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United Kingdom: Since the London bombings in July, politicians have wasted no time in deciding what to do about religious bampots. British Home Secretary Charles Clarke recently announced plans to crack down on what he describes as preachers of intolerance and hatred
. He declaimed:
We must protect the traditions of tolerance that we have established in this country through centuries of struggle and that means cracking down on those who preach intolerance and abuse free speech to justify terrorism, advocate violence or foster hatred.
Spain, Italy and France had already introduced measures to facilitate the expulsion of such preachers after the bombs in Madrid, and Denmark has acted against both Islamist extremists and those who use them as an excuse to whip up hatred against Islam.
So, presumably a few of the Prattle's favourite loony Christian preachers will find themselves unable to enter European countries from now on?
Pat Robertson is surely guilty of advocating violence when he called for the murder of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez?
Mr Robertson, 75, said on Monday's edition of the 700 Club:You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.
Yet have we have yet to hear a word from the Home Secretary about what action he plans to take against The God Channel, which broadcasts The 700 Club in the UK. Surely the best way to not drive young Muslims into extremism is for the government to demonstrate that it will apply the proposed lesgislation against all those who preach hate, not just the Muslim ones?
Fred Phelps would be another candidate for persona non grata status. He's just decided that he and 20 of his congregation are going to make a trip to Sweden next month to hunt down
the Swedish king.
We'll hunt down your king,he said ominously to Expressen.It doesn't make any difference where he tries to hide.
Phelps' hatred of the royal family and all things Swedish is linked directly to his equally virulent hatred of homosexuals. He praises homophobic crimes, including murder. When controversial Swedish minister, Åke Green, was convicted of inciting hatred of homosexuals following an anti-gay sermon, Phelps saw red and turned his attention to Sweden.
You're doomed to spend eternity in hell,he continued.All you Swedes and your Swedish king and his family.
But Phelps doesn't seem to have any faith that his god will actually do any such thing.
The minister and twenty members of his congregation from the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, are planning to come to Sweden at the beginning of September. They are bringing plenty of placards in order to spread their message that Sweden is the cradle of all evil and that the king rules a nation of sodomites.
King Carl Gustaf is their primary target.
Your king represents your doomed country and we'll find him wherever he may be.
Security around the royal family has been stepped up, though presumably Phelps and his cronies are unlikely to be allowed to enter Sweden after such a rant. And obviously, as he's the sort of preacher Clarke wants rid of, should he come via Heathrow, we will see him packed straight onto the first plane home. Won't we?
Clarke to launch hatred crackdown—BBC News, 22nd August 2005;Europe moves against radical imams—BBC News, 6th May 2004; Denmark targets extremist media—BBC News, 17th August 2005; TV host urges US to kill Chavez—BBC News, 23rd August 2005; Minister of hate to hunt down
Swedish king—The Local, 25th August 2005.
Posted in
Fred Phelps
and Love Thy Neighbour
and Pat Robertson
and Pooves and closet cases
at 20:02. Last modified on October 14 2007 at 13:36.
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Comments
1: Posted by: Pat Kirby | August 26, 2005 11:51 PM
Oh Lawd...now we're (U.S.) exporting Phelps? Because the rest of the world doesn't hate us enough?
I can only imagine the uproar here if European countries denied either him or Robertson access. "European Countries Persecuting Christians" the headlines would say.
Ugh.
2: Posted by: Feòrag | August 27, 2005 1:08 AM
Oh, Phelps has been here (the UK) before when he came over ostensibly to picket some show or other. While he's believed to have made it into the country, he never managed to get round to picketing The Laramie Project. See Phelps fails to protest, Pagan Prattle, 12th March 2003, and Phelps fails to protest (again), Pagan Prattle, 8th April 2003.
3: Posted by: Red Wolf | August 27, 2005 1:37 AM
Robertson has since apologised:
He appears to be digging an even deeper hole for himself with that sterling example of cluelessness. And, as a refresher for those who think the sun shines out of this moron's arsehole, feel free to enjoy a video of the loon calling for the assassination that he denies he mentioned.
In Robertson's addled little mind is a connection between Chavez and Muslim extremism. It seems he's incapable of even a brief check of the CIA's world factbook to see that the country is 96% Roman Catholic. But Catholics aren't Christians in Robertson's world, so maybe that's why he's confusing them with Muslims. I can only surmise that they warrant the extremist tag because they have the good sense to see Robertson as a loon.
4: Posted by: Tony | August 27, 2005 5:53 PM
In my humble opinion ALL religions should be consigned to the archive of human stupidity. Bafflers and controllers of the masses. The human species would be greatly improved it it’s members desisted in the belief of the improbable.
Not only those who preach hatred – but all those who preach that which cannot be proven, should be offered a simple choice. Leave of be exported. Mars is a suitable destination, although with the insight of the Australians, they might just make a go of it!
TC
http://www.metacraft.org
5: Posted by: Feòrag | August 27, 2005 6:21 PM
We've already seen what happens when you send people away on the B-Ark and, anyway, I vote we keep the Quakers seeing as the good they do far outweighs the harm.
6: Posted by: Solo | August 28, 2005 4:12 AM
DO OVERS!! I CALL DO OVERS!!! I'm starting to think the Amish are onto something. No... that was just *gas* from my chili at lunch.
Hey, why not?!!?!? They're unaware of the outside world and all its bull$#!t, so they've got that part right. It's sad... but our smug society found corrupting a group of Amish young people in less than one season on a reality tv show unchallenging, so we tossed 'em aside not interested in seeing anymore Amish for a while, until we can get a group of Elderly Amish Couples to fly a spaceshuttle to Venus with a Nudist Lesbian Biker Chick Cult that likes to give themselves Brazilian Waxing every other day. By the way, today is 27 August 2005 at 8:20pm and THIS IS MY IDEA, so if you see you $#!theads at UPN swapping out Amish for Mormons and Lesbians for Lebanese Chicks, I'll still come after you.
7: Posted by: jay denari | August 28, 2005 6:08 PM
By all mean, boycott Phelps and similar loonies. But when they land at Heathrow... please DON'T send them back here (the US). We don't want them either!
8: Posted by: Gert | August 29, 2005 4:13 PM
I'm an atheist but I do believe in freedom of religion. Those in need of an imaginary friend are most welcome to him. But if God (Allah, whatever) actually existed, he'd be too busy building a universe without "worshippers" and where Pat Robertson is a real turd, not just rhetorically speaking.
My main problem with religion is therefore not the belief system itself (I believe I should have the right to sleep with all beautiful women in the world, but unfortunately they strongly disagree!), believe what you want for all I care. The problem is that it [religion] leaves the road open to that much beloved conflict between "Good and Evil". Our "leaders" are extremely adept at exploiting this religious wet dream. The conflict to end all conflicts. Armageddon (the sequel).
Muslims are convinced the West is mounting an assault on their religion and Western intellectual nitwits like Tone and Dubya claim Islam is set on a collision course with "our values" (your values, mate, not mine).
The belief in this simplistic world view is so widespread it's hardly confined to a few rightists. This here British Bush impersonator has all the answers regarding the origins of Islamic terrorism on British soil:
In spite of this, Graham, considers himself "centre left" (is there a black hole somewhere called "left"?), despite a clear neo-conservative agenda: "spread a little freedom". Graham welcomes comments and just LOVES debate, so don't be shy!
The assumption that Islamic terrorism aims at global domination is risible for many reasons but also because the Muslim world could never win the conflict militarily. The West's war machine is now capable of conducting virtual, remote controlled wars with unprecented fire power on their side (a great danger in itself). In contrast, the terrorist uses very low tech weaponry which can inflict civilian casualties, but can't cover any terrain, vital for winning a war.
The mandarins, in the mean time, keep making big moollah from arms production and sales and the paper pushers in Whitehall keep producing more useless "anti-terrorism" legislation which will come in very handy as toilet paper (every cloud...)
9: Posted by: Red Wolf | August 29, 2005 11:44 PM
Cleaned up the god-awful Windoze excrement scattered throughout Gert's comment. Curly quotes are the spawn of Satan.
10: Posted by: Feòrag | August 30, 2005 12:33 AM
Yeah, it's annoying when an interesting comment is messed up by that.
11: Posted by: Gert | August 30, 2005 3:18 AM
It's strange that when a person mentions but doesn't express a need for , persecution starts. And here's me thinking I was tolerant: you believe in what you want, just don't force me to believe in it too. What a Satanist I am!
Do believe in what you feel is right. Do also allow others to debate what to you is written in stone,
12: Posted by: Red Wolf | August 30, 2005 10:57 AM
Does anybody ever bother to both read and comprehend replies to comments?
Gert apparently doesn't. He left an interesting comment, knows where the capslock key is located, is well acquainted with a spellchecker and is even down with the correct usage of XHTML. All to be applauded.
What he didn't know was that Windoze programmes have a disconcerting habit of helping people by converting quotes, apostrophes and ellipses into non standard, XHTML unfriendly, cutsie characters that render as question marks and make reading a comment difficult. He also has trouble grasping that making it easier for others to read his comment without their eyes bleeding is not persecution. Or that Satan, in this case, would be Bill Gates.
I would suggest actually taking the time to fully read a response before ruining a perfectly good comment with a clueless rant full of more non standard characters that have needed to be manually cleaned up once again.
13: Posted by: Gert | August 30, 2005 12:15 PM
Well, I'm thick as two planks, so forgive me for having to work out that "Windoze" is twat-speak for "Windows".
And again, ignoramus here didn't realise that "Windoze" is
What a prat I am!XHTML, is that the porn version of HTML (HottenTots make Melons into Lime juice)?
What I do know is that getting my comment "readable" on your comment section (in my perverted eyes) took quite a few tries. I even resorted (careful!) to viewing the source code to see why things didn't come out the way I wanted them. Your software doesn't even recognise a hard carriage return as a line break. Br, Br.
So for this one, I'll still be using Word for spelling (forgive me also for not being native English speaker) and I'll import the damn thing into "Notepadzz", maybe that gets rid of "Satan's stench". Or perhaps you could point me to dedicated, non-Windoze softwarez?
This is one of the greatest blogs I've come across in months; your story about spilled coffee had me rolling with laughter. But you sell yourself short by calling people for not being able to use a computer properly. Usually, I just use stone tablets, a hammer and a chisel... Bang, bang...bang...
Jokes aside, I would like to post some more comments, so if this one goes wrong as well, tell me what to do. Avoid speaking in tongues and consider me to be a 10-year old from Umbalumba...
14: Posted by: Feòrag | August 30, 2005 2:21 PM
Yes Gert, and it's still doing it. It is understandable that you are an ignoramous - it's a common problem among Windows users, although Red Wolf does her bit to up the average level of knowledge. No doubt instructions for how to set up your machine so it is less "helpful" and a recommendation for a decent text editor will come your way soon. You will have to edit your comments by hand (before you post them), or install Linux on your machine. Here, let me be helpful. Here are the HTML entities you need:
“ - “
” - ”
‘ - ‘
’ - ’
… - …
In the meantime, as I have no idea what characters you were trying to use, as they all look like question marks to me, you will have to wait for Red Wolf to edit them for you. As it is 2330 in Sydney, you might have to wait a few hours till the morning before your post is made to look as if it wasn't written by a technically illiterate person.
15: Posted by: Gert | August 30, 2005 4:04 PM
Well, I do apologise for wasting your time but after a little editing these texts always look fine to me, from where I look.
The source code also looks normal to me, so I'll just avoid using special characters or use the XHTML entities.
Sorry this has gone rather off-topic.
This one been typed in straight, maybe it will come out straight?
16: Posted by: Red Wolf | August 31, 2005 12:01 AM
Microsoft are a company that pour vast amounts of money into marketing rather than development and the user-friendliness of their products. This means that their products are in the hands of tech-savvy people, people barely able to find the on switch and everyone in between. Unfortunately, they have a tendency to design for the lower end of the technical scale and make changing things horribly complicated, that is, if they haven't hidden the option settings in some arcane place that requires a full search party, complete with Sherpas, to locate it.
Word is the chief suspect when it comes to swapping ASCII characters (plain text) for it's own flavour of pretty characters that web applications don't recognise without code being written to parse the characters and convert them to their ASCII equivalents. I have had to troll through hundreds of entries in a client's database trying to find which lump of weird Microsoft non-standard characters had fouled up an entire web site. It wasn't a lot of fun.
This is a Microsoft problem, not a user problem and this just happens to be the first time you've hit it. It causes havoc in LiveJournal as well. But at least in MovableType (backend of this site) and LiveJournal it just renders oddly instead of breaking things.
How do you fix it? Well, you can either use the codes supplied by Feòrag, compose directly into the comment box, edit in Notepad, install something like the freeware HTML editor, 1st Page 2000, or take a crack at disabling the curly quotes in Word so you can cut and paste to your heart's content.
If you don't need them for any other purpose, I'd recommend removing the curly quote options.
Fire up Word. From the toolbar, select Tools, then AutoCorrect. Select the AutoFormat tab. Under the Replace section, uncheck all six options (Quotes, ordinals, etc). You may have to close Word, then reopen it to force the changes into effect.
I'm quite fond of Word, especially the squiggly coloured underlines that points out dodgy spelling and grammar, but the addition of automagically changing your characters from the ones you typed to something that fouls up other applications does my head in. Having it turned on by default does no one any favours and with each new version it gets more and more bloated and adds extra things that hurt rather than help people. But, on the bright side, you've learned all about devious Microsoft programming, plain ASCII characters versus non-standard characters, XHTML (Extensible HyperText Markup Language) and database weirdness and how to change default the behaviour of Word. Who said you learn nothing on the internet?
17: Posted by: Gert | August 31, 2005 3:45 PM
OK, that was easy. Now let’s see if this comes out right.
God only knows how many illegible posts I must have lying scattered all over the net!
Thanks for your help, but does this now render properly to you guys? It does to me but then it always looks OK on preview anyway.
I feel embarrased, to be honest...
18: Posted by: Feòrag | August 31, 2005 4:03 PM
Alas, the word "let's" still has a curly quote which does not render properly. But, seeing as you're making the effort, I will correct it and not complain.
19: Posted by: Andrew Ian Dodge | August 31, 2005 4:33 PM
Actually Phelp does not claim to be Christian. His sect believes that Christianity is currupt etc etc. Good to see Clarke is going after Ken from some of his nasty comments.
20: Posted by: Gert | September 1, 2005 4:20 PM
Feoraq, I think I might know where that comes from (Tools, AutoCorrect Options, AutoFormat as you type).
But for now I will resort to using the English of the Queen, thereby sounding like my oral cavity is brimful of boiled potatoe.
Total avoidance of the curly typescript is my unreserved intend.
I for all time did have elevated social aspirations and these lessons in articulacy will certainly help me make a distinction from the earthy plebs.
Perhaps one should not make too much of the actuality that one also sounds like a comprehensive twat. That is something I for eternity managed to a certain extent fruitfully, regardless of my genuine societal standing.
All jocularities to one side, I unreservedly ask for forgiveness for wasting your instant, once yet again.
By way of deepest sympathies.
Evangelism, witnessing and similar activitites go by one name here—, and is no different from spam for viagra, penis enlargement products and pornography. We do not take advertising. If you want to advertise your imaginary friend, please spend your own money on your own web space to do so. Any attempts to use the comments section for advertisements will be deleted, and the perpetrator barred, unless they are particularly stupid, in which case I reserve the right to pinch an idea from Teresa Nielsen Hayden and delete all the vowels.
This is not a contacts site. If you are looking for help regarding a particular path, I suggest The Witches' Voice, which does operate a contacts service.
Allowed HTML:
a href, b, br, p, strong, em, ol, ul, li, blockquote, q, pre. If your name has accents in it, things will work better if you use the XHTML entities for those letters. The same applies if you are using a word processor to compose your comment, then copying and pasting the text—either turn off curly quotes and avoid using em-dashes, or edit your comment after pasting to get rid of them. Garbled comments usually get deleted.