Support ‘One Law for All and Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain’

January 14, 2010 — xanthippa

If you’ll be in London, UK, on the 28th of January, 2010, you might be interested in this (this is an email I received):

Hello,

As you know, working against Sharia and religious laws, or coming out publicly as an ex-Muslim to break the taboo that comes with renouncing religion (an act punishable by death under Sharia) is not easy in this day and age. We’ve managed to do quite a good job nonetheless, thanks in large part to the support of people like you. But there is much more to be done and we can’t do it without your financial support, however small.

If you haven’t already done so, one way you can support the work of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and One Law for All is to join the January 28 fundraiser dinner, which is only two weeks away. Tickets are still available so if you’re in London or can get here, please do try and come to the event. It is a good opportunity to support our important work whilst also enjoying a three-course dinner in an intimate environment.

The event’s keynote speaker will be AC Grayling, the renowned philosopher, author, writer, reviewer, and broadcaster. Comedian Nick Doody, Singer/Songwriter David Fisher and Magician Neil Edwards will also be there to entertain our guests.

To purchase a ticket(s) at £45.00 per person, you can either post a cheque made payable to One Law for All or CEMB to BM Box 2387, London WC1N 3XX or pay via Paypal: http://www.onelawforall.org.uk/donate.html or Worldpay: http://ex-muslim.org.uk/indexDonate.html. If you’re paying by cheque, please make sure you email us so we know to reserve a place for you.

If you can’t come to the event but would like to support us nonetheless, please send in a donation so we can cover the cost of the activities we have planned for 2010. These include a March 8 seminar on legal and legislative ways to get rid of Sharia and religious laws in Britain; an art gallery show in spring; a June 20 rally against Sharia and political Islam and in support of people resisting it everywhere; a December conference on apostasy and Sharia law and much more…

We hope to see you at the fundraiser event or hear from you about how you can help us with the important work that lies ahead.

Thank you for your continued support.

Best wishes,

Maryam

Maryam Namazie
Spokesperson
One Law for All and Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain
BM Box 2387
London WC1N 3XX, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 7719166731
onelawforall@gmail.com
http://www.onelawforall.org.uk
http://www.ex-muslim.org.uk

Posted in freedoms, religion, society. Tags: , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Musings on the existence of God – and of Richard Dawkins

January 11, 2010 — xanthippa

A few days ago, Walker Morrow had a fun, humorous bit : Is there evidence for the existence of Richard Dawkins?

In it is embeded  this link to a video (scroll down a little) which, in what I am told is a humorous manner, mocks Dawkins’s way of questioning the existence of God to question the existence of Richard Dawkins himself!

The flippant answer would be, of course, that I’ve seen a YouTube video where Thunderf00t interviews Richard Dawkins, and, when I see a video of Thunderf00t interviewing ‘God’, I’ll believe in ‘God’, too!

But, of course, my real answer is a little wordier….and weirder!

I do not know that Richard Dawkins exists!

And, making that realization is essential!

OK – perhaps this is the Aspie in me, or perhaps it is the scientist in me – or, some combination thereof.  But, by the time I was 13 (I grew up behind the Iron Curtain, so I had no access to philosophical or theological writing of any kind – this was just my simple, peasant-brain reasoning), I realized that I could not objectively prove that I myself exist!

My original formulation was very clumsy and I have not really refined the wording much, just shortened it a bit (OK – a lot) :

  1. The only way we learn about/observe/get data from our surroundings is via our senses.
  2. Our senses are demonstrably subjective (I could demonstrate this to myself, as my right eye perceives colours quite differently than my left eye does…but only just  before the onset of a migraine headache.  So, I concluded that our senses necessarily colour (pun intended)  our perceptions, making them definitely ‘not objective’.)
  3. Since the only information reaching ‘us’ about our surroundings is subjective (through the senses), it can be manipulated and we cannot make any objective conclusions based on it…like, say, to assert that any self-awareness we think we perceive is ‘our own’.

OK – so the argument is a bit ‘rough-around-the-edges’, but, you get the gist of it.

Some people think this is pointless prattle –  nothing but what Scott Adams would have called ‘mental masturbation’…

I beg to disagree!

Before a scientists makes any observation, she/he calibrates the instruments to be used.  This is important, because it sets the ‘baseline’ against which any results can be evaluated:  how good were the instruments, the accuracy of any measurements, the error margins, and all that.  If, for example, a thermometer measures temperature to the nearest degree, it will not reliably show variations of one-thousandth of a degree, and so on.

Similarly, if we are aware that all our perceptions are subjective and that we cannot even prove that ‘we’ are the bit we think of as our ‘self’, that we cannot objectively prove anything ‘absolutely’, not even our own existence as we perceive ourselves to be, it ‘calibrates’ our credulousness of what we perceive – so to speak!

Thus, if we are ‘objective’ in our reasoning, we are forced to admit that we  lack the capacity to ‘accept anything as absolute truth’ – or, if you will, as a tenet of faith.   To do so regardless would be irresponsible, to say the least.

Therefore, I ‘do not believe that Richard Dawkins exists’, any more than I ‘believe that I exist’!

It is essential that we understand that this ‘calibration’ does not mean that I can assume any such foolish thing as ‘I do not exist’ or ‘I do not need to behave as if I exist’ – not in the least.  The absence of belief in something does not imply the belief in the non-existence of it!   That is an important distinction – one too often lost on people not trained in logic.

It simply alerts me that everything has an ‘error margin’ and that nothing ought to be accepted ‘absolutely’, without reservations, without an implied error-margin.

Perhaps this is the manifesto of the ever-questioning skeptic….  Still, it prevents me (and many others like me) from being able to just ‘believe’ things, to have ‘religious faith’ – of any kind.

Posted in Aspergers, atheism, ignosticism, philosophy, religion, society. Tags: , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Catching up…

January 10, 2010 — xanthippa

Again, I apologize for the lack of new posts lately:  it seems that just before I manage to actually recover from some bug, I catch another….  This last one included high fevers, so while I did a lot of ‘philosophising’, I didn’t even open up my computer for days on end.  And while there is a real danger in trying to post before all the fever is fully gone (things make WAY more sense in my feverish brain than when I read them later), there is SO much that needs to be ‘caught up’ on, I do not quite know where to start.

I’ll just try to touch on at least a few diverse topics…

  • Irish blasphemy against free speech

1. January, 2010, the new Irish anti-blaspemy law came into force.  This one is straight out sur-real….   Just  months after the Irish representative stood up in the UN to lecture the Islamic nations on the fundamental incompatibility of laws against blasphemy with our Western culture, rooted in the freedom of speech, thought and religion, Ireland goes and imposes just such a law….and, not to appease Christians, but from fear of Islamist retribution!

  • Swine-flu Swindle

I have been very, very restrained when commenting on the whole swine-flu thing:  from the fear-mongering, partial information, the vaccines released before the results of the studies to see if they are safe were even collected – much less analyzed, the recall of ‘ineffective’ vaccines most of which had already been administered to hundreds of thousands of children….  Well, the list of outrageous ‘stuff’ is long – and, I was very, very good and restrained myself from commenting on almost all of it while it was happening.

Why?

I was waiting for the inevitable!

OK – one day, may be, I’ll write a little bit of what I know about the serious decline of proper scientific procedures in medical research:  the scope of it is truly, well, shall we say, ‘uncomfortable to contemplate’….   This ‘swine-flu swindle’ thing is just a little pimple on its bottom.

  • Caledonia

If you are unfamiliar with the events, you may find it difficult to believe the depths of depravity that this affair had sunk to.  A native group disputed some land, claiming that despite a valid deed, the land ought to be theirs – fine, that is their right.   What followed – not so nice.  The native terrorists – that IS what this particular group of thugs was, and is – occupied the disputed land AS WELL AS NEIGHBOURING AREAS.  As in, areas which were not disputed to be their land.  And, they terrorized the inhabitants, limited their access to their homes – well, the details are unbelievable….but, testified to in courts!

What was, perhaps, the most shameful chapter in this has been the conduct of the OPP.  They failed, over and over, to uphold the law.  They refused to answer 9-1-1 calls for help from residents in the occupied territories.  And, when law-abiding citizens who happened to be white-skinned wanted to go to their homes against the wishes of the occupying forces, they arrested the citizens, instead of upholding their right of free travel to their property!

My husband and I have had heated discussions about the role of individual OPP officers in this situation:  while he thinks that if the order comes not to interfere with the native protesters, their hands are tied into inaction, I maintain that any order not to uphold the laws of the land is an illegal order, and every single police officer who obeys an illegal order is guilty as hell and MUST be prosecuted to the fullness of the law…

Now, the OPP commissioner himself, Julian Fantino, has been charged with trying to influence elected officials (bully the town council)…  What a nightmare!

  • Torture

This is the `Canadian`story, not the ‘American’ one….

Perhaps what we need – before we engage in a constructive discussion on this topic – to define what ‘torture’ means….here, there, everywhere….  Because until we do, this discussion will be nothing but a peeeing contest between the various parties, with our troops stuck in the middle.  And, when someone gets stuck in between a few sides having a peeing contest, they are bound to get wet!

There  is SOOOO way much more that I ought to be commenting on and bringing up….there is correspondence and comments I ought to be replying properly to….  Yet, it seems that whenever I have long bouts of fevers, I start to go all philosophical.

All in its time!

Posted in debate, freedoms, human nature, philosophy, politics, society. Tags: , , . 3 Comments »

Paying respects to Constable Czapnik…

January 7, 2010 — xanthippa

Today is the funeral for Constable Eric Czapnik, an Ottawa police officer slain in the line of duty.



A sad and solemn procession, longer than the 2.3 km long route of the procession, makes its way from Carleton University to the Civic Centre on this chilly Ottawa day.

It was just one of those things…

Officer Czapnik was killed just outside the emergency room of the Civic campus of the Ottawa hospital – by another cop.  But, this RCMP police officer was not on active duty, following surgery for multiple brain tumors.  I doubt that this sort of thing can ever really be prevented!

The paramedics ran out to help Constable Czapnik, subdued and held the attacker while other paramedics fought to save the officer’s life.  Now, the Members 0f the Paramedic Services and  the Firefighters stand along side the members of Police, from all over North America, to send him of.

It’s times like these that we are reminded just how lucky we are…

Sincere condolences to his family.

Posted in human nature, society. Tags: , . Leave a Comment »

Support the Iranian people!

January 5, 2010 — xanthippa

Notice the demographics of the crowds:  it speaks volumes!

Posted in freedoms, opression. Tags: , . 1 Comment »

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

January 1, 2010 — xanthippa

Happy New Year!

Best wishes for 2010 (can you believe it’s 2010 already?) to you and your family.

Posted in human nature. 1 Comment »

Canadian Government shuts down blogs – without warrant!

December 30, 2009 — xanthippa

All right, this is bad, no matter how you look at it.

‘Canadian Government’ did not like the content of 2 blogs/websites.

A bureaucrat from the Canadian Government wrote a letter to the ISP, demanding the blogs/websitesibe shut down.

The ISP not only shut down the blogs/websites right away – no warrant, no court order, no proper procedure – without notifying them first, it took out another 4,500 ones along with the two ‘offending’ ones!

NOT GOOD!

Who the hell do these bureaucrats think they are?

Are the elected politicians aware of this fascism?  (Collusion between big government and business which infringes the rights of everyone else is ‘fascism’ by definition.  Just ask Prime Minister Harper!)

If you read my blog every now and then – especially during November and early December 2009 – you will probably be aware that I do not support the IPCC warm-mongers, that I have worked to expose how they falsified the data and to explain what they did and what it means, that I am appalled by their perversion of the scientific method and destruction of the peer-review-process….(I could rant on and on).  And, I don’t like the fraud-inviting cap-and-trade scheme being forced on the whole world by imposing a world-government that we, in the West, would be forced to pay for and which would actively prevent the ‘developing world’ from developing….

Nor do I look kindly at ‘spoofs’ that pretend to come from a Government Department – they are not funny and, in-my-never-humble-opinion, are actively counter-productive.

This self-described ‘culture jamming activists’ protest group, ‘Yes Men’, is nothing more than a bunch of dumb-asses, taken in by obvious half-truths and more interested in the publicity which their stunts will generate them than in taking the time to learn the science which underlies the issues.  In other words, I think they are silly bunnies who turned themselves into publicity hounds.

So, while I condemn their methods, I also reject their message…

BUT!!!!

That does NOT mean that I will stand by and do nothing as their voices are silenced!

The Canadian Government did not seek an injunction against these clowns.

They were not charged with fraud.

No judge issued a warrant to suspend their website or blog or whatever other means of online communication they happened to be using.

NO!

A bureaucrat wrote a letter to a business – and together, they deprived the citizens of the legal service the citizens had paid for, which, in this case, is the platform for those citizens to exercise freedom of speech!

That is SO UNACCEPTABLE, I am having trouble finding polite words to express the depth of my anger!  …and, fear.

Because if the government can get away with shutting down the voices of idiots it disagrees with, I am likely going to be next!

We must all stand up and tell our government that they have seriously erred in trying to shut up voices it does not like.  Then, they compounded this by circumventing the proper procedures, which permit it to protect itself from fraud or other illegal acts without arbitrarily stripping people of their rights and freedoms.

We must all speak up and shout as loudly as we can – until we are heard – that a government colluding with a business to deprive people of their rights and freedoms without due process of the law is SIMPLY NOT ACCEPTABLE!!!

NOT NOW, NOT EVER!!!

Posted in freedoms, opression, politics, society. Tags: , , , , . 3 Comments »

Instead of posting lately….

December 27, 2009 — xanthippa

Sorry about the lack of new posts recently…

Aside from my difficulties getting to a computer that would work with me (now thankfully solved!) and the social obligations which come with this time of year (and leave me too brain-numb to write anything useful), I have also been having conversations in the comments, especially on the last few posts.

Now, I am torn:  I wanted to write more on the connections between the corporate/commercial threats to our rights and freedoms and the international ones….until I saw Ezra Levant’s ‘Christmas Post’ about ‘putting Christ back into Christmas’.  I admit, my blood-pressure went through the roof and I was too keyed up to write coherently for hours….so, perhaps, I ought to address the threat from ‘the religious right’.

This threat is real and mutifaceted – and if I don’t phrase things just right, it will come off as religion-bashing instead of the real and legitimate concerns which many freedom-loving people have from this direction (without and within the pro-freedom movement).

Either way I go, it will take me a while to finish, as I am a slow thinker and even slower writer… please, forgive me!

May be I’ll just rant on about an upstart young religion re-naming an ancient ritual after their own God absorbing its customs and traditions into its own, and then claiming that since the holiday has their G since it’s got this name, it must be about only its deity….  But, that would not be very ‘Christmasy’, would it?

Posted in about, politics, religion. Tags: , . 5 Comments »

Winning back our liberty: the ‘international’ threat

December 22, 2009 — xanthippa

Just like only total seclusion will provide the environment in which an individual can exercise 100% of their personal freedoms, countries/nation-states must also find ways to ‘get along’ with its neighbours and the all the other ‘countries’ out there.  Therefore, countries must develop rules:  treaties, agreements, etc. to govern their interactions.

This is kind of like the matryoshka dolls!

Families have ‘rules’ which govern how individual members interact, villages/towns/cities have by-laws that govern how people and families in that municipality behave and interact,  provinces/states have the next level of rules that govern how all the people in the municipalities that form that province/state behave and interact…. and so on, and so on…

Through this very process – through agreeing to rules how ‘communities’ at each ‘level’ interact with each other, we are necessarily building the governance framework of government at the ‘next higher level’. The treaties and agreements governments enter into become binding rules which their industries and citizens must abide by.

And THAT is where a very great danger to the ability to exercise our individual rights and freedoms is coming!

We have, to a better or worse degree, worked out rules about what rights we can exercise, and to what degree.  This we have done within our borders, all the citizens agree (or, at least, respect) in the form of constitutions and the body of our national laws.  Right?

But, our countries do not exist in seclusion.  We need to trade and interact in all kinds of ways with ‘other’ countries.

To do that in as peaceful and amicable way as possible, we enter into international agreements about ‘things’.  All kinds of things. But, the primary focus of most international treaties is ‘trade’.

When our legislators propose laws, we examine them publicly for all kinds of ‘things’ – including any infringements on the ability of us, the citizens, to exercise our freedoms.  And so it should be.  But, when countries enter into binding, international agreements with other countries, there is nowhere this level of scrutiny!

These agreements and treaties are negotiated by a limited number of representatives (all bureaucrats) from each side, usually in secret, giving in here to get an advantage there…  And the aim of these treaties is usually one form of economic interaction or another:  ‘freedoms’ are not usually even ‘on the radars’ of those doing the negotiating.

Please, do not misunderstand – I have nothing against international treaties and agreements in principle.  They are necessary.  All I am trying to do is highlight something many people do not consider very seriously:  whenever our government signs a treaty or similar international agreement, its rules are just as binding on us as the laws our government passes, but do not undergo anything like the scrutiny…

A recent example relevant to Canadians is the EU-Canada Trade Agreement…

To make this work, some of our laws – and even attitudes – would have to change.

For example, our ideas about our ‘property rights’ might need a serious adjustment…

Right now, if we purchase a painting – or another other piece of art – most of us think that we own it.  That we can hang it on our wall, store it in the attic or even use it as kindling… Or, perhaps, that if we wish, we can sell it.

That might be just one of the laws and attitudes we would have to change:  according to a leaked chapter of the EU-Canada Trade Agreement now under negotiations, the EU is pushing for a royalty to be paid to the artists EVERY TIME their work is re-sold, FOR EVER!

This post is not about that particular trade agreement.

It’s about the fact that so many of the people who are valiantly and tirelessly fighting to preserve our freedoms are focusing only on ‘government policy’ and on the laws which our governments are passing.  And that is important!

But, our rights and freedoms can be lost ‘through the back door’, so to speak, when our governments enter into binding international agreements which are very large ‘packaged deals’ which our countries may be forced to enter into in order to remain a member of the international community…

And THAT is something we should be thinking and talking about!

Posted in debate, freedoms, opression, politics, society. Tags: , , , , . 7 Comments »

Touching video…

December 19, 2009 — xanthippa

Last night, I was lucky enough to see Brea Lawreson perform this song live – as well as to meet some of the people who helped make this video a reality.  It is very touching (OK – despite the fact I was actually wearing make-up, I could not help ‘tearing up’) – and, it is dedicated to ‘Military men and women everywhere’!

Posted in human nature, society. Tags: , . 2 Comments »
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