I am an unabashed fan of Ken Clarke, and long have been. He was stating a simple truth when he created a furore by noting that some rapes are worse than others, a truth denied by politically correct feminist idiots who see rape not as what it is – a sordid and vicious crime of violence – but as a metaphysical act, incapble of degree, like the Eucharist. Murders can be aggravated or mitigated, but not rapes. What bollocks, and good for Ken for speaking sense.
He has now quite rightly castigated Teresa May’s claim that cat-owners cannot be deported as “childish”. Actually the frothy mouthed racist bigots cheering on their poster girl are much more dangerous than childish, but Clarke is right again. Doubtless a sacking offence.
Over 55,000 people were deported from the UK last year, and just 112 managed to stay here by using Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights – that is one in every 550 deportees, or 0.18%. Article 8 reads:
Article 8 – Right to respect for private and family life
1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
How the Tories manage to disagree with that is beyond me. Bunch of xenophobic idiots – apart from Ken Clarke, who as a young man plainly wandered into the wrong party.
Anno, Angrysoba is another of God’s creatures, and deserves as much respect as any other. We do not understand the ways of creation. We might dislike aspects of it, but such feelings can reveal the shortcomings of our own thought processes when we see how that which we dislike forms a tile in the mosaic of the Great Scheme.
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However, there is a responsibility on humans, as thinking, communicating creatures, to maintain essential honesty, ie, not to deliberately attempt to look like one tile when in fact being another, and thus deliberately subverting the pattern to the ends of oneself or ones group.
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Sometimes we make mistakes in our identification of the tiles.
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For my part I believe Angrysoba to be honest. He honestly dislikes all “religion”, but by “religion” he means two things. One is the set of organisations called “religions”. I think we all have our complaints about one or many of these human structures, that have allied themselves with or permitted themselves to be manipulated by political power over the centuries, often with disastrous results.
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The other thing he opposes is less easily defined. Angrysoba (correct me if I’m wrong) would probably call it “superstition”; the belief in anything “supernatural”, and that would include “God”, by which he really means human interpretations or descriptions of God.
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I have considerable respect for this aspect of Angrysoba’s outlook. To you, Anno, I would describe it as rejection of idolatry, the idols in question being humans’ fixed ideas about God, which God, of course, always transcends. Thus he rejects all the ancient books as the work of men, and says that only the universe itself is worthy of study. Human ideas shall be acceptable only insomuch as they accurately represent the universe. This is the discipline of science. But if we recognise the universe and creation as one and the same, then science can be seen as a devotion that demands humility. It is also a very lonely path, offering no comfort of divine protection or approval. “Godless, for God’s sake”.
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Of course, I could be wrong, and Angrysoba may be a fake tile. Equally, I could be making a similar mistake about you, Anno. In the end I just assume good faith, do my best, and hope and pray that I’m not wrong about me.
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Angrysoba, I have been using language that assumes the existence of a creator. Please do not tear it to shreds with physicalist language. I regard language merely as a means unto an end, a description that will always fall short of that which it attempts to describe. I see potential for hours of crossed-purpose argument if you object to how I communicate with Anno.
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Enough metaphysical waffle. Anno, I hope you will continue the discussion with Angrysoba about the Enlightenment, reform, and the release of translations the ancient texts. This is a matter about which I know very little, and with all the religious doomsday nuttery that seems so dangerously fashionable in our nuclear-weapon blighted times, it looks like an important subject.
Clark: Anno, Angrysoba is another of God’s creatures, and deserves as much respect as any other.
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Clark, I appreciate what you’re trying to do but let’s remember that I am not the one showing disrespect here:
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Mr Nasty Angrysoba obviously detests Islam and its reform, which might threaten the Christian-Zionist-existing system we live in.
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Angrysoba can fuck off with his racism and religious prejudices.
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It doesn’t really bother me as I don’t expect to get on with Anno; he’s made it quite clear on numerous occasions that he has little tolerance for those who disagree with him.
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I wonder if you could help me out, Clark, and point out the racial prejudices Anno accuses me of.
Whoops! Sorry, Clark. I realize you addressed that first bit to Anno. I request my previous comment be stricken from the record, so to speak.
Comment on the drones from Zerohedge.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/did-iran-just-retaliate-stuxnet-computer-virus-infects-us-predator-drone-system
Thanks for that link and quote from the New Statesman Mary. Didn’t know about that, but doesn’t surprise me a lot – i knew Clarke was no mild liberal – he’s just not extreme enough for most Conservatives these days. In the 80s he was seen as around the center of the party (which was hardly that moderate under Thatcher) – today most Conservative party members seem to see him as too liberal to be in the party at all.
Angrysoba, sorry, I only just noticed this part of your comment: “I wonder if you could help me out, Clark, and point out the racial prejudices Anno accuses me of.”
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I don’t remember any racist remarks from you, Angrysoba.
I agree with Richard – Clarke may choose to speak his mind now, but in Thatcher’s and Major’s cabinets he was a bully and a yes-man. Perhaps this was more due to ambition than conviction, but that doesn’t make it any better. I see a man with a centrist mind, but a Tory heart.
Yes, I’d like to reiterate that angrysoba is NOT racist. There has been absolutely nothing angrysoba has written on this, or his own, site which could lead anyone to conclude anything other than that he is not racist. Quite the opposite – he has taken issue with a number of commentators who have expressed racist ideation.
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The other major difference b/w the Protestants/Puritans and the modern-day (actually postmodern phenomenon of) the Islamists is that the former were voracious promoters of direct learning, into both secular and religious books; that was one of their main differences with the Roman Catholic Church, in fact. The Islamists and the Sufis, on the other hand, tend to espouse primarily obscurantism and denial.
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I once got ticked-off by a reader when, in an article, I compared the apocalyptic literature in some Islamic bookshops with the sermons of John Knox. I was not comparing John Knox with today’s Islamic Fundamentalists, merely the shared obsession with theological apocalypse, but the reader took umbrage anyway (as people do). Nonetheless, the reader had a point. John Knox was a religious fanatic, yet he also established crucial social and educational reforms which helped to lay the basis for the Scottish Enlightenment. Sadly, I cannot see any parallel with any so-called fundamentalist figures in contemporary Islam.