Fascinating short interview with Robert Spencer- in my opinion the best person and most reliable expert for analysis of Islamofascism- on the London-Glasgow attempts and the "educated jihad". I wholly agree, and have always thought the same. A follow up to the post below. HERE.

(btw, I may be out of range of a computer for the next couple of days; the countryside beckons this weekend.)

"When I think of the long and arduous work that goes into preparation for a medical career, of the investment that is made by some institution or institutions in their training, for nobody pays the full cost of medical training, and then to be willing to blow themselves and possibly hundreds of others up, I am utterly horrified. We are confronted by a nihilism so total that it is unreachable and unredeemable."

(an email commenter to Pamela of Atlas Shrugs' blog, part of an interesting post here).

Now, don't get me wrong, I can follow that thought and it's got some sense to it- but another occurs to me. What does it say about our jihadi enemies if they can take half a dozen doctors and direct them into blowing themselves up in non-medical spaces? Why didn't they wreak carnage through the obvious means of their medical facilities? If Dr Harold Shipman could, for pleasure apparently, carry off tens, what could deeply motivated doctors of death do? If you ask me, Shipman was the nadir of deepest nihilism. By contrast these guys wanted to raise a spectacle, and carried their motivating focus throughout the madness of their acts. That they ignored the special status of their careers in society was their idea of transcendent values, rather than a rejection of values per se.

Oh, and that they were inept (if they were inept, rather than simply unlucky) just goes to show that intelligent people may be quite impractical when outside their specialisms.

Update: related.

Two clever women: The Bat Yeor interview conducted by Pamela of Atlas Shrugs. The wide perspective.

This ruling class...

On Sunday afternoon I watched the Marr interview the Brown, and I must say the time went as quickly as might a Sunday afternoon nap. Marr of the Beeb conducted one of his usual chummy interviews, a mellow and replete after-dinner-style (it was probably actually for a morning show) chat which enabled Gordon to pose as a calm sober influence guiding anti-terror activities and steering the good ship Britannia through her squalls/storms. A manse-like calm prevailed.

Although I fully believe that the terrorism attempted over the last few days has been real- as it was on other occasions- it is immensely easy on Brown that he has this fluffed attack in which to wallow, aided and abetted by his sympathetic media friends.

Melanie Phillips has a series of points which Marr might have raised, but didn't. One day this ruling class might come to very much regret the chummy games they have played with their hegemony, rather than making serious preparations for the challenges we face.

Phillips does though praise Gordon for his initial appointments- Sir Alan West from the Navy and Sir John Stevens. Yet I would have a question of her: is it enough to appoint better leadership at home, when the indications from the same batch of appointments are that Brown is about to back away from the "taking it to them" strategy that Blair was able to hold? Even finding the best deckchair on the Titanic and putting the best lifeguard in it wouldn't stop anyone from drowning.