God Help America

I posted the following question on Yahoo Answers, exactly as it is here, complete with typos that I've only just noticed!:


"Whny not a pre-emptive strike ON the USA?

The USA, apparently, believes it has the right to invade countries that might have caused it military or terrorist problems if left unchecked.

It assumes the right to "strike first" to prevent harm to the homeland

in that case, would it object if other countries, who (no doubt with just as much if not even more justification) believe that the USA will pose a future threat to their homelands, were to invade the USA before it had the chance to do it to them?

After all, there's an old saying about sauce for the goose ..."

**********

there were eight answers: one of them was this, exactly as i t apprears here:

"AMERICA HAS NEVER STARTED A WAR...and THEY HAVE NEVER OCCUPIED A COUNTRY OR TAKEN ANYTHING FROM IT!

WE WERE INVADED if you don't REMEMBER"

***********
to which my response was:

"no need to shout! and I wonder what books you learned your history from?!"

*****

Can you believe that that got voted as "Best Answer" by two people? [if it were voted in by one, I'd suspect the person who wrote that answer voted for himself]

but is that really what people are taught in the USA? in school, in the media, on tv and radio and newspapers? is that The Great American Version Of History?

if that's the case, then I can only repeat the comment I made on the YA page at the time -"if that's the best answer, then God Help America!"

And God help the rest of the world, cos it's dickheads like this that elect the ones who have their fingers on the biggest nuclear trigger in the world!


here's the page url: dunno if it'll work on click, or if you'll need to copy and paste it into the address box:
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AnhsEd3mpda2y5.AjDJUCeohBgx.;_ylv=3?qid=20091218194214AA2D6LG

Trial or justice?

I’ve noticed a worrying trend recently in the US (though it’s creping to our side of the Atlantic), in which politicians law enforcement officers and other official spokespersons talk glibly about “bringing criminals to justice.”

This is impossible, and they should be forcibly prevented from saying it.

What they should talk about is “bringing criminals to trial”.

Trial, Not “justice”. The two words do not mean the same thing at all, and they should not be used as if they did.

A trial is a physical entity. Justice is an abstract moral ideal. You can’t “bring people to mercy”.

(In the same vein, you can’t have “a war on terror” any more than you can have “a war on any other extreme emotion”).

“Trial” and “Justice” are not interchangeable – maybe they should be, and maybe in an ideal world they would be, but this is not an ideal world and the former is not an automatically synonym for the latter.

But it implies that every trial will be fair, and that justice will be done in every case.

Oh, really? Then how come we get so many retrials because of miscarriages of justice?

Pagan explanation for the Scout Association

I reverence the earth.
I reverence life – all life.
I reverence all creation.
I reverence the Creator.
I reverence the gifts
of the Goddess
in every aspect
of life.

I value the changing
of the seasons,
the differing beauties
of each new day;

I value everyone's uniqueness,
the shared joys
of working beside others,
discovering unities
in our differences.

I value myself,
and my role in life,
and my place in
the world.

I value life
in all its forms,
and respect it,
and do my best
not to bring harm
to any part of if.

I value my right to choose
my own path through life.

Everyone picks the path
that seems best
to them.

This is mine.



So tell me: exactly which part of this makes me a pædophile?


*****

Earliest date I can find for this is April 2007.
-------------------------------------

I started in Scouting in the mid-70s – the youngest in our family was a boy, so mum took him to Cubs; they needed help, so she joined in, then dad did, then …

Over the following eighteen-plus years I trained and qualified as both a Cub Scout and a Scout leader.

In the late 90s I had to take some time out to get my head sorted – I was under a lot of stress and suffering deep depression, partly due to trying to resist admitting to myself that I could no longer honestly call myself “a Christian” and that “pagan” would be more accurate.

By the early 2000s I was feeling well enough to want to rejoin – only in the Scout Fellowship (retired and other people who don’t work directly with the kids, but help out in the background at district events, etc), to see how I got on with that before I tried going deeper.

Apart from anything else, I’d become visually impaired and didn’t know how well I’d be able to cope with a bunch of energetic kids when I couldn’t see them clearly. But I thought it’d be interesting for the kids – and other leaders – to have a disabled leader, to discuss the differences.

On the form I had to fill in there was a question on religious/spiritual direction. Scouting insists that members have a spiritual leaning: agnostics can join, but atheists can’t.

I put “pagan” in the space provided – I was advised to put “agnostic” or even “atheist”, but thought that, for once I wanted to be totally honest – besides, I thought that it might be interesting, for kids – and leaders – to discuss this difference, too.

The district secretary told me that he’d contacted Scout HQ to ask what kind of promise I should make (the standard Scout promise is a Christian one, but they have other variants for other faiths). He wanted to know if there was a pagan one.

Their immediate response? I had to be “kept away from the kids at all costs”.

Never mind that I already had 18+ years as a Cub and Scout Leader with not even the suspicion of a shadow of a doubt against my character; never mind that I had never acted with anything other than the utmost probity towards the young people in my care.

I was a pagan, and therefore a pervert who’d drag the kids off to the woods to perform satanic rituals on them whenever we went camping.

They obviously didn’t, and probably still don’t, have any idea what “a pagan” actually is, and they probably never bothered to try to find out.

They didn’t contact me to ask, I’m not aware of them contacting the district secretary (who’d known me for almost all those 18+ years) to find out what kind of a person I was.

They didn’t even know enough to know that “Satan” is a Christian invention and that only Christian sickoes perform “Satanic rituals”.

So I wrote the above poem (apart from the question at the end, which I added later) and sent it to them, but I doubt that they ever bothered to read it: they’d made up their minds, why confuse them with the truth?

I understand that children and young adults need to be protected from potential predators, and I thoroughly approve – I’d been through police checks to become a leader before, and I’d come up with the scent of roses. Children have to be protected from perverts.

But why automatically assume that anyone who doesn’t follow the dry, dusty, colourless road of a well-trampled mainstream religion must be a pervert?

Why didn’t they bother to check what form my spiritual beliefs actually took before they made up their middle-class Christian minds?

When the district secretary told me what they had said, he laughed: he knew me, he’d known me for nearly two decades; he knew how ridiculous the very idea was.

But, sadly, the Scout Association didn’t know, and very probably still doesn’t.

There have, unfortunately, been some instances of Scout leaders sexually abusing the children in their care: I bet most of those leaders had “Christian” on their forms.

Swinging England, or, Capital punishment means never having to say you’re sorry.

Every now and then, there’s talk in Parliament about reintroducing capital punishment for murder, and it’s debated and eventually voted on. Every time, I hold my breath. So far, the vote’s gone the right way – so far. But will there come a time when the vote will go (as far as I’m concerned) the wrong way?

I am deeply against capital punishment, for practical, judicial and moral reasons.

In the first place, capital punishment simply doesn’t work as a deterrent. The sting-’em-up brigade say that the risk of being executed will stop people committing crimes. This theory is proved, of course, in the USA, which is world-famous for its low crime rate.

Most murders are committed in the heat of the moment; an argument turns into a row, which turns into a fight, somebody loses control and picks up the nearest thing to hand and hits someone else with it.

I’m not condoning or defending the practice, but knowing what the law is doesn’t stop people losing their tempers and using whatever comes to hand on the object of their anger. Professional killers know their jobs well enough that they don’t often get caught; it’s the poor sod who snapped under provocation who gets the long drop.

Okay, they say, then let’s just bring back capital punishment for certain crimes – say, for killing police officers in the execution of their duty. In my opinion, that would actually increase the number of police killed in the line of duty.

Let’s take a hypothetical example: an armed gang rob a bank, but the police arrive before they can escape. In the confusion, a police officer is shot, and dies later in hospital.

Now, the man who fired that shot knows that, if he’s caught, he’s going to die. So he’ll take every possible opportunity to avoid being caught. If that means that he shoots his way out, and kills another dozen coppers in the process, what’s he got to lose? He can only die once, and his life is already forfeit.

It may sound obvious, but it’s always very dangerous to put people in a position in which they feel that they have nothing to lose.

When your back’s to the wall, when you’ve got nowhere left to turn, then you might as well blow the whole world to bits. Why not? What have you got to lose? People must always be left a ‘bridge of jewels’, a grain of hope that the situation could get worse if they don’t stop now.

As I understand it (and I’m sure that someone will correct me if I’m wrong) the penalty for kidnapping in the USA is the same as for murder: judicial execution.

This is not the way forward! If a kidnapper knows that he’ll die if caught, he’s got nothing to lose and everything to gain by getting rid of possibly the only person who can identify him.

If the penalty for kidnapping were less than the penalty for murder, a few more kidnap victims might survive the ordeal: kidnappers would still have something to lose by murdering their victims.


In the second place, there is no guarantee that a miscarriage of justice will not occur.

The risk of simple human error is too great to decide whether a person should live or die. Even when nobody’s deliberately lying, even when all the witnesses are testifying in good faith, honest mistakes can happen. And it’s a bit difficult to apologise to a dead man after you’ve hanged him.

There should be no capital punishment where there is even the possibility of human error – and that possibility will never be erased as long as people remain people.

A few years ago, a retired high court judge was interviewed; he said that the Birmingham Six (convicted of bombing a pub in Birmingham and therefore imprisoned for many years) would have been long forgotten if they had been hanged.

Now, when those six people were given a new, fair trial, they were found to be innocent. The judge knew that. But he still thought they should have been hanged, so that the whole affair would be over and done with.

Obviously, hanging innocent people causes much less paperwork than retrials. Of course, it would have been even more cost-effective to have had an honest trial in the first place.


In the third place, I’m a coward.

I could never cold-bloodedly press the button or pull the lever that sent someone else to their death.

And if I haven't the moral courage to do it myself, I have absolutely no right to demand that someone else do it for me.

I’ve never done jury service, but if I were called, and if the accused faced a death sentence if found guilty, I’d never vote ‘aye’, no matter what they were accused of doing. Does killing a murderer bring their victim back to life? And there’s an old saying about “Judge not, that ye be not judged”.

For people to demand executions, yet to look down on the executioner, is the height (or depth) of hypocrisy as well as cowardice.

The hangman, after all, is only doing what society told him to do. Every person who votes in favour of capital punishment is equally as guilty of the death of another human being as the man who actually pulls the switch.


What should be done is this: hold a referendum on the subject of capital punishment.

But tell people that everyone who votes for it will have their names put on a list – and, if ever an execution needs to be carried out, one of those names will be selected at random to actually carry out the sentence.

People are fine at voting for other people to do society’s dirty work – let’s see how many would vote if they knew that they themselves might have to get their hands dirty!

And as for those who still voted in favour (there’ll always be some people who’d agree to kill another human being in cold blood – hell, there’d be some who’d pay to do it!), note their names, too, and watch them. Very carefully.

I don’t know what the answer is. I just think that, in claiming ‘a life for a life’, people are looking at the wrong section of the Bible.



28th December 2000

Abolish the TV licence

I stopped watching TV at home in December 1999 (thereby neatly missing the Millennium Damp Squib). I was renting a TV at the time and that’s when the contract was up for renewal.

I was hardly watching any TV anyway by that time (apart from science and nature programmes, the odd documentary and the very occasional film – I’d reached the stage where any film shown on TV that I was interested in I already owned): I’d just got my first PC and was wasting my time very happily on that.

But the main reason that I stopped watching TV at home was because I objected to being forced to pay the BBC for watching non-BBC programmes.

The BBC makes programmes that are the envy of the world – who else could have made the David Attenborough “Life” series, just as a for-instance?

I’ve absolutely no problem with paying the BBC for watching such BBC-made programmes … but why should I pay them for not using their services?

I don’t have to pay Tesco when I shop at Sainsbury: I don’t have to pay London Underground when I take a bus. It’s only the BBC that makes you pay for not using it.

Try this scenario: you paint a picture, and get your local shops to sponsor you to display it in your front window, along with small adverts for the sponsors, so that passers-by can see it for free.

And then I come along and say, “You can’t look at this picture unless you pay me first. I’ve done nothing to create this picture; I’ve done nothing towards making it available for you to see. But unless you pay me you’re not allowed to look at it. And if you look at it without paying me I'll send the boys round to your house and you’ll be taken to court.”

In my book, that’s “demanding money with menaces”; that’s plain thuggery and bully-boy tactics. But that’s what the BBC is doing with the licence fee.

Granted, in the old days, there was only BBC broadcasting, and so the licence for all TVs was justified: but given how many non-BBC channels there are now, the licence is even more anachronistic.
(There used to be a radio licence, demanded for the above reason; it was scrapped, also for the above reason!)

If the BBC want to charge their viewers, which I have no problem with, here’s a thought on how they could do it – fairly!

Scramble their transmissions; you’d have to buy a decoder to unscramble the signal.

As we’re all going digital, now would be a good time to bring in the change: we’re all mixed up over HD and HDR and Digital Switchover anyway, another change now wouldn’t add very much more to the confusion.

That would mean that every household watching TV in the country would have to buy a decoder. But that would probably profit the manufacturers more than the BBC – and even if the BBC could profit by that, it wouldn’t be by much, since each household would only need to buy one decoder.

So …

Include a couple of electronic card slots in the decoder: people would get pre-payment cards, with the base cost of £x for one hour’s viewing. They could top up their cards as and when needed to watch as much BBC as they wanted.

This is why each decoder would need at least two slots, and each household at least two cards: if the credit on one card ran out halfway through a programme there would be a second card to carry on.

This would net the BBC a lot more money, and on a continuing basis, rather than a one-off payment for a decoder.

And people would have to use them to watch BBC programmes, and only BBC programmes. People would pay pro-rata for the amount of BBC that they chose to watch.

As now, there would be special arrangements or discounts for hospitals, care homes, schools, etc.



Advantages:

No one can cheat on it: if you want to watch BBC, you have to have a decoder and pre-payment cards.

No money spent on staffing or equipping the Licensing Bureau and TV detector vans (do they still use them?);

This kind of funding would likely bring in even more revenue than is generated by the licence fee: a lot of small drips spread evenly over twelve months is less obvious and less painful to pay out than getting soaked once a year!

You could buy a new TV, DVD player or any other piece of TV-signal-receiving equipment without shortly afterwards receiving a threatening letter from the TV Licensing Bureau that “We have been informed that you have recently purchased xxx, and must warn you that unless you have a licence you will be breaking the law … ”
Or words to that effect; it’s been years since I got one of those (I once bought a video recorder for my mum, and actually wrote to the Licensing Bureau to tell them that they would shortly “be informed” that I had bought a video recorder, but that it was for my mother so they could skip the threatening letter this time. They didn’t.);

Less paperwork for shops, since they have to report any sales so that the Licensing Bureau can duly harass purchasers with threats of the perils of not buying a licence;

More money spent on making the kinds of programme that the BBC excel at;
(or, more likely, more money wasted on bigger salaries and plusher offices for the bosses!! or on those incomprehensible “team-building” events.)

Like I don’t like it

Use of the word “like” when people really mean “as” or “such as”.

A book I read recently was full of this [British History For Dummies]: when I read, “People like the Romans or Ancient Greeks …” my immediate reaction was “Can’t they like both?”

Even the Beeb is doing it: “People like the Nazis”. Do they? I wonder why?!

That this is a losing battle doesn’t stop me from fighting it, any more than it stops me fighting the use of “data” as a singular.

When someone says to me, “Like I was saying …” I have to bite my tongue so as not to reply, “No, I don’t.”

Like = similar to;
Like = affection
Nothing more!!!!



New uses of “like”:

Like you like it – Shakespeare
Like time goes by – song in C-like-ablanca !!!
Like with gladness men of old – hymn
Like tears go by – pop song

Anyone got any more?

Eextendable dog leads

The whole point of having dogs on leads is to keep them under control.

These extending dog leads are basically bits of string on a reel, and how much control do you have with a bit of string?

Besides, with a standard lead with a loop handle, if you need to exert a bit more leverage, you can slip the loop about your wrist and wind your hand round the lead so that it's not just your fingers that are taking the strain - how do you do that with a lump of moulded plastic?

Theoretically you can wind the lead in to bring the dog closer to you and more under your control, but that’s assuming that the dog doesn’t out-strength either the spring in the reel or the person that’s holding it!

I can remember walking with a friend who had a yapper-type dog on one of these leads: even though the lead was fully wound in, the dog was darting all over the place, in front of me, around me – more than once it almost had me over. Even though fully wound in, the lead [and the person holding it!] exerted about zero control over the dog.

And it’s even worse when you’re visually impaired!

I can see a person standing on one side of the pavement. I can see a dog at the kerb. But how am I expected to see the thin bit of string that’s linking them until I trip over it?

If you’re too fat or too lazy to run with a dog to exercise it properly, don’t have a dog!

Silent films that aren't

I’ve thrown several Chaplin videos away because of this – I tried watching them with the sound right down, but even then it didn’t work – the music is supposed to help with the mood, and not being able to hear it made a difference.

They were full of sound effects, bongs and bangs, bells and horns, you name it: one even had “yakkety-yak” noises for background talking.

Yet if I were to suggest that they voiced Chaplin instead of using captions, people would be horrified. “It’s a silent film!” they’d cry.

Well, let it be silent!!!

I want to see the films as they were first seen … silently. I don’t mind the piano accompaniment giving cues; that’s how it was done then. Or the occasional drum “bong”, for similar reasons.

But let it be just that!

Scouting for adults?

Why can’t we have something like Scouts for adults?

We have Scouting for kids because we think it’ll do children and teens good to learn things, to find out about the world and nature and technology and stuff, but we don’t think adults need to know or be reminded of this?

As things are, the only way an adult can be involved in these activities is to become a leader – and that’s not the same thing at all.

For a start, a leader would have to undergo police checks etc – necessary to protect the young people with whom the adult would be interacting.

And even with that, it’s not the same thing. As it is, adults teach, they don’t learn – oh, sure, there are training courses to qualify Assistant Leaders and Leaders for each section of Scouting

Oh, I did the course that you need to take Cubs camping (Scout leaders don’t need such; apparently it’s assumed that they already know it all!) and I did the first aid courses to keep my certificate “live”.

But most of what I learned in my 18+ years as a qualified Cub Scout and then Scout Leader I learned informally, from other leaders in passing, as it were.

I learned to map-read from watching other leaders training kids, I was never taught it myself. That’s how I learned most of what I got from Scouting.

And I never got the chance to put that teaching to the test: no hikes, camps, pioneering, canoeing, sailing, or anything, for adults.

Why not?

Isn’t it important for adults to learn how to cope with emergencies, even small ones? It’d put paid to the common male boast that they don’t even know how to sew on a button or boil an egg!

Isn’t it important for adults to learn tolerance for other cultures/religions/ways of life/ways of thought/ways of being?


Of course, Scouting as it stands now [or as it stood in my neck of the woods when I was in it, from 70s-90s] would have to be severely overhauled. It’s still seen as mainly militaristic, middle-class, white Christian [not necessarily in that order!]

But here’s a chance for adults of all races, classes cultures and creeds to get together on a level playing field and lean to coöperate and to accept and value each other’s differences – the activities would really be a mask for this lesson, which, let’s face it, a lot of adults could do with learning today.

Crip Rant

I’m a cripple with attitude:
why should I feel any gratitude
at being unremittingly viewed
as having no right to be valued?

The council sends me letters it knows I can’t read;
but it makes no attempt to meet my need.
I‘ve told them and told them I’m registered blind,
and I need larger print, if they’d please be so kind?

They don’t bother to even pretend that they care:
they just shrug and lift their hands in the air.
Of caring and empathy there’s not a hint
when they keep on repeating “We can’t do large print.”

They won’t tell me how my rent account stands,
cos “we can’t do large print, so it’s out of our hands”.
They screwed up my rent and the first that I knew
was getting a Notice to Quit out of the blue.
(Funny how they managed to do that letter in large print!)

But I’m a cripple with attitude:
when I meet this response I get rather rude –
I’ve asked, I’ve insisted, I’ve fought and argued,
but everything I say has just been pooh-poohed

Is the council really so poor
that it can’t afford the gear to ensure
that all of its tenants can access with ease
its ongoing snowstorm of forms and decrees?

They’ve told me, get someone to read it for me –
why can’t I just ask my family?
Cos I live alone – Oh, so where are they?
A long walk, two train- and three bus-rides away.
(if it’s any damn business of theirs where my family live)

Well, why don’t I knock on my neighbour’s door
to see if they’ve time to do the chore?
Yeah, give all of my personal details away
so they can ignore the DDA

But I’m a cripple with attitude:
my eccentricities don’t include
letting a total stranger intrude
into my personal solitude

It’s been the law since ’ninety-six
that they have to take the steps to fix
problems that rise when people like me
can’t see what you “normal people” can see

What do they care if that’s the law?
why should they bother to do more?
I’m disabled, with no right to privacy,
any more than I have to dignity

I’ve lost count of the times that I’ve fought this fight
to be seen as a person in my own right –
to be treated with common courtesy
as a paid-up member of humanity

But I’m a cripple with attitude:
and I won’t give them any latitude.
The DDA was designed to preclude
the prejudices that they exude.

I have to grovel, to pray and to plead
to get anything that I can read –
something that you all can do with ease
I have to beg for on bended knees.

Oh, they don’t mean to treat me with aversion –
but let’s be honest, I’m not a real person:
I’m disabled, so how could I expect
to be treated with even a hint of respect?

Are they incompetent, stupid or lazy?
whichever it is, it’s driving me crazy
I can’t cope with all the stress they’re giving –
It ruins my life (if you can call this living).

But I’m a cripple with attitude:
and I’m sick of the pious platitude
that as a cripple I should be subdued …
but I return to the fight with my spirit renewed.

In the 21st century
I’m still having to grovel for charity;
for the council to get off its arse to ensure
that all of its staff know, and comply with, the law.

I want to live in dignity,
not have to get someone to read for me.
I want to live my life my way,
not have to give all my secrets away.

Can you imagine living like this?
With a council that’s constantly taking the piss?
I’m disabled but they make me a cripple;
I’ve problems enough but they make them triple.

But I’m a cripple with attitude:
if they want a fight they’ve found the right dude.
One thing I can say with certitude …
they’re the ones that will find themselves screwed –
cos I’m a cripple with attitude!



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