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Further to my post earlier this week on Islamic apostasy, I see (via Dhimmi Watch) that a petition on this issue has been delivered to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights:

Religious rights campaigners, buoyed by a UN call for an end to repression of minorities by majority religions, today urged the world body to tackle persecution of ”apostates” in Muslim countries.

The move came as humanist groups hailed the UN’s 2004 Human Development Report for declaring that ”individuals must be free not only to criticise the religion into which they are born, but to reject it for another or to remain without one.” The campaigners’ appeal — in the form of a petition signed by nearly 90,000 people in 32 countries, including present and former Muslims — was delivered to new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour.

It said Muslim religious leaders and organisations should make a clear public call for reinterpretation of Islamic law ”so that Muslims who change their faith will not have to face intimidation, harassment, persecution or death as a result.” The petition, launched by British-based Christian group The Barnabas Fund, called on the U.N. Human Rights Commission, governments and international bodies to speak out on the issue and raise it ”as a matter of urgency” with Muslim groupings.

According to a comment at Dhimmi Watch, citing Ibn Warraq’s Why I Am Not A Muslim, the UN Declaration of Human Rights used to include a reference to the right to change one’s religion, but in November 1981, under pressure from Muslim countries, this was removed.

Another large group of North Korean defectors have arrived in Seoul:

About 220 North Koreans have been flown to South Korea from an unnamed third country for the second day running. The defectors arrived at Incheon International airport on a plane charted by the South Korean government.

More than 200 people flew to Seoul on Tuesday – in what was the largest single batch of defectors from the hunger-stricken Communist North.

They all apparently escaped through China to what has been officially called “a South East Asian country”.

Seoul reportedly stepped in when the country, thought to be Vietnam, threatened to send them back to China.

Meanwhile the BBC gets to talk to North Korean asylum seekers in Beijing:

Their names have been changed as they fear reprisals against family members still living in North Korea.

They looked thin and malnourished, but they were marshalling their strength as they prepared to try to seek asylum – the culmination of a long journey through China.

Ms Na, a pretty young woman with a shy smile, left North Korea two years ago when the outside world believed the worst of the food shortages were over.

“I left because there was no food, but also because I wanted freedom. I wanted to be able to live how I wanted to live,” she said.

“It was very difficult in North Korea. I saw people dying on the streets, people starving, people whose faces were wasted away from the lack of food. I didn’t want that any more.”

Despite a constant barrage of propaganda telling North Koreans their country is doing fine, many think otherwise.

The North Koreans told me most people in the Hermit Kingdom now disliked their leader, Kim Jong-il, and blamed him for the lack of food.

The front page of the paper version of the Times today is dominated by a picture of an attractive young woman. Who is she? Catherine Phillips, a novelist (here‘s the online version, but alas no pic). And her claim to fame? Well, the lead story is on the current epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, and it turns out that Catherine had a diagnosis of chlamydia four years ago. How thrilled Catherine must be to hit the headlines in such dramatic fashion.

ly well-educated individuals could be deceived in a big way. Ordinary people, the illiterate peasants and semi-literate workers, could be deceived in small matters, but never on big ones, if only because they lacked the imagination needed to believe big lies. For example, no Iranian peasant shed a tear when Stalin died in 1953 while many Iranian poets wrote qasidas to mourn the Soviet dictator. No Iranian peasant or worker joined the Khomeinist movement until after the Shah had shown that he was no longer able to play the role of the ” father.”

At one point in 1988 Rajavi boasted that the Mujahedin were the only organisation in which people with university degrees were a majority. He was more right than he had imagined. His sect included famous poets, writers, entertainers, footballers, and scientists.

Most fatuous Nazi comparison of the week – indeed most fatuous paragraph of the week – from Michael Gilmore, via Butterflies and Wheels:

Some in the White House today believe that they “have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality.” Why, God even talks to them. The administration’s “absolute knowledge” has been the basis of many of their claims, including: the weapons of mass destruction, the Hussein-al Qaeda link, the Hussein-9/11 link, and the evidence for the uranium from Africa to Iraq. Such “absolute knowledge” ensured that the Iraqi people would welcome our solders and establish a secular democracy. Such knowledge never existed. This “absolute knowledge” now provides for the Bush “faith-based” missile defense, to be deployed prior to testing. It appears that this sort of pseudoknowledge is a key ingredient for much of what the present administration has set itself to do. With such “knowledge” the road to Baghdad is becoming our road to Auschwitz. A road paved with arrogance, dogma, secrecy, ignorance, lies, and a “deliberate deafness to suffering.” The suffering shown so starkly in the haunting photos of the torture at Abu Ghraib.

The road to Baghdad is becoming our road to Auschwitz. Really, there’s nothing to say to that level of idiocy.

Addiction and Drugs project, an expert committee of scientists appointed by the Government earlier this year.

Professor David Nutt, a leading government drugs adviser who sits on the committee, told the IoS that anti-drug vaccines for children are likely to be among the panel’s recommendations when it reports next March.

David Nutt – perfect.

if you subscribe to a set of established beliefs, you are thereby committing yourself to certain forms of rules and rituals, including possibly the proscription of certain behaviours, and if you then breach those proscriptions it is legitimate for the organisation you’ve joined to have the authority to expel you. But that’s as far as it goes. A sentence of death for holding certain opinions, including the belief that the organisation you joined and are now leaving is in some ways incorrect, is totally contrary to the most fundamental principles of a liberal society. People in an organisation which holds such views are simply not free. Their views are forced on them, even if they may assert that they hold those views voluntarily, because they are not free to disavow them.

I don’t know the solution to the problem, but it seems to me a crucial one when it comes to a discussion of the place of Islam in a modern Western culture. But maybe I’m just being Islamophobic.

hatever, for me it was a revelation.

What a great idea, though – and why don’t we have such things over here? For a start the concept of transforming the chunder into, if not an acceptable part of an evening’s drinking, at least not a disaster, is revolutionary. [I must stress here that my chundering days are well in the past: the beginning of wisdom is surely when you realise that although three pints / glasses of wine / shots of whisky make you feel great, it doesn’t follow that six will make you feel twice as great.] Normally, given that throwing up is such an unpleasant business, you deny for as long as possible the inevitability of a chunder, and then make a mad dash for the toilet when it’s already too late……the room’s spinning…you feel terrible… “you okay man, you’re white as a sheet”…”I think I’m going to be”…BLOOOAAARRGGH. Even if you’re sensible and stagger through to the Gents in time, where do you go? In a cubicle all you can do is kneel down in front of the toilet, clutch the side of the bowl, and heave. On a Saturday night – well, on any night – especially with the modern tendency for men to use a cubicle to piss rather than a urinal (why is that?…increased modesty?) and given the notorious inaccuracy of men on such occasions, this is a situation you really want to avoid if at all possible. The urinal? On the floor? Not nice.

I believe there’s a business opportunity here. The Chunder Bowl. The only innovation I would make to the magnificent object I saw in Westphalia would be the addition of handles at either side for gripping. I present this as a suggestion to anyone with entrepreneurial flair. If someone does run with it, I hope they’ll remember where they first heard the idea, and at least buy me a few drinks…but, you know, not too many.

As Lance Armstrong heads towards his sixth yellow jersey with an astonishing display of cycling prowess, Jeremy Whittle in the Times comes up with an interesting explanation for the poor behaviour of some fans, especially in the time trial up the Alpe d’Huez where Armstrong was booed and spat at by German fans of Ullrich:

The culture of the Tour has indeed changed in recent years. Much of that change has been accelerated by the arrival of large numbers of highly partisan American fans who have chosen to support American riders, rather than individuals from different teams, as has been the tradition.

Yep, it’s all the fault of the Americans: they just don’t understand these sophisticated European sports. The French, of course, would never support cyclists just because they were French. The very idea! Or the Spaniards. Or indeed the Germans, whose fans only started spitting at Armstrong because – um – well, because that bastard American turned out to be a better cyclist than Ullrich.

arge later that day. Eight others, including Ian, and a 75-year-old grandmother, were charged with sexual offences against children over a period of six years between 1995 and 2001.

The charges were said to involve three girls under 16 who had been in the care of the Western Isles social services department. It is understood that the investigation began after one of the girls said something to a carer that caused her concern. This was relayed to a social worker and, over several months, allegations of abuse followed.

The arrests, in what police code-named Operation Haven, soon made headlines on local and national radio, television and newspapers. The more lurid referred to a “child sex abuse network” and a suspected “paedophile ring”.

All eight accused denied the charges and a trial was expected soon after. But two weeks ago, on Friday July 2, the case suddenly collapsed. In a statement, Northern Constabulary said the Scottish Crown Office had instructed that no proceedings would be taken. The Crown Office confirmed that all charges had been dropped. No explanation was given.

The next day, determined to clear her husband’s name, Penny Campbell wrote a long and impassioned statement which she emailed to the press. In it she revealed publicly, for the first time, the bizarre nature of the allegations that Ian and the others had faced – Satanic ritual child abuse.

Transcripts of police interviews, seen by the Guardian, reveal that those charged were accused of being devil worshippers, of raping and sexually abusing children in black magic rituals and wife-swapping orgies during which they dressed in ceremonial robes and masks, sacrificed animals and drank their blood.