Gary Monro’s blog

Norman Tebbit has a pop on ‘unreformed’ Islam today:

“The Muslim religion is so unreformed since it was created that nowhere in the Muslim world has there been any real advance in science, or art or literature, or technology in the last 500 years.”

Well, I believe strongly that science and technology, used well, is an outstanding force for good. It started in countries that happened to be Christian - it didn’t start there because they were Christian. Europe was where today’s technological society all began, the US and Japan (not Muslim but not Christian either - Shintoist and Buddhist mainly) is where much of it continues - and leaps forward - now. It seems churlish to pick out Islam as having not contributed so much to a specific area of life when neither have most other religious traditions.

I might also add that, as wonderful as scientific endeavour is, there are many ways of living a good life and material improvement and the gaining of knowledge - whilst immensely valuable - are not the be-all and end-all. We need a number of criteria with which to assess the good life - and other cultures’ contribution to it.

On multiculturalism:

“If a community was looking back at where it had come from instead of looking forward with the people to whom they had come to, then there is going to be a problem sooner or later.”

Lord Tebbit said multicultural society was “an impossibility” because if there were two cultures there would also be two societies.

“A society is defined by its culture. It is not defined by its race, it is not a matter of skin colour or ethnicity, it is a matter of culture.

“If you have two societies in the same place then you are going to have problems, like the kind we saw on 7 July, sooner or later,” he said.

He warned London was “sinking into the same abyss that Londonderry and Belfast sank”.

The thing is, with British society so ashamed of itself and so unwilling to demonstrate any pride in its past - and, hence, any optimism for its future - why would a person coming here want to adopt our culture? They’re better off clinging to that which they left behind because it was almost certainly clear, uncompromising and comfortable. In other words, all the things a human needs yet all the things our culture can no longer provide.

From The New Scientist:

A man has been arrested in Japan on suspicion carrying out a virtual mugging spree by using software “bots” to beat up and rob characters in the online computer game Lineage II. The stolen virtual possessions were then exchanged for real cash.

What’s a ‘bot’?

By performing tasks within a game repetitively or very quickly, bots can easily outplay human-controlled characters, giving unscrupulous players an unfair advantage.

Oh. I didn’t know that. Can anything be done about them?

Many games firms employ countermeasures to detect this bot activity. For example, they can ask the character questions or present them with an unfamiliar situation and monitor their response.

“There’s an ongoing war between people who make bots and games companies,” he told New Scientist. “And making real money out of virtual worlds is getting bigger.”

I’m still stuck on the idea that you can steal something in a computer game and then sell it in the Real World. Isn’t there, you know, a difference between the two?

…the line between virtual and real cash has already disappeared. The game EverQuest, for example, lets players buy and sell virtual items and characters for real money through an authorised online trading site.

Reynolds says the growing number of online game players will only increase the incentive for scammers. “There’s nothing exceptional about the virtual world,” he says. “Wherever there is that sort of money, there’s always crime too.”

So cyberspace seems to offer the same crime opportunities as Real Life. What crime is this man in Japan actually been arrested for?

The article doesn’t tell us. I imagine the police are still trying to work that one out themselves…

The Israeli government is pulling out of Gaza. Those citizens who didn’t want to leave were removed forcefully and now their former homes are being demolished.

Israel started demolishing evacuated homes in Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip today, as troops forcibly entered two synagogues at the centre of protests against Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan.

Cranes began pulling apart pre-fabricated buildings in the small settlement of Kerem Atzmona, the first homes to be taken down in Gaza’s main settlement bloc.

There were reports that demonstrators, who were chanting “Don’t expel Jews”, had covered themselves and the synagogue floor in cooking oil in an attempt to disrupt the removals.

Sobbing settlers were dragged out of homes and synagogues in six settlements but most did not put up a fight. In all, 11 of the settlements being evacuated had been emptied by this morning.

Noga Cohen, a Kfar Darom resident and the mother of three children injured in a Palestinian shooting attack on a bus, claimed Israel was surrendering to Palestinian militants.

I feel profoundly sympathetic towards Jewish people. The Israelis are not saints and have done some horrible things to the Palestinians - although I won’t actually start judging them until we in England are also subject to random and sustained suicide bombings and mortar attacks carried out by our neighbours.

Jews have been subjected to the worst atrocities in history and I cannot imagine myself what it must be like to be a member of a grouping so despised, so persecuted and to not have a peaceful place to call home. I have England, a land I love and which is good and kind and peaceful. I hope Jews get the same.