Making a Pigs ear of defending democracy
Discussion
This guy is my favourite commentator, he is a bit..extreme but very funny.
He makes some very interesting points at times
I will extract the most important quotations since the article is rather long.
"Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee's box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. And, as we know, Muslims regard pigs as "unclean", even an anthropomorphised cartoon pig wearing a scarf and a bright, colourful singlet."
"So these little news items that pop up every week now are significant mostly as a gauge of the progressive liberal's urge to self-abase and Western Muslims' ever greater boldness in flexing their political muscle."
"When every act that a culture makes communicates weakness and loss of self-belief, eventually you'll be taken at your word. In the long term, these trivial concessions are more significant victories than blowing up infidels on the Tube or in Bali beach restaurants."
"Is it really a victory for "tolerance" to say that a council worker cannot have a Piglet coffee mug on her desk? And isn't an ability to turn a blind eye to animated piglets the very least the West is entitled to expect from its Muslim citizens"
"at some point Britons have to ask themselves - while they're still permitted to discuss the question more or less freely - how much of their country they're willing to lose. The Hundred-Acre Wood is not the terrain on which one would choose to make one's stand, but from here on in it is only going to become more difficult."
Full Telegraph article below
Making a pig's ear of defending democracy
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 04/10/2005)
A year and a half ago, I mentioned in this space the Florentine Boar, a famous piece of porcine statuary in Derby that the council had decided not to have repaired on the grounds that it would offend Muslims. Having just seen Looney Tunes: Back in Action, in which Porky Pig mentions en passant that Warner Bros has advised him to lose the stammer, I wondered if for the British release it might be easier just to lose the pig.
Alas, the United Kingdom's descent into dhimmitude is beyond parody. Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee's box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. And, as we know, Muslims regard pigs as "unclean", even an anthropomorphised cartoon pig wearing a scarf and a bright, colourful singlet.
Cllr Mahbubur Rahman is in favour of the blanket pig crackdown. "It is a good thing, it is a tolerance and acceptance of their beliefs and understanding," he said. That's all, folks, as Porky Pig used to stammer at the end of Looney Tunes. Just a little helpful proscription in the interests of tolerance and acceptance.
And where's the harm in that? As Pastor Niemöller said, first they came for Piglet and I did not speak out because I was not a Disney character and, if I was, I'm more of an Eeyore.
And aren't we all? When the Queen knights a Muslim "community leader" whose line on the Rushdie fatwa was that "death is perhaps too easy", and when the Prime Minister has a Muslim "adviser" who is a Holocaust-denier and thinks the Iraq war was cooked up by a conspiracy of Freemasons and Jews, and when the Prime Minister's wife leads the legal battle for a Talibanesque dress code in British schools, you don't need a pig to know which side's bringing home the bacon.
A couple of years ago, when an anxious-to-please head teacher in Batley was banning offensive "pig-centred books", Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain commented that "there is absolutely no scriptural authority for this view. It is a misunderstanding of the Koranic instruction that Muslims may not eat pork." Mr Bunglawala is a typical "moderate" Muslim - he thinks the British media are "Zionist-controlled", etc - but on the pig thing he's surely right. It seems unlikely that even the exhaustive strictures of the Koran would have a line on Piglet.
So these little news items that pop up every week now are significant mostly as a gauge of the progressive liberal's urge to self-abase and Western Muslims' ever greater boldness in flexing their political muscle.
After all, how daffy does a Muslim's willingness to take offence have to be to get rejected out of court? Only the other day, Burger King withdrew its ice-cream cones from its British restaurants because Mr Rashad Akhtar of High Wycombe, after a trip to the Park Royal branch, complained that the creamy swirl on the lid resembled the word "Allah" in Arabic script.
It doesn't, not really, not except that in the sense any twirly motif looks vaguely Arabic. After all, Burger King isn't suicidal enough to launch Allah Ice-Cream. But, after Mr Akhtar urged Muslims to boycott the chain and claimed that "this is my jihad", Burger King yanked the ice-cream and announced that, design-wise, it was going back to the old drawing-board.
Offence is, by definition, in the eye of the beholder. I once toured the Freud Museum with the celebrated sex therapist Dr Ruth, who claimed to be able to see a penis in every artwork and piece of furniture in the joint. Yet, when I suggested one sculpture looked vaguely like the female genitalia, she scoffed mercilessly.
Likewise, Piglet is deeply offensive and so's your chocolate ice-cream, but if a West End play opens with a gay Jesus, Christians just need to stop being so doctrinaire and uptight. The Church of England bishops would probably agree with that if, in their own misguided attempt at Islamic outreach, they weren't so busy apologising for toppling Saddam.
When every act that a culture makes communicates weakness and loss of self-belief, eventually you'll be taken at your word. In the long term, these trivial concessions are more significant victories than blowing up infidels on the Tube or in Bali beach restaurants. An act of murder demands at least the pretence of moral seriousness, even from the dopiest appeasers. But small acts of cultural vandalism corrode the fabric of freedom all but unseen.
Is it really a victory for "tolerance" to say that a council worker cannot have a Piglet coffee mug on her desk? And isn't an ability to turn a blind eye to animated piglets the very least the West is entitled to expect from its Muslim citizens? If Islam cannot "co-exist" even with Pooh or the abstract swirl on a Burger King ice-cream, how likely is it that it can co-exist with the more basic principles of a pluralist society? As A A Milne almost said: "They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace/ Her Majesty's Law is replaced by Allah's."
By the way, isn't it grossly offensive to British Wahhabis to have a head of state who is female and uncovered?
I doubt whether the Post Office will be in any rush to issue another set of Pooh commemorative stamps, or the BBC to revive Pinky and Perky. Forty years ago, Britain's Islamic minority didn't have the numbers to ban Piglet and change the Burger King menu. Now they do. What will be deemed "unacceptable" in the interests of "tolerance" in 20 or even five years' time?
It has been clear since July 7 that the state has no real idea what to do to reconcile the more disaffected elements of its fastest-growing demographic. But at some point Britons have to ask themselves - while they're still permitted to discuss the question more or less freely - how much of their country they're willing to lose. The Hundred-Acre Wood is not the terrain on which one would choose to make one's stand, but from here on in it is only going to become more difficult.
He makes some very interesting points at times
I will extract the most important quotations since the article is rather long.
"Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee's box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. And, as we know, Muslims regard pigs as "unclean", even an anthropomorphised cartoon pig wearing a scarf and a bright, colourful singlet."
"So these little news items that pop up every week now are significant mostly as a gauge of the progressive liberal's urge to self-abase and Western Muslims' ever greater boldness in flexing their political muscle."
"When every act that a culture makes communicates weakness and loss of self-belief, eventually you'll be taken at your word. In the long term, these trivial concessions are more significant victories than blowing up infidels on the Tube or in Bali beach restaurants."
"Is it really a victory for "tolerance" to say that a council worker cannot have a Piglet coffee mug on her desk? And isn't an ability to turn a blind eye to animated piglets the very least the West is entitled to expect from its Muslim citizens"
"at some point Britons have to ask themselves - while they're still permitted to discuss the question more or less freely - how much of their country they're willing to lose. The Hundred-Acre Wood is not the terrain on which one would choose to make one's stand, but from here on in it is only going to become more difficult."
Full Telegraph article below
Making a pig's ear of defending democracy
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 04/10/2005)
A year and a half ago, I mentioned in this space the Florentine Boar, a famous piece of porcine statuary in Derby that the council had decided not to have repaired on the grounds that it would offend Muslims. Having just seen Looney Tunes: Back in Action, in which Porky Pig mentions en passant that Warner Bros has advised him to lose the stammer, I wondered if for the British release it might be easier just to lose the pig.
Alas, the United Kingdom's descent into dhimmitude is beyond parody. Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee's box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. And, as we know, Muslims regard pigs as "unclean", even an anthropomorphised cartoon pig wearing a scarf and a bright, colourful singlet.
Cllr Mahbubur Rahman is in favour of the blanket pig crackdown. "It is a good thing, it is a tolerance and acceptance of their beliefs and understanding," he said. That's all, folks, as Porky Pig used to stammer at the end of Looney Tunes. Just a little helpful proscription in the interests of tolerance and acceptance.
And where's the harm in that? As Pastor Niemöller said, first they came for Piglet and I did not speak out because I was not a Disney character and, if I was, I'm more of an Eeyore.
And aren't we all? When the Queen knights a Muslim "community leader" whose line on the Rushdie fatwa was that "death is perhaps too easy", and when the Prime Minister has a Muslim "adviser" who is a Holocaust-denier and thinks the Iraq war was cooked up by a conspiracy of Freemasons and Jews, and when the Prime Minister's wife leads the legal battle for a Talibanesque dress code in British schools, you don't need a pig to know which side's bringing home the bacon.
A couple of years ago, when an anxious-to-please head teacher in Batley was banning offensive "pig-centred books", Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain commented that "there is absolutely no scriptural authority for this view. It is a misunderstanding of the Koranic instruction that Muslims may not eat pork." Mr Bunglawala is a typical "moderate" Muslim - he thinks the British media are "Zionist-controlled", etc - but on the pig thing he's surely right. It seems unlikely that even the exhaustive strictures of the Koran would have a line on Piglet.
So these little news items that pop up every week now are significant mostly as a gauge of the progressive liberal's urge to self-abase and Western Muslims' ever greater boldness in flexing their political muscle.
After all, how daffy does a Muslim's willingness to take offence have to be to get rejected out of court? Only the other day, Burger King withdrew its ice-cream cones from its British restaurants because Mr Rashad Akhtar of High Wycombe, after a trip to the Park Royal branch, complained that the creamy swirl on the lid resembled the word "Allah" in Arabic script.
It doesn't, not really, not except that in the sense any twirly motif looks vaguely Arabic. After all, Burger King isn't suicidal enough to launch Allah Ice-Cream. But, after Mr Akhtar urged Muslims to boycott the chain and claimed that "this is my jihad", Burger King yanked the ice-cream and announced that, design-wise, it was going back to the old drawing-board.
Offence is, by definition, in the eye of the beholder. I once toured the Freud Museum with the celebrated sex therapist Dr Ruth, who claimed to be able to see a penis in every artwork and piece of furniture in the joint. Yet, when I suggested one sculpture looked vaguely like the female genitalia, she scoffed mercilessly.
Likewise, Piglet is deeply offensive and so's your chocolate ice-cream, but if a West End play opens with a gay Jesus, Christians just need to stop being so doctrinaire and uptight. The Church of England bishops would probably agree with that if, in their own misguided attempt at Islamic outreach, they weren't so busy apologising for toppling Saddam.
When every act that a culture makes communicates weakness and loss of self-belief, eventually you'll be taken at your word. In the long term, these trivial concessions are more significant victories than blowing up infidels on the Tube or in Bali beach restaurants. An act of murder demands at least the pretence of moral seriousness, even from the dopiest appeasers. But small acts of cultural vandalism corrode the fabric of freedom all but unseen.
Is it really a victory for "tolerance" to say that a council worker cannot have a Piglet coffee mug on her desk? And isn't an ability to turn a blind eye to animated piglets the very least the West is entitled to expect from its Muslim citizens? If Islam cannot "co-exist" even with Pooh or the abstract swirl on a Burger King ice-cream, how likely is it that it can co-exist with the more basic principles of a pluralist society? As A A Milne almost said: "They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace/ Her Majesty's Law is replaced by Allah's."
By the way, isn't it grossly offensive to British Wahhabis to have a head of state who is female and uncovered?
I doubt whether the Post Office will be in any rush to issue another set of Pooh commemorative stamps, or the BBC to revive Pinky and Perky. Forty years ago, Britain's Islamic minority didn't have the numbers to ban Piglet and change the Burger King menu. Now they do. What will be deemed "unacceptable" in the interests of "tolerance" in 20 or even five years' time?
It has been clear since July 7 that the state has no real idea what to do to reconcile the more disaffected elements of its fastest-growing demographic. But at some point Britons have to ask themselves - while they're still permitted to discuss the question more or less freely - how much of their country they're willing to lose. The Hundred-Acre Wood is not the terrain on which one would choose to make one's stand, but from here on in it is only going to become more difficult.
The grotesque stupidity and lack of even an ounce of common sense of these people leaves me speechless to the extent where I think I'm actually incapable of being able to debate this rationally. It is beyond my comprehension that anyone could have the cheek to complain about porcine items, or that anyone could actually take such a protest seriously.
racefan_uk said:
This country is already on the slippery slope to becoming undermined and losing its British identity.
I'm not racist, in any way, but you have to wonder where the line is going to be drawn on what can and can't happen.
I mean, Piglet FFS!!???!!
I thought the banning of Golly Wogs was ridiculous but that was actually quite acceptable in comparison to this farce!
We need many different types of tolerance in this country, immigrants need to have tolerance of our laws and customs, power mad governments and councils need to have the tolerance not to ban something according to some crazed PC philosophy and finally we need to have tolerance for the customs and beliefs of the aforementioned immigrants.
Unfortunately in the new PC dictatorship, whose propaganda ministry is the BBC, only one type of tolerance exists, the final one mentioned.
Unfortunately in the new PC dictatorship, whose propaganda ministry is the BBC, only one type of tolerance exists, the final one mentioned.
JagLover said:
We need many different types of tolerance in this country, immigrants need to have tolerance of our laws and customs, power mad governments and councils need to have the tolerance not to ban something according to some crazed PC philosophy and finally we need to have tolerance for the customs and beliefs of the aforementioned immigrants.
...and I think you've listed those correctly in decreasing order of magnitude; those coming here need to exhibit the most tolerance. As for this f
kwit: Cllr Mahbubur Rahman said:
...is in favour of the blanket pig crackdown. "It is a good thing, it is a tolerance and acceptance of their beliefs and understanding,"
This is an appalling victory for intolerance. It still just 'does my head in' that anyone could find anything to agree with in banning pigs and pig related items. These f
kwits are doing more to damage race relations than the NF and BNP could ever have dreamed of.I'll see your piglet, and raise you a banned representation of an ice cream swirl 
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1951292005
WB
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1951292005
WB
tvrolet said:
I'll see your piglet, and raise you a banned representation of an ice cream swirl
<a href="http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1951292005">http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1951292005</a>
WB
FFS. This bloke is a business development manager, so presumably a reasonalbly sensible, mature adult - not your average chav. Yet he goes into a Burger King to buy an ice cream and is so offended by a spinning cone logo that he threatens jihad - not a rational response in my book! Edited to say: If he wants to buy an ice cream from Burger King, then perhaps he should live in America. Over here we have ice cream vans, who serve ice cream in a cone so there are no offencsive lids at all.
>> Edited by groomi on Tuesday 4th October 18:23
IMHO religion in general is only acceptable if those who partake in its dubious benfits leave those who prefer not to believe in God, Allah, Jehova, Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny or the Grand Arkleseizure ALONE.
Provided they do that, more power to their (IMHO deluded) elbows
Prof Beard
Provided they do that, more power to their (IMHO deluded) elbows
Prof Beard
andy mac said:
Not just the Muslim religion, either... Christianity is just as bad! I'm sure people will be along to say how its not religion that kills people, its people!
Not really, when the Christians complain everyone just laughs since its more or less a religion where they have to be passive in confrontation.
When muslims complain everyone craps their pants because they think they will turn into a terrorist and blow themselves up or something.
R988 said:
When muslims complain everyone craps their pants because they think they will turn into a terrorist and blow themselves up or something.
You mean like the guy in this news story who threatened a jihad because of a design on an ice cream lid
tvrolet said:
I'll see your piglet, and raise you a banned representation of an ice cream swirl
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1951292005
WB
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