Month: December 2007

Journalists hold themselves up to be the guardians of modern society and shine the light on the issues that are important to us mere mortals.

This article is one such beam of illumination. Or is it. I head a current affairs report on the same interview and the commentary by the radio journalist seemed to bear no relation to what the Archbishop was actually saying.

The highlight seemed to be the story of the “Three wise men”. As anybody who has actually read the account knows there was never any mention of three people and that number is extremely unlikely.  In fact a little research would lead you to the conclusion that the popular “legend” is nothing but made up and that the biblical account is somewhat different. The baby was actually walking around by the time they arrived so the picture of them arriving on the night of the birth to find a baby in a cattle feeding trough is quite wrong. In fact there is a lot we know and more we can guess but most of the popular story is wrong. This is actually the point that the Archbishop was making.

Now onto the virgin birth. What was the actual point he was making. He did not deny the virgin birth – in fact he claimed to believe it. What he was saying was that we expect people to jump through all sorts of idealogical hoops and to confirm to some type of norm before they become acceptable to God. God imposes no such requirements. God is interested in relationship and complete and perfect knowledge is not a pre-requisite for God’s love for us and for us to come into a relationship with him.

Finally the date of Jesus birth. Well hello!!! No one has ever claimed that Jesus was born on the 25th of December – or anything near that date. I think he was making the point that the actual date of Jesus birth is irrelevant. What we are celebrating is the Son of God not some arbitrary date. As we celebrate the incarnation of the Son let us think about our heavenly father and his love and grace – not the irrelevant issues that have nothing to do with Jesus and his life.

One of the rarer meteorological phenomenon is the ice storm. Severe ice storms occur about once every ten years.

An ice storm occurs when the temperature at ground level is well below zero, the temperature in the intermediate layer between ground level and the precipitating cloud is much warmer, above zero, and the clouds are at or below freezing. The precipitation starts out as snow but melts in the intervening layer as it falls. Once it hits the surface it immediately freezes. This is called freezing rain and it coats everything in ice. Unlike snow which is friable and will drift and fall off surfaces the ice clings and weighs down that surface resulting in falling trees, roofs and power lines. A severe ice storm can be devastating and fatal.

At the moment there is a severe ice storm in the US Midwest and a contact posted this.

“ Oklahoma got hit the hardest. We got hit not once, but twice by ice storms. I lost power during the second one. My power was out for 133 hours, over 5 days. It finally came back on this evening. Last I heard 57,000 in Tulsa were still without power. Some may be without power for two weeks. At one point nearly 600,000 were without power in Oklahoma and around one million in the midwest.

“Hundreds of crewmen from 14 different states came to our rescue to help restore power. Heard on TV some may be here through Christmas. Also heard tonight one of the out of state crew men fell off a pole and landed on a fence and broke his leg 🙁 My thoughts and prayers are with him and all of the others who are working out in this weather to restore our power so that we can be warm once again.”
Pictures

(Used with permission)

I first heard about ice storms when I watched the imaginatively titled film “The Ice Storm“. The cinematography is brilliant, well worth a watch.

Once again those for whom English is not their native tongue have made their mark…

“Nilesh,

Your utmost interference & resolution required.”

The now legendary figure of Nelson Mandella was for one section of the population a terrorist who was responsible for the slaughter of many innocent people and was quite justly incarcerated. On the other hand he represented all that was honourable and just in the fight against tyranny in South Africa. I well remember a short but memorable conversation with a friend many years ago who was from South Africa. When I mentioned Mandella his only comment was that that men was evil and should never have been released. I make no judgment here. The situation is far from simple and the issues anything but clear cut, my only point being that a lot of what one believe is not necessarily based on fact but personal perspective and often the facts are secondary.

I was reminded of this by an article in the news regarding objections adult shops have regarding what they believe to be unfair treatment.

In this article they say that “THE adult-entertainment industry has declared war on the fundamentalist Exclusive Brethren sect for allegedly infiltrating local councils.” This is typical of the emotive statements in the article. What do they mean “infiltration”. Do they mean that they have stood for local council, campaigned and lobbied for support, completed the democratic process of gaining sufficient votes to gain a position on local council and taken up their post? Maybe we should look more carefully and we might find that Labour party members and Liberal party members have infiltrated state and federal parliament. And – heaven forbid – maybe an anti pokies independent has infiltrated the federal senate. If they want people on council to represent their views it is a simple matter of standing for election, lobbying for campaign funds, campaining and attempting to get sufficient votes to get elected.

No where in the article has any wrongdoing been proven. It is full of allegation without a shred of evidence. To be quite frank I do not agree with the group in question on many issues but I defend their right to represent those issues in whatever legal way they desire. In fact quite the opposite, what this lobby group is doing is attempting is to censor the Exclusive Brethren for no more reason than disagreeing with them.

I could go on but I think the point can be highlighted by simply quoting some of the emotive language in the article. “infiltrating local councils”, “bankrolling legal challenges”, “sanctioned bribery”, “refused him planning permission”, “infiltrated other morals groups”, “secretly being elected to local councils”, “moral agendas”, “entryism”, “decisions on moral matters have been compromised by this cult”, “Lithgow councillor Martin Ticehurst said he was disturbed”, “Councils should not be allowed to accept money from any activist group”, “It could be perceived as a form of bribery”, “The sect”.

Now I accept that in order to sell news it has to be dressed in emotive language, and that much of the language is contained in quotes but the apparent blind acceptance by this  journalist of the assumptions behind this article is all too common in reporting of these and similar issues.

The bottom line here is that adult shops are being hypocritical in their attitude here. It is fine for them to thrust on society their moral code but dare anybody disagree with them then they are branded as sectarian, extremest activists and insinuations of illegal activity are alleged.

There is nothing in this article that indicates that the Exclusive Brethren have done anything illegal or immoral.  In fact they appear to have done nothing more than exercise their democratic right. It appears to me that the adult shops are terrified that the democratic process is not biased in their favour.

The first and only formal debate I ever took part in was in high school and was on the subject “The end justifies the means” and I was on the con side. Our side won convincingly.

The principle that the end does not justify the means was one in which I believed then and I have not changed my opinion since.

There has been a lot of debate in the last few years with respect to some of the techniques used by the US in the name of security. Almost anything can be justified on the grounds of security and almost anything can be condemned on the grounds of human rights. How is a man to judge? To quote Gandalf “As he has always judged”.

There are several problems with the techniques that the CIA have used. I have written about rendition before so I will move over that one. In this blog I want to briefly address the more extreme techniques that they have used to extract information.

The two principle issues are the reliability of the information and the human rights issues. Of course it is being argued that the discomfort and endangerment to the individual is outweighed by the protections to the greater population. This is the old argument of the end justifying the means. Note that I am not going to address the argument of the ends justifying the means per se – I will leave that for another time – although the issues are related.

Any information obtained under duress is inadmissible as evidence in a court of law – at least in most western countries. This is because what is said when a person feels threatened is not to be relied on as being the truth. People have a strong motivation to lie if they think that their treatment will be abated if they tell the interrogator what they think they want to hear. For the same reason information gained under duress is unreliable for the conduct of further investigation. It is easy to be led astray or sidetracked by false evidence and the success of an investigation can be seriously impeded if techniques are used that are likely to produce tainted information which is relied on to direct the investigation. Of course this alone is not sufficient justification since the investigator may still consider the risk of the accused escaping conviction and the unreliability of their evidence as being worth it against the possible outcome of maybe avoiding a terrorist act or bringing other people to justice.

There is however a more compelling argument. Either constitutionally or legislatively we have a protection from eiter excessively violent punishment or bahaviour from law enforcement. One of the reasons is to protect the individual from the abuse of power. The state has effectively limitless power with respect to the individual and this power has to be moderated using checks and balances to avoid its abuse. That is why we have laws against assault and battery regardless of who carried them out. This is as it should be. Everybody has a right to be free of abusive treatment regardless of their situation. It is of little use in a civilised society to replace one form of terrorism with another – however it is justified. What is the difference with a radical religious extremest carrying out acts of terror and the security service of a western nation suing violent methods on a suspect to extract information?

I think the best parallel we have for the behaviour of the CIA interrogators is the inquisition. The very things that made it wrong then make it wrong now.