Radicalised illogicality

The recent identification of 'Jihadi John' (the demented brutal murderer of ISIS beheading videos), as being the British Mohammed Emwazi, has triggered astoundingly dangerous journalism that, even in the case of the BBC, at the same time exhibits deeply racist undercurrents and utter failing in fundamental logic.

This double fete, achieved by BBC's Newsnight programme, too, is created by the tacit acceptance of "reasoning" voiced among others, by the shockingly extremist representative of a group like CAGE.

The "reasoning", simply put, is that Emwazi was investigated by agencies like the MI6, which led to Emwazi feeling "marginalised", which then led to him becoming radicalised - and that, in turn, leading to him joining ISIS, then... well, we know those videos.

It is an A leads to B leads to C "logic" that is breathtakingly extremist in itself.

What is even more shocking is that even the BBC failed to challenge the point made by CAGE and the like.

Emwazi attracted the attention of MI6 because he was actively involved in what can only be called terrorism. He was given the opportunity to become an informer... and he refused.

His "persecution" by the MI6 radicalised him? He was made to feel "marginalised" because the MI6 of all things was actively interested in him for some inexplicable reason?... Tail wagging the dog...

Interestingly, and I know this for a fact from personal experience, millions of truly persecuted, every hour of every day actively marginalised and victimised minority individuals have never become extremist brutal murderers.

The fact that even the BBC has not challenged the widely media-vehiculated fallacy (basically, MI6's interest in Emwazi directly led to him becoming an unspeakably barbaric ISIS murderer) is telling.

What it tells is the deeply racist undertone of that and other journalists.

The fact that it is accepted as a valid topic of discussion, and "analysed" to death in such media, shows the proverbial elephant in the room: those journalists want, by default, to treat Muslims as untouchable dangerous terrorists.

The very reason for not once challenging, hence tacitly accepting the frankly obviously demented "logic" like that of the CAGE representative, is that to those journalists it really is a valid logical inference. It is only logical if one does think that Muslims have to be treated according to entirely different moral standards...

This is, to put it mildly, inherently racist. Yes, I, of no ethnic or religious connection with Muslims, factually accuse such journalists of deep-seated racism.

The reasons are not only stemming from my personal (and aforementioned) experience that has eminently demonstrated the fallacy of the CAGE logical inference.

It also stems from the fact that by even discussing the "reasoning" presented by such organisations like CAGE, such journalists exacerbate the very (warped) racist thought process presented, ironically, by those very organisations.

The fact that CAGE voiced such a tragic logical failure actually doesn't bother one as much as the airtime and bandwidth given to it (as if it were a valid argument) by so-called objective and impartial media without the latter pointing out the huge, almost fluorescent, elephant in the room...

The Orthodoxy of Priorities

A few interesting statistics from today's Romania show that:

• infant mortality is 10.16% per 1000 live births, the worst in the EU;
• the proportion of GDP allocated for education is less than half of the EU average;
• poverty rate is highest in the EU (21.1% at 60% median income);
• population is decreasing at a rate of 0.27% per year, with vast outflow of young people who leave the country.

However:

• more than 75% of all churches built in the EU were built in Romania, despite the fact that its population is ~4% of that of the EU; with few exceptions, these are all Romanian Orthodox churches;
• since 1990, on average, one new church appeared every 2 days, but 3 schools were closed per day, the number of hospital beds has halved.
• the total wealth of the Romanian Orthodox Church is calculated at 3 billion EUR, but it receives from the state more than 100 million EUR for the Church employees' salaries;
• above does not take into account the tax-free "gifts" and "help" that the Government has directed towards this Church.

Clearly, there are priorities... even in times of deep recession, the same priorities existed. 

Reasons are aplenty. Exactly as they did during the Ceausescu regime, the Romanian Orthodox Church has been the key propaganda instrument. Even during the most recent presidential elections, this Church actively involved itself, down to the level of direct and clear instructions sent to all its priests, in propaganda and campaigning for the prime minister Ponta's votes... who wished to become president, so that he could undo all the anti-corruption work the judiciary achieved so far...

Such services come at a price... and even now, while the country is in doldrums, the Government allocates vast funds (just most recently, 1.4 million EUR from emergency reserve funds!) to this Church.

The fact that it still is a country stuck in the Medieval Dark Ages is just part of the problem... 

Looking forward, the incessant and frankly ludicrous state funding of this otherwise extremely wealthy outfit is ensuring that the status quo is preserved.

Whilst it, as a country, holds top position in EU statistics for the worst possible reasons, immense funds and continuous "gifts" ensure that Romania stays in that top position.

The only more tragic fact is that the Orthodox Church actually dares to comment that the number of school and hospital closures are due to the decrease in the country's birth rate and its population... Let's not even go for a minute into the key reasons why the country's population is decreasing (it is enough to look at emigration statistics in the last 25 years...).

Perhaps via this superb statistical connection, they could also explain the ever-increasing funds flowing into their accounts from the state... which, by the way, is oh-so-separate from Church... clearly. 

The Romanian Orthodox Church has explained the scandalous figures in different ways, too: they said that they are running "the hospitals of the soul" and that Romania is a "nation of faithfuls"...

No comment. None is possible.

Mark of disrespect

Westminster Abbey's flag has been flying half-mast as a "mark of respect" for the late King Abdullah...

Let's put, for a brief moment, aside any specifics of particular religions, religious institutions, international politics and, oh yes, very recent outbursts of pro-freedom rhetoric in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre... as many of those who came out in favour of freedom of speech are now commemorating the late Saudi king...

Let us just be, plainly and simply (idealistically?), humans for that moment.

King Abdullah has presided over, and enforced, a brutal regime of torture, barbaric murder as a means of oppression of any free thought.., and of women.

When one says brutal or barbaric, one is using that plain and simple human(e) dictionary. It really doesn't matter what ideology or cultural/social context one may attempt to use in an attempt to defend what has been going on in Saudi Arabia.

The "fighters" funded and/or sent by the regime to various all-too-well-known areas on the map have established both Al-Qaida and ISIS.

Oh, and that minor aspect... Raif Badawi, the victim of the most recent outrage, was condemned to 1000 lashes for having written some thoughts on his blog.

Westminster Abbey, no need to elaborate on what it represents and the power of the symbolism, decided to pay its respects to the Saudi king.

It is one of the rare moments when the possibilities of English language (and one's own, infinitely more limited, capabilities) fail to describe this act...

Personally, I am deeply outraged that on the 25th anniversary of Ceausescu's death, a person paraded up and down on the very avenue situated right in front of that Abbey by the powers of the time, was not remembered by them.

Although I understand that, in comparison, Ceausescu (or his indirect mentor, Stalin) was an incomparably smaller figure compared to the late King Abdullah...  so it is unrealistic to expect Westminster Abbey to mark its respect for such minor characters, too.

And yes, this is sarcasm... but mostly disgust of some immeasurable order. 

The Untouchables (pardon: The Unmockables)

The vast number of articles on the necessity to introduce blasphemy laws (as magical wands that protect us against any aberrations like the extremists' actions in Paris) are increasing - and they have, in unison, the same fundamental failure in logic.

One key (partial) fact quoted by many is that Finland, rated No.1 in terms of press freedom, has a blasphemy law.

A slight problem with tendentiously applied partial truths: that law has been only applied three times in the last 70 years. In all three cases, there wasn't a "straightforward" case of blasphemy... and it concerned issues that spread into other areas of (even criminal) law. 

Hence the law merely exists, but it is basically a de facto dead letter, in spite of formal attempts to repeal it have failed so far. Clearly, emotions vs. reason, personal sensitivities vs. objectivity are difficult to balance. Nothing new here. 

Let us not get into the debate on why religious views, institutions, doctrine would be immune to criticism, mockery, etc. Granting them special status is plain wrong, as any objective and logical person would conclude - simply because their special status will be, by definition, at the detriment of others... and it is just a veiled totalitarian censorship.

Instead, let's just look at cold facts. Let's reproduce here the facts found by the 2010 report from Freedom House, which studied seven countries where the blasphemy laws are being actually applied:

• Governments have abused blasphemy laws to silence the political opposition, government critics, and other dissidents.
• Individuals have fabricated charges of blasphemy against others in their communities to settle petty disputes.
• Religious extremists have exploited blasphemy laws to justify attacks on religious minorities, thereby fostering an environment of intolerance where discrimination is effectively condoned by the state.
• Religious institutions, often with official or unofficial government backing, have used blasphemy laws to impose the state-sanctioned interpretations of religious doctrine on members of minority sects that are deemed deviant or heretical.

Let's then hope that magically, this time round the invention and enforcement of blasphemy laws, as a knee-jerk reaction that in some minds holds the answer to all the fundamental multi-cultural issues again revealed by the Charlie Hebdo massacre, will solve what they are after without any of the above issues... which, in every single studied country, have surfaced as side-effects.

I happen to come from a society that knew a bit about censorship... and still, media there is advocating the adoption of such laws. 

Vox populi seems to be, this time, too, based on short-term memory and selective amnesia.

Powertrip for... freedom

With a speed that surpassed several times the W. Bush administration's post-9/11 expediency in demanding more powers for the intelligence and security agencies, David Cameron has firmly demanded the same...

The logic, coming from the same PM who at the start of his first term has vowed and indeed proceeded to undo many of the former Tony Blair regime's attacks on civil liberties, on privacy and even basic human rights, is the same as ever...

More information means, in the familiar thought process, more security... more protection against potential extremist attacks. We heard this before, numerous times, and this time, too the press is mostly writing about the correct side of equation...

It is obvious, as it was underlined countless times by press, by security experts, by ISPs etc., that the gathering and analysis of the vast amounts of data about potential suspects (or isolating the latter in the ocean of communications stored by ISPs) presents huge technical and analytical problems. These lead to vast human resourcing problems, as MI5 has reported that on average twenty people are needed for a single suspect's surveillance...

What is slightly irritating however: so far the tiny detail about the past cases where there was significant and relevant information in the security forces' possession is not mentioned...

What I am referring to is the series of events ranging from 9/11 itself to Lee Rigby's murder to the perpetrators of the Paris attacks. In the case of all of these events, there were copious amounts of information on the perpetrators, but the various security forces in possession of that information either deemed the suspects harmless, or concluded that there was no risk, or failed to act at all.

Under Cameron's new tirade, that included even a demand to ban certain messaging apps (!), more information will somehow turn this so far statistically frankly ludicrously disturbing trend.

Stalinist snooping of private communication will somehow make the security forces more able to reach the right conclusions and act in time...

As a senior MI5 official stated today, don't give them more information, Mr. Cameron... give them more funding! So far the key problem was not in the realm of what amount and what kind of personal information they held about potential suspects or the public in general...

Only the mentioned speed with which Cameron has reacted in this way is more worrying than the content of his speeches. Before any analysis, any calming of spirits, any lucid investigation of British threat levels could take place, the first and blatantly exploitative emotion-centred reaction from the British Government is that of a resurrection of worst excesses of the Tony Blair regime... and more.

Congratulations again on this exercise in rational thought and, oh yes, democratic freedoms. After all, the latter is what is supposedly being protected by the proposed measures... 

Caricatures of freedom

The number of printed and online articles debating the contents of Charlie Hebdo issues has skyrocketed in the last few days - not only in Romania, but also in the more "Western" media.

A number of points one finds remarkable...:

• First of all, the debate on the level of "good taste" and "decency" in the Charlie Hebdo cartoons is forgetting the fundamental fact that any definition of good taste and decency is strictly connected to social, historic and cultural context. As soon as anyone, as many so-called journalists did, debates whether the content of Charlie Hebdo was violating some limit of decency or taste inevitably ends up in logical self-contradictions. A major Romanian media figure, Ion Plesu even suggested that self-censorship would have been the answer to avoiding the massacre...

• This then leads us to the frankly outrageous journalism that insinuates that the content in Charlie Hebdo was directly responsible for what happened. The, again fundamental, failure in this is that anybody insulted in any way by any publication has numerous proportional means to respond... and none of those means include machine guns.

• Such articles have avoided two minor details consistently (if, for a brief moment, we do look at the content-related twisted logic followed by these journalists and bloggers): firstly, Charlie Hebdo attacked myriad other faiths, communities, minorities... not just Islam. Secondly, as not just the Koran, but also major muslim personalities have underlined in last few days, the terrorists placed themselves in direct contradiction with the Koran and Islam.

• The discussion about Charlie Hebdo content vs. the massacre seen as a response to that content (one article in Romanian press even stated that this was "to be expected"!) is tantamount to misinformation of the worst kind. It is beyond irrelevant noise... People lacking the knowledge on the current, very difficult, French context, on the ISIS vs. Al-Qaeda PR campaign rivalry, on the fundamentals of Islam, are dragged into a debate that is completely avoiding the central issues. Judging from the myriad online comments, such articles have indeed successfully diverted attention from the real problems.

So then... the real issues... One does not always easily resort to quotes of Sam Harris, but so many luminaries (from Karl Popper to Levy-Strauss) have essentially led to the point one is about to quote: the only problems with islamic fundamentalism are... the fundamentals of Islam.

Sure, it needs to be revisited and taught in a way that it doesn't radicalise... the same way that Christianity and Judaism has gone through revisiting, toning down, and even reformation. This is not about whatever Charlie Hebdo published and whether that in some deranged minds triggered something. Latter has nothing to do with Islam, as many more lucid articles have stated repeatedly - not just now, but also in the aftermath of many other atrocities.

Many articles stating that what happened had nothing to do with Islam are partly correct in their polemic. However, if one deludes oneself by ignoring the glaring fact that only a specific radicalised element is committing these atrocities, then that is a truly harmful delusion.

If one does accept that there is an issue with this specific radicalisation, then one hits one key problem: that there is no central, hierarchic authority in Islam... Apart from numerous isolated voices again stating their outrage and muslim apologetics endlessly repeating again that Islam is a peaceful religion, there is no practical possibility of conveying that message. 

Also, one has to agree in face of facts with certain philosophers who have pointed out that mechanical apologetics are actually causing a huge amount of harm... by not facing the facts of the very text they are talking about and not proposing an honest admission that there is a problem  that needs to be addressed.

Until there is no possibility of revisiting and toning down the most dangerous sections of the scripture that have always been the key means for radicalisation (by literal, or even more tendentiously re-interpreted use of those passages), one will endlessly debate what "triggered" certain radicalised elements of Islam... and will forever fill internet bandwidth with empty discussions on limits of "decency" in published content that has to avoid "triggering" such elements' reactions...

Debates on certain publications' decency in the context of freedom of expression, and how this freedom needs to be self-regulated (or, as some even proposed from a society that should know better after decades of stalinist suppression of such freedoms, even to be regulated by the state), remain therefore very sorry caricatures of freedom.