Category: politics

Political thingamabobs

Northern Irish Identity

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Some of you may be familiar with the date. 11th July. Every year. That’s tonight, by the way.

A night where people go crazier than usual, where bonfires spring up and police are on patrol. And on this ‘special’ night, I wanted to share a post from my friend, Chris Geddis, on national identity in ‘Our Wee Country’…

Ok, this is Northern Ireland, or the North of Ireland or whatever your upbringing and current views tell you it’s called. Whatever. This is a disclaimer, this could get controversial and somewhat nasty in the debate that’s probably going to occur. This is your warning, so don’t get hurt and offended later if you can’t steel yourself beforehand.

Northern Ireland, a wonderful littleclusterfeck of a nation is seen mostly as usual in green and orange and fuck everyone who doesn’t quite fit into that.

Here’s my problem. Northern Ireland is currently a nation under the united title of Great Britain, something that also encompasses Scotland, Wales and England.I don’t view my nationality as either Irish or British, I view it as Northern Irish, you are allowed to disagree with me here in views to how you see your own nationality but don’t you dare talk down to me about how my nationality isn’t valid or doesn’t exist.Here’s some popular arguments. “You can’t get a Northern Irish passport, you can only get an Irish or GB one.” This is very true. So by that logic, Welsh, Scottish and English people aren’t allowed to call themselves Welsh, Scottish or English, because you can’t get Welsh, Scottish or English passports, only British ones.

Another favourite of mine is being told I’m being wishy-washy. I’m not. I’m sorry but it’s true. I feel I’m Northern Irish. I look to the South and don’t see myself associated with or represented by the Dáil or the Senate. They don’t affect my life. I look to Great Britain, and I can see that the laws passed there will affect me, but each member nation still manages to have its own sense of uniqueness and its own devolved powers.I look then at Stormont, in regards to most powers and issues this is where I feel I need to go and challenge to be represented. We also have our own culture and way of doing things. It’s not Irish culture, and I can’t seem to find anything British culture wise that I can feel I belong to or represents me. I find it here at home in Northern Ireland.So why then do republicans and loyalists, nationalists and unionists insist on calling me out and attempting to the best of their ability to try to make me feel like my opinion is invalid? Scottish people are part of Great Britain, they still have things that are Scottish and unique to Scotland, when they go away abroad places they say they are Scottish.Same with Wales and England. But in Northern Ireland?

Any attempt to assert or try to establish a Northern Ireland identity is often met with the most rampant and ignorant rejections, dismissals and hatred I’ve seen in a long time. Why is this?I can understand if you don’t agree, or feel you need to declare as Irish or British depending on your beliefs and I’ll respect that, but here’s the thing you ignorant bastards. Don’t you ever dare try to tell me that my nationality or belief is invalid, and I can’t call myself Northern Irish. We have our own history, our own culture and our own uniqueness separate from the Republic, and separate from the title British, just like England, Scotland and Wales do.So the next time you feel like you need to get on your high horse and tell me that I’m not supposed to, or my views on my nationality are invalid, I want you to think if you’d tell a Scottish person they can’t be Scottish, a Welsh person they can’t be Welsh or an english person they can’t be english, or an irish person they can’t be irish. Or finally, a British person they can’t be british.Thank you. And wise up.

Don’t do anything stupid on your 11th night, no matter what ‘side’ you’re from.

Thanks to Chris for allowing me to repost.

Peace, out.

Categories: current affairs musings politics

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Church of England on gay marriage – the consultation

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I’ve had all day to digest the latest reports, documented in many other reputable news sites (and some disreputable ones). I just wanted to go through and break down the Church of England’s argument all the way down, because it is such huge bullshit. For those not in the know, the UK government put out for public consultation the issue of full gay civil marriage, and this is the ‘official’ Church of England response to the consultation.

The response in full is much too long-winded and pointless for me to copypaste here, but if you want to, read the full document here.

Let’s make a start. First we have this:

Such a move [to introduce gay marriage] would alter the intrinsic nature of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, as enshrined in human institutions throughout history. Marriage benefits society in many ways, not only by promoting mutuality and fidelity, but also by acknowledging an underlying biological complementarity which, for many, includes the possibility of procreation.

Intrinsic? Intrinsic is a meaningless word in this context – marriage is not ‘intrinsic’ to humans as it is not itself a natural occurrence – it is a word which we use to describe a particular set of conditions, and a simple way to assign various legal and tax benefits on a blanket basis rather than a case-by-case one. So, let’s drop the emotive wording. Next I’ll be told flying in airplanes is intrinsic…
Marriage DOES benefit society, and so why should gay people not also get these benefits, as you say, for promoting fidelity (which is something that, admittedly, the LGB community gets a bad rap on). And please, don’t tell me I CANNOT procreate. I assure you, I am capable, but I choose not to (for obvious reasons), just like many heterosexual couples. This ‘biological complementarity’ I hear so much about these days is a fabrication – the only complementarity is that, to be crass, round peg fits in the round hole. Dress it how you like, and again, I am perfectly capable of that, regardless of you finding my variety of it distasteful.

We have supported various legal changes in recent years to remove unjustified discrimination and create greater legal rights for same sex couples

Bullshit. Are you kidding me? You opposed civil partnerships vehemently! What is that about bearing false witness?

To change the nature of marriage for everyone will be divisive and deliver no obvious legal gains given the rights already conferred by civil partnerships

When your neighbour gets married, does it devalue your marriage? When he’s onto his 6th marriage, is 75 and marrying a 24 year old, does it devalue your marriage? No.
Now, whilst they are correct in that it offers no obvious legal gains, it offers an important distinctive gain, whereby it stops intolerant straight couples from thinking they and their marriages are better than everyone elses. I mean, seriously, that is all this is about, protecting their ability to think they are better than the rest of us.

The Bible teaches us that marriage is a gift of God in creation and a means of his grace, a holy mystery in which man and woman become one flesh.

This is church talk for boning.

Marriage is given that husband and wife may comfort and help each other, living faithfully together in need and in plenty, in sorrow and in joy. It is given that with delight and tenderness they may know each other in love and through the joy of their bodily union may strengthen the union of their hearts and lives. It is given as the foundation of family life in which children may be born and nurtured in accordance
with God’s will, to his praise and glory.
In marriage husband and wife belong to one another and they begin a new life together in the community. It is a way of life that all should honour and it must not be undertaken carelessly, lightly or selfishly but reverently, responsibly and after serious thought.

What part of this cannot and does not apply to loving gay couples? What exactly do these churches think we gay people DO behind our doors??? They think we don’t properly FEEL the same way as other people? That we are aliens or something? Maybe they actually just think we are deluded, and when we say we feel love, they go “Oh pish posh, that isn’t love!” in the same way a parent does to a teenager in terrible US comedies.

Who the fuck elected these people to determine how great, how accurate, how REAL my love is?

It is well known that there is a continuing debate within the Church of England about its declared view of sexually active homosexual relationships. It is important to understand that our response to the question of same-sex marriage does not prejudge the outcome of that continuing theological and ethical debate.

In other words, this response to the consultation was put forth not only by a small gathering at the top, but without the full backing of the Church of England, simply because even THEY don’t know their position! As the comment article from the Guardian points out, many CoE members are very accepting and keen to have equality!

This understanding [of union between man and woman] is deeply rooted in our social culture.

Not any more. Society has changed. This point is therefore invalid instantly.

but is based on a conviction that the consequences of change will not be beneficial for society

I never hear quite how. Is this the same conviction that drove people to insist that black people were not good for society?

This distinctiveness and complementarity are seen most explicitly in the biological union of man and woman which potentially brings to the relationship the fruitfulness of procreation. And, even where, for reasons of age, biology or simply choice, a marriage does not have issue, the distinctiveness of male and female is part of what gives marriage its unique social meaning.

So, let me understand and be clear – marriage between a man and a woman is unique because it can directly produce children except in the cases where it does not, but oh well? You can’t start by saying something key to the argument, and half a sentence later dismiss it as not really being important! (PS: this term fruitful I find absolutely disgusting, like people are just trees to grow things for consumption)

Marriage has from the beginning of history been the way in which societies have worked out and handled issues of sexual difference. To remove from the definition of marriage this essential complementarity is to lose any social institution in which sexual difference is explicitly acknowledged.
To argue that this is of no social value is to assert that men and women are simply interchangeable individuals. It also undermines many of the arguments which support the deeper involvement of women in all social institutions on the grounds that a society cannot flourish without the specific and distinctive contributions of each gender.

Hoo boy… So, in one section, the church has decided that women are inequal, and purports to claim that they are trying to use marriage to make sure women still have a distinct place? How utterly sexist. Presumably they believe that the ‘sexual difference’ refers to a woman in the kitchen, except when she is spitting out babies for the church to indoctrinate.

The rest of the response is about trivial matters, such as current definitions of how marriages are consummated needing changed and it not being addressed. As I said, trivial.

 

I need say little else that hasn’t been said above. The Church of England is acting irrationally, not even at the will of their entire congregation as they freely admit. How exactly they can claim some sort of dominion over matters of morality, over matters of CIVIL marriage is audacious and mistakes their place in society. Don’t like that assessment? Get over it. Churches are not special, they are not better. Everyone can see that from all the greedy pageantry, the child abuse, the mistreatment of women and LGBT people. You lost your hallowed moral high ground long ago, and you have only yourselves to blame.

Cry somewhere else. Gay marriage WILL happen in the UK. It HAS happened elsewhere, and all these apocalyptic ideas have had not happened. Goodbye, sayonara, adios, hastalavista baby.

Peace, out!

– Matt

Categories: current affairs lgbt politics

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Stupidest Cardinal in the world?

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Hoo boy. I’ve reached a threshold of sorts about these religious nutbags.

Cardinal Keith Michael Patrick O’Brien. You. Are. Not. Worthy. Of. RESPECT. And I will give you NONE. Deciding to take himself to the Sunday Telegraph to bash at gay marriage, this idiot basically trolled the entire country.

I’m working off the PinkNews articles on this issue, and I’m going to discuss his spewings in the order presented in those articles.

Cardinal O’Brien writes: “On the surface, the question of same-sex marriage may seem to be an innocuous one. Civil partnerships have been in place for several years now, allowing same-sex couples to register their relationship and enjoy a variety of legal protections. When these arrangements were introduced, supporters were at pains to point out that they didn’t want marriage, accepting that marriage had only ever meant the legal union of a man and a woman. Those of us who were not in favour of civil partnership, believing that such relationships are harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of those involved, warned that in time marriage would be demanded too. We were accused of scaremongering then, yet exactly such demands are upon us now.”

If we’d asked for marriage then, would you have given it to us? So to be honest, if some gays WERE sneaky and did it the way you are trying to imply, good on them. It isn’t like you haven’t used any dirty tricks, or worse, to us LGBT people, no? But that aside, do you honestly think your “warning” that marriage would be demanded matters at all, that “scaremongering” matters? If equal marriage is the RIGHT thing to do, does any amount of scaremongering on either side make a difference? No, it does not. Your argument is invalid.

Moreover, to suggest that SOMEHOW civil partnerships are “harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of those involved” is a profound and unbelievable ARROGANCE that I cannot believe you can even make. You, a dried-up, old, celibate, single priest somehow are telling me that my relationship is somehow harmful, not only spiritually (which was a totally expected statement from a priest) but both physically and mentally. Really? How exactly is my relationship at any more risk of either than a ‘straight’ relationship? I don’t mean offence, but many abusive or manipulative relationships occur in both straight and gay marriage. Shouldn’t you be against ALL relationships? Or is it ok when the relationships create some troubled or untroubled little children for your church to systematically neglect and abuse, sexually? Or did you forget that scandal in favour of a ‘blame the gays’ approach?

Mr O’Brien claims: “Since all the legal rights of marriage are already available to homosexual couples, it is clear that this proposal is not about rights, but rather is an attempt to redefine marriage for the whole of society at the behest of a small minority of activists. Redefining marriage will have huge implications for what is taught in our schools, and for wider society. It will redefine society since the institution of marriage is one of the fundamental building blocks of society. The repercussions of enacting same-sex marriage into law will be immense. But can we simply redefine terms at a whim? Can a word whose meaning has been clearly understood in every society throughout history suddenly be changed to mean something else? In Article 16 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, marriage is defined as a relationship between men and women. But when our politicians suggest jettisoning the established understanding of marriage and subverting its meaning they aren’t derided.”

Damn right. I don’t care. YES. It IS about redefining marriage. So what? Is your marriage so on-the-rocks that the slight ripple that gay marriage being legal will create will doom yours? And about fucking time that EQUALITY be taught in schools. For far too long, schools escape the rules that the rest of us have to abide by, able to turn a blind eye to bullying on grounds of LGBT, and in Northern Ireland, the ability to avoid equality legislation altogether.

Redefine society? Yep. How horrible that society will change for the better. How detestable that society will become more equal. You see, it isn’t about the LEGAL rights. It’s about how it sounds. Straight people get MARRIED, gay people get PARTNERED. How degrading. We’re second-class, with nothing like the respect that is given to the relationship between a man and a woman. If you can’t see that, well the priesthood must not really care for IQ much, does it?

Words get redefined all the time, and just because something has been around a long time does not protect it from being wrong and incorrect. And while we’re on the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, please, quote the full Article, please:

  1. Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
  2. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
  3. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
It does NOT say man + woman. It says men and women, plural, and it praises the family, not a defined parental unit of man + woman. Nothing I hate more than someone intentionally misquoting.

Mr O’Brien writes: “Their attempt to redefine reality is given a polite hearing, their madness is indulged. Their proposal represents a grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right. There is no doubt that, as a society, we have become blasé about the importance of marriage as a stabilising influence and less inclined to prize it as a worthwhile institution. It has been damaged and undermined over the course of a generation, yet marriage has always existed in order to bring men and women together so that the children born of those unions will have a mother and a father.”

What an old-fashioned fool. Did you emerge from the 12th Century? Marriage is about producing children? What about whether people are suitable parents? What about infertile couples, should we nullify their marriages now?

“This brings us to the one perspective which seems to be completely lost or ignored: the point of view of the child. All children deserve to begin life with a mother and father; the evidence in favour of the stability and well-being which this provides is overwhelming and unequivocal. It cannot be provided by a same-sex couple, however well-intentioned they may be. Same-sex marriage would eliminate entirely in law the basic idea of a mother and a father for every child. It would create a society which deliberately chooses to deprive a child of either a mother or a father.”

No, all children deserve to begin with a family that loves them, whatever that family is. Don’t use lies and bullshit studies to try to say that only man + woman can raise well-adjusted children, that viewpoint has long-since been refuted. I mean, have you even used Google? ^_^

Mr O’Brien also appears to suggest that gay marriage may lead to three way marriages: “Other dangers exist. If marriage can be redefined so that it no longer means a man and a woman but two men or two women, why stop there? Why not allow three men or a woman and two men to constitute a marriage, if they pledge their fidelity to one another? If marriage is simply about adults who love each other, on what basis can three adults who love each other be prevented from marrying?”

Absolutely. If three people love each other and pledge their fidelity to each other, you honestly think that preventing them from marrying is going to stop them? I’m not advocating for polygamy, but it probably already happens. But for now, that’s for another day. Saying that somehow allowing gay marriage will instantly allow all sorts of other stuff is scaremongering. Fucking hell, look at the fight we’ve had for gay marriage – just imagine having another decades-long fight for polygamy!!!

He also claims that schools will become forced to stock “homosexual fairy stories” in their libraries.

This sounds fantastic. But seriously, what exactly is a ‘homosexual’ fairy story? I don’t know about you, but the biggest fairy story I know, the Bible, is all over the place. Personally, I prefer a story with a happy ending, thanks 😀

He also compares gay marriage to legalising slavery. “No Government has the moral authority to dismantle the universally understood meaning of marriage. Imagine for a moment that the Government had decided to legalise slavery but assured us that ‘no one will be forced to keep a slave.’ Would such worthless assurances calm our fury? Would they justify dismantling a fundamental human right? Or would they simply amount to weasel words masking a great wrong?”

Keeping a slave = demeaning a person to the extent that, unpaid, you have them serve your every whim. If you keep a slave, you are a terrible, terrible human being. How exactly is allowing gay people to marry in any way equal to ordering another person around, with no hope of freedom? I mean, what a lie. It’s total FUD.

 

It’s people like this that get me angry at religion. You wonder why there are so many people without faith, when you are so out of touch and nausea-inducing?  As my friend Adam said, it’s almost the perfect pro-gay strategy. I’m not sure we need to even say anything, as people like that just look like absolute fools to, I hope, the majority of logical-thinking people. Go back under your rock. Get out of my life, let me live equally and stop thrusting your religion, your sexuality, down my throat. Sound familiar?

Categories: current affairs featured lgbt politics

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The War for the Internet

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You must be living under a rock if you haven’t heard about ‘Cablegate’ – the continuing saga of USA, WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, Anonymous, TheJester, the list goes on. A quick summary of the situation follows, and some analysis and knock-on effects as I see them.

WikiLeaks is an anonymous whistle-blower organisation – ‘wiki’ being that anyone can contribute, similarly to Wikipedia. WikiLeaks stopped this ‘free edit’ policy a while back as it was too hard to manage, but set up a system for people to anonymously submit secrets. Now, we aren’t talking about how you’re the one stole your neighbour’s gnome here; we’re talking big things – governments, corporations, groups etc.
A while back, WikiLeaks released a multitude of material on the Iraq war, including video of US chopper pilots and soldiers shooting at a bunch of civilians, journalists and children. Ever since, the US has been on a slow burn – make no mistake, they hate WikiLeaks in the US Government. It’s very clear.
Cablegate has pushed the US to breaking – it is the simultaneous release of hundreds of ‘cables’ i.e. little notes or snippets from US ambassadors, representative and more. They are retained by the government and access is restricted but the cables are NOT classified. The contents range from little observances on foreign policitians, to records of orders from Hilary Clinton to collect intelligence, DNA, biometrics and more on foreign UN ambassadors. It also sheds light on the relationship between nations.

The US Government knew about the planned release and had worked hard to mitigate the damage but there will obviously be fallout, and perhaps a loss of trust between nations, spies, ambassadors and so on. And that’s when things get silly…
The Americans are taking things out firmly on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. I have a number of problems with that. Firstly, they are spouting a line of “This will cost lives” yet have admitted that the information has, thus far, neither been damaging nor has placed anyone at risk. They have also called to name WikiLeaks a ‘terrorist organisation’

WHAT? WikiLeaks a terrorist organisation? Or from Sarah Palin, who called that Assange be designated a terrorist and that US Special Forces move in and assassinate him? What is WRONG with the USA???

I know that every government, to a greater or lesser degree, involves themselves in this kind of stuff. But what they all have to realise is that information flow is greater now than it ever has been. When something occurs, everybody knows in seconds. And I’m sorry, but governments need to rethink themselves – this stuff WILL out, and in this age everybody WILL hear about it. So it’s time to STOP. If you don’t want to be damaged by a leak, stop doing crazy, morally ambiguous, evil, terrorising stuff.
“Oh, but the UK does it too, they all do” – Yeah, I bet. And it’s in YOUR name. Is ignorance bliss? You don’t care as long as nobody finds out? Bullshit. I don’t want this stuff done in my name.

Moving on to Assange. I don’t know the ins and outs of his accused crime, but all the coverage I’ve seen suggests that the allegations have some serious flaws, mostly in the two particular girls. They seem to have decided it was non-consensual AFTER they found out he was two-timing them. So, he’s a dick, but hardly rape. However, Sweden has odd sex laws such as “I was drunk therefore it was rape” kinds of allegations. I personally think these are damaging on the whole to the victims of rape.
I hope that the US did not put pressure on Sweden to continue to pursue allegations that had TWICE been rejected at appellate courts, but I’m willing to bet they did. At the same time, PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, SwissBank, Amazon, EveryDNS… they have all cut their ties with WikiLeaks for various reasons. This has severely hurt the funds of WikiLeaks. The only one to actively admit that it was pressed by the US was PayPal, who said that the “State dept. informed us that they were involved in illegal activities”.

So yeah, forget courts, burden of proof, justice. PayPal doesn’t care. I’m willing to bet the story is similar to the rest. What exactly has America got to hide?

Enter TheJester and Anonymous. TheJester is some absolute juvenile cunt who, prior to this, was presumably in the US army serving in the Middle East. He calls himself a “hacktivist fighting for good” when really he is a patriot. And you know, I use that word now without even thinking of the presumed “I love my country” bullshit. When I hear patriot I think of a stupid, blind, puppet of an American. The ones that blindly follow the whim of the government or their leaders for some delusion of national pride. TheJester also seems to be some sort of programmer, though I suspect his programming experience is average. He seems to have ‘adapted’ (plagiarised) a program called SlowLORIS to make XerXes, a DDOS (Distributed Denial Of Service) program that routes using Tor, the onion network, for anonymity. He has used his software in the past in order to DDOS ‘jihadist’ websites. A noble cause maybe.
Now he has turned on WikiLeaks. Yet, his failings became evident very quickly; mere hours after egotistically declaring “TANGO DOWN” on his twitter the WikiLeaks site was back. And this guy has himself an enemy.

Anonymous have waded in, in the name of Internet openness and freedom. And they have launched Operation:Payback, and it has been working fantastically! They have their target list of all those who betrayed WikiLeaks, and have been attacking as a group; today, MasterCard has been down.
Anonymous are a force and one you do not want against you – they have no head, only teeth. They are generally morally guided to causes, and while sometimes dicky, I think they are an important bunch. Those who do not care that their methods are illegal, they are vigilantes and rioters. But sometimes you need such people to effect great change.

So, in what could be the first Internet War, who are the players?
WikiLeaks and their ally Anonymous fight for a free internet and world.
USA government (and others), their foot-soldiers (TheJester) and their subservient corporations fight for their own ends.

This won’t be a war that you know when it ends. But it could fundamentally change the internet, and it some ways it already has shown me one thing. Companies control too much of the Internet for my liking. Amazon, Ebay, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, PayPal… the list goes on. And as long as these entities have no moral centre of their own and will do whatever the US tell them to, the Internet is at risk. They want WikiLeaks shut down because its not under their control, and that scares them. Bastards, that’s all I can say. USA always has the approach of policing the world, and always to its own ends. The line stops here; the Internet is NOT yours to police and there are those who will fight to keep it from you.

In summary; go WikiLeaks, go Anonymous, go fuck yourself USA. Hypocritical, paranoid monsters with some severe entitlement issues.

I know which side I’m on, have you chosen yours yet? The time may soon come where your voice needs heard, not just in disapproving comments in the pub, work, online comments, but instead on the streets – it is the only thing they will listen to.
It is time that governments started doing what their masters tell them; that’s you and me.

UPDATE: Anonymous has now taken down Visa

Categories: current affairs politics software security

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Will the Digital Economy Act ever be repealed?

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The Digital Economy Act… Passed by the Commons during ‘wash-up’… Democracy guys… democracy in action. Most MPs didn’t bother to turn up.

Do me, and online freedom a favour. Switch to TalkTalk:

One of the country’s largest broadband providers, TalkTalk, has said it would rather go to court than disconnect a customer’s account for alleged copyright infringement. It has also pledged to never surrender a customer’s details to copyright holders without a court order.

Andrew Heaney, executive director of strategy and regulation at TalkTalk, wrote on the company blog: “Many draconian proposals remain [in the Act], such as the presumption that they [customers] are guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent, and, as in China, the potential for legitimate search engines and websites to be blocked.

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Categories: current affairs politics

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