Anti-terror police have refused to say whether two German men arrested at Dover Port are suspected of possessing hostile reconnaissance photography.
Christian David Erkart Heinz Emde, 28, and Robert Baum, 23, both from Germany, were arrested on 15 July.
They have been charged with 'collection or possession of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, contrary to Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000'.
A spokeswoman for the South East Counter Terrorism Unit told Amateur Photographer that police were 'not able to comment on whether the materials seized include hostile reconnaissance photographs'.
The men appeared at City of Westminster Magistrates Court yesterday and have been remanded in custody to appear at the same court on 24 August.
Amateur Photographer
Sunday, 31 July 2011
Election of Jobbik mayor in Gyöngyöspata seen stoking tension with Fidesz (Hungary)
The radical nationalist Jobbik party’s newly elected mayor in Gyongyospata (N) has been given an opportunity to manage local issues without his party’s “extremist solutions”, the deputy head of the ruling Fidesz told MTI in a statement on Tuesday.
In his statement, Gergely Gulyas assured the new mayor, Oszkar Juhasz, of “unconditional” assistance from Fidesz’s MP for the region, once Juhasz leaves behind Jobbik’s policies which he suggested were motivated by anti-Roma and anti-Jewish sentiments.
Earlier in the day, Jobbik called for the resignation of Fidesz MP Jozsef Balazs saying that the MP had made coercive remarks to the mayor.
According to a recorded telephone call presented at a press conference in Budapest, Balazs told Juhasz that his village would receive no funding under his administration, Jobbik spokesman Adam Mirkoczki said.
“Towns will receive funds upon my approval. If I do not consent, funds will not be granted,” said the recording played at the press conference.
Juhasz, who won his position in an interim election in Gyongyospata on Sunday, has been receiving threatening signals from Fidesz circles since March, the spokesman said. In a statement sent to MTI, the green opposition LMP party shared Jobbik’s position that Balazs should return his mandate.
Talking to MTI, Balazs firmly rejected the allegations of coercion.
Gyongyospata came into the focus of public attention in March, when activists of a radical paramilitary organisation staged patrols for weeks in protest against what they saw as a rising crime rate.
The situation turned critical when Vedero, a similar group, organised a training camp near the village’s Roma neighbourhood late in April. The police dissolved the camp following a government decree that imposes stricter punishments to uniformed people who organise unauthorised patrols. Soon after, Juhasz’s predecessor tendered his resignation.
Politics Hu
In his statement, Gergely Gulyas assured the new mayor, Oszkar Juhasz, of “unconditional” assistance from Fidesz’s MP for the region, once Juhasz leaves behind Jobbik’s policies which he suggested were motivated by anti-Roma and anti-Jewish sentiments.
Earlier in the day, Jobbik called for the resignation of Fidesz MP Jozsef Balazs saying that the MP had made coercive remarks to the mayor.
According to a recorded telephone call presented at a press conference in Budapest, Balazs told Juhasz that his village would receive no funding under his administration, Jobbik spokesman Adam Mirkoczki said.
“Towns will receive funds upon my approval. If I do not consent, funds will not be granted,” said the recording played at the press conference.
Juhasz, who won his position in an interim election in Gyongyospata on Sunday, has been receiving threatening signals from Fidesz circles since March, the spokesman said. In a statement sent to MTI, the green opposition LMP party shared Jobbik’s position that Balazs should return his mandate.
Talking to MTI, Balazs firmly rejected the allegations of coercion.
Gyongyospata came into the focus of public attention in March, when activists of a radical paramilitary organisation staged patrols for weeks in protest against what they saw as a rising crime rate.
The situation turned critical when Vedero, a similar group, organised a training camp near the village’s Roma neighbourhood late in April. The police dissolved the camp following a government decree that imposes stricter punishments to uniformed people who organise unauthorised patrols. Soon after, Juhasz’s predecessor tendered his resignation.
Politics Hu
Wolverhampton Muslim extremist jailed (UK)
A Muslim extremist whose online rants inspired a fanatic to stab an MP has been caged.
Bilal Ahmad, 23, from Wolverhampton, called on Muslims to “raise the knife of Jihad” against MPs who supported the Iraq War.
His words were taken literally by Roshonara Choudhry, 21, who had visited Ahmad’s Revolution Muslim web page. She stabbed Labour MP Stephen Timms at his constituency surgery in May last year – knifing him twice in the stomach. He survived and Choudhry was jailed for attempted murder.
Ahmad said the MP had “got off lightly” and called for Choudhry to be freed and given a medal.
Ahmad admitted soliciting to murder members of Parliament, inciting religious hatred and three charges under the Terrorism Act.
Sentencing the IT graduate to 12 years at a hearing on Friday, a judge said: “You became a viper in our midst, willing to go as far as possible to strike at the heart of our system. Your views were corrosively dangerous.”
Sunday Mercury
Bilal Ahmad, 23, from Wolverhampton, called on Muslims to “raise the knife of Jihad” against MPs who supported the Iraq War.
His words were taken literally by Roshonara Choudhry, 21, who had visited Ahmad’s Revolution Muslim web page. She stabbed Labour MP Stephen Timms at his constituency surgery in May last year – knifing him twice in the stomach. He survived and Choudhry was jailed for attempted murder.
Ahmad said the MP had “got off lightly” and called for Choudhry to be freed and given a medal.
Ahmad admitted soliciting to murder members of Parliament, inciting religious hatred and three charges under the Terrorism Act.
Sentencing the IT graduate to 12 years at a hearing on Friday, a judge said: “You became a viper in our midst, willing to go as far as possible to strike at the heart of our system. Your views were corrosively dangerous.”
Sunday Mercury
TE-SAT 2011: EU Terrorism Situation & Trend Report
Here's a link to a PDF report about terrorism trends in the European Union that some of you might find interesting.
TE-SAT 2011: EU Terrorism Situation & Trend Report
TE-SAT 2011: EU Terrorism Situation & Trend Report
Norway attacks: How far right views created Anders Behring Breivik
Killer's opinions are part of a wider political and cultural shift as anti-Islamic and xenophobic groups take root across Europe.
At 9:31pm on 16 October 2008 a message appeared on the virulently anti-Muslim website Gates of Vienna. Under the user name Year2183, a reference to a manifesto he was writing, Anders Behring Breivik appears exasperated that his fellow far-right bloggers are too accommodating to Europe's Muslims.
Responding to Fjordman, the anonymous Norwegian "counterjihad" blogger, Breivik insists that only the forced deportation of Muslims will suffice. His stance, he realises, has become too extreme even for the anti-multicultural blogosphere.
For Breivik it was a defining moment, the point at which he moved to an ultra-radical position. Within months he had become immersed within the toxic nexus of increasingly extremist online forums.
Less than a year after his frustrated response to Fjordman, Breivik had begun preparing his devastating double attack of nine days ago: the bombing of the Oslo headquarters of Norway's centre-left government and the massacre of its youth wing on Utøya island.
To chart the evolution of Breivik from a child born to middle-class parents in the west of Oslo to perpetrator of the country's worst attack since the second world war, most experts recommend an initial look at mainstream politics. Last Wednesday Himanshu Gulati of the rightwing Progress Party was explaining its position as "not anti-immigration, but strict immigration".
Yet as the interview progressed, in an office a minute's walk from where rescuers were still searching for bodies from the bomb Breivik had detonated, familiar themes emerged. Immigrants, he said, were linked to "drugs and crime"; rejected asylum seekers from Somalia and Afghanistan were not being deported; tens of thousands of illegal immigrants were on the streets of Oslo and could not be "reintegrated" into society.
The interview became more focused. Gulati, 23, cited three major concerns: female genital mutilation, forced marriages and radicalisation. Although Gulati – whose Indian parents arrived in Oslo 30 years ago – never mentioned it directly, it was obvious that the Muslim community was a principal area of concern. Progress, Norway's second-largest party, commanded 23% of the vote in the last elections. A recent poll revealed that half of all Norwegians favour restricting immigration. Some experts on the far right believe Breivik is an extreme manifestation of the conservative mindset.
Breivik's teenage sympathy with the mainstream right wing is widely shared. "Many people were saying that immigration had gone too far – there is a group of people who think a bit like him," said factory worker Trygve Graff, 23, from Bergen.
The fact that Breivik chose the internet to disseminate his ideology is important. His journey to terrorism was forged within a network of blogs where violence is glorified and multiculturalism despised, along with those who embrace it.
One expert in European rightwing extremism, Andrea Mammone of Kingston University London, says the content of Breivik's hate was not new, only the manner in which it was fostered.
"The internet is extremely effective at formulating extremist ideals; killing for him was not so strange, it was about killing people who were not like him, who shared different values. He considered himself a new type of elite warrior."
A bleak scenario is that Breivik – one of thousands who regularly visit such sites – is merely the debutant warrior from a generation that is the first to witness the sociological upheaval caused by the arrival of mass immigration into Scandinavia's tightly knit, homogeneous communities. Equally crucially, it is the first generation that is internet-savvy.
Matthew Goodwin, rightwing extremism expert at the University of Nottingham, adds that Breivik was radicalised by the same online process as many of the jihadists he so loathed.
The same month Breivik responded to Fjordman, he also surfaces on another hardline blog, Stormfront, a white supremacist forum run by a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and popular among neo-Nazis across the world. Britain, Breivik warns, will be among the first western countries to face a "civil war due to Muslim immigration".
At the time, Breivik was living in Sweden, a country whose far right was rapidly gaining votes on a ticket that invited accusations of anti-Islamism and xenophobia and wanted immigration reduced by as much as 90%. It is now known that he had online contact with extremists in Sweden, whose far-right faction, perhaps more than any other country's, appears to have steered Breivik's hate-centered ideology towards his position now.
The next turning point in his journey to mass murderer can be traced to early 2009 when he registered as a member of Nordisk (Nordic), which has more than 22,000 members. The Nordisk forum was established in 2007 by the Nordiska Förbundet (Nordic League) organisation, which itself was founded in 2004 by the Nazi Swedish Resistance Movement.
Members of Nordisk openly incite violence. In March 2010 an anonymous poster delivered a seemingly eerie premonition of Breivik's Oslo attack. "Cars parked next to large buildings with fertiliser + diesel give a nice blast. Skyscrapers go down like the World Trade Centre towers."
Gradually the target of Breivik's fury moved from Muslims to the political establishment that, by promoting multiculturalism, had allowed Islam communities to flourish in western society.
But what of the now infamous reconstituted Knights Templar movement mentioned in the manifesto, which held its inaugural meeting in London in 2002, and of which Breivik said he was a founding member?
Many experts, including Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate, are sceptical a meeting ever took place. Nonetheless, the Knights Templar, with its Christian fundamentalist overtones, is described by Breivik as having a pan-European constituency. Of nine founders, two were English, one was French, one a German, one a Dutchman, one a Greek, one a Russian, one a Norwegian and a Serb. The main initiator was apparently the Serb, whom Breivik claims to have visited in Liberia.
Breivik's "mentor" was "Richard Lionheart". In reality, this might be Briton Paul Ray, 35, who lives in Malta and is author of the anti-Muslim Richard the Lionhearted blog. Ray was also an English Defence League activist and it is clear that Breivik viewed the EDL's anti-Islamic, often violent demonstrations as inspirational. He boasted of "regular contact" with many of its members, recommending strategies for its growth. Ray even suggested that Breivik's chief mentor was Alan Lake, widely described as the EDL's chief financier, a claim fiercely denied by Lake who did, in October 2009, travel to Malmö, Sweden, for a conference on Islamisation.
What is known is that Breivik emailed his manifesto to 250 British contacts shortly before beginning his attacks, among them BNP and EDL figures, along with many connected to Stop Islamification of Europe.
Another fiercely anti-Muslim figure who impressed Breivik, name-checked throughout his manifesto, is Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders, who wants the constitution rewritten to outlaw the "fascist" Qur'an in theNetherlands.
Following the devastation wreaked by Breivik, it was a week of intensive damage limitation for the anti-Islam populists of Europe. Alarmed they might be tarred by association with the Utøya massacre, the New Populists, usually if inaccurately dubbed neo-fascist or extreme right, have been in a hurry to disavow the Norwegian mass murderer and condemn the violence.
Among the extreme parties in Italy, France, Sweden and the Netherlands, politicians have been fired, suspended, disciplined or rebuked by their leaders for voicing sympathy with Breivik's worldview – nostalgia for a conservative, traditionalist, whites-only Europe of a bygone age combined with blind fury at its dissolution in a globalised world.
If Breivik's anger erupted in mass murder, the populist politicians use words as their weapons, posters and images for their witch hunts and scapegoating.
"In a Norwegian Norway this tragedy would never have happened," blogged Erik Hellsborn of the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats party. "This was caused by multiculturalism." He was in trouble with the leadership of a party that campaigns to "keep Sweden Swedish" in the country that is the most open to immigrants in Europe.
Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom party, who has been tried and acquitted on hate speech charges for his calculated provocations, is a favourite of Breivik, notching up 30 references in the manifesto. Wilders said he was appalled by Breivik, fearing that such actions could damage his campaign. "This is a slap in the face for the worldwide anti-Islam movement," he said.
In Austria, Heinz-Christian Strache, the Freedom party leader who associated with neo-Nazis in his youth and who is now neck-and-neck with the governing social democrats at the top of opinion polls, fired a party official who responded to the atrocities by declaring that the real danger was Islam rather than Breivik. The same party used a computer game as a campaign tool last year. In Mosque Bye-bye, the players zapped Muslim prayer houses, only to be told that the southern Styria region of Austria is "full of mosques and minarets".
The idea for the game was imported from neighbouring Switzerland where the rightwing Swiss People's party has powered its anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant referendum campaigns with potent, inflammatory posters almost always in stark red, white, and black, recalling Third Reich propaganda – grasping black hands scooping up red-and-white Swiss passports, three white sheep kicking a black sheep off a red-and-white Swiss flag.
As outlined in Breivik's rambling manifesto, they largely dovetail with the views of the New Populists who combine a far-right outlook. Liberals and the left have been eager to seize on this, seeking to score political points by blaming figures such as Wilders or Strache for fostering a climate of hate, fear and prejudice that may not condone but nonetheless tacitly encourage violence.
A 10-minute walk from Oslo's city centre lies the Islamic Cultural Centre, built in 1974, eight months after the formation of the Progress party. Deputy imam Tayyib Mian, 40, from Pakistan, says the congregation is growing rapidly, including 1,500 indigenous Norwegians who have converted to Islam over the past decade: "Norway is a peaceful, open country; we do not want problems, only to be part of the community."
Outside, hope remains that Breivik's atrocities will unite a nation against intolerance, steering it away from the far-right politics that have fractured Sweden. Student Katerina Slettness, 27, from Oslo, said: "We are hoping the country will be stronger against racism as a result."
Experts, meanwhile, say Breivik may be considered neither insane nor a lone wolf. They warn that thousands throughout Europe are ingesting the same propaganda that galvanised him.
Lowles said: "Somewhere, in a front room or bedroom, other young men are probably dreaming up fantasies about saving western civilisation from the evils of communism and Islam. We ignore what motivated Breivik at our peril."
The Guardian
At 9:31pm on 16 October 2008 a message appeared on the virulently anti-Muslim website Gates of Vienna. Under the user name Year2183, a reference to a manifesto he was writing, Anders Behring Breivik appears exasperated that his fellow far-right bloggers are too accommodating to Europe's Muslims.
Responding to Fjordman, the anonymous Norwegian "counterjihad" blogger, Breivik insists that only the forced deportation of Muslims will suffice. His stance, he realises, has become too extreme even for the anti-multicultural blogosphere.
For Breivik it was a defining moment, the point at which he moved to an ultra-radical position. Within months he had become immersed within the toxic nexus of increasingly extremist online forums.
Less than a year after his frustrated response to Fjordman, Breivik had begun preparing his devastating double attack of nine days ago: the bombing of the Oslo headquarters of Norway's centre-left government and the massacre of its youth wing on Utøya island.
To chart the evolution of Breivik from a child born to middle-class parents in the west of Oslo to perpetrator of the country's worst attack since the second world war, most experts recommend an initial look at mainstream politics. Last Wednesday Himanshu Gulati of the rightwing Progress Party was explaining its position as "not anti-immigration, but strict immigration".
Yet as the interview progressed, in an office a minute's walk from where rescuers were still searching for bodies from the bomb Breivik had detonated, familiar themes emerged. Immigrants, he said, were linked to "drugs and crime"; rejected asylum seekers from Somalia and Afghanistan were not being deported; tens of thousands of illegal immigrants were on the streets of Oslo and could not be "reintegrated" into society.
The interview became more focused. Gulati, 23, cited three major concerns: female genital mutilation, forced marriages and radicalisation. Although Gulati – whose Indian parents arrived in Oslo 30 years ago – never mentioned it directly, it was obvious that the Muslim community was a principal area of concern. Progress, Norway's second-largest party, commanded 23% of the vote in the last elections. A recent poll revealed that half of all Norwegians favour restricting immigration. Some experts on the far right believe Breivik is an extreme manifestation of the conservative mindset.
Breivik's teenage sympathy with the mainstream right wing is widely shared. "Many people were saying that immigration had gone too far – there is a group of people who think a bit like him," said factory worker Trygve Graff, 23, from Bergen.
The fact that Breivik chose the internet to disseminate his ideology is important. His journey to terrorism was forged within a network of blogs where violence is glorified and multiculturalism despised, along with those who embrace it.
One expert in European rightwing extremism, Andrea Mammone of Kingston University London, says the content of Breivik's hate was not new, only the manner in which it was fostered.
"The internet is extremely effective at formulating extremist ideals; killing for him was not so strange, it was about killing people who were not like him, who shared different values. He considered himself a new type of elite warrior."
A bleak scenario is that Breivik – one of thousands who regularly visit such sites – is merely the debutant warrior from a generation that is the first to witness the sociological upheaval caused by the arrival of mass immigration into Scandinavia's tightly knit, homogeneous communities. Equally crucially, it is the first generation that is internet-savvy.
Matthew Goodwin, rightwing extremism expert at the University of Nottingham, adds that Breivik was radicalised by the same online process as many of the jihadists he so loathed.
The same month Breivik responded to Fjordman, he also surfaces on another hardline blog, Stormfront, a white supremacist forum run by a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and popular among neo-Nazis across the world. Britain, Breivik warns, will be among the first western countries to face a "civil war due to Muslim immigration".
At the time, Breivik was living in Sweden, a country whose far right was rapidly gaining votes on a ticket that invited accusations of anti-Islamism and xenophobia and wanted immigration reduced by as much as 90%. It is now known that he had online contact with extremists in Sweden, whose far-right faction, perhaps more than any other country's, appears to have steered Breivik's hate-centered ideology towards his position now.
The next turning point in his journey to mass murderer can be traced to early 2009 when he registered as a member of Nordisk (Nordic), which has more than 22,000 members. The Nordisk forum was established in 2007 by the Nordiska Förbundet (Nordic League) organisation, which itself was founded in 2004 by the Nazi Swedish Resistance Movement.
Members of Nordisk openly incite violence. In March 2010 an anonymous poster delivered a seemingly eerie premonition of Breivik's Oslo attack. "Cars parked next to large buildings with fertiliser + diesel give a nice blast. Skyscrapers go down like the World Trade Centre towers."
Gradually the target of Breivik's fury moved from Muslims to the political establishment that, by promoting multiculturalism, had allowed Islam communities to flourish in western society.
But what of the now infamous reconstituted Knights Templar movement mentioned in the manifesto, which held its inaugural meeting in London in 2002, and of which Breivik said he was a founding member?
Many experts, including Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate, are sceptical a meeting ever took place. Nonetheless, the Knights Templar, with its Christian fundamentalist overtones, is described by Breivik as having a pan-European constituency. Of nine founders, two were English, one was French, one a German, one a Dutchman, one a Greek, one a Russian, one a Norwegian and a Serb. The main initiator was apparently the Serb, whom Breivik claims to have visited in Liberia.
Breivik's "mentor" was "Richard Lionheart". In reality, this might be Briton Paul Ray, 35, who lives in Malta and is author of the anti-Muslim Richard the Lionhearted blog. Ray was also an English Defence League activist and it is clear that Breivik viewed the EDL's anti-Islamic, often violent demonstrations as inspirational. He boasted of "regular contact" with many of its members, recommending strategies for its growth. Ray even suggested that Breivik's chief mentor was Alan Lake, widely described as the EDL's chief financier, a claim fiercely denied by Lake who did, in October 2009, travel to Malmö, Sweden, for a conference on Islamisation.
What is known is that Breivik emailed his manifesto to 250 British contacts shortly before beginning his attacks, among them BNP and EDL figures, along with many connected to Stop Islamification of Europe.
Another fiercely anti-Muslim figure who impressed Breivik, name-checked throughout his manifesto, is Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders, who wants the constitution rewritten to outlaw the "fascist" Qur'an in theNetherlands.
Following the devastation wreaked by Breivik, it was a week of intensive damage limitation for the anti-Islam populists of Europe. Alarmed they might be tarred by association with the Utøya massacre, the New Populists, usually if inaccurately dubbed neo-fascist or extreme right, have been in a hurry to disavow the Norwegian mass murderer and condemn the violence.
Among the extreme parties in Italy, France, Sweden and the Netherlands, politicians have been fired, suspended, disciplined or rebuked by their leaders for voicing sympathy with Breivik's worldview – nostalgia for a conservative, traditionalist, whites-only Europe of a bygone age combined with blind fury at its dissolution in a globalised world.
If Breivik's anger erupted in mass murder, the populist politicians use words as their weapons, posters and images for their witch hunts and scapegoating.
"In a Norwegian Norway this tragedy would never have happened," blogged Erik Hellsborn of the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats party. "This was caused by multiculturalism." He was in trouble with the leadership of a party that campaigns to "keep Sweden Swedish" in the country that is the most open to immigrants in Europe.
Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom party, who has been tried and acquitted on hate speech charges for his calculated provocations, is a favourite of Breivik, notching up 30 references in the manifesto. Wilders said he was appalled by Breivik, fearing that such actions could damage his campaign. "This is a slap in the face for the worldwide anti-Islam movement," he said.
In Austria, Heinz-Christian Strache, the Freedom party leader who associated with neo-Nazis in his youth and who is now neck-and-neck with the governing social democrats at the top of opinion polls, fired a party official who responded to the atrocities by declaring that the real danger was Islam rather than Breivik. The same party used a computer game as a campaign tool last year. In Mosque Bye-bye, the players zapped Muslim prayer houses, only to be told that the southern Styria region of Austria is "full of mosques and minarets".
The idea for the game was imported from neighbouring Switzerland where the rightwing Swiss People's party has powered its anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant referendum campaigns with potent, inflammatory posters almost always in stark red, white, and black, recalling Third Reich propaganda – grasping black hands scooping up red-and-white Swiss passports, three white sheep kicking a black sheep off a red-and-white Swiss flag.
As outlined in Breivik's rambling manifesto, they largely dovetail with the views of the New Populists who combine a far-right outlook. Liberals and the left have been eager to seize on this, seeking to score political points by blaming figures such as Wilders or Strache for fostering a climate of hate, fear and prejudice that may not condone but nonetheless tacitly encourage violence.
A 10-minute walk from Oslo's city centre lies the Islamic Cultural Centre, built in 1974, eight months after the formation of the Progress party. Deputy imam Tayyib Mian, 40, from Pakistan, says the congregation is growing rapidly, including 1,500 indigenous Norwegians who have converted to Islam over the past decade: "Norway is a peaceful, open country; we do not want problems, only to be part of the community."
Outside, hope remains that Breivik's atrocities will unite a nation against intolerance, steering it away from the far-right politics that have fractured Sweden. Student Katerina Slettness, 27, from Oslo, said: "We are hoping the country will be stronger against racism as a result."
Experts, meanwhile, say Breivik may be considered neither insane nor a lone wolf. They warn that thousands throughout Europe are ingesting the same propaganda that galvanised him.
Lowles said: "Somewhere, in a front room or bedroom, other young men are probably dreaming up fantasies about saving western civilisation from the evils of communism and Islam. We ignore what motivated Breivik at our peril."
The Guardian
Hundreds mark Norway massacre with flowers in call to ban EDL march through East End (UK)
Hundreds of protesters stood in silence at a rally in East London last night with raised flowers to remember the 76 people killed in the Norway massacre by the self-confessed bomber Anders Behring.
The rally, calling for the Home Secretary to ban a proposed march by the English Defence League through Whitechapel, came at the end of a day when a delegation led by the Mayor of Tower Hamlets and the new Bishop of Stepney met the Norwegian ambassador and signed the Book of Condolence.
“I know the dangers of extremism has been in your minds in the aftermath of the horrors committed in Norway,” Mayor Lutfur Rahman told the 300-strong rally.
“I know your heart will have been moved by the grieving of the Norwegian people.
“So I was proud and saddened to go to the Norwegian embassy with faith and community leaders to offer condolences and solidarity from the people of Tower Hamlets.”
He has written to Theresa May urging police to use their powers to stop the EDL coming to Whitechapel, adding yet more weight to calls for a ban from MPs, councillors, London Assembly figures and church leaders.
Norwegian trade unionists flew to London from Oslo to speak at the rally staged at London Muslim Centre along the Whitechapel Road—where the EDL plan to march on September 3.
The Bishop of Stepney, the Rt Rev Adrian Newman, in his first public engagement since his inauguration last Friday—ironically on the day of the Oslo massacre—was cheered when he told the rally: “I’ve already been criticised for standing shoulder to shoulder against fascism.
“But I stand with the people of the East End—this is no place for hate.”
The East End United alliance which organised last night’s gathering plan their own march and rally on September 3 to counter the EDL march on the same day, to be staged at Weavers Field in Bethnal Green.
Tower Hamlets Interfaith Forum’s chairman Alan Green, parish priest at Bethnal Green, told the East London Advertiser: “It will have the language of protest to show the EDL they’re not wanted here.
“We don’t want others setting up a separate demo—we have to show solidarity, a united East End against fascism and hate.”
Last night’s packed gathering heard from 35 speakers from the Jewish, Muslim, Christian and other faith communities, as well as MP Jeremy Corbyn and former London mayor Ken Livingstone.
Speakers also included a veteran of the 1936 ‘Battle of Cable Street’, former Stepney councillor Max Levitas, now aged 96, who received a standing ovation when he spoke of how the East End came together to keep out Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts 75 years ago. History had called on the East End once again, he urged, to keep out fascists today.
London 24
The rally, calling for the Home Secretary to ban a proposed march by the English Defence League through Whitechapel, came at the end of a day when a delegation led by the Mayor of Tower Hamlets and the new Bishop of Stepney met the Norwegian ambassador and signed the Book of Condolence.
“I know the dangers of extremism has been in your minds in the aftermath of the horrors committed in Norway,” Mayor Lutfur Rahman told the 300-strong rally.
“I know your heart will have been moved by the grieving of the Norwegian people.
“So I was proud and saddened to go to the Norwegian embassy with faith and community leaders to offer condolences and solidarity from the people of Tower Hamlets.”
He has written to Theresa May urging police to use their powers to stop the EDL coming to Whitechapel, adding yet more weight to calls for a ban from MPs, councillors, London Assembly figures and church leaders.
Norwegian trade unionists flew to London from Oslo to speak at the rally staged at London Muslim Centre along the Whitechapel Road—where the EDL plan to march on September 3.
The Bishop of Stepney, the Rt Rev Adrian Newman, in his first public engagement since his inauguration last Friday—ironically on the day of the Oslo massacre—was cheered when he told the rally: “I’ve already been criticised for standing shoulder to shoulder against fascism.
“But I stand with the people of the East End—this is no place for hate.”
The East End United alliance which organised last night’s gathering plan their own march and rally on September 3 to counter the EDL march on the same day, to be staged at Weavers Field in Bethnal Green.
Tower Hamlets Interfaith Forum’s chairman Alan Green, parish priest at Bethnal Green, told the East London Advertiser: “It will have the language of protest to show the EDL they’re not wanted here.
“We don’t want others setting up a separate demo—we have to show solidarity, a united East End against fascism and hate.”
Last night’s packed gathering heard from 35 speakers from the Jewish, Muslim, Christian and other faith communities, as well as MP Jeremy Corbyn and former London mayor Ken Livingstone.
Speakers also included a veteran of the 1936 ‘Battle of Cable Street’, former Stepney councillor Max Levitas, now aged 96, who received a standing ovation when he spoke of how the East End came together to keep out Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts 75 years ago. History had called on the East End once again, he urged, to keep out fascists today.
London 24
Extremists flocking to Facebook for recruits
When the English Defense League sprang to life two years ago, it had fewer than 50 members — a rough-and-tumble bunch of mostly white guys shouting from a street corner about what they viewed as uncontrolled Muslim immigration.
Now, the far-right group mentioned by confessed Norway gunman Anders Behring Breivik as an inspiration says its ranks have swollen to more than 10,000 people, a spectacular rise its leaders attribute to the immense global power of Facebook and other social networking sites.
"I knew that social networking sites were the way to go," EDL leader Stephen Lennon told The Associated Press. "But to say that we inspired this lunatic to do what he did is wrong. We've never once told our supporters its alright to go out and be violent."
A Facebook page under Breivik's name was taken down shortly after the attacks last week. A Twitter account under his name had only one Tweet, on July 17, loosely citing English philosopher John Stuart Mill: "One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests."
Norwegian investigators have pored through data on Breivik's computer and say they now believe he was acting alone. They have also said they haven't found any links of concern between Breivik and far right British groups such as the EDL.
In addition to Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter, the Internet hosts thousands of forums for far-left, far-right and other extremist groups. In Germany alone, far-right groups ran some 1,000 websites and 38 online radio stations as of late last year with many aimed at recruiting followers. Social networking sites, complete with politically charged music, are particularly drawing younger audiences who increasingly get their information outside of traditional media.
Extremists "still favor online chat platforms — often with several hundred participants — but they are increasingly turning to social media," said Germany's Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which called the danger of recruitment "considerable."
Intelligence and law enforcement officials have mixed feelings about the sites. On one hand, they recognize the potential for recruiting groups or individuals into violent movements. On the other, the sites allow officials to track and catch perpetrators. Germany's interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, told local media this week that he's more worried about extremists who go underground and "radicalize in secret."
Most agree that the most violent criminals often give little to no clear warning of the deadly acts they are about to commit, and that sometimes it's difficult to know when a person is simply boasting or whether their online activity suggests they could become killers.
What's undeniable is the social media's power to bring together people with like-minded views.
"Fifty years ago, if you believed that the Earth was populated by spies from Jupiter, it would have taken you quite some time to find someone else who shared the same belief," said Bob Ayers, a London-based former U.S. intelligence official. "That's not the case today. Social networking sites have changed the mathematics of things, and with that change, comes both pros and cons."
Several of the email addresses to which Breivik sent his 1,516-page manifesto hours before the Oslo bombing matched Facebook profiles of people flaunting neo-Nazi or ultra-nationalist symbols.
Those profiles, in turn, were set up to connect with like-minded people. One apparently Italian addressee — whose profile picture shows a swastika, the SS-symbol, and a skull — linked to Facebook groups representing "Fascist Music," the biography of former Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, as well as firearms.
His list of 462 "friends" showed several people with similar profiles, including some with the symbols or illustrations of the Knights Templar, a group that Breivik said he joined after meeting with a group of right-wing men in London.
Another addressee, showing off his pumped up torso and shaved head, lists the anti-immigration British National Party as his political views.
The British National Party, which won its first seat in European parliamentary elections last year, recently encouraged its members to use social media outlets. It even suggested that supporters use hashtags such as (hash)nationalist and (hash)BNP — techniques designed to capture a larger audience on a specific topic.
"Social networking is an important way of keeping in touch with the British National Party, and taking small, easy actions to promote our fight for our identity and culture," the BNP said on its site. "It's just one way you can make a difference and show you care about the cause we all believe in."
The group recommended its supporters post pro-nationalist quotes on Facebook to inspire friends to take action.
Some analysts say that although it's clear social media plays an important role in strengthening the far-right's sense of identity and solidarity, it's too early to say how much Facebook and Twitter have helped contribute to extremist violence.
"The fact that we have more blogs, more online forums, doesn't mean we have a greater risk of terrorism," said Matthew Goodwin, a politics lecturer who recently published a book on the far right in Britain. "Even if they hold radical, extreme views, it doesn't mean they're pro-violence."
Facebook says it relies on its community to police the site and usually only steps in when individuals or groups are inciting violence or hate. It would not comment on whether it was cooperating with law enforcement agencies looking into the Norway massacre.
"Facebook has a team of professionals that removes content that violates our policies, which includes content that's hateful, makes actionable threats, or includes nudity and/or pornography," said Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes.
Daniel Hodges, a spokesman for Searchlight, a UK magazine that campaigns against far-right extremism, said the Internet has allowed "all sorts of appalling viewpoints" to be read by anyone. "How many people over the world today have now read Breivik's manifesto?" he said.
The Internet often lets groups like the EDL come across as more powerful than they really are, he said.
"(The Internet) allows them to reach their membership relatively speedily, relatively anonymously. It enables them to give a perception of a significant critical mass. But many far right activists live online, not in the real world," Hodges said.
During a recent British election, the BNP suffered from a lack of grassroots support on the ground, even though its website received massive online traffic.
The definition of what counts as hate speech also varies from one country to another, and in the U.S. much of it is protected under the First Amendment. Denying the Holocaust, for example, is illegal in many European countries but not in the U.S.
U.S. laws also protect Internet companies from being held responsible for the content on their sites.
Rather than automatically take down pages that are in the gray area, some civil libertarians think it's better for social media sites to "err on the side of caution" and let the community handle it.
"Facebook and social media in general tend to be very self-correcting," said Jillian York, director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties group in San Francisco.
"A lot of times you see people who oppose the hate speech taking over the (hate) groups. That tends to be more effective than taking the page down."
The Czech Republic's counterintelligence service called the Internet the "No. 1" propaganda tool for extremists in their terrorism report last year.
"There is a significant increase in activities of far right extremists in social networking sites, especially on Facebook. In connection with that, a relatively new phenomenon has appeared of groups which are joined, besides the extremists, also by common citizens ... As a result, the extremist views are becoming popular and spread among the public."
Germany viewed the threat in a similar way.
"The use of the Internet has become a fixture for German right-wing extremists in spreading their ideology, preparing their activities, campaigns and other events as well as the communication with their followers and sympathizers," Germany's domestic intelligence agency said in its latest report published earlier this month.
Lennon, meanwhile, may find himself spending even more time in the virtual far-right world. The 28-year-old newlywed with a handful of missing teeth is banned from going anywhere near protests. He also claims to have had his assets frozen pending a police investigation.
Despite the setbacks, Lennon said his group is growing — and even moving beyond the need for social media.
"We'll keep talking to people about what the EDL stands for, but we don't actually need places like Facebook anymore. We've already built our network and it's growing."
Associated Press
Now, the far-right group mentioned by confessed Norway gunman Anders Behring Breivik as an inspiration says its ranks have swollen to more than 10,000 people, a spectacular rise its leaders attribute to the immense global power of Facebook and other social networking sites.
"I knew that social networking sites were the way to go," EDL leader Stephen Lennon told The Associated Press. "But to say that we inspired this lunatic to do what he did is wrong. We've never once told our supporters its alright to go out and be violent."
A Facebook page under Breivik's name was taken down shortly after the attacks last week. A Twitter account under his name had only one Tweet, on July 17, loosely citing English philosopher John Stuart Mill: "One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests."
Norwegian investigators have pored through data on Breivik's computer and say they now believe he was acting alone. They have also said they haven't found any links of concern between Breivik and far right British groups such as the EDL.
In addition to Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter, the Internet hosts thousands of forums for far-left, far-right and other extremist groups. In Germany alone, far-right groups ran some 1,000 websites and 38 online radio stations as of late last year with many aimed at recruiting followers. Social networking sites, complete with politically charged music, are particularly drawing younger audiences who increasingly get their information outside of traditional media.
Extremists "still favor online chat platforms — often with several hundred participants — but they are increasingly turning to social media," said Germany's Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which called the danger of recruitment "considerable."
Intelligence and law enforcement officials have mixed feelings about the sites. On one hand, they recognize the potential for recruiting groups or individuals into violent movements. On the other, the sites allow officials to track and catch perpetrators. Germany's interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, told local media this week that he's more worried about extremists who go underground and "radicalize in secret."
Most agree that the most violent criminals often give little to no clear warning of the deadly acts they are about to commit, and that sometimes it's difficult to know when a person is simply boasting or whether their online activity suggests they could become killers.
What's undeniable is the social media's power to bring together people with like-minded views.
"Fifty years ago, if you believed that the Earth was populated by spies from Jupiter, it would have taken you quite some time to find someone else who shared the same belief," said Bob Ayers, a London-based former U.S. intelligence official. "That's not the case today. Social networking sites have changed the mathematics of things, and with that change, comes both pros and cons."
Several of the email addresses to which Breivik sent his 1,516-page manifesto hours before the Oslo bombing matched Facebook profiles of people flaunting neo-Nazi or ultra-nationalist symbols.
Those profiles, in turn, were set up to connect with like-minded people. One apparently Italian addressee — whose profile picture shows a swastika, the SS-symbol, and a skull — linked to Facebook groups representing "Fascist Music," the biography of former Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, as well as firearms.
His list of 462 "friends" showed several people with similar profiles, including some with the symbols or illustrations of the Knights Templar, a group that Breivik said he joined after meeting with a group of right-wing men in London.
Another addressee, showing off his pumped up torso and shaved head, lists the anti-immigration British National Party as his political views.
The British National Party, which won its first seat in European parliamentary elections last year, recently encouraged its members to use social media outlets. It even suggested that supporters use hashtags such as (hash)nationalist and (hash)BNP — techniques designed to capture a larger audience on a specific topic.
"Social networking is an important way of keeping in touch with the British National Party, and taking small, easy actions to promote our fight for our identity and culture," the BNP said on its site. "It's just one way you can make a difference and show you care about the cause we all believe in."
The group recommended its supporters post pro-nationalist quotes on Facebook to inspire friends to take action.
Some analysts say that although it's clear social media plays an important role in strengthening the far-right's sense of identity and solidarity, it's too early to say how much Facebook and Twitter have helped contribute to extremist violence.
"The fact that we have more blogs, more online forums, doesn't mean we have a greater risk of terrorism," said Matthew Goodwin, a politics lecturer who recently published a book on the far right in Britain. "Even if they hold radical, extreme views, it doesn't mean they're pro-violence."
Facebook says it relies on its community to police the site and usually only steps in when individuals or groups are inciting violence or hate. It would not comment on whether it was cooperating with law enforcement agencies looking into the Norway massacre.
"Facebook has a team of professionals that removes content that violates our policies, which includes content that's hateful, makes actionable threats, or includes nudity and/or pornography," said Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes.
Daniel Hodges, a spokesman for Searchlight, a UK magazine that campaigns against far-right extremism, said the Internet has allowed "all sorts of appalling viewpoints" to be read by anyone. "How many people over the world today have now read Breivik's manifesto?" he said.
The Internet often lets groups like the EDL come across as more powerful than they really are, he said.
"(The Internet) allows them to reach their membership relatively speedily, relatively anonymously. It enables them to give a perception of a significant critical mass. But many far right activists live online, not in the real world," Hodges said.
During a recent British election, the BNP suffered from a lack of grassroots support on the ground, even though its website received massive online traffic.
The definition of what counts as hate speech also varies from one country to another, and in the U.S. much of it is protected under the First Amendment. Denying the Holocaust, for example, is illegal in many European countries but not in the U.S.
U.S. laws also protect Internet companies from being held responsible for the content on their sites.
Rather than automatically take down pages that are in the gray area, some civil libertarians think it's better for social media sites to "err on the side of caution" and let the community handle it.
"Facebook and social media in general tend to be very self-correcting," said Jillian York, director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties group in San Francisco.
"A lot of times you see people who oppose the hate speech taking over the (hate) groups. That tends to be more effective than taking the page down."
The Czech Republic's counterintelligence service called the Internet the "No. 1" propaganda tool for extremists in their terrorism report last year.
"There is a significant increase in activities of far right extremists in social networking sites, especially on Facebook. In connection with that, a relatively new phenomenon has appeared of groups which are joined, besides the extremists, also by common citizens ... As a result, the extremist views are becoming popular and spread among the public."
Germany viewed the threat in a similar way.
"The use of the Internet has become a fixture for German right-wing extremists in spreading their ideology, preparing their activities, campaigns and other events as well as the communication with their followers and sympathizers," Germany's domestic intelligence agency said in its latest report published earlier this month.
Lennon, meanwhile, may find himself spending even more time in the virtual far-right world. The 28-year-old newlywed with a handful of missing teeth is banned from going anywhere near protests. He also claims to have had his assets frozen pending a police investigation.
Despite the setbacks, Lennon said his group is growing — and even moving beyond the need for social media.
"We'll keep talking to people about what the EDL stands for, but we don't actually need places like Facebook anymore. We've already built our network and it's growing."
Associated Press
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