This was a response to a comment on a blog about sexual harassment in the workplace. I tried to put the problem into a broader perspective.

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When I was an apprentice calling the office an orifice was the norm. No offence aside from the normal workshop/ office rivalry was intended - it was certainly not misogynist because the occupants of said office were mostly guys.

I think that to accuse someone of sexual harassment on the basis of a comment like this, providing that’s all that actually happened, is a vast over-reaction and verges on bullying.

Personally, I abhor sexual harassment. In fact, I abhor bullying of any kind. I am also well aware that women can bully just as much as men, though usually their methods are different. But bullying is endemic in human society, at every level. And it cuts across gender lines, class lines, socio-economic lines, culture lines. That is the problem we need to address.

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 This is in response to comments on a blog on the ‘WA Today’ website about young people voting. There were comments that the Greens refugee policy was more humane … but have the Greens really thought it through?

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The Greens can’t have it both ways - they can’t have a high migration policy and a small Australia. If we are to accept larger numbers of migrants, be they refugees or other migrants - and there is a good case to be made for increasing the number of refugees we accept - we need to get serious about building the necessary infrastructure. Which would meet with opposition from the Greens … More housing, more water (dams!), more electricity, roads, cars, railway lines, factories, offices, shops. Have the Greens really thought this stuff through? There will be a significant impact on the environment.

Don’t get me wrong … I think we should accommodate a greater number of refugees - not just boat people, but refugees - but we need to be aware of the impact it will have and prepare for it.

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 On Rob Oakeshott’s idea of a ‘unity’ government. Rob is one of the independents who hold the balance of power and who will have to make up his mind on which party to support to form a government in Australia, after the election result giving neither party a majority. He suggested that perhaps Kevin Rudd could serve as a foreign minister in a Tony Abbot led government, or Malcolm Turnbull serving in a senior capacity in a Gillard led government.

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The beauty of a way out idea like this is that it starts people thinking of other ideas … and maybe one will come up that really is good!

But ‘unity’ governments - read ‘one party rule’ - that is dangerous. Look at Zimbabwe, North Korea, … the list is long. One of the necessities of a democracy is an effective opposition. Without it, tyranny is inevitable.

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In response to the comment on Facebook, for which I have a lot of sympathy, ‘

 How about a message like “if you and your family are victims of corruption such that your life is in danger or you are at risk of horrible persecution then you will find welcome and comfort in Australia”?

I made the following observations in a Facebook posting:

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<Sigh> Slogans are good … but …

I think its axiomatic that in human affairs simple solutions are wrong. People are complex and so are their interactions with each other. We need to deal with the realities of life. There are some ‘at least’ things to consider in this debate:

• Refugees are human beings who have rights and responsibilities like all other human beings.
• All people are sinners, including refugees.
• People are genuinely suffering, both in detention centres and in refugee camps. Who should get priority, and on what basis?
• People smugglers generally don’t care about the people they smuggle.
• Governments have a duty to care for their own people as well as refugees. There is no point in destroying the very nation that can extend a helping hand.
• The way to care for people properly is to have good policies. Having no policies just leads to anarchy. Therefore ‘people before policy’ is meaningless.
• Queue jumping is a reality, and its not fair to those who wait their turn. Christians have a duty to care for all people in need, not just refugees who arrive in boats.
• If Australia is to give a home to large numbers of refugees it has to commit itself to a larger population. Kevin Rudd understood this, but it seems to have completely escaped the Greens, who want both a small Australia and a large refugee intake.
• A larger population means a commitment to building infrastructure. There is no point in Australia just becoming a super sized refugee camp.

There’s a lot more to be said, but that’s a start.

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The refugee problem isn’t easy, and it certainly isn’t simple.  As Christians, we want to respond with compassion, but we must also be discerning. It is not a small problem, for there are ever growing numbers of refugees in the world. There are governments who are quite prepared to let their own people moulder away in refugee camps rather than working out ways to bring them back into their own society. There are people smugglers whose greed sends people out to sea in unseaworthy death traps. Attempting to get to a country through people smugglers is only an option open to those who are - relatively - well off, because people smugglers don’t do it for nothing.

But refugees are human beings who are entitled to the same rights and responsibilities as the rest of us. We need to be actively addressing their needs, as the comment above indicates, and not just letting them rot in refugee camps. But we need to do that responsibly, with discernment. Shouting slogans at each other does not help. Having real debate does … it produces new ideas, new ways to deal with issues.

In response to a blog on ZDnet.com asking the question ‘What would persuade you to ditch Windows for Ubuntu 10.04?‘ I posted the following comment - see below. After all, unless you’re a geek, computers are for doing the things you need them to do, not mucking around trying to sort out the workings. Like a motor car, you want to be able to turn the key and drive away. Every time. Sure, you need to know enough to check the oil and water but you don’t want to be tuning it and adjusting it and … So the question is, is Ubuntu mature enough yet?

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I have used W7 on my son’s laptop, and its cute and does quite a few things well. Is U 10.04 in the same league? What about reading files that were created in Windows? And can files created in Ubuntu be read in Windows? I use Fireworks and Dreamweaver in Windows - are they hard to set up in Ubuntu/ WINE?

If I can be persuaded that Ubuntu 10.04 is hassle free - or at least less hassle than W7 - then I might well make the jump. After all the price is right! But I haven’t the time or inclination to sit about mucking around trying to get things to work.

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In response to a comment on an article written by Barney Zwartz in ‘The Age’ newspaper online, I made the following comment below. The article was a review of part of a book called New Threats to Freedom, with the longish subtitle From Banning Ice Cream Trucks in Brooklyn to Abandoning Democracy Around the World: Thirty Great Writers on Cultural Trends That Are Undermining Our Liberties.and was titled ‘The boot changes feet - but still crushes‘. He begins by saying:

The stultifying orthodoxy that binds the spirit, limits the imagination and demands conformity has moved from religion to atheism, …

Its an interesting article that reflects the trend of all people to try to impose their way of thinking on everyone. All of us do it, but the present trend is for Atheism to try to do so under the pretext of reason - going further that religious orthodoxies is demanding that all proof of anything be scientific proof. In other words trying to eliminate all other ways of looking at things without ever engaging them.

The post below deals with one aspect of the debate. It is pretty self explanatory.

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@hiero 8.41am. You say:

‘Barney, please point to even one atheist commentator who argues that murder (your example of a religious doctrine with social implications) should be decriminalised. It is a conclusion bereft of a premiss.’

Umm … try looking at abortion law ‘reform’. The push to legalise euthanasia. Abortion … murder of the helpless who cannot fight back. And is euthanasia any different? Generally, though not exclusively, pushed by atheistic commentators.

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I have written in the past about bullying and political correctness. I was reading a post on a ZDnet blog that made this comment:

‘We’re already so politically correct and so fearful of offending someone, especially some protected class, that honesty has gone out the window. Nothing gets solved because problems can’t be acknowledged‘.

He has put his finger on it! Because are not permitted to talk about things we cannot deal with them. Its like someone who’s never wrong. They never acknowledge a problem, so there is no problem to deal with, so its never dealt with. When we cannot, because of political correctness, because we are too fearful of offending someone, speak our minds about the problems that face us as society, those problems are left unaddressed. Like a festering sore they go untreated because we won’t admit they are there.

We only have to consider the climate change debate in Australia. If you start to question whether climate change is real you are immediately labelled a ‘climate change denier’ and lumped with other ‘weirdos’ who won’t accept what is ’scientifically proven’.  And because none of us wants to be known as a weirdo we just don’t say much about it. And so debate is stifled. and we as a society rush around spending billions of dollars on climate change ’solutions’ without really working through what the real problem is.

And so for so many areas of life. Not so long ago Australian author Geoffrey Blainey wrote a book,  All for Australia, about whether it was wise to continue the level of migrant intake from Asian countries without considering the effect that that would have on Australian society. He was calling for a national debate on the matter. He was immediately labelled a ‘racist’ and the debate was effectively shut down. Yet it was a debate that was important for us to have … as the experience of Britain has shown. Britain now has such a large proportion of its population from non European countries that many of its cities are now completely different demographically than they were fifty years ago. The city of Birmingham is a good example. This may or may not be a good thing, but it would have been wiser to debate it properly before it happened! And no-one was game to ask about the racism record of the countries the migrants were coming from.

And so it is now. You reckon that climate change might have more to do with solar activity than carbon emissions? You’re a ‘climate change denier’. No real debate on whether it might be solar activity, or whether it actually is carbon emissions. The debate is just shut down. The only thing that is allowed to be discussed is how to tax people so that we can ’solve’ the problem!

The latest one. People are too fat. Our society is growing obese. Everyone should be thin. But not everyone is a light build. Some are, but some are not. So do we label all big people obese and therefore irresponsible? Yes they are! Right now its politically incorrect to weigh more than the ‘approved’ weight. Approved by whom? One lady I know weighs 52 kg and couldn’t put on weight if she tried; another I know weighs much more than that. Both eat very healthy diets. Do we praise one and excoriate the other? Why can’t we just talk about the different issues faced by each so they can both live healthy and productive lives? By demonising bigger people we make it very hard to address the problem - which is how to live a healthy life, regardless of the size of a person.

Religious bullies of the past didn’t have patch on the politically correct bullies of today. They focussed on religion; these guys cover every aspect of life!

God, save us from bullies of every colour, in every generation. Amen.

I sent in the response, below, to an article posted on ZDnet.com, titled ‘Should America tolerate Wikileaks or destroy it like any other national security threat?‘ I find it interesting that this question is asked in this way. Can America really just destroy any national security threat? Does that include the nation of North Korea? Iran? China? … Really?

If you look at history, Rome was begun as a republic, and ended up with an emperor who thought he was a god. Why? The focus shifted from justice to law and order - read ’security’. If security becomes the main focus of any nation, look out! Then you will get totalitarian control just to maintain that chimera of security, of ‘law and order’. And eventually some strongman will emerge and declare himself an emperor of some sort, with more power to control your life than you really want to give. But then its too late …

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Whistle-blowers such as Wikileaks do us all a service so that we are alerted to the things that powerseekers want to hide. The internet is the forum that provides the forum for them to be effective. This is a good thing.

Actually, shutting down something like Wikileaks is not that easy a thing to do. The internet is very big and very decentralised. A website can be mirrored in a dozen - or a hundred - different places around the world. So shutting Wikileaks down might just be something that even the mighty USA cannot achieve.

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If America is to be the Land of the Free … does it have any choice? Freedom of the press is at the foundation of American democracy. To now go back and say, yes ,well, freedom of the press is OK only if it suits us makes it all a bit hollow.

Keeping people - and nations - honest means bringing their activities into the light. Let people see what’s happening and its hard to hide the bad stuff. It has always been one of the roles of the press to bring out the bad stuff that governments and corporations and others do so that we the people can get to them and bring them back into line.

So … is America free … can it tolerate a free press … or will it squash a free press just like all the other totalitarian nations around? And if it does, can it really complain about the Chinese censoring Google?

Willem
Australia

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 I sent this email to the editor of the spiked blog, because I reckon they’re not as free thinking as they think they are!

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G’day guys,

I just came across spiked for the first time today. According to your What is spiked? page, spiked  is:

… waging a culture war of words against misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice, luddism, illiberalism and irrationalism in all their ancient and modern forms.

I like that!

But when I started to read, at the top of the list, the articles on abortion I found that all of them - well, all the ones I read, anyway - were toeing the conventional line that women have the right to abortion. Not one writer had the courage or the insight to take a different line, one that concerned itself with the rights of the infant being destroyed. So what’s so free thinking about that? What’s so rational about that? In what way is presenting only one side of a debate unprejudiced? Its exactly the same line as being taken in all the mainline press. You have contributed nothing new at all.

I like the idea of alternative views getting an airing, and maybe on your other topics they do. But on this one, as far as I can see, spiked just toes the same old destructive line that the mainline press does and thereby fails the test of being truly free thinking.

Thanks

Willem Schultink

Geelong
Australia.

@martin 11.54 am - Pedigree is not what Jags are about. They are about innovation. Look at the Mark 7 - first production twin overhead cam engine; Mark 10 - all independent suspension; E-Type - totally revolutionary styling! XJ a trendsetter that was also to become the home of the first mass produced V12 … I could go on.

The styling of this Jag is innovative and forward looking. For too long Jag has been backward looking, resting on its past glories. Now they have made a forward looking, cutting edge style. The engineering too, is right up there and going into the future. This is a good development for Jaguar.

This is in response to comments on an article by Stephen Ottley, entitled ‘First Drive, the new Jaguar XJ‘, in ‘The Age’ on 16 July 2010.