these are interesting times we live in, and there are some signs that a new overriding enemy is bringing some sort of rapprochement between various countries. Even if this is all over by Christmas, which anyway seems implausible, it will be years before all of the implications of the 11^th of September are clear. It is a distinct possibly that the long term effects will be greater stability after the upheaval. Here are a couple of small but encouraging signs:

• India has effectively suspended its conflict with Pakistan over Kashmir.


• China has ended its censorship of a number of US news websites.


• Iran has voiced its support for the US-led coalition. It isn't willing to give any material support, but this is still a vast step from calling the US the "Great Satan"


• The meeting between Yassir Arafat and Shimon Peres looks like it might actually happen after all.

The Guardian tries to summarise the redrawing of the world order, but really nothing is clear yet.

Meanwhile, I have to say I hope that when this is all done and dusted the US learns its lesson about haphazard interventions in the world. This cartoon is not as far from the mark as I would like to believe....

posted @ 1:46 PM -

why we have a highly evolved instinct for revenge, and why it isn't always right to act on this

posted @ 11:38 PM -

the case against, and then for, civil liberties. It's supposed to be topical, but really it's a discussion that is relevant to any less-than-Utopian society.

posted @ 11:36 PM -

why anything we do is completely irrelevant in the greater scheme of things.

posted @ 11:34 PM -

Two interesting articles about religion:

• I hope that if there is a god, this is how he [she/it you know what I mean] would address the dangerous lunatics who use religion as an excuse for intolerance. As far as I can tell, the rantings of such people accusing gays, lesbians, anyone-who-disagrees-with-them of offending god amount to using the lord's name in vain....


• It is important to remember that the fact that religion is used to justify bad things does not mean that religion is necessarily a force for evil. Richard Dawkins, however, would argue that it is. For such an allegedly great scientist (actually he has published very little original research) he shows astounding failures of logic when discussing religion. His argument in brief:
  
  
  1. Religion can be used to convince people not to value their own lives
  
  
  2. [radical interpretations of] Religion can be used to convince people to kill
  
  
  3. A radical interpretation of a religion was the probable motivator of the attacks in America last week
  
  
  4. Therefore all religion, in any form, is inherently evil and must be stamped out
  
  Just in case the stupidity of this is not obvious enough, I will draw a parallel with an equally daft argument that I can imagine Creation Scientists (Dawkins' mirror image, in that they are the religious people who believe that the theory of evolution must be stamped out - no more representative of mainstream religious views on science than Dawkins is of most scientists' views on religion) using against the ideas that Dawkins has based his career on disseminating:
  
  
  1. Darwinism has been used to devalue life
  
  
  2. [Social] Darwinism has been used to justify eugenics and genocide
  
  
  3. Social Darwinism was a major part of Nazi self-justification
  
  
  4. Therefore Darwinist theory, in any form, is inherently evil and must be stamped out
  
  

posted @ 11:27 PM -

As the media gets news-hungry but just shows up how little actual news there has been to report in the last day or two (yes, Bush's speech was news but I read the text last night, and therefore I'm no longer interested in being shown little snippets) I've been going off exploring tangents that are related to current events but also to life in general. I remember after the Dunblane massacre there was some discussion, mainly outside the 'mainstream' press, of whether crisis counselling actually works. I don't remember reading anything at the time that actually based its rhetoric on research findings or seemed to have anything worthwhile to contribute. By contrast Slate has an article which does make some interesting points, particularly about where to offer help to people. The conventional wisdom would suggest that counsellors should address grieving families when they come to NYC, because in war time shell-shock is best treated at the front line. The difference is that if a family have come to NYC from elsewhere, the actual site of their trauma is back home where they would have been glued in horror to the TV and trying frantically to phone for information. Shows the risks of trying to transplant scientific findings from one context to another (err.... lab to field anyone?)

posted @ 12:34 PM -

well well well. Next week I become the University of Sussex Postgraduate Officer (officially I have been for a couple of months, but I get my training next week and there was nothing to do over the summer), and here is a striking illustration of the problems with postgraduate education in this country. It's hard to see what I can achieve in this area, but I will be trying....

posted @ 9:35 AM -

OK, time to bring this page away from matters of such great seriousness. Last night Brighton & Hove Albion won at home yet again (13^th in a row I think). This means that we are top of the League [division 2]. Nice.

posted @ 7:40 AM -

Someone's done a far better job than me of gathering links to a wide variety of opinions and reports relating the World Trade Center attack and its consequences. Although I said I'd stop linking to such things, this source is worth knowing about.

One day, probably not all that far in the future, school history lessons will be teaching about these events. I hope someone archives a load of sites about them - they will be a valuable resource once a new generation are around who don't remember it first hand.

posted @ 6:49 AM -

just realised there's a line in the previous post that needs explaining. "If we feed them they wion't want to eat us" is a reference to the article that got me writing in response. It's a short article and worth a read.

posted @ 6:30 AM -

I was going to leave politics and serious world events out of this for a while because it's all getting a bit heavy, but I do have something fairly long, and quite possibly wrong, that I want to say. I was writing to the editor of think peace with what was originally a half baked idea about lessons from 20^th century history. As I wrote I worked out the analogy a bit more, and while it is still sketchy, and my knowledge of history is not that great, it reached a point that I thought it might at least be worth publishing here. Please read this with the awareness that I am not an authoritative commentator, and I could really do with input from people who know more about recent European history:

---

....I just thought it might be worth considering a few precedents from WW1 & WW2 to see how peace can best be achieved, and how some bloodshed might be a necessary evil.

Clearly, just going on the offensive and then leaving people to be punished by the mess that is left behind is not only morally indefensible but also futile - witness the Versailles treaty, which just left Germans desperate and hungry, pretty much making WW2 inevitable.

Then, as Hitler started to invade countries, he was left to it for a while by European powers desperate to avoid war. Appeasement failed - Hitler just became stronger, but no less hungry. Eventually it became clear to the European powers that they had to crush Nazism or face annihilation. At no point was the aim to crush the German people (though I think a great many people saw it that way), but it was impossible to attack Nazism without attacking Germany directly and brutally, with huge civilian casualties. Incidentally the British had a very detailed plan for the assassination of Hitler which was shelved for various reasons, one of which was not wishing to create a martyr.

After WW2 came the Marshall Plan, which is where the "If we feed them they won't want to eat us" bit comes in. Rebuilding Germany to be a great power again has upset many people, but it has also bought the whole of Europe unprecedented security, in the shape of the longest period in recorded history when none of the EU states have been fighting each other militarily. Clearly feeding them has stopped them wanting to eat us, and within Germany there is a visible microcosm of this - in the wealthy towns & cities of the West racism is utterly intolerated, in a way I have seen nowhere else, but meanwhile in the East where there is still high unemployment neo-fascist groups do operate. It's also important to note that Germany has not simply been rebuilt with American money - it has also changed its constitution, changed its school system, restructured its economy, all to make sure that history does not repeat itself. If there is to be a Marshall Plan for the Middle East it needs to be conditional, following this example, rather than simply throwing money at a problem - just throwing money creates dependency which can not be sustained.

The point though is that if you are faced with an aggressor they do have to be faced down by force, even though many innocent people will suffer. Perhaps a thousand civilian casualties in a military campaign now will help prevent a thousand in another terrorist attack next year - to do nothing is as good as saying "other peoples' lives are worth more than our citizens'", which is just as bad as saying they are worth less.

After this comes the time for reconciliation and rebuilding, something we should have done a long time ago, and are paying the price for not doing, but can still put right.

posted @ 6:15 AM -

Amsterdam was great. The occasion being a stag party I didn't actually get to do any sightseeing, but it's a very easy city to have a good time in, and a beautiful place too. There's something utterly odd about the red-light district being so open and so full of tourists though - as well as removing all the bad things about such places it completely removes any allure it could have had. Still surely a good thing - an Amsterdam prostitute enjoys better working rights and legal protection than call centre workers round here....

I am starting to find it slightly unnerving that my friends are starting to marry off. In this particular case the groom is a few years older than me, and he was engaged when I first met him, but by the end of this year there will be 2 couples of my age give or take a year. Odd.

posted @ 6:08 AM -