Mustaqim - Musings of a flying Imam

Europe's stunning arrogance

2011-12-01T17:21:00.002Z

Whilst the European is mainly making the news for its strenuous efforts of cancelling even the pretence of democracy to preserve the interest (pun intended) of the bankers, they have not entirely taken their eyes off the "Muslim menace" within their midst, maybe because the Islamic faith remains the last and final obstacle in the secularists dream of technocratic government unhindered by conscience or reference to divine commandments. As I am preparing for a talk at Greenwich Islamic Centre (my "Greenwich Mean Talk") on Friday, 9 December, about whether Fortress Europe will ever accept full Muslim integration, I am stumbling across yet another article on the BBC News website giving publicity to the Dutch campaign for outlawing Jewish and Islamic slaughter methods. If it wasn't for the Jews fighting their corner, we Muslims would already be on a hiding to nowhere, but luckily they have picked holes in the argument of the so-called scientific and humane method of stunning animals prior to slaughter as well as the associated terminology. Dutch chief rabbi Benjamin Jacobs is quoted as taking issue with the term "ritual slaughter", saying that "it's not dancing around a cow". "In my opinion", he says, "stunning is torture. Just because it can't say 'moo' or move anymore, it's very nice for the human eye, but the animal is alive and the scientists don't actually know if it's suffering or not."

Well, the "scientists" do know, but don't want you to: In my article The halal slaughter controversy I have quoted and provided a translation of a study performed by veterinary scientists in Hanover, Germany, in 1978, comparing the Jewish shechita method of slaughter (identical to the Muslim halal method) and the captive bolt stunning method. The results were clear-cut: Cows and sheep dispatched using the shechita/halal method were fully unconscious quicker and suffered less pain, measured by EEG, than those stunned prior to slaughter. For sheep slaughtered using the Jewish/Muslim method, a zero brain activity line was recorded after a maximum of 14 seconds, whereas for sheep slaughtered using pre-stunning, brain activity responding to pain stimuli could still be observed until 200 seconds from the animal having been stunned. So, in the worst case scenario, sheep slaughtered Islamically suffer and feel pain a whole 186 seconds less than those subjected to captive bolt stunning. For those who have been brainwashed into believing that animals slaughtered Islamically suffer unduly, I highly recommend a demonstration video produced by a Muslim small holding in Texas.

These results are, of course, not palatable to animal rights campaigners whose real agenda is to deter people from eating meat altogether, using the "barbaric" Islamic slaughter as a welcome weapon in their arsenal of tricks. In past discussions I had with them, they tend to dismiss the German scientific study as outdated, but when asked to commission a new study, they argue that this would not be ethical since animals would be subjected to pain in the process. Hence, due to this circle never potentially being squared, and Jewish and Islamic slaughter only affecting less than one percent of all animals slaughtered for food, they happily acquiescence into the other ninety-nine plus percent of animals suffering a good two to three minutes longer than those mercifully killed the Jewish or Muslim way.

The minute numbers involved and the large hysteria created by everything presented in the media as the Islamic threat are in themselves telling. There are a dozen Muslim women wearing the full niqab in France, yet the French parliament sees the need to pass a specific law outlawing this attire in public places and prosecute a woman for her defiance. Here in Britain, the Daily Mail has run a whole series of articles about unsuspecting British consumers being served "halal" meat, for example from New Zealand, conveniently forgetting to mention that such meat is about as halal as the proverbial halal or kosher pork chop (or the so-called Islamic mortgage, for this matter), since all meat in New Zealand is by law stunned prior to slaughter. At the Commonwealth Business Forum in Perth, British prime minister David Cameron had the nerve to suggest the giving of foreign aid by Britain should be tied to a commitment to accept homosexuality as a basic human right, a suggestion flatly rejected by African nations. The attack against Muslim, (orthodox) Jewish and (traditional) Christian values coming out of the corridors of power of the European super state and its constituent emasculated nation states is of a purely political nature.

Comparisons with the Spanish inquisition are not entirely inappropriate. The difference is one of scale rather than mindset. And Europe no longer wants to be Christian, but secular, a goal pursued with equal passion and fanaticism. Nobody is suggesting that Jews and Muslims ought to convert, confess and eat pork as a sign of the sincerity of having mended their ways or else they would be expelled or culled. In today's Europe Jews may remain Jews, provided they subscribe to the secular Zionist Israel project, and Muslims may remain Muslims, provided they abrogate the Qur'an as being no longer above human-made law, denounce the heretic idea of an Islamic state, pay lip-service to democracy as the best thing since sliced bread (as long as they don't demand popular rule for themselves), become vegetarian or eat only stunned meat, and concede that homosexuality is an entirely acceptable lifestyle for everybody but maybe themselves. Europe is willing to tolerate Muslims as long as they are moderate, non-Islamic and non-interfering. If not, they are radicals, potential terrorists, and must be monitored, locked up or sent "back home", where they can then be assassinated, preferably by remote control drone strike.

So far, our self-appointed leaders have made a good job of compliance on our behalf. They are apologetic and accommodating. They are grateful for being tolerated and receiving the occasional grant or other state funding. They try to outdo each other with ingenious arguments how Islam must evolve and its traditional sources be re-interpreted. They happily approve a "halal" seal for stunned meat now making up the majority of alleged halal produce in the UK. Thankfully, they have not yet managed to delivery us, the Muslim public, wholesale to the altar of Europe, which is why they vehemently object for genuinely halal meat to carry the added label "Derived from animals that have not been stunned prior to slaughter." And the popular (democratic) mood is expressed by the increasing presence of outlets approved by the Halal Monitoring Committee, who only approve non-stunned meat.

If there are enough Muslims to stem the tide of the commercialisation and emasculation of Islam, the rest of the European public may one day thank us for it. The public is suspicious of Europe whose structure is not democratic and has already blessed us with plenty of unnecessary bureaucracy of the type previously only seen in the Soviet Union of yesteryear. The centre of power has shifted to being more remote and less approachable. Make no mistake: Secular Europe (or European secularists) want total control. On the back of the excuse of the Muslim threat of terrorism they are introducing laws aimed to be used to control their own, increasingly disenfranchised, populations. As a contrast to heavy-handed policing of demonstrations, they let rioters run wild without much police interference to spread fear, a proven recipe to make people surrender their freedom to the state. Airport security serve the same purpose, frightening, harassing and controlling a compliant public: Never mind the idiocy of liquid explosives carried in hand luggage: if it is perfectly save to let planes land at European airports arriving from destinations where liquids are not controlled, why do Europeans have to have to surrender their water and coke bottles when they go abroad?

If our leadership hadn't sold us out and we weren't so trusting of them (and possibly ignorant of true Islam, including its animal welfare provisions), then maybe we could start to fill the political vacuum and provide much needed leadership at a time where the people rise up against the slavery brought unto them by fraudulent fractional reserve banking (The People against the Banks), and it could no longer be said of the "Occupy Wall Street" and "Occupy the City" movements that they lack a programme and an ideology. Until then, we will continue to be stunned by the arrogance of our self-appointed masters and remain the "scum of the sea" as in the prophetic warning: "You shall be numerous, but you will be like the foam of the sea, and Allah will take the fear of you away from your enemies and will place weakness into your hearts.". Until then, let them re-interpret Islam for us and reshape the Middle East and the rest of the world to their liking. An Islam, in which Allah is stripped of His sovereignty, is not going to impress anybody, even if it is momentarily still tolerable to European supremacists.

Monkey Science

2011-09-28T10:50:00.002+01:00

You might think scientists have gone mad when you read about a project involving millions of "virtual" monkeys tapping randomly on "virtual" keyboards. The project is an extension of a previous attempt to get real monkeys type on real keyboards, but the monkeys hit the same key until the keyboard broke. So costing only around £5000 a year using virtual monkeys and virtual keyboards works out a lot cheaper.

What's the point of the exercise? The idea is that by random chance if keys are pressed in no particular order and given enough time meaningful sentences would eventually result. And yes, by simplifying the task and not insisting on punctuation, the virtual monkeys have apparently managed to produce a part of a poem of Shakespeare. The wonders of "cloud computing".

Computer programmers have long been living in some kind of parallel universe. There is a pet theory amongst many of them that if all, or most, of human experience could be uploaded to a powerful computer, that computer would eventually be more intelligent than any human being, making human beings kind of obsolete. In other words, we humans would evolve into a higher form of intelligence not dependent on our physical existence but existing in some kind of virtual reality instead. Besides this sort of life form not being much fun, the theory is also seriously flawed.

Besides the mathematical probability of eventually arriving at a flawless copy of the complete works of Shakespeare suggesting it would take longer than the age of the universe, there is still nothing intelligent about any of it. To the computers a poem of Shakespeare makes no more sense than the single letter sequence typed by the real monkeys. The poem only attains meaning by having been written by a conscious poet and read by an appreciative audience. Computers compute or count, they do not create or appreciate meaning. The random sequence matching Shakespeare's poem only stands out from the crowd of random sequences because we distinguish it as something meaningful. Without our aesthetic sense of beauty the sequence would simply remain a string of characters.

In his book "You are not a gadget" computer guru Jaron Lanier provided a lone voice of dissent, warning against the depersonalisation of human experience through the "hive mind" to which his colleagues aspired to. His key argument was that computers, however refined they may be, do not, will not and cannot have consciousness or a soul. Unperturbed by such warnings, computer scientists like Jesse Anderson, who set up the monkey project, will want to prove that intelligence can evolve and higher forms of intelligence are entirely accidental.

The folly is not refined to wacky programmers: it is the expression of the materialist mindset which gave us the theory of evolution, denying both the existence of God and of a soul. The problem they need to face up to is that each time they run this kind of experiment, the results provide clear evidence against them. If it will take millions of virtual monkeys hitting millions of virtual keyboards longer than the age of the universe to produce the complete works of only one writer in human history, what are the chances of humans and other higher life forms having evolved by pure chance (and without the aid of virtual computer networks) from a single cell in a mere fraction of that time, namely life on earth? In his excellent "Atlas of creation", which mainly demonstrates that the fossil record of life on earth does in no way support evolution, Turkish author Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar) provides detailed evidence that even the formation of a protein as the building block of higher organisms had a zero probability of coming about by chance. He quotes the mathematician and astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle as comparing it to the probability that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein."

None of that will deter the continuation of monkey science providing evidence that no matter of how powerful the tools at their disposal, scientists are ultimately no more reasonable or intelligent than the "average" human being. And without divine guidance, the average human is guided by ambition and dogma.

The occident is coming apart

2011-08-07T02:05:00.001+01:00

Dynasties rise and fall, and the decline of the British-American empire has been long in the making. Of late, pax americana it is unravelling fast. Ever more ambitious and hasty wars, such as the support of a hotchpotch band of Libyan dreamers as the official rebel government, increase the overstretch of NATO armed forces who are gradually getting worn down and suffering defeat across the globe. At the same time, international law is in tatters and economic stability and security at home a thing of the past. Painting Muslims as the universal enemy has emboldened home-grown self-styled patriots who, having been ignored by the political establishment shocked Western civilisation with the recent Norway massacre. Not wanting to deflect from the war against Muslim terrorists, the bombing and shooting has quickly been described as the work of a lone madman, however, the reality is that over 95% of terrorist attacks in the the US and over 99% of terrorist attacks in Europe over the last decade were perpetrated not by Muslims but by indigenous secessionists, people who want to break away from the ever more oppressive and all-permeating power of government. Meanwhile the financial markets are collapsing in Europe and America as the scam of bank-created credit is once more spiralling out of control. Whereas Iraq, Iran and lately Libya paid a high price for daring to challenge the supremacy of the dollar and suggesting oil to be traded in a different currency, China, de facto owning the American economy, is emboldened to demand the end of the dollar as world reserve currency whilst at the same time ensuring that the US cannot establish itself near her borders in Afghanistan. With the dollar nearly gone as the tool to command the obedience of the world, American hegemonic influence is finally coming to an abrupt end.

Of course, like fish out of water, we cannot expect present-day power elites to go down without throwing a fit. They have tried to re-arrange the geopolitical situation in Africa and the Middle East with limited success. After the Norway massacre by one of their own and the Tottenham riots out of frustration against the increasing encroachment of the police state, with riots also plaguing Italy, Greece, and Spain due to austerity measures to placate the banking oligarchy, and violence returning to Northern Ireland, Western security forces would need to stage another false flag Islamic terrorist attack to re-focus public attention where they want it. Yet, even when they had plenty of time for planning the perfect crime before callously sacrificing their own people in 9/11 and 7/7, the cracks of the official story soon showed with endless inconsistencies, discrediting the official story, to the point where a UK jury, not usually a group of people known to be gullible or inclined to support political protesters, found the maker of the "7/7 Ripple Effect" film John Hill alias Muadib not guilty of the offence he was charged with, in other words, they found his questioning of the official story of events of the tube bombings entirely justified. So we can expect for anything they might cook up in a hurry to come unstuck rather quickly, and in the face of the death toll caused by Breivik in Norway the simple arrest of a Muslim for the thought-crime of glorifying terrorism without the means or wherewithal to harm a fly just won't do. There is, of course, the other option of staging an extra-terrestrial invasion to create sufficient fear to rally people behind their self-appointed leaders and give up their freedom willingly. Interestingly, UFO sighting stories are all the rage again lately in the UK.

So what does the immediate future hold in store? With Western armies being driven back at most fronts, their own people will question the need to sacrifice and tighten belts whilst wasting money on unwinnable wars abroad. The power of the state will increasingly be directed at people at home to prevent unrest and "keep the peace". People no longer trust their governments whom they perceive to be living off them rather than serving their interests, and being seen in bed with corrupt and powerful international media corporations has not helped to ward off the accusations of sleaze. Democratic systems are not very apt at keeping an angry populace under control, so expect the powers governments awarded themselves to fight alleged Muslim terrorists to be used more and more to placate their own people. No doubt, the scaremongering against Islam and the alleged deluge of immigrants will continue in the hope that people will fight amongst themselves rather than unite against the abuses of government. There is little hope, of course, that Muslims will be the catalyst for unity. Whilst Islam is well placed to rally a new liberation movement, including an uprising against the usurers who have enslaved most of the world into their "global village", Muslims world-wide lack even a basic understanding of political Islam and most Islamic movements have been subverted from within. If the British-American establishment simply hand over to China, it is yet again another change of shift without change of management, as the same mafia banking cartels running the show in the West, have also succeeded in pulling the strings in the East, China having become another economy manipulated and controlled through interest-based fractional reserve banking based on the power of fictitious money. Not having stepped into the breach will be Islam's greatest global failure so far.

Magistrates Courts: if you plead not guilty you will be!

2011-07-04T11:05:00.000+01:00

I've been attending a couple of magistrate's court hearings in England as press observer for contested speeding charges. Mobile speed cameras operated by rogue police officers are the British equivalent of third world countries' police road checks extracting bribes. They're about generating revenue rather than enhancing road safety. In a letter to a local newspaper an outraged motorist recently compared the police speed enforcement action to that of cowboy clampers who immobilise cars on allegedly private land in order to cash in on a hefty release fee.

Modern laser speed detection guns do not provide a print-out of recorded speed. They display a speed figure to the operator and the charge of speeding relies entirely on a single police officer's claim or memory. It is therefore easily open to abuse. Most motorists will not contest speeding charges in the knowledge that magistrates courts rarely find against the word of a police officer. However, there are cases where the police officer operating the equipment makes such major blunders or has such blatant disregard for established procedure that challenging the charge in court appears reasonable. My observations of a number of such cases reveal more about the courts than the police and lead me to the conclusion that in the interest of both justice and reducing public expenditure we might as well do away with magistrates courts altogether.

Whilst more serious offences are tried by a judge and jury in the county court, magistrates or justices of the peace deal with "summary" or petty offences. Magistrates are lay people, drawn mostly from the upper middle classes, with no formal legal training whatsoever. In passing judgment they rely on the legal advice of the clerk to the Justices, and given the magistrates' lack of legal knowledge and experience, these court clerks in a way "own" the court. So instead of keeping up pretences and running the whole show of theatre justice, offenders might as well present before a court clerk in an administrative office to be told their sentence. As there is an automatic right of appeal against the decisions of magistrates courts, not much would change. Contested changes would go to the county court and for the rest the tax payer would be saved considerable sums of money.

My experience of numerous cases is that the clerk always sides with the prosecution, and the magistrates always side with the clerk. There are very few notable exceptions to this rule. Knowing this, the police act with impunity. I have witnessed the very same officer stating under oath in the same magistrates court the exact opposite to what he stated under oath in a case a few weeks prior, in other words, he lied under oath, but even if the defendant had knowledge of the previous case, he would be prevented by the clerk from raising his concern as it would not be "relevant" to the case. The above reference is to a police officer stating when questioned under oath about the code of practice issued by the Association of Chief Police Officers of England and Wales (ACPO) regarding police conduct during speed enforcement action that he had never heard of it. In a subsequent trial the same officer stated with regard to a speed enforcement action at an earlier date that he was fully aware of those guidelines and had observed them throughout. This was an officer who had taken readings of traffic from the opposite side of the road, then jumping out into the road to stop cars on double yellow lines - so much for road safety through speed enforcement action!

Those guidelines contain recommendations for police officers to follow when carrying out road enforcement checks, e.g. that they must wear high-visibility clothing, on which side of the road they must be positioned to take a reading, that they must form a prior opinion of a vehicle speeding (i.e. no fishing operations by taking a continuous reading of oncoming traffic in the hope some motorists might eventually exceed the speed limit), the necessary checks to be carried out on the equipment before and after use, and that if there was any doubt in relation to any of those procedures not having been followed properly, then a prosecution should not be brought. It appears the guidelines were issued in an attempt to placate the public who has long taken the cynical view that speed enforcement by the police is a money-making exercise. However, unless an officer can be held accountable in court for following this code of practice mandated by his superiors, it is hardly worth the paper it is written on and thus a rather pointless waste of tax payers' money. I requested clarification from the ACPO's press office as to the degree to which the guidelines were binding on individual police officers, but they chose not to reply, confirming my suspicion that the guidelines were more of a public relations exercise than serious advice to police officers on the road.

Almost all officers' witness statements I have seen as well as their competence certificates contain a reference to the ACPO guidelines in accordance with which training was received and devices were allegedly operated. It should therefore be only right that a defendant be allowed to question officers on their adherence to those guidelines, yet I sat in a magistrates court hearing in Milton Keynes where the prosecution claimed that since these were only guidelines and, furthermore, they were currently under review, they were not relevant, after which the clerk in a hysterical voice told the defendant off for asking any questions relating to those guidelines, shouting at him as if he was a little school boy that "you were already told that these guidelines are not relevant to your case". The same clerk, who hardly opened her mouth when the prosecution spoke, also constantly interrupted the defendant during his questioning of witnesses. Frequently she would demand: "What is the relevance of this question?", thus making it near impossible to conduct an effective cross examination. For if you were to try to catch a witness out to show that he was either lying or his memory was defective, then having first to explain why you were asking a question and with what purpose ruins the exercise. Imagine the following explanation: "I am asking the officer about the timing of the check he carried out because I want to show that what he says contradicts the evidence given by his colleague earlier who gave a different time. So officer, are you still sure you carried out the check at 14.20 hours?". Being forwarned, the officer is likely going to avoid getting himself into a pickle.

A magistrate's court hearing starts with a plea of guilty or not guilty. The expectation is that you plead guilty. If you plead not guilty, the clerk will give you a long lecture that it could cost you a lot more money in court costs if you do so. So from the outset the case is about how much justice you can afford, not whether you committed an offence or not. In the past, a defendant had the right to a "duty solicitor" who would represent him or her free of charge. This provision has been axed and remains available only for offences which carry a prison sentence. In any case, a duty solicitor would normally go through the motions only and not stick his neck out for a client except that he might negotiate a lighter sentence at the end. Since the outcome of a case at the magistrates court is a foregone conclusion, it makes little sense for a defendant to hire an expensive private solicitor; that cost is best deferred for the appeals stage. Inevitably, when pleading not guilty, people rely on defending themselves. This is when they are at the mercy of the court clerk.

One should normally expect that the court try to assist a "defendant in person" who is a lay person not versed in the law. After all, the purpose of the proceedings ought to be to arrive at the truth. Not so in magistrates courts, it seems. Defendants in person are routinely intimidated and gagged by the clerk to the justices who wants to get the hearing over with as speedily as possible. In some rare cases a magistrates court hearing is presided over by a District Judge, and I have witnessed a judge tell the over-confident clerk to shut up. Of course, a proper judge knows the law and can opt to ignore advice or guidance offered by a clerk. Lay magistrates, on the other hand, lack the competence and confidence to do so and are thus at the clerk's mercy who runs the court as his or her personal fiefdom.

Motorists are well aware that short of giving up to drive they are an easy target for government tax collectors. There road taxes and fuel taxes, the cost of car insurance as well as parking fees and congestion charges, and all of those tend to go up regularly year after year. Since the tax income goes into central government coffers, local partnerships composed of local councils, local police forces and other agencies are regularly using speed checks as a means to complement income at a local level. If this is the intention it would be a lot easier to simply add a speed levy on all motorists using certain roads or use road tolls, like they do in France, instead of criminalising the motorist. The effectiveness of speed limits as a means of road safety is doubtful in any case. German motorways without speed limit are no less safe than British ones, but they are a lot less clogged up because you don't find cars hugging the overtaking lane at 70 mph. Speed limits are sensible at certain dangerous stretches of road, but their overuse for monetary purposes means that they are generally ignored, having the opposite effect on safety. Drivers who know where speed cameras are (and there is equipment on sale which superimposes those locations on GPS navigation systems) will temporarily slow down before and speed up after that location. Those who notice the cameras late will brake suddenly, endangering traffic behind them.

As for magistrate's courts, they are a total waste of time. Given that they are neither willing nor able to challenge police authority, no matter how little regard an officer might have for the law he is meant to enforce and uphold, they become "Kafka" courts where the outcome is almost predetermined and procedure, not justice, is the main objective. Instead, both police misconduct and miscarriages of justice are encouraged. In the interest of justice, and for the benefit of the public purse, the magistrates court system in England and Wales ought to be abolished.

Fifty ways to loose your luggage (The budget airline song)

2011-05-20T19:05:00.002+01:00

The budget airline song - Fifty ways to loose your luggage

to be sung to the tune of Paul Simon's Fifty ways to leave your lover

This song is inspired by the endless frustration at airports where the glamour of air travel has given way to an experience not far removed from that of the coach stations of old. To make up for their government-subsidised cheap ticket prices budget airlines have resorted to all kinds of surcharges combined with cost savings which can tire the most seasoned traveller. Whilst the situation is global, in Europe, Ryanair, the airline whose executive pondered about charging for the use of toilets whilst in flight and suggested the introduction of planes with standing room instead of seats to pack in more passengers, is the most notorious contender, charging you for the privilege to print your own boarding cards, offering you "priority boarding", which is really "priority waiting", since after you've been allowed to go first through the barrier, you simply wait at the end of the corridor whilst the remaining passengers wait to be let through, after which all passengers are let out to the aircraft together scrambling for any available seat. As the saying goes: Time to spare, go by air. To make you buy expensive low quality food on board, the airline insists that even the sandwich you bought at the airport has to fit into your one piece of hand luggage. Many passengers are going through the embarrassment of repacking their bags to match the prescribed dimensions. Should your reading book not fit inside you will have to conceal it somewhere on your body to avoid being surcharged, which lead me to paraphrase Paul Simon's song. I could have added many more rhymes but wanted to keep as close to the original song as possible. You're welcome to add your own version via comments.

Air travel used to be a joy some time ago
Service was good but prices were not too low
Then along came budget flights at prices you'd afford
And with it came limits of how much to take on board
There must be fifty ways to loose your luggage

She sad it's really not my habit to be rude
But to defeat the constant checks, the method must be crude
To stop yourself from being pursued
There must be fifty ways to loose your luggage
Fifty ways to loose your luggage

Hide it under your hat, Pat
They'll never spot that
Put on an extra coat
And get yourself free
Hop on the plane, Jane
Don't let them drive you insane
Just fill all your pockets, Lee
And get yourself free

She said why don't you get a waist belt to conceal
All your belongings, so they don't look as real
Plus all the duty free you bought for the in-flight meal
There must be fifty ways to loose your luggage
Fifty ways to loose your luggage

Hide it under your hat, Pat
They'll never spot that
Put on an extra coat
And get yourself free
Hop on the plane, Jane
Don't let them drive you insane
Just fill all your pockets, Lee
And get yourself free

Did Osama kill Obama?

2011-05-02T14:31:00.001+01:00

The news that Qaddafi's son and three grandchildren were killed in a bomb raid in Tripoli was soon eclipsed by the announcement that Osama bin Laden had been found, killed in combat and quickly buried at sea, some seven hundred miles away, and thus not the most obvious choice of burial location unless you wanted to hide something. But these days, journalists don't ask difficult questions anymore, and the world media were full with world leaders grasping the opportunity to sound jubilant and reassert their unswerving loyalty to America and the so-called war on terror. That war, we are told, is not dead with Osama, but likely to be intensified. Al-Qaeda, by now having outdone even McDonald's as a true American brand name, lives on and the soap opera continues.

For a soap opera it is, and bin Laden, one of the main actors, had eventually to be written out of the script, since he no longer participated in any of the episodes and his occasional appearances by audio or video tape lacked the credibility of the real actor in the flesh. The war on terror needs its success stories, and tracking down, confronting and eradicating bin Laden fits the bill perfectly. It also puts to rest the pertinent questions about the whereabouts of the absent actor. Happy with the "mission accomplished" statement, there is no longer any need to speculate about the frail man on a dialysis machine who could not possibly have survived the aerial bombardment at the start of the Afghan war hiding out in a cave in Tora Bora.

Does it matter? Actors change and the show goes on. Now and then a "radical" Muslim youth guilty of the equivalent of the pub banter that those in authority "all ought to be shot" and that "he'd be the first send them to hell" gets arrested, as recently in Germany, proof that terrorism is alive and kicking although incapable of going beyond the stage of wishful thinking, possibly helped by a good measure of entrapment from the security services. When this doesn't suffice and people stop tuning into the series, something more dramatic gets orchestrated to attract the crowds back to the set: a real explosion in a place where security is easy to evade, for example Marrakesh. The entrance roads to all major Moroccan towns now sport police check points where police do exactly what their Western counterparts do: cash in on the suffering of ordinary people. In Morocco they specialise in taking bribes of motorists (akin to the use of speed cameras in the West), whereas in Europe and America they sell expensive body scanners.

Incidentally, amongst the innocent victims of the carnage in Marrakesh was an Israeli who lived in Shanghai and visited his relatives in Morocco for Passover, putting paid to the lie that Jews (at least those who were not persuaded by the Zionists to migrate to Israel) could not live peacefully amongst their Muslim neighbours in Arab countries. But who pays notice to the facts? Who goes back to the original 9/11 videos and wonders how comes that airoplanes made from lightweight metal penetrate undamaged through buildings made from concrete and heavy steel, melting into the structure and even popping out the other side? It does not matter whether the attack happened as presented on the television screens, what matters for the ordinary viewer is who ordered it, and since Osama has now sunk to the bottom of the sea, the good guys have finally regained the upper hand again in this cops and robbers show. Two questions are never asked (or allowed to ask): who wrote the original script and who benefits from the outcome?

Since the war on terror is mainly fought in the media, anything goes. New wars can now be fought without a declaration of war upon the spurious excuse that we must protect rebels who want to overthrow their government against the repercussions from the the machine of state. By that logic America should have supported the IRA aforetime against the British government who did not willingly give in to their demands. Or the Palestinians against Israel, for that matter, but for sympathy for the underdog to go quite that far is, of course, unthinkable.

Sadly, the people are always the losers. Playing on their hopes of real democracy and fears of terror and violence, the world is being restructured. European countries are turning into police states in order to deal with the expected disquiet over the economic meltdown caused by fraudulent bank created credit. Sudan is partitioned in order to put an end to the war over the oil fields found at the disputed border line. Egypt retains a military government but is given a secular, rather than Islamic, constitution. American stooges who willingly agree to be written out of the script are rewarded with a gracious pension, from Idi Amin to Husni Mubarak. Those who refuse and want to carry on playing a major role, are punished severely, such as Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. And with some, the script writers had simply forgotten to carry on their story, so Osama, long since dead, had to be publicly killed once more to achieve closure. Maybe Obama, having only just recently released his own birth certificate after many years of agonising hesitation, can now proceed to fake his near namesake's death certificate.

Portugal - same folly again

2011-04-08T16:06:00.002+01:00

Another European country is declaring bankruptcy and asking for a bail-out, yet the real issues remain hidden from the public eye. All nations of the world are deeply in debt, so it would be legitimate to ask who this fantastic lender is, who owns more assets than all the peoples of the world put together. There isn't one, of course. Fractional reserve banking by the banks or debt merchants is the greatest fraud ever committed in recent history. In the case of Portugal, we are told the state can only raise more money on the financial markets by paying higher interest rates. Why should the state have to pay anything for money which the banks issue as credit without anything to underwrite its value other than the creditworthiness of the nation itself? The state should issue its own currency and the function of the banks should be restricted to accounting and book-keeping.

What happens, when a state like Portugal raises money? They issue government securities which are bought by the banks. A government security is a promise to pay, in other words, a promise that the banks will have a claim on tax revenue collected from the working population. The banks add these securities to their assets as deposits and, by the ludicrous system of fractional reserve banking, they are permitted to issue tenfold of their deposits in new credits. And it is this new money, created out of nothing on the basis of the state's promise to pay them back, which they then land to the government for its expenditure and charge interest on top of it! And so the vicious cycle continues: The state allows the banks to create credit and charge the cost to the state until the state can no longer bear the costs. Now if a bank overstretches itself and goes broke, the state (through the national bank as lender of last resort) bails it out. If the state consequently goes broke, as it must, other states in the Confederation, in this case the European Union, come to its rescue. They attach so-called austerity measures, measures designed to make sure that the banks get their illegitimate gain for the money they never had, no matter how tough it will be for the people to raise the revenue.

In the UK we had the same twisted logic: banks were failing. In the past it was always justified that they charge interest because of the risks they take. In fact, they take no risks at all as every credit they issue is new money at no cost to them. So what did the government do? It bailed out the banks with a rescue package. Where did it get the money from for bailing out the banks? By borrowing from those very same banks! Makes sense, doesn't it? And then there was quantitative easing, in other words, expanding the money supply. But instead of injecting new cash in the economy pay for education or health care, the government gave the increase to the banks as government securities to allow them to issue the very same money and multiples of it with an interest charge attached to it. Heads, the people loose and the banks win. Tails, the banks win and the people loose.

For centuries now, governments have been the servants not of the people but of the banks. They have permitted those financial institutions to defraud whole nations for their private gain, laying claim to a nation's resources and real assets through foreclosures on loans they issued without putting up any real assets of their own. Portugal is not needing a bail-out because of some natural disaster, or having lost all its working manpower in a war, or having had a bad harvest or lost all its natural resources. It is going to the wall because the banking system of compound interest on credit created based on the empty promises of repayments of earlier credits is bound to self-destruct, and instead of taking the blame, the banks want the government to carry the can. We're going to see a lot more misery until common sense returns and governments represent their own people and issue their nations' money supply free of interest charges to facilitate trade, ultimately to be cancelled out again by taxation. But then, common sense is in particularly short supply at the moment, whereas bank-created money abounds.

There is always money for war

2011-03-20T11:50:00.000Z

Taking a break from lecturing the British people on tightening their belts, accepting pay freezes and bearing with cuts in social services and infrastructure, British prime minister Cameron has found the necessary resources without batting an eye lid to send expensive British war planes to Libya for an imperialist intervention justified as support for the Libyan democratic movement and protection for the country's civilians. This argument is, of course, badly flawed:

Saudi Arabia's military has just recently intervened with arms bought from America and Britain in supporting the Bahraini government against a popular uprising; no wonder the Arab league has repaid Western nations for their support by adding their voice to intervention in Libya. More poignantly, when Israel went on the rampage during operation "Cast lead", neither Britain, nor France nor the US nor the UN security council thought it necessary to declare and enforce a "no fly zone", although the brutality meted out by Israel against Palestinian civilians - since officially declared a war crime - dwarfs anything Gaddafi has done or might do into complete oblivion.

The all-out war against Libya's defence capability is essentially a small scale "shock and awe" operation after having learnt the lessons from Iraq: that declaring an official war is highly unpopular and costs credibility at home: Let the people believe that this is a humanitarian mission. Far from it, however, it is a grab for oil just like Iraq and proves that the recent restructuring of the Middle East has not been about democracy but about securing the region for Big Oil and Israel, with not tangible outcome or benefits for the people themselves who naively believed in the false promises of the West.

What is unprecedented in the Libyan adventure is the shameless dropping of the last fig leave of legality: The UN security council, an exclusive club of second war victor nations completely unrepresentative of the UN general assembly, has never before authorised force against a government dealing with an internal opposition. Using the justification for intervention, it would have been equally acceptable for Russia or China to have bombed the UK in order to stop the British government from cracking down on Irish terrorism and "brutalising" Irish dissidents, and it thus sets a dangerous precedent. Maybe the American people will soon rise up against their ever more dictatorial government and ask for outside help?

America, France and Britain, having propped up so many unpopular dictatorships around the world, are not the least bothered about humanitarian or democracy abroad. Cameron's reference to the national interest, a euphemism for the interests of the national industries and banks who run the country, is a more honest admission. And it is in the interest of the very same corporations that the British people should remain enslaved to them perpetually and pay off the debts the government has got into by borrowing money from banks after allowing them to create this very credit out of thin air in the first place, backed by nothing tangible other than a fraudulent claim on tax revenue. So taxes have to go up, wages have to go down, services have to be cut, but there is always plenty of money for war.

Cameron's failure on multiculturalism

2011-02-06T11:24:00.002Z

There is the old adage that it is better to look intelligent and keep your mouth shut than to open it and remove all doubt. British prime minister David Cameron has just made that big mistake by talking, or rather trying to read a speech written for him, about issues he fails to comprehend. His focus at the Munich Security Conference focused on terrorism and extremism, and besides the folly of washing British laundry publicly abroad, it seemed evident that he was not at home with the subject he had chosen or that had been imposed on him.

After reassuring the attendants that Britain was going to continue to support the NATO mission in Afghanistan, without for a moment reflecting on its futility or redefining its objectives - if ever they were clearly defined -, the prime minister offers the platitude that "We will not defeat terrorism simply by the action we take outside our borders". Bravo! Has it ever occurred to him that it is the action Britain takes outside her borders that make her a target for terrorism? Would any group around the world bother with this wet and dark island in the North Sea if it stopped meddling in other people's affairs? What makes Britain and America prime targets of terrorism is that they continually moved to deny other people the freedom, democracy and right of self-determination they postulate as their own birth right and greatest achievement. And in Afghanistan it was them who trained and armed the very "extremists" to fight their war against the Soviet Union for them, pretending that they would were only there to help the "Mujahidin" to liberate their own country. Now that they have been made to swap one occupier for another, does that longing for liberation not burn equally strong in them? The same holds true for the people of Iraq, Somalia, Palestine etc., but Cameron wants us to believe that the world's problems are merely the result of a few Muslim youth in the UK failing to integrate into the Great British way of life.

Indeed, he goes as far as stating that multiculturalism has failed. In passing he admits that the "United Kingdom still faces threats from dissident republicans in Northern Ireland" (probably because the Irish youth wasn't too apt on integration either?), but then states that the "root of the problem" is the existence of an ideology, Islamist extremism". I so love the use of that postmodern term "Islamist" (only "Islamicist" could be worse) as a ruse to put the blame on Islam and Muslims without explicitly having to say so. Once more, Cameron pays lip-service to Islam as a "a religion observed peacefully and devoutly by over a billion people" and "Islamist extremism is a political ideology supported by a minority", but then displays his ignorance when identifying the latter with the ultimate goal of "an entire Islamist realm, governed by an interpretation of Sharia". "Sharia", of course, is another of those emotive words in the West, conjuring up images of beheadings and cutting of hands, yet it is actual the name of the complex legal code of Islam governing both private and public life and without which Islam would be reduced to a few pious prayers said quietly at home, which is, of course, what Cameron and his ilk would love to see, the separation of religion and politics. Yet, in the West too, religion and politics, or indeed religiously motivated ideologies and politics, are hardly kept apart, as evidenced in the total sell out of Western politicians to Israel and its supremacist ideology of Zionism with the ultimate goal of an entire Zionist realm permitting neither dissent nor criticism.

British prime minister Cameron, heading a country whose legacy includes the conflict in Palestine due to the infamous duplicity of Britain and the Balfour declaration, does not view Israeli piracy on international waters against a humanitarian mission, the "aid flotilla", as an act of extremism even worth mentioning. The total absence of Zionist terrorism as a constant catalyst for an "Islamist" counter-reaction tells us in whose camp his script writers belong.

Instead he beats the old mantra of Islamic "real hostility towards Western democracy and liberal values", when the fact is that Islamic movements in Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and so on are the ones asking for democracy and liberal values, freedom of speech and freedom of organisation, as well as their nations' right to their own resources and to deciding their own destiny, and it is Britain and America, and to a lesser degree France, who by their never-ending support for the dictators oppressing the people of those countries prevent democracy and liberal values from interfering with their ongoing political and economic exploitation of those regions.

Anticipating this argument Cameron spends a little time explaining that extremism is not intrinsic to Islam, nor is it the result of poverty or lack of democracy or indeed Western foreign policy, for otherwise there would be not extremism to be found in midst of the rich and democratic Western nations. A very hollow and short-sighted argument, for do not the people living in the West have the capacity to empathise with those in countries where protest is not allowed? Moreover, in its attempt to have a finger on the pulse of every political event in the world, Britain (and to a lesser degree France) has actively sought to attract dissident groups to set up home in the UK, partly to better be able to spy on them, partly to forge a relationship with them should the tide turn. When Rashid Ghannoushi, leader of the Tunisian opposition party An-Nahda, recently returned to Tunis, he did so from exile in London; when Khomenei replaced the Shah in Iran, he came straight from France.

For Cameron, however, it is easier to put the blame squarely on problems Muslims in Britain have with identity and integration, and this aspect of his speech has been the most widely quoted: "In the UK , some young men find it hard to identify with the traditional Islam practiced at home by their parents, whose customs can seem staid when transplanted to modern Western countries. But these young men also find it hard to identify with Britain too, because we have allowed the weakening of our collective identity. Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We’ve failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong. We’ve even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values." The media mostly reported this as "British PM says multiculturalism has failed", but the truth is that Cameron is admitting that "Britain has failed with regard to multiculturalism".

Let's be clear: For the British PM to sum up the problem as white Brits having been too tolerant and hands-off to criticise the more radical views amongst their coloured neighbours, and that this led to enforcing segregation and some Muslims feeling rootless, is laughably naive. Maybe a little history lesson on multiracial, multicultural Britain would benefit Mr. Cameron: First of all, West Indians and Muslims came to Britain because they were called and needed to build the British economy after the war. Secondly, they were never welcomed with open arms but always viewed with suspicion. Britain wanted cheap labour, semi-slaves, not people making their home in this "green and pleasant land". Nor did they segregate out of choice but partly because they were placed into ghettos by town planners and partly because they felt the need to protect themselves against racism. Over the time span of half a century and now in their third, if not fourth, generation those immigrants eventually became part and parcel of British society, providing valuable and essential services without which the British economy would collapse over night, but are still viewed by the host society as outsiders. And now that there is large-scale immigration from Eastern Europe of people who are white Christians (and who ironically can't be lectured on having to learn English and integrate, because as EU nationals they have an automatic right to stay), right-wing politicians like Cameron finally think they can turn up the heat against the darker skinned Brits, hoping they might leave. A sophisticated politician's version of the common British thug observation: "I love curry but hate Pakis".

Actually, it's not just Blacks and Asians who are looking for an exodus from Britain. Approx. 200,000 Brits leave the UK every year seeking a better life abroad, and about 1 in every 10 British citizens lives abroad. With Cameron's belt tightening measures and tax increases this number might soar. Out of the total of some 5.5 million Brits living abroad, there are about 1.3 million Brits living in Australia, some 800,000 in the USA, those being natural English-speaking alternatives, but there are as many as 800,000 Brits living in Spain where most neither bother to learn the language nor to integrate into Spanish society or politics. Talk about hypocrisy!

These are people who have permanently turned their backs on their home country and settled elsewhere, not holiday makers. Both, however, expect to be welcomed with open arms wherever they go and are happy to accept local hospitality. Yet, this hospitality is not extended by domestic Brits to visitors coming to visit or live amongst them from overseas. "There are practical things that we can do as well", says Cameron. "That includes making sure that immigrants speak the language of their new home and ensuring that people are educated in the elements of a common culture and curriculum." Wake up Mr. Cameron: Maybe it is not the children of immigrants but the children of indigenous Britons who need citizenship lessons and who need to learn to live along peacefully with everybody else, including those from different cultures or who hold different views to themselves.

And for the British prime minister himself, as an advanced programme of citizenship lessons, I highly recommend a book recently published by Pluto Press: "The Contemporary Arab Reader on Political Islam" edited by Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi' from the University of Alberta who describes his task as researcher thus: "We, as critical theorists, need to make Western audiences aware that Islamism as a political discourse embraces far more than the dogmatic fundamentalism and terrorist violence that dominate in the Western press." The book contains translations of various contributions by Arab Islamist thinkers from the Middle East and North Africa, covering the whole spectrum from government appointed scholars to jihadist theologians. It demonstrates that far from Islam being monolithic, there is a lively political debate going on in the Muslim world, below the radar of the Western media and political establishment who, as Abu-Rabi' observes, write about the Islamic movement whilst failing "to even consult original Islamist sources", and sets out as the aim of the 312-page publication to come to grips "with the conceptual framework of the 'many varieties of Islamism'." Maybe just what Mr. Cameron needs, but seeing he had difficulty reading even the script prepared for him at Munich without constantly stumbling over his words, it might be a little above his intellectual acumen.

Arabian Peristroika

2011-01-30T16:27:00.003Z

The governments of Tunisia and Egypt were amongst the most brutal regimes in the Muslim world and hitherto survived largely because of the support they received from the USA as pretended democracies on account of their unfailing ability to oppress the political and economic aspirations of their own populations, ensure the supremacy of Israel in the Middle East balance of power and prevent Islam from becoming a meaningful influence on those countries' politics. That they had to give in to popular pressure within a matter of weeks is both unprecedented and historic in the post-colonial Arab world. It has put fear into the hearts of the rulers of other states in the region and made them understand that once their own people wake up and demand their rights even the US is powerless in helping them hold on to power. In the face of indiscriminate police violence and killing, wanton interference with the internet and mobile phone communications and the disregard for organisational and individual rights - given that even the BBC had to complain about one of their journalists having been arrested and beaten - it is no longer possible for Western "democracies" to side with those governments against their own people in the name of "fighting terrorism" without risking a backlash at home, too, where unnecessary economic austerity measures in the interest of bankers and large corporations are also breeding unrest and resentment.
Before getting too excited about the consequences of these recent events, however, a word of caution: Whilst popular anger is capable of removing an unpopular regime, be it the Shah in Iran, the Communist party in Poland, East Germany or Russia, Ben Ali in Tunisia or Mubarak in Egypt, it is not enough when it comes to wanting to replace the established order with a more benign and accountable one. Whereas the USA cannot stem the unrest and prevent the fall of puppet dictators, they were not entirely unprepared for such events. During the Egyptian national uprising lead by Gamal Abd el Nasser, notwithstanding his anti-American rhetoric, American intelligence officers were writing his speeches for him as we revealed in our book Satanic Voices Ancient and Modern while ago. In the more recent book Surrendering Islam - The subversion of Muslim politics throughout history until the present day I co-authored with Canadian Muslim historian David Livingstone we show how the various opposition movements, including Islamic organisations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, are carefully groomed by Western intelligence to come into play when it is time for a regime change. Lech Walensa and Gorbachev may have freed Poles and Russians from the yoke of Communism, but simultaneously delivered them into the commercial exploitation of US capitalism. In Tunisia, likewise, the personalities at the head of the state will change, but the policies are likely going to be more of the same. For Egypt, the name of Mohamed al-Baradai, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is already being promoted as that of the future leader of a "government of unity", with the media choosing a leader on behalf of the Egyptian people and above their heads. Some might suspect that he serves establishment interests, but few know how well-linked he is, for example, by sitting on the Board of Trustees of the "International Crisis Group" together with Zbigniew Brzezinski, author of the "Grand Chessboard", and George Soros. Whereas some of the oppressive measures from which the people of Tunisia and Egypt suffered might be temporarily eased, once in government, any opposition party will serve the same pay-masters. The Liberal Party in the UK is a prime example for this ability to betray empty promises to voters. And a second caution: popular unrest might even be purposefully fermented by the ruling elite in order to make people call for law and order and usher in marshal law. Ultimately, the puppeteers behind the scenes still want world government, not democracy, and French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde recently confirmed this commenting on President Sarkozy's support for the dollar and an expanded mandate for the IMF at the Davos World Economic Forum by calling for moving towards "global governance". One of the key topics at the Forum was that rising food prices would lead to unrest and economic warfare. Be warned and don't let emotions carry the day!

Selling England by the pound

2010-12-10T12:17:00.002Z

As in the old Genesis song, England's future is being sold out by the coalition government. Finally having made it into government, the Liberal party demonstrated swiftly that all political parties put their principles behind once in power - actually, they do so because they are not in power, nor do they work for the people, they work for the banks and financial institutions who have enslaved us for far too long. Since those financial manipulators managed to get the government to give them the right to create (yes, create - out of nothing) the credit and money supply of the nation and then lend it back to the government at interest, we have all been trying to pay of the national debt, which has cost the banks nothing and the nation everything. All countries of the world are now tied in the same web, and there is ultimately no way out of the crisis other than either a popular uprising against the banks or direct, tyrannical rule by our financial masters.

The student protests against extortionate tuition fees have mainly hit the news because of violence. On the first occasion a fire extinguisher was thrown from a building with the potential to seriously hurt people. On the second occasion, the car in which the prince of Wales was travelling to attend a theatre performance had its windows smashed. That the future heir of the throne (if his mother abdicates before he himself has to retire) has no power either is evident in that he went to be entertained rather than dealing with the crisis his country is facing. But leaving that aside, the UK is not used to violent protest. It only happens when people loose hope and are pushed against the wall. Last time that was during the poll tax riots under Mrs. Thatcher, but nobody seems to make the connection. The most recent protests are not just about tuition fees, they are about depriving the next generation of Brits of a future: their parents and grandparents have to save up to afford their studies, knowing all too well that after graduation there are no jobs waiting for them. The higher education sector in the UK might deserve the knock - it has been overpriced and underrated for far too long - but the students and their families deserve better - the people deserve better.

Britain is heading for confrontation. People have lost respect for authority. For a government that sends its young into illegal wars. For a government that deprives pensioners of a decent retirement after life-long service to the country. For politicians who show their corruptibility by grabbing whatever expenses they can in addition to inflated salaries. For the police who regularly consider themselves above the law. And some people, only some at the moment, are fighting back. The shock expressed in the media, owned by the same financial institutions as our government, is like crying crocodile tears. Many have warned about things getting rough, and the writing has long been on the wall.

And now enter Islamophobia, that artificially created hate image of Muslims in Britain. It is about time people realised why this is happening and who the real enemies are. Islam is being demonised because it is the only religion left which opposes bank interest and the power of the banks. And anti-terrorist legislation has not been introduced to deal with a real threat from Muslims in our midst, but in order to give the state the powers to tackle protesters when the going gets rough, non-Muslim protesters, students, ordinary people. The pretext of a terrorist threat gives the police the powers to declare curfews and exclusion zones, to stop and search without reasonable intelligence or suspicion, to spy on people and, ultimately, to shoot to kill, as they did a few years back on the London underground. And the courts will always exonerate the police. Anywhere else in the world this is called a police state. Travellers at UK airports are regularly exposed to police patrols with machine guns, serving no other purpose but to intimidate. In the past, such heavy armed presence at public places would always be identified with living in a dictatorship, and that's exactly where Britain is heading. You don't need a university degree to figure it out.

Policing in Britain - the slippery slope towards tyranny

2010-10-10T14:28:00.003+01:00

We all learn from first-hand experience, hence there should be no objection when some of my observations are prompted and based, not exclusively of course, on a recent unjustified arrest of my own son for no arrestable crime whatsoever. Since under anti-terrorism legislation police in Britain were given the right to stop and search people without prior intelligence as to a potential crime having been permitted they have disproportionally targetted members of racial minorities, and earlier this year the European Court in Strasbourg ruled those arbitrary powers illegal. That members of minority communities were more likely to be stopped and searched says more about the police than the communities targetted. For this reason those in charge of policy decisions for the police have been at pain to try and recruit more members of the minority into the force, since in this respect, too, it is not at all representative of the overall population. Given the attitudes displayed by numerous police officers in public, these efforts have been largely unsuccessful.

British politicians often proudly refer to the country's democratic traditions as housing "the mother of parliaments" and deride third world countries for their lack of due process and the corruptibility and bribability of their officials, including the police. Whilst police officers in Britain cannot usually be bribed easily (which has more to do with the general affluence of society than their alleged integrity), they nonetheless abuse their position and disregard due process, and therefore, in common with countries where wearing a uniform brings tangible benefits resulting from an abuse of power, the police force in Britain also attracts an undue share of applicants who wish to join not so much to uphold law and order but to take advantage of the position of a police officer in society - some are common thugs (and the low level of educational requirements for joining the police gives them a fair chance to fulfil their aspirations), others are ideologically motivated, such as members of the BNP. Although members of the BNP are officially banned from joining, a leaked list of 13,000 BNP members serving as police officers two years ago showed that in practice this prohibition was not being enforced. Individual officers abusing their power may be one thing, but Where the abuse of process by individual officers goes unchecked because of tendency within authorities and especially the courts to always unquestioningly favour the account of a police officer over that of any other witnesses, we have the beginnings of the slippery slope towards a police state where abuses are committed with impunity and the police gradually becomes a tyrannical institution without checks and balances.

In most countries of the world, the police will go after the easy targets rather than risking a show
-down with hardened criminals (the latter are often controlled by way of infiltration instead), and in most countries of the world that easy target is the motorist. In many third world countries, police officers will stop motorists under the pretence of speeding offences or in order to check the driver's paperwork or the roadworthiness of the vehicle for the sole purpose of extracting a bribe. It has often been said that in the UK, too, speed checks are mainly conducted for the purpose of gathering revenue rather than road safety, and countries without motorway speed limits, like Germany, are no less safe with regard to motoring accidents. Of course, in Britain the individual officer does not get the money, rather it is the whole system which is taking advantage of the power of police to interfere with the free movement of people. In order to maximise revenue the burden of proof has been tilted in the favour of the state and against the motorist: if your car is recorded by a stationary speed camera as being in excess of the speed limit, you are presumed to be guilty simply by virtue of being the owner of the owner of the car even if there is no photographic evidence that you were yourself the driver; for this you are required to supply the evidence: guilty until proven innocent. If you are recorded by a mobile speed camera in the hands of a police officer, then his word that you were in excess of a given speed is sufficient to convict you, even if there is no recorded evidence of that alleged fact.

To further encourage motorists to cough up the money and avoid making use of legal processes, a system of conditional fines has been introduced whereby you save some money if you pay within a given time limit, and the fine goes up if you dispute the veracity of the charge. In any other field we would call this kind of practice coercion. In any case, the task of the police officer on traffic patrol, just like that of his often maligned lesser counterpart, the common traffic warden, is to find victims to extract money from, and both tend to be overzealous in the discharge of this duty. Both also tend to get very irate if challenged by a motorist as to the legality of what they are doing. So there is nothing unusual at all in my son being pulled over by a police officer with a mobile speed gun, even though the officer's speed gun was pointed at the floor until the moment he decided to pull him over when it was rapidly raised and pointed at the car and allegedly produced an excess speed reading. What is unusual for that police officer is that my son is a law graduate who, rightly, pointed out to the officer that operating a speed gun in this manner would produce an erroneous reading. However, in a police state, you must never challenge a police officer!

Once challenged, the officer goes into defence mode and becomes aggressive. In his mind he has the right to demand compliance and you have a duty to obey. If you were aggressive he could simply "book" you for your behaviour, but if you challenge him intellectually then, given the low educational threshold for becoming a police officer, he starts feeling intimidated even more and, to bring you to his level, will try to make you behave aggressively so as to get an excuse for arresting you. I must therefore stress that whilst my son was arrested for allegedly driving without a licence or insurance, both since proven untrue, and for driving with excess speed, a charge for which no evidence has yet been provided, he was never charged with behaving inappropriately or threatening in any way - his crime thus was to have been more intelligent than the officer he was dealing with and that he did not hesitate letting him know that he was making serious mistakes in his dealings with him.

As to those blunders it included dropping the speed gun onto the floor, after which it surely shouldn't be used anymore without recalibration, to refuse identifying himself or to search my son without giving, as required, the reason as to what suspicion was giving rise to the search, dropping and damaging his mobile phone in the process, or that he was subsequently searched a second time by a female officer - two violations in one since after he had already been searched there was no further reason, other than harassment, for another search, and a body search should always be carried out by an officer of the same sex. Subsequent blunders included that the female officer who, after his car had been confiscated for allegedly driving without a licence, found she had difficulty in operating a large estate car and subsequently requested from the female passenger in his car that she help her put the car into first gear - which rightly she refused since she did not have a driving licence herself! Everybody can make mistakes, but this is where training and ongoing professional development should have had their place, suggesting that there is a serious deficiency in that respect within the police service.

More worrying, however, is that such transgressions were supported by the officers' superiors at
sergeant level and the collective mindset of those tasked to uphold law and order but being careless about adhering to the law themselves in the course of duty. From my own experience of having spent many hours translating for clients at police custody suits, officers like to impress on new arrivals as to who is in charge, assuming that if they have been arrested they are by definition guilty and hardened criminals and deserve to be treated accordingly. Hence the exchanges are never polite and often more aggressive and patronising than warranted by the situation. Totally unacceptable, however, is to ridicule a person who, as the word "custody" suggests, is now under their care. For a custody sergeant to mock the law qualification of the person in his charge as not being of much use now that he is held displays both an inferiority complex and serious bad manners.

Every now and then individual officers run into persons who challenge their actions. If the right
checks and balances were in place, bad apples amongst the force would soon be thrown out, but since the process is tilted towards exonerating the officer, right or wrong, the abuses become endemic. Complaints against the police in Britain are either dealt with by the police themselves or referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, a body set up after it had become evident that the police's own handling of complaints was not robust enough. Yet, since that new body is made up partly of ex-police officers and operates from police premises, and given that they hardly ever uphold any complaint, their alleged independence appears highly doubtful. In the case of Barbar Ahmed, a young Asian who sustained the most abhorrent injuries during a raid by anti-terrorist police and subsequent arrest before being released without charge, he only managed to get the police to agree to the payment of damages after bringing a civil law suit - the "Independent" Police Complaints Commission had previously found that the officers had behaved impeccably.

What is the ultimate result of an abuse of police powers backed up by political institutions and the courts? In the long run it serves to create a deep-seated and often irreparable mistrust of the police within the population, initially those most targetted like the Irish in earlier days and
Muslims today, antagonising them against the police and making them unwilling to work with the police even where this would be the right thing to do. The lack of success of recruitment campaigns amongst young Asians already bears this out. Ultimately, community policing becomes an impossible task since it requires the goodwill and cooperation of law-abiding citizens who, however, fear that they themselves will be criminalised if they come into contact with the police voluntarily. Such a rift between the "law enforcement" bodies of the state and the intimidated population normally characterises dictatorships: Britain, where are you heading?

Provocation? Let them burn the Qur'an!

2010-09-09T10:07:00.002+01:00

It must have been a small-town priest's wildest dream come true when his marketing ploy to raise the importance of his obscure and dwindling parish by attacking the common Muslim foe worked so well that all the leading politicians of the world came out in defence of the Qur'an - or did they? Whilst appearing to make the distinction between moderate and radical Islam - one of their favourite topics lately, with the terms purposefully left ambiguous - in reality they probably savoured this new onslaught on Muslims following closely on the footsteps of the most recent storm in a tea cup, the non-debate about the 'mosque about to be built on ground zero'. In both scenarios their argument went that it would be wrong to hold ordinary moderate Muslims responsible for the actions of the radical and violent terrorists amongst them: a typical false set of alternatives, for it serves to cover up the factual reality which is that the success of the 9/11 operation could only have been possible as an insider job at the highest level within the American administration, overriding established checking mechanisms. Conspiracy theory? Well the weirdest conspiracy theory out there is that a few bearded and turban-clad individuals somewhere in an unknown Afghan cave could have duped American air traffic control and penetrated the defences of the Pentagon with such apparent ease. Sure, bin Laden is still out there somewhere and Elvis lives, let's not question those truths!

The public "news" discourse within the global media environment is carefully crafted by what in the book Satanic Voices we called "Satanic Presses", paid for by "Satanic Purses". It does not take much to find a mentally challenged parish priest with a grudge against Islam, but to catapult him to world-wide celebrity status, even if with negative associations, rather than ignore him, does not happen by accident. From the media-instigated burning of Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" via the Danish cartoons to the public burning of Qur'ans on 9/11 (coinciding with Eid-ul-Fitr), these show-downs are intentional provocations to drive a rift between communities and condition them for the next war between Islam and the West. As I pointed out in my latest book Surrendering Islam, ordinary Muslims are "blissfully" unaware how their own assumed Islamic discourse is equally being distorted to serve a wider agenda. Mentally challenged "radical" Muslim preachers are as easy to find as their Christian counterparts, and all too often they have been planted as agents provocateurs to hype up the Muslim response. Since the second world war the CIA has a long history of covert action in the Middle East using Muslim agents originally trained by ex-Nazi secret service personnel through the subterfuge of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Likewise, the British-installed Saudi kingdom provides a safe haven for a US military presence to protect Israel against any potential threat whilst Muslims have bought into the myth that this authoritarian regime is the protector of the two holy places, having systematically destroyed all other historical evidence of Islam's past glory without hardly anybody noticing. Innocence may be bliss, but ignorance isn't. There is a propaganda war going on out there as a run-up to another shooting war, and we are not winning it. No, don't point me to the alleged success of (CIA-created) al-Qaeda or those mystical Afghan warriors. Islam is not winning in Afghanistan where Muslims are sacrificed in a proxy war between America and China, just as Muslims were the cannon fodder for the proxy war between America and Russia in this strategically important region.

So what should the Muslim response be? Certainly not burning Bibles, but I'm sure somebody sooner or later will fall into that trap. When in the year of the prophet Muhammad's birth - peace be with him - Abraha, the ruler of Yemen marched against Makkah to destroy the Kaabah, Abdu-l-Mutallib the chief of Makkah and grandfather of the prophet astounded the invading general by only asking for the return of his confiscated camels: I am the Lord of camels, he declared. The Kaabah has its own Lord, let Him protect it. And He did. The Qur'an is Allah's eternal word and He ensures its protection and survival. It lives in the hearts of believing Muslims and burning a written copy of it can't do it the least of harm. In fact, we ourselves burn copies of the Qur'an to dispose of them cleanly when they have become worn out. So let them burn it and earn Allah's wrath in return, but let us look after ourselves. We are no longer "lords of camels" either, we are nowhere in charge of our own affairs. In our economic dealings, in our communications, in our "freedom" of movement we have become totally dependent on those who want to condition us or destroy us. Let us defend the spirit of Islam by rebuilding communities which can wither the storms and survive, spiritually and materially, even if those ruling over us want to tighten their grip or pull the plug. That's a very difficult task, of course, and like with the Florida preacher, it is much easier to rise to notorious fame with hot air and provocation. Plenty of "radical" leaders have been handpicked for us to do just that, and if we fall for them, we deserve no better.

Rules of engagement - fighting the non-war

2010-08-03T08:02:00.000+01:00

Us President Obama has just squared the circle: he announced the end of the war and all combat operations in Iraq by the end of the month and in the same breath stated that most of the US soldiers currently engaged in those operations would remain in the country to assist the Iraqi army and to involve in counter-terrorism operations. Since his predecessor Bush had foolishly declared the war over prematurely, the entanglement of US army personnel in Iraq has continued for years with numerous military and civil casualties, and there is no real end in sight. The US is legally required under international law to withdraw from Iraq since its mandate under already doubtful UN authorisations has already run out, and now the extension granted by the Iraqi puppet government is also coming to an end. Back at home, Americans are equally weary of the constant drain of the Iraqi operations on American lives and funds.

Basically, what Obama is telling us is that he thinks - and knows - that the people who elected him are stupid and will fall for whatever rhetoric they are given, at least for some time. Moving the goal post, redefining objectives, relabelling facts has become the government response to any situation which has become unpalatable.

Any child can do the maths that if 65,000 American troops are currently stationed in Iraq involved in combat operations and to train the Iraqi army, and 50,000 of them will stay on to involve in counter-terrorism operations and train the Iraqi army, then nothing much has changed, except that the enemy has been relabelled from a combatant under the laws of war to a terrorist or "illegal combatant", the term first coined for the detainees held in limbo, and illegally under international law, in Guantanamo Bay, which Obama also promised to close but didn't.
Those 15,000 soldiers leaving Iraq are actually being redeployed since the US is boosting its presence there by an additional 30,000 troops as, according to Obama, they face "huge challenges" there.

Afghanistan is an even more deadly place for American soldiers where they are fighting yet another war that isn't officially a war but another counter-terrorism operation with equally unclear and non-defined objectives. No doubt the US government knows only too well that it can't win on either of the two battle fields, but the logic is that if you don't define your operations as a war and don't state a clear war objective, then you can't possibly loose either. So it is not until the casualties keep mounting that the American public will eventually put more pressure on their government and tell them that rhetoric is not enough as an exit strategy.

Finkelstein on Gaza

2010-05-13T18:50:00.001+01:00

"The era of the "beautiful" Israel has passed, it seems irrevocably, and the disfigured Israel that in recent years has replaced it in the public consciousness is a growing embarrassment. It is not so much that Israel's behavior is worse than it was before, but rather that the record of that behavior has, finally, caught up with it. The truth can no longer be denied or dismissed."

"For a long while Israel's "supporters" deflected the impact of this accumulating documentary record by wielding the twin swords of The Holocaust and the "new anti-Semitism"... if 'another flare-up in the region, similar to the Gaza operation, will probably lead to an even more severe out-break of anti-Semitic activity against communities worldwide' (quote from the Israeli Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism), then an efficacious method to fight anti-Semitism would appear to be for Israel to stop committing massacres."

In his book analysing the Israeli invasion into Gaza, Norman Finkelstein takes a clear and uncompromising position. It is a well researched and referenced polemic that does not shirk from pointing the finger at those responsible for what the UN Goldstone report (whose author is both Jewish and a self-declared Zionist who "worked for Israel all of my adult life") clearly termed war crimes, stating that "the Israeli assault on Gaza constituted "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability." Anybody still in doubt about the justification of this characterisation should read Finkelstein's book as the testimony of a Jew who speaks out against crimes committed in the name of people who used to keep quiet about it, but now, he asserts are increasingly coming off the fence whilst Israel grows more and more distant from its alleged support amongst the Jewish people in the diaspora.

In a brief history of the Israel-Palestine conflict Finkelstein explains the rationale for Israel to have broken a ceasefire with the Hamas-led Palestinian government after first ensuring that both that government and its people were weakened by a prolonged economic blockade: After the blunders in the Lebanon, where Israel also stands accused of having committed widespread war crimes, the Israeli governing elite felt the need to restore Israel's "deterrence capacity", and that could only be achieved by showing unrestrained and disproportionate force against a defenceless civil population. Israel's two major concerns which it hoped to deal with by its Gaza invasion were that its enemies were less afraid of it than they once were, and that any future peace initiative might succeed in forcing Israel to concede in a compromise what it never had any intention to concede, the existence of a Palestinian people with sovereignty over any territory of their own.

Dealing with "Operation Cast Lead" as Israel termed the invasion, Finkelstein takes apart any attempt of Israeli apologists to justify the carnage it unleashed and describes minutely the progression of the military operation, based on testimonies from Palestinians, independent observers and human rights organisations as well as Israeli soldiers themselves, leaving no doubt that the intended humanitarian disaster was not by accident but by design. As a fan of Mahatma Ghandi he tries to show that Ghandi's advocacy for non-violent protest did not extend to a call for oppressed people to take oppression lying down but instead supported resistance in the face of impossible odds as "a refusal to bend before overwhelming might in the full knowledge that it means certain death", and he quotes Ghandi's response in 1947 to what might be the most acceptable solution to the Palestinian problem as "The abandonment wholly by the Jews of terrorism and other forms of violence".

Finkelstein supports a two-state solution of peaceful coexistence for Palestine. He is hopeful that after the Israeli propaganda has had to take a serious dent when the extens of Israel's crimes became known, the Palestinian position of only asking for what the International Court of Justice and the United Nations General Assembly repeatedly stated as their inviolable right - freedom from occupation and self-determination - might gradually shift public opinion and, with it, policy makers. I am not that optimistic since in my understanding Israel is only a stepping stone on the road to world government (as predicted by Ben Gurion in 1962), with Israel's designs not being limited to controlling and subjugating people on the territories occupied so far. Nor do I support an artificial two-state solution: Israel claims to be a democracy yet gives favoured status to a set of people perceived as genetically Jewish. A single-state solution with "one person, one vote" is what democracy would demand instead. In spite those differences, Palestinians do have a strong advocate in Norman Finkelstein, and I highly recommend his passionately written book in their support.

Norman G. Finkelstein's book "This Time We Went Too Far. Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion." is published by O/R Books, New York.

Hang parliament!

2010-05-06T09:24:00.002+01:00

As the UK public is going to cast their votes at polling stations around the country, there has been, as in previous general elections, much talk of a "hung parliament" or the fear of the two main parties that neither of them might manage to get an absolute majority in spite of the unique British "first-past-the-post" electoral system usually resulting in a sizable majority for a party who only has a minority backing amongst the population. This whole discussion misses the crucial point that neither of the parties potentially forming a government after today will have a popular mandate, because they are not bound to listen to the voice of the people, but rather carry out the policies of their paymasters, the banks.

Each of the parties contesting the current UK elections have already made it clear that there will be "cuts" in spending, "austerity" measures in order to pay back the large deficit amassed by bailing out the banks whose profiteering charges were in the past justified by the suggestion that they took a commercial risk when lending. Instead, it is the people who take the risk and the people who pay the price.

None of the parties have dared looking at alternatives to the current madness, because questioning the supremacy of private banks as the originators of the nation's money supply is heresy. Hence it will not make an iota of difference who gets elected today.

Only a year ago we had the bizarre scenario that we were told that the banks did no longer have the funds to lend money, therefore governments had to bail them out by lending the money to them, but in order to do so, they first had to raise those funds on the money markets, in other words, obtain them from those same banks that didn't have the funds in the first place. The real problem is that governments do not supply the currency they issue, but borrow the money they put into circulation from private banks, who in turn have been given the right to issue those loans without any material backing - out of thin air as it were - and then charge for it. In this crazy system of fractional reserve banking, banks are allowed to issue a multiple of their asset base in credits, that is lend money that they do not have nor doesn't in fact exist, and charge for the privilege. Yet, governments are denied to put money into circulation by the same means, clearly indicating that we are governed by banks, not governments.

Were our governments to issue the necessary credit directly into circulation, saving the high cost of interest on borrowing, there would be no need for cuts and austerity measures. This argument has been put to the treasury countless times, and the replies and excuses have been as ingenious as that there was "not enough demand" for this kind of government-issued money (known to economists as M0), or that the Maastricht treaty prevented European governments from doing so.

Hence, the best course of action for troubled countries like Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and sooner or later the UK would be to leave the Euro and the restraints imposed by the European Union, issue their own interest-free currency to facilitate trade and prosperity, and preventing banks from continually creaming off the lion's share of our tax payments. Don't bother voting for UKIP as an alternative though, or the SNP, they're no more wanting to upset the status quo than the rest. When it comes to political parties and their MPs, they're all in the pocket of the bankers. A hung parliament wouldn't be too bad, provided they hang them all properly.

War and Empire - The American Way of Life

2010-03-29T15:05:00.002+01:00

American school children are not known for their detailed knowledge of geography or history, depriving them of the essential tools to understand their country's place in the world. It is thus refreshing when an American professor of history sets the record straight in showing that in spite of the lofty principles upon which the American enterprise was allegedly founded and which it keeps pronouncing, its actual rise has been built on brute force from the very start. In "War and Empire - The American Way of Life", published by Pluto Press (ISBN 978-0-7453-2764-8), Paul L. Atwood does not mince his words. Its introduction alone would serve as a primer for those who need to acquaint themselves with what drives the current American psyche.

"By and large the nation's students imbibe what the American historian James W. Loewen calls the 'Disney version' of the nation's past which propagates a collective hallucination that the US is the primary source of human progress.", he states, and continues:

"Americans delude themselves when they insist that we are a peace-loving people who will go to any extreme to avoid violence. War is the American way of life. The American project began in violence, the nation was born amidst blood and the growth of the American republic is matched by a corresponding chain of carnage from the Pequot Massacre to Wounded Knee to My Lai and to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; all alleged to be the fault of others."

"For a people outraged at the murder of our civilians on 9/11 we are morally anesthetized when it comes to admitting the crimes our own actions, votes and tax dollars have wrought."

Atwood starts his exposition of how war featured in the American mindset from the very beginning - provided it was carried out by choice and against an enemy with little chance of posing an existential danger - by first describing the brutal reality of exterminating the indigenous red Indian population and then the revolt against British rule, followed by a continuous land grab and extension of America's sphere of influence, culminating in her role as global police to enforce her "Open Door" trade policy.

"The real history of Columbus' arrival in the 'New World' is a woeful account of enslavement, murder, torture and genocide that, in terms of proportion and absolute numbers, was far more successful than the race murder that Hitler attempted. Within 50 years of Columbus' arrival the indigenous population of the island of Hispaniola dropped from 8 million to a mere five hundred. That was only the beginning." - Luckily for Atwood he is not a German citizen where he could face a prison sentence under German's Draconian laws against "dishonouring the memory of the dead", where comparing the extermination of any other people to that of the Jewish race amounts to unacceptable "relativism". Unperturbed by such censorship he writes:

"All Americans know that the native peoples of the Americas were largely displaced, but little attention is paid to the methods. Just as Indian lands in the seventeenth century were 'expropriated through trickery, legal manipulation, intimidation, deportation, concentration camps, and murder', so the model continued, becoming, in short, the prototype of what is now condemned by the US as 'ethnic cleansing'. All of these measures have been employed against every non-white enemy the US has created for itself: from Virginia to Vietnam, from the Pequot massacre to Sand Creek, to Wounded Kne, to My Lai to Haditha and Falluja."

"The fate imposed upon the native peoples of the Americas has justifiably been called the 'American Holocaust'. As Stanard rightly says in American Holocaust, 'massacres of this sort were so numerous and routine that recounting them becomes numbing'."

"Of course the co-called civilizing mission was always ultimately a lie. The real venture was to take land and resources from others and transfer these to the conquerors, or to open or maintain sources of gain that would deprive the other of self-determination."

As for the lofty aims of American independence: "In the United States the American Revolution is celebrated as a near impossible victory over a mighty and tyrannical empire made possible by the heroism of those who introduced the concept of equality and self-government into a benighted world. ... Had the crown not been so preoccupied with continental threats from France the real strength of imperial Britain would have been deployed, instead of inept commanders and foreign mercenaries."

"From the beginning in the US a self-selected and tiny elite spoke of 'We the people' and 'democracy' but actually feared popular rule, and created two-tiered political institutions designed to thwart it, much like their model, the British Parliament."

"The signers of the Declaration of Independence and the US constitution selected themselves as representatives of 'We the People' but acted primarily in their own interests. Virtually all of them were plantation owners and slaveholders, or had extensive commercial and banking interests, and all feared genuine popular democracy."

"So the American revolution was not really a revolution. It was a rebellion that was fortunate to win and while it instituted key reforms and unique adaptations, such as a written constitution and a Bill of Rights, it was really a transfer of power from the British government to an American self-elected elite who ensured that governance would be held by them."

Atwood then proceeds to describe the gradual empire building the Founders of the new Republic engaged in: "The war in North America quickly led to naval engagement in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and Asia. Thus the Seven Years War was the first truly global war which foreshadowed ever more destructive wars and signaled the degree to which imperial rivalries would shape the future of the planet. In this early stage of world-wide struggle for supremacy, unconventional methods of warfare would first make their appearance."

"In their efforts to banish Spain from the hemisphere US policy-makers faced a glaring problem. The Cuban liberation movement was winning and it seemed quite likely that Spain would grant independence to Cubans. Since the real goal of US policy was to take over from the Spanish and then label American rule a victory for 'democracy', this turn of events simply would not do. American war hawks now moved with alacrity."

"In short order, with a crushing victory over Spain, the Caribbean Sea became, as the Romans used to say, mare nostrum, 'our sea'. All four island-nations became de facto American colonies, exploited as bases for the American navy and for their resources, their people now serving American masters. Cuba's constitution was written in Washington and came with the proviso known as the Platt Amendment that the US could intervene militarily on the island any time American interests were said to be at risk."

For those who think the current cancellation of civil rights as part of the "War on Terror" is an aberration in the history of the United States of America, the mention of laws enacted with similar ferocity and intent during the World War I is instructive:

"Many groups had been outraged over Wilson's betrayal of neutrality. His government's response was to enact legislation designed to silence the opposition, going so far as to jail many of those who took the First Amendment at face value. A highly unpopular draft law was enacted, only the second in American history. The Espionage Act of 1917 outlawed speech against the war as interference with military recruitment and carried 20-year jail sentences for those convicted... Effectively nullifying the First Amendment to the US Constitution, the Sedition Act of 1918 made any speech against the government's wartime policies illegal."

"Most chilling of all was the Sedition Act that effectively nullified the First Amendment to the constitution and led to the arrest of numerous journalists and editors who voiced opposition to the war with France. They were condemned as traitors. These measures, coming so soon after passage of the Bill of Rights, were an overt attempt to invalidate it and revealed how deeply many of the Framers opposed popular dissent and democracy itself, especially when the issue was war or peace. Their counterparts in every era of American history would enact similar measures intended to cow the voice of popular opposition, right up to the present."

"Though most Americans have been conditioned recently to perceive the FBI as a primary force in the 'war on terror', its initial mandate was to intimidate political opposition to the dominant parties."

With war there always came justification, usually by describing the opponents as uncivilised or subhumans, deserving of subjugation or extermination. "Well before the nation of Germany came into existence the roots of Nazi race theories were being set in the United States, and for the same reasons. New pseudo-sciences of phrenology and 'craniology' in response to abolitionism, focused on claims of African inferiority, but were also put to use rationalizing the conquest of Mexico and native peoples. These ideas were paralleled by the ever more popular doctrine of 'Anglo=Saxonism'."

Atwood illustrates this doctrine by a quote from a senator from Virginia at the time: "It is peculiar to the character of this Anglo-Saxon race of men to which we belong, that it has never been contended to live in the same country with any other distinct race, upon terms of equality; it has, invariably, when placed in that situation, proceeded to exterminate or enslave the other race in some form or other, or, failing that to abandon the country."

In both world wars, it wasn't the support of idealistic principles, but the interests of the industrial ruling oligarchy that America had become, which motivated America's entry. "War production was manifestly the only real factor that had ended the Great Depression, but even so it had absorbed only a fraction of those formerly unemployed. The bulk of young would-be workers were now wearing military uniforms, Wilson's answer was a 'permanent war economy'. But for that a permanent enemy, or enemies, would be required."

"Though American policy-makers asserted that lassez-faire principles continued to drive the economy, and decried state management of the economies in the communist world, the marriage of political Washington to the industrial-financial sectors created as similar model in the US, with the critical difference that public investment would result not in social returns but in private profit. Sometimes called the 'welfare-warfare state' American prosperity would be maintained via a permanent war economy."

"In the final analysis the US entered World War II by stealth, not to redress the crimes committed by Axis powers such as saving Jews, liberating enslaved peoples and fostering democracy, but to preserve the mainstay of American foreign policy - the Open Door to the resources, markets and labor power of the territories that were threatened with closure. Popular culture maintains that the oft-repeated ideals were the nation's primary motivations but the genuine circumstances surrounding the war's outcome belie such mythology."

"One reason that the state of Israel was supported and created by allied post-war leaders was precisely to prevent large numbers from settling in the United States and England."

"The primary motivation for US entry into the war was the prospect that Germany would dominate most of the European continent and the oil reserves of the Middle East, and establish a closed continental system that would exclude most American trade and investment, a 'nightmare' scenario from the perspective of American policy-makers. Yet there was no possibility of defeating Hitler without an alliance with the Soviet Union. The American public forgets, or the reality has been consistently downplayed, that the Soviets did most of the dying to defeat Hitler."

A quote from Truman in 1941 illustrates the American "pragmatism" and duplicity that has been in evidence then and now: "If we see that Germany is winning the war we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible."

I have only two criticisms of Atwood's analysis: When it comes to the Soviet Union, he seems to ignore the fact that the Bolshevik revolution was originally instigated by American bankers or that, in the arms race following the deliberate detonation of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, America secretly helped Russia in the development of its military capability in order to maintain the perception of the Soviet threat. Secondly, whilst deploring the hypocritical response by Washington to 9/11, he continues to buy the official line that al-Qaedah bore responsibility for the attacks on the twin towers, an official story increasingly discredited by now. Atwood's account of how the American administration deliberately engineered the attack on Pearl Harbor as a pretext for entering the war shows that it was not out of character for them, to sacrifice some of their own people for corporate ends.

Driving Islam underground

2010-02-10T13:51:00.002Z

Attacking ordinary Muslims has become the relentless pastime of a government and media that have lost their purpose. Be it the banning of Islam4UK as a group allegedly sympathising with terrorism, the French hullaballoo about fining women who want to cover their faces or the Swiss ban on minarets (with its leading campaigner since having converted to Islam!), they are all attempts by desperate governments and corrupt self-serving politicians to channel the anger at their own mismanagement into a different direction, hoping that their popularity might recover from its current depths by beating a scapegoat. And the media lap it up as it makes for cheap programme thrillers without requiring much original research or investigative journalism.

The BBC has just sunk to its lowest with a poorly scripted, badly presented and amateurishly filmed series called "Generation Jihad" in which John Taylor wants to scare viewers into believing that a whole generation of British-born Muslims are being radicalised and either ponder about carrying out a terror attack on their neighbours or at least admire those who do. His whole first episode, shot low-budget at a barber's, a meat shop and a basketball court, centres around two Muslims, Rizwan Ditta and Bilal Mohammed, who were convicted under the UK's draconian anti-terror laws for possessing material likely to be of use to terrorists. Similar charges have been brought against scores of young Muslims in their teens and twens, for a trivial a crime as possessing a copy of "The anarchist's cookbook", ab book in wide circulation since the days of the Vietnam war. It actually carries an ISBN number. Maybe it is unreliable sources like this that explain why the explosives produced by the "shoe bomber" or the "underwear bomber" quickly disappeared in an embarrassing flash?

Since Taylor broadcast some of this material likely to be of such valuable use to would-be terrorists, he should be arrested and imprisoned for at least 20 years, not just the 2 years those poor souls interviewed by him served, in order to save the British licence payer (you have to pay for the BBC if you own equipment capable of receiving a TV broadcast, irrespective of whether you watch it or not, and can go to prison if you don't comply) further shaky out-of focus shots giving the impression that in order to qualify as a cameraman for the BBC it is now sufficient to simply be able to point the lens of the camera at least somewhere in the right direction. Taylor's excuse would probably be that the material was in the public domain anyway, the same reason why Mohammad Atif Siddique had just had his conviction overturned. Unfortunately for Yorkshiremen Rizwan Ditta and Bilal Mohammed they had pleaded guilty, probably to reduce their sentence or to ward of an extradition to the USA, an infinitely worse evil than spending a couple of years in a British prison.

The lack of convictions for real terrorist offences has led the police and security services to charge and convict Muslim individuals for thought crimes in order to justify the huge sums spent on counter-terrorism measures. But the criminalisation of the innocent goes a lot further. Since the "underwear bomber" Umar Faruk Abdulmuttalab once attended University College London and was elected president of the Islamic Society there during 2006 and 2007, the counter-terrorism command of the Metropolitan Police obtained the membership records of Islamic Society members for the years 2006 - 2009 together with those of the Islamic Medical Society from the Students Union who put up little resistance against the request. Those members' data will be held on file for seven years to come and shared with foreign security services, although there is not a shred of evidence that they were involved in anything but legitimate student activities. Neither the BBC nor any other mainstream media found the story worth reporting, which was only covered as headline item by the Muslim News.

Yet, the ramifications are immense and deal another blow to freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of action in the UK. The UK already has the most surveillance cameras per individual, it's stop-and-search police powers have recently found to be illegal by the European Court of Human Rights, a British appeal court just censored the British government from hiding its knowledge of complicity in torture under the spurious excuse of national security, and the UK also has the strictest gagging laws in the Western world, matching, if not exceeding, those available in China it regularly criticises: Newspapers are frequently issued with orders not to report a specific event, even a parliamentary question, and are then even prevented from disclosing that such an order was served on them. No wonder investigative journalism is a dying art in the UK and the media go for the safe pastime of Muslim-bashing. For Muslims it means, retreat into the ghetto or get picked on, and if you want to get involved in any activity at all, keep it stumm.

Gone are decades of work trying to bring Muslim aspirations into the mainstream environment, get Muslims to identify as British citizens or even feel proud of their and their country's achievements. After fledgling attempts of getting involved in society and politics, British Muslims are back retreating into their own unformalised networks. More like "Generation under Siege" than "Generation Jihad".

What would be worth investigating by the BBC, if they still prided themselves for original work, would be the tactics used by the security services and the police in radicalising young Muslims themselves in order to justify the fight against them. Just like minors are being sent into shops to buy cigarettes or alcohol, watched by adult handlers, who then bring charges against the shop keepers, our security services actively promote the expression of radical Islamic views in order to then bring a successful prosecution. Umar Abdulmuttalab was, upon the available evidence, also actively recruited and handled by the security services.

More was hidden than a bomb in some underpants

2010-01-29T15:23:00.002Z

Kurt Haskell, the lawyer on the Detroit bound flight who witnessed the Nigerian "underwear bomber" suspect to be boarded by a "handler" at Amsterdam Schiphol airport without a passport, has just published some of his conclusions how this could have happened and why mainstream media took only a cursery interest in his story. The alternative news agency Mathaba has published some extensive background information on the incident.

The fact that in spite of clear warnings and intelligence information Abudlmutallab's multiple entry visa was not revoked is currently subject to much debate in the USA, and Haskell quotes an article in the Detroit News stating that his visa was kept valid in order to not foil a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States, so that investigators could get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with.

So effectively, the latest twist is that American security agents knew about Abdulmutallab and let him enter the United States unhindered, or even helped him enter the United States, so that he could lead them to other members of his terrorist network. Haskell quotes the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Michael E. Leiter, admitting that: "I will tell you, that when people come to the country and they are on the watch list, it is because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another."

For a law-abiding patriotic American law professional like Haskell this is a stark discovery, but in his analysis he fails to take the matter to ultimate conclusion:
If US intelligence followed Abdulmuttalab, then they would not want this to be apparent to his alleged co-conspirators. However, they must have been following him for some time, in fact given the help they provided him with, he must have already turned informer or, have been trained and handled by them as an infiltrator of the alleged terror network. Hence, they must also have known about the explosives he was carrying aboard the aircraft. Now if they did not want him and their tracking of other terrorists to be found out, then they would not want an incident that obviously would warn off any others and stop him and them from getting anywhere near them. On the other hand, unless they expected him to try and detonate the device, they would not have had somebody filming the whole episode as witnessed by Haskell.

Further, if they knew about the man carrying a "bomb", then they either a) also knew that the device would not detonate or b) willingly put themselves and the travelling public at serious risk. The first option sounds more plausible.

Now if they knew he would attempt to detonate a device that could not cause serious damage, then the purpose of the exercise must be different from the one officially declared as the scare and his subsequent arrest would have foiled any plans of following him and tracing others through him, in fact warning them off. There only remain two possible objectives: either the whole occurrence it was staged to generate public fear or it was a test run to see how a youngster like that carries out a mission like that. If the first holds true, then the war on terror has become a grand propaganda exercise. If the latter is the case, then US officials are actively involved in the training and deployment of alleged terrorists. Either scenario raises a lot more serious questions than Haskell has dared to voice.

I doubt that he will be able to go any further with what he and his wife clearly saw. He has already received some intimidating phone calls as a result. The logical facts of the course of events also explain why the mainstream media won't touch the story or probe into it as it is the story of the collusion between the security services and the alleged terror networks they claim to fight, similar to the earlier CIA involvement in the "red scare", where whole communist cells in the USA where run exclusively by secret agents.

In my forthcoming book "Surrendering Islam", co-authored with American historian David Livingstone, we show how the subversion of Muslim organisations to further the ends of unholy and clandestine interests beset with wanting to dominate the world is not a recent phenomenon but one that has been accomplished a long time ago. Far from being dead, the Neocon clash of civilisations theory put forward by Huntingdon is being put into practice, fermenting an increasingly violent show-down between "Islam" and the "West", with both controlled in their declarations and actions by the same people.

The Age of paranoia

2010-01-26T20:28:00.002Z

Be afraid, be very afraid! There may be a terrorist living in your neighbourhood. Don't take any chances. If you know of Muslim student looking up information on the location of airports around the world, don't hesitate to report him, so he can be duly arrested for possessing material likely to be of use to potential terrorists. If a non-Muslim student posing as pacifist protests by holding up a placard outside an army training base, don't leave things to chance, get police dogs and helicopter back-up. We can't have army cadets put in harms way before they even go to Afghanistan. If you're an airline pilot and one of your passengers is an orthodox Jew wanting to say his morning prayers, you better head for the nearest airport. If your passenger is a Muslim about to pray, you should try an immediate crash landing, maybe the Hudson River. We need better security. Ban the Burkha. Don't let those Muslim women get away with hiding their faces. God only knows what else they may be hiding. We live in very dangerous times.

Troubles is, where do you start and where do you stop. Why should there be naked body scanners only at airports? Did not the 7/7 terrorists try and blow up trains and buses? So did the Madrid train bombers. Why are we not strip-searched when entering a train station. Why can I board a coach or bus with as many bottles of water (or peroxide) as I like? Those terrorists sure are clever people. They've understood that it is getting harder to board a plane with explosives. Knowing that you can cause just as much carnage outside of airports, they're sure to diversify, so where are the risk assessments for public spaces unrelated to aviation? In Iraq scores of people get killed daily in bomb attacks since that glorious "liberation", and none of them at an airport.

Whenever a past attempted terrorist attack gets widely reported, the US government raises the security threat level from elevated to high or from yellow to orange, and the UK government follows suit by raising its threat level from substantial to severe. But if it's severe in the USA, then it's critical in the UK. So much for cooperation in fighting terror - they can't even agree on the terminology. What's severe on the European side of the Atlantic, isn't quite severe yet on American soil. But leaving this aside, why does the threat level never go up before an attack? Don't we all spend enough money on so-called intelligence? What is the basis of those classifications? Since they are for our own protection, shouldn't we be getting some transparency at least?

Unfortunately, there's nothing intelligent at all about the whole hocuspocus. In fact, whenever the threat level indicates that an attack is highly likely, we usually get a period of calm, whereas the attacks that lead to the subsequent raising of the threat level usually take place after the threat level has been indicating a lower risk. Of course, it is not for us lesser mortals to probe into the wisdom of such things. This is the job of security experts who sadly would be out of a job if things made sense or added up.

If an alien came to earth and read the papers or listened to the radio or watched television, he would immediately be on guard against those nasty terrorists. He'd be watching his back. He'd stop drinking water in case it exploded inside him. He'd wonder why people are allowed to wear clothes at all since they could be hiding explosives. He wouldn't ever risk using public transport. Chances are, he'd die in a car accident.

About 115 people die daily in car accidents across the United States. In the UK, a much smaller place, it is 8 people a day. Three times as many die in other accidents, for example at work or at home. In fact, people's homes are the most dangerous places of all. And as far as violent killings go, most people are murdered by somebody who knew them. Thus whilst going out is dangerous, staying home might not be an option either to prevent harm. Besides, your own children might have been radicalised by terrorist recruiters and start experimenting with explosives in the bathroom. Did I mention swine flu?

Anxiety disorder, characterised by irrational fear, used to be a psychiatric condition. Now it's become the social norm. If our governments really want to protect us and have our best interest at heart, they should invest in something rather cheap: a sense of proportion.

There, I said it. Now I'm waiting for that knock on the door.

Keeping the terror threat alive

2009-12-29T19:43:00.002Z

"It will be a world of terror as much as a world of triumph. The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant: the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism. Goldstein and his heresies will live for ever. Every day, at every moment, they will be defeated, discredited, ridiculed, spat upon and yet they will always survive.
But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police. He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State."
George Orwell, 1984

The war in Afghanistan isn't going well at all. The economy is near collapse. There is a constant feeling of doom and gloom. Life is a drag for most, more so for international travellers. There is dissatisfaction with bureaucracy, delays, lack of customer service, and the constant harassment of make-belief security. Citizens are weary, staff and officials are bored. A petty airline official or security officer will be ready to call the police the moment you question his or her motives; customer service operatives will chat away on the phone with friends and colleagues whilst passengers needing help are waiting in a queue. The system is at breaking point, tempers rise, the level of complaints goes up, but there is respite on the horizon: mortal danger, another terror threat.

As long as fear can be generated, people fall into place. America, the West, the "free" world, the "international community" are at war, a never-ending, perpetual war, the "Totale Krieg" Hitler only promised, but America delivered. And in the face of the threat even the most intelligent members of society shut up and fall into place. Here is Orwell again: "Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist."

As we were treated to another near fatal al-Qaeda attack on an American airliner, the usual pattern emerges slowly: The alleged terrorist perpetrator was "known to the authorities", he was allowed to enter the United States in spite of security warnings, there were even suggestions that he was permitted to board the Amsterdam to Detroit plane without a passport, if fellow travellers Kurt and Lori Haskell are to be believed, and considering that they are both attorneys in a Michigan law firm, maybe their evidence counts for something.
They state that the very same man who burnt his leg on board the plane, was accompanied by a man in an expensive suit who convinced ticket agents to let him on board without a passport. In such matters expensive suits alone don't do the talking, but government credentials do, so we're talking about the poor dupe's handlers who made sure that he was given an opportunity to do the job he was assigned to do.

Like those idiots who drove a van filled with propane canisters into the doors of Glasgow airport, causing damage to nobody but themselves, or the infamous shoe bomber, or the youngsters who believed you could make shampoo or mouthwash explode aboard a plane - they all did a great service to the ever expanding security industry and a great disservice to travellers. Each incident has the same characteristics, minimum damage with maximum drama. As long as such incidents can pop up credibly here and there, there is no need for those who brought us 9/11 to stage another elaborate, expensive and difficult to contain catastrophe, although one shouldn't but it beyond power-hungry cynics to contemplate a repeat performance. Each terror scare opens the doors for endless coverage, new, "even tougher" security measures, high profile raids on innocent people (e.g. the Forest Gate brothers or the Pakistani students in Manchester) and a reinforcement of the "state of war" mentality. Two German novellists argue in their book "Angriff auf die Freiheit" (Attack on Freedom) that the over-reaction to the "terrorist threat" is a much greater danger than terrorism itself and that today's surveillance society makes Orwell's 1984 look harmless. Terrorism, according to them, has become a convenient excuse for governments to spy on their own people.

Foolish executors of new terror threats are easy to find and recruit. A spoof MI6 recruiting website regularly receives applications, complete with CVs, addresses and telephone numbers, of would-be-patriots whose level of intelligence is such that they never realised that they were applying to a make-belief site. Here are some amusing examples, uncorrected for spelling mistakes:

"It with all due respect that i wish to inquire if your Organization has Recruitment offer for Nigerians that are resident in Nigeria? I am a God-fearing & law abiding citizen of my country, i also have a passion for law & order. So i wish to utilize my Intelligence quota in fighting crime both locally & internationally. pls keep me informed. Thank you for your anticipated co-operation."
"I was wondering exactly what qualifications you would need to join a government organisation eg; British intelligance for example if you would need a degree in a foriegn language, as i do not intend on studying a foriegn language at University. I was researching the police force and others in the UK and i could not find anything stating if not having a degree in a foreign languauge would present a problem. If you could reply and clear up this problem for me it would be much appreciated. Thanks."
"Born 1944 - Male - married 34 years - retired - served 1968-1971 army intelligence (analyst)"
"To whom it may consern, i am looking for information obout working for mi6, i am a Australian but i do beleave we are still part of the British commonwealth looking forward to your responce....regards james"
"...US passport 71****710, I have alway tried to do the right thing, now I really need a job. I am a known commodity, I know multiple Governments. Once hired I am completely reliable and discreet."
"I have been a Operational Officer for about four Years now and have been Deep undercover for Four Years in a Organisation called Oversight Committee. I was Recruited back in 2004 by Sir Richard Dearlove Previous Director of the Secret Inteligence Service the agency has forgotten all about me in the past four years. I would like to Continue Mobile: 079******81"
"I would like to know what I have to do to work with SIS M16, I'm working overseas doing Security, for the Army, at this time. I will be going back to the US, I will be ready for work after I get home I'm would like to learn more about Security. I have done Security for 11 years, all kinds of security I will be happy to send you a resume and there is one thing you need to know is I have a Secret Security Clearance, with DOD, if that will help. I hope to here from you soon I'm ready to go to work."
"i'm currently serving in the british army and would like to find out more about a transfer to this line of work! any infomation you could send me would be greatly appreciated."
"I am a iraqi weth brtsh passport .spike & rigt both arbic & farsi . livd in both .born in basra. mor subject to exp."
"Sir, I would like some info regarding the post because i am interested in joining. I have a military backgroung, presently a Lieutenant serving in a specialised unit."
"sir, my name is adeel tahir. age 27 from lahore pakistan. i am very interested to work for ur organization. i hope sir u consider my mail for job in ur organization. sir after 7/7 i feel ur organization need people who understand urdu language i am understand urdu very well because urdu id my mother tongue and national language of pakistan sir i think u organization me i am very interested to work for ur organization. looking forward for ur co-operation. bye sir."
If the CIA and MI6 set up similar fake al-Qaeda recruitment sites, as they most probably have, they will catch the opposite extreme of the spectrum.

Blissfully unaware, that al-Qaeda was an American invention all along, an off-spin of the days the USA was fighting Soviet Russia in Afghanistan, people feel threatened and scared, thank their governments for protecting them, and accept further inconvenience limiting their freedom of movement as a necessary evil. In line with the restrictions on liquid items, maybe, after the discovery that the latest foiled terrorist had sewn explosives into his underpants, all passengers should be made to remove their underwear before boarding a flight; a brisk sale in fresh underwear could develop in duty free shops at the airport. We could introduce the "two minute hate" sessions from 1984 before queuing at the security check-in, to get them into the spirit for the strip search. The actual choice of the security industry is, however, likely going to be expensive body scanners that peep beneath people's clothing as already trialled in Manchester.
The number of perverts applying for security jobs at airports is then probably going to match the number of idiots applying for "spy jobs" with the security agencies.

In the long run, all these reactions to the perceived terror threat are mere hysteric responses by a dying empire. A timetable for withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan has not yet been set, but the Pax Americana has long been dead. More Chinese arms might accelerate the process in Afghanistan, and China is the real threat to the USA, with Islamic terrorism a mere diversion. With America and Europe increasingly barricading themselves in, they will become more isolated and less attractive as visiting and business destinations, and thus only hasten their final implosion. It did not save the East German state that the Stasi had a file on every one of its citizens. Tightening control, will not save the American project either, and the de facto handover to China is only a question of time. Sadly, for Muslims, who believed in al-Qaeda as soon as the brand was created for them by the CIA and who are as brainwashed as the rest of Western consumers, it won't make much difference. They will be passed from one ruling world power to another, neither taking them seriously except for propaganda purposes.

Spain - Franco is back

2009-11-18T14:20:00.002Z

As British expatriates are abandoning the Spanish sunshine due to the devaluation of the pound against the Euro, Spain, predominantly dependent on tourism, is sinking deeper into recession. With the economic downturn comes a rise in right-wing politics, as is also the case in other countries of Europe. Whilst some countries view this development and its concomitant racism as a threat, Spain seems to embrace it with open arms. For the erstwhile dictatorship where fascism lingered another three decades after the end of the second world war, being a police state seems only too natural. For foreign visitors to Spain the arrogance of the Guardia Civil, the Spanish paramilitary police, and the deference showed to them by civilians and officials alike are becoming more evident.

Case study Girona airport: an airport entirely dependent on Ryanair who fly to numerous European destinations as well as Morocco from there. Many come here for the sun, but many are transit passengers on a stop-over to another Ryanair destination, since in spite of the substandard service, queuing system and hand luggage checks bordering on harassment, Ryanair flights, heavily subsidised by the regions to which they fly, remain the cheapest way to get around Europe at the moment. Whereas most airports in Europe only have X-ray machines for departure check-in, Spanish airports also feature X-ray machines for arrivals, which are used discretionary. Discretion always leaves room for abuse, and where nationalist tendencies prevail, this takes the form of racial profiling.

From observation it appears that travellers of Moroccan appearance (and for the Spanish police that includes all manners of Asians) stand a much greater chance of being asked to put their hand luggage through a scanner on arrival. So far, this is only a minor inconvenience, but the scanning, although showing that no contraband is being carried, is frequently followed by a passport check after which the inspecting officer walks off with the document to a security office room where he photocopies the passport and enters details on his computer for a purpose undisclosed to the perplexed passenger. Any attempt to question the purpose or even legality of the move is swiftly followed by the questioner being subjected to prolonged questioning (exclusively in Spanish and often deteriorating into being shouted at) before he is eventually released without explanation. There have been cases where police locked the door of the examination room from the inside before intimidating the "suspects". Demands for an interpreter are regularly ignored.

A similar treatment is sometimes also meted out to passengers on departure check-in, although it is less serious since the passenger wants to leave Spain anyway and non-cooperation could hardly have the more damaging result of being denied entry to the country. Nonetheless, it is disruptive and may eventually turn the visit to, or stop-over in, Spain into an experience the weary traveller does not want to repeat. One should think that Spain can hardly afford turning people away who might help save the Spanish economy by spending their money there, but the police at least have no such scruples.

On an occasion, when I challenged their inappropriate behaviour, they responded by subjecting me to the very same treatment of running off with my passport and subjecting me to questioning, the process being prolonged by the fact that the examining officer was unable to operate his own computer equipment! I did manage to arrange for an interpreter who, however, seemed clearly awe-stricken by the police officers and more intent on arguing their case than translating between the parties. What I was repeatedly told was that when you are in Spain, Spanish police can do whatever they want, basta. A reminder that Spain was a signatory to numerous European conventions cut no ice.

Officers with the following badge numbers currently have an official complaint filed against them with the municipality of Catalunya or the airport authority: 2510, 84613, 88336, 99142. It remains to be seen whether they are at all accountable and effective checks on an abuse of police power exist in Spain - the historic evidence is not encouraging.

Terrorising the laws of physics

2009-09-08T09:48:00.001+01:00

What do 9/11 and the liquid bomb plot have in common? They both replace reality with make-belief by seriously violating the laws of physics. And they represent a propaganda effort by today's war governments Joseph Goebbels would be proud of, thereby demonstrating that the masses in a democratic society can be easily fooled through the repeated use of media and are thus unable to make informed choices - dictatorship by consent.

Let's start with 9/11: According to the propaganda the heat of burning kerosene fuel from the aircraft which hit the high-rise buildings melted the steel reinforcements and made the steel/concrete structure collapse. This is an impossibility unless all the teachings of physics are going to be more radically revised than ever before: the hottest possible temperature of burning kerosene is 825°C, whilst steel starts melting at 1510°C. If burning kerosene melted steel or other metals (such as aluminium, with a lower melting point), airo engines would arrive liquidised before any jet plane ever made a safe landing. Even if the steel melted, the collapse of the building would have been gradual and not immediate; instead it simply disappeared into its own footprint with all the concrete being pulverised and none of the lower floors putting up resistance to the collapsing upper ones. According to the current state of the art of physics, this can only be achieved by a controlled demolition, and recent finds of thermite in the rubble support this claim. Yet, the myth wins over the facts.

Likewise with the liquid bomb plot for which three alleged Muslim terrorists have just been convicted of plotting mass murder in the sky. According to the official propaganda story, the key ingredient was hydrogen peroxide, readily available as hair bleach or medicated mouthwash, albeit at low concentrations. To buy it at the high concentrations needed for manufacturing an explosive would spark an immediate detection. But as the story goes, this was to be mixed with sulphuric acid and acetone (also known as nail polish remover) and smuggled in drinks bottles onto an aircraft together with detonators. Fantastic! Here's the physics of it: if you mix high-strength hydrogen peroxide with sulphuric acid it gets very hot, so you do get some kind of a mini explosion, or more likely a big splash. It would also soon melt through the plastic drinks bottle you were going to carry it in. To turn it into a potent explosive you still have to mix in the acetone, which has to be done at below zero temperatures, typically around -78°C, if you want an explosive you can ignite later. Now it does get very cold in the upper airways, but not inside the pressurised aircraft cabin. The very best our wannabe terrorist could achieve is to injure himself in the airplane's bathroom. The wild stories of ripping open the fuselage of the aircraft are pure imagination. By the way, airport security were not at all bothered about the potency of the liquids: On the day John Reid announced the discovery of the plot, they simply poured all liquids confiscated from the travelling public into one big container, and nothing went bang. Of course, the foul smell of sulphuric acid and acetone would immediately have revealed any harmful chemicals from amongst the gallons of harmful water and body shampoo taken of the unsuspecting public.

The stuff described makes for a nice chemical experiment with the potential to cause serious injury to the experimenter. It does not make a liquid explosive with the potential to blow a hole in an airliner, such as e.g. nitroglycerine. There are no ready-to-mix liquid explosive components out there, which detonate when mixed together, and any self-respecting chemical scientist knows that. All the whole saga tells us is that the teaching of physics and chemistry in American and British schools is very poor. And that the jury members were schooled in Britain.

Ramadan confusion

2009-08-22T16:20:00.002+01:00

It is satisfying that this year's Ramadan got off to an almost uniform start. With the exception of socialist Libya and secular Turkey, there were no countries this year who saw the moon long before it could even make an appearance or used calculated astronomical data whilst confusing the birth of the moon with the time when it might possibly be seen by the naked eye. Maybe the disquiet amongst rank and file Muslims about lack of unity and leadership has finally reached those declaring the start and end dates of Ramadan - we'll have to wait and see when it comes to the end of the month, of course.
Meanwhile, we can turn our attention to more detailed timing issues. Gone are the days when mosques turned to the experts (such as the Royal Observatory or the Met Office in the UK) to obtain their prayer times. A proliferation of online prayer time calculators means every mosque and association can now publish their own time table for Ramadan, and sadly they hardly ever agree with each other. One of the reasons is that you only get out what you put in, of course, and few mosque secretaries know how to handle the options when, for example, choosing between civil, nautical or astronomical twilight. For the observant Muslim following their timetable, this can make all the difference of starting to fast an hour earlier or later in the morning.
But the problem goes a little deeper. Most of the online prayer time calculators, such as at Islamicity.com, only go by the longitude and latitude of a geographical location, ignoring elevation data. Other, non-Muslim, sunrise and sunset calculators do the same, e.g. the world clock calculator at timeanddate.com, but at least they provide a disclaimer: "The times for sunrise and sunset are based on the ideal situation, where no hills or mountains obscure the view and the flat horizon is at the same altitude as the observer... on a high mountain with the horizon below the observer, the sunrise will be earlier and sunset later than listed." Some even state that the data are for guidance only and not fit for any particular purpose.
No such disclaimer is given with the online Muslim prayer calculators which, by definition, are meant to be for a particular purpose, namely to determine when to pray and when to fast. Yet, most only provide "flat" data without correction for altitude. Here is an example: Cranfield airport has a published sunrise on the first of Ramadan (22 August 2009) of 5:55 and a sunset of 20:15; because these figures are used for aeronautical purposes they are accurate and authoritative for the location. The prayer calculator at Islamicity.com returns a sunrise time of 5:58 and sunset time of 20:12, three minutes out at either end, because it assumes that this central England location is at sea level when its actual elevation is 358 feet. For higher level locations the error would be quite substantial.
There are prayer calculating programs which allow for the input of elevation data, such as the extremely useful DOS program written many years ago by Dr. Monzur Ahmed whose essay on the subject would be a useful primer for mosques wanting to publish their DIY timetables. Essentially, what is required in order to start and break the daily fast at the same time within the same location is exactly the same as what is required to have a uniform start and end date of Ramadan - education and leadership, or: a proper understanding of the issues involved coupled with the willingness by Muslim leaders to put their own self-interest aside for the benefit of wider unity.

When a terrorist is not a terrorist

2009-08-08T10:06:00.000+01:00

Thank goodness, British justice is consistent - unfair, unequal, but consistent. Prosecutors and judges make sure that the lines don't get blurred. Nowhere is this more important than when it comes to what defines who is with us and who is against us: terrorism is an exclusively Muslim hallmark, and it must stay this way.

Prosecutors and the bench at Glasgow Sheriff Court knew the distinction. There was a man before them who had threatened to blow up Glasgow Central mosque, called himself a "proud racist" and promised to execute one Muslim a day until all mosques in Scotland would be closed. A man with a problem, but definitely not a terrorist. To be a terrorist you have to confess Islam. MacGregor hates Islam and Muslims, and his patriotic choice is reflected in the leniency of his sentence. Three years probation provided he seeks occasional psychriatric help.

Contrast this with Isa Ibrahim, a disturbed convert to Islam, who was also a heroin addict and fancied to blow up Bristol shopping centre. He didn't have the capability and in his first experiment with explosives promptly injured himself. He was a lot more in need for psychriatric help than the proud racist MacGregor, but judges at Winchester Crown court knew that the moment he had converted to Islam he had crossed the line to becoming a terrorist and awarded him a life sentence. Ironically, it was his local mosque who reported him to the police, thus giving the media another frenzy to feed on about the dangerous Muslims in our midst.

Or take the "lyrical terrorist" Samina Malik. Her crime was to write poetry. She didn't plan or threaten to kill anybody. Her poetry was tasteless, but no more so than being a proud racist. At the Old Bailey, judges knew the difference, and gave her a nine months suspended jail sentence under terrorism legislation.

Take Peter Stephen Hill from Skipton in Yorkshire, a former territorial army soldier who had amassed a large amount of explosives. A risk analyst by trade, he knew he would not be branded a terrorist if found out. He was charged at Leeds Magistrates court under the "Explosive Substances Act 1883". By the time the matter was due in the Crown Court the prosecution withdrew from the case.

Or former British National Party candidate Robert Cottage from Lancashire who kept all kinds of chemicals for the purpose of making explosives in preparation of a civil war and who also wanted to shoot the then prime minister Tony Blair (many Brits did, but he meant it) - he also was charged only under laws relating to explosives. Sure, it's naughty wanting to take out the prime minister, but at least he had the right reasons. There was no doubt he wanted an Islamic State to emerge from the civil war he was preparing for. He was jailed for a mere two-and-a-half years and the media kept it all low key.

One could give many more examples. But more telling is that the terrorism charge is usually not brought to court but used as a blunt bludgeon to hit innocent Muslims with. Like the Pakistani students rounded up and expelled without evidence when an anti-terrorist police chief Bob Quick cocked up by showing an open dossier to press photographers. Or the Bengali Kalam brothers in East London who had there house raided and got seriously injured in the process, followed by a media smear campaign, all on the basis of unreliable police "intelligence". Or Barbar Ahmed, brutally assaulted by police and still fighting a US extradition warrant. Or the thousands of Muslims who get stopped and searched going about their ordinary daily business. And thousands of Muslims have been arrested and held under terrorism legislation to date only to be released without charge. The police would love to hold them all indefinitely.

You can say what you like about the British justice system. It may be antiquated, slow, expensive, inefficient. But the charge of ambiguity in distinguishing those who are with us from those who are against us cannot be levied against it: British injustice remains consistent.

Iran - lessons in democracy

2009-06-24T11:06:00.001+01:00

The streets of Tehran are quiet for the moment, not because the UN secretary general and US president Obama spoke openly in support of the Iranian people against the Iranian government, but because the Mousavi opposition realised that they were unable to back up those words with anything else.
Now, after the Iranian version of the Ukrainian orange revolution didn't succeed in bringing down a government that has long been an eye-sore to Israel, the United States and their followers, foremost Britain, it may be time for some comparisons.

First of all, if any administration can be said to be out of tune with public opinion, the US and UK must come amongst the first. Obama is still riding a wave of support, but only because his predecessor was so immensely unpopular. When actions won't follow his words, the honeymoon will soon be over. In the UK, during the recent local and European elections the party of the yet unelected British prime minister just about received 15% of the votes cast, with the turnout being around 35%, in other words, only just over 5% of those eligible to vote supported him. Hardly a strong position from which to lecture the world on democracy. In contrast, the turnout at Iran's presidential elections was around 80% and president Ahmedinejad secured 63% of the votes cast, so more than half the country supports him. I know, it's hard to believe, how can the Iranians support somebody we, the self-styled champions of democracy, don't like.

To put it all down to electoral fraud is ludicrous. Iran is not as advanced in pulling off the kind of scheme that saw George W. Bush junior elected against all the odds. They don't use electronic counting machines sponsored by the office holder. They still do a hand count, closely watched but numerous monitors. If the elections in Iran had been fraudulent, the figures would have been of the kind we regularly see from Egypt, that other "democratic" haven beloved by America. Instead, Iran has been very open about the results, and those published about Iranians casting their votes from abroad are most instructive. Whilst one would expect Iranians in Europe or Australia to vote for Mousavi, it comes as a surprise that he also carried the vote in such suspected Islamic strongholds as Islamabad, Quetta, Lahore or even Kabul. Even in Jerusalem Ahmedinejad, no matter how vociferously he champions the Palestinian cause, fared poorly amongst his compatriots. On the other hand, he has support in Saudi Arabia. No-one in their right mind, if tasked with engineering a result, could have come up with these figures. And the votes cast abroad would have been a lot easier to edit than those cast under the watchful eyes of monitors inside Iran.

The simple fact is that if Ahmedinejad only presided over a country made up of the capital Tehran and expatriate communities scattered around the world, he would have lost. But in Iran's hinterland he is immensely popular because, unlike Western prime ministers and presidents, he remains in touch with them and their aspirations. And like it or not, they are also deeply religious. It is true that the Iranian economy is doing just as badly as, let's say, the British. Inflation is rampant, because the Islamic reforms of the revolution never extended to the financial system and interest has never been abolished. The economy remains strongly in the hands of a few powerful family oligarchies, and there is a high level of corruption. But that corruption does not extend to the personage of the president who has an integrity that would make British MPs or the Italian prime minister Berlusconi blush in spite of their lack of shame generally. Ahmedinejad refuses to be caught by the trappings of high office, does not wear a suit nor live in a luxury home paid for by the tax payer. Nobody could accuse him of excesses of the kind which recently pushed British politics into a deep crisis.

The US and UK may not like Ahmedinejad and prefer Mousavi, but in doing so they cannot claim to speak for the Iranian people. Western governments have a long history of viewing the world through their tinted spectacles and committing severe blunders by failing to understand other cultures. They expected to be welcomed by Iraqis as liberators and thought the indiscriminate bombing of Pakistani villagers should create stability in the region. Shouldn't Obama be mourning those innocent lives lost before turning his attention to Iran? It is too early to prove whether US clandestine operations were behind the opposition protests in the first place, hoping to unseat the Iranian government after having lost the appetite for another war, although it is telling that the protesters always seem to have English placards to hand, as if they want to be seen by those outside rather than by their own people. Be that as it may, I still lay the blame for the heavy price Iranians paid in innocent lives during those unrests at the doorstep of Western governments and media for having hyped up the loser's hopes of getting the vote annulled.

One could now talk about the heavy-handed response of the Iranian security forces in dealing with what were not merely peaceful demonstrations but an attempt to bring down the elected government. Here, too, Western hypocrisy abounds. The death of "Neda" does the rounds of Youtube and Twitter because she was an innocent bystander caught up in the fray. But doesn't that equally apply to Ian Tomlinson whose death the Metropolitan police caused at the G20 summit? In response to that revelation British police arrested a dozen Pakistani students under pretended terrorist charges to divert attention. The charges were subsequently dropped, but the students told they would be deported anyway as a security risk, although they had done nothing wrong. I don't remember UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon offering similar advice to the British government as he did to the Iranians about use of force against civilians or a call for an immediate stop to politically motivated arrests.

What we have, in sum total, is another political blunder by Western governments and media, who by believing their own delusions and openly showing their cards and bias destroyed the goodwill extended to them by the Iranian government after Obama's election. I guess from here it's politics as usual.

Europe speaks Arabic

2009-06-09T13:22:00.000+01:00

A book under this title by Dr. V. Abdur Rahim deserves wider circulation as a potential bridge-builder. The book's key achievement is to popularise the subject of the influence of the Arabic language in those of Europe for lay readers. It is in no way as detailed and comprehensive as the most thorough work on the subject so far, the doctoral thesis by T.A Ismail entitled "Classic Arabic as the Ancestor of Indo-European Languages and Origin of Speech" which, sadly, will be hard to find even in the best stocked library. In that book, Ismail compares Classical Arabic with Latin and Old English and tries to establish a sequential relationship. Rahim makes no such claim. He is content with showing that Arabic, due to the great influence of Islam throughout European history, left its indelible mark. The book, published by Goodword (ISBN 978-81-7898-639-5) does not attempt to ascribe any kind of superiority to Arabic. And whilst well researched, it is not aimed at the linguist. Its stated intention is and understanding of "our common cultural heritage". In his preface the author gives ample credit to European achievements by saying that "in many cases Arabic provided the name and the raw material, and Europe developed it into a highly sophisticated finished product". He also cites numerous examples where European words of Arabic origin re-entered the Arabic language with a new meaning, for example the French "bougie d'allumage" or spark plug, which traces its history to the city of Bijayah in Algeria, famous for the candle-wax it exported.
Europe speaks Arabic makes reference to English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian as well as German, Dutch, Danish and Swedish, plus Russian, Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian and Greek and Albanian. Of course, many English readers are aware that Arabic has given them words for stars, mathematics, exotic foodstuffs, such as coffee, and seafaring, such as admiral, but they would be well surprised in learning that that most English location of Trafalgar Square takes its name from the Arabic al-taraf al-agharr, or that the exchequer takes his name from the chequered cloth covering the table on which the accounts were reckoned, and that in turn via Arabic from the Persian Shah, the title of the king in chess. The word subsequently denoted a monetary instrument (check/cheque) and was re-imported with this meaning into the Arabic language.
Some of the book's quotes of Shakespearean and other old English writings in support of the lineage of a word are an absolute delight. My only criticism is the way the author chose to present his subject. The artificially contrived dialogue between Ahmad and Eric, the former teaching the latter about the Arabic origins of English terms, a form very popular in Arabic language school books, strikes me as most unsuitable for a European audience. A straight-forward running narrative would have served the purpose better.

Does God do politics?

2009-05-05T10:31:00.002+01:00

Does God do Politics? This is, of course, a rhetorical question forming the subject of a debate I will be having with Prof. John White of the Institute of Education, a secularist for whom God does not exist, and Peter Hitchens of the Daily Mail, who believes in God but accepts the fallacy that secularism can provide a neutral playing field for both believers and non-believers. The debate has been organised by the dialoguewithislam.org for Thursday 21st May at Ebrahim Community College, 80 Greenfield Road (rear of East London Mosque), London E1 1EJ, and is chaired by al-Jazeera news presenter Hamish MacDonald. Kick-off is at 6.30 pm.

Purpose of the debate, followed by questions from the floor, is to explore both the way politicians use religion as well as the way adherents of religion use politics. The key question is not merely whether God exists or interferes in human affairs, but rather to what extent the believes of those who either affirm or deny his existence should have the right for the public engagement to be governed by those believes. When it comes to peaceful coexistence, will a secular framework provide a more tolerant environment or a religious one. Does the degree of tolerance differ between religions? Should there be limits to what can be tolerated? Is the separation of religious practice and public life workable or even desirable? If man becomes the sovereign instead of God, will inevitably abuse his power?

The two ex-leaders, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, both headed secular states yet repeatedly made references to God whom they claimed to have on their side. At the same time Bishops are criticised when they comment on social and political issues, and Islam is seen as a radical threat to Western liberal values. How can it be explained that exponents of the secular establishment appeal to religious sentiments whilst adherents of religions are told not to allow their faith to colour or govern their politics? Is the rift between the church and science a purely Western phenomenon that blinds Europe and America when dealing with the contribution religion has to make towards the progress of society? Or is the animosity against Islam a natural response from a secular elite seeing its power base threatened after having wrestled it at high cost from the Christian churches? Has liberalism become illiberal the moment it took the reigns of power?

Expect a lively debate. Advance tickets are available for £2 at dialoguewithislam.org; tickets at the door are £3.

Police policy of criminalising dissent

2009-04-25T15:10:00.004+01:00

"That's what the police do", commented former Flying Squad chief John O'Connor to the BBC who picked up a report by the Guardian that Strathclyde police were paying informers considerable sums to act as moles within protest movements. Similar contacts were often made with individuals in protest groups and in the criminal world, he observed.

That last remark is the crucial part of the statement. It betrays the mindset of the police forces in the UK which produced such shocking results as the killing of an innocent news vendor and the beating of a demonstrating lady: the police place protesters within the criminal world. The transgressions by the police, recently looked at by a select committee in parliament, are not the excesses of rogue individuals, they are a matter of policy.

Notwithstanding the oft-repeated mantra of freedom of speech and the democratic right of protest, managing protest in today's subtle police state is about ensuring by all means, fair or foul, that it remains at the periphery, invisible and inaudible, incapable of interrupting business as usual. The justification is usual the need to maintain public order. However, in reality the ends appear to justify the means, and the ends are not merely public safety. Ultimately, it is about power and remaining in charge.

The revelations that have come to light with secret tape recordings of Strathclyde police officers trying to recruit new informers raise serious questions about the nature of policing and the already frail trust between the police and the public. The blunder of police chief Bob Quick aside, where the arrests of eleven Pakistani Muslims under terror legislation merely an attempt to shift the focus of public scrutiny away from the methods the police used against protesters during the G20 summit and the question of whether their tactics were governed by a desire to protect the powerful from the voice of the people rather than to protect the people from harm? Those arrested were subsequently released without charge, as is usually the case with most people held for prolonged periods of time under terrorism legislation. On the assumption of "innocent unless proven Muslim" it was, however, suggested, that they should be deported anyway.

This is also the fate destined for Barbar Ahmed who is imprisoned in the UK on the basis of a US extradition request. He was brutally assaulted by police in his own home, sustaining multiple severe injuries, and mocked about his religion, then released without charge. When he complained to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC - which might as well stand for Indemnify the Police against Criminal Conduct), the carried out a whitewash investigation and found that there was no case to answer for the police. However, during the private proceedings his lawyers initiated, the police eventually admitted culpability.

Even more damning than the revelation that the police are actively recruiting activitsts to spy for them on legitimate protesters is the admission by a police officer on one of the tapes that "we work with lots of people from terrorist organisations right through to whatever". Maybe the "conspiracy theory" that there was police collusion during the 7/7 bombings are not so far-fetched after all. Some of the alleged suspects were well known to the police and the alleged mastermind, Haroon Aswat, was previously an informer for British intelligence. Was he also paid tens of thousands of pounds, the sums available according to the Guardian tape, in order to organise a few naive Muslims with rucksacks to travel down to London whilst intelligence experts did the rest, including letting him ecape and covering his tracks?

At the same time as these revelations about police tactics a report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary finds that police are failing to tackle the rising thread of criminal gangs in England and Wales. This report was kept secret until it was forced out by a Freedom of Information request by the Times. So whilst the police focus on those exercising their right to protest and on Pakistani students hyped up as terrorists for political convenience, the public are at the mercy of an increasing number of organised crime networks unchecked by police interference. Likewise, motorists are increasingly criminalised through revenue-generating speed enforcement action, whilst officers shy away from confronting the violence of drug and people traffickers and armed gangs.

If the Home Office Select Committee is serious about restoring public confidence in the police, their enquiries need to go a lot deeper than simple asking why officers were allowed to cover up their identity numbers, a practice commonly found in those police states our self-righteous government frequently moralises about. They would need to address the whole can of worms of the illicit relationship between policing and power politics. And it goes without saying that they need to scrap the farcical "Independent" Police Complaints Commission and replace it with a body representing the interest of the people, equipped with powers of enforcing policy changes.

Scottish Islam - does it exist?

2009-04-11T19:47:00.001+01:00

A few months ago I took a new Scottish Muslim convert to the mosque in Dumfries for Friday prayers. The address before prayer was entirely in Urdu, except for a few incoherent English words thrown in whilst glancing at the unexpected white faces in the small crowd, never as much as even half a sentence though, making the content completely incomprehensible for the non-Urdu speaker. Having said that, understanding Urdu did not help much either, since the subject matter was almost completely irrelevant to living in Britain. This was followed by a brief sermon in "Arabic", made up only of standard phrases commonly used as a framework for this purpose over the centuries and fleshed out with nothing else. The experience felt very foreign and, except for the compulsory nature of attendance at Friday prayers, a complete waste of time.

Having visited again over Easter I suggested we try Glasgow Central Mosque instead who could not possibly be as backwards as this. We were in for a major surprise. The experience was not only foreign, but completely outlandish. Sure enough, the purpose-built mosque has all the modern fittings and is kept meticulously clean. Nonetheless, we wished afterwards we hadn't made the journey. The service started with an address in Urdu, as if that was the lingua franca of Scotland. Part of this was then translated into English, none of which contained any references to the lives the attending worshippers live in Britain. Then followed a run-of-the-mill Arabic sermon read from a script which, whilst coined in flowery poetic language, made no reference whatsoever to current affairs or the situation of Muslims locally or anywhere else in the world. It was what followed after the prayer, however, that made the event memorable.

During prayer a couple of babies could be heard crying from the sisters' gallery at the back. Of course, nobody likes to hear children cry, but they do. I find it infinitely more bearable than the various musical tunes emanating from mobile phones during prayer at most mosques around the world. But for the Imam it was just too much. After completing the prayers he made an announcement that it was an outrage for women to bring children to the mosque and let them cry in order to disturb the brothers' prayers. I am told this wasn't the first time such an announcement was made. But for the first time there was an unexpected response: instead of bashfully dropping their heads and feeling guilty for having come to the mosque, one of the sisters made her way right through the crowd of male worshippers leaving the mosque in order to question the Imam on his wisdom. Imported Imams, even the younger ones, do not like their perceived authority undermined, and she was eventually persuaded to leave the men's prayer hall. Together with an entourage of other women and their male relatives, who had since caught up with them, she made her way to the Imam's office, demanding to speak to him and challenge him on having so publicly insulted the mothers of the crying children without first bothering to establish what might have happened to cause the little ones to cry. After all, mothers don't delight in their children's tears. Nor would they mind if the mosque's concern for their children extended to providing creche facilities, which would immediately solve the problem.

Outside the Imam's office the mosque administration sprang into action. It would not be possible to speak to the Imam. He was too important to be summoned, you would have to go to him. She tried, she said. No, not her, a man would have to speak to him on her behalf, it was not acceptable for a woman to speak to him. Just like in Pakistan, said another young woman, and hastily added for not wanting to be perceived as racist that she was of Pakistani origin herself. Then why don't you go back to Pakistan retorted a bouncer guarding the Imam's office, looking not much over twenty in age. I suggested he join the BNP, they love young Asians arguing their case.

Much of what was said during the continuing discussions made me wonder whether time had stood still for this insular mosque over the past few decades. Islam may have made progress in Britain and Muslims may have come of age with regard to facing up to the modern world, but all this must have happened outside the mosque. The saddest thing was that the mosque did not try to preserve some pristine version of ancient Islam but a distorted form of Pakistani male chauvinism dressed up as religion. In spite of being turban-clad they did not follow the example of the prophet Muhammad, peace be with him, in any respect. Numerous authentic reports about his actions and words (Ahadith) indicate that he displayed a caring attitude towards both children and women, which was betrayed by those who thought to take his place in defining Islam in Glasgow. He prolonged his prostration because one of his grandsons had climbed onto his back. At his mosque in Madinah men formed the first row and women the back row, with children placed in the middle, so they did attend. It was reported that any slave girl of Madinah could take him by his hand to ask him about any concern of hers and he would not move on until her request was fulfilled. And what about the old woman who got up in the middle of a public meeting to challenge the caliph Umar for wanting to restrict the amount of dowry given for marriage. She did not send her husband or brother to have a quiet word with the ruler of the Muslims, she confronted him in public with her understanding of the Qur'an, and he immediately conceded at having made an error of judgment. No such humility in the Glasgow Imam - his staff eventually suggested a later appointment could be made, one woman only, accompanied by a man through whom she would speak.

In his admonition to the attending mothers he had also misinterpreted the Hadith that the prophet had shortened congregational prayer on account of a child crying. According to the Imam and a Pakistani scholar he quoted the child had not been at the mosque but at a nearby home and the prophet had shortened the prayer to allow the mother to return home early. Should I suppose it was customary in those barbaric days to leave little children alone at home whilst going to the mosque to pray? And what about the prophet's advice to bear in mind when leading prayer that there are weak, ill and old people in the congregation, how should we twist this message to get rid of the nuisance of children?

Maybe we should bar women altogether from attending mosques, although there is a Hadith forbidding this. And also bar the ill and the disabled. And young people. And anybody with their own opinion. And non-Urdu speakers. To leave only old first-generation Pakistani men. That way Islam will have a bright future undisturbed by dissenting voices or crying children. And it will grow firm roots in Scotland and last forever. Or maybe we should give up on the mosques and take our Islam elsewhere. Both, of course, would negatively affect the size of the mosque donations after Friday prayers, a problem the Imam and his protective team still need to resolve somehow before they can pray in peace.

Challenging Darwinism: Interview with Harun Yahya

2009-03-10T14:39:00.004Z

Known to millions of readers under the pen name of Harun Yahya, the success of Turkish writer Adnan Oktar has a simple recipe for success: explain Islam in simple scientific terms coupled with high-quality presentation. His key topic has been to prove that Darwin’s theory of evolution is seriously flawed. In his magnificently crafted Atlas of Creation he takes on the evolutionist at their own game, the fossil record. At the time of the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s “On the origin of species” which soon became European dogma Oktar is the chief antagonist of the evolutionists. In their fight against revealed religion with its firm belief in a Creator they tried to discredit religion as unscientific for too long. Now he has turned the tables. Oktar's writings did not just earn him the praise of readers all over the world, they also lead to a vicious campaign of vilification against him, especially in Turkey, a nation state proud to be secular and having shaken off the burden of the Islamic caliphate - on the behest of the then European powers, one might add. The Darwin anniversary coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Rushdie affair in the UK, also intended to make religion look bad, and the only serious rebuttal ever published, Islamic Party leader David Pidcock's "Satanic Voices Ancient and Modern" has a whole chapter on how Turkey was carved up by the masonic Dönme Young Turk movement of Salonica, as well as exposing the character assassination tactics of Satanic Purses and the monetary fraud of Satanic Purses. By taking on the evolutionist ideology of the secularists, Adnan Oktar automatically entered politics. In this exclusive interview Dr. Sahib Mustaqim Bleher asks him about his views on evolution, secularism, religion, politics and the future of Turkey as well as the wider Muslim world.

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: Given the bicentenary celebrations of Darwin, let me first of all ask you about the theory of evolution by natural selection which you describe as more of a sinister dogma than a mere theory: What do you think are its political objectives?

ADNAN OKTAR: If a theory that is claimed to be scientific, despite having been disproved by all branches of science with hundreds of pieces of scientific evidence, is determinedly imposed on people across the world and kept on its feet despite reason and science, then this is obviously something that does not concern scientists alone. Even when I was still in high school I realized that all this bloodshed, world wars, the ruthless exploitation of people and revolutions could not all have happened spontaneously, and that there had to be a cause behind them. Because human beings cannot become that heartless on their own. They cannot be neighbours having good relations one day and then start slaughtering one another the next. As I researched the question I saw that all these troubles were organized by freemasonry and that Darwinism was the religion of freemasonry.

There is no materialism without Darwinism, and no communism, fascism, savage capitalism or terror without materialism. But Muslims are in general unable to see that. They see that they are up against a terrible scourge, but they do not look into the cause behind it. The fact is that Muslims have been attacked from behind, but they can only see straight in front of them. What lies behind these events? What lies behind such strife and evil? They do not look to see that. Why do people attack religious commandments, Islam? They do not investigate that. They just say “It stems from irreligiousness, from lack of faith” and leave it at that. But they do not ask why those people have turned out like this. When one looks, one is confronted by just one thing – the superstitious religion of Darwinism. So long as the false religion survives they remain loyal to it. The invalidity of that religion must first be proved. What I am doing is to explain to people that this terrible corruption, this terrible lie, is all a deliberate ruse.

Muslims have to date been unable to imagine the cunning power and influence of Darwinism. No Islamic scholar has ever waged the kind of struggle against Darwinism that I am, that we are. They have either written a few lines on the subject in their works or else not have mentioned it at all. They have never made a statement on the subject. I regard this as a blessing, thanks be to Allah. I regard the way that Allah has given this duty to my colleagues and me as a blessing.

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: Why do you think a public debate between evolutionists and creationists, which can be observed in the United States of America, is mostly absent in Europe?

ADNAN OKTAR: There is a one-sided imposition of Darwinism across the world. Around 95% of states officially protect Darwinism and impose the theory of evolution. They seek to impose this false theory with an unbelievable shamelessness and audacity, even though it is obviously false and a lie and even though we have proved that to be the case. This is a disgrace, anti-democratic and something against human rights. There are 100 million fossils in existence, for instance. All of these hundred million fossils all prove creation. But one is forbidden to say that. It is forbidden to say that proteins cannot come into being by chance. There are no transitional fossils, but one is forbidden to say so or to describe the false nature of the skulls concerned. So what about freedom of thought and freedom of expression? This means the imposition of a false idea and a lie. That only happens in dictatorships. That means there is a Darwinist dictatorship. Europe has been crushed under the feet of that dictatorship for some 150 years. Look, there is even pressure on the Vatican; that much is obvious. The Pope has to give the impression he supports evolution. How terrible this is. But Europe has now begun to be enlightened, insha’Allah. The earth moved when my Atlas of Creation arrived in Europe, and there is now a huge change of mind taking place. You can see that belief in Creation is growing stronger by the day in Britain and many people, teachers included, say that Creation should be taught in schools. Surveys in Denmark, Sweden and France show that people are no longer being taken in by Darwinism, and this is all major progress. Insha’Allah that progress will pick up even more pace in the future and the Darwinist dictatorship will be eliminated entirely.

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: Another European dogma, often taken to extremes in Turkey, is the separation of religion and politics. In your writings and interviews both religion and politics seem to go hand in hand. What is, in your opinion, the proper role of religion in politics?

ADNAN OKTAR: Belief in Allah and religious moral values are great blessings, great comforts. But Darwinists and materialists have sought to deprive the people of Europe of these blessings, though that tyranny is now coming to an end, insha’Allah. It is a great guarantee and blessing for a political leader to have spiritual values and to love and fear Allah. But one must not, of course, seek to use religious values for political ends. The public do not want that and will spurn anyone who tries to do that.

Some people in Europe misinterpret laicism. They imagine that laicism means atheism and suggest it is a shield to protect their own atheism. Some fail to comprehend the Muslim view of laicism, and that is where the problem stems from. Laicism is a comfort for Muslims, too. There is no hypocrisy where there is laicism, and that is a great blessing. People openly express their ideas. If someone is an atheist he says he is an atheist, honestly and openly. Hypocrisy flourishes where there is no laicism, which is when people with no faith say they are religious, and even very devout, misleading the people around them like an actor playing a role. And who wants that? It is very ugly. The following point is also very important, humanity has in any case learned about laicism, democracy and freedom of ideas from Islam, and these values lie at the heart of Islam. Democratic thought, plurality and laicism also prevail in the Qur’an. In other words, members of other faiths have recognized freedoms, there is love, affection and compassion, freedom of thought for them. There is the concept of republic. The peace of the public and their security is essential. These are all to be found in the faith. For that reason, giving the idea that religion conflicts with science or politics is a tactic used by freemasons and materialists, and true Muslims must thwart it.

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: You have come under repeated attacks within Turkey. Recently the Turkish prime minister was welcomed back as a hero by Muslims for walking out of Davos in protest of European support for Israel after its attack on Gaza. Likewise, the success of your books both inside and outside Turkey shows that Muslims want to debate and defeat materialist dogma. Which way do you think the pendulum will swing in Turkey and what sort of timescale are we talking about?

ADNAN OKTAR: I was first detained when I wrote my book Judaism and Freemasonry. I was held in solitary confinement for 9 months and then for 10 months in a ward full of seriously deranged patients in a mental hospital for saying, during a press statement, “I am from the Turkish people, from the nation of Islam.” I was held with 300 mental patients in an old, run-down stone building left over from the time of Sultan Abdulhamid. These were the most seriously deranged patients, unfit to stand trial, who constantly attacked one another and were generally covered in blood. They were unable to meet even their most basic needs, and the place stank to death. Seven killings took place during my time there. They killed each other with food trays. I was not allowed visits from my friends, nor even allowed to talk to the nurses, doctors or interns. After keeping me there for 10 months the military hospital then issued a report saying I was healthy in mind and body. I do not go into too much detail, but it was a tough environment. Yet for me it was a very excellent and honourable time, insha’Allah.

After that there was an endless series of attacks. But after each one, as a blessing, Allah increased the efficacy of my work many times over, and my circle kept expanding. For example, my time in the mental hospital was when the number of my friends grew most of all. There has been huge progress in Turkey over the last 30 years. The Turkish nation has always been devoted to national values and religious faith; but there has been a huge rise in consciousness and awareness over the last 30 years. A very moderate but powerful conception of Islam has settled in the country. The public’s devotion has increased many times over. Belief in Darwinism has declined so far as to be almost non-existent. Turkey is the country with the lowest level of belief in Darwinism anywhere in the world. A bright future now awaits Turkey, insha’Allah.

Turkey will play the role of older brother, leader to the Turkish-Islamic world and ensure their protection. It will ensure the salvation of all Muslims by establishing the Turkish-Islamic Union. The West supports Turkey assuming such a role, and it is excitedly anticipated by the Muslim world. That expectation has become even sharper after the event at Davos. The people of the Middle East are openly saying they want to see Turkey as leader. When you look at the Caucasus and ask them who they want to be the leader, they unanimously say Turkey. All Muslim societies, in Africa, the Far East or the Balkans, regard Turkey with love and respect. This excellent progress will further speed up in the future and the Turkish-Islamic world will enter a golden age like the Age of Happiness.

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: You have proposed the formation of a Turkish Islamic Union. Do you see a Turkish Islamic Union as a stepping stone to the re-establishment of some kind of caliphate or do you envisage a different model of global political Islam?

ADNAN OKTAR: It is important for Muslims to gather around a spiritual leader, rather than a caliphate in particular. It is unlawful for Muslims not be united and act as one. In other words, in the eyes of the Qur’an it is obligatory for Muslims to act as one, be brothers as one and gather round a single leader. But they do not do that. The door to all kinds of scourge will remain open so long as they do not do that. Muslims must fulfil this obligation. I say this so that the Turkish-Islamic Union will be established under Turkish leadership, under the leadership of the Turkish nation. Every state will remain as a separate nation state. It can behave freely in domestic matters, but they need to have a spiritual leader at their head. That is because Christians have a Pope, they have a leader. It is essential that Muslims also have a leader. If that union has a leader, then all this strife and chaos can easily come to an end. In that event, if even the hair of Muslims’ heads somewhere is hurt, the incident will be stopped at once because all Muslims will act in concert. But if they are fragmented, if they act in a manner leaving them open to a policy of ‘divide, fragment, swallow’, then it is of course easily to swallow up small morsels. But it is impossible to swallow up the Muslim world as a whole block. Muslims must fulfil this obligation at once.

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: Do you think the nation state as we know it will have much future? If not, what short-, medium- and long-term alternatives you can see?

ADNAN OKTAR: There will be a period when states will maintain their own existence and alliances will be formed. In the Turkish-Islamic Union, for example, all states will maintain their own existence. Muslim states that maintain their integral natures will come together to form one spirit, a spiritual union, a union of love. It is a question of Muslims gathering under one roof. The age we are living in is the age of Hazrat Mahdi (as). It is the age of the coming of the Prophet Isa’/Jesus (as). By Allah’s leave, the Muslim world will soon be in union, and will form a union that covers the world. The coming of Hazrat Mahdi (as) will take place. It is the time when Isa’ (as), son of Maryam, will return. This is clear from the verses of the Qur’an. These are absolutely certain in Sunni belief, in the Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki and Shafi’i schools. Nobody denies them, no imam from any school has ever denied them and all of them accepted. In the same way, the coming of the Prophet ‘Isa (as) is a certainty in Shiite belief. And that of Hazrat Mahdi (as). All the portents of this holy good news have come true. There are some 300 portents of the coming of Hazrat Mahdi (as) and the Prophet ‘Isa (as), and they have all happened. We will all live together, insha’Allah, Alawites, Sunnis, Jafaris and everyone. And Hazrat Mahdi (as) will lead the Muslim world, insha’Allah. There will be a century of joy and happiness. Islamic moral values will enjoy a glorious world dominion. Christianity will be cleaned of polytheism and assume a purified state. It will amalgamate with Islam and the Qur’an. It will be an excellent outcome for Christianity, and Islam, and the world. The prayer of the Prophet ‘Isa (as) has been heeded. He asked to be one from the community of our Prophet (saas). When he returns to Earth, he will be one from the community of the Prophet Muhammad (saas).

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: You referred to the current global financial crisis as a sign of the End Times. Do you see this crisis predominantly as monetary or economic in nature, and does the solution lie in monetary reform or in economic measures? Will or should there be a return to protectionism and does this herald the end of globalisation?

ADNAN OKTAR: This is no ordinary economic crisis, but a major event described as happening in the End Times. Our Prophet (saas) has stated in the hadith that such an economic crisis will take place before the appearance of Hazrat Mahdi (as). I can give a couple of examples of these hadith:

Before the coming of the Mahdi, TRADE AND ROADS between nations will be cut, and strife among people will grow. (Al-Qawl al-Mukhtasar fi Alamat al-Mahdi al- Muntadhar, p. 39)
STAGNATION IN THE MARKETS, AND A DECREASE IN EARNINGS... (Portents of Doomsday, p. 148)
Everyone COMPLAINING OF LOW EARNINGS... The rich being respected for their money... (Portents of Doomsday, p. 146)
Business being stagnant. Everyone will complain ‘I cannot sell, buy or earn anything.’ (Portents of Doomsday, p. 152)

This economic crisis is metaphysical. All the economists, scientists, industrialists, investors and everyone in the world are trying to stop it, but they cannot and will not. It will bring the whole system down with it. It began in 2007, and by 2014 it will swallow up almost all countries and materialist systems, and the leaders of those systems will be impoverished and humbled. Shortages will grow as a result. That means nobody will be able to show off because of his wealth and possessions, or be stubborn and arrogant. Like Qarun, Allah will bring all these systems down. The story of Qarun in the Qur’an is happening now in the End Times. All the treasure of Qarun is collapsing now, in other words. The Qur’an says that Qarun’s treasure was very famous and extensive. It says his might and economic strength was very great. The economic strength of those other people was also very great. But they have now entered the age of famine described in Surah Yusuf. And that famine will last for 7 years, and they will undergo great changes during that time and come to know the Qur’an and the moral values of Islam. Their salvation lies in the Turkish-Islamic Union, insha’Allah.

Allah has already brought that system down across the world and everyone has begun having to renounce the interest system. They will have to abandon it, because this economic crisis of the End Times is a great miracle of the age of Hazrat Mahdi (as). It is a marvel of the age of Hazrat Mahdi (as). And it will overturn all banking systems, all banking systems based on interest. Only in the Turkish-Islamic world will unity, togetherness, health and economic well-being remain, apart from which they will all collapse.

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: In your book on Freemasonry you describe how it gave birth to humanism and attempted to undermine and subvert the Christian religion. Do you think the Muslim religion has been subject to similar degeneration by Freemasonry or other secret societies?

ADNAN OKTAR: The apathy of some Muslims today, the disunity in the Muslim world, the insensitivity of some Arab leaders toward the spilling of Muslim blood in Palestine and the Middle East, the way that some Muslims regard the intellectual struggle against Darwinism as unimportant and the way they engage in no activity on the subject are all the result of masonic activity. That they are almost afraid even to speak of Turkish-Islamic union is also the work of the masons. All of them are beyond that, but the heads of state of many Islamic countries are under the control of atheist Zionists by way of the masons. For example, the president is a freemason, the prime minister is a freemason and ministers are freemasons.

That is the case in several Islamic countries, excluding Turkey. They are very careful when it comes to division, maintaining fragmentation and avoiding union. The leaders of several Islamic countries are on their guard so that a Turkish-Islamic Union should not be established. They say this is the thing to be avoided most of all. And they do indeed strongly avoid it. The fragmentation of Islamic countries, the way they are all divided, is the greatest weapon in the hands of freemasonry. The masons regard them as a horde of ants, and imagine it can easily crush them with its tanks as they have no single leader. They have struck them right in the jugular vein. They have laid hands on their most important weapon. They say that when they strike against one Islamic country that country will be left to its own devices and nobody will come to its support. Because they are testing this out. They are shedding rivers of blood in Palestine, and there is not a squeak of protest from most Islamic countries.

Look, children and the like are crying out for help in Palestine, but Egypt has closed its border and refuses to allow aid convoys in. How is one to explain that? We cannot just sit back and watch if children are being killed. We cannot sit back and say, “But what if they kill us, too.’ Fear is a corruption of the End Times, a scourge of many Muslims: ‘But what if I am imprisoned, or beaten up, or insulted, or slandered or killed?’ My brother, then you will earn the appropriate merit. Is not your aim in life Allah’s approval? Most Islamic countries are in this needless state of fear. They have experienced great suffering. But Allah would not have inflicted that suffering on them had they been rational and courageous. Strength comes from Allah. None other than Allah has strength. Allah hands out fear and afflictions. Allah sends afflictions to the cowardly. But Allah protects the brave. Muslims have a duty to be brave.

Sahib Mustaqim Bleher: You frequently quote Said Nursi. To what extend is your own activism and method influenced by the educational movement he founded?

ADNAN OKTAR: My family is a classic Turkish family. In my last years at high school I saw how there was anarchy in Turkey and how some Muslims were being badly oppressed. That made me really uneasy. I developed a strong urge to save and protect Muslims. I began studying and investigating during that time. I was greatly influenced by Imam Rabbani. I read the Letters of Rabbani, an excellent work written in a very sincere style. I read Imam al-Ghazali’s Spiritual Exercises. I was greatly influenced by that, too. But I was especially influenced by the works of Said Nursi. He was the greatest scholar of this century, a very worthy human being. In my view, he is the greatest scholar of the last 1,000 years. I love him dearly. He is an extraordinary person. I do not think his true worth has yet been fully understood. He is a very metaphysical person; whatever he said came true. I really like his very holy Risale-i Nur Collection. I think it is very valuable. It contains great secrets and profound wisdom, and is written in a very sincere style. I recommend it to everyone. It is a superb book.

Lessons learned from Gaza

2009-01-19T14:46:00.001Z

After a halt (or pause) in the carnage wrought by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) on the helpless people of Gaza (essentially a large open prison camp completely unprotected against the onslaught by the Israeli military hardware (paid for by the West), it is time for an initial assessment of what has happened. A number of pertinent conclusions arise:

1. The IDF is NOT invincible. In spite of being armed to the teeth with the latest technology, Israel did not achieve its only stated war objective of stopping the firing of rockets from the Gaza strip into Northern Israel. It's withdrawal after three weeks of continued bombardment and losing more than a dozen soldiers to the comparatively unarmed Gazan population rising in the defence of its territory is Israel's second major defeat in as many years. The war against Lebanon two years ago was also unsuccessful in its declared objective of returning two captured IDF soldiers. Nor has the political and military structure of either Hamas or Hizbullah been destroyed, leaving nothing but widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure and heavy losses in civilian lives as the end result of those two military operations.

2. Israel cannot be trusted. In desperation at having lost its myth of invincibility she might try to strike at anyone to justify her continued existence. The possession of a huge nuclear arsenal makes such a pariah state highly dangerous.

3. Terrorism has been provided with official sanction: Since Israel has justified (state) terrorism and the indiscriminate killing and wounding of defenceless men, women and children as long as some kind of greater military objective is being pursued, the argument for not involving civilians in political and military conflicts has ultimately been lost. Any group with whatever perceived greater objective can now cite the Israeli attacks against Lebanon and Gaza as justification for causing widespread damage amongst civilians. Having thus changed the rules of engagement might still come to haunt both Israel and her Western allies.

4. There are no Islamic states or governments in the world. Any state wanting to be called Islamic would have intervened to liberate Gaza from the destruction brought upon it by Israel. Historically and under international war such intervention would have been justified in the face of Israeli war crimes. Numerous Arab and other Muslim nations have large standing armies (e.g. Turkey has at least a million soldiers in active service at any one time) and expensive military hardware; the case that they are powerless against Israel can, therefore, not be made, particularly given the inability of Israel to even win a war initiated by herself against peoples without a standing army (Lebanon and Gaza). Nor can the moral case of Israel merely defending her borders and "right to exist" be made any more after the indiscriminate targetting of civilians. Given that the majority of citizens all across the world objected to and abhorred the Israeli war crimes, the regimes imposed upon Muslim nations do not represent their people.

5. Western governments are more answerable to Israel than to their own people who voiced clear objection to the war against Gaza, hence the myth of democracy has once more been exposed as a farce. Foremost amongst those are the United States of America whose new president Obama has been discredited even before taking office by trying to cleverly not be drawn on the issue. In America the right to wrestle power back from from an unrepresentative and oppressive state by popular uprising is enshrined in the constitution, and similar notions exist in most other Western nation states. That the people, permanently enslaved by debt financing, will ever renegotiate the social contract is, however, highly questionable both in the West and in the Muslim world.

6. The UN is utterly useless. Its buildings and institutions can be attacked with impunity.

7. If there ever was a right for Israel to exist on land appropriated from other people without their consent, this right has now been eternally forfeited.

8. The current rulers of the world - Israel, the US and their subordinates amongst the nations - are more likely to be defeated by the outcome of their own arrogance and false sense of invincibility than an external conqueror. It is a rule of history that all empires will come to an end. Western economies are already imploding and Western armies are overstretched in unwinnable wars. The targetting of a perceived weak enemy, as in the case of Gaza, is a sign of increasing desparation heralding the quickening of this inevitable end.

P.S. I expect to be inundated with outraged, emotional and defamatory comments. They do not detract from the factuality of the above.

The shoe bombers

2008-12-28T12:44:00.001Z

Don't talk to me about Islamic terrorism no more. A few years back American "Neocons" in the Bush administration with blind loyalty only to the illegitimate terrorist state of Israel led us into an illegal invasion of Iraq under the pretense of weapons of mass destruction. Last year, Israel tried to bomb Lebanon back into the dark ages whilst our very own middle east "peace envoy" Tony Blair called for a cease fire to be postponed in the hope that Israel could finish the job. Thankfully, the Israeli army had to settle for a defeat, although the Lebanese civilians paid a heavy price for it. So this year they went for a more downsized enemy to show their muscle and sent their Christmas peace message into Gaza, for many years the largest open air prison camp on earth. For all those who hailed Obama as the new saviour, I didn't hear a pip squeak of protest from him. A Bush spokesman, predictably, blamed the victims who had it coming to them and merely called for Hamas to show restraint. One might think scores of Israeli civilians had died. So this is the shape of things to come in the climate of the engineered witch hunt against Muslim terrorists. What Israels "Christian" supporters forget is that the chosen people do not see them as equals either. Israel is like the kid in an American school shooting teachers and fellow pupils for not having given him full marks in the last examination. Israel will not stop until the world acknowledges that global rule is rightfully hers. Meanwhile all the Muslims around the world can do is to throw shoes. Please, don't talk to me about terrorism no more.

Islamic Party calls for boycott of Lloyds TSB

2008-11-19T05:32:00.000Z

Press release:

Not having had the courtesy of a reply after an initial letter of protest to Lloyds TSB, the Islamic Party of Britain is calling for a boycott of both Lloyds TSB and the Islamic Bank of Britain, after Lloyds instructed the Islamic Bank of Britain to withdraw all banking facilities to Interpal, a charity providing much needed assistance to Palestinians suffering under occupation.

"We never understood the so-called Islamic Banking initiatives to be anything but a branding exercise", said Dr Sahib Mustaqim Bleher, general secretary of the Islamic Party of Britain, "but this inappropriate and undemocratic political interference by Lloyds makes it clear who calls the shots". Muslims account holders of either Lloyds or the Islamic Bank of Britain, especially business customers, are urged to move their banking elsewhere or at least communicate to the bank that they may intend to do so. Organisations who have spoken out to support Interpal against this undeserved interference are asked to add their voice to this call for a boycott.

"Talk is cheap", said Bleher. "Muslims should realise their strength and vote with their feet. If we act in concert, there are enough Muslim account holders, given the financial crisis, to turn Lloyds into the next casualty of the banking sector - where they belong if they think they can abuse their power to target our community. If we fail to act, we no longer deserve to be listened to."

Obama: by his friends you shall know him

2008-11-07T11:53:00.000Z

With the initial euphoria of the election of the first "black" president of the United States of America slowly subsiding, it is time to take a good look at the colour of Obama's politics rather than skin. It quickly becomes apparent then that there won't be much change after all. Early on in his campaign, Barack Obama gave a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) indicating his unwavering support for Israel. His selection of staff and advisers confirms that he is not going back on his word.

Obama's campaign manager was David Axelrod, an American Jew from Manhattan, who will be rewarded with the post of Chief White House advisor. As Chief of Staff, Obama selected Rahm Israel Emanuel, who also holds Israeli citizenship and served as a volunteer in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). John Podesta, also Jewish, heads the new president's transition team. Likely candidates for treasury secretary are Lawrence (Larry) Summers, Timothy Franz Geithner, and Paul Volcker, all Jewish. John Kerry, whose parents converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism, might become Secretary of State. An exception with regard to kosher credentials might be former CIA director Robert Gates, who could be invited to stay on as defence secretary - not much change in Iraq or Afghanistan then. James (Jim) Steinberg, likely to become National Security Advisor, is part of the tribe again, as is another contender for this post, Dennis Ross, who was Clinton's Middle East Envoy. The few expected black appointments will be safe choices, such as Susan Rice, potential Ambassador to the UN, a former protege of the infamous Madeleine Albright.

So colour really doesn't matter all that much. Those who hope that the Bush administration's unconditional support for Israeli aggression might change with Obama will be in for a nasty surprise. Of course, McCain wouldn't have been any different. And just for the record: Given that only about three percent of the American population are Jewish, their heavy concentration in the corridors of power is, of course, purely coincidental!

The end of Islam as we know it

2008-09-30T17:56:00.002+01:00

The fasting month of Ramadan has come to an end and, along with other Muslims, I should be celebrating. But as every year, at least in Europe, the celebratory spirit is dampened by the confusion as to when it is time to stop fasting and when the day of Eid celebrations begins. Islam follows the lunar calendar in which months can be 29 or 30 days long. Traditionally, if the moon was not sighted physically with the naked eye, thirty days had to be completed. Thus, one could never be quite sure when important occasions, such as the start of end of fasting, would begin, until the evening before. Whilst adding to the excitement of key Islamic events throughout the year, this "unpredictability" is not very welcome in the modern industrial society where everything wants to be planned.

There is the added problem that the lunar cycle will not be the same for every place on earth, yet information travels instantly. It would be quite wrong, if relying on moon sightings, for Muslims on one side of the globe to start the month at the same time as those on the opposite side, but this is what often happens due to telephone and satellite TV communications. As a consequence, some countries have started to fix the calender rather than relying on moon sightings.

One such country is Saudi Arabia, the British-enthroned dynasty currently ruling over the two holy places of Makkah and Madinah. However, since the self-styled custodians of the holy places wish to be seen as strict adherents of traditional Islam, they are not honest about having fixed their dates in advance and pretend each year, that somebody has actually seen the moon. Since, when fixing the dates somebody must have confused the day the new moon is born with the day the nascent crescent can be seen, those Saudi moon sightings have consistently been too early and often at a time when it was physically as impossible to see the moon as it would be to watch the sun rise at midnight. This year, for example, the moon set well before sunrise on the day Saudi moon sighting reports after sunrise were announced.

Sadly, Muslims the world over have bought into the branding of Saudi Arabia as the custodians of the holy places and safeguards of traditional Islam, and thus follow them blindly. Many, of course, also go with where the money is, given that Saudi petrol dollars have paid for many a mosque around the world, strings attached, of course. A closer look at the political reality or a visit to US army bases in Saudi Arabia would quickly present a different picture: that of Saudi-America, the occupier of the holy places and instigator of distortion and corruption of the religion of Islam.

This corruption of traditional Islam goes a lot further than merely lying about the moon. It involves the banning of all Muslim cultural and poetic expressions as innovations, reducing Islam to a set of heartless rules Taliban-style, it includes fuelling the "clash of civilisations" between Islam and the West, and it features the subversion of Islam through so-called Islamic banking ventures in which forbidden interest and usury are renamed in order to make them palatable to an unsuspecting Muslim populace. In addition to halal banking, regulated by the Bank of England to which those banks guarantee to charge at least the base rate of interest, we now also have, regulated by the Financial Services Authority, halal mortgages at higher rates than from high street lenders and halal insurance products, with many such enterprises being run as side-lines by non-Muslim commercial banks or insurances paying a so-called Shariah Board to issue them with a certification of compliance with Islamic law.

Critical voices are few and have no forum, since all the major Muslim events and media are by now sponsored by one or the other bank or insurance company. Being a Muslim today simply means paying a little more for your mortgage, banking and insurance needs in order to placate your conscience, eating pre-stunned "halal" meat and poultry, buying Islamic designer wear and fashion goods and keeping out of politics lest you are accused of terrorist sympathis. And whilst new editions of the Qur'an with all references to Jihad removed would not be received with much accolade by Muslims for whom at least the Arabic text of the scripture is sacred, much of the same is achieved by new interpretations which reduce Jihad to a mere struggle against the evil inclinations of one's own sole.

Forget about the liberation of Palestine or the resistance in Iraq, the moderate modern Muslim keeps his faith private and obeys his government. Hence Hazel Blears, the secretary of state for Communities and Local Goverment, announced the British governments intention to set up a Muslim theology board in order to promote a "peaceful form of British Islam". Maybe, like the Sharia boards of the banks, they can turn the illegal occupation of Iraq and the British intervention in Afghanistan (and soon Pakistan) into a religious virtue for Muslims. And maybe they will have the authority to excommunicate unrepentant critics of this new form of Islam, like myself. So I better do celebrate the fact that for now I can still live Islam without first requiring a government certificate to practice, never mind what day the month will actually start.

How long will bankers keep fooling us?

2008-09-26T10:50:00.000+01:00

Here is a typical example of half-truths and disinformation: This morning John Humphreys of Radio 4's Today programme asked his listeners whether they were baffled about the current financial crisis and wanted to know where all the money was and who got it. Together with his "expert" interviewee he then proceeded to confound them further. John Kay, author of "The truth about the markets" wasn't telling the truth at all. When asked by Humphreys why the banks, if they had lots of money but weren't willing to lend it, would need more money from the treasury, he explained that they had assets, but those assets were in IOU's from ordinary people and these were no longer trusted, hence the banks would want to swap those for trusted IOU's from the US government. Humphreys interjection that not all personal loans would default and did not people pay back their loans with real money and were not the properties against which they were secured still worth something, if not as much as last year, was met by the most laughable suggestion from Kay that in this case the American government could eventually even make a profit by bailing out the banks. Finally Humphreys wanted quoted an email from a listener stating that the banks would not put the new money from the government into circulation but use it to improve their balance sheets, to which Kay replied that their capital had been depleted due to past bad practices and needed to be improved in order for them to be able to put further money into circulation.

All this raises more questions than it answers. The simple truth is that almost all money in circulation, far from being "real money", to use Humphreys term, comes into existence as a debt. In what is known as fractional reserve banking, banks create credit, in other words, invent money which they then lend, backed only by a small ratio of assets, these assets in turn mostly not being gold, silver or commodities but entitlements to repayments from debtors. For example, a bank would lend to an individual a hundred pounds of non-existing money based on having a single pound of real assets; those hundred pounds of outstanding debt would then be declared an asset of the bank on the basis of which it then can lend another thousand, and so on. The current crisis, therefore, is not down to bad management but inherent in the system of debt-based finance. Governments have long since abdicated the right to issue money into circulation and given that right to private banks from whom they themselves then borrow back. In other words, governments have been privatised a long time ago.

What makes the situation so hard to understand for most people is that they have trusted their governments and economists for so long and put their faith into a fraudulent system, which makes it hard to now accept that we were all fooled into pledging our real wealth, e.g. properties, in exchange for phony money, and then put in real sweat and labour in order to pay it back plus the penalty of interest. To unravel the mysteries, here are some questions that should really be asked, although economists will avoid them at all costs:

If banks were justified in charging interest on loans they make because they allegedly took some risk, why should they now not also pay the price of having assessed those risks incorrectly? Why should the tax payer fund the result of their commercial incompetence? If a private individual invests into a business venture which returns losses, the government does not reimburse them, so why are the banks as commercial enterprises different in this respect?

If the government or treasury has so much money to inject into the banks in order to help them survive, why - at the same time - is the government borrowing money from those very banks? After all, there isn't a government in the world which does not have a national debt or so-called public borrowing requirement. Does the money the government will give to the banks reduce their debt? If it instead increases the indebtedness of the government, where does the government borrow that extra money from, seeing the banks are currently short of cash?

Given that governments represent or manage the wealth of their respective countries and people, and given that all governments are in debt, who are these fabulous individuals who own more than all the countries of the world put together in order to lend to those governments who are all in debt? And where did they get those vast sums from? Who sold them the earth and with what authority?

If governments need to give money to the banks so that the banks can put that money into circulation to prevent a deepening of the financial crisis due to lack of available funds, why does not the government simply put the money into circulation itself through development projects? Why should the government need to give the money to a bank who might not put it into circulation as intended? And why should that bank profit from government and tax payers money? Shouldn't those profits rather go back to the tax payer?

What happened to the theory of free markets if we now privatise profits and nationalise losses? If the banks' assets (outstanding debt commitments) are no longer worth as much as they were, shouldn't the banks have to bear that loss since they took profits for many years when those same assets were overvalued?

The questions could continue, and the only honest answer would be that we have been conned. This would finally lead to demands for accountable government and thorough monetary reform. Instead, we are more likely going to get plenty more of the misleading explanations put forward by "experts" such as Kay. The question of who is really in charge, the governments or the bankers, is not one they would like us ask, since we might then want to wrestle that power back off them.

Trumping up the charges

2008-09-09T08:46:00.002+01:00

"Three men have been found guilty of a massive terrorist conspiracy to murder involving home-made bombs." This is how the BBC leads its article on the recent conviction of three British Muslims for to murder persons unknown. Most other news outlets carried similar hype, with only a few providing a more balanced picture of the outcome of the trial. In truth, the headline should have read: "There never was a conspiracy to blow up airliners with liquid explosives." Whilst the government is gloating at having secured convictions of sorts, the fact is that it's whole story of a plot on account of which every traveller in Europe had to surrender drinks at airport check-ins and carry toiletries in a clear plastic bag has been exposed as fiction.

This does not come as a surprise, since to carry liquid explosives disguised as drinks onto an aircraft in order to blow it up is a chemical impossibility as it would require laboratory conditions at sub-zero temperatures on board. The government knew this all along and in the first days of introducing new airport security measures drinks were simply spilled into large containers, proving that they were not considered dangerous at all even when mixed. The aim had always been to scare the public in order to justify greater control over them; the then home secretary John Reid also wanted to score political points, albeit unsuccessful.

The men charged and convicted had been stupid enough to plan staging an action in which detonating explosives was threatened in order to stage a political protest. The fact is that they never made any explosives whatsoever. All of them pleaded guilty to causing a public nuisance. The three who were convicted of conspiracy to murder were not convicted on evidence but because they had also pleaded guilty to this charge. None of those eight men before the courts who had not pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder were convicted of that charge. There is generally a lot of pressure put on defendants to plead guilty in order to receive a lesser sentence. In the case of terrorist suspects this pressure is often exacerbated by the very real threat of extradition to the United States and the prospect of death row. Faced with stark choices like this, the young suspects often give in.

There is no doubt that the trials were politically motivated, and as such they are a major setback in not achieving their intended outcome. Not long ago a research student at Nottingham university was investigated and held in custody for possessing al-Qaedah material he had downloaded from a US government website. On the other hand, in the 1990's leftist bookshops were awash with books calling for a "class war" and the execution of judges and murder of police officers. Although these were brought to the attention of the police, these were never banned and charges against their authors, never mind anybody having bought or read them, were never brought. As usual, the UK justice system does not care so much what you do, but who you are.

The only decent thing to do for the government now would be to ease the grotesque security measures at airports and allow travellers to take their drinks on and personal toiletries on board without the unwarranted harassment.

Islam and the Political (book review)

2008-08-06T16:10:00.000+01:00

Couched heavily in academic jargon this book probably benefits those the least who need it the most: political activists. Nonetheless, Amr G.E. Sabet (and his publishers Pluto Press) must be congratulated for providing us with a first comprehensive attempt at conceptualising Islamic politics and political Islam, for, as he rightly observes, "[t]he absence of a relevant methodological framework ... manifests a condition of dependency on the donor civilization's epochal formations and definitions of reality." Thus "[r]einstating the dynamics of Islamic history ...largely hinges upon the dialectics of the past, present, and future creating a new consensus or a confirmation of who Muslims are, what they want to be, and how they want to be. These queries constitute structural and existential concerns over identity which must be addressed if Muslims are to confront their perceived disenchanted condition."

Sabet demarcates the relationship with the West through a "self-referential" circular political theory of Islam and reclaims, courageously, Islam's right to universal truth at the expense of all other alleged truisms: "That which makes claims to truth, and defines its source from outside of history, cannot relinquish its rights to both justice and universality without forsaking its own essence." He is scathing about "opportunity hoarders" in the Muslim world doing the bidding for secular hegemonial power and has no respect for Islamic pretentions by Muslim-majority states failing to apply Islam consistently. About the attempt of the Turkish ruling party to graft Islamic values onto a secular stem he comments that "employing all the political skills that served to bring the AKP to power may turn out to have been the easy part." And as for the Hijaz and the Arabs: "Saudi Arabia ... is neither "fundamentalist" nor Islamic ... [its policy] essentially served to render Israel the real and sole regional power." and: "when for instance Arabs complain about the atrocities that Israel commits against the Palestinians, frequently the retort is that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Falling into the discoursive trap, Arabs fret trying to prove that Israel is not a democratic state, as if democracy is the issue, instead of citing it as an example of the organic bond between democracy, on the one hand, and power and colonial discourses on the other... One should be aware, therefore, of strategic deceptions of the kind incorporated in concepts, labels, or mechanisms such as terrorism, democracy, freedom, equality, and others yet to come."

As can be seen from this quote already, he does not shirk away from calling a spade a spade when it comes to Western concepts everybody seems to these days feel compelled to subscribe to, and quite rightly describes "human rights" as a mere discourse of power behind which is hidden the ongoing attempt of making secularism dominant whilst "it may still be too early to talk about a "post-colonial" phase." "In its essential characteristics, secularism is irreligious, and therefore anti-Islamic. By extension, so is liberal democracy... Labeling an individual or group as being democratic or undemocratic in many ways becomes the secular equivalent to the religious affirmation of faith or of excommunication. The "non-democrat" becomes essentially the "non-believer" whose life and property is fair game... In confronting the Western discourse, Islam can only shape reality rather than adapt to it. If it is to do so, Islam will definitely have to be re-politicized and restored to its true essence as a political religion capable of overcoming historical conditions."

Sabet looks at the "Umma" with a viewpoint to the international order in which it exists. "The crisis that the Muslim world faces thus extends beyond the issue of the legitimacy of regimes to that of the legitimacy of the state structure itself." "No longer is the state simply a means to power and wealth from the inside shielded by sovereignty from the outside - which some may call corruption - but a structure of "durable inequality" of which the former predicament is but one source." Of course, Western liberalism, especially after the collapse of Communism, also tries to re-arrange international relations, and Sabet does not miss the fact that a lot of Western rhetoric contains subterfuge as well as hypocrisy: "To the great power society such transformation [of the state] will mean more integration and unity in the style of the European Union (EU) or the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, Mexico, and the US, or the consolidation of power and hgemonic influence of the Jewish state of Israel over its neighbors... For the Muslim world, in contradistinction, the same discourse regarding the state translates into "humanitarian intervention", "minority rights", and "right to secession" or self-determination, among other supposedly lofty yet practically fragmentary principles." Thus he observes that "as globalization is being universalized as a system of durable inequality, it becomes clear that human rights is nothing more than the ideological underpinning of such a global order."

Has Sabet pondered about the post-modern phase which appears to bear out the self-destructive propensity of the liberal-secular project? He rather sees it as an exercise in justification: "In its discursive and Orwellian double-talk, post-modernity simply represents the latest attempt at universalizing Western values in the guise of modest self-denial or "unmaking"." "Marxism, which had plausibly been presented as a "form of religion" ... has provided for the visible repressive and dominative elements of secularism which, while concomitantly serving the rational interests of its Liberal counterpart, allowed the latter to plead innocence. With Marxism's collapse, liberalism has been faced with the task of having to do the job itself. And since it is not equipped by its very logic to manifestly claim universal truths, post-modernity reflects the latest took in the liberal-democratic secular arsenal to universalize itself while still pleading innocence... Post-modernity, in effect, constitutes nothing more than the appropriated euphemism for (pseudo) nihilism in the same fashion that reason constituted the appropriated euphemism for Western passion."

So does the author have the answer to the problems faced by a disenfranchised Muslim Umma? Throughout the book he claims he does by citing the example of the Iranian Revolution and advocating that a leadership vacuum could be filled by Iran as having successfully defined a new concept of an Islamic state in the process. In fact, he goes as far as saying "I propose Iran for Islamic world leadership." In support of this stance he argues that "It is more than a coincidence that the only time and place where Israel has been forced to withdraw unconditionally [in the Lebanon] ...is where the Iranian revolution has been relatively successfully exported."

It appears, that the author is somewhat blinded by wishing a success which has not been sustained. There is no denying the important, even catalytic, effects of the Iranian revolution, however, whether it has provided effective leadership is doubtful. It could be claimed that in fact it failed to effectively communicate its vision to its following and did rely too heavily on charismatic leadership. This is less a criticism of the Islamic revolution in Iran than an assessment of reality. The Islamic Party of Britain, for example, which I co-founded, suffered from the very same failings. What Sabet misses entirely is how even leadership is today mediated by the rhetoric of mass media image making, largely successful because of the anonymous nature of society in which traditional means of leadership selection have been eroded.

When Sabet cites that B.H. Liddel Hart "emphasized the crucial importance of conception as a guiding principle in peace and/or conflict. He understood the fact that distracting the mind and expectations of opponents deprives them of their freedom of action as a sequel to their loss of freedom of conception... Fighting becomes secondary or redundant as opponents lose their sense of self-representation and consequently change their purpose, consciously or otherwise." In this he is entirely correct, but it seems he fails to perceive the detrimental effects such intellectual warfare can have even on the attempted rebellion against and recovery from it.

However, there is another omission, much more grave: Sabet restricts his analysis to matters social and political. In his criticism of the Moroccan writer Muhammad Abed al-Jabri's book "The Arab Political Mind" he tells us that the latter "...identified three key organic determinants which he believed to have constituted the basic components of a pre-modern Islamic historical superstructural order: The tribe (collectivity); the spoils (economics); and the faith (Islam)." That the societal order is a three-legged stool is also clear from the description of the Pharaonic system in the Qur'an of being represented by "Qarun, Haman, and Fir'aun" - representing the economic, the intellectual and the collective respectively. Sabet has eloquently addressed issues of conceptualisation, indoctrination, (media) rhetoric, ideology (Haman) and political power and domination (Fir'aun/Pharaoh), but a state or entity having only appropriated those two aspects without being in charge of its own economy (Haman) will still fall.

The sad observation that actual interest rates in Iran currently are at around 36% is probably the most striking indication that the Islamic revolution in Iran was ultimately not a success since economic injustice prevents and violates political and social justice. This is not a Shia-Sunni issue, and the author is correct that such "mazhab" issues must be overcome; Sudan is a Sunni example where both the education system (Haman) and the political system (Fir'aun) were reformed, but the IMF remained in the driving seat regarding the economy, turning the political success ultimately into a false hope and betrayed sacrifice by the people. Unless the monetary system underlying the economic organisation is seriously addressed, "durable equality" persists, and any talk of Islamic State or Islamic Revolution remains a mere marketing ploy, hence it seems appropriate to refer to a quote from Ignacio Ramonet the author cites in his book: "Marketing has become so sophisticated that it aims to sell not just a brand name or social sign, but an identity. It's all based on the principle that having is being." Whether Western companies sell halal banking, halal mortgages, and now even halal car insurance to profiteer from the "modern and moderate Muslim" whose image they create, or whether political regimes try to stay in power by internally dressing up as an Islamic state allegedly combatting the West whilst externally submitting and conforming to the global financial elites, the difference is only one of scale. As Sabet rightly observes: "Once the religious regime is securely situated in power, and especially after the inevitable demise of charismatic leadership, it will eventually attempt to institutionalize and preserve the status quo. The revolutionary regime will adopt a conservative attitude and will not be inclined to change." Thus the success of Hizbullah in the Lebanon may not be so much due to having imported the Islamic Revolution, as the author asserts, but due to the fact that it operates outside the constraints of its own state structure.

"Islam and the Political" is an important starting point in addressing issues long overdue. Its serious limitations, however, give rise to the not unfounded fear that Muslims will continue to be overtaken by world events rather than begin to shape their own destiny.

Amr G.E. Sabet's book Islam and the Political - Theory, Governance and International Relations was published as a paperback (309 pages) by Pluto Press in 2008.

Corrupting communities

2008-06-27T14:55:00.001+01:00

Councils up and down the country are given substantial sums of money by central government to combat "Islamic extremism". The more Muslims a local council has, the more money it gets, suggesting that extremism must be something inherent in being Muslim and therefore increases proportional to their numbers. Cash-strapped councils will welcome the much needed cash, but of course they will also need to justify it and produce results. To show that they are proactive in combatting extremism, we can expect to see examples of extremism turning up where they never existed before.

It is not only local authorities who can be expected to engage in creative accounting. Some of the money (only some, a big junk is expected to cover the council's "administrative" expenses) will have to be given to Muslim groups or individuals. These, too, must prove that they can deliver the goods. What better way to do so then to denounce rival groups or unpopular individuals as being extremist?

All this has undertones of Stalinism. Schoolbook history is misleading about the "collapse" of the Soviet Republics. Capitalism and Communism have always been two sides of the same coin and both favour strong central governments. Effectively, communism was bought out and simply moved West since it is probably more convenient to bribe people into giving up their liberties than having to threaten and bully them. Where the carrot does not work, Western governments also have the stick, like the right to declare exclusion zones or holding people without charge, all in the name of fighting terrorism or extremism.

What both systems need to stay in power, however, is surveillance. Corrupt governments do not trust their subjects and need to keep an eye on them. Britain is leading the way in camera surveillance. Other countries in the ever enlarging European Union (run like the Soviet Union by unelected commissioners) lead the way in gathering and retaining computer-processable information about their citizens, recently complemented by biometrics. Yet, making sense of information is difficult from a distance, hence the desire to recruit informers. MI5 have been given a lot more resources as well to recruit from amongst Muslims, but the government is probably right in assuming that individuals would hesitate to join, or cooperate with the Secret Service, whereas they would quite happily compromise a little if offered a share in the money for a new community project and become, unwittingly, citizen informers. This method isn't new either. Files for East Germany after re-unification showed that there was a dossier almost on every citizen and almost everybody was informing on everybody else. It is doubtful that much of this information was very reliable, and a great deal of it was probably offered in order to settle old scores, to gain an advantage or due to holding a grudge. What better way, for example, to get custody for one's children in a divorce case than portraying the opposing party as a Muslim extremist likely to radicalise the children?

One thing seems apparent. The less money a government has to spend on education, healthcare or basic infrastructure, the more money it is likely to throw at ways and means to combat any potential disenchantment with and protest against the level of services provided. Those who happily agreed to an erosion of freedom in order to be protected from Islamic extremism will soon find out that those measures were really intended for them, not the extremists. There is something seriously wrong with a political system where a front bencher in parliament such as David Davis has to resign to draw attention to the overbearing control exercised by government. And it doesn't matter which party gains power in an election. As with capitalism and communism, they too are two sides of the same coin.

The demise of secular dogma

2008-06-08T10:57:00.003+01:00

"These people are so scared of public opinion they are willing to set in stone the right to ignore it. Freedom requires the governing elite to be held to account. They must be getting very worried if they are enacting such dictatorial powers for themselves." Thus comments Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, on the European Parliaments attempts to prevent Euro-sceptic members from organising themselves and rightly calls the EU mindset arrogant and anti-democratic. What he fails to perceive in his criticism, however, is that this arrogance and intolerance was not invented by European bureaucrats or even Communist commissars before them. This arrogance is a key feature of secular dogma of which Muslims have been at the receiving end for decades due to practising and holding on to their beliefs more tightly than those who still call themselves Christians.

In Germany and France "enlightenment" sinks to the depth of judging a Muslim woman on the basis of whether she wears a piece of cloth on her head or not and denying her access to education or public office if she does. The showcase of secularism, however, is Turkey, where European powers conspired through the Masonic and crypto-Jewish Young Turk movement to unseat the Muslim caliphate and outlaw religious interference in politics. The movers behind the European super-state are as weary of Turkey as they are of the Euro-sceptics amongst their midst; neither can be trusted because of the "public opinion" factor. Euro-sceptics in many European countries are calling for the people to have a say through referendums on a proposed European constitution, common foreign policy, or joint armed forces, and whenever the people were given a democratic chance to voice their opinion they clearly rejected what their masters in Brussels had in mind for them. Hence, if the people are not mature enough to agree to what the unelected European Commission proposes, they must be denied the right to express their views altogether. In European double-speak this is called democracy in action.

In Turkey, likewise, the people never abandoned Islam and it keeps making a come-back. Over and over again those wanting to reform the fundamentalist secularism of Turkey into a proper democracy where Muslims, after all constituting the majority of the population, also can have their aspirations realised, are being outlawed. Whenever a party with Islamic leanings obtains a majority and enters government, the courts and the military try to declare it illegal and in violation of the secular constitution. In addition, they jail politicians who do not agree with them for their opinions. The Turkish constitutional court has just overturned a law passed by parliament which would have allowed Muslim girls to enter university wearing a scarf, and there is talk once more of banning the ruling AK party which only a year ago had won such a strong mandate during elections that European governments must be rightly worried, since their own popular support is forever diminishing.

In a similar show of desperation the secularists have passed a 3-year jail sentence on Adnan Oktar, known around the globe under his pen name Harun Yayha, for dearing to successfully demolish Darwin's theory of evolution as well as exposing Freemasonry. Likewise, European countries regularly jail "revisionists" who dear wanting to subject some of the "founding myths of Israeli politics" (Roger Garaudy), which tirelessly propagated through the official version of the "Jewish Holocaust", to a measure of scientific scrutiny. The "freedom of speech" argument regularly used when it comes to the right to insult what Muslims hold sacred (e.g. when defending Rushdie's or a Danish cartoonist's right to insult, see response in Satanic Voices Ancient and Modern), is conveniently forgotten whenever secular fundamentalist dogma is being attacked. After all, it is the nature of dogma that it must not be questioned. History, however, teaches us that a false dogma cannot be upheld by legislation and court sanctions. Ordaining the earth to be flat and punishing any expression of doubt that it might not be still does not make it so. This is why our rulers are "scared", as Farage put it. They know they are fighting a losing battle, for the truth will out.

The terrorist attack that never was

2008-05-24T11:09:00.001+01:00

Convictions for terrorist offences in the UK are on the up, apparently showing that the increased resourcing for anti-terrorist police and the heightened security measures at airports are working. In reality, however, each and every one of the alleged terrorists convicted in a UK court has been someone who might have contemplated or dreamt about doing something, possessed intellectual material (usually freely available on the internet) of use to somebody contemplating a terrorist attack, or would have been capable of doing some damage if only they had the means. The latest conviction of a "Muslim terrorist" threatening to "blow up Bluewater shopping centre in Exeter" is a prime example of this madness.

This is the case of a prisoner who, whilst in prison and therefore unable to move freely, never mind to organise a major crime (to state otherwise would imply that UK prisons are unsafe hotbeds of criminality), made a threat in anger to blow up a shopping centre with three limousines packed full of explosives. When a prison officer told him that the shopping centre he was talking about was actually not in Exeter but in Kent, he retorted he hadn't finalised his plans yet. There is nothing new about prisoners getting frustrated and angry, nor about them making wild threats in order to attract attention. To take such nonsense serious, however, exposes the immature emotionality and hysteria by which the current anti-terrorism effort is characterised.

Of course, stupid threats like that, which in the past would have earned a "watch your mouth or you'll go down the block (prison segregation unit)" from a prison officer, is welcome nourishment for politicians and media keen to cash in on the ever-present Orwellian terror threat lurking at every corner. "Is Exeter now a hotbed of Islamic terrorism?" was one of the headlines in the UK media, since another man with a history of mental illness injured only himself by trying to set off some incendiary devices in Exeter. When a former BNP political candidate and his friend in Lancashire were charged under the "Explosive Substances Act 1883" (not the Terrorism Act 2000!) for having amassed the largest chemical explosive haul ever found in a private house in the country, together with rocket launchers and a chemical protection suit, the national media had to be pushed to even mention the story (after it was first reported on Mathaba.net). The two right-wing extremists had serious plans of causing major damage, they weren't just dreaming about it or writing poetry (like the "lyrical terrorist" Muslim lady recently convicted under UK terrorism legislation), but to their credit, they were white and could not be described as having Islamic tendencies.

Consequently, the public remains uninformed about any real danger whilst willingly giving up privacy and freedom in the face of a hyped up alleged Muslim terror threat so serious that travellers have to endure long queues at airports and surrender tweezers and knitting needles (you can pick up metal cutlery after check-out at the restaurants in the departure lounge!), put their toiletries into clear plastic bags and discard any bottled water or other drinks they might have brought along. None of these measures are going to make anybody even an iota safer than they were before, but they provide a lucrative income to security contractors and support to governments wanting to control their citizens, monitor their movements, lock up opponents indefinitely without charge and without having to deal with defence lawyers, and stifle any meaningful political discussion. Welcome to the free world! On the other hand, in the much maligned third world, allegedly run by dictators restricting any kind of freedom, I can take my tweezers and bottled water onto the plane. I can then fly to a major European airport and from their transit to another European airport without being subjected to the harassment passengers boarding at that very same airport have to endure. It all makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Minority government

2008-05-02T11:47:00.001+01:00

The results of local council elections in England and Wales proved a great disappointment for the ruling Labour party, in fact they were their worst results for over 40 years, pushing the party into third place behind the Conservatives and Liberals. Labour's policies have been unpopular for a long time, and as they have been in power for over a decade the blame cannot be laid at anybody else's doorstep. Effectively, Britain now has a minority government, a government that does not represent the will of the people, which is supported by very few people amongst the electorate, but which is nonetheless able to drive through unpopular policies due to an overwhelming majority in parliament.
Political commentators have mainly focused on whether Labour's election losses mean that the Conservatives stand a chance of winning the next general election. Nobody seems to bother that these elections are proof positive that parliamentary democracy is not working as a means of expressing the will of the people. The people of Britain have had a minority government for a long time, not only did the government take power on the basis of substantially less than half the votes cast, but considering that only just over a third of the eligible population actually went to the ballot box, only one fifth to one quarter of the country ever supported the government they got. The reason so few people exercise their vote is not that they couldn't care less who governs them, but that they understand only too well that there is no real alternative on offer. Whoever gets elected will carry through the same unpopular policies dictated by the banks and large corporations. If people were permitted to place a vote of no confidence in a serving politician or to decide on policy issues, the turnout would increase immensely. This is why governments stay clear of referendums, knowing all too well that their policies are out of tune with the electorate.
What is needed is a wholesale review of the role of government. Government used to be the servant of the people, but its function now has become to manage the people on behalf of vested interests. The "Nanny state", as it was labelled when Labour first came to power, interferes in every minute detail of its citizens' lives to the degree that many have begun comparing modern Britain to the former East European states. New Labour never abandoned "socialism", they simply got rid of its caring and social pretensions.
It would not be far-fetched to claim that increasing security legislation, whilst purporting to combat an alleged ever-present terror threat, is actually designed to put in place means to control an increasingly dissatisfied population who are finding it more and more difficult to cope under the high-tax, low-yield economic climate threatening to destroy their livelihoods. As the 19th century history Lord Acton put it: "The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks". Today's governments are brought to and kept in power in order to prevent, or at least, delay this battle from being fought. The will of the people has been reduced to "one man one vote" but without a say in the affairs of state - or even his own affairs most of the time. The latest election results clearly show "democracy at work".

Historic detachment (Fes centenary)

2008-04-06T13:26:00.002+01:00

Fes, the oldest medieval town still in existence, is celebrating its 12th centenary. The highlight of the festivities - otherwise most noticed by added decorations to the anyway stunningly beautiful centre of the new town, billboards and posters, and series of lectures - was an open air stage show of folkloristic art comprised mainly of dance and music. With the exception of some terraced seating facing the stage, which was reserved for dignitaries, the event at Bab Boujloud, one of the gateways to the old Madinah of Fes, was free admission for all. In retrospect this may not have been such a good idea.

The visual effects were superb with live recording of the stage alternating with scenic photography on a large display screen, complimented by a separate but corresponding imagery cast across the whole width of the old city walls. The choreography, too, was well crafted, and as a cultural show the presentation was of high quality, even if the attempted marriage of old and new, West and East appeared forced and artificial at times, for example in the mixing of Spanish Flamenco with a form of tap dance from the desert in an apparent imitation of Flatley's River Dance. Yet, the best description available for this celebration of Moroccan culture and history is probably that of detachment.

Whilst it didn't help that the inadequate supply of loudspeakers made it difficult to listen attentively, the crowd present was anyway not interested in doing so. The show was staged for them - and of course the cameras, resulting in glowing accolades in the national media no doubt -, it did not involve them, however, and there was no real interaction between those on the stage and those watching them on the big screen. A ticketed event with a modest entrance fee would have been more appropriate, accompanied by smaller in situ events engaging local communities. As it happened, the people of Fes who attended expected a party atmosphere and soon got tired of the constant flow of folklore. From the very start they couldn't be bothered listening to the introductory remarks of the organisers or even the Royal visitor, crown prince Molay Rachid. They preferred talking, laughing, shouting, whistling, and on the whole would have been better placed at a football match. Football is big in today's Morocco, culture is not.

There were only two numbers which really caught on with the crowd: the performance of a local rap band and the absolutely magnificent fireworks which beat those staged at New Year in most European cities. The fireworks provided an ecstatic finale without which the whole show would have been flat, the rap music was a marker of how modernity has pushed heritage aside in today's Morocco, drowning centuries of cultural treasure in monotonous beats. The intention had been to celebrate the history of Fes and Morocco and portray Morocco as at ease with its past and the present, bridging the conflicts between competing cultures and values. Whilst there is some truth in this latter observation, the dominant impression, viewed from amongst the mass of spectators, not the media or the specially invited guests, is of a country having become detached from both its history and its culture, of a people starting to loose their soul, and of a Moroccan populace no longer at ease with, nor appreciative of, its own foundations. 1200 years on, the living Fes is becoming a museum for tourists and surrendering its claim to being the spiritual and cultural capital of the Maghreb.

Detached from present-day reality, the festivities were a celebration of the past without offering a path to the future. Vast sums have been spent in this and other events where, so the official tag line, "Moroccans celebrate their history". More accurately, Moroccans are having their history celebrated for them and thus find that it no longer speaks to them. Reducing a people's past to song and dance is ultimately shallow. What about their writers, their scholars, their poets, their craftsmen, their fighters, their heroes? What about the stake the ordinary citizen has in the society inherited from earlier generations? With incoming investments and tourism resulting in the rapid rise of property and other prices their own country is fast becoming out of reach for the locals. Unemployment is high, as is the confusion about how to synthesise Islamic and Western values. A true celebration of one's heritage must build on it to propose perspectives for the future. Dazzled by the bright lights of the fireworks the attendees lingered a while and then, realising that that was it, went on their way home, impressed, but otherwise unaffected. Maybe the quite considerable sums of money would have been better spent in rejuvenating the old town and supporting its restoration and what survives of its ancient craft workshops and artisans.

For the sake of provocation

2008-04-01T09:37:00.001+01:00

An item in the news this week contained the hype about a theatre in Potsdam, in the former East Germany, where racism continues to thrive, was staging the first stage play of Rushdie's Satanic Voices, the book that Roald Dahl considered unreadable. This was followed up by further news articles in the mainstream media that the play was performed without violent incident. Much to the regret of the theatre, I suppose, who had probably hoped to ride to fame on the controversy as Rushdie did aforetime.
On the trail of the republication of the Danish cartoons insulting the prophet Muhammad, the Dutch release of an anti-Islamic film and the Pope's very public baptism of an Egyptian anti-Islamic journalist in Italy one wonders whether there is a concerted effort to stir up troubles, and I am glad that Muslims have matured and did not respond as expected.
We indicated long ago in the book "Satanic Voices", our response to "Satanic Verses", that Rushdie was not acting alone but on the behest of "Satanic Presses" and "Satanic Purses". Islam is dangerous because in its opposition to lending money at interest it poses a challenge to the primacy of banks, a message becoming ever more potent during the current credit crisis.
These days poor writing and shabby expressions of hatred are elevated to art form when they malign the Muslim enemy. Anything to make Muslims look bad is good in the eyes of the media and politicians. However, their sword has become blunt.
The French author and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupery, best known in the UK for the story "The Little Prince", sums it up beautifully in his magnus opum "Citadel" (Wisdom of the Sands), doubtlessly inspired by his encounter with Islam:
"Whence I was led to reflect on those who consume more than they bestow. Thus it is with the lies of the rulers of a nation; for the efficacy and power of their words reside in men's belief in what they tell. True, much may be achieved by lies; yet when I lie I blunt my weapon in the using of it. And, though I may begin by besting my opponent, there comes a day when I must face him, weaponless.
A like case is that of the poet who makes his effects by playing traitor to the time-proved rules; for scandalizing, too, is a technique. But such a man is an ill-doer. He shatters for his personal ends a vase containing an age-old treasure, common to all. In order to express himself, he ruins the possibilities of expression for others; like one who, to light his path, should set fire to the forest, leaving nothing but ashes and charred embers for the rest of men. Moreover, when once grammatical mistakes have become the rule, I can no longer scandalize or startle. But also, by the same token, I am unable to express myself in the beauty of the oldtime style, for I have made havoc of its usages and ruled out the mutual understanding, the signs and symbols, the speaking glances that are a code built up from generation to generation and that enable me to transmit my thought down to its subtlest shades. I shall have expressed myself, perhaps - but at the cost of ruining my instrument, and others', too."
So all the supporters of Rushdie and Co. have done is to destroy the integrity of literature and art. Shocking Muslims into a response no longer works. And the day may well be near where the rulers' lies are no longer believed and they face their opponents weaponless.

Chinese mortgage - plus ca change

2008-03-12T06:03:00.000Z

Since the terminal decline of the US economy everybody has been looking to China and India as the rising economies of the world. It seems the bankers got there first. So as markets shift from a collapsing Western economy to a buoyant Eastern one, the old French proverb "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" - the more things change, the more they stay the same - seems to apply.
China has had a rough winter causing delay in food supply deliveries, which in turn caused food prices to rise. According to the Chinese National Statistics Bureau, overall inflation has reached its highest recorded level. The suggested remedies give us a clue as to what is happening. Besides the old-style communist measures of a planned economy to freeze some commodity prices, the Chinese government is also talking about the darling measure of "free market" economies: raising interest rates. They've already done so a number of times.
There is a direct correlation between inflation and interest rates, but it is not as the economics school books teach us. At the moment, only China's food prices are rising rapidly due to shortages. Once the new measures hit, the still very low inflation for other goods will also jump up.
In a healthy economy, enterprises make enough profit to pay for their raw materials and labour, and a little extra for the shareholders of a company. In an interest-based economy, they have to earn an awful lot more, because the bankers demand their pound of flesh before anyone else. Enterprises financed on loans are the reason for the ecologically unsustainable growth rates every Western government is trying to achieve. Thus the cost of borrowing has a direct effect on prices. Higher interest rates, therefore, cause inflation rather than reduce it. They only reduce it when the economy contracts and companies go broke, being sold off well below their value.
The boom and bust cycles of interest-based economies are the bankers' way of calling in the spoils. There isn't much benefit for the lender in owning a title to the fictitious money he lends - in fractional reserve banking, bank loans are hardly backed by any real collateral -, but making people mortgage their properties and then dispossessing them when they can no longer afford the payments is very lucrative for the financiers. "Mortgage" in old French means "death grip"; sadly the borrower only discovers this when interest rates go up.
So it seems the bankers as international money-lending parasites have simply moved on to a new host after realising there isn't much more to squeeze out of the Western economies they have been living off for decades.
If China wants to be the next super power, then the Chinese government would do well to rethink it's economic policy and curb the lending activities of the banks. Otherwise the Chinese government will soon be held hostage by them in the same way most governments of the world already are.

What cut cables can teach

2008-02-06T13:52:00.000Z

Arguably, the most important, albeit not particularly spectacular, event of last week was the consecutive cutting of four major fibre optic communication cables in the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf and North of the Egyptian coast. I say, consecutive, because had they all been cut simultaneously, it would be unprecedented but could still be called an accident. As there was a considerable time lapse, however, the probabilities of an accident are slim, more so since the theory that the cables were cut by ship anchors has since been discredited with the confirmation from the Egyptian ministry of communication that no ships were present in the area at the time the cables were cut. This leaves sabotage or an act of war as the only other option. The fact that there were no immediate American condemnations of this as a terrorist act indicates that it had the tacit approval of the United States, a theory further supported by the fact that Israel and Iraq remained unaffected since there internet traffic is carried via a different route. Without wanting to speculate, however, a number of interesting lessons emerge from these events.

Firstly, the internet has proven surprisingly resilient, managing to compensate for the lost traffic routes without collapsing altogether. It also demonstrated the complicated nature of the worldwide web, with India most heavily affected by a break in communications located in the Middle East, which in turn affected the UK in particular, since most large UK companies have outsourced their call centres to India. There is, therefore, no way to disrupt the internet selectively without a knock-on effect elsewhere.

Secondly, the public appears to happily buy any story it is fed by mainstream media. Tell them a ship's anchor cut through the cables and they believe it. They won't ask why after such an "unforeseen" event no measures were put in place to prevent the same thing from happening again, or why suddenly so many lethal ship's anchors are floating around the ocean when previously they never caused a problem. This public lethargy does not bode well for the future.

Thirdly, today's wars are increasingly related to technology and communications. In a report to Congress, US National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell listed amongst his major concerns besides "Al-Qaeda" that Russia, China and oil producing countries were using their wealth to advance political goals (let's guess that the USA could never possibly be accused of such a heinous crime!) and that the threats faced by the US were global, complex and dangerous, including the vulnerability of computer systems. The truth is, that Iran's nuclear capability has never really worried the White House as they know too well Iran would not be stupid enough to use such destructive technology even if they had it. It is a smoke screen for allowing interference on account of much more conventional capabilities Iran has developed like, for example, the recently announced ability to launch its own rocket and soon send its own satellites into orbit.

In this context, there have been speculations that the cutting of the internet cables was intended to cut off Arab oil producing states from vital communication routes prior to another weapon in Iran's armoury, the long-awaited and heavily speculated about Iranian oil bourse which, by trading in Euro, would send the already free-falling dollar to depths from which it could never recover. Unlike the Arab states, for example, Iran and China seem to have understood that economic warfare can be much more effective in bringing down an enemy than military engagement. Of course, they are not alone, the US and the UK have been using economic warfare as part of their arsenal for many decades.

Those opposed to being enslaved by the world hegemony of corporate America under the guise of "globalisation" should take heart in the knowledge that the internet remains one of their most potent weapons to fight back - a weapon which cannot be wrestled from them by the big powers without those powers shooting themselves in the foot. At the same time, they must be even more alert and try to wake up the general public - hitherto sedated by consumerism and entertainment and frightened by purported threats of terrorism as well as the real threat of bankruptcy and economic loss. The US economy, and with it its political influence, is about to collapse, and we don't expect it to surrender any more quietly than a fish flapping violently after having been removed from the water.

Don't buy software online (the Nero experience)

2008-01-09T17:25:00.000Z

Of course it's convenient, but you're buying the cat in the bag. If something goes wrong, you're left on your own. Unlike the software you bought from a retailer which you can return (and thus prove that you're no longer using it) with downloaded software your acceptance of a licence key is final. If the program on the CD doesn't work, the retailer can't argue that you've forfeited your consumer rights buy opening the package. But if the downloaded program fails to live up to the promised standard, the software company will deny further responsibility of the problem as was the case in a recent experience I had with Nero. Nero AG does provide some sort of warranty of replacement or repair for faulty software and the right to withdraw from the contract should the fault not be remedied within a reasonable time, but that warranty is hardly worth the paper or computer screen it is written on. First you would have to get hold of a real person at Nero to deal with your complaint.

When it was an upstarting software company, Nero AG produced one of the best multimedia managing packages available for viewing and editing audio and video files. Version 6 of the Nero suite had an unimaginative user interface, but it was stable and allowed the viewing, editing and writing of audio and video files all in one neat package. Their technical support was proactive and competent. When I wrote to them about a bug in their software, they responded immediately, acknowledged the fault, and wrote back within a few days: "We have found the cause for that problem and we are working on the solution of it. It is not sure if it will be done in time for the next update, but we are working on it." I hasten to add that I wrote in as an ordinary customer, not a software reviewer or journalist. Those were the "good old days".

How much has changed in the course of two years. Nero 8 is an upgrade I suggest nobody needs nor wants. The promotional emails advertised it as a great further development of the Nero editing suite, but in reality it is a big step back. The user interface has become infantile and the functionality has completely disappeared. Well, it remains there in theory, and you can still watch DVDs, but try editing video files or burning a DVD and the program will inevitably crash. At least that was my experience. I could have got through a whole box of writable DVDs without successfully burning a single one of them. In the process I even had to endure the occasional dreaded Windows crash or "blue screen of death", something that has thankfully become a rarity after Windows XP Professional.

As for the technical support, I emailed them and am still waiting for replay two weeks later. I also emailed Asknet, the company who handles the online sales for Nero AG. They did reply that they, too, had forwarded my queries to Nero technical support, and so we both wait. Eventually I asked for my money back. However, this is where everybody starts hiding. Asknet, who on their website proudly proclaim that they afford customers a 14 day cancellation and return period: "If you wish to cancel an order, you can do so, provided that you cancel your order within the given time line for the Right of Withdrawal/Revocation. The minimum Right of Revocation is 14 days, but might vary depending on the service policy of the Software Publisher." I read this as there being a minimum period of 14 days, but it might be longer if the respective Software Publisher permits. When put to the test, I found, however, that this promise, again, was worth less than the paper it was written on should one want to print it off. This is how I was fobbed off: "Due to terms and conditions of the software that you have purchased, you must contact Nero in order to receive a cancellation. Please contact them using one of the methods that you have been provided. Asknet cannot assist further in this matter." And they referred me back to the silent Nero technical support department. The Nero website on the other hand refers all such matters back to Asknet stating: "Asknet AG is a Nero reseller and your contractual partner for all purchases in this store". A veritable game of ping pong.

I am pretty sure that the whole arrangement and refusal to deal with a justified customer complaint is falling foul of consumer rights in Germany where both companies are incorporated, but in my experience the consumer protection agencies and watchdogs of European countries are spineless and a civil suite would be far more expensive than the original cost of the purchase. I'm also pretty sure that the two companies know this and use this to their advantage.

What they don't seem to know is that companies alienating their customers are eventually forced to die a slow death. For some time they may try to invent new software and release it on the market before it has matured out of the testing stage, for some time they may trap new buyers, but over time their reputation will precede them. Anonymous FAQs and faceless websites, the refusal to provide telephone numbers where real people can be contacted, the persistent ignoring of emails asking for support - these and many other symptoms of the increasing impersonal nature of corporate Europe are gradually turning people off. In the case of myself and Nero, I once used to recommend their product. Now I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

Last not least, the Nero PR department, the only one with a published telephone number, was given the opportunity to reply before this story was published. Sadly, it was only staffed by an answerphone. An email request to make contact was answered by, don't hold your breath: an out of office reply!

Happy or stupid?

2008-01-06T19:34:00.000Z

If you want to see politically skewed research look no further than the University of Leicester. According to a report in the health section of BBC News online Adrian White, an analytic social psychologist at the university, created the first worldwide map of happiness. Maybe Adrian was somewhat biased on account of his surname, because his map suggests that white people are the happiest of all and Denmark is, in the words of the BBC, "the happiest place on earth".

Of course, his research only measures "subjective happiness", and maybe the non-white population of the globe just don't know how happy they are. White's map uses colour coding with dark red being the most happy and bright yellow the least. North America, Europe and Australia are all red in colour, parts of Asia are orange, whilst Russia (ok, so there are some unhappy white people) and Africa are mainly yellow.

Anybody watching television might have noticed that the people of America, Europe and Australia often look dull in spite of their affluence, whilst the people of Asia and Africa often manage to smile in spite of their poverty. Their smiles, songs and conviviality, however, must be fake. According to White a nation's happiness was most closely associated with health levels, followed by prosperity and education. And then, according to the BBC, he himself expressed surprise that Asian countries like China, Japan, India did so poorly, because these were countries with a strong sense of collective identity identified with well-being by other researchers. He notes that many of the largest countries in terms of population do quite badly, and concludes that "the frustrations of modern life, and the anxieties of the age, seem to be much less significant compared to the health, financial and educational needs in other parts of the world".

Well, the saddest thing about his research is that on his map, which is available online as a pdf file, he couldn't even spell the name of his university right. Hopefully this will be corrected after any of his colleagues read this post, but at the moment it reads "Leiceter" without the "s". So much for alleged high levels of education in the happier parts of the world!

Credit Crunch

2008-01-06T10:06:00.000Z

It's coming, and as before it is going to be "Heads you loose, tails we win" for the banks who use us as pawns in their game. In the US it started with "sub prime" mortgages, in the UK it continued with "Northern Rock". In both places the governments, heavily indebted to the banking sector, and the media, whose loyalty the banks ensure with full page advertisements, want to make us believe that this is just an isolated phenomenon for imprudent lenders. The truth is, the system has been shaken more than it can recover from, and every country and their populations are soon going to be between a (northern) rock and a hard place.

There are two basic myths by which the banks have concealed their fraudulent nature from us over the centuries. Firstly, they made us believe that "boom and bust" are natural events within an "economic cycle". Secondly, they keep claiming that they lend out depositors' money. Both these claims are blatant lies.

Boom and bust are cycles created by the banking system through credit expansion and credit squeezes in order to make people pledge their real wealth as a security for obtaining loans and then taking it off them when they are forced to default. After all, the banks know that their credits are worthless promises. They are not after our money, they are after our wealth.

Bank credits are created "out of thin air" using a system called "fractional reserve banking". In other words, banks invent the money they lend us, yet still charge us for it. They don't have enough collateral to back up the promises they make. Their actual collateral only covers a tiny "fraction" of the money they lend. If any of us tried this game, we would be locked up for fraud. Not so the banks. They have been so good at conning people that even governments borrow from them their fictitious money instead of issuing their own. The money the governments borrow is, of course, backed by the totality of their nations' wealth.

The financial system just described results in an exponential growth curve similar to cancer and must eventually take its host down. The visible signs of this malaise are inflation, caused by interest, and increasing global indebtedness. Politicians keep talking of growth they want to achieve, but natural resources are finite, hence unlimited growth is an impossibility. A balanced system would be at equilibrium, but this is impossible in an economy where interest payments demand that more is given back than was entered into the equation in the first place. The only safety valves which kept this explosive powder keg from blowing up have been destructive mechanisms like drugs and wars, and space programs, which remove some of the surplus out of circulation. Global poverty, totally unavoidable in today's world, has been purposefully engineered by a greedy financial system.

However, it seems the time has finally run out. There are no more colonies to conquer and no more markets to capture. Every world citizen by now has a sizable noose of personal debt around his or her neck, compounded by the debt contracted by their respective governments. The governments know that time is running out. A few weeks ago the Treasury, the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority announced in a tripartite statement - which underlines the seriousness of the problem - that a "liquidity support facility" would be extended to Northern Rock to prevent the company from going insolvent as this would cause serious economic damage. So after we were told that paying interest for loans is a fair price for the risks bank take, we are now, through our taxes, also paying them for miscalculating their risks. In the USA, likewise, the Federal Reserve has just increased the amount made available to banks in trouble from $40bn to $60bn, once again underlining the seriousness of the problem.

What governments are worried about is that people loose trust in the banking system and that this will generate a "run" on the banks. If people all started to ask for their deposits back they would soon realise that the money wasn't actually there. Whatever desperate measures they invent, however, governments will only be able to extend the time scale and stave off the collapse for a little longer. They know this, too. This is the real rationale for all the counter-terrorism measures and attacks on personal freedom we have seen over recent years.

Under the guise of a terrorist threat they are preparing for martial law in order to control an outraged populace when the money has finally run out. Acquiescent as we have been to hand over total control to them in return for a false sense of security sold to us on the basis of the irrational fear of an ever-present terrorist threat, it is now just a matter of time when those powers will be used against us. Thus the banks, or rather their actual owners, who gained control over our governments through financial manipulations a long time ago, will consolidate their take over and begin to rule us with an iron fist. Unlike us, they were never fooled into believing that money equals wealth, and power is more important a goal for them than affluence.

Israeli apartheid officially acknowledged

2007-11-30T09:16:00.000Z

Finally a serving Israeli prime minister has admitted what critics of Israel could hitherto only say at the risk of being labelled anti-semites: that Israel is an apartheid state and owes its survival to being undemocratic by denying its Palestinian citizens equal rights.
At the eve of yet another peace conference doomed to failure like all those previous US-sponsored half-baked and half-hearted peace initiatives we have seen come and go over the past century, Ehud Olmert warned of a "South African-style struggle" which Israel would lose if a Palestinian state was not established. For once there is a recognition that playing games with Palestinian aspirations does not, ultimately, help in denying their legitimate rights in the occupied territories. Previous peace conferences have been a cover up for continued Israeli expansion on the land it occupied illegally, each time squeezing the indigenous population a little more. When a Palestinian state was eventually established in name only, with no independence whatsoever, not territorial or tax authority and, of course, no army of its own, there was the hope on the Israeli side that this token acknowledgment that the Palestinian people did exist (something denied by previous Zionist hawks) together with an attempted collaboration with a Palestinian puppet government would contain the uprising. As Olmert know seems to acknowledge, those plans came to nothing.
Meanwhile Israel's economy would long have collapsed but for the steady stream of American dollars to prop it up. And then there is the "demographic threat to Israel as a Jewish state from a faster growing Palestinian population", to cite Olmert, an admission that even in Israel itself, never mind the illegally occupied territories, Israel is having difficulties containing its non-Jewish population. This is why people who understand the region, unlike those so-called champions for Palestine who work into the hands of the Zionists, have repeatedly asked for a one-state solution. "If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished", Olmert is quoted as saying. In other words, Israel as a Jewish apartheid state has not yet been "wiped off the map" (to quote another recently popular phrase attributed to the Iranian president), because it is undemocratic. The "one person, one vote" maxim generally accepted around the globe now, is anathema to Jewish supremacists.
Olmert's recent warnings will be a hard nut for pro-Israeli leftists to chew. In the above comment he considers a South-African struggle for equal voting rights as negative and a threat to the existence of Israel as a purely Jewish (and thus racist) state. How will the left, who always supported the struggle against apartheid in South Africa but sat on the fence when it came to Israel, now continue to justify the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel and its sponsor, the United States?
Olmert has done us a great favour. He said what we weren't supposed to say and got coverage for what would have been ignored, or denounced as anti-semitic, had it be said by anyone else. Those opposed to oppression, occupation and apartheid should see things as clearly as he does and call for a one state solution.

Holier than Thou

2007-11-13T14:27:00.000Z

We have grown used to "the West" lecturing the rest of the world on standards of living, education, economic development, health and safety, human rights and, well, almost everything else. Africa in particular is given a very unsavoury image in the Western media and public perception. It is presented as a continent of aghast poverty, ravaged by disease, ruled by dictators, still practising slavery and child trafficking and having no regard to the value of human life. When the Western media became obsessed for months with the fate of Madeleine, the little Scottish girl who went missing during a holiday in Portugal whilst her parents were having a good time outside the house, all fingers were pointed to Morocco. An innocent girl belonging to a Moroccan family had her face plastered all over European newspaper because some tourists thought she looked like Madeleine. When she turned out to be one hundred percent Moroccan, no apologies followed. Meanwhile the fate of dozens of innocent children abducted from their families by so-called aid workers in Chad for the purpose of selling them on in France has all but been forgotten only a couple of weeks later.

Like drug trafficking, child trafficking is not a localised phenomenon. Supply is usually driven by demand, and the demand originates in the countries of the West. After a Unicef warning that the British government is failing to protect vulnerable youngsters brought into the country the Guardian newspaper revealed that during 2005-6 a total of 88% of Chinese children illegally trafficked into the UK have gone missing AFTER having been identified and cared for by Social Services. A similar story emerges for children brought to the UK illegally from Nigeria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Russia or Eastern Europe. Of course, the children brought to the attention of Social Services are only the tip of the iceberg. But at least one would have thought that once they were being looked after by the State, they would be safe. However, the majority eventually disappear never to be traced again, and Social Services are probably glad to have them off their books. As Unicef observes, the care and protection for these children is inconsistent, ad hoc and, in some regions, completely absent.

Some of the children are brought into the UK for sexual exploitation, others as domestic household helpers and child labourers. Their individual stories are a lot more heart-rendering than the plight of Madeleine's parents grabbing world headlines, yet little is written about them since this would tarnish the polished veneer of the "leading civilisations" of the world and reveal an ugly underside beneath the skilfully applied make-up. Until Europeans sort out their own problems of child slavery and trafficking, they should stop lecturing the rest of the nations on human rights and freedoms. If the European media were as interested in the dark side of European sexual appetites and child exploitation as in the fate of little Madeleine, and if the UK government was as proactive in dealing with the problem as it is with deriding, for example, Zimbabwe, then maybe they deserved to be listened to when talking about universal values, human rights and the future of the planet.

Of Kings and Prophets

2007-10-31T05:48:00.000Z

I would not normally comment on the visit of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to England had he not found it necessary to hand out good advice to British Muslims on how to behave and displayed his total ignorance of political reality by stating that he was sure the British government would find a way of helping end the tragic ordeal of the Palestinians. Was it not the British government that both created the Palestinian tragedy and the Kindgom of Saudi Arabia?

The current Saudi King may be called Abdullah, but he seems to have little understanding of the name. The prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be with him, was proud to be called Abdullah, literally a slave of Allah. He helped his wife in the kitchen, mended his own sandals and slept on a rough bed made of palm fibre which left its marks on his body. He stood in prayer until his ankles were swollen. He treated his companions as equal and saw it his duty to serve the Master of the Universe rather than be served.

King Abdullah, on the other hand, whilst wanting to be the rightful heir of the prophetic mission, arrived at Heathrow airport with six planes carrying 23 personal advisors and over 400 aides, his luggage took three hours unloading, and the whole entourage was carried into London in 84 limousines. He sure prefers the glamour of the world to the glory of God. The fact that he does not treat his fellow Saudis as equals prompted demonstrations by human rights campaigners upon his arrival. Saudi Arabia sadly has become a class or cast society with members of the Royal family on top and foreign guest workers at the bottom of the hierarchy - some common ground between his country and Britain at least.

The King of Saudi Arabia likes to style himself as the Custodian of the two Holy Places. In Arabic he is called the servant of the two holy places, leading to the irony that visitors to his Kingdom find large banners at the entry of towns welcoming the "servant". Thus the servant becomes more important than the master. He wants to be praised and served himself, rather than serve any cause. He even puts his name in gold lettering on the cloth covering the holy Kaaba in Makkah, stating that it was donated by his wealth. At the same time he serves the two holy places poorly, as any pilgrim witnessing the disorganisation during the annual Hajj can attest, and has abandoned the third holy place of Islam, Jerusalem altogether. So now he looks to Britain to solve this problem in a neighbouring country for him. Had the Saudi Royal family encouraged the millions of pilgrims arriving annually to continue their pilgrimage to Masjid al-Aqsa in Jerusalem instead of preventing them from going there by a pretended boycott of Israel, we would not now have to fear about the future of this third holiest shrine of Islam.

The king spoke of the two countries, his and the Queen Elizabeth’s, uniting around their "shared values". By the way, I abstain from calling Britain the United Kingdom since it has neither a king nor is it united, with Scotland, for example, actively seeking to wrestle away from under the Royal sovereignty. I guess those shared values are the values of rulers, not of the people. They are the values of arrogance and disrespect for one’s subjects. No doubt, there will also be shared interests, expressed in arms deals and backhanders.

The king would have done well to actually read the 15th century Qur’an the queen proudly displayed to him as part of the world’s treasures her family had amassed over the centuries. In verse 18 of Surah 31 (Luqman) it states (in the translation of Yusuf Ali): "And swell not thy cheek (for pride) at men, nor walk in insolence through the earth; for Allah loveth not any arrogant boaster."

Microsoft Vista Waster

2007-09-30T10:05:00.000+01:00

Computer and software manufacturers have turned computers from a convenient tool to a means of dictating to us what to buy next. Nowhere is this more apparent than when it comes to updating equipment. Our reliance on computers has become almost absolute, and as hardware and software keep developing, updating equipment has become an inevitable part of our lives. Far from being easy this is a process fraught with problems and potential failure, the worst-case scenario being a migration from one computer to another.

The following observation on a recent computer migration where the excitement of new, more capable, computing equipment soon turns into despair shows how manufacturers, in the forefront Microsoft, have devised ways of fleecing us for our money without providing any meaningful benefits. Their products are not produced in response to customer demands but in order to give the company greater control over both the market segment and the individual user, creating dependencies. The technological capabilities already exist for us to simply walk around with a pocket USB drive containing all our favourite programs, settings and data to plug into a processor anywhere, be it the home, the office, or an internet café, and start doing our work. This kind of freedom is anathema to the industry which is inventing all kinds of measures to prevent us from slipping out of their grips. Online activation is such an example. The obvious problem with online activation is that if the company selling the software goes bust, the expensive program you bought becomes effectively worthless. But even for a strong market player, like Microsoft, it can render your purchase almost obsolete. There are solutions on offer where software programs and files are hosted online for users to work with, however, since business people travel and do not always have adequate online access, these solutions are not a fix for everybody.

If you go out and buy a new computer in the high street or online it will now come with Windows Vista pre-installed as an operating system. Recently, the European Court ruled against Microsoft for anti-competitive practices by bundling its own software with its operating system and preventing interoperability with other software. The ruling hardly goes far enough. A much bigger anti-competitive measure is that the software comes pre-installed in the first place. Customers should have a choice of operating systems when buying a new computer. Vista retails at almost £200, yet it is bundled with new computers for a fraction of that price. So if a customer buys a computer without an operating system (if he can find one!) and buys the operating system separately, he is greatly disadvantaged.

I’ve been operating a multitude of specialist business software on a machine running under MS Windows XP Professional for years, some of it legacy software for which a new software key can no longer be obtained. When looking for a new laptop I was unable to find a newer model with Windows XP pre-installed. I, therefore, bought a Vista model and set about the task of rolling back the operating system. Idealistically I assumed this task would take about half a day, so I set a whole weekend aside, just in case. In the end, it took the best part of a week. Here is why.

The quickest method of migration is to image an existing hard drive and restore it to the new machine. In the past I used Powerquest Drive Image for this purpose. Unfortunately, it does not run under Windows Vista and no updated drivers are available. Hence, I was forced to buy new imaging software, choosing Acronis True Image. After restoring the image to the new system XP failed to run. An attempted Windows repair installation from the original operating system CD indicated the problem: Windows Setup determined that there was no hard drive on the new computer. There was, of course, a hard drive, larger in size than the previous one, but the Intel chip on the laptop was set to only work with Windows Vista. To work with any other operating system special drivers would have to be installed first. In my opinion, this immediately violates the anti-competition laws under which Microsoft was recently fined for lesser non-compliance.

The installation of a hard disk controller driver in itself wouldn’t be such a problem, once obtained from the computer manufacturer’s website, if Microsoft had not been stuck in the stone age with its flag ship Vista product demanding that the driver be loaded from a floppy disk. In the days of USB sticks, new computers no longer feature pre-historic bulky and useless floppy drives. Hence a visit to a local retailer was required to purchase a USB floppy drive in order to load the required drivers. Either Microsoft developers have been very sloppy in this respect when rolling out a new operating system every couple of years, or this relic from the past was left purposefully because the ability to load the drivers from a USB stick might also make it more likely for the operating system to be booted from a USB drive. If Windows could be booted from a USB storage location, then we could upgrade computer hardware without ever having to migrate the operating system and the software running under it and consequently never would have to buy another Mircosoft operating system unless we really fell in love with it.

Endless hours and computer restarts later (which reminds me of somebody’s email signature: “Linux – life is too short for reboots”) I was finally able to boot into Windows XP on the imaged drive. At this point Windows asked for “reactivation” since the hardware had significantly changed from the last login. When Microsoft launched XP it first introduced the “Windows Product Activation” where the operating system would lock you out unless you had activated it within 30 days. Once activated this program would keep a snapshot of your hardware settings and would ask for reactivation if anything but minor changes had taken place. Activation can be done either online or over the telephone where users are given a new lengthy code to enter into their machines in order for them to function. For reactivation the time scale is extremely short, a mere 3 days in total.

I initially ignored the prompt and set about installing the necessary sound, display, modem, LAN drivers etc., since they differed from those of the previous computer. Since expensive laptops are no longer shipped with driver disks, the drivers only being available as part of the “mandatory” Vista installation bundled with the system, those drivers have to be downloaded painstakingly from the computer manufacturer’s website.

The migration process had by now eaten most of the weekend, but there remind the nagging threat of Windows product activation. The Windows XP CD from which this operating system was installed was a genuine one, so reactivation after moving it to a new machine should not pose a problem, however, as the support technician at Microsoft whom I spoke to on the phone declared: “We do not support image installations”. He further explained that the preferred method of installing Windows was to reformat one’s hard drive and start from scratch, as if people only wanted to run Microsoft operating systems for the sheer joy of the Windows welcome tune without the need for any other software and data on their hard drives to be retained.

The problem with the Windows activation was that the Activation Window which popped up on screen was blank, looking like this:

Without any information being displayed, neither internet nor telephone activation would work.

To their credit, Microsoft tried every possible avenue in their arsenal of tricks when I spoke to them for hours to resolve the issue. These calls would have cost me a fortune on the high rate number provided to the public for Microsoft technical support, however, there is a handy website providing alternative numbers, even freephone numbers, for high rate 0807 numbers, helping Joe Public to escape from yet another favourite company money spinning trap.

After accepting that I did not want to wipe my hard drive, Microsoft came up with a number of other possible solutions, the most ingenious one being to do a repair installation of Windows XP after first completely removing Mozilla Firefox from the computer! Mozilla Firefox is a free alternative browser to Internet Explorer, and I wondered whether this was yet another anti-competitive trick Microsoft had up their sleeves. I opted for changing the Windows registry instead so it would not default to Mozilla when trying to display the activation window. As a precaution I also uninstalled Windows Internet Explorer 7, which has been known to cause some display problems in the past, although I was not advised to do so by Microsoft!

After sitting through another boring Windows Setup session with its boastful messages how this Windows was the best ever and allowed you to do anything you could ever wish to do, the result was as disappointing as before. Windows could not be activated. A very helpful Microsoft engineer talked me through some tweaks which were entered in the command prompt in safe mode. He tried his very best, especially since I had intimated I was going to write about my experiences, but it is now official: Microsoft are unable to fix this bug in their activation process.

There are a number of suggestions on this issue on the internet. If anybody encounters as similar problem my advice is not to waste time with them. I should know, because I tried them all. Copying over the wpa.dbl file from a sound installation does not work. Resetting the computer’s system clock to an earlier date does not give you extra days for activation but locks you out straight away even before the 3 days are up! Microsoft have made their activation process quite fool-proof; so fool-proof that even they can’t fix it when it goes wrong!

My only remaining option was now to install a clean copy of Microsoft XP (each time loading the drivers from the floppy drive, of course!), activate it as a new installation and then move my existing programs and files across using Laplink’s PC Mover. This is an ingenious program which moves most applications including their registry entries and only very few of them will require reinstallation or re-licensing. The process takes many hours, but it is second best only to cloning a hard drive. The fact that this is possible renders the Microsoft claim baseless that they do not support image installations to prevent people from running the same operating system on more than one machine. With PC Mover I can do exactly that, because I do not have to de-activate my old Windows copy before activating the new one. The downside to imaging or cloning a hard drive is that a lot of tweaking is required after the move, and of course, it’s yet another product to pay for.

I now have a functional XP Professional installation on my new computer with all my legacy applications working well, many of which would have failed under Vista. Because many of my clients require me to work in applications which run under Windows, I did not consider switching to Linux in the past or swapping the expensive Microsoft Office installation for the free Open Office, which can effectively do all the same things. However, knowing that XP will no longer be supported, and being pretty sure that Vista is going to be even more patronising and devious than XP ever was, I am now seriously looking into installing Linux and running Microsoft programs in a Windows shell or emulator, available from Win4Lin, for example. Microsoft have gone to extreme lengths to trap computer users into running and constantly updating their products without tangible benefit. For me, this latest waste of money and time associated with migrating my computer has gone one step too far. I am planning to set some time aside to experiment with the alternatives, and if I can get it to work, will turn my back on Microsoft forever. Meanwhile, computers continue to come with their software pre-installed, so I better hold on to my USB floppy drive!

Own goal: Bush sponsored al-Qaeda

2007-09-14T09:36:00.000+01:00

In his recent televised address US president Bush landed a serious own goal. Media commentators almost exclusively focused on his promise of troop reductions which the president announced and tried to make out as the result of a successful campaign in Iraq rather than an acknowledgement of ultimate defeat. Yet, the recurrent theme in the Bush address is the struggle to drive al-Qaeda out of Iraq and deny them a safe haven there. He makes the case, for example, that the people of Anbar province were suffering under the Taleban-like rule of al-Qaeda and asked the US to intervene, which ultimately drove al-Qaeda out, although it did not eliminate it as a threat. Likewise, he states that Diyala province was a sanctuary for al-Qaeda, but is no more. Mentioning al-Qaeda no less than eleven times in his short address makes them the central theme of the Bush Iraq strategy.

Leaving aside the highly suspect claims that al-Qaeda is operating successfully inside Iraq and trying to make the country its power base, the September 11 commission in the US, for all its failings to deal with most of the crucial evidence of 9/11, dismissed any link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Whilst the Bush administration used al-Qaeda as an excuse to invade Iraq, any intelligence analyis worth his salt understood these links to be politically contrived. So if al-Qaeda has become a serious problem in Iraq, as the president is trying to assert, then his administration must be credited with having introduced al-Qaeda to Iraq. Far from making the world a safer place, therefore, they created a lingering problem in the region which continues to haunt them.

In his obsession with al-Qaeda, president Bush is also demolishing his other hobby horse argument, namely that Iran is fuelling and supporting the Iraqi insurgency. "One year ago, Shia extremists and Iranian-backed militants were gaining strength and targeting Sunnis for assassination. Today, these groups are being broken up and many of their leaders are being captured or killed.", he asserts, missing the point entirely, that al-Qaeda is defined as a Sunni terrorist organisation which considers Shia Muslims to be disbelievers and legitimate targets. It is unperceivable, therefore, that Iran would sponsor such an organisation.

In his televised speech Bush tried to placate the public mood which had turned seriously against him by offering a troop withdrawal on the near horizon. Instead, he has once more made a total fool of himself.

Short sighted environmentalists

2007-09-01T11:37:00.000+01:00

To some it is astonishing when protesters join the establishment, like George Monbiot, gamekeeper turned poacher, whose conservative upbringing caught up with him and makes the erstwhile vociferous critic of the establishment now spout the official mantra on 9-11 as well as climate change or global warming. Due to his former credentials as a campaigner he is now a high value asset to those in power.

Yet, there should be nothing surprising about such apparent U-turns. From the days of the early Christians in the Roman Empire to, more recently, the post-war labour movement, opposition has been bought up and re-branded by the ruling elite. These processes are often justified with the need for efficiency in organising the alternative view, and because a lot of the old rhetoric remains in place, genuine believers in the cause only realise what has been happening after the takeover is complete. "Middle England's" "New Labour" is a recent example.

That the hitherto anti-establishment, anti-capitalist environmental movement is becoming an establishment hobby horse is clearly evident in the protest camp recently set up at London Heathrow airport. When environment editor of The Guardian complained about media management at the camp he received a vociferous rebuttal by Media Lens lambasting The Guardian as an establishment paper in bed with Big Oil. Conveniently forgotten in this row was that George Monbiot is a regular columnist in The Guardian, the establishment paper aimed at what remains of "The Left".

In my mind the obsession of the New Environmentalists with air travel is nothing short of a diversion from more important issues like the 9-11 cover-up, the disastrous war in Iraq, and forthcoming war in Iran. Numerous websites offer the unwary traveller an air travel calculator to figure out how badly his journey impacts the environment, so he can set out on his well deserved holiday laden with guilt. I have been unable to find a similar calculator for cruise missiles which are regular fired in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A cruise missile uses only about one tenth of the fuel in its rocket propellant than the fuel burnt by an Airbus, but an Airbus carries almost 150 peaceful people to a place of relaxation, whereas a cruise missile will at most send 15 people into a place of no return. On that score the carbon footprint per person going on holiday and per person killed in these wasteful wars is about the same, but the comparison is slanted, because missile propellant, unlike aircraft fuel, is converted almost completely into CO2, many missiles miss their targets and the equation omits the environmental impact of the carrier aircraft and of other ammunition such as laser-guided bombs. I leave the detail to the statisticians, but let's say for argument's sake that for the negative environmental (never mind social) impact of every human being killed during war you can send at least three people on holiday. These macabre statistics alone should drive home the futility of obsessing with individual air travel.

The casualty figures for these two senseless wars range from 100,000 to half a million; if the latter figure presented by The Lancet was true, then all the 2.5 million passengers passing through all of the UK airports during the course of a whole year could have flown for free as far as the carbon footprint is concerned, and considering the costs of missiles and bombs our government could also have issued them with free complimentary tickets.

Civilian air travel is a peace-time offshoot of military developments. In spite of being heavily subsidised, turnover and profit figures are only in the millions, whereas the military hardware produced by the same companies making civilian aeroplanes nets them billions. War is immensely more profitable than peace, and George Monbiot and his Heathrow protesters help blinding the general public about this unpalatable fact. When will we start hearing about the effects those military adventures have on climate change and calls for the return of our troops not only to save innocent lives in the regions concerned but also to save the planet? Go, camp outside the Pentagon!

Skype and the vulnerability of technology

2007-08-18T12:12:00.001+01:00

Technology can be impressive as anybody exploring a new gadget has found, and recent years have seen a revolution in technological advances from the mobile phone to GPS satellite navigation, from the personal computer to the ease of the internet. Technology makes us feel in control. However, it also provides a false sense of security.

One of the most useful and impressive items of technology is VOIP, the ability to route voice calls through the internet and communicate across the world at low cost or for free. A leading pioneer of this wonder of modern communication has been Skype which from its early beginnings as a chatting tool soon became a major means of cooperation even for serious business. The developers of Skype were so successful that ebay eventually bought them out. It came as a major shock, therefore, that the technology, which had been so reliable that it bypassed most obstacles thrown in its way by jealous fixed line telephony operators, suddenly was down for more than a day. Allegedly, software problems were to blame, so the company, but this sounds a little disingenuous since the software had not suddenly changed from one day to the other. More likely, problems developed with the network infrastructure and how messages were relayed across several computers without being actually stored permanently on any of them.

Any system can, and probably will, fail at some time, but the Skype outage has demonstrated our over-reliance on convenient technology thought to be failsafe. When and old-style mechanical car broke down, it could usually be fixed on the road side; if the electronic engine controls of modern cars play up, on the other hand, it signals the end of the journey with the car having to be relayed to a workshop for module replacements. Road users increasingly rely on GPS satellite navigation, as do aircraft, the latter often having backup systems should the primary unit pack up. However, GPS signals can be jammed or interfered with, rendering the accuracy of a few meters suddenly quite useless. The cause can be solar flares, but equally intentional attacks, which is why China's demonstrated ability to knock out a satellite caused so much stir in the United States. Without satellite guidance the US military is as impotent as its president sitting in his Oval Office. That's what star wars is all about.

Heavy reliance on sophisticated technology has made the leading nations of the world powerful, but it has also made them more vulnerable than they would like to admit or even contemplate. A complete breakdown of the internet, for example, would make the recent stock market crash (the inevitable burst of the financial bubble of artificial money creation) look like a benign ripple, since it would stifle all economic activity across the developed world probably beyond repair. Whilst regional power cuts or computer network failures could be compensated for, a global downtime could well be the death knell for Western civilisation and its market economy. The survivors and winners would be those who still know how to deal with old-fashioned nuts and bolts.

BAE - no good, the bad, and the ugly

2007-08-09T10:21:00.000+01:00

BAE systems, the company at the centre of the UK-Saudi arms deal bribery scandal, has announced record profits this year of 657 million pounds (before tax), up almost 70% from the previous year. The company explained the sharp rise with the "high speed" of UK and US military operations in Iraq, increasing the demand for support systems. It did not elaborate on the meaning of "high speed", maybe the company does not want to be seen as profiting from the high velocity at which UK and US troops are regularly coming under attack in this final phase of the Iraq adventure before the inevitable withdrawal.

In the profitable but ugly business of dealing in arms and military supplies it is actually good when things go bad. And whilst the news of casualties and incompetence may be embarrassing to the population at home, it is lining the pockets of greedy arms dealers who would probably like to have a new war in the pipeline before the current one is dying out as a source of revenue. For them, Iran is definitely not off the table.

When you make money out of death and misery, lying comes easy, and the justifications don't matter too much. The Iraq war was allegedly fought to save us from weapons of mass destruction and make the world a safer place. Those weapons were never found, and according to an audit report to the US Congress, a lot of other weapons since imported into Iraq have also gone missing. There are some 14,030 weapons which the Americans have lost track of, maybe by having succumbed to the weapon of mass distraction. For arms suppliers this is good news, since the missing hardware will have to be replaced.

The looming Iran war is being sold to us on the pretense of protecting the world from a future nuclear weapon in the hands of the Iranians, whereas the effective result of this spurious argument has already been a further proliferation of nuclear warheads, with America, for example, exporting the technology to India to balance the threat posed by Pakistan. Naturally, countries in the Middle East region would equally want to bring some balance into the threat posed by the large Israeli nuclear arsenal. With its double standards in the approach towards North Korea and Iran, the US is also sending the clear message that nuclear weapons are a real deterrent against American aggression.

Of course, we are all guilty by association. The US, the UK and Australia, and through association the EU are war economies. Without the revenue generated by destructive goods, which do not depend on the forever dwindling purchasing power of these countries' populations, their economies would already have collapsed, since strictly speaking they not only heavily indebted but bankrupt. Snuffing out lives elsewhere in the world creates jobs and income for people in the West to continue their unsustainable lifestyles.

Islam Channel or Haram Channel?

2007-07-25T11:23:00.000+01:00

I finally received a judgment handed down by an English county court ordering Islam Channel Ltd. to pay me thirty pounds in costs. A trifle sum you might think for a satellite TV station spending and earning millions. However, when it comes to the people who have contributed and continue to make this enterprise a success, Islam Channel appears to prefer the cut-throat business practices of an East End sweat shop by trying to get everything for next to nothing.

The thirty pounds represented the court fee I had to pay in order to pursue Islam Channel for fifty pounds they owed me in travel expenses. This related to me having agreed to contribute to the show "Politics and Beyond" on the condition that my travel expenses would be met, a reasonable request considering I was not going to charge for my time or demand a fee as would be customary for most radio and tv appearances. But because of the word "Islam" in the name of the business I acted like numerous other Muslims who generously give their time freely without asking for recompense.

The way the show had been run, like much of the programming on Islam Channel, had been rather amateurish. It was meant to be a panel discussion before an audience, but the audience was dispensed with due to technical problems. Since one of the expert panellists did not turn up, a student member of the audience was elevated to expert status. There is very little critical viewing amongst Muslims - as indeed amongst the general population - and any reality presented on screen is usually accepted as factual. This is not unique to Islam Channel, I hasten to add.

The unique Islam Channel experience, however, was that the promised cheque for travel expenses never arrived. Many months later, after numerous reminders and empty promises, I felt I had to keep my own promise of pursuing the matter in court should Islam Channel fail to honour its commitment. To do so, I had to pay thirty pounds to the courts in order to try and recover the debt of fifty. Following my claim the travelling expenses of fifty pounds were promptly paid, not, however the added costs of having to chase the money through the court system. My letter demanding reimbursement of this cost was met with the disingenious reply by Islam Channel's legal advisor Madeeha Dani that at no time had they contracted my services and therefore my claim was not valid. Apparently, they had only paid me the fifty pounds because I was a nice guy, not because they owed it to me.

The court took a different view. It ordered the sum of thirty pounds to be paid, describing the defence comments as irrelevant and wondering why someone would go through the troubles of paying £30 in order to get £50 if there was no possible entitlement to this money at all whilst at the same time receiving that very sum in response after it had remained unpaid until the summons is issued. I suppose such common sense arguments totally escape the legal advisors of large corporations who defend all claims at all costs. Let's hope, I don't have to spend additional funds now to collect the officially confirmed debt.

Besides having wasted time unnecessary, I could put this episode down as one of the comedy aspects of daily life not worth commenting on but over dinner. But the issue cuts deeper. What it reflects is the abuse of the concept of Muslim brotherhood which is epitomised here by Islam Channel but is not their exclusive prerogative. Many a Muslim employer pays his Muslim employees less than their due but acts as if he owns their very souls. Islam Channel became a success because Muslims thought it was representing them. In fact, it is simply another business out to make money, and if programs can be made on the cheap and costs saved, this would certainly serve the corporate objective notwithstanding the lofty statement by its CEO Mohamed Ali on one occasion: "The Islam Channel is an honourable project with high ideals, and those who offer to help us come from eclectic backgrounds, but always their intentions are honourable." Well, my honourable intention, after the experiences just described, is to expose them, and before anybody talks about backbiting and its prohibition in Islam, I did warn Islam Channel that I would make the judgment public should they defend my claim in court.

Many Muslims mistakenly believe that the commercialisation of Islam, which has taken place rapidly over recent years, represents an acceptance of their religion by the Western establishment. Nothing could be further from the truth. To be exploited or to be taken advantage of does not imply to be accepted. If a non-Muslim bank offers so-called halal (Islamically lawful) mortgages at a higher interest rate than their haram (unlawful) mortgages tailored to non-Muslim customers, then this does not indicate their conversion to an Islamic critique of interest based finance nor that Islam has become established in the West - it simply means that they consider us stupid enough (not without justification) to be taken advantage of. The same goes for many of the multitude of commercial enterprises who have added the label Islam or Muslim to their brand names. In my judgment, Islam Channel is just another commercial TV operation out to make money out of Muslims.

Honourable corruption

2007-07-21T07:04:00.000+01:00

"I have decided there is insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction against any individual for any offence in relation to this matter" said Carmen Dowd of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) after more than a million pounds had been spent in a high profile Metropolitan Police investigation lasting well beyond a year. The CPS, ready to pursue petty criminals and motorists any time, threw in the towel and decided that with the "Cash for Honours" probe, during which Labour Party fund raiser Lord Levy had been arrested and ex prime minister Blair interviewed, they had bitten off more than they could chew. Or maybe they only did their service for the country by replacing the lid on a can of worms which was getting bigger by the day.

It is doubtful that the CPS decision was a technical one relating to the strength of the evidence. Many people suspect that it was politically motivated. The police enquiries had been embarrassing for the Blair government, but corruption is not an exclusive New Labour prerogative. Dragging the scandal out in open court might have been a death blow to Britain's increasingly tarnished democracy in which voters are no longer bothered to go to the polls since the elected party, one or the other face of the same coin, usually only carries minority popular support and forces through a long string of unpopular measures and new inventive methods of taxation. The cash for honours issue was about big money and the corruptibility of politicians and business men alike.

Liberal Party leader Sir Menzies Campbell was probably right when he said: "There still remain many questions of political responsibility. This whole affair has diminished politics and politicians in the eyes of the public." Withdrawing the charges and vindicating the loathed Blair administration has merely added cynicism to the way the British public views its politicians and "democratic" institutions. Few have any doubts that money exchanged hands for honours. After the Attorney general halted an enquiry into the BAE arms deal bribery scandal, this is the second occasion where probing into high level corruption has been prevented. The honourable gentlemen in the two houses of parliament will heave a sigh of relief: In Britain, it seems, they can still do their corruption honourably.

This item appears late on my blog because Google decided, without informing me by email, that my blog has been classified as a spam blog and will be removed within a week if I do not submit it for review. Is that political too? Is the fight against spam, annoying as it is, going to be the means of curtailing the internet freedom of embarrassing the powerful and showing up the compliant mainstream media?

Escaping the UK straight jacket

2007-06-30T14:33:00.000+01:00

After the discovery of a London van which had tried very hard to get noticed before its cargo exploded, leaving the UK via any of its airports was like being processed through a prison camp. The heightened security alert level meant that already pointless security measures were stepped up and staff simply couldn't cope. Even at a provincial airport like Luton at normally quiet times a traveller was greeted with excessive check-in queues resulting in long waiting times with no other distraction but regular security announcements and television screens on which an animated single woman was walking robot-like through the security protocol of an otherwise completely empty airport. It felt surreal and bizarre.

The added security measures meant that travellers were only allowed a single piece of hand luggage, and through the intercom system they were constantly told that a separate camera or a food bag would count as a second item of luggage and was thus not permitted. People were agonising what to do with their camera or their child's teddy bear. From a security point of view I guess it makes perfect sense: if it doesn't fit into a single bag, or the bag you've brought is too small, then you are obviously not sufficiently prepared and security-conscious and thus a risk to the travelling public. And before you know it, somebody slips a Mercedes van packed with nails and gas cylinders into your handbag. My suspicion, however is that there is also a commercial interest involved. Signs pronounced everywhere that once past the departure checks you could, of course, carry as many duty free bags on board as you wished. I think you shouldn't bother though. Just turn up in your night shirt and plastic slippers and buy whatever else you need at your destination. There isn't a place in the world where you get ripped off as well as in Britain.

The only speedy movement was through passport checks. Her Majesty's officers only wanted to see boarding passes, not passports, which kept delays to a minimum and demonstrated the case made by government that we all need to carry identity cards, provided we don't show them to anyone. To be fair, passports had been looked at when reporting to the various airline check-in desks, but airline staff are not government employees, nor do they have the facility to read or analyse the biometric data our passports now contain.

Things slowed down again at the approach to the X-ray machines. First people were stripped of any liquid items they might carry, bare a few essentials. In the past, airport staff handed out clear plastic bags to put in toiletries - like hand cream and toothpaste - now you have to buy the bags from a dispensing machine, four for a pound. That's good value for money, since you are only allowed to take one such bag on board and can keep the others as a souvenir or gift for people you might meet in far-off destinations.

I watched a granddad emptying his cooling bag he had carefully packed before leaving home: the ice packs in it obviously contain liquid and are therefore far too hazardous to carry on an aircraft. Next he was asked to part with a fruit yoghurt as this was also a prohibited item. Rightly so, we can't allow carelessness to endanger the lives of crew and passengers with exploding fruit yoghurts, especially if they haven't got a say in what flavours they would like. Mind you, there are devious ways around the prohibitions: if you carry your yoghurt as filling in a chocolate bar you're allowed to take it, provided it fits in the single bag of hand luggage allocated to you as your ration. You are also not allowed any sharp items, plastic knifes or nail clippers for example, but I suggest the pins of electric plugs for your laptop or mobile phone are a lot more lethal. Oops, now they'll have to outlaw those as well, together with nylon stockings which could be used to strangle an air hostess and hold her hostage.

After leaving heaps of shampoo, drinks bottles, aftershave and other terrorist accessories behind, which they had inadvertently discovered in their hand luggage, passengers proceeded to the X-ray machines. Even after taking everything off and placing it on the belt, metal buttons or earrings would nonetheless set off the beeps of the walk-through X-ray frames, which meant they had to be given a rub-down search, resulting in never-ending queues again. At the end of such a search the staff in attendance would ask people to show them the soles of their shoes. Finally, the moment of revenge for the terrorists plaguing the British Isles had come. For Arabs it is an insult to point the soles of your shoes at anybody, and they must have revelled in delight to be able to swear at British officials whilst at the same time only doing as they were told.

The prolonged security procedures inevitably resulted in boarding delays which in turn caused take-off delays and lost take-off slots. Chaos all around, just because of some crazy van driver in London. You don't need to set off a bomb to destroy the British way of life and economy, you just have to do something silly, and the official response will take care of the rest. When the plane got airborne it finally felt like real freedom, not the fake one we're allegedly defending, gold-plated with rules and regulations. Unfortunately, most air travellers neither have the money nor courage to emigrate from these bigoted and narrow-minded isles for good, and thus will have to come back to the same sad old story. At least that bitter pill at the end of their holiday is sweetened by the fact that nobody will try to take their mineral water bottles or toothpaste away from them when they board their flight back to Britain from exotic locations. Only the British government and those who follow it blindly are smart enough to actually believe that you can bring down a Boing 707 with toothpaste or lemonade.

False-flag operations

2007-06-29T12:24:00.000+01:00

I should have read this book a long time ago: Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11 by David Ray Griffin is amongst the best titles ever written on the subject. The author is a theologian with a razor-sharp analytical mind which he turns to the evidence suggesting that 9/11 was a US government-led false-flag operation. He does not write as an enemy of America, but a concerned citizen, worried that the good faith the American people place in their government has been shamelessly exploited. His treatment of the subject, however, is not emotional, as one might expect of somebody writing from a religious perspective, but rational. He begins by a brief historical summary of false-flag operations to demonstrate that governments, including democratic ones and not exempting the USA, have used engineered events to manipulate the public mood in support of ulterior war aims. He moves on to show that in doing so the US government and secret services did not, in the past, shy away from hurting their own allies and their populations in the process, nor did they indeed shirk from contemplating to bring about a disaster on their own soil. Much of the recently declassified CIA documents corroborate Griffin's account.

Having evidenced that the US government was capable of such a monstrous act, Griffin analyses the evidence that has come to light about 9/11 to whether there has been a cover up and whether the official account of events could possibly be true. His conclusion is unequivocal: "The evidence suggests very strongly that it was a false-flag operation orchestrated by domestic terrorists." He discounts the possibility that foreign terrorists would have had the necessary access, nor would they have ensured a course of events which ultimately favoured only played into the hands of the government. Griffin knows that this truth is uncomfortable: "The implications are indeed disturbing", he says, "...so disturbing to the American psyche, the American form of government, and global stability, that [many people believe] it is better to pretend to believe the official version." However, he argues, "Far more devastating to the American psyche, the American form of government, and the world as a whole will be the continued rule of those who brought us 9/11".

After the first part of the book thoroughly destroys any remnant of credibility in the official version of 9/11, it concludes with proving US government culpability since "Bush-Cheney administration, and only it, had both the means and the opportunity to bring about the attacks of 9/11". Part two of the book shifts the focus from an examination of the facts as if in a court of law to a Christian critique of 9/11 and American Imperialism or Pax Americana. After describing the agenda of the want-to-be rulers of the world, viewed by themselves as benign and beneficial appeasement, he compares this American Empire to the Roman Empire it often is said to have been modelled on and which also mercilessly subjected its vassal colonies through military might and terror.

"Christians in America today have two reasons to know something about the Roman Empire", he says. Firstly, it helps the understanding of what America has become and really is. Secondly, it was during the heyday of the Roman Empire that Christianity rose and became what it is today. Griffin sees the gospel essentially as containing an anti-imperial message and considers the later support of empire by the Christian Church as a deviation from it. In his understanding the belief that God would bring about His Kingdom unilaterally gradually replaced the emphasis on the need to work for justice in order to bring about Divine blessing. To explain this shift delves deep into the theology of trying to explain the Divine and the Demonic. As a Muslim I obviously do not share the author's "process theology", but it makes interesting reading nonetheless, and whilst readers less familiar with religious matters may find it quite difficult to understand, it establishes the writer as an honest seeker of the truth whose characterisation of America as a demonic empire has not been reached without proper thought.

It is because of this demonic and evil nature of the proponents of the Pax Americana that they cannot perceive the objections of others to their ideal of world hegemony. A recent example of this doctrine of "benign empire" exporting values like democracy rather than imposing direct rule and stealing other people's wealth came only today in George Bush's incredible statement that in spite of all the devastating violence Iraq might one day turn out as successful as Israel - blinded to the fact that Israel has dominated world events as a key problem and obstacle to peace for over half a century.

Griffin's book is not only an analysis but also "A call to reflection and action". He proposes that irrespective of one's faith background that there are universal morals, which Christians should promote, e.g. "Don't murder other people; don't cause other people to starve; don't steal other people's natural resources, such as their land, water , and oil; don't deprive others of their basic freedoms; don't cause others needless pain; don't terrorize other people; don't rape other people; don't humiliate other people". Clearly, those values are not espoused by American imperial policy, and Griffin gives some examples of foreign policy to illustrate that the American Empire is, therefore, anything but a force for good, followed by a catalogue of suggestions about the discussions Christians should have in their congregations and the actions they should take to re-establish a moral prerogative and wrestle power back from a government which had deceived them.

The book, published last year by Westminster John Knox Press, is a great eye-opener for people who placed too much trust into their politicians' claims of defending Christian values in the face of Islamic terrorism. Which brings me to another likely false-flag operation: Isn't the find of a car bomb in central London the day after the new cabinet was announced just a little bit too convenient to help focus the new British prime minister's mind on the "serious and ongoing threat"? Expect renewed calls for the strengthening of anti-terrorism legislation - or anti-tourism legislation, as I tend to call it, since it stops people from wanting to fly in and out of Britain.

Hitchens is not smart

2007-06-18T10:14:00.000+01:00

I've listend to Hitchens on the radio promoting - or mumbling to promote - his new book "God is not Great", a fairly uninspiring attack against all things religious with the most vicious venom spewn in the direction of Islam. After Richard Dawkin's attempt to ditch religion in "The God Delusion", which was also given plenty of airtime, the secularists seem to be really on the advance - or are they?

There is a noticeable unease amongst those defenders of secularism compelling them to write about the subject. The very fact that they see the need to go on the offensive indicates that they are beginning to lose ground, and their attacks are, consequently, becoming more and more fanatical. If religion was a relic of the past, they would not need to convince us that it does not matter.

Hitchen, also an ardent supporter of the war in Iraq, is not so much worried about religious traditions and ritual, after all he admits to wanting a passover ceremony for his little daughter in spite of his Jewish wife not being too fuzzed about it. What worries him is that people should take religion seriously, believe in Divine revelation and be guided by it in their daily lives and politics. Islam is his greatest fear because Muslims have refused to have their religion emasculated by a foul compromise with secular overloards.

Just as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are turning out to be as disastrous and untenable as many an imperialist war before, the secular fundamentalists are beginning to lose the intellectual argument. A fish out of water will flap violently, but it will soon be snuffed out. The American empire is past its decadent stage and disintegrating fast even without having been attacked by any formidable enemy from the outside. Instead they had to create one in al-Qaedah. Meanwhile Russia and China sit on the sidelines watching the erstwhile giant fall and bleed to death, overstretched in too many military adventures far afield.

The need to find fault with religion is an admission of failure by the secular protagonists. Every now and then they are trying to poke a little to get a reaction in order to demonstrate the irrationality and violent nature of their enemy, be it the publication of offensive cartoons in Denmark or knighting Salman Rushdie for having written Satanic Verses, a book described by the late author Roald Dahl as unreadable, which had been prefinanced in order to begin the last crusade against Islam and religion which later culiminated in the war on terror. The mechanism of this kind of subversion is described very well in the response written by the leader of the Islamic Party of Britain at the time in his book "Satanic Voices Ancient and Modern", a book as poignant today as it was then. At the time, Muslims over-reacted and fell into the trap. Now, they seem to have matured sufficiently to sit back and watch the secularists burn themselves out.

Hitchens' and Dawkin's ramblings are the last attempt of the advocates of a failed social experiment to survive whilst more and more people are turning away from the wishy-washy uncertainties of dogmatic liberalism to find fulfilment in religious belief and devotion. Hitchens is not smart, and God is indeed great!

Fes festival of sacred music

2007-06-08T19:40:00.000+01:00

Under the motto "Essence of Time, Spirit of place" the 13th Fes Festival of Sacred Music has just drawn to a close, featuring a whole range of spiritual musical performance from the Whirling Dervishes to Sephardic Songs of Spain, from Pakistani Quawwalis to Gospel singers from London. For a week the medieval old town of Fes was alive with an afternoon concert at the Batha Museum and an outdoor evening concert at the splendid Bab Makina palace courtyard every day, plus free taster sessions for the general public by the same artists, and the attendants were as varied as the performers. The musical programme was complemented with lectures about contemporary issues. Without presumption, the city of Fes, the ancient spiritual capital of Morocco, taught the world a lesson about the truth of Islam, available to anyone willing to listen or see.

There are those who claim that music has no place in Islam. There are others who want to make us believe that giving the devotional expression of religions other than Islam a platform somehow diminishes Islam. The truth is that fanaticism is a sign of repressed doubt and that true Islam is grounded strongly enough in its own tradition in order to be tolerant to the traditions of others. Only when Islam is a mere theory in the heads of holier-than-thou hotheads with little knowledge and totally divorced from the culture of its people will it feel threatened. Only when the deeper meaning of Islam enters the hearts of people and finds expression in their literature, poetry, music and general culture will it survice and leave a lasting legacy.

In Fes, a new town has sprung up alongside the old Medina, and it has recently been transformed by the creation of palm tree boulevards with water fountains and gardens into a location rivalling California for sheer beauty. But the attraction of modern Fes lies not in its latest development projects. It is found in the absence of bigotry. In the modern Morocco under the rule of the new King Mohammed VI modernisation is not at logger-heads with tradition but both are at ease with each other. Without wanting to gloss over problems the Moroccon society, like any other, has, the acceptance of change without abandoning roots is an important accomplishment. Morocco's King was certainly right when he pointed out in his speech opening the festival season that without the modern the sacred would wither and without the sacred modernity would be soul-less. A brief look around the Muslim world as well as the Western world throws up endless examples of both unfortunate situations.

In the interest of the greater good and to saveguard humanity Muslims need to re-establish their role of leading a spiritual revival, and this can never be accomplished by petty-minded dogma. The only way to invite others to cherish what Islam has to offer is by welcoming them. A visit to Fes airport at the start and the end of the festival could have proved the point. Tourists arrived inappropriately dressed for a Muslim country in revealing Western attire and departed adorned with henna, long robes and scarves around their necks. Something of the spirit of the place had most certainly rubbed off on them and maybe, for a while, they tasted the essence of time.

Tax freedom day

2007-06-01T10:08:00.000+01:00

Today should be a public holiday. We should celebrate our partial freedom (or mourn our partial enslavement). Today (1 June) is tax freedom day in the UK, the day when we stop working to fill the coffers of government through taxation and begin working for our own benefit. The concept of Tax Freedom Day was developed and copyrighted in 1948 by Florida businessman Dallas Hostetler, who calculated it each year for the next two decades. He then transferred the copyright to the Tax Foundation who has calculated Tax Freedom Day for the United States ever since, using it as a tool for illustrating the proportion of national income diverted to fund the annual cost of government programs.

In the UK the Adam Smith Institute does the same since 1991 and established June 1 as tax freedom day for 2007, observing that the day is arriving later and later over successive years with the tax burden ever increasing through both direct taxes and stealth taxes. In some countries of Western Europe the situation is even worse. Germans work another extra month for the tax man before filling their own pockets, and in Sweden it is another two months until August, meaning the government takes more than Swedish workers receive themselves every year.

Government, once intended to be the servant of the people, has become their master. In turn, they serve the Mammon, or the financial industry, and are inventing every more subtle ways of squeezing a little more out of the working population in order to pay the interest on the national debt. This debt is totally unnecessary if the treasury created the nation's money supply instead of borrowing it from banks who, in turn, create it out of thin air.

The national debt is, of course, not the only yoke placed on hard working people. In addition, there is mortgate debt and consumer debt, extending the enslavement of the individual well beyond the tax freedom day marker. Added all together, we keep very littel of our hard earned money, if anything at all. Many people have to borrow in order to pay their taxes, demonstrating just how unsustainable the system heralded as market economy has become.

For travel outside Europe, use cash not cards

2007-05-23T11:48:00.000+01:00

Banks want to get us hooked on the cashless society, and in Europe cash transactions are by now the exception, not the norm. This allows banks to create infinite amounts of credit out of thin air and charge for the privilege. However, once you step outside Europe you're likely to pay heavily for the convenience of plastic.

Here are two examples within a single week spent in Morocco, a fast developing economy with a building boom but serious lack of any concept of quality control. Firstly, I tried to pay by credit card at a supermarket, but after accepting the pin number the transaction was declined. Unless I had sufficient cash in my pocket, I would have had to leave the shopping card and its contents behind. But this was not the end of the story: although declined, the amount subsequently showed up as having nonetheless been debited to the card account. Going back to the shop to resolve the matter is not always an option, and opening a disputed transaction procedure with the card-issuing bank in Europe is a protracted process taking up to three months (with a potentially uncertain outcome). Until then, it means having to pay twice for the same goods.

Having spent all my cash I used a bank debit card to withdraw some more from a cash dispenser in the wall outside a branch of "Societe Generale Marocaine de Banques". The English language menu messages of these machines are amusing to say the least, like "Your transaction is under treatment" or "do you want a ticket?". I didn't want a parking ticket, for sure, but I would have appreciated a receipt for my transaction. The option is fanciful, however, I am yet to encounter a cash machine issuing receipts. Unfortunately the amusement soon stopped as the machine in question did not have notes either. It simply said "thanks you" (yes, with an s added) and spit out my card. As a precautionary measure I went inside the bank to enquire, and the man in charge said: "we know there's no money in it" and reassured me not to worry as my card would not be charged.

My card did get charged, however, and another two visits to the bank trying to resolve the matter proved futile. Whenever there is a problem, nobody wants to take responsibility and everybody suddenly acts very busy. Whether the disputed transaction process will produce any positive outcome is questionable, since no receipts exist. All I could do was withdraw cash from a different machine which, luckily, did have notes. For future travels it might be advisable to travel with stacks of notes or cash travellers cheques at a bank and throw away the plastic - let's hope it's biodegradable!

UN-democratic?

2007-05-12T21:30:00.000+01:00

"We're very disappointed in the election of Zimbabwe as chair," said the U.S. representative to the commission Dan Reifsnyder, deputy assistant secretary for environment and science at the State Department.

"We really think it calls into question the credibility of this organization to have a representative from a country that has decimated its agriculture, that used to be the breadbasket of Africa and can't now feed itself," Reifsnyder said.

He was joined by several European countries who criticised the outcome of the vote forced by Germany which did not go as expected in spite of strong British lobbying efforts.

As usual there's been a lot of talk about how this vote discredited the United Nations. Now I don't exactly think that Zimbabwe in the chair will move the agenda of the commission on sustainable development forward a great deal, but the vote is nonetheless a victory for democracy - not because of the result but because of the principled objection by those supporting Zimbabwe's nomination to the arrogant US-UK-Europe assumption that just because they divided the world amongst themselves after the 2nd world war and gave themselves seats on the security council and veto rights, the countries of the world want to be constantly dictated to by a minority of governments whose withdrawal from colonialism was only symbolic. Britain, complaining of the sad state of Zimbabwe's economy, is just as responsible for this outcome as the Harare government.

The nomination of Francis Nhema, Zimbabwe's minister of environment and tourism, is an open challenge to the European travel ban imposed on members of Mugabe's administration. For Western nations it has almost become a habit to impose economic and other sanctions each time they are unhappy with the outcome of democratic elections around the world, for example the Hamas majority in the Palestinian Authority. Likewise, the United States and Britain were only interested in international legitimacy through the UN provided it rubber-stamped their illegal invastion plans in Iraq. Democracy is a hollow word even within Western societies. The UK population, just having finally got rid of its most unpopular prime minister, is going to get another equally unpopular prime minister without having the slightest say in the matter.

If world politics were not so badly skewed in favour of imperialism, the world would probably be a better place. And instead of pointing the finger at Zimbabwe's poverty, maybe human suffering could be alleviated once a handful of nations stop (or are stopped from) appropriating more than their fair share of the world's resources.

Blair's ten patronising years

2007-05-01T11:04:00.000+01:00

At last Britons will be given the brief triumph they've long been waiting for: to see their most unpopular prime minister in post war history (though some would call it a tie with Margaret Thatcher) leave office. Having sacrificed the interests of the country in order to achieve his personal milestone of ten years in office, Tony Blair is finally going to announce the date of his departure which will be greeted with more than a few cheers.

Shortly after Blair came to power he commented that in government Labour had to remember that they were not masters but servants of the people and that what the electorate gave it could also take away. Hopefully those words will come to haunt him again in the upcoming local elections to make his long awaited announcement of resignation an even greater humiliation. It is probably a little early for an obituary, but I doubt that Tony Blair will ever play any meaningful role in politics after this, not even in the upper house.

Of course, it would be unfair to lay the wilful destruction of Britain at the hands of an individual, but Blair - a career polician through and through or what less polite folks would call an intellectual prostitute - did allow his premiership to be used by those dictating his policies to fatally wound a country in the misguided belief it could rise once more to become an imperial power. It stood shoulder to shoulder with the USA in its wars of aggression, and together they will fall.

New Labour, with a sales pitch of shaking off the old socialist roots, managed to transform the UK into a through and through socialist state, also termed the Nanny state, where citizens pay high taxes with nothing in return but goverment interference in even the minutest detail of how they live their lives. No wonder that most Brits who can afford it are voting with their feet and emigrate to work or retire elsewhere in Europe or even as far away as New Zealand, whilst the British economy (or what is left of it, since it no longer has a manufacturing base nor a viable service industry) has to rely on immigrants from the new European states in the East.

The Blair government tried, and will continue to try under whoever succeeds Blair until the next general election, to set up one section of the UK against the other: "Middle England" against the "alien Muslims" within their midst. It has instigated the most vicious witch hunt against so-called Muslim terrorists, ignoring the fact that the European Commissions report on terrorism during the past year only managed to list one failed attack and one failed attempt by a group with Muslim leanings amongst the hundreds of terrorist attacks carried out on European soil by non-Muslims, with the Basque separatists in Spain leading the way. In the process of the government's defamation campaign and the intrusion into people's lives by giving the police unprecedented powers and pushing for identity cards and Big Brother style control, both sections of the traditional British populace, Middle England and the law abiding second and third generation Muslims were thoroughly put off the British enterprise and are making preparations, or at least hoping, to leave.

With illusions of grandeur Blair and his team succeeded in giving their country a death blow from which it might not recover. If it was not for the English language, the only thing of value Britain still exports, the UK would already be classified as the new sick man of Europe. Of course, Blair won't ever understand why he is no longer popular, and he will try to go round and tell people - as Thatcher did after first having sold out what England once was - that they never had it so good. Those who supported him, however, in his obsessed crusade of trying to make all the people serve the state will soon come to regret his legacy.

Order your own release from prison

2007-04-23T12:17:00.000+01:00

America is the land of the free, they say, and this proved true, if only for a couple of weeks, for young Timothy Rouse who had himself released from the Kentucky Correctional and Psychiatric Center in La Grange near Louisville where he was held pending assessment after having been charged with assault and robbery. Outsmarting his captors he had somebody send a fax to the prison from a local store, ordering his release. The fax claimed to have been issued from the supreme court, although it featured no letter head and was riddled with spelling mistakes. However, nobody picked up on the hoax, and Rouse was duly released. Probably slightly over-confident with his success and lucky escape he stayed at his mother's, where he was re-arrested two weeks later.
The story was reported both by the Seattle Times and the BBC. The Seattle Times quotes Fulton County Attorney Rick Major as saying "It's outrageous that it happened. I'm just glad nobody got hurt, because he's dangerous." But for a change, the BBC was more complete in its reporting and also quoted the prison's director, Greg Taylor, whose shoulder-shrugging response was probably too embarrassing for the Seattle Times. Checking the origin of documents was not part of the prison's routine check procedure, he explained, and as for spelling mistakes, they were quite common in court documents. Not surprising, I guess, seeing the supreme commander of the United States, George Bush, is not exactly leading by example when it comes to literacy.

Perceptions of Islam in the Christendoms

2007-04-15T14:22:00.000+01:00

"Why then do you call him a prophet and a messenger of God, who was but a voluptuary, defiled to the very core, a brigand, a profligate, a murderer and a robber? Tell me, pray, what do you mean by prophecy and by apostle? God knows you would not be able to tell had you not been taught by the Christian!" But for its greater eloquence this late Byzantine polemic by Bartholomew of Edessa differs little from today's bile spat out against the prophet Muhammad and Muslims in general by the tabloid press in support of a wider political agenda. In Norway, a little further north from Denmark, where similar polemic was recently directed in pictorial form against the prophet in series of cartoons, a Muslim historian, Dr Nasir Khan, has given us a very useful tool in understanding the mindset of the West when it comes to Muslims and their religion. His book "Perceptions of Islam in the Christendoms" is a historical survey of centuries of distorted encounters between Christians and Muslims.

Khan does not hide his own leanings, and to claim complete neutrality would imply a level of dishonesty even for a historian, but he desists from polemicising himself, quoting instead extensively from original sources. If his book causes embarrassment for Western readers it is simply because their history is embarrassing and to be reminded of it may prove painful. For example, Fulcher of Chartres gives the following eye witness account of the Crusades at the end of the 11th century: "This may seem strange to you. Our squires and footmen … split open the bellies of those they had just slain in order to extract from the intestines the gold coins which the Saracens had gulped down their loathsome throats while alive … With drawn swords our men ran through the city not sparing anyone, even those begging for mercy … They entered the houses of the citizens, seizing whatever they found in them … whoever first entered a house, whether he was rich or poor … was to occupy and own the house or palace and whatever he found in it as if it were entirely his own … in this way many poor people became very wealthy."

Khan does not sensationalise. As a serious historian he tries to offer explanations for how the negative stereotypes of the other came about, including probing into the social and economic causes. He starts his survey by giving a background to the development of early Christianity and its numerous, competing, sects. When Islam started to spread as a new faith from Arabia, Christians mainly viewed it as just another heresy from the officially accepted dogma, like Gnosticism, Manichaeism, or Nestorianism. Until Islam became viewed as more of a serious political threat their efforts against their own co-religionists with differing interpretations of what it meant to be Christian were much more pronounced than those aimed at Islam of which they knew little. However, Islam did not simply collapse and go away as predicted, and with taking Constantinople and pushing Christendom out of much of its previous territory became a serious contender. It was at this time, between the 12th and 14th centuries, that the misrepresentative image of Islam was created which still dominates the European psyche today. At the same time, due to the status afforded to Christians in the Qur'an as people of the book, the Ottoman rulers tolerated the practice of Christianity amongst themselves to a degree that at times emboldened their Christian subjects to openly challenge them and test the waters.

A similar arrogance was displayed in the 9th century by the movement of the martyrs of Cordoba who purposefully tried to blaspheme against the prophet in order to be punished and put to death. Their aim in instigating conflict arose from the deep worry that many Christians were drawn to Islam and its culture and sciences in spite of the bigoted image their church elders painted of it. Paul Alvarus, for example, observes at the time: "My fellow Christians delight in the poems and romances of the Arabs; they study the works of Mohammedan theologians and philosophers, not in order to refute them, but to acquire a correct and elegant Arabic style. Where today can a layman be found who reads the Latin Commentaries on Holy Scriptures? Who is there that studies the Gospels, the Prophets, and the Apostles?" Again, this observation of more than a thousand years ago has surprisingly modern undertones in the fear of losing one's own heritage to a more attractive, albeit misguided, culture.

Khan quotes Grunebaum summing up the Christian approach as follows: "When the Christian looked upon Islam, his primary task was not to study this phenomenon of an alien faith that seemed both akin to and apart from his own but rather to explain the unexplainable, to wit, the artful machinations by which Mohammed had won over his people to the acceptance of his absurd confabulations. There is always, even in the most aggressive and contemptuous discussions of Islam, an element of apologetic self-defence in the utterances of the Christian writers, almost a touch of the propaganda for the home front. It is as if only the most derogatory presentation of the despicable but powerful enemy could allay the suspicion that his case be stronger than it was wise to admit." And he cites Southern describing their wilful ignorance of the religion of Islam: "They were ignorant of Islam, not because they were far removed from it like the Carolingian scholars, but for the contrary reason that they were in the middle of it. If they saw and understood little of what went on round them, and if they knew nothing of Islam as a religion, it was because they wished to know nothing … They were fleeing from Islam: it is not likely that they would turn to Islam to understand what they were fleeing from."

Whilst criticising Islam for alleged loose sexual morals European capitals were awash with debauchery; whilst attacking Islam for its alleged warlike nature in contradiction to the peaceful teachings of Jesus, Christian rulers made ready for war against Islam. The reconquista was the beginning of the Christian counter attack. The conquering Normans took Sicily and Malta back from the Muslims and the Spanish Catholics prepared for pushing the Muslims out of the Iberian peninsula. Meanwhile there were internal conflicts both in Europe and in the Muslim world. The Seljuk Turks pushed from the East into Byzantine and in their advance made inroads into the Christian Levante, eventually capturing Jerusalem. The Berbers of North Africa kept the Spanish attempts in check for some two centuries, but eventually had to recede back to Africa due to internal problems of dissension. When the Spaniards took full control under Isabella they meted out merciless retribution to the infidels, the Jews and the Muslims. Those who escaped the decimation fled to North Africa and Turkey, which is how the famous Jewish city of Thessalonica became established within the Ottoman realm. The papacy in Rome started to press for the crusades with the purported objective of recapturing Jerusalem, but once stripped of the propagandistic justification, the real aims were mainly economic and political. When the first wave of Crusaders moved eastwards they were just as good at plundering the towns and villages of their own co-religionist allies as they were at destroying Muslim towns and villages in their path. Maybe today, we would call it "friendly fire". The cruelty and barbarism of the crusaders contributed to a shift in the Muslim perception of Christianity and the goodwill previously afforded to the people of the scripture started to evaporate and be replaced by an enemy image.

Whilst the crusades proved highly profitable for the West, enriching cities like Venice, Paris and Turin, and provided the desired achievement of the conquest of Jerusalem, they remained very much a side show for the realm of Islam. The biggest threat to its existence came from the East in the form of the Mongol invasion begun under Genghis Khan. Initially they had marched through the Caucasus and southern Russia in their conquest of the world in which "all cities must be razed so that the world may once again become a great steppe in which Mongol mothers will suckle free and happy children." They would have overrun Western Europe in the 13th century had it not been for the fact that Batu Khan, who had led the attack on Hungary, had to hurry back upon the news of the death of his uncle Ogodai (Ghengi's Khan's son) in order to qualify as a potential successor. Europe was spared and the Middle East lay in the uninterrupted path of advance of the Mongols instead. The crusaders saw this as a divine sign and even tried to make alliances with the Mongols, but since they made such offers preconditional on their conversion to Christianity, they had limited effects. In the end the Mongols were checked by the Mamluks in Egypt and prevented the eradication of Islam, and over time the erstwhile enemy was converted and provided strength to the recovering Islamic caliphate.

With the failure of the crusades and the early beginnings of the Renaissances the Western hopes of conquering Islam gave way to a more conciliatory approach in the hope of converting Muslims to the gospel, placing emphasis, however, less on Church doctrine and scripture and relying more on philosophical arguments. Roger Bacon and St Thomas Aquinas, for example, represent this new methodology. For the centuries to come the Christian dominions remains fearful of the Turkish threat, and when Luther and Calvin led the revolt against Papal authority, they did, nonetheless inherit the same venomous antipathy for Islam. With the new intellectual freedoms gained in the reformation, however, Arabic learning also became popular in the West, and the early Western universities as well as the Western philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries seriously engaged with Arabic literature and sciences. Gradually the image of Islam became a little more complete and less distorted. The respite, however, was short-lived, since European expansionism once more opted for the military solution during the period of imperialism and colonialism justified polemically by social Darwinism calling for the need to convert and civilise the savages of conquered lands. Missionary activity flourished in this political climate.

After two savage world wars, powered by Europe's industrial killing machine and unprecedented in human cost, the imperialist project faltered and former colonies were given a level of independence, replacing direct with indirect rule. Khan ends his book on a positive note, pointing to serious attempts by Church and secular establishments during the 20th century to re-engage with Islam on the basis of mutual understanding. When looked at a year after the publication of the book, however, it seems that this interlude was as short-lived as previous ones, and power politics and economics once again dominate the relationships between the post-Christian and Islamic civilisations. In their rhetoric the new crusaders in the White House and their allies in Europe and Australia draw on the same old worn clichés of the past. Nasir Khan's book is an excellent resource to enlighten these confusing times by providing a historic backdrop against which they can be evaluated, and to my knowledge it is the first such attempt. It is an excellent exposition both for Muslim and non-Muslim readers and helps them in understanding both the origins of modern polemics against Islam as well as their ultimate futility.

Nasir Khan, Perceptions of Islam in the Christendoms - A Historical Survey, Oslo 2006: Solum Forlag, 487 pages.

Dr. Nasir Khan has his own blog at http://nasir-khan.blogspot.com through which he can be contacted.

Muslim hospital gown by DCS

2007-04-04T12:26:00.000+01:00

Hospitalisation may be necessary, but it is rarely pleasant. First priority is the patients health and safety, followed by general wellbeing. Other aspects often take second place, although it is well established that if a patient feels at ease it will aid recovery. To help a patient feel at ease cultural sensitivities must be taken into account. It is important for patients to be able to communicate, to have the support of visiting family and friends, and to have their personal beliefs and feelings respected. A key concern for many, especially female, patients on mixed hospital wards is their privacy and maintaining their decency. For Muslim lady patients this issue is magnified by a different perception of the meaning of decency vis-à-vis the opposite sex.

A company founded by Fatima Ba-Alawi in 2005 is now addressing this need. DCS Designs Ltd. (DCS stands for Dignity, Comfort & Safety) originally produced the DCS patient gown, a new and innovative patient gown that offers hospital patients all the comfort they need, reduce risk of injury by needles and maintain their privacy and dignity during their hospital stay. The design provides easy access to the patient’s body for examination without stripping the patient through different access areas for maximum comfort and minimum stress and pain. Furthermore, the design also makes it easy for the gown to be changed without the removal of any medical devises that may be attached to the patient, hence maintaining patient dignity while minimizing risk of injury as well as infection control. In addition to that, the DCS Patient Gown is designed in such a way that it provides more coverage at the rear of the gown, unlike the conventional gowns where patients have their bottoms exposed.

A comparison study between the DCS Patient Gown and a standard patient gown has been carried out and found that if a patient has drips attached and needs his/her gown changing, it would take between 5 - 7 minutes to change the gown adding to the pain and risk of syringe injury, while it would take only between 1 - 3 minutes if the patient is wearing a DCS gown, leaving the patient pain-free, stress-free and risk-free.

Now the company has developed and launched the "DCS Faith Gown" specifically designed for Muslim women patients.

DCS Faith Gown provides over-all coverage of the body. It provides maximum comfort & dignity for the patient. It offers full body length, long sleeves and a detachable head scarf, which is easy to wear one piece. The head scarf is detachable when required during patient examination or during surgery. The gown has a V neck line, which promotes comfort & ease of manoeuvrability for when a patient is sitting up.

The gown has fastening means along the whole upper sleeve line, which provides easy and quick access for examination. This feature also makes it possible to change the gown without exposing the patient, hence promote dignity & maintain privacy.

There is an examination window in the upper body, which provides easy access to the torso for examination as well as access for surgical procedures while maintaining patient privacy and saving time.

This is a most valuable contribution to make female Muslim patients feel more at ease during hospitalisation, and hospital staff and managers in areas with a sizeable Muslim presence should most certainly invest in this excellent product.

Charging and begging cultures

2007-03-23T13:18:00.000Z

Money talks, and in money terms it is possible to look at the divide between West and East as a difference of the charging and the begging culture. It does not matter where you go in the global village, people will always be after your money. But the way they extract payment from you differs greatly. In the West they will exploit your needs and charge or tax you every step of the way. In the East they will exploit your compassion and pester you until you part with some cash.

The divide goes deep and shapes attitudes. In the East there is a service culture, which is why people from the West will go on holiday to Asia or Africa. People are trying to be overtly helpful in order to be tipped. In the West, on the other hand, people won't bother with being too helpful, since you are going to pay anyway, and after-sales customer service, unless separately paid for, has completely gone out of fashion.

Western advertising is all about creating demand. "Low cost" carriers like Ryanair, for example, will try and lure you to fly to exotic locations for under ten pounds. Once you are hooked they will add airport taxes, fuel surcharge, luggage surcharge, payment surcharge (indeed: you are charged for making payment by credit or debit card which are the only payment options on offer), and your cheap trip ends up costing more like a hundred pounds. If you end up getting thirsty or hungry enroute, you will have to fork out some extra money again. If you complain about delays or bad service, on the other hand, you just about get an acknowledgment letter.

Once you arrive, however, there is a total sea change: suddenly everybody is offering their helpful services free of charge in the hope that you will feel obliged to pay them later. If you don't, they know how to make you feel bad about it. How could you possibly take advantage of their generosity without matching it with your own. Outside the mosques, at congregational prayer times, vendors and beggars will gather, not to pray but in the hope that those who did will part with some spare change after having just begged God to grant their prayers. In a way, this is also market forces at work: large gatherings attract those who want to sell their wares or appeal to your kindness.

Human nature on the whole does not differ too much wherever you go. The ways it expresses itself, however, do. Many tourists to so-called developing countries stay in the cocoon of Western hotels and restaurants, fearing too close a contact with the local populace who might "rob" them. This same fear, too, keeps them willing victims of their own governments and large corporations who extract ever larger tax contributions and charges from them. When it comes down to having a choice it is probably wiser to prefer the beggar over the charger. Persistent as a beggar might be, it is much easier to ignore him than to ignore, for example, the taxman, and if inclined to be generous, the beggar is usually also happy with taking a lot less of your hard earned money.

Zimbabwe - divide and fool

2007-03-15T11:06:00.000Z

The US, Europe, the UK, and the UN all issued all issued statements deploring the assault upon the Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai whilst in custody, and suddenly Zimbabwe is given centre stage in the media as the number one rogue state run by a tin pot dictator. In the West, Mugabe is more disliked for disappropriating white farmers than for the economic hardship his people have to endure. Far be it from me to condone police brutality, but I detest the moral high ground so readily assumed by Western politicians calling upon the African Union to intervene urgently as if this was the biggest issue going on that large continent, dwarfing the US orchestrated invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian troops, for example.

After meeting the chairman of the African Union, Ghanaian president John Kufuor, British prime minister Tony Blair offered the platitudes that the Zimbabwean people "should be able to express their political views without harrassment or intimidation or violence", adding that what was happening was "truly tragic". He surely must live in cloud cuckoo land. Unbiased observers might point to the fact that the UK's own human rights record is anything but impressive, considering that the UK found it necessary to derogate from its obligations under article 5 of the European Community's Human Rights Act in order to hold so-called terror suspects indefinitely without trial.

Nor is police brutality against people in custody an African thing. In 2003 a British Muslim, Babar Ahmad, was arrested and later released without charge. He emerged from the police station with more than 50 injuries to his body. In typical Mugabe style an internal police misconduct tribunal found that the officers had acted impeccably, adding: "We are satisfied that there is no case to answer. In fact, the officer acted professionally and with great bravery. We support his actions: he should be commended and not castigated." The EU did not mind and the US added insult to injury by getting Babar Ahmad re-arrested on an extradition warrant. The African Union should have demanded that the EU urgently intervene in this tragic case. They should also have asked for sanctions following the brutal police assassination of innocent Brazilian Chales de Menezes on the London Underground.

The sun has long set on the British Empire, but the Anglo-American establishment continues to act as if they can make the rules and break them at will. Divide and rule may have become more illusive these days, but divide and fool is alive and kicking, particularly in the mass media who thrive in this age of shameless impudence. For the war-mongering moralists in Western governments the beating of an African opposition spokesman is a global outrage whereas the torture and sexual intimidation at Abu Ghraib prison remains merely an operational anomality.

The British people are continually fed a stale diet of two-party politics, only to find both "opposing" parties to unite when it comes to the crunch. To head of a backbench rebellion amongst its own supporters the governing Labour party relied on the opposition Conservative Party to approve a renewal of the Trident nuclear submarine system at the same time as they are lecturing other countries on nuclear disarmament. Whilst trying to make their own people feel guilty every day of their lives with the new mantra of "you're leaving too large a carbon foot print behind", they chastise Iran for wanting to develop peaceful nuclear power, arguing that a country with large oil reserves like Iran does not need nuclear energy for peaceful reasons.

For now, everybody outside the Anglo-American world (maybe with the exception of China) remains apologetic whenever an accusation of wrong-doing is levelled at a lesser country belonging to the third world. Maybe it is because their elites were educated in the West. Meanwhile the Western powers have already lost both the intellectual and moral arguments. Will the world be fooled much longer by double standards passed off as political finesse, or has the time finally come to turn the tables?

Official: Israel is THE pariah state

2007-03-06T09:51:00.000Z

A recent GlobeScan survey conducted for the BBC World Service confirms what most people know but governments want to deny: Israel is an unpopular state whose role is seen as anything but benign in world opinion. The poll rates countries as to whether there influence in the world is considered to be mainly positive or negative, and the results show Israel to be perceived the least positive and the most negative influence. Even Iran did slightly better in the perception of people around the world.

These results have to be viewed against the background of relentless negative propaganda against Iran whereas Israel is usually perceived in the dominant mass media as a beleagured democracy of victimised people fighting for survival in a despareate struggle against Arab and Islamic terrorism. So whilst many people in the world may have been hoodwinked into accepting the official line on Iran, they have not been fooled into believing the myth of Israel as the innocent home for persecuted Jews.

China, by the way, is seen as more positive than the USA, and the latter is perceived as more negative than Russia. It seems the people of the world do not share the American dream, but their clear vote against the role Israel is playing is most telling. Short of accusing the pollsters of anti-semitism in the design of their research methods, as the Israeli paper Haaretz does, Israel and its supporters have an evident image problem in spite of privileged access to the media. No doubt, in their typical arrogance they will respond by claiming that the world's inhabitants will need to be better educated.

This would make the Americans the best educated nation on earth: the Israeli national news service Arutz Sheva tells us that unlike other nations, the sympathies of Americans are still solidly with Israel. Who would have guessed!

Genocide politics

2007-02-27T12:50:00.000Z

As often happens, two contradictory stories hit the news simultaneously, in this case the clearing of Serbia of "direct responsibility" for genocide against Bosnians by the International Court of Justice in De Hague, and the filing of details of war crimes in Darfur by the chief prosecutor before the International Criminal Court, also in De Hague. Nobody argues that genocide is morally wrong or that war crimes should go unpunished. It is immediately obvious, however, that there is a serious flaw in how we deal with these issues as a society. Courts are not neutral institutions fully independent from the political realities of the environment in which they operate. The International Court of Justice is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. The United Nations are controlled by the Security Council giving undue influence to a small number of dominant states of the majority of members in the General Assembly (leaving aside the even less palatable fact that the land on which its administrative offices are established was donated by the Rockefeller Family). For the court to find that Serbia was responsible for the horrible crimes committed during the Bosnian conflict and that reparations were to be paid would set a dangerous precedent under which reparations might subsequently also be sought by the Palestinians or Lebanese against the State of Israel or by Iraqis and Afghans against the US and UK. To ignore the evidence of a genocide, on the other hand, would give a green light to any group of people furthering their political agenda through the use of terror.

As courts frequently do, the International Court of Justice came up with a compromise. They declared that the massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica (under the "watchful" eyes of UN observers, by the way) was genocide, but that Serbia was not directly responsible as a state. They found that Serbia didn't do enough to stop genocide from happening, but found no evidence that they directly ordered the crime. The countries dominating the UN may have saved their own skin by this ruling, but it compounds an already complex issue even further. Based on this judgment it appears a waste of time to continue gathering evidence against Sudan for the atrocities committed in Darfur. What point is there in spending large sums of money and time to establish what everybody knows anyway, that crimes were committed? It will be equally impossible to prove that the Sudan government directly ordered the action and thus it cannot be held directly responsible. And will Israel now repay all the money it received in reparations to Germany? After all, it is also an established historic fact that not a single piece of evidence exists that Hitler or the government of the Reich directly ordered or authorised the extermination of Jews. By way of logical deduction, the judgment in favour of Serbia means that Germany, too, should now be exonerated and no longer held responsible.