It is now an archive for my newspaper and magazine pieces. My blog can now be read at: www.spectator.co.uk/stephenpollard
Politics, economics and culture from the master. Unmissable.
Melanie Phillips home page
Melanie Phillips' peerless blog. Read, and learn.
Daniel Finkelstein's Times Comment Central
A daily must-read.
Tim Worstall
Lots of interesting nibbles - and a ruthless swatter of economic gibberish.
Harry's Place
Must-read left of centre blog from writers who understand the threat to the West.
Clive Davis
Always interesting selection of culture and politics, from an Anglo-American bent.
Samizdata
Libertarian blog, packed every day.
Norm's blog
The thoroughly sensible thoughts of renowned left-wing academic Norman Geras, Professor of Government at Manchester. And cricket, too.
Public Interest
Peter Briffa's inimitable take on The Yazzmonster and other assorted demons.
Reform
The public sector reform group; their website is an invaluable source of data and ideas.
Centre for the New Europe
The leading European public policy think tank.
Developed by:
| June | 06 |
| 2004 |
I'm back. The book's done, I've had a week (almost) off, and I'm now ready and willing to start proper posting again.
So, to begin with some links...
This is an excellent piece by the learned Victor Davis Hanson:
We do have a grave problem in this country, but it is not the plan for Iraq, the neoconservatives, or targeting Saddam. Face it: This present generation of leaders at home would never have made it to Normandy Beach. They would instead have called off the advance to hold hearings on Pearl Harbor, cast around blame for the Japanese internment, sued over the light armor and guns of Sherman tanks, apologized for bombing German civilians, and recalled General Eisenhower to Washington to explain the rough treatment of Axis prisoners.
Meanwhile this piece by David Aaronovitch is a lovely piss-take of a 'Respect' meeting.
(BTW, isn't Respect the single most innapropriate name they could have chosen, given the lack of respect their world view implies for the people of Iraq, given their wish that Saddam was still in power and free to murder Iraqis?)
MessageSpace
In the 1930s it was often deplored by Colonel Blimps that the UK had lost its appetite for war. It was all collective security, disarmament, butter before guns, the East Fulham by-election, the Peace Ballot and the Oxford Union voting not to fight for King and Country, only for the League of Nations.
Yet when the call came in '39, there was less hostility to conscription than in 1914, because the fight against Hitler was seen as a last resort and Britain's legitimate business.
Windy generalisations about the moral fibre of generations rarely stand up to scrutiny. What discomfited hawks such as Hanson can't face is the fact that Americans are fundamentally isolationist peaceniks; they can only be induced to support a war whole-heartedly if the case for it has been made out rather more resoundingly than the case for crusading in Iraq ever was.
Here is a letter I wrote and had pblished in the Harrow Times, and YES I did get some stick from a daft old bat who read it selectively...
see from your report that "Respect" the inappropriately named Party formed
by Saddam's apologist and frontman George Galloway has finally come to
Harrow. As the word "Respect" has connotations for empathy, peace and
harmony, I naturally have some pertinent questions to those who have
joined:-
Where is the "Respect" for the 300,000 victims of Saddam's murder squads,
many of them fed alive into shredding machines, head first if they were
lucky?
Where is the "Respect" for the thousands of women brutalised and beaten by
the "merciful" monsters of the Taleban?
Where is the "Respect" for the hundreds of Israeli men, women, children and
babies, bombed, maimed and murdered by the hate indoctrinated
"Suicide"-Bombers bought and paid for by Iraqi blood money and Saudi
telethons?
Where is the "Respect" for the Kurds and Shia Muslims, gassed by Saddam's
real WMD?
Where is the "Respect" for the tens of thousands of black SUDANESE, killed,
raped and enslaved by racist Arab groups?
Where is the "Respect" for us the ordinary people who you think you can fool
into thinking you are impartial and tolerant?
Where is the "Respect" when your founder openly supports the PLO and it's
offshoots in their quest to ethnically cleanse the Middle-East?
Where is the "Respect" when Mr. Galloway states that it is OK for
Palestinian areas to be free of Jews, but that Israel should allow a "right
of return" to Palestinians?
Where is the "Respect" when your founder was less than upset at the
aftermath of 9/11?
Where is the SELF-Respect now, of churchmen, preachers, idealists, religious
leaders and other genuine compassionate people of all persuasions, at being
duped by this pro-terror, anti-western, front disguised as a peace movement?
And finally, can there be any "Respect" when George Galloway calls our own
soldiers "wolves" is an avowed sympathiser with terrorists and that he is
now related by marriage to that other "man of peace", highjacker, bomber,
terrorist and "Statesman" Yasser Arafat?
Galloway doesn't know the meaning of the word "Respect" and if that is
"Respect", then I am a Dutchman.
Jeremy Van Zeid
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