Author: Mick Hartley

From the Times:

A senior judge has become involved in a controversy over the wearing of the full-face veil after a legal adviser refused to remove her headwear in court.

Shabnam Mughal was appearing at an immigration tribunal in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, when Judge George Glossop asked her to remove her veil. It is understood that he could not hear her properly. She declined twice to remove it and eventually the judge adjourned the hearing until Monday to seek advice from Sir Henry Hodge, a High Court judge and president of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT). It is likely that Sir Henry will take advice from other senior judges because, although his decision will not bind other courts, it would signal how they should deal with the issue.

It is thought to be the first time the issue of the niqab has arisen in court proceedings.

Ms Mughal, who works for Law Partnership Solicitors in Coventry, was acting for a man appealing against a Home Office decision to deny a visitor’s visa to a family member.

The Tribunals Service said: “There was a hearing at Stoke-on-Trent. The immigration judge was covering an appeal about a visitor’s visa and a legal representative appearing on behalf of a sponsor wore a full-face veil. The judge asked her to remove her veil, she refused, there was an adjournment.”

He said that later in the day Ms Mughal was asked again and she refused and the case was adjourned until Monday. […]

Gary Slapper, the director of the law programme at the Open University, said: “In a democracy, a religious person is never asked to forsake their preferred observances. But it would be unreasonable to contend that all religious practices are consistent with all professions.

“The British practice, established over eight centuries, is that justice requires good, clear advocacy, and it would be difficult to assert that advocacy can be done equally well with or without a full-face veil.

“Other countries are proud to require those who wish to perform advocacy in the local courts to abide by their relevant national and religious requirements, the ‘When in Rome’ principle. The UK is equally entitled to have its juristic traditions respected.”

Well exactly.

abundance.
This happy development wasn’t entirely unanticipated, given that the rate of increase has been slowing for at least a quarter-century. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicated many of its conclusions on scenarios in which methane concentrations would continue growing for decades to come. Thus the recent stabilization of methane levels is something that some scientists are trying very hard to explain.

Looks like that “Stop Bovine Flatulence and Save the Planet” campaign (“instead of recycling your Independent as usual today, roll it into a tube and stick it up a cow’s arse”) is finally paying dividends.

does not deserve to be killed. At most, she should be flogged….

A Muslim girl must commit herself to what her God decreed. She must take care of herself, fast, pray, be God fearing, keep herself busy.

These imams do seem to share certain obsessions….

In the Washington Post, US soldiers in Iraq have their say:

“Take us out of that vacuum — and it’s on the edge now — and boom, it would become a free-for-all,” said Lt. Col. Mark Suich, who commands the 1st Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment just south of Baghdad. “It would be a raw contention for power. That would be the bloodiest piece of this war.” […]

Capt. Jim Modlin, 26, of Oceanport, N.J., said he thought the situation in Iraq had improved between his deployment in 2003 and his return this year as a liaison officer to Iraqi security forces with the 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, based here on FOB Sykes outside Tall Afar…

“Pulling out now would be as bad or worse than going forward with no changes,” Modlin said. “Sectarian violence would be rampant, democracy would cease to exist, and the rule of law would be decimated. It’s not ‘stay the course,’ and it’s not ‘cut and run’ or other political catchphrases. There are people’s lives here. There are so many different dynamics that go on here that a simple solution just isn’t possible.”

Soldiers and officers had difficulty conveying what victory in Iraq would look like or exactly how to achieve it. In some ways, victory is a moving target, they said, one that relies heavily on the Iraqi people gaining trust in the Iraqi security forces and the ability of the Iraqi government to support essential services. In northern Iraq, officials said they expect to hand over major parts of the country to Iraqi forces within the next five months, but most agree that Baghdad will be far behind.

Even if top commanders meet their goal of transferring authority to the Iraqi army within the next 18 months, a U.S. presence long after that is likely, several officers said.

“This is a worthwhile endeavor,” said Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of Multinational Division North and the 25th Infantry Division. “Nothing that is worthwhile is usually easy, and we need to give this more time for it to all come together. We all want to come home, but we have a significant investment here, and we need to give the Iraqi army and the Iraqi people a chance to succeed.” […]

Capt. Mike Lingenfelter, 32, of Panhandle, Tex., said that U.S. troops have earned the trust of residents in Tall Afar over the past couple of years and that leaving now would send the wrong message. His Comanche Troop of the 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment is working with Iraqi forces to give them control of the city.

“We’ll pull their feet out from under them if we leave,” Lingenfelter said.

“It’s still fragile enough now that if the coalition were to leave, it would embolden the insurgents. A lot of people have put their trust and faith in us to see it to the end. It would be an extreme betrayal for us to leave.”

(via Althouse)

among Muslim leaders for protests against the Prophet drawings in Jyllands-Posten.

His claims that he spoke on behalf of all Danish Muslims did wonders for the community. For one, it motivated Naser Khader, the first Muslim member of the Danish Parliament, to launch the moderate group Democratic Muslims. More poignantly, the sight of Abu Laban saying one thing to a Danish television crew and then almost in the same breath saying the complete opposite to an Arabic TV crew inspired many to join Khader’s group.

I have spent two of the past six months in Denmark researching the lives of Muslims there. Many told me that Abu Laban’s duplicity was pivotal in inspiring them to step forward and identify themselves as Muslims who disagreed with the imam. Danish journalists have told me they do not immediately turn to Abu Laban anymore to speak for Muslims. It looks like Muslims in Denmark are slowly being allowed the differences enjoyed by other groups.

orth%20Korea%20Report.pdf”>Failure to Protect (pdf file) – on the grounds that the North Korean regime has manifestly failed in its duty to protect its citizens. It’s a lengthy and well-documented indictment of Kim Jong Il’s gross human rights violations. Here’s the foreword:

Although in recent weeks the international focus has been on North Korea’s nuclear weapons test, the situation in that country is also one of the most egregious human rights and humanitarian disasters in the world today. Yet sadly, because North Korea is also one of the most closed societies on Earth, information about the situation there has only trickled out over time.

With the unanimous adoption by the UN Security Council of the doctrine that each state has a “responsibility to protect” its own citizens from the most egregious of human rights abuses, a new instrument for international diplomacy has emerged. While states retain sovereignty to control their own territory, if they fail to protect their own citizens from severe human rights abuses, the international community now has an obligation to intervene through regional bodies and the United Nations, up to and including the Security Council.

In this context, we commissioned the global law firm DLA Piper LLP to work with the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea in preparing an objective and definitive report on the failure of the North Korean government to exercise its responsibility to protect its own people.

The evidence and analysis contained in this report is deeply disturbing. Indeed, it is clear that Kim Jong Il and the North Korean government are actively committing crimes against humanity. North Korea allowed as many as one million, and possibly many more, of its own people to die during the famine in the 1990s. Hunger and starvation remain a persistent problem, with over 37 percent of children in North Korea chronically malnourished. Furthermore, North Korea imprisons upwards of 200,000 people in its modern-day gulag, and it is estimated more than 400,000 have died in that system over 30 years.

It is on this basis that we strongly urge the UN Security Council to take up the situation of North Korea. Protecting the people of North Korea requires nothing less.

From the authors:

President Havel, Prime Minister Bondevik, and Professor Wiesel commissioned this report because they believe that, for far too long, the security threat posed by North Korea has relegated the human rights concerns in the country to a second-class status. North Korea’s nuclear weapons test, conducted on October 9, 2006, demonstrated the fallacy of the argument that not antagonizing its government on human rights concerns would promote successful engagement on security issues. Our clients believe, in the wake of that test, the human rights and humanitarian crisis in North Korea deserves to be treated on a parallel track with the security threat and should no longer be suppressed from international discussions.

In other words, the Sunshine Policy has been shown, repeatedly, to be worse than useless. It’s time to get tough.

(Via One Free Korea, with the comment, “One day, this will be Prosecution Exhibit Number 1 in Kim Jong Il’s trial”)

to Hasham, he deliberately parked a dark car opposite the bride’s house and pulled out his mobile phone.

Hasham noticed that he was sufficiently well dressed, in a dark suit, to blend in with the occasion. “I thought he was a guest,” he said. The man walked to the corner and disappeared. Moments later the dark car erupted.

Like so many massacres in Baghdad, this one was beyond the comprehension of those who saw it. No one could guess why any bomber should have targeted the wedding of Fakr, 22, and Ahmed Abbas, 26.

Update: Saddam’s been sentenced to death by hanging:

Shortly after the verdict was announced celebratory gunfire could be heard across Baghdad.

A strange headline in today’s Sunday Times:

Doctors: let us kill disabled babies

Oh go on….please.

At least it’s not as bad as the increasingly deranged Independent:

Tsunami Horror Hits Britain

In, um, 2060.

alian microbiologist Vittorio Colizzi. The report concluded that the infection at the hospital resulted from poor hygiene and reuse of syringes, and also that the infections began before the arrival of the nurses and doctor in 1998.

The Libyan court will deliver its verdict on 19 December.

(via Anthony at Black Triangle)

From the Telegraph (via):

A reader from Worthing, West Sussex, recently attempted to buy a copy of Ian Buruma’s Murder In Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance in her local bookshop. ‘I’m sorry,’ said the sales assistant, ‘but the book has been banned.’

Atlantic Books, who publish Mr Buruma, assure us that the book is not only freely available but also selling well. It turns out a wholesaler misinformed the bookshop. However, the assistant must take responsibility for the following – startling – suggestion: ‘Why not try Mein Kampf instead?’