Strategy: Stop Art

Just when you think Douglas Degeneration Parsnips (having collaborated with the Department of Home Affairs to prevent free speech in communal spaces) cannot do more to screw up the quality of Manx life, this (see

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/market-hall-to-become-base-for-arts-degrees-1-6282129 ) is announced.

Oh joy! A perfectly respectable refuge for low rent bohemians (not to mention a treasure chest of arcane knowledge you cannot find anywhere else locally) is being swept away, just so arty upper middle class dullards who are too arrogant to work in the real world (and too thick to know they have nothing to contribute to the arts) have yet another place to play.

How dumb. How utterly, utterly depressing!

If you cannot be bothered to root through the whole PR sick-bag, read this and try not to puke...

“Speaking on behalf of Douglas Corporation, Chris Pycroft said: ‘It is a really exciting prospect to work with the college in a partnership between the council and the college to breathe new life back into the Market Hall and make it a place really for the whole community, to start to be creative and think creatively.’

He added: ‘The project should allow the market operation to continue, not in the same format as it is at the moment, but at weekends and holiday times, but with additional uses happening in the building as well.’”

Oh............. piss off and get a proper job, Pie-Chart, I'm sick of us taxpayers subsidising anti-democratic clowns like you.

Has anyone actually talked to any of the island's art veterans? Has nobody noticed that internationally known Manx born sculptors, conceptual artists and painters cannot actually get employed to teach arts locally?

Has nobody asked why Manx fine arts students almost never go on to reputable British courses? Could that be because fine arts was phased out of local college courses two decades back in favour of 'practical' arts (graphic design, fashion...) taught by losers who couldn't get an industry job even when there was an industry, when just three decades back a lowly foundation diploma from the Manx FE college was almost a passport to Goldsmiths, St. Martins or even the RCA?

Even leaving aside 'career' arty types, I can remember in the mid-1980's spending free afternoons from split shift 'day jobs' browsing two incredible book stalls in that market, and amongst the usual airport novels and conspiracy theorists discovering a shelf-load of not only Michael Moorcock and other new sci-fi writers, but rarities ranging from Algernon Blackwood and H.P. Lovecraft through to Henry Treece (a mid-twentieth century New Apocalyptic chum of Dylan Thomas and Kenneth Rexroth, known to school-kids of my age for his Celtic twilight stuff, but also the author of adult versions through which Moorcock and others discovered something more imaginative could be written even in Cold War conformist Britain).

Certainly, the little community of truly knowledgeable Manx art and book-sellers which existed until around 2000 has been replaced by anal 'collectors' who know the investment value of everything and the intellectual value of nothing, but that is not the point.

I was back there, by chance, last weekend, and it was the same as ever. A bunch of wheelchair users having an animated meeting in one corner, an unpretentious caff and small shops, the book stalls.....

The source material is still there to be discovered by any chance explorer willing to risk 50p, but we are now to lose, forever, the only place on the island comparable to, say Liverpool Whitechapel in 1979 with Bill Drummond and Teardrop Explodes chatting to Pete Burns in Brian's Caff, Burnsy on a lunch break from Zoo Records, the legendary punk venue Eric's 50 yards away. And, yes, even the School of Language, Dreams and Pun with the statue of Jung (where the kind of pretentious rich thickos DDP want to attract hung out) got blitzed in the 'regeneration' of the area, and Eric's, having been shut on health and safety grounds, is now a Cavern museum for Japanese tourists while the much bigger and more important 'Mersey scene' of the late 1970's and early 1980's is wiped from 'official' Liverpool history.

But doesn't that just prove the point?

What you actually need in order for creativity to run riot is a low rent space full of odd source material which can become the stuff of new and better dreams, and for rich poseurs and bureaucrats with pebble-dash for brains to butt out.

By the way, returning to the matter of free speech in public places, you may want to take a look at

http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2013/11/feel-free-to-annoy-me--new-campaign-launched-to-protect-free-expression , a defence of the concept in which even the National Secular Society and Christofascist loons like the Christian Institute are united.

Because as the NSS point out:

“The proposed new law is contained in the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill . Clause 1 of the bill introduces "Injunctions to Prevent Nuisance and Annoyance" (IPNAs), which seek to suppress anything deemed to be potentially "annoying", however vague the justification. IPNAs will replace Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), which had been introduced under the Labour government.

Whilst in order for an ASBO to be issued, a court has to be satisfied that someone had at least caused or threatened to cause "harassment, alarm or distress" to someone else and that the order was "necessary" to protect the victim, the proposed new law would allow a court to impose sweeping curbs on people's liberty if it thinks they are "capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to any person", and so long as it is "just and convenient" to do so.”

Anything their colonial cousins in Westminster think a wizard wheeze, our chumps in the Wedding Cake and their (Westminster trained) 'expert advisors' are bound to swallow whole, without even a tentative “Are you sure about this?”, never mind “Has anyone actually thought this twaddle through?”

I would be willing to bet that at some point in the next year the DHA (or perhaps even their house-trained monkey, Juan Watterson) announces plans for IPNAs . So follow the UK campaign now, so that when (or perhaps if) we get a public consultation over here you can make informed comment.

P.S. The title of this rant is a pun on Reg Quayle's groundbreaking Strategy:Get Art campaign in the early 1980's, which put on (in empty shops during the worst recession the island had then seen) the work of truly inspiring Manx art experimentalists like Kevin Atherton. As folk like Reg never get credit for keeping this septic isle out of the Dark Ages during the knock-on effects of Thatcherism, and nobody in the current Manx government arts administration will even have heard of the project I thought I should mention it.

Not so free speech - and what about the hidden 'extras'?

Last week I was at a meeting where the proposition for a Speakers’ Corner in Douglas came up (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/should-douglas-get-a-speakers-corner-1-6105204 ). Seems one of the attendees had been approached about joining the censorship (sorry.. ’coordinating) committee, and some of the others had previous experience of Douglas’s particular take on ‘public/private partnerships’ for screwing up the lives of ordinary citizens, so the discussion was….well, full and frank!

By the way, to get an idea of the real proposal, and who is behind it, it might be best to ignore the puff piece from Douglas Degeneracy Parsnips which our ‘local’ press ran in whole and see the earlier http://www.speakerscornertrust.org/8251/a-speakers-corner-for-the-isle-of-man/ , where the real movers and shakers announced it to their allies.

The project interests me, though hardly for any of the pseudo-reasons this pseudo-public body would like. Obviously, as an outspoken advocate for free speech, the possibility of at least one island venue where that is finally possible would be nice. Equally obviously, as none of the partners have any interest in freedom of expression or movement (except how to stop it) I cannot imagine them creating one.

Here’s an interesting experiment for anyone who wonders why…

Go to any one of our crapital city’s shopping centres – all built at great public expense and inconvenience, including the compulsory purchase or forcible closure by other means of the small retail premises which used to be there - and take a book with you. Sit down on one of the benches and read it. Also keep an eye on the second hand of your wristwatch to time what happens next.

As most of the retail units are empty, and there are rarely any shoppers, it will surprise you, and enlighten you considerably as to the real nature of a society in which public bodies (nominally controlled by taxpayers and voters) pass all real power to corporate bodies who answer to nobody (least of all their clients/customers or shareholders).

Which leaves me wondering what the real game is, because the other thing to consider is that optimum control of punters passing through a retail area in order to ensure maximum spending in minimal time and with minimal expenditure is crucial to it. So why would a blatantly commercial enterprise disrupt that with an activity which clogs up the pavement, generates no direct income, and distracts potential punters who might be throwing away their earnings on expensive tat instead?

Perhaps the answer is that we are about to be distracted into giving away any real rights of free speech and assembly.

In the ‘old’ Strand Street it was possible to stop and shoot the breeze with folk you met, even hand out leaflets for good causes or ask the public to sign petitions. Nobody worried, and the police rarely moved you on, just as long as you didn’t physically inhibit passers-by doing serious shopping. Similarly, the Sally Ann and other musicians, for example, played Xmas carols, and again, as long as they didn’t huddle in shop doorways and block the way in or out neither shopkeepers nor the public complained.

About ten years ago that started changing, to the extent that now only pointless and ineffective charities or campaign groups can mount ‘actions’ and buskers have to audition in front of some clueless Douglas Council committee, leaving only the worst free to perform. There is no legal precedent for this, it just happened because civil servants and local politicians were too dumb or lazy to question it when the business sector ‘suggested’ that it might be more ‘efficient’.

So, once DDP & Co have assigned us grateful peasants one corner to spout (pre-approved and carefully monitored) nonsense, the thing to watch is whether they then use bodies like police liaison committees to ensure anyone expressing an opinion – perfectly legally – anywhere else in a public area gets moved on.

Who says that crime doesn’t pay? In Douglas, you might be forgiven for thinking it gets a public sector salary and pension.

Freethinking not allowed

I hear reports that, despite my spelling things out in such a simple manner that even an unelected political layabout ought to be able to follow, local members of the Deluded Herd insist on trying to represent this blog as the work and opinions of the Isle of Man Freethinkers. This on the slight premise that my profile until now described me as a libertarian and freethinker.
I am probably wasting my time trying to accomodate people who appear to be braindead and cannot even spell honesty, never mind define it or practice it. But for the sake of all local humanists, atheists and agnostics with infinitely more patience than me, who attempt to press their arguments for a sane and rational island in an unfailingly polite manner which should offend no reasonable person, let us try once again.
(sighs, grits teeth, counts to ten.......)
From this point onwards I shall follow the excellent example of Chris Hitchens and describe my position on religion (and indeed all forms of blind, unquestioning belief) as 'contrarian'.
I argue about these things for the hell (and very heaven) of it. I do not seek or claim to represent anyone else.
As I have always said, and repeat once more, I deliberately set out to wind up fundamentalists of all stripes (atheists included) until they explode. And I do this merely because it amuses me, and those as bored with any type of kneejerking conformism as me.
I have no agenda, seek no position or reward, and don't even care if I am widely read. If what I write gives some comfort to anyone else who has to put up with similar nonsense in any other place where just waking up in the morning and daring to think is regarded as a heinous crime, cool.
Is this clear enough?
Can we move on?

Stand up for an Egyptian free speech blogger

There’s a petition to help Karim Amer at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/158/709/068 .
For those who haven’t followed the case, Karim, a young Egyptian blogger, was charged with publishing material ‘critical of Islam’ and Egypt's President Hosni Mubarek. He was imprisoned for four years, and claims that, while imprisoned, he has been beaten at least twice under the supervision of a prison officer.
As the folk behind the petition point out, one of the luxuries of the internet is that it's a forum of expression available to anyone with some cheapish, basic technology to hand. And in this forum, anyone should be able to contribute to a discussion and speak their mind. Karim just exercised what is universally agreed is a right to peaceful freedom of expression - a right all decent governments have committed themselves by various international agreements to upholding.
If the advantages of the internet are to be used to their fullest, we need to speak up for folk like Karim, and stop powerful interest groups from extending their ‘right’ to be beyond jokes, honest criticism and other means by which ordinary folk can cut such loons down to size.

Of bigotry and fairy tales on the rates

Apparently the street preacher arrested for telling a gay copper that homosexuality is a sin is now suing both the officer and his chief constable for “unlawful arrest, false imprisonment and unlawful interference with his right to freedom of expression and freedom of religion.”
To briefly summarise for those who didn’t read of the case (possibly they don’t regard the Daily Mail as a newspaper either), Dale Mcalpine was ‘witnessing’ in a Cumbrian street, and, to be fair, whatever else he railed about in his sermon it wasn’t homosexuality.
That came up when a couple of Police Community Support Officers tried to move him on. One happened to mention he was gay (perhaps as an example of the kind of folk who might take offence) and Mcalpine seems to have told him that was a sin. At which point he got his collar felt.
But the funniest thing about the original case is that the charge against Mcalpine wasn’t dropped because of outpourings of bile from Mail readers, or splenetic columnists like Malignant Phillips, or even homophobic professional godbotherers (though they, of course, still pretend they were influential). They were dropped when Peter Tatchell said that, on principle, if Mcalpine went to court he’d turn up and be a witness for the defence. Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, also weighed in, tongue-in-cheek, saying: "This was a ridiculously over-the-top reaction to someone exercising their right to freedom of speech. Mr Mcalpine has as much right to criticise homosexuals as I should have to call him a crank."
It won’t surprise anybody that the hypocrites underwriting this under the pretence of defending freedom of speech (see http://www.christian.org.uk/news/street-preacher-suing-police-over-controversial-arrest/ ) are the same godbothering, over-sensitive whingebags who get art exhibitions closed for having piccies that question their muppetry, or mount campaigns to stop Anne Summers shops nationwide wishing us a horny Christmas.
It wouldn’t, either, surprise Manx people who’ve noticed how many superstitiously challenged bigots hang out at the Department of Home Affairs that when some of our nastiest Christians then started skulking around the local Anne Summers shop, giving staff and customers ugly looks while muttering under their breath, the police did not act. Funny that, because if all else fails a section of the Mental Health Act allows a police officer to remove lunatics to a temporary place of safety if they judge either the lunatic or the public are in danger.
But there’s a more positive way to look at this too. Once upon a time this Cumbrian imbecile would have had no problem rounding up enough loons to fill a small building, and get them to pay enough for the dubious privilege of hearing his twaddle to earn a living. Now he has to practice in the street, and like others of his ‘profession’ increasingly relies on public funds to get by.
Is this court challenge, in effect, anything but another Christian trying to con a public payout because he’s offering a product no-one needs or wants? A bit like, say, cartwrights after the motor car was invented.
Which might also explain why local Anglicans are trying to reinvent their biggest, least useful or popular barns as ‘heritage sites’ and ‘community facilities’ in order to keep them open – if, as ever, empty – with us mugs paying for buildings we wouldn’t be seen dead in (or married in either, in the case of straight heathens), and where our kids will never learn anything except hate or hypocrisy.

Imagine

If you follow other atheist or secularist websites you may have picked up the story of Harry Taylor, who’s facing seven years in jail.
For those who haven’t, Harry decided to leave a few cartoons mocking religious figures in the prayer room at Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport. You can get a taste of what happened next at http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2010/03/03/atheist-accused-of-leaving-insulting-religious-images-in-liverpool-s-john-lennon-airport-prayer-room-100252-25948815/.
Unbelievable!
Now the first funny thing is that this place actually warrants a chaplain. The second is that at an airport named after a guy who had a few run-ins with fundies himself (e.g. that “Beatles are bigger than Jesus” row in the 1960’s), which features lines from Lennon songs in the décor (including “Imagine no religion” in large letters in the reception lounge), located in a city famed for black humour…..this cleric has no sense of humour, and no common sense.
Neither, it appears, do the management or the police.
The average chaplain in such a Micky Mouse church might have quietly binned the cartoons. A more enlightened and open one might even have left some in place.
This one chose to be offended, chose to involve several levels of airport management and police, and as far as I can see to go absolutely out of her way to make sure that (a)the world and its dog knew how upset she was because someone had the temerity to mock her delusions and that (b) Harry ended up in a court.
…and someone gives this muppet a salary? How sad is that?
Only one answer to such lunacy.
More and funnier lunacy.
I’m calling for John Lennon Airport to be renamed Ayatollah Khomeini Airport if it can’t see a joke, and at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=353720796197#!/group.php?gid=353720796197&ref=nf you will find the first Facebook site I’ve ever tried to set up, in order that the world can join in.

Godbotherers 1, Decency 1 at the UN

ARTICLE 19, the international free speech body, gives a cautious welcome to the Resolution on the Right to Freedom of Expression adopted by consensus today at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). But they also warn that: “Unfortunately, the resolution does contain two viruses. It will be incumbent upon member states of the HRC and civil society to ensure that these viruses are not allowed to flourish, multiply and gangrene the text and commitments. Instead, they shall be contained, by and through international human rights standards and principles, so that the resolution can best function and offer the maximum protection to freedom of expression.”
So, you ask, what’s the problem.
Well, the final draft version proposed by Egypt & the USA had a few, actually.
For a start, it entirely deleted a paragraph which stated that the Human Rights Council: “Encourages consultations among media professionals .... with the assistance of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, with a view to exchanging views on this subject and sharing best practices, taking into account the independence of the media and international human rights law”.
But in particular, Article 19 was particularly concerned about a passage which stated that the Human Rights Council: “expresses its concern that ... negative racial and religious stereotyping continue to rise around the world”.
The previous resolution referred to “negative stereotyping of religions and racial groups around the world”, so while the word “religions” was omitted the phrase “negative racial and religious stereotyping” was no better.
As Article 19 said yesterday, “stereotyping” was too ambiguous and is easily interpreted to encompass religions, religious ideas and religious symbols, none of which are not protected by international law. Their view was that the words “negative racial and religious stereotyping” should be replaced with “negative stereotyping of individuals and groups on the basis of their religion or race”, which at least conforms with international human rights law. They also regretted that their recommendation to strengthen the protection of freedom of expression were not incorporated in the final text.
As it happened, the final agreed text still referred to “religious stereotyping”, which Article 19 today deemed: “a vague and difficult concept which suggests that religions, religious ideas and religious symbols (rather than believers) may be protected by international human rights law.”
The new Resolution also still makes specific reference to another resolution against which human rights advocates around the world have advocated.
HRC Resolution 7/36, said Article 19: “unnecessarily diluted the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression.”
Secularists might remember that the UN Special Raporteur has been the last line of defence a few times before when the uglier, more powerful theocracies have tried to sway the UN.
Nevertheless, Dr Agnes Callamard, ARTICLE 19 Executive Director, concluded that: “The adoption of the Resolution by consensus is a breakthrough. Especially so given the tensions and conflicts that have accompanied recent discussions on freedom of expression within the Human Rights Council and its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights.”
So, swings and roundabouts, but if the theofascists had got things all their own way it could have been much worse.

Muzzie, muzzie, muzzie!! Nobody died, move on

An ironic little censorship story has come my way.
What’s ironic is that the group involved, GALHA (Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association), was born from a famous free speech battle – the Gay News trial.
I’m actually a little uncomfortable going into this, because I value and support GALHA, but you have to be consistent in defending free speech. We can’t just criticise the fundie groups for their censorship and ignore the topic when it crops up amongst those we call friends.
Briefly, GALHA has an online discussion group, and one poster used the word “Muzzies” in a posting, (coincidentally not about Islam) much as you might use terms like “godbotherer” or “fundie” (or for that matter ‘Toffees”, “Baggies”, “Blades”, etc. , etc. in a footie discussion group, I suppose).
The post was disallowed, and it was at this point that members realised someone at GALHA must be censoring e-mails. As it turned out, this had been going on for months without members realising or agreeing to the practice.
Things got worse as discussion on the list continued, because everyone wanted to know what the ‘banned’ word was, but as it was banned the original poster couldn’t enlighten them, and the original censor didn’t seem to want to tell them. Eventually, for the purposes of explanation, the original poster was allowed a single “Muzzie”, though his ‘original’ remained censored.
(At this point I’m reminded of Mike Harding talking about how the BBC once allowed him two tits and a bum but no buggery during a TV routine)
Anyway, still following? No laughing at the back, either, because now things get more serious.
The ‘uncensored’ post happened only after a GALHA committee member had suggested that “Muzzie” is akin to “Paki” or “Nigger”, thus intimating the intent of the poster was racist. As the poster is another stalwart of the gay humanist world, who I've come to know well, I don't believe that for a second.
But all this fuss about a word, when surely it’s when, where and how it was used that matters. Excuse me saying so, but isn’t being scared of the power of a word a little superstitious? Manx people know where I’m heading here – but for the benefit of off-island readers, the Manx have a phobia of the word ‘rat’, as if the mere sound could conjure up a plague of them. A fellow Freethinker once reduced a Thought For The Day producer to tears with a ‘talk’ consisting of repeating the word “rat” for one minute just to prove it wouldn’t. Needless to say, it wasn’t broadcast!
And being scared of letting the world know there’s a disagreement is even worse. We’re talking about groups of thinking, feeling people here, not the dress alike, knee-jerk cults of biscuit munching, rug-butting, tax-dodging zombie worshippers we’re not supposed to snigger at.
But seriously though, as this is something I’m experiencing more and more myself, it worries me when people tell you to shut up because, somehow, arguing in public lets down the side and suggests to the ‘opposition’ that you have no clear ‘party line’. It worries me when humanist groups start acting like churches, where somehow ‘divine wisdom’ (profane wisdom?) filters down through the ether from the top and is not to be questioned. A lot like New Labour and modern politics then.
Oh, and by the way, I’m sick of being told that whatever Richard Dawkins pronounces is what I think too. If he wants to know what you or I think, he can ask us instead of palming easy money with pointless TV 'interviews' of faith leaders which are edited to hell and back to avoid either party losing face.
Atheist role models? Fuck 'em all. Who needs them if you can think for yourself?
No, argument is good. Argument is debate, argument says you’re part of a group that thinks and cares, that wants to know what you think (not tell you what to think) so that your contribution makes the whole richer and stronger.
I’m not saying humanism should descend to the Judean Peoples Front level of Manx evangelicals, where every third bampot splits and forms a new cult, inevitably demanding the same tax exemptions and access to government as every other two village idiots and a mangy dog howling at the moon in an empty building.
I would argue the opposite in fact. It is at the times we noisily, passionately argue in public about stuff that others notice and join in. It is at the times we don’t speak for fear of offending that the same religionists and their hopelessly hierarchical churches who claim offence take our silence as ‘evidence’ that we are few and irrelevant.
Oh sod it.
MUZZIE, MUZZIE, MUZZIE, MUZZIE, MUZZIE, MUZZIE, MUZZIE, MUZZLIE, MUZZIE, MUZZIE!!!!!!!
There, nobody died, nobody got bombed, nobody called a lawyer or a police officer.
So move on.

Freedom of speech - it's not just for 'proper' writers

There’s a story over on Mediawatchwatch that, when you think about it, suggests a slapdash, partial approach to freedom of speech amongst UK liberals.
In brief, Andy Thackwray, a prisoner in Hull, writes a column called ‘Angry Andy’ for Inside Time, a newspaper by and for prisoners. In his latest he hypothesises that swine flu was the result of a failed plot by Osama Bin Laden to “eradicate every pig in Christendom”. The article also has a cartoon of a bearded, sneezing and turbanned pig.
If you want, you can find the whole thing at http://jailhouselawyersblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/muslim-prisoners-are-revolting.html, a blog run by an ex-prisoner who flagged the whole thing up to the world.
OK, not going to challenge Jonathan Swift for the heavyweight satirist world championship, but a bit of light relief if you’re banged up on a cold, dark night.
Except that next John Roberts, Operations Director and Company Secretary at Inside Time, is contacted by ‘Diversity at Wormwood Scrubs’ (whatever that is) who think the article and cartoon “might be offensive to Muslims”. So, all 50,000 copies of the magazine get withdrawn and reprinted without Angry Andy’s piece and accompanying cartoon (which I’m not sure was by him anyway). This is costing the charity behind Inside Time £15-20,000.
The Jailhouselawyer also reports that Andy has been charged with a Disciplinary Offence, put in the Segregation Unit, and will be transferred out of HMP Hull. For those not familiar with prison affairs, this is a highly unusual punishment, usually reserved for hardcore political prisoners. Try Googling the name ‘John Bowden’ for an example of both the kind of individual and circumstances under which it has been used recently.
Now at this point, if this was a writer in South America or an Arabic country then PEN, Index on Censorship and others would be going ballistic, probably even Amnesty or Human Rights Watch.
When an Oxbridge inbreed like Martin Amis spouts clueless shite about Muslims in a broadsheet does the print run get stopped? Ditto the admittedly more reasoned writing of Salman Rushdie and his supporters once the Satanic Verses saga kicked off.
Is the quality of Angry Andy’s writing any worse than the rhetoric of Geert Wilders, or the cartoon than the infamous Danish ‘turban bomb’? Or is it that we don’t think there’s a principle at stake if the censored writer is ‘only’ a common English convict?
I would argue that, if anything, assuming that no Muslim prisoner will see the joke and all will riot as one in protest is itself racist and offensive. And I can think of at least two Muslim women stand-up comedians in the UK doing stuff at least as ‘offensive’ about their fellow Muslims, not to mention chavs, evangelical Christians and Guardianistas.
I would argue that treating some working class white guy in a UK jail in a way the police and courts would not dare treat an Oxbridge professor who expresses the same view, but in more flowery language in a literary mag, is bang out of order.
I would argue that the principle of freedom of speech has to be defended robustly in this country or not at all. You don’t pick and choose the nice guys and the eloquent cases. You defend the Rushdies, but also right wing pricks like Geert Wilders and the Danish cartoonists…..and lags like Andy Thackwray, serving time for I know not what and I am not about to ask.
Because it makes no difference, and because if decent folk don’t speak up for the Thackwrays of this world as we would for ‘proper writers’ scum like the BNP will pretend to.

War on the hard of thinking

Folk who know me know how irritated I get at the laziness of ‘liberal opinion’, and in particular the way in which there’s a conspiracy of blandness which stops anyone here asking proper questions about vital things like charities or the voluntary and public sector.
According to this fuzzy logic, all charities and social workers are nice and everything to do with the finance sector is nasty or crooked, so only nasty free market types ask awkward questions. It’s like being tazered by the Mothers Union some days trying to hold incompetent or just outright dangerous ‘charity initiatives’ to account.
The funny thing is, these are comfortable Guardianistas grumbling. I don’t even get this from the evangelicals or conservative clergy whose ideas and actions I am 'naturally' supposed to disagree with most.
In fact, only the other day one vicar, absolutely tongue in cheek, offered to pray for me when I have my op next month. He needs me to get out intact. Who amongst his own flock causes him to question everything he believes on a weekly basis?
So while checking out the sites on the sidebar I’ve been particularly inspired by folk putting minority views who make new arguments when the established one would probably get them a nice safe grant or steady employment.
Take Turkish journalist Ayse Onal, whose work has already got her blacklisted. When writing about honour killings it would be so easy to tap into a mainstream Western sentiment that the men who carry them out are just subhuman, or play on some hardcore feminist sentiment that ‘all men are bastards, so what do you expect?’
She doesn’t. She faces the hard fact that people who enable or commit such killings are also, while not exactly victims, at least socially trapped between a rock and a hard place. In a new book and documentary she talks to them too, and it sounds like stuff we should pay attention to when calling for national or international change to stop the killings. You can find out more about that at http://www.stophonourkillings.com/?name=News&file=article&sid=3603
Then there’s Peter Hitchens, the Hitchens brother who isn’t a secular saint and isn’t beyond putting a view that liberal atheist types find objectionable. Still, I was quite taken a while back with his account of being unable to take part in a university debate because some leftie rentamob or other thought a rightwinger like him shouldn’t be speaking in the first place.
As I recall, the debate was on legalisation of drugs and he was up against Howard Marks, but had recently sounded off about another topic – possibly to do with the right of David Irving to put his obnoxious views if only so that he could be slapped down by someone with at least half a brain. What was noteworthy was that while Marks could have just had a cosy chat with sympathetic studes, plugged his book and pocketed the appearance fee he also refused to go on if he couldn’t have a stand-up row and take the chance of having his views ripped apart by Hitchens.
So in an Index on Censorship piece at http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2009/05/15/peter-hitchens-bring-back-arguments/ Hitchens says that we’ve lost that ‘inch of difference’ between Left and Right that used to be the place where feisty but fruitful arguments took place between folk who hated each other’s views, but valued the chance to put each other straight without getting arrested or punched in the face before they could finish a sentence. As Hitchen says, what also matters is that the views on both sides were each radical, different or unpopular, and a polite 21st century ‘consensus’ means nothing serious gets discussed and there are no intelligent routes out of the grey muddle we seem to live in, even though nobody remembers consenting to it in the first place.
Crikey, me telling folk to go read the ‘wrong’ Hitchens brother for inspiration. If that doesn’t show how bad things are, I don’t know what does.

Mind your own business, make your own choice

I was intrigued to see veteran assisted suicide campaigner Michael Irwin apparently attacking a fellow campaigner, Philip Nitschke, in the Torygruff (see
http://www.secularism.org.uk/go.php?id=109917&url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5299634/Suicide-expert-turns-on-Dr-Death.html).
I have to declare an interest here. Pat Kneen, the Manxman whose death caused the attempted prosecution of Michael Irwin and Pat’s widow, was a good friend. That’s why I was secretary of Pat’s Manx Death with Dignity campaign, and that’s why I know Michael Irwin personally.
In fact, I gladly collaborated with Michael again last year on a campaign to ‘road test’ a model Irish Living Will. In return for Manx people commenting they got a template to take to a Manx advocate and try and get something which will at least offer minimal protection in the absence of a Manx equivalent of the UK’s Mental Capacity Act.
Ironically, one reason I was involved was the Kneens weren’t up on computers or the internet, although the subsequent campaign was greatly aided by being able to receive and pass information off-island quickly, so they needed help there. The other was my straightforward and non-negotiable libertarian belief that anything that consenting adults do behind closed doors which doesn’t harm others is none of the state’s damned business.
It’s also why I’m slightly suspicious of this report, because I know that Michael always felt staff at the Torygruff disliked him enough to try and trip him up or misrepresent his words and actions. That said, I think the article does fairly represent his stance on the issue.
The thing is, in a funny way both the mainstream ‘for’ and ‘against’ opinion is guided by an old school ‘doctor knows best’ attitude. Michael believes doctors alone ought to be able to act on the informed wishes of terminally ill patients who don’t want to continue living. Pro-lifers say they think doctors shouldn’t ‘play God’, though of course condemning someone to more suffering is playing a god who decides they should, and curiously it also doesn’t seem to apply if UK pro-lifers decide to slip funds to or protect US nutters who bomb abortion clinics or shoot doctors. I make that last claim because, in an exchange with the spokesman of a prominent UK anti-abortion group in the local paper a few years back, I challenged his organisation to openly condemn such murderers and their sponsors; he would not or could not do it.
But the point is, they both believe ‘doctors know best’, and even the ‘pro’ lobby (perhaps unwittingly) tends to favour only terminally ill people from an upper middle class professional background as being capable of taking an informed choice. I doubt Michael Irwin thinks, say, a manual worker dying from an industrial respiratory illness should be able to take his own life or be helped to do so by his workmates.
Michael plays the gentlemanly family doctor to put a case for law change protecting other such gentlemanly types. I like him for it, but Philip Nitschke seems, by comparison, a model of antipodean bluntness, and I like that too.
The truth is, any old Cobber with a computer these days can decide to get the pills over the internet and use them. True, as with dodgy Viagra or ‘vitamin pills’, you might not get what you ordered. But is any of this finally anybody else’s business but your own?
So, I am not about to take sides or condemn either for going about things the way their cultural background taught them works – for them.
On the one hand, I hope, like Michael Irwin, for a more compassionate law. On the other hand, as I don’t believe it was ever the state’s business anyway I absolutely defend those, like Philip Nitschke, who help people make their own choices about their own private lives.

Down with that sort of thing!

I’d thought before about mentioning a Facebook campaign to declare September 30th as an annual Blasphemy Day. The date concides with the publishing of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons, and you can find the group at
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=45065875259#/group.php?gid=50200339561 if you’re interested.
Since then we’ve also seen the attempt by Islamic nations to have the UN prevent folk poking fun at their precious prophet. Though an international clampdown on religious jokes led by the kind of freaks who like to stone women to death sounds far more serious, I still wasn’t worried.
Then I read that this month even the Irish government may regress to the middle ages and introduce a crime of blasphemous libel into a new Defamation Bill.
Ironically, one reason seems to be that there’s only been one (unsuccessful) attempt at a blasphemy conviction over there under legislation based on the original English law (which was itself finally abolished last year). That was in 1999, and failed because Ireland’s Supreme Court concluded that it was impossible to say “of what the offence of blasphemy consists”.
An added complication, of course, was that the English legislation to which they had to look for guidance in effect only prevented people waxing cynical about Anglicanism – as Muslims discovered during the Satanic Verses saga.
So now the Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, has proposed a new section for the Defamation Bill, stating:
“A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000”.
Obviously keen not to drop another bollock in court, they’ve also defined blasphemy as material:
“that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion; and he or she intends, by the publication of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.”
But where it gets really startling is when you see that:
“Where a person is convicted of an offence under this section, the court may issue a warrant authorising the Garda Síochána to enter, if necessary using reasonable force, a premises where the member of the force has reasonable grounds for believing there are copies of the blasphemous statements in order to seize them.”
Once my jaw was back off the floor I just creased myself laughing, having had a vision of a bunch of burly gardai storming into Waterstones and seizing the entire James Joyce section.
OK, the opposition is proposing reducing the fine to €1,000 and excluding 'matter of artistic merit', but why can’t politicos just tackle spook fanciers head on about their fear of legitimate criticism?
You can read more about the whole depressing thing at http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/0429/1224245599892.html.
The funniest thing is, there’s a perfectly good mechanism to tackle this in Ireland already, and the Humanist Association of Ireland, the nation’s humanist group, are part of it.
In 2005 the group were the first to make a submission to the ‘Dialogue between Government and Religious, Philosophical and Non-Confessional Groups’ but had to wait until 26th February 2007 for the eventual launch of the project. I gather much of that was because Catholic bishops were playing hard to get.
25 religious bodies are involved in a bilateral project where all meet several government ministers on an open, transparent basis, with government obliged to listen to concerns raised.
HAI in particular have aimed to remove numerous religious assumptions and references in the Irish Constitution and press for changes emphasising ‘a republic which treats people of all religions and none in an equal manner’, which sounds about right to me.
Mind you, their representative, Catherine O’Brien, once described to me and some other Celtic heathens the hissy fits when she walked into the first meeting.
Just what was it about the sight of a middle aged woman that drove 24 Father Ted clones to huddle up in one corner of the table fingering their rosaries and whimpering? Silly sods even tried pulling a few strings to try and get her removed on the grounds a ‘militant atheist’ wasn’t a fit person to sit in such exclusive company.
What worried them? Concern that she looked better in a dress than they do?
Anyways, September 30th. Mark it in the calendar and be sure to take time out to mock voodoo merchants mercilessly, and often.