I see that my last two posts have started the internet version of a pub brawl. And I think I should say that the Mike in question is not my son-in-law, in case anyone thinks so.
I have some sympathy with both points of view – and that is what I am getting at. The best characteristics of the English have generally included some sort of tolerance – which should certainly extend as far as tolerating people who don’t like jokes about religion, or have no sense of humour at all.
In fact one of the classic humorous books in the English language is “Diary of a Nobody” – all about a man with no sense of humour. And just to make the point that we all differ in our view of what’s funny, I never found it funny at all. Same thing with “The Office” – it is impossible to parody the jargon-laden crap that goes on in offices.
The real problem to me is that if people are not integrated into society – which is a baleful consequence of the multicultural approach – this causes lasting and dangerous schisms.
The first awful case of this, which we live with today, took place when the British government invited West Indians to come and work on the buses and railways after the war who, expecting a welcome, were greeted by racism. Pretty much the same thing happened when many came from Pakistan and Bangladesh to work in the textile industry.
As a nation we were not tolerant; we were vile. It is the tragedy of my lifetime and our country.
The funny thing is, I predicted what would happen when I was twelve, together with what seemed to me a good solution. That was when I was first told in my prep school about racism. I vividly recall saying that this would be the worst thing that could happen to Britain and then adding “the solution is for all the black people and the white people to make love and have children.”
Well, I have done my best in that respect, and ended up helping to bring up (rather ineptly, I’m afraid) a lot of mixed race children, but it doesn’t seem to have helped enough. My epitaph: “could have done better if he had tried”. But I certainly enjoyed trying.
Drayton
I hope we didn’t wreck any furniture.
Hey Drayton,
Look back just a couple of decades and you’ll see that we were, and still are, integrated in this society.
In fact, the majority of us consider the UK our home.
A lot of 2nd and 3rd generation Muslims don’t even consider themselves as Asians, etc, anymore.
Ask them about their origins and they’ll tell you they’re British.
I remember listening to a talk by Sheikh Hamza Yusuf who said, as long as the laws of a land don’t force you to do something against Islam, such as eating the wrong foods, etc, then it is a requirement, according to Islam, to live by the law of that land.
We did.
And we still do.
But, it seems that it is the attitude of the likes of these two here, who make such comments who forcefully have begun to alienate Muslims generally.
I mention these two here as they seem to be representattive of what’s happening in the west now.
Maybe they don’t even realise what they’re doing, but they’re doing it, nevertheless.
Anyway, it started with a joke and, as you may have seen, I did apologise for missing the joke.
My father once told me a story about when he was here in the 1950s
He said he was out on a Sunday when he suddenly felt extremely hungry, but there were no shops open anywhere.
Through shear desperation he knocked on a door and asked if they had any food.
Keep in mind that at that time, people were more open with each other.
As it happened, this house was occupied by a Jewsih woman and her mother.
My father had no qualms about asking them due to their religion, and they had no qualms about his religion.
Both parties were more than happy and, being Jewish, their food was Kosher, which meant their was no problem for my father with the food either as Halal and Kosher (the strict kosher) means the same thing.
This is what real Islam is about, and real Judaism.
Tolerance and acceptance.
Not only that, but also a desire to live together in peace.
Watch the videos on youtube that I’ve highlighted on your last post comments and you’ll see.
And for the majority of Muslims, and I have no doubt for the majority of Jews also, that is still the case.
UK, US And Israeli State Terrorism
And Western Holocaust Denial
By Gideon Polya
21 December, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Holocaust denial is repugnant because it denies the horrendous suffering of those who died; it adds to the continuing suffering of their surviving, grieving families and descendants; and it threatens repetition of such atrocities because History ignored yields History repeated. Indeed for these reasons denial of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (6 million victims) is illegal in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Israel and Switzerland and the WW1 Armenian Genocide (1.5 million victims) is variously being criminalized in Belgium and France.
There has been much legitimate criticism of the recent Teheran Holocaust Conference because of the suggestion of Holocaust denial implicit in such an event and the attendance of some notorious, right-wing holocaust deniers or revisionists. Yet Holocaust Denial is exactly what racist, lying Western academics, politicians and media have been guilty of in relation to past and present Western-imposed Holocausts in Asian countries, including India.
Thus Western academics, journalists and politicians generally IGNORE the WW2 man-made Bengal Famine in British-ruled India that killed 4 million – it was associated with a 1940s demographic deficit of 10 million, horrendous military and civilian sexual abuse of starving Indian women and girls, and may have been due to a deliberate, cold-blooded British scorched earth policy to discourage Japanese invasion from Burma. This Bengal Holocaust became a Forgotten Holocaust – it has been deleted from most British history books and from general public perception in a continuing process of egregious Holocaust Denial. Yet it was to the WW2 Bengal Famine that the word “Holocaust” was first applied – in 1944 by Jog, N.G. (1944), Churchill’s Blind-Spot: India (New Book Company, Bombay) (see: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/ ).
The West has gone so far as to criminalize Holocaust Denial in relation to the Jewish Holocaust in many Western European countries (arguably a good thing) – but it exhibits entrenched Holocaust Denial in relation to Indian and Asian Holocausts. Thus racist, lying Western Mainstream media ignore the 1.5 billion excess deaths during the brutal British occupation of India, and 18 million excess deaths due to US Asian Wars – and they continue to ignore and deny horrendous Asian excess deaths due to British State Terrorism, US State Terrorism and UK-US-backed Israeli State Terrorism (for a recent analysis entitled “Bush & Blair Holocaust Commission and Denial” see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/11293/42/ ).
Some key Western-complicit “excess death” estimates derived from authoritative sources such as the UN Population Division, UNICEF, WHO and the top medical literature (e.g. see WHO: http://www.who.int/en/ ; UNODC: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/index.html ; UNICEF: http://www.unicef.org/ ; UN Population Division: http://esa.un.org/unpp/ ) are given below
1. Global Muslim Holocaust. The post-1950 global avoidable mortality totals 1.3 billion including 0.6 billion avoidable deaths in the Muslim World – 100 times greater than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (6 million victims) or the contemporaneous but forgotten man-made Bengal Famine in British-ruled India (4 million victims and a 1940s demographic deficit in Bengal of over 10 million). There have been 18 million excess deaths associated with post-1950 US Asian wars; post-1950 excess deaths and undr-5 infant deaths in countries occupied by Israel total 24 million and 17 million, respectively. US-Israeli State terrorism and UK-US State Terrorism come at a terrible human cost – thus, as detailed below, post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories total 3.3 million but in comparison 7,000 Western civilians have been murdered by Muslim-origin non-state terrorists over the last 40 years (including Israelis and making the very arguable assumption of no American or Israeli complicity in 9/11) (see: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/ ).
2. The post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories total 0.3, 0.9 and 2.1 million, respectively – 60% infants, mostly Women and Children and largely due to Occupier violation of the Geneva, Universal Human Rights, Genocide and Rights of the Child Conventions that demand unequivocally that Occupiers keep their Conquered Subjects ALIVE (see: Geneva Conventions: http://www.genevaconventions.org/ ; Geneva Conventions relative to protection of Civilians in time of war: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm ; UN Genocide Convention: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ; UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights: http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html ; UN Rights of the Child Convention: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/k2crc.htm ).
3. Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Genocides – the Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Holocausts. There are about 6 million Palestinian refugees; about 80,000 flee their Homeland each year; about 80% of West Bank Christian Arabs have fled; 3.5 million Occupied Palestinians have been imprisoned by Israel in abusive, illegal and traumatizing conditions for nearly 40 years; 1.5 million Israeli Arabs are subject to racial discrimination including the requirement fro compulsory carriage of race-specifying ID (cf Nazi era Europe). The UN estimates that 2 million Iraqis have fled their Homeland and about 100,000 are fleeing US-occupied Iraq each month. There are about 3.7 million Afghan refugees. Consult UNICEF (see: http://www.unicef.org/ ) and you will discover that roughly 0.5 million under-5 year old infants die each year in these Occupied Territories i.e. 1,300 daily (e.g. on Christmas Day) or one per minute. This is egregious Genocide as defined by the UN Genocide Convention (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ).
US-Israeli State Terrorists (USISTs) and Racist Zionists (RZs) have been obscenely exploiting the horrendous reality of the Jewish Holocaust and have also been actively promoting anti-Arab anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and anti-Asian xenophobia that is now entrenched in the West. As shown by the above statistics, the Racist Zionists (RZs) and the Racist Bush-ites (RBs) – most notably the Racist Religious Right Republican (R4) Bush-ites and the Bush-ites of US lackeys such as the UK and Racist White Australia – are involved in egregious Holocaust Commission AND Holocaust denial.
Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003). He is a Melbourne scientist and writer and is currently editing a completed book on global avoidable mortality (numerous articles on this matter can be found by a simple Google search for “Gideon Polya” and on his websites: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html and http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/).
Drayton – now that fight is over:
What do you think about politics?
Dear Drayton:
Now my head really hurts…can we all kiss and make up so we can get back to playing the sandbox?
Drayton
How about a new subject for us to fight over. Here are some suggestions;
Pork is the new superfood. Discuss.
Should the covering of faces be banned in public as CCTV cameras can’t recognise the villains?
Now that smoking is banned in public places and can no longer mask nasty smells should people be sniffed by trained staff to check for BO before being allowed in?
If God is so great how come he got it so wrong? Or are we just the Beta version of mankind, bugs and all?
A recent study by a German scholar and expert in ancient languages has pointed out what he believes to be a miss-translation of the Koran. If he’s correct how are suicide bombers going to feel when they enter paradise and instead of 72 virgins are presented with a very large bunch of grapes?
Hold on a sec…
Don’t you know I’m Muslim?
We fight to the death.
And I aint dead yet.
But, going onto your points…
“Pork is the new superfood. Discuss.”
Yuck
“Should the covering of faces be banned in public as CCTV cameras can’t recognise the villains?”
Depends who you’re talking about. If you mean hoodies then I agree.
“Now that smoking is banned in public places and can no longer mask nasty smells should people be sniffed by trained staff to check for BO before being allowed in?”
Who will they train, volunteers or forcibly pick people for the job?
“If God is so great how come he got it so wrong? Or are we just the Beta version of mankind, bugs and all?”
God never got it wrong. Human have chosen to manipulate laws for their own benefit.
“A recent study by a German scholar and expert in ancient languages has pointed out what he believes to be a miss-translation of the Koran. If he’s correct how are suicide bombers going to feel when they enter paradise and instead of 72 virgins are presented with a very large bunch of grapes?”
Oh yeah, so if I intepret the torah (I don’t know of any other translations of the bible) will they accept that?
Or will they insist their scholars should know more than I do?
If they truly believe in their religion and their book, they will insist they know better.
And here we have a German ‘scholar’ who knows more than Muslims?
Even more than Muslims whose mother tongue is Arabic, have studied most of their lives, become scholars, and know more English than the English?
German ‘scholar’ = Muppet number 3.
Racism is particularly repugnant because it tries to deny the recipient is completely human. It is worse than hating people because they have a different religion, though I suspect it has a similar source.
It is a very primitive reaction created by a deep seated fear of the different. It is a potent demonstration of the racists’ inadequacies, something they never seem to realise.
It is an attack on a person’s human rights and should be quite properly an offence at law. However the punishment should not be imprisonment or fines but the compulsory attendance at training sessions to bring about an attitude change. No, not brain washing, but a change through understanding.
But in the end it is up to all of us to not let a racist remark pass by without a polite complaint. Only when, like smoking, it becomes socially unacceptable will this awful practice come to an end.
And just to demonstrate my own credentials, I even like some Poms.
John
PS Drayton, I agree absolutely about The Office. I have never found it funny, it makes my skin crawl.
John,
I absolutely agree with you regarding racism.
The unfortunate thing is, in my experience, the people who are racist, don’t usually want to know more in case it changes their minds.
Sounds kinda sick, doesn’t it?
And, there is racism in every culture, without exception, in one way or another.
Now, to more important things…
I have to disagree with you and Drayton about the office — I think it’s exactly the fact that it makes you cringe that makes it funny.
Although I do feel the British version is much better.
But that’s got nothing to do with them and us, but the quality of the show and the actors… just in case it crossed your mind.
Rezbi
This is nothing to do with our previous discussions.
Elsewhere on this blog Michael Leander has pointed out a serious problem with your website. This is what Google says;
“What is the current listing status for http://www.geewhizzmarketing.com/?
Site is listed as suspicious – visiting this web site may harm your computer.
Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 1 time(s) over the past 90 days.
What happened when Google visited this site?
Of the 1 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 1 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 07/16/2008, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 07/16/2008.
Malicious software includes 2 trojan(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 2 new processes on the target machine.
Malicious software is hosted on 1 domain(s), including 61.155.8.0. “
I’m sure that prior to Michael’s message you were not aware of the problem but you have been aware since yesterday as you answered his comments.
I think it’s irresponsible to keep posting to any blog or forum with a link to your site until you have sorted this out as people could be visiting your site unaware of the danger to their own computer.
Mike,
As I also replied before, there is nothing that I can see wrong with my site.
I have several ant-virus/anti-adware/security packages on both my machines and none of them pick up anything suspicious.
Unless you’ve actually had something suspicious downloaded from my site, the only thing I can assume is that google has made a mistake… it does happen.
Also, I don’t know this IP, 61.155.8.0, is from,but it’s not one of mine.
If you can give me something definite, i can check it out further but the fault is not with my site.
In fact, my security softwares actually state ther is nothing suspicious with my site.
You may want to try something different.
I use McAfee, AVG, ad-aware and steganos.
Results of Google diagnostics.
No idea where that came from, but that site actually leads to John Carlton’s site.
It also says on this that there has been no suspicious activies during the previous 90 days.
So, even according to Google, it is clear.
I have never had any problems with my site.
Safe Browsing
Diagnostic page for http://www.geewhizzmarketing.com/
What is the current listing status for http://www.geewhizzmarketing.com/?
Site is listed as suspicious – visiting this web site may harm your computer.
Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 1 time(s) over the past 90 days.
What happened when Google visited this site?
Of the 1 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 1 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 07/16/2008, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 07/16/2008.
Malicious software includes 2 trojan(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 2 new processes on the target machine.
Malicious software is hosted on 1 domain(s), including 61.155.8.0.
Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?
Over the past 90 days, http://www.geewhizzmarketing.com/ did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.
Has this site hosted malware?
No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.
How did this happen?
In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message.
Next steps:
* Return to the previous page.
* If you are the owner of this web site, you can request a review of your site using Google Webmaster Tools. More information about the review process is available in Google’s Webmaster Help Center.
As I’ve also said to Michael, I’ve deleted that particular page, just as a precaution, and I’ll ask John to check out his site in case there’s a problem there.
Warning!
Anyone visiting Rezbi’s site http://geewhizzmarketing.com/ risks getting infected with the JS/Dowloader.Agent virus.
Google indicates “This site may harm your computer.”
My computer got infected by the virus but my anti-virus caught it instantly.
Rezbi should scan and clean his site’s files and plug any security holes.
Anthony
Could you lot stop bitching at each other, if it’s not too much trouble?