Miners from San Jose Mine On Their Way Out …

 General, Media, Politics  No Responses »
Oct 132010
 

From early this morning until tonight, the news channels have been broadcasting almost constantly from the San Jose mine in Chile and we have seen 17 of the 33 miners rescued. Probably more by the time I’ve finished writing this. This is one of those rare occasions when the news is dominated by a good news story.

But whilst we celebrate the rescue of the miners so far, and wait for news of the rest plus the rescuers who went down to help out, there are some things to ponder.

We are prepared to go to almost any extent to rescue miners in such a situation – and quite rightly too! But perhaps we should be considering just how much we are prepared to pay for pulling minerals out of the earth. The mine in question had a dubious safety history, which itself isn’t a reason for it to remain closed. But it does raise the question of whether more work should have been done before the accident to make it less likely.

But serious mining accidents occur world-wide and cause many deaths annually, without generating anywhere near the amount of attention that the San Jose mining accident has gathered. Perhaps that is understandable given that this is now a good news story.

There are those who say that mining is an inherently dangerous activity and there will always be accidents. But if you read work your way through that list of mining accidents at the link above, it quickly becomes apparent that in many cases sheer commercial greed is a major contributory factor. And not just in ancient mining disasters, but in the 21st century!

If we spend as much effort as has been spent on saving the San Jose miners on improving mining conditions world-wide, we can save many more miners from disaster. Isn’t that worth paying just a touch extra for your consumer goods ?

Liu Xiaobo Is Awarded Nobel Peace Prize …

 Politics  No Responses »
Oct 102010
 

And the Chinese authorities are more than a little upset.

“Good!” is my immediate reaction. Anyone who can irritate the Chinese authorities can’t be all bad, and it seems that Liu Xiaobo is doing more than his fair share. Which is why he got the prize of course.

When you are young, you eventually realise that when accused of doing something wrong, it is usually less painful to admit to it straight away than come up with silly excuses that blame everyone else – “It was the cat” …

The Chinese government is doing exactly that when it comes to Lui Xiaobo. It is claiming that he isn’t the sort of person who should be getting the Nobel Peace Prize. After all he is alleged to have broken Chinese law (so what?). Indeed they go on to criticise the Norwegian government for awarding this prize.

Of course the Norwegian government is not involved in the decision making process as the Nobel prizes are awarded by a committee independently of the government. Perhaps the most withering description of attempted Chinese interference comes from the Norwegian government themselves who explain that the Nobel committee is independent, but that the Chinese government will find such independence incomprehensible.

Labour Leadership Vote – The Unions

 Media, Politics  1 Response »
Sep 262010
 

Yesterday we heard the news that the new leader of the Labour party is Ed Millband – and congratulations to him. Ever since then we have had the media rambling on with the same old theme – more or less “but … but … it was the undemocratic unions who voted him in”.

So? It is not as if the Labour party has some sort of secret democratic process that changes every five minutes; the union vote was known well in advance, yet we heard no complaints before the result. Sometimes it feels as if the media look for any possible note of negativity in any news. Why not portray the news for once, and look at what difference Ed may make ?

There are undoubtedly Labour party members a bit suspicious of the influence of the Unions – after all it is hardly every party that allows people outside the membership of the party to vote. But why not ? The Labour party is supposed to reflect the interests of the working man and woman, so shouldn’t their representatives have an influence on the leadership ?

Sometimes the media gives us the impression that political parties need to have free and fair elections to select their leaders. Nothing could be further from the truth. A political party is effectively a private members club who put up their members for election whenever the opportunity presents itself (if funds and inclination are available).

Excluding the Liberal Democrats who have had a more chaotic life over the last 50 years, the Tories had their first leadership election in 1965 (over 100 years after their first government), and the Labour party had their first leadership election in 1922 some time after their formation. Indeed the only voters at those elections were the MPs of the respective parties!

The Labour party is unusual in allowing the unions to vote … or more accurately, the members of those unions. If they choose to do so, who are we (as non-members) to say it is wrong ? If you feel it is wrong, join the party and campaign for change.

And lets have a few less curmudgeons in the media please!

Pope Visits The UK And Accusses Us Of Atheist Extremism

 Politics, Religion  No Responses »
Sep 172010
 

So the Pope on his visit to the UK is warning us of the dangers of “atheist extremism” and is comparing atheists to the Nazis.

I’m not sure what kind of thinking went on to associate Nazism with atheism. The Nazis repressed atheist groups in Germany with Hitler proclaiming in 1933 that he had “stamped [atheism] out”. It is just as ridiculous to claim that Catholicism lead to Nazism (as Hitler was brought up Catholic) as to associate atheism with the Nazis.

From his speech, it would seem that the pope is implying that atheists are less moral than those who believe that their imaginary friends will punish them severely if they behave badly. It is true that atheists do not have a single written code of morals to follow, but nothing stops us from following the sensible bits out of (for example) the bible. But what evidence is there that atheists behave less morally than those who believe in some religion ?

Of course we can all point out a list of historical atheists who haven’t exactly been good – Stalin, Lenin, and Hitler are usually top of the list, although it isn’t totally certain that Hitler was an atheist. The bigoted will point to that list as evidence that all atheists are evil, but of course you are not one of those fools.

The pope may have a point where he claims that morality in public life is in danger, but not when he claims that atheists are the root of the problem. A moral atheist is better than an immoral christian every single time, just as a moral christian is always preferred to an immoral atheist. We may not be able to agree on religious issues, but on most of the basics a moral atheist will be in full agreement with a moral christian – for example that all forms of murder and theft are wrong.

It is also a mistake to label everyone who doesn’t attend church or claim some sort of belief as an atheist. In a traditionally christian society, atheism is a choice to be made, and most people in Britain haven’t made that choice. Even those who put down “no religion” in the 2001 census (between 14% (England) and 19% (Wales) can’t be labelled as “atheist”, as “no religion” is a category that covers atheists, agnostics (the “don’t knows”), and the “don’t cares”.

And what examples of atheist extremism have we seen ? How many churches have been burnt to the ground ? How many bishops have been hung from lamp posts ? How many people attending churches or mosques have been spat at and reviled ? Well if all that has been going on, it mysteriously hasn’t shown up on the national news.

Perhaps us atheists aren’t that extreme at all.

Burning The Koran on 9/11

 Politics, Religion  1 Response »
Sep 082010
 

Will he; won’t he ? That dumb American pastor who has promised to burn the Koran. I’m guessing he probably will after all it’s not every day that a piece of white trash like Terry Jones attracts this much attention. He’s the pastor of a third-rate church with at most 50 in his congregation showing that he isn’t even a particularly good frothing extremist like others in the US. In other words, he needs the publicity to keep going – why else would he announce this foolish escapade this year and not in previous years after 2001?

Of course it is probably offensive to Muslims everywhere; hell it’s even offensive to me, and I don’t like any organised religion – to me this is the burning of one of the great works of literature. It is also offensive that a knuckle-dragging white trash pastor cannot distinguish between the overwhelming majority of peaceful Muslims and the fanatical fringe.  Perhaps he can’t count over 10 without taking his socks off – after all there are in excess of 1.7 billion Muslims in the world today and if they were all inclined to violence, we would have a lot more terrorist attacks than we do.

Perhaps people are fooled by the rhetoric; the wild protests and threats of violence that we sometimes see take place in the Islamic world. Well, there is a big difference between what you say you will do, and what you are actually prepared to carry out. Who hasn’t said “I’ll kill him” in a moment of stress and anger ? And yet the overwhelming majority of us will never conceive of actually carrying out a killing such as that – the outburst is a way of releasing stress. Perhaps not quite the same, but bear in mind that what we say is not the same as what we do.

According to this article on terrorist attacks in the US, no more than 6% of all terrorist incidents in the US since 1980. 6% ? Unbelievable isn’t it ? Well the figures came from a report by the FBI which is available here (although you will have to do your own number crunching). It seems that Jewish terrorists are (just) more likely to commit terrorist acts in the US as Islamic terrorists. To bring in another source, the Europol report on the terrorist situation in 2009 (published in 2010) shows that of 294 terrorist incidents (including foiled attacks), just 1 was committed by an Islamic terrorist – an even lower percentage of 0.3%

Strikes me that those 1.7 billion Muslims are either exceptionally lazy, or are just not that interested in being terrorists. Undoubtedly people will point to Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan as examples of just how active Islamic terrorists can be – fair point, but in all cases those are exceptional circumstances. And besides the overwhelming majority of the victims are Muslims themselves – if anything one might say that the “Islamic” terrorists are actually enemies of Islam as they seem to prefer killing their co-religionists to non-Muslims.

Back to our white trash pastor. Despite showing every intention of burning the Koran, it would have been nice if the world could have ignored him – that is what he deserves. Perhaps understandably, the Islamic world doesn’t feel this way and is undoubtedly working up to widespread protests on September 11th, and undoubtedly the tiny minority of Muslims who are actually terrorists will be planning their own form of reaction against this.

It is worth pointing out (no matter how little good it will do) that the reaction to our white trash pastor is almost universally negative in the western world.

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