In defence of burning books

So a gun-toting yeehah Southern-fried man of God in the good ole U S of A is going to hold a Koran-burning ceremony.

Not particularly respectful or in good taste, I'm sure you'd agree. Downright offensive to Muslims, one might think. Possibly inflammatory, in fact.

Lots of people are getting very upset about that prospect, and everyone from Hillary Clinton to newspapers in the Arab world have called for the event to be cancelled.

While some people have expressed their distaste for the offence offered to Islam, most are more concerned about the possible ramifications of this activity. They have raised the spectre of the riots across the Muslim world that followed the publication of the Danish Mohammed cartoons being repeated.

Amid all of this, almost no one has pointed out that burning books in itself is distasteful and ignorant and achieves nothing in real terms. The knowledge contained therein does not die, just the dignity of the arsonists.

But while Pastor Jones is undoubtedly a fool, he has one valid point to make. Why should the West continue to tiptoe around the psychosis of radical Islam for fear of offending people who are, at the very least, as idiotic and backward as the Pastor himself?

"Instead of us backing down, maybe it's time to stand up. Maybe it's time to send a message to radical Islam that we will not tolerate their behaviour," he told Associated Press.

It seems to me that the reason he shouldn't burn the Korans is because burning books is an act of profound ignorance. But he should not be prevented from doing so for fear of offending Medieval lunatics like the Taliban, the mass murderers of Al Qaeda or the Wahhabist psychotics running Saudi.

If Islam is truly a religion of tolerance, then its adherents will see this act for what it is - attention-seeking by a retard - and ignore it.

If however, Islam is dominated by those keen to seek out offence, quick to anger, ready to riot at the perception of a slight, and prepared to refute the pluralism and tolerance that permits their freedom of religion in the West, then they will indeed set fire to their own towns, protest at embassies and issue fatwahs demanding Pastor Jones' head on a spike.

And if that does occur, then Pastor Jones will have succeeded in a very real way in exposing the hypocrisy at the heart of Islam - a creed that demands to be tolerated where it has no rule but tolerates no plurality where it rules.

Let us not forget that a woman accused of adultery still faces death by stoning in Iran. Let us not forget the oppression offered by the Talibanin Afghanistan. Let us not forget that there is no freedom of religion in many Muslim-dominated countries.

It's time for Islam to grow up, and they can demonstrate that maturity by ignoring Pastor Jones' little stunt.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme Middle East policy

The overtly, embarrassingly pro-Israel Democratic party candidate is dead.

Long live, erm, the other embarrassingly pro-Israel Democratic party candidate?

No sooner has Zion's biggest fan, Clinton II, finally fallen as a candidate for POTUS, than the actual candidate-elect, a black sunnovaMuslim, goes and offers Israel a united Jerusalem as their capital.

Now, for those whose eyes glaze over at the mere thought of the mess that is the Middle East, I'll keep this microscopically brief:

East Jerusalem has been Arab, both Christian and Muslim flavours, for well over a thousand years. Israel conquered it in 1967 and won't give it back even though the whole world keeps telling them too, even America.

Instead, they built a ruddy big wall around it and are building a ring of settlements around East Jerusalem and kicking out the Arab residents of the city with a combination of eviction orders, refusals to permit sales to Arabs or permitting sales only to Jews, and the splitting of families by the wall.

And yup, that is the shortest I could make that.

Anyhow, those Palestinians look like continuing to roll ones in the craps game of life. No matter who was going to win the Democratic nomination, even the black sorta Muslim guy, is overtly, embarrassingly pro-Israel.

It's some state of affairs for Palestinians to know that the best they can hope for in the next half-decade is for a McCain presidency.

But hey, on the plus side for the good guys, a Sandinista got elected next UN general assembly president.

Yay.

The American presidential election digested

From the inimitable Fred Reed comes the most succinct summary of the choice America faces in the forthcoming months about which leader to choose:

We’ve got Obama, an empty suit with a good line of patter and a past few write about, and McCain, a pugnacious senile temper tantrum who can’t remember whether Al Qaeda is Sunni or Shiite.
Not too promising.
That leaves Clitler, a strange visitor from another planet probably and crooked as kite string in a ceiling fan, but neither stupid, ignorant, nor crazy.

Needless to say, he's a Hilary supporter by default. Though given he resides in Mexico, she's unlikely to benefit from his vote.

He's pretty good on current and former presidents too:

Bill Clinton was said to be the first black president. W is the first kinky president, which is a whole new approach to democracy.
All sorts of countries torture people, because intelligence agencies naturally attract cowboys, assassins, incorrigible juveniles, and sadists.
But W’s S&M operation in Gitmo is a first. Whipseys and Cheneys. It’s because he’s a Christian. Poor Jesus.
His followers act like the Marquis de Sade—torturing, burning old women at the stake, turning water into water boards. I’d love to know what movies you might find on hard drives at the White House.

There you have it - the five minute lesson in US presidents past, present and future. Perhaps they should lure Fred back across the Rio Grande and stick him in the White House. Not that he'd do it, of course. He knows Washington too well:

Washington is a curious city, separated from most of the rest of the United States by a gaping cultural chasm. It is probably the nation’s best educated town, and it is certainly a place where people know the score.
The population consists of politicians, reporters, beltway bandits attached to Uncle Sucker’s well-worn mammaries, wonks from policy shops, or outfits supplying all of them with one thing or another.
In a country that doesn’t, they travel.
It doesn’t make them better people than others. It means that they know it’s all a game, a matter of whose rice bowl gets filled by what contract and who gets re-elected how.
Things are dirty and rigged and one either hides things from the public or misrepresents them to gull the rubes. This of course is no secret. It doesn’t have to be. It works anyway.

But if Fred was, somehow, to assume the reins of power, he does have a plan, a single idea to put an end to the war in Iraq. I like his plan. It's neat, and it just might work:

I will strap the mothers of the graduating class of Harvard to the front bumpers of Humvees in Baghdad, and see how long support for the war lasts.

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Super Tuesday

It's a little shocking to my ears, having spent my childhood in the bosom of the British NHS, to listen to how Americans are responding to Hilary Clinton's plan for universal health entitlements.

She's been roundly lambasted by the Republicans for her 'Hilaryaid' proposals, which sound nothing more than the mildest, weakest version of what most Western Europeans would consider a fundamental human right.

While Barack continues to witter pointlessly about bringing 'change', without ever specifying what change he's bringing (loose change, perhaps?), at least La Clinton has put an actual concrete proposal on the table for discussion.

And to me, that discussion has been frightening.

If you were to listen to Mitt Romney or Huckabee, you'd think that she was proposing Communist totalitarianism. The idea of any form of universal state supported health care is anathema to these people. And their millions of supporters.

Those views, abhorrent as they are to most people on this side of the pond, are not unknown here, however. You could map our current Health Minister's agenda almost exactly over what Republicans believe is a functioning health system - ie a multi-tier affair based on ability to pay rather than need, bloated with inefficient beaurocracy and outrageously expensive due to rampant litigation against medics, the aforementioned paper-pushing and the need to generate profits for private entities.

There's something to think about, not only on Super Tuesday, but the next time you hear Harney trying to sell you some snake oil about 'co-location'.