Author Archives: Paul Woodward

David Yerushalmi: the White supremacist lawyer leading the anti-Sharia crusade in the US

The New York Times reports on the driving force behind the anti-Shariah movement that has drummed up hysterical opposition to the proposed Islamic center near “ground zero” in New York City and inspired the passage or consideration of anti-Muslim laws in several states.

[The movement] is the product of an orchestrated drive that began five years ago in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in the office of a little-known lawyer, David Yerushalmi, a 56-year-old Hasidic Jew with a history of controversial statements about race, immigration and Islam. Despite his lack of formal training in Islamic law, Mr. Yerushalmi has come to exercise a striking influence over American public discourse about Shariah.

Working with a cadre of conservative public-policy institutes and former military and intelligence officials, Mr. Yerushalmi has written privately financed reports, filed lawsuits against the government and drafted the model legislation that recently swept through the country — all with the effect of casting Shariah as one of the greatest threats to American freedom since the cold war.

The message has caught on. Among those now echoing Mr. Yerushalmi’s views are prominent Washington figures like R. James Woolsey, a former director of the C.I.A., and the Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann, who this month signed a pledge to reject Islamic law, likening it to “totalitarian control.”

Yet, for all its fervor, the movement is arguably directed at a problem more imagined than real. Even its leaders concede that American Muslims are not coalescing en masse to advance Islamic law. Instead, they say, Muslims could eventually gain the kind of foothold seen in Europe, where multicultural policies have allowed for what critics contend is an overaccommodation of Islamic law.

“Before the train gets too far down the tracks, it’s time to put up the block,” said Guy Rodgers, the executive director of ACT for America, one of the leading organizations promoting the legislation drafted by Mr. Yerushalmi.

The more tangible effect of the movement, opponents say, is the spread of an alarmist message about Islam — the same kind of rhetoric that appears to have influenced Anders Behring Breivik, the suspect in the deadly dual attacks in Norway on July 22. The anti-Shariah campaign, they say, appears to be an end in itself, aimed at keeping Muslims on the margins of American life.

Earlier this year, the Anti-Defamation League said:

Yerushalmi has not only actively promoted his conspiratorial vision of Shari’a law, but has also sought to portray all Muslims as a threat. In one March 2006 article, for example, Yerushalmi even went so far as to claim that “Muslim civilization is at war with Judeo-Christian civilization…The Muslim peoples, those committed to Islam as we know it today, are our enemies.”

That same year, Yerushalmi founded the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), a “think tank” that has published anti-Muslim, anti-immigration and anti-black materials, as well as New World Order-style conspiracy theories. In 2007, SANE, declaring itself “dedicated to the rejection of democracy and party rule and a return to a constitutional republic [of the original founders of the US],” launched a campaign fueled by suspicion of all Muslims.

That campaign, “Mapping Shari’a in America: Knowing the Enemy,” sought to determine exactly what type of Shari’a every single mosque and Muslim religious institution in the U.S. was advocating. A June 2007 press release announcing the campaign indicated that SANE would work to “test the proposition that Shari’a amounts to a criminal conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government” by investigating and ranking the adherence to Islamic law of mosques and their associated day-schools throughout the U.S. The statement also promised to “advocate for the criminalization of Shari’a” if it felt its targeted investigation into mosques and Islamic day schools proved such a measure necessary.

SANE also proposed legislation that furthering or supporting adherence to Shari’a “shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison.” It called on Congress to declare war on the “Muslim nation,” which it defined as “Shari’a-adherent Muslims,” and further asked Congress to define Muslim illegal immigrants as alien enemies “subject to immediate deportation.”

In March, Mother Jones reported:

In a 2006 essay for SANE entitled On Race: A Tentative Discussion (pdf), Yerushalmi argued that whites are genetically superior to blacks. “Some races perform better in sports, some better in mathematical problem solving, some better in language, some better in Western societies and some better in tribal ones,” he wrote.

Yerushalmi has suggested that Caucasians are inherently more receptive to republican forms of government than blacks—an argument that’s consistent with SANE’s mission statement, which emphasizes that “America was the handiwork of faithful Christians, mostly men, and almost entirely white.” And in an article published at the website Intellectual Conservative, Yerushalmi, who is Jewish, suggests that liberal Jews “destroy their host nations like a fatal parasite.” Unsurprisingly, then, Yerushalmi offered the lone Jewish defense of Mel Gibson, after the actor’s anti-Semitic tirade in 2006. Gibson, he wrote, was simply noting the “undeniable Jewish liberal influence on western affairs in the direction of a World State.”

As the New York Times notes, the movement that Yerushalmi has helped inspire is the same movement that shaped the thinking of Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik.

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, says:

The Oslo perpetrator in his manifesto quoted extensively from the writings of European and American bloggers — including Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller — who promote a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda under the pretext of fighting radical Islam. Because of the reach of the Internet, these ideas float freely across borders and are reinforced by like-minded bigots.

This belief system goes far beyond anti-Islamic prejudice based on simple religious or racial grounds. In a sense, it parallels the creation of an ideological — and far more deadly — form of anti-Semitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on the backs of the previously dominant cultural and religious forms of anti-Semitism.

Pamela Geller, who in recent days has been struggling to distance herself from Brievik, has no qualms about celebrating her connection to Yerushalmi. He is, she says, “a man I consider a national treasure…” He is also her attorney.

Pamela Geller’s ties to violence in Norway

Charles Johnson reveals:

In June 2007, “counter-jihad” blogger Pamela Geller posted the following Email from Norway, from a reader who sounds a lot like the Oslo terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik.

Geller’s post began:

I am running an email I received from an Atlas reader in Norway. It is devastating in its matter-of-factness.
[The email begins] Well, yes, the situation is worsening. Stepping up from 29 000 immigrants every year, in 2007 we will be getting a total of 35 000 immigrants from somalia, iran, iraq and afghanistan. The nations capital is already 50% muslim, and they ALL go there after entering Norway. Adding the 1.2 births per woman per year from muslim women, there will be 300 000+ muslims out of the then 480 000 inhabitants of that city.

Orders from Libya and Iran say that Oslo will be known as Medina at the latest in 2010, although I consider this a PR-stunt nevertheless it is their plan.

From Israel the hordes clawing at the walls of Jerusalem proclaim cheerfully that next year there will be no more Israel, and I know Israel shrugs this off as do I, and will mount a strike during the summer against all of its enemies in the middle east. This will make the muslims worldwide go into a frenzy, attacking everyone around them.

The email Geller had received, continued:

We are stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is going to happen fast.

Geller subsequently deleted these lines, and as Johnson and others have established, she deleted them after Breivik’s July 22 bombing and shooting rampage.

If Geller was knowingly in communication with Breivik then she should probably be helping Norwegian authorities with their investigation.

But even if neither in this instance nor any other did she communicate with him, the contents of the email that Johnson has unearthed are no less damning. They suggest that far from condemning those individuals in Norway who she knew were preparing for armed violence, she chose to showcase their plans as though to say, “we’re with you.”

Update: This afternoon, Geller responded to Johnson’s post and acknowledges that after the massacre she removed the sentence from her 2007 post “as I found it insenstive [sic] and inappropriate.” She also says her email correspondent was not Breivik.

The sentence I edited is not an incitement to anything. It refers to self-defense, but I removed it in the light of recent horrific events in Norway. I thought it insensitive. Nothing more.

Everyone has a right to self-defense.

There are no doubt many members of armed militias across America who share Geller’s view that anyone has the right to stockpile weapons, ammunition and equipment in preparation for “self-defense” against the US government, enemies of the White race, Muslims, Jews or whatever groups or entities they happen to have demonized.

Such militias and the philosophies they espouse provide a breeding ground for the kind of paranoia that on occasions results in mass murder.

Iran, innuendo, and secret deals with al Qaeda

“U.S. accuses Iran of aiding al-Qaeda,” screams the headline in the Washington Post.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal clearly take satisfaction with the Treasury Department’s announcement that it has exposed a “secret deal” between Iran and al Qaeda:

The Obama Administration has come a long way since the days when it thought it could strike a “grand bargain” with Iran’s mullahs, and yesterday’s move is another good step. Above all, it’s a reminder of why a regime that has no qualms serving as al Qaeda’s facilitator can on no account be permitted to build a nuclear bomb.

But if the presence of an al Qaeda network in Iran implies the complicity of the Iranian government, by the same logic the governments of Kuwait and Qatar — where the same network operates — may also be complicit. And since the US has military bases in both those countries can we not also say that this network is operating under American eyes too?

No doubt the administration’s decision to highlight a Qaeda-Iran connection will please quite a few would-be 2012 presidential campaign contributors, in particular those who share Benjamin Netanyahu’s view that Iran presents an existential threat to Israel.

Paul Pillar writes:

The Treasury Department on Thursday formally designated six members of what it described as “an al-Qa’ida network” under the terms of Executive Order 13224, a designation that has implications regarding the freezing of the individuals’ assets and prohibition of any commercial or financial dealings with them. Such designations have nothing directly to do with states, but there was an additional angle in Treasury’s announcement. The heading of the department’s press release was, “Treasury Targets Key Al-Qa’ida Funding and Support Network Using Iran as a Critical Transit Point”. Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David S. Cohen was quoted as stating, “By exposing Iran’s secret deal with al-Qa’ida allowing it to funnel funds and operatives through its territory, we are illuminating yet another aspect of Iran’s unmatched support for terrorism.”

Whoa—“secret deal”? That’s certainly an eye-catching phrase. It has been known for some time that al-Qa’ida members have been inside Iran. It has been less clear just what the terms of their residence there have been. Most indications suggest that it has been something between imprisonment and house arrest. At least some of the al-Qa’ida people in Iran have been able to conduct business of the group from there, but it is unclear again how much of this business is condoned or even known by the Iranian regime. Probably the most that can be said is that the regime, or elements within it, have reasons to have some dealings with the al-Qa’ida members, notwithstanding the sharp differences in their objectives. Tehran wants to cement and sustain the rule of the Shia Islamic Republic; al-Qa’ida wants to overthrow the established order in the Middle East and establish a Sunni Caliphate.

Despite the provocative phrase “secret deal,” Treasury’s announcement says nothing else about any such agreement. The only dealings it describes all seem to have to do with the imprisonment of al-Qa’ida members. Only one of the six designated individuals, named Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil, is described as “Iran-based”; the other five all live and operate somewhere else and are included in the announcement because they are part of the same network as Khalil. The one bit of business Khalil is said to have with Tehran is that he “works with the Iranian government to arrange releases of al-Qa’ida personnel from Iranian prisons.” One of the other five is said to have “petitioned Iranian officials on al-Qa’ida’s behalf to release operatives detained in Iran”—with no indication whether he succeeded. Any connection between the Iranian regime and the group’s other activities involving movement of money and operatives is all a matter of innuendo, at least as far as Treasury’s announcement is concerned.

Crime and punishment

Norway's prison guards undergo two years of training at an officers' academy and enjoy an elevated status compared with their peers in the U.S. and Britain. Their official job description says they must motivate the inmate 'so that his sentence is as meaningful, enlightening and rehabilitating as possible,' so they frequently eat meals and play sports with prisoners. At Halden high-security prison, half of all guards are female, which its governor believes reduces tension and encourages good behavior. -- Time Magazine

Reading Anders Behring Breivik’s account of his preparations for his July 22 attacks in Oslo and Utøya evokes a certain dread at the sight of such a deliberate effort to cause carnage. Breivik expresses no doubt about what he is doing other than the fear that he might run out of funds and be unable to rent the car in which he intends to load explosives.

Mass murder, committed with such cold calculation surely merits the harshest punishment. Many Americans are thus now perplexed to learn about the apparent leniency of Norway’s penal system. Eli Lake’s views, as expressed in conversation with Hans-Inge Lango, will be shared by many.

But if Norway’s approach to crime is really sending the wrong message, just look at the numbers: an incarceration rate of 71 per 100,000 Norwegians versus 743 per 100,000 Americans; and while in Norway 80% of prisoners once released never return to jail, in the US almost 70% end up back behind bars.

Americans should not be asking whether Norway is capable of being tough enough with terrorists, but instead why a country that spends more on its security than any other also imprisons more of its own citizens than any other. (And for any of the xenophobes out there who might want to attribute America’s high incarceration rate to the high number of immigrants in this country, Germany has a similar proportion of immigrants and an incarceration rate of 85 per 100,000.)

Norway believes democracy is the best way of challenging terrorism

Just imagine if these words had come out of George Bush’s mouth after 9/11: “The American response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation.”

The Guardian reports:

The Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, says his country will “not be intimidated or threatened” by Friday’s terror attacks, which left 76 people dead.

The country would “stand firm in defending our values” and the “open, tolerant and inclusive society”, he said. “The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation.”

The “horrific and brutal” attacks were an assault on Norway’s “fundamental values”, added Stoltenberg. “We have to be very clear to distinguish between extreme views, opinions that it’s completely legal, legitimate to have. What is not legitimate is to try to implement those extreme views by using violence,” he said.

Earlier, police detonated a cache of explosives at a farm rented by Anders Behring Breivik. Detectives believe the 32-year-old made the bomb that killed eight people in Oslo on Friday using fertiliser he purchased under the guise of being a farmer.

The controlled explosion came after police named four of the victims, including three caught up in the city centre bombing and a 23-year-old shot dead on Utøya island. Police would not reveal the quantity of explosives found at the farm in Rena, about 100 miles north of the capital, Oslo.

As the investigation continues, security officials have cast doubt on Breivik’s claims that he has accomplices who are still at large. At his first court appearance in Oslo on Monday, he told a closed courtroom he had links to “two other terror cells”.

But Norway’s domestic intelligence chief, Janne Kristiansen, said no proof has yet been found to link Breivik to rightwing extremists in the UK or elsewhere. She told the BBC: “I can tell you, at this moment in time, we don’t have evidence or we don’t have indications that he has been part of a broader movement or that he has been in connection with other cells or that there are other cells.”

Kristiansen added that she did not believe the killer was insane, but was calculating and evil, and someone who sought the limelight.

The Anders Behring Breivik interview

Anders Behring Breivik’s attorney, Geir Lippestad, says his client appears to be insane. Whether this is what Lippestad actually believes or whether he is simply laying the groundwork for an insanity defense, is unclear. But the idea that only a madman could do what Breivik did, is an idea with dangerous and popular appeal.

We would all like to believe that normal people are incapable of doing dreadful things. We want to imagine that Breivik is one of a kind.

Those who share Breivik’s antipathy for Islam, who promote the idea that the West is being taken over by Muslims and who warn that Europe and America are in jeopardy of coming under the rule of Sharia law, are now trying to protect their investment in this pernicious ideology by joining in the chorus that Breivik is a psychopath.

“The manifesto of the perpetrator makes clear that this is a madman,” writes Geert Wilders.

Pamela Geller follows the same tack:

Conservative blogger and anti-jihadist Pamela Geller told The Daily Caller it’s “outrageous” that she’s been “assign[ed] blame” for Oslo shooter Anders Behring Breivik’s actions.

“It’s like equating Charles Manson, who heard in the lyrics of Helter Skelter a calling for the Manson murders,” Geller said in an exclusive phone interview. “It’s like blaming the Beatles. It’s patently ridiculous.”

Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch refers to Breivik as the “mad murderer in Norway.”

In each instance, the reason the anti-Jihadists want to characterize Breivik as insane is rather transparent: they want to create the widest possible distance between Breivik and their ideology.

The truth is way too uncomfortable — that Breivik, Wilders, Geller, and Spencer all view the world through the same ideological prism; they merely have a tactical disagreement about the best way of promoting their views.

When Wilders asserts that Breivik’s writings make it clear he’s a madman, Wilders is relying on the fact that most people won’t read Breivik. If they do they will quickly discover how closely aligned he is with his anti-Jihadist detractors.

In his compendium, 2083 A European Declaration of Independence, Breivik interviews himself. There we learn that his extremism is mixed with a large measure of political pragmatism.

Even if neo-Nazis and cultural conservatives (like him) share common ground he sees no chance that they can form an alliance. “It will be extremely hard to cooperate with anyone who views our primary ally (the Jews/Israel) as their primary enemy.”

He sees himself as part of “a relatively cynical/cruel/goal oriented armed resistance group” that nevertheless has “foundational principles” that would appeal to the majority of Europeans.

There are plenty of views expressed here that most people will find offensive, and though the fears that Breivik shares with other anti-Jihadists might be irrational or overblown, there is little evidence he is mad.

Q: Is it possible that cultural conservatives and National Socialists will
cooperate in the future?

A: It will be extremely hard to cooperate with anyone who views our primary ally (the
Jews/Israel) as their primary enemy. Their Jew obsession and support to Islamic regimes
will severely hinder any direct cooperation. They are blinded by their Jew hate to a
degree where they fail to see the imminent threat to Europe represented by Islam.
The following poll was taken from eNationalist, a rather hardcore NS site:

eNat Poll[4]: Can the Arab world and part of the Islamic world be our allies?
Yes: 44%
No: 52%

This poll indirectly illustrate that the hardcore NS community reject the concept of
European Christian solidarity and thus rejecting the support to our Eastern Christian
cousins (Greek, Maronite, Assyrian, Copt) with the long term goal of creating future
Christian (Islamic free) zones. It also shows that they are generally supportive of
alliances with Islamic countries.

It wasn’t exactly a secret that many in the NS movements rejected Christendom
completely and instead support Odinism. It is however understandable that they view
modern humanist Christendom as weak and therefore unworthy of support (a view which
I partly agree with). However, the solution is not to reject Christianity but rather to
reform Christianity to re-introduce the concepts of “self-defence” as propagated by
former Crusader Popes. Also, we shouldn’t forget that Nazi Germany allied itself with the
Ottoman Caliphate/Turkey on two occasions and supported the Christian Armenian
genocides.

Many NS support the Islamic conspiracy theory that Jews organised the 9/11 attacks and
both reject that the Holocaust took place. In light of these opposing views it’s hard to
imagine that the “new Western European right” will be willing to trust National Socialists.

One of the reasons why hardcore anti-Semites (David Duke would be a case in point) are
unreliable allies is that they hate Jews so much that it shuts down the rational parts of their brain and they end up making common cause with Muslims, based on mutual hatred.
Fjordman

However, we have certain things in common that shouldn’t be underestimated.
We share the same anti -EU, -UN and –immigration/multiculturalism (Muslim immigration
at least) sentiments and the goal of “preserving European traditions, culture etc” which is
the primary reason why more and more ex-NS people are conforming and joining the
new “European right”.

As a message to those hardcore NS’s who are simply unable to compromise; Conform
and join our armed struggle against the European cultural Marxists/multiculturalists (the
enablers of the Islamisation of Europe), or continue to be sidelined and marginalised.
Multiculturalism is the hole in the dike. Islam is the water pouring in. Everything else
should be irrelevant. Your “Jew” obsession is undermining your own struggle against
multiculturalism.

The cultural conservatives of Western Europe will seize power by 2080, if you want to be
a part of this you will have no choice but to compromise. I would imagine that a
continued Judeo Christian Europe would be considerably better than a European
Caliphate even for the most hardcore NS.

Q: Some “Ghandist/pacifist” members of the conservative resistance will claim
that violence will not solve anything and will instead only give our enemies
more rhetorical ammunition and make it easier for them to gain the moral
ground. They will finally be able to say; “terrorism has no religion”. “By using
terror you are undermining your own struggle and hurting the nationalist
cause”.

How would you react to statements like this?

A: Well, first of all, I would tell him he obviously didn’t have a clue what he was talking
about. Pacifist approaches have been tried in the past; in Lebanon where the Christians
waited until the Muslims made up 60% of the population. The Copts in Egypt have been
relatively pacifist and look what it got them… They are almost extinct due to their
pacifist stance. The same can be said about the Christian Assyrians and Armenians. They
waited and waited, like loyal little dhimmis and “hoped” for a better future, until the day
the Muslims decided to massacre them. Ghandi pacifism worked against the Brits in India
because Christian Europeans aren’t primitive barbarians… However, pacifism doesn’t
work at all against an Islamic entity. As soon as they become a form a majority (and this
will happen unless we can start the deportation campaigns in time) they will strike and
eventually massacre us as history has shown again and again.

A great majority of the European conservatives have chosen dialogue and pacifism since
1955 until today. And what exactly has it gotten us…? During the last 55 years of pacifist
dialogue, the multiculturalists have been allowed to open the gates and flooded our
ancestral lands with 30 million Muslims and they even continue to do so today. Should
we perhaps try dialogue for another 40 years and see what that brings us…? Only a
suicidal individual would accept this. Not acting would be the biggest of all crimes.
The time for dialogue is over for an increasing number of Western Europeans. The
European civil war will progress the coming decades and our traitor enemies will
eventually be defeated and executed.

Your personal life and convictions
Q: How did you first get involved in your current activities?

A: Well, I gained awareness of certain issues at that time. My best friend for many years,
a Muslim, had lived his whole life in Oslo West with limited contact with the Norwegian-
Pakistani community. Yet, he and more or less 100% of youngsters like him still failed in
many ways to be integrated. He attended Urdu classes at school from early childhood. He
went to the mosque occasionally after he was 12. Like most Norwegian-Pakistanis he felt
really torn between the Norwegian community and the Pakistani community. However, I
was wrong when assuming that he would chose to follow my path and the Norwegian
way. I understood early that he resented Norwegians and the Norwegian society. Not
because he was jealous, after all he could have conformed if he wanted to. He resented it
because it represented the exact opposite of Islamic ways. Shortly after we broke of
contact he left Jon Trygve and Richard and started hanging out with his cousin and other
Pakistanis. Since then he has been a part of the Pakistani community in Oslo and has, as
far as I know, minimal contact with the Norwegian community. Since then he and his
Muslim friends have beaten and harassed several ethnic Norwegians, one of them being
my friend, Kristoffer.

According to Kristoffer, Arsalan and a bunch of Pakistanis tried to rob him (See: Jizya).
When he refused to pay them, they beat him badly. Luckily, there were witnesses around
and this incident in addition to Arsalans other acts of violence against ethnic Norwegians
resulted in him being incarcerated for 6 months. Another incident, which was confirmed
from reliable sources, happened on New Year’s Eve in Frognerparken, Oslo. Arsalan and
his Pakistani friends allegedly gang raped an ethnic Norwegian girl. I believe this was in
95 or 96. As far as I know, they were never charged with this crime due to the lack of
witnesses.

Muslim girls were off limits to everyone, even the Muslim boys. The only available
“commodity” at this point was therefore ethnic Norwegian girls, referred to as “whores”.
Due to the tolerance indoctrinated through Norwegian upbringing – girls aren’t brought
up to be sceptics, racists or anti-immigrant, just like most boys. They are all brought up
to be very tolerant. As a result, many ethnic Norwegian girls, especially in Muslim
dominated areas, despise ethnic Norwegian boys because they consider them as weak
and inferior with lack of pride, seeing as they are systematically “subdued” by the
“superior Muslim boys”. Ironically, Muslim boys are raised to view Norwegian girls as
inferior “whores”. Their only purpose is to bring pleasure until the Muslim guys are
around 20-25 when they will find a pure, “superior” Muslim girl, a virgin. At this point,
the ethnic Norwegian “whores” is discarded, and most of the girls go back to their old
“tribe”. They are welcomed back in the name of tolerance.

More or less all Muslim parents will tell their sons the following: “You can have fun with
the Norwegian whores, as long as you marry a Muslim”. If, against all odds, a Muslim guy
wants to marry one of these “whores”, she has to convert to Islam – no exception. The
Muslim girls however are guarded by their male family members like they were made of
pure gold. If a Muslim girl, against all odds, engages in a relationship with an ethnic
Norwegian guy, then the Muslim males from her family or “tribe” will kill her or forcefully
take her to their country of origin to be “educated” for a few years. They will attempt to
lure her on a vacation to Pakistan, Morocco, Somalia etc. and possibly kill her there, if
she still refuses to conform. An alternative strategy is to forcefully marry her off to a local
Muslim guy and keep her in their country of origin until she is sufficiently “tied down”
through impregnating her and systematical indoctrination. When she is “tied down” with
2 or more children there isn’t much she can do. Also, it’s not very risky to kill Muslim girls
in Muslim countries as most government officials are corrupt and “very understanding”,
especially in cases where a family wants to “restore their pride”. This is the main reason
why Muslim girls are occasionally sent back to their country of origin, in order to prevent
them from becoming too “European”. They are often sent back to Europe, after several
years of abduction and indoctrination when they are sufficiently subdued and under
control of the Muslim society. It’s not very tempting for Muslim girls to file a divorce and
risk getting frozen out of the Muslim community or risk getting killed when they have 2-4
children.

I also remember from my earlier childhood, two Pakistani and one Turkish girl from
Smestad school, the primary school I attended; Baligha, Modazzer and Eilif. Baligha was
Faizals, my friend’s, sister, I didn’t know Modazzer although she was my neighbour, but I
used to play with Eilif, Onors sister. At that time there were three Pakistani families in
that area and one Turkish, all except the latter lived in publicly subsidised apartments, in
accordance with the government’s integration program. I remember the day when
Modazzers chair was empty. We didn’t get an answer from our teacher regarding her
whereabouts. She was supposed to have returned from her summer vacation in Pakistan.
The next year Eilif was sent to Turkey. I heard her father thought she had become “too
Norwegian”. A few years later, the exact same thing happened with Baligha. One day she
didn’t show up for school after her vacation in Pakistan. I was only 10 years old at that
time and didn’t really know what was going on. In retrospect I know that they were sent
back to their country of origin, and no one as far as I know has heard from them again.
They were most likely either married away at young age or killed. I know exactly where
those families live(d) and I know for a fact that they vanished and didn’t return for
several years. At this point I knew nothing about Islam. I only learned at school that
Islam was peaceful and tolerant, very similar to Christianity. I was therefore unable to
make the correct conclusions and identify that both Baligha and Modazzer had in fact
been abducted.

Anyway, back to the topic. When I was around 16-17 years old I joined the Progress
Party Youth organisation (FpU) as they were anti-immigration and pro-free-market. Every
single journalist in the country regarded them as racist because of their anti-immigration
program. FrP were under constant attacks from every single media organisation, NGO’s
and all the other political parties. They were called racists and Nazis and were generally
labelled as “fascist pigs”. FrP appealed to me because I had experienced the hypocrisy in
society first hand and I knew already then that they were the only party who opposed
multiculturalism.

It became obvious to me early on that the hypocrisy in society was so prevalent and
overwhelming. I now started to see the connection between Islam, Western media, the
extreme left and the government. I started studying Islamism, Socialism, egalitarianism
and other directions of Political Science and became more aware of what was going on. I
then, for the first time, understood why I hadn’t learned anything of relevance about
Islam at school, and the motives for suppressing the truth on these issues – political
correctness.

Around year 2000 I realised that the democratic struggle against the Islamisation of
Europe, European multiculturalism was lost. It had gone too far. It is simply not possible
to compete democratically with regimes who import millions of voters. 40 years of
dialogue with the cultural Marxists/multiculturalists had ended up as a disaster. It would
now only take 50-70 years before we, the Europeans are in a minority. As soon as I
realised this I decided to explore alternative forms of opposition. Protesting is saying that
you disagree. Resistance is saying you will put a stop to this. I decided I wanted to join
the resistance movement.

However, the main problem then was that there weren’t any alternatives for me at all.
There weren’t any known armed cultural conservative, or Christian, anti-Jihad
movements.

An NS or racist/anti Jewish movement was completely out of the question, as they
represented much of what I oppose. I came in contact with Serbian cultural conservatives
through the internet. This initial contact would eventually result in my contact with
several key individuals all over Europe and the forming of the group who would later
establish the military order and tribunal, PCCTS, Knights Templar. I remember they did a
complete screening and background check to ensure I was of the desired calibre. Two of
them had reservations against inviting me due to my young age but the leader of the
group insisted on my candidature. According to one of them, they were considering
several hundred individuals throughout Europe for a training course. I met with them for
the first time in London and later on two occasions in Balticum. I had the privilege of
meeting one of the greatest living war heroes of Europe at the time, a Serbian crusader
and war hero who had killed many Muslims in battle. Due to EU persecution for alleged
crimes against Muslims he was living at one point in Liberia. I visited him in Monrovia
once, just before the founding session in London, 2002.

I was the youngest one there, 23 years old at the time. One of the key founders
instructed the rest of the group about several topics related to the goal of the
organisation. I believe I scribbled down more than 50 full pages of notes regarding all
possible related topics. Much of these notes are forwarded in the book 2083. It was
basically a detailed long term plan on how to seize power in Western Europe. I did not
fully comprehend at the time how privileged I was to be in the company of some of the
most brilliant political and military tacticians of Europe. Some of us were unfamiliar with
each other beforehand so I guess we all took a high risk meeting face to face. There were
only 5 people in London re-founding the order and tribunal (1 by proxy) but there were
around 25-30 attending in Balticum during the two sessions, individuals from all over
Europe; Germany, France, Sweden, the UK, Denmark, Balticum, Benelux, Spain, Italy,
Greece, Hungary, Austria, Armenia, Lebanon and Russia. Electronic or telephonic
communication was completely prohibited, before, during and after the meetings. On our
last meeting it was emphasised clearly that we cut off contact indefinitely. Any type of
contact with other cells was strictly prohibited.

This was not sessions were regular combat cells were created. It was more like a training
course for pioneer cell commanders. We were not instructed to attack specific targets,
quite the opposite. We were encouraged to rather use the information distributed to
contribute to build and expand the so called ”cultural conservative anti-Jihad movement,
either through spreading propaganda, provide funding for the creation of new groups
through various forums or by recruiting other people directly. All individuals attending the sessions learned about PCCTS, the Knights Templar but they were not specifically
instructed to represent that particular order and tribunal. Everyone was encouraged but
at the end, it was their own decision how they decided to manifest their resistance. A
special emphasis was put on the long term nature of the struggle (50-100 years). Our
task was to contribute to a long term approach and not to act prematurely. If there was a
large scale attack the next 10 years it was said, we should avoid any immediate follow up
attacks as it would negate the shock effect of the subsequent attacks. A large successful
attack every 5-12 years was optimal depending on available forces.

This was not a stereotypical “right wing” meeting full of underprivileged racist skinheads
with a short temper, but quite the opposite. Most of them were successful entrepreneurs,
business or political leaders, some with families, most of them Christian conservatives
but also some agnostics and even atheists. I remember it struck me how impressed I
was regarding how they had set up the screening parameters (for accepting new
candidates). They obviously wanted resourceful pragmatical individuals who were able to
keep information away from their loved ones and who were not in any way flagged by
their governments. Every one of them was supportive of a Judeo Christian Europe and
did not have any reservations against cooperating with non-European Christians Hindu or
Buddhist nationalists. I had or have a relatively close relationship with at least one of
them, an Englishman, who became my mentor. He was the one who first described the
“perfect knight” and had written the initial fundament for this compendium. I was asked,
not only once but twice, by my mentor; let’s call him Richard, to write a second edition of
his compendium about the new European Knighthood. As such, I spent several years to
create an economic platform which would allow me to study and write a second edition.
And as of now, I have spent more than three years completing this second edition.
Perhaps, someone out there will be able to contribute by creating a third edition one day.

Q: What tipped the scales for you? What single event made you decide you
wanted to continue planning and moving on with the assault?

A: For me, personally, it was my government’s involvement in the attacks on Serbia
(NATO bombings in 1999) several years back. It was completely unacceptable how the
US and Western European regimes bombed our Serbian brothers. All they wanted was to
drive Islam out by deporting the Albanian Muslims back to Albania. When the Albanians
refused, they really didn’t have any choice but to use military force. By disallowing the
Serbians the right for self-determination over their sovereign territory they indirectly dug
a grave for Europe. A future where several Mini-Pakistan’s would eventually will be
created in every Western European capital. This is unacceptable, completely
unacceptable.

There have been several issues that have reaffirmed my beliefs since then. Among them;
my governments cowardly handling of the Muhammad Cartoon issue and their decision to
award the Nobel peace prize to an Islamic terrorist (Arafat) and appeasers of Islam.
There have been tens of other issues. My government and our media capitulated to Islam
several years ago, after the Rushdie event. Since then, it has gone downhill. Thousands
of Muslims pouring in annually through our Asylum institution, or by family reunification.
The situation is just chaotic. These suicidal traitors must be stopped. Continue reading →

Did Anders Behring Breivik act alone? — Updated

(Update below.)

In his manifesto, 2083 A European Declaration of Independence, Anders Behring Breivik — who will soon go on trial for murdering at least 93 fellow Norwegians — writes:

Solo-cell systems in combination with martyrdom is the most efficient and deadly form of modern warfare. This strategy was adapted by Jihadist groups. And now we will be using it as well. It is even more valuable to us as we enjoy more “invisibility” than individuals who have Arabic/Asian appearance and customs.

This compendium of his writings, whose promotion was his central objective, describes in great detail the lonely pursuit of his “assault operation.” But though what he did would seem to epitomize the “solo-cell” action he promotes, there are several indications that indirectly and perhaps directly other individuals were involved in the July 22 attacks.

Breivik writes that in 2002 he attended of a self-described Knights Templar group in London. At the age of 23, he was the youngest member there.

He writes: “I joined the session after visiting one of the initial facilitators, a Serbian Crusader Commander and war hero, in Monrovia, Liberia,” indicating that Breivik did not initiate the formation of this group. “Certain long term tasks are delegated and I am one of two who are asked to create a compendium based on the information I have acquired from the other founders during our sessions.”

The group is hosted by an English Protestant, joined by an English Christian atheist, a French Catholic, a German Christian atheist, a Dutch Christian agnostic, a Greek Orthodox, a Russian Christian atheist, a Norwegian Protestant (presumably Breivik himself), a Serbian Orthodox (“by proxy, location: Monrovia, Liberia”), while unable to attend were individuals from Sweden, Belgium and a “European-American.” Breivik does not reveal anyone’s name.

In a self-interview, Breivik recounts how he was recruited to the Knights Templar:

I came in contact with Serbian cultural conservatives through the internet. This initial contact would eventually result in my contact with several key individuals all over Europe and the forming of the group who would later establish the military order and tribunal, PCCTS, Knights Templar. I remember they did a complete screening and background check to ensure I was of the desired calibre. Two of them had reservations against inviting me due to my young age but the leader of the group insisted on my candidature. According to one of them, they were considering several hundred individuals throughout Europe for a training course. I met with them for the first time in London and later on two occasions in Balticum [the Baltics]. I had the privilege of meeting one of the greatest living war heroes of Europe at the time, a Serbian crusader and war hero who had killed many Muslims in battle. Due to EU persecution for alleged crimes against Muslims he was living at one point in Liberia. I visited him in Monrovia once, just before the founding session in London, 2002.

I was the youngest one there, 23 years old at the time. One of the key founders instructed the rest of the group about several topics related to the goal of the organisation. I believe I scribbled down more than 50 full pages of notes regarding all possible related topics. Much of these notes are forwarded in the book 2083. It was basically a detailed long term plan on how to seize power in Western Europe. I did not fully comprehend at the time how privileged I was to be in the company of some of the most brilliant political and military tacticians of Europe. Some of us were unfamiliar with each other beforehand so I guess we all took a high risk meeting face to face. There were only 5 people in London re-founding the order and tribunal (1 by proxy) but there were around 25-30 attending in Balticum during the two sessions, individuals from all over Europe; Germany, France, Sweden, the UK, Denmark, Balticum, Benelux, Spain, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Austria, Armenia, Lebanon and Russia. Electronic or telephonic communication was completely prohibited, before, during and after the meetings. On our last meeting it was emphasised clearly that we cut off contact indefinitely. Any type of contact with other cells was strictly prohibited.

This was not sessions w[h]ere regular combat cells were created. It was more like a training course for pioneer cell commanders. We were not instructed to attack specific targets, quite the opposite. We were encouraged to rather use the information distributed to contribute to build and expand the so called “cultural conservative anti-Jihad movement, either through spreading propaganda, provide funding for the creation of new groups through various forums or by recruiting other people directly. All individuals attending the sessions learned about PCCTS [Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici (Latin) or Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon], the Knights Templar but they were not specifically instructed to represent that particular order and tribunal. Everyone was encouraged but at the end, it was their own decision how they decided to manifest their resistance. A special emphasis was put on the long term nature of the struggle (50-100 years). Our task was to contribute to a long term approach and not to act prematurely. If there was a large scale attack the next 10 years it was said, we should avoid any immediate follow up attacks as it would negate the shock effect of the subsequent attacks. A large successful attack every 5-12 years was optimal depending on available forces.

This was not a stereotypical “right wing” meeting full of underprivileged racist skinheads with a short temper, but quite the opposite. Most of them were successful entrepreneurs, business or political leaders, some with families, most of them Christian conservatives but also some agnostics and even atheists. I remember it struck me how impressed I was regarding how they had set up the screening parameters (for accepting new candidates). They obviously wanted resourceful pragmatical individuals who were able to keep information away from their loved ones and who were not in any way flagged by their governments. Every one of them was supportive of a Judeo Christian Europe and did not have any reservations against cooperating with non-European Christians Hindu or Buddhist nationalists. I had or have a relatively close relationship with at least one of them, an Englishman, who became my mentor. He was the one who first described the “perfect knight” and had written the initial fundament for this compendium. I was asked, not only once but twice, by my mentor; let’s call him Richard, to write a second edition of his compendium about the new European Knighthood. As such, I spent several years to create an economic platform which would allow me to study and write a second edition. And as of now, I have spent more than three years completing this second edition. Perhaps, someone out there will be able to contribute by creating a third edition one day. [Emphasis mine.]

In the final part of his compendium, where Breivik describes the process of collecting materials and constructing the bombs he exploded in Oslo on July 22, there is one sentence which might indicate that other individuals were directly involved:

Will attempt to initiate contact with cell 8b and 8c in late March. [p.1437]

Perhaps significantly, he writes nothing about the process of selecting and gathering intelligence on his targets. Is that because he didn’t want to commit such information to writing or because this part of his operation was handled by others?

Update: BBC News reports:

Norwegian police are investigating claims by Anders Behring Breivik, who has admitted carrying out Friday’s twin attacks in Norway, that he has “two more cells” working with him.

Mr Breivik made the claim as he attended his first court hearing following the bombing in Oslo and a massacre on an island youth camp that killed at least 93 people in total.

Mr Breivik said his attacks were a “shock signal” to Norway’s people.

He was detained for eight weeks.

Oslo police asked for Mr Breivik to be held in full isolation for the first four weeks.

Judge Kim Heger agreed, saying Mr Breivik could receive no letters, nor have visitors except for his lawyer.

Judge Heger said police must be able to proceed with the investigation into Mr Breivik’s claims without the accused being able to interfere.

From Pamela Geller to Anders Behring Breivik — how Islamophobia turned deadly in Norway

When terrorism has a white face it invariably gets marginalized in the popular narrative. The lone wolf, the outsider, the sociopath — in many cases these portraits of misanthropic, isolated individuals who turn to violence are quite accurate.

The Oslo killings, however, should be seen in a different light since there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that the perpetrator of this atrocity, even if it turns out he was acting alone, was very much part of a political movement — a movement whose leading ideologues regularly appear on Fox News and have high public profiles.

Anders Behring Breivik, the 32-year-old Norwegian man widely assumed to be responsible for the mass murder that took place in Oslo yesterday, is being referred to as a Christian fundamentalist in many press reports.

His comments appearing on the political website Document.no suggest however that this is a rather misleading description. His views, as revealed there, are ideological rather than religious with his preeminent focus being his opposition to multiculturalism. (Quotations of Breivik appearing below come from a translation provided by Doug Saunders.)

In the United States, one of the most prominent public faces of the movement to which Breivik belongs is that of the notorious right-wing, pro-Israel, Islamophobic blogger, Pamela Geller, whose principal mouthpiece is Atlas Shrugs.

The poster below shows a recent event which she backed, along with Robert Spencer who operates Jihad Watch.

The World War Two iconography they employ — battleships, tanks and squadrons of bombers — makes it clear that they regard their campaign against “Islamization” as a kind of war. One of the battles in that war played out in Oslo yesterday.

Breivik, who probably sees himself as one of SIOE’s “freedom fighters,” describes himself as a cultural conservative and anti-Marxist liberal. In his comments at Document.no, he says little about his religious beliefs and seems to see his Christian identity primarily as a cultural identity. He writes:

I myself am a Protestant and baptized / conﬁrmed to me by my own free will when I was 15

But today’s Protestant church is a joke. Priests in jeans who march for Palestine and churches that look like the minimalist shopping centers. I am a supporter of an indirect collective conversion of the Protestant church back to the Catholic. In the meantime, I vote for the most conservative candidates in church elections.

The only thing that can save the Protestant church is to go back to basics.

Breivik is much more specific in identifying the sources from whom he takes his own ideological direction: Robert Spencer, Fjordman, Atlas [Pamela Geller], Analekta [Informatics], Gates of Vienna, The Brussels Journal, and The Religion of Peace.

These are the preeminent voices promoting fear and hatred of Islam across Europe and America. But they also form — at least in Breivik’s mind — the “epicenter” of “political analysis” on the threat posed to cultural conservatives by multiculturalism in Europe and America. He recommends Fjordman’s book, “Defeating Eurabia,” as “the perfect Christmas gift for family and friends.”

Do any of the leaders of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and Stop Islamization of Europe (SIOE) advocate that their “freedom fighters” should adopt violent tactics such as those employed by Breivik? Perhaps not. Indeed, I have little doubt that in the coming days we will hear many vociferous disavowals of their having any association with the Norwegian. But have no doubt, while they might have a sincere revulsion for Breivik’s actions, they cannot so easily disassociate themselves from the ideas that drove him to murder almost a hundred innocent people.

Two years ago, Breivik called on fellow Norwegians to form a youth action group “that represents our ideological platform (anti-racist but critical of multiculturalism / Islamization etc).” He saw the group developing as part of Stop Islamization of Europe or as a new group that would model itself on SIOE and the English Defense League.

“For me it is very hypocritical to treat Muslims, Nazis and Marxists differ[ently]. They are all supporters of hate-ideologies,” Breivik writes. There is a whiff of the Bush doctrine here — that we should not differentiate between terrorists and those who harbor them. There’s also a hint of Bin Laden’s idea of the near enemy and the far enemy.

Breivik argues that cultural conservatives should not identify their main opponents as Jihadists, but instead should focus their attention on those he regards as the “facilitators” of Jihadists, namely, the proponents of multiculturalism. Hence his vehement opposition to Norway’s Labour Party and its leader, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

Those in the anti-Islam movement who now want to distance themselves from Breivik will proclaim that they are opponents of hatred and maybe that’s true — but that’s how he sees himself too: as a man dedicating his life to combating the “hate ideologies.”

As the last decade has demonstrated, whether it’s on the level of governments or individuals, those who take up a banner in the name of a crusade against hatred have a surprising willingness to employ violence in pursuit of that goal.

Where are the next News Corp whistle-blowers?

Does the death of Sean Hoare suggest that anyone who exposes wrongdoing inside the Murdoch empire is putting their life at risk? I don’t think so.

Hoare’s health had been compromised by alcohol and drug addiction. A few days before he died he got accidentally whacked on the head by a relative carrying a heavy pole as they took down a marquee at a children’s party. Reporters for the New York Times who dined with him in his last days described him as “ailing.”

The police force that ordered Hoare’s autopsy is the Hertfordshire force — not the Metropolitan police where officers accepted bribes from News International. The type of autopsy conducted was one ordinarily used in cases of suspicious death, even though investigators have not identified suspicious circumstances.

But now that News International has pulled the plug on its financial aid for Glenn Mulcaire and the world waits for him to break his silence, if he too suddenly dies then of course both deaths would be massively suspicious. Absent such an extraordinary turn of events, I think the reason other News Corp employees don’t speak out has more to do with fears for their wealth than their health.

In 2009, Fox News anchor Stuart Varney set the standard when it comes to the proposition that anyone on his payroll should dare challenge Emperor Murdoch.

Should we be surprised that a Fox journalist would assume such a supine position in relation to his boss? Only if we imagine News Corp attracts employees who are more interested in practicing journalism than they are in the size of their pay checks.

Consider the example of the editors of Murdoch’s Times of London. Today they assumed the posture of having greater concern about starvation in Somalia than they do about the phone hacking story and so they ran this cartoon:

Does the situation in Somalia deserve greater media attention? Of course. But if the Times actually thinks its competitors’ priorities are skewed, how come they couldn’t find space for a single paragraph on Somalia on their own front page?

If a few of Murdoch’s employees are now having sleepless nights wondering whether they should speak out and risk losing their jobs, they must also know that the decision of any whistle-blower is one of the loneliest. Anyone who jumps off the Murdoch ship is unlikely to be quickly offered a lifeline from another.

The corporate media world of which the Murdoch empire is merely one part, does not foster a culture that rewards integrity. Team players are an asset; individuals with an unshackled conscience are risky. Those whose job it is to report, know that there are times when nothing is more highly prized by their employers than their silence.

Bret Stephens’ and News Corp’s hacking bullshit

News Corp condemns hacking. That seems to be the corporate PR directive that has landed on the desk of every one of Rupert Murdoch’s minions in their ongoing effort to save him and themselves.

The latest example of this strategy of damage control comes from Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens under the headline: “News of the World vs. WikiLeaks.”

How does this year’s phone hacking scandal at the now-defunct British tabloid News of the World—owned, I hardly need add, by News Corp., the Journal‘s parent company—compare with last year’s contretemps over the release of classified information by Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks and his partners at the New York Times, the Guardian and other newspapers?

At bottom, they’re largely the same story.

In both cases, secret information, initially obtained by illegal means, was disseminated publicly by news organizations that believed the value of the information superseded the letter of the law, as well as the personal interests of those whom it would most directly affect. In both cases, fundamental questions about the lengths to which a news organization should go in pursuit of a scoop have been raised. In both cases, a dreadful human toll has been exacted: The British parents of murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler, led to the false hope that their child might be alive because some of her voice mails were deleted after her abduction; Afghan citizens, fearful of Taliban reprisals after being exposed by WikiLeaks as U.S. informants.

Both, in short, are despicable instances of journalistic malpractice, for which some kind of price ought to be paid. So why is one a scandal, replete with arrests, resignations and parliamentary inquests, while the other is merely a controversy, with Mr. Assange’s name mooted in some quarters for a Nobel Peace Prize?

Scandal: “A publicized incident that brings about disgrace or offends the moral sensibilities of society.”

We all know why Bret Stephen’s News Corp paymasters have been hauled in front of a parliamentary committee today to answer questions on the News of the World phone hacking scandal. But the Wikileaks scandal?

The treatment of Bradley Manning is certainly a scandal — but not one that has garnered a great deal of attention in the mainstream media. But Wikileaks efforts to promote transparency in government are neither a scandal, nor indeed do they involve hacking. There is no evidence that either Wikileaks or newspapers publishing documents provided by Wikileaks, broke the law.

The real difference between the Wikileaks story and the exposure of business practices employed by News Corp is the difference between public interest and self interest. For Rupert Murdoch’s empire, as ideological driven as some of its components might seem to be, is ultimately an enterprise with a very simple agenda.

The populism that unites News of the World and Fox News is one in which news entertainers exploit the commercial value of popular sentiment in whatever way can grab the largest market share. Sure, they have a broadly conservative agenda, but their philosophy and business practices boil down to this: they’re only in it for the money.

Rebekah Brooks volunteers to get arrested — London police oblige — updated

The Guardian reports:

Rebekah Brooks has been arrested by police investigating allegations of phone hacking by the News of the World and allegations that police officers were bribed to leak sensitive information.

The Metropolitan police said a 43-year-old woman was arrested at noon on Sunday, by appointment at a London police station.

Brooks, 43, resigned on Friday as News International’s chief executive. She is a former News of the World editor and was close to Rupert Murdoch and the prime minister, David Cameron.

Brooks was due to give evidence before MPs on the culture select committee on Tuesday.

An arrest by appointment on a Sunday by police is unusual.

Unusual because the police generally only schedule appointments for arrest during regular business hours, or because most people getting arrested aren’t offered an opportunity to schedule their arrest in advance?

Apparently Brooks was notified about her impending arrest on Friday. Maybe she had a dinner party she needed to attend yesterday evening and so couldn’t turn herself in until today.

Her PR spokesman said: “Rebekah is assisting the police with their enquiries. She attended a London police station voluntarily.” And if she hadn’t volunteered?

Meanwhile, The Independent on Sunday reports:

The MP who will lead the attack on Rebekah Brooks and Rupert and James Murdoch this week over their roles in the phone-hacking scandal has close links with the media empire, it is revealed today.

John Whittingdale, the Conservative chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport committee, admitted he was an old friend of Mr Murdoch’s close aide, Les Hinton, and had been for dinner with Ms Brooks.

The Independent on Sunday has also learnt that Mr Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, seen as the future saviour of the company, has also met Mr Whittingdale a number of times. Among her 386 “friends” on Facebook, the only MP she lists is Mr Whittingdale. He is also the only MP among 93 Facebook “friends” of Mr Hinton.

The Guardian‘s Matt Wells adds:

The arrest of Rebekah Brooks in relation to phone hacking and corruption drags News Corporation deeper into crisis.

It must surely mean that the police investigation is edging closer to James Murdoch, who has been head of all News Corporation’s businesses in Europe and Asia since 2007. He personally approved payments to civil litigants against the News of the World in settlement of their cases – deals that involved gagging clauses that appears to have prevented them discussing potential criminal activity in public.

There are two other important things to note from the arrest of Brooks. It is a personal blow for Rupert Murdoch, who had invested so much in the career of Brooks, promoting her though the Wapping ranks at lightening speed and describing her as the “daughter he never had.” (he actually has four).

It must also set nerves on edge in Downing Street – only on Friday, it was revealed that David Cameron had hosted Brooks twice at Chequers, the only guest to be granted a second visit in his premiership. They also met socially over Christmas.

Is Murdoch now getting advice from Gaddafi?

“News Corp is not Rupert Murdoch,” says Murdoch.

In this gesture of mock humility, I don’t think the News Corp CEO is suggesting that, for the good of the company, he’s ready to bow out. It’s much more like Muammar Gaddafi saying that he can’t step down from power in Libya because supposedly he’s not the head of state.

News Corp “is the collective creativity and effort of many thousands of people around the world, and few individuals have given more to this company than Les Hinton,” said Murdoch just as he dumped the Dow Jones CEO.

Murdoch ditched News of the World in order to protect News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, but then he ended up getting rid of her too.

Having now got rid of Hinton, Murdoch is probably nursing the fantasy that he won’t have to axe his son and heir apparent, James, but as Jack Shafer notes, James’ departure is all but certain.

Next week, Murdoch and his son James, who paid settlements to phone-hacking victims, will appear before a parliamentary committee after first declining the request. After saying he’s sorry, Murdoch will say he’s sorry again and again and again. James, who isn’t any sorrier than his father, will say the same thing, but it won’t work, because he paid hush money and is therefore a part of the scandal. As the Telegraph reported this week, as long as Brooks stayed on the payroll, she shielded James from some of the more vociferous attacks. She, after all, was News of the World editor when Dowler’s phone was hacked. But Brooks’ resignation exposes James Murdoch to the fury now, which he can’t possibly endure.

Rupert knows this, and knows that he must soon sacrifice his favorite son. Murdoch’s predicament illustrates why no parent should have only one offspring—a backup unit must be kept at all times in case something dreadful happens to the child you’re depending on. It’s Murdoch’s good luck that he has two children who can replace James while he does his time in Siberia. Both Elisabeth, a media tycoon in her own right, and Lachlan, the eldest son and previous heir apparent, could take James’ place in the News Corp. hierarchy. Neither carries any phone-hacking scandal taint, and both are ambitious. Where did Elisabeth stand on the Brooks question? According to a Telegraph report, she told friends that Brooks had “f***** the company.”

Would Murdoch really sack his son? I don’t see why we should rule out infanticide in this case. Writing in the Financial Times this week, former media tycoon and convicted felon Conrad Black held that “Murdoch has no loyalty to anyone or anything except his company. He has difficulty keeping friendships; rarely keeps his word for long; is an exploiter of the discomfort of others; and has betrayed every political leader who ever helped him in any country, except Ronald Reagan and perhaps Tony Blair.”

Murdoch biographer, Michael Wolff, says Elisabeth Murdoch was misquoted. “She said: ‘James and Rebekah fucked the company,'” Wolff tweeted.

Matt Wells writes:

No relationship is safe, no loyal bond strong enough for Rupert Murdoch who – looking more than the sum of his 80 years – is mounting a final battle to save the company he built from nothing.

His decision to throw Les Hinton to the wolves is his most dramatic move yet. For more than 50 years, as a journalist and then an executive, Hinton loyally served the Murdoch empire from its roots in Australia to the height of its power in New York.

Now, in a desperate effort to save News Corporation’s most valuable assets – its 27 US broadcast licences and the 20th Century Fox movie studio – Murdoch is prepared to sacrifice one of his closest allies.

The problem for Murdoch is that every time he ditches a key executive, the flames of scandal flick ever closer to him.

Murdoch’s despotic tendencies were on full display in an interview he did for his paper, the Wall Street Journal, where he took the opportunity to say what an admirable job he has done so far in handling the crisis.

Alex Klein writes:

“In Interview, Murdoch Defends News Corp.” proclaims a much-buzzed headline on the Murdoch and News Corp.-owned Wall Street Journal. It’s a stretch of a title. The 700-word piece is less “interview” than stenography, a generous opportunity for the mogul to swagger, project confidence, and bend the truth. There are a lot of so-sad-it’s-funny quotes, but the best by far is Murdoch’s promise to institute a “protocol for behavior” at all of his newspapers. This meaningless pledge falls right in line with a great deal of bad News of the World commentary that misconstrues the paper’s sins as journalistic overreach or inappropriateness. Stealing, bribing, and hacking aren’t a ‘best practices’ issue, like misattributing a quote or wearing hawaiian shirts to work: they’re illegal. Beyond breaking stuffy American ethics protocol, News International broke real British law. So unless the first bullet-point in News International’s new “protocol for behavior” is “Don’t commit crimes. Also don’t cover up crimes by committing more crimes,” I’m not quite sure what he and the Journal are playing at. The dishonest two-step from illegality to immorality is even reflected in the Journal’s own reporting, which frames the issue as one of “dubious reporting tactics.” And as Media Matters has pointed out, it took the paper a whole week — and a couple of buried NOTW stories — before it reported that its own publisher and Murdoch friend Les Hinton has a starring role in the scandal.

Larry Flynt fears that Murdoch’s lack of concern for the public interest now puts every publisher at risk:

One cannot live off the liberty and benefits of a free press while ignoring the privacy of the people. People such as Murdoch and I, as heads of publishing conglomerates, have a responsibility to maintain and respect this boundary. While Murdoch may understand the significance of what we do under the umbrella of free speech, he may fail to recognize the liability attached to publication. Simply put, he publishes what he wants, apparently regardless of how he gets information and heedless of the responsibility associated with the power he wields.

Murdoch’s enterprises have consistently published stories about people who did not give permission to have their private lives dissected in the media — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. News Corp. employees allegedly hired known criminals to obtain private information about former British prime minister Gordon Brown when his infant son was given a diagnosis of cystic fibrosis. News Corp. employees allegedly hired investigators who hacked into the phones of victims of the 9/11 attacks in the United States and the July 7, 2005, bombings in London. And News Corp. employees allegedly paid police officers for illegally obtained information about the queen. Meanwhile, Roger Ailes, chief of Murdoch’s Fox News, runs a well-oiled propaganda machine.

So it only seems fair that Murdoch was forced to close the News of the World tabloid, that he has had to abandon his bid for British Sky Broadcasting and that his reputation, not stellar to begin with, is forever tarnished.

No matter how offensive or distasteful some people may find Hustler magazine and my other publications, no one has appeared unwillingly in their pages. I do not create sensationalism at the expense of people living private lives. Yes, I have offered money to those willing to expose hypocritical politicians — one of those offers, in 1998, resulted in the resignation of Bob Livingston, a Republican congressman from Louisiana who voted to impeach President Bill Clinton despite his own extramarital affairs. I focus not on those who are innocent, but rather on those who practice the opposite of what they very publicly preach. This may be considered an extreme or controversial practice in getting a story, but it is far from criminal.

On a daily basis, and in ways that the general public does not even recognize, our right to privacy is disappearing rapidly. Our political leaders allow companies such as Google and Facebook to continually infringe on this right. Both of those companies serve as data mines, selling information about their users. Facebook, behind a mask of individual privacy settings, has almost single-handedly killed privacy; founder Mark Zuckerberg has actually stated, according to reports, that he doesn’t believe in privacy. The government needs to get back to its roots: protecting the privacy of its citizens while encouraging the individual freedoms on which this country was founded.

Freedom of the press and the right to privacy do not have to be combatants. The people have tasked members of the news media with the duty and the responsibility to provide information. As publishers, we must find the boundary, push it, but refuse to cross it — never selling out our readers and never publishing what we cannot verify.

If the allegations are true, Murdoch did not just cross the line — he erased it. By doing so, he has placed all of us who enjoy freedom of the press at grave risk.

News updates

I’ll be off-line for the next few days and so there won’t be regular news updates until late Friday. But in the meantime I have scheduled a lot of interesting feature articles which will appear here over this period. — PW

News updates

Israel’s campaign of violence against non-violent political opposition

Israel is now a nation governed by its reptilian brain. In response to the slightest challenge, it lashes out as though in each and every moment, its life were under threat.

Israel now only has one way of responding to criticism: to accuse its critics of being violent. By claiming critics are by their nature violent, violence then becomes the state’s necessary and unavoidable form of defense.

Israel has no political answers to its political critics — only the use of force, tear gas, detention, deportation and the occasional bullet in the head.

Having presented the arrival of a few hundred European tourists as a violent threat, Israeli paranoia thereafter needed some form of ‘proof’ for justifying its fears, thus today the Israeli press if filled with headlines like this:

Foreign pro-Palestinian activists clash with IDF in West Bank

Joseph Dana questions whether their is any basis for the reports. And in the video below showing “clashes” yesterday between non-violent protesters and the IDF, it’s clear that objective and accurate reporting would describe such events with very different language and headlines like this:

IDF attacks unarmed protesters in the West Bank

Dana writes:

According to media reports carried by all major news outlets in Israel, four ‘air flotilla’ passengers were arrested/detained Saturday in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh during an unarmed demonstration this morning. Haaretz, in its headline story, is citing reports by Channel 10 (Heb), that four ‘air flotilla’ activists have been taken for questioning after they had been arrested in the demonstration. The Jerusalem Post, citing unnamed ‘organizers’, claims that air flotilla passengers are clashing with security forces in Nabi Saleh. The paper does not cite the name of the organizations that the ‘organizers’ are representatives of. Ynet is reporting that activists might be involved in demonstrations in Nabi Saleh and Qalandiya but they provide nothing to substantiate their claims. None of these reports seem to based on facts on the ground in Nabi Saleh.

Kobi Snitz, an Israeli activist with the Anarchists Against the Wall, told me by telephone from Nabi Saleh that he has not seen any ‘air flotilla’ passenger in the course of the day. He told me that four people were indeed arrested, but they were all Israeli Jews from Tel Aviv. In fact, the Israeli activists are being charged with assaulting soldiers despite clear video footage to the contrary according to Snitz. Snitz did comment that there were international activists present in the demonstration but ‘they were definitively not arrested or taken in by Israeli forces.” Other villagers in Nabi Saleh told to me that they were unaware that ‘air flotilla’ passengers were present in their demonstration today. I have not been able to reach anyone present at the Qalandiya demonstration at the time of this writing.

News outlets often make mistakes and +972 is no exception. However, it is strange for a story that is based almost entirely on unsubstantiated reports to become the headline of every major newspaper website in Israel. When rumors of arrests of air flotilla passengers began this morning, Yossi Gurvitz contacted the IDF spokesman for a confirmation of the story. He was given a categorical rejection of claims that air flotilla passengers were targeted for arrest in the West Bank. No comment was given about air flotilla activists involved in demonstrations in Nabi Saleh.

Shir Hever notes:

The hundreds of activists being deported from Israel’s airport, or denied the right to board the planes to begin with, are mostly European citizens, who have the same right which every Israeli enjoys when visiting Europe. As an Israeli citizen, I can take a plane to any European country without worrying about being denied entry. I don’t need to lie at the airport. Tens of thousands of demonstrators who fly to G8 meetings to protest them are also not denied entry. Still, European citizens visiting Israel and even more so if they are visiting the OPT, are interrogated, placed under surveillance and political controls.

The European Union has a reciprocity policy regarding countries whose citizens enjoy a free visa, and expects these countries to offer the same treatment to European citizens that Europe awards their citizens. So far, European governments (as well as the Canadian and US governments) do not concern themselves too much with the rights of their own citizens in Israel.

A proper response by France, Germany and the UK to the current mass deportations would be to suspend the visa agreement with Israel and demand that every Israeli citizen apply for a visa (like citizens of most countries in Africa and Asia), until Israel gives its reasons for expelling each and every activist who wishes to visit the OPT. Such a response is sure to remind the Israeli public that control over the Palestinian population in the OPT also carries responsibilities, and abusing those responsibilities carries consequences.

Israel to deport pro-Palestinian ‘fly-in’ activists within 48 hours

Pathetic reporting from Haaretz.

Out of 120 pro-Palestinian activists attempting to enter Israel only four were willing to pledge that they would not participate in violent protests. So the remaining 116 wanted to keep open their option to use violence?

Wrong. They merely refused to submit themselves to a political litmus test now required by anyone attempting to enter the so-called democratic state of Israel.

Immigration and Population Authority officials told Haaretz on Saturday evening that all foreign pro-Palestinian ‘fly-in’ activists who were refused entry into Israel over the past few days would be deported back to their home countries within 48 hours.

At this point, there are 120 detained activists. Eighty-five are being detained at the Givon facilty in Ramle and the rest are being held at the Ela detention facility.

Four activists from Germany and Holland were released and permitted to enter Israel after they pledged not to participate in violent protest activities.

According to police, anyone “who wanted to protest in a legitimate and non-violent manner was permitted to enter” Israel.

The 120 detained activists are less than half of the more than 300 who were originally questioned by police. Police said that the detained activists were those who refused to promise not to participate in violent protests.

Some activists refused to talk to investigators and only presented their passports.

Leftist organizations said that a number of ‘fly-in’ activists succeeded in entering Israel and participated on Saturday in small demonstrations at the Qalandiya checkpoint and in East Jerusalem.

At this stage, it is not clear that the Immigration and Population Authority will be able to fulfill its intention to deport the activists within 48 hours as foreign airlines that operate in Israel have said that they would have a hard time flying large groups of activists home.

A senior official for one of the large European carriers told Haaretz on Saturday that “the airlines will have a hard time dealing all at once with large groups of pro-Palestinian activists that Israel wants to deport.”

Shares in Rupert Murdoch’s companies tumble as investors take fright

(See Hugh Grant’s article in the New Statesman and for more background on the hacking scandal see this post.)

The Guardian reports:

Investors in companies controlled by Rupert Murdoch have been dumping the shares amid fears on both sides of the Atlantic over the fallout from the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World.

Shares in broadcaster BSkyB are down 5% in the last week, wiping some £666m off the value of the business, while News Corp had lost 2.6% – slicing some $400m off the value of the News of the World’s ultimate parent company. Many hedge funds which had bought into BSkyB in the hope of making a quick profit from the bid have been selling the shares on fears that the deal now faces substantial delay.

The British prime minister’s former communications director and former editor of News of the World, Andy Coulson, is now under arrest.

To get a sense of the political impact these events are having on David Cameron’s leadership, a scathing commentary in the Tory-friendly Daily Telegraph by Peter Oborne sums up the situation:

In the careers of all prime ministers there comes a turning point. He or she makes a fatal mistake from which there is no ultimate recovery. With Tony Blair it was the Iraq war and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. With John Major it was Black Wednesday and sterling’s eviction from the Exchange Rate Mechanism. With Harold Wilson, the pound’s devaluation in 1967 wrecked his reputation.

Each time the pattern is strikingly similar. Before, there is a new leader with dynamism, integrity and carrying the faith of the nation. Afterwards, the prime minister can stagger on for years, but as increasingly damaged goods: never is it glad, confident morning again.

David Cameron, who has returned from Afghanistan as a profoundly damaged figure, now faces exactly such a crisis. The series of disgusting revelations concerning his friends and associates from Rupert Murdoch’s News International has permanently and irrevocably damaged his reputation.

Until now it has been easy to argue that Mr Cameron was properly grounded with a decent set of values. Unfortunately, it is impossible to make that assertion any longer. He has made not one, but a long succession of chronic personal misjudgments.

He should never have employed Andy Coulson, the News of the World editor, as his director of communications. He should never have cultivated Rupert Murdoch. And – the worst mistake of all – he should never have allowed himself to become a close friend of Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of the media giant News International, whose departure from that company in shame and disgrace can only be a matter of time.

We are talking about a pattern of behaviour here. Indeed, it might be better described as a course of action. Mr Cameron allowed himself to be drawn into a social coterie in which no respectable person, let alone a British prime minister, should be seen dead.

It was called the Chipping Norton set, an incestuous collection of louche, affluent, power-hungry and amoral Londoners, located in and around the Prime Minister’s Oxfordshire constituency. Brooks and her husband, the former racing trainer Charlie Brooks, live in a house scarcely a mile from David and Samantha Cameron’s constituency home. The two couples meet frequently, and have continued to do so long after the phone hacking scandal became well known.

PR fixer Matthew Freud, married to Mr Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, is another member of this Chipping Norton set. When Mr Cameron bumped into Freud at Rebekah Brooks’s wedding two years ago, he and Mr Freud greeted each other with exuberant high-fives to signal their exclusive friendship.

The Prime Minister cannot claim in defence that he was naively drawn in to this lethal circle. He was warned – many times. Shortly before the last election he was explicitly told about the company he was keeping. Alan Rusbridger – editor of The Guardian newspaper, which has performed such a wonderful service to public decency by bringing to light the shattering depravity of Mr Murdoch’s newspaper empire – went to meet one of Mr Cameron’s closest advisers shortly before the last election. He briefed this adviser very carefully about Mr Coulson, telling him many troubling pieces of information that could not then be put into the public domain.

Mr Rusbridger then went to see Nick Clegg, now the deputy prime minister. So Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg – the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister – knew all about Mr Coulson before last May’s coalition negotiations. And yet they both paid no attention and went on to make him the Downing Street director of communications, an indiscretion that beggars belief.

So the Prime Minister is in a mess. To put the matter rather more graphically, he is in a sewer. The question is this: how does he crawl out and salvage at least some of his reputation for decency and good judgment?

Rupert Murdoch’s effort to save his own skin has been bold (even if predictably cynical). To get a sense of what shutting down News of the World means, keep in mind that its circulation of 2.7 million is more than twice the size of America’s largest circulation Sunday newspaper, the New York Times (1.3 million).

Stephen Glover writes:

Rupert Murdoch’s decision to close the 168-year-old News of the World certainly takes one’s breath away. For a moment one is tempted to marvel at the media tycoon’s decisiveness. Despite inexorably losing sales over the past couple of decades, the title is still Britain’s highest selling newspaper, and profitable. To shut such an operation seems a very big deal indeed.

But it actually isn’t – except for those who will lose their jobs. The paper’s closure after next Sunday is a piece of corporate window dressing designed to persuade us that News International is at long last taking the phone hacking scandal seriously, and that Murdoch should be allowed to proceed with the acquisition of the whole of BSkyB. We would do better to ask ourselves: what exactly has changed?

It is a fair bet that in a matter of weeks, News International will launch a paper called The Sun on Sunday, appealing to readers of the News of the World. The internet domain name for such a title was registered by persons unknown only two days ago.

What looks like an act of commercial self-sacrifice may turn out to be no more than an inconvenience to the company. News International’s decision to give all the revenues of next Sunday’s final issue to “good causes” is piece of calculated piety intended to make it appear caring.

My scepticism goes deeper. In his announcement to staff yesterday, the company’s British head, James Murdoch, spoke as though the News of the World were a separate entity from News International. He rightly said the paper had behaved abominably, and had “made statements to Parliament without it being in the full possession of the facts” – ie it lied.

But the News of the World is part of News International, and all its rampant illegal practices, and the subsequent cover-up, are ultimately the responsibility of Rupert and James Murdoch, and Rebekah Brooks, its chief executive.

War in Context

… with attention to the unseen

Author Archives: Paul Woodward

David Yerushalmi: the White supremacist lawyer leading the anti-Sharia crusade in the US

Pamela Geller’s ties to violence in Norway

Iran, innuendo, and secret deals with al Qaeda

Crime and punishment

Norway believes democracy is the best way of challenging terrorism

The Anders Behring Breivik interview

Did Anders Behring Breivik act alone? — Updated

From Pamela Geller to Anders Behring Breivik — how Islamophobia turned deadly in Norway

Where are the next News Corp whistle-blowers?

Bret Stephens’ and News Corp’s hacking bullshit

Rebekah Brooks volunteers to get arrested — London police oblige — updated

Is Murdoch now getting advice from Gaddafi?

News updates

News updates

News updates

Israel’s campaign of violence against non-violent political opposition

Israel to deport pro-Palestinian ‘fly-in’ activists within 48 hours

Shares in Rupert Murdoch’s companies tumble as investors take fright