The thin blue line of jihad

The Telegraph reports that the National Association of Muslim Police has attacked government policy on countering Islamic extremism. In evidence to a parliamentary committee investigating Islamic extremism, the NAMP attacked

the Government’s anti-terrorism strategy, warning that it is an ‘affront to British values’ which threatens to trigger ethnic unrest... that ministers were wrong to blame Islam for being the ‘driver’ behind recent terrorist attacks. Far-Right extremists were a more dangerous threat to national security... that Muslims were being ‘stigmatised’ by the Government’s attempts to tackle terrorism, which was adding to ‘hatred’ against entire communities.

...The memorandum warned that Muslims were subjected to 'daily abuse' due to the strategy. 'We must not diminish our British values further by continuing to allow such behaviour and policies to continue unchecked.'

This is an extremely alarming development.

First, a general point. The...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (88)

Hope'n'change in Massachusetts

The stunning upset for Obama in Massachusetts, where the Democrats have lost an apparently impregnable seat they had held for nearly six decades and with it their Senate super-majority, is being put down in some quarters to a revolt against the President’s health care plan, in others to a general disillusionment. Those crunching the numbers have a rather different explanation. While issues such as the economy and healthcare were undoubtedly important, one issue in particular appeared to be the clincher. As Clarice Feldman notes on American Thinker:

The key issue for Massachusetts voters was not healthcare or spending. It was national security and the treatment of enemy terrorists.

Of course it was. And the thuggery. And the arrogance.This is what the Republican victor, Scott Brown, said in his speech after the result:

And let me say

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (46)

'Going to war on an assumption'

A propos Jonathan Powell’s evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, discussed below, the hanging jury of the media predictably reported it this morning with a misleading gloss. The Times was typical when it claimed:

'Britain went to war against Iraq on an ‘assumption’ that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, Tony Blair’s closest adviser told the Chilcot inquiry yesterday.'

But Powell specifically said that Britain did not go to war because it believed Saddam possessed WMD. As he told the inquiry:

In Iraq, the case was that he was in breach of UN Resolutions on weapons of mass destruction. The will of the UN had to be enforced and that was the case for action in Iraq [my emphasis].

This is what Powell actually said about the ‘assumption’ that Saddam had WMD, and how...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (20)

Erich Segal

I have just returned from the funeral of my friend Erich Segal, who died suddenly last Sunday at the age of 72. Erich was best known for having written the novel Love Story, which was turned into a box-office smash movie. His talents were very much more prodigious than that. Not only did he write other novels and screenplays, including the Beatles’ film Yellow Submarine, but his main distinction was as a professor of Latin and Greek literature at Harvard, Yale and Princeton and the author of a number of scholarly books in that vein. He was also at one time a competitive distance runner (and TV commentator on the Olympic Games), which made the subsequent ravages to his body by Parkinsons Disease which trapped him for more than two decades – and which he bore with such stoicism and...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (15)

A disproportionate response?

The unfolding mega-disaster in Haiti has exposed in the most sickening form the utter uselessness of the UN. Of course, it must be acknowledged that the UN is itself one of the victims of this tragedy, with more than 100 of its staff said to have been killed in the earthquake and its aftermath.  And yes, the wholesale destruction of Haiti’s already fragile infrastructure means that the difficulties in getting supplies to the people are exceptional.

Nevertheless, the key problem appears to be a total absence of leadership, so that no-one is taking control of the situation. Haiti’s own government is unable to do this; until yesterday, America was taking a back seat waiting upon the UN to do the business. But the UN has conspicuously failed to do so. As a result, while the countries of the developed world have...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (48)

Iraq War Inquiry Derangement Syndrome (ctd)

As Iraq War Derangement is ramped up daily to fresh pitches of irrationality and hysteria in the media coverage of the Chilcot inquiry, Nick Cohen’s article in the Observer is a must read. His conclusion, watching the latest attempt to nail Tony Blair for the crime of ‘taking us to war on a lie’ of which the appeasement crowd have known for a certainty that he is guilty since before Saddam’s Baghdad statue fell and that Blair, not Saddam, is the real war criminal, is spot on:

The fifth disappointment in a row will drive them closer to the edge. Sir Oliver Miles, former ambassador to Libya, has already predicted that the inquiry will be open to accusations of ‘whitewash’ because two members of the Chilcot panel are Jews. He's not alone. I have had an allegedly left-wing journalist

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (16)