Reading "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
A lot of "experts" and "elite" and those of us who are absolutely certain about some proposition or idea need to read and tremble at their ignorance.
Some years ago a friend of mine Boyd Jay Petersen (Lecturer at the English Department at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah)introduced me to the idea of Surprise in the affairs of men. Something we need to be aware of as we learn and try to gain certainty in our Religious, Economic, Scientific, and Philosophical worlds.
My thoughts take me back to the recent events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Bahrain. Where the grassroots revolution in this area of the world dominated by Dictators supported by the West, due to the preponderance of oil wells.
Listening to our Western Television and Radio here in Australia, and via video and audio podcasts. I was lead to believe from the likes of Glen Beck and others on FoxNews that the events were lead by the left and designed to depose the pro-western Governments, that they were lead by the Islamist organizations like the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt. Our respective Western Governments should support those same dictators against the demonstrators.
Then some inconvenient truth crept into the dialogue from the use of YouTube and Twitter, with Facebook organizing right down to the individual young person.
It was not until thousands of these youth were braving Tahrir Square in Central Cairo. The cameras making it clear that snipers had it easy to pick them out from the high buildings and the overpass. After nights and days of this terror, the destination for the sympathizers was now Tahrir Square. Thousands more migrated to the square and similar locations in Alexandria, Suez and many other cities in Egypt.. Then the what remained of the organized opposition decided to join in and try to capitalize on this grassroots popular movement that was moving too fast for these old foggies.
Far from being directed by these opposition groups like the Moslem Brotherhood, the Conservative and Liberal News groups failed to understand.
Notable exceptions were Rachel Maddow and Democracy Now! Where the Black Swan presented itself and cool analysis brought the truth behind these events from competent researchers and Journalists like Sharif Abdel Kouddous from the same Tahrir Square, interviews with the participants and the surprised formal opposition participants. I say formal, but the decades of punishment from Mubarak and his cronies has left just an impotent rump compared to the youth lead uprising which simply stated "Mubarak Must Resign".
It is sad that the great USA could not recognize an event that mirrored it's own humble beginnings.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Voter Fraud
The US Presidential Election is hotting up and the hypocrisy from the Republican Party is becoming ridiculous if it wasn't so serious. With Republican apparatchiks in key electorally responsible positions in key states around the Union, they are using methods to prevent the poor, unemployed, generally black and Hispanic neighborhoods from voting. Palast and Kennedy in a Rolling Stone article "Blocking the Vote" clearly delineate the offences and we are advised about the false claims by the GOP, like the ACORN issue which, strangely was exposed by ACORN and has Republican Funding for their voter registration efforts. Before the names were submitted ACORN pulled the false ones, now that should be commended not vilified, however the spin masters took it falsly for their claims and it includes Senator John McCain their Presidential Candidate and Governor Sarah Palin their Vice-Presidential Candidate.
Have there been any retractions, no! This push to establish a meme in the public mind, that voter fraud is a Democratic Issue not a Republican Issue goes against the evidence. Here is a quote from Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!
Now, that, in the firing of these attorneys, came down to these attorneys, Republican US attorneys around the country, saying that they were being pressured to investigate these—what they, you know, called voter fraud cases that turned out not to be voter fraud cases, like the US attorney of New Mexico, the Republican US attorney, David Iglesias, who said he was wrongfully fired because he failed to indict ACORN members for voter fraud. So this really has been going on for quite a long time. And ultimately, the casualty of this was the US Attorney General, because his own US attorneys around the country said that the voter fraud evidence was not there, that they couldn't prosecute the cases that the Bush administration was pushing them to prosecute.
So, can we believe the Republicans, are these events just the tip of the Iceberg? I say they are, with Sarah Palin being the representative of the Religious Right, the Dominionists have a candidate from Alaska who will push their agenda of a Theocratic State for the USA and destroy democracy and the will of the people. These are the enemy of Democracy, and their current Shock Agenda will bring the Freedoms many Americans think they have now, undone. It is critical they are not elected.
Why We Blog?
Andrew Sullivan in his Atlantic Monthly article "Why I Blog" for November is a worthwhile because of the History he gives us and how a journalist can relate to it. Of course he mentions the luminaries in the blogosphere and nods to the rest of us, but when he mentioned the matter I lifted from the article below:
There is, after all, something simply irreplaceable about reading a piece of writing at length on paper, in a chair or on a couch or in bed. To use an obvious analogy, jazz entered our civilization much later than composed, formal music. But it hasn't replaced it; and no jazz musician would ever claim that it could. Jazz merely demands a different way of playing and listening, just as blogging requires a different mode of writing and reading. Jazz and blogging are intimate, improvisational, and individual—but also inherently collective. And the audience talks over both.
Which made me smile because I am listening to some Jazz as I read his article and write this blog. What I would like to add to his excellent article is an observation I made about some blogs which don't fit the definition by either not accepting comments or vetting them so only the supportive ones are published. I have a policy that will accept the comments; however I do require some sort of rational argument from the commenter. These have been what I found in the anti-evolution blogs like Uncommondescent, by that erstwhile polemicist William A. Dembski, and he is not alone in the blogosphere. Is this a sign of Intellectual Cowardice? I'm sure I don't know, but it can be a means of reducing your readership to those that share your world view, and which of course leads to a false and myopic world view.
I trust we can participate in this Great Conversation in the blogosphere as we seek enlightenment and truth, both the discovered and the revealed types.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Turkish edition of The Ancestor's Tale sells out within a day!
An Interesting yet false correlation with the banning of Dawkins site, the sellout on the first day of The Ancestors Tale in Turkish in Turkey.
You cannot suppress a good idea, no matter how dictatorial your country is.
Friday, September 19, 2008 |
Turkish edition of The Ancestor's Tale sells out within a day!
by Sabah.com
Thanks to f451 for the link.
Oxford University professor and advocate of evolution theory, the author of The God Delusion which drew great attention – even illegal copies had been distributed all over- and the publisher has been sued and acquitted in Turkey Prof. Richard Dawkins' last book released and sold out in a day in Turkey, the news says.
The new book which has been written before The God Delusion, published 2 thousand copies in Turkish. The publisher of the book, Huseyin Sonmez, told that he was suprised because of all distribution orders were finished in a day and this has happened for the first time in 26 years of the publishing company history. According to the book, The Ancestor's Tale tells a 4-billion-years-old journey. Professor Dawkins' website has been closed down due to the comments that violate Adnan Oktar's personal rights by the decision of the court in Istanbul.
Source Link:
http://arsiv.sabah.com.tr/2008/09/19//haber,98BF8C9C35DE4B0CA0C042D767E13E5F.html
Posted in the forum here:
http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1356162#p1356162
Posted: Friday, September 19, 2008 | Permalink
Charges Dropped Against DN Journalists - Investigation Needed
Sitting here in a comfortable chair after talking to a friend at Church about the relative merits of the various democracies around the world both agreed that here in Australia is the best place and culture for many around the world who need somewhere to live. I am from the UK and he from Austria, and we moved on to the US via the discussion about the need for drivers licenses as a form of ID for the upcoming Presidential Elections in the US. I pointed out that NY City was a place where a DL is not a necessity for transport and thus many people may be disenfranchised because they have chosen to do without such. We decided the US is a good place to live but not universally, crime in LA and corruption at all levels, not much different from here, but the election corruption is endemic and places like Florida pick ways to disenfranchise their African-American population. Yet other issues come up and below the fold is on, where journalists, protected by a constitutional amendment no less are singled out for detention during the Republican Party Convention in St. Paul Minnesota a few weeks ago now. So much for a free press!
The Florida State again, I just heard that they authorized 11,0000 mortgage broker who had criminal prosecutions for fraud last year. No wander the markets are collapsing!!
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Charges Dropped Against Democracy Now! Journalists – Investigation Needed
Thank You For Your Support!
The St. Paul City Attorney's office announced Friday it will not prosecute Democracy Now! journalists Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman also issued a statement Friday that "the city will decline to prosecute misdemeanor charges for presence at an unlawful assembly for journalists arrested during the Republican National Convention."
Both announcements come two weeks after the conclusion of the Republican National Convention where over 40 journalists were arrested while reporting on protests taking place outside the convention center.
Upon learning of the news, Democracy Now! Host, Amy Goodman said, "It's good that these false charges have finally been dropped, but we never should have been arrested to begin with. These violent and unlawful arrests disrupted our work and had a chilling effect on the reporting of dissent. Freedom of the press is also about the public's right to know what is happening on their streets. There needs to be a full investigation of law enforcement activities during the convention."
Goodman was arrested while asking police to release Kouddous and Salazar who had been violently arrested while reporting on street demonstrations. After being handcuffed and pushed to the ground, Goodman reiterated that she was was a credentialed reporter. Secret Service then ripped the credential from around her neck.
During demonstrations on the first day of the convention police used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and force against protesters and journalists. Several dozen demonstrators were arrested, as was a photographer for the Associated Press.
John Lundquist, attorney for the Democracy Now! journalists, said, "The most notable lapse by law enforcement during the RNC was the record-breaking number of journalists indiscriminately arrested and detained for doing nothing more than performing in the best tradition of reporters who gather the news."
In the weeks after the journalist arrests, tens of thousands of members of the public contacted St. Paul officials to protest the unlawful arrests of working journalists. Goodman said, "We were deeply moved by the outpouring of support. We thank everyone who called and wrote first to have us freed and then to have the charges dropped. We thank everyone who stood up for press freedom and the First Amendment."
The YouTube video of Goodman's arrest was the most watched YouTube video during the convention week. It has now been viewed over 830,000 times. Salazar's video of her own violent arrest is also available on YouTube.
Robert Fisk's Week: Horrors of war our leaders never have to confront
An interesting commentary on his travels, Robert Fisk observing the departure of people visiting the European sites where New Zealanders (ANZACs) died in battle during WWI The Great War, The War To End All Wars.
So I just wander when these trips will include Mesopotamia or, as it is known now, Iraq. Australian, English and others including the current Imperial forces of the US are dying, fighting an enemy that they least understand. The will is lagging in this foreign war as it becomes clear the reasons we are fighting so far away, OIL of course. Osama bin Laden is still at large and has survived a number of US Presidencies. The costs are prohibitive and the question is can they continue? Meanwhile our soldiers fight on and civilians as well, with the news today of the truck bombing of the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad it becomes clear that civilians are the targets of al Qaeda against the wishes of the people and the democratically elected government struggling now to deal with such terrorism escalating, and fueled by the presence of US and Western forces in the Islamic World. I wander how much the events of the last 10 years were ignored in the past with our fear of communism??
Enjoy his essay and let me know what you think.
Robert Fisk's Week: Horrors of war our leaders never have to confront
Bush and Blair have not had to soil their thoughts with images of wickedness that make the gorge rise
Saturday, 13 September 2008
Just outside Andrew Holden's office at the Christchurch Press off Cathedral Square – and, believe me, New Zealand's prettiest city is as colonial as they come, a Potemkin town of mock-Tudor government buildings, Scottish baronial churches and wooden versions of Victorian homes – is a brightly coloured, cheerful little water-colour. Boarding a big steamship, thousands of New Zealanders in big broad-bottomed brown hats are lining the quaysides, the gangplanks and the decks.
For a moment this week, I thought this might be some annual festival (perhaps involving New Zealand's 35 million boring sheep). But then Andrew spotted my interest. "They're going to Gallipoli," he said. And – fast as the lightning bolt of history – my eyes returned to the tiny figures on the deck. Off they were going, another flower of youth, to the trenches and dust and filth of my father's war.
I'm not sure of this, but I think – I suspect and feel – that the Great War, the war of 1914-1918, is beginning to dominate our lives even more than the terrible and infinitely more costly conflict of 1939-1945. As the years go by, the visitors to the great cemeteries of the Somme, Passchendaele and Verdun grow greater in number. The Second World War may haunt our lives. The First World War, it seems to me, imprisons us all.
The statistics still have the power to overawe us. As John Terraine calculates, by November of 1918, France had lost 1,700,000 men out of a population of 40 million, the British Empire a million – 700,000 of them from the 50 million people of the British Isles. The British Army, let it be repeated, lost 20,000 killed on the first day of the Somme. I noticed that in Christchurch Cathedral, the bronze plaques to the Great War dead had been newly polished – so that they looked as they must have been seen by those who came to mourn almost a hundred years ago.
Who would have believed, even half a century ago, that this year's Toronto Film Festival would open in Canada with a film called Passchendaele – perhaps the most-difficult-to-spell-movie of all time – the film poster showing just a young man standing in mud and filth and rain? Who could conceive that one of the most popular non-fiction books in recent Canadian history would be the Ottawa War Museum's Great War historian Tim Cook's At the Sharp End, the first volume of his monumental study of Canadians in the 1914-18 war?
Canada had its Douglas Haig – a maniac called Sam Hughes ("Minister of Militia and Defence") who forced his young men to use the hopeless Canadian-made Mark III Ross rifle which jammed and misfired and heaped up the corpses of Canadians who could not defend themselves with this patriotic, murderous weapon. Cook, despite his occasional tendency to cliché (says Fisk) is superlative.
His description of desperately young Canadian men cowering in shell-holes – showered by the putrefying remains of their long-dead friends as bodies are again torn apart by shells – is devastating. So, too, are his quotations from the letters home of Canadian soldiers. "I went thru all the fights the same as if I was making logs," Sergeant Frank Maheux writes home to his wife in an innocent, broken English. "I bayoneted some (sic) killed lots of Huns. I was caught in one place with a chum of mine he was killed beside me when I saw he was killed I saw red ... The Germans when they saw they were beaten they put up their hands but dear wife it was too late."
My God, how that "dear wife" tells the truth about the surrendering Germans' fate. And here is Captain Joseph Chabelle of the Canadian 2nd Division's 22 Battalion: "Oh! The sensation of driving the blade into flesh, between the ribs, despite the opponent's grasping efforts to deflect it. You struggle savagely, panting furiously, lips contorted in a grimace, teeth gnashing, until you feel the enemy relax his grip and topple like a log. To remove the bayonet, you have to pull it out with both hands; if it is caught in the bone, you must brace your foot on the still heaving body, and tug with all your might."
Private James Owen was to describe how an enraged friend was trying to bayonet another German. "He lunged at the German again and again, who each time lowered his arms and stopped the point of the bayonet with his bare hands. He was screaming for mercy. Oh God it was brutal!"
Haig, by the way, was initially dismissive of the Canadians. "They have been very extravagant in expending ammunition!" he complained. "This points rather to nervousness and low morale."
How the gorge rises at such wickedness. But it rises far more as you turn the pages of the beautifully produced, desperate collection of French soldiers' amateur paintings and sketches of the Great War – "Croquis et dessins de Poilus" – which, ironically, includes a set of sad portraits of the poilus' Canadian comrades. This magnificent book was produced by the French Ministry of Defence; why it could not have had a joint production with the Imperial War Museum beggars belief – does the Entente now count for nothing? For anyone who wants to understand the total failure of the human spirit which war represents – and the utter disgust which must follow the "arbitrament"of war (a Chamberlain word this – see his 3 September 1939, declaration of war) – must read the extract from Jean Giono's Le Grand Troupeau, which accompanies Louis Dauphin's bleak, rainswept painting, "Supply Route at Peronne".
"The rats, with red eyes, march delicately along the trench," Giono writes of the creatures with whom he shared the war. "All life had disappeared down there except for that of the rats and the lice ... The rats were coming to sniff the bodies ... They chose the young men without beards on the cheeks ... rolled up into a ball and began to eat the flesh between the nose and the mouth up to the edge of the lips ... from time to time they would wash their whiskers to stay clean. Then the eyes, they took them out with their claws, licked the eyelids, and would then bite into the eye as if it was a small egg ..."
My father saw these horrors on the Somme. They all did. Of course, Messrs Bush and Blair did not have to soil their thoughts with such images. Our boys shipping off to war – Mrs Thatcher happily endured the Gallipoli-like departures from Portsmouth – is enough for our leaders. But could it be, perhaps, that we – the people – know more about horror than our masters? Our history suggests this is true.
Inserted from <http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisks-week-horrors-of-war-our-leaders-never-have-to-confront-928810.html?service=Print>
Sunday, September 21, 2008
When Atheists Attack
Sam Harris has articulated my concerns about the current VP candidate for the Republican Party, Sarah Palin and he certainly makes a case it is well worth reading at Newsweek.
Note the concerns are not just with him but many who feel the anti-elitist view of the Republican Bloggers is unsatisfactory and illogical. To me it does not matter who is running, merely whether they are really qualified to do that and Governor Palin is the least of the candidates to meet any qualifications and the least able to meet any requirements of the Vice President. There are other critics and I will comment on some of them as they come to my attention.
Unfortunately the US Constitution does not qualify any candidates for a General Election, thus the inept, including GWB can be elected to office, and like the current incumbent we only find out what he has done wrong towards the end of his second term. We learn about the lies the misrepresentations and corruption, because people now feel safe talking about it as the main protagonist in a lame duck.
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When Atheists Attack
A noted provocateur rips Sarah Palin—and defends elitism.
Sam Harris
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Sep 29, 2008
Let me confess that I was genuinely unnerved by Sarah Palin's performance at the Republican convention. Given her audience and the needs of the moment, I believe Governor Palin's speech was the most effective political communication I have ever witnessed. Here, finally, was a performer who—being maternal, wounded, righteous and sexy—could stride past the frontal cortex of every American and plant a three-inch heel directly on that limbic circuit that ceaselessly intones "God and country." If anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could.
Then came Palin's first television interview with Charles Gibson. I was relieved to discover, as many were, that Palin's luster can be much diminished by the absence of a teleprompter. Still, the problem she poses to our political process is now much bigger than she is. Her fans seem inclined to forgive her any indiscretion short of cannibalism. However badly she may stumble during the remaining weeks of this campaign, her supporters will focus their outrage upon the journalist who caused her to break stride, upon the camera operator who happened to capture her fall, upon the television network that broadcast the good lady's misfortune—and, above all, upon the "liberal elites" with their highfalutin assumption that, in the 21st century, only a reasonably well-educated person should be given command of our nuclear arsenal.
The point to be lamented is not that Sarah Palin comes from outside Washington, or that she has glimpsed so little of the earth's surface (she didn't have a passport until last year), or that she's never met a foreign head of state. The point is that she comes to us, seeking the second most important job in the world, without any intellectual training relevant to the challenges and responsibilities that await her. There is nothing to suggest that she even sees a role for careful analysis or a deep understanding of world events when it comes to deciding the fate of a nation. In her interview with Gibson, Palin managed to turn a joke about seeing Russia from her window into a straight-faced claim that Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia gave her some essential foreign-policy experience. Palin may be a perfectly wonderful person, a loving mother and a great American success story—but she is a beauty queen/sports reporter who stumbled into small-town politics, and who is now on the verge of stumbling into, or upon, world history.
The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin's lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. "They think they're better than you!" is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. "Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!" Yes, all too ordinary.
We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter's microphone, saying things like, "I'm voting for Sarah because she's a mom. She knows what it's like to be a mom." Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security … the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them.
Palin's most conspicuous gaffe in her interview with Gibson has been widely discussed. The truth is, I didn't much care that she did not know the meaning of the phrase "Bush doctrine." And I am quite sure that her supporters didn't care, either. Most people view such an ambush as a journalistic gimmick. What I do care about are all the other things Palin is guaranteed not to know—or will be glossing only under the frenzied tutelage of John McCain's advisers. What doesn't she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin's ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth.
I care even more about the many things Palin thinks she knows but doesn't: like her conviction that the Biblical God consciously directs world events. Needless to say, she shares this belief with mil-lions of Americans—but we shouldn't be eager to give these people our nuclear codes, either. There is no question that if President McCain chokes on a spare rib and Palin becomes the first woman president, she and her supporters will believe that God, in all his majesty and wisdom, has brought it to pass. Why would God give Sarah Palin a job she isn't ready for? He wouldn't. Everything happens for a reason. Palin seems perfectly willing to stake the welfare of our country—even the welfare of our species—as collateral in her own personal journey of faith. Of course, McCain has made the same unconscionable wager on his personal journey to the White House.
In speaking before her church about her son going to war in Iraq, Palin urged the congregation to pray "that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God; that's what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan." When asked about these remarks in her interview with Gibson, Palin successfully dodged the issue of her religious beliefs by claiming that she had been merely echoing the words of Abraham Lincoln. The New York Times later dubbed her response "absurd." It was worse than absurd; it was a lie calculated to conceal the true character of her religious infatuations. Every detail that has emerged about Palin's life in Alaska suggests that she is as devout and literal-minded in her Christian dogmatism as any man or woman in the land. Given her long affiliation with the Assemblies of God church, Palin very likely believes that Biblical prophecy is an infallible guide to future events and that we are living in the "end times." Which is to say she very likely thinks that human history will soon unravel in a foreordained cataclysm of war and bad weather. Undoubtedly Palin believes that this will be a good thing—as all true Christians will be lifted bodily into the sky to make merry with Jesus, while all nonbelievers, Jews, Methodists and other rabble will be punished for eternity in a lake of fire. Like many Pentecostals, Palin may even imagine that she and her fellow parishioners enjoy the power of prophecy themselves. Otherwise, what could she have meant when declaring to her congregation that "God's going to tell you what is going on, and what is going to go on, and you guys are going to have that within you"?
You can learn something about a person by the company she keeps. In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, parishioners enjoy "baptism in the Holy Spirit," "miraculous healings" and "the gift of tongues." Invariably, they offer astonishingly irrational accounts of this behavior and of its significance for the entire cosmos. Palin's spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of "the final generation," engaged in "spiritual warfare" to purge the earth of "demonic strongholds." Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria. Ask yourself: Is it a good idea to place the most powerful military on earth at her disposal? Do we actually want our leaders thinking about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy when it comes time to say to the Iranians, or to the North Koreans, or to the Pakistanis, or to the Russians or to the Chinese: "All options remain on the table"?
It is easy to see what many people, women especially, admire about Sarah Palin. Here is a mother of five who can see the bright side of having a child with Down syndrome and still find the time and energy to govern the state of Alaska. But we cannot ignore the fact that Palin's impressive family further testifies to her dogmatic religious beliefs. Many writers have noted the many shades of conservative hypocrisy on view here: when Jamie Lynn Spears gets pregnant, it is considered a symptom of liberal decadence and the breakdown of family values; in the case of one of Palin's daughters, however, teen pregnancy gets reinterpreted as a sign of immaculate, small-town fecundity. And just imagine if, instead of the Palins, the Obama family had a pregnant, underage daughter on display at their convention, flanked by her black boyfriend who "intends" to marry her. Who among conservatives would have resisted the temptation to speak of "the dysfunction in the black community"?
Teen pregnancy is a misfortune, plain and simple. At best, it represents bad luck (both for the mother and for the child); at worst, as in the Palins' case, it is a symptom of religious dogmatism. Governor Palin opposes sex education in schools on religious grounds. She has also fought vigorously for a "parental consent law" in the state of Alaska, seeking full parental dominion over the reproductive decisions of minors. We know, therefore, that Palin believes that she should be the one to decide whether her daughter carries her baby to term. Based on her stated position, we know that she would deny her daughter an abortion even if she had been raped. One can be forgiven for doubting whether Bristol Palin had all the advantages of 21st-century family planning—or, indeed, of the 21st century.
We have endured eight years of an administration that seemed touched by religious ideology. Bush's claim to Bob Woodward that he consulted a "higher Father" before going to war in Iraq got many of us sitting upright, before our attention wandered again to less ethereal signs of his incompetence. For all my concern about Bush's religious beliefs, and about his merely average grasp of terrestrial reality, I have never once thought that he was an over-the-brink, Rapture-ready extremist. Palin seems as though she might be the real McCoy. With the McCain team leading her around like a pet pony between now and Election Day, she can be expected to conceal her religious extremism until it is too late to do anything about it. Her supporters know that while she cannot afford to "talk the talk" between now and Nov. 4, if elected, she can be trusted to "walk the walk" until the Day of Judgment.
What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents—and her supporters celebrate—the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world's only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth:
"Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child's brain?"
"Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I'm an avid hunter."
"But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind."
"That's just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink."
The prospects of a Palin administration are far more frightening, in fact, than those of a Palin Institute for Pediatric Neurosurgery. Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated.
I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing more complex—and dangerous—with each passing hour, and our position within it growing more precarious. Should she become president, Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity, and from empirical reality, as to unite the entire world against us. When asked why she is qualified to shoulder more responsibility than any person has held in human history, Palin cites her refusal to hesitate. "You can't blink," she told Gibson repeatedly, as though this were a primordial truth of wise governance. Let us hope that a President Palin would blink, again and again, while more thoughtful people decide the fate of civilization.
Harris is a founder of The Reason Project and author of The New York Times best sellers "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation." His Web site is samharris.org.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/160080
© 2008
Inserted from <http://www.newsweek.com/id/160080/output/print>
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Fascism Shows It’s Face in Federal Police
In todays Australian is the front page article above the fold AFP admits there was no evidence against Haneef.
After beinf deported in disgrace by the Howard Government under alledged secret evidence from the AFP it has finally turned out that Mr. Keelty (Chief Cocky at the AFP) posted an announcement during Obama’s acceptance speech, that the case had no evidence. I just wander if they will ever apologise to him and his family now in India. Dr. Haneef is a Medical man and a very tenuous guilt by association case was launched aginst him which the former HowardGovernment swallowed hook line and sinker. This only demonstrates that during the post 911 Australia under Deputy Sherrif Johnny Howard there was no checks and balances on the National Security apparatice and responsible Ministers of State.
Have any changes been made by the new Kevin Rudd Federal Government I don’t know, I would like to think that a Labor Government with a more soially responsible outlook on affairs would consider such Fascist behaviour by the security forces as unacceptable. It is almost as if John Howard had successfully conducted a campaign to convince anyone whowishes to come here that they risk being harrassed and arrested for no good reason. Hopefully that will change as the off shore detention centers are closing and reason is prevailling we can move on to a more responsible and democratic Australia.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Bush and The War on Science
The current Republican Party Government of the US now faces a Senate and House it does not control. Science will now get a chance to progress with stem cell research so the genetic diseases heretofore untreatable may be treated if we work hard and don't let greed and religion get in the way.
Unfortunately Science is still playing second to Faith Based initiatives and other Unconstitutional activities conducted by the Bush Presidency. With Mitt Romney running we can add another Fundamentalist Evangelical Christian invective towards his Campaign and his Mormon background. All the problems are related to these Fundies and not the candidates or science programs, Nasa and others. Stifling respected researchers in the NOAA so that the idea of Global Warning is not associated with George W Bush or his corporate backers.
I think a lot of problems will be reviewed by the Democratic congress, but Bush will still be attempting to bypass legislation with vetoes and other means.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Irrational Politics?
The Australian reports today about a comment by John Howard MP,PM. The comment was about Barak Obama, whose policies in John Howards opinion:
If I was running al-Qa'ida in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama but also for the Democrats
This is not only irrational for an Australian Prime Minister to comment on a potetial US Presidential Candidat and his policies it is bad International Relations. All that we know is George W Bush will not intervene on the matter, simply for two reasons:
- He himself has been quilty of making comments about a potential Australian Prime Minister over much the same issue, bringing the troops home.
- George W Bush is a lame-duck incumbant, who has no inclination to minimise flak heading the Democrats way as the US gears up to elect a new and hopefully smarter President.
Following Barak Obama's comments or reply to Howards diatribe:
I think it's flattering that one of George Bush's allies on the other side of the world started attacking me the day after I announced," Senator Obama told reporters in the mid-western US state of Iowa, according to Agence France-Presse."
"I would also note that we have close to 140,000 troops in Iraq, and my understanding is Mr Howard has deployed 1400, so if he is ... to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq.
"Otherwise it's just a bunch of empty rhetoric."
I suspect that John Howard is guilty of bringing the office of Prime Minister and Parliament into disrepute. Maybe we will have that opportunity at our next General Election sometime after the US has it's new President, whoever that maybe.
The Democrats have too strong candidates, what of the Republicans, is there any among them to challenge the Bushes?
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