Mark Humphrys (politics)

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Dec 2024 entries
Nov 2024 entries

Politics - The World






 


Liberal democracy everywhere.
End tyranny everywhere.


My world view

Political freedom in the world

Religious freedom

Sexual freedom

Press freedom

Tyrants' embassies in Ireland

Genocide and War crimes

Human rights groups

How to end war and famine

World bodies

The unfree world









The World



My world view

My world view can be summarised by the following:



1. Western values are the best

I believe in the western Enlightenment model of free speech, human rights, democracy and capitalism. These ideas are universal, and they will work for every country that adopts them. Every country in the world should adopt these ideas. They will be much freer, much happier, and incidentally much richer, if they do.

If the whole world adopts these ideas it will mean the end of war forever. This isn't an opinion. This is statistical fact.

My world view might be shocking if you were brought up in the polite left-liberal consensus in Europe. My view is that there is something basically wrong with the non-westernised world. My view is that humanity has discovered the correct way to live - the so-called western way - and any country in the world that doesn't adopt it is simply backward. Other races aren't backward. Other cultures are. Western values - reason, science, democracy, free speech, freedom of religion, free press, a secular state, private property, free enterprise, and so on - are not the property of one racial group (as America itself shows). They belong to all races, and these values should be adopted by the whole world.




2. We must defend the West (and all free countries)

My world view can be summed up by Freedom House's list of free and unfree countries. Freedom House divides the world into "Free", "Partly Free" and "Not Free". Accepting that one could debate indefinitely where to draw the lines, Freedom House's division does express a basic truth about the world. About 2 billion people in the world live in unfree countries, and every civilized person must hope for their liberation.

For me, an ethical foreign policy would be to be allies (including formal military allies) of the countries in the "Free" category, to be neutral about the countries in the "Partly Free" category, and to be formally hostile to the regimes in the "Not Free" category. If you think that sounds reasonable, then why don't you read what countries are in each category, and then you will realise how skewed our foreign policy currently is.

I regard every regime in the "Not Free" category as invalid and illegitimate. These regimes have no right to exist and should be replaced by free democracies. I do not recognise as valid any vote in which these regimes participated - such as UN resolutions, UN world conferences, or Arab League meetings.




Objection - Ranking countries

Is it simplistic to rank countries, as Freedom House does?

I prefer Freedom House to other human rights groups such as Amnesty International since the other groups refuse to rank countries. They refuse to say that such a thing as a "free world" exists - that, for example, the Netherlands is more free than Saudi Arabia. Instead, they just list criticisms of each country. But since every country can be criticised about something, why should one take, say, criticisms of Sudan, China or North Korea seriously. After all, Britain and France can be criticised too.

So yes, Amnesty and the others do important work, but they should have the courage to say that there is such a thing as the free world and it is not perfect but it is better than the unfree world.




Does "the free world" exist?
Is that a valid term? Or just Western Cold War propaganda?
Luckily there is an experiment that we can do to find out!


  

Political freedom in the world



Trends in world freedom, 1946-2007.
Shows the rise and fall of communism.
From the Polity Project at the Center for Systemic Peace.
Red = Autocracy.
Black = "Anocracy" (a state with weak or non-existent central authority).
Blue = Democracy.





Ranking of world freedom - Freedom House

Freedom House is my preferred source of human rights country reports. Their world map of freedom clearly shows the unfree world - communism, Islam, and plain old-fashioned dictatorships in Africa.




Map of world freedom 2023, based on rankings of Freedom House.
Green - "Free".
Yellow - "Partly Free".
Purple - "Not Free".



The worst countries in the world, 2014.
If protest in the West was logical, almost all of it should be against these regimes - with only a tiny fraction of protest energy left over to protest against free countries like the US and Israel.






Ranking of world freedom - The Economist

The Economist has a ranking of world freedom. It is not much different to Freedom House's ranking.




The Democracy Index, 2022, from The Economist.
Green - full or flawed democracies.
Yellow and Orange - Hybrid regimes.
Red and Black - Authoritarian regimes.






Useless rankings

  

Useless gender rankings



Religious freedom

As an atheist, I stand with religious people everywhere who are not free to practice their religion. I stand with atheists who are not free also.

Most of the religious intolerance in the world is in Islamic states and communist states.


  


Persecution of atheists



There are 7 nations where atheism is punishable by death: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Mauritania, the Maldives.
All 7 establish Islam as the state religion.
Pat Condell says: "Seven barbaric crapholes where the state can execute you for being atheist. Can anyone guess the religion?"
From here.




Persecution of Christians

All over the Islamic world, the communist world, and the third world, Christians are oppressed and killed for their beliefs. Christians are probably the most persecuted religious group in the world today.


  


Persecution of Muslims

Islam is one of the main oppressors of religious freedom today and throughout history. So people can be sceptical about claims that Muslims are oppressed, especially given the many lies about this topic (e.g. claims that Israel "oppresses" Muslims).

However, oppressors come in many forms, and there are many times throughout history and today when innocent Muslims have been persecuted for their faith.



Sexual freedom

Tolerance of homosexuality is a good litmus test of how other sexual freedoms are tolerated (contraception, sex outside marriage, pornography).



Countries that jail or execute gays.
Red: Death penalty.
Orange: Jail for over 10 years.
Yellow: Jail for under 10 years.




Press freedom



Press freedom rankings in the Middle East according to Freedom House 2012 report.
Israel is the only country in the region with a free press.





Useless ranking - RSF

Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) ranks countries by press freedom. But their ranking is very strange, and seems to reflect left-wing politics rather than the actual state of press freedom.


Tyrants' embassies in Ireland



Protest at Iranian Embassy, Dublin, Feb 2011.
From here.



The Rectory of St. Philip and St. James Church, Mount Merrion Avenue, Dublin, in the 1887 to 1913 period, before it was defiled by the tyranny of Iran.
The Rectory is now the Iranian Embassy.
Thom's Directory of Dublin shows it for at least 1901 to 1945 as the home of the Rector of St. Philip and St. James Church.
It is now called "Hollybrook", and is the Embassy of a regime that persecutes Christians. Hopefully these defilers will be expelled from it soon.
Wouldn't it be lovely if it became the Rectory again?
See also Google street view.





Protesters at the Russian Embassy in Dublin after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
The Russian Embassy was over the course of many protests attacked with paint, and lots of graffiti, and someone drove a truck at the gates.
While I cannot support attacks like that, it is refreshing to see Ireland angry with the embassy of a dictatorship for once, rather than the norm my whole life, which is anger at the embassies of three democracies (US, UK, Israel). More anger at the right targets, please.


  

Genocide and War crimes

For me, the most important issue in all future world politics is the need to prevent genocide and mass murder by dictators. The only real, long-term solution to this is to end all dictatorships.





Sovereignty




Rudolph J. Rummel

Rudolph J. Rummel has done some of the most exhaustive statistics of history's genocide and state mass murder. He has come to a simple, but totally unappreciated, point, that, I believe, is now the central point of world politics.

Democracy brings peace, life and prosperity. A powerful state brings war, genocide, death, poverty and famine. It's not an opinion. It's statistical fact. Reading these statistics should innoculate you against all philosophies (e.g. socialism) that demand a powerful state.












The top killers of the 20th century (individuals).
From Rudolph J. Rummel.



The 20 worst ever human slaughters, adjusted for world population size.
See interactive version (with stats) at New Scientist.
Estimates that Genghis Khan killed 40 million in 13th century (equivalent to killing 777 million today).



 

 




Politics      Religion      Since 1995.      New 250 G VPS server.


Banned in Iran: This site is banned in Iran.

Blocked on Twitter by the regressive left and Islamists: I love debate. I love ideas. But the Western left and their friends the Islamic right do not return the favour. Their response to opposing ideas, whether expressed politely or robustly, is often to block. See Who blocks me on Twitter.

I like debate. But I do have rules. See Who I block on Twitter.

Twitter is broken, 2016 to 2022: I am on Twitter at markhumphrys. Twitter was a great place for debate before 2016. You could meet everyone in the world, and argue about ideas. Starting in 2016, Twitter became increasingly broken. It became full of reporting and bans and censorship. In 2019, Twitter even started shadowbanning me for no reason that was ever explained, or could be appealed. By 2022, everyone was looking for a better place to debate.

Twitter is saved, 2022: In 2022 Elon Musk bought Twitter and started to end the censorship. It looks great so far. Twitter seems to be saved.

Campaigns to silence me: I now have no less than two entries on the Banned List at Academics for Academic Freedom. This is a list of "individuals who were banned from speaking at universities in the UK and Ireland, or faced campaigns to silence them, or sack them for their views." The two campaigns to silence me were the BLM protests (unsuccessful) and the Israel debate (partially successful, in that it drove the debate off campus).