Go Ask Me Bollix

Now you would think that you would watch out for stuff like this if you were going to have hyped-up product launch…

…especially when you are in a city where the average January low is +3^oC ish…

Fucking Cold!

A few days ago, I was asked by a colleague what I made of the overturning of the ban on Geert Wilders’ entrance to the UK for accepting an invitation to show his film ‘Fitna’ before the House of Lords. He asked if it was really ok that the ban should have been lifted on the man.

Before I offer my reply, take a look at what all the fuss is about. Make sure you’ve a stern enough stomach to watch this.

http://www.break.com/usercontent/2009/2/Fitna-Documentary-about-Islam-660675.html

Never one to use one word where two might hammer home a particular point, I answered:

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Of course the ban should have been lifted, just as it should never have been imposed in the first place eight months before.

The reasons given for the ban relied on wilful misrepresentation of ECHR law, as Jacqui Smith pursued her fearful road of capitulation to the Islamist maniacs in her midst, which law purported to show that Wilders exposed himself to restriction of freedom of speech on ‘national security’ grounds. It didn’t wash (the underlying application of law seems to have been faulty) as the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal has now found.

The Government’s capitulation, in effecting this ban, to Jihadist violence – such violence as was threatened by Lord ‘still driving?’ Ahmed in terms of his promise to mobilise 10,000 Muslims to protest Wilders’ entrance – was far from this country’s finest hour. For not only did it do away in one unprecedentedly cowardly swoop with the notions of freedom of speech and freedom of expression, it also horribly showed up the latent bigotry of the Government, a bigotry far more sinister than the bias some ignoramuses incomprehensibly find in Wilders’ film. For the Government’s decision was predicated on the perception that Muslims as a whole would be offended by Wilders’ film such that violence would necessarily ensue, therefore immediately granting that all Muslims are in fact represented by the most extreme, unreasonable and fanatically intolerant and vocal Muslims in the UK.

Ironically, such bias worked precisely for and not against the welcome granted by the UK to Ijaz Mian, a fanatical Muslim preacher to whom no banning or censure was offered by the Government when he said:

‘You cannot accept the rule of the kaffir. We have to rule ourselves and we have to
rule the others… King, Queen, House of Commons: if you accept it, you are a
part of it. If you don’t accept it, you have to dismantle it. So you being a
Muslim, you have to fix a target. From that White House to this Black House, we
know we have to dismantle it. Muslims must grow in strength, then take over…
You are in a situation in which you have to live like a state-within-a-state -
until you take over.’

The banning of Wilders was, I think, not only a dark day for freedom of expression but an enormous condescension and insult to Muslims in general, who were despicably considered by the Government to be incapable of controlling themselves and of thinking for themselves. The British Government simply endorsed the entirety of Wilders’ filmic proposition by doing worse than ever Wilders had done in his attempt to show, correctly, the canonical basis of Islamic violence – they simply lumped all Muslims together and genu-jerked fearfully at their imaginings of collective and potentially deliberately imposed Muslim mayhem. By banning entry to the UK of the potential victim of this mayhem and violence, who was miscast as its potential instigator, a serious second offence, encompassing sheer cowardice and insult against liberal and enlightened values, was contemptibly committed.

If it had been the case that Muslims were considered by Smith and her cohorts to be ‘genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat’ as to require Wilders to stay away, then the Government may have been on to something at least arguable and honest. As it is, these quoted words refer not to the Muslims feared to be capable of violence, but to Wilders himself, in a letter sent to him by Irving Jones, under the aegis of the Home Office. I submit that the twisted logic of this is very hard to follow.

In such a circumstance, it becomes even more important to listen to the one person who wishes to speak. Christopher Hitchens correctly says that it is not only a question of that individual’s right to speak, but of our right to listen. As I consider the Wilders case, and his despicable treatment at the hands of a scared and integrity-lacking Government, I can’t help remembering a passage on the Danish cartoon fiasco of 2006 from a splendid book called ‘The Fall Out’ by Andrew Anthony, a British columnist and author, which I hope you don’t mind my quoting:

‘[A]s British liberals raced to point the finger of blame at Denmark, Islamists took to the streets of London in protest at the cartoons that had never been published in this country. Standing outside the Danish Embassy, they held up placards with such legends as ‘Butcher those who mock Islam’, ‘ Behead the one who insults the Prophet’ and ‘Britain you will pay, 7/7 is on its way.’ Despite the incitement to violence and murder, no arrests were made at the demonstration. ‘Those gathered were well natured and in the main compliant with police requests,’ said a Metropolitan Police statement. A few weeks later I would watch as a group of six or seven senior police officers agreed on the urgent need to arrest a solitary man holding up an image of one of the cartoons at a demonstration in favour of freedom of expression. The man, an Iranian refugee from religious tyranny, was in good spirits and completely unthreatening but he was swiftly hauled off by several policemen’.

Whatever one may think of Wilders’ wish to see Islamification of his own country be abolished and restored not by overtly secular tenets but by a curious and in my opinion wrongheaded notion of ‘Christian values’; whatever one may think of Wilders’ call to ban the Koran in his own country, which is maintained by his supporters to be a call simply for an equally applied hand in circumstances where ‘Mein Kampf’ is banned, and which is used by his detractors as a ‘Gotcha!’ accusation of freedom of speech hypocrisy; one may in some sense compare him – given his lack of criminality, given his general courtesy and given his wish simply to speak before an audience which invited him to do so in the House of Lords – to the lonely Iranian taking a stand against the forces ranged against freedom of expression and democracy.

Both suffered at the hands of a cowardly, capitulating Government, hatefully appeasing to both Islam and Muslims, a premiership which is supposed to protect rather than threaten the very values of free expression both Wilders and our mysterious Iranian endorsed and publicly promoted.

This was the first time that an elected politician from another member state of the EU had ever been denied access to Britain and the date of its imposition should be committed to memory as an example of just how fragile our hard-won rights to freedom of expression really are. I propose a few moments on the 10th February spent each year remembering quite how the British Government shamed and dishonoured our difficultly acquired, enlightened rights of freedom of speech and expression, so to ensure that we value them all the more.
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I trust any and all readers agree.

Styrer

Check it out: between 37 and 52 percent of Muslims residing in the state want Shariah law to be imposed on us all.

Fort Hood is an example of quite how fundamentalist Islam can sneak beneath the radar, be granted all the rights a multicultural society thinks are necessary to be PC, and then destruct a major (no pun intented) part of the society which saw fit to welcome its wannabe nemesis into its midst.

Take a look at this, if you think there’s nothing much to worry about, even in Ireland:

http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/the_third_jihad/

I sent this, expecting no reply and of course getting none:

Dr Jasser

 Your film was devastating: informative as it was terrifying. Congratulations on presenting this film such that small individuals like me can see it.

 It is often held that Islam is incapable of going through a reformation in the way that Christianity did, because its canonical dictates are that it is the final and unalterable revelation.

 I have read the Koran and the Hadith. Once the belligerent, bellicose, kuffar-attacking parts of the Koran are excised, there seems to be little left. May I please have an answer from you as to precisely what kind of Muslim you are. Do you still rate Muhammed as the perfect example of humankind? Once the most aggressive parts of the Koran are excised, may I ask what remains to believe in?

 In order for you to follow this religion, quite what is it that retains your adherence?

 I am genuinely puzzled as to how you can make of a despicably aggressive document – the Koran, as I’ve read it – a benign, life-embracing, loving way of seeing it. There really seems to be little left.

Styrer

——

Let’s not forget quite what an apostate Muslim, living under constant guard, because the crime of Islamic apostasy is death, had to say about this:

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/news/cfi_releases_statement_from_ibn_warraq_in_response_to_fort_hood_tragedy/

What is absolutely unbelievable is that there are still those who promote the vacuous nonsense that Muslim terrorism lies in some dispute about political advantage, or that those crying ‘Alahu Akhbar’ before they blow up countless innocents along with their vile selves actually have any geo-political concerns whatsoever. Until it is understood that the fuckers whose morality has been entirely corrupted by the Koran and the Hadith such that they want to fight their beloved texts’ enforced war of jihad and martydom against the kuffar – regardless of geo-political aims and against all of us little non-believing pissants in Ireland – then we’re never going to understand, let alone be able to combat, the evil in our midst.

I refer you to one of the best video clips I’ve ever come across to get across this point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8fjFKAC5k

It’s Christopher Hitchens, and I suspect he needs no introduction to any who actually know a little about what’s fucking going on out there.

The average of 37 and 52 is 44.5 percent. This is far, far too much. How the fuck have we let this maniacal element grow in our midst? It is a fucking disgrace.

Styrer

Following announcement of his resignation, Taoiseach Brian Cowen paid tribute to Mr O’Donoghue’s “commitment and integrity” in his position as Ceann Comhairle.
Let’s just remind ourselves of the “committment and integrity” that he brought to the position:

In light of the country-demeaning, progressing-defying and hell-bent reason denying signing into law by way of the greatest Cunt in Ireland, Dermot Ahern, I offer some thoughts on reason Versus unreason. Sorry it’s long.

George Pitcher, Religion Editor of the UK’s The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph, recently wrote in his blog: ‘So much of human life is irrational, but a central tenet of the secularist faith is that if it’s irrational then it can’t be allowed to exist.’

An epic fail, and not only because of the reference to a secularist ‘faith’ (faithoholics employing terms from their own sphere to denigrate atheists always tickles me, as they unwittingly and laughably express suspicion and criticism of those very terms on which their own daft claims to veracity lie). But Pitcher’s repetition of the tired, trite and unfounded charge that secularists are hell-bent on eradicating irrationality in all its forms is a useful reminder of the moronically blinkered response theists often regurgitate in the face of any challenge from atheists to their unevidenced beliefs.

There is a sliding scale of irrationality, between benign and delightful unevidenced beliefs on the one, Santa Clausian hand and unevidenced, anti-human and murderous religions, topped by a huge margin by Islam, on the other. The tooth fairy story is an entirely irrational belief but is delimited in precisely the same way as are many children’s experiences of ‘imaginary friends.’ Kids simply grow up and are highly unlikely to take up dentally-invoked jihad as a consequence.

But there is a panoply of irrationality between these extremes, not only religious in nature, and it is with the crucial notion of harm, both physical and psychological, caused to others that Pitcher’s words can begin to shed their mendacious duplicity and take on a real point of substance with which any secularist and atheist should be happy to agree.

Witness, on what at first may seem a harmless enough part of this vast spectrum of unreason, the case of the distinguished science writer Simon Singh, sued by the British Chiropractic Association for exposing their spine-bashing ways as nigh-on useless pseudoscience. In his co-authored book, ‘Trick or Treatment’, he concluded that traditional physiotherapy worked just as well as gentler forms of chiropractic treatments and without any of the euphemistically termed ‘side-effects’ of the ‘fundamentalist’ chiropractors. The UK’s Private Eye reported: ‘As well as dizziness and headaches, there were 700 instances in the medical literature of patients suffering spinal compression fractures and other serious complications, and four reported deaths in Canada’.

Let’s add to this deadly mix of unreason the case of Jeremy Sherr, Fellow of the Society of Homeopaths, who recently embarked on a campaign to treat AIDS sufferers in Tanzania not with proven and effective anti-retroviral drugs but with… homeopathy. This pseudoscience has produced no definitive results in any clinical or double-blind trial it has ever undergone and that this pernicious purveyor of nothing more than the placebo effect is now preying on desperately ill people in Africa, keeping them away from traditional medicines which are proven to work, is a disgrace of the highest magnitude. Real people are dying because of this unproven ‘science’ and both secularist and theist alike should join in as vocal a condemnation as possible before more people die because of sheer wilful ignorance.

Irrationality, then, is not the sole preserve of the theists. But they can and certainly do rise to the challenge. Theists often try to castigate the scientific method as just another ‘faith’ or ‘belief system’, one which can make mistakes just as much as they claim religion can be misused for evil ends. I’ll play along just for a moment. The vital attention that global warming is receiving because of scientists’ buttoned-down findings is encouraging governments and individual citizens to re-think their stance on how to live on our one and only planet. But an equally devastating threat to the planet, which scientists have been slow to cotton on to, is ocean acidification, the so-called ‘other CO2 problem’. Left unresolved it will, according to some experts now speaking up, have catastrophic impact on Earth’s eco-systems in less than 60 years. As Jason Hall-Spencer, research lecturer at Plymouth University, stated on this: ‘The whole scientific community was caught with its pants down’. The newsflash is therefore that scientists can make mistakes just as much as anyone can. But, as absolutely distinct from the theistic and the pseudoscientific, the solution to scientific error or oversight is not less but MORE scientific inquiry. As unbending and unheeding as theism and pseudoscience remain when faced with evidence gainsaying their positions, the solution to their anti-human, destructive failings is, by contrast, not more but LESS ‘faith’ and unevidenced assertion. Tony Blair’s Faith Foundation, for example, sees the solution to the problem of destructive and ‘extremist’ faith as the encouragement and promotion of…yet more faith (Terry Sanderson, of the National Secular Society, tersely and wittily said last year: “Mr Blair’s call for religion to play a bigger role in world affairs is like trying to douse a fire by showering it with petrol”). Until this no-brainer distinction is properly grasped, then the future looks pretty damn bleak.

The good Mr. Pitcher and those whom he is parroting should re-visit, then, their closed-minded thinking on this whole topic of secular attitudes to the irrational and realize that we are objecting properly and morally-soundly to irrationality being empowered and celebrated to such a degree that it disfigures and destroys other people’s lives, other human beings who are often at their most desperate and most vulnerable. Though he perversely and proudly says in his very same blog, albeit in no doubt ironic but inappropriately frivolous manner, that: ‘Christianity is mad. Madness is at the heart of our faith. It is a completely mad notion that an artisan from an unfashionable province of an oppressed nation could emerge with a message of the simplest self-sacrifice, get himself executed in humiliating failure, and then change the course of human history forever’, he and his ilk should surely be running to join all of us atheists and secularists in condemning the destruction of innocent lives at the hands of unreason, rather than gleefully and shamefully promoting irrationality as a virtue, as fast as their little theistic feet can carry them.

Rowan Williams 2007

He’s up to his old tricks.

One year ago the Archbishop fucked up royally by publicly stating that Shariah law was inevitable in Britain and there was growing support for its introduction in the UK.

Shariah is the full body of Islamic law and is about as misogynistic, homophobic, unfair, cruel and anti-reason as any set of ‘laws’ could possibly be. Political Islam revels in each moment where it thinks it has succeeded in moving another step forward in prosecuting its war against the infidel, and so Williams’ utterly batshit crazy public announcement was music to every Islamist’s ears.

Trounced in the press, ridiculed in nearly all quarters, the fellow should have been quietly taken off to a place for some, shall we say, peace and quiet, and that should have been an end to it.

But nope. This maniacally hell-bent multiculturalist is back again in the media, pontificating that he was right all along and that it is abundantly clear that there is increasing public demand for Shariah in the UK, despite there being absolutely no evidence in favour of his assertion whatsoever.

So what’s really going on with this peculiar fellow?

He studied at both Oxford and Cambridge, and so is no intellectual slouch. Perhaps he really has lost his mind, though it seems unlikely. Perhaps it is the case that, with huge downturns in Church of England ovine membership, any faith at all is more worthy of support than none, simply to keep alive at whatever cost a theistic rather than a secular attitude to life. The worst possibility is that he genuinely thinks that he is right. The creeping dhimmitude his bizarre support for Shariah represents is extremely dangerous, not only because it gives encouragement for additions to be made to the already five Shariah courts known to be in operation in the UK, but also because of the succour it grants to every Islamist whose end game ambitions are to see Western civilization brought to its knees under the absolute control of the House of Islam.

Shame on him. It’s high time that superstitious supernaturalist muppets like Williams be ignored and marginalised away from the public eye when it comes to all matters which are not explicitly concerned with some arcane theological hair-splitting. Let him carry on with the latter to his heart’s content, but he should not be permitted to have any further media attention in his official clerical position for any of his utterly dippy and dangerous political ideas ever again.

UPDATE: The cunt of Westminster strikes again: you may have heard of the ‘expenses’ scandals which have elevated the UK press to, for the first time I can recall, a decent reporting institution, giving out hell to the utter gobshites who have been living it large at taxpayers’ expense. Now the faith-drenched fucker rolls up his useless, twatting archbishopal sleeves to say ‘Aw, lay off the politicians, they’re having a hard time’.

The clue that he’s going to talk some shite is his clothes and his open mouth. This sorry fucking Catholic country must have something similar. Or so I thought. When Dermot the cunt Ahern started on his recent ‘anti-blasphemy’ campaign, I tried to work out which was worse – Rowan Williams or Dermot Ahern. There’s not much to choose. At least the UK gets a noisy, shit-filled cunt of a religious commentator distinguished by his bizarre clothes. We are lucky that we have, er, a noisy, shit-filled cunt of a religious commentator in Ahern, who has clearly saved us taxpayers a few bob on clothes. We should all be fucking grateful.

Styrer

The Autonomous Language Learning (ALL) project mission statement (my emphasis):

The Mission of the project is to create a blended learning system, online and offline, with materials for learning and teaching in five languages (Turkish, Romanian, Bulgarian and Lithuanian) and a procedural methodology, which can be transferred to the learning and teaching of other languages, as well.

Ehhhh… that’s four languages…

Take note: Eircom are taking it up the ass potentially on your behalf…

(In case you been living in a hole for the past few months, this is the latest in the ongoing case between Eircom and EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner – the four main players in IRMA – the Irish Recorded Music Association – over alleged illegal downloading of copyrighted music.)

On January 28th Eircom agreed a settlement of High Court proceedings with four record companies over music downloads. The record companies have been alleging that Eircom were liable because they were doing nothing to prevent the “abuse” of their networks (including your Internet connection) by people illegally downloading copyrighted material (mostly music MP3’s and movies).

The Internet can be compared (in this case anyway) to the plain old telephone service. Eircom provide you with a telephone line and you use it to talk, fax even check your email. If someone uses the telephone to make death threats or to make libelious statements then is the person who made the statements culpable or the person who provided the telephone line?

Don’t like that analogy? What about the air all around us then? Air allows sound waves to travel between someones mouth and another persons ears. Who should be prosecuted in this case? God? And if you are an atheist copyright holder – where’s your remedy then?

Here’s the beef in the Irish Times article:

…the record companies will supply Eircom with the IP addresses of all persons who they detect illegally uploading or downloading copyright works…

Now I may be no high-flautin’-fancy-pants-lawyer, but aren’t there rules under which “evidence” can be collected? Linking an IP address to an alleged offence is no more an indication of guilt than perhaps being in an area when a bank robbery is committed.

Your IP address is like your telephone number. No more, no less. If you want to send information from one computer to another (for whatever purpose) you need to know it’s IP address. If you want to telephone someone, you need their telephone number.

Linking a conversation to two telephone numbers does not tie it down to two people. In the same way, your IP address belongs to a PC (or a modem), not to an individual. The Gárdaí know all about this. Linking questionable content (like child porn for example) to an IP address is not enough to prove a case. They’ll get a search warrant perhaps but no prosecution – and rightly so. Our constitution has a presumption of innocence, and let’s not forget that copyright infringement is a criminal act.

But, unlike your telephone number, your computers IP address can change quite frequently. Imagine how useful called ID would be if your telephone number changed all the time? Indeed, under the Eircom “agreement” it could be the case that you are approached by Eircom over the “abuse” of their network because the last person to have that IP address happened to download a few MP3 tracks.

(Un)coincidentally enough, in the U.S. similar bullying tactics have been used by the RIAA (the American equivalent of the IMRA) and (shock horror) who holds the main interest in the RIAA? Why non-other than EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner!

Ray Beckerman (a lawyer in the U.S.) has a blog page which deals with the U.S. angle in some detail – it is well worth a read. Is is particularly interesting to look at the different ways in which the RIAA deal with alleged infringement cases: for example in 2007 a single mother from Minnesota was ordered to pay USD 220,000 for sharing 24 songs online while the RIAA were having less success in tackling people their own size, as has been the case with some US Universities.

So if you are approached by Eircom with this kind of “evidence”, remember you have substantial legal rights and don’t need to take their word for it (and certainly not the word of EMI, Sony, Universal or Warner.) Let’s see some hard facts please. And let’s have some proper legal scrutiny of this crap.

So here is what will happen in this joint approach aimed at ending “the abuse of the Internet by  P2P (peer to peer) copyright infringers”!

Eircom will:

1. inform its broadband subscriber that the subscribers IP address has been detected infringing copyright;
2. warn the subscriber they will be  disconnected unless infringement ceases and
3. disconnect the subscriber in default of compliance with the warning

Eircom (stupid as they are) have recognised a pretty major hole in this agreement. Therefore:

The record compnaies (sic) have also agreed they will take all necessary steps to put similar agreements in place with all other internet service providers in Ireland.

This is a pretty typical tactic for the recording industry and mirrors similar tactics made in the past (see Beckerman’s site). They know that they have major problems with the burden of proof in individual cases, therefore they make loads of threatening noises in the hope that the victim will bend over and settle.

They had wanted Eircom to install software from a US firm that would detect the unique “fingerprint” of copyrighted music files being sent on its network, but Eircom claimed (rightly so) this would not be technically feasible.

In fairness if your internet connection is being filtered in any way, or if you find certain protocols or web sites are “broken” then in my opinion, you do not have a proper Internet connection and have redress under the Sale of Goods and Supply of Services Act, 1980 under the heading “fit for the purpose”, “merchantable quality” or “misrepresentation”.

Now a question for homework:

Do you think a Eircom will actually boot paying customers off their network or do you think that some poor sap will be held up as an example?

They better start thinking quickly because the Alternative Licensed Telecoms Operators (ALTO) group  (whose members include BT Ireland, Magnet Networks, NTL, Chorus, Smart Telecom, Budget Telecom, Cable & Wireless, Colt Telecom, Complete Networks, Digiweb, ESB Telecoms, Verizon and 3 Play Plus) have already released a statement signalling their less-than-enthusiastic response:

“While we obviously do not condone illegal downloading or any illegality on or over the internet, we firmly disapprove of any draconian measures that would compromise the privacy, speed or services offered to broadband users. We do not need measures to further impede the development of next-generation broadband in Ireland”

and

“We’re not party to the agreement with Eircom – we don’t know the details of agreement…”

And as we know only too well, Eircom aren’t the company likely to do anything that might affect their market position…

Funnily enough, Eircom’s News page has no mention of the “agreement” (no link provided because their crap website makes it impossible to link to them) while the IRMA have it screaming from their “Breaking News” page.

For more reaction, off to IrishBlogs.ie with you…

To mark the utter futility of all of this expensive High Court messing, check out the link to TOR - a free and Open Source programme that will guarantee your privacy and make the whole the argument between Eircom and the record companies meaningless.

For fucks sake, haven’t we had enough of pissing money up against the wall by now?