1. Turkey bans biologist Richard Dawkins' website

Comment #249691 by lairdoflard on September 18, 2008 at 12:35 pm

@kaph
hear hear!

There seems to be quite a bit of ill-informed turkey-bashing (or should that be basting?). One cretinous creationist crackpot does not a nation make.

The main opposition to Turkey's membership of the EU, IIRC, comes from Germany, where an army of gastarbeiters would overnight be granted citizen's rights should Turkey ever join the Union. At present, German employers can simply cast aside their Turkish guest workers when they no longer need cheap labour.

The huge, huge majority of Turks, like anyone else, want to make a better life for themselves and their families - membership of the EU, they believe, will help them to achieve this.

Our own loony government supports specialist Hindu schools - we don't need to look to Turkey to see idiot government and law in action.

2. Hirsi Ali Returns to the Netherlands after Losing Body Guards

Comment #75782 by lairdoflard on October 3, 2007 at 4:02 pm

I have just ordered her book Infidel from amazon.ca and look forward to reading it. I'm a little uneasy at her association with the AEI, home to such luminaries as Richard Perle, Newt Gingrich and Chas Murray. But even if I have political issues/differences with her, I have nothing but admiration for her stance, at huge personal cost, against the evil that religion promotes.