Well, I finally got around to finishing Melanie Phillips’ ‘Londonistan’ .. and if you thought that Satanic Verses was a tiresome drudge, then you aint seen nothing till you’ve finished this marathon trudge through a huge vat of very sticky treacle.

It isn’t often that you can sum a book up in two words, but with this one it is stunningly simple:

ISLAMOPHOBIC DRIVEL

Melanie Philips’ entire premise is that there are three key features by which Islam poses a serious threat to the fabric of the United Kingdom:

1. Murderous incitement.



2. Flagrant defiance of both the rule of law and free speech.
3. Religious fanaticism.

… which is fatally flawed by the fact that none of these are a feature of mainstream Islam .. and of course the fact that they just happen also to be the ‘values’ of the Alliance of the Willing that she is so desperate to defend.

• For murderous incitement: See the words and actions of Bush and Blair

• For flagrant defiance of the rule of law: See the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and the way our domestic governments have cast aside the fundamental laws of humanity and institutions like the United Nations

• For flagrant defiance of free speech: See the persecution of anyone who dares to speak out against the murderous incitement or the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, see the persecution of people like Brian Haw, see the protracted imprisonment of people without trial, see international abductions and torture and see the paranoid obsession with which Tony Blair has seized ever possible opportunity to restrict our civil liberties and the Bush government engages in illegal spying on US citizens

• For religious fanaticism: Look no further than Bush and Blair, who driven by their born-again religious beliefs and ‘Christian’ principles decided to willfully lie in order to get us to war .. a fraud so great that even the Catholic Church – the masters of twisted morals – had to condemn as immoral

For sure we have SOME Muslim extremists in this country – just as we have extremist British nationalists, white supremacists, Jewish supremacists, Zionists, Christian fundamentalists and militant Irish nationalists .. just as the United States has all its own versions of those same extremists (one of the London bombers was an American citizen).

Look no further than the United States, where white supremacists have been responsible for terrorist atrocities that are far worse than ANYTHING we have ever seen (or are likely to ever see) in this country.

Melanie Phillips claims that ‘Londonistan’ stands as a warning to both Britain AND the United States (not just Britain, as right-wing American commentators who haven't even read the book would have you believe), but where does she ever suggest tackling the evils of white supremacists or Baptist fundamentalist extremists? The simple truth is that she doesn’t; because she only has her one bogeyman: Muslims … ALL MUSLIMS.

Britain has always thrived on providing a safe haven for the dispossessed and the rejected of all national, political and religious persuasions, so whilst it is an absolute given that we must do whatever we reasonably can to curtail the activities of the militant extremists, what we must absolutely not do is follow Melanie Phillips’ racist assumption that all Muslims (the vast majority of whom are British to the core) are guilty until proven innocent .. for it is when we do that that Britain looses the essential welcoming and inclusive core of what Britain, Britshness and especially London is about.

Like it or not, indigenous people are as much of a minority in the United Kingdom as they are in the United States. Britain has always been built on immigration and always will be: The Celtic peoples, the Jutes, the Saxons, the Romans, the Vikings, the Norman French, the Germans, the Russians, the Poles, the Italians, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Afro-Caribbeans, the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Turks, the North Africans, the Africans, the Jews, the white, the pink, the yellow, the tan, the brown and the black .. in fact I defy any British reader of this to prove to me that they are even fifth generation thoroughbred British, back to the time of Victoria coming to the throne. Hell, the most British-of-British – the Royal family itself - can’t even do two generations and have a family tree where British blood is about as rare as the sperm of the giant panda.

One of the things I admire most about the acceptance in Britain is that people don’t ask you what your religion is (or even what your moral stance is on issues like abortion and contraception). What does anyone need to know that for? Even at the height of the troubles in Ireland, the Irish weren’t asked where their sympathies were. At most they may ask you your politics (which is far more telling than whatever faith’s mast you pin your limp opportunistic colours to).

Follow Melanie Phillips’ logic and where do we draw the line? Do we regard anyone with a white skin as indigenous? How about her North American political opponents who have been condemned as Communists in their own country .. the ones who unfailingly become some of the most generous and productive members of our society when we welcome them here? Are the Spanish OK? If the Spanish are OK, then which South Americans do we say yes to? Which shade of tan or brown do we draw the line at? … and once we start, how do you control the beast of racism? What happens when it gets to the Jews? Will Melanie Phillips then not be the first to stand up to decry the evil that is afoot when that judgment doesn’t (as it surely wont) go the way of her plans?

It is all a folly. The single greatest sectors of illegal immigrants in Britain aren’t black or Mexican or Muslim .. they are white Anglo-Saxon Anglophone Christians from the southern hemisphere. When do you ever hear her, and her like, suggest that we take action against them? You don’t, because they are white and they are Christian and they LOOK like they conform.

Like it or not, Melanie Phillips’ whole sad little cornucopia of racist drivel boils down to two things:

• She is an isolationist Zionist who puts the interests of Israel and Zionism before all else and will stop at nothing to defame those who she perceives as the enemies of Israel and Zionism.

• She is a racist and whilst she will defend the right of the Jewish community to isolate itself and stick faithfully to its own farcical little traditions; she will insist that any non-Jewish minority group has to integrate totally into society and become a predictable force for her and her racist kin .. or face the wrath of her poisoned pen.

Follow Melanie Phillips and Britain will end up as the 51st state and will be afflicted by all the paranoid and uneducated phobic insularity that today afflicts the United States of America. Is that what any of us can honestly say that we want of Britain?

Of course all of this is pretty needless. Need you look further than the fact that Melanie Phillips works for the Daily Mail - the most racist newspaper in Great Britain and for thirty years (even through the second world war) the heart and soul of nationalism, fascism and the anti-Semitism in Britain – to understand the perversion that drives her?

Did having revolutionary thinkers, like Karl Marx, living here ever do us any harm?

Did having actual revolutionaries, like John Adams, living here (who by the measures of today's Bush government would be a terrorist) ever do us any harm?

Did giving a home to all those supposedly terribly evil and subversive American "communists" ever do us any harm?

The key is surely respecting the fundamental values of British society, which the vast majority of Muslims unquestionably do .. to a point where their hardworking desire for British ‘respectability’ is almost so painful and embarrassing to watch that the phrase ‘too British to be British’ springs to mind. It is a shame that we can’t say the same for people like Melanie Phillips and Carol Gould.

The other major flaw with the book is that Melanie Phillips argues that the 7/7 attacks on London were the culmination of a sinister Islamist conspiracy to infiltrate Britain and bring our entire civilisation to its knees .. but even the government’s own official inquiry - which had a vested interest in agreeing with that – could only conclude that, in fact, they were the work of four ordinary guys with no al-Qaeda mastermind and no hint of any links to al-Qaeda at all.

What makes it all so very sad is that it is only through dreaming up these non-existent global Islamist conspiracies that creatures like Melanie Phillips can square her own racist consience .. and doubly sad by the fact that if anyone anywhere mentions anything about any Zionist, then she is always the first to start bawling "Global Zionist conspiracy libel!"

At the end of the day, once you have taken away Blair and his kitchen cabinet, there is only one major fault with London and Britain that you wont find anywhere else – and that fault is that it doesn’t pay homage to the warped mindsets of Tel-Aviv, Shitsville Tennessee and the banal paranoia of McCarthyism. Is that really such a bad thing?

Do we really care about the judgment of pathetic domestic fascists, Zionists and paranoid American nationalists? We certainly shouldn't.

Melanie Phillips claims ‘Londonistan’ is “an attack on those who equate prejudice against minorities with an attack upon a society” (which I guess it is) .. and that she "is therefore exposing a moral and cultural confusion". All she exposes is her own racism, justification of supremacist attitudes and rank hypocrisy, because woes betide anyone who dares to attack ANY member of HER minority (even when they are doing a fair imitation of a NAZI concentration camp guard), let alone the minority as a whole.

If you are a fan of skillfully crafted propaganda that is short on fact and high in misinformation - so high that it is rank - then you will love this book ... which is why Smellanie is exclusively for dummies.

"When I was selected as a student speaker for the New School commencement about two months ago I had no idea that I'd end up on CNN and in Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times, among other places, when it was all over. One day after the big event I'm still reeling from all the media attention and emails from professors, students, and other supporters from all over the country, so forgive me if my writing is a little scattered.

In my speech yesterday I had hoped to talk about social responsibility in a time of war, but in much more oblique terms. I wanted to speak about communication, and how I have found that one of my strongest and most enjoyable methods of communication is music. I wanted to talk about the New York City public school preschoolers with whom I work each week and how they've been empowered through music, how they've been able to learn linguistic and social skills by singing together. I wanted to talk about my grandfather, who, despite the fact that he has Alzheimer's disease and cannot remember even my name, still knows all the songs he sang in his youth. I wanted to fearltalk about music as a powerful tool for peace. I wanted to encourage everyone to identify his or her talents and to always use them for the greater good.

Unfortunately, a certain not-so-dynamic duo of "centrist" politicians foiled my standard graduation speech and forced me to act. Until just the day before commencement I really hadn't understood the gravity of the situation. I suppose I should tell the story."

"Finally, Senator Mc Cain will tell us that we, those of us who are Americans, "have nothing to fear from each other." I agree strongly with this, but I take it one step further. We have nothing to fear from anyone on this living planet. Fear is the greatest impediment to the achievement of peace. We have nothing to fear from people who are different from us, from people who live in other countries, even from the people who run our government--and this we should have learned from our educations here. We can speak truth to power, we can allow our humanity always to come before our nationality, we can refuse to let fear invade our lives and to goad us on to destroy the lives of others. These words I speak do not reflect the arrogance of a young strong-headed woman, but belong to a line of great progressive thought, a history in which the founders of this institution play an important part. I speak today, even through my nervousness, out of a need to honor those voices that came before me, and I hope that we graduates can all strive to do the same."

"Should you grow up and ever get down to the hard business of making a living and finding a purpose for your lives beyond self-indulgence some of you might then know a happiness far more sublime than the fleeting pleasure of living in an echo chamber. And if you are that fortunate, you might look back on the day of your graduation and your discourtesy to a good and honest man with a little shame and the certain knowledge that it very unlikely any of you will ever posses the one small fraction of the character of John McCain."

- via Pink Dome

See also Jon Stewart going head to head with Bill Bennet's anti-gay marriage views.

"Divorce is not caused because 50% of marriages end in gayness." - J. Stewart

From the Huffinton Post:

You too can become a best-selling author of conservative books in eight easy steps -- really. This is made possible by conservative publishers applying the lessons of Henry Ford's assembly-line production to the publishing industry by following a proven formula to churn out book after book, each guaranteed early best-seller status through bulk sales to conservative groups.

For example, Ann Coulter's newly released Godless: The Church of Liberalism is her fourth book in five years. Your path to replicating her success is only eight steps away.

Rule 1: Liberal, Liberal, Liberal

Use the word liberal like it is the foulest word in the English language, but still use it a lot.

Rule 2: Apocalypse Now

Your target for vilification, whether it be the Clintons, feminists or some other lucky group, must lead to the immediate ruin of our democratic system, Judeo-Christian values and/or Western Civilization and you are leading the charge to, in the words of Michael Savage, "beat back the tentacles of today's ever-expanding liberalism, which even now threatens to corrupt and ultimately destroy America's most cherished institutions."

Rule 3: The Oppressed Conservatives

The corollary to the second rule is that you and your conservative brethren are the oppressed underdogs even if they control all branches of government and the media. For example, Ms. Coulter complains that liberalism has become the nation's "official state religion [while] Christianity and Judaism are prohibited by law." This would be news to the Democrats who still cower at the thought of being branded with the "L" word, but Ms. Coulter recognizes that the perception that this might or could someday be true is certain to sell books.

Rule 4: Reagan = Good, Clinton = Bad

Always remember that anything good happened because of Reagan and anything bad happened because of the Clintons -- no exceptions. For example, Reagan brought us "Morning in America" but is never responsible for the huge deficits of the 1980s that lead to the 1987 stock market crash (which either were immaculately conceived or the result of the big-spending Democratic Congress). At the same time, Clinton is as a "tax-and-spend liberal" for eliminating the deficits he inherited from Reagan and the elder Bush, but the economic boom that followed was solely the result of Reagan's policies and a Republican Congress.

Rule 5: Happy Days Are Here Again

Your vision of America must be something close to a cross between Little House on the Prairie and Happy Days, where white men were in charge, women stayed at home and what was good for GM was good for America -- that is until the liberals ruined it all. Nobody excels at conservative nostalgia like Ms. Coulter, who wants to repeal every law since the Emancipation Proclamation (including women's suffrage) and concedes she longs for the Cold War days when "at least our enemies were white."

Rule 6: Conservative Calumniations

To make your case you can cite one example of something that might have happened in Walla Walla, Washington as a sign of a national movement (e.g., John Gibson's "war on Christmas") or you can just make stuff up (it saves on footnotes). For example, Spinsanity described Ms. Coulter's Slander as "riddled with factual errors, egregious misrepresentations and a constant stream of broad, inflammatory claims about liberals." Why do research, when you can appear on the O'Reilly Factor instead?

Rule 7: Be Very Nasty

Your book must deliver the joy of hate to your readers, which is why liberals are not just wrong, they are, in the words of Ms. Coulter, Mona Charen, Mike Gallagher and Michelle Malkin, "traitors," the "spawn of Satan," "unhinged" and "useful idiots" who are trying to destroy "every value and standard, principle and ideal, concept of God, family, honor, duty, country and decency that we hold dear." There is one caveat to this rule -- you should be careful not to go after widows, orphans, cripples or people like Mother Theresa as you should save them for your next book instead.

Rule 8: The Importance of Good (Contra-)Diction

To be anointed as the next hot conservative author, you must be ready to spout pithy poison darts and gloss over the obvious inconsistencies in your message in all media appearances. For example, you must be able to claim that conservatives are for a strict interpretation of the Constitution according to the Framer's intent except when it means upholding separation of church and state, limiting the authority of President Bush or selecting a president. Don't sweat this rule too much since you always have Rule 7 to fall back on if you get in trouble.
By simply following these eight rules, you can become a best-selling author and member of the new conservative elite overnight. So skip the research and start typing and soon you will join Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and others in toasting to the true hero of today's media conservatives -- Dr. Faustus.

"These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." [p.103]

"These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them." [p.103]

"[T]hey believed the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was an important part of their closure process." [p.103]