Pfizer Cripples the US Execution Engine

 General, Politics  No Responses »
May 142016
 

Pfizer now no longer supplies drugs to be used in the US lethal injection executions. Which means that there is now no major pharmaceutical company prepared to supply drugs to be used for executions. Or in other words even large capitalist-driven organisations that the major pharmaceuticals are find executions so morally repugnant that they want nothing to do with them.

So those US states have a number of options :-

  1. Try to find the drugs from “unauthorised” sources, which basically translates as obtaining drugs under false pretences.
  2. Try to find an alternative method of execution.
  3. Or finally do the right thing and stop executing people.

It’s time the US grew up and joined the civilised world.

B84V1827t1-elderley-man-past-gravestones

Donald Trump Wants To Ban Muslims. Idiot.

 Politics, Religion  No Responses »
Dec 102015
 

So Donald Trump wants to ban muslims from entering the US does he?

Perhaps he really is not only a vicious racist but also as gormless as he looks in the photo (apologies for those of a sensitive disposition). There are others who have covered why banning muslims from entering the US is morally wrong, and if you do not understand why that is so, then explaining here is not going to make things any clearer.

But in addition to being morally wrong, it is also dumb in the extreme. There are two important question to ask when looking at a policy …

Is It A Practicable Policy?

No.

Islam is a religion and is not apparent from someone’s appearance. There is no label on their forehead!

So a policy of restricting muslims would be limited to either asking them. Which would lead to a situation where you were excluding muslims who do not lie about their religion, or in other words you are letting in the kind of muslims that you should perhaps be excluding, and excluding the muslims there is no reason for excluding.

Or you could do some sort of racial profiling, which amounts to not excluding muslims, but excluding light-brown skinned people. Again this will exclude the kind of muslims you do not want to exclude, whilst allowing through ones up to no good.

Will It Accomplish The Mission?

It really depends on what is intended by excluding muslims. If it is intended to portray the US as an intolerant country blundering around with incompetent measures that do more to annoy than to protect, them yes it can be said to accomplish the mission.

If however it is intended to make the US safer from terrorists, then no. Terrorists are more interested in accomplishing their own mission than telling the truth, and will go out of their way to avoid being identified is muslims if they think that this will help in their mission.

There is one small category of terrorists that this may protect against – those who are initially ordinary muslims but who later become radicalised whilst in the US. However having said that, the likelihood that this measure will protect against those vulnerable to becoming radicalised is pretty low.

 

 

Gun Control (Again)

 Politics  No Responses »
Oct 022015
 

In the wake of yet another senseless slaughter in the US perpetrated by a supposedly anti-Christian mindless thug, it is time yet again for the US to contemplate a sensible level of gun control.

The US does not have a problem with gun control; it has a problem with mindless violence. There are other countries in the world where gun ownership is at the same level or even higher than in the US – such as Switzerland.

But gun control is a sensible measure to take whilst the real problem – a tough problem to tackle – is dealt with. The fact that the US constitution protects gun ownership is a red herring; as the name implies (the Second Amendment), the US constitution is amenable to amendment.

And even that is a bit of a red herring – the second amendment does not protect gun ownership for the purposes of self-defence, playing with guns at a gun range, or murdering innocent animals,  It protects gun ownership for the purposes of making up a well-regulated militia :-

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Gun control regulations that do not prevent gun ownership by members of a well regulated militia are not in breach of the second amendment.

If for example the US brought in laws which required gun owners to be members of a well regulated militia (which as a minimum should ensure that militia commanders are subject to stringent checks), store their weapons in a militia armoury, and only be allowed to use those weapons under the supervision of militia officers, it would go a long way to preventing senseless slaughters.

The main aim with that is to ensure that gun usage is subject to collective decision making – crowd-sourcing the decision to use the weapons if you like.

If gun usage is controlled by collective decision making, there is less chance of a murderous maniac slaughtering innocent victims.

You may think that as a UK citizen, this is none of my business, but I dispute that. The victims of this latest senseless slaughter were my fellow humans, and as a human I have the right to stick my oar in.

It’s Not Human Trafficking; It’s Slave Trading

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Nov 022013
 

Why on earth have we got this new name – Human Trafficking – for the very old crime of slavery and slave trading? Is it some kind of attempt at putting a trendy new gloss on it? It’s not a crime that should have a trendy new gloss; even ignoring the fact that it is the kind of crime that shouldn’t be glamorised in any way, there’s a very good legal reason why we should carry on calling it slavery and slave trading.

Back in the 19th century, the British unilaterally declared that slavery and slave trading would be treated the same as piracy and set about (with the assistance of the US) eliminating the African slave trade. Under the principle of jus cogens they set about hanging slavers, confiscating their assets, and freeing slaves claiming that they had a universal right to punish those who took part in the crime of slavery.

In other words, some crimes are so heinous that anyone is allowed to prosecute offenders no matter where or when the offenses took place.

By keeping the old name for the crime, we retain it’s classification as a crime subject to universal jurisdiction. This opens the possibility of setting up a court – such as the ICC – to prosecute slavers wherever in the world they are, and the possibility of empowering law enforcement units to bring slavers to justice wherever they happen to be.

And after all, the fight against slavery isn’t going too well with more slaves today than there has ever been.

Is The US Government Still Lurching Around Like A Drunken Sailor?

 Politics  No Responses »
Oct 172013
 

With apologies to all drunken sailors who will no doubt resent – quite reasonably – being compared with a dysfunctional government.

The big news today (and yesterday – different time zones confuse these things) is that the US government has grasped just a bit of sanity and has stepped back from the abyss. Well most of them did, but the lunatic fringe of the Republican party (also known as the Tea Party) still persisted in trying to block the government from doing any work and paying any debts it owes.

But it is only temporary, and unless some more sanity returns to US politicians, we will get to see this mess repeated in January.

Ultimately this is all the fault of a fanatic wing of the Republican party who believe it is their right to undemocratically block the government budget until their favourite hobby horse is taken care of. Obamacare. Whether it is a good or a bad thing, it is a done deal, and it is undemocratic to try to sabotage it without first giving it a chance.

Yes the US has too much public debt, but too much is made of the so-call US ‘debt crisis’. The overall figure is immense to be true – so big that it is impossible to understand; so big that we have clever means to make it understandable, and to understand it in terms of affordability. If you look at the US debt as a proportion of GDP (in other words how affordable it is), you will see that the US is in 35th position (according to CIA figures) with a figure of 73.6% of GDP. Or 9th position (using the IMF figures).

Not a good position certainly, but hardly a basket case.

Now there’s a great deal of sense in reducing US government debt, but not in this way. Simply by stopping US government cheques would cause a catastrophic effect on the US (and world) economies.

Perhaps those with a vote in the US would like to remember this when it comes to voting next time. Your current set of politicians look dangerously dysfunctional; even in comparison to politicians in other countries.

 Older Entries  Newer Entries