WikiLeaks: Fear of Offending Muslims Allowed Extremists into Britain ahead of 7/7 London Bombings
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A fear of offending Muslims allowed extremists into Britain before the 2005 London Tube and bus bombings, a former Labour minister with close links to the intelligence services has admitted.

Kim Howells blamed “political correctness” for fostering a situation in which dozens of extremists being sent to fight the West after being indoctrinated in Britain.

The Daily Telegraph has disclosed this week how terrorist recruits from across Africa and the Middle East flocked to London to claim asylum.

According to leaked detainee files from the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, obtained by the WikiLeaks website and passed to The Daily Telegraph, at least 35 detainees were sent to fight against the West after being indoctrinated in Britain.

Mr Howells, a former foreign office minister and chairman of the influential Commons intelligence and security committee, blamed “political correctness” which meant that the extremists and their views were not challenged.

He said: “There is a great reluctance to talk about the whole issue. » | Christopher Hope, Whitehall Editor | Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Oh, for Christ's sake, grow a spine! (No blasphemy intended! Literally, for the sake of Christ! Otherwise the West will not belong to Christ.) You lot in Westminster and in other institutions are so, so weak. What the hell are we paying you weaklings for? Spineless creatures! Spineless to the Nth degree! Quite sickening! – © Mark

Japan Nuclear Fears Prompt Panic-buying around World
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: As nuclear panic began to spread around the world, supermarkets and pharmacies thousands of miles from Japan ran out of anything and everything rumoured to prevent radiation poisoning.

Russia saw a run on red wine and seaweed; in China people were buying massive amounts of salt, and chemists as far away as Bulgaria reported shortages of iodine tablets.

No matter how many scientists were wheeled out to reassure people that radiation levels outside Japan would not pose a threat to health, widespread distrust of official advice meant thousands placed more faith in rumours and old wives’ tales.

In China, the government called for calm after shoppers bought up huge quantities of salt in the mistaken belief that it contains enough iodine to block radiation.

Potassium iodide tablets, which prevent the body from absorbing radiation, have been handed out in Japan to those living near the stricken Fukushima power plant, and in China iodine is added to salt to help prevent iodine deficiency disorders.

The mere mention of the word iodine was enough to prompt panic-buying of salt amid fears that a change in the wind direction could blow a radioactive cloud across China from its near neighbour.

“We are entirely sold out of salt, and shoppers are now buying salt substitutes such as soy sauce, even though there is no connection,” said an exasperated supermarket worker in Shanghai. » | Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter | Thursday, March 17, 2011

Force, Fear Keep Iran Together
THE GLOBE AND MAIL: A year after Ahmadinejad’s ‘victory,’ the resistance dares not speak, but fissures exist

This may prove to be the darkest week in Iran’s recent history. There is, it seems, nowhere to go. Yet the nature of this darkness, its awkward fit with the official meaning of the Islamic regime, may show us a way forward.

Exactly a year ago Sunday, when it became apparent that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had claimed victory in an election whose results and conditions were not at all clear, the streets of Tehran began to fill with people.

It does not really matter whether Mr. Ahmadinejad stole an election that went against him (as protesters claim) or not; what this year of protest has shown is that Iran is far more fissiparous than anyone had thought, and that only force and fear, not faith and support, keeps it conglomerated. Even if you discount the hyperbole the foreign media directed at the “green tide” last year, this was by far the largest and lengthiest uprising in the Iranian revolution’s history.

It encompassed a huge swath of society; most significantly, it involved large numbers of clerics and top leaders, including former prime ministers, who were actively involved in the 1979 revolution and whose loyalty to the state is beyond question: This could not easily be dismissed as the work of radical guerrilla groups or outside agitators salaried by the United States or Britain.

As the year has progressed, and especially after the authorities went on a killing spree in December, on the holy day of Ashura, these figures have become more antipathetic toward the regime itself: There is now an official, built-in resistance with a name and an identity.

But you will probably not be seeing much of this resistance this week. It has become far, far too dangerous. Thursday, the key leaders of the protests, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, told people to stay home: The alternative was a slaughter. The regime’s shift from authoritarian to totalitarian – its adoption of Stasi-like practices that had not been part of its repertoire before – have rendered such demonstrations temporarily impossible. Read on and comment >>> Doug Saunders | Saturday, June 12, 2010

Debt Contagion Fears Mount for Eurozone

Egyptian Copts: The Fear and the Faith

Democrats Fear Every Seat Up for Grabs After Massachusetts Defeat
TIMES ONLINE: Fear and recrimination ricocheted through the Democratic Party today after the loss of a safe Senate seat left Congressmen feeling none of them was secure in the upcoming midterm elections.

Barbara Boxer, a Democratic senator for California, confirmed the sense of alarm spreading through the party. “Every state is now in play,” she told Politico.

Tuesday night’s Massachusetts by-election defeat, in one of the most liberal states in America, stripped President Obama of his 60th, filibuster-proof vote in the US Senate.

Claire McCaskill, senator from Missouri, said: “If there’s anybody in this building that doesn’t tell you they’re more worried about elections today, you absolutely should slap them.”

Mr Obama was scrambling yesterday to save his entire domestic agenda after losing the late Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat, a defeat that dealt a devastating blow to hopes of reforming the US health system.

The loss of an almost sacred Democratic seat, which Mr Kennedy had held for 47 years, was a humiliating upset that showed Mr Obama how the popular mood has turned against his policies and his party, a year to the day after he took office. >>> Tim Reid in Washington and Times Online | Thursday, January 21, 2010

New York: Metropolitan Museum entfernt Mohammed-Bilder
Mohammed und der Erzengel Gabriel. Persische Miniatur. Bild: Welt Online
WELT ONLINE: Aufregung in New York: Das Metropolitan Museum of Art will einem Medienbericht zufolge Kunstwerke mit Mohammed-Bildern nicht mehr zeigen. Außerdem soll die Abteilung für "Islamische Kunst" umbenannt werden. Ein Islamwissenschaftler von der Yale Universität spricht von einer "Schande".

Das Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will Kunstwerke mit Mohammed-Bildern nicht mehr zeigen. Außerdem werden diese Bilder wohl auch nicht mehr in der neuen Ausstellung, die 2011 nach der Renovierung des Museums eröffnet werden soll, hängen, berichtet die „New York Post“.

Momentan sind wegen des 50 Millionen Dollar teuren Umbaus des Hauses nur etwa 60 von 60.000 islamischen Kunstwerken im Metropolitan zu sehen. Weil aber konservative Muslime am Abbildungsverbot für ihren Propheten Mohammed festhalten, seien die Kunstwerke „unter Beobachtung“, heißt es. Außerdem habe das Museum angekündigt, seine Abteilung für „Islamische Kunst“ in „Arabische Länder, Türkei, Iran und Zentralasien“ umzubenennen. >>> Von Uta Baier | Montag, 11. Januar 2010

’Jihad’ Jitters at Met
NEW YORK POST: Mohammed art gone

Is the Met afraid of Mohammed?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art quietly pulled images of the Prophet Mohammed from its Islamic collection and may not include them in a renovated exhibition area slated to open in 2011, The Post has learned.

The museum said the controversial images -- objected to by conservative Muslims who say their religion forbids images of their holy founder -- were "under review."

Critics say the Met has a history of dodging criticism and likely wants to escape the kind of outcry that Danish cartoons of Mohammed caused in 2006.

"This is typical of the Met -- trying to avoid any controversy," said a source with inside knowledge of the museum.

The Met currently has about 60 items from its 60,000-piece Islamic collection on temporary display in a corner of its vast second-floor Great Hall while larger galleries are renovated. But its three ancient renderings of Mohammed are not among them. >>> Isabel Vincent | Sunday, January 10, 2010

Henryk M. Broder – After Attack on Danish Cartoonist: The West Is Choked by Fear
A Somalian man broke into the home of Kurt Westergaard on Friday armed with an ax and a knife. He is accused of the attempted murder of the Danish cartoonist. Photograph: Spiegel Online International
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL – Editorial: The attack on illustrator Kurt Westergaard wasn't the first attempt to carry out a deadly fatwa. When Muslims tried to murder Salman Rushdie 20 years ago, the protests among intellectuals were loud. Today, though, Western writers and thinkers would rather take cover than defend basic rights.

In 1988, Salman Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses" was published in its English-language original edition. Its publication led the Iranian state and its revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, to issue a "fatwa" against Rushdie and offer a hefty bounty for his murder. This triggered several attacks on the novel's translators and publishers, including the murder of Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi. Millions of Muslims around the world who had never read a single line of the book, and who had never even heard the name Salman Rushdie before, wanted to see the death sentence against the author carried out -- and the sooner the better, so that the stained honor of the prophet could be washed clean again with Rushdie's blood.

In that atmosphere, no German publisher had the courage to publish Rushdie's book. This led a handful of famous German authors, led by Günter Grass, to take the initiative to ensure that Rushdie's novel could appear in Germany by founding a publishing house exclusively for that purpose. It was called Artikel 19, named after the paragraph in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights that guarantees the freedom of opinion. Dozens of publishing houses, organizations, journalists, politicians and other prominent members of German society were involved in the joint venture, which was the broadest coalition that had ever been formed in postwar German history.

Sympathy for the Hurt Feelings of Muslims

Seventeen years later, after the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published a dozen Muhammad cartoons on a single page, there were similar reactions in the Islamic world to those that had followed the publication of "The Satanic Verses." Millions of Muslims from London to Jakarta who had never seen the caricatures or even heard the name of the newspaper, took to the streets in protests against an insult to the prophet and demanded the appropriate punishment for the offenders: death. Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden even went so far as to demand the cartoonists' extradition so that they could be condemned by an Islamic court.

This time, however, in contrast to the Rushdie case, hardly anyone has showed any solidarity with the threatened Danish cartoonists -- to the contrary. Grass, who had initiated the Artikel 19 campaign, expressed his understanding for the hurt feelings of the Muslims and the violent reactions that resulted. Grass described them as a "fundamentalist response to a fundamentalist act," in the process drawing a moral equivalence between the 12 cartoons and the death threats against the cartoonists. Grass also stated that: "We have lost the right to seek protection under the umbrella of freedom of expression." >>> Henryk M. Broder | Monday, January 04, 2010

SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: ’Islam Needs a Sexual Revolution’ >>>

In Iran Today No One Is Safe
NRC HANDELSBLAD INTERNATIONAL: Iran has shown that a regime that is not afraid to use violence against its own citizens can crush a protest even when it has broad popular support.

Iran's supreme leader, ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was categorical: the protests against the controversial outcome of the presidential election had to stop, he said in a speech after last Friday's prayer.

That was all the Revolutionary Guard and the Baseej street fighters needed. When supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi took to the streets again on Saturday, they were mercilessly bludgeoned into submission or even shot dead.

The Iranian authorities have acknowledged that at least ten people - "terrorists" they called them - were killed on Saturday. Unconfirmed reports suggest the real death toll may be higher.

For the powers that be in Iran, namely ayatollah Khamenei, who has the last word in the Islamic republic, and his protege Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the situation is crystal clear. The people have spoken - even if they disagree about what they said - and they have chosen Ahmadinejad over Mousavi with 63 to 34 percent. This result, Khamenei said in his speech, cannot be questioned.

And so anyone who disobeys the order of the supreme leader, can now be beaten off the street or arrested. The events of the past weekend show that a regime that is not afraid to use violence against its own citizens can indeed crush a protest - even when it has broad popular support. There are historic precedents in the region: in Syria in 1981, president Hafez al-Assad ordered the town of Hama bombed to quell a revolt by Islamic fundamentalists there. Thousands of people were killed, but the rebellion was crushed. >>> Carolien Roelants | Monday, June 22, 2009

Out of Iran, Still Afraid: Two women who witnessed the protests and violence in post-election Iran are in the U.S. CNN's Ted Rowlands reports

Fear and Hate on the Rise: Europe Revives Its Old Monsters
FRANCE 24: Europe has elected its angriest, most eurosceptic and xenophobic parliament ever - with a battalion of hard-right parties breaking through for the first time on a wave of anti-immigrant feeling and an unholy cocktail of both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

But while there is no denying the fury of the "angry middle-aged men" apparently responsible for electing the violent anti-Roma Jobbik party in Hungary, the BNP in Britain, Heinz-Christian Strache's Third Reich nostalgics in Austria and Geert Wilders Freedom Party in Holland - who alone on the extreme right is proud to call himself a Zionist - the new parliament will also have a caucus of new and surprising progressive voices.

Sweden's Pirate Party, who have campaigned for freer internet downloading and a loosening of copyright restrictions, have struck a chord among the young everywhere, and France's crusading anti-corruption magistrate Eva Joly - elected on the Green ticket - and her Italian opposite number Antonio Di Pietro are likely to hold many in Brussels and beyond it to account.

This is also a much more colourful and controversial parliament than the one that went before. If half of the parliament's accountability problem is its lack of visibility, a bit of personality surely has to be a good thing - granted, of course, that it does not turn into a theatre of hate. But even that unedifying prospect may prompt the majority of Europeans who did not bother to vote to do so the next time. >>> By Fiachra Gibbons/RFI | Sunday, June 07, 2009

Barack Obama's Rich Supporters Fear His Tax Plans Show He's a Class Warrior
THE TELEGRAPH: Some of Barack Obama's richest supporters fear they have elected a "class warrior" to the White House, who will turn America's freewheeling capitalism into a more regulated European system.

Photo courtesy of The Telegraph
Wealthy Wall Street financiers and other business figures provided crucial support for Mr Obama during the election, backing him over the Republican candidate John McCain as the right leader to rescue the collapsing US economy.

But it is now dawning on many among them that Mr Obama was serious about his campaign trail promises to bring root and branch reform to corporate America - and that they were more than just election rhetoric.

A top Obama fundraiser and hedge fund manager said: "I'm appalled at the anti-Wall Street rhetoric. It was OK on the campaign but now it's the real world. I'm surprised that Obama is turning out to be so left-wing. He's a real class warrior."

Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute, a free enterprise think tank, said Democrats in Congress were unnerved by the president's latest plan to raise $210 billion over 10 years from multinational corporations.

The money is needed to pay for a national debt that will double over the next five years; and triple over the next 10 years to $17.3 trillion. But the crackdown already faces fierce Democratic resistance.

"These big companies are based in New York Boston, Seattle and Silicon Valley, where Democrats dominate," Mr Edwards said. "Obama's tax plan is already cleaving him from his big corporate supporters," he said.

Mr Obama made no secret of his plans to raise taxes on the "working rich" (individuals earning more than $200,000) by imposing a top income tax rate of almost 40 per cent, and there is little surprise that those plans remain on track, even during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

But Democratic opposition is building in Congress to many of the President's proposals. A plan to reduce tax deductions for charitable gifts by richer people may have to be scrapped, because the charitable sector - which includes hospitals, museums and voluntary service groups - depends heavily on tax-deducted donations.

Charles Rangel, the New York chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which drafts tax legislation, raised a red flag about the proposal last week. "I would never want to adversely affect anything that is charitable or good," he said.

Mr Obama also wants to "cap and trade" carbon emissions - seen by business as effectively yet another tax - to tackle global warming.

The president's plans are direct repudiation of the model of light touch regulation credited with creating economic growth and wealth in America in recent decades. >>> By Leonard Doyle in Washington | Saturday, May 9, 2009

Greek Riots Spark Fear of Europe in Flames
THE SUNDAY TIMES: Seldom do Greek academics attain the heroic status that was bestowed last week on Christos Kittas, an eminent professor of pathology and rector of Athens University.

More comfortable in front of a whiteboard Kittas, a wiry figure with grey hair and a silver beard, found himself on the front line in what looked like a war zone.

From his palatial office on the first floor of the university, he organised a “human chain” of colleagues to defend the historic building from being ransacked in Greece’s worst street violence in decades.

“I’m terrified,” he confided on Friday as yet another column of demonstrators filed past the building, screaming abuse at police – “killers in uniform” – for having shot dead a teenager six days before.

“I haven’t slept in days now,” he added, sitting beneath oil paintings of previous rectors going back to the 1830s.

Downstairs, other teachers had formed a line on the steps to prevent hardcore demonstrators from breaking into the building and using it, as they had done previously, as a base from which to hurl Molotov cocktails and stones at police.

A week of protests and rioting by students venting fury over the death of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos has thrown Greece into turmoil, causing hundreds of millions of pounds of damage and focusing attention on economic, political and social woes. >>> Matthew Campbell | Sunday, December 14, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback & Hardback) – Free delivery >>>

BNP's Shock Victory in Council Election Sparks Fears of Surge in Votes across Britain
MAIL Online: Fears over rising racial tension mounted last night after the British National Party scored a shock by-election victory.

The extremist party snatched a council seat in the Lincolnshire market town of Boston - where migrants make up a quarter of the population.

Anti-racism campaigners warned that the BNP surprise triumph would fuel 'scaremongering' about foreigners and lead to an increase in 'violence and threats'.

The town has a huge numbers of migrants, especially from Portugal and Poland, who take low-paid work on farms picking flowers, fruit and vegetables and in food processing plants.

Critics have accused the Government of failing to prepare cash-strapped councils for the influx of immigrants by giving them the resources to invest in public services.

This has left schools, health facilities and transport struggling to cope with greater numbers.

The resurgence of the BNP will also spark fears among the main political parties that the radical group could prosper at future by-elections in the run-up to the next General Election.

In a result which revived huge concerns, the far-right party won its first district council seat in Lincolnshire in the Fenside ward of Boston. >>> By Ian Drury | November 14, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Dust Jacket Hardcover, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>

Dutch Companies Fear Jordanian Boycott
RADIO NETHERLANDS WORLDWIDE: Fearful of a Jordanian boycott of their products, two Dutch companies have distanced themselves from the film Fitna, produced and released earlier this year by Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders. On Sunday, Friesland Foods and the Zwanenberg Food Group placed adverts in Jordanian newspapers to announce that they have nothing to do with the film. They're hoping to prevent their products ending up on a Middle East blacklist.



They took this step after 'The Messenger of Allah Unites Us', a broad coalition of Jordanian political parties, professional organisations and media, printed one million posters showing Dutch and Danish products that - they argue - consumers in Jordan and other Middle East countries ought to boycott. In addition to a number of Danish brand names, the list includes such Dutch companies as KLM, Philips and baby food manufacturer Friso.



There's considerable anger in Jordan regarding Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and Dutch politician Geert Wilders. The chairman of the coalition, Zakaria Sheik, says that both men have offended Muslims throughout the world and shouldn't escape their punishment. Dutch Companies Fear Jordanian Boycott >>> By Sebastiaan Gottlieb | June 23, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Dust Jacket Hardcover, direct from the publishers
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback, direct from the publishers

Ben Elton: BBC ‘Scared of Islam Jokes’
THE GUARDIAN: Comedian and writer Ben Elton has accused the BBC of being too "scared" to allow jokes about Islam.

Elton, who co-wrote critically acclaimed sitcoms such as The Young Ones and Blackadder, said the BBC's reluctance to run material that might offend Muslims was based on fear rather than morality.

Speaking in an interview with Christian magazine Third Way, Elton was asked if too much deference was shown to religious people.

"I think it all starts with people nodding whenever anybody says, 'As a person of faith ...'," Elton replied.

"And I believe that part of it is due to the genuine fear that the authorities and the community have about provoking the radical elements of Islam," he said.

"There's no doubt about it, the BBC will let vicar gags pass but they would not let imam gags pass.

"They might pretend that it's, you know, something to do with their moral sensibilities, but it isn't. It's because they're scared. I know these people."

Elton said it was difficult to use even common sayings: "I wanted to use the phrase 'Muhammad came to the mountain' and everybody said, 'Oh, don't! Just don't! Don't go there!'.

"It was nothing to do with Islam, I was merely referring to the old proverb, 'If the mountain won't come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain.' And people said, 'Let's just not!' It's incredible." Ben Elton: BBC ‘Scared of Islam Jokes’ >>> By Chris Tryhorn

Mark Alexander