Is the Koran desirable?

Since I posted the piece entitled "Is the Koran actionable?" I have come to realise that the real problem of the Koran lies not in the isolated verses where it steps over the lines (lines which were drawn by mere mortals in the House of Commons committees which frame our laws), but in its pervading paranoid tribalist mindset. Geert Wilders's film Fitna also makes a verse-by-verse indictment, which though it pinpoints different verses as objectionable, fails to answer the broader question of whether we would want such a publication even with the offending verses removed? Threatening hellfire on unbelievers (fakirs), and those who pretend to believe (the muneffekhs) is not illegal because the punishment is posthumous and does not constitute assault under English law. Still, Geert is to be saluted for taking on the fight, albeit obliged to resort to legalistic nitpicking curiously reminiscent of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. The truth is, for dealing with fire breathers, England was never more in need of this gentleman:

Given the prickly sensibilities involved, the best I can do for the concerned reader is direct him to a page where he can download
St George screensavers. If you get an error message, copy the address from the address bar (Ctrl+C), say a little prayer to St George and then paste it back in in the same place (Ctrl+V). Don't ask why that works.

An Englishman's home

For too long the Englishman's home has been his financial instrument, and speculation has taken his mind off productive work. He has learnt to spend his time watching the changing size of his pile. His view of the Euro matches this mentality. He considers it his birthright to be able to leverage the strength of the pound to buy cheap property abroad and is sorely miffed when as an expat he can no longer live like a king on a sterling pension. But money is like the oil in a car's motor. If it isn't continuously pumped through the system the engine seizes up. The view of money as treasury which needs to be piled up is primitive and is equivalent to letting all the oil accumulate in the sump where it can do no good. For this reason alone, the euro, which has increased the ease with which money circulates over a large area of the world, has proved its worth, and for the Brits to stay out of the eurozone is to deny its potential for lubricating and feeding the real economies of both Europe and the UK.

Thomas Jefferson said "If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered".

Seems the same fate is befalling the mother country.

I dreamed a dream

Last night I dreamt we captured Osama bin Laden. Me and four other lads. It was me that spotted the clue. There was a row of large Victorian houses facing the common, all of them abandoned because of repossessions, but only number 30 was actually boarded up. The line of footsteps in the frost leading up to the door gave it away. His office was actually at number 10, and he would have had to slink across a road every day covered by his faithful lookouts and stenographers because there was an intersection in between.

Leading our captive by a rope across the common I was surprised to bump into Oliver, an old school friend whose surname escapes me, engaged in sloshing out a pig-sty cum water-buffalo-pen.

On reaching HQ I was not sure who I was supposed to hand our prisoner over to. The assembly hall was full of soldiers seated on the floor listening to a lecture, but their brown uniforms were no guide as to which side they were on. But I was soon reassured by the voice of the lecturer, who spoke English, and was warning the troops against dangerous heresies such as Gnosticism or Arianism. Looking for a room to hold the prisoner I was dismayed to discover that every door I opened revealed Shakespearean actors getting costumed. I ended up getting the prisoner a part in the Tempest. Later, wandering down the corridor alone, I saw a young lady in battle fatigues and a white muslim headscarf trying to contact her leader on her cellphone. "Obama! Obama! Obama!" she shouted with growing alarm, as it gradually dawned on her that he must have been renditioned. Her shouting woke me up.