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Oh, and anyone in the government opposing [calls for Islamic dress for women to be banned in Britain] is to be conditionally applauded…
…they are right to reject this vile authoritarian notion…
…but if they opposite it because “Islamic dress is ok” then they are a horse’s arse and need to called that.
A burqua or any item of islamic dress for women is as “ok” as a Nazi arm band… and people’s ability to wear Nazi arm bands also should not be banned, but they sure as hell should not be applauded.
– Perry de Havilland
Readers may find it odd that students are being encouraged to express solidarity with totalitarian terrorist movements that set booby traps in schools and boast of using children as human shields, and whose stated goals include the Islamic “conquest” of the free world, the “obliteration” of Israel and the annihilation of the Jewish people. However, such statements achieve a facsimile of sense if one understands that the object is to be both politically radical and morally unobvious.
– David Thompson ruminates on the perverse intellectual incentives that face academics
Al Rigga, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. January 17 2010 My apologies about the blurry photo. I was a little preoccupied with other things at the time. Not that I would do anything to encourage speculation.
At my personal blog, I like to write about skyscrapers. Basically, my attitude is: skyscrapers are good.
A particularly choice one is being erected in London just now, the so-called Shard, despite fears all round that the economic meltdown would demand that it be aborted. And of course I have recently also been taking note of that huge tower they’ve just opened in Dubai. I recently did a posting saying that maybe Dubai is not such a daft place as many are now saying. Maybe all those towers actually make some sense, basing my very tentative optimism on a photograph which included not just the towers but their surroundings.
But Michael Jennings, who has actually been to Dubai (on account of him having been everywhere), recently emailed me to suggest that the Dubai-is-daft tendency is probably right:
Dubai is just about the oddest place I have ever been to. I failed to go up the tallest building in the world because something went wrong and they closed it (a story in itself I would guess). The structure of the whole place is completely wrong though. It is as if someone has taken the most impressive looking bits of all the cities of the world – built new versions two or three times the size in the desert, and then attempted to weld them together into a city, but without any idea whether such things can or should fit together, and if they can, how to make it work. Virtually all the low level structure of a city is missing, and the overall question is simply who is supposed to be doing business in this place? I don’t get it at all. However, given the many tens or hundreds of very large structures half built in Dubai (the number of which rather boggles the mind) a few Arab bankers exposure to one little shard in London must be the least of their worries.
 More of my speculations on the links between our “little shard” and the towers of Dubai here. But, as that posting says at the end, Michael was wrong about them building the Shard. He said they’d scrap it. Actually he went further than that and said that if they built it, he’d eat his laptop. So maybe he’s also wrong about Dubai being daft. I’m sure some of our commentariat, like Michael and unlike me, have been there. What did they make of the place?
Michael tells me that he intends to write again at greater length about Dubai, and also that he is not wrong about it.
This is an amazing example of one those archetypal political processes, which happens when a regime that still commands the present nevertheless manages to lose all control of the future:
One of the most fascinating aspects of the current phase of the Iranian revolution is that many of those arrested knew it was coming, had the opportunity to hide, but chose to go to jail. They viewed their arrest as a badge of honor, and (not to make light of the horrors of Iranian jails) perhaps even a good career move. They expect the regime to fall, and they are building up credits for the next government.
Recently a posting of mine here about an SD card was honoured by a re-run in the comments of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, where they take it in turns to boast with ever greater ferocity about the awfulness of their childhoods, or in this case about the vast expense and extreme non-capaciousness of their very first hard discs. You mean you had a hard disc? – We dreamed of having a hard disc, etc.
Soon, Iran will be entertained with similar jokery, in which Four Iranian Ex-Oppositionists indulge in similarly competitive boasting about their hellish sufferings under the previous regime, thereby justifying their subsequent social and political elevation.
Sadly, they may not need to exaggerate.
An Islamic group called islam4uk, who are a front organisation for the islamo-fascist group al-Muhajiroun, want to march through Wootton Bassett carrying “symbolic coffins” as a protest against the ongoing British participation in the Afghan civil war against the Taliban.
My suggestion is that the good people of Wootton Bassett reply by throwing “symbolic bricks” at the Islamo-fascist protesters, should they actually ever march down that town’s streets. Just symbolic bricks of course, made of sponge cake… or maybe bricks of good English bacon or Danish butter as I am sure the cheerful chaps of al-Muhajiroun will get the joke… not real bricks, because we do not want any Islamo-fascists to get their brains bashed out by our jolly japes… well, not whilst they are in Britain at least.
But what I would really like to see is for Islam4uk carry out a march carrying symbolic coffins through a street in beautiful downtown Bazarak in Panjshir Province in Afghanistan. Just about everyone there is a muslim, so what could possibly go wrong, eh? Go on, guys, give it a try.
Yet another intellectual gem from a senior member of the Church of England:
The Rt Rev Stephen Venner called for a more sympathetic approach to the Islamic fundamentalists. The Church of England’s Bishop to the Forces said it would be harder to reach a peaceful solution to the war if the insurgents were portrayed too negatively. […] “We’ve been too simplistic in our attitude towards the Taliban,” said Bishop Venner, who was recently commissioned in his new role by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
“There’s a large number of things that the Taliban say and stand for which none of us in the West could approve, but simply to say therefore that everything they do is bad is not helping the situation. The Taliban can perhaps be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to each other.”
Could not the same have been said about the formidable soldiers of the Waffen SS? But how is ‘conviction’ and ‘loyalty’ in the service of evil somehow admirable? And how is noting this quality in an enemy going to “help the situation”? And what if the nature of the enemy simply precludes any possibility of a “peaceful solution”? This is the Taliban we are talking about.
Well in a way he is right I suppose… we should note that they are loyal to their faith and to each other, and understanding this, it should be understood that no accommodation can possibly be reached with fundamentalists, be they Nazi ones or Islamofascist ones. They need to be confronted, culturally, politically and when needed, militarily when they wander “off the reservation”… precisely because of their “conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to each other”.
Getting that set in people’s minds would indeed “help the situation”.
Just in time for the Season of Festive Cheer, The Times (of London) reminds us all again of what is likely to be the biggest foreign policy issue for the next few years. There appears little likelihood that a future possible Conservative administration will have much of an idea of what to do about it, and of course we have a Nobel Prizewinning Chicago-machine politician in the White House. Not an encouraging state of affairs.
According to Peter Hitchens:
The Atheists must reject Christianity as well as Islam. Alas, for them, Islam responds to their rejection by ignoring them, whereas Christianity tends to retreat before them. And a weakened church laces a vacuum into which Islam can move. Result? The growing power of Islam in our society, our culture, our government, our political parties and our schools, so that an essentially Atheist state pays increasing obeisance to Islam. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the new Atheists, by attacking Christianity, are simply clearing a space for Islam to establish itself in the space they have swept and garnished.
Discuss.
The result is in: the Swiss public has voted in favour of a proposition prohibiting the construction of any new minarets in their country. Note: this is not a ban on Islam or even the construction of mosques, just minarets.
Aside from all the obvious reprecussions (which are not hard to predict), it does occur to me that this raises an interesting and very thorny questions for libertarians because this is not a straightforward case of state repression. In fact, it appears that both the Swiss government and parliament were firmly opposed to the proposition which has been put to the public by referendum following a petition which was endorsed by a sufficient number of Swiss citizens. The Swiss state urged the public to reject the proposition but, having lost, is now forced, reluctantly, to change the constitution to enact the minaret ban into Swiss law. This was ground-up not top-down.
When a government says no to freedom of religious worship, it is easy to mount our high horses and ride forth bearing gleaming swords of indignation. But when a clear majority of the demos say no, well, then it gets rather harder. At least, it does for me.
You may have forgotten this.
I suppose it says something about The Daily Telegraph’s admirable commitment to freedom of speech that it let this comment I paste up below through, or possibly, the laxness of its editors. Following a comment piece about the forthcoming trial of the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, we get this remark, by someone dubbing itself “Lord Barnett”:
The trial will be a farce,held in New York for the benefit of the jews and the media of the World,The people who should be on trial are the Israelis,George Bush senior,Bill Clinton,the Bush Administration and American jews.Nobody is interested in why 9/11 happened,you can also lay the blame at the door of all Western Govenments for doing nothing to stop the holocaust on the Palistinians by Israel.Every American Administration has stood by,watched and helped Israel steal Palistinian land and murder its people, then call them Terrorists when they try to get it back,we have all watched and read about it,what is going on there is an absolute disgrace,lets just have a look at the Middle East today,Saudi Arabia,run by dictators with American backing to keep them in power,well its either that or the mad mullas who would switch the oil tap off,who would you rather have in power?, Its the same with Kuwait,Bahrain,Oman and the rest,but then you have Syria and Iran,the only Arab Nations who are trying to fight America and its dominance in the Middle East,they are called pariahs because they speak out against America,Iran is developing nuclear weapons,just like the Israelis,why should Israel have them but not Iran?, And then yesterday we have Netanyahu saying he is going to build around nine hundred more new homes on stolen Palistinian land,and what does America say to this? “Its Disappointed”, wow,there`s a strong statement that will have the Israelis quaking in their boots,until the West stands up to Israel and America there will never be peace in the World,but i am sure there will be another 9/11.The United Nations is a farce,not one single resolution it has brought against Israel has passed because America has vetoed them,whats the point? Then Independant Inquiries done by jewish people outlining all the crimes that Israel has committed have been dismissed by Israel and America as biased,who is going to stand up to these criminals?.
This character repeats the trope that Israel has “stolen” land from others, that it is a terror state, and that its fear about Iran’s having nuclear weapons is somehow groundless or unfair. This moron presumably is deaf to the fact that from the time of its founding, various Arab powers have been vocal in their desire to crush this relatively tiny state; he – I assume it is a he – is deaf to the fact that Iran is led by a man who is openly in favour of wiping Israel out.
As I said, it is perhaps right for the Telegraph to let people like this rant and rave about the Jews, Israel, blah-blah. It is sometimes salutary to be reminded of the depths of hatred and ignorance that exist in the breasts of those who wish that country and the Jewish people harm. It pays to know that there are enemies out there, if only to encourage continued vigilance.
About the only half-truth admitted by this idiot is the point about Western backing for Saudi Arabia. That remains, in my book, a serious failing of Western foreign policy. The sooner we can reduce our use of oil from that nation – which has financed a good deal of anti-western terrorism – the better.
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