Sam Harris on Real Time with Bill Maher

Sam Harris is possibly my favourite of all the writers promoting reason in favour of religion currently. He is relaxed, composed, very rational and very eloquent. He was also the one to start this so-called “new atheism” movement (though he – fully understandably – tries to avoid the word atheist himself).

Bill Maher plays devil’s advocate a bit here, and dumbs it down a little – I guess that’s showbiz. Still, good to see Sam on air, and Bill’s film Religulous was good.

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Responses to my report on ritual animal slaughter

Responses to my report on ritual animal slaughter have been coming in, slowly.

I’m posting them here as PDFs. You should be able to open the files if you have Adobe Acrobat Reader.

The report was sent out on 7th August 2009.

Response from the FAWC (PDF, 290.07 KB) — Downloaded 41 times

Response from UKIP (PDF, 253.64 KB) — Downloaded 59 times

Response from DEFRA (PDF, 485.18 KB) — Downloaded 38 times

The Conservative Party responded as follows, by e-mail on 9th September:

“Thank you for writing to Mr Herbert enclosing your report on pre-stunning animals.  We have read your report with great interest and will make good use of it as we consider this issue in the future.  Mr Herbert will most likely write to you shortly with a fuller response and our initial thoughts.”

I’m looking forward to the “fuller response” as I still have no idea where the party stands on this issue, but guess it is in the area of appeasement.

Only one who has failed to even acknowledge the report so far: Sadiq Khan MP – my local MP and the principal addressee (the only one who was really obliged to reply!). This, despite the following statement on his website:

“I endeavour to respond promptly to every letter sent to me by my constituents.”

- Sadiq Khan MP

It looks like he’s just not “endeavouring” hard enough. Maybe it’s difficult to “endeavour” when you can’t find an answer – so you just ignore your constituent instead.

Update: Second reply from Conservatives

Letter to NSS Newsline

“Two weeks ago Graham Davis wrote to Newsline suggesting that the NSS might like to focus more on the problem of Islam in the UK (yes, I did say the “problem” of Islam), and on encouraging people to take direct action with their MPs, as I have done. (I recently researched and wrote a 6,000 word report on the legal exemptions granted for ritual animal slaughter without pre-stunning and this has now gone to the government.)

As I read the responses to Graham’s mail (especially that by Dan Bye) I had to remind myself that I was reading a newsletter of the NSS, because the content seemed completely befitting of a Muslim Council of Britain press release instead.

I would like to know what kind of reading these people have done so that they can still take such a rosy view of Islam. Have they, like me, read: The End of Faith by Sam Harris; While Europe Slept by Bruce Bawer; Londonistan by Melanie Phillips; America Alone by Mark Steyn; Surrender by Bruce Bawer; Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi-Ali; and of course, The Qur’an & Hadith themselves?

So, have they done the requisite reading? Or are all of these simply to be dismissed as scare-mongering without even being read (and the Qur’an “not relevant to Islam” as I have even laughably heard)? If they have done this reading I do not understand how they can remain so ignorant and complacent. Islam is underpinned in its texts by instruction to self-segregation, submission and imperialism. Let’s start you off with these quotes. And the trouble is, this intolerant faith is on the rise.

In my opinion the appeasers in our midst are much more of an enemy than the backward religion of Islam itself. They are described perfectly by Pat Condell in this video.

The responses to Graham Davis were full of straw man arguments, full of an appeasing, “useful idiot” mentality and I was quite frankly amazed and saddened to see them in a newsletter of the National Secular Society at all.

Please, contributors, do the requisite reading before writing to Newsline, otherwise just go as far as the Guardian and no further. No, I am not trying to ban anyone (calm down), merely asking that people properly inform themselves before putting pen to paper to start criticising others who have legitimate concerns about the rise and rise within our borders of a totalitarian faith which is categorically intolerant of apostasy, not to mention many other things. Wake up, wise up, and remember what side you’re on: it’s supposed to be the side of reason.”

Christopher Hitchens puts a leftie in his place

Some of the most cowardly (or just plain ignorant) people in the whole of the civilised world have to be those who act as apologists for the backward faith of Islam. Many of these appeasers then have the gall to call themselves “humanists” and try to claim the moral high-ground – even while betraying the freedom they are so lucky to enjoy. It’s therefore nice to hear one being put firmly in his place by the ever-eloquent Christopher Hitchens. He really gets into his stride here in the closing minute.

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Harry Enfield: Saw you coming

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The mandates of Islam

After listening to the news for a while, in any country of the world, it eventually becomes obvious that, while not all Muslims are terrorists, most terrorists are Muslim. One is then naturally led to wonder whether there are any dictates intrinsic to this faith, mandating violence or hostility to unbelievers. Or is it really a religion of peace, as “moderate” Muslims and liberals would have us believe?

This is an important question. Well, the Qur’an is the sacred book of Islam. Sure, there might be the odd slip-up every now and then. Maybe something could be misinterpreted.

But 500 times? All our answers to this question, and all our reasons for concern, are to be found in this hate-filled book, this guide for Muslims the world over. It cannot be argued with: it must be abandoned, as all religious texts must be abandoned, if civilisation is to proceed as the Enlightmentment thinkers hoped and thought it would, and if there is to ever be any chance of human harmony.

Bel Mooney gives women a bad name

Writing in the Daily Mail today about virtues of crying, divorcee journalist Bel Mooney says:

“What’s more, any woman worth her salt (sorry!) knows that from time to time a few sad sniffs (or even the downturn of a mouth) will do wonders in bending a man to your will.”

I had to read this again to be sure I’d got it right. This is called manipulation, or emotional blackmail, and it’s nothing to be proud of or to be encouraged. It’s hardly good for relationships – yet this woman is supposed to be offering relationship advice for the paper.

She adds:

“Most men will do anything to appease, anything for a peaceful life.”

Just another reason to take advantage of them, then? This writing would be roundly condemned as sexist if it was the other way around. But nothing will be done, because this is a society (even the Daily Mail included, it seems) firmly in the grip of political correctness.

Ms/Mrs, whatever, Mooney also seems a bit mixed up as she describes herself later as being a “sixties feminist” who now argues for traditional roles in the family unit. Well, she got the last bit right, but with this kind of writing I don’t think the Daily Mail should be in a hurry to renew her contract…

The direction of civilisation

I sat there in McDonald’s observing the Somalies in there, with their obligatory cluster of children. McDonald’s is by no means the cheapest option for food, but hey, I guess if you’ve got the money. I reflected that my over-arching concern in all these articles, including all those about religion, is that I don’t want to see civilisation go into reverse. I couldn’t care less about skin colour, but I care about culture, and I want to see civilsation moving forwards, not backwards.

That’s why I don’t like rings and studs in the faces of indigenous people (“playing” at being savages, glorifying, really, those backward cultures), people barging others off the pavements, swearing in front of children, excessive drinking, mind-washing children with religion. I don’t like any of those things, because they represent civilisation moving backwards, not forwards. It just so happens that religion is particularly stultifying, and it is culturally suicidal for a homogenous society to encourage a different, more backward one to come and dilute it, as the UK is currently doing.

I wandered home – side-steping the other foreigners illegally cycling down the pavement into my path – and reflected on the fact that, according to the papers, 25% of government expenditure now goes on benefits. That’s right – a full quarter. I thought, no wonder they are queuing up at Calais to come over here. I remembered an immigrant advising an American national on a train that all she had to do was lie low for a while then she could start collecting all kinds of benefits (something she had no intention of doing). I wondered whether that figure will soon reach 50%. Why shouldn’t it go up from there? Perhaps we could eventually have 75% of government expenditure going to support dependents, many of them not even English, and just waiting for the day Islam, the religion of their culture, takes over.

I don’t think the remaining tax payers will stand for that, stand for what Labour has done to the country and to the individual’s sense of duty and self-sufficiency. Something will break before then.

Musing on feminism

Listening to the smug tones of Jenni Murray this morning on Woman’s Hour (there isn’t a Man’s Hour – perish the thought!) made me think a little about feminism. I wondered what people like Murray make of the fact that some women admit to enjoying sex with strangers (I guess this is okay because they’re “empowered”), some string men along on dates, taking them for all their money and giving them nothing in return (this is “their right” I guess – like everything else) and others are in the porn or escort business not because they need to be but because they are simply exploiting their best assets (granted to them through sheer chance, by the way) to make as much money as they can from sad and lonely men.

I wondered about these things because these are the kind of points that are taboo in the world of feminism – the unmentionables. You see, we must never forget that women can do no wrong, are the perpetual victims, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

If feminists had a little more respect for the family unit instead of “empowerment”, and a little less paranoia that ordinary men are out to subjugate them, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now. Worst of all, feminists are the enemy of other, normal women, who haven’t got these hang-ups and just want to love a man and have him love them in return without being told all the time that they are supposed to be on the war-path. We’ve got a few unusual women (often victims of sex abuse or other misfortunes) to thank for skewing the outlook of generations of women who followed them.

Yes, things were a little too far the other way before, but now they’ve gone too far in the other direction (this always seems to happen). Feminists: calm down. Stop the campaigning and just take it easy. Find some other bandwagon: not everybody is out to get you. Since there is little sense behind your movement, maybe I can appeal to your liking of fads: feminism is so yesterday….

• How I love the moment in Jerry Maguire when the character Dorothy is at her feminists’ meeting and they are all silenced – refuted – by the sight of true, undeniable, romance.
• It’s interesting to observe how feminists tend to be silent on the topic of Islam (as Pat Condell brilliantly noted), when its men really are out to subjugate them. This is because they experience a conflict of politically correct directives, resulting in inaction.

Pre-stunning of animals at slaughter in the UK: Government inaction

I have researched and written a 6,000 word report which should be landing on the desks of the following people today:

• Sadiq Khan MP – Member for Tooting ← Took six months to reply
• Hilary Benn MP – Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs
• Nigel Farage MEP – Leader, United Kingdom Independence Party
• Nick Herbert MP – Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs
• Professor Christopher Wathes – Chairman, Farm Animal Welfare Council

Its subject is blatant government appeasement on animal cruelty in order to satisfy religious groups in the UK, since 1985. I have requested that my local MP, Sadiq Khan, raise the issue in parliament on my behalf at the soonest opportunity.

In short: the government has failed to ban slaughter without pre-stunning in the UK, despite being repeatedly advised to do so by its own appointed experts, the FAWC. Instead it allows two laws in the land: one for Jews and Muslims and another for the rest of us.

The report is carefully researched, comprehensive – and damning. It is copyrighted to me – if you’d like to print or distribute it please contact me first:

Pre-stunning of animals at slaughter in the UK: Government inaction (PDF, 118.46 KB) — Downloaded 467 times

Cover letter to Sadiq Khan MP (PDF, 20.72 KB) — Downloaded 96 times

You might like to pressure your MP on this issue too. You don’t have the right to complain if you don’t do anything about it. Let’s begin fighting back against the constant tide of government appeasement. Let’s make them act.

Update: I have received responses to my report.

Great quotation

“Those who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Benjamin Franklin, 1755

Labour MP foresees Muslim Prime Minister of UK

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Malik himself had to resign due to his part in the MPs’ expenses scandal. There are plenty more Muslims to replace him, as Colonel Gaddafi noted:

“We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe – without swords, without guns, without conquests. The 50 million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.”

- Colonel Gaddafi

Petition to make religious indoctrination illegal

The drumming of religion into a child’s mind, including threats of hellfire, has been called “child abuse” by Richard Dawkins, and rightly so. Children should be free to choose for themselves without having their minds conditioned, almost beyond any hope, beforehand.

I had already decided I would be preparing a report on this topic to take to my MP (a Muslim), when I found this petition, requesting that religious indoctrination be made a crime.

I believe the petition site was merely set up by the government to placate the masses and offer a false sense of “empowerment”. They always give a mealy-mouthed politically correct reply which just makes you loathe them even more. Still, we all might as well sign this – there’s nothing to lose, and we’ll just vote them out as soon as possible anyway…

Nice quotation

“In practice, a “woman’s right to choose” turns out to mean the right to choose not to have any women.”

- Mark Steyn, Killing Her Softly

Steyn’s comment in this context is about the preference for having boys over girls (sexism), but it could equally be applied (and he would apply it) to the decision made by many women to work, drink and party up until their later 30s, fashionably disparaging the idea of the family unit.

These women are going to have a very rude awakening, because, meanwhile, some are reproducing in very high numbers. When these numbers grow sufficiently, the new laws of the land are unlikely to respect the “liberated” views of our feminist friends. It’ll be time for them to rejoin the real world, and it will not be a world they’ll like.

Capitalising on ancestors

My theme here is again an aspect of the political correctness that is weakening society. In these days of constant claims of rights (and little sense of duty), people would do well to remember the following:

We have no right to claim special benefits for ills that begot our ancestors, any more than we have the right to take credit for things they did.

I, for example, don’t even know who my ancestors were, and quite frankly it doesn’t matter. It would be of moderate interest, but that is all. We are all new people.

This is something that is very, very commonly misunderstood in society.

Many people seem to think that because they happen to be from a race or group that may have faced hardship in the past, then they have “credit in the bank” in the present. Possibly, if we are talking about the same individuals. Otherwise no. Everybody should be treated as a new individual who must make their own way in the world, through equal opportunities and their own hard work. Note that – equal opportunities. That does not include practices such as “positive discrimination”, because this is as bad as its opposite.

“Countries” are making abject apologies for things they did in the past. For example not long ago there was talk of “Britain” apologising for its part in the slave trade. Well, actually, many black people sold slaves on to whites, so played an active part in the trade, but anyway this apology is misplaced. Are we supposed to trawl back through the ages as a nation and apologise for all of the wrongs “we” committed?

“We” didn’t even commit them. Is Germany supposed to remain forever wracked with guilt over the rise of the Nazis? The modern day German is no more likely to be Nazi than anybody else. In fact possibly less so: perhaps as a result of this enduring national guilt, this ball and chain around them, Germany has a remarkable record of political correctness and appeasement when it comes to Islam – a totalitarian religion. Yet, of course, the Germans of today had nothing to do with the rise of the Nazis or their crimes.

People are getting carried away with their sense of being aggrieved, even when the purported crimes didn’t even happen to them. They might be 3 or 4 generations back. It’s too much of a “free meal ticket”. This common pre-occupation with “roots” is in my view something of an insult to adopted countries. The fact that you come from a particular race doesn’t mean anything. In fact, it is racist and self-segregating to keep talking about it ad nauseum. Kind of like homosexuals who won’t shut up about it. “Look, nobody cares you’re gay – that’s great, okay – we’ve got the message.”

In the end it is personal responsibility that matters, and this constant leaning on one’s “group” (the revelant ones of whom might be dead now) detracts from this principle. I’m not guilty for any misdemeanours of the British Empire. I wasn’t even alive. I never enslaved people, and I’m not apologising for it. I’m not taking credit for the great achievements of that period either.

“Debts” are repaid. It doesn’t mean we should start repeating attrocities of the past, but nor does it mean others, be it Jews or blacks or anybody else, can exploit them in their own lives now to claim “victimhood”. It doesn’t wash. It’s a harsh message, but it must be said: we’re all new people, and we need to stand on our own two feet.