Muslims feel like ‘Jews of Europe’

Minister’s shock warning on rise of anti-Islamic prejudice
By Cahal Milmo, Chief Reporter
Friday, 4 July 2008

Reuters
Mr Malik said that many British Muslims now felt like ‘aliens in their own country’

Britain’s first Muslim minister has attacked the growing culture of hostility against Muslims in the United Kingdom, saying that many feel targeted like “the Jews of Europe”.

Shahid Malik, who was appointed as a minister in the Department for International Development (Dfid) by Gordon Brown last summer, said it has become legitimate to target Muslims in the media and society at large in a way that would be unacceptable for any other minority.

Mr Malik made clear that he was not equating the situation with the Holocaust but warned that many British Muslims now felt like “aliens in their own country”.

He said he himself had been the target of a string of racist incidents, including the firebombing of his family car and an attempt to run him down at a petrol station.

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The noose tightens around the Internet

From here

… Meanwhile, the noose is increasingly tightening around the Internet, one of the last places where there is still some semblance of free speech. Under the guise of protecting copyrighted materials, many countries around the world are getting tough on the ‘illegal’ downloaders, with penalties ranging from barring broadband access to heavy fines.

The irony is that the artists, the very people those Orwellian measures purported to protect, are quick to criticize the Orwellian measures.

In another more extreme, if not ridiculous, example, AP news agency goes after a little known blogger for publishing fragments of their news articles and reports.

It seems that their lies and propaganda get exposed so often by the army of bloggers that they have now chosen to resort to such blatant intimidations – the move of a liar protecting his lies.

Alongside the intimidations, major ISPs are throttling users with high bandwidth usage.

Some ISPs even hire a company to monitor and hijack websites that these users visit. All those measures serve to do one thing: discourage users from accessing the Internet. And where will they turn for news if not from the web?

The TV with ‘fair and balanced’ Fox News, of course!

In the background, the wiretapping measures continue to be enacted.

The US Congress has just passed the new surveillance bill, which combines the worst of all alternative bills.

It both allows retroactive immunity to the telecoms and gives sweeping surveillance power to the government. Even Sweden, the country that hosts controversial sites such as Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay, has passed a bill that allows wiretapping, cross-border, of all telephone and Internet communications.