Not had much time for blogging again recently so here is a condensed collection of some positions I would have taken if I had been able to blog.
1. Is it really so difficult for French politicians to realise that one can recognise the genocide of the Armenians, enourage Turkey to face up to that horrific chapter in it’s history and give support to the Armenian community without a ludicrous, illiberal, thought crime legislation outlawing denial of that genocide?
2. Is it really so difficult for the government to realise that ‘faith schools’ (of all faiths) are not only an affront to educational values, the instruction of science and a secular society but run directly in conflict with their own stated aim of an integrated society? And isn’t absurd to think that a 25% formal minority of children of non-believers (or children of parents of other faiths) in these schools is going to change that?
3. Is it really so difficult for some people to accept and state that the veil is a horrendous symbol of backwardness, ignorance, repression and religious/political fanaticism but acknowledge that in a free society we should not regulate people’s dress or adoption of religious symbols by law?
4. Is it really so difficult for people to accept that the Coalition made some terrible mistakes in their handling of the occupation of Iraq, that large numbers of innocent people have been murdered since the overthrow of the Saddam dictatorship (spare me, please, the debates over exactly how many might be an accurate guess) and that the Iraqi people have to cope daily with the horrors of living with a fear of death, injury and crime? At the same time, is it really so hard to acknowledge that the biggest (but by no means only) mistake the Coalition made was the fatal under-estimation of the strength of Jihadist forces and that it is those Jihadists who are clearly, primarily, directly responsible for the massive death toll and daily mass murder in Iraq?
5. Is it really so difficult to call for action to stop the killing in Darfur regardless of one’s views about the invasion of Iraq?
