As my last post was a bit on the heavy side (and I’ve been dying to post this since it was sent to me—thanks Doug!), I thought I would share this great video. It’s taken from Australian comedian John Safran’s TV series John Safran vs. God, and turns the tables on Mormons in hilarious style! I think he actually does a pretty good job of selling atheism—I particularly like the part where he talks about cognitive dissonance. Perhaps this is another reason atheists are very often happier than theists?

Never mind the fact that these actions were completely illegal under international law, and showed an astonishing lack of humanity toward everyone onboard MV Tampa (including its Norwegian crew). But John Howard, being the utterly ruthless and totally immoral and unprincipled politician that he was, didn’t care about international law or compassion. He only cared about winning elections, so he milked the incident for all it was worth. He hastily cobbled together the so-called “Pacific solution” for processing asylum seekers offshore, in this case on the tiny island nation of Nauru. It turned out to be a hugely expensive farce, as almost all these asylum seekers turned out to have a legitimate claim, and many were resettled in Australia (as well as New Zealand). But that didn’t come out until well after the election, and Howard didn’t care how much money he had to spend to win either. He ran TV and radio ads and had posters and billboards with his photo, proclaiming “we decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come”. And he used all other asylum seekers who tried to land here as political pawns as well. This lead to the infamous “children overboard” affair immediately before the election, when John Howard claimed that asylum seekers threw their children overboard, so he could say “these aren’t the kind of people I want entering Australia”. But not only was this claim totally untrue, an Australian Senate Select Committee found that he knew it was false before the election. He clearly just wanted to demonise asylum seekers so he could win the election.

Now, with Howard’s reign firmly over, I would have hoped we’d never see a return to those dark days of Australian politics ever again. Yet with the conservatives trailing massively in the polls, it seems they’re willing to try anything again, and sadly, with the recent explosion of a boat carrying asylum seekers in Australian waters, they are returning to this tried and true vote winner. It started with our only conservative Premier, Colin Barnett, claiming they brought about the explosion themselves by dousing their boat with fuel. So as to avoid another children overboard affair, the federal government responded by saying that they would not make any comment on the cause of the incident until a full police investigation had taken place. The Northern Territory’s Chief Minister, who is in charge of the police investigation of the incident, has told politicians not to interfere with police by commenting on it as well. Yet that hasn’t stopped the conservatives from trying to make as much political capital as they can out of it, by claiming there’s a police and government cover-up of the incident. They’ve said the government should reintroduce John Howard’s “temporary protection” visas, which did nothing except take away the legal rights of asylum seekers arriving here by boat. At the same time, they are outrageously trying to claim the moral high ground by saying this is to deter people smugglers, when all they are really doing is (once again) demonising asylum seekers. The only reason asylum seekers would burn their own boat is to stop it from being towed out of Australian waters, a practice which started with the Howard government! So it is in fact their policies which led to this tragedy.

It saddens me and sickens me that the conservative side of Australian politics is once again using destructive wedge politics in a cynical attempt to try and grab votes. I can only hope the electorate is enlightened enough to not be fooled by this en masse again. If they are, it will mean John Howard has left a permanent scar on Australian politics—and by extension, Australian society as a whole.

In other news, I am very disappointed that Australia is boycotting the anti-racism conference in Geneva this week. How on earth does this help anything? If they’re concerned Arab nations will use it as an opportunity to say Zionism is a form of racism, shouldn’t they (and the other countries that have boycotted it on these grounds) be there to stand against it? Perhaps they are concerned they won’t be able to make a convincing case that Zionism isn’t racism? This once again demonstrates the remarkable amount of political influence Jews have in the west, and how their actions undermine their own cause—it seems you can’t even talk about Zionism without being branded an anti-Semite.

Joe Biden on guns—horrifying for many Americans, but common sense for the rest of the civilised world

I see we had yet another gun massacre in the US on Friday, with 14 people killed in an immigration office in New York. This comes after the shooting rampage in Alabama last month, leaving 10 dead. And of course, there have been many, many more before that. Vice President Joe Biden says “we’ve got to figure a way to deal with this senseless, senseless violence”. Well I’m afraid there’s only one way, and I think Joe already knows what that is: gun control. What will it take for the US to have real gun control laws like the rest of the civilised world?

Americans don’t seem to realise that not having gun control is actually extremely unusual (perhaps even unique) for a modern civilised country. The people who support the right to bear arms in the US constitution always say that if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. On the face of it, that seems to make a lot of sense, except for the fact that in countries with stronger gun laws, there is actually far less gun related violence of all kinds. It seems that, in practice, outlawing guns makes them harder to obtain for everyone, including outlaws.

Most importantly though, this concept totally ignores the important fact that guns are not something that should just be readily available to anyone, including completely law abiding citizens. The people who committed these gun massacres were not people with a criminal record; they were just ordinary people who, for whatever reason, just snapped. Many ordinary people, if pushed far enough, can go crazy like this; the problem is that having guns readily available makes it too easy for them to act on it in the most destructive way possible. This is one example of where people really do need to be protected from themselves, otherwise they could take a lot of other innocent people down with them.

I’m sure many Americans reading this will be horrified at the prospect of not being able to “defend” themselves with their own gun, but really—the rest of the civilised world gets along just fine without this. Indeed, even in situations where criminals threaten people at gun point, there are actually far less gun related deaths and injuries in countries where normal people don’t have them, as criminals do not feel threatened by the prospect that they could be fired upon themselves. This means they will normally only use the gun as a threat, and will be very unlikely to actually fire it and hurt anyone.

I guess that supporters of the right to bear arms will now be thinking “well won’t that give criminals free reign?” Once again, as logical as this may seem on the face of it, the statistics just do not bear this out. The countries with stronger gun control laws have far lower rates of crime (gun related and otherwise) than the US. I believe this is because most crime is not actually committed by career criminals—once again, it is committed by ordinary people in anger or desperation. And once again, the ready availability of guns makes it far too easy for these people to commit the ultimate crime.

The idea that people have the constitutional right to defend themselves with their own weapons is an outdated, uncivilised, “wild west” form of vigilantism—it is an anachronism that has no place in the modern world. And the sooner Americans realise this—and amend their constitution to bring it into the 20th (let alone 21st) century—the better off they will be. Real gun control is simply a necessity.