That's fucking stupid

Posts Tagged ‘control’

New Scientist has published an excellent article concerning research by Scott Wiltermuth of Stanford University in California that suggests that “activities performed in unison, such as marching or dancing, increase loyalty to the group”. The article discusses proposals by psychologist Jonathan Haidt at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville that “this research helps explain why fascist leaders, amongst others, use organised marching and chanting to whip crowds into a frenzy of devotion to their cause”.

The article very carefully skirts around the similarity between the chanting and singing, encouraged by facist leaders, and the hymns and prayers which form the bedrock of religious observance.

A fortune cookie once said:

Rules are for the guidance of the wise and the blind allegiance of fools.

The message behind the proverb is that rules are there to show people what generally is and is not acceptable but they are fallable so should not be seen as inflexible boundries. Unfortunately, where rules and laws fall down is when dealing with people who follow rules too closely and use them for their own means.

Most civilised societies have laws which prohibit murder but most countries also have a pretty narrow definition of murder and an often less serious crime of manslaughter. Murder is defined as the taking of life with malice aforethought, or with the intention of doing it. If I cause an accident which kills someone then that would be manslaughter but if I set out to kill someone then that would be murder. Proving the intent is the hard part and often means that prosecutors settle for manslaughter charges rather than murder because they are easier to prove. Unfortunately this puts us in a situation where occasionally accidental deaths are convicted as murder because the guilty party cannot prove it was accidental and also means that a clever murderer will be able to make the death seem either accidental or claim that it was accidental in order to get a reduced sentence.

Pedophiles can get their kicks just by being in the audience at a school swimming gala while parents are unable to take photos of their own kids, terrorists find new and interesting ways of causing mayhem while regular travellers get their duty free booze confiscated because it breaks the 100ml rule and copyright or patent laws are used by big corporations to attack the small creative groups that the laws were designed to protect.

The legal system has always had loop holes but the judiciary were selected for their strong moral judgement and ability to make decisions based on the evidence provided. Some of these decisions were subjective and occasionally errors of judgement happened. In an effort to prevent this from happening we, as a society, have built greater and greater layers of complexity to the legal system and filled the statute books with more and more laws which are designed to stipulate exactly what can and can’t be done in any given situation. The problem with closing loop holes is that for every one you close, many more open up. The idea of ‘rights’ is great however they must be evenly applied and are most often used by the malicious in order to escape or evade punishment.

A few years ago there was a story going around that a homeowner was sued by a burglar who had slipped while breaking in. It caused much outrage and was seen as a poster boy example for the ‘political correctness gone mad’ that the Daily Mail is keen to womble on about. In an ideal world this case (if it indeed existed) would have been thrown out by the courts for contravening the basic ideals of common sense and personal responsibility…

But what if it had? If a homeowner is allowed not liable for injury if the other party is trespassing then it might be wise to make sure that you have written invitations from the unscrupulous householders you may visit; they may exploit the loophole if you injure yourself at theirs by claiming you were trespassing. If a burglar injured himself while stealing from you he might think it wise to claim that you deliberately injured him, thus putting you in a riskier position.

Legislating for every eventuality is a process which leads inevitably towards totalitarianism and cannot be achieved without it, we are already happily skipping down that path and it would take a significant reverse in public policy to take us back to the point where judges were trusted to make decisions and policemen could use their discretion, the golden era that the “BBC Have your say” gang wistfully recall.

Media responsibility is pretty important if we want to steer away from a totalitiarian Britain. Newspapers and TV channels competing for attention are prone to blowing unusual events out of proportion. News coverage brings the unusual to the public attention. A few million people going to work is unremarkable yet a few million people trapped at home because of snow is unusual and worthy of news. All too often the remarkable events that capture the public imagination fuel massive changes in policy and legislation which are disproportionate to the original and improbably events.

In short, don’t worry about the little things that the papers report. It’s the stuff they don’t report that is happening every day in every city all around the country. Legislating for the little stuff just takes our eyes off the big stuff or gives the perpetrators new loopholes to use to their advantage.

Once again, we appear to be living by the standard that those who shout the loudest wield the most influence.

There is man employed by the UN to, in a nutshell, safeguard the freedom of speech of people all over the world. He monitors, investigates and recommends solutions to specific human rights problems. He’s called a Rapporteur.
60 years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written, and emphasised that “a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief is the highest aspiration of the common people”.

What this boils down to is that everyone has the fundamental right to speak freely about their beliefs. That everyone has the right to agree or disagree with someone else’s beliefs, and to call those beliefs into question when they clash with pesky little things like basic human rights.
This of course isn’t good enough for the shouty-shouty Islamists in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt, who have somehow come to the conclusion that the Declaration is “disrespectful” of religion because it won’t let them torture, intimidate and kill the people they govern. Consequently, they have demanded that the Declaration be rewritten to account for the “unique sensitivities” of religion. Which effectively bans anyone from raising an issue that involves Islamist beliefs and laws.
I’m sorry, what?
We are talking about representatives of 3 states with the worst human rights abuses in the developed world. We are talking about the Egyptian representative refusing to discuss the stoning of women accused of being unfaithful, and refusing to discuss child marriage on the basis that he would not see Islam “crucified” by the council, stating that these sorts of things are within the boundaries of shariah law and consequently untouchable to the infidel West. Allah forbid we ask the followers of Islam to please stop torturing people. How disrespectful of us, eh?

We are also talking about anti-Musharraf judges, lawyers and human rights activists in Pakistan being rounded up wholesale and arrested for peacefully voicing their beliefs, and an authority that has banned the establishment of independent judiciaries.

We are talking about Saudi Arabia and its proclivity to issue Capital Punishment without undue process, which still amputates the hands or feet of those accused of robbery, which still practices beheading as a “humane” method of punishment and which routinely denies that human rights abuses take place at all.

And the worst part of all of this?

The UN complied with their demands to rewrite the Rapporteur’s job spec to include not only naming and shaming human rights abusers – such as Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – but also to investigate and put a stop to the “defamation of religions and prophets”. And so he protects our rights and freedoms with one hand and takes them away with the other to appease an angry and abusive faction of religious hotheads who are terrified of their citizens thinking for themselves.

Every time the UN rolls over for these abusers is another chip away from the faith we ordinary mortals have placed in it. Every concession granted to these fanatics who play the religion card to get their own way is an erosion of the principals on which the UN was founded. Every time nobody stands up to these evil and heartless men, they get away with murder – literally. And every time we step on eggshells for fear of offending these poor, defenceless tyrants, we allow them to keep pushing us further and further away from the ideals that make the UN such a powerful force for good.
In addition, every day that countries like Britain and the USA support the governments of these and other notoriously tyrannical nations is another day they make a mockery of themselves, their politics and us. They are getting away with demanding that their laws – because they are an integral part of their religion – become unquestionable, infallible and untouchable.
If that’s the case, then they don’t belong in the UN, in any form of governmental agreement with Britain or in the civilised world.

I was quite pleased to see that noted scientist, economist and government policy advisor* Alistair McGowan has been speaking out about the proposed (and de facto approved) plans to expand Heathrow with a further terminal and runway. I wonder if Mr McGowan has gotten a little carried away with his day job; one where he impersonates people who either know what they are talking about or whose opinion the public cares about. Along with a bunch of other well meaning luvvies, McGowan would rather see an investment in high speed rail links and people being ferried around the country between smaller distributed airports.

The BBC, meanwhile is doing a Have Your Say item in which literally dozens of people who live near Heathrow are complaining that it’s too noisy and they don’t think that there should be an airport expansion. Oddly enough they are quiet about their choice of airport to fly from, one must assume that they trek up to ‘London’ Stanstead or ‘London’ Luton for their flights or down to ‘London’ Gatwick or maybe over to ‘London’ Bristol airport. Maybe they take the tube, bus and walk to the easily accessible London ‘City’ airport which is somewhere in the docklands and great for those who happen to also own a helicopter to get them there.

Heathrow is the busiest airport for a bunch of reasons, most are pretty dull and have something to do with it being a major carrier hub, close to London and well connected on the rail and tube networks. It is, in fact, the only airport in the UK that is within the M25 and connected to both the rail and tube networks so logically it’s the airport of choice for anyone in the south east who does not want to: