General – Page 18 – More Zonkyness

The Evil British Empire in India

Feb 122017

Now this blog posting is not intended to defend the wrongs of colonialism; we all now accept that territorial expansion by conquest (except apparently Russia) is wrong. In fact it could be argued that Britain conquered India for commercial and not colonial reasons – for example no penal transportation to India occurred. Yes, British people went to live in India, but chiefly to do specific jobs – colonial administration, soldiering, or commercial activities.

Not mass migration.

We need to be wary of judging the past with the moral standards of today; it was not until the 20th century that conquest for territorial expansion was universally condemned. And the evils of the British Raj (and earlier) because it successfully conquered India; earlier (and there were many) attempts failed, although some were close. The very presence of islam within the Indian sub-continent is indicative of attempts to conquer.

And as for the notion that only the British Empire acted in evil ways in India, just take a look through the list of massacres in India; many of those listed had nothing to do with the British.

Does that excuse the excesses of British colonial rule? No of course it doesn’t.

But even if Europeans had not become involved with India, the evils of attempted conquest would still have occurred as they did occur before.

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!

The Right To Be Offensive

General No Responses »

Jan 202017

There are people out there who believe that “I’m offended” is some sort of magical trump card that calls a halt to the debate and requires the offender to issue a grovelling apology. It finds it’s most extreme expression in religion – blasphemy.

Which is a useful place to find excellent examples of the foolishness of trying to avoid offence – there are those who consider that the Koran is blasphemous because it is not a christian holy book and similarly there are probably those who consider that christian churches are hotbeds of blasphemy because they’re not islamic. Which group is right? Or perhaps they are both wrong.

Now I do not believe in going out of my way to be offensive to people, but neither am I going to restrict my opinions because they might be offensive to some people out there.

And when you come down to it, the offended person isn’t really hurt are they? Nobody dies; nobody is hospitalised. The only “harm” that occurs is the harm that the offended person causes to themselves.

And if you choose to be offended by something I write, bear in mind that I can choose to be offended by some of the things you hold sacred :-

That you believe in a stone age psychotic deity who proclaims “Love and worship me, or I’ll send you to a place of eternal torture”.
That you insist on eating charred decaying animal corpses; and worse do so where I can smell the odious aerial effluent.
Perhaps you voted for what may very well turn out to be the most cartoonish president of the USA since records began. You did know that the entire world is looking at the US freak show and shaking their heads in disbelief?
Perhaps you believe that certain groups are inferior – women, men, people of a different “race”, etc.
Perhaps you think that the rich are perfectly entitled to avoid their obligations to society and that tax avoidance is not a dishonourable thing to do.

But I choose not to. I’ll argue about it, and quite possibly think of you as stupid. But I won’t be offended

And if you do get offended, well then good.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/06/03/im_offended_126814.html

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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