friday comment

COMMENT

1. I recently took a friend of mine to task for publicly criticising the singer Morrissey's comments on the Chinese people. His criticism was in 2 parts: firstly that he had referred to the Chinese as a "subspecies of humanity" and secondly, that he had chosen to highlight their poor treatment of animals ahead of any condemnation of their record on human rights. For the first part I have some sympathy: these insulting words are scarcely conducive to constructing any meaningful dialogue. For the second, however, I can only add my support. True, the Chinese record on human rights is appalling, but I believe the level of civilisation of any society can be measured by their treatment of dumb animals, and as the Chinese have no laws covering cruelty to animals, they have carte blanche to abuse, torture and ruthlessly exploit their animals with no fear of retribution from the authorities. And that's wrong, in ANY society.

2. Another measure of the level of civilisation in a society might be their treatment of offenders. In America today, specifically in the state of Virginia, they will put to death a woman who arranged the murder of her husband and son (the actual murderers were given life sentences, but avoided the death penalty) Yet this woman's IQ is 72, just 2 points above the threshold for a diagnosis of "mental debility" which would have excluded her from capital punishment. China and the US (with Iran in 3rd place) are the 2 biggest users of this archaic and inhuman form of punishment- what does this say about their claims to being civilised countries? Capital punishment is not deterrence, it is state sponsored vengeance- and that's WRONG.

3. And finally: Stephen Hawking, God bless him, has stated that it is not necessary to introduce the concept of a supreme being to account for the Big Bang. Bad news for God fans everywhere, then. On hearing this, I was reminded of a piece of graffiti I once saw in the London underground:

"God is alive and well and working on a less ambitious project"