Why ‘secular laws’ must rank above ‘religious laws’ in every society

June 29, 2010 — xanthippa

Recently, a post I had made a long time ago where I was looking at the definitions and nature of religion received a comment which raised a very important point.  It was something that I had attempted to get across – and failed.  Here, I hope, to remedy this!

Context:  Having used the Jungian definition of ‘religion’, I argued that ‘freedom to practice one’s religion’ must never be given greater weight in our society than ‘secular laws’.

Permit me to recall ‘Xanthippa’s First Law of Human Dynamics‘ -IF there is a potential for ANY law (rule) to be applied IN EXTREME ways – never foreseen when the law was first formulated – eventually, it WILL BE!!!’.  In other words, every potential  law or rule must be subjected to scrutiny of its effects when (and it is a question of when, not if) it will be applied to a ridiculous extreme.

Therefore, in that post, I used an extreme example: ‘If there is a blanket protection for actions based on religious belief, even such extreme acts as ritualized murder would be protected’.

The comment:

‘I cannot agree with your definition of religion. Since I am Catholic, I will use my understanding of it to explain my position. At the core of Catholicism, is the belief that there are some things that, with regards to morality, are objectively wrong- wrong in every time, place, and situation. I believe that you yourself would assent to this, since you already have identified objective moral truths (human sacrifice, polygamy, ritual rape, paedophilia (child-brides), ritual cannibalism, genital mutilation).

Now, it is not enough to believe that human sacrifice is wrong, rather, one must also behave in accordance with that belief. If one does not have the freedom to act in accordance with that belief, of what value is the belief? None. It is nothing but an illusion of freedom which the state allows to placate the people.

The crux of the issue, however, lies in the contradiction between the constitutionally granted “freedom of religion” and the secular law- a contradiction that is only truly resolved if religious belief and secular law both conform to objective moral truth. You seem to assume, though, that secular law is ipso facto closer to objective moral truth and therefore has primacy, but that is a false (and sometimes dangerous) assumption. Our laws were not created in a vacuum, but created by people who drew from their religious beliefs, cultural backgrounds, and own understanding of morality. There is nothing to suggest that they inherently knew better and we should accept their moral code a priori.’

I am not, in any way, shape or form, convinced that there is such a thing as an ‘objective moral truth’.

This does not mean I don’t think some things are wrong.  Yet, I recognize these for judgments based on my observation of the collection of impressions I will, for lack of a better-defined term, call ‘life’.  I would be loath to have pretensions to any absolutes, even if I became convinced ‘absolutes’ could be defined.

First things first….   Sequentially, I suppose.

The commenter self-identifies as a ‘Catholic’ (Roman Catholic Christian, I presume).

He/she then asserts that ‘objective moral truths’ exist, and as a proof cites me that, among other things, ‘ritual cannibalism’ is wrong.  However, where I say these acts cannot be justified by ‘exercising one’s religious freedoms’ IF they contravene the secular laws of the land, the commenter goes further, calling this wrong in every time, place and situation and equating this condemnation with an ‘objective moral truth’.

HOW can a Catholic possibly assert that?

Is it not one of the core beliefs of Catholicism that the priests’ blessing physically transforms a wafer of bread into the actual flesh of Christ, wine into the actual blood of Christ?  Is the consumption of these not part of their worship rituals?

This is, by definition, ritual cannibalism.

Don’t be dismissive of its importance!  Either the person truly believes they are eating Christ’s flesh, or they are heretics to their faith and not a Roman Catholic Christian.  These definitions are not mine…  One cannot possibly be both a practicing Roman Catholic Christian and believe that it is an ‘objective moral truth’ that ‘ritual cannibalism’ is wrong in every time, place and situation – unless one believes their religion demands behaviour contrary to ‘objective moral truths’!

No, I am not trying to pick on the commenter:  rather, I am attempting to illustrate of just how quickly things get muddled when we enter the realm ‘theological principles’ and ‘objective moral truths’…  No society of free people could hope to form effective laws which respect core human rights and freedoms on such a tenuous foundation.

This is precisely why ‘secular laws’ must ‘trump’ religious ones whenever there is a conflict:  ‘secular laws’ do not and must not legislate morality.  To the contrary:  the primary role of secular laws must be the protection of individual rights and freedoms against the oppression by other peoples’ ‘morality’!

Justifying a proposed law by an appeal to ‘morality’ or ‘greater good’ or ‘public interest’ (all of these are the same thing at their core, they just wear different cloaks) should sound our ‘alarm bells’ that something dangerous is afoot and requires close scrutiny.

Why?

Passing laws on these grounds necessarily permits the morality of some to over-rule or abridge the rights of others.  Than, in my never-humble-opinion, is always a bad thing!

The commenter says:

You seem to assume, though, that secular law is ipso facto closer to objective moral truth and therefore has primacy…’

No, not at all.  I am sorry if I gave that impression.  To the contrary!

Secular laws are not created in a vacuum – not even the vacuum of some ‘alternate dimension’ where rule-making deities reside.  Rather, they are a negotiated contract among the citizens of a country how to best keep from infringing on each other’s rights as we strive to coexist and thrive.  It is a living contract, not set in stone, but continuously evolving to reflect the changes in our society – and it must be supreme because by the virtue of accepting citizenship (or residency), one voluntarily chooses to abide by them.  Or, at least, that is what the meaning of accepting citizenship (or residency) ought to imply…

Because it is a negotiated contract of ‘minimum interference’, if you will (OK – let me just say that it ‘ought to be’ as we see laws becoming more and more intrusive and ‘moralistic’….), it will necessarily reflect the moral ideals of the majority of the members of the society.  That is how it should be – provided that the core rights and freedoms of each and every individual are not infringed.

Our laws must permit every person to exercise their rights and freedoms as fully as possible – but not past the point where this activity would violate the rights of another person.  Sort of like that right to swing one’s arms stops just short of hitting someone else’s nose…

In other words, a man – say, my father – must be free to believe (or not) in whatever Gods he wants.  And, he must be free to worship (or not) them as best as he can – but the limit on his freedom to practice his religion must stop short of the right to kill me because I offended his God by wearing the wrong kind of polka-dots on Sunday!

Posted in atheism, freedoms, ignosticism, philosophy, politics, religion, society. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Cheaper by the dozen – except in the EU

June 27, 2010 — xanthippa

If you think government interference in our daily lives is a good thing, you’ll be delighted at this tidbit of news:  EU is about to ban the sale of things ‘by the dozen’.

Yes.

Eggs will be sold ‘by weight’.

You know – to make sure the label on the package is accurate.

So, it’s for your own protection….

Of course, this does not explain why they’d be considering (as is reported that they are) to even ban selling ‘six chocolate bars for the price of 4’?

As John Robson is fond of saying: “The more governments do things they shouldn’t, the less they do the things they should.” You know, like controlling every aspect of how grocers run their business and even sales promotions instead of figuring out how to cut down on the size of the civil service which is so bloated, it is bankrupting the EU….

Posted in opression, politics, society. Tags: , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Aspergers and writing: ‘build’, not just ‘revise’

June 26, 2010 — xanthippa

‘Everyone’ who is familiar with Aspies knows that most of us struggle with writing.

Not all of us – Aspergers affects each person a little differently and to a different degree.  And, it affects males and females a little differently, too.  Perhaps that is why my post  ‘Aspergers and writing’ continues to get so many hits.

Today, I got a comment on it which raises something important.  That is why I’m posting this comment – and my quick reply to it – as its own post here:

Your comments about perfectionism and the difficulty Aspies have in putting words to paper make me wonder if this is why it’s so difficult for Aspies to revise what they’ve written: that once they get something down on paper they have committed their ideas to writing and there is no other way to put it. As a writing teacher, I often run into a wall when I ask my Aspie students to revise and I wonder if you think this explanation is accurate.

My response was:

I think that you are on the right track. I would like to nuance it slightly, if I may.

There are several things going on.

It is not that the Aspie may not be able to think of different words to put things into: it may be true at some times, byt certainly not at others. For example, many Aspies are very verbal – and they can say things out loud in many, many different ways. As a matter of fact, you may have a hard time shutting them up – they’ll describe the same things in so many ways.

The problem comes whith ‘investing’ into writing the words down. They have been ‘selected’ and ‘sweated over’ – why do you want to change them?

This constant ‘revision’ most writing teachers insist is part of ‘proper writing’ reduces me to white-hot fury! It it’s worth writing down, it’s worth doing it RIGHT THE FIRST TIME!

Once an Aspie HAS written something down and you are asking them to ‘revise’ it – you are asking them to take something that is ‘right’ and change it….obviously, if you take something that is ‘right’ and change it, you make it ‘wrong’! Then, when they hand in the version you forced them to change from ‘right’ to ‘wrong’, you give them a bad mark…

No wonder we don’t want to ‘revise’!

OK – that was the ‘emotional’ response.

Now, for more ‘reasoning’….

There is a problem – an actual physical problem in the neural connections – in the brain which makes it difficult for MOST (not all – we are all individuals), especially male, Aspies to write. Physically write.

Forcing us to ‘write’ and endlessly re-write the same sentences over and over is mental torture to us. It rubs our noses in our failure. So, we avoid it like the plague. If it’s a computer file, we’ll be less freaked out by it. But asking us to hand-copy out the same bits over because other bits had changed is unreasonable.

I actually can tell – byt the style of writning – if something I ‘produced’ was first spoken and then trans-scribed/typed into the computer, or if I wrote it on a piece of paper in longhand and then typed it into the computer, or if I directly typed it into the computer. Honestly, my sentence structure and syntax are significantly different in each one of these styles of ‘writing’. Perhaps you could experiment with your students on this theme….

But!

This is the way I helped my kids ‘get over’ the whole ‘revision aversion’ (I could not very well undermine the teacher, right?).

I explain that the teacher is trying to teach them how to build a piece of writing ‘from the ground up’. It is a particular methodology to teach, and marks are awarded at each stage: sort of like when you learn to swim, they first teach you to put your face in the water and only later want to see you perform the full butterfly stroke…

So – first ‘version’ is NOT supposed to be ‘a written story’ or ‘a written essay’.

Instead, organize your thoughts and put 1-2 words for each paragraph: enough to ‘record’ the ‘main idea’ or ‘main thrust’ of what this will say. This will be handed in as ‘brainstorming’ – teacher needs to get it to keep a record of it, so they can prove what they gave you the marks for if someone audits their work.

On the next ‘version’, you go to each one of the paragraphs and put in 1-2 words for each sentence you will write in the finished piece. Check that each paragraph still has the same ‘focus’ as the ‘brainstorming’. This will be first draft – again, marks, teacher keeps for records…

In between each step, take the teacher’s feedback and incorporate it in – again, this needs to show up. It’s the teacher’s job to give you feedback, so it’s important for the records they keep to reflect it. If you don’t, they’ll think they are not teaching you right, be sad, not like your work….pick your sentiment.

On the next ‘version’, you write BARE sentences for the 1-2 word things. Make sure all ideas are there, but not really all the descriptions, and not nicely or fancily. You’re hitting the highlights. That is the next draft.

Finally, you take your draft and connect up things, dress up the sentences, and so on.

It’s a method of constructing something. Teachers must document they taught it to you.

This way, you’ll show how you built the written piece. It’s not so much ‘revision’ or ‘revising’ it – that is a very poor label for this. But, that is the label we are stuck with.

Does this help explain the thought process?

Posted in Aspergers, education. Tags: , , , . 2 Comments »

Vigna vs Levant: first installment on the last day

June 26, 2010 — xanthippa

What a day today has been!

I admit, I am a little overwhelmed by all that has been happening.

And, I will try very, very hard to put down what happened, as best as I can with my very very limited legal background (which consists solely of watching ‘Jurisprudence’ on TV whenever I can).  But, most of it will not come tonight.

As those of you who read my blog on and off, I have some long term health issues.  These last two days have seen me more up and about than I have been in months, and I admit that I am exhausted.  Yeah, I know, I am a wimp….

Still, I really don’t want to try to give an exhaustive report while I am not in a serene state of mind.

I will only offer the briefest of observations… (well, brief for my standards!)

Mr. Levant appeared more patient today.  Now, I don’t know how Mr. Levant felt – he didn’t tell me.  But, it seemed to me that he had moved past the exasperation (not completely, and with a few re-lapses, of course, but he seemed less ‘overall’ exasperated ‘much’ of the time – perhaps because he was not having to explain over and over and over how his ‘sainted father’ felt bullied by Mr. Vigna’s representative(s) trespassing on his (the father’s, not Mr. Ezra Levant’s) property for reasons Mr. Vigna claims are legitimate) and, if you can believe it, I think Mr. Levant actually pitied Mr. Vigna.

Mr. Levant’ lawyer sounded every bit as good as I had hoped for, from having watched his demeanor yesterday.  I have to admit, I really like him – he has a way of understating things that permits the listener to draw his own conclusion without ‘beating him/her over the head with it’ (if you know what I mean), but which is ‘louder than shouting’…

Mr. Vigna continued in a manner similar to the one I observed yesterday.  Much of the time (when standing up) he would rest his hands on the desk and lean forward in a bullishly aggressive manner (at least, it looked so from my point of view).  At one point the judge requested him (and it almost seemed to me that the judge was a little exasperated at having to do so) to not lean so far forward because he was so close to the microphone, it was interfering with the microphone’s proper function.

(Aside:  I think Mr. Vigna was using one of the new super-awesome Sharpie pens – guaranteed not to bleed through to the next page. There are two types of this new pen – the ‘click’ type and the ‘cap’ type.  To the best of my observations, Mr. Vigna was using the ‘cap’ type, blue, if I am not mistaken.  I rather like these ones, and used the same kind (Sharpie, cap-type, blue ink) to record my notes from today between the first break and the lunch break (approximately 12:20 and 13:00 hours… I always switch pens and ink colours between breaks….  These ‘cap’ type Sharpie pens come in black, blue, red, green and purple – but, as far as I know, you can only get the purple and green ones if you buy a multi-pack.  The GTEC-C4 pen multi-packs include the same colours – but also add orange, which the Sharpie ‘cap’-type multipack does not have.)

At other times, when Mr. Vigna was not leaning against the desk, he seemed (in my layman’s eyes) to have had difficulty containing his ‘energy’ – or, in other vernacular, one could say he seemed to have had ‘too much sharp chi’, if you will.

He kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other.  Even in between ‘weight shifts’, he kind of bobbed up and down on the balls of his feet.  In addition, he kept making small little nervous movements with his hands.  And, yes, he did pull his pants up a few times – but aside from a few little glances he threw Richard Warman who sat in on part of the morning proceedings (and one glare at me that started by looking over his left shoulder, than turning about 345 degrees and finishing the glare over his right shoulder), he did not seem to pay much attention to the audience.

While I’m on the topic of ‘audience’…

When I wrote my initial observations on the ‘Warman vs Free Dominion’ appeal hearing (yeah, I know – I never DID finish my write up….I’m still thinking over some bits of it, especially the broader implications of the Irwing case), I noted that there was a pretty young blond woman with awesome shoes in the audience who looked like she had had a tooth ache,  She arrived just after things would get under way and leave just before the breaks, preventing me from saying ‘hi’ and complimenting her on her shoes (I like shoes almost as much as I like pens).

Well, that same young woman was in the audience yesterday.  You’ll be relieved – she no longer looked like she had a tooth ache.  That made me feel glad for her.  I would not have noticed her, because she sat behind me, except that her manner of arrival and departure jogged my highly imperfect memory.

And while I’m on the topic of the audience…

At just about 10 am, Mr. Richard Warman walked in and sat down in the front row in front of me.  During this time, Mr. Vigna was cross-examining Mr. Levant, and they just happened to be talking about the part of the suit where Mr. Vigna believes his reputation was damaged by Mr. Levant’s claim that he (Mr. Vigna) ‘had access to’ a neo-nazi  website.

Now, here, I have got to be careful in how I word things…. This was one of those things ‘under dispute’ and at the heart of the lawsuit – and I freely admit, I am not trained in the legal profession.  So, please, do take this as a lay person’s highly imperfect impressions and observations and nothing more.

The issue which was discussed was what Mr. Levant had written regarding the ‘Jadewar’ membership in a neo-nazi site, and its role in ‘stuff’.  And, I do not want to get into the ‘nitty gritty details’ of the case while I am tired and before I have had a chance to think it through.

Still, it is a fact that Mr. Levant specifically said under cross examination that he believed Mr. Vigna was much better a person than to join a neo-nazi group/party/site/whatever.  He (Mr. Levant) did not believe Mr. Vigna WAS a neo-nazi at all,  All he (Mr. Levant) wrote and asserted (and, I presume, still believes to be true, based on the sources he cited) was that Mr. Vigna ‘had access to’ it – as in, was aware of and could, if he so wanted, have looked up the password or found some other means (like asking Mr. Dean Stacey) to access it (because the information and password were contained ‘in the files’ which he, Mr. Vigna, presumably had access to – at least, that is my highly imperfect understanding of the testimony).

On several occasions, Mr. Levant said he did not think Mr. Vigna himself was a neo-nazi, like ‘Richard Warman’ or ‘like that man there’ – while he indicated Mr. Warman….

More to come tomorrow!

Posted in freedoms, opression, politics, society. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Ezra Levant and Giaccomo Vigna ‘cross swords’ inside a courtroom

June 24, 2010 — xanthippa

Ezra Levant is a colourful character – to say the least.

He is the Canadian lawyer who became a household name as the guy who is willing to put his money where his mouth is when it comes to defending the most important and fundamental of all the human rights – the right to freedom of speech.

Because of his responsible self-conduct as both a human being and a journalist (he was the editor of Western Standard),  he had become the target of the Human Rights Commissions – both the Canadian federal version as well as its various provincial tentacles.

It is difficult for most of us, reasoning human beings, to understand just how badly twisted things have become in our society, just how endangered our rights as human beings have truly become, until this Kafkaesque nightmare Mr. Levant found himself in brought it to our awareness.  Once there, there was no going back.

Even kids could figure it out!

What is the best way to fight injustice?

Expose it – so everyone can see it for what it is and judge for themselves.  Most people are actually much smarter than the ‘Nanny State’ gives them credit for!

What is the best way to take power away from a bully?

Humour.

Mr. Levant has, over the years, combined these two weapons very, very effectively.  Which is what got him in trouble with Mr. Vigna….

Mr. Vigna is a fascinating person.

He is (or was – I don’t know his current employment status) a lawyer for the Canadian Human Rights Commission.  His one and only claim to fame (to the best of my knowledge) so far has been to be the lawyer who, during the Mark Lemier case, asked for the court to adjourn because he was ‘ not feeling serene’ and thus unable to argue the case…

Today (thanks to email by BCF alerting me to this), I went to watch what happened during the court case where Mr. Vigna is suing Mr. Levant for defamation or libel (I can’t keep those two things straight…), based on what Mr. Levant wrote about Mr. Vigna on his blog.  It was the second last scheduled day of the trial:  Mr. Levant finished his testimony and Mr. Vigna began his cross-examination of him.

Tomorrow were supposed to be the closing arguments only, but Mr. Vigna was unable to finish his cross examination today.  The judge suggested another day be added to the proceedings:  this seemed (in my never-humble-opinion) to throw Mr. Vigna into a panic!  He promised to be more focused and brief – he already has his closing argument written up (he said).  To a non-lawyer type person like me, the level of Mr. Vigna’s agitation at the suggestion that another day be added to the proceedings seemed rather out of proportion.  What do I know!

Anyhow, after Mr. Vigna swore up and down that he’d be brief (sic!), the judge just said we’d start earlier in the morning so we could hope to get through it…

So, what went on today?

I am a notoriously slow thinker.  It will take me a while to mull this through – so, these are really really really preliminary observations.  I’ll do a better write-up, with the proper links and all, later.

What I WOULD like to focus on, though, are the ‘big things’.  The major topics, true, but even more than what was said, I’d like to focus on how it was said and the body language that went on.

Why?

Because I think that our brains are very curious organs.  They process information on many levels – and they don’t always tell us all of what they are doing.  But, they DO tell our bodies…which is why body language can tell us more about what is going on (at times) than words can.  And, Mr. Vigna seemed so delightfully unaware of what his body language was projecting, it made quite an impression on me…

Even before things got underway, the two main characters in the trial presented very different demeanor.

Mr. Vigna was first nervously arranging numerous boxes of ‘stuff’ he had wheeled in (in those ‘Staples’ boxes that hold many bundles of printer paper).  Then he sat at his desk/table, leaned forward over papers, head resting on the tips of the fingers of his right hand (which also held a cheap pen) as if thinking hard through a headache (we’ve all been there!).

Mr. Levant was  full of excited energy – sort of like what you see in an athlete before a race.  He was busy telling his lawyer about Atatürk and analyzing his policies – including his take on the whole freedom of speech and libel ‘stuff’:  it seemed to me Mr. Levant had gone to quite a lot of depth as well as breadth to prepare for this issue!

When the case resumed, Mr. Levant was giving testimony.  Then, after he finished, Mr. Vigna began to cross examine him.

While he testified, Mr. Levant’s body language was pretty natural.

Mr. Vigna, at times, objected:  during the objections, his body language varied between frustrated and aggressive:  lots of little ‘fussy’ movements with his hands, head tilts and so on.  Otherwise, his body language suggested to my layman’s eyes that he was still ‘working through a headache’.  I ought to mention:  he did wear a lovely tie with beautiful, serenely blue stripes on it.

The judge’s (the Honourable Mr. Justice Smith)body language was ‘carefully neutral’.

Mr. Levant’s lawyer (remind me not to play cards against him) had non-existent ‘natural’ body language, but maintained the ‘professional blankness’ that seems the preferred body language of the most highly paid lawyers (from my limited observation

OK – this is getting long.  I wish I had the ability (like this consise write up by thenice dude who sat next to me) to percolate the pertinent facts into a brief article…. while I’m getting ‘up there’ in the word count…

During the cross examination, Mr. Vigna rested his hands on the edge of his desk and really, really leaned forward with his upper body, giving him a very ‘bull-like’ aggressive body language – until Mr. Levant answered (in response to one of Mr. Vigna’s questions)  asserted that he thought Mr. Vigna WAS a ‘political bully’.  It was at exactly THAT point that Mr. Vigna’s body language ‘softened up’….

Mr. Vigna seemed to think that the ‘best’ way to cross examine Mr. Levant was too, at times, fire several questions with mutually contradictory answers at once – and hoping Mr. Levant answers one of them in a way Mr. Vigna could ‘paraphrase’ (as, in, twist).  Another approach he also seemed to take was to fire ‘statements’ at Mr. Levant – without a question – and waiting…..if Mr. Levant responded, he’d say ‘THAT’ was ‘NOT the question he asked’ – until even the judge began to point out to Mr. Vigna that he had failed to ask an actual question….

Mr. Levant’s body language went from ‘anticipation-excited’ to ‘passionate’ (freedom of speech bits) to frustrated (having to repeat himself 7-8 times).

The judge’s body language?

Hard to read.

In my never-humble-opinion, the judge’s body language went from ‘guardedly impartial’ to ‘suppressing the giggles’ to ‘bored’ to ‘mildly frustrated’ to ‘seriously disturbed’ by Mr. Vigna’s behaviour (which, at one point, included Mr. Vigna actually physically pulling up his pants as he shot a self-satisfied ‘we got him now’ look to his only supporte in the audience over something that was NOT a ‘goth-cha’ moment, but rather another demonstration of how Mr. Vigna just ‘did not get’ what was happening around him….)

OK, I am not a lawyer or any kind of legal mind….  These are just my personal observations.  But, today was the first time I saw Mr. Vigna in any circumstances whatsoever.  Yet, I was forced (by his dmeanour as wll as his behaviour) to conclude that he is not really aware of what he is doing, how he comes across or just how irrelevant his arguments to the court are…

Sorry to quit before I told the whole story – I plead fatigue and hope (not certainty) that I’ll make it back to the  courthouse tomorrow….

Either way – more to come later!

Posted in freedoms, opression, politics, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , . 9 Comments »

Today’s earthquake

June 23, 2010 — xanthippa

The last week of school before the summer break begins is always hectic – at least, for us, parents.  We had extra excitement today:  a bit of an earthquake.

Here are the ‘hard data’ particulars on it.

This got me thinking….

Could this quake, perhaps, have been caused by some people  who are not feeling in a serene state of mind ‘quaking in their boots’ at the prospect of having to cross-examine Mr. Ezra Levant?

Posted in about, freedoms, society. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »

Obama to get power to turn off the internet – worldwide

June 18, 2010 — xanthippa

Sit up and pay attention.

I have been ranting on and on, that we need to set up a parallel system to the internet:  one so diffuse that it could not be controlled by any authority.

Why?

Because various governments have been attempting to strangle the freedom to exchange information which people all over the world have been exercising:  and which has been a powerful weapon against suppressing information that various governments would rather not make public.

This coming Sunday will be the first anniversary of the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan.  If her death was not caught on video and posted on the internet for all the world to see, would we know as much as we do about the protests against the rigged elections in Iran?  (On this note – the demonstration which is taking place in London, England, to mark the anniversary of her death this Sunday has had its location moved by the police at the last minute:  instead of Trafalgar Square, it will be held at Richmond Terrace junction with Whitehall opposite Downing Street.)

Of course, this is just the tiny tip of a huge iceberg!

It’s EVERYTHING!!!

It usually starts with ‘protecting children’ – after all, who could be against protecting our children?!?!

So, filters and tracking traps go on.

Then it’s pornography.

And black lists.

Of course, history has shown us (the last revelations were from Australia, were they not?) that most of the sites that are blacklisted and censored do not actually have anything to do with paedophilia or even pornography.  Rather, most have been political sites critical of the ruling government and/or the censorship bodies.

After these two biggies comes ‘security’.

Again, it is an emotional appeal that precludes any reasonable argument without being accused of siding with terrorists and criminals and other ‘enemies’.

And it is exactly this reasoning that lies behind the PCNAA (Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act) that Joe Lieberman, with vigorous support from Jay Rockefeller (the guy who thinks the world would be better off without the internet) is pushing through!

This bill – once law – would give Obama the power to shut down the internet.

Everywhere.

Remember that saying – the one about people who are willing to give up freedom for security not deserving either?

So, any ideas on an alternate method of connecting up?

If we get a few good ideas, we can take this off-line:  you know, before the line goes dead….

Posted in corruption, freedoms, opression, politics, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Even more on male and female circumcision: balancing conflicting human rights

June 17, 2010 — xanthippa

A few days ago, I posted my thought on ‘The trouble with ‘circumcision’.  A friend replied – in a private email, so as to save me the embarrasement of lambasting me in public – pointing out to me the medical benefits of male circumcision.  His heart is definitely in the right place!

He even supplied me with a couple of links:  here and here.  I had thought that I had successfully debunked both of these types of claims.  Obviously, I had not.

Still, this is a very important debate – which is why I thought I ought to post my reply to him.  It was a bit long – I do go on a lot – so I split it up into two parts:  the ‘physical issues’, and the ‘rights issues’, below.

What makes all the medical arguments for or against male circumcision irrelevant is that this is a question of rights.

Human rights.

Because removing a healthy body part – no matter how beneficial one may think this to be – is not something one person has the right to decide on behalf of another person.

Parents must do their best to look after their children. They must make decisions on their behalf regarding medical treatment when their children are ill or injured. But nobody – not even a parent – has the right to subject a healthy child to non-reversible medical procedures, amputations of healthy tissue or any other violation of that child’s bodily integrity.

Yes, parents have the right to raise their child as they believe best.

No, that does not give parents the right to subject a healthy child to invasive medical procedures or random amputations!

I am aware that many parents have ‘snipped’ their sons, truly believing they were doing the best thing for their children. Families that perform circumcision on their female children also truly believe that they are acting in the best interest of their child.

That is something we must acknowledge: these parents are not monsters who want to punish their daughters for being female! Or to hurt or damage them. But, their beliefs lead them to actions which DO harm and damage their children.

THAT is what we must address!

And it is not easy to admit that one was duped into harming one’s own child!

But it is important that we face the truth and stop tolerating this violation of children’s bodies and rights. Each and every individual can choose to become circumcised as an adult – and nobody else has the right to interfere with this choice.

Bodily integrity is one of the core human rights.

We must not tolerate its violations.

Even by well meaning parents!

I am sorry to have hit another point of disagreement with you – please, do not take this as an attack upon you, personally. Just that this is one of those instances where I think many of us, in ‘The West’, have ‘blinders’ on: we see the horror and just how wrong this is when we see a variation of this practice by a different culture – but we seem unable to recognize that we are guilty of exactly the same thing, in a slightly different form.

Perhaps I did not express my central thought as explicitly in my original post as I should have: until we recognize just how wrong male circumcision is, until we begin to respect the human right to bodily integrity of ALL our children, we cannot possibly criticize (much less stop) the practice of female circumcision.

I agree with your sentiment: until popular tide turns, boys will suffer and get ill – and, in some cases, loose their lives: but I lament this same outcome as the result of an unnecessary, traumatic amputation of a healthy body part!

We are both going to the same place: we just differ about which route is medically better.

Still, there is no counterargument for the human right to bodily integrity…. because there is no valid argument for ‘male-only’ circumcision on the basis of whose rights are supreme: the right of an infant to bodily integrity or the right of a parent to amputate healthy body parts on the grounds of their ‘beliefs’ – sorry, getting long winded here…

What I mean is that there is no argument that, on the basis of ‘balancing rights’, would permit ‘male circumcision’ while forbidding ‘female circumcision’.

If the parents’ right to amputate a child’s healthy body part on the grounds of their beliefs (religious, cultural, scientific or otherwise) are supreme – all forms of genital mutilation will be ‘in’.

If the child’s right to bodily integrity is tops, then NO form of circumcision can be permitted!

We must face up to that in our fight against female circumcision….

Thoughts?

Posted in freedoms, politics, religion, society. Tags: , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

More on male and female circumcision…

June 17, 2010 — xanthippa

A few days ago, I posted my thought on ‘The trouble with ‘circumcision’.  A friend replied – in a private email, so as to save me the embarrasement of lambasting me in public – pointing out to me the medical benefits of male circumcision.  His heart is definitely in the right place!

He even supplied me with a couple of links:  here and here.  I had thought that I had successfully debunked both of these types of claims.  Obviously, I had not.

Still, this is a very important debate – which is why I thought I ought to post my reply to him.  It was a bit long – I do go on a lot – so I split it up into two parts:  the ‘physical issues’, below, and the ‘rights issues’.

Thanks for the sensitivity of a private reply.

Still, I do stand behind what I wrote.

The studies, so often touted and cited to justify male circumcision have long been debunked. As a matter of fact, when it comes to urinary tract infections – circumcised males have a higher incidence of them than uncircumcised men.

Plus – I didn’t put this in the post because I thought it would bring a wrong focus to any ensuing debate – circumcised men have a much, much higher incidence of impotence than uncircumcised men. This is the direct result of cutting off all them pleasure-sensing nerve endings AND of desensitizing the glans by exposing it.

One has to balance the benefits and dangers of circumcising versus the benefits and dangers of not circumcising!

If you live in the middle of a desert, where you often substitute sand for water when cleansing, one could make a case for circumcision being beneficial. It is true that it requires a person to maintain a certain level of hygiene to clean an uncircumcised penis, which is not possible in a desert. Under those circumstances, the long-term damage from circumcision is less harmful that the damage from lack of hygiene to an uncircumcised penis. That, I agree with.

That is why circumcision arose among desert cultures in the first place.

But, we do not live in a desert. Our kids have the ability to maintain basic hygiene. As such, the danger of damage from poor hygiene and not circumcising our sons is very, very low – while the dangers of circumcising are in no way diminished.

While cleaning an uncircumcised penis, boys will learn that it is pleasurable to touch their penis. This naturally leads to healthy masturbation: something many religions forbid. It was precisely in order to prevent young men from masturbating that circumcision was popularized in our society!

As for the STDs….. let me just note that masturbation is a much safer sexual release for young single men than using condoms and a much more realistic option than trying to get them to abstain from all sexual activity altogether!

Which brings us to the claims that circumcised men are in less of a danger of an STD. The danger of infection because of a ‘tear in the foreskin’ only comes into play if people engage in high-risk, rough sex (rape, anal sex, multiple partners etc.) and do not use a condom.

If a man decides that he wants to engage in this form of ‘entertainment, he can choose to get circumcised as an adult. It will give him all the ‘protection’ he seeks (though, as I explained in the post, there is not a convincing case that this reduction in infection rates is the result of the circumcision itself rather than the safer-sex education that accompanied the circumcision in the adult male populations on which these studies were carried out).

Not circumcising him as an infant does not prevent a man from seeking this ‘protection from STDs’ as an adult – should he CHOOSE it!!!

Let me recap: Several decades ago, doctors claimed circumcision was ‘cleaner and healthier’ than leaving the penis intact.

You know, like about the same time these ‘same’ doctors prescribed thalidamide for morning sickness…

About the same time as menopausal women were pressured into routine hysterectomies – no longer need for the womb, so take it out, just to make sure. Right? Except we now know just how very important a role the uterus plays in the immune systems of post-menopausal women….

Let’s face it: many things that doctors in the past never even considered have since turned out to play an important role in our body. Randomly removing bits that are not diseased may have effects we have not even considered, much less measured their impact.

Current medical body of evidence – even considering the old studies – falls squarely on the side of ‘circumcision has no measurable health benefits – but it does have measurable harm to one’s health’. The push to continue circumcision is political, cultural and religious – and financial…. Remember, those who claim circumcision prevents AIDS get tons of international aid money to perform these circumcisions, so they are hardly an impartial source of information.

Let me put it a different way: have you ever examined what is under our fingernails?

TONS of germs!

Even the cleanest-looking nails harbor germs under them…. And kids’ nails? A hotbed of infections!

And – infants often scratch their faces with their little nails: you can see the danger there!

And – many kids stick their hands, fingernails and all, in their mouth! Or even – do I dare say it – pick their noses!  Then they rub their eyes…

The potential for spreading these germs under their nails are, well, big!

And then there is the danger of blood poisoning from an infected hang-nail….

Just how much ‘cleaner’ would it be, how much more protected from infection would our children be, if we just removed their nail-beds while they were in their infancy?

After all – when they are little, the nail-beds are tiny. The scarring will be minimal. And if you do it early enough in infancy, they won’t really understand the pain, or remember it.

So, all parents who want their kids to be clean and healthy should have their infants’ nail-beds surgically removed!

Let’s face it – it is the same argument….

Posted in politics, religion, society. Tags: , , , , , . 5 Comments »

“Peole who walk are easier to rule”

June 15, 2010 — xanthippa

OK – I did not look up the quote exactly:  if I picked up the book, I’d end up reading it (again) instead of writing this post…  Still, the sentiment is expressed accurately.

The speaker was Leto, the millennia old,  human-half-morphed-into-The-Worm God Emperor of  Dune in Frank Herbert‘s most illuminating books on human nature.  This tyrant (who only did things ‘for the good of his people’) ruled with an iron fist.  Part of the method which he used to maintain control over the population was by controlling all means of transportation except for walking/jogging.

Leto controlled all the vehicles, in the air and on the ground.  At one point, he explained that the reason for this was that a population that walks is easier to rule.

Now, let me digress to my childhood ‘behind the iron curtain’… I’ll connect it up, I promise!

The defining thing, the one aspect of life that took up almost all the ‘free time’ of most of the people I remember from my childhood, was ‘supply logistics’.

First of all, I did not know any family – not a single one – where there was a ‘stay-at-home-parent’.

The socialist state instilled, as the most supreme of all ‘human rights’, ‘the right to work‘.  This meant that every single person had a right to a job.  Zero unemployment! Nobody starving on the street!  Heaven on Earth!

Of course, nobody was permitted to ‘opt out’ from this ‘right’.  After all, The State could not appear to be failing anyone in upholding this ‘human right’!

The upshot of this was that, whether a parent wanted (or could afford to – the economic reality would have made this very, very difficult) to stay at home longer than the permitted 6-month maternity leave, their ‘right to work’ trumped their wishes and they had to go off to ‘a job’.

After a full day of work, one had to find a way to buy necessities of life: from food to toothpaste and toilet paper.  Because everyone walked to shops, or took public transit, shopping for food for a week’s worth of ‘stuff’ at one time (as is the norm in  North America) was not an option:  even if you could carry it all home in your two hands (often walking up many stories in apartment buildings where elevators either did not exist or did not work), there would not be enough room in your tiny fridge and ‘compact’ kitchen for all that much. So, ‘food gathering’ was a daily task.

It had to be planned well – the shops were not open in the evenings, so one had to rush off straight from work to the bus, so one could get to the store on the other side of town which had supposedly got a shipment of toothpaste.  Or to that clothing store that  got white/yellow t-shirts which were the required gym uniform for the kids, but of which there was constantly a shortage .

And you had to leave yourself enough time to make it to at least 2-3  stores:  even though milk and bread were usually available, they weren’t always…  And that does not even touch on the meat situation…

An average woman could expect to spend at least 2 hours a day ‘shopping’ – running from one place to another, standing in one queue after another, just to keep the household supplied with food and soap…  This was true of ‘everything’:  many men spent a lot of their time trying to find supplies and professionals who’d help with any household repairs or renovations, car care, and so on…

Plus people had to try and have a supply of luxury items, like, say, packages of ‘Western’ coffee: one had to bring these when one went to see a dentist or a doctor or any other kind of ‘professional’.  Needless to say, much of people’s ‘private’ conversations were about what one could find where, when.

This did not leave most people much time or energy for ‘political unrest’….

Which was the point!

Some of the shortages were real – but others were completely artificial:  an item of which there was a shortage in one area was temporarily over-supplied in another.  This was actually very, very clever:  not only did it keep most of the people too busy to want do anything about the political system, it gave them a chance to ‘succeed’ – and to feel the satisfaction that comes from succeeding!

OK – it may seem petty to us.  But, after a while of living in a system where necessities are not easily obtainable, people quickly begin to derive their self-worth from how good a ‘gather’ they are!

This makes sense:  humans started out as hunters and gatherers.  It is only natural that giving people these daily obstacles to overcome, giving them the opportunity to have these little successes over and over and over, makes the population relatively docile. In this type of a society, it is only if the shortages are too big and numerous and the majority of the people is denied the warm feelings they get from overcoming these daily ‘little obstacles’ that the population is likely to turn militant.

That is human nature.

So, what does that have to do with ‘people who walk’?

Driving from one place to another is too easy:  it does not take anywhere near as much time as trying to take public transit (and to bring your shopping back home on crowded public transit), it also takes much more physical energy to walk than it does to drive.  Living like this, people don’t have time or energy to do much more than grumble about ‘the system’…

Plus, it is the government who controls the public transportation systems:  if you want to stop a lot of people getting to a specific place to protest, just delay all the trains coming into town that day.  Or, cancel the bus runs that day.   Let’s see how many people will show up at the demonstration, when most are stuck in ‘in between stations’!

Let’s face it:  having control of one’s mobility enables one’s independence!

Which brings me to my actual point:

What are the ‘carbon caps’ focusing on?

If you follow all the ‘recommendations’ of the UN and their warm mongers, what kind of public policies flow out of them?

PUBLIC TRANSPORT = GOOD

PERSONAL VEHICLES = BAD

Now, more than ever, we are bombarded almost daily with more and more evidence that the IPCC recommendations are not founded on any scientific observations but are 100% top-down policy driven.  Today, one of the top IPCC people (a prof of climate studies at East Anglia, none-the-less) published a paper that claims there was NEVER a consensus of thousands (or even hundreds) of scientists behind the IPCC reports!

Of course, those of us interested in the actual science of ‘Global Warming’ and not the politics have been pointing this out for a long time – not that it got much play in the ‘balanced reporting’ by the MSM…

WHY?!?!?

The IPCC report claims a crisis of global proportions – which could only be solved by the establishment of a global governance structure, controlled by the UN.  Now, even as the credibility of those claims is melting away into thin air, the UN is already laying the groundwork for another ‘catastrophe of world proportions’ which can only be brought under control by a world-wide effort – co-ordianted, predictablky enough, by the UN whose appointed committees would have the right to shape all the national governments’ policies…

You’d better get ready for all the new buzzwords!

Oh, and by the way – their suggested ‘solution’ to the artificially induced ‘banking crisis’ is to levy a ‘world tax’ on each and every banking transaction: giving the UN the first direct ‘global taxation’ revenue and powers.

Hey – where is that a ‘Muh-ha-ha!’ sound coming from?

Posted in corruption, freedoms, human nature, opression, politics, scientific fraud, society. Tags: , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »
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