Thursday, September 29, 2011 

The wonderful world of Melanie Phillips, pt. 964.

You might recall that a while back Paul Dacre's lawyers contacted Kevin Arscott of the Angry Mob blog as he'd had the temerity to say some unkind and hurtful things about the greatest newspaper editor the world has ever seen. Admittedly, hoping that someone dies a slow and painful death and that people then queue up to shit on their grave is not very pleasant; it is however certainly not defamatory, as they claimed. Their aim was however achieved: the second result on Google when you search for "Paul Dacre" is now not a post calling for his death. Rather, there are now three separate entries on the first page detailing his legal activities.

Suggesting that resorting to empty threats of legal action is becoming a habit among hacks at the Mail, Angry Mob has since been involved in an interesting exchange of correspondence with everyone's favourite Moral Maze panellist, Melanie Phillips. Having politely suggested in an email that her insistence on continuing to dredge up the "Winterval" myth is misleading her readers, she responded:

Interesting that you think all those people, including Bishops of the Church of England who were so upset by Winterval, failed to understand what you alone apparently understood. In fact, it is plain that you have zero understanding of why this term caused such offence to so many people. Birmingham council’s protestations that Christmas remained at the heart of the Winterval celebrations were disingenuous and missed the point. ‘Christmas’ is a term that does not merely refer to Christmas Day but to the period around it. There was no need for the term Winterval at all — except as a way of not referring to the Christmas season, but instead to provide a neutral term which would enable other faith celebrations around that time to assume equal prominence. That was the objection which was clearly stated at the time by the Bishops and others: Winterval buried ‘Christmas’ and replaced it in the public mind. Your message is therefore as arrogant and ignorant as it is offensive.

Melanie

While being told that you're misleading people is never likely to immediately endear you to them, to suggest that disagreeing is arrogant, ignorant and offensive goes beyond sensitivity into the realms of being rude for the sake of it. Rudeness often tends to lead to it being delivered back in spades, and Angry Mob duly delivered:

If you read the essay I think you’d realise that you are quite mistaken. Again, you really need to start engaging with facts, rather than just reverberating around your own blinkered mind.

Your dishonest attack on Rory Weal was a staggeringly embarrassing exercise in how underhand you have to become to even engage in an argument with a 16-year-old.

I’ve responded to you via my blog [http://www.butireaditinthepaper.co.uk ], I prefer to keep such conversations public – as any writer should (although I notice you don’t believe that journalism or blogging is a two-way process, probably because it is easier to write your nonsense trapped in your own blissful bubble of ignorance).

I really think you should take a second look at some of the accusations you made about Rory Weal, because, thanks to your laziness (i.e. not bothering to look into his life situation before starting your rant), you got his situation horribly wrong and you look even more foolish than normal.

To which Mel then responded:

Your blog post about me is highly defamatory and contains false allegations for which you would stand to pay me significant damages in a libel action. There are many things I could say to point out the gross misrepresentations, selective reporting and twisted distortions in what you have written. I will not do so, however, because you have shown gross abuse of trust in publishing on your blog private correspondence from me without my permission. Consequently I will have no more to do with you and any further messages from you will be electronically binned unread along with other nuisance mail.

While Kevin did give in to the temptation to refer to Phillips as "Mad Mel", a term of endearment much used across the blogosphere, and one to which it's known she has not warmed (the tactics of Stalin, she said, when Jackie Ashley suggested without any malice that some of her thinking could come across as "bonkers"), there's little else in his post which could be construed as defamatory, let alone for which he would have to pay out damages. The worst in fact comes in a comment, with Col describing her as a "shit human being". Not very nice, but again, likely to be classed as abuse rather than defamatory. It also seems all the more remarkable considering that it wasn't so long back that the Spectator, the former home of Phillips' blog, had to pay damages to Alastair Crooke after Mel had made err, false allegations about him. This misunderstanding almost certainly resulted in Mel deciding to "expand and develop" her own website. Then again, Mel has never had any compunction about responding in kind.

What's more, as Angry Mob relates, someone had these wise words to say on the subject of libel a couple of years ago:

Because of the difficulty of proving what may be unprovable, those who express such views are intimidated by the prospect of losing such a case – and then having to pay astronomical legal costs to multinationals or wealthy individuals who can afford to keep racking up the final bill.

So scientists, academics, authors, journalists and others are effectively censoring themselves for fear of becoming trapped in a ruinous libel suit – or are being forced to back down and apologise for statements they still believe to be true.


Wealthy or at least comfortably off individuals like Melanie Phillips perhaps, the author of the above. A statement she doubtless still believes to be true.

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9/29/2011 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, September 26, 2011 

The wonderful world of Melanie Phillips, pt. 769.

Like all right-thinking people, Melanie Phillips is up in arms over the BBC religion website's decision (and it is only their decision) to use CE and BCE instead of AD and BC. As usual, we must bear in mind that dear old Mel is quite happy to appear on the Moral Maze and Question Time at the licence-fee payer's expense, despite the corporation being dedicated to the destruction of the very culture Mel fights to defend, when she then denounces her occasional employer:

One of the most sinister aspects of political correctness is the way in which its edicts purport to be in the interests of minority groups.

This is despite the fact that, very often, they are not promulgated at the behest of minorities at all, but by members of the majority who want to destroy their own culture and who use minorities to camouflage their true intentions.

The latest manifestation stars once again that all-time world champion of political correctness, the BBC. Apparently, it has decided that the terms AD and BC (Anno Domini, or the Year of Our Lord, and Before Christ) must be replaced by the terms Common Era and Before Common Era.

Well, yes. Or it could be down to the fact that using AD and BC on a website dedicated to discussing all religions without passing judgement on them would be rather silly, when there's a perfectly good, relatively neutral system which can be used instead. The BBC's justification isn't worded very well, it must be said, but that's the real reason for doing so.

For as Mel goes on to say:

Well, I am a Jew, so I am presumably a member of this group that must not be alienated.

It so happens, however, that along with many other Jewish people I sometimes use CE and BCE since the terms BC and AD are not appropriate to me.

If the BBC really was dedicated to the destruction of Judeo-Christian culture, it would be looking towards introducing the Hijra (Islamic) calendar, where a year has 354 or (355) days and it's currently 1432. Then it might just be time to worry.

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9/26/2011 09:46:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, August 16, 2011 

Slightly shorter Melanie Phillips.

In recent weeks, having unfortunately been quoted approvingly by a mass-murderer, I have been responding to wicked smears on my character in my usual understated fashion. Numerous as these verbal pogroms have been, they have been nothing compared to the literally dozens of messages of support I've received.

This support has underlined what I know already - that rather than telling people what to think, I articulate and reflect what dozens of people too stupid or lazy to write their own 1,000 word essays on the downfall of Western civilisation and the rise of Islam at some level already know. In other words, I live on Planet Reality.

It therefore follows that every single one of my critics live on Planet Dhimmistan. My supporters clearly see that when I'm criticised, they are also being attacked and smeared. By disagreeing with me, my critics threaten the well-being and indeed the very survival of Planet Reality.

I am now adjourning to my yearly sabbatical in the Priory. I wish everyone a very good and peaceful summer. Except the Muslims.

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8/16/2011 09:35:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, August 03, 2011 

The depressing adventures of Melanie Phillips, pt 95.

As Sunny is learning the hard way, getting into a fight with Melanie Phillips might be many things, but funny or enlightening it is certainly not. The best way to understand just where she comes without going through her entire oeuvre is almost certainly to read Jackie Ashley's wonderful interview with her shortly after the publication of her book Londonistan, an interview Ashley had not even written up before Phillips was emailing Alan Rusbridger complaining about how she was about to be misrepresented and "the possible inflammatory consequences" if she was. Remarkably similar to how anyone suggesting that she has "blood on her hands" will have blood on theirs if anything happens to her.

The first and most important thing to note is that Phillips doesn't do irony, doesn't do humour, doesn't do understatement. As Ashley writes, while other columnists, especially on the tabloids don't always believe what they say and then feel they have to keep going rather than back down (Richard Littlejohn, git though he is, probably falls into this category), Phillips really, and I mean really believes every single word she puts down. Her way of responding to criticism, of any sort, but especially that which suggests she's going over-the-top, is to scream and scream about being smeared, about debate being shut down and about how totalitarians of both stripes used to describe dissidents as paranoid, delusional, or worse locked them up under the pretence of madness.

What makes this all the more surprising is that she personally has no compunction about using highly similar terminology to describe both those she opposes and the world as she sees it. Hence her first response to those pointing out she was among those quoted in Anders Breivik's manifesto was titled "a wider pathology". Her latest piece on Sunny accuses him of a "weird obsession". As Aaronovitch Watch details, to her Western society has not just become morally decayed, it has lost its mind and with it the will to survive. Her latest book is called "The World Turned Upside Down", and again, it's a title without the slightest hint of irony.

The fact is that Phillips is in a bind. She could almost certainly be more of an influence or aspire to a slightly more salubrious location than the Daily Mail, having apparently been kicked off the Spectator's website for having a cavalier approach to facts, if she toned down her rhetoric slightly. Despite the leftist, dhimmi BBC being kind enough to keep hosting her on Question Time (where she mostly does indeed manage to come across as reasonable, meaning she can do it if she wants to) and the Moral Maze, the very reason why she found herself among those being quoted by Breivik at length is that regardless of the very real concerns she has raised, she does it in such a way that it means she can only be fully embraced by the hard right in America and the similar outliers we have in Europe. Yet because she so deeply believes every word she types, her blood and soul poured into it regardless of the topic, she is denied a position that could so easily be hers. This only leads her further down the same, relatively friendless path.

Despite insisting to Ashley that she does constantly ask herself whether she's wrong, the apparent lack of self-doubt combined with the absence of any humour is what makes her writing so chilling, so apocalyptic, and also so dead. Arguing with her then is all but pointless; responding to it with mockery or parody though certainly isn't. I can then only sign off with this from the latest Private Eye:

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8/03/2011 10:07:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, August 01, 2011 

One rule for them...

Melanie Phillips has written another piece (this might be the only time I ever use a istyosty link) in response to her being included in Anders Breivik's 1,500 page manifesto. It's the usual Phillips attack as defence strategy, and also as usual exaggerates criticism into something much worse, with Sunny Hundal's "singling" her out among other notable writers a "smear".

Sunny himself deals well with most of it, such as how she argues we don't how know far Breivik's political views motivated his massacre, only somewhat undermined by how he uploaded the manifesto just before he went out to commit his atrocity, but there are a couple of parts which are worth a further degree of examination:

But in Breivik’s 1,500-page diatribe, I was mentioned precisely twice. The first time was a quote from an article in this newspaper about family breakdown.

The second was another article about the revelation by a former civil servant that the previous Labour government had kept the public in the dark about a covert policy of mass immigration.

What Phillips omits to mention is that Breivik later refers back to this second piece in the supposedly "hypothetical" part of the manifesto detailing what Knights Templar warriors should do to avoid detection and who they should target. Breivik describes the Mail's reporting and Phillips' article on Neather's comment piece in the Evening Standard as

add[ing] to the documentation which proves that a relatively large multiculturalist network on all levels of European politics: political activists, journalists, politicians, NGO leaders - locally, nationally and on EU level have a deliberate plan to destroy European cohesion, identity, our culture by implementing multiculturalist doctrines and allowing mass Muslim immigration (page 806).

He goes on to conclude:

The common factor between all variations of multiculturalists is that they all believe they are doing the right thing, so they all have good intentions, at least according to themselves. But this can also be said about Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. They were all idealists in their own twisted way. Regardless of their twisted intentions they are all mass murderers and must be treated as such.

It doesn't matter that there was of course no plot or plan to impose multiculturalism or use immigration as a weapon against the right, as Neather himself later said, criticising the Mail and the likes of Phillips for claiming this was the proof of Labour's nefarious intentions; it was however just the sort of "evidence" Breivik was looking for to confirm his prejudices. This puts his use of Phillips' arguments clearly above the dozens of other writers he liberally quoted from or mentioned, not necessarily always with approval. This is still not causation, obviously: Phillips was no more responsible for Breivik's actions than anyone else; it's not however anything approaching a smear to point this out.

As with any number of Phillips articles, she then concludes by contradicting much of what she's just wrote:

The claim that ‘blood is on my hands’ can so easily translate into someone seeking my own blood. Heaven forbid that should happen — but if it did, there would be a direct causal link with those who have whipped up this wicked firestorm.

So, err, even though the link between Breivik's words and his actions hasn't been substantiated, if someone was to now kill Phillips there would be a "direct casual link" between the murderer and those suggesting she ought to at least re-examine some of her writing. It seems then that while there will never be any link between extreme right-wing political thought on Islam and multiculturalism and violence in pursuit of the goals of that movement, anyone who has even so much as criticised Phillips should feel responsible if someone mugs her tomorrow. One rule for them and another for me doesn't even begin to cover it.

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8/01/2011 09:42:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, July 27, 2011 

Anders Breivik: a fascist?

(This is the reply I've posted to Unity's excellent Breivik and fascism - a lesson from George Orwell. As it's long enough and I'm feeling slightly lazy I'm reposting it here, with a few slight additions and tweaks, as well as links and citations.)

Much as I agree with the vast majority of this, I think the main problem with accurately labelling Breivik is that as yet we haven't come up with a convincing catch-all term for the new far right which on the surface eschews racism but which underneath is just as virulent in its hatred of those with brown skin as the fascists and neo-Nazis we're all familiar with. Scratch beneath Breivik's anti-racist façade and you find the same old tropes, i.e. as in the way he exclusively blames "Muslims" for the crime in Oslo (page 1392 of his "manifesto"), just as the EDL and those associated with it have banged on about "Muslims" being in control of the drug trade in various cities, as if religion has anything whatsoever to do with it.

This is why I think he personally has more in common with Tim McVeigh than any previous European terror group or individual. McVeigh was a fan of the Turner Diaries and a known racist, but he was further radicalised by the Waco and Ruby Ridge sieges. Coupled with the then highly en vogue "new world order" conspiracy theories, he decided to strike back against the US federal government.

Breivik instead found his inspiration mainly from the hysterical far-right, convinced that pure Muslim demographics mean that Europe is doomed. He combined this with the utterly bizarre conspiracy theory that the Frankfurt school of Marxist social theorists have somehow managed to influence politicians of both mainstream right and left into imposing state multiculturalism and political correctness onto their people without their consent. Into the mix also came the "anti-jihadist" bloggers and other assorted right-wing figures, both American and European, Pam Geller and Geert Wilders (page 1407) to name but two, all of whom he came to believe were simply not going to achieve anything through democratic politics, so convinced of the control the "cultural Marxists" have over everything. Only he, or rather his almost certainly imaginary group, can start off the war by killing not Muslims, although he includes them in his list of "prioritised targets" (page 921), but instead hitting the multiculturalists themselves. In this he shares the "awakening" belief of many other terrorists before him, that through one spectacular act he can both raise awareness among those of like minds that they can personally do something, and also hopefully provoke the authorities into so overreacting that they make things worse, the same trap the West walked into after 9/11.

While I won't demure from the fact that his dream Europe would be a very old-fashioned totalitarian place, with the media controlled and patriarchy mandated (heh), he also proposes the on the surface completely incongruous idea of "liberal zones" (page 1168), where those who wish to live "Sex and the City" lifestyles can do so, as long as they are cut off "ideologically" from the rest of society to avoid "cultural contamination". Not many fascists would be willing to offer an apparent safe haven from their policies, especially when so many would obviously consider things to be far more pleasant there.

Apart from being a mess of contradictions then, he's a fascist of the very latest school, albeit one who unlike the EDL has fully pseudo-intellectualised his actions and gone from viewing all Muslims as being bent on world domination, even if indirectly, to killing those he believes are enabling them. The wags over at Blood and Treasure suggested, with tongue firmly in cheek, that he could be viewed as the military wing of Melanie Phillips. In my view, he's best compartmentalised as a 21st century European white nationalist, who while others talked decided to act, by murdering the "friends" of his enemies. And with that, we perhaps ought to stop considering the ravings of a lone lunatic, however much insight he might give into current far-right thinking.

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Monday, July 25, 2011 

Anders Breivik and "cultural Marxism".

When it comes to terrible, immediately unattributable terrorist attacks like the ones in Oslo on Friday, the best approach would be to take a step back before jumping to conclusions. The impossibility of doing so in the era of 24-hour-news, Twatter and everything else means that criticising those who are (mostly) being asked to do so knowing only what everyone else does, i.e. very little, isn't always entirely productive, even if Charlie Brooker does it very well.

It's certainly rather more justified when those who are in a hole then refuse to stop digging. Strangely, those associated with the Labour Uncut website seem more affected than most. Dan Hodges writes that this tragedy shouldn't be turned into a simple issue of solidarity, even after he admits it was a "targeted attack", while Tom Harris, having first pointed the finger at al-Qaida or its associates as so many others did, compounds the error. The left should not imagine that because this particular terrorist is white and indeed, killed teenage left-wingers, it absolves them from failing to acknowledge or adequately condemn jihadists.

Hodges does have a point however when he raises the comparison of Gabrielle Giffords and Jared Lee Loughner, if not with the implication that "the left" was blaming Sarah Palin and Tea Party before he'd even been charged. It was Giffords herself who said there were potential consequences to Palin putting her location in a gun sight, and it was certainly the case the political rhetoric in the US was raising to ever more ridiculous and potentially dangerous heights, even if the reaction now seems a little overblown. Loughner as it turned out did not have any associations with right-wing Republicans like Palin and Michele Bachmann or their supporters, to name but two: instead, the best explanation so far for his actions is that he was a mentally ill young man with conspiratorial tendencies, who having felt slighted by Giffords in the past decided to target her.

Anders Breivik by contrast couldn't really have been more clear in setting out the justification, such as it is, for his actions. His 1,500 page manifesto, which quotes liberally from dozens of writers, has an entire, supposedly hypothetical section titled "a declaration of pre-emptive war" (page 766 onwards). In it, his group, named hysterically the Knights Templar, which seems to consist of one Anders Breivik, offers a full pardon to the "Western European multiculturalist regimes" as long as they capitulate by 2020 to the Templar's military forces (page 785). Presuming that this pardon is quite unreasonably not accepted, he goes on to explain that all multiculturalists, whether they are "hardcore Marxist, cultural Marxist, suicidal humanist, career cynicist or [...] capitalist globalist" are essentially the same, and that the punishment for such high treason is also the same (page 806), although further on he only mentions execution as the penalty for "category A and B criminals" (page 930), while "category C traitors" can be considered legitimate targets "in larger operations where WMDs are involved". He also elucidates what the prime targets should be for a "Justiciar Knight Commander" (page 921):

Concentrate on massive and compact buildings that are vulnerable to a “single source” blast/assault. We must ensure that a maximum number of category A, B and C traitors are hit with a minimum of civilians. Specified targets fit that profile:

Prioritised targets:
- MA100 political parties - cultural Marxist/multiculturalist political parties. Prioritised targets include HQs or annual meetings of MA100 political parties

Breivik's influences for his personal ideology are writ large throughout. He most admires "Fjordman", the pseudonymous blogger who's written for a number of far-right sites, and cites numerous anti-jihadist blogs, such as Gates of Vienna, Jihad Watch, Atlas Shrugs and others. Those looking closer to home will quickly see parallels between Breivik's belief in what is essentially a conspiracy between mainstream political parties to institute political correctness, or what he calls "cultural Marxism", leading to mass Muslim immigration and eventually the disintegration of democracy and the triumph of Eurabia, and the world view of groups such as the English Defence League, with which he's alleged to have dealings with, although they've never begun to aspire to his lofty pseudo-intellectual heights. Melanie Phillips, who has long despaired of the "suicide of the West", having found herself being quoted by Breivik has quickly pointed to his scattergun approach. As her blog seems to have collapsed under the weight of the traffic her defence piece brought in, all we can currently go by is her tweet, which says the "atrocity ignites left pathology".

One story which Breivik returns to throughout his manifesto (first appears on page 365) is this comment piece by Andrew Neather, seized on by the likes of the Daily Mail and Telegraph as the "proof" of a plot by Labour to recreate Britain as a fully multicultural society, where the party would forever remain in power backed by the votes of grateful immigrants. The only problem was, as Neather later responded, there was no plot and the minister he wrote the speech for was later removed from her position. Breivik not only quotes from Phillips' comment piece which more than misrepresents Neather (page 368), he uses Neather's supposed revelation as part of his explanation as to why "political activists, journalists, politicians, NGO leaders" should be treated as "traitors" (page 806) and ultimately, executed.

As much as Breivik has appropriated or indeed, admires al-Qaida's approach, as Will McCants and Spencer Ackerman have both noted, it's fairly apparent he has most in common with Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, although even Ted, who wrote a 35,000 word essay detailing his belief system, would have blanched at the excessive detail and personal information Breivik has left in his far longer tome. McVeigh, whom Breivik refers to on a number of occasions (page 950, 967) including once in his diary on the making of the bomb, exclaiming he now understands "why Mr. McVeigh limited his manufacturing to 600kg" (page 1466), was a believer in the now almost passe conspiracy theory of the "new world order" and was so angered by the heavy-handed raids on Ruby Ridge and Waco that he decided to strike back. Breivik doesn't even have a government "atrocity" to fall back on: his simple belief that Europe will be overrun by Muslims down to a mixture of demographics, immigration and "cultural Marxism", as easily debunked as any notion of a Zionist occupied government, was fuelled by paranoid hatred from far-right bloggers and nominally mainstream writers who make a living out of such alarmism.

The Heresiarch delicately considers whether, seeing as such individuals have long denounced non-violent Islamists and even ordinary Muslims for either enabling or tolerating the jihadists, it's possible that they've done the same with Breivik:

To some extent, Melanie Phillips and the others are now getting a taste of their own medicine. They have been far too quick in the past to elide the distinction between Islamist opinions and violence, and also between Muslims in general and Islamists in particular. The spread of hardline Islam is largely a phenomenon within Muslim communities, and poses the greatest problem to other Muslims (female Muslims, gay Muslims, Ahmadi Muslims...). If "Islamophobic" writers are now being tarred with the same brush as the appalling Breivik... well, perhaps it will give them pause for thought.

Well, it might. It will almost certainly temporarily lead to some soul-searching, such as that of Mark Humphrys, who goes through Breivik's writing looking for where their opinions went their separate ways, although he seems erroneously to conclude that Breivik suddenly decided upon violence last year, when it's apparent that his manifesto by his own admission has been years in the writing. At best it could lead a toning down of the rhetoric. On the other hand, it may well embolden some: already the EDL, while denouncing the attack has suggested that it shows what could happen in this country if their petty thuggery and attempts at riling up Muslims aren't given more political attention (surely if their case for a crackdown on Muslim extremists and Sharia law isn't addressed? Ed.)

Far more plausible though, and regardless of how Breivik's ideology was nurtured and encouraged, is that he's a one-off. So much of his manifesto appears to be utter fantasy, such as the sections dedicated to the medals and ribbons of his Knights Templar organisation (page 1075) (members likely to be one, despite his claim as to there being two other cells), not to the mention the sexual proclivities of his friends and relatives (page 1171), or his time as the biggest hip-hopper in west Oslo (page 1388) that it suggests someone, despite the intelligence necessary to produce such a document, that is simply not in full touch with reality. Others would have failed or given up at various stages in the planning process. It was a mixture of pure luck and Norway being unprepared for such an assault that led to his success. While some should be at the least examining their consciences, the rest of us can be fairly secure in knowing that there are most certainly not others waiting to launch further attacks on the "cultural Marxists".

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7/25/2011 09:09:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, May 17, 2011 

The depressing adventures of Melanie Phillips, pt 94.

Those with long memories for the rhetorical ticks of prominent political columnists might recall that Melanie Phillips had taken to referring to criticism of both herself and Israel as "verbal pogroms", as though by daring to take a different view to hers you were essentially perpetuating violence against her.

A Google search suggests that while Mel has cut back on her usage of that specific term, she's still as certain as ever that a concerted campaign of violence against Jewish people in this country, seemingly one which could be sponsored even by this government, is just around the corner. From a recent post on a incident at the School for Oriental and African Studies:

The pre-pogrom atmosphere in the UK against Israel and its supporters turned into outright thuggery at the weekend.

Yes, although you might not have personally noticed it, the atmosphere in this country is now so poisonous against Israel and its supporters that we're at the stage immediately prior to an widespread outburst of racially motivated murder and vandalism. It's one thing to be fearful that under certain circumstances such an atmosphere could arise; it's quite another to actively suggest it's already been reached. What a frightening, angry and incredibly sad place the inside of Phillips' mind must be.

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Monday, May 09, 2011 

From social services correspondent to satirist.

For those who noted with a raised eyebrow the inclusion of Melanie Phillips on the Observer's list of 300 public intellectuals, the Guardian by happy coincidence reminds us that back in her callow youth Mel was the paper's social services correspondent. She broke the story that immigration officials had subjected some women from India to gynaecological "virginity tests" prior to their being allowed into the country to marry, a report now further vindicated thirty two years on by an Australian study which has identified at least another eighty cases.

Sadly Mel is yet to acknowledge her journalistic acumen either on her Twatter stream (590 followers), which thankfully seems to mainly consist of links to her work, or on her blog. She is however asking why Cameron is supporting the "coalition for genocide" (Hamas and Fatah, after their reconciliation agreement, natch) and why we aren't showing Bashar Assad a flash of the cold steel like we are Gaddafi (Mel of course could think of nothing better than Assad being taken down, as a supporter and host of Hamas. She couldn't give a fig about the uprising.). I'm especially taken with this passage from that post:

Whereas of course when Israel picks its way delicately through the human shields to target those firing rockets to kill Israeli innocents, warfare undertaken solely to prevent the taking of more innocent life, the same western world screams war crimes, disproportionate aggression and all the rest of it.

From social services correspondent to satirist in three decades.

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Monday, May 31, 2010 

The suicide of Israel.

I can't really put it much better than Flying Rodent already has, yet it's still worth dwelling on for a moment longer. Commentators like Melanie Phillips ("'Peace convoy'? This was an Islamist terror ambush" is her verdict) often write about the "suicide of the West", despairing of our apparent submission to Islamic extremists, our loss of faith in our Judeo-Christian heritage, and also, of course, our moral decadence. What though, is Israel's latest act of belligerence but yet further proof of the suicidal idiocy of the country's political and ruling class?

The only conclusion that can be reached is that Israel seems to imagine that it no longer needs allies, that it no longer needs friends, except for those that can be relied upon to repeatedly defend the indefensible, for which see the above. It's true that the country has acted this way in the past, such as when it attacked the USS Liberty, but that was during the Six Day War, or when it destroyed a Libyan passenger airline that had gone off course, but then no one cares about the Libyans and that was put down as another in Israel's long line of military "mistakes". The boarding of the Mavi Marmara is however the third such act of apparently shocking stupidity in 18 months: first the murderous assault on Gaza, having provoked Hamas into breaching a ceasefire which the Israelis openly admitted they had broken first, apparently purely for electoral benefit; next the almost comically inept if successful assassination of very minor player Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, earning rebukes and diplomatic expulsions from countries which didn't take kindly to Mossad yet again forging and stealing the passports of their civilians; and now a mindbogglingly foolish assault on a peace flotilla trying to deliver aid to the impoverished and long-suffering open-air prison which is the tiny strip of land known as Gaza.

It doesn't really matter whose side of the story is the most accurate, although it's instructive that the videos released by the IDF of the commandos coming aboard the Mavi Marmara show nothing of the arrival of the helicopters that delivered them, or of the boats involved in surrounding the vessels, when the people on the boats and indeed an al-Jazeera reporter on board one claimed that they were first fired upon. All the people around the world will see is the Israelis intercepting boats with an entirely peaceful purpose out in international waters, which means they were committing an act of piracy simply by attempting to get on board. And honestly, how did they think they were going to react to commandos apparently storming their vessel? Welcome them with open arms and sit down to discuss the rights and wrongs of the siege of Gaza? It's almost as if they were actively hoping that they were going to be mobbed, record it for the world to see and then claim that their motives were far from benign after all. It seems they weren't counting on the response being so unequivocal, but again it's notable that the worst that seems to have happened to those who went on board is that one suffered "serious head injuries" after he was thrown over a rail. Accounts still differ but at least 9 on the other side are known to have been killed. Again, that all communications with the vessels were successfully severed shortly after the assault began is instructive of how the Israelis only wanted their side of the attack to be seen.

As if relations between Turkey and Israel were not stretched as they were, the only Muslim country with which Israel has anything approaching diplomatic friendship with, they've now attacked a ship carrying the Turkish flag and also it seems killed mainly Turks. After royally pissing off the Americans earlier in the year by snubbing Joe Biden during a visit to the country, they've now once again showed how they can't be relied upon to act with anything even approaching civility towards those with honourable intentions, even if they disagree profusely with them on their methods and overriding philosophy. After first responding with the usual amount of biliousness and demagoguery we've come to expect from the Israeli government PR machine, that Benjamin Netanyahu has "expressed regret", as the prime ministers of Israel always do after they've committed yet another outrage, perhaps suggests that they've realised that they've gone too far this time. The Guardian today reports that the US has been making secret overtures to Hamas, over the heads of the Israelis, fed up with impasse between Israel and Fatah. After helping to create Hamas, Israel has strained every sinew to not recognise the Islamic faction; through its apparent determination to lose friends and alienate everyone, including its closest ally, it might yet be forced to deal with those who continue to refuse to so much as recognise the Jewish state. And if they are, they will only have themselves to blame.

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5/31/2010 08:17:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, November 04, 2009 

Verbal pogroms, or the continuing jihad of Melanie Phillips part two.

Yesterday I hypothesised that Melanie Phillips has become so entrenched in her "Israel First" ideology that she could no longer separate her own persona from that nation as a whole (which was cross-posted over on Lib Con). Attacking her views was, as she wrote, a "verbal pogrom", the equivalent of actually perpetuating violence against her.

Thanks then to Flying Rodent, who brings my attention to this piece from yesterday, making clear I couldn't have been more wrong. Writing this time on the timidity of Britain's leading Jews, who are standing by while "Israel [is thrown] even more brazenly under the bus", Mel uses the exact same term for the second time in as many days:

However, I fear that his hope that British Jews get rid of these leaders and replace them by individuals who are prepared to mount a proper defence of Israel in the face of this verbal pogrom is tragically unrealisable.

Attacking Phillips herself then is a verbal pogrom, and being critical of Israel is also a verbal pogrom. I really wish I was making this up.

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11/04/2009 09:27:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, November 03, 2009 

The continuing jihad of Melanie Phillips.

At the weekend Ed Husain wrote an eminently reasonable, measured and very restrained in the circumstances attack on the more out there views of Melanie Phillips. Husain clearly feels that Phillips is a potential ally in the battle against radical Islam, although quite why judging by her record it's difficult to tell. His main concern now seems to be that rather than being an ally, she's becoming a prominent obstacle to any kind of progress, especially in the way she seems determined to see conspiracies where there are none, in this instance with Inayat Bunglawala and his determined opposition to the remnants of al-Muhajiroun. Again, this isn't anything new with Phillips: a few years back she was convinced that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had been buried beneath the Euphrates and that Saddam's crack team of WMD experts had upped sticks and moved to Syria. Nonetheless, it was also going to be interesting to see how Phillips responded.

According to Phillips, the reason why Husain "feels so viciously" towards her is because of her support for Israel, on which Husain is "unbalanced and obsessional". This is a quite extraordinary example of projection, even for Phillips. Husain's views on Israel could hardly be much more orthodox with the average view in this country: he felt that the attack on Gaza in December and January was "disproportionate". In a press release for the Quilliam Foundation, he called for:

"The UK Government cannot seek to win hearts and minds across Muslim communities while failing to stop Israel from murdering Palestinians en masse. Gordon Brown and David Miliband have reached out to Damascus and Darfur in recent weeks in an attempt to bring peace and stand for fairness. That is commendable. And in that spirit, where is the outright condemnation of Israeli atrocities and pressure on Israel to stop its inhumane operations?

Perceived double standards from our Government and the current green light (from Washington and London) to Israel's killing machine will strengthen Al Qaeda's metanarrative and radicalize yet another generation of young Muslims.

Isolating and angering millions of Muslims by sitting on the fence will not aid the PREVENT agenda, or the moderate majority of Muslims. The FCO and Downing Street has a duty to stand, condemn, and call for immediate cessation of Israel's military operations, and end the siege".

Undoubtedly those who are as vociferous in their support for Israel as Phillips will disagree with much of that, yet to second guess someone who has dedicated himself to countering radicalisation, having himself been a major player at one time in the likes of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, doesn't seem to be the best way to deal with jihadist propaganda. The problem is, as Husain himself notes, that Phillips espouses an "Israel First" mindset, where Israel can do absolutely no wrong, regardless of who leads it or regardless of what it does. If Israel tomorrow decided to nuke Iran without any warning, Phillips would almost certainly defend it on the basis that the country had long been planning a "second genocide", another of her own obsessions, and not even pretend to cry crocodile tears for the innocent among the Iranians who hadn't been involved in such plotting.

Whether it's down to a neurosis or otherwise, what's becoming ever more apparent is that Phillips is now associating Israel and the history of the Jewish people with her own persona. If you attack her, you now seem to be attacking Israel itself. In fact, you might even, without having any way of knowing it, be advocating the very destruction of Melanie Phillips. In her latest post, headlined "Two-Minute Hate at the Guardian" (Goldstein, after all, was almost certainly modelled on Trotsky, who was Jewish, which is unlikely to be a coincidence) she even calls the attacks on her a "verbal pogrom", which, as Rhetorically Speaking points out, seems to suggest that she regards criticism of her a form of violence.

Even more hilarious, or worrying, depending on your view, was part of her initial response to Husain. Husain alleged that in Phillips' world view, if you don't support Israel in the same way which she does, then you're with the Islamists who want to see it destroyed. Phillips says this is absurd. Then, err, she says this:

A number of anti-jihadis told me from the start that my support for Ed Husain was misplaced because he had never properly renounced Islamist extremism. To begin with, I defended him as a naif. Even when he came out with boilerplate bigotry against Israel, I put it down to the fact that he had been brought up in that kind of milieu. He was on a steep learning curve, I said. Everyone can change for the better.

It was I who was naive.


Husain then still must be an Islamic extremist because um, he doesn't support Israel in the way which Phillips demands. This is a rather spectacular way to prove Husain's point, and one which Phillips must be immensely proud of. Not that she likely has any idea whatsoever of quite how she's just hoisted herself by her own petard.

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11/03/2009 10:29:00 pm | | | links to this post

Friday, October 31, 2008 

And now for something completely different...

When things are getting you down, you can at least rely on Melanie Phillips to be a cool head of reason in a sea of insanity. She is incidentally here quoting someone else, but the point stands:

The flames of the urban uprisings in France, of the train bombings in Madrid, of the subway blasts in London and the school massacre in Beslan are only handwriting on the wall. The OPEC aggression against the US economy, the formation of gas cartels by Iran, Qatar and Venezuela with the enticement to Russia to join; all that are just ominous signs of what is ahead... The penetration of our systems, including educational, legal, bureaucratic, technological, defense and security by the Jihadists is ongoing and is projected to expand...

That was yesterday. Today she writes this:

So what if The One [Obama] should actually lose next week? The brainwashed hysteria whipped up on his behalf is, to put it mildly, dangerous.

Quite so. Thinking that there are jihadists under the bed though is perfectly rational.

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10/31/2008 10:02:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, March 24, 2008 

When you're obsessed, you will see your obsession everywhere.

Via Rhetorically Speaking, I note that Mad Mel has been going err, mad, over the attack by Asian youths on Canon Michael Ainsworth, which was apparently proof of a low-level jihad against Christians in east London by raging "Moslems" determined to make the entire place a no-go area.

Or not, as according to Ainsworth himself, who gave an interview to the same journal that carries Mel's rantings:

"We must respond calmly, and not jump to conclusions..." Coping with the hysteria from "wild" national press coverage had been "almost worse than being attacked." He felt helpless as his church was besieged by cameramen and reporters after the story broke last Friday. "They have their own agendas," said Mr Ainsworth, "as do the bloggers, both professional and amateur, who are using the story for their own ends and drawing bizarre, mainly racist, conclusions."

Well, quite. Mel P does have form in this area, jumping as she did on the Sun's article about "Muslim yobs" attacking a house in Windsor which local squaddies had contemplated moving into. Only, it turned out that there was no evidence whatsoever to link it to Muslims and that the most likely culprits in fact turned out to be local residents who were concerned about the effects on house prices. When confronted with the Sun's own apology, she simply stated that the "[T]he correction did not deny the original information" and that "readers can judge for themselves". Which is usually something Mel does not leave to chance.

Still, in very slightly related news, wasn't it glorious to see the Bishop of Rochester, he of the "Muslim no-go areas" soundbite giving his Easter sermon? Presumably he somehow managed to get out from under the blanket of fear that was the apparent death threats sent to him for such insolence. Doubtless too the Bishop of Oxford, who similarly received death threats after he dared not to disagree with the proposed call to pray being broadcast in Oxford made his sermon, although without any of the press attention.

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3/24/2008 09:31:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, March 13, 2008 

Why I loathe the gutter press.




There are many reasons to dislike the gutter press - its casual attitude towards the truth which it pretends to be both seeking and printing; the way that minorities which don't fit within its accepted norms and values are ridiculed and made to feel as though they're personally to blame for their lot; how it randomly chooses which causes to back and which to dump; the way in which "outsiders", such as recent immigrants are routinely demonised and assaulted; and how on the biggest issues, which can only be discussed, debated and voted upon in a calm manner, it routinely sensationalises and gives the loudest voice to those who, for one reason or another, are seeking the most extreme response.

None of the above though come close to when the press is at its most intrusive, insensitive and unthinking - when someone in a position of authority or fame suddenly either dies or is seriously injured, especially if it's through their own hand, journalists (although technically it's their editors who should get the blame) at large suddenly decide that it's a wonderful opportunity to delve into their past for either demons or affairs. Quite apart from letting the person who has just died lay to rest in something approach peace, the people such reports muses by tabloids, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, Daily Mail-watch, Mail-watch, Express-watch, ost hurt are those left behind, already having to deal with their loss, now also having to field requests from the media to reply to allegations which may or may not be true.

Last weekend saw the death of Carol Barnes, the former ITN newsreader. Widely loved by her colleagues by all accounts, even she was susceptible to this most disreputable media voyeurism. The Daily Mail, the newspaper which routinely finds it acceptable to resort to this very lowest form of journalism, ran an article wallowing in the apparent misery of Barnes's life after the death of her daughter in a sky-diving accident, savouring how she'd apparently turned to drink and been caught drink-driving, all while pretending to care about this woman who was at death's door. This is how the gutter press tries to justify such salacious gossip - both on the grounds of public interest and also on how what it's also doing is in actuality filling in the background, or most disingenuously, that it's celebrating their life, even if their life was apparently one that would drive anyone to the bottle.

The treatment meted out to Barnes was slight compared to what have been handed to two individuals this week. Yesterday Allison Pearson pulled no punches in directly blaming the mother of Scarlett Keeling for her death, despite the fact that Keeling was drugged, raped and murdered, according to the very same newspaper. That however wasn't quite enough for Mail - rather than just accusing a mother seeking justice of deserting her daughter to the hands of the inhuman monsters that apparently stalk Goa just waiting to grab "ripe peaches" like her daughter, it set about descending on Fiona MacKeown's home, which just happens to be a caravan site. Headlined "The truth about 'Good Life' of murdered teenager Scarlett Keeling" it vividly describes how it was apparently anything but. With photographs of the dead teenager's bedroom, it calls it "squalid", with "scruffy" caravans "surrounded by rubbish" with "snarling dogs" the only apparent welcome. Why anyone would welcome journalists who later write such vicious hatchet jobs is uncertain, but the hack's pique doesn't stop there. The judging of a life which seems anathema to the Daily Mail's middle-class family values continues throughout the article, until it comes to this conclusion:

Yesterday her remaining children finally arrived back in Britain where they will be cared for by their grandmother. Fiona remains in Goa, determined to continue her fight.

It is a fight not just for justice for Scarlett, but also to convince a growing army of critics, who believe she fatally let her eldest daughter down.


An army of critics which begins and ends with the Daily Mail, only too happy to profit from the misery of a family which has lost a daughter through no fault of their own.

The other case this week is that of Michael Todd - the chief constable of Manchester police that apparently ended his own life by subjecting himself to the freezing temperatures of Snowdonia on the night of the worst storm of winter. Understandably, there are those who want to know just why he did so. There is however a difference between responsible reporting at a time of grief for his family and salacious digging into his life, exposing his foibles and also his failures. Note here that although the usual suspects of the Sun, Mail and Express are all desperate to find everything out and trump each other, the supposedly higher-minded Guardian Media Group, which publishes the Manchester Evening News, was the one that exposed the first woman allegedly linked to him. The BBC, which has also claims to rise above such gossip, also mentioned the woman in its report on the news at ten. The Sun at the bottom of its article is shameless in urging anyone who knew Todd to ring in and tell them all about why they think he did it, while the Mail, which just a couple of paragraphs previously speculated wildly about Todd's private life, has the audacity to print Todd's widow's plea to the media:

"The whole family is struggling to come to terms with his death and we would ask the media to leave us to grieve in peace."

Something that it has absolutely no interest whatsoever in doing.

Slight update: No surprise that Melanie Phillips is also attacking Karen Matthews and Fiona MacKeown, using their apparent dereliction of duty as parents to conclude that that "at a certain level in British society the most basic rules of nurture, parental duty and civilised values have gone down the tubes along with orderly family life." Who could possibly disagree with the kindest inhabitant of Fleet Street?

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3/13/2008 09:08:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, February 05, 2008 

MMR and autism link dismissed yet again.

When she isn't fulminating against the treason of intellectuals or how we're slouching towards dhimmocracy, Melanie Phillips likes to spend her time ranting against the evils of the MMR vaccine. Study after study has been unable to replicate the results of Andrew Wakefield's discredited 1998 report that linked the triple-jab with autism, so it's always fit in nicely with Phillips' persecuted middle-class conspiracy theory mindset.

The latest study, involving 250 children, has similarly found no link between the immunisation programme and autism. Strangely, Phillips has yet to post on how this is the latest report that can't be trusted. The Daily Mail, the second-in-command in the scaremongering about MMR stakes, does though still continue a thoroughly disingenuous approach, starting with the headline itself, which puts disproves MMR jab link to autism in inverted commas, then quotes the usual suspects who'll never be convinced. Thankfully, Science Blogs also cover it, as does the Bad Science crew.

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2/05/2008 09:46:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, December 04, 2007 

No nukes? Oh, time to invade then.

Fwwippp, followed by an almighty crash. Heard that sequence of sounds? It's been echoing around the globe, ever since the combined work of the 16(!) American intelligence agencies in the form of the national intelligence estimate was declassified and published yesterday. That fwwippp was the noise of a thousand rugs being pulled from under the feet of a thousand different people, politicians, commentators, bloggers, saloon bar bores, all made to look like fools at best and warmongering loons at worst. Iran not only isn't pursuing a nuclear weapons programme, it hasn't been doing so for four years.

Those who found themselves in a heap on the floor have come up with different ways of adjusting to the new, we're a bunch of liars and chumps, world. For the Sun, which recently informed us that the only thing worse than Iran getting nukes was another cakewalk with 650,000 dead and that anyone who believed Iran wanted nuclear power for peaceful purposes was "hopelessly deluded", the easiest thing to do is to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend nothing has changed, helped along by not reporting on the NIE assessment at all. If you're Oliver Kamm, and the unfortunate author of a piece for the Grauniad which calls for "concerted diplomatic pressure, sanctions and luck" when dealing with Iran published on the same night as the report, then you quickly rehash your bullshit and present it to the hordes on CiF as if it was fresh roast beef, rather than warmed up vomit. If you're Melanie Phillips, then this "this report provokes a high degree of scepticism". Scepticism which Mel naturally didn't show towards the intelligence claims that Saddam was going to murder us all in our beds within 45 minutes, or indeed, towards the claims by one Dave Gaubatz that Iraq's WMD was transported post-war from Iraq to Syria with the help of the Russians. Incredibly, President Bush has been the most magnanimous since the report was unveiled: he's gone from talking of nuclear holocaust and world war three to saying little more than Iran remains "dangerous".

Mad Mel does though have something of a point. We should indeed be sceptical. Why should we believe the intelligence services which got it so completely wrong over Iraq that Iran has abandoned any plans for a nuclear weapons? It's perfectly rational to be concerned over the motives of those delivering the intelligence this time round: they found themselves manipulated and used on both sides of the Atlantic to make the case for a war which has proved to be far more disastrous than their worst predictions suggested. We don't know how much of an impact this has had on their thinking and briefings; intelligence has always been nuanced and uncertain, things which Blair and Bush had no time for. Who's to say that they haven't tried to stop this happening again by being even more timid and diplomatic when considering what they know or even a pre-emptive attempt to stop in Marx's famous quote history being repeated for a second time as a farce after the tragedy of Iraq?

With Iraq however there always were informed voices that struggled to make themselves heard that more or less got it right, such as Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector who was convinced Iraq had been 90-95% disarmed. He was 5% out. Robin Cook, who had been party to the intelligence as foreign secretary, stated in his resignation speech that he didn't believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction as in those that could be quickly used in a military situation. Although intelligence agencies the world over were convinced that Iraq had some WMD, contrary to popular belief most didn't believe that it was an imminent, let alone an existential threat. As Richard Dearlove wrote, the "intelligence and facts were fixed around the policy". The ravings of men like "Curveball" were believed.

With Iran, it's different. As Oliver Kamm admits, Iran is not a totalitarian society, even if it is an autocratic and repressive one. Juan Cole speculates over whether the new information about Iran's nuclear program has come from a recent defector, having changed its mind from 2005 when the NIE estimated Iran was pursuing weapons, with now, two years' later, more convinced than before that it isn't and hasn't been for four years.

Wherever it's come from, it has already and will only do one thing: stop, or at least postpone any attack at least for some time to come. It also highlights the irony and inequity of the UN Security Council imposing sanctions on Iran for doing only, according to this latest assessment, what it is entitled to do under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The UN has been breaking international law, not Iran. This shouldn't negate from the fact that Iran has as yet no reactor where the uranium it has been enriching can be used for such purposes; but there is also nothing now to suggest, apart from the predictable and expected dissension from Israel, that the fuel, only being enriched to fuel grade, is for anything other than an energy program.

It also shouldn't stop the search for a complete solution. Still worth pursuing is the deal Russia has offered, where it would enrich the fuel while providing Iran with the reactors, taking away any reason for doubt. More intriguing still will be where this leaves Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself: he has been hiding behind Iran's nuclear program to negate from the criticism he has faced over the rising cost of living and his broken promise to redistribute Iran's oil wealth. With the nuclear shield taken away, and faced with accusations of endangering the nation for no good reason, his short reign could be brought to an end at the first opportunity. Those also facing defenestration should be those who have so recklessly scaremongered and demanded action: Mad Mel and her second Holocaust have never looked so laughable.

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12/04/2007 08:54:00 pm | | | links to this post

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