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German Greens apologise for their paedophiles and abuse of over 1000 children

May 22, 2015

The German Greens have long been advocates of paedophilia as being one of the basic human rights. The Lib Dems in the UK also have a long history of condoning the abuse of children (Cyril Smith for example). Even The Times has picked up this expose of the German Greens but it is not being reported (yet) by other “environmentalist” media.

The Times: A paedophile network was active in the Berlin branch of the Green party until the mid-1990s, with potentially hundreds of victims, the party revealed yesterday after a lengthy investigation.

There was a “misunderstood tolerance” of paedophiles within the Green movement for many years, party leaders admitted, as they invited victims to come forward and share in a compensation fund. The figure of “up to 1,000” victims of paedophiles was suggested before yesterday’s report.

Pierre L. Gosselin has the story:

Berlin’s leftist daily Online Tagesspiegel here reports comprehensively on the German Green Party’s troubled past involving it’s earlier advocacy of pedophilia and practice by some of its former leading members, see background here, here, here and here.

Green Party Chairwoman Bettina Jarasch has just publicly apologized for what she calls an “institutional failure,” ….. 

….. The Greens’ advocacy of pedophilia rights was part of the party’s platform in the 1980s and early 1990s as it pushed neo-liberal ideas like “free and open relationships”. It still remains unclear as to why the Germany’s top environmental party took so long to issue an apology. 

…… The number of victims is not known. However one Green Party Berlin parliamentarian and author of the report, Thomas Birk, in March mentioned “up to 1000 victims”, though he said the figure was “speculative”. The report itself gives releases no figure.

Current Green party official Daniel Wesener said that there were at least two repeat offenders who were tolerated within the party, one was convicted in 13 cases.

Currently the child sex abuse within the Green party is now under investigation by a special commission. The Green Party leaders pledge their full cooperation and to provide compensation to victims who step forward.

According to the Tagesspiegel, the investigation shed light into an “abuse network” within the forerunner of the Green party, Alternativen Liste, which included at least three leading figures who set up a “youth center” in Kreuzberg recreational center.

….. Though some media outlets such as the Tagesspiegel reported on the story, much of the German media has been pretty mute on the topic.

I am afraid that the term “liberal” – which once stood for something fine – has been degraded and despoiled by the extremists to now come to mean “no limits, no ethics”. Liberalism is no longer about humanism but all about permissiveness. And if all is permitted and anything goes and any kind of ethical standards or limits are “evil”, then it follows that paedophiles and ISIS should be given free reign.

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Norway forcibly “kidnaps” half of all Roma children

May 18, 2015

There is something very peculiar going on in the State of Norway and it is the Child Welfare Agency which is arousing great suspicion. It may just be cultural ignorance or it may be a deep-seated racism or – and this is much more worrying – it may be a social experiment which has some political backing.

Norway has a very dark history in the treatment of its Roma population. Forced sterilisations of Roma women were taking place as late as 1977. Norway denied reentry to many of its Roma citizens if they left the country during WW2. Inevitably those denied reentry ended up in Nazi concentration camps. Many died. The Norwegian State’s Child Welfare Agency has a reputation for cultural ignorance and racism in their very frequent “kidnapping” or “confiscation” of children of parents they don’t understand. Now, it seems they are being accused by the European Commission of forcibly taking half of all Roma children in Norway away from their parents.

UPDATE! The report is available here.

“Serious concerns have been raised by civil society representatives about extremely frequent placements of Roma children in child welfare services, including foster care. It is estimated that over 60 Roma children are in foster care currently and that a further 60 children may be vulnerable to such interventions in the future; this represents about half of the total number of (non-immigrant) Roma children in Norway”.

Swedish Radio:

Around 120 Roma children in Norway have either been forcibly placed in foster care or are at risk of it, which is equivalent to half of those who are counted as Norwegian Roma children, according to the  Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe in a report to be published later today.

They Council of Europe gives no details on how it has arrived at this previously unknown total. However the report says that Norwegian NGOs are very concerned that the so-called Barnevernet is forcing taking so many Roma children away from their parents.

Most of the children end up in foster families and some in institutions. According to the Council of Europe sources many Roma women in Norway avoid giving birth to their children at hospitals for fear that the authorities will take away their newborn babies.

The Norwegian government said in a response to the Council of Europe that the country does not register people based on ethnicity and that the government therefore can not comment on this new information that such a large proportion of Roma children are being forcibly taken away.

The Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muiznieks, is said to be seriously concerned about the situation of the Roma in Norway. He claims that there has been an increase in violent and discriminatory statements in Norway against Roma. The Commissioner also points to the lack of education for Roma children. In 2012 data from Oslo shows that just over half of the city’s Roma children of school age were registered in a school class.

This is not the first time that Norway’s child services have been the subject of very disturbing reports. The Nordic Page reports:

The recent conflict over the Norwegian authorities putting two children of an Indian couple in foster care gets resolved with political intervention. But there are still questions that will not go away about the Norwegian Child Welfare Agency (Barnevernet).

One of the best illustrating examples of this problem is the latest barnevern crisis between India and Norway. Two kids of the NRI couple were taken under protective care last May by Barnevernet, which claimed emotional disconnect with the parents, and placed them in foster parental care as per the local Norwegian court’s directive. The family had accused the Norwegian authorities with cultural misunderstandings and prejudice as they were taken for being fed by hand and sleeping in the same bed as their parents in addition to insufficient toys to play in the house. After Indian Foreign Ministry intervened the investigation, the Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre helped children to be handed to children’s uncles.

But the stories of Russian children being forcibly taken by the Norwegian Child Welfare Agency are even more disturbing. There is a hint of some of the children being “trafficked” to paedophiles posing as foster parents and being abused.

Russian media have recently run a series of issues about how more and more Russian women living in Norway are deprived of their children. Especially two cases on Russian media were strong enough to mobilize the protestors. One of these news stories featured a Russian citizen, who lives in Norway, whose name is Maya Kasayeva. Her shocking statements took many newspapers’ front pages: “During the court hearings, the judge told me: ‘We give you residence permit, and you give us your son.’ I refused, and then the repressions started.”

Irina Bergseth Frolova, a Russian woman living in Norway, had found out that her ex-husband, a Norwegian citizen, as well as his friends and relatives, had been raping their four-year-old son. The reports also remind another foster father who was previously been found guilty for child pornography and child sexual abuse in Stavanger.

In fact, the practices of Barnevern do not only worry Russians and Indians. There is a deep rooted skepticism among local groups towards an increased use of home based measures. A report prepared by Gruppen til Familiens Selvstendige Rett (GFSR), Redd Våre Barn (RVB) and BarnasRett concludes that current practices in the Norwegian Child Protection system are not compatible with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Kidnapping children is often driven by a very lucrative adoption industry. And a small but significant part of the adoption industry is to satisfy the desires of paedophiles. But 50% of all Roma children being forcibly taken away suggests some political motive. It is not plausible – as the Norwegian government claims – that these numbers come as a surprise. It could well be that Norway is trying out a new policy to integrate Roma children — by taking them away from their Roma parents and brainwashing them to be something else.

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EU judges don’t have the discernment necessary to tell Sky from Skype

May 6, 2015

Any 5-year old today can tell you what Skype is. In a country where Sky operates the child will also tell you the channel number on cable.

But EU judges – by their own admission –  have not the discernment necessary to be able to tell the difference.  They seem terribly confused  but they try to blame the confusion on the “general public”. But I am afraid I find them (the EU judges) either blatantly partisan or unashamedly unintelligent.

BBC: Video chat software Skype’s name is so similar to the broadcaster Sky’s that the public is likely to be confused between the two, an EU court has ruled.

The judgement prevents Microsoft from registering a trademark for Skype’s name and bubble-design logo. The US company intends to appeal against the decision.

Judges at the General Court of the European Union said: “Conceptually, the figurative element conveys no concept, except perhaps that of a cloud.”

“[That] would further increase the likelihood of the element ‘Sky’ being recognised within the word element ‘Skype’, for clouds are to be found ‘in the sky’ and thus may readily be associated with the word ‘sky’.”

I don’t think that EU judges really lack the intelligence to tell the difference. But they do bend to what is considered to be politically correct in a bigoted EU world. And in that world, EU judges do not easily rule against an EU corporation if pitted against a US (or any non-European) corporation.

After all Skype is now owned by a US corporation

Skype was later acquired by Microsoft in May 2011 for $8.5 billion. Microsoft’s Skype division headquarters are in Luxembourg, but most of the development team and 44% of the overall employees of the division are still situated in Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia.

But Sky is European and the EU judges know what is politically correct.

Sky plc is a British-based pan-European satellite broadcasting, on-demand Internet streaming media, broadband and telephone services company headquartered in London, with operations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany,Austria and Italy. Sky is Europe’s biggest and leading media company and the largest pay-TV broadcaster in Europe, with over 20 million subscribers.

I am afraid that for the EU General Court and its judges, whatever is “politically correct” comes first and any pretense to fairness or being equitable comes a distant second.

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Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Europe, European Union, Politics | 2 Comments »

Ban Ki-moon and the UN lose it as they try to hide sexual exploitation of children by UN troops

May 1, 2015

I find Ban Ki-moon embarrassing as the Secretary General of the UN. More often than not, I find his pronouncements generally lacking any indication of personal moral fibre. He parrots the prepared statements of his aides and advisors and his own values are invisible. Certainly the UN, and this Secretary General in particular, have little moral authority left. I find him an even sorrier figure than Kurt Waldheim – and Waldheim with his tacit support of Idi Amin’s applause for the Munich massacre – still leaves a bitter taste. In a sense, what else can we expect? The UN is not an organisation for the dissemination of best practices. Just like in the EU, it is the worst behaviour of a member state which becomes the common standard. The best of the UN, like that of the EU, can only be as good as that of its worst member state. When all UN personnel enjoy immunity from any liability for incompetence, gross negligence and even criminal acts, it is hardly surprising that the “bad apples” get away with it. Not everybody who serves on UN missions is a “bad apple” but there is no shortage of such people. Personnel on UN missions – be they scientists or doctors or peace-keeping troops or administrators – have no incentive from the UN to act responsibly. Nobody will be held accountable for introducing cholera to Haiti just as Dutch troops will not have to face any liability for the massacres in Srebrenica (and a Dutch court refused to act against the Dutch general just a few days ago).

And in the case of the sexual exploitation of children by French soldiers (and soldiers from Chad) in the Central African Republic, there will be many fine speeches from the UN and from the French government, but nobody will be held responsible or brought to account. But in this case where the abuse was known in July 2014 and covered up by the UN, the UN is throwing the book at the whistle-blower. Anders Kompass leaked the internal report on sexual abuses by French troops to French prosecutors. But Ban Ki-moon is talking about the procedural crimes of the Swedish whistle-blower rather than why the UN has kept this hidden for so long. Even the French PM has made a fine speech about pursuing wrong-doers but he has done nothing about this case which the French first knew about 9 months ago.

Expressen:

The Swedish Foreign Ministry’s legal chief Anders Rönquist and Swedish Ambassador Olof Skoog have both defended the whistle-blower Anders Kompass. 
But now the UN Secretary General has come out criticizing the Swede who leaked the report on sexual abuse. “Our preliminary assessment is that the behavior is not the same as whistle-blowing”, says Ban Ki-moon’s spokesperson.
Anders Kompass is still employed at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland on the OHCHR, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. But he will be absent from his job till 31st July.

Presumably he has been suspended by the UN. His suspension is with the knowledge – if not at the instigation – of the UN  high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein.

The Guardian:

The United Nations is guilty of “reckless disregard for serious allegations of wrongdoing” in its treatment of a whistleblower who disclosed details of alleged child abuse by French peacekeepers in Africa, according to a former staff member.

James Wasserstrom, a veteran US diplomat who was sacked and arrested by UN police when he exposed suspicions of corruption by senior officials in Kosovo, said the case of Anders Kompass revealed how the organisation turned on the whistleblower rather than dealing with the wrongdoing he had revealed.

Kompass, director of field operations at the office of the high commissioner for human rights in Geneva, has been suspended for passing to prosecutors in Paris an unredacted internal UN report detailing allegations of the sexual exploitation of boys in the Central African Republic by French peacekeepers.

When the Guardian revealed details of the allegations this week, the French authorities admitted publicly for the first time that they had begun an investigation after receiving the report last July. It details accounts from children as young as eight and nine of serious sexual abuse at a centre for internally displaced people in the capital Bangui.

At the time, the French troops stationed there were part of their country’s peacekeeping mission run independently of the new UN operation Minusca. The UN had commissioned the report following claims on the grounds of sexual misconduct. It was completed in June last year but not passed on until Kompass leaked it directly to the French.

On Thursday, the French president, François Hollande, vowed to pursue the allegations vigorously. “If some soldiers have behaved badly, I will show no mercy,” he said. French judicial authorities said more than a dozen soldiers were under investigation. ………. In France, the claims against more than a dozen soldiers who were part of the peacekeeping mission in CAR continue to cause shockwaves.

The report contains interviews with six children who disclose sexual abuse predominantly at the hands of French peacekeepers. Some children indicated that several of their friends were also being sexually exploited.

The interviews were carried out by an official from the OHCHR justice section and a member of Unicef between May and June last year. The children, who are aged between eight/nine and 15, disclosed abuse dating back to December 2013.

But of course nobody will be held accountable.

And the behaviour of the UN and Ban Ki-moon is – once again – not very edifying.

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And so it begins! UK writes off its over 75s

April 27, 2015

National health services all over Europe are facing an increase of costs as longevity increases. It is only a matter of time before state health services encourage those considered “too old” to expedite their exit from life and save them from the costly obligations of providing care. The first stage is when some medical services are denied for those considered too old and these initial indicators are already visible. Expensive treatments will be the first to go. I have already posted about prostate cancer treatment being denied to those considered too old (over 70) in some parts of Sweden. Physicians already discourage elderly patients – perhaps unconsciously – from expensive or long treatment as a matter of routine.

And now I read that patients over 75 are going to be encouraged by the UK NHS to start planning their exits. Private health insurance premiums for the elderly are already on the rise. Perhaps the over 75s will be uninsurable soon. Ostensibly it is just to get them to sign a “non-resuscitation” declaration – but it is the start. Next they will be asked to choose their preferred method of assisted dying. The sad part is that this is no longer about providing care or about dying with some semblance of dignity. It is all about saving cost.

And if you ever read about an over 75 who was not resuscitated after suffering complications from an ingrowing toe-nail, you can at least be sure that a great deal of money was saved.

Daily Mail:

Doctors are being told to ask all patients over 75 if they will agree to a ‘do not resuscitate’ order. New NHS guidelines urge GPs to draw up end-of-life plans for over-75s, as well as younger patients suffering from cancer, dementia, heart disease or serious lung conditions.

They are also being told to ask whether the patient wants doctors to try to resuscitate them if their health suddenly deteriorates.

The NHS says the guidance will improve patients’ end-of-life care, but medical professionals say it is ‘blatantly wrong’ and will frighten the elderly into thinking they are being ‘written off’.

In some surgeries, nurses are cold-calling patients over 75 or with long-term conditions and asking them over the phone if they have ‘thought about resuscitation’. 

Non-resuscitation is the new euphemism for assisted death. And it is also only a little further along this road before the assisted death is not even a voluntary choice but is mandated for all who are past a certain age and have the misfortune to be hospitalised. A mandatory death age to follow a mandatory retirement age. Maybe those past the mandatory age of death will not be actively terminated in their own homes but woe betide them if they are ever hospitalised.

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Should Jihadi John have been killed at birth?

March 4, 2015

I was listening to a discussion this morning about who was to blame that Jihadi John (Mohammed Emwazi ) is what he is. The consensus seemed to be that it was not his parents, it was not the UK, it was not “the system”, it was not his schooling, it was not his childhood friends and it was not his University. Some blame clearly attached to the radical preachers he had been exposed to, but the primary blame and culpability lay with Jihadi John himself. In effect with his genes. His nature not his nurture.

(Of course I ignore all his companions and partners in cruelty and barbarity who think he is some kind of a hero destined for paradise).

And that brought to mind this story from last week about the quality control of Danish pigs:

TheLocal.se: Swedish supermarket giant Ica has promised action after it emerged that hundreds of thousands of underweight piglets are killed every year in Denmark by banging their heads against the floor.

Hans Aarestrup, head of the Danish organization for swine producers, Danske Svineproducenter, told Swedish Radio’s news programme Ekot on Monday that about half a million piglets are killed every year for “humane” reasons.

“Instead of waiting for the weakest pigs to die, we kill them. The most humane way is to grab them by their hind legs and hitting them on the floor,” he said.

In the latest edition of Danske Svineproducenter’s magazine, they estimate that a farm with one thousand sows could save half a million Danish kroner a year if they put down all newborn pigs weighing less than a kilo, under the headline “Could it be a win-win situation to kill pigs at birth?”. …

We exercise quality control over all our manufactured goods. We exercise quality control over all domesticated pets and livestock. Even the Swedish indignation about the manner of the killing of the Danish piglets is about the method – not about the quality control. We cull wolves and deer and reindeer and even “threatened species” (lions, tigers, giraffes) in an effort to maintain “healthy genes”.  We even exercise some quality control over humans before birth when we abort severely disabled foetuses.

Suppose now that gene testing at birth (or before) could have revealed the monster that Jihadi John was going to become. The underlying assumption is that his genes alone – and not his nurture – were to blame. Suppose that gene testing had revealed that he was like an underweight Danish piglet. That there was “high” probability that his gene mix would lead him to be a monster. Should quality control have kicked in? Should he then have been “eliminated” at birth?

And who else would then fail to pass the quality control gate at birth and end up in the “reject” pile? There is a case for a new eugenics.

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Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Genetics | 1 Comment »

Pachauri feels the heat

February 27, 2015

The Pachauri train wreck continues – a harbinger of what is to come with the global warming orthodoxy. It is now becoming clear that “much of the supposed “global warming” is due to the use of “adjusted” temperatures to cool the past!” He has been asked to resign from the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change, barred from entering his own offices and directed not to leave the country.

The sooner the IPCC is disbanded the better.

TOI: TERI chief R K Pachauri, accused in a sexual harassment case, is learnt to have been asked by the Centre to resign from the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change.
Sources said if Pachauri doesn’t leave the council on his own, the PMO would have to replace him by reconstituting the body.
Pachauri, who stepped down from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the wake of allegations of sexual harassment levelled by a junior woman colleague, has taken leave from the Delhi-based renewable energy and sustainable development thinktank TERI.
He was on Thursday barred from entering his office premises by a Delhi court which granted him interim protection from arrest till March 27. He was also restrained from contacting TERI’s staff, witnesses in the case and the complainant and directed not to leave the country without prior permission of the court.
Pachauri’s anticipatory bail application will be taken up on March 27.

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Swedish appeals court supports municipality in the degradation of the aged

February 26, 2015

“It is not the pain of death that frightens as much as the degradations of growing old”.

As we live longer, it seems, we also have a longer period of being useless in the eyes of surrounding society. People with diminished capabilities are provided Home Care help in Sweden. This applies also to the elderly until – say with dementia or Alzheimers – they have to be placed (hidden away) in “care” homes where their capabilities gradually deteriorate. The treatment meted out to them also deteriorates and, as we see in so many cases, the lack of care becomes institutionalised. In some cases the lack of care becomes intentional mistreatment. As the elderly become useless to society, society shows them that they are useless.

In Sweden the increase in longevity and the expenditure incurred by the welfare state leads to the care of the elderly becoming primarily a cost issue. The level of care is no longer about quality, let alone excellence, but instead of the minimum to be “acceptably” provided. Though the elderly are an increasing number of the population, politically they are grossly underrepresented in parliament. Age discrimination may be illegal but it is endemic. Privatised care givers and homes have the municipalities as their clients and paymasters. The municipalities just want to do the minimum necessary to stay within their budgets and comply with their legal obligations. So in both privatised and municipal run homes, there is an incentive to reduce costs – and the quality of care – to a minimum. And the municipalities are now using the Courts – where the elderly are hardly represented – to establish the minima they can get away with. The quality of life of the elderly is not really of concern to the municipalities. Their only concern is a minimum compliance with the law.

This is a case reported in Hallands Posten, and it shows the insidious way in which a municipality uses the courts to establish a minimum level of care – in this case how often a person needs to shower during the provision of Home Care. But what has also been established by this unfortunate judgement is that the Social Services Act does not include the “well-being” of the elderly  as being part of a “reasonable standard of living”. Clearly no care giver or care home need now help any of their charges to shower more than 3 times a week!

I wonder how many of the judges on the Appeal bench or how many members of the Home Care Board consider 3 showers a week reasonable for themselves. But of course, they are not elderly.

Hallands Posten:

An 82-year-old man who has fought to be able to shower every day lost his fight against the municipality. The Appeal Court accepted the view of the Home Care Board that three showers a week is enough.

The man has dementia and does not always manage to get to the toilet in time. He also suffers from oily skin and greasy hair and wants to feel clean and fresh every day. But the Home Care Board found that three showers a week was enough. The man appealed to the Administrative Court – which found in his favour.  The Court ruled that the 82-year-old had a quite extensive need for help and to have a shower every day was a reasonable requirement.

But the Home Care Board refused to accept that judgement and argued that it was based on a judgement of well-being. They claimed that the  Social Services Act says nothing about a daily shower to be included in a “reasonable standard of living”.

I would go so far as to say that the Courts are part of the institutionalised discrimination against, and for the degradation of, the elderly. However, they only interpret laws made by parliaments where the elderly are under-represented. But I have a measure of contempt for the Halmstad municipality which has not the courage to take a call on what is right, and instead has used the Courts to come to a minimum liability. And the well-being of their elderly citizens is clearly not of any importance.

 

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A genetic component to extremism and cruelty?

December 17, 2014

One hundred and thirty two children were massacred by seven Taliban heroes in Peshawar yesterday. Three of the seven were suicide bombers seeking paradise who blew themselves up in an auditorium filled with 9th and 10th grade children. It was a public but an army-run school. The Taliban see anything connected with the Pakistan army as a legitimate target – even children. They have targeted and attacked the families of soldiers before. The day before the valiant heroes of ISIS beheaded another 13 people. Last week we heard about the brutal and degrading methods employed by the CIA. Every other day Al Shabab and Boko Haram kidnap, mutilate and kill innocents – often children. One despairs that humanity has not evolved away from this behaviour. Extremism and unfathomable cruelty is dominated by, but is not the exclusive domain of, religious fanatics. We find fanatics about other causes too. There are fanatics prepared to go to extreme lengths for many nationalistic – hence political – causes. Chechnya, the Uighurs, Kurds, the IRA, in Myanmar and of course in the Middle East and Africa. White power, Black power, animal rights, rain forests, abortion and environmental causes all attract some people capable of exhibiting extreme and cruel behaviour.

I wonder how humans could behave in this “bestial” manner and still be considered human? Is it the “cause” which elicits the behaviour or is it the deviant human who seeks the “cause”? Not every religious fanatic applies to become an ISIS executioner. Not every CIA employee is capable of being a torturer. Some, if not most, people, I think, are not capable of this cruel and “bestial” behaviour.

It suggests to me that there is a genetic component involved here. That does not mean that our genes determine our actual, day-to-day behaviour. But I am sure that it is our genes which determine the unique envelope of behaviours that is possible for each one of us. We may not exhibit all the behaviours within the envelope but all our actual behaviour will be contained within the envelope. I am inclined to believe that there is therefore a combination of genes which brings this kind of extreme and cruel behaviour within an individual’s envelope of possible behaviours, and then into play. Only some humans will have this within their envelope of possible behaviours and only some of them will then actually exhibit the behaviour. Possibly it is nurture and upbringing and exposure which determines if the potential behaviour becomes actual.

There is evidence that being “nice” does have a genetic component. There is little doubt that our social behaviour does have genetic components. Some genes do seem to effect something called the Empathy Quotient and there are clear linkages between empathy and the propensity to cruelty. Matt Ridley speculated in the WSJ about Osama bin Laden’s genes:

…. But, Prof. Baron-Cohen went on, it would at least be interesting to take a look at bin Laden’s MAOA gene (linked to aggression), his AVPR1A and CNR1 genes (linked to emotional expression) and his CYP11B1, NTRK1, and GABRB3 genes, which show some association with how individuals score on a scale called the “Empathy Quotient.” He discovered these linkages in the course of testing his hypothesis that cruelty is generally enabled by a failure of empathy. 

In most cruel people, Prof. Baron-Cohen argues, the “empathy circuit,” which runs through 10 different regions of the brain, goes down either temporarily or permanently, leaving the person with “zero empathy.” The reasons may be partly innate, partly a function of early experiences such as birth trauma or parental neglect, or an interaction of the two.

Not all zero-empathy people are cruel. There is a category of “zero-positive” people, with autism or severe Asperger’s, who lack empathy but show no tendency to unkindness. And not all cruel people lack empathy (bin Laden may be among the exceptions). But if Prof. Baron-Cohen is right, a combination of a brain scan, a genotyping and a case history could “diagnose” many or even most cruel personalities, perhaps even before they commit crimes. ….. 

If we could identify the genes and epigenetic factors which led to “inhuman” cruelty, then what would we do if we diagnosed someone as likely to become a cruel extremist? Would we be prepared as a society to act against an individual because he had the potential to be a terrorist – but before he had committed any terrorist act? And should we be ensuring that he does not pass his genes on?

A New Eugenics perhaps. The rational and logical conclusion if we could clearly identify “unwanted” characteristics would be to eliminate these characteristics in all future generations. We would also have to eliminate the possibility that there is any collateral damage, that some wanted characteristics disappear when the unwanted one is removed. Certainly social skills have been instrumental in the success of the species. But humans without some measure of aggression would probably not have survived. If removing cruelty also removed aggression then we would have to tread very carefully.

Is human cruelty the price the species pays? for what?

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Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Evolution, Extremism | 1 Comment »

When the Pope meets with the Mufti of Istanbul but lacks the courage to meet the Dalai Lama

December 15, 2014

Though I have fond memories of the Jesuits who ran my school, I have not a very high regard for the courage of the Catholic Church. Pope Francis has apparently been a breath of fresh air but I am having second thoughts. All his apparent actions on trying to combat the paedophilia that is inherent in the celibate church and his apparent attempt to be inclusive of homosexuals and even gay marriage, now seem to me to be more concerned with damage control and of improving the image of the church rather than with effecting any real change.

It may be that even this “superficial” behaviour by an “outsider” in the Vatican shows a level of personal courage that is unusual and commendable. But I now begin to think that Pope Francis too is more concerned with being seen as politically correct. The Nobel peace prize winners have been at a congress in Rome and the Dalai Lama requested a meeting with the Pope only to be rejected.

BBC: Pope Francis will not meet the exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama because of the “delicate situation” with China, the Vatican says. The Dalai Lama, who is visiting Rome, had requested a meeting. A Vatican spokesman said that although the Pope held him “in very high regard”, the request had been declined “for obvious reasons“.

The “obvious reasons” had everything to do with political appeasement of the Chinese government and nothing to do with ethics or spirituality or even any sense of right or wrong. There are almost 100 million Catholics and 25 million Muslims in China. The Chinese government sees terrorists among their Muslim minorities but the Catholics mainly as being deluded but not as subversive. The Pope has no problem in visiting mosques and meeting Muftis. The rejection of the Dalai Lama must be put into the perspective of his other meetings. I’m quite sure that in both these cases he is following the instructions of the Cardinal bureaucrats of the Vatican.

Pope Francis prays with Rahmi Yaran, Mufti of Istanbul (right) during a visit to the Sultan Ahmet mosque, popularly known as the Blue Mosque, in Istanbul, on Nov. 29, 2014. REUTERS/ Osservatore Romano

 

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Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Politics, Religion | Comments Off on When the Pope meets with the Mufti of Istanbul but lacks the courage to meet the Dalai Lama

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