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The European Commission criticises a daily newspaper's Mohammed cartoons for opening the door to hate and radicalisation After months of silently observing, the leadership of the European Commission has weighed in on the Danish debate over daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten's decision to publish caricatures of Muslim prophet Mohammed. The Commission's vice-chairman, Franco Frattini, called the newspaper's decision to publish the twelve cartoons as 'thoughtless and inappropriate' in a time when animosity towards Islam is on the rise. 'Honestly, these kinds of drawings can add to the growing Islamophobia in Europe,' Frattini said. 'I fully respect the freedom of speech, but, excuse...

Christmas is sacred, Pell warns race gangs Jill Rowbotham and Elizabeth Gosch December 14, 2005 CATHOLIC Archbishop George Pell has warned gangs of Middle Eastern descent not to target Christmas celebrations, after families were abused and gunshots fired into cars at a primary school's carols night in western Sydney on Monday. Cardinal Pell said the attack in the multicultural suburb of Auburn, where Lebanese Muslims are believed to have turned on Lebanese Christians, was "apparently motivated by religious intolerance". He said: "I am deeply concerned about the targeting of Christmas celebrations at schools for students as young as five years...

As the Monitor noted back in July, “alarm bells went off like crazy when Steven Spielberg hired Tony Kushner last year to rewrite the script of a movie about Israel’s clandestine — and lethal — response to the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.” The Monitor found cause for concern because Kushner is a radical leftist whose views on the Middle East are hardly distinguishable from the hateful screeds found on the most rabidly anti-Israel websites.

JOHN Howard condemned Sydney's race riots as "sickening" and rejected claims they exposed a racist underbelly as community leaders searched for reasons for the violence. As he prepared to fly to Malaysia for today's inaugural East Asia Summit, where the riots are front-page news, the Prime Minister was also forced to deny his stand on homegrown terrorists was partly to blame. "I believe yesterday's behaviour was completely unacceptable but I'm not going to put a general tag of racism on the Australian community," Mr Howard said. "I think it's a term that's flung around carelessly and I'm simply not going...

PARIS -- Yelling into a radio reporter’s microphone, the radical French Muslim from a working class neighbourhood of Paris urged his friends to join him on the battlefields of Iraq. "I’m ready to set off dynamite and boom! Boom! We kill all the Americans!" Boubaker el-Hakim cried. "All my brothers over there, come defend Islam!" That chilling message, in a 2003 interview conducted in Iraq as U.S. troops were preparing to invade, has proven to be an early warning of a worrisome new phenomenon of homegrown militants from Europe heading to Iraq to join the insurgency, driven by anger over...

MANTES-LA-JOLIE, France - A warning whistle pierces the air, followed by a deafening roar. Two gray housing project towers come crashing down, replaced by a yellow dust cloud that blots out the horizon. Applause, whoops of excitement, and a hint of sadness is heard among the throngs of mainly North and West African residents who have gathered to witness the demolition in this town 30 miles west of Paris. Along with torched cars and Molotov cocktails, France's grim housing projects have come to symbolize the discontent that erupted in recent riots across depressed, mostly immigrant neighborhoods. The violence has awakened...

Red "Crescent of Embrace" chosen for Flight 93 Memorial An incredibly ill-conceived "gesture of healing and bonding." From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, with thanks to Charles. WASHINGTON -- It will serve as a living tribute. With each wind, each breeze, a set of chimes housed in a 93-foot tower will create a different song in memory of the 40 people who sacrificed their lives trying to save the lives of others. Four years after United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a reclaimed strip mine near Shanksville, Somerset County, on Sept. 11, 2001, the design that will serve as the national memorial...

Seven suspected Islamic radicals went on trial in France yesterday – four of them for allegedly providing logistical support to the killers of Ahmed Shah Massood, the Afghan anti-Taliban military commander. In the unusually broad-based trial, four of seven face charges for carrying out survival training designed to prepare them for training camps in Russia and Afghanistan. All seven face allegations of “criminal association in relation to a terrorist enterprise” – a broad charge widely used in terrorism cases in France. They could face a maximum 10 years in prison. Massood was killed on September 9, 2001, in northern Afghanistan...

Last Updated: Monday, 1 November, 2004, 23:16 GMT Bomber's family condemn militants The bomb was detonated in a shop in a busy Tel Aviv market The mother of a teenage suicide bomber who blew himself up and killed three Israelis in Tel Aviv has criticised the militants who recruited him. More than 30 others were wounded when 16-year-old Amer al-Fahr detonated about 5kg of explosives in a shop in the Israeli city's busy Carmel market. The leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said one of its members had carried out the attack. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was among...

Mr. Williams is a student at the University of Washington and an intern at HNN. Though a definite link has yet to be established (or publicized), it becomes more apparent with each passing day that the acts of terror on September 11 were undertaken by individuals belonging to or associated with the Al-Qaida organization. While the group has ties to the Taliban, the current ruling faction in Afghanistan, neither can really be considered a government, making war with either an unconventional one. Yet the United States is hardly unused to combating unconventional foes. While the Vietnam War and the "War...

A View from the Eye of the Storm Talk delivered by Haim Harari As you know, I usually provide the scientific and technological "entertainment" in our meetings, but, on this occasion, our Chairman suggested that I present my own personal view on events in the part of the world from which I come. I have never been and I will never be a Government official and I have no privileged information. My perspective is entirely based on what I see, on what I read and on the fact that my family has lived in this region for almost 200 years....

MIDI - ONLY TIME Who was using our White House as his whore house...he is slime And who had his aides defending...never ending...he is slime He cannot change his legacy, despite the endless spin He'll always be quite a sociopath...just where do we begin Who is still in denial...fixed a trial...he is slime And who was under oath lying, truth defying...he is slime He cannot change his legacy, despite the endless spin He'll always be quite a sociopath...just where do we begin Who had been defense harming...Chinese arming...he is slime And who ignored Muslim terror, fatal error...he is slime...

PORTLAND -- The final two defendants in the alleged terrorist cell known as the "Portland Seven" have pleaded guilty and agreed to serve 18 years in federal prison. Patrice Ford and Jeffrey Battle were among seven Portland area residents who had been charged with plotting to wage war against the United States. The charge carried a maximum sentence of 20 years and a $250,000 fine. They had initially also been charged with money laundering, supporting terrorism and other offenses. Four others had earlier pleaded guilty. The pleas came during a hearing when defense attorneys had intended to challenge evidence gathered...

15 Years ago, The New York Times could tell the truth of Kosovo "In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil Conflict" Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying possibility of ''civil war'' in a land that lost one-tenth of its population, or 1.7 million people, in World War II. The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians against the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of society, from the highest officials to the humblest peasants. A young Army conscript of...