Miss Ethnic Ireland: Your Taxes At Work

Did you know that an Iranian Student named Sheelan Yousefizadeh recently won the Miss Ethnic Ireland beauty contest in Dublin? Did you, in fact, know that there was a Miss Ethnic Ireland beauty contest in Dublin? I didn't either, until I stumbled upon a copy of Yeah!, the intellectually-titled international student magazine, in Trinity College the other day.

Yeah! is a glossy,well-put together publication. Given that it is put out free of charge, one wonders where it gets its funding from. Its contributors seem to range from would-be eurocrats (‘Save Erasmus’) to fringe feminists (‘A night full of pictures; 16-days [sic] of activism on violence against women at NUI Galway’). The first above-mentioned article gives a hint as to where the funds might come from when it announces in its final section that ‘AEGEE demands an increase in the number of [Erasmus] mobility grants’. AEGEE is the EU-funded European Students Forum, whose stated aim is to “create a unified Europe”. It would be interesting to know exactly what the relationship between it and Yeah! is.

But back to Miss Ethnic Ireland. The lovely Miss Yousefizadeh claims to be “overwhelmed” by winning the prestigious prize, and is grateful for the support of the Iranian community in Ireland, who “backed her to the hilt.” I didn't think Iranians tended to be great fans of beauty contests, but there you are. Reading on, we learn that Sheelan is not some random Iranian girl who stumbled upon the contest by accident, but rather a fully-paid up member of the multicultural establishment: “Her passions are activism and she is working on a number of projects. These include working with the Immigrant Council of Ireland in the organization’s ‘Ambassadors for Change’ campaign, in which she is currently engaged.”

The article is vague about what the Miss Ethnic Ireland contest actually is. What, for example, are the criteria for entering? And what do the contestants have to do to win?  Yeah! does not go into such awkward matters, but it does ask an interesting question of Miss Yousefizadeh: what is the worst aspect of living in Dublin? The answer is worth quoting:

“Sheelan pauses to think. After a few moments she expresses the view that Ireland is much too localised in terms of how we see the world. Our cultural understanding needs to be broadened, she feels. By way of example she cites the coverage of the Middle East in the Irish media which, she says, is not adequate compared to other countries such as the UK. This, she concedes, is probably down to demographics.”

Right. So Ireland, despite having, at a time of unprecedented shortage of money, organized an absurd multicultural event which Miss Yousefizadeh has won, and which has also given her the opportunity (according to Yeah!) to work with the UN and Amnesty International, is still much too insular and bigoted. In contrast to Iran, where, presumably, the airwaves crackle around the clock with pundits discussing the internal affairs of Iceland, Singapore and Botswana. Can you name the president of Iran? I suspect most educated Irish people could. What proportion of Iranians, do you think, could name the president of Ireland? Iran is, incidentally, a country where non-Muslims are prohibited from working for the government or running their own schools. “Cultural understanding” does not exactly seem to be its strong point.

Unabashed, Ian Callagy (the author of the piece) continues his hymn of praise with a bit of unintended humour:

“With many university graduates racing to leave Ireland for foreign shores, it may be somewhat surprising to hear that Sheelan has no plans to flee the Emerald Isle.”

Not surprising to me, Mr Callagy. Not one bit.

Looking over the photographs of the event,with a portly Irish politician (is it Joe Costello?) standing alongside the Miss Ethnic Ireland contestants, I think of my colleagues at work. Ordinary people, who fondly imagine that the hard-earned money they pay in tax goes towards things like roads and schools and social welfare, as well as the bank debt. These people don’t read international student magazines. If they did, I wonder what their reaction would be.

Man brutally assaults daughter but escapes jail. Defence pleads "cultural differences."

So a man is driving along through Blanchardstown one day when he sees his 17-year old daughter walking to college with a (presumably male) friend. He immediately starts screaming “Whore!” at her (as you do), threatens to kill her, forces her into the car and beats her severely, over and over again, variously using a screwdriver and a knife. The Independent reports:

Didani ordered his daughter into the vehicle, then began hitting her in the face as he drove home.

The court heard that he stopped the car in a bus lane and started hitting her with the handle of the screwdriver.

"If I get you to a forest right now, I'll kill you," he told her.

Didani also beat her as soon as they returned home.

He kicked and hit her while she lay on the ground before emptying the contents of her handbag on the floor.

Didani then walked into the kitchen and returned with a kitchen knife.

He put the knife to her face and said: "I'm going to kill you."

So, did he go to prison for assault? After all, apart from credibly threatening to kill his daughter, he caused her considerable physical and psychological harm. Well, no. Instead he got a meaningless two and a half-year suspended sentence. And why? Well, here’s a clue:

Gda Mention agreed with Vincent Heneghan, defending, that there were "cultural differences" which were key to this case.

Well, there you have it. If your culture says it’s okay to viciously assault and threaten a 17-year old girl for some imagined indiscretion, then the Irish justice system will simply have to get used to that.

Who could possibly have foreseen this?

The Irish Independent reports:

THE eminent UK obstetrician chairing the inquiry into the death of Savita Halappanavar co-authored a report which called on countries with restrictive abortion laws to look at more liberal regimes.

Professor Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, head of obstetrics at St George's Hospital London, co-authored a report in 2009 which he said would "encourage societies and countries with restrictive abortion laws to look at the evidence in four of liberal abortion laws".

Well, I’m glad we can look forward to a completely fair, impartial investigation then.

On the opinion pages, the Independent states, apparently without a hint of irony: "Head of inquiry is perfect choice to uncover truth of this tragedy.” Eilish O’Regan’s article is one long sigh of liberal relief.

In other news, David McWilliams comes remarkably close to stating that Ireland might leave the EU if Britain does. He doesn’t quite say that, of course, our membership of the EU being one of those unquestionable givens of Irish political and media life. But I think it’s fair to say that he implies it. Here he indicates what an EU sans le Royaume-Uni would have in store for this country:

For Ireland, it would mean being part of an enterprise where of the two other countries we joined with in 1973, one isn't in the euro (Denmark) and one isn't in the EU (Britain). Far more importantly, it would mean our two major trading partners, the US and the UK, would not be in the same orbit politically and we would be tied to a project which we would be entirely unsuited to economically. Ireland would be a total outlier in terms of economic integration, while culturally we would be in a club with which we share practically nothing.

Disheartening though the support of IBEC and “business community” types for the EU is, at least we have the comfort of knowing that they only support the project out of unscruplous greed. The moment there is a clear, unanswerable economic argument against EU membership, they will jump ship. In that sense, they are different from the real euro-fanatics, the politicians, bureaucrats and Monet professors who have nailed their colours so firmly to the euro-mast that they will let it drag them down to the icy deep, where no one will miss them.

David Quinn States The Obvious

He makes two sensible (and, one would have thought, self-evident) points: first, that it has not been established that ending Savita Halappanavar’s pregnancy when she was admitted to hospital would have saved her life. And second, that the doctors treating her could have legally ended her pregnancy by inducing labour if they had thought it necessary, but did not do so.

I suspect that the investigation, when it is happens, will conclude that Mrs Halappanavar in fact did not die because her child was not aborted the moment she was admitted to hospital. But by then the story will be old news. The pro-abortionists will have milked maximum publicity out of the affair, and the media will have moved on to other things.

As in the case of Ermyas M in Germany back in 2006, the political and media class will find, to their relief, that people have short memories.

The Indo's ageing liberals

Today’s Irish Independent has three separate articles, including an editorial, devoted to the fact that liberal Redemptorist and “Association of Catholic Priests” founder Fr Tony Flannery has been contacted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith over his dissident views. The first of these comes under the headline “New Vatican ordeal for Fr Flannery.”

You know the sort of stuff the articles contain. Church’s theological watchdog, increasing scrutiny, language of the past, 16^th century mindset, out-of-touch men in the Vatican, where is Christian compassion in all this, and so on and so forth. But the style is strikingly lazy and puerile, even by the standards of the anti-clerical Irish media.

Three times we are told that Fr Flannery has been “silenced”, without any explanation of what that “silencing” consists of. Has he been forbidden by the Church to open his mouth? Forbidden to preach? Forbidden to publish his opinions? Well, as far as I am aware, he has been asked not to publish articles in the liberal Redemptorist magazine Reality. And, um ... that’s it. That doesn’t seem like too much of a silencing, given that Reality is one of those magazines you see getting dog-eared and mouldy on the magazine rack at the back of churches. Meanwhile, the ACP’s website announces that Fr Flannery will be the main speaker at the group’s AGM in Dublin on 10 November. “Silenced”, indeed!

One of the articles is written by Garry O’Sullivan, managing director of the increasingly risible Irish Catholic. Mr O’Sullivan thinks the likes of Fr Flannery have done sterling service to the Church and should be rewarded by being allowed to air whatever opinions they like without anyone contradicting them:

“Fr Flannery and others hope for a church that is open to married and women priests; want a re-evaluation of the teaching on contraception and a more sensitive teaching on homosexuality. Of course, those in the CDF would say that if we want to evangelise Irish people and tell them about the good things that the church teaches, then we have to have our priests on the same page. But that is an old church way of looking at this.

Would it not be better to take on the liberal priests and instead of silencing them, offer counter arguments, as St Paul says, but in love? I'm not seeing the church St Paul spoke of and I'm certainly not feeling the love, but I am seeing a well-meaning group of clerical lawyers and officials locked away in a Vatican cocoon creating a climate of fear among elderly clergy in Ireland. They have, by virtue of 30 or 40 years ministering in the priesthood, earned the right to disagree with me or you or even an official in the CDF who, looking out on St Peter's Colonnade, wishes complicated Irish Catholics could be as easily cleaned up for a speedy return to a time of supposed certainty.”

Well, in those “30 or 40 years” we have reached a situation where only 14% of Dubliners go to Mass every week and where half of Mass-goers, according to one poll, do not believe in Christ’s Real Presence at Holy Communion. Fr Flannery and his ilk appear to have done a strikingly abysmal job of passing on the faith. I am not sure that they have “earned the right” to anything.

There was one bright note in this otherwise gloomy collection of pieces, however. Mr O’Sullivan, in his article, refers to “liberal ageing priests like Redemptorist Fr Tony Flannery and, among others, Fr Brian D’Arcy.”

Of course, traditional Catholics like to point out that liberal Catholics tend to be a greying bunch, and that they are not leaving many theological heirs. But it’s a fact seldom mentioned by the liberals, whose whole worldview is after all based on the premise that their watered-down form of Christianity is more “relevant” and in tune with the times than that nasty old pre-Vatican II stuff. So it is striking to see a journalist who is highly sympathetic to the liberal priests stating frankly that they are a dying breed. The phrase “ageing liberal” is repeated in the editorial; the writer seems unaware of its pejorative edge. There can be no doubt that liberal Catholics are suffering from a demographic crisis when even their friends in the media are admitting as much.

Oh, and tucked away on page 26 of the Independent is the story that 14-year old Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan was shot in the head by Islamists for spreading “Western, secular values” on her blog. But never mind that – the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are the ones we should be afraid of! 

"Islamophobia" apparently does not need quotation marks. Its Christian counterpart does.

From Le Monde on 10 December 2011, regarding demonstrations against the play Golgotha Picnic:

“La première à Paris de la pièce controversée de l'Hispano-Argentin Rodrigo Garcia, que certains catholiques accusent de « christianophobie », et que Mgr Bernard Podvin, porte-parole de la Conférence des évêques de France, considère comme un spectacle « blessant », a été jouée sans incident, jeudi 8 septembre, au Théâtre du Rond-Point.”

Le Monde again on 17 September 2012, regarding demonstrations against the film The Innocence of Muslims:

“Le parquet de Paris a ordonné une enquête sur la manifestation qui s'est tenue devant l'ambassade des Etats-Unis samedi, en réaction contre le film islamophobe Innocence of Muslims, a annoncé dimanche 16 septembre une source judiciaire.”

Those quotation marks – or their absence – can speak volumes.

The Euro is just self-evidently a good thing! (Even if 6 out of 10 people say otherwise)

Apparently desperate to join a sinking ship, the Latvian political elite are determined to join the Euro. Unsurprisingly, the political elite think very differently on the matter than do ordinary citizens:

While getting the euro is the obsession of Latvia's policy-making elite, the public appears sceptical -- on the surface at least.

An August survey of more than 1,000 Latvians by the Latvijas Fakti pollster showed that just 35 percent supported adopting the euro, with 59 percent declaring themselves against and six percent undecided.

Happily, the Latvians, like the Irish, have a paternalistic political class who will ignore their protests and drag them into the doomed currency regardless:

University of Latvia expert Ivars Ijabs says the question of euro adoption is seen less as an issue of economics than of reinforcing a European identity and national security -- further anchoring the former Soviet-ruled nation of two million in the European Union, which it joined in 2004.

"According to opinion polls we are rather euro-sceptic, but there has been no call for a referendum (on adopting the euro) and even if there was, there would be a large campaign stressing security issues," Ijabs told AFP.

"Probably Latvia will enter the eurozone as it entered the European Union -- without much debate as it is more or less self-evident that Latvia has to be there."

That is the typical eurocrat response to arguments against their project. Who needs counter-arguments? The EU is just self-evidently a glorious thing, can’t you see that? The europhile position is so self-evidently right, in fact, that a full 35% of the population agrees with it!

Islamists destroy heritage sites. But it was surely the Christians who put them up to it!

Linsay Hilsum of Channel Four has an article in today’s Irish Times, under the eye-catching headline “Heritage of Islam faces threat from within.” In it, she chronicles how Libya and Mali have fallen under the control of militant Islamists since the fall of Ghadaffi (who could have foreseen it?) and that these Islamists have begun smashing up “idolatrous” Sufi tombs and other heritage sites.

Two things stand out about the article. One is the direct and unsubtle comparison between Muslim puritans and Christian ones:

“I don’t suppose the men in the bulldozer had heard of William Dowsing. He was a Christian, not a Muslim, English, not Libyan, and he lived in the 17th century, not the 21st.

But as “commissioner for the destruction of monuments of idolatry and superstition” he was similarly determined to obliterate objects venerated by a different sect of his own religion.”

She goes on to quote a report where Dowsing gloats about having destroyed some “angells” in a church in England during the Puritan revolution.

It’s interesting how politically correct media pundits are afraid to simply criticize militant Islam and leave it at that. “It’s not just Muslims,” they want to say, “we Christians have been just as bad!” However, the zealous Mr Dowsing lived almost four hundred years ago, and even his most fanatical modern-day Protestant heirs, however they might disapprove of “graven images”, generally leave Christians who differ with them on that point in peace.

The other striking thing about the article is how it falls over itself to stress that Islam is the primary victim of militant Islamism. This has the effect of drawing that magical media barrier between nice, moderate, mainstream Islam and its barbarous offspring, jihadism – just in case anyone should confuse the two:

 “The fear today is that much more of the priceless Islamic heritage of the Sahara will be destroyed before the governments in Mali and Libya install law and order, and stop the latter-day Dowsings from doing their worst.”

No doubt Islamism has made the lives of countless Muslims a misery. But Ms Hilsum might have also spared a mention for the Christians and Christian churches that have fallen victim to the “Arab Spring.”

Outrageous Laziness

Over at the Independent, Shaun Walker frets over the “harsh life” that Pussy Riot can expect to enjoy behind bars. And he is convinced that the rest of the world shares his concern:

“The women say it was a political protest over the Russian Orthodox Church's support for President Vladimir Putin, but the court ruled it "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" in a verdict that has caused outrage across the world.”

Outrage across the world? Oh, come off it. When you think of something causing “outrage across the world,” what pictures come into your head? Furious citizens with placards crowding the streets, shouting slogans and throwing stones, if your head is anything like mine.

I’ve only discussed the case in detail with one person, who was of the opinion that two years was a rather light sentence. You can put that down to the circles I move in. But I work in a thoroughly secular environment, and there, too, I only heard one or two people mention the “band’s” self-inflicted plight in a casual, disinterested way before moving on to the more important business of the fiasco at Ulster Bank. Mr Walker is either guilty of strikingly lazy hyperbole, or else so entrenched in his left-liberal world that he really does think everyone shares his outrage. I don’t know which possibility is more depressing.

Good Riddance

So the Pussy Rioters have got two years behind bars. Since the time they have spent in jail already will count as time served, they should be out in, at most, 18 months.

Rupert Cornwell of the Independent thinks the fact that they were imprisoned at all was a "ludicrously excessive punishment." He also takes care to wag his liberal finger at Russian authoritarianism, which he believes is so much more repressive than the tolerant West:

"In any country, such a stunt would have caused considerable offence -- and not merely among the devout. But imagine the consequences, had it occurred in the West -- outrage on right-wing talk radio and much frothing on the warring cable-TV news channels, while the band's PR people would have had their work cut out to prevent a cascade of engagement cancellations.

But never would the affair have got within a mile of the courts."

Right-wing talk radio, eh? Where would that be? I know it exists in the United States, but I didn’t know we had it here in Europe too. Mr Cornwell might like to tell me where I could pick it up. It would make a refreshing change from the media drivel I have to put up with at the moment.

But – does he really imagine speech is so free in the West? What about the harrassed German radio assistant I blogged about a few days ago who pleaded with an outraged listener to take a DJ’s tasteless joke with humour, and was promptly fired? What about the Oklahoma police captain who was denied promotion, transferred and docked two weeks’ pay for refusing to attend a cultural event in a mosque? Neither of those two people did anything remotely as calculatedly offensive as the Pussy Rioters, yet both have had their careers seriously and perhaps permanently damaged. Pussy Riot, in contrast, will probably emerge from prison to a heroes’ welcome from the kind of morons who have been defending them publicly until now.

Actually, most of Mr Cornwall’s article is not really about Pussy Riot, nor about the Church they set out to besmear. It’s about what a bad man he thinks Putin is. He seems to imagine that Putin, and not the trial judge, is personally responsible for deciding the length of today’s sentence. You can read his sneering ramblings for yourself. It seems just a little sad, though. Pussy Riot, much as I detest them, did show some genuine idealism and courage in a public act of desecration of a church which they knew would have serious consequences for them. As C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape points out, a person needs some virtue to be truly and manifestly wicked. But as far as Mr Cornwell and his ilk in the anti-Putin media are concerned, they are just useful sticks to beat their favourite enemy with.When they are in prison and forgotten about by most of the world, Mr Cornwell will have found another stick.

Ultimately, Pussy Riot’s long-term legacy, apart from the desecration of a holy place that they committed, may simply be the enormous trouble they gave to a great many people who had done them no harm whatsoever. There are the faithful in the Cathedral on the day they performed their stupid stunt. There are the smashed windows in London, and the people who will have to clear them up. And there are people like me. When I was in Moscow just after Easter this year, I visited the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. You had to go through airport-style security to get in, complete with metal detectors and tetchy guards, all courtesy of those three idiots. Ironic, really, given that they see themselves as champions of dissent. The only cause they really champion is their own, and that of professional finger-waggers like Mr Cornwell.

"After all, there are Christian fundamentalists too!"

Reza Aslan says we shouldn’t be too worried about the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood are consolidating their power in Egypt. Calling the “significant role” they have to play in the country a “good thing”, he reminds us that, when you think about it, there is really not much separating the Muslim Brotherhood from US Republicans. Both, after all, want to see a greater role for religion in public life:

“In fact, when it comes to the role of religion in society, Americans and Egyptians are pretty well in agreement. An August 2010 Pew poll found that 43 percent of Americans believe that churches should express political views and play an active role in politics, while 61 percent agreed that "it is important that members of Congress have strong religious beliefs.”

He goes on to describe Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee as “two men whose views on the role of religion and politics are almost identical to those of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Hmmm.

In other news, Raymond Ibrahim reports that last week Muslim Brotherhood supporters crucified opponents demonstrating against President Muhammad Morsi on trees in Cairo (hat tip Jihad Watch).

Of course, US Christians like Rick Santorum are constantly murdering their opponents in the street and intimidating journalists into silence. Like Mr Aslan says, they’re just like the Muslim Brotherhood, really!

Stones In Glass Houses

Der Spiegel is waxing indignant over the trial of the blasphemous punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow. With that placid liberal certainty that their opponents will inevitably come round and see things their way in the end, the article assures us that "it has slowly begun to dawn on both the Russian Orthodox community and the Kremlin that they may have done themselves a disservice with this ruthless and bizarre prosecution of the anti-Putin band members."

Has it, indeed? This ruthless and bizarre prosecution? Der Spiegel is published in a society where, in the past few days, an athlete was sent home from the Olympics in disgrace because of her boyfriend's political opinions, where a radio presenter lost her job for letting the words "Arbeit macht frei" slip during a live broadcast, and where the presenter's assistant then lost her job for pleading with angry callers complaining about the slip to "take it humorously." Pussy Riot, on the other hand, quite deliberately staged a sacrilegious demonstration in a cathedral that had already been demolished once in its history during a time of almost unimaginable atheist persecution. What they did was coldly calculated to shock and offend strangers who had never done them any harm whatever. It was a far more reprehensible act than either Nadja Drygalla's choice of boyfriend or those unfortunate radio workers' choice of words. So Spiegel should give the finger-wagging a rest for once.

Rod Dreher too, however, thinks that the Pussy Riot trial is turning into an embarrassment for the Russian Orthodox Church. He quotes the Spiegel article and also a journalist from the New Republic who has fun sniggering at the simple souls testifying in court who were scandalized at Pussy Riot's act, and concludes by asking:

"How is it that Putin and the Patriarch have managed to make people feel great sympathy for a group of loony feminist slatterns heretofore known for staging an orgy in a museum?"

Well, I'm not sure that many people do feel "great sympathy" for the rioters in question. Even the Spiegel piece admitted that 47% of Russians polled by the Levada centre thought that the maximum sentence of seven years imprisonment would be an "appropriate" one.

That aside, however: a public order offence is a public order offence, regardless of whether there is a danger of the offender's attracting "sympathy" or not. And committing such an offence in a place which people hold in reverence and respect will bring a sterner punishment than committing one elsewhere. I believe that a hefty custodial sentence for Pussy Riot would both teach them to have a bit of respect for the religion and traditions of their country in future, and discourage others from copying their idiotic example.

Why This Blog?

Two recent events gave rise to the creation of this weblog. One was an article by Damian Thompson, a short time ago, in which he lamented the stubborn left-liberalism of the Irish media, saying that the Irish Times, in particular, "makes the Guardian look like the bulletin of the Prayer Book Society." The second was the news that a German rower, Nadja Drygalla, had been sent home from the Olympic Games in London because her boyfriend was a member of a far-right party.

Both stories make for depressing reading. In the case of Miss Drygalla, we have the spectacle of someone being punished and vilified, not for deeds, but for opinons. Not even her own opinions, but those of someone she was dating. It was an outrageous intrusion by the state in the private lives of two citizens, and a chilling example of how intolerable politically incorrect opinions are to our ruling classes. In the case of Damian Thompson's article, we have some of the sillier left-liberal utterances of the Irish media being scrutinized by an unsympathetic English observer. Reading it, I wanted to throw my hands up and shout: "We're not all like that!"

Hence my desire to finally speak up. In creating this blog, I wanted to create an alternative Irish voice to the liberal pieties that so depressed Mr Thompson. I wanted to do this, not just to make the likes of him feel better about this country, but strike a voice of protest against the kind of bullying political correctness that cut short Nadja Drygalla's stay at the Olympics. Since the Second World War, the idea that someone can be punished by civil authorities for the political views of a lover has been the stuff of dystopian fiction in the West, not real life. The Drygalla affair marks a change in that. It is in the hope of offering another voice against that stifling political correctness that I have rejoined the blogosphere. Time will tell how well I have succeeded.