Impartial service to the law

Go onto the BNP site and it will offer you two video clips. The first is of a Countryside Alliance demonstration in the Mall. It shows a genial crowd, standing around chatting, with a few policemen wandering around on the road.

Suddenly, there is a surge of movement and the camera catches a phalanx of police dressed in riot gear, moving purposefully into the picture. They line up and then groups form snatch squads, darting into the crowd to seize individuals, whom they drag into the road, with one at least being administered a vicious beating.

The other video shows last Friday's Muslim demonstration, the demonstrators displaying their murderous placards, the police positioned not to challenge the crowd but to protect it, and not a riot squad in sight.

The police, it seems, are becoming the most effective recruiters for the BNP . The Party is taking on new recruits so fast its administration is having difficulty coping and funds are pouring in. Reliable sources suggest that it has received over £100,000 donations in the last week, and the cheques and cash continue to arive.

The public profile of the Party has also been considerably enhanced by the prosecution of Nick Griffin and, today, inevitable comparisons are being made between the speed with which the authorities decided to drag Griffin into court, and the delays in bringing Abu Hamza ("The Hook") to justice.

Thus we find Dean Godson in The Times remarking that his imprisonment has come far too late. “The most amazing revelation from the Hook’s trial,” Godson writes,

…is that MI5 and the Metropolitan Police Special Branch effectively acquiesced in his years of largely untrammelled hate-mongering at the Finsbury Park mosque. His defending counsel, Edward Fitzgerald, QC, recalled the following exchange: "My sermon, is it a problem?" asked the one-eyed cleric. Came the reply from the Met: "You have freedom of speech. You don't have anything to worry about so long as we don't see blood on the streets."

Godson believes that this quite authentically reflect the spirit of the authorities' approach, "a policy of geopolitical Nimbyism", underlined on Newsnight by Anjem Choudary, spokesman for the extremist group al-Ghurabba, who defended the London demonstrators holding placards that called for the beheading anyone who insults Islam in wake of the cartoon controversy.

The article, which is well worth reading in full, then goes on to sketch out the various factor which have brought us to this situation, a laissez-faire attitude, which rightly earned the capital the sobriquet of "Londonistan".

But the theme is also taken up by Matthew d'Ancona in The Telegraph, under the heading, "Free speech? Labour cares more about the Muslim vote".

D’Ancona also makes use of the Newsnight transcript, this time citing Sayeeda Warsi, the Conservative vice-chairman, and a British-born Muslim of Pakistani background. Writes d’Ancona:

Unfazed by Mr Choudary's offensive claim that she was not entitled to speak because she was not wearing a veil, Ms Warsi spoke up for the very British determination not to fall for the frothing of the reactionary Right (we are all doomed) or to yield to the threats of Muslim extremists (you are all doomed). "I am confident," she said, "that in Britain the middle ground, the people who are prepared to engage in dialogue and live alongside each other with shared values and a sense of shared identity, that they will prevail." Firebrands like Mr Choudary, she said, had no place in multi-cultural Britain.

It takes a lot of courage for a Muslim woman to say such a thing, adds d’Ancona. Ms Warsi's intervention made the anodyne remarks of white male ministers seem all the more cowardly.

Warsi's intervention mirrors the statements made by other moderate Muslim leaders but this is not enough. Ministers have spent far too much time prancing about on a European stage, pontificating about global terrorism, and looking for "European solutions", neglecting their own back yard – where the murderous creed of Abu Hamza has been given free license. Now, unless they grasp these issues, the main beneficiary will be the BNP – to the detriment of the Muslim communities and the political process.

The first thing that must be done is to sort out a police force which seems to have lost its way. In this context, politicians might do well to remember Peel's nine principles of policing, framed in 1829, and in particular his injunction that, "Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law."

COMMENT THREAD

Make love not war!

Having opted out of the "Cartoon Wars", the EU Commission has decided instead to make babies.

That, at least, reports EU Politix is the plan of EU social affairs commissioner Vladimir Spidla, who wants to bolster Europe’s low birth rate by introducing measures to make it easier for women to have more children.

And with romance in mind, Spidla, a father of two, aims in March deliver a "concrete working programme" to increase the birth rate. But, if a "concrete working programme" is Spidla’s idea of romance, one wonders how he has managed to father any children at all.

Perhaps he should employ Nigel Farage as a consultant. Forum members might even feel inclined to help by submitting some slogans to help the Commission on its way… although the first person to offer the most obvious one.. along the lines of "Let's dig for Europe"... gets banned.

COMMENT THREAD

Losing it...

Looking at the EU stories up on Google, the first one we see is "WTO condemns EU over GMO moratorium". This is about the WTO ruling that the European Union and six member states had broken trade rules by barring entry to genetically modified crops and foods.

Then we get to the riveting subject of "EU looking at Net song royalties". European Union antitrust regulators, we are told, are investigating the European agencies that collect royalties for musicians from Internet sites, in parallel with other EU moves to open up the market for online music.

Only then do we get to the subject of the moment – the Cartoon Wars – but then all we are offered is: "EU joins UN, OIC in appealing for calm over cartoons". The European Union has joined the United Nations (UN) and the Organization of the Islamic Conference(OIC) on Tuesday appealing for restraint and calm over the Prophet Mohammad cartoons.

But then… wait for it… "'.eu' internet domain names open for business". Hundreds of thousands of businesses raced on Tuesday to snap up ".eu" internet domain names, with "sex.eu" taking the prize for the most sought-after address on the first day companies could apply.

And if that hasn't got your juices flowing, how about this: "Concerns over cigarette testing"? Scientists are calling for a review of cigarette tests, and say the tobacco industry uses a machine which gives misleadingly low results.

This is the great European Union which is going to dominate the 21st Century? Will anyone stay awake long enough?

COMMENT THREAD

Not Thinking but Drowning

As EU Referendum has been reacting to the "Cartoon Wars", pushing what one of our own forum members called "civilised Western values", North Jnr has been participating in a wide range of virtual discussions on popular forum sites, inhabited mainly by the "yoof" so sought-after by contemporary politicians.

This is his report from the front:


If there’s one thing that makes me quite nauseous it is the sycophantic droning of the middle aged (present company accepted) telling us all how we should look to our youth because the children are the future. If these people actually followed their own advice they’d realise exactly how deep in the cesspit we really are.

The phrase "Bread and Circuses" has been kicked around a lot of late. A tired cliché when it comes to social commentary I'll admit, and even more tiresome to modernise it to something like "Raves and Televisions". Sadly though, that is precisely where we’re at.

This week I've had armies of my peers and so-called friends queuing up to tell me I've been brainwashed by the right-wing newspapers (If only to God I could find any. Answers on a postcard please). For reasons of personal curiosity I've been busy extending the wider debate of EU Referendum to the music forums on the internet to discover that Britain is truly lost in the moral maze.

At one the time underground music scene was a hotbed of anti establishment political activity. Now I can find no other social group more in tune with establishment thinking. The yoof of today seem so fixated with the ill-doings of our colonial forefathers that they are prepared to give up the whole country to Islamo-fascism.

The recurrent sad irony is that every other post on these sites is in some way linking to human rights issues and freedom from oppression and yet when you highlight the biggest threat of all to our moral code and freedoms you become a racist, little Englander, "zenophobe" (sic). They can't even spell it!

It is so deeply engrained through decades of political correctness that analysis of reality is a cardinal sin and any attempt to even open a debate will be treated with contempt and censorship. All they can do is cherry pick the bits they are pre-programmed to wince at and gasp in horror as they dig out the first convenient politically correct label that leaps to mind, purely in the hopes that if they can marginalise the arguments with dogma they won't have to think about them. In effect, Nanny's done the thinking for them.

No matter how cold and stark the evidence, the gravity of recent issues does not sink in.

Here we have a religion with a virulent doctrine of oppression which deplores free speech, loathes democracy and declares holy war on our system. It also seeks to impose tolerance of its own practices from the back hills of Afghanistan and Pakistan upon us. Everything our sense of decency and fairness is fundamentally opposed to.

Coupled with this automatic denial of fact is the even more detestable social snobbery among these deadbeats. "Why don't you stop regurgitating the Daily Mail/The Sun/Daily Express", they cry. God forbid ones mind should be open enough to actually be influenced by media! Although it seems they have some rather lofty guesses as to what actually appears in the aforementioned newspapers. It would be cause for celebration if any of these papers reflected the true state of British politics apart from the day to day banalities and vacuosity.

"You're just spouting the drivel of the working classes", I'm told. Well, being a member of the working class and getting out of bed before lunchtime I can safely say that the working class is considerably better informed than either the hippies or the government. After all we are the ones who get out often enough to see the unfairness of our society on a daily basis. But we mustn't let the working mans opinion to rule us must we? That would be too much like er… democracy. So it's important to be fair and tolerant, so long as it's not to the working British public. It's got New Labour written all over it.

What concerns me also is the alarming tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater. No matter how concrete the evidence, the fact it is published in The Daily Telegraph or other such vessels is an instant excuse to dismiss it without actually reading it. While we may have cause to lament the lack of news in the Telegraph I'm hard pressed to deny that the little it does have is of a passable quality as to the purposes of the broader debate.

During all of this I'm told repeatedly that my ideals are harking back to a bygone age and that…

The problem with all wilfully ignorant right-wingers is that the idea of democracy and free press frightens them because it provides a method for breaking the whipped-up fear that is the only way they can gain or regain control over the populace.

This leads me to believe that our yoof have absolutely no idea what the word democracy even means or even where the right wing are coming from. They haven’t even thought about it because the term "right wing" is a pre-programmed dirty word. Not one of them will break ranks to understand it in fear of vilification. And here is how we are gripped by the tyranny of the right-on minority.

What I have learned from this exercise is that standing up for your convictions is social suicide. Breaking ranks to declare war on political Islam is in effect the signature on your own social death warrant. Who in their right mind would do that? Only a North methinks. This is how decent people are cowed into silence. Who wants to be known as a racist and a zealot?

Having been subjected to this for all of this year so far I am inclined to believe it's not a big loss generally, but you can't go raving on a Saturday night with the Bradford South UKIP Association, although it may actually do them some good.

Of course I may be a little young to be lamenting the youth of the day at the age of 27 but my generation is one that refuses to grow up, refuses to take sides and refuses to fight for what is theirs in fear of offending. Their inheritance will be squandered and they will become slaves to Sharia law. Post-colonial guilt fettered by good old fashioned British defeatism is our undoing.

I had hoped that reality would soon take a bite but at some time in the last decade that little minority became the majority through bone idleness and cowardice. This happened when our keyword of youth indoctrination changed from justice to tolerance.

Before we can bring the debate back in line with rationality we have to reverse this. We need youth to engage rather than mouth the platitudes of political correctness.

The problem is that in order to adequately explain one issue you have to tackle every issue and demonstrate its place in a wide philosophy. This means that at some point you will have to open up the debate to other areas where you meet the same ignorance and dogma. You then get tied up debating the fringe issues and diverted from the issue in hand. This is why we will lose every time.

And so what do I blame for this? Social narcotics. In effect drug culture has permeated the mainstream. The fluffiness of the ecstasy fuelled dance club on a Saturday night has become weekday policy for these people and it has spread throughout the culture like an untreatable cancer. Saturday night fever all week long. Drugs don't make you stupid but they do exacerbate the existing stupidity, and that we have plenty of.

Today I was rather startled to read their excuse…

After consuming a quantity of "blue halo" hallucinogenic mushrooms the other evening , I realised something.... The concept of "laziness" as a negative personality trait is an embodiment of capitalist ideology. Being lazy or "lazing" is to enter a state where one is neither producing or consuming. Sleeping all day is seen as "lazy" because when you are asleep, you are beyond the reach of evil multinationals and their sinister advertising campaigns.

So the notion of laziness was clearly dreamt up by nasty cigar-smoking men in pinstripe suits as a way of stigmatising people who don't succumb to their efforts to enslave the global population through a hierarchical system of debt and credit.

Therefore: the most effective form of political protest is to stay in bed.

Need I deconstruct this?

So while the mainstream parties and the wider electorate scratch their heads as to why people no longer engage in democracy perhaps they should start by explaining firstly what it even is and secondly re-assessing their apparent tolerance to social narcotics because the debate among the deadbeat left is bogged down in sentimentality and fluffiness.

COMMENT THREAD

A fundamental loss of faith

It is instructive to note that the main initiative to come from the EU commission over the last few days has been plans for the compulsory introduction of child-proof lighters - highlighted by EU Observer as "Brussels to fight for…"

The commission forecasts that its stricter rules would "save at least 20
lives" although one cannot help but feel, in view of their incendiary proclivities, making Muslim-proof lighters might save even more. Perhaps they (the lighters) should bear an image of Mohammed, in the knowledge that no devout Muslim could possibly use them. Even a label on the bottom, rather than the top, instructing users to "press here", might confuse enough of them to make the difference.

Away from such profound speculation, the importance of this "high level" initiative contrasts starkly with the complaints from Danish politicians, also retailed by EU Observer, over the lack of EU support in the country's current crisis over the Mohammed cartoons. There is a growing disappointment, says EU Observer, with the EU for its lack of support for the country at the centre of the conflict.

"This is a wider European problem and not just a Danish problem. I think it is strange the EU has been so absent in this discussion," says Holger K. Nielsen from the Socialist People's Party (SF). "They all sit on their hands and hope it will just go away. But it would be useful if the EU clearly and in a united way entered the fray," said Lars Erslev Andersen, one of the country's top Middle East experts.

In a round-up of events from Reuters today, it is clear that “it” will not go away, the agency reporting that the "wave of Muslim fury" is spreading across the Middle East and Asia.

That assertion may be taken with a pinch of salt, as the main player today has been Iran, where demonstrations are about as spontaneous as one of Tony Blair's smiles. There, an attack was mounted on the Danish embassy in Tehran, with petrol bombs and stones thrown for a second day.

There has been sporadic violence in Afghanistan, where police opened fire on a crowd which tried to storm a NATO peacekeeping base housing Norwegian troops, while across the border in Pakistan, 10,000 people rallied. At least six people have now been killed in protests in Somalia, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Volatile rallies have swept across Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Iraqi agitators have called for the seizure and killing of Danes and the boycott of Danish goods, while further protests were orchestrated in Egypt, Yemen, Djibouti, Gaza and Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, Croatia became the latest country where a newspaper printed the cartoons.

The inertia on the part of the EU, however, now begins to look more than a sudden loss of nerve and begins to suggest the re-emergence of in-built fault lines.

One is again reminded of the response of the then EEC to the Yom Kippur crisis in 1973, when the likes of Monnet called for a united European response and each of the member states slunk off to do their own deals with the Sheikhs. This time too, the member states are keeping their heads down, avoiding anything that might sound like a corporate statement.

The parallels, however, can only go so far to explain the extraordinarily low visibility of the EU. Another factor must be the lack of leadership, not only from the Austrian presidency but also from the commission. Although, strictly speaking, foreign affairs lies within the domain of the European Council and the General Affairs Committee of the Council of Ministers, one cannot imagine that Jacques Delores would have been silent in the issue. But so silent is Barroso that he is invisible.

In other respects though, this is chickens come home to roost. The European Union prides itself in its commitment to freedom of speech, while also espousing the Arab/Islamist cause. Now, it finds itself torn between both, struggling with the conflict that arises from the demands of its political protégés.

But, if there is a philosophical conflict, there also seems to be an institutional failure. Following the Madrid bombings and its "Hague Programme" agenda, the EU has made combating terrorism a high-profile issue, an example of the unility of the "European dimension".

As the Danes are well aware, and even we have worked out, these "Cartoon Wars" are but one face of the Islamo-fascist assault on the West, fully orchestrated by terrorists sympathisers. Yet, if Europol is aware of this, one wonders whether it has conveyed that information to member states and the EU commission and, if it has, one cannot but help be puzzled as to why it has not informed the response.

Perhaps that is the real reason for the EU's inertia. Aware of how high the stakes really are, the Community institution feel it safer to cower in relative obscurity behind the member states, rather than confront the issues and expose itself to the full wrath of the Islamists.

If this is the case, what we have is a complete reversal of the Yom Kippur scenario. Then, the putative "superstate" demonstrated its immaturity by failing to craft a European response. Now, the heirs to those institutions have also displayed that immaturity, but this time by avoiding a European solution. In many ways – for the survival of the EU - this is an altogether more serious failing. Faced with Islamic fundamentalism, the EU is undergoing a fundamental loss of faith in its own "project". Can its collapse be far behind?

COMMENT THREAD

The truth is stranger than fiction… sometimes

When we published this picture(swiped from Drinking from Home) - the explanation for which is detailed here - little did we know that it was going to be reproduced on Coppers Blog, only to invite the following comment:

The picture is actually quite funny because I was there at the demo on Saturday in full riot gear, waiting for it to go pear shaped. We actually had to blue light it to Parliament Square because 3000 New Zealanders had descended to celebrate the Haka which was being performed in the square. So there was I and the rest of my serial, in full riot gear, directing traffic so Kiwis wouldn't get run over, whilst 2000 angry protestors were around the corner shouting at the Dutch (Danish actually) Embassy's front door.

From further comments, something tells me that our boys in blue are not treating insults to horses with the gravity that the Oxford police obviously think they deserve, hence one commenter asking: "Did anyone check whether the horse was gay?? The horse may have been and therefore not offended!!"

The stern reply was: "It doesn't matter if the horse was offended or not, as long as any person perceives there to have been a hate crime towards it: 'Homophobic Incident' - Any incident which is perceived to be homophobic by the victim or any other person. The horse will be provided with a duty Vet, and victim support, but if it was gay, it might decline."

So now you know.

COMMENT THREAD

The sheep may safely graze

"Bush scraps Rolls-Royce deal despite Blair pleas" headlines The Times today, flagging up a story which has been doing the rounds since early January, and which has been covered fully in this blog.

This is the "hare" that the second engine for the Joint Strike Fighter is to be axed, as story that is also run in The Telegraph, as "US snubs Blair over Rolls-Royce engine deal" and in The Independent, under a similar heading: "Bush snubs Rolls over fighter engine".

The story was also run by The Business over the weekend, this time under the headline: "Blair failed to save £1bn Rolls-Royce US contract".

Such repetition tends to confer a degree of authenticity to the reports. After all, the can't all be wrong, can they? But, indeed, they can and they are. This is a classic example of the sheep-like mentality of the media, when all the witless hacks huddle together for comfort and run with the same story, in the knowledge that, if it is wrong, then no-one is out on their own.

It also demonstrates a woeful ignorance on the part of the British media as to how the US political system works – rehearsed in detail in this posting and its pathetic parochialism. This is not primarily a Roll-Royce contract – the major contractor is in fact the US defence giant, General Electric.

But, to get beyond the fluff, you have to read the "small print" in the Reuters’ report, on which the dead-tree sellers based their own story. The report cites GE spokeswoman Deb Case, who says her company was continuing to work on the programme and had an engine test scheduled soon. "It's not a final decision," she says, of the president's budget proposal, noting that Congress controlled the budget.

Richard Aboulafia of the Virginia-based Teal Group is also cited, saying the Pentagon may have targeted JSF in the hope that Congress would reverse the cut. He predicted funding would be reinstated.

And ain't that the truth. As we have pointed out before, this is the Pentagon playing games, putting up a sacrificial "saving" which they do not want and they know Congress will not approve, a ploy to keep their larger budget intact. Anyone who has worked in government has played that game - it is one of the oldest in the book.

The worrying thing is that, here it is so transparently obvious that the MSM really have lost the plot. How can you possibly trust it with other issues, even when the background is not so transparent?

COMMENT THREAD

About bloody time!

The Sun’s headline says it all. THREE days after Omar Khayam strutted his stuff outside the Danish embassy wearing a suicide bomber's vest, the Bedfordshire police have finally caught up with him and carted him off to nick where he clearly belongs.

Far from the injured innocent, this little shit is a convicted drug-dealer, out on license after serving part of a six-year sentence for dealing in crack cocaine. A man who spent time in jail with him told The Sun that Khayam was known by his street nickname "Skinner", and that he was well known to dealers and users in Bedford.

Of course, as The Sun rightly observes, Khayam’s crack-dealing past makes his claim to be defending Islam a sham. His Muslim faith strictly forbids taking or selling drugs — warning that offenders will be punished by God. Holy book the Koran says drugs are "the work of Satan". And selling drugs carries the death penalty in some Muslim countries.

What then does one make of the carefully-staged apology given by this low-life scum yesterday, flanked by the chairman of his local mosque and gullible but vote-hungry Patrick Hall, MP for Bedford

"I found the pictures deeply offensive as a Muslim and I felt the Danish newspaper had been provocative and controversial, deeply offensive and insensitive,” he told the assembled media. "Just because we have the right of free speech and a free media, it does not mean we may say and do as we please and not take into account the effect it will have on others,” he added, continuing:

But by me dressing the way I did, I did just that, exactly the same as the Danish newspaper, if not worse. My method of protest has offended many people, especially the families of the victims of the July bombings. This was not my intention.

What happened in July was a tragedy and un-Islamic. I do not condone these murderous acts, do not support terrorism or extremism and would like to apologise unreservedly and wholeheartedly to the families of the victims. I understand it was wrong, unjustified and insensitive of me to protest in this way.

Apparently, Plod Blair's finest were in the vicinity as Khayam spouted this self-justifying garbage, but did not interview this insult to the Muslim faith. They say that decision to arrest him was made with local police, "in recognition of their policing needs".

Meanwhile, that most incredible prat, Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has denounced the Danish cartoons as a "quite deliberate racist attack" on the Muslim community. Yea… right on Bish!

COMMENT THREAD

Lebanon breaks ranks

The Washington Times reports that while the American government (or the State Department, which is not necessarily the same thing) has been calling on its Middle Eastern “allies”, including Saudi Arabia, to calm the furore supposedly caused by those cartoons, Lebanon has taken matters into its own hands.

“Lebanon's dominant coalition accused Syria yesterday of deliberately fomenting violent protests over cartoons about the Islamic prophet Muhammad…”

“In Beirut, the anti-Syrian coalition that dominates the Lebanese government apologized to Denmark for the burning of its consulate on Sunday, while charging that Syrian intelligence agents had sparked the trouble to destabilize their country.

"The acts of sabotage that happened in [Sunday's] protest are the start of a coup d'etat by the Syrian regime that aims to transform Lebanon into another Iraq," said the coalition. It specifically blamed Syrian officers led by military intelligence chief Asef Shawkat, brother-in-law of President Bashar Assad.”

Not particularly surprising in view of what we have been trying to piece together on this blog (and we are not alone in this) but heartening.

For one thing it reminds us that there are many problems in the Middle East, not just the Israeli-Palestinian one that is used for any and every act of violence and oppression.

Secondly, it shows that the Lebanese government is prepared to put up some kind of a fight against Baby Assad and his ambitions. He, on the other hand, has been meeting with Muqtada al-Sadr, who has been organizing protests over the cartoons in Iraq.

Meanwhile State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that Assistant Secretary of State David Welch called in the Syrian ambassador over the week-end to protest against the burning of the Danish embassy, adding:

“Syria is a country where protests don't just occur spontaneously, certainly not of this sort, not without the knowledge and support of the government.”

Not all the news from the front is good. According to an English-language Swedish news service, a text book that had shown mediaeval Islamic pictures of Mohammed have been withdrawn.

First a school sent them back, claiming that they were too old (the books not the illustrations) and they had better material now, then the publisher, Liber, decided to stop their sale.

“Abd al Haqq Kielan, a spokesman for Sweden's Muslims, said he found it "painful" that pictures of the prophet were still used in education. He added that he was dissatisfied that the people responsible for Swedish teaching books had not shown consideration.

However, he said that it was a consolation that the pictures in the book were not prejudiced or defamatory.”

Well, how nice. And, presumably, he did not notice that they were Islamic pictures. The Swedish publishers, having made the announcement, have declined to comment.

COMMENT THREAD

A politically motivated crisis

Simon Heffer, in today's Telegraph, warns that the police must take note of the internationally co-ordinated and highly opportunistic nature of the "Cartoon Wars", which clearly "took some months to arrange".

How far, he asks, do our security services have the measure of those who were waving their placards of death last week, and how much do they know of what else they do to advance militant Islam?

One would hope, in this instance, that they were in close tough with their Danish colleagues, as details are beginning to emerge of the sinister role played Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, better known as Abu Laban, who is given detailed treatment in National Review.

The long article in NR points out that the anti-Danish emotional wave coming from the Muslim world is indeed far from a spontaneous reaction. It has been cunningly orchestrated by Abu Laban who has been building an Islamist base in Denmark for the last 15 years.

What is specially significant about this 60-year-old Palestinian imam is that, until 1990 when he fled Egypt, he was translator and assistant to a key figure in the terrorist group Gamaa Islamiya. Directly and indirectly, through this organisation, Laban has had direct contact with senior figures in what is now al Qaeda, including Ayman al-Zawahari, Bin Laden's right-hand man.

Of the more notorious activities he has conducted from his new base in Copenhagen – where he has resided since 1993 - he has worked as translator and distributor of the magazine Al Murabitoun. This glorified the killing of Western tourists in Egypt and urged the annihilation of Jews in Palestine. Laban has also worked closely with Said Mansour, a Moroccan man currently charged in Denmark with running a publishing house that distributed jihadi material.

Laban is the man who, in December 2004, as leader of the Islamic Community in Denmark, called on Muslims to oppose the government's immigration policies and told his followers that they should do their utmost to oust the government in the general election.

A highly political man, therefore, with a declared hostility to the current government, it was also he who sought to internationalise the cartoons issue, leading a delegation to a number of Muslim countries, where he met with senior officials and prominent scholars. These included Arab League Secretary Amr Moussa, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Mohammad Sayyed Tantawi, and Sunni Islam's most influential scholar, Yusuf al Qaradawi.

To them he showed not only the cartoons from Jyllands-Posten but others that had never been published by any Danish publication. The new cartoons were far more offensive, showing the Prophet Mohammed with a pig face and having sexual intercourse with a dog. That, with other provocative material, inspired Qaradawi, the real brains behind the Muslim Brotherhood's international network and a key opinion maker in the Middle East, to attack Denmark directly. This led to the Saudi boycott which was one of the main triggers of the current crisis.

Then, according to one of our Swedish forum members - relying on untranslated Scandinavian material - around 10 January there was yet again an appalling tragedy among the pilgrims to Mecca - some 250-300 persons crushed to death in a stampede. It is around this time the e-mails and sms started to flow, urging Saudi Arabia to boycott Denmark - and Norway, which a week earlier had republished the cartoons.

On 26 January the Saudi ambassador was recalled from Copenhagen and, it is not beyond one's imagination to think that the Saudis used the Cartoon War to divert public attention from their tragedy.

Although, perhaps, by the end of January, the Saudis thought they had gone far enough, by then the Palastine Authority elections showed Hamas as the winner, outflanking the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade of the defeated Fatah movement. The day after Hamas's win they demanded a boycott of the unbelievers who had blasphemed the Prophet, and occupied the EU office in Gaza.

In Syria President Assad probably saw in the same issue a way out of his self-inflicted problems, hence the demonstrations and torching of a few embassies on Saturday, plus the bus service for those pleasant bar-b-q-ers to Beirut for an encore on Sunday. Obviously, nothing would suit Assad better than a new conflict along religious lines in Lebanon. Iran, equally, has its own agenda, as do remnants of the Taliban in Afghanistan, for which the cartoons have been used as a stick to beat the Americans.

The point that emerges from all this is that the "Cartoon Wars" have less to do with Islamic sensibilities than they do political manoeuvring by a wide-ranging amalgam of Islamist groups, each for their own particular advantages – including London group where, as we are informed, Gamaa Islamiya is known to operate.

Anyone who thinks this is about freedom of speech, therefore, or about "multiculturalism" or community relations, is sadly deluded. We are being embroiled in a vicious, unprincipled, politically-motivated campaign aimed at securing advantage for the militant Islamic fringe.

No wonder Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, of the Muslim Parliament of Britain, Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, and Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the MCB's general secretary, are so quick and keen to speak out against the appalling behaviour of the extremists during the London demonstrations. Now is the time to listen to them, rather than the siren voices who urge concessions and a "softly-softly" approach.

The broader Muslim community in Britain, as much as anyone else, is the victim of this sinister manipulation and the best thing for all of us, would be for the authorities to crack down hard on those whose objectives are to sow discontent and hatred.

COMMENT THREAD

Arab political "humour" knows no bounds

The Jerusalem Post, reports The Guardian website today became the first Israeli newspaper to publish the controversial Danish cartoons

However, the "cartoons" turn out to be a facsimile of the original page from the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten (illustrated), in which all twelve cartoons were published, on 30 September. The image is one column wide and about two-and-a-half inches high, on page six of today's paper, in an article about the weekend protests against the cartoons across the Islamic world

In an editorial accompanying the column, entitled "The Prophet's Honor", the paper contrasts the outcry that the Danish cartoons are causing in the Muslim world, while "Arab cartoonists routinely demonise Jews as global conspirators, corrupters of society and blood-suckers".

"Arab political 'humour' knows no bounds," it says. "A cartoon in Qatar's Al-Watan depicted prime minister Ariel Sharon drinking from a goblet of Palestinian children's blood. Another, in the Egyptian Al-Ahram al-Arabi, showed him jackbooted, bloody-handed and crushing peace."

The editorial adds: "There are those who would argue that the controversy does not reflect a clash of civilisations. Yet it is precisely this persistent refusal to acknowledge the obvious that weakens the cause of tolerance and liberty. Must 'understanding' invariably result in the abdication of western values?"

"If anyone wants to appreciate why the west views with such suspicion the weapons programmes of Muslim states such as Iran, they need look no further than the intolerance Muslim regimes exhibit to these cartoons, and what this portends."

"No one wants to add fuel to the fire. Mobs are more easily placated than reasoned with. But once this controversy passes it will be valuable to determine just who exploited the flap to foment anti-Western outrage, and to inquire what 'moderate' Muslim voices said."

"Globalism demands that points of contact between Islam and the west be multi-cultural havens, not flashpoints. For that to happen, tolerance must be a two-way street."

Israel, incidentally, now joins Ukraine, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Hungary, New Zealand, Poland, the United States, Japan, Norway, Malaysia and Australia. Two Romanian newspapers today published pictures of the pages of foreign newspapers showing the cartoons. Noticeably absent from this list, of course, is the United Kingdom.

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The EU whimps out

UPDATED

Although several European leaders have reacted individually to the events in the Middle East, noticeably absent is any sense of crisis in the European Union hierarchy itself, with the Austrian presidency having declined to call a meeting of member states to discuss developments.

Strangely from an organisation which devoted untold hours to tense negotiations on VAT rates for hairdressers, this issue it seems is not one that it is prepared to tackle head-on.

According to EU Observer, an Austrian presidency spokesman simply confined himself to the anodyne statement: "For the moment we have no plans to call for a crisis meeting. If we call upon the ministers of the 25 member states, we would like to see something coming out of it."

A half-hearted statement has come from the EU commission, which stunned to world with the statement that is was "aware that the cartoons ... have aggrieved Muslims across the world." This is from spokesman Johannes Laitenberg, who adds that, "no grievance, perceived or real, justifies acts of violence such as perpetrated on the weekend," saying that the EU condemned the weekend violence "in the strongest possible terms."

The same lack of resolution is mirrored in the one and only statement from Javier Solana - made via his spokeswoman - who, unbelievably, condemned against Europeans on the grounds that it could "only harm the image of peaceful Islam."

In an attempt to maintain that "image of peaceful Islam", meanwhile, protesters in Afghanistan today went on the rampage, leaving at least four dead after security forces opened fire.

The worst of the violence was outside Bagram, the main US base in Afghanistan, with Afghan police firing on some 2,000 protesters as they tried to break into the heavily guarded facility.

In Kabul, about 200 protesters tried to break down the gate of the Danish government's diplomatic mission office but failed. The protesters then threw stones at the mission and beat some officers guarding it, as well some guards at a nearby house used by Belgian diplomats. Police later used batons and rifle butts to disperse demonstrators walking toward the presidential palace.

Ironically, the protestors were not content with their usual chants of, "Long live Islam! We are Muslims! We don't let anyone insult our prophet!", adding to the litany with "Down with America!" and slogans against the Afghan and US presidents.

In Tehran, about 200 people pelted the embassy of Austria, current holders of the EU president, with petrol bombs and stones. The mission did not catch fire and police prevented people from storming it. Clearly officially sanctioned, the target of the EU presidency would have been unkown to all but a very few. Following that, hand grenades and cocktail Molotovs were hurled at the Danish embassy in Tehran as several hundred radical Islamists attacked the compound this evening. The protestors, members of the Bassij – an offshoot of the Revolutionary Guards – demanded that the Danish ambassador be expelled from Iran.

Elsewhere, in Somalia, a 14-year-old boy was killed and several others were injured after protesters attacked the police. Several thousand students massed peacefully in Cairo on the campus of al-Azhar University, the oldest and most important seat of Sunni Muslim learning in the world, and, the main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir came to a standstill as shops, businesses and schools shut down for a day to protest.

In the Indian capital of New Delhi, riot police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse hundreds of students from Jamia University, who chanted slogans and burned a Danish flag while, 500 Indonesian protestors rallied in front of the Danish embassy in Jakarta.

Palestinian police in Gaza City used batons to beat back stone-throwing protesters who gathered outside the European Commission building. About 200 protesters waved green flags symbolizing the Islamic Hamas movement and the yellow flags of the secular Fatah Party.

Of course, none of this is so important as to tear the EU away from its own internal preoccupations. Thus, in the wake of the hairdressing crisis, does even the Financial Times report: "EU looks to be grinding to a halt".

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Who else is involved?

To stiffen the sinews and add purpose to my existence I have been re-reading John Buchan’s novels. (Actually, they often make one feel tired and inadequate, but let that pass.)

Aficionados will recall that most of the novels (and my own favourites are the Hannay and Leithen series) have somewhere near the beginning a discussion of a random set of events that somehow fit together into a sinister pattern. Almost always behind those events there is a person or a group of people manipulating those who think they are acting on their own.

The reason these plots do not become stupid and tiresome conspiracy theories is because Buchan, a man who knew politics from personal experience, always understood that there were many other unforeseeable events happening as well and even the smartest conspirators could not count on everything to develop as planned.

I am not for one moment suggesting that there is a world-wide conspiracy behind the War of the Danish Cartoons (though I have no doubt some of our readers will think of one or two or a hundred). But clearly there are different forces at work.

Demonstrations of this kind, whether it is a march with prepared placards from the Regent’s Park mosque to the Danish Embassy (a long way, incidentally, in London) or crowds bused from all parts of Beirut and outside it to burn the embassies, have to be planned, financed and organized. Spontaneous demonstrations always fizzle out.

So, let’s go through some of the groups and people who might be doing some organizing. No question but Iran is dabbling in it somewhere, though interestingly, the mullahs opted not to have demonstrations in the country itself. This could be a waiting game – we can do it but choose not to – or it could be the result of some unease about getting crowds together and firing them up. Who knows against whom they might turn next?

Baby Assad got his lot together, first in Damascus then in Beirut (yes, I know the Syrians have formally left Lebanon but their agents go marching on). Could it be yet another effort on his part to delay his coming demise (political or otherwise)? Another civil war in Lebanon as one of our readers has posited on the forum would be enormously useful to him.

Riots in Gaza – we have talked about those before. Apart from that, demonstrations in some countries like Pakistan and Indonesia but not very big ones. Saudi Arabia might be promoting the boycott but there are no riots in the country itself. Nor in various other Arab countries, despite the growing need to turn attention away from such enormous events as the annual stampede during the Hajj to Mecca, which always seems to result in several hundred dead and the more recent ferry disaster in the Red Sea. Over 1,000 people seem to have died while the captain and officers managed to escape.

Outside the Middle East, as we have pointed out, in one place only: London, which is interesting as Britain has not been in the vanguard of defiance or support for free speech. Are we now seen as a soft touch by all those groups of Islamicists? Is the name Londonistan better deserved than we realized? I ask merely because I want to know.

There is, however, another aspect to the London demonstrations that has not, so far as I know, been noted by anyone. The placards, presumably handed out at the Mosque on Friday and carried down to Sloane Street, all seem to have been written by one hand.

That would not be a problem by itself. But I suggest close attention to what is said on them. These are not placards written by people whose second language is English, who are not educated or unable to put sentences together and can only rage impotently.

The words, the slogans, the sentences are all carefully written by someone who is English or has lived here all his life (I doubt it was a woman) and someone well educated. Words like “annihilate”, “behead”, “holocaust”, “massacre” are not easy to spell.

Slogans like “Europe is the cancer, Islam is the answer” do not come from the Koran or the teachings of the average imam. Or what of this: “Europe you will pay, Fantastic 4 are on their way”?

One of the interesting aspects of the big demo organized by the Coalition Against the War was the complete uniformity of the placards and notices carried and stuck on lamp-posts. Furthermore, they were exactly like the placards and notices of the Socialist Workers’ Party. It took some journalists a little time to find the various connections but eventually they did. However, one look at those posters would have given them the clue.

I am not suggesting that there is a Black Stone or a Powerhouse behind all this, much less a brilliant German agent of the kind who gives Hannay a bad time in two out of the five novels.

But I would strongly suggest that some English organization (or just an individual, though that is unlikely) has become involved in the London protests, seeing in them a possibility for mayhem.

There is, of course, another explanation and that would fit in with Buchan’s plots. There may be a maverick somewhere in the various intelligence and security services, who, tired of official inaction in the face of great danger, has decided to provoke public opinion, leaving the politicians and guardians of the law (stop laughing at the back) with no choice but to act. (We wish.)

That may be a daydream but it is a very pleasant one. Sadly, I think the first explanation may be nearer the truth. But I am guessing.

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A defining moment

"Has Police Hate Crime Unit gone deaf?": a good question from one source this morning and one which, in various ways, virtually all the newspapers are asking as they catch up with public sentiment and put precisely the question we asked on Saturday morning. This source continues:

A demonstration where Muslim extremists carried banners inciting murder – whilst Metropolitan Police stood by and did nothing. In fact, despite the clear and blatant law breaking the hundreds of Metropolitan Police officers present were clearly under orders not to arrest anyone – despite feelings to the contrary by many a good copper on duty!

Another comment puts precisely the feeling of undoubtedly millions of ordinary British people – Muslims and Christians alike:

…public order and confidence require stronger recognition that limits of acceptable protest and public discourse have been crossed. White racists are rightly arrested and charged for their hate campaigns. Muslim fanatics have to face similar severity for their no less repulsive actions. Ours is a tolerant way of life; we must be robust in defending it against its enemies.

Indicative of just how far the Metropolitan Police hierarchy have departed from the common norms of decency and tolerance, the two pieces quoted – indistinguishable in tone – are respectively from the British National Party and the Guardian leader.

Such is the growing outrage that even The Daily Mail manages to sound moderate and mainstream, its story leading with: "British Muslims ask: Why no arrests?"

The paper points out that moderate Muslims are leading demands for police to explain why no arrests were made from a hate-filled mob threatening murder and glorifying the July 7 attacks. Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, of the Muslim Parliament of Britain, demanded action from the police. He said the demonstrators were "trying to incite others and to make criminal acts legitimate. The time has come to say enough is enough".

Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "It seems to us some of their slogans were designed to incite violence and even to incite murder. The Muslim community will have no sympathy whatsoever for these individuals."

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the MCB's general secretary, said he was "disgusted utterly" by some of the placards on show, and Labour MP Shahid Malik, who is on the Home Affairs Select Committee, revealed that he wrote to Sir Ian Blair, head of the Metropolitan Police, on Friday calling for prosecutions. He said: "No matter how much offence cartoons may or may not cause, it can never justify violence."

The Guardian's lead story has No 10 criticising "unacceptable" cartoon protesters, with a statement that added: "The police should have our full support in any actions they may wish to take." You wish… What actions?

Even the Independent, which can’t quite bring itself to run an editorial, covers the controversy with a headline quote, stating "Police must bear down on extremist protesters", retailing that the some-time darling of the Left, Peter Hain has said that police should come down "heavily" on anti-cartoon protesters who broke the law. Hain has said the actions of some Muslims in London at the weekend had been "completely unacceptable and intolerable".

The Times presents an unwarranted note of optimism, claiming that "militants face arrest over July 7 placards", stating that "leaders of Muslim protests who threatened more terror attacks on Britain are to face questioning by police after a weekend of complaints over chants and placards praising the July 7 suicide bombers," not perhaps realising that many of the bearers of the more inflammatory placards had their faces concealed.

We do learn, however, that the man who made one of the most provocative protests - a demonstrator dressed as a suicide bomber, wearing a fake explosive belt - was "spoken to" by police on the day, but - can you believe this? -they did not take his name and address.

It is The Sun that identifies the man as Omar Khayam, 22, who has vowed "I would be prepared to wear that jacket again." The Sun calls him a "twisted" suicide bomber. But "amazingly" Khayam avers: "I've done nothing wrong," adding: "I wasn't trying to appear like a terrorist at all."

That is not how The Mail sees it. Its leader, headed, "police, protest and political correctness" notes that "the image was profoundly shocking. A young Muslim rigged out as a suicide bomber parades in London, a city which six months ago saw 52 innocent people murdered by real suicide bombers."

"Inflammatory?" it continues: "It could hardly be more so. An incitement to violence? Given the accompanying placards urging murder and mayhem, potentially… Yet the Metropolitan Police refused to intervene in this hate-filled protest."

Finally, in the print edition of The Telegraph (but not online), the headline reads: "Arrest pedlars of hate, police urged", with an editorial , echoing our own piece, noting:

We live in a country where you can be arrested for reciting the names of dead soldiers at the Cenotaph, heckling at a Labour Party conference or making slighting remarks about Osama bin Laden. We live in a country where a pensioner can be charged with "racially aggravated criminal damage" for scrawling "free speech for England" on a condemned wall.

It then makes the obvious point about the failure of the Plods to act, asking: "Might there be a connection between this cowardice and the contempt some Muslims feel for us?"

An answer is not needed. This is the defining point for us as a nation. Either we are a bunch of timorous whimps, who carry tolerance to the point of craven appeasement, or we are a country which has certain standards and values, which is determined to stand up for them.

So far, our establishment, and especially the police, has not risen to the challenge. But how the "great and the good" act in the next 48 hours will very much define whether we, the people, take matters into our own hands. The message is simple – lead or be trampled underfoot.

COMMENT THREAD

An interesting development

We have all heard about the fake cartoons that were distributed in the Middle East. These were considerably more offensive than the original ones and my guess is that many of the rioters only ever saw those fakes (if, indeed, they saw anything at all).

The story has developed. The fake cartoons were taken by the Danish imams, who, led by Imam Ahmad Abu Laban, a man who has expressed sympathy with terrorists, toured the Middle Eastern countries in December.

As Jonathon Hunt of Fox News puts it:

“The Imam and others toured the Middle East showing the cartoons but adding three more new ones that were far more offensive than anything the paper published. He (Imam Ahmad Abu Laban) told us they were from threatening letters but promising to give us copies of those letters, he never did.”

And the purpose of this interesting idea of diplomatic negotiations? To force Western Europe to create a new set of rules for itself. Could those rules be Sharia Law? Not to be excluded, surely.

The American Thinker agrees:

“In other words, this was indeed a campaign, planned by important members of the Islamic world’s power structure, intended to force Denmark to comply with Sharia requirements. A new norm, that a western nation would conform to Sharia regardless of its free exression tradition, would be on the way to being established.”

And, of course, this would explain what was puzzling many, including us on this blog: the timing of the outburst. Those cartoons were published in September. Why has the violent protest erupted now?

What Arab sympathisers are reluctant to point out, however, is the torrent of anti-Semitic and anti-American filth that is flowing off the pens Middle East cartoonists. On the other hand, this one, illustrated above, offers its own commentary on this selective myopia.

COMMENT THREAD

And now for something completely different

Notwithstanding the overwhelming importance of the War of the Danish Cartoons, other aspects of life and activity must go on. One of my forthcoming activities is a talk I shall be giving to the Society for Individual Freedom on Tuesday, February 7 at 6.30 pm in the upstairs room of the Westminster Arms in Storey’s Gate, London SW1 (for those misguided souls who might want to attend).

My subject will be “Out of the EU into the Anglosphere?”. As it was pointed out by a person close to me, spheres are the theme of my talks this year. In Washington I talked to the Hudson Institute on “America, Europe and the blogosphere” (yes, yes, I know I have not written the meeting up) and now this.

At various times the theme of the Anglosphere cropped up on this blog and it is one that needs to be covered in greater detail, though, I am glad to say there is a group-blog, Albion’s Seedling, that is dedicated to the theme.

Very briefly, this relatively new political idea is based on the notion that certain countries share similar political, constitutional, legal and economic ideas and these countries make up a loose network, called the Anglosphere.

The ideas come from England and it was the historian Alan Macfarlane, who first showed in The Origins of English Individualism that mediaeval England could not be described as a classic peasant society, as property appeared to be owned individually rather than by family to a far greater extent than it had been understood before that.

Other aspects of Anglospheric thinking are (and much of this is theory and aspiration rather than practice) small government, individual freedom, a legal basis of common law and a very strong sense of property and legality.

Anglospherism is neither the rather racist Anglo-Saxonism of the early twentieth century nor the moribund Commonwealth revived. It is based on ideas about the past and the future and a network or coalitions of the willing made possible by modern technology.

There are other aspects of peculiarly English ideas, which are responsible for the stupendous leap forward humanity took in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Some of these I am still mulling over.

For instance, it may be the basic distrust of the state that makes it so peculiarly inefficient, as shown by its behaviour in the twentieth century. It is fair to say that no country’s economy can survive control by the state but nothing run by the state in the Anglospheric countries seems to function: not welfare, not education, not even transport. Whether this is good or bad is irrelevant. It appears to be the pattern.

Another aspect of the Anglospheric peculiarity or exceptionalism occurred to me a while ago (before the actual theory came my way) when Tate Britain had an exhibition of pre-Reformation art. It was a very limited and badly curated exhibition, whose main aim seem to prove that the Reformation, having destroyed much of Catholic art (true) then proceeded to destroy English culture by separating it from the Continent (manifestly rubbish).

What did occur to me as I was reading the rather pathetic excuse for art history was that there was clearly a continuity in English culture through the Reformation. (Readers are welcome to shoot down these tentative speculations.)

After all, do we ever hear of English artists before the sixteenth century? There were many on the Continent by this time, particularly in Italy. But we do hear of writers and poets, books published, even the first cookery book under Richard II. Could it be that English culture tended to the literary even before the Reformation.

Interestingly, the exhibition managed to disprove some of its own ideas. It seems that the great achievement of English art and sculpture before and after the Reformation was the family vault in the various churches. There is, one suspects, a continuing emphasis on individual and family here, that is not to be disregarded.

Enough of the past. What of the future? Many of the ideas that will probably be of importance in the twenty-first century are of the Anglosphere. Will Britain, the country where these ideas originated all those centuries ago, be part of it? The reason there is a question mark at the end of the title is simple: I have the most serious doubts about it. We have moved too far away from the ideas of freedom, individuality, small government and common law. It will be the most appalling tragedy if we miss this wonderful opportunity.

COMMENT THREAD

A loss of moral equilibrium

Plod Blair, aka, Sir Ian, Commissioner of the 31,000-strong Metropolitan Police Service, may not have thought it necessary to arrest the Muslim demonstrators last Friday. But it is good to know that other officers, including some of his own, have a much sterner view of the law, and are considerably more diligent in upholding it.

In June 2005, for instance, Oxford student Sam Brown was taken to court by the police for making "homophobic comments", whence he was fined £80.

His precise offence was “insulting a police horse”, calling it “gay” after he had left a night club in Oxford with a group of friends, where he had been celebrating his finals. The police had radioed for backup and then proceeded to pursue him at a trot. Two squad cars arrived at the scene and six policemen surrounded the student, who was handcuffed and taken to a police station, where he was kept in the cells overnight until charged.

But if horses are so sensitive, what price the motorist whom made V-signs at a speed camera. He was unwise enough to take both hands off the wheel to do so and was convicted of dangerous driving and banned for a year by a Scottish court - even though it was acknowledged that he was not speeding and did not lose control.

The man who used his middle finger to express his opinion of another one of these mobile cash machines fared better with only an £80 fine, despite also driving within the speed limit. He was stunned to find two plods at his doorstep half an hour after he had made his views known and even more so when they handed him a fixed-penalty ticket under the Public Order Act for making offensive gestures.

In October last year, John Banda, a 74-year old Zambian accountant, devout Christian and formerly treasurer of the United Church of Zambia, found another way or attracting the ire of the plods.

To demonstrate his faith, he sometimes carries a placard containing two quotations from the New Testament: "Jesus Christ is Lord. Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out." On 26 October, he was stopped near London Bridge by three policemen, who said that the wording was in breach of the Public Order Act 1986.

The plods had decided it was a criminal offence to display written material which is "threatening, abusive or insulting" and intended to "stir up racial hatred". The policemen told him in no uncertain fashion that, if he continued to display his placard, he would be arrested.

This month, however, a campaigner against ID cards, who had been filmed outside the Labour Party conference in the autumn, and stopped under counter-terror laws while collecting signatures for a petition, was told by police that his details will be kept on file indefinitely.

Mark Wallace, campaign manager for the Freedom Association, was outside the Labour Party conference in Brighton last autumn when he was detained under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The measure gives officers wide powers to stop anyone in a designated area, whether or not they are acting suspiciously.

"One minute I was peacefully collecting signatures,” he says, “and the next I had five policemen around me, one with a video camera recording my every move and another taking my personal details, address and so on."

During the Labour conference, 426 people were stopped under section 44 of the Terrorism Act. None was charged or convicted. Official figures show that nationally 119,000 people were stopped under the powers between 2001 and early 2005, and only 1,515 of these were arrested.

Wallace shared the same fate as heckler Walter Wolfgang, an 82-year-old activist, who was summarily ejected from the conference hall after he had dared called foreign secretary Jack Straw a liar.

At first Sussex police denied that Mr Wolfgang had been detained or searched but a spokesman later admitted that he had been issued with a section 44 stop and search form under the Terrorism Act. Mr Wolfgang said: "We have reached a situation where freedom of expression has been threatened. I am not surprised, because the Labour Party has been taken over by a gang of adventurers who are on their way out."

Then there was the famous case of the vegan cook, Maya Anne Evans. Police might have been forgiven for arresting her on sight in view of her profession, but instead they arrested her for reading out names of soldiers killed in Iraq at central London's Cenotaph. She was found guilty of breaching Section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, after a three-hour trial.

Ever watchful guardians of public morals that they are, the police also moved in to arrest a 20-year-old gamekeeper for wearing a "Bollocks to Blair" T-shirt at the Midlands Game Fair. Charlotte Denis, 20, a gamekeeper from Gloucestershire, was stopped by police as she left the Countryside Alliance stand because of the "offensive" slogan.

She was marched towards a police car. "They grabbed me as if I was a football hooligan," she says. When she asked the officers how they could arrest someone for wearing a T-shirt, she was told that “it was because it would offend a 70-80-year-old woman."

Finally, there was the case of Nicky Samengo-Turner, formerly an investment banker, now works in the Formula 1 motor-racing industry. His car was searched during a random "anti-terror" search, when the police found Victorinox Swiss multi-tool a small collapsible baton, locked in his briefcase.

He was arrested, fingerprinted, verbally abused and then detained in a cell, finally to be assaulted by the arresting officer before being charged and released on bail, only to find his car had been given a parking ticket.

These are the cases that have been highly publicised, but any number of people can tell you similar tales where the police have totally over-reacted, not least myself. They broke into my house at 11.30 on a Saturday night to arrest me for non-payment of Council Tax, withheld in protest after police inaction following a rash of burglaries, keeping me locked up until the Monday when my wife could finally draw the money from a bank.

When these actions are contrasted with the stunning inactivity of the plods to the Muslim protestors and their banners, you begin to realise that there is something seriously wrong with the state of this nation. One explanation given by a former senior policeman on Sky TV this afternoon was that the police were worried about how it might look on Al Jazeera if there was violence between the police and the protesters.

But, when there is no prospect of Al Jazeera filming, it seems anything goes. Nothing is too small or too slight to escape the attention of the long arm of the law. Small wonder, people are becoming increasingly resentful at the way they are being treated.

COMMENT THREAD

Two interesting links

While British newspapers have not found it possible to publish the cartoons, though they have all pontificated at length, Le Monde has added one of its own and very clever it is, too.

It is interesting that outside certain Middle Eastern cities - Beirut, Damascus and Gaza City - there were demonstrations (not very big ones) in Pakistan, Indonesia and Britain. London saw two and these were bigger than the ones in the non-Middle Eastern countries.

This is particularly odd as Britain is one of the few European countries where the cartoons have not been published and the politicians have been making abominably craven statements. Is there a connection there? And are we going to see a vastly increased BNP vote in the forthcoming local elections as the direct outcome of what has been going on?

Meanwhile, for those who still believe that the Prophet's face must not be pictured, here is a link to a whole series of paintings throughout history that .... errm ... did just that. Not very many hearts seem to have been broken in all that time.

A Sunday stroll and a Bar-B-Q

How nice it is of those lovely people in the Levant to honour that quaint Sunday ritual that is becoming something of a tradition in this, our own green and pleasant land.

Thus it is that the Telegraph website and others tell us that these people – whose rest day in on a Friday – have kindly given up a working day to provide us with such a splendid example of tolerance and goodwill.

No doubt attracted by the prospect of the distribution of some high quality pork products (or "white beef" as they call it in the restaurants) strollers gathered in the vicinity of the Danish embassy in Beirut, burning Danish flags as is their own tradition, and chanting: "There is no god but God and Mohammad is the messenger of God!"

Some brought their own reading material, in anticipation of the afternoon lull and many brought their own tablecloths, some in a brilliant, verdant green, although the newly fashionable black also seems to be making a comeback. Such was the enthusiam of the crowd that some even fastened them to sticks, creating a festive tableau of improvised flags.

Police, taking a cue from their Syrian colleagues, provided free doses of tear gas and a cooling spray from their water cannons. They also fired their weapons into the air as part of the celebrations. Unfortunately, it seems, enthusiasm got the better of the crowd and the Bar-B-Qs got slightly out of hand with the result that the embassy accidentally burnt to the ground.

Tragically at least 18 people were injured, including policemen and fire fighters, with witnesses reporting at least 10 people taken away by ambulance. This invoked a few minor protests, but one of the crowd quickly made amends by carrying out cosmetic alterations to a police car. Conveniently, he just happened to have brought his work tools with him to the festivities.

Some 2,000 army troops and riot police have now been deployed to help sightseers with directions and the Danish Foreign Ministry has urged its countrymen to rush back to Denmark to spread the good tidings on how well their efforts have been received in this peace-loving land, not least the sterling work of their renowned cartoonists, who are now acquiring a world-wide reputation for their penetrating wit.

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