The heirs to Chamberlain

M.Lester

Thanks, Melanie for pointing up this important speech. What's needed to get this reality across to the US executive, the State Dept & the Brits? I noticed thst David Melliband was indicating British reluctance to accept the US Iran report (that the Iranians were really pussycats) by recognising that the Iranians have nowhere to put their enriched uranium (other than make a bomb). Previous experience with dictators & totalitarian regimes indicates that they will do what they promised / brag about doing unless stopped. Unfortunately, stopping them requires removing head from sand and fighting - which costs blood and money. It's much easier just to talk & hope it'll all go away ......

Bob Hatton

I have read all of this extraordinarily silly and tedious article by Newt Gingrich. Such dangerous ignorance about the Middle East combined with puerile comparisons with the Thirties may go down well with his audience, but does nothing to advance the debate on how to get out of the mess which has been created.

Bob Hatton

You get a good idea of what kind of nut website this speech was published on by following the link "Teaching terror in American Schools" which turns out to be some anodyne advice to Muslim parents. A good example of juvenile Islamophobia.

graham

Our enemies get up every morning and say, ‘We hate the West. We hate freedom.' So the NSA wiretapping programme is finally getting results. I feel so much safer.

GH

Examples, Bob? Examples of why Gingrich is "dangerously ignorant" of the Middle East? And how is proposing to develop an alternative to oil not "advancing the debate"? Gingrich may not be 100% right on everything, but it was a well thought out speech which raised some interesting issues. Which is more than can be said for Bob Hatton's "puerile" response.

Neil

I expect that the American govt would be far less tolerant of the Saudis if the arms sales dried up. Hey, it's just good business. And as for human rights, what about those poor unfortunates incarcerated without charge in Camp Delta? What does Gingrich have to say about them?

Stuart

Bob Hatton. You wrote " Such dangerous ignorance about the Middle East combined with puerile comparisons with the Thirties may go down well with his audience, but does nothing to advance the debate on how to get out of the mess which has been created." Well, Dr Bari of the Muslim Council of Britain, a strong supporter of the Palestinians and against Israel and Zionism agrees with Newt Gingrich! After all, wasn't it Dr Bari who stated that the UK was behaving like Nazi Germany?

Helen

Bob talks of "Islamophobia" - an oxymoron if ever their were one. The tenets of Islam as set out in The Koran define themselves by their intolerance: "Make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate." People defending themselves against teachings like that, Bob, are not Islamophobes, they are defending their right not to be a Muslim. It's Westophobia that's the real issue - not "Islamophobia".

Michael B

"So we accept this totally one-sided definition of the world in which our enemies can cheerfully lie on television every day, and we don't even have the nerve to insist on the truth. We pretend their lies are reasonable. This is a very fundamental problem. And if you look at who some of the largest owners of some of our largest banks are today, they're Saudis." Newt Gingrich Yes, absolutely. Gingrich here and in the entirety nicely articulates the obvious and the fact it is obvious - even stunningly obvious, as noted, writ large across MSM styled media on a daily basis - is indicative of just how self-inflicted the problems faced by the "free world" are.

Dhimmier&Dhimmierer

OT: Will Melanie be blogging about a just-ended trial and the evidence it offers of anti-white racism by British Muslims and of the media's continuing blindness to it? Only the Daily Mail and the Pakistan Times seem to have covered the verdict so far: Asians found guilty of shattering man's skull in race hate attack Three Asian racists were convicted at the Old Bailey today of shattering a man's skull because he was white. Sodrul Islam, 23, Delwar Hussain, 21, and Mamoon Hussain, 20, were found guilty of attempted murder for the attack on John Payne, 33. Up to 30 Asians set upon the victim and his friends for drinking in a pub on the Clichy estate in Stepney, which the gang considered to be their turf. They shouted insults including "white honkies" at the five people who dared to walk through. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=501105&in_page_id=1770

T. Jenkins

Mr Dhimmier, I'd hardly call the Daily Mail a serious (or respected) news source.

Dhimmier&Dhimmierer

Mr/Ms Jenkins -- your liberal logic escapes me. Are you saying the Daily Mail has made the story up? That it must appear in a politically correct paper before right-thinking people can accept it? If not, I suggest you are trying to evade the issue: that anti-white racism by British Muslims is a serious problem virtually ignored by the media.

Phillip Reece

So Bob What should we do?

Vorax

Bob Hatton on "Islamophobia": NB: the very use of this term is a hallmark of Islamic propaganda. Design of this word is dissected as following: 1. ("negative" sense) Islamophobes are those who have irrational fear of Islam. That migh happen because of two reasons - or they are just instinctive psychopatic cowards (so their opinion doesn't really matter), or they are silly and/or poorly informed on Islam. 2. ("positive" sense) People who are not Islamophobes are informed on Islam AND don't fear Islam; other words they have no reason and no motivation to oppose what Islam says and practices. Last phrase here, is the definition of dhimmi. One should be rather a mm.. simpleton in order not to notice this cheap medieval sophistry. Correpondingly, the populations of "useful idiots" are not viable and don't live long under Sharia. For those who are not weak an not silly, there are other means in Islamic mm.. arsenal. So forget Islamophobia. This word was launched as a red herring, to confuse unbelievers and divert their attention from true "virtues" of Islam, - and it is rotten. You don't buy rotten tomatoes in the shop, aren't you?

eliXelx

Dear Melanie; 3 months ago you had your own happy website on which you posted without having worms crawling out of the woodwork to attack you-never the thoughts, just the person of Melanie Phillips! Well here's a word for you--Hazak! You're going to need it!

Bogdan of Australia

Newt Gingrich is 100% right, of course. What he, however, forgot to mention, is one more, even more hostile and dangerous power that the ignorant American, and to nearly as large extent European, Homo Consumus Degeneratus is financing; It's China and her Sino-fascists clique. This is the America that is giving that totallitarian, murderous regime some 250 billion dollars gift in exchange for poisoned baby formula, poisoned pet food, clothes, and other low quality products that this treacherous band is using to arm itself in order to challenge the US and to finance all other totallitarian, genocidal regimes arround the world which declare themselves more or less openly as the enemies of the United States of America, democracy and freedom in general. This is our own stupiduty that is sowing the seeds of our own demise The list of our enemies is frateningly long; 1. Islamofascism 2. Sinofascism 3. Russofascism 4. Latinofascism 5. Afrofascism 6. Ecofascism 7. Neo-Marxism and other variants of totallitarian collectivism 8. Gigantic army of so called: Western "useful idiots". 9. Even greater army of ignorants living in the West, like Bob Hatton, for example. Can democracy and freedom survive in the face of such an overwhelming enemy? I doubt... We would have to have someone like a modern version of GANDALF to save us...

korova

'So why wouldn't Columbia host a genocidal madman?' Pray tell, who is the 'genocidal madman'?

Jack R

Newt Gingrich, in his two speeches here, is pointing out that the West does not yet fully understand the nature and scale of Islamic jihad; and it is true that many people in the West have difficulty in comprehending what Islam really means, despite the evidence. For example, the two suicide bombers who killed about 60 people, and maimed many more in Algiers this week, belonged to Al Qaeda in the Maghreb; it is part of a global organisation, 'inspired' by the Koran, to destroy the infidel West and its supporters. Their message is all too clear to me, but many Europeans will blithely go to North Africa as tourists. Newt Gingrich is warning against appeasement and complacency; if we behave as though the global Islamic jihadists have declared war on us, that's a step forward - because that's what they've done.

Phillip Reece

korova If you cant figure that out you have mental problems of the first order.

davod

Oil is a canard as far as US energy needs are concerned. We have enough, if only we made the decision to drill off the coasts and in ANWR. The Europeans, Chinese and Japanese have problems.

Barry Larking

Gingrich's comments about Chamberlain are most interesting. It is usual to assume this man with his wing collar and rolled umbrella was infamously weak and a ditherer. He was if anything as tough as Thatcher. He is also a convenient historical scapegoat; many who like he who saw the prospect of war as only disastrous for England – including the Labour Party and the TUC – were correct. So the war proved to be.

Gingrich is often correct on the broad political problems – emotionally at least. West - East relations are based on historic compromises rather than shared values, to use a current phrase; it does not do to investigate into the causes of this. Bad faith, opportunism and money are at the centre of it, not solely between the west and the east. America, triumphant, made enormous mistakes following 1945, intent on showing up British Imperialism. (Mr Gingrich points out the Hollywood aversion to the CIA; he should try being British. Hollywood always sees evil as having a 'British' accent or face, as result of post-war hostility to the British. Afterall, it was Mr Gingrich's wing of US politics that early on cited WW II as being "the wrong war against the wrong enemy" and that "the British will fight to the last American.") However, I feel the tide is turning and as before, western societies have a resilience which is not so easily vanquished. We must begin by speaking truth and prepare to make sacrifices of our own comfort in order to resist. I have lost friends over this and that has been hard.

Cynic

Barry Larkin said: " Afterall, it was Mr Gingrich's wing of US politics that early on cited WW II as being "the wrong war against the wrong enemy" " Wrong! It was General Omar Bradley on about MacArthur's wish to extend the Korean War into China.

Herbert Thornton

Quite a plethora of Phobias are displaying themselves in this thread.

Bogdan's list is so long that it sounds like Omniphobia, but at least he acknowledges that Newt Gingrich has it right.

I think Bogdan should re-assess his Sinophobia though. If, heaven forbid, America and Europe are both so weakened by naive faith in political correctness that the Jihad reduces them to impotence or worse, and if a similar fate befalls Russia and India, China will be the only civilisation left to stand in the way of Islamist ambition. In that event, I believe the Chinese civilisation will not emulate the weakness towards Islam now displayed by the west.

China's form of government may not please those of us who believe that nothing can possibly be as good as western-style democracy, but it promises to be reasonably benign and there is a great deal more to be said for living under the Chinese form of government than under the Islam.