Thursday, June 9, 2016

PCG's Reliance on Melanie Phillips

This is the 1800th post for this blog. Thanks to all readers for inspiring me to carry on.

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One right wing columnist PCG tends to listen to a lot is Melanie Phillips. Since 2000 PCG's writers have often quoted her. Phillips is a British right wing columnist. As far as I know there is no indication that PCG has ever contacted her. Phillips certainly cannot be blamed for PCG's exploitation of her writings in their articles. This post is not about Phillips, it is about PCG's use of her writings.

Gerald Flurry praised her as "an excellent British commentator". Her book, Londonistan, is mentioned approvingly as "scorching". Ron Fraser praised her as "feisty", a "paragon of British political incorrectness" and an "admirably politically incorrect commentator". Brad MacDonald praised her as "brave", a "clear thinker" and "one of the bravest, smartest, most rational and articulate journalists of our age." The late Ron Fraser praised one article of hers as "[one] of the most scathingly articulate reviews of the Kosovo situation" (February 27, 2008). Her picture is featured on page 14 of the March-April 2004 issue of PCG's recruitment magazine, The Philadelphia Trumpet. Clearly PCG's leaders take Phillips' views most seriously.

Since 2000 PCG's leaders have quoted her in about 47 articles. (Sometimes the quotations from Phillips are used in more than one article.) Phillips has been cited by Brad MacDonald (nine articles including an article co-written with Richard Palmer), Gerald Flurry (seven articles), Joel Hilliker (seven articles), the late Ron Fraser (five articles and one booklet), Stephen Flurry (five articles), Robert Morley, Zrinka Peters, Gary Rethford, Graig Millar, Richard Palmer (co-written with Brad MacDonald), Sam Livingston, Kieran Underwood (one article each) and in anonymous articles (eight articles). Phillips' 2006 book, Londonistan, is mentioned six times.

This post is not about Phillips. This is about PCG and noting that the PCG leadership have decided to place great trust in this columnist and have exploited her writings to make PCG's writers seem knowlegible about political affairs.

Noticeably they never seem to criticize anything that they quote from this columnist. The way they quote this columnist shows that the PCG leadership have chosen to place a lot of trust upon this columnist.

There are certain themes regarding PCG's use of Phillips' writings.
  • Phillips is cited in articles bemoaning the state of the family in Western society. 
  • Phillips is cited as one who condemns political correctness, which in PCG's case seems to be a euphemism for liberals and the left in general. 
  • Phillips is cited in PCG articles which scare monger about Muslim immigrants, particularly after the release of her 2006 book, Londonistan. PCG has a long history of demonizing and vilifying Muslims. 
  • In one article Brad MacDonald approvingly quotes her criticism of those who praise the late Princess Diana (February 21, 2008). 
  • Gerald Flurry once quoted her to inaccurately insinuate that some of the Assad regime's weapons came from Saddam Hussein's Iraq (December 2012).
  • Kieran Underwood quoted her to scare monger about transgender people (February 5, 2016).
Below is a compilation showing some of the many times PCG's leaders have chosen to cite Melanie Phillips. In some articles Phillips is quoted more often than is cited here but this list shows just how often PCG's writers use her writings in their articles.

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If the war against boys is still raging, the one against men might well be over. Melanie Phillips wrote in the June 10 London Spectator, “One of the many mysteries of our age is why the British establishment has declared open season upon half the human race. Men are systematically robbed of their reputation, their children and their purpose in life.… If what is routinely thrown at men was directed at any of our fabled victim groups—women, black people, gays—society would stand condemned of the most vile prejudice, discrimination and even persecution. Yet the vast majority of people either do not know how the dice are being loaded against men or, if they do have an inkling, think deep down (or not so deep) that, well, they really do deserve it.” Ms. Phillips pointed readers to England’s justice system as an example of what she means: “The courts are institutionally biased against husbands, ousting them from their homes on the slightest pretext, stripping a man of his children and his assets even if his wife has gone off with a lover and his own behavior has been exemplary.” The courts, Phillips says, routinely assume that mothers are better parents while fathers are the ones who desert families or abuse women and children. (The War Against Men, September-October 2000.)

In the London Times, February 6, 2000, Melanie Phillips said that Tony Blair’s government “is obsessed with ‘modernity’ and contemptuous of history and tradition” (emphasis mine). Former U.S. President Bill Clinton had the same contempt for history. It is a dangerous problem—the kind of thinking that destroys nations! (Gerald Flurry, Contempt of History, January 2002. Also used in Gerald Flurry, America’s Achilles Heel—and Germany, May 2005 and Gerald Flurry, “A Law of History” (Part 4), February 18, 2008.)

However, as commentator Melanie Phillips points out, “Studies show most pregnant teenagers previously obtained contraceptive advice and even visited the GP more frequently than other young people in order to obtain it. … What is lacking is not advice about sex or contraception but any moral context” (Daily Mail, London, June 28). ...
As Phillips rightly states, “Curbing the alarming rise in child and teenage sex will only happen … when the adult world accepts, once again, that children need guidance and protection which it has a duty to provide” (ibid.). (Zrinka Peters, Failing Sex Education, August 2002.)

Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips reinforces the fact that the bull’s-eye of anti-Semitism rests directly on the West. “The [recent] Jerusalem conference [on anti-Semitism and the media] heard chilling presentations about a phenomenon barely discussed in Britain: the virulent Arab and Muslim hatred of the Jews. This goes far beyond even the desire to finish off Israel as a Jewish state. Anti-Jewish hatred plays a crucial role in the fanatical jihadism that now threatens all of us in the West, pouring out in television programs, newspapers and religious sermons throughout the Arab and Muslim world, and amounting to a new warrant for genocide. …
“These sick outpourings are not so much religious or even fundamentalist doctrines as rooted in a fanatical totalitarian ideology.
“As [Holocaust expert Professor Yehuda] Bauer observed, the driving aim is the Islamic dictatorship of the world. Realization of this utopia necessitates the destruction of the foundation creeds of Western culture, Judaism and Christianity—and especially Israel, the supposed personification of Western global power-lust, which was planted as an incubus on Arab soil as a result of the Holocaust” (Spectator, March 22).
As that article correctly states, the new direction of anti-Semitism is pointed at Western culture. Phillips concludes, “The result is the defamation of a people, the greater prospect of its destruction, and the disastrous failure of the populations of Britain and Europe to understand properly the threat that all free peoples now face” (ibid.). (Gary Rethford, Death by Prejudice, August 2003.)

Here is what Melanie Phillips wrote in London’s Daily Mail, February 9: “Mr. Blair himself, though, whether he is brought down or struggles on, is not the main casualty here. The really lethal damage has been done to the alliance against terror and the ability of this country to defend itself.
For if neither politicians nor secret intelligence are now to be believed, there will be no agreement to fight any battles that still lie ahead. This is, of course, what the appeaseniks have been working toward.” ...
“The BBC has a duty to occupy the dispassionate center ground. The problem, however, is that it has shifted that center ground sharply to the left. But because it thinks that still is the center, it cannot grasp that its own ‘impartial’ standpoint is actually deeply partisan. This is a terrifyingly closed thought system, which repels all objections. (Gerald Flurry, The Deadly Left-Wing Media, March-April 2004.)

As Melanie Phillips wrote for the Daily Mail, “If neither politicians nor secret intelligence are now to be believed, there will be no agreement to fight any BATTLES THAT STILL LIE AHEAD” (February 9). (Stephen Flurry, The Media War Against the United States, March-April 2004.)

[A picture of Melanie Phillips is featured on page 14 of the March-April 2004 issue of PCG's recruitment magazine, The Philadelphia Trumpet.]

Thanks to lax immigration and social benefits policies, Britain has attracted and become home to swaths of outrageously radical Islamists, who, in the words of commentator Melanie Phillips in her book Londonistan, find its capital city “to be more hospitable and tolerant than any other place on the globe.” (Report: Britain Harbors Anti-Semitism, September 15, 2006.)

In her scorching book Londonistan, author Melanie Phillips documents the unbelievable extent to which the UK has become home to the most extreme elements of Islamism in the world. Because of the freedom with which they are able to operate in Britain, numerous radical groups—including arms of al Qaeda—have planted their headquarters or significant operations there. Says Phillips, “UK-based terrorists have carried out operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Morocco, Russia, Spain and the United States.” ...
Melanie Phillips explains, “This bargain, or ‘covenant of security,’ had been the dirty little secret at the heart of the British government’s blind-eye policy” (op. cit.). ...
In this prophecy, Britain at some point recognizes its sickness. This is certainly happening in some British circles already, as commentators like Melanie Phillips and Daniel Johnson send out warnings to the public. At present, they are minority voices. But even among Britons at large, a majority now believe, for example, that Britain’s immigration laws should be stiffer. (Joel Hilliker, The Sickness in Britain’s Heart, November-December 2006.)

“[I]f such immigrants turned out to be themselves harmful to Britain, they could not be thrown out if they claimed that they faced further harm where they were being sent—which many promptly did. … Thus a Taliban soldier who fought the British and Americans in Afghanistan was granted asylum because he said he feared persecution—from the Western-backed government in Kabul” (Melanie Phillips, Londonistan). ...
Instead, as Phillips put it, “British society presented a moral and philosophical vacuum that was ripe for colonization by predatory Islamism” (ibid., emphasis mine). (Joel Hilliker, How Britain Learned to Hate Itself, November-December 2006.)

Numerous radical groups—including arms of al Qaeda—have planted their headquarters or significant operations there. Says Melanie Phillips in her book Londonistan, “UK-based terrorists have carried out operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Morocco, Russia, Spain and the United States.” (Sharia Law Spreading in Britain, December 4, 2006.)

“Some commentators have languidly observed that in another age this would have been regarded as an act of war,” Melanie Phillips wrote in the Daily Mail. “What on Earth are they talking about? It is an act of war. … What clearly does belong to another age is [Britain’s] ability to understand the proper way to respond to an act of war” (March 28). ...
Iran’s affronting the Royal Navy with a brash kidnapping is a remarkable symbol of the decimation of what was once the pride of British power. As Melanie Phillips asked: “What on Earth has happened to this country of ours, for so many centuries a byword for defending itself against attack, not least against piracy or acts of war on the high seas?” (op. cit.). (Joel Hilliker, Without a Fight, June 2007.)

In the May 13 edition of the Spectator magazine, the feisty Melanie Phillips asked, “Just what was that ghostly and unfamiliar noise we heard over the weekend?” She answered her own question, “Good heavens—it was the sound of a country’s political leader actually exercising leadership.”
The subject was Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
The occasion drawing Phillips’ comment was a national leader declaring a daring, non-politically correct stance for his nation against one of this world’s most rapacious dictators. The field of interest was one of Australia’s most beloved and entrenched institutions, the hallowed sport of cricket. (Ron Fraser, A Rare Example of Leadership, July 30, 2007. Later reused in Ron Fraser, Rare Leadership, October 2007.)

British commentator Melanie Phillips likened the feverish euphoria for Obama sweeping America to the irrational euphoria, which she coined Diana Derangement Syndrome (DDS), that swept Britain after the death of Princess Diana:
The main characteristics of DDS are the replacement of reason, intelligence, stoicism, self-restraint and responsibility by credulousness, emotional incontinence, sentimentality, irresponsibility and self-obsession. Political icons to which this disorder gives rise achieve instantaneous and unshakeable mass followings of adoring acolytes because they grant permission to the public to suspend the faculty of judgment and avoid making any hard choices, indulging instead in fantasies of turning swords into plowshares .… (Brad MacDonald, Obama and the Abdication of Reason, February 21, 2008.)
In the middle of 2007, the realists within Western society had reason to celebrate. Finally, among all of the simpering, mealy-mouthed, feminist, politically correct claptrap that passes for political dialogue in this disturbed 21st century, a loud bell rang. Melanie Phillips, that paragon of British political incorrectness, heard it, and she did a double take. “Just what was that ghostly and unfamiliar noise we heard over the weekend?” she asked in the May 13 edition of the Daily Mail. Answering her own question, she retorted, “[I]t was the sound of a country’s political leader actually exercising leadership.”
Phillips was referring to John Howard, Australia’s prime minister at the time, ordering his nation’s cricket team to pull out of a scheduled tour of Zimbabwe, and even threatening to suspend the players’ passports if the sport’s governing body did not abide by his decision.
At the time, Phillips had recently returned from a visit to Australia. Concerning her impressions of the political scene in the Antipodes, she made the observation, “Coming from Britain to Canberra to interview members of the Australian government is like leaving a fetid malarial swamp to be douched with fresh cold water from a mountain spring.” She praised these politicians for simply being “on-side in the great fight for civilization against barbarism” (Spectator, March 16, 2007).
One would have to wonder what Ms. Phillips’s impressions would now be should she revisit Australia under its new center-left government. (Ron Fraser, Australia--Where to Now?, Chapter 10, 2008.)

In essence, the effect on Australian society of the tribal antics allowed on the floor of Australia’s national House of Parliament, added to the public apology by Prime Minister Rudd to an Australian minority for what is at base a leftist myth, will have results no different to those feared by commentator Melanie Phillips following the archbishop of Canterbury’s declaration on deferring similarly to a minority culture within Britain.
In her daily blog for the Spectator, Phillips incisively declared that “without a strong religious core providing the moral, ethical and cultural ballast, the society it has been instrumental in forming becomes intensely vulnerable to collapse and colonization. The defense mounted by politicians becomes an empty shell …” (Feb. 8, 2008). (Ron Fraser, Australia--Where to Now?, Chapter 2, 2008.)

Commenting on the efforts by the politically correct police to obliterate common sense, Melanie Phillips in a blog for the Spectator observed: “Last night’s Moral Maze, on which I am a panelist, discussed the Home Office guidelines which advise officials not to call Islamists Islamists or Islamic terrorists Islamic terrorists but to use instead euphemisms based on the premise that the jihad against the West is not a war of religion but merely ‘violent extremism’ and that the jihadis are not jihadis but ‘criminals.’ So gripped is the Home Office by the belief that speaking the truth to Muslims will ‘alienate’ them that its Orwellian attempt to manipulate the language descends into pure farce when it suggests that even the word ‘Islamophobia’ should be avoided since this can be misunderstood as a slur on Islam and perceived as singling out Muslims” (Feb. 7, 2008). ...
Phillips’s reaction to this effort at the mind control of the masses: “I found the program deeply troubling, indeed terrifying, since it revealed so much deep denial of the blindingly obvious among otherwise intelligent people who on this subject appear to be impervious to facts and to reason itself” (ibid.). ...
As Melanie Phillips observed, “If people really are incapable of seeing that what we have to fight is religious fanaticism operating through a strategy of mind-bending intimidation and coercion, and instead succumb to that very intimidation and coercion, then we are indeed finished” (op. cit.). (Ron Fraser, Australia--Where to Now?, Chapter 6, 2008. Also see Ron Fraser, Generation Gap, February 12, 2008.)

One of the most scathingly articulate reviews of the Kosovo situation was rendered by British journalist Melanie Phillips in her Sunday blog for the Spectator magazine.
Phillips, in her uniquely cutting style, wrote, “The decision by Britain, America and certain other European countries to recognize Kosovo as an independent state is mind-blowingly stupid and suicidal and of a piece with their obvious determination to capitulate in the war for civilization. It is a rotten decision …” (February 24). This admirably politically incorrect commentator condemns the illegality of the Albanian majority’s declaration of independence thus: “Serbia is a properly constituted democratic country. To recognize the validity of such a secession is to undermine the principle of a country’s right to determine its own composition. [I]nternational law … explicitly recognizes Serbian authority over Kosovo and upholds a state’s right to its own sovereignty. It opens the way for any other breakaway movement to do the same, both in the Balkans and around the world” (ibid.). Thus Phillips endorses Friedman’s view, which any mind committed to plain common sense should be able to recognize.
Clearly, a dangerous precedent has been set.
But Phillips makes one other profound observation about the Kosovo declaration of independence: “It asserts that religion matters more than nationality. … It says in effect that nationality is not the glue that must bind people of different creeds together, but religion …” (ibid.). (Ron Fraser, Kosovo—Last of the Balkan Dominoes, February 27, 2008.)

Under this act, citizens cannot be forced to come before sharia court, but if they do, they are required by law to obey its dictates. Melanie Phillips explained the significance of the measure a few months ago (emphasis mine):
One law for all is the very basis of legal and social justice and is the glue that binds a society together. Law is the expression of a society’s cultural identity. If there is no one law, there is no one national identity and therefore no society but instead a set of warring fiefdoms with their own separate jurisdictions. (Sharia Courts Open for Business in Britain, September 15, 2008.)
Nevertheless, this failed appeasement policy still exists in many forms across Europe today. The most egregious offender is Britain. For years the Brits lived under a “covenant of security”—a sinister, tacit agreement with a burgeoning population of local radicals to look the other way in exchange for no attacks in Britain. In her book Londonistan, Melanie Phillips calls this “the dirty little secret at the heart of the British government’s blind-eye policy.” The covenant was exposed for the sham it was on July 7, 2005, with coordinated suicide bombings in London. (Joel Hilliker, Soft Europe, Hard Europe, September 3, 2008.)

This is happening in both Israel and Britain on a small scale, where clear thinkers like Caroline Glick and Melanie Phillips are working furiously to awaken their peoples to the enemies in their midst, as well as their respective governments’ failure to confront the problem. Hosea’s prophecy tells us that both Britain and Israel will soon wake up to the danger in their midst! (Brad MacDonald, Is Britain Being Conquered From the Inside?, December 11, 2008.)

Much of this violence has gone unreported in the British media. Melanie Phillips, however, has posted some chilling eye-witness accounts. She quotes one of her readers as saying, “From my own experience as an identifiably Orthodox Jew, since the beginning of the operation in Gaza I have had things shouted at me like ‘death to the Jews’ and ‘Hamas should finish where Hitler left off’ along with the usual spitting and angry looks which I’ve become accustomed to.” (Gaza War Exposed Britain’s Sickness, January 19, 2009.)

In her usual style, Melanie Phillips went for the jugular on that one. Cuttingly, she challenged, “So let’s get this straight. The British government allows people to march through British streets screaming support for Hamas, it allows Hizb ut Tahrir to recruit on campus for the jihad against Britain and the West, it takes no action against a Muslim peer who threatens mass intimidation of Parliament, but it bans from the country a member of parliament of a European democracy who wishes to address the British Parliament on the threat to life and liberty in the West from religious fascism” (Spectator, February 11). (Ron Fraser, Why So Many Disasters?, February 16, 2009.)

Yet despite Islam’s burgeoning armies—and ignoring the brave cries of commentators like Melanie Phillips and of many other frustrated British citizens—the government lacks the courage and character to admit the blatant failure of its liberal approach to immigration and to deal conclusively with the problem. Intoxicated on the syrupy elixirs of political correctness, tolerance, appeasement and multiculturalism, the British establishment fails to see what so many Britons see: that a deadly enemy is growing in their midst. (Brad MacDonald, Invasion From Within, February 2009.)

What about the appalling breakdown of family life in the West—particularly the U.S., Britain and Israel? In the Spectator, Melanie Phillips described how she has been warning repeatedly over the past 20 years about the “fragmentation of family life,” how mass fatherlessness has created “deserts of depravity and highly damaged children” who are now “damaged parents,” and “that the collapse of social and moral controls” would destroy “the most fundamental values of civilized behavior.” As for Britain today, Phillips concluded, “The truth is that it is all far, far too late. Britain has simply undone the fabric of civilized life” (Nov. 14, 2008). (Stephen Flurry, Are We Living in the Last Days?, February 2009.)

Britain’s walk-out was little more than a sanctimonious, glancing, meaningless display of disapproval. Melanie Phillips made this point superbly on her blog at the Spectator on Tuesday (emphasis mine throughout):
Geneva provided a platform for Ahmadinejad—on the anniversary of Hitler’s birthday and the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day—to pose hideously as a champion of human rights while implicitly denying the Holocaust once again and defaming Israel—which he has repeatedly threatened to wipe out .… And what was the mass walk-out other than an utterly hypocritical act of gesture politics? After all, it’s not as if anyone can have been surprised at what Ahmadinejad said. Every single person who turned up to hear him had a pretty good idea of what he was going to say. His appearance did not reduce the Geneva conference to a farce: It simply exposed it for the farce that it already was and rubbed the participants’ noses in it. ...
As Phillips noted, “The fact is that even if Ahmadinejad had not turned up, the Geneva conference was always going to be a travesty of human rights. With Iran as its vice chair, Libya as the chair of the ‘Main Committee’ running the conference and Cuba acting as rapporteur, how could this ‘anti-racism’ meeting ever be anything other than [an obscene gesture of contempt] by some of the world’s leading tyrannies to the cause of freedom and true human rights?” (Brad MacDonald, Durban II and the Walk of Shame, April 23, 2009.)

The gradual surrender of British law enforcement to antisocial forces is perhaps nowhere more chillingly illustrated than in Britain’s capitulation to hate-filled Muslims. Throughout the recent Gaza war, public demonstrations of condemnation against Israel and support for Hamas filled the streets of London. Israel’s embassy in Kensington was the object of daily violent siege. “Certainly, there have been anti-Israel protests around the world,” wrote Melanie Phillips. “But in Britain, not only have these been particularly violent but the authorities have done nothing to stop such incitement of hatred” (Wall Street Journal, January 19).
At least once, police demanded that pro-Israel demonstrators put away their Israeli flags so as not to be “inflammatory”—even while allowing some Hamas demonstrators “to dress up as hook-nosed Jews pretending to drink the blood of Palestinian babies.” “One recent video clip,” Phillips wrote, “captured the astonishing spectacle of Muslims stampeding through London’s West End hurling traffic cones and other missiles at the police, all the time shrieking ‘Allahu akbar’ and ‘cowards.’ The police ran and stumbled backward rather than standing their ground and stopping the rampage” (emphasis mine). (Joel Hilliker, Want to Know What a Former Superpower Looks Like?, April 2009.)

As British commentator Melanie Phillips once observed, “Throughout the West … [the] political class is incapable of disinterested statesmanship because it is no longer sure in what—if anything—it still believes” (Daily Mail, May 14, 2007).
Of Australia’s immediate previous prime minister, Phillips noted, “Mr. Howard, in sharp contrast, is entirely free of such absurd and crippling cultural cringe. He believes in Australia and its Western values. He thinks these values are superior to any alternatives. And it is this total absence of equivocation in upholding the national interest which explains his robust defense of both Australian identity and Western civilization against attack.” (Ron Fraser, Australia—Risking Loss of Heritage, March 1, 2010.)

Writer Melanie Phillips suggests things are to a state now that the government should give dowries to men who get married for the first time. This would “increase their worth to women” and “send a powerful signal that men are not worthless creeps but are essential to family life.” ...
As Melanie Phillips points out, British society is totally geared toward not only promoting single motherhood, but toward denigrating fathers. Britain is steaming full-speed ahead contrary to God’s laws. (Robert Morley, Missing Marriages: Evaporated Empire, March 9, 2010.)

Writer Melanie Phillips suggests things are to a state now that the government should give dowries to men who get married for the first time. This would “increase their worth to women” and “send a powerful signal that men are not worthless creeps but are essential to family life” (Daily Mail, March 1). ...
As Melanie Phillips pointed out, British society is totally geared toward not only promoting single motherhood, but toward denigrating fathers. Britain is steaming full-speed ahead contrary to God’s laws. (Robert Morley, When Families Disappear, May-June 2010.)

“Self-evident common sense appears to have been turned on its head,” writes Melanie Phillips in her book The World Turned Upside Down. “[S]elf-designated ‘victim groups’ have turned right and wrong, victim and aggressor inside out. Their ‘right’ not to be insulted or discriminated against in any way has become the basis for discrimination and injustice against the representatives of majority values. …
“Nothing is really as it is said to be,” she writes. “Society seems to be in the grip of a mass derangement.”(Joel Hilliker, The Upside-Down World, August 2010. Also see Joel Hilliker, The Upside-Down World, May 12, 2010.)

When druidism was recognized as a religion last month, Melanie Phillips weighed in on the discussion. “Elevating them to the same status as Christianity is but the latest example of how the bedrock creed of this country is being undermined,” she wrote (emphasis mine). Worse still, the equating of paganism and Christianity is an attack on religion itself. As Phillips explained, “This is because druidry is simply not a religion.” To be classified as a religion, argued Phillips, an organization must have an “established structure of traditions, beliefs, literature and laws” and, above all, “share a belief in a supernatural deity (or more than one) that governs the universe.” By definition, paganism simply is not a religion. (Brad MacDonald, Britain’s Spiritual Inversion, November 18, 2010.)

Melanie Phillips recently mused that the Vatican today, under this pope, may be taking “a giant step backwards into a darker age”—an age when the Vatican dictated that the Roman Catholic Church alone was the sole authority for interpretation of the Bible! (Oct. 25, 2010). (Ron Fraser, Pope: Don’t Take Bible Literally, February 2011.)

Melanie Phillips wrote: “Sadly, I’ve been proved right. Britain IS a center of terror. … [E]ven without any knowledge of this [BBC] entry in the al Qaeda Rolodex, some of us have long thought the same thing. … Al Qaeda terrorists are drawn to London like bees to a honeypot” (Mail Online, April 27). (Graig Millar, Britain: Al Qaeda Fifth Column in BBC, May 4, 2011.)

The JNF has existed for longer than the State of Israel. It buys land and works to reforest and improve it. Yet liberals in Britain are now accusing it of “war crimes” and “ethnic cleansing.” Commentator Melanie Phillips details how ridiculous their claims are here. (Britain Slinks Away From Israel, June 6, 2011.)

[A certain individual] has also used Britain’s notoriously bad libel laws to silence his critics, who include British journalist Melanie Phillips. (How to Win an Election in London: Appeal to Islam, March 20, 2012.)

In her 2006 bestseller Londonistan, Melanie Phillips wrote that London had become “the epicenter of Islamic militancy in Europe. … Its large and fluid Muslim and Arab population fostered the growth of myriad radical Islamist publications spitting hatred of the West, and its banks were used for fund-raising accounts funneling money into extremist terrorist organizations. Terrorists wanted in other countries were given safe haven in the United Kingdom and left free to foment hatred against the West” (emphasis added throughout)....
Law enforcement has not always been successful. In July 2005, Muslim terrorists attacked London’s transit system. These terrorists weren’t raised in Pakistan or Iran. They learned to hate on London’s streets. “[T]hese British boys, who loved cricket and helped disabled children, had somehow been so radicalized within the British society that had nurtured them that they were prepared to murder their fellow citizens in huge numbers and to turn themselves into human bombs to do so,” wrote Phillips. (Brad MacDonald and Richard Palmer, London: Look Beyond the Olympic Lights, August 2012.)

Today, with Syria engulfed in civil war and Bashar Assad’s regime teetering in the balance, there is an understandable degree of panic about what might happen to Syria’s chemical weapons in the event of a regime change. Columnists Dore Gold and Melanie Phillips both highlighted possible doomsday scenarios that could play out regarding the stockpiles. Syria could use them on foreign “attackers” as it threatened to do last month, should the international community attempt to intervene in the Syrian civil war. Or the weapons could fall into the hands of Hezbollah or other terrorists, either amid the chaos of a fallen regime, or via the Syrian government simply handing them over to terrorist allies before surrendering. (Stephen Flurry, About Those WMD in Syria, August 17, 2012.)

“Appalling as these consequences might be, however, a nuclear-armed Iran, arguably the most significant terrorist state in the world and which regularly issues threats to annihilate Israel, would be a far worse prospect,” Melanie Phillips wrote. “If America were to join such an attack, however, the terrible risks to Israel would be lessened and the likelihood of destroying Iran’s nuclear program significantly higher” (September 11). ...
But, “after Israel had all but said it would refrain from attacking Iran’s nuclear plants if only the president would draw a ‘red line’ in negotiations by threatening force if they failed, Obama had refused on the risible grounds that, according to Hillary Clinton, negotiations were ‘the best approach,’” Melanie Phillips continued. ...
After Netanyahu’s shot at Washington in that manner, U.S. Department of State spokeswoman Victoria Nuland retorted that such public spats between the two nations weren’t helpful in solving the Iranian problem. But as Melanie Phillips pointed out, there could hardly be a more public snub than Obama’s refusal to meet with Netanyahu. (Stephen Flurry, A Perilous New Year for Israel, September 18, 2012.)

What is the proof? As Melanie Phillips wrote this past summer, it is simply “that none was ever found, surely one of the most profoundly illogical and imbecilic formulations ever to have fallen from human lips” (Daily Mail, July 25). ...
Melanie Phillips concluded, “Might some of Bashar al-Assad’s chemical and possibly biological arsenal have Saddam Hussein’s name on it?” (Gerald Flurry, The Deadliest Mystery in the Middle East, December 2012.)

Here is how Melanie Phillips, an excellent British commentator, reacted to the president’s reelection: “With four more years of Obama in the White House, Iran can now be sure that it will be able to complete its infernal construction of a genocide bomb to use against the Jews and the West. World War III has now come a lot closer” (Nov. 7, 2012; emphasis mine throughout). (Gerald Flurry, The Terrifying Darkness Before the Eternal Dawn, January 2013.)

On the issue of Iran and the threat it poses, I expected the general reaction to be one of apathy and passivity, with perhaps a smidgen of halfhearted criticism. I expected ignorance—but a thoughtless, shallow ignorance, the result of not having seen and considered all the facts. Instead, the ignorance on this occasion was willing and intentional. These people had seen the facts and had either ignored them or outright rejected them. But that’s not all—they then engaged in a rude, disrespectful, fiery and impassioned barrage on Phillips and her assertion that Iran was dangerous. ...
Surely a nation has reached the apex of irrationality and foolishness, thereby thrusting itself limp and unguarded before the feet of its enemies, when in defense of its adversary it starts attacking its own patriots. In this case, one of the bravest, smartest, most rational and articulate journalists of our age. Britain’s treatment of Melanie Phillips is not unlike the treatment of Winston Churchill during the 1930s. Phillips, like Churchill, is analyzing the facts, drawing logical conclusions and delivering a clarion warning to Britain and the West. And Britain responds with putrid contempt for the message and messenger. (Brad MacDonald, Melanie Phillips Exposes Britain’s Stupor, June 27, 2013.)

Melanie Phillips described it aptly: “It’s difficult to persuade people to stay part of a Britain that has fragmented its own collective identity and purpose on so many different levels.”...
As Phillips put it: “The Scots understand what it is to be Scottish and feel good about Scottish achievements. Many in Britain no longer know what Britishness is—and if they think they do, they are told they should hate it. The Scots are proud of their past; the British are constantly apologizing for theirs.” (Brad MacDonald, Without Scotland, There Is No Great Britain, September 18, 2014.)

“The real harm that Mr. Hogg has done,” writes Times columnist Melanie Phillips, “is effectively to talk down the risks from cannabis and thus talk up its use.” (Sam Livingston,The Dangers of Ignoring a Minor Drug Offense, July 31, 2015.)

As Melanie Phillips wrote in her book The World Turned Upside Down, “Self-evident common sense appears to have been turned on its head. … [S]elf-designated ‘victim groups’ have turned right and wrong, victim and aggressor inside out. … Nothing is really as it is said to be.” (Stephen Flurry, The Left’s Inability to Make Moral Judgments, October 27, 2015.)

Times columnist Melanie Phillips explained the results: “Chinese education is based on discipline, the authority of the teacher and ruthless competition. All these factors have been significantly undermined or are totally absent in many British schools. The Chinese teach big classes in which pupils are expected to note down what the teachers are saying, learn it and move on. This is light-years away from the British ‘child-centered approach’ in which the pupil dictates the pace” (August 10).
In the experiment, half of the British students did not pay attention to the Chinese instructors. The head teacher at Bohunt, Neil Strowger, said that the problem was not with the students but with the style of teaching of the Chinese. But Phillips attributed the problem to Britain’s educational revolution which she said was part of a broader revolution against authority. (When a teacher from China takes over a British schoolroom, SocietyWatch, October 2015.)

In a Spectator article, British journalist Melanie Phillips argued against the reports’ suggestions:
Gender politics is all about subjective feelings. It has nothing to do with fairness or equality. It embodies instead an extreme egalitarianism which holds that any evidence of difference is a form of prejudice. 
Instead of requiring medical “proof” of sex-change treatment, the committee says everyone’s word should be taken for granted. “I think I am a man/woman/of no sex, therefore I am,” as Phillips paraphrased Descartes. (Kieran Underwood, British Committee Says No Evidence Is Needed to Change Gender on Passports or Driver’s Licenses, February 5, 2016.)

In a January 21 article for the Jerusalem Post, Melanie Phillips explained: “There are some who believe [Iran] already has [a nuclear bomb], or at least already has access to nuclear weapons having outsourced the testing of the bomb to North Korea. Iran is now pondering how to use the weapon to maximum destructive effect and without leaving its fingerprints on it.”...
Phillips continued in her Jerusalem Post article: “I have no idea whether that is true. But given Iran’s close association with the North Korean nuclear program, with Iranian scientists and other personnel having been present at three of North Korea’s four nuclear tests at least, does anyone believe that it could not get the bomb from Pyongyang even if it has not already done so?” ...
“[M]aybe the Iranian nuclear negotiation was a blind from start to finish,” Phillips continued. “The real action was going on in North Korea while the dummies of the free world were looking the other way. The actual point of the deal was to lift sanctions by appearing to give ground on the nuclear program in Iran itself—thus releasing those billions to ratchet up Tehran’s deniable, proxy war upon the rest of the world. Which, thanks to Obama, the UK government and the rest of the Western dummy class, Iran is now about to do.”
As Phillips said, we can’t be sure about all the details yet. But because of Iran’s extremist mind-set, we can be sure that the new deal with Iran is far worse than the one America made back in 1994 with North Korea! (Gerald Flurry, The Worst Foreign-Policy Blunder in American History, April 2016.)

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Clearly PCG's writers take Melanie Phillips most seriously. They have never bothered to criticize anything she happens to say. Clearly PCG's leaders trust this columnist. I repeat again that this columnist cannot be blamed for what PCG's leaders do.

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