Monday, December 31, 2007

 

A dishonourable list (1)

A brief but biting editorial from "The Times" below about the annual British honours list (knighthoods etc.) just announced. I must say that an awful lot of nonentities have been gonged this year: Pop singers, actors, TV presenters, a rag-trader, a BBC apparatchik etc. Being already popular or being brown-skinned seem to have been major qualifiers. A more comprehensive commentary here

There are few more predictable annual rituals than the new year honours list. There are always a few well merited awards, valuable when they are given to people away from the public eye who would never dream of such recognition for the good work they do. But the list tends to be dominated by a mix of worthies and entertainers who ought to be content with the honour of banking large sums of money for their work. The latest list is little better. In the context of the refusal to honour those who put their lives at risk to save the lives of others on 7/7, it looks insulting.

Gordon Brown is in danger of promising much and delivering little. The prime minister made a song and dance about honouring members of the public who show bravery during terrorist attacks. As he put it in July: "It is right that we look at how our honours system can recognise those in our emergency services and members of the public who showed such bravery and heroism in the face of the recent terrorist attacks." That turns out to have been hot air. In reality, as we report, the Cabinet Office has actually turned down such nominations as undeserving.

Awards have indeed been made for behaviour on 7/7 - but to civil servants sitting at their desks co-ordinating the work of others. Heroes such as Tim Coulson, a teacher who smashed his way into a bombed Tube carriage, gave first aid, had a man die in his arms and was so badly affected by his experience that he has had to retire early, have been snubbed. Not one member of the public has been rewarded for bravery. Mr Coulson's wife was told by the Cabinet Office that "honours are awarded to people for meritorious service over a sustained period and not specifically for saving someone's life" - an explanation which contradicts the citation to the bureaucrats honoured for their co-ordination role on 7/7.

There have long been calls for the honours system to be reformed. Now the shame of these snubs to the brave brings dishonour to the establishment that bestows them.

Source



A dishonourable list (2)

Rod Liddle offers a lighter version of the points made in the editorial above

Another year goes by and no bloody official recognition. Slave my guts out every week alerting people to the fact that Bono, Patricia Hewitt, Sting, the Milibands, Ruth Kelly, all doctors and most of the Conservative party are agents of Satan, all for no thanks. Not that one does it in expectation of ennoblement, of course. One does it, without fear or favour, for the good of the country. And for money, obviously.

But then you read the new year's honours list and discover, halfway down, that George Alagiah and Hanif Kureishi have both been bunged some Establishment bauble, and the rancour begins to build. Kureishi's got a CBE - for what? I mean, I have nothing against the chap. He's quite a good writer, in much the same way as Jimmy Carr is quite a good comedian and Bas Savage, of Brighton, is quite a good footballer. In truth, the three of them inhabit that vague, shadowy area where "quite good" merges imperceptibly with "actually, not very good at all".

Martin Amis, Iain Banks and, strange to say, JG Ballard have never been honoured - some people might argue that they have performed a greater service to literature over the years than Kureishi. Some people might even remember the name of a book one of them has written, which gives them the distinct edge over Hanif.

And then George Alagiah, recipient of an OBE - what's he done, exactly? Read the bloody news from an Autocue. Again, I have nothing against George, who seems a likeable chap. But his is an occupation that requires nothing in the way of skill, tenacity, intellectual ability or fortitude. All you have to do is sit there, read what's been written for you by some marginally postpubescent PC BBC monkey and try not to belch or snigger. A pig's bladder on a stick could read the news. Probably. You begin to wonder what honours are for.

Why, for example, has a person called Jazzie B been handed an OBE? Because he was the driving force of Soul II Soul, a mediocre Brit R&B band a decade or so back? Hell, is that all it takes? I could form a mediocre Brit R&B band tomorrow and so, I suspect, could you. If Jazzie B can get an OBE then surely So Solid Crew deserve knighthoods.

And then there's Kylie Minogue, who gets an OBE for shoving her arse in our faces whenever the opportunity arises, or for having successfully recovered from cancer, or for having taken part in an episode of The Vicar of Dibley. Gordon Brown recently published a book about what can be achieved by individuals who struggle against overwhelming odds to inspire and transform their communities. It was quite an uplifting book in a way. It's just that I never knew it was written with Kylie Minogue in mind, still less Hanif Kureishi. Are those the people he meant?

Source



How The News Is Made

By Barry Rubin

Ring, ring, goes the telephone. And of course I answer it. The voice on the other end says that he is "Joseph" of Reuters. I get many calls from journalists and wire services but never has someone I don't know introduced himself by first name only. Since he has an obvious Arabic accent it is quite clear that he thinks I am either so biased as to care what his family name is or so stupid not to guess why he isn't giving it. So the effect is to achieve the exact opposite of what he wants. It puts me on my guard.

Next he tells me that he is doing a story on how Israel is strangling the Palestinian economy. In such circumstances, I have taken to arguing back with correspondents. By framing the story that way, I explain, Reuters is building in a bias. After all, the story should be: What's wrong with the Palestinian economy, how to fix it, and will the massive infusion of aid--$7.4 billion just promised for three years by mostly Western donors--help?

Aren't wire services, and the media in general, supposed to be somewhat balanced? They ask an open question, collect viewpoints, and let the reader conclude what the factors are, or at least wait until they have gathered some evidence. This is supposed to be especially true of wire services, which supply newspapers and other media with the basic facts on which they can build their own stories. What is going on here, then, is not reporting but propaganda.

Clearly unnerved, he promises to quote me accurately. And he does keep that promise fully, sort of. But the outcome is quite predictable. And here is the dramatic headline that went out in the resulting story: "Analysis-Aid can't save Palestinian economy in Israeli grip." No doubt is to be left that it is Israel's fault that the Palestinian economy is in shambles. And so pervasive is this evil that even the whole world cannot save them. So after that $7.4 billion is all gone with no result everyone will know who to blame, right?

Before continuing let's note the problem with this analysis on two levels. First, Israeli closures and control on movement are the result of Palestinian terrorist attacks, coupled with the unwillingness and inability of the two Palestinian governments (Palestinian Authority-Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip) to stop them. No attacks; no closures. And this is absolutely clear. If attacks were to stop, so would Israeli restrictions. But if Israel removed all roadblocks and closures, the attacks would continue. This makes obvious the principal, fundamental cause of the problem and what needs to change in order to fix it. In other words: if Palestinian terrorism stops, Israeli restrictive measures will end and the Palestinian economy has a chance to develop.

But if Israeli restrictive measures end, Palestinian terrorism would continue and thus the Palestinian economy would not develop because Israel would put back on the restrictions eventually and also, of course, no one will invest in the middle of a war. Is that clear and logical? Obviously, not for Western leaders and much of the news media.

Second, even if all Israeli action were to disappear, the Palestinian economy would still be in trouble. There are a number of reasons for this which are all well-known and were vividly seen in the 1990s, at a time when there was massive aid and a low level of Israeli security operations. These factors include: huge corruption which siphons off money; the lack of a clear legal framework for investment and commerce; the incompetence of the Palestinian regime; internal anarchy and violence by gangs with political cover; and an ongoing war against Israel.

Naturally, if you pump $7.8 billion over three years into a society of under 1.5 million people on the West Bank--around $1,600 a year for every individual person there--it is going to have a positive economic effect. Since current Palestinian per capita income is $1,200 a year it would more than double it. In 1992, the figure was around $2,000. This represents, for all practical purposes, an increase of 400 percent over the aid being supplied two years ago. But most of the money is merely budget support for the Palestinian Authority, meaning it will pay salaries for the bloated government bureaucracy. At the end of that time the funds will be gone with no effect.

Yet the December 20, 2007, story by Reuters and two similar articles by the Associated Press (for my detailed analysis of the latter see here) simply omit all this information and put all the blame for problems on Israel.

In this case, though, slanting is not enough, however, and the Reuters report must stoop to outright dishonesty. It states:

"The $7.4 billion pledged exceeds the sum [Palestinian Prime Minister Salam]] Fayyad had asked for in his three-year economic plan, but is less than the $8.4 billion that the World Bank reckons Israeli curbs on movement have cost Palestinians in lost income over the past five years."

This is a lie and clearly a deliberate one. In fact, the World Bank annual reports are entitled "Intifada, Closures and Palestinian Economic Crisis." They make the very simple point that the intifada--an armed Palestinian war on Israel--leads to closures and thus the combination brings on a crisis. The reports are quite careful in pointing out all the factors that led to the Palestinian economic decline. They do not say the losses were strictly due to Israeli curbs on movement. On the contrary, the 2003 report for example, written at the height of the violence, says the closures and movement restrictions are pretty insignificant. (see it here). This specific example of dishonesty matters because the approach we see here--predetermining the story, ignoring most of the factors involved, blaming Israel--sets a pattern for a whole raft-full of stories:

* Why is there no peace? Israel doesn't give enough concessions. Often there is no mention of Palestinian hardline positions, behavior in not keeping commitment, terrorism as a key element in the failure to achieve peace. Most important of all, there is endless talk about what Israel can or should give for peace but far less about what the Palestinians must give: end of conflict, full recognition of Israel, return of refugees to a Palestinian state, a real end to incitement and terrorism.

* Why is there suffering in Gaza? Israel's restrictions. Far less mention of Hamas hard line, openly genocidal stance, constant aid to terrorist attacks and rocket firing, refusal to meet even minimal international requirements.

* Why are Palestinians, to quote the Reuters story, "Deprived of dignity"? No mention of a corrupt government and gangs of gunmen who couldn't care less about their well-being, and a strategy that starts unwinnable wars. It's all Israel's fault.

It is bad enough that this kind of coverage is shaping the way that many in the West see the Middle East. What is really horrible is that these articles are being deliberately written to do so.

Source



What stupid paternity laws do

INFERTILE couples desperate to have children are facing agonising waits for donated sperm. The Royal Hospital for Women has had no new sperm donors for more than 12 months. Reproductive specialists say attracting enough men to satisfy demand has always been difficult, and waiting lists are longer because of the growing number of childhood cancer survivors rendered infertile by treatment. The dwindling stocks are also sought by single women and same-sex couples.

The director of the hospital's department of reproductive medicine, Stephen Steigrad, said at least 20 men who had undergone aggressive cancer treatments requested donor insemination for their partners every year. Without new donors, the service would have to be stopped within six months. The Centre for Cancer and Blood Disorders at Sydney Children's Hospital at Randwick says one in 900 Australians aged between 16 and 45 has survived childhood cancer.

Changes to NSW legislation this month requiring donors to register their names on a mandatory central register had turned potential donors off, said Professor Michael Chapman, from IVF Australia, which has a waiting list of two years. The Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill guarantees children access to their father's name, date of birth, education and medical information once they turn 18. It may also require details of the donor's partner and other children to be listed. "Previously men could donate knowing there was no way they were going to get a knock on their door," Professor Chapman said. "Now men are less likely to donate."

Dr Anne Clark, from Fertility First Hurstville, said the sperm shortage would be compounded by the new laws, which legislate that one man's sperm can go to only five families, down from 10.

Source

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

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

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

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posted by jonjayray 00:22

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Sunday, December 30, 2007

 

Stupid British rules say homes must be safe for robbers

A woman who suffered a break-in robbery in which she lost some valuable antiques worth "thousands" has been told she could face a significant liability if she beefs up her home's security, and a returning robber would be injured. "If I have got to live behind locked doors for the rest of my life, I hope the rest of my life isn't very long," the woman, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Rugby, England, Advertiser. "But why would I want my house safe for these people? It's crazy," she said.

The woman had antiques and personal items worth "thousands" stolen from her home during her absence to attend to the needs of her brother, suffering with cancer. The invaders smashed through a security gate and broke windows in order to get inside, police reports said.

During their investigation, Rugby police provided her with a crime-fighting booklet that discusses home security. But she told the Advertiser when she asked about putting in a new security fence and upgrading its capabilities, she was told the laws on liability meant she risked a police investigation herself if any trespassers hurt themselves climbing it. She had wanted to add barbed wire to the fence in order to reduce the ease with which the robbers apparently gained access to her home.

But the Warwickshire Police "Operation Impact" booklet, which gives victims information on crime-fighting, suggested she could risk a prosecution herself if someone would be hurt. "I respect that if the postman or the gas man calls, they don't expect to hurt himself. But I was speechless - you couldn't make it up. I think these laws show we have gone soft in the head," she told the newspaper.

Source



A feminist who believes that some values are better than others!

She will become a conservative yet!

'We are just protecting women's rights to take their clothes off," was the Irish budget airline Ryanair's response when it came under fire this month for a charity calendar that showcased its female employees, bikini babe-style.

The right to pose for photographs in skimpy clothes probably wasn't what Mary Wollstonecraft had in mind when she wrote A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman back in 1792, but for all its seemingly unintended humour, the statement is difficult to argue with.

Ryanair might have been looking to achieve more through the calendar than simply supporting the desire of some of its staff to disrobe, but few would argue that they shouldn't be allowed to produce it. As the airline's spokeswoman pointed out, none of the women who posed for the calendar were forced. It was their choice to do so.

Choice. There are few words in the English language that validate a course of action quite so seamlessly. To attack someone's choices is to attack their very person, to suggest that you know better than they do. For women especially, the word represents freedom and independence - and for good reason. Historically speaking, the feminist movement's most significant wins have been about giving women choices about their lives: from deciding who runs the country they live in, to financial independence, to being able to decide when and even if to have children.

Choice equals power, and that means that with the right linguistic packaging, almost anything - no matter how controversial - can be presented as empowering. Take cosmetic surgery, transformed from a curtsy to unattainable beauty standards into a procedure that empowers those who undertake it to look their best. Or Sex And The City's Charlotte, who defended her decision to quit her job to try to have a baby by arguing: "The women's movement is supposed to be about choice. And if I choose to quit my job, that is my choice." As Charlotte and many others like her would have it, any choice a woman makes is a positive, politically empowering one - so long as it is hers.

If feminism has allowed its sisters to choose to become lawyers, never marry and keep their grooming au naturel, why should they not equally be permitted to wear high heels, bake muffins or pose for swimsuit calendars - or as many women do, pick a little from column A and a little from column B? If that is what they choose to do, how are their choices any less valid, even any less feminist, than any other woman's?

This kind of relativism isn't entirely negative. It keeps the question of what defines feminism open to be redefined by the people it's supposed to represent, and it doesn't assume that the same set of solutions will work for every woman simply because of her sex. But it also ignores the important reality that not all choices are positive or empowering - either for the person making them, or for society as a whole. Nor are all choices that women make "feminist" simply by virtue of the fact that they were made by women.

No one makes decisions in a vacuum, and our choices are shaped as much by the behaviour we see rewarded - by our friends, family, colleagues, the media - as they are by our own desires. Even before that, they are limited by government policy, our financial means, our individual strengths and weaknesses. So it's not surprising that, in a society in which women are valued largely for their appearances, many women would choose to trade at least partly on the way they look. Or that when women are paid less than and occupy leadership positions in far smaller numbers than men, women are the sex more likely to cut back on work to give priority to family life.

Equally, it is important to acknowledge that our choices have impacts beyond ourselves. Choice may be sacred, but it's not a values-free zone. One arena in which we have begun to recognise this is consumption: we know that flying contributes to global warming, that our water resources are limited, that buying clothing produced by sweatshop labour is unethical.

Similarly, the choices we make elsewhere in our lives - how to present ourselves, how to conduct our relationships, how to balance work and life - have social and political implications. Our choices determine which behaviours are normalised and rewarded as much as they reflect the status quo. The decisions individual women make have implications for the status of women as a group. And some decisions will have more broadly positive effects than others.

This doesn't mean that women should be denied the right to determine how they run their own lives, or that only certain ways of living qualify as "feminist" or "empowering" - what does qualify will and should remain permanently up for discussion. But it does mean that our right to choose comes with certain responsibilities, and one of these is that we are prepared to defend our decisions in a manner that goes beyond "well, it's my life, and it's my choice". Yes, we should be free to make the decisions we believe will make us happiest, but in doing so we need to keep our eyes open to the values that underlie them, and recognise that our choices have impacts beyond us as individuals.

Source



Affirmative action may be on ballots

A campaign is underway to ban affirmative action in five states already embroiled in debates over illegal immigration. Efforts are proceeding in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma to put initiatives on November ballots that would end programs to increase minority and female participation in government and education. The push is led by Ward Connerly, a California management consultant who successfully ran similar campaigns in California, Washington and Michigan. It is part of Connerly's effort to ban race- and gender-based policies nationwide.

The initiatives will add to the racially charged atmosphere in state elections, says Michael Kanner, a political science professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. All five states have had big increases in their Hispanic population since 2000, leading to racial tensions and debates over illegal immigration.

Arizona, Colorado and Oklahoma have passed the nation's toughest laws against illegal immigration. Among their provisions, they penalize employers of undocumented workers. In Missouri, Gov. Matt Blunt is pushing for tougher immigration laws and enforcement. In Nebraska, towns with large food processing companies that employ Hispanic immigrants have been targeted by federal immigration raids.

"It's about race in both issues," Kanner says. "Affirmative action, by its nature, is associated with minorities. In Colorado, for example, the dominant minorities are Hispanic, so it is inevitable that the two will be tied together."

Connerly, founder of the American Civil Rights Institute, a group working to end affirmative action, says, "We will deliberately try to stay away from the issue of illegal immigration. It's a tangential issue that we cannot control." He says, "It's a simple principle we are promoting: equal treatment for all Americans." Connerly says he believes in affirmative action if it is based on socioeconomic conditions, not gender or race.

His campaign is in its first stage in Colorado, Arizona and Nebraska, gathering signatures to qualify to be on the ballot. It has turned in signatures in Oklahoma, but is stalled in Missouri in a court dispute over language. Connerly's language says the state shall not discriminate or grant preferences based on race, sex or ethnicity. The language substituted by Secretary of State Robin Carnahan goes further and says the initiative would end programs that provide equal opportunities for women and minorities.

Brenda Jones, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri, says Connerly's language misleads voters. "They are co-opting the language of Martin Luther King," she says.

Source



"Anti-discrimination" nonsense

A campaigner shows up the absurdity of the law

A crusader for justice has come to Colorado. He has traveled around the country fighting discrimination, tirelessly combating prejudice and unfair treatment. Already, his efforts have paid off in Minnesota and the EU is listening to his calls for justice. This man is Steve Horner, and he's here to end Ladies Night.

Mr. Horner moved to Colorado a year ago and quickly took issue with Proof Nightclub's "Ladies Night" promotion. Ladies Night is a common bar special where women's cover charges are waived or their drinks are discounted. The goal of the promotion is to attract more women and, by doing so, attract more men as well. Mr. Horner argued that only waiving cover charges for women was gender discrimination, and that he shouldn't be charged more for simply being a man.

Mr. Horner took his complaint all the way to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, and on June 25 commission members decided that Ladies Night is indeed an illegal practice in Colorado. To justify its decision, the Commission cited a State Statute that prohibits a place of public accommodation from "denying an individual equal enjoyment of goods" based on their sex.

To enforce this decision, the Commission has been granted somewhat less than far-reaching powers. They can request that any employees who were wrongly fired as a result of Ladies Night be rehired, and they've been given the power to post notices that Ladies Night is illegal.

Moreover, they've even been allowed to request that the nightclub also post notices. Soon, we may live in a world where men who want to enjoy a drink in a place where they have the chance of meeting women are forced to read a sign first. It is a grim vision, indeed.

This is, evidently, the world Steve Horner wants. It's the world he's been working to build for fifteen years. Horner successfully pressed the state of Minnesota in 1992 to end Ladies Night. He also was convicted of harassing a state official who didn't pursue his claim against Hooters for declining him employment as a waitress.

As absurd as his mission might appear to many of us, he seems to have a legal precedent for his actions. Though he often has to badger officials and pay his court filing fee out of pocket, the State usually sides in Horner's favor. People from both ends of the political spectrum feel that this cannot possibly be right. Clearly, something needs to be done. One possible solution is to change the way our nightclubs operate. Utah, for instance, requires all bars to allow entry only to members, or guests of members. Though nightclubs are privately-owned businesses, they are considered public establishments. By changing nightclubs from public establishments to private ones, businesses can dodge the bullet. The problem here is that it puts a serious damper on bar owners, who are small business owners like anyone else. Utah's laws were written specifically to discourage drinking, Colorado does not necessarily share this goal.

Another answer is to change our laws. We could rewrite our discrimination policies to include a de minimis defense, whereby trivial infractions like Ladies Night are still illegal, but not punishable. Most people would agree that an infrequent five-dollar price differential against men is not a wholesale example of discrimination. The problem with this solution is that it still requires bars to defend themselves in court, even if they will never pay a fine. Rational individuals wouldn't take a bar to court in a case they know they would lose, but still there are irrational men like Steve Horner who routinely pay a $47 filing fee to contest a $5 cover charge. The underlying problem with both of these solutions is that they don't address the real issue at hand: our freedom.

Freedom is a big issue to trot out over a debate on Ladies Night, but it is exactly what could be at stake here. A bar, which is a private business, should be free to charge any price they want for drinks and entry. We, as consumers, are free to avoid that bar if we think they're charging too much for the goods and services they provide. This is the method by which successful businesses succeed and by which bad businesses fail. Introducing government restrictions in the form of a control over promotions and bar specials, like Ladies Night, can only harm this process. That means closing good bars, or keeping otherwise unpopular bars in business.

This control could eventually extend farther than just Ladies Night, too. Many businesses have specials that single out a specific group. Senior Citizen discounts, Military discounts, Student discounts, Kids Eat Free nights, and myriad other promotions that many of us enjoy could hang in the balance of this decision. All of these promotions benefit some small group, and in doing so benefit the business as a whole. Many of these are businesses we all enjoy using, and their success means better prices and services for all of us. Hindering the way they do business over trivial matters like Ladies Night might help guys like Steve Horner save a few bucks, but it could cost the rest of us far more than that.

Source

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

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

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

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posted by jonjayray 00:20

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Saturday, December 29, 2007

 

Justice System Gone Awry - Busting Children

Have we gone nuts? A ten year old child brings a steak knife to school in Ocala. She's caught cutting her meat at lunch, and then arrested as though she was a serial killer on the loose. Perhaps a sharp knife was inappropriate on school grounds, which is a good reason to confiscate, teach her a lesson, admonish her parents and send her on her way. But why whack the fifth grader with a formal arrest as though she had committed a crime? That'll give a growing kid a warm and secure feeling about the law.

A first grader in Avon Park, Florida, lost control and acted out in class, kicking and scratching. That's bad. She obviously has a problem. Teachers called the cops, who came and handcuffed her for restraint. Okay, I can even live with that. Then child - a six-year-old - was brought to police headquarters and charged with a felony and two misdemeanors. Huh? When did common sense lose it's foothold in America? Years ago, we'd read stories like this in communist China.

Moses Lake, Washington, 2006. Seven juveniles were taken into custody and arrested for vandalism and theft. Two of these were five and six years of age. The others were closer to twelve. Whatever happened to laws about contributing to the delinquency of minors? Locking up five year-old children as criminals? There must be another way to handle these kinds of situations.

December, 2006, a twelve year-old boy in South Carolina was arrested by police for petty larceny for - get this - opening his Christmas present without authorization. When his mother learned that he had opened the $85 Nintendo game without her permission, she called the cops to teach him a lesson, and the cops made the bust. Honest. Read for yourself. Click here: Boy Arrested

September, 2006, Pleasant Grove, Utah. A teenage prankster streaked naked across a stage during a school play. There are children in the audience. He's pretty stupid. He needs punishment. He got it. The kid is facing criminal charges for which he will likely be required to register as a sex offender for life. His name, address and photograph will be available on the Internet as warnings to citizens that this boy is a predator and to protect your kids. He'll be unable to find jobs. He'll be the instant suspect in unsolved sex crimes. A lifetime of retribution, for a silly stunt that has nothing to do with sexually offending anyone.

Honor student and football player, Genarlow Wilson was seventeen years old when he received consensual oral sex from a fifteen year-old girl in Georgia in 2005. Uh.that's an every day event by the thousands in all fifty states. But, the laws in Georgia mandated a ten-year sentence for the (ahem) sex offense with a minor child. Genarlow was ultimately released by a compassionate judge after serving two years in prison. Still, he must register as a dangerous sex offender for life.

I think we're using a sledge hammer to kill the bug. Serious crimes certainly need to be addressed by the criminal justice system, but we've gone over the top with the tough-on-crime mantra.

I'm sure glad I retired when I did. I served in an era when judgement and common sense prevailed, when a cop had the option to send a DUI driver home in a taxi cab, or kick kids in the ass for raising hell at a party, send lover's lane sexpots off to motel rooms and scare the hell out of truants and other youngsters who dabbled in pot. I had the latitude to make humane decisions about minor indiscretions, always aware of how an arrest would affect the rest of a kid's life. I feel comfortable that I, and many of my colleagues, saved some young people from entering the oppressive walls of the justice system as criminals when it wasn't in the best interest of justice.

Sure, I know all about the law, and my job was merely to enforce. I did that. I made over two thousand arrests in my career. But I also made a few unarrests for which I am proud, for I know in those few instances, I precluded a lifetime of obstacles and stigma for the undeserving because I decided to give the "offenders" a pass.

When it comes to showing small kids the strong arm of the law, there's another way, besides jails and handcuffs. It's called, education treatment, compassion and guidance. When a system can label people for life as sex offenders, when they are not, then something needs to be fixed. In today's world, the hands of police officers are tied, they dare not make decisions. It's all spelled out. Break the law, pay the price. Even if the price is a million dollars for a stick of bubble gum. They better not come for my grandson while he's still in diapers, even if he does throw a tantrum.

Source



Another attack on individual responsibility

Back in 1971 the late Harvard behaviorist psychologist B. F. Skinner published his popular best seller, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York, Knopf). The book followed several more technical works by Skinner arguing that the belief that human beings have free will and are morally responsible is all wrong, a pre-scientific prejudice that needs to be discarded and replaced with a technology of behavior.

This work prompted me to write my first book, The Pseudo-Science of B. F. Skinner (Arlington House, 1973), in which I disputed Skinner's claim to have come up with scientific reasons for rejecting free will and moral responsibility. I argued that he was actually subscribing to a certain school of philosophy that advanced the views he championed. His conclusions about free will and morality were not based on scientific findings at all.

It is now over 30 years since Skinner's work appeared and behaviorism is no longer all the rage in the discipline of psychology. But the basic goal of discrediting free will and moral--including legal or criminal--responsibility is still very much on the agenda of some folks. Only the school of psychology that is supposed to be undermining the belief in human freedom and morality is no longer behaviorism. Now it is some people's version of neuroscience.

The basic contention put forth by some of the champions of this new scientific approach to understanding human behavior is that our actions aren't really ours at all. And, very interestingly, the idea has enormous financial support from no less than the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. It has contributed $10 million to do research on the issues involved, with the work carried out at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Now I say that this money will go to do research but it looks very much like some of those involved do not think much research is needed because they write as if they had already reached their conclusions. As an article on the website of the project tells it,

"The U.S. legal system incorporates assumptions about behavior that, in some cases, are centuries old and based on common sense and culture. For example, it tends to assume that people make deliberate choices and that those choices determine what they do. However, recent breakthroughs in neuroscience research indicate that such choices may sometimes be based upon electrical impulses and neuron activity that are not a part of conscious behavior. These actions can include not only criminal activity, but also decisions made by police, prosecutors, and jurors to arrest, prosecute, convict, or mandate treatment."

In other words, as some of these scientists would have it, we are back to Skinner, although in slightly modified terms. As the new technologists of human behavior see the matter, it is not operant conditioning that drives human behavior but impersonal electrical firings in our brains. Human beings do not make conscious decisions, they do not deliberate but are being driven by "electrical impulses." (I wouldn't put much stock in the qualification "sometimes" since anyone familiar with the work of some of the enthusiasts behind these ideas can tell that theirs is actually a sweeping pronouncement about all human behavior!)

A column isn't the place to attempt to rebut these ideas, merely to call attention to the eagerness with which some are promulgating them and to the enormous investment in the attempt to make them influential. But one thing can be said so as to put a bit of a break on all this enthusiasm about denying the efficacy of human conscious thought in directing human conduct. The British psychologist D. Bannister put the matter very poignantly over 30 years ago: "... the psychologist cannot present a picture of man which patently contradicts his behavior in presenting that picture."

The point is that the champions of the relevant kind of neuroscience and its alleged findings are themselves making decisions, deliberating, and consciously deciding about what to do, day in and day out, including when they decide to make various claims about the implications of their work for the legal system they wish to discredit and take steps to convince the rest of us of how outmoded our thinking and institutions are. They cannot have it both ways--deny that people make decisions but then proceed to make all sorts of significant decisions themselves!

The plain fact is that there is something basic, undeniable about the role of our minds in our conduct, even in conduct that aims to discredit the human mind itself.

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Entitlement Mentality

If you forgot to get a Christmas present for Charlie Rangel, don't worry. The congressman picked one out for himself, and he's sending you the bill: $2 million for a shiny new Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College. The New York Democrat's Monument to Me was one of about 9,000 earmarks in the omnibus spending bill Congress approved before going on vacation. Most represented a more subtle form of self-aggrandizement, aimed at maintaining power and prestige by currying favor with voters.

According to Citizens Against Government Waste, the total cost of the 11,000 or so earmarks in the omnibus bill and an earlier defense bill is about $14 billion, which is not much in the context of a $2.8 trillion federal budget. But the same tendency that explains the persistence of earmarks -- the habit of staying popular by pretending your constituents can get something for nothing -- also explains the failure to address the federal government's increasingly dire fiscal predicament.

The root of that predicament is not earmarks, which represent less than 1 percent of federal spending. Nor is it the war in Iraq, which at $100 billion or so a year accounts for less than 4 percent. So-called entitlement programs are the reason "America faces escalating deficit levels and debt burdens that could swamp our ship of state," as Comptroller General David Walker put it in a recent speech. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid account for 40 percent of federal spending and are expected to consume 51 percent in a decade.

Right now, Social Security makes the federal fiscal picture look better than it really is since the program generates a surplus that masks the true size of the deficit. In fiscal year 2007, for example, the official budget deficit was $163 billion; excluding the Social Security surplus, it was more than twice as high.

Since the government spends the surplus on other programs, the Social Security "trust fund" consists entirely of federal bonds, and those IOUs will come due soon. The oldest baby boomers become eligible for early retirement in 2008. They will start drawing Medicare benefits in three years.

The result, said Walker, will be a "tsunami of spending" that "will never recede." Under current law, the estimated gap between the benefits retirees have been promised and revenue to fund them is $53 trillion, of which $34 trillion is due to Medicare.

Nearly one-quarter of that long-term Medicare deficit, $8 trillion, is attributable to the prescription-drug benefit championed by President Bush and approved by a Republican-controlled Congress. "Incredibly," Walker noted, "this number was not disclosed or discussed until after the Congress had voted on the bill and the president had signed it into law." He said the bill's passage "arguably represents government 'truth' and 'transparency' at its worst."

Although it was presented as a solution to the dilemma of senior citizens forced to choose between eating and taking their medicine, the drug benefit is not means-tested. Like Social Security and Medicare generally, it transfers wealth from young workers to retirees who are often financially better off, buying the votes of older Americans with their grandchildren's money.

Not that the Democrats, who criticized the drug benefit as insufficiently generous, are any better. If you believe a Democratic president would be more fiscally responsible than Bush, have a look at the campaign ad that presents "Universal Health Care," "Alternative Energy," "Middle Class Tax Breaks" and "Universal Pre-K" as Christmas gifts lovingly wrapped by a beneficent Hillary Clinton. Unlike Charlie Rangel, at least Clinton wants to buy gifts for us, but she's still using our money. "Our government has made a whole lot of promises that, in the long run, it cannot possibly keep without huge tax increases," Walker noted. Yet Clinton is making even more promises, and she proposes to do it all while cutting taxes. I think I prefer Rangel's grandiosity. It's a lot cheaper.

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Some correct but very subversive ideas below

Economics examples crop up in the most interesting places. Over the Thanksgiving holiday I ran smack into an application of the Law of Comparative Advantage that was so pure and simple that I can't resist the opportunity to share.

After flying up to visit family for the weekend, I accompanied my sister to work on Thanksgiving morning, in order to hang out with her some and pitch in. "Pitch in" is precise, because I wound up with a pitchfork and a wheelbarrow. My sister works as stallion manager in a stable. (A really nice stable. This place is cleaner than my house, although such a statement could be considered damning with faint praise.) "I'll clean the stalls," my sister said. "You can bed them down."

Well, this was good news all around. I don't at all mind the smell of stables, but it's undeniably more difficult to clean stalls than to bed them down. Cleaning consists of removing the (heavy) soiled straw bedding while keeping the still-reasonably fresh bedding for another day's use. Bedding down just requires lugging a fresh bale of (relatively light) clean straw bedding into the cleared stall, spreading the nearly clean straw left from the previous day, and then breaking up and scattering the fresh bale.

Very simple - but as with any sort of labor, there are little tricks and ways of conserving motion and effort that are not easy to explain but that accumulate with experience. Many of these economies of effort aren't even known to the worker; they develop as a sort of optimized "body memory" in response to muscle aches and the need to get work done as quickly and efficiently as possible. I've done my share of stable work "back in the day," but nothing even approaching the years my sister has put in under all sorts of conditions with all sorts of equipment. My sister even generously complimented me on knowing enough to "whack" the opened bale of straw with the fork to loosen it before I began spreading it around the stall. I'm not a complete newbie to stable work, after all. However, I'm sure I was wasting considerable effort - and time! - because of my relative inexperience and forgotten "body memory" of the necessary motions.

I think it's probably reasonable to say that in the process of cleaning and bedding, the workload is split about 70% into cleaning and 30% into bedding (my sister may be inclined to offer a correction to that estimate, but it seems about right to my less-experienced eye and pitchfork arm). I knew that 70/30 was probably the best split we could work and still finish at or around the same time, given my relative inexperience, general out-of-shapeness, and, frankly, my holiday mood. But even so, after the first stall, I asked my sister if it might not be more efficient and fair if we both cleaned and bedded stalls - meaning, of course, that she do around two-thirds of both cleaning and bedding, and I do around one-third.

Taking much less time to think it out than I am taking to write it out, my sister replied, "Thanks, but it'll go faster if I stick to doing the cleaning and you to the bedding."

And that jogged loose a memory of Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage. I remembered having an early economics mentor point out that, although Ricardo was thinking of international trade, the principle of the law made just as much sense when applied to the division of two tasks between two individuals, one of whom is better at both tasks. And that was clearly the situation in this case! As long as my sister was even better at stall cleaning than at stall bedding, then the job would get done much more quickly if she stuck to the cleaning and I to the bedding. Since cleaning is more difficult to pick up than bedding, not only was she sure to be better than me at both tasks, but she was very likely to be even better at the more difficult task, since she had been doing both for so long. My effort - willing but awkward - was best put to use in the task that was easiest for my sister, so that she could concentrate on doing a superior job at the task that was hardest for both of us.

To flesh out the insight with some numbers for illustrative purposes, suppose my sister was three times as good at me at cleaning stalls and just twice as good as me at bedding them. I hope these numbers are unrealistic (I can't be that bad!) but they do make for easier math. If it takes her five minutes to clean a stall and three minutes to bed one down, it would take me fifteen to clean and six to bed. So to finish two stalls with each of us working at both cleaning and bedding one stall, we'd take her 5+3 minutes and add my 15+6 minutes, which would give us a total of 29 minutes of labor - although, since we were working together, the total time to finish both stalls would only be 21 minutes, the last 13 of which would be filled by my sister nagging me to hurry up and finish so we could go for coffee.

If we do the same two stalls with her cleaning both and me bedding both, it would take her 5+5 added to my 6+6, which would let us get the job done in a total of 22 minutes of labor, or 12 minutes of time, allowing her only two minutes to relax while watching me finish the last bit of straw pitching. Assuming that the goal for both of us was to get the stalls completed in the least amount of time (and you can believe me when I say it was), then we both benefited from my sticking to what I was least bad at: bedding down stalls. But the best and most fascinating part of this is that it is the weaker and less experienced partner in the joint venture who stood to gain the most from this specialization and division of labor.

Well, who am I to argue with efficiency? I settled into the sneeze-inducing job of breaking open and spreading bales of straw around with a pleasure at knowing that my contribution to the joint effort was maximized by the rational division of tasks. Of course I was so tickled at running across Ricardo in such a seemingly unlikely spot that I spent - one might say wasted - several minutes enthusing on the subject rather than actually getting any work accomplished. The idea that it's the relatively weak and the unskilled who benefit most from specialization and the division of labor is so foreign to an American-public-school education that, even as I write this, I have to think it all out again as if it were the first time I encountered the idea.

If you are unskilled, there is no doubt that cultivating one or more skills that are (or will be) in demand will better your position. But even without particular skills, each individual has something of value to trade with - and the fewer specialized skills he has, the greater proportional benefit he will see from a mature marketplace with a high degree of specialization and division of labor. The mere existence of specialists will make his willingness to do unspecialized labor valuable to them. This is exactly why the unskilled laborers of America are likely to have pickup trucks and widescreen TVs.

There's a sort of built-in progressivism to the division of labor that, although it benefits all and almost always will benefit specialists by an absolutely greater amount, provides a greater proportional benefit to those who are relatively unskilled or weak. Again, this notion is so profoundly the opposite of the accepted economic tales of "robber barons" and Dickensian factory owners that, even while writing it, I find it startling.

The idea of the division of labor isn't so much about the skilled and the wealthy exploiting the labor of the unskilled and the poor as it is about the benefits of cooperation to everyone. That those who bring better skills or more experience to the cooperation do absolutely better is no surprise, but the fact that those who bring relatively less in the way of skills and experience to the market gain a proportionately greater amount is big and exciting news to a world steeped in the weak tea of socialist labor theory.

Real civilization is built on a foundation not of exploitation but of cooperation. And those with the most to gain from civilization and the cooperation it is built upon are the weak and the unskilled. Chain together my clumsy pitchforking, my sister's skilled farm management, her boss's business acumen, and his clients' professional success, with their employees' skilled and unskilled labor alike and you start to see the only real "safety net" the working world will ever know: the vast and amazing web of transactions and interdependencies of the marketplace, where even the weakest and least skilled have something of value to contribute.

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

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

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

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posted by jonjayray 00:21

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Friday, December 28, 2007

 

Anger over plan to broadcast Muslim call to prayer on loudspeaker in Oxford

Muslim plans to broadcast a loudspeaker call to prayer from a city centre mosque have been attacked by local residents who say it would turn the area into a "Muslim ghetto". Dozens of people packed out a council meeting to express their concerns over the plans for a two-minute long call to prayer to be issued three times a day, saying that it could drown out the traditional sound of church bells. But a spokesman for the Central Mosque said that Muslim's also have the right to summon worshippers.

Dr Mark Huckster, who lives in Stanton Road and works at East Oxford hospice Helen House, told the Oxford Mail: "The proposal to issue a prayer call is very un-neighbourly, especially in a crowded urban space such as Oxford. "I have lived in the Middle East and a prayer call has a very different feel to church bells and I personally found the noise extremely unpleasant, rather disturbing and very alien to the western mindset." He added: "If an evangelical Christian preacher proposed issuing sermons three times a day at full volume there would be an outcry. "There could be a sense of ghettoisation of East Oxford. Cowley Road would have a Muslim flavour and could become a Muslim ghetto which is contrary to what we want in a multicultural society."

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Deaf demand right to designer deaf children

This is the logical outcome of "All cultures are equal"

DEAF parents should be allowed to screen their embryos so they can pick a deaf child over one that has all its senses intact, according to the chief executive of the Royal National Institute for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People (RNID). Jackie Ballard, a former Liberal Democrat MP, says that although the vast majority of deaf parents would want a child who has normal hearing, a small minority of couples would prefer to create a child who is effectively disabled, to fit in better with the family lifestyle. Ballard's stance is likely to be welcomed by other deaf organisations, including the British Deaf Association (BDA), which is campaigning to amend government legislation to allow the creation of babies with disabilities.

A clause in the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, which is passing through the House of Lords, would make it illegal for parents undergoing embryo screening to choose an embryo with an abnormality if healthy embryos exist. In America a deaf couple deliberately created a baby with hearing difficulties by choosing a sperm donor with generations of deafness in his family. This would be impossible under the bill in its present form in the UK. Disability charities say this makes the proposed legislation discriminatory, because it gives parents the right to create "designer babies" free from genetic conditions while banning couples from deliberately creating a baby with a disability.

The prospect of selecting "deaf embryos" is likely to be seized on by campaigners against genetic screening who will argue that this is an inevitable outcome of allowing "designer babies". Doctors are opposed to creating deaf babies. Professor Gedis Grudzinskas, medical director of the Bridge Centre, a clinic in London that screens embyros, said: "This would be an abuse of medical technology. Deafness is not the normal state, it is a disability. To deliberately create a deaf embryo would be contrary to the ethos of our society."

Ballard, who previously ran into controversy as director-general of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) where she pushed through extensive job cuts, said in an interview with The Sunday Times: "Most parents would choose to have a hearing embryo, but for those few parents who do not, we think they should be allowed to exercise that choice and we would support them in that decision. "There are a number of deaf forums where there are discussions about this. There are a small minority of activists who say that there is a cultural identity in being born deaf and that we should not destroy that cultural identity by preventing children from being born deaf." Ballard added: "We would like to retain, as far as possible, parental choice, but it has to be in conjunction with a clinician so that people know exactly what they are choosing."

Next month a coalition of disability organisations will launch a campaign to amend the bill to make it possible for parents to choose the embryos that carry a genetic abnormality. Francis Murphy, chairman of the BDA, said: "If choice of embryos for implantation is to be given to citizens in general, and if hearing and other people are allowed to choose embryos that will be `like them', sharing the same characteristics, language and culture, then we believe that deaf people should have the same right." Murphy added that the BDA believes it is very unlikely that it would become common for deaf parents to deliberately create deaf children.

To create a "designer baby" using preimplantation genetic diagnosis, couples need to go through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) even if they could conceive naturally. The embryos created are then genetically screened and normally only the healthy ones are implanted in the mother's womb. This weekend the RNID played down Ballard's comments by pointing out that the charity does not advocate deliberately creating deaf babies. A spokesman said: "While the RNID believes in the individual's right to choose, we would not actively encourage the selection of deaf embryos over hearing ones for implantation when both are available."

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More on the Canadian attack on Mark Steyn

Conservative Canadian pundit Mark Steyn has made a name for himself in recent years as a Cassandra about the supposed threat posed by Islam to the liberal democracies of the West. Making the case most clearly in his witty, if doom-mongering, book America Alone, Steyn argues that Europeans are slipping into irrelevance courtesy of their doddering welfare states and their anemic birthrates -- that Belgium, France and Holland are poised to join the Muslim world courtesy of fast-breeding immigrants who retain a closer kinship to the cultures of the countries they left than to the values of their new homes. In response, Steyn has drawn charges of sloppy argument and even overt racism.

But, until now, the broadsides fired at the controversial writer have been rhetorical in nature -- they haven't actually carried legal consequences. That's changed now that Canadian authorities are investigating Steyn for supposed "hate speech" -- a forbidden form of expression in the frozen North -- over an excerpt from his book published in Macleans magazine.

Yep, that's right -- a writer may be penalized by the government for penning officially disfavored ideas. In Canada.

Many Americans have the idea that Canada is a lot like the U.S., but a tad more nanny-statish. In a lot of ways that's true, but it understates some important differences. In particular, Canadians are much more vulnerable than Americans to the whims of government officials when it comes to protections for individual rights. As eroded as the U.S. Bill of Rights may be, it starts from the premise that individual rights precede government, and that government may not legitimately violate or change those rights. Practical application is another matter, but the original premise still has some force.

By contrast, Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms is written as a model of slippery legalese, and seems rooted in the idea that the rights and freedoms it protects are gifts from the government. Notoriously, it includes a clause that allows federal or provincial legislators to ignore the charter by simply stating their intent to do so.

33. (1) Parliament or the legislature of a province may expressly declare in an Act of Parliament or of the legislature, as the case may be, that the Act or a provision thereof shall operate notwithstanding a provision included in section 2 or sections 7 to 15 of this Charter.

In usual practice, this difference may mean little. Canadians sometimes exercise a little more liberty than Americans on issues like marijuana use, for instance. But the idea that liberty is something that's parceled out by politicians tends to result in predictable results when those politicians come under pressure by people upset by somebody else's exercise of their rights. Specifically