Paris, anyone?

[aeolium]

I was referring specifically to the Kosovo situation of course, and absolutely not making any excuses for Milošević or his Bosnian Serb allies. I know this isn't really germane to the ongoing discussion, or maybe it is, but why do you think there are what you see as double standards, including from the usually reliable Chomsky, when talking about Bosnian Muslims as opposed to others of that faith?

I think in the case of Chomsky, as was powerfully suggested in the second article, his reluctance to admit the gravity of the crimes against the Bosniaks was because it might weaken his argument against the justification for NATO intervention to stop the butchery. It's an example of how once an agenda takes over all kinds of distorted perceptions can arise. And I don't mean to single out those on the left here as I think it's just as possible for those on the right (including, ludicrously, Fox News presenters). Once you start to have the view that most events are explicable by a set of common causes (e.g. colonialism/Western imperialism etc) then you can ignore or play down those events that do not seem to fit that pattern. History, and reality, is just so much more complex than that - as I thought Christopher Clarke's book on the origins of the First World War showed.

[posted by Calum] i am afraid that i have no respect for theocratic faith at all and dispute any claim based upon 'faith' in any deity or spirit and certainly strongly object to being asked to respect beliefs and practices that are mere superstitions in my view .... it just boils down to not wanting to hurt feelings and good manners and not much else really until the precepts and practices are urged for general adoption ..... the French concept of 'Laïcité' seems the ideal to me ....

Yes, I largely agree with this. I think the ideas and practices of the more fundamentalist states are for the most part abhorrent, but here I am glad for what is despite some influence of religion a predominantly secular society. I don't think particular groups should be accorded special privileges to alleviate offence so that the right of others to comment on ideas, including religion, should be circumscribed.

[Richard Barrett]

I think in the case of Chomsky, as was powerfully suggested in the second article, his reluctance to admit the gravity of the crimes against the Bosniaks was because it might weaken his argument against the justification for NATO intervention to stop the butchery.

Hmmm... he didn't really need to go in for any such special pleading though, since the NATO intervention (predictably) made the butchery worse, not that this was probably the intention, which no doubt had more to do with gaining a military foothold in the region and completing the fragmentation of the former Yugoslavia.

[french frank]

since the NATO intervention (predictably) made the butchery worse, not that this was probably the intention, which no doubt had more to do with [ ... ] completing the fragmentation of the former Yugoslavia.

What are you saying was the point of 'completing the fragmentation' of Yugoslavia?

[jean]

If that was our our purpose, we'd have got involved much earlier, surely?

[Richard Barrett]

What are you saying was the point of 'completing the fragmentation' of Yugoslavia?

This article is quite useful on the subject and on the complexity of internal and external pressures on the Yugoslav federation after Tito's death. What is clear is that Bosnia and Kosovo now contain an extensive US military presence as part of the NATO strategy of surrounding Russia militarily (as we see also in Ukraine), which would have probably have been more difficult to achieve had the federation remained intact.

[french frank]

This article is quite useful on the subject and on the complexity of internal and external pressures on the Yugoslav federation after Tito's death. What is clear is that Bosnia and Kosovo now contain an extensive US military presence as part of the NATO strategy of surrounding Russia militarily (as we see also in Ukraine), which would have probably have been more difficult to achieve had the federation remained intact.

Thanks. Will read tomorrow.

[aeolium]

Hmmm... he didn't really need to go in for any such special pleading though, since the NATO intervention (predictably) made the butchery worse, not that this was probably the intention, which no doubt had more to do with gaining a military foothold in the region and completing the fragmentation of the former Yugoslavia.

That sounds like the same old Chomskian agenda to me. Presumably you would have preferred the hellish suffering of the Bosnian Muslims - so unequally matched against the Army of Republika Srpska who were logistically supported by the JNA - to continue without any intervention. Yugoslavia had already fragmented with the secession of Slovenia and Croatia, and the independent referendum of Bosnia-Herzegovina. How should they have tolerated continuing in a federation dominated by the Serbs under the nationalist Milosevic? It was only the intervention that eventually stopped the bloodshed.

[Richard Barrett]

Presumably you would have preferred the hellish suffering of the Bosnian Muslims

You presume wrong, obviously. But of course these "interventions" only take place when the intervener has something to gain from them, and there have been plenty of situations in the world as bad or worse than what happened in Bosnia which have drawn no intervention, or (as in the case of the sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s) have been caused by intervention.

It was not the intervention that eventually brought an end to Milošević's rule but a massive uprising within Serbia in October 2000 after a crude attempt at election-rigging.

[jayne lee wilson]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/13/traumas-france-ukraine-european-reawakening

[P. G. Tipps]

i am afraid that i have no respect for theocratic faith at all and dispute any claim based upon 'faith' in any deity or spirit and certainly strongly object to being asked to respect beliefs and practices that are mere superstitions in my view .... it just boils down to not wanting to hurt feelings and good manners and not much else really until the precepts and practices are urged for general adoption ..... the French concept of 'Laïcité' seems the ideal to me ....

Isn't that just a tweeny-weeny bit arrogant and intolerant?

We could all maintain we 'have no respect' for views we find silly or, in truth, probably fail to understand.

If we fail to 'respect' the views of others, especially when those views are held by billions throughout the world, what makes us think our own views are somehow entitled to the 'respect' of others?

[Pabmusic]

Isn't that just a tweeny-weeny bit arrogant and intolerant?

We could all maintain we 'have no respect' for views we find silly or, in truth, probably fail to understand.

If we fail to 'respect' the views of others, especially when those views are held by billions throughout the world, what makes us think our own views are somehow entitled to the 'respect' of others?

'Respect' is a meaningless word. What does it mean to say that I 'respect' your point of view? That I acknowledge you have it? I suppose so, but where does that get us? "I respect X's support of Manchester Utd." hardly implies that I won't criticise - even lampoon - Man. Utd. if the circumstances call for it, since I don't share X's view. Y is a Ukip supporter; I'm not. Do I refrain from criticising or mocking Ukip because of that? No I don't. Am I arrogant or intolerant because of this?

Douglas Adams summed it up better than I can in a (wholly impromptu, but fortunately recorded) speech in Cambridge:

Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes.

Religion doesn't seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That's an idea we're so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it's kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? — because you're not!' If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it, but on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday', you say, 'Fine, I respect that'.

The odd thing is, even as I am saying that I am thinking 'Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?' but I wouldn't have thought 'Maybe there's somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics' when I was making the other points. I just think 'Fine, we have different opinions'. But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody's (I'm going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say 'No, we don't attack that; that's an irrational belief but no, we respect it'.

It's rather like, if you think back in terms of animal evolution, an animal that's grown an incredible carapace around it, such as a tortoise—that's a great survival strategy because nothing can get through it; or maybe like a poisonous fish that nothing will come close to, which therefore thrives by keeping away any challenges to what it is it is. In the case of an idea, if we think 'Here is an idea that is protected by holiness or sanctity', what does it mean? Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows, but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe, no, that's holy? What does that mean? Why do we ring-fence that for any other reason other than that we've just got used to doing so? There's no other reason at all, it's just one of those things that crept into being and once that loop gets going it's very, very powerful. So, we are used to not challenging religious ideas but it's very interesting how much of a furore Richard [Dawkins] creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you're not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be.

[Richard Barrett]

when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be.

Well, the irrational ideas of religion are not open for discussion within a given belief system, and since its adherents believe it (irrationally) to be true rather than (as in science) hypothetical, that closedness easily spreads outwards to be applied to people outside the system. It's a social phenomenon which has evolved over the entire history and prehistory of humanity, and it has particular relevance tody because of the huge developmental asymmetry between different societies.

On the other hand we can bear in mind that Isaac Newton was a heretical Unitarian who believed in alchemy, and also that in what in Europe is called the Middle Ages the achievements of Muslim thinkers in mathematics and other sciences were leading the world. So it's not just a simple question of scientific objectivity versus superstition.

[Pabmusic]

Well, the irrational ideas of religion are not open for discussion within a given belief system, and since its adherents believe it (irrationally) to be true rather than (as in science) hypothetical, that closedness easily spreads outwards to be applied to people outside the system. It's a social phenomenon which has evolved over the entire history and prehistory of humanity, and it has particular relevance tody because of the huge developmental asymmetry between different societies.

On the other hand we can bear in mind that Isaac Newton was a heretical Unitarian who believed in alchemy, and also that in what in Europe is called the Middle Ages the achievements of Muslim thinkers in mathematics and other sciences were leading the world. So it's not just a simple question of scientific objectivity versus superstition.

I didn't say it was. But although Newton did indeed believe in alchemy and other 'superstitious' things, it doesn't make them true because the (arguably) greatest scientist believed them. Newton got many things wrong (the nature of gravity for one) but many things right. And in any case, why should that stop us from pointing out that belief in alchemy was unfounded?

I don't think what you say undermines Douglas Adams' (or my) point.

[Richard Barrett]

I don't think what you say undermines Douglas Adams' (or my) point.

I wasn't trying to undermine them and I don't know how you get the idea I was trying to do that. I thought I was adding to the discussion.

Of course when you say Newton got "many things right" you ought to add "to the best of our current knowledge"! and we still don't know what the "nature of gravity" is!!!

[teamsaint]

A pity that the Guardian article fails to mentions the erosion of freedoms that the politicians have been carrying out under the name of the war on terror.

Teresa May's statement should have us worried, but it seems to have got lost in the public outpourings, which I suppose is what the politicians want.

The politicians will never change things without being kicked by the people, when they have finally taken enough **** from all those with an interest in conflict. Northern Ireland comes to mind.