Monbiot making some sense

Ethical shopping is just another way of showing how rich you are

George Monbiot may be one of the biggest doomsayers about global warming, but at least he calls a spade a spade when it comes to eco-consumerism. Here's an extract from his column above:

Dozens of new books seem to provide an answer: we can save the world by embracing "better, greener lifestyles". Last week, for instance, the Guardian published an extract from A Slice of Organic Life, the book by Sheherazade Goldsmith - married to the very rich environmentalist Zac - in which she teaches us "to live within nature's limits". It's easy. Just make your own bread, butter, cheese, jam, chutneys and pickles, keep a milking cow, a few pigs, goats, geese, ducks, chickens, beehives, gardens and orchards. Well, what are you waiting for?

Her book contains plenty of useful advice, and she comes across as modest, sincere and well-informed. But of lobbying for political change, there is not a word. You can save the planet from your own kitchen - if you have endless time and plenty of land. When I was reading it on the train, another passenger asked me if he could take a look. He flicked through it for a moment, and then summed up the problem in seven words: "This is for people who don't work."...

Green consumerism is becoming a pox on the planet. If it merely swapped the damaging goods we buy for less damaging ones, I would champion it. But two parallel markets are developing - one for unethical products and one for ethical products, and the expansion of the second does little to hinder the growth of the first. I am now drowning in a tide of ecojunk....

And this line:

Ethical shopping is in danger of becoming another signifier of social status.

He is being too polite when he says it is "in danger of becoming". I thought it was pretty clear that it's already here.

Go read all of his column, he gives many examples of silly eco-consumerism.

40% achieved

Hey, I know it's all statistically irrelevant when you consider a margin of error, but psychologically it is encouraging to see a poll where the the primary vote for the Coalition is back up to 40%. That "4" looks a lot better than a "3".

Pity the "Unnamed Family Member"

I stumbled across some Muslim blogs on the 'net today, and found this one: "A Muslim Wife". She lives in Florida, has not been married long, and wears the niqaab. I can't actually tell if she is an American convert to Islam, but given some of her expressions, I think that's likely.

She sounds a like a lively enough woman who really, really loves being a serious Muslim. From this post of a few months ago, she talks about how much she enjoys her friendship with the wife of one of her husbands friends:

I am especially fond of this couple; the brother is one of hubby's best friends and his new wife is also a niqaabi. It felt so good to be with someone - go out with someone, get ready with someone, talk with someone, walk with someone - who I can really relate to. Just the small things like knowing to talk in a whisper when the hubbies are around. Or when in public, to go out of our way so we don't have to walk near a man, or serving our husbands first, etc. Just all the little things that matter so much, that have become second nature to us, that are apparently FOREIGN to other sisters.

Hmm, yes I suppose wearing a niqaab in the stifling humidity of Florida is not enough to convince any man in the street that you are definitely off limits. You also have to go out of your way to cross the street to get away from them. Excuse me while I roll my eyes.

But, spare a thought for her relatives. This post caught my attention. Called "Private Conversations," she relates some snippets of conversation with a family member who (by the sounds of it) is not a Muslim at all (or is one who doesn't worry about what angels think of dogs):

Dog: bark! bark!
Me: "So we talked last time about your dog, I see you didn't get rid of it yet?"
Another Unnamed Family Member: "Nope, I didn't. I can't have him killed."
Dog: bark! bark! bark!
Me: "(laughing) No one said kill him, just get rid of him. Give him to a shelter or something."
Another Unnamed Family Member: "I can't (the baby) is so attached to him, he'll be sad."
Me: "Oh. Well you know the hadith I mentioned last time, about the angels not entering your home and the loss of mountains of good deeds for every day you keep him."
Another Unnamed Family Member: "(looking over my shoulder into the distance at anything more interesting than me) Mmm hmm. "
(followed by cold shoulder for the remaining of the week).

Oh dear. I say give the "Unnamed Family Member" a medal for keeping the response to "mmm hmm" and a cold shoulder for a week.

Karen Armstrong and the Deathly Religion

Karen Armstrong has a peculiar sense of priorities. In her latest "Comment is Free" article, she notes the several absurd inconsistencies in modern Islam, starting with the surprising finding that although she was invited by the government of Malaysia to give public lectures there, she found on arrival that three of her books had been banned.

Yet she is always keen to try to show that the West also has "double standards":

For Muslims to protest against the Danish cartoonists' depiction of the prophet as a terrorist, while carrying placards that threatened another 7/7 atrocity on London, represented a nihilistic failure of integrity.

But equally the cartoonists and their publishers, who seemed impervious to Muslim sensibilities, failed to live up to their own liberal values, since the principle of free speech implies respect for the opinions of others. Islamophobia should be as unacceptable as any other form of prejudice. When 255,000 members of the so-called "Christian community" signed a petition to prevent the building of a large mosque in Abbey Mills, east London, they sent a grim message to the Muslim world: Western freedom of worship did not, apparently, apply to Islam.

She made a pretty fundamental mistake there when she argued that free speech implies "respect" for the opinion of others. As several comments note, it only implies toleration of the expression of different opinion. No one has to "respect" the opinions of holocaust denier or 7/11 conspiracy theorist.

It's also pretty facile to argue that objection to a large mosque (seating up to 12,000) in London is an actual "attack" on freedom to worship in a Western country. The decision whether to let it be built is presumably going to be decided on planning laws, and one suspects that regardless of the motivation of the petitioners, "Islamophobia" will not be what actually decides the matter.

Contrast this to the actual situation on "freedom of worship" in countries with an even moderate version of Islam like Malaysia. Reuters reported last year that Malaysia was having a spate of Christian churches being actually demolished on flimsy grounds. Perhaps even more importantly, the article claimed this:

The issue of religion has also been controversial for Muslims. They are not allowed to formally renounce Islam, and apostates are sent for counselling and, ultimately, fined or jailed if they do not desist.

Lina Joy, a Muslim by birth who converted to Christianity, recently lost a six-year battle to have the word "Islam" removed from her identity card.

Karen Armstrong typically ended her article with this:

When Gallup asked what the west could do to improve relations, most Muslims replied unhesitatingly that western countries must show greater respect for Islam, placing this ahead of economic aid and non-interference in their domestic affairs. Our inability to tolerate Islam not only contradicts our western values; it could also become a major security risk.

The thing which Armstrong seems to never want to admit, even in an article like this one where she does criticise Islamic governments, is that the Western "lack of respect" is not institutionalised and is actually very minor when compared to legally enforced intolerance to freedom of religion that is evident in even moderate Islamic countries.

PS: That very last line of her article is quite a doozy too, isn't it? The clear meaning seems to be that the West had better learn to tolerate the (by her own admission) rather intolerant Islam, otherwise it will be its own fault if it is subject to terror attacks for showing such lack of respect.

Dr Haneef Part II

If the criminal case against Dr Haneef is as weak as media reporting is tending to suggest (but bearing in mind that there may be some evidence about which we have heard nothing yet,) then the proper thing his lawyers ought to be doing is making submissions as soon as possible to the DPP to consider not proceeding with the charge.

The DPP (and indeed the Federal Police, although having come up with the charge they cannot be the ones seen to make the decision to withdraw it) would surely have some sensitivity to their ongoing credibility if the case is one with a high likelihood of crashing and burning in a spectacular fashion.

If the charge is withdrawn, the main party that I see losing face would be the Federal Police. That would be no bad thing in its way; it would make them more careful and more cautious in future. It may make whoever it is who seems to have leaked wrong information to re-consider the tactic in future. It doesn't hurt for the Police to get a slap down, every now and then.

Meanwhile, I continue to see no substantial advantage to the refusal of the surety being paid so as to allow Haneef to be released on bail and held in Villawood in Sydney instead of as a terrorist on remand in Brisbane. I do not think the issue of getting instructions and providing him with legal advice in Sydney is that big an issue. There would appear to be little extra that Haneef can currently add to his Federal Court appeal, and the cost of getting instructions on the criminal case (even if it involved a personal visit for a day to Sydney) would surely not be huge.

Instead, it seems pretty clear that keeping him in Brisbane in normal remand is a matyrdom tactic of his own lawyers, who want political pressure to come to play on the visa revocation issue. In my view, Haneef would be better served by having lawyers who refused to play the media/political game, and took a quieter approach to ending quickly the incarceration of their client.

If the DPP did pull the criminal charge, then the astute thing for Minister Andrews to do would be to say that he has reviewed the case, and be more explicit as to whether it is the "secret" evidence alone which is sufficient to justify his decision to revoke the visa. If it is, then it's goodbye Dr Haneef and he can be deported. He has no inherent right to be here, and he would presumably be glad to be gone.

My current opinion remains that it is the Federal Police and Haneef's lawyers who have both played games here, with the media acting like a cheerleader to both sides of a game. (First half spent gee-ing up the crowd for the Federal Police, second half crossing over to the other team.) Of course the media has a job to do in reporting on justice issues, but I get peeved when they act as if it is a particularly noble role.

The history of losing your head

Earlier this week, I noted how I was enjoying reading "Across the Nightingale Floor", a story set in medieval Japan. I also said it would make a good movie.

I have now finished the novel, and I can see the difficulties of making this into a movie. (In fact, in the last 1/3, the whole story becomes very Japanese, in that most major characters want to kill themselves!) I don't want to give the plot away entirely but:

SPOILER WARNING ! SPOILER WARNING !

a pretty crucial plot point happens when a major sympathetic character gets beheaded in a way which was, apparently, not unknown in medieval Japan, but it was quite shocking for me with my Western sensitivities. It's not the technical means of the beheading as such, it's the circumstances.

I have always felt particularly repelled by the idea of watching a beheading, even a fictional one in the movies. The novel was written before the recent spate of Islamic beheadings in Iraq, and this renewed appearance of the activity in the real world is unfortunate timing for someone having the film rights to a book in which this act plays a central role.

This made me wonder whether someone has written about beheadings as a cultural issue, and indeed Wikipedia has a gruesomely interesting entry for "decapitation". (In fact, it is this entry which makes me think that what happens in the novel sounds culturally and historically plausible.)

Maybe it is modern Western urban sensibilities that find it so appalling as an act: I imagine that people who live in countries where the open slaughter of animals by throat cutting is commonplace find the idea of killing people the same way not so extraordinary. (My witnessing the killing of some chickens as a young child hasn't desensitised me, though. I don't clearly remember the chopping, but do remember my mother cleaning out the entrails. The not completely formed eggs were interesting.)

Still, I don't like thinking about the act, and wish all heads to be kept firmly in place in novels and movies.

Howard, Costello, etc

The 7.30 Report - ABC

It seems to me that the media, and the ABC in particular, is disproportionately salivating over the issue of just how much Costello and Howard like/dislike each other.

The bottom line is this: Costello has felt hard done by for years, and we already knew that. But, for whatever reason, Costello polls very poorly in preferred PM stakes compared to Howard. No one in their right mind, including Costello, would think that means its a good idea to do a leadership swap now.

The only issue of relevance to the election is Howard being put under pressure to declare that he will really hand over the leadership in the next term. But, surely this time, that's a given anyway.

So Kerry, Tony, Michelle, that's about it really. Go have a Bex and a good lie down and find something else to talk about.

Unfortunate positioning

Quake-hit atomic plant sits atop a fault line | The Japan Times Online

From the article:

The fault along which Monday's magnitude-6.8 earthquake occurred appears to extend right beneath Niigata Prefecture's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, the world's largest atomic power complex, an analysis of aftershock data by the Meteorological Agency showed Wednesday.

Seems to me to be a good argument for the modular, smaller Pebble Bed Reactor. To get a big power station, you just string a half dozen of them together, and the modular design (I imagine) would mean less risk of all of them being taken out at once in one earthquake or other disaster.

Dr Haneef

There's a couple of things about this case that I haven't noticed being said yet:

1. One of the consequences of Dr H deciding to fight the Commonwealth's decision to revoke his visa is that the surety has not been paid and he is spending the next few weeks in remand in Brisbane instead of at Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney (where people undergoing immigration detention are kept.) The detention in Brisbane is described in The Age as follows:

Queensland Corrective Services Minister Judy Spence said Haneef would face a different regime to other prisoners.

He would be allowed no contact with other inmates and would be given an hour a day to exercise. Ms Spence said Haneef would be managed as a terror prisoner under terrorism legislation.

"Anyone who is charged under terrorist legislation is obviously seen as a greater threat to the good order of our society than other type of prisoners," she said. "A terrorist prisoner is required to be held apart from the mainstream prison population, so he will be held in a segregated environment."

It seems certain that the Villawood detention centre would have conditions nothing like this, as he would be bailed on the criminal charge and simply be there as a visa-less person awaiting his ticket overseas after the trial on the Brisbane charge.

I wonder whether his lawyers have made this clear to him, as spending a few more weeks in custody as a terrorist subject is a serious issue. (There is also the issue of the ease with which he can get access to lawyers when in Villawood. However, it's not like Sydney is a million miles from Brisbane, and I expect telephone contact is readily available. Who is paying for his representation anyway? That has never been made clear to me.)

2. I am curious as to what people think about this hypothetical: if the doctor were lodging his visa application today, after the attempted attacks in England by the relatives he has obviously been close to, should the government approve his visa? What would the media reaction be if it was disclosed that he had been approved to come here, despite the family connections, and sharing the same profession?

Should the government in that circumstance simply accept the applicant's claim that he knew nothing of his relative's plans, and only ever had "innocent" association with them?

If you think that the government in that hypothetical situation should not approve the visa application, acting on a precautionary principle, then how could you really complain about the government revoking his visa now?

There is too much hot air blowing around this case, mainly from lawyers. I don't like the media and other's role too (whoever was leaking before the barrister did too.) It's reflecting badly on both sides if you ask me, but I still don't think the government is going to (or should) lose on the issue of deporting him.

How England became England

New Scientist reports how the English Channel appears to have been carved out in a giant "mega flood".

Such stories of spectacular geological events are always interesting. The English Channel event was about 500,000 years ago, though. The flooding of the Black Sea is more interesting due to its affecting people.

The famous playwright

Dazzled again by Stoppard's big ideas

I wish Tom Stoppard plays were produced more often in this country. He seems to be the only English playwright of the last 30 years who deserves fame for having such a combination of wit and intellect.

But he's turning 70! I don't know that there is really anyone on the horizon who is likely to replace him.

From the "only in Japan" files

Sex seems to be the topic of quite a few posts here so far this week, and it's not even spring yet. Still, who can resist looking at some highly amusing packaging for Japanese condoms? (I think I may have seen some of these around the web before, but here they are together with some funny commentary.)

Found via the entertaining Japundit.

Questioning everything about CO2

In a series of posts late last year, I explained that the effect of increasing ocean acidification from the rapid rise in CO2 levels over the next century was enough for me to drop scepticism about the worthiness of programs to seriously reduce CO2 emissions. The benefit of this approach means you don't really have to continue worrying about who is right in terms of how much the temperature will increase, and what effect it will have on climate generally.

Still, it is interesting to see that arxiv has published last week a very lengthy article arguing that the physics of CO2 warming is completely wrong. (Maybe this argument has already been discredited, as I haven't followed all of the skeptics arguments all that closely over the years. It is hard to believe that thousands of other scientists are wrong.)

In any event, it would be nice if we didn't get as hot as predicted because of misunderstood atmospheric physics.

On marriage

Madeleine Bunting has an interesting column in The Guardian about the political response in England to high rates of family break up.

I don't agree with her conclusion (politicians should just give up on trying to promote marriage, and just make sure that there are plenty of services to ease the effect of separation on children.) Still, there is interesting information in the article, such as:

Relationship breakdown is not caused simply by poverty and inequality - they may contribute as a stress factor, but something else is going on too. Some of the world's highest separation rates are in Scandinavia, yet countries such as Sweden and Denmark are among the most equal and have the lowest rates of poverty. Other commentators attribute relationship breakdown to increasing working hours and the pressures of employment, but most Scandinavian working cultures are genuinely family friendly.

Just remember that when the ACTU and Labor party go on about Workchoices being bad for families!

She does allow that some deeper cultural issues are probably at play:

What's also involved is that a set of cultural assumptions about how to conduct long-term relationships, and what can be expected of them, have gone seriously askew - as one thirtysomething father said ruefully after the break-up of his relationship, "our generation just can't do it". The right likes to call this moral breakdown, but it's more tragic than that - often it's a kind of lack of emotional capability.

To which I quite liked this response from commenter simonx:

Why on earth are Guardian writers so loathe to praise and support the institution of marriage?

.....today, we have Ms Bunting blaming the break-up of relationships on a ' lack of emotional capability.' Yet loyalty itself should not be dependent, surely, on the whims of emotion. Instead, it is founded on the solemn promises and commitments couples make to each other when children become part of their relationship. There's nothing which underlines these vows better, surely, than the symbolism of marriage.

For the record

I really don't like The Australian's new website design. (What is it about News Limited: I have never learned to like the last re-design of the The Times website either.)