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John Quiggin 
“My attitude towards women voluntarily wearing Islamic head scarves in environments where they don’t have to is much the same as my attitude towards women voluntarily wearing skirts, stockings, high heels and make-up in such environments” – Paul
Yes but if you listen to michael no-one has ever voluntarily chosen to wear the head-dress and anyone who thinks they have has simply been brain-washed.
This is much the same argument promoted by Christian fundamentalists who claim that homosexuality is simply learned behaviour which can be cured.
There is an interesting (unbearable) article on why criticism of the policies is Israel and zionism ammounts to outright racism and is intolerable to Jews. Basically he takes something that was said on RN to legimate his tirade. All rather pathetic really. http://onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3454
Guardian, you are doing a lot of digging about laws, but I am not worth it in this case because I am talking through my hat and believe that even if she is convicted that the president will give her a pardon (tourism reasons, not just Australia but the U.S. as far as I know).
Ian, so fighting for gay rights and the rights of women to wear a head-dress is the same. Unlike Muslim women, gays have hardly been indoctrinated by their parents to be gay and persecuted if they don’t conform. I am glad you mentioned gays though as it highlights the ludicrous nature (as does the issue of women’s rights) of the whole political correct/cultural relativist project. Criticising so-called victim groups is definitely out of order for the PC crowd. But what happens when one members of one victim groups starts persecuting other victim groups (e.g. Muslims persecuting gays, women, members of other religions, Sufis, trade unionists, intellectuals, teachers etc etc etc). The PC crowd then engage in waffle, look completely silly and allow the likes of Alan Jones to take the moral high ground.
Personally, rather than go down the PC track, I will stick with my old fashioned belief in the value of universal human rights. When Amnesty International starts believing in them again (and stops bagging Israel), I will rejoin them.
Canadian-Muslim gay activist Irshad Manji
The real problem is that in to many cases the wearing of a hijab is not a choice. It is imposed upon women by the men in their life. According a survey a few days before the acceptance of that law in France, a majority of the Muslim women said that they supported the ban on the hijab. Not because they opposed the hijab, but because they opposed the violence and the intimidation that they experienced at the hands of men who insisted that they wear the hijab. A lot of Muslim men consider their wife as a property. Women in this part of the world have the choice to make up their own mind. In to many parts of the Muslim world, including the Muslim communities in the West, they have no choice. I want to make my own choice.
Many Muslim women will not consider themselves as inferior but wear a veil because they feel as dignified human beings. Because they want to protect themselves against staring and judging by men. If women are so dignified, why is it the burden of women to cover up, in order to protect themselves from the stares of men? Why can’t be accepted from men to control their own instincts or animal behaviour? This is a question that I have never heard a satisfactory answer from a Muslim women.
Chatter on guys
Speaking of Canadians, a female Conservative MP, Belinda Stonach, has just defected to the Liberal Party. This might (just) save the Liberal government of Paul Martin in a no confidence vote coming up.
So what, you ask? Well, Ms Stonach is blonde and attractive and, according to a report in the Toronto Globe and Mail
“”Tony Abbott, a Conservative member of the Alberta legislature, described Ms. Stronach as a “political harlotâ€? and called the situation as one of “a little rich girl who is basically whoring herself out to the Liberals.â€? “”
These Tony Abbotts should start their own club.
MB, if the concept of human rights as ordinarily understood is meaningful at all, then they are tautologically universal. But that doesn’t mean that there are universal human rights, only that ethical systems that mix and match are nonsense. It is also possible – and in my view probable – that anything with that sort of universal pretension is very unlikely to be a valid universal principle unless it is limited or self-limited in some other offsetting respects. This is because it would otherwise be inherently all devouring, resulting in its eventually (tautologically) destroying the very things it is supposed either to assist or to form part of a larger whole with.
This looks very abstract, but it very precisely applies to actually existing “freedom” and “democracy” in the USA right now, as measured by its outworkings both there and in other countries (plural).
This is not to say that what the concept of human rights aims at is not benevolent, it is just saying that that sort of thing is the wrong intellectual tool for the job. It’s worth remembering that when Burke, an Irishman, said he would rather hear less of the Rights of Man and more of the rights of Englishmen, he wasn’t being simply mean minded and selfish. He was coming at the area from the British empiricist viewpoint.
Benno
RE: Dodgey Indonesian justice system
Guilty until prooven innocent doesent neccessarily make a bad legal system (look at France). The system is only as good as the people who run it. On that note, do you honestly think that australia’s system is so much better that if a Indonesian who got caught at an Australian airport with 3kgs of marijuana, victim of the same kind of accident, with the same dodgey witness, would have any better chances than corby?
I don’t know enough about our system Mr Steggles, funnily enough. But I do know that it would be covered by customs law and that when you are caught by customs entering australia the first thing you are asked is “did you pack your own luggage?”
Any system that allows the Corby sort of thing to happen is a rotten and disgusting system, there should be no doubt about that. I don’t believe that there is neccessarily any connection between guilt and innocence and a court. Just because something is called a court and says whether somebody is guilty or innocent does not give it the moral right to charge Schapelle Corby’s family with contempt of court (as they would have if they behaved that way in an english court).
Some of the best people in the world have been found guilty and thrown in prison, or just thrown in prison such as David Hicks and asylum seekers. There is nothing special about Corby, apart from the media attention. I hate Australians for getting up-in-arms about it while at the same time being nazi facists who support John Howard’s treatment of gees. As evil pundit says I am a bigoted Fanatic, but at least I am a non-ignorant bigoted fanatic with a heart of something or other, possibly cardiac mussle.
Benno,
It is a little bit more complicated than you have made out – but then, as a non-ignorant bigoted fanatic you would know that, or like our system do you not know enough about the Indonesian system?
Indonesian law meets international norms on all this – presumption of innocence is in the Indonesian constitution and the evidentiary requirements were, in this case at least, easier for the defence than ours would be and also easier than they were for the prosecution.
The question comes down to how the laws were carried out. In this instance (as, I would think in several others) the presumption of innocence appears to have been violated – the senior judge made several comments through the case indicating that SC had to prove her innocence. The judges’ 100% conviction record also seems odd, to say the least.
The 20-year sentence, while excessive from our point of view, is actually quite light in Indonesian terms for this offence.
Hopefully the first two points will be addressed in her appeal. As Mr Steggles said, an Indonesian entering Australia with several kilos of dope would also tend to attract some attention and a heavy sentence if convicted.
Give Indonesia some time – if a mistake has been made it has to be dealt with within Indonesia first.