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Category: USA

USA 

Outside the bubble

Melanie

Fascinating to hear Dr Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to President Trump, on the BBC Today programme on Friday morning (0750) With the presenter’s voice and the phrasing of his questions reflecting the premise from which all BBC coverage of the Trump presidency starts – that it is a total disaster and has achieved nothing apart from really awful things like the military transgender ban and is about to junk the US constitution for rule by junta and that the White House is engulfed by unbridled chaos – Gorka did not…

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judges USA 

At last, someone intends to restore America’s rule of law

Melanie

I have previously expressed my shock at America’s “sanctuary cities” where illegal immigrants are given sanctuary from the law. Now, the country’s top immigration enforcement officer, Thomas Homan, says he is looking into charging sanctuary city leaders with violating federal anti-smuggling laws because he is fed up with local officials putting their communities and his officers at risk by releasing illegal immigrants from jail. About time. Trump supporters are looking to the President to restore the rule of law to America. It is astounding that its flaunting has been institutionalised…

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A cruel and ignorant campaign

Melanie

The agonising case of Charlie Gard, the 11-month old baby dying from a rare form of mitochondrial disease, is edging towards a no less agonising conclusion. Today, his parents agreed that he should be transferred from Great Ormond Street hospital in London (GOSH) to a hospice to spend there his final period of life. The hospice was a compromise. The parents have been fighting the plan for their baby’s end of life care just as they had fought the decision that he should no longer be kept alive. They wanted…

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Britain USA 

The hijacking of tragedy

Melanie

Public debate on highly contentious issues is now careering out of control. Tragedy is being hijacked by political agitators. Facts are being junked for ignorance, misrepresentation and misleading hearsay. A culture of hyperventilating emotion and licensed resentment means that those trying to articulate dispassionate judgment, justice and compassion are being vilified as unfeeling brutes. The Grenfell Tower fire in London, in which an entire apartment block was consumed by flames at the loss of at least 80 lives and left all the survivors homeless, was an appalling event whose causes…

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Europe USA 

Trump in Poland

Melanie

In his magnificent speech in Poland, President Trump asked whether the west “still has the will to survive”. If he’d listened to BBC Radio’s Today programme this morning (approx 0840), he might have lost his own. The issue that seemed to have startled the BBC was the suggestion that there were now threats to western bonds of culture, faith and tradition. (The fact that some of us have been writing about this for years has of course totally passed the BBC by). Two guests were invited to discuss this question:…

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judges Instant Articles USA 

The party that stands against the rule of law

Melanie

Sanctuary cities in the US provide official sanctuary from… the law. They protect illegal immigrants from being handed over to the authorities for deportation. In some cases where they have committed crimes, they have been freed to commit more crimes, including murder. It is simply astounding that this situation has been allowed to exist and grow in America. Now President Trump has brought forward two bills to end this practice and restore the rule of law. The Democrats are resisting these bills. They want illegal immigrants to continue to be…

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Britain Instant Articles USA Videos 

An open door is swinging for the Anglosphere

Melanie

A couple of days ago, I appeared on BBC TV’s This Week show talking about whether the Anglosphere, the shorthand term for the English-speaking world led by Britain and America, was in decline given the ongoing uproar over Brexit and President Trump. You can watch this discussion here. Since my remarks were very compressed, what follows here is a fuller version of my observations – or what I would have said had I not been confined to such a short space of time. The Anglosphere has been in decline for…

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conversation Britain Instant Articles USA 

The fight to the death in Britain and America

Melanie

Both Britain and America are afflicted by a mortal sickness. Britain recently suffered three Islamist attacks in as many months, killing scores of people. Earlier this week, a white man drove a van into Muslims outside a mosque in Finsbury Park, north London, injuring nine. One man who collapsed before the attack died at the scene. Islamist attacks are habitually said to be either random acts of terrorism or the fault of the West. Muslims disclaim communal responsibility and talk instead about promoting harmony. Yet after Finsbury Park the media,…

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