Another year gone by. What did we get up to in 2011?
* We did our best to promote Goblin Camp, with a let's play kind of thing and a bunch of other posts. The game is still a going concern, and although there hasn't been an update for a while, I'm assured there will be. Eventually. Back in February, I put together really epic camp. The website is here; if you haven't tried it, do.
* There was an election in Finland, that led to no noticeable changes in Finnish politics. We have some really good-looking athletes, though.
* They killed 'Usāmah; I was skeptical about that being the death-blow to terrorism. Sadly, terrorism took a different turn shortly thereafter with the senseless attacks in Norway, the background to which we discussed. Steve Jobs also passed away, and we felt that his eulogies went too far.
* Throughout the year, we were alarmed by the police, as despite the death of "Osama", new threats to our precious bodily fluids continued to emerge. To combat these, we got everything from American police UAVs and the German police going all Gestapo on the German Pirate Party to the Finnish police hacking your phone. I also lost faith in Radley Balko, of The Agitator, for hithcing up with the Kremlin's propaganda machine, and my post on the topic inspired a TV show host to discuss my underwear.
* There was a lot of Minecraft. At the beginning of the year, I was still hanging around Epic Island, and we were impressed by music. We also weighed in on the Mojang - Zenimax legal battle.
* Apart from Minecraft, we liked Harms Way, but were disappointed by Mass Effect 2 being a sexist white supremacist game and by EA's various antics. The future looked bleak. In other media, we liked Detroit 1-8-7 and Sucker Punch, as well as the fantastic Robot.
* We all enjoyed some excellent music!
* Some memes were participated in, and scientology was addressed. We also started a series of posts on the Bible.
* There was, of course, a lot of hockey. At the very beginning of the year, the wrong guy was made MVP of the World Juniors, and later on Winnipeg got an NHL team. Sadly, our favorite NHL player called it quits. However, there were the world champs. In my preview, I had a good feeling about Team Finland, and even though Mats Sundin assured us it was impossible, Finland actually won. We were a little disappointed by the overblown coverage given to one particular goal, though.
Sadly, in the words of Jonathan Toews, the summer of 2011 was the worst ever for hockey. Not only did three NHL players pass away during the summer, but the plane carrying the KHL's Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team crashed, killing the whole team. Earlier this month, the New York Times published a series of stories on Derek Boogaard, an NHL enforcer who died last summer. I highly recommend reading them.
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Maybe that's a bit of a sad note to end this post on, but as the new year comes around, it won't hurt to take a moment to remember those who aren't around to see it happen. Having said that, though, I'd like to thank everyone who read this sorry excuse for a blag over the past year, and wish you all a happy new year! See you in 2012.
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Sunday, October 9, 2011
The Steve Jobs thing is going too far
I freely admit I write provocatively, and sometimes I've even been rude, but this time around, I genuinely do not want to offend anyone. However, the beatification of Steve Jobs is getting so far out of hand that I have to say something.
A blogger for the Economist pushed me over the edge with this:
Prospero: Beautiful gadget, no manual necessary
A blogger for the Economist pushed me over the edge with this:
Prospero: Beautiful gadget, no manual necessary
He put Apple's great achievement better than anyone I've heard, and so I paraphrase it here: it used to be that when you got a computer or a gadget, you had to read a long manual or spend forever fiddling with it to learn how to use it. One person in the family might take the time to do so, and then spend the rest of the Christmas holiday teaching everyone else how to do the things they wanted to do.
Apple changed all that.
He then goes on to claim that the success of Nintendo's Wii console is due to Apple and Steve Jobs:
The Wii game system has made Nintendo a fortune in recent years. How did Nintendo know it would be a hit? Elderly members of the company's board delighted in picking up the controller and simply moving it around to play the simple, intuitive games. I've never heard someone from Nintendo say they got this from Apple, but the influence is clear enough. These days whether you're a Mac or a PC, an Android or an iPhone, you play by the delightful rules Steve Jobs set for us all.
Okay. Stop.
First of all, the Apple Macintosh was introduced in January 1984. The Nintendo Entertainment System that we grew up with was introduced in Japan in 1983. Remember how with the NES, you had to read a long manual and spend forever fiddling with it to learn how to use it? You know, until Steve Jobs came along?
Steve Jobs, or anyone else at Apple, did not invent usability, intuitiveness, the graphical user interface, or really much of anything that goes on on your game console, PC or smart phone. Neither did he "revolutionize" any of the above. Obviously he's influenced the entire computer industry, but it's getting a bit too thick to give him credit for everything.
Most of the really innovative things Apple "came up with" for the Macintosh, such as the easy-to-use GUI, were stolen from Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. These days, whether you're a PC or a Mac, or anything else, you're operating within a framework invented at PARC. If you don't know that, you have no business blogging about Steve Jobs's or anyone else's impact on the computer industry. Let alone claiming that the Nintendo Wii is influenced by Apple.
In general, it would be nice if more people read, say, this Gawker piece on Steve Jobs. It reminds us, among other things, of the human cost of those nice, shiny devices. Here's a quote from a Daily Mail article from last June's launch of the new iPhone:
Daily Mail: Revealed: Inside the Chinese suicide sweatshop where workers toil in 34-hour shifts to make your iPod
Yet, amid all the fanfare and celebrations this week, there was one sour, niggling note: reports of a spate of suicides at a secretive Chinese complex where Jobs's iPhone, iPod and iPad - Apple's new state-of-the-art slimline computer - are built and assembled.
With 11 workers taking their lives in sinister circumstances, Jobs acted swiftly to quell a potential public relations disaster.
Stressing that he found the deaths 'troubling' and that he was 'all over it', the billionaire brushed aside suggestions that the factory was a sweatshop.
'You go in this place and it's a factory but, my gosh, they've got restaurants and movie theatres and hospitals and swimming pools,' he said. 'For a factory, it's pretty nice.'
His definition of 'nice' is questionable and likely to have his American workers in uproar if such conditions were imposed upon them.
For, as Apple's leader was taking a bow on the world stage, the Mail was under cover inside this Chinese complex. And we encountered a strange, disturbing world where new recruits are drilled along military lines, ordered to stand for the company song and kept in barracks like battery hens - all for little more than £20 a week.
In what's been dubbed the 'i-Nightmare factory', the scandal focuses on two sprawling complexes near Shenzhen, two decades ago a small fishing port and now a city of 17 million people.
This is the epicentre of operations for Foxconn, China's biggest exporter, which makes products under licence for Apple using a 420,000-strong workforce in Shenzhen. They have 800,000 workers country-wide.
And as Jobs was speaking in San Francisco, new measures were being secretly introduced at Foxconn to prevent the suicide scandal from worsening and damaging Apple sales globally.
Astonishingly, this involves forcing all Foxconn employees to sign a new legally binding document promising that they won't kill themselves.
Yeah. Isn't it funny how when Apple gets exposed for using child labor and sweatshops, the Western left reacts by sipping their lattes while smugly using their iPhones?
I'm not saying people shouldn't mourn, or that instead of eulogizing Jobs we need to vilify him. I'm just asking for some balanced coverage here. He was a man, not a saint. It's testament to the strength of the reality distortion field around Jobs that he's being given posthumous credit for inventing sliced bread, actual innovators like PARC are forgotten, and that inconvenient facts like the horrifying sweatshops that assemble your iPads are brushed under the carpet. Just because someone dies doesn't mean we shouldn't be honest about what he and his company did and didn't do. Eulogies are journalism too.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Finland is irreligious
According to a large study conducted in Finland and reported in Uusi Suomi, Finns are much more critical of religion than most other nationalities. As many as four out of five (4/5) Finns consider strongly religious people intolerant, and 60% believe that religion causes conflicts rather than promotes peace.
Only 20% of Finns unqualifiedly believe in God, while 10% don't believe at all. Eight percent define themselves as strongly religious, while less than a fifth don't define themselves at religous at all. When it comes to the public practice of religion, Finns are among the most passive countries in Europe.
This is actually quite impressive for a country where not belonging to a church was only decriminalized in 1923, there are still two state churches, religious teaching is still given in public schools and blasphemy remains a crime. I wrote more on the same topic last year, when over 15,000 people left the Finnish Lutheran church in the wake of a controversial debate on gay marriage.
Other events that have probably had an effect included a widespread child abuse scandal in the Finnish pentecostal movement. The abuse had been going on for years, with the knowledge of church "elders", who had even permitted convicted child abusers to be taken on as priests, because they felt that God had forgiven them (YLE).
In 2003, a Finnish free thinkers' organization set up an internet service titled eroakirkosta.fi ("leavethechurch.fi"), which allows members of the Finnish state churches to resign their membership with an electronic form. In 2004, they processed 10,000 applications; in 2010, it was 79,000.
In 2010, 19,2% of Finns didn't belong to any religious denomination recognized as such by the state (Tilastokeskus). A 2005 study estimated that 28-60% of Finland's population are atheists, agnostics or non-believers.
So although Sweden is the poster boy for atheist social democracy in American political polemics, maybe it should be us?
Only 20% of Finns unqualifiedly believe in God, while 10% don't believe at all. Eight percent define themselves as strongly religious, while less than a fifth don't define themselves at religous at all. When it comes to the public practice of religion, Finns are among the most passive countries in Europe.
This is actually quite impressive for a country where not belonging to a church was only decriminalized in 1923, there are still two state churches, religious teaching is still given in public schools and blasphemy remains a crime. I wrote more on the same topic last year, when over 15,000 people left the Finnish Lutheran church in the wake of a controversial debate on gay marriage.
Other events that have probably had an effect included a widespread child abuse scandal in the Finnish pentecostal movement. The abuse had been going on for years, with the knowledge of church "elders", who had even permitted convicted child abusers to be taken on as priests, because they felt that God had forgiven them (YLE).
In 2003, a Finnish free thinkers' organization set up an internet service titled eroakirkosta.fi ("leavethechurch.fi"), which allows members of the Finnish state churches to resign their membership with an electronic form. In 2004, they processed 10,000 applications; in 2010, it was 79,000.
In 2010, 19,2% of Finns didn't belong to any religious denomination recognized as such by the state (Tilastokeskus). A 2005 study estimated that 28-60% of Finland's population are atheists, agnostics or non-believers.
So although Sweden is the poster boy for atheist social democracy in American political polemics, maybe it should be us?
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Some reading on Norway
I'm working on a longer post on what happened in Norway in Finnish. I'll try to return to the topic in English later. For now, here's some recommended reading:
New York Times: Breivik and His Enablers
New York Times: Breivik and His Enablers
What has become clear in Oslo and on Utoya Island is that delusional anti-Muslim rightist hatred aimed at “multiculturalist” liberals can be just as dangerous as Al Qaeda’s anti-infidel poison: Breivik alone killed many more people than the four Islamist suicide bombers in the 7/7 London attack of 2005.
Guardian: Anders Breivik's chilling anti-feminism
Breivik's introduction is entirely given over to a half-baked history of political correctness, "no aspect" of which, he tells us, is "more prominent … than feminist ideology". The PC-project is bent on "transforming a patriarchy into a matriarchy" and "intends to deny the intrinsic worth of native Christian European heterosexual males". But more than that, it has succeeded. The "feminisation of European culture" has been underway since the 1830s, and by now, men have been reduced to an "emasculate[d] … touchy-feely subspecies".
The Nation: Europe's Homegrown Terrorists
Unlike Muslims in the wake of Islamist attacks, Christians weren’t called upon to insist upon their moderation. No one argued that white people had to get with the Enlightenment project. But the bombings—and the presumptions about who was responsible—suggest that the true threat to European democracy is not Islam or Muslims but, once again, fascism and racists.
New York Times: Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.
The man accused of the killing spree in Norway was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about the threat from Islam, lacing his 1,500-page manifesto with quotations from them, as well as copying multiple passages from the tract of the Unabomber.
BBC: Norway and the politics of hate
Back in 1985, I was in the US reporting on the emergence of right-wing militias. They were springing up across the Mid-West. Some were little more than gun clubs. Others trained men in uniform.
They believed that their idea of America was under threat. Many saw the federal government in Washington as the enemy, staffed with officials who were betraying America's core values.
A strong strain of paranoia ran through their conversation and publications. I recall a man showing me a grainy photograph, claiming it proved there were secret Russian bases in Michigan.
Most of this reflected the margins of a society and could easily be dismissed. But the idea that his government was the real enemy worked away inside the mind of a young man called Timothy McVeigh. Sometime later he packed a van with fertiliser and diesel fuel and blew up the federal building in Oklahoma, killing 168 people.
And, finally, The Colbert Report.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Brand on Winehouse
I'm shocked, depressed and generally bummed out by what happened in Norway, but I'll get this blog on track in a bit. In the meanwhile, here's a great piece by Russell Brand on the late Amy Winehouse.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
A moment of silence
After what happened in Norway this past weekend, this blog is taking a moment of silence. I may write more about this topic later, but for now I merely hope that the hate-mongers in all our countries would also take a moment and think about the consequences of building up a culture of intolerance, racism and hatred. What happened this weekend is a stark reminder of how inhuman and brutal the ideology of "immigration criticism" fundamentally is.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Criminal insanity, online and off
First, a piece of madness I must have missed when it hit the news and just happened to run into.
NY Daily News: Florida mom Alexandra Tobias pleads guilty to murdering baby for crying during her FarmVille game
NY Daily News: Florida mom Alexandra Tobias pleads guilty to murdering baby for crying during her FarmVille game
A Florida woman admitted shaking her 3-month-old baby to death after the little boy's crying distracted her from playing a wildly popular Facebook game.
Alexandra Tobias, 22, told cops she was playing FarmVille and her baby, Dylan Lee Edmondson, wouldn't stop crying.
According to the Florida Times-Union, she confessed to shaking the baby, smoking a cigarette to calm down and then shaking the baby again. The baby may have hit his head during the January incident.
Tobias pleaded guilty on Wednesday.
She later got a 50-year sentence. And here I thought FarmVille was bad for you before I knew about this.
**
Here's another example of criminal insanity:
FOX Chicago: Teen Charged with Murder in Police-Involved Shooting, Armed Robbery Case
Ross was charged Thursday evening with murder and armed robbery with a firearm, police News Affairs Officer Robert Perez said.
The incident unfolded about 8 p.m. Wednesday when two police sergeants were stopped by a person saying two people had just committed a robbery near East 70th Street and South Cregier Avenue.
The sergeants saw two people matching the description and ordered them to stop, police said. One of the suspects, with a weapon in his hand, turned in the sergeant’s direction. The sergeant shot the suspect, identified by the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office as 15-year-old Tatioun Williams.
Williams, of 1311 E. 69th St., was pronounced dead at 8:40 p.m. at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, according to the medical examiner’s office. An autopsy Thursday found he died from a gunshot wound to the back and ruled the death a homicide.
A weapon and proceeds from the robbery were recovered at the scene, police said.
No one else was injured, police said.
So two guys commit an armed robbery, and as they're escaping, the police shoot one of them. Therefore, the surviving criminal is charged with murder.
This is how the felony murder rule works: if one perpetrates a felony, and as a result someone is killed, the perpetrator is charged with the murder. Here, the result even means that if the police shoot your accomplice, you are charged with his murder.
Another example of this idea in action here:
NY Times: Serving Life for Providing Car to Killers
CRAWFORDVILLE, Fla. — Early in the morning of March 10, 2003, after a raucous party that lasted into the small hours, a groggy and hungover 20-year-old named Ryan Holle lent his Chevrolet Metro to a friend. That decision, prosecutors later said, was tantamount to murder.
The friend used the car to drive three men to the Pensacola home of a marijuana dealer, aiming to steal a safe. The burglary turned violent, and one of the men killed the dealer’s 18-year-old daughter by beating her head in with a shotgun he found in the home.
Mr. Holle was a mile and a half away, but that did not matter.
He was convicted of murder under a distinctively American legal doctrine that makes accomplices as liable as the actual killer for murders committed during felonies like burglaries, rapes and robberies.
In all seriousness, this is insane. As the New York Times article says, this law doesn't actually seem to have any deterrent effect, by comparison with jurisdictions that don't have it. Furthermore, it blurs the definition of murder; as the paper referenced by the New York Times points out, murder is defined by an intent to kill, except in this case, where you can be guilty of murder by lending your car to someone.
What makes it even more dangerous, in my opinion, is the simple precedent that a person who is in no way directly responsible for a crime, and who may even be totally unaware that it has occurred, can be charged with it. Imagine extending that idea to other crimes.
But most of all, it's completely unrealistic to postulate, even as a system of ethics, that everyone must take responsibility for all consequences of their actions. Responsibility for consequences needs to be within reason; if someone lends a homicidal friend a shotgun, I have no problem with them being held culpable, but lending someone a car doesn't seem to be strictly comparable.
Even crazier is the notion that when the police shoot your accomplice in the back, you're guilty of murder. Yes, I accept the idea that had you not been involved in the armed robbery in the first place, your friend wouldn't have been shot. But is this in any way a realistic standard of ethics? If people are going to be held criminally liable for the actions of others, where on earth do we draw the line? And doesn't this, in fact, give police a virtual blank check when pursuing a felony suspect, because any deaths that occur during the crime and subsequent pursuit will be blamed on the suspect, whether he had anything to do with them or not?
This touches on what I've been thinking about in general with regard to law lately. It seems to me that on the whole, our legislation is essentially random. I've been toying around with the idea of constructing a legal code not as a confusing jumble of separate laws but as a system of principles. Surely one of those principles should be that a person can only be held responsible for his own actions or inactions, not for the actions or inactions of others. In this case, both armed robbers should be responsible for themselves, and the cop who shot one of them responsible for the shooting. If the shooting is deemed justified, then it is, but under no stretch of the imagination should the police officer's decision to use lethal force be the other robber's responsibility.
I'll chalk this up as yet another odd aspect of an increasingly insane US justice system. Here's another example:
Wired: There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says
“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” Wyden told Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. “When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands.”
What exactly does Wyden mean by that? As a member of the intelligence committee, he laments that he can’t precisely explain without disclosing classified information.
The United States seems to be reaching the point where legistlation is classified to protect national security.
I'd comment, but I don't know how.
**
Here's some surveillance state news, too.
Nature: Terrorist 'pre-crime' detector field tested in United States
Planning a sojourn in the northeastern United States? You could soon be taking part in a novel security programme that can supposedly 'sense' whether you are planning to commit a crime.
Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programme designed to spot people who are intending to commit a terrorist act, has in the past few months completed its first round of field tests at an undisclosed location in the northeast, Nature has learned.
Like a lie detector, FAST measures a variety of physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the steadiness of a person's gaze, to judge a subject's state of mind. But there are major differences from the polygraph. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning of the subject.
The tactic has drawn comparisons with the science-fiction concept of 'pre-crime', popularized by the film Minority Report, in which security services can detect someone's intention to commit a crime. Unlike the system in the film, FAST does not rely on a trio of human mutants who can see the future. But the programme has attracted copious criticism from researchers who question the science behind it (see Airport security: Intent to deceive?).
Do, in fact, see the linked article, which starts off with this:
In August 2009, Nicholas George, a 22-year-old student at Pomona College in Claremont, California, was going through a checkpoint at Philadelphia International Airport when he was pulled aside for questioning. As the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees searched his hand luggage, they chatted with him about innocuous subjects, such as whether he'd watched a recent game.
Inside George's bag, however, the screeners found flash cards with Arabic words — he was studying Arabic at Pomona — and a book they considered to be critical of US foreign policy. That led to more questioning, this time by a TSA supervisor, about George's views on the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. Eventually, and seemingly without cause, he was handcuffed by Philadelphia police, detained for four hours, and questioned by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents before being released without charge.
George had been singled out by behaviour-detection officers: TSA screeners trained to pick out suspicious or anomalous behaviour in passengers. There are about 3,000 of these officers working at some 161 airports across the United States, all part of a four-year-old programme called Screening Passengers by Observation Technique (SPOT), which is designed to identify people who could pose a threat to airline passengers.
It remains unclear what the officers found anomalous about George's behaviour, and why he was detained. The TSA's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has declined to comment on his case because it is the subject of a federal lawsuit that was filed on George's behalf in February by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Again, I'm not sure how to comment on this. It's terrifying.
**
It seems fitting that just as my copy of The Gulag Archipelago arrived in the mail, I saw this news item:
Guardian: China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work
As a prisoner at the Jixi labour camp, Liu Dali would slog through tough days breaking rocks and digging trenches in the open cast coalmines of north-east China. By night, he would slay demons, battle goblins and cast spells.
Liu says he was one of scores of prisoners forced to play online games to build up credits that prison guards would then trade for real money. The 54-year-old, a former prison guard who was jailed for three years in 2004 for "illegally petitioning" the central government about corruption in his hometown, reckons the operation was even more lucrative than the physical labour that prisoners were also forced to do.
"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu told the Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."
In the Soviet Union, it was gold-mining on the Kolyma: in China, it's World of Warcraft. Surreal. However, they haven't abandoned their efforts at reforming the inmates:
He was also made to memorise communist literature to pay off his debt to society.
You can't make this stuff up. It only happens in real life.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Different ID cards for foreigners
According to Helsingin Sanomat, the new Finnish ID card project is getting some bad feedback from European anti-racism coalition ENAR. The new system will feature blue ID cards for Finnish citizens and brown ones for foreigners. Sweden's Nöjesguiden agreed and thought the project was amusing because of Finland's relatively low foreigner population. Finland's Hufvudstadsbladet also questioned the move.
Finnish nationalism being what it is, the social networks are awash with outrage. How dare they criticize us! The sad thing is that attitudes in this country have become so polarized that if someone even implies the word racism, people have a knee-jerk reaction to it and don't even bother to look at the issue. Why on earth should a foreign national living in Finland be forced to broadcast the fact that he's a foreign national? Just a few weeks ago, when Finland won the ice hockey world championship, foreigners and Swedish-speakers were attacked and threatened on the street for, well, being foreign.
"How can anyone possibly be opposed to something like this?" they ask on the social networks, as if they can't understand how it might be discriminating to make a certain part of the population carry distinguishing IDs. A few years ago, the same conversation was had when the Finnish police announced they would be stopping and searching "foreign-looking" people in Helsinki to ensure they were in the country legally. When it's foreigners who are involved, even people who are highly critical of the Finnish government and police will immediately leap to their motherland's defense, especially if it's criticized by foreigners like Swedes.
The real point is that in this atmosphere, it's a little odd to find Finnish officialdom making a move like this. There's no pressing need to introduce this scheme right now, in the middle of a very acrimonious social divide on immigration and racism. It makes you wonder if they're taking sides. And what's worse is the fact that it's almost certainly impossible to have an actual discussion about this, because a certain, very vocal, class of people in this country immediately fly off the handle at the least implication that something racist might happen in Finland.
There's a good Finnish proverb involving sticks and dogs that would work well here.
Finnish nationalism being what it is, the social networks are awash with outrage. How dare they criticize us! The sad thing is that attitudes in this country have become so polarized that if someone even implies the word racism, people have a knee-jerk reaction to it and don't even bother to look at the issue. Why on earth should a foreign national living in Finland be forced to broadcast the fact that he's a foreign national? Just a few weeks ago, when Finland won the ice hockey world championship, foreigners and Swedish-speakers were attacked and threatened on the street for, well, being foreign.
"How can anyone possibly be opposed to something like this?" they ask on the social networks, as if they can't understand how it might be discriminating to make a certain part of the population carry distinguishing IDs. A few years ago, the same conversation was had when the Finnish police announced they would be stopping and searching "foreign-looking" people in Helsinki to ensure they were in the country legally. When it's foreigners who are involved, even people who are highly critical of the Finnish government and police will immediately leap to their motherland's defense, especially if it's criticized by foreigners like Swedes.
The real point is that in this atmosphere, it's a little odd to find Finnish officialdom making a move like this. There's no pressing need to introduce this scheme right now, in the middle of a very acrimonious social divide on immigration and racism. It makes you wonder if they're taking sides. And what's worse is the fact that it's almost certainly impossible to have an actual discussion about this, because a certain, very vocal, class of people in this country immediately fly off the handle at the least implication that something racist might happen in Finland.
There's a good Finnish proverb involving sticks and dogs that would work well here.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
"Osama" and the beginning and end of terrorism
That's quite a start to a week: the most wanted man in the world is dead. His name was 'Usāmah bin Lādin, but in 2001 he entered American history as "O-sama", the evil terrorist. Evil he was, too; even though the conspiracy nuts will inevitably crawl out from under their rocks, there doesn't seem to be any substantial reasonable doubt that bin Lādin was indeed behind the September 11th terror attacks.
It's been pointed out by researchers that US history, like all nationalist history, resembles a Biblical narrative. The history of the United States is the history of the chosen American people, wandering through time and facing various enemies, whom they defeat through the help of god and their unique national characteristics that make them superior to other nations. In this perspective, American history is a rogues' gallery of enemies: the King of England and the British, the Kaiser and the Germans, Hitler and the Germans, Stalin and the Soviets, and now "Osama" and the Islamists (or Muslims, for the less discriminating in one sense and more so in another). In each case, the actual factors leading to the conflict, its true nature and the character of both the group and its leader were so hopelessly distorted as to bear almost no resemblance to reality. Instead of actual political processes, events and people, the end result of this process of nationalization of history produced simplistic nursery stories where evil foreigners treacherously attacked virtuous Americans. Any shades of grey and any inconvenient facts were ruthlessly suppressed to make way for a simplistic, flag-waving jingoism.
In the latest case, it's usually presented that after the cold war, there was a brief period of international peace, followed by 9/11, which "ushered in the era of global terrorism" or whatever, making O-sama the designated Great Enemy. Because he, in the memorable phrase-meme, "hated freedom", he orchestrated a terrorist attack that shocked America out of the complacency of the nineties. No doubt in a decade or so, O-sama will achieve an Al Gore-like status of having "invented terrorism" and undoubtedly being somehow responsible for the war in I-raq.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Terrorism is always a question of definition, and like all history-writing, that defining is usually done by the winners. The memorable phrase of the Cold War was "my freedom fighters, your terrorists", and its applicability isn't restricted to those years. If you like, the United States was founded by a terrorist insurgency supported by a foreign power; if you prefer the conventional version, it was founded by heroic freedom fighters. Even characterizing terrorism by its methods is always problematic. Insistence on car bombs, hijackings and suicide attacks restricts terrorism so strictly in time and space that it becomes useless as a general term; focusing on the killing of civilians begs highly inconvenient questions about several wars waged by the defining powers. The terrorist as "non-state actor" would indeed make the American Revolution, as well as the Finnish Civil War, terrorist insurgencies, and make one wonder why the death of an innocent should be more condemnable based on whether his killer was wearing a recognized uniform at the time. Terrorism is very much a cultural phenomenon that eludes strict definition.
If a starting point of sorts had to be selected, my first thought would be to turn to the Russian anarchists of the 19th century. Most people are aware of the caricature of a black-wearing, bomb-throwing ruffian, but few know that it depicts a Russian anarchist. The famous Muhammad caricature depicting the Prophet's turban as a bomb imagined it as exactly the type of cartoon bomb the anarchists were drawn with. Pioneering the non-state-sanctioned political employment of high explosive, the anarchists killed the reforming Czar Alexander II with a bomb thrown into his carriage.
The anarchists had it all: a spectacular terrorist attack gave them a villainous public image, which was seized upon as an excuse for repression around the world. Just as Islamist terrorism is used as fuel for both racist demagoguery and politics today, so back in the day the largely imagined threat of anarchist infiltration of the US was used as an excuse to tighten immigration policies and repress Eastern Europeans.
After the anarchists, various different groups resorted to terrorism as we know it. Some of its most prominent exponents were Zionists in Palestine, who mounted a bombing campaign against the British colonial authorities that is highly reminiscent of what has been happening in the same area over the past half-century. Again, one is terrorism, the other heroic freedom fighting, depending on who you ask.
Neither Islamic or Islamist terrorism begins with O-sama either. The contemporary world was introduced to the figure of the Muslim terrorist by the plane hijackings and other attacks that started in the early Cold War era. Most of the active groups were motivated more by revolutionary socialism than any form of Islamism, and their goal was to publicize the Palestinians' struggle against Israel. These campaigns successfully internationalized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and planted the seeds of the coming conflict. The global Islamist terror movement as we know it today sprung from these roots and coalesced in the insurgency against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and gathered force in the bitter civil war in Bosnia and the Russian invasions of Chechnya.
Two opposing theories on the fundamental origins of terror are usually put forward. In the religious-apocalyptic view, very popular with the Christian and racist right wings of Western politics, terrorism is simply the inevitable result of Islam, which to them represents pure evil. On the other hand, various left-wing instances champion the idea that terrorism is born from some combination of economic underpriviledge and Western imperialism; in the leftist-apocalyptic view, O-sama is nemesis to Western capitalism's hubris.
Both of these theories are far too simplistic, epistemologically consisting of little else but a dogged determination to explain everything through one's chosen worldview. By the combined logic of these explanations, every Muslim making less than minimum wage should be an enthusiastic terrorist. Taking each theory separately yields the even less plausible dieas that everyone making less than minimum wage anywhere, or every Muslim in the world, should be a potential terrorist. While such a view, especially the latter one, is extremely attractive to many people as a justification for religious persecution, it is also obviously untrue.
The real fons et origo of terrorism as we know it is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is perhaps the most highly politicized conflict of our time, which has a fantastic ability to suck people thousands of miles away into taking an uncompromisingly blinkered view of it. For several generations now, it has played just such a role for millions of Arab Muslims all over the world. Who could remain unmoved by TV images of bulldozers crashing through living rooms, missiles slamming into apartment blocks and soldiers gunning down rock-throwing children? On the other side, images of schoolchildren killed by suicide bombs and rockets streaking into Israeli suburbs serve precisely the same propaganda function. As a result, anyone prepared beforehand to identify with either side will find ample reason to do so.
This polarization meets with reinforcing tendencies from all over society. For one side, resentment at the Israeli occupation can easily link up with a conspiracy theory mindset that attributes everything from third world poverty on down to a vast Jewish-capitalist-Western conspiracy; for the other, a portrayal of Israel as an innocent victim of terrorism draws strength from memories of the Holocaust, reinforced with islamophobic and racist notions of the barbarian hordes of the third world.
It is this uncompromising, entrenched politicization that is at the root of everything al-Qaida and any other Islamist terror organization stands for: it provides the great narrative of the war between the persecuted true believers and their implacable enemy. Without Palestine, it is impossible to imagine an insurgency in Afghanistan having such global resonance and impact. Without Palestine, there would have been no pre-existing international networks of organizations, people and resources that ibn Ladin could build on to found his terrorist operation. Most crucially, without Palestine, there would be no gripping story to politicize new generations of Muslims into a worldwide conflict against the west. It is Palestine that links the disparate battles fought by Muslims all over Asia into one giant Islamist struggle against the infidel.
Most importantly for America, it is the United States' unwavering support of Israel that irrevocably paints them as the Great Satan. As implausible as the thought no doubt seems to the islamophobes of today, reformists in Muslim countries once looked up to the United States as an example and a source of aid. In the heady anticolonialist days following the Second World War, America's stand against the old colonial powers bought them immense goodwill across the Third World. As the battlelines of the Cold War hardened, more and more of that goodwill was squandered by a foolish insistence on backing anyone who publicly professed anticommunism, no matter what the actual policies they supported. The final nail in the coffin was the politicization of the Israeli-Arab conflict as a part of the Cold War. When the United States threw itself unquestioningly behind Israel, the Soviets became the only source of aid for the Arab countries, and America became their ultimate enemy.
This is why terrorism will not end with the death of 'Usāmah bin Lādin, or why indeed the global terrorism we know today will not end with any single death. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will continue to keep the fire of Islamist anti-Americanism burning until a resolution can be found. In their recent refusal to capitalize on the truce negotiated by the new Egyptian government, and more generally the total failure of successive US administrations to make any progress in bringing Israel to the negotiating table, the United States have shown that they still refuse to acknowledge the crucial role of this conflict. Really bringing an end to global terror requires a solution in the Middle East, and only the Americans have the political clout with Israel to make it happen. Because they refuse to, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will continue to create new "O-samas" to fight the Great Enemy. In that sense, his death means nothing.
It's been pointed out by researchers that US history, like all nationalist history, resembles a Biblical narrative. The history of the United States is the history of the chosen American people, wandering through time and facing various enemies, whom they defeat through the help of god and their unique national characteristics that make them superior to other nations. In this perspective, American history is a rogues' gallery of enemies: the King of England and the British, the Kaiser and the Germans, Hitler and the Germans, Stalin and the Soviets, and now "Osama" and the Islamists (or Muslims, for the less discriminating in one sense and more so in another). In each case, the actual factors leading to the conflict, its true nature and the character of both the group and its leader were so hopelessly distorted as to bear almost no resemblance to reality. Instead of actual political processes, events and people, the end result of this process of nationalization of history produced simplistic nursery stories where evil foreigners treacherously attacked virtuous Americans. Any shades of grey and any inconvenient facts were ruthlessly suppressed to make way for a simplistic, flag-waving jingoism.
In the latest case, it's usually presented that after the cold war, there was a brief period of international peace, followed by 9/11, which "ushered in the era of global terrorism" or whatever, making O-sama the designated Great Enemy. Because he, in the memorable phrase-meme, "hated freedom", he orchestrated a terrorist attack that shocked America out of the complacency of the nineties. No doubt in a decade or so, O-sama will achieve an Al Gore-like status of having "invented terrorism" and undoubtedly being somehow responsible for the war in I-raq.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Terrorism is always a question of definition, and like all history-writing, that defining is usually done by the winners. The memorable phrase of the Cold War was "my freedom fighters, your terrorists", and its applicability isn't restricted to those years. If you like, the United States was founded by a terrorist insurgency supported by a foreign power; if you prefer the conventional version, it was founded by heroic freedom fighters. Even characterizing terrorism by its methods is always problematic. Insistence on car bombs, hijackings and suicide attacks restricts terrorism so strictly in time and space that it becomes useless as a general term; focusing on the killing of civilians begs highly inconvenient questions about several wars waged by the defining powers. The terrorist as "non-state actor" would indeed make the American Revolution, as well as the Finnish Civil War, terrorist insurgencies, and make one wonder why the death of an innocent should be more condemnable based on whether his killer was wearing a recognized uniform at the time. Terrorism is very much a cultural phenomenon that eludes strict definition.
If a starting point of sorts had to be selected, my first thought would be to turn to the Russian anarchists of the 19th century. Most people are aware of the caricature of a black-wearing, bomb-throwing ruffian, but few know that it depicts a Russian anarchist. The famous Muhammad caricature depicting the Prophet's turban as a bomb imagined it as exactly the type of cartoon bomb the anarchists were drawn with. Pioneering the non-state-sanctioned political employment of high explosive, the anarchists killed the reforming Czar Alexander II with a bomb thrown into his carriage.
The anarchists had it all: a spectacular terrorist attack gave them a villainous public image, which was seized upon as an excuse for repression around the world. Just as Islamist terrorism is used as fuel for both racist demagoguery and politics today, so back in the day the largely imagined threat of anarchist infiltration of the US was used as an excuse to tighten immigration policies and repress Eastern Europeans.
After the anarchists, various different groups resorted to terrorism as we know it. Some of its most prominent exponents were Zionists in Palestine, who mounted a bombing campaign against the British colonial authorities that is highly reminiscent of what has been happening in the same area over the past half-century. Again, one is terrorism, the other heroic freedom fighting, depending on who you ask.
Neither Islamic or Islamist terrorism begins with O-sama either. The contemporary world was introduced to the figure of the Muslim terrorist by the plane hijackings and other attacks that started in the early Cold War era. Most of the active groups were motivated more by revolutionary socialism than any form of Islamism, and their goal was to publicize the Palestinians' struggle against Israel. These campaigns successfully internationalized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and planted the seeds of the coming conflict. The global Islamist terror movement as we know it today sprung from these roots and coalesced in the insurgency against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and gathered force in the bitter civil war in Bosnia and the Russian invasions of Chechnya.
Two opposing theories on the fundamental origins of terror are usually put forward. In the religious-apocalyptic view, very popular with the Christian and racist right wings of Western politics, terrorism is simply the inevitable result of Islam, which to them represents pure evil. On the other hand, various left-wing instances champion the idea that terrorism is born from some combination of economic underpriviledge and Western imperialism; in the leftist-apocalyptic view, O-sama is nemesis to Western capitalism's hubris.
Both of these theories are far too simplistic, epistemologically consisting of little else but a dogged determination to explain everything through one's chosen worldview. By the combined logic of these explanations, every Muslim making less than minimum wage should be an enthusiastic terrorist. Taking each theory separately yields the even less plausible dieas that everyone making less than minimum wage anywhere, or every Muslim in the world, should be a potential terrorist. While such a view, especially the latter one, is extremely attractive to many people as a justification for religious persecution, it is also obviously untrue.
The real fons et origo of terrorism as we know it is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is perhaps the most highly politicized conflict of our time, which has a fantastic ability to suck people thousands of miles away into taking an uncompromisingly blinkered view of it. For several generations now, it has played just such a role for millions of Arab Muslims all over the world. Who could remain unmoved by TV images of bulldozers crashing through living rooms, missiles slamming into apartment blocks and soldiers gunning down rock-throwing children? On the other side, images of schoolchildren killed by suicide bombs and rockets streaking into Israeli suburbs serve precisely the same propaganda function. As a result, anyone prepared beforehand to identify with either side will find ample reason to do so.
This polarization meets with reinforcing tendencies from all over society. For one side, resentment at the Israeli occupation can easily link up with a conspiracy theory mindset that attributes everything from third world poverty on down to a vast Jewish-capitalist-Western conspiracy; for the other, a portrayal of Israel as an innocent victim of terrorism draws strength from memories of the Holocaust, reinforced with islamophobic and racist notions of the barbarian hordes of the third world.
It is this uncompromising, entrenched politicization that is at the root of everything al-Qaida and any other Islamist terror organization stands for: it provides the great narrative of the war between the persecuted true believers and their implacable enemy. Without Palestine, it is impossible to imagine an insurgency in Afghanistan having such global resonance and impact. Without Palestine, there would have been no pre-existing international networks of organizations, people and resources that ibn Ladin could build on to found his terrorist operation. Most crucially, without Palestine, there would be no gripping story to politicize new generations of Muslims into a worldwide conflict against the west. It is Palestine that links the disparate battles fought by Muslims all over Asia into one giant Islamist struggle against the infidel.
Most importantly for America, it is the United States' unwavering support of Israel that irrevocably paints them as the Great Satan. As implausible as the thought no doubt seems to the islamophobes of today, reformists in Muslim countries once looked up to the United States as an example and a source of aid. In the heady anticolonialist days following the Second World War, America's stand against the old colonial powers bought them immense goodwill across the Third World. As the battlelines of the Cold War hardened, more and more of that goodwill was squandered by a foolish insistence on backing anyone who publicly professed anticommunism, no matter what the actual policies they supported. The final nail in the coffin was the politicization of the Israeli-Arab conflict as a part of the Cold War. When the United States threw itself unquestioningly behind Israel, the Soviets became the only source of aid for the Arab countries, and America became their ultimate enemy.
This is why terrorism will not end with the death of 'Usāmah bin Lādin, or why indeed the global terrorism we know today will not end with any single death. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will continue to keep the fire of Islamist anti-Americanism burning until a resolution can be found. In their recent refusal to capitalize on the truce negotiated by the new Egyptian government, and more generally the total failure of successive US administrations to make any progress in bringing Israel to the negotiating table, the United States have shown that they still refuse to acknowledge the crucial role of this conflict. Really bringing an end to global terror requires a solution in the Middle East, and only the Americans have the political clout with Israel to make it happen. Because they refuse to, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will continue to create new "O-samas" to fight the Great Enemy. In that sense, his death means nothing.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The surveillance society takes to the skies
via The Agitator:
USA Today: Police turn to drones for domestic surveillance
USA Today: Police turn to drones for domestic surveillance
Police agencies around the USA soon could have a new tool in their crime-fighting arsenal: unmanned aircraft inspired by the success of such drones on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Local governments have been pressing the Federal Aviation Administration for wider use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs — a demand driven largely by returning veterans who observed the crafts' effectiveness in war, according to experts at New Mexico State University and Auburn University. Police could use the smaller planes to find lost children, hunt illegal marijuana crops and ease traffic jams in evacuations of cities before hurricanes or other natural disasters.
So the police want unmanned aerial vehicles, all the better to monitor you with. The clinching argument comes at the end of the article:
The Miami-Dade Police Department has tested two 18-pound UAVs equipped with a camera for about 18 months, Sgt. Andrew Cohen says. The department has been licensed to operate the craft up to 200 feet in the air, but the drone must remain within 1,000 feet of the operator.
Cohen says the department wants to use the craft to reduce risks to manned aircraft or personnel in circumstances involving a hostage situation or a barricaded suspect. "It's an opportunity to increase safety for the officers," Cohen says.
In police-ese, this is the closing argument for just about anything. Earlier, I wrote about Sheriff Joe's antics in Arizona, including a full-scale SWAT raid on a house to serve a traffic citation. All over the United States, it's become more and more common to serve search or arrest warrants with fully-armed SWAT teams. Why? The safety of the officers. In US prisons, more and more inmates are held in solitary confinement. Why? The safety of the officers. And now here's a proposal to further invade people's privacy and increase the power of government. For the safety of the officers.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Random update
First, rejoice, because the West Memphis Three are finally getting a new hearing.
Then read an excellent article in the National Post on the War on Terror: Stalin would have been proud.
Okay, the second item there is a bit depressing, but I'm cheerful; last Saturday I had the great pleasure of seeing an awesome burlesque show by Miss Indigo Blue.
Then read an excellent article in the National Post on the War on Terror: Stalin would have been proud.
Okay, the second item there is a bit depressing, but I'm cheerful; last Saturday I had the great pleasure of seeing an awesome burlesque show by Miss Indigo Blue.
She kicked ass. For some strange reason, the next act was Canada's own Bloodshot Bill, who is now officially my favorite Canadian artist ever.
Good times!
Friday, November 5, 2010
School bus
Anybody in for a good laugh? Via Jim.
The Huffington Post: My Crush on Finland: A Country That Values Its Teachers
The Huffington Post: My Crush on Finland: A Country That Values Its Teachers
So as much as I tried to dismiss Finland for its differences, one factor just kept standing out: the quality of the teaching force. Teaching is a very sought-after profession, allowing for the selection of some of the best students to become teachers with most teachers being chosen from the top 10 percent of their college classes. It's both competitive and prestigious with only a small percentage of candidates being accepted to study as teachers. Teachers are respected, trusted and honored. And guess what else? Teaching is popular.
I really don't know whether to laugh or cry. On a wider note, it's funny how European countries are politicized in American politics. But seriously? Sought-after? You mean that in a country with massive academic unemployment, teaching jobs are sought after. Wow! We must really like teaching!
Excellent logic. Also, as Jim pointed out, if we really valued our teachers that much, you'd think we'd pay them.
**
On another note, Finnish people are funny in several ways. It's a general rule of Finnish public transport that when a passenger gets on a bus or train, they will do their utmost to avoid sitting next to another person. Earlier this week, someone sent a photo to MTV3 proving that we don't fear personal contact just on the bus. Here's a bunch of Finns waiting for a bus in Kulosaari, Helsinki:
Now THAT'S the kind of country this is!
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Great news from Finland
Last Tuesday, the Finnish government TV channel held a televised debate on gay rights and religion. The state church was represented by the bishop of Tampere, and also attending was Finnish Christian Democrat MP Päivi Räsänen. The frank discussion of gay rights led to an immediate result: over the last week, 15,000 people have left the Finnish state church. (HS)
This is nothing short of wonderful: the best way to get people to abandon organized Christianity is to get a bishop of the state church and a Christian MP on TV to talk about their opinions. I definitely hope they attend more TV debates.
Of course, the more liberal Christian circles are upset, as they feel that these people are misrepresenting the church and its ideas. I'm not entirely sure that's the case. From a historical perspective, the Christian church is built on 2,000 years of an aggressive hatred of anything they consider deviant. I realize there are lots of Christians who want to turn their church in a different direction, but the fact remains that for the entirety of its history, the cross has stood for intolerance and repression. Even today, for every progressive theologian who wants the church to tolerate gays and lesbians, there are at least ten angry and intolerant conservatives who hate fags.
Another way of looking at the recent boom of church-quitting is that this really reveals just how Christian the Finnish people are. For the vast majority of Finland's independence, practically all Finnish children were baptised into the Church on birth, this author included. Not belonging to a religion was actually illegal until 1923, and laws on blasphemy are still in force today.
All this led to an atmosphere where it was assumed that everyone belonged to the church, but religion never played a large part in everyday life. Belonging to the church was just something one was expected to do. These days, the church can be openly criticized, and more and more people are actually facing the facts of what the church really stands for, and finding they don't actually believe it. So in a sense, the discussion on gay rights isn't so much causing people to become averse to the church as exposing that they didn't believe in what the church peddles in the first place.
On the whole, these are some of the best news we've had all year. It's a wonderful testament to how far tolerance and even a kind of liberalism have spread that the best way to do anti-church propaganda is to get its representatives to talk about themselves.
This is nothing short of wonderful: the best way to get people to abandon organized Christianity is to get a bishop of the state church and a Christian MP on TV to talk about their opinions. I definitely hope they attend more TV debates.
Of course, the more liberal Christian circles are upset, as they feel that these people are misrepresenting the church and its ideas. I'm not entirely sure that's the case. From a historical perspective, the Christian church is built on 2,000 years of an aggressive hatred of anything they consider deviant. I realize there are lots of Christians who want to turn their church in a different direction, but the fact remains that for the entirety of its history, the cross has stood for intolerance and repression. Even today, for every progressive theologian who wants the church to tolerate gays and lesbians, there are at least ten angry and intolerant conservatives who hate fags.
Another way of looking at the recent boom of church-quitting is that this really reveals just how Christian the Finnish people are. For the vast majority of Finland's independence, practically all Finnish children were baptised into the Church on birth, this author included. Not belonging to a religion was actually illegal until 1923, and laws on blasphemy are still in force today.
All this led to an atmosphere where it was assumed that everyone belonged to the church, but religion never played a large part in everyday life. Belonging to the church was just something one was expected to do. These days, the church can be openly criticized, and more and more people are actually facing the facts of what the church really stands for, and finding they don't actually believe it. So in a sense, the discussion on gay rights isn't so much causing people to become averse to the church as exposing that they didn't believe in what the church peddles in the first place.
On the whole, these are some of the best news we've had all year. It's a wonderful testament to how far tolerance and even a kind of liberalism have spread that the best way to do anti-church propaganda is to get its representatives to talk about themselves.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Eating meat can be good
This is a little late, but what the hell. George Monbiot recently told the Guardian that he was entirely wrong when he called veganism "the only ethical response". Worth reading.
In the Guardian in 2002 I discussed the sharp rise in the number of the world's livestock, and the connection between their consumption of grain and human malnutrition. After reviewing the figures, I concluded that veganism "is the only ethical response to what is arguably the world's most urgent social justice issue". I still believe that the diversion of ever wider tracts of arable land from feeding people to feeding livestock is iniquitous and grotesque. So does the book I'm about to discuss. I no longer believe that the only ethical response is to stop eating meat.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
The Nazi Pope strikes again
A prominent pedophilia apologist recently visited the UK to preach his opinions, which include opposition to science and sexual as well as gender equality.
One of the big points Richard Dawkins made in his book, The God Delusion, is that we apply a totally different standard to religious discourse than we do to any other kinds. Imagine, for a moment, a prominent European politician going on tour to promote the message that women are lesser creatures than men, the only kind of sexuality that should be allowed is heterosexuality, and that science and progress are evil. Instead of science, we should listen to a 2,000-year-old version of L. Ron Hubbard's money-grubbing cult literature. Also, he is the head of a worldwide organization that has been responsible for covering up serial pedophilia committed by its employees. Of course, they blame gay people.
The idea of a secular politician behaving like this just boggles the mind. It's almost inconceivable. However, if he wears a funny hat, suddenly it's perfectly all right.
**
He also took the time to, once again, float the idiotic canard that Hitler and his fellow Nazis were "extreme atheists" (BBC). There was, of course, an uproar, but quite frankly, nearly everyone keeps missing the point. Nazism was not atheism. It's just as simple as that. Nazi ideology effectively contained a whole pseudo-religion in its "occult side", complete with a mythical cosmogony and all the trappings of religion.
The Nazis didn't persecute the Christian churches in Germany because they were atheists who hated Christianity. Hitler himself was personally opposed to atheism. Some of them sought to replace Christianity with Nazi occultism, while most weren't opposed to Christianity as such at all.
So, in short: stop calling Hitler an atheist. He wasn't one, nor was he in favor of atheism. And neither was the Nazi party in general. This whole argument rests on deliberately confusing anticlericalism with atheism, which is hogwash.
Also, the idea that all Christians in Nazi Germany, or even all churches, were opposed to the regime simply isn't true. The vast majority of Christian churches in Nazi Germany collaborated with the regime. The notion that they resisted Nazism en masse is a post-war invention.
An unexpected note of hilarity in all this was the Catholic Church's official comment:
One of the big points Richard Dawkins made in his book, The God Delusion, is that we apply a totally different standard to religious discourse than we do to any other kinds. Imagine, for a moment, a prominent European politician going on tour to promote the message that women are lesser creatures than men, the only kind of sexuality that should be allowed is heterosexuality, and that science and progress are evil. Instead of science, we should listen to a 2,000-year-old version of L. Ron Hubbard's money-grubbing cult literature. Also, he is the head of a worldwide organization that has been responsible for covering up serial pedophilia committed by its employees. Of course, they blame gay people.
The idea of a secular politician behaving like this just boggles the mind. It's almost inconceivable. However, if he wears a funny hat, suddenly it's perfectly all right.
**
He also took the time to, once again, float the idiotic canard that Hitler and his fellow Nazis were "extreme atheists" (BBC). There was, of course, an uproar, but quite frankly, nearly everyone keeps missing the point. Nazism was not atheism. It's just as simple as that. Nazi ideology effectively contained a whole pseudo-religion in its "occult side", complete with a mythical cosmogony and all the trappings of religion.
The Nazis didn't persecute the Christian churches in Germany because they were atheists who hated Christianity. Hitler himself was personally opposed to atheism. Some of them sought to replace Christianity with Nazi occultism, while most weren't opposed to Christianity as such at all.
So, in short: stop calling Hitler an atheist. He wasn't one, nor was he in favor of atheism. And neither was the Nazi party in general. This whole argument rests on deliberately confusing anticlericalism with atheism, which is hogwash.
Also, the idea that all Christians in Nazi Germany, or even all churches, were opposed to the regime simply isn't true. The vast majority of Christian churches in Nazi Germany collaborated with the regime. The notion that they resisted Nazism en masse is a post-war invention.
An unexpected note of hilarity in all this was the Catholic Church's official comment:
However, the Catholic Church has moved to play down the controversy, saying the Pope knew "rather well what the Nazi ideology is about".
He does indeed. He is, after all, a former member of the Hitler Youth.
That's another thing. I don't know if many people remember the outrage that erupted when Günter Grass revealed that he'd been drafted into the Waffen-SS during the war. In case it isn't obvious to everyone, that's exactly the same level of involvment in the Nazi war machine as that of the pope. However, when a German writer admits he was in the Waffen-SS, international outrage erupts; when the Catholic Church elects a former Hitler Youth member as pope, this is nothing special.
**
To sum up, the British government spent approximately £20 million of taxpayer money to have this guy come over and talk about his opinions.
Great.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Obama wins immunity for Bush
Salon: Obama wins the right to invoke "State Secrets" to protect Bush crimes
In a 6-5 ruling issued this afternoon, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals handed the Obama administration a major victory in its efforts to shield Bush crimes from judicial review, when the court upheld the Obama DOJ's argument that Bush's rendition program, used to send victims to be tortured, are "state secrets" and its legality thus cannot be adjudicated by courts.
With this, the Obama administration has effectively made sure that no-one who was tortured or wrongfully imprisoned by the US government during the Bush administration can ever bring any of the people responsible to trial. As Ben Wizner of the ACLU said:
To date, not a single victim of the Bush administration's torture program has had his day in court. If today's decision is allowed to stand, the United States will have closed its courtroom doors to torture victims while providing complete immunity to their torturers.
From the New York Times:
As a senator and candidate for the White House, President Obama had criticized the Bush administration’s frequent use of the state-secrets privilege. In February 2009, when his weeks-old administration reaffirmed the Bush administration's view on the case, civil libertarian groups that had supported his campaign expressed shock and dismay.
Overall, the Obama administration has been thoroughly dedicated to covering up the previous regime's blatant and criminal abuse of human rights. Given what they've been getting up to themselves, this isn't very surprising. The Bush administration inaugurated a policy under which the US government can order the assassination of any American citizen suspected of being a terrorist, due process and the judiciary be damned. In another article by Glenn Greenwald, he goes through how this works, and the fact that while for Bush, this was in the realm of theory, recently the Obama administration has placed a US citizen on the CIA's "hit list". More from the LA Times here. From that article:
"If an American is stupid enough to make cause with terrorists abroad, to frequent their camps and take part in their plans, he or she can't expect their citizenship to work as a magic shield," said another U.S. official. "If you join the enemy, you join your fate to his."
And, of course, the people who determine whether an American has "joined the enemy" are the CIA. There is no judicial process, and practically no oversight. If the Agency decides an American citizen is "deemed to be a continuing threat to U.S. persons or interests", they end up on the hit list.
**
There's the Obama administration for you. In my mind, one of the big questions is whether Americans will recognize that whatever you may think of the man, most of Obama's presidential campaign was built on a huge lie. All that talk about change was simply a smokescreen to get naïve people to vote for him.
This is most obvious in the realm of foreign and security policy, where Obama is succesfully combining pandering to voters with a "withdrawal" from Iraq with the continuation and intensification of some of the most abhorrent practices of the Bush administration's secret war on terror. In my opinion, Obama has jeopardized the entire US achievement in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as it is, with his arbitrary withdrawal dates, which will most likely end in disaster. As I said last year, I fully expect that once US troops actually withdraw from Iraq, the new Iraqi regime will have a life expectancy similar to South Vietnam.
What the fixed withdrawal dates effectively do is make the anti-US insurgency's work very simple. Maintain a low level of operations while preparing to take over the minute the Americans leave. And in Iraq, if that doesn't work, maybe Iran will invade and finally put an end to the long Iraq-Iran conflict.
It's probably for this reason that Obama's touted "withdrawal" from Iraq leaves 50,000 troops and eight Marine bases in the country. Sure, they're there in an "advisory capacity", which is the old Cold War way of saying "we have combat troops in this country, but we're not admitting it". So it's very much a notional withdrawal, because Obama probably knows fully well that he can't actually withdraw American forces from Iraq.
So really, there are two policy choices in Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan: a notional "withdrawal" that actually leaves a large enough American presence to deter both the domestic insurgency and neighboring countries, and so isn't a withdrawal at all, or abandoning both countries to the Islamists. The Bush administration was roundly, and in my mind quite rightly, reviled for embroiling America in a war in Iraq without any kind of real strategy for winning. In doing so, President Bush discarded the main strategic lessons America had learned from Vietnam, with the unsurprising result of creating a new Vietnam in the Middle East. As it stands, the Obama administration is following their lead with their total failure to create any kind of strategy for winning the war. As Obama stages his mock withdrawals and the CIA's hit lists lengthen, Pakistan is descending into anarchy.
In order to bring about any kind of satisfactory, peaceful solution to Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States would need a rarity: a president who's willing to create and implement a strong foreign and security policy. We know Obama isn't that president, so the onus is on the Republicans to come up with a candidate who is capable of resolving the situation before another four years of Obama see the collapse of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, or the continuation of six-figure US troop strengths in the Middle East for the foreseeable future. Neither option is good for America, or indeed for any of the countries involved.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Who's a skeptic?
Guardian: Bjørn Lomborg: $100bn a year needed to fight climate change
The world's most high-profile climate change sceptic is to declare that global warming is "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and "a challenge humanity must confront", in an apparent U-turn that will give a huge boost to the embattled environmental lobby.
Bjørn Lomborg, the self-styled "sceptical environmentalist" once compared to Adolf Hitler by the UN's climate chief, is famous for attacking climate scientists, campaigners, the media and others for exaggerating the rate of global warming and its effects on humans, and the costly waste of policies to stop the problem.
But in a new book to be published next month, Lomborg will call for tens of billions of dollars a year to be invested in tackling climate change. "Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century," the book concludes.
Examining eight methods to reduce or stop global warming, Lomborg and his fellow economists recommend pouring money into researching and developing clean energy sources such as wind, wave, solar and nuclear power, and more work on climate engineering ideas such as "cloud whitening" to reflect the sun's heat back into the outer atmosphere.
Apparently Lomborg has joined a fairly exclusive club. Mainly that of people with famous books that no-one seems to have actually read.
The only way anyone can say Lomborg has "changed his mind" about global warming is if they've never read his book in the first place. Contrary to what is usually reported, The Skeptical Environmentalist does not deny either global warming in general or anthropogenic global warming. In the Skeptical Environmentalist, Lomborg argued that while global warming is a very real problem, we need to be careful about what measures we take to fight it, as some of the policies being advocated to reduce CO2 emissions would end up costing us much more than unchecked global warming.
Of course, saying that we need to apply rational cost-benefit analysis to global warming was treated as heresy. The head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, infamously compared Lomborg's views to Hitler's. He said, and I am not making this up:
What is the difference between Lomborg’s view of humanity and Hitler’s? You cannot treat people like cattle. You must respect the diversity of cultures on earth. Lomborg thinks of people like numbers. He thinks it would be cheaper just to evacuate people from the Maldives, rather than trying to prevent world sea levels from rising so that island groups like the Maldives or Tuvalu just disappear into the sea. But where’s the respect for people in that? People have a right to live and die in the place where their forefathers have lived and died. If you were to accept Lomborg’s way of thinking, then maybe what Hitler did was the right thing.
That's right, folks. Cost-benefit analysis is genocide.
As Lomborg himself says in the Guardian article:
Lomborg denies he has performed a volte face, pointing out that even in his first book he accepted the existence of man-made global warming. "The point I've always been making is it's not the end of the world," he told the Guardian. "That's why we should be measuring up to what everybody else says, which is we should be spending our money well."
The problem is that no-one has read the point he was making. The entire "environmentalist" movement had a knee-jerk reaction to Lomborg's book; all they saw was someone voicing the wrong opinion.
The level of journalism displayed by the Grauniad is just appalling. In the header, they refer to Lomborg as "the world's most high-profile climate change sceptic". He isn't a climate change skeptic at all, unless now "climate change skeptic" means anyone who doesn't agree with Al Gore.
I'm now going to do something that, apparently, the Guardian is incapable of: actually quote from Bjørn Lomborg's book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. Amazing, I know, but that's the kind of blog I run.
Summing up
Global warming has become the great environmental worry of our day. There is no doubt that mankind has influenced and is still increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and that this will influence temperature.
There's your climate change denial. What kind of idiots do they hire to write their articles?
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Do parents matter at all?
NY Times: Accepting That Good Parents May Plant Bad Seeds
Not everyone is going to turn out to be brilliant — any more than everyone will turn out nice and loving. And that is not necessarily because of parental failure or an impoverished environment. It is because everyday character traits, like all human behavior, have hard-wired and genetic components that cannot be molded entirely by the best environment, let alone the best psychotherapists.
“The central pitch of any child psychiatrist now is that the illness is often in the child and that the family responses may aggravate the scene but not wholly create it,” said my colleague Dr. Theodore Shapiro, a child psychiatrist at Weill Cornell Medical College. “The era of ‘there are no bad children, only bad parents’ is gone.”
I recall one patient who told me that she had given up trying to have a relationship with her 24-year-old daughter, whose relentless criticism she could no longer bear. “I still love and miss her,” she said sadly. “But I really don’t like her.”
For better or worse, parents have limited power to influence their children. That is why they should not be so fast to take all the blame — or credit — for everything that their children become.
He's focusing on genetics, but the basic idea of how much parents can influence their children reminded me irresistably of Judith Harris's 1998 book, The Nurture Assumption. In it, Harris argued that parents simply don't affect their children nearly as much as we think they do. She noted that genetics and parenting are often confused, but what I thought was most interesting was that Harris argued strongly for the influence peer groups have on children.
As the school year is just starting, I'm now going to go off on a tangent about schools. I'm wondering if I'm justified in drawing a practical conclusion from the importance of peer groups. Basically, to me that means that one of the most important parenting decisions is choosing what school to put your children in. If you want them to do well academically, you'll look for a school with good exam results. Even there, the most important factor leading to those results may well be the culture and work ethic of the students, rather than the level of teaching. I've been to some very different schools myself, and I'd argue that this is very important. Your child won't get good exam results because the school is great, but rather because other kids at that school want good exam results, so to some extent, your kid will want them too.
A wider sociological corollary of this would seem to be that there will always be "worse" and "better" schools, if only because the latter are composed largely of kids whose parents want them to do well and steer them toward that kind of environment, and the former are made up of people who aren't that interested in going to school. In my mind, this is the single biggest reason why Finland, with "free" education, also has drastically different final exam results in different schools. It's the peer group.
The way I see it, you can't really do anything about genetics, and there seems to be pretty widespread agreement that beyond some basics, the quality of your parenting also matters a lot less than people think. So really, the one big thing that you can affect is what kind of peer group your kids end up in. That comes down to choice of neighborhood and choice of school.
The fact that schools are this different, even in countries with "free" education, suggests that most parents are already thinking like this. They consider the reputation of a neighborhood before moving there, and the reputation and results of schools. This is really a feedback loop, and to me, that means that the constantly recurring discussion on how to balance differences between schools in Finland is a totally futile one. Different schools will have different "cultures" and work ethics no matter what we do to balance them out. And I don't see why that has to be a bad thing.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Turkey time
Der Spiegel: Turkey Accused of Using Chemical Weapons against PKK
German experts have confirmed the authenticity of photographs that purport to show PKK fighters killed by chemical weapons. The evidence puts increasing pressure on the Turkish government, which has long been suspected of using such weapons against Kurdish rebels. German politicians are demanding an investigation.
It would be difficult to exceed the horror shown in the photos, which feature burned, maimed and scorched body parts. The victims are scarcely even recognizable as human beings.
As I'm writing this well before it'll be published, more information on this story may well have broken. Sounds like mustard gas to me, for what it's worth. It's good to see someone carrying on Saddam Hussein's minority policies.
**
Whether the story turns out to be true or not, the condition of the Kurds is something worth remembering. In 2008, the Kurds made up 18% of the population of Turkey. Ever since Turkey was founded in 1923, the central government has vigorously persecuted the Kurds. Until the 1990's, their objective was nothing less than total cultural genocide. The very existence of the Kurds was categorically denied; they were classed in censuses as either "mountain Turks" or "eastern Turks" to avoid even admitting that there were such people in Turkey. Their language was banned, and over a million people were forcibly relocated.
Unsurprisingly, the Kurds rebelled against this treatment, and the army was sent in. Eighty years later, they're still at it, now with chemical weapons.
It's worth remembering that the Turks actually invented genocide. From 1915 onward, the Turks killed somewhere between half a million and 1,5 million Armenians in the Armenian genocide. The full panoply of ethnic cleansing was deployed for the first time by the Turks, with forced relocations, concentration camps and death squads.
In international politics, the Turks also still illegally occupy Northern Cyprus, in defiance of the UN and the international community. In what may be a world record of sorts, no country other than Turkey has recognized Northern Cyprus as a state.
**
Turkey has been seeking membership in the European Union for a good while now. Most of the discussion around their membership revolves around Islam and, frankly, xenophobia, but a real issue that should get a lot more attention is their genocidal policy against the Kurds and the continuing debacle of the Cypriot occupation. A country that behaves like this should have no place in the European Union.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Missing in Japan
MSNBC: Where are Japan's missing centenarians?
TOKYO — Japan prides itself on the world's longest life expectancy but is struggling with a disturbing footnote to that statistic — revelations that hundreds of people listed as its oldest citizens are either long dead or haven't been heard from for decades.
The mystery of the missing centenarians has captured the attention of this rapidly graying nation with reports of scamming relatives and overworked social workers and sad tales of old people, isolated and forgotten, simply slipping out of touch with society.
The story unfolded in late July when police discovered that Sogen Kato, who would have been 111 and was thought to be Tokyo's oldest man, had actually been dead for 32 years, his decayed and partially mummified body still in his home.
Police are investigating his family for possible abandonment and pension fraud.
That discovery led officials around the country to check up on the centenarians in their own districts, and what they found has been shocking.
Of course, the big question is this: what will this do to their life expectancy statistics?
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