Is there no limit to the extent to which the Archbishop of Canterbury will suck up to terror? Yesterday's genocide bomb on the number 19 bus in Jerusalem, which killed ten people and wounded 44, was carried out by a Palestinian Authority policeman. On the same day, Dr Rowan Williams was at the end of his week's visit to the Holy Land. Did he tour the hospitals offering his condolences to the injured and bereaved? He did not. Did he visit the site of the bombing? He did not. Instead, this man of peace spent the day in Ramallah where he was presented with a medal by Yasser Arafat, chairman of the same Palestinian Authority.

But don't worry -- he deplored the loss of yet more lives from 'communities' where too much blood had already been spilt. Note that word 'communities'. Even when Jews are being blown up around him, he cannot bring himself to identify them as victims and the Palestinians as their murderers, but must offer equal sympathy to both sides. Nauseating. The man is a disgrace to his calling.

The Hutton affair is one of those issues which very clearly illuminates the moral health of a society. In the reaction to the inquiry and the report --did the BBC behave reprehensibly? Did the government put undue pressure on the intelligence services and lie through its teeth about it? -- individuals reveal their grasp of morality and truth. The reaction so far shows that this society has simply lost it.

The media have responded to a report that absolutely rightly threw the book at the BBC by turning the corporation into a martyr to political chicanery. Greg Dyke, who reluctantly fell on his sword, has shown since then that he is incapable of understanding the meaning of the words journalistic duty and editorial responsibility and instead is being paraded as a heroic victim of a government stitch-up. (He also shows he is incapable even of understanding what Lord Hutton actually said about the media, whistleblowing and the law).

The BBC governors, most of whom apparently didn't want him to resign, have revealed by that supine display that like the staff who demonstrated on the street in support of Dyke, and like the many journalists who are bellowing that Andrew Gilligan didn't really get anything very important wrong, the majority of them have absolutely no regard for or understanding of the nature or importance of truth-telling. Lord Hutton, who until his report was published was being hailed the length and breadth of the land as a model inquisitor who daily displayed awesome forensic abilities and was clearly going to see through any duplicity to get at the truth, is now being lampooned as an establishment toady who was deliberately chosen not to rock the government boat -- all because he came up with the wrong verdict, because everyone knows that the correct verdict was that the government was guilty. As a result, the Telegraph reports that most people think Hutton was a whitewash.

One reason is that people think they've read the evidence that Hutton received. But they haven't. Most of them have merely read the press reports of that evidence, which bore very little resemblance to the real thing but cherry-picked the exchanges to produce astonishingly slanted and misleading impressions which were heavily and falsely loaded against the government. With their minds bent by this propaganda, the public are incapable of perceiving the truth but insist that the truth-teller must be a patsy because his conclusions have not corresponded with their own prejudices.

But there's a deeper and no less distressing reason why the public and the media don't believe the Hutton verdict. It's because they think that Gilligan's story was basically true (the fact that everything he said was demonstrably false is apparently nothing more than a nit-picking detail). And the reason they think that is because they think the Prime Minister did lie about the threat from Saddam and his WMD and took us to war on false pretences. That view, which defies history, evidence, logic and rationality (notwithstanding the emerging evidence about dodgy intelligence) has been pumped out by the media, who now unshakeably believe their own rubbish. And the chief offender here was none other than the BBC, whose anti-war, anti-American bias was so bad that during the hostilities HMS Ark Royal stoped listening to it in fury at the defeatist disinformation it was putting out. Yet as the Telegraph poll confirms the BBC is trusted far more than any politician. As a result, the public's minds have simply been twisted -- not just about Iraq, but about the wider war on terror, the Middle East and a host of other issues.

That's surely one reason why, as the Jewish Chronicle reports this week, thousands of messages of support have been pouring into the office of Jenny Tonge, the LibDem MP who distinguished herself by saying she might become a genocide bomber if she were a Palestinian (she of course did not use the word genocide). Denise Carr, secretary of her Richmond constituency party, said she had been 'grossly misrepresented' in the press. What this actually seems to mean is that most people agreed with her.

In its abandonment of truth and morality, its descent into irrationality, ignorance and propaganda and its embrace of prejudice and hatred, this society is more and more resembling the Weimar republic.

I haven't yet read Lord Hutton's report. But having watched his statement on TV, and then watched the exchanges in the House of Commons, two things become immediately apparent. The first is that the BBC has been eviscerated and will not recover. The second is that the Tory leader Michael Howard has shown that he is unfit to lead his country.

Lord Hutton's conclusions should surprise no-one who actually read the evidence presented to his inquiry, as opposed to the grossly prejudiced and misleading press reports of that evidence. It was always obvious -- as I wrote in the Spectator last year -- that the evidence completely exonerated Tony Blair from the central charge of dishonesty. Lord Hutton has now cleared the government and the intelligence services of all the charges made against them, with the one exception that the Ministry of Defence was at fault over its procedures in not sufficiently warning Dr Kelly when his name was finally revealed.

But Hutton has thrown the whole book at the BBC, for making one of the gravest allegations that can be made against a Prime Minister -- that he took his country to war on a lie -- on the basis of an utter falsehood. The BBC never checked whether the story was true and never retracted the lie but compounded the offence by insisting that it was true. The report leaves absolutely shredded the reputations of Andrew Gilligan, the BBC's senior mangement and its Board of Governors.

This devastating indictment goes much farther than the BBC had feared. The implications are huge. For the BBC's domestic and international reputation rests above all on trust. What marks it out from all other broadcasting organisations is that people trust implicitly that its journalism is impartial, authoritative and true. The Hutton report vapourises that reputation. Why should anyone trust anything BBC journalists say ever again after this?

So what now for the corporation? Those who have long been gunning for it and want to see it privatised, on the basis that it is the state subsidy which has created a mindest which has corrupted its journalism, have had their case immeasurably strengthened. Personally, I remain deeply torn. I have long thought and written that the BBC is astonishingly biased over a wide range of issues, assuming as it does that left-wing opinion constitutes the politically neutral centre ground. And I accept that a major factor in creating this mindset is its cocooned status. But its public service remit -- which it has betrayed for so long, not least by increasingly chasing ratings in competition with commercial broadcasters -- enables it to provide a service which others cannot deliver. Speech radio, for example, or dedicated foreign correspondents are extraordinarily expensive and without the licence fee would undoubtedly be drastically reduced.

What's happened at the BBC is a bit like what's happened in our schools and universities -- a pervasive corruption of the culture and the erosion of its founding values. I don't want to destroy public service broadcasting any more than I want to destroy our schools and universities. But how can one change the culture and restore it to its founding values? How does one cleanse the Augean stables? The resignation of the Chairman of Governors and Director-General would be a necessary start, but nowhere near enough to deal with the mindset which has so poisoned its ethos. And the criticism made elsewhere that it is wrong for the governors simultaneously to be defenders of the BBC and its regulators -- although correct -- opens up the possibility of putting the BBC under the control of the meddlesome, bureaucratic monstrosity that is Ofcom, which would destroy it.

If the BBC is in dire trouble, the Conservative party's recent smirk now deserves to be wiped off its face. Michael Howard's performance in the Commons was simply jaw-dropping. Having previously repeatedly accused the Prime Minister of lying about the naming of Dr Kelly -- a conclusion emphatically rejected by Hutton -- he not only failed to apologise but dug himself further into the hole by claiming that the naming strategy had not been covert but overt, on the basis that the government's statement revealing that an unnamed civil servant had come forward was bound to lead to his being named. Such sophistry didn't stop there; Howard also wrenched other remarks by Hutton out of context in order to arrive at a conclusion diametrically opposite to Hutton's own. And as if all that wasn't bad enough, he had the bare-faced cheek to try to move the goal-posts altogether by demanding an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the decision to go to war on the basis of the missing WMD -- a quite staggering demand, considering the Tories had originally supported the war and the reasons for it to the hilt. Yet now the Tories are apparently leaping on the anti-war bandwagon.

This disgraceful performance was quite sickening to watch. I am normally the first to criticise Tony Blair's government, not least for the way I think it has misled the public over a number of issues. But on this occasion, he had it absolutely right when he told the Tory leader in tones of withering contempt: 'Being nasty is not the same as being effective, and opportunism is not the same as leadership'.

Right from the time Iain Duncan Smith first started on this line about Blair having lied over Dr Kelly, the Tories have been told over and over again that they were calling this one completely wrong. First, there was no evidence that Blair had lied. Second, by deciding that Blair was the villain of the piece, the Tories were effectively siding with the BBC, when it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that the BBC was entirely in the wrong, that its position was utterly indefensible -- and that in the long run, it is the BBC, not the Labour party, that is actually the Tory party's biggest enemy because of the role it plays week in, week out in subverting the values of this country and the nature of truth itself.

But the Tories simply would not listen. They were warned again when Michael Howard came to power. They still would not listen, because they were transfixed by the mantra of 'Blair the liar' which they have elevated to their main plank of opposition. Now they have been well and truly caught out on the wrong side. The roar of derision from the Labour benches that greeted Howard's feeble and glancing nod towards Hutton's demolition of the BBC was well deserved.

The BBC is toast. The Tories are beneath contempt.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster have joined the Chief Rabbi in warning against resurgent antisemitism and drawing attention to its link with anti-Israelism. They say: 'Criticism of government policy in Israel . . . is a legitimate part of democratic debate. However, such criticism should never be inspired by anti-Semitic attitudes, extend to a denial of Israel's right to exist, or serve as justification for attacks against Jewish people.'

Such a declaration, which the Times religious correspondent Ruth Gledhill says is 'unprecedented in its strength', is long overdue and very welcome. As the Times remarks in a perceptive and sensitive leader today, the fact that some Jews are reassured that 'only' one in five Britons thinks that Jews have too much influence and a Jewish prime minister would be unaceptable is only because they feared the situation was actually much worse. 'To discover that millions of Britons harbour such attitudes is deeply depressing...' says the paper. 'That the publication of such poll results should find so many Jews unsurprised is perhaps the most concerning aspect.'

It is more than a pity, however, that the clerics' statement was not also signed by Muslim leaders. And it will be worth very little unless the Christian churches now actively confront within their own flock precisely this cross-over from criticism of Israel into anti-Jewish feeling that they have now identified.

They could start, for example, by taking a very long and hard look indeed at a conference being held in London on February 21 entitled 'Zionism, Christian Zionism and the Challenge of the Churches'. Organised by such anti-Israel outfits as the Living Stones of the Holy Land Trust and the Friends of Sabeel, and featuring at least some Christian and other speakers whose virulent hatred of Israel goes far beyond legitimate criticism, it threatens to turn into a hate-fest against Israel and the Jews.

Are the Christian clerics' words to mark Holocaust day worth any more than the paper they are written on?

The sense that the media are behaving like Stalin's stooges in simply ignoring inconvenient truths deepens today with further coverage of David Kay's remarks last weekend. As I have previously noted, Kay said he now believed there had been no large scale WMD programme in Iraq but that Saddam was continuing to try to develop weaponised ricin right up to the war last year, and that he had restarted a rudimentary nuclear programme. Nevertheless, today's news pages simply ignored this and gave the impression instead that Kay had said there had been no WMD since 1991, period.

Thus the Guardian states:

'Further damage to Downing Street's case for going to war came from Dr Kay, who said yesterday that the CIA and other intelligence agencies had failed to recognise that Iraq had all but abandoned its efforts to produce large quantities of chemical or biological weapons after the first Gulf war.'

The Times foreign page simply reports Kay's observations about the corruption and falsification of Saddam's weapons programmes. Meanwhile foreign editor Bronwen Maddox suggests that the Bush administration had come close to misrepresenting Kay's work to give false backing to its claim that Saddam did have WMD:

'“The Kay report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction- related programme activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the UN,” the President said. Strictly, that is true, but it misrepresents the tone of Kay’s preliminary report, which was sceptical of the existance of large-scale programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction. It was hard to discern much that was favourable to the Administration in its pages. That is even more true of Kay’s final report, which expresses doubt that there was any sustained illicit effort, on a large scale, after 1991.'

But actually, Kay's interim report said he had found evidence of a clandestine network of biological programmes which had been concealed from all the weapons inspectors and was still being concealed after the war had started. This is consistent with what he has now said, which suggests that while chemical programmes may not have existed (and we don't know that for sure either) biological and nuclear ones certainly did. So why are these journalists all strenuously suggesting that Kay meant something that is demonstrably at odds with what he actually said?

The only print journalist to note what Kay actually said about ricin and nukes was the admirable Michael Gove in the Times:

'In the first instance it is just not true to assert that Saddam had abandoned efforts to acquire biological and nuclear weapons, even after years of sanctions and inspections. According to David Kay, Iraq was “researching better methods” of weaponising the deadly poison, ricin, “right up until the end”. And Saddam did make an effort to restart his nuclear weapons programe in 2000 and 2001. Western intelligence agencies may have miscalculated the precise nature of Saddam’s WMD arsenal, but they were right to conclude that the Iraqi dictator remained an active player in the mass-murder marketplace.'

Quite so.

Anyone who doubted that the reclassification of cannabis was a Trojan horse for drug legalisation should ponder today's Guardian disclosure that the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs is now to review all drugs with a view to their reclassification. Stand by for a downgrading of ecstasy and maybe even cocaine. The official line is that this is just a review. The council chairman Sir Michael Rawlins said: 'Any new system would try to bring 'more objectivity into the whole process.' Given the bias on this council towards a more liberal drug policy, such a statement should be viewed with some hilarity. It becomes ever clearer that in the shockingly cynical and manipulative shift towards an utterly disastrous drug legalisation agenda in Britain, the Advisory Council is playing a central role.

Maybe I've been reading too many thrillers, but I was transfixed by this letter in today's Guardian:

'As specialist medical professionals, we do not consider the evidence given at the Hutton inquiry has demonstrated that Dr David Kelly committed suicide. Dr Nicholas Hunt, the forensic pathologist at the Hutton inquiry, concluded that Dr Kelly bled to death from a self-inflicted wound to his left wrist. We view this as highly improbable. Arteries in the wrist are of matchstick thickness and severing them does not lead to life-threatening blood loss. Dr Hunt stated that the only artery that had been cut - the ulnar artery - had been completely transected. Complete transection causes the artery to quickly retract and close down, and this promotes clotting of the blood.

'The ambulance team reported that the quantity of blood at the scene was minimal and surprisingly small. It is extremely difficult to lose significant amounts of blood at a pressure below 50-60 systolic in a subject who is compensating by vasoconstricting. To have died from haemorrhage, Dr Kelly would have had to lose about five pints of blood - it is unlikely that he would have lost more than a pint.

'Alexander Allan, the forensic toxicologist at the inquiry, considered the amount ingested of Co-Proxamol insufficient to have caused death. Allan could not show that Dr Kelly had ingested the 29 tablets said to be missing from the packets found. Only a fifth of one tablet was found in his stomach. Although levels of Co-Proxamol in the blood were higher than therapeutic levels, Allan conceded that the blood level of each of the drug's two components was less than a third of what would normally be found in a fatal overdose.

'We dispute that Dr Kelly could have died from haemorrhage or from Co-Proxamol ingestion or from both. The coroner, Nicholas Gardiner, has spoken recently of resuming the inquest into his death. If it re-opens, as in our opinion it should, a clear need exists to scrutinise more closely Dr Hunt's conclusions as to the cause of death.

'David Halpin
Specialist in trauma and orthopaedic surgery
C Stephen Frost
Specialist in diagnostic radiology
Searle Sennett
Specialist in anaesthesiology'

Now I'm the first person to pour scorn on conspiracy theory. But I myself had noticed, when the pathologists gave evidence to Hutton, the strange absence of blood and the even stranger absence of any close questioning of this fact. I suppressed this doubt on the basis that this way lies the blinding flash in the Alma tunnel and the whole Diana madness. But here are some medically qualified folk expressing similar reservations. Maybe these 'ologists are speaking out of the back of their stethoscopes. But just because conspiracy theory is loopy, on the basis that it denies observable facts, doesn't mean there aren't real conspiracies which can only be detected through observable facts.

Naah, it's rubbish.

Isn't it?

If you tell a lie loudly and long enough, it becomes an accepted truth. It is now passing into general discourse that David Kay has said Saddam's WMD never existed. On the Today programme (08.10 am), John Humphrys repeated this again and again, with a muted and defensive Foreign Secretary never contradicting him. But what Kay actually said was he thinks newly produced large scale stockpiles and a large scale WMD programme never existed after 1991 -- a very different matter.

True, he makes a devastating case that pre-war intelligence was badly wrong, as the account in the New York Times of an interview he gave last Saturday makes clear. But in that report he also reiterates that Saddam was developing biological weapons right up to the war:

'Regarding biological weapons, he said there was evidence that the Iraqis continued research and development "right up until the end" to improve their ability to produce ricin. "They were mostly researching better methods for weaponization," Dr. Kay said. "They were maintaining an infrastructure, but they didn't have large-scale production under way."

Weaponised ricin is a weapon of mass destruction. So why are people saying that Kay has said these did not exist? He has actually said the very opposite! Moreover, he says Saddam had restarted his nuclear programme:

'He added that Iraq did make an effort to restart its nuclear weapons program in 2000 and 2001, but that the evidence suggested that the program was rudimentary at best and would have taken years to rebuild, after being largely abandoned in the 1990's. "There was a restart of the nuclear program," he said. "But the surprising thing is that if you compare it to what we now know about Iran and Libya, the Iraqi program was never as advanced," Dr. Kay said.'

To remind us all yet again -- the basis of going to war was that Saddam had defied UN instructions to dismantle all his WMD programmes and prove that he had done so. Here is Kay saying there is evidence he was continuing to try to make biological and nuclear weapons. So why are Robin Cook in the UK, Senator John Kerry in the US and Uncle Tom Anti-War Cobbley and all, screaming that Kay has now proved we were taken to war on a lie? Or is the new line that a little bit of ricin and rudimentary nukes don't count?

It is quite staggering how every time the weapons inspector David Kay makes a statement he is immediately misreported. As the Telegraph reported yesterday, Mr Kay, who has just resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said 'he did not believe there were stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. David Kay, who resigned after a fruitless eight-month search as head of the 1400-strong Iraq Survey Group (ISG), also said he did not believe Saddam Hussein had produced weapons of mass destruction on a large scale in the 1990s - since the first Gulf War.'

But this was immediately taken to mean that he had said Saddam never had any WMD at all. The Independent yesterday headlined its story: 'Saddam's WMD never existed, says chief American arms inspector'. Well no, he didn't. Robin Cook, that dispassionate observer, said: 'It is becoming really rather undignified for the Prime Minister to continue to insist that he was right all along when everybody can now see he was wrong, when even the head of the Iraq Survey Group has said he was wrong.' Well, no he hasn't. BBC Radio Four's World this Weekend pursued the same line with Environment Secretary and government trusty Margaret Beckett, who quite rightly pointed out that Mr Kay had said he didn't think 'large scale weapons stockpiles' existed after 1991, a very different matter, and that not just Britain and the US but the UN and every country in the world had thought Saddam still had the ongoing capability to make these weapons and still intended to do so.

Now today's Sunday Telegraph reports Mr Kay as saying some of Saddam's WMD has been hidden in Syria.He said:

' "We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved." '

Whether Saddam had large stockpiles or not is beside the point. How much anthrax or smallpox virus or VX nerve gas does it take to kill very large numbers of people, for heaven's sake? He was considered to be a threat because he was thought to be continuing to produce the damn things, period. As for having hidden them in Syria, this was suggested at the start of the war by Israeli intelligence and subsequently by others. It is entirely plausible. What is not plausible is that he secretly destroyed the WMD he was known to have possessed -- because he had used it -- while refusing to tell the UN he had done so, thus inviting the nemesis which ultimately descended.

David Kay said in his interim report he had uncovered a network of clandestine biological warfare programmes which Saddam had gone to huge efforts to keep secret. This report too was promptly misrepresented as an admission that he had drawn a blank. Such wilful misreporting by our anti-war media and politicians is the product of ruthless and vicious bias. Expect much more of the same as we become engulfed this week by Hutton hysteria.

There's only one thing more shocking that the comment by the 'bio-ethicist' Professor John Harris that infanticide can be justifiable, and that is the fact that he is a prominent and respected member of those great and good gatherings that decide on the ethics of medical practice. Professor Harris can always be relied upon to arrive at a position which denies the intrinsic value of human life. His latest views, however, stomach-turning, are therefore not surprising, although the muddle and illogicality of his argument may shock some who might reasonably assume a person in his position to be capable of principled and clear thinking. He said:

'I don't think infanticide is always unjustifiable. I don't think it is plausible to think that there is any moral change that occurs during the journey down the birth canal...People who think there is a difference between infanticide and late abortion have to ask the question: what has happened to the foetus in the time it takes to pass down the birth canal and into the world which changes its moral status? I don't think anything has happened in that time.

'It is well-known that where a serious abnormality is not picked up - when you get a very seriously handicapped or indeed a very premature newborn which suffers brain damage - that what effectively happens is that steps are taken not to sustain it on life-support.There is a very widespread and accepted practice of infanticide in most countries. We ought to be much more upfront about the ethics of all of this and ask ourselves the serious question: what do we really think is different between newborns and late foetuses? There is no obvious reason why one should think differently, from an ethical point of view, about a foetus when it's outside the womb rather than when it's inside the womb.'

The first point is that there not only a difference in moral and legal status between a foetus in utero and a newborn baby, but between an unborn child at different stages of its development. The law on abortion rests on the premise that we afford different treatment to an unborn child which is capable of surviving outside the womb and a foetus which is not. It sets that dividing line at 28 weeks' gestation, and while there is legitimate argument to be had over whether that limit is too late -- and there are indeed many reasonable objections to such late abortions -- the law holds that an abortion is permissible before that date and not afterwards. To say there is no difference in status between a foetus before or after it has passed down the birth canal is to ignore the crucial fact that before the abortion limit is reached, a foetus is very unlikely to emerge from the birth canal alive. And there is a very great difference between a dead foetus and a live baby.

As for not sustaining grossly handicapped babies on life support, this is only ethically justified -- and is only supposed in law to happen -- if such a baby is unable to survive. In otber words, if it is born dying. There is a great difference between allowing a baby to die by not intervening to keep it alive, an intervention which would prolong its dying -- which is actually unethical -- and taking action with deliberate intent to kill a baby which would not otherwise die, which is murder.

Not the the first time, Professor Harris cannot see the difference between killing and allowing to die. It is a confusion which is rampant among both doctors and philosophers, as it accords with the prevailing ethic of our society which is utilitarian and consequentialist. That is to say, it leads many to take the view that all that matters is the end product; so if the end result is the death of a baby, it doesn't make any difference if it is killed or not. It thus removes personal responsibility from the issue and legitimises monumental selfishness and a total disregard of any duty towards others.

Widespread as it may be, it is nevertheless a way of thinking that is profoundly amoral, unethical and indeed barbaric. Professor Harris is a member of the British Medical Association's ethics committee and the Human Genetics Commission. With such a person at the heart of the medical-ethical establishment, it is hardly surprising that this country is aborting babies with cleft palates, that it starves and dehydrates comatose patients to death and is moving ever more inexorably towards openly legalising euthanasia. This is a society that no longer understands the value of life.

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According to a survey in the Jewish Chronicle, some 20% of Britons would not find a Jewish prime minister acceptable. This is surely pretty startling. Would 20% of the population say a black or gay prime minister would be unacceptable? I think not; most people would think it wasn't an issue, and rightly so. Some Jews put an optimistic spin on the finding. The Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, takes comfort in the fact that the vast majority of people are not opposed to the idea. Well, yes; but behind the headline figure lies another finding which indicates the problem is rather wider. As the Independent reports, the poll 'found 47 per cent of people were unable to agree with the statement: "A British Jew would make an equally acceptable prime minister as a member of any other faith." ' So nearly half the population couldn't bring themselves to agree that there would be nothing wrong with a Jew at Number 10.

In addition, one in seven believed the Holocaust had been exaggerated. The even more dismaying finding was that such prejudice was most pronounced among the young, as well as the elderly. So much for Holocaust education, which frankly I always thought was likely to do more harm than good. What's gone missing, and what's needed, is properr education that gives young people not only knowledge about the past in a way that enables them to give meaning to the present, but which shows them that there are objective truths and teaches them to think about them.

Instead, we have a society which no longer knows what truth it and is receptive to whatever lies and poisonous propaganda fit the prejudices of a sentimentalised, shallow and ignorant culture. Hence the hate-fest against Israel and the Jews now current in Britain and Europe, of which this survey gives but a flavour.

On the Jeremy Vine show today on BBC Radio 2, I crossed swords with Caroline Lucas, a Green MEP, over Dr Tonge's disgusting remarks (see below). Naturally she sided with her, but was keen to move swiftly onto the usual demonisation of Israel which of course the controversy over Dr Tonge might just conceivably interrupt for five seconds.

What struck me was her hysterical hatred and blind propaganda. Thus Israel's security fence was 'higher than the Berlin wall'. Now I'm not a fan of the fence; I think Israel is very wrong to have sited it in places over the Green Line. But the reason for its construction -- the only reason -- is to prevent Palestinian Arabs from murdering Israelis. It is entirely defensive. Of course it is regrettable that it cuts through Palestinian orchards and so forth (although the Israelis say they are compensating these farmers for any loss). But for heaven's sake, the Palestinians are waging war against Israel. If they weren't inciting their population from the cradle to murder Jews, there would be no need for the wretched fence. Yet Ms Lucas, like so many other Arab propagandists, represents it falsely as an aggressive act. To build that false case, she calls it emotively a wall and makes the even more emotive and false comparison with the Berlin Wall (which of course was designed to keep a population in rather than, as in Israel's case, out) even though, as I tried to point out to her, it is not a wall but a fence, and moreover a fence that is only solid in a few places, most of it consisting of wire.

The other striking thing, although again nothing new here, was the ignorance and lies behind the propaganda slogans she was mouthing. Thus, in her view, we had to 'understand' the despair of Arab mass murderers who had 'lived for decades under Israeli occupation' of 'their' land. This widely-believed idea that once upon a time there was Palestinian land and then along came the evil expansionist Israelis who roared in and occupied it and have kept the Palestinians groaning under their heel ever since is a lie. The territories were themselves illegally occupied before 1967 by Jordan and Egypt. Strictly speaking, they have always been no-man's land. The only reason Israel is in the territories at all is because it took them as a defensive act while fighting a defensive war in 1967 against Arab states that have never un-declared that war and which use the Palestinian Arabs as proxies to fight it for them in an underhand and deceitful way. The settlements, which occupy only a fraction of those territories (and which I have never supported) are a distraction from that fact.

As for 'despair', many human bombs are well educated and from wealthy families. It is not despair that fuels the death cult that grips them -- it is demented brainwashing and hysterical exultation. This death cult should be regarded with abhorrence by all decent and right-minded people. The fact that so many very silly or very malevolent individuals in Britain and Europe effectively endorse that cult of death and cheer it on is a symptom of the deep and deadly sickness that now grips the west.

Jenny Tonge, the LibDem MP who has endorsed Palestinian human bomb terror, should be prosecuted for incitement to murder. She told a pro-Palestinian lobby about human bombs: 'If I had to live in that situation - and I say that advisedly - I might just consider becoming one myself.'

The law is quite clear: anything that solicits, encourages or attempts to persuade people to commit murder is incitement. Dr Tonge's remarks undoubtedly fall into that category. At the very least, Charles Kennedy must show that his party abhors what she has said. It is not enough to say she doesn't speak for the LibDems and they don't endorse terror. They should withdraw the whip from her immediately. Anything less amounts to no more than an embarrassed shuffling of the feet in the face of one of their MPs giving a green light to terrorism.

What is really horrifying is that Dr Tonge is by no means alone in thinking this. An obscene moral inversion has taken place in mainstream thinking, in which those who commit mass murder are viewed with sympathy while their victims are presented as the real villains. Britain and Europe are in the throes of a disgusting hate-fest against Israel and the Jewish people, which is turning even apparently responsible public figures into apologists for genocidal terror.

Israel is by no means perfect, and sometimes does things which are wrong. But the bottom line is that it is attempting to prevent its citizens from being wiped out, in a war that has been waged against it without interruption for more than half a decade by people who wish to eradicate it.

Murder is never justifiable, period. The attempt to justify or excuse it is obscene. Incitement to commit it should be severely dealt with, and those who are complicit in terrorism should be made to understand that there is no room for such attitudes in any civilised society.

The website was down for a few hours earlier today, which is why some people may have had a problem getting through. Apologies.

So that's it then; fathers are redundant. According to Suzi Leather, chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, women seeking to have an IVF baby shouldn't need to bother with finding a father. The requirement to provide a father for the child was 'anachronistic' and 'a bit of a nonsense' and was 'out of step with other changes in society and with government policy'. She says she doesn't think fathers are superfluous (which of course is exactly what she is saying) but just doesn't want to be unfair to single or lesbian women:

'There are certain circumstances in which children can grow up happy and well parented in the absence of a man. It is the quality of the relationship that matters not that a man or a woman are involved'.

Well, no. Children overwhelmingly do best if they are brought up by their natural mother and father. To that end, the existing IVF rules which appear to deem it perfectly acceptable if a woman drags in any man off the street to play the role of father are themselves deeply questionable. Given the casual endorsement of ruinous family fragmentation in those rules, and the willingness actually to create such disadvantage artificially, it's perhaps not surprising that Ms Leather has pushed such monumental selfishness to its reductio ad absurdum.

Her remarks really are quite staggering in their self-centredness. For even where she concedes that two parents are better than one, she is thinking only about the advantage to the adults: ' "I think having two parents is better than one, largely on energy grounds. It is also nice to have someone to share the enjoyment," she said.'

So of course it follows that she cannot acept the reality of child distress which might get in the way of this recipe for adult licence:

'But she dismisses arguments that fatherless children are more prone to educational failure and delinquency, saying stress can be caused in many ways - poverty, unhappy relationships, living on a crime-ridden estate - and may be translated to children.' "Delinquency cannot just be put down to children being brought up by women on their own," she said.'

This is astonishing ignorance. There is overwhelming evidence that children are disadvantaged in virtually every walk of life if they are not brought up by their natural parents. Yes of course there are fragmented families where the children do well. But in the main, relatively speaking, they don't. Secure human identity resides in being nurtured by the people who create us in the first place.

That's why people who were conceived through egg or sperm donation have a desperate desire to locate their genetic origins and track down their genetic parents. That's why it's only right that such donors should lose their anonymity. And that's why the protests that this will hit infertile couples are so misplaced. The founding ethic of medicine is 'do no harm'. To remedy the distress of infertility by creating the distress and disadvantage of fractured identity is unethical.

The remorseless march of embryology, the amorality of hubristic doctors and the selfishness of modern women have combined to pose an unprecedented threat to psychological security and emotional well-being. Dr Theodore Dalrymple hits the button in the Telegraph:

'What is so deeply revolting about Ms Leather's lucubrations is their unutterable and invincible bourgeois complacency, worthy of Messrs Pecksniff and Podsnap. If you care to look at the already extensive part of the country in which fatherhood scarcely exists, except in the merest biological sense, you will find not merely an alternative, but a very much worse kind of family life (the word family being used very loosely). It exists in a Hobbesian world of primitive brutality, where the man with the biggest fist or biggest machete or biggest gun rules, and where children are soon inducted into a wholly egotistical code of conduct in which what you do is determined only by what you can get away with.

'It is a world from which increasingly there is no escape. It is a world in which women are subjected to far more domestic violence than ever before, and in which children experience a dialectic between gross over-indulgence on the one hand and savage repression on the other, according to the mood of the moment. Merely to call this way of life different is abject cowardice or dishonesty. Indeed, having lived and worked in several parts of the world, and having travelled very extensively, I should say that it is the worst way of life known to me anywhere. To say that we should merely accept it as inevitable, as part of the march of history, as an inescapable part of the zeitgeist, is to accept descent into degradation. It is complacently to accept disaster, both for the individuals caught up in it and for society as a whole. Ms Leather's proposals are one more sentence in our long national suicide note.'

No wonder the good doctor happens to be emigrating in disgust.

Apologies for the absence of posts at present, but I am simply submerged by work. I hope to resume normal service within a day or two.

An employment tribunal has torn into the Prison Service for the appalling sacking of a prison officer whose crime was to have been rude about Osama bin Laden. As the Telegraph reports, the Norwich tribunal threw the book at it for political correctness and incompetence. It was wholly disproportionate to sack the officer after 21 years' impeccable service; he had been effectively sacked for 'thought crime'; the prison governor 'appeared to have been swayed by his keenness to "parade his racial awareness qualifications", causing panel members to ask whether he lived in the real world. The tribunal ruled:

'"Conduct by the governor was reprehensible, totally unjustified, and in so far as he argues to the contrary, we do not accept his explanation. He seemed determined to justify a course of action which seemed wholly disproportionate. In so far as there was any evidence of any determined attempt to lie or persuade others to lie, we wondered whether the governor lived in the real world. Even taking the governor's findings at their highest, there was no conceivable reason why the applicant should have been dismissed. This was a one-off incident: an injudicious remark by a man under stress with a good record over many years with no suggestion that he was other than loyal, conscientious, and who treated prisoners and visitors with respect and politeness."

Oh -- and the Prison Service manager who reviewed the sacking was also 'intellectually lazy and incompetent'.

So, a clear resignation matter for the Prison Service? At the very least, an inevitable grovelling apology and a resolve to learn an important lesson? Don't be silly. Here's their response:

'We are very disappointed by the decision of the tribunal...The decision to dismiss Mr Rose was fully consistent with Prison Service policy . . . to eradicate racism in prisons.'

Not just thought crime -- a completely closed thought system, at the heart of the British establishment.

The case of the elderly Colonel shot dead for no apparent reason when he opened the door of his cottage in the picture postcard village of Furneux Pelham has turned from Cluedo into clueless. The Guardian reports the remarkable fact that, despite the fact that a GP had certified the death and police and ambulance people had been crawling all over the scene, it took no less three hours before anyone realised the dead man had actually been shot:

'When the ambulance arrived in the village its staff could not find anything amiss and departed. It was 7am before Col Workman's body was discovered by his daily carer. She found him sprawled across the doorstep.

'She summoned the police and ambulance service. In the meantime a number of other local people arrived, including a GP. The body was covered by a duvet and the doctor certified the death at 8.15am. "It was not until 10 past 10, when the undertakers decided to move the body," Mr Mann told a press conference yesterday at Hertfordshire police headquarters, "that the wound was discovered and the death treated as suspicious.

"The ambulance service and the health authority have instituted an investigation, and we are reviewing how we deal with reports of sudden death. Obviously I was not impressed - but it has happened. I can't say whether evidence was lost or not." '

Miss Marple wouldn't have been seen dead in a plot like this.

Those who maintain that people who turn themselves into human bombs are driven to such acts by despair, and that their behaviour can only be explained by extreme poverty and dispossession, should ponder the words of Reem al-Rayashee, the 22 year-old mother of two infants who blew herself up at the Erez crossing point from Israel into Gaza taking four security guards with her and wounding seven others. The Times reports her words on the videotape explaining her actions:

'“It was always my wish to turn my body into deadly shrapnel against the Zionists and knock on the doors of Heaven with the skulls of Zionists,” she said. “I always wanted to be the first (Hamas) woman to carry out a martyrdom operation where parts of my body can fly all over.”

She said, smiling at times, that she had the dreams since she was 13. “God gave me two children and I loved them so much. Only God knew how much I loved them.” She asked that her children should study in religious schools.'

These are not words of despair. These are words of exultation. This is the language of hysterical, demented brainwashing. It is the language of fanatical hatred. This woman had everything to live for. She was not poor; she came from a wealthy family. She had two tiny children who she loved. Her family is reportedly distraught. They cannot believe she could have abandoned her children like this. They cannot understand how she can have done such a thing. But it is all too understandable. From childhood, this woman was taught to hate Jews and to dream of martyrdom. She was part of an obscene death cult founded in irrational hatred, which indoctrinates people from the cradle and prepares them not for life but for extinction in the cause of terror. While people refuse to grasp the real nature of this phenomenon, and seek explanations instead in wildly inappropriate theories about poverty and despair, this horror will never be confronted.

The family of Tom Hurndall, the International Solidarity Movement activist who has now died after apparently being shot by an Israeli soldier, seems determined to arraign the entire Israel Defence Force for his death. They want the soldier charged with murder or manslaughter, and yet at the same time say the Israelis are hanging the soldier out to dry. One or the other, surely; it can't be both.

The anger and bitterness of the family is understandable. If the soldier in question shot Tom Hurndall either with deliberate intent or as a reckless act, he should be tried and punished. However, there is surely something distasteful about the way the Hurndall family appears to want to make political capital out of their son's death and use it to whip up more hatred of Israel. The fact that is being overlooked is that Israel is fighting in Gaza to prevent arms being smuggled in to murder more Israelis. If people venture onto that field of battle while it is raging -- however humanitarian their reasons -- surely they are behaving recklessly, to say the least.

Moreover, as the Telegraph points out today in a helpful balance to the compassionate story about the Hurndalls' bereavement, the ISM is anything but a group of 'peace activists':

'The International Solidarity Movement is often described as a peace group but its founders back the Palestinian right to wage an "armed struggle". The International Solidarity Movement is often described as a peace group but its founders back the Palestinian right to wage an "armed struggle".

'Launched in 2001, the ISM says it uses "non-violent direct action" in the style of Gandhi, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Dr Martin Luther King. A closer look reveals that the leadership sees volunteers not as pacifists but as combatants on the Palestinian side.

'In a 2002 article, the movement's co-founders, Adam Shapiro, a New York Jew, and Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian Christian, urged: "The Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics, both non-violent and violent." Mr Shapiro and Miss Arraf predicted that "yes, people will get killed and injured" and suggested that the casualties "would be considered shaheed", using the Arabic term for martyrs applied to suicide bombers.

'In its mission statement, the movement says that, for Palestinians, "armed struggle" is "their right". Activists have shown their hatred for the Jewish state. " 'Israel' is an illegal entity that should not exist," wrote Flo Rosovski, an ISM "media co-ordinator" who was deported last year.

'Some links between ISM activists and Palestinian terrorists have emerged. Less than two weeks after Corrie's death, ISM members allegedly tried to prevent Israeli troops from searching their office in Jenin in the West Bank. When the soldiers forced their way in, they discovered Shadi Sukia, a leading member of Islamic Jihad. The movement claimed that it had known nothing about Sukia but had simply offered him tea, clothes and a blanket when he appeared unannounced off the street.

'ISM members also shared tea with Omar Khan Sharif and Assif Muhammad Hanif, Britons who visited the site of Corrie's death with the group last April before carrying out a suicide attack on Mike's Place, a Tel Aviv pub, killing three and injuring dozens.'

Not peace activists at all, in other words, but accomplices to mass murder.

The behaviour of the affable and popular Constitution Secretary Lord Falconer has rightly raised more than a few eyebrows. Exasperated by the apparent chronic incompetence of the new Children and Family Court Advisory Service (Cafcass), he sacked the entire board. One board member, however, Judy Weleminsky, refused to 'resign' on the grounds that she had done nothing wrong. It appears that Lord Falconer then went on a fishing expedition to find incriminating evidence against her, and came up with two items. Item one: that she told the press about 'delays and overspending'. Item two: that she undermined the organisation by giving separate evidence about it. Problem: she gave this evidence to the commons Standards and Privileges committee, whose chairman has now rightly protested that Ms Weleminsky is allegedly being sacked for performing her constitutional duty. Falconer, threatened with being hauled before that committee to explain himself, is now desperately backtracking and claiming that there was no problem with Ms Weleminsky's evidence after all. If so, he appears to have sacked her for blowing the whistle on incompetence. Altogether, not very constitutional.

Despite the outrage of 95% of the population, the BBC is now trawling for ammunition with which to finish off the reputation of Robert Kilroy-Silk and thus justify the axing of his show. Meanwhile, the inimitable Richard Littlejohn in The Sun has it just about right:

'THE BBC has agreed to reinstate Robert Kilroy-Silk after suspending him for describing Arabs as “suicide bombers, limb amputators and women repressors”. But he has had to agree to new producer guidelines designed to prevent him causing offence to anyone. This column sat in on his comeback show.

'KILROY: Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the show. Today we’re talking about freedom of speech. My first guest this morning has had a tragic life.

'He lost an eye and both hands while on missionary work in Afghanistan and has had to subsist on benefits ever since. Please welcome, from the Finsbury Park mosque, Captain Hook. (Loud applause).

'KILROY: I know this is difficult for you, so take your time. What would you like to say to us?

'HOOK: Death to the infidel! Death to the Jews! Death to America! Death to the West! (Even louder applause.)

'KILROY: You’re clearly very upset and that’s understandable. I know what you must be going through. Did I mention I’m part Irish?

'(AUDIENCE: Death to the infidel! Death to the Jews! Death to America! Death to the West!)

'KILROY: I feel your pain, I really do. I’ll come back to you later in the show. My next guest is from al-Muhajiroun. What would you like to say to the viewers, sir?

'AL-MUH: September 11 2001 was a towering day in history — a mighty blow against the Great Satan. It is the duty of the faithful to rise up and join the jihad. (Riotous cheering).

'KILROY: I can tell emotions are running very high on this issue.

'AL-MUH: The oppressor must be destroyed. The Jews must be driven into the sea! Audience goes berserk).

'KILROY: Well, you’re certainly entitled to your point of view. I’m sure many, many of the people watching will be able to relate to what you are saying.

'AL-MUH: Can I just mention that we’re holding a recruiting drive in Tipton on Tuesday?

'KILROY: Of course you can. I’m from Birmingham, by the way. (Turns to camera). And don’t forget, if you’re watching at home, if you’d like to make a donation to Hezbollah In Need just ring the number at the bottom of your screen. Our operators are standing by. (AUDIENCE: Death to Israel!)

'KILROY: Let’s welcome our next guest. It’s a pleasure and a privilege to have on Kilroy, a leading QC, a champion of human rights, wife of the Prime Minister, the Wicked Witch herself, Cherie Booth QC. (Polite hissing from audience)

'KILROY: Cherie, thanks for coming in. I used to be an MP, too, you know. Like me, you’ve got a bit of a reputation for being outspoken on the subject of human rights, haven’t you?

'WW: Yes, Robert, I have.

'KILROY: And I think, also like me, you got yourself in a bit of hot water over something you said to the Saudi ambassador.

'WW: All I said, Robert, was that Saudi Arabia had a pretty appalling image in the eyes of the world because of the disgraceful way they treat women.

'KILROY: What, exactly, did you mean by that?

'WW: Well, for instance, they won’t let women drive, deny them the vote, deny them property rights. Women in the Arab world are second-class citizens.

'KILROY: Steady on, Cherie. That’s a bit harsh. I can fully understand why our audience might easily take exception. I’m surprised an intelligent women like you would rush to judgment without knowing all the facts. (AUDIENCE: Death to the Wicked Witch!)

'WW: What I actually meant to say . . .

'KILROY: That’s enough. I won’t have such vile, offensive language on this show.

'HOOK: I object to appearing alongside infidels and half-naked harlots. This is a deliberate insult to Islam.

'KILROY: No offence, Captain. But we do live in a tolerant, multi-racial, multicultural society.

'HOOK: Not where I come from, we don’t.

'KILROY: What, Finsbury Park?

'HOOK: Infidel dog! (spits on studio floor).

'KILROY: My next guest is a young man, Ali, from Salford. He’s just volunteered to go to work in Jerusalem as a suicide bomber. That’s an interesting career choice.

'ALI: I’ve always wanted to travel and kill Jews. (AUDIENCE: Death to Israel! Death to The West!)

'KILROY: Good for you, Ali. So many young people are prepared to sit around on their backsides these days. Not like when I was a young, working class lad in the West Midlands, before I became a famous TV personality and newspaper columnist.

'AL-MUH: We have thousands of martyrs like Ali waiting to bring death to the unbelievers. (AUDIENCE: Kill, Kill, Kill!)

'KILROY: And they say modern youngsters are only interested in sex, drugs and mobile phones. That’s about all we’ve got time for. I’d like to thank all my guests, Captain Hook — good luck with the deportation appeal; al-Muhajiroun — hope the jihad goes well; Ali — come back and see us when you, er, perhaps not. (Sound of sirens. Enter boys in blue.)

'PLOD: You thought you’d got away with it, chummy, didn’t you? Robert Kilroy-Silk, I am arresting you for possession of an offensive suntan. Now stand still while the sergeant chops your arm off.

'KILROY: See you in the morning. '

So much for free speech (part 96). A preacher who was asaulted by the crowd when he held up a poster calling for an end to homosexuality, lesbianism and immorality, but who was himself convicted of a public order offence, has had his conviction upheld. The Telegraph reports:

'Two senior judges dismissed arguments that the conviction of the late Harry Hammond, 69, an evangelical Christian, for displaying an "insulting" sign interfered with his freedom of religious expression and infringed his human rights.The sign caused a furore as a group of 30 to 40 people gathered round. Mr Hammond had soil thrown at him and water poured over his head.

Lord Justice May, sitting with Mr Justice Harrison, said it had been open to magistrates in Wimborne, Dorset, to convict Mr Hammond in April 2002. Mr Hammond's behaviour "went beyond legitimate protest".'

What do these judges think 'legitimate' protest is, if not displaying a poster which merely causes offence? Isn't it wonderful, living under the protection of the Human Rights Act for which our judiciary campaigned so long and hard in order to uphold universal liberal values.

A judge has upheld a burglar's claim that hewas only acting in self-defence when he assaulted a policeman who was trying to arrest him. The Telegraph reports:

'Pc Peter Scott was called to a house where an intruder was hiding in the loft. The officer told a court that Paul Reilly resisted arrest and assaulted him as he attempted to carry out his duty, punching him and then grinding his face into roof lagging. Pc Scott was left with substantial facial injuries and Reilly was arrested only when another officer managed to get him in a headlock. Reilly, 27, appeared at Reading Crown Court last week and admitted assault occasioning actual bodily harm, but on the basis of self-defence.

'The prosecution refused to accept the plea and Judge Stanley Spence held a special hearing, known as a Newton hearing, to decide if the basis of the plea was well-founded. After listening to evidence, the judge said: "I cannot be sure the defendant was not acting in self-defence when he pushed Pc Scott."
As a result Reilly, a supermarket night-shift worker from Reading, will return to the court on Jan 29 to be sentenced on the basis that he may have been assaulted first in an unprovoked attack.'

So now we know. If you violently resist arrest, a judge will take your side. Just what has happened to our judiciary?

A new American study confirms what we have all but forgotten. Marriage is the most sure-fire prophylactic against a life of crime. The Times reports a long-term study which shows that men who marry are far more likely to go straight later in life than those who remain single:

'The married men did not set out to distance themselves from their former criminal activities, nor did marriage appear to have changed their moral outlook, the research showed. Instead, marriage altered their daily routines and physically removed them from the scenes of their past deviant behaviour.'

And crucially, it's marriage that matters -- cohabitation produces the opposite effect:

'None of the men studied was in a cohabiting relationship but other research has found that while marriage reduces crime, cohabitation increases it.' Yet another previous study, not mentioned in the Times, has shown that marriage also encourages men to work, and to work harder than if they remain unmarried.

The marriage effect used to mean that young tearaway men 'grew out of' their criminal habits as they got older -- because they got married. But now that marriage has gone out of fashion in Britain, our young men are no longer growing out of their wayward behaviour. Instead, as they drift in and out of transient 'relationships', their criminality remains unchecked as they effectively continue to be permanent adolescents.

This is what the government would call approvingly 'lifestyle choice', which it relentlessly strives to promote.

Salutary to note that in the fond farewells to Tam Dalyell, the Labour backbench 'Father of the House' who has announced he is to step down from the Commons at the next election, his recent antisemitic outburst about Tony Blair being controlled by a 'cabal' of Jews has been all but airbrushed out of the picture. Neither the Times, Telegraph or Guardian even mentioned it in their affectionate pieces presenting Dalyell as the eccentric permanent irritant on the back benches. Only the Independent saw fit to record the 'cabal' controversy.

But of course, antisemitism has become the prejudice that now dares not speak its name.

Great piece by Mark Steyn nailing the terrifying drift in Britain towards dhimmification*, as evidenced by the Kilroy-Silk affair:

'Let me see if I understand the BBC Rules of Engagement correctly: if you're Robert Kilroy-Silk and you make some robust statements about the Arab penchant for suicide bombing, amputations, repression of women and a generally celebratory attitude to September 11 – none of which is factually in dispute – the BBC will yank you off the air and the Commission for Racial Equality will file a complaint to the police which could result in your serving seven years in gaol. Message: this behaviour is unacceptable in multicultural Britain. But, if you're Tom Paulin and you incite murder, in a part of the world where folks need little incitement to murder, as part of a non-factual emotive rant about how "Brooklyn-born" Jewish settlers on the West Bank "should be shot dead" because "they are Nazis" and "I feel nothing but hatred for them", the BBC will keep you on the air, kibitzing (as the Zionists would say) with the crème de la crème of London's cultural arbiters each week. Message: this behaviour is completely acceptable.'

But Steyn observes something even more chilling -- although to us long-time observers of institutional BBC prejudice, not surprising:

'So, while the BBC is "investigating" Kilroy, its only statement on Mr Paulin was an oblique but curiously worded allusion to the non-controversy on the Corporation website: "His polemical, knockabout style has ruffled feathers in the US, where the Jewish question is notoriously sensitive." "The Jewish question"? "Notoriously sensitive"? Is this really how they talk at the BBC?'

Yup, it sure is - but usually in private. To the Beeb's illiberals, any Jewish protests at incitment to murder Jews are indeed 'notoriously sensitive', as indeed are any Jewish protests against current antisemitism. And of course, Israel is still 'the Jewish question' which for them remains unanswered -- and no doubt still awaiting a final solution.

*'Dhimmi' is the status of infidels under Islam who are permitted to live in Muslim jurusdictions but only with restrictions as second-class citizens.

As if the Prime Minister didn't have enough on his plate at present, he now has to worry about the spectre of a Ken Livingstone clone in the White House. The likelihood of a Howard Dean US presidential candidacy has, according to the Guardian, caused alarm in Downing Street that it will create tensions in the 'formidable' transatlantic Democrat/Labour alliance. As the well-briefed Patrick Wintour reports, 'one ally of the Prime Minister has suggested that he would prefer anyone but Mr Dean as president, although in public Mr Blair will be careful to ensure Labour and Downing Street are seen as neutral in the Democrat race.' The worry is that Dean will fail to unseat President Bush because he is... well, off the wall. Or to put it more politely, the US equivalent of the anti-west, unreconstructed leftism that Blair and his great buddy Bill Clinton repudiated and which is embodied in the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone.

Of course, Blair's problem this side of the Atlantic is the opposite one, that Livingstone is all too likely to be re-elected as London's mayor. Hence his breathtakingly cynical act in declaring that Red Ken is now a reformed character and turning him back into a Labour candidate at a click of his fingers. How irritating for him -- and no doubt for queasy Democrats --that he can't peform such tricks of legerdemain across the pond.

Tony Blair's crisis seems to be deepening by the hour. Far from making inroads into the top-up fees rebellion, his remarks at the weekend that opposition to the proposal is against the national interest appear to have further inflamed his backbenchers and stiffened their resolve. As the Independent reports, he is under pressure on three fronts -- Iraq's missing WMD, the Hutton inquiry and tuition fees. All three together create a momentum for political collapse. Even if one assumes that Hutton will not deliver a killer blow, and that the WMD issue is more a background grumble than an acute problem, tuition fees is the one issue which has the capacity to do possibly terminal damage. When -- so far into a political storm -- normally loyal backbenchers like Eric Illsley start steaming, it spells big trouble:

'Eric Illsley, the normally loyal MP for Barnsley Central, accused the Prime Minister of talking "crap" when he said in a television interview on Sunday that MPs would betray the national interest if they rejected top-up fees to pay for the expansion in higher education. Mr Illsley said: "If he is going to carry on like this, he ought to stand aside and let someone else have a go." He added: "Who the hell is he to tell me I am betraying the country? It's crap." '

Panic is palpably mounting in Downing Street.

Good heavens, a university academic who has actually spoken up and told the truth about the decay of higher education! Professor Anthony King, the psephological guru from Essex University, has written a heartfelt piece in the Telegraph which accurately skewers both the collapse of education standards and the extreme pusillanimity of the universities, who for the past two decades at least have refused to inform the public about the calamity. Key quotes:

'The truth is that most people outside universities have no idea how far the whole of British higher education has been degraded in recent years, and the reason they have no idea is that every teacher at every British university – from the vice-chancellor down – is engaged in a conspiracy of silence. They have no desire to engage in such a conspiracy but they have no choice, because to say publicly what is wrong at their own university is to run the risk of damaging that university, even though conditions may be worse elsewhere.

'So we cover up. We moan, but we refrain from revealing a fraction of what we know. British higher education has become highly competitive. Most of us are loyal to our own university. We do not wish to harm it, let alone give a competitive advantage to other institutions. We therefore remain silent – and the public are thereby deceived. Britain's universities still have areas of tremendous strength but they increasingly resemble those elegant mansions in the American South that one sees in films, with imposing facades in front but decay and ruin concealed behind.'

And then Prof King details some of the practical effects:

'When I first arrived at Essex, each student in my department took five courses throughout each academic year. Each student was required, in connection with each course, to submit five substantial essays – a total of 25 such essays each year. In addition, third-year students wrote a short dissertation or "project". Students were taught in smallish groups and were taught for at least 25 weeks each year.

Now students take only four courses and write only three essays in each of them – a total of 12 compared with the previous 25. The compulsory third-year project has been abandoned, students are taught in far larger groups, and there is now intense pressure to reduce the length of the teaching year from 25 weeks to 20 – roughly the length of a single US semester. The position at less favoured universities, including some of the best known, is even less satisfactory. Students in Britain are thus being systematically short-changed.'

What an appalling situation. And now students are being expected to pay for the privilege of participating in an education system that is no longer worth its name. Instead of conniving at their further emasculation by cravenly grasping the poisoned money the government is offering them through top-up fees, the universities should be blowing the whistle on an overall strategy which has brought higher education to its knees and declaring their determination to fight it.

Even by this government's standards, it's hard to credit its plan to slap a 'top-up tax' on speeding motorists. It wants to add a £5 addition to speeding fines. This extra fine is not related to anything motorists will have have done, since they will aleady have been punished for any offence by the original fine. It is merely a way of making good a Home Office deficit, caused by Gordon Brown's refusal to give it the money it needs. The excuse is that the money will go to help victims of crime. But if this is true, it is itself totally unfair. As the Times reports:

'Critics, however, said that it was unfair to expect people guilty of victimless offences, such as having a defective headlight, to contribute towards compensation for victims of burglaries. There were also concerns that generally law-abiding people would end up paying while serious offenders escaped having to make financial reparation.'

The proposal is utterly unjust and illogical. The Home Office clearly no longer cares about, or is willing to uphold, fundamental principles of law and justice. It is becoming truly oppressive, in the tyrannical sense of the word.

So much for the oft-repeated canard that the only reason Britain is a target of global terror is that it allied itself to the US. The Guardian reports that France, le pays de dhimmitude numero uno, has just foiled a biological attack upon itself and other European countries. The police sting arose from the previous arrest of a man suspected of planning human bomb attacks on Russians in Paris. Now, even this relatively comforting illusion entertained by the axis of weasels has been destroyed:

'"After last year's arrests we thought we were dealing with a group planning bomb attacks on Russian interests, and possibly supplying false papers, money and lodgings to Chechens," an investigator said. "It now seems a cell around the Benchellali family was trying to manufacture chemical and biological weapons for attacks around Europe." '

This follows an impressive story in yesterday's Observer which reported a network of bombers planning attacks on Europe. The paper said there was 'a major war being fought, bitterly and secretly, in cities from London to Warsaw, from Madrid to Oslo. It pits the best investigative officers in Europe against a fanatical network of men dedicated to the prosecution of jihad both in Europe and overseas...Previously seen as a relative backwater in the war on terror, Europe is now in the frontline. 'It's trench warfare,' said one security expert. 'We keep taking them out. They keep coming at us. And every time they are coming at us harder.'

Indeed. This is the sobering, if terifying, reality. It makes no difference whether western countries are fighting honourably alongside the US or despicably trying to appease the forces of terror. War has been declared on the west, period. The only question is whether it chooses to fight back.

One fact in particular leaps from the Observer's account of an extensive network of Islamic terrorist cells built across Europe since 9/11. It is that London is its epicentre. Key quote:

'Britain is still playing a central logistical role for the militants, with extremists, including the alleged mastermind of last year's bombings in Morocco, and a leader of an al-Qaeda cell, regularly using the UK as a place to hide. Other radical activists are using Britain for fundraising, massive credit card fraud, the manufacture of false documents and planning. Recruitment is also continuing. In one bugged conversation, a senior militant describes London as 'the nerve centre' and says that his group has 'Albanians, Swiss [and] British' recruits. He needs people who are 'intelligent and highly educated', he says and implies that the UK can, and does, supply them.'

If the Tories are looking for a stick with which to beat Tony Blair, why don't they call an emergency debate on the fact that his government has done nothing to close down London's continuing key role in the global terror factory?

A pause to send a big thank you to all the readers who take the trouble to post replies to my diary entries and articles. I read these debates with considerable interest, and am very grateful to you all for your contributions.

Some of these comments, however, I find offensive or otherwise objectionable. I believe in letting a thousand posters bloom, even though from time to time I have to hold my nose. However, I will not allow this site to be a vehicle for people who break the law; nor will I allow it to be hijacked by people who have no interest in contributing to a sensible debate and thus ruin it for others. Such posts will be deleted, both from the diary and the articles site.

It seems I may not be the only person in the world to think that, notwithstanding his undoubted prowess at the Dispatch Box, Michael Howard's Hutton tactics are dubious. Peter Oborne reports in tonight's Evening Standard that the Tories are only going hard for Tony Blair now 'because they think Lord Hutton will let the Prime Minister off. They want to get their retaliation in first'. Yesterday's Observer, while pointing up Blair's predicament, nevertheless also shone a less than flattering light on the Tories' tactics:

'In electrifying exchanges over the Commons dispatch box, Tory leader Michael Howard highlighted testimony given to Hutton nearly three months after the Far East tour. Sir Kevin Tebbitt, the Permanent Secretary of the MoD, had revealed Blair himself chaired the meeting which decided the strategy for naming Kelly. So had Blair authorised the exposure or hadn't he? "Either the Permanent Secretary or the Prime Minister is not telling the truth," Howard intoned ominously.

'It was not quite the killer blow it seemed. Hutton may never rule on whether the bizarre strategy of encouraging journalists to guess Kelly's identity from clues provided by the MoD equated to leaking. And he may not conclude that such exposure led Kelly to slit his wrists. The question of whether anyone lied about events afterwards is, strictly speaking, also beyond his remit.

'But Howard has gambled that, with the truth still buried in a confusing blizzard of Whitehall memos until Hutton reports, the first side to tell a simple, gripping version of what happened will drown out the rest. "They're trying to pre-set the agenda so that, when Hutton reports, the things that people are talking about will be ones they've flagged up beforehand," said one senior Labour MP.'

The Tories seem to have decided that the tactic is to declare Blair to be a liar at every opportunity and that the main issue from Hutton is whether Blair lied (to which the Tories apparently already know the answer). If so, this is a prize bit of opportunism that leaves a very bad taste. The only area where Blair seems to be vulnerable is over what he said on that plane journey to the assembled hacks. It is far from clear, however, that the full facts will show that Blair was economical with the actualite.

But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that he was. So what? So he misled the media. Since when was that grounds for impeachment? Haven't the Tories misled the media, ever? And why is this supposed to be the most important issue, for goodness' sake? The real issues are these. Did he take the country to war on a lie -- from the evidence to Hutton and everything else, no; did he force the intelligence service to sex up that wretched dossier -- from the evidence to Hutton, no; did he cause Dr Kelly to kill himself --from the evidence to Hutton, we are none the wiser why Dr Kelly did kill himself, but the idea that a man who was tough under pressure did so because his name was made public (an eventuality of which he had been duly warned and expected) is ludicrous. And anyway, why shouldn't he have been named? His behaviour had been out of order.

The real point for the Tories, though, is this. Going for Blair in this way is bad, both in terms of principle and politics. It's bad because by trying to pre-empt Hutton in this way, they have demeaned themselves when the issue demands a statesmanlike approach. It's bad because -- however hard they try to draw a distinction between their support for the war on Iraq and their criticism of Blair's behaviour -- they are punching a guy who is on the ropes principally because he did what was right in Iraq in the teeth of public opinion that has lost its marbles over the whole issue. By attacking Blair, the Tories are lending support to the appeasenik circus that is trying -- by bringing him low on this issue -- to undermine the whole war on terror.

And it's bad because by attacking Blair, the Tories are in effect backing the BBC. But the BBC, not Blair, is the prime villain in this drama. The BBC misled the country. The BBC levelled in effect the most serious charge that could be brought against a Prime Minister -- that he had sent troops into battle on the basis of a lie. It made this claim on the basis of one source, whose credibility it failed to check. It failed to check it because the story accorded with its own anti-war prejudice which was rampant throughout the Iraq war and subsequently. It betrayed its public service remit, as it does on a raft of issues where it cannot perceive its own loss of objectivity, not least in its endemic bias against the Tory party. Yet the Tory party is effectively lining up with the BBC against Blair. For if the issue is that Blair lied, then the real lie that is being put about -- that despite a few 'minor' errors in Andrew Gilligan's Today story, it was basically true -- becomes validated.

The Tories have got themselves into this ludicrous position of lining up with the BBC because they have failed to think this thing through from principle and have gone pre-emptively for the opportunistic jugular. In any event this is bad politics because their quarry may escape, making them look stupid to boot. They should think through their strategy again. Meanwhile, a period of silence from them on this matter, until the facts are actually established, would be welcome.

More evidence, if such is needed, that the government is in an immensely serious jam over tuition fees. The higher education minister Alan Johnson now says that further 'refinements' are possible on the package of benefits for poorer students. Yet when the bill was published last week, the government line was that the offer was final and unalterable and non-negotiable and that there would be absolutely no more goodies on offer so don't even bother raising it, comrades. But now they're talking of further sops -- er, refinements.

Clearly they have realised the gamble hasn't paid off. Education -- or to be more precise, the other kind of class war -- is Labour's real 'Clause Four', the shibboleth of shibboleths at the very core of Labour's belief system. Without that bedrock belief in penalising merit and levelling down -- sorry, 'social inclusion' -- Labour really does stand for nothing. So it's not surprising that the majority of the revolting Labour MPs aren't budging. Nor will they, unless the government gives way on the principle of variability, which ministers say is totally and utterly sacrosanct. So unless the backbenchers bottle out, Tony Blair is facing defeat on a flagship policy. If that happens, he will be a political dead man walking.

How long do you give him on variability?

Fine piece by Stephen Pollard on the Robert Kilroy-Silk affair. Stephen exposes the hypocrisy of the illiberal establishment in swiftly turning Kilroy-Silk into an unperson for his remarks that Arabs were 'suicide bombers, limb amputators and women repressors', while doing zilch about the current outpouring of Jew-hatred and Judeophobia. This is not to condone Kilroy-Silk's now notorious article in the Sunday Express. Even given the fact that it was a reprint which apparently excised the point made in the original that he was attacking not Arabs but Arab states, it still displayed ignorance about Arab civilisation and was wrong to generalise in the way that it did.

But for heaven's sake -- as Ibrahim Nawar, head of Arab Press Freedom Watch, has said, much of what Kilroy-Silk said was simply the truth. Here is what Nawar said:

'"I fully support Robert Kilroy-Silk and salute him as an advocate of freedom of expression. I would like to voice my solidarity with him and with all those who face the censorship of such a basic human right. I agree with much of what he says about Arab regimes. There is a very long history of oppression in the Arab world, particularly in the states he mentions: Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, as well as in Sudan and Tunisia.

'These regimes are not based on democracy and their legitimacy comes from military dicatorships or inherited systems. The basic right of an individual to voice his or her opinion is not granted in any kind of form in the Arab world. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, there have been seven Saudi editors sacked from their jobs for criticising the regime since March 2002. In Algeria, we are currently fighting 70 defamation cases against journalists who spoke out against the state.

'I would also agree with Mr Kilroy-Silk's comments on the oppression of women by totalitarian Arab states. Women in Saudi Arabia even have to struggle for the right to walk unaccompanied in the street or to drive a car. It is worth remembering, however, that there are individual Arabs who do work hard to defend human rights and one cannot make a blanket generalisation about Arab people. We support Mr Kilroy-Silk's comments specifically in reference to Arab regimes because we are against the oppressive policies supported by rulers in the Arab world.

'I condemn the decision to axe his programme and call for the BBC to reinstate him forthwith. Indeed, the treatment of Mr Kilroy-Silk is very worrying because it indicates that censorship is now taking place in liberal, Western countries like the United Kingdom. These countries should instead be setting an example to the oppressive Arab regimes that violate freedom of expression on a daily basis.'

An utterly balanced, objective and fair assessment from an Arab. Now look at what our own illiberals are saying, in particular Trevor Phillips. head of the Commission for Racial Equality -- which actually reported Kilroy-Silk to the police -- who is well on course to become the Joe McCarthy of the British left.

'Mr Phillips called on the former Labour MP to “learn something about Muslims and Arabs” and use some of his “vast earnings” to support a Muslim charity. “Then I would say he has been properly contrite,” he said.'

Phillips, who has said the BBC should never employ Kilroy-Silk again, has of course been silent over Judeophobic outbursts, such as that by Tam Dalyell against the 'cabal of Jewish advisers' around Tony Blair and President Bush; or the BBC TV Newsnight discussion which followed, which concluded there was indeed a 'tightly-knit' group of Jews in the US which was having an undue and malign influence over its foreign policy, illustrated by a graphic claiming a spider's web of Jewish influence acompanied by suitably sinister music; or indeed, the now countless articles alleging sinister Jewish power controlling Britain, America and the world.

Nor will Phillips presumably have anything to say about the disturbingly (and not for the first time) offensive article by Faisal Bodi in, of course, the Guardian. Revealingly, Bodi attacks Kilroy-Silk for taking Salman Rushdie's side, when he had the sentence of murder pronounced on him, in a ' debate that was wrongly characterised as free speech versus censorship'. He then says: 'Suffice it to say that neither Kilroy-Silk nor anybody else would have been allowed to say the same thing in our national newspapers about black people or Jews.' Black people, maybe; but it's open season on the Jews, not least by Bodi himself, author of a previous Guardian rant in which he said Israel should not exist, and many other inflammatory, hate-inciting attacks on Israel.

In today's article, he delivers himself of the following remarkable statement:

'The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, must decide if a prosecution for incitement to racial hatred is warranted...And, given Goldsmith's perception in the Muslim world as pro-Israeli, Britain's Muslims are not holding their breath that he will initiate a prosecution against someone writing for a proprietor with similar political leanings.'

'Pro-Israeli'? 'Similar political leanings'? To my knowledge, Lord Goldsmith has never uttered a syllable about Israel. What Bodi means is that he is a Jew; as is Richard Desmond, proprietor of the Express. Will Trevor Phillips demand that Bodi never be employed again by any newspaper? Will he demand that the Guardian donate to a Jewish charity to show its contrition? Or will he, like the rest of our dhimmi establishment, continue to indulge bigots, Judeophobes and hypocrites as long as they are Muslims and the Jews are the targets?

The British government's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, has said that global warming is a more serious threat to the world than terrorism. His remarks are utter balderdash from start to finish and illustrate the truly lamentable decline of science into ideological propaganda.

Sir David says the Bush administration should not dismiss global warming because: 1) the ten hottest years on record started in 1991 2) sea levels are rising 3) ice caps are melting and 4) the 'causal link' between man-made emissions and global warming is well established.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. There is no such evidence. The whole thing is a global scam. There is no firm evidence that warming is happening; even if it is, it is most likely to have natural, not man-made causes; carbon dioxide, supposedly the culprit, makes up such a tiny fraction of the atmosphere that even if it were to quadruple, the effect on climate would be negligible; and just about every one of the eco-doomster stories that curdle our blood every five minutes is either speculative, ahistorical or scientifically illiterate.

To take a few examples from Sir David's litany.

1) Sea levels are rising. As this article explains, this claim is not the result of observable data. Like so much of the global warming industry, it is the result of frail computer modelling using dodgy or incomplete data. It is therefore not an observed value, but a wholly artificial model construct. Furthermore, the data fed into the computer is drawn from the atypical North Atlantic basin, ignoring the seas around Australia where levels have remained pretty static. And anyway, as this article explains, sea level rises have nothing to do with warmer climate. Sea levels rose during the last ice age. Warming can actually slow down sea level rise.

2) Ice caps are melting. Some are, some aren't. Some are breaking up, as is normal. But some are actually expanding, as in the Antarctic where the ice sheet is growing, as this article points out. The bit of the Antarctic that is breaking up, the Larsen ice-shelf, which has been causing foaming hysteria among eco-doomsters, won't increase sea levels because it has already displaced its own weight in the sea.

3) The hottest years on record started in 1991. Which records? The European climate in the Middle Ages was two degrees hotter than it is now. They grew vines in Northumberland, for heaven's sake. Then there was the Little Ice Age, which lasted until about 1880. So the 0.6% warming since then is part of a pretty normal pattern, and nothing for any normal person to get excited about.

4) The causal link is well established. Totally false. It is simply loudly asserted. Virtually all the scare stuff comes from computer modelling, which is simply inadequate to factor in all the -- literally-- millions of variables that make up climate change. If you put rubbish in, you get rubbish out.

That's why this week's earlier eco-scare story, that more than a million species will become extinct as a result of global warming over the next 50 years, is risible. All that means is that someone has put into the computer the global warming scenario, and the computer has calculated what would happen on the basis of that premise. But -duh! -the premise is totally unproven. The real scientific evidence is that -- we just don't know; and the theories so far, linking man, carbon dioxide and climate warming. are specious. There's some seriously bad science going on in the environmentalist camp.

After Kyoto, one of the most eminent scientists involved in the National Academy of Sciences study on climate change, Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at MIT, blew the whistle on the politicised rubbish that was being spouted. Since his article was so significant, I reproduce it in full here:

'Last week the National Academy of Sciences released a report on climate change, prepared in response to a request from the White House, that was depicted in the press as an implicit endorsement of the Kyoto Protocol. CNN's Michelle Mitchell was typical of the coverage when she declared that the report represented "a unanimous decision that global warming is real, is getting worse, and is due to man. There is no wiggle room."

'As one of 11 scientists who prepared the report, I can state that this is simply untrue. For starters, the NAS never asks that all participants agree to all elements of a report, but rather that the report represent the span of views. This the full report did, making clear that there is no consensus, unanimous or otherwise, about long-term climate trends and what causes them.

'As usual, far too much public attention was paid to the hastily prepared summary rather than to the body of the report. The summary began with a zinger--that greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise, etc., before following with the necessary qualifications. For example, the full text noted that 20 years was too short a period for estimating long-term trends, but the summary forgot to mention this.

'Our primary conclusion was that despite some knowledge and agreement, the science is by no means settled. We are quite confident (1) that global mean temperature is about 0.5 degrees Celsius higher than it was a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have risen over the past two centuries; and (3) that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose increase is likely to warm the earth (one of many, the most important being water vapor and clouds).

'But--and I cannot stress this enough--we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to carbon dioxide or to forecast what the climate will be in the future. That is to say, contrary to media impressions, agreement with the three basic statements tells us almost nothing relevant to policy discussions.

'One reason for this uncertainty is that, as the report states, the climate is always changing; change is the norm. Two centuries ago, much of the Northern Hemisphere was emerging from a little ice age. A millennium ago, during the Middle Ages, the same region was in a warm period. Thirty years ago, we were concerned with global cooling.

'Distinguishing the small recent changes in global mean temperature from the natural variability, which is unknown, is not a trivial task. All attempts so far make the assumption that existing computer climate models simulate natural variability, but I doubt that anyone really believes this assumption.

'We simply do not know what relation, if any, exists between global climate changes and water vapor, clouds, storms, hurricanes, and other factors, including regional climate changes, which are generally much larger than global changes and not correlated with them. Nor do we know how to predict changes in greenhouse gases. This is because we cannot forecast economic and technological change over the next century, and also because there are many man-made substances whose properties and levels are not well known, but which could be comparable in importance to carbon dioxide.

'What we do is know that a doubling of carbon dioxide by itself would produce only a modest temperature increase of one degree Celsius. Larger projected increases depend on "amplification" of the carbon dioxide by more important, but poorly modeled, greenhouse gases, clouds and water vapor.

'The press has frequently tied the existence of climate change to a need for Kyoto. The NAS panel did not address this question. My own view, consistent with the panel's work, is that the Kyoto Protocol would not result in a substantial reduction in global warming. Given the difficulties in significantly limiting levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a more effective policy might well focus on other greenhouse substances whose potential for reducing global warming in a short time may be greater.

'The panel was finally asked to evaluate the work of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, focusing on the Summary for Policymakers, the only part ever read or quoted. The Summary for Policymakers, which is seen as endorsing Kyoto, is commonly presented as the consensus of thousands of the world's foremost climate scientists. Within the confines of professional courtesy, the NAS panel essentially concluded that the IPCC's Summary for Policymakers does not provide suitable guidance for the U.S. government.

'The full IPCC report is an admirable description of research activities in climate science, but it is not specifically directed at policy. The Summary for Policymakers is, but it is also a very different document. It represents a consensus of government representatives (many of whom are also their nations' Kyoto representatives), rather than of scientists. The resulting document has a strong tendency to disguise uncertainty, and conjures up some scary scenarios for which there is no evidence.

'Science, in the public arena, is commonly used as a source of authority with which to bludgeon political opponents and propagandize uninformed citizens. This is what has been done with both the reports of the IPCC and the NAS. It is a reprehensible practice that corrodes our ability to make rational decisions. A fairer view of the science will show that there is still a vast amount of uncertainty--far more than advocates of Kyoto would like to acknowledge--and that the NAS report has hardly ended the debate. Nor was it meant to.'

As Professor Philip Stott wrote in the Wall Street Journal on April 2 2001:

'"Global warming" was invented in 1988, when it replaced two earlier myths of an imminent plunge into another Ice Age and the threat of a nuclear winter. The new myth was seen to encapsulate a whole range of other myths and attitudes that had developed in the 1960s and 1970s, including "limits to growth," sustainability, neo-Malthusian fears of a population time bomb, pollution, anticorporate anti-Americanism, and an Al Gore-like analysis of human greed disturbing the ecological harmony and balance of the earth.

'Initially, in Europe, the new myth was embraced by both right and left. The right was concerned with breaking the power of traditional trade unions, such as the coal miners -- the labor force behind a major source of carbon-dioxide emissions -- and promoting the development of nuclear power. Britain's Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research was established at the personal instigation of none other than Margaret Thatcher.

'The left, by contrast, was obsessed with population growth, industrialization, the car, development and globalization. Today, the narrative of global warming has evolved into an emblematic issue for authoritarian greens, who employ a form of language that has been characterized by the physicist P.H. Borcherds as "the hysterical subjunctive." And it is this grammatical imperative that is now dominating the European media when they complain about Mr. Bush, the U.S., and their willful denial of the true faith.'

Go figure.

In the paper that brought you Osama bin Laden as this week's star columnist (see below), today's Guardian diary describes yours truly as 'stridently loopy'. Apparently this is because I wrote about the link between cannabis and psychosis.

I know, I know; don't all laugh at once. They can't help it, the poor dears.

According to the Telegraph diarist, the Guardian has been in a bit of a flap over the latest columnist who burst onto its pages this week, one Osama bin Laden. One or two of the comrades appear to feel that publishing the latest (alleged) bin Laden rant might have gone just a teeny bit too far. So what did the west's public enemy number one actually say? He urged jihad against the 'Zionist-crusader chain of evil' and declared that Baghdad had been occupied 'under the guise of the search for weapons of mass destruction'.

Yup, sounds like a regular Guardian columnist to me.

Two events in the last twenty-four hours indicate that this country has finally flipped. First there was the Royal coroner giving credence to a set of conspiracy theories about the death of Diana which until that moment had been confined to sad internet freaks who have nothing better to do than recycle ever more loopy ideas about the demise of the Princess of Wales. Now, thanks to the coroner, they've become something to be taken seriously enough to investigate. The result is that even if the police duly report there is nothing in any of them, even more people will be completely convinced that St Diana was murdered by the British secret service acting on the direct instructions of Prince Charles, President Bush, the Pope, the Association of Landmine Manufacturers and the Abertillery male voice choir.

Then the media went berserk after it was revealed that Downing Street had made a late submission to the Hutton inquiry after close of play. There was immediate feverish speculation that the Prime Minister's office had tried to rebut the testimony of Sir Kevin Tebbit, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, which is popularly expected to finish off the PM as a liar -- an expectation being promoted not least by the un-opportunist man of principle Michael Howard, who duly went onto the attack at Prime Minster's Questions.

So what if Downing Street had rebutted the impression left by Sir Kevin? Could it be, perhaps, that this impression may have been wrong because the facts were incomplete? In vain did Mr Blair protest that the remarks he made on the plane after David Kelly's death -- which Sir Kevin's evidence is said to have contradicted -- had to be taken as a whole, and that such discussion should wait until Hutton had actually reported.

Good grief -- wait to hear the facts first before jumping to conclusions? What a very strange and antiquated view. No chance of that when he has already been condemned by the media and the Tory party as effectively guilty of murdering Dr Kelly, and when there is nothing but foot-stamping impatience at the tiresome delay before stringing him up. Surely he hadn't just lied, which of course we all know to be true, but tried to manipulate Hutton! Surely he had broken Hutton's own rules about submitting evidence! Surely Hutton had broken his own rules!!!

So great was the foaming hysteria that Lord Hutton had to break off from writing his wretched report to issue a statement. to calm everyone down. In it, he says lots of people -- including Andrew Gilligan and the Kelly family -- made submissions after close of play and no, they didn't want these submissions to be made public either. So what was all the fuss about?

These instant reactions founded on ignorance and spite, this spontaneous but infectious hysteria, this widespread suspension of rationality, have come to characterise British public debate since the death of Diana herself. The country now apears to believe in lunatic conspiracy theories, that patently flawed news reports actually tell the truth if they accord with people's prejudices, and that the free world is run by people who would go to war on a self-serving whim, even at risk to their own political survival.

This country needs to lie down in a darkened room with a wet towel on its head.

After the apparent triumph in bringing Libya in from the cold comes a disturbing indication that the axis of terror may be expanding in another direction. Iran and Egypt are apparently moving towards patching up the rift between them that occurred after Egypt made peace with Israel in 1978. The advantage to Iran -- at the very centre of the terror industry -- in seeking to end the stand-off with Egypt is obvious. Iran is trying to forge closer links with all its Arab neighbours, a strategy that should ring further loud alarm bells in the west. But Egypt's motives, given it is supposed to be well-disposed towards the United States, are more ambiguous. The Americans appear to think this particular cup is half-full rather than half empty:

'A U.S. official cautiously welcomed the idea of a rapprochement, suggesting a U.S. ally like Egypt could help nudge Iran to take actions Washington wants to see as well as provide another window on Tehran. "We're so well established in playing the bad cop (with Iran) that it always helps to have good cops," said the official, who asked not to be named. "If they can play the good cop, that leaves us free to play the bad cop but also to have the benefit of hearing what the Iranians have to say." '

Hmmn. A tad optimistic, surely, given the fact that despite the peace treaty with Israel, Egypt is not a 'good cop' at all but a major purveyor of antisemitic libels and incitement to hatred; and it also does nothing to prevent the steady supply or arms smuggled in from Egypt into Gaza to arm Palestinian terror. Reported remarks by its foreign minister, Ahmad Maher, merely confirm such deepening unease:

'Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmad Maher said in Cairo on Sunday that Cairo considers the issue of Camp David as belonging to the past, stressing that Egypt is now eager to promote ties with the Islamic Republic, IRNA reported. Maher, in an interview with IRNA and the Central News Bureau, said Egypt considers the case of the Camp David Accords as closed, stressing that the interest of Tehran and Cairo today is in the promotion of mutual cooperation.

"I don't think using the issue of Camp David will be useful, because it does not exist anymore and is merely a thing of the past," he said. "There have been many changes and I believe that this case between Iran and Egypt has already been closed... What exists now is the interest of Iran and Egypt to work with each other."

'...Maher highlighted the need for Iran and Egypt to struggle together for the establishment of justice in the occupied territories of Palestine, and for promoting peace and stability in the Middle East. "Therefore, there is no reason to stop because of what does not exist anymore and has become part of the past," he said. "What is important is that we will continue our assistance to Palestine and we know that Iran will also help the Palestinian people."

Isn't it time to rethink the assumption that Egypt is on our side?

The most specific allegation yet, on WorldNet Daily, that Iraq's missing WMD are buried in Syria:

'A relative of Syrian President Bashar Assad is hiding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in three locations in Syria, according to intelligence sources cited by an exiled opposition party. The weapons were smuggled in large wooden crates and barrels by Zu Alhema al-Shaleesh, known for moving arms into Iraq in violation of U.N. resolutions and for sending recruits to fight coalition forces, said the U.S.-based Reform Party of Syria. The party, based in Potomac, Md., regards itself as a secular body comprised of Syrians who want to see the country embrace "real democratic and economic reforms."

'One weapons-cache location identified by the sources is a mountain tunnel near the village of al-Baidah in northwest Syria, the report said. The tunnel is known to house a branch of the Assad regime's national security apparatus. Two other arms supplies are reported to be in west-central Syria. One is hidden at a factory operated by the Syrian Air Force, near the village of Tal Snan, between the cities of Hama and Salmiyeh. The third location is tunnels beneath the small town of Shinshar, which belongs to the 661 battalion of the Syrian Air Force.

'The nephew of Zu Alhema al-Shaleesh, Assef al-Shaleesh, runs Al Bashair Trading Co., a front for the Assad family involved prior to the war in oil smuggling from Iraq and arms smuggling into the country. Al-Bashair has offices in Damascus, Beirut and Baghdad.'

True? Who knows. But it fits with what we know about Syria; and it fits also with a story in last week's Los Angeles Times which reported:

'Al Bashair Trading Co. participated in the smuggling of millions of dollars worth of sophisticated arms and equipment to Saddam Hussein for three years prior to the Iraqi leader's overthrow. Al Bashair executives met with North Korean firms before the war began, according to the Los Angeles daily. The paper's three-month investigation included the translation of 800 signed contracts found in the Al Bashair Trading Co. office shortly before U.S. troops entered Baghdad.

'Just prior to the U.S.-led effort to oust Hussein, SES International Corp. signed at least 50 contracts to supply weapons and gear to Iraq, the Times said, including 1,000 heavy machine guns and up to 20 million rounds for assault rifles. Not all the weapons were delivered, but some may still be in use by terrorists battling the U.S. occupation forces, the newspaper said.'

Maybe we'll only find Saddam's WMD when -- if --Bashar Assad's regime is no more.

Another stunning example of the abject failure of the war against Iraq. An Israeli delegation is preparing to visit Libya to conclude a peace treaty with Colonel Gaddafi. Nor is this all:

'Meanwhile, in comments published Tuesday, Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi was quoted as saying he is ready to compensate Libyan Jews whose properties were confiscated. He also said he is prepared to allow Libyans to travel to Israel, according to Arab press reports'.

Yes, I know some caution is in order here before we expect Col Gaddafy to start singing the Hatikvah. He may be a duplicitous hound, his surrender of WMD may be a trick and he may intend to continue his terror-sponsoring ways. But the fact is he wouldn't have got to this point at all over his WMD or these overtures to Israel if the coalition hadn't done the business in Iraq. Yes, Libya is only one piece in the jigsaw of terror, and the others are going to be much more difficult to dislodge. But it is still startling evidence of the success of the strategy. Expect to read little about this, therefore, in Britain's objective media.

What price now the British government's craven cosying-up to the Syrian prime minister Bashar Assad? The idea, put about by HMG, that if his tummy is tickled hard enough he will turn from being a major sponsor of world terror and vicious antisemite into Nelson Mandela on a camel is blown apart by the interview in today's Telegraph. In this, he refuses to follow Libya's example and get rid of his WMD. He also has the gall to say that Israel should give up its nuclear weapons first, and to complain of Israel's 'aggression' towards Syria-- when the only reason Israel has nukes is to defend itself in the last resort against Syria and other Arab states which have been trying to destroy it for half a century, and the only military action Israel has ever taken against Syria is in self-defence. In other words, same old rogue state, same old axis of evil for the forseeable future. Now Mr Blair's carrots have predictably failed to do the trick, let's see if America has the gumption to use the stick it is threatening.

I normally enjoy Mark Steyn's witty columns, and think he usually writes a lot of horse-sense. But today, I'm afraid, this has deserted him in his Telegraph article about 'Martin's law', the Today programme listeners' proposal for a householder to take any action he wanted to defend his property. The effect of such a law -- inspired by popular feeling over the jail sentence imposed on farmer Tony Martin who shot dead one burglar and wounded another -- would be to allow people to kill burglars.

The suggestion is reprehensible. It should never be permissible to kill anyone unless one's own life is in danger. That does not mean a householder shouldn't be able to take proportionate measures to defend himself or his property; and indeed, the law allows people to do just that. What it does not allow them to do is use disproportionate means. Killing someone if he is threatening your own life is justifiable. Hitting a burglar over the head with a candlestick to disable him ( I know, I know, too much Cluedo) might be proportionate, depending on the circumstances. Firing a shotgun at someone and killing him simply because he is burgling your home is disproportionate. Killing a burglar when he is fleeing anyway is murder. Tony Martin actually lay in wait for burglars and shot them as a deliberate act, even though they were about to scarper. That is not self-defence. It is deliberate killing. The Today proposal amounts to rule by lynch-mob.

Mark Steyn boasts that American householders like himself can leave their property unlocked because would-be burglars know they may get blown away if they try to break in. Terrific. What he doesn't say is that there are regular incidents in the US of innocent relatives or bystanders being mown down by his trigger-happy compatriots, who mistakenly assume that a door closing in the middle of the night when cousin Hank uses the lavatory means a prowler is at large. Nor does Steyn refer to America's gun culture which takes scores of lives every year.

Alas, so loud is the howling of the mob over the Martin case that Michael Howard -- the Tory leader who, ahem, eschews opportunism for principle -- has now endorsed this idea of the death penalty for burglars. He says: '...people who are attacked in their own homes should be able to take action to deal with the problem.' Quite right; and there is certainly something very wrong about our upside-down 'human rights' culture which enables criminals to sue their victims, or sees police officers arresting upstanding individuals trying to prevent a crime while letting the real miscreant go scot-free. But the correct response to that is to abolish the Human Rights Act, not legalise murder. As Oliver Letwin said, when he was shadow Home Secretary: 'One doesn't want to create a society in which people are liable to be mown down if they enter a property'. How depressing that the Tories now seem to want to do exactly that.

Philip Johnston in the Daily Telegraph makes the obvious point in response to the government's proposal to give traffic wardens the power to hang us all on the nearest lamp-post if our front tyres come to rest for thirty seconds over a box-grid on the road:

'Indeed, there appears to be an inordinate number of people now "freeing up" the police to do other things. The civil enforcement officers will form up alongside hundreds of uniformed community support officers patrolling the streets, keeping an eye on low-level anti-social behaviour. Neighbourhood wardens have been appointed by local councils to patrol problem estates. Every major shopping centre now has a small army of security officers. You begin to wonder what it is that the police are being given the extra time to do.'

You do indeed;particularly since what the public wants is the police to return to their core function of keeping order on the streets. Instead, people who have none of the training, experience or discipline of the police are to be put on the streets, while the police are freed up to spend more time in their cars or behind their computer screens filling in government target indicators.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the government has now delayed for three months publication of its bill to abolish the Lord Chancellor and the Law Lords and introduce a supreme court. What a surprise. After all, it takes a wee while to work out all those irritating little details if you take a sledgehammer to a centuries-old constitution with absolutely no idea of what you are doing beyond a desire to wreck all that is ancient and integral to the country's political, legal and cultural fabric simply because it is ancient and integral.

It was this Lord Chancellor, after all, who gaily announced that he had abolished himself, only to discover that the constitution didn't allow him to do so. With this kind of learning curve, three months would seem to be a touch on the optimistic side. They'd be better off locking this proposal in a bottom drawer and then losing the key.

Good to see Michael Gove's column in the Times occupying the prestigious centre slot today, a position it richly deserves. He is on typically feisty form in pointing up the folly --nay, lunacy -- of the current obsession with rooting out prejudice and discrimination and the self-perpetuating industry this has spawned of bodies which have a vested interest in demonstrating that prejudice is always rampant and rising. In particular, as he says, the belief that the proof of discrimination rests in the measurement of outcomes is sloppy reasoning and bogus social science. The Equal Opportunities Commission's recent stricture that too few women are in top jobs fails to register that this is largely due to the choices that individual women make in balancing lives which have other priorities.

If only some of this common sense would begin to rub off on our politically-correct, discrimination-obsessed, ludicrous apology for a police service. According to the Sunday Times, it's now going to ask new recruits and officers seeking promotion to state whether they are straight, gay or bisexual in an attempt to boost the proportion of gay officers to 10%.

One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. Whatever happened to the right to privacy? This is unbelievably intrusive. No-one should be forced to declare their sexuality. No-one should be given or denied a job on the basis of their sexuality. We now have (thanks to the EU) a battery of draconian anti-discrimination legislation which is supposed to outlaw discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. Yet this is precisely what the police are now introducing -- on the grounds that this acts against prejudice!

The fact that there aren't many gay police officers (and who's to say 10% is representative? The number of gay people in the population is thought to be far less than this) does not prove the service is homophobic. It might mean that gay people don't want to be police officers; or it might mean that sexuality was never an issue in recruitment at all -- as should be, and until now, was, the case.

And what on earth, for heaven's sake, has sexuality got to do with being a good police officer? According to Martin Stuart, the chief police officer responsible for this nonsense: 'Sexual orientation isn’t a visible characteristic. We need to have a better understanding of the make-up of our workforce to ensure that our practices meet all our people’s needs.' What needs? The idea that it's only gay officers who would respond properly, for example, to attacks on gays is as offensive and anti-professional as it would be to say that only black officers can respond to crimes against black people, or female officers to crimes against women. Once you go down this road, you destroy a cohesive professional ethic and end up with a series of niche markets in uniform all glaring balefully at each other and encouraging, rather than discouraging, communal divisions, strife and, yes, prejudice.

Madness.

Excellent initiative by the Commons Select Committee on Public Administration in actually publishing a draft bill which would prevent political advisers giving orders to civil servants and from spending public money. The emasculation of the civil service and the usurpation of their role by jejeune political groupies 'advising' tyro ministers has done inestimable damage to the whole process of government, orderly and effective public administration and ordinary people's lives.

Giving Parliament control of the civil service, as the committee also suggests, would in addition be a step towards restoring the constitutional balance of power which Tony Blair's control-freakery has so badly deformed. (Anti-royalists are purring that this would remove the Royal Prerogative from the civil service; but as ever they miss the point, that in practice the Royal Prerogative has virtually nothing to do with the monarchy and everything to do with the government which uses it to further its own powers).

Indeed, the very fact that the committee has actually published a bill is a welcome sign that parliamentarians are beginning to flex their muscles against the executive. The fact that it has no chance of becoming law should not discourage them, or us. More, please.

He didn't say it! The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, appears to have rewritten his Christmas Day sermon following the advance leaking of his remarks to the Sunday Times on December 21. According to that paper, he was planning to use his sermon to criticise the detention without trial of Muslims in Guantanamo Bay and in British prisons, on the grounds that this sent a bad signal to Muslims that their faith was being targeted.

This provoked your diarist, among others, to blow a gasket the following day in my article, 'Moral Confusion at Canterbury', on the grounds that the ABofC was effectively appeasing terrorism. But when he actually delivered his sermon, he said nothing about this at all. The furthest he went on the Muslim front was to regret the French ban on Islamic headscarves, while he made no fewer than three references to current antisemitism.

So what gives? It's possible, of course, that the Sunday Times got its sermons in a twist, but given the specificity of the remarks it reported, this seems improbable. It is more likely that he or his minions floated those remarks to see what kind of reaction they'd get; and when they felt the fire on their faces, they retreated sharpish and rewrote the thing.

Certainly, by the time he got to his new year address the ABof C had done a 180 degree turn from his Sunday Times position. This is what he said:

'The continuing threat of terrorism makes us constantly fearful. We don’t know where the enemy is – and it is an enemy who is skilful and merciless and willing to risk everything. We may grumble at the constraints and checks - but part of us knows just why we move in this atmosphere of suspicion. Once you see the dreadful results of terrorism at close quarters, you can begin to appreciate why'.

In other words, he appeared to be actually endorsing the curtailment of civil liberties since 9/11. What a difference the new year appears to have made! But for those appeaseniks who fear the church may be going hard in the head at long last, never fear. The Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright, has said Messrs Bush and Blair acted 'like a bunch of white vigilantes going into Brixton to stop drug dealing'. And the Archbishop of York, Dr David Hope, said Tony Blair would have to answer to 'a higher authority' for his decision to invade Iraq.

So it's business as normal for the CofE.