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The UN will remain a negative force in the world as long as it allows itself to be Hijacked by Tyranny

For many the UN serves as the ultimate moral arbiter on the International stage. Regularly in debates on foreign affairs you can hear the resolutions and statements of the UN being invoked as if they carried the unquestionable authority of God. And yet the reality is that the UN operates a level of hypocrisy that is proving lethally dangerous for thousands of innocent victims all over the world. For while the world's democracies find themselves in the dock at the UN Human Rights Council, the worst atrocities are going uncommented upon while those Governments perpetrating them are legitimised and rewarded by the UN as they sit in Judgement of the Defence policies of the Governments of the Free world.

Indeed it is not simply the Foreign policy of democratic Governments that come under attack but their Domestic arrangements also. Time and time again the UN has witnessed motions from Islamic nations condemning the free press of the West accusing it of defaming Islam, this of course coming from the diplomats of countries whose State controlled media carry the most luridly anti-Semitic cartoons. And while the floor of the UN chamber is thrown open to those denying the Genocide in Darfur and attempting to silence NGOs that attempt to expose the truth about these atrocitie,s the UN congratulates itself on the wonderful job that its 'Peace' keeping forces in Southern Lebanon have done, hence why the Security Council has unanimously voted to extended their stay in the region. And yet the truth is that the UN forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) have acted as a blanket under which the genocidal Islamic terror organisation, Hizbollah, has re-armed to a level that puts their military capabilities on par with some States in the Middle East. Whereas in 2006, during its last assault on Israel's civilian population centres, Hizbollah had 14,000 fighters it now has 30,000 and whereas back then it had 15,000 rockets it now has 40,000 which, thanks to generous Syrian support, can now reach deeper into Israel than ever before. The very re-armament that the UN forces were sent to Lebanon to prevent has been so extensive that Hizbollah now has fortified military positions embedded in over 160 Lebanese villages.

Yet this kind of failure to be effective on the ground is nothing new or unusual for UN forces. While the 1994 Rwandan Genocide may be the most infamous example of UN troops standing by and looking on as the very people they had been sent to protect were slaughtered in their thousands, this is by no means the last example of such shocking complicity. Only just in August of this year did Rwandan and Congolese rebels rape over 200 wmen and children in Eastern Congo. After three weeks the UN peace keeping mission to the Congo has still failed to make any official Statement on the incident but the lack of comment on their part is nowhere near as damning as the fact that it was this very same mission that was posted in the area that they knew to be occupied by the rebels that stood back and failed to make any kind of attempted intervention in these shocking events.

Indeed even the most casual glance over some of the atrocities committed around the world in the past twelve moths reveals to just what an appalling extent the UN is failing to fulfill even the most basic elements of its own self proclaimed mission. Indeed under the Vienna Declaration all UN members pledged to defend human rights including the right to life. And yet.....

June 2009: Tehran dozens of protesters killed.

July: China troops fire on Muslim Wiga protesters 200 killed.

August: Russia two foreign aid workers killed in Chechnya with suspected Government complicity.

September: Yemen government bombs refugee camp killing 80.

October: Terrorists attack a Mosque killing the Iman and 14 others.

November: Philippines 57 opposition activists murdered.

December: Iran protesters met with live ammunition, beatings and arrests; 10 killed.

January: Pakistan 182 civilians killed in terror attacks.

February: Afghanistan Taliban attack kills 18 including medical workers.

March: Nigeria 500 Christians killed in religiously motivated attacks.

April: Kirghistan troops fire on demonstrators with 84 being slaughtered.

May: Libya executes 18 foreigners without proper trial.

The UN Human Rights Council reaction to all of these crimes? Silence!

And yet the emergency sessions and investigations that these violations failed to merit was exactly the response witnessed when Israel defended itself against the Gaza flotilla weapons smugglers; killing 9 self declared Jihadis with the HRC holding an urgent debate, issuing a condemnatory resolution and establishing yet another unimpartial investigation.

As long as the UN continues to allow itself to be used by the tyrannies and human rights abusers of the developing world against the Democracies and free societies of the West the UN will continue to act as a facilitator for supporting and legitimising the worst crimes perpetrated against human beings. If the UN is to have any hope as serving as a genuinely moral forum for the world's nations then those with terrible human rights records must be prevented from having any influence over the UN's processes and only those countries with authentic functioning Democracies should be given any real say over UN rulings. However for as long as the UN remains in its present form it will continue to serve for a tool for dictatorships to continue delegitimising and weakening the free world in the face of tyranny.

Once more Israel finds itself paying a bloody price for American ‘Peace’ dellusions

You really don't have to be an expert in the recent events of the Middle East to have been able to predict what might happen if yet another round of unwanted Peace talks was imposed on the Palestinians, but then Obama really is no expert. For Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority who is now well overdue in his electoral term, the status quo could hardly have been better. With a freeze on Jews building in the West Bank, Israeli security forces significantly pulled back in Palestinian areas, the Palestinian Economy experiencing unprecedented growth and copious amounts world sympathy, legitimacy and money all flowing in his direction, Abbas really has very little interest in seeking his rather cushy arrangement shaken up. No surprise then that Abbas set so many demands and preconditions before he would be so gracious as to even talk directly with the Israelis. Indeed at one point the Palestinian President's demands were essentially just setting the outcome of the negotiations before they'd even began, something which threatened them ever getting off of the ground in the first place.

Yet a general unwillingness to cooperate with negotiations is the least of problems with brash American attempts to impose negotiations on the two parties. Every round of so called Peace talks in the past has been marred by the murderous campaigns of Palestinian terror groups. And it didn't take miraculous levels of clairvoyance to foresee that the relative quiet Israelis and Palestinians have enjoyed in recent months would be brought to an abrupt end by so called Peace talks clumsily forced by Obama. Yet few could have predicted this intolerably familiar pattern of violence would be resurrected so soon.

Hamas however has wasted no time in attempting to derail even the slim hopes that these talks would succeed. Tuesday saw the grisly attack on an Israeli car near Hebron leading to the murder of the four passengers, including a pregnant woman. And the following day there was yet another shooting on an Israeli civilian vehicle in which two were badly injured. And while the media continues to peddle Palestinian excuses about Jewish settlements the reality is that Jewish settlers have seen normal life in their communities put on hold, the Israeli security measures formerly in place to protect them irresponsibly pulled back and now find themselves sitting targets for Palestinian terrorists desiring to foil attempts for peace.

What Hamas apologists in Britain and elsewhere will make of these attacks and the huge celebratory rallies that have accompanied them in Gaza is anyone's guess, although the capacity of Israel's enemies in the West to attempt to justify the murder of civilians and attack Israel's attempt to defend its population never ceases to amaze. And no doubt also of amazement to many, if only the media were to cover it, would be how in recent days the streets of the Palestinian city Ramallah has witnessed large crowds of Palestinians actually demonstrating against the Peace talks. A dark secret for such news agencies as the BBC.

How much more violence these ill conceived attempts for peace will unleash is hard to tell, but we can only hope that it will not be seen on the same horrendous scale witnessed with Oslo and Camp David.

The failing Presidency of Barak Obama: America comes to its senses sooner than expected

We all remember where we were the night of Obamas spectacular landslide victory. And we all remember the images of frenzied crowds in celebration from Chicago to Bangkok that were flashed across our screens, when the celebrity of Barak Obama outstripped that of even Madonna. Not since Mao's cultural revolution have masses been seen chanting the name of a politician with such genuine enthusiasm. Yet looking back it seems that those revelling in America knew almost as little about what Obama had in store for them as those inexplicably elated Thais did. And it has been the people of America rather than the people of Thailand who have felt the brunt of the Obama presidency. Perhaps they should have been suspicious even then, when crowds in far off countries who knew next to nothing about American politics were joining them in the almost messianic spectacle.

It is safe to say that for most Americans Barak Obama, now on his 42% approval rating, has proven to be one disappointment after another. For many it was the point at which the Democrats forced through a radically unpopular and unamerican bill of health care reform that made them stop and rethink. For others it was the growing realisation that Obama was inflating the size and influence of the State beyond proportions ever thought acceptable by American standards while this along with the failed stimulus plan saw the nation slip into ever more alarming levels of debt. Meanwhile in the minds of many American's there was a dim sense that Obama lacked their appreciation of their nation's greatness or understood the threat that radical Islam posed to this, while his diplomatic bumblings on the world stage were the cause of growing embarrassment. The charismatic leadership that had initially drawn so many in now seems to be failing Obama and giving way to an image of inexperience, weakness and even a lackluster attitude tinged with just enough arrogance to make it truly too unpalatable to watch.

And in the background of all of this has been stifling unemployment and ongoing bad news about the state of an economy that seems to refuse to recover. Not surprisingly then Democrats are starting to panic about the approaching November mid-terms in which many commentators are seriously discussing the possibility of Obama's party losing control of both Houses.

This weekend over 300,000 conservatives descended on Washington for a rally to demonstrate the nation's support for its Service Men and Women but also, and perhaps more significantly, to call for America to return to its founding values and principles. Heavily present throughout the ranks of this self-confident gathering of the Right were members of the avowedly anti-big State Tea Party movement, whose emergence is a sign of just how far the Obama presidency has pushed certain sections of the American public. And yet dissatisfaction with the reign of Obama is by no means the exclusive territory of fringe groups, indeed no doubt to Obama's dismay Martin Luther King's daughter even agreed to speak at the rally. Today you don't have to speak to many Americans before you come across those who optimistically, if a little naively, gave Obama their vote in 2008 and have no intention of repeating the same mistake this time around.

UCL and Radical Islam: sleepwalking towards apocalypse

UCL in the heart of the salubrious Bloomsbury was founded by the 18th century thinker Jeremy Bentham as a beacon of academic and religious tolerance. Yet surely even for an institution whose genesis is found in the principle of freedom of conscience and expression there comes a point where the question must be asked whether a fundamentalist approach to this matter will not ultimately bring about its own demise and the demise of freedom and tolerance itself? How much intolerance can be tolerated before this noble goal has canceled itself out? How much freedom of expression can you allow to those who agitate against freedom of expression before one day you find those very same voices silencing yourself? Enter Malcolm Grant, Provost of UCL.

Grant is a man for whom there seem to be no limits on what can be said. Such is his die hard devotion to freedom of speech that if assassins were outside his office plotting how to kill him it doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to picture Grant asking them if they'd like to sit down and have something to drink while they discuss.


For although UCL's Provost has washed his hands of all responsibility of that minor Umar Farouk Abdulmatalab affair (the former president of UCL's Islamic society who attempted to blowup himself and a passenger jet over the skies of Detroit one Christmas day) the fact is UCL has been playing host to some of the most serious pro-Jihad Islamists that modern Britain has to offer. And as has now become all too apparent; when it comes to Islamic radicals the British are starting to look like connoisseurs.


And while Abdulmatalab may be the most high profile of UCL's Jihadi alumni he is far from the only young Muslim to have been radicalised in the walls of this hallowed institution. As a report released earlier this year by the Centre of Social Cohesion revealed in recent years UCL's Islamic society has invited an entourage of some of the most extreme and bigoted clerics they could get to come and preach to Muslim students on campus.


This is a phenomenon that UCL's authorities have shown themselves to be utterly complicit in. Later this month UCL will be playing host to the National Ramadan Conference, which judging by those invited to speak will be nowhere near as a prestigious event as its title might imply. However if raving anti-Semitism, Homophobia and anti-Westernism is your thing then this conference will be one not to be missed.


There's Jalal Ibn Saeed to look forward to who has described Jews as selfishly only caring about themselves while enslaving non-Jews who they believe to be damned, or there's Zahir Mahmoud who has declared his support for Hamas and martyrdom while courageously voicing his opposition to the British army and the western notion of free speech. But of course the jewel in the crown of this line up of hate has to be Uthman Lateef who is affiliated with the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir which the Government is currently looking into having made illegal. Lateef has also preached hatred against Homosexuals and championed the Muslim conquest of Europe. Yet probably the most exciting thing Lateef is ever known to have said in public is his prediction that the Devil will come from the Jews of Isfahan, accompanied by 70,000 of them by all accounts.
These are the kind of views that Malcolm Grant believes should be given a platform at his University.


And while Grant harbours delusions of being a warrior for free speech genuine warriors of Islamic holy war will be coming to recruit at UCL; something that both Boris Johnson and the British Army have been prevented from doing in the resent past. Meanwhile the prospects of an institution happy welcoming those who wish to destroy the values that it stands upon seem about as rosey as a civilization that does the same.

Britain must deal with the Anti-Semitism among its Muslim Community

British politicians are always paying lip service to the urgent need to combat the rise in anti-Semitism, such kitsch events as Holocaust memorial day are often the favourite time wheel out such lackluster calls against that hatred that thankfully still remains so absolutely beyond the pale in western society. Yet if our leaders really cared about turning back the tide of the growth of Jew hatred then they would stop trying to fool themselves and the rest of us about where the problem is really coming from. The truth of the matter is that most Jews in Britain today do not live in fear of attack from members of the BNP or white supremacist groups, but rather from another minority community which itself claims to be suffering persecution - the Muslim community.

Needless to say that coming out with the above statement is almost guaranteed to be met with accusations of Islamophobia. Yet just as Jews can not always be protesting frank conversations about Israel with accusations of anti-Semitism so too it just is not good enough for the Islamic community to hide behind the charge of Islamophobia every time its conduct is up for debate. The facts must be allowed to speak for themselves without any attempt to drown them out with shrieks of feigned offence and false indignation. And as the expert in Modern Anti-Semitism Professor Robert Wistrich points out; the statistical evidence shows that British Muslims commit violent acts anti-Semitism at almost ten times the rate of the non-Muslim population. And after that what more is there to be said?

Of course apologists will argue that it is only to be expected that as Muslims they will show concern for their co-religionists in Gaza and the West Bank and that this naturally expresses itself as an anti-Israel sentiment. But when Muslims are heard chanting Islamic death chants about the Jews and seen carrying placards about the Holocaust at anti-Israel demonstrations in London can it really be denied that there isn't something more sinister at work?

And while these things will inevitably be dismissed as the work of extremists it should be remembered that the work of British Muslim extremists have already had deadly consequences for Jews in recent years. After all in 2003 two British Muslims heeded the call of a third British Muslim ; Abdullah al-Faisal, to go and murder Israelis by blowing themselves up in a Tel Aviv music bar. And indeed it was the British Muslim Omar Sheikh who was the mastermind of the kidnapping and beheading of the Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi in 2002.

While these events are of course the work of intensely radicalised extremists it seems that Jew hatred filters down to rather less adventurous sections of Britain's Islamic community also. In recent days the story has come to light of a young man in Walsall who had adopted a Jewish appearance as part of his desire to convert to Judaism but found himself the subject of constant abuse from local Muslim teenagers until finally a group of seven of them set upon him and beat him badly.

If Britain's political leaders truly mean what they say about anti-Semitism then they would confront this issue directly and make clear to the leaders of the British Islamic community that this culture of hate must be brought to an end. No accusations of Islamophobia. No excuses about Israel. No threats about the risk of pushing their youth into the arms of extremists. The virulent anti-Semtism rampant in sections of Britain's Islamic community must end.