Ryan's Rants

Germany's neo-Nazis killings & the "Brown Army Faction"

2011-11-17T10:58:00.001Z

During the period 2000-2 I travelled to Germany several times for research during the writing of my book, "HOMELAND", an exploration and personal account of my time with extreme Right groups, worldwide.

With news of a neo-Nazi organisation, the National Socialist Underground, now turning Germany upside down - accused of 10 filmed murders of immigrants, of bank robberies, hit lists and more - I thought I would share the final segment of "HOMELAND" which sees me step inside a former Nazi castle just-purchased by a violent and fanatical neo-Nazi leader in east Germany.

To read more, you'll need to download or buy a hard copy of the book.

* NPD = Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands a controversial, neo-Nazi linked political party in Germany (with links to Britain's BNP)

*kameradschaften = "comradeships", loose alliances of extreme Right social clubs and movements

* Horst Mahler = a former member of the leftwing terrorist organisation, the Red Army Faction, who crossed sides after leaving prison and joined the NPD (I met him and you can read that encounter, too, in "HOMELAND")

****

HOMELAND - 'NEW REICH' final chapter

This is it. Really it. Back to where it all began.

We’re three hours southwest of Berlin, in the heartland of the East. Trebnitz village is a remote hamlet sunk in a wilderness of fields. The drive here has been tense, pregnant with expectation.

“Look, I think that’s it,” whispers my journalist colleague, even though there’s no-one else in the car with us. I follow his finger. Over the farm courtyard, past what seems to be a church, looms a large, stately presence. Looms is the right word. The grey stone and brick lurks, massive and half-seen, behind a spread of trees.

It’s silent. A calm breeze stirs the back of my neck, as I step out of the car and move over to the wall surrounding the property. Broken windows stare back from the crumbling mansion. My translator calls it a “castle”. We both glance around, then take out our cameras, snapping a few pictures before anyone arrives.

After a few moments, an old guy with a pot belly pulls up on a bike. We pretend we’re shooting the surrounding vista. He asks what we’re doing, scratching his sideburns, glaring suspiciously.

My colleague does some fast talking, explaining our mission. The caretaker grunts, then clicks open the huge, rusting gate. We’re in.

Would we like a tour? he asks, as we walk into a tradesman’s entrance. Not believing our luck, we agree, stepping past building materials, rows of discarded radiators, moving through thick motes of dust drifting in the air. The rooms sweep up, eerily quiet. I’m left wondering what once went on here, my imagination supplying dire scenarios.

We wait for Steffen Hupka to arrive.

Hupka is a regional leader of the Kameradschaften and an important figure on the national scene, who’s clashed frequently with the authorities. He’s recently been expelled from the NPD, following a failed putsch. A close associate of Christian Worch, his expulsion seems to represent the end of the Kameradschaften’s dreams of dominance within the NPD. My colleague mentioned that Horst Mahler had been one of Hupka’s main opponents.

The caretaker ushers us into a room bare except for a table, a few chairs, and a newly-connected fax. I sneak out and look around upstairs, as my colleague makes small talk with the old man.

Arriving a few minutes later, Steffen Hupka dabs a sweating brow and apologises for his delay. “I had a meeting with some other journalists, from Stern. They wanted to know all about this place,” he smiles.

“Oh, why’s that?” I ask. My colleague has already told me the press are desperate to get pictures of the building and find out its purpose.

“There’s two thousand square metres of living space,” he gestures, seating himself at the table. “It will make a training centre for us, one which is unique in Germany. We’ve been looking for something like this for three or four years.” He leans back and smiles through prominent teeth.

I smile in return, thinking this is not someone you would pick out in a crowd: smart shirt, rolled sleeves, expensive watch, slacks, loafers. A bland, elongated face with blue eyes and a large nose, dusted with blackheads and topped with dark, greying hair drawn towards a receding hairline.

Shifting, and seeming still a little nervous, he links his fingers together and coughs self-consciously. “I was in the NPD until a month ago,” he says, “and then I and my colleagues left the party because we think it’s not enough a, er, national party, yes?” He makes a reference to recent reports of government informers within the party’s ruling body. “So I think the NPD is an organisation for the enemy.”

Hupka curls his lip and rolls his eyes up when I ask about his current relations with Horst Mahler. “I don’t make work with him, I think he’s not a nationalist, not honest.” We’ve obviously hit a sore spot, as he spends the next five minutes detailing his battles with the man.

I raise my eyebrows. “So who will you work with?”

“In Sachsen-Anhalt [this region] we have many free comradeships from about five to 20 [people]. We do demonstrations, renovate this house,” he points, making me laugh, thinking how this place could ever be described as just a house, “but there’s no party, no association or institutions.”

“Why?”

He listens as my colleague translates, nods, then smiles again. I can sense him relaxing, even as he turns to stare without blinking into my eyes.

“Because the danger is very big that the state will ban an organisation and then the state will confiscate the property.” In a rather telling comment, he adds: “And the owner will be a private person in the future, so nothing can be confiscated.”

He draws in a breath. “Next month, you know, we’ll found an association for German culture in this house.” My colleague’s body language, a subtle shift and slight cough, tell me this is something significant. “Why?” he asks Hupka, in English, then in German.

Hupka tells us he’s spent five years in the NPD and is sorry to leave. He’s remarkably candid, as though chatting with old friends. He describes the circumstances surrounding a failed attempt by his supporters to oust the old leaders.

“Does that mean you’ve given up on building a party?” I ask, innocently.

“In the last 12 years, the state has banned 13 organisations from national opposition, so many people think they can’t found a party or big organisation and so decide to make little groups.” My gaze is continually drawn to his thin arms, cocooned in a dark matt of hairs. “We will make a new central organisation, but I think we must prepare this organisation very well, and we must have one.” This seems a significant point. It appears he’s suggesting the development of a new party and movement, beyond what’s gone before. Something to take over from the NPD.

With a sneer and a little laugh, he dismisses the DVU and REP. Then he claims that all the best NPD people will come over to their new organisation. “But we don’t want to fight against the NPD.”

“Well, what is it that will unite you and your new comrades?”

“The most important thing, I think, for us is to be a German nation in a white Europe, together with the other people of the other nations. The EU destroys these nations, cultures that have stood up in the last 10,000 years.” His voice is gradually picking up speed. “It is God’s will that these nations stand.”

I draw breath to interrupt, but he carries on. “International capitalism will destroy this, and Wall Street, because they want a world with people who have no identity and no culture.”

I already know the kind of people behind all this. The Bilderbergers, the Freemasons, the Jews, he replies, asking if I know Bill Clinton’s administration had 53 Jews. “We want a New World Order, and these people want a new One World government, and I think this nearly exists already. You can see the powers of the USA in all areas, such as political, military, and economic.” His brows draw together, and he hunches his thin shoulders forward, a transformed figure full of passion. “We need a strong organisation with cadres, and in the future I think in Germany, and in other lands too, we will have a situation which we had in the GDR [East Germany] in 1989.”

“What situation?”

“When the Wall came down. And this will happen in the next 10 years in Germany. It’s then that we must have our strong organisation, and I hope there is the same development in other European nations.”

His face has shifted into an expression of earnestness. A new Reich movement. He talks of developing ties and appreciation with other groups around Europe – “What happened in France is important” – although he doesn’t mention anything specific. One reason is that the Kameradschaften are seen as neo-nazi in their beliefs, and these other groups are not. National Socialism is illegal under German law. I decide to press the point: "Are you a National Socialist?”

He laughs. “Ahem, ahem, yes, yes, yes. But you write this in the English magazine?"

It’s only later that I realise the significance of this comment.

We move on to his background, how he read a book as a child that told the story of the Native Americans - “their tradition, nation, courage, and culture” – which proved inspirational for his interest in the extreme right and desire to save Germany. David Irving was another one he enjoyed: “He has a standing for his opinion.”

Now 39, Hupka started his career in the JN in 1980, then moved through a variety of groups such as the HNG prisoner solidarity movement, and working with individuals such as Friedhelm Busse, the same neo-nazi I’d seen on May Day. In 1985 he established the NF, which was banned in 1993. He denies it was a militant, violent organisation, but Searchlight’s German sister magazine, Antifaschistisches Infoblatt, has photos from the party’s internal archive showing people training with guns and military clothing. One of the reasons for its ban was the idea to build up hit squads (Einsatzkommandos) for street battles. From 1996 until last month, Hupka was in the NPD.

“So why have you stuck with these groups?”

“Good question!” he replies, chortling. “I think it’s in the genes.”

“What, you mean you’re born with it?”

“Yes, nationalist views are in the genes.” My colleague raises one eyebrow at me. I can see he wants to say something, but he holds his tongue. “We live in a war against our German people and against the white race in Europe, and against all culture in the world. It’s a war without weapons. We must work so hard because we have a war. We need people to fight for ideas.”

“A physical struggle?”

“No. Well, perhaps in the future. I don’t know.”

Strong stuff, I think to myself, glancing at the grounds outside. Here we are in a mansion confiscated by the Soviets – were its former owners Nazis, I wonder? – soon to be a training centre for a new political movement of the extreme right, in a country with high social tensions in the east, and which gave birth to Nazism. It’s a heady, disturbing mix.

He ruefully admits that this battle means he has little time to spend with his two young children and partner, “but I make the fight for my children to have a good future, for our culture, for Germany.”

“Does this mean others have to get out?”

“Yes, all!” he exclaims, later claiming some attacks on foreigners have been by agents of the state. Young whites assault foreigners because they don’t come to the Kameradschaften’s meetings, apparently, not the other way around. “But this is the fault of the state, of society,” he maintains. “In this fight, the enemy has the same aims as 60 or 70 years ago.”

“Which is?”

His face twists into a sneer: “International capitalism.”

His own family were involved in the last war, which he describes as “a fight by good people against bad.” His father signed up in 1945 at age 16, and his uncle was a lieutenant in a bomber – a leader of the Hitler Youth, shot down and killed over England. Hupka remembers reading his diaries. His eyes take on a wistful look. “He was a model for me.”

His words trail off. I wait for him to continue.

“There were some bad things in the Third Reich, but generally it was right, and I think Hitler and his government want to make good things for the people and Europeans. And this was the cause for the war against our nation.”

I can hardly believe I’m hearing this. But that’s not all.

“What they say in the paper about us and the Holocaust was not true. We think there were concentration camps, but the people must work, and they died by the work. That is right, I think. But there was no mass annihilation.”

"Do you think the issue of the Holocaust is used by Israel and the international Jewish community in some way for punishing German people?”

“There were many reasons for these lies,” he continues, lecturing me. “To put Germany down, they got millions from us in the past, and they will have money in the future and the next thousand years.” Bitterness drenches his words. “They destroy our self-consciousness because of what they say we’ve done. But I don’t think it’s so.”

I realise how quiet it’s become. Dusk is drawing down. The lazy drift of sunlight is dipping below the horizon. Suddenly, the ghostly presence of the past seems to linger around us. I have a flashback to the children’s mental hospital I saw in eastern Croatia, a huge old building just like this one, but full of bloodstains and bullet holes where the kids had been dragged out in the snow and shot by Serbs.

The shrill call of Hupka’s mobile phone disturbs the reverie. He moves to the window, voice booming in the high room and, without realising I’m taping, starts speaking with one of the Kameradschaften’s street generals, “Steiner”.

“I’ve got to go, sorry,” he smiles professionally, cold and formal, as he re-pockets the phone.

“Okay.” I’ve got more than enough. Enough this last six years to last me a lifetime.

Outside, Hupka poses for one last photo, a stark figure against the old Nazi stone. Then we’re off.

***

Children of the Abyss: 'Fighting Frank'

2011-11-08T17:05:00.001Z

One of my occasional (true) stories from my future book, set in the East End of London ...

I met Frank running his jellied eel store on the outer fringes of the East End of London. It was a cold night. Winter had dropped hard on the outer London/Essex borders. He was a cheerful soul, silver-haired and walnut-faced; small; full of easy recourse to cursing and cussing.

Frank had also led a fascinating life. One of 10 kids, he grew up poor, was bright but never had the chance to study. He became a boxing star as a teenager then drifted into the murky world of 'door work', policing clubs for the various villains operating in the late 1950s and 1960s, through to the early 1970s. He became part of a gang hi-jacking lorries, living in the East End during the Kray Twins period, serving jail time for one notorious heist, becoming pals with parts of the Kray family (Charlie Kray welcomed him out of prison), saw people shot, got stabbed himself, ran country clubs, and earned a reputation as a 'hard man', a-la Lenny McLean ('The Guv'nor').

Frank was also an unlicensed fighter. He took part in numerous violent contests for pay. One infamous bout took place on a barge on the Thames, as he battled an 'unbeatable' Australian fighter flown in specially for the event. There were Arabs all around as the men fought, betting on the event: he won.

"I've seen some terrible things, terrible Nick," he said in his guttural Cockney accent. "I've watched two grown men tear at each other, big blokes, villains, like they want to kill each other – biting, gouging – horrible. Then my friend just pulled out a gun and shot the guy, in front of me."

No angel himself, Frank has been on the run but his life turned around when he happened to be training in a famous London boxing gym. The American actor Mickey Rourke was there (filming A Prayer for the Dying) and asked to spar with him. Suitably impressed, Rourke's agent called Frank the next day and asked him to come to work for Mickey. That was the start of a close relationship between the two men which lasted for several years.

Frank became Mickey's minder, almost a mother and father-figure in certain ways, for the next five years. He saw the tantrums, the difficulties, the women whom Rourke had relationships (like Daryl Hannah), and watched as the actor threw away his talents. Frank was Mickey's closest friend in that time, but he finally quit after Rourke admitted giving £3 million to the IRA.

Frank shakes his head. "I took him down the Falls Road [Belfast] once, when he was making A Prayer for the Dying, and he shat himself. He had to leave after five minutes. He still got that bloody [IRA] tattoo though..."

Also a minder for other stars such as Frank Sinatra (having befriended Sinatra's bodyguard/minder, another famous US mafioso) and Yul Brynner, the money from his various activities afforded him enough to buy few properties in east London and Essex. But when I met him he was living very unostentatiously with his eel store, in a comfortable semi-detached house, with a rather nice-seeming wife whom others, uncharitably, suggested had once been known for her 'availability' with men over the years.

That was the last I saw of Frank, seven years ago – though I've since heard he met and ran off with a rich woman, and has set himself up with the life of Riley in Spain. And why not? It would make a fitting coda to a rather extraordinary life.

You can read more on Frank's story, and other extraordinary lives, in my future book on the East End of London.

London's Burning

2011-08-09T17:56:00.008+01:00

There was a riot the night I moved into my house in Brixton, south London. A burning police motorcycle lay abandoned where it had been dragged, about 250 yards from my front door. Many years later there would be bricks through my window, my partner mugged by a crack addict, Portuguese squatters 'shooting up' inside phone boxes next to the town hall, and angry young black men who shoved me aside in the street.

Of course, my friend Kieran Creagh, a Catholic priest working in South Africa, witnessed his first riot at age eight: Catholics and Protestants were tearing themselves apart, a herald of The Troubles emerging as he returned home from summer holidays to the Crumlin Road in north Belfast. But the disturbances now blanketing parts of London, and other inner-city areas in Britain, are more confusing.

London has grown into a strange kind of city-state, a mix of communities of rich and poor, haves and have-nots, aspirational middle classes and wannabe gangsters wedged side by side often in the same streets. Unlike Paris, which has shoved its poorest (often African) communities out into the banlieues away from the centre, or the great American cities where tens of miles separate projects from gated communities, there is no vast gulf of distance protecting London's middle classes from the terrible ennui of dispossessed youth – youth who in some ways are as reviled by their own communities as by others. But, by and large, these groups do not mix. They live side-by-side in separate lives.

South London's heavily Afro-Caribbean community was notorious among white middle-class Britons for much of the 1980s. Even today people still talk about the days of carnage in 1981, when local black youths rose up and took over the streets of Brixton in protest at the Metropolitan Police's heavy-handed stop-and-search tactics.

Traditionally riots in London – there have been many down the ages – have been linked to sectarian tensions, poverty or mass reaction to police brutality. The Poll Tax riots of 1990 were a wake-up call to the then-government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the "Iron Lady". Some say these riots were the beginning of the end of her rule. In Brixton in 1981, in Toxteth in Liverpool in the same year, then Tottenham in 1985, black youths went on the rampage against widely-known police abuses. Major inquiries and reforms ensued in intervening years. Surely we had learned the lessons of that past?

True, the shooting of a 29-year-old man, Mark Duggan, by armed police in north London on Thursday evening did cause an outburst of disgust from some sections of the community. But the wanton – almost random – destruction; the looting; the use of social media to organise attacks up and down the land (instant messaging on Blackberry phones, Twitter, etc.) suggest other forces at work.

Many of the attacks have now spread to prosperous suburbs such as Ealing (west London), yuppie inner city ghetto Clapham (south London) and other areas and cities where there is no link to any shooting. Political leadership has been absent until today [Tuesday 9 August], when Prime Minister David Cameron returned from his Tuscan villa to try to take charge of a situation that has caught everyone off guard. In the streets of east London, local mosque-goers have seen off youths from Hackney, just north, whilst Turkish shop owners have been patrolling their streets in Dalston (near Hackney) armed with baseball bats. A joke is doing the rounds: Where is the (far-right) English Defence League at a time like this? It is the immigrants protecting the yuppies next door, not the police or the white so-called working-class heroes from the EDL.

As I've written often, and elsewhere, we live (as the Chinese would say) in interesting times. Communities and communal ties are shifting fast; there is a whole generation or subculture of young men growing up wedded to criminality. I predict mass crackdowns and court cases within the coming weeks: there is little sympathy as far as I can see for any of the rioters, most of whom seem bent on random violence and a crazy shopping spree. Worryingly, according to the latest reports, the young guys taking to the streets on Saturday are now joined by older, more organised criminals. But it is still the hooded youth - young men and women - doing the looting on a massive scale. What does it say about a society when minors effectively control its streets?

The Right are calling for no mercy; the Left are groping for answers amid the narrative of dispossession. I meanwhile will be wondering what the silver-tongued estate agents who have made so much commission from selling London's crowded apartments and tenements will be saying to their potential clients next week on Northcote Road in Clapham, or Brixton Hill, Bethnal Green, or Hackney Road.

Nick Ryan is a British journalist, author of the exposé of extreme Right groups, HOMELAND: Into a World of Hate.

'I Knew The Boy Next Door Killers': comment on Norway

2011-07-25T17:40:00.006+01:00

The tragic events in Norway should serve as a reminder to our politicians and pundits (as well as voices in the blogosphere) of the dangers of ignoring far-right movements and individuals. Our obsession with the 'Islamist' peril has meant taking the eye off the ball on domestic terrorism - and has even driven it. The bombs and shootings of many dozens of teenagers in Norway should shatter that complacency.

It was summer 2002. I was nearing the end of an exhausting journey. My nerves were hanging on a thread and my bank balance was running on empty. Through many countries in Europe, down into the Middle East, Australia and then over much of the eastern and southern parts of the USA, I had spent six long years meeting, in some cases living with, the men and women of the extreme Right. Some of them were boy-next-door-killers just like the Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik.

I put these recollections into my book, HOMELAND: Into a World of Hate (Mainstream/Routledge) and much of the research ended up in a BBC One drama called England Expects (written by Frank Deasy, and for which I was creative producer) shown in 2004.

In Denmark and Sweden, I tracked a Danish-American neo-Nazi by the name of Thomas Nakaba, working on behalf of a renegade faction of the British neo-Nazi gang, Combat 18 (C18). He tried to send letter bombs to targets both in the UK and Scandinavia, but was caught during a sting operation. Another C18 sympathiser in Sweden also sent a letter bomb to the Swedish Justice Minister. I then watched as C18 itself dissolved into murder. I followed the case of the baby-face killer David Copeland, the London nailbomber, who killed three (including a pregnant woman) and wounded 165 others across Brixton, Brick Lane, and Soho in 1999 as he sought to ignite a race war. Like Breivik belonging to the populist anti-immigrant Progress Party in Norway, Copeland had once belonged to the British National Party (BNP) in the UK. Both had become impatient with the slow path of democracy. (The man who had sought to inspire Copeland - a former monk, Islamic convert and die-hard Nazi called David Myatt - later threatened me to a duel to the death for revealing his links to the case.)

A few years later on the grey plains of Illinois, I sat on the porch of Matt Hale's house. Hale was a third-class lawyer who ran an operation worthy of a Louis Theroux documentary: the World Church of the Creator ('our race is our nation'). Hale wore a cheap suit and spoke in earnest terms of the white revolution to come. Laughably surreal. Yet two years earlier Hale's chief lieutenant, Ben Smith, another law graduate, had gone on a shooting spree across Illinois and killed two, whilst injuring many more: all were people of colour. As we sipped our drinks and chatted, one of Hale's followers recorded us. I didn't know that he was an undercover FBI informant. Hale was later arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for trying to get this follower to assassinate a federal judge.

Like Anders Behring Breivik, many of these men would garb themselves in different names - ultra-nationalist, white nationalist, patriot, paleo-conservative, or in some cases merely anti-EU or anti-immigration (itself clouded with lots of sub-terms) - but what they all had in common was a deep-seated obsession with race and nation, obsession with homosexuality, fear of the 'Other', rose-tinted glasses about the glorious past, sense that things were on the state of perilous collapse, and strong anti-Semitic roots. Today, add 'anti-Muslim' to that mix and blend anti-Semitic views with (in some cases) strong pro-Israeli sentiments instead. Strange, and disturbing times.

I had met these lone wolf killers, entered the illegal music scene dominated by networks such as Blood and Honour, talked with the ideologues who inspired bombers and random shooters, was invited to Holocaust denial conferences in Washington DC and Beirut, and met politicians of every ultra-conservative hue: from US Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, to Jörg Haider's Freedom Party in Austria (Haider later died in a car crash after leaving a gay bar, intoxicated). I met a former Baader-Meinhoff leader who has since become a lawyer for a neo-Nazi party in Germany. One of the people who aided me in my task was the now-dead multi-million bestselling Swedish author, Stieg Larsson. Another was Nick Griffin of the BNP who allowed me deep access into his international networks, perhaps hoping to use a liberal journalist to unknowingly promote his movement.

If there was one thing my journeys for HOMELAND revealed, it was the deep ideological, physical and internet links and friendships that united much of the Far Right. I lived with Nick Griffin's man in America, Mark Cotterill, who ran the American Friends of the British National Party and had infiltrated Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign. Cotterill's associates took me to the national meeting of the white-supremacist supporting Council of Conservative Citizens; to meet the leadership of David Duke's organisation in Virginia; and to Ku Klux Klan BBQs in the deep south. I attended polite dinner evenings with gentlemen sporting bow ties and discussing racial eugenics (one attendee was a reporter who had witnessed Timothy McVeigh's execution). In the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas (scene for the film 'Deliverance'), I spent three disturbing days and nights with one of the leading proponents of Christian Identity, a heretical sect of Christianity that holds that Jews are Satan's children and race slaying is permitted on Biblical grounds. Strong Christian, as well as pagan views, are common among the Far Right - as again with the Norwegian killer, Anders Behring Breivik.

Ironically, it was at the end of my six years of journeying that the populist gay Dutch politician, Pim Fortuyn, was gunned down by an animal rights extremist. Fortuyn was very much the herald for the equally-controversial anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders dominating Dutch politics today. Then I received notice that William Pierce had died: Pierce was a former physics professor who established his own neo-Nazi movement, the National Alliance, which had inspired race slayers and Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh in carrying out acts of violence. I had met many who worked with, or knew, Pierce. His writings (in The Turner Diaries, among others) on 'leaderless resistance' (inspiring lone wolves to carry out race attacks, thus provoking minorities to respond, and in turn then provoking mainstream society to retaliate) are still widely read among extremists of the Right and I suspect Breivik might have seen them, too.

Both men - Fortuyn and Pierce - were heralds of the future in Oslo and the terrible events which unfurled on the idyllic island of Utoeya last week, in which over 90 people have now died. Anders Behring Breivik admired them.

When my book was first published in 2003, editors still thought the Far Right was a joke. A planned serialisation in The Daily Mail (ironic, given that paper's stance on Muslims and immigration) was cancelled because the editor felt "the Far Right are irrelevant". Yet soon the landscape was changing. Political parties of the extreme Right were marching across the European dream, reflecting fears and tensions about rapid change, economic uncertainty, rising immigration and shortage of housing. Only the BNP's shambolic organisation, dodgy accounting and Nick Griffin's dictatorial tendencies have hampered its rise. The popular narrative has changed, however. Anti-immigrant sentiments are strong, almost mainstream. Multiculturalism is dead: undoubtedly some got it wrong on the Left by not understanding the dynamics of separation and isolation within certain minority communities. Then after 9/11, and 7/7, everyone it seemed was talking about Muslims. Not just violent Al-Qaeda but quite clearly 'Islam' itself - as if everyone who followed a religion was somehow swept up into an ideology which transformed their brain and would ultimately lead them to attempt world domination (or return of the 'Khilafah', the Islamic Caliphate). The rise of the violent thugs from the English Defence League (EDL) showed a new form of protest growing: violent, anti-Muslim, with echoes of Combat 18 a decade before it. It was a movement much admired by the Norwegian killer Breivik, who remained in contact with its followers via the internet.

As I watched and listened to the self-appointed pundits and commentators on the TV, radio and web confidently speculating that the Norwegian massacre was most likely Al-Qaeda inspired, I shook my head. Angst about 'Islamism' has blinded us. Now these same commentators are shamefacedly backtracking; security 'experts' who are more schooled in talking about so-called 'Islamist terror' are now urgently trying to sound knowledgable about a far more dangerous threat lurking in their own backyard. Charlie Brooker in The Guardian wrote of his reaction to these self-same wafflers on the mainstream networks.

Ahmed Moor writing on Al-Jazeera got it right, too:

"Anders Behring Breivik, Mohammed Atta and Baruch Goldstein are all cut from the same rotten cloth. Anwar Al-Awlaki and Glenn Beck - the peddlers of the faith - all share the same core afflictions."

"These men are insecure, violently inclined, and illiberal. The outside world scares them. They hate homosexuals and strong women. For them, difference is a source of insecurity. Their values are militarism, conformism, chauvinism and jingoism. Worst of all they seek to pressure us into compliance while they work frantically to destroy themselves - and the rest of us with them."

We are facing an identity crisis, a shift in the way we associate, where online identities are sometimes stronger than those we feel to those around us. In this time of great change it is easy to be inspired by hate-filled ideologies and conspiracy theories. That Breivik was a keen internet user (he even played a popular fantasy game online called World of Warcraft, which I know well) is no surprise. Online forums are swamped by those with axes to grind. Some authors and documentary makers have made a good living lampooning these 'bedsit weirdoes' - but they are the boy-next-door-killers. Those of us who wrote or spoke of their threat in the past have mostly been ignored.

Certain national newspaper columnists, right-wing think tanks and allied blogs should be ashamed they have spent so long attacking only Islamists and not been focused on the dangers of their rhetoric. I have witnessed this myself, researching a book involving many different Muslims (though when called, I too have exposed the hypocrisy and radicalism of Muslim groups). Frequently I have seen how facts are twisted to represent a better story. The world is shades of grey, yet we like our leaders to tell us it is black and white.

Even today, the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront (whose leader I met in 2001), is still going on about a ludicrously sexed-up Daily Mail report into Tower Hamlets and other inner city boroughs of Britain becoming mini-Islamic Caliphates. Utter rubbish yet dangerous. It is true that the Far Right and elements of the Islamic world have found common cause: I saw this in Holocaust denial circles first hand, or when talking to elements of Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Yet there is not one Muslim community or takeover: there are many communities. The idea they all want the same thing is as laughable (they spend much of their time fighting each other) as it is reminiscent of the simplistic 'Red Scare' anti-Communist feelings of the 1950s.

If we are to face down the threat of future Norway massacres, we must grow up, confront the hate-filled discourse on both Muslims and the extreme Right, and entertain less conspiracy theories and twisted media accounts. Only by seeing the truth can it set us free.

You can buy HOMELAND: Into a World of Hate via direct download on the Amazon Kindle store ($5.75)

BBC home page: Muslim for a Month

2011-07-04T20:51:00.004+01:00

Yesterday the BBC home page carried two magazine pieces -- one text story, one video interview -- about one of my PR clients, 'Muslim for a Month'.

BBC - Deity Tourism - Can you try religion for a month?

BBC - Can you 'test drive' a religion? (video)

This is an offshoot of an international charity called Blood Foundation, which runs Buddhist, Muslim, Sufi and soon Sikh and Christian "immersion" experiences. The idea is to give someone a taste of another's religion, to better inform them of its practices, over a short period of time (and no, it is not aimed at conversion).

There were also interviews on BBC radio, including 5Live Breakfast and much of the regional radio network. I also recently placed the client into the Telegraph newspaper. And onto Talksport radio.

The Buddhist experience, Monk for a Month, is expanding soon from its Thailand base into India. Sufi for a Month is soon to start up in Turkey. And Christian for a Month is being discussed with a community here in the UK.

HOMELAND available on Kindle

2011-06-22T19:06:00.002+01:00

My book on the extreme Right, HOMELAND: Into a World of Hate, is now available as both a UK and US Amazon Kindle purchase (currently $7.99).

The Daily Mail hailed the book as its Critics Choice, whilst The Independent called it a "tremendously scary exposé" and The Guardian congratulated the courage and dedication which had gone into making it.

Witchdoctors & Toothaches

2011-06-21T10:43:00.004+01:00

More stories and more client placements this month.

Africa: Where a Toothache Can Kill

Dentist Ian Wilson fights witchdoctors, leprosy and dental pain to help the people of rural Tanzania. For The Telegraph, on behalf of Bridge2Aid.

Want to try being a 'Muslim for a Month'?
The Telegraph interviews (my client) Ben Bowler, boss of 'Muslim for a Month' and 'Monk for a Month' programmes.

Watch out for a special series of BBC reports on 'Muslim for a Month', coming soon.

Other news:

Homeland – You'll soon be able to buy the original UK edition of my exposé inside white supremacist groups, HOMELAND: Into a World of Hate, via Amazon Kindle. Watch this space.

Reader's Digest – Keep eyes peeled for my upcoming interview with Tom Hart, the Northern Irish Protestant man who became a Mayan spiritual guide in Guatemala.

PRAYCATIONS

2011-04-29T14:02:00.000+01:00

Fancy being a Buddhist for a month? Or a Muslim? Perhaps a Christian?

Then head over to the pages of Blood Foundation, a charity based in northern Thailand which is running "praycations" (prayer + vacation) for several of the world's major religions.

Monk for a Month takes place in Thailand.

Muslim for a Month (actually, only 9 days) is set in Istanbul, as will be a sister project, Sufi for a Month. You'll live in a Sufi lodge in Istanbul, pray in the famous Blue Mosque, have the option to fast for a day, eat with local Muslim families and fly to Konya to visit the tomb of the famous Muslim mystic-poet, Rumi.

Look out for Christian for a Month (probably in Scotland) and Mystic for a Month, welcoming visitors to all the three major Abrahamic faiths in Jerusalem.

Down the line, Sikh for a Week is being planned in the Punjab, in India.

I'm helping promote these projects to the media and the guy behind it, Ben Bowler, is a charismatic Irish-Australian entrepreneur available for interview.

New stories

2011-04-29T13:55:00.000+01:00

New stories in preparation right now:

• Profile of Tom Hart, the Northern Irish Protestant man who became a Mayan priest in Guatemala. The Reader's Digest.

• Profile of Ian Wilson, the Christian dentist bringing relief from suffering to thousands of rural Tanzanians (National Smile Month in the UK runs from mid-May to mid-June). The Telegraph.

WHEN AFRICA SINGS: 'A Life in the Day' of Father Kieran Creagh

2011-04-11T14:22:00.003+01:00

This is the chap whose life story I'm writing:

SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE – A Life in the Day

By Nick Ryan

'WHEN AFRICA SINGS'

Kieran Creagh, 48, Passionist priest and director of Leratong hospice near the Atteridgeville township, South Africa.

My day begins with the noises of the township. The taxis start beeping their horns around 4.30am, telling people they're open for business. I usually fall back asleep then wake with the radio news at 6am. Then I brush my teeth, shave, shower and pop on an African shirt, part of our hospice uniform, and I'm out of the door by 7am.

I cross the little courtyard outside my house, past our male and female wards, through to the open-plan reception where I meet up with the staff. Many, like our 70-year-old matron, Remigia Tloubatla, have been with me since I set up Leratong six years ago, in response to the AIDS crisis. It's decimated South Africa. Six in every 10 families here are now headed by a grandparent. I couldn't accept that people were dying in cardboard boxes.

At 7am we gather in a circle, somebody will start a song – what they call a “chorus” here – then we have a prayer and reading from Scripture. Once that's rounded off we get a report from the night sister who tells us how all the patients are doing.

The hospice is very bright at this time of day, very beautiful. The name Leratong means "place of love". It’s made of beige-coloured brick with an azure roof. We overlook the township of Atteridgeville, about half-a-million souls, west of Pretoria. Our end is the poorest part of town; all the accommodation is shacks. When I came here from Ireland 12 years ago as a parish priest I was so scared I didn't leave my house for two days. Then I decided to just go out and start walking around the township, meeting my parishioners.

I'll head over to the church at this point and just sit and say my own prayers for a few minutes, then check the creche next door and see how they're doing. That probably brings me up to 8am. I'll come back over to my house and fix a slice of toast and a cup of tea, or maybe a boiled egg, for breakfast. If it's a typical weekday, I'll go through my emails, read The Irish Times online and scan the local Times newspaper. I might generally go around and check how the departments are doing, but the wards are busy at this time and they don't really want me interfering. Our hospice is full of young people and women. About 90 percent have HIV-related illnesses. Some suffer from what we call Kaposi's Sarcoma: a cancer that rots the body from the outside in. It's sad when they die but it's actually a relief, too. I'm angry, aye, that the men don't change. People die because they're too poor to buy the [anti-retroviral] drugs; too poor to get to the clinics; too afraid of the stigma.

I generally do office work between 8 to 10am, then we all meet for tea in the dining room. At the weekend I'll be called on to do a Mass. Occasionally a funeral. When I was a parish priest for the township I'd be doing several funerals a day. People here "live" their faith more than back home. There is greater spontaneity during the Mass; everyone joins in the singing and with the drums. They have saying: "When Africa is happy, Africa sings. When Africa is sad, Africa sings."

At 12 we all have lunch, in two shifts. Traditional African cuisine would be a big pot of chicken's feet, boiled up with some spices, and “pap” - like solid, tasteless semolina. On days like that, it wouldn't be my favourite day in the dining room. But now they might cook something special for me. Maybe sausage and mash.

It was on the veranda outside here, in February 2007, that I stood banging for attention after a gang of robbers broke into the hospice and shot me three times at point-blank range. I was lucky to survive. I was almost naked at the time and one of the newspapers back home wrote: "It was pants down for Father Creagh"! I suppose I can laugh at that now.

Afternoons are for driving. In the early days I’d have done the cash-and-carry all on my own, as well as going to the market for fruit and veg and all the driving for the patients. I was like a one-man ambulance. Since the shooting I'm not so comfortable. I used to feel free to drive anywhere on my own into the informal settlements – the squatter camps. Now I always have an edge of worry with me.

Between 5 and 6pm I’ll be in the office, sorting out any administration stuff that needs doing. Then I generally go around the wards, visiting every patient, checking how they are, chatting with them. If they want me to pray with them I'll give them a blessing. People can die any time. When they do they're brought to a private room where I'll say a prayer, then leave them with their family. When the undertaker comes all the work stops. We all gather and take the body from the hospice with a guard of honor, singing and praying. It's very moving. And then we return to work.

By now a haze will have settled over the township – especially in winter time, like a fog – as people light their cooking fires. It'll disappear by about 7pm, but by then it's dark. There's always some noise. Mid-month people don't have much money, so there's not much happening. But at the end of the month when people get paid, and especially weekends, it can be music through the night. And it can be really loud. You worry when it's really, really still.

I'll return to my office, then to the medical room to check the night sister has arrived. By 7pm I'll be back in my house watching the local news. At about 8pm I lock the gates and either watch a bit of television or read, then I'll do once last round of the house, checking all the doors are locked, the windows are secure. It’ll be about 9.30 or 10pm when I turn off the lights, go into my bedroom and lock the door – I've a bolt on my door as well. I’ll maybe read for a little bit – I'm getting through 'Riding the Dragon' by Dr Robert Wicks at the moment – then say my last goodnight prayers, mostly along the lines of “I hope tonight's going to be okay.”

I generally fall asleep quite soon. But I might wake a couple of times, so I never really get a full night's sleep. In the dark my mind sometimes goes back to the night of the shooting. I try to shift it. If it gets bad I'll take a half a sleeping tablet; I look forward to the sun coming up and a new day dawning.

Interview by Nick Ryan

New work

2011-02-21T16:46:00.001Z

After some delay due to wife's illness, work is now going again on 'The Father', the life story of Father Kieran Creagh. I'll post some excerpts when time permits. (His brother, Michael, is nominated for an Oscar for his work on a short film, Crush.)

Also, recent pieces have appeared on the amazing vicar, Chris Chivers, and Muslim woman, Anjum Anwar, conflict resolution team, 'Impact', in both The Reader's Digest and The National.

My piece on Mary Nazzal, the brains behind Israel's legal bette-noir, the Palestine Legal Aid Fund, is now up on the website of The National.

Further negotiations taking place over TV projects in North America.

In discussion with a couple of other faith figures about their biographies, too.

Latest news

2010-11-29T11:34:00.002Z

Much going on behind the scenes...

• Ghostwriting continues, on 'The Father' (an autobiography), with another biography in discussion

• Client communications consultancy, for Children on the Edge and Health Poverty Action, as well as other institutions and campaigns

• Regular journalism, including pieces for Wired magazine, The National, Sunday Times Magazine, and The Reader's Digest

• TV discussions continue, on documentary and drama projects (Canadian project in-discussion at moment).

R.I.P. Jacob, our faithful friend

2010-08-24T11:02:00.017+01:00

It's funny how the loss of a pet affects you. Many times I've scoffed at others who seem to (over) dote on their animals; at the old ladies feeding scraps to the local cats; or the dog owners who treat their pets as children and can't believe they'd hurt a fly.

But the sudden loss of my own animal, Jacob, who'd been with us exactly 12 years (almost to the day) brought the reality crashing home. The animal - if it's treated well - is really a "companion". In fact, I didn't realise it but there's a lot of literature and studies done on "companion animals" and how beneficial to our physical and emotional health they can be. Now I find myself grieving - real grief, weird - for what is basically a small animal.

Of course, the cynic or journalist in me "knows" that the cat or dog gets a free home, food, shelter etc and you can't "impose" your emotions onto an animal. So whether it - or should I say he, or she - knows "love" is debatable. But they can certainly show affection, playfulness, sense when you're not right (Jacob would come up to us if we had a fight and start miaowing constantly, as though trying to get us to stop), etc.

Part of what hurts so much is that they become this companion; part of your family; a far more elevated status (to you, their owner, at least) than just a "pet". I couldn't put a hamster, gerbil or rabbit on the same level, but having taken in a one-year-old (or thereabouts, as they didn't know) big ginger rescue cat from Battersea Dog's Home (which, yes, does have a cattery!) at the end of August 1998, a big change came into our lives. Basically, it *is* like having a child: they're reliant on you for everything.

In our case, Jacob was a rescue animal with two previous homes who was recovering from gingivitis and cat flu in the quarantine area of the cattery. He was reserved for one of the veterinary nurses, who had fallen in love with him. The minute my other half saw him, she knew he was "the one". I was summoned and, reluctantly at first, agreed to take him home. Hah! If I'd known how soft I was to become on that cat, I would have laughed at myself and my reluctance then.

Through thick and thin, Jacob was my (particularly mine) constant companion: I worked from home in inner London. I would get threatened by oddballs during my work, go through periods of penury when work wasn't coming in or paying well, even through near-relationship breakup - and Jacob was there for both of us. He might not have known it, but I think he had something, a small part at least, with keeping us together and healing the rifts.

Jacob moved with us as we moved, and stayed with us as we started a family. At first, he wouldn't even sit in your lap. He was a nervous animal, but gentle as a babe. He hardly ever swiped anyone, or anything. By the end he wanted to sit on my lap all the time. He would ride around on my shoulders. We always said he was more like a dog than a cat: very faithful, very loyal, not really into hunting or staying out all night. Our one time we left him at a cattery (so we could go on holidays), he returned a nervous wreck. Never again!

I treated him a bit like a dog too, chatting to him during my days, "patting" him on his haunches (which he seemed to like, weird I know) and he became, to me at least, "man's best friend." I even taught him to come when I clicked my fingers, and you'd see him hurtling down the road or the garden towards you when you did, particularly if you also crouched down on your haunches. He was incredibly loyal. He was there for me the night before my son was born ... I guess the thing about a companion like this is that they're a "link" to your past; they are there through some of your strongest memories, whether good times or bad.

My only guilt is that once we had our son, Jacob was somewhat relegated from his favoured status: no longer could he sleep on the bed, no longer was he pampered as much as before. He still got fed, watered and attention, but not as much. Still, I remained the ridiculously attentive "dad" figure: if the neighbourhood cats were giving him a hard time, I'd walk with him out in the garden. He would literally *follow me* down the road, or out into the front garden - where otherwise he'd rarely go - if I was out there; safe; then run up a tree or do some mad stunt which always made us laugh. Gah, brings a tear to my eye just to remember those times ...

Sadly for him, the health problems began about five years ago. He was getting blocked urinary tracts (his urine), clogged up with painful struvite crystals. My other half tells me he had his first vet stay in 2005, then another in 2006, then finally in 2007 he had a full-blown major operation to remove his penis. Ouch! Poor Jacob. Despite the pain he was still a loving pet; still with us. I couldn't bare to see him in pain, or to face him dying. It cost me thousands, literally thousands, of pounds to save him. It dented my credit cards: but he was my Jacob, my friend, I wasn't prepared to let him go for the sake of my bank balance. (Some people would and did call me foolish of course) I can't explain it other than to say would you kill your own kid? I guess that was how I felt at the time.

But with family expanding, poor old "jub-jub" as we called him (or, unPC but meant affectionately, "poof-job" as our housemates also dubbed him) got less attention. And unbeknownst to us his health problems were building. He'd be getting thinner, skankier looking, always begging for food, his rug would be dirty and he'd grab any food if you left it out - somewhat stressful, as he was on a strict vet diet and we had been told that one of the old ladies near us had probably been feeding him scraps, which had led to all his bladder problems in the first place. (Male neutered cats are more prone to urinary tract disease, so beware if you get one: don't feed them dry food!)

We were so busy with "life", looking after our kid, being stressed with work, etc, that we just got fed up with Jacob. I feel eternally guilty about that, even though he is (or was) "only a cat". He would get shunted out of the way, or a slipper or other soft object chucked in his direction as he would begin "yowling" (or "maowling" as my son called it) at 5am every morning. He was desperate for food but not eating; always drinking. A trip to the vets last year failed to diagnose anything, but it was only a locum and he just weighed him and did nothing else.

The problems were getting worse and worse this year, however. The desperate hunger, the weight loss, the yowling. Eventually, with our second baby due, I figured I couldn't put off the vet any longer. I hated going to the vets with him: he would yowl all the way there, then be sick or poo himself on the way back. It was horrible. This time I didn't feed him before going, and he was ok. Once at the vets he got blood tests and it was clear something was wrong. He had mouth ulcers, making eating hard and caused by excessive acid. A day or two later, confirmation came of renal (kidney) failure: not as horrendously-advanced as some animals, but still ultimately fatal. We started him on (another) special (and expensive) vet food, and a set of tablets. Then came a second confirmation: he had hyperthyroidism. This was causing his excessive hunger, a feeling of heat, extreme weight loss. Combined with the renal problem, and a "leaking heart" (I think heart murmur) he wasn't looking good.

I was all convinced for trying a second set of drugs, along with the first, and expensive prescription food, to try and keep him going. Then he pissed himself on Saturday evening, soaking the settee, and the vet said that was a sign of his renal failure. Not only would it cost loads to keep him going, but his quality of life was going to suffer: second kid about to arrive, and I was seeing my son used to "kicking" out at the cat, mimicking my attempts to shunt Jacob away when he begged, and begged, and begged for food. I felt terrible. So did my wife, who was also extremely close to him (I may sound as though I'm the only one grief-stricken, but that's not true).

We took the final decision to have him put to sleep on Sunday; by Monday we had done it. Although, annoyingly, we had to wait for two sets of people to finish appointments (one bloke was only there to ask the vets if they could x-ray his crash helmet for cracks!!), and my wife was crying, we did get to open Jacob's cage, stroke him, and he was relaxed, lying down inside. I've never seen him like that in a vet's. Never.

Inside, they shaved a foreleg and tried to find a vein for the drug, but the veins had collapsed - a sign of the kidney disease. So he was given a sedative, which he fought for a short while, but then went limp and after laying down in his cage for a while - my god, I can't believe what a good boy he was through all this (one of the reasons so many of our friends and the vet and nurses liked this cat was his extremely good nature) - he was laid out on the table. We all stroked and kissed him, said our goodbyes, told him what a good boy he was, etc, then the final drug was given to an artery via his stomach. A few flutters and his breath left him. He was sedated already, his eyes open and his legs twitching slightly whenever we stroked him or talked to him. He died as that, eyes open, the last thing he saw in this world was my face and the wife's voice in his ear, telling him we loved him. I can't believe how brave he was. Ok, he probably didn't know "brave", but that's how I'd like to interpret it. I was actually proud of him.

Now there's a gaping hole of course. Our son asks: "Where's my cat?" and when told he's no longer with us, will go "ohhhh" with a sad tone. He's not too cut up, he doesn't really understand. I guess in time we'll get another animal and he'll bond more closely with that. But not yet. We have another new life - a new baby - to welcome any day now, and perhaps it's prophetic that we got dear old Jacob at the end of August 1998; he died at the end of August 2010; and a new life, our new baby, is due at the end of August, too. Who knows? Sounds nice to think it though.

For now, the pain is real: as real as with any human loss. It will fade with time, I know. But I and my wife want to remember our first "child", our companion, Jacob here. You were only 13 but you had a good life. And I loved you. Rest In Peace buddy. We'll never forget you.

x

p.s. This article describes the grief well. Throughout it all, our South African veterinarian has been great, so hats off to her.

'Just Have Hope'

2010-07-09T14:18:00.003+01:00

Been working on a short prologue, a taster of a new non-fiction book set in Northern Ireland and South Africa.

PROLOGUE

A hand trembles on a closed door. It is a simple barrier inside a small corridor sealed from the township.

"Duu-mehla, Laaa-feyla … "
"Duumu Laaaa'feyla"
"Duu-mehla, Laaa-feyla … "
"Duumu Laaaa'feyla"

I can hear no dogs, nor feel the familiar sting of the cooking fires. But for the aging female chorus, the township is silent.

"Everything is fine"
"Just have faith"
"Just have hope"
"Everything is fine."

Here are the women, marching in a line, gold teeth flashing, heavy chests swaying.

Matron, a formidable figure, the matriarch, but with a heart of gold. Tshidi, our deputy, who lost her husband but found a new life with the hospice. Then Mildred, faithful Mildred, who runs it all and whose mummy we buried not long ago. Patricia is here, the lead choirister – and competitive she is too! – before last-in-line our creche manager, holding one of her young charges as she sings.

"Duu-mehla, Laaa-feyla … "
"Duumu Laaaa'feyla"
"Duu-mehla, Laaa-feyla … "
"Duumu Laaaa'feyla"

Ah. It is the funeral lament. You might call it the township song.

"Everything is fine"
"Just have faith"
"Just have hope"
"Everything is fine."

The wind has whipped up. Ochre dust blows through the walls of the compound. Now I can taste the fires on the back of my throat. And something else.

Blood.

"Duu-mehla, Laaa-feyla …"

The undertaker is outside. The gurney is wheeled out. The door is open, the singing thunderous.

"Everything is fine … "

The shroud drops. A white hand slips...

Then I am looking down at my own face.

Oh God. Oh God.

Random fiction extract

2010-07-09T13:05:00.002+01:00

Random fiction – extract from a work I called 'The Lost'.

The stink of fish. It lingered over the dockside. The rusting hulks of ancient liners bobbed slowly on the swell. The young man crooked his head up to the now-covered sun, bright behind the veil of cloud. He appeared lost in thought.

A tattoo sat on the young man’s arm. He looked down at it. He remembered.

From across the bay thin filters of smoke lifted from burning dumps, the acrid tang of rubber and waste coating the back of his nostrils. He coughed and spat in disgust, cursing his luck.

The note on the portakabin said the Wansella had already sailed. That meant another day, two, maybe a week before the next boat out of here.

He stretched. The wake was always slow. The sun warmed his back, lent strength to his shoulders. He was tired. The night had been long, unforgiving.

He got up, walked down to the quayide and bought some raw cockles. The fisherman gestured, offering something that he took to be vinegar. The sour taste burned for a moment on his dry tongue. The fisherman smiled, went behind the counter, then surfaced again holding a bottle of dark liquor.

‘Raki?’

The taste melted the last of the vinegar. He shook, then composed himself in the lea of a shed. He looked over at the hanging nets, wondering how the fishermen suffered it – each day, in and out, at the mercy of the ocean.

Early morning sun flashed and caught the bronze of his forearm again. That squirming shape.

“Michael, Michael!”

He turned back to the hangar.

“Don’t worry,” said the voice. She had slipped close, surprising him. He turned as her arms drifted over his shoulders. Her smiling face was planted close to his. She tickled his nose with one insolent finger.

He grinned, inspite of himself.

They had met just a few week’s before. Picking fruit up in the north, near Macedonia. Iskander's country.

Burma, Romania, South Africa and more

2010-05-19T14:14:00.000+01:00

Keep your eyes peeled for new stories from myself on:

• Burma's British Heroine – profile of Rachel Bentley, head of the charity Children on the Edge. Stories coming on Rachel, and the charity's cutting-edge work in and around Burma, in The Times Educational Supplement, The Tablet, and M Magazine (The National), soon.

• The Father – story out now on the heroic Father Kieran Creagh, the Belfast priest who runs Leratong Hospice in South Africa. How did Fr. Creagh survive the night he was accosted and shot three times at point-blank range? Out now in The Reader's Digest; look out for a follow-up 'Life in the Day' interview with Fr. Creagh in The Sunday Times Magazine.

• Pocketing Pixels – the rise, and rise, of virtual currencies. BBC News | Technology section.

• Video games composers, sci-fi directors and more ... keep your eyes peeled for new interviews in WIRED magazine.

Busy Spring

2010-04-13T11:31:00.000+01:00

Life has turned busy this spring.

Elections are coming. I'm now doing media work with a number of NGOs (working in Burma, Tanzania, Romania and elsewhere), as well as preparing a biography on an amazing Irish priest and working hard to develop storylines for a potential drama series based on one of my major stories. (Sadly a drama for HBO based on another story fell through)

I'll be returning to 'Ryan's Rants' when time allows. Soon, inshallah, soon ...

Starting 2010

2010-01-03T09:58:00.000Z

As I write this, a blanket of frost descends onto England and we veer between sub-zero temperatures and extended downpours of rain. Plus ça change!

2010 has started and with it new chances, changes and opportunities. As well as giving up the old mince pies and ensuring I stick to a fitness regime, I've two books to get on with, some TV ideas to prepare, and a bunch of new stories waiting to roll off the line.

Check The Reader's Digest for my next piece on the fascinating Belfast priest based out in a South African township; and then a profile story of the leader of an amazing little children's charity working with Burmese refugees across Asia.

Then the BBC will be running a story from me about virtual currencies ... after which I hope to be printing a travel story on the Virgin islands, then penning some more book reviews for my favourite paper in China, the South China Morning Post.

Before that, though, to administration: a tax return to prepare! Wish me godspeed as I get down to that and, in the meantime, a very happy New Year to one and all. May 2010 bring us all good cheer and luck.

'Paradise Lost'

2009-12-21T19:56:00.012Z

Finally this story is published!

I first talked to Martin Kenney and his amazing "fraudbusting" team back in 1997. Kenney tracks down stolen wealth and, using an amazing array of legal and other powers, retrieves it for victims. It's safe to say what he does is pretty hard and there's not many others doing it at his level.

My first piece about Kenney took more than two years to prepare and was due to come out in The New York Times Magazine ... well, it mysteriously got "cancelled" during what was a ferocious legal battle between the con artist and Kenney's first venture, Interclaim. (Luckily I resold the story to other outlets around the world, including – bizarrely – another New York Times title)

That saga of difficulty mirrors Kenney's own (often lengthy) battle with the fraudsters. Men who now include disgraced financiers Bernie Madoff and "Sir" Allen Stanford. So when I chased up Kenney in 2007/8 to see whether he had more cases which could be covered, I was delighted to get a commission from the UK's Mail on Sunday weekend magazine, "Live". That story finally sees the light of day on my website this week.

I was sent out to the Caribbean by the magazine, where I investigated across two island chains, spent hours and weeks turning a complex case with two sets of fraudsters and hundreds of victims (who had been ripped off in a Christian affinity fraud) into engaging copy ... It was a story that told the details of the Paradise Beach resort -- now renamed The Angelus -- how it was built on American investors' money by one Mobster-turned-preacher; stolen from his family by a British con-man; and implicates senior politicians on the island state of St. Kitts & Nevis in shady dealings.

It seemed like a great story. There I was, poised to deliver ... only to be told (shades of the NYT) that it was "too technical" for a British audience. Not sure what was expected -- black helicopters and James Bond, perhaps -- but to call it frustrating would be an understatement! Not only that, but I had to tell the victims that no-one would be publicising their case.

A year later, I managed to get WIRED magazine's UK edition to cover a new Kenney case (the Tradex saga) then finally -- finally! -- I sold a much-shortened version of The Mail on Sunday story, 'Paradise Lost', to The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi. This cleared the way for me to write up the definitive version of the piece, which I'm airing now.

Likewise, keep peeled for the full version of the Tradex saga soon. In the meantime, Merry Xmas to one and all.

The joys of working in a garret

2009-11-26T15:43:00.001Z

Ah, the joys of a writer's life. My new office is a space inside a Georgian building ... lovely wooden floors, an old fireplace and view over the ancient rooftops of a British city.

I've also got no central heating, frozen feet and due to my 'agreement' with the boss here, got no landline phone, no internet except a 'dongle' and am not even allowed to borrow a box without sending the poor fellow into a spasm of angst and apoplexy. Just for fun I even pay him for the privilege of using an otherwise-empty space!

I spend my life in roofspaces, wondering how I can create meaningful prose and stories which will be of some benefit to the rest of humanity. Meanwhile the garret is a most appropriate metaphor for the writer's life, too: starving and railing against the world ... (laughs).

p.s. my garret is not as nice as the one in the picture

The Tyranny of the Amazon review

2009-11-11T10:54:00.005Z

Most authors will appreciate where I come from with this. You slave God-knows-how-many-hours, weeks, months (years) on a book. Probably in your spare time, whilst still earning a "regular" living. You finally get an agent, then a publisher interested, after numerous re-drafts of your pitch, your content and -- in my case -- paying thousands of £/$ for flight costs, hotels and research *out of your own pocket*.

You then (in my case, for the book Homeland) have to hire your own editor, because your publisher refuses/cannot (apparently) afford the time/resources/unpaid intern to actually edit your work. You try your best, with the limited cash (overdraft) you have available, to put out as good a work as you can. You stand back, exhausted, and marvel it has come this far. You've given birth to something unique, that doesn't simply parrot what's already out there; which is not a celeb ghostwritten piece of crap; and which you also have to have extensively checked by researchers and legal sources to ensure no libel.

Then the fear sets in.

What if no-one will notice the book when it comes out? Will it lead to more work? Has it been worth the slog, the damage to your relationships, the stress, the threats passed your way (how many times have Internet weirdoes and sad violent guys sought to have me followed ...) -- and will it be properly reviewed?

You then (if lucky) get your two week window of fame. The PR ladies at the publisher get you interviews on a few radio stations; you try and get on Richard and Judy, just missing it (too intellectual/not enough undercover violence!); you pen articles; pay for your own internet ad campaign (Google); and generally stick another huge amount of effort into getting it noticed. The reviewers (who, after local radio stations, are more or less the only people your publisher has to ensure *any* marketing at all) then ignore/maul/promise to review (but don't)/or sometimes give nice reviews to your work. I could debate the quality of professional reviewers -- I'm one myself -- let's just say there are some very good ones, and then there are those like the ladies who go on to Radio 4 and write in The Times, who clearly don't read the entire thing and give some liberal hogwash opinion which says more about their own worldview and prejudices than your own work. Time and time again I could tell who had, and had not, read the work by the tone of their comments. It is why when I review, if I don't like something I substantiate it, or give the writer the benefit of the doubt ("it's not to my taste, but I can see x y z liking it").

Be fair is my guiding principle.

But then all goes quiet. If you don't have a weekly column, face on Newsnight Review, making documentaries or generally some other "star" quality, your tome disappears among the 120,000+ published each year. Your publisher has no budget left to market and is already promoting the next work which, unbelievably, has almost the same title as your own yet is concocted trash. The publisher has no budget to promote your work each time something occurs in the news. The big fat obvious truth is that you're on your own. You're a one man band and need to promote that work yourself. In fact, if you could hire a printers and do deals with vendors, you could probably sell it almost as well as they can. That just leaves Amazon.

Amazon operates a readers' review system: people give stars and comments, from 1-5 (1 = bad, 5 = good). Many writers try and stuff their friends in, awarding suspicious 5 stars. But as time goes on, you're left with -- as my old GMTV friends called it - "the nuts and sluts". Having written a book on the extreme Right, I only get white supremacist nutters coming along these days. They uniformly give the work 1 star, which clearly has less to do with any writing or research quality (or even if they fully read it), more to do with their own obvious bias and political views.

I don't object to people not liking something, but I do object to liars, falsehoods and slander. Left at the mercy of these half-hinged cranks, every future reader sees such comments and is left with a plethora of negative reviews which they may, just may, think are fair and accurate comments. Like I said, as a professional reviewer I rarely stoop to such lows and underhand tactics, even if I really don't like something.

But if publishers aren't paying for marketing, and the author is relying on word of mouth, the tyranny of Amazon represents a powerful force in all future sales. And it is those who "shout" loudest on the Internet that, sadly, seem to get heard.

(In the interests of fairness, you can see some examples of this "he who shouts loudest" from the reviews on my Amazon.com page. Note that the lead "negative" reviewer is a self-proclaimed UFO expert ... How come Jon Ronson gets to stare at goats and they love him, whilst my chaps just hate me ... ^^)

Life after Death Row

2009-10-21T16:28:00.007+01:00

Great story from The Guardian about the freed Death Row prisoners in the States and their campaigns for justice.

Death-row survivor John Thompson is angry, but not bitter. Which is remarkable, given that the prosecutor in his original trial for murder in 1984 deliberately withheld evidence that proved he was innocent. "I'm angry," he says, "because that man was trying to murder me. He knew I did not commit that crime, had the evidence to prove it, but it made no difference. He was going to have me killed in the chair to further his own career." Of all the cases of death-row prisoners who have been exonerated in recent years, Thompson's is one of the most troubling. Jerry Deagan, the prosecutor in question, only confessed that he had concealed the blood evidence that would have absolved Thompson when he found he was dying of liver cancer, 11 years after Thompson's conviction. In an attempt to clear his conscience, Deagan told his colleague, Mike Riehlmann, what he had done.

But even when Deagan died, it was almost five years before Riehlmann came clean and earned a brief suspension from Louisiana's Supreme Court for his "inaction". After 14 years on death row and seven execution dates, Thompson was given a retrial in 2004. The jury took just a few minutes to acquit him, and later he walked out of Louisiana's Angola State prison with just $10 in his pocket for his trouble. Now he campaigns against the death penalty. And not just for those who might be innocent. "There is nothing about justice in death penalty cases in the US," he told me at the annual conference of Lifelines (www.lifelines-uk.org), the organisation that arranges pen-friends for those on death row, where he and I were guest speakers. "It's all about votes and careers."

He opened his briefcase and took out a large photograph of a burly-looking man wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. The man, Jim Williams, was the senior prosecutor who oversaw Thompson's original trial. In the picture, Williams wears a look of pride and stands behind a large desk, upon which stands a small model of an electric chair. Attached to the chair are the photographs of five black men. Thompson's picture, in the centre, is the largest. "He was especially proud to send me to the chair," says Thompson, "and it was all based on lies."

Here's a link to John Thomspon's site and new work, helping to rehabilitate prisoners.

Vote for editor of 'The Journalist'

2009-10-19T11:06:00.003+01:00

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) is voting in a new editor of its house magazine, The Journalist, shortly. If some of the discussion I've seen are anything to go by, passions about the role - and about journalism, its future and future of the NUJ - are running high.

The nice folks over at Journalism.co.uk are hosting debates and information about the candidates, so worth checking them out.

Governments using journalists to spy

2009-10-15T09:23:00.003+01:00

A dangerous precedent is being set. Governments around the world are using journalists -- or 'fake' journalists -- to gain access to movements they consider a threat, then using those journalists to either spy on or (if they're disguised police officers) to arrest people.

It's happening in Nepal, Israel and Canada, to name just a few places. And it's got journalists around the world pretty riled up: for if people can't trust us (as little as they do now), how will we get to report on stories if everyone suspects we're working for the police or intelligence units? It's bad enough with some of the conspiracy-minded people I talk to, who seem to believe they're being bugged from the lamposts and that the "Zionists" are out to get them; think how much worse it could get if governments routinely used us as a cover to infiltrate others.

***

IFEX reports

The Nepali government intends to use journalists as informants as part of a security plan, report ARTICLE 19 and the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ), a decision that would undermine the role of independent media and increase attacks on journalists. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) reports that Israeli security forces
were disguised as photojournalists in the midst of a demonstration on 8 and 9 October and arrested protesters.

This issue is not reported frequently and it is difficult to prove the practice takes place, says Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE). CJFE last documented a case of a police officer in Canada impersonating a journalist in order to have greater access to a protest in 2008.

According to ARTICLE 19 and FNJ, the use of Nepali informants as security informants is a breach of the code of conduct issued by the Nepali Press Council. ARTICLE 19, the FNJ, and another Nepali group, Freedom Forum, have called on Nepali authorities to remove any proposal to use journalists as spies and to ensure the safety and security of journalists.

"The Government's plan is opportunistic and irresponsible," said FNJ Chair Dharmendra Jha. "Threats and attacks against, and even murder of journalists are rampant in Nepal and to propose to use journalists as informants is at best grossly negligent."

In Jerusalem, Israeli security forces posed as photojournalists by carrying cameras and dressing like Palestinians, reports MADA. They arrested several young protestors at a demonstration last week against Israeli practices regarding Al Aqsa Mosque. MADA comments that this is a violation of international laws and charters and endangers the lives of journalists.

Previously in Canada, a police officer pretended to be a journalist at a Mohawk rally in conjunction with the Aboriginal Day of Protest in 2007. CJFE comments that this practice undermines the media's position as an independent third party, threatening reporters' safety and ability to access stories and sources. Police pretending to be journalists threatens free press as it creates an environment where citizens cannot trust that those who identify themselves as journalists truly are journalists. Police
action has "chilled" potential sources, says CJFE.

Fred of The Philippines

2009-10-09T18:13:00.009+01:00

Photo: Ermita, the "sin city" of Manila

I just discovered this story of mine during an office clearout. I decided to type it up again: it ain't hopeful but it is 'real'. And most of all, it is true.

***

'FRED'

I first met Fred in a brothel*. He had a woman on either side of him, laughing and chatting away in Tagalog, the Manilan language. They eyed each other nervously whenever his coarse and frequent laughter disturbed the other patrons and caused them to turn and stare. None of us knew his background but his clown-like face, all furrows and bulbous nose, looked lonely, weary and afraid, even then. He looked like someone’s grandpa gone astray, turning up white-haired and inappropriate in one of the sin capitals of the world.

I got to know Fred pretty well during my three months in The Philippines. We’d meet up in some provincial centre, all the travellers gathered in the same bar or hotel that the guidebook promised would be deserted, and talk about England. His England. I’ve been to pre-war Fulham whilst gambling in the boiler room of a steamship and worked with the lads down at Peckham sorting office, sitting on a tiny tropical island. I probably travelled more with his words than my own feet.

Looking at the spreading web of his tattoos depressed me. It spoke of lost opportunities. His hands and body didn’t move much, just kind of collapsed inwards to eventually protrude in a fragile beer gut. But his eyes were alive with vitriol and longing to live. He knew he didn’t have that long, that was apparent in his bitter and sarcastic talk about friends and family deserting him over the years. I think that Fred must be one of the loneliest people I’ve ever met. He was 79 when I last saw him.

I often asked him why’d he’d put to the road so late in life. In his sober moments, which were few, he told me.

As the youngest of four children, he’d been reared by his mother and sisters in a Fulham (west London) terrace. Their father deserted them before Fred reached his teens. His stepfather beat him. He left school at 14 to do a variety of jobs, never settling and never sticking at anything for a length of time. He blamed it on The Depression.

The War changed his life. Or so he said. He’d never travelled further than Bognor Regis (an English seaside town) and now “some bastard in Whitehall” had sent him to join the 14th Army in India and Burma. The Forgotten Army. They were abandoned with their half-competent officers, more concerned with observing the rigours of protocol than the health and well-being of their men.

He’d been sent to guard temples where teenage girls, sold by their parents, were lowered kicking and screaming onto a hallowed spike, symbolically removing their virginity and consecrating them to a secretive caste of prostitutes. He vividly described the sight of their bright garlands spattered with blood, silken robes parting over twisted, brown flesh. After this he considered all Indians, and most Asians, to be “animals”. The irony of our Philippines surroundings seemed lost on him.

He deserted after a couple of years. The situation was forced on him, he said, by 2,000 Japanese soldiers “running down me bloody throat”. He’d been based in the Burmese jungle when a naked white woman ran into his camp and began babbling, in a Glaswegian accent, that the Japanese were advancing only a couple of miles away (she, by the way, had been an anthropology student who’d installed herself as the leader of the tribe she’d come to study).

“Them fucking officers” ordered her to be arrested because she’d entered their mess, off-limits to anyone below the rank of Second Lieutenant or, for that matter, a civilian. Fred and his mates fled when several hundred tribesmen surrounded their superiors and held them until the Japanese arrived.

He’d been fleeing from himself ever since. As a postman back in Peckham, he’d spent the next 30 years in four unhappy marriages. Fred’s charm did not lie with women (he was robbed twice by prostitutes and charged at least double for their services during the times I met him in The Philippines) and he’d managed to alienate his only daughter.

Postwar England had obviously not brought happiness or fulfillment. He was pensioned off to live in a high-rise flat somewhere in his native Fulham, griping about Maggie Thatcher and femalekind in general to a cold and silent audience. After five years he set off to travel the world, scraping together the savings he had left and vowing, he told me, never to return. He’d been more places in those few years than I’d been in my entire life.

I sat and watched this incongruous figure, spindly legs jutting from beneath fake Fred Perry shorts, and failed to imagine him as a young man. That pained me because I felt I was doing an injustice to his memories. His lips quivered and he frothed everso slightly at the mouth, a broken old man reliving an alien youth. He talked too much. My companions – a motley assortment of minor drug dealers, Norwegian runaways and a hotelier-in-training – laughed and took the piss. Fred would halt his tale and join in with them.

He hadn’t escaped the sorrow of his life by travelling. He was still unsettled. This was the impression you had talking to him, an old man reeling drunk on San Miguel beer and bitter memories. At those times he would begin swearing at everyone around him, the Filippinos, prostitutes and us. He didn’t seem to care, perhaps because he’d lost all he had already. It embarrassed me to see him like this.

I doubt that Fred is still alive. I hope that he isn’t because his weariness and despair I found painful to witness. I shall strive to make my life a success in memory of that man and hope that wherever he is now, he rests in peace.

* Ed note: Most of the bars for the backpackers were also brothels.

Frank Deasy: A great man passes away

2009-09-25T17:38:00.008+01:00

Back in 2000 I was called into the bowels of the BBC to discuss a possible play about the Far Right. The BBC hadn't produced anything on this are for over a decade. We didn't have much of an idea, then, of what to do: I was in the midst of writing my book HOMELAND and Ruth Caleb, the producer, was looking for a screenwriter to turn my research into riveting viewing.

We slowly interviewed a succession of writers: those well-established, others who were little more than cab drivers with a desire to hit the big screen. Then we met Frank.

In walked this taciturn, brooding figure; a monk-like man with deep brow, a thinker's face and thoughtful expression. There was an intensity there, behind the measured-but-strong Dublin accent. He wouldn't talk about his childhood, that was quickly off-limits after I asked about his background. Apparently he had a reputation for being difficult to deal with – he even warned me that, most likely, we would fall out during the process of filming and making this drama (we did, but only for a short while) – but mostly it was fascinating to work with him. He'd written a brilliant TV series called Looking After Jo-Jo, starring Robert Carlyle, which was set among the drug dealers of a Glasgow housing estate.

I took Frank to the British National Party's 'Red White and Blue' annual festival (something they had copied off their big brother, the Front National in France); then to the East End to meet BNP people; we even ended up outside the house of an infamous Combat 18 member in south-east London. Through many months and script revisions, the drama 'England Expects' (directed by Tony Smith) was born. It was while staying in Welshpool, near BNP leader Nick Griffin's smallholding, that I learned of Frank's troubled past: he searched high and low for a local AA group, which he felt he needed to attend. (Inadvertently I'd asked him if he wanted to join me in the hotel bar for a beer.) He hinted even then about the health worries troubling him.

I watched Frank's other work appear on the screens in the following five years: an Emmy-winning Prime Suspect with Helen Mirren; The Passion, his tale of Jesus' life, and death; he had co-written an unseen Hollywood film Prozac Nation, made on a book of the same name (and which he hinted had been riven with troubles); and worked on many other superlative dramas. Sadly I only recently learned of the liver cancer that was to contribute to his death on 17 September this year. We swapped an email only the day before, after friends told me about Frank's poignant writing of his condition – waiting for a liver transplant, for which he had a rare blood type – in The Observer newspaper. It led to him doing an hour-long radio show with RTE in Ireland; thousands of letters poured in to the newspapers in support of his and others' plights.

Frank's email to me of 16 September read: "Thanks Nick – we live in hope ay?" I replied later that evening, not realising he was already in the life and death operation to transplant his liver, and which he hoped would give him a new lease of life. Instead it robbed him of that life – he died on the operating table – and his wife, Marie, and three children are now left without a father.

Frank Deasy was a rare man: principled, gifted, honorable. I was glad, in the end, to have known him.

Ponzis, Dying & Mercenaries

2009-09-06T19:52:00.007+01:00

Updated here is a roundup of my latest stories. Several are part of larger projects or available for resale, and I hope they make for interesting reading.

1) Follow The Money. October 2009: Wired (UK) magazine. In an era of financial scams and Ponzi frauds, it takes cunning, smart thinking (and a little luck) to nail the bad guys. Nick Ryan meets the 'fraud busters', the team which hunts down major-league swindlers from a luxury Caribbean base and recovers millions for victims. Based on my 10-year contact with the hotshot lawyers of Martin Kenney & Co.

2) Living with Dying. August 2009: The Times Magazine (UK). What does it mean to be dying? Nick Ryan followed five people with terminal illness as they journeyed towards the end of life. A major piece for the Times, which took many months and a lot of heartache to put together.

3) Good Heart in Africa. July 2009: The Tablet (UK). Father Kieran Creagh narrowly escaped death in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and more recently in South Africa where he founded Leratong hospice. Nick Ryan meets a man who for many epitomises the essence of priesthood and its sacrifices. (This is merely the intro/taster to part of a much longer project.)

4) Lords of War. Walrus Magazine (Canada). They brave their lives in the shadowy world of mercenary riches, risking all for reward – but what are the dangers today of using so many 'soldiers of fortune' to protect corporate and diplomatic interests? Nick Ryan, who has met many private military and security contractors, looks at their motivations and at the wider industry they inhabit. (Look out for more pieces to come from this area).

5) The Fog of War. April 2009: The National (UAE). Captured fighting alongside the Taliban, a young American Muslim convert, John Walker Lindh, became the United States’ most infamous “enemy combatant” and a potent symbol of betrayal. In a rare interview, Nick Ryan talks to his family, who ask if their son really deserved a 20-year sentence. (John Lindh deserves his freedom, despite many Americans' misguided enmity.)

6) Gold Trading Exposed. March/April 2009: Eurogamer. A major four-part, 12,000 word investigation into the blackmarket world of "gold selling" in virtual video games and online worlds. Includes exclusive interviews with Chinese gold farmers and brokers; as well as revelations such as the huge size of the market ($10bn) and size of the industry (one million employed in China alone).

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

7) (reprint) Hammering the Rock. 2005: Maxim. One of the most feared gangs in American history faces the ultimate showdown with the authorities – but will it be enough to smash 'The Rock'? Report by Nick Ryan.

8) My Virtual Family. 2009: The BBC. They are the 'Twitter generation'. Couch-potato teenagers, addicted to video games and instant messenging, dangerously cut-off from the outside world. That, at least, is one depressing stereotype painted of today’s youth: we have a disgruntled, alienated generation ignored by its guardians and parents. Yet more and more of us are finding ways to stay in touch with family and loved ones via online game worlds or "MMOs.

Further articles, books, and documentaries currently in development.

The Fraudbusters™ revisited

2009-09-03T21:27:00.011+01:00

The two men stepped off the long flight from Dublin. The Miami heat washed over them in a second, but they didn't flinch. In their line of work they were well-used to entering harsh climes:

War-torn Liberia, the jungles of Papua New Guinea or a freezing Toronto winter – they went wherever the money trail led them.

The taller and more broad-shouldered of the two had once guarded US Presidents and worked out on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border when the US supported the mujahideen. His companion, shorter and with carefully-buttoned suit and tie, was a forensically-minded lawyer responsible for crossing swords with some of the most tenacious con-men the world had ever seen, sociopaths who would stop at nothing in their avarice. When you heard of names like Bernie Madoff or Sir Allen Stanford, chances are he was on their trail. He had sat across from these criminals as they told him how they lay awake at night, dreaming of ways to kill him.

Meet the world's sharpest fraudbusters.

Follow The Money. October 2009: Wired (UK) magazine.

Photo © Neil Massey.

Grapes of Wrath revisited

2009-08-29T11:08:00.004+01:00

It's 70 years since John Steinbeck's seminal Grapes of Wrath (about Depression-era American families moving west) was published.

Here The Guardian's Chris McGreal retraces that journey and finds a series of desolate ghost towns clinging to the famous Route 66.

(I recently went to see a theatre production of the book and it still holds its power, decades since it was written).

Jack's Death

2009-08-27T08:22:00.002+01:00

A moving tribute from a father to his slain only-son, in Afghanistan.

Trooper Jack Sadler was killed in December 2007, when a land mine exploded underneath his army Land Rover in the desert of southern Afghanistan.

At the inquest into the death of the 21-year-old, in July this year, a coroner in Exeter said the government should explain why such light vehicles were used for army reconnaissance patrols.

Hear the audio tribute here.

Iranian boy who defied Tehran hardliners tells of prison rape ordeal

2009-08-22T12:04:00.001+01:00

The 15-year-old boy sits weeping in a safehouse in central Iran, broken in body and spirit. Reza will not go outside — he is terrified of being left alone. He says he wants to end his life and it is not hard to understand why: for daring to wear the green wristband of Iran’s opposition he was locked up for 20 days, beaten, raped repeatedly and subjected to the Abu Ghraib-style sexual humiliations and abuse for which the Iranian regime denounced the United States.

“My life is over. I don’t think I can ever recover,” he said, as he recounted his experiences to The Times — on condition that his identity not be revealed. A doctor who is treating him, at great risk to herself, confirmed that he is suicidal, and bears the appalling injuries consistent with his story. The family is desperate, and is exploring ways of fleeing Iran.

Reza is living proof of the charges levelled by Mehdi Karoubi, one of the opposition’s leaders, that prison officials are systematically raping both male and female detainees to break their wills. The regime has accused Mr Karoubi of helping Iran’s enemies by spreading lies and has threatened to arrest him.

The boy’s treatment also shows just how far a regime that claims to champion Islamic values is prepared to go to suppress millions of its own citizens who claim that President Ahmadinejad’s re-election was rigged.

*

Read this incredibly powerful story at The Times.

Hammering The Rock

2009-08-17T11:08:00.003+01:00

It was a place for those who had made it. Plate glass and grandeur, reflected in the bright winter sunlight. The posh Pacific Heights neighbourhood was a world away from the street gangs and violence plaguing many American inner cities.

So it must have seemed to Bill Kuenzi on a typically brisk San Franciscan afternoon, January 26 2001, as he unlocked his friend's third-story apartment door. Until, that was, he heard the screams.

"It was high-pitched, desperate, continuous screaming," Kuenzi later testified in a Los Angeles court, "of a woman who was obviously being attacked. I knew I had to do something and I tried to call 911 on my cell phone."

Kuenzi's phone didn't work where he was. So he went to the stairs for better reception and began climbing toward the screaming. The cell phone still didn't work. He continued until he reached the fifth floor. Then fear stopped him. The screaming was coming from the sixth floor.

"I assumed it was a domestic violence situation," said Kuenzi, a 35-year-old stockbroker. "Or a woman being sexually assaulted. I realised that when I climbed to the sixth floor landing, I would be exposed to the situation, which I knew was violent, and I was scared."

He had good reason. The violence that Kuenzi feared was not being perpetrated by some enraged boyfriend who might be calmed down, or even a rapist who could be scared off by the arrival of others.

The attack taking place a floor above Kuenzi was being carried out by two huge Canary Island mastiffs. They had been bred as vicious attack dogs by a pair of prison cellmates, members of the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood — possibly the most frightening prison gang in US history.

The dogs were mauling to death Diane Whipple, a petite 34-year-old college lacrosse coach and resident of the sixth floor, who had just returned from a shopping trip.

Descending again, Kuenzi finally got through to police. As he reached the ground floor, he heard Whipple's cries change to a low moan.

"Then the screaming stopped," he said.

The first police officers at the scene found Whipple in the sixth-floor hallway, nude, mutilated, covered in blood, and trying to crawl to her open apartment door. The carpet, floor and walls were smothered in bloody handprints.

Whipple was beyond help. Her larynx was crushed and her jugular vein had been severed by dog bites. The two dogs, Bane (male) and Hera (female), had worked together, Bane attacking her face and neck, Hera the lower body. Whipple would die in the emergency room 70 minutes later.

This strange and savage attack was to expose to the American public one of the more bizarre aspects of the Aryan Brotherhood. Known as Presa Canarios, the dogs which killed Diane Whipple belonged to her neighbours, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, husband-and-wife attorneys. Their legal practice had put them in contact with the two life-term prisoners at Pelican Bay, the most secure facility in the California system.

With Noel and Knoller's help, Paul "Cornfed" Schneider, an Aryan Brotherhood member, and Dale Bretches were running a dangerous business – against prison rules – that they called Dog o' War. Officials believe that huge dogs were being raised for sale to guard methamphetamine labs. The business was conducted from the cells, and by vulnerable contacts on the outside whom Cornfed managed to dupe.

Jewish-born Noel, 60, and Knoller, 46, were later convicted of involuntary manslaughter and, in Knoller's case, second-degree murder as well. There were allegations of sexual abuse concerning the dogs, and naked pictures of Knoller were also found in Cornfed's cell. Even so, these were hardly your run-of-the-mill Aryan Brotherhood associates. Yet the case threw into sharp relief the continued existence of America's most feared prison gang.

One of the most feared gangs in American history faces the ultimate showdown with the authorities – but will it be enough to smash 'The Rock'? Report by Nick Ryan.

Read the shocking tale of America's most feared prison gang; and how the authorities tried to break it. (Reprinted).

My Virtual Family

2009-08-17T11:06:00.003+01:00

They are the 'Twitter generation'. Couch-potato teenagers, addicted to video games and instant messenging, dangerously cut-off from the outside world.

That, at least, is one depressing stereotype painted of today’s youth: we have a disgruntled, alienated generation ignored by its guardians and parents.

Video games, from 'first person shooters' (FPS), to massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs, or MMOs), are often blamed for heightening this apparently self-destructive behaviour.

Psychiatrist Dr Richard Graham, a specialist in treating adolescent addiction from the Tavistock Centre in London, has even said that the teenagers he saw were living entire days inside virtual game worlds. Their time inside hugely popular fantasy games, such as World of Warcraft, was damaging their health and studies.

"One young man described vividly to me a sense that having achieved very high success in the game, when he switched off he felt downgraded," he said.

But is there another side to this picture?

Time-pressed, divided families – those divorced, living away from their loved ones, or simply with grown-up children – are increasingly using online worlds and games to stay in touch with one another. It's an interesting, and as yet unreported, shift in the new ways we're being forced to associate. It is the rise of a virtual family, you might say.

More and more of us are finding ways to stay in touch with family and loved ones via online game worlds or "MMOs", says Nick Ryan.

Read how video games are providing a new way for us to communicate.

Good Heart in Africa

2009-08-17T11:04:00.003+01:00

Two years ago he lay dying on the hard earth of a shanty town. As his life blood gushed out he stumbled away, trying to escape the men who had just shot him at point blank range.

"The third shot was like a fist going right up into my body. I really felt that," says the mild-mannered Belfast priest with a shudder. He pauses for a moment, licking his lips.

"I felt so alone … abandoned," states Father Kieran Creagh, as he remembers the night in February 2007, when a criminal gang attacked his South African hospice.

"They just rang the bell outside in the courtyard and I thought, 'oh, something must have happened in one of the wards'. I didn't realise these guys were inside. I opened the door … and that's when they grabbed me."

Leratong – the name means "place of love" in one of the six local languages spoken here – had been set up by Father Creagh in 2004, a single-minded effort to help tackle the massive HIV/AIDS crisis crushing the nation. With its hospice beds, drug clinic and creche, plus new church, it was at the physical and spiritual heart of the community.

A member of the Passionist order, Creagh had spent over a decade seeing his congregation succumb to the deadly disease. In the overcrowded, poverty-stricken township of Atteridgeville, about an hour west of the capital Pretoria, he had watched as old men lay dying in filthy shacks, unable to move; attended by wives who were scarcely less sick.

He felt passionately about bringing dignity to the dying: it was his vision and determination, despite funding problems, political obstructions and the South African government's refusal to provide anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs), that had led to Leratong's birth.

The irony was that he was now facing the end of his own, most extraordinary, life.

Fr Kieran Creagh narrowly escaped death in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and more recently in South Africa where he founded Leratong hospice. Nick Ryan meets a man who for many epitomises the essence of priesthood and its sacrifices.

Read the amazing story of 'The Father', my latest profile piece.

Lords of War

2009-08-17T11:01:00.003+01:00

I first saw them on the slip road. They were trapped in a muddle of traffic, jostling to get through, eager, anxious, impatient; the mood of the driver transmitted down through the steering wheel and the throttle into the jerking, pushy movements of the car. I'd watched them as we drove past and now they were behind us framed in my observer's mirror, kicking up a plume of road dust as they weaved through the morning traffic on the highway through Fallujah. Pickups loaded with workers on the open backs, loose-fitting robes snapping in the milky warm slipstream, moved to let the black BMW 7 series charge through. They were like the members of a herd making way for a big predator which had earmarked its prey further into the throng.

I knew what was coming now just as the herd, watching from their pickups and battered saloons, did... But the difference was that I am not one of the herd.

They brave their lives in the shadowy world of mercenary riches, risking all for reward – but what are the dangers today of using so many 'soldiers of fortune' to protect corporate and diplomatic interests? Nick Ryan, who has met many private military and security contractors, looks at their motivations and at the wider industry they inhabit.

Read the story of today's modern mercenaries, now.

Gold Trading: Exposed

2009-08-14T13:55:00.007+01:00

Is gold selling like pornography: something more of us do than admit? A shameful secret, something indulged alone and at night, in front of the screen; or during a lunchbreak, safely away from a partner, when a quick credit card or PayPal transaction will go unnoticed by others in-game?

Secret or not, we all hate 'gold sellers'. Apparently. Despise them, even. Ask your friends or colleagues: how many will openly admit to buying services from a gold farmer? Yeah, that's right. Not many. And the ones that do probably harp on just as loudly against them as the next man or woman.

But just who are these scourges of the gaming world? You probably know them as the anonymous figures plaguing your trade chat, offering great deals for game currency, power-levelling services or purchase of rare items and plans. In games such as World of Warcraft the infamous random whisper from a level 1: "Hello, are you there?" quickly leads into a macroed advert if you bother to reply. What with the well-known 'grind' present in most massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) these days, how many of us have been tempted to take that short cut?

The received wisdom, as we'll see later from the major games companies, is that such outfits are as good as organised crime: they support and promote hacking and stolen accounts and credit cards. They are not merely a nuisance and headache, but a plague to be stamped out which costs us all millions of greenbacks.

Yet this is the thing: if there was no demand, there'd be no market. And no gold sellers. Right? Yet gold selling – or 'real money trading' (RMT) to give it its emasculated, industry name (the real-world sale of virtual goods and services produced in online games) – is now worth an estimated US $2 billion annually. And that figure is growing.

It's worth up to $10 billion and used by 30% of all gamers – yet denied in public by most players and now even banned by a national government. In a four-part weekly feature series which was picked up across the Internet, Nick Ryan reports on the current state of the thriving grey market of "gold selling" in online worlds, which supports an industry of over 1 million in China alone.

Just who are these scourges of the gaming world?

Read the stories which set the internet alight -- now on my website for the first time.

The Fraud Busters™

2009-08-14T09:58:00.005+01:00

My new story in Wired magazine:

Summer 2003 – The two men stepped off the long flight from Dublin. The Miami heat washed over them in a second, but they didn't flinch. In their line of work they were well-used to entering harsh climes; war-torn Liberia, the jungles of Papua New Guinea or a freezing Toronto winter – they went wherever the money trail led them.

The taller and more broad-shouldered of the two had once guarded US Presidents and worked out on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border when the US supported the mujahideen. His companion, shorter and with carefully-buttoned suit and tie, was a forensically-minded lawyer responsible for crossing swords with some of the most tenacious con-men the world had ever seen, sociopaths who would stop at nothing in their avarice. When you heard of names like Bernie Madoff or Sir Allen Stanford, chances are he was on their trail. He had sat across from these criminals as they told him how they lay awake at night, dreaming of ways to kill him.

Read October's Wired (UK) magazine for my story of the Global Fraud Busters.

Living With Dying - The Times Magazine

2009-08-14T09:38:00.007+01:00

It is the great leveller. And the last taboo.

It brings down rich and poor alike. Hollywood gives it glamour; poets gild it with romance. Oscar Wilde even tried to make light of it. "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go," he muttered from a Parisian hotel, sipping his last champagne.

Our tabloids mawkishly follow its path, too, through the spectacle of reality TV star Jade Goody and actors such as Farrah Fawcett and Patrick Swayze fighting their doomed battles with cancer.

More than half a million people in the UK die every year, yet death is the one fact of life we refuse to confront. As we debate the morality of assisted suicide, five people with terminal illnesses movingly discuss what it really means to die:

The despair, anger, hope – even humour.

Read my story. Saturday 15th August: The Times Magazine.

(or read my original, longer piece here)

Who's killing Russia's human rights heroes?

2009-07-23T09:23:00.002+01:00

It should have been a brief trip. Last Wednesday, Natalia Estemirova, known to her friends as Natasha, left her flat in the Chechen capital, Grozny, and set off towards the bus stop. Usually, it took her 15-20 minutes to get to work – a bumpy ride in a shared No 55 mini-van, down an avenue of green tower blocks, past giant posters of Chechnya's warlord president Ramzan Kadyrov, and several of Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin.

On this occasion, she didn't make it. A hundred metres beyond the entrance of her 10th-floor flat – which overlooks a patch of grassy wasteland and a grove of shabby walnut trees – four gunmen were waiting. They grabbed Estemirova, bundled her into a white Russian-made Zhiguli car and drove off. A woman passer-by saw the abduction and heard her cry out.

It was 8.30am. Her kidnappers headed in the direction of Ingushetia, Chechnya's neighbouring republic. Probably, they took the M-29 highway, though there is also a grassy back-route looping along a hillside. The road is a scenic one: it cuts though a dark tunnel of poplar trees; on the roadside women sell melons from the backs of trucks. The kidnappers breezed through several checkpoints.

Two hours later, Estemirova was dead. The men stopped their vehicle soon after crossing into Ingushetia. Up ahead, a group of Islamist militants had ambushed a government car, opening fire. Estemirova's kidnappers may at this point have panicked. They marched her, hands tied, off the road. And then they shot her five times in the head and chest – leaving behind her money, passport and ID card.

This was no robbery. Instead, her friends believe it was something else: a vile, cowardly, meticulous, state-sponsored execution, apparently designed to send a chilling warning to the small, dwindling number of activists still working in Chechnya, Russia's rogue republic. Last week, Estemirova's colleague Oleg Orlov certainly felt in no doubt as to who killed her.

--> part of a great piece today in The Guardian, by journalist Luke Harding (a great guy whom I once met, many moons ago)

Dust-Off

2009-07-21T22:10:00.002+01:00

There's a great story up on the website of US magazine, 'Details'.

Private Dwyer's Last Breath details the tragic tale of a US veteran who turned, like many others, to a chemical propellant widely-available on US bases. Why? To deal with the traumas and stress of war.

It's a powerful piece, well told. I urge you to read it.

2009-07-21T10:48:00.002+01:00

Worth reading Farhad Manjoo's column on Slate's website, concerning Amazon remotely deleting books held on its electronic book readers.

i.e. they can delete books you've already paid for, possibly leading to a future where all copies of a work could be permanently destroyed.

New stories

2009-07-20T15:15:00.003+01:00

There are two new stories by me now available online.

1. Good Heart in Africa -- a profile of the amazing Belfast priest, Father Kieran Creagh, working tirelessly out in South Africa for the dying

2. Play Mates -- my revelations about the use of online games to bring families and loved ones together.

Trial of the century?

2009-07-20T15:10:00.002+01:00

One to watch:

The trial of the dozens of suspected members of a shadowy ultranationalist network in Turkey, accused of plotting to bring down the regime.

All sounds rather familiar ... makes for a good film too?

Read more about the Ergenekon case.

Europe swings Right

2009-06-08T10:05:00.003+01:00

From the council house estates of Britain's former industrial heartland to French cities looking out across the Mediterranean to North Africa, European far-right parties have picked up an army of supporters in the international recession.

Families who have lost jobs and homes became an automatic target for the British National Party (BNP), Jobbik in Hungary, the National Front in France and the Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands with their anti-immigrant, anti-Islam, anti-establishment proclamations.

However, in other parts of Europe the vote dropped, leaving the far right groups with eight more seats in the Parliament than they had in 2004.

The BNP picked up two seats in the just-ended European parliament election that have brought all the parties into the spotlight.

BNP leader Nick Griffin is a Cambridge University-educated political scrapper who has completely recast his party's image.

But his message is much the same as in the other countries.

"This is a Christian country and Islam is not welcome, because Islam and Christianity, Islam and democracy, Islam and women's rights do not mix," he told Sky Television on Sunday night.

"That's a simple fact that the elites of Europe are going to have to get their heads round and deal with over the next few years."

Geert Wilders' PVV won 17 per cent of the Dutch vote in the election and will send four deputies to the EU parliament.

The far-right Jobbik party, participating in the elections for the first time, finished third in Hungary with 14.74 per cent of the vote and will get three deputies. The ultra-nationalist Ataka party in Bulgaria also expects three seats after getting 10-12 per cent of the vote.

Jobbik has seized upon what it calls "Roma crimes" and set up a paramilitary offshoot, the Hungarian Guard, to stage marches in Roma dominated villages. The head of a police trade union was on its European election candidates list.

The Greater Romania party was predicted to get about seven per cent and two deputies, according to exit polls.

Amsterdam University political analyst, Fouad Laroui, said that there was a growing move toward leaders like the populist Wilders "who use simple language - caricatures".

In the Netherlands and the rest of Europe, this sector makes up a fifth of all voters, he estimated - a group, "who understand little apart from feeling threatened."

Alfred Pijpers, researcher at the Dutch international relations institute Clingendael, said Wilders had tapped into voters who "veer from left to right without subscribing to the specific policies of political parties".

"These are, above all, people who have a degree of resentment towards the elite and feel misunderstood, excluded from society and the media," he said.

The BNP described the election of its two deputies at the expense of the scandal-stricken ruling Labour Party in Britain as a "historic moment".

However, Health Minister Andrew Burnham called it a "sad moment". He vowed it would "redouble our determination to take them on and take them out of British politics".

Government ministers and the Conservative party had sought to remind voters of BNP policies, which include calls for the immediate halt to all immigration and the "voluntary resettlement" of all immigrants.

The Conservative party's Europe spokesman, Mark Francois, said it was a "disappointing night".

French firebrand Jean-Marie Le Pen is a reminder, however, of how difficult it is to get rid of the far-right, even when it opposes everything in the EU parliament.

At the age of 80, Le Pen, who has been found guilty of calling the Nazi gas chambers a "detail" of history and has thrived on shocking the nation, is now the doyen of French members of the EU assembly.

Having been elected again, he swore to "defend France against Europe, against the abuses of the European Union." His daughter Marine was also reelected in the north of France.

The EU parliament recently adopted reforms to its operating rules so that Le Pen, as the longest serving member, cannot preside over its inaugural session.

(taken from Yahoo News)

What's it like to work for The New Yorker?

2009-05-19T17:36:00.002+01:00

Veteran journalist Dan Baum puts together an intriguing chronicle of his time as a New Yorker magazine staff writer (originally he 'Tweeted' it) over on his website.

Some gems:

must say, though, the office itself is a little creepy. I didn’t work there. I live in Colorado. But I’d visit 3-4X a year.

Everybody whispers.

It’s not exactly like being in a library; it’s more like being in a hospital room where somebody is dying.

Like someone’s dying, and everybody feels a little guilty about it.

There’s a weird tension to the place. If you raise your voice to normal level, heads pop up from cubicles.

And from around the stacks of review copies that lie everywhere like a graveyard of writers’ aspirations.

It always seemed strange. Making it to the New Yorker is an achievement. It is vastly prestigious, of course.

And the work is truly satisfying. Imagine putting out that magazine every week!

Yet nobody at the office seems very happy. The atmosphere is vastly strained.

I’d get back on the Times Square sidewalk after a visit and feel I needed to flap my arms.

Get some air into my lungs, maybe jog half a block. And I came to realize I had a really good job.

I could write for the New Yorker, but not have to be of the New Yorker.

Well worth reading the whole thing.

Far Right politician admits lying about knife murders

2009-05-13T14:02:00.004+01:00

The British National Party's only elected member of the Greater London Assembly, and a leading local councillor in the London borough of Barking, as admitted putting out "incorrect" (i.e. lying) statements about three (fictitious) knife murders in his borough -- action which could lead to his suspension.

The Guardian newspaper reports that the statements, made on a Youtube video filmed by the BNP's deputy chairman, were wrong and knowingly so, in a joint report from the GLA and Barking & Dagenham council.

The complaint against Barnbrook was first lodged last September after he claimed in an interview posted on YouTube and his own website that a girl had been murdered within the borough within the past three weeks. "We don't know who's done it. Her girlfriend was attacked inside an educational institute," Barnbrook said in the prerecorded interview in which he sought to highlight failings in tackling knife crime.

He also said that two weeks previously "there was another attack by knives on the streets of Barking and Dagenham where two people were murdered".

Barnbrook, who is one of twelve BNP councillors in Barking and Dagenham, said that he knew at the time that he made the statements that "there had been no fatalities in Barking and Dagenham", according to a report documenting the investigation into the complaint.

Barnbrook nevertheless refused to apologise for the statements "until knife crime is over".

The Metropolitan police confirmed that there had been no murders or incidents resulting in critical injuries requiring intensive care in the time period cited, and that murders in the area were actually decreasing.

The eternally-beige suited Barnbrook now faces a full hearing after the respective committees at the GLA and the London borough considered the investigation's report two weeks ago.

What never ceases to amaze me: the man on the street laments politicians for being corrupt, useless, etc etc, yet turns to the first -- COMPLETEY OBVIOUS -- carpet bagger coming along. Talk about being sheep ...

(As readers of this blog will know, I met Barnbrook several times during my reporting for both The Observer Magazine, covering the Mayoral elections for Yoosk.com and my new book).

Dangerous times for coverage of Israel

2009-05-13T13:34:00.005+01:00

Dangerous times when the BBC lumbers to censure its highly-respected Middle Eastern editor, Jeremy Bowen. Shame on those pro-Zionist lobbyists who crow and allow no open debate on the Israeli-Palestinian question.

Even Jonathan Dimbleby the broadcaster has weighed into the affray, accusing the Beeb of kowtowing to pressures from outside.

Jeremy Bowen is justly regarded as one of the BBC’s most courageous, authoritative and thoughtful broadcasters; his hundreds of despatches and commentaries from various frontlines in the Middle East have been noted for their acuity and balance. Now, thanks to the Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee (ESC) — a body with the absolute and final authority of a latter-day Star Chamber — not only has Bowen’s hard-won reputation been sullied, but the BBC’s international status as the best source of trustworthy news in the world has been gratuitously — if unintentionally — undermined.

Not surprisingly, BBC journalists and news executives are aghast at the Trust’s blundering response to a series of complaints — from two individuals only — that, astonishingly, were given the full red-carpet treatment. Forget the here-today, gone-tomorrow headlines in the British media which gave the usual suspects in parts of the media yet another chance to bash the BBC. Far more disturbing is the impact of the ESC’s verdict on the BBC’s international reputation and on the morale of its staff in a news division which more than any other part of the corporation provides the BBC with its defining 21st century purpose.

Here here. The BBC is hoisted by its own ponderous petard, its procedures for fairness abused by those with fundamentalist views and who show almost contempt for its efforts to report accurately in very difficult circumstances.

London Nailbombs: 10 Years Today

2009-04-30T14:53:00.004+01:00

It was 10 years ago today, 30 April 1999, that a twisted fantasist, David Copeland, unleashed three nailbombs in London. Three people were killed and 165 wounded by this race hater's dream of inciting a "war", sparked on by his membership of (first) the British National Party (BNP) and then the tiny band of zealots run by former mad monk (and now Islamist) David Myatt.

Local press is covering the story, as are various national and ethnic and gay media and forums: the bomber, Copeland, had targeted both black (Brixton), Asian (Brick Lane) and gay (Old Compton Street) areas of the capital.

One chapter of my book, HOMELAND, tells the story of how I just missed being caught in one of the bombs myself; and how those I know were affected by this tragedy.

Stieg Larsson honored in bestseller lists

2009-04-30T09:25:00.004+01:00

The Guardian reports that a Swedish crime wave is taking place: not of smash and grab criminals, but novelists from the Scandinavian realm, topping the European bestseller charts.

Leading the way is my old contact Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo. It was a real shame Stieg died too young, of a heart attack in 2004. I'd met him a couple of times: as a journalist, Stieg was one of the foremost experts on right-wing extremists in Sweden and leading member of Expo, a magazine investigating extremists. I had no idea he was writing crime novels either, but seems the fates have been kind to him since his passing.

Well, now I must go out and get my copy of his books!

Trial opens into alleged gang kidnap, torture and murder of French Jew

2009-04-29T18:08:00.003+01:00

From The Guardian:

France was forced to confront the moral decay of its deprived housing estates as the trial opened today one of the decade's most harrowing murder cases: the kidnap and torturing to death of a Jewish mobile phone salesman by a gang said to believe Jews were "loaded" and would club together to pay a ransom.

Ilan Halimi, 23, was found naked with his head shaved, in handcuffs and covered with burn marks and stab wounds near rail tracks outside Paris in February 2006. In a state of shock and unable to speak, he died en route to hospital. He had been held, tortured and beaten for three weeks, his head wrapped in tape, eyes Sellotaped shut and fed through a straw, while a gang known as the Barbarians demanded a ransom from his family.

Police initially did not treat the case as a hate crime. But within days of Halimi's death his family said he was targeted because he was Jewish. France, still coming to terms with its anti-semitic collaboration of the second world war, was plunged into a wave of soul-searching. Tens of thousands of people marched against anti-semitism.

The leader of the Barbarians gang, Youssouf Fofana, 28, a French school dropout turned petty criminal, has appeared in court accused of kidnapping, torture and assassination, with anti-semitism as an aggravating circumstance. Facing life imprisonment, he admits masterminding the kidnap but denies murder. A deliberately provocative character who has bombarded officials and lawyers with insults, he arrived in court shouting "Allah will be victorious". Of the 26 other defendants, 15 are accused of taking part in the plot. Others are accused of adhering to a law of silence and not going to the police.

Frank Lindh's latest talk

2009-04-29T16:29:00.002+01:00

'American Taliban' John Lindh's father, Frank Lindh, continues his quest for his son's freedom in his latest talk.

"John, himself, is very scholarly and thorough in studying traditional Islam," Lindh said. "When he heard bin Laden speak, he recognized almost immediately that he was not a scholar. So John found him boring and he actually reported that he fell asleep while bin Laden was speaking at the camp one night."

A major point that Lindh emphasised was that John was immediately labeled guilty of terrorism by the government, and the media was biased and unconstitutional.

"Even the president said that he was an al-Qaida warrior, which is wrong," said Richard Gonzales, a sophomore mechanical engineering student. "We have no evidence to prove that's right, so how can we really say that he's guilty of all these crimes?"

As chronicled recently, the list of US abuses of prisoners in its detention during the War on Terror remains troubling for anyone concerned for international law and the Geneva Conventions.

Why you should avoid internet weirdoes

2009-04-28T17:52:00.004+01:00

And I can think of many people I know (or read) posting on internet forums that seem quite worrying, too, after reading this story on the Daily Mail today:

A computer fanatic flew from his home in Germany to stab a website manager to death after he became obsessed with his victim's girlfriend over the internet, a court heard today.

David Heiss, 21, stabbed Matthew Pyke 86 times in his own home in a 'cold, calculated and pre-meditated' attack which was 'born out of obsession and hatred in equal measure', a jury were told.

Prosecutor Shaun Smith QC told how Heiss 'acted in his real life as he did in his cyber life' and became fixated with his victim's girlfriend, Joanna Witton, through an on-line strategic game playing site called Warscentral.com [cont'd]

Listen up all you nerdragers and obsessives: remember it's just a game, yo ....

Gold Trading Exposed

2009-04-21T12:06:00.002+01:00

My website now includes links to the Gold Trading Exposed series, recently written for the gaming industry website, Eurogamer.

The "other" Sir Allen

2009-04-14T10:55:00.002+01:00

Not Sugar, but Stanford. I just recalled that I'd been to the bar owned by Sir Allen Stanford, the Texas billionaire now being investigated by the SEC in America for an alleged $8 billion Ponzi scheme.

You'll have seen his strange interview, linked below; now see the bar and cricket ground near the airport in Antigua, in the Caribbean, where I recently spent a few hours during a layover between flights.

Bizarre interview

2009-04-08T10:44:00.004+01:00

Sir Allen Stanford, who until recently bankrolled Twenty20 cricket and flew around the world in a private jet, offers a somewhat bizarre rebuttal of the accusations against him in this interview on ABC News.

Standing accused of running a massive US $8 billion Ponzi scheme, Sir Allen alternately laughs, cries, rages and threatens violence to those who suggest he was a mere con man and not a legit businessman.

Watch the video and watch this space for my piece on the guys who take down fraudsters (see previous stories here).

Meet the Chinese gold sellers and farmers

2009-04-07T15:48:00.004+01:00

There are over one million 'gold farmers' in China, in an industry which makes up to US $10 billion per annum.

So I reveal in the second part of my Eurogamer investigation into 'gold selling' in online worlds, I talk to a Chinese 'gold farmer', a 'gold seller' who sells his wares and an old skool gamer who describes the lure of buying and selling virtual items.

Many farmers are earning just a handful of dollars a day for their work, spending 10-12 hours 'grinding' items and selling on the proceeds to the boss of a workshop, who then makes a profit selling to a third-party broker (the gold seller) who then deals with the end player.

See the full report up at Eurogamer; and catch the third part of the series for the Players' reaction.

Games companies respond in the final part of the series, The Carrot and the Stick, published Easter weekend.

The National publishes American Taliban story

2009-04-07T10:42:00.003+01:00

The National newspaper in the Middle East has published the latest of my stories on John Walker Lindh, the so-called 'American Taliban', and the campaign by his father Frank Lindh, and mother Marilyn Walker, to have him released from prison.

As the piece notes, some of the draconian restrictions imposed on Lindh since his imprisonment in 2001 have finally been lifted (no-one is quite sure yet what this means) and hopes are being raised that the US Federal authorities may look favourably on his case once more.

Lindh was jailed in the hysteria and aftermath of September 11: whilst foolish and naive, even a zealot for a time, others convicted of 'greater' crimes than him (he was actually sentenced to 20 years in jail for breaking economic sanctions on the Taliban) have since been released.

Read The National story to find out more; a longer version is up at my own website.

Journalists dismayed by UN defamation of religion resolution

2009-04-02T09:27:00.002+01:00

Journalist organisations worldwide are said to be dismayed by a new UN resolution which seeks to ban defamation against religion.

The United Nations Human Rights Council approved a resolution on defamation of religion last week. "This decision brings discredit on the UN Human Rights Council, which should not justify censorship and the stifling of dissenting voices," said the World Association of Newspapers (WAN).

The Council's resolution, proposed by Pakistan on behalf of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and approved by the Council on 26 March, calls for a global fight against "defamation of religions". Islamic countries argue that criticising or satirising religions is a violation of the rights of believers and leads to discrimination and violence against them.

The resolution was passed by a vote of 23-11, with 13 abstentions. Freedom House, which co-organised a petition signed by more than 180 organisations worldwide against the resolution, said it was "especially disappointed that South Africa, a liberal democracy whose citizens have a deep understanding of how such laws are used to punish dissenters, continues to back these
resolutions."

According to IFEX members, the defamation of religion concept can be used by authoritarian governments to stifle debate and criticism of religions and religious institutions.

"These countries are using the UN to expand and bring legitimacy to their frontal assault on freedom of expression," said Freedom House. "This assault starts at the level of domestic blasphemy laws present in many OIC countries, which are routinely employed to harass and imprison religious minorities, political dissenters and human rights advocates, and is elevated to the international level through resolutions at the UN."

According to ARTICLE 19 and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), the resolution is the latest in a series on the subject of "defamation of religions". The first was adopted in 1999 by the UN Commission on Human Rights. ARTICLE 19 and CIHRS voiced "extreme concern" that the cumulative effect of these resolutions serves to undermine established international human rights guarantees on the right to freedom of expression but also on the rights to freedom of religion and to equality.

"It is shameful and disappointing. Unfortunately, it is also unsurprising given the way this issue has unfolded in the UN over the last decade," said ARTICLE 19.

According to Freedom House, text condemning "defamation of religions" was originally part of a draft declaration to be issued at the Durban II anti-racism conference in Geneva next month. But it was withdrawn after Western nations said they would pull out of the UN conference unless it was removed.

The end of newspapers

2009-03-24T09:24:00.004Z

Polly Toynbee writes in the UK's Guardian newspaper about a terrific swathe of job losses and closures taking place inside the UK's local newspaper industy.

National newspapers, meanwhile, are also in freefall: The Independent is moving into the offices of the Daily Mail, to save its haemorrhage of cash. The Evening Standard is sold to a Russian billionaire for £1. As TV channels suffer collapsing revenues too, only the BBC and its excellent website seems to be shining through the depressing mass of closures and desperate desire to bottomfeed for the same, tired exclusives as everyone else. And blogging, nor citizen media, is going to replace this.

Bloggers and local citizens with video cameras, or poorly-paid interns, don't have the training, the legal resources, the financial resources, someone helping and directing them, to undertake deep investigations, to work sources, to stand up to libel threats, in order to uncover the real stories out there. You may say that local papers are not doing that anyway -- and I'd agree. But the move downwards, to cut costs, to rely on free, only leads to more churnalism (regurgitating press releases) or interviews with public figures who know they're not going to get a hard time.

Let's see how brave all the bloggers are when they get sued!

I'll just pop the last few lines of David Simon's (The Wire creator) recent Washington Post piece about the decline of local newspapers.

He was explaining that as a former crime reporter, he could get access to judges, police informants etc to discover if the police were inflating the threats they faced or if they were shooting people without reason in Baltimore:

"... There is a lot of talk nowadays about what will replace the dinosaur that is the daily newspaper. So-called citizen journalists and bloggers and media pundits have lined up to tell us that newspapers are dying but that the news business will endure, that this moment is less tragic than it is transformational.

"Well, sorry, but I didn't trip over any blogger trying to find out McKissick's identity [ a police officer who had twice lost their gun and had now shot an OAP in an incident] and performance history. Nor were any citizen journalists at the City Council hearing in January when police officials inflated the nature and severity of the threats against officers. And there wasn't anyone working sources in the police department to counterbalance all of the spin or omission.

"I didn't trip over a herd of hungry [Baltimore] Sun reporters either, but that's the point. In an American city, a police officer with the authority to take human life can now do so in the shadows, while his higher-ups can claim that this is necessary not to avoid public accountability, but to mitigate against a nonexistent wave of threats. And the last remaining daily newspaper in town no longer has the manpower, the expertise or the institutional memory to challenge any of it...."

Hear, hear.

Restrictions eased on 'American Taliban'

2009-03-22T10:11:00.003Z

News released last week reveals that John Lindh, the so-called 'American Taliban' serving 20 years for violating trade sanctions imposed on the Taliban (and not for being a "terrorist", unlike most Americans think), is having some of his draconian prison restrictions lifted.

Lindh will now be able to see people outside of his immediate family and legal team. Prior to this he's been forbidden to speak Arabic, to communicate in letters and to talk to the media.

Anyone interested in the wider story, and miscarriage of justice, surround John Lindh's case and the fight by his parents for his freedom can read my article John Walker's Blues, in which I met the family, friends and supporters last year.

The Elephant in the Room -- Gold Selling in Virtual Worlds

2009-03-19T15:28:00.004Z

Up to 30% of online gamers could be buying virtual currency and game items inside hugely-popular virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft.

That, at least, is according to one of my sources I interviewed for this series of articles exposing the scale of "gold selling" within the gaming industry, on Eurogamer.net website.

Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs, or MMOs for short) have expanded to become household names in recent years -- Warhammer Online, EVE Online, World of Warcraft -- all are known by kids and adults alike in today's increasingly popular, and crowded, gaming market.

These are worlds where you immerse yourself in the life of a character, take on heroic roles, quest with friends and join potentially huge raids into complex dungeons. Yet the 'grind' these games create -- you're required to spend hours, and days, carrying out repetitive tasks to earn rewards, and thus game currency and items -- puts off a good many players it seems. So much so that they're willing to part with real-world cash in order to get the edge in these fantasy and sci-fi universes.

Whilst the stereotype of the gold farmer remains that of an overworked, Chinese shift worker, such as The Guardian recently suggested; and the gold sellers they report to as shifty middle men, often linked to organised crime; I've found there is a strong desire for change from the playerbase of these games. And several MMO firms are now responding with their own initiatives as a result.

Read the first article today; each week another piece will be added, telling the story from the farmers' perspective, the sellers, the players and the gaming companies.

Scandal of the boat people

2009-02-05T09:29:00.003Z

It seems not only the Burmese regime which is contributing to a humanitarian crisis in one of the most repressive nations on Earth ... but the neighbouring Thai authorities, too.

The Thai military stands accused of dumping men, women and children from the Rohingya boat people deep out in the ocean. A repressed Muslim minority from northwest Myanmar (Burma), they've fled conflict to end up in Thailand. However the authorities there label them as illegal migrants ... and drag them out to deep sea in their small boats, where hundreds are now feared drowned.

According to Reuters AlertNet service, 550+ Rohingya are now feared dead since early December. Another 193 washed up on Indonesia's Aceh coast earlier this month.

Along with the decision recently to jail an Australian author deemed to have 'insulted' the country's monarch, the gilding is looking a little tarnished for Thailand, the holiday haven. Sympathy from the days of the Tsunami is looking rather old news.

Asterix: An Unseemly Row

2009-01-27T09:52:00.003Z

War has broken out (ok a war of words) in the Gallic press, between Asterix creator and illustrator Albert Uderzo and his daughter Sylvie.

Apparently the old chap has decided to sell a 60 percent stake in his publishing company to French publisher Hachette Livre, which has outraged his daughter, who calls Asterix "her paper brother". I guess she's worried the money men are going to spin off the franchise into ever more commercial arms and believes her dad has been pressured by advisors into this turnaround (he'd sworn to keep his publishing company small, apparently).

Well, now dad has hit back and finds the row all rather unseemly, as you can read here.

Most selfish nation?

2009-01-26T10:52:00.003Z

Are we the most selfish nation in Europe (the Brits)? Seems so. Checking out Mark Easton's blog on the BBC reveals various pieces of research which shows we trust each other less, and are living in a highly-individualised society.

If it weren't for some reasonably healthy scores among the over-50s, the UK would drop below Bulgaria and Slovakia as the least trusting of all the European nations surveyed.

The researchers suggest that our low "trust and belonging" score may be "the result of the development of a highly individualistic culture in the UK". Basically, the suggestion is that we are in danger of becoming the most selfish nation in Europe.

If the research is robust and the conclusion sound, then this is one of the most troubling findings about my homeland that I have ever read.

Among the factors which emerge as having a big negative impact on a country's wellbeing score are a general fear of crime and a lack of trust in institutions. Also, the more time its population spends watching TV, the more unhappy a country appears to be.
One can see why Britain might struggle.

Easton's blog is here.

Generation Kill comes to the screens

2009-01-14T13:17:00.002Z

'It looks more real than anything I've ever seen'

Generation Kill, the new TV series from the makers of the critically adored show The Wire, swaps the streets of Baltimore for the battlefields of Iraq. It might take a bit of effort to watch, but the result is extraordinary television.

Itching to watch this one.

Guantanamo agents 'used torture'

2009-01-14T12:17:00.002Z

A disturbing report surfaces today on the Internet: US agents 'officially' used torture on a Guantanamo suspect, leading him to be put in a "life-threatening condition" following 18-20 interrogations for weeks on end, and caused the case against him to eventually collapse.

No charges were ever brought against this individual, Saudi national Mohammad al-Qahtani. In fact, Susan Crawford, who oversees the trials at the camp, said:

"His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case," she said.

Ms Crawford said she was shocked, upset and embarrassed by the treatment he had received.

She said: "If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques?

"How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it."

al-Qahtani had been picked up in Afghanistan in 2002 and labelled the '20th hijacker' from 9/11. Whilst he may or may not have been guilty (he tried to get into the US in 2001) the sheer ineptitude of the US response to 'the war on terror' rightly deserves some pretty harsh interrogation itself. This time in open debate and among the neocon politicians of George Bush's departing coterie.

Stuff Journalists Like

2009-01-13T16:43:00.002Z

I had a little smile at this American site, offering a little ironic humour at the sort of things that "turn" us journalists on.

Whether it's beer, press releases or our (secret) love of jargon, it might bring a small smile to your lips.

Stuff Journalists Like

In the US, Gaza is a different war

2009-01-12T14:04:00.002Z

Very interesting piece I found, on how US media treats the war between Israelis and Palestinians, sourced from Al-Jazeera. Of course, how you respond to this probably depends on long-held beliefs you already have *sigh* but it does seem hard to balance the 'fear' of rockets (even 8,000 of them over several years) with massive economic and physical suffering in the Gaza Strip.

To *just* blame Gazans for 'voting in' Hamas seems a gross oversimplification of a complex, historical situation with many eddies and currents below the surface. (For example, to demand that 'Hamas close its smuggling tunnels' seems to rely, too, on Israel opening its border crossings and relinquishing an economic embargo of the territory, leading in turn to smuggling ...)

Al Jazeera: The images of two women on the front page of an edition of The Washington Post last week illustrates how mainstream US media has been reporting Israel's war on Gaza.

On the left was a Palestinian mother who had lost five children. On the right was a nearly equally sized picture of an Israeli woman who was distressed by the fighting, according to the caption.

As the Palestinian woman cradled the dead body of one child, another infant son, his face blackened and disfigured with bruises, cried beside her.

The Israeli woman did not appear to be wounded in any way but also wept.

Arab frustration

To understand the frustration often felt in the Arab world over US media coverage, one only needs to imagine the same front page had the situation been reversed.

Watch our coverage of the war on Gaza If an Israeli woman had lost five daughters in a Palestinian attack, would The Washington Post run an equally sized photograph of a relatively unharmed Palestinian woman, who was merely distraught over Israeli missile fire?

When the front page photographs of the two women were published on December 30, over 350 Palestinians had reportedly been killed compared to just four Israelis.

What if 350 Israelis had been killed and only four Palestinians - would the newspaper have run the stories side by side as if equal in news value?

Like many major news organisations in the US, The Washington Post has chosen to cover the conflict from a perspective that reflects the US government's relationship with Israel. This means prioritising Israel's version of events while underplaying the views of Palestinian groups.

For example, the newspaper's lead article on Tuesday, which was published above the mothers' photographs, quotes Israeli military and civilian sources nine times before quoting a single Palestinian. The first seven paragraphs explain Israel's military strategy. The ninth paragraph describes the anxiety among Israelis, spending evenings in bomb shelters. Ordinary Palestinians, who generally have no access to bomb shelters, do not make an appearance until the 23rd paragraph.

To balance this top story, The Washington Post published another article on the bottom half of the front page about the Palestinian mother and her children. But would the paper have ever considered balancing a story about a massive attack on Israelis with an in-depth lead piece on the strategy of Palestinian militants?

Source: Al Jazeera English

John Walker's Blues

2009-01-12T10:21:00.004Z

This weekend the UK's Telegraph Magazine published a (somewhat cut) version of a feature story I produced on John Walker Lindh, aka 'The American Taliban' and his family.

The case is a travesty of justice and a growing campaign of voices is pressing the outgoing US President, George Bush, and the incomer, Barack Obama, for his early release from jail.

Not only was Lindh tortured, but others who committed far greater crimes have since been released. Time now for John Lindh to go home.

Here's an excerpt:

Few can forget the iconic image of John Walker Lindh, hidden behind dirt, a beard and wild hair ripped free of his turban. The media dubbed him the 'American Taliban’. A volunteer for the Taliban army, he was an eager convert to Islam who had strayed from his studies in Yemen and Pakistan. Like thousands of others he fled the American advance into Afghanistan. His Taliban commander had bartered with the Northern Alliance to allow safe passage back towards Pakistan in return for surrender. Instead, the Northern Alliance had taken them prisoner.

Yaser Hamdi, a Saudi-American national who was captured with Lindh, and held for almost three years without charge before being released back to his homeland, offers an alternative view of the battle of Mazar-i-Sharif: 'They called it an uprising, and it was not – it was some kind of massacre. It was 24 hours of asking Allah for help. Men crying out, men who were wounded, men who were sick, men who were dying. The Koran tells you how to pray in all situations. People there who couldn’t move and couldn’t turn to face Mecca still prayed. They prayed until they died.’

Within a day Lindh was strapped naked to a stretcher inside – according to his lawyers at his later trial – a freezing shipping container, in handcuffs so tight they cut off circulation, and the word 'Shithead’ scrawled on his blindfold. The lawyers also contended that it was two weeks before medics even treated the bullet wound in his thigh, and that for almost six weeks Lindh was held incommunicado, despite repeated attempts by them and the Red Cross to reach him, while he was interrogated. Prosecutors maintained that Lindh was properly looked after. Today he sits in the Federal Correctional Complex at Terre Haute, Indiana, serving a 20-year prison sentence for 'supplying services’ to the Taliban.

I'll be putting a version of the original, larger story (with far more components) up on my website soon. Meanwhile read The Telegraph Magazine version here.

Justice for the reporter who dared take on Brussels

2009-01-08T16:32:00.002Z

The EU's ham-fisted attempts to supress stories about corruption have been exposed after a court case in Belgium

A blow was struck for freedom this week. Hans-Martin Tillack, a German journalist who had been detained by the EU after investigating Brussels fraud, was definitively cleared by the courts. The Belgian government, whose police had raided Tillack's flat, was ordered to pay damages and costs.

Tillack was, for several years, the EU correspondent of the respected German magazine, Stern. Before he arrived, the press corps in Brussels had largely been made up of true believers. Copy was routinely submitted to Commission officials for approval; negative stories were suppressed; any criticism of the EU, even on narrow grounds of financial probity, was dismissed as populist.

Tillack thought of himself as a pro-European, but could see that such deference was doing the EU no favours. In the absence of critical scrutiny, the Brussels bureaucracy had become self-serving, bloated and sleazy. So he began to expose some of the more egregious corruption cases, such as how officials had diverted millions of euros from a body called Eurostat into private accounts.

The Euro-elites were furious. They expected such "anti-Europeanism" from British red-tops, but not from goody-goody Germans. When Tillack widened his investigation, and started to ask why the EU had failed to act on tip-offs, they pounced. Belgian police raided his flat and seized his laptop, files and address books. He was held for 10 hours without a lawyer, while his notebooks were confiscated, placing all his sources at risk. Even his private bank statements were ransacked.

Unbelievably, the raid was ordered by Olaf, the EU's anti-corruption unit. Needless to say, no such treatment has been meted out to the alleged fraudsters. In the looking-glass world of Brussels, it is those exposing sleaze, rather than those engaging in it, who find themselves in police custody. Tillack was implausibly accused of having procured some of his papers by bribery. No formal charges were brought. Yet it has taken him fully five years to be finally vindicated.

The First Post

Shock at Senegal gay jail terms

2009-01-08T12:33:00.001Z

The jailing in Senegal of nine gay men for eight years over "indecent conduct and unnatural acts" has been condemned by an international gay rights group.

Homosexual acts are illegal in Senegal but the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) told the BBC it was "shocked by the ruling".

The judge added three years to a five-year sentence, saying the men were also members of a criminal group.

Most of them belonged to an association set up to fight HIV and Aids.

Story source: BBC.

Dozens of Journalists Killed for Their Work in 2008

2009-01-08T09:47:00.002Z

Last year, fewer journalists were killed while doing their job than in recent years - but that should not be grounds for optimism, say IFEX members in their end of year reports.

According to its annual analysis, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) recorded 41 journalists killed in direct connection to their work in 2008 - a drop from 65 in 2007. "While that's lower than the unprecedented numbers we saw over the last few years, by historical standards it's still very high," says CPJ. The lower death toll was due mainly to a sharp drop
in deaths in Iraq, from 32 in 2007 to 11 last year, due to improved security conditions there, says CPJ. CPJ is still investigating further cases.

The 2008 death toll reflected a shift in global hot spots, as high numbers of deaths were reported in restive areas of Asia and the Caucasus, says CPJ. Watch CPJ's video tribute to the journalists who died in 2008: http://tinyurl.com/7ouzyw then read the report: http://tinyurl.com/9v6kvf

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) counts 60 journalists killed in the line of duty. RSF tallies cases in which a link between the violation and the victim's work as a journalist is clearly established or very likely. But RSF says the fall in numbers of attacks on the traditional media does not mean the press freedom situation has improved - online repression is on the rise, with bloggers being imprisoned and websites being censored. RSF says cases of online censorship were recorded in 37 countries, with Syria (162 websites censored), China (93) and Iran (38) topping the list.

"The figures may be lower than last year's but this should not mask the fact that intimidation and censorship have become more widespread, including in the West, and the most authoritarian governments have been taking an even tougher line," says RSF. See: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=29797

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) records 68 journalists and other media workers killed last year. "Attacks on journalists throughout the world - by organised crime groups in Latin America, autocratic regimes in the Middle East, repressive governments in Africa and by combatants in war zones - pose serious threats to press freedom," said WAN in its report, with region-by-region details. See: http://www.wan-press.org/article17943.html

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), which compiles figures in cooperation with the International News Safety Institute (INSI), counts 109 journalists and media workers killed last year in 36 countries. IFJ includes all journalists killed because of their work as well as those killed in accident while on assignment or on their way to or from a story. According to IFJ, India's death toll also figured high on the list with 10 casualties, following a surge of attacks in insurgent-hit states in the
country. See IFJ: http://tinyurl.com/8juw3k and INSI: http://tinyurl.com/8suo9d

Despite the range in numbers, all agree that even though the casualties have decreased, Iraq was once again the world's most dangerous country for the press. Many of the at least 11 journalists - all Iraqi nationals working for local Iraqi news outlets - were deliberately targeted.

The next three deadliest countries for the media were Pakistan with at least seven journalists killed for doing their work, the Philippines with six killed, and Mexico, with four murdered.

In the Americas, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) called 2008 "a year of contrasts." The year was marked on the one hand by violence and harassment of the media, including 13 journalists killed, and by the passing of constructive new laws on the other. IAPA blamed organised crime for the murders. IAPA notes "aggravation and threats" took place in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela, while 26 journalists remain jailed in Cuba, many of them seriously ill. But the good news is that access to
information improved in Chile, Guatemala, Uruguay and Nicaragua. See: http://tinyurl.com/9bhsuh

In Mexico journalists have increasingly become the target of drug traffickers and mobsters. According to WAN, 23 have been killed since 2000, and seven others have disappeared since 2005 - cementing Mexico's position as the most dangerous country in the Americas for the media, even surpassing Colombia. Like the Philippines, Mexico is among the worst in solving these murders: none of the killers of journalists murdered in Mexico this year have been brought to justice.

The fall in the death toll in Africa, say IFEX members, is a result of many journalists opting not to work, often turning to a less dangerous trade or going into exile. WAN reports that charges of defamation, sedition and "disrupting public order" work to intimidate and silence independent and opposition media. Those that choose to report on rebellions or criticise the authorities often end up in jail - the number of arrests is particularly high in Africa, says RSF.

Even in Europe and Central Asia, death threats against or prosecution of journalists reporting on conflict zones, war crimes and organised crime are common. Journalists are at risk in an increasingly volatile political situation in the Caucasus, where at least three journalists died in just five days of fighting between Georgian, Russian and local forces over the disputed region of South Ossetia, say the members.

Some IFEX members have also put out country-specific year-end analyses.

"2008 was not a bright year for press freedom in Indonesia," says the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), especially with a slew of criminal charges against journalists and, unsurprisingly, the introduction of new laws that criminalise press offences. Those who commit defamation via the Internet face up to six years in jail, for example. See: http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/99600/

Safety remains the biggest concern for journalists in the Democratic Republic of Congo, says Journalist in Danger (JED) in its 2008 annual report, "Ten years for press freedom: the situation of freedom of the press in Central Africa". JED says a decline in the number of attacks against the press is more likely attributable to censorship and self-censorship, rather than improvements to the country's press laws or the impunity that journalists' killers usually enjoy. See: http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/99592/

This is not good for Islam - Stoning victim 'begged for mercy'

2008-11-04T15:39:00.002Z

Almost beggars belief ... men killing a 13-year-old rape victim. Bring back the feudal ages, eh?

A young woman recently stoned to death in Somalia first pleaded for her life, a witness has told the BBC. "Don't kill me, don't kill me," she said, according to the man who wanted to remain anonymous. A few minutes later, more than 50 men threw stones.

Human rights group Amnesty International says the victim was a 13-year-old girl who had been raped. Initial reports had said she was a 23-year-old woman who had confessed to adultery before a Sharia court.

The witness says she was forced into a hole, buried up to her neck then pelted with stones until she died in front of more than 1,000 people.

Cameras were banned from the public stoning, but print and radio journalists who were allowed to attend estimated that the woman, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, was 23 years old.

However, Amnesty said it had learned she was 13, and that her father had said she was raped by three men.

"People were saying this was not good for Sharia law, this was not good for human rights, this was not good for anything"
Witness

When the family tried to report the rape, the girl was accused of adultery and detained, Amnesty said.

Read the story at BBC News.

Great Chronicler of the Ordinary Dies

2008-11-01T11:50:00.001Z

It's with sadness I note the passing of Studs Terkel, the Chicago radio host and oral historian, who more than anyone in the 20th century managed to capture the voice of the ordinary American.

Terkel was motivated by the man on the street, or farm, far more than the politicians or celebrities. I only wish there were more like him -- and more in the media who valued this sort of approach.

Obituary: Studs Terkel

Gonzo madness

2008-10-24T10:14:00.003+01:00

Another little gem from The First Post folks this week: former Time Out editor recalls his time with Hunter S. Thomspon.

"....He arrived with his current girlfriend, a diminutive American rottweiler from whom he was clearly trying to escape - and did at every waking moment. From there on it was a descent into Gonzo madness, a blurred week of drink and drugs and sobbing women and 4am rescuing from other women's beds and more drink and more drugs. And no copy. Not the merest hint of a word...."

And what can you say after that?!

Haider was Gay

2008-10-23T16:33:00.002+01:00

I knew it! There is just something the extreme Right cannot shake off when it comes to its "Charismatic" leaders and their love of authority, traditional values and intolerance for gays. Turns out half of them are batting for the other team!

Haider is one of those I tried to meet back in 2001, during research for my book 'Homeland'. Back then he deftly avoided me, although I did meet many members of his movement. I don't take pleasure in his death, but I can't for the life of me understand why those from the intolerant Right never seem to spot the queer in their midst (cf Nick Griffin and the BNP, Richard Barnbrook and his 'art' gay films) or those far worse (nail bombers, or the now-jailed paedophile leading America's National Alliance).

*

Haider’s gay lover comes forward

The death of Joerg Haider (pictured) – the Austrian far-right politician who was killed in a car crash earlier this month – has resulted in the confirmation of the long-running rumour that he was a homosexual. First it was revealed that he had visited a gay bar on the night he died and now Stefan Petzner, the 27-year-old who recently became the leader of the right wing Alliance for the Future of Austria, has claimed that he enjoyed a "special relationship" with 52-year-old Haider.

He made his admission in an emotional interview on an Austrian radio breakfast show on Wednesday. "We had a relationship that went far beyond friendship. Joerg and I were connected by something truly special. He was the man of my life."

He went on to insist that Haider's widow, Claudia, did not object to his relationship. "She loved him as a woman. He loved her as a man. I loved him in a completely different and personal way. She understood that," Petzner said. However, the young man's sister Christiane suggested in a newspaper interview that Claudia Haider had not always been so understanding. "Sometimes Claudia was jealous because Stefan would spend more time with her husband than she did."

Clearly embarrassed by the revelations, party officials attempted to limit the political damage and cancelled forthcoming interviews with Petzner. Their attempts to prevent his radio interview being re-broadcast, however, were unsuccessful.

taken from The First Post.

Michael Moore's incendiary bail-out!

2008-10-02T13:51:00.002+01:00

Now, I have to say that I find the rotund chap from Flint, Michigan, both highly-entertaining and a tad annoying. But sometimes his anger-fuelled eye hits the nail right on the head.

There's no way in a million years (yet) that America is going to accept all his recommendations for salvaging the crisis of Wall Street. But in these uncertain times, it does make for a damn fun read. It does make you wonder, though, particularly those Reaganistas who argued the market was always best: what planet have the American people been living on for so long ("government = bad") and why hasn't anyone seen this coming?

Moore's 10 points to fix America.

Palin and the Shell-Shocked US

2008-10-01T09:42:00.002+01:00

Psychoanalyst Coline Covington hits the nail bang on the head: Sarah Palin, the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate in the US elections is a phantom. An image. A dream; gossamer to protect the 'unviolability' of what Joe Bageant (author of Deerhunting With Jesus) so eloquently describes as America's inward-looking eye.

"The US is suffering from narcissistic shell-shock," writes Covington, detailing its response to economic collapse, as well as making comparisons to the reactions to 9/11.

"When the over-confident individual suffers a life blow that is beyond his control, his first response is usually to attempt to regain an illusion of control by blaming the 'other', whoever that 'other' might be. Then, as a consequence of projecting blame onto others, the individual becomes paranoid about anything 'other' or foreign and this in turn can be used to justify further attacks. Finally, he retrenches into the stronghold of narcissistic behaviour and its promise of safety in power."

Palin "deliberately perpetrated the image of the frontierswoman at a time when it is bound to be most appealing to members of a country that feels itself to be fighting against all the odds .... The frontier spirit is just what is needed. The American Indians have been replaced by the Iraqis, ecological concerns have been wiped off the slate altogether under the 'hand of God' approach, while the collapse of the financial markets can be understood as a temporary blip that simply needs tweaking to ensure continuing belief in a free market economy."

Right on. Read it here.

Brit publisher pays price for defying the nuts

2008-09-29T14:41:00.002+01:00

Following the news that three men (sigh ... Muslim extremists ... again) have been arrested at the home of the boss of Gibson Square Books, trying to firebomb his house, this just in from the people at The First Post:

Palin biog caught in Muslim storm

Bad omens for the UK edition of Sarah Palin's biography. Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down, written by Alaskan journalist Kaylene Johnson, was due to be published next week by Gibson Square Books, the company behind Sherry Jones's controversial novel, The Jewel of Medina – the cause of a firebomb attack on Gibson Square's north London office on Friday.

Gibson's owner, Martin Rynja, has now gone into hiding, which makes the scheduled publication of the book on October 7 highly problematic. It would have been a rushed affair even in less turbulent circumstances: the deal was completed on Tuesday last week, leaving just two weeks to bring the paperback out. The fact that it is a slim work - Johnson needed only 160 pages to chart Palin's journey from high school basketball player to state governor – may help the publishing process along.

At the time, Rynja said the firm's quick processing had clinched the deal. He said he had paid a "compelling amount" for the book, which had its original American title, Sarah: How a Small Town Girl Turned Alaska's Political Establishment on its Ear, changed when Palin became John McCain's Republican running-mate earlier this month. Gibson – and perhaps the Republicans – have another reason to be concerned about The Jewel of Medina furore. The publishers also have a book out by McCain himself, Hard Call, a selection of essays on great political leaders.

Britain's libel laws are stifling free speech

2008-08-14T09:13:00.001+01:00

British libel laws are stifling free speech around the world as wealthy businessmen and celebrities increasingly turn to UK courts to silence their critics abroad, the United Nations has warned.

In a report published yesterday, the UN's Committee on Human Rights criticises the phenomenon of "libel tourism", where foreign businessmen and millionaires use the High Court in London to sue foreign publishers under claimant-friendly defamation laws.

It said that UK defamation law had discouraged critical media reporting on serious public interest matters, affecting the ability of scholars and journalists to publish their work.

The report cites the case of Dr Rachel Ehrenfeld, an American researcher who was sued in London by a Saudi businessman and his two sons over a book which was not published in the UK, although 23 copies were sold into the jurisdiction via the internet and one chapter was available online.

[disturbing stuff -- read more at The Independent]

Living in fear: Tanzania's albinos

2008-07-22T11:13:00.002+01:00

Disturbing story from the BBC this ...

Twenty-five people with albinism have been murdered in Tanzania since March, a BBC investigation has found.

Albinos are targeted for body parts that are used in witchcraft, and killings continue despite government efforts to stamp out the grisly practice, the BBC's Karen Allen says.

Once, albinos used to seek shelter from the sun. Now they have gone into hiding simply to survive, after a series of killings linked to witchcraft.

In Tanzania, 25 albinos have been killed in the past year.

The latest victim was a seven-month-old baby. He was mutilated on the orders of a witchdoctor peddling the belief that potions made from an albino's legs, hair, hands, and blood can make a person rich.

Sorcery and the occult maintain a strong foothold in this part of the world, especially in the remote rural areas around the fishing and mining regions of Mwanza, on the shores of Lake Victoria.

Nobody seems to know why the killings are happening now, but Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete is now putting pressure on the police to identify where albinos live and offer them protection.

This is not an easy task when BBC investigations suggest that some police are being "bought off" in order to look away when such appalling crimes are committed.

read the full story

In isolated Belarus, Jews' fate hangs in the balance

2008-07-15T09:24:00.001+01:00

Inconspicuous in this Soviet-built capital, a few disheveled memorial stones testify to a once rich Jewish culture that activists fear now risks extinction. From the artist Marc Chagall to Israel's president, Shimon Peres, some Jews born in the lands that now make up Belarus have gone on to great things.

But activist Yakov Basin is more inclined to despair as he contemplates the latest damage to a battered memorial erected in 1993 to German Jews brought to Minsk for extermination in World War II. It is not only the swastikas drawn on the memorial stones to Jews from Bremen, Dusseldorf and Hamburg, he says. What preoccupies him is the cumulative damage to this former centre of Jewish culture, which started with the closure of synagogues in the first decades of the Soviet Union, stepped up with the Holocaust in World War II and continues today under President Alexander Lukashenko.

"Why doesn't the prosecutor open a case into anti-Semitic publications or the vandalising of memorials?" demanded Basin. "Our encyclopedia is virtually silent on the Holocaust and there's hardly a word on it in our textbooks," said Basin, co-leader of a union of Jewish organisations in Belarus. In office for 14 years, Belarus' authoritarian leader has a way of courting controversy. While taking a positive view of Soviet history and revelling in military parades marking the defeat of Nazi Germany, he has also praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, befriended Iran's anti-Semitic president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and recently attracted criticism from Israel for an alleged anti-Semitic comment.

read full story up at AFP.

Novelist prisoner wants to rewrite rule

2008-07-07T09:23:00.001+01:00

Inmate says officials have told him he violates policy of no business behind bars.

By Titan Barksdale
(Raleigh) News & Observer

Victor Martin has been writing since he was a child, but he didn't realize it could be a career until he became a convict.

A few years ago, Martin became a published author, writing four novels while lying in his bunk in a state prison in Elizabeth City.

His books, which feature a high-rolling criminal named Unique and are available on Amazon.com, have a following among readers of what is known as “urban fiction,” a popular literary genre characterized by explicit tales of inner-city crime life.

But now Martin says prison officials are shutting him down, saying his novels violate a policy that bars inmates from conducting business behind bars. Prison officials say the policy is in place to protect prison safety.

Martin, a 32-year-old habitual felon with several theft-related convictions, says the policy violates his right to free speech.

Martin's attorneys are challenging the policy, which they say prison officials have used to claim Martin's manuscripts and discipline him for writing.

Read the full story up at the Charlotte Observer.

In L.A., race kills

2008-06-20T10:36:00.002+01:00

Black-Latino tensions, not gangs, are at the heart of the county's violence, Sheriff Baca says.

That's the stark comment coming out from the Sheriff of LA County. "Let me be very clear about one thing," he says. "We have a serious interracial violence problem in this county involving blacks and Latinos.

"Some people deny it. They say that race is not a factor in L.A.'s gang crisis; the problem, they say, is not one of blacks versus Latinos and Latinos versus blacks but merely one of gang members killing other gang members (and yes, they acknowledge, sometimes the gangs are race-based).

"But they're wrong. The truth is that, in many cases, race is at the heart of the problem. Latino gang members shoot blacks not because they're members of a rival gang but because of their skin color. Likewise, black gang members shoot Latinos because they are brown."

There is interracial fighting in the prisons; in the schools; out on the streets. Gangs are often no more than collections of individuals looking for members of other races to target. It is a disturbing and pressing problem, made worse by the wider society's refusal or denial to accept that such issues are taking place.

The Sheriff has formed a Gang Emergency Operations Center to understand where and why such crimes are happening, as they happen. He makes some interesting insights into programmes that tackle such issues in jail but it remains to be seen just how much of a lone voice he and his teams are.

Read it in full.

Chinese now black

2008-06-18T16:00:00.001+01:00

Intriguing ...

*

Chinese South Africans now black

The High Court in South Africa has ruled that Chinese South Africans are to be reclassified as black people.

It made the order so that ethnic Chinese could benefit from affirmative action policies, aimed at improving living standards for black people.

The Chinese Association of South Africa took the government to court, saying its members had been discriminated against.
An estimated 200,000 ethnic Chinese live in South Africa.

The association said their members often failed to qualify for business contracts and job promotions because they were regarded as whites.

The association said Chinese South Africans had faced widespread discrimination during the years of apartheid when they had been classified as people of mixed race.

The BBC's Mpho Lakaje in Johannesburg says the Broad-Based Economic Empowerment and the Employment Equity Acts were designed to eradicate the legacy of apartheid which left many black people impoverished.

The laws give people classed as blacks, Indians and coloureds (mixed-race) employment and other economic benefits over other racial groups.

Chinese 'ghosts' in Britain

2008-06-13T12:10:00.003+01:00

The book Chinese Whispers uncovers a hidden and disquieting world of illegal workers, exploited and maltreated, coming to Britain from some of the poorest regions of China.

*

This book based on undercover journalist Hsiao-Hung Pai's experiences among Chinese illegal labourers in this country is vital reading for all who campaign about workers' rights, racial and sexual exploitation, globalisation, trafficking and forced migration.

The tale (or tail, in this case) begins in globalisation and the massive impact of opening China to market capitalism on certain areas, especially Fujian (in the south-east), Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Jilin (in the north-east) and those who have migrated to or been thrown out of state industries in Shanghai. Just to subsist, to ensure parents can eat and children get education, family members have to get to the West to work.

However much they have to pay to trafficker snakeheads (with heads in the UK and tails in rural China) they believe it will be worth their while. But, according to this brilliant book, Chinese Whispers: the true story behind Britain's hidden army of labour, based on investigative journalism by a committed Chinese post-graduate, it never is.

The traffickers always extort more and more, threatening family members back home, the gangmasters in the UK always take more and more for your keep, to register you for work, for sweeteners to agencies, as penalty for illness, lateness and not meeting targets. And now, even those dirty, backbreaking, jobs at the bottom of the illegals' pile, are harder and harder to come by as cheap, 'whiter' labour becomes available from eastern Europe.

Taken from the Institute of Race Relations website.

Gay travels in the Muslim world?

2008-06-11T11:19:00.002+01:00

I came across this rather unusual title (of a book), from one of my travel industry email lists. Take a look at the interview here with author Michael Loungo. As he says:

"It’s a collection of essays by gay Muslim men and non-Muslim Men. I write about Afghanistan; there are 17 other writers who write on countries ranging from Iraq, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Morocco, Marisha, and even Los Angeles...

"I think historically when we look at countries like Morocco, countries like Egypt, really since the Victorian era, there has been a lot of quote unquote gay tourism within North Africa. As an example, we know that even people like Oscar Wilde would travel there. There’s also… in Morocco; entire history in the 1940s and 1950s of gay men would didn’t feel welcome in the West, traveling to these countries where sexuality was very fluid and undefined, so we have that historical niche. I do believe that within the context of Shariat law, which allows a certain amount of activity in a private setting, that homosexuality isn’t as frowned upon as the news would have us believe."

Interesting stuff.

Read the full interview over at eturbonews, the travel industry newsletter.

Here's an article Loungo wrote in the UK's Independent newspaper.

Embedding Journos is a Victory - for the military

2008-05-15T08:50:00.001+01:00

Debate over the "embedded journalist" program run by the Pentagon since the weeks before the Iraq invasion in 2003 has long raged, with some claiming that it gave reporters valuable close access to action while others saying that the journalists were severely compromised within it. Now sociologist Andrew M. Lindner, writing in the spring issue of the American Sociological Association's "Context" magazine describes what is billed as the only sociological study to date of the substantive content of media coverage during the first six weeks of the Iraq war.

Lindner found that journalists embedded with American troops emphasized military successes more often than they covered consequences for Iraqi citizens.

"The embedded program proved to be a Pentagon victory because it kept reporters focused on the horrors facing the troops, not the horrors of the civilian war experience," wrote Lindner, who is completing his doctoral dissertation at Penn State University. "The end result: a communications victory for an administration that hoped to build support for the war by depicting it as a successful mission with limited cost."

Source: Editor and Publisher

Belgium is 'haven' for neo-Nazis

2008-05-08T09:19:00.002+01:00

Yep, you heard it right ... sleepy old Belgium, long-ridiculed in British press but actually a fascinating country rapidly coming apart at the seems, is a great place to be a bonehead. Apparently...

*

Accused of being a “paradise” for neo-Nazis, Belgium claims it does not have the necessary legal instruments to combat the racist groups that have been flocking to the country after meeting resistance from the German and Dutch governments.

Neo-Nazi groups such as two called Blood and Honor are increasingly heading to Belgium for their Hitler commemoration events as they usually do not face any problems from Belgian authorities. De Morgen, a Belgian left-wing daily, declared Belgium a safe haven for fascist groups in an article published on Friday. According to the daily a German investigative journalist who had been attending similar gatherings of German, English and Dutch skinheads and neo-Nazis in particular confirmed in the VRT program “Koppen” that the Belgian authorities had done nothing to stop these groups.

According to Minister of Home Affairs Patrick Dewael (VLD), the government currently does not have the necessary judicial means to act. Despite Dewael’s claims, Federal Minister for Employment and Informatization Peter Vanvelthoven has introduced a bill to ban neo-Nazi groups, characterizing these groups as private militia.

Two weeks ago Hitler commemorations were held in the Belgian cities of Bellegem and Overpelt. Home to one of the strongest racist parties in Europe, Vlaams Belang, Belgium was responsible for sending 25,000-40,000 Belgian Jews to concentration camps in World War II.

Back in February, the Belgian government and banks agreed to pay Holocaust survivors, their family members and the Jewish community 110 million euros. Last year, former Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt apologized for Belgian authorities’ involvement in the deportation of Jews to Nazi concentration camps.

Despite the presence of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP-C) as terror organizations on the European Union’s common terror list, both groups enjoy a certain degree of freedom in Belgium.

Source: Today's Zaman

Brit Muslims have a duty to fight extremism

2008-04-25T10:48:00.001+01:00

(Just found this article, connected to one of the directors of a new anti-extremism organisation in the UK called The Quilliam Foundation)

*

FOR 14 years Maajid Nawaz was a member of radical Islamist political group Hizb ut-Tahrir. But the law graduate, born in Southend, Essex, reviewed his stand while in jail in Egypt and now believes it is time British Muslims became more moderate. Here he explains why.

IT’S high time that we British Muslims stood up to put an end to the double standards of a vocal minority from within our ranks.

For far too long a culture of blaming others and protecting “our own” has been tolerated.

A new standard needs to emerge. Protecting “our own” means all the people of our country, not merely one religious faction.

Freedom of speech is a non-negotiable right. Just as some Muslims invoke this right when they attack freedom and democracy, others may invoke this right when drawing cartoons criticising our faith.

If Muslim sensitivities are a reason not to draw the cartoons, then others’ sensitivities are also a reason not to attack freedom and democracy.

We cannot have it both ways. Yes, people must be considerate of religious feelings but that discussion comes after accepting freedom of speech as a right.

If Muslims wish to protest against insulting Islam, let them begin with protesting Saudi Arabia’s destruction of national heritage sites linked to the Prophet Muhammad.

Freedom of religion is also a non-negotiable right. Just as British Muslims wish to invite others to Islam, they must accept the right of British Muslims to leave Islam. If our faith is so attractive, then what do we have to fear?

[cont'd]

Source: The Sun

Why we should fear Italy's Northern League

2008-04-25T09:15:00.002+01:00

When a xenophobic party succeeds electorally in one European country, it has a knock-on effect for all Europeans because immigration, asylum and integration policies are shaped at the EU level.

THOSE of us seeking just and humane race and immigration policies in the UK should be fearful of the knock-on effects of the Italian March 2008 general election, which secured a decisive victory for Silvio Berlusconi's Party of Freedom Alliance. Already, the anti-immigrant Northern League, which more than doubled its share of the vote (8 per cent, leading to forty-seven seats in the Chamber of Deputies and twenty-three in the Senate) has upped the ante, calling for deportation of foreigners and the formation of self-defence groups to fight 'immigrant' crime.

Kingmaker of Italian politics

The Northern League, led by the xenophobic populist Umberto Bossi, brought down a previous Berlusconi administration in 1996. It is once again the kingmaker in Italian politics, for, if it withdraws its support, the prime minister will lose his majority in both chambers. Hence, Berlusconi - the richest man in Italy and owner of all bar two of the commercial TV channels - has already hinted that the League will be given at least two cabinet positions. And in a further wink to the Northern League, Berlusconi has promised to set up camps for jobless foreigners, describing 'illegal immigrants' as constituting an 'army of evil'. Although Berlusconi's alliance includes the post-fascist Alleanza National (AN), led by Gianfranco Fini and Alessandra Mussolini, the torchbearer of Italian fascism today, according to Enrico Pugliese of the Institute of Social Politics, is the Northern League. It is the League 'that has absorbed a great part of fascist thinking, especially the racism', he told Reuters.

[cont'd]

Source: Liz Fekete, editor of the Institute for Race Relations European Race Bulletin.

WWF Warns Arctic Ice Melting Faster than Predicted

2008-04-25T09:13:00.001+01:00

Arctic sea ice is melting “significantly faster” than predicted and is approaching a point of no return, conservation group the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warned in a new study.

The volumes of the Greenland Ice Sheet and ice in the Arctic Ocean were estimated at 2.9 million and 4.4 million cubic metres respectively in September 2007 — the lowest ever levels recorded, the organization said Wednesday.

The sea ice shrank to 39 percent below its 1979-2000 mean volume, it said.

“Recently observed changes are happening at rates significantly faster than predicted” by the 2005 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) and last year’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), WWF said.

The melting of arctic sea ice and the Greenland Ice Sheet was happening so fast that experts were now questioning whether the situation is close to “tipping point,” where sudden and possibly irreversible change takes place.

Source: Common Dreams

Israel 'using psychological torture'

2008-04-22T12:47:00.003+01:00

A somewhat shocking indictment of Israeli interrogation tactics (yeah, yeah, they're in a war, I know, but still ...).

*

Gheith Nasr, 18, of the Burj Luqluq neighbourhood in East Jerusalem, has not had the ideal preparation for his high-school graduation exams in a few weeks time.

Since January, he says, he has been arrested four times by the Israeli security services, accused of stone-throwing and vandalising security cameras in the Old City.

He says he has been detained each time for a few days in one of Jerusalem's interrogation centres, and then sent home under orders not to leave the house for another few days.

The muscular, but shy and inarticulate teenager says he regularly suffered violent treatment as interrogators tried to get him to own up to crimes he says he didn't commit - but one of his arrests stands out from the others.

"When I saw my mother being brought into the cell with handcuffs, I tell you, I would have told them anything just to save her, anything," he said.

Source: BBC News

Death of the guidebook

2008-04-22T09:54:00.003+01:00

There's a really interesting comment piece from veteran travel writer, Chris Taylor, over at Australian newspaper The Age. Taylor reveals -- or talks about the revelations -- that many travel guidebooks are written by poorly-paid freelancers who have never been to the destination in question.

Who is to blame? Taylor says the industry itself ... and the rise of the Internet.

*

Underneath the self-promoting veneer of the guidebook industry, all kinds of things go wrong out in the field and for all kinds of reasons.

Accordingly, I have followed the controversy ahead of the publication of Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, by Thomas Kohnstamm, with amusement. Amusement because, if the Amazon description before the April 22 release of the book is anything to go by, Kohnstamm's account of a writing assignment in Brazil promises to be very funny. Amusement also because the official Lonely Planet response has been to attack the author as a rogue element, which amounts to blanket denial of any responsibility for what might have gone wrong on Kohnstamm's research trip.

Lonely Planet writer Jeanne Oliver challenged that response in a post on the company's internal authors' forum, which was leaked to the Sunday Herald Sun, describing Kohnstamm's coming book as "a car crash waiting to happen". Oliver has declined to make further comment, but as an industry insider, I agree with her. At present, the debate is playing out as a sparring match between Lonely Planet management and Kohnstamm, with Oliver's comments fuelling speculation that perhaps Lonely Planet is hiding some dirty secrets. The real issue, however, is not whether poor pay forces Lonely Planet writers to cut corners and accept "freebies", but endemic practices in an industry bloated with competing players. In this context, the surprise is not that the "car crash" happened but that it didn't happen sooner.

Guidebook publishers will deny this, but the travel publishing industry is bound to exploit demand for what is widely seen as a glamour job — travel and get paid for it. But with so many competing guidebook series, many titles do not generate sales revenue that justifies the legwork that results in genuine personal recommendations. Most publishers who make claims to the contrary are being disingenuous...

*

Read the full story here.

Gervais agent wins £125k payout

2008-04-18T09:58:00.003+01:00

(a story from my old agency and salutory lesson for owners trying to create 'talent agencies', without understanding the role and nature of agents/authors' relationship)

*

Ricky Gervais' agent, Duncan Hayes, has been awarded a payout of more than £125,000 from his former employers PFD.

Hayes, who represents a range of comedy performers and writers including Gervais and Stephen Merchant, was one of the 12 agents dismissed by PFD parent group CSS Stellar in October last year for gross misconduct.

The verdict in his favour came yesterday, following a one-day hearing at the London employment tribunal in February in which Hayes argued that PFD acted unlawfully in withholding his due wages and commission after his dismissal.

Following his dismissal Hayes moved to help found a new agency, United Agents, comprised almost entirely of former PFD staff. Hayes is the head of United Agents' film and television department.

More at The Guardian.

Journalism student gets university help via Twitter after Egypt arrest

2008-04-17T09:57:00.000+01:00

A University of California at Berkeley graduate journalism student received help from the institution after sending out messages through Twitter while under arrest in Egypt, the San Jose Mercury News reports. James Karl Buck was arrested while photographing a demonstration in Egypt.

He sent out the message “Arrested” on microblogging service Twitter, and friends in his network quickly notified Berkeley and the U.S. Embassy. The next day a local attorney hired by his university got him out of jail, although his interpreter, who is not an American citizen, apparently remains behind bars.

(The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Migrant crime wave a myth - police study

2008-04-16T17:23:00.002+01:00

(taken from The Guardian)

*

A wide-ranging police study has concluded that the surge in immigrants from eastern Europe to Britain has not fuelled a rise in crime, the Guardian has learned.

he findings will be presented to the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, tomorrow when she meets chief constables to discuss the issue. Several of them had complained that they needed more money to deal with increases in migrant populations in their areas. However, the study prepared for the Association of Chief Police Officers challenges claims that up to 1 million people from EU accession countries have caused a rise in criminality.

The report finds that, despite newspaper headlines linking new migrants to crime, offending rates among mainly Polish, Romanian and Bulgarian communities are in line with the rate of offending in the general population.

A senior source with close knowledge of the report said: "Any rise has been broadly proportionate to the number of people from those communities coming into this country. People are saying crime is rising because of this influx. Given 1 million people have come in, that doesn't make sense as crime is significantly down."

Source: The Guardian

Iran anti-vice chief 'in brothel'

2008-04-16T17:05:00.001+01:00

(another classic from the Beeb)

*

Tehran's police chief, who was reportedly discovered in a brothel, has been arrested, it has been confirmed.

Local media have reported that General Reza Zarei was found with six naked women in a house of prostitution in the Iranian capital last month.

He has been taken to jail while his case is investigated, a spokesman for Iran's judiciary said.

Gen Zarei was in charge of enforcing Iran's strict anti-vice laws, which include a ban on prostitution.

State media had recently reported that Gen Zarei had been replaced as police chief in Tehran, but had not explained why.

Sex taboo

Iran has tough punishments for unmarried couples who have sex or behave in a manner considered immoral.

Young people have been jailed or flogged for dancing together at house parties.

The public dress code can be tightly enforced, with women barred from showing their hair or wearing make up or colourful clothes and men from wearing their hair long.

For years the hardline Iranian establishment never admitted that prostitution existed.

They now acknowledge the problem, though, and prostitutes are becoming more visible on the streets, correspondents say.

Source: BBC

China 'gold medal' for executions

2008-04-15T11:16:00.001+01:00

(taken from the BBC)

The Chinese authorities put to death at least 470 people last year, but may have killed up to 8,000, human rights group Amnesty International has said.

Amnesty said the hidden extent of executions in China, where figures are secret, might mean the Olympic host was behind the bulk of them worldwide.

"The veil of secrecy surrounding the death penalty must be lifted," it said.

At least 1,252 people are known to have been executed in 24 countries in 2007, a slight drop on the previous year.
Just five countries - China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the US - were responsible for 88% of known executions in the world, Amnesty said.

About 3,347 people were sentenced to death in 51 nations last year and up to 27,500 people are now estimated to be on death row.

Swift justice

In its annual report on the death penalty, Amnesty International said China had executed more than any country last year, but warned that the real figure was likely to be several thousand.

"As the world's biggest executioner, China gets the 'gold medal' for global executions," said the organisation's UK director, Kate Allen.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7346938.stm

The Candidates Answer!

2008-04-15T11:13:00.002+01:00

Head over to Yoosk to see the London Mayoral candidates now answer my debate on their campaigns:

www.yoosk.com

And feel free to post follow-up questions.

Next debates I'm considering: looking into virtual worlds and 'MMOs' (like World of Warcraft and EveOnline), the housing crisis in the UK, and nationalism & the far right.