Frank Lindh – the father of John Walker Lind – has just had a piece published in the New York Times in which he laments his son's unfair incarceration. John Walker Lindh is no petty criminal. He was convicted in the US in July 2002 for fighting with the Taliban and carrying weapons while doing […]
By Robin Simcox It's harder to imagine a much more relucatant warrior than President Obama over Libya. Still, as Bill Kristol says, setting up a no-fly zone now is better late than never. There has hopefully been immediate pay-off, with Gaddafi declaring a ceasefire. Whether he plans to sticks to that is open to debate. […]
In recent weeks, the Prime Minister has given two vaguely neoconservative speeches – one in Munich on multiculturalism, and the other in Kuwait on democracy in the Middle East. Yet he also has a track record of misrepresenting neoconservative thought, just in case any potential voter mistook him for one. Everyone knows neocons are pretty […]
The London School of Economics (LSE) says it is reconsidering its links with the Libyan government as a 'matter of urgency' following that government's slaughter of its own people over the last few days. Those links are significant. In January 2010, the LSE accepted a £1.5m donation from the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation […]
By Robin Simcox Channel 4 will tonight broadcast a documentary which reveals exactly what has been going on at a British faith school and madrassa. Undercover reporters have recorded grizzly footage of the type of education being handed out at Darul Uloom Islamic High School in Birmingham and a madrassa in Keighley, west Yorkshire. In […]
It is generally Ronald Reagan, not George H.W. Bush, who is given credit for ending the Cold War – despite having been out of office for three years when the Soviet Union packed it in. Similarly, it is Reagan who is associated with funding the Afghan mujahideen, despite it being Jimmy Carter who first approved […]
By Robin Simcox It took a long time for them to get there, but the government has by and large got it right on control orders. The system will remain until 2011, and even then the fundamentals that make control orders vital – the electronic tagging, the ban on foreign travel, the prohibition from meeting […]
Mahmoud Abu Rideh is a former control order detainee who was allowed to leave the UK last year. He has long been a cause célèbre for those trying to prove how unpleasant the British government is, and how evil we must be as a nation to use control orders. The Guardian devoted a puff piece […]
There is now a risk that it will affect the specialist advice that the Government will be receiving from certain quarters.