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In eagarness, socialists and shallow relativists fall over themselves while attempting to equate advanced Western societies, or even to denigrate them, in opposition to obviously criminal administrations common among socialist paradises and other backward primitive states.

The congruence between the more advanced and organised societies and an ability to go out and right wrongs among the ‘savages’ says nothing about might making right. It says much more about right making might. It is just more of the old ‘white man's burden’ to bring civilisation to the backward and the savage.

That is eventually a ‘moral’ act, even if the politically correct world has recently forgotten that in its cotton-wool wish to ‘be different’, and its wish to claim or draw some ‘moral superiority’ from what is, in fact, the cowardice and the lack of fortitude that comes to a fat and lazy people

This does not imply that might is always used wisely or honourably. Nor does it suggest that a backward society that manages to obtain advanced weapons from corrupt or foolish sources somehow attains merit.

the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/ethics2004.php#right_making_might_081206

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the advance of the transparent society: we all could read licence plate numbers

“In recent years, police around the country have started to use powerful infrared cameras to read plates and catch carjackers and ticket scofflaws. But the technology will soon migrate into the private sector, and morph into a tool for tracking individual motorists' movements [...]”
—
“[...] a vision of the future in which LPR [Licence Plate Reading] does everything from helping insurance companies find missing cars to letting retail chains chart customer migrations. It could also let a nosy citizen with enough cash find out if the mayor is having an affair, [...]”
—
“Just as it's legal for the paparazzi to take pictures of celebrities in public, it's legal for anyone to photograph your license plate on the street. Still, there aren't enough LPR units in service yet to follow your car everywhere.

“The systems, which cost around $25,000 and are made by G2 Tactics, Civica, AutoVu and Remington Elsag Law Enforcement Systems, among others, have been sold mostly to major police departments around the country.

When the general public has access to this and other surveillance equipment, it will not just be the private individual who is watched by the police and their political masters, but the police and politicians who can be monitored by their electorate.

the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/ethics2004.php#lpr_270706

another failure of us child gun safety laws; bliar show you how it should be done - the auroran sunset

In the land of the free:

“Try and picture it. A 12 year old walks into the living room, sees his mother frantically protecting the baby, and several strangers attacking his father. The 12 year old rushes out of the living room, but comes back pointing a gun at the five suspects. As of Monday night, all but one are in jail.”

And in Bliar's Britain:

• The 12 year old would be under arrest.
• The father would be dead.
• The mother would be raped.
• The baby would be taken into care by 'social' 'workers'.
• The oppressed entrepreneurs would be receiving compensation.
  ...and their own criminal rights show on bliar's broadcasting corporation.

[lead from imao.]

the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/ethics2004.php#guns_230706

the advance of the transparent society: using sister’s dna to catch rapist

“He would drag them off the street, tie them up with stockings or tights, and rape them. Lloyd made a habit of stealing his victims’ shoes, which he kept as fetishistic trophies.

“His crimes went unsolved for more than 20 years until advances in DNA searching techniques led South Yorkshire Police to reopen the inquiry.”
—
“Lloyd was traced when DNA from his sister — taken in relation to a drink-driving offence — was matched to semen samples taken from the rapist’s victims between 1983 and 1986.”

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british government discusses a tradable carbon cap on household energy use

irving jailed for what - for opinion or for public lies?

Having thought on the recent case of David Irving, I can now state that I have very little problem with the judgement of the Austrian court. I have very little problem with the jailing of this ‘poor old man’, boo hoo, for deliberately lying about clear historical facts.

I have little problem because David Irving’s lies are obviously confusing vulnerable, uneducated people.

And that I am convinced that Irving knows full well he is lying, and that he is lying with the direct purpose of confusing and swindling the intellectually weak.

This case has absolutely nothing to do with ‘free speech’. It is about public lying.

As the case is, therefore, so cut and dried, I see little difference between Irving and

either
1. a confidence trickster
   or
2. a perjurer.

Further, I regard it as reasonable that a society protect itself from particularly dangerous lies. This category includes lies in the forwarding of the mental disease of socialism, (national socialist variant) and the mental disease of jihadism. You will note that both jihadism and national socialism attempt to exploit this falsehood.

I have been interested to see that not one correspondent has come up with even half-baked reasoning against the Austrian law [on holocaust denial]. I admit that I thought people would be able to raise valid and/or convincing concerns, but I have seen not the slightest sign of that from any correspondent.

I have seen constant attempts to muddy the water by pretence that this is about ‘free speech’. It clearly is not. It is about public lying.

I am further convinced that such lying, as indulged by Irving, is poison to any culture.

On the basis of my thinking around this incident I am content that, in special clear cut cases like this, laws such as those in Austria are indeed both valid and legitimate.

The grounds for such a statement:

1. the lie is certain. It is absolutely unrelated to anything approaching ‘opinion’;
2. the lie is socially poisonous, a form of social madness.

From this follows that there is little more problem with isolating a person who attempts to spread a mental disease, as does Irving, than there is with isolating Typhoid Mary, or a person who purposely attempts to spread HIV/AIDS.

It also follows that I expect Irving to be treated humanely, as I would want any disease carrier treated. About here, the analogy becomes uncertain/weak, as very few people infected with HIV/AIDS or typhoid would deliberately spread those maladies, whereas it is clear that people like Irving and jihadis will do that as part of their mental problems.

In the case outlined above, I am therefore strictly restricting action, as presently perpetrated on the ‘poor old man’, to clear known lies - not to the disease at large, but to particular identified memes such as spreading an obvious clear lie.

The lie in this case is “the holocaust did not occur”, or any similar clear-cut, socially poisonous and obviously false statement.

I have thought around analogous memes and I can think of very few even close to this one; perhaps spreading a belief in witches (and the burning thereof) could be considered.

‘that criminal’

For surreal reasons, the followers and supporters of Irving seem to believe the old liar; perhaps because someone once told them he was ‘a historian’ instead of ‘a liar’. Maybe they even believe such assertions because Irving had books published. One needs to grasp how naive and gullible such people are.

Now, increasingly, Irving will be known as ‘that criminal’. Maybe another generation of unthinking followers of dogma will continue to be naive and believe - well - that he is a lying criminal.

Such dull conformists never have an independent thought from birth to burial, they just follow fashions and believe in ‘authorities’. Surely it is better, if they are like that - and they are - that they should have honest, sane authorities to believe rather than liars.

Of course, it would be more gratifying if such people could, instead, be taught to think for themselves. However, my experience is, that is not always possible. Thus, as always, we are stuck with doing the best that we may.

free speech and public liars

Those who cite free speech as an objection for laws of this type will often say that it is better that the views are public so that they can be publicly taken apart. Such people also often say that jailing the liars will only give more attention to the lies and liars. These two positions are clearly contradictory.

Such people often confuse themselves further by suggesting it is better that Irving is just forgotten. Clearly, this makes no sense at all.

Either you want the arguments out in the public space, for which a trial makes a damned good job, and thus the argument is public.

Or you are fearful that you cannot meet the argument, so you wish to sweep it under the carpet. (This latter position, strangely in my view, has been taken both by Lipstadt and by Evans.)

These two positions are clearly inconsistent.

the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/ethics2004.php#irving_230206

the world of incurable cheats

“But the mildly incompetent, the spiritless and dull, the poorer sort who are ill, do not exhaust our Utopian problem. There remain idiots and lunatics, there remain perverse and incompetent persons, there are people of weak character who become drunkards, drug takers, and the like. Then there are persons tainted with certain foul and transmissible diseases. All these people spoil the world for others. They may become parents, and with most of them there is manifestly nothing to be done but to seclude them from the great body of the population. You must resort to a kind of social surgery. You cannot have social freedom in your public ways, your children cannot speak to whom they will, your girls and gentle women cannot go abroad while some sorts of people go free. And there are violent people, and those who will not respect the property of others, thieves and cheats, they, too, so soon as their nature is confirmed, must pass out of the free life of our ordered world. So soon as there can be no doubt of the disease or baseness of the individual, so soon as the insanity or other disease is assured, or the crime repeated a third time, or the drunkenness or misdemeanour past its seventh occasion (let us say), so soon must he or she pass out of the common ways of men.”

H G Wells, A Modern Utopia

Quote thanks to DVH

the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/ethics2004.php#hg_wells_160106

hurting the ‘baddies’, should it be allowed?

“LONDON -- A member of Parliament from British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour party filed a motion yesterday urging publication of a leaked document that suggests President George W. Bush wanted to bomb the headquarters of Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera.

“This week, British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith warned editors they could face prosecution under the Official Secrets Act for disclosing the contents of a document that has been described as a transcript of discussions between Bush and Blair.

“Labour party backbencher Peter Kilfoyle filed a motion calling for publication of the document, which was leaked to the Daily Mirror newspaper. Civil servant David Keogh and Leo O'Connor, who formerly worked for a British MP, have been charged with violating the Official Secrets Act.”

I do not understand why there is such a fuss. I cannot see the Allies during World War Two complaining about bombing Volkischer Beobachter [authorised propaganda newspaper of Nazism in 1930s], and William Joyce (‘Lord Haw Haw’) was killed for his behaviour during that war. If Al-Jazeera is putting out National Socialist and jihadi murderers’ propaganda, where is the problem taking them out?

Or is this leftist ‘reporter’ hysteria that claims special treatment? If the reporters wish to become part of the propaganda war, I see no great problem treating them as combatants.

the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/ethics2004.php#hurting_baddies_281105

another desperate problem for christianist fundies

“The analysis of medical literature relating to fetal pain concludes that fetuses of less than 30 weeks are unlikely to feel pain. It concludes that vital brain connections relating to pain perception form only between 23 to 30 weeks of gestation, and even if formed are unlikely to be functional until 30 weeks.

The findings come into direct conflict with legislation in several US states - and a proposed US Congress Bill - that requires doctors to inform women seeking abortions 20 weeks after conception that the fetus can feel pain. The physician must also offer to give an anaesthetic or painkiller directly to the fetus."

“Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive
Officiously to keep alive.” [1]

“What we have in the Schaivo case, then, is the legally appointed and recognized decision-maker making a choice that is well within his purview. Multiple court reviews have concluded that he is the right person to make the call, and his decision should be honored. To this libertarian, that is the end of the matter, because the very essence of being a libertarian is respecting the decisions of others even when you might decide otherwise. To a broad spectrum of conservatives, however, the fact that medical decision-making should be private is of no concern when the decisions made are decisions they disagree with.”

Link found at the auroran sunset

end note

The Latest Decalogue, 1862

Thou shalt have one God only; who
Would be at the expense of two?

No graven images may be
Worshipped, except the currency:

Swear not at all; for, for thy curse
Thine enemy is none the worse:

At church on Sunday to attend
Will serve to keep the world thy friend:

Honour thy parents, that is, all
From whom advancement may befall;

Thou shalt not kill; but need'st not strive
Officiously to keep alive:

Do not adultery commit;
Advantage rarely comes of it:

Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When it's so lucrative to cheat:

Bear not false witness; let the lie
Have time on its own wings to fly:

Thou shalt not covet, but tradition
Approves all forms of competition.

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861), British poet.
Reproduced in Collected Poems, ed. C. Whibley (1913)

i note the usual dorks are now whining about ukraine; meanwhile the un is sinking in scandal

There is a lot of information here on the various UN scandals that are emerging. Much can be traced back through the link.

“Since it was never likely that the U.N. Security Council, some of whose permanent members were awash in Saddam's favors, would ever call for Saddam's removal, the U.S. and its coalition partners were forced to put troops in harm's way to oust him by force. Today, money swindled from Oil-for-Food may be funding the insurgency against coalition troops in Iraq and other terrorist activities against U.S. interests. Simply put, the troops would probably not have been placed in such danger if the U.N. had done its job in administering sanctions and Oil-for-Food.” [quoted in T.A.S. blog]

It is rather mind-blowing that the very dorks who kept whining for Madsam [Saddam Hussein] to be kept in power and who were rattling on about the ‘authority’ of the UNO. Increasingly, it emerges that they were backing two highly corrupt regimes, not one.

And still the brain-ded [sic] tendency are prattling about Western military forces being put into danger. This danger was created by the very acts of people they, the brain-ded dorks, wished to support and apparently even still yearn to support. These usual suspects are now falling over themselves to claim that the West is ‘interfering’ in the affairs of the Ukraine; absent, of course, is any concern at various Russian comments.

Amongst the links offered here, you will find references to attempts to reform the UNO, including a new proposal to put responsibility on duff regimes to protect their ‘own’ people. The changes thus far look rather wishy-washy to me, but at least there are now movements in the right direction.

In due course, I expect regimes to be publicly labelled ‘illegitimate’ by the UN. This will have to occur if the UN is to ever regain any credibility and would, in fact, be a return to the long-continuing history of the ethics of the just war.

The idea of ‘odious debt’ is also steadily entering mainstream thinking, making the debts run up by people like Madsam carry the risk of being declared odious, and therefore not repayable.This move would also do much to make those supplying comfort via the rear door to madmen like Madsam pause before so dirtying their hands.
The odious debts website with a summary definition:

“What is an odious debt?

“This occurs when debts are incurred and used for ends which, to the knowledge of the creditors, are contrary to the interests of the nation. Then the creditors have committed a hostile act with regard to the people; they cannot therefore expect that a nation freed from a despotic power assume such "odious" debts, which are personal debts of that power.”
[Widely paraphrased for better clarity.]

A coalition of the willing, such as that which has recently freed Iraq and Afghanistan, may also be seen as establishing of ‘rule of law’ on the disorderly commons generated by the rootless Jihadi cultists.

This is also a logical way to go for the development of law, and police forces, to control the activities of essentially anarchic gangs and individual criminals, as is discussed in the tragedy of the commons.

the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/ethics2004.php#ukraine_uno

rule of law or rule of man
[link from private source]

An article that raises important issues without great skill, but worth a read and demanding of thought.

“ .....In the 1960s, Lord Denning used his position as Master of the Rolls to strengthen the role of "equity" over literal interpretation of the law in judicial decisions. Since then a fashion has been growing in jurisprudence for arguing backwards from the desired outcome of a case to a tweaking and twisting of legal reasoning in order to support it....”
—
“ ...Parliament has given us the weird offence of "causing death by dangerous driving". Should there, then, be a special offence of causing death by unhygienic kitchen management? Or causing death by inattentive child-minding? Courts and legislators have allowed themselves to be distracted from what should be the law’s focus: the culpability of the behaviour, not the seriousness of the consequence.”

For more background logic

And a sensible proposal that has the nannies at the Groaniad twitching:

“ Children as young as 14 will train to serve as judge and jury in trials of their peers, under government plans to cut inner city crime.

“The initiative, an attempt to encourage young people to respect the judicial system, has the support of senior ministers but has alarmed some legal experts.”

I’ll bet it has ‘alarmed’ the union.

“The Red Hook Justice Centre, in Brooklyn, New York, runs a unique adult court system which unites civil, family and criminal cases plus social service facilities under one roof. The scheme also uses a 'teen' court to handle cases of 10 to 16-year-olds accused of petty crimes such as anti-social behaviour, vandalism, drug-taking and underage drinking.”
—
“Under the teen court scheme, which is being adopted by New Zealand, Canada and Japan, teenagers aged 14 to 17 study a number of disciplines including law and social sciences, to ensure they make fair judgments and recommend appropriate sentencing.”

And about time too.

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could i have a spare-parts baybee, please?

Who owns the child?

“Fertility regulators in the UK have ruled that families can pre-select embryos which could potentially save ill siblings.”

Why cannot this ‘principle’ be applied to adults?
Find the appropriate adult and demand that they ‘help’ by ‘donating’ appropriate bits.

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