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US federal trade commission looking into allegations that company's DoubleClick has illegally promoted Google products

The US federal trade commission is investigating whether Google's DoubleClick advertising subsidiary has illegally pushed customers to buy its other products, the Guardian has established.

The regulator is understood to be looking at whether the display advertiser, acquired by Google in 2008 for $3.1bn (£2bn), is being used to muscle clients into buying adverts on other Google advertising properties such as its text-based AdSense. That could constitute "tying", which is illegal under antitrust law.

FTC spokesman Peter Kaplan declined to comment. The Guardian has, however, confirmed that the investigation is under way from other sources with knowledge of the FTC's work.

The FTC, which has a remit to protect consumers, has a number of preliminary investigations under way at any time, many of which are subsequently dropped for lack of evidence or harm. The first sign that it was moving towards a formal investigation would be the issuing of investigative requests to affected companies. The Google investigation is understood to be in its preliminary stages.

Reuters reported that the concerns have been raised by rivals who have complained that DoubleClick products such as its ad management system have been used to encourage sites to use other Google products such as AdExchange.

An antitrust investigation by the FTC could seriously hamper Google's freedom to manoeuvre in the advertising market. DoubleClick provides ad targeting based on various criteria. Since the purchase was completed in 2008, the number of players in the online ad market has shrunk.

Google had about 15% of America's $15bn online display advertising market in 2012, ahead of Facebook's 14.6%, said research firm eMarketer. That's expected to widen in Google's favour over the next year.

Microsoft famously fell foul of antitrust law in the 1990s, found guilty of illegally tying PC vendors' ability to buy its Windows operating system to the use of its Internet Explorer browser. That shut out the rival Netscape. Microsoft escaped a direct sanction following an appeal in 2000 but had to submit to antitrust oversight until May 2011. The trial and subsequent consent decree substantially changed Microsoft's corporate culture – and created the opportunity for Google to emerge with the rise of the internet.

Separately, the European commission has yet to decide whether it will accept a number of suggestions made by Google to end an investigation into potential abuse of its search monopoly. Google in April offered a number of concessions relating to search labelling – but rivals who previously complained to the EC indicated they would reject them, which could set back any agreement and might trigger legal action.

The FTC has carried out formal investigations against Google a number of times in recent years. In 2011 it investigated its Google Buzz social media system, for which it was bound over for 20 years in March 2011 on privacy-related matters. It then had to pay a $22.5m fine last August for violating that ruling by hacking Apple users' browsers to track them online.

In January, the FTC cleared Google of biasing its search results in its own favour after a two-year formal investigation that ran in parallel with – but separate from – the one in Europe. However, the FTC did slap down Google's Motorola Mobility (MMI) subsidiary for its attempts to seek injunctions against companies including Apple and Motorola for using its "standards-essential" patents – a decision seen by many as lowering MMI's overall value, because it reduced the amount that Google could demand for use of its portfolio of 17,500 patents.

That weakness in MMI's patent portfolio was reinforced on Thursday, when a panel at the ITC, which adjudicates on trade disputes over US imports, declined to grant MMI a sales ban against Microsoft's Xbox, ending a dispute that had gone on since November 2010.

Previously a US judge cut to just $1.8m an MMI claim under which it was demanding royalties on a standards-essential patent that would have cost Microsoft billions of dollars annually.

The US district court judge argued that having a patent with comparatively small functionality used in a standard should not be an excuse for demanding a "hold-up" rate.

In Europe, Apple and Microsoft have both complained to the EC's antitrust arm – the same one investigating Google's alleged search bias – about MMI's use of standards-essential patents to seek injunctions.

• Google
• Advertising
• Internet
• United States

Charles Arthur
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The record for the top speed reached on a mountain bike has been broken by cyclist François Gissy on a track near Mulhouse in eastern France

President tells Annapolis graduates that sexual assault 'has no place in the greatest military on earth'

President Barack Obama on Friday urged US Naval Academy graduates to remember that their honor depends on what they do when nobody is looking, and said that sexual assault has "no place in the greatest military on earth".

The commander in chief congratulated the 1,047 midshipmen graduating at the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, telling the 841 men and 206 women that they have proven themselves morally by meeting rigorous standards at the academy. But their commencement celebration came in the midst of reports of widespread sexual assault throughout the US military, and Obama ended his 20-minute address by recognizing "how the misconduct of some can have effects that ripple far and wide".

"Those who commit sexual assault are not only committing a crime, they threaten the trust and discipline that makes our military strong," Obama said. "That's why we have to be determined to stop these crimes, because they've got no place in the greatest military on earth."

The president's comments were aimed at rooting out the problem at a time when Republicans have been criticizing him for not responding forcefully enough to controversies including last year's deadly attack on a US consulate in Libya and political targeting at the IRS. But Obama was quick to express outrage over the reports of sexual assault, saying he has no tolerance for it. Last week he summoned military leaders to the White House and instructed them to lead a process to root out the problem.

The Pentagon released a report earlier this month, estimating that as many as 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted last year and that thousands of victims are unwilling to come forward despite new oversight and assistance programs. That figure is an increase over the 19,000 estimated assaults in 2011.

Several recent arrests have added to the military's embarrassment. A soldier at the US Military Academy at West Point was charged with secretly photographing women, including in a bathroom. The Air Force officer who led the service's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response unit was arrested on charges of groping a woman. And the manager of the Army's sexual assault response program at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was relieved of his post after his arrest in a domestic dispute with his ex-wife.

The applause that had accompanied earlier portions of Obama's Naval Academy speech, as he mentioned the Navy Seals' killing of Osama bin Laden and called for the building of a powerful 300-ship fleet, fell to silence as he turned to the sexual assault scandal. Midshipmen and spectators watching under cool gray skies as a light rain fell listened silently as he repeated the refrain: "We need your honor."

Obama urged the graduates to use the leadership skills and values learned at the academy to help prevent behavior in the battlefield that can damage the image of the US overseas.

"We need your honor, that inner compass that guides you, not when the path is easy and obvious, but it's hard and uncertain, that tells you the difference between that which is right and that which is wrong," Obama said. "Perhaps it will be the moment when you think nobody's watching. But never forget that honor, like character, is what you do when nobody's looking."

After the midshipmen took their oath of office as Navy ensigns and Marine second lieutenants, the president emerged from the covered stage into the rain to shake the hand of each graduate collecting a diploma. "Folks in the Navy don't mind a little water," the president joked in his speech. The rain stopped just before the whooping graduates threw their caps in the air to end the ceremony.

Obama's address was his second to a military audience in as many days, coming a day after he laid out his counterterrorism vision at the National Defense University, where he defended his controversial drone strikes program and renewed his push to close the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility. It is a tradition for presidents to rotate speeches at the commissioning ceremonies of the four service academies. The Naval Academy, about 30 miles from the White House in Annapolis, Maryland, says 16 presidents have addressed graduates, and Obama is the sixth to do so twice. He also addressed 2009 graduates.

The ceremony and its pageantry could not escape Washington's budget fights. The Navy's Blue Angels aerobatic team did not perform, because of budget cuts due to a fight between Obama and congressional Republicans. But the ceremony also featured a fitting achievement: for the first time in the academy's history, an entire family has graduated from the school. Matt Disher was joining his brother Brett and sister Alison, twins who graduated in 2010, as well as his father Tim and mother Sharon as alumni.

"Tim and I never expected anything like this," said Sharon, who graduated in 1980 in the first class that included women. "In fact, if anything we probably discouraged the kids from going, because if you don't come in for the right reason, which is to serve your country, you're not going to last."

Sharon Disher, of Annapolis, wrote the book First Class: Women Join the Ranks at the Naval Academy about the difficulties of being in the class of 1980, the first that included women. She said she is disappointed the military is still grappling with sexual assault issues, but applauded the president for raising the subject.

"The more we talk about it, the more we're going to do something about it, and that's the thing we never did," she said. "I guess we've just got to keep the conversation going until we fix the problem."

• US military
• Barack Obama
• Rape
• United States

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Just as Breivik's views on Islam did not deserve a hearing by the right, so the left should not use Woolwich to make its case on foreign policy

The killers got their bloody hands on the front page first, but they struggled to keep the public's attention. On Friday, the focus moved to Lee Rigby, the man they killed, and the family he left behind. It was his face that stared from page one, the sobbing of his wife heard on the radio news.

Even on the previous day, when the victim was still nameless, the killers were not the stars of the spectacle they had scripted and staged. How galling it would be for them to know that the person attracting the most intense interest was not the men with knives, but Ingrid Loyau-Kennett – who had voluntarily stepped off a bus to insert herself in a lethal situation that she could so easily have avoided, armed only with a Brownie leader's knowledge of first aid. She spoke calmly to the murderers, very possibly preventing further bloodshed – an act of such quiet heroism it astonishes as much as it inspires. It was her, not them, we wanted to know about. If she is not included in the next honours list, then Britain's gongs are more pointless than their most damning critics assume.

Even at the moment of highest drama, as one of the men addressed an amateur camera, his hands drenched red, he did not dominate the scene. Watch it again and your eye goes to two women, unhurriedly walking past him as he speaks of horror and violence, one of them wheeling a shopping trolley. In its own way, it was a peculiarly British moment, surreally recalling the old Morecambe and Wise sketch that had Eric stride across the back of a busy stage, wearing a coat and cloth cap and carrying a shopping bag, as if oblivious of the mayhem around him. That the two women were black, while Loyau-Kennett spoke with a French accent, only completed the tableau of modern, plural London: superficially unrecognisable from the London of 1940, but still a city that knows how to keep calm and carry on.

The behaviour of these women raises a challenging question for the rest of us: when killers strike in this way, should we listen to what they have to say? Or should we walk on, pretending we can't hear?

Judging by our responses to Woolwich and comparable acts of violence, the truth is we don't know. If you were kind, you would say we are confused. Less charitably, you'd say that we are guilty of double standards and hypocrisy. It seems we're ready to listen when we have some sneaking sympathy, not for the act itself, but for the cause it seeks to highlight. But when we find the killer's motive as repugnant as his action, we put our fingers in our ears.

A useful comparison is with the case of Anders Breivik, who in 2011 planted a bomb in Oslo that killed eight people and who went on to murder another 69, mostly teenagers, on the island of Utøya in Norway. He did not spread his message via bystanders' cameraphones, but through an 1,801-page manifesto that denounced what he saw as the evils of mass immigration and multiculturalism.

At the time there was no shortage of voices on the right rushing to denounce what Breivik had done, before suggesting he was voicing a widely felt sentiment, adding that perhaps a frank conversation about the excesses of diversity and the alienating effects of globalisation and migration was overdue. As I wrote at the time: "To listen to it, you'd think Breivik had simply wanted to start a debate, that he'd perhaps written a provocative pamphlet for Demos, rather than committed an act of murderous cruelty."

Some shook their heads ruefully, sadly noting that they had long warned such violence would be the result of the headlong rush to a multicultural, rainbow-hued future.

Liberal and left opinion knew what it thought of such talk. It was wrong to accord Breivik's warped beliefs such a respectful hearing. Airing his ideas this way was to reward his massacre, surely providing an incentive for others to repeat the slaughter. His actions should be treated as murder, plain and simple. To respond by debating his grievances was to cede him, and violence itself, too much power.

Yet when the killer's cause is the matter of western intervention in Muslim countries, it seems some left voices find their previous fastidiousness has deserted them. Cue a BBC interview with Ken Livingstone, who spoke so powerfully after the 7 July bombings in London. Now, he linked Woolwich to Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Enter the Stop the War coalition, whose statement on Woolwich similarly made the connection with "western foreign policy in the Middle East and south Asia", ending with the declaration that events had proved their position "absolutely right".

Be in no doubt, Livingstone and the anti-war movement would be appalled if their arguments were played back to them in reverse. Imagine what they would say to the claim that Breivik's terror vindicated the old rivers-of-blood warnings, predicting that decades of multiculturalism would end in disaster, and now it was time to change course. Consider their reaction if the right had seized on the bombing of the Admiral Duncan pub in 1999, casting it as the inevitable result of a liberalisation of gay rights that was bound to radicalise a certain young male demographic and that therefore a policy shift was in order.

Of course they'd have rejected such logic utterly. But if it's wrong for the right to seek vindication in acts of brutal violence, then it's surely wrong for the left to do the same. Nor is it any good for the latter to say, "we're not justifying, we're simply explaining": the right said the same about Breivik. Nor can they claim theirs is no more than a cold, analytical judgment, merely forecasting rather than endorsing the logical consequences of a current course of action. Their opponents could and did say the same about multiculturalism after Breivik.

As it happens, I too once made the case that the war in Iraq would only fuel more terror on our own soil. But what happened in Norway has made me hesitant to use that argument any longer. For now we know that there are minds twisted enough to be provoked to kill by any policy they despise. If you believe western foreign policy is wrong, then argue that case. But don't rest your argument on the threat of blowback violence against us. For as we have learned at great cost, in today's world horror can come from any direction.

Twitter: @j_freedland

• Woolwich attack
• Anders Behring Breivik
• London
• Crime

Jonathan Freedland
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South Lakes Wild Animal Park in Dalton-in-Furness closed after 24-year-old woman seriously injured in big cats' enclosure

A zoo worker has been seriously injured in a tiger attack at an animal park. The 24-year-old woman was in the big cats' enclosure when she was mauled at South Lakes Wild Animal Park in Dalton-in-Furness.

She was taken by ambulance to Preston Royal Infirmary and the park has been closed. Cumbria police said they were investigating.

A spokesman said: "The tiger is securely locked in its enclosure and there is no further risk to the public. Members of the public were not at any risk. The wildlife park has closed early and all visitors have left the park."

He said Barrow borough council was also investigating.

• Animals

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The owners of video allegedly showing Toronto's mayor smoking crack go missing in the middle of crowdfunding campaign

The effort by news site Gawker to bust Toronto mayor Rob Ford for allegedly smoking crack is crack journalism work. Toronto is Canada's biggest city. Canada has a $680bn trade relationship with the United States. We can't have them high on crack.

The spangers Gawker has deployed outside New York subway stops to raise money to buy a video purportedly showing Ford crack-smoking, however, smell bad and obstruct pedestrian flow. We exaggerate; Gawker has not deployed spangers. But the website is begging for money from the public to supplement its news gathering budget, so it can afford to pay off the drug dealers who own the video.

It's not a traditional news-gathering technique. It's the kind of thing that causes ethicists of journalism to stroke their chins at double-speed and could outright kill the more delicate newsroom ombudspeople. Gawker doesn't care about all that.

What Gawker might care about, however, is its reputation as a street-smart media machine, and the present episode has so far not burnished that.

For starters, the drug dealers appear to have disappeared, taking the video – the big payoff – with them. Gawker editor John Cook on Thursday notified potential contributors to the crowd-funding campaign, called Crackstarter, that Gawker may no longer be able to deliver the goods.

"The last time we established contact with the people who are in possession of the video was this past Sunday, and we have not been able to reach them since," wrote Cook, who knows the video exists because he enterprisingly traveled to Canada to see it for himself. "… If you are considering contributing, you should be aware that our confidence that we can get a deal done has, on account of the foregoing, diminished since we came up with this idea."

The faith of thousands of Gawker readers who have collectively contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the effort is on the line. As of midday Friday, the Crackstarter had raised $163,000 toward its goal of $200,000, which is how much the drug dealers want for the video. More than 6,000 individuals had contributed. Gawker says that if it raises the $200,000 by the deadline, 11.59pm Monday, but is unable to obtain the video, "every penny" of the money will be given to "a Canadian non-profit that helps people suffering from addiction".

Many readers of Gawker may personally be gratified at having contributed to charity. But a lot more would probably rather see mayoral crack-smoking footage.

Next, for a media conglomerate such as Gawker, the money in question would seem to be rather – how to put this – small. If Gawker's editors deem the story worth $200,000 to break – as they patently must, for the only alternative is they take their readers for fools – couldn't they find it in their budget? David Karp farts $200,000. Jonah Peretti just pulled $200,000 out from behind this gentleman's ear. Nick Denton needs to pass the hat?

(Beyond what it says about Gawker, the episode points to the relative innocence of Canadian politics. In its first week, Crackstarter barely cracked $150,000. How fast do you think the internet could come up with $200,000 to buy a video of a mayor of a comparably sized US city – Rahm Emanuel, say – smoking crack cocaine? [Rahm Emanuel has never done that.] Faster than you can say "Sheldon Adelson is urinating on America's gift to the world its open democracy.")

Finally, the Crackstarter campaign looks hypocritical, because, as the site's own commenters have pointed out, Gawker has given the full Gawker treatment to well-heeled Kickstarter users. (Crackstarter uses Indiegogo.) In a post last month tagged "crowdfarcing", Sam Biddle of the Gawker subblog Valleywag made fun of actor Zach Braff's Kickstarter campaign to run his new movie.

"Kickstarter has the potential to make some very neat stuff happen for people of modest means who need a little boost for a good idea," Biddle wrote. "But for every lazy, exploitative, Give-This-Successful-Person-Cash-Just-Cause campaign, the startup loses credibility and gains a legion of rolled eyes."

Here's hoping the drug dealers start returning Cook's middleman's calls, and we get to see the evidence and judge for ourselves whether Toronto mayor Rob Ford smokes crack, an allegation he has called "ridiculous".

Or one big lucky day may be coming up for an unnamed Canadian charity.

• Gawker Media
• Canada
• United States
• Drugs
• US press and publishing
• Crowdsourcing

Tom McCarthy
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If there is a message from the reaction to Rigby's death it is that Muslims are doing all they can to counter killers' divisive intent

Two days after Lee Rigby's horrific killing, the scene was set for a small but significant piece of community rebuilding: a delegation from the Muslim Council of Britain was to add its own tribute to the mass of flowers at the scene of his death. Then, at brisk walk in the pouring rain, arrived the last person some might wish to see at such a time: Nick Griffin.

The BNP leader, flanked by a burly aide and an even burlier bodyguard, insisted he was there purely as a politician – Rigby's family comes from his north-west England European Parliament constituency – and to "pay my personal respects". But no sooner were the cameras rolling than Griffin launched into his well-worn patter about Britain's supposedly radicalised Muslim population and how its was ignored by "the liberal elite, politicians and mass media".

Fortunately, the MCB were delayed, the group's deputy general secretary, Shuja Shafi, laying his own flowers after Griffin had gone. Shafi was at pains to say, he was there purely to mourn "the loss of a bright young man, a father, a husband and a brother".

It was a message reflected in other flowers left at the busy junction by Zahida Ahmad, a Muslim who has lived in Woolwich for 45 years. "Lee Rigby, we are deeply saddened by this tragic loss of an innocent life," read her card. "Our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family."

If there is a wider message from the reaction in south-east London and more widely around Britain since Rigby's death it is that Muslim groups are doing all they can to counter the divisive intent of the killers.

Perhaps the biggest single expression of solidarity came at the East London mosque, in Tower Hamlets, as leaders of the Christian, Jewish and Buddhist faiths joined around 6,000 Muslims for Friday prayers.

The group included the Bishop of Stepney, Adrian Newman, and Leon Silver from the East London central synagogue. Speaking before prayers started they said they had come to condemn the Woolwich attacks and show that the various faith communities were standing shoulder to shoulder with their Muslim neighbours.

"Here in Tower Hamlets we do support each other in our different faiths," said Rev Alan Green, chair of the Tower Hamlets interfaith forum. "If there are attempts to demonise parts of our community – particularly the Muslim community – we will stand together. We will not leave our Muslim brothers and sisters to attempt to defend themselves."

Nonetheless, as well as sadness over the events in Woolwich there was fear among Muslim worshippers over what it may mean for them. "My sisters, my daughter – even my wife are now scared to go out because they fear what people may do after this," said Mizan Abdulrof. "Everyone is shocked and distraught about the horrendous act that was carried out. These idiots, these poor idiots, who carried out this barbaric act did so for their own self for nothing else … they have nothing whatever to do with Islam. Our hearts go out to that man and his poor family."

The latest figures for attacks against Muslims showed that these fears are not unfounded. The Tell Mama hotline for recording Islamophobic crimes and incidents recorded 148 incidents since the Woolwich attacks took place, including eight attacks on mosques.

Tell Mama co-ordinator Fiyaz Mughal said the service usually recorded three or four incidents on an average day, but the spike after Wednesday's killing showed no sign of slowing down.

To add to the growing tensions, far right groups such as the English Defence League and BNP are still trying to whip up division between communities.

The EDL, whose balaclava-clad supporters fought battles with the police in Woolwich hours after the killing, is due to hold a demonstration in Newcastle on Saturday and has called another protest outside Downing Street on Monday. Meanwhile the British National party has called a separate demonstration in Woolwich for 1 June.

Nick Lowles from anti-extremism organisation Hope not Hate said: "There are people who are deliberately trying to wind the situation up and incite a violent response against Muslims. We need people to stay calm but also we need the mainstream majority to speak out against extremism. Britain is better than the extremists."

Back at the East London mosque, sheikh Abdul Qayum condemned "without qualification the horrendous crime committed in Woolwich".

"Our thoughts are with the family and friends of the victim. The actions of the perpetrators are totally against the religion of Islam and the example of the prophet Muhammad. Today we reaffirm this and stand with those of all faiths and none to oppose this terrible act."

At the closest major mosque to the attack, the Greenwich Islamic Centre, the mood ahead of Friday prayers were similar, albeit tinged with an air of weary resignation at being forced to defend their faith.

"Islam makes it very clear that if you murder one person you murder all of humanity," said one young mosque-goer, a Birmingham-born Christian convert who gave his name only as Mohammed. "But this is automatically a 'Muslim crime'. When Stuart Hazell killed Tia Sharp, did anyone mention he was brought up a Christian? No."

Mohammed said he felt particularly keenly about current events given that the two suspected killers are themselves converts to Islam: "But they're nothing to do with Islam and nothing to do with the mosque. I've never seen either of them here. And yet we're going to have to explain ourselves to journalists all day."

• Woolwich attack
• Crime
• London
• Islam
• Religion

Peter WalkerMatthew Taylor
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• Fifa to follow English FA's lead with universal sanction
• Points deductions for clubs whose fans are serial offenders

Fifa is set to follow England's lead and bring in a mandatory five-match ban for players found guilty of racism, while also introducing points deductions for clubs where fans are serial offenders.

The five-match ban is being proposed by Fifa's new task force on racism and, if agreed by the governing body of world football's congress next week, all 209 member countries will have to adopt the rule.

The proposals have not been published but sources have confirmed they include a five-game ban for on-pitch racism.

That is not as stringent as the 10-match sanction for European competitions agreed by Uefa's congress on Friday, but rules punishing racist abuse by fans will be stricter and include points deductions.

Asked about the five-match ban, Fifa's task force chairman, Jeffrey Webb, said: "I can't speak about that yet. We're looking at making sure that is spread across the 209 member associations and, regardless of what Uefa does or Concacaf [the North American confederation] does, from a global standpoint, there must be certain minimum standards.

"It's time to make people accountable. It's points deduction, it's relegation, it's expulsion from competitions. Finally, we're having some action on this. This is something that's long overdue.

"Fifa must set the minimum standard and say: 'These are the sanctions', and if you infringe on this, these are the consequences. Our resolution will outline to them what we expect there to be from a minimum standpoint."

Uefa's member associations agreed on sanctions for European matches at its congress in London. As well as a 10-match ban for players and officials, racism by fans will be punished by partial stadium closure for a first offence, with a full stadium closure for a second offence.

Uefa's president, Michel Platini, said: "This is a great moment in our struggle against racism."

• Fifa
• Football politics
• Race issues

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On this Greek island, I am gaining much vicarious enrichment seeing the world anew through the eyes of my 10-year-old son

I wage a losing battle in my house over the use of the word "literally". "I'm not actually joking, Alice, we saw this apple and it was literally as big as a house," is the sort of sentence – with the requisite upspeak intonation – that brings out the grumpy pedant in my children's father. "Please, please," I plead. "Can't we use the word literally, well, just a little more literally." The kids raise their eyes to heaven, sniggering over my middle-aged fussiness.

Meaning is use, they might one day argue back. But this morning I found huge delight in my 10-year-old son Felix's use of "literally". "I'm not actually joking, Alice," he said, "the sea is literally blue."

My son and I are on the small Greek island of Naxos. We are having a few days of half-term father/son bonding and reading Greek myths together. On this island, Dionysus wooed Ariadne away from Theseus, giving her the stars as a wedding crown. Felix has never been this far from home, and so much of the surrounding culture and geography is being experienced as new and extraordinary. Our friend Dimitrios explains to him the Greek alphabet. He tries a grilled sardine (not good) and, in the spirit of Dionysus, a few sips of my beer (better). The Orthodox church is full of strange icons, candles and exotic smells. He is noticing the girls. And the sea is literally blue. His eyes are as wide as saucers.

There is much vicarious enrichment to be had in seeing the world anew through the eyes of a child. The landscape is repopulated with wonder. The world-weary "been there, done that" adult is reminded of what he or she has stopped noticing or being shocked or excited by. It feels like just the sort of renewal that is supposed to come with a holiday. I want to suspend my disbelief and be 10 again. I want what Nietzsche called a "second innocence".

Nietzsche's intellectual prescription for this was that atheism must first triumph. We must first fully divest ourselves of the gods only then to return to something called the sacred. He returns to Dionysus. I return to the God of the little white churches that are scattered all over the island. But what is it, then, that atheism is supposed to burn away? For too many enlightenment thinkers, it is the credulity of childhood. So too with St Paul, we are called "to put away childish things". We are called intellectually to grow up. But I want to be a grown up and a child at the same time. I want binocular vision.

Not that this little pop at the enlightenment is a pop exclusively at the atheistic enlightenment. My particular derision is reserved for all those who insist that religion is either literally true or not true at all. Fundamentalism is just as much a product of bad enlightenment thinking as are those aspects of contemporary atheism that claim the only thing worth saying about the Greek myths is that they are untrue. Of course they are not untrue. Something can be true and not literally true. This is what the child sees. Perhaps that is why my children are so relaxed about the word literally. And maybe they are right.

Holidays are, of course, originally holy-days. Not just ways of recharging our batteries so that we can return more effectively to the world of work. At best, they are about relearning enchantment. Discovering second innocence. There is nothing wrong with the intellectual astringent of hard-nosed empiricism, in the right place.

But if the world is only populated by things that can be weighed or counted, then the world is too easily conscripted by material production. Though, to be fair, the poor Greeks could use a bit more material production at the moment.

Twitter: @giles_fraser

• Christianity
• Anglicanism
• Religion
• London
• Greece
• Europe

Giles Fraser
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To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the African Union, we asked the singer Rokia Traoré to share her thoughts on Pan-Africanism, the relationship between the continent and the west and her hopes for the future of her country, Mali. What is your vision for Africa over the next 50 years?

Adaobi IfeachorThibaut RemyJosh StraussRichard Sprenger

A veteran of London's bike-share scheme debunks the myths surrounding Citi Bikes as New Yorkers gear up for launch

They have arrived! Glowing in Citbank blue, hundreds of Bloomberg Bikes emerged from nowhere onto the streets of New York in the early hours of Friday, greeted with a combination of curiosity, puzzlement, and not a little suspicion.

Which is hardly surprising, as it's not been plain cycling so far. Residents of the West Village think the docking stations will destroy the area's historic character. In Brooklyn, treasured parking spots have been usurped. Tabloid columnists fear the city's streets will be littered with the bodies of mown-down cyclists. And the whole scheme was delayed for months because of various technical problems.

As a veteran of the London scheme, I've heard it all. The three-year build-up ran to much the same script. Conventional wisdom before the launch in July 2010 had one overarching theme: it'll never work. But it did.

So, New York, with the benefit of experience, let me guide you through the myths.

This is a disaster! All these inexperienced cyclists wobbling around on the streets of the city that never sleeps! 

London's Cassandras had to wait a whole five days until one of our hire bikes ended up being squashed against some railings by a truck (the rider survived ). But the accident statistics show that those on the hire bikes are no more likely than any other cyclists to be hurt. In the first 11 weeks of our scheme, Transport for London (TfL) received reports of ten cyclists being injured – not bad given that 1.6m journeys had been made on the bikes in that period. Initially, the kind of folks you'll get using the bikes at the start are confident sorts who are more than capable of executing an arm signal without losing control and are probably just fed up of their own wheels getting stolen all the time. But in time more newbies will start to saddle up. According to TfL, nearly 8 in 10 members either started to cycle (49%) or cycle more often (28%) as a result of the scheme. With any luck, the Citi Bikes will have a civilising effect on New York streets. There is lots of evidence which shows that cycling gets safer the more people do it.

It's too expensive! 

Actually, New York's scheme is a bit of a rip-off, at least for casual users. $9.95 plus tax for 24-hour access does seem a little steep. Until London's bike-mad mayor put the prices up in 2013, it used to cost Londoners just £1 (about $1.60) for 24 hours of unlimited journeys of 30 minutes or less. Now we pay £2 ($3). Still cheaper than a single journey on the tube. But I've seen Wall Street – you guys are loaded! People often misunderstand the pricing structure by complaining about the high cost of holding onto a bike for more than an hour – if you're on the day rate you'll get whacked with a $9 charge for every 60-90 minutes you keep a bike over your "free" first 30 minutes, and it's a whopping $12 for every additional 30 minutes after that. But the point of a public bike hire scheme is to share bicycles, not hog them. They're not for pootling around Manhattan all day as you flit from deli to cafe to office to bar. They're a substitute for one subway ride, an alternative way of getting from A to B with no stopping in between.

But there is no lock! How dumb!

Again, the bikes are for simple journeys. The Citi Bike folks don't want you chaining up their hardware outside the bakery while you pop in for a bagel. They know how many bikes are stolen in New York each year. No locks means you can only leave a bike in one of the secure docking stations across the city. You have a very good incentive to keep your hire bike at close quarters: the $1,000 fee if you don't return it within 24 hours. 

All the bikes will get stolen!

No they won't. Sure, thousands of bicyclettes disappeared when Paris launched its Velib scheme years ago. But that's because the Frenchies trusted their users with in-built locks, les cretins. In London, where bikes do not have wheel locks, only 24 have disappeared since the scheme began in July 2010, and that's over 21 million journeys. "We are confident that the number of stolen bikes will remain low through effective policing," said a spokeswoman for TfL. The majority of bikes that are reported stolen are later recovered, she added.

The commercial sponsor is antithetical to the free-wheeling spirit of cycling! 

Get over it. Barclays bank sponsors London's scheme and from day one literally no one other than the bank's PR woman has ever has referred to the bikes as Barclays bikes. They are Boris Bikes, named after our flaxen haired mayor, Boris Johnson, who arrives to all meetings helmet in hand, his suit -a-crumple. He really can't claim credit for the initiative. It was the brain child of his predecessor, Ken Livingstone: Boris just pedalled into City Hall a few months before launch and stole the glory. If you don't like the sponsor, get creative with some stickers, like this.

• New York
• United States
• Road transport
• London
• Cycle hire schemes

Helen Pidd
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Italian prisoner of war and Ukrainian forced labourer were separated after falling in love during the second world war

It may go down as one of the longest love affairs in history – and certainly one with the most inauspicious beginnings, starting as it did in a concentration camp more than 70 years ago in Austria.

It was there that Luigi Pedutto met Mokryna Yurzuk. He was an Italian prisoner of war, she was a Ukrainian forced labourer with a young daughter born in the Nazi camp near the town of Sankt Pölten, northeastern Austria. She brought him food, he sewed hats and clothes to impress her in return. They fell in love, but when the camp was liberated in 1945, Yurzuk was sent back to Ukraine. Pedutto was not allowed to join her.

Decades passed. Pedutto worked as a financier in Italy and Yurzuk as a collective farmer in Ukraine. Both married and had children, but never forgot their wartime love. Finally the two were reunited in 2004, thanks to a TV show in Moscow. Now the pair have their own statue in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, in a park near the so-called "lovers' bridge", a popular destination for people to confess their love to one another.

After unveiling the monument, Pedutto couldn't help crying. "When I was nine years old, my teacher told me: remember, for all the tough times in your life, you will be rewarded some day or other," he said. "I feel like I've been rewarded for all I endured." As he spoke, bystanders offered good wishes and women asked him to give them a kiss "for luck in love".

Yurzuk was too weak to travel to Kiev for the ceremony, but her relatives at the event said she was happy that her love would become a symbol for other couples. Yurzuk's granddaughter, Galyna Yemeliyanova, said her grandmother often retold her love story, but never dreamt of meeting her Italian boyfriend again.

Not being able to travel to the USSR, with the country cut off by the iron curtain, Pedutto kept Yurzuk's photograph and a small medallion with a strand of her hair. At last he ventured to make a move and wrote a letter to the international television show Wait for Me, which helps those who have been separated to find each other. It worked. "I sought her for 62 years, and at last I found her," Pedutto said.

Yurzuk visited Pedutto in Italy and was even made an honorary citizen of his home town, Castel San Lorenzo in Salerno. But she didn't accept his marriage proposal, despite both of them being widowed. "When I proposed to her, she just laughed," Pedutto said.

"They found each other too late," said Yemeliyanova. "Both have their children, grandchildren and don't want to travel to a foreign land."

So their relationship remains at the courtship stage. Pedutto brings Yurzuk homemade olive oil and parmesan to prepare her Italian spaghetti. He also helps her with chores, just as he did all those years ago in Austria.

He is talkative and romantic, while she is reserved and down to earth. They speak in a strange mix of Ukrainian, Italian and Russian, but usually understand each other without words. Yurzuk is waiting for Pedutto to visit again in August, when the two plan to go to Kiev together to see the monument immortalising their love.

He still hasn't given up hope of persuading her to marry, said Maria Shevchenko, the Ukrainian producer of Wait for Me, who has been following the couple's story for years.

"And you can expect anything from this couple," she added, laughing.

• Second world war
• Relationships
• Russia
• Ukraine
• Italy
• Europe

Oksana Grytsenko
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British men held on suspicion of endangering aircraft after Manchester-bound flight is diverted to Stansted following dispute

Two men have been arrested after a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane with more than 300 people on board was at the centre of a security alert and was escorted to Stansted airport by RAF fighter jets.

Officers from Essex police boarded flight PK709 and took two British men, aged 30 and 41, to a station for questioning on suspicion of endangering an aircraft.

The incident was not believed to be terrorist related. Essex police said they were treating the incident as "a criminal offence".

Police said the plane was the subject of "forensic examination by specialist officers … at this point in time no suspicious items have been recovered."

Passengers on the flight said cabin crew had told them that the men had tried to enter the cockpit a number of times and an argument had ensued.

It is understood that after the pilot was informed of disruptive behaviour a request was made to divert from its destination of Manchester airport to Stansted, London's third airport, as a precaution.

Typhoon jets from RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire were launched.

There were unconfirmed reports that bomb threats were made. The New York Times quoted a spokesman for PIA, Mashhud Tajwar, as saying that shortly before the plane was due to land at Manchester the men threatened a flight attendant that "they will blow the plane up". Tajwar later said the two passengers said they were joking but the security procedure had to be followed.

The Guardian has not verified the report of bomb threats.

Passenger Umari Nauman told Sky News: "The cabin crew informed us that basically they tried to come into the cockpit a few times and because they had been asked not to do that they got into a bit of an argument with the crew."

Passengers were ordered to leave their possessions on board before leaving the plane, she said. They were being looked after by Stansted staff in an airport lounge early on Friday evening while the airline considered how to make sure passengers reached their destination.

The plane taxied to the north side of the airport, well away from the terminal, as flights carried on with minimal delays.

Mahmouda Aslam, 50, from Prestwich, Manchester, had been waiting for her husband, Mohammed, who was on the flight. She said after speaking to him on his mobile phone: "I said: 'Are you alright? Are you scared?' He said: 'We are all OK. The flight is full of police.'"

Zohaib Sattar, 24, from Huddersfield, waiting for his wife, Iqra Anwar, 24, and his father, Abdul Sattar, 57, said he spoke to his father on the phone after landing. "My father said there was no warning or threat, all of a sudden the plane just turned around."

A spokesman for Stansted airport said police may wish to interview passengers about the incident. "At some point police and the airline will arrange for their onward transportation to Manchester."

• Air transport
• Royal Air Force
• Crime
• Pakistan
• Military

Sam JonesNick HopkinsJames Meikle
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Once denied by its leaders, the Shia militant group's involvement in Syria is now a badge of honour for families burying their dead

The workmen had been busy in the room where Hezbollah honours its dead. In one corner of the martyrs' cemetery in south Beirut, four women shrouded in black sat cross-legged near a new grave, reading from the Qu'ran. Metres away, the yellow flag of the militant group covered a freshly covered hole in a white marble floor. The scent of burning incense wafted across the room.

Another grave, its concrete seal barely dry, had been partly completed nearby. There were seven fresh holes in all; and the grave digger was never far away. More bodies were due on Friday. At this rate, the tiny room – a shrine to Hezbollah's cause as much as to the men who died fighting for it – would soon be full.

The flurry of activity in the martyrs' cemetery marks the busiest period for the militant movement since the 2006 war with Israel, in which an estimated 400 of its members died. All the new graves here have been dug in the past 10 days. Many others have been sealed with the familiar yellow and green standard in villages across Lebanon where the rumblings of a very different war have now boiled over into sacrifice and loss.

The newly arrived dead have ushered in a new reality for Hezbollah, one that has taken more than two years of uprising and war in neighbouring Syria to publicly acknowledge: all the fallen have died fighting Arabs in Syria, not Jews in Israel. Such a shift in orientation, for so long denied by the group's leadership, is now being worn as a badge of honour by the families of the dead.

Many of the next of kin interviewed by the Guardian said that their sons and brothers had been defending Lebanon from foreign plotters – in this case Salafists from the east rather than Zionists from the south. "The threat to us comes from all directions," said one grieving relative in the Beirut suburb of Chiyah on Friday. "But behind it all is the hidden hand of Israel."

The relative had come to the martyrs' cemetery to bury Taalab Fadl, who had been killed fighting rebels in the Syrian town of Qusair.

Men in olive green rode motorbikes up and down nearby roads, all closed by steel barriers while the body was prepared for burial in an adjoining funeral hall. A truck stopped on a street corner, blaring martyrdom hymns throughout the cavernous lanes and alleys of the party's heartland.

A brass band prepared for the 2pm arrival. It had used the visit hours earlier of an Iranian delegation to prepare, warming up with stirring revolutionary ballads, more than the sorrowful tones often associated with loss.

The Iranians, around 70 men in two buses, had all made their way to the new graves, politely asking their guides where each had been killed. The officials spent more time in front of one grave at the centre of the room, that of the last Hezbollah member to die in Syria before the uprising, Imad Mughniyeh, the group's key strategist and military leader who was killed by Israeli assassins in Damascus in February 2008. Some bowed in deference, stooping to touch the tomb's marble cover. Others slowly toured the room acknowledging all of the dead, new and old.

Next to Mughniyeh was a new arrival, Rabiah al-Saadi, covered uncharacteristically in a red flag. And alongside him was Hadi, the son of the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Hadi had been killed by Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon in 1997.

A middle-aged man crouched in front of the grave of his 17-year son who also died in battle that year. One hand held the corner of the tomb and he sobbed uncontrollably into the other. As he rose to leave, he said: "Grief is the price we pay for love."

In the clandestine world of Hezbollah there is something revelatory about its graveyards; its members live with their secrets, but die stripped bare of them. As the tally of dead and injured has mounted over the past week, a clearer picture has emerged of the depth of the group's involvement in Syria, a battle that Nasrallah had long denied joining.

The impact of such a shift is resounding across Lebanon and beyond. Sectarian tensions, which have bubbled away as the crisis has worn on, are now more visible and potent than for many decades. "God help us," said one refugee from Qusair this week – a Sunni mother of three. "People say they are afraid of a world war. We want a world war rather than this. Either they let us die, or live with dignity."

In a series of speeches over the past two years, Nasrallah, who is rarely seen in public, has voiced unwavering support for Bashar al-Assad, whose regime has been essential to the group's power. But he has dismissed constant opposition claims that he was more than just a moral backer. In the past eight months, however, Hezbollah's leader has shifted tone, suggesting first that members were "not yet" involved in Syria, then highlighting the threat posed to Shia shrines there, particularly the Sayyida Zeinab mosque in Damascus, as a reason to consider stepping in.

This year, Hezbollah's television station, al-Manar, started playing a short video showing fighters near the Zeinab mosque – a tacit acknowledgement of the group's direct military support. Facebook posts about slain members appeared soon after. Then came tributes on Hezbollah channels and websites, all without details.

Its hand perhaps forced by the sheer volume of dead and wounded coming back from Qusair, the group has only this past week felt comfortable enough to drop the veil on its role in Syria. But even now, the graveyard clamour and pageantry of martyrdom has not led Hezbollah's leaders to address their direct involvement – a move that has profound implications both in Lebanon and across the region.

So far, justification is being left to the group's support base, much of which seems to be onside with the decision, citing a need to strike pre-emptively against rebel groups that they believe will come to fight them next.

"I am with Hezbollah in this decision, because it is better that we fight them there than here," said a Dahiyah resident, Mohammed Abdullah.

"People don't think critically. If Hezbollah want to do this, then that's OK. They believe that Hezbollah know what they are doing."

Another Dahiyah local echoed a sentiment widely heard among Hezbollah supporters – that Syria's opposition is al-Qaida-led and heading for Lebanon. "They are terrorists who pretend they are Muslims," said Zulfiqa Hamsa, 23. They want to take the weapons from Hezbollah and indirectly support the Zionists and the Jews.

"They have been afraid until now to say that Hezbollah have been involved in fighting in other countries because of international opinion."

Other supporters are equally comfortable with the shift in the group's raison d'etre. "Of course it's a big decision," said vendor Ala'a Attrass. "But it's necessary. You think there isn't sectarianism in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia? They are persecuting Shias there."

Lebanon's civilian leaders have largely remained mute over this week's events. By Friday, at least 30 Hezbollah members had returned in death shrouds. Many dozens more were injured. Its supporters estimated that the toll was much higher, with some well connected sources saying that a Syrian jet had mistakenly bombed a large group of Hezbollah members, killing up to 20 on Tuesday.

In the northern city of Baalbek – a strategic hub for Hezbollah, only 15 miles south of the frontline in Qusair – recent refugees were taking shelter from the war. Nearby, another of the group's main zones, Hermel, where its founding parade was held in 1982 and the group was mandated by Iran to fight Israel, was further down the path of conditioning its supporters to the change. Members here had begun erecting martyrs' posters to pay homage to the dead – something that is yet to be done in Beirut, where fading banners of the 2006 dead remain prominent.

On a visit to Baalbekon Thursday, Australia's foreign minister, Bob Carr, said the week's events had marked a groundshift in Syria's war. The deteriorating situation there, he said, "could become a sectarian civil war across the region. The prospect of it being a Shia, Sunni war across more than one country and this would be a huge tragedy.

"This is profoundly serious now. We could see the unravelling of nation states and the agreed boundaries that we have seen in the Middle East."

Back in Dahiyah, there was little reflection on the broader issues beyond an existential view of "us versus them", which has morphed into "we're better off getting them first".

"Fighting Israel has a different meaning and taste than fighting in Syria," said Mohammed Abdullah.

Asked which tastes better, he replied: "Israel, for sure."

• Hezbollah
• Syria
• Middle East and North Africa
• Lebanon

Martin Chulov
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A Pakistan passenger aircraft, en-route to Manchester, has been escorted to Stansted airport by RAF Typhoons

Paula Broadwell speaks publicly for the first time about the extramarital affair that led to the CIA director's resignation

The woman whose affair with David Petraeus cost the four-star general his job as CIA director has spoken of her remorse over her role in the scandal.

Six months after Paula Broadwell's personal relationship with her subject became public knowledge, she has given her fullest comments yet regarding the extramarital relationship.

"I have remorse for the harm that this has caused, the sadness it has caused in my family and other families and for causes that we belong to," she told North Carolina news channel WSOC-TV. She went on to credit her husband for standing by her.

The comments come two months after Petraeus publicly apologised for his part in the affair, which led to his resignation from the CIA in November.

Speaking at the University of Southern California's annual Reserve Officers' Training corps dinner in March, the former CIA director prefaced his address with: "Please allow me to begin my remarks this evening by reiterating how deeply I regret and apologise for the circumstances that led me to resign from the CIA and caused such pain for my family, friends and supporters."

His affair with Broadwell was discovered as part of an FBI investigation into emails she had sent to another woman, seemingly under the impression that the recipient was a rival for Petraeus's affections.

The resulting scandal toppled him from his post at the CIA. In a resignation message to staff, Petraeus admitted to displaying poor judgement in conducting the affair.

He added: "Such behaviour in unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organisation such as ours."

For her part, Broadwell has said little publicly about the affair. Earlier this month at a YMCA prayer breakfast in Charlotte she did admit to making "some mistakes in the past". She elaborated on this during Friday's interview.

Meanwhile Petraeus has begun his post-government life, taking on a part-time teaching role at the University of Southern California.

• David Petraeus
• United States
• CIA
• North Carolina

Matt Williams
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Discoverer of Undertones calls for fresh inquiry into 2004 blaze that destroyed huge collection of Northern Irish punk

It was a blaze that wrecked businesses, destroyed 50,000 vinyl records and left a large part of Northern Ireland's punk history in ashes – but the culprit has never been found.

Now Terri Hooley, the new-wave impresario who discovered the Undertones, is hoping that publicity around a cult Ulster punk movie will spur the Police Service of Northern Ireland to reopen its investigation.

Hooley ran the Belfast record shop Good Vibrations, a 1970s centre of Northern Ireland punk whose record label released the Undertones' single Teenage Kicks. But a firebomb attack in April 2004 destroyed a huge collection of his records, artwork from the punk era, rare posters and photographs as well as newspaper and magazine cuttings.

Hooley branded the initial inquiry into the arson attack in the art deco North Street Arcade a "sick joke". But now the story of Good Vibrations has been turned into a movie of the same name and Hooley is hoping its release last month will kickstart a campaign to bring those behind the blaze to justice.

Hooley and other traders in the arcade – 20 businesses were destroyed in the arson – have also demanded a public inquiry.

Back from a tour of Moscow, where Good Vibrations – which received a four-star film review from the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw – has become a hit with young Russians, Hooley said: "We have never forgotten what was done to us. I want to use the publicity around the film to put it up to the PSNI and get them to take this seriously again. Twenty-three shops and art centres were burned out.

"The PSNI should tell us who they interviewed about this fire and talk to the owners again about who we believe were behind the arson. This was one of the worst acts of urban vandalism in post-ceasefire Belfast."

Hooley also revealed that in the months after the blaze he and other owners received threatening calls. "They didn't mention the fire but amid all the publicity I started receiving phone calls, including one from a man who reminded me: 'You have a young son.'

"I told them they would never intimidate me just as the paramilitaries never intimidated me when I had Good Vibrations going in the 70s."

A PSNI spokesman said the inquiry remained open. "All lines of inquiry were pursued at the time of the incident. The file remains open and the investigation is still live," the spokesman said, urging anyone with information to contact the police or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111."

A spokesman for the police ombudsman's office in Northern Ireland, which investigates complaints about policing, said Hooley and the other former key-holders of North Street Arcade still had the right to file a complaint once the PSNI inquiry was complete.

North Street Arcade, in the Cathedral Quarter area of Belfast, was built in the art deco style in 1936 and was regarded as a chic shopping mall that lifted the spirits of passersby and shoppers alike during the depression.

In the early 1990s, as the area around became run down, it evolved into a home for alternative record shops, punk and Gothic clothes shops and hairdressers as well as a haven for artists.

• Belfast
• Northern Ireland
• Punk
• Feargal Sharkey
• Police
• Crime

Henry McDonald
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Tighter security won't save us from more Woolwich-style attacks, but helping to protect those most at risk might

Almost eight years ago, I lost one of my dearest school friends in the 7/7 terrorist attack on London's transport network. James Adams and 25 others were murdered by Abdullah Shaheed Jamal on a train travelling between Russell Square and King's Cross. Jamal did not look like Osama bin Laden, Kaled Sheikh Mohammed or Mohamed Atta. In fact, he looked like me: black Caribbean, raised and schooled in Britain. Michael Adebolajo, one of the two people alleged to have killed Lee Rigby in Woolwich on Wednesday afternoon, has a similar profile to Jamal. Adebolajo also grew up and went to school in Britain. From the videos that have emerged, this was a man that looked and sounded like many of us. But by young adulthood, he had converted to Islam and had become radicalised enough to murder a complete stranger.

All of us want to know what security measures can be put in place to prevent this happening again but this alone will not be enough. No draconian measures to "toughen up" our borders can thwart the murderous ambition of a fellow citizen. Neither does any state have the resources to monitor every convert utterly convinced of their own righteousness. Similarly, the suggestion that the murder was a direct consequence of British foreign policy is superficially compelling – some even tried to suggest to me that my vote in favour of the invasion of Iraq contributed to James' death – but now that British troops have left Basra and are due to leave the dusty plains of Helmand next year, who truly believes this will spell the end of attacks like these? And even if they could, what sovereign nation can possibly have its foreign affairs dictated to by a violent minority?

We need to start by looking closer to home. There is no escaping the fact that terrorist attacks have almost exclusively been led and executed by young men. Males isolated from the rest of society, fixated by a binary world view where there is only faith and infidelity. But these profoundly alienated young men are not only to be found in Britain's Muslim communities – vulnerable males looking to fill a vacuum in a life absent of camaraderie and purpose are common to all ethnicities. Likewise, it is not uncommon for fringe groups of all ideological persuasions to systematically target these men by manipulating their sense of hopelessness and lack of belonging.

In one community, the English Defence League has radicalised the anger of disillusioned young white men and channelled it towards immigrant communities they believe are destroying their way of life. In another, a culture that idolises guns, knives and nihilism has drawn predominantly young black men into the world of street gangs. Boys from the age of 10 are taught to abandon all others apart from the gangs they belong to and to fight for turf with their rivals. Here, the very notion of masculinity has been bastardised to the extent that in their code, power and respect can only be achieved through intimidation and fear.

At its most extreme is the root of the horrific scenes in Woolwich on Wednesday. Radical Islamism suffocates conventional Islamic beliefs based on love and mutual respect with a diet of anger, hate and intolerance. Young men, perhaps already convinced of being outcasts, are intoxicated by teachings that not only entrench this difference further but demands that they despise the society they leave behind. Only through this prism is it possible to understand the deaths of Muslims in Afghanistan as an attack on oneself and subsequently seek revenge by the proxy of an inconspicuous soldier in a London suburb.

This distortion is so dangerous because it masquerades as an all-consuming faith. Whereas membership of the EDL or an inner-city gang can foster a type of lifestyle or, at worst, a livelihood, radical Islamism imposes a warped moral code and a polluted understanding of their purpose on earth. The attacks of 7/7 and the gruesome events in Woolwich were the products of marrying young men already drowning in their own grievances with a moral code that provides simple justifications for employing the worst excesses of human capacity.

This is no attempt to provide an alibi for the killers of Lee Rigby: no circumstance or character trait can possibly absolve personal responsibility in the case of this deliberate, gruesome murder. Neither can this possibly be caused by the recession or government cuts – there has always been a reservoir of young men that society forgets in times of both boom and bust.

But it is not unreasonable to ask why British males of a certain age and demographic but from all backgrounds almost exclusively provide the talent pool for our legions of racists, football hooligans, rioters, gang members and terrorists.

We may never be able to stop the EDL from trying to exploit the anger of young white, unemployed men. We may never be able to stop grime artists glorifying violence or gang leaders looking for impressionable black youths to do their bidding. Nor may we ever be able to stop clerics from the other side of the world inciting hatred in sermons uploaded to YouTube. But we aren't powerless. There is much more we can do to build the resilience of these young men long before they become candidates for radicalisation. We can help provide purpose to the purposeless so they cannot be manipulated. We can communicate a message of aspiration and opportunity that can cut through lives littered with grievances.

Most of all, our response should be informed by what weakens this fringe ideology the most. If the aftermath of Lee Rigby's horrific murder is that we return to a debate that isolates Britain's Muslim communities we will merely empower the racists that only wish to stoke tension. Instead, we have to empower the imams and mosques that utterly reject these heinous crimes without question. We have to strengthen the families and communities that are best placed to make a difference, not just limit our ambition to tap more phones or track more emails. We need to turn our attention to the generation of alienated and brutalised young men who remain vulnerable to the poisonous ideology of violent extremism. If we make no attempt to reach them, then we will only empower the zealots that groomed the murderers of Lee Rigby and James Adams.

• Woolwich attack
• Crime
• London
• Islam
• Religion
• The far right
• Gangs
• Communities
• Young people
• Gender
• English Defence League

David Lammy
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Children's label Crewcuts sees White House aesthetic expand its influence over British life with its zingy take on preppy classics

This weekend, in an operation masterminded from a minimalist-chic brick-and-glass headquarters in central London, the White House is quietly expanding its influence over British life.

Crewcuts, the mini-me arm of American retailer J Crew, has become a leading light in burgeoning childrenswear, with the help of endorsement by the First Daughters, Sasha and Malia Obama.

Ever since the girls wore clashing J Crew coats at the president's 2009 inauguration, the brand's colourful modern-preppy aesthetic has been in high demand – and the White House connection was underscored when Malia, 14, chose J Crew for the second inauguration in January.

Crewcuts has been given a prominent space in the two-day J Crew pop-up boutique in London, next door to the Central Saint Martins College of Arts building, where the label will fund a J Crew scholarship for an MA fashion student next year.

The initiative celebrates the arrival of J Crew in the UK, as the brand prepares to open its flagship UK store on Regent Street, central London, in November.

An endorsement as commercially powerful as that of the Obamas is a precious commodity, one that will J Crew will discuss only in the most delicate terms. "We are honoured to be part of such a momentous occasion in both history and fashion," said Jenna Lyons, J Crew's creative director, in 2009.

Jenny Cooper, head designer of Crewcuts, says the company is "very happy and flattered" when Malia and Sasha wear the label.

Cooper, who lives in Brooklyn and has two young sons, points to underlying cultural factors that have played a crucial role in the rise of Crewcuts. She says: "Children are the focus of our lives more than they ever have been. Our family life is more public, and we talk about it more than previous generations did. And as a result of that, there is more interest in childrenswear."

This shift in motivation among consumers of childrenswear, from making a mundane purchase to making a lifestyle choice, is reflected in a willingness to spend more on children's clothes.

Eve Karayiannis, founder of the luxury British childrenswear brand Caramel, commented recently that "people are looking for the same quality and style in their children's clothes as their own. One reflecting the other. I read once that children of today are an extension of one's own brand."

The UK children's clothing market is worth £6bn, according to a study by Key Note.

J Crew and Crewcuts have enjoyed a surge in popularity in the past decade and annual sales have trebled to $2.2bn. The key figures credited with the transformation of what was once a fusty catalogue brand are the chief executive, Mickey Drexler, and Lyons.

The brand, positioned at the top end of the middle market, has forged a distinctive style that has made it aspirational for the middle-class consumer. At the same time, the lower ranks of America's "two percenters" – those earning more than $250,000 a year – have reined in their spending in the shadow of the recession, trading down from top-drawer brands such as Ralph Lauren to more affordable alternatives including Coach and J Crew.

At Crewcuts, colour is king, says Cooper. "We don't talk down to kids with our designs. We make clothes which appeal to kids and to their parents."

By bridging a gap between tweedy, formal childrenswear, which looks "smart" to grown-up eyes and garish, cartoonish clothes that appeal to the younger generation, the label has forged a niche in the market where the clothes are "a mix of casual and special – we think that's a good dichotomy", says Cooper.

As the traditions of dressing boys in blue and girls in pink have faded, the J Crew embrace of colour has hit a nerve. "I've noticed in children that their reaction to colour is very strong and instinctive. When they see a colour that they like their eyes light up, there is a sharp intake of breath," says Cooper. "Girls still gravitate towards pink, but we give them options – we will always include a beautiful yellow or a persimmon."

But J Crew will face a challenge winning over recession-hit British consumers, in an economy where the outlook is bleak. With a girl's summer dress at £60, the brand has priced itself above the UK's competitive high-street market.

But Cooper believes Crewcuts will strike a nerve. "One of the things I love about England is the wonderful colour sense", says Cooper. "My grandmother was an Anglophile, and used to buy quirky coloured cashmere in London. It's very sophisticated here. I'm hoping we'll fit right in."

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Jess Cartner-Morley
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