Heh, heh, heh...

May I be the first to propose that since there has been a clear and unmitigated act of terrorist evil in the United States, these four following ideas, as part of a modest proposal to alleviate violence on our soil from the fanatics in service to their desert-god:

1) All who do not follow a religion that is 100% American shall be forced to adopt it. Naturally, this means that any followers of any Old World religions shall henceforth be required to pay homage to Huitzilopochtli and Teztcalipoca and other such gods that are 100% American. For the safety of America, we must revert to defense of traditional American values. Thus it is also that we shall revert to having societies restore their traditional organizations, the South shall be under the Great Suns, New England under Sagamores, the Republic of Lakotah will be expanding, and so forth.

2) All who do not speak a language that is 100% American shall be required to leave our shores. Those fucking fascist liberals and those fucking Commie conservatives shall henceforth alike be required to speak such American languages as Navajo and Nez Perce. Any attempt to speak a furriner tongue will be prohibited in schools with beatings of those who dare to speak these pernicious foreign influences.

3) All who do not eat 100% American shall be required to eat 100% American. That means no wheat, no millet, no crop from the Old World shall be grown in the USA. For the safety of the United States, Americans shall eat maize and mantioc and tomatoes and potatoes. We can't have this simpering liberal influence that has seeped in since the year 1492 to disrupt our precious American bodily fluids and values.

and lastly...

4) All who do not dress 100% American shall be required to do so. This will require many of the slightly-and-more-than-slightly obese Americans to get in shape to look good in a loincloth, but then society must be healthier as it is.

OK, you great Americans, who's with me? :P

DISCLAIMER: I do not support the Confederacy and its legacy, it was a hateful society of slaveholders and sinners that built their strength on treating human beings like property. This is solely intended to illustrate that all it takes is to change a few words and the anti-gay rights arguments could just as easily support slavery and white supremacy. Use of the N-word is throughout this, but let's be perfectly honest: the Confederacy will not by 2009 have come to see that the word "nigger" is hateful. After all, this is a society that was founded on slavery. I apologize to any black readers here, I am solely doing this to create the effects of a society built on hatred and dehumanization.

This is an edited version of a news release by a hate group to reflect Ye Olde American Sin, given in an alternate Confederate States of America. This is taken from a press release of ProtectMarriage.com altered to fit the Confederacy of 2009 where a descendant of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee is President of the Confederacy in 2009:

Tue May 26, 3:31 pm ET

To: STATE EDITORS

Contact: Nathan Bedford Forrest V of The White League, +1-916-448-4234

CHARLESTON, South Carolina., May 26 /Associated Press-Confederate States division/ -- South Carolina voters won a major victory today as the South Carolina Supreme Court announced its decision to uphold Proposition 8 and protect the supremacy of the white race and the glorious history of the Southern Confederacy.


Steve Longstreet, General Counsel of the White League, party of the White Man- the official proponents of Prop. 8 - said the Court's ruling is a great victory for the people of South Carolin and the necessity of ensuring that White Women are not raped by thieving hordes of freed niggers.

"We commend the Supreme Court of the Sovereign state of South Carolina for upholding the right of the people to defend our women from the predation of free Negroes in our constitution," said Longstreet. "The Court recognized that the power to amend the constitution ultimately belongs to the people. We are very grateful to the Court for agreeing with the arguments we presented in our briefs and in oral argument last March. For the second time now, the people have decided that a bill to free South Carolina's slaves is antiethical to our rights as a sovereign state under the Confederate Constitution, and the Court has respected that decision."

Over 7 million people voted in favor of Proposition 8 last November. It won by a margin of 600,000 votes and achieved roughly the same percentage of support as President Samuel Lee-Davis did nationally. Post election surveys show that South Carolinans continue to support a continuation of Negro slavery. If anything, support for gradual manumission has declined while support for the continuation of slavery has increased.

Today's ruling closes the door on the latest challenges to the state's election process in an ongoing effort to legalize manumission and racial amalgamation in the sovereign state of South Carolina. If nigger-lovers wish to legalize manumission now, they will have to go to the people and seek their permission - something they have never done. Longstreet promised that any future efforts to repeal Prop. 8 will be vigorously contested. The White League will also vigorously oppose any further efforts in the state and federal courts to invalidate or weaken Prop 8.

According to Jefferson Davis Clemson, Chairman of the South Carolina chapter of the White League, the Committee will now shift its focus on the long-term goal of continuing to protect slavery and prevent a tide of racial amalgamation that threatens traditional Confederate values.

"We will now turn our attention to public education and outreach so that citizens come to better understand and appreciate the many benefits that slavery provides for niggers and for white men," said Clemson. "The Peculiar Insitution as we have always understood it has served South Carolina and our broader society since the nation was founded. We look forward to working with young people, churches, other chapters of the White League and all of the sovereign state of South Carolina with an ongoing discussion about the benefits of Negro slavery."

_____________________________________________

I do not think it is necessary to repeat that I do not now and have not ever expressed any sympathy for the Confederacy or for racism. This is intended to illustrate the identical arguments used in this situation through use of an alternate timeline where Proposition 8 was a vote on Gradual Emancipation in Confderate South Carolina, one of the few Confederate states to keep slavery fully legal, as others have already emancipated it.

The Bible is by no means really that female-friendly in a modern context. Guess what the oldest portion of the Bible in terms of its Hebrew content is? The Song of Deborah, written in Archaic Hebrew, instead of the more general Hebrew used to write most of the rest of the Tanach. That's right....the oldest document in the Abrahamic religious context was written about a Jewish Boudicca figure that was a wee bit more successful than Queen Boudicca.

Ah, history....you do throw the screwballs at us...

As a self-professed Reactionary BastardTM, I can safely say "A plague on all your houses" to everything that's come along since Louis XIV, Peter the Great, and Frederick the Great.

I hate the capitalists because they're greedy little fuckers that accumulate too much wealth and are anti-Christian.

I hate the Communists because shooting many, many people doesn't make anything better, it makes a lot of people dead and replaces one aristocracy with another.

I hate the fascists because they're an undisciplined rabble of thugs and ill-mannered sorts that can't see anything more subtle than a cavalry charge.

I hate democracy because the idiots make up the majority of the electorate.

I hate Republicanism because it fosters elites and it turns into dictatorship.

I hate constitutional monarchy because that's a republic with a king for added coolness.

And as I support absolutist monarchy.....I get the benefit of stamping down the local yokels that want to cause trouble, I let people do WTF they want to do in their private lives, I steal everything worth stealing in terms of wealth....and I put God as the fall guy for the mistakes of the King with the Mandate of Heaven idea niftily borrowed from China so that when the inevitable corruption happens....Revolution a go-go and all is good again.

Sometimes there are benefits to being so far behind the times that you can hate on everybody and not be a fascist or a communist in denial. ^.^

Edit-And none of this "Won't you please consider the rights of X, Y, and Z" business. Under my system, the monarch would be able to chop off the head of the CEO, of the chief cleric, of the pauper, of the street sweeper, and the sniveling little brats that got a lot of money because Daddy worked really, really hard. Everybody kowtows. No exceptions. Rich, poor, or whatever you are...all are equally vulnerable. Brute force is the only language some (thinking of the rich and the vermin that pass for terrorists of various ideologies) will ever understand.

If anyone wants them, please respond here.

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This one deals with religion, if you want to create a flamewar of atheist v. Christian, this is not the place to do so and any such comment threads will be frozen when they start.

Now....forward to the post:

I think one of the forgotten goods of history has been the actions of the Pope John XXIII during the Shoah. Pius XII was and is a bit controversial, but John XXIII should be one of the Righteous Among the nations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_XXIII

He was one of those who saved the honor of the Church.

Others who deserve mention are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer

^This man was one of the leaders of the German resistance to the Nazis.

Then there's ol' Pius XII himself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XII#The_Holocaust

He hid Jews in the monasteries of the Church, saving them from Nazi evil.

And last but not least is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_the_Danish_Jews where Denmark deliberately defied the Nazis and saved most of its Jewish population.

Even in the midst of darkness and evil, there was light. And the light was good.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090514/ap_on_re_as/as_sri_lanka_civil_war;_ylt=Apqx_H8O9WB79epqxkB3cKhvaA8F

Presuming the Sinhalese manage this right, they might actually end this ethnic war. Not sure if this is necessarily going to be a pleasant end, but any limit on the endless violence that mars parts of the world is a good one.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=HomePage&id=ed4bb249-5980-42e1-83b8-4ae233db2127&Headline=Political+crisis+in+Nepal+shows+signs+of+easing

For once the Commies are trying to negotiate in terms of power instead of doing what totalitarian movements do. Good on the CPN.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=a3fOpnohjVL4

Japan and Russia may negotiate a deal to harness Siberian oil fields. That's better than shooting at each other, I guess....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090514/wl_nm/us_japan_politics_1

The Japanese parliamentary election is heating up.....

And lastly....SE Asia...

http://mt.m2day.org/2008/content/view/21867/84/

The Perak controversy appears to be veering to a solution.

How do you like them apples? A post that's chock-full of links, and not one focusing on the US distraction issue of the day! ^. -

Time for a good old school rant on Slobodan Milosevic:

My opinion on such men as Hitler and Stalin is that they are remembered for targeting white men with methods traditionally used on non-whites without anyone much giving a fuck at the time. Mr. Milosevic rose to power and committed horrific acts of ethnic cleansing, ending the 20th Century in Europe as it had begun, with trouble and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. However I think a good chunk of that is the Slavic double standard. It's been my experience that Slavic powers as a rule get called on things that evidently are just fine for Germanic or Romance-speaking nations to do.

While Russia and Serbia behaved monstrously to their subjects, it bothers me that the ethnic cleansing and expulsion of Germans from places they had lived in for centuries was perfectly kosher. Milosevic in the 1990s did precious little different from the Allied Powers in the aftermath of World War II, which were quite content to expel any and all ethnicities deemed "hostile" to the future peace of Europe in order to redraw the map. Yet somehow one is acceptable and the other isn't.....

While Milosevic did evil, and was responsible for one of the last of the 20th Century massacres, I do wonder why the expulsion of the Germans a time ago was considered acceptable then by the very powers that deigned to lecture the Slavs...

For a satire that I've been planning for a while, I've been wanting to parody quite a bit of the standard sci-fi cliches.

So....at the height of Detente, President Nixon gives the standard "Rah, Rah, Rah" speech about about Americans will always "Dixunt "Veni, Vidi, Vici," and the next thing President Nixon hears first is that all nuclear weapons of the United States have suddenly vanished in a matter of seconds and the next is that this gigantic asteroid is careening through the atmosphere heading straight for Yellowstone National Park. The gathered people in the Situation Room watch the impact....and the supervolcano is triggered.....:darklord:....

After all, in my fictional universe, aliens don't play fair, they hit from space....because let's be frank, if you've an advantage of being able to hit your opponent where he can never hit you back from, why waste it?

If the Nazis and the Soviets had been dictatorships with non-white victims, nobody would have really given a crap here in the Anglosphere. It's only because their victims were white that anything negative is said about them at all. It's why you never hear of Imperial Japan and what it did, or Mao's evils, or Pol Pot and the most evil dictatorship in all of history, or Idi Amin Dada or Bokassa or any such non-whites who did horrifically evil and barbaric acts.

But because the Nazis and Soviets treated white men as white men were accustomed to treating non-whites, Anglosphere media cryeth "Oh, how totally dreadful and horrible!" "Pol Pot who?"

....

>.

( Big image under cut... )

One thing that is forgotten about the severity of the Nazi-Soviet War is the USSR's use of female soldiers in both aerial and ground combat, which was seldom if ever done in the West. Soviet women, such as this sniper here, did many acts of heroism against a great evil. The Soviet Union itself was never a pleasant society from start to end, but the heroism of its people and its soldiers during the Axis-Soviet War should be more remembered than it is.

On occasion, I like to quiz my friends who obsess on certain topics. If I go into a literary major crowd and hold the door open for everybody, I say "Enter freely and of your own will." So....keep in mind that I don't just pick on the "Bible-Reading Bible-Believing" crowd here.

I attend a SoBap Church, where many people claim to both have read the Bible and know everything in it. So....my little tripper-upper is that when they ask me what I've been doing I say "I've been going to and fro the Earth and up and down in it."

Only one person has gotten that so far, and that person doesn't even attend the Church. I've yet to spring it on the pastor, but I'm shooting for that this Sunday.

What makes it really humorous is that those who say loudest "I read the Bible every single day," almost never recognize the quote. *feral grin.*

In the midst of turmoil and trials, it is best to remember these words of our God. And for the record, this is not supposed to be a Flood Debate thread, this is intended to be separate:

"YHVH smelled the soothing aroma, and YHVH said to Himself, "I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth and I will never again destroy every living thing as I have done.
"While the Earth remains,
Seedtime and Harvest,
And cold and heat,
And summer and winter,
And day and night
Shall not cease."

These are the words our YHVH has spoken, and these are the words that He has fulfilled. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and unto the Ages of Ages, Amen.

I would live right here and right now. Why?

For the First World, this is as good as it's going to get. And unlike the Classical world, we don't depend on slavery to make our living. Unlike the Medieval world, the Church is not the only thing left to rebuild us. And unlike the Pre-Poleis world, we're not a bunch of tribal savages, either.

:)

To the military forces of the United States and Australia who beginning on this day handed the first defeat in many, many a year to the forces of the Empire of Greater Japan.

To the victory:( Under a cut because these are damn big images: )

And a great thanks to the generation that triumphed over Tojo, Mussolini, and Hitler.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/7/11535006_7d02927e63.jpg

Hey, Nazis.....remember this? This happened the last time you got cute.

What will kill us all? I don't know. It could be any number of things. There's a range of likely possibilities, and quite a few unlikely ones. The most likely and inevitable is evolution into a successor species. Unlike certain optimists, I'm not convinced that transhumanism is really likely in the short term, and the long term is going to make First World civilization quite a bit more difficult to maintain than people realize, with all kinds of nasty consequences for the Third World (which is usually entirely ignored in First World futurology).

The second-most likely cause of human extinction (and in any case, killing six billion large apes entirely is a monstrously difficult proposition to pull off. If the Toba event had been worse....Neanderthals would likely be ruling the planet as poorly/well as we are) is something like the Yellowstone Caldera blowing up. In an instant, half of North America, including much of the cropland is gone. Hilarity ensues.

Next-likely is population pressure in the Third World spiraling into a Malthusian trap. Somewhat less-likely than others at present.

Further down the list is the epidemic that actually will be the killer epidemic, down this low because any such mutation is not yet viable.

A bit further yet is global warming.

Further yet....K/T boundary size asteroid impact.

Last, but the most potentially serious....gamma ray burst. That happens, bye-bye everything in something as epic as the P-T boundary (which makes the K-T boundary look like a sissy extinction).

Have a nice day.

"Why Prime Minister, you're drunk,"-Lady Astor.

"And you my dear are ugly. The difference is that in them morning I'll be sober."-Winston Churchill.

I dedicate this post in the Forgotten Evils to the first German genocide of the 20th Century.

The Kaiser's army was dealing with the Herero, a pastoralist African tribe. The Herero got a little too feisty in the German view of things, and so the Kaiser's army resorted to the simple expediency of killing any of them that chose not to surrender immediately. The minimum estimate of how many Herero died in this was half of them. The maximum puts it just shy of three quarters of them. A neighboring people, the Namaqua, were also victims in this, losing half of their own population.

Colonialism in Africa later led to use of the same methods in Europe on "white" men, which IMHO, was the real crime of Hitler and Stalin in terms of how they've been interpreted. As long as the victims were brown folk, that was fine. When pink folk started dying the same way, the same behavior became atrocious and horrible, despite having been such all along:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_Genocide