Norway

I have to say I'm deeply shocked and surprised at this. My mental picture of Norway has just taken a severe hit.

----------

Norway's "Boycott" of Pro-Israel Speakers
by Alan M. Dershowitz
Hudson NY
March 31, 2011

I recently completed a "speaking tour" of Norwegian Universities on the topic of "international law as applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." The sponsors of the tour—a Norwegian pro-Israel group—offered to have me lecture without any charge to the three major universities in Bergen, Oslo and Trondheim. Norwegian universities, especially those outside of Oslo, tend to feel somewhat isolated from the more mainstream academic world, and they generally jump at any opportunity to invite lecturers from leading universities. Thus, when Professor Stephen Walt, co-author of The Israel Lobby—a much maligned critique of American support for Israel—came to Norway, he was immediately invited to present a lecture. Likewise, with Ilan Pappe—a strident demonizer of Israel—from Oxford. Many professors from less well-known universities have also been invited to present their anti-Israel perspectives.

My hosts expected, therefore, that their offer to have me present a somewhat different academic perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be eagerly accepted, since I have written half a dozen books on the subject presenting a centrist view in support of the two-state solution and against civilian settlements on the West Bank. Indeed, one of my books is entitled The Case For Peace, and former President Bill Clinton praised my blueprint for peace as "among the best in recent years." But each of the three universities categorically refused to invite me to give a lecture on that subject. The dean of the law faculty at Bergen University said he would be "honored" to have me present a lecture "on the O.J. Simpson case," as long as I was willing to promise not to mention Israel. The head of the Trondheim school was more direct:

"Israel and international law is a controversial and inflamed theme, which cannot be regarded as isolated and purely professional. Too much politics is invited in this."

But is it less "controversial" and "inflamed" when rabidly anti-Israel professors are invited to express their "politics?"

Apparently, a pro-Israel perspective is more controversial, inflamed and political than an anti-Israel perspective—at least at Trondheim. The University of Oslo simply said no without offering an excuse, leading one journalist to wonder whether the Norwegian universities believed that I am "not entirely house-trained."

Only once before have I been prevented from lecturing at universities in a country. The other country was Apartheid South Africa where the government insisted on "approving" the text of my proposed talks on human rights. I declined.

But despite the refusal of the faculties of Norway's three major universities to invite me to deliver lectures on Israel and international law, I delivered three lectures to packed auditoriums at each university. It turns out that the students wanted to hear me, despite their professors' efforts to keep my views from them. Student groups invited me. I came. And I received sustained applause both before and after my talks. Faculty members boycotted my talks and declined even to meet with me. I was recently told that free copies of the Norwegian translation of my book, The Case For Israel, were offered to several university libraries in Norway and that they declined to accept them.

It was then that I realized why all this was happening. At all of the Norwegian universities, there have been efforts to enact an academic and cultural boycott of Jewish Israeli academics. This boycott is directed against Israel's "occupation" of Palestinian land, but the occupation that the hundreds of signers referred to is not of the West Bank but rather of every single inch of Israel. Here is the first line of the petition: "Since 1948 the state of Israel has occupied Palestinian land…" Not surprisingly, the administrations of the universities have refused to go along with this form of academic collective punishment of all Jewish Israeli academics. So the formal demand for an academic and cultural boycott has failed. But in practice, it exists. Jewish pro-Israel speakers are subjected to a de facto boycott. Moreover, all Jews are presumed to be pro-Israel unless they have a long track record of anti-Israel rhetoric.

Read the words of the first signer of the academic boycott petition—an assistant professor of Trondheim named Trond Andresen as he writes about the "Jews"—not the Israelis!

"There is something immensely self-satisfied and self-centered at the tribal mentality that is so prevalent among Jews. [Not] only the religious but also a large proportion of the large secular group consider their own ethnic group as worth more than all other ethnic groups. [Jews] as a whole, are characterized by this mentality…it is no less legitimate to say such a thing about Jews in 2008-2009 than it was to make the same point about the Germans around 1938. [There is] a red carpet for the Jewish community…and a new round of squeezing and distorting the influence of the quite dry Holocaust lemon…."

This line of talk—directed at Jews not Israel or Israelis—is apparently acceptable among many in the elite of Norway. Consider former Prime Minister Kare Willock's reaction to President Obama's selection of Rahm Emanuel as his first Chief of Staff:

"It does not look too promising, he has chosen a chief of staff who is Jewish, and it is a matter of fact that many Americans look to the Bible rather than to the realities of today...."

Willock, of course, did not know anything about Emanuel's views. He based his criticism on the sole fact that Emanuel is a Jew.

All Jews are apparently the same in this country that has done everything in its power to make life in Norway nearly impossible for Jews. Norway was apparently the first modern nation to prohibit the production of Kosher meat, while at the same time permitting Halal meat and encouraging the slaughter of seals, whales and other animals that are protected by international treaties. No wonder less than 1000 Jews live in Norway. No wonder the leader of the tiny and frightened Jewish community didn't get around to meet me during my visit to his country. (The Chabad rabbi did reach out to me and I had a wonderful visit with a group of Norwegian Jews at the Chabad house.) It reminded me of my visits to the Soviet Union in the bad old days.

The current foreign minister of Norway recently wrote an article in the New York Review of Books, justifying his contacts with Hamas, a terrorist group that demands the destruction of Israel. He said that the essential philosophy of Norway has always been to encourage "dialogue." But I'm afraid that that dialogue in Norway these days is entirely one-sided. Hamas and its supporters are invited into the dialogue, but supporters of Israel are excluded by an implicit, yet very real, boycott against pro-Israel views.

Israel - an apartheid state?

As the 7th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week kicks off, a thread to explore this analogy. I know that a number of South Africans are ImpDecers, so their views would be interesting.

I chuck a couple of morsels in as food for thought. First a series of anti-Apartheid Week posters from the Elders of Ziyon blog. Here's one as an example:



And secondly, here's Wikipedia's Israel and the apartheid analogy article introduction:

The State of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians has been compared by United Nations investigators, human rights groups and critics of Israeli policy to South Africa's treatment of non-whites during its apartheid era. Israel has also been accused of committing the crime of apartheid. The definition of the crime of apartheid includes acts that were never attributed to the South African regime. During the apartheid era, some South African officials and newspapers compared the two states and said that Israel also practiced apartheid. Critics of Israeli policy say that "a system of control" in the Israeli-occupied West Bank (including Jerusalem) including Jewish-only settlements, separate roads, military checkpoints, discriminatory marriage law, the West Bank barrier, use of Palestinians as cheap labour, Palestinian West Bank enclaves, inequities in infrastructure, legal rights, and access to land and resources between Palestinians and Israeli residents in the Israeli-occupied territories resembles some aspects of the South African apartheid regime, and that elements of Israel's occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid, which are contrary to international law. Some commentators extend the analogy, or accusation, to include Arab citizens of Israel, describing their citizenship status as second-class.

Critics of the analogy argue that Israeli law guarantees Arab citizens of Israel the same rights as other Israeli citizens without distinction of race, creed or sex. They also note that Israel's Arab citizens can run in elections and become ministers in the Israeli government. Regarding the Israeli-occupied territories, some opponents of the analogy state that the West Bank and Gaza are not part of sovereign Israel and are governed by the Palestinian Authority, so cannot be compared to the internal policies of apartheid South Africa, and that restrictions are only imposed on those territories by Israel for reasons of security. Some opponents consider the analogy defamatory and reflecting a double standard when applied to Israel and not neighboring Arab countries, whose policies towards their own Palestinian minority has been described as racist and discriminatory. Some opponents of the analogy say it is a manifestation of anti-semitism.

AV - a new British voting system?

I'm undecided as of yet, but I love this Historians vs Businessmen angle:

---------

Historians brand proposals for AV voting reform 'a threat to democracy'
Daily Mail
11th March 2011

A group of leading historians have branded proposals for AV voting reform 'a threat to democracy' and urged the public to snub the change in the upcoming referendum.

They claimed moving away from the current first-past-the-post system would harm democratic principles and threaten the idea of 'equal votes'.

However, in a rival letter, 11 a group of 11 capitalists said introducing AV would be a 'victory for fairness' and good for business.

Anti-reform: Historian Dr David Starkey, left, and best-selling author Anthony Beevor signed the letter which described AV as 'a threat to democracy'

The historians, who include broadcaster David Starkey, best-selling author Anthony Beevor and the Regius Professor of History at Cambridge Richard Evans, claim, under AV, MPs could be elected to parliament even if they do not have the backing of the majority of their constituents.

The country will vote on the proposed reforms in the first UK-wide referendum since 1975 on May 5.

In a letter to The Times, the historians wrote: 'The principle that each person's vote is equal, regardless of wealth, gender, race or creed, is a principle to which generations of reformers have dedicated their lives.

'It is a principle upon which reform of our parliamentary democracy still stands.

'For the first time in centuries we face the unfair idea that one citizen's vote might be worth six times that of another. It will be a tragic consequence if those votes belong to supporters of extremist and non-serious parties.'

The letter, which was organised by historian Chris Skidmore, who is also a Conservative MP, added: 'The cause of reform, so long fought for, cannot afford to have the fundamentally fair and historic principle of majority voting cast aside.

'Nor should we sacrifice the principle which generations of men and women have sought: that each being equal, every member of our society should cast an equal vote.'

The historians borrow Winston Churchill's argument that AV allows democracy to be decided by 'the most worthless votes given for the most worthless candidates'.

But in a rival letter, published in the Daily Telegraph, an alliance of businessmen argued there were three 'powerful' reason to vote for AV.

The group, which included the chairman of Aviva, Lord Sharman and head of Home Retail Group, Terry Dudd, said the system would 'force politicians to work harder to achieve more than 50 per cent of the vote'.

They also argued parties would be forced to pay attention to the 'vast majority' of people during campaigns and politicians giving them 'greater legitimacy'.

The letter said: 'A vote for change on 5 May would be a victory for fairness, a break with a system of the past and a foundation for greater political stability.

'It would be good for the country and good for business.'

A number of groups have been set up both in favour of and against AV.

The formation of the No to AV, yes to PR group was announced yesterday, with No to AV already campaigning for a number of weeks.

Campaign group Yes To Fairer Votes is supporting AV.

Eurabia

Muslim extremist who burned poppies receives £50 fine
Telegraph
08 March 2011

A Muslim extremist who burned replica poppies on the anniversary of Armistice Day was fined just £50 after being found guilty of a public order offence.

Emdadur Choudhury, 26, a member of Muslims Against Crusades (MAC), was found guilty of a "calculated and deliberate" insult to the dead and those who mourn them when he burned two large plastic poppies during a two-minute silence on November 11, last year District Judge Howard Riddle said.

Members of MAC were heard chanting "British soldiers burn in hell" before the poppy-burning incident near the Royal Albert Hall in west London, Belmarsh Magistrates heard.

-----------

Law in Austria: Guilty for Questioning Islam
Hudson NY
by A. Millar
March 8, 2011

The European "elite" has increasingly asserted that any questioning of Islam is criminal.

A few weeks ago Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was fined 480 Euros for the "denigration of religious teachings of a legally recognized religion in Austria." In a three-part seminar Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff had referred to Islam's prophet Mohammed's marriage to Aisha. According to generally-accepted Islamic textual tradition, Aisha was six at the time of the marriage, which was consummated when she was nine. Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff asked rhetorically "if this does not constitute pedophilia, what does?"

Defending the doctrines, beliefs, and figures of various "legally recognized" religions is liable to have unanticipated consequences. As Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff observes, "the judge didn't deny that Mohammed had sex with a nine year old. It is actually now proven in court that Mohammed had sex with a nine year-old." However, she says, "it's just that I am not allowed to say that he was a pedophile." Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff is not allowed to, because, in the words of the judge, as she passed sentence, "pedophilia is a sexual preference which solely or mainly is directed towards children. Nevertheless, it does not apply to Mohammad. He was still married to Aisha when she was 18."

The fine – representing a sentence of 120 days – is deceptively low. It was reduced to the minimum allowed to take into account that Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff has no income. It is usually waived for first time offenders, however, the presiding judge claimed Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff was a "repeat offender" because she had, in her judgment, referred to Mohammed being a pedophile more than once.

Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff says she is stunned by the verdict, and determined to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary. "I was actually asking a question," she says, "and for that I was convicted."

-----------

Note: Eurabia is a political neologism that refers to the premise that the Muslim population in Europe will become a majority within a few generations due to continued immigration and high birth rates. Regardless of the demographic trend, Islamism as an ideology is undoubtedly growing in strength in Europe, as these articles show.

"Court tells christian couple their views on homosexuality are incompatible with fostering children"

This strikes me as being a significant and important court ruling. Does it show that, as Oliver Kamm states linking to the Guardian article below, that religious convictions don't entitle you to exemption under the law or is it unreasonable of the state to demand the couple go against their beliefs whether we agree with them or not?

Here is Andrew Brown in the Guardian.

"The Christian Insitute and similar bodies have mounted a series of court cases over the alleged persecution of Christians in the last five years. Almost all have been based around the claim that Christians are entitled to discriminate against gay people. Each one has ended in defeat. From the cross worn by Nadia Eweida to the attempts to allow religious exemption to the registrants of civil marriage, or the owners of B&Bs, the cases have been pitched as matters of high principle, and the judges have responded with increasing asperity. None, I think, has been so brutal as Lord Justice Munby in his judgment on the case of Owen and Eunice Johns, a couple of Sheffield pentecostalists who were turned down as foster carers because they would not accept homosexuality."

And for an alternative view-point Peter Hitchens on his blog.

Islamo-homo-phobia

This belongs with JP's posts about Islamophopbia, but I didn't have time to look for them. Anyway, this is an interesting article by the always cuddly, sometimes wrong, but sometimes right, Uncle Johann:

Can we talk about Muslim homophobia now?

Last autumn, mysterious posters began to appear all over the East End of London announcing it is now a “Gay-Free Zone.” They warned: “And Fear Allah: Verily Allah is Severe in Punishment.” One of them was plastered outside the apartment block I lived in for nearly ten years, next to adverts for club nights and classes at the local library, as if it was natural and normal. I’d like to say I’m shocked – but anybody who lives in Tower Hamlets knows this has been a long time coming.

Here’s a few portents from the East End that we have chosen to ignore. In May 2008, a 15 year old Muslim girl tells her teacher she thinks she might be gay, and the Muslim teacher in a state-funded comprehensive tells her “there are no gays round here” and she will “burn in hell” if she ever acts on it. (I know because she emailed me, suicidal and begging for help). In September 2008, a young gay man called Oliver Hemsley, is walking home from the gay pub the George and Dragon when a gang of young Muslims stabs him eight times, in the back, in the lungs, and in his spinal column. In January 2010, when the thug who did it is convicted, a gang of thirty Muslims storms the George and Dragon in revenge and violently attacks everybody there. All through, it was normal to see young men handing out leaflets outside the Whitechapel Ideas Store saying gays are “evil.” Most people accept them politely.

These are not isolated incidents. East London has seen the highest increase in homophobic attacks anywhere in Britain. Everybody knows why, and nobody wants to say it. It is because East London has the highest Muslim population in Britain, and we have allowed a fanatically intolerant attitude towards gay people to incubate there, in the name of “tolerance”. The most detailed opinion survey of British Muslims was carried out by Gallup, who correctly predicted the result of the last general election. In their extensive polling, they found literally no British Muslims who would say homosexuality is “morally acceptable.” Every one of the Muslims they polled objected to it. Even more worryingly, younger Muslims had more stridently anti-gay views than older Muslims. These attitudes have consequences – and they are worst of all for gay Muslims, who have to live a sham half-life of lies, or be shunned by their families.

No, Muslims are not the only homophobes among us. But the gap between them and the rest is startling. It’s zero percent of British Muslims vs. 58 percent of other Brits who say we are “acceptable.”

Read on...

Undercover Mosque School Doc

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/feb/14/mosque-schools-arrest-channel-4

If someone can explain to me how viewing the footage of a man beating children and telling them that Hindus drink piss could 'give people the wrong idea' about the school, I'd be very grateful.

Bangladesh

A story from East Pakistan (as was), depressingly similar to those going on in old West Pakistan. That it "provoked protests across the country" is at least something to cling on to, but the rise of the Sharia bully boys continues across the globe.

-------------

Girl, 14, whipped to death in fatwa
Metro
03 Fed 2011
Four Islamic clerics have been arrested after a teenage girl was whipped to death for having an ‘affair’ with a married man.

The men allegedly issued a fatwa – a religious ruling – that 14-year-old Mosammet Hena should be given 100 lashes. The girl was publicly whipped with a cane at a village near Dhaka in Bangladesh but collapsed after 70 lashes and died in hospital.

The 40-year-old man who was said to have slept with her was also sentenced to 100 lashes but fled the area. There were claims he had raped Mosammet.

'We are hunting for the man,’ said police chief AKM Shahidur Rahman.

Fatwas are illegal in Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation governed by secular laws, and the incident – in the Shariatpur district – provoked protests across the country. Bangladesh’s high court has demanded government officials and police explain their failure to safeguard Mosammet.

It has also told police to submit a report explaining what steps they had taken to comply with an earlier court order to stop ‘extra-judicial killings’ in the name of Sharia law fatwas.

Top Gear's Mexico fun

So the BBC has just apologised for the Top Gear row (see below).

Wouldn't a much smarter reaction have been for the Ambassodor to privately note his outrage to the BBC, threaten a row, and demand as his price for not doing so that Top Gear devote an episode (or at least some features) to doing really cool stuff with cars with some very cool Mexicans (who show they know how to take a joke) in a beautifully-shot & touristically-appealing Mexico? At once Mexico gets good publicity and becomes Top Gear's favourite country.

But hell, I'm not in marketing.

---------

Mexico complains about 'vulgar' Top Gear
Telegraph
02 Feb 2011

Ambassador Eduardo Medina Mora Icaza complained in a letter to the BBC that Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May used what he described as bigoted stereotypes against Mexicans in a Sunday broadcast.

In the episode, which was viewed by more than 6 million people, Hammond claimed that cars imitate national characteristics. "Mexican cars are just going to be a lazy, feckless, flatulent, oaf with a moustache leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat," he said.

Clarkson went on to joke that being Mexican would be "brilliant" because then he could sleep all day. He said he was confident he would not receive any complaints about their comments because the Mexican ambassador would be asleep.

However, the ambassador did complain and wrote: "It is utterly incomprehensible and unacceptable that the premiere broadcaster should allow three of its presenters to display their bigotry and ignorance by mocking the people and culture of our country with such vehemence," the ambassador wrote.

The letter said the trio's "outrageous, vulgar" insults reinforce negative stereotypes and inflame racism against Mexicans.

Egypt, Tunisia and Libya: Revolution?

"The Egyptian police are no longer patrolling the Rafah border crossing into Gaza. Hamas armed men are entering into Egypt and are closely collaborating with the MB. The MB has fully engaged itself in the demonstrations, and they are unsatisfied with the dismissal of the Cabinet. They are insisting on a new Cabinet that does not include members of the ruling National Democratic Party."
Red Alert: Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood | STRATFOR

Employment tribunals are legalised extortion

Interesting comment piece from the author of excellent books on the Spitfire and Lancaster.

I wonder what Impdecers who are also employers think of this one?

---------

Comment: Employment tribunals are legalised extortion
This Is Money
By Leo McKinstry
6 January 2011
Employment tribunal cases have rocketed, with businesses paying out tens of millions to spurious claimants. When will ministers put a stop to this blackmail?

Amid our current economic crisis, with the dole queues lengthening remorselessly, everything possible should be done to encourage job creation and enterprise.

Tragically, however, there is a huge roadblock in the way of greater freedom and dynamism for employers.

That vast obstacle takes the form of Britain's increasingly strident culture of workplace rights, which not only weighs down companies with excessive bureaucracy and the costs of compensation, but also encourages a climate of permanent grievance that can be exploited by greedy lawyers and vexatious litigants.

This culture is seen at its worst in the Employment Tribunal Service, where disgruntled staff or even job applicants can sue employers without any concern for the costs or the justice of their cases.

Of course there has to be some form of protection given to workers so they are not at the mercy of capricious management. A vicious culture of 'hire and fire' does nothing for the economy or living standards. Respect for employees should be an integral part of a civilised society.

But the pendulum has swung too far. Over the past decade, the tribunal system has become heavily loaded against the employer. The threat of a complaint to the tribunal has been turned into an instrument of moral and financial blackmail.

Only yesterday, John Cridland, the director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, said that the tribunal system is 'broken' because of the way it undermines good industrial relations.

Even more critical was Helen Giles, the human resources director of a homelessness charity, who told the BBC the bias towards staff amounted to a form of 'legalised extortion'. She cited the testimony of an officer at a housing association who had told her that three homes could be built for the cost of fighting each complaint at the tribunals.

It is perhaps understandable that the BBC should take a keen interest in this issue, since earlier this week it was revealed that the Corporation has had to fork out £600,000 in dealing with 33 employment cases, spending no less than £204,000 on legal fees and another £380,000 to litigants.

Yet this is an employer fully imbued with the fashionable ethos of anti-discrimination that is the very cause of such a monstrous waste of money.

Indeed, the BBC's troubles emphasise the iron law of modern employment practice: the more an organisation emphasises its commitment to fairness and equality, the more vulnerable it becomes to spurious claims.

That was certainly my experience in the Nineties as a Labour councillor in the North London borough of Islington, which famously made a fetish of workplace rights. As I quickly learned in my role as head of the council's personnel committee, the council's commitment to rights meant we were deluged by claims from staff seeking redress over race discrimination, sexism or bullying.

Notoriously, managers in the social services department became so terrified of provoking legal complaints that they did not even take disciplinary action against gay or ethnic minority staff who were suspected of abusing children in the borough's care homes, a failure that ultimately led to one of the worst child abuse scandals of the decade.

In recent years, the culture of employee victimhood has tightened its grip. The total number of cases submitted to the employment tribunals has soared since the first Labour government of 1997, up from 91,000 to 236,000 last year.

So great is the tribunal service's workload that it can barely cope: only 65% of cases are handled by their target date for completion.

Those who play the system successfully can find themselves extremely well rewarded.

Last September, Redcar council in the North-East was ordered to pay an astonishing £442,500 to equalities officer Pauline Scanlon, who complained that she had suffered sex discrimination, victimisation and unfair dismissal.

One of the causes of her suffering was that someone in her office put up a poster of the singer Robbie Williams, with his trousers round his ankles, which she claimed violated the council's policy on unwelcome advances. In response, her employer described her as unhelpful, unco-operative and 'a zealot', but that cut no ice with the generously minded tribunal.

Given the scale of the payouts, it is no wonder so many employers try to settle claims out of court before they even reach the tribunal. While the litigant takes no risks whatsoever, the employer not only faces the danger of a huge compensation bill, but also has to fork out for legal fees.

In addition, there is the threat of bad publicity that could result from a long case.

Ian Hacon, chief executive of Norfolk firm Blue Sky Leisure, says: 'Every employment tribunal claim we have been to for the past five years, I've settled before the hearing. The economics of fighting these claims, however spurious they are, don't add up.'

Even if an employer has liability insurance, the insurer often insists claims are settled quickly to avoid the costs stacking up. In fact, it is estimated that 65% of all complaints to tribunals are resolved out of court.

Yet this reluctance to fight serial litigants only emboldens them. Take Margaret Keane, a 50-year-old accountant who in 2008 sent off dozens of complaints in response to job adverts that appealed for 'newly qualified' or entry-level candidates. She claimed this was discriminatory for someone of her experience and 12 firms agreed to out-of-court settlements worth between £4,000 and £10,000 each time.

Another litigant, economics lecturer Suresh Deman, struck fear in the hearts of the educational establishment after he launched 40 separate race — and sometimes sex — discrimination cases against more than a dozen British universities, and won at least £100,000 in payouts and out-of-court settlements.

WikiLeaks

Brilliant analysis from Friedman. The critique of Assange's attitude to his own secrets is particularly poignant.

If you only read one bit, scroll right to the end for the Robert Gates quote.

-------------------------------------

Taking Stock of WikiLeaks
Stratfor
December 14, 2010
By George Friedman

Julian Assange has declared that geopolitics will be separated into pre-“Cablegate” and post-“Cablegate” eras. That was a bold claim. However, given the intense interest that the leaks produced, it is a claim that ought to be carefully considered. Several weeks have passed since the first of the diplomatic cables were released, and it is time now to address the following questions: First, how significant were the leaks? Second, how could they have happened? Third, was their release a crime? Fourth, what were their consequences? Finally, and most important, is the WikiLeaks premise that releasing government secrets is a healthy and appropriate act a tenable position?

Let’s begin by recalling that the U.S. State Department documents constituted the third wave of leaks. The first two consisted of battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan. Looking back on those as a benchmark, it is difficult to argue that they revealed information that ran counter to informed opinion. I use the term “informed opinion” deliberately. For someone who was watching Iraq and Afghanistan with some care over the previous years, the leaks might have provided interesting details but they would not have provided any startling distinction between the reality that was known and what was revealed. If, on the other hand, you weren’t paying close attention, and WikiLeaks provided your first and only view of the battlefields in any detail, you might have been surprised.

Let’s consider the most controversial revelation, one of the tens of thousands of reports released on Iraq and Afghanistan and one in which a video indicated that civilians were deliberately targeted by U.S. troops. The first point, of course, is that the insurgents, in violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, did not go into combat wearing armbands or other distinctive clothing to distinguish themselves from non-combatants. The Geneva Conventions have always been adamant on this requirement because they regarded combatants operating under the cover of civilians as being responsible for putting those civilians in harm’s way, not the uniformed troops who were forced to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants when the combatants deliberately chose to act in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

It follows from this that such actions against civilians are inevitable in the kind of war Iraqi insurgents chose to wage. Obviously, this particular event has to be carefully analyzed, but in a war in which combatants blend with non-combatants, civilian casualties will occur, and so will criminal actions by uniformed troops. Hundreds of thousands of troops have fought in Iraq, and the idea that criminal acts would be absent is absurd. What is most startling is not the presence of potentially criminal actions but their scarcity. Anyone who has been close to combat or who has read histories of World War II would be struck not by the presence of war crimes but by the fact that in all the WikiLeaks files so few potential cases are found. War is controlled violence, and when controls fail — as they inevitably do — uncontrolled and potentially criminal violence occurs. However, the case cited by WikiLeaks with much fanfare did not clearly show criminal actions on the part of American troops as much as it did the consequences of the insurgents violating the Geneva Conventions.

Only those who were not paying attention to the fact that there was a war going on, or who had no understanding of war, or who wanted to pretend to be shocked for political reasons, missed two crucial points: It was the insurgents who would be held responsible for criminal acts under the Geneva Conventions for posing as non-combatants, and there were extraordinarily few cases of potential war crimes that were contained in the leaks.

The diplomatic leaks are similar. There is precious little that was revealed that was unknown to the informed observer. For example, anyone reading STRATFOR knows we have argued that it was not only the Israelis but also the Saudis that were most concerned about Iranian power and most insistent that the United States do something about it. While the media treated this as a significant revelation, it required a profound lack of understanding of the geopolitics of the Persian Gulf to regard U.S. diplomatic cables on the subject as surprising.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ statement in the leaks that the Saudis were always prepared to fight to the last American was embarrassing, in the sense that Gates would have to meet with Saudi leaders in the future and would do so with them knowing what he thinks of them. Of course, the Saudis are canny politicians and diplomats and they already knew how the American leadership regarded their demands.

There were other embarrassments also known by the informed observer. Almost anyone who worries about such things is aware that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is close to the Russians and likes to party with young women. The latest batch of leaks revealed that the American diplomatic service was also aware of this. And now Berlusconi is aware that they know of these things, which will make it hard for diplomats to pretend that they don’t know of these things. Of course, Berlusconi was aware that everyone knew of these things and clearly didn’t care, since the charges were all over Italian media.

I am not cherry-picking the Saudi or Italian memos. The consistent reality of the leaks is that they do not reveal anything new to the informed but do provide some amusement over certain comments, such as Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev being called “Batman and Robin.” That’s amusing, but it isn’t significant. Amusing and interesting but almost never significant is what I come away with having read through all three waves of leaks.

Obviously, the leaks are being used by foreign politicians to their own advantage. For example, the Russians feigned shock that NATO would be reassuring the Balts about defense against a potential Russian invasion or the Poles using the leaks to claim that solid U.S.-Polish relations are an illusion. The Russians know well of NATO plans for defending the Baltic states against a hypothetical Russian invasion, and the Poles know equally well that U.S.-Polish relations are complex but far from illusory. The leaks provide an opportunity for feigning shock and anger and extracting possible minor concessions or controlling atmospherics. They do not, however, change the structure of geopolitics.

Indeed, U.S. diplomats come away looking sharp, insightful and decent. While their public statements after a conference may be vacuous, it is encouraging to see that their read of the situation and of foreign leaders is unsentimental and astute. Everything from memos on senior leaders to anonymous snippets from apparently junior diplomats not only are on target (in the sense that STRATFOR agrees with them) but are also well-written and clear. I would argue that the leaks paint a flattering picture overall of the intellect of U.S. officials without revealing, for the most part, anything particularly embarrassing.

At the same time, there were snarky and foolish remarks in some of the leaks, particularly personal comments about leaders and sometimes their families that were unnecessarily offensive. Some of these will damage diplomatic careers, most generated a good deal of personal tension and none of their authors will likely return to the countries in which they served. Much was indeed unprofessional, but the task of a diplomat is to provide a sense of place in its smallest details, and none expect their observations ever to be seen by the wrong people. Nor do nations ever shift geopolitical course over such insults, not in the long run. These personal insults were by far the most significant embarrassments to be found in the latest release. Personal tension is not, however, international tension.

This raises the question of why diplomats can’t always simply state their minds rather than publicly mouth preposterous platitudes. It could be as simple as this: My son was a terrible pianist. He completely lacked talent. After his recitals at age 10, I would pretend to be enthralled. He knew he was awful and he knew I knew he was awful, but it was appropriate that I not admit what I knew. It is called politeness and sometimes affection. There is rarely affection among nations, but politeness calls for behaving differently when a person is in the company of certain other people than when that person is with colleagues talking about those people. This is the simplest of human rules. Not admitting what you know about others is the foundation of civilization. The same is true among diplomats and nations.

And in the end, this is all I found in the latest WikiLeaks release: a great deal of information about people who aren’t American that others certainly knew and were aware that the Americans knew, and now they have all seen it in writing. It would take someone who truly doesn’t understand how geopolitics really works to think that this would make a difference. Some diplomats may wind up in other postings, and perhaps some careers will be ended. But the idea that this would somehow change the geopolitics of our time is really hard to fathom. I have yet to see Assange point to something so significant that that it would justify his claim. It may well be that the United States is hiding secrets that would reveal it to be monstrous. If so, it is not to be found in what has been released so far.

There is, of course, the question of whether states should hold secrets, which is at the root of the WikiLeaks issue. Assange claims that by revealing these secrets WikiLeaks is doing a service. His ultimate maxim, as he has said on several occasions, is that if money and resources are being spent on keeping something secret, then the reasons must be insidious. Nations have secrets for many reasons, from protecting a military or intelligence advantage to seeking some advantage in negotiations to, at times, hiding nefarious plans. But it is difficult to imagine a state — or a business or a church — acting without confidentiality. Imagine that everything you wrote and said in an attempt to figure out a problem was made public? Every stupid idea that you discarded or clueless comment you expressed would now be pinned on you. But more than that, when you argue that nations should engage in diplomacy rather than war, taking away privacy makes diplomacy impossible. If what you really think of the guy on the other side of the table is made public, how can diplomacy work?

This is the contradiction at the heart of the WikiLeaks project. Given what I have read Assange saying, he seems to me to be an opponent of war and a supporter of peace. Yet what he did in leaking these documents, if the leaking did anything at all, is make diplomacy more difficult. It is not that it will lead to war by any means; it is simply that one cannot advocate negotiations and then demand that negotiators be denied confidentiality in which to conduct their negotiations. No business could do that, nor could any other institution. Note how vigorously WikiLeaks hides the inner workings of its own organization, from how it is funded to the people it employs.

Assange’s claims are made even more interesting in terms of his “thermonuclear” threat. Apparently there are massive files that will be revealed if any harm comes to him. Implicit is the idea that they will not be revealed if he is unharmed — otherwise the threat makes no sense. So, Assange’s position is that he has secrets and will keep them secret if he is not harmed. I regard this as a perfectly reasonable and plausible position. One of the best uses for secrets is to control what the other side does to you. So Assange is absolutely committed to revealing the truth unless it serves his interests not to, in which case the public has no need to know.

It is difficult to see what harm the leaks have done, beyond embarrassment. It is also difficult to understand why WikiLeaks thinks it has changed history or why Assange lacks a sufficient sense of irony not to see the contradiction between his position on openness and his willingness to keep secrets when they benefit him. But there is also something important here, which is how this all was leaked in the first place.

To begin that explanation, we have to go back to 9/11 and the feeling in its aftermath that the failure of various government entities to share information contributed to the disaster. The answer was to share information so that intelligence analysts could draw intelligence from all sources in order to connect the dots. Intelligence organizations hate sharing information because it makes vast amounts of information vulnerable. Compartmentalization makes it hard to connect dots, but it also makes it harder to have a WikiLeaks release. The tension between intelligence and security is eternal, and there will never be a clear solution.

The real issue is who had access to this mass of files and what controls were put on them. Did the IT department track all external drives or e-mails? One of the reasons to be casual is that this was information that was classified secret and below, with the vast majority being at the confidential, no-foreign-distribution level. This information was not considered highly sensitive by the U.S. government. Based on the latest trove, it is hard to figure out how the U.S. government decides to classify material. But it has to be remembered that given their level of classification these files did not have the highest security around them because they were not seen as highly sensitive.

Still, a crime occurred. According to the case of Daniel Ellsberg, who gave a copy of the Pentagon Papers on Vietnam to a New York Times reporter, it is a crime for someone with a security clearance to provide classified material for publication but not a crime for a publisher to publish it, or so it has become practice since the Ellsberg case. Legal experts can debate the nuances, but this has been the practice for almost 40 years. The bright line is whether the publisher in any way encouraged or participated in either the theft of the information or in having it passed on to him. In the Ellsberg case, he handed it to reporters without them even knowing what it was. Assange has been insisting that he was the passive recipient of information that he had nothing to do with securing.

Now it is interesting whether the sheer existence of WikiLeaks constituted encouragement or conspiracy with anyone willing to pass on classified information to him. But more interesting by far is the sequence of events that led a U.S. Army private first class not only to secure the material but to know where to send it and how to get it there. If Pfc. Bradley Manning conceived and executed the theft by himself, and gave the information to WikiLeaks unprompted, Assange is clear. But anyone who assisted Manning or encouraged him is probably guilty of conspiracy, and if Assange knew what was being done, he is probably guilty, too. There was talk about some people at MIT helping Manning. Unscrambling the sequence is what the Justice Department is undoubtedly doing now. Assange cannot be guilty of treason, since he isn’t a U.S. citizen. But he could be guilty of espionage. His best defense will be that he can’t be guilty of espionage because the material that was stolen was so trivial.

I have no idea whether or when he got involved in the acquisition of the material. I do know — given the material leaked so far — that there is little beyond minor embarrassments contained within it. Therefore, Assange’s claim that geopolitics has changed is as false as it is bold. Whether he committed any crime, including rape, is something I have no idea about. What he is clearly guilty of is hyperbole. But contrary to what he intended, he did do a service to the United States. New controls will be placed on the kind of low-grade material he published. Secretary of Defense Gates made the following point on this:

“Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments — some governments — deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation.”

“Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.”

I don’t like to give anyone else the final word, but in this case Robert Gates’ view is definitive. One can pretend that WikiLeaks has redefined geopolitics, but it hasn’t come close.

"Is University really such a good thing?'

P Hitchens again:

"What are universities for anyway? I went to one and spent the whole time being a Trotskyist troublemaker at the taxpayers’ expense, completely neglecting my course. I have learned a thousand times more during my 30-year remedial course in the University of Fleet Street, still under way.

I am still ashamed of the way I lived off the taxes of millions of people who would have loved three years free from the demands of work, to think and to learn, but never had the chance.

We seem to accept without question that it is a good thing that the young should go through this dubious experience. Worse, employers seem to have fallen completely for the idea that a university degree is essential – when it is often a handicap.

For many people, college is a corrupting, demoralising experience. They imagine they are independent when they are in fact parasites, living off their parents or off others and these days often doomed to return home with a sense of grievance and no job. They also become used to being in debt – a state that previous generations rightly regarded with horror and fear."

Come to Gaza: 'Lattes, beach barbecues (and dodging missiles)'

Last year Peter Hitchens won the prestigious George Orwell Award for his foreign reporting (much to the chagrin of Guardian readers everywhere). Uncommonly for an opinion writer he takes a lot of foreign assignments, often in dangerous locations. Here is his latest, a report on life in Gaza. JP I think you'll be interested. [Follow the link to read in full]

"Lattes, beach barbecues (and dodging missiles) in the world's biggest prison camp

It is lunchtime in the world's biggest prison camp, and I am enjoying a rather good caffe latte in an elegant beachfront cafe. Later I will visit the sparkling new Gaza Mall, and then eat an excellent beef stroganoff in an elegant restaurant.

Perhaps it is callous of me to be so self-indulgent, but I think I at least deserve the coffee. I would be having a stiff drink instead, if only the ultra-Islamic regime hadn't banned alcohol with a harsh and heavy hand.

Just an hour ago I was examining a 90ft-deep smuggling tunnel, leading out of the Gaza Strip and into Egypt. This excavation, within sight of Egyptian border troops who are supposed to stop such things, is – unbelievably – officially licensed by the local authority as a 'trading project' (registration fee £1,600).

It was until recently used for the import of cattle, chocolate and motorcycles (though not, its owner insists, for munitions or people) and at its peak earned more than £30,000 a day in fees.

But business has collapsed because the Israelis have relaxed many of their restrictions on imports, and most such tunnels are going out of business. While I was there I heard the whine of Israeli drones and the thunder of jet bombers far overhead.

Then, worryingly soon after I left, the area was pulverised with high explosive. I don't know if the Israeli air force waited for me to leave, or just walloped the tunnels anyway.
The Jewish state's grasp of basic public relations is notoriously bad. But the Israeli authorities certainly know I am here. I am one of only four people who crossed into the world's most misrepresented location this morning.

Don't, please, accuse of me of complacency or denying the truth. I do not pretend to know everything about Gaza. I don't think it is a paradise, or remotely normal. But I do know for certain what I saw and heard.

There are dispiriting slums that should have been cleared decades ago, people living on the edge of subsistence. There is danger. And most of the people cannot get out.

But it is a lot more complicated, and a lot more interesting, than that. In fact, the true state of the Gaza Strip, and of the West Bank of the Jordan, is so full of paradoxes and surprises that most news coverage of the Middle East finds it easier to concentrate on the obvious, and leave out the awkward bits...."

Creationism in Israel

One of the great things about the wonderful world of Twitter and FB is stumbling on articles like this one (via @DerrenBrown). We tend to think of creationists as fundamentalist Christians, perhaps with a smattering of Muslims. But take a look at the Israeli Education Ministry's (until recently) chief scientist, Dr. Gavriel Avital. (He's not convinced by global warming either.)

And just to be clear, before you start reading, the point of this post is not 'look at the fool', but rather, to show that such opinions are not the exclusive preserve of Bible / Koran bashers. (Check out the comments too.)

Chief scientist who questioned evolution theory fired

Dr. Gavriel Avital, who called environmental groups 'green religion' and said, 'There are many people who don't believe evolutionary account is correct,' dismissed by Education Ministry

Tomer Velmer

The Education Ministry's chief scientist, Dr. Gavriel Avital, was dismissed on Monday following a scandal-filled trial period of less than a year.

Sources familiar with the affair said Avital was fired over past statements he had made, in which he questioned evolution and the global warming theory.

Avital, who was named chief scientist in December 2009, said Darwinism should be analyzed critically along with biblical creationism.

"If textbooks state explicitly that human beings' origins are to be found with monkeys, I would want students to pursue and grapple with other opinions. There are many people who don't believe the evolutionary account is correct," he said.

"There are those for whom evolution is a religion and are unwilling to hear about anything else. Part of my responsibility, in light of my position with the Education Ministry, is to examine textbooks and curricula,"

Avital added, "If they keep writing in textbooks that the Earth is growing warmer because of carbon dioxide emissions, I'll insist that isn't the case."

Read on here.

A history of anti-semitism in Britain

While discussing with Andy whether of not Ernest Bevin was an anti-semite (as you do) I stumbled across this rather interesting summary:

Antisemitism Embedded in British Culture

Interview with Robert Solomon Wistrich

• Antisemitism has been present in Great Britain for almost a thousand years of recorded history. In the twelfth century, Catholic medieval Britain was a persecutory society, particularly when it came to Jews. It pioneered the blood libel and the church was a leader in instituting cruel legislation and discriminatory conduct toward Jews.
• English literature and culture are drenched in antisemitic stereotypes. Major British authors throughout the centuries transmitted culturally embedded antisemitism to future generations. Although they did not do so deliberately, it was absorbed and has had a long-term, major impact on British society.
• In the new century the United Kingdom is a European leader in several areas of antisemitism. It holds a pioneering position in promoting academic boycotts of Israel. The same is true for trade-union efforts at economic boycotts. There is also no other Western society where jihadi radicalism has proved as violent and dangerous as in the UK.
• In the UK the anti-Zionist narrative probably has greater legitimacy than in any other Western society. Antisemitism of the "anti-Zionist" variety has achieved such resonance, particularly in elite opinion, that various British media are leaders in this field. Successive British governments neither share nor have encouraged such attitudes-least of all Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. They have shown concern over antisemitism and the boycott movement and tried to counteract them. However, Trotskyites who infiltrated the Labour Party and the trade unions in the 1980s have been an important factor in spreading poisonous attitudes. The BBC has also played a role in stimulating pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli attitudes over the years.

I thought it might be of interest to impdec readers. And by readers I mean 'reader'. And by reader, I mean JP.

Read on here.

Peter H on Peter T and the Pope

Peter Hitchens on Peter Tatchell and the Pope's visit:

"Here comes the Pope, though he would have much more fun if he stayed in Rome for root canal dentistry.

His mysterious visit, to the country in Europe where he is most likely to be insulted, is the target of every liberal elitist in Britain.

A whole assembly of crackpot sexual revolutionaries and wild ultra-Leftists will be ranged against him.
Such people normally do not have much popular support. Against the previous Pope, their campaign would have been insignificant squeaking, barely heard above
the applause.

But thanks to the abuse of children by some priests, and the Roman Church’s
feeble efforts to punish them, all that has changed. It is now respectable again to be anti-Catholic.

Well, that’s reasonable. Paedophilia is disgusting, and particularly so among men supposedly dedicated to goodness.

But the Vatican doesn’t actually tell its priests to abuse children. The vast majority of them do not so do. And it has tried to stamp out the problem and to offer genuine apologies to the victims.

I (as a non-Roman Catholic) have examined some of the main charges levelled against Benedict XVI by his attackers, and found that several of them are simply untrue, whereas others have been crudely distorted.

I have also examined the record of one of the main critics of the Papal visit. This is Peter Tatchell, prominent in the ‘Protest the Pope’ campaign.
Set for a battle: The Roman Church's feeble efforts to punish priests who have abused children have left many with criticisms of the Pope

Set for a battle: The Roman Church's feeble efforts to punish priests who have abused children have left many with criticisms of the Pope

I admire Mr Tatchell’s physical and moral courage, notably when he was badly beaten by Robert Mugabe’s bodyguards for attempting a citizen’s arrest of that monster. The effects of that beating still trouble him.

But this does not cancel out what I believe is the hypocrisy of his attempt – and that of the Left in general – to wage war on the Pope by employing the charge of condoning or failing to act against paedophilia (it is No  5 in the charge-sheet set out by ‘Protest the Pope’).

For on June 26, 1997, Mr Tatchell wrote a start­ling letter to the Guardian newspaper.

In it, he defended an academic book about ‘Boy-Love’ against what he saw as calls for it to be censored. When I contacted him on Friday, he emphasised that he is ‘against sex between adults and children’ and that his main purpose in writing the letter had been to defend free speech.

He told me: ‘I was opposing calls for censorship generated by this book. I was not in any way condoning paedophilia.’

Personally, I think he went a bit further than that. He wrote that the book’s arguments were not shocking, but ‘courageous’.

He said the book documented ‘examples of societies where consenting inter-generational sex is considered normal’.

He gave an example of a New Guinea tribe where ‘all young boys have sex with older warriors as part of their initiation into manhood’ and allegedly grow up to be ‘happy, well-adjusted husbands and fathers’.

And he concluded: ‘The positive nature of some child-adult sexual relationships is not confined to non-Western cultures. Several of my friends – gay and straight, male and female – had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy.

‘While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.’

Well, it’s a free country. And I’m rather grateful that Mr Tatchell, unlike most of his allies, is honest enough to discuss openly where the sexual revolution may really be headed.

What he said in 1997 remains deeply shocking to almost all of us. But shock fades into numb acceptance, as it has over and over again. Much of what is normal now would have been deeply shocking to British people 50 years ago. We got used to it. How will we know where to stop? Or will we just carry on for ever?

As the condom-wavers and value-free sex-educators advance into our primary schools, and the pornography seeps like slurry from millions of teenage bedroom computers, it seems clear to me that shock, by itself, is no defence against this endless, sordid dismantling of moral barriers till there is nothing left at all.

Yet when one of the few men on the planet who argues, with force, consistency and reason, for an absolute standard of goodness comes to this country, he is reviled by fashionable opinion."


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1311193/PETER-HITCHENS-Question-Who-said-Not-sex-involving-children-unwanted-abusive-Answer-The-Popes-biggest-British-critic.html?ito=feeds-newsxml#ixzz0zJWwvBec

Peter Hitchens on teaching children to be religous

Lots for contributors to impdec to disagree with here I'm sure:

"It is notable that the work of my brother, Christopher Hitchens, and that of Richard Dawkins coincide closely on one striking point. My brother devotes a chapter in his 2007 book God Is Not Great to the question "Is religion child abuse?" Amid a multitude of fulminations about circumcision, masturbation and frightening children with stories of hell, he lets slip what I suspect is his actual point: "If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world." This is perfectly true, as is his earlier statement that "the obsession with children, and with rigid control over their upbringing, has been part of every system of absolute authority." There is a revealing assumption buried in these statements and also in the opening part of the chapter, in which he says, "We can be sure that religion has always hoped to practise upon the unformed and undefended minds of the young, and has gone to great lengths to make sure of this privilege by making alliances with secular powers in the material world." Does he realize that he is here describing Soviet Communism?

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins too has a lengthy section on "Physical and Mental Abuse." He recounts how "in the question time after a lecture in Dublin, I was asked what I thought about the widely publicized cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland. I replied that, horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place."

The word "abuse" used here by both Richard Dawkins and my brother is far stronger than it first seems to be. In modern Britain and slightly less so in the United States, an accusation of "child abuse" is devastating to the accused. It is almost universally assumed to be true. Juries and the media are instantly prejudiced against the defendant before any evidence has been heard. To suggest that any person so charged may be innocent is to risk being accused of abuse oneself.

To use the expression "child abuse" in this context is to equate such education with a universally hated crime. If Professor Dawkins genuinely believes what he said to the Dublin audience, then he should logically believe that "bringing the child up Catholic" should be a criminal offence attracting a long term of imprisonment and public disgrace. If he does not mean this, what does he mean by the use of such wildly inflated language, and what is he trying to achieve by it?

And what is my brother doing in his competing anti-theist volume? Interestingly, he does not really answer his own inquiry. The chapter drains away into some ramblings on the subject of evolution, circumcision, masturbation, and the actual sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests. I will not be trapped into defending them; their actions were atrocious, particularly because of who and what they were, and the Roman Catholic Church has been feeble in dealing with them. But it can hardly be claimed that they were the only people ever to abuse children sexually or cover it up, or that they were in any way following the dictates of their church. State-run homes for children have no doubt had their share of sexual abuse, but this has never been used as an argument against the existence of the state, nor would it be a very good argument if it were.

The use of this claim that religious instruction is a form of child abuse in an argument for atheism is propaganda, not reason. We read to the young, show them beautiful things, introduce them to good manners, warn them against dangers, teach them their letters and multiplication tables, and make them learn poetry by heart, precisely because they are most impressionable in childhood -- and therefore best able to learn these things then, in many cases long before they can possibly understand why they matter. In the same way, we warn them against various dangers that they cannot possibly understand. It is also true, as I think most observant parents know, that children are much more interested in the universe and the fundamental questions of existence than are adults.

So this is the moment at which we try to pass on to them our deepest beliefs, and the moment when they are most likely to receive them. As Philip Pullman has rightly said, " 'Once upon a time ...' is always a more effective instructor than 'Thou Shalt Not ...,' " so we do this most effectively with stories. But if we ourselves believe -- and are asked by our own children what we believe -- we will tell them, and they will instantly know if we mean it and also know how much it matters to us. They will learn from this that belief is a good thing. We will also try to find schools that will at the very least not undermine the morals and faith of the home. And for this, we are to be called abusers of children? This has the stench of totalitarian slander, paving the road to suppression and persecution.

By contrast, I say unequivocally that if a man wishes to bring his child up as an atheist, he should be absolutely free to do so. I am confident enough of the rightness of Christianity to believe that such a child may well learn later (though with more difficulty than he deserves) that he has been misled. But it is ridiculous to pretend that it is a neutral act to inform an infant that the heavens are empty, that the universe is founded on chaos rather than love, and that his grandparents, on dying, have ceased altogether to exist. I personally think it wrong to tell children such things, because I believe them to be false and wrong and roads to misery of various kinds. But in a free country, parents should be able to do so. In return, I ask for the same consideration for religious parents."

"Bad for the Jews" - Paul Krugman

Where do other readers to impdec stand on this blog post by Paul Krugman? Do they think he is right or wrong to critise the anti-defamation league for opposing the construction of a mosque near ground zero?

Here's the blog post:

"

Outside my usual beat, but this statement from the Anti-Defamation League opposing the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero is truly shocking. As Greg Sargent says, the key passage — it’s a pretty short statement — is this one:

Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.

Translation: some people will feel bad if this thing is built, and we need to take these feelings into account, even though proponents “have every right to build at this site.”

So let’s try some comparable cases, OK? It causes some people pain to see Jews operating small businesses in non-Jewish neighborhoods; it causes some people pain to see Jews writing for national publications (as I learn from my mailbox most weeks); it causes some people pain to see Jews on the Supreme Court. So would ADL agree that we should ban Jews from these activities, so as to spare these people pain? No? What’s the difference?

One thing I thought Jews were supposed to understand is that they need to be advocates of universal rights, not just rights for their particular group — because it’s the right thing to do, but also because, ahem, there aren’t enough of us. We can’t afford to live in a tribal world.

But ADL has apparently forgotten all that. Shameful — and stupid."

crime and punishment vs reform and rehabilitation

Peter Hitchens is running an interesting debate on his blog about crime and punishment and the purpose of prisons. Hitchens is debating with one of the readers of his blog, who draws heavily on articles by Johan Hari in his replies to Hitchens, so much so in fact, that Hitchens' own replies can also be read as a response to Hari's liberal critique of prisons. Worth reading.

"Something for the weekend - my latest rebuttal of the Storke Fallacy, for those interested

I'll respond to Mr Storke by interleaving my replies with his contribution.

Mr Storke: ‘Mr Hitchens amazingly asks: “Why do left-wingers still act and talk as if they were bold rebels, when in fact their ideas are the conventional wisdom of the governing elite and the academy?” Are you serious?’

My response: Mr Storke must learn to treat his opponents with basic respect. Of course I am serious. I have never been more so. I believe Mr Storke is serious, too, which is why I am devoting so much of my week to rebutting his arguments. Mr Storke should recognise that other people may differ from him, instead of falling into a sort of fainting fit when he encounters an opponent who doesn't share his world view.

Mr Storke: ‘Left-wing ideas are not conventional wisdom in our prison policy.’

Me: That is Mr Storke's *opinion*. It is not an established fact. If he would only read my book, especially the essay on Wormwood Scrubs, he would be able to argue this matter effectively. As it is, he will not make the effort to understand my position, which I am making to understand his.

Now, why might this opinion be incorrect? First, who runs the prisons, makes their rules, decides what their purpose is? Why, it is an agency under the control of government which has for almost 60 years been controlled by social democrats and social liberals of three major parties, who believe (like Mr Hari and Mr Storke) that crime is a symptom of 'social diseases' such as bad housing, poverty, the class system etc.

Secondly, what is the ethos of the prisons system? Does it believe that prisons should be punitive, as conservatives do?

How can it? It would be wholly inconsistent of it to do so. It does not believe that crime is the result of wilful wrongdoing (as the old Prison Commissioners did before the modern era). So how could punishment, or deterrence, be morally justified in its view? It believes (like Mr Storke and Mr Hari) that crime is a symptom of other wrongs. If pressed on the question of punishment, it says that the deprivation of liberty in prison is the only punitive element of it. Its stated purpose is a hope that the imprisoned person may be rehabilitated - though it offers no evidence that any such thing takes place, or ever has.

The organisation of HM Prisons is based upon this ethos. Prisoners are not punished as such while they are in prison - except by their fellow-inmates. There are no imposed disciplines, no compulsory hard labour, no real uniform, no severe deprivation of pleasures. On the contrary, the authorities turn a blind eye to the sale of stupefying drugs, and to the presence of illegal mobile phones, as well as permitting phone links with the outside world, lightly-supervised and frequent visits, TVs and other entertainments. In most cases, the sentences served are so short in practice that the deprivation of liberty is a minor inconvenience.

This was once a respectable view, that is, it was respectable before it was tried in modern Britain. Now it is plainly not working. It is not frightening convicted criminals into staying out of prison, nor is it deterring potential criminals from embarking on criminal careers. Nor is it rehabilitating anyone. This is either because rehabilitation of habitual and incorrigible criminals (virtually the only people in prison apart from the deranged) is impossible. Or it may be because it is too difficult and expensive. I tend to the former view, but am prepared to accept the possibility that the second may be correct, if only because it has never been tried and therefore has never been disproved.

The conservative (indeed, the intelligent and constructive) response to this situation would be to accept that the liberal approach has failed, and to reinstate prison's original punitive nature. The liberal response is to keep the prisons for outward show, while continuing to eviscerate the penal system. Wormwood Scrubs, with its grim, penal exterior and its much more relaxed and liberal interior, is a good metaphor for this.

Interestingly, the liberal establishment hires a state-employed inspector of prisons to call, in a series of reports which never address the fundamental problem, for even more liberal approaches. This is because the liberal state maintains prison buildings (as it orders its judges to pass fictional sentences, only half of which will ever be served, at most) only as a sop to the voters. It would much rather not have prisons, or any punitive elements in the system, at all. Its tender conscience rebels at the idea of incarcerating, let alone executing, another human being. But it lacks the political courage to try this on the electorate, hence the absurd arrangement at the moment under which people who don't believe in punishment operate a system which was physically designed to punish, and is no longer allowed even to make moral judgements. One other result of this is that police have become neutral mediators between 'victims' and 'offenders', who are morally equal in the eyes of the law - so much so that a 'victim' who defends himself on the assumption that he has a moral right to do so is treated very harshly indeed.

So it would perhaps be more correct to say that we have a prison system which still has the outward form of a conservative punitive system, but whose actual internal workings and purpose are entirely the work of liberal world-reformers.

Mr Storke again: ’If left-wing ideas are directing our prison policies why is it that The Adult Learning Inspectorate found fewer than 8 percent of prisoners are taught to read and then given meaningful work that could lead to a job on the outside?’

Me: Sigh. One more time. Because left-wing ideas are also directing our schools, which regard effective teaching methods as 'authoritarian' and refuse to use them, resulting in widespread illiteracy. And because undisciplined and disorderly prisons, full of serial offenders on short sentences, are far from ideal places for remedial schooling.

Mr Storke again: ’Worse, one third of prisoners are released to ‘No Fixed Abode’.
As Johann Hari writes, “If we send prisoners back out homeless and illiterate, what do we expect will happen?”

Me: This is a confusion. Prisoners have 'no fixed abode' presumably because they have lost their former abodes while in prison. Does Mr Storke want them rushed to the top of the council waiting list? Does he want their rent paid by the law-abiding while they are locked up? Or what? Plenty of people with small incomes struggle to find places to live and don't commit crimes. Many of them are presumably illiterate, given the prevalence of illiteracy in our population (a problem whose cause Mr Storke has consistently ignored throughout this whole long discussion). But Mr Storke unintentionally raises a different question. If prisons are significantly more comfortable than life on the outside, people will not make much effort to stay out of them. The kind of prisons I envisage would not generally see any of their inmates twice. They would much rather live honestly in a homeless hostel than return.

Mr Storke: ‘If left-wing ideas were the “conventional wisdom” of the elite, Mr Hitchens, then we would not be locking up mentally-ill people without treatment,’

Me: Here we go again, the blank refusal to respond to my repeated point that the use of the word 'mentally-ill' without specifying what he means is obfuscation. I imagine Mr Storke is a victim of the syllogism which says that anyone who does bad things is mentally ill because he does bad things, and does bad things because he is mentally ill. Alas, I cannot accept this logic myself because (as I keep trying to point out) our chief difference is that I believe that people are responsible for their actions and he doesn't.

But, leaving that aside, I have no doubt that 'mentally-ill' people are indeed 'treated' in prison with the drugs which our medical system so readily hands out on the thinnest excuse. What other 'treatment' is available for these subjective complaints, I do not know.

Mr Storke: ‘…offering literacy training to fewer than 8 per cent of prisoners, (despite the fact 60 per cent have a reading age lower than a six-year-old)’

Me: I imagine this has something to do with the practicalities I mention above.

Mr Storke: ‘…refusing to fund rehabilitation projects, (such as the Open Book Project, and the drug rehabilitation projects which Cheshire Drug Squad tried with such excellent effectiveness in the 1980's,)’

Me: Hang on. Weren't these projects publicly funded? And when, please, are we going to get the details of this amazing Cheshire Drug Squad triumph, which I have asked for again and again, and am never given?

Mr Storke: ‘…and closing down 100 drug rehab centres in one year alone (as Mr Hari reported we did in 2009).’

Me: Perhaps they weren't working. I'd need the details.

Mr Storke: ’If left-wing ideas were ‘conventional wisdom’ we would, by now, have tried Switzerland's policies on drugs,’

Me: Not necessarily. But it seems to me that our own legal system's refusal to prosecute, let alone punish people for possessing illegal drugs, and the whole trend of British drugs policy since Baroness Wootton's defeatist report of 1968, has been very similar to the Swiss policy. Has Mr Storke never heard of the Methadone programme? Can he give me a recent instance of a heroin user being prosecuted for possession, and given any sort of punishment?

Mr Storke: ’…and Denmark's policies of rehabilitation and education for prisoners.’

Me: I have now pointed out three times that Denmark, a very wealthy, tiny country entirely different from ours, is a poor comparison. I have also repeatedly asked for details of its alleged successes, which Mr Storke has never supplied. This is the last time I shall bother to respond to him on this topic, at all, unless he provides the evidence to back up his extravagant claims.

Mr Storke: ’We have done neither. All we have done is lock more people in dank, squalid, overcrowded dumps, severed by distance from any contact with relatives, denied any education, or treatment, and released back onto the streets, homeless and illiterate, and worse than they were when they went to jail.’

Me: This is simply, straightforwardly not true of the drug abusers Mr Storke is talking about. (It is only partially true of the treatment of convicted habitual criminals, the main occupants of our prisons, as qualified by what I have written above, and by the prisons chapter in my book, which I urge Mr Storke to read.) This country's treatment of illegal drug users, who are generally treated as in need of treatment rather than of punishment, is utterly different from what Mr Storke describes, and he knows it.

Mr Storke: ’If prison policy is governed by left-wing ideas, how is that the Howard League for Penal Reform found, when it visited child prisoners at Deerbolt Young Offenders Institute, that, although over 60 per cent of these kids could not write their own name, 50 per cent of them there were getting no schooling whatsoever. And that is how we try to turn around the lives of child criminals? No wonder we have such high reoffending rates among adults.’

Me: Because this is what happens when left-wing ideas dominate a country. Because left-wing ideas are based on several fundamental misapprehensions about human nature. And because this ends in chaos and pathos of this kind. Always has, always will. That's why. But I would also mention that the Howard League is not exactly a neutral observer, and that Mr Storke's use of the word 'child' to describe the hulking, feral louts who generally populate YoIs is disingenuous.

Mr Storke: ’Mr Hari reports over 50 per cent of male prisoners lose touch with their families because, due to prison overcrowding, over 5000 prisoners are kept in jails more than six hours from relatives, and many can’t afford the journey. Yet figures show those prisoners who can stay in touch with their families (so they are not released back into life, alone and bereft of contact with their children or relatives) are 20 per cent less likely to reoffend.’

Me: Perhaps. I'd like to see these 'figures', which (if they are like most of Mr Storke's research) might mean something else entirely. But some points arise. The prisons are overcrowded because they aren't frightening enough, and too many people are ready to risk being sent to them. Prisoners are not there because they've behaved responsibly towards their families, or anyone else. Perhaps they should have thought about their family life before they committed the crimes that put them there.

Mr Storke: ’Mr Hitchens continues to dispute the Zurich research.’

Me: No, I don't. This is a perfect example of how Mr Storke doesn't pay attention. I haven't *seen* the accursed Zurich research. So far as I can tell, Mr Storke hasn't seen it either, just partisan reports of it.

Mr Storke: ’I am afraid the facts demolish Mr Hitchens’ position.’

Me: No, they don't. Mr Storke (who loves to use words like 'demolish’ rather than to address the points I raise) has yet to realise that if the Zurich project had completely ended the use of illegal heroin in that city (which I doubt) I would still oppose it. I think the possession of heroin is a crime to punished, not a desire to be subsidised at the expense of the law-abiding. I think that if heroin users were locked up for their crimes, we would have very few of them.

Mr Storke: ’Heroin abuse did not just fall by 4 per cent, Mr Hitchens. It fell by 4 per cent EACH YEAR.’

Me: I know. I know because it was I who produced this figure, which Mr Storke had unaccountably omitted from his version of the 'Independent 'story. He hasn't explained why. And now he has the nerve to wave this fact about as if I am suppressing or ignoring it. What larks.

Mr Storke: ’It has now fallen by 82 per cent. In Zurich alone, the number of addicts dropped from 850 when the scheme began, to just 150, by 2002.’

Me: But what is it that has actually fallen? The fact is that the policy (as again described in a sentence omitted from Mr Storke's version and supplied by me) means that these heroin users are now taking an alternative stupefying drug all the time, paid for at a rate of £33 a day per head, by the taxpayers of Switzerland. To say they are no longer 'heroin addicts' may be technically correct, but it is not really the truth about their lives.

The filthy crime of drug-abuse has not stopped. It has instead become a nationalised industry.

Mr Storke: ’Mr Hitchens says there has only been a significant fall in new users of drugs. But these are the people the policy is aimed at. The purpose of this policy, like the purpose of deterrence, (which Mr Hitchens likes so much) is not just to help existing users but, most importantly, to prevent potential drug users taking up drugs.’

Me: But I do not think it is doing so. They are just using legal drugs given to them by the state. Deterrence would not have this effect.

Mr Storke: ’Like the purpose of deterrence is not just its effect on existing criminals, but on potential criminals, too. In this respect, it has been a roaring success, with an 82 per cent overall reduction in new users, and a massive ‘de-glamourisation’ of the drug among teens and young people (who are the group most vulnerable to experimentation with drugs).’

Me: See above.

Mr Storke: ’Mr Hitchens chose to ignore the crucial quotes from the report's authors, that the drug policy also led to a decline in crime, and drug-related deaths (whereas Britain, which does not have the Swiss policy, has the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Europe).’

Me: Sorry about that. I was at least busy answering Mr Storke's other questions, though he never answers any of mine. Well, if you ‘avoid crime’ by paying criminals to commit crime, using money squeezed out of honest hardworking folk in taxes, then it seems to me that you have made the state an accomplice to crime, so that the taxman robs us all on behalf of the criminal heroin user. The arrangement of ‘Subsidise disgusting workshy self-indulgent behaviour, or face having your home broken into by wild-eyed junkies’ seems to me to be fundamentally wrong, on a moral level with a protection racket or a blackmail demand. Even Mr Storke, I imagine, would oppose a scheme for paying would-be Bernie Madoffs millions of pounds in taxpayers' money, in return for them restraining themselves from robbing their clients. But the principle is the same. And I am against it, on principle.

Mr Storke: ‘But another fact (sorry, but this is again from a Johann Hari article) shows the Swiss burglary rate has also fallen by 70 per cent since they tried this approach (see the excellent Hari article Crime Problem?: Just Lock ‘Em In The Lavatory).’

Me: Source again, please? And see above, anyway.

Mr Storke: ’Mr Hitchens complains that I ask him to check sources with Mr Hari. I do this, because Mr Hari won’t reply to my emails,’

Me: Has Mr Storke actually asked Mr Hari to help him? And has Mr Hari actually refused, or ignored him? If so, I shall have something to say about that. If it is just a case of Mr Storke being too overcome with admiration for his hero to dare to approach him, then I urge him to try. Mr Hari, in my experience, is not puffed up or grand.

Mr Storke: ’…but, as a respected journalist, he would reply to yours.’

Me: I am touched by his faith. Perhaps so, but perhaps not. Anyway, if Mr Storke is not ready to do his own research, I'm not really ready to nursemaid him. I try to be fair to opponents, but there are limits to my generosity. As for Mr Hari's willingness to reply to me, some people like to debate with their readers. Others don't. I myself found it impossible to handle my e-mails, in the days when I published an address. I tried, but it was just too much.

Mr Storke: ’I also do this, because Mr Hitchens questions the Denmark statistics. Yet Mr Hari has quoted them in three separate articles. So, if you won’t believe them, are you saying he made it up?’

Me: No. I just make it a rule to read research before employing it in an argument.

The rest of Mr Storke's post seems to me to go round and round an old circuit, and I haven't time to rehearse my replies to his elderly and much-used points."