This link leads to two pictures, one of Putin, the other of Obama. The pictures say it all – but the comments section is unbelievable…. The sad thing is, these people are actually serious.
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Pirate Party gets elected in Berlin
September 18, 2011 — xanthippaJust in time for the International Talk Like a Pirate Day, the Pirate Party in Germany has made its legislative debut at the state level in Berlin.
And not too soon, if I may be so bold.
Why?
Because the vast majority of legislators ‘out there’ are woefully ignorant on digital issues. What is worse – they are not only ignorant, they are not interested in educating themselves on the basic issues concerning it. This makes them easy targets for well organized, amply funded lobbyists for industries intent on profiting fromone-sided digital policies…and from unscrupulous civil servants who want to play Big Brother – or just snoop on their neighbours!
In Canada, a whole slew of questionable digital policies are set to be rammed through the legislature this fall. These policies will permit the police complete access to all your online communication – without a warrant!!! And, for those of us who make our phone calls via the internet (our house phone, for example, uses voip), this DOES mean that the police would not need a warrant to listen to our phone calls…
In related news, the National Intelligence Service in South Korea has admitted to ‘packet tapping’ to monitor gmail communications (gmail had previously been considered to be more secure means of online communication that other systems, like Outlook, which are known to have ‘back doors’ built into them to facilitate government surveilance of private communication). If these laws are passed in Canada, this type of outrageous government behaviour will not be a scandal – it will be ‘the law of the land’!
Too bad that the Pirate Party of Canada seems so incompetent, and that there is not a peep from them during this Ontario election. Their wiki page does not even note the Ontario election’s existence…
I am looking for a place to park my vote – and not one of the leading candidates in my riding deserves it. It is not surprising that the voter turnout is so low!
France bans blocking streets by praying
September 16, 2011 — xanthippaMost people who pray do so privately or in ‘houses of worship’. This is just fine. (I may consider ‘prayer’ to be immoral, but I would never condone a government legislating morality.)
For many years, Muslims have blocked the streets of Paris by praying in the streets during Friday prayers. It has been widely reported that people drive from far and wide to intentionally choke up Paris as a form of bullying: we can stop your city whenever we want to – so we will. Muslim leaders simply assert that there are insufficient houses of worship for them, so they are forced to pray in the streets…
Today, there just may be a solution.
The French authorities have offered the Muslim community a large place to pray – and followed up this ‘carrot’ with a stout ‘stick: they have passed a new law which forbids Muslims from blocking the streets by praying. This is being done in the name of protecting the principle of secularism.
Of course, it raises a lot of questions – most of them very uncomfortable.
While I understand the peoblem of aggressive, in-you-face-praying (and, let’s face it: all the ‘faiths’, religious and secular, are guilty of this in different circumstances), I am not certain if the French solutuion is the correct way to go.
Certainly, France is not the only place where Muslim communities are using ‘in-your-face praying’ to intimidate non-Muslim citizens and bully political authorities by closing streets during Friday prayers.
Certainly, this practice must not be tolerated.
But solving it by providing government buildings to be used as houses of prayer seems to me to be a cure which does more harm than good!
Sure, the ‘problem’ is ‘out of sight’. Commerce can go on and the populace is not directly intimidated.
But at what cost?
Neatly and quickly, the burden of providing a ‘house of prayer’ for Muslims has been shifted from Muslims to The State!
What happened to that principle of secularism?
With the French State buildings becoming Mosques, where is the secular principle of separation of State and Mosque?
Perhaps I am simply unaware of the details of the deal – there might be some provisions for temporary use, like the types of permits for Santa Claus parades. If so, I am happy to be wrong.
However, I do think that accepting – even on a temporary basis – the responsibility for housing praying members of any religion in order to get them to obey the laws of the land is an unreasonable accommodation and a serious error of principles.
The law states that blocking streets is illegal. It is the government’s obligation to apply the laws equally and consistently – without regard to the lawbreakers’ religion, ethnicity or ‘culture’. The laws must be blind to these particulars: that is what equality before the law means!
Therefore, the laws should have been applied, fully and equally, from the beginning.
Instead, local streets had been permitted to be closed, often using private security guards from the Mosques to intimidate non-Muslims out of the area occupied by the in-your-face worshippers. That should never have been permitted.
[If I were the ruler of the universe, I’d start by fining the lawbreakrs, then, if necessary, escalate to other measures:
- playing loud music in the streets to encourage people who wish to pray to raise the money to build themselves their own house of worship (to pray on their own dime and not the public one)
- deploying canine units to patrol the streets and ensuring that the sidewalks adjacent to the Mosque and all other buildings in the area are clear for obvious safety reasons (the presence of the dogs would invalidate the prayers of those outside, so they would truly have no reason to clog the streets)
- and if that failed, the rules that apply to any other unruly and illegal public gathering would be put into action.]
(Aside – I have definite ideas about how much governments should be permitted to regulate public gatherings and I am not changing thses views. All I am asserting is that whatever the rules are, they must be applied equally to all. If the rules are bad, we should change them. Until then…)
Of course, France is not the only country with this particular method of in-your-face prayer is disrupting public peace and order. However flawed their approach and however bad its longterm results may be, at least in France, they have the guts to name the problem and are trying to do something to solve it.
C.G.P. Grey: ‘What are the continents?’
September 15, 2011 — xanthippaAside from the crack about Pluto, this is a fun little video.
Hey – September 14th was ‘Climate Parody Day’!
September 14, 2011 — xanthippaSorry – I did not realize that September 14th was ‘Climate Parody Day’!!!
If I had, I would have done something, like, witty…or something…
Perhaps a cartoon of Al Gore in a turban shaped like an ‘oveheating Earth’ or David Suzuki holding the IPCC report (any version – they are all corrupt) and threatening to burn (or behead) any heretic who does not treat it with sufficient reverence….
I guess you’ll have to pop over to The Reference Frame to read up on today’s festivities!
Of course, for a daily dose of climate skepticism, you can head over to Donna Laframboise’s ‘NoFrakkingConsensus’. (Her book on the topic will be ready soon!)
Which constitutional article was that?
September 14, 2011 — xanthippaThis lunatic is, unfortunately, a voice of influence in parts of the Arab world. Here, he claims – with a straight face – that America’s founding fathers tried to introduce an article to the US Constitution to ban Jews from US land.
Really.
Of course, there are other voices, too – they just get drowned out much of the time.
Which is a shame – these following people do make sense:
And there are Imams who do condemn violence in their sermons – yet they do not always find a receptive audience. This makes it so much more important that we speak up about them and help their voices be heard.
24-hour Online Fundraiser for MSF: 17-18 Sept., 2011
September 14, 2011 — xanthippaDoctors without borders – MSF – do a lot of good work.
A community of YouTubers is holding its 3rd annual fundraiser for MSF, live on the internet, 17th to 18th of September, 2011.
Here are 2 of the YouTube videos that explain this event:
AronRa
NonStampCollector
The Ottawa Citzen: ‘Blog vs. Blog’
September 13, 2011 — xanthippaWow – the MSM is taking note of the Baglow v. Free Dominion decision!
This is most excellent – the fight for freedom of speechin general and the Fourniers’ and Smith’s battle in particular is of great importance to all of us. It is gratifying to see a mainstream newspaper pick the story up.
If you have missed it, I have written up this ruling here.
H/T: Andrew Phillips
On 9/11 ‘conspiracy theories’…
September 13, 2011 — xanthippaI do not like to blog while angry, but, I find it difficult to keep my temper under control…
In the wake of the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade buildings in New York, there are so many idiotic (sorry – that is the only term that fits) claims being made that it makes my blood boil. Yes, I have said much of what Ithis before, and others have said it better than I – but, it seems to me, it requires re-telling.
Perhaps this time, I will say ir better – more methodically, more clearly…
Here are a few of the true claims people make – but whose significance is constantly misunderstood and misinterpreted by those who claim the 9/11 tragedy is part of a conspiracy by the US government.
Most of these ‘cospiracy theorists’ state:
‘The Government’ knew about the bombers’ plans and ‘let’ 9/11 it happen (on purpose).
To recognize the silliness of this statement, one needs to understand a little bit about the governance structures in large organizations – and, let’s face it, the US Government is a mammoth-sized one!
(I am no ‘governance guru’ – but, during one of my previous ‘professional’ incarnations, I have spent close to a decade evaluating governance in government projects. I have some limited experience analyzing, evaluating and re-structuring governance, in private, public and non-profit organizations.)
First, one must address the question: What is ‘the government’?
‘The government’ is an ‘organization made up of organization’s, each with its own agents (civil servants) – and agendas (including institutional and specific problems). Just because a ‘civil servant A’ in organization ‘B’ gets a piece of information does not mean that ‘civil servants C,D,E…etc’ in other organizations (agencies and/or departments) actually have any inkling that this bit of information exists – much less have access to it. If ‘civil servant A’ does not grasp the significance of this isolated piece of information – or has simply not processed it yet, even their supervisor may not become aware of it!
Why?
Because information is organized and graded – and only ‘kicked up’ once a certain ‘quantum’ of information/significance has been accumulated. This is how organizations gather and process information – it they did not, the organization would be crippled by the ‘noise’ of irrelevant information.
I mean the term irrelevant information quite literally – information whose relevance has not been assessed! Thus, the information is not yet connected to the facts it is relevant to – and before this assessment is made, and made correctly, the information is simply not usable.
If you excuse the tired jigsaw puzzle comparison – it may be used often, but because it is analogous…
Each bit of information is like a 1 million piece jigsaw puzzle being worked on by 1 000 people. If every puzzle piece picked up by each person is immediately shown to every other person – without regard to its relevance (Is it a corner piece? Does it have a distinguishing mark on it?) – the process is so chaotic that the puzzle will never be built.
Similarly, just because different people in different branches of the government each had a bit of relevant information does not mean they had the opportunity to fit them together. Most isolated pieces of information were not relevant enough on their own to ‘pass on’ – even were there no rivalries between various agencies each of which wanted be the one to solve ‘puzzles. Add to this the realization that most of the various agencies thought they were each working on a separate, limited investigation… They were simply not even aware that there was a bigger puzzle they should be fitting their bits of information into!
So, yes: ‘the government’ had all the information – or much of it.
Had all of it been seen by one person who happened to recognize its relevance and how to piece it together, it could potentially have prevented this tragedy from happening. But there is no evidence that this happened – and much that demonstrated it did not.
It is therefore ridiculous to suggest that, actively or passively, ‘the US Government’ is complicit in the conspiracy to comit this crime!
* * *
What the government IS guilty of is trying to look smarter than it was – after the fact.
Individual civil servants/bureaucrats were trying to protect their butts – pretending they were more in control than they were, more competent than they were (individually as well as organizationally).
And the government spokespeople were trying to calm panic among us, the little people, by pretending they were more in control than they were.
Some people believed them! Then, the lies caught up with them. That is what made them look guilty…
Let me re-phrase Ockham’s Razor/’the law of parsimony’ as ‘Xanthippa’s second law of human dynamics’:
Never ascribe to ‘conspiracy’ what can better be explained by incompetence!
Conspiracies require secrecy. Being ‘in’ on a conspiracy makes people feel ‘special’ – and it usually makes them want to tell everyone just how ‘special’ they are. Not bragging about one’s ‘specialness’ requires self-discipline – something most people sorely lack.
People are simply not good at conspiracies!
This does not mean that conspiracies do not occur – they do.
However, the conspiracies that actually succeed are ones in which a very limited number people is actively involved. A conspiracy that would encompass even 1% of the people involved in ‘the government’ would be blabbed out long before it could succeed!
Which brings me to the other part of the claim:
Some people in ‘the government’ worked with the attackers
D’-ugh!
Of course! But…
When Soviet agents infiltrated Western governments during the cold war, it did not mean that those governments were working FOR the Soviet Union. Similarly, the Islamists had some people who had infiltrated the US government and were feeding them information/aiding them.
That stands to reason. It would have been foolish of the terrorists not to cultivate some sources within the US government civil service who, knowingly or not, fed them intelligence.
But it does not mean that the US government itself was directing their actions!
No, they were clueless…or, at best, crippled by political correctness which prevented them from investigating suspect employees from ‘protected’ groups.
And – of course, no government wants to admit that the enemy had penetrated their defences. Again, both as an organization which would lose credibility and as individual civil servants caught napping on the job, the first instinct is to lie to cover one’s behind. Individual behinds and the collective behind.
Of course, these lies get exposed – and the lies uttered in order to hide simple incompetence begin to look like ‘the government’ is complicit!
Yes – there are many other claims, many claiming pseudo-scientific sources… But, upon closer scrutiny, these simply do not stand up.
Between ‘not seeing the big picture’ and ‘lying to cover butts’, the ‘big conspiracy theory’ just doesn’t hold up.
P.S. – It should not even be called ‘theory’ – it is, at best, an unsupported hypothesis. A far cry from ‘theory’. When people twist words and overstate their case – like calling a ‘hypothesis’ a ‘theory’ – a large helping of skepticism is called for. To say the least…
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 