#so wait the whole system was set up using these vague arguments and people interpreting the spirit of it?

[wainswright]

The trial of Socrates took place over a nine-to-ten hour period in the People's Court, located in the agora, the civic center of Athens. The jury consisted of 500 male citizens over the age of thirty, chosen by lot from among volunteers. Athens used very large numbers of jurors, from 500 to as many as 1501, in part as a protection against bribes: who could afford to bribe 500 people? All jurors were required to swear by the gods of Zeus, Apollo, and Demeter the Heliastic Oath:

"I will cast my vote in consonance with the laws and decrees passed by the Assembly and by the Council, but, if there is no law, in consonance with my sense of what is most just, without favor or enmity. I will vote only on the matters raised in the charge, and I will listen impartially to the accusers and defenders alike."

Most of the jurors were probably farmers, as that was the principal occupation of the day. For their jury service they received payment of three obols. The jurors sat on wooden benches separated from spectators by some sort of barrier or railing. Given Socrates's fame and the notoriousness of the charge against him, the crowd of spectators was most likely large--including, of course, the most famous pupil of Socrates, Plato.

The trial began in the morning with the reading of the formal charges against Socrates by a herald. Few, if any, formal rules of evidence existed. The prosecution presented its case first. Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon had three hours, measured by a waterclock, to make their argument for a finding of guilt. Each accuser spoke from an elevated stage. No record of the prosecution's argument against Socrates survives.

Following the prosecution's case, Socrates had three hours to answer the charges. Although many written versions of the defense--or apology--of Socrates at one time circulated, only two have survived: one by Plato and another by Xenophon.

Following the arguments, the herald of the court called on the jurors to consider their decision. In Athens, jurors did not retire to a juryroom to deliberate--they made their decisions without discussion among themselves, based in large part on their own interpretations of the law. The 500 jurors voted on his guilt or innocence by dropping bronze ballot disks of the sort pictured above into marked urns. Only a majority vote was necessary for conviction. Four jurors were assigned the task of counting votes. In the case of Socrates, the jury found Socrates guilty on a relatively close vote of 280 to 220. (Interestingly, if less than 100 jurors voted for guilt, the accusers had to pay a fine to cover trial costs.)

If a defendant is convicted, the trial enters a second phase to set punishment. The prosecution and the defendant each propose a punishment and the jury chooses between the two punishment options presented to it. The range of possible punishments included death, imprisonment, loss of civil rights (i.e., the right to vote, the right to serve as a juror, the right to speak in the Assembly), exile, and fines. In the trial of Socrates, the principal accusers proposed the punishment of death. Socrates, if Plato's account is to be believed, proposed first the punishment--or, rather, the non-punishment--of free meals in the center of the city, then later the extremely modest fine of one mina of silver. Apparently finding Socrates' proposed punishment insultingly light, the jury voted for the prosecution's proposal of death by a larger margin than for conviction, 360 to 140.

The execution of Socrates was accomplished through the drinking of a cup of poison hemlock.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/socrates/greekcrimpro.html#:~:text=Only%20a%20majority%20vote%20was,fine%20to%20cover%20trial%20costs.)

—

Checking later: “by what i think is just if no law exists” imply prosecution introduces the law, then the charge, then the facts, then the argument.

This implies defense only has ONE opportunity to rebut all of that. I’m guessing theres court procedure to settle question of law before trial, no discovery process, no witnesses, evidence like a circus sideshow and entertainment if opinions are published in town square.

The first vote is to decide the question of law, which I suppose is very vague if juries dont come back with their own chaotic decision. (a two option vote?? criminal trial emphasis even though it is called civil law? am i getting these mixed up or did athens?)

The second vote is punishment.

so: the first vote is actually “do you think this guy should get punished.”

and the system was so prone over the top comical brutality (just by how it looks set up) it was common for people to go “ope the 500 man jury went sideways lets rescue this little fella,” (i think) but socrates stubbornly took his death sentence despite everything.

also how come performance isnt an option for punishment. that doesn’t seem plausible.

[ill-will-editions]

QUARANTINE LETTER #4

A fourth letter in our quarantine series, from our friend Icarus.

-----

EVERYTHING IS TRUE, NOTHING IS PERMITTED

“They’ve already destroyed everything, all the structures we believed in, trusted. Maybe we’re in a transitional phase, you know? There’s some sort of substitution going on. Meanwhile, we’re navigating in a tremendous vacuum, vaguely oriented by the stars but with no true reference point. Our compasses have gone wild, spinning madly, attracted by thousands of magnetic poles. We might as well throw them out the window, they’re obsolete. It’s just us and the night sky, like it was for the early explorers, while we wait for new, more advanced navigational devices to be invented. My only fear is that the stars have somehow gotten out of place and will be no help as references either.”

- Ignacio de Loyola Brandao, “And Still the Earth”

Dear friends,

It can be strange to intervene in someone else’s debate, but I don’t believe you’ll hold it against me if I do. Over the past weeks, I’ve rather enjoyed the commentary and exchange of letters between my friends, August, Kora, and Orion.  Something about the reflections of my friends is missing for me still, so I’ll chime in without wasting too much time, I hope.

QUARANTINE: INCOMPLETE—WHAT WE THINK IS HAPPENING IS ONLY SOMEWHAT ACCURATE

Today, millions of people are working. In warehouses, in offices, in fields, kitchens and storerooms; from the computer, the sorting room and at construction sites, millions of Americans are sharing the coronavirus with each other and with their neighbors. Many of them are asymptomatic, a portion are not sick yet, and certainly some of them are still hiding their symptoms from their families, employers, and coworkers. No zombie apocalypse is complete without the inconsiderate hot-head who insists, deceptively, that his injury is “nothing, it’s fine, let’s keep moving”. Orion wrote that the virus imposes “its own temporality, which immobilizes everything.” If only.  

   Logistics, shipping, freight, warehousing: these are some of the largest sectors of the 21st century workforce, and they are all on overtime. From Whole Foods to Old Dominion, these disposable workers are simultaneously killable - insofar as the market facilitates their endangerment via assured contact with the virus - and indispensable, insofar as they must not be allowed to strike, unionize, or cease working that this society may minimally function. In these industries, overwhelmingly, black men and immigrants are crammed into job sites without any protective equipment. In other words, they are proletarians in the classical sense, and they are still at work. A true quarantine, a dignified exodus from the commodity society and its extensive productive apparatus, would halt all forms of labor and toil, a circumstance as yet unrealized. If we can say we are living in a quarantine, we must say that it is still incomplete.

AUTONOMY OR AUTOMATA?—THE PANDEMIC AFFECTS ALL OF HUMANITY—WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS AS SUCH

What we once called "society" (an entity which now insists it can survive unity and distance simultaneously, even distance for the sake of unity), has been replaced by billions of apparatuses. These apparatuses constitute a vast ACEPHALOGRAM - a system of machines designed to trace and retrace the consciousness of a world that has definitively lost its head.

The period of real domination opened by the aggressive economic and political restructuring in the 70s, 80s, and 90s - “globalization” - has pushed a vast quantity of workers out of manufacturing and into service related industries. Services being overall less profitable then commodity manufacturing and heavy industry, other technological implements such as we see emerge from Silicon Valley have filled the gap, so to speak, of lost profits for the economy by allowing large advertising and analysis firms to mine directly the collective human ambitions in art, sex, politics, culture, and society. To open up this mine, which has produced an existential ruin comparable to the environmental ruin associated with mineral mining, the internet has developed as a global network of pseudo participatory information systems. The data thirst of these industries cannot be sated by the administration of facts from the center or top, they must be produced by the masses directly. But technology does not simply catch data falling naturally from the sky or running off the gutters of consciousness. It produces data by arranging relations such that they produce content that can be bought and sold. Under such conditions, the medical, political, technological and ontological crisis of a pandemic cannot help but be experienced as a video, a collection of tweets, graphs, memes, as background noise, as a conspiracy theory, as a genre in the endless relay of notifications.  

THE MIDDLE OF THE BEGINNING OF THE END—WHAT MAKES INDIVIDUAL INTERPRETATION POSSIBLE, MAKES COMMON UNDERSTANDING IMPOSSIBLE.

The truth is that social media has allowed billions of people to coordinate themselves into large and small containers of meaning and virtual energy. These containers, ecosystems of signs and signifiers, by dint of their polycentralized arrangement, function as an epistemological subversion of established truth-making infrastructures that require a certain amount of hegemony or global purchase: the scientific method, fact-checking, and debate. Occasionally, the understanding produced in these containers, theory-fictions more than anything else, incidentally conform to an intensity with physical correlatives capable of overpowering police infrastructures and seizing public space, as we saw across the world in 2019. More often, the echo chambers, as they are often called, curtail feelings of common dialogue and the perception of shared futurity that would be seemingly embedded in such a “global” sharing of information. This curtailing allows people of all “types” to be bundled together as data sets, insulated from the experience of true diversity of thought, of experience, of analysis. The polycentralized arrangement of the internet today may be even less participatory than previous eras of information sharing, even though it doesn’t feel that way.

Commentators and critics have used the ongoing crisis to delay the moment of our collective education with unwavering ideological entrenchment. At work, it is not uncommon for me to hear small business owners and day traders talk about the failures of socialized medicine in  Italy, implicitly endorsing greater privatization in the US. Among activists, liberals, and leftists, it is impossible to imagine a greater indictment on the privatized, decentralized, healthcare system than what is taking place. Apocalyptic Christian sects believe the government is going to repress churches for gathering, and social justice advocates believe the coronavirus crisis will be “the same, but worse” on every oppressive axis. It’s hard to imagine another reflex.

While they recognize that the internet has plunged billions of people into a pulverized simulacrum, some of my comrades would have us devote ourselves to the dissemination of real news, of verified and sober analysis, of scientific rigor, in order to combat the prevailing disarray. This warms my heart just as it saddens my intellect. We have always been machine-breakers, in a way, revolting against the forward and crushing movement of industry to preserve a less alienated experience of reality, labor, and community. We aren’t wrong for that. We should be reliable sources of information, but not because we will convince people with our reports — which may no longer be so possible online — rather because we believe it is the right thing to do, and because we can at least proceed on a clear and shared basis with each other. But what other strategies could we utilize for analyzing the world that would allow us to act within the protracted vertigo, without trapping ourselves or others in ideological camps, and without losing revolutionary aspirations in a world where global verification of facts seems impossible, but where universal need for a transformation, fascistic or revolutionary, feels like common sense?

EVERYTHING IS TRUE, NOTHING IS PERMITTED—THE SYSTEM REDUCES ITSELF TO A PURE FLUX OF DYNAMICS

“We dreamed of utopia and woke up screaming

A poor lonely cowboy that comes back home, what a wonder”

-Roberto Bolano, “Leave Everything, Again”

For millennia, the administration of public facts was the cornerstone of political power, and stamping out alternative readings the chief objective of the repressive machinery. The ruling bureaucracy has organized itself to prevent any global loss of control. They’ve always done that. What is surprising is how readily, since 9/11 at least, perhaps much earlier, they have abandoned many important methods for doing so. As the possibility of imagining its own future became increasingly stamped-out, the reigning order abandoned any pretense of pursuing the ideals it propped itself up on, its sole promise being to ward-off unforeseen eventualities. Without embarrassing myself with long-winded arguments about things I am ill-equipped to discuss - certainly less knowledgeable than my dear friends are on such matters as philosophy and critical works - I’d prefer to refer to an argument advanced by Brian Massumi in his essay “National Emergency Enterprise”. In this piece, he argues that a primary strategy of governance is to identify all possible causes of a scenario. The market refashions environments that submit the living tissue of relations one and all to technological “dataveillance”, information which, in principle, allows the administrators of such a system to model its every possible outcome, translating every action into a trans-action, while ensuring that every aberration meets a form of control. He utilizes the example of a forest fire, but we can just look at the pandemic and it’s consequences.

   The ruling class everywhere, has argued and governed as if the coronavirus is "merely the flu", justifying late responses and insufficient care, while also closing borders and taking emergency measures as if we are living in a veritable plague. There are strategies attached to every discourse, interests silently advanced with each interpretation, and powers produced and mobilized by every kind of theory and operation. Anyway, we have been living in the fall out of multiple convergent strategies for controlling and responding to this situation.  The governors of the world, at least of the democratic countries, are basically throwing things against a wall and seeing what sticks.  We can imagine that modeling and predictions are conducted endlessly based on analytics produced through data mining and network analysis purchased from Google, Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere. As technocratic governments subordinate welfare states to the "science" of neoliberalism, the nihilism of the powerful today subordinates everything to the "science" of control.

Anyway, who organizes oblivion today acts with no principles and can only speak in lies. What does this mean for the rest of us?

NOTHING IS EVERYTHING, TRUE IS PERMITTED—TRUTH DOES NOT REQUIRE A SUBJECT ONLY LIES DO. LET'S KEEP IT REAL, WHATEVER THAT IS.

   We can and are responding to this situation. The most important thing, from my perspective, is that we develop a vibrant enough ecosystem of strategies, corresponding to the largest possible interpretation of facts, without dividing our sympathies and concerns into rival fiefdoms and ideological sects. There are benefits to arguing that nothing of the situation is unique, that in fact the worst off before are the worst off now, that today simply represents an opportunity for us, etc. I am not among the comrades advancing this position, but I want to see the results of that framework as soon as possible, if it does not in fact raise the threshold for meaningful interventions. There are benefits to arguing that the quarantine is not deep enough, that the politics of mobilization have failed utterly to devastate the economy, but that a true lock down of the world could resemble the worlds first ever international wildcat general strike. I want to hear advocates of this position contend with the possibility of carceral interpretations of this argument. For those planting survival gardens, for those running autonomous rent strike hotlines, for those training in firearms, I want us to develop a shared enough perspective to see that there is a simple unity in our strategies, which is what is precisely, and incorrectly, attacked in Kora’s most recent letter to Orion: our autonomy. Beyond any individualistic misinterpretations, it is my perspective that the ability of human beings to self-authorize our activity, to determine our shared destinies, to control supply chains, vital infrastructures, and means of subsistence without the mediating factors of the market, are necessary prerequisites for a dignified life on earth. This is not to say, as Kora has intelligently argued, that anyone could come to control the unfolding course of history - a delusion that preppers, governors, and revolutionaries have all held - but precisely that autonomous, self-organized, structures are the only structures capable of responding quickly enough to the destabilizing, frightening, and uncertain futures lying in wait regardless of what we or anyone else do. We must utilize the current situation to repolarize the circumstances to the best of our ability around foundational concerns of power: on the one hand, there are all of the people of the world, some of them bastards we would not live with, and our shared need for dignified healthcare, housing, sustenance, and livelihood; and on the other hand there are all of the bastards waiting this out on yachts, manipulating public data for the sake of a geopolitical PR battle, utilizing the pandemic to pursue totalitarian power fantasies and clampdowns. We don’t need to steer the ship forward, we need to be able to swim in the wreckage.

Sorry, I wrote too much. Thanks for reading and I look forward to reading what others think soon.

-- Icarus

04.11.2020

STATE OF EMERGENCY, DAY 40

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

[fallintosanity]

in my ffxv playthrough the summons had the obnoxious habit of only allowing themselves to be summoned right as the fight was ending, when they would be the least useful

also, gentiana is a complete troll

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14, part 15

“Have you ever heard about someone generating an elemental attack without actually using a materia?” Genesis demanded of Angeal. 

It was Friday, the day after Cloud’s materia class, and he, Genesis, and Angeal were heading to the Briefing Room. Angeal frowned at Genesis’s question. “That doesn’t even make sense,” he said.

“That’s what we said!” Genesis gestured to himself and Cloud. “But that’s exactly what Caelum’s doing.” 

“Huh.” 

Genesis stopped walking and glared at him. “You don’t care, do you,” he accused Angeal. “You’re not even remotely curious about this?”

“I’m more curious why Lazard sent all of us an emergency summons an hour before we were supposed to have a meeting with him anyway,” Angeal answered, and kept walking. 

Genesis harrumphed and followed, but Cloud had to concede Angeal’s point. He suspected the original scheduled afternoon meeting was to discuss Noctis’s work in SOLDIER and, in all likelihood, a promotion to Second Class, but couldn’t begin to guess why Lazard had called all the Firsts in early. 

Sephiroth met them in the hall just outside the Briefing Room. “Is this everyone?” he asked.

Angeal nodded. “Zack and Kunsel had to go down to Junon this morning to deal with a Turk emergency.” 

Sephiroth gave a clipped nod at that and swept into the Briefing Room without further discussion. Lazard was pacing back and forth along the end of the table, snarling into his PHS, “I don’t care how it happened, just tell Scarlet that if it ever happens again, I’m having her funding revoked—No, I just said I don’t care, this is the second time her experiments have put SOLDIERs in danger.” He glanced up, spotted the Firsts, and snapped to the PHS, “Tell her.” Then he slapped the device closed and shoved it into a pocket. 

Genesis raised an eyebrow at Cloud behind Angeal’s back - Lazard didn’t normally get that worked up. But the director took a deep breath, making a visible effort to calm down. “My apologies,” he said. “And thank you for coming on such short notice.” 

“You said SOLDIERs are in danger?” Angeal asked. 

Lazard nodded. “Scarlet has apparently been developing yet another line of attack robots - a model supposedly capable of slaying a Zolom. She took them out to the wastes south of Midgar for testing, but ‘lost control’ over them.” He didn’t quite roll his eyes at the phrase, but it was clear from his tone what he thought of Scarlet’s ability to keep her machines in line. 

Sephiroth folded his arms. “Scarlet’s robots are no threat to us. Why claim we’re in danger?” 

“Not you.” Lazard rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “I’d planned to ask Commanders Strife and Rhapsodos to deal with them after our meeting, but something went wrong with the mission system.” 

“How so?” Angeal asked. 

“Instead of staying reserved as I’d intended, the mission somehow made it out into the regular roster,” Lazard said. “It was automatically assigned to a Third who departed on the mission before I realized what had happened, and now I can’t get hold of him to call him back.” 

Cloud nodded. That wasn’t surprising; cell signal in the wastes was spotty at best. 

“Which Third?” Genesis said. “Some of them might be wise enough to fall back when they find the robots.” 

Lazard looked up at them, and from the weary look on his face, Cloud realized who it had to be even as the director said, “Noctis Lucis Caelum.” 

“Of course it’s him,” Genesis muttered. “It’s like Cloud all over again, but worse.” 

Cloud kicked him in the ankle, then looked innocent when Genesis glared at him. Lazard ignored them both and said, “I need the four of you to head to the wastes immediately to rescue Caelum. He’s shown promise, certainly, but promise won’t protect him from Scarlet’s most murderous designs yet.”

“How much of a lead does he have?” Sephiroth asked.

“About an hour,” Lazard said. “He requisitioned a van. I already have another which will be ready for you by the time you get down to the garage.” 

“Understood.” Sephiroth glanced at Cloud and the others; when no one objected, he nodded to Lazard and swept out of the room. 

*           *           *

Fifteen minutes later, the four of them were packed into a van and bouncing along the bumpy road out of Midgar toward the wastes. They were going faster than the rough road would normally allow, but Angeal navigated around the worst potholes and debris with the ease of familiarity and the reflexes of a SOLDIER First. 

Genesis, sitting in the back with Cloud, leaned forward and prodded Angeal on the shoulder. “So have you ever heard of someone making an elemental blast without using materia?” 

Sephiroth, riding shotgun, glanced back at Genesis with confusion drawing a narrow line between his eyebrows. “That doesn’t make sense.” 

“That is exactly what we have been saying!” Genesis pronounced dramatically. He launched into a description of what had happened yesterday during the materia lesson. “Perhaps we can use today’s little mishap as a test,” he finished. “Rescue Caelum, but bring him along when we destroy the robots, and have him try out that Thunder materia he carries. Then you’ll see.” 

“Good idea,” Angeal said. “There has to be a logical explanation for what he’s doing.” He drew breath to say more, but Sephiroth’s PHS rang. The general answered, then frowned as he listened to whoever was on the other end. 

“Wait,” Sephiroth said finally. “The others should hear this.” He held out his PHS and set it to speaker. “Go ahead.” 

Lazard’s voice came over the line. “I was just telling Sephiroth that my assistant figured out how this mission got on Caelum’s roster.” 

“You said it was a glitch in the system,” Genesis said. 

“Apparently not,” Lazard said. “Someone assigned it to him.” 

Cloud frowned. “Who?”

“Well…” Lazard hesitated. “The First Class override code used to make the assignment belongs to Commander Fair.”

“Zack?” Angeal said, surprised. “Why would Zack do that?”

“More importantly, when would he have done it?” Genesis added. “He’s with Kunsel in Junon.” 

“Good questions,” Lazard agreed. “Ones we don’t have the answer to.” 

“Does anyone else know Fair’s override code?” Sephiroth asked. “A Turk, perhaps?” Then his green eyes narrowed and he looked at Cloud. 

Cloud scowled back. Sephiroth must have picked up something over their connection; Cloud knew the answer, but hadn’t wanted to throw Zack under the bus. He managed not to squirm as he admitted, “Most of SOLDIER knows. Probably half the cadets, too.”

Sephiroth raised an eyebrow. In the rearview, Cloud saw Angeal wince. Genesis flung up his hands in exasperation. “I thought the Turks like him because he’s so very trustworthy. How is sharing his First Class override code with most of SOLDIER trustworthy?” 

“He likes helping people,” Cloud muttered, the words coming out defensive. “He gives it to people when they lock themselves out of their rooms, or when they need to requisition something. He wouldn’t have expected anyone to do something like this.” 

Lazard sighed, audible even over the PHS’s increasingly staticky connection. “That’s going to make it difficult to identify the culprit,” he said. 

“Who would want to, though?” Angeal asked. “Sending Caelum on a reserved First Class mission which would very likely be fatal? Has the man made such a bitter enemy already?” 

“Three friends go into battle,

One is captured,

One flies away,

The one that is left becomes a hero,” Genesis recited thoughtfully. 

“Rivalry?” Sephiroth seemed to turn this over, then shot another glance at Cloud. “You’ve spent the most time with him. Have you noticed any such thing?” 

Cloud shook his head. “One of the Thirds made a joke about Noctis’s bunkmate killing him over his alarm clock, but that’s it.” 

“I doubt a bunkmate dispute would rise to the level of attempted homicide,” Lazard agreed. “I’ll keep investigating here. You four… just hurry.” The PHS clicked as he hung up. 

Sephiroth looked at Angeal. “How much farther?” 

“Another fifteen or twenty minutes before the road ends,” Angeal said with a glance at the speedometer. “Then it’s on foot until we find Caelum and the robots.” 

“Wonderful,” Genesis muttered. “Wandering the wastes with killer robots on the prowl. Just my idea of a good time.” 

“You could always recite Loveless at the robots, if it would make you feel better,” Sephiroth suggested. 

Genesis scoffed. “Just because you have no appreciation for the arts—”

They kept bickering as the van drove into the wastes. It reminded Cloud, not pleasantly, of the time the other three had kidnapped him to spar with Sephiroth. That little adventure had been what kicked off Angeal’s degradation and started the whole mess with Hojo. 

Cloud clenched his fists. Hojo was dead, and so was Hollander. Both Genesis and Angeal’s degradation had been cured, and Noctis, despite all his other mysteries, showed no signs of anything similar. All that would happen this time was that they would find Noctis, destroy the rampaging bots, and return home. 

Fortunately, Angeal managed to arrive at the end of the road before Cloud could work himself up too badly. Noctis’s requisitioned van sat just off the pavement, and Angeal parked beside it just in time to stop a full-blown argument from developing between Sephiroth and Genesis over the interpretation of a particularly vague line in Loveless’s third act. Cloud fled the van before either of them could demand his opinion, leaving Angeal to bully them out himself. “Genesis, you and Cloud go that way,” Angeal ordered as he all but dragged Sephiroth out the passenger door. “Sephiroth and I will take this side.” 

Cloud followed Angeal’s nod to the west, where low mesas rose up from the dusty ground to create a maze of cliffs. The sun, low in the sky, cast brilliant orange and pink light across the grey landscape. They’d have to hurry if they didn’t want to be wandering around out here in the dark. Even the more aggressive monsters that emerged at night weren’t a threat to First Class SOLDIERs, but they’d be annoying - and would pose a risk to Noctis. 

“Move quickly,” Sephiroth said, echoing Cloud’s thoughts. The Loveless argument was apparently already forgotten, his focus turning to the mission. “Check in frequently, and be careful. Lazard wasn’t able to get more information on these robots, other than that they were Scarlet’s deadliest yet.” He tossed a small handheld radio to Cloud, and another to Genesis. “Let’s go.” 

They moved out, spreading out across the wastes. Cloud quickly lost sight of Genesis among the rock formations, and even the rustle of his boots over the rocky ground vanished beneath the dull rush of wind. But as he passed around the far side of one of the larger mesas, the wind carried new sounds to his ears: the shriek of machinery under stress and a distant, familiar shout. 

Noctis. 

Cloud followed the sound, ears straining as he wove through the rocky terrain. When he thought he was headed in the right direction, he radioed the others, but didn’t stop to wait for them. He could hear the deep rattle of heavy artillery now, and another metallic shriek. The sounds of battle intensified as he wove through a narrow gully that cut through one of the larger cliffs - then abruptly fell silent. 

Cloud’s gut clenched. Was he too late? He pushed himself to run faster, heedless of the rocky spurs jutting into his path and tearing at his shoulders and legs. The shadows shifted up ahead, and Cloud skidded around a corner, emerging onto a broad, flat area littered with smoking robot wreckage. 

There had to be at least twenty of the things, though it was hard to tell because they’d been so thoroughly torn apart. Spindly metal legs, still-smoking gun barrels, sheets of plating, and more debris all lay scattered across the rocky plateau. In the center was a larger pile of robot bodies, as though they’d all ganged up for a final, desperate rush against a single target. Noctis Lucis Caelum stood atop the pile of wrecked robots, his hands empty, his face turned upward and his eyes reflecting the brilliant pink glow of the sunset. 

As Cloud skidded to a startled halt at the edge of the plateau, Noctis blinked and turned to look down at him. The pink sunset glow vanished from his eyes, replaced with surprise that mirrored Cloud’s own. “What the hell are you doing here?” Noctis said. 

“Saving you...?” Cloud said, then shook his head, staring in amazement at the mess of metal parts. “I guess you don’t need it.” 

“No, why would I?” Noctis jumped lightly down from his perch, following Cloud’s gaze around the plateau. “That was a lot more fun than killing bugs in the slums.” 

“Did you just say that was fun?!” Genesis demanded, emerging from the gully behind Cloud. “How did you—” 

Noctis scowled at him from behind his bangs. “Did you think I couldn’t handle a few MAs on my own?” 

His frown deepened a moment before Cloud sensed Sephiroth’s presence. The general, with Angeal on his heels, followed Genesis out of the gully. Green eyes surveyed the destruction coolly as Sephiroth said, “Given the Head of Weapons Development’s reputation, Director Lazard had reserved this mission for a team of First Class SOLDIERs. You should never have received it as a solo mission.” 

“Oh.” Noctis looked over the robots once more, then shrugged. “Guess the director overestimated these things.” 

“You also should not have gone on any mission alone,” Sephiroth added sharply. “You’re still on probation and subject to Commander Strife’s supervision.” 

Noctis’s expression instantly turned sullen, his chin lowering so his bangs hid his face. “The mission didn’t say anything about needing to be babysat. Figured maybe you guys were finally laying off.” He strode forward, brushing past Cloud toward the gully. 

“Wait, Caelum, you’re hurt!” Genesis called. Cloud spotted the torn fabric of Noctis’s uniform and the red smear of blood down his side an instant before Genesis cast a Cure on him. 

Noctis yelped and jerked like he’d been stung. “The hell—?!”

“Easy,” Angeal said. He stepped closer, one hand out like he was worried Noctis might spook. “It’s just a Cure spell.” 

“A Cure spell? Like in—” Noctis started, then snapped his mouth closed so hard his teeth clicked audibly. 

“Never had magical healing before, eh?” Genesis asked. He clapped Noctis on the shoulder. “SOLDIERs heal quickly, but a Cure is far cleaner and doesn’t leave a scar.” 

Noctis blinked, then twisted to look down at the wound. “...Huh.” 

“Come on,” Angeal said gently. “We should get back. The wastes are—cold at night.” He didn’t quite manage to hide the fact that he’d been about to say something else. But unless those mangled robots had been far below Scarlet’s usual standards, dangerous wasn’t a concern for Noctis any more than it was for the Firsts. 

If Noctis noticed the substitution, though, he gave no sign, just headed for the gully again. “Sounds good to me. I’m beat.” 

Angeal and Genesis followed him, but Sephiroth hung back, and Cloud paused, waiting. Only when the others had vanished into the weaving trail through the rock did Sephiroth say in a low voice, “Did Caelum have a weapon when you found him?” 

Cloud blinked, running the memory through his mind. Noctis’s standard-issue broadsword had been strapped to his back, but… “Not in his hand, no.” 

Sephiroth surveyed the robot graveyard before them once more. The sun had sunk below the horizon while they’d been talking to Noctis, and in the deepening twilight, his slit-pupiled eyes glowed more brightly than usual. “None of this damage was done with that broadsword he carries,” Sephiroth said quietly. “In fact, I see a squadron’s worth of weapon marks here.” 

“You think he had help?” 

“I don’t know,” Sephiroth admitted. “We should have seen some sign of the presence of others. But Caelum clearly has no other weapons himself.” 

Cloud took another look around the plateau, studying the destroyed robots. Now that Sephiroth had pointed it out, he could see the marks of strange weapons on the pieces: a serrated blade here, something long and thin - a spear? - there. Bullet holes from a different caliber than the robots’ own mounted guns, and even familiar layered slices from a throwing star like the one Yuffie had used in Cloud’s timeline. A squadron’s worth of weapons, like Sephiroth had said, but Cloud hadn’t heard a squadron. And he’d arrived fast enough after the fight ended that he should have seen something. 

“No one else was here,” Cloud said reluctantly, and shook his head. “We’ll figure it out.” 

“Yes,” Sephiroth agreed. His eyes gleamed like a prowling coeurl’s as he stalked after the others back to the van. “We will.” 

Cloud turned, intending to follow, but an icy breeze shivered over his bare arms. He stopped, senses on high alert. The wastes were cold at night, sure, but the rocky ground was still warm with the last of the sun’s baked-in heat and that breeze had been positively arctic. Almost like…

He dug his Shiva materia out of his pocket and held it up. The red sphere was coated with a thin layer of frost, and Cloud’s breath crackled and fogged the air as he studied it. Then his straining senses caught movement behind him, and he spun around, reaching for the hilt of First Tsurugi on his back. 

For just a moment, he thought he saw a figure standing on the far side of the plateau. In the fading light, all he could make out was long dark hair, pale skin, and flowing clothes - but even as he tried to focus on the figure, it vanished as though it had never been. That arctic breeze rippled across Cloud’s skin once more, then likewise faded. 

Cloud still shivered. Had he imagined the figure, thanks to Sephiroth’s suggestion of others accompanying Noctis? Or had Cloud actually seen one of Noctis’s mysterious accomplices? He took a couple of steps forward, squinting toward where he thought the figure had been, but saw nothing, heard nothing.

It couldn’t have been a hallucination. Could it? Cloud was sane, had gone to great lengths to recover his sanity - he shouldn’t be seeing imaginary people anymore. Shouldn’t. But then, how else to explain the figure? Even Wutai ninja couldn’t vanish in plain sight like that. But if it was a hallucination— 

“Cloud?” 

He jumped about a mile and spun around, glaring at Sephiroth where he stood at the entrance to the path through the rock. Sephiroth returned the look levelly. “Everything alright?” 

“Fine,” Cloud snarled. He forced himself to let go of First Tsurugi’s hilt and stalked past Sephiroth before the general could ask any more questions. Sephiroth was absolutely the last person Cloud wanted to discuss possible hallucinations with. And it wasn’t a hallucination anyway. It couldn’t be. It had to be Noctis’s mystery accomplice. 

...it had to.

[loudlytransparenttrash]

The 99.9% of Muslims Aren’t Extremists Myth

A number of what I can only hope are well-intentioned people, including Barack Obama, have claimed that the Islamic State and other militant radical groups have practically no support among Muslims and only one percent of Muslims worldwide hold extreme views. In response to a question of why his administration avoided using the phrase, “Islamic terrorists,” Obama responded by saying the vast overwhelming majority of Muslims reject radical interpretations of Islam, distinguishing between those with extreme views and the remaining “99.9 percent of Muslims.”

Every day we are told that Islamist terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. They say the causes of al Qaeda and ISIS are not Islamic and we are told to align ourselves with the 99.9 percent of Muslims who are looking for the same thing we're looking for. But is it true that 99.9 percent of Muslims don't support extremism? I understand the desire to believe this and the optimism expressed in such a claim, but what is the evidence for it? Our feelings? It’s what our Muslim college friend told us? What about major research and polling organizations who have repeatedly shown a very different picture?

There are two main arguments that are in significant need of addressing. The first is against the claim that the beliefs and goals of al Qaeda and ISIS are not Islamic. The truth is, those who repeat this lie don’t actually know much about Islam, especially the liberal teenage Hillary supporting Muslims living in California who want to call everything and anything Islamophobic. It may sound surprising but most of them don’t even speak Arabic and haven’t read the Quran and only choose fragments of the Quran to follow, they only know what they hear from their parents and their Mullahs, and so most of them think the radical Islam actions are against Muhammad's teaching and Islam does not support these things. 

Why are they ignorant about their own religion? Because the interpretations of Islam and most of the Quran verses are very vague which leaves the door open to multiple interpretations, none technically being more correct or incorrect than the other, all equally Islamic. Most people don’t bother to do a little research or read some books since they can easily be refuted, so they will usually say “do your praying and that’s good enough, if you look any deeper into Islam, it will just be confusing.” The ones who actually do the research and learn the history of their religion and the meaning of their scripture, usually they become one of these three things:

They become horrified and either become non-religious and abandon the faith. They become “reform” supporters who try to focus on the good side of Islam while wanting to repeal and move on from the violent and oppressive ideas of Islam. Or they become terrorists.

It’s easy to say the extremists are taking the Quran out of context but who’s to say their interpretation is wrong? Are you saying there are no calls for death, violence, torture and extremism in the Quran? It’s only love and peace? Give me a break. There are hundreds of Islamic scholars and clerics all studying the context and none of them can agree on one interpretation and amongst them are both moderates and terrorist leaders. There is no Islamic world leader like the Pope who can set the record straight so every Muslim has their own interpretation of being a good Muslim, and their ideas simply cannot be called un-Islamic as they have taken their interpretations from the exact same book and the exact same scripture. That’s why Dr. Shabir Ally can talk about the fair nature of Islam while the leader of ISIS - who also has a PhD in Islamic and Quranic studies - is running a campaign of terror in the name of Allah. There isn’t a moderate version and a terror version of the Quran, it comes from the same book and they are legitimately interpreting and practicing what it says. Everything terrorists are doing today is what Muhammad and his men have already done and it’s all there within the Quran and Hadiths. To deny the link between terrorism and Islam is to deny there is no link between belief and behavior and that my friend, is to deny yourself rationality and impartiality. 

Now the other argument that is all too often being regurgitated is the myth of 99.9 percent of Muslims do not support extremism. As anyone who cares enough or has the courage to admit, Islam has a problem with extremism but it’s more than just terrorism, it’s extremism as a whole and it’s about time we have an open, honest and fact-based conversation about it. Our society has evolved to a point where we can have a civilized debate about almost anything, except what may be the most important issue of our time - the rise of radical Islam. The left somehow feel worried that they're going to be called racist if they criticize an ideology but it’s this fear of being called a racist that has caused many people to act against their better judgment and it has lead to the cost of innocent lives.

People have become afraid of reporting suspicious activity in fear of being called a racist. The perfect examples being San Bernardino and the most recent Manchester bombing. Political correctness seems to have cost people their lives yet nothing changes. Freedom of speech is supposed to be a liberal principle but today’s liberals bury that basic right the moment Islam is mentioned. Muslims don’t need to be defended by teenage girls with blue mohawks or ISIS roleplaying “anti-fascists,” they need to be protected from the radicals in their own religion who want them dead along with the rest of us.

There are about 1.6 billion Muslims, in fact there’s probably a lot less since in almost every Muslim country it’s illegal to denounce Islam. There’s almost a billion less Muslims in the world than Christians yet most of the terrorism in the world today involves Islam in one way or another. Obviously, not all Muslims are terrorists, in fact a small percentage are, I agree, but how many hold extremist views and beliefs? How many could you say are as peaceful as Obama and left-wing activists want us to believe? This is significant because when we are considering even small percentages of the Muslim world, then we are still talking about tens, if not hundreds of millions of people. This is especially concerning when we consider the different types of Islamic extremism and what they mean for us.

There are three main categories of Islamic extremism. The left automatically jump in at this point screaming “they’re not all terrorists!” but they have to understand that when we are talking about extremism and Islam, we are not just talking about just terrorism, we are identifying and talking about the very specific extreme ideas of this particular ideology, which creates the link between belief and behavior. It has nothing to do with race and it’s so much bigger than just terrorism. Terrorism is the result of dangerous fundamentals and it’s those fundamentals we are talking about when criticizing Islam. It’s not racist or xenophobic. It’s critical analysis. 

First we have the jihadists. These are people who wake up in the morning wanting to kill apostates, they believe paradise is waiting for them if they kill infidels, they believe in martyrdom and global Islamic domination. Jihadists are organizations like ISIS, al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hezbollah, Hamas and the various jihadi lone wolves who murder people in San Bernardino, Texas, Paris, Belgium, Jerusalem, Ottawa, Madrid, New York, London, Boston, Sydney, Orlando, to name a few. It’s these “bad apples” that the left only focus on when defending Islamic ideology, they say because only a tiny minority of Muslims actually commit terrorism, it’s no reflection on Islam. But Islam extremism doesn’t stop with terrorism, it’s only the tip of the Islamic iceberg. 

Next we have the Islamists. These are people who are just as convinced of martyrdom and global Islamic domination but they are more willing to work within the system, they're aren’t yet prepared to blow themselves up on a bus, they instead want to overtake governments and use democracy against itself. Islamists want many of the same things as the jihadis, it's just that their tactics differ so instead of engaging in terror themselves, they use the political and social systems to further their aims. Perfect examples are the Palestinians who voted terrorist group Hamas into power and the Egyptians who in 2012 elected the Muslim Brotherhood into power. The Muslim Brotherhood have not hid the their stated goal of establishing a global Islamic state run in accordance with Sharia law. Another Islamist group that’s actually on our doorstep in North America, CAIR, has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and has been listed as a terror organization. CAIR presents itself as a moderate civil rights group representing the interests Muslims in America. They pop up often in the media calling everything Islamophobic and getting every film or ad they don’t like shut down. This is who Linda Sarsour is working for when she continuously tries to convince young American women that Sharia law is so cool and progressive and the sad part is, it’s actually working. 

The third category of Islamic extremism are the fundamentalists. It’s this group that the left ignores the most in order to keep the numbers as low as possible when trying to debate the percentage of peaceful Muslims and those who don’t hold any extremist views. Sadly, Islamic fundamentalists come in the masses. They hold views about human rights, women and homosexuals that are deeply troubling and the people who should be concerned the most are feminist, LGBT and left-wing activists but we get the exact opposite reaction from them. 

In a 2013 Pew Research poll of Muslims around the world, they found only 57 percent had an unfavorable view of Al-Qaeda and only half had an unfavorable view of the Taliban. 13 percent of respondents declared outright support or favorability for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The Pew numbers showed remarkable consistency when they came out with their 2015 poll that focused on Muslim responses to the “Islamic State.” In an average of ten primarily Muslim nations sampled in that poll, Pew demonstrated alarmingly high percentages of either outright support for ISIS or many respondents who were undecided on how they felt about the world’s largest terrorist organization. In Pakistan for example, just 28 percent of Muslims were against ISIS. In Nigeria, 34 percent of respondents either saw ISIS favorably or undecided how they felt about them, in Turkey the number was 27 percent, in Indonesia 22 percent, in Malaysia 36 percent, and in Senegal it was 40 percent. In total, only half of all Muslims polled throughout Islamic countries rejected ISIS and other terror organizations. 

When asked if religious judges should decide family and property disputes using Sharia law which includes being sentenced to lashings, being stoned to death and hung for crimes committed ranging from dating a non-Muslim, talking to a man or being gay, between 66 and 94 percent of Muslims in 10 Sharia countries said they supported it. An average of 81 percent of Muslims in South Asia and 57 percent of Middle East - North Africa Muslims support cutting off the hands of thieves and while 76 percent of Muslims in South Asia and 56 percent of Muslims in the Middle East - North Africa support the execution of those who convert from Islam to another faith. When you take the average from all the Muslims surveyed around the world, an average of 27 percent believe that apostates should be executed, 39 percent of all Muslims believe that honor killings can be a justifiable punishment for a woman who has had pre-or extramarital sex while 42 percent of French Muslims, 35 percent of British Muslims and 26 percent of American Muslims, 39 percent of Palestinian Muslims, 29 percent of Egyptian Muslims, 39 percent of Afghani Muslims, 26 percent of Bangladesh Muslims, 18 percent of Malaysian Muslims, 15 percent of Turkish Muslims believe suicide bombings against non-muslims can be justified. Is none of this extremism? Is this just “cultural differences?” How exactly did the left come up with the 99.9 percent figure? 

In South-Eastern Europe, 88 percent of Muslims say homosexuality is morally wrong, same applies to 95 percent of Muslims in Southeast Asia, 89 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa, 82 percent in the Middle East - North Africa and 80 percent in Central Asia. 51 percent of Turkish Muslims living in Germany believe that homosexuality is an illness. As for sex outside of marriage, 94 percent of Muslims in the Middle East - North Africa and Southeast Asia and 87 percent in South Asia want it illegal. As for women’s rights, 93 percent of Muslims in Southeast Asia, 88 percent in South Asia, 87 percent in the Middle East - North Africa, 70 percent in Central Asia and 43 percent of Muslims in South-Eastern Europe believe women must not have the right of choice, she must obey her husband and she must cover herself. Only 25 percent of Muslims in the middle East - North Africa believe daughters should be paid inheritance equally, Jordan 25 percent, Iraq 22 percent, Morocco 15 percent and Tunisia 15 percent believe daughters should be paid and treated equally. 

36 percent of 16 to 24-year-old British Muslims believe converts to another religion should be punished by death. 13 percent of 16 to 24-year-old British Muslims "admire organizations like al-Qaeda that are prepared to fight the West” and 58 percent believe that "many of the problems in the world today are a result of arrogant Western attitudes.” 40% feel it is unacceptable for Muslim men and women to mix freely. Two thirds of British Muslims say they wouldn’t alert police if another Muslim joined ISIS, one in four British Muslims want British law replaced with Sharia law, one in four British Muslims say terrorism is justifiable, 100,000 British Muslims sympathize with suicide bombers, over thirty percent of British Muslims believe violence against anyone who mocks the Prophet is justified, half of British Muslims believe homosexuality should be illegal, forty percent believe wives should submit to their husband and five percent agree with stoning cheaters to death. This whole 99.99 thing isn’t quite stacking up now, is it? 

it is not just Pew reporting such findings, as a number of other polls have demonstrated similarly depressing results. Consider the 2015 survey by ORB International which found that 22 percent of Syrians see the Islamic State as having a positive influence on their country. A 2011 MacDonald Laurier Institute Poll found 35 percent of Canadian Muslims would not oppose al-Qaeda. A 2015 Metropoll that found that 20 percent of Turks supported the slaughter of Charlie Hebdo staffers and cartoonists. A 2015 poll by The Polling Company CSP Poll showed that 37 percent of Muslim-Americans viewed ISIS beliefs as Islamic or correct and 33 percent said the same about al-Qaeda.

So what other evidence might one point to as a justification for the 99.9 percent claim? None. While it’s easy to prove against the firm assertion of ISIS and extremism having practically no support in the Islamic world, which has been repeated by most western politicians and leftist activists, I am not suggesting that most Muslims agree with the extremists in their faith, only that the extremists represent a much, much larger and more troubling minority than anyone on the left will ever be willing to admit so it continues to be swept under the rug and never talked about. It denies reality and does nothing to address the endless problems described above or aid those Muslims who are making efforts to combat a very real problem among their co-religionists and one that ultimately impacts us all, Muslim or non-Muslim. We have a deadly virus that is spreading rapidly and will soon be out of our control, we have to identify the virus honestly and openly and fight against it while we still can. We have to start being honest about Islam.