Posts Tagged ‘Politics’

One of my friends who has family and friends in Israel recently tried to show people the sizes of the places involved when we talk about the conflict in Gaza. I found his comparisons enlightening and thought I would repost his comparison supplemented by the following discussion/argument.

Comparison (Courtesy of Dan)

“i was wondering to myself, just how big exactly is Israel?!?!?!
and can i demonstrate its size in a way that cant be disputed and that everyone can check my workings….

So I fired up google earth and Went to an Altitude of 1200 Km
here we can see Israel…”

“so here we have a much closer screen grab of Israel (transposed over the top of England) see the tiny area that is the gaza strip….”

“the altitude of view is 425 Km”

“So now I have zoomed to an altitude of just 150 Km so you begin to get a feel of just how tiny this bit of land is….”

This zoomed in image of Israel and the Gaza strip is transposed over Manchesters relative google earth image.

I found the size of Israel compared to UK towns and places to be interesting as i always imagined it to be much larger, it also brought the death tolls into a better perspective for me.

Maybe the argument got a little heated and nothing revolutionary was actually said but at least we care enough to have opinions backed by knowledge. One of the main problems I find in discussing these topics with people is a general apathetic studied disinterest of anything that does not directly affect them.

I would be kidding myself to say this apathy is a recent malaise on society because in truth I think it has always existed. I am not free of apathy and care little for some things it might seem “right” to have an interest in such as animal cruelty and environmental issues. Perhaps humans are only capable of so much empathy before mental exhaustion ensues?

Both sides commit horrible acts:

Maybe the government’s plan of bailing out big banks is a financially sound thing to do. Everyone tells us that these were crucial steps that needed to be taken to save our economy. One still has to wonder however why more hasn’t been done in other areas like employment.

The people who have money and influence are so interested in keeping their house of financial “cards” standing that they forgot the basics, keeping everyone motoring around like busy little bee’s earning their keep. Redundancies in England are rife at the moment and what do redundancies equal? No sorry the answer isn’t prizes, redundancies equal mortgage defaults.

Aren’t we, the public, now rather large investors in banks? If defaults are going to damage our investments don’t we have a vested interest in making sure that doesn’t happen?

Why, in England at least, do we still suffer with terrible connection speeds? Some people would say that over the years the amount of bandwidth an average user can expect has rocketed and on paper this is true. I am currently on an unlimited 8mbps line with BT, this is BT’s most expensive package however I am willing to admit it is still reasonable at £25 per month.

So you’re thinking to yourself 8 mbps that’s quite fast, yes? Well maybe if I actually received 8mbps I would be quite happy however I actually receive 3.5 mbps even though I am literally a mile from my local exchange. For those of you who don’t know the reason we do not receive decent internet speeds is due to the terrible condition of the local wire system.

Privatisation

The telephone system is controlled by the government and as such controlled by us however some in-bred conservatives came up with the idea of privatisation and it’s been downhill for most of our public services ever since.

The government get a chunk of money for letting i.e. BT run the phone system this saves the government any up keep costs etc and also earning them a nice upfront cash bonus for doing nothing. When anything goes wrong with the privatised services they can just point the finger at the company. Nice job running the country boys…. back to my place for tea and biscuits!

I have yet, in England, to see a good example of a privatised service that doesn’t run said service into the ground. Rail, Water, telephone they are all run at a minimum of maintenance costs eventually leading to bad service and in the case of rail travel sometimes great tragedy. One of the main reasons for the said privatisation was because the companies were meant to make a better job of upgrading our services and making them modern. FAT CHANCE

What we end up with is the same telephone lines, rail lines and water pipes that our parents used… at least when they used them they were new!

Of course the companies running these services are not interested in up grading them, all they are really interested in is how fast they can milk the cash cow they just rented. Why invest in upgrading your service when you can spend that money on advertising?

They keep us on the edge of our seats:

www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/09/bt_fibre_trial/

Then they let us down:

http://technical-itch.co.uk/2006/11/21/bt-rules-out-fibre-optic-roll-out/

You have been saying you’re going to give us good service and fibre optics since 1990!

ARE YOU WAITING FOR SOME BREAKTHROUGH THAT’S GOING TO ALLOW 100MBPS ON 40 YEAR OLD TWISTED PAIR CABLE? STOP DREAMING!

WHERE IS MY EXCHANGE TO HOME FIBRE OPTICS YOU BAS*E*DS?

WHY HAVE YOU NOT EVEN STARTED?

Why is America a republic and not a democracy? A republic defends its minorities from its majorities where a democracy is basically majority rule. It’s hard for me to point to a better example than creationism in schools.

http://tinyurl.com/3fln38

The above link is to an article chronicling a debate between students and teachers in Carolina. Most of the people at this debate apparently decide it will be a good thing to teach creationism to their kids in school.

I believe that anything that isn’t solid fact shouldn’t be taught to our children in school. Perhaps in another area parents will want to teach their kids Scientology in school or Islam and these very same Creationists would breathe a sigh of relief at the laws that separate school from religion.

Creationists seem to have some major problem with Darwin and evolution they also tend to lump it together with Atheism as if they are one and the same philosophy.

“It’s really a disgrace for the state school board to impose evolution on our students without teaching creationism,” county school board member Jimmy Hobbs said at Tuesday’s meeting. “The law says we can’t have Bibles in schools, but we can have evolution, of the atheists.”

I’m afraid to say that evolution and Atheism are not the same thing and should not be bundled together. Arguably, most Atheists would believe in evolution, however it’s not the Atheists belief structure.

I think Creationist/Religious people naturally assume that everyone has some sort of belief structure and even for Atheists this might be considered to be generally true. I have seen debates where Atheists get into this argument of disputing evolution with Creationists however this is really falling into a trap. As an Atheist I only believe in things that are testable and true, if a Creationist somehow managed to prove evolution false I would congratulate him for improving my understanding of something. So what? Maybe evolution has a place close to my heart because it’s really the only rational explanation of our origins, but it wouldn’t make me change beliefs if it turned out not to be true.

Atheism is so linked with our education system that it’s impossible to extricate it because it follows the same rules. I think one of the fundamental mistakes that have been made is trying to get religious people to understand Atheist beliefs it terms of another religion. Religious people need belief to participate Atheists need proof. To teach something in church people need belief but to teach something in school we need proof.

We are not saying that the Atheist God is better! We don’t have one. If your beliefs go against something that is fundamentally and testably true…. I WILL NOT DEBATE THIS WITH YOU… to do so demeans us both.