BNP candidate in ‘exclusion’ row

A British National Party prospective parliamentary candidate in Shropshire claims he has been excluded from a General Election hustings in the county.

Phil Reddall said he was the only candidate contesting the north Shropshire seat not to have been invited to tomorrow’s meeting in Oswestry organised by the National Farmers’ Union.

But the NFU said today that it had invited to the meeting those parties which it believed had the “strongest agricultural agenda”.
The meeting is being held at the Pedigree pub in Shrewsbury Road at 2.30pm.

The parliamentary candidates for Labour, Lib Dems, Conservatives, UKIP and the Green party have been invited to the meeting.
Mr Reddall, of Cheswardine, near Market Drayton said: “We are not asking to be treated in any way different, we are simply asking for a level playing field, to be treated in the same way as everyone else.”

A spokesman for the National Farmers’ Union, Oliver Cartwright, said: “The meeting was organised for our membership to discuss farming issues with prospective candidates.

“As a membership organisation we have the right to invite whom we wish to our meetings. We have got a limited time for the event and had to invited those we believe to be key players, those who include agriculture on their agendas and manifestos.”
Mr Cartwright said that as well as the three main political parties the Green party had been invited because it was heavily interested in agricultural and environmental issues.

He said UKIP was involved in agriculture at a EU level.

Shropshire’s BNP spokesman, Mr James Whittall, said the NFU meeting was not the first that had excluded the BNP.
“Some areas are inviting us to meetings but certain pockets are not.”

He said the BNP had been invited to church meetings in the Wrekin and Telford constituencies but those invitations had later been withdrawn when some other candidates had refused to share a platform with the BNP candidates.
Earlier this week the Lichfield Diocese wrote to churches urging them not to invite the BNP to meeting that it was organising.

shropshire star

Bill Clinton's warning on extremist mood in US

Bill Clinton today warned politicians and commentators to tone down their rhetoric for fear of inflaming hate groups and provoking violence, as a poll suggested that public trust in the US government is at its lowest point for half a century.

Amid growing concern in the White House about the anti-government mood and a marked rise in radical fringe groups, Clinton said the internet made it easier to spread ideas to reach "the unhinged". The worry is not so much over populist movements such as the Tea Party but the revival of extreme groups that have been encouraged by general anti-government sentiment.

On the 15th anniversary of the 1995 Oklahoma bombing, the worst terrorist attack in the US before 9/11, Clinton wrote in the New York Times: "We are again dealing with difficulties in a contentious, partisan time … As we exercise the right to advocate our views, and as we animate our supporters, we must all assume responsibility for our words and actions before they enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged."
Clinton said it should not be forgotten what drove the Oklahoma bombers. "They took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated in the months and years before the bombing by an increasingly vocal minority: the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government and that public servants do not protect our freedoms but abuse them."

At a ceremony in Oklahoma yesterday, survivors and victims' relatives commemorated the 168 people who were killed.
The extent of the anti-government mood in the country was revealed today in a Pew Research Centre poll that found public confidence in the federal government was at its lowest for half a century. Almost eight out of 10 Americans surveyed said they did not trust it; only 22% said they trusted the federal government almost always or most of the time.
Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Centre, said: "Trust in government rarely gets this low. Some of it is backlash against Obama. But there are a lot of other things going on."
The poll identified several reasons for the rise in anti-government feelings: opposition to Obama; the recession, in particular the role of Wall Street; and anger with both Democratic and Republican members of Congress.
The Southern Poverty Legal Centre, which tracks hate groups, said yesterday there has been a surge in the number of militia and other extremists. Mark Potok, its head, said the mood was so volatile that it needed only a spark to set it off.

Last month nine people linked to the Hutaree, a Christian militia group in Michigan, were arrested over an alleged plot to kill police in the hope of starting an uprising against the government. In February, a lone anti-tax protester flew a plane into the tax office in Austin, Texas.
Members of Congress who last month supported the health reform bill have been targets of vandalism and death threats. Yesterday several hundred pro-gun activists gathered at the Washington Monument to demand the end of restrictions on carrying guns in public.
Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, said groups such as his were set on ousting moderate Republicans in primaries before the November Congressional mid-term elections.

"We are in a war," Pratt, a former Republican member of the Virginia state legislature, told a rally. He said the Obama administration was out to take their freedom, their money and their childrens because it was socialist.
A newly-formed group, the Oath Keepers, made up of former members of the armed services and police forces, had been due to take part in a rally in Virginia at which they would openly carry firearms but pulled out, expressing fears of confrontation with the police.

The Guardian

GOODWILL MARCH IN PRAGUE HIGHLIGHTS THE DANGER OF ANTI-SEMITISM (Czech Rep.)

The goal of the Goodwill March that was staged in Prague Sunday was to calmly react to the alleged aggressiveness and ignorance of neo-Nazis and anti-Semites in society. The police estimated participation in the march from the Old Town to the Lesser Town at 400 people. Last year some 1000 people took part in the event. The march, organised by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, was also attended by a few dozen activists who focus on human rights observance in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. "We want to point to the application of double standards in approach to Palestinians who are daily faced with aggressiveness, racism and other forms of oppression by the state of Israel," Jana Ridvanova, from the association Friends of Palestine, told CTK. The march ended in the Wallenstein Garden where the 7th public rally called We All Are People was held. It wants to declare that anti-Semitism has no place in a decent society. Israeli jazz musician Amos Hoffman with his band performed within the event. A few Holocaust survivors spoke about their stay in concentration camps. Tomas Kraus, secretary of the Federation of Jewish Communities, acquainted the present people with a report on manifestations of anti-Semitism in the Czech Republic. He said the situation is relatively good. Last year 28 anti-Semitic manifestations were registered in the country.


Prague Monitor

Deadly attack on gay man 'like Clockwork Orange scene'

A gay man was subjected to homophobic taunts before being punched and stamped to death in London's  Trafalgar Square.

Ian Baynham, 62, of Beckenham, Kent, was with a friend when three teenagers attacked him outside South Africa House in September, the Old Bailey heard.
One witness said the attack, in which he was punched and stamped, was like a "scene from the film Clockwork Orange".
Joel Alexander, 19, Rachel Burke and Ruby Thomas, both 18, have all pleaded not guilty to manslaughter.

Mr Alexander, of Thornton Heath, south London, Miss Burke, of Three Oaks, East Sussex, and Miss Thomas, of Lichfield, Staffordshire, also deny violent disorder.

'Shocked onlookers'
Brian Altman, prosecuting, said the girls, then 17, had been drinking when they confronted Mr Baynham and his friend Philip Brown and shouted abuse at them.
It was Mr Alexander, then 18, who punched the victim to the ground. Mr Baynham died 18 days after the attack from a brain injury.
Mr Altman said the "brutal attack" was "fuelled by copious amounts of alcohol".
"One onlooker likened the scene of violence to the film A Clockwork Orange.

"Ian Baynham was openly homosexual. What led to his death began when Ruby Thomas hurled homophobic abuse at him and his friend Philip Brown."
The row escalated when Mr Baynham slapped Miss Burke, which led to Mr Alexander punching the victim with such force that he hit the back of his head on the pavement and became unconscious, Mr Altman said.

He added: "That did not suffice. There is evidence that the female defendants then began putting the boot into Mr Baynham, who was still prone on his back, clearly unconscious and in distress.

"Shocked onlookers saw repeated stamping to his chest and forceful kicks to his head."

Miss Burke also repeatedly punched Mr Brown in the face when he tried to stop her from fleeing, the jury heard. She also denies assaulting Mr Brown.

The trial continues.

BBC News

Billy Bragg clashes with BNP's Richard Barnbrook

Billy Bragg was engaged in a finger-pointing row with a senior member of the British National party during a day of action in London, telling him his "racist fascist" politics offered no help to voters.
Bragg was leafleting in Barking and Dagenham, one of the BNP's top target areas in next month's elections, when he bumped into the BNP's London assembly member, Richard Barnbrook, who has attacked the singer on his blog.
Bragg, who was born and raised in Barking, told Barnbrook: "You do not represent the people of Barking and Dagenham," as the pair became embroiled in a heated argument. "You are exploiting the genuine concerns of people here and you are making the problems worse."

Barnbrook, who was elected to the London assembly in 2008, accused Bragg of "mouthing away" and said the "ballot box will determine what happens".

The exchange came during a day of action against the BNP which saw 541 volunteers deliver 91,000 Hope Not Hate newspapers.
The BNP is due to launch its manifesto this week and has claimed it is on the verge of causing a "political earthquake". It claims it has a chance of taking control of Barking and Dagenham council and of gaining two MPs – in Stoke Central and Barking.
However, the far-right party's campaign has been beset by problems, and it appears to be floundering in the polls. Internal criticism over Nick Griffin's leadership came to a head earlier this month when publicity director Mark Collett was arrested on suspicion of threatening to kill him.

In Stoke, the party's number two target, Alby Walker, who led the BNP on the local council for four years, is standing as an independent in the general election.
Walker said he was leaving the BNP because of a "vein of Holocaust denying within the BNP that I cannot identify myself with."

Meanwhile Griffin, who is standing in Barking, has been forced to change the BNP's whites-only membership policy following a legal battle with the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. Last week the Electoral Commission announced it was launching a formal investigation into the party's 2008 accounts.

These difficulties appear to have hit the party's ability to stand candidates in next month's local elections.



The Guardian

Ugandan MP to be banned from UK if his gay death penalty bill succeeds

David Bahati wants to execute consenting same-sex couples, arguing it is a crime they choose to commit.

The British government will ban a Ugandan MP from travelling to the UK if he is successful in passing a law that would impose the death penalty in Uganda for being gay.

Civil servants in the Foreign Office, the Department for International Development and the Borders Agency are drawing up plans to block the visa of born-again Christian MP David Bahati if he does not drop legislation that would see consenting adults who have gay sex imprisoned for life and impose the death penalty on those with HIV – which will be called "aggravated homosexuality".
The bill also proposes the death penalty for those having gay sex with anyone under the age of 18, with someone disabled or what the legislation describes as "serial offenders".

It also calls for life prison sentences for those "promoting homosexuality", which could come to mean human rights groups or those who fail to inform on a gay couple.
One senior British government source said the issue could turn into a "major diplomatic incident if the Ugandans do not back down". President Barack Obama has already described the legislation as odious.
The British government's views have been conveyed to Uganda but officials have not received a clear sense of whether the legislature will pass the bill into law.
Ugandan government officials appear to be using stalling tactics, suggesting it will not come to a vote until 2011, deflecting pressure from a government that could change in the forthcoming general election.

Bahati submitted a private member's bill to the Ugandan parliament last year arguing that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice.
Gay sex is already illegal in Uganda but backbenchers there are pushing for more draconian punishment by preying on fears that homosexuals are "recruiting" children at schools.
Though observers believe President Yoweri Museveni was beaten back by the level of international opprobrium, a march against homosexuality in Uganda last month attracted 2,000 supporters.

The British government is concerned by a wave of anti-gay sentiment sweeping Africa that has also put pressure on homosexual people in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Nigeria.
Besides rescinding the visa of the backbencher, other options considered have been blocking aid to the Ugandan government. The government has switched its strategy to individual visa blocking amidst signs that threats to withhold aid backfire.
Bishop Joseph Bvumbwe, chairman of the Malawi Council of Churches, has accused western donors of trying to use aid as a bait to force Malawi to legalise homosexuality.

British officials have already rescinded the visas of those involved in the Kenyan election riots and members of the Zimbabwean government.

The Guardian