The Right To Bare Arms

Today’s mail-bag held a potpourri of postworthy tidbits. Here they are.

First, another step for the U.K. along the path to dhimmitude. It appears that female Muslim hospital staff will be exempt from the requirement to keep forearms bare and scrubbed to reduce the transmission of pathogens. In this latest capitulation, we see once again that there is no good — not even protecting the safety of hospital patients by the practice of basic hygiene — that trumps multiculturalist appeasement, and in particular, appeasement of Islam. How sad it is to see the great British people, recent heirs to the greatest empire in the history of the world, reduced to such pitiful enfeeblement. Story here.

On a related topic, another item that is causing rather a stir is the announcement that the US now considers one of its own citizens — the fundamentalist firebrand Anwar al-Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico but now lives and foments in Yemen — fair game for assassination. That the US has authorized such measures against one of its own is, to many, the beginning of a very slippery slope. We shall see where this leads.

Back to the UK: it appears that the atheist gadflies Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens will be lurking in the bushes when Pope Benedict pays Britain a visit in September. Despite the fact that the Pope has vowed to bring pedophilia down to “acceptable levels“, Messrs D & H are arranging to have the Holy Father clapped in irons for his part in the global child-molestation coverup. Grab some popcorn.

Finally, if you’re getting the impression that I think religion has brought the world nothing more than conflict, jihad and pederasty, you’re wrong. Yes, to be sure, religion has given us all that and more — but our innate sense of the sacred, finding its clearest expression in the world’s great religions, has also inspired mankind, again and again, to lift itself above the mundane, and to create timeless works of sublime and ennobling majesty.

Like this.

9 Comments

  1. bob koepp says

    I’ve been following this story for some time, and am glad for the compromise allowing “disposable plastic over-sleeves.” This is a common sense solution.

    Nonetheless, some wanker worries that “allowing some medics to use disposable sleeves you compromise patient safety because unless you change the sleeves between each patient, you spread bacteria.” That would be funny if it wasn’t a cover for bigotry (OK, maybe not bigotry, but some other form of stupidity). Just like the disposable gloves that are now “standard practice,” disposable sleeves need to be changed between patients, and sometimes even between procedures on the same patient. Despite this shortcoming, they beat “scrubbing” hands down as a method for preventing the transmission of infectious agents.

    Posted April 12, 2010 at 12:03 pm | Permalink
  2. Malcolm says

    Yes, in this case there seems to be a workable compromise. I wonder what would have happened if there weren’t.

    Posted April 12, 2010 at 12:34 pm | Permalink
  3. bob koepp says

    The word was that if a compromise could not be reached that did not compromise patient safety, those Muslims whose relilgious beliefs prevented them from exposing their forearms would not be employable in NHS jobs that involve patient contact. Eminently reasonable…

    Posted April 12, 2010 at 1:07 pm | Permalink
  4. JK says

    Following your second posted link and onto another somehow prods me to sneer, “Oh ye of little faith.”

    http://www.military.com/news/article/army-calls-birther-docs-bluff.html?col=1186032325324

    Toward whom I sneer? Not sure.

    Posted April 12, 2010 at 1:07 pm | Permalink
  5. Malcolm says

    Bob, that would be eminently reasonable. I wonder if it really would have gone that way. Almost gives one a glimmer of hope.

    Posted April 12, 2010 at 1:21 pm | Permalink
  6. Chris G says

    I’m going to hold off on paying my income taxes until I get a glimpse of that birth certificate.

    Posted April 12, 2010 at 2:08 pm | Permalink
  7. Malcolm says

    If you missed it, have a look at the article linked to in this post.

    Posted April 12, 2010 at 2:25 pm | Permalink
  8. JK says

    I recall reading that when you initially posted it.

    Reads like Trigonometry to me.

    Posted April 12, 2010 at 7:07 pm | Permalink
  9. Malcolm says

    JK, is that some sort of Palin-drome?

    Posted April 12, 2010 at 9:04 pm | Permalink

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