Stuff that is being done to children - and has been done to adults

"In other words, the decision to transition — often irreversibly — is increasingly made by age 14."

That comes from this article about a clinic at the University of California at San Francisco that concerns itself with transgender children.

The article continues: "The controversy — whether gender dysphoria is permanent or ephemeral — has occasionally made its way into the UCSF clinic ...". Occasionally.

Oh, and there's this: "Clinicians say they are no longer taken aback by youths seeking some kind of boutique treatment — often “just a touch of testosterone” for an androgynous, nonbinary identity." Right you are.

Some years back, in Australia:

"But as the wheels squeaked towards the operating table he was struck by an unshakeable thought: "It's not right." He remembers telling the surgeon: "I think I'm doing the wrong thing, it's not right, I think we've got to stop it."

The surgeon stroked Andrew's face, telling him it was natural to feel frightened before an operation. He protested again, insisting it felt wrong. Then it went black. When he woke up he was sure the surgery had been cancelled. The romantic tales he'd read of transsexuals who awoke post-surgery feeling "reborn" convinced Andrew the operation had been halted, because he felt no different.

"Then I remember lifting up the sheets and putting my hand down and feeling it all bandaged and packed. I just started bawling my eyes out and screaming … I remember saying to myself, you f--king idiot, Andrew, how could you be so bloody stupid?"

Andrew issued legal proceedings as a result of these events and was met with a limitation defence. You can find the first instance decision on the limitation issue here and the appeal here.

The first instance judgment includes this judicial pronouncement: "At or about this time it is also to be noted that he started upon a surgical process of reversal. He had been advised that such process was limited. This is not a field where donors abound." Quite.

I note without comment that the defendants' solicitors at first instance are recorded as "Tress Cocks" and "JW Ball & Sons", presumably known as "Balls".  

A few more links on Cambridge Analytica

If you are interested (and I get the feeling that not many people are) then here are a couple more things to look at.

First, this in the LRB.

Second, as with anything to do with the referendum, if you want it from the horse's mouth then go to Dominic Cummings, the person who actually won it. You'll find his comments here, here and here.

Some excepts below the break, which may or may not whet your appetite.

A few things to read when thinking about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica - UPDATED

First, the worry: short version (British) or the long version (American). But you've probably seen this sort of thing before. What follows below the break is more Alternatively than Further. (UPDATE: before the break, here's the ultimate reassurance.)

Hot gossip

Did you know that Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King of Saudi Arabia from 1982 to 2005, was addicted to methadone?

I get this (I admit it, pretty stale) gossip from the recent judgment of the High Court in Harb v HRH Prince Abdul Aziz Bin Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz. Here are a few of key paragraphs:

"34. Mrs Harb was born in Ramallah in Palestine in 1947. Her family was Christian. In 1967 she went to work in Jeddah, where she was employed as a secretary by a businessman called Ali Abdul Bugshan.

35. In December 1967 she met Prince Fahd, as he then was, at a party in Jeddah. She was then 19. He was 47 (or 46 if the date of birth given for him by the Prince is correct) and was the Minister of the Interior. Their relationship developed quickly and they were secretly married in Jeddah in March 1968. Shortly before the ceremony, Mrs Harb converted to Islam. The marriage was not made public in Saudi Arabia for cultural and political reasons. After the marriage, the couple divided their time between Jeddah and London. In London, the King introduced Mrs Harb to friends and acquaintances as his wife. During the course of their relationship, Mrs Harb had three abortions at the King's insistence.

36. When Mrs Harb and the King were visiting London in October 1968, he suffered from stomach pains and a doctor administered a methadone injection. This led to the King becoming addicted to methadone.

37. In January 1969 she introduced the King to Mr Bugshan. Subsequently Mr Bugshan was awarded a very profitable government contract. The King received a commission from this and subsequent contracts. In return, the King told Mrs Harb he would give her 50 million riyals (equivalent to at least £6 million) which he would look after for her.

38. In 1970 Mrs Harb was ordered to leave Saudi Arabia by the King's brother Prince Turki as a result of the King's family (wrongly) attributing to Mrs Harb responsibility for the King's addiction. She went first to Beirut and then to the USA. The King told her not to worry about money and that he would continue to support her financially."

There is plenty more along similar lines at the link.

A miscellany of links

1. Penrose on Hawking.

2. The 2018 Sony World Photography Awards.

3. An MP has tried being a rough sleeper for a week - for the second time.

4. Everything you ever wanted to know (and more) about different health systems across the world. It seems that American healthcare is really expensive because they pay their doctors and nurses loads of money, and they pay more for the drugs too.

5. A light-skinned, green-eyed young Pakistani woman (yes, her appearance is relevant) devised a game about arranged marriage. It put off suitors for a bit, but now she's had over 50 proposals.

6. Emailed love-letters to trees. And some replies.

7. "Can we have kale salad with lemon parmesan dressing?" and other questions asked by American children with (what seem to me) strange diet and entertainment options.

8. Even Harvey Weinstein mostly failed: a piece about how hard it is to be violent. "To be skilled in violence is to keep your own adrenaline level down to medium levels, while driving up your opponent’s to high levels that make them incompetent. On the other hand, if adrenaline levels are equal, neither side performs worse than the other, and the confrontation stalls out, the fight aborting or winding down by losing momentum." A Martin Amis character in Money said that the trick of fighting is to persuade the other guy as quickly as possible that he is losing. I think that is the same advice in different words.

9. The Washington Post has a piece (by a deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations) about aircraft with certain highly advanced technical capabilities. It discusses "videos, along with observations by pilots and radar operators, [that] appear to provide evidence of the existence of aircraft far superior to anything possessed by the United States or its allies. ... In some cases, according to incident reports and interviews with military personnel, these vehicles descended from altitudes higher than 60,000 feet at supersonic speeds, only to suddenly stop and hover as low as 50 feet above the ocean. The United States possesses nothing capable of such feats. ... these mysterious aircraft easily sped away from and outmaneuvered America’s front-line fighters without a discernible means of propulsion." You can watch a video of one of them at the link. The point the author makes is that these aircraft should be investigated. That sounds pretty reasonable to me: if, say, the Russians or the Chinese have developed such aircraft then the Americans surely ought to be interested in learning more about them. But there are two schools of thought on this subject. Why? Well, let me put it this way: I've managed to get all the way to the end of this without using the word "UFO".

The Tale of Babar the Policeman; or Is the Law an Ass?

This is the judgment of the Court of Appeal in an immigration case. My guess is that most ordinary people would think it shows that, at almost every turn, immigration law is an ass.

Mr Babar entered the UK at some point during 2000/01 and claimed asylum on 29 January 2001. He was refused asylum. However, he was granted exceptional leave to remain in the UK. Why? Because he was on bail in Pakistan for some kind of criminal offence and so there was a real risk that he would be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment due to the prison conditions and the likelihood of mistreatment by the police and prison guards, i.e., sending him back would have been a breach of his rights under Article 3 of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.

Right. So he was accused of a crime, on bail, absconded to the UK and did not have a good claim for asylum? My guess is that most people would say at this point that Mr Babar should be sent back. He doesn't sound like he's accumulated many points on any points-based immigration system you can imagine.

Wait - how do we know that the police in Pakistan are so bad? Well, one source of information is Mr Babar himself: "Mr Babar had been in the police for some seventeen years and ended up commanding a squad of 20-30 people in the anti-narcotics division.  He himself admitted in interview to beating and threatening arrested persons in order to obtain information and to permitting those under his command to do so." (Although please note that "his conduct was no more than the norm for police officers in Pakistan at the time".)

I'm guessing most people would now say that he is definitely not someone to have in the country.

But then there is this: "The Secretary of State was satisfied that this [i.e. his police 'work'] constituted a pattern of widespread and systematic crimes against the civilian population which satisfied the definition of crimes against humanity. Mr Babar was therefore excluded from the protection of the Geneva Convention by Article 1F(a) and could claim neither asylum nor humanitarian protection." (This Geneva Convention is the 1951 Refugee Convention.)

Really? A narcotics squad that beats people up and threatens them is really bad. I'm not disputing that. But a crime against humanity? Are we seriously in genocide territory here? Surely Mr Babar's just a dodgy cop, not a war criminal.

Let's leave Mr Babar for a moment. Is there a Mrs Babar? Yes there is! Mrs Babar and their three children followed him to the UK and were granted indefinite leave to remain. Why? How? I don't know.

Anyway, back to Mr Babar. In 2012, having been in the UK lawfully for 10 years, he makes his own application for indefinite leave to remain, based on the fact that he had been in the UK without incident for 14 years (14 years? since 2000? search me), that he had worked hard and not been a drain on public funds and that he had very close family ties with his wife and his children (I should hope so too).

How would you decide that one? I'm going out on a limb here, but my guess is that after 14 years living in the country together with his family with no problems, many people would be inclined to let him stay.

But don't forget the key features of the case from the legal point of view, namely (1) that he feared for his safety in Pakistan and (2) that he was one of those "crimes against humanity" guys that you read about in the newspaper (or at least see mentioned in those long articles full of Balkan names that you skip over to get to the sports section).

So the Government asked him a bit more about what might happen if he went back to Pakistan. "Mr Babar responded in a short statement in which he claimed still to fear that he would be detained and ill treated if returned to Pakistan.  This was despite the fact that in his application form for indefinite leave he disclosed the fact that he had returned to Pakistan for holidays twice in 2009 and again on three occasions in 2012, in each case without any difficulty and without the authorities showing any interest in him."

He went to Pakistan 3 times in 2012! That's three times before his application was made in the September of that year. He was practically commuting to the country!

Anyway, the Government decided that his crimes against humanity outweighed everything else and decided to send him back. Mr Babar appealed. The case got appealed a couple more times, hence ending up in the Court of Appeal.

You'll have to click the link to see what the Court decided. But I'll tell you one thing that weighed heavily with them: "Article 1F [of the Geneva Convention] is intended to protect the integrity of the asylum process and is designed to ensure that individuals should not be allowed to avoid being returned to their country of origin where they may be held accountable for their actions. Upholding the international rule of law requires no less."

That's right: it's apparently important to consider whether Mr Babar, who (let's recall) was originally absconding bail when he arrived in the UK but who has been back to Pakistan many times since of his own volition and without incident, should avoid being returned to Pakistan in order to face trial for 'crimes against humanity', those 'crimes' being acts that were normal for policemen in Pakistan. Not only is considering that unlikely possibility important, but upholding "the international rule of law" (one of the weightiest phrases in any lawyer's toolbox, normally accompanied by a blast of Beethoven's Ninth and a prim leader in one of the more expensive newspapers) demands no less.

I don't blame the judges - they don't write these laws. And it's hard to blame the Government either, constrained as it is by Conventions drawn up in the wake of the evils of Nazi Germany and the turmoil of World War II. But we are left with the situation in which they have to go through a bizarre process of deciding whether a man of doubtful qualities who tried to avoid criminal proceedings in Pakistan and make a better life for himself in the UK is more like a Jewish person fleeing Nazi torture or a Nazi criminal fleeing the Nuremberg trials - even though he took repeated holidays back to Pakistan. If you imagine a Jewish refugee popping back to visit family in Warsaw during the War, or a fugitive Hitler visiting Nuremberg to check how his old mates were getting on with their legal difficulties, then you'll see how crazy this all is.

On another note, fans of One Direction might be pleased to see that Mr Babar was represented by Zane Malik.

Update on my predictions

You may recall that I made three predictions to be fufilled by the end of next year or so. UKIP has already lost its leader, so that's one achieved already. I'm quietly confident about Korea, what with Trump making the breakthrough that has eluded his predecessors (if you read Scott Adams, the man who best predicted and explained Trump's rise and success, then you'll find Trump much more comprehensible than if you read the outraged commentary of most writers - people who can't understand how Trump got to be President are unlikely to be able to explain what he is doing now).

However, I am becoming a little worried about my third prediction. I was hopeful when The Economist, a thought leader in these things, dedicated its front cover and a long article to explaining how the West got China wrong. But then there was that awful poisoning in Salisbury and the media tried to attribute the Italian election outcome to Russia and I became pessimistic again.

So, in my own essentially ineffectual way, I am going to try to push the prediction towards fulfilment. Here's an article that deserves more publicity about how China tried to swing the election for Bill Clinton.

As the article states: "This is not a theory, it is historical fact". 

It continues: "In the end, several prominent Democratic fundraisers, including close Clinton associates, were found to be complicit in the Chinese meddling efforts and pled guilty to various charges of violating campaign finance and disclosure laws (most notably James T. Riady, Johnny Chung, John Huang, and Charlie Trie). Several others fled the country to escape U.S. jurisdiction as the probe got underway. The Democratic National Committee was forced to return millions of dollars in ill-gotten funds (although by that point, of course, their candidate had already won).

It was a scandal that persisted after the election in no small part because many of Clinton’s own policies in his second term seemed to lend credence to insinuations of collusion.

Rather than attempting to punish the meddling country for undermining the bedrock of our democracy, Bill Clinton worked to ease sanctions and normalize relations with Beijing—even as the U.S. ratcheted up sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and Iraq. By the end of his term, he signed a series of sweeping trade deals that radically expanded China’s economic and geopolitical clout—even though some in his administration forecast that this would come at the expense of key American industries and U.S. manufacturing workers.

Clinton authorized a series of controversial defense contracts with China as well—despite Department of Justice objections. Federal investigators were concerned that the contractors seemed to be passing highly sensitive and classified information to the Chinese. And indeed, the companies in question were eventually found to have violated the law by giving cutting-edge missile technology to China, and paid unprecedented fines related to the Arms Export Control Act during the administration of George W. Bush. But they were inexplicably approved in the Bill Clinton years.

For a while, polls showed that the public found the president’s posture on China to be so disconcerting that most supported appointing an independent counsel (a la Mueller) to investigate whether the Clinton Administration had essentially been “bought.”

Law enforcement officials shared these concerns: FBI director Louis Freeh (whom Clinton could not get rid of, having just fired his predecessor) publically called for the appointment of an independent counsel. So did the chief prosecutor charged with investigating Chinese meddling, Charles La Bella. However, they were blocked at every turn by Clinton’s Attorney General, Janet Reno—eventually leading La Bella to resign in protest of the AG’s apparent obstruction."

Meanwhile in Sweden

"In 2011 only 17 people were killed by firearms. [But in] 2017 the country had over 300 shootings, leaving 41 people dead and over 100 injured. ... Gang members have even used hand grenades to attack police stations. Between 2010 and 2015, people were killed by illegal firearms at the same rate as in southern Italy.

... there were 43 grenade incidents in Sweden last year ...

... Not one firearm-homicide case in Stockholm was solved in 2016. ... Preliminary results for 2017 show that the clear-up rate for firearm murders has risen to a (still woeful) 30% in Stockholm. But over 100 cases remain unsolved."

Woah.

International Women's Day - the barristers' angle

So this just arrived in my inbox:

I'm not sure what the underlying message is here. Is it: only 92% of our brilliant Bar Council committees are chaired by women, so we need to improve progress for women to get it to 100%? Or: we the Bar Council have stuck women with doing the tedious committee work men shun, so let's progress them off that and onto better things? (Women, as shown in the picture, being the sort of bun-haired characters who luxuriate in foliage - or is she desperately looking up for help escaping a carnivorous plant?) The Bar Council needs to make up its mind whether it is boasting or moaning.

13 unwelcome things

(1) Unwelcome online contact, or Those Crazy Yanks (I). When is a Child Instagram Ready? "In his first weekend on Instagram, my 9-year-old posted 20 times in 24 hours. ... Only a few times did I see anything sexually inappropriate, which I promptly blocked and reported to Instagram." Well, that's alright then.

(2) Unwelcome personal contact, or Those Crazy Yanks (II). "When Alyssa Navarrette, a third-year student who is studying anthropology and art, came home for her first visit after starting college, she was taken by surprise when her mother hugged her. “If you don’t want to be touched and your mom wants to hug you, you should be allowed to say no,” Ms. Navarrette said. “It’s about having autonomy over your own body.”" Yes. But, um, your own mother? "“I’m also looking for it to help people get justice or get acknowledgments at least for microaggression,” said Mx. Janecko, currently on co-op in San Francisco, working at a mime theater." I'm fairly certain that this is not a parody, but the mime theatre made me pause. A cracking good read either way here.

(3) Gay Hitler. That really was someone's name.

(4) Hominids were in Crete much earlier than in Africa? Not a welcome theory in the scientific community.

(5) Have you heard about the "Holocaust survivor who dies and goes to heaven. On arrival he tells God a Holocaust joke. And God says: “that isn’t funny”. The survivor replies: “Oh well, you had to be there”." From David Baddiel on Jewish humour here, although note that the rest of the article has nowhere near the punch of that joke.

(6) Lots of countries have mass shootings, not just the US. Not a welcome thought among all sorts of people, I'd guess.

(7) Marion Maréchal-Le Pen made a speech to conservatives in the US. That sounds interesting, doesn't it? So I wanted to read more. One thing she said was this: "France is in process of passing from the eldest daughter of the Catholic Church to the little niece of Islam ...". And here is where I read that:

I don't know how internet adverts get chosen. I mean, I think alms-giving is a good idea but I'm not a Muslim so there's no zakat in my browsing history to prompt this ad to pop up. I'd like to think it is brilliant marketing by Muslim Aid (this is what we do - this is who our opponents are), rather as the Mormons have used The Book of Mormon to push the Book of Mormon. Or at least epic trolling. Follow the link and see what adverts you get.

(8) EU law in England: “The flowing tide of Community law is coming in fast. It has not stopped at high-water mark. It has broken the dykes and the banks. It has submerged the surrounding land. So much so that we have to learn to become amphibious if we wish to keep our heads above water." So said Lord Denning. The article is a good insight for the layman into how English lawyers often think about European law: "Lord Neuberger, a few weeks after the referendum, saw the influence of EU law as perhaps no more than a 50-year “blip” in the life of the centuries-old common law." We'll see. I wish I could find the exact quote now, but Tony Weir wrote, long before "Brexit" was even a word, that the Europeans are people to whom our laws are strange, and who are making them strange even to us. 

(9) Fake news, fake love: "perhaps the defenders of porn should consider that the common purveyors and sharers of fake news across social media are also engaged in a form of self-abuse, combined with titillation, and fantasy life. They no more believe that Barack Obama is running guns to ISIS than that the surgically enhanced 30-year-old woman in a plaid skirt is a very bad Catholic-school girl. It’s just a reality they prefer to envision. One where they can gaze into a backlit screen, click around, and imagine they aren’t wasting their lives clicking around on a backlit screen." 

(10) Serial killers (down) and mass shooters (up) - they're just different kinds of people.

(11) Those Russian bots could learn a thing or two from a 68 year old blind guy in a basement.

(12) All is not well in South Africa: it is "not obvious that the median wage has increased since the fall of apartheid". 

(13) Finally, a But. Perhaps unwelcome inconvenience should be welcomed, or even sought out?