Today's acquittal of former DJ Dave lee Travis over charges of sexual assault and molestation of girls and women dating back to the !960s, "Coronation Street" star Bill Roach's acquittal on similar charges last week and Dylan Farrow's public accusation of former stepdad Woody Allen of abusing her sexually as a child all raise what New Statesman contributing editor Laurie Penny called in her column, the disparity in law between "he said" and "she said"( full disclosure: I follow Ms Penny on Twitter).
For the sake of argument it is worth conceding that girls and women DO make false charges of rape against men- but the number is vanishingly small-police statistics suggest that no more than 7% of said allegations are false- rape remains more unreported than falsely alleged.
So why the disparity- next to murder, the victim is often the only witness to the crime. Ms Penny suggests that the very word "testimony" comes from the ancient practice in Roman courts where male witnesses would clutch their scrotums in order to emphasize the veracity of their words under worth(presumably if they lied under oath they would lose their balls by castration) and of course as women have no testicles to clutch in order to prove their truthfulness, they are de facto untrustworthy witnesses.
Speaking as an uncle of two(grown up ) nieces, I am uncomfortable with the implication that the female sex is de facto given to mendacity. Is sexist sterotypes more socially acceptable than racist ones-? ie implying or asserting that women lie like rugs as some commentators(usually but not always male) are prone to do-when they would never claim seriously that blacks might not be very bright but hey,"they sho' got rhythym" or that Jews have some "magic knack" for getting rich, is disturbing to me.
Did anybody read the Times report( www.thetimes.co.uk, February 10, 2014) that President Barack Obama is mulling over whether or not to kill by drone an unnamed American Al Qaeda leader living in Pakistan's FATA( Federally Administrated Tribal Areas)?
As I observed to my friend Julia Millard after the conviction of "Jihad Jane" Colleen La Rose earlyier this year, not all Americans stand with America, but it is quite true that even in the extremity of wartime, the US government has been reluctant to charge its citizens with treason( and even more reluctant to enforce the ultimate penalty of execution- the Rosenbergs were executed in June 1953 for conspiracy to spy). According to unnamed Administration sources, the American AQ leader has been expressly instrumental in the planning of attacks on his fellow US citizens and if that is not "treason" then the word has no meaning( it is worth noting that William "Lord Haw-Haw" Joyce was hanged in 1946 for doing nothing other than broadcasting over Berlin Radio).
During the NI "Troubles" of course, the Crown mulled over the possibility of declaring terrorism (presumably esp Irish Republican rather than Ulster loyalist) a form of treason but wisely ditched the idea after the prospect of non-jury Diplock Courts imposing the death sentence and the strong likelihood of negative reaction from not just Northern Nationalists but in the Republic and ultimately in the United States amongst Irish-American opinion.
Treason of course in wartime is punishable by death and arguments by AQ that a given Muslim's loyalty lies to the ummah(world community of Muslim believers) and not his/her country of birth (as AQ argues) is hogwash!
For those unaware of the phrase "Potemkin House"- it alludes to the attempts by Catherine the Great's minister Count Potemkin to create a facade of prosperity in order to fool his Imperial mistress.
Whilst I agree, that for all its sins, Putin's Russia is NEITHER the Soviet Union of Stalin and his successors or the Third Reich, its treatment of LGBT people and generally thuggish attitude towards dissent(pace Pussy Riot) is sufficiently illiberal enough to arouse critical commentary abroad.
Some may argue that media criticism overseas make the situation worse, but given that a boycott of the Winter Olympics currently under way in Sochi has been rejected(although Barack Obama, David Cameron and Angela Merkel have given the opening ceremony a miss and rightly so), the best course of events is to cheer the athletes(irrespective of nationality such as Russian figure skater Julia Lipnitskaya and her American counterpart and namesake Julia Mancuso), but to NEVER forget the realities of the wider society- in sort to reject as ludicrous the hackneyed phrase "sport should be separate from politics"( the favourite especially of tyrannical regimes in the 20th century).
I saw a small squib in today's "Daily Mail"( www.dailymail.co.uk, February 10, 2014) to the effect that actor George Clooney , during a press conference to promote his latest movie "Monuments Men"( in which he, Matt Damon, Bill Murray and John Goodman play Allied soldiers who plot a heist of art and other antiques from the Germans during WWII), reportedly answered a Greek journalist's question as to whether the UK should return the Elgin Marbles to Greece by saying "Yes!"
As much as I like George Clooney (nephew of singer Rosemary Clooney by the way) although I am not a particular fan, I really must ask what conceivable business it is of Mr Clooney's( as an American) as to who owns the Marbles.
The trouble with intellectuals, as Paul Johnson noted in his 1988 book of the same name, is that outside of their chosen field(whether science or acting), and especially when it comes to the world of internationa relations, they are often quite literally babes in arms, ultra conformist to the point of being sheeplike- case in point Paul Robeson and other"useful idiots" who "pimped for Stalin" during the Cold War(when the Soviet Union was a ruthless and avowed enemy of the West)
Case in point actor Sean Penn's jeremiad over "British colonialism" in the Falklands, fellow thespian Richard Gere's intervention in the Gaza elections.
Several British newspaper columnists noted sarcastically that if Mr Penn agreed to cede his Malibu beachhouse along with the rest of the States of California , Texas, and New Mexico( whilst the US acquired Louisiana and Alaska from Napoleon's France and Czarist Russia in the 19th century in a legal sale, it is at least debatable that it seizedTexas and New Mexico in what would be termed nowadays a war of aggression), he might be in a stronger moral position to lecture other societies about returning illegally held property.
Anyway, it is noticeable that only Britain is subjected to hectoring shrill demands over alleged "colonialism"- nobody demands that say, Vladimir Putin return not just "trophy art" seized by the Red Army at the conclusion and immediate aftermath of WWII, but the Kuriles Islands( annexed by Stalin also in August 1945).
I have just finished reading the graphic novel based on the late 1990s story arc "Maximum Security" in which the whole planet Earth is turned into an intergalactic prison( by way of retaliation for Earth- read American -based superheroes for their frequent meddling in other intergalactic polities affairs) There are some parts that seem not to make sense(even allowing for the fact that this the medium of comic book based fantasy). Firstly, John Walker, the USAgent is told by the Committee On Superhuman Activities that his authority extends practically all over Earth- later he claims he has the right to draft not just the Avengers, the FF, X-Men or any other US based superhero group but all of Earth's superhuman champions-irrespective of their nationality or whether or not their country is on friendly terms with the US-into a given course of action( this may be valid in the case of NATO member states such as Canada or the UK or countries more or less regarded as American allies such as Israel or Japan but in the case of groups like the Winter Guard which are not or do not regard themselves as being in anyway answerable to any government other than of the Russian Federation, isn't this dubious in legal terms-although it may be argued that the very extremity of the situation meant that considerations of sovereignty would have to be waived for the duration)?
In reality, law enforcement officers(which since the passing of the SHRA) most superhero groups based in the US are arguably deputized, travelling to another jurisdiction(be it another US state or another country such as the ongoing investigation by UK and Portuguese detectives into the disappearance of Madeleine "Maddy" McCann) have to be careful not to be seen as coming across as overly overbearing- simply arrogantly ordering around the host force simply does NOT work!
A week after actress Scarlett Johansson(last seen as Natasha Romanova aka the Black Widow in "Avengers Assemble") publicly severed her ties to Oxfam after being criticized for her work with Israeli soft drink firm Soda Stream, several US legislators are drawing up proposals to penalize academic institutions that favour a boycott of Israel- academic, cultural or otherwise.
Predictably enough, Melanie Phillips(Jewish Chronicle, February 7, 2014) asks why "poor Israel" is being picked on with boycotts whilst say Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia seemingly get a free pass?- my reply is simple: NEITHER Syria, Iran or Saudi Arabia claims to be a Western style democracy as does Israel.
More to the point, the US's stance on boycotts, trade embargoes and sanctions is demonstratably self serving if not frankly hypocritical: America has instigated boycotts against the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, against Iran, Iraq and North Korea( when then US Secretary Of State Madeleine Albright was asked whether the sanctions against Iraq were worth it even though it had reportedly led to the deaths of a million Iraqi children, she reportedly replied during a TV interview- "We think the cost is worth it".) and STILL maintains the embargo against Cuba, long after the end of the Cold War.
True, neither of the above are Western style democracies as Israel claims to be, but inveighing against the boycott of one country whilst pressing over countries( arguably infringing their sovereign rights to trade with which country they see fit- given that the US during the Bush Administration claimed that the International Criminal Court "infringed on American sovereignty"-although how this happened was NEVER made clear) does NOT strike me as a very logical position to take- a case of Uncle Sam speaking with forked tongue as the old Westerns put it.
An old Spanish proverb runs: "There is no pot so ugly that it can't find itself a lid!"- no regime so morally abhorrant that it does't have its admirers (what Lenin aptly if crudely termed "useful idiots).
Although this phenomenon is often(rightly) associated with those leftists who (to quote the late Bernard Levin) "pimped for Stalin"( as the late Paul Robeson, Aldous Huxley, H.G.Wells and the recently deceased Pete Seeger did) or for the equally oppressive regimes of Mao, Castro and Ho Chi Minh in China, Cuba and Vietnam, it is important to note that right wing regimes also have their defenders, from the Third Reich to apartheid era South Africa( the late Conservative MP John Stokes was so noted for his defence of the latter that wags dubbed him "the Rt. Hon Member for Pretoria South").
Whilst reading Right Wing Watch, I was surprised to come across an express defence of Putin's anti-t gay legislation from the World Congress On the Family( I suspect the real reason is less love for Putin and more hatred of gays- whether in Russia or America, just as some "trendy"-and ostensibly secular if not atheistical "lefties" have begun to make common cause with Islamists- based I suspect on a mutual detestation of not simply Israel but the United State and "bourgeois/infidel "democracy).
True, Putin's Russia is no more the Soviet Union of Stalin and his successors than it is Nazi Germany, but its policies on LGBT people are sufficiently illiberal to arouse well deserved criticism. In the post Cold War era, many of the excuses for ignoring tyrannical regimes have long ceased to be valid.
Just seems to valid what Clint Eastwood once observed-"If you go far enough to the Right, then you get the same idiots coming at you from the Left!"(or is it vice versa?)
Readers of the British daily The Guardian (Fenruary 6, 2014) may have noted an editorial and front page story about FGM( female genital mutilation) along with other British newspapers.
The paper(in common with others) unambiguously condemns the practice( aka Pharonic infibulation) concluding that it has no defence either in Christianity or Islam,altough it is practised by both faith's adherents
Given that this practise has its defence amongst certain African intellectuals and Western anthopologists( who regard criticism of it in the West as being "racist" or even "Islamophobic"-although significantly it is NOT practised in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam), let us examine the rationale for FGM.
A-FGM is a "cultural" practise and therefore it should be allowed to continue even in the West. R- true, but this "jam jar" concept of culture is specious, - healthy cultures grow and change( in my own lifetime alone never mind my mother's )homosexuality was criminalized, murder was punishable by death on the gallows and in the past, witches were burned alive at the stake, it was legal to buy ,sell and own slaves, husbands could legally beat their wives( as long as the stick was no thicker than a man's thumb- hence the phrase"rule of thumb"), kids were sent down mines and up chimneys- and who would seriously defend such practises nowadays based on "culture"???
B. Criticism of FGM by Western( and indeed some African) commentators is "racist"- Europeans just don't UNDERSTAND the African mindset. I believe the reverse to be true- implying that Africans are so irredeemably backward that they engage in practises even though they have been criticised for so doing.
Who cares about the concept of universal human rights?- just leave us alone to brutalize one another, slaughter each other and generally "thin the herd"( this is roughly the argument made against the indictments of several African leaders, Omar al-Bashir of the Sudan, Uganda's Joseph Kony of the Lord's Resistance Army, Kenya's President and Vice President) on war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court).
In conclusion- NONE of the pro-FGM arguments put forward by its proponents hold water. Other societies have abolished practises now considered inhumane in the light of changing mores- suttee in India and foot binding in China- and not even the most militant Indian or Chinese nationalist has campaigned for its reinstatement!
According to The Washington Post( Feb 5, 2014), it now seems that the Commonwealth of Virginia, perturbed after the supply of drugs used in lethal injections runs out(due to US and European manufacturers refusing to supply them-and why not?- drugs used to prolong life and ease suffering should NOT be used to end life!) is set to reinstate "Old Sparky"- ie the electric chair- as its favoured mode of capital punishment.
Talk about one step forward and two steps backwards- electrocution was istelf phased out in favour of more"humane" methods of execution such as lethal injections- other states are considering methods such as firing squads or maybe even the gallows(pace Delaware).
Sounds as if the "death belt"of jurisdictions(including US federal government and US military) are growing yet more desperate?
For those unaware of the controversy surrounding French "comedian" Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala, the "quenelle" is a gesture reminiscent of the infamous "Heil Hitler" salute that he has been making in public-particularly when passing a synagogue or anyother place associated with Jews in France.
His supporters argue that as he's a black Muslim from the "banlieus"(ghettos where many natives of former French colonies(esp North Africa like Tunisia, Algeria) live, we should give him a free pass on his anti-Semitism.
My reply is, to pardon my French: this argument is BALONEY. Why should a Muslim(black or otherwise) get a free pass for airing bigotry that we would rightly pounce on a white French Catholic(such as Jean Marie Le Pen or his daughter Marine) for making.
This is NOT an issue about Israel per se but only a reminder that what August Bebel aptly termed the "socialism of fools"(anti-Semitism) will ALWAYs be the blindest of blind alleys!
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