Picture of a judge's wigThe Judge RANTS!Picture of a judge's wig



Date: 12/08/12

Rant Round-Up

What with my concentration on the two projects I have on the go (one for 45cat, one for here), my recent technical difficulties (outlined here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), and my general can't-be-arsed-ness about Things In General, I've refrained from comment on one or two things which would otherwise have exercised me in public.

A much-needed sense of proportion having been handed to my ass as a consequence of the enforced scaling down of my activities, I'll do what I promise will be as brief as possible a tour d'horizon of these matters now.

Item: In one of the most sane and humane decisions I've heard of from any judicial body in some time, a local court in Germany has ruled that a child who - at the insistence of his Muslim parents - underwent what is euphemistically known as 'circumcision' was the victim of a criminal act.

Let us consider the matter, brothers and sisters; what is involved in that practice? Why, nothing less than the forced removal of a part of that child's body. Moreover, this was done without any medical need to do so, and was carried out on a child who, perforce, was in no position to give consent (informed or otherwise) to the deed.

In any other set of circumstances, this would be what the Americans would call a 'no-brainer'. A child is mutilated, and mutilated in a very specific and permanent way with deliberate intent. And why? Mektoub. It Is Written. It Is Written, all right; written in scribblings from nearly a millenium and a half ago. But It Is Written all the same, and all adherents to that and other scratchings must comply. It Is Written.

Look at the act in any other context. Leave the Written out of it for a moment. Say Chantelle Fatslapper from your local sink estate decided to have a bit cut off little Callum's dick (or any other part of him for that matter). What would be the reaction? One would not need to guess; Miss Fatslapper would be prosecuted and probably imprisoned, and poor little Callum would be put in care for having been abused so brutally and with such devastating effects.

So why, when it is done by Muslims or Jews, is it somehow so outrageous for anyone even to dare to suggest that it is still a clear physical and psychological abuse of the child? Simple: It Is Written. Written on goatskin or parchment from ages when people believed all sorts of malign or batshit nonsense.

Which is why the Muslim and Jewish leaders of Germany - and elsewhere in Europe - have abandoned their standard modus operandi of throwing shit and imprecations at each other to march hand in hand, Rebbes and Imams in a perfect harmony of outrage, to demand the the court's decision be overturned. In this, they have a willing accomplice in the current Bundeskanzler, Frau Merkel, who - as befits the head of government of a nation which is still expected to cringe unworthily whenever the shroud-wavers of Zionism stamp their feet - has insisted that the court's decision must not be allowed to stand, however rational and correct it may be.

What has been even more sickening is the sight of the western world's ever-increasing number of faux-liberals rushing to the barricades to defend - and even attempt to excuse - such barbaric practices. Leaving aside their rank hypocrisy (only the most crass or supine of them would do the same in the case of Female Genital Mutilation), their willingness to go to the mat in the name of Bronze Age rituals carried out in the name of the tribal gods of groups deemed by these self-same self-described 'liberals' as being somehow 'oppressed' - along with their desperate attempts to find some rationale for the practice from marginal (and often long-since discredited) scientific sources - exposes the shallowness which has quite rightly led to such people being considered fit only for ridicule.

There are certain values which are as near as dammit to being universal and timeless. One of them is that no act of violence against a child or infant, carried out deliberately and with the intent permanently to wound or impair the child, can ever be defended - let alone supported - by anyone who wishes to lay claim to being civilised. The cutting off of part of a boy's penis is every bit as much a mutilation as the excising of part or all of a girl's clitoris, and it is done in much the same spirit - to mark and to control. It is a criminal act in the broad sense, and it should be considered a criminal act in the strict, legal sense as well. Religion should never be permitted to become a free pass for those who are determined to brutalise their children, and no amount of screaming from such people and no amount of prevarication and special pleading from those in thrall to their own sense of 'cultural sensitivity' should be allowed to make it so.

Item: The attempts to insinuate Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, QC, boodler and war criminal extraordinaire, back into our public and political life are fascinating, if only in the same way that some people find decomposing roadkill so.

It is clear that the Blairite tendency within and around what used to deserve to be called the Labour Party is so terrified of losing the position of ideological dominance it achieved nearly twenty years ago that they not only indulge in regular off-the-record briefings against the current leader (cipher though he may be), but they are willing even to give house room to the possibility that a former leader who is, mutatis mutandis, as reviled in his way as Thatcher still is could possibly be considered a fit person for any public rôle in this country again. It shows not only their desperation, but also their contempt for the intelligence of the public. All right, some of that contempt might be deserved if you consider that that same public re-elected Blair's party twice despite it being bloodily clear by the second occasion what sort of creatures inhabited the upper echelons of it, but then when the alternatives were William Hague and Michael Howard, success faut de mieux was only to be expected.

The Great British Public™ has rather longer memories than the Blair partisans within Labour and their cheerleader equivalents in the media are willing to consider. So many remember the control-freakery, the anti-liberty legislation, the rush to be 'intensely relaxed about the filthy rich', the supine Adoration of not only the Maggie but of the most cloth-brained US President in history, and the subsequent determination to place this country in harm's way by involvement in illegal wars fought for the corporate and ideological benefit of others against nations which were no threat to us.

I would only welcome Blair's return to the country at all if it were accompanied by a thorough mea culpa (something which - as a subsequent convert to another permanently-tarnished instiution - he would be familiar with at least as a concept), but also self-surrender to the International Criminal Court.

Item: Finally, a word about the biggest and most expensive School Sports Day in the history of what we flatter ourselves is Civilisation.

It has been instructive - if troublingly so - to watch the effects of media coverage on the minds of the public. Or, rather, on what the minds of the public are perceived to be by those providing the media coverage. Having failed miserably for over two years to convince more than about twenty per cent of the Great British Public™ (sponsored by your friendly corporate dealers in junk food, environmental poisoning and cripple-kicking) that they were 'all in this together', the media have now managed to up that figure to somewhere around ninety-five per cent (at least in their own minds) by saturation coverage of activities which would often be funny were they not so depressingly pointless (the sight of young women wearing scarcely anything hurling themselves around in a giant sandpit in Horse Guards Parade may attract some for reasons other than any they would be prepared to admit to, but it hardly constitutes anything meaningful).

This has not been done, of course, by any process which encourages thought. Quite the opposite, in fact. The propaganda is not actually overt - even the dumbest would be able to see through any Riefenstahl moments - but is the more sinister because of its insidiousness. Like with the Diana Moment, we are now all deemed to be Of One Voice, and all who dare dissent can safely be discounted, either by mass arrests ("We must have a safe Olympics!"), or by simply ignoring them.

And it seems to have worked, doesn't it? Oh, the Feelgood Factor™ is back with a right old vengeance, isn't it?

It has also enabled the forces of the State and their Chums (who are, let us always remember, venal, thuggish and self-serving, but most emphatically not stupid) to use the appliquéd patriotism upended over this ridiculous circus as cover for the stealthy release of stories which they do not want us to consider; see Septicisle's pieces here, here and here for just a handful of examples of what has passed 'under the radar' for most people.

After the corporate orgy has moved on, after Danny Boy has gone back to being an irrelevance after an opening ceremony which was by all accounts The Shire-meets-The Teletubbies-meets-Carry On Matron, and after the facilities have been sold off to The Chums on the pretext of 'realising assets'; after all that, there will still be:

And don't imagine that all those 'special measures' put in place for the Olympics - the curtailing of freedom of movement and of expression, the draconian bail restrictions, the imposition of a form of martial law on large parts of the country - will silently steal away. They're there until such time as the public and their representatives grow a collective pair and demand their removal.

In all senses, as you were...

File under: Humbug, Hypocrisy & Self-Righteousness, Liberties, Media & Culture, Politics, Religion, Its Bigotry & Its Antidotes, Sport