This piece by Brendan O'Neill pretty much nails it. Sample:
Are we saying that anyone who is a prominent public figure – from politicians to actors, “it girls” to athletes – should have no unrevealed life? Such an erosion of the line between public and private, between what we do for a living and who we are with our friends and family, shows just how far the new requirement for revealing everything has gone. You can see the Oprahite dogma at work in dozens of recent scandals, from politicians like Mark Sanford and Eliot Spitzer, to athletes like A-Rod and Mark McGwire.
The criticism of Woods for zealously guarding his private life, and for at first refusing to do the formulaic public mea culpa that is now expected of every fallen public figure, showed what really lurked behind the Tiger-baiting of the past three months: fury over a famous man’s refusal to play by the new rules, to adhere to the new ethos of public emotionalism, to bow before the altar of publicly advertising one’s pain. Woods was clinging, for dear life, to the old-fashioned idea that a clear line should be drawn between a man’s public life and his private life, and the media could not tolerate that.
And the conclusion:
Last Friday, his capitulation was complete. After months of being ridiculed and attacked, Woods finally partook in perhaps the most widely disseminated expression of public sorrow of all time. The privacy zealot was successfully remade as an acolyte of Oprah, his mind expunged of the silly idea that he, or anyone else, should have the right to sort out his problems “behind closed doors.” There were elements of the authoritarian show trial in his mea culpa: the denunciation of the self, the promise to become a new man.
The forced conversion of Tiger Woods represents another blow to the idea of privacy. A civilized society should recognize the dividing line between a public man and his private life, because all of us need a private space in which we can develop relationships and work out who we are. The slaying of private Tiger and his rebirth as a public spectacle makes defending privacy that much harder.
Yes. Last Friday, Tiger Woods let us all down - admittedly, under pressure that was evidently too much for him. I care more about that than about what he does in private with the consensual sexual partners of his choice. If some of the latter was unethical (involving lies or broken promises), that's for him to sort out with the people concerned. It's not our problem. His failure to hold the line on privacy has a much greater public impact.
Read the whole article, and spread the meme.
About Me
- Russell Blackford
- Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019); AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021); and HOW WE BECAME POST-LIBERAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOLERATION (2024).
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
The two words you really wanted to hear from me
Yes, here they are.
No, not: "Love you!" (well maybe one or two of you ...).
No, the two words you've wanted to hear from me for the past few days were surely: "Tiger Woods."
All right, discuss. I'm not going to say anything more, except you may assume a certain degree of cynicism at my end ... and that this (the apology itself if it lets you view it plus some commentary) doesn't reduce my cynicism in any way. If you can't see the apology speech at that link, go to YouTube.
No, not: "Love you!" (well maybe one or two of you ...).
No, the two words you've wanted to hear from me for the past few days were surely: "Tiger Woods."
All right, discuss. I'm not going to say anything more, except you may assume a certain degree of cynicism at my end ... and that this (the apology itself if it lets you view it plus some commentary) doesn't reduce my cynicism in any way. If you can't see the apology speech at that link, go to YouTube.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Jenny Blackford interview
Jenny's interview for ASif. Sample:
While you’re known for your short stories in the speculative fiction genre, your first novel is a historical one (The Priestess and the Slave, Hadley Rille Books, 2009). How did that come about, and what are the different challenges in writing the different genres?
Ever since I can remember, I've loved the ancient world – from Palaeolithic through to Classical. My degree was in Classics, back when that meant four years of intensive Greek and Latin, as well as history and literature. (My honours subjects included Greek and Latin Epigraphy, Palaeography and Comparative Religion, and my unfinished PhD was titled "The Tripartite Godhead in Indo-European Religion".)
So – when Eric Reynolds, of Hadley Rille Books, put out a call for submissions for an anthology about ruins, the obvious topic for me was the ruins of Delphi as described by 2nd century AD writer Pausanias (who wrote the ancient equivalent of the Lonely Planet Guide to Greece). Eric was impressed, and I was thrilled that the story (my first adult one) got an Honourable Mention from Gardner Dozois. Then, when Eric decided to publish a set of seriously archaeologically-based short historical novels, he asked me to do the Greek one.
The real difference between historical and speculative fiction, at least for me, is the research. I spent months immersing myself in the original sources about 5th century BC Greece, plus a huge range of arcane academic books (including, for example, The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks and Diseases in the Ancient Greek World.) Luckily, I love that stuff. There's nothing in The Priestess and the Slave that's not well-attested in the historical and archaeological sources.
While you’re known for your short stories in the speculative fiction genre, your first novel is a historical one (The Priestess and the Slave, Hadley Rille Books, 2009). How did that come about, and what are the different challenges in writing the different genres?
Ever since I can remember, I've loved the ancient world – from Palaeolithic through to Classical. My degree was in Classics, back when that meant four years of intensive Greek and Latin, as well as history and literature. (My honours subjects included Greek and Latin Epigraphy, Palaeography and Comparative Religion, and my unfinished PhD was titled "The Tripartite Godhead in Indo-European Religion".)
So – when Eric Reynolds, of Hadley Rille Books, put out a call for submissions for an anthology about ruins, the obvious topic for me was the ruins of Delphi as described by 2nd century AD writer Pausanias (who wrote the ancient equivalent of the Lonely Planet Guide to Greece). Eric was impressed, and I was thrilled that the story (my first adult one) got an Honourable Mention from Gardner Dozois. Then, when Eric decided to publish a set of seriously archaeologically-based short historical novels, he asked me to do the Greek one.
The real difference between historical and speculative fiction, at least for me, is the research. I spent months immersing myself in the original sources about 5th century BC Greece, plus a huge range of arcane academic books (including, for example, The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks and Diseases in the Ancient Greek World.) Luckily, I love that stuff. There's nothing in The Priestess and the Slave that's not well-attested in the historical and archaeological sources.
AC Grayling on the new puritanism
Kudos to AC Grayling for his trenchant critique of the new puritanism, published in The Herald (Scotland).
The law has no place in the private lives of consenting grown-ups, whether they are playing scrabble or having sex, and whether they are doing the latter for cash or for the long-term project of building a home and family together. When the cycles of moral fashion swing back towards prohibition, criminalisation, and the interference of law in private lives, and when this results in Canute-like efforts to stop people doing, seeing or being something that the moralisers themselves happen not to like, and which makes them wish to stop everyone else doing, seeing or being it, we need to oppose them vigorously. We must challenge them on the facts and argue the case for keeping a level head.
The law has no place in the private lives of consenting grown-ups, whether they are playing scrabble or having sex, and whether they are doing the latter for cash or for the long-term project of building a home and family together. When the cycles of moral fashion swing back towards prohibition, criminalisation, and the interference of law in private lives, and when this results in Canute-like efforts to stop people doing, seeing or being something that the moralisers themselves happen not to like, and which makes them wish to stop everyone else doing, seeing or being it, we need to oppose them vigorously. We must challenge them on the facts and argue the case for keeping a level head.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Charles Taylor makes mess of "The Windhover"
I know this is going to be cheap of me, and I'm sure I've made similar mistakes myself and will probably be caught in the future making others. I've been known to refer to a book by a (very slightly) incorrect title all the way through a review. Ouch! We're all fallible.
And, look, before I go on, I actually think that A Secular Age, by Charles Taylor, is a very useful book. It provides an extremely detailed account - admittedly from a liberal Christian viewpoint - of how we became secular. That means many things, as Taylor explains, but the book is largely devoted to a discussion of how we moved from a situation in Europe in, say, 1500, when atheism or "exclusive humanism" was almost unthinkable, to the situation now ... where it is very thinkable indeed in the countries of the West. We need thorough historical/philosophical discussions like this, written from all viewpoints, to form our own understandings of how our contemporary reality came to be as it is.
It doesn't even matter that I find some of Tayor's arguments weak, although he does, in my humble opinion, make far too much of the fact that some people continue to yearn for something beyond nature, and specifically for some transformation of their lives that will take them beyond "merely" worldly kinds of human flourishing. That's an interesting psychological phenomenon, but no supernatural explanation seems to be required. There are many reasons why even the best human life seems unsatisfactory compared to what we can imagine - but that is in no sense a reason to deprecate the genuine joys and satisfactions that we can have. To his credit, Taylor is wary of the churches' historical calumnies of the flesh. In any event, I'm learning much by reading this huge, bug-crushing work of scholarship (and I thank one of my closest friends for buying it for me as a present, since it's a book I really need on my shelves).
But I had to wince at a passage near the end, where Taylor has been discussing various fears about the cheapening or flattening of poetic and other language. To make one point, he discusses Gerard Manley Hopkins and specifically quotes the octave of "The Windhover", perhaps the most famous poem in the Hopkins canon, observing how Hopkins attempts to reveal and celebrate the force of particular existing things. Here is the actual octave of Hopkins' great poem ... which, alas, Taylor quotes with numerous errors:
The Windhover:
To Christ our Lord
I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Note that I have lost the indentations, but that is not my doing - just the way it comes out on Blogger.
Taylor misquotes this in a way that destroys the urgency of the sprung rhythm in the fifth line, and, indeed, the line's overall effect. I knew that something had gone wrong, as it matched neither my memory nor my sense of the rhythm, and went off to look it up. Hence my provision of the correct version above. (This is taken from W.H. Gardner's standard selection of Hopkins' poetry, but I checked it in a couple of other places to make sure.) I can forgive the fact that "big wind" is printed in Taylor's book as "bog wind" - presumably just a typo - and some of the other errors (such as the accent marks that Taylor provides, which do not seem to match those in the manuscript, if Gardner's notes are correct); but leaving out (as Taylor does) one of the two "off"'s in line five, then adding the word "a" before "swing", is disastrous. It may not change the literal meaning, but it produces a much weaker, "flatter" effect. Then there's the addition that Taylor makes of an "is" before "in hiding" in the second last line of the octave (this totally alters the meaning, disrupting the octave's past-tense narrative, if it actually makes sense at all).
All of which suggests, I say smugly, that theists don't have an advantage over atheists in appreciating the language of poetry.
To start where I began, though, I really don't want to make too much of it. True, the multiple and poem-wrecking errors could only be made by somebody who does not have a feel for the poem's rhythm and sense - it's dangerous to quote something you don't fully understand. But in fairness, I'm not sure I fully understand it either. The poem has its points of difficulty. And again, perhaps a research assistant mistranscribed it (and then Taylor neglected to check).
Still, the errors are so blatant, and have such an impact on the poem, that I can't just let it slide. Particularly when I noticed, a few pages later, another poem-wrecking misquote, this time from the opening of Hopkins' "(Carrion Comfort)" ... and yet other lines from Hopkins that don't sound quite right to my ear and have probably been mistranscribed. And particularly when all this appears on the heels of a discussion of the heights and nuances of poetic language.
And, look, before I go on, I actually think that A Secular Age, by Charles Taylor, is a very useful book. It provides an extremely detailed account - admittedly from a liberal Christian viewpoint - of how we became secular. That means many things, as Taylor explains, but the book is largely devoted to a discussion of how we moved from a situation in Europe in, say, 1500, when atheism or "exclusive humanism" was almost unthinkable, to the situation now ... where it is very thinkable indeed in the countries of the West. We need thorough historical/philosophical discussions like this, written from all viewpoints, to form our own understandings of how our contemporary reality came to be as it is.
It doesn't even matter that I find some of Tayor's arguments weak, although he does, in my humble opinion, make far too much of the fact that some people continue to yearn for something beyond nature, and specifically for some transformation of their lives that will take them beyond "merely" worldly kinds of human flourishing. That's an interesting psychological phenomenon, but no supernatural explanation seems to be required. There are many reasons why even the best human life seems unsatisfactory compared to what we can imagine - but that is in no sense a reason to deprecate the genuine joys and satisfactions that we can have. To his credit, Taylor is wary of the churches' historical calumnies of the flesh. In any event, I'm learning much by reading this huge, bug-crushing work of scholarship (and I thank one of my closest friends for buying it for me as a present, since it's a book I really need on my shelves).
But I had to wince at a passage near the end, where Taylor has been discussing various fears about the cheapening or flattening of poetic and other language. To make one point, he discusses Gerard Manley Hopkins and specifically quotes the octave of "The Windhover", perhaps the most famous poem in the Hopkins canon, observing how Hopkins attempts to reveal and celebrate the force of particular existing things. Here is the actual octave of Hopkins' great poem ... which, alas, Taylor quotes with numerous errors:
The Windhover:
To Christ our Lord
I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Note that I have lost the indentations, but that is not my doing - just the way it comes out on Blogger.
Taylor misquotes this in a way that destroys the urgency of the sprung rhythm in the fifth line, and, indeed, the line's overall effect. I knew that something had gone wrong, as it matched neither my memory nor my sense of the rhythm, and went off to look it up. Hence my provision of the correct version above. (This is taken from W.H. Gardner's standard selection of Hopkins' poetry, but I checked it in a couple of other places to make sure.) I can forgive the fact that "big wind" is printed in Taylor's book as "bog wind" - presumably just a typo - and some of the other errors (such as the accent marks that Taylor provides, which do not seem to match those in the manuscript, if Gardner's notes are correct); but leaving out (as Taylor does) one of the two "off"'s in line five, then adding the word "a" before "swing", is disastrous. It may not change the literal meaning, but it produces a much weaker, "flatter" effect. Then there's the addition that Taylor makes of an "is" before "in hiding" in the second last line of the octave (this totally alters the meaning, disrupting the octave's past-tense narrative, if it actually makes sense at all).
All of which suggests, I say smugly, that theists don't have an advantage over atheists in appreciating the language of poetry.
To start where I began, though, I really don't want to make too much of it. True, the multiple and poem-wrecking errors could only be made by somebody who does not have a feel for the poem's rhythm and sense - it's dangerous to quote something you don't fully understand. But in fairness, I'm not sure I fully understand it either. The poem has its points of difficulty. And again, perhaps a research assistant mistranscribed it (and then Taylor neglected to check).
Still, the errors are so blatant, and have such an impact on the poem, that I can't just let it slide. Particularly when I noticed, a few pages later, another poem-wrecking misquote, this time from the opening of Hopkins' "(Carrion Comfort)" ... and yet other lines from Hopkins that don't sound quite right to my ear and have probably been mistranscribed. And particularly when all this appears on the heels of a discussion of the heights and nuances of poetic language.
Interview at ASif
As the World Science Fiction Convention, Aussiecon 4, approaches, Australian Specfic in focus (ASif) is conducting a series of interviews with writers, editors, publishers, and so on involved in the local science fiction community. Aussiecon 4 will be held in Melbourne in September, and I'm looking forward to it.
The various interviews are initially appearing across a number of blogs, but will eventually be consolidated on the ASif site. Jenny will be doing one of these interviews today, and others so far include Alison Goodman (hey, Al, you were a bit laconic!), Damien Broderick, Paul Collins ... and many others whom I'm glad to count as friends (I can't list them all, so browse for yourself via the ASif site). This is about the closest thing to my tribe (to borrow a line from the Kim Wilkins interview).
I'll link to the consolidated set of interviews when it's available. My own interview appears here, on Kathryn Linge's LiveJournal page.
Sample:
Did you specifically approach science fiction (as compared to mainstream) writers when putting together the collection [i.e. 50 Voices of Disbelief]? What did you aim to achieve with the book?
To take the second question first, Udo and I are outspoken critics of organised religion, and not even big fans of the less organised kinds. We're painfully conscious that religion is not only persisting but often exercising serious influence on the political decision-making process. Worse, at least from my viewpoint, many religious organisations, leaders, and thinkers defend the right of legislators to enact laws that enforce specifically religious moralities. While these leaders, etc., may say they defend a separation of church and state, I often have to laugh at this. Many of them interpret "separation of church and state" as a requirement that the state refrain from interfering with the organisation and operations of the religious sects — but that the latter remain free to lobby the state to impose a Christian (or Islamic, or whatever) moral agenda, even on non-believers. As long as we have religious leaders, and indeed legislators, who think this way, it's natural, inevitable, and entirely desirable that non-believers question just what intellectual and moral authority the religious organisations, leaders, holy books, etc., actually have. Where do they get this authority that they claim? If it's from a god, how does anyone know what this god really thinks or whether it even exists? It's worth scrutinising the amazing claims of religion from every angle — philosophical, historical, psychological, or whatever.
The various interviews are initially appearing across a number of blogs, but will eventually be consolidated on the ASif site. Jenny will be doing one of these interviews today, and others so far include Alison Goodman (hey, Al, you were a bit laconic!), Damien Broderick, Paul Collins ... and many others whom I'm glad to count as friends (I can't list them all, so browse for yourself via the ASif site). This is about the closest thing to my tribe (to borrow a line from the Kim Wilkins interview).
I'll link to the consolidated set of interviews when it's available. My own interview appears here, on Kathryn Linge's LiveJournal page.
Sample:
Did you specifically approach science fiction (as compared to mainstream) writers when putting together the collection [i.e. 50 Voices of Disbelief]? What did you aim to achieve with the book?
To take the second question first, Udo and I are outspoken critics of organised religion, and not even big fans of the less organised kinds. We're painfully conscious that religion is not only persisting but often exercising serious influence on the political decision-making process. Worse, at least from my viewpoint, many religious organisations, leaders, and thinkers defend the right of legislators to enact laws that enforce specifically religious moralities. While these leaders, etc., may say they defend a separation of church and state, I often have to laugh at this. Many of them interpret "separation of church and state" as a requirement that the state refrain from interfering with the organisation and operations of the religious sects — but that the latter remain free to lobby the state to impose a Christian (or Islamic, or whatever) moral agenda, even on non-believers. As long as we have religious leaders, and indeed legislators, who think this way, it's natural, inevitable, and entirely desirable that non-believers question just what intellectual and moral authority the religious organisations, leaders, holy books, etc., actually have. Where do they get this authority that they claim? If it's from a god, how does anyone know what this god really thinks or whether it even exists? It's worth scrutinising the amazing claims of religion from every angle — philosophical, historical, psychological, or whatever.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Prudish bully vs. ACLU - government official challenged in US Court of Appeals
H/T George Felis.
This from the ACLU's Blog of Rights.
On January 15, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit heard arguments in Miller, et al. v. Skumanick, a child pornography case that, oddly, involves no child pornography. The case goes back to 2006, when two girls aged 12 were photographed by another friend on her digital camera. The two girls were depicted from the waist up, wearing bras. In a separate situation, our third client was photographed as she emerged from the shower, with a towel wrapped around her waist and the upper body exposed. Neither of the photos depicted genitalia or any sexual activity or context. In 2008 the girls' school district learned that these and other photos were circulating, confiscated several students' cell phones, and turned the photos in question over to the Wyoming County district attorney, George Skumanick, Jr.
Skumanick sent a letter to the girls and their parents, offering an ultimatum. They could attend a five-week re-education program of his own design, which included topics like "what it means to be a girl in today's society" and "non-traditional societal and job roles." They would also be placed on probation, subjected to random drug testing, and required to write essays explaining how their actions were wrong. If the girls refused the program, the letter explained, the girls would be charged with felony child pornography, a charge that carries a possible 10-year prison sentence.
The girls are now about 16. Obviously, a conviction for child pornography - or even the process of a trial - could easily destroy a teenage girl's life prospects. It boggles the mind that any responsible public official would make such a threat to very vulnerable young people; but of course, bullies are always with us. For someone prepared to abuse his authority, this is a very powerful way to coerce others to obey his will. Interestingly, none of the children known to have actually distributed the photos were the subject of any action by the authorities - only the girls actually appearing in the photos. In particular, there is no reeducation program proposed for the boys involved in distributing them.
Most of the girls surrendered to the overwhelming power of the bully: they gave in and attended the aptly-named Skumanick's reeducation program - with what effect is not apparent. But three families challenged him and contacted the ACLU to defend their daughters in court. In 2009, the ACLU was successful in obtaining an interim order restraining the DA's office from proceeding to prosecute the three girls concerned. Whether the DA's office will be able to proceed further is now up to the Court of Appeals.
Blog of Rights observes:
It is certainly important, in this era of Facebook and Twitter and text messaging, that children learn the consequences of sharing digital photographs of themselves, but as ACLU of Pennsylvania legal director Witold Walczak puts it, "prosecutors should not be using heavy artillery like child-pornography charges to teach that lesson."
Edit: On reflection, I'm not sure that the word "prudish" is correct in this context, since the photos don't sound especially sexual (much as they might appear provocative and "naughty" to a bunch of 12-y.o.'s!). It's not that he's seeing something clearly sexual and finding it offensive, although the word may still be appropriate as there does seem to be an underlying "shame about the body" thing going on. But what I mainly see here is a pathological lack of any sense of nuance or proportion, combined with an unscrupulous, destructive determination to get his way.
This from the ACLU's Blog of Rights.
On January 15, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit heard arguments in Miller, et al. v. Skumanick, a child pornography case that, oddly, involves no child pornography. The case goes back to 2006, when two girls aged 12 were photographed by another friend on her digital camera. The two girls were depicted from the waist up, wearing bras. In a separate situation, our third client was photographed as she emerged from the shower, with a towel wrapped around her waist and the upper body exposed. Neither of the photos depicted genitalia or any sexual activity or context. In 2008 the girls' school district learned that these and other photos were circulating, confiscated several students' cell phones, and turned the photos in question over to the Wyoming County district attorney, George Skumanick, Jr.
Skumanick sent a letter to the girls and their parents, offering an ultimatum. They could attend a five-week re-education program of his own design, which included topics like "what it means to be a girl in today's society" and "non-traditional societal and job roles." They would also be placed on probation, subjected to random drug testing, and required to write essays explaining how their actions were wrong. If the girls refused the program, the letter explained, the girls would be charged with felony child pornography, a charge that carries a possible 10-year prison sentence.
The girls are now about 16. Obviously, a conviction for child pornography - or even the process of a trial - could easily destroy a teenage girl's life prospects. It boggles the mind that any responsible public official would make such a threat to very vulnerable young people; but of course, bullies are always with us. For someone prepared to abuse his authority, this is a very powerful way to coerce others to obey his will. Interestingly, none of the children known to have actually distributed the photos were the subject of any action by the authorities - only the girls actually appearing in the photos. In particular, there is no reeducation program proposed for the boys involved in distributing them.
Most of the girls surrendered to the overwhelming power of the bully: they gave in and attended the aptly-named Skumanick's reeducation program - with what effect is not apparent. But three families challenged him and contacted the ACLU to defend their daughters in court. In 2009, the ACLU was successful in obtaining an interim order restraining the DA's office from proceeding to prosecute the three girls concerned. Whether the DA's office will be able to proceed further is now up to the Court of Appeals.
Blog of Rights observes:
It is certainly important, in this era of Facebook and Twitter and text messaging, that children learn the consequences of sharing digital photographs of themselves, but as ACLU of Pennsylvania legal director Witold Walczak puts it, "prosecutors should not be using heavy artillery like child-pornography charges to teach that lesson."
Edit: On reflection, I'm not sure that the word "prudish" is correct in this context, since the photos don't sound especially sexual (much as they might appear provocative and "naughty" to a bunch of 12-y.o.'s!). It's not that he's seeing something clearly sexual and finding it offensive, although the word may still be appropriate as there does seem to be an underlying "shame about the body" thing going on. But what I mainly see here is a pathological lack of any sense of nuance or proportion, combined with an unscrupulous, destructive determination to get his way.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Kevin Rudd wants women to be baby factories
This story by Nina Funnell is an eye-opener. It seems that we have a choice for prime minister come next election. On the one hand, we can have a bible-bashing social conservative who would take us back to the 1950s if he could. If that's what you want, you have a perfectly good candidate in Kevin Rudd. Alternatively, there's Tony Abbott.
Extract from Funnell:
After Rudd came off stage, he spoke to me and the few other under-30s (we had congregated for strength in numbers). He extended his points about the problems with the ageing population and the financial problems gen Y will incur when the baby boomers become pensioners.
At that point one of my friends introduced me, dropping in that I am completing a PhD. At this, Rudd rolled his eyes and in a terse voice lacking any sense of irony remarked that is the "excuse" that "all" young women are using nowadays to avoid starting families. Since then I've come up with numerous one-line retorts, but in the moment I just froze in shock.
Extract from Funnell:
After Rudd came off stage, he spoke to me and the few other under-30s (we had congregated for strength in numbers). He extended his points about the problems with the ageing population and the financial problems gen Y will incur when the baby boomers become pensioners.
At that point one of my friends introduced me, dropping in that I am completing a PhD. At this, Rudd rolled his eyes and in a terse voice lacking any sense of irony remarked that is the "excuse" that "all" young women are using nowadays to avoid starting families. Since then I've come up with numerous one-line retorts, but in the moment I just froze in shock.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Russell Blackford interview on YouTube
Adam Ford did this interview with me in October 2009, at my old house in Melbourne (shortly after last year's Atheist Alliance International Convention and a couple of months before I moved interstate).
It's divided into six parts, as follows:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/user/singularitysoup#p/u/6/8Ly-KEqy0rs
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/user/singularitysoup#p/u/5/uwPLob4tJ_Q
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/user/singularitysoup#p/u/3/cWijedQIrnQ
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/user/singularitysoup#p/u/2/gU0W8xmqEc0
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/user/singularitysoup#p/u/1/ID4j1pXf6f0
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/user/singularitysoup#p/u/0/S-GxnXGkFL4
We discuss such topics as the book, 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists; atheism and secularism; indigenous spirituality; radical life extension; and technological change, including the Technological Singularity foreseen by Vernor Vinge, Ray Kurzweil and others.
It's divided into six parts, as follows:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/user/singularitysoup#p/u/6/8Ly-KEqy0rs
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/user/singularitysoup#p/u/5/uwPLob4tJ_Q
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/user/singularitysoup#p/u/3/cWijedQIrnQ
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/user/singularitysoup#p/u/2/gU0W8xmqEc0
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/user/singularitysoup#p/u/1/ID4j1pXf6f0
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/user/singularitysoup#p/u/0/S-GxnXGkFL4
We discuss such topics as the book, 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists; atheism and secularism; indigenous spirituality; radical life extension; and technological change, including the Technological Singularity foreseen by Vernor Vinge, Ray Kurzweil and others.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Hitchens - Amnesty has lost sight of its original purpose
Christopher Hitchens castigates Amnesty Internation, which has, he says, lost sight of its original purpose.
In common with all great ideas, the Amnesty concept was marvelously simple. Each local branch was asked to sponsor a minimum of three prisoners of conscience: one from a NATO country, one from a Warsaw Pact country, and one from the Third—or neutralist—World. In time, the organization also evolved policies that opposed the use of capital punishment or torture in all cases, but the definition of "prisoner of conscience" remained central. And it included a requirement that the prisoner in question be exactly that: a person jailed for the expression of an opinion. Amnesty did not adopt people who either used or advocated violence.
This organization is precious to me and to millions of other people, including many thousands of men and women who were and are incarcerated and maltreated because of their courage as dissidents and who regained their liberty as a consequence of Amnesty International's unsleeping work. So to learn of its degeneration and politicization is to be reading about a moral crisis that has global implications.
Hitchens' article is well worth reading, which does not mean I endorse it all. I don't think he goes far enough.
The truth is that Amnesty International lost sight of its original purpose years ago, which is why, with some sadness, I left the organisation years ago. For some reason, it decided to morph into an all-purpose human rights advocacy body, which would be fine except that this duplicated aspects of the work of many other bodies and distracted it from its original focus on freeing prisoners of conscience: people imprisoned for expressions of opinion. That was the organisation that I'd joined and paid my dues to. Moreover, its more diffuse mission undermined its ability to maintain true expertise and authority on the limited subject of prisoners of conscience. Its pronouncements once had credibility right across the political spectrum, but I can't remember when that was last the case - not in this millennium.
And it began to pay too much attention to the low-hanging fruit, the undoubted human rights violations by Western democracies that might actually be shamed if exposed ... distracting it from the mass incarcerations by theocratic and dictatorial regimes of prisoners of conscience by the thousands. Once again, there are many other organisations mainly lobbying against human rights abuses in the West; this is important work, but not something that we specifically needed Amnesty International to pursue to the point of watering down its real expertise and distracting from its original purpose.
The tendency of Amnesty's new direction, set a couple of decades ago now, is that it will provide a platform even for Taliban sympathisers, so long as they are willing to rail against human rights violations by the West.
Against that background, I feel sympathy for the plight of Gita Sahgal, an Amnesty employee who objects to her employer's provision of a platform for Moazzem Begg. Hitchens describes Begg as follows:
Moazzem Begg, a British citizen, was arrested in Pakistan after fleeing Afghanistan in the aftermath of the intervention in 2001. He was imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay and then released. He has since become the moving spirit in a separate organization calling itself Cageprisoners. Begg does not deny his past as an Islamist activist, which took him to Afghanistan in the first place. He does not withdraw from his statement that the Taliban was the best government available to Afghanistan. Cageprisoners has another senior member named Asim Qureshi, who speaks in defense of jihad at rallies sponsored by the extremist group Hizb-ut Tahrir (banned in many Muslim countries). Cageprisoners also defends men like Abu Hamza, leader of the mosque that sheltered Richard "Shoe Bomber" Reid among many other violent and criminal characters who have been convicted in open court of heinous offenses that have nothing at all to do with freedom of expression.
Note that Amnesty's original purpose would involve a much less significant overlap with the work of Cageprisoners.
I am, however, less sympathetic to Saghal than some. I have reservations.
The fact is, Amnesty has every right to take the policy direction it has, no matter how misguided, and no employer will put up with a senior employee in a policy-implementation position publicly arguing against its lawful policy direction. Note that, whatever else Sahgal may be, she is not a whistleblower, since Amnesty is doing nothing in secret that needs to be exposed, and is doing nothing corrupt or illegal on which she could be "blowing the whistle". Instead, it is quite openly carrying out a highly problematic but perfectly lawful policy. Rather than being a whistleblower, Saghal is simply a person who finds herself working for an employer whose lawful and openly-pursued policies she objects to strongly and now wishes to oppose in public debate.
Unfortunately, that places her in an untenable position, and I don't see how she can stay employed by Amnesty unless it does a massive policy volte face. Subject to the details of her contract of employment, it is, I suggest, legally able to dismiss her from its employment in these circumstances. Thus, I think her position is legally shaky ... and to be frank, I am also a bit iffy about the morality of how she is handling this.
Is it really morally acceptable to go on insisting on getting a salary from an employer whose policies you are in the process of opposing in public debate? Well, perhaps it's fine if you are a junior employee or an "ordinary" cog somewhere in the organisation, or perhaps if you are an academic with some guarantee of freedom to speak out, including on the decisions of your university. But Sahgal is not an academic, and she is a senior employee who appears to be part of Amnesty's policy-implementation team, and perhaps part of the management structure. Such employees are quite rightly expected by their employers to keep policy debates in-house, maintain a public show of solidarity, and even defend policies that they personally disagree with.
I've been there; that's how it is. If your employer's policies appear so heinous that you can't implement them and defend them in public, you should resign - quietly, or, if the situation is truly extreme, in protest and with fanfare. But you can't expect to continue to be paid a salary.
So, Sahgal and Hitchens are both correct on the substantive point: Amnesty International is not the organisation it once was, and the change is for the worse. On the other hand, this process of change has been going on for many years now, and will not be reversed quickly or easily, if ever or at all. Amnesty does have the right to change, even for the worse, and very likely the right (depending on what's in the relevant contract of employment or any related undertakings or circumstances we don't yet know about) to dismiss Sahgal from its employment.
On the gripping hand, we have the right to leave the organisation if it's not what it was when we joined it. As I said above, I exercised that right a long time ago. What will you do? I'm not saying you ought to leave, even though I did. Amnesty still does good work and needs funds. Maybe you can stay and help to repair it from the inside. But then again, you could spend the money on other charities that need your funds just as much. It's your choice.
In common with all great ideas, the Amnesty concept was marvelously simple. Each local branch was asked to sponsor a minimum of three prisoners of conscience: one from a NATO country, one from a Warsaw Pact country, and one from the Third—or neutralist—World. In time, the organization also evolved policies that opposed the use of capital punishment or torture in all cases, but the definition of "prisoner of conscience" remained central. And it included a requirement that the prisoner in question be exactly that: a person jailed for the expression of an opinion. Amnesty did not adopt people who either used or advocated violence.
This organization is precious to me and to millions of other people, including many thousands of men and women who were and are incarcerated and maltreated because of their courage as dissidents and who regained their liberty as a consequence of Amnesty International's unsleeping work. So to learn of its degeneration and politicization is to be reading about a moral crisis that has global implications.
Hitchens' article is well worth reading, which does not mean I endorse it all. I don't think he goes far enough.
The truth is that Amnesty International lost sight of its original purpose years ago, which is why, with some sadness, I left the organisation years ago. For some reason, it decided to morph into an all-purpose human rights advocacy body, which would be fine except that this duplicated aspects of the work of many other bodies and distracted it from its original focus on freeing prisoners of conscience: people imprisoned for expressions of opinion. That was the organisation that I'd joined and paid my dues to. Moreover, its more diffuse mission undermined its ability to maintain true expertise and authority on the limited subject of prisoners of conscience. Its pronouncements once had credibility right across the political spectrum, but I can't remember when that was last the case - not in this millennium.
And it began to pay too much attention to the low-hanging fruit, the undoubted human rights violations by Western democracies that might actually be shamed if exposed ... distracting it from the mass incarcerations by theocratic and dictatorial regimes of prisoners of conscience by the thousands. Once again, there are many other organisations mainly lobbying against human rights abuses in the West; this is important work, but not something that we specifically needed Amnesty International to pursue to the point of watering down its real expertise and distracting from its original purpose.
The tendency of Amnesty's new direction, set a couple of decades ago now, is that it will provide a platform even for Taliban sympathisers, so long as they are willing to rail against human rights violations by the West.
Against that background, I feel sympathy for the plight of Gita Sahgal, an Amnesty employee who objects to her employer's provision of a platform for Moazzem Begg. Hitchens describes Begg as follows:
Moazzem Begg, a British citizen, was arrested in Pakistan after fleeing Afghanistan in the aftermath of the intervention in 2001. He was imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay and then released. He has since become the moving spirit in a separate organization calling itself Cageprisoners. Begg does not deny his past as an Islamist activist, which took him to Afghanistan in the first place. He does not withdraw from his statement that the Taliban was the best government available to Afghanistan. Cageprisoners has another senior member named Asim Qureshi, who speaks in defense of jihad at rallies sponsored by the extremist group Hizb-ut Tahrir (banned in many Muslim countries). Cageprisoners also defends men like Abu Hamza, leader of the mosque that sheltered Richard "Shoe Bomber" Reid among many other violent and criminal characters who have been convicted in open court of heinous offenses that have nothing at all to do with freedom of expression.
Note that Amnesty's original purpose would involve a much less significant overlap with the work of Cageprisoners.
I am, however, less sympathetic to Saghal than some. I have reservations.
The fact is, Amnesty has every right to take the policy direction it has, no matter how misguided, and no employer will put up with a senior employee in a policy-implementation position publicly arguing against its lawful policy direction. Note that, whatever else Sahgal may be, she is not a whistleblower, since Amnesty is doing nothing in secret that needs to be exposed, and is doing nothing corrupt or illegal on which she could be "blowing the whistle". Instead, it is quite openly carrying out a highly problematic but perfectly lawful policy. Rather than being a whistleblower, Saghal is simply a person who finds herself working for an employer whose lawful and openly-pursued policies she objects to strongly and now wishes to oppose in public debate.
Unfortunately, that places her in an untenable position, and I don't see how she can stay employed by Amnesty unless it does a massive policy volte face. Subject to the details of her contract of employment, it is, I suggest, legally able to dismiss her from its employment in these circumstances. Thus, I think her position is legally shaky ... and to be frank, I am also a bit iffy about the morality of how she is handling this.
Is it really morally acceptable to go on insisting on getting a salary from an employer whose policies you are in the process of opposing in public debate? Well, perhaps it's fine if you are a junior employee or an "ordinary" cog somewhere in the organisation, or perhaps if you are an academic with some guarantee of freedom to speak out, including on the decisions of your university. But Sahgal is not an academic, and she is a senior employee who appears to be part of Amnesty's policy-implementation team, and perhaps part of the management structure. Such employees are quite rightly expected by their employers to keep policy debates in-house, maintain a public show of solidarity, and even defend policies that they personally disagree with.
I've been there; that's how it is. If your employer's policies appear so heinous that you can't implement them and defend them in public, you should resign - quietly, or, if the situation is truly extreme, in protest and with fanfare. But you can't expect to continue to be paid a salary.
So, Sahgal and Hitchens are both correct on the substantive point: Amnesty International is not the organisation it once was, and the change is for the worse. On the other hand, this process of change has been going on for many years now, and will not be reversed quickly or easily, if ever or at all. Amnesty does have the right to change, even for the worse, and very likely the right (depending on what's in the relevant contract of employment or any related undertakings or circumstances we don't yet know about) to dismiss Sahgal from its employment.
On the gripping hand, we have the right to leave the organisation if it's not what it was when we joined it. As I said above, I exercised that right a long time ago. What will you do? I'm not saying you ought to leave, even though I did. Amnesty still does good work and needs funds. Maybe you can stay and help to repair it from the inside. But then again, you could spend the money on other charities that need your funds just as much. It's your choice.
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