Russia does not have a functioning criminal justice system at all, in the sense of a trial mechanism aimed at determining innocence or guilt. Exactly as in Uzbekistan, the conviction rate in criminal trials is over 99%. If the prosecutors, who are inextricably an arm of the executive government, want to send you to jail, there is absolutely no judicial system to protect you. The judges are purely there for show.
When critics of Putin like Alexei Navalny are convicted, therefore, we have absolutely no reassurance that the motivation behind the prosecution or the assessment of guilt was genuine. Which is not to say that Navalny is innocent; I am in no position to judge. People are complex. I sacrificed my own pretty decent career to the cause of human rights, but in my personal and family life I was by no means the most moral of individuals. I see no reason for it to be impossible that all of Navalny’s excellent political work did not co-exist with a fatal weakness. But his criticisms of Putin made him a marked man, who the state was out to get, and the most probable explanation – especially as prosecutors had looked at the allegations before and decided not to proceed – is that he is suffering for his criticisms of the President rather than a genuine offence.
It fascinates me that the Western media view the previous decision by the prosecutors not to proceed as evidence the case is politically motivated against Navalny; but fail to draw the same conclusion from precisely the same circumstance in the Assange case.
David Ward MP has not been sent to jail. He has however had the Lib Dem whip removed, which under Clegg’s leadership perhaps he ought to consider an honour. It is rather a commonplace sentiment that it is a terribly sad thing, that their community having suffered dreadfully in the Holocaust, the European Jews involved in founding the state of Israel went on themselves to inflict terrible pain and devastation on the Palestinians in the Nakba. Both the Holocaust and the Nakba were horrific events of human suffering. For this not startling observation, David Ward is removed from the Liberal Democrats. He also stated that, with its ever increasing number of racially specific laws, its walls and racially restricted roads, Israel is becoming an apartheid state. That is so commonplace even Sky News’ security correspondent Sam Kiley said it a few months ago, without repercussion. In Russia you cannot say Putin is corrupt; in the UK you cannot say Israeli state policy is malign. Neither national state can claim to uphold freedom of speech. Meanwhile, of course, David Cameron announces plans to place filters on the internet access of all UK households.
In the United States, the House of Representatives failed by just 12 votes to make illegal the mass snooping by the NSA which was not widely publicised until Edward Snowden’s revelations. What Snowden said was so important that almost half the country’s legislators wished to act on his information. Yet the executive wish to pursue him and remove all his freedom for the rest of his life, as they are doing to Bradley Manning for Manning’s exposure of war crimes and extreme duplicity.
Around this complex of issues and the persons of Manning, Navalny, Snowden and Assange there is a kind of new ideological competition between the governments of Russia, the US and UK as to which is truly promoting the values of human freedom. The answer is none of them are. All these states are, largely in reaction to the liberating possibilities of the internet, promoting a concerted attack on freedom of speech and liberty of thought.
States are the enemy. We are the people.
At firat I thought ‘What a horrible headline’. Then I read on 🙂
http://www.politicsworldwide.com/why-is-there-so-little-anger-about-all-these-scroungers/
“She accuses me of wanting to ‘get rid of compassion'”
No, I said, “We must work to get rid of it.”
[It’s called ‘sarcasm’.]
As for ‘phony compassion’ and ‘twisted morality’, what I see coming from the right (particularly in the U.S. – which the élite in the UK is now so busy emulating) is NO compassion and NO moral compass, despite so many of them claiming to be Christians.
You do talk tosh.
Anon
Where’s the list of different “brands” of compassion that you referred to and I asked you for?
Can’t make it up?
Anon, you are correct about the hijacking of issues on the basis of compassion, monopolising the moral high ground on those issues and falsely depicting opposing points of view as ‘morally bad’ because they are demonstrably less ‘compassionate’, as if ‘compassion’ is the primary or exclusive factor in the formulation of public policy and social responses to desperate problems.
Compassion is defined as “sympathetic pity and concern for suffering of others”. I see no value in standing around and feeling sympathy for someone who is suffering while others rush to his aid. By itself, compassion is an emotional indulgence, not a solution to relieving humanity of its most pressing and agonising problems. Feeling compassion doesn’t make anyone superior – it is the motivation to act and succeed in helping that we can admire most.
Australia is facing a Federal election soon and the politics of ‘compassion’ has raised its ugly head in the problem we are experiencing in managing and processing of aslyum seekers. Some people have been journeying by boat, usually from Indonesia, and over a thousand souls, many of them children, have been lost at sea due to overloading of unseaworthy boats.
As a result, Australia has to send warships thousands of kilometres, sometimes into Indonesian waters, to mount sea-rescue missions because Indonesia, with its population of 300M, couldn’t give a shit about people drowning 5km off their coast. These missions cost millions of £££££ in a budget of *billions* to process unauthorised arrivals of so-called asylum seekers, money that would be better spent on fighting disease, hunger and peacekeeping in global black spots.
There are a lot of lies being told about this issue with claims of inhumanity, lack of compassion, cruelty, and a host of demonising emotional terms being levelled at both the government and the opposition who have announced strong policies on managing a massive spike in unauthorised migration by sea. The Labor party played the ‘compassionate’ card in 2001 and the result was over a thousand people dead at sea.
The Greens, who I have voted for at both the federal and state levels for the last eighteen years, has been leading this charge. What do they say about people dying at sea? It’s Australia’s fault. I will never vote for them again.
Let me give some advice to anyone who wants to argue with someone who takes the moral high ground on an issue – don’t! You can’t win. The best solution to a problem is NOT the most compassionate one, but the most effective one. Ask how many are willing to open their homes to the homeless – not many, it turns out.
No offence to the good people here who do the right thing, but let’s leave the word ‘compassion’ out of it. It’s not about you and your emotional needs, it’s about the needs of those who are suffering.
Interesting that the House of Lords goes into recess today. The House of Commons pushed off for their hols on 18 July so why did the Lords continue meeting for another 8 days? For the £300 a day attendance allowance each member of the lords claimed presumably.
http://www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and-lords/about-lords/lords-allowances/
They have been waffling on today about the EU and are now discussing ‘Orders and Regulations’.
http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/#!/calendar/Lords/MainChamber/2013/7/30/events.html
@Anon. 2 44pm
Can you link us to even one time a poster here has suggested, “…anything not wholly critical of Israel is seen as supporting the murder of Palestinians.”
Thanks.
That was quite a read.
The mention of Papua New Guinea as the final destination for Australia’s /asylum seekers/illegal immigrants, as recently decided by Rudd, is omitted above.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/election-2013/island-locked-and-loaded-for-first-png-flight/story-fn9qr68y-1226688380868
@Jemand. 3 56pm
Lets do a simple exercise.
Take two groups of randomly chosen people.
Drop them onto two identical islands, both of which contain all the tools and resources to meet human needs.
Group A are required to respond to each other with compassion 75% of the time.
Group B are required to respond with compassion 25% of the time.
Leave them for a year, then return. But on the way you are required to place bets on which group is in better condition.
If you were a gambler, which group would you put your money on?
Isn’t compassion/empathy a vital survival trait for us at this stage, now we have so much more power than ever to screw things up on a scale never imagined before?
Flaming June/Mary is again lying as an unstoppable, compulsive liar about my country.
The PNG solution was not specifically mentioned by me because it did not have to be mentioned. I referred to “strong policies” and that implied everything that has been reported in the media.
But as expected, she fails to express even a scintilla of compassion for the children who breathed water into their lungs as their short lives were extinguished at sea. You see, it is more important for her to be seen parading her bleeding heart than caring about the real causes of tragedy. And it seems she thinks it’s better to drown at sea than be offered a safe haven in PNG (as if Australia OWES the world a place in our land).
Sofia KN,
I don’t bet on anything other than a sure thing.
Let me ask you this –
Who would you bet on if Group A expressed compassion 100% of the time and Group B only 75% of the time?
Does this hypothetical exercise, absent of any real evidence, prove anything?
His analysis is of the psychology of modern leftism
He’s a mathematician ffs. His analysis is of his own thoughts and feelings. And they’re confused.
You’ve missed my point, too. Or you’re saying it’s ok to adopt the prevailing morals but not to say or do anything about them, for that will earn you the lofty censure of the excrescences?
Anyway, off to the buzkashi game. I have a bet on the Taliban Turtles.
“80 percent of U.S. adults face near-poverty, unemployment, survey finds”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57595861/80-percent-of-u.s-adults-face-near-poverty-unemployment-survey-finds/
Has anyone provided accomodation to a poor homeless person yet?
*sounds of owls hooting*
@Flaming. 3 19pm
Call me a bleeding-heart, but it I can’t help getting all emotional when I hear a journalist attacking scroungers like “… the pregnant young woman, who has been unemployed for months, receiving hundreds of millions of pounds in state hand-outs on top being allowed to live rent free in a 20 bedroom house, which was re-furbished by the taxpayer at a cost of £1M.”
Thanks. I needed a laugh after those “torrents of cack.”
A compassionate take on Manning….no cack or chung.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/who-is-bradley-manning
I had the same irrational and hostile reaction from Jemand when I dared to mention the abominable treatment of the aboriginal people by the Australians, quoting John Pilger whom I take to be a most reliable source.
Watch The Rabbit Proof Fence and Samson and Delilah and be moved. Also read this.
July 22, 2013
The PNG Solution
Harshness Before Sense
by BINOY KAMPMARK
This is patently sinister. Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea, is destined under the “regional agreement” between PNG and Australia to become an expanded detention centre which may house upwards of 3000 individuals. (Shades of an Asia Pacific Gulag Archipelago come to mind.) These individuals might well have been processed quietly through Australian channels by Australian authorities. If it had been news, it should have been embedded in the back pages. But this Labor government is desperate. Very desperate. So much so that anyone without a visa who arrives in Australia will never (emphasis on the word never) settle in Australia.[1]
Those are the words of a “restored” Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Rudd has made it clear that the Refugee Convention, ratified in 1951 is an anachronism on stilts. Nothing new there – he parrots a long standing lament of wealthy states who would rather wish the convention might be done away with – or at the very least “revised”.
Much of this behaviour on the part of the prime minister is probably histrionics – to change the convention through the channels of the United Nations would require General Assembly approval. Poorer states are unlikely to be joining richer states in attempting to curb global flows of individuals – for them, the richer the state, the greater the burden by necessity.
[..]
As Marina O’Sullivan of the Castan Centre for Human Rights explains, domestic violence is rife.[3] Ethnic tensions are ever present. The “human rights” infrastructure is simply not in place. Then there is that matter of the High Court, which found in 2011 that arrangements of this sort violated international refugee obligations.
Should he win the elections, will Rudd care? This is hard to know given the distinct hollowness of Australian politics. Australia is a land jam packed with regulations, controls and a mania for “security”. Its electoral system, at least in so far as it determines the fates of governments, hinges on marginal seats in the outer suburbs – the “Rooty Hill” factor. But this policy, unless it is challenged in the High Court, risks making Australia not merely an inept international citizen, but a callous one whose words at international law are empty sentiments rather than genuine policy.
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne
/..
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/22/harshness-before-sense/
“I see no value in standing around and feeling sympathy for someone who is suffering while others rush to his aid.”
No, Jemand. But this is a blog, there is no CCTV to see what people are doing (when they’re not writing here), and no access to people’s bank details to see what they might be donating to good causes.
All we can see is when people express sympathy with the plight of others.
What I’d like to ask you is,
Do those who rush to the aid of others feel no compassion?
Or do they rush to others’ aid because they feel compassion?
Why does it have to be either feel compassion OR go and help people? why not both?
—————-
Sofia
about
“… the pregnant young woman, who has been unemployed for months, receiving hundreds of millions of pounds in state hand-outs on top being allowed to live rent free in a 20 bedroom house, which was re-furbished by the taxpayer at a cost of £1M.”
https://twitter.com/irlpol/status/362174194663952384/photo/1
Anon writes, “Most of us – one would hope the vast majority of us – believe that war is wrong, helping the less fortunate is good, and so on.”
Sometimes, not always by any means. The majority of Americans believed war with Iraq was right, despite Iraq having never done us any harm. The majority of our representatives in the UK thought war was right too. In fact, there’s rarely a war the right wing _doesn’t_ like – as long as they’re not personally involved, of course. Most people in the UK have welcomed the majority of wars we’ve fought in the last 100 years. But most Americans cheerfully endorse the US attacking of a tiny, unarmed country too, wherever it occurs, even though they’ve never heard of it before and couldn’t find it on a map.
Helping the fortunate is not seen as a good thing by the right either. Oh, they’ll make weasly arguments about dependency cultures, etc., but will oppose every last thing that assists the working man. Indeed, “cheap labour” is at least a major component of every policy the right puts forward. “Welfare queens”, “scroungers” and so on our very popular whipping boys. Haven’t you noticed?
So while your premise might sound good as a lazy assertion, it doesn’t really stand a popularity test when you get to any specifics.
Anon continues: “What the modern left does is to hijack these ideas and try to adopt them as its own, focuses its indignation selectively along political lines, and, believing it has established moral superiority, characterises dissenting views as cruel, inhumane, lacking compassion.”
What is there to “hijack”, if you think they are majority views anyway? Why should what you’d have as a majority view on compassion suddenly become “phony” when exhibited by the left?
That’s what makes lefties unpopular – going against warmongering, and opposing the demonising of the poor – which is hardly hijacking a notion for popularity.
Your view is actually rather comical, in a sad way. You’re proposing that a majority view is only voiced by the Left, yet they’re the one group that doesn’t believe in it! That’s right – the Left puts their entire concerns on only for show, while the Right that _does_ believe in these fair-minded principles holds policies that work in the opposite direction. Your logic/view is so convoluted that only a madman could have threaded such a twisted mess and called it a reasoned argument. Oh yes… it was inspired by Kaczynski, no wonder!
*
You have so much pent-up distortion and – frankly – anger pent up in your 2:44pm post it’s too much to unpack without going overly long here. For instance, Christianity is seen as a rival for a moral code, therefore its attacked because we lefties can’t stand the competition! That’s great, it’s so daft I just have to chuckle.
For a start, any genuine practitioner of a moral code will be incorporated and welcomed by the Left – not attacked. If you think the real Christianists (not just your harmless CoE types) have any relationship to the teachings of Christ, let alone morality, you are seriously misinformed. If you think the implementation of Christianity (or religion generally) through the centuries has done us any good, you are also badly mistaken.
Frack off Lord Howell (Gideon’s father-in-law)! The ConDem equivalent of Marie Antoinette.
George Osborne’s father-in-law has declared fracking should happen in the North East of England because it is filled with “desolate areas”.
Lord Howell of Guildford, whose daughter Frances is married to the Chancellor, drew gasps of astonishment with his comments in the House of Lords on Tuesday.
He claimed the controversial form of gas production could take place in the North East without any impact on the surrounding environment.
Environmental campaigners called the declaration “jaw-dropping” and Labour claimed it was further proof that the Tories are “out of touch” with ordinary Britons.
The Tory peer, who was energy secretary under Margaret Thatcher, argued that the same approach on fracking should not be taken in all regions.
/..
http://news.sky.com/story/1122219/lord-howell-frack-in-desolate-north-east
http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/lord-howell-of-guildford/993
PS He has since apologised for any offence caused!
Oh well said, Glenn.
Typo: I’d put “Helping the fortunate is not seen as a good thing by the right either” above. Meant to say “… helping the UNfortunate”, obviously. I don’t usually respond to my own typos – usually it’s obvious what was meant, but that one did require clarification.
Because the Right actually thinks helping the already fortunate _is_ their job, with “fortune” being the operative component of the word, by funnelling tax-payer money at their investor-class cronies, and relieving them of their tax duties. All the while, the Right denounces the poor for taking so much from the hard-working rich, increases the tax burden on the poor, and works to deny them as many state benefits as possible.
@ Ben. 4 56pm
Thanks. It gives a good idea of the person behind the name.
@Dreoilin.
”“WOMAN HAS BABY
LOL!
Still no expression of sympathy from Flaming Mary for the children who died at sea.
@Dreoilin, the compassion competition on this blog serves no useful purpose but to arbitrarily divide those who think they care the most from those who think they know the best.
My statement re standing around wasn’t a metaphor for all of us on this blog. It was literal – ie people who stand around in the street saying “Ooh, that’s terrible, my how sad” while others rush over to help. Do those who rush to offer aid feel more compassion? I don’t know. Does it matter what they feel as long as they help? As we sometimes say, “actions speak louder than words”, or “words are cheap”. Perhaps actions are all that count in measuring compassion, so all this blustering over who expresses more compassion than who is utterly pointless.
It’s possible, Dreoilin, that some of the world’s best doctors are psychopaths. I don’t know this to be true, but I can imagine a selfish doctor who is determined to win accolades for his great work in saving lives might not care any more than you, me or the self-professed bleeding hearts of humanity on this blog. But again, it’s not about unfalsifiable claims of feeling compassion that’s important, it’s the awareness of suffering and the development of workable solutions. You can’t run a hospital full of crying nurses.
Glenn; so true. Right-wingers wince with obvious pain if you should mention the concept, noblesse oblige. Denial is a powerful substitute for compassion.
Found not guilty of aiding the enemy!!!
Thank goodness
Sofia KN,
Still waiting for a reply re your bet.
“If you think the implementation of Christianity (or religion generally) through the centuries has done us any good, you are also badly mistaken.”
It’s more a failure to implement the principles of Christianity, which has made it appear a failure glenn
The Founder’s biggest challenge was not the streetwalkers and Publicans of his day, but the religious hypocrites who didn’t want to get the message because it was inconvenient.
There are lots of ‘Cafeteria’ christians who choose a schism based upon their predispositions. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.
Thanks Dreoilin…. I haven’t been paying so much attention lately, I admit, but Anon (who he?) seems to have gone off the deep end today. Quoting a bit of Ted Kaczynski and arguing that he had a point here or there is one thing, but here Anon seems to be challenging us with Kaczynski’s words as if they were received wisdom!
If that were not bad enough, Anon now decides to make sweeping generalisations and assumptions about the Left that would make Thatcher blush (if she wasn’t red-faced enough already contending with the fires of hell), and builds a teetering column of baseless assertions to arrive at a completely insane conclusion. No wonder these people eventually start lobbing bombs about if they’re capable of that sort of reasoning.
@Dreoilin, thanks for the news re Manning. I wasn’t expecting it but then, this case was more about getting a relationship between Manning and Assange+Wikileaks on the formal legal record for subsequent action against Assange – the real target.
Thanks for all the great links and opinions, I feel humbled. Have been painting non stop for about a week, feels like Ramsgate all over again.
In preparation for another night around the fire of facts, anguish and distortion, can I offer you all an instant sleeping pill for the early hours of the morn.
I do not need it anymore as hard physical work works better for me.
So you get ready, rest your wary head and play this. 1min 27 second of it should do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgY_XWPhxos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgY_XWPhxos