Forty-nine Turkish hostages, including diplomats, women and children, have been released by the terrorists of Islamic State. The lavish scenes of jubilation on their safe return were prominent on Turkish TV. But did you see the earlier pictures of the fearless men of the Turks’ secret intelligence service, backed by special forces,Read More

One can observe two things about modern tyrants: first, they can’t resist divulging their plans; second, the world never listens. Marx, for example, laid down the blueprint for a modern totalitarian state, complete with genocide, democide, concentration camps, suppression of every liberty, dictatorship of a small elite, confiscation of allRead More

A financial consultant shouldn’t have fundamental misgivings about the morality of money. A geography teacher shouldn’t doubt that the Earth is round. A nuclear physicist shouldn’t wonder if the atom is really divisible. If these professionals are indeed beset by such doubts, any sensible person would be justified in thinkingRead More

Write this: you can write nothing. No one can, for what is said Is not the thing that is Except in that single case wherein The eternal Word was made flesh And dwelt among us. What is it that the poets are up to then? Only to take us toRead More

It was the current American VP Joe Biden who set the precedent. During his 1988 presidential campaign Biden repeated word for word Neil Kinnock’s speech on being the first in his family to go to university. Sorry, it wasn’t quite word for word: Joe did replace ‘the first Kinnock’ withRead More

Most historians agree that the Second World War started on 1 September, 1939. Some will argue that the real date was 23 August, when Molotov and Ribbentrop signed the pact whose secret protocol divided Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union. Some others will pick an even earlier date, suchRead More

One day after John Kerry declared that the US is “not at war…that is the wrong term” with Islamic State, the White House and the Pentagon announced, “We are at war with Islamic State.” It is reassuring to see that the power with the greatest ability to defend the westernRead More

Sir Alan Moses starts work this morning as chairman of the new Independent Press Standards Organisation IPSO and promises that it will not be “a sham.” Indeed it is not a sham: it is a political quango set up in response to campaigns by Hacked Off and Guardian journalists to abolishRead More

On an aeroplane returning from Korea, the Pope was asked if he thought it right for the western allies to bomb Islamic State in Iraq.  “Yes,” he said. The Archbishop of Canterbury was today asked the same question by Edward Stourton on The Sunday Programme. He answered in the usual LambethRead More

Something is rotten in the state of England. At the highest level, a rigid political policy which declares that ethnic and religious minorities must not be offended has ensured that for decades untold thousands of children have been sexually abused. This means that the largely imaginary crime of so calledRead More