It is surely difficult to break new ground in the field of anti-Semitic bigotry, especially in the modern-day Middle East. But it is possible that an official from the Egyptian Religious Endowments Ministry has achieved just such a distinction.

According to a dispatch from the inavaluable media monitoring organisation MEMRI, ministry official Sheikh Ahmad ‘Ali ‘Othman recently worked himself into quite a frenzy about Islamic teachings on the relationship between Jews and pigs. According to one theory, our learned hero opined, Allah turned some Jews into pigs which did not have progeny; according to another theory those pigs did in fact multiply and now have descendants.

“I personally tend to believe that the pigs living today are descended from those Jews, and that is why Allah forbade us to eat them…”, ‘Othman was quoted as saying. So, don’t eat pork because pigs are probably descended from Jews, eh? The notion that Jews descended from apes and pigs is, of course, par for the course in Middle Eastern discourse these days. But dropping the apes and adding in the pigs at the beginning (or is it the middle?) of a chain of anthropomorphic descent may be a new departure even in the putrid swamp of contemporary Muslim anti-Semitism.

See this dispatch from Memri at: http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=antisemitism&ID=SP235909

Amid all the shame and dishonour in the history of the ideological left — a brand of thinking which I contrast with the entirely honourable leftist traditions of trade-unionism and social activism –there has emerged across Europe in recent years a new kind of intellectual leftist. Many of these people have been on a journey: Joschka Fischer, the former German Foreign Minister (1998-2005) and one-time radical is a celebrated example. That journey has taken them to within an inch of the centre of the political spectrum: they have, in most cases, acknowledged the horrors of communism; they have ditched their anti-Americanism; they will countenance an assertive foreign policy (many supported the Kosovo operation and the invasion of Iraq); they are deeply concerned about the rise of Islamism; they oppose anti-Semitism; they are supportive of and not hostile to capitalism. In Britain, this shift bore fruit in the form of the so called Euston Manifesto Group, one member of which writes an illuminating piece in today’s Observer newspaper.

The writer, Nick Cohen, is an intelligent and interesting thinker: someone who rises far above the general standards of bland mediocrity on the comment pages of the British press. He is one of the best representatives of the afore-mentioned class of leftist journeymen in the European political classes. The jolt to the senses is all the sharper, therefore, when one crashes into remnants of the old ways of thinking.
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William (Bill) Kristol is one of the heaviest hitters on the American Right. He edits the Weekly Standard, one of the most influential magazines on US politics, and appears regularly across the American and international media. In his column in the Washinhgton Post today he offers a a five point battle plan to reinvigorate Republican politics. Whatever your politics it is an interesting insight into how the battle lines are now being drawn in America.

His plan centres on the five ‘D’s, which, he argues, signify unfolding weaknesses in the politics of the Obama administration. These are: “Debt”, “Defence”, “Diplomacy”, “Detention”, and what he calls “Docs”, which apparently signifies healthcare.

Click here to read the piece:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/11/AR2009051102866.html

N.B. You may need to login to the Washington Post to read it. But it only takes a moment and then gives you free access to one of the best newspapers in the English speaking world.

I am taking the liberty of putting up a piece of my own which was published in today’s Wall Street Journal Europe. The question of the sustainability of European democracy is something which should concern us all. I often have the impression, though, that we are sleep walking our way towards a crisis. Democracy is fragile and does not have deep roots in Europe. Here’s the piece:

OPINION: STATE OF THE UNION MAY 12, 2009

Filling the Democracy Gap The opponents of an ‘ever closer union’ need to spell out a viable alternative to the status quo.

By ROBIN SHEPHERD From today’s Wall Street Journal Europe.

The Czech parliament’s reluctant approval of the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty last week was hardly an occasion to boast about. Even the country’s prime minister, Mirek Topolánek, felt obliged to note that it was no time for “euphoria” — the Czechs, he all but admitted, had been pushed into it as “the price of membership.” Not what you’d call a ringing endorsement.

But hailing it all as “very good news” that will enhance the prospects for Ireland’s repeat referendum later this year, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, was reveling in it. It was an event, he said, that reflected a “commitment to a more democratic, accountable, effective and coherent European Union.” Contemporary Europe is a world of competing realities.

For the commission and its ideological praetorians, the path of history is preordained. Paradoxically, though, its end state is never defined. And so we are heading toward “an ever closer union” whose benefits we must accept on faith. In this version of reality, words do not mean what we think they mean.

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Sir Max Hastings is an establishment man. Born in 1945 and educated at Charterhouse — the exclusive English private school founded in 1611 — then Oxford (for a year), he has edited two of Britain’s best known newspapers: the Daily Telegraph and the London Evening Standard. Like so many who rise to the top in British journalism, he was born into it. His father, Macdonald, was a celebrated war correspondent; his mother, Anne Eleanor Scott-James (or Lady Lancaster), edited the UK edition of Harper’s Bazaar. He writes columns for the Daily Mail, the Guardian and many others. He regularly appears on the BBC, for whom he was himself a celebrated war correspondent. He is President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England and he is a fellow of The Royal Society of Literature, an elite institution founded by King George IV in 1820. Sir Max Hastings is an establishment man indeed. He despises the State of Israel.

In May 2009, he delievered a Leonard Stein Lecture on Israel and the Palestinians at Balliol College Oxford, extracts from which were used for an opinion piece in today’s Guardian. His writing is an almost parodical one-stop shop for every misconception, misreading of history and civilisational pathology in the mindset of Britain’s upper class, Arabist, right.
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