Pub Philosopher

Gallery vows to re-open after violent threats from Muslim youths

More censorship by Muslim fanatics.

An art exhibition in Berlin has been forced to close after threats of violence from a group of Muslim youths. Galerie Nord in central Berlin closed its "Zionist Occupied Government" exhibition which ridiculed radical Islamists and neo-Nazis who believe Jews dominate global politics. The satirical works, by Danish artists' group Surrend, also poked fun at the state of Israel and radical Jews.

The picture that annoyed the youths showed the Kaaba shrine in Mecca with the caption "Dummer Stein," or "stupid stone."

However, unlike some other organisations, the gallery is refusing to be intimidated by these threats. After a review of its security arrangements, it will re-open the exhibition. Galerie Nord's artistic director said:

It would be unacceptable if individual social groups were in a position to exercise censorship over art and the freedom of expression.

Unacceptable it may be but we are seeing instances of this de facto censorship throughout the western world. More power to the Galerie Nord for bucking the trend.

Hat Tip: MediaWatchWatch

Publish the cartoons says German minister

Germany's Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has called on all European Newspapers to publish the Danish Mohammed cartoons. He said that he thought the cartoons were pathetic but that they should nevertheless be printed as a protest against those who are using violence to limit press freedom.

Mr Schaeuble's department has since said that his comments were misinterpreted.

In other cartoon news, there have been large scale protests and flag burnings in Mauritania and Sudan. The Sudanese government has ordered a boycott of all Danish products so the Danes have reacted by opposing debt relief for Sudan and threatening to cut off foreign aid.  (Only threatening?!!)

Meanwhile, Kurt Westegaard is thinking of putting his famous Mohammed-with-a-bomb-in-his-turban cartoon up for sale, although he hasn't come up with a price yet.

Any offers? 

Why I'd rather keep my DNA to myself

The recent convictions of  Steve Wright and Mark Dixie, using DNA evidence, have increased the clamour for a national DNA database. Many police officers, some journalists and even a few bloggers argue that a database of everyone's DNA would make it easier and quicker for the police to catch violent criminals.

It probably would but a DNA database isn't the panacea that some are making it out to be. DNA profiling is not foolproof; there can sometimes be mis-matches. There have also been cases where a person's DNA has been found at a crime scene by chance. Where computerised data is seen as holding all the answers, it creates a mentality where few stop to question its validity. As long as "Computer says Yes", the everyone is happy, apart from the person desperately trying to protest his innocence.

A national DNA database would also be extremely expensive. It would require the creation of a national database of all people resident in the UK, similar to that being proposed for the identity cards system.

For now, the government has dismissed the idea of compulsory DNA profiling but this is probably due to political expediency. There are MPs on both sides who favour such a measure and it will almost certainly be proposed again soon.

While I sympathise with some of the points of principle raised by civil libertarians about the relationship between the citizen and the state and presumptions of guilt and innocence, I have deeper concerns about giving my DNA profile away to...., well, to anyone actually.

Whether or not you agree with his political views, James Watson did us all a favour when he posted his DNA analysis on-line. It yielded information about his ancestry and about his genetic risk of disease, for example:

- Age-related macular degeneration (blindness) - 20% less than average

- Asthma - 31% less than average

- Breast cancer - 1.45 times greater than average

- Coeliac disease - 66% less than average

- Colon (bowel) cancer - 16% greater than average

- Glaucoma - 1.42 rimes greater than average

- Inflammatory bowel disease - 31% less than average

- Multiple sclerosis - 29% greater than average

- Heart attack - 33% less than average

- Obesity - 5% greater than average

- Prostate cancer - 1.02 times greater than average

- Psoriasis - 31% less than average

- Restless leg - 29% less than average

- Rheumatoid arthritis - 20% greater than average

- Type 1 diabetes - 65% less than average

- Type 2 diabetes - 33% greater than average

Now how useful would that sort of information be to life and medical insurance companies, or even to prospective employers?

Of course, if a national DNA database were to be established there would be all sorts of safeguards and guarantees of security. But given the number of occasions recently where the government has lost personal data, or even sold it to private organisations, how valid would these assurances be? A DNA database would have hundreds of users across the country. Any one of them could make a mistake or be bribed to pass on information. DNA data is already passed to private organisations for analysis. There is some evidence that one organisation, LGC, has set up its own DNA database as a result. How secure is this data in their hands?

Data protection legislation could be tightened up to ensure that people were able to find out if insurance companies had their DNA information. However, to ask for a disclosure about your data, you have to know which company is holding it in the first place. DNA data could be held by separate companies in countries outside UK or EU jurisdiction. If companies can set up offshore entities to avoid tax and financial regulation, they can do it to avoid data protection legislation too.

The first you'd know about it would be when one insurance company after another turned you down for life or medical insurance. The companies involved would deny that they held your DNA data and they would be telling the truth. Your data and the resulting risk assessment would be held on a system somewhere in Equatorial Guinea. The insurance companies would just need to access it as and when they needed the information.

Private detectives and criminals might find a person's DNA profile useful too.

A paranoid vision of the future? Perhaps, but as Joel Bakan said in his book, "The Corporation", companies will always try to privatise profits and socialise costs. If the insurance industry could get the UK taxpayer to fund a database that would enable it to mitigate its risks, a few quid to bribe someone for the results would be money well spent.

There is too much information on a person that can be gleaned from DNA. I would not be happy giving this information to anyone. I do not trust the state to keep this information secure and I do not trusts the state's agents not to sell it to those who would misuse it. Sure, most of the police and civil servants who would have access to such a system would be honest, but it would only take a few to be open to bribes or blackmail and the whole system would leak. 

A DNA database might help catch a few more violent criminals more quickly but these potential benefits are outweighed by the consequences of putting such sensitive information onto a computer.

I'm glad that Steve Wright and Mark Dixie were caught and I feel sorry for the families of their victims. I wish the police every success in apprehending such people in the future.

All the same, I'm not a violent criminal and I haven't done anything wrong. For the reasons I've just given, I'd like to keep my DNA details to myself, please.

Standoff with Muslim medics over hygiene rules

Remember those Muslim medical students who refused to scrub up properly, on religious grounds?

Well it appears that they still haven't been booted off their course for endangering patients' lives. Instead, managers at Liverpool's Alder Hey hospital are trying to negotiate with the students. The Liverpool Echo reports:

Dr Steve Ryan, medical director at Alder Hey said that while the “bare below the elbows” dress code is a matter of patient safety, the trust would work with Muslim students to find a solution.

So what sort of solution would that be? Surely you either scrub up or you don't and if the Department of Health is stipulating that doctors must be "bare below the elbow", to prevent the spread MRSA and Clostridium difficile, then there is not much room for negotiation.

The hospital would be well within its rights, both legally and morally, to refuse to allow these women anywhere near an operating theatre. If they were no longer able to work in the hospital, the University would then be justified in throwing these troublemakers off their course.

It's up to the ultra-religious to make sacrifices for their religion but instead, these women want other people to make sacrifices - even to the extent of endangering lives.

It's time to stop negotiating with these students and give them an ultimatum. Fit In or Fuck Off.

The Tory Press and the Nanny State

The Tory newspapers are making a huge fuss about a Home Office report on 24-hour pub licensing which comes out today. Apparently, it will show that there has been little impact on drink related violence and that, while overall drink related crime fell, offences between 3am and 6am rose by 22 per cent.

The Telegraph muddied the waters by producing its own figures showing a 46% rise in anti social behaviour since the licensing hours were extended. The Home Office has already dismissed these findings for using a "shaky methodology".

The point which seems to have been lost here is that, while the liberalisation of licensing laws has not reduced alcohol related crime, it has not significantly increased it either. Anyone who thought it would significantly reduce crime in the space of two years wants their head testing.

Surely, it is up to those who want to ban anything to show that a ban would improve the safely and welfare of the majority. There is no evidence to show that re-imposing licensing hours would reduce alcohol related crime, so why ban the rest of us law abiding drinkers from getting a beer at midnight?

Yet the Conservatives and their cheer leaders in the press seem to want to conflate the issues of youth binge drinking and anti-social behaviour with 24 hour licensing. What is their interest in doing this? As a party that claims to value individual freedom the Tories are showing a very nannyish side.

But that's what turned me off the Conservative Party in the first place. For all its libertarian pretensions, there is actually something Hyacinth Bucket and Chair-of-the-Residents-Association about the party. For every affable hedonist like Kenneth Clarke or Boris Johnson, there seem to be five hectoring Ann Widdecombes or Nicholas Bennetts who want to tell how to behave, what to wear and what time to be in at night.

Having opposed the extension to the licensing hours in the first place, the Tories seem to be determined to bring back the old eleven o'clock closing time. Think about that next time you hear a Conservative MP, or the Mail, the Telegraph or the Express, mention the Nanny State.   

Pakistan blocks YouTube over cartoon video

Those cartoons again.

Yesterday, Pakistan ordered all ISPs to block access to YouTube because it carried a video of the Jyllands Posten Mohammed Cartoons. The video has been there since May of last year but the Pakistani authorities are a bit slow on the uptake.

The action by Pakistan Telecom also blocked access to YouTube for the rest of the world for a few hours. This was, apparently, an accident, as was the mess it made of general internet access throughout Pakistan.

So, you'll be wanting to see the video that caused all the trouble then. It simply shows the cartoons to a slowed-down version of the Danish national anthem. That's all.

Nothing you haven't seen before and it's been around for months. Hardly worth buggering up the internet for is it?

When immigrants pour in.....

Immigrants, eh?

They come into your country and completely swamp certain areas. A lot of them don't show much inclination to integrate. Instead, they set up their own little ghettos and try to recreate aspects of their home country. The next thing you know, they've taken over the corner shops. Everywhere you look, there are places selling strange sorts of sausage, drinks with unpronounceable names and stuff in jars you wouldn't even feed to animals.

And then, to cap it all, they try and take over your local council too.

Cameron in trouble over school trips to Auschwitz

I know I have had a go at David Cameron in the past but isn't it reasonable for him to question a government plan to send 15,000 children on trips to Auschwitz over the next three years? I'm sure the visits would be educational but perhaps the £4.65 million could be better spent elsewhere.

OK, calling the scheme a gimmick was a bit insensitive but some of the I'm-determined-to-be-offended mob are going a bit over the top.

Then again, maybe the whole thing is a subtle plan to try and get votes from BNP supporters and Muslims.

Or maybe not.

I'm no friend of Dave's but I think this is a perfectly legitimate question rather clumsily phrased and, as often happens in these situations, some people want to score points by appearing to be as offended as they possibly can. 

Bishop Hill gives £250k towards Muslim prayer room

No, I'm not talking about the blogger, but the Bishop of Guildford, Christopher Hill.

According to the Times, he has donated £250,000 of the Church of England's money to build a multi-faith centre in which the largest prayer space will be reserved for Muslims. The rest of the money will come from a fund-raising appeal. The paper doesn't tell us whether Muslim groups have stumped up any cash.

Bosnian Serbs threaten to secede

After Montenegro declared its independence, I wondered whether the West had perhaps been too quick in the early 1990s to recognise small nations that seceded from others. There was a time when everyone seemed to be doing it, as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia fell apart. Then the Slovaks decided to jump on the band-waggon and secede from the Czechs; a decision most of them now regret.

From East Timor to Kosovo, states have seceded, designed themselves a flag, then appealed to NATO for protection. And therein lies the problem. Many of these states are just not viable on their own. Without military protection from NATO or a larger neighbour like Russia and, in Europe, the prospect of economic support from the EU, they would collapse.

But now everybody is at it. Kosovo has seceded from Serbia, so the Serbs there reckon they will secede from Kosovo. Now the Serbs in Bosnia have decided that, with the prospect of big-brother Russia wading in to help, they might as well give secession a go too. The already fragile Bosnian state could be about to collapse.

Who will be next? The Albanians in Macedonia? Russians in Moldova? Russians in eastern Ukraine?

What if Russian minorities in what are now NATO states in the Baltic decide to have a go too?

And then there is the question of the patchwork of ethnic groups across Russia.

A collection of small precarious states is not in the interests of the US, the EU or Russia. They are likely to become havens for drug smugglers, arms dealers, people traffickers and religious extremists.

Rushing to recognise Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence could prove to be as disastrous as the recognition of the Yugoslav secessions in 1991.