Activist turned down as lawyer

The idea that the law and lawyers are beyond criticism is laughable

An outspoken men's activist and critic of New Zealand's legal system has been told he is not a fit and proper person to be a lawyer. But Peter Zohrab, acting president of New Zealand Equality Education Foundation, says he will not let matters rest there. "I just intend to keep at it and see how long it takes," he said of his quest to become a lawyer. Mr Zohrab could bypass the law society approval process that blackballed him and apply to the High Court for admission to the Bar.

He said he spent more than two years gaining his law degree because he believed men could not find lawyers who understood a man's point of view. He wanted to begin as a family law specialist and then expand into other areas where men's rights were an issue, such as criminal and employment law.

Mr Zohrab says Wellington District Law Society raised issues of "balance and judgment" against him. He believes a big part of the problem is his involvement in the men's rights movement. He was told the society took into account his web pages containing "intemperate" comments, including about governor-general and former High Court judge Dame Silvia Cartwright. Mr Zohrab had written an open letter to Dame Silvia last year, titled Resign, you incompetent, sexist, racist bitch! His website also included a copy of his complaint to the United Nations human rights committee, that the body for training New Zealand judges, the Institute of Judicial Studies, indoctrinated judges against men. The website quoted him as saying: "The law is not an ass – the law is a sexist bitch!"

Mr Zohrab would not discuss his background but his website said he was 56, born in Moscow, and had been a secondary school teacher. He holds a New Zealand Bachelor of Arts and a BA from an English university. He said he passed all his law papers and completed the practical training necessary to be a lawyer. The next step toward beginning his legal career was being admitted as a barrister and solicitor of the High Court. But he has become snagged on the normally routine stamp of approval from the district law society. The society asks for three references, a certificate of suitability from the student's law school, and asks lawyers and other law societies to comment on the candidates for admission. The society objected to one of his references so he supplied a fourth. The dean of the law school refused a certificate, and he was told unnamed lawyers said he had spoken strongly and abusively in some unspecified circumstances.

The society's endorsement of a graduate as a fit and proper person is not obligatory and Mr Zohrab can apply to the High Court to admit him. He questioned whether a law society council was an appropriate body to assess fitness to be a lawyer. From the number of lawyers convicted of offences it was obvious the process did not prevent unsuitable people becoming lawyers, he said. Wellington District Law Society executive director David Clarke said fewer than 10 people had been refused the society's approval in the past decade. More than 300 lawyers are admitted in Wellington each year.

Source. If you want to send emails in support of Mr Zohrab's application, this site has the details you need.



FRANK FUREDI

I have often excerpted the writings of Frank Furedi on this blog so I thought the biographical note below might be of some interest



As a Trotskyist in the heady atmosphere of late 1970s London, Frank Furedi founded the Revolutionary Communist Party, a splinter party of the extreme Left. Three decades later the articulate, ubiquitous University of Kent sociologist, prolific author and serial stirrer is better known as a darling of the Right who has got up the collective nose of everyone from environmentalists, animal rights activists, regulators, the cultural elite, educators, parents and politicians.

Furedi's radical stance of questioning received wisdom - from the ban on human cloning to blaming human behaviour for global warming and what he calls the empty celebration of multicultural touchstones such as diversity - has won him numerous enemies on Britain's Left. George Monbiot, the prominent left-wing author and columnist for London's The Guardian newspaper, has dubbed Furedi the godfather of what he claims is a secretive, cult-like organisation with a far Right, corporatist agenda and, according to the sociologist, has tried to have him sacked from his academic post.

On the eve of a speaking tour to Australia, where he is a star attraction at Brisbane's Ideas Festival, a Queensland Government-backed talkfest, Furedi denies he can be described as "a person of the Right", telling Inquirer: "I haven't really changed but the world has changed a lot."

Suspicion of the state is the unifying theme of his work. But while many of the ideas he extols in his books and articles point to a strong streak of libertarianism, Furedi rebuffs suggestions he can be characterised in this way, preferring the label humanist. "There are different kinds of libertarianism," he says. "There are libertarians who are obsessed with the free market and think that's the high point of civilisation. I would see myself as a libertarian who sees the importance of liberty and tolerance and genuine liberalism, not the way it is understood today. I actually think that as a humanist I would have been on the Left side of virtually every major controversy of the past 300 years."

According to Furedi, the ideals of the Enlightenment, "daring to know and a powerful humanist vision", are the inspiration behind his belief in human potential to solve problems, from the millennium bug to global warming and the root of his dismay at what he sees as cultural pessimism, suspicion of science and technology and misanthropy. His is the key name behind the Manifesto Club, a new online forum set up, its website says, to tackle the cultural pessimism "gripping Western societies ... despite the significant achievements of the past two centuries". Certain to raise eyebrows is the club's second principle: support for "experimentation in all its forms - scientific, social and personal".

Born in Budapest in 1947, a little more than a year after his mother returned from a concentration camp, Furedi spent his childhood in the Hungarian capital. His father and older sister were embroiled in the country's 1956 revolt. When it was defeated the family fled to Austria, ending up in Montreal, where Furedi discovered left-wing politics as a student at McGill University. Even in those days, Furedi says, he was regarded with suspicion by fellow travellers and sometimes accused of being "a lackey to fascists" for his insistence right-wing opponents be given a voice in campus debates.

According to Furedi, he often finds himself in rows with right-wingers. "They think the free market will solve all of our problems," he says. "No.1, there has never been a free market. No.2, it is not going to solve all of our problems. I also happen to think that governments have an important role to play in providing certain services."

No matter what his politics, Furedi's appeal lies in his ability to diagnose and articulate the West's malaise. His arguments against the dumbing down of education in Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone and regarding the dangers of over-cautious child-rearing in Paranoid Parenting ring as acutely in the Australian context as in Britain or the US. In his latest book, Politics of Fear, he argues that the disorientation and disenchantment of people with the traditional Left-Right political divide has created a vacuum that has been filled by "negative politics" and fear-mongering on the part of politicians and what he calls "fear entrepreneurs". "What you were left with by the end of the 1980s was a fairly narrow, managerial rhetoric that had very little substance to it," he says. "In that situation governments and political parties find it very difficult to project a positive view of the future and feel much more comfortable with warning us about the dangers ahead." They include terrorism, childhood obesity, avian flu, climate change and genetic modification.

Furedi does not argue that we fear more than in the past but that we fear very differently and that it has left people feeling helpless and risk averse. "In previous times when we feared it often brought us together, like in the Blitz in London," he says. "Fears were very specific things you could do something about. The fears we have today are mediated through CNN. They might be things we hear about going on in Vietnam or Turkey or god knows where and we see their impact on the imagination, but these are fears we can do little about. Usually you can flee when you fear something or fight it. But these things are simply suffered."

Furedi says the result of faceless, generalised fear can be seen in diminished human relationships, in paranoid parenting and in the delayed adolescence evident among young adults. When it comes to identity, another red-hot theme in Australia, Furedi is impatient to bypass hurrah words such as diversity to get down to the "real values we sign up to, not the bullshit ones like diversity, but the real ones that tell us what is right and wrong".

Source



Food nuttiness to be restrained by the Feds

"The House voted Wednesday to strip many warnings from food labels, potentially affecting alerts about arsenic in bottled water, lead in candy and allergy-causing sulfites, among others. Pushed by food companies seeking uniform labels across state lines, the bill would prevent states from adding food warnings that go beyond federal law. States could petition the Food and Drug Administration to add extra warnings, under the bill. Lawmakers approved the bill on a 283-139 vote. Supporters expect a Senate version of the bill to be introduced soon.

“This bill is going to overturn 200 state laws that protect our food supply,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. “Why are we doing that? What’s wrong with our system of federalism?” The bill’s supporters argue that consumers deserve the same warnings on supermarket shelves across the country. The bill would allow a state to seek a nationwide warning from FDA. “We ought to do it in all 50 states,” said Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich. “Chicken grown in Louisiana is going to end up on a plate in Michigan.” Rogers mentioned a warning his own state about allergy-causing sulfites: “If they’re bad for Michigan citizens, I think they’re bad in all of the other 49 states,” he said.

Nationwide, as many as 200 state laws or regulations could be affected, according to the Congressional Budget Office. They include warnings about lead and alcohol in candy, arsenic in bottled water and many others. The government would spend at least $100 million to answer petitions for tougher state rules, according to CBO.

Opponents of the bill scored one victory Wednesday: State warnings about mercury in fish would remain. Lawmakers amended the bill to let states keep those warnings. That amendment, sponsored by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., passed on a 253-168 vote. About a dozen states have safety and labeling rules for fish. In California, white signs with “WARNING” in red letters tells grocery shoppers about high mercury levels in certain fish. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., displayed the placard during debate Wednesday on the House floor. Eshoo noted the bill’s supporters have personal ties to food industry lobbyists. “This is not about consumers. This is about special interests,” she said.

California is a primary target of the legislation. There, the voter-passed Proposition 65 requires companies to warn the public of potentially dangerous toxins in food. California has filed lawsuits seeking an array of warnings, including the mercury content of canned tuna and the presence of lead in Mexican candy.

Of particular concern to the industry is acrylamide, a chemical linked to cancer that forms in starchy food cooked at high temperatures, such as french fries and potato chips. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has sued to force Burger King Holdings Inc., PepsiCo Inc.’s Frito Lay brand, McDonald’s Corp., Wendy’s International Inc. and other companies to warn consumers that acrylamide is present. There is widespread opposition among state officials. Attorneys general in 39 states are opposed, as are the National Conference of State Legislature and the associations of state food and drug officials and state agriculture departments.

Source