The final image of Dr Jacob Bronowski, in his “Ascent of Man”, standing in the mud at Auschwitz is implanted in my brain. He wept and said that Auschwitz and, by implication, all the other hell-holes constructed by Man, is the unavoidable destination reached by the denial and silencing of truth.
‘It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That’s false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods….so it is religion that turns men into numbers.’
The BBC tells us that Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller are banned from the UK:
The letters [from the Home Secretary], both dated Tuesday, claim that both activists have fallen within the scope of a list of unacceptable behaviours by making statements which may “foster hatred” and lead to “inter-community violence” in the UK.
Both letters gave examples of anti-Muslim views stated by both and went on to say that should they be allowed to enter the UK the home secretary believes they would “continue to espouse such views”.
This is the quote that got Robert Spencer banned from the UK:
‘It is a religion and is a belief system that mandates warfare against unbelievers for the purpose of establishing a societal model that is absolutely incompatible with Western society. But unfortunately because of political correctness and because of media and general government unwillingness to face the sources of Islamic terrorism these things remain largely unknown.’
None of the usual comparisons of remarks made by other people that the BBC so often drag out when it suits them on occasions like this so that we can judge the comparative seriousness of the comments.
Perhaps I can help out with a few.
I wonder, based on that, how many of these people will be welcome in the UK:
Asked by presenter Matthew Parris whether there were any circumstances in which terrorism was justified, David Miliband said:
‘Yes, there are circumstances in which it is justifiable, and yes, there are circumstances in which it is effective.’
How about our ex- Prime Minister?
Tony Blair: Woolwich attack shows there is a ‘problem within Islam’
The former Prime Minister said the ideology that inspired the act of terror that shocked Britain last month is ‘profound and dangerous’
“It has at its heart a view about religion and about the interaction between religion and politics that is not compatible with pluralistic, liberal, open-minded societies,” he said.
How about the Mayor of London?
After the July 7 London bombings, Johnson called Islam “the most vicious sectarian of all religions,” and posed the question: “When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s medieval ass?” “Islam”, he wrote, “is the problem.”
What about George Galloway MP…or should that be HMP?
To Iraqi terrorists: ‘These poor Iraqis — ragged people, with their sandals, with their Kalashnikovs, with the lightest and most basic of weapons are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars, with 145 military operations every day, which has made the country ungovernable by the people who occupy it.’
To Saddam Hussein: “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability and I want you to know that we are with you, until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem!”
What of Prince Charles and all those who hob nob with Middle Eastern Royalty?
Charles was thrilled to be strengthening “relations which are underpinned by the close personal friendship that exists between their royal highnesses and the Saudi royal family”. Unaffected by regular reports about torture, intolerance and oppression and, in 2011, the country’s participation in Bahrain’s violent crushing of dissent, the prince’s affection for Saudi Arabia’s innumerable royals has blossomed over his eight official visits and intervening meetings in Britain, to the point that Highgrove is irrevocably – even if no floral roundabouts and municipal visits are involved – twinned with Jeddah.
When he endorses the oppression of Saudi women, Charles will also, with his retinue of arms salesmen, be giving a British blessing to the country’s religious and political intolerance, its torture, absolutism, imprisonment without trial, capital punishment for minors, pardons for rapist fathers, deals with al-Qaida, opposition to nearby democratic movements and executions for apostasy, homosexuality and adultery. Any of them – but perhaps, particularly, the last – might strike this enlightened royal and his wife as a good reason to remember an urgent appointment with a plant.
And what about Tony Lloyd…PCC for Greater Manchester? :
“Geller and Spencer are dangerous, they only want to come to stir up hatred and incite violence. Let’s make a stand together and say – you are not welcome in our proud land,” Tony added.
Tony has signed a Hope Not Hate open letter calling on the Home Secretary to deny Geller and Spencer a visa.
I wonder what drove Lloyd’s decision?
Tony Lloyd, MP for Manchester Central, said he had a longstanding relationship with the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at. He said that under the leadership of Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmadaba, Ahmadi Muslims constantly displayed values of love and peace.
or could it be this show of support from the ‘devout’ Muslims of ‘Engage’:
The PCC Elections: Obama who? Vote for that Tony Lloyd geezer.
Because hardly anyone knows about these elections, and even less will bother voting, this will be an election that can basically be framed as one for the freaks i.e. only those who are completely going to be affected are going to even bother promoting this and encouraging their people to vote, because in the absence of other block voters, your vote will be many times more powerful. Get it?
And then you’ve got the other vested parties, the “good” ones i.e. the Muslims. See, we also need to really get out there and not only block nutters like Carroll, but also ensure that we pressurise our local candidates in committing to bringing forth changes that will be fairer and safer to the most oppressed people in this country at the moment. Us.
or could it be Lloyd’s friendly relations with the terrorists of Hamas?
I wonder if that is the same Tony Lloyd who posted a comment condemning an Islamic state on this blog?:
At the very least, Pakistan has buried the idea that an ‘Islamic State’ can be a workable solution in today’s world. The truth is that Muslims in power are every bit as prone to abusing that power as non-Muslims. Only, most ‘Islamic states’ or ‘Islamic republics’ do not have anywhere near the same legal safeguards and restrictions on power that most modern secular states do.
Tony Lloyd says:
Good post, I entirely agree about the dangerous nature of an “Islamic state”. Of course much the same problems can arise with a “Christian”, “Hindu”, or “Atheist” state.
The “state” should be a mechanism for living together, not for securing an ideology.
This murder re-enforces the argument for secularism.
(1) Ignorance leads to “Hope not Knowledge”
(2) Islam leads to “Hate not Love”
For Buddhists and Christians its “Love not Hate” but for Humanists, Atheists, Satanists and Muslims its “Hope not Hate”.
I think I prefer the wisdom of the religious dogmas of Buddhists and Christians who “Love not Hate”, “Love thine Enemy” and “Forgive those who Hate ye”
Also I think it was from Bronowski that we got the “Fixed Invariable” when thinking about Evolution.
“Survival of the fittest” where survival or death is the fixed invariable and fitness is subject to the statistics of probability of death. Its why he said “I don’t think it matters” when confronted with the biggest taboo in science, as intelligence is not a fixed invariable.
Ignorance leads to “Hate not Hope” ala Nick Knowles
or the “Union Arrogant Fascists” ala Martin Smith and co.
http://youtu.be/38fxq7qLG3M
Might have guessed that piece of Anglophobic, Communist filth – Nick Lowles – would be involved somehow. I expect he told Cameron that he’d order his rent-a-mob of brain-bleached student zombies to stop attacking UKIP meetings if he didn’t do as he said.
the odious uaf and the far left and there islamist allies always peddle this crap that if the edl ever got in power they would stop there freedom of speech,well hang on there a sec,it is the uaf and the islamists that want to deny the edl there freedom of speech under the false banner of anti fascism and i have never heard once the edl calling for a ban on the uaf and there islamists cronies peddling there hate and violence on the streets,hence i declare that the edl are the real anti fascists and the uaf/islamists are the fascists who want to deny freedom of speech to anybody that does not agree with there communist/ islamist ideology.as for banning people from this country,is theresa may going to ban barack obama from the uk on the grounds that he is bombing the hell out of pakistan and yemen killing 100s of civilians with his 2000 ilb bombs in them drones.i say ban barack obomber from the uk due to the violent reaction it could provoke from the 8 million muslims many illegals and failed aylum seekers living here.
The preamble to this post is far too long, containing at least 8 separate threads. Far too much to post any kind of response too.
Are you accusing Alan of making verbose posts? Perish the thought. Nah, can’t be bothered reading it either.
Poor responses to important points raised by Alan about the lack of free speech and demonisation in this country of those who want to warn us about the perils of Islamic terrorism. It takes effort and courage these days to stand against the politically correct lemmings in government and at the BBC. Alan should be supported not sneered at, especially by those who see fit to continually fill his blog with their own ramblings.
In other words, your version of freedom of speech does not include the right to criticise certain people !
No body is sneering just pointing out the preamble is too long and covering too many points to make it possible to respond to.
But isn’t your post in itself a response?
‘Everything I say is a lie’, &c.
Relax boys, I did the reading. Still nothing to do with the BBC. Unless you include this statement ; ‘None of the usual comparisons of remarks made by other people that the BBC so often drag out when it suits them on occasions like this’
I mean wtf does that mean!?!?
I don’t think Tony Blair, David Miliband etc have much trouble getting into the UK, what with them living here and all.
These two links are well worth reading
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
A World Split Apart
Juts a taster
And yet — no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal. Thus at the shameful Belgrade conference free Western diplomats in their weakness surrendered the line where enslaved members of Helsinki Watchgroups are sacrificing their lives.
Western thinking has become conservative: the world situation should stay as it is at any cost, there should be no changes. This debilitating dream of a status quo is the symptom of a society which has come to the end of its development. But one must be blind in order not to see that oceans no longer belong to the West, while land under its domination keeps shrinking. The two so-called world wars (they were by far not on a world scale, not yet) have meant internal self-destruction of the small, progressive West which has thus prepared its own end. The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one and I do not believe it will) may well bury Western civilization forever.
Facing such a danger, with such historical values in your past, at such a high level of realization of freedom and apparently of devotion to freedom, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself?
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html
This is a coincidence. I have just downloaded this . In my view one of the most important I have ever read.
A very remarkable man.
Its truly a prescient analysis pf the woes that affect us.
There is another link that I have posted below.
——————————
More from AS
Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.
What is more, the events of the Russian Revolution can only be understood now, at the end of the century, against the background of what has since occurred in the rest of the world. What emerges here is a process of universal significance. And if I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, here too, I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God.
The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century. The first of these was World War I, and much of our present predicament can be traced back to it. It was a war (the memory of which seems to be fading) when Europe, bursting with health and abundance, fell into a rage of self-mutilation which could not but sap its strength for a century or more, and perhaps forever. The only possible explanation for this war is a mental eclipse among the leaders of Europe due to their lost awareness of a Supreme Power above them. Only a godless embitterment could have moved ostensibly Christian states to employ poison gas, a weapon so obviously beyond the limits of humanity.
only a religious state can do “ungodly” things to people, because religious people defer to their supreme being instead of holding themselves responsible for their own actions. A person who rejects gods and who accepts responsibilities for their own actions cannot blame a religion for their action and is fully accountable to their own conscience – when people have stopped blaming their gods and other peoples’ gods for problems we will be left with people with no excuses except “we wanted that land” or “we wanted that resource” or “we wanted to destroy that people because they want to destroy us” – much simpler! Humans will be seen for what we are, animals vying for resources and room – when there are too many of us, we will wipe each other out to a few and start all over again
The West has yet to experience a Communist invasion; religion here remains free. But the West’s own historical evolution has been such that today it too is experiencing a drying up of religious consciousness. It too has witnessed racking schisms, bloody religious wars, and rancor, to say nothing of the tide of secularism that, from the late Middle Ages onward, has progressively inundated the West. This gradual sapping of strength from within is a threat to faith that is perhaps even more dangerous than any attempt to assault religion violently from without.
Imperceptibly, through decades of gradual erosion, the meaning of life in the West has ceased to be seen as anything more lofty than the “pursuit of happiness, “a goal that has even been solemnly guaranteed by constitutions. The concepts of good and evil have been ridiculed for several centuries; banished from common use, they have been replaced by political or class considerations of short lived value. It has become embarrassing to state that evil makes its home in the individual human heart before it enters a political system. Yet it is not considered shameful to make dally concessions to an integral evil. Judging by the continuing landslide of concessions made before the eyes of our very own generation, the West is ineluctably slipping toward the abyss. Western societies are losing more and more of their religious essence as they thoughtlessly yield up their younger generation to atheism. If a blasphemous film about Jesus is shown throughout the United States, reputedly one of the most religious countries in the world, or a major newspaper publishes a shameless caricature of the Virgin Mary, what further evidence of godlessness does one need? When external rights are completely unrestricted, why should one make an inner effort to restrain oneself from ignoble acts?
http://www.roca.org/OA/36/36h.htm
Alexander Solzhenitsyn won a medal for bravery on the Western front against the Nazis. Bravery was common on this front, thus a medal awarded for bravery must have been something beyond what one would consider bravery, specially in Stalin’s Russia.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn also was in the gulag, so he knows a lot more about totalitarian systems then most..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23064355
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b02x9r5j/Nihal_Pamela_Geller_and_Robert_Spencer_visit_the_UK/
now go away
to much alanphobia going on in here by these nasty lefties as usual
The bbc must have formed a committee to brainstorm a whole batch of new names for their trolls.
Well he’s wrong about the final scene in The Ascent of Man so what’s the point of reading any further?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn on Courage
no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal. Thus at the shameful Belgrade conference free Western diplomats in their weakness surrendered the line where enslaved members of Helsinki Watchgroups are sacrificing their lives.
Western thinking has become conservative: the world situation should stay as it is at any cost, there should be no changes. This debilitating dream of a status quo is the symptom of a society which has come to the end of its development. But one must be blind in order not to see that oceans no longer belong to the West, while land under its domination keeps shrinking. The two so-called world wars (they were by far not on a world scale, not yet) have meant internal self-destruction of the small, progressive West which has thus prepared its own end. The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one and I do not believe it will) may well bury Western civilization forever.
Facing such a danger, with such historical values in your past, at such a high level of realization of freedom and apparently of devotion to freedom, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself?
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html
The “next war” that Alexander Solzhenitsyn referred to in 1978, is already here, and the soldiers of the future rulers are also in the UK in millions.
This may seem a trite question, but what does this have to do with allegations of bias at the BBC?
Oh dear James.
It takes the good people who post up the truth-as exemplified by this astonishing prophetic piece by Mr Solzhenitsyn-to , inevitably: show up the lazy inherent cultural bias and reflexes of the liberal media he coruscates in the speech.
Read it-if you don`t see the BBC in there, you`re being silly.
Now if this kind of work or opinion was ever put up for debate on the BBC, then you`d have a point-but the BBC are as quick to bury the likes of Sharansky and Solzhenitsyn as they are to blow fetid air into Mandelas lungs, whilst they get the black ties ironed.
Have yet to hear why Madelas daughter says the media coverage is racist…has the BBC given us the context even for this minor sin that normally gets the lethal injection from the liberals at the BBC?
Come on James-hat tip to DP111, who`s given me the Thought for the year, let alone the Day, may not quite match John Bell, but hey…
Excuse me chrish if I seem pedantic.
coruscate – to flash, sparkle, glitter
But I know what you mean. Deprecate?
Apropos of Auschwitz, did you see this:
Matthew Collins (Hope Not Hate): “People will now quote Voltaire but he never had the benefit of going to the gates of Auschwitz and seeing where unfettered free speech ends up.”
You confuse Freedom to Tell the Truth with Freedom to Tell Lies. UAF are the Facists they purport to “unite against”. I assume the inclusion of the word “Unite” is deference to their Union paymasters.
What a bizarre and ludicrous thing to say
Is Mathew Collins suggesting that people had “unfettered free speech” in Germany under the control of National Socialism? (do you think that?)
Surely the holocaust was made possible by the construction of an ersatz Volksgemeinschaft
A construct made possible by suppressing any dissenting view and with the full co-operation of the media
P.S. Sorry for any ‘pseudo-intellectualism’ James ,I just haven’t learnt to no my place
oops know my place – yer’honour