Outrageous

Two things that aroused my ire this week: traders at Barclays and the Texas GOP.

The second ones I knew were crazy, it just wasn’t crystal clear HOW crazy. The first I knew were cheating, sociopathic criminal scum, but it wasn’t clear that they were also shameless and arrogant.

I want to launch them from a cannon.

Let’s start with the funny one. The Texas GOP released their 2012 platform document. It’s in PDF form, which is a little annoying, but as far as I know it’s not a joke. Here’s some highlights that suggest otherwise:

We strongly support the immediate repeal of the Endangered Species Act. We believe the Environmental Protection Agency should be abolished.

We affirm that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society and contributes to the breakdown of the family unit. Additionally, we oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction or belief in traditional values. … We urge immediate repeal of the Hate Crimes Law. Until the Hate Crimes Law is totally repealed, we urge the Legislature to immediately remove the education curriculum mandate and the sexual orientation category in said Law.

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

We unequivocally oppose the United States Senate’s ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

We support abolishing all federal agencies whose activities are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution; including the Departments of Education and Energy.

We support the immediate approval and construction of the Keystone XL and other pipelines that will reduce our reliance on imported oil and natural gas from unstable or unfriendly countries. We support immediate resumption of deep water drilling and production in the Gulf of Mexico. We support land drilling and production operations including hydraulic fracturing.

That’s not even including the stuff about religion, or returning to the gold standard, or abolishing income tax. Basically, they want children to be raised as mindless, subservient zombies, in a society where it’s OK to bash homos and rape the environment wholesale in the most damaging and profitable short-term way.

I repeat: they’re not joking.

Oh, and I missed one. The one about taking away voting rights for black people.

Then there was the Libor scandal. For those of you who haven’t heard about it, Google will take you to summaries of what happened. In my basic understanding, Libor is the London Interbank Offered Rate, basically an average of interest rates being offered by big banks in the City for certain periods of time (eg one month, three months). It informs the offered interest rate for many money-lending/trading organisations around the world. The banks in the City submit the interest rates they’re offering each day, and the figure is calculated from the average.

Barclays traders were revealed, via scandalously blunt and cavalier emails, to be requesting (and getting) the ‘submitters’ to just change their numbers, to drag the average up or down in their favour. Of course, Barclays are the ones who have been caught, but it’s probably global and industry-wide.

“Hi Guys, We got a big position in 3m libor for the next 3 days. Can we please keep the libor fixing at 5.39 for the next few days. It would really help. We do not want it to fix any higher than that. Tks a lot.” (September 13, 2006, Senior Trader in New York to Submitter)

The traders, in cahoots with the submitters, were blatantly manipulating what should have been a relatively straightforward and transparent number for their benefit. It’s immoral behaviour, showing a complete disregard for anything except swelling their own profit, with the law or other people being damned in the process. A corporate culture in which behaviour like this is not just acceptable, but celebrated and rewarded, is rotten to its core. It sickens me. I cannot wait for the finance sector to properly implode, and while I know many ordinary people will probably lose a lot in the process, having the finance industry dominating our political and economic system fills our society with a corrupt stench that even ‘record fines’ (amounting to a day or two’s profit) cannot mask.

I’m going to do some research into the banks on offer, and move my money to the one I suspect has the least to do with these things (perhaps the co-operative?). It’s a trivial amount of money, but I can’t stomach dealing with companies that employ monsters.

To convince a skeptic?

In honour of a morning’s decent work on my dissertation, I thought I’d dig up this old gem. It’s the list of demands I managed to squeeze out of a climate change skeptic who’d been arguing with me here a while back:

” I want to know what you’d need to see to admit AGW is actually occurring.”

How clearly do I need to put it. We have a hypothesis “Anthropogenic CO2 causes Global Warming”.
Fact: It is unproven.
What would make me support it?

Included would be:
Some facts that appear to support the hypothesis.
Absence of facts that disprove the hypothesis.
Absence of facts that do not support the hypothesis.
Absence of hypebolic statements from such people as Al Gore, the media and the IPCC which are frequently nonsense.
A lack of scientists who do not support the thesis.
A lack of silence on the costs (Social and Economic)of actually acheiving the CO2 reductions demanded by the IPCC.
The absence of apparent hidden agenda of a number of the key players in this scare.
The absence of the attitude of many “Alarmists” such as yourself in that they refuse to consider any facts which contradict their faith.
The absence of Cap and Trade proposals which are pointless except to take money from the masses.
The absence of the proposed diversion of funds through the above and other measures, away from the real needs of this planet.

This list is one of the most honest and revealing representations of a skeptic position I’ve encountered. A complete misunderstanding of how science works, but really, digging deep into personality and politics. Roger doesn’t like the kind of people who talk about global warming, and he doesn’t like some of the proposed solutions, and his answer is to deny it’s real.

Anyway, here’s a picture I took while walking home on Friday.

Nothing particularly compelling about this photo, I just like the uniformity of the building.

Climate skeptics: whoa. Just whoa.

Let’s start with some racism:

Bangladeshis suffer because they have failed to understand the basic things that make an economy work to better their lives.

General hate:

People like McKibben are pathetic. They think of themselves as martyrs to some glorious cause, yet are far too vain and cowardly to strap on a vest full of C4. Or to even to publicly set themselves on fire, as some did during the Vietnam era, to make their point. They are beneath contempt.

Lies and Nazi comparisons:

Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” and the subsequent blanket ban on DDT has so far resulted in the death of > 30 Million. I believe that Hitler and Stalin killed less people, on an individual basis at least.

Hyperbolic lies:

These people are pure enemies of human freedom.

Academic purging:

Ah, another example of the “intelligentsia” at work. We need to scrub our colleges and universities of these idiots out to save the world.

WTF statistics:

If we convert 50% of our food to bio-fuels, and then go to organic farming as well, something like 70% of the world’s population will need to be culled, in order to balance the food supply.

Hysteria:

Al Gore and the global warming alarmists such as left wing politicians, pseudo scientists, journalists, the Hollywood idiots, have been inflicting psychological terrorism upon a whole generation of children all over the world for the last 20 years.
These charlatans should be brought to justice as the perpetrators of the biggest scam in the history of this planet.

And yet still come comments are too graphic to be allowed by moderators:

[snip - too graphic]

That’s all from one comment thread at Watt’s Up With That. The thing that scares me the most is that none of these people were criticised or pulled up for being too extreme, or, well, wrong.

I’m studying the community at the site for my MSc dissertation, looking at how climate skeptics react to evidence that the globe is warming (like, uh, this). I want to understand what makes these people take the position they do, but I’m regularly seeing comments – like the C4 one – that make my eyes bleed and my head hurt. I will be happy when this study is finished.

So here’s a nice picture to cheer you up.

Fitzroy Falls in New South Wales, Australia. A stunning gorge and view.

Norway and the Right

What happened last week in Norway is horrific. The deeds, the immediate aftermath and the lasting impact on those affected are nothing but negative. There’s a murky cloud of commentary surrounding the terrorist attack, though, and finger-pointing is going on. Some of the most interesting is the link between the extreme conservatism in both the West and in Islamic countries:

Two main anti-Muslim talking points are now taken for granted in this country: First, all terrorists in the West are Muslims; second, we are in the midst of a global civilisational war. These are the dual planks upon which Uncle Sam squats in his Afghani outhouse.

Objective sources have done an excellent job of discrediting the first of the two claims that inform the 21st century American experience. The second point however – that we are engaged in a war of civilisations – is one that I agree with. But the combatants are not Islam and the West. Instead, the war is between the normal, sane people of the world and the right-wing zealots who see doom, destruction, hellfire and God’s Will at every turn.

Anders Behring Breivik, Mohammed Atta and Baruch Goldstein are all cut from the same rotten cloth. Anwar Al-Awlaki and Glenn Beck – the peddlers of the faith – all share the same core afflictions.

These men are insecure, violently inclined, and illiberal. The outside world scares them. They hate homosexuals and strong women. For them, difference is a source of insecurity. Their values are militarism, conformism, chauvinism and jingoism. Worst of all they seek to pressure us into compliance while they work frantically to destroy themselves – and the rest of us with them.

This article’s a hard-hitting one, but it raises a point I respect: that the response to the attack, from the Norwegian Prime Minister, was that the country would seek to expand its openness, not shrink from it. It seems natural to call for greater security and the like, but no society can protect itself sufficiently from such attacks. There is always a risk to living with other people, and if an unhinged terrorist with a strong dogma has the intelligence and time to plan an attack, it will cause destruction. But a society built from the gradually earned good-will of millions of people must not be fragmented and shattered by the actions of one or few, because that represents victory for the extremists.

Different? Yes. Bad? No.

We don’t have to look far in our own societies to find those who have bought into the bile. The ongoing vitriol and suspicion of ‘boat people’ arriving on Australian shores is one example, and one that contributed heavily to an election result. The Daily Mail in the UK practically froths at the mouth over immigrants. And the words ‘Islam’ and ‘terrorist’ are paired too frequently.

We shouldn’t be scared of other people. We need to fight those who say we must be. It’s not a fight that can be won with violence, and it will never be decisive, for group instincts run deep. We need to direct our suspicion and anger towards the ideas, organisations and individuals promoting segregation, generalisation, stereotyping and fear of ‘them’.

Today, here in Norway, many politicians and people state that “today we are all AUF” (the name of the youth party). And we are. Just as we all were Japanese when the earthquake struck, or as we all are Somalis when we read about famine. This feeling of community is a part of being human. And this communality, the shared experience of humanity, is essential to hold onto. In the face of inhumanity, we have to be more human. Because there is only this one world, brutal and beautiful, and we only have one fragile life to make our difference in the world we all share as home.

A rapturous playlist

What better to prepare us all for the coming rapture than some themed prog rock? I give you… Going Home by Dire Straits, Learning To Fly by Pink Floyd and World’s On Fire by the Butterfly Effect. Good luck!

The intro to this gives me chills…

Let me know if you’re still here after 6pm (your time – apparently the Rapture will be happening around the world in order of time zone). Oh, and – what’s on YOUR playlist?