I thought pork was white meat. Oh well...never mind. It's not important, anyway. See you next week.

I also thought that. The Hebrew for pork (on a menu for example :-) is "White Steak". :-)

Brian

Hah! They just do that to fool you. Or to fool God. Or someone.

That's really weird that they're bringing in gratuitous references to Muslim culture, even in describing food for babies. It's these little things that most eloquently show the penetration of multiculturalism in British society. The funny thing is, this really isn't multiculturalism. If multi-culturalism were really "multi," you'd also see a growing prominence of Hindus in Britain, not to mention Buddhists, Shintoists, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, animists, Orthodox Christians, Assyrian Christians, Wicca, and what have you... Oh, yeah, and maybe the Jews, too.

Just imagine if the Muslims were accused of being intolerant by the Buddhists, who insisted on having golden Buddha statues on university campuses and traffic intersections. What? No graven images? But that attitude just alienates us!  You'd have Hindus saying they're *offended* by the idea of monotheism. The national anthem should be changed, they'd say, to Gods Save the Queen. And they'd say that that pork is fine, but they're really, really offended by the sight of people eating beef. If you really want to respect other peoples' cultures, and not be Hinduophobes, you'd have McDonald's serving veggie-burgers...and so on and so forth.

You get the idea. What I think you're seeing in Britain is not so much multiculturism as biculturalism. Britain doesn't seem to be opening up to the world, it's opening up to just one part of the world. And if the Muslims are for multiculturalism, then why don't they show much interest in various other cultures around the world: the Japanese, Peruvians, Eskimos, whomever? They don't seem so eager to be "sensitive" and make concessions in the interest of getting along.

So, it's not "down with multi-culturalism" that you should be shouting, but rather "down with bi-culturalism." Multi-culturalism to the max would be a mess, but at least you'd have no one particular minority calling the shots. In fact, no one would be calling the shots. Everyone would be too confused.

OK, that's it. This is my last comment. At least until the next one.

It's not multiculturalism, biculturalism or anything else cultural. There is a great word for what it is but very few in the world know it or recognise it:

DHIMMITUDE.

Yeah, I only learned the word "dhimmitude" relatively recently. I used to refer to it as simply the Middle Eastern version of Uncle Tom-ism. If you look at some of the restrictions the dhimmis lived under in the Middle East--especially the fact that they had to step aside to let Muslims pass on the sidewalk--it is sort of reminiscent of Jim Crow.

I knew someone who took a course in southern literature (southern USA, that is), and some white ladies from the South were in the class. They said that everyone misunderstood the old South, that the whites and blacks got along together just fine, and even liked each other. This reminds me of when Arabs say that the Jews and Christians were so well-treated in the Muslim world. Everyone was happy, and got along just fine. Yeah, as long as the underlings kept to their place.

I just wanted to say thank you for being the oasis of sanity in my week.  It's really easy to forget in my everyday life that there's other people who do actually have their heads on straight.

I work at a TV station on the East Coast (US) and it's hard to remember that there are people outside of that that aren't insane!

I think I see what you mean, Brian. The cultural aspect is just a means, not an end in itself. The end may well be political hegemony, not cultural inclusion or sensitivity. The Islamists may be using politically correct issues to establish a *prominent* place for themselves in British life, with the idea of eventually making that into a *dominant* place. Of course, it won't happen. But a lot of mischief will be done in the meantime.

Laura, thanks for you comments and welcome! Glad to hear we have another listener in the deranged stream media!

Brian

Congrats on your 100th! I know it is a big labor of love... and I love it! I generally save your podcast every week until I want to "treat" myself.

You are correct that ridicule is a potent weapon and I think you employ it well. Of course, it IS kinda like shooting fish in a barrell. A fatwa that women can breast feed their male co-workers and therefore work alone with them in the same office... This intrigued my husband for days! At one point he blurted out "would they have to be Muslim women?" This was completely out of the blue and yet, I knew exactly what he was referring to!

Rage Boy is so simplistic that even an idiot could get a few shots in but, my favorite is dragging the plastic Ronald McDonald into the street during a riot and setting it on fire. Yeah, that will show the west that we mean business... Burn up the evil plastic clown! Never mind that McD's is a franchise and some sad family in YOUR COUNTRY just lost their investment and livelihood.

On a serious note, the situation is rather grim and having the chance to laugh and realize the absurdity of the opposition through humor, coupled with serious interviews, makes your show very worthwhile. I think you have the balance just right. I appreciate both sides of your content; serious interviews with serious people and, rightly deserved ridicule dished up weekly to ease my tension as a citizen of the west that still has a hard time believing this is all going on.

Meanwhile, we debate whether toe tapping in a public toilet is a crime...

Hey, priorities!

Of course dhimmitude is a legal arrangement in Islamic countries, but when used in the west we are talking about a state of mind which would make actual dhimmitude bearable.  It seems to be a common mental state in dhimmis in the Islamic world - sort of a Stockholm Syndrome.  The weakness of mind, paucity of soul and submissive character in evidence in those who display this attitude in the west is truly marvellous.  Such weak people naturally gravitate to protected, undemanding areas of employ such as the public service.  As government has expanded so has their scope, power, influence and number.  This shows what the real, and dangerous, enemy is - not Islam, which is itself pathetically weak, but the expansion of government.

Brett -

This reminds me of a movie I saw in an Israel film festival here in the States. A young couple of , I think, Sephardi descent made a film about a 20th-century (pre-Israel) massacre of Jews in an Arab village. The film started out by showing how cruel the massacre was...deaths of women, children, etc....how the local Arabs had killed all of the Jews in this town, etc. Then it showed an interview with an older Arab man, very dignified, very handsome and articulate, who was something of a spokesman. He more or less said that, had the Ashkenazim not come (implication: had Zionism not come) and stirred things up, relations would have continued peacefully between the Muslim and Jewish populations. It was the fault of those Zionist Ashkenazim. Thing is, the movie seemed to accept this Arab guy's point of view, implying that maybe he was at least partly right. I had never heard of the word "dhimmitude" at that time, but the movie left a bad taste in my mouth.

It's like the caretakers of a couple of synogogues in Morocco I met when I was on vacation there. They kept saying that the Jews are doing great in Morocco, that they and the Muslims have always gotten along wonderfully and still do. It was over-kill, however, too insistent, a case of "The lady doth protest too much." I think that state of dhimmitude does eat away at the soul, I agree with you wholeheartedly with that. You see yourself through the eyes of a majority that has contempt for you, you adopt the worldview of the majority altogether. In the States, they call it "internalization."

On a contrary note:I'm not so sure about the connection between personal weakness and government employ. People who are without aspirations may go into the family business or just do what their parents did for a living, since that would be treading familiar territory. The civil service may not be the obvious choice for them. In fact, inmany Western countries, the civil service is extremely competitive, extremely prestigious, and takes the best from the best schools. Even where that's not the case, I think the connection between dhimmitude and being in public service is a bit of a stretch.