good times
Hypocrisy seems to be high on everyone’s list since the rebellions started in the middle east. The media have been reporting that the great and the good have been fraternising with defunct Arab establishments.
First Sir Howard Davies resigned as director of the London School of Economics because of a connection with the, now out of favour, Gaddafi regime and now we discover that Prince Andrew has “entertained” a leading member of the deposed Tunisian dictatorship at Buckingham Palace
Yes, from what I can gather Muammar Gaddafi is a shit. Yes, he has been ruthless and abominable in his dealings with the Libyan people. But hold on, don’t we know some other people like that. Didn’t Tony Blair invite Chinese president Jiang Zemin on his first satte visit to a Western country? Didn’t the New Labour government arrange for three white transit vans to shield Jiang Zemin’s eyes from people in the UK protesting against the despicable treatment of the Tibetan people by the Chinese regime?
I am not saying that we should not do business with the Chinese. It’s too late for that now.
What the West needs is less grand standing on human rights and more disciplined rules on engagement with undemocratic regimes. Democracy should be understood as a great prize. Experience in democratic countries has shown that it is something which is difficult to achieve and requires constant vigilance to maintain. It is not something that we can order a nation to introduce overnight. It needs time to grow and mature.
So we should not go around the world condemning every regime which does not measure up to Western standards of democracy. We should, however, encourage democracy and prefer democratic regimes over authoritarian regimes.
A good start would be for democracies to agree to refuse to grant Most Favoured Nation trading status to undemocratic regimes.
In the words of Elvis: A little less conversation and a little more action.
Photography
hypocrisy is the burning issue
Tags: bollocks, burn koran, burn quaran, burn the american flag, burn the stars and stripes, burning quaran, Dove World Outreach Center, koran, Muslim, pastor brian houston, Pastor Terry Jones, Quaran, racism, shouting mobs, tony blair
hypocrits!
Today both Tony Blair and Barak Obama were in the news condemning small town Florida pastor Terry Jones for threatening to burn copies of the Quaran. I don’t understand why Channel 4 thought that Mr. Blair was an appropriate person to interview and I don’t understand why Mr. Blair thought he should comment. I suspect that, like a junky who has been in rehab for a while, Mr. Blair’s first taste of fame in the form of his autobiography was so good that he is going straight back on the hard stuff.
On the topic of the book burning: I am against the destruction of all books and specifically religious books as the act is designed to cause offensive and will offend not only the religions nutters planting IEDs in Afghanistan but peaceful Muslims. The pastor should be condemned but America is mot a oppressive dictatorship and so I see no reason for him to be prosecuted. In the UK I imagine that if he were to do this publicly and in a manor designed to cause a “breach of the peace” then he could be stopped or arrested and this sounds about right to me.
Having said that, the news this evening carried pictures of more shouting mobs in Muslim countries burning American flags and this is also offensive and should be condemned.
This leads me to wonder how it is that a unknown American pastor who only threatens to do something can cause two important statesman to wade in to dissuade him while offending American citizens while flag burning goes uncriticised by Muslim statesman.
It seems to me that there is a form of racism going on here. When mobs of idiots burn American flags we are encouraged to think that these are merely ill educated people who have been unfairly provoked. When a daft pastor behaves in a similar fashion we are encouraged to condemn the man as an awful intolerant racist who should know better.
The fundamental racism here is that all white people are well informed, intelligent masters of their own destiny whereas all non-white people are ill educated and at the mercy of events.
This is, of course, BOLLOCKS!
It is instructive to go to google images and type “burning Quaran” and then type “burning American flag”. The obvious conclusion is that it is deemed acceptable to insult Americans but not Muslims.
The American pastor should be condemned of course but in the same breath we should condemn everyone shouting their mouths off in a street protest while burning an American flag. I was told by a Pakistani friend that the shouting mobs who burn American flags are often hired by richer more intelligent people so it would be useful to expose these people to give the lie to idea that the flag burning can be blamed on lack of education.
It would also help if prominent statesman in Muslim countries were as strenuous in condemning insults to Americans as Obama has been in defending Muslims.
I recall the words of an Australian comednien on television recently. He was talking about offense in comedy and he said that it was unreasonable to expect not to be offended. He said something like: “So what if your are offended. Be offended. It’s OK. Nothing’s going to happen. Just be offended.”
Very wise.
Are Christians and North American’s cowards?