There are three parameters that I think define the level of freedom we actually enjoy. I call them the ‘3 Ps’.
They are Pot, Porn and Prostitution. Why have I chosen these three? Well, it’s not a recent thing, and I have thought about it for years.
I could use transgender rights, since, as readers will be aware, this is an area that concerns me deeply; but while we will certainly discuss these, the issue is too specific. I could use women’s rights but that’s the opposite: too vague — and in any case the 3Ps allow us to consider this question. I could use taxation but goodness me, everyone has a different view.
Separation of Church and State? Yeah, but again, too vague. Children’s rights? The same. Treatment of ethnic minorities — which ones? And how?
I wanted a small number, not more than three, of very specific measures that had certain things in common.
The first was that they had to be, or have been until recently, illegal. You can’t measure whether a culture is open by measuring what it permits; you measure it by the things it does not.
At the same time, the measures had either be things that caused no harm or only caused harm to those who, in full knowledge, took part or indulged in the activity in review. It is no part of government’s remit to save us from ourselves.
I can, quite legally, go into my garage right now and start up a motorcycle capable of 170 mph (272kph), and then go out and burn serious rubber. This is a lethal machine. Killing myself on it would be a lot easier than by smoking pot, masturbating or having sex. Trust me.
I can go off into the woods around here with no supplies or emergency kit — nobody would stop me. I can do the same in the Scottish Highlands or the Alps, where there is a very good chance of getting in serious trouble, maybe even dying. I could — and did — sail my yacht round Scotland, through treacherous, open seas. Nobody would even think of trying to prevent me and these things are all more dangerous than the measures I have chosen.
I can freely use alcohol, which is proven to be addictive and causes liver disease. I can stand on a ladder and prune my climbing rose. I can use a chainsaw to cut up fuel — have you any idea what a chainsaw can do to a person?
Government does not ordinarily attempt to protect us from our own stupidity. So the measures chosen must ask the question ‘Why is government involved with this at all?’
Finally, the measures had to be controversial. There’s no point in a measure that doesn’t inspire debate, or in one that doesn’t divide society, between those who believe in regulation for its own sake, and those who believe in freedom as long as it harms no-one. This is the balance, you see, and this is the question we must ask: are the powers of the State, through law, being used to prohibit activities that either harm no-one, or are no more dangerous or harmful than other activities that it does permit?
I think the 3 Ps, Pot, Porn and Prostitution, address this. They are a reliable barometer. They afford us a good measure of how authoritarian our elected representatives, who, after all, are meant to be working for us, are being, and they allow us to ask which forces are they actually acting for. They are a good measure of how the will of the minority is being forced on the majority. There are others, certainly, but the 3Ps are clear and concise and they produce interesting results.
Some of the argument will be controversial. People might be offended.
A man was killed yesterday during a mass attack as at least 1500 people attempted to board trucks entering the Eurotunnel in Calais. This brings the death toll in the ongoing crisis, which began in June, to nine.
Eurotunnel, the operator, has invested heavily in security fences and personnel at the French end of the Tunnel but it is clearly not enough and they are swamped, daily, as would-be immigrants try to get into the UK.
The crisis has caused reduction in the frequency of freight trains through the Tunnel. Around Dover, the UK terminal, motorways have been closed for weeks as trucks waiting to depart for Europe are parked on them in what is called ‘Operation Stack’.
With the motorways closed, small towns and villages, whose roads are not designed for this weight of traffic, are jammed with cars seeking a way round the blockage. Businesses are reporting a catastrophic drop in revenue.
On the French side, large numbers of extra police and security have been drafted in to the Pas de Calais area to try to secure it, but they are manifestly failing.
While closure of the Tunnel is a drastic option, it may be the only one left. The situation, already catastrophic, can only get worse.
Placing the burden of cross-channel travel on the ferries would overload them, leading to severe delays and grave economic damage. It would also mean that the ferry terminals, unquestionably, would themselves come under siege. There is no easy answer to this.
The Tunnel is a magnet for illegal immigrants, most of whom do not understand its nature and think they can just walk through. Groups of up to a hundred have already been apprehended, on many occasions, trying to do this.
Most, however, attempt to secrete themselves on freight vehicles. This was the cause of yesterday’s death, as the man, believed to be Sudanese, was crushed under a truck.
Across Europe now, the immigration crisis is in full fury. A significant number of immigrants may be refugees from war, but the vast majority also have economic intentions. It’s not possible to separate these out. If you have been forced off your land by military action and seek to go somewhere you think you can find work, does that make you a refugee or an economic migrant or both?
Added to the refugees from Syria, Iraq and other parts of the Middle East and Asia, there are huge problems in Sudan, Ethiopia and across Africa. As Climate Change devastates this area with drought and famine, further territorial and ethnic warfare must inevitably break out, leading to exponentially-increasing levels of migration.
Europe is the target. Its soft underbelly, the long southern coastline, has already been ripped open, and this will get markedly worse. Italy is already submerging under the pressure, Greece can no longer police its islands and rows are breaking out between the other Balkan states because of the flow of migrants passing through them.
Europe is not a federal state. It is a loose confederation of independent states, bound together by treaty. There is no administration that could raise or divert resources that might deal with this. There is no centralised military command that could plan strategies and execute them. There is no unitary political control.
Yet while Greece is a frontline state in this crisis, Germany has deliberately pauperised it in order to teach a ‘lesson’ to Spain, Italy and France. How is it going to pay for its own defence now? And as for the other states on the front line, Italy is under similar economic pressure to cut spending when in fact, Europe needs it to spend on its defences. The same is true of Spain and even France.
This is a problem that needs to be addressed: Germany is guilty of arranging the Euro to suit its own ends; it can’t be allowed to manipulate this crisis to its advantage as well. It is fundamentally illogical and unfair to suggest that the southern European states, already burdened because of the Euro, should foot the astronomical bill that defending northern states from migration will cost. Make no mistake: the migrants are not coming to enjoy Florentine culture, see the Parthenon or sunbathe on the Costa Brava, but to travel to Germany, Holland, Scandinavia and the UK to get jobs.
The solution is manifold: vastly increased security forces in the frontline states to turn back or arrest illegal immigrants; detention and holding camps located near the point of entry; repatriation programmes and huge aid budgets to help the repatriated to live decent lives in their home territories, which in turn will probably require the deployment of military forces to secure these areas. This engagement would necessarily be open-ended.
The whole of Europe will have to bear the economic burden of this, which will be vast, but the greatest net contributors must be the wealthy northern states. Germany, along with the others, will have to cough up.
The freedom that Europeans enjoy is now under threat from events distant from its shores. Fortress Europe will have to be built, quickly, and it will cost a great deal of money. We are all going to be less free. This is inevitable. The Channel Tunnel crisis is not an isolated shower, it is the presage of a coming storm. The only way we can soften its impact is to take action now.
The UK and Ireland, with their semi-detached status, might have some hope of holding on for longer, but that must mean the closure of the Channel Tunnel as well ass the imposition of severe restrictions and much increased security on other forms of transport. This will impact the south of England heavily.
The people who live in these islands cannot escape the storm that has already begun; the question for them is whether they think that they can weather it better with their European partners or alone. Either way is going to be expensive and painful.
The broader media gave the story of how a young woman was set upon by five other women for sunbathing in a bikini in a park in Reims, France, some attention today and a few new titbits have come out. (I covered this yesterday.)
According to the national newspaper Le Monde, under the headline ‘Emotions and hasty conclusions’ the woman who was attacked is Angélique Slosse. Three of her alleged attackers have been named, Inès Nouri, Zohra Karim and Hadoune Tadjouri. The other two are minors and their names have not been released. All five are Muslim.
The newspaper says that one of the alleged attackers was slightly injured and was signed off work for three days. One of Slosse’s friends was also given hospital treatment for injuries received.
Buzzfeed France claims to have contacted one of the alleged attackers, who was not identified by name, but only by her age, 19. She confirmed that she and her friends were Muslims, but that she ‘was tolerant’. According to her, she had, on seeing the victim dressed in shorts and a bikini top, said that she ‘wouldn’t dare dress like that’, to which she claims Slosse retorted ‘If I had a body like yours, I wouldn’t either.’
Buzzfeed’s contact then went on to say that she ‘approached (Slosse) to slap her, when she started fighting with my friend.’ The person, according to her lights, then tried to break up the fight before bystanders and a policeman intervened.
Certainly, this was petty. Probably, there was over-reaction. But one must ask, is it okay for a young woman, minding her own business, sunbathing in a bikini and shorts, to be harassed by passers-by and then when she retorts — and let’s face it, her response was funny — to be physically attacked by five people?
Furthermore, the attacker’s suggestion that she was not being aggressive is clearly false: her remarks were made loud enough for Slosse to hear them and respond. Her statement is also at odds with earlier reports, confirmed in l’Express by Commissar Julie Galisson, which claimed she had told Slosse to ‘Go home and dress, it’s not summer.’ Then, she clearly states that her intention was to physically attack Slosse, ‘to slap her’.
If you’ve observed as many Sheriff Courts as I have — the joys of being a photographer — then you know how to interpret statements like these: play down the culpability and make like innocent. But there is no denial that the attackers first harassed Slosse and then assaulted her. The only question is whether the motivation religious and again, it’s hard to see how it could have been otherwise.
There have been numerous incidents where Muslims in France have caused problems already because they think that French customs are unacceptable to their religion. Butchers have been threatened for cooking sausages on Fridays and shops have been forced to close. Restaurant chains have been coerced into taking pork off their menus and supermarkets into stocking ‘halal’ meats; anyone familiar with the obscene cruelty involved in the slaughter of animals to produce this, should find that offensive. I know I do.
The authorities and the Media are terrified that a reaction might occur. It’s been a hot summer, always good for riots, and there is a lot of anger in France just now, at Hollande, at the austerity measures forced on the country by Germany and by high unemployment, a low Euro and falling house prices. The Establishment does not want the extreme right of the Front National to profit from more stories of Muslim misbehaviour and intimidation, and one may sympathise.
It’s all very well to try to play down a problem to stop it developing. The trouble is, it looks as if it might be too late for that.
The Warm Pink Jelly Express Train was a very difficult book to write. Compared to my previous one, Poaching the River, it required profound reflection and much research.
Poaching is essentially a romanticised memoir; Warm Pink is nothing like that. It is far deeper and more introspective and writing it, along with the later Why Men Made God, was what shaped my current world view.
My ideas about gender in particular were formed by the research and writing of Warm Pink. Although it is a breathlessly-paced romantic adventure, it required me to dig deep into the natures of gender and sexuality, something I had never done before.
I spent hours that amounted to weeks on forums where the subject of transgender was discussed and even invented a doppelgänger, MacShreach, to do this. (MacShreach, by the way, just means ‘Son of Shrek,’ which I thought rather fitted the character.)
But I did a great deal of conventional research too. There were precious few books and papers available but I read them all. I think the most useful was Don Kulick’s Travesti, which is a must-read, partly for the insight it gives and partly just because it’s a great book.
I learned Spanish (thanks to the lovely Fabi Pinilla, my longsuffering teacher, who became a real and lasting friend) and enough Portuguese to read interviews in those languages. This was because at the time, there were practically no such resources featuring young transgender women in English. But there were and remain, many published in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and elsewhere in South America, as well as in Spain itself, where there is a long history of transgender cultural integration. The artists Picasso and Dali associated with transgender women, as did the film-makers Luis Bunuel and Pedro Almodovar.
Bruna Geneve
There is a dichotomy between the culture in these Latin countries and that in North America and the UK. In the former, nearly all the trans women appeared to have transitioned young, often at or before puberty. They typically began taking feminising hormones around the age of 12 or 13. This information fed directly into the construction of Rafy, Warm Pink’s female lead; she tells a story typical of Brazilian trans women.
However, in the Anglo-Saxon world, the majority — by far — of trans women then transitioned over the age of forty. This misled a number of American psychologists into thinking that there were actually two types of trans women, and ultimately to Ray Blanchard’s bizarre and now discredited typology.
We now know that Blanchard was wrong, and that the cause of the anomaly in the Anglo-Saxon world was the extreme, violent and pernicious repression against young trans people. This was a time, only ten years ago, when ‘reparative’ therapies, now totally discredited for use against gay men, were being strongly advocated for use against young trans women, in order to turn them into gay men.
This is a level of misogyny that can only be wondered at: it was literally saying that any future, for someone born with a penis and testicles, was preferable to being a woman. At the same time, women who escaped their clutches were beaten, discriminated against and murdered.
I was horrified by this, and by the smug, academic self assurance with which these monsters — I can think of no other word — perpetrated their tortures, akin to water-boarding, on completely defenceless young people. It both made me angry on behalf of their victims and further hostile to the cosy, self-congratulatory club of academia, where such vile ideas are given platform.
The consequence of the repression they suffered was that trans women were bottling up their true natures, often for decades; this is why they presented late. We have just seen, in Caitlyn Jenner, a classic example of this. As repression is reduced we should see many more girls transitioning young and the demographic should align with that which is seen elsewhere.
But in 2005 and 2006, when I was writing Warm Pink, none of the recent developments had yet happened. Blanchard’s typology still had traction, even though a reaction had already begun against it, led by transwomen who were rightly offended to their cores by its gross misrepresentations of them. Perhaps the single most powerful catalyst had been the publication of Michael Bailey’s egregious work of populist pseudo-science, The Man Who Would Be Queen in 2003. Trans women were being erased by society, by health professionals and in the media. In some ways Warm Pink was my reaction against Blanchard and Bailey’s attempt to erase the identity of an oppressed group altogether.
Karol Bonkar
The book was an attempt to publicise the fact that not only do young trans women exist, they have established, valid, lived histories which are consistent throughout the world. They know they are trans from before puberty. Their gender dysphoria is such that they simply cannot live as boys. They are almost exclusively attracted to men, and generally prefer the submissive role in sex, though there are notable exceptions.
I explored these alternative sexualities through AnnaMaria’s relationship to Rafy — there was never any doubt in my mind that this was a case of unrequited desire — and Rafy’s with her prior mentor, Marina.
Perhaps the mos fascinating thing I discovered in researching the book was the extensive support network that exists for young trans women. Brazil is a conundrum: the culture is viciously macho and repressive, yet there are huge numbers of trans women. Murder rates against them are the highest reported in the world, yet Brazilian transgender beauty is iconic and has been celebrated for decades; witness Roberta Close.
Roberta Close
I struggled at first to see how this could be, but it seems that the support network is the key. Young trans girls are adopted by older trans women and then educated — in being transgender– and supported though their journey of transition, which they fund — certainly in Brazil — almost exclusively by sex work.
(I just read Janet Mock’s excellent Redefining Realness in which she describes a very similar support network and how she, too, funded her transition through sex work. I think it shows great courage and integrity that she should be so open about this and I highly recommend her book.)
This support network allows young transwomen to survive in these repressive cultures, which I was able to confirm when I began to visit the Philippines. Here, there is severe prejudice and discrimination against trans people because of the generally malignant influence of Christianity, yet trans women are everywhere. This is explained at night, when you discover an entire subculture that sustains them.
So Warm Pink is about the nature of young transgender, something that was then being largely ignored both by patriarchal academics like Blanchard and his followers Bailey and Zucker, and the hegemony of late-transitioning women who had adopted a privileged position. Young trans women’s narratives and lived histories were being suppressed and I wanted to redress that.
At the same time, of course, the book is an exploration of my own relationship to trans women, as a man.
Through Brian, the book’s male lead, I explored the nature of the relationship between a trans woman and a straight man who loves her. I put him in a position he could never have believed he would be in, and let him find his fate. There was no predetermined narrative and the end was by no means a foregone conclusion. It was just the way it worked out.
I gave Brian a real test, to find out what he was made of; and in the end, I think he came through with flying colours.
However, Brian and Rafy’s relationship reveals something else: trans women feel affirmed by their relationships with men. This is part of the attraction that not only sex work, but also cabaret dancing, modelling, beauty pageants and a range of other activities have for them.
This offends some radical feminists who have reacted in a fashion that shows the profound intolerance of their philosophy. The vicious damage that they do, deliberately, out of spite against the most discriminated-against group in society, is both a scandal and pure hypocrisy. People like Julie Bindell, Catherine Brennan and their fellow travellers have no right to claim they support ‘human rights’ when they seek to deny them to others, to eradicate those others and erase their very identity. Happily these are a minority even amongst feminists.
I had always supported the equality of women, but I had never really felt the bitter sense of oppression that many women experience, until I saw it through trans women’s eyes. Nobody would ever choose to be trans; it leads, for most, to a life of poverty, discrimination, violence and often murder.
Through the extreme hostility of the patriarchy, for which radical feminists are but agents, towards trans women, I realised the oppression of the patriarchy against all women. It made me a feminist, if I am one. (Something I leave to others to judge.)
Writing The Warm Pink Jelly Express Train was a voyage of discovery for me, and I tried very hard to be true to that. The new edition, which contains many revisions, reflects discoveries I have made since it was first published, but no substantive areas have been changed.
Protesters today expressing solidarity with the woman who was attacked.
It’s a case of double-speak gone mad.
On Wednesday lunchtime, at the Léo-Lagrange Park near the town centre of Reims, France, a 21-year old woman was sunbathing with two of her friends, dressed in a bikini. This is perfectly normal and if you visit any park in France in summer, especially a hot one like this, you will see plenty of women wearing swimsuits getting a tan. It’s a French passion.
However, the woman, whose name has not been disclosed, was spotted by a ‘group of five girls’. One of the came over and told her to ‘Get dressed, it’s not summer.’
The sunbather replied that the newcomer was not ‘the religious police’ and at that point all five of the girls attacked the woman, requiring her to be hospitalised. She was signed off work for four days.
All five of the attackers were detained. The three oldest, aged 18, 19 and 24, will appear before the court on September 24 to answer charges. The two others are minors and will be dealt with by the French juvenile correction system.
French law, like that in Scotland, considers all subjects of criminal legal action ‘sub judice’ which means that to publish the names or addresses of the accused is itself a criminal offence. The name of the victim has also not been publicised, probably for the same reason, since she will be a witness, but also likely for her own safety.
The city authorities have been very coy about discussing whether this was a race or religiously based attack, again, likely due to French criminal law.
However, there is other evidence. A French organisation called SOS Racisme organised a mass protest at the park in question for noon today, of people dressed in swimming costumes. If this could not be seen as a racist attack, why would this organisation be involved? And note: they were not trying to defuse anti-Muslim sentiment, but to express solidarity with the victim.
On Twitter, the deputy Mayor of Reims, Arnaud Robinet, described the assault as ‘intolerable in our country’ although he was later to state, in an interview on TF1, that there was ‘no proof of a religious motive for the attack.’ Why would he bother to say that if there were no reason to assume that it might be?
The French Twittosphere in general has been alive with allegations of a religious background to the attack while everyone official is, as usual, standing with their hands behind their backs whistling.
The newspaper that reported the attack, l’Union, checked and verified that anyone can walk down the high street in a bikini without breaking the law, unless a local bye-law prevents it. The city authorities in Reims confirmed that no such local ordinance was in place, so the victim of the attack was behaving legally, dressed in a manner that she had a perfect right to be. Are we to imagine that she was attacked by a group of militant nuns? Or a stray pack of radical feminists? Don’t be silly.
The nonsense of attempting to keep the religious or cultural background of the attackers secret is a joke. As soon as they have appeared in court, their names will be revealed and their religious affiliation quickly inferred anyway. Presumably the authorities hope that by then, everyone will have forgotten.
But that is not good enough. France is a secular state and if people of particular religious persuasions are acting outside the law in promoting the ideas of these religions, then that should be exposed and challenged publicly. It’s not as if this would be the first time Muslims had behaved in an unacceptable manner, especially in Reims and the surrounding areas.
If indeed the attackers are Muslims — and let’s not kid ourselves here, if there were no possibility of that, this would have been made known; the official coyness is proof enough — then very firm action needs to be taken, by the authorities, to stamp out the culture that is promoting violence. If that means closing mosques and other places where this poison is being disseminated, better sooner than later.
It’s curious though, that only yesterday I was writing about how Muslims need to understand and accept the principle of secularism and here they are, it would appear, doing the exact opposite.
There is no doubt that many shadows are looming large over Europe today. One of them just got bigger. Every time things like this happen, moderates are squeezed between religious fascism and common or garden fascism from the extreme right. Europe is in trouble, and its leaders do nothing.
The only way for the Muslim community, insofar as it can be referred to by such a homogeneous term, to resolve the problems caused by the rise of Islamic extremism and the predictable reaction to it, is at once to accept secularism and to reject shari’aa and the primacy of Islam over other cults.
The issue is not between a Christian majority and a Muslim minority, it is between a society founded on democratic principles and reason, an arch crowned by the keystone that we can change the laws that govern us by electoral mandate, and a religious minority that refuses to accept this, and instead insists that no part of the law, as expressed through shari’aa — because it is ‘god’s’ law — can ever be altered, even in one word.
As a lifelong liberal, inclusionist, respecter and promoter of minority and other human rights, I am thoroughly weary of the complaint of those who consider that our secular democracy does not do enough for them, while themselves refusing to recognise that all religions, whatever their individual merits and demerits, within a multicultural environment, must defer to secular democracy and secular law.
To do so does not require that people give up their culture, merely that they change it to be in line with the one they live in — something that Britain’s first waves of Muslim immigrants did, but which has now been replaced by a culture of confrontation, that leads only to extremism on both sides.
Across the Internet there are countless poison-pen articles from Islamic fundamentalists who condemn the Quilliam Foundation, but the core of their criticism is that Quilliam promotes secularism amongst Muslims. It wants the Muslim community to become like the Christian one in the UK — British, democratic and secularist first, Muslim, religious and faithful second. The Islamists who condemn it want the exact opposite, and their path can lead only to disaster.
It is only by becoming secularist and placing democracy and the rule of secular law above religion and religious ‘law’ that the Muslim community can actually integrate into the broader UK one. Failure will inevitably lead to further polarisation, extremism, and ultimately violence.
Nobody should care whether Islamic texts render the cult ‘inherently peaceful’ or ‘inherently violent’. We could make the same observation about Christianity or Judaism — that their texts are ambiguous and open to being read in diametrically-opposed ways. What we should be focusing on is how people are expressing their religion. Are they denying science? Are they denying Evolution? Are they against secular law? Are they in favour of millennia-old creeds, without a jot of relevance to the way we live today, being the basis upon which we are judged and governed — not by ‘god’ or ‘allah’ but by other humans? Do they suggest that their particular cult is somehow ‘more correct’ than any other? Do they believe that their adherence to a set of cult beliefs should afford them better treatment than others? Do they believe that their code should allow them to decide how other people should behave?
If the answer to any of these is ‘yes’, whether you are a Christian, a Jew, a Baha’i, a Mormon, a Muslim or of any other religious persuasion, then your views are not compatible with secular democracy and you will have to find ways to resolve this, by changing your ideas to be more aligned with the culture you live in. It is not for secular culture to change to accommodate religious ideas, because secularism is the compromise, thrashed out in the Enlightenment, that allows people, of any religious persuasion as well as those of none, to live alongside each other in peace, and it therefore must stand above all and any of them.
If you cannot do this, then you cannot integrate, and you cannot expect the secular society you live in to protect you. It cannot respect you until you respect it, and that means accepting that secular ideas and laws come before religious ones. Secularism will guarantee you the right to worship as you will, as long as you harm no one, nor impede in any way their right to live as they choose under secular law — including those who may, notionally or otherwise, share your faith. But the bargain is strict: you must accept the primacy of secularism before it can afford its protection to you.
Religious fundamentalism, whether that be expressed by Islamists or Southern Baptists, is incompatible with secular democracy. Yet without secularism, it is inevitable that conflict and violence will occur. We see, right now, how, in America’s infamous ‘Bible Belt’ the horrible undercurrent of hatred persists. In the last month or so we have seen a toll of death that has but one cause — religious intolerance.
In the United States this has its roots in the very psyche of the nation itself and the fundamentalist refusal of the South to defer to secularism and secular law, even after a civil war of staggering brutality, which it comprehensively lost a hundred and fifty years ago. Yet the hatred lives on, surviving and evolving, and now exports itself to other parts of the world. In the last month or so we have seen a mass murder of black people by a white Christian supremacist, and an ongoing campaign of killing against transgender people, sparked by the recent decision by the US Supreme Court to uphold all citizens’ right to marry. (This right confers but little benefit on trans people, but they pay the price for it by being more obvious than white, middle-class cis-men, and thus easier targets for those fed hatred from the pulpit.)
We should, rightly, be horrified at the depraved mindset of these Christians — yet the very same mindset is at work in Islam and no notions of ‘multiculturalism’ or ‘tolerance’ should allow us to avoid confronting it.
You cannot plead for fair and equal treatment by a secular society unless you are prepared to accept the core principles of that society, and to demonstrate this publicly. Muslims in the UK will have to follow people like Maajid Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation and reject the arguments of their enemies. They will have to not just accept, but embrace secularism and the primacy of secular law. They will have to accept that science is the proper way to understand the universe, not creation mythology. They will have to accept the fact and Theory of Evolution. They will have to accept that secular law, agreed by democratic mandates, must always hold sway over religious ‘law’. They will have to accept that their religion is but one of many and since all of them cannot be right, then they all must be regarded as equally wrong, and it is only through secularism that all can be treated as equals.
Muslims in the UK must accept that the culture they live in cannot make exceptions to its secularism for them or any other religious minority. The outlook for us all, if this cannot be achieved, is grim in the extreme.
A Bugis bissu. These are neither cis-men nor cis-women, nor are they trans men or transwomen. Instead they are all four other genders at once. South Sulawesi, Indonesia
When we were doing the research for Why Men Made God I kept coming across cultures where non-binary gender or sexual models were normal. We discussed a few such as the Zoé, the Mosuo and the Toraja but in the end time ran out and we could not add more although, as is so often the case, more and more keep turning up!
Why Men Made God is not all about gender or sexuality by any means but these examples are evidence that the binary, which the patriarchy puts forward as the only possible social model, is far from being so. They are valuable because they show us how we might move towards a more inclusive and mutually respectful society that values everyone as equals and accepts our duty of care for our planet.
Our present culture must either transform itself, now, and make the changes required for a soft, or at least softer collision with the buffers of climate change, or face the consequences of centuries of unbridled consumption and pollution in a global social catastrophe that will, without question, force radical change. This latter will be extremely painful.
We still have time to choose, if we move quickly, but the window of opportunity is narrow and closing fast.
This details the five genders of the Bugis people of Indonesia. While Indonesia is a Muslim country with shariaa, there exists a long-established, widespread and respected tradition of tribal adat. These are pre-Muslim religious beliefs and customs. Within Indonesia they are tolerated, although, as ever, the rise of Islamic extremism over the last 15 years is now calling this into question.
Sharyn Graham
I first went to Sulawesi in August 1998 on a reconnaissance trip to determine if this would be an interesting place to study gender relations. I had read a little about gender in Sulawesi, encouraged by my supervisors Dr Greg Acciaioli and Dr Lyn Parker, but I was not quite prepared for the richness of Bugis gender identities. In Australia we tend to assume that there are only two genders, woman and man, and two matching biological sexes, female and male. The Bugis acknowledge three sexes (female, male, hermaphrodite), four genders (women, men, calabai, and calalai), and a fifth meta-gender group, the bissu.
‘Bissu’ tends to be translated as ‘transvestite priest’, but this term is less than satisfactory. Transvestite implies cross-dressing, but bissu have their own distinctive clothing. Moreover, bissu do not go from one gender to another; they are a combination of all genders. To become a bissu, one must be born both female and male, or hermaphroditic. (To be precise, the Bugis believe that a bissu who appears externally male is internally female, and vice versa). This combination of sexes enables a ‘meta-gender’ identity to emerge.
La Tenri Olli’
Aseng tongeng-tongeng
Mu ri langi
Mu nonno’ ri lino
Mu riyaseng t
Your name in the heavens
Is La Tenri Olli’,
In the name of the buffalo,
Descend to earth.
Mariani begins her chant as the sun is setting behind the limestone cliff. The eerie chant is accompanied on the cylindrical drum called tumba, on cymbals (kancing), and metal rhythm sticks (ana’ baccing).
Over 35 of us had squeezed into two small mini-vans and traveled for over an hour to reach this place. We then walked a few kilometres to the mouth of a small cave, which, as I was to find out, went deep into the mountain.
Blessing
We had come here to perform a ceremony. A woman I knew named Ibu Qadri wanted to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. She needed the blessing of the spirits before she set off. Bissu have long conducted ceremonies like this. They are able to act as mediators between humans and spirits (dewata) because they are considered neither male nor female, and neither woman nor man, but a mix of all four of these.
This was one of my first bissu ceremonies. I was somewhat baffled as to why a pious Muslim would want a blessing from other spiritual beings. However, over the 15 months (until November 2000) that I lived amongst bissu, I learned that at least to the Bugis there really was no contradiction. They told me that Allah is the one and only God, but Allah has helpers, called dewata. The most powerful of the dewata is the one Mariani is calling today. When Mariani is in contact, the dewata will arrange for the most appropriate lesser dewata to descend and take possession of Mariani. Only then can Mariani bestow blessings.
For the blessing to be a success, Mariani and three other bissu had to enter a cave. I too was invited in. We took off our sandals, and two of the bissu carried burning torches to light our way. I was urged to lead in front. I later found out this was so that I could take their photograph as they entered the cavern. After we had slid on our backsides down the entry passage, walked quite a distance, successfully avoiding treading barefoot upon the many scorpions surrounding us, we came into a large cavern. Here we squatted in a circle. Mariani began chanting. At appropriate times the other bissu joined in. The ceremony here was short. When the chant was over we returned to the opening of the cave.
While we were away, preparations had been made for the main ceremony. Mariani took her place (or ‘hir’ place, since she is both male and female) in front of the large assortment of ritual offerings that were to be offered to the dewata. These included cooked rice died into four different colours(songkolo), eggs, a hen and a rooster, cigarettes, bananas, and coconuts. Mariani again began to chant, but this time hir chanting became erratic and frightening. Hir body began to shake and s/he became very angry. ‘Where are the siri leaves?’ These are an important part of the ceremony, but there were not enough of them. The spirit that possessed Mariani was furious and refused to give the blessing. Through Mariani the spirit conveyed that we could, however, perform the ceremony at the woman’s house. By the time we arrived at Ibu Qadri’s house it was dark. The altar and the offerings were set up in her living room, and the bissu adorned themselves in their powerful, magical (sakti) clothing. The ceremony began again. Everything was complete.
Mariani and the three other bissu performed their chants. In order to honour the spirits who had possessed them, and hence bless Ibu Qadri’s pilgrimage, the four bissu performed the ma’giri. Each bissu took their little dagger(kris) and tried to force it into their throat. If a powerful spirit has possessed them, and if the blessing is successful, the kris will not penetrate and they will not bleed. On this occasion, when Mariani had completed the ma’giri, I noticed blood coming from hir neck (see cover photo).
Not till many months later did I venture to question this. The reason was that the spirit who possessed Mariani had not been very powerful. However, with the combined efforts of the four bissu, Haji Qadri did make the pilgrimage to Mecca. On her return, she requested another bissu ceremony to give thanks to the dewata for protecting her on her journey.
Calalai
This brings us to calalai and calabai. Strictly speaking, calalai means ‘false man’ and calabai’false woman’. However, people are not harrassed for identifying as either of these gender categories. On the contrary, calalai and calabai are seen as essential to completing the gender system. A useful analogy suggested to me by Dr Greg Acciaioli is to imagine the Bugis gender system of South Sulawesi as a pyramid, with the bissu at the apex, and men, women, calalai, and calabai located at the four base corners.
Calalai are anatomical females who take on many of the roles and functions expected of men. For instance, Rani works alongside men as a blacksmith, shaping kris, small blades and other knives. Rani wears men’s clothing and ties hir sarong in the fashion of men. Rani also lives with hir wife and their adopted child, Erna. While Rani works with men, dresses as a man, smokes cigarettes, and walks alone at night, which are all things women are not encouraged to do, Rani is female and therefore not considered a man. Nor does Rani wish to become a man. Rani is calalai. Rani’s female anatomy, combined with hir occupation, behaviour, and sexuality, allows Rani to identify, and be identified, as a calalai.
Calabai, conversely, are anatomical males who, in many respects, adhere to the expectations of women. However, calabai do not consider themselves women, are not considered women. Nor do they wish to become women, either by accepting restrictions placed on women such as not going out alone at night, or by recreating their body through surgery. However, whereas calalai tend to conform more to the norms of men, calabai have created a specific role for themselves in Bugis society.
If there is to be a wedding in Bugis society, more often than not calabai will be involved in the organisation. When a wedding date has been agreed upon, the family will approach a calabai and negotiate a wedding plan. The calabai will be responsible for many things: setting up and decorating the tent, arranging the bridal chairs, bridal gown, costumes for the groom and the entire wedding party (numbering up to twenty-five), makeup for all those involved, and all the food. Rarely did I attend a village wedding with less than a thousand guests. On the day, some calabai remain in the kitchen preparing food while others form part of the reception, showing guests to their seats.
Bissu, calalai, and calabai challenge the notion that individuals must conform to one of two genders, woman or man, and that one’s anatomy must support one’s gender. Bugis gender reveals the diverse nature of human identity. It makes me question our own notions of gender. For example, why should Australia insist on a boring old two-gender system?
Francela Méndez, the tenth trans woman to be murdered in El Salvador this year
People do not ‘become’ transgender. They just are.
Trans people are assaulted, insulted, vilified, denied their existence and human rights, and murdered, every day, but that’s not what makes them transgender. Although trans people are disproportionally the victims of assault, we now know that Gender Identity is innate. Assaults cannot cause innate identities, by definition. And by the same definition, all the abuse the patriarchy throws at them will not unmake a trans person.
Rape, which is one form of assault, is not about sex, it is about subjugation and control. Women, trans people, gay men are raped by men because they don’t conform to the kind of stereotypes that ignorant men (by and large) think should apply to everyone. Trans people are raped because they are trans. It doesn’t ‘make them’ trans.
To put that another way, people are raped by the agents of the patriarchy because the patriarchy desires conformity, detests women and utterly loathes those whom it sees as rejecting it — which anyone of non-binary Gender Identity is, by definition, doing. These individuals destroy the very basis of the assumed binary that the patriarchy is based on: two sexes with two prescribed Gender Identities and two concomitant Gender Expressions. The whole of life decided by whether you have an ‘inny’ or an ‘outy’ at birth.
It is this that defines one’s status in the patriarchal pecking order: outy — highest status; inny, not so much. The patriarchy is predicated on insatiable misogyny and it expresses its anger at the challenge to that trans people represent by pathologising them, insulting, beating, raping and killing them, and by attempting to deny not only their right to exist but their very existence itself.
This anger is meted out on the victims in the most horrific ways imaginable: it goes way beyond rape, which is bad enough. Trans people are beaten, stoned, set on fire; they are shot, stabbed, beaten to death with shovels, drowned in toilet bowls. They are suffocated, scalped, have their eyes gouged out and are strangled. Their bodies are dumped in the desert, thrown in the trash, left on the street. These attacks do not ‘make people trans’. They are hate crimes that happen because people are trans.
Trans people are beaten, tortured and murdered by complete strangers, by the police, by the military, by religious authorities. If they run afoul of the law — even in the case of trans people seeking asylum in the US because their lives are in danger at home — they are incarcerated in male prisons where they are repeatedly, serially raped and may be killed. In 2012, in Dubai, a young trans woman, after being arrested for being trans, was raped not only by the other prisoners but the police themselves, was then hired out to other men to be raped, under the watchful eyes of her jailers. She escaped to tell her story; she was one of the very lucky ones.
Yet this year, when Jennicet Gutiérrez dared to heckle President Obama about the shocking abuse of trans people by the US government she was shouted down and. tellingly, amongst the most shrill voices in her denunciation were those of ‘gay’ men. The clear signal, now finally out in the open: the ‘gay’ movement couldn’t care less about trans people. It has achieved its end, now to hell with the rest.
Yet if anything, the success of ‘gay’ men in achieving the patriarchal recognition they have so long campaigned for, has seen an upsurge in transphobic hate crime, especially in the United States. The ongoing toll of transphobic murder — that is, for just being trans — worldwide, is hard to determine but it is known that it is at least 300 or so every year. One might have thought that, having had the support of the transgender community in their own struggle, ‘gay’ men might be ready to lend their shoulders to the wheel. Early indications are that we shall wait a long time to see that.
Francela Méndez. RIP. Almost certainly nothing will be done to find her killers. Trans people are murdered with impunity across the globe, with the approval of the patriarchy — and condoned by radfem extremists.
Trans lives are ended by those closest to them too: by their lovers, especially, by those they called their friends and perhaps most horrifically, by their immediate family: in 2014 in Rio de Janeiro an eight-year old girl called Alex confessed to her father that she was trans and he beat her to death. Can you imagine the terror of this poor, innocent little girl, savagely murdered by the man she had most right to expect would protect her? I can’t. But that is what transphobic violence does: it kills trans people, it doesn’t cause them to be.
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One of the saddest things about the litany of hatred that is levelled at trans people by the patriarchy is the role cis-women play in it. In 2011 Teonna Brown, a cis-woman, pleaded guilty to assault and hate crime after savagely leading an attack on a transgender woman. The woman survived but was traumatised. Brown was convicted, the other attacker, also a cis-woman, 14, was sent to detention. In the murder of Gwen Araujo in 2002 in California, the court heard how the fatal attack was instigated by other women present, who were cis. Gwen’s murderers were convicted, but these women were never tried. I have personally seen cis-women deliberately and offensively misgender trans people — and misgendering is the first step towards violence.
But the insults of the ignorant, the bigoted and the uneducated is not the only expression of virulent transphobia from cis-women. There is a whole subculture of ‘feminists’ who make it their job to do as much damage as they can to trans women. Their leaders are people like Catherine Brennan, Julie Bindell, Suzanne Moore, Germaine Greer… people who adopt the mantle of liberalism, who claim to be ‘human rights activists’ — yet who would deny the very human rights they themselves demand to the most at risk and endangered group in society.
Their vile pronouncements, from behind a screen of academic faux-respectability, provide pseudo-philosophical justification for the torture, rape and murder of trans women. They are the agents of the patriarchy, abusing those weaker and less privileged than themselves in the hopes of being offered some scrap of privilege in return. Their hands may never have personally pulled a trigger that killed a trans woman, but they are as red as those that do.
If there is one light in this dark place it is that today, these so-called radical feminists — who are nothing more than the tools of the patriarchy — are rejected by mainstream feminism, which recognises that you cannot protest the lack of privilege the patriarchy awards you, while denying the same to a less privileged group. To do so would be — and is — sheer hypocrisy.
So if assault doesn’t ’cause’ transgender, what does? We know a lot more now than we did even a decade or so ago. The specific biological causes of transgender are still not fully understood but we now know that they are neurological in origin and that they are a normal part of human variation. Thus, listen up: being transgender is normal.
Whether the stimulus is genetic or environmental has not yet been established, but we can identify changes in brain structure that occur before birth, which rules out any notion of childhood conditioning; if environmental factors are the cause, then these happen in the womb. Trans people have been recorded in history since the invention of writing itself and a recent study in Thailand that showed that 20% of transwomen had one or more trans siblings. These, amongst other factors, strongly suggest a genetic cause which effects changes in the early development of the embryo. These cause the child to be born with the brain (not the mind) of one gender and the sexual organs of the other. Thus it is a form of transsex, a medical condition, and one that is very easily treated.
One does not ‘become’ transgender, any more than I ‘became’ white. One is born that way. Transgender is not made by domestic influence, parental behaviour, peer pressure, fashion or lifestyle. It’s just what some of us are. It’s innate.
How many other medical conditions lead to people being raped, burned, stoned, strangled, stabbed, shot, vilified, denied their human rights, imprisoned, executed and having their very existence questioned by bigoted academics and on-the make lawyers and scribblers?
I can’t think of a single one. Being attacked doesn’t make people trans, but not doing something about these attacks, or worse, condoning them, does make you transphobic, an abuser of the weakest in society and an agent of the patriarchy.
Terror comes in many forms. There is state terror; organised terror which is not state-promoted (NGO terror if you like); and individual acts of terror which are nevertheless encouraged by religion. All of these have one end: to reinforce the patriarchy’s grip on society and they are almost all sanctioned by religion. While a half-century ago, Communist terror was a problem, with the collapse of the Soviet Union that died away: nearly all terror, in every form, present in the world today, is inspired by religion.
Individual acts of terror are where one or a small number of individuals, usually from a majority of some kind, kill, maim, beat, insult, deny service to or otherwise harm persons of another group in order to intimidate them. A good example would be violence against LGBT people. This is frequently a spontaneous act of terror by private individuals with little or no coordination. Yet it causes the deaths of hundreds of transgender women every year. We see the same in beatings of minority races, persons of colour and those who dare to speak out for freedom.
Most of this terror is encouraged by the rantings of deluded religious demagogues preaching hate against gays, trans people, blacks, Jews, women, you name it. What are the recent atrocities carried out in France but religious terror designed to suppress legitimate criticism of Islam? We saw it in Charleston but lately. We see it in the killings of doctors assisting women to assert their rights over their bodies. It is pervasive and religion is the cause of it.
In Muslim families, even in the UK, girls are terrorised from birth. An estimated 1200 forced marriages are carried out in the UK every year, with the mainly female visions of this abuse being told that to resist would mean beating, torture and death — for compromising the ‘honour’ of both her own and the groom’s family. And in these cultures, gay men are sometimes forcibly married, in order to ‘turn them straight’ — with the same caveat: to resist is to dishonour and for that you will die. And this makes no mention of the horror of circumcision, where children’s bodies are mutilated by adults in the name of religion.
We usually forget that 26% of the world’s population is under 15, with no vote, precious little representation and almost no defence against religious terror. This is inflicted directly by parental beatings, usually administered by men, absolutely mandated by religion, and through bullying by peers, acting on the same vile impulse. Taken together with women, we find that a majority of the world’s population are subject to terror by men on a daily, routine basis. Terror is a part of the lives and upbringing of most of the world’s population in other words, and it is sanctioned by religion. Islam even gives instructions as to how to beat and inflict terror.
Children are religious terrorists’ first victims, whether by mental abuse form pulpit or mosque, religiously sanctioned beatings or mutilations. Religion is the herald and enforcer of the patriarchy; terror is its stock-in-trade and violence, mutilation and killing are its tools.
Non -governmental, organised terror covers everything from the KKK to ISIS and all points in between. While maintaining shocking levels of individual terror within the group — witness the defenestration of gay men by ISIS — it promulgates terror against people outside the group. It includes Hamas, Al Qaeda and Boku Haram; but on the other hand we have the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Church and many others. Only this week we have seen a Baptist ‘pastor’ incite his followers, yet again, to murder LGBT people. In Africa, the Anglican Church ha actively been promoting terror against the same group. And the Catholic Church continues its suppression of women by denying them the right to divorce abusive husbands. Terror being used to keep people in lione.
Remember Rwanda, where the terrorism was promoted by Christians and Srebrenica, where 8000 Muslim men and boys were taken out and murdered by Bosnian Serb nationalists, just because they were Muslim.
Just over the last month, we have yet again, in Northern Ireland, seen the UK’s largest sectarian organisation, the Orange Order, attack and attempt to intimidate Catholics — provoked by Protestant pastors. So far this year there have only been serious injuries but these include a little girl being driven over by an alleged Protestant in his car. She was trapped under it after he appeared to deliberately drive into a crowd of mainly Catholics (she survived, he was arrested.) The Orange Order has never hesitated to proclaim the religious justification for its violence towards and intimidation of anyone who opposes it. It is by definition a terrorist organisation and it is staggering that it has not been banned.
In Africa, Boku Haram has regularly shown the depths of its terrorist depravity, every last bit of it religiously inspired. Yet it is not alone. All across sub-Saharan Africa, religiously-motivated bigots with guns and no education, kill, beat and displace others, while death-squads from the same source terrorise LGBT people.
The appalling brutality of ISIS, ISIL, call it what you will has but one inspiration — religion. Its stated purpose is to fulfil the religious obligation placed on Muslims by the Qu’ran and turn the whole world into the Caliphate: and make no mistake, it will not stop until it is eradicated.
Why did Al Qaeda murder 4000 Americans on the 11 of September 2001? In the name of Islam. Just this month, 30 tourists were murdered in Tunisia — in the name of Islam: which its apologists call, lest we forget, the ‘religion of peace’.
Religiously-inspired state terror is widespread and commonplace. It includes killing, torturing and imprisoning LGBT people in Africa, the Islamic world and elsewhere. Throughout the Islamic world, women are routinely terrorised. Women in Iran are attacked, have acid thrown in their faces, are arrested and imprisoned — for not wearing the veil, the symbol of female subjugation in this miserable culture. This is pure terrorism.
In Saudi, women are subject to similar abuses, and are commonly beaten and executed, as are a whole list of persons who dare to oppose the state-backed religious hegemony in any way. To be LGBT in these terror states is to live in constant fear, and all because of religion. In Indonesia, special police squads enforce Shariaa on Muslims, imposing terror on anyone who has an Islamic name — even if they themselves have never been Muslim. Every nation where the evil code of Shariaa is in place and enforced, or even tolerated, is an example of religious state terror.
Despite the vociferous attempt by misguided liberalists to condemn Israel, its actions, even if they could be described as terror rather than the legitimate self-defence that they are, pale into insignificance compared to the Indonesian government’s actions in East Timor, for example, which was entirely a religiously-inspired state terror against Christians by Muslims. There is evidence of state-sanctioned terror against Muslims in Burma.
The United States, along with many other developed nations, has exported terror across the globe. In the 1970s and 80s, for example, the CIA, with collusion from the administrations of the day, supported fascist dictatorships in South America, and we now know, actively assisted their death squads in selecting and capturing their victims. This may not have been in the name of a specific religion, other than the extreme worship of capitalism, but behind it lies a core of religious justification that it is done in the name of ‘God’ and country.
But let’s look further back: what was Hitler’s principal justification for the Holocaust? Religion. Hitler was a lifelong Catholic and he knew that killing Jews would make him popular with Catholic Germans. This most egregious of terrors was perpetrated in the name of religion, and for his anti-Semitism, Hitler was warmly congratulated by the Pope.
Over the centuries, from the Muslim invasions of Europe and Asia to the Christian ones of the Americas and Asia, the brutal exporters of religious state terror all carried in their vanguard the crosses and crescents that justified the trail of blood and horror that they blazed.
In 1683 during the Siege of Vienna, the Muslim leader Kara Mustafa ordered the execution of 30,000 Christians who had been taken hostage. In the name of Islam.
In South America, rivers off blood ran as the Conquistadores imposed Christianity on a terrified population, using all the brutality of an imperial war machine. Exactly the same was done in the Philippines. Neither Christianity nor Islam have been spread by love, but by the sword and by religious terror that left countless dead.
But to come back to the present. There is one category I have not mentioned, did you notice? Rape is the most common form of terror on the planet. A woman is raped every six minutes in the USA. Worldwide the toll is astronomical and nearly all of it has some religious cause. Rape is not about sex, it is about subjugation — subjugation of women to men and society to the patriarchy, which has always used religion as its preferred method of control. We can’t have pastors out there raping women but they can, and do, impute that women, especially those who do not behave or dress in the ways they specify, are legitimate targets.
There is no doubt that Islamist terror is a major problem in the world today, and has been for decades. This cult of violence is probably the most important single promulgator of terror on every level, today.
But let’s not imagine that lets other religions off the hook. They are all, at root, social control systems that never hesitate to use violence and terror to further their ends. Underneath the smiling velvet glove of Islam — the ‘religion of peace’ and Christianity, ‘the religion of love’ is the iron fist of pure coercion through terror.
It will be a great day for humanity when they are all — every one — forgotten.
Today I am spitting nails. I have not been as angry as this for 20 years. The last time I felt my blood boiling like this was in 1995, when Serbian nationalist gunmen entered the Bosnian town of Srebrenica and, with the collusion of the Dutch troops who were meant to protect them, took away 8,000 men and boys, murdered them ion cold blood and buried them in graves they had dug themselves.
That is how furious I am today.
And why? Because I have seen Germany destroy a weaker nation for political ends. I have seen Germany destroy all notion of European solidarity. I have seen Germany reveal its true self — the monstrous bully of Europe that cannot suffer dissent and insists that its orders must be followed, on pain of destruction.
In 1871 the failed. In 1914 they failed. In 1945 they failed — but defeating them cost 2n million lives and the destruction of Europe.
But in 2015 they have succeeded. They have finally achieved their end. They have crushed a sovereign nation, not with tanks and bombers, but with threats and banks.
We believed, in our innocence, that suffering appalling want for years after 1945 so that Germany could be reconstructed, was worthwhile because then, Germany would be a good European nation. Billions were poured into its economy and restructuring under the Marshall Plan, so that Germany would be a good European nation. Further billions were poured in for decades as NATO maintained vast armies along the Rhine — so that Germany would be a good European nation. We allowed Germany to re-unify, believing that it was, by then, actually a good European nation. For the same reasons we allowed it to organise an Exchange Rate Mechanism that favoured Germany by keeping the costs of its exports down, and we then even allowed them to change the name of that and call it a ‘currency union’ — which it is not.
Why did we do all this? Because we wanted Germany to be a good European nation and at the back of our minds, always, were those 72 million dead and the images of the horrors of Auschwitz.
And all of that, all of it, failed. Germany has revealed, one again, the ghastly monster of its true nature. It will stop at nothing to impose its will on others.
What is the deep, rotten cancer at the core of the German psyche that makes Germans think they have a right to tell others how to run their countries? What is the evil in their national character.? I wish I knew because as far as I can see we have done everything that could be done to appease them and the monster that corrupts their national soul.
And none of it was enough. None of it will ever be enough. Germany is the enemy, the enemy of freedom and democracy. It is the dark totalitarian vampire at the heart of Europe, that sucks the blood of liberty and will go on sucking it, until the continent is a dried out husk and freedom itself is dead.
It is too late now to demand forgiveness for errors past; to late to claim that the evils once done were then, not now, and that the sins of the parents should not be visited on the children. It is too late now to insist, yet again, that Germans have changed, because every single living German is guilty as charged in the indictment of the monstrous behaviour of their nation. A nation has been destroyed in their name and with their sanction. Democrcy has beenn snuffed out, because they allowed it, indeed, desired it.
Today’s Germans are are just as culpable as those who sent Jews to the gas chambers or who helped round up gays for execution. There is a rot at the heart of the German soul that we now must understand can never be cut out. If all the effort we have made to make them a civilised, good European nation over the last 70 years has failed, then there can be no hope. Germany is a beast that can never be treated with, and must instead be chained.
For me, this week has been a personal tragedy. I voted twice, in the 1970s, for the UK to join the EEC, as it was then. I believed in the dream of Europe. All thorough the 1980s and 90s, while the ‘democratic deficit’ at the heart of Europe worried me deeply, I held on to my faith. I told myself that Europe was bigger than this, that it would be all right. I told myself how apt it was to choose ‘Ode to Joy’ as the European anthem, to express hope for a harmonious, democratic future.
After the millennium I went on believing; I had no interest, ever, in the euro project, an ill-favoured child from the outset, but despite the increasing evidence to the contrary, I told myself that the European commitment to peace, democracy and human rights counted for more than these worries.
This week, Germany pulled aside its mask and I saw how wrong I had been. The entire European project is nothing more than an attempt to turn the whole continent into a satrapy of Berlin. Just as in 1871, in 1914 and 1945. Every one of the German promises was a lie. It will accept our acquiesence in its Master Plan, but if we resist, it will bludgeon us until we surrender.
Just as it has done with Greece.
Oh, in the end, this had little to do with Greece, other than the public whipping of an errant child who dared disobey its master. The real message in the destruction and pauperisation of a tiny, weak, poor country, the message in condemning its children to starvation, is not for the Greeks. Germany doesn’t care about Greece. It’s just more beaches for them to clog up, more locals for them to be rude to.
The message is for the Italians and the Spanish and the Portuguese and the French, to show them what will happen to them if they aver dare to stand up against Germany. That is the real reason why the Greek nose had to be rubbed in urine — except, it’s not even Greek urine, but German.
Well, I say enough. Germany would like to be the economically-driven Gestapo of Europe, but we are still free. We can rally to the Greek side. We can shout from the rooftops, march in the streets, besiege the German Embassies and Consulates, telling them, you shall not do this.
We can boycott their services and products. Don’t buy German cars. Don’t patronise German shops. Let us see a Europe full of boarded-up Aldis and Lidls. German flags should be in flames all over Europe, their pyres surmounted by effigies of Merkel, Hitler’s true daughter.
We can flood the internet with our disapproval of their monstrous and unacceptable behaviour and we should challenge every German we meet, not with violence, but with a patient explanation of why their behaviour is not acceptable and that until they mend their ways, they are not welcome among us; that they should go home and tell their Chancellor that she has disgraced them both as Germans and Europeans, or accept that they really are the monsters they appear to be.
The European Project has no future now. It has been eviscerated, by Germany. Many people’s dreams, including mine, have been shattered. But we will live on.
Today is the 14th of July, Bastille Day, here in France. Today they will read off the roll of the sons of this tiny village who gave their lives for France to be free from the German monster. It is a fitting day to be reminded that Europe is once again under threat from it.
I had an unusual experience last week here at Mission Control in Darkest France. I was door-stepped by Evangelists. We don’t see too many of those round here. They were working a nice formula; he was older and avuncular, she was young and very attractive. She was chosen to hook the guys, he because he was not threatening to women.
Having the kind of debate one has with Evangelists is a little harder in French than it is in English, at least for me, but I think I did OK. She seemed to like the bit about stardust…it’s nice and romantic.
He, however, brought up the ‘statistical probability of Earth being where it is etc etc’ canard. This is meant to show that the probability of Earth’s existence is so low that there must be magic, or as they would prefer, Divine Intervention, involved. Richard Dawkins debunks this in ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ very nicely and I recommend it.
It’s a bogus argument because it proceeds in the wrong direction: we are already here. There is no probability about it. The actual probability of the Earth being where it is, is 1:1 or 100% because that is where it actually is.
But this got me to thinking and I did a little thought exercise. What would the probability of any one of us being born when and where we were?
Ali addresses a slightly less extreme calculation by removing the specific location and time of birth, but it still works. It’s definitely worth a read and he also put up an excellent graphic which shows exactly what the odds are, and his method but here’s what he says in his own words:
‘Probability of your existing at all: 1 in 10 to the power 2,685,000
As a comparison, the number of atoms in the body of an average male (80kg, 175 lb) is 10 to the power 27. The number of atoms making up the earth is about 10 to the power 50. The number of atoms in the known universe is estimated at 10 to the power 80.
So what’s the probability of your existing? It’s the probability of 2 million people getting together – about the population of San Diego – each to play a game of dice with trillion-sided dice. They each roll the dice, and they all come up the exact same number – say, 550,343,279,001.’
(The exercise was based on the US population, but even if we used a global sample the figures would hardly change.)
If the probability of any individual human existing is 1 in 10 to the power 2,685,000 then statistically it is impossible for you to exist at all, in practical terms.
But this is a parlour game and that is exactly what the ‘statistical probability of Earth being where it is’ is too. The statistics say it’s impossible, and yet, here she jolly well is, and here we jolly well are too.
The point of this is to show that the logic being used is a nonsense. We are here, all of us. We are not a theoretical future being. The Earth is here and we are on it and we observe the universe from it. Using parlour games like this to show that this implies the existence of a ‘God’ is beyond risible. It’s right through the Tunnel of Stupid and out the other side into the Lake of Total Idiocy.
For the Anti-Apologist, it’s an amusing way to shoot down some of the more scientific-sounding Evangelists. However there are religionards who actually think that ‘God’ really does choose who shags whom and which sperm meets which egg. The Micro-Manager God, we might call this one. Definitely a deity with severe OCD.
The solution is simple: since we are now in the realm of statistics, what is the probability that an invisible man in the sky is hand (or Noodly Appendage) selecting every single sperm from every single ejaculation (including the moon-shots) and deciding which one will enter a specific vagina at the exact right moment and fertilise a particular ovum?
Well there you have it again — that is, by Ali’s method, 1 in 10 to the power 2,685,000.
So in other words, statistically, there is 33,562 times less chance of God doing that than there are atoms in the known universe.
It’s not that often I agree with Suzanne Moore. So that has to be noteworthy for a start. I find myself agreeing with Joseph Stiglitz more often — and why not, I mean he is a Nobel Prize winner. I am pretty sure for all three of us to be in agreement is pretty exceptional though.
And what are we agreeing about? Germany’s atrocious, scandalous bullying of Greece, that’s what.
I am no fan of Margaret Thatcher, but her fears, expressed before Germany was re-unified, have proven correct: Germany is once again Europe’s bad-mannered thug, and it has begun to flex its muscles.
Of course it always was; three times in under 70 years, it invaded its neighbours and created havoc. (Okay, the first was technically Prussia, but that’s a detail.)
The last expression of its natural tendency to be King Rat caused 72 million people to be killed and Europe — as well as substantial other parts of the globe — was devastated. Well, after that one we got smart and took Germany’s tanks and bombers away.
So now they are using their financial power to do the same thing, bully and intimidate smaller countries. Last month we heard the head of the ECB — a German — ask that democracy in Greece should be suspended and a ‘technocrat’ appointed to run it instead. After all, we can’t have an annoyance like democracy getting the way of the Master Race’s plans now, can we? And freedom, what’s that?
Today we hear German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisting that no debt restructuring will be offered to Greece. If they cannot behave like good Germans — which is what, apparently, being European now means — then they can starve. If they wish for forgiveness they must kiss the jackboot of the goose-stepping schoolyard bully and thank it for not sweeping down the Danube and delivering the punishment in person. Except they can’t because we took away their tanks and bombers. Thankfully.
Well, this is where I agree with Stiglitz. It is Germany’s boneheaded insistence on ‘austerity’ that has ruined the Greek economy. And they are determined to reduce all Greeks to third-world status just to show what happens when you dare to stand up to the Master Race. Just like they did in 1914. And 1939. And that Franco Prussian entanglement.
As Stiglitz points out, Germany, after it ruined Europe and killed 72 million people, was given the BIGGEST BAIL-OUT IN RECORDED HISTORY. Its war reparations were written off. Of course none of the other European nations got this free hand-out because they –INCLUDING Greece — were the ones who gave Germany this gift.
Why did we do this? Because making Germany pay for the destruction it caused in the First World War was its reason for starting the Second World War. Better that the other European nations stayed on rations than give the Germans another excuse to do the same again, nein? I mean, 72 million is a lot of people.
Through the Marshall Plan, the US injected vast amounts of money to rebuild Germany — far more than any other state received. For decades, billions more were poured in as part of NATO defence policy. Germany was allowed to re-unite, although this immediately destabilised Europe — which the British and French attempted to defuse by pushing for enlargement of the Union.
Then, Germany was allowed to establish a fixed exchange-rate mechanism that favoured its own economy and ensured that the normal economic pressures, which would have cause its currency to rise and make its products less competitive were negated by the presence of weaker currencies in the group. This then became the euro — which is just another exchange-rate mechanism, not a currency union at all. That is why the Swedes, when asked, refused to join. The Swedes have a proud tradition of resisting German bullying.
And the euro has worked exactly as the Germans planned — it has sucked wealth out of the weaker economies and given it to Germany.
So Germany’s economic success is not because it’s thrifty or hard-working, but because everyone else has been pouring billions — trillions — into its economy for SEVENTY YEARS.
And now, big bully Germany would rather see Greeks starve than do the decent thing and write off the so-called ‘debt’ — mostly, by the way, in favour of German and French banks.
Greece should have none of it. It should leave the euro and go back to the drachma. The US Government has today made it clear: it will not let Greece fall. The IMF has said the same. The Greeks have nothing to fear. If they stick up for democracy, the bully of Europe cannot harm them.
Yet what a bitter taste it leaves, for once again — for the third time in a hundred years — a European nation needs the USA to save it from Germany.
And this is where I agree with Moore: I have always considered myself a good European. I still am. But if being a European means standing by and allowing this appalling behaviour on the part of the bully of Europe, then I want no part of it.
The UK will hold a referendum on EU membership within two years. Thanks to Germany, I will be campaigning for an exit. Maybe nobody will listen, but I will do my little best. It’s time to tell the schoolyard bully to go off and stand in the corner in shame, alone.
The last time we had to stand up to Germany and its shocking behaviour was 1939. It looks like we’ll have to do it again. And we have discovered something — taking away its tanks and bombers has not made Germany a good European.
With 15% of the vote now counted, Greece looks set to vote ‘NO’ in its referendum by an ‘overwhelming’ majority of a huge turnout.
We should all congratulate and thank Greece. It has set itself up as a beacon of hope and democracy against the unelected suprastate that would crush it and further enslave it to the failed model of ‘austerity’.
The economic competency of the Germans and the French, the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund has been shown, by far better economists than I, to have been about the level of a bunch of schoolchildren. Greece was forced into unnecessary recession and at the same time expected to make huge loan repayments in order to serve the political ends of Germany and France. The consequence has been an even greater Depression than that which afflicted the USA in the 1930s, with over 25% unemployment and hardship that no-one else in Europe would put up with.
And that is why it has been so important for the lenders to break tiny Greece. Because when they come for you, they don’t want you to think that there’s any way out. They don’t want you to realise that states are sovereign and can just tear up debts. At the moment their targets are Italy and Spain; they dread the consequences if these two states were to tear up their loans and tell their lenders to raffle themselves — which they are perfectly entitled to do. But make no mistake, these people, Merkel, Hollande, Juncker and Lagarde are out to destroy democracy and the sovereignty of the people, and concentrate power in the hands of oligarchs, bureaucrats, and completely unaccountable quangos and corporations.
Iceland proved them wrong and they have been very quiet about that. But they won’t be able to keep quiet about Greece.
The Greek economy is actually in surplus, by about 2%, if we discount the loan repayments. It is not Greece’s economy or its economic management that is at fault, but the slavish insistence of the European anti-democratic hegemony on ‘austerity’.
Well, it looks like Greece has given these economic bullies a kick in the testicles that they will remember.
It should now declare that all the debt is suspended. It should declare a repayment holiday with no interest increment. It should invite China to invest hugely in its infrastructure and tourism economy. It should print drachmas and float them. And it should continue to tell the anti-democratic hegemony that governs Europe that its day is done.
