In part one of this series, I explored the nature and the ongoing crisis of modernity. The crisis took the form of the conflict between camps referred to as the revolution (who preferred to rely upon empirical evidence) and the counter-revolution (who preferred to rely upon dogmas and doctrines).
The conflict could never be permanently resolved. Periodic detentes were achieved through a mediating force: Cartesian reason. But those detentes were few and far between. I refer to the ongoing process of attempting to mediate between the two Cartesian modernity.
Cartesian modernity was a successful enough project that for centuries it prevented Europe from completely destroying itself.
But as fate would have it, Cartesian modernity -- and with it, objective reason as its central mediating force -- would fall out of favour with powerful ideologues.
Why did this happen?
It happened when ideologues linked Renaissance-era modernity to imperialism and Eurocentrism. The world was quickly changing. The old world, so to speak, was stumbling upon new ones, and discovering new ways to assert itself in others. As Hardt and Negri explain:
"The internal conflict of European modernity was also reflected simultaneously on a global scale as an external conflict. The development of Renaissance thought coincided both with the European discovery of the Americas and with the beginnings of European dominance over the rest of the world. Europe had discovered its outside. 'If the period of the Renaissance marks a qualitative break in the history of humanity,' writes Samir Amin, 'it is precisely because, from that time on, Europeans become conscious of the idea that the conquest of the world by their civilization is henceforth a possible objective ... From this moment on, and not before, Eurocentrism crystallizes.'"
European incursions into Asia, Africa and the Americas opened new fronts on which the philosophical adherents of the revolution and the counter-revolution could compete.
While the resources and the infrastructure of the revolution (universities, primarily) were immobile, the prime resources of the counter-revolution were not. The counter-revolution could send missionaries and militant forces into these lands and obtain relatively-instant gratification. Universities of the European standard didn't exactly sprout from the soil overnight.
But even as the counter-revolution gained an edge on these fronts, it appropriated reason, or at least what it could pass off as reason. In order to do this it had to appropriate many of the tools of the revolution.
The counter-revolution asserted that European domination over these lands was justified by the technological superiority and (what they deemed to be) intellectual superiority of European modernity.
So missionaries carried Bibles into the depths of Africa, Asia and the Americas. But instead of simply lecturing about Christianity, as European priests had with their flocks, missionaries taught their flocks how to read for themselves. In time, the Bible was even translated into those languages.
This was an under-appreciated lesson that the counter-revolution had taken away from the Renaissance. The refusal of the Catholic Church to permit the Bible to be translated into languages other than Latin -- which only the clergy spoke -- had opened a front within Christianity which turned far more ugly than perhaps anyone could have expected, with rivers of blood flowing.
This was just one way in which the counter-revolution appropriated the methods of the revolution. In short, the counter-revolution cloaked itself in the form of Cartesian modernity. And it was under this guise that it spread itself across the globe while the revolution remained rooted mostly in Europe.
It's with this in mind that perhaps it's easy for people such as Hardt and Negri to mistake the counter-revolution for Cartesian modernity itself. But make no mistake about it. For the counter-revolution, Cartesian Modernity very much was a problem. Even Hardt and Negri have it as such:
"On the one hand, Renaissance humanism initiated a revolutionary notion of human equality,of singularity and community, cooperation and multitude, that resonated with forces and desires extending horizontally across the globe,redoubled by the discovery of other populations and territories. On the other hand, however, the same counter-revolutionary power that sought to control the constituent and subversive forces within Europe also began to realize the possibility and necessity of subordinating other populations to European domination. Eurocentrism was born as a reaction to the potentiality of a new found human equality; it was the counter-revolution on a global scale."
Interestingly enough, this belief in "new found human equality" is the preserve of neither the revolution nor the counter-revolution. but rather the result of Cartesian reason.
Contrary to what one may be tempted to think, it wasn't a result of mediation of the two sides' views. In both revolution and counter-revolution can be found the seeds of Eurocentrism. For the counter-revolution, the lands into which Europeans had incurred were full of heathens, not yet uplifted by Christianity. For the revolution, (most of) these lands were filled with technologically- and scientifically-deficient peoples. In each case, the conclusion was that Europeans were superior,
A mediation between these views obviously does not produce a belief in the essential equality of humankind. Rather, this belief was a spontaneous product of Cartesian reason, but one that would require centuries before it would convincingly take hold.
The position of the counter-revolution was clearly rooted in subjective and self-serving thought. It could have been based on nothing else. But it's not difficult to look at the comparative states of these civilizations and see how one could presume the conclusion of European superiority was based on objective reason.
Speaking strictly for myself, I don't believe that presumption would fail the tests of virtue epistemics, particularly virtue reliabalism. It's my personal opinion that the locus of the conclusion of European superiority was as much, if more so, internal as it was external. In short: ego. It's not at all difficult to understand how someone may have made the comparison between the civilizations and simply wanted to conclude they were superior.
But the appropriation of Cartesian reason for the purpose of drawing this conclusion has, in the minds of many, linked it indivisibly to Eurocentrism and by extension to imperialism.
People who subscribe to social justice ideologies don't care for imperialism very much.
So they were confronted by the need for tools not tainted by Eurocentrism and imperialism. They stumbled upon a rather curious alternative: subjective reason. Thusly, postmodernity was born.
They found that subjective reason had advantages that objective reason did not. Objective reason required that one reason strictly according to empirical evidence -- material evidence which could be observed. But many of the arguments that the champions of postmodernity wished to make could not be made on the basis of empirical evidence, or at least not on empirical evidence alone.
To do this they would colonize the primary intellectual infrastructure of the revolution: the academy. And in doing so they would create entire new fields of study with loose evidentiary standards, and effectively non-existent tools of internal inquiry.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
Sunday, April 5, 2015
The Real Rape Culture on Campus
The gray lady, she shall never be the same.
She's been violated. Will she survive her victimization? And if so, will she survive intact? Only time will tell.
But what of her victimization? Well, it just so happens that there really is such a thing as a rape culture. But the real rape culture is that of social justice ideologies that exist to force their ideas into the minds of as many people as it can, to colonize as many institutions with its toxicity as it can.
It's not a sexual rape. It's not a rape of the body. It's a rape of the mind, and make no mistake, journalism has been raped.
For evidence of that, one needs look no further than the vile hoax perpetrated by Sabrina Rubin Erdley, whose story entitled "A Rape on Campus" was published by Rolling Stone. The story sparked a firestorm on university campuses across the world. It was also completely false.
Before other outlets began to do the pesky work of actually fact-checking Erdley's article, Erdley spent some time as a media darling. She was treated to slathering praise on such media outlets as MSNBC, wherein she was toasted for helping to crack the case on the "rape epidemic" on American university campuses.
Thankfully, this didn't last.
The story slowly unravelled until today, when the last thread was pulled. After the New York Times published a damning account of Erdley's shoddy journalistic work, Rolling Stone finally retracted her article in full.
But it turns out that there was more to the story than simply Erdley reporting a story she had been told. Rather, Erdley spent months going from campus to campus, "shopping" for the most sensational rape story she could find. Erdley had been to Harvard, Yale and Penn State (yes, that Penn State) before she finally found "Jackie," who claimed she'd been brutally gang raped at a fraternity party.
The story had literally everything Erdley was looking for, including convenient rape villains.
Even now, in the wake of the story's proven falsity, there are signs that the ideological violation of journalism may be harder to shake than it should be. Far, far harder to shake.
In Politico, UVA student Julia Horowitz offers her personal explanation for why the story got so much traction at UVA. The following excerpts offer a stunning revelation: Horowitz has learned nothing.
"The University of Virginia — like most American universities — has a problem with rape. Current estimates, cited earlier this year by Vice President Joe Biden, hold that one in five women will be sexually assaulted while in college. That means that in my 200-person politics lecture, roughly a full row will be filled with survivors. In my 20-person major seminar, there are at least two. That is not a calculus I should have to work out in the margins of my Marx-Engels reader."
"We were frustrated by the repeated use of the 'Rugby Road' song, which appeared to make fun of the rape culture on campus but which most students, in fact, had never heard."
"... from where I sit in Charlottesville, to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake."
"Yes, the story was sensational. But even the most sensational story, it seems, can contain frightening elements of truth."
Clearly, Horowitz continues to staunchly believe that there is a "rape culture" on campus. She invokes the "1 in 5" canard, despite the study on which it's based having been thoroughly discredited. And she actually attempts to sublimate a disdain for fact-checking that she and Erdley share in common, and was in fact the very reason for this entire debacle in the first place.
Hopefully, someone at UVA is making Horowitz an appointment with a dunce cap. Perhaps she'd manage to learn something from that, even if she has learned nothing from the ignominious ending of Erdley's journalistic career.
And it is over, make no mistake about this. It's over as a reporter, and it had damn well better be over as a journalism instructor.
And in a terrifying portent for the future of journalism, it just so happens that Erdley has taught journalism at the University of Pennsylvania, and at Temple University.
Sabrina Rubin Erdley wrote a story based on a false account of gang rape. Rolling Stone published it. A group of young men were terrorized out of their fraternal home by a mob of psychos similarly-indocrinated into social justice ideologies as was Erdley, as was Horowitz. And from the looks of it, the next generation of journalists may be ready to rush out and repeat the injustice all over again with the same disdain for fact checking.
How could they not? Apparently they were taught by Erdley.
And when they do this, large swaths of the journalistic landscape will accept it unquestionably. Because of the narrative. Because of the agenda. Increasingly in journalism it's becoming the narrative, the agenda, that matters.
It's been an institutional rape of terrifying proportions, with horrifying results. Will the gray lady survive this violation? Only time will tell.
She's been violated. Will she survive her victimization? And if so, will she survive intact? Only time will tell.
But what of her victimization? Well, it just so happens that there really is such a thing as a rape culture. But the real rape culture is that of social justice ideologies that exist to force their ideas into the minds of as many people as it can, to colonize as many institutions with its toxicity as it can.
It's not a sexual rape. It's not a rape of the body. It's a rape of the mind, and make no mistake, journalism has been raped.
For evidence of that, one needs look no further than the vile hoax perpetrated by Sabrina Rubin Erdley, whose story entitled "A Rape on Campus" was published by Rolling Stone. The story sparked a firestorm on university campuses across the world. It was also completely false.
Before other outlets began to do the pesky work of actually fact-checking Erdley's article, Erdley spent some time as a media darling. She was treated to slathering praise on such media outlets as MSNBC, wherein she was toasted for helping to crack the case on the "rape epidemic" on American university campuses.
Thankfully, this didn't last.
The story slowly unravelled until today, when the last thread was pulled. After the New York Times published a damning account of Erdley's shoddy journalistic work, Rolling Stone finally retracted her article in full.
But it turns out that there was more to the story than simply Erdley reporting a story she had been told. Rather, Erdley spent months going from campus to campus, "shopping" for the most sensational rape story she could find. Erdley had been to Harvard, Yale and Penn State (yes, that Penn State) before she finally found "Jackie," who claimed she'd been brutally gang raped at a fraternity party.
The story had literally everything Erdley was looking for, including convenient rape villains.
Even now, in the wake of the story's proven falsity, there are signs that the ideological violation of journalism may be harder to shake than it should be. Far, far harder to shake.
In Politico, UVA student Julia Horowitz offers her personal explanation for why the story got so much traction at UVA. The following excerpts offer a stunning revelation: Horowitz has learned nothing.
"The University of Virginia — like most American universities — has a problem with rape. Current estimates, cited earlier this year by Vice President Joe Biden, hold that one in five women will be sexually assaulted while in college. That means that in my 200-person politics lecture, roughly a full row will be filled with survivors. In my 20-person major seminar, there are at least two. That is not a calculus I should have to work out in the margins of my Marx-Engels reader."
"We were frustrated by the repeated use of the 'Rugby Road' song, which appeared to make fun of the rape culture on campus but which most students, in fact, had never heard."
"... from where I sit in Charlottesville, to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake."
"Yes, the story was sensational. But even the most sensational story, it seems, can contain frightening elements of truth."
Clearly, Horowitz continues to staunchly believe that there is a "rape culture" on campus. She invokes the "1 in 5" canard, despite the study on which it's based having been thoroughly discredited. And she actually attempts to sublimate a disdain for fact-checking that she and Erdley share in common, and was in fact the very reason for this entire debacle in the first place.
Hopefully, someone at UVA is making Horowitz an appointment with a dunce cap. Perhaps she'd manage to learn something from that, even if she has learned nothing from the ignominious ending of Erdley's journalistic career.
And it is over, make no mistake about this. It's over as a reporter, and it had damn well better be over as a journalism instructor.
And in a terrifying portent for the future of journalism, it just so happens that Erdley has taught journalism at the University of Pennsylvania, and at Temple University.
Sabrina Rubin Erdley wrote a story based on a false account of gang rape. Rolling Stone published it. A group of young men were terrorized out of their fraternal home by a mob of psychos similarly-indocrinated into social justice ideologies as was Erdley, as was Horowitz. And from the looks of it, the next generation of journalists may be ready to rush out and repeat the injustice all over again with the same disdain for fact checking.
How could they not? Apparently they were taught by Erdley.
And when they do this, large swaths of the journalistic landscape will accept it unquestionably. Because of the narrative. Because of the agenda. Increasingly in journalism it's becoming the narrative, the agenda, that matters.
It's been an institutional rape of terrifying proportions, with horrifying results. Will the gray lady survive this violation? Only time will tell.
Sunday, March 22, 2015
After God Made Azealia Banks, He Broke the Mold... No One Needs Any More of That
Previously, I wrote about rapper Azealia Banks and about how she spews social justice rhetoric while failing to understand it or apply it to herself.
In an eye-opening interview with Playboy Magazine (good gawd, have they ever dropped their standards) Banks confirmed that, yes, she really is virulently racist.
But more than that, Banks confirmed another already-known-fact: that she's a blathering moron. Her comments on religion are as incoherent as they come:
"I don’t understand how someone could be an atheist. Think about God as software, right? If you were to look at God’s face, your head would explode. Because your head is a calculator, and the amount of information that would be embedded in his face would fit only on a Google-size data center. Your head cannot handle that much information. Stop looking for God."
It's almost as if someone from the mighty Google paid her to tell Playboy magazine that Google is God. Which shows what she knows. Anyone who has seen Airheads knows that Lemmy is God.
Banks isn't making many friends these days. Other rappers. White people. Homosexuals. Christians. Atheists. Middle America. None of them are people she's coaxing into her dwindling fandom.
I've listened to enough of her music to conclude one thing: she's seemingly got just one gift, and it's not music. Rather, that one gift is alienating absolutely everyone. She's finally alienated enough people that the only way she can get mainstream press coverage is to show off her birthday suit in Playboy. And apparently can't even do that without humiliating herself during the interview.
In the words of other, better musicians (most of whose catalog, oddly enough, I don't really care for): you did it to yourself.
In an eye-opening interview with Playboy Magazine (good gawd, have they ever dropped their standards) Banks confirmed that, yes, she really is virulently racist.
But more than that, Banks confirmed another already-known-fact: that she's a blathering moron. Her comments on religion are as incoherent as they come:
"I don’t understand how someone could be an atheist. Think about God as software, right? If you were to look at God’s face, your head would explode. Because your head is a calculator, and the amount of information that would be embedded in his face would fit only on a Google-size data center. Your head cannot handle that much information. Stop looking for God."
It's almost as if someone from the mighty Google paid her to tell Playboy magazine that Google is God. Which shows what she knows. Anyone who has seen Airheads knows that Lemmy is God.
Banks isn't making many friends these days. Other rappers. White people. Homosexuals. Christians. Atheists. Middle America. None of them are people she's coaxing into her dwindling fandom.
I've listened to enough of her music to conclude one thing: she's seemingly got just one gift, and it's not music. Rather, that one gift is alienating absolutely everyone. She's finally alienated enough people that the only way she can get mainstream press coverage is to show off her birthday suit in Playboy. And apparently can't even do that without humiliating herself during the interview.
In the words of other, better musicians (most of whose catalog, oddly enough, I don't really care for): you did it to yourself.
Friday, March 20, 2015
Actually, It's About Ethics in Villainous Internal Monologues
So, did Marvel Comics take a cheap shot at #Gamergate?
This appears in the most recent issue of Loki: Agent of Asgard.
Many #Gamergate supporters are not impressed. They feel as if Marvel Comics has taken a shot at them to *ahem* avenge criticism they've faced over the new Thor.
Speaking for myself, I don't buy it.
Perhaps if this quip had come from a character such as Tony Stark that would be one thing. But the quip comes from Loki. Not only a villain, but the single most treacherous and deceitful villain in all of Marvel Comics. A character who, as he is literally the God of Mischief, would likely look at all the chaos and discord social justice warriors have sewn in the world and approve of it.
Taking character motivations into account, even if writer Al Ewing intended to take a shot at #Gamergate, that's not the message that realistically comes through.
As for female Thor: as I understand it, the objection many comic books fans have raised have less to do with the actual change, and more to do with the contrived way in which it was done.
Even then, everyone needs to relax. The idea of Thor as a woman has an interesting novelty. For a time that will drive sales, then when the novelty is gone Marvel will change things back.
Remember, this is the company that couldn't keep 90-year-old May Parker dead (bless her fictional soul).
This appears in the most recent issue of Loki: Agent of Asgard.
Speaking for myself, I don't buy it.
Perhaps if this quip had come from a character such as Tony Stark that would be one thing. But the quip comes from Loki. Not only a villain, but the single most treacherous and deceitful villain in all of Marvel Comics. A character who, as he is literally the God of Mischief, would likely look at all the chaos and discord social justice warriors have sewn in the world and approve of it.
Taking character motivations into account, even if writer Al Ewing intended to take a shot at #Gamergate, that's not the message that realistically comes through.
As for female Thor: as I understand it, the objection many comic books fans have raised have less to do with the actual change, and more to do with the contrived way in which it was done.
Even then, everyone needs to relax. The idea of Thor as a woman has an interesting novelty. For a time that will drive sales, then when the novelty is gone Marvel will change things back.
Remember, this is the company that couldn't keep 90-year-old May Parker dead (bless her fictional soul).
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
How Does Canada's Budgeting Process Undermine Parliamentary Democracy?
If you weren't aware of it before, in reading Brent Rathgeber's Irresponsible Government you may be stunned to learn that what could quite accurately be described as Canada's "real" federal budget is essentially self-approving.
At first glance that doesn't sound correct. After all, the federal government presents a federal budget each year. In years past the late former Finance Minister Jim Flaherty would go out and buy a new pair of shoes. There would be a short debate, a few days of acrimony from opposition leaders, then the budget would be passed.
Then the media loses interest and goes home.
And why wouldn't they? What's left to see?
For the media, not much at all. For any elected MPs who sit on a parliamentary committee overseeing a specific department, there's lots left to see: the tabling of the estimates.
If you've never heard of this you're unfortunately not alone. That so many Canadians haven't heard of this is nothing less than a cataclysmic failure of the media and other educational institutions that we count on to keep us informed.
Most simply put, estimates are each department's spending plans for the next year, laid out on a line-by-line basis. MPs have a very brief time to examine them, then 21 supply days in the house to debate them and propose a maximum of 14 amendments to the estimates.
In order to be formally adopted, however, the estimates merely have to be voted upon by the committee in question, and the adoption of that estimate reported to Parliament. But here's where the entire process becomes largely irrelevant: if the committee doesn't report adoption of the estimate back to Parliament by the deadline, the committee is deemed to have reported and the estimate is adopted.
If it sounds like the budget presented in Parliament is largely for show, there's a reason for that.
If the media really thinks the federal budget is the most significant portion of the process they could be forgiven for being fooled. After all, there is no sequestration period prior to the tabling of the estimates during which the media may examine the estimates, then later report to the public on the plans detailed therein.
It's been this way largely since 1971: Canada, a Parliamentary democracy under the principle of responsible government, in which the executive is supposed to be accountable to the legislature, spends its taxpayer dollars in a manner not nearly as dissimilar from executive-centric France as we may have preferred to think.
Compounding the problem is that the vast majority of Parliamentarians lack the requisite skills to glean the necessary information out of these documents, and many of them lack even the motivation. So when it comes to how government spends taxpayer dollars, Parliament is effectively asleep at the switch.
So how is this problem, which Parliament doesn't even seem to recognize that it has, solved?
Well, perhaps the simplest way to solve it is not to table the estimates merely for members of each committee, but instead table them for the general public. Then, concerned citizens can contact their MP -- hoping that they've taken care to elect a good one -- to draw attention to their concerns.
If the public is engaged, Parliament will have no choice but to be similarly engaged. It may slow down the process of government spending taxpayer dollars, but do we really want a government that's in a hurry to spend our money?
Sunday, March 15, 2015
About #Gamergate, Ben Kuchera,and Gatekeeping
If Electronic Arts executives have any stones whatsoever, Polygon opinion editor has fouled up epically.
In fact, it should wind up being one of the most epic foulings up in any genre of journalism in journalism history.
Just what did Kuchera do?
Well, EA's director of digital communications, Chris Mancil, wrote a blogpost praising Breitbart UK writer Milo Yiannopolous. In passing he mentioned that Kuchera had some worthy ideas on how Twitter could better handle harassment on its site.
For this, Kurchera freaked out. He tweeted EA demanding that someone at the company intervene with Mancil to remove a link to a column Kuchera published at Polygon.
From this we can glean the full extent of Kuchera's irrationality: apparently one may not praise Kuchera if they happen to be praising Yiannopolous at the same time. And if they do, Kuchera will complain about it to that person's employer. That's how authoritarian, how stunningly eager to abuse his power, Kuchera has become.
Since his meltdown many other social justice warriors have joined Kuchera's chorus, going even further than Kuchera and demanding that Mancil be fired.
This brings us to a very interesting question: just how much power does Kuchera have? How much power do games journalists have?
At first glance,it might seem that they have a great deal of power. They're considered by many to be the gatekeepers of the industry. They have the power to decide which games get coverage, and which games don't.
So surely games developers and publishers must be sensitive to their whims and demands, right?
Well, perhaps not so much.
The relationship between the games industry and games developer is far more symbiotic than many might give it credit for. While games journalists may have the power of gatekeeper at their end of the relationship, games developers and publishers have the same power at their end.
They have the power to refuse to grant interviews, or even release review copies of games, to journalists with whom they are unwilling to interact.
Therein just how badly Kuchera has fouled up.
It takes no more than a cursory look at Mancil's blogpost to recognize that Kuchera is being hilariously unreasonable and, in fact, unprofessional. To give in to Kuchera's demands would only reward that unreasonability and unprofessionalism from someone who writes for a publication that EA actually pays for advertising.
As an online website with no paywall Polygon literally has no source of revenue other than their advertisers. Kuchera is literally making demands of the hand that feeds him even as he embeds his incisors into it.
There's really only one way EA can respond: they must pull their ads from Polygon, and refuse to restore them until Kuchera is no longer employed by the publication. Other games developers and publishers should also recognize Kuchera's behaviour for what it is and do the same.
In other words, if Polygon will not fire Ben Kuchera, the games industry must fire Polygon.
No more ad revenue, no more review copies of games, no more access of any kind. The games industry must exercise its gatekeeping power and cast Ben Kuchera outside its gates. If Polygon insists on remaining attached to Kuchera, it should share his predicament.
If this seems unreasonable, games developers and publishers must remember: Kuchera would enthusiastically do the same to them.
In fact, it should wind up being one of the most epic foulings up in any genre of journalism in journalism history.
Just what did Kuchera do?
Well, EA's director of digital communications, Chris Mancil, wrote a blogpost praising Breitbart UK writer Milo Yiannopolous. In passing he mentioned that Kuchera had some worthy ideas on how Twitter could better handle harassment on its site.
For this, Kurchera freaked out. He tweeted EA demanding that someone at the company intervene with Mancil to remove a link to a column Kuchera published at Polygon.
From this we can glean the full extent of Kuchera's irrationality: apparently one may not praise Kuchera if they happen to be praising Yiannopolous at the same time. And if they do, Kuchera will complain about it to that person's employer. That's how authoritarian, how stunningly eager to abuse his power, Kuchera has become.
Since his meltdown many other social justice warriors have joined Kuchera's chorus, going even further than Kuchera and demanding that Mancil be fired.
This brings us to a very interesting question: just how much power does Kuchera have? How much power do games journalists have?
At first glance,it might seem that they have a great deal of power. They're considered by many to be the gatekeepers of the industry. They have the power to decide which games get coverage, and which games don't.
So surely games developers and publishers must be sensitive to their whims and demands, right?
Well, perhaps not so much.
The relationship between the games industry and games developer is far more symbiotic than many might give it credit for. While games journalists may have the power of gatekeeper at their end of the relationship, games developers and publishers have the same power at their end.
They have the power to refuse to grant interviews, or even release review copies of games, to journalists with whom they are unwilling to interact.
Therein just how badly Kuchera has fouled up.
It takes no more than a cursory look at Mancil's blogpost to recognize that Kuchera is being hilariously unreasonable and, in fact, unprofessional. To give in to Kuchera's demands would only reward that unreasonability and unprofessionalism from someone who writes for a publication that EA actually pays for advertising.
As an online website with no paywall Polygon literally has no source of revenue other than their advertisers. Kuchera is literally making demands of the hand that feeds him even as he embeds his incisors into it.
There's really only one way EA can respond: they must pull their ads from Polygon, and refuse to restore them until Kuchera is no longer employed by the publication. Other games developers and publishers should also recognize Kuchera's behaviour for what it is and do the same.
In other words, if Polygon will not fire Ben Kuchera, the games industry must fire Polygon.
No more ad revenue, no more review copies of games, no more access of any kind. The games industry must exercise its gatekeeping power and cast Ben Kuchera outside its gates. If Polygon insists on remaining attached to Kuchera, it should share his predicament.
If this seems unreasonable, games developers and publishers must remember: Kuchera would enthusiastically do the same to them.
Saturday, March 14, 2015
The Twisting Road to Victory Over the Islamic State
Even as Canada continues to reel from its first casualty in the war against ISIS, one important question must loom in our participation in this war effort is meaningful at all:
How does Canada, and how do its allies, intend to win this war?
Obviously, we intend to win it. If we didn't intend to win it there was no sense in going. Likewise if we didn't have any sense of how we were going to win it.
But how can the war be won? The war requires an endgame. And as Canada looks ahead to discussions about the potential extension of the mission, this is a necessity that must be at the front of our minds.
So what does victory over the Islamic State look like?
In my opinion, it looks a lot like a Kurdish state.
More specifically, in my opinion it looks like Kurdistan.
There should be no question that the Kurdish people have been our strongest and fiercest dog in this fight. They turned the tide of battle from near-defeat to victory in Kobane, and are generally believed to be giving at least as good as they get.
But they're always in need. Of materiel. Of reinforcements. And to that end, we in the west are not giving the biggest, fiercest dog in the fight against ISIS as much support as they need.
In fact, at least one British woman has been arrested for planning to leave the UK to fight not for ISIS, but for the Partiya Karkaren Kurdistani -- the Kurdish People's Party. They maintain the YPG and YPJ, the people's defense forces. The YPJ, specifically, is comprised of women fighting ISIS forces.
So with that in mind you'd think the PKK isn't an obvious villain in the region. Until you keep in mind that the British government -- in fact, virtually all western governments -- consider the PKK to be a terrorist organization.
It's said that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. It's been said often enough that the phrase has nearly transcended cliche. Yet in the case of the PKK, it's an obvious truism.
Until the establishment of no-fly zones in northern Iraq following the first Persian Gulf War there was virtually no safe haven for the Kurdish people. Even after the establishment of those no-fly zones the region historically known as Kurdistan remains spread out across the states we currently know as Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria.
Turkey is a particular issue in regards to the PKK. Since 1984 the PKK has conducted regular raids into Turkey, where the Kurdish population lives oppressed.
Turkey, meanwhile, is a NATO country. Which would complicate matters greatly for the UK even if it's government was sympathetic toward the oppression Kurds suffer there. The UK -- and the whole of NATO -- could not help but recognize the PKK as a terrorist organization lest it alienate an ally.
Turkey has been touchy enough about the Armenian genocide, often threatening geopolitical consequences if its western allies dare condemn it. And that was something that happened 100 years ago. Just imagine how Turkey would react were the west to condemn something it's still doing today.
So of course the UK must continue to recognize the PKK as a terrorist entity. Nor can it even partake in a serious push to reincarnate Kurdistan as a country without risking a key Middle Eastern ally.
This situation is in no small part analogous to the conditions that fomented the Israeli insurgency following the 1939 white paper. Then it was a British government dependent on Arab Muftis who ultimately controlled the flow of Middle Eastern oil to the British war effort, and placating them by limiting Jewish immigration into modern-day Israel to only 10,000. Then it was Jews -- particularly in the post-war years -- defying British law to immigrate there illegally, all so the Israeli people could have a land in which to realize their right to self-determination.
Now it's Yazidi Britons defying British law in order to repel the hordes of the Islamic State so that the Kurdish people may have a land in which to realize their right to self-determination. Them, and non-Yazidi citizens such as Aussie Ashley Johnson, who have joined the fight and in some cases even given their lives. (In Johnson's case, it's Australian law he has defied.)
In that western governments haven't arrested western fighters upon their return is indication that we have recognized the legitimacy of the PKK, at least by half-measures. We're willing to tolerate western fighters doing battle alongside them, so long as they don't intend to join full-time.
Half-measures are not even half-sufficient. While the contributions of western nations to the fight against ISIS are undoubtedly valuable, we must recognize that they are not enough to win the war.
I firmly believe that, in the end, only the Kurds can win this war. There's clearly quite a diplomatic and legal minefield that must be navigated in order to maximize the west's ability to fully contribute to that victory, but no other path to victory appears immediately feasible.
In terms of issues on which Foreign Affairs Minister Rob Nicholson could attempt to insert some leadership internationally, there are worse places he could look. There are few signs of anyone else trying to blaze this vital diplomatic trail.
How does Canada, and how do its allies, intend to win this war?
Obviously, we intend to win it. If we didn't intend to win it there was no sense in going. Likewise if we didn't have any sense of how we were going to win it.
But how can the war be won? The war requires an endgame. And as Canada looks ahead to discussions about the potential extension of the mission, this is a necessity that must be at the front of our minds.
So what does victory over the Islamic State look like?
In my opinion, it looks a lot like a Kurdish state.
More specifically, in my opinion it looks like Kurdistan.
There should be no question that the Kurdish people have been our strongest and fiercest dog in this fight. They turned the tide of battle from near-defeat to victory in Kobane, and are generally believed to be giving at least as good as they get.
But they're always in need. Of materiel. Of reinforcements. And to that end, we in the west are not giving the biggest, fiercest dog in the fight against ISIS as much support as they need.
In fact, at least one British woman has been arrested for planning to leave the UK to fight not for ISIS, but for the Partiya Karkaren Kurdistani -- the Kurdish People's Party. They maintain the YPG and YPJ, the people's defense forces. The YPJ, specifically, is comprised of women fighting ISIS forces.
So with that in mind you'd think the PKK isn't an obvious villain in the region. Until you keep in mind that the British government -- in fact, virtually all western governments -- consider the PKK to be a terrorist organization.
It's said that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. It's been said often enough that the phrase has nearly transcended cliche. Yet in the case of the PKK, it's an obvious truism.
Until the establishment of no-fly zones in northern Iraq following the first Persian Gulf War there was virtually no safe haven for the Kurdish people. Even after the establishment of those no-fly zones the region historically known as Kurdistan remains spread out across the states we currently know as Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria.
Turkey is a particular issue in regards to the PKK. Since 1984 the PKK has conducted regular raids into Turkey, where the Kurdish population lives oppressed.
Turkey, meanwhile, is a NATO country. Which would complicate matters greatly for the UK even if it's government was sympathetic toward the oppression Kurds suffer there. The UK -- and the whole of NATO -- could not help but recognize the PKK as a terrorist organization lest it alienate an ally.
Turkey has been touchy enough about the Armenian genocide, often threatening geopolitical consequences if its western allies dare condemn it. And that was something that happened 100 years ago. Just imagine how Turkey would react were the west to condemn something it's still doing today.
So of course the UK must continue to recognize the PKK as a terrorist entity. Nor can it even partake in a serious push to reincarnate Kurdistan as a country without risking a key Middle Eastern ally.
This situation is in no small part analogous to the conditions that fomented the Israeli insurgency following the 1939 white paper. Then it was a British government dependent on Arab Muftis who ultimately controlled the flow of Middle Eastern oil to the British war effort, and placating them by limiting Jewish immigration into modern-day Israel to only 10,000. Then it was Jews -- particularly in the post-war years -- defying British law to immigrate there illegally, all so the Israeli people could have a land in which to realize their right to self-determination.
Now it's Yazidi Britons defying British law in order to repel the hordes of the Islamic State so that the Kurdish people may have a land in which to realize their right to self-determination. Them, and non-Yazidi citizens such as Aussie Ashley Johnson, who have joined the fight and in some cases even given their lives. (In Johnson's case, it's Australian law he has defied.)
In that western governments haven't arrested western fighters upon their return is indication that we have recognized the legitimacy of the PKK, at least by half-measures. We're willing to tolerate western fighters doing battle alongside them, so long as they don't intend to join full-time.
Half-measures are not even half-sufficient. While the contributions of western nations to the fight against ISIS are undoubtedly valuable, we must recognize that they are not enough to win the war.
I firmly believe that, in the end, only the Kurds can win this war. There's clearly quite a diplomatic and legal minefield that must be navigated in order to maximize the west's ability to fully contribute to that victory, but no other path to victory appears immediately feasible.
In terms of issues on which Foreign Affairs Minister Rob Nicholson could attempt to insert some leadership internationally, there are worse places he could look. There are few signs of anyone else trying to blaze this vital diplomatic trail.
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