Jon Pike on Ted Honderich is well worth reading. Studying, even.

To begin with, he doesn’t just think that affluent westerners are collectively guilty for their omissions in respect of bad lives. He asserts that this explains and justifies anti-Western hatred…The book is, as I will show, chock full of sloppy arguments and non-sequiturs but this is perhaps the worst, and is the hinge with which Honderich gets from bad lives to terrorism.

That’s an important hinge, I think. It’s a hinge that other people use in other causes, or ’causes.’ There is suffering or deprivation or injustice in X place or situation; some set of people are collectively guilty for their omissions or their ‘complicity’ (remember that word? it’s … Read the rest

Catherine Bennett is amusing.

It is strange, isn’t it, to think that this fine-looking couple, recently seen experiencing spiritual ecstasy in East Grinstead, presumably believe in Scientologist founder Ron L Hubbard’s story of Xenu, the galactic tyrant who froze his victims and stored them in the Earth’s volcanos?

Yeah? I didn’t know that. I don’t keep up with Scientology (too busy keeping up with Feng shui, I guess), and I didn’t know that. The galactic tyrant! Froze his victims! Stored them in earth’s volcanoes. Very cool. Almost as cool as playing football in pyjamas with no goal and no crossbar and no hugging.

If, as Madonna says, she has been ridiculed for professing her beliefs, her best expedient would