Prince Charles convert of Islam?

I was reading an article about Prince Charles visit to Turkey and I was struck by his timeless fascination with Islam.  The article can be found here.

After reading this article I decided to search about Prince Charles interest in Islam and found an interesting article which I don’t know to make of.  Has to be absurd conspiracy surely.  Anyway,  you can make up your own mind.  Sure is an extreme article…

Prince Charles: The Constantine of Islam?

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By Ali Sina 

2005/11/03

When Constantine began his rule, only 5% of the Western Roman Empire was Christian. He came to power at the age of 24 and did not baptize until he was in his fifties and close to his death. Technically, he did not force his subjects to convert, but he gradually introduced Christianity and changed the laws making it harder to practice paganism. 

He increased taxes for the pagans while exonerated the churches and the Christians priests from paying them. He granted lands and built many Christian churches. He gave Christian bishops the authority of judges – against whom there would be no appeal. He imposed moral codes by creating severe penalties against adultery, concubinage and prostitution. For a variety of other crimes, people were to have their eyes gouged out or their legs maimed. In keeping with Paul’s instructions that slaves should “obey their masters with fear and trembling” [Eph 6:5], he passed a law allowing masters to beat their slaves to death. He allowed infants born to slaves to be sold and allowed slaves who were caught seeking refuge among “barbarians” to have a foot amputated. Slaves in the public services caught attempting to leave town were to be beaten. With the agreement of bishops, slaves who sought refuge in Christian churches were to be returned to their masters. 

Constantine did not abolish democracy, but introduced policies that made the Senate even more ineffective. Cities continued electing their officials but under him municipal governments declined. He revived the secret police, which was notorious for its reputation.

These changes were gradual. They destabilized the democratic system and inaugurated an era of despotism which ushered Europe into obscurantism that lasted over a millennium. The Church received governmental grants to build orphanages, hospitals, inns for travelers, and it founded old age homes, all of which helped increase Christianity’s prestige and popularity. Constantine was gullible and the priests used him to advance their cause. ¹

Is Prince Charles being groomed to become the Constantine of Islam in England?

Prince Charles has come to America for an eight-day tour. His mission is to persuade W. Bush and the Americans of “the merits of Islam”. He has voiced private concerns over America’s “confrontational” approach to Muslim countries and its failure to appreciate “Islam’s strengths”. He thinks United States has been too intolerant of the religion. 

What is behind this interest in Islam? Why would the Prince of Wales become an ambassador of this Arabian religion? 

In a 1997 Middle East Quarterly article titled “Prince Charles of Arabia,” Ronni L. Gordon and David M. Stillman looked at evidence that Britain’s Prince Charles might be a secret convert to Islam.

This claim was put forward by no less a personage than the grand mufti of Cyprus: “Did you know that Prince Charles has converted to Islam. Yes, yes. He is a Muslim. I can’t say more. But it happened in Turkey. Oh, yes, he converted all right. When you get home check on how often he travels to Turkey. You’ll find that your future king is a Muslim.”

The Prince has not made any announcements about his conversion.  But he is no stranger to surprises. After all, didn’t he surprise everyone with his confession to adultery when he was still married to Princess Diana?

Charles has made several strong and disturbing public statements endorsing Islam “as the solution to the spiritual and cultural ills of Britain and the West”. When Ayatollah Khomeini issued the fatwa against Salman Rushdie for lampooning Muhammad in his novel Satanic Verses, rather than defend Rushdie’s right to free speech, Charles reacted to the death decree by reflecting on the positive features that Islam has to offer the spiritually empty lives of his countrymen.

His views on Islamic terrorism are similar to those expressed by the apologists of Islam. He believes that Islam has been hijacked by the extremists. In a major address on Islam on October 27, 1993, at the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford where he is a vice patron of the Centre for Islamic Studies, Charles declared:

“Our judgment of Islam has been grossly distorted by taking the extremes to the norm. . . . For example, people in this country frequently argue that the Sharia law of the Islamic world is cruel, barbaric and unjust. Our newspapers, above all, love to peddle those unthinking prejudices. The truth is, of course, different and always more complex. My own understanding is that extremes, like the cutting off of hands, are rarely practiced. The guiding principle and spirit of Islamic law, taken straight from the Qur’an, should be those of equity and compassion.”

These are the words of an apologist of Islam. They are of course absurd. The Quran calls for cutting the hands of thieves 5.38 and those who wage war against Allah and his messenger 5.33 i.e. anyone who criticizes Islam. If Muslims rarely practice this law it is a credit to them. It shows they are more humane than their prophet. But Charles is defending ISLAM. He is claiming that the guiding principle and spirit of Islamic law is taken straight from the Quran. Cutting the hands is straight from the Quran. What spirit of the Quran is Charles advocating when he brushes under the carpet its clear mandate? Which part of the Quran teaches equity and compassion? No one expects kings to be intellectuals, but shouldn’t they be minimally intelligent?

Charles went as far as to suggest that European women may even find something to envy in the situation of their Muslim sisters:

He said: “Islamic countries like Turkey, Egypt and Syria gave women the vote as early as Europe did its women-and much earlier than in Switzerland! In those countries women have long enjoyed equal pay, and the opportunity to play a full working role in their societies.” 

This is typical Islamic propaganda. Muslims love to compare the worst of the West with the best of Islam and even take credit for what is anti Islamic. If at one stage these countries disregarded Islam, despite of it adopted secular laws and gave women some recognition, why should Islam be credited for that? Isn’t this a non sequitur logical fallacy? Doesn’t the Prince read the history of these nations to learn that women’s status there was gained because the secularists beat the Islamists?  Doesn’t he know that in 1920 the French defeated King Faysal in Syria and it was they who gave women voting power? Doesn’t he know that the emancipation of women in Egypt is owed to a secular reform called Egypt’s Liberal Experiment (1924-1936) that mimicked the European style of government?  Do I have to tell him that Ataturk’s reforms were not Islamic?  How can Islam give voting rights to women, when it does not recognizes democracy? All these reforms failed and all these countries now harbor terrorists. Islam cannot accept modernity. How can the future king of England make comments so uninformed?

Lambasting at the Western civilization and declaring Christianity as inadequate to the task of spiritual restoration, this future head of the Church of England, has declared that “Western civilization has become increasingly acquisitive and exploitive in defiance of our environmental responsibilities.” Instead, he praised the “Islamic revival” of the 1980s and portrayed Islam as Britain’s salvation: 

“Islam can teach us today a way of understanding and living in the world which Christianity itself is poorer for having lost. At the heart of Islam is its preservation of an integral view of the Universe. Islam-like Buddhism and Hinduism-refuses to separate man and nature, religion and science, mind and matter, and has preserved a metaphysical and unified view of ourselves and the world around us. . . . But the West gradually lost this integrated vision of the world with Copernicus and Descartes and the coming of the scientific revolution. A comprehensive philosophy of nature is no longer part of our everyday beliefs.”

It is disturbingly clear that Charles is disdainful of enlightenment and nostalgic of obscurantism. He concluded his speech by suggesting that “there are things for us to learn in this system of belief which I suggest we ignore at our peril.”

Like what? What is it exactly that Muslims have that if the Britons ignore it would be perilous to them? Is the Prince talking about stoning, hand chopping, beheading, public beating, polygamy, dictatorship, misogyny, marriage of little girls, honor killing, patriarchy, human rights abuses and all other ills that are directly inspired by the Quran? In what ways Islam is superior to the Western culture?  Apart from the fact that Islam treats humans like animals and punishes them for thinking independently, in what other ways it unifies man and nature?

If Charles is concerned about the decline of morality in England, shouldn’t he, as the “defender of the Faith” and the head of the Church of England revive Christian values of morality and to begin with, set better personal examples? Doesn’t Christianity prohibit adultery? [Mat.5:29] It is not that Christianity does not have moral and family values. If most Christians have abandoned those values, it is not the fault of Christianity. Why the Britons, or anyone for that matter, need to embrace a barbarian cult such as Islam to become moral when all they have to do is practice their own faith? It is foolish to believe that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and the alien is always superior to the familiar.

Becoming moral is a personal struggle. Whether you are a Muslim, a Christian or an atheist, it is YOU who must strive and become moral. Religions don’t give you a magic pill. If morality is what you want, why can’t you exert to become more moral by becoming a better Christian? Is Christianity against morality? Does Christianity separate Man from Nature? Why one has to embrace a dark faith such as Islam that resembles a cult of terror in order to become moral or discover his unity with nature? The only thing Islam has is FEAR. Islam frightens its followers with the imagery of a dreadful hell. Do we really need that stick to do the right thing and be moral?   

The Prince of Wales knows nothing about Islam. He is ignorant of the bloody history of this cult, its violence, its misogyny, its intolerance, its enmity with science, its antagonism towards intellectuals, its disdain for fine arts, its incompatibility with democracy, and knows nothing about the objectionable character of its founder.

Charles obviously does not subscribe to the draconian Islamic laws. He is relieved that the majority of Islamic countries do not practice Sharia and do not cut the hands of the thieves as prescribed in the Quran. He believes in the “reformed Islam”. Apart from the fact that reformed Islam is only a chimera, a lie created as window-dressing to fool the Westerners and all it means is “less Islam”, the question that begs an answer is: why decry Christianity, which is already reformed and support an alien belief system that cannot be reformed and in its pure state is so inhumane that even the Prince can’t stomach? 

Is the Prince tired of democracy? Does he secretly envy the Islamic system of government where the rulers have absolute power and can even impose morality on their subjects? Or is he completely misinformed? Where Charles gets all these erroneous concepts about Islam? 

Gordon and Stillman reveal that Charles has set up a panel of twelve “wise men” (in fact, eleven men and one woman) to advise him on Islamic religion and culture. The group was reported to have met in secret. Of course no comparable body exists to inform the crown prince about other faiths practiced in his future realm. Has Charles already fallen prey to Islam and is he now practicing kitman? (hide one’s belief) 

The news coming from the royalty is disconcerting. Gordon and Stillman say that Charles has taken steps to give Islam a special status. “Among the many titles borne by the British sovereign is ‘Defender of the Faith,’ a reference to the fact that the monarch heads not only the government but also the Church of England. But the prince has reservations about this title. In a June 1994 television documentary he declared his preference to be known as “Defender of Faith” rather than “Defender of the Faith,” leading to a rash of speculation that he favors the disestablishment of the Church of England.”

It appears that this council of “wise men” has already a plan of action for the future king of England to Islamize the country. Discussing the role of Islam in the United Kingdom, in a speech at the Foreign Office Conference Centre at Wilton Park in Sussex on December 13, 1996, Charles called on Islamic pedagogy and philosophy to help young Britons develop a “healthier view of the world”. Praising Islamic culture in its traditional form for trying to preserve an “integrated, spiritual view of the world in a way we have not seen fit to do in recent generations in the West,” he went on to say:

There is much we can learn from that Islamic world view in this respect. There are many ways in which mutual understanding and appreciation can be built. Perhaps, for instance, we could begin by having more Muslim teachers in British schools, or by encouraging exchanges of teachers. Everywhere in the world people want to learn English. But in the West, in turn, we need to be taught by Islamic teachers how to learn with our hearts, as well as our heads. 

According to the Prince, all that Muslims need to learn from the West is English, while the “spiritually bankrupt” Westerners are in dire need of learning Islamic philosophy and values.

What philosophy? What values? Tell me what Islam has that Christianity doesn’t and I will tell you a million things that the Western culture has that Islam doesn’t. First and foremost is freedom of thought and respect for human dignity. In the West people are people. In Islam they are slaves and like animals their thoughts do not count. If they dare to express a thought contrary to Islam, they will be executed.   

Why like all Muslims you compare the unbelieving decadent ‘Christians’ with the ‘ideal Islam’? Why don’t you compare Christians with Muslims, fundamentalist Christians with fundamentalist Muslims and Christianity with Islam? When you stop this logical fallacy of comparing apples to oranges, you will see that Christianity is a thousand time superior to Islam and Christians are a thousand time better than Muslims. Fundamentalist Christians are just nutcases. All you have to do is ignore them. Fundamentalist Muslims are terrorists. You can’t ignore them. And there is no comparison between Jesus and Muhammad. The former was a super saint, the latter was a thug.

While criticizing the Western civilization Charles added:

During the past three centuries, in the Western world at least, a dangerous division has occurred in the way we perceive the world around us. Science has tried to assume a monopoly ­ even a tyranny ­ over our understanding. Religion and science have become separated, so that now, as Wordsworth said, “Little we see in nature that is ours”. Science has attempted to take over the natural world from God; it has fragmented the cosmos and relegated the sacred to a separate and secondary compartment of our understanding, divorced from practical, day to day existence. ³

Science does not pretend to have answers to all human questions. Science has its own modus operandi and does not concern itself with things that are not verifiable through scientific means. It is not up to science to speculate on supernatural and spirituality. But science per se, is not tyrannical. Scientists may not agree with your views but they will never jail you, torture you or behead you for believing in what they regard scientific heresies. In the midst of the most scientific societies, you are allowed to believe in, and even preach, hocus-pocus and do not have to fear for your life. It is Islam that claims monopoly of the truth, jails its dissidents, tortures them and beheads them. What would befall to a Muslim scientist if he dares to say Jinns are fairytale, Muhammad did not split the moon and Mi’raj (the alleged ascension of Muhammad to heaven riding on a winged horsy) is ridiculous? 

What part of the Quran is scientific? This book is an insult to human intelligence. What has been the contribution of Islam to science? Nothing! Islam has been a hindrance to science. The few scientists who were born in Islamic countries and gave birth to what now Muslims claim to be “Islamic science”, were all apostates and unbelievers. Some of them, like Razi, ridiculed religions and called the prophets, “billy goats” and “charlatans”. The quartets of Khayyam, the great poet/mathematician, is full of ridicules of the Quran and its epistemology. Others, like Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd were denounced as heretics and often were on the move to escape persecution. Whatever these scientists planted with their “heads” was nipped in the bud by true Muslims like Al Ghazali and Rumi who followed their “hearts”. Islam put an end to science and scientific quest. Rather than investigating the causes of the natural phenomena, everything was explained as the “will of God” and the researchers were mocked. What harmony of science and religion Charles sees in Islam? Why he does not enlighten us?   

As is to be expected, Charles has reached a hero status among Muslims.

CAIRO, June 21 (IslamOnline.net) – Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei will award Prince Charles, the heir to the British crown, an international prize for his contribution to understanding Islam in the West during a London ceremony on Thursday, June 24.

The Prince of Wales was unanimously chosen by an international jury set up by the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS) for his earnest efforts to promote dialogue between the Islamic and Western civilizations, ⁴

John Casey of Cambridge University, warns that the British public lacks a clear understanding of Charles’s standing in the Muslim world:  

The extent to which the Prince is admired by Muslims-even to the point of hero-worship-has not yet sunk into the consciousness of the British public. When it does, that public may or may not be pleased.

As it is clear, Charles likes to think with his heart rather than with his head. Heart is for feelings. To find one’s way one must use his head. Impressionable people like Charles can easily be coned. He, obviously is being used by Muslims with whose help they hope to penetrate England and indoctrinate the Britons with Islam. Gordon and Stillman write: “At a private dinner with Prince Charles in May 1997, Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia announced a donation by King Fahd of $33 million to Oxford University to construct a new Centre for Islamic Studies at Oxford, a gift designed “to establish Islamic studies at the heart of the British education system.”

Centre for Islamic Studies is just a fancy name for madrassah. Thousands of mosques, madrassahs and Islamic centers have been sprouted all over UK. Islam is gradually penetrating in that country, destabilizing its democratic foundation and fomenting terrorism among its Muslim population. Muslims’ ‘generosity’ does not come with no-strings-attached. Wherever they invest their money, whether it is in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, UK or USA, the objective is to advance Islamic imperialism. Soon terrorism will follow and the country will become a war zone.

The Britons should know that the first allegiance of a Muslim is to Islam. Every Muslim, whether he is a pauper or a prince has the duty to advance the cause of Islam and make it dominant. 

 

  

Muslims, function as the fifth column, in favor of Islam, wherever they reside. The Britons must realize that Islam is not just another faith. Islam is a fascistic doctrine that uses religion to advance its political agenda. If the king of England has sympathies towards Islam, whether he is a convert or just a ‘useful idiot’, this should be a matter of concern to everyone. His sympathy to Islam will boost Islamic zealotry and will feed Islamic terrorism.  

With so much scandals oozing out of the House of Windsor, Charles flirting with Islam and his son Harry wearing a swastika armband, maybe it is time that the Britons see whether they really have any need for the archaic institution of monarchy. Apart from providing fodder for the tabloid industry what other useful function does monarchy have?

Instead of coming to America and lecturing to Americans about a faith of which he knows nothing but some lies and clichés that he has been told, I challenge the Prince of Wales to urge his panel of “wise men” to confront me and prove that my charges against Muhammad are false. Will he at least ask them to do that? If he really cares about the truth, this is the least he should do.

  

Is Prince Harry also a Muslim in closet?

 

This article should be read by the President of the United States before listening to Prince Charles’s charade about Islam. Please forward it to him, to the Secretary of State, to all the members of the Congress, to your governor and to your mayor. Send it  to your local newspaper and ask them to publish it. Don’t assume that truth will always win. This is a childish belief. It happens only in fairytales. History shows that only those who are determined win. If you are not determined the Isamists will win and mankind will lose.  

Permission is granted to publish this article  and I encourage you to promote it as much as you can until it reaches the Prince and millions of others who like him are fed with lies about Islam. Being a ‘useful idiot‘ is just as dangerous as being the enemy itself, or perhaps more.  

 

Related subject:

A letter to HRM Queen Elizabeth II 

Defender of the Faith

 

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1- http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch24.htm

2- ^[Quoted in Giles Milton, The Riddle and the Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville (London: Allison & Busby, 1996), p. 78.]

3-  http://salam.muslimsonline.com/~ig/islam/abbas/prince.htm

4- http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2004-06/22/article03.shtml

Source of unspecified Quotes in this article is: Prince Charles of Arabia by Ronni L. Gordon and David M. Stillman  SEPTEMBER 1997 • VOLUME IV: NUMBER 3 http://www.meforum.org/article/356

 

Muslims will take over Europe within a few decades – Gadhafi

From the horses mouth, so to speak, see here. Muslims will take over Europe in a few decades according to Gadhafi. He seems to be on the money with the way in which successive governments in the UK and in Europe have let a flood of migrants come into Europe. According to Gadhafi there are already 50 million Muslims in Europe already, with the succession of Albania, Bosnia and of Turkey it will increase the number of Muslims in Europe by another 50 million. This estimate is probably out of date now as by the time Turkey aspires to join the EU its population will be nearer 100 million(99% Muslim).

Gahdafi continues on a pro-Islamic diatribe exposing contradictions from the Bible while claiming that the Koran(which incidently is just as full of inconsistancies and errors as the Bible) is unfallible.  He finishes by saying that ‘All people must be Muslims’.  Such arrogance and such small mindedness to suggest that a religion created, in historical terms, recently has the the priviledge and precident to represent to govedern us all.

Firstly had not the religion primarily been an Arab God formostly?  What about all the cultures that came before the Arabs and the Hebrews and the Christians.  Cursed to hell?  And what of the far future when we all finally succeeded in blowing ourselves up to the afterlife(presumably) are they to be governed by Islam too?   It is fascist and it is a terrifying prospect.

These are the terms in what we should be framing these words.  There is a battle going on quietly for your heart and your mind:  to that there can be no uncertainty.

With Jack Straw saying that Turkey should join the European Union(click), is there any hope that the UK battled culture will stand any chance. Especially with the population so depressed, obese and docile. Like domesticated livestock(micro-chipped and bar-coded) our nation is being sent to the abattoir of cultural destruction.

Why does the EU NEED to be expanded further, is it not enough for us just to trade with the Turkish people. Why do they need to be in the European Union? The amount of strain and pressure it will put on Europe will make the accession of the former communist states look like child’s play. The Eastern European peoples culture at least is more similar to the that of the West. Firstly they are a primarily Christian people, I don’t think that these new states will like to see Turkey join the EU as it will take resources (for nor) directed at their door, towards Turkey.

Turkey with a long history of oppression of Eastern European countries, such as Greece, Bulgaria and Romania; and recently with growing religious intolerance towards non-Turks and non-Muslims is EXTREMELY worrying. The European Unions borders then will move towards Iraq, Syria and Iran. The furthest East since the times of the Roman Empire.

Territory and money aside, this issue has more to do with cultural change and what sort of future we want to leave to our children. Are people in the West really wanting to embrace Islam? What is wrong to defend the culture of Europe, we are not an Arab culture, we are not an Islamic culture, so why is it being forced upon us?

It makes me so mad. Have humans learnt nothing from history? Here we stand as a CULTURE and as a unique PEOPLE on the precipice of being consigned to the past. Do we want to preserve our way of life. I think we should too. Having traveled extensively through Eastern Europe I certainly know that they do to.

Have HEART we are not alone. And the fools that have lead us to these dark corners will find that the light will burn very brightly upon them when the tide does turn.

Schools to use high tech surveillance methods on pupils

A report yesterday in the Daily Mail, see here.

Using RIFD technology, microchips sewn into the school uniform emit information on student details which are tracked at every point of the school day. Using this information a log of what the student is doing from the point of entering the school to leaving the school gates can be compiled.

Defenders of the scheme say that it will reduce the time taken by the teachers compiling registered and tracking down errant pupils. However, this technology will do nothing to stop truancy amongst pupils that are determined not to go to school. Other ‘benefits’ regarding security are equally as pointless as well as if a stranger was to enter the school no record of the stranger would show in the RFID logs. Pupils determined to do mischief could equally exchange coats and throw the whole system into chaos.

In America schools that utilized this technology feed the information collected by the RFID logs directly to police computers and alert the police to any truancy that may take place. Other variotions on these tracking systems is the use of electronic fingerprint reading devices which track when children get on and off school buses and enter individual classes.

These system when viewed as a whole seem to be another way to in-doctorate children(when people are most impressionable) into a culture of surveillance. With the popularity of such sites like Facebook and MySPACE where people voluntarily submit personal information for all to see(even potential employers/schools/government) it can be hardly surprising that this sort of technology is becoming accepted.

When will the day come when financial details are kept on these RFID chips and payment for school meals can only take place with these microchips. Where you will be unable to get a job or bank account unless your personal information is stored on a microchip and implanted into your body. Is a frightening thought. More frightening then one looks at the ’security lapse’ which are endemic in modern society. See the recent fiasco with the loss of sensitive information by the UK government(estimated at 25 million people AT RISK of identity fraud) and already the alarm bells should be ringing.

It can only be a matter of time before the microchip is surgically sewn into children. We have the technology and the infrastructure in place (generally) to do this. We will be under surveillance at every turn, and at every juncture in our brief, miserable lives. Is this really the future we want for our children and the rest of us? What have we done wrong to be constantly under observation like some common criminal?

For an interesting news report(video) on the implications of this click here .

Fortunes of Western Union rise with growing illegal immigration

A very interesting article on how Western Unions fortunes have flourished with the rise of illegal immigration. See here.This has lead some commentators to raise eyebrows over Western Unions tactics to endear themselves with illegal migrants. For an interesting look at the problems faced by ordinary American in regard to illegal immigration click here. It would be interesting to know what percentage of illegal immigrant use this companies services to send money back to their home countries.

A common problem faced with officials wishing to deport illegal immigrants is the fact that the migrants often destroy their papers prior to arriving in the UK. This makes things difficult when trying to deport them as there is no certainty which country they have originated from.

Government often says they are doing all they can to prevent illegal migration to the United Kingdom. This is plainly not true as the services of Western Union provide a convenient method to anonymously send money to their home countries. Surely if the diatribe on terrorism is to be believed then companies such as Western Union must be better regulated?

Free speech stifled in oxford

The authorities are again scare-mongering over the appearance of ‘holocaust denying’ historian and the BNP head Nick Griffin over a debate at the Oxford University Student union. Rumors of a ‘clash’ between far-right thugs and left wing activists have been circulating in the press recently. It is funny that whenever people that have an opposing view of ‘normal’ conventions and wish to publicly air their views, they are immediately subject to a tide of messages aimed at causing a moral conflict in the population. You either engage with the established politicians and academics that know best of you are against.

Even if you disagree in their views, surely they have the right to air them if no laws are broken?

Anyway sad day for the freedom of speech when all forms of debate are stiffled(see earlier post about channel 4 dispatches documentary) . Britain is becoming a crazy place where all sorts of expressions are self censored by the population at large after years of PC conditioning. Even if you disagree with what these people say let them say it. They are not members of any banned organization, have they committed a crime?

I am neither right nor left, but I will try to defend their right to speak. As should be the right of all people. The Jewish community has played their card in this too by voicing their concerns over the presence of these people and what they represent. I don’t mind them voicing their concerns, but that should not be the reason to stop this meeting. The history of Jewish culture and the sadness of what happened in the holocast should not be the reason to kill free speach. That would become a self imposed censorship, something I am sure the Nazis would of loved.

Maybe they are nutcases, but at least don’t do the job of terrorists by destroying the freedom to voice your opinion whether it is right OR wrong.

The article is here

One last amusing footnote to this, is the fact that people in this article were complaining about the damage to Oxford Universities ‘Reputation’ this will have. As someone who has lived in Oxford, I think the Oxford University has already lost its reputation in the world when they embarked on the policy of prostituting itself to wealthy overseas students regardless of their academic achievements and at the expense of home students who are easily capable.

Police State tactics to surpress media documentary detailing radical preachers

An interesting article from the Daily Telegraph detailing a recent Channel 4 dispatches documentary documenting the culture of intolerance being preached in Mosques around Britain(namely Birmingham). The documentary shows preachers and worshipers furiously denouncing women as ‘deficient’, non-Muslims are attacked and Muslims are told that homosexuals should be thrown off mountains and killed.

Unhappy with the state of affairs in Britain the Police decided that they would launch a criminal investigation directed at Channel 4 and NOT the Muslims in question. One has to ask the question, what are the motivations behind such behavior. The articles mentioned the fact(which is true) that Muslims are forming into a strong political alliance in which the Labour party needs if it is too remain in power.

Unable to persue criminal preceedings against Channel 4 under ‘inciting racial hatred’ (WHO WAS PREACHING THE RACIAL HATRED HERE?) the police fall back on tactics obviously gleaned from Stalinist Russia to supress information that is in the public interest ever being shown. A complaint was lodged to OFCOM the Television Broadcasting regulator to block the transmission of the documentary.

Embarrassingly, for the police, OFCOM ruled in favour of Channel4 after viewing transmitted material and transmitted material, continued to judge that the broadcast was fair and impartial.

The reasons for these events are staggering, why in a country that seems to be a fruitful radicalization ground(forget about Afghanistan) with documentary evidence of the culture of hate being indoctorated into Muslim youth is nothing done about it. Why should the police then attempt to cover these facts up with the threat of legal action and censorship.

The government is walking a tight-rope on one hand engaging in policies in such areas as immigration, legislation in regards to terrorism and hate crimes, coupled with doctrines of capitalism that have little regard for long standing traditions and cultures; while simultaneously seducing the public with their tough stance on terror and intolerance.

Given the behavior of the police in trying to supress this documentary and afterwards NOTHING DONE TO DEPORT AND SEND HOME THESE PREACHERS OF HATE, it stands to reason that the government doesn’t want to do anything about this. Instead it is quite happy to let this pressure cooker simmer away until bursting point.

How long this can go on I do not know. The article can be read here.

Aldous Huxley – Propaganda In A Democratic Society

Propaganda in a Democratic Society

by Aldous Huxley

“The doctrines of Europe,” Jefferson wrote, “were that men in numerous associations cannot be restrained within the limits of order and justice, except by forces physical and moral wielded over them by authorities independent of their will. . . . We (the founders of the new American democracy) believe that man was a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights, and with an innate sense of justice, and that he could be restrained from wrong, and protected in right, by moderate powers, confided to persons of his own choice and held to their duties by dependence on his own will.” To post-Freudian ears, this kind of language seems touchingly quaint and ingenuous. Human beings are a good deal less rational and innately just than the optimists of the eighteenth century supposed. On the other hand they are neither so morally blind nor so hopelessly unreasonable as the pessimists of the twentienth would have us believe. In spite of the Id and the Unconscious, in spite of endemic neurosis and the prevalence of low IQ’s, most men and women are probably decent enough and sensible enough to be trusted with the direction of their own destinies. Democratic institutions are devices for reconciling social order with individual freedom and initiative, and for making the immediate power of a country’s rulers subject to the ultimate power of the ruled. The fact that, in Western Europe and America, these devices have worked, all things considered, not too badly is proof enough that the eighteenth century optimists were not entirely wrong. Given a fair chance, I repeat; for the fair chance is an indispensible prerequisite. No people that passes abruptly from a state of subservience under the rule of a despot to the completely unfamiliar state of political independence can be said to have a fair chance of being able to govern itself democratically. Liberalism flourishes in an atmosphere of prosperity and declines as declining prosperity makes it necessary for the government to intervene ever more frequently and drastically in the affairs of its subjects. Over-population and over-organization are two conditions which … deprive a society of a fair chance of making democratic institutions work effectively. We see, then, that there are certain historical, economic, demographic and technological conditions which make it very hard for Jefferson’s rational animals, endowed by nature with inalienable rights and an innate sense of justice, to exercise their reason, claim their rights and act justly within a democratically organized society. We in the West have been supremely fortunate in having been given a fair chance of making the great experiment in self-government. Unfortunately, it now looks as though , owing to recent changes in our circumstances, this infinitely precious fair chance were being, little by little, taken away from us. And this, of course, is not the whole story. These blind impersonal forces are not the only enemies of individual liberty and democratic institutions. There are also forces of another, less abstract character, forces that can be deliberately used by power-seeking individuals whose aim is to establish partial or complete control over their fellows. Fifty years ago, when I was a boy, it seemed completely self-evident that the bad old days were over, that torture and massacre, slavery, and the persecution of heretics, were things of the past. Among people who wore top hats, traveled in trains, and took a bath every morning such horrors were simply out of the question. After all, we were living in the twentieth century. A few years later these people who took daily baths and went to church in top hats were committing atrocities on a scale undreamed of by the benighted Africans and Asiatics. In the light of recent history it would be foolish to suppose that this sort of thing cannot happen again. It can and, no doubt, it will. But in the immediate future there is some reason to believe that the punitive measures of 1984 will give place to the reinforcements and manipulations of Brave New World.

There are two kinds of propaganda – rational propaganda in favor of action that is consonant with the enlightened self-interest of those who make it and those to whom it is addressed, and non-rational propaganda that is not consonant with anybody’s enlightened self-interest, but is dictated by, and appeals to, passion. Were the actions of individuals are concerned there are motives more exhalted than enlightened self-interest, but where collective action has to be taken in the fields of politics and economics, enlightened self-interest is probably the highest of effective motives. If politicians and their constituents always acted to promote their own or their country’s long-range self-interest, this world would be an earthly paradise. As it is, they often act against their own interests, merely to gratify their least credible passions; the world, in consequence, is a place of misery. Propaganda in favor of action that is consonant with enlightened self-interest appeals to reason by means of logical arguements based upon the best available evidence fully and honestly set forth. Propaganda in favor of action dictated by the impulses that are below self-interest offers false, garbled or incomplete evidence, avoids logical argument and seeks to influence its victims by the mere repetition of catchwords, by the furious denunciation of foreign or domestic scapegoats, and by cunningly associating the lowest passions with the highest ideals, so that atrocities come to be perpetrated in the name of God and the most cynical kind of Realpolitik is treated as a matter of religious principle and patriotic duty.

In John Dewey’s words, “a renewal of faith in common human nature, in its potentialities in general, and in its power in particular to respond to reason and truth, is a surer bulwark against totalitarianism than a demonstration of material success or a devout worship of special legal and political forms.” The power to respond to reason and truth exists in all of us. But so, unfortunately, does the tendency to respond to unreason and falsehood – particularly in those cases where falsehood evokes some enjoyable emotion, or where the appeal to unreason strikes some answering chord in the primitive, subhuman depths of our being. In certain feilds of activity men have learned to respond to reason and truth pretty consistently. The authors of learned articles do not appeal to the passions of their fellow scientists and technologists. They set forth what, to the best of their knowledge, is the truth about some particular aspect of reality, they use reason to explain the facts they have observed and they support their point of view with arguements that appeal to reason in other people. All this is fairly easy in the feilds of physical science and technology. It is much more difficult in the fields of politics and religion and ethics. Here the relevant facts often elude us. As for the meaning of the facts, that of course depends upon the particular system of ideas, in terms of which you choose to interpret them. And these are not the only difficulties that confront the rational truth-seeker. In public and in private life, it often happens that there is simply no time to collect the relevant facts or to weigh their significance. We are forced to act on insufficient evidence and by a light considerably less steady than that of logic. With the best will in the world, we cannot always be completely truthful or consistently rational. All that is in our power is to be as truthful and rational as circumstances permit us to be, and to respond as well as we can to the limited truth and imperfect reasoning offered for our consideration by others.

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,” said Jefferson, “it expects what never was and never will be. . . . The people cannot be safe without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.” Across the Atlantic another passionate believer in reason was thinking about the same time, in almost precisely similar terms. Here is what John Stuart Mill wrote of his father, the utilitarian philosopher, James Mill: “So complete was his reliance upon the influence of reason over the minds of mankind, whenever it is allowed to reach them, that he felt as if all would be gained, if the whole population were able to read, and if all sorts of opinions were allowed to be addressed to them by word or in writing, and if by the sufferage they could nominate a legislature to give effect to the opinions they had adopted.” All is safe, all would be gained! Once more we hear the note of eighteenth-century optimism. Jefferson , it is true, was a realist as well as an optimist. He knew by bitter experience that the freedom of the press can be shamefully abused. “Nothing,” he declared, “can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.” And yet, he insisted (and we can only agree with him), “within the pale of truth, the press is a noble institution, equally the friend of science and civil liberty.” Mass communication, in a word, is neither good nor bad; it is simply a force and, like any other force, it can be used either well or ill. Used in one way, the press, the radio and the cinema are indispensible to the survival of democracy. Used in another way, they are among the most powerful weapons in the dictator’s armory. In the field of mass communications as in almost every other field of enterprise, technological progress has hurt the Little Man and helped the Big Man. As lately as fifty years ago, every democratic country could boast a great number of small journals and local newspapers. Thousands of country editors expressed thousands of independent opinions. Somewhere or other almost anybody could get almost anything printed,. Today the press is still legally free; but most of the little papers have disappeared. The cost of wood pulp, of modern printing machinery and of syndicated news is too high for the Little Man. In the totalitarian East there is political censorship, and the media of mass communication are controlled by the State. In the democratic West there is economic censorship and the media of mass communication are controlled by members of the Power Elite. Censorship by rising costs and the concentration of communication power in the hands of a few big concerns is less objectionable than State ownership and government propaganda; but certainly it is not something of which a Jeffersonian democrat could possibly approve.

In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not forsee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies – the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.

In the past most people never got a chance of fully satisfying this appetite. They might long for distractions, but the distractions were not provided. Christmas came but once a year, feasts were “solemn and rare,” there were few readers and very little to read, and the nearest approach to a neighborhood movie theater was the parish church, where the performances, though infrequent, were somewhat monotonous. For conditions even remotely comparable to those now prevailing we must return to imperial Rome, where the populace was kept in good humor by frequent, gratuitous doses of many kinds of entertainment – from poetical dramas to gladitorial fights, from recitations of Virgil to all-out boxing, from concerts to military reviews and public executions. But even in Rome there was nothing like the non-stop distraction now provided by newspapers and magazines, by radio, television and the cinema. In Brave New World non-stop distractions of the most fascinating nature (the feelies, orgy-porgy, centrifugal bumblepuppy) are deliberately used as instruments of policy, for the purpose of preventing people from paying too much attention to the realities of the social and political situation. The other world of religion is different from the other world of entertainment; but they resemble one another in being most decidedly “not of this world.” Both are distractions and, if lived in too continuously, both can become, in Marx’s phrase, “the opium of the people” and so a threat to freedom. Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metephysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would manipulate and control it.

In their propaganda today’s dictators rely for the most part on repetition, supression and rationalization – the repetition of catchwords which they wish to be accepted as true, the supression of facts which they wish to be ignored, the arousal and rationalization of passions which may be used in the interests of the Party or the State. As the art and science of manipulation come to be better understood, the dictators of the future will doubtless learn to combine these techniques with the non-stop distractions which, in the West, are now threatening to drown in a sea of irrelevance the rational propaganda essential to the maintenance of individual liberty and the survival of democratic institutions.

DNA testing apologists, Financial Times

Article take from here.

Seems these people are determined to build a DNA database of the United Kingdom. It heralds the loss of our personal identity. To think that future government could misuse this information should be reason enough to resist it. Why government create the policies of destruction and propose the insidious solutions to them, thus appearing as our saviour, only to become despotic with each step. We will all be micro-chipped next.

B455. “Why DNA Testing is Worth the Risk” Financial Times (May 10, 2004), p. 13.
In the growing debate over the encroachment of science on privacy, the use of DNA testing presents both high risks to privacy and great potential for the public good. How widely should it be employed and how does one determine its limits? This depends largely on the extent to which a society can ensure proper accountability to minimize abuses of such vital information. This entails using both privacy-enhancing technologies (for example, audit trails and encryption) and several layers of accountability (not just by various ministries but also by parliament and the media).
Most conflicts between the protection of privacy and services for the common good, such as national security and public health, have a tilted profile that makes it relatively easy to form the proper public policy – but not always to sell it to the public. Trading medical records, for example, which banks could use to call in the loans of sick people and employers could use to avoid hiring people who had had a heart attack – a practice that was once common and is now banned in the US – is grossly invasive and does little public good. Banning such practices is readily justifiable.
In contrast, using cameras to record license plates (but not the drivers) for traffic violations can save lives and entails a minimal invasion of privacy. It should be an easy public policy to embrace.
The public policy profile of DNA testing and data banks is very different. The level of privacy invasion involved is high. Testing someone’s DNA can reveal much about their ancestral history – say, family diseases and, arguably, their racial origins. It can determine whether one – or even one’s siblings and children – is predisposed to still other debilitating illnesses. As reflected in the increasingly bitter nature of paternity suits, it is also used to determine who is and who is not the biological parent of a child.
From many aspects, however, the public benefits are tremendous. In its most commonly recognized role, DNA testing helps solve individual crimes when the criminal leaves, say, some hair or blood behind, which enables DNA comparisons with someone who can be reasonably suspected of having committed that crime. How widely the authorities should cast such a net is a matter of much controversy. Some would limit the suspects to only those the police can demonstrate would have reasonable cause to have committed the crime. Others would include a much larger range of suspects – for example, the residents of a whole village in which it occurred.
Accountability is the key. The stronger the legal assurances that DNA data collected by police will be used only for solving crimes – and remain inaccessible to unauthorized individuals including the media – the more widely authorities may cast the net.
DNA testing provides better opportunities than any other available tool to prove wrongly accused people innocent. Democratic societies like to believe they are committed to going to the limit to ensure innocent people will not be incarcerated, as reflected in the commonly held notion that it is preferable to let 100 criminals walk free than to jail one innocent person. DNA can serve justice very well indeed. Surely this alone would justify the development of extensive DNA data banks – including of those arrested and not just convicted – as long as the data banks are properly supervised?
In another increasingly important use of DNA technology, it can assist national security efforts by enabling identification of the bodies of terrorists. DNA testing could, in fact, be the
ultimate “identification card”, if such a card is truly in the national interest. The data can also greatly help medical research, although in this case, it should be “de-personalized” – released to researchers without the names, addresses or other such attributes that enable personal identification. Researchers should commit themselves, subject to oversight, not to sidestep the ban against tracing people, even if it encumbers their work.
When it comes to weighing the considerable benefits of DNA testing against the growing demand for privacy protection, among the best technological safeguards is high-powered encryption of the data banks. Encryption could largely eliminate the possibility that unauthorized individuals will access information locked in these databases. Another safeguard can be provided by audit trails, in which anyone who accesses a file must leave their identification details. Audit committees should be established to review these trails. Separating DNA information from personal identifiers and requiring a court order for disclosure of names and addresses of those identified as criminals is crucial. Basic laws should determine the purposes for which these data banks may be used and should clearly ban other uses. For instance, parliaments should determine whether they may be used in paternity suits. A privacy advocate should be appointed whose duty would be to ensure the data are not abused. Regular oversight by non-partisan groups of lawmakers is part of good accountability. Annual reports about abuses that occur and corrective measures taken could help focus the public’s attention. In the end, however, in a non-perfect world, it comes down to one question: Does one trust the various layers of accountability, or fear abuses to such an extent that one is willing to sacrifice the many advantages that DNA testing can bestow on society? I vote with those who hold that we can provide adequate accountability.
The writer is author of The Limits of Privacy and, most recently, From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations.

Detention of terror suspects in UK

The conservatives are finding their libertarian roots in the battle for how long terror suspects can be held for. Read article here. I doubt that the conservative party has any shred of decency left having presided over the demise of Britain for so long. I doubt that the powers at be in the conservative party will significantly reverse the slide of personal freedoms that the British have long enjoyed.

The people of Britain will never understand it seems, that the whole concept of left and right is dead.  Instead we have the cult of government. There is ONLY government and what they say is what matters. Opinions of ’subjects’ do not matter in this climate of tit for tat horse trading of policies, with each party seemingly to outdo each other on draconian legislation.

If they were so concerned with the breakdown of the moral and social fabric then why continue with the policies that bring them about(i.e. immigration, death of the family, mistrust of voters, squeezing of the middle classes). The government far from being concerned for these problem, instead embark on their own ideas of ‘containing’ the problem. Increase in the survalence of people, draconian laws aimed not just at terrorists but for the population at large.

When will the government start to listen to the concerns and worries of the people they are supposed to serve?  It is incrediable that in a period of, so called growth, that people are having problems paying their bills each month.  We are creating a powder keg of problems for our future generations,  who burdened with crippling debt, uncertain economic future and unprecedented cultural change will have the misfortune of dealing with.

Can the powers at be not have some foresight and actually create a Britain that our predecessors would be proud of?  Unfortunately the power hungry robber baron that are our leaders along with their powerful banker friends think otherwise.

An essay by George Orwell, England your England

   An interesting article by George Orwell.

England your England.