Freedom is as freedom does

Next time somebody tells you about the glories of academic research, academic thinking and academic publishing, tell them about this. Hot Air quotes the New York Times article, which informs the sadly unsurprised world that

Yale University and Yale University Press consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous: The book, “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” should not include the 12 Danish drawings that originally appeared in September 2005. What’s more, they suggested that the Yale press also refrain from publishing any other illustrations of the prophet that were to be included, specifically, a drawing for a children’s book; an Ottoman print; and a sketch by the 19th-century artist Gustave Doré of Muhammad being tormented in Hell, an episode from Dante’s “Inferno” that has been depicted by Botticelli, Blake, Rodin and Dalí…

So, we have a book about the Danish cartoons that will not be illustrated by those cartoons. Brilliant. Just the sort of fearless enquiry one wants to see.

Furthermore, Yale (both Press and Universiy) are happy to go along by non-publication with the notion that Mohammed has never been depicted before and certainly not in the Muslim world. After all, they will not publish an Ottoman print either.

At least, as AllahPundit on Hot Air says, there is no equivocation of why they are censoring their own publication: naked fear of reprisals. But you know, they can't get all of us. Not even the New York Times, whose account of what happened after the cartoons were published is somewhat economical with the truth as Gateway Pundit details.

PS Michael Moynihan echoes my sadness that it should be Yale University Press that has shown itself to be "yellow" as James Cagney's Rocky Sullivan says in "Angels with Dirty Faces". They had taken on the so-called liberal, pro-Communist establishment, after all. Their Annals of Communism series has changed for ever the way that evil system is viewed and has made it possible to write more clearly about Communist infiltration in the United States. And now this.

UPDATE: Roger Kimball stays with the story and points out that, contrary to what the NYT said, the advice to remove the illustrations from a serious book about the Danish cartoons was not unanimous. Indeed, there were many good reasons advanced by those asked why they should be kept in. Nor does it seem likely that it was the threat of violence that really underlay the decision. Well, what else could it be? Money? Surely not.

Common sense triumphs for the time being

Thanks to James Delingpole's blog on the Telegraph site (see, I do read some Clogs) we find out that the Australian Senate has voted Kevin Rudd's cap and trade bill out by 42 to 30 votes.

Why did those Senators reject Rudd’s scheme, despite their prolonged drought and their bush fires? Well some - the green ones - did so because they didn’t think its emissions cutting targets went far enough. But the majority did so - duh - because they didn’t want their coal-dependent heavy industry hamstrung by still more pointless taxation and regulation, their consumers fleeced and their economy ruined in the middle of a thwacking great global recession. And, in at least the case of Senator Steve Fielding, because they’d done their research and discovered that Anthropogenic Global Warming is a figment of Al Gore’s imagination.

Having consulted scientific experts including Ian Plimer [whom I interviewed in the Spectator a few weeks back and whose views are neatly summarised here] Sen Fielding was inspired to visit the US to assess at first hand what evidence the Obama administration was using to justify its radical Waxman Markey cap and trade measures. He was not impressed and issued a challenge, emailing graphs to one of the US president’s energy advisers showing that, despite rising CO2 levels the globe has not warmed in over a decade.

He concluded: “Until recently I, like most Australians, simply accepted without question the notion that global warming was a result of increased carbon emissions. However, after speaking to a cross-section of noted scientists, including Ian Plimer… I quickly began to understand that the science on this issue was by no means conclusive….As a federal senator, I would be derelict in my duty to the Australian people if I did not even consider whether or not the scientific assumptions underpinning this debate were in fact correct.”

We may add that the bush fires have been known to be caused by arsonists and have often spread fast because in many places control of the wilderness had been abandoned in response to Green demands.

Bloomberg points out that this is not the end of the story.

Rudd, who needs support from seven senators outside the government to pass laws through the upper house, can resubmit the bill after making amendments. A second rejection after a three-month span would give him a trigger to call an election.

“We may lose this fight, but this issue will not go away,” Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told the Senate in Canberra. “Australia cannot afford for climate change to be unfinished business.”

Five members from the Australian Greens party sought bigger cuts to emissions while the opposition coalition and independent Senator Nick Xenophon wanted to wait for further studies on the plan’s impact on the economy.

I can't help being pleased that someone called Xenophon should emulate his namesake and approach matters with an open and enquiring mind.

AND TALKING of Clogs or Corporate Blogs, I shall be spending a good deal of today and tomorrow writing about them for the Total Politics Guide to Political Blogging. There's glory for you.

Why I find it so tedious

I wouldn't go so far as to say I don't give a sh*t about British politics but I do find it extraordinarily tedious. I know it is August but to have the issue of some daft Conservative MP making a "gaffe" when he did not realise he was recorded (shades of "Yes Prime Minister"), his apology and the non-problem of his future as the most important one of the day, nay several days, is enough to make one give up the will to live. (There are many other links in the media and the blogosphere I could post but cannot be bothered. As Private Eye might say: continued on pp. 3, 4, 6, 7-9, 11-14 & 94)

Children should be seen and not heard at political meetings

Mornings mean cups of coffee and a reading of Instapundit, following up the links if they are of interest. With the time difference I have several hours in which I can catch up with what the American scene. (If I try really hard, could I become the British Instapundit? Nah. Not enough hours in the day.)

At present, much revolves round the Obamacare fracas and the townhall meetings at some of which elected politicians go to all kinds of ruses to avoid talking to those who had elected them and whom they represent. Whatever makes them think this is a sensible idea? But then, who are we to talk? When did anyone see a really open political meeting in this country? With no open meetings we do not have elected politicians telling us we are lucky they bothered to turn up to answer questions.

Among the many stories from left and right (funnily enough, the left-wing ones appear to be somewhat inaccurate, not to mention outraged at the thought of the great unwashed protesting) there is a link to Michelle Malkin's account of a rather nauseating incident at the townhall meeting in Malden, New Hampshire, attended by The One himself.

As Sister Toldjah reports with links to "real" media outlets, the meeting was not a total success with Obama blundering into a comparison between FedEx and the US Post Office while trying to prove that more state control of healthcare was a good thing.

The story Michelle M quotes concerns a "randomly" picked 11 year old girl who asked a nice easy question that she thought of all by herself. Except that her mother, who helped her to write the question before they came to the meeting is a fully paid up and accredited Obama supporter who has met the First Family before. (More here and on other blogs. This story is not going to die.)

Of course, children are used as political pawns all the time. Baby kissing has been a notorious pastime for politicians running for office since time immemorial. And no different in Britain as any reader of "Pickwick Papers" can tell you.

We can all recall the girl, who just happened to be the daughter of long-standing members of the Labour Party, both of them teachers, who did not get into Edinburgh University for whatever reason touted by Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, as an example of the social unfairness of university entrances. Whatever happened to that girl?

One can cite any number of examples. But I agree with Michelle's reader, Ricky. I, too, am fed up with children being produced as some oracles of political wisdom. It may have started with Carter who told us all that he consulted his daughter Amy on important matters to do with nuclear deterrence. How embarrassed that poor woman must be whenever the old reels are shown.

Then there was our own Tony Blair losing his temper because critics of the projected Dome could not see its glory while his 13 year old son, Liam could. Unfortunately, by the time the Dome was complete Liam was somewhat older and the critics turned out to be right. Running a country according to what 13 year olds think is not such a great idea.

In other words, children at political meetings should be seen and not heard. No harm in them coming along and listening to what people say and how they argue; no harm in them discussing said matters with their parents and teachers afterwards; that, for 11 year old Julia's and her Obamabot mom's information is how children learn to understand things and be able to discern the truth if there is such a thing in politics. But the idea of the President of the United States, in the middle of a crisis (and there is no other way of describing the events of the last couple of weeks) getting a child to pipe a pwetty little qwestion so he can have a go at his opponents is worse than nauseating.

And talking of nauseating, President Obama is not doing too well with his own supporters. Camille Paglia, though still all of that, is appalled by the sequence of disasters that has visited this Administration as it tries to implement those reforms Democrats have, apparently been longing for. Mind you, she thinks he is utterly wonderful and it is his staff that is problematic. She is right about Nancy Pelosi, whose botoxed head should roll but blaming everything on the staff is a little low. Reminds one of that old chestnut: "if only Stalin knew".

Meanwhile public support for Obamacare is dropping: down by 21 per cent. A good deal of that is not because people might not like to see some reform but, as Ms Paglia rightly notes, because of the cack-handed way this package is being put together and ferocious hysteria with which it is being pushed down people's throats. Anyone would become suspicious if the slightest argument is shouted down with the words Nazi, KKK and anti-American.

Tom Maguire on JustOneMinute links back to a HuffPo writer who is beginning to wonder just exactly what it is that makes President Obama tick. A little late in the day for that sort of wondering, I'd say. Perhaps journalists and other analysts should have done a little searching before the man was elected to be Commander-in-Chief.

It is absolutely true that neither the people of the United States nor the rest of us know anything about him. The media managed not to find out anything in the two years when he campaigned to be President instead of doing his job as Senator for Illinois. There has been a moratorium (give or take some blogs) on all personal stories and he has managed to secrete all documents to do with his life, studies and career so far. When he could not do so, as in voting records, he simply lied until called out on it.

My own suspicion is that there is nothing there. Glenn Reynolds is right when he calls him the clothes with no emperor. One of the oddest things I noticed about that appallingly tacky birthday cake was that there was nothing personal on it, though the party was merely for the family and staff. Everything on it is to do with the presidency, not the man. Even the number is 44 instead of 48, his age. The fact that he is the 44th President is more important for a birthday cake? And just how tacky it is to make the cake icing (frosting for our American readers) into the shape of the Presidential Seal?

Are there no interests at all that can be referred to? No sports, entertainment, books, hobbies that The One cares about? Most unusual.

Another Yvonne Ridley in the making?

Claudia Rosett writes that the two journalists, sent by Al Gore to get stories about North Korea and subsequently rescued by former President Clinton, may well be getting rather juicy advances for their "story", which is unlikely to be entirely truthful.

There is an interesting discussion that follows if one ignores the resident trolls. Pajamas Media has about half a dozen that turn up on every thread. I hope it makes their lives worthwhile.

This is not the first time journalists go into oppressive countries, get caught, imprisoned and are rescued. Remember Yvonne Ridley, captured by the Taliban, then released, who has become a Muslim convert and a member of the Respect Party? Nobody ever found out what happened to her guides who had taken her into Afghanistan.

In the same way, Ms Rosett is right to point out that the girls may well have had information on them when they were captured that could well have led to the arrest and deportation of North Korean refugees. Various organixations in the field are worried about that. And what happened to the Chinese who helped the two hackettes? I don't suppose former President Clinton will rush to their rescue if they are in trouble.

What of their book, articles and probable lecture tour? I have no real objection to them making money out of what seems to have been a stunt that went temporarily wrong for them but I agree with Ms Rosett: they are unlikely to tell the truth even if they know it. There is much to be said for the testimony of witnesses. It's just I do not think Ms Laura Ling and Ms Euna Lee are exactly witnesses in the old sense of the word. Not in the way Whittaker Chambers or Margarete Buber-Neumann meant it. The money they will get is the least of it. I do think, however, that it would be a graceful gesture on their part and some indication of good will if they contributed some of what they will receive (earning, I suspect, does not come into it as the book is unlikely to sell well for any length of time) towards one of the organizations that are trying to help North Korean refugees and to disseminate genuine information about that unhappy country.

Oh my, haven't things changed

All of us who are interested in American news can recall a time when dissent was the "highest form of patriotism", when protests, however small, however clearly organized by political groups, however unpleasant were, at least, high jinks and indications of a robust debate (especially when the protesters shouted down or attacked anyone who disagreed with them), and at most, indications of genuine popular discontent (especially is the protesting group was outnumbered by the media). Glenn Reynolds gives a few examples.

As he also points out, this is no longer so. Dissent is now fascist or Nazi (as Nancy Pelosi said, winning the prize for transgressing Godwin's Law). It is also un-American. Yes, that's right, in the country that has prided itself on the First Amendment, which guarantees free speech and on being the first constitutional republic in the world, in that country the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader call protesters un-American. Mind you, if you read the comments you will be surprised how many of USA Today's readers disagree very violently with Madam Speaker and her colleague.

The phrase un-American conjures up all sorts of past events, in particular the House Un-American Activities Committee that still sends the left in America and here into paroxysms of rage and shrill hysteria. Let us not forget that HUAC dealt with people who had been working for the Soviet Union as spies or agents of influence, that is, working for one of the most evil political systems and to undermine the United States, its allies and constitutional democracy in general. Recently opened up documents have proved beyond doubt the truth of those accusations.

That was then. This is now. And being un-American is no longer a question of betraying your country in order to aid and abet a totalitarian system: it is simply disagreeing with the President's and his party's highly controversial policy.

It would appear that even President Obama or his spokespeople are backing away a bit from that rather outrageous position. Then again, it was President Obama who said just a few days ago that he did not want to listen to those who disagreed with him as they were responsible for the mess that has been created (not he who has been in politics for most of his adult life); he just wanted them to shut up and go away. At least he did not call them un-American or Nazi.

Presumably, he also knows of the call by his henchpersons for American citizens to snitch on their neighbours not because they suspect them to be terrorists (when it was suggested under Bush that people should report suspicious behaviour the left and the civil rights brigade were up in arms though most people thought it a sensible idea) but because they might be spreading "fishy" stories about the Obamacare bill. They are, to use the old Soviet terminology, wreckers and saboteurs and need to be reported.

I suggest they call the database thus collected the Pavlik Morozov Archives, after the young pioneer who is supposed to have shopped his father and uncle to the GPU (the NKVD's predecessor) during collectivization.

Oh, by the way, I am not seeing any anti-American slogans despite the rather unpleasant developments anywhere in Britain or Europe. Not that I see any growth of pro-Americanism either, just a complete lack of interest now that Bush is not president and the government is genuinely trying to suppress dissent, which is no longer patriotic.

Plus ça change ....

There are people around who solemnly assure me and anyone else who happens to be withing hearing distance that things are definitely changing in China. They are getting better, people are becoming more free, the state is moving in the right direction.

They have no evidence for this, beyond the odd story of how nobody seemed that afraid to talk to them when they were in Beijing as tourists. Hardly sufficient evidence in my opinion and shows how contemptuous these people really are of the Chinese, if they think that is a good enough development.

(A little like people who argue that abolishing the burqua in Western countries would be a terrible idea as it gives Muslim women the freedom to go out on the streets. As the rest of the female population is free to go out without covering themselves from top to toe, one wonders exactly who deprives Muslim women of their freedom. Answers on the back of the postage stamp, please.)

In China matters are moving in the wrong direction, as the New York Times reports under a rather unhappy title: "Arrres in China Rattles Backers of Legal Rights".

China's nascent legal rights movement, already reeling from a crackdown on crusading lawyers, the kidnapping of defense witnesses and the shuttering of a prominent legal clinic, has been shaken by the detention of a widely respected rights defender who has been incommunicado since the police led him away from his apartment 12 days ago.

One China's legal rights movement well; we must all offer whatever support we can. Somehow I do not think that proclaiming the wondrous democratic developments in China is quite what these courageous people are looking for.