Archive for the ‘politics’ Category
Boston Bombers, Social Media, and Jihadism
With 24 hour news speculation fills air time before confirmed reports come in. Social media is worse, however the sheer scope means following the right people you may get corrections/clarifications before mainstream media do so – and be ahead of the curve in reports flooding in. It is also a chance for people to politicise and make the most absurd renderings out of the carnage.
We had the rants that all Muslims should be killed aka Erik Rush later claiming he was being sarcastic. We know better given he thinks the constitution is allowing Islam to conquer the United States, and immigration reform being put off as people suggest Muslims should be stopped from entering at the border. The typical hard right wing reaction missing these brothers had become citizens. Worse, Russia had expressed concern about one of the brother’s connection to Chechnya Jihadists. The FBI made no links to terrorist groups though his Russian youtube playlists and links had plenty to be concerned about.
Then there was concern on social media that the younger brother was not read his Miranda rights. Despite the public safety exemption being legal, and not unconstitutional. That the police are now hunting a 12 strong sleeper cell suggests that critical time sensitive information needed to be retrieved. [Daily Mirror]
Still one would hope freethinkers would not fall into the hyperbole that appears on social media, recognising that these young men born in Chechnya, living in the USA last ten years. We need the time to piece together how this happened. For me Richard Dawkins spoke well when he said we need to study what made Dzhokhar prepared to carry out such attacks so we can prevent others doing – the death penalty would be self defeating to the public future safety of finding this out from him.
Unfortunately today my twitter timeline revealed we are not immune from crass generalisations:
Whilst the article itself has quotes clarifying not all Muslims are supporters of terrorists (but “most terrorists are Muslim”) the tweet itself falls short of not inflaming tensions that mainstream media are trying to avoid. Comments are taking that tweet and articles quoted to task:
Indeed we can remember the IRA and who was funding them to remember that terrorism is not just Islamic. My school by an army stables practised bomb and fire drills – the difference being we ran further and had to take bags with us (this confused teachers as fire national guidelines said kids should leave their bags; military said this would slow down a bomb search). Being in a town centre when a bomb alarm goes off not knowing which direction is safe to go in is not the family outing you want, and my heart bled when it happened in Manchester 1996. Thatcher being laid to rest this week was a reminder that the IRA nearly did that with the Brighton hotel bomb nearly 30 years ago. Nail bombs on train station platforms. Are memories so short?
Clearly whether the brothers were indoctrinated and groomed by Jihadists or of own accord support Caucasian Chechnyan terror groups which led to committing a domestic act of terror, time will reveal. Till then take the speculation with a healthy degree of skepticism as the hard data comes in and is evaluated.
The Boston bombing is being used as a sounding drum for some people’s pet hates. Let us march to a different beat. Foremost Boston you are in our thoughts as we remembered you at the start of the London Marathon here in the UK.
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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The Mistaken Peter Hitchens on Communism
Peter Hitchens has said that atheism is a blood soaked creed, and used some quotes to state Bolsheviks were atheists. He mentions persecution of religious groups and people. For him atheism is responsible. Not communist totalitarianism.
Which begs the question of belief for communists (the Bolsheviks adopted that term in the 1920s) and the violence the state used in suppressing people and maintaining the state as the supreme political body.
AJP Taylor remarked that Lenin realised he was in gangster warfare and wanted to be the right end of the shotgun. Terror was the way power was exercised on the populace in the revolution and beyond.
A new tyranny from god ordained Tsar to supreme communist rule had taken effect.
The communists were atheists, rejecting the theist argument. Marx saw that as a beginning in rational thought – a kind of training ground in philosophical thinking.
The idea that atheism then leads to blood stained communism is not one borne out. Communism in Russia was totalitarian, and no rival organisation or thought was to be tolerated. Pluralism was dead, and religion that demanded your obedience in thought, life, and in death was the ultimate challenge to Marxist ideology. The socialist workers councils tried to rebel, and were suppressed as were churches that stood up to the regime.
Would the communists have been less inclined to kill millions if they believed in a creator God? Doubtful: terror was the expediency and effective way to keep people in check and destroy opposition. The Soviet Union collapsed ideologically when Mikhail Gorbachev realised pluralism was the answer to a morally and financially stagnated bankrupt nation.
Hitchens can quote mine all the “communist are atheist” references he likes. We know communists were atheists. We also know they were anti-pluralist, anti-democracy, anti-free speech, non secularist, butchering murdering psychotic thugs.
Something for humanists not to be.
As I have argued atheism is non belief in god based on theist arguments, not a basis for working out morality or ethical behaviour which requires much other thought including religious/philosophical thinking that are a part of our historical discourse.
It is a mistake for anyone to suggest otherwise.
UPDATE:
Awaiting reply …
FOLLOW UP BLOG: Peter Hitchens replies on twitter
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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No to National Atheist Party
The President of the National Atheist Party Troy Boyle has resigned, less than a month after its second convention. What strikes me as odd is that they had not in place a contingency for the President resigning, and that Boyle wrote the charter single handed which never covered that eventuality. This does not sound like a democratically well organised party that the United States deserves.
So my advice to the 8,000 members that they lay claim to is that promoting secularism should not be a fringe political party movement. Rather, you need to influence the two main parties on the national stage: Democrat or Republican (yes I said that) as party members. Or, you could try for yourself as independents.
There are huge issues that need tackling at home and abroad: economic growth, employment, poverty, the environment, human rights, international security, homeland security, health care, education and the constitution (to name a few). A one issue party, and in this case an only atheist party membership, is doomed never to be taken seriously or have the impact on secularism that is needed in the political arena.
At the local level, as an upstanding member of your local community that has given so much you could try standing for office. The key here is standing up and putting yourself forward as a credible candidate. Running an effective campaign that makes those running in your district address your issues.
For those that do not seek office, support those that do care about the separation of church and state, and religious freedom, who are serious people for the big issues. Donate money, give of your time, or at a minimum acknowledge your support for what they as doing as a message or Facebook like.
There are secular and atheist groups which can help in this already and may even be able to help you do all these things with information, channels to use and even workshops. They are an excellent place to start your activism.
Stop being on the fringes and start contributing to the mainstream.
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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Can the progressive future claim the past?
President Obama used the imagery of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence to state that equality was a founding principle of the Republic, and that now is the time to fulfil that promise with regard equal pay for women and gay rights. (Blog on that here)
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Needless to say, the right may have a problem with this – having claimed the founding fathers for the small state, and liberty for all to have wealth without being taxed by the state to increase it’s power relative to the rest of civil society.
Enter Buchanan:
How could that be, when the author of the declaration Obama cites, Thomas Jefferson, believed homosexuality should be treated as rape, and George Washington ordered homosexuals drummed out of his army?
What Obama was attempting at the Capitol, with his repeated lifts from Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, was to portray his own and his party’s egalitarianism as a continuation of the great cause that triumphed at Yorktown and Appomattox.
He is hijacking the American Revolution, claiming an ancestral lineage for his ideology that is utterly fraudulent and bogus.
Buchanna is at least more honest then some about Jefferson’s position. Many do quote Jefferson’s ideals about equality, and people being free to their conscience. Yet he also in the Virginia legislature tried to introduce castration for rape and sodomy. Some have spun this that the alternative was the death penalty, which made him liberal by the standards of the time. At any rate, his bill was defeated.
Yet claiming Jefferson as a homophobe or as pro gay rights is to put our own terms on a people who believed that no one could consent to a homosexual act. Such is the problem also when we look to great figures in the past as an example. Look deeper, you will find something that will shock you.
Richard Dawkins covers that well when talking for ten minutes about the moral zeitgeist – that is that overtime what we consider moral changes, sometimes rapidly – and to be cautious when using our times looking back on history.
Buchanan is right that civil rights are in many ways a modern idea in American history (just listen to the quote Dawkins reads out from Lincoln above). It does however miss an important point, that our values could be considered barbaric in the future and we may need to discuss them with enthusiasm, and that each generation may have to come to terms not only with that but how they should be governed, perhaps tearing down what has gone before, even the constitution.
Those ideas come from … Thomas Jefferson:
“We shall have our follies without doubt. Some one or more of them will always be afloat. But ours will be the follies of enthusiasm, not of bigotry, not of Jesuitism. Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both. We are destined to be a barrier against the return of ignorance and barbarism.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1816. ME 15:58
Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of nineteen years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right. It may be said, that the succeeding generation exercising, in fact, the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law had been expressly limited to nineteen years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be, indeed, if every form of government were so perfectly contrived, that the will of the majority could always be obtained, fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves; their representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils, bribery corrupts them, personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents; and other impediments arise, so as to prove to every practical man, that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal.” –Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:459, Papers 15:396
If we are going to be honest, let us be fully so. In the debate bring your enthusiasm. Time to claim the future from people long since dead.
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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Joe Scarborough Mea Culpa?
Sort of … Joe Scarborough former Republican congressman now television host says in the wake of Sandy Hook it can no longer be business as usual. However he gives these causes:
The violence we see spreading from shopping malls in Oregon, to movie theaters in Colorado, to college campuses in Virginia, to elementary schools in Connecticut, is being spawned by the toxic brew of a violent pop culture, a growing mental health crisis and the proliferation of combat-styled guns.
Though entrenched special interests will try to muddy the issues, the cause of these sickening mass shootings is no longer a mystery to common-sense Americans. And blessedly, there are more common-sense Americans than there are special interests, even if it doesn’t always seem that way. Good luck to the gun lobbyist or Hollywood lawyer who tries to blunt the righteous anger of ten million parents by hiding behind a twisted reading of our Bill of Rights.
Trying to pin it down on pop culture (video games, and movies). Up there with mental health issues – which if we believe current reports not helped by a mother preparing for the apocalypse, training him to shoot in preparation for the breakdown of society. Also note “combat styled guns”. This suggests to me not all types of guns. You know, the other ones that also hurl metal at bone piercing speed, smashing through organ matter.
In case you think I am nit picking, another quote explaining abandoning libertarian views:
But the symbols of that ideological struggle have since been shattered by the harvest sown from violent, mind-numbing video games and gruesome Hollywood movies that dangerously desensitizes those who struggle with mental health challenges. Add military-styled weapons and high capacity magazines to that equation and tragedy can never be too far behind.
If we want a discussion about the impact on a psychotic person certain video game and film content has, fair enough. We can study that. The problem with the analysis above is that for the health problems of a few that non health experts consider susceptible, and those primed psychotics needing a trigger, the solution is to oppose the First Amendment. By a conservative moralist.
So conservative views on art and entertainment are after a piggy back ride on the sorrows of a nation – when the demographics of the killer at twenty years of age suggest he would play such video games, see such movies.
The issue is not that media entertainment exist. The question is were his mental health needs safeguarded, and what role did the mother (reported that she took time off work to look after him unclear) and local social health workers have in his welfare?
The focus must be on Adam Lanza so we can actually see what could have been done, and learn.
Misinformation abounds as the news is gathered – the above could be speculation as far as I know reported as true regarding mother and concerns for son’s state of mind. The answers to his upbringing and mental health will be key in the coming days. No doubt other factors as well which might be even more critical; how can we judge till the information is in? We need to examine the facts.
So we do not make any mistakes again, or draw the wrong conclusions now. Or knee jerk ones that appeal to our own values and prejudices.
Previous blog: Crazy talk on Sandy Hook, and a heroine
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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Crazy talk on Sandy Hook, and a heroine
Talk about drawing the wrong public policy conclusion for the Sandy Hall Elementary killings in Newtown, Connecticut.
Former Republican prospective Presidential nominee Mick Huckabee “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools … Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”
Bryan Fischer, the Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association said that God could have protected the victims of this massacre, but didn’t because “God is not going to go where he is not wanted … For fifty years we have been telling him to get lost” so let us return to the power of prayer in schools.
Absolutely. Let us forget the idea that everyone should be free to worship their own god, that society institutions should not enforce public worship on citizens, and the constitution. Rather than some form of bullet control, or maybe making sure guns do not get into the hands of the homicidal, more prayer. Against people with automatic, concealed, legally acquired, weapons.
Then the coup de grace the Westboro Baptists, website godhatesfags.com, plan to picket Newtown. Their nice colourful banners with messages of hate, blaming homosexuality for society’s ills, will sadly be missed by twenty school children.
These are not serious people for serious times to take part in a meaningful discussion.
Contrast that with teacher Victoria Soto. She heard the gunman, and locked her class into a closet that teachers keep an arsenal of stationary, and text books. When Adam Lanza asked where her class were she said they were in the gym. He then killed her. Her class survived – though there are now reports some children fled the closet and were subsequently killed.
Of the four lies mentioned above only one saves children.
Her actions and courage in the face of death deserves more coverage than anything the other people say to make their political points, for an agenda to piggy back on the sorrow of a nation that want something done.
More on her can be found here.
The others can frankly get lost.
Follow up blog: now coming for the first amendment and your movie/video collection
Previous blogs: reasoning what happened at Sandy Hook
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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Reasoning why what happened at Sandy Hook
When initially blogging on the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School shortly after it happened, this observation was made:
No doubt there will be lots of people using these stories to make their own points. Gun control. Godless society. That there is no god. That human nature is evil. That this is just too much to bear. That in the darkest hour a community can come together. More armed security. Better mental health care in the community.
It was inevitable that these points would be the rallying call on social media, before the facts are clarified. Where anyone can post anything, you will find something to offend you. Possibly someone will go out of their way to find you to message you personally. Even that someone that agrees with you posts something that offended them so you can share in being offended.
For example:
Just some examples that appeared on my twitter feed.
The result hysteria, name calling, mud slinging. When the focus should be on helping a small community get back on it’s feet, with the time and resources it needs, and a serious conversation how we reduce the likelihood of these events happening again. President Obama was right in saying this concerned his office now, before meaningfully trying to tackle the issue of gun violence. That is where it is at, not sneaking a way to use the tragedy as a sounding drum for a particular cause.
It has nothing to do with the god/no god outlook on life. Saying that those children dying shows there is no god that created the earth is as balmy as saying we should rejoice that they get to spend Christmas in heaven this year.
After mentioning condolences and how some people had used the incident to have a go at the separation of church and state, the American Humanist Association made that same call:
… We hope that all Americans, religious and secular, recognize the foolishness and opportunism that underlies such statements, and we also hope that, rather than focus on divisive theological matters, Americans can come together to mourn and heal.
With the growing number of significant gun-related tragedies in recent years, it’s time to have a serious conversation about reason-based efforts to reduce such violence in the future.
A shame that they felt the need to say “reason-based efforts” rather than public policy.
Hopefully though something effective will be done. It is already much too late as it is.
Follow up blog: Crazy talk on Sandy Hook, and a heroine
Previous blog on Sandy Hook here
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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American Debt Post Second World War
The chart comes from an article in the Atlantic: Where Did Our Debt Come From?. It shows under post war administrations the overall growth in national debt during their time in office (middle column) and the average change in debt for each year during their time (far right). Green symbolises reducing the debt, while red shows increasing.
A look at the stats is enough to make people spill their tea.
The thing here is that the Obama administration had its work out cut out before his first term, let alone the second.
As December 8th 2012 The Economist puts it:
DEMOCRATS say it so often that it has become something of a mantra: there will be no deal to resolve America’s fiscal mess unless Republicans agree to higher tax rates on the richest Americans. But they seldom talk about their side of that bargain: the cost-cutting reforms to such entitlements as Medicare, the government’s health-care scheme for the old, and Social Security, its pension scheme, that they are expected to offer in return. As more and more Republicans grudgingly accept the prospect of higher taxes, the Democrats will soon have to decide what they can stomach on entitlement reform.
Can congress put aside brinkmanship this time?
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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