A jump to the left

So Stephen Franks is seeking to be the National candidate for Wellington Central.

He always was a rather conservative ACT MP, not warm towards civil unions or legalisation of prostitution. He has a good legal mind, but does this say more about Stephen Franks or ACT? I am sure ACT will be sad to lose him, but if National seeks someone to talk about the Treaty of Waitangi he would be a good man for that role - he's certainly head and shoulders above many of the National caucus.

I don't believe in property rights so...

I can steal. Phillida Bunkle, a sad case of a dejected socialist or just a common thief?

Thieving socialist! One could feel sorry for her, but honestly I don't. She entered public life in order to be a bully, in order to raise taxes, to regulate people and their businesses - while she produced nothing. Remember you paid for her salaries and travel for several years, thanks to the retards who voted Alliance in 1996 and 1999. The Dom Post got this wrong, saying she was elected in 1999 - how much effort is there to do some basic internet research Kay Blundell? Bunkle was number 8 on the Alliance list and got in with such brainiacs as Liz Gordon, Alamein Kopu and Frank Grover. Yes, just over 10% of voters ticked these supreme underperformers (picking Alamein was, of course, part of the "got to have Maori candidates" political correctness of the Alliance, forgetting of course, that as the Alliance was largely driven by hatred of success, good people would be unlikely to be attracted to it).

^

I love Oswald Bastable's comment that "as a former Alliance MP, Bunkum genuinely did not understand that it is wrong to take other peoples property"

^

She still has a website as if she were an MP here. She was Minister of Consumer Affairs - adding to her contempt for producers or sellers. Of course her first claim to fame was co-authoring the famous/infamous article "An Unfortunate Experiment" in Metro which saw the Cartwright Inquiry undertaken. Itself controversial, but that is another story.

Gillian Gibbons needs peaceful Muslims to stand up

and rally to her cause. She's the teacher who let a boy suggest his own name, Mohammed, be used as a name for a teddy bear, which most in her class agreed with. For this she faces jail and 40 lashes.



She's now been charged with "insulting religion" and "inciting hatred" according to the Daily Telegraph. The Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain has fortunately been backing her saying "This is a disgraceful decision and defies common sense". Of course he's not defending her because the law is absurd and the punishment obscene, but because "There was clearly no intention on the part of the teacher to deliberately insult the Islamic faith". Presumably if she was trying to insult Islam, he'd happily see her be flogged? By contrast the "Sudanese Assembly of the Ulemas" a bunch of stoneage men believe she is part of an international conspiracy against Islam - but then again these are the same men who regard rape victims to be to anything but victims. Vile bastards to a man.



Boris Johnson, Conservative MP for Henley, who is trying to unseat Ken Livingstone as dictator for London, has said "the voices we need to hear now belong to Britain's vast, sensible Muslim majority. If British Muslims speak up decisively and loudly against this lunacy, then they can achieve two good things at once. Their arguments will be heard with respect in Khartoum, since they cannot be said to be founded on any kind of cultural imperialism, or to be actuated by Islamophobia."



Well indeed, although Johnson then slips a bit backwards saying "a strong protest by British Muslims against the imprisonment of Gillian Gibbons would help to contradict the growing ranks of pessimists and neo-cons - the people who say that the real problem is Islam, the religion itself. "



I can understand Boris saying this, and to an extent he's right - Islam as simply practised privately by consenting adults, is not a problem. People must have the right to believe whatever they wish and worship this, as long as they do not seek to initiate force against others. However, Islam as a basis for laws and the state is a problem, it is stone age. It DOES seek to initiate force against others, and more importantly enough Muslims in the West also seek to initiate force against others who insult them.



You see while Boris seeks to paint Islam as not being the problem he bemoans another fact "If you want grounds for despair, read the entries on the BBC website, in which some British Muslims say that she should be punished; or read the entries from people in Sudan saying that the children should be punished. It is tragic and incredible that we can allow people to take offence over such a simple misunderstanding. If this goes any further, it will entrench prejudice and misunderstanding. "



Frankly, such people are barbarians themselves, and this makes the point further. If there will be those who continue to think that people who do not initiate force against others deserve to have violence done to them, then they need to be criticised and outed for the fascists they are - they are no different from the likes of the BNP.



Sadly I think Boris is wrong with his last statement "But if British Muslim leaders are able to seize the opportunity and speak up for common sense, then they have a real chance to show that there is all the difference in the world between Islam and the ludicrous fanaticism that has incarcerated Gillian Gibbons." Sadly I think the difference is not that great. Most predominantly Muslim countries are full of people who wouldn't bat an eyelid at Gillian Gibbons's

UPDATE: She has been sentenced for 14 days, she wasn't even allowed her lawyers for the hearing. Stone age thugs and Damian Lanigan from the Daily Telegraph has a good comment on it all:

"Politicians have been fair game for millennia and now religions and religious people are as open to ridicule as everyone else. This is of course excellent news, and actually a mark of civilization. We all roll around in the mud together - but at the same time, we actually treat each other rather well. Is it ironic that those who profess to have powerful notions of something 'higher' can act so bestially? Or is it kind of inevitable?"

Indeed, every dictator acts in exactly the same way.

Why is SHE being charged?

My most popular recent post has been about this woman (warning link from that post is NSFW), who engaged in group sex on a hotel balcony in Latimer Square Christchurch. All consensual of course, but for some reason she has been charged but none of the men involved have been?

^

Now, as I've said before the only crime really is trespass - if the hotel didn't want them all doing this, then they could have told them to leave, it was private property after all. However, it is an outrage that her name is plastered over the media, whilst those men who availed themselves of the openings that she offered are anonymous and don't face legal proceedings? After all "taking part in a 45-minute group-sex session one afternoon" didn't mean masturbation did it?

^

She was arrested last Friday breaching her bail conditions that she not go within 100m of Latimer Square, so what pervy cops were keeping such a close eye on a young woman who, presumably, means nobody any harm (indeed quite the opposite for some)?

^

So:

1. Why was she charged in the first place for doing an "indecent act" which actually is not an offence in and of itself, but is in a public place? Is the balcony of a hotel a private or a public place? Who forced anyone to look?

2. Given she has been charged, what of the the men involved? Are men immune from prosecution if they gangbang a willing teenager?

^

Finally, you might ask why the Police in Christchurch so eagerly jumped upon this case, so to speak, but will be apathetic about burglaries, car conversions and the like when there IS a victim.

^

Nice to know there is so little real crime in Christchurch.

Pity Pakistan

Founded from the religious separatism, and bigotry that Jinnah inspired in the Pakistan movement, the artificial division of India into two then three states, the hundreds of thousands murdered and who died in the population transfer, as a heterogeneous India became several lands - and Pakistan and India would be antagonists, fighting over borders and Kashmir especially. It became an "Islamic Republic" ensuring that the common law legal system and criminal law it inherited from Britain would be frittered away with Islamic law and its brutal treatment of women.

So with its cold war with India, it was inevitable sadly that it would become nuclear - and so Pakistan is the only predominantly Muslim nuclear weapons state. It also is the location of not a few madrasses, teaching hatred of the West, fomenting the Islamist attitudes of anti-semitism, anti-Americanism, and anti-individualism. So letting Pakistan slide towards the sort of rule of Iran or the Taliban, would not just be scary, it would be downright dangerous.

Fortunately, the vast majority of Pakistanis are not Islamists, there is an Islamist element, but they are, by and large, moderate. So that is why having secular leaders, which has been mostly the case in recent years, is important. Unfortunately, those who Pakistan has had have either been authoritarian or grossly corrupt.

I didn't cheer the arrival of Benazir Bhutto. She may be a pin up of the left because she is a woman in a Muslim country, secular and a socialist, but her and her husband are under charges of corruption for a reason. Apparently a rather large property outside London was found that was paid for by the Pakistani government, which was allegedly for her and her husband (though she denied it), when the government was seeking to sell it off, suddenly they came out of the woodwork. Pervez Musharraf isn't so corrupt, but his state of emergency and martial law were unacceptable.

Now he has not only surrendered control of the army, but has declared the state of emergency will be over in a few weeks, with elections allowed in the New Year. That is all good, but what Pakistan needs is leadership - secular, modernising, reforming and not corrupt. India is growing enormously because it has finally unlocked the entrepreneurship of its people and its enormous market. Pakistan could share in this, if only it wasn't shackled by socialist policies that India has been throwing away, and the stifling influence of Islamism. The former needs reforms, the latter needs a serious battle against terrorism, seeking of peace with India on Kashmir, and to ensure the judiciary is fully independent, respects private property rights and contracts, and to be open. Pakistan is not Iran, but it is a long way from being a Turkey. That is the model it should be looking to follow, and if the economy is opened up, fear of terrorist attacks against Westerners reduced, then the prosperity that would arise would be a useful antidote against Islamism.

A booming Pakistan bordering Afghanistan and Iran will speak volumes, and will be our best hope that the nuclear weapons will stay in the hands of those who are sane.