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Thursday 27 October 2011

Election Day down south

Despite being a Citizen I wont be able to vote, stuck at Campus here in Belfast all week. Even with that said I do not envy the Conscience voters down south, what a miserable crop of candidates we have. From a Moral standpoint none of the candidates stand up, from a political expedience standpoint, all of them are compromises in the worst sense of the word for damn near everyone, and from a purely superficial standpoint well...

Lets just say, at this point in time, the best we can all hope for is a mediocre president who won't be a total failure. None of these people have 'real' Leadership qualities, most of their promises are hollow, plithy and really really REALLY don't have anything to do with the mire the Irish State is stuck in. The worst thing that can come from this is an embarrassment of a president who runs his/her mouth and ruins the prestige of the office (heh, like there was much left since the start of the race, no real fault to McAleese although I am not fond of her, Ireland has somehow become even MORE of a no-name in international politics since the crash).

I really hate to be a pessimist, it is unhealthy for me, for anyone. But there is literally nothing I can see that offers me anything resembling a light of hope for this country and nothing short of a miracle worker can save Irish politics from itself. And the same miracle worker would need to instil badly needed principles in the Irish people themselves for it to have any lasting effects.

That is not even touching upon the referenda that may or may not give the Oireachtas Inquisitorial powers depending on how votes go. Who knows? Maybe they'll decide the people voted 'wrong' if they don't get a result they want.

Happy Presidential election 2011 everyone. God Help us all.

Monday 17 October 2011

State of the Republic: The Race for the Aras

Well, no two ways about it, welcome to the all Irish make-a-damn-fool-of-yourself-a-thon. I can safely say none of the candidates rub me the right way. And even with the very limited powers of the Presidency, I still don't want any of these people representing my Country as its head, regardless of how popular. Well, lets have an overview of the candidates:

David Norris, Independent:
I am no friend of Norris, he is easily the most socially liberal of the entire lot, and thats saying something. While I despise republican politics for its focus on smear campaigns and scandal hunts, I am glad his entire campaign imploded over the legal advice issue. I honestly don't expect him to win and I am glad for it.

Mary Davis, Independent:
"inclusion, empowerment and respect" Well hot damn, that sure tells us alot about your intricate oscio-political views doesn't it? Not to diminish her work with the disadvanataged, but she is not political leader, she is at best a social organizer a leader in 'change'. Basically an Obama Wannabe, only more intelligent and MAYBE a little less ego-centric. Although you wouldn't know that from her campaign site.

Sean Gallagher, Independent:
I will admit, I am not familiar with this business man. How ever his catch phrase of "I believe three things are vital for our country: self-belief, self-confidence and self-determination." is something that appeals to me on the face but I know he doesn't mean it the way I'd like it to mean. Another proponent for the ever vague 'Inclusiveness' platform that really REALLY offers us nothing for Ireland's current predicament. I'll keep an eye on him and see where he goes.

Michael D. HIggins, Labour:
I am tempted to write this fellow off from the get go, but you never know these days. He's currently a Senator. He promises to be a neutral president, (What, like the past two we have? I am calling Bull. Wolf in sheep's clothing), and not be a handmaiden of the governemnt. Which he'll conveniently forget if Labour ever gets a majority I'd wager.

Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein:
I must admit, I was REALLY surprised how well he is being taken down south. He wouldn't be the candidate I would put forward if I ran Sinn Fein, (and not for the reason you might suppose. Martin McGuinness is a famously bad speaker), I cant say much about his policies, but knowing sinn fein they'd at least keep up with the tradition of speaking gaelige as the traditional language of government. Hardly important in comparison to other nation threatening issues, but still a small mercy.

Gay Mitchell, Fine Gael:
Who? Yeah I don't think much about this guy.

Well thats the line up of prospective hopefuls. Although I won't hold my breath. This is the same nation who voted Bono as one of the top ten greatest Irishmen ever lived instead of small, insignificent people who contributed little to world cultural heritege like Yeats or something, so I would not hold my breath for them to pick any decent president to save their lives.

Now if you'll excuse me I have a few headache tablets to take.

Thursday 13 October 2011

Blogger tales

You can find some weird things in the Statistics section of one's blog, and when bored I often check on it to see what shenanigens has occured. No I am not ego-centric, why do you ask?

I kid of course, but it does lead to amusement.

Sometimes I find that most of my readers that week have dwell in Iran, other times I find myself being argued over on the Politics.ie board between feaces flinging wannabe political columnists. Truely the Internet is a strange place and i'd like to take an off-topic post exploring some of the more strange and wonderful places the statistics has lead me to:

1) A German Imageboard.
Don't know what imageboards are? No? Well, they are basically forum-like sites where one creates a thread with an image on the first post, and people respond, often with images, they are usually humorous or pornographic in nature, they are several famous ones on the internet, and almost all of them will give you Cancer. Trust me, i've been there. They're also commonly referred to as the gateway to internet hell and the name is deserved. (real internet hell is something much harder to get to and NOBODY goes there and comes back from it mentally unscathed. Those who know what I'm talking about can relate. Lets just say those black screens with green letters you see hackers in movies tap into to get under the radar of the CIA? That's real.) Anyway I found this strange purely out of novelty that a bunch of Germans on an imageboard had posted a link to this blog in one of their topics.

I cannot stress the strangeness of finding a link to one's blog in the same image thread that features various images of living dolls from some Japanese Anime doing silly things. And everything is written in a language you can't understand to boot.

2) A fascistic Polish Imageboard.
Same deal as above only more politically orientated, also Polish. Never did find which threads I was being linked to on these boards, but almost all of them that I did see dealt with History, militarism and politics. So its easy to reason some monarchist on those boards linked to one of my articles or something. I'm no fascist myself but I am flattered some people of a third-way persuasion had deigned to give my blog a once over. It makes a delightful change from rabid communists lamblasting me as a living anachronism. (Several of my readers have seen my thread on the internet game Nationstates where I went fishing for fellow monarchists, and have ended up taking part in the game itself with imaginary nations, and can share my pain with the over-presence of leftists there)

3) A Korean culinary forum
I have no words. There's just... what?

4) Gothise, risingtaste and other fashion or alternative fashion related sites and social networks.
I must have a few readers with considerably different dress sense then myself due to the amount of constant traffic I seem to be getting from these kinds of sites. Good to know I have such broad appeal, what with me being a Absolutist Nationalist Monarchist with just a tad bit of Papism on the side.

I joke of course. Its good to know I can tap into such a broad spectrum of people. Its just kind of surprising.

4) Multiple facebook and Deviantart comment threads I can never seem to find.
Seriously, there must be one hell of a debate over this blog on some facebook topic I cant get into due to facebook's back tracking system. There was a two month period where I got a metric tonne of traffic from the site. Hardly the strangest nor most amusing source of traffic, but one of the most mysterious.

5) Several Feminist blogs and forums.
Its good to know I can inspire rabid hatred in these sexists by my mere existence. Even though I have never actually made a post addressing feminism yet.

6) Numerous Monarchist links from various countries.
Check out Promonarchii sometime, they do a good coverage as a news source for most European Monarchies and Monarchy in general, just make sure google translate is on. That goes for the rest of my fellow Monarchosphere bloggers. Keep up the good fight!

7) A Neo-Druid forum.
Yeah they kinda sorta just linked to my blog out of the blue. I couldn't understand half of what was being said in the thread itself. And they were typing in English too so that was saying something.

8) A Russian porn site.
Yeah. I was completely unprepared for this. Sometimes its better not to click a link with a questionable name in your traffic sources. Who knew?

9) Software and Hardware enthusiasts
Apparently alot of people who like to tinker around with machinery and computers are very interested in Monarchism or something.

10) Equestriadaily
Well, I can honestly say this was a surprise. For those who dont know My Little Pony got an animated reboot and its kinda taken popular culture by storm. Being something of a connesuir for popular media I of course have my own opinions on the show, the franchise's legacy and the ABSURD popularity it has garnered among adults as a result of veteran cartoon creator Lauren Faust creative vision.

Apparently a few of the guys who frequent Equestriadaily, something like a news source for My Little Pony fans, (don't ask, it takes too long to explain and even longer to accept as real) also visit my blog straight afterwards, as is often the case with traffic sources. They'll be checking something of their interests then rewrite their URL bar to visit my blog straight afterwords.

And my little pony is the LEAST embarrassing things I find out about the interest of anonymous readers of my blog. Seriously fellas, just use a new tab or something.


Well there's a top ten list of the wierdest traffic sources I've garnered over the past two months. Seriously this is really entertaining sometimes. Has anyone else had some funny stories to share about their traffic sources?

Tuesday 4 October 2011

Future monarchy, population control and a place in the sun

((Dont worry I'll comment on the presidential elections soon enough))

As I had pointed out in my previous blog post concerning intellectual posturing regarding the unknowable positions of alien lifeforms with regards to how humanity governs itself, I gave a few hints of some deeper thought I have given to the changes that inevitably come should humanity become an extra-planetary civilization and how the arrogant presumptions of many liberal minded academics and even entertainers in the realm of science fiction are woefully underappreciative of how the human mind works. Specifically with regards to government. Allow me to explain.

If you read my last post I point out how aliens will be expected (if the work in question spins an overall 'positive' view of the future, and provided they aren't being used as a heavy handed allegory to human movements or attitudes as they often almost always are) to have formed some kind of grand space federation of planets in one form or another, and it will mostly be some sort of democratic process analogous to the UN here on Earth. Inherent in this, is that whatever form human government will take, it will be more or less 'united' (but not always secularized to the point of human cultures ceasing to exist in terms of variety) and democratic to certain extents. If it is ever posited as anything opposed to democratic 'freedom' it will more often then not be portrayed as dystopic. "Democracy is the future, we know this because we told you so, and if it isn't, everyone is nazis, yay democracy!" The more nuanced works of course will try to avoid stale tropes and give more depths to all races involved but the common perceptions still reign.

The problem with this is no one really wants to admit that the only attempt at unitary governments of the world have become laughable failures at best and encrouching dictatorships at worst, (compare the EU, USA and the UN of today to the implications of their founding ideals to understand what I mean, criticising those alone would take a week), and that at levels higher then national levels, power plays and political football become so far removed from the People that the notion such organizations are inherently democratic is a laughable fallacy. So then, how in the name of all that is holy would an extra stellar Human Empire be democratic? As soon as humanity establishes its first colony on Mars or the moon or whichever rock we fancy sticking a flag onto we will be facing taxation and governing and policing problems that will make the age of exploration seem like a golden age of fast communication, and the likeihood of colony destruction or rebellion becomes astronomically higher the less we get things under control. The solution is of course to establish a local government loyal to the Federal government (can't use the word Imperial, that'd be too honest) and allow them democratic involvement in the big hippie space federation Humanity is forming, which still doesn't negate the fact that colony revolt is still likely once it becomes self sufficient, and that any peaceful acts of secession will be overruled by the majority of the federal government which of course will be doing so in the interests of humanity at large. Basically denying democracy in order to defend democracy. How democratic! Not to mention that any actual unitary world government would have the same democratic deficit problem of current supra-national states only cranked up to eleven. Democratic government will become an impossibility and a farce, we could call ourselves a democracy but we wouldn't be, any Imperial human government at levels above national will be de facto dictatorial in order to get anything done at all.

And it is this inevitability of democratic apathy and deficit that the future of Humanity will either be like its past and form some kind of Imperial monarchy, (dont ask me how, I honestly wouldnt know what form it would take) or a beuracratic dictatorship. Based on the service records of past versions of both forms of government, which do you think will be most likely in the long term to not slow to a cumbersome death? One thing is most certain, should humanity ever extend its reach beyond the shores of earth, the democratic farce will die.

Onto population control, for this is relevant on a likely incentive for expansion onto other worlds, the simple fact is the current liberal and secular ideals of population control and social formation are WOEFULLY under-suited both for the advancement of human exploration into space; as well as borderline stupidity in terms of raising the human population high enough in order to make such ambitions feasible. Again, allow me to explain. I do not believe in population control, by which I mean I do not believe in direct population control, the only real 'control' I recognise over the population's size is the four horsemen of disease, war, famine and death. These are what I call natural control over population size, none of them are desirable and when they occur they are nearly unavoidable by the majority of the populations affected. A such I hold an incredibly dim view of arguements for proponents of 'positive' or 'active' population control methods, primarily contraception, abortion and increasingly, euthanasia. As many of us in the west know, this has led to declining birthrates and 'population replacement' measures to bolster falling workforces or even just because of the now completely indefensible belief in europe that enforced multi-culturalism is healthy, and this is because the second portion of the demented social experiment by leftists has failed spectacularly. Leftists believe humanity's population needs to be controlled and lessened for x, y and z reasons, environment, resources, general asshatery, etc (I am being forgiving in that I am running this portion of the article ont he assumption that the majority of the proponents are genuinely deceived into thinking these are good arguments for the future of mankind), and then controlled to rise and fall depending on what the state needs and what it can handle. China is actually a poster boy for the most unashamed example of this mindset. The problem here in the west is that once the 'convenience' and 'contraceptive mentality' took hold of the majority or people and sex in the popular minset is about pleasure first and reproduction as an optional, expensive second, many people did not feel like having more children when the state finally wanted populations to increase, even with the carrot of incentives to reproduce more most European populations stubbornly refused to procreate to the desired level, this occurred in the nineties and we've all known the story since then. The values and mentalities populations relied on which maintained traditions and all sorts of things revolutionary types didn't like where largely destroyed or discredited and in so doing, could not enforce sufficient influence on popular mindsets to encourage procreation when it was convenient for the states. The liberals shot themselves in the foot. What this means is that the population cannot be subtly controlled by the state to rise and fall according to its whims and what this ultimately means is that the sheer manpower mankind as a species requires to make expansion across the stars neccessary or even feasible will be nothing short of impossible. How many times have you read a sci fi novel, watched a movie or played a game where mankind has formed a 'united government' and the population has increased to such a scale that the planet's landmasses are effectively giant cities? Did it never strike you as odd, when perusing these works that the implication being that the modern secular ideals prevail in those settings yet somehow mankind still became so overpopulated as to turn Africa into one huge New York metro line? How can that be, when the insurmountable contemporary evidence is that secularized populations engaging in population control actually fall dramatically?

Leaving aside that a world government formed prior to expansion beyond earth would ultimately hinder exploration efforts, because in case you haven't noticed, no one's really been keen on going farther then the moon despite the fact we are LITERALLY close to half a century from landing on the blasted rock. Half. A. Century. When the 'need' is outweighed by convenience mankind ultimately will choose what is convenient, or in less forgiving terms, we will won't be bothered to do something if others aren't bothered to do something. Europeans sailed west to search for a quick route to India because the silk road's position was inconvenient, America landed on the moon, because allowing the Russians to get there first would've been inconvenient (or worse), and now no one is really doing anything, because space exploration is inconvenient for the environment, or for world politics. For example, when the USSR fell, what did America do? did it continue moon landings? So long as convenience is favoured in the popular mindset over principles or needs advancement, real advancement of human society is farcical.

Getting to my main point on population control, overpopulation is killing our societies. And by that I mean the myth of overpopulation as it stands, as a planet we are NOT overpopulated, that is the most blatent of lies propagated in the popular consciousness. Countries are overpopulated individually certainly, Japan, for example has a REAL lebensraum problem, and Lord knows the large populations of China and India are going to lead to trouble, but as a world and as a species? No, we aren't overpopulated. However, say we did rid ourselves of the contraceptive mentality and reproduced to make up for lost time, sooner or later overpopulation WILL become a reality and a problem, in terms of living space alone if nothing else, and in actuality, in my opinion this will be a good thing. As mention prior, the convenience mentality is killing our God-given inquisitive drive to explore, so should all the world bicker and fuss over the environment and the ice caps and what have you, until humanity is on the brink of very real overpopulation, overpopulation will finally be used as the one real drive and push that will propel humanity to the stars and not the namby pamby liberal mentalities that encourage the idea that we will explore the stars 'in our own time' once we have terrestial concerns dealt with and not the tragically under utilised drive of wonderment, exploartion for exploration's sake, (AKA, the NASA mentality, no ideological pressure or politicising, going to space simply because in the long term, when you REALLY boil it all down, its just bloody awesome). Overpopulation will FORCE governments to do the only real thing they can to handle the overpopulation: Expand.

In the end ultimately, expansion is in my humble view the only truly moral solution to Humanity's population concerns. God willed us to be fruitful and multiply. Who here reading this article honestly thinks He intended us to disregard his command once our population got so large that there was not enough room for everyone in the world? Far more likely, when He made us stewards of His creation that once our population exploded, it is either in His will or more likely in His pleasure to allow, our species to expand to other worlds. Because why not? Earth of course will always be sacred to mankind, but that doesn't mean we cant live on Mars as well, as I had said previously, space is an ocean and other worlds are really just other lands. Of course our species' empire expanding beyond the solar system becomes laughably impossible until we find some legitimate workaround for Einstein's cage (Realtivity and faster then light travel), but I think the solar system alone is enough to keep us entertained for a few thousand years. Ultimately however, whatever excuse people have for not expanding and exploring, turns to ash in the face of the potential expansion gives us as a species.

But we need to sort out our resource problems!: There's plenty more resources in space

We have yet to fix global warming!: If we dont advance our technology to the point where we can leave the planet, we probably never will have the technology to fix global warming

But what about world hunger!?: Who says we cant turn the moon into one large farm colony?

Overpopulation!: Hurr durr...

This will probably be my last article on space exploration and monarchy when it pertains to the future of the human species (keep in mind what I have pointed out would still remain true even if world war III wipes out half the earth) but it should be noted that I am extremely pro-humanist (not exactly sure if that's the right term), as my opposition to antipathic movements such as nihilism and anti-natalism as well as more pressing troubles such as a secularization and population control informs my view of the future as well as the present. I may not be as eager as some of my more scientifically bent friends about the promises future tech will deliver us (actually on that matter I have gotten into numerous debates about transhumanism but that is a WHOLE other story), but I am very eager at the possibilities for the benefit of society. And as my views are quite honestly also influenced by my Religion, this has more often then not caught out and unnerved a few of my atheist friends when the discussion is brought up (the assumption that technological advancement and interest in space exploration is the purview of the irreligious never ceases to amuse me).

As I said my views can be summed up as 'A Cathedral on Mars', while it may not be time now for Humanity's expansion, one day it might very well be so, and I encourage ourselves as a species to seek out a place in the Sun.