Spectator Blogs

The smoking iceberg?

, 21 Nov 2009 18:24:44 GMT

Data that has been hacked from the Hadley Centre’s Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University – one of the principal academic centres behind anthropogenic global warming theory – appears to reveal an international conspiracy of scientific experts to distort, falsify or suppress evidence in order to exaggerate man-made global warming, and also to vilify AGW sceptics in order to rubbish and bury their own evidence.

If true, a revealed systematic fraud of this magnitude will surely not only bury AGW once and for all but, as Philip Stott]]>

A voice of decency protests

, 20 Nov 2009 00:32:10 GMT

Robin Shepherd’s op-ed on that Dispatches in the Wall Street Journal is a cracker. Having dwelt upon the absurdity and sloppiness of its case, he concludes nevertheless:

Given the paucity of the arguments, it would be tempting to dismiss the whole thing as unimportant. Would that we could. The documentary has already provoked a torrent of abuse against British Jews... If this sort of language takes hold, a bad situation in Britain may be about to get a whole lot worse.

Jewish leadership organizations have long feared

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Still extreme

, 18 Nov 2009 22:39:09 GMT

As has been pointed out here before, the idea that the Muslim Council of Britain spokesman Inayat Bunglawala is a reformed character who now espouses moderate and liberal attitudes was always risible. Now he himself has helpfully provided fresh evidence that the very opposite is the case. On the Islamist website Islam Online, he has again supported the Muslim Brotherhood religious authority Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, who supports human bomb attacks against both Israelis and coalition forces in Iraq, not to mention the execution of homosexuals and other similarly fanatical]]>

The still strong voice of a vanishing Britain

, 17 Nov 2009 23:48:34 GMT

I have not had a moment until now to post up a comment on Robin Shepherd’s new book about the relationship between Israel and Europe, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel (Weidenfeld and Nicolson). It is a remarkable book by an author with a remarkable history.

Until a short while ago Shepherd, now Director of International Affairs at the Henry Jackson Society, was a senior fellow at The Royal Institute of International Affairs -- commonly known as Chatham House -- in charge of its European programme. After]]>

This sceptred isle

, 17 Nov 2009 23:30:50 GMT

Reflecting on that Dispatches programme, Tom Gross writes:

I wonder whether the directors of Britain’s well-regarded Channel 4 television, or the program-makers, have read — or even care about — the European Union’s working definition of antisemitism, part of which reads:

'Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective – such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.'

The

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Everything is now illuminated

, 16 Nov 2009 23:14:55 GMT

After watching Peter Oborne’s ‘Dispatches’ programme on the power of the Israel lobby in Britain, the scales have fallen from my eyes.

I now see things in an entirely different light. I now realise that the power of this unique cabal is so vast and unprecedented in its truly demonic power – a power given to no other lobby – that both the Labour government and Tory opposition slavishly and unquestioningly support Israel’s military actions and that the Guardian and the BBC have found themselves totally unable to publish or]]>

Britain's least effective lobby?

, 16 Nov 2009 14:24:11 GMT

In respect of tonight’s TV programme on the allegedly malign influence of the Israel lobby in Britain -- previewed here in today’s Guardian by presenter Peter Oborne -- readers may find enlightening these comments by Robin Shepherd, who takes issue with Oborne’s claim that he is not peddling ‘Jewish conspiracy theory’, and Tom Gross, who observes that there is no effective British pro-Israel lobby.

A propos, in view of Oborne’s suggestion that pressure from pro-Israel donors upon the Tory party silenced criticism of Israel’s Operation Cast]]>

The flight from reason in jihad denial syndrome

, 15 Nov 2009 22:48:55 GMT

Two essential pieces on the hallucinatory madness of the reaction to the Fort Hood jihadi attack: the first by Mark Steyn and the second by Barry Rubin. Read, and tremble.

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And so it begins again

, 15 Nov 2009 20:14:59 GMT

Readers might be interested to see in particular the comments below this advertisement for a TV programme to be transmitted tomorrow night.

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