For Justice, a River of Blood

Or at least a rivulet.

Abimael Guzman, imprisoned leader of the Shining Path guerrillas in Peru, famously said that for the revolution to succeed, "Peru would have to cross a river of blood". Much of the civilized world was horrified by this bloodthirsty statement, but was he onto something?

I would argue that the vast majority of social progress achieved in the past 150 rivers has unfortunately occurred only after rivers of blood were shed. Or at the very least trickles. To but it bluntly, people had to die. They had to get hurt and die.

It's sad that it has to be that way, but it seems that that is just the way it is. Powerful people do not give up stuff just because they wake up in a good mood one day or go to church, find God and start feeling guilty.

Here in the US, Blacks only gained their liberation in the context of a devastating Civil War in which 100,000's of Americans shed their blood and lost their lives. Haitians only got rid of slavery by rising up and killing every single one of 25,000 Frenchmen on the island. For Algeria to blast free of colonialism and to shock the French out of the colonial habit, 1 million people, including 25,000 Frenchmen, died.

Britain only chucked colonialism after British soldiers died in Malaysia, India, Palestine and other places. Does anyone think even a modicum of a Palestinian state would exist had Palestinians not taken up the gun? Without the armed struggle of the Iraqi guerrillas, US troops would have ovverun Syria and possibly Iran by now.

The Basque Country has the considerable autonomy it does today only after 800 Spaniards died in the ETA's armed struggle. Land reform was only instituted in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan after the war to ward off the threat of Communism from North Korea and China.

Apartheid is gone in South Africa and one man one vote democracy is in its place for the most part only due to an armed campaign by the ANC stretching over decades.

US workers only got rights after bloody strikes in which workers were killed by goon squads.

The social market that James Schipper praised in Europe in earlier comments is also the project of massive labor union mobilization in Europe.

I would also argue that it was created by devastating the European Right, first by killing 10 million of them (10 million dead fascists in WW2), next by making rightwing ideology toxic for many years after the war, and finally by revolutionary pressure from the Far Left before and after the war, which led the business sector to seek out a class compromise and a social contract, mostly to ward off revolution.

Even the Swedish model mostly came into play in the 1930's when the nation was wracked by violent, radical and revolutionary labor actions all up and down the land. This so rocked the business and ruling classes that the Swedish model was created as a lesser evil alternative to ward off revolution.

Most do not realize that Swedish society was not very liberal during the 1930's. People are misled by the fact of Sweden's neutrality in the war to think that Swedes themselves were neutral. Most of the middle classes and certainly the business classes were firm Nazi supporters. Furthermore, I understand that Swedish businesses continued to supply the Nazis well into the war.

In Costa Rica, radical pressure helped create Costa Rican social democracy, now deteriorating after Reagan ordered the Costa Ricans at gunpoint in the 1980's to get rid of it.

After WW2, Costa Rica outlawed the Communist Party, killed 6,000 Communists, instituted a social democracy to buy off social unrest and got rid of the military as a rather interesting way to top it off. Without revolutionary pressure in 1946 and the bodies of 6,000 Communists, Costa Rican social democracy may never have occurred.

Mexico today has some semblance of socialism and a land reform that enables to poor to own small plots and at least survive and eat if they cannot find work only because 20 million Mexicans died during Pancho Villa's revolution that put Mexican feudalism in the grave forever. Most do not realize that Mexico was actually a horrible and truly feudal society as late as 1910. Yet it was.

In the same way, in El Salvador now, one can at least farm a small plot, eat and survive, something often not possible before the Revolution started. For that meager reform, 70,000 people died and Salvadoran feudalism was crushed, possibly forever.

Lenin said power never gives up without a fight. And most social reforms in capitalism have come on the heels, tragically, of a river of blood. Or at least a small stream.

Without pressure from below by revolutionaries and radicals, it is uncertain how many of the progressive social contracts in place in the world would exist.

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Sexmaniacman Praises Sex Crimes

Sexmaniacman kept reading the news in the papers and on the Net, and could not believe his eyes anymore.

A US diplomat goes to Brazil and "molests" some "little girls" aged 14-17, which Sexmaniacman assumed is perfectly legal in Brazil. He comes back to the US and gets arrested on "pedophile" charges.

A gay man "molests" a 15-year-old gay "little boy" prostitute in the Philippines, comes home to the US, and is arrested and labeled "pedophile". His arrest is uncovered when he goes to work for a local politician and his career is shot.

A local US mayor with long hair and a beard like a ZZ Top musician "molests" a 15-year-old "little girl". He's sentenced to prison and reviled by a town who hopes he stays away for a long time.

Roman Polanski gives a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude long ago, "molests" her, flees the phony prosecution for the sanity of France, where he remains to this day.

Mark Foley does little more than talk dirty to some "little boy" pages aged 16-17 (some of whom apparently enjoyed it), never touches any of them even once, and is labeled "pedophile".

In the UK, a father takes pictures of his kids on a slide in the park and insane irate mothers order him to stop taking pictures, and when he refuses, they go to the cops. Obviously he's a child molester. Whoops. He's just a father taking pics of his own kids.

Sexmaniacman looks at all the "pedophiles" above and cheers them on, despite the hysteria, although he thinks Mark Foley was an idiot. Sexmaniacman figures that if these guys want to have sex with teenagers, that's their business. Sexmaniacman realizes it's illegal, and he hopes he won't do it himself, but he can't see it as a sin.

We're in the midst of madness. Child Molester Mass Hysteria, to be precise.

Sexmaniacman did lots of "molesting", and had lots of fun, back in the day. He was 18, 19 and 20, and the women and "little girls" never stopped coming. The females were all ages, but plenty were 14, 15, 16 and 17. He had sex with them all, and then he got up in the morning and did it some more. He's proud of it to this very day. Nowadays, he'd be a "pedophile" for doing that. Back in the day, it was just good times.

Sexmaniacman had some "pedophile" friends. One was 28 years old, had a 16-yr-old "little girl" girlfriend, and "molested" her regularly.

Sexmaniacman cheered his friend on for this dastardly "pedophile" episode.

Sexmaniacman had another friend, Killerdude. He was 29 years old, and they were over at Killerdude's Mom's house getting high as kites and laughing their asses off. Killerdude's little sister's 15-yr-old girlfriend walked out of the bedroom and out the front door, waving goodbye. Killerdude confided to Sexmaniacman that he had just had sex with that "little girl" the other day.

His sister had approached Killerdude, said her friend wanted to have sex with him, and would he do it? He obviously obliged. What else could he do but "molest" her, right?

Sexmaniacman approved, and cheered his "pedophile" friend on.

Sexmaniacman gave up on the young girls when he turned 21. After that, they needed to be 18. In dubious cases, he even asked for ID.

Sexmaniacman read a pdf on the Net about Costa Rica. There are all kinds of American men down there having all sorts of sex fun with girls and women. In Costa Rica, a girl is a woman at age 13.

So you could say that Costa Rica is just a nation of sex perverts and child molesting sick fucks, and the whole country needs to be arrested. The males all need prison or castration or preferably both, and the females all need lifetime therapy for "getting molested".

Sexmaniacman cheers on Costa Rica in their freedom of choice and thumbing their nose at Child Molester Mass Hysteria.

There are men down there, American men, the pdf said, older guys, and some are having sex with underage girls. It didn't really give ages, but the implication was they were 14-17 years old. The guys were also doing it with women. They were just screwing anything, like any real man does if he gets a chance. The Costa Ricans wouldn't do anything about it because they didn't think it was a crime.

Sexmaniacman cheered them on, all of them, the American men doing this, the Costa Ricans for shrugging their shoulders, and the girls for having a good time. He didn't think he would want to go to Costa Rica, or any foreign land, and do it himself, since teenage girls hardly interested him much anymore, but he didn't care if another guy did.

The idiots in the US government, egged on by the Child Molester Mass Hysteria sweeping the land, passed a weird and retarded law. Only women and pussy-whipped married men would ever pass such a bitchy law, but pass it did.

It bizarrely extended the purview of US law overseas! If an American man of any age goes to a foreign land and has sex with a girl or boy who is 17 years and 11 months old or younger, he goes down on US child molesting laws!

Although at first it would seem that US law should never extend to crimes committed in foreign lands, which are properly the purview of those foreign lands, Sexmaniacman realized that this happened for a reason.

Actual Western pedophiles were going to Philippines, Thailand and other places and having sex with really young kids, because it was more or less legal over there, and the locals didn't care. In order to put a stop to this, the US and Western Europe passed some laws to bust pedos when they went overseas to molest little kids.

Otherwise, Western pedos would run around the world seeking out 3rd World hellholes where no one cared about pedo stuff, and dollars shut up everyone. In order to put a stop to this, anti-pedo laws were passed in the West extending Western law to other nations.

Sexmaniacman thought long and hard about this, and finally decided that this was really weird and legally obtuse, but still unfortunately right and proper in the case of Westerners having sex with actual little kids, but not with teenagers.

One thing Sexmaniacman bemoaned with the coming of Child Molester Mass Hysteria was the extinction of statutory rape, a perfectly valid category, and its blurring with actual pedophilia with young kids. Child Molester Mass Hysteria came to America, and quickly, a 17-yr-old girl and a 9-yr-old girl were the same thing. They were both "children", and those of all ages who had sex fun with them were all sick evil pedo fucks.

Even teenage boys were going down on these sissy, bitchy pedo laws for the crime of proving their manliness by sticking it to their teenage girlfriends. It was as if Iraq or Iran had come to the USA. A 13-yr-old boy and his girl have some sex fun, videotape it on cell phones and pass it around. The boy, but not the girl, goes down on charges of distributing child pornography. Just as the feminazi bitches would have it.

The anti-pedo laws, the blurring of teenage sex fun with sick child sex, the idiot wind attacking virile teenage boys and young men - they were all part of the war American women and girls were waging on real American men and boys. The bitches' wormboy boyfriends, vaginized male allies and pussy-whipped husbands defending the chastity of teenage daughters - they were all behind this bullshit too.

Real American men and testosterone-charged American boys, the few that were left, should have stood up to this attack on manliness, but they were too scared of the pedo charge to speak up.

Millions of vaginized males and girlymen all over America stood up alongside their pants-wearing, hysterical girlfriends and wives, screeching defense of the fake honor of hymenless 17-yr-old girls all over our fair land.

There were some serious issues here. Sexmaniacman had to agree. What was to be done?

You couldn't exactly legalize sex between adults and teens all the way down to age 14 or so. Otherwise you would have guys 40 and 50 walking down the street in broad daylight with their 15-yr-old girlfriends in tow. Sexmaniacman decided that that would not do.

How's about we went back to the old days, Sexmaniacman suggested?

Two laws.

One called statutory rape, judiciously prosecuted against egregious cases of sex between men and girls and gay boys 14-17. Another, child molesting, for sex between adults and girls and boys under the age of 14.

Overseas, clearly there was a national interest in the West to stop pedos from heading to SE Asia to have sex with little kids. If the Thais won't stop it, doggone it, we will. Sexmaniacman nodded his approval.

But Sexmaniacman could see no national interest in busting a Western man of any age for messing with a teenage girl in some sweltering foreign land. That was beyond absurd.

Child porn. Sexmaniacman pondered the very phrase, and lately did so frequently, and he didn't even feel guilty. He loved to think about child porn, since it offered so many legal and philosophical quandaries.

Child porn! The phrase alone drove Americans to paroxysms of madness.

It actually posed a most difficult case, Sexmaniacman noted. To merely look at the stuff was a crime. Child porn was on the Net, and you could find it if you really, really tried. Could you stumble upon it? Highly dubious.

Sexmaniacman felt that in analogy, child porn seemed like the case of a book in a library. It sat on a special shelf called the Internet Shelf. The book was out there in plain view, but there were signs next to it saying DO NOT LOOK AT THIS BOOK! ILLEGAL! LOCAL ORDINANCE BLA BLA BLA! Now and again, some maniac thrillseeker would grab the book and sneak a glance at a few pages.

They would almost always be caught, and the police would haul them away. They would be bashed in the press and their communities as sickos for looking at a book in the library, and their careers and lives would be ruined.

Although this scenario seems absurd, Sexmaniacman realized that that's pretty much how it is with child porn. It's out there on the Net, but if you look at it, you're going to prison. It has to be just about one of the only things on Earth, Sexmaniacman noted, that, if you look at it, you go to prison. Think about it, real hard. Anything else illegal to steal a glance at? Anyone?

Sexmaniacman pondered the weird legal and philosophical arguments for why looking at something , say, child porn, or anything, really, should be illegal:


Child porn is the portrayal of a crime.

Therefore, when you look at it, you violate the kid's privacy. Ok, but the kid has no idea you looked at their pic. Sexmaniacman felt it was impossible to argue that by stealing a glance at their porn pic, you have psychically harmed this kid via telepathy.

Furthermore, Sexmaniacman pointed out that there are all sorts of videos out on the Net that depict crimes, sometimes homicides. You can even find them on this blog. Should those not be illegal too? After all, they portray a crime, no? Or should they be allowed because the victims are dead and can't be harmed anymore?


When you look at child porn, you create a market for it, and that makes producers abuse more kids.

Well, ok, Sexmaniacman nodded. But once again, the criminal appears to be the person who made the child porn, not some guy looking at a picture.


What about trafficking? Sexmaniacman agreed this was a tough one. Here things get more dicey. Now you are actually making money off kids getting molested. He noted that this is getting quite close to actual harm, but there are still some problems.

Sexmaniacman offered up the scenario of the stuff being traded back and forth by pedos for free. No profit is involved, but Sexmaniacman figured we can't really legalize it, can we? If we did, child porn trading sites would open up all over the web, and probably those who make the stuff would create more of it. Sexmaniacman felt that society had an interest in preventing that.

No matter that merely looking at the stuff constituted quite a bizarre sort of crime. Sexmaniacman offered up, "What if we acted logical and said it was legal to look at the stuff, but not to peddle it?" But then he noted that child porn sites would pop up all over the web, just for folks to "look at". Society clearly has an interest in preventing that.

As far as the Internet goes, Sexmaniacman felt that probably the present state of affairs is the best. Child porn is quite illegal, hence it is extremely difficult to find, although with enough effort and hours of searching by savvy Net users, it's surely out there. So child porn is rare and very hard to find. It's almost impossible to stumble upon it by accident. This is probably the way it ought to be, he agreed.

Sexmaniacman pointed out that if we allowed folks to look at it, websites would sprout up all over, and hundreds of thousands or millions of people would be looking at the stuff, just like they are feasting on all the other shock stuff out there. And that didn't seem right to Sexmaniacman.

Sexmaniacman bemoaned the fact that child porn, child molesting and statutory rape are subjects that are banned from polite conversation, and frankly all conversation, in today's Idiot America. The only talk allowed about these subjects is to rant about how we want to castrate the sick fucks who "molest". No problem ever got solved by not talking about it, or only talking stupid about it.

Just to piss people off and make them hate him more than they already did, Sexmaniacman deliberately brought up these subjects, especially in public, just to watch the freakouts and hard stares.

Despite the fact that hardly anyone was talking sensibly about this sick stuff but Sexmaniacman, he noted that these areas opened up a lot of interesting philosophical and legal dilemmas that do not have easy answers.

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An Examination of the Frog Extinction Epidemic

Although many factors are involved in this epidemic, one of the worst is the Chytrid fungus epidemic. It is being spread by Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), which causes chytridiomycosis. This fungal disease is devastating frog populations all over the world, but particularly in Australia, and North, Central and South America.

The devastation in Central America has been particularly acute, with many species simply vanishing from the face of the Earth. Bd is just now spreading here in the US, with serious devastation of Sierra Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog populations in the Sierra Nevada. However, some populations are apparently surviving the epidemic with some some survivors intact and thereupon rebuilding their populations.

A paper in Nature (Pounds 2006) made the case that the chytrid epidemic was being driven by global warming. They suggested that Bd had always been there but had only become pathogenic in the face of global warming.

A new paper (Lips 2008) in the journal PLoS Biology challenged that theory with some interesting data. I did not read the Pounds paper, but the Lips paper was quite convincing.

Their argument is rather simple. If Bd had always been there, it would not show a spread rate typical of a spreading disease epidemic. Instead, it would tend to erupt in all places at once.

Lips' team showed first of all that Bd had not always been in the environment, that is, it was not an endemic. It appears to have escaped from an Australian lab around 1970 and from there spread through Australia. From Australia, it made its way to the Americas.

We can see several places where it seems to have been introduced, and we can plot the years of introduction on a map. So Bd is acting like an invasive alien species.

Bd appears in Costa Rica in 1987 and then heads south to Panama. It seems to be following mountain ranges there too. The number of species lost in Costa Rica is very large.

Bd spread in South America following two introductions, one in 1977 and one in 1980. The 1980 Ecuadorian introduction heads both north and south along the Andes. The 1977 Venezuelan introduction heads south along the Andes. For some reason, Bd in South America is sticking to the Andes.

This is precisely how we would expect an epidemic following an introduction by an alien species to operate - a geographical spread from a point of introduction with a rate of spread in miles per year. Furthermore, the testing of many specimens in museums failed to find Bd in any of them prior to 1977. This suggests strongly that Bd is an invasive alien fungus that was not present in the environment before.

An alternative hypothesis was not tested but did occur to me: That even though Bd was an alien exotic invasive fungus spreading after accidental introduction, global warming had somehow made Bd much more lethal to frogs. I can't figure out a way to test that hypothesis, and I guess none of the researchers are considering it. The Pounds team is sticking to their guns on this one, but I think that they are wrong.

It's a good mind exercise to read academic science journal articles that test scientific hypotheses against competing hypotheses. It's hard to read that stuff, but if you can get through it somehow, personally I find these brain puzzles to be a lot of fun. If you see learning as virtually a sensual activity as I do, this kind of stuff is almost as fun as a vacation, sports, sex or any other other purely sensual activity.

Learning and thinking is actually a blast, to me anyway. Try it sometime!

References

Lips, Karen R., Diffendorfer, Jay, Mendelson III, Joseph R., Sears, Michael W. 2008. Riding the Wave: Reconciling the Roles of Disease and Climate Change in Amphibian Declines. PLoS Biology 6:3.

Pounds JA, Bustamante MR, Coloma LA, Consuegra JA, Fogden MPL, et al. 2006. Widespread amphibian extinctions from epidemic disease driven by global warming. Nature 39: 161–167.

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