Month: March 2016

I blogged very positively about Anne Marie Waters a little over a year ago, when she spoke in London. At that point she was describing leaving Left / Feminist / Secularist movements behind and moving into Sharia Watch and UKIP. Her “Three I’s” – anti-Islamisation, anti-Immigration and pro-Independence, and the fact that established political movements that should be taking strong stands on these issues are effectively colluding through ideological political correctness.

More recently, having added Pegida to the movements she supports, she gave an update of essentially the same talk in Nottingham (not great sound quality) – “Islam and the Political Left” – in the fresh light of Merkel in Germany and Islamist terror in Paris and Brussels.

Now, she is a political campaigner, and chooses her rhetoric for its effect, so I wouldn’t always agree literally with every statement in an actual dialogue or argument. When debating politically-incorrect topics it is necessary to be extra careful – perversely, even to be a little politically correct – in choosing your words. And she is. There are things to say distinctly about both Islam and Islamism and the fact they are causally connected – and she does. When talking about immigration the things to say are about import of cultural practice inconsistent with our human values and freedoms – and she does. And she does it with reference to objective events, and empirical, pragmatic practice. She’s beyond – lost patience – with theory, and with overly analytical people like me.

I pick one example to analyse – highlighted already by a comment on the YouTube page:

“It’s not a conspiracy
[between Islam and the Western Liberal Left],
it’s a common ideology.”

• “Not a conspiracy” she says – that’s literally true. It’s a kind of collusion that evolves naturally in an environment of politically correct discourse – to look like a conspiracy, and behave like one too. It’s what I often call here a “memetic” effect. But, if it looks and quacks, many would call it a duck – she is careful not to.
• “It’s a common ideology” she says – well not literally true, but if documenting her thesis, her meaning is clear. They are both ideological and they share some important common ideological components – which she does indeed go on to list. She’s right. I’d just drop the “a” – the definite article. In fact the ideological problems run deep into how the meme of accepted discourse drives political correctness of [Western] thought, decision and action. A Catch-22. (Hence my own analysis here.)

Whilst we all deal with the difficulties of these “Three I’s” – facing us right now in the UK, she’s someone you should listen to carefully – with your ears and minds open. However you choose your own words, I’d challenge you articulate anywhere you believe she’s wrong. Anyone accusing her of bigotry – and many do – are not actually listening as carefully as she is speaking.

The fact it’s not actually an identifiable conspiracy, but more a mutual sleep-walk, means it’s particularly scary and dangerous to ignore it, or worse deny it, and all the more imperative we articulate and engineer solutions.

UK Employment and UK & International Economics are big important and complex topics for us to worry about.

Tata’s proposed sale of UK Steel is related to both.
But Tata’s sale is NOT about either.

Tata, as a massive sprawling multinational conglomerate was never a good choice to own British Steel / Corus assets in the first place. They have no interest in UK assets. Their interest is in international economics, more specifically their own profitability. Tata have a big history in steel, but they are so much more diversified into services these days. SSI (who were on Teeside) would have been a much better bet, but that horse has already bolted, without a whimper from UK government.

Sure, we should not be artificially preserving UK Steel industry at large (loss-making) capacity – the market (UK and foreign) will find most economic sources of steel. Any intervention on economic grounds should be temporary, transitional, to manage employment and social responsibilities. There may be economic upturns that make the productivity less loss-making, but this would not be a long term operational plan – to compete on UK price. Whatever our best productivity – and it is good – we will never compete long-term on raw materials and energy compared to some other nations.

NONE OF THIS IS THE POINT

What matters is having UK Steel Making capacity at a level governed by strategic capability and need. Look at the scale of funding in (say) Trident – a large defense asset. Massively controversial as to whether it’s now the right defense asset, whether to modify how the funding is best used, but nevertheless massive government commitment to the need to fund a long term defense strategy.

Warships and tanks are one thing, but think also of bridges, railways and buildings. Should we think about whether we in the UK could build these in our future strategic interests? What if most economic steel suppliers were in countries that didn’t share our strategic interests. Is the cost of the steel in these assets really that significant? Hardly.

UK should have some capabilty to make steel – coking and smelting iron and refining steel – sufficient capacity for future strategic needs – greater capacity can be left to questions of economics. And these future strategic needs are not issues for temporary Labour vs Capital government ideologies.

In days of old the king planted forests of oak trees for future generations of warships and bridges. It’s about investment in future strategic assets. Not short-termism about current economic market operations.

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[Post Notes:

Still lots of inept misunderstanding of the real issues – even on last nights BBC Newsnight – and now today in reports from Downing Street (Twitter etc.) Jeez!

More considered and typically radical input from @PaulMasonNews.
“They don’t give a shit” about the real issues.

And this is what is generating so much anger – government rhetoric about “doing all it can” when it is patently obvious they were and still are working ideologically against what the EU has actually been trying to do.

Been out of circulation for a week or so since posting this. The story of the Indian businessman looking to buy the Tata Port Talbot operation has been prominent – and his “green” sustainable plans to use scrap steel rather than blast-furnace iron & steel-making has been promoted. Need to be careful this doesn’t miss the strategic steel-making point. Sure, any steel products business should maximise its possible use of recycled material – most already do, they’d be mad not to. When thinking of steel-making it’s easy to focus on the enormous blast-furnace(s) dominating the skylines, but of course these are the source of crude iron material which, along with available scrap, feed the actual steel-making in the basic oxygen and arc furnaces before con-casting the raw steel. The real significance of keeping the iron blast-furnace in the loop is the the fact the the feed to the steel process is already at molten metal temperatures in an “integrated steel-making” process. A switch to 100% scrap means all the heat has to be added in the steel-making furnace(s). The overall eco-energy-carbon-footprint is not obvious – recycling doesn’t magically make you green.

We don’t need massive steel-making capacity, just enough for future strategic security. In times of hardship we can always scrap the fence-railings to build hurricanes and tanks again, but lost strategic capability for short-term eco-nomics will be hard to recreate from scratch.]

As a humanist, I’m a member & supporter of the British Humanist Association. They do good work promoting humanist issues and political campaigning, particularly in two main directions – one where UK secular arrangements are flouted by religious organisations and two in highlighting where the UN declaration on Freedom of Expression (religious and non-religious) is abused anywhere in the world, and in supporting the IHEU in that enormous task.

One topic that the BHA keeps reacting to is the idea that we in the UK are a “Christian country” – and high-profile assertions of same by the likes of Blair and Cameron. Either way we don’t “do” god.

Compared to the tangible secular freedom issues above – not to mention the raging Islamic extremism / terrorism problems of the day – I have to say the Christian country debate pales into insignificance for me. It’s clearly non-PC to say we’re a Christian country, but … I mean, y’know?

In the UK we are almost entirely secular – the remaining “establishment” of the Anglican church being an embarrassment to the church as much as anyone else. Other abuses of secularism are already entirely outside the law. No one is suggesting otherwise when claiming we live in a Christian country. Nor is anyone suggesting a popular majority self-identifies as practicing Christians. What is being claimed is that we are “culturally” a Christian country.

That is our values and traditions are essentially Christian. Not exclusively, obviously, many values and traditions have co-evolved and cross-pollinated back-and-forth between secular and religious traditions over millennia, but in the history of the UK as a nation state, Christianity has played a big part in maintaining continuity of values (*). Many Christian values are of course shared with many traditions whatever their histories. There’s no religious dogma or supernatural theism in a statement like “We are a Christian country” – it’s just simple shorthand for complex historical facts.

Of course a lot of such debate would go away if we came to terms with the elephant in the room – it’s hard even to say “British values” without being accused of racism, nationalism or even fascism by those of a PC bent. Our values matter enough to need a name.

That’s a serious debate in itself, not unrelated to many other problems of the day, but – it’s complicated. It’s not really a “campaigning” issue to react against casual use of the expression “Christian country”.

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[Post Note

(*) Values – there’s the rub. Without any high-level constitution or documentation of values, we do of course rely on the body of legislation and case-law. But taking a legalistic view – a PC view, an objectively “scientistic” view – is not really a substitute for having actual values. “Rules (laws) are for the guidance of wise-men and the enslavement of fools.” Wise men, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, already understood back in 1978 that a culturally-Western legalistic view would lead to inter-cultural fractures. A man from the Gulags warning of the perverse consequence of uncensored free expression – because cultural popularity beats quality every time. As I put it, memes spread popular knowledge – not good knowledge. (That’s a new source for me, hat tip to @_coltseavers for retweeting link from @PoliticalShort. Will be reading & writing more on Solzhenitsyn no doubt. See also.)]

Facts, Causation & Speculation

Any “facts” not in the links provided are purely speculative on my part, but the connections are real enough. Anyone saying this happened because that happened should be confined to a lab, unless their whole audience recognises their rhetorical intent.

Three of these items are connected by the fourth – in causally complex ways –

• The Glasgow Imam / Mosque,
• The Glasgow Shopkeeper,
• Terrorists Nuclear Target.
• This US child’s decision tree for current US election candidates.

The Shopkeeper

Outrageous that this well liked local Glasgow (Muslim, Ahmadi actually) shopkeeper should be brutally murdered (by a so-called Muslim) for expressing (Christian) Easter best-wishes to his customers and the nation.

He didn’t live to regret his more overtly religious coda advising Islam on the benefits of Christianity. Could that be considered blasphemous or even apostasy perhaps?

The Imam

There was much discussion some weeks ago about various Muslim institutions overtly praising the convicted murderer of  the Pakistani politician opposing blasphemy laws. Both blasphemy and murder carrying a death sentence in those parts.

Well, more recently the Imam of the Glasgow Mosque apparently spoke in praise of that murderer too. Who knows how that may or may not be linked to the murderer of the shopkeeper?

The Terrorist

The terrorist “insurgency” in Europe continues to take many twists and turns – the latest being this apparent attempt to get access to a Belgian nuclear facility. Politically significant, and maybe even (politically & economically) disruptive to nuclear power generation, but highly unlikely any terrorist would get access to any significant radioactive materials or inflict any damage to safe containment of such a plant.

[Except of course if they’re working inside jobs over a long period. Interesting that main threat is seen as psycho-politico-economic rather than human safety. Unless they actually build a bomb of course.]

[And – post note – 70+ dead families and children as Christian’s celebrating Easter targetted by Taliban in Lahore – whilst just down the road in Islamabad a mob in support of the anti-blasphemy-killer. Taliban, wayward mosque or disaffected European youth #Letsbehonest the causation includes a common Islamist element.]

The Child

The thinking in this decision-tree is child-like for several reasons. Great joke, and seen as such, but also seen in many a social media response as “too true” and “accurate” – with veiled irony naturally. It may reflect – or parody – the simplistic political thinking of many, but it is of course dangerously wrong to suggest any close relationship to the real world.

View post on imgur.com

The binary choices – too simplistic to start with, irrecoverably so, right from the first broke / not-broke choice, and the implied whose fault is the cause of subsequent choices in the decision tree laughably simplistic. (Yes, even gender isn’t binary.) Every choice and every contributing factor to each choice is causally more complex than that. A mockery to think the world can be represented this way.

The punchline may be in Ted Cruz certainty of belief in an imminent second coming, but the joke is in the first line (and every subsequent line).

Next

But then it is the more child-like falling for the simplisticated Corbyn / Sanders idealised and utopian views of socialism.

The all or nothing (everything / nothing to do with Islam) take on Islamist Extremist terrorism and murder is the same simplistication problem.

[Or if you prefer – no more Islamic than the KKK are Christian? – #letsbehonest they share the same religious component – more explicitly so with Islamism.]

The police citing general but unspoken “religious motivations” in the murder of the Glasgow shopkeeper maybe need to be less PC about what the religious connections and motivations really are, without anyone being so crass as to point a finger at a single cause. God forbid. [Post Notes – here some progress on this and Douglas Murray in The Spectator.]

How little this Iraqi Terror story, with Muslim target victims in a faraway land, is being covered by the media wrapping themselves in the recent Belgian tragedy.

It’s politically correct – even outside politics – to be simplistic. Political correctness compounds all our problems. Dangerously so.

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[Post Notes:

How non-PC then – Democracy (popular voting, hopefully?) is Overrated. 1 of 3
Not great. Disagree with reasoning so far ..

Two side of same coin – what causes radicalisation, and how to handle “returnees” from radical tourism.
The answer in both cases? – you’ve guessed – it’s complicated.

Great piece by Maajid Nawaz in The Daily Beast.
Need to address denial of “fear of political incorrectness … to do with Islam”]

A theme of mine when people are banging on about humour as a “weapon” is that is does matter how it’s used. There’s no simple right to offend, sarcasm can be cheap, and the context matters. In days of old, the court had a jester so everyone knew it was the “fool” who spoke the ironic riddles – nonesense at face value, funny or foolish – but not the guv’nor. The need was recognised, not simply “tolerated”. And it needs to be used sparingly. Anyone attempting serious dialogue or enabling real change, whether formally in politics or not, is perfectly entitled to use ironic or foolish humour, but with so much transparency of communications through social media, it’s important such humour doesn’t deflect-from or crowd-out the serious work. Best left to the professionals. Frankie Boyle is my current favourite, but you will have your own preferred national treasure. (We Cannot All Be Court Jester – with Frankie links lower down).

“Taking a baseball bat” (*) to Boris Johnson, by Matthew Parris in The Times (behind paywall), shows exactly how overplaying the fool – by his critics as well as by Boris himself – simply hides real and serious political issues.

Well said, a must read.

[Hat tip to @Emma_C_Williams for the “baseball bat” tip off. Take note my US friends.]

Too much free choice is not necessarily a good thing. This kind of vote needs expert candidates before “popularity” becomes any kind of tool. Hammers & Nails?

[Post Note : And the following day The Spectator caught up with me 😉]

One in a long line on the idea of Vive la différence. So many beliefs on gender equality are simply political correctness – as Djokovic suggests – which have nothing to do with the intended equality of opportunity and human rights.

Sure, you could argue – morally – sport should not be a professional commercial business, but so long as it is, men will earn more than women. Different argument, and it demeans women not to celebrate their actual difference. Archetypically dfferent attributes mean different challenges – physical as well as mental – and that’s true even if the range of attributes overlap enormously – not many men would choose to face a serve from Serena. Politically correct however, to simply suggest women are (should be) no different to men.

At least Djokovic acknowledged the constraints of political correctness in explaining his own view, unlike the ignorant Raymond Moore. Ignorance doesn’t change the truth however.

Wonderful interview with outgoing director of Liberty Shami Chakrabarti by Joshua Rosenberg on today’s BBCR4 Law in Action. (Last item.)

Posting during a week’s business trip to China, with the “Great Firewall” constraints on social media and Google services – including no access to any of my email (!) or any TV media. A fascinating visit to Wuhan capital of Wuchang, the home of the original 1911 Chinese revolution and more, but I digress.

One of the web-pages cached on my phone was the one extracted below from HuffPo’s UK version Tech pages. Fusion Reactor ‘Breakthrough’ Could Finally Hold The Key To Giving Us Clean, Abundant Power (16 February 2016 by Thomas Tamblyn Technology Editor, The Huffington Post UK)

Apart from the usual media hype of the key or final piece in the science jigsaw – mediated by “could” in the title and “may” in the opening sentence …

Researchers may finally have overcome one of the biggest obstacles to making nuclear fusion live up to its dream of giving us clean, virtually limitless energy.

… the view of science as a completable jigsaw is misguided anyway, even as a mathematical model – ask Godel, but again I digress.

The “almost exact” will turn out to be significant, but for now, whilst this is a computer model, physics is at base fundamentally computational. And whilst the scale of computation here is impressive (more details – read the story) it is an established fact that repeated computation throws up unpredictable results (at higher “evolved” levels than the starting point) even if the computation is simply and repeatedly algorithmic. (See Hofstadter, see Dennett, distinctly and together.)

The distinct levels (gestalts) ARE distinct – have their own identity, properties and behaviours – and whilst related, connected, even dependent, the lower does NOT cause the higher in any reductively, predictable way. Knowing the lower tells you nothing (very little) about the higher. Small differences in either the starting point or in the algorithmic relationship will lead to entirely different outcomes, and neither can you predict how small is too small to ever circumvent the problem. (In the specific example of the two-level plasma turbulence, the turbulence is already metaphorical I suspect, compared to “normal” fluid flow, but turbulence is notoriously chaotic, unpredictable and empirically stochastic – which spookily IS related to why I’m in China.)

Science ain’t that scientific. Not all, not even all good science is that repeatable.

Entertaining review from Eugene Wolters at Critical Theory, of  Francois Dosse “Intersecting Lives” of the philosophical odd-couple  Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. (Hat tip to Judith Stout @judystout1)

Apart from the madness and chaotic activism from pre-1968 Paris, the lives intersect with the name-dropping list of all those you’d expect from Lacan, Foucault, Baudrillard, Derrida and more. Less expected, for me anyway, was to see the Spinoza references as a common thread of sanity despite the lunatics having taken over the asylum.

The buzz-cloud also gives a clue to the material covered by the Critical Theory blog. Entertaining and a useful resource.