The World
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.
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.
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.
- Freedom House
(and site)
- Freedom in the World report
(and site)
- Freedom in the World report 2013
- Freedom in the World report 2012
- Some old graphs:
-
The worst countries
-
Comparison of freedom of countries with their prosperity
(and detailed GDP figures).
-
Comparison of freedom of countries with their prosperity:
shows that political freedom makes you rich.
-
Of the 48 high-income countries,
80 percent of them rank as "Free" on political freedom.
-
At the very top,
20 out of 20 of the top richest countries in the world are "Free".
- Of the "Not Free" countries,
76 percent of them are low-income,
24 percent are middle or high income.
- Of the "Partly Free" countries,
71 percent are low-income,
29 percent are middle or high income.
- Of the "Free" countries,
17 percent are low-income,
83 percent are middle or high income.
- "Free" countries account for 89 percent of the world's wealth.
They are rich because they are free,
not for any other reason.
- There is a clear correlation
between political freedom and prosperity,
just as there is
between economic freedom and prosperity.
Why is the world too stupid to see this? Why don't they
embrace freedom too?
Map of world freedom 2013,
based on rankings of
Freedom House.
Green - "Free".
Yellow - "Partly Free".
Purple - "Not Free".
Ranking of world freedom - The Economist
The Economist's ranking is not much different to Freedom House's ranking.
The Democracy Index, 2011,
from
The Economist.
Green - full or flawed democracies.
Yellow and Orange - Hybrid regimes.
Red - Authoritarian regimes.
From
here.
Ranking of world freedom - Center for Systemic Peace
The trend towards increased world freedom, 1946-2007.
From the
Polity IV Project.
Red = Autocracy.
Black =
"Anocracy"
(a state with weak or non-existent central authority).
Blue = Democracy.
As an
atheist,
I stand completely with religious people everywhere
who are not free to practice their religion.
Most of the religious intolerance in the world
is in Islamic states
and communist states.
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.
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.
Gay rights around the world.
Tolerance of homosexuality gives us a good idea how other
sexual freedoms are tolerated
(such as contraception, pornography,
sex outside marriage).
From here.
|
Homosexuality illegal:
Minimal penalty
Large penalty
Life in prison
Death penalty
|
- Tyrants' embassies in Ireland:
- China:
40 Ailesbury Road,
Ballsbridge,
Dublin 4.
- Russia:
184-186 Orwell Road,
Rathgar,
Dublin 14.
- Egypt:
12 Clyde Road,
Ballsbridge,
Dublin 4.
- Pakistan:
Ailesbury Villa,
1B Ailesbury Road,
Ballsbridge,
Dublin 4.
- Saudi Arabia:
6 and 7 Fitzwilliam Square East, Dublin 2.
- Cuba:
2 Adelaide Court,
Adelaide Road,
Dublin 2.
- Iran:
72 Mount Merrion Ave,
Blackrock, Co.Dublin.
- Palestinian Authority:
10 Mount Merrion Ave,
Blackrock, Co.Dublin.
- These embassies defile my beautiful city.
All these embassies should be shut down,
and the diplomats expelled from Ireland.
Ireland should not have diplomatic relations with these places
until they become free societies.
- These are simply modern versions of:
- World War Two's
Nazi Germany Legation,
58 Northumberland Road, Dublin.
-
The Cold War's
Soviet Union embassy,
184-186 Orwell Road, Rathgar, Dublin 14.
- Ted Leddy
on claims that the Iranian Embassy intimidates Iranians in Ireland:
"the Iranian embassy in Dublin is engaged in spying against Irish and Iranian citizens in this country. The principal objective of this is to make note of which Iranians living here are engaging in anti regime politics. This is reported back to Tehran and the family members of these people are threatened that if their relatives in Ireland don't stop what they are doing, there will be serious consequences."
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?
From OSI.
See also
Google street view.
-
Iranian authorities raid Christian church at Christmas, Dec 2011, and detain everyone in the building, including children
attending Sunday school.
And update.
And this regime is allowed to continue to defile a Christian Rectory in Ireland?
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.
- The arrest of Pinochet, 1998, and
immunity for mass-murderers:
- The reality is that there is no such thing as law in this world,
and there never has been.
Within a sovereign state governments can do anything they like.
Murder, rape, torture and genocide go unpunished as they have always done.
And Pinochet's
arrest is one of the few hopeful signs
that at last there may come into existence
a form of law for this long-suffering planet.
- Sovereignty - the friend of tyrants
-
The Sovereignty Con
by Ralph Peters
rages furiously against the UN and the left's
defence of "sovereignty".
- "Today, claims of territorial sovereignty by dictators and
illegitimate regimes
amount to the biggest con in history.
No
matter how unfairly borders are drawn, no matter how
monstrously tyrants behave toward their populations, no
matter how ruthlessly a strongman seizes power, the world
pretends that
those who hold the reins in the capital city are
entitled to do whatever
they want on their own territory.
The current system is the greatest collective violation of
human rights in our time.
The United States must shatter this
antiquated scam"
- "today's international revolutionaries are on
the political right.
The left wing represents the ancien regime"
- Unfree regimes have no right to exist
and "every government should be
of the people, by the people,
and for the people"
- this sums up the revolution of the right.
-
This sick petition in support of Castro's Cuba
explicitly calls on the world
to "uphold the universal principles of national sovereignty,
respect for territorial integrity
and self-determination".
This is what the left stands for - not human rights.
-
Sovereignty can't protect mass killers
by Robert
Horvath
- "Why can't John Pilger et al
see that human rights are more important
than sovereignty?"
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.
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