Dear CSteele,

<<[Belly] started this thread just so he could hop on a rather tired old hobby-horse and bang on about Muslims…He is very fearful …of [an] apocalypse>> .
If Belly can see further into the future than you and discern things that are beyond your ken. It can only be because those whose shoulders he stands upon are a good deal taller than the midgets [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hassan Nasrallah et la] who you’ve asked to give you a leg-up.Get a higher vantage point and you may well see it his way.

I maintain Belly was rather brave to take the stand he did. He must have known that at the first airing of any criticism of Islam he would cop an earful from the Multicultural choral group singing everyone-is-beautiful (except WASPS!) and, there-are-good-and-bad-in-all (except WASPS!) -- yet he still took the stand!

<<Not that you are above scaremongering tactics. A disowned posting on a Sydney Mosque's facebook page is equated to the destruction of the Buddha statues in Afghanistan? Yeah right>>

My dear fellow, you appear to be under the misapprehension that those who blew-up the Afghan Buddha are an aberration –not so. They are reading from the same book as their Sydney brethren. The only difference is the Taliban are a few chapters ahead of their Sydney brethren.

Actually – to give them their due -- the Sydney branch also has a few advanced readers. You can pick them ‘cause they were the ones at the recent demonstration against the film holding placards that said : “Behead anyone who insults the Prophet”. And if they had their way all Ozzies would be given a special speed reading program. But up to the present they just don’t have the numbers to implement their reforms. Though, if our present immigrations policies continue much longer I shouldn’t think it too long till they do have the numbers.
Thereafter, there"ll be no more merry Xmas's--of that I can assure you!

Dear Belly,

Have you heard of Scum Villages? Look what they're now doing in free and easy Amsterdam.
http://rt.com/news/amsterdam-scum-villages-exile-208/

I think it was Shockadelic who was telling Lexi that she's helped in bringing us back to the 1400's. Well, those God fearing medievals were sure into partying and full on celebrating - they were the ones who invenented holidays afterall. So I guess this new initiative may not be totally out of line with liberal Amsterdam afterall.

There's a great book I've read called "How to be Free" by Tom Hodgkinson. He thinks the medievals had it right and were actually more humane than today's modern world. There was hardly any government intervention but more community organising by people who had the same ethics. They had the same goal of the common good, and charity played a significant part - not welfare bludging, but mendicants. They were part of society. They also had people friendly special architecture building of towns happening (I've forgotten the name of the architecture concept). I agree with him. He's the editor of an online mag called "The Idler". /Cont..

..Cont.

Industrialisation has killed communities, basically. Analogy - Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's philosophy. Why has it been so popular with people? Especially the young. They are finding life confusing and lack direction. There are no real role models anymore. People desire to just drop out of the harshnes and the soul destroying jobs out there.

Today's work ethic I'm afraid has made us slaves. We now live to work instead of working to live. And employees are dispensable, as we are only numbers in the end. I had lunch with a nurse friend yesterday and she was telling me about a colleague's farewell after working at same place for many years. The short farewell speech she got was basically - you are disposable (give us your badge, next one in please). Careers were once vocations now it is survival of the fittest and their bloody careers. There are so many psychopaths in my workplace, (especially women I'm afraid) in the public service. I've been through hell in the past few years. But am now recovered through my own will. You may think I'm a bit off topic, but I don't think I am. It all relates to how divisive society has become.

This ongoing so called progress and endless growth will kill us in the end.

We are in need of unity more than ever.

Constance,

Funnily enough, Tom Hodgkinson's book is a favourite of mine. I discovered it years ago and it has been one of the few books I've read where the content fulfills the promise of the title.

I happen to agree with most of Tom's views. I love his style and his philosophy....I'm not at all the type who wishes to be enslaved by consumer life.

I'm not sure, btw, that Tom would endorse the sort of garbage thrown around on this thread - his idea was more on creativity, cooperation and treating people with respect. He's an inspiring guy, shame there's not more like him around here.

Perhaps you should reread the first chapter "Banish Anxiety; Be Carefree"...it's all about how society/the media like to keep us in a state of anxiety, and how we seek succour by rewarding ourselves by consuming, etc...(lots more too, including another chapter titled: "Sail away from Rudeness and towards a New Era of Courtesy, Civility and Grace").

I'm sorry, but that's exactly what I see in a thread like this...pure scaremongering, anxiety inducing scapegoating - the antithesis of Tom's philosophy.

Dear Constance,

I've made a note of the book and will now try
to get a hold of it. Sounds great. My ancestry
is Lithuanian, where small villages and caring
communities were a way of life - until the
Soviet occupation of course (from which my parents
fled) and ended up in Australia where I was born.

Dear Poirot,

You've again said it so beautifully.

"If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favours nor your hate."
(Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, iii, 58-61).

Dear Poirot,

Yes, I recall that chapter. Tom chose the hippy happy way of defeatism - just ignore the problems and create your own world. Doesn't mean I don't like hippies. Do you think he'd want to get involved in this shite and have a fatwa put on him or have his London office blown up? He works in London for goodness sake.