Don't confuse us with the facts!

A random follow of a link from the CiF pages under the heading "Brian Whitaker's best blogs and analysis from the Middle East" led me to "Jadaliyya" which has a fascinating take on Ayaan Hirsi Ali's claims that Muslims are conducting war on Christians across the world.

It's clear that the author (Anthony Alessandrini) is not that keen on Ms. Hirsi Ali:

Having already reached her inevitable conclusion in her opening, Hirsi Ali appears to feel little need to support it with anything so mundane as actual facts, instead offering a loosely-connected cherry picking tour that ties together incidents of violence against Christians and other religious minorities in Nigeria, Sudan, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, and Indonesia.

although interestingly he doesn't dispute any of the facts she offers; instead aiming at the context of her data:

[about Indonesia]...she cites data complied by the Christian Post suggesting an increase in violent incidents against religious minorities of nearly forty percent between 2010 and 2011. Again, this is certainly a cause for concern, but it would be interesting to ask Hirsi Ali how she would compare this increase to the more than fifty percent increase in hate crimes against Muslims in the United States between 2009 and 2010, as reported by the FBI.

and the time-honoured strategy of playing the (wo)man, not the ball:

What is more worthy of note, however, are those claims by Hirsi Ali that suggest a number of moves taken out of the contemporary neo-conservative playbook. Hirsi Ali's connections to the neo-con movement—she is, among other things, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute—have been widely noted.

So in Muslim nations across the world, Muslims are indisputably persecuting, killing and driving out Christians, in many cases with their nation's acquiesence, but we shouldn't be too concerned about that because a) American citizens badmouth Muslim neighbours and b) the person pointing out the facts hangs around conservative American politicans?

Whew, I was nearly worried for a minute.

[A note for Anthony who may have forgotten a point in Ayaan Hirsi Ali's motivation: do you remember what happened to her Dutch friend Theo van Gogh when he helped her make the film "Submission" criticising Islam? Perhaps you should refresh your memory. ]

I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to be muzzled

Rather disturbed at Lord Leveson's proposal to extend his proposed press restrictions to bloggers especially with his sympathy to Inayat Bungawala's complaints about depiction of Islam in the media (hat tip: Kate at Small Dead Animals).

In particular:

Inayat Bunglawala said the amount of negative stories about Muslims in Britain is "demonizing" Islam and fuelling a "false narrative." He called on the government to do all it can to "ensure a fairer portrayal, a more balanced portrayal of the faith of Islam" in the British media.

Inayat, my friend, that isn't the government's job. That's your job. If you want a more positive portrayal, you and your pals need to be writing columns, funding / producing / acting in TV series, or recording songs which give this more positive portrayal. If the British public doesn't believe or listen to your lauding, that's not really their problem.

I particularly liked:

Bunglawala, who says he represents mainstream moderate Muslim opinion

Great. Who represents mainstream Christian opinion? The Archbish of Canterbury? Giles Fraser? The Pope? Jesus Christ and the writings of the apostles? Mrs. Ethel Smith who's attended her local Anglican church for forty years? My local vicar? Or is there no such thing as Christian mainstream moderate opinion? If there's one thing I hate, it's the propensity of activists to claim to speak for a huge swathe of population when there's absolutely no evidence they do so, or accountability to the people they allegedly represent.

Lord Leveson, a word or two in your ear about the Internet. Blogs are supra-national. The ease of setting up a blog on UK topics hosted solely in the USA is in marked contrast to the effort required to establish a dead-tree publication or spectrum broadcast programme. This blog is hosted on Blogger, owned by Google, which means that copies of the blog are distributed around the world in Google's data centers. How are you going to regulate blogs like this which carry content that's perfectly legal in all countries apart from the UK (and perhaps China, North Korea)?

OMG! Technology and paedos!

In an article perilously close to jumping the shark, the Daily Mail has a conniption fit about geo-tagged photos. All a paedophile has to do is search for images of children, check their geotags, and then they know where these (randomly selected) children live! Surely this must be the end of society as we know it!

The article explains the crawling horror of technology:

The location information could be used to locate a child's home based on information publicly available on Flickr,' explains Kuzma.
'Publishing geolocation data raises concerns about privacy and security of children. Personalised information is available to internet users who may have dubious reasons for accessing this data.'

Heaven forbid! We must disable all geotags immediately! Doing this will mean that paedophiles actually have to walk down the street and observe footballs / swings / trampled plants / play-tents in gardens to determine houses where children live.

Personally, I'd locate a survivalist compound in rural Texas and amend the geo-tags on my photos to that location. That should thin out the paedophile ranks a little.

Dear Daily Mail editors, a mathmo is yanking your chain

The photo accompanying an article claiming "Maths 'too hard for students and dons': Universities drop subject from science courses" is of a blackboard with maths that makes no sense.

I see:

1. a nonsense vector equation
2. a pointless series adjoined without explanation to a meaningless delta equivalence (assuming the series is of t, y is +/1)
3. an equation with a missing right bracket
4. a bastardisation of Boyle's Law
5. the function product differentiation identity
6. some trivial differentiation identities

Whoever is the mathmo who wrote that up for you, he holds journalists in complete contempt. I'm with him.

Pragmatism vs Parenting

Never was there a minefield so thickly sown as any discussion involving teenaged girls, contraception and schools. The Grauniad enters it from the viewpoint of Lisa Hallgarten, director of Education For Choice which accordng to her Guardian profile is "dedicated to enabling young people to make and act on informed choices about pregnancy and abortion". The Education for Choice homepage is a little less nuanced:

supporting young people's right to informed choice on abortion

with helpful "Facts about abortion" and "Abortion resources" prominent. So we now know where Lisa is coming from in this debate...

The particular case which has provoked this article is one where 33 13-year old girls were prescribed a contraceptive implant at school:

The teenager is one of 33 schoolgirls who have been fitted with the device in Southampton, Hants, as part of a controversial government initiative to drive down teenage pregnancies.
Now she has broken her silence to defend her actions, saying she believes she acted responsibly by taking measures to stop herself getting pregnant.
And her mother insisted she was "proud" of her daughter, although she claimed performing a minor surgical procedure at school without parental consent was "morally wrong".

(Head in hands). I know this is Southampton, but even so... I note that "not having sex" was apparently rejected as a option, and that the contraceptive implant does SFA to protect against STDs.

By the way, did the age of consent drop to 13 when I wasn't looking? If not, aren't the health workers here encouraging the commission of a serious crime? At the very least, why aren't they asking pointed questions about the person or people that the girl intends to have sex with?

Lisa notes, not unreasonably:

Everyone's ideal scenario is that young people and their parents have the kind of relationships in which they can discuss these issues openly and safely. For those who can't, most parents would rather their children did have the option of talking to a trained health professional than the alternative – which is no information or advice, no contraception and the risk of unintended pregnancy.

The problem here is that there's something of a gap between "talking to a trained health professional" and "receiving long-lasting hormone treatment and actively encouraging unprotected sex in under-age children without parental knowledge or consent", and it's the latter which is causing more parents to be concerned. At the risk of repeating clichés: parents can't ask schools to give their children asthma medication, but the same schools can give their children contraceptive implants without even informing the parents. These implants let the children feel free to have sex without risk of pregnancy (because they have no other purpose) while leaving them wide open to acquiring STDs from their new-found friends. WTF?

Care to take this debate on, Lisa?

[Good Lord, I think I'm in near-complete agreement with Nadine Dorries. I need a lie-down.]

The irony meter has melted

I had to pinch myself when I saw the article: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin writing in the Guardian about the need for Russia to reject corruption and build a modern democracy.

You couldn't make it up.

Read the whole thing: here's a quote to whet your appetite.

But I strongly believe we do not need a circus of candidates competing with each other to make increasingly unrealistic promises.

Quite right, Vlad my old chum. One Putin-endorsed candidate is all any sensible (read: self-preserving) Russian needs.

Top comment so far comes from Helen121:

Perhaps a good place you could start would be to allow a free press and stop killing journalists. Here's a list of dead Russian journalists: here

All eyes on the Olympics Opening Ceremony

The 2012 London Mayor election takes place on May 3rd this year. The most likely winners are the current incumbent Boris "Bozza" Johnson (Tory) and the previous mayor "Red" Ken "The Newt" Livingstone. While this blogger could normally care less about the political scene of London, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that, two months after this election, the winner will be headlining the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony.

I've seen Ken on any number of TV shows, and he's a cut above the average debater; even while disagreeing with his politics you have to concede his debating skills. However, I think any right-minded person will concede that, when it comes to the potential for an incredibly embarrassing but entertaining public spectacle, there is no competition worthy of the name for Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. Watching him at the Beijing Olympics brought tears to my eyes; as he expounded on the subject of whiff-whaff, one could imagine the bug-eyed expressions of the Chinese senior politicians and apparatchiks as they listened to their translators. If Boris at the Olympics doesn't cause at least two diplomatic protests to be filed, I have sadly mis-judged him.

Therefore, people of London, I urge you to think of the spectacle of foreign dignitaries spluttering into their glasses of taxpayer-funded vintage champagne, and vote for Boris on May 3rd.

This is what the Government want to spend tax money on...

...aid to a country that doesn't want it:

...the foreign minister, Nirumpama Rao, proposed "not to avail [of] any further DFID [British] assistance with effect from 1st April 2011," because of the "negative publicity of Indian poverty promoted by DFID".
But officials at DFID, Britain’s Department for International Development, told the Indians that cancelling the programme would cause "grave political embarrassment" to Britain, according to sources in Delhi.

So, and let's be sure this is clear, civil servants at DFID were pushing to give UK taxpayers' money to India, despite India actively trying to refuse it, in order to prevent embarrassment of their bosses.

I have a modest proposal: save the £250mm/year aid (returning it to taxpayers in the form of higher personal tax allowances), making the Indians happy; fire the DFID officials and their boss and then there's no danger of them being embarrassed by their position. Everyone wins!

Conference call security

There's no such thing as security on a conference call, as the FBI and Scotland Yard are discovering.

I'd bet the public number and 6-9 digit access code for the call was widely circulated internally (deliberately or inadvertently) by the FBI; someone passed the info on to Anonymous, who dialled in from a compromised phone line - kerching, they get to record the call with no personal risk.

A secret's security varies as the inverse square of the number of participants. If you don't want someone to hear what you're saying, the discussion needs to be between a small number of participants who must individually authenticate onto the call, where access points are strictly limited. This is awkward to arrange, especially internationally, and costs serious money. It also requires participants who really care about security, and these are much harder to find than you might think.

Better yet, fly over and have the meeting in person. Or shut up.

Update: the FBI confesses:

...an F.B.I. official said Anonymous had not in fact hacked into it or any other bureau facilities. Instead, the official said, the group had simply obtained an e-mail giving the time, telephone number and access code for the call. The e-mail had been sent on Jan. 13 to more than three dozen people at the bureau, Scotland Yard, and agencies in France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden. One recipient, a foreign police official, evidently forwarded the notification to a private account, he said, and it was then intercepted by Anonymous.

D'oh!

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone

Shock! Horror! American comedian swears on BBC Breakfast TV:

Presenters Bill Turnbull and Sian Williams had asked funnyman Dave Fulton how he would pronounce one of Del Boy's favourite sayings 'lovely jubbly' in an American accent.
Fulton replied: 'You wouldn't, because it's like me saying w****r'.

(What kind of hack uses the word 'funnyman'? I ask you.)

I'd like to point out that Colm Meaney got to say "bollocks" and have it broadcast at 6pm on American network TV. So I don't think we have much room to complain about Dave Fulton.