He is just fantastic. Most people have read Brave New World but I would also encourage you to read ‘Island’. It really is an incredible book.
This interview is also fantastic…
An idea is being proposed - I don’t know how seriously - that the dome building at Dounreay nuclear power station could be turned into a hotel once it has been decommissioned.
A hotel.
Does this mean the Iranians will be accused of having lots of suspicious hotels?
Dounreay is the place that pleaded guilty to four charges of breaching radiation safety legislation. They were convicted of “unauthorised disposals” of waste in drains and landfill. They were also convicted of “failure to prevent fragments of irradiated nuclear fuel being discharged into the environment”.
The Dounreay plant has also previously been in trouble for allegedly exposing workers to contamination - you could be the first guest to be exposed to plutonium. Come back from your holiday with that ready brek glow!
So my question to you is this….
What other sites of environmental and human catastrophe do you want to see turned into funspots?
We could have a water sports facility where the French did their Nuclear tests.
What about beach volleyball in Tiananmen Square (they really were considering that - follow the link)
What about a rollercoaster on the site of your favourite train crash?
What are your ideas?
This is not strictly relevant to what is happening at the moment but events reminded me of this Orwell piece…
A HANGING - George Orwell
It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two. One prisoner had been brought out of his cell. He was a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick, sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the moustache of a comic man on the films. Six tall Indian warders were guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood by with rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly noticed what was happening.
Eight o’clock struck and a bugle call, desolately thin in the wet air, floated from the distant barracks. The superintendent of the jail, whowas standing apart from the rest of us, moodily prodding the gravel with his stick, raised his head at the sound. He was an army doctor, with a grey toothbrush moustache and a gruff voice. “For God’s sake hurry up, Francis,” he said irritably. “The man ought to have been dead by this time. Aren’t you ready yet?”Francis, the head jailer, a fat Dravidian in a white drill suit and gold spectacles, waved his black hand. “Yes sir, yes sir,” he bubbled. ”All iss satisfactorily prepared. The hangman iss waiting. We shall proceed.”
“Well, quick march, then. The prisoners can’t get their breakfast till this job’s over.”
We set out for the gallows. Two warders marched on either side of the prisoner, with their rifles at the slope; two others marched closeagainst him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing and supporting him. The rest of us, magistrates and the like, followed behind. Suddenly, when we had gone ten yards, the procession stopped short without any order or warning. A dreadful thing had happened–a dog, come goodness knows whence, had appeared in the yard. It came bounding among us with a loud volley of barks, and leapt round us wagging its whole body, wild with glee at finding so many human beings together. It was a large woolly dog, half Airedale, half pariah. For a moment it pranced round us, and then, before anyone could stop it, it had made a dash for the prisoner, and jumping up tried to lick his face. Everyone stood aghast, too taken aback even to grab at the dog.
“Who let that bloody brute in here?” said the superintendent angrily. “Catch it, someone!”
A warder, detached from the escort, charged clumsily after the dog, but it danced and gambolled just out of his reach, taking everything as part of the game. A young Eurasian jailer picked up a handful of gravel and tried to stone the dog away, but it dodged the stones and came after us again. Its yaps echoed from the jail wails. The prisoner, in the grasp of the two warders, looked on incuriously, as though this was another formality of the hanging. It was several minutes before someone managed to catch the dog. Then we put my handkerchief through its collar and moved off once more, with the dog still straining and whimpering.
It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare brown back of the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the Indian who never straightens his knees. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.
It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working –bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming–all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned–reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone–one mind less, one world less.
The gallows stood in a small yard, separate from the main grounds of the prison, and overgrown with tall prickly weeds. It was a brick erection like three sides of a shed, with planking on top, and above that two beams and a crossbar with the rope dangling. The hangman, a grey-haired convict in the white uniform of the prison, was waiting beside his machine. He greeted us with a servile crouch as we entered. At a word from Francis the two warders, gripping the prisoner more closely than ever, half led, half pushed him to the gallows and helped him clumsily up the ladder. Then the hangman climbed up and fixed the rope round the prisoner’s neck.
We stood waiting, five yards away. The warders had formed in a rough circle round the gallows. And then, when the noose was fixed, the prisoner began crying out on his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!”, not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. The dog answered the sound with a whine. The hangman, still standing on the gallows, produced a small cotton bag like a flour bag and drew it down over the prisoner’s face. But the sound, muffled by the cloth, still persisted, over and over again: “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!”
The hangman climbed down and stood ready, holding the lever. Minutes seemed to pass. The steady, muffled crying from the prisoner went on and on, “Ram! Ram! Ram!” never faltering for an instant. The superintendent, his head on his chest, was slowly poking the ground with his stick; perhaps he was counting the cries, allowing the prisoner a fixed number– fifty, perhaps, or a hundred. Everyone had changed colour. The Indians had gone grey like bad coffee, and one or two of the bayonets were wavering. We looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and listened to his cries–each cry another second of life; the same thought was in all our minds: oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable noise!
Suddenly the superintendent made up his mind. Throwing up his head he made a swift motion with his stick. “Chalo!” he shouted almost fiercely.
There was a clanking noise, and then dead silence. The prisoner had vanished, and the rope was twisting on itself. I let go of the dog, and it galloped immediately to the back of the gallows; but when it got there it stopped short, barked, and then retreated into a corner of the yard, where it stood among the weeds, looking timorously out at us. We went round the gallows to inspect the prisoner’s body. He was dangling with his toes pointed straight downwards, very slowly revolving, as dead as a stone.
The superintendent reached out with his stick and poked the bare body; it oscillated, slightly. “HE’S all right,” said the superintendent. He backed out from under the gallows, and blew out a deep breath. The moody look had gone out of his face quite suddenly. He glanced at his wrist-watch. “Eight minutes past eight. Well, that’s all for this morning, thank God.”
The warders unfixed bayonets and marched away. The dog, sobered and conscious of having misbehaved itself, slipped after them. We walked out of the gallows yard, past the condemned cells with their waiting prisoners, into the big central yard of the prison. The convicts, under the command of warders armed with lathis, were already receiving their breakfast. They squatted in long rows, each man holding a tin pannikin, while two warders with buckets marched round ladling out rice; it seemed quite a homely, jolly scene, after the hanging. An enormous relief had come upon us now that the job was done. One felt an impulse to sing, to break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering gaily.
The Eurasian boy walking beside me nodded towards the way we had come, with a knowing smile: “Do you know, sir, our friend (he meant the dead man), when he heard his appeal had been dismissed, he pissed on the floor of his cell. From fright.–Kindly take one of my cigarettes, sir. Do you not admire my new silver case, sir? From the boxwallah, two rupees eight annas. Classy European style.”
Several people laughed–at what, nobody seemed certain.
Francis was walking by the superintendent, talking garrulously. “Well, sir, all hass passed off with the utmost satisfactoriness. It wass all finished–flick! like that. It iss not always so–oah, no! I have known cases where the doctor wass obliged to go beneath the gallows and pull the prisoner’s legs to ensure decease. Most disagreeable!”
“Wriggling about, eh? That’s bad,” said the superintendent.
“Ach, sir, it iss worse when they become refractory! One man, I recall, clung to the bars of hiss cage when we went to take him out. You will scarcely credit, sir, that it took six warders to dislodge him, three pulling at each leg. We reasoned with him. “My dear fellow,” we said, “think of all the pain and trouble you are causing to us!” But no, he would not listen! Ach, he wass very troublesome!”
I found that I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing. Even the superintendent grinned in a tolerant way. “You’d better all come out and have a drink,” he said quite genially. “I’ve got a bottle of whisky in the car. We could do with it.”
We went through the big double gates of the prison, into the road. “Pulling at his legs!” exclaimed a Burmese magistrate suddenly, and burst into a loud chuckling. We all began laughing again. At that moment Francis’s anecdote seemed extraordinarily funny. We all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a hundred yards away.
The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defense each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace. - Bill Hicks
I love space and astronomy stuff. I put myself through little courses all the time. I even read the Stephen Hawking book and didn’t give 
up on it halfway through. That’s not to say I like science-fiction very much. Most of it is very poorly written and Star Trek is a thinly veiled representation of US foreign policy, the ‘Prime Directive’ is to never interfere in the ‘natural’ development of other societies and yet in every single episode something happens that offends the Enterprise crew so much that they just have to intervene to save these poor people from themselves. Sound familiar?
Despite the interest I have in it we need to leave it and leave it now.
The main humanistic arguments for exploring space are
1- To further our knowledge of the Universe and therefore our own origins
2- To see if we are alone in the Universe
3- To (possibly) prevent us all being wiped out by an asteroid strike
4- Humans are natural explorers - it is inherent in our nature
5- Technical gains for current Earth use and possible extraction of resources for future use
As for number one, this is probably the most fascinating information that space exploration has come up with so far. Pictures like the one below from the Hubble Telescope (which shows one of the most complex planetary nebula ever seen, NGC 6543, nicknamed the “Cat’s Eye Nebula.”) are fantastic to look at and tell us a lot about the make-up of the Universe.
The second point is an important point philosophically and spiritually but the question is…would we know we were looking at life even if it was right in front of us? Think how long it took us to work out gravity, or that light moves. Life elsewhere is likely to be so different that we wouldn’t know it even if we were looking at it. It is also very hard to define exactly what is life and what isn’t….
If you think about it, a collection that includes a fruit fly and Richard Dawkins and the Great Barrier Reef is an awkward set of objects to try and compare. When we try and figure out what the rules are that we are looking for, trying to find a rule that’s self-evidently true, that turns out to be very, very hard. Is [life] something, to coin someone’s earlier phrase, that’ll go squish if you step on it? (Douglas Adams)
It is also likely to be so far away that it could never get here. Even if it could get here, if your house is in a disgraceful condition do you invite visitors?
The answer to the third point is that it is highly unlikely we would see an incoming asteroid (until it was too late) or be able to stop if it was (unless Bruce Willis was on form that day).
As to the fourth reason, it could be argued that people migrated (explored), and still do, with animal herds or to find good arable land - not from any inherent desire to do so.
On the fifth point it is unfortunately the case that technical gains tend to be used for military purposes first before they filter to the public - the military got Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and spy satellites, the public got Velcro and Teflon. Is the trade off really worth it?
The exorbitant costs of the space program just aren’t justifiable at the moment. Especially given that a lot of space missions don’t work. $300 million dollars was wasted in one venture because the European made components were designed to work in kilometres and the American components were designed to work in miles. There are other things to be investing our resources in. I think everyone knows what they are.
That’s the Humanistic part of it.
Now the militarisation part.
[former] NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe- everything NASA does from now on will be “dual use” (meaning it will serve both military and civilian purposes) has said, “propulsion power generation advances that are so critical to the purposes of achieving our exploration and discovery objectives are the same technologies that national security seeks to utilize.” It has long been claimed by the Pentagon that they will require nuclear reactors in space to power space-based weapons.[i]
A fleet of space planes will be designed to attack and destroy future satellites of enemies and rivals. A prototype is expected by 2005 with deployment envisioned around 2014.
In other words, with total domination of space instant annihilation of any state that gets out of line is possible. Stopping short of destruction, communications can be disrupted to ensure domination of the airwaves and then we can all watch reruns of Star Trek.
Lets not just call for an end to the militarisation of space. Let’s try to stop anything that doesn’t have a direct and immediate effect in pulling half of the world’s people out of poverty.
Once we have done that, then we can get round to “explor[ing] space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.”
Oh, we would finally be able to get rid of shitty satellite TV channels too.
[i] Iraq War Emboldens Bush Space plans - Bruce Gagnon, http://www.counterpunch.org/gagnon08082003.html
I posted about this guy a while ago and thought I should just add the video clip from the real news.
He swam across the north pole becoming the first person ever to do so as it was never possible before now. He did this to raise awareness about climate change.
Just a question for regular users of the site.
I disabled the snapdrive feature on the site because I used to find it annoying on other sites but now I kind of don’t mind it.
What do you all think? On or off?
www.socialistunity.com has put me on a list of top 100 leftist bloggers. I have been placed directly beneath Peter Tatchell, which is not a place I had imagined I would ever find myself. I was however placed above George Monbiot and can only assume this to be an oversight on the part of the compilers.
This list was done in response to 2 other lists. One was compiled by the daily telegraph (which is a Murdoch paper, or at least should be) and has the supposedly most 100 influential leftists in Britain. Some of them can not even be described as left-ish.
For example, the top 10 is…
1. Gordon Brown
2. Tony Bliar
3. Alex Salmond
4. David Miliband
5. Ed Balls
6. Jack Straw
7. Ken Livingstone
8. Douglas Alexander
9. Harriet Harman
10. Derek Simpson
The rest is mostly a baffling list of New Labour and ex-new labour people and a few token journalists (whereas a real journalist like John Pilger just manages to sneak in at number 100).
Well, it is only baffling if you don’t realise that they are trying make telegraph readers think that New Labour are what qualify as screaming communists and freeze out the ideas of any supposedly more ‘radical’ elements from any discussion. You know, ‘radicals ‘ the sort of people who believe that bombing the shit out of other people for profit is wrong, the sort of people who believe that there are other choices other than letting the profit hungry rampage through hospitals, schools, universities and other institutions - those kind of freaks. Even worse are the kind of people who don’t want to wave the Union jack at every opportunity and don’t believe that the purpose of the British Empire was to civilise the world - its best just not to mention them.
The second list in question was by Iain Dale and co. who did the same thing for bloggers. Dave did a good little critique of it at a Complex System of Pipes.
I don’t usually fuss about lists of this sort but since they were lists of british bloggers I thought honourable mentions should go to a couple of people I noticed weren’t on any of the lists, namely the curmudgeon who makes me laugh and cry in equal measure, flying rodent and the fanonite.
Also, Kenny Sheerin, who has an excellent post today and the Disillusioned kid, who seems to have given up but was very good.
This is from memory and was actually about the UK Foreign Office method of ‘handling’ a crisis about which they have no intention of doing anything…
1. Say there isn’t a problem.
2. Say that there might be a problem but we need to work out how serious it is.
3. Say there is a problem and there might be something we can do but we need to work out what to do before we do it.
4. Say there may have been something we could have done but that it is too late now.[1]
I was put in mind of the above this morning when I looked at BBC website and saw this…
Man causing climate change - poll
Large majorities in many countries
now believe human activity is causing global warming, a BBC World Service poll suggests.
A sizeable majority of people agreed that major steps needed to be taken soon to address global warming.
More than 22,000 people were surveyed in 21 countries and the results show a great deal of agreement on the issue.
Well woohoo for them. I wonder how many are prepared to do something themselves, but that is another question.
Further…
An average of 79% of respondents to the BBC survey agreed that “human activity, including industry and transportation, is a significant cause of climate change”.
Nine out of 10 people said action was necessary, with two-thirds of people going further, saying “it is necessary to take major steps starting very soon”.
In none of the countries did a majority say no action was necessary to combat climate change.
Why has it taken so damn long to get to even this stage?
One of the reasons is that some people have been trying extremely hard to stop other people getting the basic concepts right…
The Union of Concerned Scientists found that 58% of the 279 climate scientists working at federal agencies in the US who responded to its survey reported that they had experienced one of the following constraints. 1. “Pressure to eliminate the words ‘climate change,’ ‘global warming’, or other similar terms” from their communications. 2. Editing of scientific reports by their superiors which “changed the meaning of scientific findings”. 3. Statements by officials at their agencies which misrepresented their findings. 4. “The disappearance or unusual delay of websites, reports, or other science-based materials relating to climate”. 5. “New or unusual administrative requirements that impair climate-related work”. 6. “Situations in which scientists have actively objected to, resigned from, or removed themselves from a project because of pressure to change scientific findings.” They reported 435 incidents of political interference over the past five years(9). [2]
There is also the well documented funding of climate sceptics by those with most to lose by the alterations that have to be made.
There are also always those willing to capitalise on any tragedy.
There needs to be major changes in environmental regulation especially in the business aviation (and transport more generally) sectors. There needs to be nothing short of a revolution in agriculture- we all literally eat oil - and there needs to be a major effort on the part of the population.
The fact that many are only waking up about it now is proof of a disaster brought about not through wilful ignorance but through various attempts to castrate, silence or falsify discussion.
I hope we still have enough time to prevent a serious catastrophe.
[1] From the BBC programme ‘Yes, Prime Minister’.
[2] http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/04/10/the-real-climate-censorship/
This is from a while ago but nothing much has changed…
On someone else’s blog last week (sorry, I really can’t remember where) there was a question about what sort of people you tend to get bothered by most, people trying to sell you something, companies cold-calling, that sort of thing.
Well for me it is definitely the god-squad. I can’t seem to leave the house these days without someone trying to convert me.
Strangely enough, this phenomenon started when I was on the other side of the world in South Korea. South Korea is about 40% christian and everywhere you go you can see the neon crosses flashing in blue and red.
Not long after I arrived I was walking back to my apartment after work and two sharp-suited white guys saw me from across the road and made their way over. One was tall with dark hair, the other short and red-haired. They came over, stood very close to me, one on either side and said hello, how you doing etc. I can’t remember their names. Then they asked where I was from and I said ‘Scotland’ and they condescendingly commented on my accent and told me they would ‘have to visit there’ and seemed to expect me to be pleased about it.
I was a little bit worried by these two, they didn’t seem right.
After the preliminaries they asked me what religion I was. I said ‘I am an atheist’ at which they were a bit taken aback. They then asked if that was always the case and I said I had went to a catholic school but wasn’t at all interested in it now. At the said catholic school I was told at six years old that I was going to hell because I stole a pencil and at 10 years old, by the same priest, that I was the boy in the class most likely to become a priest. Consequently, I began to find the while thing absurd.
“You have to come to our church.”
“No, I don’t. Sorry guys, not interested.”
“We work at the Baptist university over there.”
“Oh.”
“You should come to our church, it is not like the catholic church and the service is in English.”
“I don’t want to.”
“We can go for a beer to talk about it. Let’s go for a beer.”
“No.”
By this time I am getting seriously worried. When this is going on I am trying to walk on down the road with them flanking me or occasionally stepping in front of me to make their point.
I took a taxi to get away from them.
You would think the story ended there but it didn’t. I saw them a couple of days later and managed to get by them without them seeing me. One of them was standing on a stepping stone in a little stream I walked past, hitting something in the water with a big stick. I have no idea what he was attempting to achieve by this.
About 2 weeks later they came to my door early on Sunday morning. These guys had somehow found out my address, possibly by following me (it’s not that difficult to spot me, I am quite tall and in a country with few foreigners and where people are generally short I stick out a bit) and were round to get me to come to church again.
This time, because I was shocked that they had found my house (and because I am generally not in the mood to talk on Sunday mornings), I was the more aggressive one.
They were told “F*ck off and don’t come back”, then I slammed the door.
This didn’t stop them either. Four more times over the year I was there they came to my house and got a similar response every time. I eventually hatched a plan with my friend that the next time he came we would take our tops off and mince about and invite them in and that would have properly got rid of them but we never got round to doing it.
More seriously, I think what they were doing constitutes a form of harassment. I am not the kind of person to want them prosecuted but I think that someone could probably make the case.
I have heard it said that some people who have that belief (any religion) have a fire or light in their eyes - I think it is a terrible thing. I can’t tell you how many discussions I have had where at the point that rationality becomes incompatible with their beliefs it is suddenly jettisoned and the ‘I’m right, you’re wrong, no matter what you say” kind of comments start to come. At this point the debate is over because you are not debating the person anymore, they are debating themselves.
I think that as much as they profess to hate the kind of islamic fundamentalism that goes on the supposedly christian ‘theoconservatives’ are actually jealous of the kind of intensity of adherence that some of the islamic groups have. Why else would they have been blurring the lines between politics and religion so much? Why else would they be slipping religious messages into politics and political messages into religious ceremonies. Why else are they trying to replace science with dogma? Why else are they deliberately fomenting the christian fundamentalism and longing for the ‘end time’ that we see now?
I have watched so many clips of just complete insanity going on in some of the American churches. Harry Potter encourages satanism apparently, and god will punish America for allowing people to be gay. These people are nuts.
It is also being exported all over the world. I have met quite a few American christian zealots in this country.
Recently I was working in Dundee and was having a cigarette outside the pub and this guy came up and started chatting away. Very amiable at first, till he asked me if I was going to church. Then the fire in his eyes lit up and another half hour argument started. His Scottish friend told me I should read the bible (I have, catholic school etc) and dragged him away.
I can’t even be left alone in the pub anymore?
Walking down the street yesterday a woman came up to me and gave me a flier called ‘What hope for dead relatives?’. The non-sequitors in this flier are incredible. Taking one at random…
“Lacking appreciation for God’s kindness, Adam and Eve did disobey and were made to pay the proscribed penalty.”
Does anyone else see something wrong with that?
Some other quotes are hilarious..
“Death is an absence of life” - well spotted!
I wonder what would happen to me if I stood outside churches, synagogues or mosques handing out leaflets saying “It’s All Bollocks - Don’t Believe It” . What if I went knocking peoples doors with the same message. I would probably get done for hate crimes. Somehow I don’t think I would encounter simple detachment from the majority of religious people. However if they turn up on my door and try to tell me I will suffer eternally if I don’t agree with them that is fine?
Finally, I have been talking about this kind of thing for years and I don’t want to be thought to be simply in step with Dawkins and co. for one main reason. I don’t really disagree with his argument, just his emphasis.
Before I give the reason I would like to separate Christopher Hitchens out from the group. Hitchens I have a problem with. Hitchens has gone from being a political apologist for mass slaughter to being another kind of apologist for it without so much as breaking stride.
Ok, the reason… Dawkins and Sam Harris I like. I like what they say but I think there is a problem with it and I am very conscious of being accused of the “I’m an atheist but..” kind of argument that Dawkins wrote an article about which I posted on this site. I shall be sending this to the Richard Dawkins site to see if they will post it.
I have a political problem with some of it. They make an argument against all religions and are very careful to point out difficulties and barbarities in all of them. Fair enough. They have considered their positions and want to argue their point. I just don’t like that the large latent atheist community that they are engaging with might be de-sensitised to the violence being done to middle-eastern countries by the west.
Yes there is Islamic terrorism. Yes it is horrific. Yes I want the people responsible for organising indiscriminate attacks on civilians to go to jail (or suicide bombers but you can’t punish them once they’ve done it).
What I would also like to see from Dawkins and Harris, which I have never seen from either of them, is an acknowledgement of the fact that both industrial society, as currently organised, and the supposedly christian west, are responsible for massacres on - for want of a better word - an industrial scale - and that this violence, on the whole, flows mostly in one direction.
Both ends of this violence are very wrong, but one side is killing a hell of a lot more people. I just want to see them acknowledge that.
==postcript==
I am finishing this in the pub because my net connection at home doesn’t work and I wanted to post it today. I went to the bar and there was an American there who was saying to his friend “I don’t want to get drunk and flirt with the barmaid, I want to get drunk and flirt with god.”
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