After his shite remarks the other week about islam and anti-globalisation movement, even the evening standard took issue with him... (thank goodness, though there are a lot of others talking about anti-capitalist terrorists):

The Italian making capital out of terror

 http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/news/top_story.html?in_review_id=460907&in_review_text_id=413218

by Zoe Williams

Read Zoe Williams every Friday in the Evening Standard
If someone had told us two weeks ago that the most dangerously inflammatory remarks about the current crisis would come from Italy, that would have been something of a surprise - not because its president, Silvio Berlusconi, is known for his easy-going attitudes, just because there were so many other more likely candidates.

Yet, as it stands, even the ceaseless wartalkers of America have been scrupulously careful not to call this a clash of civilisations. Everyone has stressed the difference between regular Islam and fundamentalism. Every government has called upon its people not to confuse the Muslims in their neighbourhood with the suicide bombers. Everyone except Berlusconi who, on a short trip to Berlin, managed to squeeze in the following thoughts - that Western civilisation is supreme and superior; that we ought to recognise our "common Christian roots"; that Western society is distinguished by a respect for the "civil and political rights of our citizens and tolerance of everything"; and that there is a "strange unanimity" between Islamic terrorism and the antiglobalisation movement.

A lot of this sounds like no more than the babblings of an unsound mind - if this turns into a war between Christianity and Islam, it won't just mean the end of the world, it will leave an awful lot of us without any side at all (atheists, we're called). I wonder if we could be assigned our own country somewhere, to hide out until the clash of faiths has worn itself out. Boasts of toleration and respect for citizens are absurd coming from a man whose police force, in Genoa, shot dead a protester armed only with a fire extinguisher and beat up countless others, just two months ago.

But let's look at this "strange unanimity" between the anti-globalisation movement and Islamic terrorism. The former would not sanction the killing of thousands of civilians, whether they were bankers or not; the latter would, and did. That's a pretty big difference, considering terrorism is defined by its murderous agenda. Otherwise, though, they are fairly similar - hardline Muslim leaders, from Afghanistan to Iran and

Saudi Arabia, condemn the bombing of Afghanistan. The major protest group, Globalise Resistance, also condemns the bombing, indeed, has pacifism at its core, on the basis that there's no point having global resistance if you don't have a globe.

Much of the anti-American feeling in the Arab world comes not from religious hocus-pocus about women in trousers, but from real economic hardships perpetrated by the West, from crippling interest rates to economic sanctions to large Western corporations exploiting populations who don't have the benefit of Western employment rights (and it's a bit rich, boasting of your treatment of citizens, if that treatment is made financially viable by the maltreatment of other people's). The anti-globalisation movement's concerns are almost exactly the same, give or take a handful of anarchists and a fair amount of environmentalism.

Clearly, Berlusconi's aim here is to co-opt terrorism with protest, thereby criminalising protest and getting himself off the hook for his shameful treatment of Genoan protesters. It's a horribly cynical way to use the deaths of 6,000 people, but there we go. He has, however, raised an interesting point - there are similarities of belief between the Iranians who shout "Death to Americans" after Friday prayer and the protesters who shout "Bush-Bush-Bush, Out-Out-Out" outside international summits. And yet, to look at them - God-fearingly modest on one side, a "travelling circus of anarchists" (copyright: Tony Blair) on the other - they couldn't seem more different.

When people who are completely ideologically unrelated all start thinking the same thing, the answer is not that they're all mad, or they're all enemies - the answer is that there might just be something in what they're saying.


Here's the drill - don't panic
Last week, I was suggesting gut-churning fear as the proper way to respond to the nuclear threat posed by such countries as we may, over the coming months, find ourselves at war with. Now, after seven full days of chemical-weapon talk, I'd say pretty much the opposite.

There's been a run on gas masks; the manufacturer of chemical suits has last week received more calls in 24 hours than he had done in his entire career; people, apparently, have started stockpiling food and water; hospitals are on red alert, though what exactly they'll do with anthrax victims, should they have any, is unclear. Clearly, health authorities need to ready themselves for Doomsday scenarios, but the rest of us don't. Unless we're prepared to wear a mask or a charcoal suit constantly for the next five years, there's no point owning them. There's no point avoiding the Tube, and there's no point fashioning a getaway plan to Essex.

Nobody talks about these devastating possibilities without an agenda. Newspapers discuss it because most events - mobile-phone bills, the trials of Prince William, the Scottish ballet company facing ruin - seem meaningless to the point of disrespect in the light of the past fortnight. The Government, although clearly doing no more than its duty by alerting us to the risks, is also cranking it up a bit to keep the peace lobby quiet.

Unlike pre-Blitz, when people busied themselves building cubbyholes under the stairs, there's nothing you can do to prepare yourself adequately for an attack which, if it came, would be without warning and possibly without even a large blast, or any other dead-giveaway signs of an explosion. Which leaves two possible courses of action - either worry, or don't worry. And worrying, as any decent self-help book with tell you, is best spent on something you can actually do something to help - like seven million Afghan refugees.