E-mail: mail@suffolkhumanists.org.uk Event description: Peter will talk to us about his human rights work. We’ll be in the hexagonal room at the Friends' Meeting House, Colchester. Friends and other guests welcome. We’ll be going for a restaurant meal before the meeting. If you’d like to join us, please email us. Further info: www.petertatchell.net Map link: http://tinyurl.com/2242bj

The doctrine of tolerance and, foremost, respecting cultural and religious diversity cannot easily cope with those who claim the right to intolerance, especially within the same society. Link: IHS :: HNN :: Entrapped by Tolerance: Humanism in the Netherlands Dr Floris van den Berg, a philosopher at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, is a member of the Dutch Freethought Association. He argues that Dutch Humanists have got into a muddle about multiculturalism.

Frightened for your life in these days of madness? It’s not about religion, stupid. It’s about foreign policy, and silly us for thinking any different. So let’s have a look at the unique feelings of those young Muslim men who are so deeply affected by international politics and certainly not religion – no, no, goodness me no – and examine those gaping differences between us. We can use the martyrdom tape of July 7, 2005, as a guide to why we’re on such opposing sides and take it from there.

The other week I read a newspaper article by Euan Ferguson in which he wrote of his experience of a freak storm on a public holiday in Budapest, when flash floods overwhelmed a crowd that had taken shelter under the Elizabeth Bridge. Ferguson wrote that most people reacted by helping each other, passing small children and the infirm to safety out of the rising floodwaters. Others, however, behaved differently; they “… pushed forward, pushed everyone out of the way; stamped and splashed and elbowed and forced their way to higher, drier ground.