Sunday, June 04, 2006

BRITAIN'S LAST HOPE

Melanie Phillips, I muse as she sits in front of me in a seersucker suit, is strikingly like Margaret Thatcher. Like Ms. Thatcher she speaks with that authoritative British accent that we hear on the BBC and like the "Iron Lady" she's confident in her message and doesn't mince her words. Her message when she visited our offices yesterday? That there is a "cultural and moral sickness" afflicting Britain in the failure of its establishment to recognize Islamic extremism for the threat it poses and that unless America acts Britain will be lost, and more potently, America could be next.

That's the central theme of her latest book, "Londonistan," which she's here in the States promoting. "Londonistan" - Britain's capital, London, mixed with the "istan" from onetime Al Qaeda central, Afghanistan, - is a mocking term that Ms. Phillips thinks was first given to London by the French security services. The French were appalled at Britain's willingness to tolerate Islamic radicals in London. In the 1990s London was the "most significant hub in Europe" and the "most hospitable place on earth" for Islamic radicals. Moreover, Ms. Phillips says, "some people think Al Qaeda formed as a global movement" in London: The Islamists held conferences there that brought together radicals from across the globe for the first time.

The British allowed this to happen, Ms. Phillips says, because they were more concerned about terrorism coming from Northern Ireland and because they believed that as Britain had "no interests in the Middle East" Islamic radicalism "wouldn't bite them." Ignoring radical Islam was also part of what Ms. Phillips terms Britain's "exaggerated respect for freedom of speech: Today's dissident is tomorrow's prime minister" and so it's "never in Britain's interest to offend anyone" - as "long as they don't threaten Britain."

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks failed to shake the British establishment as it shook America's. Rather than realizing that radical Islam is a serious threat, Ms. Phillips says that a "group think" took hold that "global Jihad was rooted in discreet grievances" such as "Israel-Palestine, Chechnya ... and America throwing her weight around in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in Arab world." The British establishment's solution therefore was to ignore radical Islam and simply try to solve the individual problems, especially the Israel-Palestinian Arab conflict. Once this is done,"everything else will disappear."

Last year's London bombings, what Britain calls its "7/7," produced the same reaction. The establishment refused to consider that "religious fanaticism" was to blame and put the terrorists attacks down to "global grievances." Britain was targeted because of her troops in Iraq and her close alliance with America. This caused Muslim resentment that in turn caused the terrorist attacks: The attacks were therefore a "protest movement" and not rooted in underlying religious radicalism. And so, still to this day, Ms. Phillips says, there has been no real challenge by the British establishment to the "lies and propaganda at center of Jihad."

While Prime Minister Blair is someone who "gets it," Ms. Phillips says he is a "lone voice" and virtually everyone else in the citadels of power - the rest of his government, the police, and the security services - don't. Not much hope for a country if the prime minister can't change the establishment's thinking. Which is why, Ms. Phillips says with a sigh, she's bringing her book to America.

Ms. Phillips sees America as the last best hope for her country. She's turning to America to kick-start the debate in Britain. Britain is "paralyzed by multiculturalism and minority rights" which "leads people to say you can't question a minority or a religion." Ms. Phillips says that she almost failed to find a publisher for her book in Britain. It went down to the "11th hour and the 59th minute" when a small publisher took it on. With "no Fox News, no conservative talk-radio, no big conservative think tanks," there is no one to force the establishment to debate the roots of radical Islam.

Americans should care about Britain's coming "cultural collapse and appeasement" beyond the obvious reasons of helping an ally with a shared heritage. Firstly, Ms. Phillips says, as things stand there is the "likelihood that next prime minister after Mr. Blair won't be so keen to stand shoulder to shoulder"with the American president. More importantly for America, Britain, Ms. Phillips says, is where our western values - "democracy,liberty,and the rule of law" - originated. Britain still is a "cultural leader." If she falls there "will be a knock on effect in America and the rest of the western world." Ms. Phillips says that already some of these British establishment attitudes are heard around America. While she is "writing about Britain" people will "recognize it in America."

Ms. Phillips is, as readers who follow Britain will know,a celebrity in her own right: She's a celebrated columnist and author.And she might, if her warnings are heeded, one day be known as a one-person journalistic version of Winston Churchill - a Briton who stood against the tide. Can it be done? Ms. Phillips hopes so. She "doesn't think anything is (already) lost" or that "defeat is inevitable." But, she says, history also "teaches that empires fail." She's hoping America can once again save Europe.

The New York Sun, 25 May 2006



SOME TRUTHS THAT YOU WILL NEVER HEAR FROM FEMINISTS

Which shows that their real market is lesbians rather than normal women

New York playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who died two weeks ago, made a name for herself writing plays about smart, driven, successful women who miss out. "I feel stranded," complains the heroine of her most successful play, The Heidi Chronicles, when she finds herself single in her late 30s. Scoop, the man Heidi was half-heartedly involved with, decided to marry another woman because he needed someone "to give me the confidence to go out into the world each day and attempt to get an 'A' ".

Successful women hope men will be attracted to an "A" and are disappointed when they discover their hard-won success counts for little on the marriage market and might even work against them.

Some time ago there was an article in the Wall St Journal about a female CEO of a major company who was having trouble finding a husband. She'd tried a dating service and found that the only men interested in her earned a fraction of her income. She concluded that her equals spurned her because they we re intimidated by a strong woman. A reader responded, saying women failed to understand the economic principle of "comparative advantage". Comparative advantage is the essential principle of successful commerce and business, which says you are most valuable to someone who needs what you have. So the male executives weren't afraid of strong women, they simply weren't interested because this particular woman didn't offer them anything they didn't already have. They already had lots of money, financial and social success. They looked for something else in a woman.

American writer John Ross, author of Unintended Consequences, makes the point that what men want, and women do have to offer, is youth, beauty and the ability to bear children: all expiring assets. He suggests they are like a $200 voucher for a restaurant that declines $10 every month you don't use it. If you don't want to eat at that place, fine, let the voucher expire. But if one of your life goals is to go there, use your voucher early, he says.

Men and women seek the best deal on offer in the marriage market, says University of Canterbury psychology professor Garth Fletcher. In choosing long-term relationships, the assets that matter most for both sexes are warmth and trustworthiness. Men also tend to place more value on attractiveness and vitality than on status and resources. It's probably all hard-wired, suggests Fletcher: men seek vital, attractive women because they are genetically programmed to look for signs of fertility. Status and resources add little to a woman's pulling power if she has allowed her more vital assets to dwindle. His research also shows women are happy to accept an out-of-shape unattractive man as a long-term mate, provided he has high status and resources.

But Wasserstein's character Scoop has a point. Fletcher's work shows people generally don't set their sights on "A" partners unless they are an "A" themselves. More ordinary mortals know that even if they attract a person who is 10 on everything that matters (warm, beautiful, sexy and rich), keeping such a mate happy and would-be suitors at bay is likely to turn this into an emotionally fraught, high maintenance affair. The bottom line is that women seeking successful men take a risk in investing in assets that carry little weight in the mating game while allowing more vital assets to dwindle, as Wasserstein's life sadly shows.

At 40, when she found herself stranded, she embarked on a seven-year battle to have a child on her own. At 48, she succeeded in falling pregnant, but at six months she had an emergency caesarean and gave birth to 790gm Lucy. The premature baby suffered numerous medical crises, but ultimately survived. Then last month Wendy Wasserstein died of lymphoma. Her child was five.

Source



ANIMAL RIGHTS TRUMP HUMAN RIGHTS

Terrorism takes many forms. Recently, animal-rights terrorists have unleashed an organized campaign of violence and intimidation against animal industries and their service companies--such as banks, auditing companies, and insurance brokers.

A pattern has developed: Websites identify people to be terrorized because of their involvement with animal-using industries; these sites list their personal information, including home addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, even the names, ages, and schools of their children. Militants use this information to send anonymous death threats to the children of targets, backed by mailed video tapes of their family members. They steal mail, shatter windows while the family is home, burn cars, make false bomb threats, cover homes with graffiti, take out subscriptions to pornographic magazines in the name of the target, steal identities, and otherwise ruin their victims' lives.

One of the most active of these groups is Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), which is dedicated to driving Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) out of business because it tests drugs on animals. As William Trundley, the vice president for Corporate Security & Investigations at GlaxoSmithKline, recently testified, SHAC members distribute a "SHAC Terror Card" to potential victims, which reads:

Do you do business with Huntingdon Life Sciences? . . . If you do, there's something you should know . . . Radical animal rights activists have been targeting executives and employees of companies that work with HLS, with criminal activity including: smashed windows; spray painted houses; glued locks; vandalized cars; stolen credit card numbers; ID theft; fraud; and continuous acts of harrassment and intimisation against employees, their children and spouses.

The card states that "the only way to end or prevent such attacks . . . is to stop doing business with Huntingdon." SHAC has grown so brazen that it demands that when targeted companies capitulate to its demands, they do so publicly. The SHAC website instructs:

TO ALL SUPPLIERS: If you have severed your links with Huntingdon Life Sciences, please let the campaign know. You can send a simple email to info@shac.net stating the following: " . . . . . . (name of your company) have severed their links with HLS and terminated their contract, and will not be dealing with them now or in the future, directly or indirectly." This will enable supporters to be kept up to date with which companies are still involved with Huntingdon Life Sciences.

This is terrorism, pure and simple--and unfortunately, it's working. SHAC and its allies, such as the Animal Liberation Front, have scared a number of businesses into cutting ties with Huntingdon Life Sciences, including the huge auditing firm of Deloitte & Touche. At present, SHAC's website lists 113 companies that have complied with its demands, including Johnson & Johnson, Washington Mutual, UBS Global Capital, Nucryst Pharmaceutical, and Chubb.

The site also crows about its most recent triumph: the submission of the New York Stock Exchange to animal liberationist demands. In 2005, the NYSE unexpectedly reversed a decision to list Huntingdon Life Sciences, on the morning the listing was to commence. Big Board executives refused to either explain or justify their decision--even to a United States Senate committee. The rescission came immediately after liberationists vandalized an executive's yacht club and threatened to target Exchange employees.

NOW THE TELEGRAPH reports that U.K. animal liberationists plan to hold a "training camp" to "export terror" throughout Europe this June. "The AR 2006 camp," will "feature classes in potentially lethal physical techniques . . . that could be used against security guards at pharmaceutical companies and huntsmen."

Law enforcement is on heightened alert to protect against animal-rights terrorism, and legislation (H.R. 4239) is wending its way through the House of Representatives to make such lawlessness more easily prosecuted. These are necessary steps. But given the ideological zealotry of these extremists, the best chance we have of stopping the violence is for fellow believers to convince the terrorists among them to stay within the law.

But so far, the "mainstream" leadership of the animal-rights movement has generally failed to do so. They have been mostly silent, at times ambivalent, and in a few cases, even supportive. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), for example, refuses to condemn arson and vandalism in the name of animal liberation and likens such crimes to the French Resistance and the Underground Railroad. PETA's second in command, Bruce Friedrich, sure seemed to support violence when he told an animal liberation conference in 2001:

Of course, we're going to be as a movement blowing stuff up and smashing windows. For the record, I don't do this stuff, but I do advocate it. I think it is a great way to bring about animal liberation. And considering the level of the atrocity and the level of the suffering, I think it would be a great thing if all of these fast food outlets and slaughter houses and laboratories--and the banks that fund them--exploded tomorrow.

From time to time, an animal-rights activist will speak up. Princeton's Peter Singer, the godfather of animal liberation, occasionally takes a mild line against using violence and threats in the name of animal rights, as he did, for example, in "Humans are Sentient Too." But even here, Singer mostly punted, asserting that beyond expressing their genuine disapproval, "There is little more that the non-violent majority of the animal movement can do. The next step is really up to the government and the research community."

Surely there is more to be done than the wagging of fingers. If animal-rights terror continues to be ratcheted up, someone is going to be killed. If that happens, those who winked at violence in the name of saving the animals will wish they had instead insisted to the terrorists among them: "Not in our name."

Source



"Incorrect" pride among young Australians



They've emblazoned their cars and homes with Australian flags, the Eureka Stockade Flag and the Southern Cross. Now the youths of Cronulla and surrounding suburbs have started tattooing their postcodes across their neck, chest, back and limbs in defiant reaction to the Cronulla riots. Local tattooists yesterday said they had inked the postcodes of Cronulla (2230), Caringbah (2229), Engadine (2233) and Miranda (2228) on more than 100 men and teenagers since last December's violence.

And it seems many going under the needle have been motivated by a mixture of pride and provocation. The postcodes are being accompanied by Australian and Eureka stockade flags and the Southern Cross. Customers are paying about $100 a tattoo, depending on size.

Cronulla tattooist Chuck Sekulla said he had inked five postcodes a week on average since the riots - with many customers adamant the marks were a response to retaliatory attacks. Mr Sekulla had little doubt there was an element of provocation. "With a lot of them it's a case of up yours [to outsiders]," he said. Another tattooist, Rev, told The Daily Telegraph the trend was no surprise. "They're always getting Southern Crosses tattooed but since the riot it's been crazy," he added."People haven't forgotten."

Local Nathan Bames, 23, is one of dozens to emblazon the 2230 postcode on his right leg in the wake of racial tension at the beach. But the shopfitter was adamant his "tatt" was simply a show of local pride. "I've lived here my whole life and we don't want to stand for this anymore," he said. "It's just mateship, trying to keep our area positive."

Psychologist Dr Darryl Cross was alarmed at the underlying message of the tattoos, which he compared to being "like a line in the sand"."What they are trying to do is create solidarity among themselves," he said. "This is a huge bonding experience because they now have a cause which is etched into their skin." Inspector Rod Rae said police were unaware of the postcode tattoo explosion. "If I saw a lot kids starting to get the tattoos I would have concerns but I don't know of any," he said.

The above article is from Pg 13 of the Sydney "Daily Telegraph" of May 31 2006

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