Just to let my readers know, I will be writing a guest post on Connor Woodman's blog, Manufacturing Hegemony. The article will be titled the "The Anti-Science Left" and will focus on the tendency of some on the Left to refuse to accept or understand certain scientific ideas for ideological reasons, with specific emphasis on GM crops.
Connor will in turn be writing a guest post here on, I believe, the situation in West Papua, about which my knowledge is seriously lacking, so this will hopefully be enlightening for me and for my readers. Connor writes about foreign policy, mainly, and his posts are well written and researched so you should definitely check out his blog.
We're hoping to expand our readerships (though at ~600 views I'm trailing behind Comrade Woodman) so, to anyone directed over here from Manufacturing Hegemony, welcome and I hope you check out the rest of the blog!
A friend recently asked what YouTube videos / websites I was using to inform my views and get news; this prompted me to put together this list of resources for both my views on atheism/scepticism and my political ideas. If you are looking for things to read, listen to or watch to further indoctrinate yourself into my viewpoint then here is my officially approved list of resources:
Podcasts:
As mentioned in a prior post reading Marx's Capital has been helpful for me in terms of political understanding an I will restate the recommendation here: read it with David Harvey's lectures.
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is a great weekly podcast, especially for allowing any of my fellow weak-minded humanities students to keep up with scepticism and developments in scientific thought and technology. Seriously though, understanding science is vitally important for avoiding a coterie of irrational beliefs - anti-GM environmentalists for example, ought to take note of where the scientific consensus is on the issue.
Atheism-wise, The Atheist Experience can be entertaining; and, The Thinking Atheist is good for a whole variety of social, political and scientific issues surrounding religion and non-belief. Godless Bitches is also excellent - especially for keeping abreast of developments in reproductive rights and other feminist issues from an atheistic standpoint.
Websites:
Libcom.org - good for news, also has an excellent library of books, articles and pamphlets.
Reddit is your friend, trust me, - acts as a kind of aggregate news feed as well which does a pretty good job of moving the most important content to the front page - also good for community - if you have a question about a political ideology then there's unfailingly a subreddit to meet that need - r/anarchism, r/cooperatives, r/anarchismpdfs and r/libertariansocialism are good places to start if you're looking for an insight into left-libertarianism.
Noam Chomsky is probably the best person to articulate and elucidate any number of issues - the main two being US foreign policy and libertarian socialism - http://www.chomsky.info/index.htm is a good website, which aggregates a lot of his essays, books and lectures.
YouTubers:
The Young Turks is my main source of US political news; they are much better than any mainstream sources (CNN, MSNBC etc) and help to elucidate, to those who haven't worked it out yet, the decisive role of moneyed interests in US politics.
Pamphlets and books:
The Spirit Level - explains the societal benefits of economic equality.
Abundance: Why the Future Is Better Than You Think - vital reading for everyone - especially those who have been demoralised by those who try to claim that the world is just getting worse and worse.
Inefficiency of Capitalism - provides a practical critique of free markets from the perspective of efficiency rather tan morality or political values
Chavs: The Demonisation Of The Working Class - read it, see what Thatcher did to us, how the media creates stereotypes and never use the "c" word again!
Hope this has been helpful to someone - obviously the list is not exhaustive and I don't endorse everything that emanates from the
Uruguay just passed marriage equality, the tide appears to have turned; if even in traditionally conservative, Catholic South America progress can be made on this issue then we are clearly getting somewhere (although bear in mind that Uruguay is considered the most secular country in South America with only 45% of the country identifying as Catholic).
In the USA the question is played as a civil rights issue while in Britain a centre-right PM advocates gay marriage as a conservative cause, much to the chagrin of the reactionary right of his party.
This post will cover a number of areas and try to provide an overview of the issues around marriage equality:
The Supreme Court cases - I will point in the direction of resources that explain the legal issues better than I could ever hope to.
A look at changing attitudes in the US - why have the polls shifted? Are conservatives moving away from opposing equality?
Examine the libertarian* argument against gay marriage - should the state be in the relationship business at all?
The Cases
There are two cases before the US Supreme - one involves the "Defence Of Marriage Act" (DOMA) and centres mainly on the right of the federal government to refuse to recognise state laws; the second is about the constitutionality of California's "Proposition 8", a ballot initiative which sought to "ban" same sex marriages in that state.
The Christian Right still exists, of course, and its as insane as ever - the Family Research Council** and others like them continue to churn out hideously offensive sound-bites for Right Wing Watch to chronicle - like this, this and this. Increasingly the country is beginning to see these people as what they are - trolls.
However, the recent statements by Bill O'Reilly explain something of the shift - the gay rights activists have successfully made it into an issue of fairness and rights - hence the prominence of the term "marriage equality" - as O'Reilly puts it, their case has been: "we're Americans, we just want to be treated like everyone else".
Views have changed hugely in the last decade - Pew polling suggests that in 2003 58% of Americans opposed gay marriage and 33% supported it - today 49% support equality while 44% still oppose it. The poll suggests that it is mostly the more secular, open-minded, "millennials" that have made the difference.
The Libertarian Argument - Get Government Out Of The Marriage Business!
The anti-gay marriage conservatives, it appears, are fighting a losing battle. Now, self-proclaimed "libertarians" are coming out of the woodwork, putting out a message summed up by the above picture - they argue that human relationships flourish best outside of the purview of the state, that human sexuality and social relations should not be subject to law and regulation. Reasonable, one may think, but there are problems.
One is tempted to wonder, how much of this new found libertarianism is a face-saving exercise, a post hoc rationalisation for holding a bigoted position, but perhaps that is somewhat unfair. A more relevant critique is that this argument is a distraction, a red herring - abolition of opposite sex marriage is not on the horizon any time soon, equalization of marriage is - the cause of equality should not be impeded by a long term principle - think of the people who oppose affirmative action to correct racial inequalities because they can better be dealt with by no longer "talking about race" and shoving the legacy of segregation under the rug.
Gay marriage is important as an affirmation of society's respect for gay rights, a rejection of traditionalistic bigotries. In any case, the state is "in charge of marriage" because there are complex issues of property, custody of children, inheritance and so on.
This "Libertarian Case Against Gay Marriage", for example, while attempting to appear neutral, is stocked with anti-gay tropes (or well-meaning "positive" stereotypes) and conservative attacks on the Democratic Party and "political correctness". The author talks about gay "propaganda" in schools, trivialises the ideas that gays may face discrimination (after all, they can always hide their sexual orientation) and perpetuates the idea that marriage only exists because of the need to rear children and is thus inapplicable to gays - except, of course, that gay couples can and do raise kids.
His political partisanship comes through here:
But the legislative agenda of the modern gay-rights movement is not meant to be useful to the gay person in the street: it is meant to garner support from heterosexual liberals and others with access to power. It is meant to assure the careers of aspiring gay politicos and boost the fortunes of the left wing of the Democratic Party. The gay-marriage campaign is the culmination of this distancing trend, the reductio ad absurdum of the civil rights paradigm.
By the way, the phrase "homosexual agenda" makes it obvious when a libertarian critique is insincere...
Don't get me wrong - there are libertarians and anarcho-capitalists who want the state out of marriage because they genuinely the state to be corrupting and illegitimate. They suggest that the full gamut of human relations cannot and should not be covered by a legal framework and that in fact the natural fluidity and passion of relationships is harmed by contracts and registrars and divorce lawyers.
Final thoughts
While it is not in question that LGBT rights are vitally important (if you don't think so - get off my blog, bigot), I will leave it up to you decide whether it is the state's business at all - this post has not even addressed the case made by some LGBT activists that gay marriage is either not worth the effort or even represents a step backwards or a co-optation by conservative forces.
Personally, I think the shift on gay marriage across the West is a good thing; it is a barometer of shifting social attitudes that are promising for supporters of social justice and tolerance. Right-Libertarian utopianism is all well and good***, and, in a perfect world, maybe the government wouldn't define what relationships gets social and legal approval; however, in this one, US federal law gives 1,138 benefits, rights and protections specifically to married couples - it is unjustifiable for that package of rights to be denied to a section of the population.
**To anyone new to the US's "culture wars" - "family" in the name of a pressure group is a red flag (and not the good commie type) - it more often than not means a hate group.
***Really, I have no problem with wholesale reduction of state influence in social life - there is absolutely nothing wrong with a good dose of utopianism - as Oscar Wilde put it: "a map of the world without utopia is not worth glancing at".
Sure, we've come a long way since Christians were thrown to the lions in Ancient Rome. Sure, Christianity is now a dominant world religion which in many places is dangerously intertwined with the state. But repression against those who chose to follow Christ still exists, even in the (primarily) Christian West (apparently)...
Britain's Christian population is being oppressed and downtrodden; their church organisations are locked out of influence in the state and denied resources. Society from the PM down is practising a war of "aggressive secularisation" and Christianity is being insulted and blasphemed constantly.
Or at least that's what you'd think if you took seriously the Lord Careys and Anne Widdecombes of this country - incidentally, Lord Carey - when did we elect him to our legislature? Oh, that's right - he's entitled to his position (along with 25 other pious old men) because of his affiliation with the Church of England, the state church - oh sorry, state church? How did they manage that in an age of aggressive secularism and discrimination against Christianity? What about the fact that 33.78% of state schools are faith-based - paid for by our (parents') tax money. Or the fact that the Queen is the also the head of the Church and the "Defender of the Faith". Or that daily collective Christian worship is still a legal requirement in our school system.
So, that editorial, let's see if Lord Carey has a case to make here, shall we? Okay, well, at least he acknowledges that "few in the UK are actually persecuted"; the article goes downhill from there though. Here come all the old anti-gay tropes:
I am very suspicious that behind the plans to change the nature of marriage, which come before the House of Lords soon, there lurks an aggressive secularist and relativist approach towards an institution that has glued society together for time immemorial.
By dividing marriage into religious and civil the Government threatens the church and state link which they purport to support. But they also threaten to empty marriage of its fundamental religious and civic meaning as an institution orientated towards the upbringing of children.
1) Gay marriage doesn't "change the nature of marriage", at least not for straight couples - when was the last time a married couple were harmed by someone else having the right to marry?
2) What has "glued society together" is relationships, people, love - not a particular kind of a particular social contract, families don't require a marriage license to exist.
3) Threatening the "church and state link", emptying marriage of "fundamental religious...meaning" - good, go right ahead!
4) Do I have to hear this one again - "what about the children?" - fine, fertility tests shall be required for marriage licenses, no one can marry if they are infertile, old, celibate, or just unwilling to procreate (a tragic decision for our dangerously underpopulated planet - hang on...) is that how it works? No, it isn't, and besides that - why can't a gay couple be involved in the "upbringing of children" (quick hint - they can!).
Carey then goes on to cite some cases of discrimination that will, he claims, result from the law - all I have to say is that the freedom to be bigoted should exist in public speech, it should not be allowed to impinge on professional conduct or an individual's ability to do their job - if, as a registrar, you refuse to marry a couple that is legally allowed to do so, tough luck.
Right, so marriage equality is the problem here...even Bill O'Reilly gets it, the fundies are on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of justice (skip to 4.45 for the important bit):
Adding to the collective moan of self-pity from a Christian lobby that is rapidly losing its grip, Anne Widdecombe recently produced a "documentary" for the BBC called "Are You Having a Laugh? - Comedy and Christianity" - "documentary" being a generous term for this hour long fit of whining and crying wolf. Her argument was that though there have "always been jokes about Christianity", they have in recent years become more aggressive and nasty; maybe the fact that in previous eras " jokes about the Church would have been met by state repression, up to and including torture and execution, the last British arrest for blasphemy was in 1992.
At least not everyone seems to share her attitude - even the Christians don't agree - one points out that a "mature Christian should have a sense of humour" and Marcus Brigstocke is there to challenge her and inject some lightness into the endeavour - when Widdy says that watching the abuse of a communion wafer is like joking about a recent bereavement, Marcus is quick to ask "how long is the grieving period for Jesus, then".
Her argument was interesting - that mocking of Christians is okay, but not mocking of their dogma - I've always thought of it the other way round - attack ideas, not those who hold them - apparently though, for the devout among us, their faith is more personal than their very person.
At least she is right about one thing - mockery is a weapon in the cultural and intellectual war on religion, and so it should be, though old Widdy seems to find this idea horrifying; apparently assertive Bible-thumping is a-ok but assertive statements of non-belief are not. Christians should be out and proud and proselytising; atheists, back to the sidelines please, bow your heads and pretend you haven't worked out the scam yet.
You have no right not to be offended, grow up and get over it. Oh, and here is an "offensive" and "nasty" comic about Christianity, enjoy ;)
Maybe I don't need to write the drone piece after all - this infographic pretty much says it all.
Anyway, an outline of my views:
US use of drones sets a dangerous precedent - China is already preparing to deploy drones as are other countries
Killing civilians is bad, killing children is even worse
"Anyone of military age in the Middle East" is a bad definition of an enemy combatant
The policy must be illegal under all sorts of international laws
Sovereignty, if we have to use that outdated concept, surely applies to nations other than Europe, Israel and the USA, other nations like, oh I don't know, Pakistan shouldn't be bombed by outside forces. Imagine America accepting such violations from another country - what if Mexico uses drones to kill a drug lord staying in LA, which just happens to kill a whole load of civilians? This is justifiable on national security rationales even stronger than those used by the USA - 9/11 killed 3000 Americans, the Drug War has killed upwards of 50,000 Mexicans.
Connor will in turn be writing a guest post here on, I believe, the situation in West Papua, about which my knowledge is seriously lacking, so this will hopefully be enlightening for me and for my readers. Connor writes about foreign policy, mainly, and his posts are well written and researched so you should definitely check out his blog.
