Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 181
November 22, 2015
Another Voice Urges an Inquiry About Mind-Altering Drugs and Violence
Some of you may be interested by this article by Christopher Booker in today's Sunday Telegraph, in which he supports my call for a inquiry into the correlation between the use of mind-altering drugs and many episodes of political and non-political violence in recent years:
BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme examines the George Bell case
About five minutes and 40 seconds into this programme
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06psb50#play
is a fair and cautious discussion on the allegations against the late Bishop of Chichestrer, George Bell. I have a brief walk-on part.
It is a credit to Radio 4 that they have examined this, giving both sides of the matter, which several important newspapers have rather failed to do since the allegations were first revealed. They treated the Bishop as if he were a convicted criminal, when he is not. I doubt whether any regulatory body can rule on this, as it lies outside the law. But it would surely be morally right to revisity the matter, and point out in some way that the allegations are just that.
I do wonder what is to happen to the memorial to Bishop Bell in Chichester Cathedral, now labelled with a sort of warning. I very much hope there will be no attempt to remove it (in line with the renaming of Bishop Bell House and the removal of his name from a house at a nearby school) , but in these times I suppose such things are possible. And I would point out that the member of the Chichester public who assumed that George Bell was a pacifist was mistaken. He took the normal Christian position that wars can on occasion be just, but that the deliberate bombing of civilians was not just. People often make similatr claims about Jeremy Corbyn who (though as far as Iknow not a Christian) is not an absolute pacifist but has reasoned objections to war and is reluctant to support it except in very strict circumstances. This tends to be the position of most people who have seen war, too. .
November 20, 2015
A Fair Trial for the Chichester One! The George Bell controversy deepens.
The controversy over the treatment of the late Bishop George Bell by the Church of England continues to grow. After last week���s letter to the ���Church Times��� from the distinguished judge, Alan Pardoe QC, ���
other important voices have joined the call for a re-examination of the case.
The Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, The Revd Dr Jeremy Morris (a Historian and Theologian), is joined by Andrew Chandler (a leading academic expert on Bishop Bell) , Keith Clements (an expert on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Protestant Christian opposition to Hitler) and the distinguished Church historian (who has taught extensively in Germany), the Revd Dr Charlotte Methuen, have joined to sign a letter saying they are ���disturbed��� by the C of E���s statement about George Bell.
While mindful of the distress of the complainant, and regretting that the complaint was not investigated properly when first made in 1995, they criticise the C of E statement as implying, rather than openly stating the claim (later published as akin to fact in several newspapers) that Bishop Bell was a child abuser.
���If it raises concerns about Bell���s integrity and humanity as a Christian leader, it must also, surely, raise acute concerns about the degree to which it is possible to establish certitude in cases of alleged crimes in which the perpetrators are long dead.���
It adds :���Some of us have worked extensively on Bell���s papers; we are not aware of any evidence there of this side of his character.���
They accept this does not mean that no such evidence exists, but they suggest that the ���independent reports��� made by the C of E should be at least partially released, redacted where necessary, to demonstrate the strength of the evidence to which the C of E statement alludes.
For me, the heart of the letter lies here :���This is all the more important, it seems to us, given the risk of damage spilling over on to the many honourable causes with which Bell was associated. Christian internationalism, criticism of Nazi anti-Semitism, prophetic support for Church unity, opposition to saturation bombing, support for the Confessing Church and the German resistance movement ��� these and other matters were all things on which Bell had courageous and other far-sighted things to say���
They point out that his reputation extends well beyond the shores of this country, and that many from outside this country and in all Christian traditions will be watching the case closely.
There is an accompanying letter from Dr Brian Hanson, a resident of the Chichester Diocese, who reveals that there has been unhappiness in the Chichester Diocesan Synod about the way in which the case was handled at national level. He rightly stresses the right of an accused person to a defence.
I might add that the Chichester Observer has this week kindly published a short article by me on the subject, which cannot yet be found on the web, but which runs as follows:
���Can a man be great and distinguished one day, and disgraced and notorious the next? Of course it is possible. But should this have happened to the late Bishop of Chichester? George Bell is fast becoming an unperson in the city where he was revered, his name expunged where once it was honoured.
As one of many in Britain and the rest of the world who has long admired George Bell���s undisputed personal courage and principle, I found this distressing. I spent some formative years in Chichester, just after George Bell���s death, living in Brandy Hole Lane and attending (as a non-choirboy) the Prebendal School.
In a long career, during which I have lived and travelled much in ugly, totalitarian and Godless parts of the world, I have always carried those early memories of a very gentle and deep English beauty, of landscape, architecture, music and worship, inside me. I also remember the reverence and love with which George Bell���s name was mentioned in the cathedral precincts.
And I feel there is something deeply un-English about the way in which his reputation has been treated by the Church of which he was once such a distinguished leader. He has indeed been accused of a terrible thing. But he has not been tried or convicted of it, and cannot be.
As he left no descendants, it is left to us to defend the ancient English principle that we are presumed innocent until proven guilty after a fair trial before an impartial jury, no matter how foul the crime alleged against us. In fact, the more serious the accusation (and this charge is undoubtedly extremely serious), the more essential this is. I am not alone in this concern.
An article in the Church of England newspaper has said ���He is effectively being tried and convicted by the Church of England with little thought for proper justice and due process.��� A group of former Chichester choirboys, some of whom are now distinguished musicians and knew the Bishop when he was alive, have written to ���The Times��� to say they fear he has been ���smeared to suit a public relations need���. They recall him as ���an upright entirely moral and devout figure who meant a great deal to us as children���.
Of course, if the case against him is proven beyond reasonable doubt, all these defences count for nothing. But has it been?���
November 19, 2015
Sunday Morning Live
Some readers may like to see last Sunday's 'Sunday Morning Live', available for a limited time on BBC iplayer, in which I discuss the Paris Atrocities, the campaign for a cultural boycott of Israel , and the fiction of 'addiction'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06q6tj8
Some may not.
An Appeal to Reason, and a Challenge to the Twisters of Words
Here are two statements:
1. "Almost all Islamist terrorists in recent atrocities or attempted atrocities in Europe (and in some cases elsewhere) have been found to be users of mind-altering drugs. Here are more examples from among the culprits of last Friday���s mass-murders in Paris. Surely this is interesting, and requires further investigation?"
2. "All drugtakers become terrorists."
Yesterday, I made the first, giving some supporting evidence. I was immediately attacked as if I had made the second, which of course I did not make, and do not believe.
This has happened before:
How can we expect to have serious public debate if this is how people behave in response to reasoned, cautious argument and carefully-compiled and authoritatively sourced accurate information?
My response is to list the instances in which Islamist terrorists have beyond question been shown to be drug-abusers.
Omar El-Hussein, the Copenhagen killer , twice arrested for cannabis offences.
The Tunisian beach murderer Seifeddine Rezgui was a cannabis user
The killers in the Charlie Hebdo Outrages were cannabis users (the Kouachi brothers, Amedy Coulibaly)
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/01/what-do-we-know-about-the-paris-outrages.html
The man who attempted an attack on the Amsterdam-Paris train, Ayoub El-Khazzani, was a cannabis user
Michael Zehaf-Bibeau , The killer of Nathan Cirillo in Ottawa, Canada, and Martin Couture-Rouleau, of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Canada, were both cannabis users.
When I say that these people were 'cannabis users', in most cases the evidence points towards long-term regular use. Several were also arrested for drug offences, which is actually quite hard to achieve given the relaxed attitude towards cannabis among police in most of the Western world. What's also interesting is that those who describe these people's drug habits think illegal drug use unremarkable, and see no connection between it and the person's later behaviour. The possibility that there might be a correlation only appears when these events are all listed together.
As for Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, killers of Lee Rigby in London, their heavy use of cannabis is well-documented and beyond challenge, as I explain here:
and as is confirmed here
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/26/woolwich-attack-michael-adebolajo
So, with all that clear, I now repeat what I said yesterday, and appeal for a reasoned response, free of self-interest or special interest pleading.
What I seek is an inquiry, one with full powers to investigate all such cases to see if terrorist killers are drug users, and to see what influence, if any, this had on their actions. If you are against such an inquiry, be so good as to explain why. But respond to what I say, not to what you wish I had said, but didn���t say.
November 18, 2015
The Use of Mind-Altering Drugs by Terrorists: Some New facts
I promised that I would record what I knew about the latest Paris atrocities and drug abuse, once I knew it. I will not be surprised if more emerges (though it may be necessary to search quite hard for it, so uninterested are the authorities and media in this aspect of the matter). The French authorities are still far from completing their inquiries and I am not sure we even have a complete list of perpetrators and suspects. But here is an interim summary:
We still have a very partial picture, however, some facts so far revealed bear out my view that such killers tend to come from a milieu of petty crime in which drug abuse is common.
I have so far compiled the following (some links are to French publications) about those whose names have so far been linked to the atrocities, and drug abuse.
Ibrahim Abdeslam and Salah Abdeslam ran a Brussels caf�� closed after complaints of the stink of dope led to a police raid:
And Ibrahim Abdeslam, according to his ex-wife, was a heavy smoker of cannabis.
And
Abdelhamid Abaaoud , the supposed ���mastermind��� of the atrocities, is reported to have drifted into a ���life of thievery and drugs���
And one of the Bataclan theatre killers, Omar Ismail Mostefai, was reported to have committed ���a string of petty offences���.What were they? I haven���t seen them detailed in any British outlet, but Paris Match lists them here. They include violence involving the use or threat of weapons, robbery with violence, breaking and entering, counterfeiting cheques��� and ���.
���achat des stupefiants��� - the purchase or possession of drugs.
http://www.parismatch.com/Actu/Societe/Ismael-Omar-Mostefai-profil-d-un-kamikaze-francais-866191
What does this mean? I don���t claim to know. Conceivably, it means nothing at all, though surely the habitual use of powerful mind-altering drugs by people who then commit crimes of extraordinary horror and callousness is suggestive of something, even to the most prejudiced mind?
I just think the pattern of correlation between terrorist outrages and drugtaking needs to be investigated and noticed in a scientific and objective fashion, and examined on each occasion these events happen. It shouldn���t be left to dissenting journalists to compile such things.
November 16, 2015
Distinguished QC calls C of E Treatment of Bishop George Bell 'Slipshod and Muddled'
I have now obtained a copy of last Friday���s (November 13th) Church Times, and will here set out the case against the Church of England���s treatment of Bishop George bell, made by His Honour Alan Pardoe QC.
The Church Times has very generously agreed to allow the letter to be read in full, though it would normally behind a paywall. You may read it here:
It refers to the Church���s statement on the matter, issued on 22nd October, which I link to here so readers can refer to it if they wish.
He describes it as ���slipshod and muddled���, and ���appallingly unfair to the reputation of George Bell, a ���tremendous figure in the Church��� whose very distinguished and ���immensely courageous��� life he then describes.
He then proceeds, forensically, to explain why he objects, as a lawyer, to the Church���s statement.
First, he points out that the Church media centre���s statement did not spell out that the Bishop had been dead for almost 40 years when the complaint was first made to Chichester diocese.
He notes that we are not told if the civil claim was made against the whole Church of England or the Diocese of Chichester. But he points out that both Church and diocese must have known they held in their hands the honour of Bishop bell and of the Church ( I do myself wonder if anyone in the modern Church of England really understands George Bell���s importance, either in this country or worldwide, but that���s another matter).
Alan Pardoe says the claim appears to have been about the Church���s allegedly unsatisfactory response in 1995, and this seems to be borne out by the statement made by the present Bishop of Chichester.
But, as he then goes on to say, the C of E statement fails to make it clear whether the present Bishop was acknowledging George Bell���s guilt of the charges against him.
Instead, it ���deals with this obliquely��� by quoting at length from the complainant���s lawyer, which des seem to concentrate upon the failure to deal with the complaint properly in 1995.
Alan Pardoe asks :���Does the quotation of this statement constitute and admission by the Church that in the 1940s or 1950sone f its senior bishops committed horrible offences against a child? If so, why is it made in so oblique a fashion? If not, why is this part of the solicitor���s statement quoted in the media centre���s statement?���
Having sharpened his forensic scalpel, he then cuts deep, pointing out ���There is, or ought to be, a chasm��� between the two wholly separate charges.
It is clear, he says, that the Church has properly acknowledged failure to act properly in 1995. But on the second issue, The Bishop���s guilt of the crimes alleged against him, he says the C of E���s statement is ���appallingly muddled��� when it needs to be absolutely clear.
He says the reports on which the Church based its action are ���most unlikely to have been admissible��� as evidence in any trial of this claim.
As for the Police declaration that they would have arrested Bishop Bell had he been alive when the accusations were made, Alan Pardoe says:
It would have been helpful if the media centre���s statement had gone on to state that it would have been for the CPS to decide whether to mount any charge and, if so, what charge, and that there would then have been a trial of such charge before a jury���
Mordantly, he adds: ���The recent example of the police treatment of Lord Brittan is surely relevant here���.
While understanding that the Church has apologised for its inadequate actions in 1995 and paid compensation, he says it is ���incomprehensible��� that the Church in its media statement has ���almost casually lent its authority to the utter destruction of the reputation of George Bell, arguably one of the greatest bishops of the Church of England.���
I very much hope that this thoughtful and powerful intervention will cause some heartsearching among those who have so far been willing to let Bishop Bell���s reputation suffer without any sort of fair trial. I also hope those who have responded to these accusations by hastily removing George Bell���s name from buildings and institutions will recognise that the presumption of innocence live son only if it lives in our hearts and minds.
Keep Thinking. Thinking is Acting, at least as Much as Shooting is Acting
First, there were all the historically ignorant people ( but, even so, righteously passionate about the supposed lessons of a past they don���t know about or understand). They yesterday compared me with Neville Chamberlain, presumably because I didn���t urge the immediate bombing of someone or something.
Then there were all the ones whose response to my call to ���Think!��� responded, ���but he does not say what we should *do*���.
To the first group I have little to say except ���learn some real history��� and ���World War Two is not necessarily the only form in which crises come���. Islamic terrorism is not the Third Reich, Britain now is a tiny, insignificant country compared with what she was then, and you are not Winston Churchill. As it happens, such people, being the victims of propaganda and conventional wisdom, would almost certainly have been keen supporters of Neville Chamberlain���s appeasement policy at the time. Most were.
To the second group, may I introduce the radical idea that thought is an action? May I suggest that seeking the truth about an event, and considering its implications and meaning, are at least as effective, and very probably much more so, than a televised air strike on a bit of desert, or a round-up of suspects? Confronted with a mechanical problem, we will generally trust the skilled, clam man with the precise tools, and mistrust the angry man in a hurry, with a hammer, even if he acts more quickly. It is the same here.
Of course I could use this event as a pretext to reinforce my long-held opinion that immigration to Europe should be restricted. But in truth I think the arguments for such restrictions are perfectly good already, and needn���t rely on this horror to strengthen them. What���s more, I disapprove of others using crises as a pretext to push demands they have long sought anyway. So I really oughtn���t to do it myself.
Also, I���d be grateful if those who go on about the alleged ���failures��� of the ���security��� services can explain how they would have made such services clairvoyant. Outside Science Fiction and Hollywood, it is extremely difficult to evaluate what must be hundreds if not thousands of potential suspects, warnings and tip-offs. This difficulty won���t cease if more spooks are hired, or more surveillance is imposed. People still have to make judgements on very partial knowledge, and often they will get them wrong. The terrorist, who has almost limitless defenceless targets once he adopts the morals of the murderer, will almost always get through. There are very few instances (Guy Fawkes being one) of serious terror plots being uncovered in time.
I���m still struck by how little we yet know about the perpetrators of the November 13 massacres. Some appear to be (as any observer of these things would expect) petty criminal low-lifes of the sort who often gravitate to highly-disciplined fanaticism. One has already been liked with cannabis use in the French press, as, once again, I would expect.
But on this occasion, much more so than in the Charlie Hebdo outrages, there is strong evidence of a guiding hand.
This is not because of the guns. Guns, alas, may be easily obtained by criminals in France. I note the lack of calls for gun control in France, not least because there is severe gun control there already, and it has had precisely no effect on the ability of such people to obtain AK-47s and plenty of ammunition to put in them. Some acknowledgement of the implications of this, by those who demand ���gun control��� in the US after every massacre, would be interesting, if unexpected. You can see why they don���t say much.
It is because of the suicide belts. These are very difficult to make, and require a great deal of skill, and discipline, and some pretty tight organisation. And it is also because of the clearly co-ordinated and widespread nature of the actual attacks, in an area they had clearly scouted and researched with a particular and very nasty purpose in mind. They knew exactly which part of French society they wanted to scare the most. And scare them they did. A brief TV film of a group of mourners in a Paris street, suddenly fleeing in fear when a loud noise is heard, is one of the saddest parts of this story. I personally would hesitate before passing judgement on them. The real possibility of being mown down by fanatics in the street without warning is a potent fear.
If the French authorities actually know that this outrage was planned in Syria or Iraq, then I would be very interested to know how they know.
As I have said before, all Muslim terror attacks used to be said to have ���all the hallmarks of Al Qaeda���, for years and years. These ���hallmarks��� were that they were terrorist attacks committed by Islamists, which always seemed a bit circular to me. The claim meant nothing. Now ���Al Qaeda���, never in fact anything like as co-ordinated or centralised as claimed, has sunk into obscurity and disuse, and we all talk about IS instead. How much do modern claims that IS is behind such actions mean? I do not know.
In fact, I still know so little about this crime that I am still thinking about it, and about what we should do about it.
November 15, 2015
PETER HITCHENS: Really want to beat terror? Then calm down and THINK
This is Peter Hitchens's Mail On Sunday column
Could we please skip the empty bravado? This is a time for grief above all else, and a time to refrain from soundbites and posturing. France ��� our closest neighbour, oldest friend, beloved rival, what Philip Sidney called ���that sweet enemy��� ��� France is stricken, and we should weep with her.
Over the past 40 years or so, most of us have heard quite enough politicians and others pledging to stand firm against terror, hunt down the vile perpetrators, ensure that it never happens again, and the rest.
Then there have been the emergency meetings of grandly titled committees, the crackdowns, the increased surveillance, the billions spent on spying and snooping, not to mention the various wars on terror which have certainly killed a lot of our troops, but never seem to make us any safer. It is remarkably hard to defend yourself against an enemy whose language few of us speak, yet who speaks ours and can move freely in our world, and who is willing, even happy, to die at our hands ��� or his own ��� if he can kill us first.
Meanwhile, many of the demands of terror, from the IRA to the Palestinians, have been quietly met. And the extraordinary connections between our supposed ally Saudi Arabia and the worst terrorist incident of all ��� September 11, 2001 in New York ��� have been politely ignored.
It���s also worth remembering, as we mourn alongside the French, how many stupid things have been said about them. Remember the long period of macho chest-thumping in which they were idiotically derided as ���Cheese-eating surrender monkeys��� and it was claimed you couldn���t find any French military victories on the internet?
This was stupid at the time, especially from Americans, whose country would never even have existed if the French (modestly aided by some Americans) hadn���t defeated us British at Yorktown, perhaps the most significant French victory in the history of the world. How does it sound now?
Yet this sort of thing, shouting, table-thumping, threat-making and boasting, is all too often the only outcome of murderous atrocities such as this.
And then there is the rapid casting aside of ancient, wise rules. Our irreplaceable liberty and justice, which took a thousand years to create, are in shreds thanks to hasty and emotive measures that did no good. And now we have the shame of lawless confinement of untried men in Guantanamo, of torture that Englishmen, far fiercer and crueller than we think we are, abandoned as barbaric hundreds of years ago. And we have the horrors of ���extraordinary rendition��� by secret flights to secret prisons, in which dark things took place. How can we claim to stand for liberty and justice if we do such things?
And we see the dubious and dangerous use of pilotless drones to conduct summary executions of our enemies. Few can be sorry at the death of Mohammed Emwazi (the so-called ���Jihadi John���), but what precedents are we setting? For the moment, our fanatical foes do not have drones of their own. One day, they will.
Few will be sad about the death of Mohammed Emwazi (Jihadi John) but the drone strike killing will set a dangerous precedent for our enemies, who don't have drones at the moment but will do one day
A lot of people exult over this event, and those who quietly suggest that it might violate our own principles of law and justice are jostled to one side by super-patriotic breast-beaters (the same sort who used to jeer at the French for being soft). And listen to the words of the mother of James Foley, one of Emwazi���s victims, who in a short and dignified interview epitomised the difference between our civilisation and those who seek to destroy it.
Diane Foley said: ���It saddens me that here in America, we are celebrating the killing of this deranged, pathetic, young man.��� It gave her no solace. ���No! Not at all! If the circumstances had been different, Jim probably would have befriended that man and tried to help him���.
She regretted the concentration of resources on revenge rather than on protecting our citizens and helping the vulnerable. ���I am sorry,��� she said softly. ���Jim would have been devastated with the whole thing. Jim was a peacemaker. He wanted to know how we could figure out why, why all this is happening.���
Asked if she got a sense of justice from the drone strike, she replied ���Justice! No. Not at all. Just sad���.
Should we decry this measured, civilised and thoughtful response as foolish softness? It is surely hard to do so, when the person speaking has endured the public, cruel murder of her son, and yet still finds it in her heart to think and say such things. Could it be that she is wiser than the politicians and the security men?
James Foley was among Emwazi's victims but his mother Diane didn't celebrate the killer's death. She said it was just very 'sad' and that her 'peacemaker' son would have been unhappy about the quest for revenge
After all, let us not forget that Islamist terror has grown in strength and reach, not diminished, since we embarked on our supposedly benevolent interventions in the Muslim world. The Iraq invasion, the Afghan intervention, the wild and brainless enthusiasm with which we greeted the disastrous ���Arab Spring���, the supposedly humanitarian interference in Libya which turned it into a failed state, the aid and comfort we gave to the rebellion in Syria. Not only have these things failed to prevent terror. They have visited a violent chaos on the whole Muslim world, in which fanatical and grisly death cults thrive and prosper.
And alongside them, there is the enormous migration of desperate young men, from Africa, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, many of them Muslim, some of them no doubt easy recruits for the fanatics.
We pretend to understand these nebulous and varied terror groups, for years placing them under the all-embracing trademark of ���Al Qaeda���, now insisting they are part of a new and greater menace called ���ISIS���. The truth is there is no mastermind sitting in a cave issuing orders (though of course someone is always willing to claim responsibility for these outrages after they have happened ��� and who can be sure if such claims are true?).
That is a James Bond fantasy. And it is also why these things would still be hard to prevent if we turned ourselves into a totalitarian state of surveillance, identity cards, perpetual searches of the innocent ��� like going through an airport, only all the time.
They don���t work by our rules. They can stay off, or below, our grid. They don���t mind if they die. They will get through.
All we will achieve by adopting such methods is to make ourselves miserable without making ourselves safe.
Our task is now first to mourn with our French friends and allies. And after that, to think rather than to shout. Rhetoric and militancy have not done very much for us in the past. Why should it be different this time?
November 14, 2015
A Debate on Free Speech at Blackwell's Bookshop, Oxford
Here, from the interesting Quadrapheme site, is the first account (quite brief) of a discussion on free speech (and the growing movement to ban speakers from universities) in which I took part, on Thursday 12th November.
http://www.quadrapheme.com/wallflower-free-speech-debate-at-blackwells-oxford/
I believe a recording was made and will soon be available.
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