Katboy's Comments (665)

“People should keep their religion to themselves.”

“Ask Asian kids who grew up in Europe/US/UK/Australia whether it's an offensive gesture.”

“Churchill's famous "V for victory" is done with the hand the same way around as the "up yours" gesture.
"Victory" isn't quite the same as "peace", but there's some overlap of meaning”

“Johann Hari: Why should I respect these oppressive religions?

The right to criticise religion is being slowly doused in acid. Across the world, the small, incremental gains made by secularism – giving us the space to doubt and question and make up our own minds – are being beaten back by belligerent demands that we "respect" religion. A historic marker has just been passed, showing how far we have been shoved. The UN rapporteur who is supposed to be the global guardian of free speech has had his job rewritten – to put him on the side of the religious censors.

Starting in 1999, a coalition of Islamist tyrants, led by Saudi Arabia, demanded the rules be rewritten. The demand for everyone to be able to think and speak freely failed to "respect" the "unique sensitivities" of the religious, they decided – so they issued an alternative Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. It insisted that you can only speak within "the limits set by the shariah [law]. It is not permitted to spread falsehood or disseminate that which involves encouraging abomination or forsaking the Islamic community".
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-why-should-i-respect-these-oppressive-religions-1517789.html

As demonstrated in the US (NZ/Oz/UK), christians are getting in on the act. Pandering is not the intention of religious tolerance. One gets to practice their religion without fear of persecution. One does not get to demand respect for meaningless arbitrary standards.”

“Read the article. It wasn't an 'Asian gesture'. It was the well-known western gesture used by children/idiots/racists to 'imitate' Asian eyes by pulling one's eyes back at the corners in order to make them narrower.

Racist? Possibly.
Stupid? Definitely.”

“Puching fascists is ALWAYS laudible.

Note, I'm referring to real, self-declared fascists, rather than people who are merely called fascists by a hyperbolic public.

If someone had managed to punch Reagan, Khomeni or Thatcher in the face, the general public would have laughed just as hard.”

“The "Queen Mum" was the mother of Elizabeth. She died a few years ago, aged well over 100.

Elizabeth II is never referred to as 'the Queen Mum" or "the Queen Mother"”

“Yes, but this is a formailty. She is TOLD when to dissolve by the sitting government. The king/queen can never DECIDE to dissolve parliament, nor refuse to do so when the call for election is made.

There's the step of souble dissolution, when the upper and lower houses are deadlocked, as can happen in most bicameral governments. Again, the monarch has no say in when if or how this happens. They just rubber-stamp the decision.

The dismissal of Australia's Whitlam govt. is seen by some as the UK extending influence over Australian politics but it was the US govt. interfering, if anything. Had a lot to do with Nam and early-warning systems.

Now the Dutch, queen, on the other hand, seems to have quite a bit of actual, factual power.”

“Thanks for setting the rules, oh wise one.

Incidentally - 'what twitter has done to blogs'?
Please. They've hardly been around long enough to be pining for the good old days. Did you start using the internet in 2005, or something?”

“Murdoch voluntarily gave up his Australian citizenship, and he doesn't live in Oz any more.

He is officially, legally, a US citizen. Australia is sorry he was ever born, but he's your problem now.”

“It's 2009 and someone was still unable to type five letters into google.
Sad.”

“He wasn't a politician. You mentioned one in your post.”

“As has been pointed out by wittier folk than I - the most evil, war-mongery presidents of recent US history don't even have the dubious honour of the 'dick' (Nixon) appelation. Their family name relates to an unnecessary secondary sexual feature - the 'bush'.”

“Yes, I felt this option was missing from the poll as well.

You have to pay for going 5-10 kilos over luggage allowance, so why should you not pay for being 40-50 kilos over the weight of the average person?

It's all about fuel economy.”

“Also, the idea that non-Muslim women would be forced to wear a 'burkini' in the UK is absolute right wing fantasy.

Distrust of all religion aside, the idea that 'the Caliphate' is coming to Europe is beyond ridiculous. Barring divine intervention, it is simply not going to happen.

I'd put the idea of a 'muslim takeover of the west' in the same league as:
"Should the West choose to remain reactionary in how it deals with Muslim extremism -- real or perceived -- then it unwisely relinquishes its fate to the hands of terrorists who know that it would only then take a few more attacks to sink Western societies into self-defeating frenzy. Make no mistake about it, merely inflicting explosions that tear down towers of steel and glass is not terrorism's ultimate goal or greatest threat, being a catalyst for Western self-implosion is."

Pure fantasy.”

“JFTR - Pim Fortuyn was murdered by a nutty animal rights activist, not a nutty religous fanatic (though it may be reasonable to put all fanatics in the same category).”

“Not sure if this should be classed as a mistake or a strawman-by-proxy, but Hungarian people are not Slavs!

See also: European history in the early twentieth century, WWI, etc.

I'd expect a dressing down if I referred to Iranian people Arabs, so please be more culturally aware.”

“{typo]
"Tolerance does NOT mean bending over backwards to accommodate the whims and desires of any religion"”

“[cont'd]
Religious edifices are precisely the opposite of practicing religion privately.
Religious buildings are designed (again, especially by monotheists) to dominate their physical environment and, by extension, influence the minds and internal environments of people around them. That’s what they’re for, by definition.
Whatever one’s conception of the ultimate power in the universe, it seems safe to assume that it need not be pandered to with enormous edifices. It’s unlikely to be impressed, if it made the universe. Giant religious building are built to impinge upon – to impress, to awe, to strike fear into - the minds of humans. I find it hard to believe that anyone would deny this.

As for "personal freedoms ... the modern free world [was] founded upon”, that, to me, would be *the separation of church and state*. That’s what dragged us out of the dark ages. The freedom to practice one’s personal religion without persecution is a side effect of this huge advance.

That is the definition of religious tolerance. Tolerance does NOT mean not bending over backwards to accommodate the whims and desires of any religion, it means allowing them to practice without fear of persecution, despite how offensive their *views* may be to another individual or group.

The point where tolerance may be rightly abandoned is when views become actions, when a group attempts to make its arbitrary (and often intolerant) beliefs into law, or force its point of view upon others.

Straw men and disingenuous arguments do not help your”

“"so would Stalin."

What an excellent, well-thought out response. Was Godwin's law expanded to cover this slight variation on the old argument-ender?
Yes, perhaps Stalin would agree with this, as would millions upon millions of other people who were not soaked in the blood of others. Heck, I love a cup of coffee in the morning, and Stalin probably did as well. How meaningful.

The fact that you equate forced conversion to a dominant religion with a perfectly reasonable desire not to be impinged upon by other people's religious edifices (NOT practices) speaks volumes about your ideas of equality and freedom.

Freedom of religion includes freedom from religion.

The fact that I would prefer not to see any new religious buildings cluttering up my physical environment is not even tangentially related to "banning them from practicing their religions in the privacy and sanctity of their houses of worship". The fact that you try to construct this straw man is intellectually dishonest.”

“Organised religion is not a tool, it is an instrument for turning people into tools.

Spirituality is personal. Religion is received from an outside source, and shares its root with 'ligature', meaning to bind - whether it's binding people together or binding an individual to restrict movement is down to your interpretation, but received, organised, dogmatic religion restricts people.
Some think this kind of restriction is a good and noble thing. Others, like myself, think that religion lessens people,.

A hammer can be used to build or to kill, but the act of wielding a hammer is unlikely to affect a person's notion of what should be built or who should be killed.

Religion does do this, on a massive scale. Which is not to say that religion automatically turns people into killers, but all religions (especially the monotheistic ones) have very clear delineation of the worthy from the unworthy. I don't need to mention what tends to happen to the unworthy, the cycle tends to be repeated whether it's a christian, muslim or jew making that judgement.

Organised religion is violent, almost by definition, in that it forcibly binds people together by claiming influence over and knowledge of the greatest human mysteries. The fact that this force is almost invariably directed at young, developing minds who don't have defences against this kind of manipulation moves it into the realm of abuse, IMHO.

I'd ban the building of any new, overtly religious buildings.”

“Well spotted and quite correct. Even in this low-res video it's obvious that the weed in the bags is worthless clip.

$1500 of cannabis? I love police estimates. That looks like about $20 worth - $5 per schwag-filled bag.”

“Dubai has no oil left. That's why the country tried to reinvent itself as a centre of luxury tourism.”

“We're all bombarded by vacuous crap, but that doesn't mean we have to pay attention or allow it to have any impact on or relevance to our lives. If we do allow it into our heads, then we have to take responsibility for the fact

The average person see trees every day, and hundreds of cars and (as an example that has few positive angles) litter. Do any of these things occupy the average person every day, or cause them to feel like they're being bombarded by these concepts? No.

So, if 'reality TV' places higher on the list of terrible events of the 2000s than '9-11', if Katrina, the SE Asian tsunami, the dismantling of the US constitution and a dozen other disasters don't make the list, while 'k-fed' does ... that suggests the poster's mind has been colonised by vacuous crap.

Despite anyone's protestations about being 'forced' to devote mental real estate to meaningless fripperies, this state of affairs is no-one's fault but their own.”

“The fact that you have so many 'celebrities' on your list demonstrates that you spend way too much time thinking about them.

Anyone would agree that the illegal wars and corrupt administrations were some of the worst features of the 2000s, but it wouldn't even have occurred to me to mention the dozen non-entities that made your list. They didn't really exist in my world; sorry they had such a big impact on yours.

Maybe you should alter the media you consume? Not every news-source devotes half its time/space to gossip.”