Crisis in Somalia

I am growing increasingly concerned with the situation in Somalia. It is a problem that can very quickly develop into a major international crisis with wide-spread human and policy implications. It is within our power to act now to avoid it, but it doesn’t seem that this crisis is getting much traction with world governments.

I have written down some of my thoughts over at Canadian Atheist:

So even if you don’t buy the hippy-dippy “human suffering” and “think of the children” arguments usually put forward to elicit aid in times of great human need, you’ve got to realize that this is a crisis that effects you personally. If we act now, we can put the genie back in the bottle – if we wait too long, then we’re all going to have a much bigger problem on our hands. A problem we may not be able to solve.

I’ve written a letter to my MP (more on that later, once I get a response from her directly), and hopefully there will be some pressure on the federal government to take the lead on this. It affects them directly, and they can avoid a shitstorm on a planetary scale if they react now.

Anyway, read the article over at CA, and keep an eye out for this issue. If you can afford it, consider donating a few dollars to the humanitarian aid effort.

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Anything goes when it comes to ‘hos, ’cause…

Pimpin’ ain’t easy:

Charges against a man accused of being a pimp have been thrown out after an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled that a police officer involved in the case fabricated evidence and lied on the stand. The problem involving Const. George Wang only came to light after Courtney Salmon’s lawyer finally found contradictory information in the notes of other officers involved in the case. Salmon had faced pimping charges before, but they didn’t stick.

But it is made infinitely easier when you are being prosecuted by incompetent and crooked police officers. I lived in Peel region for several years, and I have nothing but negative things to say about them. Contrasted against the professionalism that I associate (in most circumstances, with a few egregious exceptions) with the Vancouver Police Department, I found Peel to be staffed almost exclusively by bullies and mindless thugs who were more interested in pushing around and terrorizing young people than with living up to their oath.

And while the title (a reference to a classic track from Big Daddy Kane *trigger warning for sexism and homophobia*) is meant to be amusing, there is nothing particularly funny about pimping. Despite the fact that it has taken on some kind of positive connotation in common language, it’s an occupation that essentially relies on the exploitation and physical/psychological abuse of young women. It’s a detestable thing, and anyone caught doing it should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

However, what the police chose to do instead was to ignore due process and fabricate evidence. As a result, the case against Mr. Salmon (who is probably guilty) has to be thrown out, at the cost of not only the time and efforts of those involved in the prosecution but the Peel Police themselves. As I pointed out in his morning’s post, when police abuse their powers they undermine their own credibility, which is their most effective law enforcement tool.

“Our whole system of justice is based on faith in police investigating, and presenting their case fairly and truthfully … the community should have grave concerns that the police are not only fabricating evidence, but coming to court and lying about it.” Penman wants the officers involved investigated and punished, but they remain on the job. A spokesperson for the Peel Police Service said they have not been disciplined, despite the judge’s findings.

The tools that run Peel law enforcement are not effective at all, and people are starting to notice:

Defence lawyers who regularly try cases in the area call it the latest example of a troubling and cozy relationship between the police service and the local prosecutor’s office, which has yet to wipe away the decades-old stain of a high-profile wrongful conviction.

With 1,855 officers, the Peel force ranks behind only those of Toronto, Montreal and Calgary. It watches over a sprawling melting pot of new immigrants. “Peel is a petri dish of massive growth and bad planning,” said defence counsel Robert Rotenberg. “They are playing catch up, going from being a small town to being a big city.” In the latest ruling, a judge found that Peel Regional police officers stripped a suspect naked to show him who was boss, and provided false testimony to conceal their misconduct.

Boy am I glad I don’t live there anymore.

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Law and Disorder

Occasionally, events conspire to force me to subtly shift the focus of this blog. What started as a forum specifically for issues relating to race, free speech and religion has since expanded to include feminism, LGBT, law, politics, psychology, and secularism. To this litany of overlapping topics I am about to add a new one: crime.

As you may know if you pay attention to those sorts of things, Vancouver recently had a riot that followed a hockey game. Windows were smashed, people were stabbed, cars were lit on fire – it was a real shit show. It is inaccurate to label them as ‘hockey riots’ though, because they had nothing to do with the result of the hockey game. People came to the downtown area from surrounding municipalities with the sole purpose of causing damage – they brought rocks, gasoline, and masks to hide their identities from cameras.

Of course, such an event necessarily included response by law enforcement, who have been taking quite a bit of criticism for failing to react faster, or more thoroughly, or taking whatever steps were necessary to prevent widespread violence:

Vancouver police are defending the number of officers on the street during last week’s riot, saying it was about the same during the gold-medal hockey game in the 2010 Olympics. “It is true that about 5,000 officers were brought in from other jurisdictions for the Olympic Games, but those officers were for deployment by the Integrated Security Unit inside venues from Richmond to Whistler.

The Vancouver Police Department policed the streets of Vancouver, with some assistance from the ISU in the final days,” said a statement issued by police on Thursday. The force is continuing to refuse to release its tally of feet on the street, saying even if it did, it wouldn’t matter anyway because there will always be debate over how many officers would have been enough.

This more or less agrees with my take on the situation. When you have a crowd of 30,000 people involved in a massive orgy of destruction, there’s very little that having more police there can do. This particular paragraph resonated strongly with me:

“The fact still remains that the number of police on the street the night of June 15, correct or not, quelled a violent crowd of 30,000 people in three hours without major injuries or a single complaint of excessive force or unlawful arrest. Our goal once the riot began was to protect lives, end it as quickly as possible.”

This is the role that police are supposed to perform: protect lives and property (in that order of priority), and to respect the constitutional rights of even those that are committing crimes. The response from the VPD was measured and lawful, and as a result they are enjoying a great deal of public support (the criticisms and questions notwithstanding).

Either police chief Jim Chu is particularly forward-thinking and enlightened, or his policy just happens to coincide with those kinds of principles. At any rate, the VPD’s behaviour seems to reflect an understanding of the fact that the most powerful tool that the police wield is the respect and trust of the people  they are sworn to serve and protect. Respect for the law and those that uphold it is not something that can be legislated or purchased at the point of a gun.

When police behave well, they reap the benefit of not having to work as hard. The immediate response of the people of Vancouver following the riots was to submit photographs and videos to the police department, in the hopes that the police would be able to ferret out those that attacked the city. That is what respect and trust buys you. The other side of this is what happens when people don’t trust you:

Newly released G8/G20 summit documents reveal the RCMP and various Ontario police forces spent several months infiltrating anti-war, anti-globalization and anarchist groups with the use of undercover officers ahead of last June’s summits in Huntsville and Toronto.

<snip>

“A large number of the people charged with conspiracy were arrested prior to anything happening on that Saturday demonstration,” [Laurentian sociology and history professor Gary] Kinsman told CBC News, saying he himself was among the peaceful demonstrators at last year’s Toronto summit. “So the evidence collected from the people who infiltrated the activist groups was basically used to criminalize the organizers, prior to anything actually taking place.”

Using police power to criminalize dissent itself, rather than actual breaking of the law, increases scrutiny and suspicion of police officers. The RCMP and Ontario police’s borderline-illegal (of course, if the police do it, it’s not illegal) behaviour during the G20 summit in Toronto is a prime example of when police overreaching undermines their own credibility. People lose trust in the institution, and begin to demand answers. And, as sure as night follows day, incidents of police corruption are never isolated.

I disagree with anarchist groups, I disagree with anticapitalist groups, I disagree with antiglobalization groups. However, provided they are not breaking laws or conspiring to break laws (which is itself against the law, so maybe that phrase is redundant), I think they have the right to exist. After all, if the measuring stick against which we decide which groups are allowed to exist is whether or not I personally agree with them, then we can just go ahead and disband the Republican North Party right now.

When we allow police officers to infiltrate groups because they don’t like them and arrest people with no evidence of a committed crime, we open the door to criminalizing any political dissent. We have absolutist states in the world where political dissent is illegal – trust me, you don’t want to live in them.

Well, they burned it. Everyone still alive?

 

This morning I warned you all of a dire plot by a group of fanatics in the Netherlands to do something profoundly silly:

But of course, banning a book doesn’t prevent people from reading it. Especially in this day of instantaneous transfer of information, burning a book is simply raising a flag that says “We are ignorant” and “We are out of touch with reality” at the same time. If people in the Netherlands wanted to find a copy of [Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes], they could simply go to Amazon or any number of other online bookstores. Banning the book is therefore futile. Burning the book may have some kind of psychological satisfaction for the protesting group, but it is an outmoded and meaningless gesture.

Well, undaunted by rational thought or… y’know… bothering to read the book, these Jell-o heads have decided to forge ahead with their agenda of public stupidity:

The activists vowed to burn copies of the book, published in Dutch as Het Negerboek, in an Amsterdam park unless its name was changed.

However, group member Perez Jong Loy said Wednesday that they did not burn the entire work because it’s not the novel’s content they find offensive, only the title. “We are upset by the title of your book because the name you gave, it’s insulting to the black community. It’s an insult,” he told CBC News.

Never mind the fact, of course, that Hill is a member of the black community, and is a prolific defender of black people. Never mind that his books have reached millions of readers across the world, and have thereby advanced the discussion of race and the history of slavery. Never mind that the title of the book is a direct reference to a historical document, and was intentionally chosen to reflect that fact. Never mind that burning a book (even just the cover) only serves to increase its popularity. Never mind that in the age of digital media, burning a book is about as meaningful as vandalizing the card catalogue in a library or fighting to close an adult movie store – people will find a way to read the book no matter what you do.

No, let’s ignore reality and reason, and instead make a big show of how angry and stupid we are. That’ll show ’em!

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To protect and serve… kinda

I have a difficult relationship with police officers. First of all, I recognize that they are tools of the state, which has its own plusses and minuses. When the goals of the state are bound to the benefit and protection of the people, then a strong police presence is a good thing. We saw this in last week’s riots in Vancouver – police were more interested in protecting people and minimizing harm and loss of life than they were concerned about protecting private property. However, when the will of the state is opposed to the welfare of the people, police have carte blanche to abuse civil rights and become an essentially-unchecked force of oppression. We saw this at the G8/G20 protests in Toronto – the legitimate right of people to voice opposition was met with boots and truncheons.

The second part of my cop conundrum comes from the fact that police officers are still human beings, which also has its negative and positive aspects. Individual police officers are capable of great compassion, discretion and empathy. I remember during the Olympics seeing smiling police officers talking to enthusiastic tourists and locals, joking and posing for pictures. I’ve had several positive interactions with police officers where they have revealed themselves to be human behind the badge. Then again, being human means that they have all the failings of individuals (pettiness, panicked responses to threats, abuse of power), and demonstrate the mean stupidity of groups. A reader sent me a story that I think illustrates how fraught these conundrums are particularly well:

Chris Cochrane, an entertainer who goes by the name Elle Noir, is recovering from a gunshot wound to her right arm. She said her attackers yelled homophobic slurs as she was hit with gunfire at her Fairview apartment early Tuesday. She said she believes they intended to kill her.

“They were yelling, ‘Tranny faggot, open the door, let us in, let us in,’ which leads me to believe they knew who I was. I’m in a second-floor apartment. You know, you have to have a security key to get into the building. Obviously it was 100 per cent hatred.”

So we have the victim’s statement, that armed men shot through her front door with handguns and a shotgun(!) after accosting her verbally. There was no reason for the intruders to pick that apartment at random, since there was no drug activity. There is a long and sordid history of violent assault against transpeople (that is, people who identify as a sex other than the one they were born into – someone please let me know if I worded that incorrectly), and this has all the hallmarks of a hate crime.

The police reaction?

Halifax Regional Police interviewed Cochrane on Wednesday. After speaking with witnesses, investigators doubt her claim that the shooting was a hate crime, said a police spokesman. “We believe this particular unit at least — while not saying this particular victim — was targeted specifically,” said Const. Brian Palmeter.

“Certainly we don’t believe this was a hate crime based on the information that we have so far… There may have been other reasons at play why this might have occurred.” Palmeter refused to elaborate on what those reasons might be.

And immediately the skepti-shields go up. Police would like us to believe that a group of armed men broke into a building, targeted the apartment of a publicly-transsexual person and shot their way in. They did this, according to police, for reasons that have nothing to do with the gender identity of the inhabitant. To persuade us of this highly dubious set of circumstances, police are offering us the iron-clad reassurance of “there may have been other reasons at play”.

It seems to me that there are two things that could potentially be happening here. The first comes from my cynical side: Halifax police aren’t interested in investigating a hate crime. Crimes against transpeople often go unreported and poorly-investigated (I offer no evidence for this assertion – it is based on the testimony of every transperson and gender equality speaker I have ever heard/read). It is trivially easy for the Halifax police to sweep the motivation for this crime under the rug, especially since it happened in an area known for drug involvement. The police force may be acting like a person – allowing their biases and transphobia to bubble to the surface in such a way as to preclude Ms. Cochrane from seeing justice.

The second possibility I can see is that Ms. Cochrane is mistaken about the nature of her assault. She lives with a roommate – perhaps the roommate was involved in the drug trade unbeknownst to Chris herself. Maybe she misheard what the attackers said at the door – hearing “tranny faggot” in her panic when something else entirely was said. The police are suggesting another option but are being intentionally vague (which is their usual way of doing things when evidence collection is ongoing) – maybe the neighbours are privy to some knowledge that Chris herself isn’t, something perhaps to do with her roommate.

Regardless of what the reason for the cagey response from police, this kind of reaction sends a chilling message to transsexual and transgender people living in Halifax and elsewhere: despite the fact that you are more victimized than cissexual people, police will absolutely refuse to take that fact into account. At the very least, Halifax police could have said “we are concerned about the hate component, and even though at this moment we don’t have evidence to suggest hate was a factor, we are cognizant of the fact that transpeople are singled out for special treatment by their assailants, and so we will give the matter our own form of special treatment.”

I am curious to see how this whole story shakes out.

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Passing through the eye of the needle

One of the funny things about the Bible is how regionally-specific its allusions are. Jesus is described as a shepherd, a potter, a sower of specific types of seeds… all references that would be readily understood by those living in the Middle East. Of course a culture that has no sheep wouldn’t really understand the reference, likewise with cultures that don’t use pottery, and has anyone ever seen a mustard seed grow into a tree? I’ve only ever seen them on a sandwich.

One of my favourite Biblical allusions comes from the book of Matthew:

And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Any of you shocked by the fact that a confirmed and vocal atheist would quote the bible need not be: I quote Shakespeare, Nietzche and Orwell too. A good phrase is a good phrase, regardless of how bat-shit insane the author may be. This particular quote, replete with its regional dialect (why a camel? why a needle?) suggests that rich people, or more specifically people tied to material and worldly goods would find getting into heaven very difficult. ‘Abandon your material possessions and focus your attention on Yahweh’ is the bedrock of Jesus’ theological position.

They must make those needles pretty big in Nigeria:

Nigeria’s pastors run multi-million dollar businesses which rival that of oil tycoons, a Nigerian blogger who has researched the issue has told the BBC. Mfonobong Nsehe, who blogs for Forbes business magazine, says pastors own businesses from hotels to fast-food chains.

“Preaching is big business. It’s almost as profitable as the oil business,” he said. The joint wealth of five pastors was at least $200m (£121m), he said. Evangelical churches have grown in Nigeria in recent years, with tens of thousands of people flocking to their services.

The wearisome part of blogging about religion is the depths of hypocrisy that one finds among believers, especially those that lead the flock (of camels?), becomes almost cliché after a while. It becomes repetitive and rather thin gruel for people who have been paying attention to religious establishments. It is pretty much de rigeur for those who claim a superior level of morality, purity, and righteousness (as given them by strict adherence to YahwAlladdha’s commands and the power of the Holy Spirit) to be caught, sometimes literally, with their pants down in violation of some stricture or other. Another religious zealot violates the strictures of her/his own purported beliefs? Ho hum… where’s my Congressional cock shot?

The reason I think this stuff bears repeating is twofold: first, because there are people who honestly believe that these kinds of things are isolated indiscretions rather than exactly what happens when human beings give other human beings power that is not only unquestioned, but fundamentally unquestionable. Criticizing the god-man is a good way to get ostracized and run out of the community, and when you depend on that community for your survival, you’re even less likely to raise an eyebrow when your hard-earned dollars are going to buy his… what did these guys buy again?

Bishop Oyedepo owned a publishing company, university, an elite private school, four jets and homes in London and the United States, according to Mr Nsehe.

“Oyakhilome’s diversified interests include newspapers, magazines, a local television station, a record label, satellite TV, hotels and extensive real estate,” Mr Nsehe said.

Ah yes, the kinds of necessities that are needed to support and develop the communities from which the funds come. Authority derived from religious faith is basically a blank cheque for corruption and abuse. It requires the engagement of the rational part of your brain to recognize and critique hypocrisy – faith actively encourages the suspension of the rational mind. The next thing it actively encourages is for you to make a show of sacrificing your material possessions to gain an afterlife reward for which no evidence is offered (“you just have to believe!”). We have to begin to recognize that the only legitimate reason to believe in a leader is a proven track-record of effectiveness and honesty – piety shouldn’t enter into it.

The second reason I bring this up is that it is usually the people who can least afford to give away their money that are most susceptible to these hucksters. It’s the poorest and least-educated that have the greatest level of desperation, and who are therefore most likely to abandon what little they have for the promise of something greater in the future. Conversely, it is those who have the most to gain from fraud and deception that prey on that same desperation to make what is a huge amount of money in a place like Nigeria. And of course religious organization like the Vatican can’t say anything, lest they open themselves up to more accusations of gross hypocrisy about how much money they take in from gullible suckers pious believers.

It is a great shame that these funds are being used for the exclusive benefit of the pastors. Had the people in these communities instead invested in themselves, they could have built their own schools, newspapers, and real estate. Imagine for a moment if they had pooled that money to attract skilled tradespeople to teach community members how to build businesses and develop commerce. That’s how wealth gets built. Instead, they happily threw it into the pockets of the first hypocrite to cross their path.

Or maybe they just have tiny camels.

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Ah, sweet juxtaposition

I’m not sure if it shows (and I sure hope it doesn’t, because I really am trying to become a good writer), but my last instruction on literature or the craft of writing came at the hands of my OAC (that’s grade 13) English teacher, Mr. Lowens. By the time I got to his class, I had already been well-schooled on one of my all-time favourite literary techniques at the hands of Ms. Mooney (the ~25 people who read this blog at the time will no doubt remember that she appeared in one of my first posts). That technique, friends, is the fine art of juxtaposition.

Let’s contrast two news stories out of the USA, shall we?

Alabama passes extreme anti-Mexican law

The new legislation, similar to one passed last year in Arizona, requires schools to find out if students are there illegally. The law, which takes effect on 1 September, also make it a crime to give an illegal immigrant a ride in a car…

…in addition, businesses and schools will be required to check the legal status of workers and students, while landlords will be committing a crime if they knowingly rent to illegal immigrants. Republican Governor Robert Bentley, who signed the bill into law Thursday, said: “We have a real problem with illegal immigration in this country.

The actual headline read “Alabama passes tough immigration law”, but that’s too euphemistic for my taste. First, it’s not “tough”, it’s cowardly. It’s refusing to actually deal with the issues your state is facing, and instead choosing to blame them on a poor, brown scapegoat. Second, it isn’t about immigration – it’s about harassing Mexicans. So congratulations, Alabama, you are still the most racist place in the entire United States. Feel proud – you’ve come a long way since Montgomery (in that you haven’t changed at all).

But wait… what’s this other story?

U.S. Border Guards accept bribes from Mexican drug cartels

Mexican drug cartels are increasingly targeting American border guards and customs agents with bribes and sexual favours, a US security official says. Charles Edwards of the US Department of Homeland Security told a Senate committee the cartels were using what he called systematic corruption to smuggle drugs and migrants into the US. He said the cartels were also seeking tip-offs about police investigations.

Ah, those crafty illegal immigrants… sneaking across the borders at the risk of drowning, police dogs, detention centres, and at great personal cost. If only they knew that all you had to do to gain entry into the United States was to give a handjob to an American border guard! Then you can just waltz (salsa?) right across the border and into your new life being legislated against by the reactionary bigots that run the southern states.

Gawrsh, Governor Bentley. Doesn’t it seem as though the problem isn’t that your laws aren’t tough enough, but that the people who are enforcing them are absuing their power? Well, I guess the answer is to give them more power, right? That’ll fix everything! Or maybe, just maybe, this law isn’t about your illegal immigration problem at all, but about your racism and the racism of your state.

We should try deporting all the reactionary xenophobic assholes out of Alabama. See if that helps.

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Democracy – still happening

It’s easy to lose sight of what’s happening in the world, especially when new stories are flooding the news outlets (OMG did you hear that SCHWARZENEGGER had a secret KID? And apparently John Edwards is still relevant?). Something important is still happening, and it’s spreading to places that one might not suspect:

For a man who has lost three disputed presidential elections to his archrival, Kizza Besigye is enjoying the kind of political resurrection that can only happen by accident. The leader of the Forum for Democratic Change has become the face of an unprecedented uprising in Uganda. It began with a “Walk to Work” demonstration in mid-April, a small, unassuming protest against soaring food and fuel costs. Had Besigye and his small group been allowed their demonstration, it probably would have passed without much fuss or attention. But instead they were met with riot police with billy clubs, tear gas and rubber bullets. It was the kind of security force overkill that sends a clear message: The government of President Yoweri Museveni is terrified of dissent and is willing to quash it by whatever means necessary.

I’ve never been in a position of political power, so I can only extrapolate from what I know of history, what I’ve seen in the news and in various fiction and non-fictional media. There seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to dissent that happens in the mind of a dictator, whereby whenever someone speaks up against you the immediate reaction is to try and prevent that person from speaking. This seems to be particularly likely when the dictator is surrounded by a group of sycophants.

What’s happening in Uganda, aside from the criminalization of gay people, is that the political infrastructure is starting to crumble under President-For-Life Museveni. Because of his paranoia and sense of slipping control, he has completely overreacted to a small, non-violent protest and in doing so, has elevated his chief political rival.

This overreaction likely owes a debt to a number of factors:

  • The massive uprisings happening across north Africa and the Arab peninsula were triggered, initially, by high food prices and cost-of-living increases under a tyrannical government;
  •  The recent return of Besigye to Uganda after an extended period of exile means that Museveni has a powerful rival now within his own borders, albeit under house arrest;
  • The high level of scrutiny that Uganda has “enjoyed” recently due to its rampantly anti-gay legislation has brought extremely unwelcome attention to a country that, before then, hadn’t really been famous since Idi Amin was in power;
  • The ordinary types of despotic paranoia I mentioned earlier in this post.

So here’s an important lesson for those of you hoping to use this blog as a sort of Machiavellian how-to guide to be a successful political ruler: avoid overreacting. If your political rivals are gaining popularity, figure out what is fueling that rise and then find a way to circumvent it (preferably by fixing the problem your rivals are promising to solve). And, whatever you do, don’t piss off the foreign media:

At the same time, the police were stopping the media from getting in to see Besigye. The roads were blocked with spiked belts. When we tried a back route, our unassuming SUV was first followed then stopped by police. Last week, Uganda’s minister of information called the international media “enemies of the state.” Journalists have been detained, their equipment seized and a few local reporters have been beaten by police as they tried to cover the demonstrations.

There’s no quicker way to raise the “tyrant” flag than to crack down on free speech rights. If you want your rule to extend indefinitely, be open, be honest, and be transparent (or at least appear so). Respect human rights, respect private business (but regulate it when necessary), treat your political opponents respectfully, and if you have to silence dissent, do it swiftly and away from the eyes of the cameras.

Hmm… maybe I shouldn’t have said that last part.

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Guilty of hate speech; guilty of crime?

For all my bluster and polemic, I am tormented by a fundamental uncertainty when it comes to hate speech laws. My position on hate speech is unequivocal – I am against it. Spreading hate is abhorrent, and its effects tend to move beyond the words themselves. I am particularly aware of the fact that anti-gay hate speech is part of what is considered civilized discourse in this part of the world, and that the prevailing anti-gay attitude is resulting in serious and often deadly consequences for gay people.

The situation is much worse in Africa:

The South African ambassador to Uganda, a former columnist for South Africa’s Sunday Sun paper, has been found guilty of hate speech for an anti-gay article. South Africa’s Equality Court fined Jon Qwelane $14,450 (£8,920) and ordered him to apologise for promoting hatred in the column published in 2008.

Regular readers will need no reminding about how serious the problems for gay people are in Uganda. Anti-gay hatred has reached the level where people are attempting to pass legislation that would make being gay a jailable offense, with bonus death penalty for ‘repeat offenders’. This is the level where simple hatred has gone beyond privately-held beliefs and entered into the realm of bigotry with the force of law behind it.

However, I am still conflicted over the outcome of this story. The issue with criminalizing speech – any speech – is that it tends to slowly creep toward criminalizing unpopular speech under the guise of labeling it ‘hate’. Many people would label the kind of vociferous criticism of religion that appears on this and other atheist websites as ‘hateful’. Much of this comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of the word ‘hate’, some of it comes from the inability to separate a criticism of ideas from a criticism of those that hold those ideas, and some of it is the knee-jerk reaction that happens whenever religious is lampooned.

My concern, therefore, is partially selfish. Even if I were given the opportunity to explain the difference between criticism of sacred ideas and ‘hate speech’, it’s unlikely that judicial authority or the court of public opinion would buy the argument. Popular ideas need to be criticized, because they are the ones that are most often accompanied by legal authority, even when they are wrong or harmful. They are also the least likely to be examined critically by those that agree with them a priori. Punishing those that express criticisms serves to chill fair and open-minded scrutiny.

This example, however, is not a question of fair and open-minded scrutiny. It is a question of victimizing a group of people based on intentional lies and distortions of a segment of humanity whose ‘critics’ don’t want to understand the other side of the story. Those kinds of criticisms are not the kind of thing we think of when we talk about protecting free speech – we think of it in terms of ensuring that police forces aren’t allowed to shut down protest against a corrupt government. However, that idea assumes that popular opinion is on one side of the issue, and the authority is on the other side. I have no doubt that Mr. Qwelane sees himself as standing up against the ‘gayification’ of Africa, and thinks that his is a noble cause.

There is another issue that doesn’t seem to filter into the discussions of hate speech laws – the issue of whether or not they work. This is a real scientific question I’d like to see answered: does the existence of legislation against hate speech reduce its incidence or effect? I’m inclined to think that while fines or prison terms might prevent people from going out in the public square and screaming hateful things in front of police officers, it will not meaningfully reduce the amount of hateful speech spoken among individuals or in groups. We know from observation that while explicitly racist speech is wildly unpopular, there are other ways of conveying the same ideas without saying the words themselves.

I can see the appeal in banning hate speech, because it seems like a tidy way of disposing of a problem. However, there are no quick and easy solutions to systemic problems such as anti-gay homophobia or racism. Hate speech laws are very tempting to abuse, especially since they can be ushered in with high public approval ratings. After all, they are brought in with the very best of intentions:

“We are hoping really that this finding will send a message to community members, a message that says gay and lesbian people have an equal right to the protection of their dignity,” said Vincent Moaga, spokesman for the South African Human Rights Commission, which initiated the complaint against Mr Qwelane.

But there is no real evidence that, beyond donating the proceeds from the fines to LGBTQ advocacy groups, criminalizing hate speech reduces it. More likely, it just makes the identification of hate speech more difficult as bigots learn to adjust their language. And then, as the lines become more and more obfuscated, more and more types of speech are classified as “hate” until even legitimate criticisms are subject to punishment.

My conclusion on this is that, absent of empirical evidence that hate speech laws reduce the amount of hate speech or have a meaningful impact on the climate of hate, coupled with their potential for abuse and the fact that they violate human rights to free speech, I cannot support them. However, I think there is value in identifying hate speech and making it clear that governments and other large organizations aren’t okay with it. Like when Laura Schlessinger did, well… whatever you want to call it… she wasn’t sanctioned by the government or fined – she was just made to leave.

As I said, I recognize that there are many weaknesses in my position, and I am open to evidence showing that laws against hate speech are useful or warranted, but I suspect such proof won’t be forthcoming.

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Tyranny: American style

Emergency powers are a funny thing. Granting extraordinary leeway to a governmental authority is crucial when lines of communication have the potential to get crossed, and swift action is needed to address an urgent situation. However, the tricky part comes when it’s time for that governmental authority to give up those emergency powers. When the ’emergency’ is vaguely defined, it becomes easy to justify extending the powers indefinitely. The ability to violate those pesky civil liberties becomes far too tempting, especially if there’s no organized opposition to point out how egregious your abuse of the law is.

Guess who’s finding this out?

US President Barack Obama has signed a four-year extension of the Patriot Act from Paris, extending post-September 11 powers allowing the government to secretly search records and conduct roving wiretaps in pursuit of alleged terrorists or their supporters. Hours after the US Senate and House of Representatives passed the law, through votes taken in rapid succession, and just minutes before the law was to expire at midnight in Washington DC, Obama sent in a digital signature, finalising the renewal on Thursday. During congressional debates, legislators rejected attempts to temper the law enforcement powers to ensure that individual liberties would not be abused [emphasis mine].

At the risk of sounding like a member of the tin foil hat brigade, people need to realize that without an effective opposition, the government is not working for your best interests. This is simply the nature of all government; once it begins considering itself the embodiment of the state – rather than the legislative interests of the people of the state – it will become self-serving at the expense of the rights of its citizens. Despite all the hopes pinned on this supposedly liberal president, he has shown – with one stroke of the autopen – to be no less autocratic than his predecessor.

I have supported Barack Obama from the beginning of his first campaign to the office of POTUSA. He spoke a language I agreed with – people becoming more involved with their government and increasing transparency. However, like all leaders, once he gained office he had to begin making compromises. I stuck through him with his ludicrous mishandling of the health care debate and various budgetary fights (his insistence of pretending that Republicans are reasonable people with principled objections rather than seeing them for the howling mob of reactionary plutocrats they are irked me to no end). I cheered when he overturned the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” regulations, and commiserated when he had to sign the renewal of the Bush tax cuts.

However, by signing the Patriot Act back into law rather than simply letting it expire, and by increasing America’s military presence abroad, he has shown himself to be just as unprincipled and prone to corruption as his opening act.

Most chilling about this story?

Congress bumped up against the deadline mainly because of the stubborn resistance from a single senator, Republican freshman Rand Paul, who saw the act’s terrorist-hunting powers as an abuse of privacy rights. Paul held up the final vote for several days while he demanded a chance to change the bill to diminish the government’s ability to monitor individual actions. The bill passed the Senate 72-23.

Any story where Rand Paul is the good guy is one that makes my head spin. The same Rand Paul that thinks that businesses should have the right to discriminate against people based on sex, gender, race… basically whatever they don’t like. This is the guy I have to cheer for standing up for his principles. It’s a sad day.

This is what happens when you don’t have a serious opposition – corruption takes root unabated. The Republicans are too busy trying to torpedo the entire United States economy, by demanding ridiculous service cuts by holding a metaphorical gun to the head of the country’s credit rating, to organize a legitimate force that can criticize acutal government overreach. Although, considering how they explode government interference (while all the while trumpeting for “small government”) when they have power, maybe it’s no surprise that they support unchecked wire taps and surveillance of people who are suspected of crimes in the absence of real evidence.

The lunatics are running the asylum, and the people who were hired as orderlies are too busy trying to steal meds from the supply closet to bother trying to restore order.

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