Excellent Investigative Report by the Guardian on Peter Moore's Kidnapping

This is a superb report here . Peter Moore has now been released from captivity in Iraq/Iran? The Guardian are reporting that he was held in Iran which is entirely plausible given the Iranian government's long history of holding hostages. Sadly Peter's four security guards were murdered during their captivity. Anyway watch the Guardian report it is excellent and very plausible. We know the Iranian government likes to kidnap Britons, it may also have murdered them. I would like to wish Peter and all readers a happy New Year. My sincerest condolences for the families of his four colleagues from GardaWorld. Also I would like to express my admiration for the two Iraqi intelligence personnel mentioned in the film. Those guys ran incredible risks and are a credit to their emerging nation. Even if this tale overall is a sad indictment as to how Iran's thuggish theocracy can subvert an emerging democracy. Overall all the best to Peter Moore and may he have a speedy recovery.

Final Hours for Brit on Death Row in China

Time may be running out for Akmal Shaikh a Briton convicted of drug smuggling in China. Indeed by the time many of you read this he may already have been executed. I have mixed views on the death penalty. That may seem strange to some and I accept it is. But all my experiences have taught me that all governments kill to some extent or another. As such I can see perhaps cynically the argument for a just authority passing the death penalty after an individual has been tried by a jury of his peers. I mean every day western governments kill in Afghanistan and the UK government hypocritically supports that whilst being against capital punishment. That said I certainly support the calls for Shaikh to be granted clemency. I can never condone the use of capital punishment against drug smugglers. Had Shaikh received a fair trial and been convicted of murder perhaps I would think differently but I'm not decided on capital punishment per se. However I really do not want the Chinese government to kill this man.

Historian Andrew Roberts 'An Inconvenient Truth'- The History of Anglo-Israeli Relations.

Here is the full text of a speech given by historian Andrew Roberts at the annual dinner of the Anglo Israeli Association. Their annual dinner was held last night the 9th December. I have posted this from Melanie Phillip's column in the Spectator. One possible explanation for the Foreign Office's historic attitude could be that reflected in my last post about the PSC's John Sullivan. Simply put many Brits don't like Jews.

You know one way you can test the British people's attitude to Jews? Simply type Stacey Solomon (X factor singer) into Google. The list with the most hits populated by Google as you finish typing reads 'Stacey Solomon Jewish'. Funny ain't it that I don't get anything similar with any other X factor contestant? Read some of the comments about Stacey, most are complimentary the horrid ones though not infrequently come back to one thing. I'll leave that to my readers to find out. Back on topic Andrew Roberts Speech below:

'My Lords, Ladies & Gentlemen,
It’s a great honour to be invited to address you, especially on this the 60th anniversary of AIA, and I’d like to take the opportunity of this anniversary to look at the overall story of the relationship between Britain and Israel, and to try to strip away some of the myths.

Because it seems to me that for all the undoubted statesmanship implicit in Arthur Balfour’s Declaration of November 1917, promising ‘a National Home for the Jewish People’, it doesn’t mean that Britain has ever been much more than a fair-weather friend to Jewish national aspirations. The Declaration itself was at least in part conceived to keep Eastern European and Russian Jews supporting the Great War after the Bolshevik Revolution, and Chaim Weizmann’s preferred wording of ‘a Jewish State’ was turned down by the British Foreign Office. As David Ben-Gurion wrote at the time: ‘Britain has made a magnificent gesture … But only the Hebrew people can transform this right into tangible fact: only they, with body and soul, with their strength and capital, must build their National Home and bring about their national redemption.’

Sure enough, at the Versailles Conference and its ancillary meetings up to 1922, although Britain was given the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, the Jewish National Home was not established. During the Mandate period there was an observable tension between the CO, which was responsible for administering Palestine and wanted to do so within the terms of the (admittedly self-contradictory) Balfour Declaration, and the FO, which feared that allowing the de facto creation of a Jewish State would alienate Arabs. In 1937 the Peel Commission recommended ending the Mandate and partitioning Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with population transfers of 225,000 Arabs from Galilee, an outcome Ben-Gurion said [quote] ‘could give us something which we have never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the First and Second Temples’. Nonetheless, both the Arabs and the 20th Zionist Congress rejected Peel’s recommendations, to the palpable relief of the Foreign Office, which concentrated its own opposition to it on the basis of its supposed impracticality.

Instead there was the notorious 1939 White Paper, which severely limited Jewish immigration into Palestine at precisely the period of their greatest need, during the Final Solution. A total upper limit of 75,000 Jewish immigrants was set for the fateful years 1940-44, a figure that was also intended to cover refugee emergencies. The White Paper was published on 9 November 1938 – the very same day as the Kristallnacht atrocities in Germany – and was approved by Parliament in May 1939, a full two months after Hitler’s occupation of the rump of Czechoslovakia. The Manchester Guardian described it as ‘a death sentence on tens of thousands of Central European Jews’, which in sheer numerical terms was probably an underestimation. Although the Labour Party Conference voted to repeal the White Paper in 1945, the Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin – a bitter enemy of Israel - persisted in it, and it was not to be repealed until the day after the State of Israel was proclaimed.

In late April 1948, Bevin ordered that Arab positions in Jaffa needed to be protected from the Jews [quote] ‘at all costs’, and when Israeli independence came the next month, the departing British sometimes handed over vital military and strategic strongpoints to the five invading Arab armies, the most efficient of which, Transjordan’s Arab Legion, was actually commanded by a Briton, Sir John Glubb. And then on New Year’s Eve 1948 the British Government actually issued an ultimatum to Israel threatening war if Israel did not halt its counter-attacks on Egyptian forces in the Gaza Strip and Sinai. Britain was the only country in the UN that came to Egypt’s aid in this regard.

One can easily see, therefore, why when Brig-Gen Sir Wyndham Deedes set up the Anglo-Israeli Association only weeks after Israel was finally recognized by Britain in 1949 - months after America, Russia and several other states had already done so – it was much-needed. There was still massive resentment over the War of Independence; Israel was considered at best a headache by the FO; and worst of all, unlike her neighbours, she had no oil. Nor did the Suez Crisis much help matters seven years later: the way in which Israel fitted in neatly with British plans to crush Nasser ought to have endeared her to the Foreign Office, but of course it didn’t.
When in May 1967 Nasser announced the blockading of the Straits of Tiran, closing Israel’s commercial lifeline to the east, the guarantors of this international waterway – including Britain – failed to act quickly or decisively, and although Harold Wilson was proud of his pro-Israeli sentiments, his foreign secretary George Brown and the FO certainly did not reciprocate them. Britain compounded its generally lukewarm attitude during the Six Day War by sponsoring Resolution 242 at the end of it, which called on Israel to withdraw [quote] ‘from territories occupied’, in a resolution that was so badly worded by the FO that Arabs and Israelis have been able to argue over its proper meaning ever since.

The Yom Kippur War of October 1973 saw even worse bias by the FO in favour of the Arabs and against the Jews. Announcing an arms embargo ‘equally’ between the belligerents, the Heath Government effectively stopped Israel buying spare parts for the IDF’s Centurion tanks, whilst allowing them to be bought by Jordan, the only other country affected, because it was not (officially at least) a belligerent. Egyptian helicopter pilots continued to be trained in Britain, with the foreign secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home lamely telling the Israeli Ambassador that it was better for the pilots to be training in Britain than fighting at the front. Heath even refused to allow American cargo planes taking supplies to Israel to land and refuel at our bases on Cyprus.

In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher seemed to offer a new warmth to Anglo-Israeli relations. She sat for Finchley, her Methodism chimed well with Jewish values, and she was the most philo-Semitic PM since Churchill, yet even she was stymied by the FO, especially over Intelligence cooperation with Mossad. It’s true that John Major sent a special SAS unit to seek and destroy Iraqi Scud missile batteries targeting Israel during the First Gulf War, but that was largely to remove the danger of Israel retaliating, and thereby perhaps destroying the Arab coalition against Saddam.
After 9/11 Tony Blair seemed to appreciate how Israel was in the very front line in the War against Terror, and he thus bravely refused to condemn Israel’s acts of self-defence in Lebanon, but since then Britain’s contribution to the EU’s strand of negotiating over Iran’s nuclear ambitions has been, frankly, pathetic.
One area of policy over which the FO has traditionally held great sway is in the question of Royal Visits.

It is not therefore coincidence that although HMQ has made over 250 official overseas visits to 129 different countries during her reign, neither she nor one single member of the British royal family has ever been to Israel on an official visit. Even though Prince Philip’s mother, Princess Alice of Greece, who was recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" for sheltering a Jewish family in her Athens home during the Holocaust, was buried on the Mount of Olives, the Duke of Edinburgh was not allowed by the FO to visit her grave until 1994, and then only on a private visit.

"Official visits are organized and taken on the advice of the Foreign and Commonwealth office," a press officer for the royal family explained when Prince Edward visited Israel recently privately - and a spokesman for the Foreign Office replied that [quote] ‘Israel is not unique" in not having received an official royal visit, because [quote] ‘Many countries have not had an official visit.’

That might be true for Burkino Faso and Chad, but the FO has somehow managed to find the time over the years to send the Queen on State visits to Libya, Iran, Sudan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan & Turkey. So it can’t have been that she wasn’t in the area.
Perhaps Her Majesty hasn’t been on the throne long enough, at 57 years, for the Foreign Office to get round to allowing her to visit one of the only democracies in the Middle East. At least she could be certain of a warm welcome in Israel, unlike in Morocco where she was kept waiting by the King for three hours in 90 degree heat, or at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Uganda the time before last, where they hadn’t even finished building her hotel.
The true reason of course, is that the Foreign Office has a ban on official Royal visits to Israel, which is even more powerful for its being unwritten and unacknowledged. As an act of delegitimisation of Israel, this effective boycott is quite as serious as other similar acts, such as the academic boycott, and is the direct fault of the FO Arabists.

Which brings us on to Mr Oliver Miles. One of the reasons I’m proud to be an historian is that there are scholars of the integrity and erudition of Prof Sir Martin Gilbert and Prof Sir Lawrence Freedman who also write history. If people as intelligent, wise and incorruptible as they choose to be historians, then it must be an honourable profession. Let me quote to you, therefore, word-for-word, what a former British Ambassador to Libya and Greece, Mr Oliver Miles, wrote in The Independent newspaper less than a fortnight ago, commenting on the composition of the present Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War:
‘Both Gilbert and Freedman are Jewish, and Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism. Such facts are not usually mentioned in the mainstream British and American media. … All five members have outstanding reputations and records, but it is a pity that, if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available. Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced.’

Ladies and gentlemen, if that’s the way that FO Arabists are prepared to express themselves in public, can you imagine the way that they refer to such people as Professors Gilbert and Freedman in private? For the balance that Mr Miles is talking about here is clearly a racial balance, that only a certain quota of Jews should have been allowed on to the Inquiry.
Of course there’s a reason why ‘Such facts are not usually mentioned in the mainstream media’, of course, and that is because it is a disgraceful and disgusting concept even to notice the racial background of such distinguished public servants, and one that wouldn’t have even occurred to most people had not Mr Miles made such a point of it.

Because there are 22 ambassadors to Arab countries, and only one to Israel, it is perhaps natural that the FO should tend to be more pro-Arab than pro-Israeli. On occasion there are remarkably good British Ambassadors to Israel – your president, Sir Andrew Burns, was one such in the early 1990s – just as there are on occasion remarkably good Israeli Ambassadors to Britain, indeed we are fortunate to have one at the Embassy today in Ron Prosor. Overall, however, such men are swimming against the tide of an FO assumption that Britain’s relations with Israel ought constantly to be subordinated to her relations with other Middle Eastern states, especially the oil-rich ones, however badly those states behave in terms of human rights abuses, the persecution of Christians, the oppression of women, medieval practices of punishment, and so on.

It seems to me that there is an implicit racism going on here. Jews are expected to behave better, goes the FO thinking, because they are like us. Arabs must not be chastised because they are not. So in warfare, we constantly expect Israel to behave far better than her neighbours, and chastise her quite hypocritically when occasionally under the exigencies of national struggle, she cannot. The problem crosses political parties today, just as it always has. William Hague called for Israel to adopt a proportionate response in its struggle with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2007, as though proportionate responses ever won any victories against fascists. In the Second World War, the Luftwaffe killed 50,000 Britons in the Blitz, and the Allied response was to kill 600,000 Germans – twelve times the number and hardly a proportionate response, but one that contributed mightily to victory. Who are we therefore to lecture the Israelis on how proportionate their responses should be?
Very often in Britain, especially when faced with the overwhelmingly anti-Israeli bias that is endemic in our liberal media and the BBC, we fail to ask ourselves what we would not do placed in the same position?

The population of the United Kingdom of 63 millions is nine times that of Israel. In July 2006, to take one example entirely at random, Hezbollah crossed the border of Lebanon into Israel and killed 8 patrolmen and kidnapped 2 others, and that summer fired 4,000 Katyusha rockets into Israel which killed a further 43 civilians. Now, if we multiply those numbers by nine to get the British equivalent, just imagine what we would not do if a terrorist organization based as close as Calais were to fire 36,000 rockets into Sussex and Kent, killing 387 British civilians, after killing 72 British servicemen in an ambush and capturing a further eighteen? I put it to you that there is absolutely no lengths to which our Government would not go to protect British subjects under those circumstances, and quite right too. So why should Israel be expected to behave any differently?

There has hardly been a single year since Brigadier-General Deedes established AIA in 1949 when a speaker has not been able to say that Israel faced a crisis, and on some occasions – in 1956, 1967, 1973 and especially in the face of the present Iranian nuclear programme today – these were existential. At a time when Barrack Obama appears to be least pro-Israeli president since Eisenhower, the dangers are even more obvious. For there is simply no way that Obama will prevent Ahmadinejad, perhaps Jewry’s most viciously outspoken and dangerous foe since the death of Adolf Hitler, to acquire a nuclear Bomb.

None of us can pretend to know what lies ahead for Israel, but if she decides pre-emptively to strike against such a threat – in the same way that Nelson pre-emptively sank the Danish Fleet at Copenhagen and Churchill pre-emptively sank the Vichy Fleet at Oran – then she can expect nothing but condemnation from the British Foreign Office. She should ignore such criticism, because for all the fine work done by this Association over the past six decades - work that’s clearly needed as much now as ever before – Britain has only ever really been at best a fair-weather friend to Israel.

Although History does not repeat itself, it’s cadences do occasionally rhyme, and if the witness of History is testament to anything it is testament to this:
That in her hopes of averting the threat of a Second Holocaust, only Israel can be relied upon to act decisively in the best interests of the Jews.'

Anti-Semite from the PSC, another example of Britain's growing Anti-Semitism

A sad example of what is growing in Britain today. Anti-Semitism. Listen to what this idiot member of the PSC has to say about Jews in Britain. The PSC held a ‘Christmas Carol Service’ on 01 December at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church on Tuesday December 1st, starting at 6pm.

The carol concert featured Caryl Churchill, author of the anti-Semitic play Seven Jewish Children, which demonises Israel and suggests that Israeli parents teach their children to hate Arabs. The leader of the Church, Vicar Simon Perry disgracefully buys into the PSCs propaganda as can be seen he also features in this video. A demonstration was held at the Church by Israel supporters. The man John Sullivan and others from the PSC can be plainly seen along with their views. A typical example, of the alliance that exists between leftists and Islamists. I gave further examples of this dangerous alliance and the resulting anti-Semitism here:

http://amodernlibertarian.blogspot.com/2009/01/rally-for-hate-and-were-are-not-all.html

If You're a Former Serviceman or Servicewoman express your displeasure at the BNP here...

This is a superb website here. The BNP are seeking to hijack the good name of the British Forces. Numerous veterans and others are speaking out about this on the 'nothing British'website which I have linked to above. The BNP are on Question Time tonight on BBC 1, whatever you think of that I bet it will send Question time's ratings through the roof! I have little to say on the BNP. I don't like them, I consider them to have gained in popularity due in large part to NuLabour and EU policies but that is for another time. I'm heartened to note that the overwhelming majority of servicemen and veterans are opposed to them. For evidence of that look here. The BNP are racial supremacists and unless we make the Army like the Waffen SS we're going against history. For one thing if the Army was to follow BNP like policies and only allow 'white native Britons' to join, we would have missed out on some star recruits such as Talaiasi Labalaba (pictured),Johnson Beharry and of course the Gurkhas. More on Labalaba here. There is an ongoing campaign to get Labalaba's MID upgraded retrospectively to a VC. He only recieved a MID (mention in dispatches) in 1973 due to an official desire to keep the battle he fought in secret. I would like to quickly take this opportunity to wish all serving Gurkhas and others from the Commonwealth in HM Forces all the best. Your bravery is the best possible riposte to the BNP.

Whatever Happened to Global Warming?

The science is contradictory.






Interesting article from the BBC. I am one of those unusual people whose mind is not made up as to whether climate change is man made or not. This article whilst it is obviously not detailed enough to argue either case, does lay out each point of view. Good article and full text below:



This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998. But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise. So what on Earth is going on?


Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming. They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?
During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly. Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun. But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences. The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature. And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).


But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees. He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures. He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month. If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.


What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth's great heat stores. In the last few years [the Pacific Ocean] has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down. According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated. The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO). For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too. But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down. These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years. So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.


Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling." So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along. They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature. But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid.


The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new. In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models. In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling. What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.


To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years. Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers. But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself. So what can we expect in the next few years? Both sides have very different forecasts.
The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly. It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998). Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely. One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

Putin almost says sorry

Wielun, where the Luftwaffe 70 years ago

killed 1000 civilians in a portent

of what was to come.

Good article in the Times about the commemorations in Poland today marking the outbreak of the second world war. Well the commemoration is today if you're Polish, Friday if you're British or French. Americans can wait until December 2011. However if you're Chinese your seventieth commemorations should have started on September 18 2001. Anyway back to the Times, it seems in a relativist sort of way Putin has come close to apologising for the Soviet treatment of Poland and in particular the Soviet/Nazi pact of 1939 that set the stage for world war two. It's hardly surprising the Poles are not too keen on Vladimir's obfuscations. Whilst it has to be borne in mind that the Soviet Union was overwhelmingly responsible for the Nazi defeat, for those areas liberated by the USSR in '45 all it meant was Soviet and not Nazi tyranny. Still I shall not go on, I would just like to express my sympathies for all those who suffered as a consequence of this conflict. Also my admiration for those who fought to defeat Nazi terror.

PM requested bomber 'sensitivity' - Thanks for that Gordy!

This from the BBC is a complete non-story. As we are all aware Megrahi has been released to jubilant scenes in Libya, his homeland. Fortunately the BBC are now telling us that PM Brown requested of the Libyans that they show 'sensitivity' upon Megrahi's return. Well assuming that's true thanks PM well done! Now will you actually tell us what you think about this decision to release Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber? Also will there be an inquiry to establish exactly what happened to Pan Am 103? Who was responsible and which terror supporting regime orchestrated this attack? I ask because almost 21 years later people do still not know the full story. Sadly I fear the truth will die with Megrahi. This is a unsatisfying end to a sad and sordid story. Full text below.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown had asked Libya to "act with sensitivity" in its welcome for the returning Lockerbie bomber, it has emerged. He sent a letter to Colonel Gaddafi ahead of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi's release from Greenock Prison. Crowds in Tripoli, some waving Saltire flags, greeted the Libyan after he was freed on compassionate grounds.

Mr Brown has been urged by Tory leader David Cameron to make clear his view of the decision to release Megrahi. Downing Street confirmed the prime minister had asked Libya to show restraint on the return of the man convicted of killing 270 people in the 1988 atrocity. The celebratory welcome was subsequently described as "deeply distressing" by Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

It is curious that while others have commented, Britain's own prime minister has not said
David CameronConservative leader. Mr Brown has now been asked by Mr Cameron to state his opinion of the decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds. The Conservative leader has already said he believes Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill was wrong to free the Libyan. In a letter to Mr Brown, he said the fact that the Scottish Government made the decision did not preclude the prime minister from making a comment.

He wrote: "It is curious that, while others have commented, Britain's own prime minister has not. "I hope you will now take the opportunity to do so. Above all, I believe the public are entitled to know what you think of the decision to release Megrahi, and whether you consider it was right or wrong."
Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond said that the decision had been made "for the right reasons". The scenes which greeted the Lockerbie bomber's return have been widely criticised.
US President Barack Obama described the release as a "mistake" and said his administration had urged Libya not to give Megrahi a hero's welcome.

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond also said the reception was "inappropriate".
Dumfries Labour MP Russell Brown and Dumfriesshire Conservative MP David Mundell described the scenes as "stomach turning" and "sickening". It has also emerged that a visit to Libya by the Duke of York is being reconsidered following the welcome reserved for Megrahi. The Duke's spokesman said a trip to Libya in early September had been "in its planning stages". Terminal cancer He added: "We will continue to take advice from the Foreign Office as we do with all overseas royal visits."

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said she was unable to confirm the visit would be cancelled because an official invitation to the British Government from Libya had not yet been received.
However, it is believed the visit by the Duke, who is understood to have made several trips to Libya in recent years, is unlikely to go ahead. Lockerbie bomber Megrahi, who has terminal prostate cancer, was released from jail on Thursday on compassionate grounds and flew back to Libya.

He was convicted in 2001 of carrying out the 1988 atrocity in which 270 people were killed.
He dropped his appeal against conviction earlier this week. Scottish prosecutors at the Crown Office have now confirmed they have also dropped an appeal against his "unduly lenient" sentence.

Bonkers!- Avon and Somerset Police make Non-Muslim Female Officers were Hijab when Visiting Mosques.

All smiles at the Avon and Somerset
Police Madrassa sorry HQ




I really cannot comprehend this idea at all. It must have come straight out of left field, that left field being of course political correctness and amoral feeble leadership. I'll say this quickly in a secular democracy, secular law takes precedent over religious law and customs. It's actually a good idea by the way that was what the enlightenment was all about. I doubt however anyone in Avon and Somerset Police's management realise that of course, they're too busy with 'cultural relativity' or some similar way of eroding their own responsibilities. This panders to Islamic supremacism, i.e Non-Muslim laws and customs must make way for Sharia. According to the BBC 'The force says the move will help its officers respect Muslim religious customs while carrying out their job.' Great now are they going to respect other 'Muslim religious customs' as well such as child marriage or honour killings?



Muslims welcome police scarf move

The head scarves are designed to match the force's uniform
Avon and Somerset Police is issuing head coverings to its female officers so they can enter mosques. The force says the move will help its officers respect Muslim religious customs while carrying out their job. The garments, designed to match the force's uniform, were designed in consultation with Muslim groups. Imam Rashad Azami, of Bath, said: "This will go a long way in encouraging a trustful relationship between the police and the Muslim community."

Mr Azami, director of Bath Islamic Society, said: "The police have been working closely with the Muslim community in the area on many levels for the last few years."
There are two versions of the head coverings, to match the black of a police officer's uniform and the blue of the Police Community Support Officer uniforms. Both carry the force's crest.

PM appears to say 'We have enough helicopters in Afghanistan'- Why then Gordy are more being sent?

Whilst the debate rages on, he soldiers on...







One thing I regret about this blog is that I have not blogged enough about defence and the overseas operations being carried out supposedly to that end. However I cannot ignore the current morass in Afghanistan. Read the Telegraph article if only for the comments below it. What annoys me though is the continued double speak by our ruling politicians. Examples include saying 'we could send more helicopters'. Anyone get that I don't? Could or should? I mean we could send a P&O cross channel ferry for that matter. However we do need them. I don't believe that Afghanistan is a lost cause, however a lack of aerial mobility will render our troops very vulnerable. I can be convinced that defeating or at least containing the Taleban insurgency is best for the region. If only to prop up up the governments in Kabul and Islamabad. Besides if the Taleban emerge victorious a huge price will be paid for all. That said I wish both the UK and US governments had realised that much sooner. I'll conclude by copying the superb comment by 'JL' in the Telegraph:





'15 July: General Dannatt - we need more helicopters.


16 July: Brown - no you don't.


17 July: Jock Stirrup - we need more helicopters.


19 July: John Hutton - they need more helicopters.


20 July: Mandelson - no they don't.


21 July: Malloch-Brown - they need more helicopters.


22 July: Brown - no they don't.


22 July: Malloch-Brown - they have enough.


23 July: Rammell - we may send more helicopters......Meanwhile yet another soldier dies in Helmand.This has gone beyond farce. If we have to fight this war then fund and equip it properly. Otherwise get out.'





I could not agree more.











More men and helicopters 'could be sent to Afghanistan'- The Telegraph

Hundreds more troops could soon be sent to Afghanistan, a defence minister hinted yesterday.
Downing Street has already said that the 700 extra troops sent to Helmand temporarily for the operation to protect the integrity of next month’s elections will stay, probably to help to train Afghan troops. However, Bill Rammell, the Armed Forces Minister, hinted that the current total of 9,150 could be increased further as military chiefs call for up to 2,500 more soldiers on the ground.



Earlier Gordon Brown accepted the case for more helicopters in the region. In a change of tone, he acknowledged that more were required for the “general” Afghan mission and said that they were being ordered. He denied that a lack of helicopters was costing British lives after Lord Malloch-Brown, the Foreign Office Minister, appeared to back criticism that the British force was not properly equipped. Lord Malloch-Brown told The Daily Telegraph: “We definitely don’t have enough helicopters.” Under pressure from No 10, he later issued a clarification: “There are without doubt sufficient resources in place for current operations.”

The issue dominated the Prime Minister’s monthly press conference at which Mr Brown insisted: “For the operation we are doing at the moment we have the helicopters we need.” He also described as completely wrong any assertion that the recent loss of lives had been caused by an absence of helicopters. “More helicopters in general, yes,” he said. “That is why we are putting them into Afghanistan.” More Merlins would be there by the end of the year, more Chinooks next year, and numbers had increased by 60 per cent over two years, he said.



The remarks put the Prime Minister more in line with the approach taken by present and former British commanders, who have been calling for more help to tackle the Taleban.
Earlier, on a visit to Salisbury Plain where he met troops preparing to deploy to Afghanistan, Mr Rammell confirmed that a review of troop numbers there would take place after the Afghan elections. Asked if he would meet the desire of military chiefs who have asked for an additional 2,000 to 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, the minister said: “This is a Government that does listen to the advice that it gets from the service chiefs. That is why we increased the numbers from 5,500 to 9,000.” He added that the figure was kept under review.



General Sir Richard Dannatt, who will be replaced in August by General Sir David Richards as head of the Army, said last week that he wanted more “boots on the ground”, regardless of whether they were British, US or Afghan. Additional British troops are ready to head out to the front line if called upon. Brigadier James Cowan, commander of 11 Light Brigade, the next brigade to deploy to Afghanistan in the autumn, said: “It is up to ministers to decide. I will make do with what I am given. I am a practical man.”



Elsewhere, the Government’s insistence that it has provided enough equipment was questioned by the former commander of British troops in Helmand, who said that the military effort in Afghanistan was “insufficiently resourced” to counter a widespread insurgency. Brigadier Ed Butler, a retired officer, told The World at One on Radio 4: “What is [Mr Brown] defining as the mission at hand? He may be referring to Operation Panther’s Claw but I think the wider campaign in Afghanistan, and this has been the case from the early days, has been insufficiently resourced to undertake a proper counter-insurgency.”

Back soon with my own ideas for defence in the 21st Century.

Ban Paintball??

Time out for this activity in Germany?
He may look wacky but he should be allowed to play his corner.


It would appear that the Federal Government in Germany is considering banning paintball. Why? Well after a disturbed individual called Tim Kretcshmer went on a rampage in March with his father's registered pistol, the authorities are seeking to clampdown. There is nothing new about this phenomenon at all. The UK has seen this several times. After Michael Ryan using a Kalashnikov and pistols embarked on a murder spree in Hungerford in 1987, the UK government imposed a ban on self loading rifles.





The following decade after another appalling crime the UK government banned hand guns. This latter ban was after a successful campaign, the snowdrops campaign that garnered much public support. The problems I have with groups like the snowdrops campaigners, is their arguments are emotional rather than practical. I am fully in favour of law abiding citizens having a right to own firearms. True enough both Dunblane and Hungerford were committed by madmen with legally owned guns. However the easy response is excessive statism and draconian legislation fuelled by hysteria and moral panic. There are other factors worth considering. Hamilton the mass murderer in Dunblane was under police investigation and had been the subject of several complaints. His licence should have been suspended by the police under the then existing laws.





Where have these laws left us? Quite simply the only people in the UK at the moment with possession of firearms are either criminals or police. The criminals of course face legal sanction if caught but they tend to regard that as par the course anyway. If you live in a rural area and someone tries to break in to cause you harm your only option is to become a victim of crime. These laws do not and have not made us any safer in that regard. As to the police well of course their firearms units are reasonably (although not especially) well trained. But they carry a huge and unnecessary burden. They are the public's sole guardian, the only people with any legal or practical means of disrupting violent crime against the individual. No wonder they make mistakes. Secondly have the laws worked and prevented gun crime? Have a guess what the answer to that one is? The simple truth is that gun crime has increased fourfold in spite of the UK having the most restrictive laws concerning firearms in the world. The laws passed by the Tories in 1987 and New Labour in 1997, have only acted against the law abiding citizen and keep no one safe.





Back to Germany then and Kretschmer. Kretschmer had been treated for mental illness according to the report by the BBC. He did not in fact posses a firearms licence. Secondly he did not it seems actually play paintball either! He was a loner and disturbed. Yet if the German government thinks that banning a sport that yes may be militaristic or plane wacky will keep anyone safe they are wrong. Just look to the UK for an example of how these laws don't actually achieve anything other than the appeasement of the morally outraged. I fully understand how many people reading this may think things like 'well isn't paintball weird anyhow' or even 'well why would someone want to own a gun anyway?' However when the governments curb these activities we see a disturbing shift in power from the individual to the state that I really do not like. I strongly welcome debate on this topic and views from abroad in places like the USA in particular.

Arabella Dorman's Evocative Iraq artwork

Down time




Too much too young perhaps



Arabella spent time in Iraq attached to the British Army as an artist in Basra. It's worth pointing out however she was not an 'official artist'. She captures the mood of soldiers and Iraqis alike at different moments. Frequently she depicts moments of 'down time' and here she brilliantly portrays the intimacies and camaraderie of service life. Her images can be viewed here. They also form part of an exhibition at the Frost and Reed Gallery, St James, London on 12-30 May. Well worth a visit her work does not just cover Iraq but other caricatures. Ring the Frost and Reed Gallery on 0207 839 4645.

'Not in my name'- The Hypocrisy of the anti-Israeli Left by Chas Newkey-Burden

This article is one I have just chanced upon. However it is a brilliant riposte to the position of those on the anti-Semitic left. Also it highlights the moral hypocrisy of those who constantly criticise Israel yet do not make a squeak about the behaviour of Islamists and the Arab states. I need not say any more, Chas in his article below has brilliantly articulated the arguments in favour of Israel and the hypocrisies of those that berate it.

Not in my name: Israel Chapter

This is an extract from Not In My Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy, written by Chas Newkey-Burden and Julie Burchill, and published by Virgin Books.
This chapter was written by Chas Newkey-Burden.

‘When my father was a little boy in Poland, the streets of Europe were covered with graffiti, “Jews, go back to Palestine,” or sometimes worse: “Dirty Yids, piss off to Palestine.” When my father revisited Europe fifty years later, the walls were covered with new graffiti, “Jews, get out of Palestine.”’ - Israeli author Amos Oz.

Everyone knows the proverb of the three wise monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. As shown throughout this book, the modern hypocrite can be very skilled indeed at seeing and hearing no evil. When women are stoned to death in Arab states, when gay men are brutalised in Caribbean countries, the hypocrites’ ability to cover their ears and look the other way is remarkable.

However, the triumvirate cannot be completed for when it comes to the state of Israel the modern hypocrite just cannot stop speaking evil. They will fail to condemn – and sometimes actually support - terrorists who blow up school buses and pizza parlours. They will march hand in hand with people who – quite literally – fundamentally disagree with every basic political principle they claim to hold dear. They will openly question whether Israel even has the right to exist. And all along the way, they will show themselves to be devastating hypocrites.
The anti-Israel brigade would have us believe that the motivation for this vitriolic hatred of Israel is a genuine, compassionate concern for the fate of the Palestinian people. But do they really care about the Palestinians, or is their compassion somewhat selective, to put it politely? In reality, are they only interested in Palestinian suffering for as long as it gives them an opportunity to bash Israel?

This hypocrisy is not entirely modern. When the West Bank and the Gaza strip were occupied by Jordan and Egypt, those occupations of ‘Palestinian land’ drew not a whimper of protest from the people who spat blood at the ‘occupation’ of those territories by Israel. When Jordan killed thousands of Palestinians and drove just as many of them from their refugee camps into Lebanon, Israel-bashers saw nothing wrong with that at all. Neither did they take issue with Kuwait when it deported Palestinians in the aftermath of the 1991 Iraq war. Why were they silent in all these cases? Because none of them gave them a chance to bash Israel, of course.
Well established as this hypocrisy is, in the 21st century it has well and truly taken root as ‘supporting’ the Palestinians had become achingly fashionable. So when Hamas-sparked violence led to Palestinian students at a West Bank university being brutally beaten and shot by their own people, the Westerners who claim to support the Palestinians raised not a single word of protest or concern. Likewise, when Palestinian women are stabbed to death in “honour killings” across the West Bank and Gaza Strip, no anti-Israel Westerners lose a single moment’s sleep on their behalf.

Likewise, when Palestinian children are hospitalised after being caught in the crossfire of fighting between rival Palestinian factions, there is not a word of condemnation from the West. When Palestinian children are deliberately forced into the line of fire by their own people, where is the concern from those in the West who claim to be their biggest supporters? When terrorists are found to be hiding hand grenades in the cradles where Palestinian babies sleep, where is the outrage? If Israel is accused of torturing Palestinian terror suspects, the hypocrite is indignantly up-in-arms in protest without establishing a single fact but when Palestinians suspected of collaborating are proven to be brutally tortured – sometimes to death - by members of Islamic Jihad, again the silence is deafening.

Similarly, if these people are truly concerned about the Palestinians, then where are their words of praise for Israel when it flings open its hospital doors to them? Just one example: in May 2007 an eight-day-old baby from the Gaza Strip that was suffering with congenital heart complications was treated in a hospital in Israel. An Israeli Magen David Adom ambulance drove into the Gaza Strip, dodging Qassam rockets that were headed for Israel and collected the child for treatment at the Sheba Medical Center in Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. Such cases are far from rare. But I’ve never heard a word of praise for these treatments from any of those in the West who claim to be concerned over the fate of the Palestinians. It’s the same with the refugee question. The heartbreak that the hypocrite feels for Palestinian refugees is only expressed in the context of slamming Israel. When it’s pointed out to them that the Arab world has done precious little to help the refugees, their interest dwindles. And what of the hundreds and thousands of Jewish refugees who were deported from Arab states? They’ve never received any compensation – as Palestinian refugees have from Israel – and no Westerner has ever cried them self to sleep on their behalf.

Any action taken by Israel to deal with Palestinian terrorists is met with abuse and distortion. The case of Jenin was typical. Following scores of suicide bombings organised from within the Jenin refugee camp, Israel entered the camp in search of the terrorists. As the fighting ended the media leapt into action to demonise Israel’s action. The Guardian described Israel’s actions as “every bit as repellent” as the 9/11 attacks. The Evening Standard cried: “We are talking here of massacre, and a cover-up, of genocide.” The Independent spoke of a “war crime” and The Times claimed there were “mass graves”. The head of the United Nations Refugee Agency was quickly out of the traps to describe the affair as a “human rights catastrophe that has few parallels in recent history”. The EU was nor far behind in its condemnation.

Let’s examine the facts of this massacre, this genocide. In total 75 people died at Jenin. 23 of these were Israeli soldiers and 52 were Palestinians, almost all of them combatants. By even the most hysterical, loaded standards of language this does not constitute genocide, nor anything of the sort. Indeed, the Palestinian death toll would have been much higher – and the Israeli death toll non-existent - had Israel simply bombed the camp from the air. Instead, to avoid civilian casualties, Israel put their own soldiers at risk, sending them in on foot to search through booby-trapped homes.

When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon next visited Israeli troops, one of them asked him: “Why didn’t we bomb the terrorists from the air? That operation cost the lives of more than 20 of our comrades!” Sharon replied: “That is the painful and inevitable price that those who refuse to abandon their humanity have to pay.” In return for paying the painful price of eschewing air attacks, Sharon and the brave Israeli soldiers who entered a terrorist camp on foot were accused of genocide and massacre and spoken of in the same terms as the 9/11 terrorists.
However, the hypocrisy doesn’t end there. In 2007, another Palestinian camp, which had become swamped with suicide bombers, was attacked. This time, the gloves came off. The camp was surrounded by tanks and artillery that fired indiscriminately at the inhabitants. Snipers backed up this fire. The camp’s water and electricity supplies were cut off. Thousands of innocent Palestinians were forced to flee but not before at least 18 had been killed and dozens injured. The camp itself was reduced to rubble. Ultimately, the fighting killed more than 300 people and forced nearly 40,000 Palestinian refugees to flee.

This time, there was next to no coverage in the British media. There was no talk of genocide or massacre. Rather than condemning the attack, the EU and UN were quick to express their support to the army. Even the Arab League came out in support. So what had changed? You guessed it, this time the army dealing with the camp was not the Israeli army but the Lebanese army. How terrifyingly revealing this is of the hypocrisy of those who claim to care about fate of the Palestinians.

During the fighting, tanks and artillery had also fired at residential areas of Lebanon and civilians were inevitably caught in the crossfire. Just months earlier, the anti-war brigade has been marching through the streets of London to express their concern for the people of Lebanon who were caught in the crossfire of Israel’s fighting with Hezbollah. Strangely, the marchers couldn’t get off their self-righteous backsides when Lebanese civilians were being shot at by Islamic groups: this time, the people of Lebanon could go to hell as far as they were concerned.
How different it had been in the summer of 2006. “We are all Hezbollah now,” the modern hypocrites had chanted as they marched in fury against Israel’s latest battle for survival, as the rockets of that terror group were raining down on its cities and kibbutzim. If “Not In My Name” was an embarrassing slogan, then “We are all Hezbollah now” was little short of insane. How could these marchers, who say they oppose misogyny, tyranny, homophobia and genocide, march in support of an organisation which fanatically and brutally promotes all those things?

Because they’re hypocrites, of course, and because their frenzied hatred of Israel has utterly stupefied them. It was embarrassing for them, therefore, when Hezbollah’s leader Hasan Nasrallah told them: “We don’t want anything from you. We just want to eliminate you.” As Martin Amis neatly put it, these demonstrators were “up the arse of the people that want them dead”.

But what were they doing up there? Many no doubt believed that during the war they were backing the little guy of Hezbollah against the big guy of Israel. The truth was somewhat different, though. Hezbollah was no little guy, it was backed by millions of pounds of Iranian and Syrian money. Neither were the two sides of the conflict as clear-cut as they believed. The Israeli Arabs of Haifa spent much of the summer sitting in bunkers to avoid being killed by Hezbollah rockets. Many of these Arabs cheered on the Israeli army throughout the campaign.
imilarly, Ethiopian Jews who Israel had previously bravely airlifted from oppression and starvation were particularly badly hit in Tiberias. How incredible that back in England, many of the groups whose members wear white Make Poverty History wristbands and campaign on Third World debt were willing to cheer as Ethiopians were bombed by Hezbollah.

So no, Israel was not necessarily the Goliath of the conflict. How could a nation the size of Wales, surrounded by millions who want it wiped off the map be a Goliath? However, the courage shown by its soldiers was immense. Lt Colonel Roe Klein was marching at the head of a unit of troops when a Hezbollah man threw a hand grenade at them. Lt Klein jumped on top of the grenade to save his troops, losing his life in the process. Meanwhile, Hezbollah were employing the standard cowardly tactic of hiding among women and children, with wheelchair-bound people a particular favourite. Throughout Israel, the population showed itself to be as brave and humanitarian as ever. Newspapers were full of classified advertisements in which families offered to house those from the north of the country who were under Hezbollah fire. Ultra-Orthodox Jews took in secular Jews, people living in small flats flung open their doors to large families with pets. The blitz spirit also saw youngsters from the big cities like Jerusalem and Tel Aviv organise treats for Arab children from Galilee.

The government arranged for celebrities to visit the bunker-ridden population of the north and even flew in a gay porn star to cheer up gay Israeli troops. As Hezbollah’s rockets rained down over northern Israel, weddings in the region had to be cancelled. So cinema producer Eliman Bardugo organised for those affected to have the chance to be married en masse on the beach in Tel Aviv. Some 50 couples took him up on the offer.
Meanwhile, in London, left-wing people took to the streets to cheer on Hezbollah as it butchered Israeli people. As, for instance, a Hezbollah rocket hit a kibbutz and killed 12 people including an ultra-orthodox Jew who was sitting next to a hippy with pierced ears. The more of these incidents happened, the further the marchers climbed up the arses of the people who wanted them dead.

It would have been familiar territory for many of them. When I went to see the play My Name Is Rachel Corrie in London’s West End, I had sat in an audience littered with white English men and women wearing keffiyeh scarves and some wearing Hamas badges. I see these people – and the marching Hezbollah-wannabes – as terror groupies, a sort of left-wing equivalent of the little boys who play army in playgrounds across England. But these are adults so they really should know better.

I’m not sure the terror groupies look the other way on the topic of Palestinian terrorism. They seem – sorry to say – almost turned-on by it. You surely can’t, after all, overlook something as big as the blowing up of buses or pizza parlours. There is no ‘bigger picture’ regarding people who do that. And why would you appropriate the uniform of the man who backed all that terrorism unless you actively had, well, a bit of a thing for him? For much of the audience, the play about Rachel Corrie must have been a gleefully pornographic experience. They say a picture is worth a thousand words but sometimes a picture can be worth far more than that. There are more than a thousand words in the play, about Corrie, the young US activist who accidentally died during an anti-Israel protest in Gaza in 2003. But none of them shed light on the now-canonised Corrie as much as a photograph taken of her by the Associated Press a month before her death. She was snapped burning an American flag and whipping up the crowd at a pro-Hamas rally.

Naturally, there is no mention of this photograph in the play. Neither is it mentioned that thanks in part to demonstrations of the International Solidarity Movement with who Corrie travelled to the Middle East, the Israel Defence Force was prevented from blocking the passage of weapons which were later shown to have been used to kill Israeli children in southern Israel.
Instead, the play is full of naïve anti-Israel propaganda from the mouth of Corrie. “The vast majority of Palestinians right now, as far as I can tell, are engaging in Gandhian non-violent resistance,” she wrote in 2003 as Palestinian suicide bombs were slaughtering Israelis. Lest we forget who the real star of the story is, towards the end of the play Corrie writes: “When I come back from Palestine I probably will have nightmares and constantly feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into more work.” We’re back in self-indulgence territory, aren’t we? Not in my name. My name is Rachel Corrie. We’re all Hezbollah now. Thousands are dying but it’s all about me. The hypocrisy of the audience was depressing. I wonder if any of were even aware that Hamas had danced over Corrie’s grave when she died? To the Palestinians, a dead young American girl was a wonderful publicity coup. Had any of the audience travelled to the Middle East in a Corriesque trip of self-indulgence, the Palestinians would have crossed their fingers in the hope they too died.

As I say, the modern hypocrite is delighted to overlook misogyny, homophobia and brutal clampdowns on all manner of person freedoms in Arab states and the other side of this coin of hypocritical currency is the way they simultaneously overlook the extraordinarily positive record Israel has on such issues. Take the case of Golda Meir, Israel’s first female Prime Minister who took the top job in 1969, just 21 years into the country’s existence and a full decade before England had our first female Prime Minister. In some Arab states, women are not allowed to go to school. In Israel they can become the most powerful person in the country.
Meir herself was well aware of this spectacular contrast. In 1948, when she was a negotiator with the Jewish Agency, she set off on a secret mission to meet King Abdullah of Transjordan. The meeting was secret so she travelled with the Agency’s Arab expert Ezra Danin and posed as his wife. She recalled: “I would travel in the traditional dark and voluminous robes of an Arab woman. I spoke no Arabic at all but as a Moslem wife accompanying her husband it was most unlikely that I would be called upon to say anything to anyone.” How hypocritical it is of those left-wingers in the West that they can hate a country with tales such as these throughout its history.

It’s just the same with gay issues. Left-wingers who say they passionately believe in gay rights manage to put that passion aside when it comes to their view of the only country in the Middle East with a positive record on the issue. A wonderfully positive record, in fact. In 2006, within days of the country’s fighting with Hezbollah ending, I flew to Israel to research a feature on gay life in the Holy Land. Before leaving, I’d been warned by anti-Israel Westerners to expect to find a very homophobic country. Had any of them bothered to visit Israel, they’d have discovered it’s nothing of the sort. Workplace discrimination against gay people is outlawed; the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) has openly gay members; in schools, teenagers learn about the difficulties of being gay and the importance of treating all sexualities equally. The Israel Defence Force has dozens of openly gay officers who, like all gay soldiers in its ranks, are treated equally by order of the government.

The Supreme Court has ruled that gay couples are eligible for spousal and widower benefits. The country has gay football teams. Most mainstream television dramas in Israel regularly feature gay storylines. When transsexual Dana International won the 1998 Eurovision Song Contest as Israel’s representative, 80 per cent of polled Israelis called her “an appropriate representative of Israel”. These facts are there for all to see but it is only on visiting Israel that you discover how happily the different sections of the society coexist. I interviewed a gay Israeli man on Tel Aviv’s “Hilton beach” – it is opposite the Hilton hotel – which is also known as the “gay beach”, where men openly check each other out and pick each other up. It is neighboured by the city’s religious beach which has separate bathing days for men and women. And all this is just yards from Tel Aviv’s Independence Park, which is the main gay cruising area in Tel Aviv. The cruising park in Jerusalem has the same name.

Elsewhere in Tel Aviv is the House of Freedom. Opened in the late 1990s, this is a shelter for gay, lesbian and transgender youngsters between the ages of 12 and 18 who have been thrown out of home after coming out to their parents. At the House they are counselled by social workers who then visit the parents and attempt to bring about reconciliation. Those attempts are often successful, each year hundreds of gay youngsters return to a better home thanks to this remarkable institution. And everywhere you go in the city, gay men walk hand in hand more openly that they even would in London’s Soho. It is staggering that Western left-wingers who claim to believe in gay rights can be so furiously opposed to tolerant Israel. The tolerance is not confined to Tel Aviv, either. When some in Jerusalem opposed the staging of the gay pride parade in the capital in 2007, the media presented a city on the brink of civil war. I happened to be in Jerusalem that week – though I didn’t attend the parade – and I witnessed no unrest. Perhaps the strongest opposition I witnessed to the parade came from a taxi driver. I asked him what he thought about the parade and he sighed deeply before saying: “Oh it was terrible for the traffic.” He was right, too!

By hating Israel, the pro-gay-rights left are not just proving to be hypocritical, they are also endangering the one hope that gay Palestinians have. The leading gay rights organisation in Israel organises Arabic gay evenings where gay Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza strip are invited to come and party with Israelis – and many take up the invitation. “We are their only hope,” says one of the organisers. “If they came out where they live, they would be killed but they can come and party with us in Israel.” As has been documented by human rights groups, gay Palestinians are routinely tortured and murdered by their own people. They often flee to the safety of Israel.

The attraction that Israel should hold for believers in the rainbow alliance doesn’t end with its record on women and gay men. I remember on a road trip from the Dead Sea to Tel Aviv marvelling at a quartet of an ultra-orthodox Jew, an Arab, a uniformed Israeli soldier and a mini-skirt wearing girl in her late teens all engaging in friendly chit-chat as they waited for some traffic lights to change. Such sights are far from uncommon as Israel is home to one of the planet’s most diverse people: dreadlocked Ethiopians, and their fellow Africans from Yemen, Egypt and Morocco exist alongside people from Iraq, Iran, Russian and Latin America. Then there are Asians from the Far East and Israeli Arabs, the latter group enjoying more personal freedoms in Israel than they would in any Arab state.

My experiences in Israel might seem surprising to the reader who hasn’t been there – particularly given the predominance of reports casting the country as a villainous, apartheid state. There exists a peculiar unwillingness to accept good news from Israel, which contrasts with the way that paradigm-shifting reports on ‘The hidden modernity of Tehran’ are welcomed with open arms. When I attempted to include the scene that I had witnessed at the traffic lights in a magazine feature I wrote about the research trip to Israel, I had to go through an exasperating discussion with the commissioning editor. He didn’t seem to know that Israeli Arabs exist and insisted that the scene I described couldn’t have occurred. He’d never been to Israel but was quite sure that he was right and I was wrong.

He was in good company in his blissful ignorance. Within hours of my return from the trip, I received a call from a journalist acquaintance who asked me with genuine shock: “What’s all this about you going to Israel?” He said that a mutual journalist acquaintance of ours was “absolutely disgusted” with me for going there and that he hoped I was “going to put the boot in” when I wrote my articles. These were not close acquaintances, I hadn’t even spoken to one of them for nearly nine years and it must have taken them some digging around to find my new telephone number. They obviously thought it was worth the trouble to have a dig at a writer who was friendly to Israel. Apparently the “absolutely disgusted” man – a weekly columnist on a high-profile magazine - has since tried to get an article published that claims that Tony Blair murdered Yasser Arafat.

The editor of another magazine once told me I was not allowed to write that Yasser Arafat turned down Ehud Barak’s offer at Camp David in 2000. I asked why and he replied “because of a need for balance.” I pointed out that nobody, including Arafat, has ever disputed that he rejected Barak’s offer and the editor replied: “Well, I don’t know about that but you still can’t write it.” The article in question was an “opinion” piece and taking sides was the order of the day each week in that column. Not if the article was about Israel, it seemed. Get this for hypocrisy, though: the same magazine had happily published articles accusing Israel of “war crimes” and carried advertising accusing Israel of apartheid policies. Clearly, the need for balance is relative.
Not that there was much balance in the motion the National Union Of Journalists passed in 2007 to boycott Israel. As a writer I felt shame and despair at this motion. Those emotions of shame and despair were not joined by shock, though, because much of the British media has long been absorbed by a blind hatred of Israel.

Broadsheet newspapers print editorials that are so biased and distorted that Osama Bin Laden would probably blush at them and say: “Steady on! We can’t print that!” The BBC refuses to describe suicide bombers who blow up buses full of Israeli schoolchildren as “terrorists” even though it has used that term to describe bombers in London, Iraq and Indonesia. One of its correspondents told a Hamas rally that he and his colleagues were “waging the campaign shoulder-to-shoulder with the Palestinian people”.

Why did the NUJ choose Israel for a boycott? The country has an entirely free press. If the NUJ wanted to boycott a country, then Russia, China, Zimbabwe and Pakistan would have been more sensible options, given their record on press freedom. The timing, too, was ridiculous. Shortly before the motion was passed, BBC journalist Alan Johnston was kidnapped by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. So why did the NUJ respond to this by boycotting Israel?

The coverage of the Alan Johnston case was riddled with hypocrisy. Every day, the BBC devoted acres of space to the story. Yet the BBC largely ignored the plight of young Israeli soldiers who were kidnapped by Palestinians. Indeed, the BBC refuses to even use the term “kidnap” in relation to the snatching of teenager Corporal Gilad Shalit, preferring to say he was “captured”. I was in Israel during Johnston’s captivity and had a conversation about his case with an Arab from the West Bank. He said: “I’m surprised that they took someone from the BBC. Everyone knows the BBC is totally biased for the Palestinians. I bet they’re not so for the Palestinians now, though!” When I told him that the BBC was just as pro-Palestinian as ever, he raised his eyes to the heavens. “That’s strange,” he said.
True. But then Auntie Beeb has long shown its true colours on the conflict. A 2007 a leaked internal BBC memo written by Bowen blamed Israel for all the woes of the Gaza Strip, despite the fact that Israel had withdrawn two years earlier from Gaza!

Hmm, what we need is a man who can effortlessly show these BBC buffoons just how hypocritical they are. Step forward and take a bow Benjamin Netanyahu, former Prime Minister of Israel and all-round hero of both myself and my co-author. He was interviewed on the BBC during the 2006 Hezbollah conflict and made mince meat of his quizzer:

Interviewer: “How come so many more Lebanese have been killed in this conflict than Israelis?”
Netanyahu: “Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?”

Interviewer: “Why not?”

Netanyahu: “Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the war was caused by Germany’s aggression. And in response to the German blitz on London, the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden, burning to death more German civilians than the number of people killed in Hiroshima.

“Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the RAF tried to bomb the Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen, some of the bombs missed their target and fell on a Danish children’s hospital, killing 83 little children.

“Perhaps you have another question?”
Perhaps indeed! Perhaps the academics who chose to boycott Israel at the same time as the NUJ might have asked themselves some questions too. In 2007, they voted to boycott Israeli academic institutions in a protest supposedly on behalf of the Palestinians. Meanwhile, back in the real world a young Jordanian-Palestinian woman, was graduating with a Masters degree from Ben Gurion University in Israel. Dana Rassas was trained by the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura in the Negev, and then went on to study the Israeli water desalination program at the Albert Katz International School for Desert Studies at Ben Gurion University. As a result of her studies in Israel, Rassas is now helping to solve Jordan’s water problems. If they boycotters had their way, she’d never have had any of these chances.
To take a wider view, why is it that so many people who cling to the notion of human rights when considering the plight of the Palestinians couldn’t give a hoot about other groups around the world like the Tibetans, the Kurds, the Armenians and the Chechens?

Is it because these groups didn’t have the fortune of being in dispute with Jewish people? Either way, it is indisputable that the incessant focus of the human rights movement on the actions of Israel has allowed genuinely horrific human rights abuses in other parts of the world to go unnoticed.As we keep seeing, whatever it does Israel cannot win and so we end up returning to the graffiti seen by Amos Oz’s father in Poland. First: go back to Palestine, then: get out of Palestine. Anti-semitism has always been dominated by contradictions. The Jews have been attacked for being both communist schemers and capitalists plotting to take over the world. They can’t stop sticking their noses into others’ business yet they also must be attacked for keeping themselves to themselves. They were taunted for being too weak when the Germans tried to eliminate them from the face of the earth and are now slammed for being too strong when the Arabs try the same trick.
Ironically, for all the attention and criticism that Western hypocrites throw at Israel, the biggest questioners of the state and its actions are Israelis themselves. Israel’s Supreme Court is a thorn in the side of the government and army and frequently overrules both. It regularly examines petitions brought by Palestinian people and rules in their favour. Many of its judgements have restricted the options open to the army and in passing them, the Court has acknowledged that its rulings will cause Israeli loss of life but insisted that such steps are needed in the interests of humanity.

When terrorist leaders who have arranged the slaughter of Israeli people are killed by the Israel Defence Force, there is no cheering in the street as is seen among Palestinians when another school bus is blown up by a suicide bomber, a favourite tactic of there’s as seen in November 2000. Instead, commissions of inquiry are set up to examine whether the elimination of these men who wanted to blow murder their children was ethical and correct. On and on it goes, this relentless self-examination by a country that has faced abuse, distortion and calls for its destruction since the very minute it was established in 1948.

But then that’s the thing about Israel: strong, plucky, moral, deeply self-critical yet determinedly happy and upbeat, it is everything the modern hypocrite is not. I love it.
Not In My Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy, written by Chas Newkey-Burden and Julie Burchill, is published by Virgin Books.

30 Years ago on this day..

Maggie at the gates of Number 10

(on a side note can you see how close the press got in those days?)


I think Blue is definitely the right colour for this post. 30 years ago today Margaret Thatcher assumed the premiership of the UK. Her extraordinary leadership bought both pain and progress for the country. Good articles from both the BBC and the Daily Telegraph outline her legacy. Text from the Telegraph below but I strongly urge readers to check out the BBC link above the slide show in that article is a good one.




















Margaret Thatcher's tumultuous premiership





Margaret Thatcher stood on the steps of 10 Downing Street on that fateful day, May 4 1979, beaming and waving at the cheering crowds, but looking isolated and vulnerable.

Last Updated: 11:26AM BST 04 May 2009

Margaret Thatcher on the doorstep of No 10, with John Sergeant on the left Photo: PA
Was she the right person, people were asking, to tackle a Britain which was bedevilled by strikes and cursed by bullying trade union bosses who seemed to exert more power even than the Cabinets of Labour governments which preceded her administration?
How wrong her critics, with their patronising remarks, proved to be. For Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Britain's first woman prime minister, was about to embark on what was undeniably the most tumultuous peacetime premiership of the 20th century.

She unprecedentedly won three elections in a row, during a period of Tory rule which kept Labour out of office for 18 years. And she would almost certainly have won a fourth election had she not, in 1990, been "betrayed" - to use her own word - by colleagues who brought about her downfall after 11 years in power. Now, 30 years on, the passage of time has not tempered one jot the feelings people still have about her. Her political enemies to this day regard her as little short of diabolical, while her supporters still refer to her in almost beatific terms. It is seemingly impossible to have luke-warm views about Margaret Thatcher. That is a mark of the impact she had made not only on this country but around the world as well. She fought a brilliant campaign in 1979. Her remark that she understood how to manage a household budget and was equipped, therefore, to run the country prudently, was a stroke of genius.





At one point during the campaign she unwisely agreed to pick up a grubby and struggling calf at the behest of photographers. Her husband Denis, shouted out: "Put the bloody thing down, dear. You'll kill it." The beast expired on the following day. The Tories won that 1979 general election, in the wake of the disastrous Winter of Discontent, with a comfortable majority in the Commons of more than 40. Mrs Thatcher famously stood in Downing Street quoting what was said to be St Francis of Assisi: "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony... where there is despair, may we bring hope." In fact, some say the words are more likely Victorian.





She went inside to pick her new Cabinet, saying: "I feel an aura of calm." But there was nothing calm about the next 11 years: she transformed the derided so-called "sick man of Europe" into a robust, world economic power again. She tamed the trade unions, effectively emasculating the union leaders and handing them back to their members, as she put it. She responded to the Argentine invasion of the Falklands by doing what nobody believed she dared to do, sending a majestic task force 8,000 miles into the southern hemisphere, and driving the invaders off the islands.





She took on Arthur Scargill and defeated the miners after a year-long bitter struggle.
She ended the 13-year rebellion against the Crown in Rhodesia.
In 1984 she narrowly survived an IRA attack on the Grand Hotel, Brighton, saying two days later: "This was the day I was not meant to see." And she abolished the Greater London Council and other metropolitan authorities. Margaret Thatcher, who never promoted a woman from the Commons into her Cabinet, had complete control over her ministers. "I don't mind how much my ministers talk, as long as they do what I say," she said.





She strode the world like a colossus, opening up an entirely new relationship with the Kremlin - "I can do business with this man," she said of Mikhail Gorbachev - and she struck up an intense political relationship with Ronald Reagan, the US President. And she treated many European leaders and bureaucrats with what some people described as contempt and what her arch-enemy Edward Heath called "foghorn diplomacy". Brussels Eurocrats often visibly cowered before her handbagging tirades.





And she went on to defeat Labour, under the feeble leadership of Michael Foot in 1983, and in 1987 routed Labour again with Neil Kinnock at the helm. Even her political adversaries admired her for her conviction rather than consensus politics, and her "lady's not for turning" utter refusal to be budged off course. Left-winger Tony Benn once said he preferred her style of leadership to what he regarded as the fudged style of Neil Kinnock.
But her reign did not end as triumphantly as she would have wished. It juddered uncomfortably to a halt.





By the time she had been in power for 10 years, some Tory MPs started to mutter that she had been there long enough. And she was seriously weakened by a leadership battle with a barely known and insignificant Tory back-bencher stalking horse Sir Anthony Meyer.
She beat him easily but 60 MPs had either voted for Meyer or abstained - a hugely damaging blow to her authority.





Events followed thick and fast. Nigel Lawson (described by Thatcher as "unassailable") had already resigned a few days earlier. Sir Geoffrey Howe resigned from the Government and delivered a devastating Commons attack on the Prime Minister which shook her to the core.
Michael Heseltine, who had stormed out of the Cabinet in a rage over the Westland Helicopters affair three years earlier, announced he would challenge her for the leadership.
And on the day of that election she foolishly, some would say, attended a meaningless summit in Paris when her supporters thought her time would be more profitably spent at Westminster drumming up votes. She won, but not by a sufficient margin to avoid a second ballot.
Thatcher appeared on the steps of the British Embassy in Paris, looking shaken but boldly saying: "I fight on. I fight to win."





But on her return, her Cabinet colleagues, one by one, warned her that defeat stared her in the face if she did fight on. Reluctantly she announced she would quit and days later she left Downing Street for the last time, in tears. Feminists had applauded her arrival in Downing Street, but that degenerated into disappointment and even rancour. To this day they complain that she did nothing for women. At one point Thatcher said: "I owe nothing to Women's Lib."
But her premiership was not all sound and fury. She loved children and adored her grandson Michael.





One bitterly cold day in Beijing, scores of tiny children had turned out to parade in her honour. They were shivering and dressed in the flimsiest of clothing. Thatcher took on the might of the Chinese army and won. She approached a gold-braided officer and effectively told him: "Either you give these children some warm clothes or I go home." The officer cowered and complied.
She once attended a children's party at Westminster, urging them to eat up their sausages and baked beans. A year later, one parent said to his small daughter: "Would you like to go to that party in the House of Commons again this year?" The youngster replied: "Yes, but only if that nice dinner lady is there... "
At one stage, the current Tory leadership appeared to be trying to distance itself from her. David Cameron astonishingly once refused an opportunity to have his photograph taken with her - although she had agreed.
But he quickly realised that that attitude was unwise, to say the least. Margaret Thatcher, after all these years, remains an honoured figure in Tory politics and no doubt will remain so for years to come.
But perhaps her greatest misjudgment came early in her political career when she said: "There won't be a woman Prime Minister in my lifetime."