Dutch court goes insane

Sometimes one feels one is living in Wonderland. The whole world goes topsy-turvy. Those who are supposed to defend freedom actively destroy it. Civilisations willingly commit suicide. Here’s one such moment: Geert Wilders is being prosecuted by his own government for merely exposing what the Qur’an actually says.

Here is what Pat Condell has to say about this.

This rampant, insane political correctness will eventually affect and legislate against you. If you care even remotely about retaining freedom and civilisation in Europe, it’s time to sign this petition.

Not With a Bang But a Whimper

“Liberals … have destroyed the family and any notion of progress or improvement. They have made a world in which the only freedom is self-indulgence, a world from which -most terrible of all- prison can sometimes be a liberation.”

- Theodore Dalrymple, Not With a Bang But a Whimper

The latest book from this astute and erudite observer is high on my reading list. I remember him writing about how, in Britain now, there is actually nothing anyone can do that will stop them being protected by the welfare state. I see the things that concern him going on day in, day out, around me in London. If you don’t, you can at least read the reviews here.

The problem with liberalism, it seems to me, is that it is based on the highly naïve tenet that everybody would be nice and productive and civil, if only they could be/were allowed to be. Criminals are not really bad, they’re just oppressed. It’s not their fault. Nothing is ever their fault. People like Dalrymple counter that not all “oppressed” people turn to crime and laziness and that there are personal standards which we should all maintain and are all capable of maintaining. They argue that liberty consists not only of rights but also of duties to ourselves and others, and that ultimately we are all responsible for our own actions. That’s a novel idea indeed in today’s politically correct society, but an important one.

Qur’an quotation

“O ye who believe! spend of that wherewith We have provided you ere a day come when there will be no trafficking, nor friendship, nor intercession. The disbelievers, they are the wrong-doers.”

- The Cow 2:254

USA-Phobia

We hear a lot about Islamophobia, homophobia, all kinds of phobias. How about USA-phobia? Nope, of course we’re not allowed to talk about that.  In the politically correct world, it is strictly off limits; you’re likely to make yourself a pariah at a party for even bringing it up. Well, Bruce Bawer is talking about it in his book While Europe Slept, which I am enjoying.

My fiancée daren’t even disclose that she is American while in Europe – despite having a liking for Europe (or at least what it used to be) – such is the ignorance, automatic hostility, and in short racism one encounters from the many “limousine liberals” to be found there now. Here is an excerpt from Bawer’s book:

“In 2004, after the story of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad broke, Western European newspapers and TV news programs showed the same three or four pictures day after day for weeks. I was repulsed by the images and appalled that a few uncomprehending fools (at whatever level) had managed to damage the reputation of American servicemen and women; yet I was also disgusted by the cynicism of the European media.

They had correspondents in Iraq who surely saw American soldiers doing good; but they never reported on – or took a picture of – any of it. The American media, though often slighting good news from Iraq, at least run the occasional story that shows the U.S. military in a positive light: for example, on June 19, 2005, the CBS Evening News ended with a report on a Wisconsin soldier who adopted an Iraqi boy with cerebral palsy. I’ve never seen a report anywhere in the European media that portrayed U.S. soldiers so sympathetically, so humanely.

The coverage is consistently, flagrantly unbalanced. For European media consumers, Abu Ghraib is the U.S. presence in Iraq; Guantanamo is the war on terror. Make no mistake: any prisoner abuse is a disgrace to American values. But the fixation of the Western European media on Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib is pure hypocrisy: indifferent to far greater human rights abuses elsewhere in the world, they’ve harped on abuses by America out of sheer malice.”

They demonise America while listening to its music in their headphones and soaking up its films. To the observer this looks all too much like pure, infantile, transparent envy. For all its faults, they don’t know how lucky they are that the USA is still the world’s primary superpower. They don’t know what a luxury they have to be able to complain at all. The sweetest justice for them (and the worst result for all the rest of us) would be for them to have their way: to have America fall to be replaced by a state such as North Korea or China or a totalitarian theocracy such as Iran.

Suffice it to say I am agreeing with Bruce Bawer so far, but you are not likely to see his book mentioned much in the UK, where the arguments he propounds are nothing short of thought-crime. That – the insidious grip of political correctness -  is a dangerous thing for civilisation itself.

iPM revisits Thought for the Day issue

On Saturday iPM revisited the TFTD issue, handling it more competently than the first time. I have commented on their blog page.

The next step

Mark Damazer is refusing to defend his decision to allow Thought for the Day to remain in its current form despite the hundreds of complaints. He still thinks it’s a “difficult” question and has suggested people take their arguments to the BBC Trust. So that is the next thing to do.

Here is the page about how to complain to the BBC.

First of all, you follow the BBC’s “executive complaints procedure” (which in this case will probably go nowhere, despite your being right). You then place an appeal against their decision, and there are details of how to do that on the page I have referenced.

Personally I do not listen to The Today Programme any more. I find it is just too full of religious appeasement and am sick of TFTD coming on just as I am starting my day. In fact I am going off Radio 4 as a whole because of its political correctness. I feel like an old friend is betraying me. They’re not listening to me, so I’m disinclined to listen to them.

But the cause is still worthy, so people, feel free to take this to the BBC Trust and upwards…

Cybersquatting

Not enough is being done about the practice of cybersquatting, or name-jacking, domain squatting – this disreputable practice in all its forms.

I’m making music, under the name Eudaimonia, which is a very important word from Aristotlian ethics. I made an offer on eudaimonia.com which is effectively being squatted on – just $100 to start with. Back came the demand: $25,000 for the domain name. Absurd, of course.

Another case in point: richarddawkins.com. Richard Dawkins must have been very annoyed to find that this domain has been “name-jacked”. The person has put up links to his books at Amazon, in order to gain commission, while at the same time posting an essay critical of him. All under his name – under the search people will use for him, not the name-jacker.

These situations seem to me patently absurd. The legal issues may be complicated, but there must surely be scope for improvement on the current system.

No-Man: Wherever There is Light

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People embracing religion as they become older

This doesn’t always happen. It didn’t happen to Hume or Russell. In fact it doesn’t often seem to happen. A case in point is my father, who is 70 and just as rational as ever. Another is a lady called Deborah Ainger, who sent me one of the most interesting  e-mails I have received of late. She has given me permission to reproduce it here:

“Dear Gavin Orland

Congratulations on your TftD campaign – herewith, for your information, my two-pennyworth contribution to it (see below).

I believe the faith-heads regularly trot out Hitler, Pol Pot and Sadam Hussein as being examples of irreligious monsters – they may not have had a religion, but, as far as I am aware, none of them carried out out their atrocities in the name of their agnosticism/atheism.

As well as citing the opacity of the RCs towards the regimes of the Nazis and of Leopold II, I think I should also have cited RC opacity re the Rwandan genocide. I believe some RC priests were complicit in this in some ways, and that one or more priests sought refuge in Europe where they were protected by the RC church before being ferreted out by investigative journalists.

Just in case you are by any not chance not aware of the sickening activities of King Leopold II of the Belgians (see below) he was a splendid example of a good RC gentleman who, not unsupported by his church, for over thirty years [c. 1880 to c. 1910] vigorously enforced a rapacious régime of the most sickening brutality in the Congo River Basin in order massively to enrich himself with its ivory and rubber – as a distraction from wreaking havoc among his Congolese victims and constructing lavish palaces from the profits of his rapacity, he indulged a voracious appetite for very young girls. Adam Hochschild has superbyly documented this in his outstanding “King Leopold’s Ghost”, ISBN 13: 978-0-330-44198-8 and also 10: 0-330-44198-1 (I am never sure which is the hardback ISBN and which is the paperback, so I have given both).

Another example of sadism is, of course, the Magdalene laundries. And as well all that has been going on in the Catholic church, sadism and the sexual abuse of minors also seems to flourish in extremeist protestant/evangelical/fundamentalist religious communities, the USA providing several examples – nor is ultra-orthodox Judaism exempt (see Sally Feldman’s most interesting article in the Jan/Feb issue of the “New Humanist”, entitled “Days of Atonement” where, towards the end of the section entitled “Even popular . . “, she mentions “. . . . some horrifying incidents of child abuse among four different orthodox communities.”).

In my e-mail to TftD I should have mentioned cruelty to animals. You mention the stoning of animals: I did not know that was done (by Muslims and Jews?), but I am upset by their halal method of slaughter which prohibits advance stunning – from the little I know about this it means that, depsite to Muslim and Jewish protestations to the contrary, the animal definitely suffers.

And the superstitious try to make the non-superstitious feel we have no moral compass!! Where is THEIRS for goodness sake!?

I am thrilled at my advanced years (almost 67) to be able to participate in the great stuff that is currently going on, e.g. writing re TftD and contributing to Ariane Sherine’s wonderful “atheist” bus campaign (which I did as “Merry Militant Moral Pensioner” saying “God doesn’t bother me, but the bigoted bunch of her/his self-appointed phallocratic, misogynistic, homophobic, lying charlatans do! Bus the world!!”) and by subscribing to the “Freethinker” and being a member of the BHA, the National Secular Society and the International Humanist and Ethical Union. These are exciting times for the non-superstitious, who, in no small measure thanks to the wonders of electronic communication, can, perhaps for the first time in history, start to exert some serious pressure worldwide. Long may it last!!

Very best wishes for your TftD campaign.

Regards.

Deborah Ainger”

Regarding the stoning of animals, such instructions are to be found in Exodus and Hebrews and elsewhere in Old Testament. Animals are particularly to be stoned to death if they so much as  touch Mt. Sinai (as if an ox could be expected to know where the mountain begins and ends).

As for letters to the BBC, I’ve seen and read many of them and many really excellent ones – too many to repeat. Here is Deborah’s:

“Dear Today Programme

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

I am writing to complain about Thought for the Day (TftD). Please respond to me yourselves – I will not find a response from the Religion (or, to be accurate, the Superstition) & Ethics Department acceptable. (For the purposes of your Statistics Dept I am a 66-year-old female of pinko-”white” complexion.)

Today is a programme of news items, but TftD is not a news item: when one wishes to listen to moral points of view one listens to other programmes, so there is no logical reason for TftD to be incorporated into Today. Should it not be disposed of it is totally inequitable that listeners should continue to be denied the thoughts of the Non-Superstitious (NS).

What is your rationale for denying listeners the thoughts of the NS? I know from Gavin Orland that you routinely trot out at least six reasons for including TftD in Today and for denying the NS a voice. Your moth-eaten reasons cut no ice, but merely leave me to draw one conclusion: namely that you most likely include TftD and deny the NS because you and the BBC powers-that-be share what appears to be a common prejudice, viz that the NS are deemed to have no valid moral viewpoint on current affairs because they are devoid of morals. This is this deeply insulting. It is also untrue.

Not only are the revered books of the superstitious riddled with accounts of the most staggeringly immoral behaviour in ancient times (documented by, among others, the superb websites of sceptics’ annotated bible and quran), but also the modern and current behaviour of the major superstitious are equally sickening: the denigration and horrific abuse of women (which seems but reluctantly [and rarely] to be condemned by the violently misogynistic, self-appointed emissaries of some imaginary “supreme being”); homophobia; widespread pædophilia (and its cover-up); caste-ism; a barbaric legal code; the criminal denial of human rights (e.g. to reliable contraception); obscurantism (suppressing scientific research past and present); the denial of informed consent (e.g. the genital mutilation of baby boys; the brain-washing of children with non-evidence-based superstition); lying (e.g. creationism; holes in condoms); vicious intolerance (e.g. persecution of “apostates” and of those of other superstitions and none; inter-superstition slaughter [e.g. sunnis vs shias; hindus vs muslims]); decidedly opaque stands vis à vis vile regimes (e.g. of the Nazis; of Leopold II of the Belgians).

When have the NS ever advocated such grossly immoral behaviour, let alone behaved in such sickening ways? And the superstitious try to make out that the NS lack a “moral compass”!! This is remarkable: haven’t they given their past and current behaviour even the most cursory overview?

The NS try to make the most of their (one) life and to enjoy and marvel at the wonders with which evolution has graced this peculiar little planet. We govern our lives by tolerance, rational argument and evidence-based facts. We do not have to resort to the triumphalism of the superstitious who, knowing that they cannot do so by reason, are only able to get people to believe that their brand of superstition is the uniquely acceptable one by brain-washing childrernwith lies and by subsequently tightening the brand grip by obsessively ranting on about the evils of the other brands and by warfare, bombs (suicide and other) and murder.

It is good to know that the BBC has decided to invite Ariane Sherine (the wonderful instigator of the “atheist bus”) to make a presentation on Radio 4’s iPM programme tomorrow (10/01/09). Thank heavens for that – not a moment too soon to have a NS speaker. But what about TftD?

Is it planned to retain TftD in Today? I sincerely hope not, but if it is, will the thoughts of NS commentators be incorporated? If they are incorporated, will they be given the same percentage of air-time as is currently allocated to the major superstitions?

I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you.

Yours sincerely

Deborah Ainger”

I wonder if Deborah will receive a reply to her e-mail. Many have not.

In case anyone thinks this was a “co-ordinated attack” of anything of that kind, it was not intended to be. As someone else said well recently, non-believers do not have a “pope” or “archbishop”. We don’t have anyone speaking for us, and we were obviously going to continue to be ignored if we kept on speaking out independently. We had to speak en masse to stand any chance of being heard. Well, we’ve spoken now. We’ve yet to see if we have really been heard.

iPM to address TFTD issue again?

There’s still activity on the iPM blog, and I’ve posted the following:

“I’m not sure where Rupert’s message is re-posted from, but it’s quite reassuring to see. I hope some of the most cogent arguments will be selected from this blog to be put to Mr Damazer, because I am mystified as to how he could possibly defend his position in the face of them. Even many religious people feel he is trying to defend the indefensible.

This is an important issue: we are talking about removing superstitious sermons from Britain’s leading radio news programme. Or, at least, admitting that contributions from non-religious moral philosophers have at least as much value – admitting that by airing them.

That all this needs to be argued around 250 years after the Enlightenment is sad indeed, but credit to those journalists who usher in change, especially if they feel it means risking their own jobs.

The BBC has been getting itself into a lot of trouble over its apparent favouring of religion recently. See for example its misrepresentation of the views of Dorothy Rowe and the recent news that it spends more than £10m per year on religious programming. Yes, there is non-religious comment – but how much is explicitly secular and humanist? Very little – nearly none – it seems.

It is obvious that the people have spoken loudly about this. Senior executives do not have the right to force their own religious convictions on others via the media, if that is what is happening. Now is the BBC’s chance to correct matters and show that it does respect rational listeners. So I look forward to hearing what is said.”

More media mentions of TFTD issue

The Guardian ran an article about the “Thought for the Afternoon” broadcast by Ariane Sherine and misreported there that I “set up a Facebook page last month to press the BBC to open Thought for the Day to humanist contributors”. In fact I hardly ever look at Facebook these days. Anyway, at least the issue is getting exposure!

My favourite alternative TFTD so far has been by Graham Davis, on the iPM blog. He emphasises the point of the slot, which is to add a moral/ethical context to current events, before offering the following piece:

“The tragedy of Gaza demonstrates yet again what happens when human beings regard each other as part of a group, be it religious, ethnic or political, rather than as individuals. It all too easy for Hamas to demonise all Israelis and to justify the firing of rockets into their midst or for the Israelis to punish the defenceless population of Gaza for having elected Hamas.

The historic reasons for this conflict stretch back to the power politics of the inter-war years long before the formation of the State of Israel in 1948, with so many twists and turns that it is all but impossible to find a solution that satisfies the aspirations of both sides.

In a recent Thought for the Day Angela Tilby drew an analogy between this dispute and that of family arguments that many of us have experienced. Both the Israeli Jews and the Palestinian Moslems share a common Abrahamic lineage and like families they know each other only too well. She hoped that this shared heritage might eventually lead to reconciliation.

A less hopeful prospect is that the two religions having diverged from that common origin now see each other solely as rivals, Moslems and Jews, rather than as fellow human beings. That common ancestry has resulted in each making an exclusive claim to the land that they both share.

Humankind has the ability to do wonderful thinks, to invent and create, to nurture and protect, to manage the present and plan for the future. Our intelligence can make that future better for our own offspring and generations that will follow us but only do if we respect our fellow human beings.

This is the simple philosophy of the humanistic tradition. It requires no deity and no scripture; it obliges each one of us to consider the needs of those not just close to us, but of all humanity. We place our trust in our fellow human beings, whatever their race, age or gender, because we know deep down that they are all like us. In the Merchant of Venice Shylock utters that immortal phrase “If you prick us do we not bleed??” As is so often the case, Shakespeare expressed a truth about the human condition that we would do well to remember, especially when we see the blood spilled in the slums of Khan Younis or in the settlements of Beersheba.”

There’s an article on Adfero too, and two more on politics.co.uk. The latter article says I “persuaded” people to support me in e-mailing the BBC. Hardly – I merely gave the effort some focus. Dozens of people have e-mailed me to say how infuriated they have been by TFTD for many years – they had just virtually given up hope of ever having their views taken into account. The BBC is being extremely obstinate, it is true – but hope remains.

Independent article on TFTD

It’s good to see this topic is not going away. The Independent is now running an article about it – again in support of free-thinking contributions.

OMD: Universal

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iPM blog continues

The coverage of the TFTD issue may have been inadequate (perhaps their hands were just too tied) but at least the iPM blog is still open, and I’ve just made this comment. Let’s see if it gets through.

“Hi everyone,

Such good comments here, especially from gcdavis and pdw709. I liked the latter’s complaint about iPM and thought the potential TFTD was excellent. (However I also thought Richard Dawkins’ was good.)

I have been commenting on developments on my own site, and with Jonathan Bartley’s article as well, the Religious dept. is looking like some kind of mafia that does not have any good arguments so instead uses threats to silence and control people. Is this acceptable? I hardly think so.

Perhaps we need some more whistle-blowers on this from inside the BBC to explain what on earth is going on? At the very least we need some acknowledgment of the arguments that have been put to Mr Damazer.

Gavin Orland”

An inside view of Thought for the Day

People are alerting me to articles about Thought for the Day and I appreciate that, because sometimes I miss them. Christian Jonathan Bartley has written a very interesting one from something of an insider perspective.

The BBC Religion department (I will refrain from using their indefensible conflation “Religion & Ethics”) is fast coming into focus as a frightened, insecure bully – one who has no valid arguments but who still insists on having things their way. We’re hearing of coded threats being issued to presenters if they even dare to publicly question the status quo. If they do, they find they lose their public voice altogether.

Well, it’s no wonder the Religious department are insecure since they occupy the losing position, but – as such – isn’t it about time they lost? What is this stranglehold they have over the BBC controllers? Why is an unsupportable situation still being supported? Does it all come from Catholic Director General Mark Thompson? Is the church funding the BBC? It’s a mystery which some more party to the facts might care to explain…

Telegraph takes up TFTD issue

Damian Thompson, editor of a Catholic newspaper, has written an article on Thought for the Day in The Telegraph. It’s generally right, I think, and pretty hard hitting. He has easy pickings when he criticises the last three TFTDs, which were Muslim, Christian (Church of England) and Jewish – one can’t help but wonder whether he would have been so critical of a Catholic. But it is interesting to see that TFTD has so few fans, either religious or non-religious.

The Telegraph has another article too – which rather conflates the two campaigns (ABC and TFTD) – but it’s certainly good to see these issues getting coverage. I hope Mark Damazer soon shows some signs of having read the arguments that have been put to him. That would at least be a start.

The problems with TFTD, as I perceive them, are detailed in my letter.