THE INCORRECTNESS OF THE BRITISH VICTORY AT AGINCOURT

We noted last year the unsuccessful attempts to erase from popular consciousness what happened at the famous battle of Trafalgar. A reader points out that earlier British victories are being "revised" too:

Several years ago, while watching the History Channel on TV -- not something I often do these days, for as a medium I consider it largely speaking to be `pollution for the human mind', (TV that is) -- there was a program presented by some modern academics, about The Battle of Agincourt.

Now having once been an attentive little English schoolboy, I remember it well, (the story of the battle that is.). As presented, these scholars dutifully trotted out their new theories as to how the battle had transpired, because as we all now know, since the victors get to write the narrative, and it is now an accepted nostrum that `they lied', they were there to put things right. This was quite simply, the intellectually superior man, correcting the falsity of historical narrative. The good professors, tramped over the actual battlefield -- for what reason I don't know, for now it is just a collection of fields, as to be found anywhere in Europe, unless to impress upon their audience, an assumed sense of unstated certitude, as in they were there, actually at the battlefield so therefore they must know what they are talking about.

The good professors then proceeded to deconstruct the battle, pointing out that it had rained hard the night before. Yes, yes, I already knew that; that the fields were muddy, ditto. That when the superior numbers of French knights advanced, they became bogged down in the mud, so far so good, but now for the good part.

The English archers, credited with cutting down the flower of French knighthood; that bit, well the tale, long famed for the stunning accomplishment against superior forces, was all a fabrication. You see according to these new experts of medieval warfare, quite simply, the English longbow, with its deadly arrows, was according to our experts, totally unable to penetrate the French armor. No mention that shooting the horse that the man in heavy armour was sitting on was pretty fatal. They even gave us a practical demonstration, though the last true makers of English longbows died off a long time ago, not much of a market for them these days. So, I think it safe to assume the example they used was of modern manufacture, don't know, but there might be a difference or two there, just speculating a bit, mind.

What actually transpired according to our new age experts, was that the French got bogged down in the mud (yes, and!), then the nasty, brutal English thugs, jumped in and with great relish set about slaughtering the gallant French knights as they lay helpless on the ground, oh, how ignoble of them, the brutes. Oh the humanity!

Now I don't know about you, but I can well imagine, just about any medieval battle would be brutal. I'm sure that in the thick of the fight, throats got cut, people got killed: it happens that way in battle. Battles are places where people get killed Actually, that was the whole point of the exercise I thought, but what would I know, for I'm just a simple man.

But the unstated but insinuated statement, was that this was not something that the British people should be proud of, rather, something to be atoned for, this was murder. It left a profound distaste in my mind. For in the modern world, this new all inclusive multicultural society, lets all get along PC world, it simply would not do to leave the details of this battle, which took place on 25 of October 1415, to rest upon the page of history, no, that would not do, let's re-write it according to our better feelings.

No mention of course, of what their fate would have been, should the English have lost the battle, hhmmm(?). Don't know, but I doubt it would have been anything pleasant . Being that the archers were drawn from peasant stock, as opposed to the mighty Lords of French chivalry, not too bright methinks. I do seem to recall many tales from the historical record, pertaining to the lamentable way that the high and the mighty tended to treat lesser mortals.

I'm not really surprised that the English fought like devils, the were hopelessly outnumbered, in enemy territory, half starved after a long forced march and cornered. Don't know about you, but I'd fight like the devil too. Now if that offends the delicate sensibilities of some dry, morally superior beings, pontificating behind the safe ramparts of a free society, then too bad f*** 'em I say.

A small silly detail you might say, well yes; but it is in the small details that the fabric of society is formed. From substituting a sense of guilt, in the place of one of accomplishment, to sowing a seed of doubt in the minds of everyday people, who often have no great understanding of events, nor indeed of latent subversive agendas; it becomes possible to sow confusion among the people. And a confused people are an easy people to lead, especially when you can distract them with the newest version of `bread and circuses' . sex and drugs and rock and roll.



Louisiana's HB 315 Says One Parent is Better Than Two

The Louisiana House of Representatives will soon consider a misguided family law bill which will make it more difficult for children of divorce to preserve the loving bonds they share with both parents. Whereas most states are moving towards shared parenting, House Bill 315 takes Louisiana in the opposite direction, to the detriment of some of the state's most vulnerable children.

Current Louisiana law states "To the extent it is feasible and in the best interest of the child, physical custody of the children should be shared equally." This is reasonable-it presumes that as long as both parents are fit and there are no extenuating circumstances, they should both share in parenting their children. HB 315 weakens the law's wise preference for two parents instead of one. Under the bill all that children receive is a vaguely defined "as frequent and continuing contact as is feasible with each parent." However, research establishes that shared custody is what's best for kids.

According to psychologist Robert Bauserman's meta-analysis of 33 studies of children of divorce, which was published in the American Psychological Association`s Journal of Family Psychology, children in shared custody settings had fewer behavior and emotional problems, higher self-esteem, better family relations, and better school performance than children in sole custody arrangements.

A Harvard University study of 517 families conducted across a four-and-a-half year period measured depression, deviance, school effort, and school grades in children ranging in age from 10 to 18. The researchers found that the children in shared custody settings fared better in these areas than those in sole custody.

A study by psychologist Joan Kelly published in the Family and Conciliation Courts Review found that children of divorce "express higher levels of satisfaction with joint physical custody than with sole custody arrangements," and cite the "benefit of remaining close to both parents" as an important factor.

When Arizona State University psychology professor William Fabricius conducted a study of college students who had experienced their parents' divorces while they were children, he found that over two-thirds believed that "living equal amounts of time with each parent is the best arrangement for children."

Unfortunately, rather than putting the need to preserve children's relationships with both parents at the center of the discussion, advocates of HB 315 are instead focusing on child support. In Louisiana, like most states, how much time each parent spends with his or her children helps determine how much child support is ordered. Rep. Shirley Bowler (R-River Ridge), who authored the bill, asserts that dads seek shared custody as a way to decrease their child support obligations. She promotes HB 315 as a way to "remove this angle" in the current law, which she claims divorced dads are exploiting.

While it is true that there are fathers who put their pocketbooks above their children's best interests, Bowler and the bill's supporters ignore the obvious converse. If a dad may seek 50% physical time with his children simply to lower his child support obligation, doesn't it also hold that a mother may seek 85% physical time in order to increase it? Similarly, critics charge that the child support provisions of current law amount to paying men to spend time with their children. In reality, the provisions simply acknowledge that both moms and dads have child-related expenses.

HB 315 also provides that a court may require a six-month trial period before ordering shared custody. While this may sound reasonable, it opens the door for mischief. When there is discord between divorced parents and joint custody appears unworkable, sole custody is the alternative. One of the grave problems in our family court system is that this dynamic gives the parent positioned to gain sole custody-usually the mother-an incentive to create conflict.

Shared parenting is advocated by a growing consensus of mental health and family law professionals, and current Louisiana law has led to an increase in shared custody awards. This greatly benefits the state's children, who preserve their bonds with the two people who love them the most. HB 315 would reverse this progress by reinstating an atavistic, win/lose system which often reduces loving parents to being mere occasional visitors in their children's lives.

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PARENT-HATING BRITAIN

Imagine a country where parents accused of child abuse are assumed guilty unless proven innocent. Where secret courts need no criminal conviction to remove their children, only the word of a medical expert, and rarely let parents call their own experts in defence. Where even parents who are vindicated on appeal cannot see their children again, because they have been adopted. And where the "welfare of the child" is used to gag them from discussing the case ever after. I live in that country.

In that country, a mother who has had her three children taken away broke the gagging order on BBC One on Monday night. She was brave to do so. For she is in grave danger of also losing the baby she is due to give birth to in two weeks' time. Nicky Hardingham's three children were removed because one had unexplained fractures in his bones. Two paediatricians categorically stated that the boy could not have the brittle bone disease that can cause such fractures, even though the disease is in four generations of Mrs Hardingham's family. Medical geneticists have since said that the boy could indeed have inherited the disease, although Mrs Hardingham herself has not suffered fractures. The police dropped all charges against the Hardinghams. But the court's decision to take away her children was final.

I won't name those two doctors. It is partly the fault of my own profession that doctors now have so much more to fear from failing to spot signs of abuse - of missing another Victoria Climbie - than they do from diagnosing abuse where it does not exist. Many social workers and judges are so terrified of false negatives that they hasten to false positives for which they will never be accountable. Yet this alone does not explain why professionals make categorical statements in situations where they should merely be posing questions.

In classic child abuse cases, there is often a family history of abuse and vile evidence of assault, such as bruising and cigarette burns. Yet there seems to be a growing number of cases in which these factors are totally absent. The metaphyseal fractures suffered by Mrs Hardingham's son are said to be caused by an adult violently twisting little limbs. But it would be virtually impossible to do that without bruising the skin. And in case after case, there is no bruising.

Other parents are accused of violently shaking their children, because doctors have found haemorrhages in the brain or the eye. Again and again parents are told that they have shaken their babies at a velocity of "30 or 40 miles an hour". Yet the evidence is flimsy. Lorraine Harris was cleared after serving a jail sentence for shaking her four-month-old to death, when she proved that he had a blood disorder. She has little hope of ever seeing her other child again. Joe Wainwright was jailed for shaking his baby son, even though the scan used in evidence was taken after the hospital had smashed the boy's trolley into a concrete pillar. He has not been given leave to appeal. The list goes on.

At a conference in London two days ago, I watched American scientists rip the medical canon on child abuse to shreds. Kirk Thibault, a biomechanical engineer from Pennsylvania, has demonstrated that even a child falling over its own feet can sustain much more serious head injuries than one being deliberately shaken. So perhaps the courts should have given more credence to all those parents who pleaded that their daughters had slipped on the floor. Marvin Miller has found that low bone density is responsible for many infant fractures, and that this can be caused by lack of movement in the womb as well as by a brittle-bone gene. Low bone density does not show up on the conventional X-rays used by the radiologists who pronounce on abuse. Patrick Lantz has studied 890 bodies to find that a whopping 15 per cent of adult corpses, and 19 per cent of those under the age of 1, have the haemorrhages that the textbooks cite as proof of abuse. John Plunkett, the forensic pathologist from Minnesota who has helped to free more than 100 wrongly accused parents in America, neatly summed up the problem. "If all you have is a hammer," he said, "everything looks like a nail."

Most of these men started out on the other side of the argument, as doctors testifying against parents. At some point each seems to have become alarmed by the number of allegations being made in families with no history of abuse, and stunned by the flimsiness of the research. The belief that metaphyseal fractures are incontrovertible evidence of abuse, for example, is based chiefly on one 1986 study by the American radiologist Dr P. K. Kleinman. He found such fractures in four infants who were known to have been abused, and none in one who had not. How could any court convict Nicky Hardingham, and many others, on the basis of such an unscientific sample? Yet they have.

At Tuesday's conference I met a young couple looking completely shell-shocked. Social services took away their child last month. It is hard to escape the feeling that any one of us could be in their shoes.

I do not know quite how we have created a situation where abuse has become the default diagnosis in the face of the unexplained. Or why social workers and judges have come to rely so heavily upon medical theories that are presented as fact. The only way to avoid miscarriages of justice must be to throw open these decisions to thorough scrutiny. Children in Scotland, Canada and New Zealand have not been damaged by family courts being open to the press. The longer these processes remain secret, the more danger there is that children will suffer from misguided decisions.

It is too late for Nicky Hardingham to get her three children back. But if her next baby is taken away, we must suspect that the system has learnt nothing. In telling her story she has at least begun to expose how the system is skewed. There are so many like her who dare not speak. We should not stand for that in this country.

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Movie madness

By Andrew Bolt

At last, Hollywood makes a movie about a barbaric religion that oppresses women and sends fanatics to kill unbelievers

Yes, they've had it coming, those, er, Catholics. They've terrorised us too long. So clap the makers of The Da Vinci Code. Imagine what guts it took for them just to go to last week's premiere in Cannes when -- as The Independent reported -- outside the theatre there was "a contingent of persistent nuns hovering forbiddingly". Those damn hovering nuns. No wonder we're so scared of flying.

But a word of advice to the Catholic Church, and particularly its Opus Dei order, accused in this film of being a bunch of self-flagellating perverts and assassins. Friends, why waste breath insisting the film tells lies when it says Christ had a child with his "wife" Mary Magdalene, and the church has murdered their descendents to protect its power? Stop claiming that you're actually nice guys who'd have to be insane to kill the children of your own God.

You're accused of being killers? Then live up to the hype. It's your only hope. Just ask our Muslim friends. Ask them why no Hollywood director dares make a movie that trashes Islam the way The Da Vinci Code trashes Christianity. Here are a few clues. In 1988, novelist Salman Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses, which -- as The Da Vinci Code does with the Bible -- questions how the Koran came to be written, and suggests it, too, crushed the worship of female divinities.

But some Muslim hate-preachers, unlike the average bishop, don't wring hands, but necks. And so Iran's ayatollahs issued a fatwa on Rushdie, who within five years saw his Japanese translator murdered, his Italian translator stabbed, and his Norwegian publisher shot three times. I don't know if Dutch director Theo van Gogh forgot that lesson, or learned it too well, but he later made a 10-minute film which showed half-naked actresses on whose skin was written the Koranic verses, which most insulted women. Two years ago, a Muslim viewer gave him the ultimate bad review, cutting his throat and pinning a note of complaint to his chest with a hunting knife.

Other "bad" art has had similarly robust critiques from militant Islamists. The huge Bamiyan statues of Buddha were blown up by Afghanistan's Taliban. A fresco in a Bologna church, showing Mohammed in hell, was the target of a planned bombing by al-Qaida. And in case our artists still hadn't got the fatwa, Muslim crowds this year rioted so violently against Danish cartoons of their prophet that 140 people died and two Danish embassies were burned down.

Now that's the kind of protest Hollywood heeds and had newspapers around the world censoring themselves out of sheer fear. Of course, Hollywood hardly needs an excuse to savage us rather than the latest tyranny. But never has it seemed so determined to do this as it has since September 11. It was around that very day that the makers of The Sum of All Fears became the first in Hollywood to declare that showing Muslim extremists as the kind of people who might kill you was haram, a sin against safe business. Their film was based on the Tom Clancy novel, in which Muslim extremists, helped by East German communists, smuggle a nuclear bomb into the United States and blow up a crowded stadium, illustrating a threat only too real.

But when the Council on American-Islamic Relations demanded he be nice to Muslims, the director turned his baddies into German Nazis and a white South African, pleading: "I have no intention of promoting negative images of Muslims". Since then Hollywood has looked in every direction except the East for its villains -- every direction except the one most terrorists actually come from.

Run through the latest movies. The Constant Gardener paints our drug companies as racist killers. Kingdom of Heaven makes the Crusaders the real baddies. Munich criticises Israel for hitting back. Syriana blames wicked American oil men for corrupting a harmless Arab tyrant. Fahrenheit 9/11 makes Saddam's Iraq seem like paradise and George Bush an agent of hell. Even past enemies of us wicked capitalists are redeemed. Good Night and Good Luck savages those who once hunted Communist spies in the US. The 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate replaces the old villain -- an agent of communist China -- with one from a US company just like Halliburton.

So many villains, and all Americans, Christians and Jews. Not a Muslim among them. Still, it keeps the actors safe, I guess. When did some Jew or Christian last hammer out a film review with a machine gun?

But there is more than cowardice behind this. This year's V for Vendetta chokes with real loathing of the very institutions that make us free, as if only the totalitarian is pure. It invents a police-state Britain in 2020 that -- backed by a pedophile Anglican archbishop -- has declared war on all gays and Muslims, and is so evil that its leaders could poison 80,000 of their own people and pin the blame on Muslims, just to pass harsh new laws. Get the hint? Some on the Left now claim the CIA staged the September 11 attacks as well, to justify a war against Iraq. The film's climax is the bombing of Parliament by a noble freedom fighter -- a scene filmed with the help of the British Government, which agreed to have streets around Westminster closed.

Have we no sense of self-preservation? Perhaps not. See only how many now cheer The Da Vinci Code's attack on Christianity. Is Christianity really a plot to oppress women, as the film claims? Did pagans really celebrate women only to be destroyed by the sex-hating church fathers? Again Hollywood attacks what has helped make us free. As sociologist Rodney Stark wrote in his celebrated The Rise of Christianity, "Christianity was unusually appealing to pagan women" because "within the Christian subculture women enjoyed far higher status than did women in the Greco-Roman world at large". CHRISTIANS rejected polygamy, divorce, infidelity, incest, infanticide, giving women more power and dignity than pagan Rome ever did.

It's true we now have one movie about September 11, United 93, that tells of the hijacked plane brought down by its heroic passengers. But as Khalid Abdalla, who played one of the hijackers said, the director tried not to make the hijackers seem too bad because "it wasn't to be a film about stereotypes". Of course not. Islamist terrorists killing innocent people for a mad ideology? That's a stereotype we've seen so often in real life that why see it in the movies too? Let's instead see a film with a fresh take on how, say, the Catholic Church hates women and protects perverts. Or how our politicians are crooks, Germans are Nazis and businessmen scum. And at the end of it you can declare: I have seen the movie and the enemy is us.

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