Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani

Pastor Youcef Nadarkani is an Iranian Evangelical Christian pastor. He has also been sentenced to death. The two preceeding sentences are not unrelated, since it appears that he has been sentenced to death for being an Evangelical Christian. Some four times he has been pressured to recant his Christianity; each time he has refused to do so.

We know of his appalling case thanks to Christian Solidarity Worldwide - see its briefing on Pastor Nadarkhani here - which is campaigning for Pastor Nadarkhani's life and freedom of conscience.

We also know about Pastor Nadarkani thanks to leading Catholic blogger, Caroline Farrow, who has been unsparing in her efforts to raise awareness of this awful story. Read her superb post here and if you haven't already done so, please email and phone the Iranian embassy expressing your grave concern for Nadarkhani. Caroline has helpfully provided a template letter for your guidance.

The world knows about Pastor Nadarkhani thanks to campaigning lawyer and New Statesman writer, David Allen Green. Green, an Atheist whose commitment to human rights descends from the Enlightenment tradition has been tenancious in following the Nadarkhani story. When he writes, governments sit up and take notice. The Foreign Office released a statement not long after Green blogged about Nadarkani, as did the US State Department and so too did the Iranian Embassy in London.

Perhaps stung by the growing international clamour for Nadarkhani's life and liberty, the official Iranian news agency has recently been putting it about that Pastor Nadarkhani has been sentenced to death for rape and extortion and even more chillingly, claimed that he is a Zionist.

The New Statesman's Mehdi Hassan's eloquent denunciation of the death sentence levelled upon Pastor Nadarkhani as not only unIslamic but anti-Islamic was a perfect exposition of the humane heart of the Islamic faith and one which which Moslems all over the world will echo.

Meanwhile, in the very quarters that Nadarkhani should expect the strongest support, that is to say among Western Christian leaders, there has been unsconscionable silence, as both Archbishop Cranmer and Damian Thompson have noted with understandable disgust. 

In a Flather about fertility

She's at it again! Dolphinarium's favourite politician, Baroness Flather, has hauled herself back onto her pet hobby horse: children and why there should be fewer of them especially among certain sections of the community.

This time dear old Shreela used the occasion of the second reading of the government's Welfare Reform Bill in the Lords, a piece of legislation she admitted in her opening remarks that she "found very difficult to understand" to argue that "people should not be getting the full raft of benefits for any number of children."

She elaborated,

"I feel that the first two children should get a full raft of benefits, the third child should get three-quarters and the fourth child should get a half."

The Baroness observed that minority communities in the UK, she specified Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, "have very large numbers of children" and demonstrating her noteworthy skills as a reader of human minds, opined that "the money that follows the child is an attraction".

She went on,

"there is no doubt that six or seven children give you a far larger income than three or four. I think it is about time that we stop people using children as a means of increasing the amount of money that they receive or of getting a bigger house."

Notice the emphatic language the Baroness used in making her point? The twin themes of barely-concealed disgust at the Asian immigrant working-classes and their fertility on the one hand and coercion, on the other - "it is about time that we stop people" were reinforced in her closing peroration:

"In the countries of origin, these people-Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and even Indians-have large families because there is no safety net. When you get old, it is only your children who are going to look after you. That does not apply here. Every old person will have their pension and will be looked after. It is time to introduce the pattern of this country and to tell people that they must start following it."

As my opening paragraph makes clear, this isn't the first time that Baroness Flather has suggested that the less well-off should be told to have fewer children.

Six years ago she ventured substantially the same argument that she would make in the Lords last week, positing a correlation between smaller families and better educational outcomes and singling out fecund Bangladeshis for particular haughty disapproval. Last week Flather, who hails from a top-drawer Indian mercantile family - her great grandfather, Sir Ganga Ram, was a noted philanthropist - again referred disapprovingly to large Bangladeshi families, who she bracketed with Pakistanis in her Lords' speech as having "no emphasis on education" which indicates how mightily exercised she remains about these communities' fertility patterns. She went qualitivately further in the Lords, however, by arguing for a system of financial disincentives for those with more than two children, thereby passing into serious anti-natalist policy territory.

It remains only for me to note that the noble Baroness holds a senior position in an organisation which provides its services in a country which has one of the most notorious anti-natalist policies of our times and which enjoys such warm relations with that country's government that it hosts discreet tête-à-têtes between its senior personnel and that country's minister for the creepily entitled State National Population and Family Planning Commission at its London offices. Baroness Flather is a director of Marie Stopes International.

(Naughty) Thought for the Day: Just because Dorries says it doesn't necessarily mean that it's wrong

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require schools to provide certain additional sex education to girls aged between 13 and 16; to provide that such education must include information and advice on the benefits of abstinence from sexual activity; and for connected purposes.

The shock, the horror!

Then an underwear model gets up and holds forth on the benefits of sex'n'relationships education.

On mad cows and abstinence

Somewhere on ye olde twittersphere the copulationologist community is getting its knickers in a twist about an MP who has had the nerve - the nerve, if you please - to mention the A word* in a ten minute rule bill.

This has been taken as an unreasonable attack on the promotion of contraceptive and abortifacient drugs and devices to captive young audiences transmission of impartial information by the said community and before you mention it, all that talk about condoms and cucumbers or is it bananas is nothing more than a myth advanced by the tabloids and we should invent a game called SRE bingo to show what a load of rubbish it is because in fact, the copulationologist community desires nothing more than good quality, comprehensive sex 'n' relationships education which inter alia teaches young people communication skills, reduces fear, stigma and anxiety and moulds a generation of young people into the kind of virtuous citizens who have the social skills and common courtesy to say please and thankyou for fellatio and there follows an example of the kind of good quality, comprehensive material teenagers (not children, what do you think we are?) should be exposed to but may not be if that evil misogynistic witch gets her way.

Children as young as 13 are being advised on oral sex, anal sex, orgasms and being good in bed in a booklet published by the fpa, formerly the Family Planning Association.

Entitled Love, Sex and Relationships, the booklet is aimed at 13- to 16-year-olds, although the legal age of consent is 16, and is being distributed to schools and youth groups.


[...]

The booklet advises teenagers how they can tell when they are ready to have sex and contains cartoon characters saying: "I like to touch myself" or "I like to dress up as a girl" and "Does my crotch look big in this?" In the section on oral sex, it says: "Many people enjoy it; others aren't interested. Often called a 'blow job' when done to a man and 'going down' when done to a woman."

*Abstinence, to delay temporarily or desist entirely from sexual activity. An inflammatory term which suggests that humans can control their sexual urges. Not to be confused with claims made by copulationologists that sex education encourages delaying sex.

Simply Staggering

Laughs aplenty, heckling, a man blowing an actual whistle - God, can it get any better than that - and undoubtedly stormy applause at Saturday evening's hot ticket New Statesman/Frontline Julian Assange cult meeting free speech debate. Some 900 people crammed into Kensington Town Hall to have the chance to hear our sleek navy-suited hero and a cluster of other luminaries debate the propostion "This house believes that whistleblowers make the world a safer place."

I love this sort of thing, really I do and not just for the opportunity to see one of the sexiest issues de nos jours given a good workout by some of the greatest champions of free speech ever.

Speaking of which, I'm sure the unfortunate business of Craig Murray, Our once-upon-a-time man in Tashkent, being disinvited from the panel was nothing more than a mix up, just one of those things. Maybe someone better qualified to make the case for whistleblowing suddenly became available. Murray who crowned his dull, uneventful career by revealing that intelligence linking the Islamic Movement for Uzbekistan with Al Qa'eda was gained through torture would have been an adornment to the panel, to be sure but couldn't have brought the same gravitas and relevance to the debate as, say, the delightfully named Clayton Swisher.

It's always important to retain a sense of perspective about these matters. The champagne flute-clinking world of modish media crusades which comes bedecked with demi-mondaines and countercultural brand names is as fickle as any fashion editor; hems go up, hems go down, jetsetting whistleblowers are the new flares of light in our murky world, yesterday's stern critic of a periodical's spinelessness is today's showcased ally.

If Julian Assange isn't minded to allow a pesky little thing like a deleted blog post about controversial Iraqi billionaire, Nadhmi Auchi on the Staggers' website disturb his tranquility why should anyone else?

Back in 2008 Wikileaks editor Julian Assange claimed that

"The New Statesman, in agreeing to Auchi’s terms, would defame him and Wikileaks by implying that the site’s content was inaccurate. In a letter to the New Statesman, Assange warned ‘Our organisation’s reputation for professional, accurate investigative journalism is our primary asset. As both the New Statesman and Wikileaks are globally read publications, we will consider taking action against the New Statesman in the most suitable jurisdiction or jurisdictions.’ Assange said the New Statesman should not be party to what he terms Auchi’s ‘mischief’, pointing out that Wikileaks had never been approached by Auchi or its lawyers about the material it hosted."

But that was three years ago. Hemlines have risen, fallen and risen again since then. A highly regarded political editor may have departed in the wake of the Auchi contretemps but at least now the Staggers can now glory in an edition have been guestedited by a member of the celebrated Puddleduck family. And let's not say a word about NUJ chapels or how much interns are or are not paid.

...With a modest set of demands

I’d like to see good governance in the Church. One of the most frustrating things about Catholic affairs is the uselessness of ecclesiastical bureaucracies. Not merely in terms of the sexual abuse scandal – though that shines a particularly harsh light – but much more generally.

To which I fully subscribe.

Read the rest of 'em here.

But will she stick around for a few more pictures?

I don’t want to make rash promises

Ever the tease ...

Garbo Returns ...

Here

Happy New Year

As ever, I love you all.

Wesołych Świąt Bożego Narodzenia!