**Always the way, the UK law slap a notice to the papers and media based in the UK to keep quiet (or else) and a US tabloid runs the story even with a photo. Now I now who it is, I am not interested anymore :-(
Books by British, American and French authors have suffered this fate. Both books by left-leaning authors who question the ‘war on terror’, and books by conservative authors who support it, have been removed from Britain’s bookshelves. Such is the censorious nature of English libel law that these books have effectively been wiped off the intellectual map: you won’t find them in any bookshop or library.
The spiked review of books has invited five authors whose books are no longer available in Britain to tell British readers what they are missing out on. We don’t want them to repeat any of their allegations about the Saudi, who often featured only as a bit-part character in their works – rather we have asked them to explain why their books were an important contribution to the broader debate about terrorism, and why it’s a shame that British readers have been denied access to their work.
Matthew Carr, author of Unknown Soldiers: How Terrorism Transformed the Modern World - published by Profile Books in August 2006; withdrawn from sale and pulped following legal action in January 2007.
The violence that we call terrorism generally refers to a tactic or what some have called a ‘ technique of violence’ that originated amongst the Russian revolutionary left and European anarchist movement in the late-nineteenth century. Since then, that technique has been used in different ways by groups with widely distinct ideologies and political agendas. Unknown Soldiers: How Terrorism Transformed the Modern World traces the way this technique has evolved in various historical terrorist emergencies, such as the ‘Mau Mau’ revolt in Kenya, the French-Algerian war, amongst the Latin American urban guerrillas of the 1970s and in the current ‘war on terror’.
My book is not a straightforward narrative account, however. I wanted to subject the whole concept of ‘terrorism’ to critical scrutiny and challenge some of the established assumptions about it. At the same time I have tried to analyse how our understanding of terrorism as a cultural and political phenomenon has been shaped, not just by its actual protagonists, but by its external audiences. In addition to looking at the motives, tactics and causes of terrorist violence, Unknown Soldiers analyses the way in which these episodes have been represented in novels, books and plays, in military propaganda and the media. I have tried to combine historical detail with a wide range of source materials in order to tease out some of the moral and political complexities and ambiguities – and outright lies – surrounding terrorism, which tend to be obscured by strident official rhetoric, by governmental propaganda, and by ideologically-motivated pseudo-scholarship that has often emanated from the intellectual ‘terrorism industry’.
I am not an apologist for atrocity and I have not tried to obscure or excuse the numerous horrendous acts that have been carried out in the bloodstained history of modern terrorism. Nevertheless, I believed before I wrote my book that the conventional explanations for these acts often fail to provide an honest or coherent explanation for why such acts occur, and the journey that I took in writing it has only confirmed that belief. I have tried to place these acts – and the groups responsible for them – in their specific historical contexts.
My book is not a counterterrorist manual, but an invitation to readers to think again about what terrorism is and why it happens, and to question the validity of our responses to it. Not all readers will agree with my analyses and conclusions, nor did I expect them to. But in Britain at least, readers can no longer choose whether to accept or reject that invitation in the first place. Unknown Soldiers took three-and-a-half years to write and research. It took a single letter from a lawyer to bring its lifespan to an end, after it had been in bookshops for just over two months. Fortunately, it has been published in the United States by New Press, under the title: The Infernal Machine: a History of Terrorism From the Assassination of Alexander II to Al-Qaeda. Next year it is due to be published in France. In Britain, however, my book has been quietly and comprehensively erased from the map, with an ease that would once have been the envy of any Soviet censor.
Matthew Carr
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Robert O Collins, co-author of Alms for Jihad: Charities and Terrorism in the Islamic World - published by Cambridge University Press in April 2006; withdrawn from sale and pulped in August 2007.
Alms for Jihad seeks to unravel and bring clarity to the complex, elaborate and secret world of Islamic charities that have financed terrorism. One of the most striking differences between Khartoum in the 1980s and the 1990s was the presence of new Islamic charities and their gratuitous proliferation in well-appointed offices. Who were these charities? What was their purpose? Why, of all places, was the remote Sudan on the frontiers of Islam? The more we sought the answers to this phenomenon, the more we realised that Khartoum had actually been transformed from a rather somnolent outpost of the Islamic world into a centre of the international Islamist terrorist movement made possible by enormous amounts of money from Islamic charities.
There are thousands of Islamic charities that assist the destitute, build mosques, schools and hospitals that have nothing to do with terrorism. The massive infusion of petroleum dollars into Saudi Arabia following the 1973 Arab-Israeli war enabled the indigenous evolution of a sophisticated Islamic banking system by which wealthy devout Saudis could fulfil their charitable Islamic obligations, establish individual charities, or arrange for the transfer of funds to support those well-established. Six years later the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and the clerical Shiite revolution in Iran challenged the Sunni Saudi stewardship of Islam to forge a marriage of convenience by which the jihad of Afghan-Arab Mujahideen against the communist kafirin would be paid for by wealthy Saudi charities for the promotion of Salafist fundamental Islam, Wahhabism.
Upon the withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in 1989, there were thousands of trained Afghan-Arab Mujahideen deeply committed to the Islamist global revolution who could not return home for fear of incarceration by their secular Muslim governments. With assistance from Islamic charities they were flown to sanctuary in the Sudan where they received a warm welcome from the National Islamic Front government of Umar Hasan al-Bashir and Hasan al-Turabi. Provided with Sudanese passports, housed, fed and given advanced training in some two-dozen camps surrounding Khartoum financed by Islamic charities, and in the camps of the Sudanese Popular Defence Force, these Afghan-Arab jihadists were then infiltrated into Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Bosnia, Transcaucasia, Chechnya, Central and Southeast Asia, Palestine and later into Europe and the United States.
The political counterpart to terrorist training in the Sudan was the Popular Arab and Islamic Congress (PAIC), which met in 1991, 1993 and 1995 in Khartoum, financed by Islamic charities and the Sudan government. Organised by Hasan al-Turabi, several hundred leaders committed to founding Islamist states gathered in Khartoum to reaffirm their commitment, share information and plan for the Islamist revolution in their respective countries. The marginalised Sudan had suddenly become the fertile breeding ground for international terrorism in which the individual chapters of Alms for Jihad provide a succinct explanation of the composition, financing, money-laundering and management of those Islamic charities through which runs their common goal: the establishment of the Islamist state by any means necessary.
In April 2006 Cambridge University Press published Alms for Jihad, which was well received for its meticulous research, style, but above all the clarity by which the narrative discloses the very complex relationship between Islamic charities, Arab financial institutions, and the determination by Islamist managers of those charities to divert funds for the Islamist revolution by any means necessary. Within a year Alms for Jihad had become required reading for those investigating Islamic charities as well as the growing number of professionals engaged in anti-terrorism – until a Saudi brought a suit against Cambridge University Press for defamation in April 2007. In order to avoid long and expensive litigation that it could not possibly win under current British libel law, Cambridge agreed to destroy all copies of Alms for Jihad, write to 280 libraries worldwide to do the same or place an errata sheet, give an abject public apology and pay costs and damages.
The swift demise of Alms for Jihad has thoroughly intimidated British journalists, the media and publishers from writing or publishing about terrorism. Moreover, it has deprived the British public access to Alms for Jihad and the freedom to read about Islamist terrorism, a subject that has become a stark reality of everyday life in contemporary Britain.
Robert O Collins
* * * * * *
Michael Griffin, author of Reaping the Whirlwind: The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan - published by Pluto Press in 2001 and 2003; withdrawn and all unsold copies destroyed in March 2004.
My book, Reaping the Whirlwind: The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan, started out as an analysis of the origins of the Taliban. The book begins with their capture of Kabul in 1996. Back then, it was all smoke and mirrors; nobody knew who the Taliban were or where they came from. When I started writing, there were various theories out there – on whether they were sponsored by Pakistan to create an artificial peace, whether they were autonomists or an Afghan movement, and whether they were representing US interests in the scramble to gather oil and gas resources in the Caspian.
My book was really tracing a profile, a portrait, a set of belief systems and then the history of the conflict that the Taliban encountered as they moved from Kandahar into the rest of the country, captured Kabul and tried to start dealing with the rest of the world. Latterly, obviously, if you research the Taliban you inevitably end up with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
My book was written in what I would call ‘the age of innocence’, when the Taliban were just a rather weird ethnic, religious phenomenon on the edge of the known world, Afghanistan, which nobody was interested in. And it was published six months before 9/11, when 9/11 itself was unimaginable. So it was written without the benefit of hindsight.
Everything that has been written since 9/11 has obviously been influenced by the impact of those events – by all the subsequent investigations, security measures, anti-terrorism legislation and all the speculation about who Osama bin Laden is, where he’s from, where he’s hiding and so on. So the whole story has changed.
In a sense, my book was a cut-and-paste job; I took excerpts from newspapers, media and reliable online sources and tried to put together a narrative of a movement that nobody knew much about but which everybody would come to know about six months after the publication of my book. So the book is innocent, and because it’s innocent, it is non-partial and I think it is very difficult to find that pure history of the Taliban these days because everything has been shovelled into a ditch of what the West wants everybody to believe about Islam, terror, the Taliban, al-Qaeda and so on. You can no longer find books that deal with the pure, unadulterated information about history. What you find now is commentary.
The media versions and the George W Bush version of who the Taliban were, or why al-Qaeda is a threat that justifies invading Iraq, are all very different from the original story both of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. That’s why I believe it’s important that people are able to read my book, which came before all those versions.
Reaping the Whirlwind was published in 2001 and a second version was published in paperback in 2003. This continued the story from where the first version ended, through to the conspiracy to attack the World Trade Center and to the immediate aftermath of the United States’ bombing of Afghanistan and attempted destruction of the Taliban government. The first version was published before the whirlwind - the attack on the World Trade Center - took place, and the second version was published to describe how that whirlwind actually happened.
Both the paperback and the original were pulped in 2004 as a result of successful libel action here in the UK. The book was also published in Spain and Japan, but only in short runs. The only copies of my work available these days are pirated versions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the writ of British laws apparently does not run.
Michael Griffin
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Jean-Charles Brisard, co-author of Forbidden Truth - never formally published in Britain; withdrawn from all British outlets, including internet bookshops, in 2006.
My book, Forbidden Truth, was published in France in November 2001. It was published in 10 other countries, including the United States, but not in Britain. Initially, the book was available to British readers only through Amazon.com, but due to UK laws I have had to agree to withdraw my book from all the places where it was available to British customers.
Forbidden Truth, written by myself, Guillaume Dasquié and Lucy Rounds, was the first book after 9/11 which asked questions about how the United States and other countries, including Saudi Arabia, ended up facing the events of 9/11. The core of the book was to explain how the al-Qaeda network was able to grow in the years before 9/11 because of the support of various organisations and of individual financiers. So the book explains the core financial backbone of the al-Qaeda network.
For many publishers and newspapers around the world, understanding the rise of the al-Qaeda network in the years prior to 9/11 is considered very important. So our book was of international public interest. Yet people in the UK have not been able to get hold of it.
I was sued in the UK even though my book wasn’t published there. My French publisher specifically excluded the UK from the publishing territory because we knew we might face legal problems due to your libel laws. Despite this, a judge decided he had jurisdiction over my book because a few people in the UK managed to get a copy of it through Amazon.com.
I signed an agreement for my book to be withdrawn. I believe, however, that at the time it would have been important for British readers to be able to get hold of my book.
Jean-Charles Brisard
* * * * * *
Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It, published by Bonus Books in America in 2003 - never formally published in the UK, yet it became the subject of a libel suit here after 23 copies were bought by Britons via internet bookshops, and is now not available at all in the UK.
Many have written about the origins, ideology, plans, infrastructure and operations of terrorist groups. Even after the 9/11 attacks on America, few have focused on the sources of their funds. Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It addressed the lifeline of different terrorist groups around the world, focusing on the radical Islamic organisations and their financiers. It calls attention to and details the major funders of al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbollah and their offspring, and follows the money trail to its devastating results.
The analysis and suggestions in this heavily documented book offer methods to seriously impede the spread of terrorism and expanding influence of totalitarian Islamic law (Shari’a).
It is essential reading for policymakers, law enforcement officials and the media, who still seem to pay little attention to the idea that without funding, terrorists could not recruit, educate and train adherents, as well as conduct destructive operations. Funding Evil, should wake up our policymakers who seem completely oblivious to the growing and pervasive media campaigns and massive investments infiltrating and subverting the West from within.
Reading this book would help policymakers and law enforcement to gain an important leg up on the Fifth Generation warfare (5GW) now consuming and eroding our civilisation, through the methodical destruction of the foundations of individual, religious, civil, educational, political and financial freedoms we enjoy in the West. It’s a wake-up call to take preventive and offensive measures to stop the money flow to the enemies of democracy and freedom.
Rachel Ehrenfeld
* * * * * *
**The very people who torture UK citizens and oppress women and export terror are the ones that our New Labour masters are whoring themselves for, anything for arms deals and petro-dollars. some more on our ethical foreign policy with Saudi Arabia here.
**Frank Field MP came up with the above, and former PM Pasha Blair reomoved him from his post. After all New Labour need dole scum votes.
Another Idea I have had is for auditing the biggest "dole scum" that we all pay for, the other bunch of shiftless lazy bastards, commonly known as MP's.
MP's to have their saleries cut by 70+% to reflect the work "outsourced to the EU"
KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S.-led coalition forces killed about 80 Taliban fighters during a six-hour battle outside a Taliban-controlled town in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, the latest in a series of increasingly bloody engagements in the region, officials said.
Also Saturday, homicide bomber wearing an Afghan security uniform detonated his explosives at the entrance to a combined U.S.-Afghan base in the east of the country, killing four Afghan soldiers and a civilian, officials said.
The battle near Musa Qala in Helmand province — the world's largest poppy growing region — is at least the fifth major fight in the area since Sept. 1. The five battles have killed more than 250 Taliban fighters, a possible sign that U.S. or British forces could be trying to wrest the area back from Taliban militants.
The latest fight began when Taliban fighters attacked a combined U.S. coalition and Afghan patrol with rockets and gunfire, prompting the combined force to call in attack aircraft, which resulted in "almost seven dozen Taliban fighters killed," the U.S.-led coalition said in a statement early Sunday.
The coalition said that four bombs were dropped on a trench line filled with Taliban fighters, resulting in most of the deaths.
Plus we have...from the MODThe last units from 12 Mech Bde left Afghanistan yesterday, Wednesday 24 October 2007, after a six month deployment which began with the Taliban building up for an offensive against ISAF and the Afghan National Security Forces but ended with the enemy beaten back after a series of operations which saw fierce fighting in soaring heat and tough terrain.
Talking yesterday at Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow about the fight the Brigade took to the Taliban over the last six months, Brigadier John Lorimer, Commander of 12 Mech Bde said:
"The fighting was tough and the terrain and climatic conditions made it even tougher. The temperature hit 50 degrees during the peak of the brutal summer months. "The enemy was cunning, determined and ruthless, utilising every terrorist tactic against us, the Afghan soldiers and police and the representatives of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. "However, every time we closed with the enemy, we beat him – and beat him well. This was down to first class junior level commanders, well trained and motivated soldiers, excellent equipment and outstanding multinational support."
The Task Force level offensive, codenamed 'Chakush' or 'Hammer', began in the early hours of Tuesday 24 July 2007 in the area between Heyderabad and Mirmandab, north east of Gereshk.
Led by the British commanded Task Force Helmand, the operation is continuing the momentum towards expelling Taliban forces from areas of the Upper Gereshk Valley in Helmand province.
ISAF's enduring objective is to extend the influence and control of Afghanistan's democratically elected Government as well as enabling vital reconstruction and development projects to take place.
The creation of an enduring security presence in the Upper Gereshk Valley is an important step to achieving these objectives.
During the initial stages of the operation, ISAF and Afghan National Security Forces advanced to secure a strategic bridge crossing over the Nahr-e-Seraj canal, clearing and searching compounds, before military engineers from 26 Engineer Regiment established a joint forward operating base in order to provide an enduring and reassuring security presence in the area. ISAF soldiers and the Afghan National Army are continuing to move through Taliban-held areas expanding north, south and east into the Upper Gereshk Valley. Conducted in support of the Afghan Government and in consultation with the local authorities, Operation Chakush builds on progress made in defeating the Taliban and extending the Afghan Government's authority within Helmand province during recent months. Task Force Helmand spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Mayo said: "This operation is another important step in continuing the progress we have made recently in providing the enduring security conditions required for the Afghan Government to remove Taliban influence from the communities in Sangin and the Upper Gereshk Valley. "It is vitally important to prevent the Taliban intimidating and terrorising the local population so that they can go about their daily lives peacefully. "The malignant presence of the Taliban subjects the people of Helmand to the threat of violence and hampers reconstruction and development projects that are so important to improving their quality of life. "The local people have welcomed Afghan National Army and Task Force Helmand soldiers and are pleased that we are driving the Taliban out of their villages.
"They know that Afghan National Army and ISAF soldiers are working hard to deliver the peace and stability they so desperately want."
The UK-led Task Force Helmand has carried out a number of recent operations in the province. Earlier this month Operation Leg Tufaan ("Small Storm") removed Taliban influence from the towns of Gereshk and Kakaran into the Upper Gereshk Valley. Operation Ghartse Gar ("Mountain Stag") was launched to take control of Jusyalay, between Sangin and Putay.
And we have this on UK forces training up the Afghans to defend themselves..From the MODRoyal Marine Captain Matthew Williams has just completed a six month tour in Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan, where he helped train the Afghan Army.
His team trained the Afghan National Army (ANA) in all military and security aspects from very basic soldiering skills and weapon training to more advanced operations. Captain Williams has seen many changes over the last six months and has been impressed by what the ANA has done to improve security in the country. They are now conducting regular check-point and security patrols based on the training they have received. Captain Williams said: "The highlight of my tour has been finding out that the ANA that we had helped train had captured a key Taliban leader; this really shows the progress that has been made. We trained them and then they completed the operation on their own; it is really gratifying to see." There have also been many obstacles to overcome: "There are many cultural differences between the British and the Afghans and also their work ethics are quite different to ours, so this has sometimes caused misunderstandings. "Language has also been something that we have had to deal with. The guys are generally young and uneducated so their ability to take on information and act on it requires special handling and understanding; these personnel are not like your average British recruit."
**So in numerous operations the terrorists of the Taliban are being sent to meet Allah at a rate of knots, losing men and material as well as land and the Afghani people are being trained to fight for their homeland.
Yet according to one "expert" we losing the war, well you see an armchair general thousands of miles away stuck in his ivory tower in the House of Parliment claims that is the case.
Yes despite the facts out of touch MP Paul Flynn thinks we are losing...British Vietnam
So for £140,014 in expenses, plus his wage as an MP, plus 91 days paid holiday a year, plus the fact he is a proven libelist and liar we get an MP who either is wrong on his facts on Afghanistan that his lives in fucking la-la land or he a typical leftist and is happy to stick the knife into our troops for petty point scoring and would be happy to leave the Afghan people to the headchopping drug dealers of the Taliban.
Sunday the 21th October was not only a severe attack on freedom of speech but an attempt to close the mouth forever on an organisation who stands up for freedom, freedom of speech and for democracy. Small details were the reason why it didn’t ended up with murder like in Holland, on one of the brave advocate’s for freedom of expression who dare to stand in the frontline.
On sunday the 21th October SIOE Denmark had announced a demonstration in Copenhagen. Read previous post. Before the demo Anders Gravers (SIOE and SIAD) and 2 other members were driving in a van with three seats in the front, following the security car, where an elderly woman, 74 years, (foto) and member of SIAD and another SIAD member were passengers.
Anders was driving and followed the security car down in a parking cellar to park so the cars would be in a secure place before the demo.
He drove very slowly down because apperently there was very little space in the hight for the van. The driveway is very steep and is divided by concrete pillars. Because of the delaying, the driver of the security car got out of his car to open the metalgate again because it was closing after 30 sek. so we could enter the cellar. He directed the van forwards close along the pillars and directly in front of a big concrete pillar supporting the cellar roof.
Anders succeded after a while to kick one of the autonomous hard in the face as he leaned in to unlock the door. Anders mananged to get out with a fire extinguisher from the van and hit another one hard on the shoulder. It remained later that they attemted to stab him down when there was found cut holes in the shirt, jacket and vest. Anders was wearing his securityvest which saved his life.
Suddenly they disappeared and Anders got around the van and saw a SIAD member (foto top) lying on the floor while he was beaten in the head of 4-5 persons with ironbars. Apperently they also tried to stab him down, but again he also wore his security vest which saved his life.
Suddenly someone screamed RUN RUN and they disappeared up the steep driveway. The elderly woman was lying on the floor completely still. She had been in the security car and got out immediately when the driver shouted OUT OUT. She didn’t know what to do and started running. She was hunted down by two persons and banged down with an ironbar. She lay completely still in the hope she wouldn’t get anymore. She felt they stood a moment watching her if she would move. Then they presumably ran to the other SIAD member on the floor and joined the attack on him.
It was impossible to call the police in the cellar because of bad connection. But fortunately the caretaker of the building came down straight after by a coincidence and alarmed the police and ambulances.
The wounded, 2 men and 2 women decided that the best thing Anders could do was to complete the demonstration. That would be a slap in the face on the undemocratic and fascistic forces who have tried to shut us down forever. Anders agreed, apart from bruises on arm and body he felt allright and after talking to the police he drove away and completed the demonstration in front of the Institute of human rights.
Another article will follow about the demonstration.
**This was copied from the SIOE site shows in all its horror what an islamic Eurabia will offer those who dare to open their mouths. The moslem hoards who our masters in Brussels are allowing in have no interest in free speech, no interest in the rights of man(and women don't even enter their thought processes other than as breeding machines) and see all non moslems as kuffir.
As recent events have shown any who protest are hunted down as part of the ongoing jihad against the infidel, they don't care if you are liberal, they don't care if you support moslem rights, you as a non moslem are seen as the enemy of Islam and a greater moslem caliphate.
Meanwhile in Brussels the moslem hoard are planning a demo, demanding that dhimmi's kow tow to the moslems and know their proper place as second class citizens in their own nation.The Turks’ anger was provoked by rising tension with Kurds along the Iraqi-Turkish border and by the debate in the American Congress about the Turkish genocide of the Armenians in 1915. On Sunday night Turkish youths in Sint-Joost destroyed the pub of Peter Petrossian, an ethnic Armenian who had to flee for his life. Apparently, some Turks think that by attacking the Armenians in Brussels they can convince the world that the Turks never committed a genocide of the Armenians.
Tonight the youths attacked Kurdish shops. They also set fire to several cars.
Belgium’s Muslim population consists mainly of Moroccans and Turks. In the past rioting Muslim youths were mostly Moroccans. The Turkish community is controlled by the Turkish embassy. The latter used to restrain the Turkish population so as not to upset the Belgian authorities and thwart Turkey’s chances of EU admission. This policy seems to have changed recently. In Antwerp, too, Turkish youths demonstrated tonight.
But is this what moslem Turks define as Irony? They claim no genocide of Armenians took place then riot and attack Armenians?The Turks’ anger was provoked by rising tension with Kurds along the Iraqi-Turkish border and by the debate in the American Congress about the Turkish genocide of the Armenians in 1915. On Sunday night Turkish youths in Sint-Joost destroyed the pub of Peter Petrossian, an ethnic Armenian who had to flee for his life. Apparently, some Turks think that by attacking the Armenians in Brussels they can convince the world that the Turks never committed a genocide of the Armenians.
**That must be moslem irony, the genocide never happened and we shall attack Armenians to prove it....When can we close the gates to the barbarians?
Tags: Eurabia, SIOE, Moslems, Barbarians
