Britannia Radio

December 28, 2009

‘Londonistan’ is still the weakest link

Daily Mail, 28 December 2009

So here we go again. Another international Islamic terrorist plot — and yet another British connection.

The attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up an American plane was averted only by luck and courage.

The incident obviously raises alarming questions about gross lapses in security. In particular, how did Abdulmutallab obtain a U.S. visa when he had been on an American watch-list of people with known terrorist connections?

But the deeper and more urgent issue for Britain concerns the key role this country has once again played in a Muslim’s trajectory to radicalisation and terror. Abdulmutallab, who claims to have been working for Al Qaeda, was an engineering student at prestigious University College London for three years until 2008.

He was actually refused an entry visa to Britain earlier this year, but only because the institution at which he said he wanted to study turned out to be non-existent.

How, people might well ask, could such a radical have been educated in Britain without the authorities jumping on him? Did MI5 know anything about him - especially since he was on a U.S. terrorism watch-list for two years?

As yet, we still don’t know much about this man’s history. It appears he became a religiously extreme Muslim at a school in Togo, but was further radicalised while studying in London before apparently going to Yemen and linking to Al Qaeda.

Who can be surprised? After all, this is ‘ Londonistan’ — the contemptuous term coined by the French security service back in the Nineties as they watched Britain become the central hub of Islamic terrorism in Europe.

Radicals flocked to the UK, attracted by Britain’s toxic combination of criminally lax immigration controls, generous health, education and welfare benefits and the ability to perpetuate their views through the British veneration of the principle of free speech.

Despite 9/11, the 2005 London Tube and bus attacks and the dozens of other Islamist plots uncovered in Britain, the astounding fact is that Islamic extremist networks are stillallowed to flourish in Britain, largely through the obsession of its governing class with multiculturalism and ‘human rights’.

As a result, Britain remains — to its eternal shame — the biggest hub of Islamic radicalisation outside the Arab and Muslim world.

Extremists are still slipping into the country. The courts are stillrefusing to deport terrorists in order to protect their ‘human rights’ abroad.

London boasts the shameful reputation of the world’s premier money-laundry for terrorism, which shelters behind a label of ‘charity’ that the authorities choose not to challenge.

Not only is no action taken against extremist mosques and madrassas, but many British universities have been turned into terrorism recruitment centres.

More than four years ago, the intelligence expert Professor Anthony Glees listed 24 British universities which he said had been infiltrated by militant jihadists.

Indeed, the long list of Islamic terrorists who were educated at universities in Britain should in itself have raised concerns about radical Islam on campus. Yet Professor Glees was instead undermined by university authorities determined to bury their heads in the sand.

Last year, a poll by the Centre for Social Cohesion found — horrifyingly — that almost one in every three Muslim students in the UK said that killing in the name of religion was justified, with one third also in favour of a worldwide Islamic caliphate, or empire, based on Islamic sharia law.

The Centre also noted on campus the presence of extreme Islamist books in some prayer rooms, appearances by militant Islamist speakers, and links between extreme Islamists and the student Islamic Societies.

Yet the government refuses to outlaw Hizb ut-Tahrir, one of the key groups that is radicalising students on campus by infiltrating and taking over these student societies and preaching its subversive message of Islamising the free world.

But it’s not just in the universities that Britain seems unable to recognise, let alone deal with, highly manipulative Muslim extremists. Astonishingly, similarly radical speakers are regularly invited into the very heart of the defence establishment, on courses teaching intelligence officials as well as soldiers and police officers about radical Islam.

The Government is funnelling money into extremist Islamist groups, and even employs Islamist radicals within government as advisers on — wait for it — ‘combating Islamic extremism’.

All in all, Britain’s defences against radical Islamism now resemble nothing so much as one giant hen-house over which a pack of ravenous foxes has been placed in charge.

The root cause of this madness is that British ministers and officials refuse to accept that what they are facing is religious fanaticism. They insist that Islamic extremism and terrorism have got nothing to do with Islam but are rather a ‘perversion’ of Islam. And they believe that the antidote to this is ‘authentic’ Islam — which they then use taxpayers’ money to promote.

But what they fail to grasp is that ‘authentic’ Islam is currently dominated by a deeply politicised interpretation which promotes holy war to conquer ‘infidels’ and insufficiently pious Muslims.

And although many such Muslims abhor this and have nothing to do with violence or extremism, it is an interpretation backed up by Islamic theology and history and currently supported by the major religious authorities in the Islamic world.

That is what the government often ends up inadvertently funding — with catastrophic results. For when exposed to this, even many hitherto secular Muslims become radicalised.

So it is hardly surprising if, when Abdulmutallab came to Britain, the country’s ostrich-like denial of Islamic fanaticism helped turn him from a religious extremist into a terrorist.

If Britain is ever to get on top of its terrorism problem, it has properly to acknowledge and tackle this radicalisation process. That means giving no quarter to this politicised interpretation of Islam.

And that means junking its current idiotic definition of an ‘extremist’ as merely someone who is committed to violence. It must outlaw instead the religious fanaticism that also threatens the British way of life.

Certainly, it is important not to demonise those British Muslims who pose no threat to this society.

So the Government should say that Muslims are welcome to live here on exactly the same basis as all other religious minorities - that they accept the principle of one law for all, and do nothing to threaten or undermine the prevailing culture.

That means an end to the increasing toleration of Islamic sharia law as the effective jurisdiction in Muslim areas, which so badly threatens in particular the safety and well-being of women, homosexuals and converts from the faith.

It means giving no quarter to the Muslim Council of Britain and all the other organisations and individuals who support Islamic extremism but are currently wooed by Whitehall.

It means outlawing Hizb ut-Tahrir. It means prosecuting the anti-West fanatics in mosques and madrassas. It means profiling Muslim extremists at airports.

None of these things is currently being done. Instead, radical Islamism is being appeased on the grounds that Muslims must not feel targeted in any way.

But in fact, this merely cuts the ground from under the feet of genuinely moderate British Muslims. For it is their friends and relatives, and worst of all their children, who are being radicalised through such a wrongheaded strategy.

The urgent question now has to be asked how many other Islamic terrorists in Britain are, like the quiet, studious, privileged Abdulmutallab, also lurking beneath the radar.

For in the defence of Western society against militant Islam’s war of conquest, the activities of the Christmas Day bomber show that once again Londonistan is the weakest link in the chain.

December 27, 2009

Israel’s false friend

Jewish Chronicle, 22 December 2009

Five years ago, anti-Israel campaigners tried to arrest the then Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz for ‘war crimes’ while he was on a visit to London.

Since then, a steady stream of senior Israeli officials have either narrowly escaped similar arrest in Britain through diplomatic immunity, or have had to cancel planned visits because such an arrest was all too likely.

In all that time, the government has sat on its hands. Only now that Tzipi Livni has had to cancel her trip to London following an attempt to arrest her over her part in Operation Cast Lead has the British government said it will change the law, probably by making the Attorney-General the gatekeeper for any such arrest attempts.

Why is it only now that the balloon has gone up? One reason is that this is the first time the Israeli government has responded with unbridled fury at Britain. But also, for British diplomats, Livni is ‘one of us’. That is because, since she is one of the most appeasement-minded politicians Israel has ever produced, it is considered an affront to try to arrest her, of all people, for her part in warfare.

‘Livni supports a two-state solution. This attempt to secure her arrest has really set alarm bells ringing,’ a horrified senior Foreign Office source reportedly told the Guardian. The unpleasant implication is that the Foreign Office cares far less about attempts to arrest Israeli politicians with more hawkish views.

This telling remark shows how the Foreign Office circles the wagons when one of its ideological soul-mates is under attack — and is wholly unable to see how the amoral and unprincipled view of the world it believes it shares with Livni may actually be contributing to the problem.

The British refusal to see Israel’s predicament as an existential siege, insisting instead that the Middle East impasse is a boundary dispute, perpetuated by Israel’s refusal to compromise, is the false analysis fuelling the poisonous atmosphere giving rise to these arrest warrants.

After all, Gordon Brown’s government has been displaying the most hostile attitude towards Israel that many in Britain have ever seen.

It is leading a boycott of Israeli goods from the West Bank, singling out its democratic ally Israel for condign punishment that it dishes out to no other country, however tyrannical. It has similarly imposed a limited arms embargo on parts for Israeli warships. It refused to vote against the Hamas-leaning Goldstone report at the UN.

It denounced Cast Lead as disproportionate, thus endorsing Hamas propaganda and effectively denying Israel the right to defend its people against attack. And it supported the vicious Swedish proposal pre-emptively to hand half of Jerusalem to Israel’s Arab attackers.

It puts out the false view that Israel is still occupying Gaza and that the settlements are illegal — legally illiterate claims which derive entirely from Britain’s time-hallowed policy of sucking up to the Arabs.

Whether or not they are wise or desirable, the settlements are legal, not least because the 1922 mandate for Palestine, whose provisions are still legally binding, laid down that the Jews should have “close settlement” of the land from the Jordan to the sea.

The unpalatable fact is that, ever since the 1920s, when Arab terror first began against the Jewish presence in Palestine, the British responded by appeasing it and reneging on its own treaty obligations, thus giving such terrorism every incentive to continue.

That despicable tradition continues today in Brown’s government, even as it claims that Israel is Britain’s “strategic partner and close friend”.

In fact, its hostility has contributed enormously to the climate of rabid hysteria, irrationality and bigotry towards Israel now consuming British public debate and in which these arrest attempts are being made.

With a ‘close friend’ like this, who needs enemies?

December 21, 2009

The growing threat to free speech

Daily Mail, 21 December 2009

Britain has a historic and international reputation as the home of free speech.

Yet in recent times it has been developing an altogether contrary reputation as the country where free speech is being steadily suppressed, courtesy of the English legal system and in particular the law of libel.

The latest victim of this phenomenon is a Danish radiologist, Dr Henrik Thomsen. At a scientific congress in Oxford, he claimed that some kidney patients at his hospital had contracted a potentially deadly condition after taking the drug Omniscan.

As a result, he found himself being sued for libel by the makers of the drug, a subsidiary of General Electric called GE Healthcare. The company has denied that it suppressed information about the drug and said it is safe for 99 per cent of patients.

This is merely the latest in a string of alarming cases in which the English libel law has been used to gag debate that is overwhelmingly in the public interest. Several of these cases involve scientific or medical issues.

Simon Singh, a science writer, is being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association for describing some of its treatments as ‘bogus’.

And Peter Wilmshurst, a consultant cardiologist, is being sued by a U.S. company, NMT Medical, after he questioned the effectiveness of a new heart implant device.

Far be it for me to suggest that any of these allegations is true. But after raising such matters, serious scientists are being hounded to retract their claims.

Yet science depends upon scientists making such critical observations. Trying to gag them surely amounts to an abuse of the libel law and threatens the very integrity of science itself.

The idea that libel can be used like this to stifle discussion of the possible dangers of medical treatments will strike many as utterly intolerable.

The reason it is happening is that, unlike equivalent laws in other countries against defamation, English libel law is the most draconian in the world.

The law of libel has long been the bane of journalists’ lives. But now it has become something altogether more sinister and frightening

It places the burden of proving that a statement is true on the person who has made it. This means in practice that from the start the cards are stacked against the defendant and in favour of those who are bringing the libel suit.

This is justified on the grounds that anyone who makes a possibly libellous statement is thought to be best placed to prove the truth of the information they claim to have.

But although they may have good reason to believe that something is true, it is often difficult to prove it — not least because to do so may involve gaining access to further information which only the person bringing the libel suit actually possesses.

So even if someone has what by any normal standards would be regarded as a justified case for making such a claim, this is not enough to prevent them from losing a libel case.

In other countries, by contrast, a malicious intent behind such claims has to be proved in order to win such a case. But in Britain, people are being sued successfully for making reasonable statements.

The law of libel has long been the bane of journalists’ lives. But now it has become something altogether more sinister and frightening.

Rather than a form of legal redress for unjustly sullying someone’s reputation, it is increasingly being used by wealthy individuals or organisations as a weapon to stifle politically or commercially unwelcome views.

Because of the difficulty of proving what may be unprovable, those who express such views are intimidated by the prospect of losing such a case — and then having to pay astronomical legal costs to multinationals or wealthy individuals who can afford to keep racking up the final bill.

So scientists, academics, authors, journalists and others are effectively censoring themselves for fear of becoming trapped in a ruinous libel suit - or are being forced to back down and apologise for statements they still believe to be true.

More sinister still, the courts are being used by Arabs and radical Muslims to shut down discussion of Islamic terrorism or extremism.

In what appears to be a co-ordinated campaign — aided and abetted by certain English law firms — writers who draw attention to suspected terrorism networks or extremist statements find themselves promptly served with a writ for libel.

The fact that the grounds for such lawsuits are often preposterous is all but irrelevant given the intimidatory effect of the apparently bottomless pockets behind them.

Such ‘libel tourism’ is proving a chilling weapon in the armoury of those who are waging Islamic holy war.

It is also turning Britain into an international pariah as the country whose courts are now the most hospitable in the world to attempts to stifle discussion of Islamic extremism.

In one infamous case, U.S. author Rachel Ehrenfeld was sued for libel in Britain over her book Funding Evil about the Islamic terrorist money trail.

Her book was not even published in the UK. But 23 copies sold over the internet which were shipped to Britain opened her up to a libel suit, in which she was ordered to pay £130,000 in costs and damages.

This case has led a number of U.S. states to pass a special law to prevent English libel judgments from being applied to books published in the U.S.

Britain has now become the global centre for this kind of legal censorship over a growing range of issues. The rich and powerful flock from all over the world to use its courts to stifle scrutiny of their affairs.

And, by definition, the public are unaware of such suppression since, because of the risk of libel, no one can tell them what it is they are not being allowed to know.

The result is that there are increasing occasions where rogues, malefactors and incompetents are getting away with extremism, negligence or other bad deeds without any public scrutiny at all.

Now a campaign backed by many eminent people has got under way to reform the libel law. MPs who have been slow to respond to this growing threat suddenly woke up recently when it reached Parliament itself.

The attempt by the law firm Carter-Ruck to prevent the Guardian newspaper from reporting a Labour MP’s question about the alleged dumping of toxic waste by the oil trading company Trafigura, on the grounds that this would break an injunction against reporting such allegations, was seen as a direct challenge to the supremacy of the legislature.

The resulting outcry forced Carter-Ruck to back down, but the threat to Parliament has apparently not disappeared.

Anything MPs say in the chamber of the Commons has immunity from libel. But according to Index On Censorship, the Speaker’s Office has now advised the House of Commons that, contrary to previous reassurances, MPs do not have the same legal protection for statements they make elsewhere in Parliament, such as in committees or other public meetings.

And meanwhile, in the past few days the BBC has apologised to Trafigura and paid £25,000 in libel damages for claims made on BBC2’s Newsnight about waste dumping — in a case which some experts had estimated would rack up costs of around £3million if the BBC had fought it.

Of course, those whose reputations really are traduced must be able to obtain justice. But such corporate or individual intimidation courtesy of the English libel law must be stopped if Britain is not to exchange its reputation as the crucible of free speech for that of the laughing stock of the world.