Christian Hate?

Solidarity with Egypt's Christians: a little bit of action

2011-10-18T16:23:00.000+01:00

I've just signed a petition here. Only takes a minute. (hat tip)

Those sectarian tensions in full

2011-10-12T13:21:00.001+01:00

Following clashes between Christians protesting about the burning of a church (not such a very big deal surely - if it had been we'd have reported it) and the army, 25 people are dead. Not much we can tell you about who killed who, but we may be able to give you more details once the army have carried out their independent investigation. The Christians claim they were attacked, but they would say that, wouldn't they? Let's face it, there are usually faults on both sides when you get these sectarian tensions.

Thus, in substance, the BBC on Egypt's latest Bloody Sunday. The BBC can do better than this when it wants to. Where the Copts are concerned it apparently doesn't want to - and consistently hasn't wanted to in the face of all the outrages they have suffered over the last few years. Why not?

Anti-Zionism at the Proms: the Big Lie

2011-09-08T18:48:00.000+01:00

Did you know that Max Bruch's Violin Concerto is a fiendishly cunning piece of Zionist propaganda? That anyone listening to it live is at severe risk of going home convinced that you can't do better than be beastly to Palestinians?

You'd better believe it, since to doubt this is to doubt that there was any justification whatsoever for the disruption of Thursday night's Prom by Palestine Solidarity Campaign protesters.

There are the usual objections to these people's perceptions and priorities to be made. One may strongly suspect, for example, that the Khartoum Philharmonic Orchestra, if such a thing exists, could have performed at the Albert Hall every summer for the past 30 years without moving them to take action. The state which has occupied Tibet since 1959 sends its circus on tour round Britain without fear of disruption.

But there is more. Let us allow, for the sake of argument, that Israel is indeed the Most Evil State On Earth. What is then to be said about disrupting a violin concerto as a means of protest?

It is asserted that the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is a tool of the Zionist propaganda machine. that (in the PSC's words) it shows "complicity in whitewashing Israel's persistent violations of international law and human rights".

Now please follow me closely at this point. The PSC is right to this extent: having an orchestra good enough to play at the Proms does indeed make Israel look better than it otherwise would. but the reason why this is the case is that the existence of such an orchestra is in fact a good thing, and being a good thing makes the country it belongs to really a better country than it would otherwise be. It is therefore not propaganda.

The man who tells you that a beautiful piece of orchestral music is a lie has not only failed to understand what beauty is. He has failed to understand what truth is. He is a philistine and, being a philistine, a liar too. If he is not conscious of lying, that is because he has drunk so deeply from the well of politics that he no longer recognises the distinction between a lie and a politically unhelpful truth. He has decided that there are so many bad things about Israel that it must not be permitted for there to be any good things about it. The IPO is a bad thing because it is a good thing.

The principle applies without exception - to the Berlin Philharmonic under Hitler, to the Leningrad Philharmonic under Stalin. I need hardly say that propaganda was integral to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. They shared a need to convince their citizens and the outside world of things which were not true. But the orchestras made music which was really and not just propagandistically beautiful and, I repeat, that was a good thing.

Of course I am not suggesting that the arts cannot be instrumentalised and manipulated by oppressive regimes (or indeed by comparatively benign ones). They can be given propagandist content - but come on... Bruch's Violin Concerto? They can also be used to try to establish "innocence by association". But the remedy for that is simply for the audience to decline to be manipulated. It really isn't difficult. In my time I've been to concerts given by Soviet, Iranian and Sudanese musicians. In each case I enjoyed the music, but did I come away with an enhanced regard for the regimes of those countries? What kind of fool do you take me for?

"The kind of fool who would go to the IPO Prom" must evidently be the PSC protesters' reply. So make that not just philistinism and dishonesty but arrogance as well. Ludicrous arrogance, given the demographic characteristics of your average Proms audience, and the audience's reaction on Thursday night suggests that the point was not lost on them. "We must control what music you are allowed hear because otherwise we cannot trust you to think the right thoughts about it": the thought is the one which invariably underlies totalitarinism, and anyone thinking it is unfit to be trusted with a seat on a Parish Council.

So much for the moral status of the protest. There remains the related but separate question of what crime protesters of this sort ought to be charged with. And specifically whether whatever it is should be considered as "racially aggravated". We have been here before, and the outcome was a depressing own goal.

I find Sheriff James Scott's remarks irritatingly bumptious in tone but he has surely judged rightly. I hope the doomed attempt at establishimg "racial aggravation" will not be played out again in a court in London and end up giving the PSC further cause for celebration.

The sustained campaign to portray the state created by Jews as uniquely oppressive and murderous is (since this portrayal is false) is racist in its effect and, whilst it is not necessarily racist in its motivation, almost inevitably leads to a blurring of the line between non-racist and racist motives and reasonings. But the attempt to pin a "racist" label on a single act of protest against the actions of a state is futile.

Imagine that there was a well-organised and vocal campaign to hold the People's Republic of China to account for its occupation of Tibet and oppression of the Tibetan people. Who knows, perhaps one day some members of the PSC will start one. Would we really want to see its supporters in the dock, facing charges of anti-Chinese racism on the grounds that they had unfairly singled the Chinese state out for criticism?

The "racial aggravation" charge here makes as much of an ass of the law as the proposition that, when a drunken oaf lurches towards a football manager with the alleged intention of assaulting him, the gravity of his offence should hinge on the question whether he called the target of his ire a "Fenian bastard" or merely a "f***ing w***er" (since apparently, in the eyes of Scotland's once highly regarded legal system, the latter lacks the potential to render the offence one "aggravated by religious prejudice").

I would respectfully urge Jews who believe good can come of recourse to such illiberal legislation to think it possible they may be mistaken. It forfeits the moral high ground and is pragmatically counter-productive to boot. It alienates those with a healthy distrust of restrictions on free speech. It closes down all possibility of dialogue with anti-Zionists who are genuinely innocent of racial motivation. As for the hope that some successful prosecutions will shame the hard Left into applying the canons of political correctness consistently, it is a vain one. When did they ever feel the need to be consistent? The clue is in the fisrt word of that phrase "political correctness".

No, let the Prom protesters' guilt be "aggravated" not by racism but by philistinism, barbarism, preening totalitarian arrogance and, last but not least, blasphemy against the God who has made beauty true and truth beautiful.

Reorganisation time

2011-08-16T16:53:00.000+01:00

I've been bothered for some time about the mismatch between this blog's title and url on the one hand, and the contents of most of my recent posting on the other. That's why (as the politicians say) I've decided to create a new blog for all posts not strictly related to this one's original theme. It'll be at mrgrumpysplace.blogspot.com.

"Christian Hate?" was about taking the charity Christian Aid to task for indirectly promoting hatred of Jews through its demonisation of Israel. Regular readers will hopefully appreciate that it's not about encouraging Christians to hate Muslims, the Guardian or even the Archbishop of Canterbury. However, a casual visitor might, on seeing the title, get the wrong end of the stick and jump to the conclusion that I'm Anders Behring Breivik's sock puppet. On the Web first impressions are everything.

I blog about what I feel strongly about and of late that hasn't included Christian Aid, not least because becoming a Catholic has meant that I no longer have any corporate connection with it. I'm proud of what I've written about Christian Aid, I stand by nearly all of it, and I'm not saying I'll never re-enter the fray in the future. With that in mind, rather than change this blog's title I'm taking my other wares elsewhere.

Bishops and the riots

2011-08-11T19:50:00.002+01:00

I can't make up my mind. What has been the most helpful reaction to this week's events from the Church of England?

On the one hand, there's this from the Archbishop of Canterbury:-

(hat tip: Damian Thompson)

On the other hand there's this from the Rt Revd Christopher Chessun, who is not merely Bishop of Southwark but Bishop for Urban Life and Faith:-

"The images of violence and destruction on our screens do not represent the strong, hopeful and vibrant communities I know so well. I want to appeal to those responsible for the disturbances to stop.

"Today, as many in our Diocese count the cost of the disturbances, I am deeply saddened to see the images of destruction in familiar places. I will in the days ahead visit those communities that have been at the centre of trouble and I continue to promise my support for, and solidarity with, all who seek to build positive and constructive engagement.

"The Christian message is one of hope, love and peace and I know that the churches of Southwark Diocese stand ready to play their part in bringing healing and hope to the places they serve. I am asking them to offer special prayers for the healing and peace of our cities when they gather for worship this Sunday and week by week, remembering especially those who have been personally affected and have lost homes and livelihoods.

"Southwark Cathedral, along with many other churches in the Diocese, remains open as a place of prayer and reflection."

Much as he knows and loves those strong, hopeful and vibrant communities, they'll have to wait a day or two for that positive and constructive engagement, then...

This is an institution which, at its higher levels, can hardly be bothered any more to even pretend it is relevant. Dr Chessun, one assumes, is well aware that out on those vibrant streets right now "I'm your local bishop" means less than nothing. Rowan Williams occupies the highest post next to the Queen in the Established Church: it is a civic role, not just a spiritual one. He has at length spoken - on Day Five. Not to the nation, but to the House of Lords. As usual, he sounds as if he was delivering an academic paper.

I don't want to be scoring sectarian points here, and goodness knows there are some wishy washy Catholic bishops, but in this company Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, sounds like Jeremiah. I would have liked him to offer explicit support to the police. But, where most of the Bishop of Southwark's statement sounds as if he was reacting to a natural disaster, Archbishop Nichols speaks plainly of wrongdoing and its consequences, in language which stands some chance of touching the hearts of those in the thick of it - anxious parents, kids tempted to go along with their mates. His appeal for prayer is, of course, one that should be heeded.

If good can come out of this mess it will be through the application of some very tough love at all levels of society. There are many in the Church of England crying out for leadership. A country with good reasons for cynicism about the worlds of politics and media desperately needs a lead from its Established Church. But the Church's leadership is not fit for purpose.

Libya: Mr Grumpy in "over-optimism" shock

2011-08-01T14:37:00.000+01:00

Back in March I wrote a post on Libya in which I suggested six possible outcomes of Western military intervention, five of which were likely to be worse than the outcome of leaving Gaddafi to get on with it. It was a pessimistic piece - but not pessimistic enough. I covered the scenario where the rebels are at each others' throats as soon as they have toppled Gaddafi, also the one where the rebellion helps Islamists into power, and also the danger of a prolonged stand-off between government and rebel forces. What I failed to suggest was that a blend of all three scenarios would see Islamist rebels begin disposing of their non-Islamist rivals long before there is any sign of Gaddafi deciding he has a plane to catch.

It's an absolute fiasco, rendered perfect by the fact that General Younes was murdered just two days after the UK recognised the rebels as the government of Libya. So was that the turncoat Gaddafist General Younes we thought we were recognising - doh! - or was it the doughty champions of freedom and democracy in the Obaida Ibn Jarrah Brigade? The truth is that we haven't a clue.

One consequence of this farce is very clear. We might send a plane or two to Syria once we're very sure we know who's going to win, but that will be it. We condemn, we sympathize, we pray, but we keep out. Call it humanitarian non-intervention. It will require us to have strong stomachs, but it's the way it has to be.

Or am I, even now, underestimating the obdurate sentimentality and vanity of the politicians who think it is their mission to jolly well make the rest of the world behave itself?

Goose and gander: a somethingveryspecificist strikes

2011-07-23T17:54:00.000+01:00

This should not be a day for point-scoring, but inevitably the point-scoring is in full swing. And I really was pulled up short when I realised what my last post had been.

For today neither the BBC nor anyone else in the left-liberal universe has the slightest difficulty in naming the beliefs held by a man who has slaughtered 90 innocent victims.

Even though there is, as I write, no evidence that any other person - let alone an organisation - sharing those beliefs helped or encouraged him to commit mass murder. Even though his action seems utterly irrational even considered as a means to the ends which are assumed to have motivated it. Even though the outrage would appear at this point to have at least as much in common with the classic spree killing as with the kind of organized religio-political mass murder campaign with which we are familiar.

So there's an absolutely blatant double standard here. Branding everyone in Norway or anywhere else who is worried about Muslim immigration as a potential mass murderer is out of order unless it's OK to do the same to Muslims every time an Islamist bomb goes off. So far from doing that, the BBC fights shy of even applying the label "Islamist" to terrorists, for fear of implicating Islam as such. No such fear of implying guilt by association is restraining it today, though:-

'The BBC's Richard Galpin, near the island which is currently cordoned off by police, says that Norway has had problems with neo-Nazi groups in the past but the assumption was that such groups had been largely eliminated and did not pose a significant threat.'

Once again: this is before we have a shred of evidence that any group was involved.

We ought to be getting some consistency and it ought to be a consistent moderate Somethingveryspecificism rather than any variety of Nothinginparticularism. By all means let's put the far Right under the spotlight, though without imputing bogus guilt by association: it remains true that the EDL hasn't organised any spree killings and Geert Wilders hasn't planted any bombs. But let's also insist that the BBC must boldly go into the journalistic no-go area it has created around the relationship of terrorism to Islamism and Islamism to Islam. Not because we should want to demonise Muslims but because when lives are at stake we need and are entitled to understand what the problem is.

Extreme varieties of nothinginparticularism

2011-07-14T13:17:00.000+01:00

Edwin Greenwood notes that, whilst British media types have complied meekly with Indian officialdom's belated two-fingered gesture towards the Raj of turning Bombay into Mumbai, the locals are less enthusiastic.

I feel sure that they are also less reticent than the BBC about naming the cause which has claimed a further 18 lives in the city. I was originally going to link the previous sentence to this item. But now, on reading the Beeb's account of the latest Bombay bloodbath, I find that it makes my point just as well. Just as the estimable young Jordanian is tackling "extremism" with his computer games, so we have speculation as to whether the blasts were the work of "home-grown militant outfits like the Indian Mujahideen (IM)", or, as in 2008, of "Pakistani-based militants".

Extremism has to be an extreme form of something. You can't be a militant without something to be militant about. Pardon me for repeating myself, but it's one thing (and bad enough) for government to adopt this mealy-mouthedness as a matter of policy; for the organization we pay willy-nilly to bring us the news to follow suit is unconscionable.

Understatement of the month

2011-07-07T12:45:00.002+01:00

From the findings of the investigation into the American Catholic TV presenter Fr John Corapi by his religious order:-

“Holds legal title to over $1 million in real estate, numerous luxury vehicles, motorcycles, an ATV, a boat dock and several motor boats, which is a serious violation of his promise of poverty as a perpetually professed member of this society.”

101 Uses for Other People's Money

2011-07-07T12:30:00.001+01:00

No. 53: set up a website that nobody ever visits.

Headline of the week

2011-06-17T13:27:00.001+01:00

Virgin warns infected customers

And courts risk of being sued under the Trades Descriptions Act?

Sorry, couldn't resist it.

Raising awareness of the stakeholders in the room

2011-06-15T13:07:00.002+01:00

John Rentoul reaches out to us to share his concerns and issues around clichés. What's not to like? Though I do hope I won't be named and shamed. And I fear Mr Rentoul himself may be teetering on the edge with his opening "I have an article". Pots, kettles.

I must admit I haven't yet come across "toilet" as a verb. Is it transitive or intransitive?

(Hat tip - is that on the list, or already old hat? - to Fr Tim)

Have I got this right?

2011-06-13T13:16:00.000+01:00

'This is not helped by a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, nor by the steady pressure to increase what look like punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system.'

- Ed Miliband

'those at the top and the bottom who were not showing responsibility and were shirking their duty to each other [...] some of those on benefits who were abusing the system because they could work - but didn't.

'Labour - a party founded by hard-working people for hard-working people - was seen by some, however unfairly, as the party of those ripping off our society.'

- The Archbshop of Canterbury

No, wait...

Schadenfreuderealpolitikbeansproutthing

2011-06-08T13:28:00.001+01:00

Warning: this post contains tasteless schadenfreude*.

OK, I know the new E. coli outbreak is no laughing matter. But you would need a heart of stone not to crease up at the news that, after initially fingering organic cucumbers, the German authorities are now closing in on an organic bean sprout farm. Yes, this is an epidemic tailor made for culling health food junkies. I mean, what normal human being, on being told that their next meal is going to be their last one, would order bean sprouts?

And, as one who has himself patronised German health food shops in his time (Frau G made me do it), I strongly suspect, despite the Beeb's reservations, that we already have the solution to the mystery of the sexist bug.

The German government should urgently consider launching a health campaign aimed at middle-class women in their thirties, to encourage them to switch to healthier options such as beer and sausages.

*Foootnote: since like so many bloggers I dream of breaking into the big time in the manner of Oliver Kamm, I follow the rules of the hack's profession and take care to use this word, or its synonym realpolitik, when writing anything about Germany. For the benefit of those who didn't get an edukayshun, it means "I am cultured and cosmopolitan, a veritable Renaissance man". On the other hand, I am emphatically not going to mention the Nazis. Oh, bother, I just did.

Londoners, don't vote for Ken! (reason no. 953)

2011-05-05T13:35:00.000+01:00

Very much a last minute job, this. Blame moving house, changing my religion etc. Plus I really thought that someone in the MSM would have a long enough memory to pick up on this one. In fact someone had done, only three years ago and thus before Colonel Gaddafi declared war on the Libyan people. It's a much. much more pertinent story today, so here it is for the record.

Once upon a time there was an exceptionally repellent totalitarian sect called the Workers Revolutionary Party. Being not only exceptionally repellent but also unusually well-funded, it was able to put out a daily paper, the Newsline. Party members were expected to devote 25 hours a day to selling this product. On a good day they would come across somebody prepared to part with money for it.

In the early Eighties it evidently dawned on the WRP that the Newsline was not reaching the masses, so they decided to try to broaden their influence by launching a "Labour" paper. And so the Labour Herald was born, a classic front organization. As well as having "Labour" in its name, it was to be fronted by a Labour editor - and no less a figure than the Leader of the Greater London Council was waiting in the wings.

Here's a sample of the paper's content. Anti-Semitic? I'm sure Ken would no more think so now than he did then.

And now I'll let Keith Dovkants of the Eve Stennit tell the rest of the story:-

'The paper was printed by a firm based in Runcorn, Cheshire, which also printed News Line and publications sponsored by the Libyan government.

'When Private Eye ran a piece claiming Ken Livingstone, then leader of the GLC, was editing a paper financed by the Libyans he successfully sued for libel. It has to be remembered that at that time Gaddafi was encouraging the assassination of his political opponents abroad and wiping them out at home. In 1984 his thugs fired on demonstrators outside the Libyan embassy in St James's Square, killing WPC Yvonne Fletcher.

'Although no one doubts Gaddafi was subsidising News Line and Labour Herald there is absolutely no evidence Ken knew about it. But he did support the WRP when it published an extraordinary anti-Jewish rant in News Line.

'On 20 March 1983, BBC2 ran an investigation on its Money Programme. Its central thesis was that the WRP's newspaper, Ken's Labour Herald and other publications were being funded by Gaddafi. Looking at the transcript today one sees a thorough, rather measured, piece of journalism. The response was quite different.

'Under the heading The Zionist Connection, News Line published an editorial denouncing the Money Programme's investigation. It blamed a "powerful Zionist connection" that ran through the Labour Left, Mrs Thatcher's government, to the BBC. It cited the placing of Stuart Young, a director of the Jewish Chronicle, as chairman of the corporation and the appointment of his brother, David Young, to head the Manpower Services Commission. The Jewish Chronicle, the editorial noted, gave "support and advance publicity" to the Money Programme.

'On the day of its hysterical editorial News Line ran a piece in which Ken suggested the Money Programme report was indeed the work of Zionists. In the same piece he blamed "smears" against him on agents working for Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin's government.'

So when confronted with the facts Ken preferred to endorse the WRP's theory that the Money Programme was in the grip of a Zionist conspiracy (we all know how much Zionists like their money, don't we?) rather than acknowledge that he had unwittingly taken a bloodstained tyrant's money.

Has Ken ever retracted this position? His Wikipedia entry passes over this strand of his career in silence. It wouldn't be the only case where "Sorry" has been the hardest word for him. Employing Lee Jasper still isn't a cause for regret, it seems. Sorry, but Ken's not fit to be Mayor.

Christians rejoice?

2011-05-03T14:02:00.003+01:00

I was going to start this post by observing that I do not expect to read a more inane reaction to the killing of Osama bin Laden than Cristina Odone's attempt to construct a (im-)moral equivalence between Americans celebrating the demise of the bearded one and the "Arab street" rejoicing over 9/11. That, however, was before Rowan Williams's PR man George Pitcher popped up singing from the same hymnbook*. My cup runneth over, and I think it is Mr Pitcher who must be awarded the palm, if only for his inspired use of the term "rednecks".

Well, George Pitcher is in the deepest and truest sense not my problem any more. As for Cristina Odone, however, I am emboldened to suggest that after less than a fortnight as a Catholic I already have a better grasp of Catholic moral theology than she has.

It is right to celebrate the success of a just endeavour and wrong to celebrate the success of an unjust endeavour. As simple as that. And when I say "right" I don't mean just "permissible". We ought to be thankful that Osama has been put out of the way of masterminding the taking of innocent lives, thankful to those whose professionalism, doggedness and courage has brought about this end. Why, Ms Odone, should anyone risk their neck for the sake of your freedom if the most you can manage when they triumph is a "yes, Osama bin Laden’s death is a good thing" from between gritted teeth?

But surely, you may now be saying, our Cristina has the Vatican on her side? Thus Fr Federico Lombardi:-

“Osama bin Laden – as we all know – was gravely responsible for promoting division and hatred between peoples, causing the end of countless innocent lives, and of exploiting religions to this end.

“Faced with the death of a man, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibility of each and every one of us before God and before man, and hopes and commits himself so that no event be an opportunity for further growth of hatred, but for peace.”

And quite right, too. Note, for one thing, the first of these two sentences, and see if you can find its equivalent in either GP's or CO's posts; compare the forthright attribution of guilt with George Pitcher's portrayal of Osama as a man denied a fair trial. Note also the absence of direct condemnation of anyone other than Osama himself, and again compare and contrast. Note next that the Vatican can never forget the exigencies of diplomacy when it chooses its words. Fr Lombardi will have been keenly aware that there are Christians in Pakistan.

And note above all a crucial distinction. It is the termination of the man's evil deeds which is just cause for rejoicing, not the termination of his life. However just, the fighting of a war is a poor substitute for the repentance of the aggressor. That's a distinction which, I dare say, many patriotic Americans are failing to draw today, but the faux pacifist liberals sitting in judgment over them in North London aren't doing any better. Two sides of the same coin, in fact.

*That will, of course, be the one from which which the inappropriately militaristic "Onward Christian soldiers" has been expunged in favour of "Onward Christian pilgrims".

Men are a waste of space, and the BBC has the stats to prove it

2011-04-14T12:48:00.009+01:00

Two BBC stories from the same day, unconnected but offering an instructive contrast.

From the first:- 'Almost 100 women are killed by partners or ex-partners each year, figures show. 'And 21 men died from domestic abuse in England and Wales last year.'

Now, though the mention of male victims may strike you as something of an afterthought, I say the author deserves considerable credit for thinking of them at all. There's a lot of ideological capital invested in the perception of domestic violence as Exhibit A in the case against the patriarchy, and far too much media coverage has endorsed this view by presenting it without qualification as a male-on-female crime.

So three cheers for a Beeb reporter who has acknowledged that more than one case in six adds up to too many exceptions to the rule to be brushed under the carpet. Nevertheless the rule does get stated. The gender/sex breakdown is there to remind us, just in case we had any doubt, that most victims are female and most perpetrators male.

Now compare what we find in another story from the same day:-

'Since operations began in Afghanistan in 2001, 363 UK servicemen and women have died.'

The double plural actually makes this sentence misleading. For, as is revealed by following a couple of links, the gender/sex breakdown here is in fact 362 to 1. To make the comparison crystal clear, if we surveyed 363 domestic abuse fatalities we would expect to find over 60 male victims.

So a breakdown is de rigueur when it suggests that murdering your partner is very much a man thing, but to be avoided where it might give the impression that getting killed for your country is even more of a man thing. I'm sure there's no deliberate indoctrination going on here. That happened a long way up the line. At this point it's just the working out of an unconscious worldview, the fruits of the coming true of Gramsci's dream of cultural hegemony. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that both pieces were written by men.

No definitive evidence for a correlation between gender and nitpicking blogging was available at the time of going to press.

Libya: a just war?

2011-03-29T20:53:00.004+01:00

William Oddie, an eminent precursor on the road to Rome, argues that the air strikes on Libya meet the Catholic church's five criteria for a just war. He writes persuasively, but I find that the argument falls short.

One point, not the most important: in his enthusiasm for smart weapons which can take out tanks with a minimum of risk to civilians, Dr Oddie seems to forget that the youing men inside the tank get taken out too. True, they are combatants, and true, they may have much civilian blood on their hands, but it is still not permissible to dismiss their lives as of no account.

The more crucial point arises from the unpacking of the notion that the intervention is all about "protecting civilians". For we are not doing that in any direct way, by building bomb shelters for them or evacuating them. We are taking out tanks, and whilst tanks are useful for massacring civilians they are by no means essential. So if we are protecting civilians it is by the indirect means of enabling the rebels to beat back Gaddafi's forces. And since that is the case I think it is absurd to suggest, as Dr Oddie does, that we can bracket out any concerns about the outcome of the conflict.

Here's one outcome: we decide at some point that we have done enough bombing, whereupon the tide immediately turns in Gaddafi's favour. What's to stop him carrying through all the massacres he had planned in the first place, plus a few extra since the bombing will have given him and his supporters many more scores to settle?

Outcome two: when we stop bombing we leave a standoff which will be resolved, if at all, only after an indeterminate period of civil war. What are the chances that this will further the protection of civilians?

Outcome three: we enable the rebels to overthrow Gaddafi and form a government. But Gaddafi's supporters now turn insurgent. Iraq all over again. Same question as in outcome two.

Outcome four: the rebels manage to utterly defeat Gaddafi and his forces (though miraculously without killing large numbers of his civilian supporters). However, because the rebels are a hopelessly disparate bunch containing everything from pro-Western liberals to al Qaidists, they turn against each other as soon as Gaddafi has fallen and plunge the country into continued civil war. Same question again.

Outcome five: Gaddafi utterly defeated, but this time the rebels hold together and form an effective government. But the bad news is that it turns out that the al Qaidists are the predominant force among them. The government is more repressive even than Gaddafi's. All dissent is met with massacres.

Outcome six: under the impact of the bombing Gaddafi has a change of heart and sues for peace. A peace conference is held at which all parties agree to forego reprisals and hold free elections. An elected government takes power and duly submits to the verdict of the voters five years later. The people of Libya live happily ever after.

So one scenario out of six in which the criterion for a just cause to which Dr Oddie refers - "prevention of a worse evil" - is met. Is there as much as a one in six chance of it turning out that way? I doubt whether the Sarbameron troika are that sanguine, and it's very clear that the Pope isn't. Dr Oddie knows very well what a wise man the Pope is; he and many others should not resist being guided by that wisdom now.

Ash Wednesday

2011-03-09T15:42:00.004Z

Technology changes, the nuts and bolts of the human condition not so much. After a sustained campaign to interest me in two billion per cent APR credit cards, this morning my Yahoo mailbox was advertising a hair restorer ("9 out of 10 men..."). It was like scanning the ads in a Victorian newspaper.

Well, I am happy to report that I am well, nay luxuriantly, provided with thatch. On the other hand the latest offering, liposuction for men, may be an option if my Lenten fast proves too gruelling - a pretty good bet based on previous years' performance. I've done OK so far today, Frau G having acceded to my pleas that I should not be left alone with an unfinished packet of Choco Leibniz.

On a more serious note, as of today both Grumpys are officially headed Rome-wards. If you are of a praying disposition, please say one for us.

Never the right time

2011-01-08T21:46:00.003Z

On the one hand...

'Helen Brayley, from University College London's Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, said people should not draw hasty conclusions.

'Ms Brayley, who wrote the first independent academic analysis of child sex trafficking, said: "When you jump in with thinking about race too quickly, you can miss a whole load of other things that are happening in other areas.

'"So by racially stereotyping this early on without a national scoping project... we don't know what the situation is in other areas around the country... you might be leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy of if people are looking for Asian offenders, they will only find Asian offenders."'

(Or you might want to avoid stereotyping people concerned about this as racist morons, but I digress)

On the other hand...

'He [Keith Vaz] said: "Why didn't Jack Straw say something about this (before)? He has represented Blackburn for 31 years, he's been the home secretary."'

(all from the Beeb, betraying no hint of awareness of a contradiction)

Well, actually, not the other hand but very much the same one. Too soon, too late, any time but the right time. Which is of course never.

On the murder of 21 Christians

2011-01-02T19:52:00.004Z

In the first place:-

'intermarriage between Coptic men and Muslim women is illegal.'

- from Time magazine

In the second place:-

The Laws for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour
(September 15, 1935)

Entirely convinced that the purity of German blood is essential to the further existence of the German people, and inspired by the uncompromising determination to safeguard the future of the German nation, the Reichstag has unanimously resolved upon the following law, which is promulgated herewith:

Section 1

Marriages between Jews and citizens (German: Staatsangehörige) of German or kindred blood are forbidden. Marriages concluded in defiance of this law are void, even if, for the purpose of evading this law, they were concluded abroad.

(source: Wikipedia)

In the third place:-

'We know the long and honourable history of co-existence of Christians and Muslims in Egypt and are confident that the overwhelming majority of Egyptian people will join in condemning this and similar acts.'

- the Archbishop of Canterbury, from his statement on the Alexandria church bombing.

Now I'm not expecting Rowan Williams to say something inflammatory. But waffle as mendacious as this is worse than silence.

There's some good background stuff at the Guardian, to give it its due - here and here. Another sample of that honourable co-existence:-

'Egypt's Christians have played as big a part in the recent demographic explosion as their fellow Muslims, but whereas new mosques are built and renovated freely, Christians have to navigate a bewilderingly web of bureaucracy to secure permission for construction. There are an estimated 2,000 churches in Egypt today, alongside 93,000 mosques.'

So 1 church for every 46-and-a-half mosques. One Egyptian in ten is Christian.

'Pontiff: Christians are most persecuted'

- so runs the front page headline in the Christmas edition of the Catholic Herald, over a report on the Pope's World Peace Day message, dated 8 December. Can we agree that Pope Benedict is not quite as out of touch as he's often painted? It's good that this is said, not because it's good for Christians to be trying to face down others in a game of victimhood poker, but because it's manifestly true.

Both the Pope and Rowan Williams have been at pains to further Christian-Muslim dialogue, and that is also a good thing. But only one of them seems prepared to say plainly that there can be no dialogue where one party is holding a pistol to the other's head.

As for the BBC and its talk of sectarian tensions...

When I entered "Islamophobia" into the BBC News search engine it offered me 171 hits in the blink of an eye. Then I tried "Christophobia"; I thought I would have to give this up as a bad job after it had pondered for five minutes, but eventually it dredged up three hits from 2004 and 2006.

Those who have introduced "Islamophobia" into our political discourse have been spectacularly successful in framing the terms of debate about the relationship between British Muslims and the rest of society. This has happened in spite of our Muslim communities never - thank God - having had to face anything remotely comparable to the Alexandria church bombing. If a bomb ever did claim 21 lives at a British mosque, can there be the slightest doubt that for the BBC it would be an "Islamophobia" story and not a "sectarian tensions" one?

Hey, let's not get judgmental here...

2011-01-01T19:37:00.003Z

It's sectarian tension time again.

Pravda!

2010-11-24T10:32:00.002Z

'2 killed as Koreas exchange live fire'

- headline in the Morning Star. It's reassuring to see that some things never change.

Suspended by the chasubles

2010-11-23T15:08:00.006Z

So the Right Reverend David Spart, Bishop of Neasden, has been suspended. Quite right, too, and I trust the incandescent +London has selected a suitably sensitive part of the anatomy to suspend this prize twerp by.

I had a long republican phase and am still by no means an ardent monarchist, though my respect for the Queen is considerable. I hope, however, that even as a Trot I would not have been quite mean-spirited enough to derive satisfaction from predicting the demise of somebody else's marriage before it had started.

What's not to dislike about Bishop Spart's remarks? I don't know which is worse, the smug schadenfreude or the no less smug assumption that he can be an outspoken red republican whilst simultaneously holding high office in an institution headed by the Queen.

Says Spart:-

“I think we need a party in Calais for all good republicans who can't stand the nauseating tosh that surrounds this event.

“I managed to avoid the last disaster in slow motion between Big Ears and the Porcelain Doll, and hope to avoid this one too.”

Well, I avoided it too. I spent an agreeable day with my comrades in Boulogne (note to Bishop Spart: nicer than Calais). As I recall, the local Communists laid on some kind of reception, but apart from them and the lefties from across La Manche practically nobody was out and about. Royalty addicts are nowhere thicker on the ground than in Europe's republics.

That was of course nearly thirty years ago. One would hope that having done a certain amount of growing up in the meantime would be an indispensdable qualification for a bishop - even the Bishop of Neasden.

And then he invaded Belgium...

2010-11-17T16:49:00.007Z

Inevitably much instantly forgettable comment on The Engagement, but I did enjoy this slice of history from Christopher Howse:-

'The service, in St George’s Chapel, was full of copes, scarlet robes, ermine, silver trumpets, tabards, choirs and quizzing-glasses. But it was something of a shambles. The Garter Knights became entangled in a mêlée, Disraeli had to sit on his wife’s lap on the train back, and the four-year-old future Kaiser threw his jewelled dirk across the chapel in a tantrum, biting the leg of one of Bertie’s brothers when told off.'

Prophetic, did they but know. Bertie, the bridegroom, was the future Edward VII, and let's hope that William proves to be husband material of rather better quality than him.

Islamophobia (the real thing)

2010-11-05T16:04:00.003Z

As ever. Just the kind of story to make you feel extra good about our civic duty to hand out passports to hate preachers.

Unbeliever On Board

2010-10-23T11:17:00.005+01:00

Just walked past a car with a sticker in the back window declaring "ATHEIST" in big red letters. I just find this such a strange thing to do. What message is it meant to convey? That the owner considers himself (and I dare say it is a he) a better person than those of us who believe in fairy stories? Or a happier one? What, then, should I do with this information? Sorry, but I can't just decide to stop believing.

I could understand if it was saying "if you're one too you're not alone". But why, then, does the sticker also feature a fish logo cancelled by a diagonal red bar? It is not enough for our atheist to declare his own belief in nothing, he feels the need to point to somebody else's belief and actively reject it. What for?

And why, if you're going to do that, pick on the fish? I'm not the kind of Christian who puts a fish logo on his car, and not only because I don't own a car. For me those fish have always had a faint whiff of the Masonic handshake about them. But in point of fact I don't know of any actual harm attaching to them whatsoever. So in what way does our atheist feel that fishy types have got it in for him? It can't be, surely, that he suspects them of wanting to blow up a Tube train while he's inside it.

Or even of being liable to scratch his paintwork or let his tyres down. And that's the real irony, isn't it? The sticker suggests both a theoretical belief that Christianity is the root of all evil and a complacent assumption in practice that Christians are utterly harmless. I suppose as a Christian I should feel flattered that we're seen as such safe enemies to have. But I must confess to a degree of irritation.

Coincidentally, when I came home from my walk I started leafing through the Catholic Herald and came across their Thought for the Week:-

'If there were no God, there would be no atheists'
(G K Chesterton - of course)

If I ever do acquire a motor I'll be very tempted to put that in the back window, anticipating many stimulating conversations. Atheists are, after all, mostly harmless.

Waitrose don't preach

2010-10-02T16:20:00.003+01:00

For a blogger of my stripe there is practically endless material to be found in food packaging. I've been meaning for ages to devote a post to the Co-op's instructions for preparing a carrot for consumption.

The other day Frau Grumpy brought home a bag of Waitrose potatoes adorned with the slogan "Grown with care by farmers who share our values". This really must not be allowed to pass without comment.

Let me first put before you the image of a gaggle of Fenland farmers being examined in their catechism by the local Waitrose buyer. Diverting, is it not?

Then let me suggest that Waitrose have clearly determined that our appetite for corporate sanctimony is so insatiable that we will tolerate it even when it is utterly, 500% vacuous. For these are not even organic potatoes. They are the ordinary, bog standard variety (indeed, since they come from Curmudgeshire it is very likely that they were grown in a former bog).

Our newly rediscovered compulsion to be preached at is, you might suppose, good news for the churches. Well, perhaps, but they will surely blow their chance if, as all too often seems to be the case, they confine themselves to preaching about exactly the same things as Waitrose. It's a contest they are unlikely to win. Just before the Papal Visit I was vastly entertained by a Catholic Herald piece penned by a chap of liberal leanings who'd decided there must be some good in the old boy after all on learning that he has had solar panels installed on the Vatican roof. Parody is redundant.

A final thought: with the Equality Act now in force, are Waitrose not skating on thin ice? I foresee an action brought by potato farmers who are ******ed if they're going to parrot the Waitrose creed and don't see why they should be discriminated against...

A warm welcome to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI

2010-09-17T12:22:00.001+01:00

At least that's what I call him. What Stephen Fry and friends call him is "Pope Ratzinger".

Isn't the oafishness of that the most revealing moment in their letter? It reminds me of nothing so much as the Koran-burning antics of Pastor Terry Jones. The same gratuitous bad manners, betraying the same inability to deal on a human level with the existence of persons who sincerely hold different beliefs from oneself - in a word, intolerance.

Unlike Jones, though, Fry and Co. are members of a cultural and intellectual elite who have no excuse for ignorance. Also unlike him, they have not and will not trigger a frantic damage-limitation exercise. They will not need to lose any sleep over the possible consequences of sticking two fingers up at a billion Catholics.

Well, it ought to have at least one consequence. The ayatollahs of secular liberalism have it in for all Christians who are not prepared to swallow their agenda whole; the Pope is just a particularly potent symbol. Deo volente I'll be in the West End tomorrow evening to wave to him, and I hope to have plenty of non-Catholics for company.

NO POPERY: a liberal fatwa

2010-09-15T19:05:00.004+01:00

With the round robin letter published in today's Guardian, the anti-Pope campaign cranks up to a shrill crescendo (I'm sure there's worse to come over the next few days, though). That not just the likes of Stephen Fry and Johann Hari but so many of the Great and the Good have deemed it worthy of their signatures is a depressing commentary on the state of intellectual life in Britain.

Practically every sentence cries out for fisking, but I'll be selective.

Among the misdeeds laid at B16's door is...

'Opposing the distribution of condoms and so increasing large families in poor countries and the spread of Aids.'

So if you come from a large family in a poor country, you can rejoice in the knowledge that all these movers and shakers consider you surplus to requirements.

Here, of course, we have plenty of condoms and plenty of Aids. Is it too much to ask for just a little humility from the ayatollahs of secular liberalism?

Another grievance, and a decidedly bizarre one:-

'In any case, we reject the masquerading of the Holy See as a state and the pope as a head of state as merely a convenient fiction to amplify the international influence of the Vatican.'

Riiight. So how, exactly, do we identify proper states? By the blushing diffidence with which they surrender any claims to international influence?

This one goes without saying:-

'Failing to address the many cases of abuse of children within its own organisation.'

Now because this is a debate in which no benefit of the doubt is ever extended to anyone who speaks up for the Pope, let me say at once that this is a serious matter which has been dreadfully mishandled by the Church. However, the accusation that he has failed to address it is simply untrue.

And let us take a look at the glass house from which the stones pour forth. Did I mention that Peter Tatchell is one of the signatories? Did I need to? In fact I strongly suspect that the wording is his. Now in 2008 Mr Tatchell had an article published in an Irish paper in which he argued that the law should allow adults to have sexual access to fourteen year olds. As he points out in the article, this is an issue on which he has campaigned since the 1990s. In 1997 the following appeared in a letter to the Guardian from Tatchell (at least Peter Hitchens says it was a letter, I remember it as an article):-

'The positive nature of some child-adult sexual relationships is not confined to non-Western cultures. Several of my friends – gay and straight, male and female – had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy.

'While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.'

I'd really like to see some of the Professors, Baronesses and Lords who have signed the round robin letter confronted with this quote and asked to defend their association with its author in a campaign ostensibly motivated by concern over child abuse. If this happens on the BBC or Channel 4 (which recently screened a hatchet job on the Pope fronted by... Peter Tatchell) I'll eat my hat. Mr Tatchell is Teflon Man incarnate.

Doubtless the Professors, Baronesses and Lords would, if put on the spot, counter by asking what this has to do with children being raped by priests. But that would be sophistry. The roll of shame of priestly rapes (and however much exaggeration of the figures has gone on the real ones are shocking enough) includes every case where a child was subjected to penetrative sex. Consent is irrelevant since the law deems children incapable of giving it.

Change the law, though, and you convert large numbers of priests from abusers to legal lovers. For example, in one of the US cases which was talked up in the hope (I use the word 100% advisedly) that the Pope could be incriminated, one of the victims recalled that he hadn't liked to say no because the priest was such a nice guy. Well, consent is consent. Plenty of adult sex happens on the same basis. Of course he had subsequently regretted it, but you can't have it both ways. If consent is valid you can't allow those who have given it to retrospectively cry "rape".

I would not dream of suggesting that Peter Tatchell has ever had nefarious designs on fourteen year olds. If he had, though, he could hardly have supplied himself with a more perfectly self-serving argument than this one (from the Irish Independent piece):-

'This sexual disempowerment of young people [by an age of consent set at 17 in Ireland] plays into the hands of adults who want to abuse them. Guilt and shame about sex also increase the likelihood of molestation by encouraging the furtiveness and secrecy on which abuse thrives.

'One way to protect young people against unwanted sexual advances is by promoting sex-affirmative attitudes which challenge the idea that sex is something sordid, and by empowering teenagers to stand up for their sexual rights. Sexually informed and confident youngsters are more likely to resist sexual exploitation.'

So the way to protect kids from abuse is by redefining it so that adults who succeed in persuading them that they want sex aren't guilty of it at all.

Sexual empowerment is for adults. Children have one sexual right and it is the right to be protected from sex. Blur that distinction and you start sliding towards the rationalizations of the paedophile in denial.

To sum up: I'm not the only person who remembers reading the Guardian in 1997. You can bet that 80-90% of the signatories to the letter did. If the campaign against the Papal Visit was really about protecting children, they'd have quietly ensured Peter Tatchell wasn't invited to sign. My suggestion is that they didn't because it isn't.

I have more on the letter but this is already a longish post. Another to follow, time permitting.

The rules for them and the rules for us

2010-09-11T11:11:00.004+01:00

A senior Islamic cleric is about to pay Britain a visit, so the BBC marks the event by polling British Muslims on whether their faith has been shaken by the scale of Islamist terrorism. You can just see it, can't you?

Nein, danke!

2010-09-06T16:33:00.005+01:00

What have I done to deserve this? Here's the latest offering that amazon.de is trying to interest me in:-

Can't help feeling the title comes over as ever so slightly sinister in German. That and the author's choice of shirt colour...

Grave Concerns, or the Jobsworths Who Make a Vase Difference

2010-09-05T21:43:00.007+01:00

Bad news and good news on the hazards of life here in Curmudge. The local paper reminded us last week of an incident earlier this year in which the police took eleven hours to respond to an alleged rape. We also learned that the average speed cameras which have dramatically reduced deaths on the notorious A14 are threatened with the spending axe.

Thank goodness, though, that staffing levels at the City Council are adequate to protect us from the Invasion of the Killer Flower Vases...

'Cambridge City Council has introduced “rigorous” new rules to enforce a ban on glass and pottery containers left as memorials. Now the council is sending letters to relatives ordering them to remove flower vases which may pose a danger.

[...]

'Cllr Tim Bick, the authority’s communities chief, said there has been a “significant reduction” in memorabilia after the order was made.

'He said: “We recognise what remains might be because our notices have been missed or relatives may not have been able to visit, so we expect and hope that a direct reminder will help us complete this as sensitively as it is intended.”'

So no unkind comments, please. This being handled sensitively. And the risks here are plain for all to see:-

'The crackdown came after a child cut her hand on a broken glass vase in the grounds of Cambridge Crematorium – even though it had been damaged by a council worker.'

Always nice to see the folk who spend our taxes getting their priorities right. I'll let you know when my Curmudge City Council-issued regulation cotton wool suit is delivered.

Something completely different

2010-09-04T15:40:00.004+01:00

I defy anyone to be grumpy after watching this.

Or for the even more unashamedly sentimental (and for added entertainment watch out for the pianist's haircut - made in Germany)...

He's great in Bach too.

The lie that keeps creeping into the mainstream: now Israel is accused of genocide in the Big Issue

2010-09-04T15:19:00.003+01:00

'During the trial Osmond cited cited the words of Rachel Corrie - the US activist who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah in 2003 - as inspiration, specifically her diary entry: "I'm witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I'm really scared, this has to stop. I think it's it's a good idea for all of us to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop."' (the emphasis is mine; for the trial in question see this and - deserving a companion post in its own right - this)

Let's keep this simple. First point: Corrie's words are simply untrue - still as untrue now as when she wrote them. Untrue by any definition of the word "genocide" that does not reduce it to a Zimbabwean dollar of political discourse, that does not leave us needing a new word to describe the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Second point: it is no small matter to make a false allegation of genocide specifically against a state founded as a home for a people who have suffered the real thing. "Offensive" is a grossly overused word which I do not resort to lightly, but if ever there was a case to which it was appropriate, this is it.

Third point: the quote is from an article in The Big Issue (July 26 - August 1 2010, p. 25).

There is nothing in the article that questions the truth of Corrie's allegation. On the contrary, the passage quoted is immediately followed by allegations of war crimes committed against civilians by Israeli forces in Gaza. And let us be absolutely clear about this: I am not denying that any war crimes were committed in Gaza, but even if it were true that the Israelis had deliberately attacked a hospital and UN compounds, "genocide" is not a synonym for "war crimes".

The article is also notable for containing not the slightest hint that anyone other than Israel and its allies bears any responsibility either for the fighting in Gaza or for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole. The only points at which it provides anything remotely resembling balance are where it concedes that there is actually no proof that the arms firm EDO MBM supplies Israel at all, let alone supplying kit for use in war crimes. I suspect we have the magazine's lawyers to thank for this.

None of this is surprising given that one of the co-authors is Richard Purssell. He is a long-standing member of the International Solidarity Movement, the group to which Rachel Corrie belonged. In fact, he was with her when she died. I know this because I have googled him, not because The Big Issue told me. Evidently the reader was not meant to think that the article was partisan. The other co-author is a journalism lecturer and evidently knows a trick or two.

Let there be no misunderstanding: whilst I think that diary entry paints Rachel Corrie in a very unattractive light, and I see no reason to doubt that the primary cause of her death was her own foolhardiness, her death was untimely, unmerited and tragic. However, it doesn't make her use of the "g" word any whit more justifiable. Or rather, it shouldn't do - but it's always fascinating to see how religious patterns of thought persist among the theoretically most secular-minded of people. Corrie, we are to understand, speaks from beyond the grave with the moral authority of the martyr (as the early Church knew, the best martyrs are young and female).

A good gauge of how justifiable the charge of genocide is the fact that even the ISM don't - at least officially - make that accusation. They prefer the still highly contestable but comparatively speaking reasonable charge that Israel has created an apartheid system.

So have they written to the Big Issue dissociating themselves from Corrie's claim? Are they moving to expel Richard Purssell? If they have, it will give me great pleasure to withdraw what follows. But I'm not expecting anything of the sort before the inauguration of porcine aviation.

If you hold an extreme and irrational belief which you would like to insert into the mainstream of political discourse, what is the best way of going about it? Guerrila tactics are likely to serve you better than conventional ones. Don't issue a manifesto and get imbroiled in arguments in which the weakness of your case will be exposed. No, let Rachel the martyr state your case for you, for nobody can start an argument with a martyr. Dress up your propaganda as an objective news feature, and get it published in a magazine sold by homeless people. For who will want to hear that the Big Issue is not on the side of the angels?

The lie is worthy of Der Stürmer (for, huff and puff as you may, it is a lie specifically about Jews). But was Der Stürmer ever half as a slick?

As for the Big Issue, I would hope they could be induced to feel ashamed of themselves. My fear, though, is that we have already passed beyond that point.

More unsaintly remarks concerning a great Catholic man of letters

2010-09-01T16:40:00.003+01:00

Thank you Ross, this has made my day.

In which Mr Grumpy blows his chances of canonisation

2010-09-01T15:42:00.004+01:00

Light posting of late, so how about a sideswipe at a really easy target to get back into the swing of it? Oh, look, Cristina Odone's at it again. Today's pearl of wisdom:-

'I’m afraid Cardinal Newman was just too bitchy to be made a saint.

'The Catholic Church’s great intellectual convert was a magnificent writer, a bold thinker, a rigorous Church historian. But his Apologia Pro Vita Sua leaves no doubt that he was also supremely catty and precious, guilty of the self-absorption of a latter-day celeb.'

So no hint of bitchiness there, then. Pretty much a case of "takes one to know one", might one say (miaow)?

I've read the Apologia twice and it changed my life. Self-absorbed? Well, he was after all defending himself against a savage assault on his integrity. What he was he supposed to write about if not himself? If you really don't like the autobiographical slant, there is an abundance of other works to choose from. No doubt Cristina will be giving us her reactions to the Grammar of Assent in due course (miaow no. 2).

And what makes the Apologia unexpectedly unputdownable is, quite simply, the fact that Newman had a mind worth being absorbed in. Unlike some people (miaow no. 3).

Oh, and one other thing. Few Victorian English gentlemen would have doubted that the Italians were dirtier and more superstitious than the English. Certainly not Charles Kingsley. Might this view not, at the time, have contained a grain of truth? I'm not aware, though, that Newman ventured any predictions about comparative hygiene standards in the early 21st century - as Cristina's aggrieved present tense implies. Oh well, I suppose 1 September still counts as the silly season (miaow no. 4).

Double standards and self-deception: Barack Obama on the Ground Zero mosque

2010-08-14T16:19:00.006+01:00

A brief questionnaire...

1. Should the construction of a mosque at Ground Zero be

(a) allowed in the name of religious freedom

or

(b) prevented on the grounds that it is grossly offensive to those bereaved by 9/11?

2. Should the Catholic convent at Auschwitz have been

(a) closed down on the grounds that it was grossly offensive to Jewish Holocaust survivors

or

(b) allowed to stay in the name of religious freedom?

Would I be wrong in thinking that a broad swathe of liberal opinion would reflexively choose answer (a) to both questions?

True, not a few conservatives would offer a (b) in both cases. That, however, would arguably be less inconsistent since the parallel is not an exact one. The Nazis did not claim Auschwitz as a Christian project; indeed they were very happy to murder Christians there, not least one who perished 69 years ago today. 9/11, on the other hand, was of course the work of men who saw themselves as Muslims acting in the name of Islam - and the fact that they sacrificed their lives for this conviction might seem like reasonably strong evidence that they held it sincerely.

Barack Obama, however, supporting the Ground Zero mosque, thinks he he knows their minds better than they did:-

'"Al-Qaeda's cause is not Islam," he said, "it is a gross distortion of Islam"'

Apart from anything else, this is simply a cowardly way to argue for religious freedom. 'Liberty, if it means anything, is the right to tell people what they don't want to hear' says the banner at Harry's Place (and whilst I'd rather not hear the gross dishonesty of pieces like this, I certainly don't want them banned). Religious freedom is a costly good. The cost would be a small one if it could be assumed a priori that all religions are just different ways of articulating a belief in motherhood and apple pie. They aren't.

And who made Obama an authority on what is Islamic and what is not? Undoubtedly many Muslims would agree with him about Al-Qaeda, and that is naturally very much to be applauded. But who will adjudicate between them and the many Muslims who take the opposite view?

9/11 was not the work of callow converts. Nearly all the perpetrators were born and bred in Saudi Arabia. So is Saudi Arabia a genuinely Islamic society or isn't it? Was the Islam these men absorbed from families and mosques real or bogus? If it was real, when and why did they stop being real Muslims? When they started drawing particular practical conclusions from the doctrine of jihad? That was a very bad thing to do and, to repeat, makes them very bad Muslims in the eyes of very many Muslims, but how did it turn them into non-Muslims, Mr President?

If his choice of a place of worship in Chicago is anything to go by, I'd say Barack Obama is a less than perfect Christian. If my church started putting material from Hamas into the parish magazine I'd protest, and if that didn't work I'd walk. What this doesn't do, though, is make Obama a non-Christian. Far worse people than him have been bad, but real, Christians.

It is widely believed among Muslims that 9/11 was not the work of Muslims at all, and that no Jews were killed because they'd all been warned to stay off work. Others believe that 9/11 was fitting punishment for America's crimes against Muslims. Are these non-Islamic beliefs? If they are, can Mr Obama assure us that none of these non-Muslims will be plausible enough to insinuate their way into the Ground Zero mosque?

Places of worship can be powerful symbols of reconciliation. The reconstructed Frauenkirche in Dresden is topped with a cross made in Britain by the son of an airman who took part in the bombing of Dresden. Reconciliation doesn't happen to order, though. If I was a Muslim wanting to build a mosque at Ground Zero, I'd wait to be invited.

Father forgive them, for they know not what they do

2010-08-07T12:21:00.003+01:00

'Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said bibles translated into Dari had been found.

'"Yesterday at around 0800 (0330 GMT), one of our patrols confronted a group of foreigners. They were Christian missionaries and we killed them all," he told the AFP news agency.'

I'm more or less at a loss for words over this. The BBC lives down to expectations: you have to get past the headline and the first four paragraphs before you find a hint that this is a story of religious intolerance (whether the Taliban actually fired the shots is virtually irrelevant in this respect - they want to claim the credit).

One word I hope I won't hear today is "Islamophobia". I won't be answerable for the consequences if I do.

ContactPoint: goodbye and good riddance

2010-08-06T12:39:00.007+01:00

For me it was what they call a defining moment: the Blair government's response to the nightmarish death of little Victoria Climbie.

The state had all the power it needed to save this beautiful child's life, and access to all the knowledge it needed to identify her as being at risk. It failed her through the blinkered incompetence of its servants.

How, then, did the New Labour state react when confronted with its inability to make proper use of the power it had? Simple: by awarding itself more power. If it could not protect a child where there were multiple indicators of risk, the "lesson to be learned" was that it must invent a new Stasi to monitor and collect data on the millions of children whose parents, far from torturing them to death, were doing a far better job with them than the state could dream of doing. And all this data was to be centrally held, with security as good as the competence and integrity of the people using it - people like, well, like the ones who let Victoria Climbie die under their noses.

Thus was ContactPoint born. And now, after an outlay of £235m and, at length, a change of government, the whole thing's being switched off.

Which seems as good a note as any for me to come out on. If the admirable James MacMillan can do it, why should I skulk in the closet? Like MacMillan, on 16 May I voted Tory.

And on the day the plug was pulled on ContactPoint, non, je ne regrette rien. The state has been too long in the hands of those who believe it is the cure for every ill and can never have too much power.

A radical anti-Zionist writes

2010-07-26T13:58:00.003+01:00

'Ah, yes...yet another fluff piece in favor of Jewishness. Mr. Luther was not alone in his beliefs that Jews are inherently bad. Maybe people should look into the matter before passing judgement. Even today the Jews continue to subvert Christianity, control the flow of money in any/every manner. They are indeed the children of the Fallen One. Good grief, just look at how many of them are in positions of power, yet their population is a drop in the bucket of "humanity". I myself am not religious, as I refuse to assimilate to the dogma of fools.

'The Jews were expelled from Spain (as one example)well before Hitler.

'Look at Bernie Madoff...a Jew stealing from mostly Jews, and from the "goyim" but we all know how Jews feel about non-jews.

'For fuck's sake, wake up!'

(a comment left on this old post today; I suspect it may not get through the moderation process)

No doubt the writer will face the usual kneejerk charges of anti-Semitism from the Neocons, but let us hope that the power of the Lobby will not be able to silence this brave voice. What have we come to if you can't criticize Bernie Madoff without being accused of anti-Semitism?

Farewell Daleep Mukarji, Israel-baiter

2010-07-16T14:28:00.003+01:00

In April Dr Daleep Mukarji ended a 12-year stint as Director of Christian Aid. So this is not a bad time to stumble on a Guardian Society interview with Dr Mukarji, published in May 2004 but still distinctly topical.

I started my campaign to challenge Christian Aid's bias against Israel by writing to Dr Mukarji in 2003. I received a courteous and considered response. When I wrote again a couple of years later he was enjoying an extended holiday in India, and the response promised by his PA never materialized. That I could never have expected to get any change out of him becomes clear in the first paragraph of the Guardian piece:-

'The church in Britain may once have been perceived as the Conservative party at prayer but its humanitarian wing offers a world view that embraces cross-cultural action against poverty, criticises Israel and the US, supports peasant occupations of land in Brazil, and lobbies Tony Blair on aid for Africa.'

Well, you see why I wanted to cover it, don't you? I don't think there has ever been much risk of Christian Aid being confused with the Conservative Party at anything, but just to rule out any possible doubt, here is the Guardian's seal of approval: this guy is One Of Us. How do we know this? Because he criticises Israel and the US. Because he criticises the two countries in which four fifths of the world's Jews live. In 2004 this was the way you established your credentials as a good Leftie and it still is in 2010 only more so.

And so it goes on:-

'Reality matches rhetoric, he insists. "Liberation theology has inspired many of us; we want to be part of a movement to change systems and structures, including the use of civil disobedience and protest, though never the use of violence."

'So Brazilian peasants seizing land have Mukarji's backing, while a Christian Aid report said Israeli policies deepened Palestinian poverty. "We must not be in sympathy with anyone who uses violence," he says, "but we do have to look at the root causes, respect people's rights and ask how we can find solutions."'

Need I say that Dr Mukarji apparently felt no need to accuse any other state (apart from the US) of having policies that deepen poverty? Here, too, we have the key equivocation which enables Christian Aid to disclaim sympathy with violence whilst steadfastly declining to explicitly condemn the violence of Hamas. That violence has its "root causes" in the Israeli occupation, therefore the proper response to it is not condemnation of Hamas but condemnation of Israel. Of course this is a game in which the moral parcel is only ever passed in one direction, so that Israel is never to be exonerated by an appeal to "root causes".

Perhaps I am being too hard on Dr Mukarji, though?

'One example of that movement is the UK Interfaith Humanitarian Group, which Mukarji helped set up after 9/11 to bring together Christian, Islamic, Jewish and other faith agencies, as well as Oxfam and Save the Children, to work together on common concerns such as Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.'

Very laudable in principle, but how does it work out in practice? Perhaps that concern with Islamophobia is the reason why Dr Mukarji did not use the interview to criticize any of the 57 member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. Not even Sudan, whose regime was in 2004 still engaged in its 20-year war against the non-Muslim populations of the South of the country, deploying brutality on a scale massively exceeding anything the Palestinians have ever suffered at the hands of Israel.

But it's Israel, not Sudan, that is fair game for "criticism". And I'll say it again: whenever Israel is singled out in this way, anti-Semitism is legitimized. When the singling out is repeated time after time after time, anti-Semitism creeps stealthily back into the mainstream. Enough drops of water will hollow out a stone. Read here an example of how the mood is changing among supposedly intelligent and educated people.

"I don't think this would have happened 10 years ago" writes Eve Garrard of the outburst of "bloody Jews" academic anti-Semitism she encountered. No indeed; and Dr Daleep Mukarji has spent the past decade being part of the problem. Too many of those drops of water have dripped from Christian Aid on his watch. It's not a record that encourages me to regret his departure.

Postscript

On a different tack, it's worth noting the extraordarily deferential tone of the Guardian piece. If the interviewer had any aspirations to be a Humphreys or a Paxo one day, he was keeping them under wraps. Whatever the normal hue of his nose, it was surely browner than Dr Mukarji's by the time he switched the tape recorder off. Guardian Society knows which side of its bread is buttered with advertising revenue.

Here's the executive summary of Mukarji's CV:-

'Mukarji's background mixes both the frontline of human need and leadership roles in development challenges, from working as a doctor with lepers to taking on the Christian Aid job in 1998 and becoming an influential voice in many networks, notably as chair of the Trade Justice Movement. He once described himself as "city-bred, slightly westernised, secular and cosmopolitan".

'Why is he running a multi-million pound global charity from small offices near Waterloo station, London? "I made a personal and professional choice," he answers. "I could have stayed a doctor in India, but I saw that poverty and injustice could not be solved by medical treatment alone; that needed everything from clean water supplies to women's rights. That inspired me. I'm very lucky: I get paid for doing what I enjoy, and I believe in what I'm doing."'

Practically an Albert Schweitzer de nos jours. Here, though, is the same in a little more detail at the end:-

'Career 1971, qualified as doctor; 1972-74, worked with lepers and then ran mission hospital; 1975-76, post-graduate study in London, diploma in tropical public health, and master's in social planning; 1977, returned to India to establish a rural health and community development programme; 1985, appointed general secretary of the Christian Medical Association of India; 1994, became executive secretary for health, community and justice at the World Council of Churches in Geneva; April 1998, became director of Christian Aid, seeking to expand the organisation's influence and to change public perception of the charity's work.'

So two years at most as a frontline medic, followed by some 35 years as a desk wallah! I hasten to add that I who have never entered a leper hospital have no business pointing to the mote in Dr Mukarji's eye. No doubt every one of his career moves has been motivated by a zeal for serving the poor (though it must be said that he was in no danger of joining their number during his time at Christian Aid). But I don't much like newspapers that try to manipulate me. Better just make that "I don't much like newspapers".

Quote of the Week

2010-07-10T21:48:00.003+01:00

Brought to my attention by him and her:-

'Our society has moved towards, or some might say reverted to, a legislative approach that punishes those who commit crimes not solely on the basis of their actions, but on the reasoning behind those actions and the identity of the victim.'

Too right, mate. It makes a total mockery of the principle of equal justice for all, doesn't it?

Oh no, wait, this is a barrister defending hate crime legislation in the Grauniad. He's telling us about a good thing...

Typo of the month

2010-06-17T11:13:00.004+01:00

'Social networking sties means [sic] that animal-rights campaigners can spread their message with touch-of-the-keyboard ease, says Judith Woods.' (here)

I'm all for confining the persons who have been harassing the Koupparis family to sties in which they can network with each other to their hearts' content. Not that I would want them to share their accommodation with pigs - that would be most unfair to those intelligent and pacific animals.

And since you ask, I only eat pork if free-range.

A dangerous moral non-equivalence

2010-06-16T17:17:00.004+01:00

Dashing trendy vicar George Pitcher has picked up on the well-worn phrase "moral equivalence", and thinks he has nailed a dodgy one:-

'The British Army represents our parliamentary democracy and defends our freedoms. We are entitled to expect better of it than terrorists. Its actions must be entirely professional and accountable.'

So far so good. It does, we are, they must be. However...

'Furthermore, to kill civilians is more morally reprehensible for our soldiers and degrades their moral integrity to a level lower than the actions of IRA terrorists, because that is what we expect of terrorists – it is not what we expect of the British Army.'

No George, no. That doesn't work. The moral equivalent to murdering innocent civilians is murdering innocent civilians, actually. If by murdering innocent civilians you confirm a prior expectation that you will murder innocent civilians, all that means is that you have acquired your moral infamy by instalments. But the end result is the same.

Maybe not the strongest argument ever against GM food?

2010-06-16T11:35:00.006+01:00

...this one from Martin Kelly:-

'Genetically modified food seems to be where the mindset of 'Star Trek' meets
that of 'Old MacDonald Had A Farm', the intensely modern, ultrarational view
that believes technology is the cure for all our ills applied to the most basic,
most ancient of human practices. GM may have some value. However, there may also
be some value in the human race deciding to recite the words 'Give us this day
our daily bread'. It works for me. Which of the two is more likely to lead to
you having bread to eat is one of those many things in life to which we will
never know the answer. We might think we know; but we won't, not really.'

Well, I don't what I'm doing wrong in the prayer department, but, no matter how often I say that one, all the shops round here still expect me to fork out money for the stuff.

Seriously, does Martin have the faintest idea how much he would have to eat if agricultural technology had remained static since the day the prayer was first uttered?

"God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform", says William Cowper's well-loved hymn. Sometimes, though, the mystery is merely mystification of our own making. Sometimes he's just asking "what did I give you lot brains for?".

Left foot forward: Christian Aid and its mistakes

2010-05-30T17:40:00.001+01:00

Christian Aid and Israel. There's been enough material for an entire conference just lately - and I reckon it's about time somebody organized one.

What was Christian Aid doing the other day issuing a press release which alleged sexual abuse of Palestinian schoolgirls by Jewish settlers? Answer: it was a mistake. Very sorry.

We all make mistakes, don't we? It's just that sometimes our mistakes say a lot about us. This one speaks volumes about the culture that prevails inside Christian Aid. You don't turn verbal abuse into sexual abuse unless you already have a strong disposition to think the worst of those accused. And this is not the first mistake of its kind.

In February Christian Aid's youth website "Ctrl alt shift" carried - on International Holocaust Remembrance Day - an article by a young fanatic which accused Shimon Peres of being a war criminal and equated the dead of Gaza with those of the Holocaust. As Adam Levick wrote at Comment is Free, "Such ugly charges are typically levelled only in explicitly antisemitic and extremist publications". Whilst there was no mistake on the writer's part, Levick's piece prompted what was apparently an official response from Christian Aid (though it has now strangely disappeared from the comments thread). Said marketing director Matthew Reed:-

'The incident exposed shortcomings in the moderation procedures for the Ctrl Alt Shift website and an urgent review of these procedures is underway.'

Very sorry indeed.

Then, just a few days later, it was the turn of Christian Aid's favourite politician to wipe some egg off her face. Baroness Tonge had, of course, suggested that the allegation that the Israeli Defence Force were in Haiti to harvest organs merited an investigation.

So, so, so sorry.

(at least, she was when called into the boss's office)

Three mistakes, but not three accidents. Put them together and you get an entirely coherent picture of what Jews are like when they get their own state.

They go to one of the poorest countries on Earth in the wake of a disaster, posing as helpers but in fact on the lookout for body parts to steal.
They do things which are as bad as herding men, women and children into camps and murdering them with poison gas.
And, they sexually abuse Gentile children.

Each "mistake" ratchets up the hysteria one more notch, makes it a little easier to look at a Jew and see a monster.

How can anyone even moderately acquainted with the history of anti-Semitism - and specifically the history of Christian anti-Semitism - fail to hear alarm bells ringing?

Summonsed by Bell: spinning against Israel in the name of Britain's Christians

2010-05-28T21:16:00.000+01:00

'For the latest comments on Israel from Christian Aid see:

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/christian.aid.fears.for.ngos.in.israel/25917.htm

'Does Mr Grumpy have anything to say about this?'

- asks commenter David.

Well, David, due to the way the portfolios have been divvied up here I'm afraid you'll have to make do with the Nick Clegg to Grumpy's Cameron. Rest assured, though, that my remarks have been cleared by the big boss.

So, yes, meet William Bell, Christian Aid's "Advocacy Officer for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory". The man, in other words, who, with the blessing of my church (and forty others large and small), has a full-time job spinning against the Jewish state. David, I hardly know what to say (apart from everything I've been saying here for the past five years).

I'd just like to know what makes William Bell tick. Perhaps he will stumble on this and enlighten me. Does he ever turn on the radio in the morning and think "Gosh, those poor people in Tibet/Burma/Zimbabwe/Darfur... They could really do with a bit of advocacy. I'll have a word with the boss and see if I can talk him into broadening my job description."?

Or does he wake up every morning saying to himself, "What a dream of a job mine is. For if I wasn't able to speak out against the Most Evil State in the World, who else would?"?

And if that's the way it is, if it isn't about Jews, what is it about?

This particular effort from Mr Bell reveals quite a lot about the way he operates. Like any good lobbyist he can take any story and spin it on his clients' favour. Here the starting point is Israel's admission to the OECD. I'd say this accolade for the country's thriving economy was something to celebrate, on the whole. But for Mr Bell the Israeli glass is half empty at the very best. Not a proper democracy, he mutters. Unlike all those proper democracies for which the rest of the Middle East is famed. Again, I'd say it's little short of a miracle that Israel has stayed democratic through 60 years of staving off threats to its existence. No credit given by Mr Bell, though: "civil society [...] under threat [...] repression [...] intimidation [...] undermine human rights defenders [...]". Etc etc.

Does Christian Aid ever condemn Sudan, or any of the world's despotisms, in anything like these forthright terms?

I tried googling "Christian Aid Sudan repression". The first hit was the paid-for Christian Aid Week link. The second was an item on Ethiopia with a passing reference to Christian Aid. The third was a press release from the Disasters Emergency Committee, of which Christian Aid is of course a prominent member. It was issued in 2004. Of criticism of the Sudanese government there is not one word.

A little further down the list came Christian Aid's Sudan page. Still no word of criticism of the government. Maybe it's on the linked "Our work on conflict" page? Oh dear. We learn that they deliver urgent aid in Darfur, however:-

'But our experience has also told us that our response to conflict needs to be even more far-reaching than the delivery of humanitarian assistance, however important that may be.'

That's the lead in to a section headed "Speaking out". So this must be where they've put the hard-hitting criticism of the Sudanese regime, right? Wrong. Six paragraphs: one on Colombia, one general, four on... need I continue?

After this you won't be too surprised to learn that there is no Christian Aid Advocacy Officer for Sudan. And with that, back to William Bell.

What is it that has triggered Mr Bell's doom-laden pronouncements on the state of Israeli democracy? Simply this: there are moves afoot in the Knesset to limit the political activities of NGOs like, well, Christian Aid. Not, be it noted, that any laws have been passed; that it's even being talked about is enough.

NGOs in Israel enjoy freedoms which would be inconceivable under any dictatorship. That, of course, is one major reason why the BBC website tells us more about Israeli human rights abuses, real or otherwise, than those of any of the world's dictatorships (than all of the world's dictatorships put together, is the impression I often get). Every time anyone in B'Tselem blows their nose a BBC stringer is on hand with tape recorder running.

Israel is also remarkably tolerant of international NGOs coming to the country to pursue anti-Israel political agendas. Sometimes somebody is refused admission and headlines are made, but these are exceptions that prove the rule. I've written a lot about the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, a Christian Aid partner and in effect a training programme for anti-Israel propagandists. Their volunteers may face some hurdles in getting into Israel, but get in they do.

So whilst a retreat from this openness would certainly be cause for concern, it would also be comprehensible. It would be directly related to the way Israel's openness has been abused by NGOs like Christian Aid, the way they take the soft option of giving democratic Israel a hard time whilst mutely bending the knee to tyrants.

Here's a reminder of how much open scrutiny of their human rights Israel's enemies tolerate. Simple but effective: if you're going to do something unpleasant, make sure no journalists are watching. True, you might not be able to suppress the story completely. But there won't be any tear-jerking eyewitness accounts or any of those pictures that speak a thousand words. Obviously it also helps that because you're Hamas you can rely on the Beeb to insert a sideswipe at Israel by way of "balance".

So where was Christian Aid when Hamas were bulldozing poor people's shacks?

From just across the border comes another recent story, taking us back to that booming economy that's won Israel a seat at the OECD. A reminder of who's benefitting and who isn't - and why.

It's only a privileged minority of the human race that can afford to turn up its noses at a thousand dollars a month for picking coriander, even if it comes at the slight risk of falling victim to a rocket attack. It's good money in Thailand and it's good money in Gaza. It's certainly more than enough to ensure you won't need to look to Christian Aid to provide your next meal.

And it's money that used to flow into the Gazan economy. Until?

'But until the start of the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in 2000 when Israel tightened the border, thousands of Gazans used to travel daily through Erez to work on Israeli farms.'

Those smooth euphemisms for the campaign of mass murder directed at Israel's civilian population. Of course Israel turned off the flow of potential suicide bombers. What country on earth would not have done so? And now the Thais are doing the jobs Israelis won't do while Gaza has 40% unemployment. It's called shooting yourself in the foot - or it is if you think that the foot and the finger on the trigger have the same owner. If, that is, you count Hamas as the legitimate democratic representatives of the people of Gaza. What do you say, Mr Bell?

The lice and the fleas fight over the cadaver of Amnesty International

2010-05-26T20:34:00.004+01:00

Martin Bright gives us an extract from Gita Sahgal's latest salvo against her former employers Amnesty International. He's impressed and one can understand why. Of course it is unconscionable that AI has been organizing gigs for an extreme Islamist, and in this matter Ms Sahgal has acted as a model whistleblower.

My own admiration for her is tempered by the fact that her job description at AI was "Head of the Gender Unit", meaning it was very much on her watch that Amnesty declared abortion to be a universal human right, with the corollary that unborn children have no human rights at all.

So this is, after all, no more than a turf war between two factions of leftist ideologues using Amnesty to promote their agendas. For both sides the most fundamental human right of all is negotiable. It was Dr Johnson who said that there is no settling the precedence between a louse and a flea; putting it another way, only if it can be arranged for both sides to lose does Amnesty stand a chance of recovering its original and noble vocation.

A fish called Humbug

2010-05-21T17:46:00.004+01:00

"[Lord] David Alton [...] left the Lib Dems when he realised that they cared more about the rights of a goldfish than an unborn child", Cristina Odone recalled the other day.

I am sure there are strict regulations to ensure that no advert on Channel 4 ever promotes goldfish abuse.

I'm reminded of the questionnaire I was sent a couple of years ago by the Co-op Bank, whose customer I am largely as a hangover from past political affiliations. I was invited to tick boxes to indicate which ethical issues moved me. The idea of determining what is ethical by sending out a questionnaire is in itself a diverting one, is it not? David Cameron himself couldn't have done better. But the point on this occasion is that whilst there was a box by which I could have registered a concern that the bank should not invest in fur farming, any reference to the legalized culling of small humans was conspicuous by its absence.

Catching 'em young

2010-05-19T19:57:00.005+01:00

'I do continue to make generous donations to Christian Aid via the Inland Revenue. I'd like to think the change of government will lead to some rather more rigorous questions being asked about what it is they do.'

- I wrote last week.

It's looking promising already:-

'Less than a week after becoming international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell began fulfilling his pledge to ensure value for money on aid by cutting development education projects.

'As part of "a drive to re-focus aid spending", Mitchell today announced an immediate funding freeze on five development "awareness projects", a move expected to save the department more than £500,000.

[...]

'The five cancelled projects are £146,000 for a Brazilian-style dance troupe in Hackney, London; £55,000 to run stalls at summer music festivals; £120,000 to train nursery school teachers about 'global issues'; £130,000 for a 'global gardens schools network' and £140,000 to train outdoor education tutors in Britain on development. The money saved will be "redirected to areas where it will have a greater impact on global poverty".'

(Hat tip: Julia M)

Allergy advice: this post may contain traces of schadenfreude. I've nothing against Brazilian-style dancing in Hackney except that it ain't overseas development, so they can jolly well join the arts funding queue like everyone else. But it's the nursery school teachers bit that's the dead giveaway, isn't it?

Andrew Mitchell is stressing the value for money angle, but he won't need telling that there's more to it than that. This is fat-trimming in the fullest sense, not just excess pounds we're lugging around but stuff that's positively bad for us. It's about the development business not only telling us how to think but doing it with our cash - cash that it can more or less help itself to because it's doled out by tame civil servants who already think all the right thoughts because they've been parachuted in from the development business. It's grown into a very cosy arrangement over the last thirteen years, and it's an arrogant, fundamentally undemocratic abuse of power.

And when the indoctrination starts in nursery school... what's not to like, as they say, about Mr Mitchell and his new broom? A word to the wise: I wouldn't count on him being a huge fan of Friends of Sabeel UK.

The liberal Inquisition

2010-05-17T19:48:00.004+01:00

At the Telegraph Jonathan Wynne-Jones is in complacent mood, suggesting the lack of reaction to the consecration of a lesbian Anglican bishop in America shows that "liberals have won the battle over the place of gay clergy in the Church".

As I've noted in two recent posts, the liberal (maybe that should be "liberal") orthodoxy isn't taking any chances, though. The Inquisition is in place. Christian dissenters can count themselves fortunate if they suffer nothing worse than being represented by Bishop John Spong's glib rhetoric as God-Hates-Fags bigots. The less fortunate, or less cautious, face being sacked or arrested. Burning at the stake is not on the menu - not yet, anyway.

Really it's much safer to be a daring radical like Bishop Spong, isn't it?

It's Christian Aid Week

2010-05-12T19:51:00.008+01:00

(thanks to eChurch Christian Blog for cross-posting this post)

If you have overlooked the fact that this is Christian Aid week I'm sure you're in good company. There have been one or two distractions around. No little gnashing of teeth at CA HQ, I suspect.

Not that such a very political charity can really complain about being upstaged by politics, though. And in writing an update on Christian Aid I shall have no difficulty in making topical connections.

Actually my last big Christian Aid post, written in October, doesn't need very much updating. On their website a new policy paper on Gaza has increased the total of papers on Israel and Palestine from seven to eight. The combined total of papers on African regional conflicts, the Chinese occupation of Tibet, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, Zimbabwe and Burma continues to stand at zero.

There is plenty to catch up on concerning someone who had a starring part in that October post, and this is where it gets topical. Take a bow Baroness Tonge, member of and former frontbencher for what is now our junior governing party.

In October her Ladyship was still a Lib Dem health spokesperson. Though fired by Charles Kennedy and reprimanded by Menzies Campbell, it seemed that Nick Clegg was more indulgent towards her extremist views. But in February she finally went too far for Clegg. To recap, Palestine Telegraph, a website of which she was then a patron, carried an allegation that IDF members supposedly delivering humanitarian aid in Haiti were in fact harvesting body parts. Quizzed about this by the Jerusalem Post, Tonge did not denounce the accusation as a disgusting anti-Semitic slur. Instead she called for an independent inquiry. Whether she felt the inquiry should also cover the killing of Christian children to provide blood to be baked in matzos was not clear - personally, I think there should be an inquiry to clear her name. Anyway, the upshot was that she was sacked - again.

I was with those who thought it was high time for Baroness Tonge to have the Lib Dem whip withdrawn from her. How many strikes does it take before you're out? But at least Nick Clegg did something. That's more than can be said of Christian Aid or the churches which sponsor it. It was business as usual at Friends of Sabeel UK, the Israel-demonizing partner "charity" of Christian Aid which still includes Tonge among its Patrons.

Let's be fair to the Baroness, though. Fast forward to 22 April:-

'Baroness Jenny Tonge has withdrawn her patronage of the Palestine Telegraph after the paper posted a video of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke claiming that Israel is a terrorist threat to America.'

Evidently even Tonge didn't feel that Duke could be covered by the "it's not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel" line. Commendable, though given that by this time we were in the thick of an election campaign, I'm not sure we can exclude the possibility that she had some help from a Higher Power in reaching her decision. Note that her fellow patron, the then Respect MP George Galloway, who is entirely is own master in such matters, has felt no need to resign.

Galloway also got a name check in my October post. Will his Klan connection move Friends of Sabeel UK to distance themselves from him? What about Interpal, whose coordinator Ibrahim Hewitt also continues to serve as a FoSUK Patron?

It may be that the members of my church who are collecting for Christian Aid this week share the fondness for Hamas of Baroness Tonge, George Galloway and Ibrahim Hewitt. But I really don't think so. I think they just want to give help to people who need it. If I believed the only way of doing that was to support Christian Aid, I might have signed up for some tin-rattling despite all my reservations. But it isn't.

I do continue to make generous donations to Christian Aid via the Inland Revenue. I'd like to think the change of government will lead to some rather more rigorous questions being asked about what it is they do. It certainly doesn't look as if the new man at International Development shares their pet obsession:-

'Andrew has a strong interest in conflict prevention, resolution and reconciliation. He served as a UN peacekeeper in Cyprus, and has twice visited Darfur, Sudan, with Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague MP and Conservative Party Leader David Cameron MP. He has also visited the Democratic Republic of Congo. His experience in these countries informed his 2007 pamphlet "The UN and the Failure to Protect", which made a number of suggestions for reform of the UN’s peacekeeping efforts.

'In March 2007 Andrew became the first senior British politician for many years to travel to Burma and meet the ruling junta. He delivered a robust message to the military regime about the need for a transition to democracy. He also met senior members of the National League for Democracy and leaders of the 1988 protests, and visited a camp for displaced people on the Thai-Burma border. He has followed recent events in Burma closely, and remains in touch with key figures in Rangoon. Andrew’s covertly-filmed video diary from the trip can be viewed on YouTube.'

Another bigoted man

2010-05-05T20:38:00.004+01:00

More in the same vein as my last post: the Pub Philosopher has a neat take on the latest story. Equally symptomatic of the way we're governed and hence deserving of being pondered on the way to the polling station.

One can only marvel at the potential this nonsense has to stir up ill-will where none was before. I've always taken what police officers get up to when they take off their uniforms as being a matter of supreme unconcern to me. But when gay coppers start getting allocated to special jobs where they don't have to bother with mundane stuff like clearing up burglaries because they're too busy taking DNA swabs from preachers...

A bigoted man?

2010-05-01T10:07:00.005+01:00

Here's how it could work. A taxpayer-funded organization offering relationship counselling recruits counsellors who reflect the diversity of opinions on relationships to be found in our society. When it comes comes to counselling gay couples on enhancing their sex lives, many will have no problem whatsoever, some will prefer not do it. So couples seeking this service are matched up with counsellors who are happy to provide it - and why would the couples in question want it to be otherwise?

Everyone's happy. All the diversity balls are still in the air. It makes no difference to the principles at stake, but have you noticed that Gary McFarlane happens to be black? Actually, of course, it's rather more than coincidence. Members of ethnic minority groups are, on average, markedly more conservative about these matters than white Brits. More specifically, black Christians tend to be more conservative than white ones.

The reality is somewhat different from my imaginary scenario. Why? How are we better off? It's no answer to say that the law's the law and we can't go round making exceptions for all and sundry. The whole problem is that the law is not the law. For it's not as if Mr McFarlane is claiming a Biblically-endorsed right to engage in burglary with impunity. The law which has cost him his job has been created by politicians pursuing an ideological agenda, and in this it is typical of a large part of the avalanch of legislation unleashed on us since 1997.

We can test this claim by putting a simple question. Does Gary McFarlane's unwillingness to provide sex therapy for gay couples mean that he is unfit to work with the large majority of Relate clients who do not require this service? Naturally the answer is "No". There is no reason to doubt that he is an excellent counsellor, and if he is his sacking has done a disservice not only to him but to all the clients who are denied the benefit of his skills. So the law is the enemy of the common good.

There's nothing surprising about it having panned out this way. It was widely predicted when the legislation was going through Parliament. But its' sponsors were undeterred because their purpose was ideological. The law was to be used to enforce conformity, to suppress diversity in the name of diversity. Any Gary McFarlane who might dare to challenge it deserved to lose his job and to be made an example of. The right of conscientious objection could be granted in 1940 to those unwilling to help defend their country against Hitler, but the New Labour zealots will not exempt anyone from service in the war against political incorrectness.

Our rulers have pinned a label on Gary McFarlane. It says "just a bigoted man". Mr Brown, Ms Harman and the rest of you, your mike is live.

Election fever hits Curmudge - more incisive commentary

2010-04-28T13:03:00.008+01:00

Now the small fry are making their presence known.

First off we have the Curmudge Socialists ("make the wbankers pay"). Their candidate looks as if he last smiled on the day Margaret Thatcher announced her resignation. This is the effect Trotskyism so often has on those who can't kick the habit in time. There but for the grace of God...

OK, even if your candidate doesn't exactly radiate good vibes you've pretty much got to show the punters what he looks like lest they suspect you are concealing even worse things. What you don't have to do is gratuitously compound the offence by subjecting them to a mugshot of Bob Crow. I regularly wake up screaming in the small hours having dreamt that Bob Crow was running the country.

Moving swiftly on, UKIP's man looks more the sort of bloke with whom one could contemplate sinking a tolerably agreeable pint. Indeed, his communication has the feel of having been composed shortly before chucking-out time on Saturday night. The greenish tinge of his mugshot suggests it might have been taken the morning after, displaying the after-effects of indulgence in a dodgy doner on the way home.

On to more serious matters: the Lib Dems' man, who will indubitably be our next MP unless he forgets to look both ways while out canvassing. Whereas the Green candidate (not to be confused with the green man from UKIP) has adopted an arboreal name, this one has sought to inject a much-needed touch of glamour into the campaign by borrowing the surname of a French film star.

I feel he makes rather too much of the endorsement of the retiring MP: "David who?", I hear the voters cry. They are pictured standing under a large black umbrella (didn't they have an orange one?) held by the MP, next to the cycle racks at Curmudge station, and looking less than enchanted with the situation. "Climate change is the biggest threat facing humanity", we read below this, so you would think they would be looking a bit happier about the fact that it is still possible to get really cold and wet on an April day in Curmudge. But no, they have the unmistakeable air of two men who would rather be on the beach at Cannes with the divine Isabelle.

"Gordon Brown has failed the people of Curmudge" is illustrated by a photo of the PM shaking hands with the other GB. Damning evidence indeed! But methinks if Nick Clegg gets his hands on the levers of power he will find that he needs to go through the motions of basic courtesy with people far, far more unpleasant than George Bush.

In the interests of balance I would like to make sport of the Tories at this point. But I've had nothing from them. Doesn't augur well.

Stirring up apathy

2010-04-24T17:48:00.005+01:00

So here we are again. In passing, I had ever such a strange dream last night. I dreamt a volcano erupted somewhere, and somehow or other it stopped me getting home for a week. Whatever was that about, I wonder.

Well, I've missed a large chunk of the election campaign. By way of making up for lost time, here are the impressions I've garnered in Curmudge over the past 24 hours.

The Green candidate has rather charmingly displayed his commitment to the cause by naming himself after a tree, but I suspect this may not be enough to swing it for him.

So far only Labour have actually been round. Their man introduces himself as 'an experienced politician, ready to represent Curmudge'. The other things he says are mostly not quite as inspiring as that, though. His desperation has now reached the level where you start calling the other side Nazis; apparently he doesn't have a minder with sufficient sense to warn him that stiff-armed salutes are best avoided if you happen to be half Austrian.

It's not looking good for Cameron, is it? I know Curmudge is different - an extreme case of the nationalization of the middle class, where anything in the way of belt-tightening is not going to be a vote-winner unless Education, Education, Education is ring-fenced, ring-fenced, ring-fenced. Nevertheless, it must be ominous for Dave that even in the posher bits there are occasional splashes of orange but no Tories coming out. Clegg certainly seems to have set at naught all DC's efforts at cornering the touchy-feely-alternative-to-Labour vote. Might he actually have done better to present himself as a conservative?

So it's a less than nail-biting contest in Curmudge, which the Lib Dems have held since 2001*. One good thing about the prospect of a hung Parliament is the hope that we may at last get a slightly more grown-up electoral system. As it is, I'm not sure I'll manage to summon up enough willpower to get dressed. Do they let you vote in pyjamas?

*Only since 2005 actually - shows you how much I know. But with a respectable 10% majority.

Intermission

2010-04-04T20:37:00.003+01:00

Off on my travels tomorrow so even less prospect than usual of any postings over the next couple of weeks. However, I hope I shall be visiting my favourite CD shop, which will give me the opportunity to select a recording by the Jerusalem Quartet.

Easter blessings to all readers.

Who says there are no good guys in the Middle East?

2010-03-16T12:43:00.004Z

Certainly not the BBC. Here's their woman in Damascus feeling the pain of Iraqi Baathists exiled in Syria.

'"There are hundreds of thousands of supporters of the former regime among these refugees. What should we do... jail them all?" asks Samir al-Taqi, an analyst with a pro-government Syrian think tank.'

Pity all the anti-government think tanks were unavailable for comment.

'Mr Taqi argues that what is radicalising many Baathists further is the failure of the Iraqi government to involve them in the political process.'

Yes indeed, whereas the willingness to reach out to its opponents is the secret of Baathism's enduring popular appeal. Look at the al-Assad dynasty - they haven't lost an election in 47 years.

It's funny, I thought the progressive complaint was always that the post-war denazification of Germany was much too lax. By this reasoning it shouldn't have been attempted at all.

Seriously, though. I'm not saying that it was very clever to make an enemy out of every ordinary Joe who joined Saddam's party to get a job. But compare and contrast the understanding and sympathy we are being prompted to show towards these ordinary Joes with the apoplectic reactions to those other ordinary Joes, not so far away, who want homes even if they're built on land which, in the eyes of the rest of the world, doesn't belong to their country.

Why does Hamas get such a good press while Israel gets such a bad press?

2010-03-11T14:45:00.002Z

It's as simple as this. Gaza welcomes indignation tourists and useful idiots. But not investigative journalists.

Nothing new about the technique, of course - it worked a treat for Stalin.

And note how the Beeb lends a helping hand with a headline assuring us that the glass is half full - 'Hamas releases', not 'Hamas deports and bans'. The bit where the Hamas accusations against Paul Martin are attributed to Associated Press can probably be put down to sloppy sub-editing. Probably.

Is this the ultimate epitaph for Blair's Britain?

2010-02-15T13:41:00.005Z

'In late 2005 the government appointed Mr Blair's former private secretary, Francis Campbell, as ambassador to the Holy See after the post was advertised.

'It was the first time a British ambassador had been recruited from open competition. One hundred and twenty people applied for the job, according to the Foreign Office.'

(from)

Yes indeed. Equality for us, open competition for them. Sooner or later you realize that the more some things change the more they stay the same.

'The [119] creatures outside [(clutching the utterly futile CVs they had sweated over)] looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.'

Solidarity against intimidation

2010-01-25T19:28:00.004Z

Stephen Sizer, a Surrey vicar with rather more than a sideline in "anti-Zionism", has not yet featured here. No time like the present to introduce him. Seismic Shock, a Christian blogger who keeps tabs on his activities, has recently had a visit from the police. Another Christian blogger has been personally warned that she may experience similar treatment - rather bizarrely since she is based in Australia.

Mr Sizer affects hypersensitivity to accusations of anti-Semitism. If that reflects his true feelings, he isn't doing himself any favours by the company he keeps. If a book of mine was available as a free download at a Holocaust deniers' website I'd want to do something about it.

I'm pleased to see that Mr Sizer's actions have been widely publicized. It can't be widely enough. In solidarity against intimidation, here is a link to Seismic Shock's post recounting his experience, and here is a link to the post at Vee's Living Journey blog to which Mr Sizer contributed his threatening comment.

And I feel a letter to the Bishop of Guildford coming on.

Update: I've removed the link to the Holocaust denial website as I suspect there is a risk of virus infection. The address, strictly at your own risk, is: http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres2/SIZERchriszion.pdf

Two takes on moral responsibility: part 2

2010-01-23T21:40:00.006Z

Can you believe that Simon Tisdall of the Guardian has written a piece about the plight of Christians in much of the Muslim world? Don't worry, normal service has been resumed by the time the article reaches its conclusion: it's all the West's fault.

No need for a long post since Mr Eugenides is in sparkling form on this one. A small touch of irony from self can be found nestling among the comments.

Two takes on moral responsibility: part 1

2010-01-23T19:26:00.008Z

What would you think of the proposition that nobody should be prosecuted for speeding, driving without due care and attention or dangerous driving unless they cause an accident in which somebody gets hurt? And even then with a certain reluctance, since bad drivers are victims of society deserving of compassion rather than blame?

I suppose if you're a certain sort of get-the-state-off-my-back conservative you might sympathize with the first part of the proposition. Your approval would only be likely to extend to the second part if you had a significant personal stake in the matter. In which case you would doubtless also be glad to know that state-funded advocacy groups for bad drivers are waiting in the wings ready to plead for clemency on your behalf and shield you from stigmatization.

You feel an analogy coming on, don't you? Quite right, and we're actually talking HIV. I think it's fairly safe to assume that neither the chief executive of the National AIDS Trust nor the chief executive of HIV Scotland would support my suggested libertarian approach to road safety. It's tempting to wonder whether they would take a rather more punitive attitude in their own sphere of competence if someone accused of recklessly putting others at risk of HIV infection was as likely to be a straight white man as, let us say, someone accused of dangerous driving.

A man who knows he is HIV-positive has unprotected sex over a period of years with a number of women. One of them is infected. What shall we say? You may feel that anyone with HIV is a victim to whom compassion is owed regardless of their behaviour. On the other hand you may feel that precisely the demands of compassion require justice for someone who has been infected through another's irresponsible and selfish acts. If you belong to the former group, you can take comfort in the knowledge that your taxes are helping pay spokepersons to put your case. Whereas if you belong to the latter group... Need I go on?

The National AIDS Trust notes in a tone of gentle rebuke that in recent years state funding has fallen to as little as 15% of its total income. HIV Scotland is less informative; the link to its Annual Report is "still under construction". Still, I'm pretty sure that their claim to be "the independent voice for HIV in Scotland" is not to be taken too literally. For folk in this kind of field dependence on the state is so much taken for granted that it simply doesn't count.

Now I'm sure that many wonderful things are accomplished by both organizations. But the point of this microcosm of Britain in 2010 is this: a news story raises a moral dilemma; the state broadcaster is not content to report, but wants an authoritative opinion, the voice of the Magisterium; instinctively, inevitably it goes to the spokespersons of state-funded advocacy groups. We are ruled by a priestly caste which doesn't do God, but bids us worship a god of its own making.

Bah, humblog

2009-12-21T14:02:00.003Z

I have frequently wondered what it is about me that makes me such a peerless blogger. Now I know:-

'Feeling grumpy "is good for you"

'[...]

'An Australian psychology expert who has been studying emotions has found being grumpy makes us think more clearly.

'In contrast to those annoying happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible, his experiments showed.

'While cheerfulness fosters creativity, gloominess breeds attentiveness and careful thinking, Professor Joe Forgas told Australian Science Magazine.

'[...]

'Next he asked them to take part in a series of tasks, including judging the truth of urban myths and providing eyewitness accounts of events.

'Those in a bad mood outperformed those who were jolly - they made fewer mistakes and were better communicators.'

Well, that's my New Year's resolution sorted, then. All jollity to be rigorously avoided. And, however grudgingly, more charity towards those whose views have me tearing my hair out. They can't help it, they're just too blooming happy!

We will be taking a blogging break over the next week and a bit, so we can perhaps risk just a little seasonal cheer. And we now unbend ourselves sufficiently to wish all readers a blessed and joyful Christmas (and/or Hanukkah) and a fruitful New Year.

Christian Israel-bashers: a seasonal round-up

2009-12-18T19:32:00.004Z

At Harry's Place Adam Holland relays a seasonal Israel-demonizing epistle from Trots for Jesus, alias the United Churches of Christ and one or two more of the usual suspects from the left end of the American Protestant spectrum. Predictably enough, it equates Israel with imperial Rome and the Palestinians with Rome's Jewish subjects and specifically with Jesus. The rhetoric comes straight from Canon Naim Ateek and Sabeel. And as Adam points out:-

'To put this comparison in perspective, remember that the Roman forces in Judea are said to have massacred tens (if not hundreds) of thousands including woman and children, literally festooning roads with their crucified victims. The Roman war against the Jews included the Romans burning Jerusalem, including the temple, to the ground.

'And of course, there was that whole Christ-killing thing… The letter goes on to subtly invoke that old standby, Jewish deicide:

"What the Palestinian community faces, Jesus knew when he walked these stony hills."'

One of the signatories links to a page on the site of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, on which we find a set of four maps purporting to show the changes in the division of land between Jews and Palestinians from 1946 up to the present. In fact they're a wicked propagandist travesty, and again Adam Holland does a great job of demonstrating this. One point he could have added is the gross dishonesty of portraying the whole of Israel as "Jewish land". In reality, of course, it's the home of a million Arabs.

This is not the first time I've seen those maps. They can be found, illustrating an equally mendacious narrative of the "suffering in Palestine", on the website of Friends of Sabeel UK, the charity (I'm inclined to put that in quotes) about whose partnership with Christian Aid I posted recently.

Here they're credited, below the extremely revealing rollcall of FoSUK Patrons, as "courtesy of Tim Biles from his book A Puppy Dies". The title tells you all you need to know, doesn't it? Now it would be a pretty amazing coincidence if this were not one and the same person as the Revd. Canon Timothy Biles, who, I find, acts as Consultant and newsletter editor to a charity called the Jerusalem and the Middle East Church Association. If he is indeed the originator of those maps they are no aberration. He's still at it.

Here is an extract from a book review by Mr Biles in the Advent 2009 issue:-

'But storm clouds gathered, the events of 1948 are described in graphic detail, the incursion of
Zionist forces into Haifa and northern Palestine, the forced evacuation of the indigenous population to southern Lebanon and the refugee camp of Shatila [...]'

The detail may be graphic but it is evidently extremely one-sided, at least in Mr Biles's reading of it. Where are the incursions of the Arab armies seeking to destroy Israel at birth, and fought off only at the cost of 6000 Jewish lives?

And again:-

'The author shows how the lives and fates of Palestinian Christians and Muslims are intertwined, making it clear that it is the Israeli occupation, not Islam, that threatens Christians in the land that was Palestine.'

Curious, then, that while Palestinian Christians become an endangered species the Muslim population, equally subject to occupation, is growing by leaps and bounds. But it seems that for Mr Biles and his friends nobody other than the Israelis is ever threatening. An article in the 2008 issue quotes another priest and/or his wife as saying:-

'What is ultimately striking about Gaza is the sheer disproportionality of it all – the collective punishment inflicted on 1.5 million people is against every measure of international and humanitarian law…'

I certainly understand why people returning from Gaza in the aftermath of the invasion would say this. But we get no mention of what it is that the "collective punishment" is disproportionate to, no suggestion that lobbing missiles at civilian populations is itself a form of collective punishment "against every measure of international and humanitarian law". Still less any suggestion that Hamas, the popularly elected rulers of Gaza, bear any responsibility for thus picking a fight with a vastly more powerful enemy. As so often the H-word doesn't appear at all.

Bias is one thing, lies are another. Above this article is a heading containing the claim that "Gaza is the most densely populated place on earth". This was untrue when George Galloway said it three or four years ago (which hasn't prevented him from repeating it last year) and it's still untrue, as a minute's googling will confirm. Gaza's population density (4118 per sq km - panel on the right here) is exceeded by Macau, Monaco, Singapore, Hong Kong and Gibraltar (list here). Oh, and also (comfortably) by Tel Aviv (7604 per sq km).

It's true that Gaza may move further up the league table if it continues to have one of the highest rates of population growth on earth. It's not immediately obvious to me how this is the Israelis' fault (indeed they made a temporary dent in the population by removing 8000 settlers in 2005) but I expect Mr Biles could soon put me right.

So is this Canon of the Church of England a liar or a dupe? The latter, I very much hope, but if so, I wish he'd do a bit less politicking and a bit more priesting. If the former, it's a disgrace that he's a dignitary of my Church.

Freedom of speech alive and well (ish)

2009-12-11T13:44:00.005Z

So now we know. Next time a brace of Jehovah's Witnesses come knocking at your door, you can, if so inclined, tell them they're bonkers without acquiring a criminal record. If, that is, you get the right judge. I think I can guess which newspaper Mr Justice Clancy doesn't read over his Cornflakes. If Ericka Tazi faces counter-charges from the Vogelenzangs (having according to them started the whole barney by rubbishing their Christian beliefs) she'd better hope it's him she comes up in front of.

We're left with the scandal of the Vogelenzangs ever having been dragged in front of a judge in the first place. When the government created the offence they were charged with, we were assured that of course there was no intention to criminalize robust debate and the bar for bringing a prosecution would of course be set high enough to ensure there was no chance of that happening. Ha! I trust a global ban on ministerial assurances is on the agenda at Copenhagen.

It's Propagandatide again!

2009-12-08T15:28:00.003Z

If any readers in London can get to St Paul's in Covent Garden by 6:45 tonight and protest against the use of a church for this kind of nonsense, it will be an evening well spent (I can't, unfortunately).

To the people of Switzerland: a modest proposal

2009-12-01T12:21:00.001Z

Tall pointy things. Spires, towers, columns. They're all about telling us what we are to look up to. Their whole point being to be as un-private as they can be, the decision to erect one is never a private one.

It took the Emperor Constantine's say-so before churches could come with towers attached. Nelson was raised up on his Column as the very epitome of his country's ideal perception of itself.

Announce that you are going to put up a column in your back garden with Hitler on top, and you will speedily discover that it is everybody's business. And rightly so.

So the electorate of Switzerland have just made a statement about what values and beliefs they want to see affirmed by their skyline. They have seen how tolerance of intolerance has played out elsewhere in Europe, and decided to issue a symbolic warning to their cozy political elite that they will not follow it in a sleepwalking progress down the path trodden by its counterparts in countries such as Britain.

Consider this: the progressive opinion which the Swiss have so outraged is perfectly happy for Turkey to be welcomed into Europe. Turkey, a country in which it is for all practical purposes impossible to build a church, be it never so unobtrusive.

Here in Britain our Education Secretary, the never more aptly named Mr Balls, is trying to bluster his way out of the revelation that public money has been channelled to schools which are at the very least in the ideological orbit of Hizb ut Tahrir, an organization which makes Switzerland's SVP look like a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals. Hands up everyone who thinks this sets an inspiring example for observers in Switzerland or anywhere else.

And note that if, as we are constantly assured, the only problem was a tiny minority of extremists, these schools would have folded for lack of pupils. They haven't.

And yet, and yet. When the elite loses the confidence of the populace, however deservedly, and populists get their chance, the results tend not to be pretty. The SVP is evidently an unpleasant outfit which has little compunction about playing the race card. There's no escape from the principle that two wrongs don't make a right. A simple, blanket ban directed at one faith looks bigoted however valid the fears underlying it.

So how about this as a rather more sophisticated way of making the point that rights must never be divorced from responsibilities?

Tall-pointy-things-attached-to-places-of-worship-law (December 2009)

(and believe me, that will look mightily impressive translated into German)

Permission for the construction of tall pointy things attached to places of worship shall be conditional on the following:-

All members of the worshipping community shall sign a declaration affirming their support for freedom of religion. This declaration will affirm that freedom of religion includes the right of every individual to choose their religious affiliation, regardless of any previous affiliation, without fear of punishment, reprisal or discrimination. It will also affirm the right of individuals to join together in faith communities and engage openly in religious worship. It will call for these rights to be respected in all countries of the world.

The place of worship shall not be used for any preaching, teaching or dissemination of literature which contradicts the declaration on freedom of religion.

The worshipping community shall be responsible for expelling any member who makes any public statement or commits any act contradicting the declaration.

The worshipping community shall demonstrate that it does not receive funding from persons or organizations which do not uphold freedom of religion, or from citizens or domiciles of countries which do not uphold it.

Any contravention of the above points shall result in a warning. A second contravention shall result in demolition at the worshipping community's expense.

And then let a thousand Alpine minarets blossom. Or not.

No room at the inn, no unauthorized use of mangers

2009-12-01T10:02:00.003Z

Cutting off Palestinian noses to spite Israeli faces: with solidarity like this who needs enemies? As Mrs Cyrus observes it's straight out of Life of Brian.

Of course there are those in the Occupied Territories who are very happy for the sacred music of Bach not to be heard in Bethlehem at Christmas. And they are by no means short of friends in the PSC. Pity the shrinking Palestinian Christian community, caught in the firing line and getting it from all sides. They could do with a return date from the angelic choir - if permission can be obtained.

What is it with the Quakers?

2009-11-13T16:33:00.004Z

Once upon a time I came quite close to becoming a Quaker. Here (with comment from me) is one reason why I wouldn't want to be one now. Playing host to Hizb ut Tahrir is very much of a piece with their leading role in the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel.

Admirable as much of their heritage is, if they can't be consistent about their pacifism they don't amount to much more than the SWP with quieter meetings.

Trendy vicar lectures Chief Rabbi

2009-11-07T12:03:00.000Z

Gorgeous George Pitcher, trendy vicar in charge at the Telegraph, is cross with Lord Sacks. Under the headline "Is the Chief Rabbi worried about Muslim immigrants?" he continues schoolmistressishly "I hope he wasn’t making a thinly-veiled attack on European Muslim immigrants".

Yes, and I hope that in due season George will be offering his advice on appreciating the true meaning and spirit of Advent to the turkey community.

More wisdom from George:-

'Lord Sacks was ostensibly attacking our secular, consumerist culture. But a regular canard of European racists is that the Muslim immigrant population is “out-breeding” other ethnicities. They usually add that the name Mohammed is now the most popular boy’s name in some cities. The truth is that immigrant birth-rates settle down to mirror local trends.'

Well, I really don't see why he shouldn't have meant what he said - or is it only the Established Church that is licenced to attack secular, consumerist culture? But, George, let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London... Over the past few weeks I've had conversations with a young Algerian taxi driver who is here because his uncle is here, and a young Bangladeshi waiter who is here thanks to an arranged marriage. Nice guys, both of them, but how is anything supposed to settle down so long as immigration keeps breeding more immigration, and second generation immigrants are so little assimilated that they are prepared - or required - to submit to an arranged marriage with a stranger from another continent?

And yes, George, a rise in the levels of anti-Semitism in Britain - and specifically in the levels of abuse, vandalism and violence suffered by the Jewish community - is an entirely predictable by-product. I dare say Lord Sacks is indeed worried, and if he isn't he ought to be. But it's funny how it seems to be acceptable for participants in the Michal Kaminski debate to talk as if the entire population of Poland is infected with anti-Semitism, yet you can't mention Muslim anti-Semitism without arousing the suspicion that you're about to join the BNP.

Water politics

2009-11-01T21:29:00.003Z

The claim that there is a seriously unfair division of water resources between Israelis and Palestinians is one to which I've tended to attach considerable credence. It seems I may have been wrong. An Amnesty International report on the subject stands accused of resting largely on uncritical acceptance of Palestinian claims. If that is indeed the case it confirms my low opinion of another organization which I once held in high regard.

Jonathan Hoffman is clearly partisan, but some of Amnesty's claims do seem inherently dubious. 90-95% of Gaza's water unfit for human consumption? There are parts of the world where that really is true, with public health consequences which in Gaza are conspicuous by their absence.

Being a Palestinian propagandist must be a dream of a job. The people you can fool all of the time are legion.

J'accuse encore: how Christian Aid demonizes the Jewish state

2009-10-28T18:19:00.001Z

The United Reformed Church is a significant Christian Aid donor. Through its "Commitment for Life" programme it raised over £400,000 for CA last year. It divides its donations into four equal parts, to be spent respectively in Bangladesh, Jamaica, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Zimbabwe. This arrangement already tells us something about the way propaganda shapes the perceptions of the most well-meaning. It results in Palestinians getting about five times more per head than Zimbabweans, and getting on for fifty times more than Bangladeshis - and this despite the fact that Palestinians are on average significantly less poor than either Zimbabweans or Bangladeshis. OK, the Jamaicans do best of all, and I admit I have no theory to explain how the URC worked that one out, unless it simply reflects where they like to spend their holidays.

Christian Aid have produced briefings for the URC on the countries which its donations benefit. The one for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is here, and it starts like this:-

'The past year has been dominated by the conflict in Gaza and its aftermath. On 27 December 2008 Israel launched an aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip, followed by a ground invasion a week later. The violence continued for 22 days, until a temporary ceasefire was put in place on 18 January. Christian Aid’s partners wasted no time in responding to the crisis, with the provision of medical relief, food distribution and counseling for children. But Israel’s continuing blockade of Gaza’s borders – which even before the conflict was severely exacerbating the poverty and suffering of the people of Gaza - continues to hamper the humanitarian response.'

Needless to say, it was entirely appropriate that Christian Aid should respond to the humanitarian emergency created by the fighting in Gaza. But humanitarian is never just humanitarian where Christian Aid's involvement in the Middle East is concerned - as the passage above demonstrates perfectly.

In this version of events there was no conflict, no violence until an Israeli bombardment began on 27 December. The rockets that fell in their hundreds in and around Sderot simply aren't part of the picture; apparently they fall outside Christian Aid's working definitions of 'conflict' and 'violence'. So, once the rockets have been excluded, Israel's actions in first blockading, then bombarding and invading Gaza become totally unprovoked, gratuitous acts of cruelty.

Argue that an invasion was the wrong response to the rockets and you potentially have my sympathy. Ditto if you argue that it took an unnecessary toll of civilian life. But if you present the invasion as unprovoked you've crossed the line in the sand. On the right side of the line what happens is the proper holding to account of all the parties in a long and complex conflict in which nobody has a monopoly of right. On the wrong side is the demonization of that state and the promotion of prejudice and hatred towards the people whose state it is. That there are a lot of people on the wrong side these days is no excuse for Christian Aid to be among them.

When you're looking from the wrong side of the line, you can see the children of Gaza need 'psycho-social support', but it doesn't occur to you to wonder what it's like to be a child in Sderot. You feel a need to support people who 'provide a supply of credible and up-to-date information to counter biased or misleading accounts in the Israeli media' - no need to worry about Gaza's media, which thanks to their Hamas minders always tell the truth, don't they?

And whilst you will be happy to associate Zimbabwe with images like this...

...("A man surveying his crops with pride" from this leaflet) your preferred imagery for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories will be like this...

...accompanied by text like this:-

'It is 6am and Rasheed Mohammed’s hands grip the metal bars at the main checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Like the 2,000 other Palestinian workers coming through this morning, his short commute to work is now far longer and far more difficult. It takes him through these bars; past Israeli soldiers with rifles; through two ID checks; and a metal detector.'

(from this leaflet)

You will graciously concede to Israel 'the right and the duty to protect her citizens', but will have nothing to say about the cost of her pre-barrier inability to do so.

From the wrong side of the line in the sand you will not see any soldiers with rifles in Zimbabwe, and only your passing reference to 'bad governance' will hint at the realities of a country terrorized and reduced to penury by a despot. So you will have no thought of sending volunteers dressed in high-visibility jackets to monitor the country's human rights record. Save that for the evil Israelis.

I sometimes wonder whether 'Christian Hate?' was an overly provocative title for my blog. But not when I see material like this. And, yes, even the gentle souls of the United Reformed Church can be led to hate in the end, if they're fed enough lies. The evidence is for that proposition is in the long, bloody history of Christian anti-Semitism. If you don't believe me, it's time to do some reading.

Tongewatch

2009-10-28T13:25:00.003Z

Here's the latest on the company kept by former Christian Aid trustee and current patron of Christian Aid partner Friends of Sabeel UK, Baroness Tonge.

I fear it's no use telling her that she'll be rubbing shoulders with Hamas supporters. We already know that that's not a problem for her. Will she have second thoughts, though, on learning that she'll be sharing a platform with one of Nick Griffin's chums? My breath is baited.

Christian Aid and Israel: some hard facts for Liberal Jews (and concerned Christians)

2009-10-25T19:00:00.005Z

This post is cross-posted at Harry's Place

Who said that?

'[T]he pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. I think they've probably got a grip on our party.'

Who said that? Answer: a former Trustee 0f Christian Aid, and current Patron of a Christian Aid partner charity.

'International law accepts that people living under illegal military occupation are entitled to fight against the occupiers with whatever means they have at their disposal. If the world does not like, for example, “terrorist suicide bombing” in Palestine (a weapon neither unique to the Palestinians nor invented by them), then, as one Palestinian exile said at a conference in December 2003, “Give us F-16s, Apache helicopters, missiles tanks and heavy weapons, and we’ll have a fair fight”.'

Who used these words to justify the deliberate killing of civilians? Answer: another Patron of the same Christian Aid partner charity.

Also on the roll of Patrons are a bishop who is currently a Trustee of Christian Aid; another bishop who was Chair of Christian Aid from 1998 to 2008; and his predecessor in that post. The organization claims that it 'works for a just peace for the people of Palestine and Israel' and 'promotes non-violence and reconciliation'.

Introduction

I'm a Christian and a one-time Christian Aid donor who believes there's a problem here. I started this blog to make the point (in 2005, having first raised the subject in a letter to Christian Aid in 2002 - the problem is not a new one). This is an update on these concerns which I've been encouraged to write having received an e-mail from a reader who belongs to a Liberal synagogue. He and others in the Liberal Judaism movement are unhappy that the movement is linking up with Christian Aid to campaign on climate change. They're not against the link in principle, but they do think Christian Aid should clean up its Middle East campaigning act first.

Blows have been exchanged in the LJ movement's magazine (here on page 4) but so far the debate seems just a little short on facts. Naturally it's not for me to tell Jews what to think, but I do think they ought to know what they're getting into. So I offer this post as a contribution to informed debate.

The Big, Big Issue

I started off my blog with a series of posts analyzing coverage of Israel and Palestine in Christian Aid News, the charity's magazine. This is how I summed up what I found:-

'Over the last seven issues [Summer 2003 to Summer 2005] of Christian Aid News more than 17 pages were devoted to Israel and Palestine. Most of this coverage involved political criticism of Israel. The most coverage any other conflict zone got was 4.5 pages for Angola – barely a quarter as much. Sudan, scene of more than two million deaths in the civil wars of the past two decades and, in the UN’s words, “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world”, got 2.5 pages. These include a full page feature about a woman who makes perfume. It tells you her recipe.'

Has anything changed over the four years since then? You can easily see for yourself. Go to the Christian Aid website. Click on the tab marked policy. Here you'll find policy papers filed under ten headings. Nine are for general and global issues - climate change, trade, and so on. One is for a specific area of the world: the Middle East. Click on this one: there are eight papers filed here, written between 2003 and 2008. One is a 2003 expose of alleged American theft of Iraqi wealth (did CA ever publish a 'hard-hitting report' on Saddam Hussein's regime?). The other seven all deal with Israel and Palestine.

You will search in vain for even one position paper on those conflicts in Sudan (and even if there was one, you could be pretty sure it would pull its punches when it came to apportioning blame; Omar Bashir's regime is touchy about what aid agencies say about it).

Sometimes slightly more subtle ways are found of justifying a preoccupation with a region slightly smaller than Belgium. During Lent this year Christian Aid led a 'virtual pilgrimage' around the Holy Land. Now the pilgrimage is of course a venerable Christian tradition, but pious tradition is not something that usually concerns Christian Aid overmuch. In this instance the pilgrimage furnished the perfect pretext for bringing sustained political criticism of Israel to a wider audience. Given a little imagination, a virtual pilgrimage could very well range across the entire world, but Christian Aid chose to do it differently, and that choice, it can scarcely be doubted, was very much a political one.

It's hard to see how this fixation with Israel and Palestine can be understood as (in the words of Liberal Judaism CEO Rabbi Danny Rich) 'seek[ing] to fulfil a humanitarian mandate'. On the contrary, its perverse consequence is that other areas of the world suffering human rights abuses on a vastly greater scale simply get ignored. You might expect that an international development agency like CA would be concerned to redress the neglect of many such places by mainstream media and political discourse in Britain. Instead it concentrates on the tiny scrap of land that's already a focus for relentless media overkill.

The sheer volume of coverage would tend to create a false impression - of Israel as a rogue state without peer - even if it were all scrupulously even-handed (it isn't). Whenever that perception is created it gives rise to undestandable anger. Not everyone is sophisticated enough to maintain a strict distinction between anger against Israel and anger against Jews (nor indeed do the sophisticated necessarily maintain it). For some the natural outlet for anger is violence and abuse. For many more it leads to a gradual desensitization to the proposition that the Jews are a people afflicted with a fundamental moral flaw.

The Tonge Connection

I've already hinted that my objections to Christian Aid's coverage of the conflict have to do with more than its sheer volume. At this point I take up the thread begun with the two quotations at the start of this post.

The name of the Liberal Democrat politician Jenny Tonge, now Baroness Tonge, will be all too familiar to many Jews. In 2004 a comment suggesting that Palestinian terrorism was an understandable reaction to the conditions of occupation led to her being sacked by party leader Charles Kennedy from the Lib Dem front bench. Two years later her statement at the party conference that "the pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. I think they've probably got a grip on our party." was denounced by Kennedy's successor Menzies Campbell as having "clear anti-Semitic connotations." She is someone who has plainly moved way beyond legitimate criticism of Israel.

Earlier in 2006 Baroness Tonge had been appointed a Trustee of Christian Aid. After her conference speech the charity sought to portray it as irrelevant to her work with them. However, her position had evidently become untenable and she resigned her Trusteeship soon afterwards. I have little doubt that this was a result of pressure put on CA by responsible church leaders, but Tonge was no less certain that the pressure had come from a different quarter. As she wrote in an e-mail to a student:-

'After criticizing the lobby in a fringe meeting at conference (just after the publication of the book I mentioned [i.e. Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby]) I had to stand down from the board of Christian Aid because they had been warned by the BOD [Board of Deputies of British Jews], that my membership would endanger projects going ahead in the West Bank and Gaza.'

So was this the end of Christian Aid's association with this deplorable conspiracy theorist? By no means. The connection is now a little less direct, but it is nevertheless alive and well. Baroness Tonge is currently a Patron of Friends of Sabeel UK, a group which promotes the nationalist liberation theology of the Palestinian Anglican Canon Naim Ateek. Its declared aim is to work for a just peace, which it may or may not be doing; what is evident from its website is that it promotes a one-sided propagandist narrative of the conflict and its origins, and that it campaigns against the Israeli security barrier without acknowledging that the barrier is a response to the deliberate killing of hundreds of civilians.

Friends of Sabeel UK declares prominently on its website that it is a partner of Christian Aid. It can be assumed that the partnership is to FoSUK's advantage financially; Charity Commission records shows it raising barely half as much as it spends. The honour of being a Patron is one that Baroness Tonge shares with, among others, Professor Michael Taylor, former director of Christian Aid, Michael Langrish, Bishop of Exeter and a Trustee of Christian Aid, and John Gladwin, Bishop of Chelmsford and Chair of Christian Aid from 1998 to 2008.

The point of establishing this connection is that by now it would take pretty high levels of anti-Israel obsessionalism - and a pretty insouciant attitude towards anti-Semitism - to make anyone want to make common cause against Israel with Baroness Tonge. Two Liberal Democrat leaders have distanced themselves from her; the top brass of Christian Aid are doing quite the reverse.

A Connection Too Far

The Friends of Sabeel website reveals another connection that is, if anything, even more disturbing than that with Baroness Tonge. For also on the list of Patrons is Ibrahim Hewitt, "coordinator of the Palestine relief organisation Interpal".

The Harry's Place blog has made something of a speciality of researching Interpal and its relationship to Hamas. Rather than duplicate HP's efforts, I invite readers to inform themselves here and here, and specifically on Ibrahim Hewitt here. Follow the link to Mr Hewitt's pamphlet "What does Islam Say?" and note, for example, his opinions on the proper punishments for apostates (death) and homosexuals (one hundred lashes, or death). That he is comfortable with the proposition that those converting from Islam to Christianity deserve to forfeit their lives is not only ironic given that he is himself a convert with an at least nominally Christian background, but also makes him, one would think, a remarkable bedfellow for a brace of bishops.

Agreed, that is not directly relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Not so the second of the quotes at the beginning of this post, also from Mr Hewitt's pamphlet and quoted in a recent Harry's Place post. Here it is again:-

'International law accepts that people living under illegal military occupation are entitled to fight against the occupiers with whatever means they have at their disposal. If the world does not like, for example, “terrorist suicide bombing” in Palestine (a weapon neither unique to the Palestinians nor invented by them), then, as one Palestinian exile said at a conference in December 2003, “Give us F-16s, Apache helicopters, missiles tanks and heavy weapons, and we’ll have a fair fight”.'

Hewitt further underlines this position by quoting approvingly from "contemporary Islâmic scholar, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi", who has consistently upheld the right of Palestinians to resort to terrorism.

This is not, repeat not, about Mr Hewitt being a Muslim, nor is it about the fact that he sympathizes with the Palestinians. The issue is this: his argument that Palestinians are entitled to kill Israeli civilians is one which Christians must reject as morally intolerable. The claim that "international law" vindicates terrorism is of course preposterous; far less can it be vindicated by any credibly Christian ethic. I cannot justify deliberately murdering the unarmed and defenceless by appealing to a group identity which they share with others whose military might exceeds my own. To assert otherwise is, apart from any other consideration, inherently racist where the group identity in question is a racial one, as it plainly is in the case of Palestinian terrorism.

The principle I have just stated may or may not have been infringed by members of the Israeli forces in Gaza. If and to the extent it has been, that is deplorable. Where Palestinian terrorism is concerned no 'ifs' arise. That the infringement has occurred and that it has indeed been premeditated and deliberate is beyond question, and this infringement is precisely what Mr Hewitt seeks to vindicate in the quote above. And this presents Christian Aid and Friends of Sabeel UK with a choice. Either they can claim the moral high ground for their efforts on behalf of the Palestinians, or they can argue from political expediency that their tent should be large enough to accommodate Ibrahim Hewitt. But they cannot do both.

Christian Aid and Hamas

What, then, is Ibrahim Hewitt, a Muslim with extreme religious and political views, doing as a Patron of a Christian charity? It's just possible that the Christian Aiders are not aware quite how extreme his views actually are. On the other hand, it's not necessary to assume that they are ignorant of his and Interpal's stance towards Hamas. For Christian Aid itself seems to be by no means hostile towards Hamas.

It consistently offers no criticism of Hamas to balance its repeated criticisms of Israel. It consistently avoids use of the word "terrorism"; whilst its official statements condemn "violence" in general terms, there is never any suggestion that the deliberate killing of non-combattants deserves special condemnation. Nor is there any acknowledgement that Hamas has been one of the foremost sponsors of violence of this type, nor that it is intransigently hostile to the existence of Israel, which Christian Aid is officially committed to upholding.

There is more on this theme in my response to a Christian Aid parliamentary briefing produced in 2006 and typical of an approach which has been entirely consistent before and since.

Further evidence of Christian Aid's approach can be found on Friends of Sabeel UK's website. The FAQ page starts with the question "Is Sabeel anti-semitic?" - revealing a certain defensiveness, perhaps. The answer begins with "No" and ends with criticism of Israel. It contains no mention of the explicit anti-Semitism of Hamas.

The events page lists FoSUK as one of the supporters of the "Free Palestine!" demonstration in London on 16 May 2009. Also in the list of supporters are the Muslim Association of Britain ("the British franchise of Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood", in the words of Harry's Place) and Viva Palestina, under whose auspices George Galloway made his way to Gaza to hand over a wad of cash to Hamas. Viva Palestina is under investigation by the Charity Commission following this escapade (it is, after all, illegal to fund Hamas even if you don't have charitable status) - see this Harry's Place post which also notes the organization's close links with Ibrahim Hewitt's Interpal.

The Charity Commission seems happy to grant charities a good deal of leeway for political campaigning, and only under fairly extreme provocation does it bestir itself even to launch an investigation. Personally, I believe that this degree of politicization makes nonsense of the very concept of charity; even if the Commissioners disagree, it really is not acceptable for the churches which sponsor Christian Aid to share their indulgence.

The security barrier

'Christian Aid has expressed unequivocal support for the security of Israel and the rights of all Israeli people to live safely and securely' writes Rabbi Rich. Indeed it has. The problem is that there is a large gap between what the organization says in bland official statements (largely to keep the Charity Commission and/or the Archbishop of Canterbury off its back, I suspect) and what it actually practises. For in practice its support for the security of Israel is hedged about by the equivocations that surface whenever Israel takes action to safeguard its citizens.

The homepage of Friends of Sabeel UK features a photo of what is described elsewhere as an "armed Israeli lookout tower on the ‘Apartheid’ Wall". Another photo features "A Friends of Sabeel demonstration against the continued construction of the wall".

What has the security barrier meant for Israelis? Bearing in mind that construction began in 2003, the graph here tells its own story (I would not usually rely on an Israeli - or any other - government source, but the figures are not in dispute). To bring the picture up to date, one Israeli woman was killed by a suicide bombing in February 2008 (the bomber had come across the barrier-free border with Jordan). As I write that is the most recent suicide attack to have occurred in Israel. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have both acknowledged that their attacks have been frustrated by the presence of the barrier.

When Pope Benedict visited the Holy Land he described the security barrier as one of the saddest sights of his trip, and looked forward to a future in which it would have disappeared. But he also stated clearly that this was contingent on a renunciation of violence and aggression by all sides. That was an expression of 'unequivocal support for the security of Israel' and a model for Christians. It is sadly not the view of the Christian Aiders gathered together as Friends of Sabeel.

It might sound outrageous to suggest that the Friends of Sabeel want it made easier for Palestinians to kill Jews. But in June 2006 Baroness Tonge wrote complainingly in a letter to the Independent 'It should come as no surprise to anyone that suicide bombers in Iraq are Palestinians. Israel's security wall is forcing them to export themselves to another arena [...]' (my emphasis). Lest we forget, Baroness Tonge is a Patron of Friends of Sabeel UK and a very special friend of Christian Aid.

To be continued

This long post has been too long in the writing. For this I offer my apologies to the reader who asked me to write it, whilst leaving further thoughts for a follow-up post.

Update: the follow-up is here.

Appendix 1: selected past posts on Christian Aid

My June 2005 introduction to the blog

On the appalling 'Child of Bethlehem' Christmas appeal and its invocation of ancient tropes of Christian anti-Semitism

CA as Manichaeans

Demonizing imagery, and selective quotation from Rowan Williams

CA flies two MPs to Gaza - one of them just happens to be Jenny Tonge

A pat on the back for CA, for supporting a genuine peace initiative

On a student-oriented website which earned CA an award from the New Statesman

An open letter to the Director of Christian Aid (he didn't reply)

My reply to a comment from a Christian Aid employee

On episcopal politics and the beginning of CA's campaign against the security barrier

On Christian Aid advocacy for Hamas - with an update

On CA collaboration with War on Want and the Muslim Council of Britain

On Baroness Tonge's graduation to outright support for Hamas

Appendix 2: the charitable objectives of Friends of Sabeel UK

As lodged with the Charity Commission:-

(3.) THE CHARITY'S OBJECTS ARE:

(3.1) TO SUPPORT THE SABEEL THEOLOGY CENTRE IN JERUSALEM IN ITS WORK FOR THE PROMOTION OF RELIGION FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE COMMUNITY

(3.2) TO SUPPORT AND ENCOURAGE THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY IN THE HOLY LAND (ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIAN AREAS OF GAZA, THE WEST BANK AND EAST JERUSALEM) IN THEIR LIFE AND WITNESS

(3.3) TO RAISE AWARENESS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM CONCERNING CHRISTIANS IN THE HOLY LAND AND TO PROMOTE LINKS WITH THEM.

Broadminded couple seeks...

2009-10-23T15:44:00.006+01:00

Aside from mists and mellow fruitfulness, autumn is the season in which Curmudge is once again packed with nubile young freshers. So Frau Grumpy and I have been trawling the bars in search of a partner (gender immaterial) for a drug-fuelled threesome. Like you do.

I wouldn't bore you with this everyday tale of everyday folk, only - can you believe it? - some evil fascist hag has accused us of being sleazy. Our mortification knows no bounds. Honestly, doesn't she know what century she's living in? Thank goodness the heterosexual troilist community has protested on a scale which will hopefully ensure she never works again. Let her consume away like a snail.

(hat tip: the Dumb One)

Fake Aid

2009-10-10T10:13:00.004+01:00

I'm still learning. I was aware that aid charities like Christian Aid derive a large slice of their income from the Department for International Development, and it goes without saying that I'm very much aware of their highly politicized 'advocacy' work, of which Christian Aid's Israel-bashing campaign is a particularly deplorable instance. What wasn't clear to me, though I had my suspicions, was how DfID cash goes specifically to fund ~~propaganda~~advocacy.

So I'm indebted to 'Fake Aid', a new report from the International Policy Network, for putting me in the picture. In an executive nutshell:-

'In 2008–092 DfID spent £140 million on
“communications” activities by NGOs whose primary
focus is often not the delivery of aid. Spending on such
communications has rocketed in recent years: starting
with an initial budget just under £38 million in 2000–01,
the total cost of these programmes will reach £1.1 billion
by 2010–11.'

It's a lot of money not being spent on what one might expect to be the raison d'être of both the DfID and the charities. The Times had a piece on the report; I missed the agencies' letter in response and can't find it, but some of the comments make the noises characteristic of a vested interest being rubbed up the wrong way. There are some good samples of the oh-so-you-want-us-to-leave-starving-babies-to-die-do-you straw man tactic. Perhaps somewhat spoiling the effect of these is the contribution from someone who can't see what the problem is because he got an all-expenses-paid trip to Ghana and jolly interesting it was too. I'm glad that he had a good time at my expense, but since at present my personal finances won't run to a holiday in Ghana I can only live in hope that the DfID will decide I am a particularly urgent case for re-education.

It's not hard to work out that the IPN is a robustly right-of-centre outfit. But there's a principle at stake which one would hope had at least some lingering resonance with the non-Stalinist Left: the principle that the state is not entitled to take my money and spend it on telling me what to think. But it's hard to find any section of the Left which has not been corrupted by the power conferred by its status as the new Establishment.

A question of some interest to me is whether Christian Aid's Israel-bashing, Hamas-legitimizing political campaigning has been supported by the taxpayer. There's no direct evidence in the report, and it may be hard to disentangle the answer. As the report notes:-

'When DfID funds are bundled together with money for
aid work in the field, it is impossible to know precisely
how the money is spent by recipient organisations or
how much is spent on aid delivery rather than advocacy
and public relations.'

This, though, is anything but reassuring:-

'The NGO War on Want, for example, was issued
an official warning by the Charity Commission over its
overtly political activities which included calls for the
cutting of all cultural, academic and sporting ties with
Israeli people who they deem “complicit at worst and
acquiescent at best” in relation to the Israeli
government’s alleged “apartheid policies.” The warning
did not affect DfID’s continued funding of the
organisation, to which it granted £980,119 via the CSCF
in 2007 and 2008.'

It is, indeed, fairly hard to imagine that you could bung a million quid at War on Want and not be making a substantial contribution to the demonization of Israel. It was certainly never going to get spent on campaigning against the Sudanese regime. It's also hard to believe that the DfID's functionaries don't know this.

I'm very much in favour of schoolkids (and others) learning about development issues. They should learn through proper educational materials devised by reasonably impartial educationalists, not from consciousness-raising sessions run by political commissars. What the DPI report uncovers is that a large and growing chunk of the aid agencies' business is effectively state propaganda by proxy. It's illiberal, it's corrupt, it stinks.

Official: Nobel judges now certifiable

2009-10-09T14:15:00.003+01:00

A billion bloggers will be speaking as one but what the heck, why shouldn't I be the billion-and-first? Nobel Peace Prize now definitively worth one bent halfpenny.

I hope that in ten/twenty/thirty years' time we will look back and say they were right. Really. Though actually, on a more visceral level I also hope they will look as foolish as their predecessors who picked Kissinger. So I can't be disappointed either way.

Even the Beeb's man has to admit that the award "might be regarded as more of an encouragement for intentions than a reward for achievements". So prizes for everyone motoring down the highway to the big bonfire, then. Hurrah!

"His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population" saith the committee. Where do you start with that one?

Remember Tony Blair and his ethical foreign policy? Shame he couldn't have got his gong as a reward for pious words spoken in 1997. Why did the Nobelity have to hang around and pass their judgment on him after he'd quietly shelved the whole concept in favour of old-fashioned national self-interest?

No risk at all of history repeating itself, is there?

I'd say it would even have been a shade premature to pick Morgan Tsvangirai. But at least he can point to some solid achievements in hauling Zimbabwe out of the abyss. Not to mention stuff like getting his skull cracked by Mugabe's thugs and losing his wife to what may well have been an assassination attempt.

But who actually gives a monkey's about Zimbabwe and its people's empty stomachs, anyway? In a world of hype, nothing breeds hype like hype. And as of today, that's all the Nobel Peace Prize is about.

Here endeth the rant.

Dead right

2009-10-02T10:24:00.003+01:00

Death as lifestyle choice: at the Torygraph fluffy Anglican Pitcher is of one mind with the bracing if slightly alarming franquista Catholic Warner. And they're both dead right.

A Polish wedding party

2009-09-12T17:57:00.004+01:00

A bit of excitement in the Grumpy neighbourhood this morning. A stretch limo drew up outside our front door, and it transpired that the Polish plumber and his other half who live somewhere on top of us were taking the plunge. She emerged cutting a striking figure in a dress of some daring, he dapper as could be in a suit apparently cut from the same fabric. This, I must admit, is something I would have consented to even less readily than the stretch limo, but each to their own on their big day. Are Poles particularly drawn to Vegas glitz as a reaction against the hair-shirted communist years?

After photos had been taken they piled in together with the supporting cast, and off they went. I hope they were able to plight their troths amid the splendours of OLEM, and not in the dismal new church down the road (I'm not willing to entertain the possibility that they opted for the registry office).

As we've never exchanged more than the occasional Hello it was all a complete surprise. We seemed to be the only neighbours who were registering it at all. We've left a card on the stairs and perhaps it will break the ice. All the best to them in any case.

Here on the edge of Curmudge all the world is at home. French, Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Africans, Bangladeshis, Chinese, you name it. We come and go on our bikes and in our little silver cars (except for the plumber who has something red and sporty-looking) and we each mind our own business. I've seen the future and it sort of works, but a community it isn't. Pity, really.

From the Nazi-Islamist connection to Holocaust-denying Hamas

2009-09-03T17:52:00.000+01:00

Harry's Place is a blog whose praises I can't sing highly enough at present. I have my disagreements with its contributors, but it is an exemplary political blog in that, whilst it knows its mind, it deals in research at least as much as opinion.

While I'm doing my own research on my 'favourite' topic, here are a couple of HP titbits to provide some context for my next Big Post. First, a post on Hamas's official embrace of Holocaust denial tellingly draws on Al Jazeera to expand on what the BBC had to say on the subject, and makes plain UNWRA's wretched failure to stand up to the bigots. And secondly, lest anyone should suppose that Hamas's stance is an aberration, here's one that sheds light on the movement's ideological roots by documenting the Nazi sympathies of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna.

So: what kind of Christian charity is it that would cheerfully legitimize this gang of murderous, intolerant, racist bigots by taking Hamas fellow-travellers into partnership?

The BBC and the taboo against asking an obvious question

2009-08-26T18:41:00.004+01:00

The Office of National Statistics has recorded a continued fall in the number of unexplained infant deaths - 2007's figure is 7% down on the previous year. Good news indeed.

Still a lot of deaths, though - five every week in England and Wales. What do we know about them? The BBC quotes some answers that took me aback:-

'The majority of deaths were among babies of a normal birthweight - 2,500 grammes or 5.5lbs and above, and occurred between 28 days and one year of age.

'At a rate of 1.42 per 1,000 live births, the rate among unmarried mothers registering the birth alone was eight times that of babies born within marriage.

'For births inside and outside marriage - and where the baby was registered by both parents - the death rate among parents in the routine and manual occupations was twice that among those classified as managerial or professional.

'Age was also a factor: rates were highest in mothers under 20, and fell the older she became.

'There were also regional variations: the North East had the highest rate, at 0.66 per 1,000 births, and the East of England the lowest, at 0.32 per 1,000.'

Let's have one of those stats again: 'the rate among unmarried mothers registering the birth alone was eight times that of babies born within marriage'. Eight times! What on earth can that be about?

The ONS doesn't do explanations. Here's all you'll get from the Beeb-

'There is now suggestion that bacteria may have a role in sudden infant death, although the precise nature of any such relationship is unclear.'

Well, they must be exceptionally unenlightened bacteria. I hope none of them is planning a career with the BBC.

PS The ONS bulletin is here. In it I discover another differential that has been excised by the Beeb from the quote above:-

'During the period 2003–07, the unexplained infant death rate in boys was over 1.3 times
the rate in girls.'

Clearly too scandalous to be mentioned.

The Blood Libel updated

2009-08-23T15:22:00.003+01:00

One of the more disturbing recent instances of anti-Semitism of the Left is a Swedish newspaper article accusing Israeli soldiers of 'harvesting' organs from Palestinians. This is not from an obscure neo-Nazi rag: it's Sweden's top-circulation paper, Social Democratic in its politics and 50.1% owned by the country's trade union confederation. Details are at Engage, and if you want to read the article the Google translator doesn't mangle it excessively. Harry's Place also has some worthwhile thoughts.

You'll be convinced if you're disposed to take seriously every piece of paranoid hearsay circulating in the Occupied Territories and to believe the worst about Jews - oops, I mean Zionists, of course. If, that is, you're a not untypical member of the Guardian-reading, Fairtrade coffee-drinking classes for whom Sweden is the closest thing to Nirvana.

Challenged to provide hard evidence, the writer has backed off. But the paper's editor seems to feel no urge to publish a retraction. On the contrary. Following high-level protests from Israel, he's chosen instead to play the freedom of speech card. And since he is not an anti-Semite, there is no need even to discuss the charge that he has published something anti-Semitic. It's not anti-Semitic, you see, to feel that Israel doesn't and shouldn't have a good name to lose. So all those Fairtrade coffee-drinkers are in the clear.

That may sound terribly bitter. But based on my own experience of Fairtrade coffee-drinkers (of whom, by the way, I am one) at prayer, I don't think it's overstating the case. I'm forcibly reminded of what I wrote here about the resurrection of another mediaeval prejudice. The following, directed against an activist of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, could just as well be applied to Donald Boström and the editor of Aftonbladet:

'I've mapped out a No Man's Land bounded on the one side by a world in which real dead chickens are fished out of a real village well, and extremism and hatred provoke real people on both sides of a bitter conflict into committing real evil deeds, but bounded on the other side by the ravings of pure racist paranoia. In this wilderness our Accompanier and many others like him seem to have no fence to stop them from drifting towards the wrong side, and they show all too little awareness of the need to build one.'

Esther Rantzen and the Elders

2009-08-16T21:48:00.005+01:00

The Telegraph had an article last week by Esther Rantzen on the harrowing case of Baby Peter. No comment on the article itself other than to say that a strong stomach is required.

Ms Rantzen is one of those people you either love or hate. The latter is perhaps an understandable reaction to memories of 'That's Life'. Less understandable is the view that her work with vulnerable children is informed by the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. But for some people the name alone tells a story...

'I would argue that Esther does not give a rats noddy about endangered children, as she works for the tribe that blatantly commits the most heinous crimes on the planet'

So wrote a commenter signing himself 'Noble Lord' at 11:24 AM on Wednesday. And more in the same vein. Just over an hour later I reported the comment to the Telegraph, pointing out that it was anti-Semitic and asking that it be removed.

Result as of today's date: zilch.

Now I would hazard a guess that Noble Lord is on terms of some familiarity with his local mental health services. I wonder which noble lord he supposes himself to be. The Duke of Edinburgh, perhaps? The Marquis of Bath? Lord Lawson of Blaby?

Nevertheless, those of us who have studied history know that sometimes the lunatics can take over the asylum. So it behoves a reputable newspaper not to make things easier for them. The Telegraph wouldn't dream of commissioning an article propounding these views, so why does it tolerate them in a comment - for which it is in principle just as responsible as for the output of its star columnists?

Be your own Nazi

2009-08-03T18:07:00.006+01:00

Along with one or two other folk I've been much exercised by the topic of assisted suicide of late. Though not a Catholic (yet?) I've found Catholic voices consistently the sanest ones. This from Dominic Lawson is a cracking piece. This blog post from Gerald Warner comes with a comment from me to which the title of the present post relates.

The case of the 23-year-old left paralyzed by a rugby accident seems to me to pose the issues particularly starkly. If I were in his position I'm sure I would be traumatized and depressed. These are treatable conditions. Quadriplegia is not, but neither does it have to be a bar to a richly meaningful life. That was true even in the absence of all the opportunities opened up by modern technology.

There's not much dignity in needing someone else to wipe your bum for the rest of your life, it's true, but when did the human condition ever come with a guarantee of dignity?

I have no window into the souls of the young man's parents, and accordingly pass no judgements. Nevertheless, this must be said: if, in those circumstances, I decided my life wasn't worth living, I hope I'd discover that at least one person loved me enough to tell me I was wrong. And keep telling me until I took notice.

The way we were, the way we are

2009-08-03T18:02:00.002+01:00

I’m bound to say that, as a general rule, my idea of a large afternoon would be to keep as far away from a village school-treat as possible. A sticky business. But with such grave issues toward, if you know what I mean, I sank my prejudices on this occasion and rolled up. I found the proceedings about as scaly as I had expected. It was a warm day, and the hall grounds were a dense, practically liquid mass of peasantry. Kids seethed to and fro. One of them, a small girl of sorts, grabbed my hand and hung on to it as I clove my way through the jam to where the Mothers’ Sack Race was to finish. We hadn’t been introduced, but she seemed to think I would do as well as anyone else to talk to about the rag-doll she had just won in the Lucky Dip, and she rather spread herself on the topic.

‘I’m going to call it Gertrude,’ she said. ‘And I shall undress it every night and put it to bed, and wake it up in the morning and dress it, and put it to bed at night, and wake it up next morning and dress it –‘

I cut the pestilential infant off in mid-flow. The situation which had developed was, I realised, one to be viewed with the gravest concern and alarm. Visions of Bertram languishing in durance vile swam before my eyes.

‘Now look here, young lady’, I said, extricating myself from her grip and fixing a basilisk-like gaze upon her, ‘Are you aware that firstly you have no business wandering around unaccompanied by a carer, teacher or other responsible adult, secondly I haven’t got police clearance for contact with children, let alone conversations about naked dolls, and thirdly any form of physical contact between you and self is totally inappropriate? Don’t they teach you anything about Stranger Danger at this beastly school of yours? I suppose the next thing will be that you’ll want me to take your picture, forsooth! Kindly make yourself scarce before you get me arrested.’

[Even the most imperishable classics may need updating to make them appropriate to changed and more enlightened cultural contexts. Here Mr Grumpy (inspired partly by this) gives the Master a helping hand in The Inimitable Jeeves.]

A wedding present from the Home Office: postscript

2009-07-26T19:00:00.004+01:00

Regimes which have prevented people with differing backgrounds from living together as man and wife:

1. Apartheid South Africa

2. Nazi Germany

3. Labour Britain

Like all right thinking people I was disturbed by the successes of the BNP in the European elections. I will never be found among those trivializing the threat to our liberties from a party with such a deplorable political pedigree. However, whilst the threat from these still fairly marginal opponents of 'diversity' remains theoretical, the stripping away of said liberties by the left-liberal establishment - as a direct consequence of their pursuit of 'diversity' - has long since become reality.

Keep the BNP out - don't vote Labour!

A wedding present from the Home Office

2009-07-26T14:03:00.004+01:00

Hard to imagine many worse ways of starting a marriage: eighteen months of separation enforced by the whim of the state. As so often these days it's a whim compounded from a lethal cocktail of plain incompetence, mendaciousness and political correctness.

It seems no time since the government was in denial over forced marriages. Not a problem. OK, maybe a teeny weeny problem in a handful of cases, but nothing that existing legislation can't deal with.

Then somehow the balance tipped, and now we're in the next phase - the one where they try to find a fix that will let them off having to come clean about what the problem is.

For we do all know, don't we, that forced marriages are not a prominent feature of traditional Canadian or Welsh culture. And the Person from the Ministry knows that we know. But in order that he and his masters and mistresses may avoid pronouncing the 'M' word and/or the name of the country that separates India from Afghanistan, two newly-weds must be punished for a crime that everybody knows neither of them has committed. And just to add insult to injury, they get a lecture from the Person from the Ministry about what an evil crime it is that they haven't committed, and how admirable it is that the government is 'tackling' it (at their expense).

No doubt Rochelle and Adam will spend large parts of the next two eighteen months celebrating diversity. Unless, that is, they're too busy organizing Adam's permanent relocation to Canada.

Here's another take on the story. Note particularly the government's forced marriage poster: does either of those shackled hands look as if it comes from that mysterious anonymous space to the left of India?

Service announcement

2009-07-25T20:14:00.002+01:00

For fairly obvious reasons I am switching on comment moderation for the time being. Sorry the technology doesn't allow me to exempt you, Snoopy, and please don't be put off!

To whom it may concern

2009-07-24T18:01:00.000+01:00

Visitors to the blog have by now had ample opportunity of gathering that I am a scummy little smearbag. I suspect one or two may be feeling that the novelty is wearing off. I certainly am. So I have deleted the last batch of comments to this effect, and any more in the same vein will meet with the same fate.

Apart from anything else, I have no proof that the writer is who he claims to be. And I would certainly feel defamed if someone were posting comments in my name which made it look as if I was suffering from some digital variant of Tourette's Syndrome.

If the writer is indeed who he says he is, he may rest assured that an apology for legitimate and pertinent comment on material which he has chosen to place in the public domain is as unforthcoming as ever.

One last point. I recently leafed through a copy of the Economist whilst waiting to board a plane. Something rather unusual struck me about it: it's an anonymous magazine. Not a by-line from start to finish. And it is a former senior editor of the same magazine (or someone impersonating him) who repeatedly accuses me of moral cowardice for blogging anonymously. There's nowt so queer as folk.

Al-Beebi update

2009-07-13T21:00:00.003+01:00

A loyal reader thinks I've been slacking long enough, so here goes, following on from the theme of the last. The Beeb and the Middle East - enough material for an entire something-or-other.

Whilst last time I was suggesting that a little contextualization wouldn't go amiss, here we get contextualization in abundance. Six bomb attacks on Baghdad churches over a single weekend might make it appear that this is not a great place to be a Christian, but these things are relative...

'There are some 750,000 people in Iraq's Christian community. Christian targets have been attacked in the past, but are spared much of Iraq's deadly violence.

'They have been targeted in some areas of the country, mainly in Baghdad and in the northern city of Mosul.

'However, most of the violence in Iraq is sectarian in nature and targets either Sunni or Shia Muslims.'

So, no whining from you Christians. Count your blessings!

When I first read the story this morning it was even more dismissive; methinks the middle paragraph has been inserted later.

Given the small size of the Christian minority, I'm not sure whether the writer's perception that Christians have been 'spared' is based on hard statistics or on the finger-in-the-wind approach. Iraqi Christians themselves feel the wind coming from a very different direction - they're emigrating in droves, and 750,000 is already almost certainly a gross overestimate of their numbers. Odd that that's not mentioned, don't you think?

And in any case, if we're going to do odorous comparisons, 'poor Muslims bearing the brunt of the violence' isn't quite the whole story, is it? There's also the small matter of who it is that thinks other people's places of worship are legitimate targets. Number of mosques blown up by Iraqi Christians, please? Over to the Beeb's man in Baghdad... Hmmm, we're having some trouble accessing that statistic. We'll get back to you as soon as we can.

Rod Little professes to be shocked that an esteemed colleague from his BBC days has taken the mullahs' shilling and joined the One Formerly Known As Gorgeous at Press TV. Really, Rod?

One for Biased BBC

2009-07-06T19:22:00.010+01:00

A minute or two for blogging, and a topic chosen more or less at random (albeit one I've touched on before).

The murder of a young Egyptian woman by a deranged defendant in a German courtroom is a tragic occurrence. But at the BBC there are tragedies and tragedies. If we're talking martyred Egyptians, you might think that this or this would merit a place beneath the 'SEE ALSO' heading. And you might think it a little inconsistent that only one of these three stories contains the word 'martyr'.

Appeasers, resisters and a Sandalista Mass

2009-03-29T18:50:00.009+01:00

Honestly, it wasn't just that I forgot the clocks were going forward. I'd been meaning for ages to pay an exploratory visit to my local Catholic church, and with 11 o'clock Mass substituting nicely for 10 o'clock Holy Communion it seemed clear that a suitable occasion had arrived.

I can't deny, though, that low expectations lay in large measure at the bottom of my procrastination. I also can't say that those expectations were exceeded. On this evidence the wasteland created by the trendy lefty interpretation of Vatican 2 is as dire as Damian Thompson says it is.

The church was full, mind, but that's no great achievement in a city as cosmopolitan as this one now is. A solitary parish priest is obviously grossly overstretched and, as he reminded us this morning, with blocks of flats springing up on every pocket handkerchief of empty land the parish is on track to double its population, recession notwithstanding. With a church packed to bursting-point with Africans and Poles, what chance is there that mission to the heathen natives will get a look in?

A special dishonourable mention must go to the music. It was like the drippiest variety of Evangelical happy-clappy with added Valium, a fitting counterpoint to the puke-green wall behind the altar. The fact that it was still being rehearsed at three minutes past eleven merely added insult to injury.

So it is with increased fervour that I join Damian T in his approbation of the Scots Catholic composer James MacMillan. He has proved that contemporary music need not contribute to stripping the liturgy of reverence and mystery - try his sublime Mass. And for good measure he has his head screwed on politically as well. Last week he laid succinctly into the editor of the Guardian over the paper's support for Islamism.

Support for Islamism? Some mistake, surely? You've been at the Melanie Phillips again, Grumpy, haven't you? What about this...

'It is also true that a document signed by Mr Abdullah [deputy general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain] at a recent international conference is in many ways offensive, with sweeping threats against those who stand with Israel and a slip into racialised language in relation to the Jewish state.'

So far so good, but I reckon if I ask you to guess what the next word is you won't have too much trouble. Close your eyes, and read on when you've had a stab at it.

'But '

Well done! You'd certainly have seen it coming if you've already read this in the leader:-

'Hazel Blears, had decided to cut contact with the largest Muslim civil society group until its deputy general secretary, Daud Abdullah, was sacked - a perverse decision if the aim is building the broadest possible alliance to take on the extremists.'

So someone undeterred by anti-Semitic language from signing a call to Jihad on behalf of Hamas is an invaluable member of the anti-extremist alliance. To coin a Wodehousean phrase, this is vastly well. There seems to be genuinely no limit to what we may be enjoined to accept in order that still worse things may be warded off:-

'A month ago the Guardian revealed that the government was considering setting arbitrary criteria to define extremists, such as support for sharia law - an approach that would have branded many mainstream Muslims enemies of the people. Thankfully the idea was ditched [...]'

Get that: 'mainstream' Muslims think it is not extreme to call for the introduction of a parallel theocratic jurisdiction in Britain, therefore nobody else has any business thinking it is.

Can you imagine the Grauniad telling us that in the interests of building an alliance against the far Right we must take care not to alienate 'mainstream' BNP voters by telling them their views are extremist? Of course not - the BNP aren't nearly scary enough.

Continuing to scan the papers, Ruth Gledhill of the Times is admirably robust on Dr Abdullah. I agree with her that this quote from David T of Harry's Place is telling:-

'The exposure of one faux-moderate as an extremist creates a domino effect. You just watch for the statements of outrage, and of support for the poor maligned nutter, and you uncover their constituency.'

But then we come to Damian T's Torygraph colleague, the dashing trendy vicar George Pitcher. Barely able to contain his glee over Dr Michael Nazir-Ali's decision to hand in his mitre, he writes:-

'It is said he was disappointed not to have been made Archbishop of Canterbury, but in truth he would have been awful in that role; his comments on British Muslims alone, had they emerged from Canterbury, could have left blood on the streets.'

'Blood on the streets'. No need to ask whose blood, or who'd have spilt it. Dr Nazir-Ali witnessed how Christians were intimidated into compliance in his native Pakistan. Has he given up hope that a repetition of the process in Britain can be prevented? It would be tragic if he has, though this kind of official flannel from the C of E would make such a conclusion understandable.

'As we rejoice in the power of his Spirit,
may God grant us today the faith of the apostles,
the boldness of the prophets
and the strength of the martyrs.'

When the Society of St Francis included this prayer for Pentecost in its office book, published in 1992, being a Christian in Britain was still pretty much the same cosy business it had been for a couple of centuries. Seventeen years on, it begins to look as if the prayer ought to have that well-known warning appended to it: be careful what you pray for - you might get it. Personally, I don't have the boldness of the prophets or the strength of the martyrs, and I'm not at all sure I want them, thank you very much. But how much longer is meaningful Christian witness in this society going to be possible without them?

On calling a Jew a Jew

2009-03-16T20:50:00.000Z

In June 2006 I wrote a brief post reacting to a letter in the Times from one Stephen Hugh-Jones, in its turn a reaction to an op-ed by Melanie Phillips. My post has now attracted a series of comments from Mr Hugh-Jones in which he complains that I have smeared him - libelled him, indeed - as a closet anti-Semite and calls on me to apologize.

I am certainly always willing to apologize to anyone I have misrepresented. This post, however, is not an apology but an attempt at an apologia. I hope to place beyond any possibility of misunderstanding the reasons why Mr Hugh-Jones's letter left an unpleasant taste in my mouth and continues to do so. If the letter inadequately expresses what he meant to say, or if it reveals more about his attitudes than he meant to reveal, the fault is plainly not mine.

Please stay with me: this is rather more than an obscure blogger's defence of his integrity. First, because Mr H-J is a mediacrat of some significance. He is the former International Editor of the Economist, and still enjoys the magazine's hospitality as an occasional blogger.

And second, there are some serious issues at stake - issues of what should and should not be said to and about Jews, and what it is permissible to notice about what others say to and about Jews. Let me again commend Howard Jacobson's recent piece in the Independent as a reminder as to why this discussion is timely. It has now become a commonplace, not least in supposedly serious and reputable newspapers, to say such things as that Jews have recreated the Warsaw ghetto in Gaza, that 'Palestinian Anne Franks' lie dead there. These are not true claims in any meaningful rational sense, but they evidently have a cathartic function for those who make them. It's time for people, and not just Jewish people, to demand less catharsis and more scrupulous precision in what's said about Jews. I certainly make no apology for raising that demand myself.

Before we go any further, here is the full text of Mr H-J's letter:-

'Sir Melanie Phillips (comment, June 6) thinks the doctrines of multiculturalism and minority rights spring from “a systematic onslaught” by the elite against British identity and values.

'If so, the elite has taken its time. It is 350 years since Jews were readmitted to Britain, and some 150 since the last formal bars against Jews and Roman Catholics (and atheists) were removed. The Phillipses of the day reacted much as the present one. Does she think they were right?'

Let me begin by stressing that I did not call Mr H-J an anti-Semite. What I did want to do was point out the way he draws attention to the fact that Melanie Phillips is Jewish. Make no mistake: that fact, that 'J' word, is on the table, not because I put it there or Ms Phillips put it there, but because Stephen Hugh-Jones put it there.

Let's understand clearly how the letter does this. Having invoked two historical events involving Jews, it ends by throwing out a rhetorical question. And the rhetorical force of the question lies entirely in the phrase which the reader is left to supply: does she, as a Jew, think they were right?

Since the question is rhetorical, furthermore, it implies an assertion: Melanie the Jew is happy to take advantage of British liberties whilst seeking to deny them to (Muslim) others. It points simultaneously to her Jewishness and her hypocrisy.

I will be very interested to see whether Mr Hugh-Jones feels able to deny any of this. It's a sly little piece of innuendo; for its author to react, when someone catches him at it, by huffing and puffing about smears and libels might charitably be labelled chutzpah. It might less charitably be called humbug.

Ad hominem arguments are dubious enough at the best of times, and it's my view that an ad Iudaeam argument - or any other kind that works by putting people in a racial pigeonhole - is particularly distasteful. Mr H-J is naturally perfectly entitled to disagree with every word Ms Phillips wrote. But it cannot be the case that the article is any worse than it would have been if it had been written by someone who was not Jewish, and to imply otherwise is plain racism.

It is of course true that Melanie Phillips makes no secret of being Jewish. She frequently writes as a Jew addressing Jewish concerns. In this instance, however, she was writing about what she perceived as a matter of common concern to British citizens. Mr H-J or anybody else is free to find those concerns totally bogus. But the anti-racist principle is clear: Ms Phillips is entitled to have concerns as a British citizen, as a European, as a woman, as a member of the human race - and not exclusively 'as a Jew'. That is what being fully 'one of us' is about, and someone to whom it is denied - by having her Jewishness gratuitously and irrelevantly thrown in her face - is indeed, as I wrote in my 2006 post, being treated as 'not quite One Of Us'.

Ah, I hear Mr H-J cry, that's the whole point, isn't it? It wasn't gratuitous and it wasn't irrelevant. It wasn't just 'she's a Jew', it was 'she's a Jew and therefore a hypocrite'. The hypocrisy is the real issue, and if it can only be exposed by referring to her Jewishness then that reference is amply justified. Look how good we Brits have been to the Jews since Cromwell let them back in - and now here's Melanie wanting to deny the very benefits she enjoys as a Jew to the poor Muslims!

The first thing to be remarked on is the whiff of patronage this exudes. It puts Ms Phillips in her place, a place which is hers by virtue of her Jewishness. She must be reminded that she is the beneficiary of British tolerance so that she may be truly thankful and learn to practice the Golden Rule. This place is evidently not the place of the Hugh-Joneses of this world. Theirs is one of not needing to worry that anyone might find them intolerable. Again, I stand by what I wrote in 2006: the subtextual message to Ms Phillips is that she is not quite One Of Us.

The second point is that the charge of double standards depends on putting words into Melanie Phillips's mouth, making her an opponent of 'minority rights'. Mr H-J refers to the readmission of Jews to Britain by Oliver Cromwell, nearly four centuries after their expulsion by Edward I in 1290 (and here he is sloppy with his facts, for Edward had the power to expel the Jews from England and Wales, but not from Scotland, and the Scots never chose to follow his example). So was Ms Phillips suggesting the mass expulsion of British Muslims? Of course not - so where's the relevance?

Similarly, concerning the legal emancipation of the Jews in the nineteenth century, my original post contained this challenge which Mr H-J has signally failed to take up in his (so far) three comments:-

'Nor does he tell us what formal bars exist against law-abiding Muslims, or what
formal bars he imagines that Melanie Phillips is proposing.'

Jews enjoy equal rights under the law and Muslims enjoy equal rights under the law. Where did the article say they shouldn't, Mr H-J?

Thirdly, I challenged the validity of Mr H-J's historical analogy thus:-

'A pity the writer didn't have space to elaborate on which bits of British
identity and values were compromised by the emancipation of the Jews. The Jewish
terrorist threat in early Victorian London has somehow got left out of all the
history books I've read.'

His response to the first sentence is 'None, of course: that was exactly the point I was making in my letter to the Times.' Well, that in itself is good to know, but it makes his point not a very exact one at all, and reinforces the point I make in the following sentence. Melanie Phillips's article focussed specifically on the very real challenge presented by violent Islamism (whilst explicitly dissociating the 'hundreds of thousands of Muslims [who] lead law-abiding lives and merely want to prosper and raise their families in peace' from it); Mr H-J's letter implies there is some precedent for violent Islamism in the history of British Jewry (if it doesn't mean to do so, why is that history invoked?), but he is so far unable to say what that precedent is.

Now that is a point of some importance. I'm currently reading Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, one of which, the Prioress's Tale, deplorably recounts the fictional murder of a Christian boy by Jews and connects it with the historical murder of St Hugh of Lincoln. The latter is, of course, also blamed on 'cursed Jewes'. I'm not suggesting that a faulty historical analogy that falsely hints at Jewish murderousness is up there with the blood libel. But it certainly deserves to be challenged. If Jews engage in violence they are, of course, open to censure on the same terms as anybody else, but inventing Jewish violence, however obliquely, is an unacceptable incitement to prejudice.

To recap, then, the charge of double standards simply doesn't stand up. In fact it doesn't have either of the legs it would need to stand on. The logical structure of an accusation of double standards is 'you say a about x and b about y, and x is like y but a is not like b'. We've seen that not only is there no a to conflict with b, but also x is not like y.

So let's strip away the misrepresentation and the bogus analogy. What's left of the letter? Nothing but the information about Melanie Phillips conveyed by a single word. We've noted that 'You're a Jew' is a problematic response to an article one disagrees with. 'You're a Jew and a hypocrite', when the charge of hypocrisy is groundless, is like 'You're a Jew' only a lot, lot worse.

I might, despite all this, have concluded that I had gone over the top in my post and should give Mr H-J the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps I was making a meal of a letter which meant to say little more than 'I can't stand Melanie Phillips'.

I might, had I not googled him and discovered one of his Economist blog posts, covering the demonstration against David Irving and Nick Griffin when they spoke at the Oxford Union in late 2007.

One of the more interesting aspects of this post was that I first discovered it reproduced in its entirety on David Irving's website (no link - google 'David Irving Stephen Hugh-Jones'). Not necessarily with Mr H-J's blessing of course. But not without reason either, despite the fun that, to give him due credit, Mr H-J pokes at Irving.

Irving's fixation with the notion that at least a substantial part of the historical record of the Holocaust was fabricated by Jews in order to screw money out of the rest of us, and Griffin's leadership of a party which keeps open house for people holding such views? All a bit of a joke. They are 'controversial', that time-honoured journalistic cop-out word. But the excoriation of the demonstrators is serious stuff. They are 'baying' demonstrators - less than human in their behaviour. Whilst Mr H-J is perfectly justified in denouncing Trotskyist thuggery, he manages to elide the various issues raised in such a way as to make it seem disreputable even to want to wave placards at Irving and Griffin, and goes on to suggest that the student Jewish society's presence was most discreditable of all.

And here we get a distinct echo of the letter to the Times. Like Melanie Phillips, the Jewish students are seeking to deny others the freedom they enjoy themselves. They are doing a bad thing which is particularly bad because they are Jewish. In one of the most bizarre and grotesque moral equivalences I've ever read, Mr H-J equates Jewish objections to Holocaust deniers with German objections to Jews wearing yarmulkas and going to synagogue.

Where do you start with that one? There's no evidence of awareness that Holocaust denial is literally a matter of life and death for Jews, a racial slur which implicitly sets them up for a new Holocaust. Or that, whilst German Jews may indeed have briefly benefitted from the Weimar Republic's liberalism, Hitler's political ambitions benefitted a great deal more. His 'unwelcome views' certainly never got silenced.

By the way, if Mr H-J doesn't grasp the difference between allowing someone free speech and giving them a platform, I trust he will be willing to pull a string or two for me at the Economist. Publication in that prestigious journal is an honour in exchange for which I would gladly forego the anonymity which provokes him so...

Mr H-J doesn't much care for anti-Semites of the Holocaust denying variety, let's be quite clear about that, but he seems to care even less for the kind of people who feel strongly enough about them to wave placards at them. Oh, and he doesn't seem to like my blog either. Not just the bit where I had a go at him, not the deficiencies of my prose style or the gaps in my knowledge, but the whole idea of it. The vigilance against anti-Semitism thing. It's all about smearing people. It must mean that I don't like Palestinians. In a word, it's crap.

So, no, no apology for Mr H-J. I didn't call him an anti-Semite and I'm still not calling him an anti-Semite. On the evidence available he looks to me like a rather doctrinaire libertarian (though not, I fear, quite a consistent enough libertarian to avoid loose use of the intimidatory word 'libel') with a certain penchant for seeing Jews, specifically, as hostile to other people's liberties. To resort to my least favourite management buzzword, I'd say he has some issues. And I'm modestly pleased with myself for spotting those issues back in June 2006.

Counterstatistics

2009-03-03T18:38:00.005Z

The average Brit gets caught on CCTV 300 times a day. If you haven't read it in the Daily Mail, you've read it in the New Statesman. So it must be true, then.

Or not. David Aaronovitch gives us the secret biography of a junk statistic, and it's a real eye-opener.

Over the weekend I nicked my brother-in-law's copy of Damian Thompson's Counterknowledge for long enough to skim-read it. What the book reveals is scary enough, but I think I find Aaro's piece even more worrying. In my rationalist wisdom I can look down from a great height on those poor souls duped by the claims of reflexologists, creationists and 9/11 truthers, but how do I innoculate myself against the kind of disinformation exemplified by that '300 times a day' stat? It's like a virus spreading through the mainstream media, accepted and passed on uncritically because it supports a mainstream political agenda - one which I at least partially subscribe to, so my guard is down too.

Thomson exposes the scandal of universities offering degrees in homoeopathy, but at least we can easily divine that they're not worth the paper they're printed on. Sociology, on the other hand, is a real academic discipline dealing, potentially at least, with real and important knowledge. When a social scientist who works at a reputable university, and is entrusted by something ironically called the Office of the Information Commissioner with the writing of a an official report, announces that it is 'politically autistic' to expect an attention-grabbing statistic to have an empirical basis, how and where are we to draw the line between counterknowledge and the real thing?

The Pope on racism

2009-02-19T19:30:00.003Z

From a sermon on the second creation story in Genesis 2:-

'Thus the unity of the whole human race at once becomes visible: we are all made from one earth. There are no varying forms of "blood and soil". There are no fundamental differences between one group of human beings and another, as the myths of so many religions thought and as worldviews of our time also claim. There are no differences of caste and race which make people different in their value. We are all one humanity, formed out of God's one earth. [...] The Bible says an unequivocal "No" to every kind of racism, to every division of the human race.'

(Joseph Ratzinger/Benedikt XVI: Berührt vom Unsichtbaren, Freiburg im Breisgau 2000/2005, p. 61, my translation)

Using the I-word

2009-02-19T19:24:00.001Z

The Beeb keeps us updated on the fight against 'extremism' in colleges. Funny, isn't it, an extremist always used to be an extreme something-or-other, like an extreme socialist or an extreme nationalist, but now we have extremists who are just extreme nothing-in-particulars wanting to kill us in the name of goodness-knows-what. Anyway, it's state-approved.terminology, and the Beeb scribe does his/her duty to the Party.

Just once, though, he/she forgets him/herself and lets slip that dangerous, offence-giving I-word:-

'It [the government's set of guidelines] also mentions dissident Irish republican groups, as well as some racist and fascist organisations.'

Yes, indeed, we've still got to keep a careful eye on what those Paddies are up to.

Among friends

2009-02-19T00:08:00.004Z

Harry's Place has a post on the Friends of Sabeel, revealing that, although Baroness Tonge may have been ousted from her Trusteeship at Christian Aid, prominent supporters of CA are still happy to rub shoulders with her - and with other apologists for terrorism.

As I've noted in the comments, Michael Langrish and John Gladwin, fellow patrons of Friends of Sabeel with Tonge, are bishops of Exeter and Chelmsford respectively. Langrish is currently a Trustee of Christian Aid. Gladwin stepped down last year after 10 years as Chair of CA. So much for CA distancing itself from Tonge and her like.

From the papers: Gaza and the new anti-Semitism

2009-02-18T18:56:00.005Z

Howard Jacobson seems to grow in stature every time he squares up to the new anti-Semitism. Has he ever been as majestically eloquent as this?

Scan the comments, though, and weep. This is the first and by no means worst of those apparently deemed by the Indie not to be 'offensive or abusive':

'With a name like that....

'Why not just become a lobbyist for Isreal [sic] and have done with it? You are hardly impartial or objective.'

There's no way into a mind like that. I'm sure the writer would have no hesitation in dismissing Denis MacShane MP, despite his name, as an Isreali stooge. His is a valuable and all-too-rare non-Jewish voice, though. My only quibble, as you'd expect from my last post, is with the dig at the Pope's supposed 'embrace' of a Holocaust-denier. Benedict's on our side, Denis - haven't we got enough real anti-Semites to fight without creating imaginary ones?

Mr MacShane leaves in the air the question why non-Jews can massacre Muslims on a scale far exceeding the scale of destruction in Gaza without exciting a fraction of the Muslim indignation provoked by Israeli actions. Janet Daley supplies the answer, if one is needed. The 'I had one of them taxi drivers in the front of my cab' thing is a hoary journalistic cliche, but can be forgiven this time. Israel represents the theological abomination of Jews not knowing their place. The artlessness of the Luton cabbie, rather touchingly described by Ms Daley, can stand for the great majority of anti-Semites through the ages. This man is anything but a monster, but there are monsters inside his head, and they have been put there by people less innocent than he.

People like these (and credit to the Beeb for running this story); note how they, and the man from Hamas, feel about civilian casualties in Gaza.