Why not question for once?

I’m having a few problems with a lot of religions at the moment. The Koran definately has some pretty dodgy bits in it, but as a former born again christian I feel compelled to note that the Bible is actually about as bad.

I wonder when people are going to stop paying attention to dodgy texts from thousands of years ago that have been edited and re-edited over the centuries by whoever has a vested interest.

Personally when I got born again started reading the Bible. After some reading I thought “hmm…”. After more reading, I started questioning. That’s the point that the religion fell down for me and I took a choice to step away.

I can’t understand why most people don’t go through this process as well. Don’t they read the texts for the religions they are supposed to be a part of?

People should have the right to believe whatever they want, as long as it doesn’t affect others, however, sometimes you gotta wonder why.
I personally am a commited agnostic. I can’t say for sure there is a God, but conversely I can’t say for sure there isn’t one. I don’t think theres enough evidence one way or another, so the only logical position to have on the subject is none at all.

Relatively Speaking?

I don’t subscribe to relativism. Relativism is the concept that different rules/morals/ethics apply to different people for reasons of culture, race, religion and so on. For example, a relativist might assert that a race can’t handle democracy because they aren’t used to it, or they might argue its perfectly alright to put people to death for adultery because of the religion of the place its happening.

I think that morals are universal. That certain principles apply everywhere and religion, race, creed, culture or geography are irrelevant to the issue. To kill is wrong wherever it happens. To force women into subjegation is wrong wherever it happens. To limit free speech is wrong wherever it happens.

I believe all human beings should have certain rights and that those rights should be untouchable wherever in the world you happen to be. Anything else is barbarism.

Playing at Politics?

In the aftermath of the Government seeing off the vote for an inquiry about the Iraq War, I noted Mike O’Brien (Home Office Minister), saying some pretty damning things about the conservatives. He was saying they were being opportunistic, undermining our troups, playing politics and so forth. All of these comments are totally ridiculus. They are merely labels thrown as insults.

Has politics in this country got to such a point that rather than arguing against the point in hand, insults are thrown? If someone dares to ask a question or vote for something that the government disagrees with, rather than countering with reasoned argument and debate, the person or party is dragged through the mud.

Now, I know O’Brien is the kind of slimy time serving hypocrite that is discrediting politics and the labour party, however, that the only kind of politician we seem to see these days.

Blair’s Conference Speech

I don’t understand why people are going on about the speech Blair made at the Labour party conference this year and saying it is his best ever. It’s not his best ever, unless you define best as patronising, lying, manipulating bastardishness. Out of all the speeches Blair has made, its this one that came the closest to inducing vomiting in me.

I want to make this absolutely clear. Blair is NOT a great communicator. In order to be a great communicator, you need to be actually communicating something worth hearing. I listened to the speech I noticed he actually said very little of any worth. Blair is not a communicator, what he actually is…is a manipulator. Throughout, the speech constantly little pangs on your heart strings, “oh my sons”, “oh the ebil terrorists”, “oh the scum who dare to suggest its foreign policy related” (on which point he is LYING and knows it, by the way…either that or he’s an idiot), “oh I love the party” (which is why he ripped it to pieces in his personal quest for power at any cost), “oh Gordon Brown’s great” (so insincere its almost impressive).

I grew up with emotional blackmail, I learned to recognize it in its many forms and now have a kind of automatic bullshit detector running. Blair’s speech set it off continually. It was a continuous stream of bullshit. A veritable river of bullshit, if you like.
So…let me be the first to say good riddance – I hope Blair’s departure can finally bring some honesty back to politics, but I doubt it.

Spooks – BBC 1 Monday Nights

Well a new series of Spooks is here and I see they are following on from the last series in continually ramping up the tension. The problem is the bigger the threat that emerges in an episode, the harder the writers have it trying to follow that episode without appearing anti-climatic.

The first couple of series the threats to the nation were scaled back and they had a lot more scope to do agents on routine operations and believable plots and threats. It was more plausable in the earlier series and the better drama for it.

Since then, it seems the writers have got themselves stuck in the trap of feeling like they have to have bigger and bigger threats every week.

This has been going on for some time and we have finally reached the point where every single episode is apocalytic. This week its a heinous coup d’etat coming from within MI6 and next week its going to be a thermonuclear bomb in central London!

I confidentally expect God and the Devil to emerge from the skies and begin fighting the final battle – that’ll be the cliffhanger to this series, I reckon.

Islam and the Pope…

I don’t want to add much to this debate, the way I see it, the Pope’s comments are ambiguous enough to have possibly caused some offence and create the implication that Islam is a violent religion.

What I do want to comment on is the more extreme reactions in the Moslem world – such as the killing of a nun in Italy and the calls for the Pope’s execution from several hardline islamists. I’m sorry, but don’t they see the irony of a violent reaction to the Pope’s comments?

I fully appreciate that the extreme reactions are those of the more hardline elements in the Moslem world, however, even then it takes some pretty mindbending illogic to think “How dare the Pope imply that Islam is a violent religion, lets kill him!”.

How to make politicians do their job properly.

I’ve often felt that the main reason why politics doesn’t function in a way thats appropriate for the electorate, is that Ministers are often isolated from the effects of their policies.

For example, how many Ministers in the Health department actually use the NHS, do you think?

The answer is virtually none of them.

This being the case, how can we be sure they are doing what is best for the NHS when they take decisions? My view is because they are not using the NHS, they have NO RIGHT to make a decision concerning it for 2 reasons.

1. They are isolated from it. All they see of the NHS is the sanitized view they get from official visits. When a politician checks out a hospital it is announced beforehand…then the hospital concerned takes all the precautions possible to ensure that said minister sees the hospital in the best possible light. If they were visiting because they themselves were sick or a friend or relative was, they might stand a better chance of seeing the NHS in an unedited state.

2. Although many ministers are devoted servants of the state trying to do the best for the people they represent, there are several who act purely out of self interest or the interest of their business pals. There are also many who are good intentioned but weak willed the moment a lobbyist comes to see them and inclined to take the path of least resistance. If they have no personal stake in the NHS being good, then what is to stop them acting against the interests of its users.

My suggestion is this: Ensure that politicians are personally involved in the consequences of the decisions they are taking.

In essence:

All ministers working in Health should have to use the NHS.

Ministers working in transport should have to use public transport to get to work.

Ministers working in Education should have to send their kids to a state comprehensive.

Suddenly these ministers have a vested interest in making those services not shite. Suddenly, because their lives/childrens education/trips to work are affected they have a reason to say no the corporate machine that wants deregulation, privatisation and to shit on people and be paid for the priviledge.

Suddenly the right questions are asked, details are scrutinized and better decisions are taken.

Twin Tower Conspiracies

Anyone that knows me is aware that I’m massively interested in conspiracy theories…in fact, if you know anything at all about history, you’d realise that conspiracies DO happen (Bolshevik revolution, Watergate, countless more…) and you’d, therefore, be some kind of total muppet to dismiss all conspiracy theories as half baked irrational ideas dreamt up by paranoid fools.

I think all conspiracy ideas should be approached with an open mind, however, this does not mean that you suspend all disbelief and shut your brain down. When approaching a conspiracy theory you need to be unafraid to ask the vital, inconvenient questions…

To justify what I mean, lets ask a few questions of 11th Sept Conspiracies…

If the government are responsible…the obvious question is why? What do they possibly gain from it? Its obviously a high risk strategy…Watergate is not that long ago and some in the US press still do proper investigative reporting – with the amount of people you’d need for such an operation surely its likely that some will come out in the press sooner or later – to entirely hush up such a large scale operation you’d need to kill most of those involved in it as well, surely?

Could these ends that have been atributed to Bushes government, have been achieved without the twin towers going down? Could Bush still have implemented the Patriot act? Could Bush still have invaded Iraq?

Well, actually with control of both houses, he probably could have still achieved both these goals. He didn’t require this massive terrorist action to achieve these goals. It possibly gave him an easier time about it, but, he could still have done them.

Once you lose the motive, it suddenly seems less likely that the US Government is responsible and although its obvious that there are several suspicious facets to the attacks, I cannot see how the US Goverment orchestrated them, although, I’d be willing to concede its possible they turned a blind eye to them, however, I think base incompetence and some coincidence is a more likely explanation for many of the facts that 911 conspiracists use to prove the involvement of the government.

Brown’s Ambition

The subject of the Brown ascension has reared its ugly head in the media again. Several formerly loyal labour MPs have tried to force Blairs hand and get him to finally, once and for all, just reveal the date he is planning on leaving.

The problem is that if Brown had any sense at all, he would be begging Tony to stay. It is not in the party’s best interest or in Gordo’s, for that matter, for Blair to go before the next general election.

Dont get me wrong, no one would be more pleased than me if Blair left office tomorrow (or indeed ritually committed suicide), however, the fact remains that he would be doing Brown no favours at all if he were to leave anytime before the next general election.

The reason for this is dead simple, and is based on the simple premise that Cameron is probably going to win. Unless Dave does something pretty drastic, like admitting to bestiality or something (even then I can’t shake the suspicion that he’s slimy enough to wriggle out of it), the Conservatives are going to wipe the floor with labour come voting time. I may not like it but you’ve got to smell the coffee on this one, the wind is blowing his way and the sneaky little bugger is headed for high office.

God knows what they’ll do once they get the power. My personal hope is very little (because then there is less chance they’ll make something worse), but I suspect camerons got an ego on him and won’t be able to resist changing things (and by change I mean fuck right up).

In any case, anyone seeking power should bear this in mind when making any plans. If Tone stays on, he will lose the election, Gordo can ascend, and he’ll have a convenient scapegoat for losing the election, (approval rating, trust for Blair, war on terror blah blah blah), AND he’ll have less embarrassing questions about democracy when he takes leadership (since its only a party leadership and not Prime Minister).

Brown can make a clean breast of it and should be able to hang onto the leadership long enough for the tories to drown in their own sleaze and lose power again.

If, on the other hand, he takes power before the election, he’ll still lose but instead it will look like its his fault. Even if he’s not forced out immediately, his authority will be in doubt right from the very start of his opposition leadership, and he’ll certainly have problems hanging on long enough to again grace the corridors of number ten.

I suspect his ambition will get the better of him, but all the same he’d be a fool to want Blair to go sooner rather than later.

My serve

(This is in response to Anyone for Tennis – a recent post by my friend Alison Mills – sorry for the delay, Alison).

On the Majority Must Be Right:

Alison Says:

Glenn seems to have slightly misunderstood my position on the ‘majority must be right’ argument, which is probably my fault for implying what I ought to have made explicit.

I understand her position perfectly, I think, and I happen to agree with it. Regardless of the true facts of a situation (and understanding you can make a statistic mean anything you want it to mean), it doesn’t matter whether or not the majority is in favour of something or not, to be honest – it doesn’t automatically follow that because a majority of people take a certain point of view that it is the correct point of view (assuming there is a correct point of view).

This assumption that the majority is always right is a dangerous fallacy – UNLESS the majority is sufficiently informed in a balanced way and fully understands the arguments.
My experience tells me that the majority is often wrong, which is why we have representational democracy as opposed to a vote on everything.

To make a final point on this – a vast majority of people watch soap operas and read the Sun newspaper. The majority are idiots.

Would you trust an idiot to make a decision on your life?

So I agree with the premise that to argue “you should believe something because the majority does” is insanity, because there are countless examples of the majority being wrong.

On what it will take:

Glenn goes on to say “I do not understand what it will take to convince some people that this probably wasn’t the best course of action.” I realise that this was probably meant as a rhetorical question, so it may be unfair of me to supply an answer, but I will anyway. A convincing argument. And if you could make it one that’s morally acceptable then I might even buy it.

Before I answer this point I want to make it quite clear that I am not anti-war, per se, I could be convinced to support a war, as long as I see more pros than cons. On this war I’ve seen more cons than pros, so my view reflects this.

As it stands, I’ve seen a lot of good reasons NOT to go to war but very few good ones in favour – I’ll try and spell out the various arguments as I see them, but also try to point out the problem with the argument…

In favour:

Saddam is an evil tyrant and dictator and the Iraqis are better off without him..

Of course he is, no one disagrees with that fact. It doesn’t follow that war was the appropriate way to achieve this end.

It is worth noting that I could argue here that what the Iraqis have now or will have in 2 years isn’t a great deal better and is getting worse – but I’m not going to – its easy to say something with the benefit of hindsight, but it can’t have been known beforehand so is an unfair argument.
What I felt was that the most appropriate would be to assist as much as possible with an internal uprising from the Iraqi people themselves – it always seems to me to be the most stable option with the best prospects of not descending into a mess – look at Serbia or Romania. I know there is the argument that this would just generate a Shia state, but I would have to say that you can’t know this in advance with any certainty. Its that hindsight thing again.

Weapons of Mass Destruction – He’s going to kill us all!!!

We all know about this one. They…er….didn’t turn up.

I suppose if I was being charitable, I could say that the Brit and US government were acting on the best of their knowledge at the time, but I’m not. There were plenty of indications that Iraq had nothing or not much by way of WMD and they were ignored. (For example – the various statements made by Scott Ritter (a former member of the inspection team in the 1998 inspections – he made the assertion that 95% of Iraqs WMD were destroyed by the time they left Iraq and the remaining 5% would have degraded by now) at the time. The cynic in me says they were ignored because they didn’t further the governments argument to go war. For the same reason, the little dossier we got was “strengthened” in order to make as strong a case as possible, leading to allegations of it being “sexed up”.

Iraq is in breach of (insert various UN resolutions here)

All I can say is…give me a resolution that really nails down the coalition of the willing to attack Iraq…I haven’t seen anything partically that convinces me of the legality of this war under international law – but I’m willing to do further reading on the subject.

Ok, heres the 3 main reasons for going to war. one we can discount (WMD), one I’m not convinced by (resolutions) and the other could have been handled differently.

So lets move onto the cons….

Increases threat of terrorism

Not on its own a reason NOT to go to war, but as part of a range of reasons this is credible. Theres plenty of evidence now that the Iraq war has increased tensions between the west and the middle east. Us appearing to act against Moslems surely serves as a rallying call for extremist groups. I’ve seen enough reports of terrorists talking about Iraq as a reason for attacks in Britain, to be convinced that we have made ourselves less safe.
Increases tension between the middle east and the west

Have our actions made the middle east more secure? or is the area more likely to go mad at a moments notice.

Before all this came about Iran was moving towards reform…now we are back to nutters in government. When people feel under threat they look to those that they feel could protect them and scared people are more easy to manipulate. Before our recent spate of interference in the middle east, several middle eastern countries were moving towards more liberal societies. Post Iraq the trend is back to the religious hard line. If there was indeed a goal of spreading democracy it seems ironic that our actions are having the reverse effect.
Afghanistan still needs sorting out

Forgive my spelling I suspect its wrong. The point is right, though. We still haven’t finished up our business in Afghanistan – at the moment Karsai’s government hold Kabal, the taleban holds the north, warlords hold the rest and its still a total mess. We need to clear up our messes before we move on to making new ones.

Iraq was NOT a pressing concern

With Osama Bin Laden still on the loose, I would’ve thought that catching him would be top priority, not this new adventure in Iraq that had nothing to do with terrorism.

Anyway, I’m tired so I’m going to wrap this one up.