Some truly flawless logic is coming out of the Russian judiciary with regards to the appropriateness of sexual harrassment in the 21st century:

A Russian advertising executive who sued her boss for sexual harassment lost her case after a judge ruled that employers were obliged to make passes at female staff to ensure the survival of the human race…

“If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children,” the judge ruled.

Since Soviet times, sexual harassment in Russia has become an accepted part of life in the office, work place and university lecture room.

According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 per cent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven per cent claimed to have been raped.

Eighty per cent of those who participated in the survey said they did not believe it possible to win promotion without engaging in sexual relations with their male superiors.

Women also report that it is common to be browbeaten into sex during job interviews, while female students regularly complain that university professors trade high marks for sexual favours.

To quote a journalist friend on the road in East Timor—“Must be the envy of all the world. Think they should use him for the Guantanamo trials.”

I was happy to see so many comments on my argument against French hypocrisy. Some agreed with my assessment; others did not, calling my reasoning “misleading” or “muddled.” I think my argument still stands when taken for what it is: an analysis of (secular) national law.

Confusion arises in this argument due its complexity: there are actually four entwined issues including personal freedom, feminism, religious freedom and religious expression. I specifically chose to make my case in terms of the first issue. Others did not appreciate my specificity. Renee summed it up by stating that the argument is not over a piece of cloth. The same tactic was used to attack PZ’s cracker analysis.

I disagree with this proposition. By making the argument bigger than than a simple “piece of cloth” secular lawmakers give validation to the status of religion in modern life. Rather, we should focus expressly on the material reality — the corporeality the cloth and crackers. Ignore religious symbols outright, sidelining the religious by giving them no room to leverage their belief system in a court of law. Personal religion as a whole cannot be outlawed because of our beliefs in liberty. However, their outward symbols can be trivialized to meaninglessness. No validation through recognition.

Does this mean we ignore religion in the public sphere? Hell no! There are many unbalanced tax and education laws, as well as warped public perception of secularism and atheism that requires the actions of rationalists and libertarians alike. Rather than keeping foreigners with long dresses outside of our borders, much work needs to be done about the laws within our borders, specifically in terms of the separation between church and state.

During the heady days of the Koizumi era, it was common to see and hear of unusually progressive changes in how Japan worked. That included foreign private equity companies buying and managing Japanese banks, foreign-born naturalized persons elected to the Parliament, and privatization of such public institutions as the post office.

Since Koizumi left, there has been a feeling of malaise, that Japan has stagnated and even reverted to the old ways of fighting change. That’s certainly the common wisdom. But the past few weeks have been a rollercoaster of change that I can barely keep up:

• – The state bureaucrat civil service law has been rewritten to abolish “career bureaucrats” and introduce a new system that promotes technocracy.
• – The Ainu indigenous people of Hokkaido are to be recognized as a separate ethnicity in their own right
• – Bastard half-Japanese children can now obtain Japanese citizenship with recognition after birth, whereas previously the fathers had to recognize the children before birth or marry the mother
• – And now here’s the latest unbelievable item—Japan is to become an “Immigrant Nation”!

In my education in Japan and observation of public life, the word imin kokka—immigrant nation—is used to state what Japan is not. How often have Japan-watchers heard that Japan is a nation of “one language, one people, one culture.” Yet when I opened my newspaper this morning I saw some of Japan’s most powerful and conservative politicians state exactly the opposite: “In order for Japan to survive, it must open its doors as an international state to the world and shift toward establishing an ‘immigrant nation’ by accepting immigrants and revitalizing Japan.” The goal? 10% of Japan should be made up of immigrants over the next half century.

This is the first time any serious government proposal has referred to newcomers as “immigrants” instead of merely foreigners, with the emphasis on “visitors.” The proposal also said a foreigner who has lived in Japan for 10 years or longer should be given nationality if the person wishes to become a Japanese citizen, and citizenship should be given to all permanent residents.

A big question of mine, for certain reasons, is dual citizenship. Japan has previously forbidden dual citizenship for anyone over the age of 20, although the enforcement of this is so haphazard as to be laughable. The reason for the prohibition on multiple citizenship has been that Japan is, as noted, a nation of “one language, one people, one culture.” Will changes come with the new immigrant nation proposal? I’ll be watching developments closely.

Thanks to Joe for this legal tidbit (and the translation):

Question
We have reviewed request no. 2556 for the year 2005 coming by fax and which includes a request to clarify the legal opinion on the following:

A woman observes the enjoined obligations of Allah, fasts the month of Ramadan, and performs the night vigil prayer. However, due to exhaustion, she sometimes feels sleepy and refuses sleep with her husband. What is the ruling?

Answer

A woman must observe the enjoined obligations of Allah Most High and do her best to perform supererogatory acts of worship [Ar. nawafil] in a way that does not affect the duties imposed upon her by Allah. If her diligence in performing supererogatory acts disrupts her obligatory duties, she must give the obligatory acts precedence over the supererogatory. It is obligatory for a wife to fulfill her husband’s request to have sexual intercourse. The Prophet said: “A woman who refuses her husband’s bed is cursed by the angels until sunrise.” Moreover, a husband must fear Allah when asking his wife to bed lest she be forced to disobey him when she is tired.

Allah Almighty knows best.

With questions about a two-tier system for NATO and concerns about certain members being unreliable or not sharing the burden, a ruling by the German Supreme Court comes as more bad news. The issue this time was the deployment of German AWACs along the Turkish border with Iraq in 2003. The article notes that:

Germany had sent its Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) planes at the request of its NATO ally, Turkey. Germany provided crews to man NATO planes that flew surveillance flights near Turkey’s southern border which were meant to protect Turkey against an Iraqi attack during the US-led invasion. Schroeder’s government described the 2003 deployment as a “routine” NATO operation.

However, although a NATO flight in conjunction with Turkey would seem fairly uncontroversial, there was a much deeper issue at hand for the Germans, the risk of war. The AWACS were sent to patrol the border and to be able to alert and direct Turkish fighter jets in the event of an attack by Iraq, most likely with missiles. And although the planes are unarmed and used solely for command and control purposes, the risk that they could have become involved in a war was real, according to the German Supreme Court. Therefore, the previous government of Gerhard Schröder, acted illegally and unconstitutionally by putting the German military in a situation in which it could have potentially been involved in armed conflict. Only the German parliament has the authority to do such.

Effects

First of all, this ruling puts the Chancellor on a much tighter leash that before and strengthens the German parliament. It does not however, affect any current operations such as in Afghanistan, Djibouti or Kosovo nor is it likely to cause trouble for any politicians who were involved in the decision at the time. Yet, it could complicate future decisions, mostly minor ones, and subject them to prevailing political whims which may in turn further damage Germany’s reputation as an ally of the United States and as a reliable NATO member. However, outsiders do need to retain a bit of perspective as the Germans, and indeed their form of government, is rather explicit in its intention to keep the majority of power in the hands of the elected representatives of parliament and prevent an overly strong executive branch from repeating World War Two.

On a related note, this is also bad if not fatal news for the CDU’s proposal to create a German NSC.

New Jersey’s hope of profiting from a huge liquefied natural gas processing plant on its Delaware River shore ended yesterday, as the Supreme Court ruled with a vote of 6 to 2 that Delaware has the right to veto the project. You can read the factual background and legal basis for the case in previous posts here and here.

Writing for the court on Monday, Justice Ginsburg said that while New Jersey had the right of “ordinary and usual” use of its shoreline, the proposed LNG project was an operation of “extraordinary character” over which New Jersey and Delaware shared overlapping authority under the court’s interpretation of a 1905 compact between the two states. As the LNG project “goes well beyond the ordinary or usual,” Justice Ginsburg concluded that New Jersey could not proceed without Delaware’s approval. Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kennedy, Souter, and Thomas joined Justice Ginsburg’s opinion. The sixth vote for Delaware came from Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote separately to say that he would give Delaware a veto not only over ‘’extraordinary’’ operations, but also over any ‘’structures and operations extending out from New Jersey into Delaware’s domain.’’

The two dissenters were the court’s two most conservative judges and both New Jersey-born, Justices Scalia and Alito. Scalia said in his dissenting opinion, which Justice Alito signed, that the court had never before applied a test of whether a proposed shoreline use was of an ‘’extraordinary character.’’ In typical Scalia prose, the Justice wrote ‘’What in the world does it mean?… Would a pink wharf or a zig-zagged wharf qualify?” (Justice Breyer did not participate because he owns BP stock.)

Through experience with criminal elements and based on my political philisophy, I am generally a red-blooded pro-law enforcement citizen. But I also fully understand and appreciate the fact that American police culture is dispicable in the way it regularly interacts with ordinary citizens engaged in no criminal act, with reckless abandon of safety and basic common manners.

It’s thus with great shock yet little surprise that I saw this story and saw the video that comes with it. The video below shows a deputy dumping quadriplegic Brian Sterner out of his wheelchair and onto the floor while she is booking him into a local Florida jail. The tape also shows the deputy then searching Sterner as he lay on the floor.

The deputy in question has been suspended without pay, and the others who watched the event with no protest put on administrative leave, but while a public apology has been issued through the media, no one has spologized to Sterner—which seems even more absurd in that he is at present only asking for a change in the system, and has not yet filed a lawsuit.

Thanks to Eddie for the head’s up. ComingAnarchy’s favorite genocidal Liberian is making headlines again:

Liberian Ex-Rebel Confesses to Killings
January 21, 2008; 3:56 PM

One of Liberia’s most notorious rebel commanders, known as Gen. Butt Naked for charging into battle wearing only boots, has returned to confess his role in terrorizing the nation, saying he is responsible for 20,000 deaths.

Joshua Milton Blahyi, who now lives in Ghana, returned last week to face his homeland’s truth and reconciliation commission, this time wearing a suit and tie. His nom de guerre is derived from his platoon’s practice of charging naked into battle, a technique meant to terrify the enemy.

Other former warlords, though, have refused to ask forgiveness, dismissing a commission many in Liberia see as toothless. Blahyi is urging other former killers to come forward: “I could be electrocuted. I could be hanged. I could be given any other punishment,” the 37-year-old Blahyi said in a weekend interview following his truth commission appearance last week. “But I think forgiveness and reconciliation is the right way to go.”

Then there is more old hat about Butt-Naked’s exploits which will be old news to CA readers:
Read the rest of this entry »

The US Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments regarding the New Jersey-Delaware LNG terminal dispute previously covered at the blog here. The dispute centers on a proposed LNG terminal that energy giant BP wants to build on the Jersey side of the river.

Delaware has refused to authorize the construction of a 2,000-foot-long pier, which would be built on part of the river bottom that belongs to Delaware. Once again, here’s the map:

The arguments:

New Jersey: Yes, Delaware owns the land. But says a century-old agreement allows each state to control piers on its side of the river. A pier on the New Jersey side that can’t stretch onto Delaware territory to reach the main shipping channel is worthless, that’s where the ships are.

Delaware: Decisions on what to build on Delaware land belong to Delaware. Boundaries matter. And on a practical level, Delaware has only twice in 160 years denied permission to build a pier on the Jersey side of the river and both instances involved LNG facilities, for which the state has safety concerns.

A court-appointed special master concluded earlier this year that
Delaware has the authority to block the pier. Justice Stephen Breyer is not taking part in the case because he owns BP stock, raising the potential of a 4 to 4. A tie often means that a lower court ruling is upheld, but disputes between states are decided by the Supreme
Court in the first instance. What happens in the case of the tie? There’s no precedent, and in this case, we may just find out.

The Asahi Shinbun has a fascinating narrative piecing together what hapened last year when the US military requested to use the civilian Aomori Airport in the prefecture of Aomori in northern Japan. Using documents recording phone conversations between the prefectural government, the central government and the U.S. military, they provide a blow-by-blow account of 18 hours that shows the tensions between an urban political capital and a rural local government

On April 19, 2006, the U.S. military called the Aomori prefectural government’s Ports, Harbors and Airport Division (PHAD). U.S. military brass were due to make a courtesy call on Aomori Governor Shingo Mimura to discuss a new surveillance device installed in June 2006 in Tsugaru, on the coast of Aomori Prefecture. The X-band radar was installed at the Air Self-Defense Force’s Shariki air station in Tsugaru to detect missile launches overseas, including those from North Korea.

The reasons for not using the Misawa Air Base in the eastern part of Aomori Prefecture is that the Aomori Airport is within the Aomori city limits and would save a 90 minute car drive. However, the Aomori PHAD refused. It said that the U.S. military should use the civilian airport only in emergencies.

The Foreign Ministry quickly sought an explanation from the prefectural government for rejecting the U.S. military request. Later that day at 6 p.m., a prefectural official returned the ministry’s call, to which the Foreign Ministry stated that the Status of Forces Agreement allows the US military the use of civilian airports, there was no basis for the refusal in the Aviation Law, and even the Aomori prefecutral bylaw stated that a mere prior notification was required for the US military to use the airport. The prefecture actually had no grounds to reject the landing. Aomori remained adamant—there was no emergency, so they must decline.

At 6:40 p.m., the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport called Aomori, where an official from the Administration Division, Aerodrome Department of the Civil Aviation Bureau pleaded with Aomori: “We understand there are issues involving the environment, noise and public sentiment that need to be addressed, but is it not possible to make a special consideration?” The Ports, Harbors and Airport Division decline.

At 7:30 p.m., the prefecture called the Foreign Ministry, which asked the Civil Aviation Bureau to reconsider, to which they responded: “In the current climate, the wishes of people in regional areas should be respected. There is no change to our beliefs.”

The battle continued the next morning at 10:15 a.m., when an official from the Foreign Ministry’s SOFA Division phoned Aomori: “We would like you to allow the use of the Aomori Airport. The request has been placed by the U.S. Embassy, and it is a right set forth in the Status of Forces Agreement. Denying the request would amount to a breach of the agreement. This is a matter concerning Japan-U.S. relations. We need you to take up the issue with the governor and report back to us.”

The Director of the Department of Land and Infrastructure, Aomori prefectural government: ” I will talk to the governor.”

Governor Mimura told senior aides he would not back down, and then pulled out a real threat: if the US military insists on using the airport for their courtesy call, he would refuse to meet them.

At 11:45 a.m., Aomori made a call to the Foreign Ministry to deliver its final notification of the refusal. The director of the Department of Land and Infrastructure refused to accept te reasons, but the Foreign Ministry folded and later that day withdrew the request to use the airport.

Plans for the courtesy visit were also nixed.