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Antisemitism: A Web of Denial

Friday, November 21st, 2008

Let me start by thanking the ADL and Chris Wolf for making this into a great conference. I’m pleased to be here in the United States, in fact I’m always happy to come here but this time is doubly joyful since America has voted massively for hope. Hope for America and hope for the world. Now, step into my time machine, we’re going back 2000 years.

The first dissemination of antisemitism comes to us from the Alexandrian Apion, a Greek-Egyptian philosopher and writer. When the great library of Alexandria burned down, Apion’s Egyptian History burned with it. We only know partly what was written in those books because the Roman historian Tacitus quotes some of the content. Another source for Apion’s antisemitism is to be found in the work of the historian Titus Flavius Josephus, the former Jewish military leader Joseph ben Matthias. Josephus wrote a treatise called ‘against Apion’ in which he attacks and refutes Apions’ ideas, which probably makes him the first advocate against antisemitism.

Apion described Jews as sinister and revolting, barbaric because of the practice of circumcision. Apion was not unique, many popular believes about Jews during those days –we’re talking about the year 30- were extremely negative. Because of the Shabbat, Jews were thought to be lazy. Jews were thought to sacrifice humans during strange rites – the blood libel throwing its shadow backward - Jews were considered anti-social and worshipped only one god, which in those polytheistic times was considered to be foolish and alien, although some of the Greek intellectuals thought the idea as such was very stylish. Apion’s antisemitism was quite popular with the Greek elite of Alexandria and his writings fuelled the flames of the first pogrom in history, in the year 38. That pogrom broke out when the Jews of Alexandria protested a decree by Roman Emperor Caligula in which they were ordered to pray to his statue. Apions’ rabble-rousing resulted in the murder of thousands of Alexandrian Jews.

Now, Apion was a charismatic individual, who did not have the use of Internet but rather his writings, copied by scribes and disseminated by –and through his friends and admirers and he used public speeches to spread his hatred. Instead of Internet the Alexandrians of that age knew the bathhouse.net and the marketplace.net, where information, gossip, writings and speeches went from person to person.

Jumping forward in time, we have to note that for every succeeding pogrom there was either a verbal or written slander campaign to incite the masses to attack Jews. Sometimes it was writings by religious leaders; sometimes it was word-of-mouth, often instigated by kings, emperors, religious or other leaders, creating myths like the blood libel, the poisoning of wells by Jews, the Christ-killers accusations, and many variations on those and other themes, culminating in what Lucy Davidowitz very aptly calls ‘the war against the Jews’, the Shoah.

After the Shoah followed a period in which antisemitism in the western world was mainly spread underground, on paper – books and pamphlets. The protocols, Mein Kampf and other leftovers of Nazi ideology were disseminated both in Europe, the U.S. and the Middle East, where European-style antisemitism found an already fertile breeding ground. But, both in volume and in reach it was nothing compared to what we see these days on the Internet.

From 1992 on, Neo-Nazis started to use the Internet to spread their rhetoric. Already in the in the pre-world wide web age German Neo-Nazis saw the potential of Information Technology, using Bulletin Board Systems and moving onto the web when it came available.

In as sense, those German Neo-Nazi’s did not have to go far from home. As the journalist and writer Edwin Black proved, the information age was not born in Silicon Valley but in 1933 in Berlin. IBM facilitated the administration of the Holocaust with census cards and punch card technology, even after 1941, through full IBM subsidiaries managed from Switzerland. The Nazi’s had a problem and IBM had a solution for their final solution. It teaches us to be wary of those who say that they are only selling technology and don’t care what it is used for. Or those who say that others should do no evil while they themselves engage in the large–scale technological facilitation of oppression.

The Internet gave Antisemitism a new common carrier, to use a technical term. Thanks to the Internet, there is more antisemitism and Holocaust denial available in the world than ever. Thanks to the Internet, there is more information on the Holocaust and antisemitism available than ever. But these positions hardly cancel-out each other, even if you believe that bad speech can be countered by good speech. No longer is it the grubby bookstores, which sold stenciled copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion under the counter. No longer is it the house-to-house delivered stenciled antisemitic pamphlets, a hundred here, a thousand there. Now it’s tens of thousands of websites and hundreds of thousands of expressions of antisemitism and Holocaust denial. Now it’s millions of hits here and hundred thousands of page views there.

In 1995 who had heard of Stormfront? Yet there they were, in the forefront of the Internet age. As no other, Neo-nazi’s, white supremacists and other extremists understood the potential of the Internet for the unbridled dissemination of their ideas. Antisemitism. Holocaust Denial. National Socialism. Racism.

By now, the bulk of all antisemitism and Holocaust denial has firmly moved onto the Internet. Old media have become obsolete. You will still be able to find Mein Kampf or the Protocols or Hardwoods ‘did six million really die’ in the proverbial grubby bookstore – or get it by post order through the Internet. But ask yourself, who under 30 years old still reads books? Very few. In the 15 years since the Internet took off, antisemitism and holocaust denial have penetrated every nook and cranny. You can find it on web logs, web forums, Youtube, in online games, in chat boxes, on facebook, myspace, et cetera, and it is the largest category of online hate.

The number of websites offering antisemitism or Holocaust denial runs in the tens of thousands. We’re not only talking about ‘dedicated’ Neo-Nazi or other extremist sites here. A “normal” popular web forum has 1000-plus postings per day, of which on average 50 are of a racist or antisemitic nature. There are thousands of web forums like that. If you add the thousands of extremist web forums that generate hundreds of hateful expressions per day, the total volume of hate on the net is mind-boggling. I understand that the latest CD Digital Terrorism and Hate 2007, published by our colleagues at Simon Wiesenthal Center identifies some 5000 “problematic” websites. I think that is quite an underestimation. We’re not even taking into account all the web logs, and the still existing Usenet newsgroups, historically known for a large hate content. It is impossible to really give exact figures on online hate. We only know that the volume is enormous, but registering and monitoring is a bit like trying to count fruit flies. There are lots of them, they die soon but since they breed fast new ones appear all the time.

The current interactive web, web 2.0 as it’s is called, with its blogs, forums, photo –and video repositories like Youtube turns everybody into an instant publicist. Internet is the biggest soapbox in the world, and people who would not dare air their views offline find their outlet in posting them on the Internet, thinking they are totally anonymous. Internet is also the big recycler. Once something is online, it is quite hard to get rid of it for good. The boost the Internet gave to The Protocols is enormous. Twenty years ago, it had almost sunken into oblivion. The immensely popular Youtube is used on a large scale to share short video-clips with the world. Neo-Nazis use Youtube as another great tool, but you can also watch Holocaust deniers like David Irving walking in Birkenau, explaining why Jews were never gassed there. You can see Leuchter fans doing a so-called scientific experiment ‘testing’ Zyklon-B on each other, showing that ‘the concentrations of Zyklon-B that were allegedly used to kill Jews are in fact harmless’. Do a search on the Youtube site for ‘gas chambers’ and the second video that will be presented to you is footage of Fred Leuchter talking about his report which claims that the gas chambers at the death camps were never used to gas people.

Then there’s the online games and games sold over the Internet, like Ethnic Cleansing and ZOG’s nightmare, which add another level of nausea and last but not least there’s the virtual ‘Furry Nazi groups’ in Second Life, who amused themselves by building gas chambers and ‘playing’ camp, trying to capture Jewish Second Life users in order to ‘test their facilities’. Good news is that just two weeks ago, after pressure brought by Jewish groups in Second Life, owner Linden Labs removed the Nazi’s and their virtual ‘Third Reich’. A small victory.

The Netcraft October 2008 web server survey tells us there are now almost 200 million websites online. A sea of data, which would be impossible to navigate without search engines. But here’s the rub. Your average non-Jewish student who becomes curious about his Jewish classmate goes to Google and types in the word ‘Jew’. The third search result is the infamous hate site ‘Jew Watch’, which will teach the student that Jews control the world and every evil deed ever done in history was done by Jews. Oh yes, since recently you will see as a first search result a notice by Google saying that they do not endorse some of the disturbing search results and that it is better to search on Judaism then on Jews, in order to get informative and relevant results instead of ‘unexpected ones’. How easy it would be for the privately owned company Google to just omit sites like Jew Watch from their database. But I guess that would be ‘doing evil’.

Sadly, it doesn’t end with ‘classic’ antisemitism. Where before you could only find a limited amount of left-wing antisemitism, after the disastrous 2001 World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa, which turned into an antisemitic hate-fest, the masks came off. Blatant antisemitism on left-wing sites is now quite acceptable, of course prudently called “anti-Zionism”. Some left-wing sites even link to antisemitic content on neo-Nazi sites and since the rise of Islamism and Jihadism there is an increasing overlap between Islamist and neo-Nazi rethoric, uniting seemingly natural enemies in their joint struggle against the “Zionist world conspiracy”. The common ground for online hate-mongers is called Jews.

The Internet not only dramatically changed the scope of antisemitism, it also facilitates its mutation. The antisemitism-virus always seems to seek a new myth to piggyback on and if there’s one thing the Internet is good in, it is the fast dissemination of urban legends and myths. The Jews are behind 9/11. The Jews working at the World Trade center stayed home on 9/11. The Jews are behind the financial crisis.

Then there is the online trivialization of the Holocaust – which is maybe the biggest danger. The Holocaust depicted as a dance party in the infamous video ‘Housewitz’. A Belgian far-right politician singing a song about ‘the little Jewess that is going to Dachau to be gassed’. Or comparing the Holocaust to anything, from bad treatment of animals and abortion clinics to discrimination of smokers.

Lastly, there is the encrypted antisemitism, a language of code words for Jews -like Zionists, or cabal, or the media elite, or those that control the banks. This language creates an environment that eases the path for openly antisemitic rhetoric.

The results: Holocaust Denial is becoming fashionable, antisemitism quite normal, Zionism is deliberately depicted as racism and antisemitic violence is on the rise.

Those who say ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me’ need to do a reality check. Apion’s words fuelled the flames of the first pogrom. Hitler’s and Goebbels’ and Streichers’ words caused the Holocaust. Every genocide, pogrom, or act of antisemitic violence in history was built on words.
There’s a well-known quote from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” He wrote this in 1914 in his publication Other People’s Money—and How Bankers Use It, referring to the benefits of openness and transparency in financial issues. Many an advocate of freedom of speech takes this quote to mean that hate speech, once it is exposed and out in the open, will shrivel away and die. First of all, I think it is doubtful that Brandeis meant this. Justice Brandeis died in 1941 but had he lived to see the Holocaust, I don’t think he would have agreed with the new meaning his quote was given. Secondly, in recent history, let’s says since 1900, we’ve had very little success countering genocides or atrocities only by publicity and sunlight. The sad thing is that the amount of people outside of Germany who were aware of the holocaust already in 1941 is quite large. But nothing happened while the sun kept on shining over Auschwitz.

The Shoah itself illustrates the danger of the repetition of hate speech best. Nazi propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels loved to advise everybody to “make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually people will believe it.” Mass-murderer Rudolf Höss, commander of Auschwitz, illustrated this further during his interrogation shortly after his capture in 1945 when he said: “I was absolutely convinced that the Jews were at the opposite pole from the German People, and sooner or later there would have to be a clash between National-Socialism and World Jewry…but everybody was convinced of this; that was all you could hear or read.”

The role of antisemitic propaganda and language was significant in creating a mindset in Germany in the 1930s that predisposed acceptance of racial policy even in its most radical form. The constant repetition of antisemitic sentiment, whether fanatical Party propaganda or the casual racial aside, lodged in the collective psyche in ways that reduced the ability and willingness of a great many Germans to question race policy and encouraged them to endorse it.[1]

So why should everybody work on countering antisemitism and Holocaust Denial? Many think that National Socialism and the Holocaust are things of the past, and antisemitism is not seen as a real problem.

The Nizkor Project– whose director, Ken McVay, to my great pleasure, is present here today, gives us the answer. In 1996, a small Neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist White Peoples Party, wrote in their electronic magazine “The real purpose of Holocaust revisionism is to make National Socialism an acceptable political alternative again.” Nizkor published this profound quote on its main page – and it is still there today.

This is why we need to counter antisemitism and Holocaust denial. We want to do it because we need to remember those who were murdered, lest they be forgotten, but we need to do it to make sure National Socialism never again becomes an acceptable political option. Now to make the world understand that. A tough challenge.

Of course we need good speech. Of course we need truth. So are we doing that? In the physical world I think we can’t complain. Lots of great work is done by scholars, Non-Governmental Organizations, Jewish Communities and Community organizations. Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial are illegal in a number of European countries. Thanks to the effort of a number of Jewish NGOs and individuals, some present here, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency now has a Working Definition of Antisemitism. We have Holocaust museums. We have a wealth of online information on the Holocaust, available through the Nizkor Project, the Survivors of the Shoah Foundation, Yad Vashem and many others. We commemorate. We warn. We give testimony. We educate. We take young people to see the camps. We try to prevent.

On and through the Internet, NGOs like mine, the INACH Network, the ADL, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and others work on countering hate. Since 2002, the INACH network has gotten thousands of instances of antisemitism and Holocaust Denial removed. That sounds like a lot, but looking at the vast hate-scape that has unfolded on the Internet, it seems almost futile. I fear we are not able to stem the tide in this way.

The memory of the holocaust is fading, the first and second generation of Holocaust survivors are passing away, and antisemitism is moving into the electronic mainstream.

What we should do is put all our efforts in education, not only anti-hate education and education about the Holocaust but also Media literacy; how to assess information on the Internet, how to check for credibility, how to check sources and how to think critical. But we should also advocate for anti-discrimination lessons and for Holocaust education and prejudice reduction modules to be included in all school curricula. That is in my view the only way to –in time- effectively counter hate.

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the new library of Alexandria, opened 5 years ago and is built next to the location of the antique library. It contains millions of books. It aims to be ‘a center of excellence in the production and dissemination of knowledge and a place of dialogue, learning and understanding between cultures and peoples’.

It has Tacitus’ Histories, quoting Apion’s antisemitism. It has The Protocols of the elders of Zion in many translations. The online catalog proudly describes ‘The protocols’ as a ‘Complete plan for world destruction’. This august new institution for knowledge in the Middle East, partly financed by UNESCO, also has the Leuchter report in Arabic, Mein Kampf, and other antisemitic material. Of course it has a complete copy of the Internet Archive containing most hate sites on the Internet. From Alexandria in the year 30 to Alexandria in 2008 - it seems that Apion has come full circle and not only that – antisemitism is now part of the largest library in the world – unquestioned, uncommented antisemitism.

During the 2007 annual INACH conference in Berlin a resolution was adopted which calls upon countries and international bodies like the OSCE and the EU to coordinate measures against cyber hate and to start working on media education. That’s excellent, but we need to do more. When I did one of my usual gloomy speeches last February during the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem, people asked me ‘but what can we do?’ Well, we need to engage our schools and our politicians, to make it clear to them that we have to take action now.

After Lunch, some of you will be visiting the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Right after the main entrance, on your left, you will see the flags of the U.S. Army units that liberated the concentration camps. One of those is the flag of the 4th armored division of General Patton’s 3rd army. I have an interest in that since the 4th armored was the division that liberated my father-in-law from Buchenwald.

The motto of the 4th armored was “They shall be known by their deeds alone” and I think that is a fitting message to all of us. Let’s stop talking, and be known by our deeds.

Keynote speech by Ronald Eissens during the INACH/ADL Global Summit on Internet Hate, 17 & 18 November 2008, Washington D.C.

[1] Richard Overy, Interrogations – the Nazi elite in allied hands, 1945. P.196, The Penguin Press, 2001

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War Crimes Conference - London, 20-21 February, 2009

Friday, November 21st, 2008

University of London, 20-21 February, 2009

War Crimes Conference – Retrospectives and Prospects ‘Identifying war crimes and the perpetrators is a key part of post-conflict resolution’

Venue: Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London

When: February 20/21 2009

Speakers Include:

Lesley Abdela,
Professor David Fraser
Michael Kandiah
Frank McDonough
Hans Pawlisch
Dr David Seymour
Professor David Sugarman

Details, including the programme and the booking form will be available on the SOLON, IALS, and CCBH websites:

Prospective themes include:

The implications of the use of national/international courts and tribunals and the problems of jurisdiction
The role of the media in portraying war crimes, and the rhetoric used
Legal issues, e.g. the nature of evidence in war crimes trials; questions of jurisdiction
Witness perspectives: protection, access to courts; financial support; are their voices heard?
Witness perspectives: protection, access to courts; financial
support; are their voices heard? Do prosecutions serve justice?
The impact of recent trials, e.g. Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.

Presenters:

Lesley Abdela, specialist in Gender in post-conflict/post-natural
disaster reconstruction, and Gender in Humanitarian Aid
David Fraser, Prof of Law and Social Theory, Nottingham University
Michael Kandiah, Director Witness Seminars Programme, Centre for
Contemporary British History, Institute of Historical Research,
specialising in the Cold War period
Frank McDonough, Reader in International History, Liverpool John
Moores University
Hans Pawlisch, currently historian to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington
David Seymour, law lecturer Lancaster University, known for his work
on human rights and anti-Semitism
David Sugarman, professor of law Lancaster University, currently
working on the Pinochet episode

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Fury at Labour MPs ‘Orwellian’ tactics over DNA database vote

Friday, November 21st, 2008

Liverpool Daily Post | LABOUR MPs were accused of “Orwellian” tactics last night after voting to make it all-but impossible for innocent people to remove their DNA from the national database.

Opposition parties reacted with fury after the Government overturned a Lords amendment that would have forced the Home Office to issue specific guidelines to help the innocent strip out their profiles.

The vote came just days after the Daily Post revealed a seven-year-old Merseyside child had its DNA added to the database – a move condemned by civil liberties campaign groups.

Merseyside police chiefs said it had been held because of “extraordinary circumstances”, but later ordered the details to be removed.

Almost one in ten people in Merseyside have their genetic profile stored, around one quarter of whom have not been convicted, or cautioned, with any offence.

The law allows the police to take DNA samples from anyone who has been arrested – and store their samples permanently, even if they are acquitted.

Most concern centres on the profiles of nearly 40,000 children in Britain, including 3,555 under-16s from Merseyside and a further 2,452 from Cheshire.

Two weeks ago, the House of Lords backed a Conservative amendment calling for the Counter-Terrorism Bill to be redrafted to include specific guidelines on DNA removal.

Damien Green, a Tory home affairs spokesman, said the draconian rules gave police only a single example where a person’s DNA would be considered for destruction. This would be where a person died in a multi-occupancy house and everyone else was arrested on suspicion of murder. If it later transpired the person died of natural causes, only then would other residents have a case for removal.

Mr Green said: “I think MPs will recognise that this is an absurdity and clearly these guidelines in themselves are not an acceptable way to proceed.”

But, yesterday, the amendment was easily overturned with a government majority of 68.

Chris Huhne, for the Liberal Democrats, said: “This Orwellian government has turned down the opportunity to give innocent people the rights they fully deserve.”

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Scottish Parliament votes out ID cards

Friday, November 21st, 2008

By John Oates | The Scottish Parliament has voted against the government’s proposed ID cards, in a gesture of Phythonian futility.

Members of the Scottish Parliament decided the cards would not deter crime, would not add to security and would do very little for civil liberties as well.

MSP Fergus Ewing told the Parliament that the government could not be trusted to keep the data safe. He also said cards were a colossal waste of money and the £5bn would be better spent elsewhere.

Members of the Scottish Parliament voted by 69 votes to zero with 38 abstentions, according to the BBC.

Unfortunately, however, the Scottish Parliament has no jurisdiction over ID cards.

Tory MSP Bill Aitken said he had no problem with governments taking action to improve security but plenty of countries have had terrorist attacks which were not stopped or ameliorated by compulsory ID cards. ®

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Congress Must Debate The Implications Of A Bush Self-Pardon

Friday, November 21st, 2008

Many people have been asking us, “Could Bush actually pardon himself?”. Would it be despicable? Sure it would. Would it be shameless and cowardly? Yes, that and that too. But all those adjectives fit Bush like O.J.’s glove before it shrunk from being soaked completely in blood. Which means he is absolutely is planning on doing it.

And only impeachment could stop it. We need to talk about this. We need Congress to talk about this. And Congress is in session this week, so we need you to speak out this week while there is still time.

Impeach Now Action Page: http://www.usalone.com/impeach_now.php

Tens of thousands of you submitted the action page on this last week. Do it again. Please speak out again while we still can. There is already a drum beat in the right wing media calling on Bush to pardon his whole administration. Only our voices can raise the price of such action so that there would be real consequences.

We have not given up, and will never give up hope on justice. We will be taking delivery of another huge shipment of the “Impeach Both!!!” caps that are still so popular. But this might be the last batch. So if you want to demonstrate your support for impeachment, please request yours now from the return page of the action page submission.

Impeach Now Action Page: http://www.usalone.com/impeach_now.php

Will Congress now act? That is not the yardstick of the worth of our activism. We speak out because we must speak out, whether we are heeded or not. Let history record that we spoke out until the last minute to the eternal shame of those who did not. Because when enough of us speak out at once, the worst thing that can possibly happen is that we are building the progressive base for the REAL change of the future.

So Bush most certainly is planning on pardoning himself. And all the right wing lock down ideologues in the corporate controlled media will call it “healing”. Let’s all make nice with war criminals? Shall we all make nice with the gang rape of our economy, our environment and our Constitution? We think not.

And one more thing. You know that come January 20th the right wing will start calling for the impeachment of our new president, over a endless litany of the most ridiculous of trivial trifles. In fact it has already started even though he has not even taken office. If they are so hot on impeaching someone, let them speak out now, when it truly is called for, or shut the hell up in 65 days.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.

If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at http://www.usalone.com/in.htm

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MI5 said Iraq “exacerbated the threat from international terrorism”

Friday, November 21st, 2008

By David Morrison | Stella Rimington, the last but one head of MI5, was interviewed by Decca Aikenhead in The Guardian on 18 October 2008. She asked her about the effect of Britain’s invasion of Iraq on the terrorist threat to Britain:

I ask Rimington what importance she would place on the war, in terms of its impact on the terrorist threat. She pauses for a second, then replies quietly but firmly: ‘Look at what those people who’ve been arrested or have left suicide videos say about their motivation. And most of them, as far as I’m aware, say that the war in Iraq played a significant part in persuading them that this is the right course of action to take. So I think you can’t write the war in Iraq out of history. If what we’re looking at is groups of disaffected young men born in this country who turn to terrorism, then I think to ignore the effect of the war in Iraq is misleading. [1]

Decca Aikenhead seemed to be surprised at this forthright assertion by an ex-head of MI5 of a causal connection between Britain’s invasion and occupation of Iraq and the heightened terrorist threat to Britain. She commented:

These might not be unremarkable views for most Guardian readers - of whom Rimington is one. But according to Rimington, they are widely held within the intelligence service - much more so than most members of the public, and perhaps particularly Guardian readers, ever suspect.

Official MI5 view

In fact, it is the official view of MI5, and has been for several years, that such a causal connection exists. I know that because I read it on MI5’s website in July 2005, at the time of the London bombings. There, on a page entitled Threat to the UK from International Terrorism, I read:

In recent years, Iraq has become a dominant issue for a range of extremist groups and individuals in the UK and Europe.

I was astonished to read this since it acknowledged that al-Qaeda activity was, at least in part, a reaction to Western interference in the Muslim world, rather than driven by an evil ambition to destroy our way of life in the West, as our political leaders kept telling us.

At that time, Prime Minister Blair was (understandably) trying to deny the existence of a connection between the invasion of Iraq and the bombings in London on 7 July 2005, lest somebody accuse him of having blood on his hands. That was not an unreasonable accusation, given that, having been warned in advance by the intelligence services that the threat from al-Qaida “would be heightened by military action against Iraq” (see Intelligence & Security Committee report of 11 September 2003 [2], Paragraph 126), he chose to make Britain a less safe place by invading Iraq in March 2003.

I made considerable efforts to draw the attention of The Guardian and other newspapers to the extraordinary fact that the words coming out of the Prime Minister’s mouth were at variance with what was published on the MI5 website. This seemed to me to be newsworthy. But to no avail. To the best of my knowledge, this plain, publicly stated, view of MI5 was never quoted in the columns of The Guardian, until a letter by me was published on 3 July 2007 [3]. That Guardian readers are ignorant of MI5’s view on the issue is due to the failure of Guardian journalists to bring it to their readers’ attention.

International Terrorism: Impact of Iraq

Lest there is any doubt that the intelligence services have long held the view that invading Iraq increased the terrorist threat to Britain, listen to this from a Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) assessment entitled International Terrorism: Impact of Iraq dated April 2005, extracts of which were published in The Sunday Times on 2 April 2006:

Iraq is likely to be an important motivating factor for some time to come in the radicalisation of British Muslims and for those extremists who view attacks against the UK as legitimate.

There is a clear consensus within the UK extremist community that Iraq is a legitimate jihad and should be supported. Iraq has re-energised and refocused a wide range of networks in the UK.

We judge that the conflict in Iraq has exacerbated the threat from international terrorism and will continue to have an impact in the long term. It has reinforced the determination of terrorists who were already committed to attacking the West and motivated others who were not.

Some jihadists who leave Iraq will play leading roles in recruiting and organising terrorist networks, sharing their skills and possibly conducting attacks. It is inevitable that some will come to the UK. [4]

Blair’s blowback

Even Tony Blair eventually acknowledged that his military adventures in the Muslim world had produced “blowback”. Here’s is what he said in his resignation speech in Sedgefield on 10 March 2007:

Removing Saddam and his sons from power, as with removing the Taliban, was over with relative ease. But the blowback since, from global terrorism and those elements that support it, has been fierce and unrelenting and costly. [5]

The Guardian has yet to report this confession by the former Prime Minister that he has made Britain a less safe by his military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq and, in the process, he has caused the deaths of around 400 British soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis.

Crucial point erased

Today, the MI5 website still has a page about “international terrorism” [6], but you won’t find a word about Iraq on it. The previous plain statement by MI5 that there was a causal connection between Iraq and the risk of terrorism in Britain was removed some time since June 2007, when I last saw it there. Now al-Qaeda’s motivation is described in the following terms:

The terrorists draw their inspiration from a global message articulated by figures such as Usama bin Laden. The message is uncompromising and asserts that the West represents a threat to Islam; that loyalty to religion and loyalty to democratic institutions and values are incompatible; and that violence is the only proper response.

It doesn’t quite go so far as to say that al-Qaeda is out to destroy our way of life in the West, but the crucial point – that al-Qaeda terrorism in the West is a response to Western interference in the Muslim world – has been erased.

Jacqui Smith speaks
Fresh from her ignominious defeat in the House of Lords on 42-day detention on 13 October 2008, the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, made a major speech on “the threat of international terrorism” to Britain on 15 October 2008 [7]. Like the MI5 website today, her speech omits to mention British intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq as a motivating force for al-Qaeda activity in Britain. In a 3,000-word speech, she provided the following penetrating analysis of what drives al-Qaeda to commit terrorism: “They want a reordering of global political structures and a separation of faith groups …. and to subvert our institutions.”

Most of her speech was taken up with detailing the measures she was taking to counter al-Qaeda in Britain. Four regional counter-terrorism policing hubs, in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds have been established and a fifth one is on the way on the M4 corridor. These are tasked “not only to investigate conspiracies and terrorist operations but to understand radicalisation and radicalisers and to tackle them effectively”.

Several Government departments are also involved in countering “radicalisation”: the Department for Children Schools and Families in providing advice to teachers on how to deal with signs of radicalisation; the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills in working with student bodies and higher and further education to do something rather similar; the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in considering what impact the issue of counter radicalisation should have on their programmes; ditto the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Health; the Department of Justice is addressing the problem of radicalisation in prisons; and, last but not least, the Department for Communities and Local Government is working on the Preventing Violent Extremism plan. And she holds “a Weekly Security Meeting with senior representatives from each of these Departments and others across Whitehall to discuss their work and the current threat with the police and the security and intelligence agencies”.

How any of this is meant to reduce or prevent “radicalisation” in circumstances in which the main driver – the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq – is still going on is not clear. Withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan would certainly diminish, and perhaps eliminate, the threat to Britain from al-Qaeda. In other words, if we ceased spending money and blood invading Muslim countries, we wouldn’t need to spend money protecting the British homeland from terrorism emanating from the Muslim world in response – and blood would not be spilled on our streets when the protection proves to be fallible.

Notes
[1] The Guardian
[2] Intelligence & Security Committee (pdf)
[3] The Guardian
[4] The Times
[5] Labour website
[6] MI5
[7] Home office.

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Blackwater gunboats will protect ships

Friday, November 21st, 2008

By Kim Sengupta |

The American security company Blackwater is planning to cash in on the rising threat of piracy on the high seas by launching a flotilla of gunboats for hire by the shipping companies.

The firm, which gained international notoriety when its staff killed civilians in Iraq, has already equipped one vessel, called The McArthur, which will carry up to 40 armed guards and have a landing pad for an attack helicopter.

The McArthur, a former survey ship, arrives in the Gulf of Aden, the scene of the recent high-profile hijackings and shootouts with Somali pirates, at the end of the year. It is to be joined by three or four similar vessels over next year to form the company’s private navy.

Blackwater, which has strong ties with the Republican administration in Washington, was the subject of investigations by the US Congress and the Iraqi government after its guards shot dead 17 people in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square last year, a massacre which led directly to changes in law regarding security contractors in Iraq.

Several security companies are rushing to the region despite the presence of British, American, Russian and Indian naval warships, among others, sent to protect ships. For fees ranging from £8,000 to £12,000 for transits of three and five days, companies are offering teams of unarmed guards, “non-lethal deck security personnel”.

With more than 60 ships attacked in the Gulf and ship-owners paying an estimated £75m in ransom for the return of crew and cargo, the security companies foresee a lucrative business.

One US company, Hollowpoint Protective Services, says it is offering a comprehensive service of hostage negotiations backed by armed rescue operations if the talks fail. Eos, a British concern, says it favours a “non-lethal” approach with the use of sophisticated laser, microwave and acoustical devices. But Blackwater plans to have the largest and most heavily armed presence among the security contractors. The company believes that the presence of escorting gunboats will have a deterrent effect, with criminal gangs being forced to switch to more vulnerable targets.

A Blackwater spokeswoman, Anne Tyrrell, said there have already been about 15 inquiries about its anti-piracy service. The company refused to reveal how much it will charge. Its executive vice-president, Bill Matthews, said the US Navy and the Royal Navy do not have the resources in the region to provide total security, opening up a role for companies such as his. He added: “While there are temporary needs that perhaps outpace the limited resources of the Department of Defence [Washington] and the Ministry of Defence [London], the private sector is available to fill those gaps.

“We have been contacted by ship-owners who say they need our help in making sure goods get to their destination. The McArthur can help us accomplish that. We have not sought to enter the space until recently. It was not part of our business plan. But as the world changes, so does our business plan.”

Nick Davis, a former British Army pilot who runs a company in Poole called Anti-Piracy Maritime Security Solutions, said: “It frightens me that Blackwater is going down there. Their background is not in deterrence. Their background is in weapons. To me, the best people to be armed are the military. Pirates might approach McArthur without knowing it’s a Blackwater boat and try to hijack it.”

Chris Austen, chief executive of Maritime & Underwater Security Consultants, in London, said ship-owners should be cautious about armed guards. “There are some flags that prohibit the carriage of arms or the use of violence. There are some insurers that will not accept it, and your insurance will be void.”

Guns for hire: The violent option

The massacre on Baghdad’s “Bloody Sunday” became a lethal symbol of the aggression with which Blackwater’s private army carried out its mission in Iraq. I saw the deadly result of panicked security guards opening fire at a crowded Nisoor Square in the city centre. Round after round mowed down terrified men, women and children. At the end of the shooting spree, 17 people were dead and 20 injured. The killings sparked one of the most bitter and public disputes between the Iraqi government and its American patrons, and brought into focus the often violent conduct of the Western security companies – and that of Blackwater in particular. Operating in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, they were immune from scrutiny or prosecution. This was the seventh shooting of civilians involving Blackwater. The company’s reputation in Iraq was particularly controversial. After Nisoor Square, the Iraqi government threatened to expel Blackwater. But it was forced to let the company operate again under pressure from Washington.

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US lawmaker accuses Bush of secrecy over Iraq deal

Friday, November 21st, 2008

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government is refusing to make public the security pact it has signed with Iraq, even though it has already been published in full in an Iraqi newspaper, a congressional hearing was told Wednesday.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were holding a closed briefing for U.S. House members on the pact signed Monday that sets a 2011 deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq.

Rep. Bill Delahunt, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations and Human Rights, before the closed briefing called it “insulting and an after-thought,” after the Bush administration earlier rebuffed calls for Congress to be consulted during year-long negotiations on the agreement.

The administration has said it will not seek congressional approval for the deal. It has been in a hurry to finalize the pact, which Iraqi lawmakers still must approve, before the U.N. mandate under which U.S. troops operate expires Dec. 31.

Delahunt, who has urged President George W. Bush to renew the U.N. mandate rather than sign a bilateral agreement with Iraq, held the eighth in a series of hearings on the Status of Forces Agreement.

He said the Bush administration had turned down an invitation to attend the open hearing, saying it was a “sensitive time.” Experts testifying before his subcommittee were forced to rely on an unofficial English translation of the security deal.

“Even now the National Security Council has requested that we do not show this document to our witnesses or release it to the public. Now that’s incredible — meantime the Iraqi government has posted this document on its media website,” Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat, said.

He was referring to the Iraqi government-funded al-Sabah newspaper, whose Arabic version of the deal is also the source of the only known unofficial English translation, by the anti-war American Friends Service Committee.

“There is something bizarre about the text being disseminated to the Iraqi people and we are being told we cannot distribute the English-language version of the agreement,” said Rep. Howard Berman, a California Democrat who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

JOINT MILITARY CENTER

According to the unofficial version, the United States and Iraq are to set up a joint committee to oversee and coordinate all offensive U.S. military operations.

“All such military operations that are carried out pursuant to this agreement shall be conducted with the agreement of the government of Iraq. Such operations shall be fully coordinated with Iraqi authorities,” the translated document says.

Oona Hathaway, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said it appeared the agreement would give the joint committee operational control over U.S. military operations. If so, that would be “unprecedented and extremely unusual,” she said.

“The president can enter into agreements on his own but this agreement goes far beyond the president’s independent constitutional powers,” Hathaway said.

She said challenging the legality of the agreement was compounded by the vagueness of much of its wording. She said standard SOFAs are several hundred pages, but the Iraqi one was a little over 20 pages.

On the controversial issue of Iraqi criminal jurisdiction over U.S. soldiers, the unofficial English version says Iraq will have that right “when such crimes are committed outside agreed facilities and outside duty status.” It does not define “duty status.”

But any U.S. service members arrested or detained by Iraqi forces will be kept in U.S. custody pending trial, it says.

In the future, U.S. forces will not be able to arrest Iraqis without Iraqi approval, and those detained must be handed over to Iraqi authorities within 24 hours, requirements that could potentially complicate military operations, Michael Matheson, a former State Department legal adviser told the hearing.

(Editing by Vicki Allen)

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Hillary Clinton wavers over Barack Obama job as Bill’s finances are investigated

Friday, November 21st, 2008

By Tom Baldwin and Tim Reid | Hillary Clinton is hesitating over the chance to become Secretary of State while Barack Obama prises open some of the closely guarded secrets surrounding her husband’s foreign financial dealings.

Mr Obama’s offer to make Mrs Clinton his top diplomat has become clouded by mystery and mixed signals that threaten to overshadow his transition to the White House. Some sources close to her say that she remains keen to take the job. Others are indicating she is reluctant to give up her career as an elected politician with an independent voice.

A number of Mr Obama’s aides are known to harbour reservations about appointing his former rival for the Democratic nomination to such a senior post, where doubtless she would seek to bring in several of the advisers they clashed with hardest during the primary battle.

Their scepticism has been reinforced by the saga of recent days - punctuated by leaks and semi-public agonising - which contrasts sharply with the “no-drama Obama” approach that characterised his campaign.

Yesterday it emerged that Tom Daschle, the former Senate leader and prominent supporter of Mr Obama, had been lined up to be health secretary. On Tuesday Eric Holder was named as favourite to become America’s first black attorney-general.

Both of these expected appointments have been eclipsed by the Clintons. “Holder, in particular, is a big deal,” said one senior Democrat, “but he has been lost amid all the chatter about Hillary.”

The chief concern in Mr Obama’s Chicago headquarters is over the prospect of Bill Clinton, a former president with stellar international appeal and a tangled web of overseas donors, embarrassing the next administration or being seen as an alternative avenue for influence over US foreign policy.

The Clinton camp is keen to show that it is cooperating with the vetting process. Mr Clinton has agreed to release the names of several key benefactors to his charitable foundation, while also referring future activities and paid speeches to an ethics review.

Public records show that Mr Clinton has raised money from the Saudi Royal Family, Kuwait, Brunei and Qatar, as well as from a Chinese internet company monitoring Tibetan human rights activists.

Funding for his presidential library has been more secretive, with Mr Obama’s campaign pressing him repeatedly during the primaries to disclose the names of donors - thought to include several foreign governments - who had been promised anonymity by Mr Clinton.

In negotiations between teams of lawyers over recent days, the former president is said to have promised that he will step down from day-to-day control over his foundation while balking at suggestions that he submit speeches and business dealings to the White House for prior approval.

Mrs Clinton is said to be genuinely torn about whether to accept the post and has sought to damp down the speculation over the past five days by hinting that she might choose to remain in the Senate.

“If you are Secretary of State you work for the President. If you are a senator, you work for yourself and the people that elected you,” an adviser told The New York Times.

Rahm Emanuel, who has been appointed Mr Obama’s White House chief of staff, appeared on a business forum organised by The Wall Street Journal this week. “Hillary Clinton - Secretary of State?” he was asked. “Good question mark,” he replied.

Distant donors

— At least 10 per cent of the $165 million (£109 million) raised for Bill Clinton’s presidential library is believed to have come from foreign sources

— The biggest overseas donation was from the Saudi Royal Family, which reportedly gave $10 million

— Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Taiwan and Brunei are said to have given at least $1 million. The King of Morocco and the Chinese Government gave smaller, but substantial, sums

— At least three Saudi businessmen were substantial donors to the Clinton library. Abdullah al-Dabbagh, Nasser al-Rashid, and Walid Juffali all gave gifts of at least $1 million

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