Thursday, July 31, 2008

A Very Distorted Vision of Humanity

Judith Apter Klinghoffer has an insightful post about a diabolically disingenuous study produced by Vision of Humanity, an Australian NGO. Judith, who is one of the clearest thinkers I know, calls the thing hilarious and I agree that the design of the study and the claim for its validity is laughable but my sense of humor about this travesty is overcome when I consider the damage it does.
In a comment I made to her post I say:
Tyranny- It Always Quickens the Progressive Pulse
Tyrannies always have an eerie kind of menacing quiet to them. When the government is opaque and supplies the statistics there is never any problem that cannot be minimized. Ahmadinejad says that there is no homosexuality in Iran and so the killing of homosexuals does not disturb the peacefulness index. Lets not forget that Progressives like these Australian twits are just the modern form of collectivist ideologues who created the most peaceful "workers paradises" on earth- places where you could starve to death - or disappear into the Gulag, concentration camp or reeducation camp without ever being recorded in such a way as to blemish the peaceful image of the "People's Republic or Soviet Union or Third Reich" in which you live. Leftists always admire tyrannies (from afar, of course) for it. They seem to be saying, "If only we can regain the power again, with all these new rationalizations, we would be much better equipped to denature the human spirit next time around."

One of the prime ironies of the study is that Iran is, according to this very Astigmatic Vision of Humanity, a much more peaceful country than Israel. With that in mind let’s take a look at a few of the scoring points on which Iran that peaceful land of Mullahs, nuclear ambition and Bhurkas did so much better than Israel. Their quoted points are in black and my comments are in red.


Relations with neighbouring countries Let’s see, if you’re Israel, everybody around you hates you and tries to kill you because you’re Jewish- That’s going to hurt your score. If you are Iran, you are the world’s most active sponsor of terror by proxy- you hire train and supply outsiders and your own army officers dressed as civilians to commit murder outside your own borders- none of which hurts your standing as a “peaceful country”.

Level of distrust in other citizens Hmmm, if a guy from a "certain group" grabs a bulldozer and crushes a few of your people that is no reason to be suspicious. Then when another guy from that same group does the same thing it would hurt you Peace Index if you thought that there might be a pattern emerging here… Then again in Iran the only people you have to distrust are the government’s moral police.

Level of disrespect for human rights (Political Terror Scale) It is absolutely unfathomable how it has been possible to formulate an index in which Iran (where religious intolerance is endemic and violent, where slavery is still practiced openly, where women are beaten by officers of the government for wearing western style clothing and where homosexuals are subject to capitol punishment) has a better score on this category than Israel (where all citizens can vote, where religious tolerance is absolute where there are open gay pride parades, Arabs have a better standard of living, are better educated and experience lower infant mortality and all styles of clothing are worn including the hijab)- someone please explain this to me!

Potential for terrorist acts This one is priceless! Iranian trained, controlled and supplied terrorists maraud inside Israel and fire rockets on an hourly basis and these count against Israel not Iran!

Level of violent crime Of course when the Morality Police beat up a woman on the streets of Iran because she isn’t sufficiently covered up this is not considered a violent crime- just the police "keeping the peace" does this make sense?

Military expenditure as a percentage of GDP With Iran, Syria and several other much larger countries dedicated to destroying her, Does it make sense for Israel to cut her defense spending?
Number of armed services personnel per 100,000 people Israel is a tiny country, out numbered (more than 100 to 1) by nations all around her that have sworn to eliminate her do you think she might want to have a higher portion of people ready to fight? Oh, and that doesn’t even take into account the difference between the citizen soldiery and reserve system of Israel and the professional military caste/establishment in the countries that have kept her under siege for sixty years.

Volume of transfers (imports) of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people. Not counting the traffic of weaponry flooding across Iran’s northern borders from the former Soviet Union.

Volume of transfers (exports) of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people Not, of course taking into consideration the massive shipments of arms from China and North Korea that are smuggled and trans-shipped to the Iranian proxy armies in Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza.

Aggregate number of heavy weapons per 100,000 people Why would you need heavy weapons- Oh, maybe because your neighbors are trying to annihilate you… So if you intend to put up a fight you are a “problem child in the community”

Ease of access to small arms and light weapons In all totalitarian societies the first move is to disarm the populace- It cuts down on civil strife for better or worse.

Military capability/sophistication Heaven forbid you should study was to be able to protect your citizens efficiently with the least collateral damage. You’re going to look very un-peaceful.

That’s just a few of them- But you get the picture. The whole thing reminds me of my posts on the battered woman syndrome- Making it look like Israel brings it on herself. Then you punch her in the nose and yell at her for bleed ing on the rug. There it is a Vision of Humanity that only a Progressive could love.

Great name for a Progressive NGO By the way- They Love Humanity its People they Hate.

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