moral compass

Vatican tells U.N. that critics of gays under attack (Reuters, Tue Mar 22, 2011)

Vilifying gays is ok. Vilifying those who vilify gays is not ok. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

(Morality according to the Vatican.)

Bill of No Rights

Statement on sex offenders' register (Home Office, Wed Feb 16 12:14:14 GMT 2011)

The sex offenders' register has existed since 1997. Since that time it has helped the police to protect the public from these most horrific of crimes.

Where is the evidence that the sex offenders' register protects anyone against anything?

Does anyone realise that 'sex offences' include such things as brothel keeping (read 'two prostitutes sharing a flat so that they can protect one another if a client becomes violent')? (Sex workers put in danger by British policing, Melon Farmers, 13th February 2011.) How about people convicted of having sex with inanimate objects? (Bike sex case sparks legal debate, BBC News, Friday, 16 November 2007.) A wide range of other victimless crimes could be listed such as the truly moronic Dangerous Pictures Act. (UK prosecutors drop 'tiger' sex video case, Register, 6th January 2010.) So Theresa May considers these to be the 'most horrific of crimes'? And in the case of sex with bicycles and cartoon tigers, where exactly does protecting the public come into it?

This is Britain all right. Any mention of sex and all fuses blow, and Home Secretaries with puny brains start reciting well rehearsed, but meaningless phrases such as "most horrific" and "protecting the public".

the right of the public to be protected from the risk of re-offending

The risk of re-offending is never zero. The risk of someone not convicted of any crime so far committing a crime, any crime, is never zero either. In the case of certain 'sex crimes', the risk of re-offending is smaller than the risk of someone not convicted of any crime so far committing a crime some time in the future.

The risk of crypto-fascist Home Secretaries in sheep's clothes tomorrow turning into chain-saw murderers is never zero. So we'd better lock her up, shouldn't we?

The final decision of whether an offender should remain on the register will be down to the police

And we know how concerned the police is with our rights, don't we, boys and girls? Letting the British police decide matters involving individual freedom is the best guarantee that citizens' rights will be trampled upon until it is an unrecognisable goo mashed through the cracks in the floor.

Finally, I can tell the House today that the Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary will shortly announce the establishment of a Commission to investigate the creation of a British Bill of Rights.

For those who have been hoping for the creation of a British Bill of Rights to safeguard human rights in the UK, let it be a sobering thought that if this crowd of right-wing loonies gets its way, that Bill of Rights will codify the status quo with the public (a euphemism for the state as an abstract entity) having all the rights and the criminal (meaning any individual who steps out of line) having none.

It is time to assert that it is Parliament that makes our laws, not the courts;

And a populist mob law it will be.

that the rights of the public come before the rights of criminals;

Let's not forget that by definition anyone is a criminal who has been convicted of a crime, and crimes are defined by law makers. Once homosexuality and sodomy were crimes. Women resorting to civil disobedience in the late-19th and early-20th century, in order to demand the right to vote, were breaking the laws of that time. The brave people in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya fighting against tyrany and oppression today are committing acts labelled by various repressive regimes as crimes.

and above all, that we have a legal framework that brings sanity to cases such as these.

If moving against insanity were the objective, our first step should be locking people like Theresa May away for good.

There is the usual blatant government propaganda from the BBC, dressed up as scientific fact:

Who, what, why: When is a sex offender not a risk? (BBC News, 16 February 2011)

"Often these offenders are incredibly furtive," Prof Wilson says.
"They may have committed many, many offences before being caught - their conviction is only the tip of the iceberg."

"furtive"? Does he want to say that the crimes are so hidden that no one notices. Are we, by any chance, talking about victimless crimes again?

Sex offender registration appeals to go ahead (BBC News, 16 February 2011)

"Adults who sexually abuse children should stay on the offenders register for life as we can never be sure their behaviour will change."

If sex offences were distinguished into different categories, such as sex with inanimate objects, indecent exposure, possession of videos with cartoon tiger sex, brothel keeping, and child abuse, then we, the poor readership, would find ourselves intellectually challenged beyond our limited capacities. Therefore the BBC simplifies the discussion by equating sex offence to child abuse. How thoughtful of them. And utterly misleading.

wishes

Happy Celebration-of-a-biological-impossibility, everyone!



Virginity Claims Despoiled... (Melon Farmers, 24th December 2010)

rape

Background information least likely to be found on BBC News:

When it comes to Assange rape case, the Swedes are making it up as they go along (Crikey, Thursday, 2 December 2010)

The obsession with prosecuting sex crimes has come to a point where, just like in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the victims of rape are put in jail:

I accused my husband of rape. I was locked up – and he was set free (Guardian, Friday 26 November 2010)

Children, sex is bad, mmm'kay?

Children 'over-exposed to sexual imagery' (BBC News, Friday, 26 February 2010)

Author Dr Linda Papadopoulos said there was a clear link between sexualised imagery and violence towards females.

Sorry to be a pain, but, where is the evidence?

"Unless sexualisation is accepted as harmful, we will miss an important opportunity…

Sexualisation is harmful? What exactly is sexualisation and why is it harmful? The dictionary defines "sexualisation" as "To make sexual in character or quality". Then what is the alternative? Let people grow up asexual? Isn't that more harmful, to survival of humanity for example?

Printing photos of topless models in British tabloids is an abject phenomenon that a few more civilised countries somehow can do without. Publishers are given a choice to print those tabloids, and we are given a choice not to buy them, but some Neanderthals among us do anyway. I think this is called freedom, you know, that trifling issue that brave men and women gave their lives for throughout the centuries.

to broaden young people's beliefs about where their values lies," said Dr Papadopoulos, a psychologist.

Ah, "values", dictated by Big Brother. Was this 'expert' recruited by the Labour government by any chance?

Other recommendations include:

* A ban on "sexualised" music videos before the TV watershed

* A ban on Jobcentres advertising positions in lap-dancing clubs and massage parlours

* Internet service providers to block access to pro-bulimia and pro-anorexia websites

* The creation of a website where parents can report any "irresponsible marketing" they believe sexualises young children.

"Ban", "block" and snitching. Yes, this is New Labour all right. If people do something that is inconsistent with your world view, just criminalise them and put them in jail if they persist.

Dr Papadopoulos said there should also be symbols to show when a published photograph had been digitally altered - such as pictures of celebrities manipulated to make them appear thinner.

Have a look at the web site of TV personality Dr Papadopoulos: Dr. Linda. Should I believe her cover photo is not digitally altered? If it is not, then an unlikely amount of make-up was applied. This is a good role model for young women is it?

Dr Papadopoulos said: "The evidence gathered in the review suggests a clear link between consumption of sexualised images, tendency to view women as objects and the acceptance of aggressive attitudes and behaviour as the norm.

So in countries where there are no "sexualised images", there is a much lower incidence of violence against women? Well not exactly. The reason why women in e.g. Saudi Arabia don't report rape is because it is not in their interest:

Rape victim sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail (The Guardian, Saturday 17 November 2007)

The review forms part of the Home Office's broader attempts to have a louder public debate about how to combat violence against women and girls.

The last thing this government is interested in is debate. They are interested in pushing through their narrow-minded plans for social engineering. New Labour has learned to its detriment that debate and hiring critical people are bad ideas:

Profile: Professor David Nutt (BBC News, Friday, 30 October 2009)

and

Drug adviser joins exodus after ban on mephedrone (Guardian, Friday 2 April 2010)

So instead of asking for independent scientific advice, Labour now recruits malleable TV personalities to write reports with pre-determined conclusions, dressing up opinion as science.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson said: "We know that parents are concerned about the pressures their children are under at a much younger age, which is why we have already committed to a number of the recommendations in this report.

They already know, do they? How many parents were asked?

As to porn hysteria:

We must speed up to protect children from online porn – expert (Scotsman, 30 March 2010)

"And I'm very proud that Britain is now the only country in the world to have a comprehensive internet safety strategy."

Wrong: Iran, China and North Korea beat us to it.

New Labour protects us from the evil interwebs. Who protects us from New Labour?

Let us on May 6 please wipe this club of warmongers, social engineers, zealots, cheats and charlatans off the face of the earth.

(But don't mind me, I'm just 'bigoted'.)

unaccountability

Call to elect local police chiefs (BBC News, Saturday, 7 November 2009)

Only 0.18% of all complaints against riot squad officers over the last four years were upheld (Guardian, Friday 6 November 2009). This is not a typo! If you're bad at maths, let me explain that 0.18% amounts to about 1 out of 556.

Does that mean that 99.82% of all people who filed complaints were doing so just for the fun of it? I would lean towards believing instead that a culture of unaccountability has pervaded every echelon of law enforcement.

So what do we do about it? Do we organise mass demonstrations to demand punishment of officers who have abused police powers, or to demand punishment of those in government who have entrusted those powers to a fruity club unworthy of them? Do we start an armed revolt against the state perhaps?

No, the cunning plan is to have elected police chiefs. If anything, this will add to the illusion that police have a mandate from the people to fuck up the way they have done in the past. One may also expect an increase in police brutality against "pervs", "social deviants" and other minorities, to please the tabloid-reading, self-righteous masses.

If the voters are stupid, then the easiest way to achieve repression is through a pretence of democracy. This is demonstrated in Britain more than anywhere else (save the US of course).

More repression is on the way:

Her Majesty's Pleasure: How England "Safeguards" Sexuality, by John Ozimek (Carnal Nation, via Melon Farmers 7th November 2009)

the new lepers

One in 10 inmates is sex offender (BBC News, Monday, 26 October 2009)

Most repressive regimes invent a term to refer to people who stand in the way of whatever the regime wants to achieve. The term is given a strong negative connotation, and subsequently the populace tends to treat those branded with the term as less deserving of life and happiness.

Examples of such terms are "infidel", "unbeliever", "sodomite", "social deviant", "subversive", "Untermensch", "asbo", and lately "sex offender", which is another concoction of New Labour's mass criminalisation programme, making clever use of Britons' innate pathological fear of sex. The term includes those who have been convicted of rape or child molestation. But it also includes a policewoman who moonlighted as a prostitute, a man who gave a woman a lift from the train station to a nearby brothel (so called domesting trafficking; yes, people have been sent to jail for that), a father owning a holiday photo of his 17 year old daughter in a bikini, people who read explicit Japanese comic books or watched videos with "extreme pornography", as well as many dozens of innocent people (innocent in every respect except that of British law) whose credit card information was stolen by paedophiles.

Responsible journalists would not use a crude term like "sex offender" for such a wide spectrum of individuals, many of whom don't deserve to be treated as criminals in the first place. But of course, we are not talking about responsible journalism here, we are talking about BBC News.

extremely cruel

First prison sentence for extreme porn (Register, 29th September 2009)

"Nothing will be gained by sending you into custody, because you wouldn’t survive because you would be vulnerable. Support and assistance is needed."

Does the judge perchance admit that jail is a nasty place where strong men rape not-so-strong men? If so, this means that the first individual mentioned in the article has been sent to jail for six months for possessing images of a horse being sexually abused, so that he in turn may be abused. But whereas the horse may not even have noticed, he will, every time he reaches down for the soap, for six long months.

I thought the Hammurabi code (ca. 1790 BC) had put an end to such disproportional punishment.

Teacher jailed for sex with pupil

Teacher jailed for sex with pupil (BBC News, Monday, 21 September 2009)

It is highly unethical for a teacher to continue teaching someone or to be in any way involved in their grading, after they have started a relationship. The teacher ought to have been disciplined for this, and possibly dismissed.

There is no mention however of paedophilia in the clinical sense being a factor here, nor that the relationship was very different from a normal romance between two young people, one somewhat younger than the other. The state then has no business interfering in one of the few things that make life worth living, and the long jail sentence cannot reasonably be seen as anything other than a perverse application of a crude law.

An impact statement from the girl's parents said the teacher went "out of her way" to befriend them and their "vulnerable" daughter.

Note that "impact statement" includes considerations about the parents. Often in such cases, parents choose to see themselves as victims. Their hurt pride means more to them than the best interests of their children.

"It is, of course, against the law to engage in sexual activity with a person under 16, even with her consent."

As a rule, statements of judges are full of self-righteous moralising bullshit, suggesting they have the private phone number of God™, whom they consult to distinguish right and wrong. In this case however, there is no mention of "wrong", but just of "against the law". This country has sunk so low that we don't even pretend any more that the law is a reflection of any kind of natural justice.

If the law is out of synch with reality, then reality will have to adapt to the law. This harsh sentencing will miraculously alter the genes of Britons, and from now on, no one will fall in love with anyone on the opposite side of the 16th birthday.

The judge added: "The relationship involved a fair degree of deception not only in respect of the school but also to the girl's parents."

How strange that lovers would try to keep such a relationship secret, when bringing it in the open would only get one of the two in jail for a long time.

The school was made aware of the affair through an anonymous e-mail tip-off, the court heard.

Nice to have such friends and colleagues. I wonder how they can bear the guilt for the rest of their lives.

The judge, who was told the girl and the teacher were genuinely in love, did not uphold the prosecution's request for a sexual offences prevention order as it would be "draconian and unnecessarily cruel" to the girl as well.

How kind of the judge to consider the girl's interests. No doubt she will be delighted that she can see her lover in jail for the next 15 months.

The original BBC News article also included the following (which has since been edited out, but it is still found in the Guardian article, which seems to have been derived from it):

Officers raided the teacher's maisonette in Greenwich, south-east London, and arrested the 26-year-old. They seized sex toys from the house.

What do these "sex toys" prove, other than that BBC News journalists are pathetic little weasels who are all too eager to harm people's privacy far beyond the call of duty?

See also:

Blurred boundaries for teachers (Guardian, Wednesday 23 September 2009)

Some of the comments are noteworthy. Whereas Guardian readers tend to be open-minded and critical of the nanny state, as soon as sex is involved even they turn into hysterical bigotted monsters, calling for even harsher penalties for "pervs".

What is it with Britons and sex?

Policewoman who worked as a prostitute is jailed

Policewoman who worked as a prostitute is jailed (Guardian, Thursday 10 September 2009)

Policemen who shot an innocent commuter in the head (seven times, with hollow-point bullets) never spent one minute in jail. The policeman who found pleasure in clubbing an innocent passerby to death at the G20 will most likely never receive a jail sentence either. But making love (with remuneration) apparently shakes the very foundations of this society and so warrants the harshest punishments.

The convicted woman might have served society well as a police officer who, for a change, was not clubbing innocent people to death or shooting them in the head (seven times, with hollow-point bullets), regardless of whether she was moonlighting as a private math tutor or as anything else. Instead, her life has been devastated and she has been turned into a burden on society, at least for the next 15 months, when we will all be paying room and board for her.

Update (2009-10-21)

I'm still puzzled why the establishment came down so hard on this woman. Was it perhaps because her very existence was an embarrassment to Jacqui Smith's claim that all prostitutes are helpless women who are forced into it by ruthless pimps?

For more ideology-driven 'fact' finding, and New Labour creating statistics to suit its purpose, in concert with a police force that is out of control, see:

Inquiry fails to find single trafficker who forced anybody into prostitution (Guardian, Tuesday 20 October 2009)

PM apology after Turing petition

PM apology after Turing petition (BBC News, Friday, 11 September 2009)

The intelligentsia in Turing's time were deploring eras when women didn't have the right to vote and were otherwise oppressed. But in the 1950s it was not fashionable to defend the rights of gays. Alan Turing was a genius and his contributions to code-breaking were vital to the war effort. But after the war he was simply a perv, and standing up for that sort of people was not salonfähig.

Today, complacent intellectuals condemn persecution of gays (or to be exact, persecution of one famous gay man) in the 1950s. How courageous to criticise law makers most of whom have been dead for decades! Will the same intellectuals stand up for the rights of consenting adults in the BDSM community who are persecuted by today's government for enjoying non-vanilla sexual activities and images thereof? Defending pervs? No way!

Jacqui's legacy

Jacqui Smith's marriage 'strong' (BBC News, Sunday, 5 April 2009)

I think I should be very open about my expenses, but there are bits of my private life that I don't think should be open to public scrutiny.

If what happens between consenting adults is exposed to public scrutiny, then that's quite awkward. Isn't it, Mrs. Smith? This is quite unlike your Extreme Porn Law (see Backlash), which doesn't interfere at all with what happens between consenting adults. Does it, Mrs. Smith?

As you sow...

Update

Recommended reading:

Comment: Good riddance to a bad home secretary (politic.co.uk, Tuesday, 02, Jun 2009)

It fails to mention a few fuckups, but then again, there were so many. See also:

Rule nothing out with these Home Office farceurs – except competence (Guardian, Friday 8 May 2009)

For now, let's not rely on the next home secretary being less of a wackjob.

'More sex offenders' go missing

'More sex offenders' go missing (BBC News, Tuesday, 23 December 2008)

The horror! Do the missing sex offenders include the man convicted of having sex with a bicycle (BBC News, Friday, 16 November 2007)? Better lock up your bike sheds then!

Child protection charities warned it was common for sex offenders to re-offend

Define 'common'. Some types of sex offence have the lowest reconviction rates among all crimes, according to government statistics, which regrettably leave out of consideration those cases where the victims were bicycles, shoes, traffic cones, or other inanimate objects involved in recent convictions.

The above article should be seen against the backdrop of a growing awareness that the sex offenders register as it is maintained in the UK breaches human rights:

Sex offenders win rights ruling (BBC News, Friday, 19 December 2008)

Of course, it is not politically correct to talk about this. And think about the poor underage Vettas, Konas and Raleighs!

censored Wikipedia image

Wikipedia child image censored (BBC News, Monday, 8 December 2008)

Wikipedia page censored in the UK for 'child pornography' (Guardian blog, 8 December 2008)

I don't exactly enjoy living in a country where people are put in jail every day by narrow-minded and self-righteous judges and magistrates, for an ever increasing number of victimless crimes, thought up by a maniacal government intent on obliterating every last shred of our civil liberties. But it is an outright affront to freedom and democracy that government-funded bodies operating outside the control of the judicial system decide what is good for us to see, hear and read.

Forms of censorship that are not answerable to anyone are at the basis of every dictatorship, and countries that are democratic, at least in name, have become a lot less so because of such censorship. Those who dare speak out are often themselves censored, as in the case of Lapsiporno:

Finnish government blacklists 'free speech' site (CNET news, February 18, 2008)

In Britain, internet censorship is implemented by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which was initially only concerned with identifying child abuse websites. Through the function-creep that is inevitable with such organisations, they then started to widen their scope to material that they deemed objectionable for a variety of reasons, from obscenity to incitement to racist violence (BBC News, Friday, 24 October 2008), and all major ISPs now adopt their blacklists blindly. No one except the government and ISPs have access to the blacklist, which makes the IWF unaccountable. The censored material will of course also cover (and likely now already covers) "extreme porn", in the light of new legislation:

Porn, abuse, depravity - and how they plan to stop it (The Register, 9th October 2008)

Government finally names the day for porn ban (The Register, 26th November 2008)

backlash-uk.org.uk

The case at hand involves an album cover from 1976, which is of historical interest, notwithstanding its bad taste, and unless the decision to blacklist the image is withdrawn soon, Britain will become the laughingstock of the (supposedly) free world even more than it already is.

If you cannot access the Wikipedia page, then it is advisable to change your provider to a decent one that doesn't play ball with the nanny state, or use a proxy situated in the free world, or to be more exact, anywhere except Britain, Australia and North Korea. (Check out Relakks and Anonymouse.org.) Alternatively, you can see the controversial album cover here or here or here or here or here of here. That is, if you're curious what the fuss is about, and are not shocked by a naked body!

If you haven't had enough yet, check out Le Sommeil de l'Enfant Jésus by Benvenuto Tisi. Every day, hordes of paedophiles go on a pilgrimage to the Louvre to see it.

And what to think of The Three Graces, either the painting by Raphael or the sculpture by Antonio Canova. Those girls look rather underage don't they?

You want bondage thrown in as well? No problem. See The White Captive by Erastus Dow Palmer.

But hush! Don't tell the IWF, or a large portion of classical and neo-classical sculpture will be ostracised, only to be appreciated by a handful of scholars, authorised after thorough psychological testing that qualifies them to see such depraved and depraving material.

By the way, our friends down under are in an even worse predicament than we are. But it won't be long till we catch up:

Fake Simpsons cartoon 'is porn' (BBC News, Monday, 8 December 2008)

In Conroy’s muddy waters you'll never know what’s being filtered (Computerworld, 28/10/2008)

www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com

Addendum:

For an update and thorough analysis, recommended reading is:

Scorpions tale leaves IWF exposed (The Register, 9th December 2008)

Addendum 2:

IWF backs down on Wiki censorship (BBC News, Tuesday, 9 December 2008)

"IWF's overriding objective is to minimise the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect. We regret the unintended consequences for Wikipedia and its users."

So they couldn't foresee that blocking a Wikipedia page (and other collateral damage) would upset people? One cannot but wonder what incompetent fools are behind that organisation. It is very plausible that more harmless, or at least legal, images and textual material have ended up on the blacklist that we don't know about.

One of these days, some hacker will get hold of the blacklist, and distribute it on the web, thereby giving paedophiles the most concentrated list of filth in existence, and as we all know, the offending websites are and will always remain accessible with a minimum of technical know-how, by means of proxies, the TOR network, etc. How's that for "unintended consequences"?

The IWF is a serious threat to free speech, while having no effect whatsoever on the availability of child abuse material to those intent on finding it. Close the IWF down, now!

Addendum 3:

There are in fact now leaked blacklists for Denmark (Melonfarmers, Dec 24, 2008), Thailand (CircleID, Dec 2, 2008), and Finland as mentioned above.

there's weird and there's weird

Healer methods doubted by expert (BBC News, Wednesday, 8 October 2008)

Professor Ernst, professor of complementary and alternative medicine at Exeter University, was asked about evidence from the woman about how Mr Hands had touched her.

[...]

Prof Ernst told the court that the methods she described were "not part of lymphatic drainage of the groin".

Curious. The guilt of the quack seems to depend on whether his holistic healing methods are more wacky than holistic healing methods are anyway. My understanding was that if reason goes out the window, then nothing is too weird. The legal profession apparently has a different view.

sex in public

Sex-on-beach trial Britons guilty (BBC News, Thursday, 16 October 2008)

Those cursed Muslims in Dubai with their outdated morals! We in Britain are more open-minded. Aren't we? Well, apparently the following is still not self-evident:

Police leniency call on park sex (BBC News, Friday, 17 October 2008)

Sex offenders to face lie tests

Sex offenders to face lie tests (BBC News, Friday, 19 September 2008)

It won't be long until we can read in the newspapers:

Labour to replace police investigations by 16th century witch-hunting methods

Decades of experience with polygraphs used by the US federal government have established that the high number of false negatives and the high number of false positives make the method useless for any purpose whatsoever. For example, all those who were tested and later turned out to be spies had passed the test successfully, while the careers of several innocent people were ruined after they failed a lie detector test.

Polygraph examiners are the lowest of the low. With their bogus claims to possess magical powers of truth finding, they are as deceitful and fraudulent as dowsers, psychics, chiropractors, homoeopaths, and senior members of the Labour Party. Letting them have any function at all in any kind of legal process will cause immeasurable damage. Innocent people will be made to suffer because of false positives, and a misplaced sense of security in the case of false negatives will endanger potential victims.

Once more it is demonstrated that people's brains stop functioning as soon as an issue involves child abuse. No one in Britain would propose use of polygraphs in the case of mass murder, terrorism, or the treason committed by Blair and Brown over the war in Iraq. So why is it okay to apply polygraphs to sex offenders? Because with their conviction, they forfeited their human rights for all eternity? Then why not reintroduce trial by drowning? That would be the ultimate solution to keeping these freaks away from our children.

Woman jailed for sex with boy

Woman jailed for sex with boy, 15 (BBC News, Friday, 12 September 2008)

Here we go again. Apparently jails aren't full enough yet.

As in the case two weeks ago, there was consensual sex, and the father had nothing better to do than snoop on his offspring, who might have been months, days or seconds away from the age of consent.

Passing sentence Judge Peter Jacobs told her: "If this was a 35-year-old man and a 15-year-old girl no one would raise an eyebrow if he was sent to prison."

I would. And I don't understand the reasoning. Did she deserve 15 months in jail for reasons of gender equality?

The court heard there was no victim impact statement as he had been a willing party.

So this is a victimless crime? Why are victimless crimes punished so harshly in this country? Is there a rational explanation for this?

"His parents have been very upset," Mrs Tucker added.

So it is really the parents who are the victims. Just let the implications sink in for a moment.

Spy software snares child abuser

Spy software snares child abuser (BBC News, Tuesday, 2 September 2008)

There is not much about this case in the press, and perhaps the offender is really pure evil and the victim is pure innocence. The only practical way to criminalise child abuse is to set an age of consent, which according to my sources happens to be 12 in Malta, 14 in Austria, 15 in France, and 18 in Turkey. The case reported here is clearly statutory rape in the UK, as the girl was not yet 16. (By how many months or how many days?)

This said, am I a vile monster myself if I feel some compassion for this guy who is being sent to jail for 4.5 years? Having sex is what has saved the human race from extinction, and urges programmed into our genes tend to take precedence over social conventions about, for example, age difference. Moreover, the reality seems to be that a third of British teens have sex below the age of consent (Third 'have sex below legal age', BBC News, 13 Aug 06), and for gay teens this may be more than half (Report Finds 58% of Gay Teens Have Sex Before Legal Age of 16, UKGayNews, 1 December 2006).

Incidentally, judging from our overcrowded prisons (e.g. Scots jail numbers at record high, BBC News, Friday, 29 August 2008), it seems that either Britons are more inclined to commit crimes than our neighbours oversees, or most people in UK jails don't deserve to be there, due to an antiquated legal system and self-righteous legislators who think that all that is undesirable will go away if only penalties are high enough, irrespective of any sense of justice.

Of course, in the present climate of child abuse hysteria, it is no longer allowed to consider such matters rationally. This holds in the UK as much as in the US, cf. the Rind et al. controversy. Further recommended reading is Predator Panic: A Closer Look by Benjamin Radford, Skeptical Inquirer 30(5). In France we saw the Outreau trial a few years ago.

Back to the original BBC News article: If an attempt was made to provide a balanced view on the trial, it wasn't successful. Could it be that the father who installed spy software on his daughter's computer was himself a bit off his rocker? This doesn't sound very sane to me:

I picked up the software for £60 and is the best thing I have ever bought and is now on all my children's PCs.

Poor children. Will they sustain more permanent trauma from the consequences of their budding sexuality or from being continuously spied on by their parents?

This is a good occasion to reread:

Girl to get tracker implant to ease parents' fears (The Guardian, Tuesday September 3 2002)

A less gullible source is:

Cap Cyborg to chip 11 year old in wake of UK child killings (The Register, Monday 2nd September 2002)

Want to mould people into a surveillance society? Start early!

virtual freedom

Computer generated abuse 'banned' (BBC News, Wednesday, 28 May 2008)

This loophole is real. But the remedy is really perverse (The Guardian, Saturday May 31 2008)

Soon, they may put me in jail for three years for publishing this drawing on the internet:



However, this would be perfectly legal:



Under the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, drawing and distributing this image may also carry a prison sentence of 2 years (virtual zoophile pornography):



Kudos to the brave people who challenge Scientology (and its collaborators among the City of London police), but let us not ignore an even greater threat to freedom and democracy. NuLabour is a dangerous cult that will continue to nibble at the edges of our civil liberties until there is nothing left.