Odd one out

Spot the odd one out:

• Fox News: Muslims Torch Christian Homes in Southern Egypt;
• theage.com.au: Muslims torch Christian homes in Egypt;
• news.com.au: Muslims torch Christian homes;
• The BBC: Homes burnt in southern Egypt Muslim-Christian violence.

Congratulations, BBC, on yet another triumph of mealy-mouthed equivocation! This is what I pay my licence fee for! Somehow the BBC article has lost the information that it is, yet again, a mob of Muslim thugs rampaging through a Christian area and destroying peoples' homes, while giving the impression that the violence, and the burning, are equally spread amongst the communities.

This rampant pandering shames the name of the BBC, which has lost any credibility as a news organisation and is revealed as an agent of goodthink, ceaselessly spinning the news in order to advance its "progressivist" view of the world. The BBC should be shut down immediately.

British man said to be mentally ill executed in China

Such is the title of an article on the BBC website decrying the execution of a British national for smuggling drugs.

"The execution took place despite repeated calls from his family and the British government for clemency," bleats the BBC. There follows a set of, frankly, completely unbelievable excuses apparently invented by his family, as well as the claim that he was mentally ill. Quotes are also supplied from the British Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, who seem to believe that a British national should not have to suffer the same fate as, say, a Chinese national convicted of the same offense.

Oh come on! Just because British criminals can expect to be wilfully coddled by their courts (one of which recently ruled that an asylum seeker who had run over and killed a child in a driving accident while drunk could not be repatriated because it would breach his human rights), this does not mean that they can expect the same treatment from a country not yet mired in suicidal self-loathing.

No, to see at once the relevant facts of this case, just note that this man's name is Akmal Shaikh and that he was arrested in the city of Urumqi in possession of 4kg of heroin. Yes, that Urumqi, the one with the recent murderous muslim riots against the Han Chinese. The likelihood seems to be that this man was part of a criminal gang involved in smuggling drugs in order to finance jihad against the Chinese state.

Swine Flu, Egypt, slaughter

Apparently the Egyptian government have had all the pigs in the country slaughtered, some 400,000 of them (according to the Times).

I wonder who owned all those pigs? It seems unlikely that the owners will be followers of Egypt's majority religion, since pig products are forbidden to them. It seems likely then that the livelihoods principally affected will belong to members of Egypt's minority religions — a doubtless unintended consequence. I wonder how well they will be compensated?

Peter Thiel - The Education of a Libertarian

Just read his post. It neatly sums up several themes that have occupied my thoughts recently (by which I mean the last year or two) and it's pushed me to write my own thoughts down. That's probably going to take the better part of a day, so this post is going to start short and get longer as the day goes on...

The case of the curious graffiti

Tonight's Channel Four news provided an amazing hate-fest against Israel. I had thought better of Channel Four, but apparently not.

It was always the case of course that the TV journalists, who'd been denied access to Gaza while the Israelis were actually there, would be shepherded in [and I use the word advisedly] by photogenic Palestinians and encouraged to vent their spite. What amazed me though was that they would apparently believe everything that the people they met told them without even attempting to verify them.

The most interesting was the graffiti that we saw in a building [or was it several different buildings? I'm not sure, but the handwriting all looked curiously similar to me, so it must have been just the one building mustn't it?] that had been used as a base by the Israeli military. There it was, evidence of the evil Joos' pathological hatred of the Palestinians, plain for all to see. I can't remember the exact words now, but it was all along the lines of "The only good Palestinian is a dead Palestinian". Remarkable that soldiers in a life and death situation would take the time out to chisel their evil mottoes into the stone of the buildings. Even more remarkable that they would do it in English, for the convenience of an international audience, rather than in their native Hebrew.

Lillian Ladele

So the "Christian" registrar (of births, marriages and deaths) who won the right not to have to register the civil unions of homosexuals turns out to have an illegitimate son of her own? I wonder if she's claimed child support for him in the past? Accepted the resources of the state perhaps for the son born outside the wedlock she apparently believes is the sole legitimate place for sexual congress?

Unfotunately such hypocrisy is constant amongst those "religious" people who have nothing better to do than to try to destroy the lives of those of whom they disapprove.

Languagehat wears the dunce's cap - again

I'm a subscriber to Languagehat and read it every day. Among its posts I've found occasionally-fascinating nuggets about individual languages, interesting thoughts on language in general, and an inside perspective on issues in linguistics. However its posters do sometimes seem to display a woeful weakness for that kind of woolly, leftist thinking that particularly inflames me — not so much for its leftiness as for its woolliness.

You can see where they get it from. Their discipline requires them, on a regular basis, to talk to many different people, of many cultures, colours and creeds, often foreigners who live abroad (I'm flagging the danger words for you), sometimes even going so far as to speak to them in their own language! Worse still, they will often listen to what these people say back to them.

In this way, over many years, linguists can get to the point where they believe that most people are basically the same. That people half-way across the world are in many respects just like themselves and their neighbours. That the similarities between people are so much more important than their differences (except for really interesting ones, such as pitch differences between the sexes in normal speech). People all over the world are probably quite nice if you give them a chance.

Linguists are missing, then, the basic insight common to Loldemort and those like him (shameless and unrepentant homosexuals with a taste for corrupting married men, especially those who've proved that they've got lead in their pencils). Viz. that our neighbours are monsters who hate us, would like to write discrimination against us into the constitution (where applicable), and regularly indulge in legally-protected rants against us in church and mosque, synagogue and temple. The truth of course is that those smiling foreigners are, in their unique, irreplaceable and doubtless endangered way, just as horrible as our current neighbours are, have brains full of memes just as virulent as the diseases spread by 18th and 19th century European explorers were, and will do us all down in an instant given half the chance.

Now there's a particular kind of ego inflation that often afflicts linguists (who are invariably clever enough to be able to spell correctly in several languages, and who are regularly asked to rule on such matters of universal importance as correct punctuation, admissible vocabulary and the legitimacy of dialectal usages in polite intercourse), and that's to think that anyone gives a damn about their half-baked opinions on social matters.

The thought processes behind this post though, simply beggar belief. I imagine that we're supposed to think that English isn't the language of the land (of the USA) because — hang on, here it comes — it wasn't the language of the land a thousand years ago, and was subsequently imposed there violently. But of course, the cartoon "proves" quite the opposite of what is intended. The land doesn't care what language is spoken on it, only the people living there care. And if you let a bunch of other people come and establish their language as a living tongue in a substantial part of your language's range, without learning or using your language, then there's a good chance that your descendants will end up speaking their language and living in their world.

Macaulay on Southey's Colloquies on Society

Written in 1830, some 176 years ago, Macauley's review is sadly just as applicable today as it was in his own time.

Mr. Southey brings to the task two faculties which were never, we believe, vouchsafed in measure so copious to any human being, the faculty of believing without a reason, and the faculty of hating without a provocation.

Apply that to any of the religious figures who claim authority to lead and to condemn today.

He judges of a theory, of a public measure, of a religious or a political party, of a peace or a war, as men judge of a picture or a statue, by the effect produced on his imagination. A chain of associations is to him what a chain of reasoning is to other men; and what he calls his opinions are in fact merely his tastes.

It's true, reason has been lost to us, as a result of education concentrating on what is merely useful to us for gaining our living as opposed to what is absolutely necessary to us if our lives are not to become worthless.

Now in the mind of Mr. Southey reason has no place at all, as either leader or follower, as either sovereign or slave. He does not seem to know what an argument is. He never uses arguments himself. He never troubles himself to answer the arguments of his opponents. It has never occurred to him, that a man ought to be able to give some better account of the way in which he has arrived at his opinions than merely that it is his will and pleasure to hold them. It has never occurred to him that there is a difference between assertion and demonstration, that a rumour does not always prove a fact, that a single fact, when proved, is hardly foundation enough for a theory, that two contradictory propositions cannot be undeniable truths, that to beg the question is not the way to settle it, or that when an objection is raised, it ought to be met with something more convincing than 'scoundrel' and 'blockhead.'

Again, this could be applied to almost any of the religious leaders of our time, whose first recourse, when some kind of reasonable law tries to prevent them from destroying those of whom they do not approve, is to scream offense and lack of religious freedom.

If...

• you are a gay man, and
• you watch Stargate: Atlantis, and
• you have a heart in your body, then

read Missed the Saturday Dance.

It makes you laugh #1

Spain translates more books into Spanish each year than the entire Arab world has translated into Arabic since the ninth century.

Pope 'sorry' for offence to Islam

As the BBC notes:

In the West Bank city of Nablus, two churches were firebombed on Saturday in attacks claimed by a group which said it was protesting against the Pope's remarks.

They are protesting against a link between Islam and violence by firebombing churches? The standard western reaction to that is: What mad perversion of reason made them think that was logical? But this, I think, misses the point.

The truth is of course, they are not protesting, they are punishing, and the Pope has fallen for it. Theodore Dalrymple once said:

In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.

What better way to humiliate those who dare to link Islam with violence than to do violence to them in the name of Islam while insisting that it is a religion of peace? The Pope, by apologising, has merely tried to appease. And, as anybody might guess, by appeasing has encouraged his tormentors to further demands: "Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood said the statement did not go far enough and called on the pontiff to apologise in person," the BBC reports.

Weird BBC

'Airlines terror plot' disrupted

Today's major article is currently (the BBC apparently has a habit of quietly rewriting them without telling anybody) a masterpiece of mealy-mouthedness:

• "21 people" are in custody. Do we know anything about these 21 people? Well:
• Police had spoken to a "good number of community leaders to make them aware that a major operation was under way." Which community was this? Doesn't say. I wonder if it was the leaders of the Bath and Wells Mother's Union?
• According to BBC sources the "principal characters" suspected of being involved in the plot were British-born. But British-born what? Sheep? Cuckoos?

Well, you won't find the answers in the BBC article. No doubt somebody has decided that the truth could either give offense or incite prejudice. But was that person in the BBC or in the Home Office? The best we can hope for seems to be that the answers will leak out in time.

Gays flee Iraq as Shia death squads find a new target

The gist of the article is, Shia Muslim deaths squads in Iraq, acting on pretended authority from their "god", and with the connivance of the supposedly secular government that we are supposed to be supporting, are executing innocent gay people. Once again, absolute faith leads to absolute corruption.

Dear Colin

I commiserate you on your recent lack of success with the 70 year-old ladies. While congratulating you on your open-mindedness, I feel emboldened to point out the considerably greater likelihood of success that your amatory advances would have with 47 year-old gay men (such as, incidentally, myself). In fact, I can confirm on behalf of 47 year-old gay men just about everywhere that should you require an evening's intimate relaxation, or even just a "quickie" blow-job, we would be more than delighted to help out.

Yours, any way you want me,
Loldemort

Gorgeous Irish heartthrob actor Colin Farrell, 28, tried for two and a half hours to get Dame Eileen Atkins into bed on her 70th birthday. Though considerably flattered, Atkins denied the request since she felt her body really wasn't going to give him pleasure.

Cocteau's beautiful description of a man's body

In Le livre blanc Cocteau writes of:

a perfect body, rigged out with muscles like a ship with ropes, its limbs appearing to open out like a star around that fleece where there rises, in contrast to woman, who is built for concealment, the only thing about a man which cannot lie.

I must read the French, but the English is very good. The trouble is, you can pick several holes in it: from its old-fashioned idea that womens' sexual parts are concealed to the very dodgy assertion that a man's penis tells the truth. You know what he means: the penis can neither conceal its desire nor fake it. But pity those who mistake its fleeting interest for anything "more".

Still, it has that amazing simile, "rigged out with muscles like a ship with ropes" which alone is worth an evening's awestruck contemplation, and the star, and the fleece. It may not be perfect, but it is still very, very good.

Gay histories — more personal notes

While reading The Light Of Reason I found this posting. Arthur's story is one that every gay man over a certain age, and many younger ones, can identify with.

It starts with the horrified realisation, when you are nine, ten, eleven or so, that you are somehow — you're not quite sure how — different from everybody else, and that things are going to be very bad for you from now on.

It continues when, an innocent little child, you receive a series of small shocks, maybe one or two every day, as people you've always known and liked, even respected, talk about gays, or queers, or faggots, and how they are disgusting, how God hates them, how they deserve to be killed. “That's me they're talking about,” you think, and realise that you've got to hide if you're going to survive.

So you develop a finely honed set of reflexes, not unlike those acquired by small, furry creatures without much in the way of teeth or claws, who live in fields and are preyed upon by hawks with terrible beaks and sharp claws: to fall into their grasp is death. You learn to make an excuse and leave, any time the conversation turns, however remotely, towards gays: you can't afford to stick around and be asked what you are, because you haven't yet learned how to lie with a straight face, and because you know that an affirmative answer may be met with abuse, perhaps even physical harm, from the other kids and even from the authorities. You learn to take your time when changing after games, so that you can go to the communal showers after the others, to avoid the terrible possibility that you might accidentally see the other boys' bodies and get visibly turned on. Of course, since you're the only one not comparing dicks, they know anyway, and the taunts, and the jeers, and the punches start. You learn, in a thousand different ways, how to pretend not to be who you are, and how to appear to be someone acceptable to your tormentors: the “normal” kids. If you're really good at deception, you may even end up not being a loner.

Some time later, maybe at 14 or 15, you fall in love with one of your classmates. It's funny, very, very funny, how the heterosexual literature is replete with tales of how awful teen years are, how much pain kids go through. You're spotty and you're in love, maybe with someone a little older, a little cooler, a little better looking. Do you tell them and risk rejection? Or do you hide your feelings and be sad? Of course, you're supposed to tell them and learn that risk can be followed by reward, and that if it isn't, then at least the downside may not be as bad as you feared. You conquer your fears and grow! Hurrah! But what if the risk isn't just a "no" and a little laughter, but being punched to the floor and then kicked around until your head is bleeding, your glasses broken, and you can't breathe for the pain in your chest? And when your beloved has finally finished teaching you a lesson, his friends join in. And then they spit on you. And then the teacher arrives and you have to explain it all to him. And so you get expelled because your school is Christian and you're a scandal. Sounds silly doesn't it? Did I make it up? No. Things like that really did happen. And the fear of things like that happening to you was crippling. You didn't ever think of telling the one you had that teen crush on that you were sweet on him. You just prayed that he wouldn't notice the way you blushed when he looked at you. You wanted to hide. You wanted the feelings to go away. You wanted to be dead.

At some point, maybe, you meet someone, an adult, who seems to be a little more reasonable than the rest. They are clever. People admire them for their intellectual honesty. You think, maybe, just possibly, that you can tell them what you're going through, and that through sheer force of intellect they may understand. Arthur tried that, and the result was an offer of electro-shock (aversion) therapy.

* * *

Enough generalities. Here is my story.

* * *

I was born my parents' fifth child, and the only one to survive. Three others had been stillborn. The fourth, a little girl, lived a few days. After I was born, apparently perfect, they decided not to try for any more. It was too painful.

When I was small I used to crawl around the legs of the men as they sat at the table. I actually have memories from those years: something about those mens' legs just smelled good. I remember — I must have been about four — hearing one of the men saying that there was something wrong with me, forever crawling about their legs; it wasn't right. My mother brushed the charge away: he's just a baby. What had I done? Had I held on to his leg, the way I find it so comforting to do now as an adult, thigh over my shoulder, knee by my head, my arms around the calf, my cheek just resting against a man's leg? Whatever it was, that was my first little shock. I knew I'd done something bad, although it had seemed the very opposite of bad to me. I never played around their legs again.

My early teen years were lived in a climate of fear and self-loathing much as I describe above. Just one small personal touch: I remember that at the age of eleven or so, how I used to wake up in the morning with the feeling that I'd had a very bad dream, something disastrous and terrible, that no matter how hard I ran I couldn't get away from. I used to be so relieved that it was all just a dream, that I could get up and go about my business and everything would be OK. And then it would hit me. It hadn't been a dream. I was a queer. That was the bad thing I hadn't been able to remember. My life was going to be different from everybody else's, and I would live, and die, alone.

I remember when I was about sixteen, my Mother took me to visit the S______ family. It was evening, and we were all conversing while watching TV, as is the fashion in the North of England. By this time my intellect was developing, and indeed I was somewhat precocious. I had started to think for myself, and I'd come up with the idea that in morals, some of the rules were more fundamental than others: 'don't hurt anyone' being the one I thought basic, and that the others (don't steal, don't kill, don't commit adultery etc.) could be derived from that one. I'd even managed to see that the prohibitions against homosexuality couldn't be derived from that one, and that they were in some sense one-off, ad hoc (I had a little Latin!) and possibly even false. In other words, I was just finding my feet, I had a little courage, and I thought that even if sticks and stones (and kicks and punches) could break my bones, I was armoured against mere words. The news came on the TV. Perhaps someone had been exposed as a homosexual. Or perhaps he was 'self-confessed'. Or maybe it was just the theme of some 'controversial' film. The conversation turned to the Big 'H', and to homosexuals in general; and Mrs. S______, a sweet little lady, who was always smiling, always doing good works in our (Catholic) community, opined that she hated them, and wished that they were all dead. It was just another little shock. But years later when I was watching a documentary about the Nazi extermination camps, when the narrator asked how it had happened that a civilised people had risen up, segregated out a small minority from their midst, and condemned its members to torture and death, — I knew how!

The worst one was when I was about seventeen, and my parents and I were watching an episode of M.A.S.H. on the TV. Some odd circumstance or other had all the characters thinking that Radar Riley was gay. My mother, taking on the role of Grand Inquisitor, said, “Oh, and he's such a good-looking man!” Then looked at me and said “Don't you think so?” I knew a loaded question when I heard one, so I denied that I thought he was handsome. She persisted: “Are you gay?” I denied it. “Good, because I would rather you had been born dead like the others.” I denied myself and my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters for a third time. We watched TV in silence for a few minutes, then I got up and went upstairs to 'do my homework'. I lay on the bed and cried, as quietly as I could.

I wish I could say I get some sense of catharsis from writing all this down. I don't. What I do feel, as I note the rise of the fundamentalist Christians in America, the Santorums, the DOMAs, the proposal to enshrine hatred of homosexuals in the very constitutional fabric of the country itself, and in Europe the election of a Pope whose first public pronouncement is to attack Spain for allowing gay marriage, and the growth of an Islam whose clerics go on television and actually scream with hatred for gays (one of them says that we should be dropped head first from tall buildings), is the old fear coming back, the old urge to bolt and hide, like a rabbit that senses a shadow growing in the bright sky.