Jackie Ashley interview in the Guardian

Mark Steyn in Macleans

Simon Heffer in the Telegraph
NB: A point of clarification in case of any misunderstanding arising from this article: the Daily Mail ran a 3000 word extract from Londonistan on May 20.

Brendan O’Neill in the New Statesman.

It is now clear that Israel was not responsible for the killing of the Palestinian family on the beach in Gaza last weekend (see the Jerusalem Post). It looks as if it was the Palestinians who had killed their own children by mistake. Shrapnel removed from the wounded Palestinians turned out not to be Israeli ordinance; there was no blast crater of the kind that would have been expected following a shell landing, while the evidence at the scene suggested instead a mine exploding from below; and all the shells fired from the Israeli gunboat had been fired significantly earlier than the disaster on the beach.

This was the incident, remember, that Hamas used as an excuse for its announcement that the ’truce’ with Israel was now over. So the reality of this episode was that the Palestinians killed their own children in some kind of accident (presumably involving explosives which they were intending to use to murder yet more Israelis), promptly blamed Israel for it and cynically used it as a pretext for a further campaign of mass murder.

So what’s new?

This latest libel, in the mould of the killing of Mohammed al Dura (almost certainly killed by Palestinian fire, as has been all but conclusively demonstrated in reconstructions by European journalists) and the ‘massacre’ of Jenin that was nothing of the kind, was once again uncritically swallowed and regurgitated by western media. Honest Reporting has a round-up of the way the incident was falsified by the Palestinian Authority and the western media all rushed to damn Israel over an incident on which they not only had no reliable information but where it was obvious from the start that the Palestinians’ claims were suspect, not least because of the way they obstructed attempts to inspect the evidence.

So what’s new?

Meanwhile, more than 100 missiles have been fired at Israeli towns from Gaza since the weekend. The Palestinians are using their own people as human shields by firing from densely populated areas, thus making it impossible for Israel to take out these firing sites without civilian casualties. The bombardment of Israel, however, has been all but ignored by the UK media; it is referred to only in passing, if at all, while the same media eagerly transmit a libel that demonises the target of this warfare. No country on earth would be expected to put up with such a bombardment of its citizens. Israel has no alternative but to take action in Gaza to stop it. Yet as soon as it does, the same media which eagerly regurgitates Palestinian lies and libels to demonise Israel while ignoring or minimising Palestinian violence against it will turn on Israel for defending itself.

Monstrous.

Last night: BBC Radio Five Live Anita Amand show

Today: BBC Radio 2 Jeremy Vine show, 1.30 pm approx

Tomorrow: LBC, Nick Ferrari, 9.05 am approx

BBC Radio Scotland, Scotland Live, 12.30 pm approx

I have been immensely touched and heartened by the steady stream of support and encouragement I have been receiving in response to my book Londonistan and my various articles and broadcasting appearances related to its publication. I am extremely grateful to everyone who has written. What is notable is that so many feel they are alone in thinking the way they do; but what is clear from such a reaction is that, on the contrary, there are many, many people who retain a strong sense of decency, conscience, and the ability to think straight, and who see very clearly what is going on and how it threatens our national survival. At a time when such people have effectively been politically disenfranchised, it is particularly important that they know they are not alone. In that spirit, I reproduce here a message I received today.

I just want you to know that its so incredibly refreshing to know that there is someone in public arena to speak for those of us, who are increasingly fearful of the cultural and moral erosion we see in this country, as a result of a 'multi-cultural' society. I have never felt so compelled to write or contact someone as yourself, ever, ever before, until today, because I have simply had enough.

It amazes me greatly that people who are meant to be seen as rational, intelligent and highly educated cannot (or perhaps are too fearful) see that there is a great difference between being a racist who still lives in the dark ages and wishes for Britain to remain a white Anglo-Saxon society and those who are advocates of a British cultural and national identity.

My parents were among the many Nigerians who were sent to Britain by their parents in the 1960s to gain an education. My father qualified as a pharmacist from Cardiff University and my mother studied sociology and social policy at Birmingham. They had my brother and sister here, before returning to Nigeria in 1976, where my younger brother and I were born. They stayed in Nigeria from 1976 to 1985, where both my parents were finding it increasing difficult to live and survive in a country where corruption was necessary to maintain a particular lifestyle.

I clearly remember when my parents told my siblings and I that we were coming back to Britain, as my father's old employer had given him a job in Luton to manage one of his chemist shops - I was so excited. I was finally coming to this great country that I had heard so much about.

Britain, the country where there was always a right and proper way of doing things, a democratic country that allowed for freedom of speech and expression but was still relatively grounded in its beliefs. A Christian country that allowed for the practice of other faiths. One in which where there were opportunities for all who sought it and were prepared to work for it, almost regardless of race and colour.

I went to a local state school, where we had assembly and sang hymns and the headmistress gave a closing prayer. Hymns and closing prayer?? That’s almost unheard of in many state schools now - and why? Multiculturalism and the completely misguided belief that it would cause offence to non-Christians.

I completely agree with you that the goverment, the establishment, even the Royal Family (Prince Charles, defender of all faiths) have been completely sucked into a situation where in the country trying to be all things to all men has given up it beliefs, its fabric, its everything and is bereft of anything. My children are certainly not being taught what it means to be British – gosh, it’s almost embarrassing to say 'I am British'. Teaching all children from an early age to be able to sing the national anthe, would probably provoke a national debate about why we should have an anthem that mentions 'O Lord our God', as it might offend our non-Christian bothers and sisters. The true goal would be completely pushed aside.

I am worried that my children are growing up in a society where there is no national identity and celebration of the British culture. I can definitely attest to the fact that this lack of identity is causing children of second, third etc generation of immigrants to be brought up with the beliefs and national identity of the country their parents or grandparents have come from. They view and will view themselves to be British only as far as their passport is concerned, but a Nigerian, a Ghanaian, a Pakistani or an Indian first and foremost. I am not saying that it is this lack of identity that is solely responsible for young British Muslims wanting to blow themselves and others up, but it certainly plays a large part. They see themselves as Muslim and Pakistani / Bangladeshi / Jamaican first. For some, ‘British’ does not even feature in their identity — hence why they are so able to do what they do and believe what they believe.

Look at America, a country many times larger than ours with people from every corner of the earth, yet they still manage to retain a sense of what it means to be an American, because they make no apology for trying to instil this identity from when one has to pass the citizenship test, to the ceremony and pledge of allegiance.

It amazed me greatly after the July bombing that the majority of the media and British, white public were so shocked that 'our' own people could do this. I certainly was not shocked. What this part of the country needs to realise is because of the promotion of multiculturalism, THERE IS NO LONGER AN 'US'. There now exist separate identities living under the umbrella of Britain/United Kingdom, but who certainly do not view themselves as British.

After the recent raid in East London and the growing likelihood that the police might not find anything, I felt a sense of dread that the 'undercover' extremist groups and Muslim groups who in public like to pretend that there isn't an issue to be worried about (of which there are many) would now be able to use this as a weapon to be fashioned against the police and government, in order to ensure that their activities continue to go undetected and to protect 'their own'. These groups and their leaders who appear in the media, are aware that there is a problem within their communities but as a result of lack of identity or togetherness to the country they live in, they believe that their loyalty belongs first and foremost to their own, rather than to this country.

They might not necessarily agree with those who commit these atrocities, but are more likely to pretend to the outside world that all is well within and try and resolve the issues themselves that report a brother or sister who they know is planning to commit a terrorist crime, because their loyalty belongs to them first and not to the Crown.

There are many second generation immigrants, who although born and bred in this country are feeling a sense of alienation from the country they chose to come and live in and were prepared to imbibe its culture as well as keeping the culture of their parents, because the country, in trying to be all things to all men, has lost its identity and all are left with a lack of belonging.

My parents and I and many black and ethnic groups have always voted for Labour out of a sense of history, but I can certainly tell you that this group are more and more feeling disenchanted with the government as it is they who have slowly helped to ensure the erosion of a national identity out of a sense of political correctness, which they looked to and wanted their children to imbibe.

The Conservatives are certainly missing a trick here - the country wants direction and a national identity to be proud of and not ashamed of; someone who won’t apologise for insisting that those wanting to become citizens must learn to speak English and to pledge allegiance to the Crown, must learn the history of the country and must be able to sing the national anthem. That Christianity is the national faith, for which we make no apology for, that children must and should sing hymns in schools and have prayers.

We should stop being scared and embarrassed for wanting to be proud to be British. If the white, indigenous people are embarrassed about their identity, what hope is there for the rest of us.

You speak for a larger group of people than you probably know.

Yesterday, BBC London News discussion with Masoud Shadjareh of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, followed by webchat.

Tomorrow at 1am PST: John Rothman US radio show

Sunday, between 10 and 11am, BBC TV Heaven and Earth show, discussion with Prof Hale Afshar of York University.

Today I appeared on Glenn Beck’s US radio show at approx 0915 EST.

This afternoon I am due to appear on Glenn Beck’s CNN Headline News show at 3.45pm EST.

The police raid in Canada which netted 17 Islamist terrorist suspects becomes more significant by the day. According to the National Post, the Canadians appear to have averted a major strike, thought to involve a plot to detonate a truck bomb to destroy a significant building and to open fire on a crowd in a public place — plus an allegation that one of the suspects wanted personally to behead the Canadian Prime Minister.

We learn that terrorist training camps were being run at an isolated site north of Toronto. Once again, the sense of déjà vu is overwhelming. In the UK, terrorist recruits were sent to train in the English countryside under the noses of British security forces who, when later challenged, said disingenuously that no-one had been breaking the law. Doubtless the Canadians too thought that such camps were merely a multicultural version of the boy scouts.

If the details emerging are true, it would seem that this haul of suspects has a significance extending far beyond Canada. They appear to have been part of an international conspiracy, demonstrating once again the global aspect of the jihad and the way in which, as a decentralised and endlessly mutating network of like-minded terrorists, it has spread like a cancer throughout the world.

The Australian reports:

The investigation into Canada's home-grown terrorism plot has been widened, with authorities looking for links between those detained in Canada and terrorist cells in at least six other countries. It has been established that two men from the US state of Georgia, who were charged this year in a terrorism case, had been in contact with some of the Canadian suspects via computer, according to a US law enforcement official. The other countries are believed to be Bangladesh, Bosnia, Denmark, Britain and Sweden.

Apparently the Georgia men travelled to Washington to shoot ‘casing videos’ of the Capitol and other potential targets. But the Canadian investigation appears to have started in — where else — Londonistan. The Wall Street Journal reports:

The October arrest of a London man who allegedly ran al-Qaeda-linked websites and distributed jihadist propaganda kicked off a multinational investigation that culminated in last weekend's arrests in Canada, U.S. law enforcement officials and counterterrorism experts say.

Younis Tsouli, who is being held on charges ranging from conspiracy to murder to terrorist financing, is suspected of involvement in a possible plot to attack Washington, and other militant activities. During the raid on Mr. Tsouli's home Oct. 22, Scotland Yard found a PowerPoint-like presentation on a computer showing how to make a car bomb, various bomb-making manuals and a digital video clip of Washington monuments. Federal law-enforcement officials now say that the digital movie, believed to be a surveillance video, was taken by one of two suspected Atlanta terrorists who was arrested and charged in March in the first part of a counterterrorism operation that resulted in the Canadian action.

And what else was Mr Tsouli apparently doing in the UK in addition to allegedly plotting to blow up Washington?

Mr. Kohlmann noted that Mr. Tsouli seemed to be particularly active in radicalizing non-Arab terrorists, whether they are English-speaking South Asian men or Muslim converts. This, he said, could allow al-Qaeda and other militant Islamist groups to greatly alter the profile of many of their operatives.

He was, it seems, radicalising people in Britain. Unnamed UK ‘security sources’ tell us that some 1200 terrorists — 1200! – are biding their time within the British suburbs. Any connection? So are our media’s finest jumping up and down about this UK connection to Toronto? Are they asking hard questions about the record of our intelligence service, which ignored this man’s activities —like so many others - for so long? Are you reading anything at all about this in the British media? Of course not. British intelligence is instead feeding the media with what they want to hear: that the root of the problem is the UK’s involvement in Iraq. Yeah, yeah - just like Canada, eh?

Now America faces the chilling realisation that while it has been convulsed for weeks over illegal immigration across its border with Mexico, a far greater threat is posed by its unpatrolled border with Canada — twice the length of the border with Mexico – which has one of the most liberal asylum and immigration policies in the world.

Jack Hooper, deputy director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, has admitted

that the CSIS could vet only about one-tenth of the immigrants from Afghanistan and Pakistan. In other words, apart from bare details, which themselves may be spurious, Canada knows nothing--not even current addresses--of approximately 18,000 immigrants from that part of the world who have arrived just in the last five years.

Sound familiar? Canada, America, Britain — the axis of feeble.

I appeared yesterday on the Jerry Doyle US radio show at 4.35pm EST.

Today I am appearing on the Laura Ingraham US radio show at around 10.30am EST.

The Times published an extract today from Londonistan here. The weekend before last, the Observer published an extract here, and on 20 May the Daily Mail published an extract(link not found but I’m working on it).

After the July bombings in London last year, a conviction settled in many quarters that the young Muslim men who turned themselves into human bombs to blow as many of their fellow citizens as possible to kingdom come had been radicalised by Britain’s participation in the war in Iraq. Last Friday night, Canadian police arrested 17 suspected Islamist terrorists who were said to have amassed enough explosives to have committed an atrocity three times the size of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

The similarities with Britain are striking — so much so that Jack Hooper, deputy director of operations for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, who on May 29 presciently warned the Canadian Senate defence committee of an increasing threat to Canada from home-grown terrorists added:

I can tell you that all of the circumstances that led to the London transit bombings, to take one example, are resident here and now in Canada.

How interesting. Because of course there is one difference between Canada and Britain. Although it has troops in Afghanistan, Canada has no troops in Iraq. Canada is not part of the coalition of the willing. Canada has refused to fight in Iraq. Indeed, Canada is one of the most liberal, politically correct, human rights obsessed, immigration-friendly, multicultural, appeasement–minded countries on the globe. Yet it was still included on al Qaeda’s list of targets for the jihad.

As an editorial today in the National Post remarked:

Because our government refused to fight in Iraq, and has postured against American ‘unilateralism,’ most Canadians liked to think Islamists would leave us alone. Now, everyone in Canada knows better.

Ummn...do they really? I think not. This mindset isn’t overturned by a little thing like demonstrable, literally explosive reality; good heavens, no. Plenty of room in Canada for further culturally suicidal delusions. We in Britain should know.

Incitement to riot – or worse -- on the MPACUK site after today’s arrests in East London?

If British intelligence is anything to go by, we can only hope the sleeping Muslims of East London will wake up and rise against the tyrrany [sic] being perpetrated against our youth in the name of combating terrorism.

When will such incitement be dealt with? How much longer will this be ignored?

Those who haven’t yet caught up with this should read in full the attempt by Charles Johnson, who runs the Little Green Footballs website which campaigns against Islamist fascism, to discover who used the Reuters email account to post up on his site a threat which ran: ‘I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut...’. The latest post in this saga can be found here (scroll down to 'Reuters death threat update 11'). It’s worth following every link from the beginning to note just who is in the frame here, and the extent of the truly demented ‘Zionist conspiracy’ theory emanating from Londonistan (Charles isn’t even a Jew).

As things stand, the Reuters connection still hasn’t been explained; someone is said to have been suspended from employment with Reuters but we don’t know who, or whether he/she was the person who issued the threat; and we still don’t know who the threat-poster was. Are Reuters employees talking about this? Can anyone there solve this mystery? And as things stand, seven days after LGF first reported the threat and eleven updates on, not one British mainstream media outlet has seen fit to mention any of this.

Gateway Pundit provides a riveting comparative exercise putting the casualty rate in Iraq in perspective.

The recorded Iraqi civilian fatalities (including insurgents, military, morgue counts, police, etc.) were down 16% (16% maximum) in 2005... 38% (48% maximum) less than 2003 (via Leftist anti-war site Iraq Body Count). If you take out the numbers from that horrible day in August 2005 when nearly one thousand panicked Iraqis were trampled or drowned near a Muslim shrine, the year shows striking progress compared to 2003 and 2004 with fatalities one third less than in 2004.

...John Hinderaker at Powerline adds this: A total of 2,471 service members have died in Iraq from 2003 to the present, a period of a little over three years. That total is almost exactly one third of the number of military personnel who died on active duty from 1980 to 1982, a comparable time period when no wars were being fought. Until very recently, our armed forces lost servicemen at a greater rate than we have experienced in Iraq, due solely to accidental death.

Do you recall that during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s there was any suggestion, from anyone, that our military policies were somehow disastrous due to fatalities among our servicemen--fatalities that nearly always exceeded those we are now experiencing in Iraq? No, neither do I.

...To further put things in perspective, Newsmax reported yesterday that...

Iraq Is Less Violent than Washington, D.C.

Using Pentagon statistics cross-checked with independent research, King said he came up with an annualized Iraqi civilian death rate of 27.51 per 100,000. While that number sounds high - astonishingly, the Iowa Republican discovered that it's significantly lower than a number of major American cities, including the nation's capital. ‘It's 45 violent deaths per 100,000 in Washington, D.C.,’ King told Crowley. Other American cities with higher violent civilian death rates than Iraq include: Detroit - 41.8 per 100,000; Baltimore - 37.7 per 100,000.

Yes, the violence in Iraq is dreadful. There’s a war on, whose intensity reflects the enormity of the stakes being played. The forces of Islamist fascism simply cannot afford to allow the forces of (relative) freedom and democracy to win. Unlike so many in the west, the Islamist fascists fully understand that a free, stable and prosperous Iraq will destabilise and help destroy tyranny in the entire region and its capacity to hold the rest of the world to ransom. An Iraq that slides back into that tyranny will help cement it.

That’s why the free world cannot afford to lose in Iraq. But it may do so, with untold consequences for all of us; and if it does, much of the cause should be laid at the door of those who, willing defeat from the very start for reasons of vicious political partisanship, ancient prejudices and modern loss of cultural nerve, have so distorted public perception – through decontextualising the casualty figures in Iraq, for example – that public support for this great fight has just drained away.

Yes, abuses such as occurred at Abu Ghraib and now maybe Haditha have had a profound effect too. But once again, the way these have been reported -- as if the behaviour of the US military has been as bad as, if not even wose then, the terror perpetrated by Saddam -- has played a major role in breaking the public's spirit. Abuses happen in all military conflicts. Soldiers fighting for the most noble of ends sometimes behave in appalling ways. It's reprehensible, and should be punished. But dwelling upon it obsessively, inflating or distorting what happened and equating such aberrations with systematic tyranny, are all fuelling an atmosphere of hysteria in the west and handing Zarqawi his most potent weapon. If we had behaved like this during World War Two, we would have lost it.

The attrition from the relentless propaganda of appeasement and defeatism is working. The peoples of the free world have been successfully demoralised. The poison is now endemic. Did you do a double-take at the figures given above? Point made.

A sobering but salutary and very necessary reminder of what happened to Jews in Arab lands before Israel was restored:

Today marks the 65th anniversary of the Farhud. Arabic for ‘violent dispossession,’ this is the word used to describe the infamous pogrom of June 1, 1941, against the Jews of Baghdad. In its wake, the Farhud left some 200 dead, 2000 injured, and 900 Jewish homes destroyed. It was the beginning of the end of the Jewish community of Iraq, a community that had existed for twenty-six centuries, preceded Islam by a thousand years, and once numbered over 125,000 souls. Today, not a single Jew is left in Iraq.

Read it all.

I was on BBC Radio Four’s Today Programme this morning talking about my book Londonistan, which is officially published in the UK by Gibson Square on June 15 (although copies of the UK edition should be available now. It was published last month in the US by Encounter). You can listen to it here. (0840)

Also today, I am due to talk about the book on American radio on the John Batchelor Show this evening.