Wayne Swan’s [remark last month](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-21/swan-attacks-republican-cranks-and-crazies/4273300) that the US Republican Party had been taken over by “cranks and crazies” is notable in two respects.
First, it is true.
Second, it marks a further move towards a globalised politics, in which political arguments routinely transcend national boundaries.
The truth of Swan’s claim is so obvious that few, even in Australia, have bothered to dispute it. The following are just a sample of the lunatic beliefs held by much of the Republican Party base, propounded on its news outlets such as Fox News, and put forward by leading Republican politicians:
* That President Obama is a [foreign-born Muslim](http://www.mediaite.com/online/new-poll-shows-conservative-republicans-increasingly-believe-obama-is-muslim/), a rabid [socialist](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/04/obama-socialist-claim-history_n_1568470.html) and more [sympathetic to jihadists](http://news.yahoo.com/michele-bachmanns-mccarthy-esque-hunt-islamist-infiltrators-guide-182000777.html) than to the United States.
* That scientific evidence on climate change is the product of a global conspiracy aimed at imposing a UN-dominated [world government](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,575565,00.html).
* That opinion polls showing Republican candidate Mitt Romney trailing President Obama [have been rigged](http://theweek.com/article/index/234067/the-polls-are-not-rigged–theyre-just-nuanced) in the hope of depressing the turnout of Republican voters.
While not all Republicans believe all of these things, few, if any, have been willing to repudiate these conspiracy theories and their advocates. Mitt Romney, for example, has [equivocated on climate change](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20127273-503544/mitt-romneys-shifting-views-on-climate-change/), [embraced “birthers”](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/30/us-usa-campaign-idUSBRE84S19O20120530) such as Donald Trump and, through his campaign organisation, promoted [opinion poll denialism](http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/09/can_the_polls_be_believed.html).
The view that the Republican Party has been captured by cranks and crazies is not confined to Democrats or even centrists. Leading conservatives such as [David Frum](http://nymag.com/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011-11/), speechwriter for George W. Bush and [Bruce Bartlett,](http://workingreporter.com/wordpress/?p=1053) domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan have said the same thing, in equally blunt terms.
Even the remaining conservative intellectuals who deny the “crazy” claim do so in a half-hearted fashion. New York Times columnist [Ross Douthat argues](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-responsible-republicans.html) that Romney’s success in claiming the Republican Presidential nomination, after half a dozen manifestly crazy candidates had held the lead at one time or another, proves that the Republican base is not entirely crazy. Others, such as [Stephen Bainbridge](http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2011/11/this-country-is-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket.html), engage in _tu quoque_, picking isolated instance of Democratic silliness to suggest that both sides are crazy. Both approaches have proved unconvincing.
Accurate as Swan’s remarks are, it would have been surprising, until relatively recently to see an Australian leader make such comments about US politics. The etiquette that “politics stops at the water’s edge” precluded both comments on domestic politics while travelling overseas, and on the domestic politics of other countries.
Such niceties have ceased to be relevant in a world of massive and instantaneous communication. For practical purposes, any comment, wherever it is made, is addressed to the world as a whole. More significantly, political debate has been globalised. In particular, the “cranks and crazies” who dominate the US Republican Party, along with the right wing of the Tory party in the UK, inform the thinking of much of the Australian right-wing commentariat.
The Republican conspiracy theory about opinion polls was only days old when it appeared on Australian right-wing blog sites. Writing in Quadrant, once the voice of high-toned intellectual conservatism, Steve Kates [called President Obama](http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2012/09/america-s-last-hurrah) “a socialist of the most radical leftist kind”. This is an absurd description of a centrist Democrat who wasted much of his first term seeking a “grand bargain” with the Republican party to reduce social welfare expenditures while modestly increasing taxes. And of course, climate conspiracy theories, recycling material derived from the US, are run of the mill material for the Australian right.
Some on the Australian right are more circumspect, in a manner that might be described as “cafeteria crazy”. That is, they accept a full-blown conspiracy theory regarding climate change, in which Obama, and most other world leaders, scientific organisations and so on, are embroiled in a plot to enslave the free peoples of the world. On the other hand, they indignantly reject birtherism, and get uncomfortable when the list of climate change plotters is extended to include the Rothschilds, the Royal Family and so on.
It’s fair to observe that the globalised Republican brand of craziness is not the only one in the market. Most obviously, there is the mirror-image brand of militant Islamism, circulating on websites and mailing lists out of the view of most Australians. At a much lower level, there are silly ideas propagated in some leftwing circles, from 9/11 “trutherism” to the wilder fringes of the environmental movement. But, unlike the case with the Republicans, neither of these brands of crazy has a significant presence in mainstream politics, either here or in the US.
A globalised world produces globalised politics. At one time, criticism from “overseas” (the very term recalls an long-vanished world of sea voyages), would have been largely counterproductive, producing a united reaction against outside interference.
But the US reaction to Swan’s remarks has been on predictably partisan lines. Democratic-leaning bloggers such as Paula Gordon on [The Huffington Post](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paula-gordon/feint-praise_b_1908595.html) have endorsed Swan. The fact that Australian politicians rarely make such remarks has been cited, not as a criticism of Swan, but as evidence that Republican extremism has gone beyond any normal bounds.
Conversely, right-wing US sites have attacked Swan in much the same terms as they do their domestic opponents. Exactly the same responses, with sides reversed, greeted Israeli PM Netanyahu’s attack on Obama, and, going back a few years, George Bush’s criticism of Mark Latham.
In practical terms, the re-election of the Obama Administration, which now seems highly likely, would constitute a substantial win for the Australian Labor Party. And a surprise victory for the Republicans would be a win for Tony Abbott and his Republican-style politics of culture war.
In a globalised world, there is no meaningful “water’s edge” and politics no longer respects national boundaries.
John Quiggin 
And don’t be too quick to call it for Obama, John. Despite virtually everything falling out of Romney’s mouth last night being at best a misrepresentation and at worst in direct opposition for his party platform over the past few months (examples of his policy last night were no tax cuts for millionaires, investing in green energy, investing in education which are DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE to the fringe-loony bumper-sticker economic policy the nutbars have been touting for the past couple of decades), me, being intellectually honest, can say Romney won because he carried himself better and wasn’t seriously challenged by Obama. Carry yourself like an arrogant bully, smirk a lot, recite a couple of zingers (“trickle down government”, whatever the hell that means) and you win regardless of the content.
Ronald Brak: the maths component of anti racist maths puts an emphasis on enthnomathematics; teaching the maths of other cultures. This sort of thing is of great interest to anthropologists and little use to anyone else. The important pieces of maths that are derived from other cultures (eg algebra) are already taught in schools.
But anti-racist mathts goes further and incorpotates a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with mathematics. The Newton, Mass. high school maths curriculum document says:
“Respect for Human Differences – students will live out the system wide core of ‘Respect for Human Differences’ by demonstrating anti-racist/anti-bias behaviors.” It continues, “Students will: Consistently analyze their experiences and the curriculum for bias and discrimination; Take effective anti-bias action when bias or discrimination is identified; Work with people of different backgrounds and tell how the experience affected them; Demonstrate how their membership in different groups has advantages and disadvantages that affect how they see the world and the way they are perceived by others…”
(note that mathematics can be used to analyse human differences; this is the science of psychometrics. However this is (a) way too advanced to teach in high school and (b) roundly loathed by the PC crowd like Stephen J Gould.)
Megan: just because anti-racist maths is an easy target for Fox News doesn’t mean that it is worthwhite! Yes it is true that much maths that we use was invented in India, China and Arabia (this can certainly be mentioned in class without the sort of rubbish documented above).
Freelander: spot on! The concepts of mathematics are more important than their origin!
@Tim Peterson
Stephen J Gould had a lot of good points beyond simply PC. Properly done measurement is important and those who believe in blank slates and no differences are simply nuts. However to do measurement properly is not easy, and very clever people can easily make errors in measurement and interpretation. Therefore,thoughtful and reasoned debate about potential sources of error and potentially mistaken interpretation of measurements is vital. Not all the discussion is reasoned, unfortunately, and to often driven by ideologies and that is a reference to those on the right and the left.
@Jim Rose
I do blame Obama Jim — but on different grounds. The claims about his leftist sympathies from the right notwithstanding, he was probably no more liberal than Clinton or even Carter. Instead of playing hardball from the get go with the Repugs, he welcomed them back into the family without even a sincere apology from them. Inept. He could have seized the high ground even before the election, but he squibbed it and wasted the crisis.
More generally though with the US currently in the worst drought in its recorded history and Romney all over the place and trying to work both sides of the street, you’d have thought there would have been at least one question. AIUI, about 72% think congress should act:
IAE, it does underline the pointv I was making — if 160,000 people don’t count for anything even when there’s nothing at stake — how can one vote — which aims at something more impressive than a question to a candidat at a public event — make a difference?
Thanks for that, Tim. But while once could certainly argue that time spent “demonstrating anti-racist/anti-bias behaviours” would take time away from actually learning maths, I don’t see how apart from that it would actually harm children’s ability to learn mathmatics, unlike creationism that says that biology is wrong, geology is wrong, physics is wrong, chemistry is wrong, and history is wrong.
The way the nonsence does take away from learning in maths is providing a set of excuses for non-performance. Humans, regardless of ethnicity, are prone to accumulate handy excuses, real and imagined. Excuses, valid or invalid, can retard performance. There is no doubt, for example, that the so-called “first Australian” have suffered immense discrimination in the past and continuing discrimination today. However, other than a variety of issues, domestic violence, fetal alcohol syndrome, and others,which the sad history has had more than a small part in creating, the fact of historical and continuing discrimination is hampering many from grasping the opportunities they have because that discrimination provides a ready made excuse for bad behavior and failure.
Few manage to overcome that type of burden. In the US, for example, Martin Luther King, and in South Africa, Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandala.
And that is why I think incorporating all that nonsense into a math curriculum is worse than unhelpful.
Ronald,
Actually, going back to my earlier research mentioned above, the idea is not some loopy-liberal-pinko-commie conspiracy at all. The idea is to better engage school children in learning mathematics.
The reason I found Murdoch and Thatcher’s links to this denigration of the ‘anti-racist mathematics’ strawman interesting was because of their (and ultra-conservatives in general) hatred for the idea of school teachers fostering critical analysis rather than simple rote-learning.
Ideologically, neocons don’t want a populace of thinking workers, they want an unthinking population of order-takers who neither have, nor wish to exercise, independent judgment but simply “do”.
Here is another excerpt from that paper (remembering that this is from an education academic):
” There is a practical limit to how much of a child’s own experiencecan be drawn on in learning mathematics. But cultural heritage is a different matter and, if used imaginatively, is an exciting way of learning mathematics. Children are given opportunities to see the development of mathematics as a pan-cultural endeavour. Modern mathematics evolved to its present form as a result of centuries of cross-fertilisation of ideas from different cultures.
The story of the spread of what is now the universal system of numeration is a fascinating one. Our number system grew out of the work on the Indian sub-continent about two thousand years ago, transmitted south as far as Indonesia, east as far as Cambodia, north as far as Mongolia and west as far as British Isles during the next twelve centuries (Joseph, 1991, pp. 239-241; pp. 311-316). Manipulations and representations of algebraic quantities, the distinction between rational and irrational numbers and the evolution of concepts of zero and infinity excited the imaginations of Greek, Indian, Mayan and Chinese mathematicians.”
“Critical Analysis” is almost by definition unknown to those who use a Murdoch outlet such as News Of The World, The Sun or Fox as their sources of information.
I am genuinely puzzled by the number of people who still accept something coming out of a Murdoch organ with anything other than suspicion. Confirmation bias probably goes some way to explaining it.
@Fran Barlow
Obama is a disappointment (to those who ever had faith in him). If he thought it would ensure him the Presidency, I’m sure he’d drop an A-bomb on London tomorrow. But then, I would expect as much from most of the presidential hopefuls.Teheran must be concerned that they may yet have a few untimely bumps in the night simply to provide a timely bump in the polls.
As it is, the timing of the Iranian currency crisis, precipitated by US actions, is fitting snuggly into the American electoral cycle.
Is the world of a great power full of timely and pleasant coincidences.
Or for the believers, God helps those who help themselves. And indeed, if there s is a God, a just rather than capricious God, then it is “God help those who help themselves”.
@Megan
Research by looney liberal Pinko …
Research Jim. But not as you know it!
Note. Neither Murdoch, nor Thatcher are neocons.
Politics may be going global but in NSW apparently 40% can’t name our State Premier. At a guess more could name the US President but I suspect most people remain broadly disengaged from politics and mostly don’t give a stuff. They’ll pay whatever they are made to and grab whatever is offered. They know what sounds nice and what sounds nasty and vote accordingly. But most will never put more than a moments thought into “the system” and how it ought to be.
http://www.news.com.au/national/barry-ofarrell-a-mystery-man-to-many-voters-dont-know-who-is-is/story-fndo4bst-1226476863477
Speaking of Rupert Murdoch:
“The Weekly Standard is an American neoconservative[2][3][4][5] opinion magazine[6] published 48 times per year.
Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a “redoubt of neoconservatism” and as “the neo-con bible”.[7][8] Since it was founded in 1995, the Weekly Standard has never been profitable, and has remained in business through subsidies from wealthy conservative benefactors such as former owner Rupert Murdoch.[9] Many of the magazine’s articles are written by members of conservative think tanks located in Washington, D.C.: the American Enterprise Institute, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the Hudson Institute.
Some individuals that have written for the magazine include Elliott Abrams, Peter Berkowitz, John R. Bolton, Ellen Bork, Ed Gillespie, Roger Kimball, Harvey Mansfield, Joe Queenan, Wesley J. Smith, David Brooks and John Yoo. The magazine’s website blog, titled the “Daily Standard”, is edited by John McCormack and Daniel Halper and produces daily articles and commentary.”
And the man who has oten been referred to as “Rupert’s Brain”, Irwin Steltzer, compiled ‘The Neo-Con Reader’ which proudly trumpeted Lady Margaret Thatcher’s contribution.
A synopsis:
Neoconservatism isn’t new. Neocon policies have deep roots in early American history, the ideas of welfare and crime reduction originating with Victorian reformers, while the theory of a preemptive military policy dates back to Theodore Roosevelt. Yet the term is widely misapplied, and neoconservative foreign and domestic policies are little understood. The Neocon Reader gathers the most prominent thinkers, columnists, and politicians to give a comprehensive overview of neoconservative ideology in a bold collection of classic and original essays written especially for this book.
Author Max Boot passionately refutes many of the charges made against neoconservatives, arguing that neocons “place their faith not in pieces of paper, but in power, specifically U.S. power.” William Kristol and Robert Kagan discuss how neocons do not rely exclusively on military muscle to defend American interests but also on a lively engagement of intellectual discussion. Lady Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s former prime minister, argues that America must deal with rogue states directly, through preemptive means. Also included are pieces from George Will, Condoleezza Rice, David Brooks, and many more.
Edited by Irwin Stelzer, The Neocon Reader provides a collection of the ideas that are exerting enormous influence on American foreign and defense policy, and serves as an important reminder of how a loose-knit band of intellectuals and politicians thought, wrote, and preached their way into the halls of power.
I bow to a wiki scholar, not. Neither are or were neocons. Suppose we’ll have to disagree.
Looks like you can add Jack Welch to your list.
http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/10/05/jack-welch-i-wasnt-kidding/
and perhaps not buy a Ford, not that many people would want to buy one anyway.
So to sum up, creationism is basically the opposite of education, while anti-racist mathematics is thought by some to spend too much time on the history of maths? Lies on one side versus an arguement over the best way to teach maths on the other? They don’t really seem equivalent. While I’m sure one could find people who say two minus two doesn’t equal zero because some cultures don’t have a concept of zero, I don’t think those people have any actual effect on the teaching of maths in schools while creationists do have a negative effect on education in India, Turkey, Pakistan, the USA and even Australia.
@Freelander
After his performance in that sideshow in Denver earlier this week, where he seemed unwilling to use the material he had to hand against Romney to put him off his stride, that claim looks hard to sustain. “538” has him with an 87.5% chance of winning a second term. Maybe that’s near enough to avoid extravagant gestures like arguing your case energetically, much less bombing London.
@Megan
I suspect that what kids learn in anti-racist maths is to mindlessly regurgitate PC ideology, NOT critical thinking. This is certainly what happens in a lot of university womens studies courses.
Ronald Brak/Freedlander,
Anti racist maths takes away from maths teaching because if kids who hate maths can pass by doing the non-math component of the course, they will do so instead of learning the maths.
@Fran Barlow
We will never know, simply because there is no guaranteed win from an A-bomb on London. As for the Iranians, that bombing them might look like to cynically calculated to win votes is what is saving their lives, that and the prospect that vote winning regime change might happen in October anyway, due to the currency collapsing regime change.
@Ronald Brak
Re-read what I said.
The history they are trying to teach them is bunk anyway, as evidenced by the “not as we know it” “research” being quoted by Megan.
To reiterate. There are two problems with this nonsense. First, time spent on bogus maths history during maths teaching time is time not spent learning maths. And second, the nonsense provides a ready made excuse for those who cannot be bothered putting in the effort to learn, what for some, is a difficult subject. The excuse “discrimination” or “I’m not be taught culturally appropriately”.
To this, Tim has added a third. That scoring on the PC nonsense components of the course will result in nonsense grades.
Arguably, the teaching of creation is worse. But only arguably. Having good skills in the basics of maths is far more important than knowing, we, chimps, gorillas, pond scum,and Tony Abbott share a common ancestory.
That people can be crazy enough to believe in creation is more than a little annoying, but does not seem to stop some of those crazies gaining advanced degrees in physics, chemistry, and maths. Not learning the basics in maths definitely would stop those achievements. Note, this is not my supporting creation it creationism. Simply being fair (and balanced). As for creationists, I’d ankle bracelet the lot of them and subject them to heavier taxation. For their own good of course. The mild persecution would help them earn golden bricks in heaven, and if their loving god didn’t approve he,she, or it (common contraction sh-t) could simply strike the bad people down. Ad everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
Is it possible for flat-earthers to believe in globalism?
Republicans appear to be at a disadvantage in this matter.
Is Freelander really some kind of programmed assertion generator, some kind of Turing like state machine? Is it possible for a human to produce so much unsubstantiated rubb.. ahem … output and be convinced that it is all absolutely, without doubt, correct?
The name of the “bogus” mathematics is “Connected Mathematics” and plenty of “research” has proven that it works. The students who get taught using this method have better results than those who don’t.
One (and there are plenty more on the Michigan State University website) is summarised:
“This independent efficacy research study, conducted by Dr. Rebecca Eddy of Claremont Graduate University’s Institute of Organizational and Program Evaluation Research, reported that CMP2 students demonstrated significantly greater gains in problem-solving, math communication, and math reasoning strategies than their peers using other math programs as evidenced by performance on the Balanced Assessment of Mathematics (BAM).
In addition, CMP2 students demonstrated significant improvement from pretest to posttest in the areas of concepts and problems, estimation, and computations as evidenced by performance on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS). The difference in achievement between Latino students and Caucasian students on the BAM assessment was significantly smaller than the difference between Caucasian and Latino students who used other math programs.”
So we come back again to the, baseless, criticism from ultra-conservatives feigning concern for “the children”. Is it that they don’t want anyone to understand the exponential function as it applies to the real world? Maybe they just can’t stand critical analysis.
@Freelander Depends on what you mean by “important”, Old Sport.
Many species can count:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-animals-have-the-ability-to-count
But only humans have the capability to construct a complex taxonomy that expresses the relationship between Tony Abbott and pond scum.
Recognition and manipulation of these abstract relationships is the sine qua non of human intelligence.
@Megan
Plenty of research has shown that God created the world in seven days. If you want to discuss this further maybe you could request a sandpit as its way off topic.
@Patrickb
I wonder myself.
I haven’t seen any research along those lines.
The title of the thread is self evident.
Someone popped up and threw about a term I had never come across – ‘anti-racist math’. I looked into it and found that it has an interesting history.
Apparently my rather benign observations have hit a nerve somewhere.
@Megan
I’ve seen plenty of creation research by people with great qualifications in hard science. Research, of course, but not as you know it. The type of research you get when you start with the conclusion and it is very important to provve that conclusion even when that conclusion is totally wrong.
That is the problem with research conducted by those with a strong religious or ideological stake. We need to keep this nonsense out of the classroom. As Tim suggests, this sort of teaching is the antithesis of teaching and promoting critical thinking. On blogs and elsewhere we see far to many graduates of this uncritical, appeal to authority (or some dubious link on the web) school of education.
To use the word “observations” indicates a disturbing lack of precision in your thinking.
“Is it possible for flat earthers to believe in globalism”? [Katz, @25 above].
I’ve got an idea how Freelander and Tom Peterson might answer this question, using their education in mathematcs, and, I suspect, they would require only 1 or 2 lines.
How would Megan answer this question, using ‘connected mathematics’ and ‘critical analysis’?
@Ernestine Gross
As it was rhetorical, I wouldn’t.
I took it to be a rather clever, and gently mocking, play on words.
@Megan
What is your answer to Katz’s question, using ‘connected mathematics’ and ‘critical analysis’?
The internet is a garbage heap indexed by search engines where everyone is able to readily conduct their (uncritical) “research”.
Research.
Yes, Jim. But not as we know it.
Fran Barlow raises what is the $64 question for me also. How is it that Blairite politicians are always so lethargic once in government? Their economics, legal and security advisers seem to have them comatose and inert, subject to policy initiatives completely alien to platforms proposed to a given electorate and what that electorate clearly voted in preference of.
Where DOES it start to go wrong, once they are in office?
Blair’s new Labour was old Thatcher. Blair was asperational. For him and so many others Labour just a ladder to reach a Tory Nirvana. Where God was also waiting for him.
Obama, integrity in the Blair mold.
EG and M, my little globalisation quip may cause to explode the heads of some high-performing asberger syndrome sufferers.
I don’t know whether it may endanger certain discussants on this thread.
How might one render a bit of maths history in a fair (and balanced and non-bunk) way:
“The modern way of representing numbers, adopted by the West, has its origins two thousand years ago in India. Before adoption by the West, that system of representation was developed further by the Arabs… Nevertheless, the type of decimal representation we now take for granted had been developed, quite independently, in China even earlier than in India.
Importantly, although this modern system of representation originated in India two thousand years ago, mathematics did not originate so recently, and did not originate in any single easily discernable place. For example, familiarity with numbers and many of their basic properties is quite ancient, in particular, the properties of addition, subtraction,multiplication and division have been know, apparently, for tens of thousands of years. And many other properties had been discovered before the common era. The Greeks, for example, had proven the existence of irrational numbers well before the common era. And other, more cumbersome systems, than the Hindu-Arabic system for representing numbers, have been around for many thousands, probably tens of those of years, and maybe even longer.”
Despite enclosure in quotation marks do not expect to find this elsewhere through search engine scholarship. I just wrote it. If I could be bothered, I could provide references for all assertions. But would it be worth that effort?
“those” should of course be thousands.
Katz, yes. Missed that one earlier…very, very good. I think they’d even be suspicious about your bona fides as to “supporting our troops”, after that. You might even get run out of town. They don’t LIKE “clever easterners” down south, your probable bruises would be the testament.
FFS, Freelander, not even we are as shallow as that.
@paul walter
The mistake is to start with the assumption that a politician, especially one feigning a heart and compassion, is other than a completely self-obsessed hypocrite who see lying as a handy means to a strongly desired end.
The Blairs and Obamas of the world are not saintly innocents corrupted by evil advisors. If anything, frequently it is the advisor that is corrupted by getting to close to a font of evil.
No, there is something definitely wrong with things at the moment.
Hey; got to listen Julian Assange’s mum, Christine at a FOWL forum in Adelaide today. Amazing lady; methodically and exponentially reemed an idiot blathering about Ecuador inside out at one stage without having to raise her voice.
@paul walter
Well done Christine!
What is being done to Assange is outrageous. What is possibly more outrageous is the lack of concern about him, and about the threat his treatment represents to each of us. If JA can be treated thus what can each of us expect if we fail to bow to the great American power, supplicate ourselves to their every whim?
There was outrage in the ’60s and early ’70s over many things nowhere as bad. Ellsberg was not crushed by the American government. The My Lai massacre caused universal outrage, and many Americans felt great shame over the event. Wikileaks released videos of similar by American troops taking place today, but no outrage, no shame, no widespread condemnation, those video documented events not even worthy of investigation.
What sort of anarchy, or divided and conquered degradation have we descended into?
The crime is no longer the many evil things; the real crime is to talk about or worse still to expose the commission of and existence of those many evils things.
Good that so many now avoid sin by keeping silent. To even talk about these things can be so costly, career-wise. In the West people sellout for such paltry sums.
Come on Freelander,
Assange is just a not so petty crook. To give support to him is to give support to all of the other hackers who steel peoples indentity information and raid people’s bank accounts. For all we know Assange heads up those rings, but just does not tell you about it.
Assange is not being chased for what you allege. In fact there aren’t even those allegations being made against him except by you.
Too many, like you, just sell him out and do so while talking nonsense.
Assange and Wikileaks provided a conduit for whistle-blowers to blow the whistle on activities various people including governments don’t want us to know. Most importantly those secrets so-called that the US thought so secret that three million had access to them. They were not categorized secret for any other reason than protect those responsible from public scrutiny for their actions and lack of actions. The purported justification for the information being secret has been shown to be a pack of lies.
As Ellsberg has indicated the situation is analogous to his release of the Pentagon Papers. The public has a right to know.
Assange may be no saint. He may have numerous flaws; he may have done these Wikileak things for various bad reasons. But that is irrelevant. What he did was good, and he should be rewarded, not punished for his actions.
We live in a world of twisted moral migits. People of such small moral stature and so wrapped up in the burden of their own many deformities that they cannot even work together for their own good. Even when clearly for their own good. Just like a bunch of rats crippled by the density of their living conditions.
We also live in a world ruled by incredible hypocrisy. Where the word migit is banned from Google’s spell checker because its use is not PC. And where various other quaint PC stuff flourishes. But where Google provides a platform for disseminating much dangerous filth, and provides the means for facilitating crime because that brings in dollars and they can claim their activities as promoting freedom of speech. The most recent Google activity, not excising migit from their spell checker, but disseminating a film attacking the Muslim religion, a film with the clear and now realised intent of inciting conflict and violence, nothing else.
And why is this done? All for money. In Google’s case advertising revenue. Inciting conflict more generally, usually in the interests of weapons manufacturers to sell weapons. Or simply to help someone steal something that isn’t rightfully theirs. And why secrets? Because if we knew we might stop their mischief!
Someone does something that is in our interests and we turn on him like a bunch of rats. Rather than attempt to assist him, in our own misery at our own pathetic lives and gross inadequacies we revel in his pain. What gross pathology?
As it has been for thousands of years, bread and circuses; this is how the overlords keep the lower and middle class scvm from organising and getting their rightful share. And they are scvm because they are kept down so easily.
Maybe the overlords are right to push your faces in the dirt?