14 Oct 2015
27 Jun 2012
The Sugar Mama of Anti-Muslim Hate
Interview with Max Blumenthal on The Real News:
Nina Rosenwald, (she's the heir to the Sears-Roebuck fortune) has spent about $2.8 million specifically on funding anti-Muslim figures and groups in the last ten years. But this money has gone a long way. And this is similar to a piece I did about another millionaire, named Aubrey Chernick, who spent around the same amount of money funding many of the same figures. And through this coordinated campaign of funding, they have been able to drive the Islamophobia industry and put the anti-Muslim agenda on the front of the American political radar.
Geert Wilders (the far-right Dutch political leader), who is—until recently, really held the key to the Dutch governing coalition, until he pulled out in protest of austerity measures being imposed on the Netherlands by the European Union, which made him sort of populist hero, and who is really the leading Islamophobia in the world—I mean, this is a guy who went on trial for hate speech in his own country for calling Muhammad a pedophile, for calling for burning the—for calling for banning—an unofficial ban on the Quran—was brought to New York City not once but twice by Nina Rosenwald, through her think tank Hudson NYC, which grew out of the Hudson Institute, a major neoconservative think tank which is no longer affiliated with it. And she hosted a fundraiser. According to her website, it cost $10,000 per person to get in. I don't know if this money went to Geert Wilders' legal fees, for his battle against hate speech, if it went into his campaign chest or what, but this is really remarkable. And she's apparently hosting these fundraisers at her apartment in New York City.
She's a major socialite. She's very close to Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative godfather who is the publisher of Commentary magazine. And she's also close to people like former NSA chief Michael Hayden, who sits on the board of MEMRI with her, a think tank, another anti-Muslim think tank. She's close to a whole host of national security figures.
11 Jun 2012
31 Jul 2011
Europe's leaders are 'playing with fire'
Europe's leaders have been warned to adopt a more "cautious" approach when discussing multiculturalism. The Norwegian chairman of the Nobel peace prize committee has told them they risk inflaming far-right and anti-Muslim sentiment.
Thorbjørn Jagland, a former prime minister of his country, said leaders such as the British premier would be "playing with fire" if they continued to use rhetoric that could be exploited by extremists.
Four months ago in Munich, Cameron declared that state multiculturalism had failed in Britain, a view immediately praised by Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, as "a further huge leap for our ideas into the political mainstream". Marine Le Pen, vice-president of the far-right National Front party in France, also endorsed Cameron's view of multiculturalism, claiming that it corroborated her own party's line.
Jagland's comments come in the wake of the Oslo bomb and the massacre on Utøya Island that left 77 people dead. The killer, Anders Behring Breivik, said he was inspired by the right-wing English Defence League. Breivik sent his manifesto, published online hours before the attacks, to about 250 British members of the BNP, the EDL and the Stop Islamisation of Europe group.
Jagland, who is also secretary general of the Council of Europe, told the Observer: "We have to be very careful how we are discussing these issues, what words are used.
25 Jul 2011
Hunt for Britons linked to Norway killer Anders Behring Breivik
Before he carried out Norway’s worst terrorist atrocity, Breivik typed out a chilling 1,500-page description of his plans, written entirely in English and datelined “London, 2011”. He signed the document “Andrew Berwick”, an Anglicised version of his name, and described his “mentor” as an Englishman he identified as Richard.
Scotland Yard counter-terrorism officers are now trying to establish whether Breivik visited London in recent years and whether he was part of a wider network preparing to carry out similar attacks. The 32 year-old boasted that he was just one of up to 80 “solo martyr cells”recruited throughout Western Europe who were ready to follow his example of trying to overthrow governments tolerant of Islam.
He said he regarded himself as a successor to the medieval Knights Templar, and claimed to have been recruited at a meeting in London in April 2002, which was hosted by two English extremists and attended by eight people in total.
Any member of a political group that has allowed Muslims to migrate to their country is regarded as a “target” who deserves “the death penalty”, according to his writings. He also spoke of being in touch with the far-Right English Defence League and made repeated references to British politicians, including Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, who were blamed for making London a global hub of Islamic terrorism.
27 Jun 2011
The Misguided Notion Of What Patriotism Is
"It's not your country that you're fighting for when you go to war, it's your government.". American Historian Howard Zinn on his books: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train - A personal History of Our Times, and Failure To Quit - Reflections of an Optimistic Historian.
12 Feb 2011
First Netherlands, then Sweden. Now Austria witnesses rise of far right
After the Netherlands and Sweden, another stunning electoral surge for the extreme right in Vienna, a city where the centre-left views governance as its birthright.
"Red Vienna" has been a socialist and then social democratic stronghold since the 1920s. There was never any chance of Michael Häupl, the incumbent and long-serving SPÖ (social democratic) mayor, losing his job. But the customary absolute majority in Vienna's gargantuan mock-gothic town hall is gone, perhaps for a long time. That makes yesterday's vote a bit of a watershed.
Former dental technician Heinz-Christian Strache, the loud extreme right leader who is heir to the late Jörg Haider, was the real winner of the poll. He came second with a staggering 27% to the SPÖ's 44%. That is the social democrats' worst result since 1996, when Haider was in his prime, and the second worst result ever.