Tag Archives: Politics

Religious geography

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In case you ever wonder about how far people’s beliefs affect the rest of society, (Well, alright, the advent of suicide bombing probably means you have an idea that there may some connection – Look, I’m just trying to introduce the blog, OK?) piece in the Times that compares a USA map of religious adherents as a percentage of all residents, with another map showing whether each state voted Democrat or Republican in the 2004 elections.

There is a broad (but moderately convincing) similarity between the map of the densest areas of god-adherents and the map locations of Republican states.

This reinforces an impression that the Republicans have pretty well hijacked Christian “belief” across swathes of the USA.

If you keep repeating over and over that Christianity = “traditional values” = Republican, some of it is bound to stick.

I always wonder how the uncomfortable bits of Christian writings – like the Sermon on the Mount – are so easily reconciled with the social policies of the Republican right, but I assume that the religious have to get well used to picking and choosing what to actually follow in their “unerring” texts.

Otherwise, the bizarre prohibitions and injunctions in Leviticus would have to be a daily guide for Christian fundamentalists. Which would be a moderately good grin for the rest of us.

As it is, US religion-in-politics seems to relate to just being anti-abortion and anti-gay – neither of which I can remember as having been big concerns of Jesus, from my school RE lessons. In fact, I thought “Render unto Caesar” was about as overtly “political” as the New Testament got.

But, then, I have to admit to having paid minimal attention, so these may indeed have been hot political issues in ca. 0 AD Palestine.

Mid-knight’s Children

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Salman Rushdie’s knighthood has caused some very predictable results in Pakistan and Iran.

I can’t help being suspicious over the timing of this. There have been plenty of opportunities to honour Rushdie since the Ayatollah’s fatwa was placed on him, but it seems the UK wasn’t too keen to antagonise Iran.

Until now.

Do you have to be a conspiracy theorist to see this as unfortunate timing?

I normally draw a pretty rigid line against the idea that the US is led by people so demented they will blow up the Twin Towers or whatever to justify a war, so I’m normally all for applying Occam’s Razor. (Explanations based on normal RealPolitik usually suffice and are usually grubby enough.)

However, applying Occam’s Razor in this instance, it is quite hard to believe that our leaders are so naive that they thought “Oh Gosh, that nice Salman Rushdie. We haven’t shown him how good we thought Midnight’s Children was” without remembering that he was still subject to a death sentence for blasphemy based on the Satanic Verses.

So the kinighthood thus comes to look like an act designed only to stir up more fanatical suicide bombers and to enrage Iran even more, thus opening the way for the war with Iran that we’ve all been dreading or looking forward to (depending on the number of shares we hold in Haliburton or oil companies.)

Still, I remain impressed that you can apparently now get a honour without handing over a few million in loans to one political party or another.

Tell me it’s not true?

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Quintessential Rambling posted yesterday to say that he/she? thinks war with Iran is about to happen on the basis of an order for massive upping of missile cones, as seen before the last two rounds of global “Risk”.

This post has the horrible ring of truth. So I am just saying to the full pantheon of all deities, spaghetti-monsters, tooth fairies and all “Please, let this be too paranoid a conclusion”

The Armageddon-meisters on any of the constantly shifting sides in WWIII tend to be quietly confident that:
(a) they won’t actually have to do any killing or dying themselves. Lots of young men and women in the armed forces and millions of civilians who happen to been unfortunate in where they chose to be born will do that for them.
(b) they will be rewarded after death anyway when the big magic man rewards them for doing his righteous smiting.

I don’t suppose they care, but some of us are quite pleased to be alive on this planet. We’re not remotely convinced that we’ll be anything except wormfood when we’re not here anymore.
Basically, only having one shot at this life, some of us may value life a bit more than those people who think they’re going to a better one.

Last refuge of the scoundrel

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Margaret Hodge, the government’s Industry Minister, not random nutter, has been trying to snatch votes from the BNP – i.e. voters who are blatantly three courses short of a 2 course meal – by coming out with anti-immigrant nonsense.

Shoe made some cursory efforts to distinguish her call for housing to be kept for British people from the far-right ranting of the BNP by phrasing it in supposedly inclusive terms:

She said white, black and Asian British families on low incomes, who had lived in an area for several generations, could not get their own homes and all felt there was an “essential unfairness” in the system

Getting votes by adopting the policies of parties that exist only through pandering to racism by stealing their policies does nothing to challenge these parties. Her whole argument is particularly insidious because she has taken on the whole principle of “Seek power by blaming some weak and visibly different group for all social ills” and just shifted it towards blaming Eastern Europeans and “asylum seekers” – the 1930s German Jews de nos jours.

This is unlikely to fool the black and Asian families who’ve lived here for generations and have therefore probably developed a healthy fear of the whole principle. Or is the BNP also trying to attract these people now?

I suspect that would certainly alienate their core constituency, but, hey, rabid racism is nothing if not inclusive – they can happily add Eastern Europeans to their mental rolls of hate figures. It’s not very good at shrinking though, so I dont hold out much hope of the BNP welcoming their previous core enemies into the fold so they can happily gang up on the Eastern Europeans.

Social housing, especially in the South East, is so close to non-existent now that the idea that it is getting handed out freely to immigrants and asylum seekers is laughable. Is there a shred of evidence of this?

There is no easier and more shameful way to get political power than by picking out a group of people to scapegoat. The fact that Margaret Hodge – former the 70’s anti-Thatcher London council leftwinger 🙂 – is driven to using this strategy tells us a lot about how deep principle runs in the average politician (granted, no surprise there.) It also draws attention to the horrifying fact that the BNP are becoming a viable political force.

Yes, these people are basically morons and rogues. They are still dangerous. That must be more of an issue than whether a Barking MP (you can obviously read that with or without the capital) is so afraid that her constituents are being seduced by racism that her major response is to try and keep her seat in Parliament by adopting their policies.

Pressure point

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BBC health pages say that

Ministers have bowed to pressure to allow the creation of human animal hybrid embryos for research

(Phew, that’s a relief, then. For a minute, I was afraid that the UK might fall behind in the global “chimera creation” league.)

Pressure from whom? Some scientists apparently. Even if we add the big pharmaceutical companies to the group “pressuring” the government we are not exactly looking at a huge mass of people.

Genuinely enormous numbers of people have opposed the introduction of ID cards, the Iraq war and other government initiatives. That certainly didn’t count as enough pressure to have any impact on our government’s decisions.

Here’s the plan for any opponents of ID / random wars and so on. Just find out the identity of the half dozen scientists and drug companies that wrought this policy change and get them on your side. Easy

[tags]chimeras, democracy, id, identity-cards, politics, pressure, pressure-groups, society, war, science, BBC, UK, pharmaceutical[/tags]

More on Expressions of Belief

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Sorry for returning to the same topic so soon after my previous post, but as often happens, I posted in haste previously and further reading has brought out some more enlightenment. First off, a bit in the main post I neglected to comment upon before. Mr Illeborg wrote:

The veil, I was told by Karen Armstrong, when I interviewed her this winter, has for some Muslim women become a way of expressing anger over the war in Iraq and disquiet with western aggressors. There is not just one meaning to wearing a veil and Abdol-Hamid has herself chosen to wear it. This is something we must accept, even if we don’t like it.

Now this, to me, pretty much undermines the main premise that the hijab is an expression of religious belief and therefore wearing it is a “right” people have. Here it seems wearing it is nothing more than a statement of outrage over actions carried out by an unrelated nation. It seems to me the Special Pleading is going strong in this instance. If I decided that walking the streets naked, with blood splattered all over my face, was an expression of anger over the French Elections (as an example), would that be “something we must accept?” It certainly would not be a pleasant sight. (Reductio Ad Absurdum is a wonderful tool…)

In addition to this, as is always the case, the comments left by the “public” (yes, they are sneer quotes) is even more entertaining than the original article. It goes some what towards reassuring me I am not being seduced by the RightWing (the claims that the left are in bed with Islam shows how truly ludicrous right wingers can get, not to mention this bit of nonsense). It is nice that a lot of people realise the hijab is not mandated by Islamic doctrine and is a fairly modern implementation (which further undermines the argument it is an inviolable “expression of belief”).

As one comments points out, if your beliefs demanded you refused to shake hands with coloured people, would that be a defended “right” in the same manner? Or (different commenter) if your belief led to you wearing a white sheet and a pointy white hat with the eye holes cut out, would that be just as “right?”

Rights are special, important, things. Creating ones where no right exists just to be seen as reasonable and helping the “minorities” helps no one and does little more than dilute the status of rights.

Expressions of Belief

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Casting about the Guardian website is always an interesting pastime. Today, on the “Comment is Free” parts, I came across a post by Jakob Illeborg titled “Danes battle the veil.” This is quite an interesting article about a Danish politician who wants to wear a hijab when she goes about her daily business. It all seems reasonable enough, doesn’t it?

The comment has a byline which reads “Religion’s role in society is preoccupying the people of Denmark as never before, but they should not restrict the expression of belief.” For me, from this point on things get a bit confused. The piece is further tainted (in my eyes of course, this is a blog not an impartial news piece!) by the opening paragraph:

The role of religion in modern society is preoccupying the Danes as never before. Ever since the prophet cartoon crisis, a heated debate has begun between atheists and moderate Christians on one side, who fear that Islam and democracy are an unholy alliance, and pragmatists on the other, arguing for a greater understanding of the many faces of Islam, who do not see Islam and the Qur’an as being incompatible with democracy.

Continue reading →

A refreshing change

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This is arguing from an almost less than zero point in terms of knowledge of Turkish politics, but, on the face of it, thousands rallying against a perceived move away from secularism by their government has got to be a promising sign for those of us who worry about the spread of religious fanaticism of any flavour.

The ruling party’s candidate is Islamic in its basis. Their candidate for the presidency is apparently seen by many as not being committed enough to secularism, despite his claims to support it. For instance, it is believed that his wife would be the first president’s wife to wear a headscarf whch is a significant issue in a country where Attaturk’s early 20th centrury reforms are still seen by many as the crucial underpinnings of Turkey’s modern democracy.

The military has expressed concern over the choice and the opposition are to challenge the choice in the courts.

Royal Marine, Royal Navy, Publish and Be Damned

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 (Update: It seems this has been added to Digg)

I am not sure why I have strayed into current affairs as a topic for debate here, but I promise this will be the last blog post I make on this topic (for a while at least…). Previously, I have ranted about the supposed “outrage” over the 15 sailors and marines held hostage by Iran being allowed to sell their stories, and about them wrongly being called cowards or a disgrace.

For people outside the UK, this may come across as little more than a parochial spat and, to be honest, I am amazed there is so little going on in the world that this is actually headline news. Again, today, I have spent most of the day listening to the radio. This is never a good thing, and especially so when I spend time listening to the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 (he gets callers to call in on current affairs topics). I am also very aware that they will screen callers to ensure the cranks get more air time than they deserve.

Knowing all this doesn’t stop the idiocy and bigotry winding me up though. (Again, this is long so most is below the fold)
Continue reading →

Poor Sailors and Marines

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Today’s radio news headlined with the supposed “outrage” that the 15 sailors and marines detained by the Iranians were being allowed to be paid for for their press reviews. Apparently The Sun newspaper (no, I will not post a URL to them…) has offered them a “six figure sum” [*] for their stories. From the breakfast radio news, this has caused outrage. People like Bob Stewart, Tim Collins and numerous other people were being mentioned as “outraged” over this decision by the MOD. The BBC news website had a lead article titled “Iran stories sale criticism grows” which explained the Head of the Army has banned all Soldiers from selling their stories following the Navy personnel being allowed to make some money off the story. Different media outlets have similar stories — all pretty much saying the same thing. The TV news had vox pop interviews with people in the street, mostly saying they “thought it was wrong for them to sell their story.”

The sheer barefaced hypocrisy, tinged with basic madness, of all this amazes me. I am (almost) at a loss for which parts of the nonsense to start with… Continue reading →

Good response to armchair warrior journalists

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Yes, know this topic has been done to death, but it seems impossible to look at a newspaper or a topical web page without some armchair Rambo sounding off about the British captives having somehow done a disgraceful thing (a) by getting themselves captured and (b) by smoking and eating on Iranian TV.

So it was refreshing to see some pure sense expressed – in devastatingly precise English – about the British sailors held by the Iranians.

The at largely blog answers some colonel who’s been mouthing off in the right-wing media. Apologies for quoting huge chunks of this. He just says it so well. The fact that he seems to be a “Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy, retired” makes his characterisation of the illogicality and inconsistency of the Rambo position all the sweeter.

He characterises this as a “Pavlov’s Dogs of War approach.” This is a phrase so good that I intend to plagiarise it in my every fifth sentence for the next few days.

A few salient points.

Some of us think that the British sailors and marines played the situation as smartly as it could have been played by anyone…..
……By committing themselves to a battle that would have led to their certain slaughter, the British boarding party would have created a far more shocking international incident than the one that actually occurred. Mr. Bush might have used such an incident to justify a full scale naval and air strike on Iran……
…And it’s obvious to anyone familiar with prisoner of war resistance techniques that the sailors and marines who made taped statements were sending clear verbal and physical cues that they were speaking under duress. ….
…. Thanks to the level headed thinking of a small team of junior British troops, led by a Royal Marine captain and a Royal Navy lieutenant, they did not turn into a cause for war by getting themselves killed in a hopeless battle….
……Jacobs is an old soldier who thinks we’re still fighting World War II, the kind of warrior who still thinks that “brave” and “smart” are mutually exclusive virtues, and who likes to hide his lack of intellectual integrity behind his combat decorations.

Petitions

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(For UK citizens) Nullfidian has posted on his blog about some online petitions which may be worth checking out. I have copied the extract below verbatim (as various technical problems are making any online time scarce here):

Here are a number of petitions that you can sign to help raise awareness:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister…

…to Abolish all faith schools and prohibit the teaching of creationism and other religious mythology in all UK schools.

…to ban within government-funded schools the promotion or practice of any particular faith or religion.

…to prevent the use of creationist and other pseudo-scientific propaganda in Government-funded schools.

…to separate church and state and create the United Kingdom a secular democracy.

…to Remove tax-exempt status for religions (granted such privilege) within the United Kingdom.

…to cease the creation of more faith schools, take existing public-funded faith schools from the control of religious bodies and convert them to unbiased schools for all.

…to refuse to reimburse the Church of England with public funds for repairs or maintenance to their own, private buildings.

Each petition includes more information about the exact nature of and reason for the petition. If you agree with the sentiment of the petition, please add your name to the list. If possible, to help increase the audience for these issues, please repost these in your own blogs, MySpace, LiveJournal, FaceBook, etc.

If you can think of other petitions either comment here or on Nullfidian’s blog.