Here's to a libertarian anti-theology

Considering that I describe myself as a libertarian and freethinker, I have been a bit lax of late in promoting the libertarian view, and especially at suggesting how the two might be linked.
To me, the two things are interlinked, and the obsession of many atheists/humanists with soft left/liberal views of the world which are (in practice) paternalistic, over-reliant on welfare-statism or (at times) just plain dead in the water is a constant frustration for me. I know from new alliances I've made in the last few years it is for many others 'written out' of mainstream humanism too, which is why we've been kicking off about it.
While I was one of the first to pop my head above the parapet, sadly, introducing the concept of ‘secular methodism’ to humanist circles might have been my only contribution to this noble struggle. Meanwhile, I see Diesel Balaam, for example, plugging away in the letters pages of The Freethinker to push us secularists beyond a wishy-washy middle of the road version of liberalism and back to thinking about the real meaning of the term.
So, if I was a young schoolie my end of term report this month probably would be saying ‘must try harder’. This I undertake to do, always providing I don't have to stop joking about it too. To paraphrase Emma Goldman, 'If I can't laugh, I don't want any part in the revolution.'
For a start, as nobody in the UK except the Spiked posse is taking on the vacuous new British temperance-nazi lobby (which, in turn, causes nonsense like the island’s ‘voluntary’ alcohol sales codes) I had to turn to the US for a spot of inspiration laced with a strong slug of humour.
I found some recently in the work of Jeffrey A. Tucker (and you do have to like a bloke who writes a book called Bourbon for Breakfast: Living outside the Statist Quo).
In Repeal the Drinking Age (see http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker177.html ) Tucker lays into the ridiculous nationwide US ban on anyone under 21 consuming booze. As almost anyone who’s been to the US knows, in practice this ban is ignored, except for times when it suits authority to stop other activities. For example, any attempts at a self-sufficient youth culture where kids actually discuss and do intelligent, socially progressive stuff instead of vegging out and/or reading the Bible.
He goes on to argue that: “With the two-thirds and more of people under the age of 21 reporting that they have consumed alcohol in the last year, it should be obvious that the law is doing nothing but providing a gigantic excuse for arbitrary police-state impositions on human liberty, and also socializing young people in a habit of hypocrisy and law breaking. It’s like the old Soviet-style joke: they pretend to regulate us and we pretend to be regulated.”
Writing just after Independence Day, Tucker ends his piece by saying: “The founders would have never imagined such a thing as a national law regulating the age at which beer, wine, port, and other alcoholic beverages are consumed. If we are serious about embracing their vision of a free society, as opposed to just blathering about it, let’s start with something that is supremely practical and would have immediate effects on an entire generation: repeal the national minimum drinking age law.
You say that this is unthinkable? I say that you don’t really believe in human liberty. “
Closer to home, I’d not only agree with the above but add that the last thing on the minds of the pathetic church-led, state-sponsored Manx agencies theoretically ‘concerned’ with the ‘welfare’ of young people is encouraging any sort of social set-up in which teenagers take control of their own lives, or parents and guardians are allowed to help them do so.

Plane stupidity

Sometimes the combination of lies, deception and pig-ignorance that passes for Manx government activity is so blatant you wonder why people fall for it.
Take an article which you will be reading in the Manx press next week, though if you can’t wait you can read most of what it will say now at http://www.gov.im/lib/news/cso/initiativeishelp.xml .
It will begin by trying to tell you that:

“The Small Countries Financial Management Centre is set to welcome representatives from 29 different nations on Sunday (July 11, 2010) for the start of its second annual international capacity-building programme.
The Centre, located at the Isle of Man International Business School, aims to build on the success of the inaugural event in 2009 which helped small countries from around the world to respond to the global economic downturn. The Small Countries Financial Management Programme is a major initiative developed through a partnership between the Isle of Man Government, the World Bank, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Small States Network for Economic Development, and the University of Oxford.”

…and so it potters on, and on, and on… with ‘comments’ from one muppet at the World Bank, another halfwit from the misleadingly entitled Isle of Man International Business School, and so on ad sodding nauseum.
Oh, I can’t even be bothered to rip this tosh apart bit by bit!
So I’ll just cut to the chase.
The Oxford University Said Business School is so named because the main benefactor is Wafic Said. Just Google ‘Al Yamamah’, remember a time not long ago when the UK’s Labour Government blocked all attempts to investigate just how British Aerospace gained so many lucrative Saudi arms contracts, and then wonder if, say, a dead slug with a history of hebephrenic schizophrenia could do a worse job of ‘advising’ the Manx government on improving our international image than any of the overpaid consultants currently failing to do so.

Heritage strategies from La La Land

Ah well, I’m not the only one then. The great Manx public also think Tynwald Day is rubbish, and in particular we think all that churchy twaddle sucks.
Last week’s IOM Newspapers online poll asked: “What do you enjoy best about Tynwald Day”.
Today the results are up on the site. For 74% it was “Having the day off to stay at home”, for 10% “The ceremony on the hill”, for 7% “Looking round the fair's stalls”, 6% “The music and entertainment” and a mere 3% like the church service.
The other local rabble-rousing atheist media whore called Stuart (Peters) even took a pop at it in his weekly Indie column today, ending by suggesting it might be time to: “make Tynwald a truly Manx occasion, celebrating all the good things about the Isle of Man, sidelining the preening politicians in their top hats and chains of office, and bringing it more up to date and much less a reminder of how grateful we should be to our ultimate landlady.”
Now you might imagine that public bodies – especially those ‘marketing’ the gaff – would have sussed the public mood, maybe done a survey or two of their own to ascertain how we like to spend our time and what would get the ‘bucket and spade brigade’ back on boats and planes to spend some loot.
Well….no! At least not if a government press release (see http://www.gov.im/lib/news/mnh/songsofpraiseatr2.xml ) for an event this Sunday is anything to go by.
We are invited to:
“join Manx National Heritage at Rushen Abbey and enjoy the sounds of choral music at the annual Songs of Praise service in the Abbey Gardens.
The service begins at 2.30pm and visitors will be invited to join in with the well-known hymns performed by the Meadowside Choir, with an accompanying dance display provided by Ballasalla Dance Group ‘Academy of Dance’. “
Oh yes, let’s….................not bother getting out of bed.
This is actually quite worrying.
What it tells us is that not only are our politicians way out of touch and stuck in a tiny, fast-dying myopic subculture that still thinks religion is a big deal, but that the ‘professionals’ they employ to advise on what constitutes Manx life and culture are equally clueless, equally trapped in some sepia-tinted time-warp.
Where they live on our money and make our lives ever duller, all the time covering their ears and singing ‘La, la, la’ tunelessly.

Another year, another colonial clown show

We’re just back from the Tynwald Fair, and, as I suspected, it was another washout.
As we never bother with the colonial clown show on the hill anyway, I couldn’t even tell you which royal inbreed (if any) was guest of honour. Instead, it was straight to what I think is now officially designated the charities field.
Originally, this was a fairly open space for any community group that wanted to come along – you just lined up with everyone else at a government office, put your name down and had a spot allocated according to how early you got there.
Then, the year Madge herself was booked and there was an excuse to change the security arrangements, this changed and (mysteriously) groups with a slight political edge (e.g. Amnesty International) found their pitch uprooted overnight and moved out of sight of either royalty or roving TV cameras, then subsequent years found their application was simply ‘overlooked’.
So, the only serious community political activity at this year’s fair was Mec Vannin, the Positive Action Group and….well, sadly that was it. There really isn’t any other evidence of any Manx group who are even half-awake and taking a serious interest in Manx affairs from the presence on the Tynwald Field. The other stalls on the field – a random selection of British paramilitary organisations, right wing ‘heritage’ groups, cuddly bunny charities and braindead evangelical outfits – could safely all collapse tomorrow and there wouldn’t be the slightest damage to Manx life. If anything, it might improve considerably.
If this is the sum total of ‘community’ activity on the island, we’re dead already. And if the organisations able to set up on the fair field are the sum total of political interest, we’re a nonsensical colony stuck in the middle of the Irish Sea, run from somewhere else.
Oh, I forgot. We are anyway. It’s just our colonial Quislings run a pathetic sideshow with a lot of flag-waving, singing of an absolutely vacuous ‘national anthem’, folk-dancing and loons in homemade costumes proclaiming twaddle in a language nobody actually uses for any practical, everyday purpose to try and distract the peasants.
Which works depressingly well, by the looks of things.
One brighter note, as it is most years, was the Tynwald Day edition of Yn Pabyr Seyr ('The Free Paper) by Mec Vannin. To see this little gem, go to http://www.mecvannin.im/pabyr/yps45.pdf and download the whole paper.
It is always guaranteed to show the whole island hasn’t quite gone to sleep, and always takes a few pops at government incompetence. Some past editions are collectors items. If they aren't stored in the Manx Museum's library (and I suspect they are not) then there is no national record of the only significant political literature on the island in the last couple of decades.
This year the piece that caught my eye was Mec Vannin’s objections to the truly obnoxious 'Armed Forces Day' and the inevitable show of British military incompetence at Tynwald Day itself. In addition, there’s the matter of inviting these colonial enforcers into Manx schools – under the pretence of running ‘physical fitness’ sessions which are curiously combined with crude recruiting films. As Mec Vannin say, instead of renaming our Department of (mis)Education the Department of Education and Children they could be honest and call it the Department of Indoctrination and Recruitment.
Considering my own worries over the once insidious, now quite blatant, entry of borderline fascist Christian organisations into schools (and as someone who has actually studied the phenomena academically, I do mean fascist) it appears things are going from bad to worse at the Department of Education. Thankfully, it also appears I am not the only one remarking on it.

Stop the stoning of Sakine Mohammadi Ashtiani

Sakine Mohammadi Ashtiani is a forty-three year old mother of two children, 16 & 20 years old respectively,and has been sentenced to death by stoning for committing adultery. Despite the best efforts of her lawyer and children, her stoning has just been finalized by the Iranian court.
Sakine is now in Tabriz prison awaiting her imminent death at the hands of superstitious throwbacks. On days like these, maybe we should be grateful that the chunterings of our homegrown fundamentalists are too pathetic to get much of an audience (always excepting the idle educationalists and overpaid social services consultants).
International Coalition Against Stoning distributed the following ‘plea to the world’ made on June 26th by Sakine's children.

”Do not allow our nightmare to become a reality, Protest against our mother’s stoning!
Today we stretch out our hands to the people of the whole world. It is now five years that we have lived in fear and in horror, deprived of motherly love. Is the world so cruel that it can watch this catastrophe and do nothing about it?
We are Sakine Mohammadi e Ashtiani’s children, Fasride and Sajjad Mohamamadi e Ashtiani. Since our childhood we have been acquainted with the pain of knowing that our mother is imprisoned and awaiting a catastrophe. To tell the truth, the term "stoning" is so horrific that we try never to use it. We instead say our mother is in danger, she might be killed, and she deserves everyone's help.
Today, when nearly all options have reached dead-ends, and our mother's lawyer says that she is in a dangerous situation, we resort to you. We resort to the people of the world, no matter who you are and where in the world you live. We resort to you, people of Iran, all of you who have experienced the pain and anguish of the horror of losing a loved one.
Please help our mother return home!
We especially stretch our hand out to the Iranians living abroad.
Help to prevent this nightmare from becoming reality. Save our mother. We are unable to explain the anguish of every moment, every second of our lives.
Words are unable to articulate our fear…
Help to save our mother. Write to and ask officials to free her.
Tell them that she doesn’t have a civil complainant and has not done any wrong. Our mother should not be killed. Is there any one hearing this and rushing to our assistance?

Faride and Sajjad Mohammadi e Ashtiani”

(Disseminated by the International Committee Against Stoning)

To join a petition being sent to Iranian officials, plus the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, go to http://stopstonningnow.com/sakine/sakin284.php?nr=50326944&lang=en

Holiday fun in Trumpton

Next Monday is our National Day here on L'Isle de Homme. Or, more precisely, the day when the triumph of English colonialism over anything vaguely resembling a Manx identity is most crushingly obvious ....to anyone except the loons who perpetuate the Tynwald Day farce.
I’ve already covered the lunacies and delusions of the ceremony itself (see last July’s Tynwald Day for Dummies ) so won’t repeat myself here.
This year, according to the local press (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/Looking-ahead-to-Tynwald-Day.6376950.jp ) “organisers have decided to put an emphasis on family fun with a picture treasure hunt and a special question from Tynwald President Noel Cringle MLC.”
Actually, I have a special question in return for Noel.
Why do you bother?
For the benefit of off-island readers, Cringle is what you might get if you crossed Benny from Crossroads with a sheep, then programmed it to parrot the philosophical musings of a particularly vacuous small town Unionist politician. When not laying on Manx whimsy with a trowel as part of his doddery uncle act in Tynwald he’s abusing his privilege (and public resources) to run ‘prayer breakfasts’, at which yet-to-be-convicted war criminals and international fraudsters raise the aspirations of the most dishonest and dull-witted elements of local life (i.e. church leaders, overpaid civil servants and evangelical Christians in general).
As for the nature of the ’family fun’, you can get a taste of that by downloading the Tynwald Day programme at http://www.tynwald.org.im/ . Not, to be honest, the kind of family life to be seen anywhere else on the planet (unless you include, say, a few three-nippled kissing cousins in Alabama).
You can see just how dire it all is by noting that most of the week’s ‘entertainment’ is the Ramsey National Week (see http://www.ramseynationalweek.com/ ), which in turn is underpinning the Manx Flower Festival (see http://www.manxflowerfestival.org/ ), a particularly twee small town church fundraiser.
This isn’t to say families can’t have fun.
For example, you can snoop around all the drabbest or most startling examples of two eejits-and-a-mutt Manx ‘charities’ on the heavily censored fair field ( from which every last example of Manx democracy or independent thinking apart from Mec Vannin/the Manx National Party has now been airbrushed).
Try slipping a copy of, say, Valerie Solanas’s Scum Manifesto into the Mothers Union display of homely tracts, or slip an old Wayne County & the Electric Chairs tape into a blank case and place it next to the tape recorder on the SPUC stall. You’ll be well gone by the time If You Don’t Want To Fuck Me Baby, Baby Fuck Off blasts out at full volume instead of Pat Boone.
Or you can play our family favourite. Walk up to a Flower Festival participant church hand-in-hand in a nice family group, watch the staff salivate……
..and then turn around, run away and do something interesting instead.
Hours of innocent fun to be had – you just have to use your imagination. Which is more than the organisers of these toytown idiotfests ever do.

Horrible history

The sheer cretinism of Isle of Man Department of Education staff beggars belief sometimes. In particular, their willingness to hand vulnerable kids over to fundamentalist pondlife really is a national disgrace.
Take last week, when according to the Isle of Man Courier, nine and ten year olds from local schools attended Lifepaths, a week of evangelical brainwashing at Rushen Abbey co-organised ( in theory) by the Education Department, Manx Heritage and…Scripture Union Ministries Trust.
Supposedly, the Education Department used Manx Heritage to give the kids a historical experience. Fair enough, even though Manx Heritage’s idea of history is (at best) fact-lite plastic patriotism and (more often) little more than tourist-orientated shite.
So why were SUMT there?
Well, again according to the Courier, to give “perspective on being a younger Christian in the 21st century”. In short, to brainwash kids too small and scared to fight back.
This (see http://www.connect2charity.im/charities/charity_92271.html) is the official line on SUMT. And if you check under ‘events’ you’ll be interested to find that:

“Lifepath is an education day for Year 5 pupils, they will have the opportunity to come and explore the concept of faith, prayer and the lifestyle of a Christ follower, through the life of a Cistercian Monk from the 11th Century.
300 children are coming to join SUMT across the week. With a team of 60 volunteers throughout the week each day will be packed with energy, craft activities, songs, drama, laughter, wigs and a whole lot more!”

So, pure Christofascist brainwashing and nothing to do with objective education then. And so again you have to ask, why were the Education Department letting a dangerous bunch of fundie flat-earthers with form for child-molesting loose with hundreds of local kids?
Because, make no mistake, SUMT are not just harmless sad-acts with an imaginary invisible friend.
Amongst last week's volunteers, to my certain knowledge, were people who in 1998 helped ‘persuade’ the victims of a notorious faith-biased kiddy-fiddler not to give evidence in court. Thankfully, though most caved in to the threats and so the full extent of this perv's actions were never revealed in court, one family stood their ground and he was convicted. His friends (including a protege of James Anderton) 'stood by him' as he went to jail. The brave family who stood up to the evangelical scum left the island soon after to avoid retaliations.
Also amongst last week's SUMT staff was a character who has, several times, been reported to the Dept of Education for harassing under age girls with text messages while, in theory, ‘mentoring’ teenagers at a local school.
Needless to say (at a time when the Education Minister was himself of notoriously fundamentalist views) the Department of Education took no action. Even worse, two Education Ministers later and this sad, middle aged loser is still ‘mentoring’ (i.e. pestering teenage girls whose personal contact details he obtains with the help of schoolteachers who share his sad delusions about imaginary friends).
At least SUMT’s tactics aren’t working at my daughter’s primary school, where she tells me their sad efforts to run a lunchtime Bible club are being outwitted.
In an effort to draw at least a few kids in, SUMT volunteers are reduced to offering handfuls of sweets to anyone who’ll enter the room. So, in response the kids have created a new game called ‘Take the Smarties and run’.