On Tuesday October 18 2005, a member of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) rang a hotel in Anaheim, California. A pharmaceuticals conference was taking place at the hotel. One of the delegates was Steve Ruckman of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a company which uses animals in research and testing. A communiqué from the ALF dated October 25, which includes the warning “Associate with HLS and we will ruin your life,” reports the conversation this way:

“ALF: Hello, I stayed in Room xxx recently and think I left something behind.

Concierge: What is that?

ALF: A bomb. You’ve allowed HLS to come into your hotel, now you will pay the price.

Concierge: What was that?

ALF: If Steven Ruckman from HLS takes

… Read the rest

Recently, two stories have appeared in the British Press which confirm
some of the worst stereotypes of Muslims as backward, irrational, and superstitious.
The first
involves alleged ‘upset’ caused by a Police recruitment poster featuring
an image of a dog:

The advert has upset Muslims because dogs are considered ritually
unclean and has sparked such anger that some shopkeepers in Dundee have
refused to display the advert.
Dundee councillor Mohammed Asif said: ‘My concern was that it’s not welcomed
by all communities, with the dog on the cards.

‘It was probably a waste of resources going to these communities. They
(the police) should have understood. Since then, the police have explained
that it was an oversight on their part, and

… Read the rest

The anthropologist Margaret Mead once observed that in the 1930s, when she was busy remaking the idea of culture, the notion of cultural diversity was to be found only in the ‘vocabulary of a small and technical group of professional anthropologists’. Today, everyone and everything seems to have its own culture. From anorexia to zydeco, the American philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has observed, there is little that we don’t talk about as the product of some group’s culture. In this age of globalisation many people fret about Western culture taking over the world. But the greatest Western export is not Disney or McDonalds or Tom Cruise. It is the very idea of culture. Every island in the Pacific, every tribe … Read the rest

Introduction

In 1976, a book was published which claimed that the Quran “..does not contain a single statement that is assailable from a modern scientific point of view”. The book: ‘The Bible, the Quran and Science’ [1] had been written by a French doctor, Maurice Bucaille, who became interested in Islam after he was appointed family physician to King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. In the early chapters, Bucaille proclaims articulately, enthusiastically and with apparent sincerity that the scientific accuracy of the Quran is such that “I could not find a single error…“ and that “…there can be no human explanation” for its contents.

Such a claim was not new. Something similar had been expressed in the 13th century by the … Read the rest

Today all speakers talked about honour crimes as a widespread form of violence against women. What bewilders me is the name given to this horrendous crime: honour. Honour has a very positive connotation. Regardless of one’s world outlook and beliefs, the word honour has a good ring to one’s ear. When you hear this word, you fill up with positive and good feelings. The combination of these two completely opposite concepts to describe one phenomenon brings a lot of contradictions and confusion: “honour crimes!”

I have given this phenomenon a great deal of thought. I posed this question: Why is this brutal act being described so positively? After reflecting on this issue for some time, I came to see a … Read the rest

Washington, DC – The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a second report from its U.S. Religious Landscape Survey on Monday concluding that Americans are highly religious and tolerant of other religions and that religion is politically relevant. While none of this is news, the study’s findings about nonreligious Americans are.

Pew reported that 21 percent of atheists in their survey said they believed in God or a universal spirit, that six percent of them considered it a personal god, and that 40 percent of agnostics feel certain that God exists. Conversely, among respondents who say they are affiliated with a religious tradition (Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, Muslim, etc.), a surprising number said they actually do not believe in … Read the rest

The case against Christopher Hitchens can be summarised, broadly, in a kind of comic list as done by the British satirical magazine Private Eye:

He supported the Iraq war
He likes a drink
He smokes, as well
He supported the war
He tends to be aggressive in debate
He likes a drink
He supported the war
Er…
…That’s it.

In a sense he needs no introduction. (His entry in the contributors’ biographies of this book simply reads: ‘Christopher Hitchens is Christopher Hitchens.’) He is one of the West’s most prolific journalists, speakers and essayists, with a love of literature and hatred for oppression and superstition everywhere. A one-time Marxist, Hitchens’s politics could be defined not so much as ideological … Read the rest

I was asked to speak about forced marriages on a local radio show; I didn’t get to say a lot in a few minutes but there is a lot to be said under the current climate.

I wasn’t actually ‘forced’ into an arranged marriage. I was slowly coerced, manipulated and brainwashed by my dad and his family members over a short period of time, when I went on holiday with him at the age of 16. Soon after arriving, I was given some clothes and a ring. My engagement was announced without my knowledge or consent. I thought it was just a gift from my uncle. He had taken me shopping. I chose the ring and clothes myself without any … Read the rest

ZADHR is deeply concerned about the continuing violent trauma being inflicted on the Zimbabwean population. The escalation in numbers and severity of cases of systematic violent assault and torture during May was of a scale which threatened to, and for brief periods did, overwhelm the capacity of health workers to respond. Both first line casualty officers and specialists, especially surgeons and anaesthetists, to whom patients were referred had great difficulty in adequately managing the burden of serious physical trauma.

ZADHR commends the efforts of health professionals in Zimbabwe who continue to provide the highest possible quality of health care to victims of violence under extremely difficult circumstances.

In addition to individuals with significant physical injuries, members of ZADHR saw over … Read the rest

Ever since the process of economic reforms began in the 1990s, we have been hearing pious noises about the urgent need to reform education also. Obviously, the linkage is pragmatically motivated: economic growth cannot be sustained over a long period without a suitably reformed education system. This is good as far as it goes. If a concern for sustaining economic growth can trigger reforms in education, we should embrace the opportunity.

But it would be disastrous to hang education from the peg of economics, as seems to be happening, without considering the other larger reasons for restructuring it. The need to see the larger picture is urgent also because the dominant vision of economics in the country today is itself … Read the rest

Pollster: Excuse me, sir.

Jesus: I forgive you.

Pollster: No, I mean I want a minute or two of your time for a survey I’m doing.

Jesus: I have all the time in the world. And then some.

Pollster: We’re surveying religious attitudes–random sample, of 1200 adults. Can I ask, What’s your occupation.

Jesus: I am a messiah.

Pollster: Can you spell that.

Jesus: C-h-r-i-s-t. It’s the Greek form.

Pollster: Are you Greek?

Jesus: No, Palestinian Jew. I’ve been working here in the States for ages though. Things in Europe aren’t what they used to be. I find that in America, you can be anything you want—even a humble carpenter’s … Read the rest

I remember a friend telling me only a few days after the Sept 11 attacks that the World Trade Centre had been wired with bombs either by the government or by the owner. It was also pointed out to me that the dust around the World Trade Centre had fallen in the shape of Satan’s visage. I wouldn’t have predicted it at the time, but the crackpot impulse behind these ideas has become common currency. In one American poll, a third of respondents registered their belief that the Bush Administration either aided the attacks or declined to stop them.

More recently the cult of Zeitgeist: The Movie, made by someone called Peter Joseph, has been brought to my attention. … Read the rest

What is the difference between Jack the Ripper and the Suffolk Strangler? Apart from that we actually know Steve Wright is the latter and he was caught, what separates them?

Jack the Ripper rejoices in a whole tourism and franchise industry centred on him. He has films, television programmes, documentaries, books, cups, ashtrays, t-shirts and tours. How does one serial killer become so profitable? Why are there no Suffolk tours or films starring Johnny Depp?

Of course, timing would seem the obvious answer: with no living immediate relatives of Jack the Ripper; we feel it is safe to exploit his legend. It is just too soon to do the same for Steve Wright.

For Jack the Ripper read “recognised” religion. … Read the rest

As mesmerized television viewers know, America is beset with vapid discussions of the faith of their future president masquerading as “compassion forums.” In the April 12 CNN version of what may become a permanent feature of American political showmanship, candidates were challenged to describe whether they have ever felt the Holy Spirit move within them and whether, in their best judgment, God wanted him, or her, to be president.

No, this was not a BBC satire. It is American Realpolitik. The questions were deadly earnest, exceeded in absurdity only by the feigned seriousness with which the combatants stumbled through their rehearsed platitudes. Neither contender was asked the unfashionable empirical question that used to dominate discussion: Would you push a red … Read the rest

In early December, 2007, my hometown newspaper, the Louisville, Kentucky Courier-Journal, published my opinion piece concerning the newly opened creation museum in northern Kentucky.[1] I’m a former science teacher with a particular interest in the understanding and advancement of science in society, so the article expressed my extreme concern that this $27 million monument to the acceptance of blind faith over science and reason is exceeding attendance expectations and gaining momentum in their mission to cast doubt, in whatever way they can, on evolutionary biology and the multitude of scientific theories that support it. I went to the museum and toured it twice during their opening weekend in late May of 2007. While no one can argue with the high … Read the rest

The first time I went to Israel, in 1983, when everyone could still drive freely around the West Bank, I got into an argument with a distant cousin, a social worker. Like many Israelis (and many social workers) she is Leftish and secular and regrets that proportional representation gives such disproportionate influence to Israel’s religious and expansionist parties. She and her husband are peaceniks, demonstrated against Israel’s 1982 involvement in Lebanon, and want the settlers out of the West Bank.

Like many Israelis, she also lost family members to the Nazis and came as a teenager to Mandate Palestine. She isn’t the sort who won’t listen to Wagner or Richard Strauss, though she still doesn’t like visiting Germany. We were … Read the rest

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Our civilization is a civilization of fear. Walk into any bookshop and look at the titles – horrors assail you from all sides; open a newspaper, check how many headlines try to awake in you a feeling, if not of mortal fear at least of anxiety; take a notebook and a stopwatch to your evening news and write down how many times during one evening you are told about violence, disasters, crimes, and suppositions that aim to trigger your fear, flight impulse, or “righteous” anger.

Newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations are waging a deadly battle over who can frighten you more. Every day specialists check to … Read the rest

The online magazine Democratiya was set up by writers and academics in 2005 as a reaction to the status-quo left consensus that dominated liberal thought from the provincial dinner party to the pages of the British Guardian. From its founding statement:

When over eight million Iraqis voted in democratic elections in January 2005, at polling stations guarded by American and other foreign troops, emerging to dance for joy, their purple fingers aloft, only for Britain’s leading liberal newspaper to sneer that the election was ‘at best irrelevant’ it was clear that something had gone terribly awry. When Iraq’s heroic free trade unionists were called ‘collaborators’ and ‘quislings’, while their torturers and murderers were hailed as a ‘liberation movement’ one

… Read the rest

It has been debated whether the term “the Fourth Estate” which refers to journalism or a “free press” was originated by Edmund Burke, who once pointed to the gallery of reporters in the British Parliament and declared them to be the fourth, and most important, element overseeing a triumvirate of governmental power. In my opinion, this was one of the most perceptive descriptions of democracy and its processes, applying equally well to the British Parliament and the Estates General of France (from which the term was derived); the constituents were supposed to be representatives of the society’s main elements— the nobility, the middle class and the clergy. Burke was saying that the influence of a free press was, and should … Read the rest

In recent months, a number of high (and not so high) profile celebrities have publicly offered support to conspiracy theories regarding the September 11th 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. Central to the claims of many who embrace notions of 9/11 as an ‘inside job’ is that credible scientific research by mainstream scientists supports this position. In this article, I shall briefly look at two qualified academic scientists who hold that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by a cabal of scheming neo-conservatives in Washington DC. The picture that emerges is not one of mainstream scientists whose research is trustworthy and should be urgently addressed. Instead, we find purveyors of extreme and fact-free conspiracy theories, scientists who appear to have … Read the rest