Not waving but drowning

The climate change zealots continue their free fall into utter ridicule. Yesterday, the government’s former Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, told the Independent that the

highly sophisticated hacking operation that led to the leaking of hundreds of emails from the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia was probably carried out by a foreign intelligence agency.

Ah! Reds under the sea-bed! But by today King had retreated. The Guardian reported:

Sir David King admitted he possessed no inside information about the leaks of embarrassing emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, and had merely been speculating on material already in the public domain. His remarks to a journalist had been a ‘side-issue’, he said. But it emerged that he had been

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By the waters of denial they sit and weep...

A few days ago, Analysis on BBC Radio Four featured a programme about environmentalism by Justin Rowlatt which concluded that the green movement was using climate change as a cover to smuggle in other agendas such as poverty or equality. No! You don’t say. It was a timid, tentative thesis; the fact is that from the start environmentalism has self-evidently been all about changing the nature of society rather than changing society’s views about nature. And of course Rowlatt’s concern was that these hidden agendas might only confirm people’s scepticism about the science of anthropogenic global warming, which as we all know is Settled and an Unchallengeable Consensus, amen.

Nevertheless when the BBC, no less, starts to allow an interviewee to start telling the truth like this:

I hate to say this – but there is a very

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Censorship by intimidation

A study by the University of Exeter’s European Muslim Research Centre claims that a rise in the number of hate crimes against Muslims in London is being encouraged by mainstream politicians and sections of the media. In the Guardian Vikram Dodd has written:

The study mentions no newspapers or writers by name, but alleges that the book Londonistan, by the Mail writer Melanie Phillips, played a part in triggering hate crimes.

The text of this study, Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime by Dr Jonathan Githens-Mazer and Dr Robert Lambert, does not in fact mention my book Londonistan (although it is cited in the bibliography). What it says is this:

Islamophobic, negative and unwarranted portrayals of Muslim London as Londonistan and Muslim Londoners as terrorists, terrorist sympathisers and subversives in sections of the media appear to

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A class act

Tony Blair is still giving his evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, but here are some of my thoughts so far.

First, he struck me as remarkably nervous, especially in the first hour or so – he seemed to relax a bit after the first break – and even more strikingly, appeared to be positively bursting to get across the points he wanted to make. His agitation in that early session struck me as the reaction of someone who has been deeply wounded by the way he has been demonised – the particular anguish which comes from being vilified from telling the truth and seeing it twisted and distorted to such an extent that it become impossible to challenge what becomes mass hysteria.

Second, at time of writing Blair has more than held his own. So much for all the feverish comments...

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Goldsmith speaks at last -- but is anyone listening?

In a sure-footed day-long appearance at the Chilcot inquiry today, the former Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith finally let us see how he came to change his initial opinion of the legality of going to war in Iraq without a second UN resolution. Tested repeatedly by the hostile questioning of the ex-Foreign Office mandarin Sir Roderic Lyne – who was clearly wearing on his sleeve the hearts of the Foreign Office legal advisers who gave evidence yesterday that in their view the war was illegal – Goldsmith resolutely held his ground and didn’t let Lyne get away with a single throwaway reference (and there were many) which Goldsmith held to mis-state the true meaning of the key Security Council Resolution 1441.

The encounter between Goldsmith and Lyne told us a very great deal – not least about Lyne’s spectacular tunnel vision....

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Did the Foreign Office legal adviser mis-state the law?

A number of remarkable facts leap out from today’s testimony at the Chilcot inquiry of the former Foreign Office legal adviser, Sir Michael Wood.

The least interesting of these is that the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, changed his mind about the legality of the war without a second UN resolution, a fact which was long suspected. This is widely supposed to mean that he was leaned on to mis-state the case for war. On the contrary – it is clear that the ‘illegal war ‘Goldsmith mark one was wrong, while the ‘legal war’ Goldsmith mark two was correct. More of that anon.

The second, more interesting, fact is that the then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw played an absolutely central role in arguing with both Lord Goldsmith and his own Foreign Office legal adviser that they were totally...

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