A Private Symbol

 

                                  A Private Symbol

 

The Australian Aboriginal flag is actually copy-righted by an individual although it is recognized as a national flag.

It was created in 1971 by an artist named Harold Thomas and went onto to become culturally accepted as the flag of the Aboriginal people. And then as above, went onto being proclaimed a national flag by the government.

Unfortunately, since then, Harold Thomas has licensed the flag to various private agencies. One of the licenses was exclusive to a clothing label, which now means that no other Aboriginal business can print clothes with the flag on it without paying royalties. (Sitting around 20%) A lot of Aboriginals feel dismay at the current situation of the licensing.

Sunday/Taum

A NYT article about the Taum children was published last year. It is an account, through the memories of one of the children, of what happened there in the early 1900s. It will come up again because it is a terrible story and the Church, which was involved, has had new horrible stories about children.

Taub is a large community in Galway and was the site of what was originally a workhouse which became a home for unwed mothers and a storehouse for their children. A lot of kids came through there. A 796 graves of children are there as well. 

"The Tuam home was not alone. Children born out of wedlock during this period were nearly four times more likely to die than “legitimate” children, with those in institutions at particular risk. The reasons may be many — poor prenatal care, insufficient government funding, little or no training of staff – but this is certain: It was no secret.

In 1934, the Irish parliament was informed of the inordinate number of deaths among this group of children. “One must come to the conclusion that they are not looked after with the same care and attention as that given to ordinary children,” a public health official said.

Thirty died in the Tuam home that year.

In 1938, it was 26. In 1940, 34. In 1944, 40." (nyt)

That is to say these children were not actively killed, they were just not cared for as much. And the nuns who ran the place were responsible. But they were not alone.

These children had mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts. The government knew. So did the Church. Thousands and thousands of adults knew.

"Taum" comes from a Latin word meaning "Burial mound."

Shades of Biopreparat

One of the beauties of the rising world of communications is that anyone can say just about anything. You might think a thoughtful, filtering agency would make things better but, think again.

A recent publication in a scientific journal showed the process and fruits of a scientist's curiosity. Specifically the scientist was interested in smallpox, the famous man-killer laid low by man's scientific curiosity and responsibility. This curious scientist wondered if he could build a smallpox virus that was immunologically new, unhindered by current immunologic developments both natural and pharmacological. You will be pleased to learn he was successful. Not only did he develop a new strain of smallpox, he proudly published how he did it.

Neither the scientist nor the scientific journal thought such a thing unreasonable.

Shades of Biopreparat; these terrible things can happen even without bad intent.

No [...fill in blank...], No Peace

The leader of the U.K.'s Green Party, Natalie Bennett, has said that her party is "open" to the possibility of three-way (or more-way) marriages. 

Opiates change the neurological pathways forever. Consequently some feel that, having a biologic drive for opiates is metabolically driven and hence a variant of illness, no more a crime than is diabetes.

Research shows that some rodents, when crowded, become violent and vicious. Some think this means that congested cities cause crime by their very nature and the individual is merely an inadvertent criminal product.

Freud said that every child was born with sexual lust for one parent, homicidal hatred of the other. Innately.

 

Any number of these ideas may be insightful or totally nuts but they all raise an important question: Responsibility and how the society views it. What is normal behavior, what is an unacceptable outlier? What can society reasonably ask of people? Who should be punished? What acts have environmental nuances? When does circumstance trump action. Where is motive trivial? Do we hold the grasshopper responsible for the behavior of the locust?

 

Sowell raised this question recently about the "Non-judgmental subsidies of counterproductive lifestyles" where the government underwrites people regardless of their behavior. "You cannot exempt people...from the requirements of civilization — including work, behavioral standards and personal responsibility — without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large. "

Is that observation true and, if so, who will bell that cat?

When the Bell Tolls for No One

A new program has appeared in American schools whose purpose seems to be teaching objectivity. While this may be a noble goal it is focused on a peculiar event: 911. The gist of the particular course episode seems to be to show some understanding of the 911 terrorists and their mindset. One of the sections raises the question of how the Americans are perceived internationally and how American policies might engender antagonism in other nations. This is an effort to make the 911 atrocity understandable.

This is very dangerous ground.

Open-mindedness. Parallax. Seeing things in context. It all sounds commendable. For years it has been used to explain differences among peoples, particularly differences in the success of cultures. But seeing the better side of atrocity is no virtue. Strangely, seeing an action as the product of many fused factors, usually social and economic, never seems to include elements of immorality, savagery or evil.

Should we really argue that the strains of World War 1, an unfair Treaty of Versailles and inflation led to the Holocaust?

Konrad Lorenz and Nagasaki

Today is the anniversary of the attack on Nagasaki. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed and maimed. Others suffered immediate and long-term effects of radiation.

It is curious that no one remembers the pilot's name. It was Maj. Charles Sweeney. This event changed the world--more than Kant or Patton or Booth did--yet somehow the complexities and the distances create a cloudy barrier as if no individual was really involved.

On the other hand it is doubtful that most under the age of twenty-five have ever heard of the attack on Nagasaki so maybe, like all great and riveting events, it is just metabolized by time.

Serious Government

One reason that the government contribution to GDP can not be examined is because of the remarkable warmth the "G" creates in the cold GDP = C+I+G+X equation. Government, as opposed to the rapacious and self-centered private sector, has good motives, an evenhanded outlook that treats all citizens equally and does things for the betterment of all that may not be economically advantageous.

How could we evaluate the economic value of what government does? What is the economic value of the building of a school? Or a road? There certainly seem to be some social value to all but there is also some social value to a church social; should they be underwritten? It seems reasonable that an educated populous is more economically valuable that an uneducated one, it seems that roads would encourage easier and faster economic activity than cow paths but how exactly are those advantages quantified? Should the government build hospitals, which seem to have social value? How about libraries? Libraries have a lot of social value; should we build them? If so, how many? Is it possible to build too many libraries? How should we analyze the right number of libraries? And how to we evaluate a successful road or school?


But even if we accept as true that the government "has good motives, an evenhanded outlook that treats all citizens equally and does things for the betterment of all that may not be economically advantageous" that does not excuse the government from honest and clear self assessment. Modern surgeons have a regular monthly or bimonthly self assessment called M&M, Mortality and Morbidity. It is a conference attended by the hospital surgeons where the recent surgical errors, misjudgments and bad results are discussed. The discussion, often among friends, is brutal. Cases are dissected like cadavers, thinking processes are probed, behavior and decision-making are laid bare. There is never any animosity; the truth and improvement guided by the truth are the only objectives.

The General Accounting Office spoke before a congressional committee a few years ago and said that they estimated 7% of federal programs were lost to graft before they were implemented. Nobody blinked. Very few businesses in the private world could afford that kind of loss because they are serious. The physicians in M&M conference hear every word of the discussion because they are serious. What makes people serious is risk, the risk of loss or failure or death--risk the involved people are responsible for. Improvements in government will certainly come from visionaries and philosophers, but up until now, such visionaries have been few and most of them have been murderous.

Making governmental personal responsible for planning their projects, defending them, and analyzing their social and financial success or failure would be a refreshing start in developing governmental programs that create value. That's what everybody else does.

The Black Hole of Bad Manners

This New York mosque controversy is not a circus, it is just another distracting and misleading tempest looking for an accommodating teapot. Anyone can build a building anywhere as long as it conforms to local regulations, is not in an area of eminent domain and conforms with the financial interests of politicians of import. If the mosque doesn't violate any of these restrictions, no one will have a logical objection.

And that is the point: The objections are not logical--but they are heartfelt and, somewhat, understandable. The Islamic movement in the U.S. has willingly joined what has up until now been the underclass' monopoly: Taking advantage of America's strange eagerness to reward bad social behavior. In 1999 two Muslim students on an American West flight were thrown off after wandering the plane cabin, refusing to respond to flight attendants, talking to passengers in ominous ways and trying twice to get into the cockpit. On Nov. 20, 2006 the six "flying imams" on a US Air flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix terrorized a passenger cabin by wandering the cabin, refusing to sit in assigned seats, speaking loudly in Arabic and voicing loud support for bin Laden and hatred for President Bush. They, too, were sent off the plane. Both these groups sued in court and got money.

I doubt any of these acts qualify as felonies or even misdemeanors but they are certainly obnoxious, antisocial and malevolent. Mutual concessions are mandatory in the civilized social world and pointed disdain for the comfort of others living responsibly under the social contract is a bit hard to take sometimes. While these people are only annoying and the problems minor, there is a larger point at stake. Societies--especially democracies--need a feeling of commonality of purpose. Diversity brings spice to the table but substance is always individual. People and groups with their black hole self importance will always ignore the common good. This mosque mosquito is just another such square religious/ethnic peg in the social round hole. And the opposition to it is little more than incoherent anger at sadistic jerks.

This mosque foolishness is a real opportunity. The social contract demands a concern for the common good. Purposeful defiance of the common good must be publicly discouraged, even when that defiance is legal. This country has a long history of confusing narrow personal political goals with how the country should be. Malicious social disruption might be legal but it does not have to be tolerated. This discussion should move away from debate over political and legislative tolerance to the social responsibility debate. It is time to draw some lines.