I have to admit I am a little disappointed. The White House officially rejected a petition to begin construction of a Death Star space station. And it’s the bean counters’ fault, as usual: they think spending $850,000,000,000,000,000 on the capability to blow up inhabited planets contributes too much to the deficit!
Shame.
Alas, the cat sanctuary on Parliament Hill is no more.
Now all we have there is politicians. This depresses me greatly.
I was reading about Kim Jong Un’s unusual New Year’s message when I came across this video, a documentary by Dutch filmmaker Pieter Fleury, titled North Korea: A day in the life:
Even though it’s a few years old (it was made in 2004) and despite the fact that it was obviously made under the watchful eyes of North Korea’s censors, it still speaks volumes about the world’s last Stalinist state.
Today I ran across the Web site of a movement to amend the US constitution to explicitly declare that corporations are not persons. I like the idea. In fact, it inspired me to exercise my non-existent skills as a cartoonist.
A Facebook friend shared this image, a cartoon about conservative vs. liberal views on equality:
Looking at the image, I realize that deep in my soul, I am in fact a conservative. That’s because I see another variation of the same picture (and it’s not the crudeness of my art to which I am referring):
Then again, if I am a conservative, so was Kurt Vonnegut. Why else would he have written a story like Harrison Bergeron, in which a totalitarian state uses a form of mind control to create equality between intellectually gifted and less talented people?
Or perhaps I am neither a conservative nor a liberal (and the same goes for Kurt Vonnegut). Instead, I am trying to use rational thinking to decide what’s best in a given situation, without resorting to ideology or dogma.
Generally, I am sympathetic towards the American concept of gun rights. The basic idea, as I understand it, is sound: a constitution that explicitly forbids government from claiming a monopoly on organized violence, in contrast with European countries where government has that monopoly. It is part of a well thought out system of checks and balances that characterizes America’s quarter millennia old stable democracy.
What I don’t really understand is how this, the notion of a “well regulated militia” that citizens can freely form and, if needed, rely on to fight government oppression, is related to the concept of granting every imbecile the “God-given” right to have a military grade assault rifle. I honestly don’t think that America’s founding fathers had concealed carry permits and assault rifles in mind when they formulated the Second Amendment.
But where the “gun nuts” really lost credibility in my view is when they began advocating that teachers be allowed, or even required, to carry a gun. Have you guys gone completely bonkers? Do you really think that the solution to tragedies like the Newtown massacre is to turn schools into battlegrounds? Do you actually listen to yourselves when you utter such a blatant idiocy?
I told a pro-gun friend of mine that if gun advocates continue on this course, it will only accomplish one thing in the end: we may yet see the Second Amendment repealed within our lifetime. And if that happens, the “gun nuts” will only have themselves to blame.
Predictably and understandably, a lot of people are questioning America’s gun laws in the wake of the Newtown, CT massacre.
What I would like to know is this: exactly when did “a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” turn into the right for every clown and idiot to own assault weapons or to walk around in crowded places with a concealed handgun? Is this really what the Founding Fathers wanted?
To me, the meaning of the Second Amendment is clear: it is about not granting government a monopoly on violence. It is about the citizenry’s right to arm themselves and if necessary, protect themselves from oppression. But this meaning seems to have been forgotten. Last time I checked, American citizens long ago lost the right (if they ever had it in the first place) to operate private well-regulated militias that own, never mind aircraft carriers or ballistic missiles, how about tanks and fighter aircraft, the kinds of weapons necessary for protection against an oppressive state, as the civil war in Syria amply demonstrates.
So the original meaning of the Second Amendment is long lost; should the US Federal Government turn into an oppressive dictatorship, concealed handguns or semi-automatic assault rifles are not going to do much good against tanks, drones, or smart missiles.
But then, why is it necessary to let every idiot purchase a high-power handgun that serves only one purpose: to kill people, lots of people, at a high rate of efficiency?
Just wondering.
The other day, I read about an interesting experiment: The Guardian solicited readers’ ideas to resolve the nuclear crisis at Fukushima. Predictably, the majority of the submitted ideas were dangerous nonsense.
Today, I ran across something on Facebook: an attempt to promote the Robin Hood tax, a tax on financial (e.g., Wall Street) transactions. The suggestion is that a tax of a mere 0.5% on Wall Street transactions would not only generate billions in revenue but also slow down algorithmic trading that can cause so much runaway damage. Wikipedia tells me that EU citizens overwhelmingly support such a tax.
The trouble is that Wikipedia also tells me the reasons why such a tax may not be a great idea after all, as well as past lessons from attempts to implement such taxes, e.g., in Sweden. These are the consequences that are left out of the populist rhetoric, and are usually only discussed by experts.
Should this mean that we should leave political and economic decision-making to experts? It has been tried before. It is called totalitarianism. So once again, I am reminded of Churchill’s words: “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.
Which is why the often quixotic fight of those who try to educate the public is both noble and essential.
The sordid saga around the resignation of Gen. Petraeus continues. It became such a tangled story, Gawker.com actually published a flowchart to make it easier to decipher.
Meanwhile, however, The Guardian raises some very troubling points:
The Guardian comments about the “sweet justice” aspect of all of this: namely that America’s security surveillance system that is running amok is targeting the very people in charge of that system, such as the head of the CIA. However, I do not share their implied optimism; I don’t think the growth in surveillance will stop anytime soon. We are nowhere near close to anything like the McCarthy era’s pivotal “have you no sense of decency?” moment. For that, a lot more good people will have to be harmed a lot more gravely first.
Rudy Giuliani made an interesting comment on CNN yesterday. He ridiculed his own party by pointing out that they are all for states’ rights… except when they are not, such as when they are pushing to amend the federal constitution to define marriage. He pointed out that a conservative party that stays out of both people’s pocketbooks and their bedrooms would be a winning combination. I couldn’t agree more.
So how come I am in favor of Obamacare? Well… I also like highways. Some libertarians may argue that by building a highway, government restricts your freedom to drive where you want and forces you onto a narrow strip of asphalt. Technically true, but I still prefer to live in a place with a well-developed national infrastructure. These days, I consider a universal health care system just as important a part of that national infrastructure as highways, schools, or electrical networks.
Apparently, it’s real. Some Americans, bitterly disappointed with Obama’s re-election, are considering emigration. At first I didn’t want to believe this but I now personally heard about a medical professional from the southern United States who is contemplating moving to Canada.
Well, we are a big country, a welcoming and tolerant place. Still… are you sure you will fit in? I feel compelled to repost a picture I ran across on Facebook a day or two ago.
Obama won. He is not going to have an easy four years with an obstructionist Congress. And the route Republicans will chose in the wake of Romney’s defeat remains an open question. I hope they don’t turn further right; that would either marginalize them or lead a far-right candidate to the White House, and neither of those outcomes are pleasant to think about.
But the real winner of the night I think was Nate Silver of the The New York Times, who predicted the outcome with uncanny accuracy, state-by-state. The one state that has not been called yet by the networks? Florida, with Obama slightly in the lead. Nate Silver’s prediction? A 50.3% chance of Obama taking the state.
And the real losers were Fox News, I believe. Rather than facing the facts, they decided to question the wisdom of their own “decision desk”, live on the air. What a sad (not to mention ridiculous) moment.
I am reading some very interesting statistics. It is a survey of Muslims in the United States.
Wenzel strategies is a partisan public opinion firm associated with the US Republican Party. Nonetheless, while their ideology may be reflected in their choice of questions, I have no reason to believe that the statistical integrity of their survey is compromised. There may be some shenanigans not uncommon when partisan pollsters are involved (for instance, how did they select their respondents?) that may skew the results somewhat, but I don’t think they would alter the outcome dramatically. In other words, I don’t think this is islamophobe fodder.
The picture painted by the survey is complex. A small but not insignificant percentage of the respondents (almost all of whom are US citizens who are registered to vote) clearly have extremist views: for instance, 12% of the respondents think that those who criticize Islam or Mohammed should be put to death, with a further 9% unsure. On the other hand, defying stereotypes, only about 16% think that Israel has no right to exist, and only 7% think Sharia law should take precedence over the US constitution (with a further 20% unsure). And a surprising 30% think it’s okay for US citizens to evangelize Muslims, with a further 28% unsure.
In the data set, I don’t see much by way of significant differences among demographic groups. One exception is the support for the death penalty for those who offend Islam: younger responders were much more inclined to agree (19%) than the older generation. Similarly, younger responders were much less likely to support Israel’s right to exist (31% disagree with that right).
Overall, if the survey results are valid, they are troubling. While the majority tends to have moderate views, an alarming minority (and in some cases, even a majority) expressed views that are fundamentally incompatible with liberal Western principles. For instance, as many as 58% do not believe that the First Amendment of the US constitution should protect criticism of Islam or Mohammed. And the fact that younger Muslims tend to have more extremist views may mean nothing (younger people are generally more receptive to radical ideas) but may also indicate an alarming trend.
One conspicuously missing demographic question is the one about immigration status: how many of the respondents were born in the US, immigrated as children, or arrived as adults? Perhaps accompanied even by a breakdown by country or region of origin. That is because I would not be surprised at all if the more extremist views were held by recent immigrants from countries with strong tribal traditions. I wonder why these immigration questions were omitted from the survey.
Immigration status and partisan views notwithstanding, I find it deeply disturbing that, at least according to this one survey, as many as one in five young American Muslims think I should be put to death if I were to make my critical views on Islam or Mohammed public.
I gave this post a provocative title intentionally. I am a one-time conservative voter. One reason why I feel disenchanted with conservatives (not just in Canada, mind you) these days is that they seem to have politicized science at every opportunity. Sure, others have done the same thing in the past (liberals are certainly no knights in shining armor) but the past is the past, right now I am worried about the present. Reproductive health, stem cell research, environmental science, climate change, you name it… if they don’t like the result, they attack it, and if the result withstands politically motivated attacks, they move on to attack the researcher. Or, as the case might be, they do their darnedest to undermine the integrity of the data.
This is precisely what happened when Canada’s conservative government eliminated the mandatory “long form” census that was sent to 20% of Canadian households. Sure, there were legitimate privacy concerns that could and should have been addressed (I even wrote a letter to the Chief Statistician myself many years ago when we received the long form census and found some questions a tad sensitive, and the safeguards against being able to personally identify responders inadequate.) But eliminate the long-form census completely, making it “optional”? That is a bone-headed stupid move. The most charitable interpretation is that the government simply didn’t know what they were doing because they don’t understand statistics. A more sinister possibility is that they knew exactly what they were doing, and they are undermining the integrity of Statistics Canada’s data sets on purpose. In light of what has been done and said in recent years, despite my general dislike of conspiracy theories, I am leaning towards accepting this interpretation.
And now the results are beginning to arrive, demonstrating the validity of all those concerns. According to the data collected, the percentage of people in Canada whose mother tongue is English remained the same despite the fact that in the meantime, Canada received 1.1 million new immigrants, 80% of whom had a mother tongue other than English of French. Or that the number of people in Canada whose mother tongue is a non-official language supposedly dropped by 420,000, again despite the above-mentioned immigration statistics.
Of course these results make no sense. What they reflect is a faulty data collection methodology. A methodology forced upon Statistics Canada by a political leadership that finds it appropriate to meddle with science.
The damage due to such meddling is profound and lasting. There is the immediate damage of distorted results. This can be fixed easily; for instance, if Canada were to return to the long form census, this one census could be discarded as an outlier and the long-term integrity of the data would remain assured. But by politicizing the science and polarizing researchers, they undermine the process itself, creating a partisan mindset. Defenders of scientific integrity will unavoidably find themselves participating in political debates and feel forced to adopt polarized positions. Climate scientists often sound more like preachers of a religion than impartial researchers. Could this be, at least in part, due to the polarized atmosphere in which their scientific results are scrutinized? Ultimately, it is the integrity of the scientific process that suffers, and that’s bad news for all of us, regardless of our political views.
This is not some fringe moron but a Republican representative for Georgia’s 10th district. Member of the Tea Party caucus. And a physician to boot:
Groan. I guess I must be a servant of the Devil then (go, Lucifer!) as I, too, spread the “lie from the pit of hell” called the Big Bang theory. Or the lie called “evolution”. Or the lie called “embryology” (that’s a new one for me; would you know what’s wrong with embryology from a Tea Party perspective?) What next, write down the Friedmann equations, be burned at the stake?
Now this is why, even if everything you told me about Obama and his Chicago lot was the gospel truth, I’d still prefer them over Republicans these days. I’d rather take 21st century corruption than go back to the Middle Ages.
Part of me wonders (hopes, even) that this is just a cynical attempt to attract votes and he is not actually this stone dumb stupid. But I don’t know what it says about the Republican party these days if these are the kinds of votes its representatives go after.
I am unashamedly reblogging a cartoon that I came across on Facebook yesterday. It needs no further comment:
I admit I was underwhelmed by Mr. Obama’s presidential debate performance last night, and like many others, I think Mr. Romney exceeded expectations.
I was particularly annoyed by the number of opportunities missed by Obama to strike back at his opponent. The obvious one, of course, is whether Romney really believes killing Big Bird is the secret to a healthy economy. But more importantly… does Romney really believe that when you get a heart attack and you suddenly realize that your insurance company is screwing you, you can easily switch insurance? And what was this nonsense about “panels of government bureaucrats”? How is that any worse than panels of private insurance company bureaucrats who, unlike their government counterparts (who would only set policy) actually DO stand between you and your doctor, deciding which treatment to approve? Last but not least… a classic opportunity was missed when Mr. Romney was repeatedly talking about the middle class. Had I been in Obama’s shoes, I would have told him, “Mr. Romney, you never lived the life of a middle class American. I know middle class life. I lived most of my life as a middle class person. Mr. Romney, you are no middle class.”
That said, I was pleased by how civilized and intelligent this debate was. Neither candidate was trying too hard to be a partisan populist. This was refreshing.
There is, apparently, a call for a world-wide ban on anti-Islam “hate speech”: essentially, any speech that criticizes Islam or its prophet.
My immediate reaction was a flat out Cold War Soviet-style “Nyet”. Or simply to tell them to bugger off. Seriously bugger off.
But it was a friend of mine whose views on Islam are generally far less restrained who offered the most eloquent way to respond to these calls. It was a quotation supposedly from Voltaire:
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
Protesters at the US Consulate in Toronto yesterday demanded that American authorities do something about the infamous anti-Islam video, the Innocence of Muslims. They held up signs claiming that “free speech does not mean disrespecting any prophet”, among other things.
But, my friends, that is EXACTLY what free speech is. It is precisely the right to disrespect, even insult if I wish, God, Yahweh, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Ra, Moses, and every other living or imaginary prophet, deity, political or religious leader. Even using crude or obscene language and bad humor, if that happens to suit my fancy.
Do you want to know what hate speech is? Why, it’s easy: holding up (not to mention handing to 4-year olds to hold up) signs that demand the beheading of people as it happened the other day in Australia:
No, I am not ready to join the ranks of Islamophobes worried about the coming Caliphate, but I still categorically reject these Islamist attempts to limit the right to free speech in Western societies and the implied or, in this case, explicit threats. As an immigrant myself, I think I have the right to say something that might appear a tad more distasteful if uttered by persons born here in Canada: if you don’t like it here, you are free to leave.
Perhaps go to Pakistan. After all, that fine country’s Minister of Railways thinks that offering a $100,000 bounty for the head of the filmmaker is the right thing to do. How enlightened and civilized. I am sure people who think about free speech like these protesters do would fit right in.
Two years ago I attended a conference in Mexico City. We had many pleasant conversations with our hosts, who sadly told us that these days, Mexico City may be the safest part of the country… not because it is any safer than it was 20 years ago (when it qualified as the least safe) but because the rest of the country went downhill as a result of a perpetual drug war.
This is why I find these latest news so disturbing: it seems that the drug war may have reached a suburb of Mexico City. It appears that not even the capital is immune anymore.