Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
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16
Aug
2010
Welcome to Reykjavík
An eccentric little piece from Reykjavík’s Mayor. Click to enlarge.
Thanks to Hugh for bringing this to my attention.
1
Jul
2010
Torture and the media
Abstract from Desai, Pineda, Runquist, Fusunyan et al. (2010), emphasis mine:
The current debate over waterboarding has spawned hundreds of newspaper articles in the last two years alone. However, waterboarding has been
the subject of press attention for over a century. Examining the four newspapers
with the highest daily circulation in the country, we found a significant and
sudden shift in how newspapers characterized waterboarding. From the early
1930s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered
waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was
torture: The New York Times characterized it thus in 81.5% (44 of 54) of articles on
the subject and The Los Angeles Times did so in 96.3% of articles (26 of 27). By
contrast, from 2002‐2008, the studied newspapers almost never referred to
waterboarding as torture.The New York Times called waterboarding torture or
implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles (1.4%). The Los Angeles Times did so
in 4.8% of articles (3 of 63). The Wall Street Journal characterized the practice as
torture in just 1 of 63 articles (1.6%). USA Today never called waterboarding
torture or implied it was torture. In addition, the newspapers are much more
likely to call waterboarding torture if a country other than the United States is
the perpetrator. In The New York Times, 85.8% of articles (28 of 33) that dealt with
a country other than the United States using waterboarding called it torture or
implied it was torture while only 7.69% (16 of 208) did so when the United States
was responsible. The Los Angeles Times characterized the practice as torture in
91.3% of articles (21 of 23) when another country was the violator, but in only
11.4% of articles (9 of 79) when the United States was the perpetrator.
18
Jun
2010
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country
Photo: Reuters
A select few quotations from a BBC article on Hitler’s bizarre popularity in India:
Latest reports say Bollywood is now planning to cash in. A film – Dear Friend Hitler – is due to be released by the end of the year, focusing on the dictator’s relationship with his mistress Eva Braun.
…
It’s hard to narrow down what makes the dictator popular in India, but some young people say they are attracted by his “discipline and patriotism”.
Most of them are, however, quick to add that they do not approve of his racial prejudices and the Holocaust in which millions of Jews were killed.
…
Nearly all the booksellers and publishers contacted in India say it is mainly young people who read Mein Kampf. It’s not just the autobiography – books on the Nazi leader, T-shirts, bags, bandanas and key-rings are also in demand. A shop in Pune, called Teens, says it sells nearly 100 T-shirts a month with Hitler’s image on them.
Dimple Kumari, a research associate in Pune, has not read Mein Kampf but she would wear the Hitler T-shirt out of admiration for him. She calls him “a legend” and tries to put her admiration for him in perspective: “The killing of Jews was not good, but everybody has a positive and negative side.”
I have to say, I find this peculiar naivety fascinating. I also can’t imagine what it must be like for a Western traveller to be walking down a street in, say, Bangalore, spotting a few people coming towards him clad in Hitler Apparel. Indeed, staying with Bangalore, since it’s such a huge IT hub… Should we expect to see originally well-meaning and innocuous (to Indians, that is) photographs of young IT workers on their IBM or Microsoft campus, posing happily with their corporate swipe-cards dangling from from their neck, the strap perfectly framing a portrait of their “Dear Friend Hitler”? Indeed, do such places, renowned for their lack of dress-code in the West, already have a strict dress-code in places like India, in order to prevent such embarrassments? I wonder.
And, before I go, here’s another great article from Der Spiegel on the same phenomenon, only this time in Pakistan. Yep, they’re at it too. Who knows – perhaps this new-found love for the 20th century’s most hated, genocidal dictator will only serve to foster a new friendship of shared values between India and Pakistan, leading to a stable peace! Surely no harm could come of future generations of two of the world’s most antagonistic and unstable nuclear-countries worshipping a genocidal, maniacal, militaristic dictator!
Brings a whole new sense to that Vonnegut quote…
18
Jun
2010
The biggest problem with Libertarian thinking
A member of reddit, quag7, contributes to a thread entitled “I am a registered Libertarian, but it seems the party has lost its way” in /r/Libertarian. Reposting here in full. Thanks to Hugh for bringing this to my attention:
For me, the biggest problem with libertarian thinking isn’t what its critics say: that is promotes some kind of immorality in its defense of self-interest in the context of capitalist economics.
Where I got off the bus is when I realized how terribly unsustainable libertarianism is, the naivete about how money corrupts, money being to power what matter is to energy. And lastly, the lack of consideration given to how unequal the playing field is, how much class does matter, and how libertarians seek to make a “clean break” from interventionist corporatism to capitalism without addressing the massive chain of abuse which has resulted into the polarization of the wealthy and the poor.
Unsustainability – most libertarians support the free market on the basis of rights and morality, not out of pure utilitarianism, but most tend to believe that a free market in a libertarian context would also provide the greatest opportunities to the greatest amount of people. I think this, too, is a matter of faith. So long as you allow the top few percent to own the vast majority of wealth, you will always have an underclass voting itself, amending the constitution, rioting, or revolting to get some of the upper or ruling class’s money. This is why Marxism refuses to go away in the Third World. Conservatives and classical liberals like to insinuate it has something to do with bankrupt political and economic ideals in an academic context (“Ivory tower Marxists”) but in reality the reason why socialism and communism continue to find purchase in the third world is because of crippling poverty, including things like landlessness, where you can inhabit a piece of land for generations, but someone just deeds it out from under you (a Zapatista complaint).
Labor movements, social welfare programs, guranteed minimum incomes — all of these proceed from human need, and I see no indication that the somewhat benign term “self interest” applies here, as much as “crass greed” does. Libertarians practically celebrate the concepts of wage slavery, sweatshops, and so forth, because – they say – that the people working in them would be “worse off yet” without them. Good luck, 5 years down the line, making that case while the peasants get restless. How anyone feels about the morality of who gets how much pie and who has to share, the reality is that humankind will only put up with so much before organizing, revolting, striking, or otherwise influencing the system such that it is more equitable for the poor – and more offensive to libertarians. No document will constrain that. Read the rest of this entry »
15
Jun
2010
Bloody Sunday
Today, the Saville Report into the events of Bloody Sunday was published. You can read it in full here. British Prime Minister David Cameron summed up:
- No warning had been given to any civilians before the soldiers opened fire
- None of the soldiers fired in response to attacks by petrol bombers or stone throwers
- Some of those killed or injured were clearly fleeing or going to help those injured or dying
- None of the casualties was posing a threat or doing anything that would justify their shooting
- Many of the soldiers lied about their actions
- The events of Bloody Sunday were not premeditated
- Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein, was present at the time of the violence and “probably armed with a sub-machine gun” but did not engage in “any activity that provided any of the soldiers with any justification for opening fire”
The inquiry ran for 12 years at an ultimate expense of £195M. Its findings have been widely greeted positively.
What I post today is not directly connected but certainly not unrelated: a debate — I use the term loosely — between Fintan O’Toole of the Irish Times and members of the Wolfe Tones, an Irish rebel music band who have enjoyed a long, successful career. Fintan contends their music and their style of performing are inherently racist and filled with hate-speech, while the Wolfe Tones assert that… Well, that Fintan is lacking a sense of humour, that his knowledge of the history of The Troubles is lacking and that he shouldn’t be able to consider himself Irish.
While even after having watched it countless times, to me it is completely obvious who wins this farce of a “debate”, the Youtube comments tell a different story:
In any event, here is the “debate”, in full:
12
Jun
2010
Rise of the Robots
A good, short blog post from the wonderful ginandtacos blog on the increasing prevalence of unmanned vehicles in war, ending with a very sobering thought:
Won’t it be great when the military can send in the tanks without having to put crews in harm’s way?
Yes and no. The fewer casualties, the better. But what becomes of our reluctance to send the military galavanting around the sordid parts of the world once American casualties are taken out of the equation? We have almost no restraint as it is. I shudder to think of how easily Presidents and legislators will make the decision to go to war when the attitude of “We can just send robots to do it!” becomes entrenched. We saw what the advancements in design of cruise missiles in the 1980s did to the Executive Branch; if someone’s acting up, just lob a dozen Tomahawks at them from a few hundred miles away. It became the easy way to intervene without actually making a commitment or putting Americans at risk. Collateral damage isn’t much of a deterrent to our political class. UAVs are another step in that direction, a step toward a future with more remotely operated and even autonomous means of doing the dirty work.
It’s great that technology allows more American soldiers to come home alive and in one piece, but if we remove the U.S. body count from the decision-making process the only restraints on waging war will be common sense, morality, and logic. Yeah, let’s start taking bets on how well that works.
4
Jun
2010
A Strange Echo from History
Acclaimed Filmmaker Adam Curtis writes of a strange echo from history, drawing parallels between the recent news from the Middle East and an attempt by members of a Zionist terrorist group in the 40s to try to break the English blockade of Palestine. He shares with us a documentary film from the BBC archives:
As you watch the film - it raises complex reactions and thoughts in your mind. But it is ironic that, although the two events are in many ways completely different, the Israelis are now preventing Palestinians and supporters of Hamas from doing what the Israeli defence organisation – the Haganah – tried to do over 60 years ago. From 1945 the Haganah, along with the Irgun, had been carrying out a terror campaign against British soldiers in Palestine. Then in 1947 they organised the Exodus operation as an attempt to break the British blockade.
It is absolutely essential viewing. Read his blog post and watch the documentary now.
12
May
2010
Boston.com Big Picture Cataloguer
I’m a big fan of The Boston Globe’s photojournalism series, The Big Picture. So much so, in fact, that I decided to dedicate a few hours this week to building a program that would not just download the entire series, but add caption metadata to each photo, since many are informative and look very nice in Picasa, for example.
Now, I’m happy that the application is stable enough to release to the world in the Code section of my website.
Since I don’t want people to be hammering The Boston Globe’s servers, I’ve made the script wait a fraction of a second between each request, and since I don’t want people to be able to disable this functionality, unfortunately only binaries will be available for the time being. Windows binaries are available already, OS X and Linux binaries to come in a few days.
Indeed, if those at The Boston Globe have a problem with how the program operates, they need simply contact me and we can come to an agreement, but I’ve worked hard to make sure that the program contacts their servers as little as possible.
Bug reports will be automatically submitted through this website too, but if you have any unforeseen problems (e.g. a crash or a hang), email me with as much information as possible (text describing the “Traceback” printed before the crash, what album/photo the program was working on, etc).
What can you do once you’ve got the entire 2GB collection of photos downloaded? Well, you can simply look through them at your own pace and comfort, or indeed choose to create a montage screensaver from them (although be warned – a screensaver that fades from a beautiful Antarctic landscape to a bloody photo of a victim of the war in Afghanistan might not be exactly what you had in mind.)
But in any event, hopefully it’ll be of some use. Enjoy!
5
Jan
2010
Rette deine Freiheit
At the moment in Germany, there is fierce opposition growing against plans by the CDU to implement internet censorship under the guise of attacking the spread of child pornography. A movement championed by the German Piratenpartei has dubbed ex-minister for family affairs Ursula von der Leyen “Zensursula”, a portmandeau of Zensur (Censor) and Ursula, and is referring to the CDU’s plans as Stasi 2.0, a nod to the brutal secret police which operated in former East Germany.
Not only is there to be a secret list of blocked websites, such as exists in Australia, but the government is pushing for more data to be collected from citizens and retained for a long period of time.
A video which caught my attention a while back was entitled Du bist Terrorist (You are a terrorist). With soft ambient music playing, and deceptively pleasantly designed imagery, the two-minute video parodies the Du bist Deutschland ad-campaign with a soft, reassuring voice informing you of what the German government has in store for you, in terms of heavier and more invasive surveillance — because You are a terrorist.
Earlier this week I found that the same people had created a new video in the same vein, entitled Rette deine Freiheit (Save your freedom). The video focuses much more on the coming internet censorship in Germany than just data retention and physical surveillance.
Since there was no English translation available, I decided to translate it and re-upload to Youtube. The result is below:
The translation is by no means perfect, but at least it’s something. There were a few tricky problems with it:
- Einfach wegschauen: Literally “simply look away”, the video describes this as the method tried-and-tested by members of families with a history of domestic abuse. I was going to translate it as “simply look the other way” in its first instance, since this is the closest phrase in English that pertains to such a situation. However, this doesn’t exactly capture the double-meaning employed in the video, since it implies wilful ignorance which isn’t quite applicable to what the government is doing, so I decided to settle on “simply block it out”. I’m not sure I’m happy with this, however. Suggestions?
- In the sentence, “In Prävention, Therapie und Personal investiert hätte dies vielen Opfern helfen können: Reinste Verschwendung”, the meaning that is sarcastically implied is that the money that could be invested in preventative measures, therapy and personelle is much better spent on building an internet block. I don’t think I captured this very well.
In any event, there’s likely to be an official translation soon (I just saw an “Englisch (bald verfügbar)” notice at the top of the official page now — perhaps my emailing asking for a transcript of the video got them in a rush) and these issues will cease to be.
One last thing — if you are interested in learning more about the situation in Germany regarding internet freedom and the child pornography scare, I’d not only urge you to visit the links above, but also this shocking, but morbidly fascinating account of one techie’s work in the murkiest of subcultures. Thankfully, he doesn’t go into detail about actual child abuse, but instead details exactly how child pornography rings work, using the internet and computers.
Put simply, it proves what anyone with a clue already knows: current proposals for internet censorship will have absolutely no impact whatsoever on paedophiles and child pornographers and will only serve to infringe the rights of normal, law-abiding internet users.
Thanks to Áine and Patricia for help with one or two minor parts of the translation.
17
Oct
2009
Don’t hold your breath for tolerance.
In the past week, Stephen Gately, former member of Irish boy-band Boyzone, died. Jan Moir of the Daily Mail wrote an incredibly repulsive article on the subject and Charlie Brooker responded indignantly.
Meanwhile, a Ugandan minister of parliament has proposed legislation to enforce a penalty of death for the “offence of aggravated homosexuality.”
Well then.
