Should Politicians Be Profiled?

 Politics  No Responses »
Feb 282017
 

With the enfant terrible Trump in charge of the USA and petulant Putin in charge of the Russian bear, it seems like an interesting idea to subject politicians to psychological profiling to determine their suitability for public office and power over us.

When you look at the list of monstrous political leaders we have had over just the last 100 years – Hitler, Pol-pot, Stalin, etc., the idea of testing politicians to find out if they are psychos or loonies starts to make a great deal of sense.

The first complaint about this would be that it would be an invasion of privacy. Well we don’t need to know the details; we simply need to have a trustworthy organisation certify that person A is suitable (or unsuitable) candidate.

The second issue is determining just what makes a suitable or unsuitable candidate which is something we need to persuade a bunch of psychologists and psychiatrists to propose.

The final issue is to get politicians to agree to it, and there we can simply refuse to vote for any candidate who has not been certified.

Immigration Trumpidity

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Feb 042017
 

I could choose to criticise Trump’s stand in immigration from certain countries based on the rights and wrongs of it, because it’s certainly wrong. But firstly there has been plenty written and said about that aspect of it, and secondly those who don’t see how wrong it is are not likely to change.

But even those who do not see how wrong it is may well be able to see just how stupid this move is.

Just to remind ourselves, Trump has temporarily blocked all travel into the USA by anyone holding a passport issued by seven countries which were previously subject to heightened visa requirements. And for good reasons – the relevant countries have more than their fair share of terrorist activity – and it is more than reasonable to check on immigrants to verify that they are not known terrorists.

The first “own goal” is that the new restrictions blocks many people from travelling to the USA who have made their homes there including famous people like Mo Farah (although the ban may not apply to him). How much safer is the US by blocking Mo from entering the USA and going home?  Or all the others in his position?

And let’s be frank – there’s something less than honourable about issuing a visa allowing someone to travel, and then preventing them from travelling. There are people who have planned the holiday of a lifetime and arranged to visit Disneyworld or Disneyland, and all of a sudden they are prevented from travelling.

Now you could argue that if this action decreases the risk to US citizens it is worth taking. But even if it does significantly reduce the risk, I would argue that it is better to accept the increased risk to do the right thing. And in general if you do not accept a slightly increased risk to do the right thing, you are a morally bankrupt person.

But does this decrease the risk to US citizens? To assess that we need to assess how great is the risk of terrorist attacks to the USA, and specifically terrorist attacks from those seven countries.

In fact the risk attributed to terrorism is vastly overrated. Going through the Wikipedia list of terrorist incidents, I get a total of 5 incidents causing the deaths of 50 people (the perpetrators excluded), which includes the Pulse nightclub shooting. If you go back to 2015, the figures are 4 incidents and 23 deaths, and one of the incidents was a christian terrorist.

Working through a similar list of mass shootings in 2016, I get a total of 14 incidents causing the deaths of 56 individuals.

Which is basically saying that you’re about as likely to walk into a terrorist incident as into a mass shooting, and both are really, really unlikely. That doesn’t help much if you are caught up in such an incident, so taking reasonable and proportionate action to decrease that risk is worthwhile.

And targeting refugees fits into the disproportional category; of those 5 incidents in 2016, only one was perpetrated by a refugee (and nobody died).

And now onto the final bit of stupidity: Firing your legal adviser for telling you an executive order is illegal when it is being found so over and over again makes you look more than a bit foolish.  Particularly when you could accomplish almost as much (although in reality more) by simply stopping new visas being issued; especially when the decreased risk from terrorism is marginal at best.

Trump Trumpets His Moral Turpitude Over Torture

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Jan 262017
 

The comic book villainous president Trump has just spoken about how he believes that torture works.

The first thing to point out is that it is widely acknowledged that there is no evidence to show that it works, and anecdotally the torturer is in severe danger of hearing what she wants to hear from the victim. In other words the gut feeling that it ought to work is not to be trusted.

Secondly, torture is prohibited under international law. Now we know that the US is in the habit of showing the finger to the international community – if the US were not so powerful, they would be labelled a “rogue state”.  Just look at a list of the nations that utilise torture – it’s one of the key indicators of a bad state.

Finally, torture is wrong. Under all circumstances it is wrong. You do not “win” over terrorists by descending to their level!

Just How Dumb Is Trump’s Team?

 Media, Politics  No Responses »
Jan 222017
 

News story.

We’re all used to politicians lying – either baldly (“Is the sky blue? No, it’s pink.”) or by avoiding the subject altogether (“Is the sky blue? I think the question shouldn’t be is the sky blue, but whether the colour really matters.”). But normally you can see some rationale behind the lie – there’s some genuine advantage to the politician by lying.

And seeing a politician who doesn’t bow down to the media is somewhat gratifying. At least when it serves some purpose.

But headbutting the media and spouting easily disproved lies about the number of people attending Trump’s inauguration?

Crass stupidity and arrogance of the first order.

There’s no point to it – after all who really cares how many people were stroking Trump’s ego on the day? After all his ego doesn’t need any bolstering, and even if it did there were still plenty of people in attendance.

Shattering the establishment (which is something I don’t believe Trump really intends no matter how much he claims) is all very well, and indeed to be encouraged. But you don’t accomplish it by picking stupid fights over nothing important.

Trump is in danger of giving a new word to label stupidity – Trumpidity.

 

Two US Free Speech Myths

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Jan 142017
 

One of the things you regularly encounter online is the fetish Americans have for free speech; not entirely a bad thing, but some of what they believe is a bit of a myth. Part of the problem is that the first amendment to the US constitution is just a little vague and handwavey :-

or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press

First of all, what is that word “abridging” supposed to mean? It literally means shortening which makes the phrase nonsense even if it was supposed to be read as if “restricting” was the word used. Of course the meaning of language does change and it could well be that at the time, “abridge” would have unambiguously meant restrict. And “freedom of speech”? We normally take that to mean any form of expression whether spoken, written, drawn, or generated in some other way. But was that what was meant?

But now onto the myths … the first is a simple one and there is no real debate about it.

The right of free speech does not give you a right to be published by a third-party. If you are on Facebook for example, there is no right to free speech there – Facebook can decide to arbitrarily restrict what you can say perfectly legally. The government cannot restrict what you self-publish, but your publisher (including forum admins, mailing list admins, etc.) is free to refuse to publish for any reason at all.

Ultimately the only recourse to such censorship is to self-publish which is relatively easy on the Internet.

The second “myth” is a bit more debatable, but arguably the right to free speech is more about being free to criticise the government; in an era of lese-majesty and seditious libel, the major concern of the American revolutionaries was with political free speech. And whilst there has been free speech, there have always been restrictions on that freedom or consequences :-

  • Obscenity (as determined by the Miller test).
  • Inciting imminent lawlessness such as encouraging a lynch mob. Although this one can be a dangerously slippery slope given it’s historical use against people protesting the draft.
  • Commercial speech including advertising, and copyright.
  • Libel and slander.

So when looking at a particular restriction on free speech – such as hate speech (i.e. racial or religious hatred) – it is perfectly feasible for a law to be enacted to make such speech punishable in some form.

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