Nobody's Business

Poor Britain

I've written about Tony Blair's Britain dozens of times, with not an iota of affection for the man who carries a great deal of responsibility for a string of anti-liberty outrages perpetrated against his own flock of sheep citizens.

Now that Blair has vacated 10 Downing Street for Gordon Brown, I don't reckon that all is magically right again in the country I once venerated.

Spiked Online's Brendan O'Neill, who's actually going to have to live with Mr. Brown, isn't heartened either. Here is his partial assessment of the man.

Last year, in a major speech on security, [Brown] declared that he would reorganise every arm of government around combating terrorism, in effect giving rise to a war cabinet and a war mindset in a nation that isn’t at war (except with handfuls of wannabe jihadists from the Home Counties and Leeds). ... Brown is every bit as willing as Blair to exploit the politics of fear; if he has his way we can look forward to a state built on fear and paranoia. Brownism means stasis and security, not ambition or change.

And:

Anyone who thinks Brown will reverse New Labour's trend for eating away at our liberties — both at our formal freedoms and our informal everyday freedom to smoke, drink and eat what we like — must have been smoking something illegal. Not content with the fact that MPs nodded through the Anti-Terror Bill in 2005, which included a provision allowing suspects to be held for 28 days (otherwise known as The End of Habeus Corpus), Brown wants to raise the detention-without-trial period to 90 days. He has also called for the strengthening of Britain's religious hatred laws, which are a shocking assault on the hard-won right of our secular society to ridicule religious faiths and their adherents. Brown says 'religious hatred', which can include critical comment and even jokes, should be 'rooted out from whatever corner it comes'. ... He wants to put a copper at the heart of government, to ensure that his petty authoritarianism is enforced by truncheon from the very top.

I hope sincerely that O'Neill turns out to be a wolf-crying alarmist on this one. But he's right that Gordon Brown's record gives anything but cause for optimism.

In fact, Brown seems to be, in Jimmy Breslin's immortal phrase about Rudy Giuliani, "a small man in search of a balcony."

Poor Britain.

The Cop and the Airman, a Morality Play

California police officer Ivory Webb was acquitted of all charges yesterday, some 18 months after pumping three bullets into unarmed suspect Elio Carrion at close range. Webb's defense was that he thought Carrion was about to reach for a weapon, or lunge at the officers making the arrest. But there's a telltale video that just doesn't support that contention. Carrion was, in fact, cooperative to the point of docility.

In the Press Enterprise, a regional newspaper, Cassie MacDuff writes:

I sat in on critical parts of the trial, and watched repeated showings of the videotape of Webb ordering Airman Elio Carrion to get up, then shooting him when he did. I can't imagine coming to the same conclusion the jury unanimously did Thursday afternoon.

It's interesting that in the six or seven articles about Webb's acquittal that I read on the sites of U.S. newspapers, not one reporter or editor included a web link to the video of the shooting. Foreign newspaper sites, like this one, had no such qualms.

Anyway, you can watch the footage below, in all its unedited, unaltered glory. There's sound, too, so it isn't too hard to follow exactly what happens from second to second.

But the jurors found it easy, apparently, not to believe what was in front of their eyes.

Juror Michael Thompson said the video footage didn't tell the whole story. "Somebody watches something on television, you can't assume it to be true," he said. "You can't assume it to be what's real."

Other than the actual event, what's more real than a recording of it, with both images and sound?

Wow. Deliberate cognitive dissonance, times twelve.

I know it's tempting to go along with defense attorney Michael Schwartz, who told the courtroom:

"Have we reached the state where the safety of the suspect has become more important than the safety of the officer?"

But that's a false dichotomy. No, the safety of a suspect is not more important than the safety of a cop. It's merely equally important. To argue that the life of a government official is intrinsically more valuable than the life of a citizen is to stand the American justice system, and its presumption-of-innocence doctrine, on its head.

Yet the jurors in the Webb case were unremarkable in that they, like probably 90 percent of the population, believe just that, consciously or not. It's the childlike flight of fancy instilled by thousands of two-dimensional, quintessentially American morality plays, from Dragnet to Diehard. Good versus evil. Cop good. Suspect bad.

The only (occasional) chance to defeat the playbook seems to be reserved for the rich and famous.

Airman Elio Carrion is neither, so we owe him nothing. No apology. No compensation. No justice. All he should expect from our country is an order to return to combat in Iraq if and when he recovers, where he may, on our behalf, fight for liberty and the American way.

I wish him Godspeed.

Meet the Real Robocop

From Wired:

Taser stun-guns are already controversial, in the hands of cops and G.I.s. Now imagine a whole field of the electric weapons — out of human hands, entirely.  Taser International recently rolled out its Taser Remote Area Denial (TRAD) system — a networked series of sensors and stun-gun projectiles that promises to "observe, warn, incapacitate and retain intruders" from afar. ...

An array of TRADs — or a "TASERNET," in company lingo — provides "the capabilities of visual observation and oversight coupled with the ability to engage and incapacitate targets remotely. The things are "ideal for protecting high value facilities or operations such as checkpoints, command centers, depots, aircraft insertions, and spec ops, as well as fixed installations such as embassies, air fields, utility facilities, pipelines, etc."

Sicko

I wonder if this is in Michael Moore's new movie. It should be. From the New York Times:

[P]sychiatrists earn more money from drug makers than doctors in any other specialty. ... [T]he more psychiatrists have earned from drug makers, the more they have prescribed a new class of powerful medicines known as atypical antipsychotics to children, for whom the drugs are especially risky and mostly unapproved.

I will put my libertarian bona fides up against anybody's, but I part ways with libertarianism on the healthcare issue: I'm a reluctant socialist when it comes to getting sick and getting better. Too many private-entity players in the health market as we know it have conspired and colluded in ways that put profit maximization first and patients' interests last. I love this country, but healthcare-wise, I'd be better off in my old stomping ground, the Netherlands, or in at least 35 other countries, including Saudi Arabia, Colombia, Chile, and Costa Rica. Enough.

Socialized medicine is no panacea, and I, too, am leery of creating a system like the U.K.'s, crippled by chaos and low expectations. But we ought to be able to learn from Britain's mistakes, and Canada's, and create a kind of medical care that will make the U.S. if not the envy of the world, then at least a Top-10 player.

And yes, I am aware of smart and coherent arguments against "socialized medicine." I just wonder whether, when it gets right down to it, the writers of such pro-market pleas would prefer to get sick in Canada or in the U.S. — and if the latter, would they feel the same way if they were uninsured, as roughly 45 million Americans are?

I hope Moore's movie, and other evidence of the shamefulness of our healthcare system, such as that Times article, will serve as a series of clarion calls to burn down what we've wrought, and start over.

Our lives depend on it.

What Year Is It?

Picture this.

German officials refuse to give people of a certain hated faith the same rights as Protestants and Catholics. In the press and among those expressing the nation's gesundes Volksempfinden (the German vox populi), the maligned minority is widely said to be deceitful and money-hungry. Resentment builds.

Opposing these wicked believers becomes a national German pastime, legitimizing efforts by politicians and bureaucrats to ban them from making art on German soil, and to shut down their economic interests to any legal extent possible.

So what year is it? 1933?

Or 2007?

Germany has banned the makers of Tom Cruise's new movie from filming at military sites in the country because the actor is a Scientologist. The German defence ministry said Cruise has "publicly professed to being a member of the Scientology cult". Scientology masquerades as a religion to make money, Germany said, but leaders of the church reject this.

Special irony award:

Cruise will play Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg in Valkyrie, leader of the 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler using a bomb hidden in a briefcase, scheduled for release next year.

Today's assignment (mandatory for German readers): google the words "history condemned repeat," and see what you come up with.

A Court Divided

The First Amendment allows you to say almost anything. Except when you unfurl a banner across from your school and it contains some nonsense about Jesus and a bong.

A high school student's "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner got slapped down by the Supreme Court in a decision Monday that restricts student speech rights when the message seems to advocate illegal drug use. The court ruled 5-4 in the case of Joseph Frederick, who unfurled his handiwork at a school-sanctioned event in 2002, triggering his suspension and leading to a lengthy court battle. 

Yep, it was another 5-4 decision. Those have been handed down a lot lately.

Why is it that increasingly, when I read the justices' convoluted opinions, they seem to be trying to make their interpretation of the law fit a foregone conclusion? I suspect it is because partisanship within the court's hallowed chambers is on the rise, predisposing the justices to judge first and reason later.

Jeffrey Toobin, writing in the June 25 issue of the New Yorker (not yet online, I believe), has similar misgivings about the Supremes:

As George W. Bush staggers toward the conclusion of his second term, he can point to at least one major and enduring project that has gone according to plan: the transformation of the Supreme Court.

Toobin then details how the court, hardly a shining example of non-partisanship in the Rehnquist days (remember Bush v. Gore?), has become more divided, and the dissenting justices (typically Souter, Ginsburg, Stevens and Breyer) more likely to read their opinions aloud from the bench — "a vigorous protest in the genteel world of the justices."

And he concludes:

At this moment, the liberals face not only jurisprudential but but actuarial peril. Stevens is eighty-seven and Ginsburg seventy-four; Roberts, Thomas, and Alito are in their fifties. The Court, no less than the Presidency, will be on the ballot next November, and a wise electorate will vote accordingly. 

That prospect offers scant comfort to Joseph Frederick — or to his dad, who was allegedly fired over the son's banner. They will have the rest of their lives to ponder the impermissibility of a nonsensical, innocuous phrase that oddly put them on the wrong side of the nation's highest court; and to wonder why a court majority didn't see this no-brainer case the way John Paul Stevens did, when he rightfully wrote that his colleagues' ruling "does serious violence to the First Amendment."

Given the current makeup of the court, additional "serious violence" against the Bill of Rights is all but a certainty. It's maddening to think that George Bush retiring to Crawford will not, alas, end the man's destructive effect; and that when my little girls become adults, Roberts, Thomas, and Alito will probably still be sitting pretty, still acting hostile towards Americans who dare assume that the Constitution and its amendments give them certain inalienable rights.

UPDATE: I was startled to learn that it's possible to put a positive libertarian spin on this case, and to view it as a "victory for drug reform advocates." I don't share Radley Balko's optimism, but as usual, he makes worthwhile points.

"Why Are Westerners So Insecure?"

I just came across the text of the speech that Ayaan Hirsi Ali gave before an audience of journalists at the National Press Club in Washington last Monday. As befits someone with her courage (or should that be recklessness?), she didn't mind entering the lion's den and asking the lion why on earth it's being such a pussy.

The first time that I was at a gathering like this one, it was November 2005 at the Krasnapolsky hotel in Amsterdam; not quite like this one, though, because there is only one National Press Club. I was invited to a session on media coverage of Islam, and Submission was shown. Submission is a 10-minute film I made with Theo van Gogh. As many of you know, he was killed for it by a Muslim.

I found myself in the odd position of defending freedom of expression, free press, and the rights of women against Arab-Islamic journalists and commentators. I found it odd because the Western journalists whose conference it was were either quiet, mumbled something about free expression, or approached me after the session and whispered into my ear that I had done a good job. I noticed the embarrassment they felt at defending the very right from which they earn their bread.

I noticed the same sense of uneasiness in early 2006 among Western journalists, academics, politicians, and commentators on how to respond to the cartoons of Muhammad in Denmark. In fact, many seriously defended the assertion that Denmark had to apologize for the cartoons. This attitude was repeated in the fall of last year when the Pope quoted a Byzantine emperor who wrote that the founder of Islam spread his religion by the sword, and the New York Times urged the Pope to apologize. ...

Why are Westerners so insecure about everything that is so wonderful about the West: political freedom, free press, freedom of expression, equal rights for women and men, gays and heterosexuals, critical thinking, and the great strength of scrutinizing ideas — and especially faith? ...

If we do not understand the differences between Islam and the West — why one is so great and the other so low — and we don't fight back and win this battle of ideas in order to preserve our civilization, in my view there is no point to your profession or mine.

The two-hour interview I had with Hirsi Ali on Wednesday should make it into the pages of Reason soon — I'll post a link. Thanks to all who sent me questions, by the way.

Stop Rape? Ban Booze and Porn, For the Kids.

In a surprising new White House initiative, Native Americans are prohibited from drinking firewater alcohol and viewing pornographic material from now on.

At least that's what would happen if America took its cues from Australia.

Australia will ban alcohol and pornography in Aboriginal communities across the country's vast Northern Territory to combat widespread child sexual abuse, Prime Minister John Howard said Thursday. Describing the plight of Aboriginal children as "a national emergency", Howard said he was taking control of indigenous communities from the Northern Territory government because it had not addressed the problem. ...

"This is a national emergency, there is no greater obligation this parliament has than caring for all the vulnerable and young in our community," Howard told parliament. 

I'm not going to go into the unsettling racist undertones of the new Australian policy — other blogs will no doubt be dissecting that particular strain of ugliness.

I will say that Howard is right to surmise that there is a correlation between pornography and sex crimes. It just happens to be the inverse of what he believes: porn reduces the incidence of rape. In other words, and in broad [ahem] strokes, more porn equals less rape.

I wrote about that here.

Of course, Howard's contention is far more questionable than that. He apparently thinks that images of adults having consensual sex lead to child molestation. That's not just illogical — it's lazy and scurrilous.

And it's not much different with the alleged alcohol link. Sure, alcoholics have problems, often domestic ones. And yes, alcohol does lower inhibitions. But I'd wager that beer and booze prevent as much sexual abuse as they cause — and probably more. As Shakespeare knew, alcohol provokes the desire but takes away the performance. Howard deplores the stuporous drunkards he seems to detect especially among Aboriginals, without asking how men so intoxicated they're barely able to walk can suddenly turn into raging, overpowering sex machines.

I'm not being flippant. I don't deny the involvement of alcohol in a good percentage of sex crimes. But (a) correlation does not mean causation, and (b) the statistics fall necessarily short here. If all you have is numbers that reveal how often alcohol was implicated in sexual assaults on children, those numbers tell only half the story. The missing piece is: how many sex crimes against children, or adults for that matter, did alcohol thwart, by rendering the would-be assailant woozy, sleepy, sapped of energy, and unable to get it up?

Even disregarding that huge unknown, there is scant evidence that alcohol is a prominent trigger in cases of sexual child abuse. Howard might have pondered these findings from a U.S. study about child molestation:

Generally speaking we have not found any social or demographic characteristics that differentiate the child molester from the general population, not his race, religion, intelligence, education, vocation, socioeconomic class, or the like. ... We have also observed that alcohol and drug abuse play a relatively minor role in the commission of such offenses. 

To be fair, that's research from the 1980s. But has the picture changed much? Not really, it seems. More recently, the federal Bureau for Justice Statistics said that

Violent offenders with child victims reported less involvement than adult victimizers with drugs or alcohol at the time of the crime. About 6 in 10 inmates who committed their violent crime against an adult reported that they had either been drinking alcohol, using drugs, or doing both at the time they committed the offense. About 6 in 10 child victimizers reported that they were using neither drugs nor alcohol at the time of their crime.

Howard's draconian decisions have the promise of law-and-order toughness and the sheen of moral certainty. But they're likely to be fig leafs that clumsily hide, rather than illuminate, the cultural and socio-economic realities that are really at the root of the problem.

Walking on Eggshells

In Great Britain,

The Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre, which vets all TV ads, said: “Eating eggs every day for breakfast goes against generally-accepted advice.”

So the BACC decided to ban the 50-year-old ad slogan “Go to work on an egg,” because the famous exhortation might lead to unhealthy eating habits that have no place in "a varied diet."

Happy Birthday

Today is Salman Rushdie's 60th birthday. There are worse presents than a British knighthood, if you're into that sort of thing, and "Sir Salman" certainly has a nice ring to it.

Don't look now, but guess who's seething.

"If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Muhammad, his act is justified," the minister for religious affairs, Ijaz ul-Haq, told Pakistan's national assembly, according to the translation from Urdu by Reuters. He urged Muslim countries to break diplomatic ties with London. ... His comments were reported on local news networks and provoked an angry response around the world.

Well, at least that's something: universal condemnation of the call to blow a novelist to kingdom come.

Oh wait, never mind. The anger was aimed at Rushdie.

Effigies of the Queen and Rushdie were burned in the eastern Pakistan city of Multan as students chanted "Kill him! Kill him!"

In Iran, where protesters wasted no time throwing stones at the British embassy, the outrage was also shared by government officials.

Mohammad Ali Hosseini, a spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry, portrayed the decision to honour the novelist as an orchestrated act of aggression directed against Islamic societies, describing Rushdie as "one of the most hated figures" in the Islamic world. "Honouring and commending an apostate and hated figure will definitely put the British officials [in a position] of confrontation with Islamic societies," he said.

Inevitably,

Security around the writer was reviewed by Scotland Yard as an Iranian group placed an £80,000 bounty on his head.

And British Muslims? They now know better than to publicly call for the killing of Islam's critics. Not that they're not mortally offended, of course. Right on up to members of Parliament.

In London, Lord Ahmed, Britain's first Muslim peer, said he had been appalled by the award to a man he accused of having 'blood on his hands'. ... "This man not only provoked violence around the world because of his writings, but there were many people who were killed around the world."

Ah, the 'look what you made me do' defense of the serial wife batterer. It never goes out of style, does it?