Not All Cockroaches Are Pests

Sometimes this world bewilders me, and one bewildering thing at the moment is an electronic backpack for cockroaches which allows the insect’s movements to be controlled by a mobile phone app. It’s about to go on sale in America, and is ostensibly intended to get more youngsters interested in neuroscience. Unfortunately, in order to attach the backpack, the cockroach has to be placed in icy water to subdue it before sandpaper is used to remove the waxy coating on the shell of its head; an electrode connector and electrodes are then glued on to the insect's body and a needle is used to poke a hole in its thorax in order to insert a wire; its antennae are then cut and electrodes are inserted; a circuit is attached to its back, and signals are received through the mobile phone app allowing users to control the cockroach’s movements to the left and to the right. How on Earth did this make it on to the market?! This is clearly cruel! I find all animal cruelty abhorrent, but I accept that there will always be some psychopaths in the world; what I don’t accept is animal cruelty being promoted (and seemingly accepted by retailers!) under the veil of education! I hope there is some sort of backlash against the company producing these insect backpacks (a company I’m not going to dignify by naming), and that the products are taken off sale as soon as possible.

Petty Republicans

So the U.S. government has finally gone into shutdown, but not like the last couple of times it was threatened when it was the issue of budgetary constraints which was the primary sticking point; the issue now is universal healthcare. That’s right, a significant portion of the Republican Party is appalled that hard-working Americans should be entitled to visit a hospital for treatment without paying extortionate amounts of money or enrolling in private insurance programmes which can often go to great lengths to not pay out on claims. I imagine these right-wing politicians think that the British National Health Service – one of the fairest healthcare systems in the world – represents some form of communism! It’s time that American citizens were put before party politics, and the Republicans need to grow up and understand that this level of petty immaturity will only cause their party to eventually disintegrate from within.

Historic Parallels

Paddy Ashdown has said that the decision to not take action against the use of chemical weapons in Syria will make England “be a country that shrugs its shoulders and says ‘nothing to do with me’”. I agree. Of course I understand that there are many well-intentioned people who disagree with Syrian military intervention, mainly because they do not fully understand the difference between the Iraq conflict and that which is going on now – i.e. U.N. democracy, or lack thereof – and I fully accept that British democracy has been proven functional in its resistance to warfare. But unfortunately, Syria now stands alone, just like Britain once stood alone, and tyranny will have to take its toll before decent human beings realise that allowing Assad to commit torture is almost as bad as when America refused to fight dictatorship in 1939. This is not sensationalist, it is historical relevance that many people have seemingly forgotten.

The Red Line Is About Time

Most people I speak to about the news (and most politicians that I see on the news) tend to be rather tentative about getting involved in the ongoing Syrian civil war. This mainly stems from the unnecessary war with Iraq, but I think there is a significant difference between the conflicts. Before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Hans Blix and his U.N. weapons inspectors were doing a good job, albeit a little slowly; they would have eventually determined that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and rendered him militarily impotent. I know that it wouldn’t have been particularly moral to leave a previously brutal dictator like Hussein in power, but further political measures would hopefully have been deployed (e.g. harsh economic sanctions) that may have forced a new Iraqi dawn – as in Egypt and Tunisia – without having to resort to warfare. But Syria is different: it is the U.N. Security Council that has been rendered impotent this time with Russia / China and Britain / America / France in a seemingly permanent stalemate that prevents political implementations. So now that today it has been revealed that President Barack Obama’s ‘red line’ has been crossed (proof has been shown that Bashar al-Assad has been using chemical weapons), I’m pleased that the U.S. government has taken the decision to arm Syrian rebels; in fact, it’s about time. Just because Russia and China have their own immoral agendas to keep Assad in power, doesn’t mean that the rest of the world should sit idly by while tens of thousands of people are massacred, many of them innocent civilians. As much as it may be reasonable to avoid sending in the soldiers (so that we don’t get dragged into another Afghanistan) we still have a moral duty to intervene somehow. We were able to get rid of Colonel Gaddafi by helping rebels in Libya (though that was with more political consensus), and that country is certainly better off without him. So I hope that Obama is strong in his decision-making, and forces Assad to back down from genocide.

Decisions

A few days ago, film director Tony Scott committed suicide by jumping off a bridge in America. Initial reports indicated his primary reason for doing so was that he had an inoperable brain tumour, but that story is currently being brought into doubt. Whatever the reason was, Scott made a decision that was his alone to make, regardless of how grim it must be to have those life-ending thoughts. It’s a decision that last week was again denied to Tony Nicklinson, a man in England who has locked-in syndrome (he is virtually unable to consciously perform any bodily movements by himself); the British courts decided that to issue a ruling allowing doctors to assist suicide for those who are unable to help themselves, and avoid prosecution for it, was not for judges to decide upon. So if a doctor attempted to help Mr Nicklinson - and it would be help - they could still be arrested for murder. How preposterous! Judges and politicians alike are continually afraid to make moral decisions for fear of a reactionary (and probably religious) backlash - shame on them! But they can still manage to make controversial decisions where international political prisoners / asylum-seekers are concerned. Yes, Julian Assange will be ingloriously deported by the British government if he dares to step outside of the Ecuadorian embassy. And rest assured this has very little to do with sexual allegations from Sweden; Ecuador was happy to release Assange into Swedish custody as soon as assurances were given that it would not be followed by deportation to America for a Wikileaks trial (where even the death penalty could be considered!), but no such assurances were ever even negotiated by the British Foreign Office. Nowadays I usually have great respect for the U.S. government under President Obama, but the witch-hunt for Assange has got way out of hand.
How is it that so many decisions seem to be going so badly wrong? Or should I simply not be surprised anymore?

 

Race Perpetuates Racism

Barack Obama - the 44th President of the United States - is a Democrat. He is one of the most eloquent orators to ever grace the political landscape, and a man of true moral principle which has inspired a world. These are the headlines that should be grabbing people's attention. Yet instead a different headline has been plastered across the media: Barack Obama is the first black President! It is not wrong that this statement of fact should be mentioned; after all, this is a country where blacks and whites were segregated in all walks of life less than half a century ago, giving rise to racist persecution and death. But Martin Luther King, probably the greatest icon of those times, famously stated that his dream was to live in a country where people would "not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character". So if people are now hailing Obama purely because he is a black President, then they are not taking a moral standpoint; they have managed to take this man's immense achievement and lessen its worth by colourising it. If Obama is to be judged solely on the colour of his skin then the racist society that King condemned is still being perpetuated; if a black warmongering hateful Republican were President, that would not be a good thing just because he had overcome repression; and if Americans cannot judge a President on his policies then they have not yet overcome the past. Obama has already made some great decisions (having not yet been in office for a week); he has commenced closure of Guantanamo Bay prison camp, reinstated a pro-choice abortion law, and (best of all) given the go ahead for embryonic stem cell research so that future generations can benefit from massive medical breakthroughs. Let's judge the man on these social accomplishments, not on his race, which incidentally is mixed!

Irony For The Unintelligent

The band James have just revealed the sleeve design for their upcoming album release; it features a baby playing with some toy building blocks and a gun. It refers to a recent incident in the good ol' US of A where a ten-month old child was legitimately granted a firearms certificate! The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK have banned this design from being featured on any billboards for fear that it may encourage younger people to use guns...What?! I ask you, how do these authority figures in the ASA get superior positions of employment with mighty powers of censorship when they can't even understand the use of irony? To anyone with more than three brain cells to knock together it's clear that the James album is anti-guns and is in fact mocking the ridiculously liberal (or should that be right-wing Republican) American gun laws. And exactly how stupid are the British youth in the twenty-first century meant to be? Does the ASA truly believe that gun crime originates or is vitally encouraged by billboard promotions? The contradictory madness of society never ceases to amaze me: while pacifist James fans listen to the pleasantly inspirational tunes and consider an ironic front cover that they weren't allowed to see advertised beforehand, they can be secure in the knowledge that a ten-month old child somewhere in America may grow up one day and become a little bit unbalanced by perpetual social repression just in time for him to shoot up a school and blame it on people who will refuse to listen; because that's how gun crime really originates.