A really shocking indictment of our police force

This comes from the New Statesman but for once I have to admit with that hoary old leftie periodical. In fact, I am rather surprised they did publish this, as the subject of the piece is more likely to crop up in the Spectator or, especially, Standpoint: the outrageous truth that most of our police force ignore such matters as forced marriage and "honour" based violence, despite taking the first step towards making it a bureaucratically acknowledged crime, creating an acronym, HBV.

The article, The majority of of police forces' failure to tackle honour-based violence is punishing victims, as clumsy a title as I have ever seen, was sent to me by Detective Sergeant Pal Singh, a good friend of mine, who is mentioned and quoted in the text.

Detective Sergeant Pal Singh has worked on some of the most high-profile “honour” killings in Britain to date, gaining a Metropolitan Police Service award for “Outstanding Individual Contribution to Victim Care” during HBV investigations. He is one of only a handful of people that I believe are truly able to understand the challenges we face and provide the real, practical solutions needed to tackle “honour” crime in all its forms. After spending many years bearing witness to the fatal consequences of inappropriate police responses to HBV, Singh has some important ideas on how to tackle the issue, which have yet to be acted upon.

He suggests that, to begin with, a specialist HBV unit covering the whole of London should be set up as a priority, which makes sense given that most recorded incidents take place there. Other high-risk areas include the West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Lancashire and Manchester. Underreporting of “honour” crime is not based on speculation, it is a reality deduced through analysis of poor and inappropriate recording of crime data.

We have heard of too many cases of women denied justice when they go to the police, being sent back to meet more violence and even murder; we know it is happening but we refuse to deal with it because we refuse to acknowledge that certain ideas are superior to others and refuse to accept the basic fact that the law of the land should be the same for all. That means the most important entity is the individual not some community, based on religion or so-called culture.

Read the whole article. It is worth it.

And speaking of Pal Singh, here is one case in which he and his colleagues managed to achieve the result they wanted: the saved the woman from an abusive husband and family as well as putting him in gaol, though possibly the sentence was not quite long enough. That, as we know, is not the province of the police so, possibly, other institutions need to start thinking about the problem as well.

We have a problem

It is one of the assumptions of most of the eurosceptic wing that as far as possible (allowing for international agreements and so on) legislation and regulation in this country should be carried out by our elected representatives within certain constitutional boundaries, which, in my opinion, includes a role for the House of Lords, chosen on a completely different basis and one for and independent judiciary. MPs must, in that system, be of huge importance.

Nothing wrong with that, you might say. After all, MPs can always be voted out (though many people who live in safe constituencies might disagree with that); they can be challenged while they are sitting though I dislike the idea of recall as we do vote for our MPs as members of parties and a recall can so easily degenerate into one particular group re-fighting a perfectly valid election. Anyway, there we are: MPs rather than the various levels of eurocracy.

Then we get the spectacle that is going on in the Commons right now: a debate on whether Donald Trump, an American businessman and a candidate for the Presidential nomination, should be excluded from the United Kingdom. Why? Well, he said a few things we do not like or some of us do not like and, in any way, his behaviour is boorish. Not only are those not reasons for excluding someone from this country but it is an obvious waste of time for MPs even to debate it.

Now admittedly, this is not happening in the Chamber but in Westminster Hall. It is, nevertheless, taking up a great deal of Parliamentary time. The debate is taking place at the instigation of the Petitions Committee, which has had to deal with two e-petitions, 114003, with 500,000 signatures that is in favour of the ban and 114907 with 40,000 signatures that is against it. In neither case are the numbers big enough to make it a matter for Parliamentary debate.

As it happens, the Home Secretary has the powers to exclude people from entering the country and this power has been exercised at various times - some of those we know about, many we do not but we must assume that the reasons had to be more than just unpleasant and boorish behaviour.

Let me just add that so far as anyone knows no UK variant of the US Magnitsky Act with its list of people who were responsible for the torture and death of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who had been employed by a British firm exists.

Some thoughts on recent events

No, this is not about David Bowie about whom my feelings are lukewarm, at best. I refer to the events of New Year's Eve in Cologne and other Continental, particularly German cities as well as subsequent developments. My intention was not to write about it because there were so many people pontificating already but an exchange I had with a very well known journalist (no name, no pack drill, as they say) who thought that the official report, which confirmed that the Cologne attackers were "of migrant origin".When I asked why that is a surprise, given what we had heard from the women victims and why is it worse than if the attackers had lived in the country for a while, the reply was "because it plays into the hands of those wanting to sow division".

What can one make of that attitude? Can this journalist really think that the crimes are less important than the need to prevent "dissension", which cannot possibly be sown who think it is all right to attack women in the streets? Could this journalist have possibly preferred that the story of Cologne as many other similar but smaller stories had been buried by unsympathetic police officers and politicians? One cannot help suspecting that with this and many other journalists. After all, the media has been entirely complicit in the mess.

Other discussions I have had yielded some interesting moments as well. On a personal basis I can confirm that a good many people on the left are or are trying to be in denial about this. The number of assertions I have seen that this must have been a plot put together by the extreme right and other opponents of immigration is extraordinary. What that shows is the usual left-wing contempt for the people they allegedly support and a reluctance to understand that there are other cultures around and some of them are incompatible with ours. The notion that only Europeans or Americans are capable of deciding to do anything and everyone else simply follows instructions or gets caught up in a conspiracy is laughable but also dangerous. Yet there are many people around who do not even see anything wrong with that.

There have been the inevitable comments and articles about "feminists" being ready to sacrifice other women for their own rather skewed politically correct attitudes. That, I keep pointing out, is true only if we all accept that Guardian-type definition of a feminist being left-wing. Then it all becomes a general problem for the left. There are, however, many of us feminists, who believe in freedom and equality and who are not on the left. We have been discussing these issues for some time and intend to go on discussing them. Nobody, in my opinion, is more of a feminist than the Baroness Cox, who is fighting for the rights of women against Sharia law and who is much disliked by the left, including the so-called feminist left.

There are the inevitable arguments that we should look at male violence in general and not assume that some cultures encourage it more than others. Any discussion of that kind would take away attention from recent events and criminal activity and bog us down in pointless meanderings. Of course, there is something to be said for looking at the male violence angle but not quite what these people mean.

One of the big arguments against the decision to allow in refugees/migrants in large numbers (a decision that almost all European countries have been rejecting) was the fact that the majority of them were young men though enough women and children could be found for moving pictures in the media. Not only does that raise uncomfortable questions as to whether these are really refugees but should remind us that a sudden influx of tens of thousands young men is not that good a development and is unlikely to be conducive to keeping peace and law and order. When those young men come from societies, which have a very different attitude to women, then big trouble could be expected.

Unfortunately, having committed themselves to a certain series of actions, politicians together with the media that supported them and those entrusted with the preservation of law and order, preferred not to acknowledge that trouble was on its way. When it came (and that happened some time before this last New Year's Eve) official reaction was to dampen the fires, dismiss complaints, bury the news story and hope it will all go away. They may have feared a backlash, dissent, even violence aimed at the migrants but most of all it is their own position that was at risk and up with that they could not put.

As my friend and wise mentor John O'Sullivan put it on his Twitter feed:

Official silence, meant to prevent a backlash, fueled a backlash which, btw, is a racist term for critical opposition to foolish policies.

The story of violence against women at various occasions and in various parts of Europe (with Britain not exactly being exempt, what with our tales of gangs grooming young girls and years of official denial) has now become too big to suppress. The Police Chief of Cologne was thrown to the dogs and the Mayor of that city, having made some very stupid statements that basically blamed the victims, is whining that she has been attacked and criticized. The interview is well worth reading in full to see the political helplessness and need to blame everyone else. None of it is new but people have become less tolerant.

What we see here is quite normal for the political establishment. They make a colossal mistake or two, refuse to look at valid criticisms and discard any opposing ideas. When those criticisms turn out to be correct they find it impossible either to acknowledge it (with some exceptions) or to admit that the mess is now too big for them to deal with and they have no idea how to get out of it.

This has happened over and over again, the whole appalling mess of the eurozone being just one example. In the case of this particular mess there were two catastrophic decisions: one is to take in very large numbers of migrants/refugees from societies that are run on different principles without even a perfunctory check beyond the odd newspaper story; the other, older decision (and really it is hard to tell whether it was a decision or something that just happened) was not to insist that those who come to our countries and societies abide by our laws and our own cultural norms. That does not mean people cannot worship in their own way, wear clothes they prefer (though I have a rooted objection to the veil) or eat the food they like (that, above all). But there are more important issues such as the position of women in society. The decisions were challenged and criticized all along and these criticisms were dismissed as emanations of racism or xenophobia. Well, now the whirlwind is upon us.

Somewhat ironic

Every year around this time the European Parliament announces its nominees for the Sakharov Prize, so-called because of the great scientist and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov. On their own account

The prize is awarded every year to honour exceptional individuals who combat intolerance, fanaticism and oppression.The nominations will be formally presented on Monday 28 September during a joint meeting of the foreign affairs and development committees and the human rights subcommittee. The winner will be announced in October.

Who was nominated this year? Mostly the names cannot be faulted though, clearly, we know more about some of them than about others.

From the Middle East we have Raif Badawi, a blogger who is in prison in Saudi Arabia, still under threat of inhumane punishment though the flogging after the first portion has been postponed time after time. As a blogger in a country where I can write what I want without worrying about the police breaking down my door at dawn I feel particularly for my colleagues in less fortunate circumstances.

From the Horn of Africa we have Edna Adan Ismail, a Somali activist for the abolition of female genital mutilation and a former government minister. While I am not particularly interested in former or present government ministers in that part of the world, I do find activists for the abolition of female genital mutilation in a country where its prevalence is extremely high and where it is dangerous to speak up against it worthy of support and highly admirable.

I know less about Venezuela but find it not unreasonable to have Political prisoners in Venezuale as as well as the democratic opposition in Venezuela embodied by the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática among the nominees.

So we come to two nominees about whom I know a great deal and who can be said to represent many other people, murdered or imprisoned in Russia or kidnapped from Ukraine and the Baltic States; Boris Nemtsov, the former Leader of the Russian opposition, murdered in full view of the Kremlin and Nadiya Savchenko, Ukrainian military pilot and a member of the Verkhovna Rada and of Ukraine’s delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, who was captured on 18 June 2014 and illegally transferred to Russia.

So we come to the West where the nominees are of a lesser calibre and face slightly lower levels of danger: Antoine Deltour, a former Price Waterhouse Coopers auditor who revealed secret tax rulings with multinational companies in Luxembourg to journalists and a man who seems to be on the side of the taxman; and Stéphanie Gibaud who uncovered tax evasion and money laundering by UBS AG, also apparently more interested in the rights of the tax collector than anything else.

And finally, the nomination that made me laugh, the one that has made nonsense of the whole effort: Edward Snowden, the man whose love of liberty is so high that he has decided to live in Russia, the country two of whose victims have been nominated to represent, as I said above, many others.

My own prediction that this year the prize will go to Boris Nemtsov, who is dead and is, therefore, uncontroversial. As it happens, his daughter Zhanna, a journalist, has been hounded out of Russia because of the statements she made about her father's murder, can accept it in his name. That is what I suspect will happen. But one can never tell. It could go to Edward Snowden, which will be highly entertaining.

Classical liberalism and illiberal groups

The latest IEA publication, which I have just finished reading is thoroughly to be recommended. Eamonn Butler's Classical Liberalism - A Primer is an excellent summary of that much misunderstood body of ideas with a good many paragraphs that will, no doubt, appear on this blog whenever I am writing about the need to control governments and legislatures, regardless of how its members get there. In other words, a dictatorship by an elected majority has to be controlled as well as the old-fashioned monarchical institutions were.

The historic sections made me laugh - they reminded me of the tail end of the Whig history that I encountered at my schools but there is nothing terribly wrong there. I would have liked a little more about Mediaeval constitutionalism but Dr Butler had to concentrate on the later ideas as these are of greater relevance.

Nevertheless, my first blog about this work is a critical one. I was a little disappointed with his coverage of classical liberal attitudes to illiberalism, always a tricky subject.

On page 92 the author tackles the subject: Dealing with illiberal groups:

An interesting problem for classical liberals, however, is how they should deal with groups and nations that are highly illiberal. The problem has become more urgent. There have always been religious and political fundamentalists who reject any idea of political, social and economic freedom and who would gladly extinguish our own freedoms if they had the reach to do so. But now, with travel so easy and destructive technologies so obtainable, the potential threat has become more dangerous.

The problem is relatively (but only relatively) easy while we are dealing with those threats from outside the country: after all, not every illiberal state is a direct threat to us except maybe by existing but a number of them are prepared to send our agents in to try to destroy us and we need to be prepared for it now as we had to be prepared in the days when our enemy was Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

What of the illiberal groups that are already here and are trying to subvert and overcome our own liberal ideas (in so far as they exist) or create groups and areas that function or intend to function outside our rules and ideas? While we can all be tolerant of people joining Trotskyite groups if they so wish or go to a mosque that preaches intolerant and hate-filled ideas, what of the move to create sharia courts that undermine the basic concept of equal and clearly understood justice for all, without which free societies cannot function?

Dr Butler does not touch on the subject of sharia but he tries to deal with another serious problem:

On the other hand, many classical liberals would think it right to intervene to prevent girls being denied an education, for example, or to prevent female genital mutilation and forced marriages. These are seen as breaches of the rights and freedoms enjoyed by all human beings.

Classical liberals have no prescriptive answer to such questions. But in general they take the view that state action should be kept to a minimum. Some take the view that we live in a pluralist age, and are mature enough to tolerate different manners and customs, so intervention is generally not justified unless there is some overwhelming ‘public’ case for doing so. Others emphasise that persuasion and debate are more effective at changing minds in the long run. A law against female genital mutilation, for example, is probably less effective at ending this practice than women who have undergone it being free to decide not to inflict it on their own children. It is that freedom that the law should be defending.

He then goes on to discussing what we should do if those illiberal groups should find themselves in position of power or authority. I know some people think that illiberal groups have already taken power and to some extent I agree with that, adding the proviso that we are in a position to change that, should we wish to do so.

What, however, is of such problems as female genital mutilation? Why exactly should it be put aside, not dealt with in legal terms (though it is banned in law despite a certain lack of action)? A classical liberal's core belief that the state must exist in order to protect individuals from direct physical harm inflicted by other people. The immense physical harm that is FGM is inflicted on children, often little more than babies who then suffer from the after effects, both physical and mental, for the rest of their lives. By no stretch of the imagination can one say that they are consenting partners.

Yet. apparently, there are classical liberals who do not think this is something for the law to deal with. One assumes that they do think the law should deal with other methods of child or adult torture but not this. Either those people do not exactly know what FGM is, in which case they should read or listen to accounts or they are prepared, in certain cases, to forget about individual rights and the core belief of equal and clearly defined justice and allow certain cultural groups to stay outside that law. More, they are prepared to abandon the basis of classical liberalism which is respect for the individual in favour of (some) group rights. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is not  good enough.

As the debate goes on

Back from the Christmas break and turning my attention to guns and violence, which is entirely appropriate. Christmas, as we know from police reports and more pertinently from detective stories is the time for crime and violence. Were I to indulge in more than just verbal violence I would vent my anger (as I do my verbal spleen so often) on ASLEF and TfL who managed to make Boxing Day in London a hideous nightmare.  But enough of my problems.

On Boxing Day the Wall Street Journal had an article (which is not behind any pay wall) by Joyce Lee Malcolm about the British and and Australian experience with strict gun control and its general uselessness. As it happens I recall the dishonest campaign that followed Dunblane and the failed attempts by well-organized shooting clubs as well as knowledgeable members of the House of Lords to stem the hysteria.

I have temporarily forgotten about the Cumbrian massacre of 2010 but, living in West London, I am all too well aware about armed gangs and the high level of armed crime, which gets little coverage in the national media as it is not as spectacular in news terms as a massacre particularly of children.

The Australian experience was unknown to me but seems to agree with ours in this country. As Professor Malcolm says:

What to conclude? Strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia haven't made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres. The two major countries held up as models for the U.S. don't provide much evidence that strict gun laws will solve our problems.

If our society is more violent in the twenty-first century than it was in the late nineteenth when guns were readily available and most home owners kept some kind of a "shooter" then the reasons must be something else, not the presence of guns.

Sayers being prescient

This is a slightly odd posting for me, firstly because I rarely use this blog for writing about a book I happen to be reading (though I seem to have ranted about modern detective stories and a history of cookery books before) and, secondly, because I may seem to be trespassing on the territory so ably occupied by the Boss of EURef, the early days of World War II.

The book I am reading is David Coomes's Dorothy L. Sayers - A Careless Rage for Life. Unusually, Mr Coomes spends considerably less time on the detective stories than on Sayers's religious writings (he is the erstwhile Head of Religion at the BBC), plays and, less happily, on attempts to get at the person beneath the carapace she had built for herself. The book is outstandingly good in that it quotes Sayers herself, her less well known essays, articles and many letters extensively. Whatever one thinks of Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, there is no question, that Sayers was a superb writer. Her prose sparkles, whatever the theme.

Sayers more or less stopped writing about Wimsey in 1937, putting aside around 170 pages of a planned novel, Thrones, Dominations, completed much later by another detective story writer, Jill Paton Walsh. There are many possible explanations as to why Sayers decided not to carry on with the book and the most likely one is that she really did lose interest in the Wimsey saga and gained interest in many other things, not least the theatre and playwriting in general.

However, in the autumn of 1939 the Spectator decided that it might be a good idea to revive Lord and Lady Peter Wimsey as well as a number of other characters in order that they should discuss the war and provide some well-written patriotic propaganda. A number of Letters to and fro the various people appeared through late 1939 and early 1940 after which the scheme was abandoned. Jill Paton Walsh put the published Letters to good use as a starting point to her second novel about the Wimseys, Bunter and others, A Presumption of Death. There has, since been a third novel, The Attenbury Emeralds and I do hope that there will be no more. I fear my hopes will not be realized. (I did write about the three novels on another forum for those who might be interested.)

There is one particular passage in the Letters that is surely of interest to all of us, those who are interested in Sayers as she expressed very strong convictions and those who are interested in the way this country developed during and after the war. David Coomes, who quotes it is unhappy with the sentiments and thinks Sayers shows herself to be merely tetchy because of private problems. As an ex-BBC man he, presumably, finds those sentiments deeply unpalatable.

Lord Peter, somewhere in Europe on an unspecified mission is writing to his wife, Harriet.

You are a writer - there is something you must tell the people, but it is difficult to express. You must find the words. Tell them, this is a battle of a new kind, and it is they who have to fight it, and they must do it themselves and alone. They must not continually ask for leadership - they must lead themselves. This is a war against submission to leadership, and we might easily win it in the field and yet lose it in our own country ...

It's not enough to rouse up the Government to do this and that. You must rouse the people. You must make them understand that their salvation is in themselves and in each separate man and woman among them. If it's only a local committee or amateur theatricals or the avoiding being run over in the black-out, the important thing is each man's personal responsibility. They must not look to the State for guidance - they must learn to guide the State. Somehow you must contrive to tell them this. It is the only thing that matters. 

I think we can safely say that the battle was lost in this country and not just on the left or among professed admirers of the state. The fact that so many supposed opponents of that, so many supposed eurosceptics, so many supposedly on the side of freedom can still solemnly call for a leader to take them out of the wilderness would have horrified Miss Sayers.

A federal agent was inspecting lunch boxes?

Well, you know this terrorism business has gone too far. Those weirdos are going for pre-schoolers' lunch boxes and making them eat ... well, actually, quite healthy stuff. But fear not. The brave federal officers know how to deal with it. They take away those lunches and make small children eat chicken nuggets in the name of nutrition.

Here is the story as reported by Carolina Journal and spread further afield by Mark Steyn in the National Review, where he put in the George III wouldn't have done this to you file.

A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.

The girl's turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.

The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs - including in-home day care centers - to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.

When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.

Firstly, let me point out that the home-provided lunch was extremely well balanced and nourishing, unlike those chicken nuggets, which the child didn't like anyway. In fact, she ended up eating next to no lunch. Secondly, the idea that a parent who provides a carefully selected and packed lunch should then be forced to pay for cafeteria-provided rubbish is outrageous. Finally, and most outrageously, the idea of federal agents checking children's lunch boxes and demanding that they eat what the government prescribes is so outrageous that I have actually run out of outraged comments and that does not happen to me often as readers of this blog will know.

And what is the Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services? I have no doubt someone will tell me that we have something of that kind here as well.

Two causes - two rallies in London

It is hard to tell whether rallies for a cause achieve anything but one goes on trying to show that there are people out there who care. Tomorrow, August 31, there will be the usual demonstration outside the Russian Embassy and Consulate (actually, it is nearer to the Consulate) in Bayswater Road in London to show solidarity with Strategy-31 in Russia, that is with people who, despite Article 31 in the Russian Constitution, are not allowed to have political rallies. It will start at 6 and carry on till about 8.30 or so. Nearest tube stations are Notting Hill Gate and Queensway, both on the Central Line; there are lots of buses in that part of the world.

The other rally will be outside the Royal Albert Hall on Thursday, also starting at 6. It is organized by the British-Israel Coalition, which is a very diverse and a seriously all-inclusive group, as I know from my participation in Sunday's rally in Trafalgar Square. The reason for Thursday's rally is that the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is playing at the Proms (a blameless programme) and there are rumours that anti-Israeli demonstrators will be bussed in to protest this "appalling event". Mustn't have cultural exchanges or diversity - that is not what we are about. So, a counter-rally is being planned. The nearest tube station to that is South Kensington on the District, Circle and Piccadilly lines and there are plenty of buses going past the RAH.

More from Phyllis Chesler

This piece is well worth reading though as it describes the non-sensational struggle of somebody who tries to speak the truth about the position of women in Islam. Of course, she also has to fight genuinely misguided and unimaginative "liberals" and "libertarians".

True, as I suspected, I had to share the time with a burqa-wearing woman (who remained unnamed) and with a pro-hijab ex-parliamentarian from Turkey. She kept insisting on the right to wear hijab (the headscarf) and I kept repeating that the French ban on the burqa (the face-veil) in public concerns only the face veil not the headscarf and that I do not oppose the headscarf. Nevertheless, the Turk turned out to be something of a closet Islamist and a believer in the false concept of “Orientalism,” which concept she wielded as a club meant to shame me into silence. It did not work. I referred her to the work of Ibn Warraq which has utterly demolished Said’s claims, and I talked about Islam’s long history of racism, imperialism, colonialism, white slavery, black slavery, and apartheid. Reasonably, I pointed out that the West is not the only culture which has engaged in extremely bad behavior and that Muslim-majority countries may have actually surpassed us.

“Why don’t you busy yourself in criticizing how badly the West treats women before you start criticizing a culture you know nothing about.”

Ah, dear lady: For more than 40 years, I have specialized in criticizing discrimination against women worldwide and have challenged much else under the sun. What I refuse to do is to limit myself to Western culture only. In fact, I said, “the new colonialism consists of westerners abandoning the concept of universal human rights. It’s a way of saying: ‘Let them (Muslim women, Muslim homosexuals, Muslim free thinkers and Muslim truth-tellers) eat their barbarian cake.’ They are not worthy of any universal human rights.”

She then proceeded to lecture me about how women are treated as sex objects in the West. I pointed out that face-veiling women in Muslim-majority countries does not prevent those very same women from being routinely battered, raped, force-married, and honor murdered; that sexual slavery and prostitution are very much alive and flourishing in Muslim-majority countries; and that the “good girl bad girl” dichotomy that veiling creates justifies an even more open aggression against naked-faced women. I conceded:

“Half-naked Western women, unwed teenage pregnancies in the West (a point she raised) are far from ideal—but is the solution to throw a garbage bag over a woman’s head or to keep her entirely hidden at home?”

As I said, read the whole piece.

After International Women's Day

This year marks the hundredth anniversary of International Women's Day and it is, therefore, pertinent to ask why stories of young girls being sold into marriage "in our own backyard" as Phyllis Chesler says, should be of so little interest to the media and the various feminist organizations.

Pencils aren't the problem either

Every time there is the terrible tragedy of somebody going berserk with a gun and killing a number of people there is a cry for yet more tightening of gun laws. Uniquely, this country does not allow people to practice handgun shooting in clubs, presumably because all those who do are likely to go berserk and start slaughtering people right, left and centre. Nobody asks the obvious question of what would have happened in all those tragic episodes if other people had been armed and could have stopped the gunman with a well-aimed shot at an earlier stage.

Anyway, I was rather pleased and surprised to see that the Derrick Bird case did not produce the usual knee-jerk reaction from the government. Gosh, I thought, maybe there is something, very little to be said for the Boy-King. I suppose, it is possible that he was brought up among people who took shot-guns for granted and knew that they, in themselves, were not good or bad. However, as Philip Johnston says, we were all reckoning without the oleaginous Keith Vaz. (No, he does not say oleaginous as the Telegraph would not allow it, I expect.)

Hundreds of thousands of firearms owners who feared a new crackdown breathed a sigh of relief – but they reckoned without Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, who felt that another review of the law was in order. His committee's report was published yesterday, and while it shied away from the tough restrictions on ownership that some campaigners would like to see, it managed to recommend yet more controls on law-abiding users that would do nothing to stop a maniac like Bird or reduce the number of illegal guns in the hands of criminals.

Of course, not. That is not the aim of people like Mr Vaz who merely wants to control the law-abiding population. Much he cares about armed criminals. He does not live anywhere near them.

Read the whole article. I understand Philip Johnston was briefed by the Countryside Alliance. I see another campaign brewing.

Each to their own

Phyllis Chesler describes an encounter:

I recently spoke at length about Islamic gender and religious apartheid in the Arab and non-Arab Muslim world. This was, perhaps, the first time that anyone had ever focused on this subject at this distinguished Ivy League university.

I described both the level of poverty and illiteracy in the Arab and Muslim world and the absence of a free press, independent judiciary, human rights, and of the increasingly savage persecution of women, infidels, dissidents and homosexuals; about the prisons teeming with thousands of Muslim political prisoners who had been kidnapped and were now being tortured for “thought crimes.”

I described a culture in which women were arrested, whipped, gang-raped, and then either hung or stoned to death for alleging rape or for daring to leave dangerously abusive husbands; a culture that has spawned death-eating terrorists who have exposed Muslim and Arab civilians to permanent, bloody danger; and about how these cunning, brazen jihadists have now expanded their global reach and unleashed their bombs and suicide killers against the entire world.

I argued that, in effect, the demonization of Israel by the media, by governments, international bodies, human rights organizations, and university professors allowed the world to self-righteously bypass, minimize, avoid, utterly disappear Muslim-on-Muslim and Muslim-on-infidel tyranny and torture. Scapegoating Israel is what focuses attention away from the larger suffering in the Middle East and in the Muslim world in general.

And then a young, well-spoken, earnest, curly-headed college student asked this question: “You are talking about diverting attention away from the real issues, right? But, if we focus on the absence of freedom or the absence of women’s rights in the Middle East won’t that divert our attention away from the Settlement issue?”

One can, of course, argue about those Settlements but it is perplexing that a reasonably intelligent (one assumes) and well-meaning young man should consider the issue to be more important that the absence of freedom and the absence of women's rights in the Middle East. Yet he is not alone either in not ever bothering to hear that side of the story or in dismissing it as soon as he has heard it. I can only suppose that deep in his heart this young man (and many others like him) do not think such matters are of any importance when it applies to Arabs or Iranians (who, as it happens, do not mind being called Persians). Because they are not like us, see?

Approaching it from the right side

A friend has passed on to me his copy of Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny, the American publishing sensation last year. Subtitled, A Conservative Manifesto, it is a summary of conservative ideas as opposed to what Mark Levin calls "Statist" ones. How right he is not to subscribe to that ridiculous misuse of the word "liberal". There is nothing liberal about people who want to strengthen the state, take away people's liberties and impose their own idea of utopia on them.

Mark Levin is a writer, a journalist, a radio show host and another perpetual thorn in the left's collective side. He is also a constitutional lawyer. A real one.

The book swings along at a merry pace and, so far, there are only two quotes that I want to share with those who have not yet read the book. [Spelling as given, i.e. American.]

And yet, the Statist has an insatiable appetite for control. His sights are set on his next meal even before he has fully digested his last. He is constantly agitating for government action. And in furtherance of that purpose, the Statist speaks in the tongue of the demagogue, concocting one pretext and grievance after another to manipulate public perceptions and build popular momentum for the divestiture of liberty and property from its rightful possessors. The industrious, earnest, and successful are demonized as perpetrators of various offenses against the public good, which justifies government intervention on behalf of an endless parade of "victims". In this way, the perpetrator and the victim are subordinated to the government's authority - the former by outright theft, the latter by a dependent existence. In truth, both are made victims by the real perpetrator, the Statist.

It is, of course, important to recognize how much of this has already been put into place and to what extent we have all become both "perpetrators" and "victims" as defined by Statists. It is also of some importance to try to define what the response ought to be.

However, the Conservative seeks to preserve and improve civil society, not engage in a mindless defense of the status quo inasmuch as the status quo may well be a condition created by the Statist and destructive of civil society - such as the 1960s cultural degradations, which are all too prevalent today. It is the Statist, then, who rejects even minor change if such change promotes the civil society, thereby challenging his authority.

We see this reluctance to accept change in many from the europhiliacs to the trade unions who are threatening the country with all manner of ills if the slightest necessary change is made to the current suicidal state of affairs.

But what of the times our own entitlements are taken away. Here is a story in yesterday's Scotsman. It seems that

FAMILIES will have to take more responsibility for looking after their frail relatives because the state can no longer afford to care for a soaring elderly population, Scotland's councils have warned.

Setting aside the thought that these days not all people over fifty or even sixty, seventy and eighty are so frail as to need constant care, one needs to ask why it should be considered to be such a terrible idea that families be asked to look after their relatives. Just another example, one might say, of our reluctance to take responsibility for what should be our duty.

Yes, but hang on a minute. In its fraudulent claim that it can look after us all and, particularly the frail and the elderly, the state has taxed us to a considerable extent, smugly taking away our money in order to use it for "our benefit". Now it tells us (and Scotland is not the only part of the country where this is true or going to be true) that it cannot do so and we have to take our share. With what, may one ask. Is the state going to stop taxing us to the point where we have no money to care for anyone who needs extra care in our families?

Furthermore, in its fraudulent claim that it can look after us, the state has produced regulation after regulation that has made it impossible for private individuals and companies to run care homes for those frail sick and elderly. Now it tells us that we need to find some way to look after the frail. Where exactly are we going to do it? Are those regulations going to be changed to make it easier for us to do so?

In other words, we must start with the notion that it is not the state's business to look after us and it should stop pretending it can do so; stop taxing us in that pretence or making it impossible through ridiculous and vindictive regulations for us to do so for ourselves. Sadly, that is not how the story is reported or accepted by many: the state should be looking after us; how dare it give the task over to the families of those frail elderly people?

A new blog and a good quote

The blog is not exactly new but I have not come across it before. It is called Pileus and it describes itself:

Pileus is a group of scholars who examine public policy and philosophy in light of our respective disciplines. We differ in many ways but share a commitment to liberty and personal responsibility.

I shall return to it without doubt, even though I have a personal aversion to people who blog under the name of a historical figure, such as Grover Cleveland. His co-authors clearly use their real names.

I found this blog through Instapundit who linked to this story of gratitude to four black men and a gun bt Marcus Cole.

At the top of Pileus I found a quote from Samuel Adams. On October 14, 1771 he either said or wrote:

The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom and defended it as they ought.

I appreciate that this is a very Anglospheric sort of comment made by a man who looked around a world where liberty was appreciated if only in theory at times. There are many parts of the world where this comment would cause either derision or a sad sigh of impossibility. But it is a good sentiment to remember.

Even in Cuba ...

... hunger strike works but at a price and with some limitations, as the Economist writes. For some reason we do not hear that much about Cuban political prisoners or those who die as a result of going on a hunger strike there.

Happy Birthday, Bastiat

IPN (International Policy Network), a think-tank whose work I much admire (see, I can be nice about some people but they have to deserve it) calls attention to the fact that today is the 209th birthday of Frederic Bastiat, one of the most brilliant opponents of protectionism. In fact, let us go further and admit that the man was one of the greatest political economists. Oh, and by the way, he was French.

A short interruption in the service

I shall be away till Monday evening and as I am going to Paris, I refuse to take my laptop or spend any time on the computer. There are far better things to do, not least meeting with some like-minded individuals. (Oh yes, they do exist in France as well.)

In the meantime here is a jolly story about organizers of an art exhibition who dared to criticize the close link between the Orthodox Church and the Russian state (nothing new there) being on trial for blasphemy. I found it on Tom Palmer's blog. Tom, whom I met a couple of times in Washington DC is a one-man operation for the spread of ideas of freedom in the most unlikely parts of the world, specifically in the former Soviet Union. He goes to the more difficult parts, like Kyrgyzstan and the other stans rather than the highly accessible Baltic States. Personally, I think that there is a long way to go till the ideas of freedom take root in Central Asia but when they do, it will be thanks to Tom Palmer and a few hardy souls like him.

Will the burqua be banned?

The Interior Affairs Committee in the Belgian Parliament has unanimously supported a Bill that would ban the burqua in public. The Bill is now going to a full debate and vote, probably before the end of this month. This may be the first step towards a European country actually banning face veils but there is some way to go.

In the meantime, as the Wall Street Journal points out, there seems to be little fuss in Belgium. Most of the Muslims there are from North African countries where women tend not to be veiled (thus making nonsense of the argument that the niquab is in any way a religious symbol).

Catholic bishops came out against the ban, citing freedom of religion, as did Muslim community leaders. But they were unable to muster a strong enough front—indeed, many of them agreed the ban could contribute to integration.

Belgian lawmakers argued that the veils can hide criminals, imprison women and segregate society. (One backer even compared women who wear face veils to dwarfs subjected to dwarf-tossing.) The ban would prohibit face veils in nearly all public places, except for special occasions such as Halloween. Violators could be fined up to €25 and imprisoned for seven days.

The European Commission

said that they were concerned at the move, but initially it was a matter for member states, but they would be watching the issue and examining any bill put before the Belgian lawmakers very closely as it may fall foul of EU anti-discrimination policy.

Well, we wouldn't want to discriminate against people who prefer gender apartheid to freedom and equality.

In France, where most of the Muslim population are also from North Africa, the debate goes on. President Sarkozy, backed by Prime Minister Fillon, has said that the burqua was not welcome in France. However, there has been a set-back to the proposals to ban this all-enveloping garment:

France's highest administrative body warned Tuesday that a total prohibition on full-body Islamic veils in public risks being found unconstitutional in a setback to President Nicolas Sarkozy's goal of an all-out ban.

Even a limited ban on the full-body veil would be difficult to enforce, the Council of State said in a study of the legal possibilities for a broad application of a ban on burqa-like garments that was commissioned by Prime Minister Francois Fillon earlier this year.

A total ban risks violating the French constitution and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the report said.

Once again, one has to wonder at the mentality of people who solemnly proclaim that the depriving Muslim women of basic rights or even of participation in the society around them is somehow an affirmation of human rights.

As usual ...

... Chris Muir on Day by Day gets it right:

Nobody has a right to freedom - we all have to fight for it.