Archive for March, 2007
200 Years since the Abolition of Slavery
When a ship carrying hundreds of people was recently turned away from Benin, Africa, officials suspected that the children on board were human slaves. The incident once again brought attention to the problem of slavery. At this moment, millions of men, women, and children—roughly twice the population of Rhode Island—are being held against their will as modern-day slaves.
Sometimes referred to as bonded laborers (because of the debts owed their masters), public perception of modern slavery is often confused with reports of workers in low-wage jobs or inhumane working conditions. However, modern-day slaves differ from these workers because they are actually held in physical bondage (they are shackled, held at gunpoint, etc.).
Modern-day slaves can be found laboring as servants or concubines in Sudan, as child “carpet slaves” in India, or as cane-cutters in Haiti and southern Pakistan, to name but a few instances. According to Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest human rights organization, there are currently over 20 million people in bondage.
This should be the main focus of the event. We should be talking about making it so that in 200 years they can celebrate the bicentennial of abolition of ALL slavery everywhere. We can feel collectively gulity about our slave-owning ancestors, collectively proud of our abolitionist ancestors, but we should be the last generation that can feel guilty about living in a world where it still exists.
“If you demonstrate that someone is wrong, you are now deemed to be silencing him.”
Cherry-pick your results, choose work which is already outdated and discredited, and anything and everything becomes true. The Twin Towers were brought down by controlled explosions; MMR injections cause autism; homeopathy works; black people are less intelligent than white people; species came about through intelligent design. You can find lines of evidence which appear to support all these contentions, and, in most cases, professors who will speak up in their favour. But this does not mean that any of them are correct. You can sustain a belief in these propositions only by ignoring the overwhelming body of contradictory data. To form a balanced, scientific view, you have to consider all the evidence, on both sides of the question.
But for the people who commissioned this film, all that counts is the sensation. Channel 4 has always had a problem with science. No one in its science unit appears to understand the difference between a peer-reviewed scientific paper and a clipping from the Daily Mail. It keeps commissioning people whose claims have been discredited – like Martin Durkin and a certain nutritionist of our acquaintance. But its failure to understand the scientific process just makes the job of whipping up a storm that much easier. The less true a programme is, the greater the controversy.
I’m not sure it’s possible to have too much fun with this
Wikipedia! That abode of knowledge, free for all people to edit and read, committed to providing an encyclopaedic and unbiased point of view!
HA!
As we all know, Wikipedia is anti-conservative, anti-Christian and anti-American. What we need is another encyclopaedia that isn’t stifled by political correctness, liberality or impartialness. An encyclopaedia that doesn’t wimp out and use CE on their date - I present Conservapedia! The encyclopaedia that isn’t afraid to get the truth out.
For example, Unicorns!
‘The existence of unicorns is controversial. Secular opinion is that they are mythical. However, they are referred to in the Bible nine times. Christian apologists have advanced various arguments that the biblical unicorn was not a fantasy animal. ‘
Controversial!
The Entirety of the Descent of Man article really covers the main points:
“Charles Darwin wrote Descent of Man in 1871.
A quote from the work reads:
‘Civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate the savage races throughout the world … The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.’
Many believe the evolutionary ideas have contributed to racism.”
Damn those godless racist evolutionists….will they ever learn?
And now I feel bad, because I was going to mock it because most of the articles read like a 15-year old’s history notebook…but that’s exactly what it is. Conservapedia is at least in part a communal reference point for home-schooled kids. Wikipedia is often too detailed for the notes needed for school kids and I can see how something like this could be helpful. Sure there’s the occasional humorous turn of phrase, like in the Gutenberg article:
‘Some historians claim that the printing press had already been invented in China before Gutenberg, but this is debatable as no one in the West was aware of it.’
But I think we have to let it slide. What’s really worrying is that this is a reference guide with no pretence at being impartial. Its half-school notebook and half-propaganda piece, the Evolution article is completely undeserving of the name, an article on a Hate Crimes Bill states one of the problems with the bill as:
‘ Someone who murders a gay person could get sentenced to life in prison while a person who murders a grandmother coming back from the store with cat food would serve less time.’
…Cat Food? Really? It’s comical, but someone writes it and doesn’t want these children to think any other way. God forbid children encounter anything that might challenge their worldview.
It’s depressing, but is Wikipedia any better? Is there anything to their list of complaints against it? It’d be silly to say there was no bias in Wikipedia but it’s hardly as systematic (and obvious) as Conservapedia. To be fair, the discussion pages show there are people who recognise how ridiculous some of the articles are, but they’re argued down by bullying admin. There probably is room for a Conservapedia that isn’t ridiculous, that really does draw attention to any slight liberal bias in Wikipedia, but it can’t do that while these small minded people run it.
I don’t think I can ever get tired of this site, but I can’t help but feel sorry for the kids who are raised in this little ideological bubble.
