Painting by Ahn Gyeon (안견/安堅), Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land (몽유도원도/夢遊桃源圖), 1447.

30.8.10

Viriathus

Viriathus is considered the first Portuguese national hero. 
He was the leader of the Celtiberian tribe of the Lusitani in their struggle against the invading Romans during the second half of the 2nd century BCE.
The prefix luso refers to Lusitania, the Roman province named after the vanquished people of Viriathus and mainly located in present-day Portugal.
The Portuguese are still know as lusitanos. The epic poem Os Lusíadas ("The Lusiads"), by Camões, tells the story of the Portuguese nation.
Below is an excerpt from historian Theodor Mommsen's seminal work Roemische Geschichte, Viertes Buch: Die Revolution (translation by William Purdie Dickson, "The History of Rome, Book IV: The Revolution", available at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10704; the original text in German is available at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3063).
The dates are in A.U.C. or Ab Urbe condita: "from the foundation of the city" of Rome in 753 BCE.
"Lusitanian War
But more serious events occurred in 600. The Lusitanians, under the leadership of a chief called Punicus, invaded the Roman territory, defeated the two Roman governors who had united to oppose them, and slew agreat number of their troops. The Vettones (between the Tagus and the Upper Douro) were thereby induced tomake common cause with the Lusitanians; and these, thus reinforced, were enabled to extend their excursionsas far as the Mediterranean, and to pillage even the territory of the Bastulo-Phoenicians not far from the Roman capital New Carthage (Cartagena). The Romans at home took the matter seriously enough to resolveon sending a consul to Spain, a step which had not been taken since 559; and, in order to accelerate the despatch of aid, they even made the new consuls enter on office two months and a half before the legal time. For this reason the day for the consuls entering on office was shifted from the 15th of March to the 1st of January; and thus was established the beginning of the year, which we still make use of at the present day. But, before the consul Quintus Fulvius Nobilior with his army arrived, a very serious encounter took place onthe right bank of the Tagus between the praetor Lucius Mummius, governor of Further Spain, and the Lusitanians, now led after the fall of Punicus by his successor Caesarus (601). Fortune was at first favourable to the Romans; the Lusitanian army was broken and their camp was taken. But the Romans, partly already fatigued by their march and partly broken up in the disorder of the pursuit, were at length completely beatenby their already vanquished antagonists, and lost their own camp in addition to that of the enemy, as well as 9000 dead.

Celtiberian War
The flame of war now blazed up far and wide. The Lusitanians on the left bank of the Tagus, led by Caucaenus, threw themselves on the Celtici subject to the Romans (in Alentejo), and took away their town Conistorgis. The Lusitanians sent the standards taken from Mummius to the Celtiberians at once as anannouncement of victory and as a warning; and among these, too, there was no want of ferment. Two small Celtiberian tribes in the neighbourhood of the powerful Arevacae (about the sources of the Douro and Tagus), the Belli and the Titthi, had resolved to settle together in Segeda, one of their towns. While they were occupied in building the walls, the Romans ordered them to desist, because the Sempronian regulations prohibited the subject communities from founding towns at their own discretion; and they at the same time required the contribution of money and men which was due by treaty but for a considerable period had notbeen demanded. The Spaniards refused to obey either command, alleging that they were engaged merely inenlarging, not in founding, a city, and that the contribution had not been merely suspended, but remitted bythe Romans. Thereupon Nobilior appeared in Hither Spain with an army of nearly 30,000 men, including some Numidian horsemen and ten elephants. The walls of the new town of Segeda still stood unfinished: most of the inhabitants submitted. But the most resolute men fled with their wives and children to the powerful Arevacae, and summoned these to make common cause with them against the Romans. The Arevacae, emboldened by the victory of the Lusitanians over Mummius, consented, and chose Carus, one of the Segedan refugees, as their general. On the third day after his election the valiant leader had fallen, but the Roman armywas defeated and nearly 6000 Roman burgesses were slain; the 23rd day of August, the festival of the Volcanalia, was thenceforth held in sad remembrance by the Romans. The fall of their general, however, induced the Arevacae to retreat into their strongest town Numantia (Guarray, a Spanish league to the north of Soria on the Douro), whither Nobilior followed them. Under the walls of the town a second engagement tookplace, in which the Romans at first by means of their elephants drove the Spaniards back into the town; but while doing so they were thrown into confusion in consequence of one of the animals being wounded, and sustained a second defeat at the hands of the enemy again issuing from the walls. This and other misfortunes--such as the destruction of a corps of Roman cavalry despatched to call forth the contingents--imparted to the affairs of the Romans in the Hither province so unfavourable an aspect that the fortress of Ocilis, where the Romans had their chest and their stores, passed over to the enemy, and the Arevacae were in a position tothink, although without success, of dictating peace to the Romans. These disadvantages, however, were insome measure counterbalanced by the successes which Mummius achieved in the southern province. Weakened though his army was by the disaster which it had suffered, he yet succeeded with it in defeating the Lusitanians who had imprudently dispersed themselves on the right bank of the Tagus; and passing over to theleft bank, where the Lusitanians had overrun the whole Roman territory, and had even made a foray into Africa, he cleared the southern province of the enemy.

Marcellus
To the northern province in the following year (602) the senate sent considerable reinforcements and a new commander-in-chief in the place of the incapable Nobilior, the consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who had already, when praetor in 586, distinguished himself in Spain, and had since that time given proof of his talentsas a general in two consulships. His skilful leadership, and still more his clemency, speedily changed theposition of affairs: Ocilis at once surrendered to him; and even the Arevacae, confirmed by Marcellus in thehope that peace would be granted to them on payment of a moderate fine, concluded an armistice and sent envoys to Rome. Marcellus could thus proceed to the southern province, where the Vettones and Lusitanians had professed submission to the praetor Marcus Atilius so long as he remained within their bounds, but afterhis departure had immediately revolted afresh and chastised the allies of Rome. The arrival of the consul restored tranquillity, and, while he spent the winter in Corduba, hostilities were suspended throughout the peninsula. Meanwhile the question of peace with the Arevacae was discussed at Rome. It is a significant indication of the relations subsisting among the Spaniards themselves, that the emissaries of the Roman party subsisting among the Arevacae were the chief occasion of the rejection of the proposals of peace at Rome, by representing that, if the Romans were not willing to sacrifice the Spaniards friendly to their interests, they hadno alternative save either to send a consul with a corresponding army every year to the peninsula or to makean emphatic example now. In consequence of this, the ambassadors of the Arevacae were dismissed without a decisive answer, and it was resolved that the war should be prosecuted with vigour. Marcellus accordingly was asserted, from his unwillingness to leave to his successor, who was to be expected soon, the glory of terminating the war, or, as is perhaps more probable, from his believing like Gracchus that a humane treatment of the Spaniards was the first thing requisite for a lasting peace--the Roman general after holding asecret conference with the most influential men of the Arevacae concluded a treaty under the walls of Numantia, by which the Arevacae surrendered to the Romans at discretion, but were reinstated in their formerrights according to treaty on their undertaking to pay money and furnish hostages.

Lucullus
When the new commander-in-chief, the consul Lucius Lucullus, arrived at head-quarters, he found the war which he had come to conduct already terminated by a formally concluded peace, and his hopes of bringing home honour and more especially money from Spain were apparently frustrated. But there was a means of surmounting this difficulty. Lucullus of his own accord attacked the western neighbours of the Arevacae, theVaccaei, a Celtiberian nation still independent which was living on the best understanding with the Romans. The question of the Spaniards as to what fault they had committed was answered by a sudden attack on thetown of Cauca (Coca, eight Spanish leagues to the west of Segovia); and, while the terrified town believed that it had purchased a capitulation by heavy sacrifices of money, Roman troops marched in and enslaved or slaughtered the inhabitants without any pretext at all. After this heroic feat, which is said to have cost the livesof some 20,000 defenceless men, the army proceeded on its march. Far and wide the villages and townships were abandoned or, as in the case of the strong Intercatia and Pallantia (Palencia) the capital of the Vaccaei, closed their gates against the Roman army. Covetousness was caught in its own net; there was no community that would venture to conclude a capitulation with the perfidious commander, and the general flight of the inhabitants not only rendered booty scarce, but made it almost impossible for him to remain for any length oftime in these inhospitable regions. In front of Intercatia, Scipio Aemilianus, an esteemed military tribune, theson of the victor of Pydna and the adopted grandson of the victor of Zama, succeeded, by pledging his word ofhonour when that of the general no longer availed, in inducing the inhabitants to conclude an agreement byvirtue of which the Roman army departed on receiving a supply of cattle and clothing. But the siege of Pallantia had to be raised for want of provisions, and the Roman army in its retreat was pursued by the Vaccaei as far as the Douro. Lucullus thereupon proceeded to the southern province, where in the same yearthe praetor, Servius Sulpicius Galba, had allowed himself to be defeated by the Lusitanians. They spent thewinter not far from each other-- Lucullus in the territory of the Turdetani, Galba at Conistorgis-- And in thefollowing year (604) jointly attacked the Lusitanians. Lucullus gained some advantages over them near the straits of Gades. Galba performed a greater achievement, for he concluded a treaty with three Lusitanian tribes on the right bank of the Tagus and promised to transfer them to better settlements; whereupon the barbarians, who to the number of 7000 came to him for the sake of the expected lands, were separated into three divisions, disarmed, and partly carried off into slavery, partly massacred. War has hardly ever been wagedwith so much perfidy, cruelty, and avarice as by these two generals; who yet by means of their criminally acquired treasures escaped the one from condemnation, and the other even from impeachment. The veteran Cato in his eighty-fifth year, a few months before his death, attempted to bring Galba to account before the burgesses; but the weeping children of the general, and the gold which he had brought home with him, provedto the Roman people his innocence.

Variathus
It was not so much the inglorious successes which Lucullus and Galba had attained in Spain, as the outbreak of the fourth Macedonian and of the third Carthaginian war in 605, which induced the Romans again to leave Spanish affairs in the first instance to the ordinary governors. Accordingly the Lusitanians, exasperated ratherthan humbled by the perfidy of Galba, immediately overran afresh the rich territory of the Turdetani. The Roman governor Gaius Vetilius (607-8?) marched against them, and not only defeated them, but drove thewhole host towards a hill where it seemed lost irretrievably. The capitulation was virtually concluded, when Viriathus--a man of humble origin, who formerly, when a youth, had bravely defended his flock from wild beasts and robbers and was now in more serious conflicts a dreaded guerilla chief, and who was one of the few that had accidentally escaped from the perfidious onslaught of Galba--warned his countrymen against relying on the Roman word of honour, and promised them deliverance if they would follow him. His language and his example produced a deep effect: the army entrusted him with the supreme command. Viriathus gave orders tothe mass of his men to proceed in detached parties, by different routes, to the appointed rendezvous; hehimself formed the best mounted and most trustworthy into a corps of 1000 horse, with which he covered thedeparture of his men. The Romans, who wanted light cavalry, did not venture to disperse for the pursuit underthe eyes of the enemy's horsemen. After Viriathus and his band had for two whole days held in check theentire Roman army he suddenly disappeared during the night and hastened to the general rendezvous. The Roman general followed him, but fell into an adroitly-laid ambush, in which he lost the half of his army andwas himself captured and slain; with difficulty the rest of the troops escaped to the colony of Carteia on theStraits. In all haste 5000 men of the Spanish militia were despatched from the Ebro to reinforce the defeated Romans; but Viriathus destroyed the corps while still on its march, and commanded so absolutely the whole interior of Carpetania that the Romans did not even venture to seek him there. Viriathus, now recognized aslord and king of all the Lusitanians, knew how to combine the full dignity of his princely position with the homely habits of a shepherd. No badge distinguished him from the common soldier: he rose from the richly adorned marriage-table of his father-in-law, the prince Astolpa in Roman Spain, without having touched the golden plate and the sumptuous fare, lifted his bride on horseback, and rode back with her to his mountains. He never took more of the spoil than the share which he allotted to each of his comrades. The soldier recognized the general simply by his tall figure, by his striking sallies of wit, and above all by the fact that hesurpassed every one of his men in temperance as well as in toil, sleeping always in full armour and fighting infront of all in battle. It seemed as if in that thoroughly prosaic age one of the Homeric heroes had reappeared: the name of Viriathus resounded far and wide through Spain; and the brave nation conceived that in him it hadat length found the man who was destined to break the fetters of alien domination.

His Successors
Extraordinary successes in northern and in southern Spain marked the next years of his generalship. After destroying the vanguard of the praetor Gaius Plautius (608-9), Viriathus had the skill to lure him over to theright bank of the Tagus, and there to defeat him so emphatically that the Roman general went into winter quarters in the middle of summer--on which account he was afterwards charged before the people with havingdisgraced the Roman community, and was compelled to live in exile. In like manner the army of the governor-- apparently of the Hither province--Claudius Unimanus was destroyed, that of Gaius Negidius was vanquished, and the level country was pillaged far and wide. Trophies of victory, decorated with the insigniaof the Roman governors and the arms of the legions, were erected on the Spanish mountains; people at Rome heard with shame and consternation of the victories of the barbarian king. The conduct of the Spanish war was now committed to a trustworthy officer, the consul Quintus Fabius Maximus Aemilianus, the second son ofthe victor of Pydna (609). But the Romans no longer ventured to send the experienced veterans, who bad justreturned from Macedonia and Asia, forth anew tothe detested Spanish war; the two legions, which Maximus brought with him, were new levies and scarcely more to be trusted than the old utterly demoralized Spanish army. After the first conflicts had again issued favourably for the Lusitanians, the prudent general kept together his troops for the remainder of the year in the camp at Urso (Osuna, south-east from Seville) without accepting the enemy's offer of battle, and only took the field afresh in the following year (610), after histroops had by petty warfare become qualified for fighting; he was then enabled to maintain the superiority, and after successful feats of arms went into winter quarters at Corduba. But when the cowardly and incapable praetor Quinctius took the command in room of Maximus, the Romans again suffered defeat after defeat, and their general in the middle of summer shut himself up in Corduba, while the bands of Viriathus overran the southern province (611). His successor, Quintus Fabius Maximus Servilianus, the adopted brother of Maximus Aemilianus, sent to the peninsula with two fresh legions and ten elephants, endeavoured to penetrate into the Lusitanian country, but after a series of indecisive conflicts and an assault on the Roman camp, which was with difficulty repulsed, troops after the wont of Spanish insurrectionary armies suddenly melted away, he was obliged to return to Lusitania (612). Next year (613) Servilianus resumed the offensive, traversed the districts on the Baetis and Anas, and then advancing into Lusitania occupied a number of townships. A large number of the insurgents fell into his hands; the leaders--of whom there were about 500--were executed; those who had gone over from Roman territory to the enemy had their hands cut off; the remaining mass were sold into slavery. But on this occasion also the Spanish war proved true to its fickle and capricious character. After all these successes the Roman army was attacked by Viriathus while it was besieging Erisane, defeated, and driven to a rock where itwas wholly in the power of the enemy. Viriathus, however, was content, like the Samnite general formerly at the Caudine passes, to conclude a peace with Servilianus, in which the community of the Lusitanians was recognized as sovereign and Viriathus acknowledged as its king. The power of the Romans had not risen more than the national sense of honour had sunk; in the capital men were glad to be rid of the irksome war, and the senate and people ratified the treaty. But Quintus Servilius Caepio, the full brother of Servilianus and his successor in office, was far from satisfied with this complaisance; and the senate was weak enough at first to authorize the consul to undertake secret machinations against Viriathus, and then to view at least with indulgence the open breach of his pledged word for which there was no palliation. So Caepio invaded Lusitania, and traversed the land as far as the territories of the Vettones and Callaeci; Viriathus declined aconflict with the superior force, and by dexterous movements evaded his antagonist (614). But when in the ensuing year (615) Caepio renewed the attack, and in addition the army, which had in The meantime become available in the northern province, made its appearance under Marcus Popillius in Lusitania, Viriathus sued for peace on any terms. He was required to give up to the Romans all who had passed over to him from the Roman territory, amongst whom was his own father-in-law; he did so, and the Romans ordered them to be executed or to have their hands cut off. But this was not sufficient; the Romans were not in the habit of announcing to the vanquished all at once their destined fate.

His Death
One behest after another was issued to the Lusitanians, each successive demand more intolerable than its predecessors; and at length they were required even to surrender their arms. Then Viriathus recollected thefate of his countrymen whom Galba had caused to be disarmed, and grasped his sword afresh. But it was toolate. His wavering had sown the seeds of treachery among those who were immediately around him; three ofhis confidants, Audas, Ditalco, and Minucius from Urso, despairing of the possibility of renewed victory, procured from the king permission once more to enter into negotiations for peace with Caepio, and employedit for the purpose of selling the life of the Lusitanian hero to the foreigners in return for the assurance of personal amnesty and further rewards. On their return to the camp they assured the king of the favourable issue of their negotiations, and in the following night stabbed him while asleep in his tent. The Lusitanians honoured the illustrious chief by an unparalleled funeral solemnity at which two hundred pairs of champions fought in the funeral games; and still more highly by the fact, that they did not renounce the struggle, but nominated Tautamus as their commander- in-chief in room of the fallen hero. The plan projected by the latter for wresting Saguntum from the Romans was sufficiently bold; but the new general possessed neither the wise moderation nor the military skill of his predecessor. The expedition utterly broke down, and the army on its return was attacked in crossing the Baetis and compelled to surrender unconditionally. Thus was Lusitania subdued, far more by treachery and assassination on the part of foreigners and natives than by honourable war."

29.8.10

Privacy in this day and age

From the 21 August 2010 edition of The Guardian:

Does technology pose a threat to our private life?

By Jemima Kiss  


This week Google's Eric Schmidt suggested we may need to invent new identities to escape embarrassing online pasts – while Facebook launched a tool to share users' locations. So does technology pose a threat to private life?
smartphone
Facebook Places harnesses the GPS function of the latest smartphones to enable users to track each other down. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA
Are you in a relationship? What are your political views? And where did you go for breakfast this morning? What would once have been details of our lives known only by those we know and trust, many of us now willingly display online.
From the surveillance entertainment of Big Brother to CCTV and celebrity magazines, the boundaries of what is regarded as appropriate to put in the public domain are shifting dramatically. But nothing is challenging our notion of privacy more than social networking, with 26 million of us using Facebook to share the minutiae of our lives every month in the UK alone.
Facebook has proved irresistible to many because we are lured into joining by friends and family. Browsing, reading, comparing and nosing is instinctive, impulsive and reflects our tendencies offline, our "social graph", as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg likes to call it. Having executed the social networking business idea better than its rivals – MySpace, Bebo, Friendster and Hi5 have been left for dust – Facebook has seen astonishing growth, from a Harvard dorm project in 2003 to a global phenomenon that had 500 million monthly users by July this year. That's already one in 13 people on Earth, and Zuckerberg recently predicted it was "almost a guarantee" that his site would reach 1 billion users, with growth in relatively untapped markets such as Russia, Japan and Korea "doubling every six months".
On Thursday, Facebook unveiled its latest gambit in the battle to remain top of the social networking heap with a move into geolocation services, which harness the GPS functionality of increasingly powerful mobile smartphones. Facebook Places will launch first in the US and later in the UK, allowing users, if they choose, to share their location with friends on the site by checking into public venues. Sensitive to intense public scrutiny of its privacy controls, Facebook was careful to make the service opt-in but every geolocation service – including Google's Latitude, Gowalla and Foursquare – has prompted renewed debate about the protection of personal details online.
"This is a seminal moment where we're seeing new thinking and new practice starting to emerge around the issue of privacy," says Stephen Balkam, chief executive of the Family Online Safety Institute and member of Facebook's safety advisory board. "The battle lines are being drawn between generations. Facebook is headed by someone who hasn't hit 30 yet, but has very different perceptions and assumptions about what is private and what is not. We need to recognise that with social networking, geolocation and digital technology, the privacy bar is being reset."
Facebook has come under significant pressure to make its site safer for users. Incidents of serious crimes facilitated by the internet such as the murder of British teenager Ashleigh Hall by Peter Chapman earlier this year, are tragic but rare. More common is the embarrassment from a compromising tagged photo of a drunken night out.
The rapid pace of development by technology companies often throws up new cultural and ethical challenges. Google's Street View has frequently been challenged by privacy campaigners who question whether the logistical and commercial benefits of making every property in every street visible on the web are worth the sacrifice of the individual's right to privacy. Facebook users first raised their pitchforks in 2006 when the site introduced a news feed for each user, summarising their friends' activity. More recently it came under pressure to simplify its privacy controls with some high-profile commentators and groups – organised on Facebook pages, naturally – encouraging others to remove their profiles. It responded in May with simplified privacy settings.
Richard, now Lord, Allan is a former Liberal Democrat MP and Facebook's European policy director. "The internet is here to stay as a ubiquitous way for every individual citizen to capture and share information. The challenge is how you manage that increasing flow of information and that's where Facebook is at the bleeding edge, allowing people to navigate that world. Expressions of concern and criticisms are really of that direction of travel, rather than any particular product, like Facebook."
Allan thinks it is an exaggeration to characterise privacy as a natural state of man, citing societies before mass transport where a large community would know every intimate detail of each other's lives. The modern sense of privacy came much later, with modern transport and cities. "Notably with new technology, you end up with a utopian viewpoint and a dystopian viewpoint, but a lot of things those dystopians feared did not come true. To say you're 'living in Facebook rather than the real world' is a complete misreading of what's happening. The reason it is so compelling is because it is so connected to the real world. With every wave of technology we need to get used to it."
Our personal information can broadly be categorised as trivial data such as music preferences, behavioural information about our activity and connections, and confidential information including credit card numbers. But even seemingly innocuous information can be used against us, says security expert Rik Ferguson of Trend Micro. "In isolation, much of this data may be trivial but from a hacker's perspective, any information is good information," he says. "Use search engines to discover the extent of your online footprint and tailor it. Keep tabs on yourself before anyone else does."
Balkam describes the internet's two biggest privacy problems as reputational damage – inadvertently posting drunken photos that your boss might see, for example – and physical safety, the latter being the issue for women particularly wary of location tools. Burglary is another concern, when users of location services announce they are out of the house; in February three developers built PleaseRobMe.com to raise awareness about the implications of broadcasting location to a public audience.
Currently location games such as Foursquare, where users check in at public venues to earn points and prizes, tend to have a small, enthusiastic and largely trustworthy group of dedicated users comprised of so-called "early adopters". For them, this period of intensive invention and opportunity is a golden age. Christian Payne – who describes himself as a "social technologist" – abandoned a career as a photographer in early 2008 when he had a "car crash epiphany". Within minutes of tweeting a video of his crashed Land Rover, he had an offer of help from a local crane operator, his AA membership number sent to him and a call from BT asking for the serial number of the telegraph pole he'd crashed into. He worries that spirit of helpfulness will dilute as social media becomes more commercialised, and its users more sceptical.
"We'll never see it like we do now – more nefarious people will come later," he says. "But it would be more risky for me not to take the chance of building meaningful connections with acquaintances who then become friends when one of you needs some help."
Payne seems to put a lot of intimate information into the world, but still skillfully manages to keep his personal life, and that of his partner and son, almost completely private. It's up to the user to decide what they want to keep private, he says, though he's uncomfortable with the idea that he is unknowingly creating a public persona for himself. "I'd hope I'm doing this naturally and not thinking about it. But then asking me that is like taking me out of the play I'm acting in as myself – and asking me to direct it."
Online privacy is intrinsically linked to identity. Author Peggy Orenstein wrote in the New York Times recently that her reflexive compulsion to tweet a pleasant moment with her daughter had also spoilt the moment, and mused that our online personas are elaborate constructs that we, knowingly or unknowingly, craft into an identity we want the world to see. The internet has provided a platform that seems to challenge us to present a single identity to the world, yet we struggle to balance the profiles we share with family, friends and work colleagues.
Stories of employers sacking staff for drunken Facebook photos will be replaced by an acceptance that drunken university pictures are the norm, says Dr Joss Wright, Fresnel research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. He hopes sites will develop more intuitive ways to share information with the appropriate people; when his grandmother joined Facebook it "severely curtailed" what he could share with his friends.
"I'd like to believe people will learn how to guard their privacy, but we're more likely to see societal shifts in what is seen as acceptable for privacy," Wright adds. "Privacy has tended to be something quite intrinsic, and there hasn't been a mechanism for privacy violation in general society until the arrival of the internet. The rise of Facebook and Foursquare show we don't really understand privacy or what it means to preserve it, and don't have an ability to understand the consequences of violating it either."
Regulators struggle to keep up with the pace of technology and enforcement of what rules there are is weak, meaning the onus for education should be on the services themselves, says Wright, who doesn't think they are closely scrutinised enough. Though sites like Facebook have a duty of care, "the economics are against that, because their entire business model is built around getting us to share as much information as possible".
But there are upsides, too. Sharing personal information is beneficial in giving insights into different aspects of society. "If you can see the details of people's lives, when you can see someone's actual persona, it's harder to be biased and bigoted," said Wright. "But a balance has to be struck between the amount we share for the positive and negative."
Eric Schmidt, Google chief executive, recently reiterated his suggestion that internet users may one day be able to change their identities in order to distance themselves from personal information shared so freely in their formative years. "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time," he told the Wall Street Journal.
Zuckerberg takes a different tack. "You have one identity. The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly … Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity," he was quoted as saying in David Kirkpatrick's book, The Facebook Effect.
Part of Facebook's success has been to demand people's real identities. In that way, it represents the maturation of the internet where the previous norm had been a wisecrack pseudonym and a world of "trolling", where faceless, nameless commenters could easily post abusive messages and attack each other. The improvement in the quality of communication and debate online is in no small part down to the trend towards using real identities. However, anonymity still has its role in whistleblowing sites such as Wikileaks, or in debates where a contributor to a discussion on rape, for example, deserves protection.
If you think the current internet landscape is frightening, don't think too much about what's coming next. Already served with targeted ads based on keywords in our Google email, or picked out by our age and interests on Facebook, the future is more personalised still. "Sites will get much better at filtering information and predicting our behaviour, serving us what we want to buy and finding new ways to share information, like location. Three years ago, people wouldn't even have dreamed of sharing their location," says Wright. While the sensitivities and sensibilities of managing our online data still need to be clarified, there will be benefits in personalisation, which promises more meaningful, relevant advertising for consumers and consequently, for advertisers, far more effective bang for their buck.
So what next? Three years ago, rival social networking site MySpace seemed invincible. Could Facebook still lose its edge? Anything is possible.
Balkam recently suggested Facebook recruit a philosopher to help interpret some of the demanding and unprecedented ethical and sociological challenges it faces.
"No company in the world has ever attracted 500 million users, and they are having to come to terms, at lightning speed, with what is good and what is abhorrent behaviour. Aristotle and Plato struggled with that – and the average age at Facebook is 28."

Where the Twitterati draw the line

Zoe Margolis, blogger
While I'm very active on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, I have so far avoided all the location-based tools on my phone. Primarily, this is because I do not want to publicly announce where I am - I wish to protect my privacy and safety - but also because I don't want to bombard people with incessant, dull, information; I've unfollowed people on Twitter and Facebook due to their too-frequent (and, might I say, very annoying) Foursquare updates being fed through to their timelines.I can see the point of location tools – they're an easy way to connect people who might otherwise be unaware of their proximity to their friends – but given the amount of information we already share using social networking sites, it almost seems like overload to add yet another method of input, and it's pretty much redundant if not all of your friends/social circle are using the same tool.
I have some major concerns with Facebook Places though and believe it is a huge threat to people's privacy. It is already live in users' settings(though the feature has not yet been rolled out in the UK) and while there is the option of limiting the location info to friends only, they have to de-select the automatically enabled "Include me in 'People Here Now' after I check in" box in order to opt out of their location being included on a public list for all to see.
In addition to this, people's friends can "check' " them into locations, so even if someone has limited the information about themselves that they are sharing, there might still be a breach of their privacy from others.
Most of my friends on Facebook have never heard of Foursquare or Gowalla, let alone used a location-based tool on their mobile phones; I assume the majority of people who use Facebook are similar. Given this, it concerns me that Facebook Places appears to be lacking transparency about privacy. The ability to change the settings to ensure personal information is protected seems more geared to the tech-savvy, than the lay-person; I fear many people will discover their privacy has been breached only after the event.
Privacy on any social networking site or location-sharing tool should start off being intact: 100% protection, with the chance to opt-in to less privacy, should you wish to share information with others. Facebook seems to take the opposite view, making the default position little/no privacy with the need to opt-out; I won't be using Facebook Places any time soon.
David Nobbs
I don't believe total privacy is possible so I never telling anybody anything on line that I wouldn't be happy for the nation to know (if it was interested!).
I think some people are so hungry for celebrity they're happy not to have a private life at all. I'm very careful with my tweets. People can never be quite sure whether they're true or false, and I never reveal when I'm going to be away.
Sorry this is so short but I'm off to Portugal now for five months. Only joking.
Max Tundra, musician
I probably spend too much time online, sharing details about my life with anyone who has the remotest interest in my music. I don't like the idea of letting people know exactly where I am right this second, but as my fans tend to be fairly sane and unstalkerish, I feel comfortable letting them know what I'm up to in a general sense.
I don't use Foursquare or any applications which might reveal my geographical co-ordinates, although I am often easily locatable, as I play advertised concerts. I did, however, recently delete my personal Facebook profile, as that seemed to be a cluster of unnecessarily pertinent information about my life and the people I share it with, as well as being a colossal waste of time which could be better spent telling people on Twitter that I prefer the Henry vacuum cleaner to the Dyson.
Graham Linehan, comedy writer:
I always hated Facebook because it made me very uncertain about what I was and wasn't sharing with the world. The privacy settings were, famously, a bit of a maze, and seemed subject to sudden changes that you hadn't agreed to. I felt like one day I might open up the site to see a picture of myself in bed asleep with my wife, like in Hidden'.
Twitter is different because it forces you to be very selective with what you choose to share, and so forces social media back to a more private place. I personally don't tweet much stuff about my home life, because I don't want to accidentally tweet something stupid like "Holiday starts tomorrow!" along with a geotag to my home address. So my tweets are generally links to things I find funny or interesting, and my home life only gets a look-in when something truly interesting or funny happens.
Once I made a mistake and posted my home number while trying to send a direct (private) message to someone and we had to change it, but that was a valuable lesson to learn early on, because now I'm a lot more careful with what I put out there. It wasn't too much of a problem, though. We only got two or three callers who hung up as soon as my wife said "Hello, Dreambeds". I asked her who Dreambeds were and she said "Dunno. I suppose they sell beds."
I think people should start to claw back as much privacy as they can. Services such as Twitter show that it's possible to share selectively. Sharing selectively should be the default setting on every social network service. Which, again, is why you won't see me on Facebook any time soon.
John Prescott, politician
Twitter has been a revelation. In the past if I needed to get message out I'd have to convince a paper to publish it. Now I can tweet my thoughts and, if interesting, it'll get pick up. My Milburn tweet was running on rolling news within 10 minutes.
I share a lot of content like my blogs and vlogs along with links to stories and virals from others I like. Twitter is also great to run campaigns and organise tweetups.
We did the first pastiche of the Cameron airbrushed posters, which then inspired MyDavidCameron.com. Suddenly hundreds of thousands of people were doing their own versions. It destroyed Ashcroft's poster campaign and cost nothing.
And when the founder of the National Bullying Helpline said people were bullied in No10, someone tweeted me a link to the industrial tribunal which proved she was accused of bullying herself! It killed the story within 24 hours.
I've found Twitter to be a fantastic way to communicate, learn from others and show the real me, not the distorted view peddled by the media.
But I'm not convinced about geolocation applications. You have to have some privacy.
Suzanne Moore, journalist
Don't mistake personal information for honesty. Personas are created and people play as well as tweet their hearts out. If you don't want to bare your soul you don't have to, but the dividing line between public and private is now generational, one that neither mainstream culture nor government appears to understand.
I don't much care what people think of me and was wondering who some guy on MasterChef was the other day on Twitter and wondering if I had slept with him. Turns out I hadn't which was a relief. And a joke!

No saint at all

Hitchens on Teresa again, writing in Slate:

Mommie Dearest 

The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.

I think it was Macaulay who said that the Roman Catholic Church deserved great credit for, and owed its longevity to, its ability to handle and contain fanaticism. This rather oblique compliment belongs to a more serious age. What is so striking about the "beatification" of the woman who styled herself "Mother" Teresa is the abject surrender, on the part of the church, to the forces of showbiz, superstition, and populism.
It's the sheer tawdriness that strikes the eye first of all. It used to be that a person could not even be nominated for "beatification," the first step to "sainthood," until five years after his or her death. This was to guard against local or popular enthusiasm in the promotion of dubious characters. The pope nominated MT a year after her death in 1997. It also used to be that an apparatus of inquiry was set in train, including the scrutiny of an advocatus diaboli or "devil's advocate," to test any extraordinary claims. The pope has abolished this office and has created more instant saints than all his predecessors combined as far back as the 16th century.
As for the "miracle" that had to be attested, what can one say? Surely any respectable Catholic cringes with shame at the obviousness of the fakery. A Bengali woman named Monica Besra claims that a beam of light emerged from a picture of MT, which she happened to have in her home, and relieved her of a cancerous tumor. Her physician, Dr. Ranjan Mustafi, says that she didn't have a cancerous tumor in the first place and that the tubercular cyst she did have was cured by a course of prescription medicine. Was he interviewed by the Vatican's investigators? No. (As it happens, I myself was interviewed by them but only in the most perfunctory way. The procedure still does demand a show of consultation with doubters, and a show of consultation was what, in this case, it got.)
According to an uncontradicted report in the Italian paper L'Eco di Bergamo, the Vatican's secretary of state sent a letter to senior cardinals in June, asking on behalf of the pope whether they favored making MT a saint right away. The pope's clear intention has been to speed the process up in order to perform the ceremony in his own lifetime. The response was in the negative, according to Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, the Canadian priest who has acted as postulator or advocate for the "canonization." But the damage, to such integrity as the process possesses, has already been done.
During the deliberations over the Second Vatican Council, under the stewardship of Pope John XXIII, MT was to the fore in opposing all suggestions of reform. What was needed, she maintained, was more work and more faith, not doctrinal revision. Her position was ultra-reactionary and fundamentalist even in orthodox Catholic terms. Believers are indeed enjoined to abhor and eschew abortion, but they are not required to affirm that abortion is "the greatest destroyer of peace," as MT fantastically asserted to a dumbfounded audience when receiving the Nobel Peace Prize*. Believers are likewise enjoined to abhor and eschew divorce, but they are not required to insist that a ban on divorce and remarriage be a part of the state constitution, as MT demanded in a referendum in Ireland (which her side narrowly lost) in 1996. Later in that same year, she told Ladies Home Journal that she was pleased by the divorce of her friend Princess Diana, because the marriage had so obviously been an unhappy one … 
This returns us to the medieval corruption of the church, which sold indulgences to the rich while preaching hellfire and continence to the poor. MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?
The rich world has a poor conscience, and many people liked to alleviate their own unease by sending money to a woman who seemed like an activist for "the poorest of the poor." People do not like to admit that they have been gulled or conned, so a vested interest in the myth was permitted to arise, and a lazy media never bothered to ask any follow-up questions. Many volunteers who went to Calcutta came back abruptly disillusioned by the stern ideology and poverty-loving practice of the "Missionaries of Charity," but they had no audience for their story. George Orwell's admonition in his essay on Gandhi—that saints should always be presumed guilty until proved innocent—was drowned in a Niagara of soft-hearted, soft-headed, and uninquiring propaganda.
One of the curses of India, as of other poor countries, is the quack medicine man, who fleeces the sufferer by promises of miraculous healing. Sunday was a great day for these parasites, who saw their crummy methods endorsed by his holiness and given a more or less free ride in the international press. Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. More than that, we witnessed the elevation and consecration of extreme dogmatism, blinkered faith, and the cult of a mediocre human personality. Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of MT: Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud, and a church that officially protects those who violate the innocent has given us another clear sign of where it truly stands on moral and ethical questions.
Correction, Oct. 21, 2003: This piece originally claimed that in her Nobel Peace Prize lecture, Mother Teresa called abortion and contraception the greatest threats to world peace. In that speech Mother Teresa did call abortion "the greatest destroyer of peace." But she did not much discuss contraception, except to praise "natural" family planning.(Return to corrected sentence.)

Hell's angel

The truth about Mother Teresa and the hypocrisy surrounding her 'saintliness'.
A great documentary by the unbeatable Christopher Hitchens:



Catilinaria

Listen to readings of the beginning of Cicero's First Catilinarian oration here (an audio plug-in may be required) or here. Below is the original text with English translation:

"Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia? Nihilne te nocturnum praesidium Palati, nihil urbis vigiliae, nihil timor populi, nihil concursus bonorum omnium, nihil hic munitissimus habendi senatus locus, nihil horum ora voltusque moverunt? Patere tua consilia non sentis, constrictam iam horum omnium scientia teneri coniurationem tuam non vides? Quid proxima, quid superiore nocte egeris, ubi fueris, quos convocaveris, quid consilii ceperis, quem nostrum ignorare arbitraris?
O tempora, o mores! Senatus haec intellegit. Consul videt; hic tamen vivit. Vivit? immo vero etiam in senatum venit, fit publici consilii particeps, notat et designat oculis ad caedem unum quemque nostrum. Nos autem fortes viri satis facere rei publicae videmur, si istius furorem ac tela vitemus. Ad mortem te, Catilina, duci iussu consulis iam pridem oportebat, in te conferri pestem, quam tu in nos [omnes iam diu] machinaris." 

When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now? Do not the night guards placed on the Palatine Hill -- do not the watches posted throughout the city—does not the alarm of the people, and the union of all good men -- does not the precaution taken of assembling the senate in this most defensible place -- do not the looks and countenances of this venerable body here present, have any effect upon you? Do you not feel that your plans are detected? Do you not see that your conspiracy is already arrested and rendered powerless by the knowledge which every one here possesses of it? What is there that you did last night, what the night before -- where is it that you were -- who was there that you summoned to meet you -- what design was there which was adopted by you, with which you think that any one of us is unacquainted?
Shame on the age and on its principles! The senate is aware of these things; the consul sees them; and yet this man lives. Lives! aye, he comes even into the senate. He takes a part in the public deliberations; he is watching and marking down and checking off for slaughter every individual among us. And we, gallant men that we are, think that we are doing our duty to the republic if we keep out of the way of his frenzied attacks.

Latin is beautiful. Such a succinct, melodious and powerful language.
If only the members of the Reichstag had remembered these words in 1933 before granting full powers to corporal Hitler...

27.8.10

There are real minorities and 'minorities'...

Unbelievable inaccuracies in a report by an otherwise credible and well respected NGO, wherein the Azoreans and the Madeirans (i.e. the inhabitants of the Atlantic archipelagos of Portugal) are classified as 'minority groups'.
See the full text and my comment here.

24.8.10

St. Bartholomew's Massacre

Today, 438 years ago, the Huguenots (French Protestants) were massacred on the Feast of Bartholomew the Apostle, by order of Catherine de Médicis.
Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera Les Huguenots is loosely based on that event.
Below is an aria sung by the unforgettable Joan Sutherland, in the role of Marguerite de Valois (the wife of Henri of Navarre, the future King Henri IV of France):

Malacca

On this date, exactly 499 years ago, the great Afonso de Albuquerque, Viceroy of Portuguese India, conquered Malacca and destroyed the power of that Sultanate.
In modern Melaka and in the Straits region there still is a small Eurasian community stemming from the Portuguese presence, which lasted for just over a hundred years. They are known as the Kristang (Malay for 'Christian', from the Portuguese 'cristão') people.

Today, 1600 years ago

Barbarians at the gates.
A date to remember:
BBC News - 24 August 410: the date it all went wrong for Rome?

22.8.10

On the Catholic Church and Ireland

No comments are necessary:

The Pope in the UK

"I'm an atheist but this anti-Catholic rhetoric is making me nervous": a sober view by a (too) 'moderate' atheist. 
The writer's arguments are lucid, but his conclusion is wrong.
He contends that "It is the structure of the church that should be challenged, not the beliefs of Catholics.". I dare say that both should be challenged.

18.8.10

Read and weep

Mindset List for the Class of 2014.


"Beloit, Wis. – Born when Ross Perot was warning about a giant sucking sound and Bill Clinton was apologizing for pain in his marriage, members of this fall’s entering college class of 2014 have emerged as a post-email generation for whom the digital world is routine and technology is just too slow.

Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. The creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation. The Mindset List website at www.beloit.edu/mindset, the Mediasite webcast and its Facebook page receive more than 400,000 hits annually.

The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm. Since "digital" has always been in the cultural DNA, they've never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry (who’s that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat.

Nonetheless, they plan to enjoy college. The males among them are likely to be a minority. They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries, on which making a phone call will be only one of many, many functions they will perform. They will now be awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them. A generation accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of scholarship. They will discover how to research information in books and journals and not just on-line. Their professors, who might be tempted to think that they are hip enough and therefore ready and relevant to teach the new generation, might remember that Kurt Cobain is now on the classic oldies station. The college class of 2014 reminds us, once again, that a generation comes and goes in the blink of our eyes, which are, like the rest of us, getting older and older.

The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014

Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992.

For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.

2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.

3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.”

4. Al Gore has always been animated.

5. Los Angelenos have always been trying to get along.

6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.

7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.

8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.

9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.

10. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority…unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet.

11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.

12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.

13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation.

14. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine.

15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause.

16. Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways.

17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection.

18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.

19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.

20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed.

21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn.

22. Cross-burning has always been deemed protected speech.

23. Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes in cars.

24. “Cop Killer” by rapper Ice-T has never been available on a recording.

25. Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing networks.

26. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.

27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.

28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.

29. Reggie Jackson has always been enshrined in Cooperstown.

30. “Viewer Discretion” has always been an available warning on TV shows.

31. The first computer they probably touched was an Apple II; it is now in a museum.

32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.

33. Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.

34. “Assisted Living” has always been replacing nursing homes, while Hospice has always been an alternative to hospitals.

35. Once they got through security, going to the airport has always resembled going to the mall.

36. Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin tones.

37. Whatever their parents may have thought about the year they were born, Queen Elizabeth declared it an “Annus Horribilis.”

38. Bud Selig has always been the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

39. Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes.

40. There have always been HIV positive athletes in the Olympics.

41. American companies have always done business in Vietnam.

42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict.

43. Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.

44. The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs.

45. They have always had a chance to do community service with local and federal programs to earn money for college.

46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.

47. Children have always been trying to divorce their parents.

48. Someone has always gotten married in space.

49. While they were babbling in strollers, there was already a female Poet Laureate of the United States.

50. Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps.

51. Food has always been irradiated.

52. There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church.

53. J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone. Hasn’t he?

54. The historic bridge at Mostar in Bosnia has always been a copy.

55. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties.

56. They may have assumed that parents’ complaints about Black Monday had to do with punk rockers from L.A., not Wall Street.

57. A purple dinosaur has always supplanted Barney Google and Barney Fife.

58. Beethoven has always been a dog.

59. By the time their folks might have noticed Coca Cola’s new Tab Clear, it was gone.

60. Walmart has never sold handguns over the counter in the lower 48.

61. Presidential appointees have always been required to be more precise about paying their nannies’ withholding tax, or else.

62. Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.

63. Their parents’ favorite TV sitcoms have always been showing up as movies.

64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely.

65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.

66. Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman Catholic Church.

67. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court.

68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.

69. The Post Office has always been going broke.

70. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping.

71. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.

72. One way or another, “It’s the economy, stupid” and always has been.

73. Silicone-gel breast implants have always been regulated.

74. They’ve always been able to blast off with the Sci-Fi Channel.

75. Honda has always been a major competitor on Memorial Day at Indianapolis."

17.8.10

Assange on TED

View this important interview given by WikiLeaks' Julian Assange:



A blog to read

For those who read Chinese, I highly recommend following Susana Chou's blog. 
Ms. Chou is the former President of the Macau Legislative Assembly. She writes very well and her criticisms are scathing (and always spot on). Come to: 曹其真記事簿.

More from The Wire

Same language advisory:

The best from The Wire

The language is very dirty, but some of the quotes convey deep truths; the rest are just great entertainment. From the best television series ever made:

8.8.10

Žižek interview

I can't get enough of Žižek! He has become one of a handful of (living) philosophers to follow  extensively and in depth, alongside Giorgio Agamben, Jürgen Habermas and -- in a more specific domain -- Joseph Raz.
Žižek's style and approach have even earned him the quasi-sobriquet "Elvis of cultural theory" (thanks to the simplistic New York Times). As a public intellectual and iconoclast, he may one day be as important -- though probably not as militant and admired -- as Noam Chomsky.
Here is an interview given on 15 October 2009 to Democracy Now!, where he addresses a range of current topics:


Žižek on atheism

An Op-Ed piece by Žižek published in the 13 March 2006 edition of The New York Times, on an issue far from unheard of in this blog:

Atheism is a legacy worth fighting for

LONDON — For centuries, we have been told that without religion we are no more than egotistic animals fighting for our share, our only morality that of a pack of wolves; only religion, it is said, can elevate us to a higher spiritual level. Today, when religion is emerging as the wellspring of murderous violence around the world, assurances that Christian or Muslim or Hindu fundamentalists are only abusing and perverting the noble spiritual messages of their creeds ring increasingly hollow. What about restoring the dignity of atheism, one of Europe's greatest legacies and perhaps our only chance for peace?
More than a century ago, in "The Brothers Karamazov" and other works, Dostoyevsky warned against the dangers of godless moral nihilism, arguing in essence that if God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted. The French philosopher André Glucksmann even applied Dostoyevsky's critique of godless nihilism to 9/11, as the title of his book, "Dostoyevsky in Manhattan," suggests.
This argument couldn't have been more wrong: The lesson of today's terrorism is that if God exists, then everything, including blowing up thousands of innocent bystanders, is permitted - at least to those who claim to act directly on behalf of God, since, clearly, a direct link to God justifies the violation of any merely human constraints and considerations. In short, fundamentalists have become no different than the "godless" Stalinist Communists, to whom everything was permitted, since they perceived themselves as direct instruments of their divinity, the Historical Necessity of Progress Toward Communism.
Fundamentalists do what they perceive as good deeds in order to fulfill God's will and to earn salvation; atheists do them simply because it is the right thing to do. Is this also not our most elementary experience of morality? When I do a good deed, I do so not with an eye toward gaining God's favor; I do it because if I did not, I could not look at myself in the mirror. A moral deed is by definition its own reward. David Hume made this point poignantly when he wrote that the only way to show true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God's existence.
Two years ago, Europeans were debating whether the preamble of the European Constitution should mention Christianity. As usual, a compromise was worked out, a reference in general terms to the "religious inheritance" of Europe. But where was modern Europe's most precious legacy, that of atheism? What makes modern Europe unique is that it is the first and only civilization in which atheism is a fully legitimate option, not an obstacle to any public post.
Atheism is a European legacy worth fighting for, not least because it creates a safe public space for believers. Consider the debate that raged in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, my home country, as the constitutional controversy simmered: should Muslims (mostly immigrant workers from the old Yugoslav republics) be allowed to build a mosque? While conservatives opposed the mosque for cultural, political and even architectural reasons, the liberal weekly journal Mladina was consistently outspoken in its support for the mosque, in keeping with its concern for the rights of those from other former Yugoslav republics.
Not surprisingly, given its liberal attitudes, Mladina was also one of the few Slovenian publications to reprint the caricatures of Muhammad. And, conversely, those who displayed the greatest "understanding" for the violent Muslim protests those cartoons caused were also the ones who regularly expressed their concern for the fate of Christianity in Europe.
These weird alliances confront Europe's Muslims with a difficult choice: The only political force that does not reduce them to second-class citizens and allows them the space to express their religious identity are the "godless" atheist liberals, while those closest to their religious social practice, their Christian mirror-image, are their greatest political enemies.
The paradox is that Muslims' only real allies are not those who first published the caricatures for shock value, but those who, in support of the ideal of freedom of expression, reprinted them.
While a true atheist has no need to bolster his own stance by provoking believers with blasphemy, he also refuses to reduce the problem of the Muhammad caricatures to one of respect for other's beliefs. Respect for other's beliefs as the highest value can mean only one of two things: Either we treat the other in a patronizing way and avoid hurting him in order not to ruin his illusions, or we adopt the relativist stance of multiple "regimes of truth," disqualifying as violent imposition any clear insistence on truth.
What about submitting Islam - together with all other religions - to a respectful, but for that reason no less ruthless, critical analysis? This, and only this, is the way to show a true respect for Muslims: to treat them as adults responsible for their beliefs.
Slavoj Zizek, the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, is the author, most recently, of "The Parallax View."