Move along people...

I'm a massive fan of Mark Steyn's writing. He's funny and acerbic while still getting his point across. His gross generalisations have to be the best in the business.

How about this line about female genital mutilation?


A few years back, I thought even fainthearted Western liberals might draw the line at “FGM.” After all, it’s a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: Its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, many of us hapless Western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don’t demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest.

The rest of the article can be found here. It's worth a read, even if you disagree with him.

And what happens if Islam does take over? Well for a start, you don't get to look at pictures of attractive women. Here's some examples of what you wouldn't be able to see...

or

or even

Apparently Cheryl Cole is a host of X-Factor in Britain. I had no idea, I'd just seen her photo in English newspapers!

One last thing. I remembered reading this and thought I should include it. It is an absolutely hilarious satire about trying to solve the mystery of the recent attempted bombing in New York. I can recommend it highly enough.

Cheers

Dr Harry

If you only read one opinion article this year...

make it this one....

Greg Sheridan writing in The Australian about Israel and the Palestinian questions.

For me, the key points are this (without looking to remove blame from Israel for things theymight have done).

Why is Israel the only country condemned by the UN and the media for human rights violations?  Fine, if Israel does the wrong thing, have at them.  But then you should also have at everybody else.  Can you really compare a couple of hundred civilian deaths in Gaza (not counting Hamas combatants here) against the 300,000 or more deaths in Sudan?  Why does no-one ever mention the huge numbers of Palestinians killed by other Palestinians?

Why does no-one ever mention the economic failings (massive economic failings) of the Arab states that surround Israel?  Oh no, it´s all the Jew´s fault (most things are apparently).

Why on earth do people who would be put to death in brutal and horrific ways (homosexuals), locked up without trial for indefinite periods (various academics and so-called intellectuals) or subjected to a lifetime of oppression and sujugation (women) think that´s it a great idea to support Islamic fundamentalists (islamo fascists) and the various loony Arab regimes?

Now I´m not going to argue about the truth or otherwise of Israel´s crimes (although I would be happy to), but even if everything that has ever been said about Israel is true, surely the above points are still valid?  Attack Israel for its failings, but make sure you look properly at everyone else´s failings as well.

Read the article, it´s rather excellent.

cheers

Harry

ps, if you read the comments there´s some quite interesting stuff in there.  My favourite - 

Anti Semitism is not only one of Europe's oldest religions, a "faith" consoling many nice people to this day, it has outlived Christianity there. Now the failing Arab states embrace it too. Like other consoling faiths, it can't be destroyed by rational arguments like this essay, I'm sorry to say.

British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow's Train Bombing

As luck may have it, I'm currently reading a novel that features, along the way, aspects of the massive changes that occurred in India after it was split in twain, into what is now Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

Now as I'm sure everyone knows, there was a massive movement of people both ways after partition, and a massive loss of life as Hindus murdered Muslims bound for Pakistan and vice versa. There were riots in the street, mobs going around killing innocents and lots of people generally had a bad time.

However, to imply that India is bigoted against Muslims is too much of a simplification, since the Indians are pretty much bigoted against everyone, including most of their own people. The Sikhs, the Tamils, the Muslims; all the ethnic groups in India have gotten a bad time of it on occasion, not to mention the lower caste groups who've been getting a bad time of it for untold centuries.

What does all this mean? Well when was the last time a group of "untouchables" made their way into the middle of Mumbai and tortured and murdered as many people as they could?

So having said that, a much better writer than me (Mark Steyn) has written an interesting article HERE about the attacks and the response to them.

In an interesting note, a few years ago there was an attack on a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires, of all places, by Muslims.

Something has to change, but the reality is that things never change until the problem is so great that you can't possibly avoid it any longer (think Britain and France pre WW2). What does this mean? Well you'd better start having lots of kids, because there maybe some SERIOUS military confrontations going on in 25 years or so, maybe even earlier.

cheers

Harry