King Abdullah's imaginative inter-faith initiative

historic and bold

the two-day international inter-faith conference which opened today in Geneva. The conference is the initiative of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia who, says Bava Jain, deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for an initiative which potentially

would have tremendous impact on world peace and stability if effective measures were taken to implement it.

The report tells us:

Delegates from 35 countries are taking part in the conference, which opens Wednesday. They include William Baker, president of Christians and Muslims for Peace in the US; David Rosen, director of inter-religious affairs at the American Jewish Committee; Pramjeet Singh Sarna, president of Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Rakab Ganj Sahib; Kuniaki Kuni, president of the Association

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (36)

Beef-eating surrender monkeys?

Matthias Kuentzel has written an important piece for the Wall Street Journal explaining just why the world's ‘dialogue’ with Iran over its nuclear programme -- which is continuing with talks between five UN Security Council members plus Germany --  is such a lethal farce. First the Europeans and now the Obama administration have said they want Iran to comply with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which it is a signatory. But as Kuentzel observes, Iran is bound by its own constitution to violate that treaty, since ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 Iran has been constitutionally bound to abolish the very world order that the NNPT is designed to stabilise. He writes:

An Islamist state like Iran can by definition not be considered a bona fide signatory to the NPT. The mullahs, although opposed

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (37)

The British police: a cry from the heart

My article in the Mail yesterday about the failure of the Leicestershire police to stop the decade of criminal harassment of Fiona Pilkington and her family which led her to set fire to herself and her daughter has provoked a large mailbag – a significant part of it from anguished present and former police officers, aghast at what has happened to their calling. One such former officer has written the following to me, which I reproduce here with his permission and without further comment.

'The Leicester case is a disappointing result of a mis-managed police service – a service ruined by political interference and a preoccupation with ‘bean-counting’. Unfortunately, the emphasis seems to be on ‘ticking all the boxes’. This to me means covering one’s backside: apparently doing the minimum to cover a particular aspect or outcome with

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (46)

The 'human rights' witch-hunt

As readers may know, I have had my differences with the American civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz – specifically, over how American Jews can continue to support Barack Obama given his acute hostility towards Israel and appeasement of the Arab and Islamic world. Nonetheless, all credit to Dershowitz for mounting a devastating onslaught upon Richard Goldstone and his shocking travesty of justice masquerading as judicious analysis for the UN Human Rights Commission on Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. In this piece, Dershowitz accuses Goldstone of conducting a ‘kangaroo court’ in which he

abandoned all principles of objectivity and neutral human rights.

And in this terrific piece he excoriates Goldstone’s ‘wilful and deliberate’ refusal to hear the other side of the story – Israel’s side: the most elementary precondition of justice and fairness. As I wrote...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (117)

Who does he think he's kidding?

On Wednesday, Barack Obama addressed the UN. If this was supposed to be a triumphant projection of the wonders of his foreign policy, his timing was singularly unfortunate. It was as if he had unveiled his shiny new bus after the wheels had come off and the engine had fallen out.

His speech set out the approach that we all know by now: soft power, apologising for America, hand of friendship extended to enemies of America, upholding human rights for enemy combatants, desire to channel foreign policy through the club of terror UN, ‘engaging with the world’ and ‘leading by example’ -- particularly by apologising for America. This approach was to be the antidote to the supposed gung-ho militarism of George W Bush. Swords would be beaten into ploughshares, genocidal lunatics would swap recipes and holiday snaps with their...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (61)

Back to basics

A set of must-reads that shed light on both Britain today and what to do about some of the worst effects. In the Daily Mail, a blistering series of pieces by Harriet Sergeant has painted a devastating picture of the extent to which civilised norms of behaviour have been extinguished amongst teenage boys at the bottom of the social heap, and why. As she says, the reason is that the institutions that previously socialised and directed young men - the family, the church and school - have either lost or given up their authority.  Here she describes Britain’s ‘feral’ youths; here how the welfare system has underpinned the catastrophic collapse of the family and helped deprive these young men of their fathers, the core reason for their descent into under-achievement, drugs, crime and anarchy; here she describes...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (94)