Yet for the 2013 conference, hosted at the Grove Hotel in Watford, the vale of secrecy had been partially lifted; the event boasted not only a website detailing attendees and the agenda but also a fringe festival on the perimeter, allowing those who believe the group’s activities might not be in the best interests of democracy a chance to protest in front of the world’s media.

For people who don’t see plot and intrigue behind every door, “Bilderberg” is something of a buzzword attached to the conspiracy theory community, along with “truthers”, “birthers” and countless other alleged “cover ups”, from JFK and the moon landings to the more recent accusations thrown at the families of the Sandy Hook victims late last year.

However, with one or two notable exceptions the attendees of the Fringe were far from the kooks, crazies or harbingers of a lizard apocalypse one might be led to expect. Several people told the HuffPost UK they were there because they were worried about issues of transparency in government. Several more voiced concerns about the concentration of power embodied by the politicians and business leaders enjoying canapés in the hotel up the road. Yes – there was talk of “shadow governments”, “hundred-year agendas” and “orchestrated media blackouts” but there was also talk of Libor, the problems of the EU and the unfolding Prism scandal.

When asked how they felt about being dismissed as conspiracy theorists, many pointed to large spa hotel next door as vindication that clandestine groups not only exist, but they could be unveiled by pressure.

Russell, a middle-aged man from Tiverton in Devon, was sat alongside his wife on deck chairs in the corner of the field. Both sported David Icke t-shirts. He told the HuffPost UK they were there to voice opposition to this “small group of people that wield such power”.

“Most people unfortunately still have their head in the sand,” he said. “They [the majority] are driven by the system, they’re controlled by the system and they’ll die by the system. They’re even told what food to eat and what medication to have.”

“It’s an undemocratic meeting,” said Claudio, 23, who had travelled from Germany to protest. “There are several attendees from German parties in there and a couple of CEOs. If you think this is just a conspiracy theory, why was the Bilderberg Group so secretive for so long? We’ve finally forced it into the open.”

John, in his thirties, had travelled to Watford from Aylesbury to raise public awareness about the group. “George Osborne and Ed Balls are both up there,” he told the HuffPost UK. “They work for opposing parties. Why are they discussing financial agendas behind closed doors? Also, you can’t discuss matters about Africa without African people here to represent those countries. Who are they [The Bilderberg Group] to make those decisions?”

John said that the influence of the group might be waning, particularly with the rise of the Chinese economy, but thought the group’s real focus was likely to be foreign policy rather than financial matters.

Despite the relaxed atmosphere inside the Fringe (it felt more like a picnic than a protest) security was heavy, with a strong police number backed up by guards in G4S uniforms. Everyone entering the event was given a thorough search with metal detectors, while guards in jeeps patrolled the perimeter fence.

Wearing a pink shirt, a cowboy hat and a large placard, protester Glynn Ellis, offered some flamboyance to the event, insisting he had been “groped” by police. “There are more questions than answers,” he serenaded before launching into a rant: “I don’t exist, this field doesn’t exist, I didn’t get groped on the way in here by G4S security, and there are definitely not 120 world leaders in that hotel up there… which doesn’t exist.” When asked what he thought was on the agenda, Ellis was clear: “The bombing of Iran.”

Then there was Alex Jones, the American radio host, who first came to British attention sparring with Piers Morgan on his CNN show over gun control. Jones, who along with the late Jim Tucker is seen as one of the founders of the movement against Bilderberg, was rapturously welcomed by protesters, being surrounded by cameras and peppered with questions, whilst making his own recording via an iPhone on a small tripod.

Yet in contrast to his bruising encounter with Morgan, Jones was charming, polite and measured in his criticism, his objections bouncing from corporate groups in Europe controlling policy, to manipulation of the media, to how Bilderberg “sets the agenda” for less secretive meetings, such as the G8 and G20.

Jones has been criticised in his homeland for cashing in on people’s fear and paranoia, and devotees of his radio shows will know his beliefs go way beyond Bilderberg, seeing the hand of government everywhere from the Sandy Hook killings to the Boston Marathon. However, it was ironic that the Fringe was held on the weekend that The Guardian broke the Prism surveillance scandal, perhaps giving pause for thought to even the most ardent sceptic who might just think there’s something in this after all.

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.

The middle-aged woman, dressed snout to claw in black and white, topped with homemade headgear and a megaphone, pleaded with the protesters.

“Badgers… come out of the road. Please don’t give us a bad name.”

On Saturday, opponents of the badger cull, who had massed in London to protest the animals’ impending slaughter, had strayed down Westminster’s Victoria Street, emerging at the Houses of Parliament to chance upon a 50-stong BNP protest against the death of Lee Rigby. As always, the BNP had been met by a counter demonstration of several hundred anti-fascists, many under the banner of Unite Against Fascism (UAF).

Some of the “badgers”, distinctive in their monochrome garb, had joined UAF ranks, blocking the road outside parliament, preventing cars from moving around the Palace of Westminster.

One last cry: “Don’t give us a bad name”. The “badgers” reluctantly moved on. For the anti-fascists it was too late – the damage had already been done.

By 4.30pm that afternoon, more than 30 of those opposing the BNP had been arrested under section 14 of the Public Order Act. By the end of the day the figure was nearer 60. At least one member of the BNP was given a bloodied nose, allegedly by one of the anti-fascist throng.

According to the UAF, the 58 arrests were “not because of violent clashes” but because “the police decided to extend by an hour the time allowed for the BNP protest, but asked anti-fascists to leave at 4pm.” The Anti-fascists were arrested “for refusing to leave”, they said. That may be so, but the tone of the protest was not one of peaceful opposition… it also doesn’t explain the bloodied and battered BNP member.

Having reported on several far-right demonstrations, this was not the first time I had witnessed aggression, criminal behaviour and a disregard for the rule of law by those claiming to walk against fascism.

Opposing the BNP, like opposing the EDL, is an essential political expression. The BNP is a fringe political party that campaigns on a plank of anti-immigration, playing on the fears of a white working class marooned from any type of upward social mobility.

The EDL are nothing more than a disparate group of drink-sodden thugs, politicised around a single anti-Muslim sentiment, and seemingly nostalgic for the days when you could fight at football matches.

Neither group has any genuine interest in Lee Rigby, other than using it as an excuse to wheel out clichéd admonishments towards “evil Muslims” and the threat of “creeping Sharia”.

However, the BNP had a legal right to march. A right, ironically, the anti-fascists tried to deny. The UAF had a similar right to demonstrate, but the tone was such that they looked close to becoming exactly what they were protesting against – vicious bullies.

Had the anti-fascist mob spent a minute looking at the BNP protest they would have seen 50 or so tired, haggard, middle-aged men barely worthy of a passing car horn let alone a huge counter demonstration. Some of the BNP struggled to string a sentence together. I asked one man waving a flag why he was there. “They’re killing our soldiers, aren’t they.” He could offer no more by way of reasoning.

What about the BNP threat? There were more journalists at the rally than ‘National Party’ supporters. There is no threat. Still, that didn’t stop those opposing Griffin’s party from acting like a violent mob – masked, angry and hysterical.

“Don’t give us a bad name,” shouted the badger woman. It’s a sentiment everyone who opposes fascism will hope supporters of the UAF start to heed.

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.

If Wednesday’s murder, as seems increasingly likely, transpires to be the first terror attack to scar the capital since 7/7, it marks a different type of horror than that which devastated the Tube and a bus eight years ago.

In the intervening years between 7/7 and the Woolwich attack the world has moved on; western operations in Iraq and Afghanistan – open wounds in the global conflict – have been scaled back, while western violence against extremism has spread outwards to North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, where militants and civilians alike suffer under Obama’s expanded drone programme.

“Individualised Jihad” has become the fear for security services, highlighted by a number of thwarted attacks on the UK, and, more recently, a successful attack on the Boston Marathon.

According to Dr Christina Hellmich, a terrorism expert from the University of Reading, this notion of “individualised Jihad” is a product of the demise of al-Qaeda.

“As an organised international movement, it is a spent force,” she told the Huffington Post UK. “A seemingly random murder is truly horrific – but it is hardly the activity of an institution which wields genuine international power.”

Hellmich said this variation on tactics has its origins in the Arabian Peninsula, developed, she argued, as “a distraction against the fact that al-Qaeda was no longer an effective institution”.

Rather than calling for groups to unite and carry out attacks, the call is for individuals, wherever they are to take up arms against Western targets,” she said. This call for indiscriminate violence, Hellmich argued, is a new phenomenon, adopted around 2010 by Anwar Al-Awlaki (before his death) and his followers. As such, Hellmich placed Wednesday’s murder in a “similar family” to that of the Boston bombings rather than 7/7.

“The Woolwich attack most reminded me of the 2010 attack on Stephen Timms MP by Roshonara Choudhry,” Hellmich said.

Choudhry, it transpired, had been radicalised by online sermons and had no connections to existing radical groups. When asked about her motivation at her trial, the 21-year-old said that Timms had voted in favour of the Iraq War.

The targeting of soldiers rather than civilians marks a further evolution in extremist methodology, though as Raffaelle Pantucci points out in an article for the Royal United Services Institute, this is not the first time soldiers have been targeted. The academic cites Parviz Khan, who plotted to kidnap and behead a British soldier in Birmingham and Mohammed Merah, the French-Algerian who killed three soldiers before turning his gun on a Jewish school in Toulouse, as similar acts of terror, adding that there was no evidence that either Merah or Khan had been “tasked to do what they did” by an organisation or group.

The inevitability of a successful attack on the military is not lost on Joe Glenton, a former British soldier who served in Afghanistan and Africa, and a HuffPost UK blogger. “This type of attack has been planned at least twice and foiled before,” he told the HuffPost UK. “Targeting a soldier is a spectacular in one sense,” he said. “British troops will be very worried.”

The world has also altered politically and economically since 2007; Labour was in Downing Street, Bush was in the White House and the European Union was a bastion of economic and political solidarity. A year later and the world lay racked in turmoil as the worst financial crash since the Twenties blighted both Europe and America.

Since then, parties of the far right have enjoyed a surge in support as history’s all too familiar narrative – economic decline leading to an increase in political extremism – played out across countries and continents. Like the Tea Party in the US and Golden Dawn in Greece, Britain too suffered a resurgence in the political fringes, with the EDL gaining support on the streets and the UK Independence Party (Ukip) gaining traction at the ballot box.

Speaking to the HuffPost UK in March, MP Dianne Abbott said: “Whenever you have austerity and recession you have a rise in racism and fascism… you saw it in Germany in the 1930s and you’re seeing it across Europe now.”

Former London mayor Ken Livingstone offered a similar assessment: “If you look across Europe you will see an increase in parties of the right and of anti-immigrant sentiment.”

It is this increase in far-right activity, as highlighted by Wednesday’s EDL gathering in Woolwich, as well as an increase in passive support, that “must be nipped in the bud” said Glenton. “There is space in this country, because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where you can comfortably be anti-Muslim, and the EDL… have marched right in.

“There cannot be a blanket punishment for people who haven’t done anything just because these two guys [the alleged attackers] just happen to be Muslim.”

It’s a sentiment Hellmich echoes: “I see sporadic attacks ahead of us, rather than a wave… but these attacks have and will lead to an increase in anti-Islamic sentiment. It just adds fuel on the flame of those looking for a scapegoat.”

Another worry for Hellmich is seeing a similar response to Woolwich as in Boston, what she calls the “heavy militarisation of an entire city”.

In the wake of the Boston bombings, the city was placed in virtual lockdown as security services scoured the beleaguered city for the suspects.

“This was more threatening that the actual incident itself,” she said. “Thankfully we didn’t see that in the UK, but the incident was very different.”

Wednesday’s rally by the EDL was condemned by Unite Against Fascism (UAF) as the work of “fascist thugs trying to use the murder to whip up racism and direct hatred against all Muslims” and an attempt to start a “race riot”. Still, anecdotal evidence suggests that support for the group, particularly on social networks, swelled following the murder.

But herein is the problem facing the UK should more horrors unfold; individualised attacks, which are the work of lone men or unconnected groups, are difficult to stop and when they do succeed they play into the hands of the far-right, spoiling for a fight with an al-Qaeda nemesis that barely exists.

Countering these twin threats is the task facing not only the UK government but every citizen repulsed by the brutal murder of a 25-year-old serving soldier on a south London street.

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.

Tuesday is St George’s Day, an annual “celebration” in the national consciousness that is uniquely ignored, despite incessant and often fruitless attempts by organisations, brands and politicians to whip up a collective English spirit.

Last weekend, London mayor Boris Johnson hosted an event in Trafalgar Square to commemorate England’s patron saint, telling the crowd it was a “fantastic opportunity to celebrate the very best of what England has to offer, from music to theatre to film”.

A St George’s Day event it may have been, but the pageant was more a publicity exercise for the city of London (and its mayor), leaving celebrations on the actual day muted or absent.

But why has England’s saint been so ignored?

Reasons abound, from the island’s religious history to the more recent appropriation of national iconography by members of the far right. Certainly, for many the English flag represents a facet of the national character that is best hidden away. It’s a chauvinism and a narrowness that, outside major sporting events, has come to be identified with the English Defence League (EDL), the British National Party (BNP) and mobs of travelling football fans.

As an inter-faith group bemoaned on Monday, the saint has been “hijacked” by the extreme right as a “symbol of triumphalism and division”.

England is, after all, a country in which national outpouring is rare.

Every two years, the population watches the country’s best 23 football players get on a plane, returning shortly after the quarterfinals of either the World Cup or the European Championships.

For the brief interlude in between, flags are hung from windows, colours are worn and England becomes united in an acceptable display of national pride. Then the shirts, the silly hats and the flags are promptly put away… apart from the few left draped over balconies of inner city estates. Similar displays were seen for the golden Jubilee, though this was a more British celebration represented by the Union flag. Likewise the London Olympics.

But why are displays of English national identity limited to only a handful of prescribed sporting events? One reason could sit within the decline of faith. The St George’s Cross is, after all, a religious symbol and a Christian symbol. As Greg Jennerhas argued blogging for the HuffPost UK: “If I am going to have to live in a modern England, I believe it should not be reflexively branded with medieval, Christian iconography”.

Historian Diarmaid Macculloch goes even further, arguing that the apathy towards St George’s Day is less to do with secularisation or modern politics and more a consequence of the reformation.

He told the Huff Post UK: “The English, being Protestants for nearly five centuries, have never had much time for saints’ days – same with the Scots,” adding: “Neither really need their patron saints to celebrate nationhood.”

The Welsh, he suggested, despite being Protestants, retain St David’s day to “keep their end up against the English”.

Nationalism too is often borne out of oppression. Scotland, Wales and Ireland have historically been the oppressed members of the Union, giving them a cohesion or national unity against the English. It’s a notion that Robert Ford, a lecturer in politics at the University of Manchester and a specialist in far-right politics supports. “Very often, national identities are expressed in opposition to something,” he told the HuffPost UK.

“So St Andrew’s and St Patrick’s Day celebrations reflect the assertion of an identity distinct from the dominant English identity. It is not clear whom the English define themselves against, or in comparison to. Once upon a time it would have been Catholic Europe, while more recently on parts of the right it has been against immigrants with a different culture.”

According to Ford, smaller, non-dominant nations who may be threatened by neighbours have strong reasons to promote and protect their own sense of identity. What’s more, England has no “great political event to focus identity debate and provide the symbolic furniture – as the Revolution did in France, Garibaldi in Italy, or unification in Germany.” As such, when identity promotion has occurred, for example over immigration, Ford argues the debate often turns “negative, defensive and exclusionary rather than positive and celebratory”.

In contrast, the US, despite being the dominant actor in the region, has created a strong national identity – a form of “civil religion”, as sociologist Robert Bellah outlined – focused on the flag, the national anthem, the military and days of national celebration, such as the Super bowl and the presidential inauguration. Every morning, school children across the States are made to recite the pledge of allegiance. In England, there’s no anthem, no pledge and little reference in school to what it means to be English.

Still, this unpatriotic nation may be on the turn. A poll for the IPPR think tank out on Tuesday revealed that more than seven out of 10 backed making St George’s Day a public holiday. Of course it did, the public want another day off. Despite the failure of a recent attempt by MPs to have St George’s Day and St David’s Day declared a bank holiday (the bill was withdrawn despite support from across Tory and Labour ranks), the director of IPPR responsible for the research believes the poll shows “an emergence of an English identity that British political parties ignore at their peril.”

David Cameron duly obliged on Tuesday morning sending his best wishes “to everyone celebrating St George’s Day”, adding: “I think it is important that people in England can celebrate St George’s Day, just as other nations of the United Kingdom celebrate their patron saint’s days.”

For Andrew Rosindell, a Tory MP who has campaigned for more than a decade to have St George’s Day celebrated as a National Holiday, attitudes are changing. He told HuffPost UK: “St. Patrick’s Day, St. Andrew’s Day and St. David’s Day are celebrated so widely now that people in England also want to share in celebrating their unique English traditions and heritage. Of course, it is also proud to celebrate the unifying values that make us British and I am proud of being both British and English, which is a view that I am sure many others up and down the country share.”

That may be so, but English identity remains a difficult question. Richard Wyn Jones, professor of politics at Cardiff University and co-author of the IPPR report, strikes a more nuanced tone: “A cocktail of deepening cultural anxiety, rising economic insecurity and a growing disillusion with the political system has made the English Question something far more complex than simply a response to Scottish devolution and European integration.”

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.

Two days earlier in Montevideo, Uruguayan campaigners packed the public seats of the legislative building to watch lawmakers vote in favour of allowing gay marriage by a majority of 71 to 92.

According to Federico Grana, the leader of a gay rights group that drafted the proposal, the vote represented “an historic moment” for Uruguay, a country that becomes the third across the American continent, following Canada and, more surprisingly, the deeply Catholic Argentina, to recognise equality in marriage.

Before this week, eleven countries had already passed legislation to allow same-sex marriage, with 10 other states, including Britain and Ireland, currently in the process of pushing through bills.

Although change may appear to be happening at pace, the campaign for gay rights is decades old, with incremental steps leading back to the sixties responsible for the swathe of parliamentary successes currently being celebrated by advocates around the globe.

As human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell told The Huffington Post UK: “Marriage equality is an idea whose time has come. It’s an unstoppable global trend.” It’s a sentiment BJ Epstein, a lecturer at the University of East Anglia who specialises in queer literature, agrees with.

“Governments are starting to look quite ridiculous not giving equal rights to all people and all relationships,” she tells The Huffington Post UK. “In a few years people are going to wonder why it took such a long time.”

But why has it taken such a long time for governments to recognise such a basic principle as equality in marriage for same-sex couples? For Stanislas Kraland, a journalist for the Le Huffington Post who has reported extensively on the gay marriage debate in France, the answer is both generational and political.

“The answer stems from an analysis of who is against gay marriage in France,” he said. “It’s the elderly, right-wingers (because gay marriage is a left wing project) and the majority of Catholics. That’s a lot of potential voters.”

The Netherlands became the first country to pass gay marriage legislation in 2001, which Kraland argues, in sociological terms, is only very recent, while the push for equality in this area only started in France in the 1990s.

“During the 1970s, French homosexuals were against the idea of marriage per se,” he said, however, once equality became an issue for the French homosexual community in the Nineties, the law moved relatively quickly, making civil unions legal in 1999, and same-sex marriage legal this year.

In Britain, civil partnerships were made legal in 2004, while the current gay marriage Bill wrestled its way through the House of Commons in February, and is due to be debated in the House of Lords later this year. Following amendments, the Bill should be handed back to the Commons, with political commentators expecting it to be signed into law by the end of the year.

Unlike many of the countries that have already passed legislation, most notably Spain and Argentina, Britain isn’t saddled with a strong religious voice to offer sustained opposition. Yet, rather than pioneer gay marriage, as some might expect from such a secular society, the UK has lagged behind Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and even South Africa.

“People are becoming less religious which helps,” said Epstein, “but in many ways the UK is a rather conservative country. As a foreigner living in the UK (she’s originally from Chicago), Epstein admitted she has been surprised at just how conservative the British are. “If you go to places like London and Manchester it’s very diverse, but go to a small city or town and it’s not diverse at all. People are scared of otherness.”

Still, the lecturer believes the world has reached a tipping point on gay marriage. “Some countries are going to take a long time, but I think we’ve got there and it is just a matter for the other countries to catch up.”

So with much of Europe adopting or having adopted equality for same-sex couples, campaigners are now looking towards the next major battle, the USA. Still, for Epstein there’s plenty of optimism.

“Even conservative religious people in the US are beginning to see that they have no choice but to go along with it,” she said.

Since Obama’s re-election last year, arguably a watershed moment for the GOP, which was plagued throughout the campaign by outspoken representatives offering a series of public faux pas on social issues, a number of politicians have “evolved” their thinking on the issue of gay marriage.

At the time of publication of this article, 14 Senators – 13 Democrats and one Republican – had publically changed their views in favour of accepting gay marriage in the past month alone, along with former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

Whether this is a genuine evolution in thinking, or just the realisation that opposing equality is not a vote winner, is up for debate. Either way, the 2012 election marked a significant step forward for gay rights in the United States with three states voting in favour of gay marriage, while Wisconsin, the home state of Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, elected the first ever openly gay senator, Tammy Baldwin.

Other social issues came to the fore, with a record number of women voted into office, as well as several states voting to legalise cannabis. As a colleague quipped the morning after the election, “Americans woke up gayer, more female and slightly stoned.”

For Noah Michelson, the Editor of Huff Post Gay Voices in the US, the post-election change has been driven by two factors. “It’s both people truly evolving with their thinking, but also not wanting to be seen as having fallen on the wrong side of history,” he said.

“I don’t think we can discount that, as it gets easier for people to come out of the closet, more people than ever know someone who is LGBT… and these personal relationships really can transform the way someone (re) considers equal rights.” 

Last year’s election also brought into focus the political necessity for change on this issue. “Many politicians are realising that marriage equality is heading our way whether they like it or not and if they don’t come out in favour of it, they’re going to look foolish – and it could even cost them their positions,” said Michelson.

For Epstein, it’s a matter of urgency that the US adopts equality in marriage. “Many countries look to the US, and for a country that’s so religious and so conservative to say ‘yes, we accept gay marriage’, it would be a huge boost for the cause. Other countries would take note.”

And there’s the rub: America remains a country deeply enthralled by God and, unlike many other countries in the first world, America’s brand of religion is not only political but has a very loud voice.

“Religious opposition to gay marriage is still a huge issue in the US,” said Michelson, “but not necessarily because the majority of people actually believe that marriage equality is antithetical to believing in the Bible, but because the far Right and Evangelical movement is so vocal and has worked so tirelessly to ensure that their message is heard.”

Still, the Defence Of Marriage Act (DOMA) is currently under review, with the Supreme Court due to decide in June whether it should be overturned, paving the way for states where gay marriage is legal to be afforded federal marriage rights.

Yet the grand prize – national legalisation – remains obscure. As Michelson said: “I do not think we will see gay marriage legalised on a national level any time soon… if ever. It’s frustrating to have gay marriage be decided on a state by state level because in my view, we’re talking about basic civil and equal rights.”

Casting the current fight for equality as a civil right places the campaign in a broader context, one that perhaps mirrors the civil rights movement of the sixties. The importance of the first decade of the 21st century as a social revolution is a question for future sociologists to debate, yet for Epstein, there’s little doubt: “It hard to predict the future, but I think it will be viewed as a moment of change, similar to the way we look back on civil rights or giving women the right to vote.”

As a note of caution, though the trend in the first world is seemingly heading in the right direction, many countries around the world, particularly in Africa and Eastern Europe, appear to be going the opposite way.

This week, a human rights activist was granted bail in Zambia after being arrested for calling for gay relationships to be decriminalised on live TV, while in January, Russian lawmakers passed a bill making gay public events and the dissemination of information about the LGBT community to children punishable by a fine of up to $16,000. In the Muslim world, basic human rights for LGBT individuals is a battle yet to be won.

Still, Tatchell remains certain on the course of history: “The ban on same-sex marriage will eventually go the way of the ban on inter-racial marriage. In a democratic society, everyone should be equal before the law. Most people accept that, which is why the ban will sooner or later be history.”

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.

According to a leading psychologist, Kim is most likely none of the above, more a young man trying to prove himself while suffering “an inevitable deep sense of psychological threat that he will be perceived as weak and inadequate” by others within the regime.

Speaking to the Huffington Post UK, Professor Ian Robertson said that regardless of the politics, individual egos will always come into play, and though Kim is known to be very proud and nationalistic (his friends at his Swiss school recall him playing the national anthem over and over), the young dictator is unlikely to be driven by a desire for war, but a wish to carry on the family dynasty as an act of self preservation.

Unfortunately for the fledgling despot, the “psychological threat” of being deposed could, and seemingly has, led to the current standoff with the peninsula one mishap away from conflict.

On Wednesday, former North Korean spy Kim Hyun-Hee said of the country’s ruler: “He’s is too young and too inexperienced,” adding that Kim is “struggling to control his military and using war talk to shore up support”.

Worryingly for Robertson, people can be driven to “self-destruction or self destructive acts when their behaviour is motivated by threats to the self”, and it is almost certain that the implementation of UN sanctions following February’s missile test, has heaped more pressure on the leader.

Speaking to The Guardian, Jang Se-yul, a former mathematics professor who defected from North Korea to the South, argued that Kim “needs money to ensure his survival… and wants a large cheque from the United States, but is not willing to give anything up to get it”. The less cash, the greater “threat” to his rule, the more anxiety he must feel.

But how instructive is his age and upbringing? Rarely do men (and it is always men) come to hold such overarching power over the lives of their fellow countrymen at such a tender age. Both Hitler and Stalin came to power in their mid-forties; Saddam was 42, Mao was 52. In comparison, Fidel Castro was a mere pup at 35-years-old, but still had five years on Kim, and had been embroiled in political activism since his university days in Havana.

Likewise, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Saddam had all fought their way through swamp of revolutionary politics before resting ultimate power on the totalitarian bank. Kim’s upbringing sits in stark contrast, the product of a Western education, a person who likely wanted for nothing. If his youth adds anxiety into the psychological mix, what about his formative years?

“He is unlikely to be as ruthless as a guerrilla fighter, like his grandfather,” said Robertson, “his upbringing as a privileged child [rather than a revolutionary] may make him less likely to do the terrible things other political leaders have done… but it depends on how far he feels he must go to consolidate his position.”

Due to the nature of the North Korean system in which notions of democracy and civilisation haven’t trespassed to limit the brute force of “alpha male hierarchies”, the Kim regime is best compared to that of a “warlord, a drug cartel or a crime family”, said Robertson.

“The North Korean dictatorship is a group of people desperately holding on to power. What’s different is that this small group of people is able to mobilise mass media and brainwash millions of people. Because of this, the crime family has been able to hold onto power for decades, creating a dynasty.”

“The principle motivation for Kim will be to carry on the family business,” Robertson added. Like Assad in Syria, once a dictator exacts his authority in a despotic, authoritarian and brutal way, there are very few alternatives to absolute power other than a bloody end as people exact their revenge. Both Saddam and Colonel Gaddafi would agree, had they not been otherwise engaged proving that exact point.

Robertson admitted there will be other factors to Kim’s actions, “sentimental and ideological reasons, believing you’re the saviour of the people and all the delusions that come with absolute power,” but argued that his current posturing maybe entirely rational.

“If you want to keep enthralled a miserable population you want to keep them feeling as though there’s a constant external threat and a state of war,” he said, “that’s what brings them together.”

So perhaps Kim is not so “nuts” after all, yet the threat remains, balanced between the patience of the Pacific states and a young man’s need to cement his rule.

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.

Just 10 days after the new Archbishop of Canterbury spoke of his aversion “to the language of exclusion”, members of the General Synod, the governing body over which Justin Welby now presides, failed to carry a motion on as simple premise as: Let’s treat everyone the same.

Instead, having failed to gain a two-thirds majority in favour of ordaining female bishops, the CofE remains officially an organisation that sanctions discrimination against half the population.

Yes – the verdict was close, with the bishops and a clergy voting overwhelmingly in favour of the motion and only the house of Laity voting against.

But that is no mitigation against the fact that legislation was not passed on a principle as basic as equal rights for women – the unwillingness of provincial Anglicans to compromise exposing a huge division between the Bishops and the Clergy, and the Church’s representatives from the diocese.

Opponents of female ordination will no doubt see this as a victory for Christian traditionalism. That’s no doubt true, but it’s also a victory for bigotry, intolerance and small-mindedness, casting aside a much-needed opportunity to drag the 500-year-old monolith a little closer to the modern world.

Instead, the verdict exposes the CofE for exactly what it is – a lumbering, divided, grotesque whose lay members would prefer to see it wither away rather than make any accommodation with progress.

Perhaps nothing could have stopped the decline of the Church; there was no future salvation for the CofE. However, by retaining its adherence to barbaric Bronze Age doctrines that demote women to second-class citizens, the emasculation is nearly complete.

Yes – the Church of Henry has been expiring slowly and in agony for many years, but by voting against female ordination, Tuesday’s ballot may well have killed it off, pushing the spear into the side of the half dead institution as it hung limply from its cross.

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.

In the clip, Romney’s unease at having to defend a faith that believes Christ visited America 2,000 years ago is clear… despite being filmed in 2007, long before he was even a Republican candidate.

Despite Romney’s best efforts, it seems religion is the one issue presidential candidates cannot avoid. As noted by Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to the United States, in European politics “God does not even get a walk-on part… In America he is centre-stage, wherever you place yourself in the political spectrum”.

Team Mitt has certainly done its best during the campaign to push faith itself, rather than the particulars of the Church, leaving their candidate to emphasise “shared values” over denomination.

Speaking to the Huffington Post UK, Dr Uta Balbier, the Director of the Institute of North American studies at King’s College London, argued that Romney has been successful to this end, and has “established himself as a person of faith in the eyes of the American voters”. As such, Romney has managed to make “the general perception of his faith more important than his belonging to the LDS church”. By emphasising Mormonism into just another branch of Christianity, Romney has neatly sidestepped the issue.

One can speculate whether the YouTube clip will undo Romney’s clever evasions come Tuesday night. However, that the former Governor of Massachusetts was even able to secure the Republican nomination speaks well of a religious pluralism that the US is rarely given credit for (albeit a win aided by a paucity of credible candidates from the dominant Evangelical wing of the GOP, as well as Romney’s large bank balance).

Should a Mormon beat Obama, would that not represent a victory for diversity of American society, an openness already emphasised in the election of an African American in 2008 and a Catholic in 1960? Perhaps, though some will no doubt see it as a testament to Republicans voters’ willingness to overlook Romney’s Mormonism (or at least to have their concerns subsumed by an often rabid desire to see the incumbent serve only a single term).

But why should Romney’s religion be so controversial, especially as the LDS, a 19th century off-shoot of Christian Protestantism, represents a modern American success story, with the religion currently boasting more than 13 million members worldwide?

The faith certainly has a chequered past, particularly in the practice of polygamy. Yet polygamy – the one certain fact everyone knows about Mormonism – was left behind by the main church more than a century ago and is now only practised by some of the movement’s more fundamentalist sects. As Romney noted in a recent 60 Minutes episode: “I can’t think of anything more awful.”

Since the days of its birth, the Church has undergone gradual change, with many of its rougher foundational edges softened by schism and secularisation, resulting in the seemingly more “benign” variant practised by Romney and his contemporaries today (although it is important to note that it wasn’t until the ’70s that the Church ended its prohibition on non–white members).

The LDS has its odd beliefs – the Garden of Eden was geographically in the US and that Christ will rule from Missouri upon his return – but Mormonism is hardly the only religion to hold bizarre revelations (the evangelical rapture or the return of the 12th Imam are no less inexplicable).

That’s not to say the modern LDS church is a bastion of transparency and openness – secrecy and obfuscation remain, particularly when dealing with the outside world. Non-members aren’t allowed into Mormon temples, while members are threatened with excommunication for discussing the faith’s rituals or theology.

Again, witness Romney’s unease when pushed to discuss the finer points of his faith or the rarity by which elders in the Church offer insight (the European LDS church was contacted for this article but would not comment due to “political neutrality”).

Yet secrecy alone is unlikely to be enough for one-in-five Americans to say they would not vote a Mormon for President as highlighted in a recent Gallup poll.

In a recent interview with CNN, Russell Ballard, an Apostle in the LDS, said it would be “misguided” if a politician tried to proselytize his religion while in office. Yet herein sits the problem for Romney: there’s the suspicion that a Mormon president would take direction from his Church rather than his office, echoing the anti-Catholic concerns surrounding Kennedy’s campaign in 1960 when critics argued that the Pope would be able to exert ‘foreign’ influence on the Camelot coterie.

There is also the Mormon belief that America is divinely blessed, so much so that church members profess that Christ actually visited the US two millennia ago, a notion heretical to Christians of other stripes. This has led many Americans, particularly conservative evangelicals, to dismiss the LDS as a cult, albeit based on the hypercritical notion their brand of Christianity is somehow lent authenticity due to its antiquity.

For Balbier, two things have helped Romney reduce Christian concerns over his faith: “His choice of the ultra-conservative Catholic Paul Ryan made the ticket more appealing for conservative Christian voters and the fact that Billy Graham, one of the most influential Christian evangelists in the US offered his endorsement.”

So if Romney wins, is it a victory for religious pluralism in the US?

“Religious pluralism [in the US] is functioning to an impressive degree,” said Balbier, “but from a European perspective, the acid test would be the presidential campaign of a Muslim candidate”.

Perhaps a Muslim candidate in four years time (hopefully running against a Trump-Palin ticket), but whatever happens on Tuesday night, the 2012 election has added yet another layer to the increasingly complex and often paradoxical relationship between a nation founded on principles designed to limit religion, and its citizens’ ardent desire to practise it.

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.

Pinned up against a wall, both arms wrenched behind his back, the man in the football shirt would not be silenced. “This is my fucking country.”

I move closer to get a better view. He sees me: “Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off…” Two policemen try to squeeze him further into the wall, subduing him against the bricks. It doesn’t work.

His face now entirely sculpted by anger, the detainee continues his child-like resistance: “Fuck off, this is my fucking country. It’s my country.”

As he is led to the police van, little visible about the man remains human. His mouth twisted and locked with fury – even his body, contorted out of shape by restraint and rage, seems to betray his animal origins.

His face lit red by sunburn, his clothes dirtied and frayed from the scuffle with the police… one last time before the door is closed: “This is my fucking country.”

Around 200 members of the English Defence League (EDL) journeyed to Walthamstow on Saturday to protest against the town’s Muslim community.

The marchers had dressed their protest with placards warning of “creeping Islamazation” and the “threat of Sharia”, their chants hitting the more base notes of the late Oriana Fallaci, interspersed with modified songs from terraces: “We’re the famous EDL”.

There were no Nazi salutes; there were no visible beer cans. As the group formed outside the station, the pack became recognisable as a football crowd – men travelling on a train to an “away-day” fixture, boozing on the journey, seeing old friends, before meeting the enemy on their own turf.

Once on the march and confronted by a rival protest organised by Unite Against Fascism (UAF) and local residents, some EDL members offered less politicised viewpoints.

“Go and rape your fucking sister,” one man barked to an Asian protester stood on the other side of the police line.

“Shave your beard you dirty fucking cunt,” shouted another.

Non-Muslims – white and black – that showed any form of disapproval were met with chants of “you’re not English anymore”.

Violence erupted on the Forest Road, started by UAF demonstrators, who threw glass bottles into the crowd. One man started throwing flowerpots. The EDL pushed at the police line, but nothing was thrown back.

By the time the marchers finally reached their protest point, the UAF had gathered enough numbers to force the police to call off the event. Bottles hit a van draped in the English flag. UAF protesters shouted: “Without the police you’d be fucking dead.”

More missiles were thrown, now at the EDL leadership who were stood outside Walthamstow Magistrates’ Court, cut off from the main pack.

The man in the football shirt was detained. “It’s my fucking country”

…Except it isn’t his country.

His colour, his culture, his race may put him in the majority, but his views place him firmly in a minority – a minority even smaller than the three million Muslims in the UK that apparently pose such a direct threat to his “British way of life”.

There is a genuine debate to be had over multiculturalism, particularly in regards to Britain’s Islamic community and how to encourage integration without cultural dilution.

There is also a debate about freedom of speech and the right to political protest – a right the EDL was seemingly denied.

More grand still is the question of all religion and whether society can truly progress if shackled with bronze-age beliefs and superstitions.

However, marching 200 angry men up a High Street in one of London’s most ethnically diverse suburbs, while shouting, “fuck off Islam” and “who the fuck is Allah?” does absolutely nothing to advance the cause of political protest, or the points of multiculturalism in the UK or religion in the modern world.

Whatever country the EDL are trying to salvage, it isn’t one worth saving.

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.

The 42-year-old Wisconsin Representative was unveiled in Norfolk, by the presumptive Republican presidential candidate ahead of a four-day bus tour through key states and battlegrounds.

Appearing alongside Ryan for the first time, and with the World War II battleship, the USS Wisconsin in the background, Romney called his VP pick a “shining exception” in Washington, and praised Ryan’s “character and values”.

“Paul Ryan works in Washington but his roots remain in Janesville, Wisconsin,” said Romney to the delight of the flag-waving crowd, adding that youthful-looking Representative had become the “intellectual leader of the Republican Party.”

The selection of Ryan, revealed by Huffington Post late on Friday night, will be seen as a gamble by Romney, who is hoping that the Representative’s appeal to fiscal conservatives on the right of the GOP, as well as the Tea Party base, will out-way the loss of any moderate Republicans or Independent voters at the polls.

John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign was hugely energised by his selection of Sarah Palin as VP candidate, even if the bounce was only temporary. By selecting Ryan, Romney is betting on a similar boost for a campaign that has come under increasing criticism in recent weeks, not only from Democrats, but from allies within his on party.

In the run-up to Saturday’s announcement, a number of “safer” candidates had been mooted, from Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty to Ohio Senator Rob Portman.

Yet by selecting Ryan, the Chairman of the House Budget Committee and the architect of the Path To Prosperity series, Romney is pushing the economy front and centre of his presidential campaign.

Romney’s VP candidate has built his name in recent years on the back of the “Ryan Budget”, a series of radical proposals for the US economy that includes repealing much of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), while converting Medicare – the safety net offering seniors access to health care via the state – into a voucher-style system dispensed from government through private insurance companies.

Ryan’s selection will be hugely popular with the conservative wing of the GOP, as well as the Tea Party grass roots, many of who see the repeal of Obamacare and the end to entitlement spending as the key focus of the 2012 election.

Yet Ryan is likely to prove equally as popular with Democrats, who now have the Republican’s poster boy for fiscal conservatism in their sights. Should Obama and Biden defeat Romney and Ryan in November, it would be a resounding rejection of the principles upon which much of the Tea Party has campaigned since 2009, as well as clear rejection of the path of austerity and deficit reduction as favoured by the Romney camp.

Ryan’s budget, particularly the reformation of Medicare, one of the government’s most popular programmes, will give Democratic campaigners another easy line of attack, while large spending cuts, allied to income tax rate reduction, can easily be portrayed as a budget for the wealthy at the expense of the middle and working classes.

And while Romney has been quick to point out Obama’s lack of experience in the private sector, Democrats can now point to Ryan, whose career has been almost exclusively in politics.

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.