There Ought To Be A Law Against It

They should make it illegal to talk crap. I can't think of any other way to stop the flood of bullshit that threatens to drown out all sensible discourse. It should be a crime to say or write anything for public consumption that is provably wrong at the time it was said.

The irritating and most visible manifestation of the untrue rubbish people spout is in advertising. I don't just mean ads that say processed food X is "wholesome" or  indistinguishable from real food, I mean the lying nonsense about the beneficial powers of inert food supplements, or magnetic mattresses, or "quantum energised" crystals. All that New Age quackery, all that techno-babble, all that distortion and half-truth designed to mislead!

It gets beyond mere irritation when you hear garbage spoken by politicians. Many of them (particularly on the right wing) talk about medical issues, about welfare reform, about incentives, about wars on drugs, about the criminal justice system, about education and about tax reform, as if we haven't had a century of psychological studies, sociological studies, criminology, medical science, and anthropology. The evidence is all there if they had the wit to grasp it. Yet they go on, year after year telling us the answer is more police on the streets, stiffer sentences, getting back to the three Rs, sacking civil servants, etc., etc., etc.. I know politicians are just ordinary people with monster egos, and most of them don't have the intelligence to read research reports (from actual scientists, I mean, not from "think tanks"!) but if there were criminal penalties for being caught saying untrue things in public, maybe they would actually start to care about what they say.

And, of course, politicians lying to the public (wilfully or out of ignorance) can do real harm. It can blight lives and hobble whole societies. It can kill. But the people with the real power, who can do most harm, are the corporations and their various mouthpieces. We've seen endless examples of how the tobacco companies lied about the harm they cause, how the oil, coal and gas companies have lied about global warming (and pollution in general), and how the big news media corporations lie to ensure the political outcomes they favour. Yet there are no penalties. The Big Tobacco spokesperson may be responsible for thousands of deaths, but they are not tried for mass murder. The Big Oil CEO who sponsors obfuscatory research that may lead to hundreds dying in floods and droughts, doesn't face jail time, nor do the scientists who take his money and publish his papers. And the Big Pharma PR guys who tell the doctors lies about their products, are not being prosecuted wither, and nor are the doctors who sign their names to academic papers written by those same PR guys.

We live in a world where solid scientific evidence is ignored or actively disparaged, just so that people can sell you things, or feather their nest in some other way. It is a world where religious groups are allowed to teach anti-science courses which are nothing but insupportable nonsense - presumably so that young people aren't exposed to ideas or rational thinking or something equally horrible. There seems to be nothing anyone can do about all this lying and misleading and distortion and outright fraud. Or nothing anyone is willing to do. After all, the lawmakers are among the worst offenders.

Yet if there is anything there should be a law against, this is it.

A Post on Behalf of Electronic Frontiers Australia

I received this email from EFA and I reproduce it here in full, in case anyone out there would also like to help in the campaign against Internet censorship in Australia.

Electronic Frontiers Australia needs your support to protect online
civil liberties in this country!

Over the past few months, EFA has been working hard campaigning for an
Open Internet against Government censorship of the Internet
(http://openinternet.com.au/). While we are proud of what we have
achieved in that campaign, the Government's decision to delay the
introduction of the legislation means that it will be prolonged and
ongoing campaign. Moreover, that is only one example of EFA's
activities and interests (http://www.efa.org.au/projects/). In
addition to Internet censorship, EFA also campaigns on a wide range of
issues relating to Internet regulation, including copyright,
defamation, R18+ for computer games, telecommunications, ISP
liability, privacy, domain names, trade marks, and the digital
economy.

Most of this campaign work is carried out by elected Board Members,
who act in a voluntary capacity and are not remunerated for their time
spent on EFA projects. This will not change. However, if EFA is to
continue to expand and launch further campaigns, we need money for
media, organisation and lobbying.

That is why, starting today, we are launching a fundraising drive so
that we have the necessary funds to effectively protect online civil
liberties in this country.

Visit http://www.efa.org.au/support2010/ and learn more about what it
is that EFA does and what your money will be spent on, and then please
give whatever you can afford. The recent debate in this country
around Internet censorship demonstrates that we cannot take our civil
liberties for granted and that EFA is in the best position to campaign
on your behalf.

In addition to donating, please forward this email to your family and
friends, and encourage them to support EFA.

You can also show your support by participating in the Open Internet
campaign (http://openinternet.com.au/) and by becoming a fan of EFA on
Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/EFA-Electronic-Frontiers-Australia/36777331283?v=wall).
You can also now buy EFA merchandise on Zazzle
(http://www.zazzle.com.au/efa_oz).

Thank you for your support.

Electronic Frontiers Australia

Irish Government Throttles Free Speech

Hello, and welcome to 2010! Or should that be 1010? I'm a bit confused. The Irish government has just extended its blasphemy laws, you see, taking the world just a step farther back towards the Dark Ages.

Fortunately, not all the Irish are insane - just the government. Some are actively opposing this new law and the constitutional basis for it. Have a look at the Atheist Ireland website for more information, including their deliberate attempt to provoke a prosecution from the government.

You know, I really hate people telling me what I can't say - especially governments and religious nuts.

And, just in case you thought the people who introduced this new law were sincere, God-fearing fundamentalists, here's a quote from Micheal Martin, Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, opposing attempts by Islamic States to make defamation of religion a crime at UN level, 2009:

“We believe that the concept of defamation of religion is not consistent with the promotion and protection of human rights. It can be used to justify arbitrary limitations on, or the denial of, freedom of expression. Indeed, Ireland considers that freedom of expression is a key and inherent element in the manifestation of freedom of thought and conscience and as such is complementary to freedom of religion or belief.”

Governments and hypocrisy, eh? Who'd have thought?

Help Me Out, America

Calling all Americans. I need your opinion on something.

I've written a book and it's going to be published in February 2010. It's a near-future thriller set in Europe. The background to the tale is that the world is just recovering from a very serious depression brought on by us hitting peak oil. The depression, which lasted fifteen years, was worse than anything experienced yet - millions starved, resource wars were fought, governments toppled.

It's a very minor part of the story but it is mentioned that of all the countries of the world, worst hit was the USA. It's dependence on oil and its strongly consumer-driven economy meant that the effect of peak oil was worse there than anywhere. The economy collapsed. Tens of millions were unemployed and most of them were starving. Riots and civil unrest threatened to turn into civil war as an ineffectual government dickered around with fiscal stimulus. Things looked bad until a strong, right-wing government, with fundamentalist Christian roots was elected and immediately took a firm grip of the situation. (Imagine a strong George W Bush, or a Sarah Palin with brains.) Unfortunately, they use their emergency powers and a mandate from a population scared to death about what is happening, to push through some constitutional changes - abolishing the separation of church and state and ensuring that only candidates affiliated to the official church can run for office.

Over the next couple of decades, the new government does, in fact, stop the country from plunging into chaos, but at enormous cost. Opposition parties are banned, many universities - hotbeds of anti-government sentiment - are closed down under the new blasphemy and insurrection laws. The ones that remain are 're-focused' on theological teaching, with the closure of many 'blasphemous' science departments, especially the biological sciences, geology, astronomy, philosophy, and physics. Theology replaces science teaching in schools. Many, many people are arrested and executed for anti-government and anti-religious crimes and the FBI is turned into a feared and energetic prosecutor of the new laws and policies.

Ironically, although peace returns to the streets and Americans are being returned to work and the homes they had lost, the country's prosperity, without the leading edge science and technology that once powered it, has nose-dived. With GM crops and livestock classed as 'abominations', the (future version of the) Internet strictly censored, and other countries surging ahead in the recovery, America is actually receiving massive food aid shipments from Europe and Asia - a fact the Christian fundamentalists in power are suppressing through their control of all media.

OK.

Here's what I need help with. As an American, does this scenario seem so far fetched, so completely unbelievable, to you that you would have a low opinion of a book in which it occurs?

Australia is Endangering Global Democracy

Just thought I'd point this out in case any Rudd government ministers are reading.

Even children's groups like Save the Children oppose the Australian government's plans to censor the Internet. Since the government censorship plans are ostensibly to protect children, surely this should give them pause.

Or maybe they would rather just go ahead and put their censorship technologies in place and then come clean about the real reason they're doing this? On the other hand, maybe they wouldn't. Their whole attitude seems to be, "Stuff you, Australia, we're going to censor the Internet and nobody can stop us."

Maybe other Western countries should start agitating against this move. After all, once one Western democracy has taken complete control of the Internet and what its citizens can see there (yes, just like China) won't other Western governments want to do the same? Once there is a precedent, it will be much easier for this to happen in the USA and the UK too.

The scary thing is, no-one seems to understand the danger that government-controlled Internet filtering poses to Australian democracy. Why is there no national and international outcry against this?

Good on ya Joanna

I was born just ten years after World War 2 ended. I was raised in Hull in Yorkshire, a major fishing and cargo port and one of the worst-bombed cities in England. When I was a kid, my friends and I played 'Jerrys and English' in the bombed out ruins of buildings still not yet rebuilt. Every adult male I knew back then had been in the army or the navy. All my friends' fathers, and all their grandfathers too. My own paternal grandfather was bed-ridden all the time I knew him because of injuries sustained in the war.

I don't know how kids view war these days. I imagine they don't see it in the way we did. Since World War 2, wars have become shabbier and less honourable. The disgraceful invasion of Iraq makes even Vietnam seem marginally reasonable. Yet everyone I knew as a child was proud of what we did in World War 2. We had stood firm against oppression. We had saved the world from tyranny. We had been brave and strong.

And among all the many stories I heard in those days, of bravery and courage and skill, the stalwart loyalty and fierce bravery of the Gurkhas was often mentioned.

I think, like many other Brits, I was astonished to discover that Gurkhas who had served in the British Army Brigade of Gurkhas had no automatic right to settle in Britain on leaving the army. I was also shocked to discover that a sly deal at the time of Partition had left the Gurkhas with a reduced pension compared to other British Army servicemen.

For some years now, there has been a campaign to achieve better rights for Gurkha ex-servicemen. Small wins have happened from time to time but the big battle - for their right to settle in Britain - has only just been won. After a surprise 'first day motion' defeat for the Government (the first since 1978) the British Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, announced that "All Gurkha veterans who retired before 1997 with at least four years service will be allowed to settle in the UK". As Nick Clegg, a UK politician quite rightly said, it was "a victory for decency" and "the kind of thing people want this country to do."

Certainly it is what people of my generation would want, people who heard the admiration and respect in the voices of our forebears when they spoke of the brave and loyal Gurkhas.

But there is still work to be done on the Gurkha's behalf. We still need to ensure that Gurkha Brigade veterans receive full pensions in the UK. But, as 'Gurkha Justice Campaign' lawyer David Enright says, "that is for tomorrow". Today, he and other campaign leaders - including figurehead and active campaigner Joanna Lumley, whose father was an officer in a Gurkha regiment - are celebrating yesterday's tremendous victory.

Amazon and the Creeps to Whom it Panders

Amazon's recent 'glitch', which de-ranked a whole load of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgener books, along with others of an explicitly sexual nature (including Lady Chatterley's Lover!) was another dismal consequence of the way certain people think - or would prefer not to have to think. Religious and right-wing types don't like sex. Some think their magic god creatures have told them not to like sex (unless sanctioned by a man in a dress who likes abusing small children). Others just have weird hang-ups about it. Some spend their days trying to stop anybody doing sex, seeing sex, or reading about sex. It is for these sad souls that Amazon has an 'adult' field in its book description database - so that it can, if it chooses, hide these books from our view. It is for these same sad souls that the Australian govenment is about to instigate a Web censorship scheme that will give it the power to hide anything it deems 'adult' (or, in fact, just anything it doesn't like) from the entire Australian population.

These weird sex-haters, these creepy people who shudder with distaste at any expression of human sexuality, put a huge amount of effort into pressuring governments and commercial organisations into censoring what we can read. They justify much of their perverted sex-hatred by saying it is to protect children. But they cannot explain why it is necessary to keep children in ignorance of sex. How does ignorance protect anybody from anything? Their intention, they say, is to prevent the 'corruption' of young minds. But what does 'corruption' mean here? Reading a book about gays is not literally going to rot your brain. But it might strike a chord for people who are gay and let them know that other people feel the same way, that not everyone thinks it is disgusting and depraved. This is the 'corruption' the sex-haters are afraid of, that through learning about the experiences of others, people may better understand their own nature. The sex-haters are not trying to protect people - least of all children - they are trying to protect themselves from a world that disgusts and frightens them.

Well, sorry guys, but that's the real world, and it's pretty harmless and mostly benign. You are the creepy, scary misfits, and it is you we all need protection from.

Jobs, Justice and Climate

In the UK yesterday, Trades Union Congress general secretary, Brendan Barber, said this to world leaders assembling for the G20 summit meeting next week. "The old ideas of unregulated free markets do not work, and have brought the world's economy to near-collapse, failed to fight poverty and have done far too little to move to a low-carbon economy."

The Metropolitan Police estimate that 35,000 people marched through London on the 'Put People First' demonstration, the first of many events planned for the G20 summit. Put People First's slogan is "jobs, justice and climate".

With civil unrest growing across Europe as job losses mount and the recession bites ever harder, I really hope that the G20 leaders are listening. We've had decades of unfettered greed and government-backed corporate callousness, the rich have got richer and the poor have starved. The fiction that 'economic growth' will filter down to the poorest and make everybody better off has been exposed, and the future is looking bleak for working people everywhere as the value of their pensions has halved in a single year.

We might struggle through this recession but worse ones are coming. Peak oil is nearly upon us. Climate change is now unstoppable. The population is still growing and resources are still dwindling. Economic growth has natural limits and we are reaching them. Managing global capitalism requires more skill and ability than the world's capitalists and their governments are able to provide.

This is the kind of future that leads to uprising. It is the kind of future that leads to riots and even revolution. I hope the G20 leaders, isolated as they are from real life by their power and wealth, do not underestimate the amount of anger there is among the people they have been exploiting for so long. That crowd of 35,000 in London is the tip of an iceberg of resentment and disgust. It could easily turn from a peaceful march with reasonable requests into a furious mob, burning effigies and storming the parliament.

It's All About The Guns, Stupid

Another damned mass murder, this time in Winnenden in Germany.

The boy who did it was described by Heribert Rech, interior minister of Baden-Wuerttemberg state as "completely unremarkable, there was nothing in his background to suggest this could have happened." Except the boy was a trained marksman! Except he had access to firearms! Except that he was an isolated loner who played computer games all day!

For God's sake, wake up! If you give weapons and training to disturbed children, some of them are going to go nuts and shoot people.

Here's a simple way to stop young men from shooting their classmates: don't let them anywhere near guns! It isn't hard. It isn't rocket science. If you give kids guns, they will shoot people. Incidentally, the same goes for grown-ups.

And while I'm ranting on the subject, how is it we can, as a society, spend billions setting up evesdropping services like the famous Eschelon, that listen to everybody's phone calls and read everybody's emails, trying to protect us from the extremely minor 'threat' of terrorism, but we can't use the same technology to monitor the Web for kids who openly brag that they are going to shoot their classmates? Like the German killer-nutcase did seven hours before he went on the rampage in Winnenden- and as so many others do. If we're going to lose all our privacy to the NSA and MI5 anyway, why can't they at least do something useful with their supercomputers like stopping assholes shooting children.

End of rant. Thank you for your patience.

Catholics in Disgrace

Once you start believing in things that are not real, they can lead you into all kinds of bizarre ethical quagmires.

If a nine year old child had been raped by her stepfather and became pregnant, most people would see the whole affair as repugnant and awful. Most would see the stepfather as a monster and the child as the victim of a hideous crime - especially when the pregnancy, according to her doctors, threatens her life. Most people would do everything they could to help the child.

Sadly, this is not a hypothetical situation. It actually happened, recently, in Brazil. And the child was pregnant with twins.

The child was given an abortion, of course. What other sensible action could there be? What else could a compassionate and caring society do? Who in their right mind would inflict a full-term pregnancy on a nine-year-old rape victim, along with whatever psychological harm there might be for her if she survived it?

Nobody.

Which is why the rantings and ravings of the Catholic Church seem especially twisted and inhuman in this particular instance. They say the child should have been made to suffer the full term of the pregnancy and the possibility of her death - and the death of the twins - because of their bizarre beliefs. The Church has villified the doctors who most probably saved the child's life, and they have villified the child's mother. They have also excommunicated the whole medical team and the mother (the child too, for all I know) - for all the harm that will do anybody.

It makes me want to cry out 'What is wrong with these sick bastards?' It makes you ask how anybody could be so cruel and care so little for the welfare of this poor child.

Yet the answer is painfully obvious. Catholics believe in a magic being who tells them what to do and what to think. The scribblings of some deranged mystics, thousands of years ago, have become the laws that these people must follow. Laws so weird, vague, and self-contradictory that Catholic witch-doctors can give their 'blessings' to Hitler's armies but they can't show compassion for a child whose life has been devastated and who desperately needs help.

The Catholic Church has done more than most over the past couple of thousand years to destroy the lives and innocence of young children. Maybe it's time they sought psychological counselling instead of inflicting this sickness on more helpless children.

Surprise, Surprise!

Dr Jerry Burger, of Santa Clara University, has repeated Stanley Milgram's famous 1960's experiments and found that people are still willing to inflict severe electric shocks on other people just because an 'experimenter' tells them to.

Personally, I'm satisfied that Milgram did a pretty thorough job of investigating this effect and all its various parameters. Of course, it's nice to see replication of the results by others, and this should be encouraged - especially in a field like social psychology. What puzzles me, though, is the headline on the BBC's report of Burger's study: "People 'still willing to torture'." Well, duh! What do you think is going on at Guantanamo Bay? What do you think Mugabe is doing to all the opposition politicians who disappeared recently? What do you think Amnesty keeps banging on about if it isn't the willingness of people everywhere to indulge in torture?

There seems to be a belief, at least among journalists, that human beings will 'evolve' in som spiritual or ethical way and that, over time, we will all become better people. Well I'm sorry guys but evolution doesn't work like that. If not torturing people had survival or reproductive benefits, then it might happen. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Our only hope is that our cultures will evolve - or at least learn. Cultures are probably shaped by the same selection processes that shape species. What's more, cultures can change very quickly - unlike species. Yet here too, the elimination of torture from a society would need to have some beneficial impact on that society to make it stick. That is, a culture without torture would need to survive and even spread more easily than one with torture. As yet I see very little evidence for it.

But we can hope.

Censored

I wrote to the Minister a little while ago regarding my concerns about the new Internet censorship scheme planned for Australia. His office sent me back a pro-forma PDF document explaining the scheme and the various additional measures (including additional policing and public awareness campaigns) they intend to put in place.

It was interesting and I'd love to share it with you but the communication also included this paragraph:

"The information transmitted is for the use of the intended recipient only and may contain confidential and/or legally privileged material. Any review, re-transmission, disclosure, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited and may result in severe penalties."

Since this effectively gags me, I cannot tell you what the government's plans are. Sorry.

I might just say, though, that if the harmless publicity material they sent me had to be suppressed by threats like this, doesn't it speak volumes for the kind of people who are running the country? How can we trust them to build and operate tools that will censor the Internet when they think even their own vague and bland assurances have to be censored?

McCain Makes A Hideous Mistake

I've mentioned before what an idiot presidential wannabe John McCain is. Well this week he rose to new heights of folly by choosing Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running-mate.

What makes a man - even a man who can't think straight - choose a woman who is known as 'the barracuda' to help him run the country? Why, when America is reeling from the right wing fundamentalism of George Bush Jr., would he think that picking a tough-minded, right-wing ideologue would help him win the hearts and minds of the voters. This woman has a lifetime membership of the National Rifle Association for Heaven's sake! She likes shooting things - living things! She thinks it's fun to kill animals! (Not foetuses though - she's a rabid anti-abortionist, of course. But I imagine she approves of the death penalty so she won't mind killing grown-ups. She definitely thinks the Bush Administration is being to soft on polar bears by declaring them a protected species and would prefer the great hairy things not to be around eating fish and hanging out while her friends the oil companies ravage Alaska.)

Let's face it, McCain is no spring chicken. If anyone is dumb enough to vote for McCain, this woman could become President!

Can I make a plea to all my American readers: for your own sakes, don't vote McCain. Now that he has this Palin creature gnashing and slavering at his heels, his presidency could turn into something even worse than Bush's. And if you don't believe me, talk to anyone who was alive in the UK during the reign of Margaret Thatcher. It was a dark, dark time and I still shudder at the memory of it. Thatcher was a vicious thug in a skirt, a monster that wore lipstick. She crushed civil liberties wherever she found them. She trampled on democratic rights. She terrorised and politicised the civil service. She took the country to war. She was the worst Prime Minister ever to blight the British Isles.


















Don't, please don't, put a woman like that in a position where she might become President of the USA. You will regret it.

We don't play cricket with Zimbabwe because...?

Never mind that they throw dissidents in prison. Never mind that they routinely use torture and execution. Never mind the corruption, the oppression, the people who were thrown out of their homes to make way for Olympic venues. Let the games begin!

Of course we all know that China is a dictatorship. We all know that human rights there are allowed or disallowed at the whim of the ruling politicians. We all know that the oppressive regime in China sees the 2008 Olympic Games as a massive propaganda exercise to to give itself credibility and respect in the world's eyes and to bolster its progressive image at home.

But we will suspend our revulsion because sport is such a great way of bringing people together. It breaks down national boundaries, it does away with prejudice and it helps us join hands in peaceful pursuits. Whatever the cost of our tolerance is to oppressed people in China, whatever the value of our support is to the ruling party there (and the value in dollars alone is just staggering), we know in our hearts that engaging China in such global events will, in the long-run help to bring them into the fold, to integrate them with their neighbours (oops, almost mentioned Tibet) and to hasten the rise of democratic institutions in the biggest dictatorship the world has ever known.

After all, it worked so well with Hitler and the Third Reich back in 1936.

The Saddest Olympic Games Yet

Don't you think it's sad that the Chinese feel they have to take dog off the menu in Beijing during the Olympics? I mean, for heaven's sake, this is your country, people. If squeamish American tourists don't like what you eat, tell them to stay at home and eat Macdonalds.

Sadder by far, however, is the fact that so many people will be going to China to watch a bunch of people throwing things and jumping things and running round and round. It will inject plenty of money into the Chinese economy of course (maybe the organisers will celebrate afterwards with a nice dog dinner) but of all the things to spend your money, time and energies on, trailing out to Beijing to watch sports seems like just about the most futile I can imagine. (All the people trailing out to Sydney for World Youth Day has it beat but WYD is so exceptionally stupid it isn't a fair comparison.)

Even sadder than all this, however, is the fact that, while the Chinese want to avoid offending Westerners by keeping dogs off our dinner plates, they don't seem to feel the need to release political prisoners, to stop torturing people, to leave Tibet alone, or to allow free and fair elections - even for the two weeks while we're in town. They obviously understand that such things don't offend us anywhere near as much as fried pets.

A Trades Union For Bloggers

I like trades unions. I think they are the best thing since sliced bread. The demise of the unions since the late nineteen seventies is one of the tragedies of our age – and something we will all live to regret. I've been in several trades unions in my time. I even sat on a picket line during a strike back in 1976 – it was boring as hell but I'm glad I did it. So you'd think I might be in favour of the current push to form a trades union for bloggers. After all, I'm a blogger aren't I?

But I'm not.

The thing is, unions exist to protect the interests of working people. Ordinary people like you and me don't have much clout when it comes to negotiation with our employers. In fact, employers can roll right over the interests of their employees if they feel like it and the current employer-biased legislation we all live under (of which Australia's IR laws are a typical example) grants employers legal support for the exercise of their already-one-sided power when it comes to negotiating employment contracts, removing and restricting benefits, and terminating employment. It is only by organising, by acting together, that working people have a power that is even vaguely comparable to that of their employers. It is only through collective bargaining and collective action that working people can possibly hope to get fair treatment from employers and from conservative governments.

That's why the trades unions exist. They are simply groups of working people, acting together to give themselves some say in the conditions under which they work.

So a trades union for bloggers doesn't even make any sense to me. Bloggers don't work for anyone. They don't negotiate their work contracts because they don't have any. They're not paid, they don't have conditions of employment, they don't have 'benefits' to win or protect and they can't be sacked. So what's it all about? Says Gerry Colby, president of the U.S.A.'s National Writers Union, “Bloggers are on our radar screen right now for approaching and recruiting into the union. We're trying to develop strategies to reach bloggers and encourage them to join."
The NWU has done a lot over the years to help freelance journalists. Journalism is one of those areas of employment which uses a lot of freelance labour and where employers were quick to understand the value of having a low-cost, vulnerable and dependent pool of casual labour. Many other employers have caught on and there is a big push on to reduce permanent staff and replace them with casual labour. My own area – information technology – has created a large body of freelance 'contractors' who live by taking individual, short-term contracts with employers, often through intermediary employment agencies (which take a big slice of the money they earn). The movement to casualise labour is so extensive that governments have had to change the tax laws to prevent these casual professionals from benefiting – at the taxman's cost – by running their own companies and taking the tax breaks. These days, for casual labour, there are almost no tax breaks at all and operating your own company to sell your own labour no longer offsets the financial disadvantages of casual labour in any way.

In this climate of throwing people out of full-time employment and then taxing them as if they were employed full-time, freelancers need the protection that only organisation in trades unions can offer – to set standard contracts, to help negotiate, to provide standard benefits (like healthcare, in those countries like the US where the state doesn't provide it) and to defend people against unfair dismissal, discrimination, harassment, and so on.

Now, some bloggers are essentially freelance journalists. It's a tiny, tiny minority but they are, of course, vocal. There may be only a few hundred of them worldwide, possibly a couple of thousand, but for these guys, membership of the NWU or a local equivalent would make sense. They're trying to sell their services as freelance writers and they should try to get the same union support. For the rest of us – the other 55 million – the idea of a union of bloggers, or of bloggers joining a union, is just nonsense. A bloggers' mutual support society or shopping club - so we can get 10% off our motor insurance or whatever - might make some sense, but not a bloggers' trades union.

Has The World Gone Mad?

It's been a strange week.

In the southern Iraqi town of Basra, fierce giant badgers are roaming the docks. The locals believe they were introduced by the British Army to spread panic but local experts say the animals are indigenous – just not often seen in the city. Giant, killer badgers are odd enough but what is much, much more disturbing is that people could think for a moment that the Brits set them loose on the town. What possible chance do the invading armies have of winning the 'hearts and minds' of the Iraqis if the conquered have such a complete and utter misconception of who their conquerors are?

Meanwhile, a 45-year-old man in Sydney has been on a rampage in a restored tank. He drove his tank at dead of night through several Sydney suburbs apparently targeting mobile phone towers. He managed to take out six mobile phone tower sheds and an electricity sub-station (easily confused with a mobile phone tower in the dark) before his tank stalled as he tried to demolish a seventh. Apart from trying to keep people out of his way, there wasn't much the police could do about it except watch. Now, I hate mobile phone operators as much as the next guy, but to spend all that time and money on buying and restoring a tank just so you can have a little rampage and knock down a few towers seems just a little over the top. Surely it would have been easier to start a socialist party, sweep the country in a landslide election and nationalise them all without compensation? Far less bother and so much more satisfying.

And then there was the guy in China who got married this week. The bride a normal-sized Chinese woman, 1.68m tall. He is the world's tallest man, Bao Xishun, who is 2.36m tall. It seems he's a really nice guy under all that enormousness but was driven to advertise for a wife – probably for all the obvious reasons. Curiously, he only got 20 replies. Now, if it had been the West, they'd have built a 'reality' TV show around it and had thousands of female contestants being slowly and tediously eliminated for months before finally picking some completely unsuitable extravert with outsize breasts to appear in the season finale on Mr. Bao's arm. As it was, there was a quiet courtship and the bride seems like a very nice person. Bao is famous not only for his record-breaking length but also for saving two sick dolphins by using his very long arms to pull plastic rubbish from their stomachs. But the really odd thing is, he's Chinese. Aren't those guys suppose to be small?

Finally (Ha! Finally! I didn't mention the mystery philanthropist in Japan who has left at least $40,000, in envelopes each containing $100, in public toilets around the country. Nor the fact that a member of the pop-group Queen has just finished writing up a PhD thesis he started in 1971 and which was rudely interrupted in 1974 when he took 33 years out to become a worldwide global mega rock guitar hero.) Finally, I should mention that Dr. Mohammed Haneef has at last been charged with 'recklessly providing resources to a terrorist organisation.' Dr. Haneef has been infamously held without charge in Australia for 13 days while being questioned by the police about alleged involvement with a UK terrorist group responsible for recent botched car bomb attacks. The strange thing is that, after all that questioning by Australian and British anti-terrorist police, the charge is that Dr. Haneef 'recklessly' (not intentionally) gave a phone SIM card to the terrorists. Stranger still, this kind of recklessness, under the new anti-terrorism laws (America's finest export to the world) could cost him a further 25 years in gaol. Of course, in law, 'reckless' implies that Dr. Haneef didn't care if the terrorists blew people up. That is, that he was indifferent to the consequences of what he did. The common usage of the word to mean something like 'foolishly unthinking' isn't what he has been charged with. It is quite possible, the charge says, that he could clearly foresee what would be done with the SIM card but he just didn't care. Which is a pretty strange thing to charge him with in itself, don't you think? The anti-terrorist laws have the concept of conspiracy to commit a terrorist offence. So why not use that? Presumably because there is no evidence for it – only evidence of the doctor's indifference.

Intelligent Design Defeated By Intelligent Politicians

I see from The Register (and elsewhere) that the UK government has declared its intention to keep Creationism out of the classroom. Specifically, they concluded that “intelligent design” is a religion and should not be taught as science in British schools. To quote them:

The Government is aware that a number of concerns
have been raised in the media and elsewhere as to
whether creationism and intelligent design have a place
in science lessons. The Government is clear that
creationism and intelligent design are not part of the
science National Curriculum programmes of study and
should not be taught as science.

It is so rare that a government ever does anything so sensible and praiseworthy, that I'd like to take this opportunity to express my congratulations to the people who made this decision. 'Intelligent design' is a pernicious, fraudulent and disgraceful attempt to deceive people into accepting magic as legitimate science. It is extremely heartening to see that there are people in the British government who are clever enough and level-headed enough to reject it out of hand.
The decision comes in response to an online petition organised by James Rocks of the Science, Just Science campaign. From the bottom of my nouveau-Australian heart, I'd like to say, “Good on ya, Jim!”

Over in the USA, it's another story. The outcome of the battle there between good sense and religious mania is still moot and the cowardice and, sometimes, the insanity of American politicians has given succour to the forces of madness. The amazing fact is that the USA is a country where three of the Republican presidential candidates do not believe in evolution! (The mind boggles! Do they also think the Earth is flat and the Sun revolves around it? If not, why not?) Perhaps this seems just normal or even reasonable for an American (or maybe most Americans don't even care) but, from the outside looking in, American religiosity just looks crazy – like looking at ranting Muslim leaders condemning 'the great Satan', or the old Soviet regime's attempts to deny the evidence of genetics for ideological reasons. This kind of head-in-the-sand Christianity belongs to an ancient, unenlightened world and to see it flourishing in the USA is somewhat scary.

Yet I'd be happy to leave them to it (except that it will eventually bring down their economy – look at how research has been weakening under George Bush). However, the American churches are funding the lobby groups and the 'research institutes' that are distributing Creationist propaganda around the world. So it's not just their problem anymore. It's everybody's. Which means more governments ought to take a stand, like the UK has just done, and keep these crazy people out of our kids' heads.

Equality Beyond Humanity

Should the great apes be granted rights to life, liberty and freedom from torture? Well the Great Ape Project says they should. There is almost no doubt that, like human beings, the other great apes are clever, self-aware, emotionally complex and horribly capable of suffering. There is also no doubt that they, unlike human beings, are quickly going extinct. If the wild populations of chimps, bonobos, gorillas and orang utans are not gone in my lifetime, they will be gone in my daughter's. Something has to be done urgently if we want to save them.

Of course most people don't want to save them and that's the main problem they face. Some people are eating them. So called 'bush meat' is not just popular with starving people in remote jungles, it now has a worldwide customer-base - about 12,000 tonnes of bush meat (not all of it great apes of course) is imported to the UK each year, for instance.

But even if people don't eat gorillas and chimps, the chances are they are totally indifferent to their plight. Scientific work and medical research around the world is the very least of it. It is the huge, global habitat destruction that is crushing these creatures out of existence. And the political debate is on the effects of deforestation on global warming and therefore on our own economies. Never mind the world-wide genocide that is happening.

A recent news article about a rebel group threatening to kill mountain gorillas in the Congo is indicative of the contempt in which so many people hold the lives of our poor cousins. But it also shows up the enormous problems organisations like GAP face in securing rights for the great apes. This same rebel group killed a wildlife officer and wounded three people just before making their threat about the gorillas. If they don't care about human life, why should we expect them to care about the lives of apes? If we think cheap paper and furniture is so incredibly important that we have to chop down the world's forests, then of course we're going to let these almost-human relatives die for the sake of it. If we let people sit in our city streets and beg for food, or let our police and intelligence agencies torture our enemies, or lock up poor people for crimes that rich people get away with, what are the chances we will show compassion to any creature unable to speak out for itself - however much like us it is?

Religious Bigot Bans Gay Pride March In Moscow

If you read my previous blog posting and thought I was perhaps overreacting to the dangers of allowing people who are not quite sane – because they believe in magical beings - to run the world, then you might like to consider yesterday's Gay Pride march in Moscow. The march was banned by the city authorities but marchers went ahead anyway, trying to deliver a letter to the city's mayor, Yuriy Luzhkov. They didn't make it.

The march was attacked by right wing-protesters and the marchers were beaten and abused while the police looked on. Eventually, about 70 of the marchers were arrested when the police finally intervened. (Some put the number arrested as high as 100.) Later still, the police also arrested some of the right-wing attackers.

I mention this not because I think gays should have fair treatment in Russia (although I think that everyone should have fair treatment everywhere) but because of the reason the mayor of Moscow is reported to have given for his opposition to the march. He is on record as saying that Gay Pride marches are “the work of Satan”.

So here is a man who believes in magical beings, he feels that these magical beings are influencing the world in which we live, he clearly gets his information from a five-thousand-year-old document produced by someone else who was crazy enough to believe in magical beings, and he probably talks to these invisible beings at least once a week. Yet he is in charge of a whole city! On the orders of this delusional man, gay rights marchers are locked up and refused a voice. And I'm pretty sure he's not receiving any medical treatment for his mental problems.

Homosexuality, whatever you think about it, is at least real. It exists. It is manifested in many, many species, including our own. It is a fact of life. It doesn't hurt anyone or deprive them of their civil liberties. The magical beings that Yuriy Luzhkov believes in are not real. They exist only in stories and in his mind. Yet they get peaceful protesters beaten up and they deny them their right to speak.

Now tell me religion isn't a bad thing.