International

Terrorist bomb plot galvanizes EU into action
European Notebook by Neville de Silva
It took this month's headline-making bomb plot in London to finally get the European Union off its collective posterior.

Though there have been terrorist attacks before, most recently in Spain and Britain, it seemed the EU was slow to recognize the dangers to itself as a whole of the presence of highly-motivated people with genuine or perceived grievances living among them.

Individual member states of the EU took whatever measures they thought necessary to meet their respective exigencies. But collective action was more in the rhetoric of the political leaders about fighting international terrorism than in substance and concerted, concrete action.

This month's huge security operation in Britain -- with nearly 25 persons being taken into custody for allegedly conspiring to blow up some 10 transatlantic flights leaving London, supposedly with liquid explosives -- has awoken the EU from its slumber.

Last week, five EU internal ministers and top officials met in London to map out a strategy to meet what is now seen as a developing threat not just to Britain but to the EU in general.

The meeting was called by British Home Secretary John Reid who has been in charge of the overall British security operation from the time the intelligence services and police decided to crack down on the conspirators.

After the meeting Reid said Europe faced a "persistent and very real threat" from terrorists. He said that would-be terrorists were hoping to "abuse our open societies" and had "no regard for human life and human rights."

Arguing that "there are borders between freedom of expression and incitement to terrorism, the EU's Justice Commissioner, Franco Frattini, called for a crackdown on internet sites used to incite terrorism.

In recent years various groups, some of them banned by the EU as foreign terrorist organisations, have been using the internet and mushrooming websites to falsify history and more recent events and spread their special brand of racial and religious hatred.

In the name of advocating political causes these groups have not only used websites but other electronic media as well to propagate their venom and incite persons of their religious and ethnic persuasion into illegal actions including terrorism.

Much of this has been possible since individual member states have tended to shut their eyes to what happened on their own backyards for political or other reasons.

Little or no action was taken against acknowledged terrorist groups or their supporters because they were not perceived as an imminent danger to the societies in which they lived as refugees or as citizens of the country.

For too long political leaders and security services lived in the smug satisfaction that those involved in terrorist activity or laying their murderous plots were necessarily foreigners who entered a country openly or surreptitiously to carry out their missions.

True, they would have their local contacts, those who help hide them, provide them with safe houses and gave logistical support. But the masterminds were usually thought to be foreigners and not home-grown persons with accumulated grievances or pushed into violence by what they perceive as the discriminatory foreign policies of their respective country that heap untold tragedy upon their religious or ethnic communities elsewhere.

The bomb attacks in Spain and particularly in London over one year ago were proof enough that those who carried them out were local persons who were born in the country or had earlier settled down there.

This new realisation has changed the whole complexion of the terrorism issue because it now meant not extra vigilance at points of entry into each country alone but policing local communities.

On top of that, individual countries began enacting their own laws, which civil libertarians and human rights activists argued, violated basic freedoms and even the EU's own Convention on Human Rights.

Since there are open borders for EU residents where they could come and go from one EU country to another without visas, the harmonisation of security and EU policies has become an imperative.

The lack of even proper internal policies and policing to implement its own terrorism laws was clearly illustrated last month when the LTTE-sponsored "Black July" remembrance day was held at Hyde Park.

By the stage was a huge cutout (somebody said it was 18-foot high) of the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. Under the UK Terrorism Act 2000, the LTTE is a banned organisation and the public display of any signs or symbols including flags and pictures, of the LTTE is an offence under the law as is membership of a proscribed organisation or espousing its causes.

But neither the Special Branch which is tasked with monitoring such organisations and their activities nor the Home Office which is responsible for the police, acted to stop the violation of its own laws.

This is one reason why the most senior Muslim police officer in the Metropolitan Police, Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur said in a speech to the Black Police Officers association recently that Britain's Muslim community felt aggrieved because the anti-terrorism and stop-and-search laws seemed to be used against them more than any other community.

This feeling of creeping alienation is radicalising young Muslims here and despite the attempts by Prime Minister Tony Blair and some of his cabinet ministers to rubbish the argument that his foreign policies in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East that simply toe the American line, have nothing to do with the growing curse of terrorism, it is simply not true.

His foreign policies that have shown subservience to the US have not only antagonised the majority of the public, most of the Labour Party and sown discord in his own cabinet, but have also driven moderate Muslims here to question the direction of the government.

Moreover the opposition Conservative Party also backed Blair's decision to take the country to war in Iraq. The Conservatives are not in favour of pulling British troops out of Iraq until their job is done which itself is becoming more obscure almost daily.

So it seems that whichever party comes to power in Britain at the next elections, there does not seem to be any indication right now of a perceptible change in foreign policy.

If so how is the EU, especially Britain, going to stop or minimise the radicalisation of Muslim youth or others that might feel aggrieved? In fact, how is the EU going to deal with the Trojan horses in their midst? Not by turning a blind eye on other potential terrorists because their attention is now focused elsewhere.

The agenda behind war on terror: A journalist’s analysis
Journalist Latheef Farook's book "War on Terrorism-The Untold Truths", that provides a totally different perspective about the United States-led Western campaign against Islam to justify their crimes against Muslims was released this week in Sri Lanka by the South Asia News Agency.

This well researched book dealing in depth with some of the burning issues since the collapse of former Soviet Union in 1990 was first launched in Malaysia by the Patalang Jaya based Strategic Information, Research and Documentation Centre, SIRD, last May.

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Bin Mohamed who lamented in his foreword that Muslims have neglected their responsibility to defend the religion and the Ummah, commended the book as "a lesson and an eye-opener to the whole world".

With the end of the "Cold War" people all over the world thought that there would be no more war clouds but peace all over the world. They were wrong because America and its Western cohorts were quick to seize the opportunity to focus on a new "whipping boy"-Islam.

They replaced red communism with Islam and unleashed a well orchestrated ferocious global campaign against Islam to dehumanize Muslims to justify their crimes.

The US exploited the mood in the aftermath of the mysterious 9/11 attacks, raising many questions still remain unanswered, as an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination of the Islamic world. Senior journalist Latheef Farook who led a group of Sri Lankan journalists in 1979 to relaunch the Dubai-based Gulf News, exposes the US led west's war against terrorism as a fraud.

The book is powerfully persuasive, credible, serious and well-researched. For students of politics it would serve as a good refresher course or rather as a crash-course in the major events in the world in general and the Middle-East in particular and US politics.

Indeed, the Cairo-based British commentator on Middle Eastern Affairs Linda Heard has this to say in her message about the publication: "This fascinating and compelling book, one that I would have been proud to have written myself, should be required reading for all serious students."

There are many wars being waged on Muslims that started as political issues in places such as Chechnya, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Algeria, Gujarat and the smouldering Middle East where the Palestinians continue to bleed while the Gulf pays the price for possessing oil wealth.

And then on to Afghanistan and Iraq where there seems no let up to the brutal massacre of innocent civilians. The author dismisses the Bush "war on terrorism" as deception and reveals the Realpolitik behind the aggression against these Islamic nations. Invisible but powerful forces such as weapons industries, oil companies, the financial oligarchy, corporate conglomerates and the Zionist Jewry are among those who have instigated this crusade against Islam.

They all form a complex dominant coalition which makes and unmakes governments in the West, including the US. The book also assesses the results of the US attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan and the rest of the predominantly Muslim states. It exposes the human cost and examines the bigger geo-strategic picture of these invasions that may lead the world toward the next global conflict.

It is a heart-rending documentation of some of the poorest, most stricken nations being terrorised by the most powerful, where cluster bombs are deliberately being used to kill and maim.

It also shows up the tyrannical puppet regimes installed by the West in many of these Islamic states, especially in the Middle East, turning a blind eye to these crimes to protect their power and comforts and thereby helping the Zionist and the Jewish dominated US led west implement their designs on the region, the latest being the merciless destruction of Lebanon and Gaza and the senseless killing and maiming of civilians there.

Describing the situation a frustrated Egyptian journalist said "thanks to the Arab dictators today Arab means shame and disgrace". But behind the entire West's justifications has been the craving to expand American economic and military power in what is tantamount to the biggest energy and oil grab in history.

There are several more questions that beg to be answered such as what the violent deaths of innocent children, the harmless elderly and women have to do with Osama bin Laden.

The book makes gripping reading as it gives the world a divergent dimension of the obscene abuses perpetrated on innocent Muslims which include torture, rape and genocide.

It brings a balanced analysis of world affairs amidst the turmoil of doctored evidence and a shamelessly complacent Western media. Its contents are certainly an eye-opener and are desperately needed in a war-mongering climate such as today.