Let’s all congratulate the US for electing a new President who is only 50% white unlike previous presidents who have all been over 90% white. All through the US the Democrats have been congratulating themselves on the change that will come about now that they have elected a lawyer to high office.
We can all admit now that a purple fairy could have won the election against GI Joe and Caribou Barbie provided they had a policy or two. The entire republican campaign seems to have been bourne out of the following principals:
- Obama sounds a lot like Osama
- Barrack rhymes with Iraq (if you are fuckwit american)
- Barrack Obama is kinda the same colour as quite a few muslims
- Sarah Palin was nearly chosen as Miss Alaska
- McCain spent some time being held by the Viet Cong so his country owes him 8 years of living in a nice house with guards and his own big ass plane
Now that the elections are over we can all admit that change is not really all that likely, the US will still go out into the world and bully whomever it can in order to further their own goals. The US will still send troops abroad to rape and pillage in the name of liberty and will still claim the war on terror is more than just an excuse to remove the freedoms that other nations’ citizens have to be above the shallow materialistic corruptions of the United States. I doubt that electing a half white man to the White House will make the US suddenly take an intererst in the reasons why most of the world hates the US. I doubt a dose of humility will be packed inside Obama’s travelling case and I doubt that the meddling with foreign nations will cease and the US will begin to recognise the soverignty of all states outside their own borders.
If the US wants to change then it must respect that treaties are a binding two way thing which must be recognised at all times rather than when the US will gain from it. They must realise that pillaging the oil reserves of smaller nations or invading countries like Iraq is no different from Iraq invading and annexing Kuwait for the same goals. For the US to really change they need to stop their support of the occupation of Palestine and start understanding the reasons why muslim fundamentalists are angry at the imperialistic empire which has been responsible for many of the ills of the world today.
When I was a kid I liked to play cops and robbers; I always ended up being one of the robbers and my big sister would be one of the cops. That way she could guarantee that she was the goodie and would of course ultimately triumph. We played cowboys and indians a bit too but she didn’t like that so much because as the elder sibling she needed a clear cut way to show that she was the goodie and I was the baddie and the line was not so clear in cowboys and indians. On the one hand the cowboys are gun toting bullies who are stealing the land of the noble indiginous people but on the other hand the cowboys were americans who were taming the wild west while being attacked by murderous savages. As it was the game taught us that sometimes it’s hard to tell if you are on the side of the right or the wrong: cops and robbers can very easily be transformed into Robin Hood and the nasty Sheriff and suddenly it’s the robbers who are the goodies and the cops who are the baddies.
During the second world war it was easy to tell that we were indeed on the right side, on the one hand we had the murdering nazis who were recklessly invading countries, persecuting their own citizens and generally being quite beastly. The stiff upper lipped brits could take a stand and later on once the beastly Japanese had executed their cowardly raid on Pearl Harbour it was the duty of every follower of Uncle Sam to help put a stop to this evil menace. Then along came the cold war and the west, with their freedoms and democracy, were ever vigilant against the threat of the mighty warmongering red storm. Stories about the treatment of political disidents showed us that we were resisting a threat which would take away our freedom and our trust in the state to protect us. While the two ideologies were incompatible there was still a fairly clear arguement that we were in the right, even if the opposition were not that far in the wrong (because they were not murdering people or invading much).
Roll on to ‘nam and it gets even more cloudy. Within vietnam there were those who were in favour of communism and those who were in favour of the US intervening. The numbers in favour of the US intervening were not that big but the US thought it prudent to save them anyway.
Then we had a reprieve when Gulf War 1 started. We were clearly the good guys because we were rescuing the peaceful and extremely rich nation of Kuwait from being annexed by the nasty big bully that was Iraq. We rolled in there and fired up our shit and then once we had liberated Kuwait we stopped at the border and didn’t lower ourselves to Iraqi standards by invading anywhere.
It all seemed to change on 11/9/2001 when a bunch of freedom fighters pulled off a death star scale attack on the US and global financialism in general. On the face of it we must be the goodies because the attack killed so many people yet that is not a measure of who is right and who is wrong because the US killed many tens of thousands of Iraqis in GW1. The first battle was to get in to the obvious target. Having spent a lot of time fighting the Russians when they were baddies; the Afghani people were clearly goodies so the Taliban had to be named and shamed as the vicious fundamentalist thugs that they were. The fact that they were effectively put into power by CIA meddling during the ’80s was glossed over but let’s not get ourselves all in a toot about that.
Once we had kicked the evil Taliban boogeyman out of power in Afghanistan the battle there was reduced to resistance fighters taking on the evil invading armies and that is why the coverage has dropped a fair bit since 2002.
Then it was time to get on to making those pesky evil Iraqi folk pay for their threatening behaviour. The US does not like anyone getting into their exclusive nukes club because then they have fewer bargaining chips and can’t invade whenever they like. It’s a bit like how they did not want the indians getting guns in the wild west because it was not that sporting if they shot back. The illusion of a threat of WMDs was created and it was all systems full ahead for an invasion and occupation of the country that has around a third of the worlds oil.
During this time the US has also been busy on the home front conducting torture, detention without trial and finding loopholes for any of the conventions that it has pushed for, signed and then not ratified. US soldiers were held by Iraqi forces in clear contravention of treaties of the Hague that Iraq did not sign and this was plastered all over the media as further evidence that they were the baddies yet the propaganda failed to mention that the US is not bound by such treaties either because they did not rattify them and so that means that the treaties are invalid in that conflict. In the last few year a nation has victimised their own citizens for political dissent and had a corrupt and unelected leader in charge. That nation has threatened to use WMDs while developing new ones. The nation I am talking about also refuses to be open with the UN about what chemical and biological weapons technology it has. The warmongering country has invaded and occupied countries and supported the invasion of Palestine by Israel. In fact if this was a war movie the country I am describing would have an army staffed by serious looking men in black uniforms; and yes, it’s the United States.
I don’t mean that the soldiers on the front line are evil. I also don’t mean that the average person at home in Wyoming is evil, or any more evil than a mother in Fallujah who sends her boys off to fight for freedom from the invading hoardes is. The soldiers are just kids doing a tough job for what they have been brought up to believe is right but it’s the political puppet masters that are out of check.
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No you are not. You are randomly generated freaks of nature that just happened to carry a bunch of genes that were fairly well suited to the environment in which your ancestors lived.
A little while ago I got cornered by a two creationists who wanted to try to persuade me, an intelligent and rational person, that the theory of evolution was in fact a sham and that creationism or intelligent design was the faith based explanation that I should take more seriously. Unfortunately I have read the Bible and they had not read anything on the subject of evolution other than the materials they had been fed by their handlers. I tried rational reason but they had been well programmed to just talk over me and so I left them with the following question before I left: “have you seen any evidence of creationism?” no? well I have seen enough evidence of evolution to satisfy me for the time being, but fortunately you don’t have to take my word for it or act on faith because the evidence is there for you to see yourself.
What I don’t get is the constant quest by the fundamentalist christians to try to persuade people that something written as a parable or metaphor two thousand years ago should be taken as litteral. In the same way that kosher jews are just idiots following a several thousand year old health and safety manual, those who take religion to be litteral rather than a basic framework for morality are just dumb. Religion has always been a great way to pacify the masses; be good now and you get eternity of happiness. Religion is also a way to promote the idea of marriage and avoid men unknowingly investing their time and resources providing for an illigitimate child, the fear behind the culture of monogamy in the Abrahamic and other religions. We have now moved on and so litteral interpretations of whatever brand of creator fantasy are just no longer relevant in a world where communcations, science and law replace the requirement for religion.
In the UK there have been a couple of recent suggestions that Sharia may have a place in the English law (and by “English” I include the law of the Kingdom of England, the Principality of Wales and the Duchy of Cornwall). English law is a very fluid system with two main areas, the statutory law which parliament makes and the common law which is that ‘common sense’ law that is borne out of the courts and their interpretation of the law. These areas are subdivided into, amongst others, criminal and civil laws where the police handle matters of criminal law and the individual can press for a resolution on matters of civil law. If I was to steal a car then it would be a matter of criminal law and the police would be responsible rather than the car owner for bringing me to justice however if I borrowed some money and then failed to pay it back it would be a civil matter and the person I borrowed the cash from would need to take me to court to recover the cash.
Where the dumb people have gone wrong is confusing the criminal and civil law and the place of Sharia within those. There is no place for Sharia in criminal law, English law has sovereignty in the Kingdom of England, the Principality of Wales and the Duchy of Cornwall and Scottish law has sovereignty in the Kingdom of Scotland. Throughout the United Kingdoms of England and Scotland the law set down by statute and the common law of Her Majesty’s courts prevails in all matters of criminal and civil law and the law can only be enforced by the courts with the assistance of the police and, in the case of Scotland, the sheriffs.
Where Sharia has a place within the law is within civil law; just as the Beth Din (a rabbinical court of Judaism) is recognised in taking a role in civil mediation. In the simplest form a dispute between two parties, say a dispute over a debt, could be resolved by both parties agreeing to have the dispute resolved by the Beth Din. There is already a provision for this in English law and it is a purely voluntary arrangement with the courts of England and Wales merely enforcing the decision that has been reached by this form of mediation. If one or both parties do not wish to be bound by the decision of the Beth Din then they can argue their cases in the courts under English law.
In this respect the place for Sharia already exists within the English legal system. If two muslims have a dispute then they can opt for a mediation under Sharia and agree to be bound by this decision. If they do not wish to resolve the dispute in that way then English law prevails. If a christian has a dispute with another christian then they may wish to resolve the dispute according to their own religious beliefs rather than go to the courts and can, for example, choose their pastor to mediate the dispute and help them resolve it. This is the way that law has always been handled in England and village elders or parish councils often to this day resolve disputes through mediation rather than the parties going to the courts.
Where Sharia has no place in law, as with the Beth Din, is in the criminal legal system. Criminal law must be equally applied by the courts to everyone regardless of religious beliefs. Criminal behaviour is just that and punishment should be dealt out by the courts of England, Wales and Scotland equally and without prejudice to different belief structures. While parties can opt to resolve disputes by using religious courts there must be no obligation to do so and no punishment can be dealt out by religious courts for criminal matters regardless of if it’s a crime under English law or religious law. Under the laws of England, Wales and Scotland it is permissable to be a homosexual; while many religious groups disagree with this it is not the place of a religious court to place penalites (other than exclusion from the religion) on homosexuals and any physical penalties would be unlawful and the religious courts would be punishable by the relevant sovereign courts.
One area where Sharia is billed to take a major part is in marital and financial disputes. In order to ensure that a marital dispute is handled by Sharia it would be necessary for both parties to voluntarily agree (maybe in the form of a pre-nuptual contract recognised under English law) to have the dispute resolved under Sharia. Again, this is perfectly fine under the English legal system and so long as no unlawful penalties (corporal or capital punishment for example) were imposed then the English courts would no doubt uphold the decision of the Sharia court.
What we must avoid is the fear that the integration of Sharia into civil law will lead us down a path where we have rapists castrated, homosexuals beheaded in the steets and adulterous women stoned to death. These are all extreme examples of the application of religious law and the hangovers from an archaic system which was appropriate in a time long past and a place far away. To understand these seemingly barbaric systems of law we must look at the context in which they were practiced and compare them to the system of law which prevailed in this country prior to the Magna Carta.
Many middle eastern countries in the cradle of Islam and Judaism had little or no system of state government. The tribal and nomadic nature of the people led to a system of fragmented government which still persists to this day with tribal warlords in some areas and titles such as prince adopted by those with money, land and power under their control. Into this anarchic system the wisdom of religious teachers was often sought because the writings of God were almost universally known and contained a framework of morally acceptable behaviour which encouraged a penitent life without killing, rape, theft, adultery and greed. In the absense of a legal system comparable to the ones common in western countries the religious courts of the Abrahamic religions made sense and kept everyone close to a basic social morality which persists to this day in the laws of every nation.
Sharia and Judaic law also governed aspects of how people should live their life and laws about food preparation were the beginnings of health and hygene law. Given the instruments available and the environement of the middle east it was sensible to avoid non kosher or halal foods and the methods of killing animals described in both traditions are arguably the most hygenic and safe methods that were available a thousand years ago in the middle east. Circumcision, practiced by both Jews and Muslims, is a sensible health precaution for nomadic tribesmen and many other laws within the Koran and Bible are concerned with health and hygene. The qustion of how these aspects of law persist into the modern world of improved healthcare and factory farming is one for the religious clerics. With improvements in cooking and food storage it is possible that the halal and kosher traditions could be brought up to date but that would imply that the ‘word of God’ was no longer relevant or correct.
