Mood:
chattyTopic: Lib Loser Stories
Senator Edward M. Kennedy backs a bill that would effectively halt the proposed construction in Nantucket Sound of 130 wind turbines similar to this one in Hull. The bill would give Governor Mitt Romney the power to veto the Cape Wind plan. \/
Kennedy faces fight on Cape Wind
wind farm comes up for a vote in the Senate, they will object on procedural grounds. They say they'll argue that a renewable energy project shouldn't be lumped in with a bill governing the Coast Guard.
Meanwhile, a group of rank-and-file House members, worried about the political ramifications of rejecting alternative energy sources while motorists pay $3 a gallon at the gas station, have persuaded House leaders to sidetrack the entire bill for at least several weeks, even though it was slated for action this week. The delay could give supporters of the wind farm time to make their case to members of Congress.
"Are we going to be for developing alternative energy or not?" said Representative Charles Bass, a New Hampshire Republican who helped persuade House leaders to table the bill until at least mid-May. "The longer you delay it, the longer there is for people to examine the issue, and to determine what's going on here."
The efforts to move the wind farm
forward occur amid growing attention to Kennedy's role in the secret, behind-the-scenes maneuvering to stop it. Republican Ted Stevens of Alaska, the senator who inserted the wind-farm provision into the Coast Guard bill, has acknowledged discussing the matter privately with the Massachusetts Democrat.
Environmental groups have launched an aggressive advertising and lobbying campaign to persuade Democrats to abandon Kennedy and back a promising source of renewable energy. If the wind farm becomes a reality, advocates say, it could provide three-fourths of the Cape and Islands' energy needs and could set an example for the nation.
The maneuver to stop the wind farm "is clearly a backroom deal, and they're going to get called publicly on it," said John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA. "The Democrats are going to kill the first big offshore wind farm in the United States because of their relationship with Ted Kennedy."
The 130-turbine, 24-square-mile cluster of windmills would be about 8 miles from Kennedy's home in Hyannis Port, and he has long opposed it. The Coast Guard bill would give Governor Mitt Romney, another wind farm opponent, the power to veto it, even if the project clears all other hurdles.
Kennedy rejected suggestions that he doesn't like the wind farm because it would be near his Cape home, and said the project probably wouldn't be visible from the Kennedy compound. He said he's against the project because it would create a range of environmental and navigational problems and would hurt tourism, one of the area's key industries.
The Cape Wind developers, he said, want to erect a sprawling, for-profit field of giant windmills on public, state-owned territory. Kennedy noted that the project was the beneficiary of more lenient regulations included in last year's energy bill, which could have put it on a faster track to construction; therefore, a special deal was warranted to stop it.
Ultimately, Kennedy said, Massachusetts and its governor should get to decide yes or no on the site for the farm, Kennedy said.
"We had an opportunity to right a wrong," he said of the provision in the Coast Guard bill. "The people who ought to be irate ought to be the citizens of Massachusetts. I don't shrink from my advocacy for them. I welcome it. I'm going to continue to make sure that ... a wealthy developer is not going to ride roughshod over the state's interests."
Kennedy said the effort to block the wind farm started in the House, where Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young, another Alaska Republican, originally inserted it in the House version of the Coast Guard bill. Young and Stevens maintain that states should have a say in energy projects off their coastlines.
"I just believe it's a state's right," Stevens said yesterday. "If that were in Puget Sound, don't you think people in Washington would want to say something about it? If it's off our coast, we'd want to know."
Stevens said he "conferred" with Kennedy about adding a provision to the bill that would allow the state to veto the Cape Cod project. He said Kennedy agreed with that idea, an account that Kennedy confirmed.
But the project's supporters don't like the manner in which the provision was included in the bill, an argument that appears to be catching on with some lawmakers. The final language was hashed out in secret by a small handful of lawmakers -- a group that included Young and Stevens.
Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the ranking Democrat on the Senate energy committee, said it's important to encourage development of renewable energy sources like wind power.
Bingaman and Chairman Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, will try to round up enough senators to strip the provision from the Coast Guard bill. That would send the bill back to the conference committee -- with the Senate on record against interference with the Cape Wind project.
The Kennedy-backed provision "would short-circuit the process and kill the project, which I think would be a mistake," Bingaman said.
"If there are problems with the project, they ought to come out and be discussed. But they shouldn't be dealt with this way."
Bass said the Cape Wind project
has been treated differently in Congress because powerful lawmakers and special interest lobbyists vacation on Cape Cod and treasure the ocean views.
"It's odd that the people who are against it are the people who have [scenic] views," Bass said. "I'm sorry about that, but the project ought to rise or fall on its merits."
Kennedy dismissed such talk as "their response to any kind of raising of questions" about the project's problems. "It's just an easy response to an argument that has merit."
Boston Globe ~ Rick Klein ** Kennedy faces fight on Cape Wind
Posted by yaahoo_2006iest
at 5:52 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, 28 April 2006 5:59 PM EDT
d'oh
.
Suddenly, Negative Politics Isn't So Bad
black, whatever; telling lies all over the place. 
celebratory
Al-Qaeda leaders are losing control, U.S. says
WASHINGTON -- Leaders of al-Qaeda lost some control of the terror network last year due to the arrests and deaths of top operational planners, but the group remains the most prominent terror threat facing the United States and its allies, the State Department said Friday.
In its annual report on worldwide terrorism, the department singled out Iran as the most active state sponsor of terrorism,
saying that its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ministry of Intelligence and Security directly have been involved in the planning and support of terrorist acts.
Overall, the report tallied about 11,000 terror attacks around the world last year, resulting in more than 14,600 deaths. That is almost a fourfold increase from 2004, though the agency blames the change largely on new ways of tallying the incidents.
About 3,500 of last year's attacks occurred in Iraq and about 8,300 of the deaths occurred there, accounting for a large part of the increase over 2004.
The report said that Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders are scattered and on the run and Afghanistan is no longer a safe haven for the network. In addition, al-Qaeda's relations with the Taliban that once ruled
Afghanistan are growing weaker and the group's finances and logistics have been disrupted, the report said.
"Al-Qaeda is not the organization it was four years ago," the report said.
However, "overall, we are in the first phase of a potentially long war," it said. "The enemy's proven ability to adapt means we will go through several more cycles of action/reaction before the war's outcome is no longer in doubt. It is likely we will have a resilient enemy for years to come."
A new generation of extremists, some of them getting training through the Internet, is emerging in cells that are likely to be more local and less meticulously planned, the report said. These small groups, empowered by technology, are very difficult to detect or counter, it said.
Safe havens for terrorists where they plan and inspire acts of terrorism tend to be located along international borders between and among ineffective governments, the report said. It cited the Afghanistan border, the intersection of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, the Celebes Sea in Southeast Asia, and Somalia.
In Iraq, which the report called a key front in the global war on terror, a system of clandestine support networks funneled in foreign terrorists from the Middle East, Europe, North Africa, South and Central Asia and the Caucasus.
In 2004, the U.S. government's National Counterterrorism Center, which monitors terrorism, counted 3,192 terror attacks worldwide,
including more than 28,000 people wounded, killed or kidnapped.
Officials have said the government last year changed its system of counting global attacks and devoted more energy to finding reports of violence against civilians. Even so, the higher figures underscore how terrorism around the world has grown since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Six countries -- Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria -- remain classified as state sponsors of terror. Libya and Sudan, though, were credited with continuing to take significant steps to cooperate in the global war on terror.
But the report cited allegations that Libyan officials played a role in an attempt to assassinate then-Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah in 2003 and said the United States continues to evaluate Libya's assurance to halt the use of violence for political purposes.
Libya began working last year with Britain to curtail terrorism by the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and extradited a suspect in a Cairo bombing to Egypt, the report said.
In Israel and Palestinian-held territories, a range of groups, including Hamas, used a variety of tactics, including suicide bombs.
The number of victims killed in Israel was less than 50, down from the nearly 100 people killed in 2004, the report said.
The report said that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, with whom the Bush administration has clashed repeatedly, has an "ideological affinity" with two terrorist groups operating in Colombia, the FARC and the National Liberation Army. It said these connections limit Venezuela's anti-terrorism cooperation with its neighbor.
party time!
Economy rebounds with 4.8% annual growth rate in Q1; inflation weakens
WASHINGTON -- Casting off an end-of-year lethargy, the economy bounded ahead in the opening quarter of this year at a 4.8% annual pace, the fastest pace of growth in 2 1/2 years.
The latest report on the economy, released by the Commerce Department on Friday, showed that consumers, businesses and government all did their part in terms of robust spending and investment to spur a healthy pace of growth in the January-to-March quarter.
The 4.8% increase in the gross domestic product marked a vast improvement from the feeble 1.7% annual rate registered in the final quarter of 2005, when fallout from the Gulf Coast hurricanes, including high energy prices, prompted people and companies to tighten their belts.
The GDP measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States and is considered the best barometer of the economy's fitness.
"The economy is off to a strong start in 2006 and has fully rebounded from the fourth quarter's setback," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group
The first quarter's performance -- the best showing since the third quarter of 2003 -- was close to economists' expectations. Before the report was released, private analysts were forecasting the economy to clock in at a 4.9% growth rate.
Even with the economy zipping ahead in the first quarter, inflation moderated.
An inflation gauge closely watched by the Federal Reserve showed that core prices -- excluding food and energy -- rose by 2%, down from 2.4% in the fourth quarter.
The inflation reading, however, was taken before oil prices zoomed to a record high of more than $75 a barrel last week. Although prices have retreated since then, they still remain high.
A separate report from the Labor Department suggested that the strengthening job market isn't fanning inflation. Employers' cost to hire and retain workers -- wages and benefits -- rose 0.6% in the first quarter, the slowest pace in seven years. That mostly reflected less generous benefit packages.
To keep inflation at bay, the Fed is expected to boost interest rates again at its May 10 meeting, which would mark the 16th increase since June 2004. But after that, the central bank could take a break -- perhaps temporarily -- in its 2-year-old rate raising campaign, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke suggested Thursday.
Bernanke and other Fed policymakers indicated that they want to proceed with caution because they don't want to hurt economic activity by pushing rates up too high.
In the first quarter, consumers -- critical players in the shape of the overall economy -- got their spending back in a more-normal groove. They boosted spending at a brisk rate of 5.5%, compared with paltry 0.9% pace in the fourth quarter. The first quarter's increase, the biggest since the third quarter of 2003, was led by spending on big-ticket goods such as cars.
But a third report showed that consumer sentiment fell in April as concerns about higher gasoline prices overshadowed a buoyant stock market and strong job growth.
The University of Michigan's final index of consumer sentiment for April was 87.4, down from March's final reading of 88.9 and April's preliminary reading of 89.2, said sources who saw the subscription-only report.
"Sentiment is finally beginning to show that consumers are getting a little bit unnerved about higher gasoline prices," said Brian Fabbri, chief economist at BNP Paribas in New York.
The median forecast of Wall Street economists polled by Reuters was for a 89.0 reading on the University of Michigan survey, according to a poll of 53 economists.
Another force helping the economy in the first quarter was business investment. Business spending on equipment and software grew at a whopping rate of 16.4%, the largest gain since the first quarter of 2000. Businesses also ratcheted up investment on buildings and plants. Such capital investment is another key to the economy's continued good performance.
With businesses feeling better about the economy, hiring has picked up. In March, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.7%, matching January's -- the lowest in 4 1/2 years.
Government spending also supported economic growth in the first quarter. This spending went up at a 3.9% pace, a turnaround from a 0.8% dip in the fourth quarter. Spending was strong at the federal level for both defense and non-defense. At the state and local level, government spending was flat.
Elsewhere in the GDP report, Americans' personal savings -- savings as a percentage of after-tax income -- dipped to negative 0.5% in the first quarter as consumer spending outpaced income growth. In the prior quarter, the savings rate stood at negative 0.2%.
Looking ahead, Bernanke said he expects the economy's growth to moderate in coming quarters but still be sufficiently strong to generate decent job growth. Risks to the mostly positive outlook, he said, could come from any prolonged runup in energy prices and sharp drop in housing activity. For now, neither scenario is envisioned.
Contributing: Reuters --- 
silly
CBS News To Be '700 Club' of Gay News
"We don't want to be the '700 Club' of gay news," says Jason Bellini, anchor of "CBS News on Logo," the MTV-owned cable network that targets gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender viewers. "The audience wants us to be credible. There are plenty of other outlets out there doing advocacy coverage."
"CBS News on Logo" made its debut last summer, producing four minutes of news each day for Logo. Courtland Passant, executive producer the CBS News-produced show that runs more than 30 times each day on the network, says the content of the segment centers on gay issues. He notes that recent story topics include a gay-themed children's book, arrests in a St. Maarten gay-bashing case involving CBS News employees, and the discharge of a lesbian Air Force nurse.
Passant, however, insists that he and his staff of five "take great pains to make sure we don't appear to be pandering to the audience. We are not a mouthpiece for the gay community."
"We get our notions of balance and objectivity from voices within our community," he adds. On an issue like gay adoption, for example, Passant says, that means they don't have to put a conservative on air to balance the issue, since almost all of those opposed to gay adoption are outside the gay community.
In addition to "CBS News on Logo," the network produces programming for a number of stations, including A&E, MtvU, Discovery Channel, the Food Network and TV Land. Some such programming, like that on MtvU, is branded with the CBS News name, but much of it is not.
According to Passant, Logo, which partnered with CBS News while both were under the Viacom umbrella, pushed for the CBS News brand name, and CBS News, he says, was "supportive of that."
Bellini, who came to Logo from CNN says the gay news content does not indicate that CBS has taken up gay causes. "I don't think that CBS has chosen sides in the culture war by doing this," he said, adding that all of the networks support the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. "I think they all recognize gay people as part of a diverse newsroom."
Bellini says he isn't the only person taking a risk in embracing Logo. "If we don't do our jobs right, we could be damaging the CBS News brand," he says. "We want to make sure that it's as good as anything else CBS News would put out there."
He says however, that does not mean creating a carbon copy of the kind of coverage of gay issues one would find in traditional media. He recalled an interview with Rosie O'Donnell about her "Gay Family Cruise" in which he interrupted O'Donnell to remind her she was on Logo. "I told her we don't need to hear her making the case for gay people -- you don't need to do PR here," he says. "She loosened up a little after that."
Adds Passant, who came to "CBS News on Logo" from Newspath, the 24-hour affiliate news service of CBS News, the broadcast doesn't inject any editorializing into the final product. "We're just covering stories most news organizations aren't covering," he says. "We take great pains to write the story as straight, if you will, as possible."
"People are so excited that there is a high-quality gay newscast," adds Bellini. "Our very existence gives validity to the idea of gay news."
loud
"If incorporated into a city, it would be the sixth-largest city in Los Angeles County," Antonovich said in a statement Tuesday. "While legal immigration is a positive influence on our culture and economy ... in public safety, health care and public social services, illegals cost county taxpayers nearly three quarters of a billion dollars a year."
Shirley Christensen, spokeswoman for the Department of Public Social Services, said her office provided the data to Antonovich.
"What I want to make clear is the children we aid are legally eligible to be aided," Christensen said. "They are the children of undocumented parents, but they themselves are not undocumented. They were born in this country."
Antonovich's comments come amid a debate in Congress and across the nation about illegal immigration.
No reliable studies have been conducted on the economic impact illegal immigrants have on California government budgets, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California.
In 2004, the Government Accountability Office concluded there was insufficient information to establish the costs to states of educating illegal immigrant children.
Some in the immigration debate say illegal immigrants are a drain on public coffers. Others say illegal immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in services.
Illegal immigrants are not eligible for many government services, but they can use the public health care system and their U.S.-born children are eligible for welfare.
Nearly two years later, when her boyfriend started bragging about the returns he was earning on his 401(k), Mendez took a closer look at her own account. "He was earning 15 percent a year and I was earning 3 percent," she recalled. "I thought, 'There's something wrong here.'"
Mendez's money was languishing in a fixed-rate annuity, an investment ill-suited to someone in her early 20s. Worse, she would have to pay a steep penalty to bail out.
Public-school teachers across the country are in similar predicaments.
And many have their unions to thank for it.
Some of the nation's largest teachers unions have joined forces with investment companies to steer their members into retirement plans that frequently have high expenses and mediocre returns.
New York State United Teachers, for instance, receives $3 million a year from ING Group for encouraging its 525,000 members to invest in an annuity sold by the Dutch insurance giant.
The National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the country with 2.7 million members, collected nearly $50 million in royalties in 2004 on the sale of annuities, life insurance and other financial products it endorses.
Other deals
Union leaders defend the endorsement deals and the prevalence of high-fee annuities. They say that teachers get valuable advice from brokers and financial advisers in return for the fees, and that the companies' contributions to union coffers help pay employee salaries and other union expenses.
Yet no one disputes that this money ultimately comes out of teachers' pockets.
"The nature of the marketplace is such that you have these little under-the-table payments, or whatever you want to call them, and a good-old-boy network that really works against the teachers," said Mark Fischer, who runs an Ohio company that designs and manages retirement plans.
As with a 401(k), funds invested in a 403 (b) grow tax free until the owner retires and starts making withdrawals. But there is a key difference. In the private sector, employers sponsor 401(k) plans and are required to screen the investment options and make sure employees have good choices.
School districts are under no such obligation. Most leave it to teachers to find their own investments.
As a result, hundreds of insurers, mutual fund companies and financial planners compete for teachers' money, promoting a bewildering array of products. A union endorsement confers a huge advantage, allowing a provider to stand out from the crowd.
Teachers generally are not aware that unions are paid for their endorsements, directly or indirectly. Such deals usually are not mentioned on union Web sites or in brochures describing the favored investments.
"This is a national problem," said Dan Otter, a former Maryland teacher and founder of 403bwise.com, a Web site that offers tips on finding low-cost 403(b) plans.
"It's a rare school district that gives teachers access to quality choices," Otter said. "In many cases, the 403(b) is a source of profit for unions."
The NEA receives royalties on sales of Valuebuilder, the annuity it endorses, and other financial products. Union officials declined to say how the royalties are calculated or how much money union-endorsed retirement plans bring in.
Disclosure required
In addition to its direct payments, Security Benefit sponsors dozens of NEA conferences each year.
NEA officials said they endorsed the insurer's annuity because they wanted a provider with a national sales force to serve affiliate unions.
"There are companies that have lower fees, but they don't have the distribution structure that our members tell us that we need," said Gary Phoebus, an NEA spokesman in Washington.
Local unions that help promote NEA-endorsed products get a share of the royalties. The Florida Education Association, for example, collected $140,000 in "program royalties" last year, federal records show. The Illinois Education Association received $178,148, while the Maine Education Association was paid $33,610.
The rival American Federation of Teachers has a far less lucrative arrangement with ING Group. The 1.3-million-member union endorses ING as a provider of 403(b) plans but does not share in sales revenue. Instead, ING reimburses the union for the money it spends promoting the insurer's products.
Those payments have totaled less than $50,000 since the agreement took effect in 2003, said John Abraham, the union's deputy director of research. The lower overhead translates into lower-cost options for teachers. ING offers American Federation of Teachers members a choice of mutual funds with fees as low as 0.25 percent, as well as an annuity with higher expenses.
"We do not have a royalty arrangement like NEA," Abraham said. "All of our deliberations with ING have centered on getting lower fees for members and more benefits and services going forward."
In Wisconsin, the teachers union set up its own low-cost 403(b) program.
The Wisconsin Education Association, which represents most kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers in the state, charges an annual fee of 0.3 percent of assets.
"We have no profit motive. Our goal is to cover the cost of operations and keep the cost to participants as low as possible," said Randy Mullis, assistant executive director of the union's Tax Sheltered Annuity Trust in Madison.
Several years ago, Mullis said, the NEA asked the Wisconsin union to help promote the Valuebuilder annuity.
"We said that in all good conscience, we can't do that," he said.
Kathy Kristof writes for the Los Angeles Times. Times researchers Scott Wilson and John L. Jackson contributed to this report.
Pat K fails Rhode test: Boy blunder didn't have right - or write - of way
And what's up with Patches this spring? First he takes a hammer to the mouth in Pawtucket, and now he's driving around Rhode Island like an idiot, or should I say, a Kennedy?
Does Patches have some issues - I mean, other than the ones we already know about, the "medications," the boat, the women, the fact that he's more incoherent than his worthless father and is generally dumber than two rocks.
This time, the question must be asked, what's up with Patches' handwriting? Check out the Portsmouth Police Department accident report he filled out. Is that the handwriting of a 38-year-old member of Congress?
It looks like it was written by a chimpanzee, or a 2-year-old
.
Or a Kennedy.
It was Saturday, April 15 - Tax Day, not that that means much to a Kennedy. They want to raise your taxes, not theirs. Just ask Ted which state they filed Grandma's will in. (Hint: it wasn't Massachusetts.)
Patches' trust fund bought him a house in Portsmouth, R.I., a few years back. On this Tax Day, at 10 a.m., he was on his way to the local drug store - fill in your own Patches Kennedy-at-the-DRUG-store joke here. It was a CVS.
Patches was behind the wheel of a 2003 Crown Vic - a gas guzzler, but then, like taxes, fuel conservation is something for the Little People to worry about, not one of the Beautiful People. The Ford is owned, by the way, by The Friends of Pat Kennedy, Inc. Must be nice.
So Patches is trying to turn off Turnpike Avenue into the CVS parking lot, and he's in a hurry ... if you know what I mean. Why should a Kennedy have to wait until the car with the right of way goes by in the other direction?
As one witness put it:
"A vehicle was in front of V#2 (the Patches mobile) making a left into CVS, and that V#2 turned directly behind the unidentified vehicle turning without hesitation."
Didn't the other driver know who he was?
The other motorist, a 46-year-old guy from Bristol, slammed his 2000 Nissan into Patches' Crown Vic. By Kennedy standards, it was a fender-bender. Not only did not a single blonde die, no one was even paralyzed, or raped. Of course, Patches' no doubt extremely urgent trip to the drugstore was delayed, which may be the cause of his almost indecipherable scribbling. Dammit, he needed some more ... shampoo?
A call was placed to his Rhode Island office yesterday, but was not returned. I am somewhat puzzled by the police officer's description of Patches' physical condition:
"Appeared Normal."
Nobody who scribbles like that is normal. Look, no one is expecting even mediocrity from the boy - this is the Congressman who once decried the fact that middle-class Americans were having trouble "making mends meet." But given the trouble he gets into, shouldn't he have someone on the payroll just for moments like this?
The accident wasn't reported in the newspapers until almost a week after it happened. The story ended up in the D section of the Providence Journal, under the East Bay Sports Bulletin Board and a big story headlined, "Two arrested after Newport tagging spree."
Probably six people saw the story. Luckily, one of them faxed it to me. And so we have another chapter in the pathetic biography of Patches Kennedy.
The chapter's title: "When You Need, I Mean Really Need Something at the Drugstore, Send A Flunky."
Your dad could have told you that, Patches.
(Origional story requires registration) --- 
spacey
<<<<< David Myatt, who has changed his name to Abdul Aziz ibn Myatt, is a former leader of Combat 18; he now says Islam is the best hope for "fighting the West".
What the neo-Nazi fanatic did next: switched to Islam
Two faces, two converts - two Muslim extremists in Britain
A Neo-nazi whose ideas were said to be the inspiration for the man who let off a nail bomb in Central London in 1999 has converted to an extremist form of Islam.
David Myatt, a founder of the hardline British National Socialist Movement (NSM) who has been jailed for racist attacks, has changed his name to Abdul Aziz ibn Myatt. David Copeland, who is serving six life sentences after three people died in his Soho bomb attacks, was a member of the NSM.
Myatt is reportedly the author of a fascist terrorist handbook and a former leader of the violent far-right group Combat 18. But now - in his mid-50s and sporting a red, bushy beard - he subscribes to radical Islamist views.
In an internet essay entitled From Neo-Nazi to Muslim, Myatt asks: "How was it that I, a Westerner with a history of over 25 years of political involvement in extreme right-wing organisations, a former leader of the political wing of the neo-Nazi group Combat 18, came to be standing outside a mosque with a sincere desire to go inside and convert to Islam? "These were the people who I had been fighting on the streets, I had swore (sic) at and had used violence against - indeed, one of my terms of imprisonment was a result of me leading a gang of skinheads in a fight against 'Pakis'."
In a later interview,
and demand, that we abandon the purity of authentic Islam and either bow down before them and their idols, or accept the tame, secularised, so-called Islam which they and their apostate lackeys have created.
"This may well be a long war, of decades or more - and we Muslims have to plan accordingly. We must affirm practical jihad - to take part in the fight to free our lands from the kuffar (unbelievers). Jihad is our duty."
Myatt, who briefly became a monk after his second spell in prison, said that he became a Muslim while working long hours alone on a farm. He grew up in Africa, moved to Britain in 1967 and spent time living in Worcestershire. In July 2000 Searchlight, the anti-fascist magazine, described him as "the most ideologically-driven Nazi in Britain, preaching race war and terrorism".
Myatt was the architect of the NSM and was involved in the leadership of Combat 18. He issued a statement in response to the Soho nail bombings saying: "Neither myself nor anyone else connected to the NSM can be held responsible for these bombs in any way. That responsibility lies with the person who constructed them, planted them and caused them to explode. Only that person, and God, know the motive behind the attacks."
Myatt said that "all bombs are terrible and barbaric", whether detonated by lone bombers, Western governments in Iraq or Zionists in Palestine.
"The NSM considered the creation of a revolutionary situation in this country as necessary since it wished to build an entirely new society, based upon personal honor, and believed this could only be done by destroying the dishonourable and corrupt society of the present.
"However, the NSM neither preached, nor sought to incite, what is called 'racial hatred'. Instead, it strove to propagate the warrior values of honor, loyalty and duty, and make the British people aware of, and come to value, their ancestral warrior culture and warrior heritage."
Myatt said recently that he had given up hope of a breakthrough by the far Right and believed that Muslims were the best hope for combating Zionism and the West. "There will not be an uprising, a revolution, in any Western nation, by nationalists, racial nationalists, or National Socialists - because these people lack the desire, the motivation, the ethos, to do this and because they do not have the support of even a large minority of their own folk," he said.
"If these nationalists, or some of them, desire to aid us, to help us ... they can do the right thing, the honorable thing, and convert, revert, to Islam - accepting the superiority of Islam over and above each and every way of the West."