Melanie Phillips: "Why are the Left (and the BBC) so keen to promote this ghoulish culture of death?"

From the London Daily Mail Online

The gathering pressure to adopt the former course says something terrible about our society. It says we are turning into a culture of death.

We must resist it and reaffirm life, true compassion and our common humanity.

Read more

What price the Jewish/Israel/neoncon warmonger conspiracy now?

Melanie Phillips interprets Wikileaks' document revelation in her column on The Spectator: "Bang goes that conspiracy theory"

So now the world has been made aware, thanks to Wikileaks, what anyone with their ear to the ground has known for yonks -- that Saudi Arabia and other Arab states have been desperately pressing the US to bomb Iran.  The Guardian reports:

The Saudi king was recorded as having ‘frequently exhorted the US to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons programme’, one cable stated. ‘He told you [Americans] to cut off the head of the snake,' the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir said, according to a report on Abdullah's meeting with the US general David Petraeus in April 2008.

... Leaders in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt referred to Iran as ‘evil', an ‘existential threat’ and a power that ‘is going to take us to war’... In a conversation with a US diplomat, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain ‘argued forcefully for taking action to terminate their [Iran's] nuclear programme, by whatever means necessary. That programme must be stopped. The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.’ Zeid Rifai, then president of the Jordanian senate, told a senior US official: ‘Bomb Iran, or live with an Iranian bomb. Sanctions, carrots, incentives won't matter.’

In talks with US officials, Abu Dhabi crown prince Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed favoured action against Iran, sooner rather than later. ‘I believe this guy is going to take us to war ... It's a matter of time. Personally, I cannot risk it with a guy like [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad. He is young and aggressive.’

What price the Jewish/Israel/neoncon warmonger conspiracy now??

Also CiF Watch augments it with: "The only silver lining in the wikileak scandal: The Guardianistas were proven wrong about Arab fears of Iran"

I hate to say we told you so (ok, I actually don’t mind so much), but for those at the Guardian and elsewhere, who, for years, have claimed that the only ones pushing the U.S. to attack Iran were (pick from four) Israel, Jews, neocons, or the Israel lobby, you were wrong.  To those who advanced argument after argument, with something approaching religious intensity, that the Arab world’s number one concern is the Palestinian issue, you were wrong

Melanie Phillips takes on insanity in “correct” attitudes being promoted much of the Western media.

Melanie Phillips’ new book stuns readers with a ferocious exposé of the strains of insanity in political correctness.




DemoCast original video of Ms. Phillips' presentation at the 2009 Jerusalem Conference.


Read Isi Leibler's review of "The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth, and Power" in the Jerusalem Post.

The opening chapter titled “The Myth of Environmental Armageddon” deals with global warming which has swept the planet. Phillips ruthlessly dissects the lies and distortions employed to promote what she regards as one of the greatest scientific scams of the modern age,“reminiscent of a medieval witch-hunt,” with dissenting scientists being hounded from their posts by the equivalent of a secular inquisition.

The Left's psychological warfare to remake the West - British columnist, Melanie Philips, live video from Jerusalem

Melanie Philips explains how the West is succumbing to the global Left's psychological warfare of U.N.- centered, trans-nationalism (which is exploiting Israel as its unifying cause). Exclusive video filmed live by DemoCast.TV in Jerusalem.

"The mild-mannered British desire for the annihilation of Israel," by Melanie Phillips

By distancing itself from the Jewish state, Europe seeks to deflect the anger of its Muslim population. (Courtesy Pajamas Media).

In Europe’s Estrangement from Israel, the British sociologist Frank Furedi reports what he has heard from Britain’s educated classes since the Gaza crisis began:

I am standing in a queue waiting to buy a train ticket from London to Canterbury. A well-dressed lady standing behind me informs her friend that she ‘can’t wait till Israel disappears off the face of the earth.’ What struck me was not her intense hostility to Israel but the mild-mannered, matter-of-fact tone with which she announced her wish for the annihilation of a nation. It seems that it is okay to condemn and demonize Israel. All of a sudden Israel has become an all-purpose target for a variety of disparate and confused causes. When I ask a group of Pakistani waiters sitting around a table in their restaurant why they ‘hate’ Israel, they casually tell me that it is because Jews are their ‘religion’s enemy.’ Those who are highly educated have their own pet prejudice. One of my young colleagues who teaches media studies in a London-based university was taken aback during a seminar discussion when some of her students insisted that since all the banks are owned by Jews, Israel was responsible for the current global financial crisis.

This shocking anti-Jewish bigotry and violence – according to the Community Security Trust, Anglo-Jewry is in the middle of the worst outbreak of Jew-hatred since records began a quarter of a century ago, with more than 150 incidents across the country recorded since the beginning of the Gaza war -- has erupted in Britain as a direct result of the British media and political class giving the impression that the Israelis are deliberate child-killers. Both politicians and journalists have accepted at face value the Hamas claim that the dead in Gaza were mainly civilians, whereas the Israelis maintain that the vast majority were terrorist operatives. The British elites have accepted all claims of Israeli atrocities as well-founded, even though as far as I can see there is not a shred of evidence for any of them. They have also treated the word of the UN as objective holy writ, even though there are serious grounds for suspecting that the UN are the patsies of Hamas. For example, the UN has been screaming that Israel committed a ‘war crime’ when it shelled its Gaza HQ last Thursday; few in Britain know that Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert, no less, told UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon that the IDF returned fire after terrorists inside the compound fired anti-tank weapons and machine guns during the humanitarian daily pause:

‘We don't want this event to happen again,’ he told Ban, ‘and I don't know if you know, but Hamas attacked from within the UNRWA compound during the humanitarian cease-fire.’

What is so terribly shocking is that in the face of this unprecedented wave of hatred and bigotry, Britain’s senior politicians have been all but silent. They have a duty not merely to condemn the anti-Jewish violence but also to condemn the blood libels about Israel that have been inciting it. Instead, ministers such as International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander have breathed upon the flames by condemning Israel’s behaviour as ‘disproportionate’ and regurgitating as fact the distorted propaganda of Hamas and its patsy, the UN, about the number of civilian casualties.

Repeatedly, Gordon Brown has said, as here, that ‘too many innocent people’ have died in Gaza without acknowledging these crucial points: that while all deaths of innocents in war are to be much regretted, the vast majority of those killed have been Hamas operatives; that Hamas deliberately falsify these figures by classifying terrorists as civilians; and most crucial of all, that Israel has gone to extreme lengths to avoid killing innocent civilians – lengths to which the British and Americans most certainly are not going in Afghanistan. For Brown to avoid stating any of this, and instead to lend credence to the libellous claims about Israel’s behaviour which have incited this wave of anti-Jewish bigotry and violence makes the British Prime Minister effectively an accessory to that bigotry and violence.

Let us not hear any more pieties from PM Gordon Brown about his great love of Israel and the Jewish people. The hypocrisy is simply nauseating.

Why Sharia Law Isn't Simply 'Kosher' for the West

"Britain is Being Islamised by Stealth," claims Melanie Phillips, being interviewed by CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck. British political commentator, Melanie Phillips, condemned the Archbishop of Canterbury's endorsement of authorizing enforcement of non-standardized, decentralized Sharia in Britain. Watch her video:



Christopher Hitchens used Archbishop Rowan Williams sanctioning of Sharia as justifying his ouster. From Slate:

"In the midst of this dismal verbiage and euphemism, the plain statement—"There's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said"—still stands out like a diamond in a dunghill. It stands out precisely because it is said simply, and because its essential grandeur is intelligible to everybody. Its principles ought to be just as intelligible and accessible to those who don't yet speak English, in just the same way as the great Lord Mansfield once ruled that, wherever someone might have been born, and whatever he had been through, he could not be subject to slavery once he had set foot on English soil. Simple enough?"

Sharia Law is not equivalent to Jewish or Hindu law in the West
Hugh Fitzgerald elucidates in Jihad Watch:

The difference between the imposition of any part of the Shari'a and whatever a very limited role is allotted to Jewish (or possibly Hindu) family law, is that there is no real challenge, by the latter, to the supremacy of English law. There is no long-term program to use whatever small place has been allowed for there to be some kind of use of Jewish (or Hindu?) family law, in very limited ways, and ONLY when those ways do not contradict English law, to undercut the supremacy of the law of the English state. There is no program to undo the legal and political institutions of the English state.

The situation is quite different from Islam. The pretense, that the uninformed and terminally naive Archbishop of Canterbury has fallen for, that Muslims "only" want this little concession, should be seen in light of the steady and inevitable Muslim desire to remove everything that stands in the way of the spread of Islam. Shari'a imposed on Muslims -- many of whom do not want it (see the example of Canada, where female Muslims led the fight against it) because their legal position under the Shari'a-supplied family law is far inferior to what it would be under the laws of any Infidel land -- in the supposedly limited area of family law may, and indeed does, contradict the law of the land in Great Britain. That is quite another matter. And so too is the fact that this is not a final demand, but merely an opening one. If granted, it will lead to more and more such demands -- demands that swell with each new victory, as a sense of triumphalism is at the heart of the matter. That sense must never be encouraged. It must always be discouraged and disappointed.

Christopher Hitchens elaborates on the importance of resisting Islamist imperialism in this essay published six months ago, "God-Fearing People: Why are we so scared of offending Muslims?"

... Not content with igniting copies of The Satanic Verses, Islamist lynch parties demanded the burning of its author as well. Many distinguished authors, Muslim and non-Muslim, are dead or in hiding because of the words they have put on pages concerning the unbelievable claims of Islam. And it is to appease such a spirit of persecution and intolerance that a student in New York City has been arrested for an expression, however vulgar, of an opinion.

This has to stop, and it has to stop right now. There can be no concession to sharia in the United States. When will we see someone detained, or even cautioned, for advocating the burning of books in the name of God? If the police are honestly interested in this sort of "hate crime," I can help them identify those who spent much of last year uttering physical threats against the republication in this country of some Danish cartoons. In default of impartial prosecution, we have to insist that Muslims take their chance of being upset, just as we who do not subscribe to their arrogant certainties are revolted every day by the hideous behavior of the parties of God.

It is often said that resistance to jihadism only increases the recruitment to it. For all I know, this commonplace observation could be true. But, if so, it must cut both ways. How about reminding the Islamists that, by their mad policy in Kashmir and elsewhere, they have made deadly enemies of a billion Indian Hindus? Is there no danger that the massacre of Iraqi and Lebanese Christians, or the threatened murder of all Jews, will cause an equal and opposite response? Most important of all, what will be said and done by those of us who take no side in filthy religious wars? The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant, or neutral, without inviting their own suicide. And the advocates and apologists of bigotry and censorship and suicide-assassination cannot be permitted to take shelter any longer under the umbrella of a pluralism that they openly seek to destroy.