Unveiled: The naked truth?
The English fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk” has a passage that most children quickly remember:
Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Be he 'live, or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread.
The mother of the little boy (Jack) in the fairy story was always frustrated by his lack of common sense. One day she sends him to the market to sell their last possession, a cow. But on the way he meets a man who trades Jack five “magic beans” for the cow. His angry mother threw the beans out of the window and a giant beanstalk grows from them. Jack wants to know where it goes to so climbs the beanstalk the next day and at the top discovers another world with a beautiful maiden and a giant (who sings the text above) and his wife. Well the tale ends with the Giant cashing Jack down the beanstalk but Jack manages to get an axe and chop the beanstalk so that it and the giant comes crashing down with the giant breaking open his head and the jack and his mother end up being rich in gold.
There are several variations of this Fairy Tale and now another British Jack is in action but this is not a fairy tale, or?
There are now calls for a teaching assistant in a British state junior’s school to be sacked, she has already been suspended. The grounds for this are that she wears a veil and it is argued that the children cannot understand her properly because of this. British Cabinet Minister Jack Straw recently brought this matter into the public by asking Muslim women not to cover their face as this, in his opinion, makes community relations more difficult. Strangely enough it would appear that before British Cabinet Minister Jack Straw comments the assistant woman teacher taught the children wearing the veil and there were no problems and no complaints from the children or anyone else. Additionally if it is a problem why was the assistant not told about this earlier, or even given the job in the first place? She had even offered not to wear the veil in class as long as no male adults were present in the classroom but she got suspended anyway.
Mr Straw is quoted as saying: "I stand by my remarks and see no reason to apologise for them. This is a free and democratic country.”
“free and democratic country” ?
Surely there is something terribly wrong with that statement!
What is the truth of this matter?
Well there is speculation in the press that British Cabinet Minister Jack Straw used this issue to heighten his profile ahead of Labour's deputy leadership election, although Mr Straw has dismissed these suggestions. Mr Straw is a Labour MP for Blackburn and 25% to 30% of the residents are Muslim. It was at his Blackburn constituency office, where he holds meetings with locals who have (political orientated) problems or grievances or other political matters, that he asked the Muslim women if they would remove their veils.
Jack Shaw argues "I stand by my remarks and see no reason to apologise for them. This is a free and democratic country.” Apparently it is a free and democratic country when it concerns matters regarding him, but he would seem to deny the same rights to others, in particular (Muslim) women!
However is this the only truth of the matter?
There are at least two other possibilities to be considered. The labour party under the leadership of Tony Blair has clearly problems with Muslim issues, certainly with those of the Arab countries, but Muslim issues in general.
Additionally ask a psychologist about such reactions and most will say that this is a reaction that displays signs of emotional insecurity on the part of the person expressing such views. If Jack Shaw is not just using the matter purely, and this is unlikely, to heighten his chances of becoming deputy leader then we must consider these other factors.
Blind and people with severe sight difficulties have to deal with other people all the time without seeing their faces, as far as I am aware they manage this perfectly well without it being a necessary barrier to community relations or personal contact.
(Quote from BBC World Service News): “……Mr Straw explained the impact he thought veils could have in a society where watching facial expressions was important for contact between different people…… "Communities are bound together partly by informal chance relations between strangers - people being able to acknowledge each other in the street or being able pass the time of day," he said…..”(end of BBC quote) .
Firstly the situation was not one of people on the streets in chance meetings but of Muslim women from his constituency coming to his office to discuss some issue. Issues that are possibly for the Muslim women of a very personal and (for them) difficult subject matter to talk about. Yet Jack Shaw, desiring his own particular gold, political gold, ignores this and turns it into a political problem in general! Secondly is he inferring then that blind people and people with severe sight problems live an inferior life compared to those of us with sight, or in some way have a negative influence on society, just as women who wear veils do?
What about such issues of power domination and misuse, male attitudes, arrogance and other such issues? Maybe even a certain kind of blindness? What about male sexual issues?
Unveiled: The naked truth?
Here is another possibly interesting quote from Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man):
Straw man
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia
This article is about the logical fallacy. For other uses, see Straw man (disambiguation).
A straw man argument is a logical fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw-man argument" is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent. A straw-man argument can be a successful rhetorical technique (that is, it may succeed in persuading people) but it is in fact misleading, because the opponent's actual argument has not been refuted.
Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Be he 'live, or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread.
The mother of the little boy (Jack) in the fairy story was always frustrated by his lack of common sense. One day she sends him to the market to sell their last possession, a cow. But on the way he meets a man who trades Jack five “magic beans” for the cow. His angry mother threw the beans out of the window and a giant beanstalk grows from them. Jack wants to know where it goes to so climbs the beanstalk the next day and at the top discovers another world with a beautiful maiden and a giant (who sings the text above) and his wife. Well the tale ends with the Giant cashing Jack down the beanstalk but Jack manages to get an axe and chop the beanstalk so that it and the giant comes crashing down with the giant breaking open his head and the jack and his mother end up being rich in gold.
There are several variations of this Fairy Tale and now another British Jack is in action but this is not a fairy tale, or?
There are now calls for a teaching assistant in a British state junior’s school to be sacked, she has already been suspended. The grounds for this are that she wears a veil and it is argued that the children cannot understand her properly because of this. British Cabinet Minister Jack Straw recently brought this matter into the public by asking Muslim women not to cover their face as this, in his opinion, makes community relations more difficult. Strangely enough it would appear that before British Cabinet Minister Jack Straw comments the assistant woman teacher taught the children wearing the veil and there were no problems and no complaints from the children or anyone else. Additionally if it is a problem why was the assistant not told about this earlier, or even given the job in the first place? She had even offered not to wear the veil in class as long as no male adults were present in the classroom but she got suspended anyway.
Mr Straw is quoted as saying: "I stand by my remarks and see no reason to apologise for them. This is a free and democratic country.”
“free and democratic country” ?
Surely there is something terribly wrong with that statement!
What is the truth of this matter?
Well there is speculation in the press that British Cabinet Minister Jack Straw used this issue to heighten his profile ahead of Labour's deputy leadership election, although Mr Straw has dismissed these suggestions. Mr Straw is a Labour MP for Blackburn and 25% to 30% of the residents are Muslim. It was at his Blackburn constituency office, where he holds meetings with locals who have (political orientated) problems or grievances or other political matters, that he asked the Muslim women if they would remove their veils.
Jack Shaw argues "I stand by my remarks and see no reason to apologise for them. This is a free and democratic country.” Apparently it is a free and democratic country when it concerns matters regarding him, but he would seem to deny the same rights to others, in particular (Muslim) women!
However is this the only truth of the matter?
There are at least two other possibilities to be considered. The labour party under the leadership of Tony Blair has clearly problems with Muslim issues, certainly with those of the Arab countries, but Muslim issues in general.
Additionally ask a psychologist about such reactions and most will say that this is a reaction that displays signs of emotional insecurity on the part of the person expressing such views. If Jack Shaw is not just using the matter purely, and this is unlikely, to heighten his chances of becoming deputy leader then we must consider these other factors.
Blind and people with severe sight difficulties have to deal with other people all the time without seeing their faces, as far as I am aware they manage this perfectly well without it being a necessary barrier to community relations or personal contact.
(Quote from BBC World Service News): “……Mr Straw explained the impact he thought veils could have in a society where watching facial expressions was important for contact between different people…… "Communities are bound together partly by informal chance relations between strangers - people being able to acknowledge each other in the street or being able pass the time of day," he said…..”(end of BBC quote) .
Firstly the situation was not one of people on the streets in chance meetings but of Muslim women from his constituency coming to his office to discuss some issue. Issues that are possibly for the Muslim women of a very personal and (for them) difficult subject matter to talk about. Yet Jack Shaw, desiring his own particular gold, political gold, ignores this and turns it into a political problem in general! Secondly is he inferring then that blind people and people with severe sight problems live an inferior life compared to those of us with sight, or in some way have a negative influence on society, just as women who wear veils do?
What about such issues of power domination and misuse, male attitudes, arrogance and other such issues? Maybe even a certain kind of blindness? What about male sexual issues?
Unveiled: The naked truth?
Here is another possibly interesting quote from Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man):
Straw man
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia
This article is about the logical fallacy. For other uses, see Straw man (disambiguation).
A straw man argument is a logical fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw-man argument" is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent. A straw-man argument can be a successful rhetorical technique (that is, it may succeed in persuading people) but it is in fact misleading, because the opponent's actual argument has not been refuted.
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