MELANIE PHILLIPS: And Now, What She [Baroness Warsi] Actually Said...
THE SPECTATOR: Here is the text of the speech that Baroness Warsi actually delivered. Lots of gracious references to Christians and Jews -- but also note the disreputable suggestion that certain Old Testament passages provide excuses for stoning people to death for adultery and the like.

The fact is, however, that unlike Islam Judaism has always mediated such passages through rabbinic interpretation, with the result that such activities have not been tolerated. Jews pose no threat to anyone -- other than those who try to wipe them out. The sly insinuation that Islam is inherently no more dangerous to life, liberty and human rights than is Judaism is quite wickedly false -- and all too telling. >>> Melanie Phillips | Friday, January 21, 2011

How I Was Reviled for Warning that Britain Is a Hotbed of Islamic Terrorism
MAIL ONLINE: Some four-and-a-half years ago, a book of mine was ­published that caused something of a sensation.

It was called Londonistan, and it was about the way in which - astoundingly - Britain had ­become the most ­important centre, outside the Islamic world itself, for the production and export of ­Islamic terrorism.

Worse yet, I wrote, even after the 9/11 attacks and the 7/7 London Tube and bus bombings, the British political, legal and security establishments were still refusing to get to grips with the threat posed to Britain by militant Muslims who wanted to conquer it for Islam.

For my pains, I was called ‘mad’ by the Guardian, ‘bonkers’, ‘alarmist’, ‘­hysterical’ and, of course, ‘Islamophobic’.

Indeed, I had a hard time getting the book published at all. It was turned down by every mainstream London publisher because they regarded my views as dangerous extremism. One even remarked: ‘I’d rather take the ­poison ricin than publish this.’ Nice! Read on and comment >>> Melanie Phillips | Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Weep for Britain: 1940 This Is Not
THE SPECTATOR: When David Cameron became Britain’s Prime Minister, I warned that he would turn out to be even worse than Labour on the related issues of Israel and the global threat from Islamism to Britain and the west. This was because Cameron had no knowledge of or interest in foreign affairs, and so was always likely merely to reflect the most politically expedient views he encountered – which, given the current poisonous attitude within the British establishment and intelligentsia, were likely to push him into appeasing Britain’s mortal enemies in the Islamic world and dumping on Israel, Britain’s strategic ally in that great struggle.

But even I did not foresee just how cynical Cameron would turn out to be -- and how dangerous therefore to the British national interest. Today’s truly shocking and quite astoundingly stupid speech in Turkey has now laid bare the fathomless shallowness and frightening ignorance and idiocy of Britain’s new Prime Minister.

Declaring himself a fervent supporter of Turkey’s bid to join the EU, Cameron declared that those who opposed this bid fell into one of three categories: protectionists; those who believed wrongly in a ‘clash of civilisations’ between east and west, whereas in fact

Turkey can be a great unifier, because instead of choosing between East and West, Turkey has chosen both;

or

those who wilfully misunderstand Islam

because they

... see no difference between real Islam and the distorted version peddled by the extremists.

Astonishingly, Cameron thus totally ignored the fact that Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Erdogan, is no secular Ataturk but an Islamic extremist; and as a result Turkey is changing from a secular state and strategic ally of the west into an Islamist tyranny and a new strategic enemy of the west. Here is what Turkish political economy professor Dani Rodrik wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal (£):

I no longer recognize Turkey, the country where I was raised and spend most of my time when I am not teaching in the U.S. It wasn't so long ago that the country seemed to be taking significant strides in the direction of human rights and democracy... But more recently, the same government has been responsible for a politics of deception, dirty tricks, fear, and intimidation... It's clear now that Turkey is no longer the liberalizing, emerging democracy under the AKP that it was only a few years ago. It's time the U.S. and Europe stopped treating it as such—both for their own sakes, and for the sake of the Turkish people.

Into which category of prejudice would Cameron place the horrified Professor Rodrik – Turkish protectionist, Turkish culture warrior or Turkish Islamophobe?

Or what about the alliances Erdogan has been forging with Islamic terror regimes such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran – and not forgetting his warm overtures to Russia? Is this what Cameron regards as evidence that Turkey is playing the role of ‘great unifier’ between east and west? Continue reading and comment >>> Melanie Phillips | Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Melanie Phillips: “Cameron Must Have the Guts to Go It Alone”
MAIL ONLINE: One of the strongest advantages of the British electoral system has always been that it gives voters the opportunity for a clear choice.

'First past the post' means the chance to throw the governing party out on its ear. It is a brutally clean break and totally transparent.

By contrast, coalitions mean backstairs deals which are not transparent at all. They mean weak governments held to ransom by tiny political parties. And they mean voters can never make that clean break.

Which is why the manoeuvres to form a coalition between the Tories and the Lib Dems are so dismaying - particularly since the Lib Dems' non-negotiable condition is to demand proportional representation, thereby cementing coalition government for ever. >>> Melanie Phillips | Monday, May 10, 2010

Melanie Phillips: The Orwellian Logic That's Turning the Faith Britain Was Built On into a Crime
MAIL ONLINE: Terrifying as this may seem, the attempt to stamp out Christianity in Britain appears to be gathering pace.

Dale McAlpine was preaching to shoppers in Workington, Cumbria, that homosexuality is a sin when he found himself carted off by the police, locked up in a cell for seven hours and charged with using abusive or insulting words or behaviour.

It appears that two police community support officers - at least one of whom was gay - claimed he had caused distress to themselves and members of the public.

Under our anti-discrimination laws, such distress is not to be permitted.

And so we have the oppressive and sinister situation where a gentle, unaggressive Christian is arrested and charged simply for preaching Christian principles.

It would appear that Christianity, the normative faith of this country on which its morality, values and civilisation are based, is effectively being turned into a crime.

Surreally, this intolerant denial of freedom is being perpetrated under the rubric of promoting tolerance and equality - but only towards approved groups.

Never has George Orwell's famous satirical observation, that some people are more equal than others, appeared more true.

The Cumbrian arrest comes hard on the heels of last week's ruling by Lord Justice Laws in the case of Gary McFarlane, who was dismissed as a Relate counsellor because he refused to give advice to samesex couples on sexual relationships. >>> Melanie Phillips | Monday, May 03, 2010

Melanie Phillips: The UK Will Be an Islamic State
Part 1:



Part 2:

To Our Eternal Shame, Britain Is STILL a Hub for Islamic Terror
MAIL ONLINE: So here we go again. Another international Islamic terrorist plot - and yet another British connection.

The attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up an American plane was averted only by luck and courage.

The incident obviously raises alarming questions about gross lapses in security. In particular, how did Abdulmutallab obtain a U.S. visa when he had been on an American watch-list of people with known terrorist connections?

But the deeper and more urgent issue for Britain concerns the key role this country has once again played in a Muslim's trajectory to radicalisation and terror. Abdulmutallab, who claims to have been working for Al Qaeda, was an engineering student at prestigious University College London for three years until 2008.

He was actually refused an entry visa to Britain earlier this year, but only because the institution at which he said he wanted to study turned out to be non-existent.

How, people might well ask, could such a radical have been educated in Britain without the authorities jumping on him?

Did MI5 know anything about him - especially since he was on a U.S. terrorism watch-list for two years?

As yet, we still don't know much about this man's history.

It appears he became a religiously extreme Muslim at a school in Togo, but was further radicalised while studying in London before apparently going to Yemen and linking to Al Qaeda.

Who can be surprised? After all, this is ' Londonistan' - the contemptuous term coined by the French security service back in the Nineties as they watched Britain become the central hub of Islamic terrorism in Europe.

Radicals flocked to the UK, attracted by Britain's toxic combination of criminally lax immigration controls, generous health, education and welfare benefits and the ability to perpetuate their views through the British veneration of the principle of free speech. >>> Melanie Phillips | Monday, December 28, 2009

Melanie Phillips: The Outrageous Truth Slips Out: Labour Cynically Plotted to Transform the Entire Make-up of Britain without Telling Us
MAIL ONLINE: So now the cat is well and truly out of the bag. For years, as the number of immigrants to Britain shot up apparently uncontrollably, the question was how exactly this had happened.

Was it through a fit of absent-mindedness or gross incompetence? Or was it not inadvertent at all, but deliberate?

The latter explanation seemed just too outrageous. After all, a deliberate policy of mass immigration would have amounted to nothing less than an attempt to change the very make-up of this country without telling the electorate.

There could not have been a more grave abuse of the entire democratic process. Now, however, we learn that this is exactly what did happen. The Labour government has been engaged upon a deliberate and secret policy of national cultural sabotage.

This astonishing revelation surfaced quite casually last weekend in a newspaper article by one Andrew Neather. He turns out to have been a speech writer for Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.

And it was he who wrote a landmark speech in September 2000 by the then immigration minister, Barbara Roche, that called for a loosening of immigration controls. But the true scope and purpose of this new policy was actively concealed.

In its 1997 election manifesto, Labour promised 'firm control over immigration' and in 2005 it promised a 'crackdown on abuse'. In 2001, its manifesto merely said that the immigration rules needed to reflect changes to the economy to meet skills shortages.

But all this concealed a monumental shift of policy. For Neather wrote that until 'at least February last year', when a new points-based system was introduced to limit foreign workers in response to increasing uproar, the purpose of the policy Roche ushered in was to open up the UK to mass immigration.

This has been achieved. Some 2.3million migrants have been added to the population since 2001. Since 1997, the number of work permits has quadrupled to 120,000 a year.

Unless policies change, over the next 25 years some seven million more will be added to Britain's population, a rate of growth three times as fast as took place in the Eighties.

Such an increase is simply unsustainable. Britain is already one of the most overcrowded countries in Europe. But now look at the real reason why this policy was introduced, and in secret. The Government's 'driving political purpose', wrote Neather, was 'to make the UK truly multicultural'. It was therefore a politically motivated attempt by ministers to transform the fundamental make-up and identity of this country. … >>> Melanie Phillips | Monday, October 26, 2009

If Children Are Taught That Patriotism Is Wrong, Britain’s Very Identity Is At Stake
MAIL ONLINE: One of the most startling aspects of our society at present is the way things that were once considered to be virtues have now become the object of intense disapproval, and vice versa.

A recent survey of teachers by London University's Institute of Education found that some three-quarters of them believed it was their duty to warn their pupils about the dangers of patriotism.

Once upon a time, loving your country enough that you were prepared to die for it was held to be the highest virtue.

Indeed, without patriotism there would be no one serving in the Armed Forces.

For the past 1,000 years, it has given the people of these islands the strength and courage to repel invaders and defeat the enemies of liberty.

Is it not extraordinary that such affection for your country should now be considered so objectionable that children should be told it is positively dangerous?

One teacher said that praising patriotism excluded non-British pupils.

'Patriotism about being British divides groups along racial lines, when we aim to bring pupils to an understanding of what makes us the same.'

But on the contrary, patriotism is what binds us together through a shared sense of belonging and a desire to defend what we all have in common. >>> Melanie Phillips | Monday, September 14, 2009

Sharia Law in the United Kingdom

Melanie Phillips: Our Democracy's Going Down the Plughole with the Home Secretary's Dirty Bathwater
Luton South MP Margaret Moran claimed £22,500 of taxpayers' money for treating dry rot in a house in Southampton, many miles from her constituency or Westminster. Photo courtesy of MailOnline
MAIL Online: They still just don't get it, do they. With details continuing to pour out about the epic abuse of Parliamentary expenses, MPs are displaying about as much ethical sensibility as the lumps of meat they have charred on their ill-gotten barbecues.

The details and scale of what they were up to are beyond belief.

'Flipping' the designation of their main and second homes to manipulate the expenses system to their advantage and to avoid paying various taxes.

Claiming help with mortgage payments for houses that were already paid for.

Getting the taxpayer to reimburse them for eyeliner, plastic bags, nappies, mock Tudor beams, Maltesers, nail polish, plasma TVs, Christmas tree decorations, horse manure, bath plugs; and on and surreally on.

Yet in the face of such baroque dishonesty, MPs claim that the real villain is the media for publishing the leaked details. So they've set the police on to probing the disclosures. But if the police should be investigating anyone, it's surely the MPs themselves.

Outrageous

Not, it seems, in the parallel universe of Westminster. According to MPs, none of them has behaved immorally. Not one. None of them should be censured or lose the party whip, let alone be prosecuted.

Instead, utterly deaf to the mounting public fury this is causing, they are coming up with one excuse after another.

Apparently, something called 'the system' - which, it seems, has nothing to do with them - is to blame. But the 'system' is simply what the MPs themselves devised.

Like sheep, they all went along with these scams, so that's supposed to make them all right. 'It wasn't my fault, m'lud, that I claimed for a barbecue - it was the system.' Sounds awfully like 'I was only obeying orders' in another era.

In a kind of spivs' chorus, they whine in unison that it was all 'within the rules'. But rules can be manipulated for corrupt or otherwise indefensible ends.

Luton South MP Margaret Moran claimed £22,500 of taxpayers' money for treating dry rot in a house in Southampton, many miles from her constituency or Westminster. She justifies this on the outrageous grounds that her partner works in Southampton and it is 'her right' to have a family life with him.

Her right?

Other people cope with this kind of messy situation every day, paying for it out of their own pocket. Why should Ms Moran imagine it is her right to be paid for doing the same thing? >>> Melanie Phillips | Monday, May 11, 2009

THE TELEGRAPH: Alan Duncan Claimed Thousands for Gardening: MPs' Expenses

Alan Duncan, the senior Conservative MP who oversees the party’s policy on MPs’ expenses, claimed thousands of pounds for his garden – but stopped after agreeing with the fees office that his expenditure “could be considered excessive”.


Mr Duncan’s gardening claims raise serious questions about whether expenses by some MPs can be justified as entirely necessary for their parliamentary work. In a three-year period, he recouped more than £4,000. He has not been asked to repay the money despite later concerns over the garden claims.

The bill for £3,194 for gardening in March 2007 was not paid by the fees office, which wrote to Mr Duncan suggesting that the claim might not be “within the spirit” of the rules.

However, by then the multi-millionaire MP for Rutland and Melton had claimed £4,000 of gardening costs that were approved. In a letter to the MP, the office said that it expected gardening costs “to cover only basic essentials such as grass cutting”. Mr Duncan submitted receipts showing that his gardener was being paid £6 an hour for up to 16 hours a week in grounds of less than an acre.

In March 2007, Mr Duncan claimed £598 to overhaul a ride-on lawn-mower and then a further £41 to fix a puncture a month later.

Mr Duncan also claimed £1,400 a month for his mortgage interest on his home in Rutland. He bought the large detached house without taking out a mortgage on the property itself in January 1992, shortly before he was elected to parliament.

However, it was not until January 2004 that a mortgage was secured against the property. >>> By Holly Watt | Sunday, May 10, 2009

THE SPECTATOR: A Parliament of Thieves

Like any sensible person I've been thoroughly amused and appalled by the scandal of MPs expenses. Appalled because the extent of MPs' avarice is sufficient to shock even an iron-souled cynic; amused because watching MPs try to justify their gluttonous appetite for taxpayer-funded freebies affords a certain pleasure that one might consider vindictive if only it weren't so entirely merited. This isn't a tragedy, it's a stinking farce.

The dreary pretense - duly repeated by every sticky-fingered parliamentarian - that it is all ok because "no rules were broken" could hardly be more priceless. Nor could it do more to underline the essential fact that these people are fools who in turn treat the public as though they are fools themselves. Only the blindest dolt would think that boasting of obeying the rules might minimise the public's entirely-justified sense of outrage (a wrath that is, I suspect, under-appreciated at Westminster and in the media) when it is the laxness of the rules themselves that occasions so much incredulity and anger.

For it is now clear, if it weren't before, that we are governed by a parliament of thieves for whom no expense is too small or too trivial to be borne by the taxpayer. These knaves and charlatans are strangers to shame and decency. Astonishingly, they make journalists and estate agents seem paragons of probity by comparison. Who'd have thunk that possible? >>> Alex Massie | Monday, May 11, 2009

Melanie Phillips: When a Bishop Has to Leave the Church of England to Stand Up for Christians, What Hope Is Left for Britain?
NAME: The resignation of Michael Nazir-Ali as Bishop of Rochester is a terrible blow, not just for the Church of England but for Britain.

The bishop says he is resigning so that he can work for endangered or beleaguered Christian minorities both abroad and in the UK.

What a shocking rebuke to the church, that he has to leave his post of influence and authority as a bishop in order to carry out the church's core duty to defend its own against attack.

Shocking - but hardly surprising. Across the world, in countries such as Nigeria and Sudan, millions of Christians are being persecuted at the hands of militant Islam, with forced conversions, the burning of churches and widespread violence.

Yet in the face of this global onslaught, the Church of England makes scarcely a peep of protest.

Worse still, when Dr Nazir-Ali warned last year that Islamic extremists had created 'no-go areas' across Britain where non-Muslims faced intimidation, he was disowned by his fellow churchmen who all but declared that he was a liar - even though he was telling the truth.

Courage

For this act of moral courage, he and his family had to be put under police protection, while his own church left him to swing in the wind of bigotry and intimidation.

Dr Nazir-Ali is one of the very few inside the church to make explicit the link between Christian and British values, and to warn publicly that they are being destroyed through the prevailing doctrine of multiculturalism.

That strong voice of protest has never been needed more than it is now. For Christianity in Britain is under attack from all sides.

Last month, the bishop protested that the arrival in Britain of so many from other faiths had led to the closure of chapels, the retrenchment of Christian chaplaincy and the advent of a 'doctrinaire multi-faithism' - not through pressure from the incoming minorities, but from British secularists who wanted to destroy Christianity.

That agenda is becoming ever more oppressive. Yesterday, it was revealed that a Christian council worker was suspended for encouraging a terminally ill woman to turn to God. He says he was also told it was inappropriate to 'talk about God' with a client and that he should not even say 'God bless'. >>> By Melanie Phillips | Sunday, March 29, 2009

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Melanie Phillips: Persistently Validating Extremism
THE SPECTATOR: Policy Exchange has produced yet another extremely important pamphlet on radical Islamism and the grievous and indeed lethal errors in government policy towards it. Entitled Choosing Our Friends Wisely by Shiraz Maher and Martin Frampton, it is a devastating critique of the centrepiece of that policy, a strategy called Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE). Recently, it was reported that there was a strong feeling in parts of the security establishment that this strategy had been a disaster; defining the problem as only ‘violent’ extremism’, the government had failed to grasp that the core problem is actually religious/ ideological extremism which produces a continuum of divisive, antisocial or threatening views which provides the sea in which violence swims. The strategy should therefore be changed to ‘Preventing Extremism.’

This is a case I have made many times, not least in my book Londonistan. It is not clear whether or how this argument has resolved itself within government – although from a speech made recently by the Communities Secretary Hazel Blears, it looked as if the PVE camp had succeeded in fending off the PE proponents. No surprise there – a change to Preventing Extremism would take clarity of vision and a great deal of courage. Now, though, the Policy Exchange pamphlet has dissected the disaster that is the Preventing Violent Extremism strategy – which, through its unbelievably stupid belief that non-violent extremists can be used as the antidote to violent extremists, is actually radicalising a new generation of Muslims, sometimes with the very funds that are supposed to be countering radicalisation. It says:

Non-violent extremists have consequently become well dug in as partners of national and local government and the police. Some of the government’s chosen collaborators in ‘addressing grievances’ of angry young Muslims are themselves at the forefront of stoking those grievances against British foreign policy; western social values; and alleged state-sanctioned ‘Islamophobia’. PVE is thus underwriting the very Islamist ideology which spawns an illiberal, intolerant and anti-western world view.

Political and theological extremists, acting with the authority conferred by official recognition, are indoctrinating young people with an ideology of hostility to western values. This strategic error on the part of officialdom is born of a poverty of aspiration: the belief of the authorities that they cannot reasonably ask angry Muslims for much more than a pledge not to use violence in Britain. The effect has been to empower reactionaries within Muslim communities and to marginalise genuine moderates, thus increasing inter-community tensions and envenoming the public space.

>>> Melanie Phillips | Wednesday, March 11, 2009

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Labour's Disastrous Policy Is Radicalising a Whole New Generation of Muslims
MAIL Online: The repellent spectacle of Muslims demonstrating in Luton against the British soldiers returning from Iraq does more than turn our stomach.

It tells us in graphic form that this country has not only utterly failed to combat a threat to itself from within but - astoundingly - turns not against those who threaten it but against those who seek to defend it.

When the returning troops of the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Anglian Regiment paraded through Luton they had to run the gauntlet of Muslim protesters waving placards saying: ‘Anglian soldiers: Butchers of Basra,’ and ‘Anglian soldiers: cowards, killers, extremists.’

Not surprisingly, this enraged the rest of the crowd of decent, patriotic people who had turned out to welcome the troops home. Yet the only arrests made were among those who objected to the Muslim provocation, including a man who shouted something at them.

Talk about getting things back to front! The police turn a blind eye to gross and offensive provocation which clearly poses a threat to public order, while arresting instead those who are thus provoked!

Among the protesters was a group of burka-clad women with their faces wholly concealed except for slits for the eyes. Given the menacing nature of the protest, the fact that their identities were thus concealed was highly relevant.

Yet if anyone objects to any of this, they are called ‘Islamophobic’. Just think what the reaction would be if, say, a group of Ku Klux Klansmen in full regalia took part in a demonstration by neo-Nazis in a heavily ethnic minority area. Does anyone imagine that such a direct threat to public order would be permitted?

But when it comes to Islamist extremists, it is those who protest at such gross provocation - and, indeed, treachery against their own country - who are arrested as a threat to public order while the extremists are left free to preach their hatred.

Moreover, this demonstration appears to have been organised by an extremist group directly linked to Omar Bakri Mohammed, who now preaches to his followers from Lebanon via videos posted on websites after he was barred from Britain.

Omar Bakri led the extremist group al Muhajiroun which is now banned in Britain. But one of yesterday’s protesters was Sayful Islam, the leader of the Luton branch of an organisation that has the same beliefs as al Muhajiroun, and who said ‘They can’t come here and parade where there is such a Muslim community.’ Why are the police turning a blind eye to this?

Today, the extremist preacher Anjem Choudary not only praised yesterday’s protesters but, in an inflammatory message posted on an Islamic extremist website, viciously mocked the member of the returning regiment who had been killed by friendly fire in Iraq.

Why is Anjem Choudhary still at liberty to preach such inflammatory hatred? He leads a group formed after al Muhajiroun was banned called Islam For The UK which wants Britain to be an Islamic state ruled by Sharia law. >>> Melanie Phillips | Wednesday, March 11, 2009

YOUTUBE: "The Butchers Of Basra?"



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Melanie Phillips: British Police Running from Muslim Demonstrators, a Christian Nurse Facing the Sack for Offering to Pray for a Patient - This Is the Way a Society Dies
MAIL Online: In our allegedly multicultural society, there is one religious group which is apparently not to be afforded equal respect, let alone treated for what it embodies - the foundational creed of this nation. That group is Britain’s Christians.

Somerset community nurse and committed Christian Caroline Petrie has been suspended and faces being sacked and even struck off for offering to say a prayer for an elderly patient. Although startled, the patient - herself a Christian - did not make a complaint and was in no way offended.

Nevertheless Mrs Petrie’s boss wrote to her saying she was required to uphold the reputation of her profession - which apparently means demonstrating ‘a personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity’ and not using her professional status ‘to promote causes that are not related to health’.

Apparently, Mrs Petrie previously received a warning about promoting her faith at work after she offered to give a prayer card to an elderly male patient.

Now there may be a valid point here about professionalism. Offering prayer cards comes close to touting one’s faith, which might well be thought inappropriate on the wards. But even so, one would have thought that a quiet word in the nurse’s ear would have been all that was necessary. Instead, Mrs Petrie was packed off to an ‘equality’ course for some diversity training.

This Orwellian response has now been followed up by the draconian action of suspending her with the possibility of outright dismissal from her job simply because she offered to pray for another patient.

Suspension and dismissal are sanctions to be used for mistreating or neglecting patients. Yet here they are being used against a nurse for offering to bring a patient a form of spiritual solace - which the patient was able easily to refuse and which caused her no problem. Is this not an utterly idiotic over-reaction?

I am a Jew; but when my mother was in the last stages of her terminal illness she was cared for by deeply devout Christian nurses who regularly prayed for her. Far from being offended by this, I was touched and comforted by this signal that they cared so much about her.

Moreover, this is not actually about upholding professionalism in nursing. It is all about foisting upon nursing the sinister and politically correct ‘diversity’ agenda – which means in effect treating Christianity as inherently offensive. >>> Melanie Phillips | Tuesday, February 3, 2009

BNPTube: Metropolitan Police Humiliated at the Hands of Muslim Demonstrators in London

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Part 2
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Britain’s Surrender
MELANIE PHILLIPS: In Britain, the war in Gaza has revealed the extent to which the media, intelligentsia and political class have simply crumbled in the face of the global jihad.

The U.K. is a major player in European and world politics and is America’s most significant strategic ally. Until now, it has been considered one of Israel’s firm supporters and a linchpin of the Western defense against the world-wide Islamist onslaught. With the reaction to Gaza, however, that reputation is no longer sustainable.

Years of demonizing Israel and appeasing Islamist extremism within Britain have now coalesced, as a result of the media misrepresentation of the Gaza war as an atrocity against civilians, in an unprecedented wave of hatred against Israel and a sharp rise in attacks on British Jews. >>> Wall Street Journal (Europe) | Tuesday, January 20, 2009

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Melanie Phillips: Freedom Now Stands Alone
THE SPECTATOR: So the answer to my question turned out to be yes, America really was going to do this. A historic moment indeed. The hyperbole for once is not exaggerated: this is a watershed election which changes the fate of the world. The fear however is that the world now becomes very much less safe for all of us as a result. Those of us who have looked on appalled during this most frightening of presidential elections – at the suspension of reason and its replacement by thuggery -- can only hope that the way this man governs will be very different from the profile provided by his influences, associations and record to date. It’s a faint hope – the enemies of America, freedom and the west will certainly be rejoicing today.

America has voted for change, apparently. Change from what, precisely? From Bush? But in the second term, Bush stopped being Bush. His foreign policy lurched from paralysis to appeasement (redeemed only by the strategic genius of Gen Petraeus – and what price Petraeus now?) As Frank Gaffney wrote in the Washington Times yesterday, Bush’s Treasury is about to open the way for sharia law to be imposed upon America’s banking system. And it was a Democrat-controlled Congress that helped provoke the sub-prime lending crisis that triggered the current financial meltdown.

What this election tells us is that America voted for change because America is in the process of changing – not just demographically by becoming less white and more diverse, but as the result of a culture war in which western civilisation is losing out to a far-left agenda which has become mainstream, teaching American children to despise the founding values of their country and hijacking discourse by the minority power-grab of victim-culture.

The reaction of conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic to this undoubted change – not just in the US but in Britain too – shows the intellectual disarray caused by these profound developments. They say politicians must stop trying to hold the cultural line and go instead with the flow of change. In Britain, the Tory party has adopted this strategy. Now there are Republicans saying the same thing.

But John McCain is a Republican who does not fit the old template, who does subscribe to some of this ‘change’ agenda on a number of issues. As a result, he was incapable of attacking Obama on the most important grounds of all: that he stood for values inimical to America’s founding principles. When he did venture into this territory, it was half-cocked and far too late, appearing merely like the desperate throw of a loser. The reason he couldn’t do it earlier was that he had no coherent platform of his own. So why vote for a muddled and erratic quasi-'progressive' when the real thing is a rock star? It cannot be said too emphatically -- the Republicans lost this election. Obama ran a superbly disciplined campaign and he was an impressive candidate, particularly in his calm and stately demeanour throughout. The Republicans screwed up in government, they selected a hopelessly frail and erratic candidate, he ran a shambolic campaign. They deserved to lose. >>> Melanie Phillips | November 5, 2008

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Melanie Phillips: Join Up the Dots
THE SPECTATOR: I have written many times about concerns over Obama’s links to the Nation of Islam. Now here it is from the horse’s mouth. Ken Timmerman reports:

A former top deputy to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan [Dr Vibert White Jr] tells Newsmax that Barack Obama’s ties to the black nationalist movement in Chicago run deep, and that for many years the two men have had ‘an open line between them’ to discuss policy and strategy, either directly or through intermediaries.

... In addition to the ideological affinity Obama expressed for the black nationalist movement, White believes that Obama owes much of his success as a public orator to speaking techniques that Farrakhan developed over the years, and exploited for years to great success...As a former minister of the Nation of Islam, I know how they speak,’ White told Newsmax. ‘I don’t know who was training Obama. But that style is not a ministerial style like in the Christian church. It’s a Nation of Islam style.’

Daniel Pipes, who has written about Obama’s links to the Nation of Islam, expresses his amazement that a man who tomorrow may become President of the United States should have so many questionable links in the arena of Islam and the Middle East:

Other than Obama's lies about his childhood religion, which cast doubt about his character, all the other connections establish the radical circles he frequented during his Chicago years, associations he is trying hard – and with apparent success - to keep from the attention of just enough voters until after election day.

The response of the Obamanics is to dismiss every such piece of evidence as a ‘smear’. They should consider this. A smear is a lie, or a gross distortion of some kind. You cannot smear someone by telling the truth. None of Obama’s revealed radical connections, deeds or words has been refuted or disproved. Given the volume of them, their consistency throughout his life and political career, the way they chime with what he himself has said and written – including his Philadelphia race speech which, when read carefully, is far more troubling than his enthusiasts have recognised – and the demonstrable lies he has told and evasions he has made about these connections and his early life, it is eminently reasonable to conclude that such information tells us something very important and alarming indeed about his character and world-view.

To believe otherwise is to be irrational. To vote on that basis is to be reckless in the extreme. [Source: The Spectator] Melanie Phillips | November 3, 2008

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Melanie Phillips: Selling Us All to Saudi Arabia
THE SPECTATOR: The Islamisation of the west is proceeding according to plan, as the Times reports:

Gordon Brown claimed success yesterday in his attempt to persuade Saudi Arabia to help stricken economies by pumping more money into the International Monetary Fund... Lord Mandelson, who was also at the dinner at the Royal Palace, said Mr Brown wanted to ensure that the Saudi King was ‘on the same page’ over the causes of the financial problems and the solutions. ‘We are seeking “buy-in” from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to the necessary response that we all need to make to the turmoil of the international financial system. If we don’t get that money we will fail,’ Lord Mandelson said...

Lord Mandelson said that the Saudis and other Gulf states would now expect a bigger role in global institutions in return for their investment.

You bet they will. Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson are delivering Britain and the west into dhimmitude.*

* Definition of ‘dhimmi’ from the Dhimmi Watch site:
Dhimmis, ‘protected people,’ are free to practice their religion in a Sharia regime, but are made subject to a number of humiliating regulations designed to enforce the Qur’an’s command that they ‘feel themselves subdued’ (Sura 9:29). This denial of equality of rights and dignity remains part of the Sharia, and, as such, is part of the law that global jihadists are laboring to impose everywhere, ultimately on the entire human race.

The dhimmi attitude of chastened subservience has entered into Western academic study of Islam, and from there into journalism, textbooks, and the popular discourse. One must not point out the depredations of jihad and dhimmitude; to do so would offend the multiculturalist ethos that prevails everywhere today. [Source: The Spectator] Melanie Philips | November 3, 2008

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Melanie Phillips: Is America Really Going to Do This?
THE SPECTATOR: The impact of the financial crisis on the American presidential election has somewhat obscured the most important reason why the prospect of an Obama presidency is giving so many people nightmares. This is the fear that, if he wins, US defences will be emasculated at a time of unprecedented international peril and the enemies of America and the free world will seize their opportunity to destroy the west.

Personally, I don’t give any credence to the ‘support’ for one candidate over the other that has been expressed by the enemies of civilisation (Iran and Hamas ‘support’ Obama, while an al Qaeda blogger ‘supports’ McCain). Their agenda is simply to sow confusion and promote American recriminations and disarray. Nor do I set much store by many of the remarks made by either candidate during the latter stages of this election campaign, since under this kind of pressure both will now say pretty much anything to win it. The New York Times has run a useful analysis of the candidates’ foreign policy campaign statements which shows how Obama has carefully tacked to the ‘hard power’ agenda while McCain has in turn nodded towards ‘soft power’.

No, the only way to assess their position is to look at each man in the round, at what his general attitude is towards war and self-defence, aggression and appeasement, the values of the west and those of its enemies and – perhaps most crucially of all – the nature of the advisers and associates to whom he is listening. As I have said before, I do not trust McCain; I think his judgment is erratic and impetuous, and sometimes wrong. But on the big picture, he gets it. He will defend America and the free world whereas Obama will undermine them and aid their enemies.

Here’s why. McCain believes in protecting and defending America as it is. Obama tells the world he is ashamed of America and wants to change it into something else. McCain stands for American exceptionalism, the belief that American values are superior to tyrannies. Obama stands for the expiation of America’s original sin in oppressing black people, the third world and the poor.

Obama thinks world conflicts are basically the west’s fault, and so it must right the injustices it has inflicted. That’s why he believes in ‘soft power’ — diplomacy, aid, rectifying ‘grievances’ (thus legitimising them, encouraging terror and promoting injustice) and resolving conflict by talking. As a result, he will take an axe to America’s defences at the very time when they need to be built up. He has said he will ‘cut investments in unproven missile defense systems’; he will ‘not weaponize space’; he will ‘slow our development of future combat systems’; and he will also ‘not develop nuclear weapons,’ pledging to seek ‘deep cuts’ in America’s arsenal, thus unilaterally disabling its nuclear deterrent as Russia and China engage in massive military buildups.

McCain understands that an Islamic war of conquest is being waged on a number of diverse fronts which all have to be seen in relation to each other. For Obama, however, the real source of evil in the world is America. The evil represented by Iran and the Islamic jihadists is apparently all America’s fault. ‘A lot of evil’s been perpetuated based on the claim that we were fighting evil,’ he said. Last May, he dismissed Iran as a tiny place which posed no threat to the US -- before reversing himself the very next day when he said Iran was a great threat which had to be defeated. He has also said that Hezbollah and Hamas have ‘legitimate grievances’. Really? And what might they be? Their grievances are a) the existence of Israel b) its support by America c) the absence of salafist Islam in the world. Does Obama think these ‘grievances’ are legitimate? >>> By Melanie Phillips | Friday, October 24, 2008

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