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Postmodernism is fundamentally frivolous. Postmodernists routinely condemn racism and intolerance as wrong but then say that there is no such thing as right and wrong. They are clearly not being serious. Either they do not really believe in moral nihilism or they believe that racism cannot be condemned!

Postmodernism is in fact just a tantrum. Post-Soviet reality in particular suits Leftists so badly that their response is to deny that reality exists. That they can be so dishonest, however, simply shows how psychopathic they are.

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21 November, 2009

Obscene British "justice" again

Judge orders mother to hand over son to father he despises -- despite the best interests of the child being supposedly paramount

A judge ordered a mother to hand over her distraught young son to her ex-husband despite admitting it would be 'almost cataclysmic' for the child. The boy is happy living with his mother, is doing well at school and fiercely resists the move, a court heard. The 11-year-old child, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, warned that his father had 'ruined my life' and said he would 'punch and kick' rather than leave his mother's home.

But Lord Justice Wall, a leading family judge, gave the woman less than a week to kiss her son goodbye before he is uprooted. She now faces being without her only child at Christmas. Last night a family friend said: 'It is horrific. He has good friends, he is bright and he loves his school, and now he is going to be taken to live two hours away.' Another friend said: 'I don't know how his mother is coping. 'How can it be right to take a boy away from the mother he loves to live with a father who he doesn't even know?' It is understood that the child does not yet know what lies ahead for him.

The child is expected to be taken to his father early next week and it is unclear when his mother will next see him. Last night the boy's father, who lives in an £800,000 detached stone cottage on the edge of a West Country village, declined to comment. A family member on the father's side said: 'The mother just wouldn't let go of her son and wouldn't let him let go. 'It's a very sad situation. You could say she was possessive. They broke up soon after he was born and there had been problems for a long time. She yes'd and no'd an awful lot and sadly broke promises.

'It's been an extremely distressing time for everyone. 'The father is an excellent man who cares deeply for his son so it has been especially hard for him. 'But in a horrible situation like this we recognise that it is also very difficult for the mother so it has been no good for anyone really.' Under the 1989 Children Act, courts must consider the child's interests above all else.

The mother's barrister told the Court of Appeal in London this week that the boy is adamant he wants nothing more to do with his father - with whom he only lived for a few months after his birth before his parents separated. Jane Hoyal told Lord Justice Wall: 'A move from the happy, settled and stable home he has with his mother would be momentous for this young man. 'There is no dispute that he will be very upset, angry and defiant when this hugely disruptive move is implemented.'

But a child psychiatrist and the boy's own court-appointed guardian were unanimous that he is 'suffering emotional harm' due to his alienation from his father, who lives a two-hour drive away. The boy's move to live with his father, who has remarried, was originally ordered by Judge Bond at Bournemouth Family Court earlier this month. That ruling was 'stayed' pending the mother's bid to overturn the decision at the Appeal Court.

But Lord Justice Wall refused permission to appeal. He said the higher court could only intervene if Judge Bond's decision was 'plainly wrong'. Despite the mother's 'ostensible willingness' for the father to have contact with the son, the boy's 'long-term psychological welfare' demanded he live with his father, he added. The father, said Lord Justice Wall, claimed he had found it impossible to build any sort of relationship with his son while he lived with his mother.

Miss Hoyal said the mother had co-operated with all contact arrangements - and gave her 'unconditional support' to her son having a relationship with his father. She told the court the couple had been engaged in 'almost continuous litigation' throughout the boy's life. She said the importance of the boy's relationship with his father had been elevated above all other factors, including the child's own wishes. She said the boy's father and stepmother would often be away working, leaving the boy to be cared for by a nanny.

But Lord Justice Wall said Judge Bond had made a ' sensible, careful, well thought-out and balanced judgment'. He added: 'I appreciate this will be hard for the mother and will be very hard for the boy.'

SOURCE



Excused Horrors

Last Tuesday, I had the pleasurable task of being Master of Ceremonies for the Atlas Economic Research Foundation dinner in Washington, D.C., that celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Founded in 1981, the Atlas Foundation assists the formation of free market think tanks around the world to spread the ideas of personal liberty, private property rights and limited government. So far, they have been successful in at least 70 countries. Attending the two-day celebration were think-tank representatives from many of these countries, including those from Croatia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, Mozambique, South Korea, Russia and Brazil.

Alan Kors, University of Pennsylvania history professor, gave the evening's keynote address. What he revealed about the dereliction and character weakness of academics, intellectuals, media elites and politicians is by no means complimentary, but worse than that, dangerous. Professor Kors said that over the years, he has frequently asked students how many deaths were caused by Joseph Stalin and Mao Tsetung and their successors. Routinely, they gave numbers in the thousands. Kors says that's equivalent to saying the Nazis are responsible for the deaths of just a few hundred Jews. But here's the record: Nazis were responsible for the deaths of 20 million of their own people and those in nations they conquered. Between 1917 and 1983, Stalin and his successors murdered, or were otherwise responsible for the deaths of, 62 million of their own people. Between 1949 and 1987, Mao Tsetung and his successors were responsible for the deaths of 76 million Chinese.

Professor Kors asks why are the horrors of Nazism so well known and widely condemned, but not those of socialism and communism? For decades after World War II, people have hunted down and sought punishment for Nazi murderers. How much hunting down and seeking punishment for Stalinist and Maoist murderers? In Europe, especially Germany, hoisting the swastika-emblazoned Nazi flag is a crime. It's acceptable to hoist and march under a flag emblazoned with the former USSR's hammer and sickle. Even in the U.S., it's acceptable to praise mass murderers, as Anita Dunn, President Obama's communications director, did in a commencement address for St. Andrews Episcopal High School at Washington National Cathedral where she said Mao Tsetung was one of her heroes. Whether it's the academic community, the media elite or politicians, there is a great tolerance for the ideas of socialism -- a system that has caused more deaths and human misery than all other systems combined.

Academics, media elites and leftist politicians both in the U.S. and Europe protested the actions and military buildup of President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and ultimately the breakup of the Soviet Union. Recall the leftist hissy fit when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire and predicted that communism would wind up on the trash heap of history.

Professor Alan Kors did not say this but the reason why the world's leftists give the world's most horrible murderers a pass is because they sympathize with their socioeconomic goals, which include government ownership and/or control over the means of production. In the U.S., the call is for government control, through regulations, as opposed to ownership. Unfortunately, it matters little whether there is a Democratically or Republican-controlled Congress and White House; the march toward greater government control continues. It just happens at a quicker pace with Democrats in charge.

You say, "Come on, Williams, there will never be the kind of socialist oppression seen elsewhere here!" You might be right because Americans have become very compliant with unconstitutional and immoral congressional edicts. But what do you think would happen if some Americans began to rise up and heed Thomas Jefferson's admonition "Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force." and decided to disobey unconstitutional congressional edicts?

SOURCE



Abuse industry teaches women to fear men, men to fear women

Recently I attended a domestic violence conference hosted by a church in my community. “The Church’s Role in Addressing Domestic Violence in the Faith Community,” the glossy brochure explained. The program featured a Proclamation by President Barack Obama filled with heart-rending language about the “devastating impact” of domestic violence on women and children. The conference included a workshop, a dramatic presentation of The Yellow Dress, a play based on stories of women who were victims of dating violence.

I opted to screen a video called “Defending our Lives,” featuring the accounts of five women incarcerated for murdering their partners. All insisted their lethal actions were taken solely in self-defense. But from the beginning, it was clear an ideologically-fueled agenda was lurking in the background. Because research shows, over and over, that women are equally likely to aggress against their intimate partners.

The video commenced with a stark warning; “There is a war against women in this country.” Oh, really? The video then claimed domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women. That myth has been debunked by people like professor Richard Gelles of the University of Pennsylvania who derides such claims “factoids from nowhere.” (The actual causes of female death are accidental falls, motor vehicle accidents, and over-exertion.)

And then the coup de grace: “Battered women who kill have longer sentences than serial rapists.” The source of that outrageous factoid? Well, nobody seemed to know -- and no one really cared. After all, we’ve got an epidemic of domestic violence on our hands, so any make-believe statistic will do.

The effect of the conference was to teach women to distrust and fear the men in their lives as latent, if not actual abusers. Husbands, boyfriends, brothers, even teenage sons – all are now suspect.

Also attending the conference were a State’s Attorney and an aide to a federal Congressman. Realizing that women outnumber men in elections, politicians have become sympathetic to women’s concerns these days. As a result, almost every state in the country has domestic violence laws on the books that represent a flagrant suspension of American civil liberties. All a Scream Queen needs to do is play the abuse card, conjuring up a creative allegation that she knows may never require proof.

Two years ago a man in Stamford, Conn. was arrested for allegedly kicking his wife and throwing her down a flight of stairs. But it turned out to be a bogus accusation – the woman filed the charge hoping the restraining order would give her a leg-up in an impending divorce and custody hearing. Not only did she file the spurious accusation, but then Superior Court Judge James Bingham denied the man’s request for an evidentiary hearing.

Obviously there are fundamental Constitutional issues at stake. Doesn’t the Fourth Amendment require probable cause before an arrest is made? Don’t Fourteenth Amendment due process protections apply? Isn’t stealing a man’s children with the blessing of the family courts a form of “cruel and unusual punishment”? So this past week, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled the man should have been granted an evidentiary hearing based on the preponderance of evidence standard.

Amazingly, the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which receives $2.4 million federal funding each year, argued against the Supreme Court ruling, saying it would have a “chilling effect” on victims. In truth, the ruling will have a chilling effect -- on false accusers who should be stoutly punished for their scurrilous deeds.

Each year, over two million domestic violence restraining orders are issued in the United States. Half of them are based on not even an allegation of physical aggression, according to a study by the Massachusetts Trial Court. Dads are stigmatized as abusers, families dissolved, and kids thrown into single-parent households.

Eventually word gets out. Men get wind that marriage is a raw deal. Lose your kids, your home, and your assets, thanks to a baseless accusation. Men begin to distrust and fear women. That’s the bitter fruit of our nation’s $4 billion domestic violence industry. [And American women wonder why men won't "commit"!]

SOURCE



Australian conservatism less divided than its American countertpart

By Hal. G.P. Colebatch

AUSTRALIA'S conservative intelligentsia may have a lot to complain about, but there is one thing at least that they should be grateful for: the Australian conservative movement has almost entirely escaped the toxic division, which in the past few years has bedevilled much of American conservatism, into so called neo-conservatives and paleo-conservatives.

This is probably largely due to John Howard's position that the Liberal Party is the bearer of both Australia's liberal and conservative traditions, and the fact that Howard himself has taken, and continues to take, far more interest in the intellectual content of Australian conservative thought than any other Liberal prime minister. It also owes a lot to the fact that most of those associated with Quadrant, Australia's most important anti-left intellectual journal, including long-time editor Peter Coleman, the late P. P. McGuinness and present editor Keith Windschuttle, have not been concerned with expending their energy fighting their own allies, or exposing alleged traitors and heretics in the conservative ranks. Further, since its foundation they have kept Quadrant and its circle free of the "anti-Zionist" ratbaggery that has crept into some American paleo-conservative work.

This anti-totalitarian ethos may owe a lot to Quadrant's founder, Richard Krygier, a Polish Jew and former social democrat and its first editor, the Catholic poet James McAuley. After more than 50 years this ethos seems firmly established.

Certainly there are crank groups on the Right but in terms of serious political and intellectual debate they are of little relevance.

This is in considerable contrast to the situation in the US, where attacks on the so-called neo-cons - and Israel - have become major pre-occupations of Patrick Buchanan, former Reagan speech-writer, former hopeful Republican presidential candidate and founder of the grotesquely misnamed American Conservative, and much of the American conservative circle.

Recent effusions by Buchanan include attacks on the pre-World War II Polish "regime" (his term) for provoking World War II by not giving Danzig to the patient and reasonable Adolf Hitler (a line also taken up recently by some Russian militaristic, ultra-nationalist and anti-Polish circles), and claims that, in effect, the countries liberated from Soviet occupation at the end of the Cold War have no right to self-determination because they lie within Russia's sphere of influence. The fact that tiny Estonia, the victim of countless Soviet atrocities, moved a war memorial erected by the Red Army from the centre of its capital has been described by Buchanan as a reckless provocation to Russia. The American Conservative, as well as all its other attacks on Israel and Zionism, actually published an article after Buchanan left the editorship insinuating - with obvious implications - that Israel had prior knowledge of 9/11.

Buchanan's work is also pushed on a website run by Greek multi-millionaire Taki Theodoracopulos, another ceaseless critic of the neo-cons and of Israel, from a so-called paleo-conservative position. One article published on the Taki website earlier this year, "Little Miss Zionist Gossip Queen", was a self-congratulatory account of how the Palestinian author, one Adam Kharii, had intimidated and chased away a lone Jewish girl in a nightclub: "I shouted at her, 'Don't be here when I'm back.' She was not even worthy of all the insults I'd hurled at her." Such, it appears, are the heroisms of self-styled US paleo-conservatism, descended more or less from the isolationist, anti-Semitic-tinged America First movement of World War II. I doubt it is a conservatism that Ronald Reagan, William Buckley or John Wayne would recognise.

One Australian-sourced attempt in The American Conservative to blame an alleged collapse of Australian conservatism on a neo-con takeover left its author lamenting that no notice had been taken of it. Among the alleged neo-cons listed there were Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt, and the late Frank Devine. The same author lamented elsewhere that his application to edit Quadrant had been, for some reason, rejected. He further described Howard as: "a semiliterate school prefect, haunted (to an extent remarkable even for antipodean statesmen) by what Mencken would have called the nagging fear that someone, somewhere, might be free", a description which, whatever one thinks of Howard, is simply off the planet. The big battle facing conservatives in Australia at present is against the expansion of government power and control in the name of environmentalism and here neo- and paleo- divisions are also irrelevant.

Mike Carlton recently attacked "shameless neo-cons" in The Sydney Morning Herald. His rogue's gallery included Tony Blair, who far from being any sort of conservative is probably the most socially radical prime minister Britain has had.

It appears most Australian intellectual conservatives think that what unites them is more important than what divides them. Most of them also seem to think that Israel is an island of democracy and civilisation, to be supported rather than attacked. On the potentially divisive questions of the war in Afghanistan and attitudes to Barack Obama's America in general, there is little they can do anyway but wait and see.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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20 November, 2009

Yes, some jokes can be offensive ... but is Britain losing its sense of humour?

A blonde asks for help with a jigsaw puzzle after struggling for hours to make the pieces fit into the shape of the farmyard rooster pictured on the front of the box. Eventually, her boyfriend says: 'Let's just put all the Cornflakes back in the box.' This is an example of the wit and wisdom of multi-millionaire financier Mark Lowe, who is being sued for sexual discrimination and unfair constructive dismissal by Jordan Wimmer, a 29-year- old Canadian former employee, who happens to be blonde.

Wimmer claims she was the target of Lowe's 'dumb blonde' jokes. She says that even after she was treated in a clinic for severe depression, Lowe continued to bombard her with inappropriate jokes. For his part, he claims he was only having a bit of a laugh, and it never occurred to him that she would take offence.

Clearly, Mark Lowe is not a man with whom many of us would choose to get stuck in a lift. Having a holiday with him would surely be a nightmare. Miss Wimmer says he took prostitutes and escorts to business meetings - charges he hotly denies. The fact that some of us might not enjoy Mark Lowe's company very much, or find his jokes very funny, is only part of the story. The case serves as a good illustration of how dangerous it can be these days to make jokes.

The late Bernard Manning used to have a joke - 'I once got the sack for laughing.' Then after a silence he admitted: 'I was driving a hearse.' It was a sad joke really, for in the end Manning really did get the sack for laughing. His brand of humour was considered too sexist, too racist, too just-about-everything-ist for today's po-faced Britain.

It was only recently, in the wake of the events of September 11 and concerns about Muslim persecution, that the then Home Secretary David Blunkett introduced his Religious Hatred Bill, intending to make it a criminal offence to poke fun at religion - even though this has been the stuff of comedy in all free countries for centuries.

Monty Python's film Life Of Brian has jokes about the Crucifixion. And one of the funniest of Peter Cook's dialogues had him, as a shepherd abiding in the fields, describing the Nativity to Dudley Moore from the Nazareth Gazette. 'Was the Holy Ghost present?' Dudley asked, to which Cook replied: 'Hard to tell.' When asked how Joseph looked in the stable, Cook, the shepherd, replied: 'Quite frankly, gobsmacked.'

Rowan Atkinson once described a scene in Not The Nine O'Clock News where a shot of worshippers bowing to the ground in a mosque was coupled with the voiceover: 'And the search for the Ayatollah's contact lens continues.'

Until Blunkett's Bill was watered down in the House of Lords, we really were about to enter a world in which such jokes might have put their perpetrators in prison.

Context is, of course, everything where humour is concerned. When in Year Six at her primary school, aged ten, my daughter and her friends all loved repeating 'blonde' jokes. No doubt they would have liked the one about the jigsaw and the cornflake-packet mix-up. I asked one of the girls who liked these jokes whether she did not think them offensive. This particular girl was, after all, a natural blonde. She just giggled. The girls were not bullying the blondes. They were enjoying the jokes. Eventually they grew out of them, and went on to some other excruciating collection of jokes.

I can imagine situations, of course, in which the blonde joke is very unfunny - especially if, beneath the veneer of humour there was bullying or cruelty. It is so easy to make remarks which are blatant racialism, for example, and then, when offence is taken, retreat behind the facade of: 'Can't you take a joke?' Making remarks or jokes which you know will be upsetting to another person in your hearing is obviously the mark of a bully and it cannot be defended. But we have gone far too far in the opposite direction. We have become a society which positively encourages people to take offence.

Some of Bernard Manning's jokes were offensive. But some were really quite good jokes: 'If you dial 999 in Bradford, you don't get the police coming round - you get the Bengal Lancers.' I think you would need to be an incredibly humourless Bangladeshi not to see that this reference to a regiment from the high days of the British Raj was quite a funny joke about immigrants. Manning was not making a mockery of people from Bengal because they were from Bengal. He was making a joke about the fact that Bradford is very full of Asians. And in so far as jokes depend upon an element of surprise, there is something picturesque about expecting the arrival of Z-cars and getting instead the Bengal Lancers on their horses, dressed in topis and turbans.

It is possible to be too sensitive, and to encourage others to be needlessly touchy. We now live in a Britain where it is expected that other people will take offence if we so much as notice differences. The 'blonde' joke is simply a variation on the classic joke about some group or category deemed to be stupid. In some contexts, these jokes are made about Irish people. In Ireland, the jokes are made about Kerry men. In other parts of Europe the same jokes are made about Poles. It would be a mad world if we really thought that Irish people or Poles were stupider than the rest of us.

The jokes would be wearisome if they were made too often. But never to make such jokes is actually very patronising to whichever group you are allegedly trying to protect. It implies that all blondes - or all Irish people, or all Kerry men - are such wimps, and so in need of protection, that you must never, in any circumstances, make jokes about them.

Life is often dull, and quite often it is painful. Jokes and laughter spring out of this fact. In places where men and women are facing harsh realities - in the Armed Forces, for example, or in hospital - jokes are the staple of conversation. "It's being so cheerful as keeps me going", as the woman used to say on the It's That Man Again comedy show on radio during World War II.

Jokes today are lavatorial, crude and vulgar while at the same time being somehow shamelessly politically correct. Many alternative comedians, and would-be funny men and women employed by the BBC, think it is perfectly OK to make jokes on prime-time TV about intimate parts of the Queen's anatomy, but they would have an attack of the vapours if you repeated on air the sort of unfunny jokes we all used to tell as children about 'An Englishman an Irishman and a Scotsman'. Only last month, BBC executives suffered a meltdown when Andrew Neil, in his late-night political show, light-heartededly compared the black Labour MP Diane Abbott to a chocolate HobNob.

I would much rather live in a world where comedians sometimes 'go too far', than in a tight-lipped dictatorship where you do not dare to make a joke because someone else will think it 'totally unacceptable' - to use that pompous phrase which is trotted out all too often nowadays by the thought police. Acceptable to whom? Laughter really is the best medicine, as they used to say in the dear old Reader's Digest. Humour should not need censorship. Jokes sometimes are cruel.

It is patronising to women, Jews, black people, Irish people, or indeed to anyone, to suggest they are too thin-skinned ever to hear a joke in which some stereotypical attitude is betrayed.

If the aim of the joke is to bully, to harass, or to enforce ugly prejudice, it is not very likely to be funny. But if the aim is to be funny - and if it succeeds in being funny (at least in some contexts) then surely we should welcome anything which brings a smile to our lives.

SOURCE



Britain lurches towards 'secret' justice as judge rules security services can give evidence in closed courts

Britain took another lurch towards 'secret' justice yesterday when a judge ruled that the state can for the first time withhold evidence from people involved in civil cases. The decision means claimants will be left unaware of the evidence the police, Government or security services are using to blacken their name as they contest a case for damages.

Lawyers described Mr Justice Silber's ruling as a 'constitutional outrage' that overturns 'the whole history of the fundamental principle that both sides must be on an equal footing'.

Justice Sibler's ruling will affect the case of Binyam Mohamed and six other British residents, who all allege the UK was complicit in his torture by overseas agents during their time at Guantanamo Bay. His finding concerns claims lodged by Binyam Mohamed and six others UK residents previously detained at the U.S. camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, who allege Britain was complicit in their torture by overseas agents.

The intelligence services want their evidence disputing the claims to be available only in secret hearings, using a 'special advocate' system, which has so far been restricted to immigration and terrorist control order cases. It means the information is kept hidden from the individuals involved on the grounds of 'national security'. Only a lawyer appointed on their behalf sees the intelligence, and he is not able discuss it with the accused.

But despite these 'Kafkaesque restrictions never being permitted in a civil court before, Mr Justice Silber ruled in the High Court yesterday that there there was no reason in law why a 'closed' court procedure should not be employed in a civil damages case.

The seven - Mohamed, Bisher Al Rawi, Jamil El Banna, Richard Belmar, Omar Deghayes, Moazzam Begg and Martin Mubanga - had all wanted their case to be heard under the 'public interest immunity' procedure. This prevents evidence and allegations being used as evidence by either side if the disclosure could reveal sensitive sources or pose a threat to national security.

The seven are suing the Government for unlawful acts and conspiracy. They deny any involvement in terrorism and allege that MI5 and MI6 aided and abetted their unlawful imprisonment and 'extraordinary rendition' to various places, including Guantanamo Bay, where they were subjected to inhuman treatment and to torture. The Government and security services have denied the claims. The case will now go to the appeal courts.

In addition to cases at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission and control order hearings, the Government recently passed a law to allow inquests to be replaced with secret investigations. The family courts also remain shrouded in secrecy.

Former shadow home secretary David Davis said yesterday's ruling was part of a 'very, very worrying slippery slope' towards secret hearings. He added: 'It may be victory for the intelligence services, but it is an affront to open justice'.

Louise Christian, a lawyer for some of the claimants, said the ruling overturned 'the whole history of the common law and the fundamental principle that both sides must be on an equal footing'. She added: 'The judge has sanctioned what would be a constitutional outrage.'

Tim Hancock, of Amnesty International, said: 'This ruling means alleged complicity by the UK authorities is likely to remain hidden.'

A Home Office spokesman welcomed the court's decision, saying that in closed proceedings special advocates representing the claimants would have access to the sensitive material. 'We believe this strikes the right balance - protecting the wider public interest and ensuring national security is not harmed whilst allowing cases to be tried fairly,' he added.

SOURCE



"Allah Is Power" Mall Attack

(Pleasanton, California) Last week in Alameda Superior Court in Pleasanton, a 22-year-old recent arrival to the U.S., Abdul Walid Hamid, pleaded not guilty during arraignment on charges of battery, grand theft and making terroristic threats stemming from an incident at the Stoneridge Shopping Center in Hayward.

Hamid allegedly ripped a crucifix off a fellow shopper's neck while yelling "Allah is power" and "Islam is great" and brandishing a pen in a fist over his head. According to witnesses, Hamid shouted anti-Christian statements. Hamid reportedly had to be restrained and forcefully arrested by Pleasanton Police.

Hamid's family members claimed that the incident was a misunderstanding and an accident, explaining that he had only been in the U.S. a short time and he was still learning the language.

Inexplicably, the mainstream media have avoided the story as if it were radioactive and the local police department seems bent on downplaying the hate-crime and violent nature of the incident. Pleasanton Police Lt. Mike Elerick, for example, excused Hamid's belligerence by saying it was similar to the behavior of loud Christian activists. Honestly, I'm more than skeptical. Never have I heard of an instance when a Christian attacked a Muslim while shouting "Jesus Christ hu akbar."

Nevertheless, since Hamid recently arrived in the U.S., it would be nice to know from where he came. After all, his behavior could at least partially be explained if he had come from a jihadi training compound in Pakistan or Somalia or Yemen. Right now, Hamid is free on $27,000 bail.

Regarding the nuts and bolts of the legal issues involved, Eugene Volokh weighs in here.

SOURCE (See the original for links)



Obama's Doubletalk on Political Dissent

President Obama traveled all the way to China to praise the free flow of information. It's the only safe place he could do so without getting heckled. With a straight face, Obama lauded political dissent and told Chinese students he welcomed unfettered criticism in America. Fierce opposition, he said, made him "a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear." How do you say "You lie!" in Mandarin?

While the kowtower-in-chief's press shop feeds paeans to free speech into Obama's globetrotting teleprompter, the White House is still waging war on vocal foes at home. Obama has lectured his critics in Washington to stop talking and "get out of the way." He has stacked his carefully staged town halls with partisan stooges and campaign plants throughout the year. The president recently derided limited-government activists in the Tea Party movement with a vulgar sexual term used by left-wing cable host Anderson Cooper on CNN and the MSNBC smear merchants (just Google "teabagging" and you'll see what they mean).

There are now more muzzled watchdogs in the Obama administration than on the sidelines of the Westminster Kennel Club show. Most recently, two EPA lawyers critical of the "fatally flawed" cap-and-trade system -- peddled by their agency, the White House and the Democratic majority -- were told by their superiors to yank a video they posted to YouTube explaining their views. Despite including a caveat that the opinions expressed were their own and not the agency's, the couple faces possible disciplinary action by the feds. While demanding the video be yanked, the EPA disingenuously claims it tolerates all dissenting views of its employees.

The clampdown follows on the heels of the Obama EPA's stifling of veteran researcher Alan Carlin's dissent. He dared to challenge the agency's reliance on outdated data to support its greenhouse gas "public endangerment" finding. Carlin's report was squelched; his office is now on the chopping block.

In China, O proclaimed himself "a big supporter of non-censorship." But his FCC "diversity" czar, Mark Lloyd, is bent on re-engineering public airwaves by redistributing free speech rights from conservative haves who earned their success to minority have-nots who demand talk radio entitlements in the name of "media justice."

And among Obama's closest advisers is a husband-and-wife duo who specializes in marginalizing and stifling the Democratic Party's most effective enemies. Just days after White House interim communications director Anita Dunn -- the administration's resident Mao cheerleader and Fox News-basher -- stepped down to take a planned role as a "consultant" behind the scenes, her husband, Robert Bauer, stepped up and shoved aside White House counsel Greg Craig.

The problem? Former Clinton lawyer Craig wasn't tough enough for Chicago-on-the-Potomac. Obama needed an intimate ally who will put hardball politics ahead of policy and the law. Bauer fits the bill.

A partner at the prestigious law firm Perkins & Coie, Bauer served as counsel to the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Obama for America. He has served as Obama's personal attorney, navigating the corrupted waters of former Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich's pay-for-play scandals in Illinois. He also served as legal counsel to the George Soros-funded 527 organization America Coming Together during the 2004 campaign.

That get-out-the-vote outfit, helmed by Patrick Gaspard (the former Service Employees International Union heavy turned Obama domestic policy chief), employed convicted felons as canvassers and committed campaign finance violations that led to a $775,000 fine by the Federal Election Commission under Bauer's watch.

During the 2008 campaign, Bauer pooh-poohed GOP complaints about voter fraud. While decrying the Republicans' "fear message," it was Bauer who was on a fear-inducing crusade -- pulling out all legal stops to silence conservative critics of Obama's ties to the radical left.

As I've noted previously, and in light of Obama's self-serving praise for political dissent abroad, I note again: It was Bauer who lobbied the Justice Department unsuccessfully last fall to pursue a criminal probe of American Issues Project (AIP), an independent group that sought to run an ad spotlighting Obama's ties to Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.

It was Bauer and his legal goon squad who attempted to sic the DOJ on GOP donor Harold Simmons and sought his prosecution for funding the ad. In a parallel effort launched the same week as Bauer's legal efforts, a nonprofit called "Accountable America," spearheaded by a former operative of the Obama-endorsing MoveOn outfit, began trolling campaign finance databases and targeting conservative donors with "warning letters" in a thuggish attempt to depress Republican fundraising.

It was Bauer who tried to bully television stations across the country into pulling the spot. Team Obama then summoned their troops to bombard stations, many of them owned by conservative-leaning Sinclair Communications, with 93,000 e-mails to squelch the commercial.

With Bob "The Silencer" Bauer now working from the inside and Anita "News Commissar" Dunn working from the outside, Obama has a state media police apparatus the Chinese regime itself could love.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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19 November, 2009

CAIR and North American Muslims; The Truth

The recent Islamist terror attack against American warriors preparing for combat deployment from Fort Hood, Texas, serves as a harsh reminder that the threat of terror from home-grown radical Muslims remains a very real danger to our country. Major Hasan, the alleged terrorist murderer, appears to have been long under suspicion for his anti-American, pro-radical Islamist statements.

Following the shooting, many leading mainstream American press outlets blamed Major Hasan's attack on "loneliness"; of being angry over his treatment as the result of his Muslim faith, or his reluctance to support the war on terror by deployment to a war zone.

What was, as usual, overlooked by the sycophantic press was the stark reality that slapped all Americans in the face at Fort Hood: Major Hasan committed his terrorist act and did so with the full blessing of his version of “Allah”; the very same “Allah” that motivates Islamist terrorists like those in Hamas and al Qaeda in their demented desire to impose “paradise on Earth” by terror murdering all who disagree with their “religion of peace”. Even Hasan's radical Islamist Imam, who formerly preached at a Falls Church, Virginia mosque called Hasan a "hero" for his attack. What version of Islam does Imam Anwar al-Aulaq represent?

CAIR said it was a "big surprise" this Imam held radical beliefs. Yet CAIR has no problem inviting speakers to CAIR events who advocate attacking U.S. troops, like American cleric Zaid Shakir who said: "Islam doesn't permit us to hijack airplanes filled with civilian people," ... "If you hijack an airplane filled with the 82nd Airborne, that's something else."

Beliefs of religious leaders like Shakir and al-Aulaq appear to be given a pass, and therein lies a major problem: the mainstream press in our country seems unreasonably fixated on the idea that many Muslims are so mentally unstable, so irrational, and so unable to stand up for themselves that excuses must be made for the behavior of radical, militant Muslims; no matter how heinous or despicable that behavior may be. Yes, these radical Muslims - whose minds are perverted with a violent form of political, militant Islam - are so misunderstood that we must excuse them even when they come to murder us.

When will this madness stop? How many innocents must be terror murdered before America’s righteous indignation motivates the people to demand our leaders either lead or get out of the way when it comes to dealing with Islamist terror; protected, nurtured and encouraged by Muslim Brotherhood front groups like CAIR? What is this irrational fear that motivates our so-called leaders to cower at the very mention of the word “Muslim”? Why must we continually apologize to radical Islam for our very existence? What is this wicked power Islamists exert over our institutions that causes many of us to fall all over ourselves in our rush to lie prostrate at the feet of radical Islamist groups like CAIR, and ask for forgiveness?

The real reason radical Islam enjoys the special protections of the press and some of our government agencies? Fear of reprisal.

When it comes to the mainstream press, the days of the fearless investigative reporter, backed up by a fire-breathing editor, supported by a news organization worthy of the name are long gone; replaced by “reporters” and “editors” literally afraid of their own shadows. The North American press, once the envy of the world, is mired in a form of political correctness that undermines the security of our country; refusing to recognize its own appeasement while criticizing those who do the right thing in defending our country. This is cowardice in its worse form; self-imposed. How sick is this?

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has repeatedly said that Americans cannot blame all of Islam for the actions of a few. Fair enough. However, we can, and do, directly blame CAIR for fostering an atmosphere that lends support and encouragement to Islamic terrorists like Hamas...and Major Hasan. Possibly sensing further exposure of CAIR's dangerous radical ideology that includes claims that America's war on terror is "war on Islam", CAIR appears frantic in making a like-minded Major Hasan out to be anything other than a radicalized Muslim. A panting Ibrahim Hooper said: "Why can't the killer at Fort Hood just be a crazy guy?"

CAIR condemns the Fort Hood massacre; yet CAIR’s own senior officials are on record making statements encouraging or excusing Islamic terror, such as: "Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam, that is not suicide…they kill themselves for Islam."

Which is true, CAIR condemns Islamic terrorism, or approves it?

More HERE



Christmas could be killed off by Britain's far-Left Equality Bill

Christmas celebrations could be banned under Harriet Harman's controversial Equality Bill, Roman Catholic bishops warned yesterday. They fear the complex legislation will have the 'chilling effect' of town halls and other organisations clamping down on festivities for fear of offending other cultures.

Monsignor Andrew Summersgill, the general secretary of the Catholic Bishops' Conference, has written to MPs to say it will fuel Britain's 'risk-averse' culture. He pointed to bizarre decisions in recent years including the banning of decorations and renaming of Oxford's Christmas festival as the 'Winter Light Festival' to make it more inclusive.

The letter, part of the evidence being considered by the Parliamentary committee examining the Bill, said: 'Under existing legislation, we have seen the development of a risk-averse culture with outcomes as ridiculous as reports of a local authority instructing tenants to take down Christmas lights in case they might offend Muslim neighbours, or of authorities removing the word Christmas out of cultural sensitivity to everyone except Christians. 'If this Bill is serious about equality, everything possible must be done to avoid it having a chilling effect on religious expression and practice.'

The proposed Bill being championed by Labour deputy leader Miss Harman aims to strengthen protection for minority groups by forcing public bodies to give them more opportunities. It also contains measures aimed at closing the gender pay gap.

But senior Catholics have also complained that religious groups will be forced to accept homosexual youth workers, secretaries and other staff even if their faith holds same-sex relationships to be sinful.

Christian organisations fear that the law will undermine the integrity of churches and dilute their moral message.

The letter by the bishops adds: 'The Catholic Church has significant concerns about the practical implications of some parts of the Bill.'

A spokesman for the Government Equalities Office denied the Bill would impact on Christmas. He said: 'That's ridiculous; of course local councils can still put up Christmas tree lights or mark any other religious ceremony such as Diwali, Eid or Ramadan.'

The BBC's governing body has rejected calls to allow non-religious voices to be heard on Radio 4's Thought For The Day. Complaints had been made that banning secularists, atheists or humanists broke the corporation's impartiality guidelines and amounted to 'religious force feeding'. But yesterday the BBC Trust ruled that limiting the slot to religious views did not represent a breach of its rules. It added that Thought For The Day was properly signposted, well known for what it did, and neither misleading nor inaccurate.

SOURCE



Australia: The Victorian Human Rights watchdog again interferes with people's human rights

VCAT rejects woman's bid to set up women-only travel service -- but Muslims can do anything, of course

A TRIBUNAL has rejected a Melbourne woman's bid to set up a women-only travel service. Erin Maitland, a former tour guide, applied to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal for an exemption under the Equal Opportunity Act to set up her business, Travel Sisters. She argued some women would feel more comfortable travelling in women-only groups and safer than travelling alone.

Ms Maitland said her tours would also be tailored to common women's interests including cooking, shopping and crafts and that women's partners would be more supportive of them travelling if they knew they were with other women. Ms Maitland relied on a ruling two years ago in which VCAT granted an exemption to a woman, allowing her to arrange tours for women only.

But the tribunal must now assess exemption applications in line with the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities. VCAT president Judge Marilyn Harbison refused Ms Maitland's application, saying she had not shown enough evidence that limiting a human right is reasonable or necessary. "The grant of an exemption may well be convenient and practical to assist Erin in the establishment of her business but it cannot presently be justified on human rights principles,'' she said.

Judge Harbison said there were other steps that could be put in place to ensure women feel safe and comfortable travelling in groups, without having to exclude men.

The Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, which argued during the hearing that the evidence provided was "weak'', said Ms Maitland could enforce standards of conduct, select facilities with separate male and female change rooms, ensure privacy for her clients and encourage people to report safety concerns.

The commission said that even without an exemption, market forces could result in Ms Maitland's business being successful because men would not be interested in it. The ruling comes after a Melbourne party company specialising in dance events for lesbians and bisexual women won the right to ban men earlier this year.

In May, VCAT granted a three-year exemption to an inner western suburbs gym, enabling it to conduct women-only swimming sessions and related programs. Many of the women at the YMCA gym in Ascot Vale are Muslim who, because of their cultural and religious beliefs, cannot take part in mixed swimming lessons.

SOURCE



Absurd attack on freedoms in Western Australia

YOU don't have to be a civil libertarian to oppose giving police the powers to indiscriminately stop and search people without so much as a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. Yet that is exactly what the West Australian government is trying to do with legislation before parliament this week.

Think about it for a moment. You could be walking down the street (or even driving a car) and a police officer, for whatever reason, could stop you, frisk you and go through your personal possessions. If you are a woman that includes rifling through your handbag. No reason needs to be given, no discussion had, no consent.

These are extraordinary powers, unprecedented in this country. West Australian Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan defends them on the grounds that they won't be used unnecessarily. But the legislation is silent on this opaque promise, which, with the sands of time, could wash away. Anyone who values their freedoms should be appalled.

The newly elected state Liberal MP Peter Abetz (when he isn't referring to the actions of Adolf Hitler to improve law and order in fascist Germany) says: "When it comes to the crunch, people prefer to be safe than to have freedom."

But a large component of safety is protection against an all-powerful state. That is why the term "reasonable suspicion" is a bedrock of policing standards across the globe.

The real reason the Barnett government wants to introduce these absurd laws is because there have been recent well-publicised cases of botched "reasonable suspicion" arrests resulting in the courts letting the accused walk free. That happens when police don't do their jobs properly. The solution is to improve policing, not simplistically widen their powers so as to infringe on the rights of law-abiding citizens.

And of course Western Australia now has mandatory jail sentences for anyone who assaults a police officer. If you resist a search you can be pinned against the floor and, if you in any way react, you could be deemed to have assaulted the officer who without reason stopped and searched you. So blokes out there, don't go getting too offended when a cop runs his hand up your wife's inner thigh without reasonable suspicion. It could land you in jail.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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18 November, 2009

Socialist attacks on Christmas go back a long way

How the Nazis tried to take Christ out of Christmas

For the perfect Nazi Christmas you had to hang glittering swastikas and toy grenades from the pine tree in the living room and, in your freshly pressed uniform, belt out carols urging German women to make babies for the Führer rather than worship the Jewish Baby Jesus. Then came the moment to light the pagan candle-holders — hand-made by labourers at Dachau.

Hitler’s dream of a 1,000-year Reich came to an end long before the world was subjected to 1,000 of his Christmases but an exhibition in Cologne is highlighting how the Nazis, in particular Heinrich Himmler, tried to take Christ out of Christmas.

What is alarming German visitors is the realisation that, in many cases, they have been brought up with a variation of the Third Reich Christmas. Not the swastika baking trays or baubles shaped like Iron Crosses, but the revised lyrics of carols and the traditions that had been altered subtly. “I always thought that Unto Us a Time Has Come was a song about wandering through winter snow,” said Heidi Bertelson, 42, a lawyer, after studying the exhibits at the National Socialism Documentation Centre in Cologne. “I didn’t realise that Christ had been excised.”

The Nazi version — removing lines about Christ and inserting a paean to snowy fields — remained in some songbooks and, outside churchgoing families, is the version sung by many Germans today. The same goes for carols referring to Virgin Birth and lullabies that invoke the Baby Jesus. The rewriting was supervised by the chief Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, who had the brief of changing the German calendar. Christmas was to be merged into a Julfest, a celebration of the winter solstice of light and of oneness with nature. It drew on pagan traditions and tried to squeeze religion out.

The plan was to break the emotional power of the Church. The star from the Christmas tree was replaced with a sun in case it could be interpreted as a Star of David, or if red, as a Bolshevik symbol. The name for the Christmas tree, Christbaum, was usurped in the press by fir tree, light tree or Jultree. The point of the Julfest was to remember Germanic ancestors and soldiers, although most Germans did their best, discreetly, to keep Christmas religious.

“The most important celebration in the calendar did not match their racist credo so they had to push out the Christian elements,” said Judith Breuer, who helped her mother, Rita, with the exhibition.

Rita started trawling flea markets in the 1970s in search of her childhood Christmas. She turned up boxes of Nazi-era Christmas decorations, even though it is against the law to display or deal in swastika symbols. “After the Nazis had gone you could still find textbooks on Christmas that use exactly the same phrasing,”she said.

SOURCE



Obama intelligence pick accused Jews of assassination

Lauded Iranian nuclear program as 'deterrent' against Israel, Bush



The Obama administration's withdrawn nominee for a top intelligence post delivered a speech to a pro-Arab U.S. group in which he claimed that Israel has long assassinated peace-loving Palestinian leaders. He also falsely accused the Jewish state – which doesn't publicly comment on its alleged nuclear weapons program – of threatening to nuke Iran.

Charles "Chas" Freeman, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, used the speech to suggest that America was attacked on 9/11 largely due to its support for Israel. He further stated that if the White House attempts to pressure Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "American lobby" will arrange for Congress to punish President Obama.

Freeman was slated to head the National Intelligence Council but withdrew his nomination in March following revelations – some first reported at WND – that he has financial ties to the infamous bin Laden family and that he sits on the board of a major oil company owned by the Chinese government that had been in the midst of a multibillion-dollar deal with Iran that may violate U.S. sanctions.

WND also reported that Freeman once peddled a Saudi-funded book to U.S. public schools that falsely claims Muslims inhabited North America far before European explorers.

On Oct. 16, Freeman delivered a speech to the 18th Annual Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference run by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, which defines itself as a nongovernmental organization dedicated to "improving American knowledge and understanding of the Arab world." During this speech, Freeman referred to the government here as "Israeli occupation authorities" and claimed an "Israeli cabinet-directed assassination campaign has long focused on ensuring that there is no one to talk to on the Palestinian side."

He slammed the State Department's labeling of Hamas as a terrorist organization. The radical Palestinian group's charter calls for the murder of Jews and destruction of Israel. Hamas is responsible for scores of suicide bombings, shootings and rocket attacks against Jewish civilian population centers.

Freeman claimed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict began as a problem between "Jewish colonists and indigenous Arabs" even though Jews had historically lived in the territory that became modern-day Israel for thousands of years, while many Palestinian Arabs arrived originally as migrant workers when the Jewish population started to increase in 1881.

Freeman claimed that Israel threatened to nuke Iran, stating: "Tehran seems on track to acquire the ability to field its own deterrent to the threats of nuclear attack Iranians have serially heard from Saddam's Iraq, successive Israeli governments and George Bush's America." Israel, however, refuses to address the issue of its alleged nuclear arsenal. Israel has never threatened a nuclear attack against any country. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, has threatened to wipe Israel off the map.

Of the Sept. 11 attacks, Freeman claimed, "The 9/11 assault on the United States was carried out by Muslim extremists motivated in large measure by their resentment of U.S. support for Israel and its actions."

Al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden has referred to U.S. support for Israel, but his main grievance has long been U.S. troop presence in the Middle East. Additionally, al-Qaida leaders have addressed their primary need to spread Islam around the world though jihad.

Freeman claimed the current Netanyahu government of Israel "rejects trading land for peace" even though the Israeli leader has multiple times called for the renewal of negotiations with the Palestinians. Additionally, it was Netanyahu who signed the 1998 Wye River Memorandum, which provided PLO leader Yasser Arafat with strategic territory in the West Bank.

Freeman went on to accuse Netanyahu of being "confident that his American lobby will arrange for Congress to punish the president if the president tries to punish Israel for its intransigence."

SOURCE



A new iteration of "blame the parents"

Crap research in support of interventionist conclusions. The fact that one type of parenting is associated with one type of child behaviour proves nothing. Both phenomena could be caused by a third factor -- genetic factors in particular. Genetics are very strongly related to personality (See here, for instance), so the utter ignoring of genetics in the report discussed below reveals it to be an ideological guided missile, not a work of science

A new report by the British think-tank Demos has hit the headlines, with its claim that ‘Parents are the principal architects of a fairer society’. Based on research from the Millennium Cohort Study, the report argues that how children are parented has a more significant impact upon their future life chances than just about anything else, including poverty and the social class into which they are born (1).

You might wonder whether the world really needs another report blaming particular parenting styles for every evident problem in late capitalist society. Across the British political spectrum, policy continually seeks to clobber parents over the head with the assertion that the future of Britain rests or falls according to whether they feed their children too many sweets or read to them for the requisite number of minutes at bedtime.

So when Jen Lexmond and Richard Reeves, authors of the Demos report, respond to concerns about interference by the ‘nanny state’ by arguing that ‘if there is one area where government intervention is justified, it is in precisely the area of life signalled by the term “nannying” – the development of children’s capabilities’, they are pushing at doors opened by New Labour, and held open by the Tories. Nothing new there.

However, Lexmond and Reeves at least try to go beyond the emotional blackmail that informs most parenting policy, which simply asserts that if you don’t adopt the right kind of parenting behaviours with your children they will die of obesity or end up on the social scrapheap, with no qualifications and a million mental disorders. Their report, Building Character, is an attempt to wrestle with the problem of how we bring up children with a sense of self and agency, who can achieve things in life and develop a responsibility to people and projects outside of themselves.

This is an important question, and one that preoccupies parents as much as policy-wonks. I have often found myself ploughing through the latest piece of official parenting advice and wondering to what end it all leads. The idea that rearing children is just about maximising their ‘happiness’, or stopping them from becoming fat, or enabling them to take a few calculated risks, might all make some sense on a personal, daily level, but it seems thoroughly inadequate in terms of a generational project.

When we say ‘children are the future’, we don’t just mean that they will outlive us, but that they will be the ones running society and making history. To that extent, it really is not enough that they are happy or that they have high self-esteem – they have to be able to cope with adversity and think outside of themselves, in order to shape the world around them. This is where character comes into play, and where adults’ role in helping to ‘build character’ is crucially important.

Unfortunately, while Demos’ enthusiasm for addressing this issue is refreshing, its narrow focus on parenting styles and outcomes among young children means that the report ends up peddling the same old mixture of common sense and nonsense. On the common sense front, it finds that more authoritative parents have better-behaved children and that more confident parents are more authoritative. On the nonsense front, it speculates that better-behaved children with more confident parents will get to be middle class when they reach adulthood – which leads to the conclusion that training parents on low incomes to be confident and authoritative will magic some social mobility into their children. Or, as Jen Lexmond told The Sunday Times, ‘when it comes to parenting, it is not what you are, but what you do that’s important’ (2).

What is striking about this is not only the blithe assertion that all manner of social inequalities and life problems can be obliterated by parents simply setting a few house rules for their toddlers. It is the reduction of a child’s moral development, the building of character that takes place over the course of childhood within a distinct cultural context, to a particular parenting style that results in clearly observable attributes amongst five-year-olds.

Building Character starts with a discussion of Aristotle; eight pages later it presents us with a table showing how three ‘key character capabilities’ are exhibited by the behaviour of five-year-olds studied by the Millennium Cohort Study. So we find that a child who ‘cannot sit still, is constantly fidgeting or squirming’ shows something about ‘application’, a child who is kind to younger children shows something about ‘empathy and attachment’, and a child who ‘often argues with adults’ shows something about ‘self-regulation’. The child who exhibits the good behaviours is presumed to be a product of authoritative parenting, and will go far in life; the restless hypochondriac tantrummer is presumed to be lacking boundaries and will end up socially immobile.

An expert in survey methodology could no doubt find several holes in this research. I was struck by the admission, in the appendix, that for all the authors argued that confident parents make better-behaved (or more character-ful) children, ‘It is possible that the association between parental perceived competence and child behaviour outcomes is spurious’ – as the data was based on parents’ reports of their children’s behaviour, and less confident parents tend to report more bad behaviour in their children than do more confident parents. It seems equally possible that the report’s entire evidence base is ‘spurious’.

But aside from that, why do we think we can measure something so complex and human as ‘character’ by looking at the behaviour of five-year-olds? Can human agency really be reduced to an ability to concentrate and a willingness to share toys?

As a parent, I worry about the development of my children’s characters. I worry about the impact of a purportedly child-centred therapy culture, which encourages children to think that that they should never be criticised and that their feelings are the most important ones. I worry that children who are over-protected, who are not allowed to take risks or work through problems for themselves, are profoundly ill-equipped to become adults capable of running the world. I worry that the educational direction taken by ‘personalised learning’ and methods that make everything fun and relevant to children limits their capacity to apply themselves to things.

I worry about the way that anti-bullying initiatives actively discourage children from developing empathy, by presenting bullying as the use of certain bad words or particular actions, rather than encouraging children to think about what it means to be kind or unkind, how to roll with the blows and how to maintain friendships. I worry that precisely the model of ‘good parenting’ that is advocated by policymakers is that of the active consumer – the parent who elbows everybody else out of the way to achieve the best for his or her child, who is obsessively anxious about the individuals within his or her family to the exclusion of thinking about what’s best for the school, the community, even other friends and family members. And I worry about lots of other things as well.

But, as the parent of a five-year-old and a three-year-old, I know that their characters are not yet fully formed. There are several years and many experiences left in order to inspire and shape young children into the kind of adults we hope they will become. As children gain the ability to read, reason and expand their world beyond the home, we can engage them in questions of agency and morality, and trust them to work things out for themselves but in relation to other people.

The idea that parents alone can – even should – short-circuit these processes by seeking to ‘develop character’ by the end of five, and that we can measure our children’s worth as moral, responsible beings according to whether they sit still at the dinner table, displays a narrow and deterministic view. Character is not an ‘outcome measure’, and obedience is not what makes us human.

SOURCE



We must stop being tolerant of repression

I have no intention of ‘rethinking freedom’. Rather I persist in maintaining a traditional notion of rights and freedom and a belief in traditionally liberal distinctions between the public and private realms.

The title of this debate, ‘Securing rights or celebrating liberty?’ does seem to me to assume a false opposition. Positing a choice between securing rights and celebrating liberty is a bit like positing a choice between love and marriage. They may not always overlap but they‘re not mutually exclusive, or so we hope. In fact, they’re often mutually reinforcing.

Our social freedoms are to a great extent contingent upon our formal legal rights. Take a very simple example: going to a cinema or a museum is part of daily, lived experience, but our formal speech rights will determine what we may or may not see there. Personal relationships are certainly part of our daily lived experiences, but the nature of those relationships is partly contingent upon the legal right to engage in them, which is why the gay rights movement is currently focused, at least in the US, on the right to marry. The philosopher Hannah Arendt called the right to marry fundamental and inalienable. It is both a social freedom and a formal political right – marriage is an institution of the state.

I’m not denying that there’s tension between rights and freedom, but this tension is overshadowed by confusion about what each entails and the government’s role both in protecting our rights and allowing for our freedoms. Debates about rights and freedom, at least in the US, tend to be framed in terms of an incoherent, result-oriented partisanship. On the right, people celebrate freedom – the right has virtually copyrighted the word freedom – while showing relatively little regard for the concept. Trumpeting freedom hasn’t stopped many right-wingers from supporting the expansive national security state that developed during the Bush years or an ongoing censorious culture war. On the left you rarely hear people utter the word freedom, although they sometimes talk about civil liberties; they tend to focus on equality and not just economic but existential equality, which includes some sort of imagined right to psychological wellbeing. And this, I think, is really quite dangerous.

The left undermines freedom the most by trying to restrict intolerance or discrimination in the private sphere. This is particularly pronounced on college and university campuses. The right, at least historically, has undermined fairness by ignoring discrimination in the public sphere. It also tends to undermine freedom by trying to restrict sin in the private sphere. But put right and left together and you’d still lack any coherent analysis of rights and liberties and the public and private realms.

Which brings us back to Hannah Arendt. She made her comment about marriage in an essay written about 50 years ago, a very controversial critique of federal efforts to forcibly desegregate the public schools. I don’t share her opposition to forcible school desegregation – it was unavoidable – but the reasons for her opposition are instructive. Aside from her pragmatic concerns, and her very strong distaste for enlisting children in what was often a very heated and violent political battle, Arendt was quite sympathetic to the private associational rights of parents who wanted to control their children’s education.

I disagree that, in this case, private associational rights should have prevailed. In my view, your associational rights aren’t dissolved but they are diluted when you engage in a commercial or educational endeavour in the public realm. But I share Arendt’s conviction – and she stated it in her usual clear-headed fashion – that social life entails the right to engage in social discrimination. And that’s a right that many liberals seem bent on eviscerating. Lyndon Johnson reportedly said, during the civil rights era, that law can’t change what’s in people’s hearts; law can only point the way. The problem today is that many liberals seem intent on using the law to do what it should never attempt to do – change what’s in people’s hearts.

Going back to Arendt, her analysis of the private, social and political realms, and the government’s role in each, clarifies the dangers of this very intrusive approach to law. At the risk of stating the obvious, the political realm demands government intervention to secure political rights: the right to vote, due process, rights against summary detention, and also rights to public education, employment, and access to public services. The private realm demands laissez faire government. These are pretty obvious principles about which you can find general agreement. Yet in practice they’re really quite controversial, or they’re applied arbitrarily with an eye towards results and no coherent delineation between the public and private spheres.

Today, with people being summarily detained and tortured, political rights seem paramount. It’s easy to scoff at people who complain about social restrictions on their daily life, from the right to smoke or overeat to the right to indulge in allegedly abusive speech. And their complaints can seem relatively trivial when viewed individually. But collectively, these restrictions upon people’s daily lives are really quite consequential. Collectively, they erode the basis for a free society, because the more officials exert control over everyday behaviours, the more people develop habits of submission, the more they become tolerant of repression.

I do believe that privacy is the foundation of a free society – it’s extraordinarily important. We have lost so much of it, some of it perhaps irrevocably. It’s not just government surveillance or surveillance by large private entities that’s the problem; it’s the enthusiasm, the eagerness with which the public has surrendered privacy for the sake of a department store charge card, notoriety, or easy social networking.

I really do worry about a future in which privacy is so greatly diminished. ‘There no longer exists an un-political sphere of life’, a German court declared in 1937. I worry about the future because if you imagine a world with no private, personal realm, you imagine a world with no refuge.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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17 November, 2009

Lithuania Fights Back Against EU Resolution Favoring Homosexual Propaganda

The fight over homosexual propaganda in schools taking place between the Lithuanian and European Parliaments escalated this week with the Lithuanian Parliament (Siemas) calling on its government to file suit against the Europeans in the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU).

The argument began with passage of a Lithuanian "Law on the Protection of Minors against the Detrimental Effect of Public Information" which prohibits promotion of "homosexual, bisexual, polygamous relations" among children under the age of 18. While the Lithuanian president subsequently vetoed the measure, the Siemas overturned his veto and the law is slated to go into effect next March.

As a consequence, in September the European Parliament (EP) voted 349-218 to condemn the new law and ask the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights to review it. The Parliament also considered what is called an "article 7"?action against Lithuania, which could have resulted in Lithuania's suspension from the European Union. Jean Lambert, a British MEP said at the time, "This law contravenes the EU Treaties, the EU Charter and the European Convention on Human Rights, and should be urgently repealed on those grounds."?

Besides the education of children and parental rights, the issue of national sovereignty is central to the debate. The Lithuanians insist they are free to enact such laws and that the European Institutions have no "competence" in them. Many Europeans have long feared what they see as inevitable EU interference in life and family matters.

The Lisbon Treaty, which among other changes would make the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights binding upon members, was defeated by Ireland two years ago at least partially over such questions of sovereignty. Irish voters eventually approved the Lisbon Treaty but only after written guarantees of sovereignty were written into the treaty.

The just-passed Lithuanian response seeks to have the European Court of Justice determine the "lawfulness" of the European Parliament resolution and to determine further that the resolution is void.

The Siemas contends that if the European resolution is not formally voided it would "become a dangerous precedent." The Lithuanian resolution also expressed "regret" and "deep concern" that the European Parliament attempted to "doubt the lawfulness of the law passed by the great majority of the democratically elected parliament of a member state, although this issue should not fall under the jurisdiction of the EP."

Lithuanian Labor Party member Mecislovas Zasciurinskas asked the Lithuanian Tribune, "What do you think, is this a one time only attempt to interfere with the affairs of a sovereign state...or is this the beginning of an absolute dictate? Some years back we called this 'Moscow's Grip," the tendency to meddle in everybody's business..."

Conservative Ceslovas Stankevicius said,"This is in the competence of the Siemas, and the EP has no place getting missed up in this, because Lithuania violated no law."

The resolution of the European Parliament is non-binding and has no force in law. However, such resolutions are used by activists to build a public relations case against the targeted country. While the Agency for Fundamental Rights is not obliged to act on the EP resolution, it could use the EP resolution as the impetus to begin an investigation.

SOURCE



Dads give kids a headstart

As many women bemoan, men often approach fatherhood with a combination of chaos and casualness. But increasingly research is showing that the things fathers bring to the equation can make enormous differences to their children's lives.

Dr Bruce Robinson, co-ordinator of The Fathering Project at the University of Western Australia, has spoken to thousands of fathers and father figures about ways they can engage with their children and the rewards that it brings. "In general, mothers tend to spend their time worrying about the kids. 'Have you got clean knickers, have you eaten your vegetables, have you brushed your teeth?'. Whereas dads tend to be a bit more laid-back," Robinson says. "Those differences are good, so long as they are two good parts of one thing. "It's good for the kids to eat properly and brush their teeth and go to bed on time, which mum tends to worry about . . . that's the nurturing mum. "But a dad often tends to muck around more with the kids, and it's so good for kids to muck around with dad. "Also, dads tend to take a few more risks. Kids can learn that it's okay to take risks from their dads."

Robinson is a professor of medicine at the University of Western Australia and runs a lung cancer research centre. He is a fairly busy bloke. But, as he says early one morning on the phone from Perth, he's always willing to talk about fathering. Robinson says it's such an important subject, something that has hit home to him many times in talking to men who are dying from lung disease who wish they could have been better dads.

Research into the role of fathers is increasingly showing the benefits children experience when fathers take an active role in the children's schooling from an early age. Professor Brent McBride, director of the University of Illinois Child Development Laboratory, released a study two months ago that found a father's influence upon a child's success at school was felt the most when the dad was involved from the very beginning. McBride says dads typically become involved in their children's school results when things start turning sour, with the father stepping in to lay down the law. But he says if the dad had not engaged with their children's schooling before the problems developed, then they are unlikely to have an impact.

In an earlier study released in June, McBride found dads who changed nappies and made pediatric appointments for their babies were more likely to be involved when their kids went on to school. "If fathers wait to seek a closer relationship with their child until later in the child's life, the moment has passed," he says in the study which followed about 400 children for five years.

The impact fathers have on their children's development isn't just noticed at school age. Three years ago, the University of North Carolina released research showing that in families with two working parents, fathers had a greater impact than mothers on their children's language development.

Sociologists at the University of California found in a 2003 study, which looked at more than 3500 children, that those of school age who did housework with their fathers were more likely to get along with their peers and have more friends. They were also less likely to get into trouble at school.

Back in 2002, McBride released findings of a study that found when a father talked sincerely with his children daily, they achieved better results on their reading and maths tests.

In one of the biggest studies, Dr Eirini Flouri led a team of University of Oxford researchers who looked at 17,000 children born in 1958 and followed up their development at ages seven, 11, 16, 23 and 33. The findings, published in 2002, were that girls whose fathers were involved in their upbringing were less likely to have mental health problems in later life.

Other findings from the study were that teenagers who were close to their fathers were more likely to have strong marital relationships and that a father's involvement with their children at age seven is strongly related to their educational achievements throughout their life.

Robinson's experience from talking with so many fathers about their role supports the research about the power of dads. "A father's involvement in a child's education helps in a lot of ways," he says. "A child realises that learning is important if dad pays attention to it. "It's the attitude to the whole process of learning. Otherwise it's just mum nagging 'do your homework' or whatever and the child thinks it's optional. "It's the same with everything in life.

"One of the problems with kids is that they can get bored with learning, but a dad can help a kid to really love learning just for the sake for it, the curiosity. "Just, for example, to look up at the stars and say 'I wonder how long they've been there?' or, in nature, to lift up a rock and see what's under it. "These things have a profound effect on kids. "A child who has one-on-one time with their dad feels good about themselves. "They feel they are worth spending time with, and that is the best platform for learning."

Robinson has written two books on fathering, Daughters and their Dads and Fathering From the Fast Lane, and his tips include daddy-daughter weekends away and the importance of listening to your children rather than just lecturing to them. And he says dads need to start being involved in their children's lives from the beginning. "You can't just suddenly start things when they're teenagers," he says. "By then, they've learnt to live without you."

SOURCE



We'll fail a generation of girls if we teach them they have to have it all

Can women have a successful career and a family? Looking around at the ambitious and talented young women I teach as headmistress of Dane Alice Harpur school in Bedford, my heart swells. Brimful of dreams and high expectations, they talk of how they are going to become surgeons, barristers and captains of industry. They envisage themselves running companies, saving lives and making millions - all with a clutch of rosy-cheeked children in tow. And why shouldn't they?

From the moment these little girls toddled into nursery school, we've been teaching them that their ambitions should have no limits. We've told them there's absolutely nothing that men can do that they can't do at least as well. And they've proved it - girls now outperform boys at every academic stage. We've told our daughters that nothing need stand in their way - not relationships, not marriage and certainly not children. And, being ambitious, hard-working girls, they've learned the lesson only too well. The young women we are sending out into the world believe they can have it all - and, if they don't, they will have failed.

And what a tragedy that is, because the truth is that modern women can't have it all. They may succeed in their careers and they may succeed as mothers, but to do both at the same time? No, that is not possible without making huge sacrifices which many will find simply too much. The fact is that life is not a level playing field. Men and women may finally have equal opportunities, but that doesn't mean women should make the same choices as men. The sexes are different.

Most women want children and they want to be the principal carer. Encouraging young women to aim for the top at the same time as raising a family is unrealistic and, I would argue, damaging. We need to tell today's young women that there is absolutely no shame in stepping off the career ladder to bring up children. Women should be the best they can, but being the best chief executive and the best mother at the same time is unrealistic.

I know that, as a headmistress of a leading girls' school and president of the Girls' School Association, many women are going to hold up their hands in horror. How can I, someone who was part of the generation who fought so hard to win equality, possibly suggest that women should now consider curbing their ambitions? Feminist sisterhood will undoubtedly accuse me of trying to send women back into the Dark Ages. But I refuse to sit back and watch us fail another generation of women by feeding them a fairytale.

Of course, I want my pupils to have successful careers. I certainly don't want to turn back the clock and make women economically dependent on their husbands and unable to leave unhappy marriages because they couldn't fend for themselves, as happened in my mother's generation. But I desperately want my students to be happy. And that means acknowledging that having a career and children brings pressures which many women will find unbearable.

I know several successful women who were in shock when they became mothers. No one had warned them they would find the pull of motherhood so powerful. And no one had prepared them for the terrible juggling act they were faced with. They felt enormously guilty because they wanted to stay at home with their children. Quitting work seemed like admitting failure so they soldiered on, becoming increasingly stressed and exhausted.

I am incredibly grateful for my education. I was the first member of my family to go to university. I studied English at Manchester before training as a teacher. I'm very ambitious. I don't have children. But I know I would have wanted to concentrate on my family and chosen to put my career ambitions on the back-burner for a while, had that been the case.

The truth is that many women would be a lot happier if they stepped off the career ladder to raise children. Instead, in a bid to pursue equality at all costs, we have made these women feel like failures. Friends tell me that they don't understand how other women can have it all and they can't. They feel there's something wrong with them. And that's simply not fair. We need to admit that children aren't a problem to be negotiated. They enrich our lives and bring huge happiness as well as challenges. And no woman who chooses to sacrifice her career for her family should feel a failure.

We need to tell our girls that you can't have it all, all of the time. We need to admit that balancing a high-powered career and children is incredibly complex. Career opportunities have changed dramatically. A generation ago, women dreamed of being nurses, not doctors. Now, more women than men graduate from medical school. I wouldn't deny my girls the chance to study medicine. But I do tell them that if they want to be a consultant surgeon and have children they will have a very tough balancing act.

It may not be what they want to hear, but I feel if I don''t open their eyes to the truth, I will be failing them. I have taught girls and boys during my 30-year career, and I am convinced the sexes are very different. Typically, boys have a greater self belief. They are more inclined to believe they can do something until they are proved otherwise. Girls are much more self- effacing and self critical. Men apply for promotion years before they are ready. Women wait until they have amassed every qualification and scrap of experience.

In short, we are our own worst enemies. We push ourselves to the brink and then beat ourselves up because we're not perfect. That's why it's so important that we teach our girls that they have a right to be happy and that they're not failing if they choose motherhood over their careers. Yes, we women can make it to the top. But think very, very carefully about the price you may have to pay.

SOURCE



Leftist suspicion of a constellation of stars in the night sky!

Trotskyites, Leftist labour unions and various other far-Leftist groups in Australia have often flaunted Southern Cross ("Eureka") flags but when other Australians use a representation of the same cross, it becomes "racist"! That it is essentially just a geographical identifier (it is not seen in the Northern sky) is too deep for them. A representation of it is included on the right-hand side of the Australian flag



It shines in our night sky. It is plastered across the uniforms of our elite sporting teams and inked into the skin of everyone from pro surfers to supermodels. It was made infamous during the Cronulla race riots and is being stuck to an increasing number of car rear windows. It even features on the Australian flag and the Eureka flag, the latter which first flew in 1854 during a goldminers' revolt. Whichever way we look at it, and whether we like it or not, the Southern Cross has become our de facto national symbol.

But a debate has erupted as to whether the Southern Cross has been commandeered for social and/or political agendas. Many say patriotism should be commended but others point to its complexity and argue that it is more divisive than unifying. As the Australia Day Council launched a campaign last week to ask which symbols and images best represent our country, opinion-makers and public figures were at odds on how to answer the question - variously describing the Southern Cross as everything from "beautiful" to "racist".

While Southern Cross tattoos adorn celebrities such as television tradesman Scott Cam, cricketer Peter Siddle and Bra Boy surfer Koby Abberton, there has been something of a backlash. On the internet community site Facebook, groups have started such as "The Southern Cross tattoo is bogan and racist" and "I'm sick of seeing people with Southern Cross stickers on cars and tattoos".

Australia Day Council ambassador Elka Graham said a website launched last week - aussievault.com.au - is designed to promote debate over our national identity. "You're not just having people of status and wealth talking about what it is to be Australian but you're getting the average person online," the Olympic swimmer said. "I think you're going to find a diverse range of what Australia is."

Tim Soutphommasane, a first-generation Australian and author of Reclaiming Patriotism: Nation-Building for Australian Progressives, said symbols such as the Southern Cross came to be associated with a new wave of patriotism under the conservative Howard government. "Many Australians have been content to regard all expressions of national pride as thinly disguised racism," he said. "The result has been a surrender of all things patriotic to extreme nationalists."

Soutphommasane said Australians needed to work harder at tying national symbols to civic virtues, such as inclusion and democratic participation. "This is what's frustrating about occasions such as Australia Day," he said. "People often reduce everything that's great about our country to sport and lifestyle - that sells Australia short, it trivialises our achievement. "We have a democratic and egalitarian public culture that is worth celebrating. Symbols such as the national flag should be things that unite us rather than divide us along racial lines. Since Cronulla [in 2005], this has been a challenge."

Dr Russell McGregor, an academic at James Cook University, said if there was a rising perception of the Southern Cross as racist, it's nothing new. "The Southern Cross became famous because of its connection with the Eureka Stockade … The race element is because at one stage [it was used] by the National Front, a far-right organisation back in the 1970s, but before that it was adopted by various communist groups," he said. "It's been adopted by the left, the right and the centre of Australian politics at various stages. I don't think there's any inherent racial [meaning]."

Research shows Australians have become one of the "most patriotic" peoples in the world. International research company the Reputation Institute, last month released a report that found Australia rated highest among 33 countries in self-image. The poll found Australians score themselves 91.9 out of 100 when it comes to the esteem, respect and admiration they hold for their country - although foreigners have a rather lower opinion of Australia, giving it a score of 72.5.

Russel Howcroft, a panellist on ABC TV's The Gruen Transfer , said outside Australia, the Southern Cross was a more distinctive symbol than we have traditionally used. "I think the Southern Cross is really important to how Australians view themselves," he said. "To me, it's far more unifying than the Union Jack … And it's interesting because over time, it has become a key image."

Mr Howcroft said as an advertisement for the country, the national flag failed to promote Australia. "What it says is that we're colonial, because it's basically a colonial design, and it isn't differentiating because there are many other countries in the world … who use that basic structure," he said.

Australians for Constitutional Monarchy national convener Professor David Flint disagreed, saying critics were out of touch with the Australian people and that it was a "pity to undermine the great symbols of the nation". "The fact [the symbols] have been imported doesn't make them any less Australian."

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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16 November, 2009

'Gay' Jihad

It never ceases to amaze me the degree to which liberals – the self-styled proponents of “tolerance” and “diversity”… the mind-numbingly sanctimonious arbiters of “hate” – consistently prove to be the most intolerant and hateful among us. But regrettably, since the recent passage of “Question 1” – the voter initiative that threw out counterfeit “gay marriage” in Maine – the level of hate-filled bile we’ve come to expect from the left has morphed from malicious to menacing.

In the wake of the horrific act of Islamic domestic terrorism at Fort Hood Texas, it’s been learned that militant homosexual activists recently made similar online postings to those of Nidal Malik Hasan, threatening additional acts of terrorism against Christians. A number of pro-marriage advocates have also received death threats directly.

Shortly after “Question 1” was voted into law, I issued a press release (posted with additional commentary at AmericansForTruth.com) hailing this pro-family victory. In reaction to that statement a handful of homosexual activists on the popular anti-Christian “JoeMyGod” weblog, became completely unhinged, engaging in death threats and warning of future homosexualist terrorism should their political demands not be met.

Blog poster “ColdCountry” wrote: “Will someone please give me a gun?” Poster “Fritz” warned: “What I fear is that once gay and lesbian people give up hope of achieving equality through nonviolent means, there will be radicals who will begin to hunt down haters… All it will take is a small group of radical zealots who are willing to kill for their cause.”

In reply to Fritz, “tex” posted: “Fritz....you say this like it's a bad thing? Maybe a bit of well organized terrorism is just what we need.” “This happens in all cases where people are oppressed and lack representation,” continued Fritz. “We will have gay and lesbian people strapping bombs to their chests and blowing up churches. All it will take is one or two more losses like this. If marriage equality is taken away in one of the landmark states, we will see domestic terrorism arise very quickly. … In 1991, I witnessed gay and lesbian activists setting fire to buildings and beating people with baseball bats in Los Angeles.” “tex” reiterated: “Still not seeing this as a bad thing Fritz ... [African gay activists] didn't gain their civil rights through being passive.”

Liberty Counsel notified the FBI which is investigating the matter. Not surprisingly, Joe Jervis, the homosexual activist who runs the offending blog, quickly removed the comments once exposed (captured version of post available at AmericansForTruth.com).

Meanwhile, Michael Heath, former director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, was directly targeted with a death threat shortly after the vote on 1. An anonymous caller telephoned the League and left a message warning: “I am calling about Mr. Mike Heath, the Executive of your Christian Civic League of Maine. He thinks that gay people should have our rights revoked that we already have. Well I can tell him this – I’m a gay guy who owns guns, and he’s my next target.”

Another death threat was made against Marc Mutty, chief of the unaffiliated “Yes On One” organization: “You're dead. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon...you're dead.” Law enforcement has been notified of each incident as left-wing extremist threats targeting other Christian advocates continue to mount.

Elected officials are apparently fair game as well. For instance, a post on the Gay.com weblog in December even went so far as to directly threaten the life of then President Bush (no news on whether the Secret Service investigated the incident). Someone identified as “Josh Sebring” wrote: “I suggest we throw a pride parade at the whitehouse and everyone bring their (sic) guns. We form a militia and get our gay rights by raiding the whitehouse and possibly burning it down or something. … We've got to shoot out a few Govenors (sic) knee caps, kill a few cops, burn down a few churches. We could get it done this year.”

As a former law enforcement officer, I can tell you that this is deadly serious business. All potential threats of terrorism and murder, when discovered, must be investigated. As Fort Hood has taught us, there are indeed ideologically driven terrorists who walk among us.

After passage of Proposition 8 in California we saw that many homosexual activists are capable of threats, vandalism and even violence. Those who either threaten or attempt to incite terrorism must be immediately brought to justice. Churches and Christian leaders around the country need to be on high alert. These threats of homosexual activist terrorism must be taken very seriously.

Of course, just as most mainstream media have sheepishly caved to the dictates of political correctness in refusing to call Muslim terrorist, Nidal Malik Hasan, a “Muslim terrorist” – they too have blacked-out the story surrounding these homosexualist threats of terror. It doesn’t fit the PC narrative, you see. Islam is really a “peaceful religion,” right? And homosexual activists? Well, they’re the victims, not the victimizers. They’re the targets of “hate crimes” not the architects.

It seems the mainstream media are likewise bent on strapping a suicide bomb to any last remnant of journalistic credibility.

SOURCE



British health and safety snoops to enter family homes

This will be abused within weeks. British bureaucrats are already a nightmare of intrusiveness

Health and safety inspectors are to be given unprecedented access to family homes to ensure that parents are protecting their children from household accidents. New guidance drawn up at the request of the Department of Health urges councils and other public sector bodies to “collect data” on properties where children are thought to be at “greatest risk of unintentional injury”.

Council staff will then be tasked with overseeing the installation of safety devices in homes, including smoke alarms, stair gates, hot water temperature restrictors, oven guards and window and door locks.

The draft guidance by a committee at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has been criticised as intrusive and further evidence of the “creeping nanny state”. Until now, councils have made only a limited number of home inspections to check on building work and in extreme cases where the state of a house is thought to pose a serious risk to public health.

Nice also recommends the creation of a new government database to allow GPs, midwives and other officials who visit homes to log health and safety concerns they spot. The guidance aims to “encourage all practitioners who visit families and carers with children and young people aged under 15 to provide home safety advice and, where necessary, conduct a home risk assessment”. It continues: “If possible, they should supply and install home safety equipment.” The proposals have been put out to consultation and, if approved, will be implemented next year.

Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It is a huge intervention into family life which will be counter-productive. “Good parents will feel the intrusion of the state in their homes and bad parents will now have someone else to blame if they don’t bring up their children in a sensible, safe environment.” About 100,000 children are admitted to hospital each year for home injuries at a cost of £146m. [All the snoops in the world won't stop childhood accidents]

SOURCE



Name, age... are you gay? British census may get personal

As well as being an assault on privacy, this would certainly have a bad effect on compliance and truthfulness. People already tend to give mocking answers to many questionnaires. The results would be totally unreliable

EVERYONE in Britain could be asked if they are gay, straight or bisexual under controversial plans being examined by the government. Ministers working for Harriet Harman, who is in charge of equality policy, are considering including a question about sexual orientation in the 2011 census.

The move is opposed by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which is responsible for drawing up the census questionnaire. Officials believe the question would be unlikely to provide a true picture because sexuality is so complex, while religious groups and other critics view the question as an unwarranted invasion of privacy.

Ann Widdecombe, Conservative MP for Maidstone and the Weald, said the question, although optional, would be intrusive. “It is people’s own business,” said Widdecombe. “It is not anyone else’s business and I don’t see why anyone should be asked to declare it.”

However, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the government watchdog chaired by Trevor Phillips, has argued that it is vital to know how many gays, lesbians and bisexuals there are in Britain, where they live and what jobs they do so the progress of equality legislation can be measured. Failure to include a question, according to a paper by the commission, would be “an indicator of invisibility” and “a major obstacle to measuring progress on tackling discrimination”. This week the EHRC will tell a committee of MPs that it does not make sense to exclude the question when people are already asked about disability, race and religion. The government has previously ruled out the question, deeming it too controversial.

A draft of the 2011 census, which by law will have to be completed by every household, does not include a question on sexual identity. However, Michael Foster, a minister in Harman’s department, said: “We are being asked to look at it again.” Some ministers support the inclusion of a question, but only if it is not compulsory. One said: “You can’t demand that people tell us if they are gay or not.”

The ONS is opposed, partly because of research showing that people were against answering questions about their sexual behaviour. A spokesman added that sexual orientation was too complex to be accurately assessed by a single question. “A suite of questions would be necessary to collect data on the different dimensions of sexual orientation, including attraction, behaviour and identity,” he said.

There is also disagreement over the optional religious question, which first appeared in the 2001 census. Ministers are considering re-phrasing it, partly because of arguments from secular groups that “what is your religion?” overestimated the number of people following particular faiths because it was a leading question. Ministers are now looking at replacing it with “Do you regard yourself as belonging to a religion?”. Those answering “yes” would then be asked to identify that religion.

SOURCE



Free Britons from constant suspicion

Under the cloak of "safety", the British Left is degrading the treatment of children. They know what they are doing. They seize every opportunity to destroy the society they live in

David Cameron gets it. Last week he had the good sense to say what many people know to be true, but fear to articulate: that all too often the government’s bureaucratic schemes to protect children have so many unintended consequences that they end up making children more vulnerable and society less strong.

In his Scott Trust speech, Cameron picked up on the themes that this newspaper has been highlighting: the hidden damage being caused by the government’s vetting and barring regimes. He was unequivocal about the malign effect that the new Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), with its plans to monitor at least a quarter of the adult population, would have on our lives.

Many responsible adults would, the Tory leader said, rather abandon volunteering than go through the rigmarole of a vetting procedure. That mass withdrawal would actually reduce the amount of care and love in children’s lives. This is already happening, although no one in government appears willing to recognise it. Ministers are so busy mouthing platitudes, both in public and in private, about “safeguarding children being our most important priority”, that they don’t want to hear or think about what it means for children when grown-ups decide it’s too risky to spend time with them. Ask them about sports or drama groups closing down for fear of breaking regulations, or of teachers deciding it’s too hazardous to organise school trips, and they say blandly that protection must come first.

They don’t want to know about all the quiet and disastrous ways in which society is being reshaped by the constant message that adults can’t be trusted. Evidence has poured into this paper since the issue was raised here two weeks ago. Some came from professionals who cannot afford any misinterpretation of their interaction with children because of what it means for their jobs.

A paediatric nurse told me that until this autumn she was a volunteer at a local mother and toddler group. She stopped on the day a baby tumbled off a low slide. She realised then that if the mother concerned had accused her of negligence, that accusation could put an end to her career. She will no longer volunteer at any activity where children might be present.

A school governor talked of her distress at seeing a six-year-old child screaming after a bad fall in a playground and of no adults going to comfort her. The teacher standing beside her, watching woodenly, said it was more than his job was worth to touch a child. A children’s social worker said he made it a rule never to take out his godchildren, or to be alone in a room with the children of friends, in case he was ever accused of abuse.

If it seems perverse that the people who are trained to relate to children now have a particular reason to avoid them, some of the consequences outlined by other adults seem sadder still. A couple in their seventies wrote to say that their small dog was so attractive to children that every time they went out with him children wanted to stroke him and talk to them. The couple were so worried about how this might be seen that they now walked the dog only when children were in school.

A company director, fit, wealthy and about to retire, said that what he really wanted to do was to change deprived children’s lives, as he had done by running football teams for them in his thirties and forties. But he didn’t want to do so in a climate of such suspicion, so all his energy and experience would go to waste.

A fiftysomething grandmother wrote to say that on Hallowe’en she had stopped in the street to compliment three nine-year-olds on their costumes and, in the midst of a lively conversation, had felt such sudden panic that she might be accused of grooming the girls that she had cut it short and hurried off.

This is the reality of what pervasive suspicion is doing to us all. The government and its agencies may prefer to be wilfully blind to it. The Conservatives can’t afford to be. Their vision of a better Britain is built on the idea that people and communities should come together to take more responsibility for one another. They want to build links between people and generations, not erode them. That’s why they intend to rethink the way the ISA operates.

It is delicate territory and they know it. Demanding more protection for children is the politically easy option; talking about why mass monitoring won’t achieve it, and what will be lost in the ruthless and misguided pursuit of it, is harder and needs a more sophisticated argument.

Everyone notices, and recoils, when a child is atrociously abused or dies; the absence of thousands of voluntary activities, or untold acts of kindness, warmth and concern between children and adults never registers. It is to the Tories’ credit that they are willing to open up this argument.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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15 November, 2009

British childcare watchdog deliberately hid evidence in court case

Secrecy is deeply ingrained into everyone involved in British child-protection -- it is their only protection against revelations of their vast incompetence and injustice. See an example of their mindless oppressiveness here

The childcare watchdog has admitted withholding crucial evidence that could potentially hand Sharon Shoesmith, the former head of children’s services at Haringey Council, hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation. Ms Shoesmith was sacked after a damning Ofsted report into how her department was run in the aftermath of the Baby P case. A High Court judge has taken the extraordinary step of reopening her case so dozens of pages of handwritten notes, e-mails and draft reports can be examined. Mr Justice Foskett also ordered Ofsted to pay for all extra legal costs incurred at the penal “indemnity” rate — a bill that could cost taxpayers £50,000.

Ofsted issued a humiliating apology for its handling of Ms Shoesmith’s legal challenge, admitting a “serious and deeply regrettable error”.

The latest unexpected twist in the case of Baby Peter, the 17-month-old boy who died from repeated abuse, has placed in doubt Ofsted’s competence to oversee child protection.

Last month Ms Shoesmith launched judicial review proceedings against Ofsted, Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, and Haringey Council over her dismissal from the £130,000 a year job after the Baby Peter tragedy. She accused Mr Balls of putting pressure on Haringey to sack her with no compensation after a media campaign. Her lawyers have argued that a devastating Ofsted report used by Mr Balls and Haringey to justify their actions was deeply flawed and failed to follow proper procedures. That hearing ended a month ago and all parties were expecting the judge to make his ruling this week.

Ms Shoesmith’s lawyers had repeatedly tried to get hold of handwritten notes and various early drafts of the devastating Ofsted report into Haringey children’s services that cost her her job. Ms Shoesmith was told first the notes were not relevant, then that they “did not exist”. However, they were found several weeks ago by a lawyer new to Ofsted’s legal department who was following up a freedom of information request. Of the five key witnesses in Ofsted’s defence, three have produced new material. The judge was alerted on November 6.

Last night the Conservatives said that the court case had called into question Ofsted’s competence. “Ofsted has come out very badly from this tragic affair. An inspection in 2007 gave Haringey three stars, just days after Baby P has died. Their second inspection completely reversed that judgment. Now someone’s incompetence means we’re faced with the risible prospect of the taxpayer shelling out for Sharon Shoesmith’s legal costs,” Tim Loughton, the Shadow Children’s Minister, said. “Ofsted has to get its act together. Inspectors of children’s services need to be spending much more time talking to professionals and less time checking ticked boxes.”

Ofsted has been given two weeks to produce any other documents that could be relevant to the case.

In the emergency High Court hearing yesterday, Mr Justice Foskett also ordered it to give “a full explanation” of how it was that a series of requests from Ms Shoesmith’s lawyers for information on draft reports “was dealt with in the way it was”. He said that they were at first “batted away”, then turned down on the basis that the draft reports did not exist, “and now they do”. “I want chapter and verse on that,” he said.

Among the material are copies of drafts of transcripts of the Ofsted report into Haringey. There had been allegations that earlier drafts of the Ofsted report had been altered, or the assessments that they contained were altered in some way, he said. The reopening of the case means that a judgment is now unlikely until the new year.

Ofsted admitted that it had made a “serious and deeply regrettable error” in failing to disclose potential evidence. “We very much regret that this has happened. We have apologised unreservedly to the court and other parties. Unfortunately, mistakes sometimes happen and, while this is a serious one and deeply regrettable, we have nothing to hide,” it said in a statement.

Ms Shoesmith, 56, was dismissed in December.

During the judicial review it emerged that there were two key phone calls made to Haringey Council from a senior minister and senior official at the Department for Children, Schools and Families after a bruising Prime Minister’s Questions. It also emerged that Christine Gilbert, the Chief Inspector, made special arrangements for Mr Balls to have the Ofsted report before Haringey and gave him a personal briefing on the morning when Ms Shoesmith was suspended.

SOURCE



An Economic Case Against Homosexuality

As a Christian, I agree with the biblical condemnation of the homosexual lifestyle. However, we are living in a nation and world that increasingly rejects biblical norms. To defend traditional sexual morality against the encroaching threat of homosexuality and other aberrant forms of sexual expression, we need to be able to do more than cite Bible verses. Fortunately, there are plenty of economic reasons for being against this lifestyle and I think as conservatives we need to be able to articulate why our nation cannot afford the extremely high financial costs of this lifestyle at a time when we are confronting dangerously high budget deficits, national debt, and personal debt.

Let's start with AIDS. U.S. Government expenditures on this disease have risen from $200,000 in Fiscal Year 1980-1981 to $23.3 billion for Fiscal Year 2008. These figures have increased steadily over nearly three decades and probably exceed $100 billion. When you factor in what countries all over the world have spent on seeking to diminish this disease, without recognizing the morally aberrant sexual behavior (including heterosexual promiscuity in Africa and elsewhere) causing its spread, we are probably looking at U.S. expenditures of over $1 trillion dollars. I can't even begin to calculate the potential global expenditures on this. Think of how much constructively such money could have been spent on public health issues such as improved sanitation, immunizations, and other more worthwhile programs instead of promoting immoral and self-destructive behavior through needle exchanges and widespread condom distribution. The money invested on AIDS research could be returned to taxpayers or transferred to more worthwhile areas of public health research such as cancer, heart disease, combating pandemic conditions like H1N1 flu, and promoting responsible sexual behavior such as monogamy within heterosexual marriage.

Our ongoing U.S. political debate over health care reform also needs to factor in the economic costs of homosexual and other sexually deviant behaviors on our health care system in terms of pharmaceutical drugs, tainted blood supplies, and requiring doctors and nurses to treat sexually transmitted diseases which would be less likely to occur if people practiced chastity outside of heterosexual marriage and monogamy within such marriage. As human beings, we are actually capable of such restraint.

Anyone who studies prison conditions knows that AIDS is a reality in many correctional facilities due to the occurrence of rape. I'm not sure how systematically the Justice Dept's Bureau of Justice Statistics keeps track of prison rape statistics or other instances of same sex sexual assault, but that also has economic implications not to mention the psychological trauma experienced by all rape victims. I have seen one Bureau of Justice Statistics study indicating that 90% of prison rapes are from male on male sexual activity. This particular problem was serious enough to cause Congress to pass legislation in 2003 creating a Prison Rape Elimination Commission which issued its report earlier this year. The presence of sex offender registries, which require significant law enforcement staff time and expense to update and maintain, is another demonstration of the high economic costs of sexually deviant behavior.

The sad practice of so many companies and universities adopting domestic partner benefits in a misguided effort to attract employees drives up insurance costs for these companies and prevents them from providing additional coverage to those of us adhering to traditional sexual moral standards. It also requires these companies to pass on the costs of their goods and services beyond normal inflationary trends. Additionally, it also probably makes it more difficult for them to expand their businesses and create additional jobs in an economy coping with near double digit unemployment rates. The 2002 Corporate Resource Center's study Do Domestic Partner Benefits Make Good Economic Sense? (available at their website) demonstrates that such investments are counterproductive to good business sense for most employers and that it's more economical for employers to promote healthy employee marriages because married employees are generally more dependable and motivated workers.

The homosexual lifestyle also affects areas such as life insurance, estate planning, real estate, divorce law if same-sex marriage occurs on a widespread basis, and investments as firms providing these services have to factor in how to treat same sex domestic partner issues into their cost calculations. Guess who has to pay for these increased costs and potentially lower investment returns? We do, regardless of whether or not we approve of the homosexual lifestyle. The next time some one tells you how wonderful is the "progress" gays have made in recent decades ask them if they have ever thought about the multiple economic consequences of this "progress" as described in this posting. These may be inconvenient truths to some as the primarily infantile ad hominem attacks this posting has received below indicate. They are substantive realities which cannot be denied.

I welcome suggestions from readers as to other possible economic costs of the homosexual lifestyle which I have forgotten.

SOURCE



Courts lead new French revolution

NO tumbrels have appeared in Paris's Place de la Concorde, but a revolution may be under way in France nonetheless. Recent weeks have seen the trial of former prime minister Dominique de Villepin and the conviction of former defence minister Charles Pasqua.

Now former president Jacques Chirac has learned that he is not immune from prosecution. Is France's "Republican monarchy", to borrow a phrase from Jean-Francois Revel, about to be overthrown?

The French Revolution never actually ended the privileges of France's ruling elites. True enough, some aristocratic heads rolled, but the nobility eventually returned to France. When the Republic replaced the monarchy for good, in 1875, ballots replaced birthright, but the new governing elite believed it possessed the same rights and perks as the former aristocrats.

The concept of the "Republican monarchy", which is mostly concerned with the mores of French presidents and their entourages, did not really take hold until the Fifth Republic. Once elected, the French president and his court gain access to financial privileges that are not always legal. Moreover, they live behind a shroud of secrecy: how they use official planes, the civil servants they employ for personal service, not to mention the mistresses, has always been more or less considered private territory. Journalists avoided commenting on these matters.

The apex of the aristocratic Republic was reached under Socialist president Francois Mitterrand, who ruled from 1981 until 1995. Unknown to the public, a government jet would ferry him to Egypt to spend weekends with his mistress and his illegitimate daughter. Only the media elite knew, and they never mentioned it. Chirac, who succeeded Mitterrand as president, was only slightly more cautious.

All this has changed. In less than a week, Pasqua was sentenced to three years in jail for illegal arms trading with Angola. Villepin, a former prime minister for Chirac, awaits judgment on charges of having organised a smear campaign against his rival for the presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Chirac's indictment is remarkable for the very modesty of his supposed crime: he is suspected of having asked city bureaucrats to work for his political party and run his electoral campaigns when he was mayor of Paris.

So something of a democratic revolution may be under way in France, but it is a revolution made in the courts, not the streets. French judges have become more independent than they traditionally were. Inspired by Italy's investigating magistrates who took aim at the mafia bosses, and Spanish judges who act as social redeemers, some French judges are determined to democratise the Republic and eradicate corruption.

The internet is a seminal lever in this process. Today, Mitterrand's mistress and daughter could not benefit from the media's complicity: no state secrets, and no aristocratic excess, can escape today's bloggers.

Is the private life of France's elite also to be exposed? Today, many French journalists still resist the temptation to expose the private lives of the political elite, but this is a lost battle: the bloggers do not share the journalists' ethics. Sarkozy understands the new rules of the game. As soon it was known he had an intimate relationship with a former fashion model, he decided to marry her, avoiding any further embarrassment.

Still, aristocratic habits do not die easily, even in Sarkozy's overexposed regime. Sarkozy's son, Jean, has already been elected to a major local government office at the tender age of 22. Being as ambitious as the father, Jean Sarkozy recently tried to have himself appointed as chairman of a powerful public company. Bloggers, followed by traditional journalists, went up in arms against such blatant nepotism. Young Sarkozy withdrew.

France, it seems, does not yet share the real democratic culture of, say, Scandinavia. French ministers have yet to be seen taking the bus or the subway to their offices. French ministries still occupy the former 18th-century palaces of the king and his nobility. As long as the governing elite works in this splendour, one cannot expect they will ever behave like common mortals. As Bossuet, Louis XIV's confessor, declared to the Sun King: "You'll die, but you are immortal." French presidents and their elected nobility still bask in this decadent aura. But, like French hauteur in international affairs, the end of an era may be at hand.

SOURCE



The right to privacy in the Age of Facebook

In an era of voluntary revelation and involuntary regulation, we must find new ways to defend our private lives

One of the most confusing things about the question of privacy, and what makes it so elusive today, is that it is far from evident how people regard their right to privacy, or how these attitudes translate into day-to-day behaviours.

The concept of privacy, once merely thought of as the right to be left alone, has been transformed as we have become more information-oriented and as digital technologies have come to ensure that almost everyone now has a ‘digital fingerprint’. The question is further complicated by the fact that, in recent decades, the boundary between private and public has become blurred. A new age of disclosure has emerged where reality TV and social networking sites now represent the ‘private’ face of public scrutiny.

Can one seriously argue that privacy is generally regarded as important today?

It is clear that contradictory attitudes and practices co-exist - often in the same individuals. For example, it is common to encounter people who are concerned about data collection and the potential abuse of power by the state, but who are at the same time willing to reveal deeply personal thoughts on social networking sites. Some say they value the right to privacy but then also seem willing to bargain the release of very personal information in exchange for relatively small (often financial) rewards. Others who are keen to protect their sexual or medical histories will still gladly disclose vital details of their financial circumstances on commercial websites (1). It is not uncommon for those who reveal personal information on social networking sites also to be paranoid about online transactions, fraud and identity-theft.

When it comes to security, anti-terrorism and anti-crime measures, even those who regard privacy as intrinsic to personal liberty are willing to accept encroachments on their freedoms and rights by the state with little protest or outcry (just consider the deployment of CCTV cameras in the UK).

It appears that privacy is increasingly being regarded as an area of trade-offs rather than a political principle to be defended or upheld in all circumstances, particularly against the state. There are several signs that this is happening:

* privacy is increasingly traded for free content online;

* personal information is widely shared with institutions in return for some benefit or reward, often financial;

* state surveillance and data capture are often accepted as necessary for ensuring personal or national security, even though giving up privacy does not necessarily enhance security (2).

There are numerous studies that show the differential attitude people have towards sharing information in different circumstances. One example is a recent study published by the Economic and Social Research Council, Assessing Privacy Impact, in which Dr Ian Brown of the Oxford Internet Institute explains that his organisation’s latest annual survey of internet users found that while more people are now happy to provide email addresses and names to e-commerce websites, public concern over data collection by state institutions (beyond concerns about competence) remains very high. Brown notes that ‘the public is unhappy about extensive sharing, even for purposes such as counter-terrorism and medical research’ (3).

So how does one begin to understand what is really happening here, let alone what this might mean for the future? It appears that people’s willingness to share information about themselves depends to a large degree on who they are sharing that information with. It is precisely because people have different levels of trust (or confidence) towards different institutions that these differentials in attitude and behaviour can coexist. This is what makes anticipating privacy behaviour so elusive; how much information people will disclose or how they will regard a breach of data protection depends not only on their prior attitude towards privacy, but also on how they trust the beneficiary of their self-disclosure or data breaches.

Risk trade-off behaviour is mediated through a trust relationship between the discloser and the recipient of information. The distinction between sharing information with people in a social network versus institutions sheds considerable light on the apparently contradictory behaviours noted above.

In The Problem of Trust (1997), Adam B Seligman makes the important and helpful distinction between trust and confidence. Seligman argues that there is a fundamental difference between trust in people (interpersonal relationships) and confidence in institutions. (The same would apply to technological systems, though this is not Seligman’s focus.)

This goes to the heart of what trust actually is: a relationship that is not based upon reciprocal calculation, but is open-ended. Seligman argues convincingly that if a trusting act was based on calculation of expected outcomes or on the rational expectation of a quantified outcome, this would not be an act of trust at all, but an act based on confidence. It would be based on the idea of confidence in the existence of a system that delivered what it promised. The suspension of reciprocal calculation is precisely what defines trusting relationships.

Trust not only entails negotiating risk, it implies risk, as it is about negotiating that which is unknown. But the risk is specific. It is based upon the implicit recognition of others’ capacity to act freely and in unexpected ways. Unconditionality and engagement are at the heart of trust relations. As Seligman notes, if all actions were constrained or regulated there would be no risk, only confidence or a lack thereof. In relations of confidence, roles are prescribed while passivity defines behaviour; we give data to the state, they act upon it - more often than not - outside of our control. Data-protection legislation protects data and prescribes what can or cannot be done with that data. We are merely passive onlookers who give up that data either willingly or inadvertently.

So, in our interpersonal relationships – in the realm of trust – we act as free individuals and recognise others’ free agency as well. But when we act in predefined ways (that is, when we are constrained), then trust is not called for nor established. Confidence that everyone will act in accordance with the law or existing moral standards suffice. It is only when aspects of behaviour transcend this that trust emerges systematically as an aspect of social organisation.

Thus, the origins of trust are rooted in our recognition of the freedom of others to act freely. Trust is based on the ability to act autonomously and outside of predefined or ascribed roles, and on the recognition that others have this ability, too.

Trust is therefore a very rare thing indeed. And because it is based on free will, trust cannot be demanded, only offered and accepted. Trust and mistrust thus develop in relationship to free will and the ability to exercise that will, as different responses to aspects of behaviour that can no longer be adequately contained within existing norms and social roles.

This provides some important insights into the complexities surrounding the contradictory privacy behaviours mentioned above. Sharing of personal information on Facebook is thus a fundamentally different act from allowing one’s personal data to be used by the National Health Service or any other government institution.

In the first instance, social networking sites are voluntary. Joining and participating is based upon free will and the ability to act autonomously. By adding friends to our network, we implicitly recognise this capacity in our friends and recognise their ability to act outside of predefined roles. Reciprocity is an outcome rather than a condition for participation. Gaining acknowledgement from your peers does not assume what form that should take. Outcomes cannot be predetermined. It is a trust relationship because it is open-ended; individuals are free to control their identities, how they present themselves and share what’s on their minds, and they recognise in their friends the same capacities. For younger people, in particular, this is perhaps their only truly private space. Not even their homes or bedrooms are as private as this.

This is thus a high-trust space where privacy has a negligible impact on behaviour.

The opposite pertains to environments where requests for information are made from institutions and organisations that we interact with. From what has been said above it should be clear that our relationships with state institutions are based upon confidence rather than trust: roles are ascribed while outcomes are intended and expected. Transgressions are resolved through the legal system. There is neither unconditionality nor active engagement, but a passive relationship based on prescribed roles that are not subject to change or control. Passivity and/or the expectation of trust being delivered are thus anathema to the establishment of real trust relations.

In these circumstances it is clear that privacy concerns will come to the fore and influence behaviour far more than in the case of social networks. The blurring of the boundaries of public and private today, and the general disengagement of atomised citizens with the political process, means that the lack of confidence in the institutional frameworks of society is extremely high. In these circumstances of a lack of confidence, indeed, a lack of trust, privacy concerns come to the fore.

Attitudes to privacy, and the behaviours that arise from those attitudes, will change according to the level of trust or mistrust people have with regard to the people or institutions they are interacting with. How much people trust the potential beneficiary of their self-disclosure is now the overriding motivator of behaviour.

This has a number of important consequences, which require further research and debate.

First, this insight suggests that any discussion that does not take questions of trust as a starting point will inevitably get it wrong. Regulation and legislation (around data protection, for example) or technologically based solutions (like identity management solutions, privacy policies and so on) can exacerbate rather than allay fears because they fail to take into account the trust relations underpinning them. Indeed, even raising the question of safeguards increases rather than allays privacy fears. This is a problem of perception and social attitudes, not something that is susceptible to legal or technical fixes. For regulation or technological solutions to be effective they have to be based upon the prior question of how much trust the given institution or system has with the public.

Second, because privacy is increasingly understood as a trade-off, its link to freedom and free will is increasingly brought into question. In these circumstances the right to be left alone is no longer a universal principle. Rather, subjectivity and the randomness of individual choice become the realm within which a degraded notion of privacy is upheld or encroached upon. A universal principle is replaced by the tyranny of subjective judgement, which can only result in the loss of social and political solidarity.

Third, the defence of privacy as a political right needs to be re-established on the basis of its centrality to the development of individual identities. Today’s identity formation through social networking represents a degraded sense of identity. ‘Facebook identities’, which are constantly exposed, force social conformity. Individuated conformity is not the basis upon which a robust defence of privacy can be mounted. This represents the loss of privacy and is a regressive force.

The rethinking of privacy as a trade-off mediated by trust is thus a critical starting point for mounting a defence of privacy today. The right to be left alone is not something whimsical or self-indulgent, but a crucial personal and social freedom. The loss of privacy represents a real threat to the spirit of human progress through social experimentation.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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Examining political correctness around the world and its stifling of liberty and sense. Chronicling a slowly developing dictatorship


BIO for John Ray


Gender is a property of words, not of people. Using it otherwise is just another politically correct distortion -- though not as pernicious as calling racial discrimination "Affirmative action"


Postmodernism is fundamentally frivolous. Postmodernists routinely condemn racism and intolerance as wrong but then say that there is no such thing as right and wrong. They are clearly not being serious. Either they do not really believe in moral nihilism or they believe that racism cannot be condemned!


Postmodernism is in fact just a tantrum. Post-Soviet reality in particular suits Leftists so badly that their response is to deny that reality exists. That they can be so dishonest, however, simply shows how psychopathic they are.


Juergen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."


The Supreme Court of the United States is now and always has been a judicial abomination. Its guiding principles have always been political rather than judicial. It is not as political as Stalin's courts but its respect for the constitution is little better. Some recent abuses: The "equal treatment" provision of the 14th amendment was specifically written to outlaw racial discrimination yet the court has allowed various forms of "affirmative action" for decades -- when all such policies should have been completely stuck down immediately. The 2nd. amendment says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed yet gun control laws infringe it in every State in the union. The 1st amedment provides that speech shall be freely exercised yet the court has upheld various restrictions on the financing and display of political advertising. The court has found a right to abortion in the constitution when the word abortion is not even mentioned there. The court invents rights that do not exist and denies rights that do.


Consider two "jokes" below:

Q. "Why are Leftists always standing up for blacks and homosexuals?

A. Because for all three groups their only God is their penis"

Pretty offensive, right? So consider this one:

Q. "Why are evangelical Christians like the Taliban?

A. They are both religious fundamentalists"

The latter "joke" is not a joke at all, of course. It is a comparison routinely touted by Leftists. Both "jokes" are greatly offensive and unfair to the parties targeted but one gets a pass without question while the other would bring great wrath on the head of anyone uttering it. Why? Because political correctness is in fact just Leftist bigotry. Bigotry is unfairly favouring one or more groups of people over others -- usually justified as "truth".


One of my more amusing memories is from the time when the Soviet Union still existed and I was teaching sociology in a major Australian university. On one memorable occasion, we had a representative of the Soviet Womens' organization visit us -- a stout and heavily made-up lady of mature years. When she was ushered into our conference room, she was greeted with something like adulation by the local Marxists. In question time after her talk, however, someone asked her how homosexuals were treated in the USSR. She replied: "We don't have any. That was before the revolution". The consternation and confusion that produced among my Leftist colleagues was hilarious to behold and still lives vividly in my memory. The more things change, the more they remain the same, however. In Sept. 2007 President Ahmadinejad told Columbia university that there are no homosexuals in Iran.


It is widely agreed (with mainly Lesbians dissenting) that boys need their fathers. What needs much wider recognition is that girls need their fathers too. The relationship between a "Daddy's girl" and her father is perhaps the most beautiful human relationship there is. It can help give the girl concerned inner strength for the rest of her life.


The love of bureaucracy is very Leftist and hence "correct". Who said this? "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything". It was V.I. Lenin


On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


Germaine Greer is a stupid old Harpy who is notable only for the depth and extent of her hatreds