Discussion (20)¬

1. Ben Elms-Lester says:

   May 16, 2018 at 12:22 pm

   Their irony meter is still out of action

2. Nassar Ben Houdja says:

   May 16, 2018 at 1:11 pm

   Murder is not the only thing
   A sword is supposed to bring
   To muslims the sword is proselytization
   Death or submission to every nation
   Or whack their necks, with every swing.

3. FreeFox says:

   May 16, 2018 at 2:42 pm

   Wishing a pensive and enlightening Ramadan to all the faithful out there sneaking a read anyway. 😉 Looking very much forward to tonight, our apartment house always comes together on the roof for Iftar. Even as an infidel I always enjoy it very much – even though getting through the day without smokes is making me intensely irritable. ^_^

4. M27Holts says:

   May 16, 2018 at 3:18 pm

   Aye. The pious will be thirsty. Not drinking water all day in summer is not a good idea….wonder which ignorant knobcheese thought that one up?

5. Someone says:

   May 16, 2018 at 3:20 pm

   Context and metaphor. In the case of these two, pronounced “bullshit” and “unbelievable bullshit”.

6. 1happyheathen says:

   May 16, 2018 at 6:58 pm

   50 some odd killed and 2500+ wounded in Gaza and for what? useless words in a silly, poorly written book or books? so a foolish orange menace can make his base happy? do not all the Abrahamic religions claim to follow the 10 commandments? hypocrites the whole lot of them.

7. Darwin Harmless says:

   May 17, 2018 at 7:07 am

   Hmmm. Whatever malware infected my site has caused the removal of all content, once you get past the gates. I find this strangely comforting. I haven’t done anything to replace it, or salvage it, and may not ever. It was of its time, and now it’s gone. So it goes, eh.
   I understand that all those words are still available on some Internet archive site. Good enough.

   FreeFox, further to our conversation about the ex-Playboy model who converted to Islam and her motivation for doing so: I’ve noticed another theme in these conversions. I think the demonizing of Islam makes people curious. Can Muslims reallyi be that bad? Then they meet a pleasant, calm, friendly, rational sounding Muslim who demonstrates real reverence and family values and they are ripe for conversion. Especially if they are disgusted by the hypocricy of the right wing Christian culture as personified by the current POTUS.
   This dosen’t mean we should stop mocking and denigrating the Islamic religion, but it is a side effect, eh.

8. M27Holts says:

   May 17, 2018 at 1:10 pm

   All religions are poisonous. But the Manchester atrocity affected people I know. Thus I feel the only material threat to my family from a religion would be Islam. I am also rational enough to realise that my families underwear is probably just as likely to cause death as a Muslim extremist. However I feel that as soon as sharia law is in control of a country. It’s freedoms and standard of living goes back into the dark ages!

9. FreeFox says:

   May 17, 2018 at 9:33 pm

   Are you sure the UK needs help from the middle east on the way to the dark ages, M27Holts? If you go by who kills most brits, the Tories slowly but surely running the NHS into the ground is leading to (at a moderate estimate) 9000 preventable deaths each year, a number that’s bound to rise under the current leadership. You need a lot of mad Muslims in white vans or with box cutters to get into the same ballpark. Sharia law is truly horrible, no doubt, but I think on the list of current English worries, it ranks pretty low.

10. Donn says:

    May 18, 2018 at 6:55 am

    Yes! For all their pretensions, the one thing the religions have in common is that when you get down to it, there are always plenty of other things that matter a lot more.

11. M27Holts says:

    May 18, 2018 at 11:25 am

    Freefox. Do we count those who die from smoking related illnesses plus alcohol, drugs and obesity as preventable? If so it’s a lot more than 9000. Fit people usually don’t need hospitals unless involved in an accident or violent crime…Is it always the government’s fault if people won’t listen to clinical advice? The more you tell people that smoking is bad for them the more they want to do it so they can “stick it to the man!” Stupidity eh? It’s what government’s bank on to stay in power.

12. FreeFox says:

    May 20, 2018 at 9:20 pm

    I dunno, who you want to count and in what, M27Holts. I was just startled by your apparent fear of Sharia law and Islamic atrocities on British streets. I mean, of course every murder is horrible for those affected, and law enforcement should try to prevent them and apprehend the guilty, but if you really measure a religion by their dead (in England), it’s meagre pickings. To quote the Daily Telegraph:

    “Since 2000, there have been seven deaths per year in the UK due to terrorism – which, according to research from BuzzFeed, means you’re more likely to be killed by dogs (18 deaths per year), hot water (100 deaths per year) or using your phone while driving (2,920 deaths per year).”

    (Of course, if you look at their statistics, you see that the death count of current Islamic terror is also eclipsed by the vastly superior number of deaths during the Northern Ireland conflict, which I guess would make Christianity again the more poisonous religion by that metric.)

    All I wanted to say was that if you worry about English lives, there are other more poisonous windmills to tilt at. ^_^

13. FreeFox says:

    May 20, 2018 at 9:28 pm

    (And maybe compare that to the many thousands of deaths by British and American bombs in this part of the world: Civilians deaths soar into thousands from UK-US bombing campaign in Iraq-Syria – probably not the most reliable news source, but feel free to google around, from my personal experience, whether the numbers are exact, it was and is horrendous.)

14. LD50 says:

    May 21, 2018 at 10:58 am

    FF & M27,

    On the one hand we are being fed propaganda and being manipulated by our governments/media. We are supposed to feel fear/anger/outrage and direct that feeling at “others”. And not at our government (where it should be directed).

    On the other hand, Islamic terrorism is particularly loathsome and not really comparable with accidents or even manslaughter/murder.

    Hmm. Having written that, I realise it’s just a feeling — not a reasoned argument. Objectively, more people may die from all sorts of things than from terrorism. But I find I don’t really even want to think about whether Islamic terrorism is worse than right wing terrorism. Or whether Edwina Curry’s suggestion (to OAPs freezing to death in their homes) to put layers of newspaper above their bedcovers was worse than having people dieing in hospital corridors. Or whether it’s better to die in the corridor than to die in the ambulance waiting outside because the corridors are full. Or whether to die at home while waiting for the ambulances (which are busy waiting outside the hospitals).

15. LD50 says:

    May 21, 2018 at 11:26 am

    And while I’m feeling political, I once tried to explain to my children why we pay taxes. (They didn’t like the idea 🙂

    Well, I said, “the government needs to pay for schools and hospitals and roads. And police and possibly even the army.”

    Now, my kids’ school doesn’t have enough money for photocopies, so question sheets are reduced (to fit 4 sheets on one page). As a result, they often can’t read the questions – particularly subscripts and superscripts in chemistry and maths.

    The roads around here are so blighted with potholes (some truly massive/deep) that I have to get one of my wheel/tyres sorted/replaced and find myself peering at the road surface directly in front of me more than looking ahead and to the sides and keeping an eye out for kids or whatever. And almost every drain is blocked – which results in water damage and … more potholes.

    People are dieing because the NHS is being killed off. Making potential nurses pay for their training and kicking out all the EU nurses is a brilliant idea. But, to be honest, the NHS hasn’t been brilliant as far back as I can remember (40+ years). I fell/twisted my knee a few months ago. GP said “yes, it’s swollen. You’ve had a trauma, but I don’t think the ligaments are torn. Goodbye.” I went to a Dr in Germany. I had an MRI done within two hours. (Apparently there are more magnetic resonance tomographs in Munich than in the whole of England). And, yes, cruciate ligaments torn – when would I like it operated? Next week?

    Police complain about cuts which mean they don’t have the resources to deal with terrorists. The local police station has closed its front desk.

    I can’t even remember what the armed forces are complaining about. Was it that the navy’s aircraft carriers don’t have any planes or something? And did we *give* the US all our Harrier jump jets?

16. Cassanders says:

    May 22, 2018 at 2:01 pm

    The ostenible non-devine origin of the rules for fasting/(Ramadan) should be very obvious for those watching the poor observant muslims here in the high north (e.g. Norway). Some areas already experiencing 24 h sunlight, and other places are approaching. A large fraction of Norway, Sweden and Finland have very few hours for eating/recovering. A stupid idea altogether. Some imams have tried to be sensible ( and regulating the fasting by e.g. Mecca time, but of course there are überpious nuts insisting that they should stick to the scripture.

17. Hassan Radwan says:

    May 23, 2018 at 3:31 am

    Nicely done!

18. Author says:

    May 23, 2018 at 7:20 am

    Thanks again, Hassan!

19. Troubleshooter says:

    May 23, 2018 at 5:14 pm

    Shall we also mention that Jesus actually says that if you don’t have a sword, go sell you cloak and buy one?

20. Walter says:

    November 19, 2018 at 9:21 pm

    Islam and Christianity are both millennial cults. Every few years we hear “Jesus is cumming again” loud enough that everyone hears. And Christians make fun of cargo cultist who have only been waiting for less than a hundred years. Go figure.

    And the cargo cultists don’t give money to Israel so they can build the 3rd Temple and bring on Armageddon. I’m not making this up you know — Anna Russell on the plot of Wagner Ring Cycle.