Letter

3:44pm

The following letter has been received from Lord Patten of Barnes, Chancellor of Oxford University. I reproduce it here in its entirety.

  From: The Rt Hon Lord Patten of Barnes C.H.   Dear Sir,

Your article, “Carpe diem -- or can we all relax now?” by Melanie Phillips (26 November 2008), repeats a number of patently false assertions about Robert Malley that are currently blighting the more dubious corners of the internet and do not belong in a respected publication.

Mr Malley did not work for the Obama campaign, nor is he working for the transition team. He did not travel anywhere for Obama, neither before nor after the election. His work on the Middle East in recent years has been in his role as the Middle East and North Africa Programme Director of the International Crisis Group, where I am currently co-chairman.

Ms Phillips uses a quote...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (15)

A new kind of warfare

12:13pm

On the JihadWatch site Raphael Israeli, professor of Islamic, Middle Eastern and Chinese history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and author of 25 books, including Islamikaze: Manifestations of Islamic Martyrology and his latest, Arabs in Israel: Friends or Foes? (excellent, as ever), cites another al Qaeda theorist (see my Mail piece today) to explain the Mumbai atrocities in their wider and terrifying context:

Qurashi, who has obviously studied the most recent Western research in matters of the future battlefields and war doctrines, has come up with conclusions that are alarming: first, that the era of massive wars has ended, because the three war models of previous generations have been eroded; second, the fourth-generation wars of the 21st century will consist of asymmetrical confrontations between well-armed and well-equipped armies, who have a turf, a way of

...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (51)

Rising again from under that bus

11:03pm

Looks like as well as walking on water Barack Obama also resurrects people from under the bus where he’s thrown ’em. His erstwhile foreign affairs adviser and close friend Samantha Power was fired from his campaign after she called Hillary Clinton 'a monster'. But now we learn that Power is back (as she herself predicted all along) on Obama’s transition team advising the Prez-elect on matters relating to the State Department – where Hillary is apparently to be appointed imminently as Secretary of State.

Quite apart from the interesting future dynamics of this relationship, it means that Power will be bringing her views to bear upon State employees and Obama’s foreign policy. As I wrote here previously, those views include not only advocating the ending of all aid to Israel and redirecting it to the Palestinians, but also...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (29)

Barbarism

10:11pm

 

This, an account by doctors in Mumbai, is what all who stand in the way of the Islamist conquest are up against:

‘It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood,’ one doctor said. The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: ‘Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again,’ he said.

May their memory be for a blessing.

 Update: The Jerusalem...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (28)

The war against civilisation

1:21am

The atrocities in Mumbai have left reporters and commentators floundering for explanations. Why India? Was this a local terrorist group or al Qaeda? Why single out Americans and Brits if they also targeted Indians in the railway station? Why attack some obscure Jewish organisation? And so on. They are floundering because they still just don’t get it. The atrocities demonstrated with crystal clarity what the Islamist war is all about – and the western commentariat didn’t understand because it simply refuses to acknowledge, even now, what that war actually is. It does not arise from particular grievances. It is not rooted in ‘despair’ over Palestine. It is not a reaction to the war in Iraq. It is a war waged in the name of Islam against America, Britain, Hindus, Jews and all who refuse to submit to Islamic conquest. The Mumbai atrocities...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (87)

Reverting to type

7:17pm

The supposedly more sophisticated British National Party reverted to type last night when it fielded its ‘legal director’ (sic) Lee Barnes to take part in BBC Radio Four’s Moral Maze on which I am a regular panellist. The subject was whether people’s political views should ever disqualify them from a job, an issue that had arisen in the context of the leaking to the press of the BNP’s membership list.

Barnes, who was supposedly there to present the BNP as a mainstream political party, proceeded to behave like a thug. To make the case for BNP members’ right to express themselves, he set out to prevent anyone else from talking; he ranted and raved so badly that it was impossible for the panellists even to finish their questions to him, let alone get a word in edgeways. He also...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (111)