A few excerpts from the UN’s Report of the Secretary-General on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran:

Amputation and corporal punishment, although justified by the authorities as Islamic punishments, remain a serious cause for concern.

The death penalty is imposed for certain hudud crimes, including adultery, incest, rape, fornication for the fourth time by an unmarried person, drinking alcohol for the third time, sodomy, sexual conduct between men without penetration for the fourth time, lesbianism for the fourth time, fornication by a non-Muslim man with a Muslim woman, and false accusation of adultery or sodomy for a fourth time. Furthermore, the death penalty can be applied for the crimes of enmity with God (mohareb) and corruption on earth (mofsed fil arz) as one of four possible punishments. Under the category of ta’zir crimes, the death penalty can be imposed for “cursing the Prophet” (art. 513 of the Penal Code). The death penalty may also be applied to such crimes as drug smuggling or trafficking, murder, espionage, and crimes against national security.

Concerns have been expressed over an increasing crackdown in the past year on the women’s rights movement in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Women’s rights activism is sometimes presented by the Iranian Government as being connected to external security threats to the country.

Reports continue to be received about members of the Baha’i community being subjected to arbitrary detention, false imprisonment, confiscation and destruction of property, denial of employment and Government benefits, and denial of access to higher education. A significant increase has been reported in violence targeting Baha’is and their homes, shops, farms, and cemeteries throughout the country. There have also been several cases involving torture or ill-treatment in custody.

The Human Rights Committee expressed its concern at the extent of the limitations and restrictions on the freedom of religion and belief, noting that conversion from Islam is punishable and that even followers of the three recognized religions are facing serious difficulties in the enjoyment of their rights.

In addition, the special procedures have raised a number of communications concerning members of the Nematollahi Sufi Muslim community, the Kurdish community, the Sunni community, the Baluchi community, the Azeri-Turk community, and the Christian community who have reportedly been subjected to arbitrary arrests and torture, allegedly in connection with peaceful demonstrations for their rights, such as the right to speak their own language and to hold religious ceremonies

There have been increasing reports of tightening curbs on the media in the recent past. The crackdown has affected print media, weblogs, and websites, and journalists have been imprisoned. A well-known human rights defender in the country said that in the period from March 2007 to March 2008, approximately thirty newspapers and magazines had been suspended in the country, including Sharq and Hammihan dailies as well as Madrese, Zanan and Donyaye Tasvir, Sobh-e Zendegi, Talash and Haft. Some women’s rights activists were indicted on national security grounds owing to their weblogs. It is further reported that during the month of May 2008 alone, more than eighteen weblogs focusing on discriminatory laws against women (the “one million signatures” campaign) had been filtered. The censorship of books has reportedly been tightened, affecting negatively the environment for the publishing industry and writers. The Iranian Government appears to encourage self-censorship openly, as the Islamic Culture and Guidance Minister was quoted in the media as saying that if book publishers were to do some self-censorship, they wouldn’t have to complain so much.

The Human Rights Committee . . . noted that contrary to the provisions of articles 18 and 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, members of certain political parties who did not agree with what the authorities believed to be Islamic thinking or who expressed opinions in opposition to official positions had been discriminated against. Self-censorship also seemed to be widespread in the media, and severe limitations appeared to have been placed upon the exercise of freedom of assembly and of association.

That’s the name of the seminar I just came back from. Run by the Acton Institute and held all over the country, these seminars provide a basic introduction to the intersection of Christian theology and free-market economics. If you (or someone you know) have wondered about how exactly to help the poor or the principles behind the social and economic misunderstandings in our time, check out the program here.

Atheist Richard Dawkins has announced that he is relinquishing his post at Oxford University in order to write a book aimed at convincing children not to believe in “anti-scientific” fairy-tales. Apparently, conquering Cinderella is a full-time job.

Times Columnist Libby Purves is glad Dawkins has taken up this new cause, if only because it will highlight once again how badly children need fantasy and myth to make sense of the real world:

The reason I am delighted at Professor Dawkins’ investigation, therefore, is that I am pretty sure his intelligence will bring him to the same conclusion as the psychologists: that a bit of magic and fantasy in childhood is useful and helps you to grapple with your fears about life, death, peril and chance. It may even (to be flippant for a moment) serve to keep future laymen’s minds open to the more provable marvels of science. If you’ve played at invisible fairy-dust, you may have acquired the kind of counter-intuitive mental flexibility required to accept what goes on in the Large Hadron Collider. . . .

Magic is useful. Myths are helpful, pointing at truths which are all the deeper for not being literal. Neither is a threat to scientific understanding. Let children cast off their clouds of glory at their own pace.

Chesterton, in The Red Angel, put it this way:

Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms [the child] for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.

While we’re on the subject, the renowned philosopher Antony Flew offers a response to Richard Dawkins in the new issue of First Things, due out in a week or two. Watch for it.

With rising poverty and unemployment, the War on Poverty would seem an incontestably humane and urgent cause. In the words of Bob Geldof, “Something must be done, even if it doesn’t work.” It’s the sort of remark one would expect from a pop musician, but he has a point: We have to try, and we won’t know what works until then.

The problem, of course, is that many things have been tried, and the unsuccessful ones are being dusted off and re-gifted to the American public; if we don’t know precisely what does work, we certainly do know what doesn’t. In a fascinating analysis of the 1970s federal poverty programs, in comparison with Barack Obama’s policy proposals, Steven Malanga of City Journal argues that another War on Poverty is exactly what our country and its underprivileged do not need.

“Despite years of effort and gargantuan transfusions of money,” he observes, “the federal government lost its War on Poverty. ‘In 1968 . . . 13 percent of Americans were poor,’ wrote Charles Murray in his unstinting examination of antipoverty programs, Losing Ground. ‘Over the next 12 years, our expenditures on social welfare quadrupled. And in 1980, the percentage of poor Americans was—13 percent.’”

Malanga touches on urban problems and still more problematic proposals ranging from housing to unemployment, crime to education. To take the last as an example, it is often suggested (not least by Sen. Obama) that the failures of urban schools lie in insufficient federal funding–and to hear tales of public-education inadequacies, who would be inclined quibble? Yet the per-pupil, per-year, spending in New York has now crept above $19,000 for K–12 education, with Newark at $20,000 and D.C. at $22,000. Is more money going to help? Malanga wisely thinks not: “An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development study found that most European countries spend between 55 percent and 70 percent of what the U.S. does per student, yet produce better educational outcomes. If some urban school systems are failing children, money has nothing to do with it.”

What is needed is localized effort and accountability, looking back to the successful welfare-reduction and anti-crime policies of the Nineties, not the failures of the Seventies: “Obama may claim to be advancing a twenty-first-century agenda, but his ideas about combating poverty and aiding cities ignore the lessons of the nineties’ reformers and remain firmly mired in the War on Poverty’s vision of cities as victims. . . . Implementing [his campaign’s] policy ideas would simply expand the tin-cup urbanism that has kept so many cities in despair for so long. That’s change we can do without.”

After thirty-five years of living under Roe v. Wade, many pro-life Americans are understandably weary. This frustration makes them more receptive to the arguments of those who claim that the battle against legal abortion has simply been lost, and that the only sensible goal now is to enact social programs that will make abortion less likely, even if this means voting for pro-choice candidates.

But Michael New, writing for Public Discourse, insists that these arguments are at odds with the facts. Though the situation remains unacceptable, pro-life laws, passed by pro-life politicians, have managed to reduce the rate of abortion–since every life saved is precious, it would be no trivial matter to lose ground so painstakingly won.

Elaine Lafferty, pro-choice feminist Democrat and erstwhile editor in chief of Ms. magazine, thinks Sarah Palin is a brilliant woman:

Now by “smart,” I don’t refer to a person who is wily or calculating or nimble in the way of certain talented athletes who we admire but suspect don’t really have serious brains in their skulls. I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernible pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick study”; I’d heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts. What is often called her “confidence” is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.

One should immediately point out that she’s a pro-choice feminist Democrat advising the McCain campaign, so she’s not exactly a disinterested party. But it’s hard to think her description is made out of whole cloth.

From Magnificat’s summary of the life of St. Martin, an Italian hermit from the 6th century:

Martin’s peace, however, was soon disturbed by the appearance of a mysterious serpent that menaced him, stretching itself out before him as he prayed and slithering beside him in his sleep. Sensing that the creature was of unnatural origin, he refused to be driven from the cave by it and even dared it to bite him. Finally, after three years, the serpent suddenly rushed out of the cave, hissing furiously as it hurtled down the mountainside, setting ablaze all the shrubbery in its path with fire that shot from its body. The spectacle conformed Martin’s conviction that the creature was in fact a demon.