The US government forgets what country Jerusalem is in

The blogosphere is buzzing about the US Consulate in Jerusalem. Look at its website and you’ll see why. What’s missing from the site?

Yup – any mention of Israel. As far as the US Consulate is concerned, Israel’s capital city is Arab. It's as if Israel and its Jewish identity have been airbrushed from history altogether. Astonishing.

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A chemical reaction

When the worm finally turns, it really gets itself into a flat-out spin. More and more scientists have just about had it up to here with the rubbish being put out as the ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming. Marc Morano reports how members of the American Chemical Society (ACS) have risen in revolt against the group’s editor-in-chief -- with demands for his removal -- after an editorial appeared claiming ‘the science of anthropogenic climate change is becoming increasingly well established.’

The editorial claimed the ‘consensus’ view was growing ‘increasingly difficult to challenge, despite the efforts of diehard climate-change deniers.’ The editor now admits he is ‘startled’ by the negative reaction from the group’s scientific members.

Poor bewildered soul. He really thought he had written what was undeniably the case. Here are some examples of that ‘negative reaction’ he produced:

ACS member scientist Dr. Howard Hayden, a Physics Professor Emeritus from the University of Connecticut: ‘Baum's remarks are particularly disquieting because of his hostility toward skepticism, which is part of every scientist's soul. Let's cut to the chase with some questions for Baum: Which of the 20-odd major climate models has settled the science, such that all of the rest are now discarded? [...] Do you refer to ‘climate change’ instead of 'global warming' because the claim of anthropogenic global warming has become increasingly contrary to fact?’

William E. Keller wrote: ‘However bitter you (Baum) personally may feel about CCDs (climate change deniers), it is not your place as editor to accuse them—falsely—of nonscientific behavior by using insultingly inappropriate language. [...] The growing body of scientists, whom you abuse as sowing doubt, making up statistics, and claiming to be ignored by the media, are, in the main, highly competent professionals, experts in their fields, completely honorable, and highly versed in the scientific method—characteristics that apparently do not apply to you.’

Morano points out that this revolt is but the latest in a series of recent eruptions against the so-called ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming:

On May 1 2009, the American Physical Society (APS) Council decided to review its current climate statement via a high-level subcommittee of respected senior scientists. The decision was prompted after a group of 54 prominent physicists petitioned the APS revise its global warming position. The 54 physicists wrote to APS governing board: ‘Measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th - 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today.’

The petition signed by the prominent physicists, led by Princeton University's Dr. Will Happer, who has conducted 200 peer-reviewed scientific studies. The peer-reviewed journal Nature published a July 22, 2009 letter by the physicists persuading the APS to review its statement. In 2008, an American Physical Society editor conceded that a ‘considerable presence’ of scientific skeptics exists.

 In addition, in April 2009, the Polish National Academy of Science reportedly ‘published a document that expresses skepticism over the concept of man-made global warming.’ An abundance of new peer-reviewed scientific studies continue to be published challenging the UN IPCC climate views. (See: Climate Fears RIP...for 30 years!? - Global Warming could stop 'for up to 30 years! Warming 'On Hold?...'Could go into hiding for decades,' peer-reviewed study finds – Discovery.com – March 2, 2009 & Peer-Reviewed Study Rocks Climate Debate! 'Nature not man responsible for recent global warming...little or none of late 20th century warming and cooling can be attributed to humans' – July 23, 2009 )

A March 2009 a 255-page U. S. Senate Report detailed ‘More Than 700 International Scientists Dissenting Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims.’ 2009's continued lack of warming, further frustrated the promoters of man-made climate fears. See: Earth's 'Fever' Breaks! Global temperatures 'have plunged .74°F since Gore released An Inconvenient Truth' – July 5, 2009

And so on, and on.

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Britain forgets that it no longer runs Palestine

An eye-opening story in the Jerusalem Post takes the current anti-Israel stance by Gordon Brown’s government onto a new level still. Herb Keinon reports that the British government is funding political activity in Israel that runs counter to Israeli government policy:

British spokesman Martin Day said in an interview in Dubai with Al-Arabiya television last week that the British government was ‘taking practical steps towards freezing settlement activities.’ ‘For instance,’ Day said, ‘we finance projects aimed at halting settlement activities. One of these projects seeks to build new Palestinian neighborhoods in east Jerusalem and save Palestinian houses from demolition.’ In addition, Day said in an Arabic interview, ‘we also finance organizations that monitor settlement activities.’

Wow. Just imagine if America, say, during the Troubles in Northern Ireland had been funding projects aimed at halting Loyalist marches or building houses for Catholics in Loyalist areas.

It would seem that the British government is actively subverting the government of Israel. HMG appears to have forgotten that it stopped governing Palestine in 1948.

Extraordinary.

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Obama's gesture to the Jews

Is Obama going out of his way to make an obscene gesture to the Jews ? On the Commentary blog Contentions, Jennifer Rubin is rightly astounded by the fact that Mary Robinson, UN Commissioner and former president of Ireland, is being awarded the Medal of Freedom by Obama.

Mary Robinson?

This is the same Mary Robinson who presided over the infamous and odious Durban anti-Israel and anti-Jew hate-fest a few days before 9/11. As Rubin points out:

Recently deceased congressman and human-rights champion Tom Lantos had this to say:

Mary Robinson’s lack of leadership was a major contributing factor to the debacle in Durban. Her yearning to have a ‘dialogue among civilizations’ blinded her to the reality that the noble goals of her conference had been usurped by some of the world’s least tolerant and most repressive states, wielding human rights claims as a weapon in a political dispute.

But Durban was not the only blot on her record. As Michael Rubin pointed out in this 2002 column, in her capacity as president of Ireland, she also happily provided millions of dollars of support to the PLO, which were used in terror attacks... Robinson’s post-Durban record is little better. On April 15, Robinson’s commission voted on a decision that condoned suicide bombings as a legitimate means to establish Palestinian statehood (six European Union members voted in favor including, not surprisingly, France and Belgium). The vote came after Robinson initiated a drive to become a fact finder to investigate the now-famous massacre in Jenin (also known as ‘the massacre that never happened’).

What precisely is the President of the United States giving Mary Robinson the Medal of Freedom for? Maybe someone might ask him.

 
In the interests of readers' sensitivities (see comment below) I have replaced my original illustration with something more tasteful.

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Only connect

I wrote yesterday about concerns that Iran might be pulling the strings of an illusory peace in Iraq. Brace yourselves – I have long had concerns about other alliances.

One of the many absurd mantras of the ‘we were taken to war in Iraq on a lie’ brigade is their belief that, in the Muslim and Arab world, everyone stays within their own silos. Thus Saddam could never have been working with al Qaeda because Saddam was secular and al Qaeda are religious fanatics; thus Hamas/al Qaeda could never be working with Hezbollah because Sunni and Shia are mortal enemies; thus since Iran poses a mortal threat to the world we should have attacked Iran, not Iraq.

It has always seemed to me, however, that ‘either/or’ in these circumstances is wildly inappropriate. Even mortal enemies form alliances against a foe that is common to both. We saw that with the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact in World War Two. Today, Sunni and Shia, Ba’athists and Iran are united against America, Israel and the western world.

Just because Iran poses a threat to the world doesn’t mean that Saddam did not also pose a threat in himself on account of the triple lock of support for terror, regional ambition and development of WMD programmes – a threat which I believed then to be well-founded and still do.

There was never any evidence that Saddam was involved in 9/11; there was evidence that he had contacts, although no evidence they were operational, with al Qaeda. This is stated in both the US 9/11 report and the British Butler report. Now this article based on an interview with Matthew Degn, a former civilian interrogator attached to the U.S. Army in Iraq, states:

When asked about recent media reports citing Saddam Hussein's denial to the FBI about links to al Qaeda Degn viewed these reports as part of an ongoing attempt to rewrite history saying these reports stand in stark contrast to what he saw and heard firsthand in Iraq. In fact, Degn said that to many of the detainees links between Saddam Hussein’s regime and terrorist groups including al Qaeda was not even a point of contention but freely acknowledged. Many of the high value detainees took it as a given that their captors were aware of Iraq-al Qaeda links. Some even bragged about those links.

... When pressed for specifics Degn said that Hussein’s regime, like many other Middle Eastern groups, used the ‘Hawala’ system to secretly move money to al Qaeda and made it nearly impossible to ‘prove’ in a legal system that the transfers took place. The ‘Hawala’ system uses multiple layers of middle men couriers to transfer money and leaves no paper trail, making tracing such transactions virtually impossible.

Degn said that Iraqi assistance given to al Qaeda also included safehaven. Degn said al Qaeda used that safehaven for at least two training camps in Western Iraq and the Anbar province. Degn argued that Saddam Hussein’s government was certainly aware that the provision of safehaven was being used for these camps. (Related: Captured Iraqi terrorist says al Qaeda had camps in Saddam's Iraq)

Degn said he had heard reports that indicated that al Qaeda affiliates had multiple, possibly competing, cells in Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. One cell was affiliated with Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who had not yet ‘officially’ sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden. Another al Qaeda cell, linked to Ayman al Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad, was reportedly simultaneously operating in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

We know that al Qaeda was trained, supported and sheltered by the Taleban. But I have long suspected that somewhere in the planning of the 9/11 attacks was also Iran: most particularly in the shape of Imad Mughniyeh, the senior Hezbollah commander who was killed in Damascus by unknown assassins last year. I have no evidence to back this up, only a hunch based on the fact that Mughniyeh was held to be the most brilliant terrorist mastermind of all and that elements within the intelligence world thought his fingerprints were all over 9/11.

Scrolling through Google just now, I happened upon this article in Jane’s on September 19, 2001:

Israel’s military intelligence service, Aman, suspects that Iraq is the state that sponsored the suicide attacks on the New York Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington. Directing the mission, Aman officers believe, were two of the world’s foremost terrorist masterminds: the Lebanese Imad Mughniyeh, head of the special overseas operations for Hizbullah, and the Egyptian Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, senior member of Al-Qaeda and possible successor of the ailing Osama Bin Laden.

Now there are reports that Iran was involved with the Taleban – before 9/11. This article by Thomas Joscelyn is based on unclassified documents prepared by the US government for Guantanamo detainee Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa:

According to the US government’s unclassified files, Khairkhwa was installed as the governor of Herat ‘to improve relations between Iran and the Taliban government.’ By his own admission, Khairkhwa began meeting with the Iranians in early 2000. The US government’s unclassified documents cite at least two instances when Khairkhwa took part in meetings between senior Taliban and Iranian officials: one on Jan. 7, 2000, and a second time in late 2001.

The government’s Oct. 7, 2005, ARB summary of evidence memo for Khairkhwa (see here) includes this allegation:

‘On 7 January 2000, the detainee and three other Taliban officials attended a meeting with Iranian and Hizbi Islami-Gulbuddin Hikmatyar faction officials. Present at the meeting were Afghan Hizbi Islami-Gulbuddin leader, Gulbuddin Hikmatyar and Ayman Al-Zawahiri [emphasis added]. Topics of discussion included United States intervention in the region, restoration of peace in Afghanistan and strengthening the Taliban’s ties with [the] Iran[ian] government.’

The government’s second and more recent ARB summary of evidence memo (dated June 16, 2006) modified this allegation. US intelligence officials did not allege that Hekmatyar or Zawahiri personally attended the meeting. (See here.) Instead, the government’s allegation reads:

‘On 7 January 2000, the detainee and three other Taliban officials attended a meeting with Iranian and Hizbi Islami-Gulbuddin Hekmatyar faction officials [emphasis added]. Topics of discussion included United States intervention in the region, restoration of peace in Afghanistan, and strengthening the Taliban’s nascent ties with Iran.’

As with all such shadowy information, one has to be very careful before reaching any conclusions. But in this world of deeply complex alliances and internecine warfare --some of which takes place with the same players simultaneously -- it could be that both Iran and Iraq were involved at one time or another with al Qaeda.

The full story has yet to be written. But what is undeniably true is that the Islamic jihad is an umbrella movement comprising not just one or two but many actors, all with their own sub and sub-sub agendas, all fighting and allying and fighting with each other again, but all with the same ultimate objective: to conquer the non-Islamic or not-Islamic-enough world. Until and unless we realise that one key fact, we won’t even begin to understand what we’re up against.

The picture is ''The Prussian Tribute in Moscow' published in the satirical newspaper "Mucha' on September 8 1939, Warsaw

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Forced to think freely

It’s got to be one of the most unintentionally comical and yet revealing stories of the summer. An atheist summer camp has been set up to indoctrinate children in ‘free thinking’ by ensuring that not one hint of religion nor any discussion of religious ideas creeps into the programme. The ‘free thinkers’ running the camp are clearly incapable of seeing the paradox. Wouldn’t it be a good idea for a camp promoting ‘free thinking’ to be run by people who can actually think?

The picture is of Goya's engraving: 'The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters'

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An Iran/Iraq axis?

As Iran in a so-called ‘conciliatory gesture’ released 140 dissident prisoners whom it had jailed during the recent post-election disturbances, horrific reports have filtered out about abuses. The New York Times (subscription required) reports that upwards of an estimated 100 prisoners may have been killed:

Some prisoners say they watched fellow detainees being beaten to death by guards in overcrowded, stinking holding pens. Others say they had their fingernails ripped off or were forced to lick filthy toilet bowls.

The accounts of prison abuse in Iran’s post-election crackdown -- relayed by relatives and on opposition Web sites -- have set off growing outrage among Iranians, including some prominent conservatives. More bruised corpses have been returned to families in recent days, and some hospital officials have told human rights workers that they have seen evidence that well over 100 protesters have died since the vote.

... The number of those killed since the election is impossible to determine, and it includes at least a few members of the Basij militia as well as protesters. One human rights group, International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said it spoke to doctors in three Tehran hospitals who registered the bodies of 34 protesters on June 20 alone. Other doctors have provided similar accounts and have estimated a death toll of at least 150 based on corpses they saw.

Earlier this month, family members of missing demonstrators were taken to a morgue in southwest Tehran where they reported seeing ‘hundreds of corpses’ and were not allowed to retrieve bodies unless they certified that the deaths were of natural causes, according to accounts relayed on Web sites and to human rights workers.

Meanwhile, it appears that at least seven members of the Iranian opposition group, the Peoples' Mujahideen of Iran, were killed yesterday and 400 others injured in an Iraqi attack on the PMOI headquarters in Ashraf, Iraq. The PMOI set up base in Iraq in the 1980s after being forced to flee Iran. Although they renounced all violence several years ago, they were only taken off the terrorism list in Britain and Europe in the last year or so after a legal battle. According to the BBC, although they are still considered a terrorist group by the US,

reports suggest Washington has received intelligence from the group, and has urged Iraqi authorities not to repatriate its members or use lethal force against them. ‘We have had promises from the government of Iraq that they would deal with the [PMOI] in a humane fashion,’ said US Gen Ray Odierno.

Well so much for those promises. According to an account from the PMOI:

The attack against Ashraf began at 15:00 local time by the Iraqi forces, whose numbers grew to nearly 2,000, and was followed by firing of rounds of live ammunition and using of tear gas canisters, pepper gas, batons, iron bars, clubs, boiling water sprayed at high pressure, and sonic grenades. Iraqi military loaders and armored vehicles demolished gates, fences, and walls of the camp while foot soldiers swarmed the camp from various entry points.

The British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom has condemned the bloodbath in Ashraf:

Several hours after the raid began on Tuesday, Iraqi police opened fire on the unarmed and defenceless residents of the camp. Dozens have been seriously injured and many are in a state of coma. Over 50 of the residents have been arrested, in some cases after they became unconscious. Ms. Zohreh Qaemi, a deputy Secretary General of the PMOI, was shot by Iraqi forces.

The attack is in breach of international law and comes against a background of Baghdad recently claiming that Ashraf residents have no legal status despite having lived in Iraq lawfully for the past 23 years and having been recognized by the US as ‘Protected Persons’ under the 4th Geneva Convention.

The attack goes against the European Parliament's 24 April 2009 resolution on the humanitarian situation in Ashraf which urged Baghdad to make clear it would not expel or displace the residents, and would instead end its siege of the camp and recognise the residents’ status as ‘Protected Persons’ under the 4th Geneva Convention. It violates the written assurances by the government of Iraq to the US administration that Baghdad would treat the residents of Ashraf humanely and consistent with international law.

The atrocity in Ashraf is not just a crime against the Iranian people. It is surely also a deeply alarming sign of co-operation between the Iraqi government and the regime in Iran. The PMOI head Maryam Rajavi has said that although Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al Maliki should be held responsible the order to attack came from Tehran:

She added that the attack was carried out at the behest of the Iranian regime and that the regime’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, is using it in a futile bid to compensate for his humiliating defeat in the face of the Iranian people’s nationwide uprising.

Despite the firmest possible denials from American sources, I continue to hear reports that Iran is pulling Maliki’s strings and that the relative progress in Iraq is illusory, owing much to Iranian influence and strategy. I fervently hope that this is wrong; but the terrible events in Ashraf can surely only deepen that concern.

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A craven response

The latest statistics of anti-Jewish incidents from the Community Security Trust are as grim as they were predictable. Largely as a result of the way Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza was presented by the media, there has been an enormous spike in Jew-hatred in Britain. In the first six months of this year, the CST recorded 609 antisemitic incidents, more than the previous record high of 598 such incidents recorded for the whole of 2006.

This has caused widespread alarm. Ha’aretz reports:

‘Britain is setting a shameful new record in anti-Semitic incidents this year,’ Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary Chris Huhne said Thursday... In response to the report, British Foreign Office Minister Ivan Lewis said: ‘I am deeply concerned by the rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents as reported by the CST today.’

And what is the general view of the current situation of British Jews as expressed by their official spokesman? In response to a fine article in the Jerusalem Post by Robin Shepherd who warned that

darkness is closing in

on Israel’s reputation in Britain, the new President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews Vivian Wineman writes in the Jerusalem Post that Shepherd is ‘misguided and alarmist’:

There is no doubt that Operation Cast Lead has made putting the case for Israel all the more challenging for Diaspora communities - and the UK is certainly no exception. But let’s be clear, the ‘relentless, unremitting stream of anti-Israel invective’ that Shepherd refers to is still propagated, as it has been for years, by a relatively small number of people with loud voices.

Let’s be clear: Shepherd was absolutely right. The obsessive campaign of demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel in Britain has reached a new crescendo, with the media, NGOs and the Foreign Office piling in every few days with fresh volleys of malicious distortions and misrepresentations against it. This campaign now goes far beyond being confined, as Wineman wrongly states, to the usual suspects at the Guardian or the occasional left-wing NGO. It is now the default position across the intelligentsia; it courses through the Church of England and Christian charities; it is being articulated by the Foreign Secretary; it is (and has been for several years now) a mainstream position in conservatively-minded Middle Britain.

Tragically, many British Jews don’t see this. Many do; they tend to be the ordinary, middle-of-the road, pragmatic people who habitually observe reality without the impediments of ideological baggage -- and who are now horrified beyond measure. But many don’t see it at all. I would divide these British Jews into three groups. The first are the secular ultra-leftists, many of whom have a tangential or conflicted attitude towards their Jewish background and whose loathing of Israel is both ideological and pathological. The second are the ‘Peace Now’ or ‘peace process’ left, who believe that the ‘two-state solution’ is being thwarted by the settlements and therefore the onus lies with Israel to break the stalemate. They basically think that the Middle East impasse is Israel’s fault.  They therefore cannot acknowledge the bigotry in the presentation of Israel because they share too many of its premises. Their capacity for self-delusion is thus as inexhaustible as the ammunition they help provide for Israel’s enemies.

The third group is the leadership of the British Jewish community, which since time immemorial has believed in keeping its head down in public, never rocking the boat  and working behind the scenes to represent Jewish concerns. To this craven attitude must be added the historic ambivalence of that leadership, going back to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, towards a Jewish nation state which, it was always feared, would lead in Britain to a revival of the ancient canard of ‘dual loyalty’ – precisely what we are experiencing today.  So given the explosive fact that contemporary Jew-hatred is expressed through the unique malice displayed towards Israel, British Jewish leaders are struck virtually dumb.  

As a result, in response to the tremendous surge in anti-Israel and anti-Jewish prejudice which erupted with the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000, those leaders have consistently downplayed the problem – and gone round bad-mouthing  those who draw attention to it. At a conference on global antisemitism in Israel a couple of years ago, I sat with Israeli experts on antisemitism listening open-mouthed to Wineman’s predecessor, Henry Grunwald QC, state that ‘there has never been a better time than now to be a British Jew’.

As for Wineman himself, he is a former chairman of British Friends of Peace Now, and so concern has already been expressed in some quarters that he may therefore prove an even weaker voice in defence of Israel at this time of unprecedented hostility. I happened to be on a panel discussion with him at a London synagogue a while ago, where he and others on the platform who were similarly pooh-poohing as alarmist concerns about anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bigotry in Britain were booed for their complacency by an angry audience.

The Jewish community in Britain is fortunate to have such a friend as Robin Shepherd who tells it as it is. It is not fortunate itself to have such leaders at such a time.

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A strategy of political genius

President Obama has pulled off a truly remarkable feat. He has managed to turn even the Israeli left against him and united virtually the whole of Israel behind Prime Minister Netanyahu’s rejection of Obama’s demand for a total settlement freeze. The widely respected Ha’aretz analyst Aluf Benn writes in the New York Times:

Mr. Obama’s stop at Buchenwald and his strong rejection of Holocaust denial, immediately after his Cairo speech, appealed to American Jews but fell flat in Israel. Here we are taught that Zionist determination and struggle — not guilt over the Holocaust — brought Jews a homeland. Mr. Obama’s speech, which linked Israel’s existence to the Jewish tragedy, infuriated many Israelis who sensed its closeness to the narrative of enemies like Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

... in the past decade, repeated peace negotiations and diplomatic statements have indicated that larger, closer-to-home settlements (the ‘settlement blocs’) will remain in Israeli hands under any two-state solution. Why, then, insist on a total freeze everywhere? And why deny with such force — as the administration did — the existence of previous understandings between the United States and Israel over limited settlement construction? There is simply too much evidence proving that such an understanding existed. To Israelis, the claim undermined Mr. Obama’s credibility — and strengthened Mr. Netanyahu’s position.

Obama has certainly brought unity where there was discord – but perhaps not in quite the way he intended.

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The mask slips

I’ve been travelling and so have only just been catching up with the Obama race row over the altercation between Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge, Mass. police. Strikes me this is no storm in a teacup. Look at the Fox News clip that Tim Montgomerie highlights here for some extremely sharp comments indeed, particularly by Charles Krauthammer. Even after Obama started rowing back, noted Juan Williams of NPR, he was still getting the facts wrong, claiming that Sgt Crowley had led Gates out of his house whereas this was ‘just not true’.

This affair is toxic because it touches many nerves: America’s neuralgic conscience over its historic racism, the monstrously unjust over-reaction to that racism, and the election of a President who supposedly embodied, in both his identity and his approach, a post-racial New Man and an absolution for past national sins. Now the mask has slipped, and even those with Obama stars in their eyes can’t hide their dismay.

As regular readers of this blog know, I have been banging on from the start of Obama’s rise to power about the astonishing discrepancy between how he was presented by the media on the issue of race and what he actually had said and done. His whole background from the earliest days onwards was steeped in anti-white grievance politics of the most bitter and corrosive kind. This was all ignored. His two-decade membership of an anti-white church was ignored, his early anti-white mentors such as Frank Marshall Davis were ignored, his participation on the Nation of Islam ‘Million Man march’ and his association with Nation of Islam cadres were ignored.

And as Krauthammer aptly observed – and as I wrote here – Obama’s major speech on race in March 2008 in which he finally ‘renounced’ his former pastor, the anti-white bigot Rev Jeremiah Wright, which was hailed as the greatest piece of oratory since the Gettysburg address and which supposedly transcended racial animosities to create the colour-blind Brotherhood of Man, was anything but. In this speech Obama actually said Wright should not be renounced, and that Wright’s racism was actually all the fault of white people. The fact that so many people failed to hear or read what Obama actually said and instead heard or read only what they wanted to hear was truly frightening.

Now, thanks to the histrionics of Henry Louis Gates, we can see how Obama’s  dysfunctional attitude to race plays out in real time. Gates’s arrest was an honest and understandable mistake by the Cambridge police who were investigating what appeared to be a break-in.  It clearly had nothing to do with Gates being black – not least because other officers backing up the arresting officer were non-white. Gates’s protests were preposterous, and vividly demonstrated the pathological resentment and injustice – not to mention the strutting arrogance and narcissism -- of anti-racist ‘victim culture’.

For the President of the United States to get involved at all in such a local matter was off-limits. For him to do so without even bothering to discover the facts was disturbing. For him to damn the Cambridge police as ‘stupid’ whereas it was clearly Gates who was ‘stupid’(and worse), thereby demonstrating how the Presidential knee automatically jerks to the crudest of anti-white (and anti-police) tunes regardless of the facts, was deeply alarming.  

But not surprising.

Update: As is pointed out below, although the police were originally under a misapprehension about the apparent break-in at Gates's own house, the arrest was for his disorderly conduct which started as soon as the police spoke to him, as is apparent  from the police report of the incident here -- and which appears to have vanished from the Boston Globe website.

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