my favourite atheists

 The atheists whose thinking is most interesting to me are internet commentators Ridevan Aydemir, Sarah Haidar, Harris Sultan and Abdullah Sameer.

I suppose my regard for them is based on the fact that their well argued public professions of atheism require per se a significant amount of integrity, principle and courage since all are former Muslims.

Within Islam it is not rare for those leaving the religion to be murdered.

If I was to try and answer the atheism of those whom I most respect, I would do it in the following way.

It is strange to me that in leaving Islam because of a perception that violence is inherent to it, you should choose a philosphy of life which comports more violence than any religion.

The atheistic communist Chairman Mao killed a hundred million Chinese people.

The atheistic communists Vladimir Lenin, Joe Stalin and their cohorts in the Russian Communist Party killed a hundred million more in Russia, South America, Asia and Africa.

The atheist Pol Pot wiped out a quarter of the population of Cambodia though we might attribute his murders to his sponsors Mao and the Russians.

I don't want to double count anybody.

Than there's the hundred million murders that go with Western atheism, the abortions, euthanasias and assisted suicides which only became possible as official government policy when the peoples of our nations began to turn their backs on God.

So I would counsel Sarah, Ridevan, Abudllah and Harris, whom I admire more than any other people on earth, to be cautious in what they are embracing by accepting and endorsing atheism.

It is a long way down from Mount Oympus.

an open letter to Robert Spencer of the Jihadwatch website.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: JH
Date: Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 10:15 PM
Subject: from JH in Ireland
To: Robert Spencer

Morning Roberto.

The Joshua Winston article on your website today got my attention because it gave long overdue focus to the gangland mobster nature of the thriving thieving murdering racketeering ethno mafia which is the IRA and its various factions as well as to the links between current IRA groupings and Jihadists. Very relevant and very timely analysis. I think I remember sending you an email a few years ago about the clear links between the Rah and the Jihadis amd about how significant this symbiosis between mafia criminality and Islamic terrorism was becoming for me personally and for the world.. Memory is such a tricky thing in these matters as you are aware, it's difficult to be sure.

I would suggest though that your correspondent's linking of these IRA mafias and their criminal competitors  to Catholicism and Protestantism was misleading and untrue although they do leech off Protestant and Catholic communities in the same way that the Chinese Triads might be said to leech off Chinese Buddhist communities. If you talk to an IRA man or a supposed Protestant UDA man, you quickly realise that they are not quarreling about the real presence of God in the Eucharist or about the special honour reserved for the Blessed Virgin Mary in the ancient church or about the primacy of the Pope among Christian leaders or even about Martin Luther's sometimes salient critiques in the 95 theses. Their quarrel is about gangland turf. And Catholics and Protestants live on that turf so the hijacking and manipulation of those communities is for mobsters of the Rah and the supposed mobsters of the supposedly still existent UDA a military objective.

People like you shouldn't help them do it.

I would note that no one calls the Chinese Triads Buddhists, Bob because no one is trying to frivolously discredit Buddhism.. Is your correspondent perhaps a tad frivolously trying to take a side swipe at Catholicism? Forgive me. I'm sensitive about these things.

I remember the late great Dan Rather reading the news on American television thirty years ago and referring with lazy lefitst incompetence (and something approaching mendacious glee) to "the Catholic IRA."  It's always nice for someone inherently leftistly hostile to religion to claim the IRA is Catholic and its opponents are Protestants and that religions cause all the war in the world. It's a sloppy error only possible if one doesn't know any IRA men, and one chooses to ignore the definitive Soviet era causalities and underpinnings of the organisation under consideration and if one further chooses to ignore the key role for the past hundred years of atheistic communism in fomenting revolutionary wars of extirpation on every continent.

It is a rum reflection that those great champions of laicised atheism, Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, Lenin and Stalin have singly and together killed, raped, tortured and violated more human beings (and continue to do so through their ideological offspring) and more nations than any religion or purportedly religiously motivated grouping.

I put it to you Bob old pal that Dan Rather thirty years ago and you guys today aren't doing your homework when you call the IRA Catholic.  You're simplifying your soundbites down to the level of untruth. Here is the news. The IRA is a Marxian atheistic drug dealing, people trafficking, child abusing mafia,, incepted and farmed in its modern incarnation by Soviet Russia, and which since its Soviet era glory days has had operational links with Jihadists.

The IRA is Catholic only in the sense that Chairman Mao (old pal of yours Bob?) was Buddhist, Joe Stalin was Eastern Orthodox, and Adolf Hitler was Catholic, that is to say, not at all.

Besties.

James Healy

pilgrim's progess

Climbing a rocky path in the Wicklow mountains.

I'm imagining a soliloquy for a character from my movie The Rah Thing.

He's an atheist.

He has a near death experience and finds himself on a mountain path, trudging upwards.

We might film it here.

He'll be grunting and saying things like:

"Life is useless struggle."

"Life is a rocky path with no point to it."

"There's no God."

Then he'll turn and see the magnificent sweep of the mountains, the valley and the lake.

He'll exclaim to himself musingly: "It all seems hopeless until suddenly you look back and see the beauty of the valley, the impossible beauty you could never otherwise have known, you could never have seen any of this without struggling to get up here, you could never have felt what you feel now without going through everything that happened before, and you realise that this is why God permits the pain, because there are certain rare beauties you could never have known, you could never have really savoured, without the suffering of a life time."

I pause well pleased with my own and the Creator of the Universe's handiwork.

"Wow Lord," I breathe, speaking as the real me, not the character from the film. "I suppose if this was some sort of spiritual allegory, some distraction would emerge right this moment to lure me off the path. What's coming Lord?"

In John Bunyan's famous allegorical tale Pilgrim's Progress, all sorts of characters show up at pivotal moments to lure the hero into error.

There's Worldly Wiseman, Mr Brisk, the monster Apollyon, and Madame Bubble.

I wouldn't mind meeting her.

There's other characters too, heavenly ones, who try to help the pilgrim along the rocky path.

But I wasn't really expecting anything.

This happened.

A man came racing towards me over the rocks.

He was youngish, tough, bearded, bare chested, wearing combat trousers and hiking boots.

I couldn't believe he could hold his balance on the stones.

He passed me at a rate of knots.

"How do you do it? How can you hold your balance?" I called after him.

"I was raised in mountains like these," he shouted back still doing the antelope routine.

Reddish hair.

Couldn't place the accent.

He might have been Irish.

Ahead of me up the path a woman picked her way towards me over the rocks.

She was shapely and sure footed but a little slower than the man had been.

Even from a good distance, I could tell she was a tad sylph like.

Must be wearing one of those close contoured body things.

Skiers and swimmers sometimes have them.

Glorified track suits really.

Her one was really well made though.

She drew level with me.

Except for a pair of hiking shoes, she was splendidly stark buck naked.

Most people can't really carry off full frontal nudity in the mountains or anywhere else.

She could.

"Hi," she said with a hand on her hip.

It would have been more effective, more of a Kodak moment I mean, if I hadn't intuited the bleeding obvious that Ivan Man Boob springing along a hundred yards further down the trail was her boyfriend.

"Good evening to you," I said brusquely.

I didn't feel equal to any further conversation.

I scrambled past her over the rocks and kept climbing.

"Madame ****ing Bubble," I muttered to myself when the power of rationcination returned. "Who wudda thunk it! Who would have rationcinated it! Bloody hell!"

Presently I was alone once more in the wilderness.

"Lord you'll have to forgive me," I told the Deity, "but with the best will in the world I think I'm going to have some difficulty noticing your wonderful mountains for the rest of the evening."

Panting and mildly discombobulated, I reached a bend in the trail and found two conservatively dressed (by Wicklow mountains standards) congenial looking American tourists standing in silence.

The air hung heavy with things unsaid.

I could guess what had silenced them.

"Thank heavens," I gasped as I reached them. "Thank heavens there are some people on these mountains actually wearing clothes today."

The Americans fell around laughing and even in these circumstances I was rather pleased that a joke had gone over.

I kept climbing for another few hours.

I was not inclined to risk meeting Lady Godiva or Ivan Man Boob again.

It was dusk as I picked my way back down the trail.

Surprisingly I really had managed to stop thinking about what had happened earlier.

This is because I was now in an imaginary phone conversation with Hollywood director Mel Gibson which had all my attention.

Gingerly I navigated the downward path. In precipitous terrain and fading light, the circumstances weren't ideal for conducting a phone conversastion.

But when you imagine Mel Gibson ringing you up to ask for the film rights to your movie, you take that phone call.

Holding my mobile phone to my ear, trying not to fall on the rocks, I enunciated aloud first my voice and then Mel Gibson's and so on as the conversation developed.

The conversation between me and Mel Gibson went as follows: "Look Mr Gibson. Look. If you want the film, it's yours. I'm not going to say no to you. If you want the film, you've got it... Right James old cobber. That simplifies things. And call me Mel... But you've got to consider the risks. The IRA are not known for their sense of humour about themselves. They might not approve of a film that makes fun of them... Cut the crap James. To hell with the IRA. Bunch of druggies. I mean drongos... No, you're okay, they're druggies too... James, I want this script to happen. Two days ago I saw a film crew up the road who could make this movie. You wanna see it on the screen, you talk to me... Okay, okay. I'm saying yes. I just think we should meet before you commit. You'll know in about thirty seconds whether you can work with me or not... I wanna do this movie Heelers. My instincts are good on this sort of thing. I'm not going to let a sure fire hit pass me by... All I'm saying is don't let your enthusiasm for the script draw you into a shooting match... Strewth James you're more of a neurotic than George Miller. This thing is gold. It's like a comedic soft centred Mad Max. A soundtrack movie. A road movie. An homage. It's got so much going for it... Hang on Mel. I've a call on the other line. Hello... James this is Steven Spielberg. Are you talking to Mel Gibson about your film?.. How do you know that?.. James, out here, we know. "

At this point I looked to my right.

In the half light quite close, I saw Lady Godiva still naked and Ivan Man Boob still half naked. They were sitting motionless on a rock, presumably enjoying the cool caress of the mountain breeze.

They were looking at me as though they'd heard every bit of my conversation with Mel Gibson and Steven Spielberg.

They did not keep the bemusement from their eyes.

Amid the gathering shadows I could see little mocking Cheshire Cat smiles on their faces.

Yes.

Incredible as it may seem they both had the presence of mind and the cheek(s) to smile at me as if I should be embarassed about something.

watching the defectives

 (The story of my argument with the BBC)

A British satirical magazine styling itself Private Eye printed a mock graphic this week purporting to show potential reasons for the collapse of viewership at the BBC. The breakdown contained reasons like (1) Er... and (2) Um... which I thought were quite funny.

The graphic was the only nearly salient thing in that particular edition.

Private Eye has grown a tad joyless in the last decade or two. Trading on rep. No jokes about the Prophet Muhammed. No references to the trial this month of the Muslims who ate Paris. (Shot 11 people to death inside and outside the Charlie Hebdo premises and then another four people at a Jewish supermarket surely? - Ed note.) Lots of tired attempts to deride President Trump. Lots of wearisome attempts to deride Prime Minister Boris Johnson. A pointless international section featuring reports from Armenia, Sri Lanka and somewhere else. (It was Spain - Ian Hislop note.) Lots of groovy stuff about climate change and Corona Viruses taking over the world. By gadfrey it was dull. How the mighty have fallen. Some famous English man who once wrote acerbic and witty articles for Private Eye must be turning in his grave. (It was Auberon Waugh - Charlie Hebdo note.) (There were more. I think Willie Rushton once worked there. - Heelers note.) The staff at Private Eye should go to church, become joyful again and get back to writing satire with a mischievous edge, satire that requires courage, satire that doesn't look like you'd written it while being held at gunpoint by a vegan IRA feminist, satire which inonveniences improprietous hijackers of discourse, the powers that be, Jihadists, climate change advocates, abortionists, euthanasists, assisted suicidists and lefties generally.

I'm just saying is all.

As for the Beeb.

The real reason it has no viewers is because the Beeb has become a joyless atheistic conformist rag, indistingusihable really in terms of world view and mind set, from Private Eye. I mean I don't want to go casting no aspoyshuns.

I watched the BBC tonight Horatio.

I have an excuse.

A war had broken out between Armenia and Azerbaijan this evening.

Hilariously Private Eye's hugely relevant nay vital Armenian reporter hadn't seen it coming. Maybe he was being satirical. By not seeing it coming. I mean by being in Armenia writing from Armenia for a magazine that has no conceivable remit to report from Armenia and by not seeing any ominous rumblings of World War Three breaking out in Armenia. It reads like satire.

But I digress.

All out war in Armenia.

That was my excuse for watching the BBC.

A war between Armenia and Azerbaijan with Turkey sponsoring Azerbaijan, and Russia who once ran both Armenia and Azerbaijan as Soviet vassals and was lately toe to toe with Turkey in Syria where Russia won the war for Assad thwarting Turkey's Caliphate gambit, yes Vladimir Putin of Russia no less this evening standing on the sidelines contemplating Armenia and Azerbaijan and up to who knows what. The whole hot war situation spiced up by the fact that a hundred years ago, Turkey attempted to commit genocide against the Armenians and now under its peaceloving Muslim Brotherhood President Recip Teyip Erodgan, might just fancy another go. And Armenia is culturally Christian. And Azerbaijan is preponderantly culturally Muslim. 

Hoo baby.

That's the sort of excuse it takes to get me to watch the BBC.

It was a good excuse.

I'm not ashamed of it.

And the Beeb's main evening news programme did actually manage to tear itself away from its beloved Corona Virus long enough to lead with the outbreak of war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Of course they didn't contextualise their report with any mention of the hundred year old Turkish genocide of Armenians. They didn't mention that both Armenia and Azerbaijan had been Soviet vassals. No such context at all. They didn't mention Vladdie the Pute. They didn't mention Erdogan. They didn't mention the peaceloving religion of Islam. They didn't mention ethnicities.

Yet their report was for a few moments surprisingly okay.

There were details of the initial skirmishes. Some footage. (Although they shouldn't have shown the snuff movie of the tank brewing up.) Extracts from statements by both sides. Not bad.

A Russian professor working from an American University had come on as a guest and was clinically and succinctly analysing what has happened, why and where it might go.

He was getting there.

He knew his stuff.

And just as the guy mentioned Turkey and the risks of a broader war, the Beeb news presenter cut in and said: "I'm sorry, we have to leave it there."

Yes.

They cut off the Prof who was a tolerably good speaker, and who knew his Armenians and Azerbaijanis from his elbow, and who had just mentioned the danger that other powers might be involved.

The BBC cut off that guy talking about a new war that began tonight involving great Powers on the edge of Europe, right that moment, they cut him off... to go to a story about the Corona Virus.

This is after six months of packing the news every evening with stories about the Corona Virus.

Here is the news.

The nose blowers of the BBC are gone.

The BBC is gone.

It is a former television station.

It is a television station that was.

It is defunct.

It is no more.

It is kaputt.

It is an ex parrot.