Author: Mick Hartley

popular support in the north.

But there is significant opposition to the law, especially among the Christian minority.

While officially it does not apply to them, many say that in practice they are forced to comply.

(Via Secular Blasphemy)

/p>

Not much of a night out though, is it? But that does seem to provide a clue as to why the play is so lionised. Contrary to Simon Callow’s belief in the play’s ability to “frustrate intellectual criticism with its apparent elusiveness”, it is in fact one play where everybody knows exactly what it’s about. That’s why people of a certain sort keep going back to it, and why critics love it. They’re hoping against hope that some naif will mutter “Waiting for Godot? I don’t get it. It’s boring. Godot never comes.” “Ah, but don’t you see,” they’ll cry, “that’s the whole point…” And they’re off. They get it, even if smaller minds don’t. They’re the same people who laugh loudly at the jokes in Shakespeare: the backbone of so many theatre audiences, and the reason why going to the theatre is so often such a dispiriting experience.

ciman and John Julius Norwich, who is no historian. The entry of scholars into popular Crusade history does not seem to be welcomed in all quarters.

I watched the BBC’s “The New Al-Qaeda: jihad.com” programme last night, and was suitably appalled at the repellent Mohammed Al-Massari, who hosted a website from his London home specialising in videos of infidels being blown up and beheaded, as propaganda for the recruitment of young Muslims to the jihadist cause. Similarly Babar Ahmad, the young IT expert from Imperial College currently fighting extradition to the US and using all the liberal legal traditions of this country which, it’s pretty clear, he’s spent most of his recent life planning to destroy.

When people talk about Londonistan, I’ve always had a sense of pride about the openness of this country, and our tradition of harbouring dissenters, but of course, as we’ve now learned and should have realised years ago, it can’t go on. The French, despite the fact that their Muslim population is the largest in Europe, and has more reason, economically and socially, to feel alienated from their host society, seem to have got some things right:

The French Government clamped down on radical Islam in a way that no other country has. No mosque or Islamic prayer hall is off limits to police. Imams preaching hate are regularly deported. France stopped giving asylum to Islamic extremists wanted in their home country, and was disgusted when many of them were given refuge in Britain. As a result of France’s draconian anti- terror laws, the country is thought to be comparatively free of terrorist networks.

I’m curious as to the response to the BBC programme. Currently the relevant have-your-say page hasn’t been updated. “There have been a large number of e-mail comments about the programme. This page will be updated shortly. The e-mails published will reflect the balance of opinion received.”

What stuck with me was the classic BBC twist at the end, when Mike Sheuer, former head of the CIA Bin Laden unit (at least I believe it was him), was allowed the final comment – the thought that we would be taking to bed with us – which was to the effect that there could be no solution to the problem as long as our governments didn’t tell people the truth, and lied to them about how these terrorists hated us for what we were and wanted to destroy our liberal societies. No, it was our policies which were the problem. Eh? Without wishing to discount the effect of US and British foreign policy, I thought the previous hour had pointed in exactly the opposite direction.

The Failed States Index at Foreign Policy (via Instapundit):

“America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones.” That was the conclusion of the 2002 U.S. National Security Strategy. For a country whose foreign policy in the 20th century was dominated by the struggles against powerful states such as Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union, the U.S. assessment is striking….

Failed states have made a remarkable odyssey from the periphery to the very center of global politics. During the Cold War, state failure was seen through the prism of superpower conflict and was rarely addressed as a danger in its own right. In the 1990s, “failed states” fell largely into the province of humanitarians and human rights activists, although they did begin to consume the attention of the world’s sole superpower, which led interventions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. For so-called foreign-policy realists, however, these states and the problems they posed were a distraction from weightier issues of geopolitics.

Now, it seems, everybody cares. The dangerous exports of failed states—whether international terrorists, drug barons, or weapons arsenals—are the subject of endless discussion and concern….

Using 12 social, economic, political, and military indicators, we ranked 60 states in order of their vulnerability to violent internal conflict…. The resulting index provides a profile of the new world disorder of the 21st century and demonstrates that the problem of weak and failing states is far more serious than generally thought. About 2 billion people live in insecure states, with varying degrees of vulnerability to widespread civil conflict…

The 10 most at-risk countries in the index have already shown clear signs of state failure. Ivory Coast, a country cut in half by civil war, is the most vulnerable to disintegration; it would probably collapse completely if U.N. peacekeeping forces pulled out. It is followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Chad, Yemen, Liberia, and Haiti. The index includes others whose instability is less widely acknowledged, including Bangladesh (17th), Guatemala (31st), Egypt (38th), Saudi Arabia (45th), and Russia (59th).

Eric Reeves at The New Republic (via Butterflies and Wheels) – scroll down – argues the case for NATO intervention in the light of our failure thus far to do anything to prevent the Darfur genocide:

Perhaps the largest challenge will be to disarm and neutralize the Janjaweed, an increasingly diffuse force. Many Janjaweed members have been removed to other parts of Sudan; many others have been incorporated into the police, security forces, or paramilitary organizations such as the notorious Popular Defense Force. Disarming the Janjaweed must be done in a head-on manner by NATO troops, for the militias are not a true military force and would be overwhelmed quickly if they resisted in the face of well-trained, well-armed NATO forces operating with robust rules of engagement.

The two major insurgency movements–the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement–must be put on forceful notice that to the extent they interfere with the establishment of secure conditions or humanitarian operations, they will also be militarily targeted.

Given what happened in Iraq, where a long-oppressed people did not receive Western troops as warmly as the Bush administration had predicted, it may seem presumptuous to say NATO forces would be welcomed by the African populations of Darfur. Nonetheless, countless conversations with Darfuris have convinced me that Western intervention would in fact be welcomed with enthusiasm, especially given growing disaffection with the performance of A.U. forces.

Disarm and neutralise the Janjaweed? Does anyone doubt that this would be a further addition to the list of Muslim grievances for which we in London have supposedly just paid the price?

Well here’s a surprise:

Shortly after the attacks, Egypt’s state-run television interviewed retired army general Fuad Allam. He said that he was almost certain that Israel was behind the attacks at Sharm e-Sheikh and Taba.

According to Fuad, investigations have shown that the mastermind of the Taba attack was a Palestinian “apparently linked to Israel’s security forces.”

He added: “I’m almost certain that Israel was also behind this attack because they want to undermine our government and deal a severe blow to our economy. The only ones who benefit from these attacks are the Israelis and the Americans.”

Allam’s remarks were re-aired several times during the day by Egyptian TV. Other commentators who made similar charges against Israel included political figures and prominent journalists and editors.

Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, the Arab world’s leading satellite TV stations, also hosted a number of commentators who claimed that Israel was behind the latest wave of terror in Egypt.

Dia Rashwan, an expert on Islamic terror groups, from Cairo, said in a phone interview with Al Arabiya: “Israel is the only country that benefits from this,” he said, referring to the attacks in Sharm e Sheikh.

Dismissing the theory that Al Qaeda was behind the attacks, Rashwan explained: “We are giving Al Qaeda more credit than it deserves. What happened here negates the possibility that the attacks were carried out by ordinary elements. This is the work of an extraordinary element – one that benefits from such attacks. All the available details indicate that only the Israelis could have done this.”

Yes yes, Mark Steyn is a right-wing death beast – but he’s always good value. Here he wonders if the London bombings will do anything to change the usual multicultural pieties (via Secular Blasphemy):

That’s the great thing about multiculturalism: it doesn’t involve knowing anything about other cultures – like, say, the capital of Bhutan or the principal exports of Malaysia, the sort of stuff the old imperialist wallahs used to be well up on. Instead, it just involves feeling warm and fluffy, making bliss out of ignorance. And one notices a subtle evolution in multicultural pieties since the Islamists came along. It was most explicitly addressed by the eminent British lawyer Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws, QC, who thought that it was too easy to disparage “Islamic fundamentalists”. “We as western liberals too often are fundamentalist ourselves. We don’t look at our own fundamentalisms.”

And what exactly would those western liberal fundamentalisms be? “One of the things that we are too ready to insist upon is that we are the tolerant people and that the intolerance is something that belongs to other countries like Islam. And I’m not sure that’s true.”

Hmm. Kennedy appears to be arguing that our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people’s intolerance, which is intolerable. Thus the lop-sided valse macabre of our times: the more the Islamists step on our toes, the more we waltz them gaily round the room. I would like to think that the newly fortified Age columnists are representative of the culture’s mood, but, if I had to bet, I’d put my money on Kennedy: anyone can be tolerant of the tolerant, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti masochists. Australia’s old cultural cringe had a certain market rationality; the new multicultural cringe is pure nihilism.

its power to divide and incite and assumes that all true practitioners are like the Anglo-Catholic priests of middle-class London: upright men who do good works and wish no one ill.

The National Secular Society learned with despair but no surprise that the government could not be deterred in pressing ahead with faith schools by something as trivial as attacks on London by religious fanatics. […]

Now the government wants to reinforce separation with Muslim schools for brown pupils and Christian schools for white ones.

David Trimble told John Humphrys recently that the greatest blunder after partition was to allow Catholic and Protestant schools to survive. He might have added that the mainland is repeating Ulster’s murderous mistake.

Richard Ingrams thinks we deserve it:

Pundits can talk reassuringly about our civilised values, our tradition British way of life. But if you are a devout Muslim, or a devout Jew or Christian for that matter, it is very likely that you do not consider Britain to be an especially civilised place.

Looked at from a religious perspective, our society can seem positively uncivilised – materialistic, money-mad, even sordid. What, after all, is so civilised about Big Brother, the Star or binge-drinking, to name just a few conspicuous examples?

But no one, least of all our church leaders, would dare to suggest that if we want to secure the respect of Muslims, it might be a good thing to clean up our act. No, the onus is on the Muslims to adapt to our supposedly civilised ways.