Europe

London: a class divided

I was standing on Brixton High Street, in South London, at 7 in the morning, looking at a row of looted shops.

A man, unshaven and in a track-suit pants trousers, walked by with a pit bull terrier on a leash. The dog paused in the middle of the street, and slowly defecated.

The man looked on, with apparent pride, until the dog had finished. Then men and dog continued their swagger across the road.

At this point, I committed a foolish error. With a look of disgust on my face, I caught the man's eye. Now he was coming towards me, pit bull straining at the leash.

I knew what was coming: The menacing language, "You [expletive], what the [expletive] are you looking at?" I walked away.

This encounter: its nuances, its predictability, are familiar to anyone who knows England.

In London, well-off people with lots of opportunities often live almost next door to poor people who live blighted, frustrated lives.

The self-styled leader of the Knights Templar

Before we start to film our interview, Paul Ray pulls off the plain T-shirt he arrived in, and despite the late afternoon heat of a Maltese afternoon, he pulls on a white hooded sweatshirt.

He wants the world to see the logo. A white shield with a gold outline and a red cross, above it the initials AOTK – the Association of Templar Knights.

Ray was a founding member of the anti-Islamic English Defence League, but left in a bitter row which continues today. Now he is the self-styled leader of the Association of Knights Templar – an organisation, size unknown, which he believes is the modern equivalent of the medieval Christian crusades to the Holy Land.

A manifesto for a Muslim-free Europe, an Infidel-free Middle East

I have just finished reading a terrifying document. It's called 2083: A European declaration of Independence. 

It's full of advice for the budding Christian martyr. Handy tips on how to build bombs and make poisons; on how to use video games to hone your shooting skills. 

I came across it on a far right website. 

At 1511 pages long it’s a work of extreme prejudice - against Muslims predominantly. 

Ultimately, the author wants a Muslim-free Europe.

The author’s name is Andrew Berwick. He datelines the document London 2011. He spent 3 years of his life writing it and clearly believes, with a passion, every single word. 

The Norwegian media claim this document is written by Anders Behring Breivik, the suspect behind the brutal attacks in Norway. 

At the end of the book are pictures of Breivik himself, dressed as a blond haired and blue eyed hero of the Knights Templar. 

Serbia catches the last fugitive from UN justice

There are no demonstrations on the streets of Belgrade for Goran Hadzic, the last suspect wanted by the UN Court in the Hague, who was finally captured this week.

There have been no outpourings of nationalist rage.  In part, this is because even the extremists find it hard to justify the appalling deeds of the Serbian militiamen who were, in theory, under Hadzic's command in eastern Croatia in the early 1990s.

Their savagery was notorious, their motives often blatantly mercenary.

Throughout the Balkan wars, the line between nationalist and criminal activity was frequently blurred, [and not just by Serbs] but it was perhaps especially hard to tell if the militiamen in the Slavonia region were more interested in fighting, or smuggling and profiteering.

In part, too, it is simply because the events of the early 1990s, Vukovar et al, now seem an awfully long time ago, and increasingly irrelevant, and not just to a younger generation of Serbs.