Daily Archives: January 10, 2015

Because it is worth relinking and rereading.

thatswhatseparatecountriesarefor

 

Jim Butcher has this to say about the Charlie Hebdo atrocity

Freedom v Fear

It needs requoting, but you should also read the original post on his LJ.

“Still mortified about our fallen cartoonist colleagues, but free speech will always win.”

No.

No it won’t.

The history of the human race demonstrates /very/ convincingly that free speech is the /exception/ to the human condition, not the rule. For millennia, those who spoke out were imprisoned or killed. Hell, you could say something that wasn’t even subversive, just inept and stupid, and be destroyed for committing the crime of lese majeste.

Make no mistake. What we have today is a level of freedom and self-determination on a scale unparalleled in the history of our species. We live in what is, in many ways, a golden age. So much so that we give tremendous credit to the adage, “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

But everyone always forgets the first half of that quote:

“Under the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.”

I’m not sure I know of anyplace that’s ruled by anyone “entirely great.” That adage wasn’t a statement of philosophy, as it was originally used: it was a statement of irony.

Don’t believe me? Look around. Notice that everywhere you go in the world, whoever happens to be ruling seems to have a great many swords.

Still, the idea contained within the quote is a powerful one–that intangible ideas, thoughts, and beliefs can have tremendous power. And that’s why we should be paying close attention.

After all, intangible fear can be mightier than the sword, too. Hell, it has been for quite a while now. Don’t believe me? Try getting on an airplane without taking your shoes off in the security line. While you’re doing that, try cracking a joke about having a knife.

That’s the power of fear, guys.

We. Are. In. Danger.

The threat isn’t aimed at our government or our borders or our resources. It’s targeting something far more precious–our identity. It’s changing us, who we are, how we live, and not for the better.

The Western world has got the biggest and sharpest sword the planet has ever known, yes. But the extremists are armed with a weapon just as powerful: Fear. And these nuts are really good at using it.

There is /one/ way that freedom, freedom to speak, to choose, to grow, to believe, to improve, survives in the face of violent attack.

Free men and women defend it, violently if necessary–or it dies.

It’s that simple. It really is.

If we forget that, if we forget that there are predators in the world who very much want to destroy those freedoms in the name of their god, their philosophy, their politics, if we forget that our freedoms /can/ and /will/ be taken away if we sit staring and do nothing, they are as good as gone.

Freedom doesn’t defend itself.

We have to do it.

That said…

Good question.

That’s a huge contrast to Scalzi apologizing to Muslims for what happened over in France. Hat tip to Vox Day on that one, since I don’t keep track of Scalzi.

Respect for Butcher, Correia, Hoyt, and so many others +++++++ infinity. This is a freedom of speech issue. This is a Western Civilization issue. It needs defending, or we lose everything.

Yummy Hospital Food!

Yeah I know, there’re are people out there going O_o wtf at that title. It’s like saying “OMG YUMMY AIRPLANE FOOD.” (Which I have had. Emirates and Philippine Airlines international flights have delicious food, and I hear Singapore Airlines and JAL have also good inflight menus. So…yeah. ^^;;; )

So, hospital food here in Townsville Hospital? Is yum. I’m not saying that because “I don’t have a choice and hafta eat it because I’m admitted for baby-observation” but because I really do find the options delicious. Lunch was a meltingly soft beef curry with steamed green beans (that was my choice, since I get jabbed for blood tests as part of the monitoring) and I have a coffee. I chat up the lunch ladies here and they now know I ABSOLUTELY ADORE the hospital’s egg sandwiches. If someone rejects them please give them to me while I’m here. cute puppy eyes And well, extra protein for bubs! (I have some sealed fruit juices and fruit cups that were rejected and I’ve set aside to increase my vitamin C intake to help me absorb the goodness for the baby too.)

Hospital food is yummy here.

Anyway. It so happened someone rejected their egg and ham sandwiches, and the food cart lady asked if I wanted them. DO I EVER?! I love the boiled egg salad sandwiches here, but egg sandwiches in the hospital are om nom nom weakness for me. The egg sandwiches might not seem special to anyone but they’re light and creamy and flavorful eggs of perfection without being overwhelmingly eggy. Maybe next time I’ll remember to take a picture of them before snaffling them down. They’re so yummy… They have plenty of other sandwiches too, but the egg ones and the chicken ones are my faves.

There’s always a good meal too. You have the main dish (one of the meals scheduled that I picked will be chicken schnitzel with sides, and the dessert for that will be a fudge cake. OM NOM NOM, must remember to take photo). The tray will have a fruit cup, coffee or tea (I pick coffee) and often a slice of bread and options of jelly or Veeeeeeeegimite (I… prefer the jelly) and there’s often a fruit cup of diced fruit. I found out that people often turn up their noses on these things and sometimes, if lucky the fruit cups, extra sandwiches and such end up in the lounge fridge for anyone to have. If unlucky they get thrown away. Thrown. Away. HORRORS.

Now, the food served are also balanced diets. A serve of meat, carbs and steamed veg is the usual. The carbs can be mashed potatoes, rice, steamed and mashed pumpkin, or roasted potatoes or pumpkin/squash. They’re not overly salty, but also not bland. And they do serve a small packet of salt and pepper that if used, is just the right amount. Breakfast is typically cereal options, (I pick boiled oatmeal porridge), fruit cup, yogurt, fruit piece, coffee or tea, slice of bread with butter and jam option. It’s very filling, and usually afterward I walk around the ward to stretch my muscles and ensure I don’t encourage blood clots.

Milo, Chocolate Chip Cookies and ANZAC biscuits. Yum!!!!!!

Mid morning, mid afternoon and about 8 pm, there’s a coffee trolley that goes around too. I look forward to these because they have the option of hot Milo with the usual coffee and tea (and yes, I can ask for a milo-coffee!) and this is where I get the chance for little saltine crackers and cheese, or a packet or two of Arnott’s bikkies or cookies. =9 The cheese and cracker option it pure delight when eaten with the supply of cherries or grapes I have here with me for extra vitamin C snackies.

Milo coffee, saltines and a nibble of cheese - healthy snackie!

Healthy little nibbles

And I’ve taken so long writing this that they’ve come up with the tea / bikkie break. I asked for a Milo-coffee / mocha, and they gave me the saltines and cheese =9

Staying hydrated isn’t a problem either. The water bottles they give out have a sweet water that reminds me of Evian (which we used to drink when I lived back in Germany.) I often find myself surprised when I empty a bottle from idly sipping while writing. I also have my half-cup juice stash of apple juice, and there’s the tea trolley, and if I want more I can just meander down to the lounge and make myself a coffee, then toddle back to my room. I can also make myself a chamomille or Lady Grey tea since I brought some teabags from the house (because I do try to cut back on the coffee to just twice a day.)

I’m quite well fed and cared for here, and I really appreciate the efforts on that. So I thought I’d write about it.

And now that I have, I’m going to eat the food.

 

==

 

update: dinner option:; shepherds pie, steamed veg, pea and ham soup.

shepherds pie, ham and pea soup, veg and all good and delicious!

shepherds pie, ham and pea soup, veg and all good and delicious!

=9

 

More on Yamamanama / Andrew P. Marston’s attempts to crowdsource harassment options

This was originally posted on the forums, and has been expanded since.

https://forums.affsdiary.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=41&p=151#p151

Which has, thanks to this post, gone into FOUR PAGES of record.

Starting off my morning with this while stuck on the baby heart rate monitor. Typing is awkward.

Anyway, an update (with regards to latest online events regarding the ongoing saga of being stalked and harassed by Andrew P. Marston, Stalker of Six Years and Counting.)

It seems, rightly so, the folks at fstdt do not like being used to further a proven longtime stalker’s malicious and misogynistic stalker’s agenda, because soon after I took these screenshots the thread was deleted or meh-ed to gone. I don’t know which. At any rate, these screenshots are for me to address certain points or respond to some remarks.

Now, I don’t know for certain if Yama himself was Goob/Goomb / the person who originally quoted me out of context in that quote-post, but it fits in with his past behaviors, so it would not surprise me if Yama did, or showed the quote to someone he felt was amenable to reposting the quote out of context because of outrage / oh god this is stupid and needs to be mocked. If the latter, you were cruelly mislead and used.

This may be something of a warning to Yama’s associates online, to be wary of taking him completely on trust and on his word in the future.  Be advised that Yama is known to have a long list of pseudonyms which he uses on a variety of sites, and has also been known to try impersonate other people by using their online nicknames and handles.  In fact, his doing so is the main reason why I had to start commenting on Vox Day’s blog – to establish my own identity and state how I was to prove that I was the real Shadowdancer by reposting screenshots of my own comments to the Affsdiary Forums.

I looked at the latest discussions on FSTDT and one of the ones with lots of comments is critical of a crazy misandrist radfem calling for regular castrations. To be clear, this is the kind of feminist / tumblr feminist I rail against and stand against. I AM THE MOTHER OF SONS AND A DAUGHTER. That I react with proper REVULSION to such misandry MAKES SENSE because my middle boy is only eight years old and turned loose on a playground to play, plays with both boys and girls with no discrimination as children are only concerned with ‘let’s play!’ (the other is still in my womb. So, dear crazy misandrist radfem? You are a pathetic scumbag because you can’t do more than pick on children and unborn babies, and hilariously have accepted the lie that women are so inherently weak and helpless the ‘only way’ to ‘get ahead’ for women = kill men / oppress them / castrate them.)

Also, this graphic bears repeating because /facepalms so hard

I'm the person in pink.

To my misogynistic stalker’s mind this statement is equal to my being ‘misogynistic’, because I refuse to toe the radfem line and am a supporter for REAL equal rights, respect and treatment for both genders, groups, and regardless of skin color, not JUST women / special victim groups (because then, it’s not equal nor meritorious).

It should not surprise anyone who has read through the sticky or is aware of the six long years of harassment that Yama / Andrew will double down on his threat and continue to try justify his actions.
@pyro: no worries; apology accepted =) I’m just glad its clear now. I honestly harbor no bad feelings because this isn’t the fault of the folks at your discussion place, and the quote itself really is taken so completely out of context it’s obvious that it was deliberately done to create a bad impression. I really am sorry you guys were being dragged into yama’s campaign.

@the dude – my sticky has also discovered over the years that Yama / Andrew will deliberately go out of his way to go to non-Liberal sites (conservative, libertarian, religious group sites, blogs etc) for the explicit purpose of using them as hunting grounds for his targets of harassment. He will frequently take people’s comments out of a long, long discussion thread or post completely out of context then spread them in places like the FSTDT discussion forums, or quote them in other blogs, in the hopes of portraying the person being quoted as far more evil than the quote in context would actually be. Through this method he has attempted more than once to portray me and many others as misogynistic, racist, anti-homosexual, ‘rape apologizing’, anti-feminist, etc, to try get people to dogpile on me. He has done this both with art, words, and written works, the latter of which he will admit to never even reading but will happily deride and mock as worthless. That he is quite alone in this opinion becomes rapidly clear, so Andrew is quite desperate to try ‘prove’ that he isn’t alone in his hateful opinion of me.

I repeat that whatever he’s incoherently blabbing about regarding Andrew’s ‘friends’ I had nothing to do with it, because, quite logically why would I know or care about a hipster guitarist on youtube that Vox Day linked? My musical tastes are my own and I simply avoid the music I don’t like and waste no further time on it. Mere association with Yama does not result in my deep abiding hate or even mild dislike of a person. Why would it? I’m not Yama, who seems to automatically HATE everything and everyone vaguely associated with me and behaves as if this is ‘behavior everyone does because Andrew thinks like this’ projection.

And it seems that to Yama now, contradicting him = You Are A Vox Day Supporter If You Think That Andrew P. Marston Is A Stalker Asshole. That’s… a new level of crazy there, woah.

The thing is, I don’t mind at all if someone decides they don’t like me because I hold an opinion or POV that they disagree with. I don’t mind if someone doesn’t agree with me. If this hypothetical person doesn’t like me, then we can go our separate ways and avoid each other, or agree to butt heads over discussions as much as we like, or just ignore each other’s existence in forums where we both participate. That person doesn’t have to go to my homepage, and I avoid that person’s page. In fact, this is perfectly sensible and civilized to me; so I don’t go out of my way to frequent say, radfem sites that espouse the castration of men and hatefully rail at women who choose to have their male babies, or believe that all infant boys by default will become misogynistic raping monsters / rage at women who are in happy heterosexual relationships / lesbians who choose to become mothers. I’ll end up there if someone I know links it, but I’ll also do them the courtesy of actually reading the words before I react, if I choose to react, on my own blog.

At no point, ever, will I say this person should not have the right to say what they’re saying, since I’m a very strong believer of the maxim ‘Let him speak, so that we may know his mind/thoughts.’

At no point do I wish for Andrew P. Marston to shut up, actually. Let him speak so that people may know what he is like, that people may judge him based on his own words, actions and beliefs. He frequently claims that I am trying to silence him, but in fact I only document his own words and actions, and my place on the web rebut his lies and attempts at ink-squirting obfuscation. The fact that this sticky thread is necessary at all is not because of me, but rather necessity borne out of reaction to a crazily obsessed person living in Massachusetts taking advantage of the fact that he can openly harass and stalk a woman living in Australia, who hasn’t got any ability to try push for a court suit because I can’t afford that, and there’s this whole thing about having a continent and a huge ocean between him and me.

But also, logically, I have reasons to worry because of Andrew P. Marston’s demonstrated behavior of seeking out groups who he feels may be amenable to being directed to a convenient target of hate for harassment online. Of this I have proof – this latest attempt being clearly one.

Who is to say he hasn’t tried to garner this for RL, given that he makes repeated threats against my kids? What reassurance do I have that he hasn’t done this? And given that we’ve shown that he lies if it suits him, there is no way for anyone to hold his word as being good or remotely trustworthy. Yes, I am aware that this is, at present, mere speculation, but that is a speculation that is with some backing due to his online behavior towards myself, which I have kept a record of here.

It is also clear that Andrew resents the presence of this sticky as a record of that bad behavior. He has constantly tried to misrepresent the thing as ‘attempts to silence him’ or ‘dox him’ or other absurd claims. His words and actions are here for people to view. Other people have shown through their own records that Andrew / Yama has been doing this kind of harassments since at least 2003, which long predates my running into him in late 2009. So, no, despite his claims, I am but just one of his many, many victims, and one who has chosen in this small way, to fight back and refuse to give in.

People should also be aware that Andrew P. Marston’s campaign of harassment against Vox Day – which Vox documents at having been 56 months of nearly daily harassment; just slightly less than Yama’s own campaign of stalking against myself – is resulting in police reports to the Massachusetts PD. Regardless of what you may think of the man (or heck, about myself) that’s far, far longer than anyone should have to endure. And yes, bans, avoiding him, ignoring him all haven’t worked. See the sticky. Stalking and harassing people he doesn’t like seems to be the entirety of Yama’s whole life. At any rate, that Vox has begun these proceedings has resulted in Yama desperately trying to scrub the Internet of proofs of his past bad behavior, quotes and has him fleeing to Twitter to try get people to listen to ‘his side’. (Is anyone surprised that this pretty much translates to any rational and sane person as someone trying to clean up the evidence of his past wrongdoings?)

At no point does he try to even prove his own allegations, throwing around lies and accusations instead as if they were fact. As stated above the only reason why I have a nominal participation on Vox Day’s blog now as a commenter was an act of pre-emptive self defense against Yama trying to steal my identity (which he tried to do anyway.) I am not, despite Yama’s insistent implications, ‘Vox Day’s best friend forever’ and Yama fondly imagines that I have ‘influence’ over a person I don’t know and at best is only an ‘acquaintance’ of.  This isn’t me trying to ‘disassociate’ myself from Vox Day, but rather a statement of accuracy – I occasionally read the blog because there’s the occasional interesting topic, or reference it on my sticky, but with Vox himself, there has been very little actual interaction. My own personal encounters have been brief and polite; and he was kind enough to answer a couple of questions I raised on According To Hoyt or Mad Genius club. (I don’t actually participate in the discussions on Vox Popoli because I feel I’d be quite out of my depth on the topics about history and science I find interesting. Personal assessment there, and I don’t mind admitting that I fall short by my own standards.)

I’ll stop here because 1) the heart rate monitor is taken off now and I can move again, and 2) I’m being fed lunch. Time to feed the baby so it grows strong and healthy, and as it is a beef stew, I’m quite keen because they vampired me for blood samples again this morning. I’ve had to waste enough time on Yama’s latest campaign of Epic Stupid and Epic Fail as it is. Unlike the man who has enough time to devote six years of active stalking an Asian chick on the other side of the freaking planet, I have a life outside of the Internet, responsibilities and much better things to do.