melanie phillips: this rejection of anti-semitism is actually an endorsement

It's time for another game of "Melanie Phillips Close Reading Tango," as Phillips decides the following from Barack Obama:

Obama said. 'I think that they [Farakh's views] are unacceptable and reprehensible. I did not solicit this support. He expressed pride in an African-American who seems to be bringing the country together. I obviously can't censor him, but it is not support that I sought. And we're not doing anything, I assure you, formally or informally, with Minister Farrakhan.'

is in fact some kind of stealth support for anti-semitic, racist views. For an alternative (and frankly less alternative-universe) take on the same moment in the most recent Democratic debate, see Talking Points Memo.

If you missed the first round, jump back a couple of months to when Phillips declared that the phrase "Let us respect each other, be fair, just and kind to another and live in sincere peace, harmony and mutual goodwill" actually meant "submit or die." No, really.

shorter everyone

A quick summary: yes, some people might be behaving in a way that makes them appear to be hypocrites and/or bullies but, in their defence, they never agreed that they wouldn't.

not helping

Writing on the Cornerstone Group blog to argue for stronger controls over films which depict sex and violence, Julian Brazer MP gives clear and specific instructions on how to find a scene of prolonged violent rape online which he claims "glamorises" rape because the victim is "by any standards good-looking."

It's hard to know where to start with the problems in that. No link for obvious reasons.

bigotry as a "lifestyle choice"

Here we go again:

They are devoted foster parents with an unblemished record of caring for almost 20 vulnerable children.

But Eunice and Owen Johns have been forced to abandon their good work because they refuse to tell children as young as ten that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle.

Ah, yes. The "homosexual lifestyle," available off-the-peg or tailored to measure. As before, the idea that some people might be irretrievably, happily gay - and not through "lifestyle choice" - doesn't feature.

The idea that young people - young adults, even - might know that they're gay is kicked to the kerb for the idea that sufficient religious disapproval will drive that child back onto the.. ahem.. straight and narrow. And even if it doesn't work, and never works, it's still appropriate to let that child know, every day, that he or she is unacceptable.

Let's take a second to look at what this couple is refusing to do:

"They were asking: "What would you do if a 10 year-old child came home and said they had been picked on because they were homosexual?"

"They said, "Do you know you would have to tell them that it's ok to be homosexual?"

"But I said I couldn't do that because my Christian beliefs won't let me. Morally I couldn't do that, spiritually I couldn't do that.I said I was there to explain that I would not compromise my faith.

"I said I would have to tell the child that as I am a Christian I don't believe in homosexuality but I can give as much love and security as I possibly can."

So they're not even prepared to tell that child that being gay is "okay."

So that's love and compassion, while maintaining that the bullying was in some way morally justified: you were picked on for reasons of uncompromisable faith. Those bullies just don't "believe" in homosexuality, and refuse to extend their passive endorsement of your "lifestyle."

And apparently there's some confusion as to why this might not be the best model for parenting vulnerable children. Fortunately, such religious beliefs are only "lifestyle choices."

For a refresher of how the same exact story turned out last time, read here and here.

every log is sacred

Like Justin, the quality of "debate" over abortion limits leaves me less than impressed. We've endured a few months of "debate" where "debate" apparently means accepting the selective, misleading or plain irrelevant platter of evidence offered by anti-abortionists. The irony of being told that you're ignoring new evidence by people who choose to ignore the overwhelming body of existing evidence is, as ever, exquisite.

It might be that I'm the wrong audience, but the question posed by the first of Passion for Life's new videos presents an almost instantaneous answer.

A man with a chainsaw carves a block of wood into the shape of a foetus, followed by the caption "Just a block of wood?" Well, yes. A block of wood shaped like a foetus, but still wood. Yes, I'm being obtusely literal, but if you then ask "Is there more to life than meets the eye?" the horse of obtuse argument has already bolted the stable of rhetorical nonsense.

Still in the genre of bad metaphor, the second video likens work-place bullying to abortion, because the women who choose abortion spend the weeks leading up to the procedure tormenting and torturing their unborn child before.. ah, wait. I've done it again. I've actually assumed that the use of metaphor would actually involve some kind of metaphor - where one thing is equal to another.

The video's slogan that "humanity should have rights from day one" also never quite gets around to declaring when day one might be: from the moment of fertilisation? Such a principle - applied consistently or logically - would presumably include the "humans" in the form of the high proportion of fertilised eggs which the female body naturally rejects, or which fail to bed into the wall-lining of the uterus.

Perhaps the next video will announce the creation of rescue centres where women can donate their sanitary towels for close examination, less a "human" be accidentally flushed. And that's just where the trouble starts. Let's not forget the smallest living members of the potential-human race: every sperm is sacred.

Still, a new anti-abortion argument has emerged:

Had the 1/2 million children who have been forcibly aborted in this country since Steel's Act been allowed to live we might not now have to import labour from Eastern Europe.

Remember, not only is every pin-head sized bundle of cells fully human, but they're also a potential source of cheap and ethnically palatable labour. Win, win!

In short, these are not convincing arguments for anything.

a failure of "moral" logic

Edward Leigh decides to kick around Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris, presumably because it's easier to attack the opposition than to advance a reasoned argument:

Imagine: in one room the doctor might be advising a young mother on her pregnancy and how to breastfeed her baby, while next door a child is being killed in the womb by the nurse, perhaps herself a mother.

But of course, according to Dr Harris and his supporters that is perfectly all right.

What is remarkable here is that Leigh is convinced that the existence of choices taken by different women (living different lives and faced with different decisions in different circumstances) is not all right. It's a profound rejection of any form of choice that has little or nothing to do with a desire for a reduction of week limits for abortion, and instead articulates a far more stringent position.

The juxtaposition of images - like the often mentioned but medically irrelevant "4D" pictures of foetuses - is a transparent appeal to emotion, intended to sidestep any examination of the reasons why women might justifiably seek out abortion. It also entirely ignores the (lack of) evidence for reducing the week limit on abortion, Leigh's stated aim.

Interestingly, this strategy directs attention to the disparity between the supposed "moral" basis for restrictions on abortion, and the measures that campaigners for restriction are actually pushing. I'm struck again by the apparent dishonesty of the anti-abortion lobby, whose stated desire to reduce the number of abortions appears more and more like a cover for making abortion as difficult as possible, if not impossible. At least, that's the conclusion any consideration of their moral code would suggest.

If you take assume Leigh's position on abortion (or that of Widdecombe, or Dorries, or the Bishop of Brentwood) - that all human life is sacred from fertilisation onwards - then no level of abortion is acceptable. If it's not all right for the two women in adjoining rooms in Leigh's imagined clinic to make different decisions, why not campaign on that basis and demand a total ban on abortion where life is not at risk? Voting for a mere reduction might be tactical, but it's also entirely hypocritical.

In fact, why stop there? There's also the tremendous failure to follow through with this moral logic: if abortion is murder, morally speaking, should we prosecute women and doctors for that crime? Or would manslaughter be enough?

(It helps to remember that the pro-abortion lobby isn't interested in forcing anyone to have an abortion, merely in making sure that abortion is safe and available to those who need it - and, as experience across the world has taught us, safety, legality and access are almost irrevocably linked.)

the nasty party

Nadine Dorries takes the time to remind us that she occupies the low ground in British politics: there's nothing like the gentle inference that your political opponent is a child-snatching cannibal to improve the tenor of debate.

via ChickenYoghurt.

melanie phillips: do you believe me, or your own lying memory?

Creeping out from my work-bunker, I read this:

One further question. Just what do people think was in the super-secret Syrian facility bombed by Israel last year -- and where did it come from?

The inferred answer, of course, is SADDAM'S SECRET NUKES XOMG!!!!! Thanks, Melanie Phillips. I was wondering where they'd ended up: case closed.

Phillips attempt to paper over the various and delightful spin used to rationalise another war in Iraq which proceeds the above question depends quite heavily on you having fallen down and hit your head on something hard, said injury leading to specific amnesia removing any memory of many months of speeches and front-pages. Here's Phillips' clean and tidy version:

The case for war was always that Saddam was in breach of those resolutions and the cease-fire agreement at the end of the 1991 war by failing to show that he had dismantled his WMD programmes.

So presumably all of that talk of a clear and present danger of attack was an hallucination caused by smacking my head firmly into the kerb again and again.

Phillips also wilfully confuses the notion that there was no threat from Saddam, and the argument that such a threat had been exaggerated beyond the reach of reliable evidence - a necessary step along the road to re-writing history. For future reference, it's better to re-write history that's a little further away and can't immediately be checked via a) google and b) human memory.

You may recall that Melanie Phillips' WMD theory is possibly her most elaborate contribution to the canon of batshit craziness, a sequence of unverifiable claims based on a single source which depends on a conspiracy of silence involving several international organisations, governments and security agencies. As such, jumping to the conclusion that the contents of a bunker about which she knows nothing must contain secret weaponry is a very small leap indeed.

the customary restraint of the british press

The defensive posture adopted by some pundits - claiming that Rowan Williams has not been misrepresented over his comments on sharia law - depends rather heavily on you not going and - you know - actually reading what Williams said.

My personal favourite moment came courtesy of The Times, when Minette Marin declared "I haven’t seen any serious misrepresentation in the media" (a most excellent deduction by absence of evidence) before going on to accuse the Archbishop of Canterbury of treason.

It has also been glorious to witness countless columnists forgetting the acres of coverage dedicated each year to home-grown Christian religious groups who decide that their own moral codes - their "affiliations and loyalties" to echo Williams - entitle them to ignore the law in the pursuit of an attack on the deadly deadly homo.

No, apparently this is a uniquely Islamic problem, and anyone who says otherwise is in denial or - as per Melanie Phillip's latest column in the Mail - aiding the recruitment of terrorists. Still, work commitments mean I'm behind nearly everyone else on this story - so try reading Garry, Obsolete or Justin instead.

proposals for draconian piracy law leaked

A rather disturbing lack of essential details in the leaked government paper on internet piracy:

All those who are suspected of wrongly downloading pirated material will receive a warning email for the first offence, a temporary suspension from going online for the second and if they commit a third crime they will find their web contract will be terminated, under the new proposals.

Every broadband company will be expected to enforce these rules and firms who fail to adhere to the guidelines could be prosecuted.

Amongst the gigantic problems already apparent:

The Internet Service Providers Association said data protection laws would prevent providers from looking at the content of information sent over their networks.

"ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope," the association said.

"ISPs bear no liability for illegal file sharing as the content is not hosted on their servers," it added.

And then there's this massive hole in the ground:

So far, [some of the UK's biggest internet providers] have failed to resolve how disputed allegations would be arbitrated - for example, when customers claim other people have been "piggybacking" on their internet service.

And while your claim is being "aribitrated," you're cut off from the internet entirely - from activities which have nothing whatsoever to do with the claim of illegal file-sharing. When the government says that it has consulted "stake-holders," I don't get the feeling that this actually includes the general internet-using public. The words "record" and "industry" spring to mind.

If this legislation were introduced, it would mean the UK would have the most stringent and prohibitive anti-piracy laws in the world.

co-inky-dink

Please note: the nauseatingly effusive coverage of Delia Smith in the Daily Mail has nothing to do with the same newspaper's decision to spend a rather large amount of money serialising her recipes "exclusively in Weekend magazine" with the Mail on Sunday.

The fact that this is - almost word for word - the argument that Smith has herself been making while pushing her book is also coincidence of the highest order, and certainly not some kind of free advertising.

let the scaremongerers lead the way

The Daily Mail's shock and awe approach to news means that today's all-terror front page is a story based on a series of unconfirmable, off-the-record and un-attributable quotes. What exactly do these mysterious "security sources" have to say?

Counter-terrorism officials say "insiders" or their associates are almost certainly working "undetected" in sensitive posts and are actively supporting the activities of extremists.

Of course, this isn't enough for the Mail, who choose to re-write "almost certainly" as:

Revealed: Islamist extremists have penetrated the heart of Britain

As has been remarked before, subtlety and restraint is something that largely happens to other newspapers.

Whne you've finished reading a couple of hundred of highly speculative scaremongering, there's a case study of one of the Jihadist fiends who has managed to penetrate the heart of government to become.. a traffic warden.

Please jump to your own alarmist conclusions.

carol sarler: yes, I was paid actual money to write this and I'm almost as surprised as you are

Never wanting to patronise by halves, Carol "Just Awful" Sarler and the Daily Mail subs team declare:

Tears are every woman's most powerful and manipulative weapon, but can Hillary weep her way to the White House?

Take a second to enjoy the girth and weight of that sweeping claim: tears are every woman's most powerful and manipulative weapon. Forget intelligence, forget sex appeal: Sarler and team have sent forth the proclamation (the message being "it's amazing how little we know about men and women given that we are, technically, men and women.")

There's also bonus points for taking time to argue that hapless men are unable to resist or understand this briney brainwashing; apparently, "men don't really understand the politics of crying" and "we [all women everywhere] don't actually want them to understand it, either." Congratulations, Carol: this is really top-notch bollocks. Extra credit for the literary references which show little or no comprehension of the text from which they are taken.

As a side note, a simple response to the claim that Clinton is using tears to manipulate the public via the media would be for the media to stop printing MASSIVE PICTURES of her semi-teared-up eyes. It's akin to the Mail's habit of complaining about TV filth before going on to describe, in some detail, the simply awful and depraved scenes that you probably missed and would otherwise never have heard about.

sex education in the UK: further tales of deliberate ignorance

Nadine Dorries repeats some of the most obvious untruths about sex education in the UK, beginning with the assumption - made, as is traditional, without any evidence - that sex education encourages sex:

In some parts of the UK, syphilis is being reported for the first time in 20 years, and in some towns gonorrhoea has increased by over 1,000 per cent.

And yet, we have a government which has promoted sex education over the last 10 years.

This could be part of the problem rather than the solution.

Dispensing with any actual research which might show this to be true, or any discussion of the various sex education programmes which have produced the reverse of the situation in the UK, Dorries ploughs on:

PSE lessons teaching 14-year-old girls how to apply a condom, high street chemists having the ability to dispense over-the-counter contraceptive pill, and easier access to abortion, I believe will exacerbate this situation and do nothing to stem the rise of teenage pregnancy or disease.

The problem is not access to contraception, or being shown how to use it. Any long-term reader of this blog - or anyone with a passing familiarity with sex education - will know that the main problem with the system in England and Wales is that there is no statutory obligation to teach about contraception or the prevention of disease.

As it stands (and despite some pretty damn heroic local initiatives) education is piece-meal, half-hearted and occasionally entirely non-existent: the quality of sex education depends heavily on the preferences of your local school and education authority. In short, the problem is weak, patchy, poor - bad - sex education.

As ever, it helps to consider the contrast between Dorries' personal beliefs, and actual research into health policy (backed by the knowledge of successful experience with comprehensive sex education programmes elsewhere in the world, and compounded by the failure of abstinence first progammes).

Dorries also chooses to exclusively the emphasise the responsibility of young women:

We need to re-introduce moral values into our education system. We need to be able to empower young girls with the ability, and the confidence, to say no; and we need to educate about the consequences of unprotected sex, abortion and disease.

Education should lean heavily on an emphasis that under-age sex is not a good idea. It's not cool and too many young people have their lives turned upside down by the consequences.

That young men might also be encouraged to take a role in the consequences of their fertility is apparently ignored. Yes, women bear the greater consequence of unplanned pregnancy, but an exclusive emphasis on that acts to reduce the pressure on young men to take responsibility for their own sexual health.

Dorries' plea that education should "lean heavily on an emphasis that under-age sex is not a good idea" rather misses the fact that this is exactly what a number of government sex education campaigns focus on. The suggestion that sex education is delivered outside of a moral context is similarly misleading. I'll quote from the government R U Thinking About It? campaign, targetting young men in the UK:

Having sex purely to impress your pals isn't cool - you'll probably end up feeling foolish because you didn't make your own decision. Plus, you're more likely to forget about contraception if you're stressing out and under pressure.

The last thing you need is to get someone pregnant or pick up a Sexually transmitted Infection (STI), so discuss contraception with your girlfriend before things go too far.

Pushing your girlfriend into sex could also spoil your relationship with her. The best sex happens when both people like each other and are ready to do it. Most lads regret persuading their girlfriend to have sex unless she's 100% up for it.

Remember that having sex before you're 16 (17 in Northern Ireland) is against the law – but that doesn't mean you have to rush out on your birthday and try to lose your virginity, whatever your mates say.

If this isn't the kind of message that Dorries supports, what is?

It's worth heading over to the epolitix site to read the various comments on the article, not least those from health professionals know exactly who to blame for holding up reform and the spread of misinformation:

I am taken aback! I find it extraordinary that a well educated MP with a nursing background could think that sex education is a contributing factor to the appalling teenage sexual health crisis currently in the UK.

Every single study done shows that well delivered sex and relationship education delays the age of first sexual intercourse, and also reduces the incidence of teenage pregnancy. It’s all about self esteem and ambition. Isn’t it remarkable how the worst figures match exactly to the areas of deprivation?

Shame on this country for failing its most vulnerable youngsters. Shame also on the politicians who don’t support statutory obligation on schools to do this properly.

Dr Colm O'Mahony
Sexual Health Clinic Countess of Chester NHS Trust

What he said.

peter hitchens: why don't people agree with me?

Peter Hitchens seems unable to tell the difference between being allowed to state your opinions openly, and having people agree with you.

I'm in the Land of the Free, so why can't I mock Tony Blair?

Hard-hat workers and truckers, normally reliable Right-wingers, can turn pretty nasty if I dare to sneer at Blair over here, though in other circumstances, they would despise him as a weedy liberal.

Sweeping political stereotypes aside, Hitchens demonstrates a delightful ability to distinguish between "reliable Right-wingers" who voted for two Bush presidencies, and the "reliable Right-wingers" who have happily supported what Hitchens describes as "the international disgrace at Guantanamo Bay, the disgusting "renditions" of suspects to Arab torture chambers."

Presumably two entirely different groups of people.

possibly just that stupid

Crushingly busy, so I'll flag up this week's moment in homo-baiting, as the Mail covered the potential advice not to assume children always have two parents as "Now they want to ban Mum and Dad," 'they' being the international conspiracy of family destroying queers.

It's unclear whether the Mail's sub-editors (or Richard Littlejohn) realize that declaring every family has a mum and dad doesn't actually create that reality, or destroy it by ommission. That said, they may just be that fucking stupid.

melanie phillips: I disagree strongly with these opinions that I have imagined

Melanie Phillips tries very hard to be angry about some academics she believes have dared to question the merits of teaching patriotism:

This is not just pernicious but perverse. No-one has called for patriotism to be ‘promoted’, merely for pupils to be taught about their country’s history and institutions so that they can feel as a result a sense of belonging, attachment and loyalty.

Isn't it fun to get angry about opinions that don't actually exist?

The first point of hilarity is that this is pretty much what the academics wanted - for history to be taught, warts and all. Teachers and students are concerned about teaching patriotism without mentioning the downside; the reports' authors pose an open question: is it possible to unconditionally love a concept which is - despite its virtues - also flawed? Indeed, the problem appears to be with the uncritical appraisal of our country's history.

Secondly, the argument that "teaching is not promoting" is entirely hypocritical: Phillips has penned at least a dozen articles arguing the opposite when it comes to teaching about the existence of sex, sex outside of marriage, non-nuclear families, gay marriage etc. etc. All that's left is for Phillips to do what she's paid for and simply make shit up:

But of course, the authors of this report do not acknowledge any such criteria of objectivity, let alone the duty to transmit a culture down through the generations which is the very essence of education. No, the explicit basis for their conclusion is that Britain is intrinsically ‘corrupt’ and its history characterised solely by ‘warmongering, imperialism, tyranny, injustice, slavery and subjugation'.

It's really almost as though she hasn't read the report, which actually reports the findings of a survey of attitudes of studentsd and teachers towards teaching patriotism - one finding of which is this:

Ninety-four per cent of the teachers and 77 per cent of the students replied that schools should give a balanced presentation of opposing views on the subject.

Oh, no: a balanced presentation of opposing views. It couldn't get anymore close-minded, it's the height of totalitarian control etc. etc.

"Students tend to feel strongly that their feelings about their country are their own business and schools have no right to try to influence them," says Dr Hand.

While there was little support for the idea that schools’ overall stance towards patriotism should be discouraging or challenging, 74 per cent of teachers agreed that they had an obligation to point out to students the danger of patriotic sentiments.

So there's little support for discouraging patriotism, and students have their own strong opinions - a situtation which rather contradicts Phillips (groundless, fabricated, baseless, lying) claim that history lessons are a well of "sub-Marxist counter-culture claptrap" which are in turn destroying our culture from the youngest generations upward. As they say, the kids are alright.

To compound your sense of Phillips heading of into a great blue yonder uninhibited by tiresome fact, you'll note that The Times coverage which Phillips quotes actually opens like this:

History and citizenship lessons should stick to the bare facts rather than encouraging loyalty to Britain when covering subjects such as the Second World War or the British Empire, the Institute of Education researchers said.

The bare facts? Why, it's the very pinnacle of brainwashing. It's possible that she's fallen for the Times' sub-editor's decision to headline the story as "Don't teach children patriotism," which isn't actually what the research says - but then I'd hope that columnists actually read the research they're complaining about, rather than someone else's summary.

In short, if you find yourself asking, 'could Melanie Phillips further misrepresent something in order to be more completely wrong?' the answer is 'probably, yes, in fact she's doing it right now.'

(It's also delightful to have Melanie Phillips declaring that the only reason Hitler is on the curriculum is because of the "crowd-pulling appeal in the classroom of extreme violence." I'm glad I don't have that therapy bill.)