Livingstone is jewish?! And other (more important) revelations

... well, maybe.

This and other revelations to be found in an interview with somethingjewish.co.uk

There’s no evidence of where my maternal grandmother came from, she was called Zona. And I remember a couple of times when I was a kid, she would say to me, “Don’t let anyone ever tell you you’re Jewish.”
Which made me think we must be, otherwise why would she raise this? And I remember chatting to Greville Janner about this, saying it sounds like a middle European name. So I might be Jewish. Not that I want anyone to feel mortified about this at the Board of Deputies. I mean, because it runs through the maternal line if it turned out to be true I could go and stand for the Knesset, couldn’t I? In Israel I could be elected, no problem.

The interview also covers KL's views on Israel, Zionism, and the Evening Standard. Definitely worth a read whether you're a Ken fan or not.

The bigger revelation is that Oct 31st saw the 350th anniversary of jews being allowed back into England after a 350 year expulsion.

Think that the Nazis came up with the idea of making jews wear a special symbol to identify them as jews? Nope, another English invention.

In March 1218 the Royal Council, under pressure from Papal legate ordered that all adult Jews wear the cloth "badge of shame". It was a yellow felt or taffeta shape representing the two tablets of the Law, 2 fingers wide by 4 long.

Can't vouch for the provenance of all the websites cited, but interesting stuff all the same. (At least to me, as I didn't know all this before.)

First spotted the Livingstone interview on harry's Place btw.

How to be offensive...

Results of a survey into offensive words on TV.

TV's most offensive words

Extract from Language and Sexual Imagery in Broadcasting: A Contextual Investigation. Offensive words followed by summary of respondents' reaction.

(Note: you may have to register to read the full article, but it's free and worth it. Otherwise how would you know that 'papist' still has the power to raise a few eyebrows.)

New group replaces al-Muhajiroun

I expect we'll be hearing more of these guys...

New group replaces al-Muhajiroun
BBC News
18 November 2005

Anew group has been formed to replace radical Islamic cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed's al-Muhajiroun group, which was disbanded last year. Ahl ul-Sunnah Wa al-Jamma was launched in a north London charity shop, with leading member, Simon Sulayman Keeler, calling the Queen "an enemy of Islam".

David Irving arrested in Austria for Holocaust Denial

Austria Arrests David Irving, Writer Known as a Holocaust Denier
New York Times
November 18, 2005

Suicide bombings in Amman, Jordan

The combative title of the article belies its reasonable contents:

Palestinians Taste a Dose of Their Own Medicine
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
November 15, 2005

EU accounts fail to clear watchdog for 11th year

This really is an appalling scandal that doesn't get the coverage it deserves. If the EU were a private company, its directors would be in jail.

BBC Radio 4 Today Programme
15 Nov 2005

0810 For eleven years running the EU auditors have looked at the European Union's account books and refused to approve the accounts. Why is so little being done about it?
Listen | Permalink


(Here in full as the Indie annoyingly pulls its articles from freeview)

EU accounts fail to clear watchdog for 11th year
Independent
15 November 2005

The European Union's financial watchdog has refused to give the annual euro-accounts the all-clear - for the 11th year running.

A report from the European Court of Auditors today repeats familiar concerns about the accuracy of the books on the 2004 budget totalling nearly £70 billion. And it points the finger at member states themselves more than Brussels - because about 80% of EU spending is conducted by national and regional authorities.

The auditors have acknowledged European Commission efforts to improve the situation by bringing in accounting reforms to answer complaints that lax procedures could be wide open to fraud and mismanagement. But yet again this year they say they cannot give a formal "Statement of Assurance" about the validity of the annual accounts.

Conservative MEP James Elles warned that the accountants' refusal to clear the books was in danger of becoming a permanent feature of the EU unless member states faced up to their responsibility to ensure euro-funds channelled through them were better accounted for. And he said Britain's EU presidency had been a missed opportunity to tackle the problem.

Last week Chancellor Gordon Brown, chairing talks between EU finance ministers, made clear it was for the auditors to set out ways to improve the procedures for clearing the accounts. Ministers said the system of verification needed updating and rejected Commission calls for national authorities to take more responsibility. They insist the auditors' failure year after year to endorse the budget is because of the technical rules governing the delivery of a "Statement of Assurance" rather than a result of widespread fraud.

But Mr Elles, Tory spokesman on budgetary control in the European Parliament, said the blame rested with EU governments. "The commission always gets the blame but the situation is more complicated than that. Eighty per cent of EU money is spent at national level. Member states should not be passing the buck. "The British presidency of the EU has had a good opportunity to grasp this problem. But Gordon Brown is yet again saying one thing and doing another. He says he wants everyone to do their bit to improve the situation but he's not prepared to take the lead himself."

Mr Elles added: "Faced with an opportunity to take the lead in ensuring member states are held responsible for funds disbursed at national level, the UK government has dodged the issue."

Chris Davies, leader of the British Liberal Democrat MEPs and a member of the European Parliament's Budget Control Committee, said: "The finger of blame should be pointed towards Gordon Brown and his fellow finance ministers who have refused to accept responsibility for the money spent by their own administrations.

"The public will assume that fraud is widespread and the Brussels bureaucracy incompetent but in fact the EU administration is now subjected to greater scrutiny than that of any government in Europe." He added: "Despite many improvements made in accounting procedures the auditors have refused to specify what steps must be taken if the EU accounts are to be given a clean bill of health. It's like telling an athlete to run a race without announcing the distance."

Media biased against Muslims

Was going to add this as a comment on some of our ongoing threads, but it's probably relevant to about half of them...

(Note: the report seems to be about the US.)

Media has anti-Muslim bias, claims report

Monday November 14, 2005

The portrayal of Arab and Muslim people in the western media is "typically stereotypical and negative", according to a new study of perceptions of Islam.
The report, commissioned by the Kuwaiti government and based on a surveys and interviews with media experts, claims that terrorism, anti-Americanism and the Iraq occupation dominate TV news coverage of the Middle East.

"In the past 30 years of thousands of TV show series, there have been less than 10 characters who have been Arab-Americans," the report claims.

"In print stereotypes are not so obvious, except in cartoon caricatures, but they still occur and anti-Muslim bias is more insidious. The terms Islamic or Muslim are linked to extremism, militant, jihads, as if they belonged together inextricably and naturally (Muslim extremist, Islamic terror, Islamic war, Muslim time bomb).

"In many cases, the press talks and writes about Muslims in ways that would not be acceptable if the reference were to Jewish, black or fundamentalist Christians."

Breaking the cycle?

In case you missed it, here's the story of a Palestinian boy who was shot by the Israeli army, but whose organs were donated to save others, regardless or whether they were Jewish or Muslim, Israeli or Palestinian.

Ahmed's gift of life

Ahmed Khatib's death was tragically unexceptional: the 12-year-old Palestinian was shot by Israeli soldiers while holding a toy gun. But what happened next was not. The boy's parents donated his organs to six Israelis. They tell Chris McGreal why their decision was a gesture of both peace and resistance

What happens when a Himmler marries a Jew?

Thanks to JSL for alerting me to this one.

Katrin's choice: how do I tell my son about great-uncle Heinrich. . .?
The Times
November 11, 2005

KATRIN HIMMLER’S son is a bright, curious six-year-old. “I’m dreading the moment,” she says, “when I have to tell him that one half of his family tried to kill the other half.”

Frau Himmler, a political scientist, is the great-niece of Heinrich Himmler, head of Hitler’s SS and mastermind of the concentration camp system that murdered millions of Jews.

She is married to an Israeli whose family was confined to the Warsaw ghetto, which was burned to the ground by troopers acting on her great-uncle’s orders.

Sometime soon her son will have to be told of the 20th-century tragedy that is part of his heritage. Katrin Himmler, 38, has tackled the problem by writing an account of the family which she will give to her son as soon as he is old enough to read.

Remove Hitler poem from book, says MP

Remove Hitler poem from book, says MP
Telegraph

09/11/2005

Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, has been asked to force the withdrawal of a poem for schoolchildren written from the viewpoint of Adolf Hitler.

...

The poem's author, Gideon Taylor, writes: "Jews are here, Jews are there, Jews are almost everywhere, filling up the darkest places, evil looks upon their faces. "Make them take many paces for being one of the worst races, on their way to a gas chamber, where they will sleep in their manger."

One line of the poem states "Adolf Hitler is my name," and ends with the words: "And for what price? World domination." It was published in an anthology called Great Minds by the Forward Press group, which said 452 copies had been printed.

Palestinian Friday Service - Jews Are a Virus Resembling AIDS

This has to be seen to be believed. Goebbels would be so proud.

Palestinian Friday Service by Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris - film clip
Palestinian Authority TV
May 13, 2005

------------------

The transcript just doesn't have the same impact. But for anyone without sound on their machine:

Palestinian Friday Service by Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris - transcript

Allah has tormented us with "the people most hostile to the believers" – the Jews. "Thou shalt find that the people most hostile to the believers to be the Jews and the polytheists." Allah warned His beloved Prophet Muhammad about the Jews, who had killed their prophets, forged their Torah, and sowed corruption throughout their history.

With the establishment of the state of Israel, the entire Islamic nation was lost, because Israel is a cancer spreading through the body of the Islamic nation, and because the Jews are a virus resembling AIDS, from which the entire world suffers.

You will find that the Jews were behind all the civil strife in this world. The Jews are behind the suffering of the nations.

Nazi war criminal dies in Britain

My italics. No tears.

Nazi war criminal dies in Britain
BBC
7 November 2005

The only man to have been convicted in Britain of Nazi war crimes has died in Norwich prison. Anthony Sawoniuk, 84, was serving two life sentences after being found guilty of murdering 18 Jews in the UK's first war crimes trial.

...

Sawoniuk was born on 7 March 1921, in the harsh climate of Domachevo. As a boy he would have starved if it were not for the generosity of local wealthy Jewish families. But when the Germans arrived in 1941, he took up with the Nazi police force to help with the suppression and genocide of local Jews.

During his trial, the jury heard from an eyewitness how he watched Sawoniuk tell two men and a woman to strip beside an open grave and then shot them. The court also heard how he mowed down 15 people with a submachine gun and pushed their bodies into an open grave.

Coursework in exams favours the middle classes. Discuss.

Uncle Johann confirms what I always suspected to be the case. I knew standards were slipping!

Coursework: a charter for cheats

It's yet another way the British middle class rig the education system in favour of their coddled children

If Britain’s coursework system were submitted for examination, it would be lucky to scrape an E grade and a place doing Golf Course Studies at De Montford University. This week, the AQA exam board warned (again) that teachers are routinely waving through material that had been “blatantly copied from the internet”, and another GCSE exam authority, Edexcel, warned that schools were now offering so much “help” to students that it amounted to “a kind of mass plagiarism”.

Paris when it sizzles...

Riots in Paris and beyond have been in the news as of late.

Here's an interesting leader from the Telegraph:

Broken contract

France has had a week and a half of rioting. It is spreading, there is no end in sight and the government appears powerless to stop it. We are witnessing the breakdown of the contract between the state and Europe's largest immigrant population. That, as the Bill banning the hijab in schools reminded us, is on one side the acceptance by newcomers of a strictly lay entity in which no exception is made for different religious communities. In return, they are supposed to enjoy the benefits of a republic based on the revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Despite much controversy at the time, the Bill has been implemented with remarkably little fuss. It is not the hijab that lies at the heart of the present trouble. It is, rather, the failure of the state to fulfil its side of the bargain. The first generation of immigrants came to France to meet a demand for foreign labour. The second and third generations find themselves trapped without work in the estates or cités built for their parents and grandparents. To compound matters, the unemployed have become dependent on welfare. These two factors produce a feeling of helplessness, which in turn engenders a hatred of the state.

The Telegraph goes on to argue that the solution is "the creation of conditions for enterprise that will allow those stuck in the cités to break out of drear desperation through work."

I thought it was an interesting (right of centre) argument. Leaving aside certain cultural variables (violent protest is more common in France than here) I was wondering if there were any useful parallels. There are claims that we too in Britain have a 'dependency culture' (at least in certain sections of society) - is there anything we can learn from what's happening in France? France is generally perceived as having much greater social protection, but if the Telegraph argument holds sway that is precisely the problem. However, it is worth remembering that we have had race riots here too, under both the Conservatives and New Labour, both of whom seem quite keen on 'enterprise'. (Though this does not automatically mean that the Telegraph's analysis does not apply - the deprived areas that rioted in the UK would still have had a high proportion of people on benefits.)

So my question - is the Telegraph right to see social funding as (a major) part of the problem, or is the solution more funding for deprived areas?

Looking forward to Wemb on this one. For my own part I think the dependency culture argument has some validity.

Iraq battle stress worse than WWII / Iraq Paras trial

Disgusting the way the British govt is treating its soldiers in Iraq.

Iraq battle stress worse than WWII
The Sunday Times
November 06, 2005

Senior army doctors have warned that troops in Iraq are suffering levels of battle stress not experienced since the second world war because of fears that if they shoot an insurgent, they will end up in court. The two senior Royal Army Medical Corps officers, one of whom is a psychologist, have recently returned from Basra, where they said they counselled young soldiers who feared a military police investigation as much as they did the insurgents. The revelations follow the collapse last week of the court martial of seven paratroopers accused of murdering an Iraqi who died near al- Amarah just after the war and amid signs of a dramatic drop in morale among frontline infantry soldiers.

The doctors’ warnings came in post-operational reports submitted by senior officers to their formation commanders after serving in a battle zone. They are exceptional because of their content. One source said: “There doesn’t appear to be any overt consideration or understanding of the pressures that our soldiers are under. “The unpopularity of the war at home and a belief that firing their rifles in virtually any circumstances is likely to see them end up in court are sapping morale.”

One corporal said that troops arriving in Basra were confronted by warnings from the Royal Military Police. “They make it clear that any and every incident will be investigated. It is also made clear that if you shoot someone, you will face an inquiry that could take up to a year. “The faces of the young lads straight out of training drop as the fear of being investigated strikes home and many ask whose side the RMP are on.”

------------------

It's so bad that even the anti-war Rod Liddle had this to say:

Sod this game of soldiers
Rod Liddle
The Sunday Times
November 06, 2005

------------------

Some background in case anyone missed it:

The Iraqi lies that put the Paras in court
Telegraph
04/11/2005

A blatant attempt to extract money from the British Army had been made by the Marsh Arabs of Ferkah, the court martial heard. They had colluded, lied and frequently spoke of "fasil" - bloody money - and compensation when they appeared to give evidence.

The Judge Advocate General, Jeff Blackett, said they had made specious claims of improper behaviour including allegations that a baby and an old man had been killed by the British soldiers. Three women witnesses had admitted making up claims that they were assaulted by the soldiers and the family of the dead man, 18-year-old Nadhem Abdullah, had encouraged other villagers to tell lies about the incident.

Fourteen witnesses had been brought from their homes in Iraq to give evidence to the court but much of their evidence was "too inherently weak or vague for any sensible person to rely on it" and it had been based on "a corporate recollection discussed by the family or tribe", said Judge Blackett.

Paras cleared as Iraq trial collapses in £8m fiasco
Telegraph
04/11/2005

The court martial of seven paratroopers accused of murdering an Iraqi teenager collapsed yesterday after the Royal Military Police investigation was condemned as "inadequate" and riddled with "serious omissions".

The hearing, which cost up to £8 million, came to an abrupt halt after the most senior judge in the Army courts directed that the defendants be found not guilty. Jeff Blackett, the Judge Advocate General, described the evidence presented by the prosecution as "too inherently weak or vague for any sensible person to rely on".

He strongly condemned the Special Investigations Branch of the RMP for making significant errors during its inquiry.

Indefatigable opposition to terror bill

As you're undoubtedly aware the government won a vote on their terror bill by one vote.

It's not unreasonable to assume that civil liberties minded opposition parties like the LibDems and Respect would have made sure they voted against it. However, 2 LibDems missed the vote as well as the indefatigable MP for Bow & Bethnal Green, George Galloway. The LibDems had fairly valid excuses. George, however, was at 'an "uncancelleable" speaking event'; towit 'an Audience with George Galloway'. You will be shocked to learn that this is a commercial event.

Read more here.

Interview with a terrorist

Seems like 72 virgins is not the only motivation:

Egyptian mercenary

Mahmoud Hassan, an Egyptian terrorist captured in Iraq explains his training and inspiration: primarily money from foreign sources. Al-Iraqiya TV aired this interview on February 24, 2005.

Full transcript available at: memritv.org

Twin pop stars with angelic looks are new face of racism

Be honest - what's your first reaction when you look at the pic of these young Nazis?

Twin pop stars with angelic looks are new face of racism
Telegraph
25/10/2005

America's white supremacist movement has an angelic new face: twin teenage pop stars whose songs preach messages of racial hatred.

Prussian Blue, a "white power" band now recording its second album, is described as a sinister version of the Olsen Twins, the squeaky clean child actresses of the 1990s. It is attracting more and more fans among young white nationalists.Lamb and Lynx Gaede, blonde, blue-eyed 13-year-olds from Bakersfield, California, have been entertaining all-white crowds with their music since the age of nine. Lamb plays the guitar and Lynx the violin.

Their songs have titles such as Sacrifice, a tribute to Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, that praises him as a "man of peace who wouldn't give up".

Performing for such groups as the neo-Nazi National Alliance at Holocaust-denial events and festivals entitled Folk the System, the girls execute Sieg Heil salutes while belting out lyrics such as "Strike force! White survival. Strike force! Yeah.""We are proud of being white," Lynx told ABC News. "We want our people to stay white…we don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race."

Australia: police advised to treat Muslim domestic violence differently

Police told to respect traditions
Herald Sun
25/10/05

POLICE are being advised to treat Muslim domestic violence cases differently out of respect for Islamic traditions and habits. Officers are also being urged to work with Muslim leaders, who will try to keep the families together. Women's groups are concerned the politically correct policing could give comfort to wife bashers and keep their victims in a cycle of violence. The instructions come in a religious diversity handbook given to Victorian police officers.

Anti-terror Ramadan TV drama stirs the Arab world

Not often I get to blog any good news in the world of Islam....

Anti-terror Ramadan TV drama stirs the Arab world
Telegraph
02/11/2005

A blockbuster Ramadan television drama broadcast across the Arab world has broken new ground by daring to question the motives of terrorism committed in the name of Allah.

The plotline of al-Hur al-Ayn (Beautiful Maidens), has proved enormously controversial with its makers denounced by an angry fundamentalist minority. But it has also been hugely popular with an Arabic-speaking public fed up with the cliched portrayal of all Muslims as gun-toting fanatics.

Chomsky interview & the Left Revisionists

Chomsky just came top of the Public Intellectuals poll I blogged separately, so a couple of links to old Chommers from an erstwhile fan (moi).

First, an interview with him in the Guardian:

Emma Brockes interview: Noam Chomsky
Monday October 31, 2005
The Guardian

Then a comment on the interview:

Oliver Kamm on Brockes' interview with Chomsky
Blog
Oct 2005

Then something from a current fave of mine, Paul Berman, on Chomsky:

Paul Berman on Noam Chomsky

and then a longer article on Chomsky and the "Left Revisionists" in general, about the left's hypocritical attitude, especially in regard to Bosnia:

The Left Revisionists
Marko Attila Hoare
November 2003

And all of that started by a recent comment from Dan in this thread, which referred me here.

Top public intellectuals - Prospect Poll result

Bit of harmless fun - the Prospect/FP Global public intellectuals poll. Here are my current faves from their list of 100:

5. Christopher Hitchens
9. Jared Diamond
21. Francis Fukuyama
26. Steven Pinker
28. Samuel Huntington
33. Peter Singer
34. Bernard Lewis
35. Fareed Zakaria
44. Niall Ferguson

Comfortably in last position for me - Al-Qaradawi, natch... Anyone else want to weigh in?

Skinning Galloway

Amusing account of a visit to see George Galloway on The Frank Skinner show. (Found this via Harry's Place btw.)

More Galloway posts here and here.

Faith no more...

The always interesting Uncle Johann on the subject of faith schools.

Key quote:

"[...] the Government believes faith schools achieve better results. At first glance, this seems true: look at a league table of the highest GCSE and A-Level scores in the state sector and you'll overdose on Saint this and Holy that. So, Blair says, would you really have me dismantle some of the best state schools in Britain?

But look again. The right-wing think tank Civitas - expected to back faith schools with table-thumping vigour - decided to study the figures, and found something surprising. Faith schools get better results for one simple reason: they use selection to cream off middle-class children - all kids bright and beautiful - and to weed out difficult, poor or unmotivated students who would require more work. They gave the game away last year when the Government suggested church schools educate more children who are in care, and they recoiled in horror. John Hicks, governor of St Barnabas' Church of England school in Pimlico, snapped: "We know children in care must be educated but it can be detrimental in schools that are oversubscribed." Or, not on our league tables, baby.

Civitas found that actually - once you factor in the fact they take brighter kids with far fewer problems - it turns out faith schools underperform compared to other schools. This is hardly surprising since they dedicate hours of school time to non-academic religious pursuits. The Welsh National Assembly commissioned a study that found the same thing. So the sole credible argument for faith schools is as mythical as the Christian belief that Jonah was swallowed by a whale and burped out, alive and well, a month later."

Iranian president calls for destruction of Israel

Iran president: Wipe Israel off map
The Scotsman
27 Oct 2005

Iran's ultra-conservative new president has broken his silence on Israel and declared the Jewish state was a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the map".

"Anybody who recognises Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury; any (Islamic leader) who recognises the Zionist regime is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world," state-run television quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

On Wednesday Ahmadinejad said "there is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world. As the Imam (Khomeini) said, Israel must be wiped off the map."

---------------------------

Iran leader's comments condemned
BBC
27 Oct 2005

The US said the comment highlighted concerns about Iran's nuclear programme, which Washington suspects is being used to develop weapons. Iran says its programme is for peaceful purposes only.

This is not believed to be the first time a senior Iranian leader has made such comments. In 2001, former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani called for a Muslim state to annihilate Israel with a nuclear strike. Such calls are though regular slogans at anti-Israeli or anti-US rallies.

Islamophobia myth

Islamophobia myth
Kenan Malik
Prospect
Feb 2005

[D]oes Islamophobia really exist? Or is the hatred and abuse of Muslims being exaggerated to suit politicians' needs and silence the critics of Islam? The trouble with Islamophobia is that it is an irrational concept. It confuses hatred of, and discrimination against, Muslims on the one hand with criticism of Islam on the other. The charge of 'Islamophobia' is all too often used not to highlight racism but to stifle criticism. And in reality discrimination against Muslims is not as great as is often perceived - but criticism of Islam should be greater.

In making a film on Islamophobia for Channel 4 what became clear is the gap between perception and reality. Islamophobia driven by what people want to believe is true, rather than what really is true.

...

A total of 21,577 [people] had been stopped and searched under the terror laws. The vast majority of these - 14,429 - were in fact white. Yet when I interviewed Iqbal Sacranie, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britainhe insisted that '95-98 per cent of those stopped and searched under the anti-terror laws are Muslim'. The real figure is actually 15 per cent. But however many times I showed him the true statistics he refused to budge. I am sure he was sincere in his belief. But there is no basis for his claim that virtually all those stopped and searched were Muslim - the figures appear to have been simply plucked out of the sky.

...

Every year, the Islamic Human Rights Commission organises a mock awards ceremony for its 'Islamophobe of the Year'. Last year there were two British winners. One was the BNP's Nick Griffin. The other? Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee. Toynbee’s defence of secularism and women’s rights, and criticism of Islam, was, it declared, unacceptable. Isn't it absurd, I asked the IHRC's Massoud Shadjareh, to equate a liberal anti-racist like Polly Toynbee with the leader of a neo-fascist party. Not at all, he suggested. 'There is a difference between disagreeing and actually dismissing certain ideologies and certain principles. We need to engage and discuss. But there’s a limit to that.' It is difficult to know what engagement and discussion could mean when leading Muslim figures seem unable to distinguish between liberal criticism and neo-fascist attacks.

...

[W]e already live in a culture of growing self-censorship. A decade ago, the Independent asked me to write an essay on Tom Paine, the eighteenth century English revolutionary and freethinker. It was the 200th anniversary of his great polemic, The Age of Reason. I began the article with a quote from Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses to show the continuing relevance of Paine's battle against religious authority. The quote was cut out because it was deemed too offensive to Muslims. The irony of censoring an essay in celebration of freethinking seemed to elude the editor.

Old Man & Rivers...

or 'Come to the Darcus side...'

If you missed Joan Rivers v Darcus Howe, hear the argument here.

Read a transcript (and many entertaining comments) here.

Collapse by Jared Diamond

Currently reading Collapse by Jared Diamond. Fascinating stuff, but not exactly a comedy. Apart (so far) from this one paragraph, which cracked me up. Not easy being a 49er, it seems.

p145

In 1849, hungry gold miners crossing the Nevada desert noticed some glistening balls of a candy-like substance on a cliff, licked or ate the balls, and discovered them to be sweet-tasting, but then they developed nausea. Eventually it was realized that the balls were hardened deposits made by small rodents, called packrats. that protect themselves by building nests of sticks, plant fragments, and mammal dung gathered in the vicinity, plus food remains, discarded bones, and their own feces. Not being toilet-trained, the rats urinate in their nests, and sugar and other substances crystallize from their urine as it dries out, cementing the midden to a brick-like consistency. In effect, the hungry gold miners were eating dried rat urine laced with rat feces and rat garbage.

The House That Became a War Zone

Promised I'd post this one for JP a while ago. Occupied territories in microcosm:

The house that became a war zone

Chris McGreal
Tuesday October 4, 2005

The first soldiers to arrive on Khalil Bashir's doorstep in Gaza five years ago explained the new geography of his home in terms he understood only too well. His three-storey house was to be like the West Bank, the Israeli officer said, with its areas of divided security and administrative control.

The army designated the living room as "Area A", after the part of the occupied territories where the Palestinians have control, and told all three generations of the Bashirs, from 81-year-old Zanah to her five-year-old granddaughter, that they were confined there for most nights and sometimes for much of the day. It was the only part of the house they could still call their own.

The bathroom, kitchen and bedrooms were "Area B", where Palestinians administer themselves but Israel has security control. In the Bashir home that meant soldiers had priority and the family had to ask permission to cook or go to the toilet.

And then came "Area C", where the Israeli military government runs everything and the Palestinians have no authority. The soldiers warned the Bashirs that all of their home above the ground floor was Area C and if they ventured up the stairs they would be shot [...]

Fourteen Terrorist Attacks a Day against Israel - Pipes

This is quite a stat.

Fourteen Terrorist Attacks a Day against Israel
Daniel Pipes Weblog
September 29, 2005

The Israeli Prime Minister's Office has released the following:

Today (Thursday), 29.9.05, will mark five years since the start of the current round of Palestinian violence, during which 26,159 terrorist attacks were perpetrated against Israeli targets, in which 1,060 Israelis were murdered and 6,089 were wounded.

That comes out on average to 5,232 attacks a year or 14.33 per day, every single day. One can only speculate how many more thousands of attacks were prevented. For anyone not living in Israel or Iraq, this figure staggers the imagination.

Making a pig's ear of defending democracy - Mark Steyn

Making a pig's ear of defending democracy
By Mark Steyn
Telegraph
04/10/2005

[T]he United Kingdom's descent into dhimmitude is beyond parody. Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee's box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. And, as we know, Muslims regard pigs as "unclean", even an anthropomorphised cartoon pig wearing a scarf and a bright, colourful singlet.

Cllr Mahbubur Rahman is in favour of the blanket pig crackdown. "It is a good thing, it is a tolerance and acceptance of their beliefs and understanding," he said. That's all, folks, as Porky Pig used to stammer at the end of Looney Tunes. Just a little helpful proscription in the interests of tolerance and acceptance. And where's the harm in that? As Pastor Niemöller said, first they came for Piglet and I did not speak out because I was not a Disney character and, if I was, I'm more of an Eeyore.

And aren't we all? When the Queen knights a Muslim "community leader" whose line on the Rushdie fatwa was that "death is perhaps too easy", and when the Prime Minister has a Muslim "adviser" who is a Holocaust-denier and thinks the Iraq war was cooked up by a conspiracy of Freemasons and Jews, and when the Prime Minister's wife leads the legal battle for a Talibanesque dress code in British schools, you don't need a pig to know which side's bringing home the bacon.

...

Only the other day, Burger King withdrew its ice-cream cones from its British restaurants because Mr Rashad Akhtar of High Wycombe, after a trip to the Park Royal branch, complained that the creamy swirl on the lid resembled the word "Allah" in Arabic script. It doesn't, not really, not except that in the sense any twirly motif looks vaguely Arabic. After all, Burger King isn't suicidal enough to launch Allah Ice-Cream. But, after Mr Akhtar urged Muslims to boycott the chain and claimed that "this is my jihad", Burger King yanked the ice-cream and announced that, design-wise, it was going back to the old drawing-board.

...

When every act that a culture makes communicates weakness and loss of self-belief, eventually you'll be taken at your word. In the long term, these trivial concessions are more significant victories than blowing up infidels on the Tube or in Bali beach restaurants. An act of murder demands at least the pretence of moral seriousness, even from the dopiest appeasers. But small acts of cultural vandalism corrode the fabric of freedom all but unseen.

Is it really a victory for "tolerance" to say that a council worker cannot have a Piglet coffee mug on her desk? And isn't an ability to turn a blind eye to animated piglets the very least the West is entitled to expect from its Muslim citizens? If Islam cannot "co-exist" even with Pooh or the abstract swirl on a Burger King ice-cream, how likely is it that it can co-exist with the more basic principles of a pluralist society?

...

By the way, isn't it grossly offensive to British Wahhabis to have a head of state who is female and uncovered?

Social Mobility

An indispensable post on social mobility from Harry's Place (well if you're interested in education and it's effect on social mobility).

Some of the most interesting stuff is in the comments section - particularly by a poster named Old Peculiar.

I was moved to comment but HP requires an email address which I was not willing to give, so instead my comments are here: (though they make more sense if you've read the other comments on HP first.)

"Living in a deprived neighbourhood with a 10 year old son going to secondary school next year I agree with much of what has been said in these comments.

re: grammar schools. I too have been wishing for their return for the admittedly self-interested reason that it would benefit my son. There is one remaining grammar school in our area. There are 1800 applicants for 180 places, so clearly there is a demand. And yes, the well-off are at an advantage, either through having come from a better primary school, or from being able to afford private tutoring for the entrance exam. More grammars school would at least mean more places.

re: streaming. I think OP is right, that this would be a way to make comps work better. Indeed it may be the best answer all round. No entrance exam. More opportunity to change streams at a later date. My own schooling was in a 'normal' comp - good mix of pupils. Neither desperately deprived or unusually affluent. I certainly benefitted from the fact that in my day there were still O levels and CSEs. Having people taught separately for the two different types of exam was an effective form of streaming and I remember those lessons as being more disciplined and challenging than the mixed ability ones. I then went on to a selective state 6th form college which was the first school I encountered where academic ability was genuinely valued by the pupils rather than being something to be hidden or played down.

Ben G is right when he says that a return to grammar schools is also a return to secondary moderns, though as the second series of C4's That'll Teach 'Em showed, they weren't inherently bad - just chronically under resourced. But yes any selective system needs to make equally good (if different) provision for those who are not so academically inclined."



Note: previous impdec threads on education can be found here.

Beleaguered Sharon orders new Gaza strikes

I have blogged before on Pipes' opposition to the Gaza pullout. Should we see the article below as early evidence that he was right?

Interestingly, the article also reports that the PA backs Israel's view of the explosion that kicked off this round of violence.

Beleaguered Sharon orders new Gaza strikes
Telegraph
26/09/2005

The latest violence was sparked by an explosion that killed 16 people at a Hamas rally in Gaza on Friday. Hamas blamed Israel, and militants fired at least 40 rockets into the Jewish state in response.
Israel, though, denied responsibility and the Palestinian Authority said the explosion appeared to have been an accident caused by Hamas members carrying explosives.

Pulling out of Iraq

An interesting article from Niall Ferguson on the consequences of pulling out of Iraq.

Liberal Democrat conference sketch

Very funny sketch of the Liberal Democrat conference. "There's a place for meaninglessness in British politics, and the Lib Dems fill it very effectively".

Today Programme
21/09/05

0847 - An overview of the Liberal Democrat's conference so far from Simon Hoggart of the Guardian and Andrew Gimson from the Telegraph.
Permalink

EU winners and losers

Short, readable article lays out the winners and losers of the great EU contributions game.

Holland tops EU paymasters list
BBC News
22 September 2005

EU cash flow figures for 2004 show ... the biggest net contributions ... came from, in order, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Italy and France. But when these net contributions are expressed as a proportion of the countries' national incomes, the Netherlands came first, followed by Sweden, Germany, the UK, Italy, France and Austria.

...

The biggest net recipients were Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Poland, while the countries with the biggest net receipts as a proportion of national income were Luxembourg, Greece, Portugal, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

India's lost tribe recognised as Jews after 2,700 years

India's lost tribe recognised as Jews after 2,700 years
Telegraph
17/09/2005

With a cry of "Mazeltov" and a Rabbi's congratulatory handshake, hundreds of tribal people from India's north-east were formally converted to Judaism this week after being recognised as descendants of the 10 Lost Tribes exiled from Israel 2,700 years ago. A rabbinical court, dispatched with the blessing of Israel's Chief Rabbi, travelled 3,500 miles to Mizoram on India's border with Burma to perform the conversions using a Mikvah - ritual bath - built specially for the purpose. There were emotional scenes as the Oriental-looking hill people professed their faith, repeating the oath from Deuteronomy: "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One."

Zionist Banana of Death

Muslims sound alarm over schools
The Age
July 31, 2005

The imam told the students that the Jews were putting poison in the bananas and they should not eat them

--------------------------

Latest Zionist Scheme

From the makers of the Zionist Death Ray TM, Zionist Death Juice TM, and the Zionist Death Lazer TM comes our latest diabolical scheme: the Zionist Banana of Death. TM

Short, tall, fat, thin, pretty, ugly

Hey, Gorgeous, Here's a Raise! As for you fatties, we're cutting your salaries.
Steven E. Landsburg
July 9, 2001

Short Changed - Why do tall people make more money?
Steven E. Landsburg
March 25, 2002

From the Short Persons Support Web site:

Standing Tall Against Discrimination
My name is Matt and I am 28 years old. I am 5'5" tall. ... I seem to get laughed at a lot. HA HA HA! I'm the little short guy.

Understanding and Living with Height Discrimination
The current order is that tall white guys (TWG) rule, and are unwelcoming to anybody who would not fit in.

At least the shorties are more environmentally friendly:
Advantages of Shorter Height

Palestinian Arabs murder Palestinian Christians

Christianity Dying in Its Birthplace
Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
September 13, 2005

What some observers are calling a pogrom took place near Ramallah, West Bank, on the night of September 3-4. That's when 15 Muslim youths from one village, Dair Jarir, rampaged against Taybeh, a neighboring all-Christian village of 1,500 people.

...

A cousin, Suleiman Khouriyye, pointed to his burned house. "They did this because we're Christians. They did this because we are the weaker ones," he said The Khouriyyes and others recall the assailants shouting "Allahu Akbar" and anti-Christian slogans: "Burn the infidels, burn the Crusaders." To that, an unrepentant cousin of Hiyam Ajaj replied, "We burned their houses because they dishonored our family, not because they are Christians."

Ditch Holocaust day, advisers urge Blair

Remember this from the beginning of the year?

Holocaust Day boycott by Muslim Council
Telegraph
24/01/2005

The Muslim Council of Britain are planning to boycott this week's commemoration of the Holocaust because they claim it is not racially inclusive.The Queen, Prince Philip and Tony Blair will represent the nation at Thursday's Holocaust Memorial Day national event at Westminster Hall, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.More than 600 Holocaust survivors together with British soldiers who helped liberate the camps will attend.Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, says it will not attend because the event did not include what it described as continuing human rights abuses and genocide in the occupied territories of Palestine.

Well how about this from today's Sunday times?

Ditch Holocaust day, advisers urge Blair
Sunday Times
11/09/05

ADVISERS appointed by Tony Blair after the London bombings are proposing to scrap the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day because it is regarded as offensive to Muslims.

...

The committees argue that the special status of Holocaust Memorial Day fuels extremists’ sense of alienation because it “excludes” Muslims. A member of one of the committees, made up of Muslims, said it gave the impression that “western lives have more value than non-western lives”. That perception needed to be changed. “One way of doing that is if the government were to sponsor a national Genocide Memorial Day. “The very name Holocaust Memorial Day sounds too exclusive to many young Muslims. It sends out the wrong signals: that the lives of one people are to be remembered more than others. It’s a grievance that extremists are able to exploit.”

The recommendation, drawn up by four committees including those dealing with imams and mosques, and Islamaphobia and policing, has the backing of Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain. He said: “The message of the Holocaust was ‘never again’, and for that message to have practical effect on the world community it has to be inclusive. We can never have double standards in terms of human life. Muslims feel hurt and excluded that their lives are not equally valuable to those lives lost in the Holocaust time.” Ibrahim Hewitt, chairman of the charity Interpal, said: “There are 500 Palestinian towns and villages that have been wiped out over the years. That’s pretty genocidal to me.”

Choppy waters ahead for the US economy

A great opinion piece from Naill Ferguson in The Sunday Telegraph - 'Waters Are Receding But Katrina Might Still Unleash A Nasty Surprise'

Katrina - American coverage

An interesting montage of the american coverage to the New Orleans hurricane and the political 'blame game'.

Waite calls for bombers' families to attend service

Interesting one, wonder what you guys think about this? FWIW, my take is that it depends on the attitudes of victims' families, they should have a veto, but if they're fine with it, then go ahead.

Oh and Livingstone yet again takes the "utter shite" trophy with his "offensive" comment.

Waite calls for bombers' families to attend service
Telegraph
07/09/2005

Terry Waite, who was held hostage by Islamic extremists for four years, stoked controversy over a memorial service for the London bombings yesterday by calling for relatives of the bombers to be invited.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury's envoy suggested that close relatives of the four suicide bombers should sit alongside the families of the 52 victims at the special service in St Paul's Cathedral.

His comments were echoed by Ken Livingstone, the London Mayor, who said that it would be "offensive" if relatives of the bombers were turned away from the service on Nov 1.

...

The suggestion was first raised by Church of England bishops at the weekend. The Bishop of Sheffield, the Rt Rev Jack Nicholls, said he would like the bombers' families to attend, but only with the approval of the bereaved and injured.

"The families should be consulted. If such a suggestion were to bring more anger between communities it would not be a risk worth taking," he said.

But the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and St Paul's Cathedral, which is responsible for the event, said they had decided against such a move. A spokesman for the cathedral said: "Although neither of us attaches any blame to the families of the London bombers, our first responsibility is to the families of the victims."

Brian Coleman, the Tory deputy chairman of the London Assembly, labelled the idea of bombers' families attending as "political correctness gone mad".

A War to Be Proud Of - Christopher Hitchens

A War to Be Proud Of
Christopher Hitchens
09/05/2005

"You said there were WMDs in Iraq and that Saddam had friends in al Qaeda. . . . Blah, blah, pants on fire." I have had many opportunities to tire of this mantra. It takes ten seconds to intone the said mantra. It would take me, on my most eloquent C-SPAN day, at the very least five minutes to say that Abdul Rahman Yasin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center attack in 1993, subsequently sought and found refuge in Baghdad; that Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, Saddam's senior physicist, was able to lead American soldiers to nuclear centrifuge parts and a blueprint for a complete centrifuge (the crown jewel of nuclear physics) buried on the orders of Qusay Hussein; that Saddam's agents were in Damascus as late as February 2003, negotiating to purchase missiles off the shelf from North Korea; or that Rolf Ekeus, the great Swedish socialist who founded the inspection process in Iraq after 1991, has told me for the record that he was offered a $2 million bribe in a face-to-face meeting with Tariq Aziz. And these eye-catching examples would by no means exhaust my repertoire, or empty my quiver. Yes, it must be admitted that Bush and Blair made a hash of a good case, largely because they preferred to scare people rather than enlighten them or reason with them. Still, the only real strategy of deception has come from those who believe, or pretend, that Saddam Hussein was no problem.

...

The peaceniks love to ask: When and where will it all end? The answer is easy: It will end with the surrender or defeat of one of the contending parties. Should I add that I am certain which party that ought to be? Defeat is just about imaginable, though the mathematics and the algebra tell heavily against the holy warriors. Surrender to such a foe, after only four years of combat, is not even worthy of consideration.

...

But a positive accounting [of the war] could be offered without braggartry, and would include:

(1) The overthrow of Talibanism and Baathism, and the exposure of many highly suggestive links between the two elements of this Hitler-Stalin pact. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who moved from Afghanistan to Iraq before the coalition intervention, has even gone to the trouble of naming his organization al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

(2) The subsequent capitulation of Qaddafi's Libya in point of weapons of mass destruction--a capitulation that was offered not to Kofi Annan or the E.U. but to Blair and Bush.

(3) The consequent unmasking of the A.Q. Khan network for the illicit transfer of nuclear technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea.

(4) The agreement by the United Nations that its own reform is necessary and overdue, and the unmasking of a quasi-criminal network within its elite.

(5) The craven admission by President Chirac and Chancellor Schröder, when confronted with irrefutable evidence of cheating and concealment, respecting solemn treaties, on the part of Iran, that not even this will alter their commitment to neutralism. (One had already suspected as much in the Iraqi case.)

(6) The ability to certify Iraq as actually disarmed, rather than accept the word of a psychopathic autocrat.

(7) The immense gains made by the largest stateless minority in the region--the Kurds--and the spread of this example to other states.

(8) The related encouragement of democratic and civil society movements in Egypt, Syria, and most notably Lebanon, which has regained a version of its autonomy.

(9) The violent and ignominious death of thousands of bin Ladenist infiltrators into Iraq and Afghanistan, and the real prospect of greatly enlarging this number.

(10) The training and hardening of many thousands of American servicemen and women in a battle against the forces of nihilism and absolutism, which training and hardening will surely be of great use in future combat.

Briton dies in Jerusalem stabbing

We'll have to see how this story pans out, but somehow I don't think it'll get similar coverage to another Westerner killed in Israel, Rachel Corrie

--------------

Briton dies in Jerusalem stabbing
BBC News
25 August 2005

A British man was stabbed to death and another injured in an attack in Jerusalem, the Foreign Office has said.

Shmuel Mett, 21, and fellow Jewish religion student Sammy Weisberg were attacked in the Old City area on Wednesday evening. Reports said the men were attacked by a Palestinian with a kitchen knife.

Israelis 'warned of 7/7 bombings'

Private Eye 1137
22 July 2005

ANOTHER rumour which has circulated widely is that Israeli finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu received prior warning of the bombs via the Israeli embassy and therefore declined to attend a conference in London that day.

This was based partly on an erroneous report from an "official at the embassy" which appeared on the Associated Press wire service, and partly on the determination of anti-semites to believe, just as they did with an equal lack of evidence after the 9/11 attacks in New York, that Jews were warned to vacate the area prior to an attack set up by Zionists keen to demonise Muslims.

This theory is rather hard to square with the fact that the meeting Netanyahu was scheduled to attend was the Israeli Opportunity 2005 conference organised jointly by the Israeli Embassy and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, and it was taking place at the Great Eastern Hotel almost directly above the bomb which exploded near Liverpool Street station, which meant that there was actually a significantly higher number of Jews than usual in the area when the bomb exploded.

Netanyahu, however, was not there - as the conference's schedule shows, he was not due to deliver his speech until 9.30, which meant that he had just left his own hotel to make his way to the Great Eastern when he received news of the explosion at Liverpool Street, at about the same time as everyone else, 9.15, when TV and radio stations began reporting it.

Unsurprisingly, his security guards decided to turn back. The unnamed official had simply muddled his times in the confusion (much as everyone else did: the police did not even realise the underground blasts had been simultaneous until the following day), and AP duly withdrew the claim - not that this stopped the Daily Express and Mail on Sunday from reporting it over the weekend, the latter under the spectacularly misleading headline '"No Alert' claim is thrown into doubt".

Meet the Right-Wing Michael Moore

Meet the Right-Wing Michael Moore
By Damian Thompson
The Daily Telegraph
13 August 2005

Confessions of an Anti-Sanctions Activist

Longish article for those with 15 mins to kill. It's the thoughts of an erstwhile peacenik (specifically, campaigner against Iraq sanctions) on how he & his fellow-peaceniks, with the best of intentions, ended up effectively supporting a brutal and murderous dictator.

Confessions of an Anti-Sanctions Activist
by Charles M. Brown
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2003

MCB Watch - another blog to follow

Just found this blog, dedicated to keeping an eye on the Muslim Council of Britain:

http://mcbwatch.blogspot.com/

Some interesting stuff there, for example, a look at the History and Aims of Hizb-ut-Tahrir (man, do they hate Jews!), and how HT relates to the MCB.

Thomas L. Friedman

Was telling JP and Andy about interesting interview with Friedman in this month's Playboy. Sadly the interview doesn't seem to be available online, but for those who are interested here's Friedman's home page with access to his NYT articles:

Terrorism caused by Western racism

Naomi Klein argues that racism, not politically correct multi-culturalism is what has created 'home-grown' terrorists. As someone who has posted numerous 'the problem is we're too soft and PC' type articles I thought it was worth sharing this opposing view:

it's not tolerance for multiculturalism that fuels terrorism; it's tolerance for barbarism committed in our name.

Racism is the terrorists' greatest recruitment tool

The problem in Britain is not too much multiculturalism but too little

Naomi Klein
Saturday August 13, 2005

Previous multi-culti post here

MCB attacks the BBC...

... while the Observer finds links within the group to extremists.

Muslim leaders in feud with the BBC
Muslim Council official claims Panorama is 'pro-Israel'
Observer investigation reveals group's extremist links
Martin Bright, home affairs editor

By the way, here's a previous (and exhaustive) thread on BBC bias.

Iraq and Privatisation

I agreed with getting rid of Saddam but feel that things have been badly handled since the take over. Decisions have been made which have encouraged chaos and disorder rather than lessened them. This article by Michael Meacher in the Times gives further food for thought regarding the occupation of Iraq. Maybe I'm being hopelessly naive. What does everyone else think?

Saddam's germ war plot is traced back to one Oxford cow

I guess we've become so used to the "Saddam had no WMDs" line that it's almost a shock when we're reminded of things like this:

Saddam's germ war plot is traced back to one Oxford cow
Times
August 09, 2005

On the subject of bio-terror I can recommend this book I read recently (though it's not good for sleeping well at night). The description of how smallpox kills you was particularly horrible.

The Demon in the Freezer: The Terrifying Truth About the Threat from Bioterrorism
Richard Preston

The world on a train

I'm in uncharacteristically poetic mode. Found this the other day:

The world on a train
BBC News
09/08/05

Nine years ago, novelist Geoff Ryman wrote a pioneering online novel, 253. It told a tale of the relationships between people who happened to be on a Tube train at the same time. Now, inspired by the varied lives of those who died on 7 July, Ryman offers his thoughts and tribute.

I actually completely disagreed with some parts:

I don't believe there are evil people or evil countries ... Everybody has a measure of right on their side and a measure of wrong.

The bit that I liked & caught my attention was this last part:

The philosopher Hannah Arendt concluded that evil lay in the refusal to think. One of the things evil cannot face contemplating is variety. It prefers monolithic simplicity. Reality outstrips simplicity through a constant flowering of unexpected lives. Evil thoughts and deeds cannot prevail against it.

Maybe some of you ex-literature / ex-art history students can muse intelligently on this!

;-)

Why Sharon's critics are clueless on Gaza

Why Sharon's critics are clueless on Gaza
Oliver Kamm
Times
August 09, 2005

Mr Sharon’s policies have been unambiguously successful in curbing terrorism. With the construction of a security barrier (not a “wall”, as anti-Israel campaigners habitually term it, but for most of its length a chain-linked wire fence that could be taken down within an afternoon) and the assassination of successive leaders of Hamas, the number of successful terrorist attacks within Israel fell by more than 75 per cent between 2002 and 2004. The breathing space that these policies have allowed Israelis has encouraged serious thinking about territorial compromise and the outlines of an eventual settlement with the Palestinians.

The dispiriting fact is that no negotiated two-state agreement is likely in the near future. Western commentators who speak of a two-state “solution” adopt a misnomer. A two-state arrangement, with Israel withdrawing to boundaries approximating the pre-1967 armistice line, is not a solution to the conflict, but an outcome of the end of the conflict. The end of the conflict requires something more deep-rooted: a changed relationship and mutual trust between Israelis and Palestinians. As an Israeli analyst, Dan Schueftan, says: “At this stage, it is extremely difficult to imagine how any amount of European funding or sponsorship could produce a mega-gimmick convincing enough to persuade Jews, except in the hard-core Left, to consider a refurbished version of the Oslo act of faith after that failed so miserably.”

This is the context in which Mr Sharon’s plan should be assessed. Israel within its pre-1967 borders was militarily indefensible. After the Six-Day War, in which Israel captured east Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and Sinai, successive governments kept these territories juridically separate from Israel and treated them as bargaining counters for future negotiations. That consensus ended with the election of Likud governments in the late 1970s and 1980s, but since the collapse of negotiations at Camp David and Taba in 2000 and 2001 the political terrain has shifted again.

Israeli leftwingers have had to acknowledge the failure of the peace process established with the Oslo accord of 1993. Mr Sharon became Prime Minister because Yassir Arafat rejected the offer of an independent Palestinian state made at Taba, demanded a “right of return” for all Palestinian refugees — a course incompatible with Israel’s existence as a Jewish state — and declared a second intifada.

Mr Sharon, meanwhile, has taken the Right an important stage on from merely accepting the need for negotiations with the Palestinians, and has acknowledged that what he explicitly terms the “occupation of the West Bank” is untenable for Israel and for the Palestinians. His security measures have reinforced a consensus among Israelis for a strategy of defensive deterrence, withdrawal from settlements in Gaza, and direct negotiations for a Palestinian state. The prerequisites for a final settlement include Israelis’ confidence in the ability of the Palestinian leadership to crack down on terrorism and to make their administration of Gaza a success. Israel will feel secure enough to withdraw to the pre-1967 boundaries only when it no longer believes they are continuously threatened. On any realistic assessment, this will take time.

That is why Gaza is important. Mr Sharon knows that Israeli security is ill-served by the diversion of effort to protect 8,000 Jewish settlers among 1.3 million Palestinians. To the settlers’ anguish, he is evicting them as part of a wider plan to create the conditions for dialogue. The wisest course for politicians outside the region is to cease attacking Mr Sharon for not being able to create peace by fiat. The cause of confidence-building and direct negotiations has never wanted for meddlesome outsiders; it should be given a chance to flourish unaided.

Comprehensives impede social mobility

We haven't had an education thread for a while. Wonder what you guys think of this anti-comprehensives piece?

Schools for a scandal
Tim Luckhurst
Times
August 09, 2005
AMONG THE most infuriating conundrums in Britain is why comprehensive schools still exist when every argument for them has been undermined. The assertion that comprehensivisation would enhance opportunity was tendentious before the experiment was attempted. These days a potent blend of ideological zeal and intellectual dishonesty is required to defend it. A Sutton Trust study for the London School of Economics proves that comprehensives damage social mobility. Before that, research by York University demonstrated the benefits of academic selection for children from low-income families. The evidence from overseas is incontrovertible too. Selection delivers social justice.

After a fortnight's holiday, I find I'm utterly baffled by the War on Terror

In the same piece Finkelstein also makes some interesting points about Robin Cook, the myth of the consensus against terror, & others.

After a fortnight's holiday, I find I'm utterly baffled by the War on Terror
Daniel Finkelstein
Times
August 10, 2005

The Grieve Paradox:

Apparently, last week, the Shadow Attorney-General, Dominic Grieve, said that he thought the London suicide bombings were “totally explicable in terms of the level of anger” of the Muslim community. This was widely portrayed as coming close to justifying the attack. Yet surely, whatever may have been Mr Grieve’s intent, his remarks do nothing of the sort. Or have I misunderstood something?

Mr Grieve’s remarks came at a time when the Home Office Minister Hazel Blears was touring the country listening to the views of the Muslim community. Yet if the Tory MP was correct,this would be a disastrous thing to do.

As the US lawyer Alan Dershowitz points out in his book Why Terrorism Works: “The real root cause of terrorism is that it is successful — terrorists have consistently benefited from their terrorist acts.” The advance of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in the 1970s suggests he is right. Thus if the cause of the London bombings was indeed the anger of Muslim youth the last thing one should do is reward it with political concessions.

If, on the other hand, Mr Grieve is wrong and the cause of the terrorism is an unappeasable religious doctrine rather than specific political demands, then efforts to address the political issues that anger Muslim youth would not provide an incentive for terrorists. They can go ahead, based solely on whether they are the right thing to do. There is, therefore, a Grieve Paradox — the more correct he is, the less one should do about it.

Janet Daley on Multiculturalism

Excellent article - printed in full becauseof Indy's annoying self-destruct policy: (Btw, for ease of reading I haven't added it it to other recent multicultural threads - you can find them here.)

Janet Daley: Integration will take more than a hyphen

Absorbing migrants involves more than taking in strangers and leaving them to it

Published: 10 August 2005

A quick fix for the ethnic problem: as multiculturalism sinks into disrepute, the Home Office offers us hyphens. Alienated Muslims are to be known as Asian-British, plagiarising the American model for incorporating immigrant groups into the national identity. This risible semantic exercise, like multiculturalism itself, is a non-policy: a vacuum, a substitute for thought.

The idea that many cultures could co-exist side by side in one country, going their own ways, cultivating their own disparate and distinct identities, was always a cop-out. It assumed that coming to live in a country was rather like lodging in a rooming-house: new tenants could keep to themselves and do what they liked so long as they didn't make too much noise or block the toilets. How they lived their lives was nobody's business, not even the landlady's.

Well, as we have apparently now realised, being a country that absorbs migrants involves rather more than taking in strangers and leaving them to get on with it. Multiculturalism may have been dressed up as cosmopolitan virtue but, at heart, it was a rationale for not really giving a damn, and a cover for the least attractive British traits - intellectual laziness, indifference to the needs of other people, complacency, and contempt for any sort of energetic commitment to a social ideal.

Well, the serious thinking starts now. The lodgers - or, more to the point, their children - clearly need to be offered a bit more than a key to the front door and a reminder not to leave the landing light on.

Much has been made of this country's failure to give any instruction to incomers on the essentials of Britishness - whatever that is - and the consequent lack of any sense of national identity. Acres of newsprint and hours of broadcasting time have been devoted to producing a defining sense of what it means to be British.

The results have been banal, embarrassing, and pointless. We are, or like to see ourselves as, tolerant, law-abiding, humorous and fair-minded. Yes - and how far does that get us in dealing with cults which actively preach intolerance, urge people to break the most fundamental laws, are deadly serious about their aims and opposed to fairness (that is, social equality) as we understand it?

This failure to inculcate some mysterious core of national pride is being contrasted unfavourably with the practice of my home country. In the United States, it has been noted, waves of immigrants from vastly differing parts of the world have been successfully integrated by a determined, conscious programme of "Americanisation" in the schools and throughout the wider society.

Somehow, the US with its pledge of allegiance and its "civics" lessons, has cracked the problem of inducting people into a more-or-less unified society within one generation. Ah yes, snigger the British, but we don't go in for that sort of thing here. We don't make children rise up every schoolday morning, put their hands on their hearts and pledge allegiance to the flag. No super-patriotism please, we're British.

Sorry, but you've missed the point. American primary schoolchildren may salute the flag and recite the pledge of allegiance, but a few years later, it is the Constitution they learn to revere and its preamble (which begins "We the people") that they memorise.

Their high school civics classes require them to write letters to their congressmen in Washington and to their state senators, to study specific pieces of current legislation whose progress they can follow through Congress, and to campaign or canvass for the party of their choice in elections.

And the politicians to whom they write are all primed to respond in a helpful and generous way, because it is their responsibility, as much as the schools', to educate children in the democratic process. What American children learn, in other words, is not some amorphous concept of "American-ness" but how their system of democracy works, and by implication, what its value is to them and to the nation.

Britain, too, has a system of government and principles of law, such as the independence of the judiciary, which need to be explained to school children (and not just the ones born of immigrant parents) in order to give them some understanding of the part that they should play in their national life if it is to be sustained. It too has institutions and processes that must be participated in, if they are to have meaning.

Feeling alienated from your surroundings generally begins with not understanding them. Curing that is going to take more than a hyphen: it needs national confidence, fervour and concerted effort. All those things that laid-back multiculturalism disdained.

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article304859.ece

Anjem Choudary, ex Al Muhajiroun, interviewed on BBC Hardtalk

I watched the BBC News 24 program Hardtalk last night - an interview with Anjem Choudary, Former UK Head of Al Muhajiroun. Hopefully the interview will come up on the Hardtalk homepage at some point, because I'd urge you all to watch it. Here's the blurb.

The interviewer Stephen Sackur did an ok job under difficult circumstances, I suppose, though I yearn for the day when Paxman is turned loose on these people. I would like to have seen Sackur make a lot more of the remark (re: the London 7/7 bombings) that no non-Muslim can be considered "innocent". I'd also like to see Choudary asked, given that he utterly rejects British law & the British state and recognises only Sharia, on what grounds he & those sharing this viewpoint should have *any* rights whatsoever in this country - for example, the right not to be shot on sight by the police.

Choudary is certainly a charismatic, articulate person, with utter certainty in his views, and the politician's art of being uninterruptable. I'm torn as to whether such media exposure is a good thing (give them enough rope...) or bad (would we have give Hitler air time?). Certainly Pipes has some interesting views on this:

Television in Time of War
Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
August 2, 2005

JP

PS There *is* an older Hardtalk interview with Choudary from May 2003 which I haven't seen myself that is available for download:

Hardtalk - Suicide Attacks - May 2003

Mosques 'failing to protect young from extremism'

This is definitely in the "you couldn't make this up" league.

Mosques 'failing to protect young from extremism'
Telegraph
08/08/2005

Mosques across the country are failing to confront the threat of extremism in young people and many do not believe it is their responsibility to do so, according to a poll. A survey of 100 mosques by a Muslim lobby group showed that no steps had been taken to challenge radical preaching to youths, and that none were planned.

[O]f the 100 mosques contacted by Mpac [Muslim Public Affairs Committee], none had changed their teaching syllabus or set up programmes to challenge extremism, the group said. Asked what they had done to help channel Muslim anger about British foreign policy away from extremism, a fifth said the Friday sermon was being used to condemn radical preaching and terrorist action. But Asghar Bukhari, 35, the head of Mpac, said: "[A speech] is the most incompetent way that a mosque could challenge extremism. It is like a doctor telling a patient not to smoke - it won't cure the illness. The very institutions that could make the most difference are refusing to help. That is a disgrace."

...

Dr Musharraf Hussain, 47, who represents two mosques in Nottingham, said he did not intend to confront any evil ideology "head-on", as the Prime Minister suggested. "I have absolutely no plans whatsoever. If the Government wants us to become a secret service, or their stooges, they will have to pay us for it. The reason the youngsters are angry is because of Tony Blair's foreign policy, so I think it is very unfair to suggest that we should bear the whole responsibility for that."

Aurangzaib Khan, who works for the Pakistan Centre in Nottingham, which is also used for prayers, said: "The problem is being caused by the Government, so they should solve it rather than throwing it on to the community. They look for so-called leaders, but if anything happens in the white community they don't look for leaders. Are they going to pay people to be outreach workers?".

Dilwar Khan, director of the East London mosque, said: "It is not our responsibility to go and search these people out [extremists or their targets]." He said the mosque had preached against radicals for a long time. "As far as we are concerned we don't have to do anything more."

Mr Atta Choudhri, the chairman of Manchester Central Mosque, said: "How can we take responsibility for all the youngsters? We will try our best, but youngsters don't listen to anybody."

Why Israel is gaining new friends

Read the opinion piece below in the weekend FT. Would be interested to get JP's take on it.

Why Israel is gaining friends
By Christopher Caldwell
FT
August 6 2005

Thursday's atrocity in the Israeli-Arab town of Shfaram - where an army deserter shot four Arabs dead on a bus before being lynched - is the worst act of anti-Arab terrorism by an Israeli since 1994. It is also looks like the most violent act of resistance yet against the plan by Ariel Sharon, prime minister, to remove all 8,000 Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip by mid-August. Mr Sharon condemned the outrage as "a despicable act by a bloodthirsty terrorist". But there was no rush in the international media to blame Israel's government or society for it, of the sort one would have expected during the "second intifada" that began in 2000.

This is a sea change. On Mr Sharon's watch, without anyone really noticing, Israel has become more firmly anchored in the good graces of world opinion than at any time this decade. As Mr Sharon sought to stem the Palestinian suicide-bombing campaign in the spring of 2002, he was not merely condemned for excesses or derided as a crafty operator. Mobs of demonstrators, many journalists and even several European politicians compared him, without irony, to the leaders of Nazi Germany. What has changed? Has Mr Sharon undergone a conversion? Or were Israel's detractors of three years ago simply wrong?

Nowhere have attitudes towards Israel shifted more dramatically than in France. Mr Sharon was frostily received by Jacques Chirac, the French president, during his first visit to Paris in early 2001. The years since have been marked by contretemps. Back when he was foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin (France's present prime minister) insisted on treating Yassir Arafat, the former Palestinian leader, as a reliable negotiating partner for peace. Mr Sharon urged French Jews to emigrate to Israel in the light of high levels of anti-semitic violence and intimidation.

And yet, during a pomp-filled three-day visit to Paris last month, Mr Sharon had productive meetings with Mr Chirac, Mr de Villepin and Philippe Douste-Blazy, the new foreign minister. Mr Chirac announced a €1m (£695,000) campaign to improve the image of France in Israel. France, he said, hoped to become Israel's "special partner, in politics, economics and culture". Mr Sharon, for his part, invited Mr Chirac to his ranch, praising the "firm battle he is waging against anti-Semitism", and describing French efforts in that area as a "model".

There are many reasons why France might cultivate, or accept, a closer relationship with Israel just now. Arafat is dead. Iran's nuclear programme has proved as much a diplomatic headache for France as for Israel and its Middle Eastern neighbours. Alleged Syrian involvement in the assassination last spring of Mr Chirac's close friend, Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, may bring France and Israel's views of Syria into closer harmony. In general, as Le Figaro put it: "France understands the risk of being shut out of the diplomatic game in the Middle East if it is not listened to by Israel."

Both Mr Chirac and Mr Sharon gave a simpler reason for their newfound amity: Gaza. "If anyone had a doubt about Israel's stature in Europe and the world", Mr Sharon told the Israeli press, "this meeting proved that Israel's reputation is good and it's all because of disengagement." Mr Chirac praised Mr Sharon for his courage in undertaking the withdrawal. Should we believe their protestations?

Probably not. Mr Sharon has been able to manage his own party's opposition to his Gaza plan only with difficulty. He has an incentive to use any political chip to sell the plan domestically. And if Mr Chirac is supporting the Gaza pull-out as a bold step, it is a big change from just a year ago, when much of the French foreign policy establishment were treating it as a ruse. In Mr Sharon's hands, the explanation ran, Gaza First could mean Gaza Only, with no provision made for withdrawing Israeli forces and settlers from the West Bank.

The real reason that Israel has been readmitted to the family of western nations reflects ill on the west. It is that, for years, western public opinion blamed Israel for the violence committed against it. As the violence abated, so did the blame. The American essayist Paul Berman, in Terror and Liberalism, was the first to notice that "the suicide bombings produced a philosophical crisis among everyone around the world who wanted to believe that a rational logic governs the world". Suicide bombing had to be about an unbearable injustice. If not, it was a mere homicidal cult - an unbearable thought. Under the slipshod moral reasoning that resulted, the more Israelis the bombers killed, and the more they did it, the more public opinion shifted against Israel. Americans and Britons have recently grown familiar with the carping of those more interested in the "causes" of terrorism than in terrorism itself.

So when Israel clamped down on the West Bank and Gaza, "something curious happened", Mr Berman writes. "As the Palestinian situation grew more desperate, the wave of protest around the world, instead of growing, began to recede . . . The protests rose and fell around the world in tandem with the suicide bomb attacks, and not in tandem with the suffering of the Palestinian people."

Time has vindicated Mr Berman's view. Israelis are today being attacked less in opinion columns because they are being attacked less on buses and in discotheques. They are less victimised by suicide terrorists largely because Mr Sharon's government built a physical barrier between Israel and the Palestinian territories, in the teeth of western opposition. Mr Sharon has behaved as if foreigners will despise Israel if it shows patience and forgiveness and will befriend Israel if it disobeys their urgings. His world view may look topsy-turvy, and it can be condemned as paranoid in a time of peace. It has been proved correct in a time of war.

The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard

seven ways to stop the terror

An article by Jason Burke in the Observer this Sunday. For me, it's the most intelligent piece on how we can stop the terrorists.

Johann says multiculturalism isn't working

Essential reading:

Multiculturalism is not the best way to welcome people to our country
It promotes not a melting pot but a segregated society of sealed off cultures, each sticking to its own.
by Johann Hari

[...]

[Johann quotes an email he received] "My younger sisters go to Denbigh High School [in Luton] which was famous in the headlines last year because a girl pupil went to the High Court for her right to wear the jilbab [a long body-length shroud]. Shabinah [the girl who took the case] saw it as a great victory for Muslim women ... but what happened next shows this is not a victory for us.

"My sisters, and me when I was younger, could always tell our dad and uncles that we weren't allowed to wear the jilbab. Once the rules were changed, that excuse was not possible any more so my sisters have now been terrified into wearing this cumbersome and dehumanising garment all day against their wishes. Now most girls in the school do the same. They don't want to, but now they cannot resist community pressure ... I am frightened somebody is going to fight for the right to wear a burqa next and then my sisters will not even be able to show their faces."

So to multiculturalists, we have to ask: which Muslim culture do you want to preserve? The jilbab-wearing culture of Shabinah and the mullahs, or the culture of the hundreds of Muslim girls who curse them? All immigrant communities are divided and diverse; it is a form of soft racism to assume they have One Culture that should be respected at all costs.

Good stuff throughout. If you're interested in this topic it's worth looking at a couple of earlier posts on the subject:

http://impdec.blogspot.com/2005/07/ee-begum.html

http://impdec.blogspot.com/2005/07/multi-culturism-and-dangers-of.html

Two Israel stories: (i) Israeli lynched (ii) Israeli jailed

Two stories about Israel attracted my attention. The more recent one about the Israeli who went beserk, shot up Israeli Arabs on a bus, then got lynched, is interesting for the immediate unambiguous condemnation from Sharon, which labelled the guy a "terrorist". What do people think about that?

The older story was interesting for the lack of coverage it got in the press (let me know if I'm wrong about that). If that is the case, I wonder if it's because the Israeli in question was an Israeli Arab...

Israeli lynched after bus killing
BBC NEWS
04/08/05

A teenaged Israeli gunman has been lynched after killing four people on a bus in an Israeli Arab town. The man, said to be wearing an army uniform and a Jewish skull cap, opened fire on pasengers as the bus was passing through Shfaram near Haifa.

Several people were injured, some seriously. A furious mob killed the gunman as police were leading him away. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called the incident a reprehensible act by a "bloodthirsty terrorist". "This terror incident is a deliberate attempt to harm the relations between the citizens of Israel," he said through his office. "Terror between civilians is the most dangerous thing for the future of Israel and its democratic stability."



Israeli guilty of shooting Briton
BBC News
27 June, 2005

A former Israeli soldier has been found guilty of the manslaughter of British student Tom Hurndall in the Gaza Strip. Ex-sergeant Taysir Hayb was convicted at a military court in Ashkelon for the shooting of Mr Hurndall in April 2003. Hayb will be sentenced at a later date.

Mr Hurndall, 22, was involved in protests against the Israeli military in the Palestinian town of Rafah. He died nine months after the shooting. His father, Anthony, said the Israeli army acted with impunity too often. The defendant was led out of the court in handcuffs and tried to attack a number of photographers and cameramen filming him.

...

In addition to the manslaughter verdict, Hayb was found guilty of obstruction of justice, incitement to false testimony, false testimony and improper conduct. ... The Israeli army initially disputed this account, but under pressure from Mr Hurndall's family and the British government it ordered a full investigation. It later indicted Hayb, a member of Israel's Bedouin Arab minority.

Fanatics around the world dream of the Caliph's return

If you're ever looking for a quick one-page summary of jihadi history and aims, you could do worse than this:

Fanatics around the world dream of the Caliph's return
Telegraph
01/08/2005

Fanaticism and Religion

An article on religion from Niall Ferguson. It raises some interesting questions and is relevant to a recent comparison JP made between the moral certainty of the Christian right with the uncertainty of liberal secular left.