Wingnuts over Holland

Dutch politics, Geertje Wilders, wingnuts
Published on

The socalled “freedom party” is a Dutch extreme righwing party founded by professional Islamophobe Geert Wilders. In an effort to prove that all Wingnuts over Holland, it has now proposed to force women undergoing abortion to pay for it themselves and so stop the government subsidising abortion clinics. This proposal is so absurd that even the main anti-abortion organisation in the Netherlands, the VBOK, has rejected it. They prefer (sex) education in schools and practical support for unplanned pregnancies as ways to minimise the number of abortions.

The Netherlands, which has always had a large population of conservative Christians, was late in legalising abortion, only doing so in 1984. Since then it had largely stopped being a controversial subject, playing little to no role in politics, with none of the battles waged against it as seen in the US. Opponents largely concentrated either on limiting the need for abortions through sex ed and use of birth control or on providing support for women going through unplanned pregnancies.

With the worldwide return of conservatism since 2001 however wingnut ideas about abortion have been introduced here as well. It’s not just a fringe party coming up with such ideas to make abortion more difficult, the government as well has floated ideas to make it harder, Dutch police has taken an interest in prosecuting women for undergoing “illegal” abortions abroad, etc. The wingnut right thinks it’s in the ascend, so is now much more confident in attacking hardwon liberties.

Is the SWP used to attack Galloway?

socialism
Published on

That’s what Splintered Sunrise thinks, because since the split in Respect the SWP side of the story has gotten a much more sympathetic airing in the media than the Galloway side:

George Galloway, on the other hand, is quite a different kettle of fish. I have my own serious reservations about George, but there’s no gainsaying the fact that the media are out to get George, and for reasons that have nothing to do with my reservations. Indeed, they’re after him for his good points. Let’s be honest, George, whether we like it or not, is just about the most recognisable face of the antiwar movement. He’s one of the most articulate critics of New Labour. He has that extremely important connection with the working-class Asian population in the East End. Lord help us, he’s a serious asset to our side as well as being an incorrigible loose cannon.

All this should be fairly obvious. If the SWP side in the split is getting puff jobs in the media, not to mention acquiring the critical support of Harry’s Place and the Alliance for Workers Liberty, that’s not an accident. These guys have a clear sense of priorities. There are of course other factors – Private Eye’s repeated snarky references to the Asian element of Respect gel with the sort of casual racism one expects from the Eye – but in the end it comes down to priorities. Using the SWP as a cat’s paw against Galloway is using a sprat to catch a whale.

The point here is not who was at fault in the acrinomious split of Respect last year, but whether the SWP is letting itself used to attack a former ally who they might now have issues with, but who is still far preferable to the people trying to bring him down, still nominally socialist. This split has not been easy to either of the parties involved, so I can understand the temptation to lash out, but it’s a good rule of thumb for any socialist not to give your real opponents ammunition to bring down fellow leftists. Not that the SWP is the only one to have given in to this temptation, as a casual perusal of Socialist Unity shows. there are plenty of people on the left who hate the SWP as well and they have not always been discreet. Of course, that doesn’t mean you should never speak ill of fellow lefties, genuine political differences or real cases of abuse should not be hidden, but the sort of gloating you sometimes find about the SWP’s (or other organisations) troubles isn’t helpful.

Strawman environmentalists

Activism, Climate change
Published on

Unlike Charlie Stross I was less than impressed with this article on The Top Ten Things Environmentalists Need to Learn. Perhaps that is because it reminded me too much of the sort of thing Jerry Pournelle used to write in his science columns for semi-obscure science fiction magazines back in the late seventies. It pays some lip service to the idea that “maintaining the environment is a critical issue” but then argues in bad faith, more interested in attacking environmentalists than in contributing to solutions. Take for example, the first thing “environmentalists need to learn”:

10. Go after pollution sources with the highest benefit/cost ratio, not those which are most noticeable – If you are attempting to make a difference in the world, you should start with the largest problems with the simplest solutions and the least cost in remedying.

For example, underground coal fires produce as much CO2 as all the light cars and trucks in North America and most of those in Europe. The cost of developing a method of fighting such fires and implementing it is likely very low compared to the benefit especially in the context of the amount of effort which has gone into reducing the pollution from cars and trucks.

Now that coal fire example makes me suspicious, as it’s just the kind of pat factiod that appeals to the inner contrarian in all of us. What’s stated here is that coal fires are as big a problem as CO2 emitted by cars, what’s implied is that those silly enivronmentalists are not doing anything about the former but are only concerned with the latter, hence they are hypocrites and can be ignored. Unspoken is the assumption that as long as these coal fires are going on, limiting CO2 emission from traffic is pointless.

But is it actually true that underground coal fires contribute as much CO2 as “all the light cars and trucks in North America and most of those in Europe”? No figures or references are given, which doesn’t strengthen the author’s case. The Encyclopedia of Earth article on
carbon dioxide says 24% of manmade CO2 emissions is attributable to transport worldwide, while its coal fires article says that “according to most recent estimations coal fires in China contribute about 0.1% to 0.2% of the annual human induced CO2 emissions globally”. There seems to be some sort of mismatch then, though of course the figure of 0.2% is only for China (the world’s largest coal user) while the 24% of transport worldwide needs to be broken down to “all the light cars and trucks in North America and most of those in Europe” to be able to truly compared the two figures. Nevertheless, a case can be made for the author having overstated the contribution of coal fires to manmade CO2 emissions…

But even if the figure was comparable, does this mean tackling underground coal fires is more cost effective than limiting the emissions put out by cars? Not necessarily. Underground coal fires are partially a natural phenomenon, with some having been burning for thousands of years,
while the most famous manmade fire, in Centralia, Pennsylvania, has been burning for some 45 years. By any measures they’re hard and costly to put out, requiring huge investments; according to an article in The Smithsonian putting out the fire in Centralia would’ve cost as much as 660 million dollars.

Producing more fuel-efficient cars suddenly looks a lot more affordable compared to those numbers, especially since a lot can be done without requiring new, exotic technology. Just switching from using inefficient types of car (the infamous Chelsea tractor, or SUV) to existing, more energy efficient cars would help. More and better public transport as an alternative to car use is another obvious measure to limit CO2 emissions. And of course, it’s perfectly possible to both invest in fighting underground coal fires, as is actually already happening (see the Smithonian article) and more fuel efficient cars.

So yeah, if the first bullet point in this essay is already this dishonest, I’m skeptical about the rest of the article, especially in the context of the rest of the blog, which seems largely dedicated to showing how silly and stupid environmentalists are.

The Fall of Rome – Bryan Ward-Perkins

books and books review, history
Published on

Cover of The Fall of Rome


The Fall of Rome
Bryan Ward-Perkins
239 pages including index
published in 2005

When I was googling for some background information on Peter Heather’s The Fall of the Roman Empire, Bryan Ward-Perkins’ The Fall of Rome was mentioned the most alongside it in reviews. In those reviews The Fall of Rome was described as a much more agressively counter-revisionist attack, compared to Heather’s book, much more scathing in its rejection of the view that the fall of Rome was not that big a deal. Therefore I thought it would be interesting to read, to see what the more traditional view of Rome’s collapse would look like.

It turns out however that Ward-Perkins’ rhetoric here is actually stronger than his actual disagreement. He’s scathing about those historians who go too far in arguing that the transition from Roman Empire to the post-Roman, Germanic west was a relatively gentle affair, but his own
view isn’t quite the Gibbonesque tragedy of traditional history either. He argues that the transition period was violent, that there was a decline in civilisation, that the death of the western Roman Empire was a tragedy, but that this was far from the end of civilisation. But because Ward-Perkins spent much of this book arguing against the more rose-tinted views currently in vogue of the transistion from a Roman to a post-Roman world, his disagreements may seem bigger than they actually are.

Read more…

Books read in January

books and books review, posts interesting only to me
Published on

Nine books read this month, of which five were rereads, all science fiction:

The End of Eternity, – Isaac Asimov.
The first Asimov novel I’ve read since at least 2001, an old favourite of mine, one of the first sf novels to introduce me to the idea of altering history.

The Big Time – Fritz Leiber.
Also an author I hadn’t read since at least 2001, another favourite and another time war novel. Brilliantly claustrophobic.

The Player of Games, Consider Phlebas and The Use of Weapons – Iain M. Banks.
The first three Culture novels, read in order from weakest to strongest. The first one was a breeze to read, I struggled a lot with Phlebas which felt a bit padded and Use of Weapons was not as amazing as the last time I’ve read it. Still incredibly good novels though, some of the best space opera ever written.

The Fall of Rome – Bryan Ward Perkins.
Short history of how the Roman empire ended, which spents much of its time argueing against the allegedly fashionably view that the Fall of Rome was highly exaggerated and in fact went almost unnoticed. However, though the author is very adamant in insisting this fall did happen and was a disaster, his own description does make clear the Gibbonian idea of civilisation collapsing with the end of the Roman Empire in the West is indeed wrong and the revisionists actually do have some grounds for their views. In short its rhetoric is much stronger than its disagreement.

The Diversity of Life – E. O. Wilson.
Very readable book explaining clearly how resilient and abundant life on Earth is, how ecosystems grow and evolve, how even large extinctions are repaired over time, only to break your heart in the end with the description of the human caused extinctions now going on. Especially after you realise that this was written sixteen years ago and things have only gotten worse…

Upheaval from the Abyss – David Lawrence.
enjoyable if sometimes slight history of the idea of continental drift and how it got accepted, as well as the mapping of the ocean floors and how this contributed to the acceptance of this theory.

The Celtic Empire – Peter Berresford Ellis.
Conventional but misleading general historic of the Celts up until the Roman conquest of Britain. Supposedly this is about the whole Celtic era from 1000 BC until 51 AD, but instead it largely focuses on the Roman wars against the various Celtic tribes. Lots of names and dates, not much attention to culture and all that good stuff. Not that I didn’t learn something, but it wasn’t quite the thing I was looking for.