Daily Archive

CNN:

Sen. Joseph Biden, the incoming chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he has invited Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify during three weeks of hearings in January about the Iraq war…

Aside from the fact that it often seems as if Secretary Rice has already spent half of her life “testifying”, clearly the Senator is convinced he’s on to a winner here. And of course the Secretary’s input is always useful. However, one question: Will the Senator assure us at least that it is really his idea . . . and not Lord Kinnock’s?

Letter to The Times, December 27:

Sir, The Archbishop of Canterbury is right to draw attention to the suffering of Christians in the Middle East but wrong to lay the blame for this at the feet of Western foreign policy.

The genocide, displacment and repression of Christians across the Muslim world is one of the great untold stories of the past 150 years. Were it more widely known it would explode the myth of Islamic tolerance of other faiths.

The Archbishop falls into precisely the intellectual trap which has long obscured the reality of Christian persecution under Islam: an unwillingness to risk offending Muslim leaderships reinforced by orientalist guilt for the West’s troubled past with the Islamic world.

PROFESSOR SHAUN GREGORY
Department of Peace Studies
University of Bradford

I made reference to those views from the Archbishop in an earlier post. What I am impressed by here is not just that Professor Gregory is an academic in a Department of Peace Studies and is willing to offer such an appraisal. Far more noteworthy, and in fact, perhaps, courageous — actually, likely far more courageous than anything said by the Archbishop of Canterbury in offering his powerful critiques — may well be the Professor’s willingness also to admit . . . he works at the University of  Bradford:

Facts and Figures - Profile 2005…

…The University of Bradford…

…About our students…

…Ethnicity
White - 43.2%
Pakistani - 30.7%
Not known - 8.5%
Indian - 7.3%
Asian other - 1.8%
Black African - 3.3%
Bangladeshi - 1.4%
Mixed - 1.6%
Other - 0.9%
Black Caribbean - 0.8%
Chinese - 0.5%
Black other - 0.3%

Indeed, assuming the Professor is a British citizen, let us not forget also that if he were instead American and offered such a view in the States . . . he might well also run the risk of having to cope with nuanced thinkers terming him ”un-American”.

Sky reports:

The Government reports it will create 40 so-called “respect zones” across Britain in an effort to tackle anti-social behaviour in society…

By the way, is one of them in Worcester? 

I ask that for a reason.  For imagine, women behaving that way in public?  Good God, it’s simply appalling.