PETER HITCHENS: This farcical witch-hunt will drag British justice back to the Dark Ages

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

Countries on the brink of madness are riven by whispered scandals about the powerful - some of them true, most of them not. Four years before the French Revolution, some tangled rubbish about a diamond necklace was used to smear Queen Marie Antoinette. Pre-1917 Russia seethed with obscene rumours about the monk Grigory Rasputin and the Empress Alexandra.This tittle-tattle helped to discredit the existing regime, and opened the way for a new order which was far, far worse. With us, there is a strange belief that a vast sex-abuse scandal, reaching high into the establishment, is being hidden by the powerful. The great thing about such claims is that they can neither be proved or disproved. And so those who doubt them can be condemned as part of the cover-up. You cannot be neutral. In a reversal of the normal rules on slander, an accuser can allege the vilest things about an alleged culprit, and yet not suffer at all.

He or she can also shelter for life behind legally-enforced anonymity. Meanwhile the accused are publicly humiliated, their homes absurdly searched – for what, exactly? This unjust lunacy reached its peak in 2014 when the then Home Secretary, a Mrs Theresa May, responded to a media frenzy by setting up an ‘Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’. It was a very silly idea. If crimes have been committed, we have a huge and expensive police and justice system which, to tell the truth, isn’t half as busy as it likes to pretend. This is because it has decided that so many things that used to be crimes aren’t crimes any more, so it ignores them. And immediately, because of the wild and fantastic nature of the claims, almost nobody could be found who wasn’t in some way disqualified to lead it. Ridiculously, that fine lawyer and judge, Baroness Butler-Sloss, was ruled out as chairman because she was ‘part of the establishment’. I bet the Baroness is relieved to be out of it now, but isn’t it ridiculous that the joke MP, Simon Danczuk, later to gain fame for his sexually explicit text message habit, was allowed to influence the matter? Now on its fourth chairman, this gigantic, foggy inquisition has just lost its chief lawyer, Ben Emmerson QC, amidst a barrage of leaks and counter-leaks. Meanwhile most of those involved in the original scandal-mongering have suffered various embarrassing setbacks and aren’t quite as chipper as they were when they stomped around the land demanding a state-sponsored witch-hunt.

And Mrs May, who wants to be thought of as open-minded and willing to review the decisions of the Cameron government, now has the chance to review and reverse her own mistake. I do hope she does, and shuts the whole thing down. This gigantic kangaroo court, which is, incredibly, allowed to hear evidence against accused individuals without allowing any defence, is an embarrassing hangover from a bout of national lunacy. We are slowly recovering from it. The Metropolitan Police Chief who joined in far too keenly with the hunting pack has quit his post early.

A powerful new Channel 4 Drama, ‘National Treasure’ –in which Robbie Coltrane plays a showbiz giant brought down by abuse claims - is at least toying with the possibility that some of these accusations may actually be untrue and that some accusers may be hoping for gain more than for justice. About time too. For far too long media, police and – shamefully – the courts themselves have forgotten the rule which stands between us and tyranny – that an accused person is innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. It is no good saying that the crimes are terrible. Locking up an innocent person, or destroying his life with anonymous smears, is terrible too. And if we don’t stop doing it, we will soon cease to be a free country.

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If a small army of Islamist terror fanatics makes its base in a crowded city, and will not let women and children leave, it is very hard to know what to do. For instance, the Iraqi army was faced with this problem in 2014 when it sought to recapture the city of Fallujah from Jihadists. Nouri al-Maliki, then President of Iraq and so the West’s ally, used barrel bombs to fight ISIS terrorists in Fallujah. Pro-ISIS propaganda made much of the civilian deaths, but I don’t recall the USA, or the BBC, or the moralizing choir who now emote over Aleppo and shout ‘war-crimes’, saying much. Nor do we hear at all from these moralists about Saudi Arabia’s rather savage little war now going on in Yemen (using British munitions) in which more than 2,000 civilians are said to have died. There’s a similar problem over the severe criticisms of the Syrian government made by the USA’s diplomats and their mouthpiece, the BBC.

Near-identical repression of dissent in Bahrain and Egypt (currently our allies) passes with barely a mention. Their governments aren’t called ‘regimes’. Why is this? For instance, on a recent edition of BBC Radio 4’s over-rated ‘Today’ programme, the presenter, Justin Webb, stated as a matter of fact that Russia ‘has no obvious interest’ in bringing the Syrian war to an end. How does he know? He then used that interesting phrase ‘some who think’. There are some (namely me) who think this is a BBC way of sliding an opinion into a place where it shouldn’t be. Anyway, according to Mr Webb ‘There are some who think they (the Russians) want it to go on and on and on in order to damage Europe with the flows of migrants’. No doubt there are, but who are they, and are they right, and why is Justin Webb smuggling this opinion (especially if it isn’t his) into a major news programme?

A BBC spokesperson says feebly that this is ‘news analysis’, but it looks to me like taking sides. From the start I have been shocked by the BBC’s partial coverage of this issue, and its willingness to be a conduit for war propaganda in Syria, as it was in Libya. This is important because we are being softened up for a war far more risky than that in Libya or Iraq. In Syria, western forces might actually find themselves in direct combat with Russian troops and planes. Can you begin to imagine how dangerous that could be for Europe and the world?

Please don’t be rushed into supporting such a thing, even by the BBC.

***

I am sorry that Jeremy Paxman has gone into the memoir business. Surely he doesn’t need the money, and, whenever anyone attacks his or her dead parents in public I always wonder what those parents would say if they were still alive. But I am glad of this confession from the man who so loftily looked down on so many interviewees: ‘It is not necessary to be an expert — why bother interviewing someone if you already know it all? ‘The presenter is there merely as the representative of the average, reasonably alert viewer. You only need to know enough not to ask spectacularly stupid questions.’ Really?

*****

Tories attack Jeremy Corbyn for wanting to renationalise the railways (in my view, his best idea). Well, they can hardly accuse him of too much state interference while simultaneously demanding government control over pudding portions in restaurants. Nice big sugary puddings in old-fashioned British Railways dining cars, that’s my policy.

PETER HITCHENS: Gold for Synchronised Sunburn and self-delusion goes to...

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday Column

Imagine a country that isn’t very successful, but wants to boost its image in the world. Its economy is rocky, its cities grubby and run-down. Its education system isn’t much good.
So this country spends huge sums of scarce money and great effort to find young men and women who can win medals in international sporting competitions.
It carefully chooses sports where the competition is weak. It relentlessly drives the chosen athletes. And it works. At home and abroad, its image is transformed.
Its national media go into hysterics over each medal.
The people at home forget for a moment the dreariness of their lives.
The anthem plays and the flag flies high.
The country I am thinking of is East Germany, the self-styled ‘German Democratic Republic’. You may remember the superb figure skater Katarina Witt, who won Winter Olympic gold medals in 1984 and 1988, and a pile of other awards for her ghastly country in the years just before it collapsed in a cloud of rust.
What did her triumphs prove? Nothing much, except that state power can achieve sporting success. In which case, what is so joyous about it?
If sport is about anything, surely it is about individual achievement, not plans, budgets and political prestige.
What could be further from the burning individual talents and grit celebrated in Chariots Of Fire than some Ministry of Sport fulfilling its medal plan?
But what, deep down, is the difference between this episode and Sir John Major’s dash for Olympic gold which has now paid off in Brazil?
In fact, I think our state-sponsored medal programme may be worse in some ways than East Berlin’s because, as a free society, we had the power to question it and we didn’t.
It might also be worth recalling that Sir John’s much-praised initiative was financed mainly by the Lottery – in which a British government for the first time actively encouraged gambling, especially among the vulnerable poor, the main payers of this tax on false hope.
Indeed, Sir John’s legacy of gambling and debt, forced on students in the universities he so wildly expanded, may be his main memorial.
You may say, quite rightly, that I am jaundiced because I couldn’t care less about sport. My sympathies in Rio lie mainly with the empty, wet seats, which beautifully sum up my view of the Olympics.
But even if I were an enthusiast for Underwater Motorcycling, Bovine Ballet or Synchronised Sunburn, or whatever it is we currently lead the world in, I’d still have the same misgivings.
This is what failed and powerless countries do to make themselves feel better.
It is an illusion, and when it ends, things will be worse than they were before.

Tragic Victims of our deal with the devil

Who can fail to be moved and grieved by the sight of a small child in distress? But please do not let your emotions stop you thinking.
The picture of the shocked Aleppo survivor, Omran Daqneesh, like that of the drowned child Alan Kurdi last year, should not be allowed to enforce a conformist opinion on the world.
The death of Alan Kurdi did not mean that it was wise to fling wide the borders of Europe (as Germany’s Angela Merkel now well knows).
The rescue of Omran Daqneesh should not make us side with the bloody and merciless Syrian rebels.
Why is Aleppo a war zone in the first place? Do you know? I will tell you. Syria was a peaceful country until it was deliberately destabilised by Saudi Arabia and its fanatical, sectarian Gulf allies, consumed with hatred for the Assad government and, above all, its ally Iran.
Worse, this monstrous intervention was supported by the USA, Britain and France, all sucking up to the Saudis for oil, money and arms contracts.
In the hope of bringing down Assad, we made a devil’s bargain with some of the worst fanatics in the Middle East, people who make Anjem Choudary look like the Vicar of Dibley.
We know of Britain’s role for certain because of the very strange case of Bherlin Gildo, a Swedish man accused by British authorities of attending a terror training camp in Syria. His trial collapsed in June 2015 because his defence lawyers argued that the terror groups he was accused of supporting had been helped by British intelligence.
The Assad state, as you might expect, defended itself against its attackers, helped in the end by Iran and Russia.
And the war which followed was the ruin of Syria, whose innocent people found their peaceful cities and landscape turned into a screaming battlefield, as it still is.
If you are truly grieved by the picture of poor little Omran, just be careful who you blame.

Anjem Choudary, broadcasting’s favourite Islamist loudmouth, was and is a vain, bloviating, blowhard fraud, another boozy drug-taking low-life posing as a serious person. He found a role and fools to indulge him, many in the same media who now queue up to rejoice at his imprisonment.
But I do not feel safer from terror now that he is locked up. Worse, I feel less safe from Chairman May’s sour-faced surveillance state, which takes a dim and narrow view of free speech and liberty. Choudary has been locked up not for what he did but for what he said. Claims he influenced anyone into crime are thin. Even the sneaky wording of the Terrorism Act, in which he was charged with ‘inviting’ support for IS, is suspicious.
It sounds like ‘inciting’, and is meant to, for incitement to terror and murder is a real crime, even in free countries. But it isn’t the same as ‘inviting’, a much weaker word. You may gloat that Choudary is eating Islamic porridge. But be careful what you gloat over. A law as loose as this could easily be used against anyone the state doesn’t like. I predict that it will be, too.
By the way, I spent several hours last week circling Government offices trying to find out how many such charges there have been – the CPS sent me to the Justice Ministry, they told me to call the Home Office, who sent me back to the CPS. This pathetic pass-the-parcel evasion suggests they don’t care much. This stuff is propaganda, not genuine security.

******

A few days ago I took part in a recorded BBC debate on prisons, What Point Prison?, which will be transmitted on Radio 4 at 8pm on Wednesday

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07pj2pk

 There was a startling exchange on capital punishment between me and Erwin James, a penitent convicted murderer much admired by liberals, who has now become a distinguished writer on prisons. You may be surprised at what he said.

 

The Hijab versus the Bikini

I am always risking wilful misunderstanding, and have grown to expect it and to be used to it. But it can also be frustrating. A few months ago I commented on the use of a hijab-wearing model by a British advertiser, and said this was significant, as it was. I was subjected to all kinds of thought-police interrogations whose aim was clearly designed to make me confess to some shameful phobia and (quite irrelevantly, since Islam is not an ethnic group but a religion which all may join) ‘racism’.

 

I confess that I became so scornful towards these questions that I said less than I would have done had they asked me intelligent things.

As I am old enough to remember when most Englishwomen covered their heads in public, often with not-very-elegant headscarves tied savagely beneath their chins as they bent to face the drizzle and the east wind, I find all kinds of odd emotions stirred by the sight of the scarf’s return on our formerly bare-headed streets. I certainly don’t feel an unmixed hostility, more a curiosity and a sort of respect.

I don’t know, and cannot tell, how much of the Muslim scarf-wearing is voluntary and how much is forced on women by husbands, imams and indeed the Islamic sisterhood, which – having embraced the veil in various forms for whatever reason – is no doubt anxious to see others do the same. It’s a kind of conformism. Squads of veil-wearers take to the streets in some Muslim cities, cheerily urging uncovered women to adopt the hijab or the niqab.  

 

Having grown used to it in London, I’m not even especially  bothered by the severity of the niqab, the full-face veil with a narrow slit for the eyes , so often wrongly described as a burqa. On a visit to Kashgar in Chinese Turkestan I encountered the most extreme form of veiling, where the women’s heads seem totally covered with fairly thick cloth (they must be able to see out, but it is not obvious how) , and they look shockingly like walking corpses in their shrouds risen from the tomb. That I did find worrying and hard to look at.

But I also wrote the words below about a visit to Iran (to the Shrine city of Mashhad, where I was hospitably invited into several homes where some women were uncovered but others remained veiled). In the case I describe the woman involved, a schoolteacher articulately and rather fiercely defended her style of dress to me. I tried to reflect this in what I wrote:

‘ There is more than one Iran, and even the passionately Islamic version should not be dismissed with scorn or distaste, though some of it remains baffling or repellent to us. One of the most articulate and intelligent people I met was a young schoolteacher, the mother of a young child. It was clear that her relationship with her husband was that of an equal. Yet as we discussed propaganda in the classroom, I was greatly struck by her extraordinary, medieval, night-black robes, so intensely sombre that they darkened the well-lit room in which we sat and so emphatically, ferociously modest that they represented an unspoken, passionate argument against secular modernity and all its works.’

In writing that I did not alter by one jot or tittle my absolute opposition to Islamic ideas of marriage or of the legal status  of women. These can and do exist independently of any dress code. Nor do I believe that women are necessarily oppressed or repressed by modesty, provided that they choose it for themselves. On the other hand I remain totally unconvinced by those left-wing Western feminists who try to claim that the Muslim dress code is ‘liberating’. It certainly isn’t in their terms, and I believe they say this for the same reasons that Ken Livingstone and other British male leftists try to suck up to Islam. They think Islam is just a squad of voters which can be appeased into supporting the left’s project forever.  

But it is not. It is a very serious, very determined religion and if, one day , English women find themselves compelled to cover themselves in black shrouds to venture on to the street, it will be because a) we completely rejected any Western philosophy or religion which might have helped us pull back from the wilder bits of the sexual revolution, so ceding that task to Islam,  and b) we did not understand just how determined, uncompromising and tough a  religion can be , because we no longer have one of our own.

I was thinking of the Mashhad schoolteacher when I wrote my brief few sentences about the Egyptian beach volleyball player  Doaa Elghobashy . She says ( see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37009324 ) that her headwear is her own choice, and she seems to have had to battle a bit with the Olympic authorities to be allowed to wear it. Her team-mates remained bare-headed.

I am against this being a divide between the Muslim world and the West. I don’t see why Western women shouldn’t object for their own reasons  to the near-nakedness that (in some cases) they now come under pressure to adopt in certain circumstances. Is it really so empowering and liberating? Is it truly voluntary? If we can ask this about the hijab, we can surely ask it about the Beach Volleyball bikini.

I am also convinced that the ‘West’ will grow tired of the moral and sexual revolution, which has now been taking place without pause for about 50 years. Such moral counter-revolutions have happened before in  human history, or how did the Victorian age come about? And it is almost bound to happen again. Who will lead it? Last time it was people such as John Wesley, whose work came to fruition in Victoria’s reign. If we don’t find his successor, it will be imams who do so.

PETER HITCHENS: Grammar wreckers KNEW they would make our schools worse

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

Here's why the quarrel about grammar schools never ends: it is not really about schools, but about what sort of country this should be.
Grammar schools stood for adult authority, for discipline, for tradition, for hard work first and reward afterwards, and for self-improvement. They also tended to assume that boys and girls were different, and so educated them apart from each other. I like these things, but many don’t.

Old-fashioned Labour saw the point of this. They realised that it helped the poor become better-off and to have better lives and more power. They created a peaceful revolution that changed Britain for the better. Labour councils used to build new grammar schools and be proud of them.

But the modern liberal Left don’t like any of these ideas. They would rather teach children how to have sex than teach them to believe in God. Especially they don’t think parents or teachers should have any authority over the young. The State should be trusted to tell them what to think. They should look to the State for any improvement in their lives.

They don’t like the idea that there are fixed things that you just have to learn – which is why the teaching of languages and sciences is shrivelling in our schools. The people who smashed up more than a thousand of the best state secondary schools in the world didn’t do it to make education better. They knew it would make it worse for bright children.

In one case, that of Sir Graham Savage, they openly admitted this. They did it to make the country more ‘democratic’, more like the USA. They have made it like the worst bits, but very unlike the best bits.

How odd it is to recall that in my childhood there was a thing called the ‘brain drain’, which meant British scientists being lured away to the USA because they weren’t educating enough of them. And in those days a set of English A-levels was said to be equal to an American university degree. It isn’t so now. The enemies of grammars really should stop lying about the subject to get their way.

They moan about those who don’t get into grammars. But what about the huge numbers who can’t get into good comprehensives, and are dumped in vast bog-standard comps which are, in reality, worse than the old secondary moderns.

Of course selection for any school has losers as well as winners. But we have selection in our supposedly comprehensive schools. It is mainly done through the secret privileges (fake religious belief, close knowledge of feeder schools etc) exercised by sharp-elbowed, well-off parents. How is this better than selection by ability?
A 2010 survey by the Sutton Trust found that comprehensive schools in England are highly socially segregated. In fact, the country’s leading comprehensives are more socially exclusive than the remaining grammar schools.

Both the 164 (then remaining) grammars and the 164 most socially selective comprehensives drew pupils from areas where about 20 per cent of children were from poor homes. But the supposed comprehensives were more socially selective, taking only 9.2 per cent of their pupils from poor homes, while the grammars took 13.5 per cent. Who’s democratic now?

In fact, most of the remaining grammars are so besieged by middle-class commuters hiring tutors that their entry figures are utterly distorted. If we still had a national grammar system they would be far fairer than the top comprehensives are.

I wish I thought Theresa May really wanted to restore grammars. This has been successfully done in the former East Germany. But I fear that this is just a token move to try to hold on the support of the many voters who want to see this change. Even so, it is a good deal better than nothing, and a sign that this dreadful national error may one day be reversed.

A modest victory for decency

Islam’s real challenge to Western society is not terrorism. With a bit of resolve and common sense we can always defeat this filthy thing, and most Muslims would (in my view) be as happy as us if we did.

No, the challenge comes from Islam’s near-total monopoly on things we used to value quite a bit and then totally gave up – female modesty being one of them. And yes, I know that plenty of other things, much more controversial, come with the package.

Pictures of Egypt’s veiled and covered Doaa Elghobashy, right, competing against bikini-clad Western opponents in the Olympic beach volleyball, are very thought-provoking.

You don’t have to go more than 100 years back to find Western women who would have had much more in common – in attitudes and dress – with Ms Elghobashy than they did with her near-naked rivals.

I often wonder if our society will sicken and tire of its seemingly endless relaxation of rules. Such things have happened before. If it does, the Muslim religion may be very well-positioned to lead the counter-revolution. I don’t want this to happen. I just think it might.

*****

Shouldn’t we have a formal ceremony, with parchment documents, trumpets and heralds, to declare that the ‘war on drugs’ is over? Then at least Sir Richard Branson would stop claiming tediously and inaccurately that we groan under a cruel regime of prohibition.

If the Government still seriously disapproves of illegal drugs, explain this: EU enthusiast and hereditary Labour politician Will Straw (son of Jack) has been awarded a CBE, a heavyweight mid-ranking honour one down from a knighthood, aged 36, despite being caught (aged 17) trying to sell cannabis to a newspaper reporter. Indeed, for many people this event is the most memorable thing about him.

He went on to boast that he had carried on smoking the drug for the next nine years.
There was a bit of a fuss about the award – but it wasn’t about the illegal drugs.
Stop pretending we are actually trying to do anything about this.

*****

Of course judges should not swear in court, especially at defendants. Justice is not emotional revenge, but a cold, rational process where we all try to keep our feelings out of it.

Judges hold the keys to the prisons. They can change a convicted person’s life utterly. To wield such power, they have to be cool and self-controlled.
In fact the person Judge Patricia Lynch swore at is pathetic, fat and lonely – a dismal life probably made worse by taking State-approved ‘antidepressant’ drugs, the failed panacea of our age. Stupid four-letter words are all that is left to such people.

Her Majesty’s judges shouldn’t stoop to such sad things. Only two kinds of people use this language in public. The powerful, who employ it to bully, and the inadequate, who have no other way of expressing themselves.

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An article for 'Christian Today'

The website 'Christian Today' has asked me to write about the role of drugs in rampage killings. Some of you may like to read the article here

 

 

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/is.islamism.the.driving.force.behind.terror.no.its.worse.than.that/92569.htm

My conversation with Ken Livingstone - the night before his latest disgrace

The day after I had this on-stage conversation with Ken Livingstone, he made his infamous remarks about Hitler and Zionism. I apologise for the sound quality, but some of you might find it interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i10cLvgdIcA

How Many Times Do I Have to Say it?

I am not defending Islam, And I am not saying there is a single cause for rampage killings.

 

This interesting posting (with emphases added) from Monday 7th December 2015 shows that I have been repeatedly making this clear for months. Yet I am still being accused of these things in comments posted today.

'....The other is the San Bernardino shooting,  in which 14 people died and 21 were injured by a married couple, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. This event was initially reported simply as a gun massacre, but has since been ‘nationalised’, as Sir Simon Jenkins says, by being classified by President Obama as a terror outrage. Is this wise or useful?

Well, maybe. I keep an open mind on all such claims, though continue to insist on testable actual evidence of terrorist connections and motive, rather than unsourced claims and the whisperings of security men and their media patsies,  before accepting that they are in any way centrally directed. There’s also the usual talk of ‘radicalisation’, a speculation that doesn’t explain how even the wildest ideas translate themselves (as they do so rarely) into violent action.

The possibility that we may be dealing with unhinged people, not in full command of themselves, has been pushed into the background by the current preoccupation with Islamic State, which has now wholly replaced the (largely mythical) Al Qaeda, as the Official Octopus of global terror. This of course means nobody is looking into how they might have become unhinged, preferring to trawl through their travel, phone and computer records in the hope of finding some link between Raqqa and San Bernardino, just as we once sought similar links between every terror outrage in the world and an imaginary cave in Afghanistan.

Islamic State does certainly exist in Syria and Iraq, but I think we must be free to doubt how closely its distant franchises are linked to the central body. Also, if Islamic State wishes to strike at the USA, why would it choose to do so at a centre for the developmentally disabled in Southern California? I’ve struggled to learn much about the row Farook and Malik appear to have had with another guest at the party at the centre, before leaving to fetch their guns and bombs. Such things, surely interesting to any crime investigator searching for motive, get lost once ‘terror’ is the explanation.

Well, now look at today’s ‘Australian’  

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-times/san-bernardino-massacre-a-hatred-beyond-reason/news-story/5af7a1b4463bc493a852a0f634a73ab5

This opens : ‘Spilt across their cluttered kitchen counter was the last meal enjoyed by Tashfeen Malik and her husband, Syed Farook. Along with orange juice and paratha bread were bottles of Adderall and Xanax pills, prescribed to steady the nerves.’

 

Who says they were ‘prescribed to steady the nerves’? Who knows that they were prescribed at all? Who says this was their purpose? Maybe an interview with the doctor involved was cut out at the last minute, but this seems to me like jumping to conclusions. Maybe the pills were prescribed.   But the misuse of Xanax is not exactly unknown. This amazing piece of presupposition allows the story to wander off immediately into all kinds of other directions.

What is Xanax, otherwise known as ‘alprazolam’? Why, it’s a member of the happy, happy benzodiazepine family.   Look it up.  Adverse effects include suicidal ideation, our old friend. And its ‘paradoxical reactions’ (that is, those you might not expect from a drug marketed as a tranquillizer) are aggression, rage , hostility, twitches and tremor, mania, agitation, hyperactivity and restlessness.

As for Adderall,  this is an amphetamine, of all things, mainly prescribed to children alleged to be suffering from the mythical complaint, ‘Attention Deficit Disorder’ or its equally phantasmal relative ‘Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder’.  No objective diagnosis has ever been established for these complaints yet they are ‘treated’ with powerful mind-altering drugs. Amphetamines are totally banned in some countries, and heavily restricted in almost all jurisdictions. 

Malik and Farook had a six-month old baby, but even American ADHD/ADD fanatics have yet (I think)  to begin prescribing their ‘medications’ to children so young. So we have to wonder what it was doing in their home. I know there is an increasing habit of 'diagnosing' adults with ADD, the child market having become saturated, but some of these drugs leak out of the legal market

Very high doses can result in psychosis, involving delusions and paranoia. A Wikipedia article says ‘Recreational doses are generally much larger than prescribed therapeutic doses, and carry a far greater risk of serious side effects’.

Interestingly, its use is contraindicated in people suffering from severe anxiety, the same people who might be prescribed Xanax.  

I mention these things here, and place them in a proper context, for reasons well-known to regular readers. There appears to be a reliable correlation between outbreaks of homicidal violence (including violence classified as political) and the use of mind-altering drugs, whether legal or illegal. If we don’t investigate it, we will never find out of it is important.

Please don’t tell me I’m trying to excuse crimes, or take the heat off Islamist fanaticism. I am not. Not merely have I not said that I am, which ought to be enough for anyone short of the Thought Police.  I am here saying that I have no such motive. Please don’t tell me I’m offering a single cause. I am not.

If you can't be bothered to read this blog, please don't comment here

I wrote the words below in response to yet another comment from a person obsessed with the Islamic menace, who commented here in total ignorance of my point about rampage killings.

I reproduce it here as a warning. This blog is designed for intelligent and *responsive* discussion (this requires reading and responding to what the host says) of the issues raised. It is not yet another shouty forum for people who wish to get something off their chests but cannot find an audience elsewhere.

 

It is not very difficult to see that this chain of events (the series of recent killings, from Columbine to Rouen via Norway, Orlando, Finland, Nice, Paris, Brussels, Tunisia and Japan)  might not actually be wholly about Islam, when so many of these killings involve such people as irreligious British taxi drivers, Norwegian anti-Islamic fanatics, Finnish depressives, Southern racists from the US, other Americans (sometimes ex-service personnel) , High-school students, Korean college students, without any trace of Islamic interests or involvement, and now a Japanese citizen, similarly unfamiliar with Islam.

 

Of course, if you restrict your interest only to those killings where Muslims are involved, they will all feature Muslims.  Axiomatically.

 

Can anyone see a problem with this method of analysis?

 

But if you simply study *all* rampage killings, you will find that Islam is not a necessary condition, or even a sufficient condition for involvement. I have made this point several times now. I would regard it as a courtesy if contributors here at least acknowledged that I had made it, and wrote their contributions as if they had read it. I may have to institute a policy of deleting comments from people who clearly do not read this blog

 

I also take this opportunity to to reproduce here, in type so big that none can fail to see it,  my general caveat on my view of the apparent correlation between the use of mind-altering drugs (legal and illegal) and these events. Again, anyone who does not take account of this in future comments faces the strong possibility that their comments will be deleted and go unpublished.  

The usual caveat applies. All I am saying here is that ultra-violent crime is a subset of crime as a whole, which is distinguished by being thoroughly covered by the media. Thus information is available about the criminals which is not available about most criminals.  

I would like to see the police and courts compelled by law to investigate and record the drug use of all persons convicted of violent crime, and for the results of this recording to be the subject of an inquiry into an apparent correlation. I am not saying all cannabis users are terrorists. I am not saying all terrorists are cannabis users. I do not restrict my interest to cannabis, but am also interested in the use of prescription and other legal drugs, especially SSRI 'antidepressants' and steroids , such as were used by Anders Breivik and Omar Mateen, the Orlando murderer. That is all. Anyone who says I have said anything else is making it up. They will. Please disregard it.

An Interview with the Australian edition of 'The Spectator'

I recently gave an interview to Rachel Bailes of the Australian version of 'The Spectator'. Some of you may be interested

 

http://new.spectator.co.uk/2015/12/the-peter-hitchens-exclusive-interview/

 

Bert Agonistes - an Automatic Opponent Confronted

Bert is a hard man to argue with, because he just ignores the points that give him most trouble, and twists the rest. I’ve yet to see him attempt to defend his gratuitous ad hominem swipe at my friend Christopher Booker, a distinguished and courageous journalist of vast experience whom Bert dismisses as ‘ a bit of a loon’. Yet he has also not apologised for it.

 

This is why I ceaselessly remind him of his absurd posturing some years ago about the incontestable role of the EU and its Landfill Directive in forcing this country to change the way it collects rubbish. This is important because it is an example of the EU’s penetration into every aspect of life here, often unrecognised by those who are affected. The point about this is that Britain, unlike the EU sponsors of the Directive, could perfectly well continue to use landfill to dispose of garbage without any problem or environmental harm. But it faces huge fines if it does so, because it is governed by laws made elsewhere and in the interests of others. Bert has for some years avoided admitting that he was mistaken in claiming this change did not originate in the EU. This is because he never admits he was mistaken. He is now reduced to claiming that the matter is trivial. In which case, why did he engage in arguing about it in the first place, and very vigorously at that?

 

The truth is that he contradicts me for the sake of it.

 

Take the issue of Islamist terrorists all being habitual consumers of powerful mind-altering drugs.

Rather than address this interesting fact with an open mind, my automatic opponents, and the cannabis comment warriors, immediately create straw men, claiming or at least implying that I have declared unequivocally that drugs are the only reason for these outrages.

 

I have not said this and do not believe it.

 

I do not even *know* how drugs affect the brains of those who take them. This is mainly because so much about mental illness and the action of drugs upon the brain is unknowable in the current state of scientific understanding. Correlation is our main means of making this link.

 

Big Dope Comment warriors and other contrary persons immediately say such things as ‘Correlation is not causation’. Indeed it is not. I am well aware of it, hence the caution of my argument.

 

But they omit to mention that it is, even so, the foundation of epidemiology and that correlation is not necessarily *not* causation. They also put up another destructive and irresponsible argument : all these killers also ate bread or consumed mother’s milk. This correlation is just as strong. Both are therefore equally meaningless.

 

This argument is plainly false. But how do we demonstrate that?

 

I sought to do so thus: ‘ Without an established causal link, [the connection between cannabis use and mental illness] remains a matter of conjecture, though the strong and plausible correlation between the persistent habitual use of powerful mind-altering drugs and irrational behaviour is not much less indicative, in my view, than a correlation between a hammer blow and the dent on the surface struck by the hammer. It is surely persuasive to anyone with an open mind.’

 

I should have added that, unless you have actually observed that particular hammer striking that particular surface, the evidence remains just that – a persuasive correlation, not a proven hypothesis. But I thought this was clear to any fair-minded person, as I was still consciously and deliberately using the word ‘persuasive’ rather than any expression suggesting certainty.

 

The parallel is, however, quite clear. It is not exactly surprising to find that the use of powerful mind-altering drugs, which observably affect brain function (we know that they do. We just don’t know how)  is associated with subsequent mental illness. It would be surprising if , say, foot massage, carpentry or a love of flowers were associated with such an outcome, there being no similarly obvious connection between the two.  

 

This passage followed one in which I pointed out that I was not ‘convinced’ of this link. This is not because I don’t myself find it persuasive (for I obviously do) , but because I treat, as far as I can, my own arguments with the same rigour I apply to those of my opponents.

 

I have often found that caution, modesty and honesty in argument does not produce a comparable response in some opponents. Bert is one of these. Rather than recognise that I was treating him as a fair-minded adult, Bert responded thus:

 

‘Mr Hitchens is attempting to have his cake and eat it. He writes that ‘Without an established causal link, [the link between cannabis and terrorism] remains a matter of conjecture’ – a cautious and sensible position. He goes on, though, to compare the ‘strong and plausible correlation’ between the two with the correlation between a hammer blow and the dent on the surface struck by the hammer – ie not a matter of conjecture at all. He concludes that to ‘anyone with an open mind’ – ie good people like him – this is ‘surely persuasive’. I disagree.’

 

But with what is he disagreeing?  The fact that it is *persuasive* does not mean that it is *conclusive*. What is the point of using precise and careful English if one’s opponent ignores the distinctions between such words? Nor do I say that it is conclusive.

 

I readily agree that I wish it were, for then we would not be in such danger of legalising the very drugs which I suspect of causing this danger.

 

But I recognise that it is not. Nobody is compelled to agree with me by the available facts and the process of logic. All that I ask is that they recognise that this is a reasonable and sustainable contention, about a matter of some urgency, which ought to be explored by an inquiry. Bert offers no arguments against such an inquiry, or against taking the matter seriously as a possibility. Despite strong evidence that this *might* be important, Bert has concluded that it is not important. His only real argument for this, it seems to me, is that I say it is important and that therefore it is not.

 

In face of my caution and admission that my argument is incomplete and needs further evidence, Bert does not respond with a civilised and open-minded  ‘Yes, let’s agree it needs to be looked into’ he just concludes (without adducing any reason) that I am wrong.

 

What’s more, he has his own explanation, untroubled by any modesty or diffidence:

 

He says : ‘To my open mind – I do not have any interest, financial or otherwise in illegal drugs – the main motivator for these acts of terrorism seems to be religion – a horribly perverted interpretation of religion thankfully shared by very few.’

 

Well, the openness of Bert’s mind seems to me to be a matter for dispute and further detailed discussion elsewhere. But, leaving that aside, what does he mean by ‘main motivator’? How does one measure precisely what the ‘main’ motivation is at any given time? Are we even discussing motivation? A political motivation may express itself in loyalty to our cause, passionate public declaration, emotional engagement, but yet not take the shape of organised or individual violence.

 

In my experience, most normal human beings are strongly predisposed against violence, and need to have their inhibitions removed before they will contemplate it. Military discipline, often combined in combat with issues of rum, overcomes these inhibitions in many, as does the noise and fighting madness of war. But these forces don’t operate on individual living in advanced urban societies. There are, I should calculate, many thousands of young men in this country who have been wooed by Wahhabi preachers and have in whole or part accepted their stern and puritanical message. Yet there is no evidence that most of them have ever considered, let alone involved themselves in, homicidal violence.

 

Those who have taken violent action (with very few exceptions) turn out, for much of their lives to have been alienated petty criminals, usually unable to hold down jobs, often gang members and abusers of mind-altering drugs. In the recent Paris outrages, the killers seem to have continued this way of life right up to the moment when they chose to murder their fellow-creatures in circumstances of great cruelty.

 

I really don’t see how this squares with Bert’s contention that Islamist fervour (which frowns on this way of life) is the *main motivator*. Were it so, then surely it would be self-disciplined and abstemious young men known for their piety and puritanism who would be the main actors. It isn’t.

 

Yet the response of Bert to this point is simultaneously to ignore and to twist it (he ignores it *by* twisting it,  a technique in which he is expert. Thus he appears to be responsive without actually responding)

 

‘I’m struggling to understand the final paragraph of your response. Is it that these terrorists cannot have been real Muslims if they drank etc (the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy), and so their faith cannot have been any motive for their behaviour. That seems to be an attempt to ascribe rational thinking to people who are clearly not rational, and you don’t need drugs to think and behave irrationally. I have not seen any reports that any of these Islamic terrorists have not genuinely believed that they were acting for their faith – however sick and twisted we think that this sort of reasoning is.’

 

I don’t know what his struggle is, except to avoid engaging with arguments he cannot answer. He says that Islamist fervour is the main motivation for these murders. Yet the culprits of the murders are , in most cases, demonstrably not devout Muslims. They are the opposite. This has nothing whatever to do with the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy. It is a statement of fact which flatly contradicts his claim about motivation ( ‘the main motivator for these acts of terrorism seems to be religion’ ) As for 'I have not seen any reports that any of these Islamic terrorists have not genuinely believed that they were acting for their faith', nor have I. But I have seen plenty of reports suggesting that, in practice, they are not especially devout individuals. This is demonstrable.