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Radical Digressions
Ulli Diemer's Notebook #5

Comparing evils

May 14, 2008 - #

Senator Romeo Dallaire told a Parliamentary committee yesterday that, “The minute you start playing with human rights, with conventions, with civil liberties, in order to say that you're doing it to protect yourself and you are going against those rights and conventions, you are no better than the guy who doesn't believe in them at all.”

Predictably, Conservative MP Jason Kenney professed shock at the idea that anyone could compare the methods used by the U.S. in the name of "combatting terrorism" with the methods used by "the terrorists". According to Mr. Kenney, you can’t compare U.S. actions in the "war against terrorism" with al-Qaeda using “a 14-year-old girl with Down's syndrome” as a suicide bomber.

On one level, he is correct to say you can’t compare them, though not in the way he thinks. The “Down’s syndrome” claim was exposed as a fabrication within days, and quickly dropped by U.S. authorities. The bloody excesses of the U.S. occupation forces in Iraq, on the other hand, such as the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl by U.S. soldiers, are well documented facts. You can’t compare fabrications with facts.

On a broader level, Mr. Kenney is wrong in saying that you can’t compare U.S. behaviour with the behaviour of “people who blow up children”. On the contrary, it is an indisputable fact that U.S. bombs have blown up far more Iraqi children than al-Qaeda’s bombs. Al-Qaeda is willing to kill large numbers of innocent people, including children, in pursuit of its goals, and the U.S. is willing to kill large numbers of innocent people, including children, in pursuit of its goals. By what standard of morality are they not morally equivalent?

The single-state solution

May 16, 2008 - #

Globe and Mail columnist Marcus Gee dismisses the growing movement for a single democratic secular state encompassing Israel and Palestine with the claim that “Jews could never feel safe in a country where they were a minority. Many will simply leave.”

Has it escaped his notice that most Jews choose to live in countries where they are a minority? Any Jew anywhere in the world is free to fly to Tel Aviv and instantly claim Israeli citizenship. Yet despite Israel’s strenuous efforts to encourage Jewish immigration, very few Jews make this choice. Most of the world’s Jews clearly prefer to be citizens of secular states like Canada, the United States, Britain, France, and Argentina, even though they are a minority in those countries.

In fact, some 700,000 Israeli Jews, around 13% of the Jewish population, have left Israel – to move to countries where they are in the minority. More than 100,000 Jews who came to Israel from the former Soviet Union have chosen to return to Russia or the Ukraine.

Indeed, the times have changed so dramatically that each year thousands of Israelis, many of them the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, are moving to Germany and taking out German citizenship. Who would ever have predicted this? Who would have thought sixty years ago that Europe, with its history of war and hatred, would one day be transformed into a single community in which long-time enemies would live together in peace? Yet it happened in Europe – and it can happen in the Middle East.

Bringing about a single secular state in which Jews and Palestinians have equal rights will not be easy, but ultimately it is the only solution to the conflict. A state based on respect for the human rights of all its citizens is a better safeguard against anti-Semitism and racism than one based on ethnic nationalism and inequality.

From the people who rescued the victims of Hurricane Katrina...

June 2, 2008 - #

The United States – so the media report – has accused the Burmese government of “criminal neglect” in its response to the recent cyclone. The accusation is undoubtedly true, and the U.S. government is certainly splendidly qualified when it comes to recognizing criminal neglect. Still, the chutzpah is enough to turn one’s stomach.

And is there anything left to say about the blank-faced servility with which the media report the U.S. government’s statement without so much as whispering the words “Hurricane Katrina”?

Proof that leprechauns exist

June 11, 2008 - #

One David Berlinski, of whose existence I was blissfully unaware until a few days ago, has written a book attacking atheism and science. It appears he doesn't think it's very nice that atheists dismiss religious beliefs as illogical and unsupported by evidence.

In his book, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, Berlinski deploys what he considers to be a devastating rebuttal against atheism. The gist of his argument is this:

(1) There have been atheists, such as Stalin, who did bad things.
(2) Therefore God exists.

One might be tempted to ask: Why doesn't religion get a substantial share of the blame for Stalin, given that Stalin spent his formative years in a religious seminary?

But leave that aside. This is an old argument, but the logic of it is seductive for all that, and promises to lead us down many an attractive garden path. For example:

(1) Bad things have been done by people who don't believe in leprechauns.
(2) Therefore leprechauns exist.

Then again, one could as easily make the point that bad things have been done by people who believe in various gods. Is that an argument for the existence of those gods, or an argument against? I'm not sure - I personally think it's probably an argument for the existence of leprechauns. My kind of leprechauns, that is. Not those other kinds of leprechauns those heretics believe in.

And don't even get me started on those a-leprechaunists and their scientific pretensions.

Still... I wonder how much Berlinski is making from his book...?

Lady Martha’s story

June 12, 2008 - #

Normally, I delete the spam that gets past the filter into my mailbox as quickly as anyone. Tempting though it might be to realize my innermost fantasies of losing weight and getting a degree in any field I choose while having my breasts augmented and my penis enlarged, it never quite seems like the right moment to go for it.

But I do have a sneaking fondness for those occasional carefully crafted letters that tell a complete and compelling story. Some of these are almost works of literature, little Chekovian gems in their own way. If Alice Munro fell on hard times and had to support herself writing spam, these are the stories she would tell to get her hands on our banking information.

I recently received one from a certain Lady Martha. She plunges directly into her story:

“Here writes Lady Martha Stirling, suffering from cancerous ailment. I am married to Engineer Dennis Stirling an Englishman who is dead.” You can read her whole story here.

Lady Martha is a woman I feel an instant bond with. Burdened though she is with her own woes – she has had a stroke, her doctor has told her she has “limited days to live due to the cancerous problems”, and of course there is the unfortunate circumstance of the husband who is an Englishman who is dead – she nevertheless has made the time to do something very special for me.

I think what I like about Lady Martha is that she is interested in the good in me, not the bad. Whereas most spam is designed to prey on my weaknesses – my greedy desire to make a quick killing on the stock market, my insecurities about my penis, breasts, weight, and lack of education – Lady Martha has singled me out because she knows I am a good person. She has chosen me because she knows she can trust me to use the “10 Million Great Britain Pounds Sterling” she is prepared to deposit in my bank account not for my own selfish purposes, but “to fund the upkeep of widows, widowers, orphans, destitute, the down-trodden, physically challenged children, barren-women and persons who prove to be genuinely handicapped financially.”

I almost think that it’s this blog that has finally made people far and wide realize what a kind and trustworthy soul I am. How else to explain the fact that five days after Lady Martha’s letter arrived, I received, out of the blue, a very similar letter from one Lady Karen, who is also “married to an English man who is dead”. Her story is if anything even more tragic: her husband “died in a train bomb blast in Spain when he was going for his medical check up”, and sadly she too is suffering from “cancerous problems”. You can read her whole story here.

Lady Karen will be depositing 6 million Great British Pounds in my bank account. She says that her goal is “to put a smile on the face of the less privileged.”

And you know, she is doing just that.

I am therefore I blog.