I still find the term "Axis of Evil" funny. I can't but help humming the Star Wars theme whenever it's mentioned.
Well, I could talk about Zimbabwe and the flagrant abuse of power that President Mugabe has committed. I could talk about the injustice of it (because when every single election observer there says that the election was "flawed at every stage" and when a crashed car was last week found to have a ballot box stuffed with papers voting for Mugabe's Zanu-PF party then it definitely falls under the category of unjust) and how something needs to be done to stop this happening. I'm not going to do that right now though. Partly because I'm inclined to believe that if the people of Zimbabwe want rid of their dictator then they need to do something about it themselves unless they wish to live a life being cowed and beaten. Mainly because I want to talk about Dubya's current favourite soundbite; The Axis of Evil.
Doubtless you have heard this phrase as it was spluttered forth a few weeks ago now. Let's not spend too much time worrying about the fact that the speechwriter seems to have picked the phrase according to how cool it sounded ("Yeah, Axis of Evil dude! If Dubya doesn't go for it maybe we can sell the idea to George Lucas for the 3rd Star Wars film..."). Instead, let us worry about what the implications may be for all of us if Dubya does what several newspapers (whom, to be honest, I suspect are scaremongering rather more than usual) are indicating and declares all out war (or low level conflict, or a policing operation, or whatever euphemism is flavour of the month at the moment) on all of the nations belonging to this Axis.
So then; which countries are lining up to join the axis? According to Dubya the 3 main offenders are Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. I'm going to look at Iraq last of all as that is something of a special case (i.e. Dubya pretty much got it right; I suppose 1 out of 3 is pretty decent...unless you're talking about declaring war and subsequent nuclear immolation in which case I'd prefer a little more accuracy). Firstly, a word about Iran. I admit to being biased as I have a soft spot for this country. President Khatami of Iran is making substantial inroads in bringing democracy and equality to this Persian nation (I do wish Dubya would stop calling them Arabs; another fine example of ignorance that is excrutiating at that level) despite the opposition of the hardline clergy who are doing their utmost to maintain the status quo (that being to support Islamic terror groups everywhere and to oppose anything said or done by the west and Israel). Khatami has done his utmost to relax the incredibly harsh Sharia law, endeavoured to improve the lot of the Iranian people (including women; a rarity in an Islamic nation) and has tried to make the government more representative of what Iranians want rather than the government telling people what they will get. He has been opposed at every turn by the clergy, who have subsequently found their support from the people plummeting. Khatami has said more than once that he has the people on his side and so the feeling was that he would get his way on a number of the reforms. After all, the last revolution was well within living memory; the clerics don't want to find themselves on the receiving end of another one.
And now, thanks to Dubya, a lot of that hard work has been undone. The clergy now say that this proves that they were right all along, and Khatami was foolish to try and open up Iran to negotiations with the West as they will always try to destroy Islamic culture and replace it with that of America. Many of the people of Iran (a nation where the people held candlelit vigils in memory of the victims of Sept. 11th) are understandably angry at being condemned by the US and so their support is swinging back to the clergy. Any hope of reforms that would increase the freedom of people in Iran has been dashed thanks to the land of the Brave and the Free. Supporters of Dubya's idiocy point to the fact that Iran and Khatami have made statements in support of Hamas, the Palestinian terror group responsible for so much of the bloodshed in Israel. And I agree, this is a bad thing. Would they perhaps like to look at some of the terror groups that the US has supported and in some cases continues to support? The Taliban once received US support, to say nothing of the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, or Pinochet's murderous coup. The only thing that I can find to damn Iran for is the same thing that damns the US, the UK (we've supported lord knows how many rebels and terrorists when it suits our purpose), France (who are in the Rwanda massacres up to their necks) and so on. If someone can point out where the difference between them and us lies then I'm all ears. Happily, the EC has had an outbreak of sanity, and the visit of Khatami to various European countries this week demonstrates exactly what the view of Dubya's branding of Iran is.
Okay, that takes us on to North Korea. Here is a country that has been in the grip of a famine for years. Here is a country that cannot feed it's own people. Here is a country that is so xenophobic that the idea of it co-operating with anyone or thing that isn't North Korean is laughable (I believe the last time it did so was when some North Korean military types helped train Idi Amin's army). I'm not going to take issue with the fact that it is a dictatorship ran by a reclusive madman. But trying to identify it as a sponsor of terrorism is disingenuous as it A: Cannot afford to and B: Has a healthy fear and loathing of Islam due to the fact that it is a Communist nation that permits no religion other than the cult of leadership. Sticking the boot into North Korea is rather like sticking the boot into a paraplegic Mike Tyson; everyone knows he deserves it but as a threat they are completely ineffective. I will place one caveat on this paragraph; they are developing their own Nuclear Weapons (according to rumour) and this certainly needs to be closely observed. But by the UN, not the US. America has already managed to destroy the credibility of arms inspectors in Iraq when it emerged that they kept asking for the information found by the UN. This is despite the fact that the UN is supposed to be impartial. Is the world just supposed to accept America shanghai-ing the UN for it's own purposes and then believe that they are not pursuing their own agenda? If that's the case then fine, but drop the high-minded rhetoric about defending world peace and democracy; the stench of hypocrisy becomes overpowering after a while.
And finally, Iraq. A few things to get out of the way first of all; yes, I do believe that the sanctions on Iraq are failing as the Ba'ath party leadership is as secure as ever whilst the Iraqi people suffer (if nothing else, their plight should hopefully provide a warning to the people of Zimbabwe...). I also believe that weapons of mass destruction are being developed in Iraq, and that they are a threat to world peace. However, I also believe that the answer isn't nearly as simple as both Dubya's "Let's roll" approach, and Dubya himself.
Let's be honest here; the UK and US are still smarting about the Gulf War and it's failure to result in the end of Hussein's rule. We are annoyed that he is free to cast occasional barbs at the west with impunity. And most importantly of all, in this war against terror we are frustrated that there is no clear target to aim at. Afghanistan was not the target of the war as it has unfolded thus far; Al-Quaida and the Taliban were. The military is a conservative sort of organisation, and these rules of engagement have clearly sat rather uncomfortably with them. What better way to boost morale by finding a gen-u-wine country to go to war with? None of that awkward and complicated separating the civilians from the Taliban and Al Quaida (the last time America fought a war where those type of procedures were required was Vietnam), just good old fashioned "our army against their army". We all know where we stand with that.
That at least is one of the many criticisms from some elements of the political left. However justified it is (and I think it is) I would say that it is rather shortsighted. Are we simply supposed to sit back and wait until Iraq is in a position to deploy their weapons of mass destruction? Do they have to make the first move? I've got my grievances against Israel but I'm not entirely sure that sitting back and waiting for Iraq to reduce it to molten slag, or a bacterial wasteland, or a chemical hell is the best way to deal with a small-time dictator with big-time weapons. So isn't it right that we should strike now and do our utmost to remove Hussein from power before he authorises some atrocity?
Yes and no. If Dubya goes wading in, cack handed as usual, then he runs the very real risk of destabilising the Middle East. The governments of many of these countries are supporters of the US. The majority of people are not. Many would welcome the opportunity to replace their oppressive governments whom they regard as American puppets. A war against Iraq that the people do not agree with could provide that opportunity. What would start out as a conflict with defined targets could very quickly and very easily descend into anarchy. So whilst I agree something does need to be done about Iraq, it needs to be done differently to the way Dubya envisages. How? Well, I don't rightly know to be honest. But I do know that Dubya actually took the time to talk to his titular allies rather than ride roughshod over any objections they might have and do whatever he feels like, then he might find that there are other solutions.
Finally, a word about that fun brand of American and English patriot who, upon reading the above, will think nothing more than "Tough luck; we're in the right and so have the moral high ground. Therefore we should attack Iraq, and to hell with anyone who disagrees." These are same brand of people who compare anyone who disagrees with them to the people who believed that appeasing Hitler would avoid war. Well, I certainly don't like the idea of appeasement as those people, far from ensuring world peace, ensured that what could have been a localised conflict became a worldwide one. However, what I would say to them is that in behaving in the way they are, in hooting and hollering for conflict against Iraq, they are doing exactly the same thing as the appeasers once did; helping make sure that a small scale conflict becomes a bigger one.
Wednesday, 13 March 2002
Sunday, 10 March 2002
Lo, cometh a Used Car Salesman
The debate about Faith schools remains a relevant one. I remain perplexed as to why a Used Car dealer should be regarded as a paragon of virtuous faith.
No matter what the event may be, and whether you think it is good or bad, it never seems to matter to you if it is happening far away. Take Afghanistan for example; we are aware in some peripheral way that there is a spot of bother out there. If we hunt hard enough through the column inches of the newspapers we may even find that people are dying out there (despite President Tony’s best efforts). We may also have heard of Camp X-Ray, where prisoners from the conflict are being held. Perhaps we have heard in passing about human rights abuses, or that English prisoners are being held there. Yet none of it is really real, because it is happening over there. We can therefore safely forget about it and get on with the important business of our daily grind.
Sometimes however, we are given cause to regret paying so little attention to events over the sea and far away. Apathy gives way to anger, mockery turns to indignation, indifference to embarrassment. I’ve been given cause to feel like that recently. For many happy years I have sat in my chair and poured all manner of scorn on those evangelical Christians in the USA who believe firmly in Creationism. They have allowed years of scientific study to gently pass them by and remain cheerfully mired in the superstitions and fairy tales of times gone past, when the world was simpler and so were the people whom they wished to have influence over. When several counties in the south of the US began to pass laws stating that creationism was to be given equal weight in school’s to evolution, far from being utterly horrified at the world’s most powerful nation taking a giant leap backwards, I could scarce contain my laughter, to say nothing of the satisfying feeling that most Englishmen get when Americans do something laughable such as elect a chimpanzee as their president.
I would wade through reams of print to find the reasoning that led to these schools saying (with a straight face) that the world was created in 7 days. Naturally, their reasoning caused one to believe that if they were created in 7 days then it was definitely a rush job on the part of God. All sorts of pseudo scientific titbits (“carbon dating is only approximate”), circumstantial guesswork (“there is a lack of fossils from key periods in the evolutionary timescale”), and downright lies (“only God could have created the world, for he has provided us with the Bible to show us that he did this”) were trotted out to any reporter who could keep the mocking grin from his face whilst the interview was conducted. In short, I revelled in the opportunity to point and laugh and stare at a group of people whose wilful stupidity and willingness to be manipulated into believing such nonsense confirmed so many long held prejudices about the good folk of Southern USA.
Well, don’t I now feel like the idiot?
I live near Newcastle upon Tyne in the north east of England. In the eyes of some, the north of England can be equated to the South of the USA; we’re supposedly a bit rougher round the edges, our accents are funny, and in general we’re a little less sophisticated than those from the richer south. Like those people of Southern USA, there is also a general sense of pride in our region. I personally am deeply in love with the northeast. I love the nightlife in Newcastle, the fact that rolling hills and countryside is but a few miles away, that money goes further here, I love the honesty and friendliness that is so prevalent here. I even love the casual way in which two chaps may beat each other near senseless in a pub yet be seen drinking together the following day. Since going away to University, I have become a born again Geordie. Which makes my shock, shame, and anger at the events in Emmanuel College, Gateshead all the greater.
Emmanuel college is the first school in the UK to go the same route as those unevolved souls in America who wish to teach our children that dinosaurs did not exist, that the world is only 10,000 years old, and that fossils are simply rock formations placed there by God himself. It is their stated intention to churn out classrooms full of children whose spirit of inquiry will be blunted by the bland assertion that God created everything, and anything that contradicts that is either flawed as it comes from the mind of Man, or treacherous because it was put there by Satan to deceive us. How can it be that the place which I love more than any other is opening itself up to mockery by exactly the sort of smug git who would do things like laugh about the stupidity of those far away from himself?
The college is, in a way, a victim of it’s own success. It is partly private and partly state funded. It has been praised for the high number of exam passes that it is producing. A sister school is due to open in Middlesborough (which is just about far enough away for me to laugh at). However, the private finance comes from a gentleman who is passionately evangelical in his faith. And, as with most tiresome evangelists, he wants to spread the good word as far as possible. Hence the faith based science syllabus which he and many of the teachers at Emmanuel wish to smear all over their pupil’s minds.
Yet why should this be such a bad thing? After all, it’s not as if teaching of evolution is being abandoned altogether. It is merely being given equal weight to creationism as theories for how we all came to be standing here now. And isn’t it a good thing to give children the choice to make up their own minds? Well, to be blunt, no. Can you really imagine evangelical teachers giving unbiased information about evolution when their own beliefs conflict and when they have the opportunity to tell the Truth to a class full of blank slates? And what about homework or essays? If a pupil was to write that he or she had taken account of both theories and found that evolution was the more plausible, would he be given the same grades as someone who had seen the light and accepted that only God could have created such a perfect and holy world?
Neither do the teaching plans of Emmanuel College bode well for the governmental preference that is being shown to faith based schools at the moment. They don’t require as much state funding and so save money. These schools tend to do better in the yearly exam result league tables, and good luck to them for doing so. Consequently, more parents wish to send their children there. What if they decide that they too wish to teach the true word of God rather than Darwin’s distasteful and blasphemous theory? Does the idea of a generation who are taught to dismiss certain lines of enquiry with the blanket answer “God did it” scare anybody else as much as me? If you want an extreme example, let’s revisit the Afghanistan conflict. The Taliban and other assorted religious fanatics who are trying to show us how good God is by trying to kill as many people as possible originated from faith based schools in Pakistan. It was in these schools that they received their education, their absolute intolerance of anything that falls outside the scope of their religious beliefs, and their unshakeable knowledge that anyone who disagrees with them is the enemy. Why were these schools allowed to proliferate? Because they didn’t require state funding and so saved money.
Of course, I’m not saying that Emmanuel college will be the training ground for warriors of a Christian Jihad, but I am saying that it will encourage exactly the sort of narrow-mindedness that will be music to the ears of a failing and flagging church. This will also give the lapdog Church of England a little more courage to yap at the government and make some demands of its own. The Church and the State were separated for a very good reason. Please don’t let it take the introduction of parliamentary bills calling for the abolition of abortion or removal of sex education from schools to remind us why that separation continues to be a good idea.
No matter what the event may be, and whether you think it is good or bad, it never seems to matter to you if it is happening far away. Take Afghanistan for example; we are aware in some peripheral way that there is a spot of bother out there. If we hunt hard enough through the column inches of the newspapers we may even find that people are dying out there (despite President Tony’s best efforts). We may also have heard of Camp X-Ray, where prisoners from the conflict are being held. Perhaps we have heard in passing about human rights abuses, or that English prisoners are being held there. Yet none of it is really real, because it is happening over there. We can therefore safely forget about it and get on with the important business of our daily grind.
Sometimes however, we are given cause to regret paying so little attention to events over the sea and far away. Apathy gives way to anger, mockery turns to indignation, indifference to embarrassment. I’ve been given cause to feel like that recently. For many happy years I have sat in my chair and poured all manner of scorn on those evangelical Christians in the USA who believe firmly in Creationism. They have allowed years of scientific study to gently pass them by and remain cheerfully mired in the superstitions and fairy tales of times gone past, when the world was simpler and so were the people whom they wished to have influence over. When several counties in the south of the US began to pass laws stating that creationism was to be given equal weight in school’s to evolution, far from being utterly horrified at the world’s most powerful nation taking a giant leap backwards, I could scarce contain my laughter, to say nothing of the satisfying feeling that most Englishmen get when Americans do something laughable such as elect a chimpanzee as their president.
I would wade through reams of print to find the reasoning that led to these schools saying (with a straight face) that the world was created in 7 days. Naturally, their reasoning caused one to believe that if they were created in 7 days then it was definitely a rush job on the part of God. All sorts of pseudo scientific titbits (“carbon dating is only approximate”), circumstantial guesswork (“there is a lack of fossils from key periods in the evolutionary timescale”), and downright lies (“only God could have created the world, for he has provided us with the Bible to show us that he did this”) were trotted out to any reporter who could keep the mocking grin from his face whilst the interview was conducted. In short, I revelled in the opportunity to point and laugh and stare at a group of people whose wilful stupidity and willingness to be manipulated into believing such nonsense confirmed so many long held prejudices about the good folk of Southern USA.
Well, don’t I now feel like the idiot?
I live near Newcastle upon Tyne in the north east of England. In the eyes of some, the north of England can be equated to the South of the USA; we’re supposedly a bit rougher round the edges, our accents are funny, and in general we’re a little less sophisticated than those from the richer south. Like those people of Southern USA, there is also a general sense of pride in our region. I personally am deeply in love with the northeast. I love the nightlife in Newcastle, the fact that rolling hills and countryside is but a few miles away, that money goes further here, I love the honesty and friendliness that is so prevalent here. I even love the casual way in which two chaps may beat each other near senseless in a pub yet be seen drinking together the following day. Since going away to University, I have become a born again Geordie. Which makes my shock, shame, and anger at the events in Emmanuel College, Gateshead all the greater.
Emmanuel college is the first school in the UK to go the same route as those unevolved souls in America who wish to teach our children that dinosaurs did not exist, that the world is only 10,000 years old, and that fossils are simply rock formations placed there by God himself. It is their stated intention to churn out classrooms full of children whose spirit of inquiry will be blunted by the bland assertion that God created everything, and anything that contradicts that is either flawed as it comes from the mind of Man, or treacherous because it was put there by Satan to deceive us. How can it be that the place which I love more than any other is opening itself up to mockery by exactly the sort of smug git who would do things like laugh about the stupidity of those far away from himself?
The college is, in a way, a victim of it’s own success. It is partly private and partly state funded. It has been praised for the high number of exam passes that it is producing. A sister school is due to open in Middlesborough (which is just about far enough away for me to laugh at). However, the private finance comes from a gentleman who is passionately evangelical in his faith. And, as with most tiresome evangelists, he wants to spread the good word as far as possible. Hence the faith based science syllabus which he and many of the teachers at Emmanuel wish to smear all over their pupil’s minds.
Yet why should this be such a bad thing? After all, it’s not as if teaching of evolution is being abandoned altogether. It is merely being given equal weight to creationism as theories for how we all came to be standing here now. And isn’t it a good thing to give children the choice to make up their own minds? Well, to be blunt, no. Can you really imagine evangelical teachers giving unbiased information about evolution when their own beliefs conflict and when they have the opportunity to tell the Truth to a class full of blank slates? And what about homework or essays? If a pupil was to write that he or she had taken account of both theories and found that evolution was the more plausible, would he be given the same grades as someone who had seen the light and accepted that only God could have created such a perfect and holy world?
Neither do the teaching plans of Emmanuel College bode well for the governmental preference that is being shown to faith based schools at the moment. They don’t require as much state funding and so save money. These schools tend to do better in the yearly exam result league tables, and good luck to them for doing so. Consequently, more parents wish to send their children there. What if they decide that they too wish to teach the true word of God rather than Darwin’s distasteful and blasphemous theory? Does the idea of a generation who are taught to dismiss certain lines of enquiry with the blanket answer “God did it” scare anybody else as much as me? If you want an extreme example, let’s revisit the Afghanistan conflict. The Taliban and other assorted religious fanatics who are trying to show us how good God is by trying to kill as many people as possible originated from faith based schools in Pakistan. It was in these schools that they received their education, their absolute intolerance of anything that falls outside the scope of their religious beliefs, and their unshakeable knowledge that anyone who disagrees with them is the enemy. Why were these schools allowed to proliferate? Because they didn’t require state funding and so saved money.
Of course, I’m not saying that Emmanuel college will be the training ground for warriors of a Christian Jihad, but I am saying that it will encourage exactly the sort of narrow-mindedness that will be music to the ears of a failing and flagging church. This will also give the lapdog Church of England a little more courage to yap at the government and make some demands of its own. The Church and the State were separated for a very good reason. Please don’t let it take the introduction of parliamentary bills calling for the abolition of abortion or removal of sex education from schools to remind us why that separation continues to be a good idea.
Thursday, 7 March 2002
The right to die
I was way too pessimistic (if you'll pardon the use of the word in this context) about what would happen to Ms Pretty. I still believe in the right to die, although personally I have to say that I would want to be kept alive no matter what. I just don't see why I should impose what I want for myself onto others.
A legal debate is currently taking place in the upper echelons of the justice system. Like many legal matters, it is being expressed in terms that have a tendency to send the casual observer (i.e. me) to sleep. Unlike many legal matters it is of the utmost importance to anyone who believes in personal liberty and the right to go about ones business without interference from the state so long as it does not conflict with the laws of the land. It is a debate concerning the right of an individual to take his or her own life versus the right of the state to stop one from doing so.
In fairness, this isn't a new debate. In this country I suppose one could point to the abolition of the statute that made suicide a criminal offence or, more recently, the case of Tony Bland. Mr. Bland was effectively killed in the Hillsborough tragedy, which saw hundreds of football fans crushed to death. Unfortunately for Mr. Bland, although his mind was dead his body was capable of life. That is to say, if he was hooked up to numerous machines that fed him, allowed his kidneys to function etc, then he was capable of life. This left him as little more than a warm body in a hospital bed surrounded by machinery. After 4 years of this (and I use the term loosely) existence, his parents went to court to win the right to switch off the machines that were feeding him. The courts said that they could on the basis that feeding him was a medical treatment from which he was drawing no benefit. Despite the actions of a meddlesome priest who's name isn't worth mentioning (his actions are though; he decided to bring a private prosecution for the murder of Mr. Bland. Apparently seeing your son halfway between life and death for 4 years isn't hell enough according to this man's God; only the addition of an accusation of murder produced sufficient suffering. Happily the courts made another correct decision by effectively telling him to take his high minded principles, fold them up neatly, and shove them as far up his backside as the hand of God would allow) Mr. Bland was allowed to die.
Yet that does not bring us up to date with the present situation. Mr. Bland had no voice of his own to say whether he wanted to live or die. Although the case established that the state doesn't have the right to keep people alive no matter what their quality of life may be, it said nothing about the withdrawal of treatment from somebody who was gaining some form of benefit from medical treatment (for example, one's life being prolonged by use of anti-cancer treatments) nor did it encompass a situation whereby someone needed assistance in ending their own life. There are two ongoing cases that discuss both of these situations. Firstly that of Diane Pretty and secondly a case involving a lady (her identity is unknown to anyone outside of the case itself) who is paralysed and wishes to have the ventilator that is keeping her alive switched off.
Let us look at the case of Ms Pretty. Should you be unacquainted with the facts of this case they are as follows; she has motor neuron disease and is in constant pain. She will soon be dead, having lived her last few years in agonizing pain. She wishes to take her own life as the pain is unbearable and will only get worse. However, such is the severity of her condition that she is unable to do this by herself. Therefore she has asked her husband to help her commit suicide. Should he do so he risks being prosecuted for aiding and abetting a suicide (because the law allows you to take your own life but will not allow anyone to help you). Naturally Ms Pretty does not want to be relieved from her pain at the cost of the man she loves being branded a criminal. To that end, she went to the courts and asked them to give a guarantee that her husband would not be prosecuted. The courts refused to do so. Ms Pretty is now taking her case to the European Courts but, should it not get heard in the next few months, she may well be dead anyway.
Personally speaking, I find the decision of the House of Lords a disgrace. How dare they tell Mr. Pretty that he cannot help his wife end her horrendous suffering. The main reason given seems to have been a variation on what is called the Floodgates argument. Namely that if they allowed him to assist his wife in committing suicide, numerous people may do the same. People may also commit murder and use this as a defence. Quite why they couldn't have simply distinguished the case on it's facts (which is essentially where a judge states that the judgement can only be applied to these exact set of circumstances, and so the case can't be used as a precedent) is beyond me. Instead, one woman is left to suffer because the state feels that it's own interests outweigh hers. By which I mean that the state seems to envisage that allowing Ms Pretty to take her own life with the help of her husband after it has been made clear by all parties that this is what is wanted would lead to some sort of breakdown in law and order.
And yet there is another side to that. You may be familiar with Dr Jack Kevorkian, an American doctor who specialised in assisted suicides. He helped over 100 people end their lives, all of whom were in circumstances similar to Ms Pretty. Kevorkian was acquitted of numerous murder charges before falling foul of his home state of Michigan. He had filmed himself giving the lethal injection to a Mr. Thomas Youk. The film found it's way onto '60 Minutes' (a US current affairs program) and on April 13 1999 Dr Kevorkian found himself convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 10-25 years. And my first reaction? Good.
I have few doubts that the people whom Kevorkian helped to die were settled in their wish to end their lives. I don't believe that he acted in any way out of a desire to kill people for the sake of killing (step forward Dr Harold Shipman). But the idea of a doctor (particularly a skilled self publicist such as Kevorkian) specialising in euthanasia...well, I'm sorry but there are rather too many shades of the Totalitarian state sanctioned murder of the mentally or physically handicapped in the 30's for my liking. Maybe this is something that contributed to the decision of the House of Lords.
The second case is being decided as I type this; Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss who is the head of the High Court's family decisions, and as such is faced with numerous cases involving the welfare of individuals and families, has described the case as "agonising" and has admitted that she fears getting emotionally involved in the matter. Essentially, the case runs thus; a woman is paralysed from the neck down. She is on a ventilator which allows her to breath. She is lucid and can communicate with those around her. And she communicated her wish to die.
She is undoubtedly gaining benefit from the continued medical treatment in that she is alive and not in constant searing pain because of it. However, she doesn't want to live her life like that and so wants to end it. Except that, being paralysed, she cannot. And so she must ask the courts for permission to have her life support switched off. The main line of opposition to this comes from the idea that she is not mentally competent to make this decision due to her extreme circumstances. Let's forget just how patronising that is for a moment and look at the implication; they seem to be saying that if you state you have a wish to die then you are not mentally sound enough to make that decision. Nothing like a good old catch 22 to establish that having control over your life is an illusion carefully maintained by the state. Thankfully (though probably unhappily for those who enjoy nothing more than claiming that the state wants to control every aspect of your life at all times) this argument has been given little weight in court. 2 psychiatrists and an independent advisor to the court have stated that she is competent to make the decision.
Yet I suspect that the ruling will go against her; doctors want her to try a rehabilitation program that could improve her quality of life and I would imagine that the court will state that she must at least try this to see if it alters her opinion at all. I could be wrong and I hope that I am, but the state seems unwilling to allow people to make their own informed decisions when one of the choices is their own death. I believe that our life and death should be something that remains unconditionally within our own control, and with luck this legal debate will enshrine that right in law.
A legal debate is currently taking place in the upper echelons of the justice system. Like many legal matters, it is being expressed in terms that have a tendency to send the casual observer (i.e. me) to sleep. Unlike many legal matters it is of the utmost importance to anyone who believes in personal liberty and the right to go about ones business without interference from the state so long as it does not conflict with the laws of the land. It is a debate concerning the right of an individual to take his or her own life versus the right of the state to stop one from doing so.
In fairness, this isn't a new debate. In this country I suppose one could point to the abolition of the statute that made suicide a criminal offence or, more recently, the case of Tony Bland. Mr. Bland was effectively killed in the Hillsborough tragedy, which saw hundreds of football fans crushed to death. Unfortunately for Mr. Bland, although his mind was dead his body was capable of life. That is to say, if he was hooked up to numerous machines that fed him, allowed his kidneys to function etc, then he was capable of life. This left him as little more than a warm body in a hospital bed surrounded by machinery. After 4 years of this (and I use the term loosely) existence, his parents went to court to win the right to switch off the machines that were feeding him. The courts said that they could on the basis that feeding him was a medical treatment from which he was drawing no benefit. Despite the actions of a meddlesome priest who's name isn't worth mentioning (his actions are though; he decided to bring a private prosecution for the murder of Mr. Bland. Apparently seeing your son halfway between life and death for 4 years isn't hell enough according to this man's God; only the addition of an accusation of murder produced sufficient suffering. Happily the courts made another correct decision by effectively telling him to take his high minded principles, fold them up neatly, and shove them as far up his backside as the hand of God would allow) Mr. Bland was allowed to die.
Yet that does not bring us up to date with the present situation. Mr. Bland had no voice of his own to say whether he wanted to live or die. Although the case established that the state doesn't have the right to keep people alive no matter what their quality of life may be, it said nothing about the withdrawal of treatment from somebody who was gaining some form of benefit from medical treatment (for example, one's life being prolonged by use of anti-cancer treatments) nor did it encompass a situation whereby someone needed assistance in ending their own life. There are two ongoing cases that discuss both of these situations. Firstly that of Diane Pretty and secondly a case involving a lady (her identity is unknown to anyone outside of the case itself) who is paralysed and wishes to have the ventilator that is keeping her alive switched off.
Let us look at the case of Ms Pretty. Should you be unacquainted with the facts of this case they are as follows; she has motor neuron disease and is in constant pain. She will soon be dead, having lived her last few years in agonizing pain. She wishes to take her own life as the pain is unbearable and will only get worse. However, such is the severity of her condition that she is unable to do this by herself. Therefore she has asked her husband to help her commit suicide. Should he do so he risks being prosecuted for aiding and abetting a suicide (because the law allows you to take your own life but will not allow anyone to help you). Naturally Ms Pretty does not want to be relieved from her pain at the cost of the man she loves being branded a criminal. To that end, she went to the courts and asked them to give a guarantee that her husband would not be prosecuted. The courts refused to do so. Ms Pretty is now taking her case to the European Courts but, should it not get heard in the next few months, she may well be dead anyway.
Personally speaking, I find the decision of the House of Lords a disgrace. How dare they tell Mr. Pretty that he cannot help his wife end her horrendous suffering. The main reason given seems to have been a variation on what is called the Floodgates argument. Namely that if they allowed him to assist his wife in committing suicide, numerous people may do the same. People may also commit murder and use this as a defence. Quite why they couldn't have simply distinguished the case on it's facts (which is essentially where a judge states that the judgement can only be applied to these exact set of circumstances, and so the case can't be used as a precedent) is beyond me. Instead, one woman is left to suffer because the state feels that it's own interests outweigh hers. By which I mean that the state seems to envisage that allowing Ms Pretty to take her own life with the help of her husband after it has been made clear by all parties that this is what is wanted would lead to some sort of breakdown in law and order.
And yet there is another side to that. You may be familiar with Dr Jack Kevorkian, an American doctor who specialised in assisted suicides. He helped over 100 people end their lives, all of whom were in circumstances similar to Ms Pretty. Kevorkian was acquitted of numerous murder charges before falling foul of his home state of Michigan. He had filmed himself giving the lethal injection to a Mr. Thomas Youk. The film found it's way onto '60 Minutes' (a US current affairs program) and on April 13 1999 Dr Kevorkian found himself convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 10-25 years. And my first reaction? Good.
I have few doubts that the people whom Kevorkian helped to die were settled in their wish to end their lives. I don't believe that he acted in any way out of a desire to kill people for the sake of killing (step forward Dr Harold Shipman). But the idea of a doctor (particularly a skilled self publicist such as Kevorkian) specialising in euthanasia...well, I'm sorry but there are rather too many shades of the Totalitarian state sanctioned murder of the mentally or physically handicapped in the 30's for my liking. Maybe this is something that contributed to the decision of the House of Lords.
The second case is being decided as I type this; Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss who is the head of the High Court's family decisions, and as such is faced with numerous cases involving the welfare of individuals and families, has described the case as "agonising" and has admitted that she fears getting emotionally involved in the matter. Essentially, the case runs thus; a woman is paralysed from the neck down. She is on a ventilator which allows her to breath. She is lucid and can communicate with those around her. And she communicated her wish to die.
She is undoubtedly gaining benefit from the continued medical treatment in that she is alive and not in constant searing pain because of it. However, she doesn't want to live her life like that and so wants to end it. Except that, being paralysed, she cannot. And so she must ask the courts for permission to have her life support switched off. The main line of opposition to this comes from the idea that she is not mentally competent to make this decision due to her extreme circumstances. Let's forget just how patronising that is for a moment and look at the implication; they seem to be saying that if you state you have a wish to die then you are not mentally sound enough to make that decision. Nothing like a good old catch 22 to establish that having control over your life is an illusion carefully maintained by the state. Thankfully (though probably unhappily for those who enjoy nothing more than claiming that the state wants to control every aspect of your life at all times) this argument has been given little weight in court. 2 psychiatrists and an independent advisor to the court have stated that she is competent to make the decision.
Yet I suspect that the ruling will go against her; doctors want her to try a rehabilitation program that could improve her quality of life and I would imagine that the court will state that she must at least try this to see if it alters her opinion at all. I could be wrong and I hope that I am, but the state seems unwilling to allow people to make their own informed decisions when one of the choices is their own death. I believe that our life and death should be something that remains unconditionally within our own control, and with luck this legal debate will enshrine that right in law.
Wednesday, 27 February 2002
Here is the News
A fairly uninspired browse through some of the main news stories of the day.
It occurs to me that I've written very little about the news recently, and that perhaps you may be getting rather sick of hearing tales of woe regarding pets, friends, and girlfriends. And so it was that I planned to sit down and review a few of the meatier items of note from the last few weeks. However I find that I am handicapped by one or two trifling factors. Not least of these is the following; nothing interesting has happened.
Well, that's not entirely true of course. Lots of things have popped up to stimulate my interest in the last month or two. It's just that something seems to have conspired to make them all seem as bowel achingly dull as possible. Lately the papers have been a torturous read, as if every journalist had suddenly and simultaneously decided to write in the style of Charles Dickens (i.e. dull and plodding; Dickens could quite easily take up 5 pages describing the turning of a door handle...). The only thing that was reported on by journalists who didn't seem to be somnambulant was the Amy Gehring trial, and frankly that's only because the whole affair was stage managed to resemble a twisted circus where the editor of the Daily Mail was the ringmaster. And besides which, I've already bleated on about her bouts of frenzied and drunken seduction. Should I be suspicious about this trend towards making important news seem as riveting as a football match involving Middlesbrough FC? And whether I should or not, what does that leave me with to actually talk about?
Well, I suppose one should really start with the aftermath of the Taliban. In Afghanistan itself there are now peacekeeping troops in place. This is of course a good thing. However, the peacekeeping troops are Para’s. This is of course a bad thing. It was the Para’s who were acting as peacekeepers on Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland. It was also the Para’s who had the lion's share of action in Sierra Leone, and acquitted themselves well. Finally, it was the Para’s who opened fire on a group of Afghanistani civilians last week, reportedly without provocation. In case I'm not making myself clear, Para’s make brilliant soldiers and appalling peacekeepers. From what I understand of Para training, their aggression and killing instinct are encouraged as much as possible within the constraints of military discipline. Asking them to fulfil the role of a peacekeeper is akin to using a starving tiger to guard some sheep.
And then of course we have Camp X-Ray, the holding facility for...well, they're not being called prisoners of war are they? I believe "Illegal combatants" is the current euphemism for the 500 or so men who are currently confined there. Does anybody know what has actually been happening to them, or what the reason for their continued detention is? Donald Rumsfeld, the American Secretary for Defence and for Americans in Favour of Behaving like a Pissed Up Redneck was adamant that the men held were dangerous and high ranking members of the Al-Quaida terror network. He talked grandly of secret military tribunals to try them (and of course to try Bin Laden and Omar Mohammed, but as they are still at large they remain unmentioned in most of the press; after all, we don't want to be reminded that the entire purpose behind the conflict in Afghanistan hasn't actually been achieved, do we?) Today the Pentagon shuffled it's collective feet like an embarrassed schoolboy as a spokeswoman admitted that none of those held are actually likely to face trial in the US (apart of course from the infamous American Taliban John Walker Lindh, who's committal proceedings occurred a few weeks ago; I won't go into detail about what happened at the committal, but suffice to say the prosecution lawyers seem determined to top the ratings of the OJ Simpson trial, and aren't shy about using pathetic media stunts to do so). Now that this has been admitted, the pressure will surely grow for these men to be sent to face trial in their own countries. Who knows, maybe the supposedly unsophisticated nations of the Middle East will do something that the US has been incapable of doing and actually charge them with a crime. Remember the outcry when the Taliban held those members of a Christian Aid group? At least the Taliban had the sense of due process to actually charge them with a crime pretty much straight away.
I wouldn't object to the cack-handed abuse of power in keeping these men out of sight but not quite out of mind (who would? It's difficult to shed many tears for men who supported a brutal regime or a self-obsessed terror group) were it not for the fact that it has been handled so badly. From the beginning the US has proclaimed that they are fighting in defence of freedom and democracy. Then they enforce it using methods that would not be out of place in a dictator’s paradise. If the west wants the rest of the world to follow the rules of "freedom and democracy" then we're going to have to as well, whether it suits our purpose or not. And if we're not, then we're going to have to learn to present it in a more palatable form to the rest of the world. Anyone who has a mindset of "Fuck them; it's out right as the victor to behave in this way; everyone else is just going to have to deal with it!" can look forward to a world of increasing tensions and further terrorist atrocities. The current methods of stamping out terrorism have the same effect as stamping on jelly; it doesn't get destroyed, it just fragments and spreads further.
Israel is also simmering nicely. After over a year of pretty much continuous pseudo civil war the Israeli people are starting to realise that Ariel Sharon's methods have not led to peace and never will do. I should also make it clear that, despite one or two accusations to the contrary, I do not hate the Israeli's, nor do I excuse the atrocities committed by the Palestinians. Both sides have suffered, both sides have committed terrible crimes, and both sides deserve a lasting peace settlement. Happily, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has provided a plausible plan for peace, which everyone has tentatively welcomed. So now all we have to do is wait for some extremists to do something truly abominable in order to derail any negotiations and we can get back to the daily business of hearing another report of a suicide bomber killing Israeli's followed by the deaths of Palestinian civilians in the retaliatory action taken. Both sides are as bad as each other in that respect. The most worrying thing is that the Israeli extremists number Ariel Sharon and half of his cabinet in their number. I have a sinking feeling that this conflict is similar to a hit West End musical; it will just run and run and run.
The Enron scandal also broke and singularly failed to engulf the governments of the US and UK in an avalanche of accusations concerning corruption and toadying to big business. It would have done so were it not for that fact that it involved economics, which is boring and therefore unimportant. No? Then why has the media simply reported the scandal as is, with no effort to break down the various (frankly baffling) elements of this sorry affair into something that would be understood by the majority of people? And why is it that the tidbits of coherent information that indicate corruption in and collusion between government and big business have been greeted with a "Yeah? And?" reaction by all and sundry?
Once again, it's my favourite scapegoat; apathy. No-one is really surprised to know that our government is corrupt to some degree, and we are happy to accept it as long as tomorrow is much the same as today. Enron got found out and shafted and is now a semi-worthless piece of intellectual property. Are we to believe that all other large companies play by the rules? Or that Enron was the only company with close ties to western governments? Of course not, and by doing nothing about it we are tacitly encouraging this sort of thing to continue. Oh, there have been various people who have said that nothing has been proved conclusively and so on and so forth. Usually these are the same people who are happy to repeat smears and slanders originating from the right wing press, and pass them off as pure fact, unpolluted by the "biased liberal media". Well, just as some of the accusations that have been thrown at the US and UK governments concerning their corruption are rather too rabidly left wing (I'm sorry, but I still don't believe in any governmental master plan to shaft the people of their country in order to line their own pockets; I believe in a series of greedy and rather weak willed individuals who are looking out for themselves), attempts to claim that Dubya and his pals have completely clean consciences show the same detachment from reality. Okay, innocent until proven guilty is one thing, but in burying ones head in the sand against the tide of circumstantial evidence (The vice president refusing to reveal details of meetings between himself and Enron where he is suspected to have offered them the chance to regulate themselves; had this happened then Enron would never have been caught. Not to mention Kenneth Lay's refusal to testify for fear of incriminating himself and a number of people in office, perhaps even Dubya himself) has the effect of making one seem wilfully and selectively ignorant.
The last big (ish) story that I want to look at caught my attention for no other reason than one of the main players is my local MP. I'm talking about the story that has rocked British politics in an extraordinarily boring way; the fall and further fall of the Transport Secretary Stephen Byers MP. Fate really does seem to hate Mr. Byers; not only is he lumbered with trying to sort out numerous problems not of his own making (the railways, the state of our roads, traffic congestion in cities) but he has inherited a government department consumed with a level of infighting and cattiness that has not been seen since the backstage footage of the Pop Idol Final was released. Basically, two senior civil servants in his department had a row. One (Martin Sixsmith) accused the other (Jo Moore) of forcing the civil servants (who do not work for the Labour Party but for the country; civil servants are theoretically apolitical) to do work for the Labour party itself. Both resigned, then Sixsmith declared that he had done no such thing and generally stamped his feet in a way that will be familiar to anyone who has ever seen a 4 year old in a huff. Poor old Mr. Byers then found himself having to explain just why the senior members of his department seemed to be a bunch of self aggrandising turds who were happy to use the time that should have been spent doing governmental work composing spiteful emails to undermine their colleagues. In one way this story is reassuring though; it's good to know that anyone in any walk of life is capable of acting in such an immature way. It gives me great comfort to know that if they can behave like that then so can I, and I don't have to grow up quite yet. If only I came away from every news report feeling so positive.
It occurs to me that I've written very little about the news recently, and that perhaps you may be getting rather sick of hearing tales of woe regarding pets, friends, and girlfriends. And so it was that I planned to sit down and review a few of the meatier items of note from the last few weeks. However I find that I am handicapped by one or two trifling factors. Not least of these is the following; nothing interesting has happened.
Well, that's not entirely true of course. Lots of things have popped up to stimulate my interest in the last month or two. It's just that something seems to have conspired to make them all seem as bowel achingly dull as possible. Lately the papers have been a torturous read, as if every journalist had suddenly and simultaneously decided to write in the style of Charles Dickens (i.e. dull and plodding; Dickens could quite easily take up 5 pages describing the turning of a door handle...). The only thing that was reported on by journalists who didn't seem to be somnambulant was the Amy Gehring trial, and frankly that's only because the whole affair was stage managed to resemble a twisted circus where the editor of the Daily Mail was the ringmaster. And besides which, I've already bleated on about her bouts of frenzied and drunken seduction. Should I be suspicious about this trend towards making important news seem as riveting as a football match involving Middlesbrough FC? And whether I should or not, what does that leave me with to actually talk about?
Well, I suppose one should really start with the aftermath of the Taliban. In Afghanistan itself there are now peacekeeping troops in place. This is of course a good thing. However, the peacekeeping troops are Para’s. This is of course a bad thing. It was the Para’s who were acting as peacekeepers on Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland. It was also the Para’s who had the lion's share of action in Sierra Leone, and acquitted themselves well. Finally, it was the Para’s who opened fire on a group of Afghanistani civilians last week, reportedly without provocation. In case I'm not making myself clear, Para’s make brilliant soldiers and appalling peacekeepers. From what I understand of Para training, their aggression and killing instinct are encouraged as much as possible within the constraints of military discipline. Asking them to fulfil the role of a peacekeeper is akin to using a starving tiger to guard some sheep.
And then of course we have Camp X-Ray, the holding facility for...well, they're not being called prisoners of war are they? I believe "Illegal combatants" is the current euphemism for the 500 or so men who are currently confined there. Does anybody know what has actually been happening to them, or what the reason for their continued detention is? Donald Rumsfeld, the American Secretary for Defence and for Americans in Favour of Behaving like a Pissed Up Redneck was adamant that the men held were dangerous and high ranking members of the Al-Quaida terror network. He talked grandly of secret military tribunals to try them (and of course to try Bin Laden and Omar Mohammed, but as they are still at large they remain unmentioned in most of the press; after all, we don't want to be reminded that the entire purpose behind the conflict in Afghanistan hasn't actually been achieved, do we?) Today the Pentagon shuffled it's collective feet like an embarrassed schoolboy as a spokeswoman admitted that none of those held are actually likely to face trial in the US (apart of course from the infamous American Taliban John Walker Lindh, who's committal proceedings occurred a few weeks ago; I won't go into detail about what happened at the committal, but suffice to say the prosecution lawyers seem determined to top the ratings of the OJ Simpson trial, and aren't shy about using pathetic media stunts to do so). Now that this has been admitted, the pressure will surely grow for these men to be sent to face trial in their own countries. Who knows, maybe the supposedly unsophisticated nations of the Middle East will do something that the US has been incapable of doing and actually charge them with a crime. Remember the outcry when the Taliban held those members of a Christian Aid group? At least the Taliban had the sense of due process to actually charge them with a crime pretty much straight away.
I wouldn't object to the cack-handed abuse of power in keeping these men out of sight but not quite out of mind (who would? It's difficult to shed many tears for men who supported a brutal regime or a self-obsessed terror group) were it not for the fact that it has been handled so badly. From the beginning the US has proclaimed that they are fighting in defence of freedom and democracy. Then they enforce it using methods that would not be out of place in a dictator’s paradise. If the west wants the rest of the world to follow the rules of "freedom and democracy" then we're going to have to as well, whether it suits our purpose or not. And if we're not, then we're going to have to learn to present it in a more palatable form to the rest of the world. Anyone who has a mindset of "Fuck them; it's out right as the victor to behave in this way; everyone else is just going to have to deal with it!" can look forward to a world of increasing tensions and further terrorist atrocities. The current methods of stamping out terrorism have the same effect as stamping on jelly; it doesn't get destroyed, it just fragments and spreads further.
Israel is also simmering nicely. After over a year of pretty much continuous pseudo civil war the Israeli people are starting to realise that Ariel Sharon's methods have not led to peace and never will do. I should also make it clear that, despite one or two accusations to the contrary, I do not hate the Israeli's, nor do I excuse the atrocities committed by the Palestinians. Both sides have suffered, both sides have committed terrible crimes, and both sides deserve a lasting peace settlement. Happily, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has provided a plausible plan for peace, which everyone has tentatively welcomed. So now all we have to do is wait for some extremists to do something truly abominable in order to derail any negotiations and we can get back to the daily business of hearing another report of a suicide bomber killing Israeli's followed by the deaths of Palestinian civilians in the retaliatory action taken. Both sides are as bad as each other in that respect. The most worrying thing is that the Israeli extremists number Ariel Sharon and half of his cabinet in their number. I have a sinking feeling that this conflict is similar to a hit West End musical; it will just run and run and run.
The Enron scandal also broke and singularly failed to engulf the governments of the US and UK in an avalanche of accusations concerning corruption and toadying to big business. It would have done so were it not for that fact that it involved economics, which is boring and therefore unimportant. No? Then why has the media simply reported the scandal as is, with no effort to break down the various (frankly baffling) elements of this sorry affair into something that would be understood by the majority of people? And why is it that the tidbits of coherent information that indicate corruption in and collusion between government and big business have been greeted with a "Yeah? And?" reaction by all and sundry?
Once again, it's my favourite scapegoat; apathy. No-one is really surprised to know that our government is corrupt to some degree, and we are happy to accept it as long as tomorrow is much the same as today. Enron got found out and shafted and is now a semi-worthless piece of intellectual property. Are we to believe that all other large companies play by the rules? Or that Enron was the only company with close ties to western governments? Of course not, and by doing nothing about it we are tacitly encouraging this sort of thing to continue. Oh, there have been various people who have said that nothing has been proved conclusively and so on and so forth. Usually these are the same people who are happy to repeat smears and slanders originating from the right wing press, and pass them off as pure fact, unpolluted by the "biased liberal media". Well, just as some of the accusations that have been thrown at the US and UK governments concerning their corruption are rather too rabidly left wing (I'm sorry, but I still don't believe in any governmental master plan to shaft the people of their country in order to line their own pockets; I believe in a series of greedy and rather weak willed individuals who are looking out for themselves), attempts to claim that Dubya and his pals have completely clean consciences show the same detachment from reality. Okay, innocent until proven guilty is one thing, but in burying ones head in the sand against the tide of circumstantial evidence (The vice president refusing to reveal details of meetings between himself and Enron where he is suspected to have offered them the chance to regulate themselves; had this happened then Enron would never have been caught. Not to mention Kenneth Lay's refusal to testify for fear of incriminating himself and a number of people in office, perhaps even Dubya himself) has the effect of making one seem wilfully and selectively ignorant.
The last big (ish) story that I want to look at caught my attention for no other reason than one of the main players is my local MP. I'm talking about the story that has rocked British politics in an extraordinarily boring way; the fall and further fall of the Transport Secretary Stephen Byers MP. Fate really does seem to hate Mr. Byers; not only is he lumbered with trying to sort out numerous problems not of his own making (the railways, the state of our roads, traffic congestion in cities) but he has inherited a government department consumed with a level of infighting and cattiness that has not been seen since the backstage footage of the Pop Idol Final was released. Basically, two senior civil servants in his department had a row. One (Martin Sixsmith) accused the other (Jo Moore) of forcing the civil servants (who do not work for the Labour Party but for the country; civil servants are theoretically apolitical) to do work for the Labour party itself. Both resigned, then Sixsmith declared that he had done no such thing and generally stamped his feet in a way that will be familiar to anyone who has ever seen a 4 year old in a huff. Poor old Mr. Byers then found himself having to explain just why the senior members of his department seemed to be a bunch of self aggrandising turds who were happy to use the time that should have been spent doing governmental work composing spiteful emails to undermine their colleagues. In one way this story is reassuring though; it's good to know that anyone in any walk of life is capable of acting in such an immature way. It gives me great comfort to know that if they can behave like that then so can I, and I don't have to grow up quite yet. If only I came away from every news report feeling so positive.
Thursday, 21 February 2002
Animal Nitrate
I'm afraid I'm still guilty of a ridiculous level of love for all things cute and fluffy.
Two things happened that had an effect on me this past weekend. Firstly a friendship that has lasted since childhood ended. Secondly my cat, Ali, died. Who wants to guess which of the two was more upsetting? I’ll give you a clue; I conform to the stereotype of England being a nation of animal lovers.
Many moons ago I wrote about how we seem to be far more horrified at the mistreatment of animals than we are at the mistreatment of people. I’ve seen and heard little or nothing to alter my views regarding this. For example, after the main body of the Afghanistan conflict (it wasn’t a war apparently; to echo a better man, a war is when two armies are fighting...) had ended there was a huge relief effort aimed at improving the lot of the Afghanistani people. And yet donations to charitable causes for the populace were dwarfed by contributions to a charity that concerned itself with the welfare of Marjan. Marjan was the one eyed lion that had eked out a miserable and tortured existence in Kabul zoo for the last 23 years. So in the midst of a sea of human suffering, our heartstrings were plucked and played by the plight of a solitary beast.
I should make it very clear that I am in no way looking down on the huge number of people who find animals more agreeable than people. Whilst scanning through the news yesterday a story broke involving a young boy being battered and burnt to death. Let us be in no doubt at all that this was a truly horrific crime. Just beneath it on the Ananova website was a story of a Czech man who was sentenced to 6 months in prison for kicking a hedgehog to death. Suffice to say that I would have been happy for the former crime to be inflicted on the perpetrator of the latter.
What is it about the human condition that allows us to hear reports of appalling human suffering with something horribly close to tolerance whilst we cannot condemn those who cause pain to animals fast enough? This is even reflected in our charities; the main charity for the protection has a royal charter, which although it counts for little in this day and age does give the RSPCA a certain air of esteem. Contrast this with the leading UK charity concerned with the welfare of children, the NSPCC. They are merely a national society. So our monarchs (Prince Phillip notwithstanding of course; the irony of his being patron of the World Wildlife Fund has been oft commented on) are apparently more concerned with animals than with children (which explains quite a lot, not least of which is the fact that our future king has become an old hippy with spiritualist leanings and one or two pointed views on architecture; if only Phillip had shown as much attention to his son as he has to the various species that he’s been helping become extinct).
It would seem that our attitude toward animals stems from a somewhat unholy alliance of duty to protect those that are weaker than ourselves, compassion for those who have suffered, guilt for the fact that the suffering has invariably been at the hands of man, and selective sentimentality. I name the latter with a certain amount of trepidation and self-disgust, as I am guilty of it myself. This sentimentality comes from our anthropomorphication of cute animals. We are less eager to put our hands in our pockets to save endangered insects (unless they are pretty or fluttery, preferably both), fish (the stocks of cod in the North Sea and Atlantic have plummeted, but as long as we get out fish and chips then everything is ok, right?), or birds and mammals that occupy the less attractive end of the looks spectrum (if every hyena on the face of the planet was to disappear tomorrow I don’t think anyone would mourn too much, do you?).
Of course, all of the above could quite easily be applied to people as well with the exception of sentimentality (except perhaps toward children, but as I am not a parent I find it difficult to relate to that mindset; in my world children are there to cry noisily, make awful smells, and ask banal questions. In all respects they are little different to French tourists...) and it is that final element that makes the crucial difference. I think we find it easier to sympathise with the plight of an animal because we can impriny our own idea’s of it’s characteristic onto it regardless of how close this may be to reality. For instance, let’s return briefly to Marjan. A lion is regarded as a noble beast, the king of the jungle. It simply isn’t right for this regal feline to have suffered so much. Therefore it seemed proper to try and restore it’s sense of dignity in it’s last days.
That all sounds about right, does it not? Yet I have seen footage of these ‘noble beasts’ behaving in a decidedly ignoble way; would we use the same metaphors of royalty if we were more familiar with them as bloody great big pussycats that produce echoing squitty noises when emptying their bowels? Or if we had seen one drag it’s backside along the ground in much the same way that a dog might do (and incidentally, the next time you do see a dog do that, pay close attention to the owner; you will never again see such a look of acute embarrassment in your life...)? Okay, with our Royals it’s not the best comparison but you get the gist.
It’s not so easy to make these simplistic projections of emotion onto people, and if it is tried then it doesn’t sit easy with us. Again, the conflict in Afghanistan provides a recent example of this. I talked to many of my friends about Afghanistan (and doubtless bored them all senseless in doing so) and there was a certain amount of ambivalence about the future of the Afghanistani people. In general, we wondered why they had not done more to rid themselves of the oppressive Taliban government, and why they had tolerated the insidious presence of the terrorists who had brought American retribution upon them all. As to the starvation that they were enduring, many people wondered why they didn’t just leave (because as a man named Sam Kinison once said “You live in the middle of a desert! There wouldn’t be any famine...IF YOU PEOPLE LIVED WHERE THE FOOD IS!!”). We are happy to think such things, yet the people of Afghanistan were just as caged as Marjan. Pakistan, Iran, and the various former Soviet republics are not exactly teeming with opportunities for fleeing Afghanstani’s. The refugee internment camps in Australia and the UK are a fairly clear indication of what the West thinks about anyone who had the courage to flee. And make no mistake about how courageous or desperate they had to be to attempt to leave. They ran the risk of execution at the hands of the Taliban or the Northern Alliance, or being robbed by the various tribesmen on the Pakistani and Iranian borders, not to mention the incredible risks involved in sailing for days to get to Indonesia or Australia. No one expected an animal to have done this, but we believe a person to have been in some way negligent if they didn’t.
In truth, I’m not even sure that valuing animal welfare above that of people is such a bad thing. Obviously if taken to extremes it is (Hitler’s love of his dogs is an established historical fact; his regard for Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and, by the end of the war, people in general is something of an oxymoron) but in general I’m inclined to think that anything that encourages us to feel compassion toward something that is not ourselves can’t really be faulted. I certainly don’t feel guilty about feeling relieved that my former friend is out of my life whilst sobbing at the prospect of never seeing Ali again. Maybe we should stop trying to compare sympathy for animals with sympathy for our fellow man and recognise them as different things. Hopefully we will then stop trying to establish a hierarchy of consideration and get on with the important business of treating every living thing with respect and empathy. And following that we can go on a flying pig hunt because, let’s face it, that is just as realistic a prospect.
Two things happened that had an effect on me this past weekend. Firstly a friendship that has lasted since childhood ended. Secondly my cat, Ali, died. Who wants to guess which of the two was more upsetting? I’ll give you a clue; I conform to the stereotype of England being a nation of animal lovers.
Many moons ago I wrote about how we seem to be far more horrified at the mistreatment of animals than we are at the mistreatment of people. I’ve seen and heard little or nothing to alter my views regarding this. For example, after the main body of the Afghanistan conflict (it wasn’t a war apparently; to echo a better man, a war is when two armies are fighting...) had ended there was a huge relief effort aimed at improving the lot of the Afghanistani people. And yet donations to charitable causes for the populace were dwarfed by contributions to a charity that concerned itself with the welfare of Marjan. Marjan was the one eyed lion that had eked out a miserable and tortured existence in Kabul zoo for the last 23 years. So in the midst of a sea of human suffering, our heartstrings were plucked and played by the plight of a solitary beast.
I should make it very clear that I am in no way looking down on the huge number of people who find animals more agreeable than people. Whilst scanning through the news yesterday a story broke involving a young boy being battered and burnt to death. Let us be in no doubt at all that this was a truly horrific crime. Just beneath it on the Ananova website was a story of a Czech man who was sentenced to 6 months in prison for kicking a hedgehog to death. Suffice to say that I would have been happy for the former crime to be inflicted on the perpetrator of the latter.
What is it about the human condition that allows us to hear reports of appalling human suffering with something horribly close to tolerance whilst we cannot condemn those who cause pain to animals fast enough? This is even reflected in our charities; the main charity for the protection has a royal charter, which although it counts for little in this day and age does give the RSPCA a certain air of esteem. Contrast this with the leading UK charity concerned with the welfare of children, the NSPCC. They are merely a national society. So our monarchs (Prince Phillip notwithstanding of course; the irony of his being patron of the World Wildlife Fund has been oft commented on) are apparently more concerned with animals than with children (which explains quite a lot, not least of which is the fact that our future king has become an old hippy with spiritualist leanings and one or two pointed views on architecture; if only Phillip had shown as much attention to his son as he has to the various species that he’s been helping become extinct).
It would seem that our attitude toward animals stems from a somewhat unholy alliance of duty to protect those that are weaker than ourselves, compassion for those who have suffered, guilt for the fact that the suffering has invariably been at the hands of man, and selective sentimentality. I name the latter with a certain amount of trepidation and self-disgust, as I am guilty of it myself. This sentimentality comes from our anthropomorphication of cute animals. We are less eager to put our hands in our pockets to save endangered insects (unless they are pretty or fluttery, preferably both), fish (the stocks of cod in the North Sea and Atlantic have plummeted, but as long as we get out fish and chips then everything is ok, right?), or birds and mammals that occupy the less attractive end of the looks spectrum (if every hyena on the face of the planet was to disappear tomorrow I don’t think anyone would mourn too much, do you?).
Of course, all of the above could quite easily be applied to people as well with the exception of sentimentality (except perhaps toward children, but as I am not a parent I find it difficult to relate to that mindset; in my world children are there to cry noisily, make awful smells, and ask banal questions. In all respects they are little different to French tourists...) and it is that final element that makes the crucial difference. I think we find it easier to sympathise with the plight of an animal because we can impriny our own idea’s of it’s characteristic onto it regardless of how close this may be to reality. For instance, let’s return briefly to Marjan. A lion is regarded as a noble beast, the king of the jungle. It simply isn’t right for this regal feline to have suffered so much. Therefore it seemed proper to try and restore it’s sense of dignity in it’s last days.
That all sounds about right, does it not? Yet I have seen footage of these ‘noble beasts’ behaving in a decidedly ignoble way; would we use the same metaphors of royalty if we were more familiar with them as bloody great big pussycats that produce echoing squitty noises when emptying their bowels? Or if we had seen one drag it’s backside along the ground in much the same way that a dog might do (and incidentally, the next time you do see a dog do that, pay close attention to the owner; you will never again see such a look of acute embarrassment in your life...)? Okay, with our Royals it’s not the best comparison but you get the gist.
It’s not so easy to make these simplistic projections of emotion onto people, and if it is tried then it doesn’t sit easy with us. Again, the conflict in Afghanistan provides a recent example of this. I talked to many of my friends about Afghanistan (and doubtless bored them all senseless in doing so) and there was a certain amount of ambivalence about the future of the Afghanistani people. In general, we wondered why they had not done more to rid themselves of the oppressive Taliban government, and why they had tolerated the insidious presence of the terrorists who had brought American retribution upon them all. As to the starvation that they were enduring, many people wondered why they didn’t just leave (because as a man named Sam Kinison once said “You live in the middle of a desert! There wouldn’t be any famine...IF YOU PEOPLE LIVED WHERE THE FOOD IS!!”). We are happy to think such things, yet the people of Afghanistan were just as caged as Marjan. Pakistan, Iran, and the various former Soviet republics are not exactly teeming with opportunities for fleeing Afghanstani’s. The refugee internment camps in Australia and the UK are a fairly clear indication of what the West thinks about anyone who had the courage to flee. And make no mistake about how courageous or desperate they had to be to attempt to leave. They ran the risk of execution at the hands of the Taliban or the Northern Alliance, or being robbed by the various tribesmen on the Pakistani and Iranian borders, not to mention the incredible risks involved in sailing for days to get to Indonesia or Australia. No one expected an animal to have done this, but we believe a person to have been in some way negligent if they didn’t.
In truth, I’m not even sure that valuing animal welfare above that of people is such a bad thing. Obviously if taken to extremes it is (Hitler’s love of his dogs is an established historical fact; his regard for Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and, by the end of the war, people in general is something of an oxymoron) but in general I’m inclined to think that anything that encourages us to feel compassion toward something that is not ourselves can’t really be faulted. I certainly don’t feel guilty about feeling relieved that my former friend is out of my life whilst sobbing at the prospect of never seeing Ali again. Maybe we should stop trying to compare sympathy for animals with sympathy for our fellow man and recognise them as different things. Hopefully we will then stop trying to establish a hierarchy of consideration and get on with the important business of treating every living thing with respect and empathy. And following that we can go on a flying pig hunt because, let’s face it, that is just as realistic a prospect.
Friday, 15 February 2002
I Know Who My Friends Are
I had just fallen out with one of my oldest friends when I wrote this. By writing it, I managed to piss of most of the rest of my friends. Whoops.
I've always been told that friendship is a good thing, a gift to be valued. Your friends should be the family that you can actually choose. A true friend will always be there to support you, and a group of friends are bound together by ties as strong as blood. History is littered with great and famous friendships that have enriched the world through their strength; Churchill and Roosevelt were good friends. Had they not been, who knows if the US would have entered WWII or if they would have continued their isolationist policies? Coleridge and Wordsworth were good friends. Without the influence of one on the other then generations of people might never have known that a man has wondered lonely as a cloud. The Ancient Mariner might never have troubled us (which if I'm honest is not necessarily a bad thing...).
Yet I've also heard it said that your friends drag you down. That friendship can be a prison and the expectations of your friends are your jailors. Should you ever wish to soar off and explore what you believe to be your full potential your friends will curse your name for abandoning them. The full capacity of friendship becomes the capacity to hate that person. History is again most instructive on this aspect; Julius Caesar was supposedly betrayed by his friend Brutus because of his desire to be King of Rome. In rather more recent and mundane times Tony Blair risks being knocked off the political moral high ground by his continued support and repeated rehabilitation of Peter Mandelson, a man who is gaffe-prone and unpopular. This is to say nothing of the 'Old Boys Network', the main public achievements of which have been to shield certain persons from too much scrutiny only to throw them to the wolves if they become a liability (no doubt Lord Archer and Jonathon Aitkin could explain just how dreadful a thing this is!)
Which of these two statements is true? Is there a grain of truth in both? Or are neither of them particularly relevant, mere idealisations of man's need for companionship? As I have nothing better to do today I'm going to make a (probably vain) effort to decipher this particular mystery.
Before making a start, I'll make a confession of intent. One of my very best friends betrayed me in about as comprehensive a manner as it is possible to do last weekend. He did something that he knew would cause me immense emotional pain and he did so wilfully and deliberately in the full knowledge of what the result would be, and he did so because he wanted to know what it felt like to do so. His behaviour is utterly contemptible by any reasonable standards and I think it's reasonable to say that he is not my favourite person in the world right now. So if by the end of this I have concluded that one's friends are vile and selfish scum who no more deserve compassion than a fat man deserves a girlfriend...well, at least you know of my bias before we get started!
The main example that I intend to use is the friendship between 2 powerful men; George W. Bush (I said powerful, I didn't say anything about being especially bright...) and Kenneth Lay. The former needs no introduction (except possibly to remind his raddled brain of who he is). The latter is the former chairman of Enron, the energy company that has recently been revealed to have done for financial honesty what Enoch Powell did for race relations. Some may question the validity of the friendship between these two; after all, in the murky world of politics friendship comes second to ambition. Yet I believe that there is a strong element of mutual admiration between these two that could be described as friendship, and so it is with these two that I will proceed.
Firstly, if we rewind a few years to when dear old Dubya was running for the governorship of The Lone Star State. Lay (or Kenny Boy as Dubya refers to him) ensured that a lot of money went into Dubya's campaign fund. There is nothing unusual about this in politics of course, but once Bush was elected he returned the favour with bells on. Enron was given pretty much free reign to do what it waned in Texas. In politics, favours are usually given out begrudgingly and are only awarded in the first place because a company has contributed to a campaign fund. Even then, a politician is careful with what he promises because chances are the company or individual will have donated to the opposition as well (as indeed Enron did, though the political party accounts show that the Republicans were the more favoured to the tune of almost $1 million).
The favour that George Bush bestowed was that he trusted Enron to keep their own house in order. When one bears in mind that most politicians are almost porn star-like in their willingness to jump into bed with big business, Dubya's decision to leave Enron to their own devices whilst he got on with the important business of ensuring Texas had the one of the highest execution rates in the world is surprising to say the least. The personal friendship between Lay and Bush seems to provide many of the answers as to why this decision was made.
In a strange sort of way, this shows how friendship between two people can make them greater than the sum of their parts. Without the staunch and unwavering support of the powerful businessman Lay, the political career of Bush (a reformed alcoholic who was even then regarded as something of a simpleton) might have been stillborn. Without the support of Bush, Lay's company might have had to subject itself to greater regulation and control by state and federal government. The one could not have been achieved without the other. The friendship and trust between the two further showed itself by the amount of time the two men spent in each other's company.
Yet things are not quite the same now. The rosy future that the friendship between these men offered seems to have disintegrated for at least one of them. Dubya's trust in Enron to be their own policeman has proved misplaced to say the least. The favour shown to Enron was abused to a frightening degree. As a result of Dubya showing trust and friendship in Lay, a mighty company has been bankrupted by it's own dishonesty. Thousands of people have lost vast amounts of money via their pensions or sharesave scheme. The abuse of friendship has also damaged Bush himself; accusations of cosying up to big business at the expense of the rights of the average man are flying thick and fast at his government, perhaps justifiably so. Yet for all I am a critic of Bush, I don't believe he is an evil man. I don't accept that he extended such trust to Lay knowing full well that Enron would make a mockery of it. I am of the impression that he is genuinely shocked at the extent of Enron's questionable activities and is upset that his friend has betrayed his trust in such a manner and it would seem over such a period of time.
If the relationship between Dubya and Lay was one of convenience then we could be assured that Mr. Lay would be the second Enron executive to commit suicide under the kind of circumstances that keep conspiracy theorists in business. Yet Bush seems to be honouring his friendship with the man who has made his government look like fools, and corrupt fools at that. He was given an easy ride at the inquiry into the collapse of Enron. There is no question that he will suffer any form of censure in terms of criminal or civil actions. Every possible scrap of information that shows Lay as an innocent is being hurled at the media (today the papers make a big deal about the evidence given by Sherren Watkins who was the whistleblower on Enron's financial crisis; she is vociferous in her belief that Kenneth Lay was kept in the dark and was not to blame). Though it is perhaps in Dubya's best interests to abandon Mr. Lay, he is not doing so.
Will the two men still be friends in the future? Probably. I have no doubt that things will be worked out between my friend and I as we have been through a lot together and are simply too fond of each other to allow one incident to make us enemies, and I would expect things to be no different between Lay and Bush. I think what I am saying in all of this is that we should certainly love and cherish our friends, and should always do whatever is within our power to help them. But don't trust them, at least not completely. When someone is faced with a choice of advancement of oneself at the expense of a friend then it would appear we will do so 9 times out of 10.
I've always been told that friendship is a good thing, a gift to be valued. Your friends should be the family that you can actually choose. A true friend will always be there to support you, and a group of friends are bound together by ties as strong as blood. History is littered with great and famous friendships that have enriched the world through their strength; Churchill and Roosevelt were good friends. Had they not been, who knows if the US would have entered WWII or if they would have continued their isolationist policies? Coleridge and Wordsworth were good friends. Without the influence of one on the other then generations of people might never have known that a man has wondered lonely as a cloud. The Ancient Mariner might never have troubled us (which if I'm honest is not necessarily a bad thing...).
Yet I've also heard it said that your friends drag you down. That friendship can be a prison and the expectations of your friends are your jailors. Should you ever wish to soar off and explore what you believe to be your full potential your friends will curse your name for abandoning them. The full capacity of friendship becomes the capacity to hate that person. History is again most instructive on this aspect; Julius Caesar was supposedly betrayed by his friend Brutus because of his desire to be King of Rome. In rather more recent and mundane times Tony Blair risks being knocked off the political moral high ground by his continued support and repeated rehabilitation of Peter Mandelson, a man who is gaffe-prone and unpopular. This is to say nothing of the 'Old Boys Network', the main public achievements of which have been to shield certain persons from too much scrutiny only to throw them to the wolves if they become a liability (no doubt Lord Archer and Jonathon Aitkin could explain just how dreadful a thing this is!)
Which of these two statements is true? Is there a grain of truth in both? Or are neither of them particularly relevant, mere idealisations of man's need for companionship? As I have nothing better to do today I'm going to make a (probably vain) effort to decipher this particular mystery.
Before making a start, I'll make a confession of intent. One of my very best friends betrayed me in about as comprehensive a manner as it is possible to do last weekend. He did something that he knew would cause me immense emotional pain and he did so wilfully and deliberately in the full knowledge of what the result would be, and he did so because he wanted to know what it felt like to do so. His behaviour is utterly contemptible by any reasonable standards and I think it's reasonable to say that he is not my favourite person in the world right now. So if by the end of this I have concluded that one's friends are vile and selfish scum who no more deserve compassion than a fat man deserves a girlfriend...well, at least you know of my bias before we get started!
The main example that I intend to use is the friendship between 2 powerful men; George W. Bush (I said powerful, I didn't say anything about being especially bright...) and Kenneth Lay. The former needs no introduction (except possibly to remind his raddled brain of who he is). The latter is the former chairman of Enron, the energy company that has recently been revealed to have done for financial honesty what Enoch Powell did for race relations. Some may question the validity of the friendship between these two; after all, in the murky world of politics friendship comes second to ambition. Yet I believe that there is a strong element of mutual admiration between these two that could be described as friendship, and so it is with these two that I will proceed.
Firstly, if we rewind a few years to when dear old Dubya was running for the governorship of The Lone Star State. Lay (or Kenny Boy as Dubya refers to him) ensured that a lot of money went into Dubya's campaign fund. There is nothing unusual about this in politics of course, but once Bush was elected he returned the favour with bells on. Enron was given pretty much free reign to do what it waned in Texas. In politics, favours are usually given out begrudgingly and are only awarded in the first place because a company has contributed to a campaign fund. Even then, a politician is careful with what he promises because chances are the company or individual will have donated to the opposition as well (as indeed Enron did, though the political party accounts show that the Republicans were the more favoured to the tune of almost $1 million).
The favour that George Bush bestowed was that he trusted Enron to keep their own house in order. When one bears in mind that most politicians are almost porn star-like in their willingness to jump into bed with big business, Dubya's decision to leave Enron to their own devices whilst he got on with the important business of ensuring Texas had the one of the highest execution rates in the world is surprising to say the least. The personal friendship between Lay and Bush seems to provide many of the answers as to why this decision was made.
In a strange sort of way, this shows how friendship between two people can make them greater than the sum of their parts. Without the staunch and unwavering support of the powerful businessman Lay, the political career of Bush (a reformed alcoholic who was even then regarded as something of a simpleton) might have been stillborn. Without the support of Bush, Lay's company might have had to subject itself to greater regulation and control by state and federal government. The one could not have been achieved without the other. The friendship and trust between the two further showed itself by the amount of time the two men spent in each other's company.
Yet things are not quite the same now. The rosy future that the friendship between these men offered seems to have disintegrated for at least one of them. Dubya's trust in Enron to be their own policeman has proved misplaced to say the least. The favour shown to Enron was abused to a frightening degree. As a result of Dubya showing trust and friendship in Lay, a mighty company has been bankrupted by it's own dishonesty. Thousands of people have lost vast amounts of money via their pensions or sharesave scheme. The abuse of friendship has also damaged Bush himself; accusations of cosying up to big business at the expense of the rights of the average man are flying thick and fast at his government, perhaps justifiably so. Yet for all I am a critic of Bush, I don't believe he is an evil man. I don't accept that he extended such trust to Lay knowing full well that Enron would make a mockery of it. I am of the impression that he is genuinely shocked at the extent of Enron's questionable activities and is upset that his friend has betrayed his trust in such a manner and it would seem over such a period of time.
If the relationship between Dubya and Lay was one of convenience then we could be assured that Mr. Lay would be the second Enron executive to commit suicide under the kind of circumstances that keep conspiracy theorists in business. Yet Bush seems to be honouring his friendship with the man who has made his government look like fools, and corrupt fools at that. He was given an easy ride at the inquiry into the collapse of Enron. There is no question that he will suffer any form of censure in terms of criminal or civil actions. Every possible scrap of information that shows Lay as an innocent is being hurled at the media (today the papers make a big deal about the evidence given by Sherren Watkins who was the whistleblower on Enron's financial crisis; she is vociferous in her belief that Kenneth Lay was kept in the dark and was not to blame). Though it is perhaps in Dubya's best interests to abandon Mr. Lay, he is not doing so.
Will the two men still be friends in the future? Probably. I have no doubt that things will be worked out between my friend and I as we have been through a lot together and are simply too fond of each other to allow one incident to make us enemies, and I would expect things to be no different between Lay and Bush. I think what I am saying in all of this is that we should certainly love and cherish our friends, and should always do whatever is within our power to help them. But don't trust them, at least not completely. When someone is faced with a choice of advancement of oneself at the expense of a friend then it would appear we will do so 9 times out of 10.
Tuesday, 5 February 2002
Hey, teacher; Leave them kids alone
I do find I keep commenting on cases where teachers are accused of shagging their pupils. Is this social commentary, or barely disguised frustration that none of my teachers were even remotely fit, let alone promiscuous?
The Amy Gehring case finally reached a climax (if you'll excuse the pun) yesterday. If you are unfamiliar with this lovely little case then I shall briefly recap; a Canadian Supply teacher (the aforementioned Miss Gehring) was accused of seducing 3 teenaged (i.e. 14-15 year old) boys. Various other details fleshed out the trial, such as the salacious reporting of 26 year old Miss Gehring allegedly groping and kissing a young female pupil at the same party that she was supposed to have slept with at least one of the boys (the Daily Mail in particular reported on this bout of bisexuality with a luridity that must have set 50 and 60 year old saliva glands across the country into overdrive...). We were also treated to revelations that Gehring herself could not actually remember if she had slept with one of the boys at a party but had taken the Morning After pill as a precaution because "...I heard a rumour that I had had sex with him". After a trial lasting a few weeks, and after Miss Gehring was shown to be pitiful rather than predatory, she was found Not Guilty on 3 charges of Indecent Assault, with the judge having earlier directed the jury to lodge a Not Guilty verdict on the 4th charge.
The case and it's conduct have raised a few questions about both the law and about morality (as well as leaving me wondering why school parties these days seem to be so much better than they were when I was at school; we were happy with a few awkward sticky fumblings at age 15. Shagging a teacher was never on the cards for most of us, although in fairness most of them were post menopause anyway...). For example, this was not the first time Gehring had faced allegations of this nature. She had been investigated for "inappropriate behaviour" at another school and the agency that employed her, TimePlan, had been warned that she posed a risk to children. Should this have been revealed at the trial? We also have the treatment of the case in the press. It has been marked by a distinct lack of moral outrage. Had Gehring been a man and the accusers been 3 teenaged girls, would the coverage of the trial have been different? Would the verdicts themselves have differed?
First of all, let us look at the press coverage of the case. I always got the feeling that there was a certain amount of sympathy for Gehring being generated by the media. We were told that she grew up in a remote rural hamlet in Canada, thus giving us the implication of a rather sad and lonely young woman. Much was made of her admission in court that she had never really received much attention from her peers, and so the fluttering and flattering of the pupils made her feel wanted and popular. All in all one was left with the impression of an unbalanced and maladjusted lady who was ill equipped to be in a position of authority over young people as she had more in common with them in terms of emotional development than she did with people her own age.
Can anyone see the same sort of coverage happening if a male teacher is accused of sleeping with his pupils? Would anything have been made of his disadvantaged life or emotional well-being? Or is it more likely perhaps that he would be painted in the colours of a monster; a ravening beast whose only thought is for his own gratification and to hell with the consequences? It's not a brilliant comparison, but look at the Jonathon King case and the differences in the language used. King was branded a paedophile. Gehring was cast as a seductress (although frankly it sounded like she practiced the same art of seduction that will be familiar to anyone who has drank far too much on a Friday night and slurred lovingly at the nearest member of the opposite sex until they either respond or someone else catches one's eye...). King lured (only just) underaged boys back to commit sordid acts. Gehring was simply accused of having sex with an (only just) underage boy and his brother. In both cases the boys were, by their own admission, willing partners. It seems that there is a double standard concerning sex and the young.
I suppose there are a number of reasons why this could be. First and foremost let's look at the unspoken reason; no one can realistically picture a 15-year-old boy who has had sex with a 26-year-old female teacher as a victim. Will the young lad be traumatised and have difficulties in forming relationships in later life? Or is it more likely that he will tell every single one of his friends and earn a place in his school folklore? At the school I attended there was a relationship between a female teacher and a boy who had just entered 6th form. Nobody batted an eyelid at this (except of course to congratulate the boy in question; after all, Miss Binks was rather nice...) but had it been a male teacher and female pupil then I have little doubt that reaction would have been different.
It seems that it is all about our different attitudes to the young depending on whether they are male or female. These boys have doubtless been feted by their peers for what they allegedly did (and they will probably still be hailed as heroes; I don't exactly think that a Not Guilty verdict will stem the tide of schoolyard gossip) and they certainly haven't been portrayed as victims in the press. If you cast your mind back 6 months you may or may not remember 15 year old Katherine Baillie from Portsmouth who ran away with her 35 year old maths teacher for almost a year. She was the poor girl who had been duped and seduced by her pervert of a teacher and had lost a year of her life because of his determination to keep her away from those who cared about her. Yet for all we know, the Gehring boys may be traumatised and unsure of themselves whilst Baillie may be entirely comfortable with herself after her year with the teacher. But we don't want to hear that. That would muddy the waters of social morality where men are always the instigators of sex and women are precious little things whose virtue is to be jealously guarded.
I can sense a snigger building at that last sentence and that only goes to show how unrealistic the social conscience that is peddled by the media as an ideal is. That's not to mention how paternalistic and offensive it is to women in general. If we're going to demonise somebody for having sex with a 15 year old, should it matter what sex either party is? I mentioned how difficult it was to see the Gehring boys as victims at any stage of the case. Yet the boys that King seduced were portrayed as poor lost souls who had had their innocence cruelly taken from them. The only major difference that I can see is that the King case involved consensual underage homosexual sex and the Gehring case dealt with consensual underage heterosexual sex (bisexuality is forgivable in a woman apparently...). Not to mention of course the fact that King was found guilty of a crime under British law and Gehring innocent.
Of course, I could just be honest and say that all of the above is a roundabout way of saying that it's not fair that women can sleep with sexually mature young men whilst men are held in contempt for sleeping with sexually mature young women, but that would be frivolous. Society's differing rules for young men and young women are the product of several hundred years of men being on top (figuratively speaking) and 30 years of Women's Lib. is not going to change it for the better (in the case of certain radicals such as Andrea Dworkin I would go so far as to say that they make it worse). We still don't have true equality in our society and as long as cases like this are portrayed in the way that they are then it will continue for many years yet.
The Amy Gehring case finally reached a climax (if you'll excuse the pun) yesterday. If you are unfamiliar with this lovely little case then I shall briefly recap; a Canadian Supply teacher (the aforementioned Miss Gehring) was accused of seducing 3 teenaged (i.e. 14-15 year old) boys. Various other details fleshed out the trial, such as the salacious reporting of 26 year old Miss Gehring allegedly groping and kissing a young female pupil at the same party that she was supposed to have slept with at least one of the boys (the Daily Mail in particular reported on this bout of bisexuality with a luridity that must have set 50 and 60 year old saliva glands across the country into overdrive...). We were also treated to revelations that Gehring herself could not actually remember if she had slept with one of the boys at a party but had taken the Morning After pill as a precaution because "...I heard a rumour that I had had sex with him". After a trial lasting a few weeks, and after Miss Gehring was shown to be pitiful rather than predatory, she was found Not Guilty on 3 charges of Indecent Assault, with the judge having earlier directed the jury to lodge a Not Guilty verdict on the 4th charge.
The case and it's conduct have raised a few questions about both the law and about morality (as well as leaving me wondering why school parties these days seem to be so much better than they were when I was at school; we were happy with a few awkward sticky fumblings at age 15. Shagging a teacher was never on the cards for most of us, although in fairness most of them were post menopause anyway...). For example, this was not the first time Gehring had faced allegations of this nature. She had been investigated for "inappropriate behaviour" at another school and the agency that employed her, TimePlan, had been warned that she posed a risk to children. Should this have been revealed at the trial? We also have the treatment of the case in the press. It has been marked by a distinct lack of moral outrage. Had Gehring been a man and the accusers been 3 teenaged girls, would the coverage of the trial have been different? Would the verdicts themselves have differed?
First of all, let us look at the press coverage of the case. I always got the feeling that there was a certain amount of sympathy for Gehring being generated by the media. We were told that she grew up in a remote rural hamlet in Canada, thus giving us the implication of a rather sad and lonely young woman. Much was made of her admission in court that she had never really received much attention from her peers, and so the fluttering and flattering of the pupils made her feel wanted and popular. All in all one was left with the impression of an unbalanced and maladjusted lady who was ill equipped to be in a position of authority over young people as she had more in common with them in terms of emotional development than she did with people her own age.
Can anyone see the same sort of coverage happening if a male teacher is accused of sleeping with his pupils? Would anything have been made of his disadvantaged life or emotional well-being? Or is it more likely perhaps that he would be painted in the colours of a monster; a ravening beast whose only thought is for his own gratification and to hell with the consequences? It's not a brilliant comparison, but look at the Jonathon King case and the differences in the language used. King was branded a paedophile. Gehring was cast as a seductress (although frankly it sounded like she practiced the same art of seduction that will be familiar to anyone who has drank far too much on a Friday night and slurred lovingly at the nearest member of the opposite sex until they either respond or someone else catches one's eye...). King lured (only just) underaged boys back to commit sordid acts. Gehring was simply accused of having sex with an (only just) underage boy and his brother. In both cases the boys were, by their own admission, willing partners. It seems that there is a double standard concerning sex and the young.
I suppose there are a number of reasons why this could be. First and foremost let's look at the unspoken reason; no one can realistically picture a 15-year-old boy who has had sex with a 26-year-old female teacher as a victim. Will the young lad be traumatised and have difficulties in forming relationships in later life? Or is it more likely that he will tell every single one of his friends and earn a place in his school folklore? At the school I attended there was a relationship between a female teacher and a boy who had just entered 6th form. Nobody batted an eyelid at this (except of course to congratulate the boy in question; after all, Miss Binks was rather nice...) but had it been a male teacher and female pupil then I have little doubt that reaction would have been different.
It seems that it is all about our different attitudes to the young depending on whether they are male or female. These boys have doubtless been feted by their peers for what they allegedly did (and they will probably still be hailed as heroes; I don't exactly think that a Not Guilty verdict will stem the tide of schoolyard gossip) and they certainly haven't been portrayed as victims in the press. If you cast your mind back 6 months you may or may not remember 15 year old Katherine Baillie from Portsmouth who ran away with her 35 year old maths teacher for almost a year. She was the poor girl who had been duped and seduced by her pervert of a teacher and had lost a year of her life because of his determination to keep her away from those who cared about her. Yet for all we know, the Gehring boys may be traumatised and unsure of themselves whilst Baillie may be entirely comfortable with herself after her year with the teacher. But we don't want to hear that. That would muddy the waters of social morality where men are always the instigators of sex and women are precious little things whose virtue is to be jealously guarded.
I can sense a snigger building at that last sentence and that only goes to show how unrealistic the social conscience that is peddled by the media as an ideal is. That's not to mention how paternalistic and offensive it is to women in general. If we're going to demonise somebody for having sex with a 15 year old, should it matter what sex either party is? I mentioned how difficult it was to see the Gehring boys as victims at any stage of the case. Yet the boys that King seduced were portrayed as poor lost souls who had had their innocence cruelly taken from them. The only major difference that I can see is that the King case involved consensual underage homosexual sex and the Gehring case dealt with consensual underage heterosexual sex (bisexuality is forgivable in a woman apparently...). Not to mention of course the fact that King was found guilty of a crime under British law and Gehring innocent.
Of course, I could just be honest and say that all of the above is a roundabout way of saying that it's not fair that women can sleep with sexually mature young men whilst men are held in contempt for sleeping with sexually mature young women, but that would be frivolous. Society's differing rules for young men and young women are the product of several hundred years of men being on top (figuratively speaking) and 30 years of Women's Lib. is not going to change it for the better (in the case of certain radicals such as Andrea Dworkin I would go so far as to say that they make it worse). We still don't have true equality in our society and as long as cases like this are portrayed in the way that they are then it will continue for many years yet.
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