Hate Speech

Until recently the following provocative banner was kept on the web site of Sarah Palin, the infamous pro-gun, bigoted extreme right wing US politician.

click to enlarge

"Don't retreat, instead RELOAD!" was Palin's battle-cry, asking voters to do away with Democrat congress persons.(1)

"Today the United States Democrat Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords survived a gunshot to the head after a gunman opened fire at an event she was hosting outside a Tucson, Ariz., grocery store. As of this moment, 6 out of the 18 (or 19) wounded have died, including a 9-year-old girl and a federal judge."(2)

"The problem of hate speech seems to set two fundamental commitments of liberal democracies against each other. While it seems obvious that we should condemn speech that conveys or worse incites hatred on the basis of race, religion, gender or some other shared characteristic, our commitment to freedom of expression seems to ask us to put up with it.

In the United States the courts are applying a guarantee found in a constitutional bill of rights: the American guarantee of 'freedom of speech' found in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Very little escapes the protection of the First Amendment altogether. There are only a few categories that First Amendment law recognises to be 'unprotected' or of very low value. The 'unprotected' categories have traditionally encompassed 'true threats', defamation (though that has since been qualified') and abusive language (or 'fighting words').

The First Amendment exception for 'fighting words' turns on the likelihood of violent response and the exception for 'threats' applies only to 'true threats' and not to 'political hyperbole'.

Hate speech laws have existed in various forms in Australia for well over a decade. Unlike other countries, such as the United States and Canada, they have not faced constitutional hurdles to their existence. The general acceptance of hate speech laws in Australia opens intellectual space for the exploration of a range of interesting questions regarding the laws' operation, the underlying values they pursue and the context within which hate speech is occurring."(3)

In my view hate speech should not be protected if it inflicted violent behaviour, and such restrictions should cover entire spectrum of political and civil organisations such as religious organisations, faith schools, associations, societies, and political parties. Hate speakers should be fully held accountable before Law which should decree sufficient penalties for the damage speakers inflicted upon the society.

References:
(1) Sarah Palin prays for peace and justice; for congresswoman she ordered the assassination of
(2) The shooting of a Congresswoman
(3) Hate Speech and Freedom of Speech in Australia
(4) FDL firedoglake

Spellchecker

It is true that your word-processor's spellchecker does not and cannot improve your English as you'll never learn if you don't make and not humiliated by your mistakes.

But at the same time new technology gives courage to write. Ordinary people would have terrified if they were stuck with an old typewriter.

What technology did remarkably well was to empower people and encourage them to focus on the content and expression by relieving them from checking ruthless grammar and spelling errors (not completely but nearly). And I think this is a good thing. Technology democratised writing.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

My generation grew up with spaghetti westerns. Probably the most popular one was Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

I watched this film for the first time in 70’s. 

The film reaches its climax in finale, an unforgettable duel scene among a trio; Blondie, Tuco and Angel Eyes. 

As I snuggled into my chair, eyes frozen without a twitch, I gazed at the barren landscape, I felt the heat, the tension as if it would last another lifetime before the music stopped and they drew their guns simultaneously. 

At the time every boy in our neighborhood walked and talked like Clint Eastwood,  sometimes with a piece of fake paper cigar between our innocent lips. It was the coolest thing.

Almost forty years later I found a DVD in our local supermarket, thrown into a big basket. I was eleven years old again. I bought it, rushed home and watched.

I was curious how much I would remember. I did not recall most scenes, the faces and plot did not fit exactly.  I could not remember war scenes at all. Perhaps I was drawn too much into Blondie, the aura of his personality hypnotised me.

“There is an experiencing self, who lives in the present and knows the present, is capable of re-living the past, but basically it has only the present. And then there is a remembering self, and the remembering self is the one that keeps score, and maintains the story of our life.” from 2010 TED Talk by Daniel Kahneman “ The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory.”

We are what we remember. The scenes picked by my remembering self survived and gave way to other thoughts, memes and ideas. Dead ends and dull became dead, truly, just like Angel Eyes.

Orhan Pamuk and his oriental melancholia

Turkish author Orhan Pamuk wrote an article in the New York Review of Books named The Fading Dream of Europe.

This is what I posted in response:

Historical events should be evaluated in their circumstantial context in order to understand their true nature and intent, only then we might be able to make a fair judgement about their implications. Pamuk’s article unfortunately lacks that, it is a one-sided, narrow, cynical and grossly melancholic interpretation of history partly influenced by his Orientalist views we are familiar to see in his novels and partly his resentment towards the backlash of an alleged Nationalist plot against his political views.

I don’t agree that Turkish people were called upon to embrace and even imitate a rosy-pink European dream just for the purpose of legitimizing Atatürk’s reforms. Such a limited view demands us to believe that these reforms were hollow imitations, lacking substance and vigor, however nothing can be further than the truth.

Turkish Republic was founded in 1923 on the wrecks of Ottoman Empire and Atatürk’s reforms were derived from the newly born state’s secular constitution. At the centre of these reforms we see Secularism as its core value and a desire to establish an egalitarian society in which women and men have equal rights including the right to vote and the right for being elected as representatives of the state.

It didn't matter whether the Secularism was born in Europe or elsewhere. Whereas the circumstances in which it was born and its context mattered for Atatürk.

Secularism is a product of the Age of Enlightenment in which reason was advocated as the primary source of legitimacy and authority. At its core was a critical questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals, and a strong reliance in rationality and science.

Enlightenment had been a natural movement evolved in the dialectical context of European history, it didn’t drop from the sky like a meteoroid. You can not point to a single historical event as its sole source. French Revolution happened to be its most dramatic and well know realization.

The central issue Pamuk is circumventing is the clash of Islam and Secularism we see today. Islam contradicts Enlightenment values by proposing a political, social and judicial ideology of its own relying solely on divine authority as opposed to reason.

To a large extent Muslim migrant populations in Europe while enjoying and taking advantage of freedom and tolerance European democracies provide, don’t show similar levels of tolerance or respect to the values of greater society they live in.

In the name of multiculturalism most Muslims continue to live within enclosed ghettos. Their realisation of truth is determined by Imams who teach them intolerance towards views who oppose or don’t share their absolute divine rhetoric written in the Koran.

Religious rhetoric dictates men use their power to suppress women and undermine their role they could otherwise play in the society. Such gender power imbalance had been centerpiece of Atatürk’s reforms to confront.

Atatürk and liberated women of the secular Turkish Republic

The irony of Liberty is letting intolerance to breed despite not endorsing it. This is the puzzle the West has to solve without undermining core values of Enlightenment.

For the past eight years the Turkish Republic is governed by a pro-Islamic populist political party (AKP) who concealed their true intent behind a ‘Moderate Islam’ mask, slowly but surely marching towards their ultimate goal of establishing an Islamic presidential state. There are strong indications that this is the case. The AKP Government now controls judiciary system, put intellectuals, journalist, and politicians who oppose them in prison for three years without sufficient evidence to prosecute them.

Unfortunately what Pamuk is saying here is not so different to populist and anti-secular rhetoric of AKP.

I advise Mr. Pamuk to return to what he does, writing novels.

Contact Opening Scene Under the Knife

I am reading "Selected Stories of H.G Wells", edited and with an introduction by Ursula K. Le Guin.

The protagonist in the short story "Under the Knife" undergoes a surgery. During the operation he sees himself as being elevated and detached from his body. He then leaves the room, rising up, watching London in bird's eye view, then rapidly flying up over the British Isles, Europe, and so on. He eventually leaves the Earth, crosses the solar system even briefly going through the rings of Saturn as brilliantly depicted by Wells:

":..and then I saw that a bright spot of light, that shone a little to one side of my path, was growing very rapidly larger, and perceived that it was the planet Saturn rushing towards me. Larger and larger it grew, swallowing up the heavens behind it, and hiding every moment a fresh multitude of stars. I perceived its flattened, whirling body, its disc-lite belt, and seven of its satellites. It grew, and grew, till it towered enormous; and then I plunged amid a streaming multitude of clashing stones and dancing dust-particles and gas-eddies, and saw for a moment the mighty triple belt like three concentric arches of moonlight above me, its shadow black on the boiling tumult below.."

When I finished reading the story I couldn't help but think that Wells perhaps became an inspiration to 1997 movie Contact's opening scene (from Carl Sagan's novel of the same name):

Just watch this and make your own mind up:

No wonder they call him, H.G Wells, "The Father of Science Fiction".